Chips was the first to undergo a maligned transformation. His neck sprouted to three times its normal length. From his back, tearing through his chequered shirt, sprouted more than a dozen bone-like appendages, like huge skeletal fingers with many intricate joints. His already thin arms and legs became even thinner, and darkened in colour, as if the blood and muscle were rapidly decaying to a mummified state.

All of this happened with frightening speed, and seemed as if the eldritch form had been waiting to burst out the entire time. It was only through the use of the power slowing everything down that I had the time to make some sense of what I was seeing, and for me to move to defend myself.

Chips set upon me, and me only, leaping forward with inhuman strength and speed, the huge spider-limb-like bone-appendages which had sprouted grotesquely from his back stabbing for me like spears.

I sprang to the open doorway to my left, span round, and narrowly ducked my head to the right to dodge an incoming appendage aimed directly at my skull.

Chips's face remained one of the few parts of himself yet to take on an eldritch appearance.

He continued to smile just a little, his eyes half-lidded, as the rest of his limbs set upon me.

Dodging the attacks wasn't too difficult. Each of the dozen or so limbs stabbed at me, but avoiding them was as simple as bounding backwards to either stay out of their reach, to duck and dodge, or to bat them away with my slip-suit-enforced forearms.

Each of those attempted blows from Chips landed hard enough for me to know any of the strikes would have broken my arms were I not wearing the slip-suit.

In the time Chips continued to set upon me, his form became ever more unsightly. The rest of his body, including his face, took on the same malformed mummified state that had already taken hold of his arms and legs. All over, like a sunken sagging husk, darkened skin hung dryly over thickened and increasingly unevenly grown bones.

Enough, I thought.

I used both forearms to bat away yet more of the spear-like bone appendages and, still in the midst of bounding backwards and quickly hurtling towards the mansion front door at the end of the hallway, I threw a testing punch straight for Chips's ribcage.

The blow landed, and Chips, along with his next attack, was stopped short.

I sailed further back, and landed on the ground again several paces away from the mansion front door. The adhesion at the soles of the slip-suit stopped me from sliding further backwards.

Rather than continue his attack, Chips remained still in the middle of the hallway. Beyond him, from the kitchen, the sound of more fighting, crashing, banging, and yelling from both sides met my ears.

I took a step forward, and Chips's many limbs raised like scorpion tails as if to warn me to stay where I was.

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Is he keeping me away from the others? I thought.

I inched a little to the right, as if I might try and go up the stairs to the first floor. Right away Chips, moving through the air atop half of the bone-like appendages as if he were some hellish fun-house mirror daddy-long-legs, resided atop the stairway banister.

He wants to keep me from the main fight, I decided, Which must mean that's part of whatever strategy they have to beat us.

I understood right away that my mission was to get back to Clang and Miss Toontastic as soon as possible, because we were stronger together.

And, looking at the vacant expression on Chips's sallow face, I felt I understood how it was they intended to have the upper hand in the fight.

How am I going to handle Chips? I thought.

Simply beating him to a pulp as best I could seemed a likely option, but seemed unsatisfying as a means to render him helpless quickly. In such an eldritch form he likely could recover quickly to any damage done to him. And since he had gone straight-to-eldritch, it was likely going to be a form he could push to ever more monstrous levels before any drawbacks came into play.

If I were intending to be utterly ruthless, which I wasn't, I knew a sure way to end the fight against Chips quickly was to rip his head clean off.

Fortunately for Chips, I wasn't willing to go to such drastic measures. Which left plan B.

I sprang into action, bounding off hard and diving straight for Chips. In turn he started to move away, sensing the danger of my attack.

Our fight took us up the stairs. I threw punches at him which were more to keep him busy than to harm, and in turn he deflected as best he could with his malformed arms, which were much stronger and resilient compared to his many back-appendages.

At the top of the flight of stairs Chips drew back all of his back-limbs at once, but in the same motion, hoping to catch me off-guard, his dark leathery hands, which had crookedly long fingers, grabbed hold of my outstretched arms.

I saw the triumph in Chips's eyes, like a glimmer of life showing there was still some personality beneath the vacant doll-like expression he otherwise maintained.

But I had seen the attack coming a mile away, and had already prepared the slip-suit to become extra-slippery, just like when I had slipped out of Clang's metallic grip during our training.

Chips's hold on my arms slipped away, and in turn I jumped and sent a double-kick straight into his torso, feeling his inhumanely strong ribcage crack from the impact. Just as I began to fall backwards down the stairs, I grabbed two of Chips's back-appendages.

CRACK-CRACK! POCK-POCK!

Chips let out a hellish screech as two of the limbs, newly belonging to me, were ripped straight out of the back sockets.

I sailed backwards, flipped over once, and then landed with a heavy crack at the bottom of the stairs.

CRASH!

The fight which had continued in the kitchen had reached the hallway. Clang burst through the wall to my left, being driven backwards by a creature which only vaguely resembled Lure.

The creature, being huge and hulking much like the fox-frog-monster had been, was bearing down on Clang.

Clang, newly being brought backwards into the hallway, was driven yet more into the stairway banister, which gave under his weight.

Lure's head was no longer a beautiful sight to behold. But had become engorged, with a huge mouth, and many pointed teeth; her eyes having become wet fishy globes; one of her eyes swivelled in its socket and fixed onto me, and the other remained set towards Clang.

THWIP! SNAP!

Her hair, which had lengthened, and taken on a sickly wet texture, behaved like a thousand or more wafer-thin autonomous tentacles, lunged at me like a whip.

I blocked the attack by throwing up the two appendages I had ripped off of Chips.

Lure's hair must have been insanely strong and sharp, because the appendages I had taken from Chips resisted the hair's grip for a moment, before breaking into several pieces.

DOOM!

Clang had thrown a punch for Lure's head which landed squarely at her huge uneven jaw. She recoiled from the heavy blow, losing her grip on Clang. Rather than shirk away from the fight, Clang, dove right into Lure, sending them both hurtling through the whole in the wall they had both made.

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