no_ufo_ending | [Victory Road] Ic Inbox

_{[Indeed, she looks a mess. Not anywhere near as badly as they'd all looked after their impromptu week-long hike after Moon Prom, but still exhausted and grimy from the road. There's even some funny bruises visible above her collar.]}

No, I know, and it's fine. That's why I came back as quick as I could.

Let's go, just... slowly.

_{[Shooting a last look at the main desk, she decides she doesn't actually have the energy to give the Jennies any more lip. So she grabs Henry's elbow gently and starts to head out the door.]

[Will it be worth the inevitable GIANT CROCODILIAN FRETTING to let Godzilla out and ask him to straight-up carry them back to the house...?]}

Edited 2016-09-12 15:41 (UTC)

_{[Hanging onto Henry's elbow is not unlike trying to take a very nervous great dane for a walk. He can't help but pull. He's trying to be slow but. Serial killers.]}

Walter Sullavin is here. I met him on my way home from work last night--this morning, I guess. He has a cubone. He's solid. I nearly killed him, would have if that construction worker hadn't called the police. I almost did it, Heather. I almost did my job. Nobody here understands.

It's either him or me. I'm the last sacrament.

_{[At least she's got plenty of experience walking giant dogs. She knows how to deal with the pulling, even if she's dead on her feet.]}

A Cubone?

_{[Shit... that HAS to mean he was the one who talked to her briefly at the festival. She hadn't put the strange, quiet man and the voice on the phone together before, but it's too big a coincidence to dismiss.]}

Tell me what happened. Did-- I mean... you said he didn't attack you, so-- what, did you just... was he trying to follow you down the road? What?

_{[She knows about Henry's violent streak but she's not used to it springing up without some form of provocation. And as hotheaded and bloodthirsty as even she is sometimes, her first instinct upon seeing things from home is usually not to go straight in for the kill immediately, no matter how much of a fright they give her.]}

_{[Henry let out a huff as he thought back on the encounter.]}

I was coming home from work. I saw him in the fog. I thought he was France. I was going to go say hello and see if Envy knew he was back yet but--it was him. Once I was close enough to see who he was he said...something. I don't even remember. I just--

_{[Henry made a strangling gesture and gritted his teeth.]}

He didn't even put up a fight--probably didn't know how to now that he isn't an immortal ghost with a chainsaw.

_{[IT'S KIND OF AWFUL but deep down she's kind of relieved that she wasn't the only one who thought the guy was France at first. Of course, now that she knows who he actually is, it's staggering what an AWFUL case of celebrity lookalikes this is.]

[Wait till Envy finds out that his old flame looks exactly like the serial killer who tried to murder his best friend and nobody had said anything about it this whole time.]

[But enough about that.]}

He didn't fight back?

At all?

_{[A twinge of nausea joins the multitude of other little physical discomforts she's feeling right now, as a scene she's been trying her best not to think about flashes before her mind's eye again. Claudia's pale eyes, fear-filled but somehow still calm, reflecting the flames all around her...]

[She hadn't fought back, either. Hadn't lifted so much as a finger in her own defense while Heather shook her and threw her down like a ragdoll.]}

You don't think he'd try and come after you now, do you?

If he didn't even fight back?

_{[Here she'd been thinking she'd have to call in the cavalry and pull out all the stops to protect Henry, but Henry apparently can defend himself just fine.]}

No, he didn't.

_{[Henry huffed out a humorless little laugh.]}

Coward. He's nothing without his powers. I caught him off guard. I won't be able to do that again. He knows I'm here. He knows I work in this town, Heather. We have to be ready.

We'll be ready.

_{[THAT, she knows. There's no doubt in her mind.]

[The daughter of Harry Mason knows what to do when cultists are in town.]}

Let's get you home.

You can fill me in on-- ... whatever I need to know. Anything.

_{[Henry nods grimly and after one more block he finally slows and walks beside her instead of trying to drag her. The sleepless night and the day's excitement is getting to him now.]}

When we get home I...have something to show you.

_{[It was time to dig out The Tome. He'd received it one year when everyone had gotten things from home. Henry would have rather gotten coal but now that he thought about it, it really would come in handy.]

[The rest of the walk is filled with a blaring silence. He wants to sit. He wants coffee. He wants to get high. He wants to be alert. He wants to pass out. Henry starts to clench and unclench his fists.]

[Finally the house comes into veiw and Prince is sitting in a depressed lump on the welcome mat. His ears perk at their approach and when he spots Henry, he lets out a startled chirp and arches up his back like a Halloween cat.]

[Seeing this, Henry is yanked from his thoughts with a small gasp. He holds out a hand.]}

Prince, it's okay it's--

_{[The Sylveon spits a hiss at him and bolts around the house, disappearing into the decorative bushes.]}

Damn...

_{[She nods right back.]

[They've both got a lot to think about-- Henry moreso, but well... it's the first time since Claudia that a cultist has appeared in Johto. And god, it's been years.]

[This entire day doesn't even feel real.]

[That feeling of surreality is only compounded when they make it to the driveway and Prince reacts like they were coming at him with a vacuum cleaner. Heather freezes on the walkway, looking kind of shocked.]}

Whoa.

What's up with Prince?

_{[She has... NEVER seen the Sylveon do that.]}

_{[Henry grits his teeth. It feels like something icy is squeezing his chest.]}

He tried to stop me.

... Oh. Ooh.

_{[Her mind leaps back several years, to when Sunny had treed herself and refused to come down and let Heather climb on her back. She'd known exactly where Heather had wanted to go, who Heather had wanted to see, and why.]

[Grimacing, Heather rubs the back of her neck... then reaches out to lay a tentative hand on Henry's arm.]}

... He'll be okay.

Just give him some time.

_{[His arm shudders but he doesn't pull away. Henry heaves a blustery sigh and tromps on into the house.]}

It's in here.

_{[He makes his way beyond the ogre hut into the study where he snoozed in his sleeping bag. His personal things were strewn and piled here and there in a sort of organized chaos. But there was one big lump, a huge bundle of an afghan that he yanked out. He'd muffled the thing years ago out of fear and paranoia least it start leaking or whispering or something. Henry carefully unwrapped the board-bound book of red papers. It smelled like soot and blood.]}

This is everything I know about the cult and Walter Sullivan.

_{[She follows him inside, shedding her luggage in the front hall and shutting the door behind them. And, as an afterthought, locking it. You never fucking know.]

[Then she follows Henry into the office-space that has kind of just become HIS space since she's been away.]

[For a moment, she just looks at the thing. It makes the hair on her arms stand on end.]}

... How long have you had that?

Edited 2016-11-06 08:26 (UTC)

_{[Henry sits down and opens the thing across his lap. He doesn't meet her eye.]}

A few years...I couldn't really think of a reason to bring it up. It was around when your dad...nevermind. Here.

_{[He held it out for her to take, should she want to dirty her hands on something that literally came right out of hell.]}

As the Receiver of Wisdom I was left these notes...I found them all over the Otherworld. I copied down a few things myself, things Eileen read for me. But...

_{[Henry heaves a heavy sigh and drops his head into his hands. A single droplet of blood falls from his nose onto the crook of his elbow, staining his scrubs.]}

One day I woke up and there were chains across my door. They stayed and stayed and I started to run out of food. I thought I was going crazy or going to die...but then a hole opened up in the wall and with nothing else left to do I crawled through it.

_{[She takes it. Even if it makes her skin crawl, it's not like she doesn't have one or two artifacts from Hell squirreled away, herself... The Seal of Metatron has been wrapped up in one of her scarves at the bottom of her bag for years now.]

[As Henry starts his tale, she in turn starts to flip through the book.]}

The hole led to...the subway. Somehow. But something was wrong with it.

_{[His eyes drift to the window, hoping to catch sight of Prince. No luck. The Pink Pokemon wasn't going to set paw near the house so long as he was there.]}

There was a woman...and these...dogs.

What did the dogs look like?

_{[She knows too much to assume that they resemble her own, but it's worth asking.]

[Walter was a cult child too, after all. Maybe his Otherworld had dogs for the same reason Alessa's had.]}

_{[Still facing away, Henry's voice falls quiet, as though he were somehow both embarrassed and unsure. His adventure had the terrible quality of a nightmare that you kept false-waking from. He couldn't be sure. But he also had evidence dripping from his nose.]}

Rotten. Green...brown. They didn't have faces, just long tongues. They ate one another. They didn't sound like dogs, they screamed.

_{[She nods.]

[Different dogs, then.]

[She can't decide if Henry's sound more or less awful than her own. She'll settle on it being a tie.]}

Gotcha.

What happened then?

There was a girl...I'd seen her from my window before. She thought it was all a dream...and I did too for a minute.

_{[Henry makes a face.]}

She just...couldn't understand the danger we were in. Walter had picked her as part of the Sacraments...I found her again later with numbers carved into her chest.

_{[An unpleasant jolt runs down Heather's spine as she recalls the scattered letters she'd stumbled across down in the sewers-- and the body in the mall.]

[Innocent people who'd had the bad luck to get caught up in the flood of the Otherworld as it came rushing in.]

[It hadn't exactly been the same as Walter's hand-picked victims.]

[But close enough.]}

Is that what would've happened to you?

_{[Henry nods slowly, miserably, as he reaches up to trace numbers into his collarbone.]}

I'm number twenty one, the last part of the ritual.

... We're not gonna let that happen to you.

You might be on your own back there, but here you've got backup.

_{[And not just any backup-- he's got a godslayer. She's not about to say as much out loud, but he'll know what she means.]}

Thanks.

_{[It's really nice to have the house behind him. He wishes that he had this kind of support back home...and the one person he had started to be something like friends with disappeared.]}

It was strange, though. That world was full of holes and every time I crawled through one, I woke up in my bed. I started to think maybe it was a dream...I didn't need to eat or drink. It was like time had stopped. My ceiling fan fell.

I felt like...Walter was leading me through some sort of carnival dark ride, making me look at all these different things. The orphanage in the woods. The prison on the lake. Every time I went somewhere new, someone else died.

_{[She nods.]

[The Otherworld had felt like that, sometimes-- like the town itself had been laying out a path before you. Showing you just what you needed to know.]

[But that had always just been a feeling. For Henry, it might well have been literal.]}

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