The Tales of the Legendary Mimic : Momo

Killing the banshee

Max didn’t need a manual to name it.

As if sensing him, the banshee’s gelatinous head turned. The goo inside swirled faster. Its tendril‑arms tensed.

It screamed.

The screech slammed into him mid‑air.

The goo around his ears absorbed most of the raw sound, but the pressure wave still punched into his chest and skull. His wings trembled; his vision fuzzed at the edges.

Below, the zombies were throwing themselves at max to protect the banshee.

They appeared frezy as they traded their life for their master's. A zombie managed to gnaw on Max's wings, making him groan. A portion of his energy went to that part and healed another, fixed a burning sensation in his throat, making him want to puke. Something told him made him sure it was death if he did.

cold sweat draped his forehead. As he lost his balance

The banshee didn’t wait to see if he dropped.

It spun on its heel, thin legs blurring, tendrils whipping behind it, and fled.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Max growled.

He forced his wings steady and shot after it, cutting low over bowed zombies and shattered walls. The banshee skimmed across the broken courtyard and deeper into the ruins, periodically twisting its bulbous head back to unleash another focused blast of screech.

Max dodged when he could, tucking his wings and rolling through the air, ducking behind broken pillars and collapsed concrete. Each pass drained more strength than he liked to admit, but every time the banshee tried to pull ahead, he pushed harder.

This thing controls the nest. If it escapes, we start all over again.

He wouldn’t let that happen.

The banshee darted upward now, gaining height above the courtyard. Max followed, wings beating so hard his shoulders burned. The battlefield below shrank into a mess of figures and rubble.

The creature twisted in mid‑air, its tendrils flaring out. The goo inside its head swirled into a tight, stormy whirlpool.

It drew in breath.

Max saw its chest expand, saw the transparent flesh stretch.

“Now or never,” he thought.

He folded his wings tight against his back.

Gravity seized him.

The world became a blur of rushing air and distant shouts. Wind tore at his clothes, his skin, his eyes.

The banshee opened its mouth.

The slit peeled wide in an instant, the beginnings of another bone‑shattering screech rising from its throat.

Max snapped his wings open and beat them once, brutally.

He became a streak.

Goo surged over his right arm, swelling and hardening into a heavy, armored gauntlet. Every bit of strength he had left flooded into that limb.

He slammed into the banshee from below.

His fist drove into the softer underside of its bloated head and through the hardened shell of goo and warped bone protecting its core.

The impact sounded like a thunderclap trapped inside a metal drum.

The banshee’s screech cut off mid‑note.

The transparent dome of its head fractured, then exploded. Goo and shattered fragments of mutated tissue burst outward in a spray of black and gray. The creature’s gaunt body spasmed, limbs jerking wildly as its inner network of control unraveled.

It tumbled.

Max peeled away at the last second, wings flaring to slow his fall as the banshee spiraled down, a broken, shriveling comet of flesh and slime.

It smashed into the courtyard with a crash that sent cracks spider‑webbing through the concrete.

For a heartbeat, everything went silent.

Then the cheering started.

The soldiers’ roar rolled across the battlefield.

They shouted and whooped, some raising weapons overhead, others just sagging in place and laughing shakily. Relief crashed over them like a wave; for the first time since the screech, the horror loosened its grip.

Even those who hadn’t seen the whole aerial chase knew what the crater meant.

The banshee was dead.

Max glided down, landing hard beside the broken creature. His wings shuddered, then retracted into his back in ripples of goo, leaving only aching muscles and the faint echo of their strain.

He stood there for a moment, chest heaving, ears still humming with ghostly remnants of the banshee’s voice.

Around the courtyard, the remaining goo men and zombies stiffened.

Their master was gone.

Without that commanding will, their movements faltered. Attacks lost rhythm. The unnatural coordination bled out of them, leaving only clumsy, aimless aggression.

“Finish them off!” someone yelled, voice cracking.

Yeah! ahhhh"the soldiers' battle cry boosts their morale instantly, yet they still heldcautionn at heart

The line surged in.

Blades chopped into softened goo armor. Bullets finally punched through unprotected skulls. Lorne’s baton crackled blue as it smashed joints and temples. Those who still had strength left pushed forward, cutting down the last of the nest’s outer defenders.

One by one, the remaining mutants fell.

The final skirmishes were fierce but brief.

Within minutes, the courtyard quieted, broken only by ragged breathing, the settling groan of twisted metal, and the slow drip of dissolving goo.

As they regrouped, Max felt a heavy, hard‑earned satisfaction settle over him. His arms ached, his lungs burned, and there was a faint ringing still lodged in his skull—but beneath all that was the knowledge that they’d done it.

They’d taken down the banshee.

They’d shattered the nest’s command and secured the outside of the lab.

But under that satisfaction, something colder crept in.

This isn’t over.

He lifted his gaze to the gaping main entrance of the laboratory. Vines and twisted rebar framed it like crooked teeth. Beyond that shadowed threshold, nothing moved.

No light.

No sound.

Just darkness.

The real problem hasn’t even shown itself yet. Max thought.

The wind shifted slightly, carrying with it a faint, sour smell from within—old chemicals, old blood, and something else. Something that had been growing, waiting, for a very long time.

Behind him, his teammates straightened their gear.

Lorne rolled his shoulders and gave his baton a slow spin, as if to shake the last of the tremors from his fingers. Henrik and Sarah reloaded in silence, eyes locked on the entrance, jaw tight.

Max glanced at each of them in turn.

They were bruised. They were tired.

But they were still here.

Still willing to go forward. The mercenaries were gone tho, if there was anything those no-good were good at than women and booze was being unreliable.

No one had to say a word. Determination lived in the way they stood, in the stubborn set of their shoulders, in how their boots edged—almost unconsciously—closer to the lab’s dark mouth.

“Form up,” Captain Jane called, her voice steady again. “We’re going in. Stay sharp. Whatever is in there could be worse than the last,” she warned 

As a unit, step by step, they moved toward the lab’s shadowed entrance, united in a single, dangerous purpose:

To uncover whatever was festering within the abandoned lab, then make sure those horrors never reached the world outside and retrieve the "item."