Supernatural Taxes

43) Lod's floor bosses need to unionise

"Gas, give it more gas!" yelled Atla desperately clinging to the roof of the green machine that was smoking from everywhere while rounding a corner.

"My foot has literally broken through the chase!" Nora shouted back while beating back a demon monkey that got inside with a hairbrush, it had been annoying them for the last ten minutes, trying to casually disembowel Nora whenever she forgot about it.

"Kill that thing!"

"Oh, thanks I'll just do that quick, you steer why don't you!"

The environment was a mixture of wooden beams and bronze pipes. A mechanical clock was embedded into the wall or floor every dozen meters or so.

Little toy soldiers patrolled the sides of the passages closer to the boss room. They weren't aggressive, they just stared at the party as they passed before getting trampled by the horde of demon monkeys on their trail. The closer that they got to the boss the more it felt like there were toy factories in the walls.

The raid had started well enough, their strategy was to never stop moving and to kill any demon monkeys that tried to enter the van. Then the Green Machine had a minor crash while avoiding traps allowing the monkeys to catch up.

"Damn, I thought they'd have an aggro range or something" Atla muttered while beating a monkey on the head.

The green machine was too injured to outrun the monkeys, she looked at Thanos who said, "Yeah this is looking bad, we'll have to pull one of our cards early."

"Nora, use the machete in the glove compartment, I'll drown the rest. Okay Thanos, you said this should work, but will failing give us a game over?"

"Not at all, worst case the spell won't activate"

"Got it, do I just say Water?"

"Tack on a 'continuous use' and maybe aim it a bit,", Atla moved to the bucket tied to the Green Machine's roof and wiggled it to hang over the back so that she could tilt it up like a construction truck's load bed. "Wait wait wait, this doesn't feel right. We're renaming this thanos, let's call it, "Flood""

"Excellent-"

"-Whenever you're ready!"

"Flood, continuous use please," The entire paper mache bucket with a two meter depth and diameter was filled to the brim with an unpurifiable saltwater. Then gravity kicked int and dumped that water behind them, then Thanos recast the spell and filled the bucket to the brim again. The end result? A giant faucet gushing water out of the back of their truck like a damn was bursting.

The downpour stopped any pursuers from getting within twenty meters of the Green Machine. Atla tried out a, "Bwahahahaha," Thanos said nothing though since he was focussed on casting Flood several times per second.

There were shrieks as the demon monkey inside was KO'ed by a blade to the face, "Hah! I did it Atla, did you see that? I"

"—Good job, how far are we?"

"Hmph, maybe two more corridors"

"Can you hold on that long Thanos"

"...Yeah"

Atla hopped back on the bonnet and headed off incoming monkeys.

Usually one would wait there and meticulously plan their encounter, rest up and prepare equipment. But the monkeys on their tail were doused not dead.

The three of them and a smoking Green Machine burst through the double doors, praying that they closed behind them.

***