Chapter 24 - MegaOctagon!

As soon as he realizes what Solomon's unearthly wind is trying to do, he tears at the trash and detritus trying to cover the sigil and keep it exposed to the others.

Bev is still slack-jawed at the spectacle of her own magic symbol, challenging her scientifically-oriented mind with a self-luminescence that should not be.

Then from under her feet, a tremor begins. She looks down at her sneakers praying not to end like the corner of Warren Venue and Gulfside Boulevard.

From the distance, she sees the ground breaking under an enormous stress, and a single, implacable, unstoppable crack breaking the asphalt in ugly scales of tarmac. The crack advances straight towards the base of her wall! As it hits it, she can see it trying to propagate upwards in the brickwork, crumbling the mortar and making the bricks change asset!

From the top of her ladder on the billboard, Alana knows something's wrong when she sees Benny stepping back and hears Ripper whining.
Then she sees the clouds gathering right above her at unnatural speed, fast, ominous, thickening as ink in front of their own eyes.
A super concentrated, violent rain starts falling with astounding viciousness almost horizontally against them. Benny cries down below.

The drops are painful against her skin, like a thousand needles! Once the initial shock gone, she catches something at the corner of her eye and turns to the billboard: the rain is impacting hard on the large poster, soaking the paper and has already started to smudge her painted symbol, under the glow!!

"Benny!" Al shouts. "You need to grab that trashcan lid there. Climb up the ladder and shield the symbol. Quickly!" At the same time, Al picks up the spray can again and begins redrawing the parts of the symbol that are starting to get smudged. "You're not going to win this one, Solomon!" she mutters.

Johnny fights like a fury against the almost sentient wind, reaching high and stretching to grab, rip, crumple the flying junk before it can cover his glowing lines! It is tiring and nerve-wracking, and his heart thumps in his chest like thunder - but somehow he manages to keep the symbol exposed for now!

Al's quick thinking and determination shake Benny off his shock. He clambers up the ladder with the trashcan lid she pointed at and starts holding it vertically in front of the symbol, gasping in the torrent of vicious drops, while his sister spray paints and repairs the damage of this uncanny attack!

Alice eyes widen in terror as she sees a tornado of flying paper, wrappers and junk heading her way! It is totally unnatural and has all the markings of a Solomon spell!
The junk flies against her canvas, a plastered wall to the side of a shop, and starts covering her glowing symbol too.
"No no no no no no!!!" she shouts as she jumps to reach the junk trying to keep it clear from the lines of her symbol.


Elsewhere, Brian cannot make sense of the concentrated, intense water ramming hard against him and his billboard, and gasps for breath in the agony of a thousand needles on his face.
When he clocks that the water is smudging the symbol, he climbs right up the metal scaffold supporting the billboard, and holding on with his legs he tries to shelter the symbol with his jacket, spreading it wide open in front of it.

As morter shakes loose from the wall Bev lets out a string of curses she's been meticulously collecting from Gran over the past two years.

The wall's bulging out, she thinks to herself as she runs to the dumpster of the Orange Julius. She slams her shoulder into it and pushes with all her might......her sneakers slip in grease. She tries to dig in, her head throbbing from the welt...Dammit Bev, you nerd, she thinks to herself as she can't seem to get purchase.

Bev slumps against the dumpster, spent. Tears build in her eyes, more from frustration than anything else. She just knows she's gonna be the one to blow it...

She thinks back to what her mom said to her, a week before it happened, while sick in the hospital hooked up to machines, no less.

Come on, you're gonna show them what you can do... she thinks and stands back up. Put your back into it as she channels Olivia Newton-John.She shouts in surprise and elation as the dumpster squeaks and begins to move...

"Thanks...Mom," she grunts

The dumpster slides half way to cover the wall, propping it up and giving it some sort of stability... the symbol looks a little wonky, with the brickwork starting to misalign... but it stays together for now.

Alana and Benny, soaked to the bone, see the rain decreasing in intensity. Their billboard is soaked, but the battering of water has ceased. Even the gathering of clouds over their heads seems to dissipate. The symbol shines with a healthy glow despite the ground all around the billboard has turned into a muddy mess. Eventually, the rain stops.

"Wh-What's going on? Is Solomon going away?" he asks, dripping wet.

Ripper tentatively steps out from under the ladder. She has lost half of her volume, her drenched fur making her look skinny and odd.

---

Alice readies herself to face a new wave of junk and papers, like when she is between the posts of her goal and the opponents' team is past the full-backs and all depends on her. But just as it had started, the unnatural wind fades and stops altogether, leaving her puzzled and panting to catch her breath.
All around her is a multitude of paper trash and wrappers, but her glowing symbol is intact.

Johnny keeps fighting the wind with remarkable focus. The localized ministorm does not give any signs of wanting to stop. If anything, the items blown by the wind seem to be larger now. The wind has stolen clothes and towels left to dry outside, and preventing these from covering the symbol is becoming more difficult.

As he strains to keep his desperate fight, with arms aching...

Bev is as tense as a bow string, trying to keep in check the bricks as best as she can. The dumpster she has placed helps give support, but she can see more cracks splitting the tarmac and snaking their way towards the fragile wall, and can feel the tremors under the soles of her sneakers.
Luckily her mind seems to understand the stress lines and weakest spots in the brickwork, and pushing her weight this way and that she begins to counter the wrecking effects of the seismic attack... for now.

Then a voice in her head changes everything...

"Maybe we already won!" Al exclaims. "Maybe Solomon's powers are gone and that's why this stopped." But she's not so certain that's true. It couldn't already be over, right? Rather than move down from her ladder, she stays right where she is, waiting for some sign.

You really don't understand me at all, Black... Johnny shouted into the wind, shielding the shining beacon behind him. That void you see is your own future...or lack of it. My parents are gone from this world but not from me. I'm not alone. I have family and I have friends and both are something you lack. It's not the fact that you've been beaten by an old man and a bunch of kids that makes me feel bad for you... it's that when you're gone there'll be no one to miss you. Everyone will just be glad you're gone.

The voice goes silent in Johnny's head, and the wind keeps whipping this young fighter, who is putting all of himself in defending his friends, his family, and everything he has.

As the darkness crowds around her, Bev's breathing becomes labored. She feels the weight of it, and the voice pressing her down.

Not the dark again... she thinks as she grabs at the red chord dangling from her coat breast.

She yanks the chord, closes her eyes and whispers, "Highbeams.."Then she slowly opens her eyes and becomes emboldened by the light pushing back the darkness. "See? See, Solomon; I am a little light, jus' like my momma said! And even if I am a loser, my friends will be real, not a bunch'a brain washed dummies!"Bev's sense of self worth soars. She doesn't care what a monster thinks of her--just her crew.