The Ludicrous Escapade Pt.3

Escargot

"There's no way that someone could have two abilities!" Jolyne stood on top of a waiting room chair near the entrance of the hospital. A human-snail hybrid was sprawled out on the actual seat, unmoving. "His ability should only be to control the weather! This isn't even anything like that frog rain back at prison! What the hell is going on?!"

"Well... the rainbows do seem to be causing it. Not entirely sure how, though. If someone touches one of the snails, that also seems to make them mutate, too." You were seated comfortably on Wamuu's shoulders.

The Pillar Man was standing near the center of the room, kicking away layers of snails with his shoes. "As long as your skin does not make direct contact with them, you should be fine. Though I am unsure if there would be a way to reverse this process."

"The fact that they're duplicating so quickly is also a problem."  You could only assume that the entire hospital would be full of them eventually. "We also don't know how far this phenomenon spreads." From what you could tell, Weather was to the left somewhere, Pucci was a fair distance behind the hospital, and you could see Donatello running off to the left through the glass front door.

"Shit! We have to kill Versus before these things multiply any more!" Jolyne scooted further up the wall to avoid the snails, some of them grazing against her skin.

"If we kill Donatello, that won't change anything, Jolyne. If we want this situation to change at all, then Donatello may be able to take the memory disc back out with his Underworld." Not that you really wanted Weather to have to forget everything all over again. But if you couldn't find your friend in time to get him to deactivate the ability on his own, then there might not be another option.

"Damn it!" Jolyne cursed under her breath before sticking her head around the corner to look at the Costello. "Are you okay, Hermès?"

Hermès' entire back had twisted into a shell with her slimy arms making her stick to the wall. "Yeah... just be careful not to touch the rainbows. The snails are procreating. They don't have a gender, so once they pierce each other with those tentacle things, they start to make more snails. They can have one or even tens of offspring! If they multiply anymore, we're screwed!" She very slowly moved a hand to touch the sticker plastered onto her face. "My Stand and I are slowing down... I can't take them off. I don't know if I'll be able to catch Versus."

"That car over there!" Jolyne could see one parked out in front of the hospital. "There aren't any snails in there! If we can just get into that car!"

"Jolyne... you can come over here, you know." You gave Wamuu's shoulder a pat. "He's plenty strong enough to carry multiple people."

Wamuu gave an affirmative hum. "Indeed. And I can assure that I won't let the snails touch you." Unaware that they already had.

"Uh... sure..." Jolyne used the sprinkler in the ceiling to swing over to him.

She succeeded in her jump, but there was an unsettling creak as the ceiling tiles were pulled open slightly. The accumulating weight seemed to reach its limit as a wave of snails rained down from where Jolyne had been seconds earlier.

You turned your gaze upward. "The rest of the ceiling will likely collapse soon, too. We should hurry and get Hermès."

"I have an idea. Hold on, Hermès." The Cujoh sent some string over to her friend who quickly wrapped it around one hand. "An organism that can have sex with anything it encounters... I'm kinda jealous." Jolyne found herself lost in thought while staring at the the snails.

You cleared your throat loudly, "Jolyne... I don't think now is the time for that."

She quickly shook the thought out of her head. "Right. Of course." And Jolyne jumped off of Wamuu's shoulder toward the entrance, earning a frightened scream from Hermès who was being pulled along. "Yare yare dawa." She grabbed a sticker from Kiss and threw it onto the glass. She broke through the copy, but was able to use the original to safely make it outside the hospital with Hermès. Shells crunched beneath the glass pane.