ic Welcome to Springsvale, AZ(IC)

[Ari]

GM

 

June 12th, 2014, 4.45 PM,

Half-Moon Summit Park, west Springsvale, Arizona

 

"Found it like this. Last week." said Jane Aqui as she climbed out of the truck, the middle-aged park ranger tilting her broad brown hat a little farther from her eyes, the better to squint at the ungainly, smelly heap in front of her. She'd kept a polite few feet from the new arrivals since first meeting them, the odd crew seeming to get a little more awe even than the usual outside the world's super-capital. Even the evidently taciturn Jane had dug a little deeper than the usual "Can you really do magic?" that seemed to come up every time they were recognized. Which admittedly had been twice.

 

Springsvale wasn't much. At the best of times, and especially when perched a few hundred feet above the valley the town stood in, it was compact and industrious, a collection of pale houses, a brightly-painted school and dark warehouses, offices and factories hugging miles of the scrub-rich eastern bank by a small, fast-running, very blue river, the town's dusty road running south to the I-15 highway only a few miles distant. A few bits of suburbia spilled away from the river, looking very much like fingers on some skeletal hand. Somewhere behind them, far out of sight past the hills, lurked the rugged Grand Canyon's eastern end. Far below, another truck pulled into town, one of dozens they'd seen since getting to Springsvale forty-seven minutes ago. Small ponds and rivlets spilled away from the main Springwater, but beside those distractions it ran as direct as compass point.

 

They weren't there for the sights, though. At least, not the natural, or man-made ones. They had been called here to deal with the giant snake lying in a dead, mouldering heap in front of them, surrounded by sickly-glowing runes. A small camp of white tents had sprung up in another clearing about 50 yards away, from Phoenix University judging by the emblem a few of the laughing, chatting twenty-somethings and dignified-looking elders sported, and the comically grand white-red flag.

 

The heat and wind hadn't been kind to the corpse, it was bleached enough to disguise whatever color it had been before, and was now a feeble yellow-brown. It was lying on its back, belly cut open and resting a gaping, sunken head on its coils. It was already sagging from decay. They had been able to smell it long before they saw it.

 

Ranger Aqui cleared her throat "Gathered you folks knew about this...kind of thing. Heard it from those kids who do that show about the town. It's not normally that strange. 'Least not giant-snake-strange." She turned her squint to the ghoulishly-painted necromancer, the robed witch, and the biker-looking woman with the stick "So..." her squint turned quizzically to the deceased serpentine object of their distress "...what's this mean?"

[trollthumper]

Nick Cimitiere studied the gigantic dead snake, trying to maintain his cool. That was more physical than spiritual, though - he wasn't exactly used to the dry heat that came with places like Arizona. And while the cooling waters of the River Styx did help keep him from baking in the heavy leather of his jacket, even they had their limits.

"Well," he said, "I remember reading somewhere that snake tastes a lot like chicken, so it's a boon for the nearest barbecue place..."

He shook his head. "More seriously... gonna require closer inspection." He took a step up towards the carved open snake, careful to watch his footsteps. Giant magical zombie snakes were a rarity in his line of work, but not unheard of. "Could be a lot of things... bit small to be the Jormungandr, and if it was a basilisk, we'd probably be seeing a lot more petrified wildlife. Maybe one of Typhon's errant spawn..." His eyes fell on the glyphs surrounding the snake; maybe there was something about them...

[Supercape]

Pitch stayed on her bike, smoking away. Tazel had fired her up, so you looked like Pitch. Leathers, studs, smoke, fire. About the only thing that remained of Carmen was her limp and her tattoo. And the Cantos Devil Stick, her cane. 

 

Nick knew far more about sigils and signs that she did, she guessed. On accountin' of him being an expert in magic and she knowing just a bit more than some jo dragged from the road. 

 

Of course, Tazel might know something. He could read anything. 

 

Hey hot stuff, can you read those? And no stupid answers. If you can read them, tell me what they say! she said, without speaking, to the demon rumbling in her belly. 

 

The heat was heavy here, but as Pitch it didn't bother her. Even as Carmen, she had grown up around dusty tracks in the south, and the desert was familiar to her. Thing was, there usually wasn't a soul around down here. No witnesses. 

 

Unless one of the more regular snakes or lizards had slithered by to witness what happened. 

[Ecalsneerg]

Equinox stood a little ways from the corpse, looking down at the runes. Her eyes were narrowed both from the sun and from the plumes of smoke rising from the cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She tugged the brim of a wide-brimmed black cowboy hat further forward. "What worries me right now is what killed it." 

 

<Bigger snake?> suggested Hayley, lying flat on her back nearby, sunning herself.

 

<I hope not. But snakes can't draw sigil circles.>

 

She turned to Jane Aqui. "Why are the kids hanging about?" She inclined her head at the nearby tents. "I understand this doesn't happen much, but if someone did some heavy duty magic, and they're still around, it's likely to be pretty unsafe."

[Ari]

GM

 

"Hm. Them?" Jane glanced at the little camp and shrugged "This happened a week back. If it was gonna to hurt anybody, it would have when we found it. Got a letter too, according to the mayor it said that 'The hilltop is harmless.' Last few letters have been true enough, so we figured it was alright." Her gray eyes met Equinox's, all calm resignation "Early warning too, not a lotta folks who'll take guard duty on Half-Moon Summit. Got more than one park to take care of here." Taking a sip of coffee from a thermos, the park ranger examined the shriveled corpse for a moment, idly swatting aside a few flies.

 

'But it's so hard!' wheedled Tazel 'If I weaken myself with frivolous jobs, then...erm...' the demon withered under Pitch's mental glare '...Fine, it's a prayer. A very stupid prayer to a god of snakes. A-heh-hem: "Oh Scaled Father! I call your children to my embrace, let them bridge the Gulf of Shadow and drink deep of the world of life! Let them not wander, but lay their coils in rest!" I believe those witless Serpents made many prayers like that. And they aren't human, or subject to your laws. I merely comment...Also there is a rattle-tail by your foot. Give it a kick.'

 

"Hello!" came the small, dry, rustling voice "Are you a friend? You smell like one!"

[trollthumper]

Nick squatted down to check out the runes in closer detail, then backed away in a fashion that didn't indicate panic, just a desire to clear the area. "All right," he said, "whoever did this knew their stuff. This wasn't an example of 'let's summon the first primordial snake we can think of.' This was an invocation to Yig, often said to be the secret god of the Serpent People. I'm pretty sure Jormungandr has him on the Christmas card list and Quetzalcoatl's not returning his calls."

He turned to Jane. "You said you'd been getting letters. How often before - or after - these events? Any insignia? Were they delivered with postage, or did they just appear in the inbox?"

[Supercape]

"Yig?" Replied Pitch internally to Tazel, who she felt was being particularly passive aggressive today. His moods were mercurial to say the least.

"Nick, its a prayer to some dud called Yig!" She yelled at the necromancer dping the real legwork, in a friendly manner.

"Hey buster, what happened to your big friend? Some kinda snake eater around?" She asked the reptile at her feet. Her mouth moved, but the sounds came from the unnerving whistling head of the Cantos cane, a blackened metal goats head.

[Ari]

GM

"I think so!" the rattlesnake slithered over Pitch's boots, sniffing curiously at the smell of treated cow hide "When Big Brother appeared, he was talking to somebody, they smelled like that black rock humans put everywhere in the sands. Big Brother was all "I want to eat that town!" and the other was all "Nooooo, I want your soul!", and then there was this big flash of light! Then I saw that Big Brother was dead. There was this big shiny thing sticking through him, but it melted when the Day Spear shone on it. Can I have a lizard?"

Coiling around Pitch's left ankle, the snake looked up at her with wide, piercing eyes. It was almost puppylike.

"Nah, no signature" Jane told Nick evenly "but they got the same handwriting, really blocky and straight. Almost cut through the paper. We get a few every couple of months, warning us not to do somethin' or go somewhere. Only got one other like this one though, back in April. Came in the day before something was spotted near the river mouth. They've been good advice and go straight to the mayor somehow, so we guess whoever's sending them is on the level"

An expression flickered in her eyes for the first time "There somethin' to this? Some kind of mystic sign?"

[Supercape]

"Sure" whispered the Cantos Cane. Pitch thought the words, the goats head hissed them. 

 

"Fairs fair" she said to nobody in particular, and snatched up a small crawling lizard, dropping it by the snake. 

 

Tarmac? she guessed. Black rock in the sands. Big Brother must be referring to the dessicated enormous snake. Shiny thing, light? could be anything. At least, anything that wanted to eat the snakes soul. 

 

It wasn't a lot to go on. Yig, snakes, and...presumably something else. Something even more frightening than giant snakes, as fare as she could make. She frowned, smoke belching out of her. It was dusty desert towns like this that could get swept away with some kind of ethereal bust up. And she was kinda fond of these dusty desert towns. She had sure seen enough of them, free wheeling the roads with bikers both friend and non so friendly. 

 

Why Springsvale? Just some ant in the way of the boot, or something more?

 

"Mayor of the town gettin' some personal advice from somebody then? Wonder why he got so lucky. Are y'all sittin on an oil field or somethin'?" she asked Jane. "What makes Springfield shine?"

[Ari]

GM

With a small hiss of joy, the rattlesnake reared up and pounced on the offered prey, disentangling itself from Pitch to better kill and devour the luckless animal.

 

Jane shrugged, the brief flicker of life going out "Not much. Up until last year our biggest draw was how close to the Canyon we are. Then the boom happened," she gestured with a tanned, arm to the spread of factories and warehouses spilling off of the road "right before Ambrose up and vanished, and suddenly people come from all over to work or buy stuff from there. The town owns it all, too, so we get a cut. Nothin' as exciting as oil, but it's welcome." Glancing back at the trio, her eyes suddenly lit on something over their shoulders, and she sighed wearily "Just a minute, some of those Phoenix kids are trying to edge closer again, I'll go handle 'em."

 

And indeed, several of the university party had detached from the camp in the trees, and were approaching the ritual site. Jane squared her shoulders and marched off to confront them, her boots crackling on the dry grass and fallen twigs.

 

Meanwhile, Tazel had stirred to life again. Well, more life.

'This is fascinating, Carmen. Really, small-town economics was my favorite subject in Hell School, but is it really important? I, for one, think our rattle-tailed friend's mention of a 'big shiny thing' making kebab out that scaled cretin is a little telling. Get the bossy one in the hat to repeat the spell, and you'll see why we should just leave this alone.'

[Supercape]

Recite a spell? Ya think?

 

Tazel had to obey her. But for one thing. Telling the truth. And the deceptive imp had many motives and much cunning. Very often he told her the truth - just to keep her off balance. 

 

Instead she ground her teeth in annoyance and coasted her motorcycle, engine ticking and grumbling, across the dry cracked earth to Nick. Black smoke oozed from her body and her bike, wafting up to the desert skies. When Tazel bubbled in her muscles and bones, it was hard not to notice her. The plume of smoke could be seen for miles. 

 

"Nick, these signs. Are they a spell?" she asked thoughtfully. "Might be something we should use, say the words our selves. Find out what's happening here?"

 

Carmen was all for detective work. But more of the "Jump in and see what happens" variety of finding things out than anything methodical. 

[trollthumper]

Nick turned back to Pitch. "Well, if you're talking about the sigils," he said, "they're part of said invocation to Yig. Which means either somebody got this summoning quite wrong and didn't have the idea to go into the snakeskin boot business, someone summoned him for the express purpose of defeating him, or..." He shook his head. "It could be the summoning was interrupted. And not by someone casual. This wasn't a matter of some college kids taking the wrong turn and walking into a Satanic ritual; if someone disrupted this, they knew what was going down and how to stop it. Which means there are probably multiple people in town who are players in the game."

The last time Nick had taken a trip to a small town to deal with an occult incident way out of everyone's league, it had been the result of an agitator trying to get everyone to bust out the torches and pitchforks. He really hoped that wasn't the case here.

He headed over to Jane, aware that he'd probably be drawing the cameras off of the snake and onto him. Somehow, he could live with that - less chance of the photos ending up on the Internet and someone trying to piece together the glyphs for themselves. "These letters," he said. "There any surviving copies, or was it a 'catches fire after reading' type deal?"

[Ari]

GM

 

Jane squinted at him for a moment before replying slowly "Yeah...the mayor keeps them at the town hall. Doesn't know what to do with 'em, just hopes they'll be useful for somethin'. Only one caught fire that I know of, the first one, telling him 'I guard Springsvale with my life. Fear nothing'. Just jumped into the air and burned to a crisp. No smoke though." A soft camera-click turned her swiftly back to the object of her mission, as some of the Phoenix students had paused on their way to the snake and were, as Nick expected, snapping photos of the strange duo and their outlandish backdrop.

 

One of them, a little younger and sandier-haired than the rest, stepped up to the ranger and necromancer with a cheerful smile. "Hi there! I'm Karen, came here with the Phoenix crew, school paper." she said to Nick, gesturing to the giant snake husk "Is that thing from, uh...where Terra-King hangs out? Sum-Terra? Ooh!" her eyes lit up "Is Set comin' here? Set's thing is snakes, right? All those At Large files he's got his picture's in, he's wearing that snake-mummy getup."

Edited June 27, 2014 by Arichamus

[Supercape]

Pitch couldn't help a smirk at Nick's new groupie. Her mouth curled and her eyebrows bent. Even the smoke curling out of her mouth seemed to chortle in a puff. 

 

"Terra-King? Set? Man, the kid's here really must be bored, huh?" she said to herself. The words still came out though, soft, low, and smoky. 

 

In a fuller voice, she considered the situation. "Well, I guess we should take a look at the Mayor back at the Ranch, huh? See if we can make some sense of those letters. Somebody ain't up to no good in Springsvale, that's for sure"

 

She kicked her motorcycle into gear and revved the engine slightly. 

 

Tazel, you can read anything, right? I'll want your eyes on those letters ya old toad! she croaked to the demon bubbling away inside her. 

[trollthumper]

As Pitch blazed off towards town hall, Nick was left to deal with the semi-adoring public. He couldn't say for sure whether any of these kids would be wise enough to leave magic to the professionals - says the guy who got cosmic power because he was dumb enough to get in a car crash - so he decided to play it safe. "What happened here was a clear case of a summoning gone very, very wrong," he said. "We're not sure what happened to the guy who invoked the snake, nor are we fully clear on where the snake came from. And, judging by the gigantic corpse cooking under the desert sun, it's clear this got less than satisfactory results. And I'm sure that if Set were to come out here, he'd say something about snakes being last season, likely blasted all over social media as advanced warning of his presence." He gestured towards the snakes. "So remember one of the key rules of initiate magic: never summon anything bigger than your own head. Thinking big may result in big messes."

[Ari]

GM

 

'W-what? B-but we have to perform the ritual! Then I-then you'll see the powers we so foolishly tamper with! Don't take us awaaaaaaay....'

For a demon, Tazel had a strange fear of high speeds, and was soon howling as Pitch roared away from the clearing and set off down the hill for the picturesque town hall. The going was easy, and the afternoon sun gave the river and town a pleasant, old-timey feel that went well with the rushing wind and rumbling motorcycle.

 

At last the hellfiend recovered some of its composure. 'Fine. I'll read your slimy human scribbles and make them fit with your stunted human sense of order. The things I do, and am I ever thanked? Nooo it's always "Tazel do this! Tazel do that! Tazel burn this thing for me because my puny human body can't control this facile physical universe"...ingrates...should burn this town down...'

 

Springsvale wasn't too big, and before the demon could really get going Pitch arrived at the low white building marked 'Springsvale Town Hall' above the door. On the door was a knocker, which summoned a sleepy-looking old man with a head of white hair that looked like a cloud had fallen on him, and a small sign: 'No Solicitors/Sorcerers'

 

"Can I 'elp, miss...?" the old man asked dubiously, looking Pitch up and down remarkably like a disapproving grandfather.

 

---

 

"Wow!" Karen's eyes sparkled "A summoning? Ooh! What if-what if, this was the prelude to an invasion of snakes? This could be a new supervillain on the rise!" scribbling gleefully on her notepad, she went on chattily "So, that thing being dead means it didn't work, right? But why? If it's a failure why leave it around for people to see and know you ****ed up? Pardon my French, but couldn't it also mean that it's just not done? Maybe something BIG needs that snake corpse to work! Like...like in conjunction with stars or an eclipse or something. Also," she looked up, blowing a few strands of dry hair out of her frowning face "if it failed...why're the runes still all glowy? If the spell was wrong, or just got messed up, why is all this still here?"

[Supercape]

Tazel, you are in a particularly fractious mood today, aren't you?

 

Pitch almost liked him like that. 

 

She grimaced at the sign. No Sorcerers. Well, was she one? Close...but hopefully no cigar. On reflection, as she stood smoking away, with red eyes, a dimly lit red mouth, the occasional wisp of flame and studded leather wrought with infernal images...a cigar would not go amiss. 

 

"Pitch" she answered through red-lit teeth.

 

"I know you don't want sorcerers. I can tell you I ain't no solicitor though" she smiled. Pitch looked scary enough when Tazel was bubbling in her veins and bones. 

 

"I'm looking to speak to the Mayor. And i'm looking to speak to him about some letters he got, that might be pertaining to a big ass snake in the desert, sprinkled with sorcerous writing" he explained. 

 

She tapped her chin with one finger for a moment. 

 

"And come to think of it...can you tell me why the sign says no Sorcerers? I'm not objecting, its just a strange kinda  thing to hang on a town hall..."

[Ari]

GM

"'Pitch', huh?" the old man mused aloud, peering at the woman's face closely for a long moment. Shrugging, he moved further inside, swinging the door open behind him "Well, anyone that open about being darned weird can't be too dangerous, c'mon in. Name's Ben Shammer. Uh," he glanced down at the demon-carrier's boots "wipe your feet on the mat, would ya?"

As Carmen entered the cool, low building, Tazel almost gibbered 'So...clean...yrgh!'

Following the old man, Pitch encountered nothing more sinister than some neat, small offices, all of them occupied by quiet people working at their desks. Most looked up at the unfamiliar footfall, and then even more at the unfamiliar sight of a biker marching down the hall, but not a one of them showed much curiosity beyond that.

The Mayor turned out to be Eddie Tumlin, a tall, raw-boned man with an air of tired strength. He was looking over a pile of forms when the pair barged in, and jerked from being half-asleep to fully awake when he saw the woman glowing with an inner fire. Clearing his throat, Ben stepped over to the desk and muttered something about "The notes" involving those "arrivals". Eyes narrowing as the old man whispered huskily, his voice partly drowned out of Pitch's hearing by the droning ceiling fan, the mayor nodded and, reaching under his desk with a stretch that moved the muscle and bone under his shirt in fascinating ways, retrieved a small and sturdy metal box that he plunked on the desk, obscuring the forms he'd been reading either by accident or design.

A moment, a turn of a key, and Pitch had a stack of letters in white paper, in white envelopes, with a simple name in the sender's corner. One word: 'Springsvale'. They practically crackled at Carmen's touch, and even Tazel stopped his griping to 'peer' at them, his own senses feeling out the power that sheathed the crisp paper.

"They're all there. Never threw one away, burned, shredded, chucked in the river, nothing." Speaking for the first time, Mayor Tumlin's voice was grim and slow. Like he was weighing every word. "If you're wanting the writer, that's the only clue we have."

Edited July 25, 2014 by Arichamus

[Supercape]

"Thank you Mr. Mayor" said Pitch, trying her best not to smoke and cinder. Staying indoors too long, when Tazel was firing her up, often left some nasty soot and smoke damage. 

 

Normally she wouldn't defer to authority. Not her bag, man. But right now, she figured she needed Springsvale on their side. 

 

The Mayor looked like a wiry pole to her. Shrunken, somehow. To her mind, either that meant he was rotting and weak, or his strength had just condensed down to a whipping cord. She just didn't know which it was for him. Burnt out, or burning?

 

"Have you read them?" she asked him, and Ben. 

 

A thought struck her. 

 

"Arrivals?" she asked Ben. "You mean, more than jus' a big damn snake in the desert?"

[Ari]

GM

"Nope. Been around half a dozen arrivals cropping up lately. Most of them don't end up like the snake, of course," the Mayor added, glancing reassuringly at Pitch "they just snoop around for a day or two and vanish near the river's mouth". His eyes met hers just long enough to catch the Hellish flames wafting behind them, and he withdrew his gaze quickly.

"As for the letters, 'course I read 'em! They don't say much, though. No riddles or anything, just very specific and simple: "The lake water stirs, do not spill blood in it", or "Avert all eyes from the dog park". No clue about anything that we could tell, just that weird stuff's going on here for some reason, and somebody out there wants to help us out. Far as I care, that makes them a friend of ours."

A cloud passed over the Mayor's lean face "But if it's gotten to where they're killing these things...I'd like it all stopped, if it can be. And if our 'friend' has to be stopped too...that's fine by me".

The power in the letters was a little clearer to Pitch's magic sight. It thrummed with the energy of creation, with the unknowable potential of life itself. Something alive had sent these letters, something allied to that force. Though why they named themselves after the town was still hazy...

---

Meanwhile, Nick's attempt to catch a glimpse of what had happened to the snake had hit an unexpected snag.

Casting one's eyes back to the death of something wasn't a guaranteed success, but it almost never fractured into a myriad of endless spirals of possibility, showing a dizzying, impossible picture of what might have gone down a few hours ago. Everything imaginable in a single eyeblink; silver blades, fire from the earth, columns of grass, giant skulls gnashing teeth, a horde of opposing serpents writhing across the hill.

The finality of death was somehow being obscured by a dense veil of living power.

[Supercape]

"Thanks Mr. Mayor" she said, forcing it out of her mouth stiffly. She wouldn't go as far as adding "Sir". 

 

"You have been real helpful". 

 

Stepping out side of the hall, she stopped a moment to consider what the man had said, and the options. Things where obscure of course. That was the way of things. And Tazel was unlikely to help. He fed on obscurement. 

 

"Those words. Something about life, energy...and the things that were summoned...dissapearing into the river source? it might jus' be poetic. Might jus' be coincidence. Easy to get fanciful about these things. But any half crazy kid writer might put life and a river source together.,.."

 

Speaking aloud didn't help none. It was just a fanciful notion, that was all. Best see how NIck and Equinox were doing...

 

She kicked started her bike, and flew back to the scene of the crime. If crime it was...

[Ecalsneerg]

"Well, it could be any number of reasons why it's still here," said Equinox. She tipped her hat back a bit to avoid shrouding her face so much, looking intimidating wasn't her aim. "Using magic to reform existing bone matter as a basis for a construct, attempting to reanimate fossils, any number of increasingly implausible and misguided things." She tried a reassuring smile. 

 

"I get this is a little... unusual," said the witch softly. "But the sooner we let the man take a look at it, the sooner we can establish if it's still unsafe, or if what's sitting here's no longer hazardous."

[trollthumper]

Nick attempted to focus his will on the runes and open up his connection to the Fates. But as the storm of images clashed and exploded in his head, his tongue and vocal cords likewise twisted. What normally came out as a dirge reading the inscription off of time's tombstone instead sounded like an Autotuned death rattle that slid up and down in pitch as it went on. And it went on for about fifteen seconds before he could regain control of his own speech faculties.

He turned back towards the college students, who were no doubt staring at him by now. "Sorry about that," he said. "Guess I should have skipped Mexican for lunch." He turned his eyes back towards the sigils. Okay, so trying to tap into the strands of fate wasn't going to work here. But if there was power still going into it...

He closed his eyes, drawing on his inner reserves. There was that unpleasant clicking sensation behind his eyes, as if his retinas were rotating out and getting replaced. When he opened them again, he found himself attuned to the magics of life and death... but he could see the many frequencies and spectrums of those magics. And he could see where those strands lead. Now, if only he could follow the trail...

[Ari]

GM

 

To Nick's reopened eyes the world was suffused with a clear, soft light. The normally invisible forces that intertwined with the physical seethed at the corner of the necromancer's vision, from the symphonic grace of spiraling air elementals to the clockwork rigidity of the time-stream carrying everything inexorably onward.

 

Dwarfing those half-seen wonders was the silver giant leaning over Half-Moon Hill. 

 

It didn't have any one clear shape, besides a vaguely serpentine arc, and was like a mural made up of every imaginable kind of life. Nigh-invisible cells clustered around the 'head', streaming back and enlarging into cats, bushes, gazelles, massive prehistoric beasts and things that looked like nothing Earth could ever hold. Like a ghostly tributary it sprang from the river running through the center of Springsvale.

 

Somehow, it was looking down at him and Equinox.

[trollthumper]

Um.

Nick stood quite still, even though it was clear he'd already been spotted. It was less out of wanting to avoid detection and more out of some primal fear. It bled away quickly, but he was still slightly off his footing as he gazed up at the creation before him. There was always the possibility that this vague conglomeration of all living things - and quite a few dead ones, if the telltale spectral glimmers in its corpus were there - had come about naturally, but it was a very, very slim one. If anything, his thoughts were drifting to when Doctor Archeville had briefly gone mad, and bound a monstrosity of living flesh and dead souls together to stride through Freedom City.

He sidled over towards Equinox as subtly as he could. "So, yeah," he whispered, "something gigantic, spectral, and made up of a whole lot of dead animals is watching us. This has gotten even weirder."