Frank started to scream, drowning out his jazz music. I looked ahead to see that there was nowhere for us to go. The road was blocked by a convoy of oversized toy cars, each one overflowing with plastic passengers.
Frank tried to regain control of the car, but there wasn’t enough time or space. We crashed head first with the closest car, the crunch of plastic and metal joining Frank’s screams. The car began to spin out, hitting a handful of the plastic cars before crashing into a fire hydrant.
When I regained my senses, I could hear the violent flow of running water, and I forced myself out of the car. It was a warzone of shattered plastic, with broken toys sprawled across the ground. Most of the cars we hit were torn apart, but I could see a few cars and toys still standing.
When I looked around, the Camaro was nowhere in sight. Before I could check on Frank, however, I was forced into a fight. A giant metal spring launched itself at me, smashing into my ribs, and tossing me into the air. Before I fell, I caught a glimpse of the oversized metal slinky that had just crashed into me.
I fell onto the ground, winded from the hit. I tried to get back up and fight, but countless strands of hair wrapped around my neck and hands. No matter how hard I pulled, they kept me pinned to the ground.
Suddenly, a sharp force lifted me up. I was pulled into the air, a noose made of multicolored hair tightened around my throat. I was already struggling to breathe, and now I was fighting just to stay conscious. I tried my best to look around to try and find a way out.
There were a dozen troll dolls, the small ones with wild hair, with their hair extended and mixed together. They’d wrapped their hair around a street light, and were now hanging me from it.
I desperately reached for my gun, but I couldn’t find it. There I was, without my only weapon and quickly losing consciousness. I tried to raise my hands, hoping for some miracle ability that could save me. But there was nothing.
I’d been risking my life nearly every single day over the past couple of weeks, but this was one of the worst moments. Not only would I be dying, but it wouldn’t even be by the hands of a powerful hero or villain. It would be because of Plaything, an absolute joke that didn’t even deserve to be remembered by me.
Despite the panic and fear, it all ended awfully peacefully. There just wasn’t enough oxygen left to think about the situation I was in. There was just warmth, and soon after, there was silence.
Until the silence was interrupted. A violent burst of sound, gunpowder bursting through the air, brought me back to reality. My body fell to the ground, sprawled onto the sidewalk. I was coughing violently, trying my best to breathe in as much air as possible.
I turned to see Frank, blood pouring off of him, shooting at the small bastards. He had a shotgun in his hands, and he was wildly firing at the trolls. But by the time he reduced them to nothing but recycling, the rest of the toys began to approach.
It was an army of oversized toys ripped straight from the nineties. I couldn’t recognize most of them, most of them looking like they were made for late night commercials. The issue was there were so damn many of them. It was one thing to fight a super toy or two, but this was an entire toy box worth of threats.
Frank aimed his shotgun at the crowd of toys, trying to hold them off while I recovered. Each desperate breath helped me think. From what I knew, Plaything was nowhere near this strong. Either he'd been hiding his true power for the past year, or something was up.
I forced myself up onto my feet, still feeling the pain of the noose around my neck. Frank shot at an approaching human sized G.I. Joe as I walked towards the car, grabbing a gun from the front seat.
Frank helped Joe earn a purple heart while I shot down the toys closest to us. While the plastic dolls were easy enough to kill, bullets shattering them into pieces, it became clear that we still had some problems.
The slinky that had kicked my ass earlier was bouncing towards me, followed by a large squirming pile of glitter filled slime. But what stood above them, having been hidden in the pile of damaged toys, was an oversized Elmo doll.
Elmo stood at well over ten feet tall, his red fur mangled and damaged. On the side of his torso was part of our fender, currently wrapped around his stomach. I dumped every remaining bullet I had into him, but they just seemed to vanish in his matted red hair.
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“Frank, were there any other guns?” I asked, looking around for my dropped pistol.
Frank pulled the trigger on his shotgun, realizing he was out right as Elmo approached. “No, I don’t think so.”
I used [Take] to grab my pistol and then tossed it to Frank. “That's all we have until the others get here.”
“Damn.”
The rest of the toys backed up, allowing the three largest ones to approach us. I wasn’t happy to be unarmed, but Frank needed a weapon more than me. Even then, that pistol certainly seemed lacking compared to the enemies we were fighting. How the hell do you shoot a slinky to death?
The giant Elmo walked towards us, his soulless smile freezing me in place. When he was just a few feet away, Frank raised the pistol and shot. Each bullet connected with his head, but they did nothing to slow him down.
“That tickles!” said Elmo, giggling with his classic high-pitched voice.
In a flash of movement, he lunged forward. Elmo’s fist smashed against Frank’s chest, sending him flying through the air. “It’s my turn to tickle you,” Elmo groaned, his voice deep and husky.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said, watching Frank crash against the wall of a nearby building.
Elmo turned to me, his short red fur swaying in the wind. He ran forward, throwing a fist that I barely managed to duck under. But before I could recover, he already threw another punch, hitting me square in the jaw.
Super Resistance stopped my face from crumpling in on itself, but I was still sent back. And by the time I caught myself, he was once again charging at me. His next punch threw me against the wrecked car, which was now soaked from the broken fire hydrant.
I threw myself to the side, barely dodging another punch, this one aimed at my chest. His fist was lodged in the car, forcing him to waste precious seconds pulling it out. I ran towards the front of the car, struggling not to fall from the surging water and slick surface.
As I got behind the fire hydrant, I noticed that Elmo wasn’t chasing me anymore. He stood still, as if he was trying to figure something out. That was perfectly fine with me, because I could see a bright red Camaro speeding through the streets in the distance.
While Reload and Tóxica approached, the metal slinky and pile slime started to move. They went around the car, clearly trying to reach me from behind. Elmo was the only one attacking us a minute ago, so there had to be some reason they were now stepping in.
It may have been a big ask to assume that Tóxica had enough control of the car to hit something, but a car crash would be the only way to hurt that fucking thing. The slinky and the slime shimmied at me. Well, I had no clue how to describe what they were doing. I assumed it was an attempt to scare me away from the fire hydrant.
“Come here, daddy wants to tickle you,” Elmo growled, his deep voice activating a near primal fear in me.
“I… I don’t know how to respond to that. You make me very uncomfortable, Elmo.”
If I’d forgotten to mention it before, I really hated Plaything. Elmo opened his plastic mouth, likely to say something else that would help ruin my childhood. Well, not my childhood. I wasn’t old enough to watch that crap. But likely someone else’s childhood.
Thankfully, his speech was cut short. The roaring engine of the Camaro caused him to turn around, watching as the car tore through the toys that were standing around the scene. I caught sight of Reload, guns in hand, shooting out the front window with reckless abandon while screaming.
Elmo tried to move out of the way, but it was too late. The Camaro crashed into him, sending him flying a few feet back. The front of the car crumpled against him, now thrown off course.
Elmo landed on the water hydrant, inches away from me, his thick red fur soaked in an instant. His limbs flailed, trying their best to get him away. But he only managed to desperately crawl for a few seconds before his body gave out, the sound of electricity crackling from his chest.
He looked up at me, moments away from death. He managed to squeak out, “That tickles!” in his original high pitched voice.
I felt a weight fall off my shoulders. The normal toy wasn’t waterproof, and I had hoped that Plaything’s version wouldn’t be either. But even if Elmo was dead, there was still a whole cabinet’s worth of toys to fight.
Reload and Tóxica managed to break out of the wrecked car, neither of them injured thanks to their Super Resistance. I ran over to Frank, who was now lying unconscious on the ground. He was injured, but still breathing. While I force fed him a Throm, Reload walked up to me.
“My Camaro is wrecked! She didn’t even ask, she just rammed it into that red guy!” he complained.
“It was my order to crash into him,” I explained. “We can buy you a new one later. Right now, we need to get ready to fight and run.”
Tóxica crashed into the ground next to us, having been knocked back by the slinky. “?Malditos cabrones! You going to help or just stand there?”
I could already hear the sirens closing in as I turned to see the remaining toys approaching us. The Superheroes and police were on their way, and we still had an army to fight. And now both of our cars were wrecked, thanks to a single fucking muscular Elmo toy.
Reload tossed me a semi-automatic before arming himself. His bullets fired into the crowd, tearing through the closest toy soldiers. Tóxica had a shotgun in her hands, and she was giving hell to some stuffed teddy bear.
I could see the two elite toys moving through the crowd. While they were larger than the other toys, what made their position obvious was the way the other toys would move aside to not get in their path.
The slinky wound itself into the ground, before launching towards us with a violent burst of speed. I shot at it as it approached, but my bullets just passed through the gaps in its body. Reload managed to dodge out of the way, causing the metal wire monster to crash into the building behind us.
“Fuck this!” I shouted, grabbing and heaving Frank’s unconscious body onto my back. “We’re running.”
“What? But the fight isn’t over?” Reload said, a small frown forming on his face.
I started to run down the sidewalk, keeping as much distance as possible from the remaining toys. “Yeah, it’s not over, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to be the ones fighting.”