1965-08-18 - It followed us home
Summary: "Elmo if I can't keep the possum you can't keep the cultist in the garage."
Related: The Gaze of the Eyeless
Theme Song: None
halgrim elmo julie jp 


JP was not above looting a house. Sure it was fixtures and parts but he did. Pulling Jeanne d'Arc through the garage to the back to unload he came back in, grabbed a beer and made two swiping motions with his hand to close the garage doors. "So… this the cat that V healed up?"


"Yeah. Except, kinda more of a wolf." Elmo, not one hundred percent on his slang game today. "She—okay, I dunno if it's a girl or not, but Vitale thinks so, anyway, she was in a bear trap." He dives under a workbench to grab an empty ammo case. "Knew this thing would come in handy."


Julie did less looting, apart from a snoop for further clues. But she'd gotten hold of some beers along the way, and had been waiting. Eyes Elmo for context, there. But offers a can up when she seems to catch up. "I'm gonna guess the bear trap wasn't around here?"


The creature, meanwhile, has trailed behind, following the smell of the vehicles through the city and back to the garage. It's nowhere near as fast as the vehicles, but the darkness lets it move more directly than it would be able to otherwise. Now it enters the garage, moving cautiously, eyeing everything around it. It doesn't like the smell, if the way its snout writhes is any indication, but it does like all the things it could get into. Those it likes very much, by the way it's staring at the workbenches.


JP was as much that smell as the garage was. He was all dust, engine oil, and brake dust. Elbow grease, sweat and dirt, and occasionally some Stetson. Say what one will about the Cajun his workshop was tidy. It wasn't clean. It's a garage. The workbench though is damn tidy. He seemed to be watching all of this with a waiting interest. "Soooo we all groovy now this how this works? I mean ain' Viatale or the-…your fault he got dinged."


Elmo locks the bracelets in the ammo can, manipulating them with comically huge barbeque tongs. "Okay, nobody touch that," he mutters, not actually talking to anybody in particular, and scoots out from under the workbench. Catches the beer Diz tosses him, turns—and stiffens up when he sees the beast. The massive, furred, feathered, horne‘d creature lurking in his garage. It’s something out of his nightmares. Suddenly, he's not so sanguine about Fjorskar's presence. "Y…yeah. I, uh, I gave her bells." Whatever that's supposed to mean.


Julie watches the creature as it enters and sniffs around, a bit curiously, sipping her beer and re-coiling the last set of her bolas she'd flung in the recent fracas. Her own scents, well, may be a cleaner version of JP's mechanical ones about the leather and shoes she wears, it being Saturday night and she not being a guy. She holds another of the beer cans toward the creature. "Hey, big guy. Or gal, maybe. Want a beer?" She rolls it on across the floor, it making gentle, if oddly-steady progress toward Fjorskar. Smirks to Elmo. "I'll giver her beers, then, maybe."


Fjorskar lowers its head to the incoming can, watching its motions. When the beer gets close enough, though, it sniffs, grunts, and straightens to settle back, resting its wrists on its knees, letting its massive claws spread and gleam in the garage's lights. They look almost metallic.

It looks from JP to Elmo to Julie. "Give, the bindings. To the world shaper." This is apparently important and bears repeating. "Do not. Keep. They taint." It tilts his head, adresses Elmo directly. "The mender. Do the dreams. Still. Come." Each word is forced out, snarled and rough, like this is a language it's almost painful to speak.


JP squint at the feather-wolf creature. He murmured to Dizzy, "Good idea." He listened. He looked… utterly confused and furrowed his brow saying thoughtfully, "Sparkplug, tell me they ain' talkin about my mama…" Which is also JP for- the hell did I just listen to? I need a translator. "Who doin what to whose what?"


Elmo swallows, looking away when the monster looks at him. "She means Strange. It's his job to take care of stuff like this. Weird magic stuff, like." He edges towards JP, not turning his back to the beast. "'Cause of Lindon, he showed me how to call him. So I can. Uh. Vitale's …okay, mostly. Says he has a dream sometimes. He did you a hell of a good turn."


JP blinked and looked to Elmo completely lost, "Who's strange? Lindon strange? I mean I know he read a lot and books mess up your head an' what not." He turned to Dizzy arching an eyebrow. "He talkin all smart and shit. Break it down t'pieces parts for me here?" Lookin back to the creature he looked apologetic admitting, "Soundin' like English ain' too great to make much use to either of us." He considered offering a solution, "Parle francais? C'est ce que je peux faire. Je peux faire cette merde toute la journ e." The offer was on the table. French? he could do that shit all day.


Julie ahs. "Yeah, sounds good to me." She looks over to JP. 'Strange is a *guy*, I think I heard him called that shaper thing before one time somewhere. I was hoping to catch up with a friend of mine, but she ain't been around, and I think we got about as far as we can throwing stuff at creeps. If you guys don't know, I think I know where to ask after him."


Fjorskar tilts its head at JP. "These words. The way," it gestures at Elmo, JP, and Julie with gleaming claws, "your kind speaks. Is vulgar." It narrows its eyes. "The old words. The gift. Those." It heaves a sigh, shakes its heavy head. "Cannot."

The beast considers Julie. "The host. Knows." Now it's looking at Elmo again. "Delivered me. To the world shaper. Could, ask. It."


Elmo grimaces. "Right. You dunno who Strange is. That's his name, okay? Stephen Strange. He's a wizard. He's like, chief mechanic of magical stuff. Anything's weird or broken, that's his job." His eyebrows go up as the creature talks to him again. "I dunno who your, uh, host is, pal. I only know you."


JP nodded slowly letting the puzzle form, "So Strange… is a guy… who deal' with weird stuff? Soundin like he named appropriately. Good deal. Hey, e'ryone got a nickname." He considered this and asked the room, "Wizarding pay any good? Maybe we do that if business startin t'drop off in the winter." Looking back to Grimm from Elmo and Dizzy he asked genuinely, "Hey, Vitale said he had t' heal you. Somethin tryin t'hurt you pal?"


Julie hrms. Gestures to Fjorskar with her beer. Then to the one she'd rolled over to it. "You can relax a while. We'll get the, ah, Shaper." She looks over to Elmo. "You got his number, or maybe should I make a couplea calls?"


Fjorskar considers Elmo; if a huge hulking wolf raven ram dragon beast can have a pensive expression, then it does. It speaks to JP, however. "Your kind. Hunts. The things. It fears." It gestures unerringly in the direction of Central Park. "The Green Heart. There was. A trap." Its lip writhes, because while it might have been placed for the coyotes or wolves which slip into the park, that doesn't seem very likely.


Elmo snorts, taken off guard by JP wondering if they maybe should get into wizarding freelancing. "JP—nevermind. I'll tell ya later." Accidentally and totally without meaning to, he surreptitiously takes JP's hand. One might suspect him of being terrified and not wanting to let on. "Central Park." He translates. "People think our buddy here's a bear." Looking at Diz, with relief because she's not a scary monster, he nods. "Yeah. I mean…more or less, his number."


JP squints listening. THAT… made sense to him. "Yup. We aaaabsolutely do." JP was a hunter by nature. He wouldn't deny it. But then there was a hand slipped into his and he dropped the last two of his fingers in with the first two of Elmo's without breaking stride of thought. JP has zero fucks to give about the proclivities of the world. Nothing about him screamed subtle. "Like we do when you go into a pen. Find the biggest dog in the pack. Take it down. Your pack now. Ain' just people. That just nature. Laws of the wild. Buuuut, huntin a person mindin they own business?" JP shook his head, "That jes' bein a bully." Looking to Dizzy he said "They blew up our phone out there. Bakery across the street? She might let you use theirs. V called but the phone ain' installed yet." Then Elmo got his attention. It wasn't for taking his hand either, "When the las' God blessed time these assholes seen a bear wit' feathers? Lawdy you got some shitty huntin' up here in New York."


Julie nods to Elmo. "I guess, use it, like, what name was it again, for our buddy, here?" She's got a weird way of seeming to take certain things in stride, it seems, perhaps cause the alternative would be freaking out. And, well, a lot of her friends are seen as monsters, too. "It's Mutant Town, ain't always easy to get hooked up. We probably ought to just hook you up, find out the number from old phone books, and pay the bill from some other address."

"I guess Central Park ain't really safe for bears, anyway. But I guess they mostly cleared out the zombies." She says to the creature, "Sorry about that, anyway, probably you didn't deserve to get hurt, from what I seen. You OK, now?"


"Mender, healed." Fjorskar indicates Elmo and JP with a wave of its claws. "Took too much." It shifts off its heals and makes for the garage doors. It pauses there, says over one black-feather shoulder, "World shaper." It looks hard at JP and Julie, though seems to think better of subjecting Elmo to another lingering stare. Then it waits, allowing JP to let it out rather than sorting out an exit on its own (which will no doubt destroy the doors).


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