Utterly Mad

L was nowhere to be seen, instead what greeted Catnip when she reached the top of the tower was an electric generator burning merrily to itself while the tower shook under it. Catnip took hold of the wind cell and prayed to Agmen. With every step up the tower, the cell had become more and more like a bomb, active and ready to blow at the slightest provocation, or given enough time. She gave it an experimental turn and felt the uncharacteristic grind of super alloy on steel. She could open it, but it was dangerous. There was also the risk to the dish. She had no idea exactly what would happen when she opened the canister or how powerful it would be. All Catnip could do was pray and hope she was doing the right thing. She gave the dish an appreciative look, perhaps a longer look than was safe. Three pink parabolas dotted with fist sized holes arranged irregularly about their surfaces. No dish was the same as the ones it sat between, and no hole seemed exactly the same as the others. To Catnip, the natural breeze atop The tower seemed not to blow, but to breath through those holes. She stared long at the dishes and with one hand, reached out and touched it knowing fully that she didn't have time for the reverie but helpless to stop. The feel of it sent a ecstatic jolt down her spine that made her shiver. It was like touching something divine. Like bone and metal made one. It was...

There was no time. Her whiskers caught movement a moment before her eyes did and she flinched away from the reaching hand made claw.

"Stupid rats!" The Tenny thing hissed, "Stupid rats and shriekers and triffids and... And stupid stupid rats! Not much time now, you can't start it now rat, can't stop the Grey Queen."

Catnip backed away, hissing a little herself and suddenly feeling outright pissed at the interruption rather than afraid of the creature advancing on her. Beneath her arm, she gave the canister a single half turn and heard the pressure within push the top half up the channel to the next turn with a loud "snap." Behind her, she caught more movement, someone or something dropping off the dish. If it was some new enemy coming at her from behind, she'd at least make them pay for profaning an object she already viewed as sacred. With her free hand, she held up something that glittered and glinted brilliantly in the cold dawn, it's little bells jingling unheard in the growl of the towers turbine.

"You evil thing!" Tenny hissed warrily, "You wicked evil thing, give it back, it's mine! Give it back or Rita will make you suffer!" Catnip didn't understand why Tenny had invoked the name of the Grey Queen, but the mimic's seeming inability to threaten Catnip with her own wrath gave the Mechanic more than enough confidence to do what came next.

"If you want it so bad, then you can go get it." Catnip hissed. With a flick of her wrist, the bracelet arced out and away into the blue yonder. Except, it didn't. With a move just as quick Tenny lashed out with one tendril and caught it, snagging the charm bracelet with a boney barbed claw like appendage. It wasn't much, but it would be all Catnip would get for a distraction. If anything had been gained from the attempt, it was that Tenny's minor display of flexibility meant that Catnip didn't have nearly enough space between them. She spun on her heel, saw L standing behind her with a look of pure terror writ large in her eyes, and then gave the canister the last half turn. The lid flew off with a deafening bang, giving Catnip no time to move her hand clear of it. The half she'd been holding, the handle, rocketed away from her and smashed one of the faulty circuit boards with the power of a cannon ball while the half Catnip held fired into her guts with matching force. She felt the railing, behind her. Then beneath her. Her back screamed a familiar agonizing protest, and then she was over and falling. Above, the dishes were spinning under the force of the gale released. Everything seemed to be moving very slowly now, the tower speeding by at a snail's pace. Then she was brought back around by a fresh gust as cold as a winter storm blowing across her face, and she realized she landed on something. Breath came hard, and she was coughing and felt like she was going to hock up her guts. Catnip wanted to vomit, but there was nothing. The retching only made her more aware of her condition, and only brought up thick gobs of bloody phlegm. For all intents and purposes Catnip was down and out, but not dead.

---

As soon as Catnip opened the canister, Tenny charged. The monster hadn't expected the explosion of air that had suddenly swept the mechanic off the walkway and down to her obvious death. She also hadn't expected the dish to begin it's terrible spin and it's even more terrible song. A loud dull groan that passed through the structure and passed through Tenny like a lemon on an open sore. She screamed and that was when L hit her.

The wrench had been in Catnip's bag, but L had been given the tool along with some others for the task she'd come up the tower to accomplish. She hadn't needed it of course, but perhaps it was better that she had it. Without it, she would have had nothing to hit the mycus horror with. The Misling was torn momentarily between watching her friend fall and fleeing before the anger came to her. A white hot anger. It wasn't for Catnip, it was for herself. The writhing thing howling it's agony to the sky. It was a wretched thing to behold, and L hated it. In the open light and without any focus on it's appearance, Tenny had let the disguise slip. The rags were now revealed to be what they were, gills like those on the underside of a mushroom unevenly grown all over the woman's wasted body, and the tendrils. Long gray this tipped with a little barbed claw. Only L knew they weren't claws. They were stingers. Stingers that stung and injected spores by the millions into people. Into people's husband's and children. L was here, but she was down in that cellar still. L would always be down in that cellar, and she could keep going despite that. She could still live despite the pain, and she could certainly make the shrieking monstrosity pay for what it had done.

The first blow crushed Tenny's skull, The second bent the wrench, and the third sent her tumbling over the side of the tower, bouncing noisily off the railing of the walkway Catnip had miraculously landed on and was even then 'expressing her dissatisfaction' with what had just happened to her. L had the insane urge to heave the electric generator down after Tenny. She would have done it, only the tower chose the following moment to shudder and shout it's own issues to anyone who would hear. It went from shuddering, to violent shaking all the while accompanied by a steadily rising "kachunk kachunk kachunk." The towers gears were stripping again one another, the rotors we're turning but not engaging. L stood stunned, staring at the flashing green light in the towers only good fuse box. Then, with a casualness that belied the adrenaline running through her, she pulled the switch. The noise increased tenfold and L thought for a very brief second that everything was going to come down regardless and that all their efforts were for nothing. The tower soon settled though, and left L standing alone in the smell of burning electronics, the beautiful blue of an Arizona early morning, and the voice of the howling tower.