None of them were quite sure if they had really seen it. The troop of Lost Boys and their companions had been pressed to the wall as they skirted along, avoiding a patch of ground that looked suspiciously rotted and cracked, when something like a streak of electric pink went snipping past their heads and into the dark behind them. They paused and blinked at each other.
"What was that?" Mab yelped. Partlet puffed up defensively.
Nibs looked to the next with a furrowed brow "Was that Tinkerbell?"
"I-I slightly don't know." Slightly admitted. "It could have been. But wouldn't she have stopped when she saw us?"
"Maybe she didn't see us, she was going awfully fast." said Curly.
Before the Storyteller could snap at them to move along again, there came another dancing echo, trickling down from the path they had traveled and forcing them all to look up, wide eyed. Wendy put her hand to her collar as the tell-tale crow of Peter Pan fell down from behind them.
"PETER!" Wendy called, face suddenly lit. There were sounds of some confusion from the boys but Wendy shot past them into the darkness, ignoring the stone that powdered under her step.
"Wendy, wait!" Nibs called after her, but she didn't obey. With a short puff of frustration he took off after her, followed obediently by the Lost Boys and therefor, the light.
They caught up to Wendy's footsteps as she slowed to a halt in the black corridor, the light from a nervous and flying Mab bringing her dress to a flare of pink before them. Nibs bumbled to a stop only a few feet behind her, causing Curly, Slightly, and Toodles to plow into his backside and nearly send them all into a mess on the floor. As it was Toodles dropped Partlet, who landed on his beak, and puffed up indignantly as he waddled up beside Wendy to see what the fuss was about. The dash of pink light that had sent them all this way was drifting slowly back towards them, now obviously a fairy (and a rather pretty one too, he thought, though nowhere near as beauteous as his Queen was!). But this light was not alone. Trailing behind it by a good three feet and barely outlined in the shadows was the shape of a human boy. His steps made no sound against the stone.
"Peter?" Wendy called out, the elation in her chest feeling suddenly pressed. For the briefest moment the light of Tinkerbell was reflected back in his eyes, smearing his shadowed skull with red before he surged into the fairy's light and came running towards Wendy, an enormous grin on his face. The girl shouted happily and met him halfway, throwing her arms around his neck and almost knocking him over. Peter laughed.
"Peter, what's going on? We thought Murhedd had you! How did you escape? Are you allright?" Wendy sputtered.
"Murhedd?" Peter wiggled out of Wendy's grasp and assumed his cockiest position, teeth showing as he grinned at the Lost Boys. "That pathetic thing? He couldn't have trapped me even if I wanted to be trapped! He's nothing but a rotting old mouse!"
There was a moment when Peter laughed again, and it didn't sound quite right. The silent Tinkerbell twitched, flickered, and the laugh rose up into the correct key before cutting off abruptly. The silence therein smothered them like a down mattress and stretched into uncomfortable measures.
"Something isn't right." Toodles whispered to Nibs unnecessarily. The boy's eyes flickered to him, then back to Peter. Peter Pan's face had dropped it's grin and he now stalked easily towards Slightly, bringing himself nose to nose with the boy and frowning. His eyes were too dark a color. Slightly felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle; no, something was definitely not right.
"You're getting rather tall, aren't you, Slightly." Peter said coolly. Wendy didn't understand their reaction as all Curly, Nibs, and Slightly tensed up like startled rats.
"Peter? What's that got to do with anything?" Slightly asked warily. He leaned back from Peter, who leaned forward equally to keep the distance.
"You're getting rather TOO tall. You could almost be mistaken for a young man, couldn't you, Slightly, and not a boy at all." Peter's hand drifted down towards his belt where his dagger was dutifully hung.
"This isn't any time for this..." Nibs said carefully. He tried to wedge the two apart but Peter ignored his second in command.
Wendy gripped Peter's elbow, nervousness obvious in her voice. "Peter, what are you doing?" she asked.
Peter turned his head, and grinned at her. His jaw split back to where his lips would not, and Wendy blinked, unsure whether or not she really saw the nubby ends of over-fat fly spawn speared into his gums.
"I'm just thinning them out, Wendy." He said, his voice dripping down into the wrong key again. The place Wendy held onto suddenly felt soft and cold in her grasp, and she looked down at her hands. Peter's elbow had turned purple and barred, as though thick strips of muscle were seeping through the cloth, and as he pulled his arm away from her grasp the tissues loosened in her hands, splitting and writhing as the strands congealed into the segmented bodies of night crawlers.
Wendy screamed. She threw the worms away from herself and frantically wiped her hand on her skirt; it seemed, however, that the situation had been catalyzed. At Wendy's scream, the knife came out from Peter's belt, and Slightly shouted and bolted into the dark. The thing that played at being Peter Pan went after him with a shrill and terrible crow two octaves too high.
It was only a moments time, too short a time to shout or react, that the corridor exploded towards them like a darning egg being pushed through a sock. From the darkness where the stairs came something larger than was rightfully possible in these walls scurried on heavy claws, it's scales shrieking horribly against the stonework. It stopped mere inches behind the stationary Tinkerbell and no one was quite sure who shrieked this time, though it might very well have been Captain Partlet. The Crocodile stood heavy in the corridor, the stones stretching to accommodate her bulk, and the stench of rot and seaweed overcame them in an instant. Her scales were frayed and greying, her skin crackling over her snout and showing dry tissues within, and her eyes were white with death's blindness, though she herself was far from rictus.
The Captain flared himself up valiantly in front of the offending crocodile, though the Queen pulled on his feathers and told him to quit being and idiot this INSTANT and run or she was going to bust him down to steward! The crocodile's jaw dropped open with the audible snap of cold tendons, and up from her convulsing gorge rose a flood of unwholesome creatures like vomit or blood. Out spilled slick purple night crawlers and the carapaced bodies of earwigs; twitching larva with skin oozing filth, eyeless rats who's bone shone through their fur, and sticky, long legged aracnia that pulled themselves from the vile like the vengeful from a shallow grave.
Partlet's crest snapped flat and he snagged the Queen by her skirts, and flew off down the corridor towards god-knew-what at the other end. He wasn't long followed.
"Bloody Hell!" The Storyteller could be heard screeching. "He's using her on the Nightmare Things! The fairy's controlling the Nightmare Things!"
No one listened. Tinkerbell kept pace two yards behind them and so too did the tide of maggots and worms, with blind, stumbling rats at their head. Captain Partlet nearly struck the wall as a sharp turn and dip broke their way, and suddenly the fleeing bodies were ejected into the light of a vast and towering chamber, in which they were not alone. They stumbled to a halt as behind them the wave of foul things broke over the doorway and oozed out carelessly across the floor, worms and spiders twitching as the rats became caught in their combined muck. The Captain faltered and landed with a clumsy smack (though he was picked up by Toodles in strict automation, and neither the Captain nor a pale looking queen were going to complain.)
Overshadowed by the enormous bulk of something taught and lipless, Slightly and the Peter Thing were scuffling on the ground, Peter gaining a definite upper hand. It didn't look much like Peter anymore; it's clothing and skin had meshed and become shiny, and the hair looked like it was painted on the skull. With a strength Peter did not posess it pinned Slightly on his belly and crushed his arms behind him with one hand, the other clamped over his mouth. The boy's hat had fallen off in the brief tussle and his matted hair stuck in odd directions.
"My goodness, it's really quite amazing how much like RATS you people are." came a voice that was familiar and unwelcome. The boy they'd come in search of was leaned against the monster's paw, fiddling with the popped side seam on his breeches. "Where there's one, more will follow. Is that the saying, Pinwhistle? It's been a while since I've heard your lovely ditherings." he said flatly. He jerked his hand and one of the Storyteller's beetles abruptly froze in mid air, dropping down and sending his frantic partner into a spin. The Storyteller barely caught the bar in time for the remainder to lower them gracelessly to the stone.
The beetles immediately shook away the bar and scuttled to hide behind her skirt.
"Charming as you ever were, I see." She answered crisply as she smoothed her hair. Murhedd smirked.
"I've been practicing."
It was only mildly satisfying to watch the boy flinch back in surprise as Queen Mab, her glow gone a nasty shade of purple, shot to his face and hovered there mere inches from his nose. Her hands were on her hips and her head craned forward, and if it weren't for the fact she was still muddy at the corners from all the night's adventuring she would have looked like an angry nanny.
"Now look here, you." she started, and her color began to shift red. "Two of MY deputies got LOCKED down here by your faulty door, and I want them back this very instant! They belong to me and my Flying Brigade and I won't have any second rate sociopath bringing them to harm!"
"A second rate what?" he asked, face cracking in a grin. "I recognize no Flying Brigade and no authority from YOU. Do you really think I'm just going to hand them over?"
"You most certainly will!" Captain Partlet interjected. "My boy, do you not realize you are speaking to Her Royal Majesty, Queen Mab? Millions follow her banner!"
Murhedd scoffed "I don't."
"Murhedd, you know why we're here!" Wendy interrupted the nasty exchange between the Queen and the boy. Her tone dropped considerably when it was apparent they were listening. "You know why we're here." she repeated. "We've come to get back Peter Pan and Michael and anyone else you've got tucked away down here. What's it going to take to make you let them go?"
This was a surprisingly reasonable tone coming from Wendy, and Toodle's looked impressed. Murhedd, however, did not.
"There's nothing you would give me that I want, little girl." He said bitterly.
"What DO you want?" The Storyteller asked him
"You know what I want, PINwhistle." He spat her name venomously. "I want what YOU took away and can't give back. So I can't HAVE what I want." Murhedd looked at Wendy with a mirthless smirk. "You understand the feeling. I can tell. It's not fun never getting what you want, is it."
Wendy blinked, startled at him. "Well..NO....But even if you don't get what you want that doesn't give you the right to hurt innocent people!"
"I have the right to do to them what they do to me!"
"THEY HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING TO YOU!" Wendy shouted. "You're just acting spoiled!"
Murhedd's face darkened and his hands closed. Wendy knew her negotiations were ruined.
"Tzesrikan!" he snapped. The beast cocked his head to stare down with a yellow eye. "CATCH them ALL."
Queen Mab swore. The monster whuffed and dropped it's legs till the ridge of it's chest hit the ground. The three-taloned arms hunched down over them to snatch the first to run, and there was little doubt he could have snatched them up like jacks had there not come from the ceiling a shower of glass and sulfuric grit as ten feet of water pipe exploded into the room. The monster jerked in surprise, and his intended targets scattered at a snapped order from Nibs.
From the shattered pipe came a shrill and bouncing war cry, and no less than thirty dull fairies poured from the jagged lips in lieu of acidic waters. They swarmed upon the monster's head and he backed himself into the wall, flailing at them as they pricked at his face like angry mosquitoes.
"NO!" she heard someone bellow, and Wendy thought it was Murhedd. "No fairies! I DIDN'T WANT FAIRIES!"
Oddly enough, in the entire company who had no glow there was one tiny fairy who still did. She had the starched apron of her maid's uniform tied around her head like a headdress, and seemed to be having a marvelous time.
Though the boy's followed suite and darted at the monster, Wendy shot in the air to the opposite side of the room and sought out their host. She saw no boy and no Tinkerbell, either, but she saw the tiniest movement as a door groaned shut below her, and she knew she had to go after the boy. She trusted her Lost Boys and the company they'd kept to take care of the monster; they had, after all, likely dealt with more monsters, villains, and creepers than any other boys their age, and she was proud of them for that. She flitted down to the door and hauled at the grimy handle. With her foot braced against the frame it creaked open, just enough for a little girl to slip through, and she did.