Meanwhile, things were getting chaotic back at Miranda's base...
"What do you mean, you won't get me food?!" She howled, stamping her foot. "I'm starving, you rotten little brat, but its obvious all you can think about is yourself! I can't believe you want me to STARVE! I can't go hunt for myself," She whined. "since it's day time, but you obviously don't care."
"Miranda-" Her minion began.
"Miss Miranda, you arse-wipe! If you won't get me food, I'll settle for something...like you!"
She lunged at the hapless minion and sank her fangs in his neck. Her other minions watched in disgust as she guzzled greedily from the still whimpering man. She tossed the drained body aside and wiped a sloppy trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth.
She scowled at the minions. "What're you staring at! I need to eat, morons!" She paced around her base irritably. "Tonight, I'll finally get my revenge on that fat pig Santa! Half the idiots over there are already deader than dirt, so it'll be a snap to kill the rest." She smiled evily. "And then I'll have a nice big blood meal! I'll drain 'em all!" She snickered. "Since they're no match for me."
So yet another more hapless person had lost his life to her, and two others were desperately trying to find a place to go where she wouldn't find them.
Miranda sat, brushing her hair and smirking in anticipation of the carnage she planned to dole out on Santa and his allies soon. It didn't bother as much that a couple of her men had just made a run for it, she planned to find them and finish them off later anyway.
"Hm," she chuckled to herself, "Bet they're all scared stupid! It's just too bad that I didn't really get a chance to finish that Brett off myself." She took out a piece of paper, and an orb, and set to work. "Might as well entertain myself while I'm waiting to strike them all where it really hurts."
Soon as the orb touched the paper, images appeared on the sheet. Images of NT, Danae, and Cosima, all looking utterly terrified and in pain as Miranda was coming toward them, fangs out, preparing to bite them.
"So, having a nice unlife, o' queen of the vampires?"
Miranda dropped the paper and the orb. The paper disintegrated, and the orb rolled away.
"How dare you awaken me?" the voice hissed irritably.
Miranda turned toward the sound and gaped in shock.
"Well?" it demanded.
It was a particularly ghoulish looking version of Cosima with a discolored face that looked as if it had been dead for a day or so. Its injuries still visible on its hand and arm.
Miranda stared a moment longer, then took another orb out of her pocket to examine it. "I didn't awaken anybody!" she mumbled frantically. "I COULDN'T have!"
"Yes, you did." the voice hissed.
"No, it was just an illusion. This stupid orb," she shook it idiotically, as if that would accomplish anything.
"You fool!" the Cosima entity scoffed, "Do you really think that once you've awakened us you can just send us back just like that?"
"I didn't - what? Us? What do you mean, us!?" Miranda demanded, unable to keep the fear out of her voice.
"Come in, fellas." the Cosima said, and two more appeared, floating in right through a wall. They were the torn and bloody Samuelson and one of the elves Miranda had killed.
Miranda squealed in horror.
"You will regret disturbing us." the Samuelson entity gurgled, staring at Miranda with vacant eyes that had a red glow that pulsed and flickered.
the elf nodded and his head twirled around, exorcist style.
"Stop that, you stupid STUPID ORB!" Miranda yelled,, banging it against the chair. "Stop it, stupid! Stop it! Stupid! Stop it stupid, stop it stupid!" Miranda howled frantically, banging the orb with each yell, and looking utterly ridiculous.
The apparitions did not go away.
"You dared awaken me!" the Cosima roared, lunging at Miranda and going right through her.
Miranda screamed.
"You didn't know what you were getting into by calling up the dead, did you?" the elf gurgled. What an unearthly, horrible little monster. Miranda was now finding out that under the right circumstances, even an elf could be changed from cute to ghastly.
"You will never be free of us now." the Samuelson put in.
"Oh, you're sure about that?" Miranda stood up and tried running to another area of the room to hide behind some furniture.
The Samuelson's arm disengaged from itself and it chased Miranda, deathly pale fingers extended in a grasping position.
"It doesn't matter where you go," hissed the Cosima from right behind her it seemed, even though there was no room between her and the wall. "I'll always be with you. You bound my unlife with yours, Miranda!"
"And ours." the elf sneered.
"No! Miranda panicked, throwing the chair so she could make a bolt for it. "It was just a stupid trick! It wasn't supposed to really wake the dead!"
"Ah, but if you were just a mage, it would've been. But you're a vampire, and sometimes these tools work a lot differently with them." the Cosima said in her ear.
It just didn't matter how Miranda stumbled around in there like a bull in a china shop, she just couldn't shake these things.
"Yeah!" the elf said in a ghoulish gurgling laugh. "A person can't use these mere orbs to summon the dead, but a vampire cannot help but call up whichever dead person, even when he does the exact thing with that orb as a live person."
"And now, you're stuck with us." the Samuelson grinned cruelly. His arm attached itself again.
"No!" Miranda screamed and flailed about. "No! Go away! Just go away already!" She took the orb, clutching it tightly in her hand, and shouted a long series of gibberish words at it, ending with "Disappear!"
Instead of the ghostly beings vanishing, it was the orb that disappeared.
The Cosima entity guffawed wickedly.
"What's happening here!?" Miranda wailed, taking out another orb, this one, her wishing orb. "I wish you'd disappear!"
Nothing happened.
"You half-wit!" The Samuelson sneered. "Don't you know that thing only works on living things?"
"Then," Miranda stammered, "Why did it call you up?"
"Because you're undead and - I thought I explained that to - " the Cosima checked herself "oh, but then, this is you. Even as a vampire, you're a little - slow - on the draw."
"The only way you can make us leave you is to smash the orbs you used to awaken us." the elf explained.
"All of them?" Miranda asked.
"Yes." said the Cosima. "Otherwise you'll be stuck with more and more of us each time you use another orb."
"But - but - " Miranda stammered. "I used my best orbs for that!"
"Then the choice is yours, init?" the Cosima sneered, ruffling Miranda's hair with an icy wind.
"We'd like to go back to our peaceful rest as much as you want to be free of us." said the elf, shooting a stream of blood from the top of his head that fell back on himself."
The sight of this made Miranda hungry again, and she lunged for the elf.
She fell flat on her face and the apparition just went through her.
"You dummy! You can't feed on us!" the elf taunted.
"And we can't rest again until you destroy the tools you used to summon us." the Samuelson added, giving Miranda a particularly sinister stare.
"So, which is it gonna be?" the Cosima hissed.
"Nothing! I'm getting out of here!"
Miranda got up and peeked outside.
The light was fading, and there was enough cover around that she desperately decided to chance it.
She rushed out of the building and behind a tree.
"Oh, that's rich," the elf spoke right next to her, "Trying to run from us."
Miranda fumbled around wildly in the cover, trying to escape, to no avail. Everywhere she went, one or more of these ghoulish undead enemies were always there, giving her no peace from them.
At some point in the panic, she had let go of her wishing orb. Now it was lost, among the snow, or back inside, she had no idea where.
Finally she gave up and crouched behind a snowbank to cry self-pitying tears. It was an awful dilemma for her, give up so much power by destroying at least some of her best orbs, or spend the rest of her unlife with these derisive enemies who were clearly having the last laugh.
"As if crying about it'll do any good." the Cosima sneered in her ear.
This startled Miranda and set her off running and stumbling again.
The Samuelson appeared just ahead of her.
She turned and took off in another direction.
"Hurry, hurry, hurry!" the elf taunted right next to her.
The Cosima tormented her by more horrific dismemberment displays. Throwing Miranda off with an arm coming right at her face, an upper body skidding to a stop right in her path, a pair of eyes coming out of their sockets to whirl madly about Miranda's head.
It went on like that until Miranda had more than she could take.
"Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it!" She wailed. "I'll destroy the stupid orbs, okay?! Just leave me alone, you stupid freaks!"
Miranda waited expectantly, as if she were waiting for the three specters to vanish.
the elf giggled demonically. "Oh, it isn't QUITE that easy." He taunted.
"We're going to make absolutely sure you destroy those orbs," the Samuelson continued. "After all, we would just HATE being called up again."
"W-what do you mean?" Miranda stammered.
"We mean, we're coming with you!" The Cosima snapped. "We're going to watch you smash every single orb you used to conjure us. Only then will you be free of us..." As if to further motivate Miranda, she blew an icy gust of wind at her, causing her to shudder uncontrollably.
"B-but-" Miranda began, not quite sure what to say. Even after all she had experienced with these three, she was still clinging to the delusion that she could trick them into leaving her alone.
"Come on, now." the Cosima prodded.
"The sooner you smash the orbs," The Samuelson began.
"The sooner you're rid of us!" the elf cackled, squirting a stream of blood from his eyes to taunt Miranda.
She almost lunged at him, before she remembered she couldn't feed on him.
"Oh, fine." She pouted.
The group made their way slowly back to Miranda's base, the three tormenting her the whole way. She scowled moodily at them as she skulked into her lair and went about collecting the orbs she had used.
"Get on with it, leechgirl!" the elf taunted. "I'm tired of being stuck with you!"
Miranda was about to go after the elf again when a pair of ghoulish detached arms shot in front of her and barred her way.
"Oh, no you don't!" An armless Samuelson taunted.
"Stop stalling and smash the demn orbs!" the Cosima snapped.
"Yeah! We don't have all day." the elf smiled cruelly. "Oh, wait...we do."
"All eternity, actually," the Cosima snarled, "unless you move your lazy butt and do something about it!"
Miranda shuddered and looked mournfully at the first of several orbs to smash. "This is so unfair!" She whined. "You are so horrible and mean! This is so-"
"Can it, Miranda!" the Cosima snapped. "If you don't get smashin', WE'RE going to be VERY unhappy with you! Catch my drift?"
"But-"
the elf cut Miranda off by gliding up to her face and splitting his own face open like a fan. She let out a yelp of terror and surprise and muttered a frenzied series of gibberish before throwing the orb to the floor, where it exploded in a shower of colored fragments.
"Keep going!" the Samuelson taunted, his still severed arms weaving through the air around Miranda's head.
She squealed in terror and continued smashing orbs until there was a considerable assortment of colored fragments scattered around the room.
"This is the last one, okay?!" Miranda snapped. "After this, you freaks can leave me alone!"
"Freaks?" the elf taunted.
"Look whose talking!" the Samuelson continued.
"Keep going!" the Cosima barked. To drive the point further home, she reached out as if to grab Miranda, withdrawing at the last fraction of a second, but not before a massive apparition of phantom maggots came crawling from that arm and over Miranda before disappearing.
Miranda clapped her hands over her face and uttered several terrified shrieks.
"Get going!" the Cosima ordered.
The Samuelson and the elf cackled wickedly as Miranda destroyed the final orb.
"There! I hope you're happy now! Leave me alone!" Miranda wailed.
The Cosima chuckled wickedly. "Oh, all right, I guess we will...but not until-"
"We say goodbye!" the elf shrilled.
The three figures flickered and the room went dark. When the lights came back on, a monstrous version of Miranda stood in the room.
The real Miranda let out a single squeak of surprise before the ghoul Miranda lunged at her, with its bloated tongue lolling hungrily out. It passed through her and vanished in a puff of smoke.
For a few long moments, Miranda was too shocked to react. At length, she gathered what senses she had, and spoke.
"I can't take this stupid place one day longer!" She stormed from the room, shouting as she went. "Where are all you stupid slaves!? Get out here! We're attacking right now! I don't care if you don't want to, I'm sick of those stupid morons!"
One of them poked his head out from a room. "Right now, Miss Miranda?"
"Yes, you stupid fat slug, now! Get the others and get your Battle Orbs!"
The henchman nodded and set about gathering up the others.
Miranda continued moping around her lair, mumbling to herself all the while. "I hate this rotten place! That fat blimp Santa has it coming, and so do all those other stupid freaks! Those stupid, stupid ghost things made me ruin my best orbs, but I'll make everyone pay with my battle orbs...and I'm going to make them wish they'd never been born!" Her mumbling had become full-on shouting by now, and any drudge of hers within ear-shot cringed at her tirade. "They're going to be sorry for being such stupid morons to me! I'm going to have a blood-meal like none other! I'm going to have a blood-buffet!" She grinned wickedly, delighted and energized by her plan.
--