savetheearth | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Who: Alexander & Lyall
What: Dudes be chillin' when they cross paths with a Vermini.
When: Friday, 6/28, late afternoon
Where: Parking lot of the movie theater/mall

After the movie, in which Alex told Lyall (at the instruction of his co-worker) that they ought to stay past the credits to see the extra at the end, the two men headed out into the parking lot. There was only one vehicle between them today -- Alex's truck, a green Tacoma; he'd gone and picked Lyall up earlier. No sense in coming with two cars when he'd be going to Lyall's place to help with the windows -- that'd been his reasoning.

He'd parked a fair distance away from the entrance, favoring sparser cars over proximity. There were a few dotted here and there near his, and no one in them, which was convenient when he trailed off in the conversation, paused several feet away from his truck and squinted.

There was a squirrel loitering on the tailgate. It was a perfectly normal looking squirrel if you ignored its tail, which resembled a small child's arm.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It was the smell that alerted Lyall first. That acidic, scouring smell. He stopped and looked around, holding out a hand to stop Alex, as well.

He'd actually enjoyed the evening, so far: getting out with someone close to his own age-- if not necessarily maturity level-- and doing something completely simple and normal. He felt fully recovered physically from his full moon ordeal, and as for the whole acceptance of it all thing... well, he was mostly just trying not to think about it, and distractions helped that.

The scent of those grue fairy things did not.

"It has an arm for a tail," he said, a question as well as a statement.

His newly purchased rifle (a blow to his wallet, but far more preferable to explaining to his folks why he'd like them to mail his rifle from the ranch) was lying beneath a towel and his toolbox on the cab's floor. A lot of good it did him there, he thought, unaware of the Vermini's relative harmlessness.

"It-- oh. Oh dear, you're right." He finally found the source of the smell, a bit later than Alex had. Lyall frowned at it disapprovingly, and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter: "This is happening again, is it?"

In part, he didn't want to alert the thing to their presence, or at least didn't want to frighten it off yet. He wanted to catch it... but he knew he wasn't really likely to, not with the materials he had on his person: a jacket, some ticket stubs, that damned empty journal. Nothing good for catching mutant squirrels or the creatures that possessed them.

"Again?" he echoed, wanting to glance at Lyall, but unwilling to take his eyes off of the squirrel. "Is this related to that bird with teeth a couple months back?"

He hadn't been a part of the network then, but Hajime's little guide had mentioned "bizarre animal activity."

"Again. Like those bats in the mine, and like crows and rabbits and things from before you joined us." Lyall had the vague desire to actually growl, but smothered the urge. That was far too werewolf-like for his taste, thank you very much. "They're being possessed by furry little sprite things. I managed to catch a couple last time.... See if you can't circle around behind it. I can drive it at you and perhaps we can catch the thing."

It would be worth it to find out if these were exactly the same as last time, if they could catch one.

"Okay." He did as suggested, moving incrementally into the lane to (hopefully) get behind the Vermini. It was a slow enough process, and one he actually was quite familiar with given his background in ranching and hunting, that the idea to hypnotize the creature had time to surface.

By then, he'd almost completed his arc and didn't want to voice the possibility for fear of scaring the creature away. Instead, he paused and held is hand up in a universal 'stop' sign. The creature was shifting back and forth along the tailgate, as if unsure of whether or not it wanted to jump off and bolt.

It alternated nervous glances between Alexander and Lyall. The next time it shot one Alex's way, he held eye contact and tranced it.

... Tried to, anyway. At best, it seemed like the squirrel had one beers too many. Despite Alex willing it to stay still, it continued to pace, if not at a slightly slower rate.

Lyall waited, watching warily for whatever Alex had in mind. When nothing seemed to happen, he gave a little shrug in his friend's direction, pointed subtly at the squirrel, then after a beat to gather himself and make sure Alex was aware, he lunged at it. The goal was to try and with catch it, or drive it at Alex for him to catch.

The thing avoided him, but did at least seem to be moving... erratically, maybe, that was a little odd... in Alex's direction.

As the squirrel darted in his direction, Alex tried to meet it. His efforts were thwarted by a sudden bout of what he had come to refer to as a 'pulse' -- another Echo. Disoriented, and quite frankly still not entirely accustomed to that peculiar hollowing sensation, Alex's reaction time suffered, allowing the squirrel to dart in another direction.

"Alex, oh no-- ah, damn." Lyall tried to run after the squirrel for a few steps, but it was gone, and he knew better than to think a biology teacher-- werewolf or not-- was going to catch up. And then as he slowed from a run to a jog to a full-on stop, he stumbled with one of those heartbeat moments of his own.

Except it didn't come with any visions, this time. Or pain. Well, that was something. Shaking his head sharply to try and clear it, while simultaneously trying to take stock of himself, he said, "Well, that's that."

He let out a groan of frustration. "Timing!" he said, a complaint about that of the Echo's. He looked away from the retreating squirrel to Lyall. "You felt it, too?"

He had made a fist as he'd asked, and released it just as quickly, but when one had no habit of wearing rings on their fingers, it became very obvious when suddenly one was present. Alex glanced down at his left hand, considering the plain, metal band that had made its home on his ring finger with some amount of confusion.

"Apparently so." Looking frustrated, Lyall dusted off his hands, even though they hadn't had much to do in this little skermish. "Though no accompanying vision, illness, or difficulty seems to have come of it, this time. --What?" He finally noticed Alex's own confusion and blinked down at where he was staring.

"Uh..."

He lifted his hand, palm facing himself, to show Lyall the ring on his finger. "Aliens decided to gift me some bling?"

If bling was a family with a cousin twice removed. The ring was aged and utterly unremarkable. Hell, the circle wasn't even even.

"Did you really just say 'bling'?" Lyall asked, sounding vaguely amused. He did pad over to investigate, though. "Well. You aren't the only person receiving strange and apparently useless objects. Doctor Strider had a few, and one of my former students wound up with a belt he can't take off, but which he can make disappear at will. You're doing all right with just a ring."

He sure did, Lyall. He's twenty-eight, not eighty-two!

Alex shrugged, mildly comforted -- not that he had been troubled by the ring's appearance, but he was definitely grateful he didn't have a phantom belt. His hand dropped to his side.

"Maybe you got something, too-- ahh, but let's--" He started rounding around the truck bed, taking the keys out of his pocket. "Let's get inside first."

Bling seemed more like a word a sixteen-year-old would use than a twenty-eight-year old, but then, Lyall always was a little old-fashioned in general. He shook his head. "Inside is probably better, you're right. Who knows how many more of those things there will be, and just how much they understand. After you."

He motioned to Alex's car, wondering now if his own change was some kind of item, as well, but nothing seemed out of place or unfamiliar....

With a push of the little 'unlock' symbol on his security system, they were free to hop inside. As soon as Lyall was in, he pressed the lock-all switch on the driver's door and started up the engine. The air conditioner blasted lukewarm air into the cab; he swiped the filters down.

"These fucking things," he said, more to himself, as he reversed out of the stall. "I'm surprised we haven't got animal control in a tizzy."

He exited the parking lot, not without another look to the ring on his finger. He flicked a glance at Lyall. "So, anything new?"

"It may be that most people don't even notice them, the way most people don't notice the network," Lyall answered absently, and started pulling things from his pockets to check them, including the little blue notebook that he kept in the inside pocket of his jacket most days. That wound up sitting on his knee as he checked through his wallet with a frown.

It took him a beat more to notice it was leatherbound now, and had a little gold-leaf note at the bottom. "What's this...."

How convenient for their aggressive gardeners if that were the case. Alex blew an annoyed puff of air up at his bangs.

Eyes on the road, he waited in silence until Lyall spoke again. "What's what?" he prompted, not yet looking over.

"That book I bought, back before all this started... or right about when all this started." Lyall replaced everything else in his pockets and picked the book up again. "It has a date on it, now. And it's... changed. It wasn't quite this shade before, or this well-constructed." Really, it looked almost fancy, though he supposed if the date was remotely correct, it was standard for the time.

"Oh yeah?" Alex risked a quick glance at the item in question. "What's the date?"

"Eighteen forty-eight to eighteen-fifty," Lyall read aloud, and opened the little book. Nothing on the first page... or the first dozen he flipped through, though he did finally find one a dozen more in. Short, mostly describing a night out with two men and their female companions. It was rather scathing towards the females, in particular. "There isn't much in it, but it does seem to be from those years.... How strange."

He did a double take. "Eighteen-fifty?" he echoed, almost incredulous.

The eighteen hundreds... That was too far from what he thought he'd remembered, wasn't it? But Alex wasn't versed enough in history to know how many hundreds of years they were close or far apart.

"Anything else in it?"

"I've only found one entry... handwritten, personal, it looks like someone's journal... oh wait, here's another, dated some time later." He didn't stop to read that one, he just kept flipping. "Those are the only two. The rest is blank. The pages are much finer than they were, though... I suppose along with the rest of the thing. I don't know much about antiques, but it does seem authentic."

And why wouldn't it be, if all his visions so far had been from that time period, or close to it? At least before the twentieth century, he was sure of that.

He mulled over that for a bit, lips pressed tightly together and scrunched in thought. When he started talking, it was with a meandering sort of tone. "In these... memories or whatever, I've seen a journal, too. Leather-bound, old, like the kind you'd see in a museum or game. People wrote to each other in it, like the medieval's version of messaging."

He took in a deliberate breath and let it out with a huff. "I dunno, man. It's like there's no rhyme or reason to what we 'get'."

"That's certainly interesting. Though this... doesn't seem out of place, considering what I've seen in this other man's life. This other werewolf," he corrected, making a little face. He shut the journal again, staring down at the cover. "So no rhyme or reason that we can determine, I suppose. Maybe you'll find a new vision that includes that ring of yours, for all we know." If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that everything each individual saw was connected somehow-- part of a single life, or three intertwined lives in the case of Bakura.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(no subject)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

aaaand echo approved, so here I go finally :B

\o/

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject