❅ SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PART 3

[nightmods]

SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PART 3

The cracks are starting to show. People have been reforging connections. Rebuilding their senses of self.

Digging into things that are potentially sinister, their curiosity dangerously piqued. Now, too many truths are coming back to the surface for everything to stay suppressed.

Somewhere deep in the MineCorp mines, a wire snaps. Then another, and another.

PROMPTS

a)  A CRACK IN THE DAM

A feeling of déjà vu is commonplace, and people’s dreams start to contain more and more imagery that doesn’t align with the lives they know here in this shitty little town – fantastical sleighs, huge golden globes, fae and monsters. Some people stop automatically responding when their name is called, because the name they’re being called feels wrong. Others discover they have talents at skills they don’t remember ever trying before.

But it remains out of reach until they do something that affirms their true self, an act that goes down to the core of who they are. It might be true love’s kiss, or placing a hand on their signature weapon, or invoking certain words when speaking truth to power. One way or another, once that final requirement is met...it all comes flooding back.

b)  PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER

Your character remembers who they are, but their powers haven’t returned! The nefarious makers of the spell suppressing powers must be defeated. But who are the nefarious makers of the spell?

Several people have several parts of the puzzle. Time to put them together, anonymously, on the network. Skye has taken it upon herself to facilitate a discussion forum online with all accounts highly anonymized and access granted only by a password; details are being spread by word of mouth, friend to friend, always with the warning that just because the accounts are anonymous doesn’t mean that Goluboy or his people couldn’t try to sleuth people’s identities from context clues.

Skye sets a time for when the discussion forum will go live, and at midnight that evening, a website goes live with a simple comment post function and a message that all data will be deleted within 24 hours.

NETWORK LINK

The jig is up!

The source of the curse – and other mischief – is traced to Kyan Goluboy, and Noire Cygne. Confrontation with each of them will trigger counter-attacks and defenses.

c)  CONFRONTING CYGNE

As soon as Cygne is confronted, or receives word from Goluboy that the jig is up, wilis pour into town. Normally, these undead jilted brides will dance to death whoever they get their hands on, but in a hurry they’ll resort to tearing their prey apart. Any person who the wilis get their hands on will be overwhelmed by an empathetic sense of their grief, shame, and hatred, and control of their body will be taken over as they are swept into the deadly dance.

The wilis are strong against physical violence, but can be burned by sunlight, or artificial growlights. People dancing with wilis can be pulled out of their embrace and pulled to safety, but only those with formal dance training stand a chance of changing the course of the deadly waltz, once touched.

The sheriff’s department forms the final level of defense around Noire Cygne’s mansion and person. Get past the chaos of the wilis throughout town, and Sheriff Mallard and her deputies stand between your heroes and the town matriarch.

d)  CONFRONTING GOLUBOY

Destroying the torture machine hidden hidden in MineCorp will end the curse and restore all powers. Too bad everyone will have to sneak past mine workers and security guards who’ve been promised a big fat bonus for bringing your characters alive and restrained to Goluboy’s office. As the man himself would say, nothing makes a person work harder than money. Some of the wilis have made their way into the mines as well...

e)  AFTERMATH

The villains have been defeated!

What will your heroes do with them? Can any of their past victims still be saved? It’s time to convene and pass judgement on your captors, and check that every I is dotted and every T is crossed.

OOC DETAILS
❅ Event Length: This part of the plot will last until 10/15, and the situation with the npcs are meant to be resolved by then, though general CR threads can continue to be backtagged after that.

Comments

[sk8terh8ter]

"If shit goes south, I'm screwed anyway."

If Crowley gets busted, he doesn't have anywhere to go and has no money.

They keep moving, not too closely, so if the cops are zeroed in on Cato that Crowley just looks like some guy ahead of him moving the same direction. Just a dude there to pick up some milk or something.

But then he looks down an aisle just as one of the cops are looking down an aisle, and hears her call it in on the radio clipped to her vest, "I've spotted him. I'm sure it's him."

He bolts ahead of Crowley, being an absolute little shit and trying to draw attention away.

"He's evading. In pursuit."

They're almost to the large doors to the supply room when a burly officer walks out, blocking off their exit.

"Easy, kid," he holds up his hands, not reaching for his side-arm. "We're here to help you. Cato Goodspeed, right?"

Three other police officers hem them in, coming from the aisles around them. But no weapons are drawn.

"Is this who you've been staying with?"

"No, he's just some dude," Little Cato says with a skeptical wrinkle of his nose. "Way to freak out some rando."

He is so not buying the helpful act.

"Sir, I need you to step away from the minor," says the police officer, but he seems to have actually bought Cato's act. They'd been too locked in on Cato to see him with someone. Tunnel vision. "This is police business."

[demonicmiracle]

"The librarian's a bleeding heart, he'd help." There's confidence in Crowley's voice that he doesn't quite feel; Aziraphale's a decent sort, but this would be asking a lot of someone who doesn't even like Crowley. There aren't many other options, though. Julian would do his best, but he's not exactly in a good position to help.

Hopefully this is all a moot point and they can have a discussion about actual back up plans later, when they're both perfectly safe. Crowley hates having to keep some distance, but he knows Cato will kick up a stink about it if he stays too close, and that would only make things worse.

He sees the first office before the man blocks their exit, but it's too late to do anything about it and too late to turn around. He has the sense to look slightly offended when Cato calls him some rando, and holds up his hands as if planning to back off.

But this town loves nothing if not gossip. He can work with that. "Goodspeed, you said? Isn't he the one that got kidnapped a couple years back?" Talking for the sake of it, hoping it might offer a distraction for Cato to get away. "You find a co-conspirator or something? Or, fuck me, don't tell me those foster parents are some sickos, too? Always thought there was something a bit off about them, letting these kids run around like bloody hooligans. What's that other one called? Bobby?"

He makes a sort of vague gesture, then steps a little closer to the office blocking their planned exit, leaning in conspiratorially, "If they are sickos, you might want to keep an eye on this one after what he did to the last person who kidnapped him, you know? Who knows what he's carrying on him." It's a bit of a risk to make Cato sound more dangerous, but maybe the fear of a weapon will give Cato the second he needs to escape.

using his cat journal from now on even tho he's human for the expressions lol

[furtitude]

The officer does turn because Crowley is chattering away and it is distracting and suspicious.

"Sir, I said step away," he says, and now he turns to try to get Crowley clear from the scene, not quite shoving at him, but definitely looming and holding his hands out as a wall. He's also starting to look suspicious at his involvement. So Crowley's distraction works. There are only three focused on Cato now.

The female officer says, "Cato, we had concerning reports that you were possibly hurt by someone at Cygne's ball. We wanted to bring you in for questioning about it."

"'Reports.' Riiight," Cato says.

He's still not buying it. Either they're lying or have been lied to, but he'd put far more money on lying. But his eyes are on the officer near Crowley. For just a moment, there's a horrible vision of a bleeding hole in Crowley's chest and he doesn't know where it came from. But that might happen. What happens if they try to take him in and Crowley gets in the way? Will they shoot him?

Will he fall away from the ship, his chest blown open - no, that's not -

Will he lay there in a coffin with a hole in his chest as Cato cries over his friend, his friend who'd saved him several times over, who always wanted to be gentle but was willing to join his original crew's fight against something terrible - no, that's not -

The officer shoves at Crowley now.

Will he lay there bleeding in Cato's arms from the holes in his chest, like Gary had? No, that's not -

The gun pointing at Avocato is in his hand. His father is standing there bleeding with a hole to the chest, the gun trembling in Cato's hands -

That's not him, he doesn't know how to fight, he doesn't know how to use a gun, he doesn't know how defend himself with more than rage and desperation, he doesn't know how to defend one of the only people that would've noticed if he was gone.

Who was willing to set the thing that looked like Lord Commander on fire in the space of a heartbeat, because Cato looked scared -

Lord Commander. Not Jack. Jack, but not - not the same Jack -

You can protect him. It'll hurt to let it all in. But you can.

"Cato, we need you to come with us -"

The three focusing on him have their hands near their belts - they're expecting the need for force. They're all in on it.

You need to let it in, says a voice that sounds like him but not him. Yeah, it'll suck, but you're not just someone that has things happen to him. You always fight back. You even made him mad on purpose anytime you got bored, instead of crying in the dark.

It wasn't some dank sub-basement, where he trembled in the dark until his vicious fight to get free, it was multiple dark and terrible prisons...where he told Lord Commander how much he looked like crap and refused to be intimidated.

You have claws. You have teeth. And you haven't used them enough.

You're Ventrexian.

The dam breaks and it all pours in. It makes Cato tear up. This life had been kind of nice in some ways. He remembered having a different, softer childhood, with a father that he realizes now was a mix of Avocato and Gary - the good parts of both. He got to go to school and even had a few friends. He got to listen to Crowley's dad rock records. He got to run around skateboarding and just being a kid. He got to be a public menace with Boba.

He'd been kidnapped for less time, even. Less violence, less cosmic terror, less zombie alternates of his dad. And he'd gotten to even kill his kidnapper - and have him stay dead.

But there was a price, in that he'd forgotten who he was and who he left behind in his world. In that he'd been far more afraid. In that he'd had far less personal power. In that the blood on his hands after defending himself had been far more traumatizing, versus something to just...wash away.

After swaying in place slightly for a moment, he says, "It's Cato."

"What?" says one of the three officers facing him, confused.

"Cah-to - like 'cot'?" Cato corrects. "Not Cay-to like 'fate'."

"Kid, we don't have time for -"

What happens next happens ridiculously fast. He does a flip over a display table of cupcakes and while his landing is a little unsteady, he still manages to kick it over so the tabletop is facing the female officer, Cop 1. Then he kicks it again so fast and hard that most of the cupcakes are still on it as it slams into her legs, knocking her over and leaving her in a pile of baked goods and frosting that have escaped their packaging.

Apparently, he's supposed to be brought in alive, because the next officer, Cop 2, reacts by drawing his TASER and firing, but a quick sidestep causes the barbed prongs to hit Cop 3 in the neck, immediately causing him to go down, twitching, before the Taser Cop goes "shit!" and takes his finger off the trigger.

He drops the TASER and goes for his baton next but the boy punches him in the throat with a, "hey, thanks!" stealing the baton and hitting him in the head with it and knocking him out.

Cop 1, cupcake cop, is almost on her feet again, reaching for her gun now, but Cato sees the entire aisle behind her has cleared out due to seeing some kind of ruckus and police. No risk of hitting someone innocent. It's a brick wall on that far side of the super market, too. Cop 2 is still on his way down, having dropped to his knees first, so Cato steals his sidearm as he goes, shooting the gun out of Cupcake Cop's hand, a trick shot that's only supposed to exist in the movies. She goes down screaming, holding her now maimed hand, but it's definitely a non-fatal injury.

It gives him time to kick a can of soup in the air and roundhouse kick it at her head. He wobbles on the landing but it hits its mark and knocks her out.

The last officer, who'd been confronting Crowley, didn't react quickly enough. He's turned by now, and his hand is at his sidearm, but Cato throws the stolen baton at his head, knocking him unconscious.

Surrounded by ruined baked goods and four unconscious cops, chest heaving as he catches his breath, the gun held down at his side with such comfort it seems like he was born with it in his hand, he looks at his handiwork and says, "Sweeeet. Still got it! Even with my balance totally off."

He looks pleased with himself, like it was totally normal for him to go full Bourne Identity. He looks up at Crowley, "Buuuut we should probably go."

He snags another clip off a fallen cop but doesn't dare ransack more. They need to run for it, like, yesterday. It's not like they can take refuge in the vastness of space to escape him beating the snot out of the po po. He moves towards the entrance to the back.

"They're so lucky I don't know how much they're in on it or I wouldn't have held back."

He's still human, but there's something strange about his body language now. Something that's a mix between cagey and confident, guileless and slinking. He doesn't move like a human anymore, not entirely.

:3 kitty

[demonicmiracle]

Crowley would like to think of himself as someone who's relatively quick on the uptake. Someone who can roll with the metaphorical punches and adapt to whatever the world throws at him. He's even had less-than-pleasant interactions with cops before, though it's not quite the same now, when he has to worry about firearms.

Still, he manages to keep his wits about him for the first few seconds, ready to shove this piece of shit cop right back, before everything gets truly wild.

Following the movement is difficult when it happens so fast, he hears a taser go off, sees one of the cops fall, but the gunshot is what snaps him out of it and by the time the fourth officer is reaching for his weapon, Crowley has the sense to grab at his wrist, hoping to delay him for at least a few seconds. Only for the man to go stiff then limp as the baton strikes him.

It leaves Crowley standing in the mess of a grocery store aisle with four unconscious cops and the teenager who just took them all out in less than a minute. When Cato addresses him, all he can do for a second is make unintelligible noises, but he manages to kick his brain back into gear eventually.

"What— shit, nope, no time. Let's go." He's going to usher Cato out, as if he has any semblance of control over this situation, casting occasional glances back at the officers in case one of them recovers quickly.

None of them do, thank fuck, and Crowley's hands are only shaking a little as he unlocks his car so he and Cato can climb in. If he had a nickle for every time he'd had to make a quick exit with Cato in his car, he'd have two nickles.

He's not hanging around here, though, so even if he has no idea where to go next, he's pulling out of the parking lot as soon as Cato's in the car. "Can you take the clip out of that thing?" What a wild fucking thing to say.

(=✪ᆽ✪=)

[furtitude]

Boy, Crowley sure looks beshookt but Cato gets it. Cato has no idea how they got here or what changed them but it's not hard to guess it's a mission gone wrong, something that got into their heads and made them think they're a part of this super messed up town. He's seen some of the others, after all, like Boba. They all must have gotten trapped somehow.

Which means Crowley is sort of normal-guyish and doesn't have any context for this. It must be completely bewildering to suddenly have a person you know transform (mentally, if not physically) into a slightly different person.

(It doesn't feel like the fake human Cato wasn't him, but he feels more...complete this way. And definitely more confident. That kind of thing comes with competence.)

"Yeah, I can do that." He ejects the clip and clears the chamber like he could do it in his sleep. Past-time guns are different from what he has back home, but after realizing he might wind up stuck with one and not his normal gun on a mission, he's practiced with one of the ones he stole from Project Prometheus.

And he was right, naturally. He did need to know how to use them.

Sensing that Crowley is a might anxious, he puts the gun and clip in the glovebox. For now. If Crowley goes for it, he's taking it back.

He drums his fingers against his knees, awkwardly trying to figure out how to raise the subject of 'so by the way, you're brainwashed right now, and usually something probably not human that can shoot fireballs and turn into a big snake, but I actually don't know whether it's a magic thing or just a alien thing because you play it really close to the vest.'

But maybe he should start smaller.

"...so you probably have some questions..."

[demonicmiracle]

It's a strange thing to realize that the tension he feels has little to do with concern that Cato doesn't know how to handle the gun; there's something else about the weapon that sits unpleasantly in his chest, but he doesn't want to look too closely at the thought, as if there's something dangerous down that particular road. His life has enough trouble right now, he doesn't need to go adding to it by indulging in useless introspection.

"You'd think that, wouldn't you?" If there's a slight edge of hysteria in his voice, that's his own business, because he has it handled and it's fine and he's driving exactly at the speed limit to avoid unwanted attention, suddenly grateful that he drives the same kind of car that half the town drives. They're not going to be able to avoid the consequences of this, but he can delay it for a little while, especially if he aims for the edges of town where they're less likely to run into a patrol. "Yet here I am, not a bloody question on my mind 'cause I wouldn't have a clue where to even start with how nonsensical this week has been. Do bats eat cats? Do cats eat bats?"

Quoating Alice In Wonderland isn't how he expected to end that sentence, and yet it feels apt now that he's drawn the comparison. Cato is the white rabbit, it seems, leading him into a world where nothing makes a lick of sense and a powerful old woman is offing people left and right. Or maybe he's the Cheshire Cat, considering how much easier he seems to be handling this situation.

[furtitude]

Well, he is a cat, even if he's missing a tail, fur, pointy ears, and little pawses right now.

He totally misses the reference. And now he's playing with the locks in the car because there is a novelty in this absolutely archaic form of transportation. He's re-interacting with a very normal past-times Earth as himself this time. Everything is new again.

"I don't actually know what eats what? Until a friend let me name his cat and then I wound up in this town, I only knew what cats were because my dad calls me spider-cat as a nickname."

Present tense, not past. His dad is a alive again - one of the best possible side effects of this regaining his memory thing.

"Because I am kind of what you might call cat-like? Cattish? When I'm in my normal body." There, he broke the ice. He cringes a little as he continues, "You know my super skilled cat alien OC? Who has space adventures? Fighting unspeakable cosmic horrors?"

[demonicmiracle]

Crowley does not snap at Cato to stop playing with the locks, despite wanting to do exactly that, because he's trying not to be an asshole no matter how stressed he might be about this mess of a situation.

The present tense goes right over his head; he's too busy trying to parse through the rest of what Cato is saying, which is more difficult than it really should be, considering everything he's saying is technically English. Something about cats and space adventures and he has no idea how this ties into Cygne attempted kidnapping.

"I knew all that acid I did in the eighties would catch up to me eventually." He takes a hand off the wheel to scrub it over his face, unsure where to even start with all this. "You're trying t'tell me that you're a cat?"

[furtitude]

He finally stops messing with the locks.

"Alien." There, the bomb has been dropped. He has no idea how to work on 'and you're from somewhere else, too,' but he needs to wait for the right moment. "I'm Ventrexian. Something changed me human and our memories of me being someone that grew up in this town are fake, up to a point. I think all the stuff with my art was my subconscious trying to tell me something."

And then he quickly adds, because it needs to be said, "And before you say it, I'm not crazy. I know this sounds like I went crazy but I'm not. Crazy doesn't magically teach you how to do flippies and shoot someone's gun out of their hand."

[demonicmiracle]

Well.

Points for originality; Crowley's fairly sure that Ventrexian isn't something Cato swiped from whatever small handful of sci-fi books are left in the library, though that doesn't actually help him wrap his head around the situation.

He exhales roughly at the disclaimer. "If I hadn't seen it for myself, I'd reckon you were crazy, but I'm wondering if I'm the one that's lost it." The way Cato moved was something out an action movie, even if he'd been secretly practicing karate or whatever, there's no way he'd be that good at his age.

Trying to rationalize it to himself isn't going to work. He needs to just roll with it and focus on their next move. "Is this why Cygne wants to kidnap you?"

[furtitude]

"You're not crazy." Just brainwashed. "And I don't know why she went after me. It might be that she just didn't like me - she did it after asking stuff about me. It might be that she wasn't involved in me being here but figured out I was alien. But if she's behind why I'm here, it might be because I'm part of a group of people that fights people like her. We're called the Guardians."

He watches Crowley carefully, out of the corner of his eye.

Maybe mentioning the team will jog something.

"I've seen some of my teammates around town, too, acting like they belong here, so they must be brainwashed too. We're not even from this world, though. We're from a bunch'a different dimensions. Some are human, some aren't. All of us have powers, normally. We're all trying to stop something really bad, so we go to different places to save people."

He adds, "This world is kind of broken."

Cracking at the edges.

"But hey, a lot of worlds are."

His dimension is cracking at the edges too.

[demonicmiracle]

The one mercy is that even this version of Crowley is a fan of science fiction, so they don't have to start entirely from scratch regarding the concept of different dimensions, but there is still a lot of nonsense to sift through. Including a name like the Guardians, which earns a scoff.

"Right. Alien superhero team, of course, what else could it be?" He isn't trying to be rude or dismissive, because he is trying to believe Cato, it's just that this is the best defense mechanism that he has.

Up ahead, he spots two officers strolling down the street, so he decides that he always intended to turn at the next left, taking them away from the potential patrol.

"If we figure out how to wake up the rest of your teammates, can you lot handle Cygne?" He is, frankly, useless, but he wants to do what he can to help Cato, even if that means finding these teammates of his, so that they can fix the problem.

[furtitude]

He's disappointed it didn't jog anything. Does he tell him? Or would he just freak out?

If someone had told him that his life was fake and that he was secretly a cat-alien on a superteam, he'd have -

Okay, he'd have really wished it was true.

...but also it would've been scary. Maybe this is something to ease Crowley into. Hope as they go along, something clicks. Telling someone "your whole life is a lie" would be terrifying to them.

"You just saw me drop four cops in like ten seconds after starting unarmed. And I'm, like, 14. I'm one of the youngest so some of them are better fighters than me, even without powers. Some are complete tech geniuses." He nods. "So yeah, if enough of them remember, we'd be able to stop whatever she's doing. And whatever did this to us."

The confidence is complete and unwavering and it's partly that he's a deeply confident kid but also that he knows the group and their skills. He saw how a lot of them handled things in Project Prometheus's prison.

"Some of them will probably have a better idea of what to do, too. Like, they're good at leading and tactical stuff. I can engineer a little but I'm mostly just good at fighting."

[demonicmiracle]

Were he talking to anyone else, he might be inclined to be more pessimistic; whatever Cato and his friends are up against was powerful enough to apparently make him human and fuck with his memories, which strikes Crowley as being pretty fucking powerful. But he's not going to say that to Cato.

"That's the plan, then. Find these teammates of yours, see if they've woken up." The relief he feels at having a solid plan is palpable. He's good at running away from things, but there's nowhere to run to right now, so the second best thing is having an idea of what the next step is, not just wandering aimlessly. "Do you know any of them, or have they all been changed like you?"

This is the moment when the Bentley would start playing Alanis Morrissette, if it was here.