I
THE SHAPE OF THINGS
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
― Albert Einstein
Amanda and Monday followed the girl... no, Wednesday, through an almost invisible path through the forest trees.
Something had definitely changed when they unintentionally gave the girl her name. The whole environment around them was still black and white, or at least that's how their eyes perceived it. The whole of reality seemed to have a slight tremor, a sort of schematic, unfinished nature.
Like pencil strokes, that's what Monday said, Amanda thought, looking back at her braided guide.
The Wednesday Addams who now walked in front of them seemed more real. She could think of no better way to define it.
The child was still monochrome... shades of black, gray and white in an extreme that far exceeded what was usual for most incarnations of the Addams Family Amanda had met in her rough multiversal odyssey. But she had gained in... sharpness? No, that wasn't the right word. Amanda wasn't even sure if there was an appropriate word to describe the phenomenon. But if that reality and those who inhabited it were like some sort of unfinished cosmic pencil sketch, that little Wednesday Addams had just been inked.
And she had only needed to be given her name.
What would have happened if we called her another name? The same? Something different? Would she now be a different person and not a Wednesday Addams?
Amanda decided not to give the matter any more thought. It would end up with a headache if she went through with it.
Walking beside her, Monday made an almost imperceptible sound, an “Hmn” that Amanda had learned to identify as a sort of signal with multiple meanings depending on context, vocal tone or volume.
In that particular circumstance, Monday had used the equivalent of “Look.”
And she looked, indeed.
The road before them had opened and widened, the number of trees had thinned, and before their eyes lay an almost barren field leading up to a high hill. And on it, surrounded by a blackened iron fence and what looked like a moat, stood a huge manor marked by a tall tower that seemed to rise twisted toward the heavens.
The mansion was not like the one Amanda had known in her universe. It really wasn't like any she had ever seen before. But it was still, undoubtedly Addams Mansion in a primal, raw form.
And then it happened. The mere thought of the name seemed to be enough for the building. It was almost imperceptible, but Amanda felt it like a huge animal coming out of deep hibernation: the house gained the same quality as the young Wednesday. What had been a barely sketched outline now felt like a real, living presence. More real than anything else around it in that wasteland.
The silence was broken by Monday's quiet voice, almost echoing reverence in her words.
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
“What?” asked Amanda.
Monday merely shook her head, “It's nothing...just something that...Nothing.”
“It's House,” said the little Wednesday. The young girl paused for a moment, as if startled by something, "I know it's House. But before it never... now it feels like a name. But it also feels like it always was. Like something has changed to always be the same."
Monday and Amanda exchanged a glance, concerned about the little girl's perception of reality. The last thing they needed was for her to suffer an existential crisis.
But little Wednesday merely shrugged, her face still a mask of monotonous serenity and pragmatism.
“Oh, anyway,” she said, “I guess that's how it has to be.”
They continued on their way. The dirt and gravel under their feet gradually turned to small cobblestones until they reached the mansion's boundary. The outer gate door opened of its own accord as Wednesday arrived before it. It did so with a creak that sounded like the wailing of a soul in mourning and slammed shut behind Amanda and Monday as soon as the two crossed the threshold.
Finally they were at the front door of the Mansion, conveniently opened to reveal the glow of a blazing fireplace (or perhaps a fire in the making) and two disparate silhouettes waiting for them.
It was time to meet the Family. One more time.
Some things didn't change, however vague they were.
Wednesday's parents greeted them with effusiveness. Open and expressive in his case, a burst of pure hospitality. Calm and polite in hers, kind but also watchful.
That was why they were now with them and the girl sitting in the main room. The shadows intermingled with the lights from the fireplace fire and moved constantly enhancing the shapes of the entire collection of paintings, sculptures, stuffed creatures and strange knick-knacks that proliferated in the place. Yes, the house was undoubtedly a veritable museum of oddities in this universe as well.
“So...Gomez?” the Addams patriarch asked, with a smile that was somehow equal parts charming and creepy, “Just like the Hispanic surname?”
“Yes, although it's your first name, not a last name... Apparently it comes from part of your family having ancestry in Spain in some universes, I think,” Amanda explained.
“Gomez,” he repeated, “Gomez! I like it! Gomez Addams!”
And once again, the same process. The same feeling that his presence had become more constant and steady in the world.
“That's a name that suits you, dear,” said his wife, before turning to their guests with a questioning look.
“Oh!” said Amanda, “And you're Morticia.”
“Morticia,” said the newly named, as if savoring the letters. Seeing her smile, Amanda could have sworn that her lips were blood red, the first hint of color she had perceived in the world so far. Like all Morticias, she was tall, elegant and of a pallor that seemed to cry out to be described as exquisite, but there was something almost vampiric about her that was much more accentuated than usual.
“Ah, my dear, that's a wonderful name, and much more resonant on the tongue than simply referring to you as Mrs. Addams,” Gomez said.
"Mmm, from the Latin mortuus. It suggests tombs, cemeteries and crypts. I love it."
“What is my brother's name?” suddenly asked Wednesday, “I wonder if he will answer to his name if you name him now even though he is away blasting dynamite in the quarry.”
“His name is Pugsley,” Monday replied.
Little Wednesday looked crestfallen for an instant, "Oh...yes, that's his name, I can feel it, but I was hoping it would be something more sonorous, like Pericles. Or Pestilentius."
“Well, you have an uncle named Fester...,” added Amanda.
Monday was looking around. As they had been talking and giving their names to the family the room was becoming crisper and sharper, more tangible. It no longer looked like an unfinished pencil drawing. It was beginning to be something more like a black and white photograph and she didn't feel the same pain in her senses if she tried to elucidate the peculiarities of the surroundings.
“I wonder... if this is what he wanted,” she muttered under her breath, though Amanda heard her without trouble.
“Who?” she asked.
“Morningstar,” Monday replied, "By bringing us here. To a world not fully formed... our presence is altering it every time we call a thing or person by name."
YOU ARE ACTUALLY NOT ALTERING ANYTHING.
Amanda jumped in surprise, letting out an expletive that little Wednesday made a mental note of for future use. Monday rolled her eyes in irritation at the sudden volume of the disembodied voice echoing through the room.
“Oh, it doesn't sound like the voices we usually hear around here floating in the dark,” Gomez pointed out.
IN RESPONSE TO YOUR INQUIRY, MONDAY JONES, YOUR PRESENCE IS NOT ALTERING ANY OF THIS REALITY. YOU ARE ONLY REAFFIRMING WHAT ALREADY EXISTS.
“Well... that's good to know,” Monday said, “I don't want to have the responsibility of calling someone by the name they are not and altering their cosmic essence.”
“I had thought about that a bit... What would have happened if when we found this Wednesday we had told her that her name was something like... I don't know, Christina, or Jenna?”
“Being called something so mundane would make me sad, I think,” Wednesday said, “And it would surely lead to homicide.”
SUCH A NOMENCLATURE WOULD HAVE HAD NO EFFECT, WOULD NOT HAVE ANCHORED ITSELF TO HER NOR REINFORCED HER OWN BEING IN THIS EXISTENCE.
I MUST ALSO ADD THAT IT IS A PLEASURE TO MEET YOU IN THIS REALITY, MR. AND MRS. ADDAMS.
“Please call us Gomez and Morticia!” replied Gomez grinning from ear to ear, “Our names have just been revealed to us in a most curious manner, we might as well use them, Mr...?”
MORNINGSTAR.
“Oh, how delightfully Luciferian,” added Morticia.
I MUST SAY THAT...
Suddenly, Morningstar fell silent. He was not gone nor had communication been cut off. Somehow everyone could still feel his presence, but there was a growing tension in the air, as if something was about to...
AMANDA. MONDAY.
I MUST ASK YOU TO STAY HERE, PROTECT THIS PLACE.
I INSIST ON IT.
And after that, silence again. But this time they could sense that the extracorporeal presence had vanished.
“Oh, that was a bit rude,” said Wednesday, “ He didn't even say goodbye.”
“The real Lucifer has more class, no doubt,” Gomez said. He still presented a jovial attitude but one could subtly see that Morningstar's abrupt departure had made him uncomfortable.
“Something's wrong,” Monday said, “There was urgency in his voice... Amanda, you've spent more time with him, has he ever sounded like that before?”
“No. Not in that tone,” replied the young blonde in the astronaut suit, frowning before standing up, “And honestly, I'm fed up.”
“Fed up with what, dear?", Morticia asked, with a hint of genuine maternal concern that gripped Amanda's insides in a way she hadn't felt in a long time.
"Fed up with waiting. Tired of going aimlessly... Staying here and doing nothing? No, I don't plan on being so stupidly retroactive anymore," Amanda said, shooting a glance at her dimension-hopping device before drilling her blue eyes into Monday's dark eyes. Monday raised an eyebrow, questioningly, though she had an idea of what was going through Amanda's head.
Her question wasn't a “What are you planning” but more of a “Are you sure?”.
And Amanda certainly seemed to be. Monday closed her eyes and sighed, before turning to Gomez and Morticia, and young Wednesday who was watching them expectantly.
“Uncle, aunt, cousin... what do you say to organizing an Addams Family Reunion?”
Somewhere in that raw and still forming universe, there was the snap of fingers.
II
TARFU
TARFU: Totally And Royally Fucked Up (or Things Are Really Fucked Up), military slang during World War II.
Mary Sue merely s̵͑̈́͋͂̍͂͛͆̍͆̈̔͝ ̧̙̠̟̳̝̖͈̪̓̐͌m̶̹̉͠ i̴̭̼͇̝͎̅̄̐̽͊͝͠͝ ̡̡̧̫͇̺̮̮̟̺̥l̵̝͔̖̥̼̐̍͗̅̓̐̈́ͅ ̗̤̯̜̦͇̝͓ẻ̶̝̄ d̸͒̌́̒̒̈͑̏̒̍͊̆͛.͖͙̱͇̼̽̈̉̉
And Enid Saint-Clair felt her blood boil.
Not literally, of course. It was more like the typical metaphorical boiling derived from a sudden outburst of murderous rage directed at a very specific target. A target like the disguised thing in the shape of an adorable little girl grinning from ear to ear in front of her.
Saint-Clair could almost hear the werecat inside her.
Rip and tear.
Don't stop until the prey is a bloody shred of flesh on the ground.
So she decided not to think about it for a second longer and lunged forward with her claws extended towards the girl's throat.
The only thing that prevented Mary Sue from falling victim to an unexpected impromptu tracheotomy was the quick reflexes of the other Wednesdays and Enids present.
“Hey, hey! Calm down, Nid!” exclaimed Eamon Sinclair, grabbing the werecat by her left arm.
“Enid, stop!” shouted Pup, holding her right arm with Taylor’s help. “It’s just Mary Sue! You know her! We all know her!”
“You bet I know her!” growled the werecat.
The rest of the group continued to watch, unsure of what to do or say in the face of this unexpected situation. Eneit exchanged a worried glance with her husband. “Do you think it might be some kind of mind control? Saint-Clair is aggressive, but she’s never attacked one of our own so arbitrarily…”
“I don’t know, querida,” Wod replied, “She’s been agitated ever since she got back…”
As they watched Saint-Clair struggle with the others, Friday approached little Mary Sue. The girl looked distraught, terrified by what had just happened.
“Mary?” Friday asked.
Mary Sue Addams looked up, her eyes locking with Friday’s. They were deep and dark and glistened with held-back tears. Two wells of dark vulnerability and uncertainty that launched a direct assault on the maternal instincts of the Addams woman dressed in pink.
“Mrs. Friday… What’s wrong with Nid? Why does she want to hurt me?” the little girl asked, her voice slightly trembling. “Is it my fault? Did I do something wrong?”
“Oh, Mary…,” said Friday, crouching down in front of the little girl and wrapping her in a protective embrace. “Everything will be all right, you’ll see… Nid is just… Well, she’s a little nervous, that’s all.”
Seeing Friday hugging the little girl made Saint-Clair angrier. A brown tabby fur began to cover her body as her eyes glowed green, “Friday! Get away from her! She's a fucking parasite!”
“Damn it Saint-Clair, I can't believe I'm the one saying this, but get a grip!” growled Taylor with her eyes beginning to bug out at the first sign of her transformation into her Hyde form, “Don't force us to...!”
And that was the situation: an almost fully transformed Enid Saint-Clair trying to exercise an act of extreme violence against a girl who was a member of the family and of their group and who had been with all of them since the beginning. Something had happened to her in her last multiversal leap, something that had extremely upset her. It seemed more and more evident that it was not possible to calm her down and drastic measures would have to be taken... at least that was what most of the members of the group thought, like Parker, or Shark, who wanted to intervene in some way but did not know how.
But there were two people whose minds were coming to very different conclusions.
Wednesday Addams watched the scene with a growing sensation that she could not put into simple words, which for a writer like her was patently frustrating.
From the first moment, Saint-Clair's reaction to Mary Sue had struck her as oddly visceral in a way that suggested something profound and far beyond appearances. Wednesday knew them both, and there was nothing to suggest that Saint-Clair was under any sort of outside control or influence...
So she tried to mentally review previous interactions between Saint-Clair and Mary Sue, to see if there was anything that might have given rise to any misunderstandings, and when she tried her hardest...
Wednesday Addams had no eidetic memory, but her ability to recall was prodigious by most people's standards (it helped to always have in order who she was indebted to and who she had to punish severely), and while all her memories pertaining to Saint-Clair were crystal clear, Mary Sue's were... well, they weren't hazy or fuzzy.
They were just as clear. No, they were more so. They were memories that were too perfect, without the inconsistencies and irregularities you would expect from a standard remembrance.
And that was not normal.
For her part, the Wednesday Addams known as Woe was going through another very different line of thinking but one that was going to lead her to a similar conclusion.
Woe had also known Mary Sue for a long time. She had vivid memories of the girl accompanying them on previous multiversal journeys, being a constant and reliable presence on the team... there was no logical reason for her Enid's reaction, nothing to indicate that the little girl was the danger the werecat said she was.
Woe knew Mary Sue.
But above all that, Woe loved and trusted Enid Saint-Clair.
Unconditionally.
In that moment it was almost as if a connection had been established between the two. Wednesday and Woe exchanged a glance, a silent signal followed by a mutual nod.
They would face whatever was to happen, regardless of what it might be.
So without another word, at the very moment Mary Sue finally broke away from Friday's embrace, Weds and Woe threw two daggers in unison that whistled through the air to plunge full into the little girl's neck.
A girl who immediately exploded into a shapeless mass of shadows, eyes and teeth.
Friday was the first to react to its proximity, throwing herself backwards by pure reflex to dodge the blow of a shred of shadows tearing the air around her, as if absorbing the very light in its wake.
The effect was also immediate on the rest of those present. As if some kind of filter had just disappeared from their minds... all memory of Mary Sue fragmented and shattered leaving behind only confusion and an accentuated sense of revulsion.
“Fuck, am I the only one who feels like her soul has been puked on?” asked Cyber Enid holding a hand to her head.
“No,” replied many of the others in unison.
“Damn it,” Taylor muttered, letting go of Saint-Clair, “It's been inside our heads like...”
“Forget that, I gave that thing a hug,” Friday said with a puzzled expression, “Normally I have no problem hugging monsters and shapeless entities, but this one was very rude.”
For her part, free at last, a certain werecat decided to finish what she had started.
“RAAAARGH!” shouted Saint-Clair lunging headlong into the mass of shadows.
It was to no avail. Mary Sue's form dissipated leaving the werecat to pass through the space it had found itself in only moments before, only to take form again a few feet away.
It looked like a little girl again, but any hint of innocence or vulnerability had vanished. Any pretense of harmlessness had evaporated, replaced by an aura of grotesque menace and a twisted, toothy grin more akin to that of a lamprey. The wounds on its neck were still open, a thick, black pitch oozing from them that had begun to form a puddle at its feet in which flickering eyes floated.
"Heh. I told her,” Mary Sue murmured, “I told her that something so abrupt wouldn't work, that I'd need more time to integrate, but she insisted. She wanted to see what you were made of.”
Woe had begun to circle Mary Sue as she approached Saint-Clair, “It is talking about her, isn't it?”
Wednesday nodded, another dagger again firmly in her hand, “Yes. The Unkindness.”
“Mmm... I don't think that dagger is going to be worth much,” Moon Raven interjected.
The black pitch at Mary Sue's feet began to rise up enveloping it like a sphere that began to grow and fragment letting out tumors of meat and thorns. Soon where once had been the figure of a girl now stood a deformed mass of throbbing, bloody flesh that vibrated like a gigantic heart.
Wednesday had to squint her eyes as she looked at it. She noticed that the others were going through something similar... the mere fact of resting their gazes on that thing seemed to cause pain in a very direct way. The environment around it was also being affected, as if the surface of the ground was being twisted and absorbed by the mass of the parasite.
“Well, I can't speak for your daggers, swords or other cutting things,” said Saint-Clair, “But these claws have slashed that thing before!”
Without another word, the werecat leapt towards the otherworldly mass that was Mary Sue before it could extend the slightest tentacle against the others.
Saint-Clair was not wrong in thinking that to take on such a solid aspect the creature was surely again as tangible as in their first confrontation... but on this occasion Mary Sue was not self-limiting herself so as not to break her “toys” as was the case in the universe in which they had first encountered each other.
So even though the feline fell upon her with uncharacteristic ferocity and filled her flesh with lacerations, Mary Sue had no trouble grabbing Saint-Clair, with fang-filled tentacles and bony protrusions digging into the werecat's flesh.
One had to give her credit, Saint-Clair emitted no whimper of pain. Only a roar of frustrated fury.
It lifted her high, stretching her arms and legs in opposite directions, as if intending to tear her in two at a single pull, as a huge eye and a jagged mouth-like pit formed in the creature's main bulk.
“Nid!” shouted Woe, running towards them and catching in mid-air the sword that Wod threw at her as she passed by for her to make use of. The Addams was ready to cut that monster into little pieces if it caused any more harm to her fiancée.
But Woe did not have to do anything to save Saint-Clair. What happened next was a veritable deus ex machina.
An invisible force severed Mary Sue's tentacles and Saint-Clair was flung into the air in the direction of the group. She would have landed squarely on top of Woe had she not been intercepted by a completely transformed Taylor, who used her own massive frame to cushion the impact.
But that was not the strangest thing. Only Wednesday saw it, but just before Saint-Clair was released there was a faint flash of light just behind the creature.
Then a white circle formed right in the center of the mass of flesh.
There was no other way to describe it. It was not a sphere of light per se, it was more like a singularity that began to draw Mary Sue to itself as its body began to be enveloped in an iridescent blue-white fire. Mary Sue screamed... a scream that echoed not only in that plane of reality but in multiple higher and lower dimensions at the same time as its entire essence was affected by that attack and not just its current physical incarnation.
It was the cry of a dying beast that suddenly burst into a maelstrom of light and fire. The singularity expanded for an instant with a refulgent flash before also bursting with a resounding “pop,” as if a void was suddenly filled with air.
All that remained behind was the remains of black pitch smoldering on the ground, a white cloud of smoke and the silhouette of a figure advancing towards them.
For a brief moment, glimpsing the outline of the newcomer who had undoubtedly teleported behind Mary Sue's back, Wednesday thought it was Amanda Buckman.
But it was not.
They were wearing an astronaut suit similar to Amanda's... very superficially. Their visor hid the face, reflecting the room and everyone present. The suit in turn seemed to be made of scraps of others, different models joined in a combination of Frankensteinian fashion with pieces of recycled armor in one of the arms and one of the legs. The whole ensemble was of a white color that in its individual pieces had undoubtedly been pristine in the past but was now marked by burns and grey ash.
The newcomer advanced slowly, limping. It was obvious that the mere act of walking was visibly straining them.
As they spoke their voice sounded distorted, impossible to identify as if it had passed through a filter, but it was recognized instantly even though this time it did not resonate as an untraceable disembodied entity.
"MY POWER IS DIMINISHED. BUT I CAN STILL DEAL WITH PARASITES LIKE YOU," said Morningstar, speaking directly to the mass of pitch.
Something moved there, emerging from the remains. All that was left of Mary Sue: a small worm, or rather a cosmic leech, crawling pitifully along the ground, futilely trying to escape.
It didn't get very far, courtesy of a stomp from Saint-Clair's feet.
“Good riddance, scum,” the werecat snarled.
“This situation has certainly been more interesting than I expected myself," said Mami.
“Believe me sister, this has been nothing,” replied Shark, “But it still makes me uneasy that that thing managed to sneak into our memories so easily.”
“You're not the only one, Shark,” Friday said, “I think we all owe you an apology, Nid,” she added, turning to the werecat who was currently being embraced by Woe as her bleeding wounds regenerated as she reverted to her human form.
Saint-Clair responded with a simple head shake.
"It's nothing Friday. I saw how that thing had the brains of an entire universe slurped out. I don't think you could do anything against it without seeing it coming."
Meanwhile, Wednesday advanced straight ahead toward Morningstar.
“We need to talk,” she said. And while it wasn't an order it felt like one.
A hush fell over the instance again as everyone's attention focused on the Addams and the individual who had gathered them together and thrown them into different corners of the multiverse with virtually no warning.
The figure in the astronaut suit nodded... or at least from his body language that was the impression he had given. It was as if an air of resignation had fallen over him.
"I SENSED A CORRUPTING PRESENCE AND KNEW I WOULD HAVE TO LET MYSELF BE SEEN. I WOULD APOLOGIZE. BUT AS SINCERE AS MY PLEA MAY HAVE BEEN I DON'T THINK YOU WOULD BE INTERESTED."
“It's just that throwing us into other realities without warning was a bit rude, Mr. Morningstar,” Pup said, “To say the least.”
"OF COURSE. BUT PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT I WAS DESPERATE. MY KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR GROUP IN GENERAL AND YOUR CAPABILITIES IN PARTICULAR WAS MY ONLY HOPE. BUT I HAD NO MEANS OF LOCATING YOU UNTIL AMANDA WAS FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO DO SO."
"I don't understand. If you needed us and knew us and can access multiversal travel, how come you couldn't locate us on your own?" asked Woe, with a hint of distrust in her voice.
"BECAUSE OF MY... CIRCUMSTANCES. I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU DO NOT TRUST ME BUT THERE IS A REASON FOR MY ACTIONS. AND I INSIST THAT YOU ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO CAN BE EXPECTED TO HAVE A REAL CHANCE OF STANDING AGAINST THE ENEMY."
“Friend, I have met snake oil salesmen more trustworthy than you,” a voice interrupted, accompanied by the soft sound of a slow clapping.
On the couches in the center of the room, right next to the unconscious Abigail Craven, there had appeared perched a hooded figure wrapped in black robes that appeared to be made of the very night itself. The cawing of ravens seemed to echo from within her, but faint, as if it were an echo in the distance.
In what little could be seen of her pale face under the hood as she clapped her hands, a smile worthy of a hungry predator shone through.
The Unkindness.
Wednesday felt a wave of irritation at the sight of her.
Not necessarily by her presence per se but by the fact that she seemed to have appeared there without them having been able to detect her in any way. Even Morningstar's previous arrival had left signs, but that was not the case with The Unkindness.
She must have a masterful control of multiversal travel to be able to locate us and appear as if nothing, thought the Addams, Or maybe it's a control of our perceptions. We only became aware of her presence when she decided to announce it, but it's possible she's been here with us longer than that.
Yes, it was possible that The Unkindness could have been observing the situation with Mary Sue for some time now.
It was not a reassuring thought.
The mocking applause had ceased, but a quirk of fate would have it that at that moment, before anyone could say or do anything else, the unconscious Abigail Craven awoke from her induced sleep.
The member of the Nine woke up disoriented and with a sore jaw. A normal state after being knocked out by the punch of a variant of Enid. Her eyes surveyed everyone present but it was as if she couldn't quite take in what she was seeing. It was when she became aware of the presence right next to her that the glow of consciousness fully returned to her gaze.
“Oh... oh my.”
“Hello, Abby,” The Unkindness said, smiling affably.
“My Lady! My Mistress!” exclaimed Abigail, shifting awkwardly and falling off the couch in an attempt to curtsy, finally remaining prostrate on her knees in front of the hooded woman, “Oh, my Lady, I have failed you! You and all of ours!”
“Chss, chsss, Abby, it's okay,” said The Unkindness in a calm and collected tone of voice, as if speaking to a little girl who had committed a mischief, "It's okay. You've only done your job to the best of your limited capabilities. I'm not going to ask a smelly fish to climb a tree am I?"
Abigail Craven looked up, her watery eyes focusing on her Mistress and for a slight fraction of a second she frowned. It was the first time she had seen the leader of the Normalcy Nine so closely. It was the first time he had actually seen her face...
“My Lady,” Abigal began, with a tremor of doubt in his voice, “why do you look like...?”
She couldn't say more. With a movement of unearthly swiftness, The Unkindness plunged her fingers into Abigail Craven's skull.
There was no blood, no crunching of bones. The fingers of her hand pierced the woman's head as if they were intangible. But the effect was immediate. Abigail Craven's whole body tensed in a sudden spasm and her eyes snapped open, as if wanting to pop out of their sockets before rolling back into her head. A faint gurgle escaped from her throat, not even a cry of pain, for barely an instant before she went completely limp.
The Unkindness withdrew her hand, clean and spotless, and Abigail Craven fell dead to the ground.
“Oh, Abby,” said The Unkindness, “Anyway...”
The Unkindness got up from the couch and stood up, rubbing her hands together as if she had just finished a manual labor job.
“So even your servants don't know who you are,” observed Wednesday. Her whole body was tense and ready for action at the slightest sign of danger. Both she and everyone else present were on alert. Taylor and Saint-Clair had completely transformed their bodies again.
“Well, only one knows, and he's discreet,” replied the murderous intruder, before casting a look of incredulous reproach at Wednesday and the others as she noticed their expressions, "Oh, come on. Don't look at me like that, I've got spares. You're not going to tell me truthfully that you cared about this thing's life."
Wednesday certainly didn't care much about Abigail Craven's life or death. She was sure that the case was the same among most of those present, especially Woe. But she also knew that there were others who, even though they considered Abigail Craven an enemy and would have no qualms about using lethal force against her in a confrontation, would not be very happy with the situation they had just witnessed.
In truth, she herself was one of them. She felt no pity for the member of the Nine, and no Addams was a stranger to murder. But there was a proper way to do things and that level of indifferent callousness was unnecessary.
Besides, if you were going to punish a servant for a failure they weren't really responsible for, you didn't kill them. If anything you pulled out a fingernail or two. That was disproportionate.
You see, it was not the murder she had just seen that irritated Wednesday, but the injustice inherent in it.
So she decided not to engage in a futile moral dilemma. It was best to focus on the here and now. And above all, on the who.
“We know who you are,” Wednesday said, “We know you're a Wednesday Addams.”
The Unkindness seemed to delight at that, the teeth of her smile sparkled like sharp pearls, "Well, it's not like I'm hiding it either... ok, yes, I'm hiding it from my followers, but it's purely a pragmatic matter. If they were to discover that their crusade to destroy the Addams's is led by an Addams from the shadows... Well, I admit I was amused by the irony."
“Why?” Pup interjected, “Why hunt our variants? Why destroy their worlds? What do you get out of it?”
The Unkindness looked at her other counterpart and folded her arms, an expression of mock concentration on her partially visible face. The cawing of ravens seemed to echo from somewhere in the distance, like twisted laughter.
“Yes, I suppose this is the moment when I explain my nefarious plan...” she said.
She took a step toward the group. They all took a step back from their respective positions, almost by reflex.
"But in fact, it's very simple” she continued.
Her gaze shifted from one Wednesday of the group to another, ignoring the Enids, Parker, Agnes and Taylor. Her attention seemed to focus exclusively on the other Wednesday Addams, as if she wanted to make the following point very clear to them and them alone.
"I'm Wednesday Addams, and I'm unique."
The silence that followed that statement felt like a heavy weight. There was something in the way she spoke the words that conveyed a sense of implacable finality.
"That's all you need to know, really" she finished.
But before the meaning and intent of what was uttered could settle over all present, the silence was interrupted by a faint access of coughing followed by Morningstar's resonant, filtered voice.
"SO IT'S MERE NARCISSISM. AS I FEARED."
The Unkindness turned to look at Morningstar, as if paying attention to him for the first time. The expression on her face partially hidden under her hood suddenly became serious.
“You, of all people, do not have any miserable right to say that to me,” said the intruder, “Do you think I don't know you? That I didn't know that all this time you've been playing the hero, sending that blonde clown of yours from doomed world to doomed world in the hope of finding this whole gang?”
The Unkindness laughed, "I could have stopped you at any time. I let you be because... well, I was bored out of my mind,“ she said, shooting a glance back at the Wednesdays, ”And maybe I can get some fun out of all this."
At that point, after a series of exchanges of glances, the first to respond was curiously Moon Raven, letting out an irritated snort, “Well, then we'd better not let you down,” said the wheelchair-bound heroine, “Agnes, don't interfere.”
“Boss?“ asked the young red-haired girl.
“This situation is as good an excuse as any to try it.”
And as if her body was neither broken nor nearly immobile, held in place by irons in her bones, Moon Raven stood up as her wheelchair seemed to disassemble into dozens of pieces that were suspended in the air, floating. Then they began to envelop her. The metal attaching itself to Moon Raven's arms, legs and torso as it morphed and was reshaped, following the programming of millions of microscopic nanomachines.
The gray of steel turned ebony black, and in a matter of seconds where once stood the more frail-looking Wednesday Addams now stood a behemoth in high-tech combat armor with a vaguely corvid design.
But despite its bulk, the armor and the pilot inside it moved at breakneck speed, appearing in the blink of an eye right next to The Unkindness, delivering a vicious blow to her face with such force that the crack of her broken skull and neck echoed through the chamber before the body was flung through the air and slammed into the hanging column of monitors in the center of the room.
“Fuck yeah, Boss!”, exclaimed Agnes.
“What the hell is that?!” asked Cyber Enid, with her eyes sparkling with excitement and grinning from ear to ear for the first time since she had regained consciousness. Her own embedded circuits could almost smell the colony of nanomachines that made up that armor.
“Impressive contraption,” said Wod, admiring the design of the armor. It was far less ornate than his own but its effectiveness could not be denied, “It is not hard to imagine you like this alongside your heroic companions in your home universe.”
“Ironically, this armor was designed to combat them in case they fell prey to some sort of mind control or manipulation,” Moon Raven explained, “Especially SuperWolf... but since even my Enid couldn't stop this counterpart of ours...”
And as if to prove her words, The Unkindness stood up at that moment, holding her head with her hands and adjusting her neck, as if she was snapping the vertebrae back into place. She moved her head in circles a couple of times until with a final bony snap everything seemed to settle down. Her hood had fallen, exposing her face, which didn't seem to have even the slightest mark left on it.
She smiled.
“Come on, what are you waiting for?” she said, “I haven't got all day.”
What happened next was a little bit of chaos.
Daggers whistled through the air, courtesy of Woe. They stabbed into the flesh of The Unkindness causing her to recoil as she felt the force of the impact and the steel digging into her flesh.
Instantly Saint-Clair planted herself behind her, digging her claws into the hooded woman's back and flinging her into the air, where with a leap a transformed Taylor intercepted her, striking her with such force that The Unkindness formed a small crater in the ground as she landed.
A crater from which she was thrown when a plastic explosive stuck to a shovel, courtesy of Pup and Shark, landed right in front of her. The explosion threw her through the air once again, into the arms of Friday and Mami, who, with a combined judo throw, redirected her trajectory in such a way that The Unkindness had a run-in with the fists of Eneit and Eamon before ending up pierced by Wod's sword, followed by a new impact from Moon Raven and multiple cuts courtesy of Cyber Enid's blades.
But not everyone was intervening.
Parker had stood on the sidelines, holding young Agnes/Sparrow to keep the young teenager from throwing herself fully into the fray, though she couldn't stop the girl from throwing some tiny blades that contributed to adding to their foe's wounds.
Parker saw that she was not the only one on the sidelines. Morgninstar was standing somewhat apart from her, his hands wrapped in strange signs as he seemed to mumble something that echoed like a quiet murmur through his voice filter.
And Wednesday... Weds hadn't moved either. She had stood still, in her everlasting folded-arm pose, watching the carnage.
Wednesday watched... taking note of something that the others should already be aware of as well.
The Unkindness was not defending herself.
The Unkindness was not dodging any attacks.
She received them in full, without moving a muscle or putting up the slightest resistance. She was for all intents and purposes the flesh and blood equivalent of one of those anatomical dummies used for simulating injuries.
But she was recovering... for as Wod had previously observed, she was an Addams. And an Addams can't really hurt or be hurt by another Addams.
And yet...
Her regeneration is abnormally fast, Wednesday observed, Even by the standards of our family and other supernatural creatures, the absurd amount of damage she has taken should leave her turned into a bloody, steaming piece of flesh for a few hours at least. But...
The regeneration was almost instantaneous. Moreover, it seemed to become faster and more intense the more damage was accumulated.
The combat finally came to a pause, the result of the exhaustion derived from attacking with great intensity an enemy that clearly resists to die.
And The Unkindness was still there, rising to her feet again, her black robe also reforming, letting fly a raven or two made of shadows that dissolved in the air around her. Again, not the slightest trace of wounds, burns or other injuries remained on her. Except for stains and splashes of blood and traces of ash.
But she was unharmed.
She rustled her robes, as if merely dusting herself off after having fallen down. Immediately, she looked at her opponents with an arched eyebrow that reminded many of them all too uncomfortably of Morticia.
“You do realize you can't kill me, right?”
“One Addams can't hurt another Addams,” Wod repeated, with terrible resignation.
"Exactly. We're family,“ replied The Unkindness, ”So you have to be aware of the futility of it all."
“There are ways for one Addams to neutralize another without resorting to fatality,” said Woe, “We just have to get creative with you...”
The Unkindness threw back her head, as if to laugh again... but she stopped short. Her face suddenly took on a calculatingly neutral expression as she raised her right hand and watched it intently.
There, between her index and middle fingers, there was a faint crackle of energy. It would have been almost imperceptible but Wednesday, Woe and many of the others saw it. A tiny discharge of electricity-like energy, reddish in color, emanating for a split second from her body.
Like a leak. Like an open wound.
“I'm expending too much energy, too much lost essence,” said The Unkindness, before a once again jovial expression, though marked by a strange and cruel glint in her eyes settled back on her face, "I must admit, it's been great getting to play with all of you. But this is starting to lose interest. I was hoping for something... I don't know... more."
She extended her left arm and from within the shadowy folds of her robe emerged a familiar silver sphere that slid into the palm of her hand. There, in a second, the sphere became a long, razor-thin sword.
"Although I will take the opportunity to do some reaping."
And she disappeared. She left behind only a wisp of black smoke and a handful of raven feathers floating in the air.
Actually, she had moved. Very fast, so fast that one could almost speak of a rudimentary teleportation, placing herself right in front of Moon Raven with her sword ready to attack.
“Moon Raven!” exclaimed Wednesday, “Get out of there!”
The superhero Addams listened. Her armor's systems ejected her by flinging her out through an automatically formed opening in the back. It was almost as if the mass of nanomachines had spit her backwards.
And to no avail, as The Undkiness moved from her front position in another dizzying motion to be on Moon Raven's back in the blink of an eye, intercepting her in her retreat and allowing the Addams to skewer herself on the edge of her sword with the force of inertia.
Moon Raven was unable to say anything. There was no time to utter any words, no last statement, lament or challenge. No last instruction to her ward or her allies.
Her body fell apart in an instant, disintegrating into invisible ashes.
“BOSS!” shouted Sparrow, breaking free of Parker's arms and attempting to run towards The Unkindness with tears in her eyes as she gripped her throwing blades with such force and rage in her clenched fists that blood began to gush from between her fingers.
But for all practical purposes, it was as if the willing Agnes hadn't moved. Everything that happened next seemed to be in slow motion and Wednesday realized, feeling a cold sensation settle in her stomach, that The Unkindnees had really been treating them as a mere game up to that point.
Shark was next.
There didn't seem to be any particular criteria, she was simply the closest.
It didn't matter that her ever-faithful shovel and a huge saber had appeared in her hands out of nowhere like the living cartoon she really was. The Unkindness moved again at an unnatural speed and stood at her back, piercing her torso with her silver sword/sphere.
And the result was the same. Shark dissolved into ashes, an expression of incredulous frustration on her face...
Someone shouted her name, but Wednesday couldn't tell who did it. Maybe Pup, or Friday.
Maybe herself.
And Pup... Oh, Pup.
The Unkindness appeared between her and Taylor, behind their backs, and struck the Hyde as she turned to try to intercept her. The Unkindness did so with her free hand, essentially knocking the huge creature out with a single slap as her sword blade grazed Pup's shoulder.
She didn't even skewer or seriously wound her. A mere graze, a scratch.
And that was enough.
Pup was gone.
Wod and Eneit attacked, gripped by a berserker rage at the fate of their fallen comrades, but the only thing the Adamo prince and his barbarian princess managed to do was to draw the attention of The Unkindness upon them.
Their attacks did not hit their foe, they only passed through the empty space she left behind her filled with smoke and feathers as black as a moonless night.
The last thing Wod was aware of was the sensation of something sharp digging into the back of his neck.
A dagger whistled through the air, and The Undkiness merely let it stab into her shoulder, focusing her attention on her next target.
Woe threw dagger after dagger towards her opponent. The Unkindness first merely walked with unnatural calm, letting the blades of Toledan steel dig into her flesh like she was a human pincushion. But soon she vanished again and in a wisp of thick, black smoke reappeared behind Woe's back, thrusting her sword into her side.
The Addams’ disintegration was accompanied by the scream...no, the roar of her name from Enid Saint-Clair.
“WILLAAAAAA!”
In the unreality of the whole situation, Wednesday could see coming what was going to happen. It was not a vision, but rather a sudden and clear mental reconstruction in her mind of the inevitability of events.
Weds saw Saint-Clair's futile attack, resulting in the werecat being thrown against an also desperate Eneit trying to fight back, both falling to the ground stunned. And she realized with that sudden clarity that someone has just before dying that she herself was next, she was the one who was closest to Woe when...
The Unkindness's gaze locked onto her before evaporating again. In less than the blink of an eye.
Wednesday had noticed that all the attacks had been from behind. So she began to move milliseconds before her enemy vanished completely. She spun around, turning herself around in mid-air as she jumped backwards and prepared to launch a counterattack, but she knew immediately that it would be futile.
For The Unkindness was already there, instantaneous and relentless. Her arm outstretched, her silver sword closing in on her target. Everything was still moving in slow motion for Wednesday. The Addams could see in those last moments the glint of the silver blade, its sharp point millimeters from her chest, ready to finish her off as it had the others.
The blade never touched her.
For in that split second, The Unkindness' face was struck by a huge fist covered in golden fur.
The enemy was thrown through the air once again, in an impact of such force that the sound around her seemed to explode in a small shockwave as she was thrown against one of the walls of the room, piercing it.
From the sound of it, she had actually gone through several walls.
Her sword had fallen from her hands, becoming a sphere again, not touching Wednesday, whose fall backwards was interrupted by being picked up by another muscular, furry arm.
Wednesday looked up and could see the fully transformed form of her wife, Enid Addams, the Volvaugr, with the glow of the multiversal travel portal closing behind her.
“Don't you fucking touch my wife!” the she-wolf snarled, baring her teeth as she pinned her gaze towards the spot where The Unkindness had impacted.
The silence that followed did not last long. From the hole in the wall now surrounded by debris that had been formed by being pierced by The Unkindness came the sound of crystal clear laughter.
The Unkindness emerged from the darkness of the damaged wall, again completely unscathed except for some dust and rubble on her shoulders. She was still laughing, with the expression of joviality having returned to her face and a genuinely euphoric gleam in her eyes as she rested her gaze on the transformed Enid.
“Oh! OH!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands in jubilation, “You're for real! A Volvaugr! Oooh, it's been so long since I've encountered one of your kind!”
And once again her playfulness turned predatory, almost like the infantile psychopathy of a spoiled child who had never quite grown up willing to take a new toy by force, “This... this is going to be a real challenge.”
Enid used no words, the only response that came out of her mouth was a low growl accompanied by the sound of her claws extending.
She was followed by similar actions from Saint-Clair, Taylor and Eneit... she could almost feel the pain and despair emanating from them tempered by a level of rage that was off the charts. Eamon had stepped forward, extending his claws as well and attempting to shield Friday with his body, fearful that she would be the next victim. Agnes had been intercepted by Mami before she could carry out her own suicide attack. Cyber Enid was some distance away from the others, but even she was still extending the blades that emerged from her arms.
It looked like they were about to enter the next round. Wednesday only hoped that the presence of her Enid could make a real difference.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, the universe decided to intervene with an anti-climax called Morningstar.
All this time, a soft, almost inaudible murmur had been playing in the background of the room. Parker was the only one who had noticed it was the work of their host in an astronaut suit muttering something under his breath while making strange hand signs during combat.
The culmination of it was at that moment. As The Unkindness took a step forward in the direction of Enid, Wednesday and the others, Morningstar was this time the one who surprised her by appearing in front of her in a flash of blinding white light, landing his palm directly on the intruder's chest.
He uttered a single word that echoed like a command to the universe itself as a sigil of light formed in the air above the figure of The Unkindness.
“BEGONE.”
“Oh, go fuck y...,” The Unkindness began to say just before she was forcibly teleported against her will to some other corner of the multiverse.
There was an explosion of blinding light that forced everyone present to look away. It faded as quickly as it had begun and as her vision cleared, Wednesday could see that there was no longer the slightest trace of the cloaked intruder. Only Morningstar remained, kneeling on the ground and emitting a wet cough that suggested that the act he had just performed had cost a notorious portion of his physical integrity.
Still, he got to his feet. Still struggling and panting from the effort. Despite the filter, one could sense how his voice sounded cracked, pained.
“WE MUST GO... THIS PLACE IS NO LONGER... IS NOT SAFE,” he said, before being briefly interrupted by coughing before he could continue speaking, "IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE I'VE USED MAGIC IN SUCH A DIRECT WAY. IT BURNS."
Enid listened to Morningstar's words, but her attention was mainly focused on observing the entire environment around her very carefully, slowly returning to her human form as she hugged Wednesday, taking note of the state of the others, the almost catatonic condition Taylor seemed to have fallen into, the waves of PAIN she could feel almost tangibly escaping from her counterparts Saint-Clair and Eneit...
And the absences. She also took particular note of the very troubling absences.
"Weds...I felt...I felt you were in danger. I don't know how, but I knew in an instant that I had to get to you,“ Enid said, ”What happened, who was that?"
“It was... it's the enemy, Enid,” explained Wednesday, "Her name is The Unkindness and she's the one who's behind everything. And she's a Wednesday Addams."
“And she...,” Friday added, approaching them along with Eamon, before Enid could ask more about that last revelation, “She attacked us, and Shark, Pup, Woe... the others... she's killed them.”
Oh.
Woe was gone... Shark was gone... Wod...
Pup.
Despite the years, despite the fact that she was already an adult when they met again thanks to the temporal divergences that initially separated their universes, a part of Enid never stopped seeing Pup as the little six-year-old she found one day on the streets of Jericho and who fell asleep in her arms on their way back to Nevermore.
Her first daughter.
The feeling that went through Enid Addams' heart at that moment cannot be described in mere words. We might call it homicidal rage, but the magnitude was such that in a split second it transcended into a restrained, icy calm that would have wreaked havoc in some hellish dimensions.
But before Enid could sink any further into such a feeling…
“She hasn't killed anyone,” said a new voice.
There, in a corner of the room, with one of the old dimensional portals from their second adventure created years ago still open behind her, stood Needler.
It looked like she hadn't slept in years.
“Weds!” exclaimed Parker, rushing over to hug her wife, who was about to fall to the floor barely able to support herself on her legs, clearly exhausted.
“Ooook, what the hell is up with everyone having dramatic entrances?” asked Cyber Enid.
“And how long have you been here?” added Mami.
"I just arrived, just as our host threw our enemy out of this plane of existence by force, newcomers. And it's easy to deduce what has happened,“ Needler explained, ”I've been... busy. Very busy. But Morningstar is right, the time for explanations has to wait and we must get out of here."
“You said she didn't kill anyone,” echoed Saint-Clair's cavernous voice, tinged with anger but also a trembling hope, “You said they're not dead.”
Needler looked at the werecat with an expression that might have seemed indifferent, but Parker could see the enormous pity and empathy that her wife was feeling at that moment. The mad scientist Addams reached a hand into one of her pockets and extracted one of the silver spheres. Everyone else fought back a shudder at the sight of it.
“What this instrument does is far more complicated than mere disintegration,” she said, "I will tell you all I know, but we must go...but yes, Saint-Clair, the others are still alive. Or at least they will be for a while. The danger they are in is undeniable."
She put the sphere away again, and the next thing she said was almost absentmindedly, unceremoniously.
“But you knew all that already, didn't you, Morningstar?”
All eyes were locked on the figure hidden in his astronaut suit. Morningstar took a breath, and began to direct his hands in slow, heavy movements to the opening edges of his helmet.
"I HAD A SUSPICION. BECAUSE MADNESS RECOGNIZES MADNESS."
The helmet latches opened with a hiss. White steam began to emanate from it along with an antiseptic-like odor.
“BE IT IN THE DEEPEST OF SHADOWS...”
Morningstar raised his helmet and a white smoke emanated from it, hiding even from view the face beneath it save for its outline. And when their host spoke again without a filter, the voice that did so was undoubtedly that of a woman,
“...or the brightest of lights.”
The white smoke cleared away altogether.
Wednesday caught her breath and felt her knuckles tighten. She could hear beside her the rising growl in Enid's throat.
And the face now visible before them merely winked at them with a sad, weary smile, as if the whole thing was the most grotesque and tragic of jokes.
“Howdy,” said The Bright One.
