It was then I heard a landing which was both soft and heavy. Snap, Clang, and I turned and looked upwards to the roof of a panini shop building to our right.

Above, framed by the silvery glow of an overcast sky, was what looked like a man made out of marshmallows.

The marshmallow-man jumped with superhuman strength away from the roof and onto one of the traffic-jammed cars which dented from the impact.

The marshmallow-man then jumped upwards to the roof of the corner shop building at the other side of the street.

I had seen a lot of crazy stuff since the day of the evacuation. But the absolute silliness of a six and a half foot tall marshmallow-man was really pushing the boundaries.

The marshmallow-man didn't look fat however. If anything, he looked broad and tough, but also lanky. Like an action-figure, the marshmallow-pieces of this new stranger's outward appearance looked as if he were pieced together with more than a dozen human-head-sized marshmallow blocks.

And the face of this marshmallow-man looked menacing because the eyes and mouth looked melted-in.

The pops and cracks of the increasingly distant gunfire drew the marshmallow-man's attention away from the three of us below.

The marshmallow-man bounded out of sight in the direction of the gunfire.

"Do you think he's a bad guy?" Clang's voice rang.

"He didn't look friendly," I resonated.

I turned to Snap to see what she made of the marshmallow-man, only to find her taking a selfie with two secondary school students.

"Snap?" I resonated.

Her eyes were large and toonish, and there was a big smile on her face.

"Cheese!" Miss Toontastic squeaked.

The school kids mumbled thank yous to Miss Toontastic and hurried away. The train barriers rose up, allowing a good portion of the secondary school students to cross.

The traffic-jammed cars honked their horns, because several secondary school students were standing in the road because they were waiting for their chance to take a picture with Miss Toontastic.

"We've got to go," I resonated.

Miss Toontastic looked at me with her huge orb-like eyes, blinked twice, then turned to the crowd of eagerly waiting school students.

"We'll have'ta take one big picture cos' I gotta go!" Miss Toontastic squeaked.

The students dove together, and Miss Toontastic flashed an inhumanly large cheesing smile.

Clang had taken the initiative and was already walking across the street, but this didn't stop several secondary school students, most girls, from quickly snapping selfies with him.

Clang flashed a handsome grin in the direction of the phone cameras shoved in front of his face.

One of the girls trying to take a selfie with Clang gave a sudden gasp.

"Careful," Clang's voice rang, "I'm hot."

"Yeah you are!" shouted one of the girls from among the crowd of students.

Several of the secondary school students had turned their attention to me, and a cacophony of requests to take a picture with me followed.

I thought about it for all of five microseconds.

"No," I resonated, and I gently brushed them aside and kicked off on the resin-board. It was hard to move between the traffic-jammed cars and the throng of secondary school students, but after several seconds I managed to have enough room to zip and sail up onto the corner shop roof where I had seen the marshmallow-man land before.

I looked back, and saw Clang and Miss Toontastic slowly easing away from all the kids trying to take pictures with them. The success of the kids that had already managed to claim pictures and selfies had spurred on others to try and get pictures too.

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Should I wait? I thought.

It was a tough decision. There was something about that marshmallow-man that made me nervous. There was no doubt in my mind that he had an aura of someone dangerous, even if he looked ridiculous.

You don't even know if he's a bad guy, I thought.

Whilst this was true, the stabbing pain of dread in my gut was telling me it was too dangerous not to consider the marshmallow-man as a serious threat.

As much as I hated doing so, I decided the safest strategic decision was to wait the extra few seconds for Clang and Miss Toontastic to catch up.

Each moment I forced myself to wait was excruciating, because it meant there was more time for the men with their guns, and whatever strange device they had used to attack that other mouse, to continue to run amok; and for the marshmallow-man to catch up before us.

Clang and Miss Toontastic reached the top of the building.

Both looked to be in very good moods.

It was impossible to keep the look of annoyance from my face.

I sailed off, quickly building momentum until I was hurtling across more residential homes as if riding a huge slate-tiled tidal wave.

Clang and Miss Toontastic sped up and kept pace with me, and together we neared the sound of gunfire.

It was a surreal and horrifying moment when I realised the gunfire was coming from inside my old school.

Together we crossed the street and soared over the school's front black iron gates. As we moved into the school I looked back and saw the black iron-gate entrance was open, and there were several burnt tyre marks along the inner school concrete. I heightened my hearing as best as I could manage not just to lock-in on the gunfire, but also to have a better estimate of how many people remained in the school.

Much to my relief as far as I could tell the school was deserted of teachers and students.

I led the way along a concrete path, over a strip of garden grass, and beneath an arching corridor section which connected the East-Wing building to the South-Wing Building.

And finally we arrived at the upper south-end incline of the huge concrete school playground.

The gunfire had stopped, and it was obvious to see why.

All six of the African men who had been riding in pairs on the three motorcycles were, to varying degrees, rendered no longer able to fight.

Two of the motorcycles were sideways on the ground and still running. And the third was little more than chunks of scrap spread across the concrete.

Three of the men were prone on the ground, either dead or unconscious, and the remaining three were kneeling and were battered, bloody, and bruised.

They were facing the snow-white-skinned woman with the rose-patterned outfit.

The young woman was towering in height, somewhere close to seven feet tall, and was standing in a heroic-pose.

I noticed then that the woman's skin wasn't just white, but instead was made out of what appeared to be marble. Dark wavy lines were among the white-marbel of her shiny-smooth skin, and both her hair and face and her hands and feet had a distinct stone-like quality. She was, also, athletically built like a short-distance Olympic-level sprinter.

By her feet were the remains of the mass of teratoma flesh which had latched onto her before, as well as that strange cylindrical device I had seen her holding like a briefcase.

The teratoma flesh had turned a lifeless gray, and had already started to crumble into useless debris.

The marble-woman had noticed our arrival, and so had the still conscious African men.

The men, I saw, were dressed in hoodies and sweatpants – certainly not the kind of clothes police or Pied Piper Task Force officers would wear.

The marble-woman raised her fists, and said, "Are they with you?"

She had asked this of the African men. The first thing I noticed was that the marble-woman had an accent so posh it sounded as if she were a member of the royal family.

"Nah," said the youngest of the three conscious men, in a typical Stowchester hoodlum accent.

"No," said the other two men, in accents that were more distinctly African.

It was then the familiar sound of something soft yet heavy met my ears, and the marshmallow-man fell to the ground from above.

He landed in front of both the unconscious and still lucid African men. In turn, the marble-woman leapt back, her stone-feet clacking and scraping against the playground concrete.

"D'ese are my boys," said the marshmallow-man in a foreign African accent, in a deeply serious tone.

"Your boys attacked me," said the marble-woman, her accent so thickly English she sounded as if she were from a Jane Austen novel.

"You stole from us," said the marshmallow-man.

"Oh this?" said the marble-woman, gesturing to the cylindrical device which was an equal distance between her and the mashmallow-man, "I should like to ask you something, if I may. Where did you find such a splendid toy?"

"That - is - no - business - of - yours," said the marshmallow-man, each syllable like its own distinct shout.

His head turned suddenly so that his burnt eyes fixed on us.

"Are you wi'd her?" said the marshmallow-man.

"That depends, init," Clang's voice rang, "Is she a good guy?"

"Oh yes," said the marble-woman, "I'm trying to be something of a superheroine, actually – thank you for asking. The name's Marbelle by the way."

The marshmallow-man's burnt face formed into an amused sneer.

"Good guys – bad guys – what is d'ese games, ay?" said the marshmallow-man.

"Your boys were shooting their guns around civilians," I resonated, "That's why we're here."

"D'is does not concern you," said the marshmallow-man, "Go away or you will suffer d' same fate as her."

"Haven't you noticed you're outnumbered?" Clang's voice rang, "You ain't winning this."

"Ca-ca-ca-ca!" the marshmallow-man laughed, "Even if it were jus' me, I would be enough on my own."

It was then the sound of many more motorcycles filled the air.

"I will give you one las' chance to go away," said the marshmallow-man, "I do not wish for a conflict wi'd you for da' sake of ma' boys. I am showing you three mercy because you do not know who I am."

"Oh yeah?" Clang's voice rang, "And who are you, then?"

"My name," said the marshmallow-man, "Is Sweet-Face."

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