It is, of course, not just like Butterscotch. It has no hooves and is considerably more reptilian than insectoid. That doesn't stop Tiff from searching for similar weaknesses and weak points on its body. If it doesn't have weak, spider-like knees, what can she exploit?
Elton goes to run, but simply falls flat on his face. The bone snake rears up to clamp its jaws down on him, but Tiff shoves him out of the way and raises her arm like she's wearing a shield. Tiff is not wearing a shield. Long and sharp fang-like bones pierce her forearm through the leather that has served her so well until now.
Dingus leaps at the creature's head, slamming all of his weight into it. The force of the blow rips the fangs from Tiff's arm and knocks the bone snake off balance.
Tiff knows she really should have learned her lesson the first time. Unfortunately, the only combat lesson that has stuck with her is exactly none of them. What she has is an atomic derringer from months ago that she forgot to reload (so she has one shot with that thing), a ray gun in a broken bag, and a very sharp, surprisingly dense bone.
And also Elton. Elton's on the ground. She can't forget that.
She adjusts her grip on the sharpened bone. Ignoring the pain in her left arm and the blood already flowing like water from forearm to wrist to palm, she wields it like she would a sword (not that she's good at that, either), and swings at the snake.
Bone meets bone like steel against steel, dry squeaking like the screeching of brakes and blades. She grits her teeth, drives the point up into nonexistent organs, and tries not to flinch at the way she can feel blood running up and down her arm. All she can do is hope that Elton is doing the smart thing (getting up off his ass and trying to get the hell out of there).
Elton rolls to a stand, watching Tiff battle the creature. He watches Dingus battle the creature. He watches Kepler, somewhere further off in the pile, battle the creature. What is he doing except making everyone have to do more because he's not as strong or experienced as them? What else can he do but run?
He doesn't want to do that, though. Somewhere on a molecular level, the idea is frightening and repulsive. He has two feet; why doesn't he do something? He's got to do something! He's going to do something! Elton picks up a large bone from the leg of something bigger than he can fathom right now. It's heavy and more than a little unwieldy, but that's not going to stop him from rushing forward and trying to smash the creature on its head.
The bone snake barely registers Elton. It flicks its tail to smash him almost flippantly, like a cow with a fly. The fly doesn't appreciate it, though; the spiked end pierces Elton's side and sends him flying; his body rolls near the stardust boundary of the portal.
Tiff announces it as soon as the half-baked idea comes to her: "I'm going to get on it."
She isn't sure what will kill this thing— or even just incapacitate it long enough for them to get away— but going for the head seems like a good idea.
It's just like climbing a tree, she thinks. It's just like riding a mechanical bull. (Not a horse. Never a horse.)
She releases the bone from its periosteum sheath, stabs it into the top of the ribcage nearest the skull, up near the cervical vertebrae. From there, it's more like swinging herself up onto it— like getting up into a saddle when you're too short, like she's twelve again and hasn't been to Gatlinburg yet. Riding a giant skeletal crocodile-snake like this isn't something that's a great idea, but it's better than doing nothing.
Now she just has to get its head off its shoulders. That should do the trick.
It won't. It probably won't. But she has to try. She doesn't have any better options right now.
Elton groans. He raises one hand to his side and winces when he realizes what's coating his fingers in warmth is just blood. Rolling to his hands and knees, Elton slowly gets to his feet and only wobbles a lot. Fuck. Pain hurts. Why did no one tell him pain hurt?
His attention snaps over to the battle to see Tiff climbing the creature like the fucking badass she is. He wants to be just like her when he grows up. The thought makes him laugh just a bit before the pain of crunching his abdomen sets in.
Sighing, he removes his keys from his pocket and grips the mace. He's kept it there since that time he was stalked by the weird guy he went on a date with. Was that really only last year?
Moving as quickly as he can, he raises his arms and waves at the bone snake. "Hey! Hey! Look at me, asshole. That's right. I'm not dead! Come on, you fuck!"
He sure feels dead. It hurts to wave his arms around, but he needs to give Tiff the chance to finish this fucking thing. Despite having one teenager on its back, the snake snaps its attention to the other teenager waving his arms. It slithers forward faster than could possibly have anticipated.
Stumbling backwards and falling on his ass in the jagged bones between blades of grass, he holds up the mace. In a fit of genius desperation, he holds down the button just as the creature lunges to strike. Both Kepler and Dingus rush to him, but he knows they won't reach him in time.
Good thing Tiff's there, then. Too scatterbrained and bloody-handed to actually do the process of aiming and firing, she takes the derringer out of her waistband and throws it at the snake's head from where she is. It dinks off, flies off toward the bones like a villain disappearing into the stars— but it does the trick. (Dr. Deseret is going to be so pissed at her later.)
A thunk rings out when the gun connects with the bone snake's head. It stops mid-strike. Elton's finger keeps pressing down on the small can of pepper spray in hopes of doing something to stop the creature from killing him. Unfortunately for Tiff, the snake didn't stop far enough away to not get a small blast of peppery mist in her face.
"Ow. Fuck. Oh my god." She waves a hand in front of her and shields her eyes, hoping Elton gets the hint. "Stop spraying! Oh my god!"
This is one of those moments where she should really take out her contacts. She's taken lab safety courses; she's read and re-read the protocols on the clipboard by the morgue's person door; and none of that really prepared her for "getting maced out in the wild." Not in a pocket dimension.
Unfortunately, she is on the back of a giant snake. She can make the choice here: get them out so they don't fuse to her goddamn eyeballs, neglect rinsing her eyes out, try to keep going with her unspoken plan. It works well enough on a theoretical level— but fuck, it hurts, and god, it looks stupid to take a second in the middle of all of this to think about whether or not she has water in her bag. At least the contacts didn't fuse before she could get them out. Her eyes burning like hellfire is a pretty shitty silver cloud.
The bone snake, of course, does not have eyes. It has sockets, though. Maybe she could do something with that in a moment.
Elton's stomach turns cold. Fuck. He fucked up and sprayed Tiff. "Oh, shit. I am so sorry!"
"Don't be sorry, just fucking— Don't spray me." Blood runs down her chin from biting her lip in an attempt to keep from rubbing her eyes.
He just can't seem to get it together. Why did he even think he could come on this and be useful? What the fuck was he thinking? Everything hurts, and he keeps screwing up, and it's all so much, and there's a bone in his shoe that won't stop jabbing his ankle. The intensity of the situation is more than overwhelming; that would be an understatement; his head pounds like it has fists and an intention to burst from his skull.
Everything shifts. He can see Tiff fighting the creature— he can see her destroying it. He tries to figure out what, exactly, he's seeing. The head has to come off; he can understand that. More scrutiny: the snake has a weak point on the base of its skull and Tiff is exploiting it.
Then he's back in the moment. His breathing was heavy and Tiff was tossing out her contacts and spitting blood on the bones.
"Tiff!" he calls, hands cupped around his mouth with his keys still between his fingers. "The base of its skull! There's a weak point, a connection! Take its fucking head off!"
"I figured—" She spits another lipful of blood. "The question is how."
"Oh! Right! Just pull the bone!"
"Pull the bone?"
"It looks like one of those things that come on bread. You know, the thing!"
She groans, already looking for it. "Like fucking Power Rangers? Are you serious?"
"Sure, I guess!" He says it in a way that makes it clear he has never watched Power Rangers.
Tiff removes the sharp bone she was using as a handhold, scoots forward on the snake's spine, reaches for the correct bone, and pulls. The bone pops up and out without any effort at all. The entire creature shudders and then immediately collapses into a heap of bones that clatter on the ground in a wave. Tiff falls with it.
In the subsequent silence, Elton hobbles over to her. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," she lies, laying dramatically on her back like she has so many times before. "Or— I will be. We just— We need to get out of here, and I can try to fix it."
"To fix what?"
"To fix you. You're covered in your own blood." Sitting up now, Tiff gestures to the still-open portal with her head. "We might as well go through. It's taking a lot out of me, to keep it open. Honestly, at this point, something is bound to go wrong."
Kepler bounds over with another bone. He drops it into her lap.
She nods. "Yeah, okay. It'll come with us. The other one, too. Help me up, bud."
It's the good thing about Kepler being so large in the expanded form. He's sturdy enough that he doesn't squeak in protest during moments like these, when her hands are covered in her own blood and her legs are jelly from the fall. Once she's up, she uses the larger, denser bone he handed her— something from some animal, she thinks, or some monster that Boris Covington definitely killed— like a wizard's staff. In her mind, it looks sick as hell. She's aware it probably looks super dorky to regard a viscera-suspended patella as a crystal ball. (Sword and staff— this is just like Pathfinder. Fuck yeah.)
Elton nods, hand still on his side. "I think that's a great idea. Let's get the fuck out of here. You look terrible, by the way."
"I look fine."
"No, Tiff, you look like shit. I imagine I do, too. Fuck. I think I have some broken ribs and I got a puncture wound in my side. Not sure how I'm going to explain this to my mother..."
"I can fix it. I think. Just— not here." She winces, adds, "Not broken bones, either. Better hope they're bruised.
"Okay. I'll hope my ribs are bruised."
"It's not the most insane thing in the world."
He rolls his eyes good-naturedly. Dingus bounds up to both of them still in hellhound form, panting like the darling he is. "Just— Come on. Do you want me to jump in first?"
She gestures to the swirling green around the void. "After you."
With a wince, Elton steps forward through the portal and finds himself back in the room where they first encountered Frederick. He turns to see Kepler come through, back to his normal rat form, brown fur slick with something that's definitely not fruit punch. Elton waits a moment for Tiff and Dingus, hand still clutching his side. Where are they?
His heart skips a beat when the portal stutters and winks out without either of them stepping through. Fuck. Oh, fuck.