loungelizard | Ryslig Inbox

It would be the smart thing to keep his head down. It would be the smart thing to get the hell out of Bavan and wait out this fresh new disaster at the house. He could watch the smoke rise in the distance from the safety of the pumpkin patch, maybe with a cup of coffee or moonshine to steady the nerves.

But then Fiddleford sees the jacket. It's custom-tailored with clasps made of bone and very familiar red and blue stripes, and it's being worn by a man whose face he knows even if it's furrier now. The claws are new, and the big rounded ears, and the long rat's tail. But he knows the face. He remembers how the hands looked before they had claws, how they looked holding a knife. He remembers the voice, though not from the operating room -- from before. Holy shit Danny that's the snake that ate Joshua. He wonders if Danny is here too somewhere. What he's made himself into. If either of them still recognize him-- surely they must. Surely that's why the coat was such a prize.

So he could keep his head down and leave Bavan, or he could follow that rat down the alley.

He picks the second option.

"That's mine," he says, and when he grabs the newly-minted pooka by the shoulder the jacket actually reacts to his touch. It surges up beneath his fingers and jerks the man's shoulder backward, helping Fiddleford more easily turn him around to punch him right in the mouth. He stumbles back, trips over a loop of snake tail, and falls with a crunch and a squeak onto the pavement. The jacket continues to move, wriggling and jerking the rat this way and that as he struggles to right himself, and when Fiddleford leans down and grabs it by the back of the collar it comes away easily. It is his. It slides its way onto his shoulders like it remembers him, and that would be incredibly weird to experience if he weren't so laser-focused on the rat still. He's scrambled upright, new claws held in front of him like he isn't really sure how to use them yet but really wants to look like he does.

"You-- are you gonna kill me like you killed my best friend?"

Fiddleford wonders if maybe that one time he ate a guy set the lives of several other people on a downward trajectory that led them to this. Maybe. Maybe if it wasn't him it would have been someone else.

"Depends. You gonna do somethin' stupid like he did?"

"Fuck you, man," the rat sneers, but there's something shaky in it. His gaze flicks toward the mouth of the alley like he's hoping for backup.

Fiddleford knows he should leave before that backup arrives. On one level it's just about the coat, about what it took to get it, about the memories he's now going to have to live with forever of what it felt like to be skinned alive. He's made the symbolic gesture of taking it back and that's more than he really needed to do to begin with. Leaving would still be the smartest option. But on the other hand...

On the other hand he's incensed by the sheer hubris of it all. It's one thing to butcher monsters and sell their spines to be made into lamps and their skin to be made into coats, all as revenge for them simply trying to survive. That's bad enough on its own. But more than that, only one being can make monsters. The Fog takes her children from other worlds for a reason. It's a chance at a new life for those that choose to take it, not something cool for people to wear like a coat. It's hard and it's serious and it'll put you through hell even when it's good for you. In a bizarre way Fiddleford feels as though being a snake is something that he's earned the right to be at peace with by now. What did this man have to do to get those big old ears? Torture a whole bunch of other people for fun and profit. So the smart part of him says to leave, but the petty part of him that now considers the Fog God to be someone he owes wants to stay and really impart a lesson about who exactly gets to be a monster here.

The time it takes for him to weigh his options is long enough to look like hesitation, and hesitation reads as weakness. The rat springs up to try and come down at him from above. Rookie mistake, not knowing how fast a snake can react. He sees a glint of his own glowing red eyes reflected in the rat's in the split second before he lifts a loop of his coils and knocks all the air out of the rat's lungs.

After that things start happening very fast. Fiddleford has had four years to get used to being a snake. This man has been a rat for barely twenty-four hours. He's got four pointy sets of claws and he manages to give Fiddleford some nasty scratches, but he makes the mistake of not keeping his distance. It's easy to trap him in a tight crush of coils before he can disengage. A few superficial gashes and some rat bites are an acceptable trade for feeling the telltale crunch of bones and the wheezy death rattle of a man whose lungs are now full of holes.

This is about the point Danny shows up, just like Fiddleford thought he might. It's weird that a night years ago where Fiddleford got jumped for the crime of wanting to go down to the corner store for some painkillers has come back to bite them both like this. Danny's face is ringed with feathers but it's another he recognizes. Funny how he's awful with names and faces unless they're tied real hard to something traumatic.

"Holy shit, Milo--"

"Y'all know you shouldn't have done this, right?" In his coils the dying pooka twitches weakly, maybe in response to his friend's voice and maybe just because his whole chest cavity is having a real bad time. "Did you figure we'd welcome you in with open arms? Did you think she'd be happy with what you did to us?"

The Fog has never made it a secret how she feels about humans. And much like with her children, Fiddleford knows she won't intervene in this herself. It's up to him to make this point. Vaguely in the back of his mind he thinks that that's a dark road to go down, but the rest of him is righteously angry and free of the fear of death. They made his skin into a coat. He's pissed.

So is Danny, apparently, because he doesn't bother responding with words. Instead he lets out a birdlike screech and flares his new wings. Apparently this is just how tonight is going to be. Fiddleford discards the cooling body of the rat pooka and rears himself back in preparation for round two.

About an hour later he drags himself through the door of McGucket Labs. He's still wearing the coat. There's an awful lot of blood on him, and he isn't sure what percentage of that blood is his. Both of his arms hang limp at his sides. He managed to kill Danny but Danny had backup and the backup had a crowbar and a baseball bat. So he's looking, uh, a little worse for wear. He slumps over to the sink in the corner of the shop and then realizes that with his arms how they are he can't actually turn it on to wash his face.

"Aw, heck." He clears his throat but his voice still comes out kind of ragged as he shouts toward the stairs: "Larry? You here? I need, uh. I might need some help."

Downstairs, Larry is leaning over the break-room sink, letting his mouth drain of blood directly into it. Unhygienic? Probably. But after twenty-some-odd mouth rinses to clear the blood out of your mouth, you eventually stop putting up the fight and just let it go its course.

He doesn't know how long he's been like this when he hears a voice -- panics for a second and jolts, because maybe he forgot to lock the door -- but no, it's just McGucket. Larry lets out a sigh of relief, but feels a momentary frustration when he realizes he probably won't be as much help as Fiddleford is banking on.

Larry heads upstairs and presents himself with no flourish, despite the fact that blood of various ages and crispiness streak their way down his chin, his powder-blue dress shirt, and slacks. Once he sees the state Fiddleford is in, he offers a helpless smile that reveals his two front teeth are missing. Fresh blood creeps down the side of his mouth.

"Routh weaffer we've been haffin, huh?"

Larry's smile disappears and he sighs with a roll of his eyes, realizing that his joke is probably going to land even flatter on the account of not being able to annunciate.

"Kinda in need of help myselth, but I'll see what I can do."

He steps closer.

I would never expect tag matching even if it WASN'T two and a half pages in gdocs

terribibble - 2020-09-18 05:13 (UTC) - Expand

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backdated real hard to the reckoning plot

gently replies at a fraction of the size....

<KrisKringle>

< LarryLaffer >

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December 25th

[The evening IMMEDIATELY after finding out about the 'wedding announcement']

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<GiggleGrrl> - Morning, January 14th

< LarryLaffer >

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<marco> i am... so sorry about this

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Dated Mid-April

<Player1>

<LarryLaffer>

<TheMechanic>

< LarryLaffer >

<PurplePeopleEater>

<LarryLaffer>

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Nattensfest!!