Chaos Angel Spanner
Interlude 8: Scary Monsters
Interlude 8: Scary Monsters
dreaming. This is not a message. This is dream reality. Jennifer is awake within the dream. She expects trouble. She sees its tentacles approach.
Her power wand did come from a message dream. Her dreaming self had hidden it within a pile of gears off to the side two years ago. It was a special prize she earned for successfully interpreting the dream. Ann Faraday would have called it a transforming symbol. The wand is itself an intricate and complex clockwork. She raises it high and speaks the words of power:
“Clockwork angel, spin your gears!”
The magic streams out of the wand, magic possible only in dream reality, in a stream of gears and pistons and bright lights, destroying her flimsy dress and covering her body with a magical girl’s dress of power she constructed entirely out of steampunk aesthetics.
The monster’s tentacles surround her. She pronounces the spell — “Tesla Coil!” Electric arcs coil around her, burn the attacking tentacles, reduces them to ash. But still they come. “Sawed Off!” Thousands of spinning sawblades shoot out to cut the tentacles into millions of pieces. But the fragments come together, and the monster regenerates.
“Power level two!”
She transforms from human form into a gigantic machine, vast gigantic gears spinning and shifting to catch the monster’s arms and crush them. Conveyors and chutes carry the crushed pulp into the huge steam engine at her core, to convert its power into hers.
The monster decides it has toyed with her enough. It shifts into its power form. It generates compound camera eyes to aim and multiple gun emplacements to fire. She realizes it’s time to get serious.
“Power level maximum!”
The machine contracts and condenses. The clockwork vanishes; the angel appears. Two vast wings stretch out from her body of light. She begins to sing her song of power. The monster fires every gun.
She unleashes a shockwave that destroys the missiles, then a burst of infinite light to blow out its camera eyes. The monster decides that she is too powerful for it to handle — for now. It retreats.
waking. Jennifer staggers into the living room. Keenan lies on the couch. Ada says, “You look like you need coffee, Jen.”
“I know. I just downed three cups.”
Keenan sits up to make room for Jennifer. “Another of those magical-girl dreams, eh?”
Jennifer sits down beside him, leans back, and sighs. “Have you ever seen what a Corporation looks like in dream reality?”
“I’ll bet not like the cultlike organizations we see on this side,” says Ada.
“More like the ‘eldritch abominations’ the cults worship, I’ll bet,” says Keenan.
Jennifer lets out an even bigger sigh. “I’m not looking forward to finding out what Jesus America looks like.”
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[Revision 2, 8/18/11: All new material.]
[Revision 2.0.1, 10/30/11: Corrected HTML error.]
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