Local Gossip

[madimpossibledreamer]

...I forgot about Edgar verbally threatening Tango and Cash. They’re loyal enough where they saved him from the fog, but...dogs also show loyalty sometimes in situations they shouldn’t, and Desmond’s definitely thinking about putting him on the hit list.
This chapter also ended up taking approximately forever because I was trying to figure out what Desmond would name the dog only to have that not end up being at all important. That’s writing for you.
There’s a character later who’s a King reference. I decided to just make him his own thing.
I wrote, like, 90% of this the Tuesday of the election, and then was too depressed to even look at this again until I made the decision I was going to keep going.

Main Points: Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: They check out the junkyard, then head back to check in with the sheriff's department.
Word Count: 2933
Rating: Teen

 

         The junkyard just happens to be just about even distance between them, so it’s easier just to meet there, and from there Desmond fills them in: Phoenicians, but probably not holding a grudge, given that they seem to be as interested in recruitment as everyone else. As expected, there’s not too much at the junkyard in the way of leads. The junkyard guy, Edgar, said his half-feral Dobermans went after someone matching Beaumont’s description and tried to tear him apart, and while Beaumont actually deserves every bit of that, the way Edgar chuckles about the story as he’s retelling it absolutely has Desmond quietly judging the man. It’s not the thought of letting an animal fight for him, or he’d be a huge hypocrite—but he also isn’t forcing Rukh to do that and gives him treats and pets, and he’s pretty sure if he gave Rukh an order the raven didn’t agree with he wouldn’t get anywhere. He’s definitely asking Bannerman if she’s gotten any complaints about him abusing the dogs, and if so...well, he’s not entirely sure how to make it better for the dogs, given that he’s got no clue how to rehab abused dogs, but he can ask around and if they are being mistreated he’s almost certain they’d be happier just roaming around eating blue lobster-humans than hanging around with Edgar. The part about getting to use yet more explosives on the Draug has him listening more closely, but yeah, he’s absolutely judging. And—maybe more interesting—that whole Golem-creating spell? Either someone’s casting it, again, which probably means Beaumont and his chaos-seeking, or it’s automated somehow, because some of Edgar’s ‘going to abandon everyone else and ride out...of an island’ bus keeps turning into golems and actually walking away. Now, okay, it’s not the worst plan he’s ever heard, the way he’d thought, because there actually is a bridge leading from here to the mainland. Only it’s the one the Orochi are guarding. And they’re friendly enough now, but between one guy even with two vicious dogs and a bus and a fully ready for combat force with one functioning nearby helicopter and a bunch of military gear? His money’s on the Orochi.
         He does have to hold Chelsea back, though. Because Edgar starts going off on this whole speech about how Desmond’s not a hero, and she’s really indignant about it. Also assuming he doesn’t know much about engines, which—isn’t entirely true, he had been learning about taking care of a motorcycle, but he definitely doesn’t know too much about a bus engine and it’s not worth getting worked up about. It’s a good thing she doesn’t actually punch Edgar in the face. The guy thinks that’s funny, too, but what he doesn’t get, because he just glanced at her and saw ‘woman’ and immediately dismissed her (which, it sucks that that hasn’t changed from Ezio’s time), is that she’s got the kind of muscle that someone swinging around a sledgehammer in combat situations would have and could do some serious damage. Never mind the whole Bee thing. She’s not ready for her first kill.
         He’d still have probably signaled the bouncers to kick Edgar out, because he wanted the patrons to have a nice time, but he also doesn’t feel like the guy deserves to die. Yet. Depending on what Bannerman says. He definitely doesn’t deserve them putting in their best efforts when he’s trying to abandon everyone, though. And he’s also getting the feeling she probably thinks of him as her hero, at the very least, which is kind of sweet. He’s not going to say that, though, because that’s not exactly the kind of thing you say out loud and she’d get indignant about that too.
         They do all collectively decide, out of earshot, that they’re only going to look into the golems to see if Lydia and Nate can figure out what’s going on with the spell, and they’re definitely not bringing the guy’s parts back. He seems safe enough here, at the moment, and he’s rude and going up against the Orochi is only going to get him killed quick. (They’d mostly listed all of this out loud because Chelsea seemed to want to make that decision, too, only to be a little torn about not helping out the civilian, so yeah, she’s definitely not ready.) Alongside the usual ‘congrats for that, here’s some stuff teleported to you from who knows where’, Rebecca also seems to be psyched about the potentially murderous-but-there’s-a-truce Phoenicians.

Rebecca: Thanks for the confirmation & for helping me win the bet

Desmond: next time I’ll try to do it without almost getting killed

         What he doesn’t expect, when they’re leaving to go spy on the Morninglight one last time before they leave, is to be followed. Again. Which might derail their plans a little. This time, it’s a mangey dog, skinny and sad, following at a distance. It looks a little like Tango and Cash, Edgar’s dogs, but it’s not aggressive, snapping at them or getting too close, and while Rukh hadn’t been fully trusting, not at first, this is a dog that looks like it’s learned to be wary of humans.
         “We’re friendly,” Desmond tries to tell it, just like that works the way it had with Rukh, but the dog doesn’t get any closer, just hides behind a tree the second he starts talking.
         Well. He does have some jerky on hand, and if he asks he’s pretty sure Shaun will absolutely send him more, so…
         “I’m just going to leave some food here for you, okay? And you can grab it when you feel ready.” He just tears open a few packages and lays them down prominently on a rock, and maybe it’s a good idea to switch it up. They go to check in on Bannerman, because it’s been a while and he’s got questions about Edgar. Nate takes the opportunity to work on his focuses (foci, Shaun informs him, later) and have a conversation with Moose, and Chelsea, with a grin, volunteers to help keep zombies away from the barricades. Probably good for her to work out some aggression and she’s got backup, so that’s fine.
         He is actually slightly surprised to find that Danny actually moved into the Sheriff’s office and commandeered the storage closet as his own personal office. “I realized I wasn’t doing too much good out there, man. I thought I was, but your friend talked some sense into me,” he knew sending Danny’s info to Rebecca was a good idea, “...and I was letting my ego get the better of me. Playing lone wolf sounds all appealing, but as for really getting shit—” he pauses, glancing toward Bannerman’s desk, even though it sounds like she’s coordinating something with Lydia and a deputy and isn’t actually listening, “...stuff done, you’ve got to accept some help here and there, and you know, here I was thinking I’m just a teen, not one of the cool kids, but that is so wrong, actually, because nobody else here is a whiz with tech. You hear there were entries in her database that the Sheriff herself was locked out of?”
         That’s actually kind of funny, but you know, let the kid have his victories. “What, really?”
         “You are so bad at playing along, Desmond, okay, fine. But it wasn’t just the one entry. I figure where there’s one conspiracy, there’s six. They just keep multiplying like hydra heads. If you don’t take care of the source, they’re just going to keep getting worse.” And he’s doing a good job keeping distracted, but he’s actually scared, by the sound of it, and with good reason, given what’s at stake here.
         “What do you know about Edgar and his dogs and maybe a stray?” He’s not going to let on that he’s trying to figure out whether or not the man deserves to die. He’s pretty sure Danny’s not ready for that any more than Chelsea is.
         The teenager still eyes him. “I’ll talk about the last one first, if that’s okay, because I know the most about that. Pretty much everybody in Kingsmouth heard about it, actually. So they were actually part of a litter of three, Tango and Cash and Katherine, and Norma Creed down at the point was all ready to adopt Katherine into her family when bam, out of nowhere comes Eleanor Priest and nobody’s saying no to the great-whatever-granddaughter of the town’s founder, and people don’t stop gossiping about it for weeks. She didn’t want the male dogs, though, and Hudson says he’s changed his mind about Norma getting one, and then Edgar’s dad comes in and gets both. I think Eleanor told him to snub Norma, but I don’t know why there was a feud or anything. That’s before my time. Now, fast forward to...uh. I want to say a couple weeks ago, but who can even tell in this fog anymore? Eleanor’s one of the first taken by the fog, and the priest tries to go and save Katherine only she runs away and doesn’t let anyone get near, not like the Sheriff could spend too much energy on trying to catch her, so the way I figure it, Eleanor wanted the prestige but not the work that came with owning a dog, and maybe one or more of the servants wasn’t quite so nice. As for Edgar’s dad, I figure that was a screw-you too, because pretty much nobody talks to Edgar or even wants to acknowledge his existence really?”
         So Bannerman really hadn’t been joking about the whole ‘maybe we brought this on ourselves’ thing. “Okay, so Edgar’s an outcast, too.” As neutral as he can make it.
         Danny sighs. “I mean, yeah, though remember, most of this is me piecing things together like the superhero sidekick I am. A sad amount of all this is town gossip. In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s not big on the whole ‘Pomp & Circumstance’ thing, and Kingsmouth practically runs on it.” With another glance at the doorway, he lowers his voice. “Illuminati, you know. Pretty exclusive club. His parents—it’s not like they had money, or were bigshots in blue or anything.” He doesn’t bother whispering for the rest, though. “Jack & Wendy’s, the place you found the twins, that was a proud Kingsmouth staple, but the Overlook Motel wasn’t in town, like they were too good for us or something. Not stuff I think, mind you, just repeating what I’ve heard the adults say before. The Overlook’s the first thing you see when you get to through the tunnel to the Savage Coast, can’t miss it, and yeah I don’t know what they were thinking either, naming it after one of King’s locations—only guests started disappearing. Then it was his dad, and his mom abandoned him to go to Florida. There’s stuff in the database about that too. Usually, the Sheriff would probably get mad at me for passing on info about investigations and stuff, but I figure, you know, apocalypse, special circumstances, all that. The most likely culprit was a man named Wicker, probably through magic, but he up and disappeared too, so it’s not like they could arrest the man. The only thing he had after that point was the dogs.”
         He shudders. “Man, Edgar himself is pretty cool—taught me a lot about actual mechanical stuff, sneaking me parts for free, and he wasn’t too far from the skate park, so while I wasn’t technically allowed to go talk to him, it wasn’t that big a deal to pull off. I wouldn’t introduce him to Carter, though. He’d tick her off by underestimating her and then she’d explode him with her mind and then get all upset. But those dogs scare me. I’ve played a lot of videogames, and honestly, they remind me more of hellhounds. I don’t think they like anyone else, which suits him just fine. I just distract them with a bunch of biscuits, but man they scare me more than my parents.” He pauses, and then adds, face twisting, “More than my parents did. Man, that’s weird. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”
         “You okay?” For all his excitement about being alive during a zombie apocalypse, it’s easy for him (and Danny, probably) to forget the actual human cost, out here.
         “Yeah, I mean…” Danny wipes at his eyes with his sleeve. “It’s not like they were great parents or the worst parents or anything. They were just mine. And now they’re not, they’re just gone, and like...okay, it’s not even them being gone. The worst part is going through these databases and finding references...they were great to me, but there’s just. We all knew there was something rotten to the core in this town, but we all just kind of ignored it, and of course that came back to bite us in the ass. And they were involved.”
         He chuckles a little into the hug. “Thanks, man. I just...I haven’t been back home. I didn’t want to see, you know. It empty. I’d been looking forward to the Halloween festival—that’s one of the cool things about this town, officially it goes on for, like, a week, but for tourist season they’d started having a few events earlier, drum up the hype, you know, and I don’t...I don’t get to have that, anymore. But, uh, least I get to be helpful, and people are listening to me now. I did some research before, about the fog and all that, because it came in before the whole siren song thing. I tried to warn everyone, but nobody listened. They were all like ‘It’s normal fog, Daniel, you’ve been playing too many videogames again,’ only I’m right and they’re dead, and for once I wish I wasn’t.”
         “How’d you escape the song?” It’s not like he’s too invested in the answer, nope.
         “Me and my friends, we kinda had this secret base, with wards and all that. Maybe I’ll tell you about it later—could come in handy if you hit that neck of the woods. I just went there, and when I came back…” he sits back and shrugs helplessly. That...definitely might come in handy, if only for the knowledge of which protection runes could actually help.
         He probably doesn’t do well with feeling helpless any more than Desmond does. “I’ll keep that in mind, Danny, thank you. You’ve been really helpful so far.”
         The smile is only a little fake. “Anyway, we were talking about Edgar. I think I heard it used to belong to some older guy named Tom, but I was too young to remember any of that. It was always Edgar and those dogs.”
         “So, you’ve never seen him hit them or anything like that?” he asks, and Danny blinks a little before looking thoughtful.
         “He’s always threatening them but I haven’t seen him actually do it, no. And they love him, though sometimes we love people who aren’t good people, as I’ve been learning.” He makes a face. “At the very least, I’m pretty sure they’re the only reason he’s still here. Probably dragged him back away from the sea.”
         That’s not exactly conclusive, and it’s not like Desmond doesn’t have other things to do, at the moment. He’ll set that aside for now. “Okay. Did you find anything on the Morninglight?”
         Danny definitely lights up at that. “Aside from their sexy recruiter? Okay, this is is wild and I have been dying to share it with somebody—so the MIBs, the Orochi as you call them?” Never mind that that’s the actual corporation name, as far as Desmond’s aware. “They’re keeping an eye on them, weirdly enough. Less like they’re a known threat, more like they don’t know what to make of them and they’re wary. And there’s—huh. Okay…”
         “Find something?” Desmond prompts, when Danny doesn’t continue.
         He doesn’t respond immediately. Looks like he’s reading the entry before he summarizes. “Yeah, so remember when I mentioned Tom? It turns out he didn’t die or leave his scrapyard to Edgar in his will or even vanish from the motel. There’s a note here about witnessing the contract handing it over and then the man moved back into town and just lived the good old hermit life, except he still owns a bunch of the land and made a complaint about the Morninglight camping on his property and hasn’t been seen since. Now, in-town hermit, so it’s not like that’s weird, but that just might be worth looking into.”
         “Great find.” Yeah, putting him in touch with Rebecca was a great idea. And—oh, yeah. “This wouldn’t happen to be him, right?” He holds out the picture he’d taken of the dead hippie in the tunnel. Rebecca hadn’t managed to get much, which means it’s probably more paper records or Morninglight covering it up again or something.
         “Oh man. No, that’s Joshua Brewster. He was married to Mary Brewster, the one you found on the porch near the fire station.” One of the missing persons, then. Yeah, he hadn’t looked anything like the picture, but from what Shaun’s said complete makeovers aren’t uncommon when someone joins a cult, either. Somebody else to add to the board then. “Guess he signed up.” A thought occurs to the teen and he winces again. “Glad that wasn’t me, yeesh.”
         “You’d definitely be missed,” Desmond agrees, and with Danny looking a little happier, they need to go deal with the Morninglight. Again. Yay.