What the Duck
| What the Duck | |
|---|---|
Goddamit Siri! | |
| Players
Ethan, Apophis as ST |
Ethan goes back to Ae-Cha's shop to see what he can see in the shadow at night. Alone. And regrets this decision almost immediately. |
Following the woman to the shop during the day proved -- well. Less than productive, given the ultimate outcome of what went down. MOre questions than answers came of their last visit, and Ethan's internet stalking, while productive, didn't give a ton of enlightenment either. Which is why he finds himself outside the shop, in the middle of the night. 2am, when most people are sleep and the various psychic baggage is reduced for the day, Helios far on the other side of Gaia and his minions no longer exerting their particular tyrranies over the denizens of the Hisil. Soft lights glow in the parking lot, security lights on in the shops. It's not *dark*, per se. Nothing in this city is ever truly dark. But it's as dark as it gets. The fact that his spirit had evolved enough to embrace the Wolf's Gift of Skin Thieving came to Ethan in a dream. So did the poor mutt who he chose as his prey for the hunt. He deliberately chose one who he could end painlessly, who was in pain, rangy and aggressive and recently just sort of…left by the side of the road when he was no longer useful to his owner's disgusting dog fighting passion. That came to him in a dream too, and he made a mental note to find and deal with the owner and maybe that ring too, as penance. Sliding the dog's skin over the shoulders of his *urhan* form struck him as literally the least human thing he'd ever done to date, and if some spirit was watching they'd have felt him shiver in dismay and remorse alike. His commitments to paying the debt to the spirit of such dogs aside, it doesn't make him feel like anything close to a good person. But his yellow eyes gleam in the darkness as he slinks across the parking lot, staying as far from the light as the light will allow, until he finds a likely patch of grass ringing the parking lot, one where he can settle in and attune to his spirit senses. None of the others who might have helped him tonight were available…and in truth, he can only justify pulling others away from their own duties if he comes *up* with something. In the meantime, the wolf must hunt, and he's driven to keep looking, to keep poking, to understand why ASA Monrose is strange to his satisfaction to be utterly sure he's done his duty. By her, by Skolis-Ur, by Mother Luna. When he knows, he can decide how to act and he can stop. Until he does, failing to keep looking is out of the question, even if he must look alone. The little shop is quiet. There aren't any signs of habitation inside -- the little strip mall space isn't really zoned for residential living, so Ae-Cha has probably long since returned to wherever she actually lives. There's a gate over the front door, and the windows are shuttered, presumably to deter looters, though the shutters are covered with graffiti here and there, layers and layers of spray paint covering -- Something. Ethan's eyes manage to flick to the various designs there, colors and different manners of scrawl clear enough. But there's something else there, too. Something between the spaces, in the negative. Something that Ethan can just start to make out, like one of those magic eye puzzles, the shape starting to coalesce but not quite there. *There* we go. Moon Moon rises, dashing across the intervening space to get closer to that magic eye puzzle, sitting down and tilting his head at it as he narrows his eyes at it, trying to work out what it is that he is seeing. He's careful to try to avoid touching a single design or color, double checking that none of it is anywhere he might, say, accidentally place a foot. BEtween the spaces, in the negatives, where most people wouldn't think to look -- are sigils. Symbols of protection. Ethan might not be entirely, intimately familiar with them. But he can pick out enough. They're symbols of warding and protection. The claw-marks and scratches and loops of the First Tongue. Ae-Cha's shop has been marked by someone -- or something -- in a rather clever way. Hidden from the eyes of most humans, visible to the ones that know what they're looking for, and vague enough not to tell the entire story all at once. Ethan actually takes an alarmed step back. Has he stumbled into a goddamn nest of *Pure?* His hackles rise as he takes another step back. None of them tried to get close enough into her personal space to smell her. That would have been fatal at the prison, anyway. Colt is so experienced and established…let the games begin, a potential enemy that she might have thrown into prison. John…Blood Talon, never going to go over. Did she take an interest in *him* because he still radiates fucking *wet behind the ears?* He's suddenly snapping his perceptions to the other siide, alarmed as hell, deeply afraid he just ran himself straight into a trap. He doesn't have real proof yet. There's other explanations. But for the moment, he is feeling so much ice water down his spine that he can't help but stop and take himself a moment for some pure paranoia before he decides what to do next. The Shadow, when Ethan snaps his senses to the other side, tells a story as well. One that won't leave him feeling any better. All around the shop are signs of claw marks. Deep, nasty things etched into the Shadow-stuff of the concrete, some new, some old, each of them looking like they were done with purpose and intention. Some of them spell out runes and glyphs in First Tongue. Some of them look to be just done for the joy of it, or out of rage. And almost palpable in the air is a feeling of *command*. Of discipline and strength and a general idea that something powerful has its eye on this place, a sleeping giant capable of shattering the earth to motes of dust, but content for the moment, the ebbs and flows of the Shadow like the rhythmic breaths of some enormous creature. *Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch!* Ethan freezes though. Yanking himself back into focus. He's a goddamn *Iminir.* He's competent, he's capable (*he's out here alone, hoss*) and he's going to get all the information he can from this location. Then he'll visit a second. Gritting his teeth, he starts trying to read the glyphs, carefully picking his way so as not to disturb that powerful, sleeping spirit, desperately trying to remember what Colt told him about these crazyheads. Something about them making deals with all kinds of strange spirits. Maybe that's why Alex struck out. Maybe she got a real good whiff of him while she was offering that oil…and even though he didn't take a good smell of it himself, his own step back kept him from doing the same…if it even occurred to him. After all, he was riding on Ethan's supposition that she was maybe Ridden. Why do a species check? His brain kicks up one more soft *son of a bitch!* for good measure before he well and truly drags it back to the task. minir or no, those glyphs and symbols are layered one on top of the other, sometimes in inscrutable patterns that maybe only the one that clawed them into existence could even hope to follow. Ethan can make out words, things like 'blood' and 'family' and 'protect' and 'kill', but the patterns taht they form, the meaning they're meant to invoke, whatever ritual went into them -- it's lost on him. He can't make them out any more than he could make out the Tao Te Ching with just a chinese dictionary. Whatever's going on here is clearly bigger than whatever Ethan was thinking about ridden and Possession. So much bigger. Right. Time to get an expert in here to look at these. He wrenches his senses back to the physical realm. This, he won't keep from Colt. Not even a little bit. He actually freezes too. He'd considered swinging by her place. Gathering just that much more info. That would be the thorough thing to do. It is also the kind of thing that either Irraka do, or that packs do, not lone Cahalith. This is a big find, and trying to tackle anything more at this point would be stupid. If she is Pure, if he goes to her house…if he fucks up there…he'll tip her right off and that will make things worse, not better. Or she will corner him and kill him, depending on just how old or powerful she is, on whether any members of her own pack are nearby. He's not willing to make such a bet. He turns on his heel and takes off running into the night, running back to his truck which suddenly doesn't feel far *enough* away from the shop to suit him. He slows before he gets there, crouching, prowling around, uneasy enough to make a wide circuit to make sure nobody's watching him or his truck, lying in wait, tampering with it, any of that. It's pure paranoia, but care and a long life go together. There isn't anything under the truck. Or in the truck. No traps, no nothing that Ethan can see. There is, however, something new there. Or, more specifically, something that Ethan might be seeing for the first time. Near one of the light poles, there is a tall stick planted in a pot of earth that looks like it might have once housed a small tree on a city street. And on top of that pole, carved from the same wood, is a duck. And its eyes are currently pointed directly at Ethan's truck. But no attack comes. No spirits apart from what he was already sensing. He's free to shift, and to leave. The *fuck*? He does pause at that duck. He slinks under Baby's carriage, feeling a little safer with her solid weight above him. And then narrows his eyes and takes one more Shadow peek to see if he can discern anything about *that.* He'll just be here in urhan one more moment while he tries to figure out why a fucking wooden duck is staring at his truck now. And he tries to mostly hold on to that *what the fuck* feeling, because he's just had another goddamn *gallon of ice water* dumped down his spine.
But there's nothing in the shadow. Nothing that Ethan can see anyway. It's just -- a duck. On a stick. Staring at the truck. Or really, in the *direction* of the truck. Everything is quiet. Almost too quiet, really. But whatever presence is looming here might be enough to account for that. Letting sleeping giants lie is always wise advice. Even for spirits. Right. Well. He's not touching it. He'll just describe it. He's gotta call Alex too, but maybe not at 2 AM. Shit, Colt might not appreciate the 2 AM call anyway, but he's *getting* one. He takes a moment to fix the form of the dog with him; he won't waste that poor scarred up animal's life. He'll do it all due honor. He's not sure if he'll be the butt of more jokes with his urhan looking that way until he chooses to discard it, but it's way too useful for holding to the Oath of the Moon, flying below the radar, and doing his goddamn *job.* When he shifts, with a crack of bones and a still-painful stretch of muscle, he does it lying on his belly, under the truck. He then soldier crawls out from under it. He looks around, then eases to a crouch, hand on the driver's side handle. He softly unlocks the door, very quietly opens it, slides in hunched down, closes it. He hesitates one more moment, starts the car…and straightens only when he's ready to go. He doesn't floor it. Don't attract attention. He just eases out of his parking space, drives the speed limit, gets several lights away. Then he snaps, "Siri, call Colt. Call Colt right fucking now." "I'm sorry. I do not understand Right. Fucking. Now." "God damn it…Siri. Call Colt." "Calling Colt." | |