maskormenacelogs | [open] And the nights, they last forever...

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[open] And the nights, they last forever...

WHO: The Hargreeves + Guests
WHERE: Various Cities
WHEN: Month of May
WHAT: Mass log of idiots to keep from flooding others. A log for all things Hargreeves, their Adventures, and those trying to befriend them.
WARNINGS: Obligatory CW for: drugs, alcohol, mentions of death, and mentions of child abuse. You know, the normal things.

"Gerard Way - Baby You're A Haunted House [Official Lyric Video]" (Watch on YouTube)

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When the revenant seems to stop and hesitate, Luther immediately seizes on the opportunity: he grabs the monster where it's looming over Klaus, lifts it away like a kitten by the scruff of its neck, and promptly rips its head from its body. It would've been easy for him to do to a living creature; it's even easier with these rotting beasts with their fraying tendons, and he flings the two pieces far away from them.

But there are more and more around them. It's a numbers game.

Thankfully, more of the Academy are appearing too. In the distance, he sees Allison running, and Luther immediately straightens in recognition.

Once she gets far enough back up the shore of the lake, it's not too hard to figure out where they are. Coming up on Klaus, Diego, and Luther already well into the swing of things -- or so says the body that Luther just ripped in two, easy as though it was paper and not bones, and threw far out toward the middle of the lake as she was getting there.

There's an easier than it should be ease to it. Making the circuit of her gaze take in where each of them was, and how many were coming from each of the directions, and estimating how many of those fast, choppy waves were the warning of more undead things coming out of the water still. Like the house that night, and the bowling alley. It's almost too easy.

There's a nod at Luther, less hello and more like signing-in, at attention, accounted for, and turned from it, without a pause, toward one of the ones just stumbling out, as she flips the chair rod in her hand. The one was still soaked more red and grey than brown, and just came from being stabbed into the brain of another of those bastards.

Everything mutes when he's in a battle, especially when the enemy numbers seem to be ever-increasing in swarms. Sighs, sounds, everything that isn't purely for tactical purpose fades and he's nothing but fluid in motion.

Knives are flying in every direction, which would be far more dangerous if it was literally anyone else throwing them, but with Diego behind it, they weave through the important people and land properly. He hits his targets every single time; in the eye, in the temple, wherever he was trying for, not all necessarily kill-hits, but stunning could help just as much at a crucial moment.

There's a thrill in this that nothing else ever knows or could ever touch. It's why he never did anything else, especially after bombing out of the police academy all those years ago. There was no other thing he could do and truly enjoy the way he did a fight. The heat of it, the adrenaline, the risk-- all of it fuels him in a way that makes everything feel right, complete, only in these moments.

He's still mad with Klaus, but that doesn't stop him from coming when called. It's a fight, and Luther called them to it. Issues had no place in a fight and he'd leave them at the door. He had been working with Kirk for a while, and some others for a bit, but then he was roaming the coast line in a boat taking care of what tried to seep up onto shore.

The roar of the motor might have been head on the water, but he killed it the closer he got. He could see in the crystal clear waters the heads and bodies of water zombie things headed for shore. Headed right for his family.

He had done this before. Slipping over into the deeper water, he dove under and got the attention of a few creatures. On shore, one might see tentacles break water. Flying around. One ripping a head off and flinging it, another lifting above water with three creatures wrapped in it. A 3rd leg ripping their heads off with ease.

The tentacles flail in the water, and another body goes flying. It's a mess, but not as bad as a bloody mess.

Ben popped up again a moment later and shouted. "There's a whole horde coming your way!"

"Jesus—"

The approaching shape in the water hammers on all his sense of danger, at first. Is it another monster rising up out of depths? The notorious Tessie, come to call?

But then there's eldritch tentacles and a sight that he hasn't seen for years, a decade-plus, and it stops his heart with how familiar it is. How absolutely, stunningly right it feels to have all of the Academy springing into action around him for the first time in so very long, Numbers Two and Three and Four and Six all accounted for in the fight, falling back into their rhythms as if they'd never left. (As if they'd never left him.) The only one missing is Five, but they'd been used to that, too: he'd been missing for years before Ben died.

And it's like something has clicked into place and it feels like home. Even (or perhaps especially) when covered in gore, ichor, water-bloated zombies shuffling at them, more hordes coming and Ben seething out of the lake, it feels like home. Luther leans down and catches Klaus' hand and drags him back up to his feet — not realising, not fully, not yet, what Number Four can do with the revenants.

"Then we stop them!" he shouts back to Ben. Number One, implacable. The Umbrella Academy doesn't turn tail at a threat. It jumps right in.

Klaus is staring at the tattoos on his hands when Luther hoists him up and brings him back to the present.
It's just like old times, really. The fantastic five back together, knocking heads and taking names. Which means it's time for him to pull his weight.

"One-" He calls to Luther, as easy as sliding into a second skin.
"I think I've got an idea- it might sound crazy, but-" He's cut off by a sudden shriek, an inhuman sort of wail like dragging nails down a chalkboard.

"CHRIST, behind you-!" He moves, quick, fast, ducking around Luther's arm to hold up his hands like it's a command.
"Stop-" Is it just him, or are his hands glowing blue?

... Is it just him, or did the thing wearing tattered clothing and sunken eyes... actually listen to his command?

It's almost staggering how fast this sends her back. First to the bowling alley, where she, and Luther, and Deigo, and Klaus were all fighting, and then even further back. So much further back. There are tentacles -- that aren't ghostly blue like they were in the Icarus -- writhing under the water and popping out from it, tearing bodies limb from limb, gore and bloodless body pieces flying everywhere.

Knives are whirling through the air. The lowest pitch whistle of the silver through the air, before it slams into bodies, too. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. She can place precisely where Deigo is by them, as well as where things keep coming out from. She can see Luther out of the edge of her vision and Klaus hiding behind the bulk of him. That same flicker of blue near him as at the Icarus. There's part of her that wants to look, but she's been trained better than that.

Ben said a whole horde of those things are coming their way and her eyes have to be on the water. There's no time for gawking. She knows Luther has whatever it is, and there'll be time to ask later.

All of her siblings placed that one last time as the heads start surfacing out of the water, several writhing gray bodies swarming for them, running through those waves, picking up speed as the water lessens. Back in another life, Allison might have said something, but she's not back in that life, and she still can't say anything. Still. Here they come, and Allison goes running into the surf, sharp smile twisting her lips as she slams into one with a shoulder and spins to kick it down into the wavelets.

Six appearing from seemingly nowhere, warning of a horde and sliding instantly into formation with the rest of them is the kind of thing that takes him back. Way back, to when this was all just a game, before he understood the gravity of what they were doing, and what could happen because of it. Fighting with his siblings at his side is the most natural kind of feeling, like sliding on a well-worn favorite t-shirt and easy as every next breath that he doesn't even have to think about.

Three darts off at the other side of him somewhere, and he catches for the briefest second, that twist of her lips into something far more dangerous than it looks before she slams her weight against the revenant.

The blurry edge of blue toward one side of his vision makes him want to look, but he can't. Distraction is deadly and he can't risk it. Instead, he sends a series of knives at another set of zombies swarming them. Shwink. Thwack. Easy targets.

Finally, he steals a glance toward One and Four and sees the zombie stop when Four commands it-- and that's what it is, isn't it? He's controlling it. "Four! Again!" He doesn't have time to explain any further as claws circle his shoulder and he throws everything into slamming the back of his head against his attacker and his attention is stolen again to make sure he wins this.

Six is busy out in the water, his boat a drift for now. He wonders if Kirk was alright out there still, but he was sure the Batman would be fine. Right now he had to answer the call of his siblings, because they were important to him.

Tentacles wrap around bodies, and thought they fight, Ben's abilities keep him able to rip things to shreds. Four did something to stop one, he could see that. He needed to get to shore to keep at Four's back, like the good old days (not that they were all that good), but for no he was dealing with the horde from the outside.

Something grabbed hi leg and he went under in a blink, but ghosting was a great ability and he was out of the grasp, floating to the top again, live form, and ripping the same thing into shreds.

Whatever Four as doing he should do it fast, as there was a mass coming his and One's way.

I missed this, is running through Number One's skull like a drumbeat, like a pulse. He'd spent so many years fighting without them, and it had been like having his arm lopped off, missing the parts of himself that had once functioned like such a well-oiled machine. And they fall right back into it, Sir Hargreeves' vicious hunting hounds, despite the fact that fights like this had killed Six, once.

It still feels like coming home.

One moves to the side, letting Four stand in front of him for once. Not the sentry but the frontline. Hands glowing, hands raised. One claps his brother's shoulderblades, pointing him right at the horde of zombies coming out of the lake, like he's aiming a cannon.

"Do it! Whatever you're doing, do it now!"

It feels so familiar, slipping into a tailored glove or a well-worn shoe. The five of them, the Academy, baring their teeth and wearing their numbers as they call to each other, as they speak, as they fight, as they breathe the training that Hargreeves has given him.

There's a horde of them. More of them than they could take individually. Maybe more of them than all of them could take together. Three and Six are in the water, and Two is covered with gore. Four, again he calls, and One's hands are on his shoulders, and it all comes together. The blue flickers, bright flames burning into fire around his hands, glowing like the most ethereal ectoplasm. And he speaks, the words coming to him from deep within.

It is an old ritual. One he has learned since he was very small. One he seldom used because it never seemed to work.

"You are done here." His voice wavers, but the strength he borrows- from One, from Two, from Three and Six- reverberates back into his voice.
"We thank you for your presence, spirits. We dismiss you. Go- and release from the mortal coil-!"

It wavers. The bodies stilling. The lights in their eyes, haunted, hollow, staring at him.
And one by one, they fall. Dominoes tipping over, their deadly playthings to be discarded back into the water after they fall. Rot and bones and nothing else as a wave of blue sweeps over each of them.

He's trembling. Shaking. Can barely hold the power inside of him, the flames on his fingertips practically burning. And by the time the last one falls, he's all but collapsed back against Luther.

Extinguished.

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[open] And the nights, they last forever...

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