The boy rushed through the front lawn (which was, indeed, very nice) and stormed inside the house. He heard sounds behind him and turned around only to see a minor horde of imps running in between all of their houses. With a little squeak, he slammed the door closed and leaned against it, hoping that no imps would figure out how to turn the handle for a while.
Now what? Where was that girl? Oh right, on the roof. Her home was relatively simple. Much like Adrian's own actually. He didn't bother exploring the bottom floor - in only a few seconds he was up on the top floor. But Odetta was nowhere to be seen. How had she reached the roof? Adrian scratched his head and looked for a balcony or a hatch or something.
Imps began climbing along the walls of the house on all four sides. While there were some that crawled through the windows, apparently finding Adrian more appealing than Odetta, the majority seemed to be headed for the roof. Perhaps it was because Odetta was closest to the gate, but honestly, she didn't care about the reason. Once the first one made it to the rooftop, Odetta let out some line, put the gauntlet on, then charged at it. While she wished she had two gauntlets to punch with, she was fine with one just because she was happy could punch these imps at all. In her fervor, Odetta threw a haymaker straight at the imp's face. Unfortunately, it seemed she had too much fervor and she pulled the fishing rod out of her other hand when she pulled her fist back. The action put her off balance and open for an attack by the imp, which bit her shoulder (which happened to be the one opposite the one the other imp bit). Strangely enough, this time it didn't really hurt that much. It was still annoying though. She punched the thing a couple times (not caring that in the process the rod was being flung around) and it evaporated into black mist and gem things again. "I hate this strife weapon stuff," she said, picking up the rod and letting out a good bit more fishing line. Once that was done, Odetta walked back to the center of the roof and prepared herself for the many other imps that had made it to the roof.
Inside the house, two imps had just climbed in from a window and surprise attacked Adrian from behind, making him tumble down onto the floor. His FORKSMITER materialized just as an imp came in for a take-down attack, and now it was instead flung away by a smash from the weapon. It made impact with the wall and gave Adrian time to hop up from the floor - but the other imp leaped forward, scratch-ready with its claws. Interestingly, both of these looked like Vinnie's butler in their clothing style. They sure didn't behave like him though.
Adrian, still not used to actually swinging a heavy weapon, didn't get a good hit in, but managed to fend off the imp with the handle of the FORKSMITER. But now the first imp was up and ready again. Adrian took a deep breath and decided to just go for it. He sure hoped that he had some extra lives in this CHESS game.
He swung the FORKSMITER, fork-side first, and hit an imp easily. When he really tried, they weren't that difficult to hit actually. And they were also incredibly light. The imp was squashed by the pointy forkface of the weapon against the wall, and exploded into a couple of shiny GRIST pieces. The other imp, meanwhile, came in and bit Adrian's leg. He screamed, loud enough for even Odetta on the roof to hear. But he swung the heavy FORKSMITER down and pinned the imp against the floor. Apparently also enough to kill it, because it exploded too.
Falling to his knees and taking a deep breath, Adrian tried to calm down. He had killed imps. He could do this. Yes. He wouldn't die yet. No. Oh god, more of them were coming. He had to get to the - hang on, what was that?
He moved closer to the window, stepping on and absorbing some GRIST in the process, and looked out. His house was standing there, on the opposite side of the yard. And it was shaking. Suddenly, before his eyes, it was as if a new floor just popped in between the highest and the floor. As if it was squeezed in magically, looking as natural as ever. The roof was now closer to the glimmering gate above... His eyes widened. So THAT was what they had to do. Kill imps.
He climbed out from the window, grabbed hold of a drainpipe, and tried to get to the roof before imps caught up with him from below.
Odetta stood on the roof as more and more imps made it onto there with her. She let out a little more line so she could move into a boxing stance and prepared herself for some more action when it occured to her that this would be much cooler somewhere besides the land of flowers and sunshine. Or whatever it was called. She tried thinking of what sort of place that "somewhere" could be, but her mind was blank. What sorts of things were cool? Rain in movies made things cool, so that could replace the sunshine. What else... explosions? Once she had two things, Odetta didn't feel like trying to think of more and settled on the land of rain and explosions.
With that done, she immediately refocused herself on the imps only to be distracted once more by a scream from within the house. It seemed like one of the other kids had followed her. Whatever. As long as they weren't messing things up in there, specifically mom's and Laila's, then she didn't care. Suddenly, the imps all charged at her simultaneously. There were like one...two...three...a lot. It didn't look like punching them would kill them more than one at a time so she grabbed the rod with the other hand and prepared to swing. Imitating a baseball player's stance, she waited until they were almost upon her before she finally struck. "Home run!" she shouted as she sent three of them tumbling off the slanted roof.
While she was watching the results of her handiwork, Odetta failed to notice a pair that had sneaked behind her until they jumped onto her back. One of them started hacking at her back with its claws while the other climbed around onto her face. The extra weight and her inability to see caused her to lose balance and fall herself, rolling down the side of the roof. Fortunately, the imps hit themselves against the roof as she rolled and lost their grips, one of them having enough sense to latch onto the roof with its claws while the other rolled down with her.
Odetta struggled to slow herself as she tumbled and once she finally did, she slid off the side of the roof anyway. While she managed to grab the edge with one hand, the other imp that followed her wasn't so lucky and went falling down into the shrubs below. It no doubt survived, but she couldn't worry about that right now. As she lifted her head from looking down at the fallen imp, Odetta saw Adrian climbing a drainpipe next to her. "Aren't you supposed to be climbing your house?" she asked before remembering she had more important things to do like not getting killed by monsters."Whatever, you might want to climb faster. You probably wanna get to the roof before they get to you."
"Huh?" Adrian said and glanced downwards. One imp with bunny ears was quickly climbing up after him, and another one with wings zoomed in from the air. "Waaah!"
Odetta pulled the gauntlet hand up to grab the edge of the roof as well when the imp that stayed on the roof peeked its head over the edge and bit her hand. Too bad for the imp, it bit the wrong hand. Protected by the armor, Odetta grabbed the creature's tongue while her hand was still in its mouth and pulled it down to her level before punching its head agains the wall, killing it. The moment she did so, the roof jumped upwards. She quickly grabbed the edge with her other hand to keep from falling, a fall that was a bit more dangerous at three stories.
Adrian managed to kick the bunny-imp in the head and make it tumble down back to the ground, just before the whole house began shaking. "Oh no, here we go!" he said, knowing that the same thing must be happening now as was happening to his own house earlier. He clung on for dear life as the very drainpipe he held on to extended. Odetta must have killed some imps.
After looking briefly at Adrian, Odetta lifted herself up onto the roof and pulled the rod up with her. Adrian had almost reached the roof now, despite the sudden extra floor on the house. But the flying imp was bugging him, hindering him from reaching up to the very top of the house wall.
Finally safe, Odetta looked back down at the boy and held her hand out to him. "Need a hand?"
