2020-06-08 Baby's First Assassination
Baby's First Assassination
Participants: Elle (2021) Olivia (2021)
Storyteller: Elle (2021)
Location: A small park in San Francisco
Date and Time: 2020-06-08
Summary: Olivia attempts to take the lead on a vengeance killing.
The park Olivia is scouting out now seems perfectly normal. There's a little old lady sitting on a bench and watching her cute little dog bound about but no one else is here this morning. The street nearby is completely normal, with cars moving freely. A couple are parked in front of the little ice cream parlor. Really, it's a idyllic afternoon. No sign of tree murderers whatsoever.
---
Stolen clothes are the order of the day. The jeans she found are a little too big because they're men's jeans, but she needed pants with pockets to hold the thorns she's carrying; five of them, in which slumber the spirits she found growing in a bush of solanum americanum, a leafy plant with tiny berries that look almost like baby tomatoes but that you mustn't eat unless you want to risk dying. The spirits were reluctant to give up their essence to the binding even for Olivia's impassioned plea, but ultimately were convinced when she argued that spreading poison was really their job, and that spreading it to the enemies of Gaia was probably the best way they could do so. She wonders what they dream of as they sleep.
But that's a secondary concern. The first one is the old woman on the bench. Olivia is naive to the ways of the Wyrm, but she's misanthropic enough to put nothing past the kindly little old lady and smart enough to know that an old woman would be an ideal hiding spot for a demon (or whatever; she's not yet clear on that part of the cosmology) who needs to possess a minion, because who would suspect Nana of being possessed by the devil?
Which means there's a reasonable chance the little anklebiter is actually a hellhound. She dips a hand casually into her pocket and pulls out a thorn, cupping it in her palm as she walks to the park. She aims for nonchalance as she walks toward Del's burnt husk as if simply looking at an oddity, then turns toward Granny Lucifer to greet, "Hi, sorry to bother you. You know what's up with that burnt tree over there?" she asks, voice aiming for somewhere between concerned and suspicious. "We don't have a firebug in town, do we?"
---
"Oh dear. I think it was dry lightning, sweetie." The little old lady looks up and adjusts her glasses, taking in Olivia only slowly. She is wrinkled and frail, moving with a tremor in her hand that seems to make any kind of effort something of a chore. The smile, however, seems to be genuine. "I am not sure. I came to the park for my reading and the poor thing was gone." She blinks, and the little dog sits down beside her. It appears to be a miniature corgi.
"I'm sorry to see it go. You have fond memories of the tree, I guess? It's been here for as long as you have, I think, dearie."
---
Olivia's 'oh' expression isn't entirely faked. "Yeah, I guess I do have good memories." She shrugs nonchalantly and reminds herself not to squeeze the thorn hard enough to draw blood. "I've only been here once, so it spooked me to come back and see that. But I probably shouldn't have jumped straight to roving arsonists." She affects an embarrassed little chuckle. "Seems paranoid now."
Olivia glances down at the corgi, then back up at the old woman. "Am I distracting you from watching your dog? You seem nice, so I don't want to put you out or anything."
'Dearie,' she said. Olivia can't swear no non-possessed person would ever say that word, but it doesn't sound likely.
---
The little lady shakes her head slowly. "No... It's nice to have some company. Alex will sit there like a good boy. Won't you, Alex?" The dog barks, as if he might actually know what the lady is saying. She smiles and nods. "Go ahead and sit if you like, sweetie. I'll just be right here. I might do a little knitting."
Somewhere nearby, Elle is taking position. Olivia knows it. However, she has as yet seen no sign.
---
There were craft days at the hospital. Nothing that would allow access to sharps, obviously, but some weaving was in there. Olivia wishes, not for the first time today, that she'd had the materials to weave a little bracelet out of that she could have tied her defense-thorns to instead of having to dip into a pocket. She wishes, not for the first time since escaping the hospital, that she had money so she could buy a phone to keep up with the news. Well, wish in one hand, Liv. You work with what you got. She keeps the thorn cupped in her hand as she gingerly sits on the far end of the bench and is quiet for just long enough to realize she genuinely doesn't have a better conversational gambit in her than, "So, do you come here often?" Yeah, good one, Liv. Now buy her a drink and tell her you're senior VP of a major movie studio.
---
Olivia sees a couple of guys walk out of the ice cream shop across the way, carrying cones. They cross over to the park, entering about fifteen feet or so apart, subtly boxing her in along with the elderly woman. As they approach Olivia hears the woman murmuring, "If you surrender now, dearie, we're not going to hurt you. You need to come back with us. To the hospital. You're sick."
The lady sounds stilted, like she isn't used to making this speeches. They could have picked a better frontman for this expedition.
---
Discovering the trap has been sprung is the weirdest feeling Olivia's ever had. Part of her expected this and is grimly unsurprised; another part of her feels her heart and stomach turn to water before dropping inside her to pool around her pelvis with fear; and a third part of her accepts the danger and the fear as natural but also irrelevant to what has to be done, even while the second part of her is so close to dissociating in panic that it feels like the narrator of a nature documentary is in her mind, passionlessly describing everything she's seeing and feeling, up to and including saying 'the voice in her head sounded like a stranger as it passionlessly described its own narration...'
Enough.
Eyes narrowed, Olivia glares at Granny Badness while ootching her butt away on the bench, aiming for every centimeter of distance she can get. Meanwhile, the coldly driven part of her realizes she'll probably never have a better chance than this to just ask the question, so she asks it: "What's it like, being what you are?"
Olivia isn't stalling for time, or at least isn't just stalling for time. She genuinely wants to know, before she has to kill the old woman and lose her chance to get more answers.
---
Another person is crossing the street from the far side of the park to the two men. A small woman, blonde, green eyes, dressed for a jog. Just in case you break past Granny, perhaps. The elderly woman looks surprised by the question but then she starts to laugh. "It feels terrible. Like my skull is being eaten from the inside by something that *hungers* for my pain!" She laughs louder, and her eyes flash red. Olivia makes out sharp teeth in that maw. "But it will settle for your flesh." So much for the disguise. The question seems to have ruined all the Granny's self-control in an instant.
The park is well enclosed by privacy trees, and that fact right now means no one will see the fight that is about to ensue. It's as close to a perfect arena as one can get in the city.
---
The thorn in Olivia's hand, one of five she was able to bind, is nearly half an inch in diameter. Its base is round and swollen, pregnant with poison, turning it into the shape of a teardrop but also giving it enough weight that it can be meaningfully thrown. She stands as suddenly as she can, the narrator inside her marveling at the smoothness and speed her conviction grant her despite fear wanting to make her legs weak, and she throws the thorn at the old woman. It's a competent toss, but her aim has nothing to do with it striking home. The thorn *wants* to bite the bane living inside the old woman.
---
The thorn leaps from your hand and pierces the old lady's side. She howls, blood leaking from the wound, and throws herself at Olivia across the bench. From infirm to leaping over six feet in an instant, she immediately lashes out with hands that have now mutated to misshapen claws. The glasses are lost as claws find Olivia's arm and send blood splattering into the grass.
---
Olivia sees the blow coming and her animal instincts kick in, raising her expendable left arm to block the old lady's evil claws and paying the price as hot pain rips through her torn flesh, making her gasp even as she swings the injured arm in a clumsy backhand, pushing her assailant back a few feet and buying her room to backpedal from the animalistic old biddy. She wants to keep fighting despite being outnumbered, despite being wounded, despite not having enough ammunition for the number of devils: none of those matter compared to her cold fury at what they did to Del.
But the plan does matter. Elle told Olivia to find a tree and get into it.
So she does. She makes a quick break for the copse and leaps for the lowest branch she can see, wincing in anticipation of the pain that will slow her climb but steely in ignoring it. Her fingers latch onto the thick limb of a fir, and even as muscles made strong by adrenaline launch her through the best pull-up of her adult life, the tree branch itself bows subtly to lend its springiness to her effort, helping her find purchase. Her sneakers scrabble against the trunk as she pushes herself upward, hopefully away from her pursuers, hopefully toward safety, hopefully to a place where she won't get in Elle's way.
"Sorry," she pants at the tree once she's standing on the branch and able to stop kicking the poor thing's bark off.
---
The three approaching people give up all vestiges of propriety and begin sprinting toward the tree where Olivia has posted herself. Claws and ridged backs start to appear, showing their bestial nature.
At the base of the tree, the little dog is barking furiously, teeth bared.
---
Olivia glares down at the corgi, which is probably also possessed by a bane but at least is too small to seem to be able to chase her. Not so the humans, or human-shaped things or whatever they are. Bad arm wrapped around the fir's trunk for support, she digs in her pocket for a thorn and closes her fingers over it. Despite her carelessly rough grip, the thorn doesn't bite her because she is not its prey. She hurls the seed at the nearest human, wanting to slow him down with pain and poison.
---
The one struck stumbles in mid stride. He is passed by the man beside him and the blonde, both charging toward the tree with murder in their reddened eyes. They are bearing down on Olivia quickly, snarling with claws out stretched. A branch blocks the blonde's way and she carves through it like the wood is tissue paper, showing just how little a tree can truly do to stop them.
Then you hear a tremendous roar. It is pitched low, so as not to echo off of every wall and street for miles, but a roar it is nonetheless, a rumble that shakes the ground and pierces the brain with implicit violence. A moment later, Olivia sees the largest creature she has ever encountered outside of a zoo. It bounds forward on all fours, a sixteen foot long four thousand pound polar bear with enormous claws.
Rising to two feet, the bears tears up an iron bench that must weigh hundreds of pounds, ripping it free of the concrete plugs and bolts that hold it to the ground. The bench is lobbed at the nearest of the Fomori as he stumbles and waves because of poison, smashing into him and splattering his body across the grass. The others stop charging to look back and stare openly at the sight.
---
That strange sense of division in Olivia's senses takes over again. Part of her is scared shitless by the reality of Elle's power, a thing that had been hypothetical until just a few moments ago. Part of her is jabbering nonsense to try to distract herself from her fear, demanding to know where Elle came from and how Olivia missed seeing her approach. But the biggest part of her doesn't care about any of this, just punishing her enemies. She grabs another poison-pregnant thorn from her pocket, leaving only two more, and throws it at the blonde who can go right to hell for cutting up the fir's branch.
---
Olivia's arrow strikes true, this time hobbling the blonde as she stares, slackjawed, at the approaching behemoth. Elle hits the second male Fomor in the same ways a semi truck does when rushing downhill at a hapless pedestrian. There is gore and viscera in the bear's fur now, and she hardly even applied her claws to make him explode into messy paste. She roars again. The blonde stumbles backward, unable to easily run with the thorn and its poison already buried inside of her.
The tree Olivia is in has little to say, but she can tell they are pleased.
---
Maybe it would be wiser to save the remaining two thorns for the future, but why risk one of these things being able to hurt Elle because Olivia got greedy with her magic toys? She digs out the last two thorns and throws them down at the blonde, who may be having trouble running but isn't having trouble enough. They fly into her like the world's biggest mosquitoes and inject their venom deep into her bloodstream. Olivia shouts a fierce, wordless scream of triumph, viciously hoping she's managing to kill not just the human hosts but the Banes inside them.
---
Once the blonde goes down Elle's form rapidly twists collapses down into that of a small, very nude blonde woman. She steps into the nearby bushes to retrieve a messenger bag and begins to dress, all without missing a beat. There is blood in her hair, but she is ignoring it for the moment. "We should leave quickly. No one will know what to make of what happened here... Take your thorns." She speaks matter-of-factly as she works. "I'm sorry we didn't capture anyone. Do what you need to do and we can be out of here before someone sees..."
---
Olivia flushes a little at Elle's nudity and looks away even as an exasperated part of her brain (is this the fifth voice? she's lost count) asks what she expected to see. "Right," she mutters through a thick voice and drops down off her perch to a heavy but not totally graceless landing on the ground. She hurries her way to each corpse, rolling them for her thorns and digging them out, making a mental note for the future that she needs gloves the next time she does this. And probably a hair net, too. The blood she left on the ground is likely a problem, but there's no way to hide it without leaving an obvious trail of scuff marks over to her tree, so she just has to hope the parched California dirt will soak it up before forensics can arrive. Besides, every second spent here rolling dead bodies makes her back itch where she's pretty sure a cop's bullet is going to hit her. While her back is properly turned to Elle, she doesn't quite babble, "It's okay. We did what had to be done. Now they know they can lose five soldiers per tree they burn. Might make them think, right? Are you okay?"
---
Elle just grins at Olivia when she asks about the bear's well-being and holds up a thumb. Dressed now, she straightens and slings her bag over her shoulder. "No worries. Once we get some distance I'll heal you up really quick. Gaia will help us both out there. But first... We need to book it. Can you run?" The blonde looks up at Olivia, no sign of the same conflicts in her mind as the woman before her. Perhaps Elle is used to murder and death. She's a giant bear, after all. This might just be her world. "You did a good job."
---
Olivia rolls her eyes at the compliment. "Right, because I was so instrumental to putting them all down," she says cynically, and examines her wounded arm. The cuts are a furious red, but the pain isn't too bad. She's had worse headaches. More importantly, the wounds aren't as deep as they feel, already clotting shut. It would be better to bandage them than risk leaving a blood trail as she runs, but even if she had time to rob one of the corpses of their shirt, she doesn't trust it to not have some kind of spiritual stink on it that will infect the wound.
"I can run. Let's fucking book."
---
Fortunately, there is not really any more blood to hit the ground. What's done is done. It's unlikely anyone will check that closely given the massacre that occurred. Elle nods at Olivia and breaks into a jog, heading away from the scene of the attack.
