Trust Machines - Beastly Beauty 5

Chapter 5 - Monsters Come Out to Play Tonight

Friday morning arrived at last.  Violet stood outside the school in her costume, a bright orange skin-tight suit with a stylized i logo on the front, and a black mask over her eyes.  She watched as costumed students streamed by, chattering among themselves eagerly.  Every girl she saw was wearing one of her designs, and a decent number of the guys as well.  To her amazement, some of the cheerleaders she’d done up as flowers had persuaded some of the guys to go with the same look.  Even two of the football players!  Violet had had to be quite creative with them, making them look more like a shrub than a lissome flower.

Bailey was easy to spot in the crowd.  She had the prettiest wings among the dozens of pairs there.  She giggled as she bounced up to Violet with her wings fluttering.  “I can’t believe I’m about to go to school with real wings.  Are you sure they look like they’re only part of the costume?”

Violet grinned and gestured to the other winged outfits streaming toward the doors.  “Among this chaos?  Even if your dress didn’t cover them up, I don’t think you’d get noticed by the teachers.”

As Violet and Bailey strode toward the entrance, a girl in a daffodil costume intercepted them.  “Violet!  There you are.  And O-M-G what are you wearing?”

“Morning, Amelia.  I’m wearing my favourite superhero’s outfit, what does it look like?”

“It looks...  You can’t be seen like that!  You should be here in one of your creations, not that.  Who made it?”

“Bailey, of course.  I can’t design clothes for myself, they always fit the other person in the Venn Machine.”

“You could turn Bailey into a copy of you first.”

“And spoil her lovely wings?  I can’t do that to her.  Besides, seeing another copy of myself is...”  Violet shook her head.  “Confusing.”

“Yeah, but it’s way too much fun to go to school in each other’s bodies,” enthused Amelia.  “The stories I could... so not the point.  Okay.  There is another way.  Turn me into your costume.  If you turn a person into a dress...”

“It fits me, not them.  I know.  I did it once by accident.”  Violet looked over at Bailey.  “You were cute.”

Bailey shrugged.  “You only wore me for five minutes.”

“So?  Come on, if we go now you’ll only miss first class.  I’ll get some of the cheerleaders to cover for us.”

“Seriously?  You’d...”  Violet shook her head.  “No.  Thank you for the offer.  This is how I want to look today.  I am Violet Parr, the most incredible girl I know of.”

Amelia sighed.  “You’ll stand out like a sore thumb among all the other costumes.  One of two girls not wearing your designs.”

“Bah.  E is way better at design than I am.”

“Who?”  Amelia looked confused.  “I don’t get it.”

“You don’t have to.”  Violet strode toward the entrance, head held high.  “Come on, let’s get to class.”

Amelia was right, in that Violet’s comparatively plain suit stood out among all the gorgeous costumes thronging the halls.  Everyone she walked past turned to look at her.  Most smiled and waved.  Violet could hardly believe it.

There was one other girl there in a non-Violet costume, and just before first class they met face to face.  Violet in her orange super-suit, vs. Chelsea in her over-sequined Catgirl outfit.  “Ugh, are you really the only other superhero?”

Violet shrugged.  “The Venn Machines take a lot of persuading to get superhero costumes right.  Plus I was kind of saving this for myself.  Violet as Violet...”

“You are such a geek,” snarkled Chelsea.  “This is all your fault.”

“My fault?” asked Violet.  “I didn’t do anything to you!”

Violet’s reflexes from months of being attacked served her well when Chelsea took a swing at her.  Violet stepped back and Chelsea’s fist instead impacted a locker.  She shook her hand in pain.

“I suppose that’s my fault too,” sighed Violet.  “Leave me alone.  We’ll both be better off.”  She kept a wary distance between her and Chelsea as she walked past the fuming girl and off toward her classes.

Other than that, the morning went by without confrontation.  At lunch, Amelia was vibrating with excitement as she dragged Violet and Bailey over to a cluster of tables.  Instead of the usual handful of cheerleaders in Amelia’s faction, a larger group was gathered there.  All of them were in flower costumes.

“What’s going on?” asked Violet.

“Chelsea’s been kicked out.”

“Of the cheer squad?”

“Of the school!  She assaulted Coach Prenda.”  Amelia launched into an animated telling of the story.  Cheered on by the others, she told of how Chelsea had reacted to finding the cheerleading team wearing flower costumes.  The outfits were so flexible (for which Amelia thanked Violet again) that they wanted to practice in them.  Chelsea had exploded at that, but this time instead of everyone cowering, someone laughed.  Soon the entire squad was laughing at her, and Chelsea had turned to the squad’s coach to get her to do something about it.

“And Coach Prenda, who’s always backed her before...  She said ‘it sounds like you’ve lost the confidence of your team’.  She put it to a vote!  Chelsea was incoherent with rage.”

“So you voted for a new head cheerleader?” asked Violet, amazed.

“No, they’ll pick someone later.  We just voted her out.  Not one of us voted to keep her.  It was like she broke at that point.  If you thought she was mad before...  She threatened Coach Prenda, saying she’d make up a story about being sexually abused by her.”

“She didn’t!” gasped Bailey, who was also listening intently.

“She did.  And when the coach pointed out that nobody would vouch for her, and that she keeps a recorder running in her office, Chelsea physically attacked her.  They had to call the cops to drag her off.”

Violet was stunned.  “Arrested?”

“Dragged her away in handcuffs, still screaming obscenities.”

“That’s...”  Violet grinned.  “That’s awesome.  Thanks.”

“Hah!  We should be thanking you.  Nobody liked her, I don’t even know why she was head cheerleader.”

“Daddy’s money,” said one of the other cheerleaders.  “She’ll be back.  More’s the pity.”

Violet was just happy that her nemesis was gone, even if it was only for the day.

Rumours of Chelsea’s ignominious departure spread like wildfire.  Thanks to the efforts of certain cheerleaders, Violet was credited as the cause in many of the stories.  As a result, she got cheers and high-fives on a regular basis throughout the afternoon.

When she told Bailey about it at the end of the school day, she crowed that it had been the best school day ever.  “Everyone has been so nice to me.  I don’t want to terrify them any more!”

Bailey grinned.  “Aw, c’mon, don’t bail on me.  We need to give them a show, they want to be scared at Hallowe’en.  And we’re the girls for the job!”

Violet cheered.  “We are going to blow their minds!”

*** *** ***

The Hallowe’en party organizers had told their monster volunteers to meet at the mall just before 4pm.  Bailey and Violet made it there just in time, to find one of the Venn Machines sectioned off behind an impromptu barricade made out of a large tarp held up by a couple of volunteers with poles.  The barricade was high enough to block off the prying eyes of passers-by, but did not extend into the sight-lines of the security cameras focussed on the Venn Machines.

“What’s this about?” asked Violet.

The guy organizing the volunteers waved to them. “Hey, you made it.  Hi, I’m Carson, and I’ll be your MC tonight.  We want to keep the identities of the monsters secret until the end of the night, so we can do the big announcement and thank you at midnight.”

“Amelia’s Carson?” asked Violet.  “Oh!  The one who liked the extra features in her costume.”

Carson grinned broadly.  “That outfit is going to see use after Hallowe’en, that’s for sure.  How long will it last?”

“A month.  But if you want a new one, or upgrades...”

Carson managed to widen his grin.  “To the outfit, or the girlfriend?  Some people noticed your friend’s wings today.”

Violet looked over at Bailey, who fluttered her wings much more emphatically than she’d done at school.  “Yes, well.  I’m branching out.  So... Yes to both.”

“Cool.  We’ve already done two sets of volunteers, and the third should be emerging soon.  We’ll bundle them off to the van, and then it’s your turn.  Ready to be scary?”

Violet and Bailey cheered enthusiastically, and before long they were at the shrouded Venn Machine, with Carson setting it for eight hours.

“You have a big van for this, right?” asked Violet.

“Yeah, I borrowed one of dad’s company’s delivery trucks.  Just in case.”

Violet grinned wickedly.  “Good.”  Then she stepped through the door and she and Bailey were alone in the machine.  They both called up the history display and were soon looking at monstrous forms.

“Wait a moment,” said Violet.  “There’s one more thing to do.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to scare anyone at kitten size.”

“Exactly.  Scrunch up as small as you can.”

Bailey did so, a puzzled look on her face.  The kittymonster’s look of confusion made Violet giggle.  She picked larger and larger versions of the kittymonster in the display, until it was filling the entirety of Bailey’s side of the Venn Machine, squished up like a kitten in a bottle.  “Okay.  Move you right paw... I mean hand up a bit. And right... there.  Ready to press.”

“How big did you make me?”

Violet laughed wickedly.  “Make me big enough so that I barely fit inside this thing.”

“Ohhhh!  Oh, wow.  You were a big spider before, now you’ll be...”

“Immense.   Do it!”

When the Venn Machine opened a black wall of fur poured out of the one side, stretching and unkinking into an enormous pantherine form.  From its monstrous muzzle full of wicked looking (but actually soft) teeth to it’s third pair of legs, the beast was easily fifteen feet long, and stood over five at the shoulder.  The tail added another dozen feet, and the tentacles filled the space around it like a writhing cloak.

“Dear God,” swore Carson.  “What are you?”

The giant panther-thing tried to answer, but only produced a low rumble.  It shifted to something akin to a purr, though it sounded more like the idling of a giant diesel engine.  Its giant muzzle swung toward the mall entrance.

“Right.  Time to go.  We’ll just bundle the whole thing around...  Yah!”  Carson saw a giant black eye staring at him from within the other half of the Venn Machine.  “Oh.  Just an eye.  I thought there must be... right.  Can you move?”

The monstrous eye tumbled forward, making Carson skip backward out of the way.

Soon they were inside the back of a cargo van, taking up much of the space within it.  The others travelling with them scrunched toward the front.  The werewolf and the stitched-together monstrosity talked to each other in low voices, comparing notes about the other’s designs.  The translucent blue girl and her nearly transparent companion held hands and grinned at each other.  The last two looked a bit out of place, one looked like a guy in a gorilla suit, and the other like one of the 60’s versions of Godzilla.  Both were staring at the size of the panther-monster and muttering about how they wished they’d thought of that...

At the school, Carson escorted them through a cargo entrance into the gym.  The panther-monster flowed through the doors easily, but the giant eyeball took a nudge to get over the threshold.  The panther batted the eyeball around like an oversize kitten with a ball of yarn.  It drew a hiss from the eye and some nervous giggles from everyone else.

Carson soon took charge, getting his team of volunteers set to rearranging the “Maze of Terror” to give his giant cat-monster a larger space to work in at the back of the maze.  After a while, the assistants got used to the presence of the sinuous beast among them.  It was especially welcomed for its help at moving partition walls and bracing them in place while the corners were secured.

The panther-beast’s ability to rear up and reach the rafters of the gym with its tentacles also helped make quick work of the decorating efforts, and soon the gym was ready to host the party.

Carson cheered his volunteers.  “Thank you everyone.  Those of you who don’t already have them, go get your costumes.  School rules about modified forms don’t apply tonight, so go visit the Venn Machines if you like.  Doors open in an hour, bring all your friends.”

The panther and the eyeball waited in their lair at the back of the maze, the one curled up around the other.  The panther-thing tested its voice, finding a range of yowls, growls, and subsonic grumbles, but making anything much like actual language was beyond it.  Its exasperated gaze inspired the eyeball to open up slightly so that it could shrug two of its forelegs in a weak apology.

The panther-beast harrumphed and settled in to wait.  At least the darkness proved penetrable to its great eyes.  Even when the giant eyeball closed its lid, the beast could still see.

The pantherine thing sniffed at the air, and uncoiled.  Something was in its lair, approaching.  Something that smelled of soap and excitement.  Behind it the eye closed, plunging the lair into darkness.

“What was that?” asked a girl in a flower costume, clinging to the arm of her beefy boyfriend.  His costume consisted of the uniform of his favourite football player.

The panther prowled closer, emitting a grumbling growl from deep within its chest.  The rumbling, gurgling noise drew more squeaks from the girl, and she tugged her beau toward the faint spill of light that marked the lair’s exit.  The huntress was having none of that, so they ran into a wall of fur part-way along, and had to feel their way around it.  Just as they were nearing the panther-beast’s head, the eyeball opened, bathing the lair in a sickly yellow light.  Yellow demon-fire reflected in the panther-thing’s eyes, and its face was twisted into a snarling mask.

The girl’s scream was shrill and loud enough that the whole school heard it, even the “cool” kids hanging out in the parking lot.  Darkness resumed, and the football player streaked for the exit even faster than his date did.  As they stumbled out of the maze, she began berating him for leaving her behind.

The panther chuckled to itself, and swivelled its ears toward the next couple entering its lair.  Soon the beast and the eyeball had a routine worked out.  The former would use its superior night vision to ghost around the people in its lair, using subsonic rumbles and growls to terrify.  The eye would tick softly three times before blinking open for a moment like a fiery strobelight.  In the moments of warning, the pantherbeast would pose so that all that could be seen of it was a wall of fur and a bit of tentacle, or a vicious looking claw, possibly an eartip.  The screams were fun, but the hopeless moans and whimpers were even better, as was the scent of fear that frequently filled the lair.  Restraining the instinct to pounce and rend took effort, especially when its prey slipped and fell.

Then the pantherthing’s ears pricked up at a familiar voice approaching.  Tony.  With the giggling of not one, but two girls accompanying him, one clinging to each arm.  The beast restrained its urge to swat at them, but did make sure to give the trio more nudges than usual, and tripped one of the girls with a tentacle.  It blocked them from the exit twice, then posed itself in wait.

“Ugh, what is that?” asked one of the girls.  “It feels like something’s... breathing on us.”

The eye rolled silently to the perfect angle, and illuminated its partner.  An enormous muzzle, gaping wide to display a cutlery drawer’s worth of knife-sized teeth, was less than a foot away from the trio’s faces.

Two screams rent the night.  The third member of the trio, a familiar looking flower-costumed girl, winked at the beast then played along with a grin.  The panther watched after her for some time, rumbling a curious purr.  Why did Stella wink?  Why wasn’t she scared?

Tony didn’t return.  Some time later, another familiar face showed up, but this time it was atop an unfamiliar body.  Jimmy’s face was perfectly normal.  But everything below his neck filled out the cheerleader uniform he was wearing perfectly.  The panther puzzled at the design.  It was in school colours, and had the right letter, but the cut of the skirt was far longer than the current ones.  It spent so long considering Jimmy’s outre costume that it let him bump into its side.  

Jimmy petted the panther-beast’s fur, and didn’t flinch when a tentacle brushed along his side.  The panther eeled its way around him, making a moving maze of flesh between him and the exit.  Its best grumbling roars did little to dissuade him from running a hand along its flank to find his way.  The eye lit the way for the last stretch, and Jimmy waved to both of them cheerfully as he left.

Shortly after that the room lights were brought up a little, reverting the maze from gloomy darkness to “just enough light to see how quickly it was built”.  A minute later, Carson popped in through the rear exit.  He announced that they were wrapping up the maze part a bit early, because there was nobody left willing to brave it.  “You two did great.  You should hear all the stories everyone’s telling.  They might even be a little disappointed to see the real you... but you should come on out and join the party anyway.”

The panther-beast eeled it's way carefully along the exit corridor, tentacles tucked tight against its flanks to keep from bursting the walls.  As it emerged onto the dancefloor a hush fell over the crowd, and everyone edged away to give it room.

Once it was clear of the maze, the beast reared up its forward torso, standing like a monstrous felinoid centaur.  It towered above the crowd, its head ten feet off the ground, tentacles swirling about it to make it seem even bigger.

The screams were delightful.  But then the panther-thing noticed that people were pointing behind and above it.  Turning its flexible torso, it saw a burning eye rising on towering legs.  The spider-monster was stretching its legs at last.  Confined by the lair from properly spreading out, it stood tall enough to brush the roof over twenty feet up.

The great arachnoid delicately lifted one leg clear over the maze, setting it soundlessly on the floor.  Leg after leg followed in turn, bringing that flaming eye closer and lower.  The crowd cowered back, save for the three girls and one guy who appeared to have got catatonic with fear.

The spider-thing lashed its segmented tail and the barbed spear at the end flashed over the crowd, drawing more screams.  It turned from the bulk of the crowd, and carefully strode toward the tables off to one side.  A couple was cowering there, immobilized by its monstrous gaze.

A long, toothy jaw unhinged from the underside of the arachnoid’s tapered central mass.  A lamprey like tongue with an embedded mouth full of teeth lashed forward.  With cries of terror the couple dove out of the way.  Above them, the toothy appendage deftly scooped some cookies from the snack table.  It munched on the cookies as it turned away, moving back to the clearing around the panther-beast.

The silence that ensued was broken when someone started to giggle.  Shortly after that, the DJ started up another song.  The “Monster Mash” got the spider and panther bopping along, and soon most of the rest of the party was dancing as well.

They gave the beasts lots of room, and the beasts reciprocated by dancing in place.  The spider’s legs bridged it above the panther, where it swayed slowly to the beat.  Underneath, the panther twined and gamboled energetically within the thirty foot wide cage of monstrous segmented legs.

As the next dance began, both were surprised as someone approached.  Jimmy bowed to the panther-beast and asked politely if he might have the next dance.  The panther looked up to the spider-monster, which bobbed its head.  The panther-beast didn't leave the ambit of the spider legs, but it did bow to Jimmy and a tentacle waved him closer.

Jimmy looked up to the great eye watching from above, waved to it, and slipped between its legs.  This did not give him much room to maneuver around the panther-thing’s energetic, flailing limbs.  Still, he did his best to duck and weave, bouncing forward and back with the beast, even diving under its belly to emerge from the other side.  A tentacle helped him back to his feet, then the dance resumed.

At times the dance seemed more like a martial arts demonstration, others more like a steeplechase.  Two songs later, Jimmy was still standing, thought he was panting hard.  Stella reached between the spider legs to tap his shoulder.  “Time to tag out?”

Jimmy nodded, and let her take his place.  As he caught his breath just outside the spiderleg ring, he noticed that Stella’s friends Amelia and Darla were nearby, watching the spectacle from just beyond the legs, well within the reach of the spider-monster’s swishing tail.

Few others came within reach of that spiked weapon.  Thus when the crowd parted around an orange-clad form, Jimmy and the cheerleaders could easily see her.  “What’s Chelsea doing here?” asked Jimmy loudly.  

The music ended just as he spoke, so his voice carried through the room.  

No song picked up, so the chatter grew louder and louder.  Chelsea strode forward, her head held high despite what she was wearing.  The bright orange one-piece looked like prison garb, stencilled with the name of a local women’s prison.

“And what the hell is she wearing?” said Amelia, deliberately loud enough to carry across the chatter.

“The point,” said Chelsea, striding forward imperiously, “is to prove that it is not the clothing one wears, but how one wears it.”

“You’re certainly wearing it with conviction,” joked Jimmy.  Stella giggled, and the monsters burbled with amusement.  Chuckles spread to the crowd.

Chelsea was having none of it.  Eyes burning with determination she strode up to Jimmy and started to lay into him verbally, dressing him down for every failing of his in humbling detail.  Everyone watched, stunned - they’d never seen Chelsea eviscerate someone verbally like this before.

Jimmy faltered under the assault, taking a step backward into the leg of the spider-thing.  It took a step forward, lowering itself and canting its legs protectively in front of him.  Chelsea’s diatribe paused for a breath, and the beast hissed at her loudly enough to drown out her next bit of venom.

“Oh.  So now you need a monster to protect you from me?” laughed Chelsea.  She looked the beast in its great eye without the slightest show of fear, and laid into it verbally as well, claiming that it was covering up for being a weakling in “real life”.

Amelia tugged Stella and Darla away from Chelsea as the diatribe continued and the spider-monster’s tail lashed in agitation.  “What is she doing?  This is insane.”

Stella shushed her, and watched intently.

The spider-thing was starting to make pitiful hisses in response to Chelsea’s comments, she’d found subjects that were getting to it.  “Nobody loves you” got an especially big reaction.  The segmented tail lashed forward, stopping just shy of Chelsea.  She patted it with wry smile then started to laugh.  “Look, it’s made out of rubber.  Stupid beast couldn’t hurt me if it wanted to.”

Chelsea looked up at the beast defiantly.  “I bet even your mother doesn’t love you.”

As Chelsea had noted, all the cruel spikes and claws on the spider-thing’s tail and feet had been made of foam rubber.  Harmless.  But the outer carapace of each leg segment formed the hard shell of the giant eye when collapsed.  Each was made of a section of a sphere, and came down to a sharp, spear-like point as hard as stone.

So when the spider-thing slammed a foreleg into Chelsea’s chest, it tore straight through her like she was made of papier mache.

The spider-thing’s monstrous eye stared in horror at the gaping ruin of Chelsea’s chest, embedded on its forelimb up to the first joint.