Send in the clowns

Ben and Johnny found themselves trapped in a horror show. Fighting for their lives in the Fantasticar against a pair of demons that cackled and giggled while attacking them… And they wore Valeria and Franklin’s faces. The Thing found himself pinned against the bulkhead, fighting off Franklin who had pounced on the stone skinned man like a rabid animal, a rictus smile filled with fanged teeth as he gripped at Ben’s throat with inhuman strength. His skin clammy and pale and eyes yellow and slit like a gecko’s, the boy was driven insane.

“Cheaters never prosper! Cheaters never prosper!” The creature that used to be Franklin Richards laughed, his eyes narrowing as his smile threatened to split his face from ear to pointed ear.

“FRANKIE! Kiddo… This isn’t you…” Wheezed Ben, trying to pry the boy off him without hurting him. But struggled to do so. On the other side of the Fantasticar’s interior he could spot Johnny over Franklin’s shoulder, the man grappled with Valeria who had become some hunched over goblin creature trying to strangle the Human Torch to ****.

“Mommy told you what the RULES were hee, hee, hee… You broke the rules…” She hissed in a raspy voice, her eyes twitching as her chin and nose grew, deforming her face to look more and more like some kind of goblin while her humanity continued to slip. “Now we get to break YOU!”

“Cough… Ben! Cough… Can’t fight her… Off.”

“Hang in there kid, we got to get through to them.” The Thing wheezed, feeling his skin chip from the boy’s fingers digging into his throat. “Frankie! You got to… Cough, cough… Stop this. This isn’t you.”

“Cheaters… Never… Prosper…”

Trying to look into Franklin’s eyes for any sign that he was still in there, all he got was a mask of pure insanity grinning back at him. It was like Franklin was possessed, and by how the hull behind him undulated and squirmed, so was the Fantasticar. Pinned against the blue painted surface of the vehicle’s hull, Ben noticed the walls begin to warp and melt like hot wax. Forming screaming faces or clawing hands that grabbed at his arms and shoulders, pulling his rocky hands off of Franklin.

To their horror the Fantasticar pried apart around them like the interior of a flower blooming, the metal and plastic peeling away and moulding like clay as their surroundings changed into a nightmarish hellscape through the lens of a child’s mind. All around them Coney Island began to transform; the rides and stands taking on a wicked appearance with tattered banners and moldy tents. The roller coaster looked like a twisted pile of lumber and metal with illusions of nightmare clowns and carnival creatures giggled and dancing in the distance. The skies churned with storm clouds, pipe organ music played in the distance, off key and menacing while the boardwalk waters turned to a murky swamp with thorned and wicked plant life replacing the manicured hedges, and leafless trees bearing cracked menacing faces groaned. All of which was Franklin’s doing as he used his powers to alter reality around him.

“Tee hee, hee… Wonder if you can draw blood from a stone…” Rasped Franklin, his eyes narrowing to thin slits as he increased the pressure of his grip on the man’s throat. “Blood and sweat and tears and joys…”

“Going to draw oil from a fire man!” Laughed Valeria, watching Johnny’s eyes roll back… “Oooh, what’s that poor little fire man? Can’t lighten up? Can’t crack a jo… ACK!”

A pair of hands grabbed Valeria’s shoulders from behind and pulled her off the Human Torch. The man falling to his knees coughing and gasping for air while he heard screaming from the possessed girl. Looking up, he found his niece screaming and flailing against a woman grappling her in a **** hold from behind. Covered head to toe in a white skin suit with a black spider emblem on her chest.

“That’s enough out of YOU little girl.” Frowned Lady Anti-Venom, pulling the girl off the Human Torch and enveloping her in black webbing to keep her bound. Valeria shrieked like an animal as she struggled against her webbed-up bindings. Her mouth frothing as she even tried to bite the symbiote clad heroine like a rabid dog but to no avail. Helping Johnny off the ground, the woman looked to her variant of a brother and back to her counterpart helping the Thing.

“Daredevil, do you have Frankie?”

“I got him.” Called out the blind vigilante. The Susan variant catching Franklin by surprise and pulled him off the Thing with one of her batons, the weapon clicking open to unfurl steel cabling she used to hog-tie the boy. “Good luck trying to get out of this!”

Even so the cable audibly creaked and squealed in protest against the boy’s inhuman strength.

“Damn he’s strong, what the hell is running through his system?”

“Dun… Cough, cough… Dunno…” Now free of the boy’s ****, Ben regained his footing and gasped for air now that he was safe, while Johnny was on his feet coughing up a fit with his variant of a sister tending to him. “Goblin must have… Cough… Shot them up with something.”

“I’LL KILL YOU ALL FOR THIS! MOMMY DOESN’T LIKE CHEATERS! MOMMY… Mmmph!” The boy never finished his tirade after Lady Anti-Venom webbed his mouth shut.

Squirming and struggling, Franklin was like a wild-eyed muzzled animal, kicking wildly while Daredevil held him back. Valeria was just as violent as Lady Anti-Venom pulled her away to sit down on a rock that used to be the pilot seat of the now gone Fantasticar.

“Where the heck did YOU two come from anyhow?” Coughed Ben, getting to his feet and keeping his distance from the two transformed children.

“We’ve been looking for that witch ever since she attacked your home.” Explained the spider-themed heroine, the mask around her head peeling away to reveal her face and let her hair flow out over her back and shoulders. “Moon Dame didn’t make it… We thought we lost the Blue Goblin after she kidnapped the kids, that is until we saw Coney Island light up.”

“I’LL EAT YOUR EYEBALLS LIKE CHEWING GUM!” Screamed Valeria. “I’LL CARVE YOU OPEN AND WEAR YOUR SKIN LIKE A COAT!!!” she hissed, getting gagged like her brother with more webbing to her mouth.

“The hell has gotten into them?”

Narrowing her eyes, Lady Anti-Venom looked down at the struggling girl in her grasp, her chipped and pale skin, pointed ears and nose and glassy yellow eyes made her look like the Wicked Witch of the West’s albino sister. Even so, her symbiote gave her the ability to ‘see’ what was wrong with the child as she struggled and glared back hatefully.

“They’re… Poisoned. This stuff she’s injected them with, its doing a number on their body chemistry. Right now they’re strong enough to lift a car over their heads… But their nervous system is frying like an egg!”

“Just like the Green Goblin.” Johnny spoke up, finally able to steady himself as he watched his niece and nephew struggle. “We’ve got to do something about the kids, fast! From what Spider-Man told me about Osborn’s formula, it’ll drive them both permanently insane if its left in their system for too long.”

Smirking, Susan brought up her right hand, wriggling her fingers. “Good thing you have ME here then Johnny.” Raising a free hand holding the girl down, her fingers began to extend into slither tendrils that snaked out from her hand.

“All I have to do is let my friend here bond with her blood stream and…”

Stabbing into the girl’s neck, at first it looked like it hurt with how her eyes went wide and she screamed behind the webbing over her mouth. But the second the symbiote started to pump into her system, her skin began to clear, and the changes receded. Her eyes softened from a pale sickly yellow to a sky blue and the fight went out of her when Lady Anti-venom pulled back her fingers, not even leaving a mark.

“M-mommy?” Valeria mumbled out, squinting her eyes tiredly as she looked up to see the woman pull her close. “I had the strangest…”

“Shh, its over now sweety, now for your brother.”

“NO!” Screamed Franklin, breaking free of his bindings and shoving Daredevil away, Franklin leapt away from the four and disappeared into the nightmare carnival he conjured around him.

“You’re cheaters! CHEATERS! Cheaters never prosper!”

Jumping out onto the boardwalk, the boy disappeared behind the throng of monstrous clowns that now danced and shambled around the nightmare theme park they found themselves in.

Scrambling out onto the boardwalk to find him, the Four heroes darted their attention from one grinning clown to the next, who by now were approaching them all menacingly. One of those clowns even tackled the Thing in a bout of giggling, clubbing the stone-skinned man with its oversized fists that honked like a toy horn every time Ben was punched in the jaw, until it was thrown away with the same ease as tossing a softball.

“We got to get to him before that stuff in his system causes real damage.” Susan hissed, her suit enveloping her face back into a mask. “Or worse, he spreads this… Insanity across all of New York.”

“How do we find him?” Gasped the Human Torch, incinerating a clown on the spot when it tried to reach for Valeria. “It’d be like finding a needle in a haystack. A haystack made of needles he made out of haystacks.”

Several mobs of carnival monsters and monster clowns attacked the Thing and the Human Torch. The two doing their best to protect Valeria behind them while Daredevil and Lady Anti-Venom stood their ground. With a one-two punch, Ben sent a pair of horn honking demon clowns flying while Johnny set a trio of them ablaze, the man wincing when he spotted freshly cooked popcorn flying out their pockets comically.

“Head’s up.” Daredevil called out, **** to fend for herself when a carnival performer with elongated legs stomped towards her with a long-handled mallet.

Lady Anti-Venom found herself tackled by a monster clown with an apple sized nose and a bear trap for a mouth, laughing and trying to pin her down while laughing down at her. With a terrifying snarl, the clown laughed and roared down at her. Only to blink back in surprise when she took on a monstrous visage of her own, her eye lenses becoming jagged and a mouth with pitch black teeth snarled back.

Ben was tossing a clown out over Coney Island when he spotted the clown who attacked the Susan variant running for its life and emptying its pockets of rubber chickens and yoyos. Looking back to see the symbiote wearing women stand to her full height propelled by eight elongated arachnid legs from her back. Her fingers long and clawed like the talons of an eagle and her mouth like a piranha.

“Relax… It’sssssss still me.” Lady Anti-Venom hissed with a long, forked tongue slithering out of her maw.

“If you say so…”

Looking out over the rest of the park, more clowns and monsters were conjured out of thin air, advancing on the Four’s location. Some crawling out of the ground while others pulled themselves free of walls, like paintings coming to life.

“The kid’s got a knack for turning things into something else when he’s in the mood for it. One time the living room turned into the Millenium Falcon after binging Star Wars as a family together.”

“We’ll never find him at thisssss rate.”

“What are you talking about? He’s right there.” Pointed Daredevil towards the boardwalk, her finger pointing towards a snack stand that looked more like a rickety shack behind the approaching group of monster clowns heading their way. “I can sense him hiding, waving his hands like a conductor like he’s behind all of this.”

Johnny, still aflame and landing next to them all, shook his head in concern. “So how do we get him out in the open? Because I’m not setting Coney Island on fire again.”

“HEY FRANKY!” Screamed out Valeria, hoping she was loud enough for her brother to hear. “HAN SOLO SUCKED ASS!”

“YOU TAKE THAT BACK!!!” Screamed out the boy, coming out of hiding and charging towards his sister in a rage. “I’LL KILL YOU FOR…”

Franklin didn’t get much further than ten steps when Lady Anti-Venom shot out a tentacled limb that slammed into the boy’s chest and stopped him dead in his tracks. Laying on his back, within seconds the nightmare reality around them all began to dissolve and rebuild back into what it was before. The clowns and creatures evaporating into nothing and the boardwalk theme park restored to its former glory when Susan retracted the spidery leg away, showing Franklin fully returned to normal and unharmed. Save for a sore stomach.

Carefully making their way over to the boy, they were all relieved to find him breathing and completely human once again. The poor boy turning over on his side and clutching his stomach where Lady Anti-Venom had struck him. Looking up he found his loved ones crouched over him checking that he was okay.

“Ugh… What happened?”

“You’re good kiddo, just some tough love from your mom…”

Looking back over his shoulder at Lady Anti-Venom, Johnny gave a concerned look at the symbiote clad woman standing on eight arachnid legs coming from her back and smiling back at him with a black fanged grin better seen on an angler fish.

“Kinda…”

“Not bad Val, how’d you know that would flush him out?”

“Franklin and I had a debate on who was a better character, Han Solo or Luke Skywalker. We kept fighting until mom sent us to bed. Had to put up with a copy of Han Solo sitting next to my bed telling me how awesome he was for days.”

“Well at least you two are okay.” Looking out towards the view of the city where the Blue Goblin made her escape, Ben grimaced. “Now we got to find your parents… And hope to crimony that they’re doing better than we are here.”