B-Team: A Dream Come True

Life, Supernatural

A night of fun and games at Strike Out! Bowling and Batting Cages with their favourite intern goes a little off the wall for Pagan and Warp as shadowy creatures begin to descend on the local population, bringing their dreams into reality and causing chaos.

It's Thursday night and Kelly Dawson has invited her old bowling buddy Emily for another game at the local alley, along with her friend and teammate Frank. The evening starts normally enough, with the two heroes meeting a little early and taking a moment to chat while Frank enjoys a particularly lumpy serving of Rolla' Cola and Emily reiterates the importance of hunting down the escaped supervillain Combat. It doesn't take long however, for the pair to notice something amiss and, upon further investigation, see Kelly herself, watching them from a prime position hidden behind an arcade machine nearby.   Flagging her down, Frank immediately wants to know why she was watching them while Emma seemingly couldn't care less. A few lame excuses later, Kelly offers to get them a lane and the evening begins in ernest. Despite his relative lack of recent bowling experience, Frank manages to make a decent go of it, staying almost neck-and-neck with his teammate while the intern flies into the lead. All seems perfectly fine until about half-way through the second game, where a well-aimed ball thrown by Frank is suddenly stopped by a pair of floating hands orbiting one of the pins.   Soon the hands are joined by feet, and the pin joined by several others as they pull out tiny picket signs, shouting that "All this ball-on-pin violence has to end!" and "We're going on strike!" as they walk purposefully up the lane towards the group. With accusatory fingers pointed, the animated pins begin to demand their workers' rights be upheld and that they be treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve. While the heroes try to diffuse the situation, not helped by the inflammatory remarks of certain bowling balls, Pagan quickly notices a distinct magical signature emanating from the collective and heading behind the bar.   Soon enough, Frank has had about as much as he can stand of the pins, who at this point seem to be set on some sort of communist revolution, and picks up their leader to a chorus of "Fascist!" emanating from around his feet as the pins try to batter him with their tiny picket signs. Claiming he was taking the leader to the man in charge, the pair of heroes make their way to the bar and find a man asleep on the counter. It's difficult to see at first, but after a moment the pair are able to see a shadowy form leering over him.   The two are a little stumped at first. They find themselves unable to hit the thing, with Warp's thrown pin doing little more than providing an annoying breeze. They're unable to focus on it however, as they hear screaming coming from the direction of the bathroom. With eyes thoroughly rolled they begin their approach, Frank saying "the condom machine better not have come to life too."   In stead, what Pagan finds as she nears the bathroom is a congregation of aligators menacing the nearby bowling alley patrons. She does her best to communicate with the ferocious crocodilians, but they seem far more interested in snacking on human flesh, forcing her to blast magic at them to get them to back off. The aligators begin to retreat into the bathroom but are stopped by a tall figure in the doorway. The condom machine, awakened and spoiling for a fight comes to their aid and, in a surprisingly archaic english accent, inspires his allies to take on the spellcaster.   As she's being menaced by beams made entirely of condoms, and crocodiles nipping at her feet, Emma manages to make two observations. Firstly, that Warp is currently lying unconscious on the floor near the bar with another shadowy creature leering over him, and second, that another of the creatures was currently trying to carry a janitor away from the scene past her. Focusing her attention on the shadow, she blasts it with a volley of arcane bolts and it quickly dissipates, dropping the man and causing the aligators to burst into a haze of glitters as the custodian begins to wake up. Having worked out the mechanics at play here, Pagan makes quick work of the creature attacking Warp and the awakened condom machine also bursts, the hero breifly seeing it in his half-asleep daze as he regains consciousness.   As the two brush themselves off, making sure to release the bar manager from his similar predicament and themselves from the chanting of "Fascist!" that had been driving them crazy up until this point. They check in with Kelly, who'd been having a pleasant conversation with her own bowling ball, and notice that she too was bearing a creature, though this one was smaller and for whatever reason wasn't causing her to fall asleep.   In this very moment, Emma realises for the first time just how handsome and impressive Frank is, and how romantic in retrospect their little sitdown before Kelly showed up was. Her expression softens and she gazes longingly into his eyes. For his part, Frank finds himself feeling a little nauseous and, upon placing a hand on his stomach, notices it juts out about a foot further than normal and feels a light kicking from within. At this point, Emma is able to break out of her delerium and fire an arcane bolt at the creature piggy-backing on Kelly, before adding "Kelly, I say this as your friend. You are a deeply sick person." She's not sure exactly what happened, or how to respond to that.   With reality within the bowling alley returned to normal, the duo leave Kelly in the relative safety they've created and open the door to the city proper, and are met by a scene of sheer pandemonium. They see half-naked people running through the streets, flying saucers abducting civilians, and as they turn a corner, they're brought face-to-foot with Terrorzilla^TM, the 50ft-tall, totally-original movie monster! They each make their best attempt to hurt the beast, and in Pagan's case, actually seems to do a tiny bit of damage, but the creature begins to bear down on them. With few options left to them, it seems like they're about to be crushed underfoot by a gigantic monster.   That is until Terrorzilla^TM shudders suddenly and collapses forward, his skull having been perforated by the sword of a familiar, though somewhat altered, face. Standing at almost seven foot, with flowing golden hair, six-pack abs, a chiseled jawline and an unnaturally large codpiece, the supervillain Combat descends from the rapidly-dissipating form of Terrorzilla^TM and strides towards the group. He places a hand to Emma's cheek, and whispers, "Good evening, my dear."   Emma knows what's going on. She can see the shadowy creature that has attached itself to her back, thrusting her misguided dream about an enigmatic villain into their reality, but despite the embarassment can't quite bring herself to rid them of it. She notes that despite everything else going on, this apparition doesn't seem hostile towards them and, as several of the creatures descend upon them, he even jumps to their defence. That said, on the way further into the city, following some of the creatures that seem to be carrying their victims away, a few of the creatures find themselves attached to Warp's back, culminating in an uncomfortable scene wherein some scantily-clad clones of Pagan and Harmony attempt to distract him from the mission. The pair quickly make a pact that nothing they've seen tonight will ever be mentioned again.   The pair and Dreamboat Combat make their way to the edge of the Recreational district, near to where it intersects with the Innovation district, and to the Bathala Museum of History. There they see, laying atop the grand front gardens of the building, dozens of sleeping people placed carelessly in position as what seems to be a Native American warrior on horseback patrols in laps around the area.   Wasting no time in saving the gathered victims, the team move in and catch the warrior in the middle of his lap, taking him by surprise as they launch their attack. Dibikad, as he's revealed to be called, proves to be quite the worthy opponent for the two heroes and their imaginary companion, subjecting them to their own nightmares, including the vengeful spirits of the people Frank had killed, the feeling of falling, being buried in maggots, and a topless and amorous Mercy. The battle is hard-fought, with the heroes forced to whittle down Dibikad's resistance little by little until he finally falls, the blade of Dreamboat Combat's sword piercing his heart and rendering him a pile of glitters as well.   The moment Dibikad dissolves, a man in the pile of bodies awakens with a start, turning his balding head towards the heroes and asking them what exactly is going on. The man soon introduces himself as Bob Deaver, curator of the Museum and local expert on the Ojibwe tribe. Dreamboat Combat immediately strides over, clutching the man's head to his chest and telling him he'll be okay, despite the man's protestations. Apparently, he'd been in charge of putting together an exhibition, making use of some original artefacts from the tribe including one of the oldest dreamcatchers still intact. He explains that, while he was happy to set up the installation, when it came time to hang the dreamcatcher in question, the Museum's director, a "boujee bitch" by the name of Chase, decided to forgo the usual ritual and requirements for its display, opting in stead to hang it up however he pleased.   Without a second to lose, Dreamboat Combat throws Bob over his shoulder and charges towards the building, much to the chagrin of both the man and the heroes. Emma, with her background in the arcane and Bob, whose expertise is evident in his dashing sweatervest, are able to piece together the correct steps that need to be taken in order to end the chaos currently overtaking the city. They know that firstly, the catcher cannot be hung on a wall, secondly it must be facing east, and third it must undergo a smudging ritual to cleanse it of negative energies contained within. Negative energies that become readily apparent when the door to the main exhibition hall opens up and Pagan, with her magic vision, can see the flow of dark energy out of the artefact like a cup tipped upside down.   There's no time to lose as a rumbling starts to be heard from outside converging on their location. Dreamboat Combat points out that, while he's happy to help them and sacrifice himself in the process, many of his fellow dreamkin will be less eager to see their fun end so soon. Frank rushes over and begins to reinforce the grand entrance to the exhibition hall, using his powers to fuse the wood together, while Emily begins to work on the smidging ritual, lighting up some sage as she asks Dreamboat Combat to reposition the dreamcatcher.   With the natural flair that the team has come to expect of this version of their sworn enemy, Dreamboat Combat soon finds himself performing some manner of aerial acrobatics routine as he hangs from ceiling-mounted hooks overhead and places the dreamcatcher in its new position facing east over the main walkway. He descends to the ground with the flourish of a seasoned gymnast and kicks over a nearby table, taking cover behind it to await the upcoming battle, throwing Frank his stun baton to assist him.   Soon enough, a crowd of the shadow creatures descend upon the exhibit hall and, while Bob tends to the slowly mustering flame beneath the artifact, the three heroes are forced to defend themselves from an onslaught. The creatures are soon joined by creatures of the dreams, including three UFO's and Butterfra^TM, the ancient enemy of Terrorzilla^TM! The battle soon starts to turn against the heroes, with Frank falling back aided by Dreamboat Combat, who then takes a hard hit himself from Butterfra^TM's Uberbeams, but Pagan is finally able to get the ritual going. White smoke begins to rise up to the dreamcatcher, weaving through the various strands as the negative energies of the artefact are slowly washed away.   As if understanding that they've lost, the various assembled creatures cease their attack and begin to dissipate into sparkles like all the other dreams they'd defeated up until that point. Dreamboat Combat, for all his good work, knows his time is up. He turns to Emma, his chisled jaw glistening with the falling of a single tear as he brushes a strand of hair from the side of her face and whispering, "Emily, I lo-" before dissipating entirely.   With the city once again safe, the dreamcatcher placated, and the citizens beginning to awaken from their forced slumber, the two heroes leave Bob to his business and begin the slow walk back to Strike Out with one idea standing out far beyond all others in their minds, even beyond the movie monsters, aliens and communist bowling equipment.   They can NEVER tell anyone about the shit they saw tonight.