Mind Image: the ability to project one's image to the mind of another.

double update surprise mother fuckers

At the sound of Hayley's voice, Tyler's head twists 180 degrees on his shoulders, fangs jutting out of his mouth like walrus tusks. His torso and arms are furry and lion-esque, with his hind legs scaly and thick with muscle. The scorpion tail whipped dangerously back and forth.

He gnashes his teeth her way, wide gray eyes grotesquely big for his head. A forked tongue flickers threateningly. Hayley steps back again, her face flickering between guilt and fear.

"I'm sorry, Ty." She flicks her wrists, her walking stick extending to its fullest length, and holds it out like a baseball bat.

Tyler spins his body so it faces the same way as his head and drops to all fours, a pair of small membrane wings popping out of his back. His claws click rhythmically against them asphalt, head craning to the left before jolting to the other side.

A small ball of fire forms at the end of Hayley's walking stick. She slowly raises it over her shoulder and then swings it, sending the ball of fire flying towards Tyler, who doesn't move. It hits him square in the chest, sending him flying out of the bubble with a stream of smoke following him.

As he soars through it and into an abandoned car, the bubble wavers then drops. Josh turns and sees Tiana on the ground, seizing. Alley Cat stands above her, a hand gripping her forehead. The other holds the red crystal.

His attention completely redirects to those two, tackling the villain to the ground. Alley Cat, caught off guard, doesn't react until Josh grabs his throat and punches him square in the nose.

He lifts a hand, slamming the crystal into the side of Josh's head. The impact itself hurt, but upon contact something shook in his skull, like he touched a live wire while touching a metal stove. His eyes nearly roll back into his skull. Alley Cat takes the opportunity to plant both hands on his forehead.

Suddenly, Josh is standing in a room, behind a group huddled scientists. The room is dark except for half of it that is quaffed off by thick glass. Inside, he sees dozens of lasers hitting something in the center of the closed off space.

"What- oh, no." Josh looks behind him, realizing where he is.

"Our power source isn't stable. Should I add the backup generators now?"

"Do what you need to do. This is our last chance at recreation Flamel's work."

He recognizes the two who spoke as Ashley and Alley Cat, respectively. The others he doesn't know, except one woman in the corner watching from afar. She looks familiar.

"He's right. Once we do, we'll be on the covers of every science newspaper from here to Russia and will never have to worry about government funding ever again," a man said, laughing.

"You need to get out. Leave!" Josh shouts.

"They can't hear you."

He turns, startled to see Tiana there. "Fucking pardon?"

"Don't worry, I'm real, unfortunately." She flicks herself in the head. "Let me guess- Alley Cat?"

"Yeah. What is this? How are we both seeing this?"

"Well, you kind of already have this power. Maybe I'm just your co-pilot."

"Makes sense."

The image smears then switches to the aftermath. Body parts of strewn about the decimated lab, every scientist now blown apart and scattered, except for one. Brendon Urie is hunched over a body, sobbing quietly as he tries to slot the two glowing rocks together.

"No, no, no, no."

Suddenly, the whole room is flooded with light from another source. A little boy, who lies unconscious in the arms of the familiar woman, glows a brilliant lavender. His eyes are closed, though his appearance is twisted, large buck teeth jutting out of his mouth, a scaly hard shell covering his back.

"That's Tyler," Josh says, pointing to the boy.

"Jesus, that's tough. Remind me to give him a hug when he's not all murdery."

"Gotcha."

The light blinds the two, and when it dies, Brendon Urie is in one piece, but they're not his pieces. Half of his face has been replaced with someone else's, his legs and arms mismatching skin tones. Even his torso, which is visible through his burnt clothing, is distorted with scar tissue and mysterious body parts.

He looks how he does now, like a monster. And the little boy is gone.

"So, Tyler got his powers this night. We knew that already," Tiana sighs.

"But we didn't know that he created Alley Cat," Josh says, the reason of him seeing this dawning on him slowly. "Don't you know the implications of his powers?"

"No?"

"Tia, Tyler isn't just a healer. He somehow got every dead person and sardined all of their souls into the last living person's body. Brendon."

Tiana's eyes start to widen. "And it must've been amplified by the stones. So only can he bring people back from the dead-"

"His mom is among them. Every soul besides Ashley is in that body. They're in pain. They want all three of our powers because with all of us-"

"They can restore their old bodies."

Josh is torn out of the memory, bolting upwards off the ground. He can see Tiana getting to her feet from the corner of his eye, cradling the red crystal in her arms. Blood runs down from her temple to her chin, covering part of her face.

Alley Cat, well... he's nowhere to be seen.

Black smoke materializes around Tiana's hands, solidifying into hooked claws, reaching up to her elbows. Her eyes burn black and red, any remaining dark energy swirling about her body.

She looks at Josh, asking for permission to rave, and takes off towards Tyler once he grins and nods, joining Hayley in the fight. Josh looks up at the fox, looks down at his three friends, and teleports up to the back of the robot.

The fox is frozen in place, eyes glowing but still halfway through walking. He flexes his fingers, lifting a hand over his head and slamming it into a panel on the base of the neck. A shudder runs through the entire machine, small clicking and shifting making him nervous.

"Oh, I get it," he says. "You need both stones. You two keep the others moving. Without one of them, none work."

Josh feels for the panel's edge and lifts it, seeing the same tangle of wires he had during their first go around. He slips his hand cleanly through, grasping the smooth blue crystal and tugging it loose. As soon as his hand is fully grasping the stone, a surge of ice cold energy rushes through him.

It feels like running through a snow storm, just frozen adrenaline being injecting up from the blue stone into the rest of his body. He inhales sharply.

"Woah."

"Josh!" Hayley shouts. "We need you!"

"I'm on the way," he says.

With the stone in hand, Josh jumps off the edge of the fox, landing not so gracefully as he can beside Tiana. She lunges forward, slicing at Tyler and being sliced in return. Tyler grabs her arm, howling in pain as the energy simultaneously burns through his hand and freezes it, but manages to toss her like a doll over his shoulder and down the street.

Hayley is somewhere to his left, blocking all of his attacks with her walking stick, retaliating with the occasional fireball or a shower of icy spikes. Josh's appearance distracts her for a moment, and Tyler jabs in in the leg with the scorpion tail, making her scream and fall to the ground.

"Tyler!" Josh shouts, redirecting his attention away from Hayley as she drags herself to safety. "Hey, buddy. Remember me?"

His head snaps around at neck breaking speed, stumbling towards him on disproportionally small legs, his gorilla arms weighing his chest down. A crown of hair surrounds his head, eyes white with spidery red threads through them.

"That's right, look at me."

Josh teleports closer, then back to his original spot. Tyler looks confused, so Josh does it again, and this time it pissed him off.

He roars, disorienting Josh long enough for him to gain ground. Josh throws the stone into the air as Tyler slams his large fists into his chest, knocking him to his ass. The air escapes him, and he can feel that his ribs are most defiantly broken.

Tyler stands over him, foamy saliva forming in the corners of his mouth. He raises his arms above his head, getting ready to crush Josh's chest until he's mush. But before he can do so, a voice behind him screams for him to stop.

The feral boy turns around, and there stands his mother, looking just as she did in Tyler's memory.