dazlious | Call me animal.

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Call me animal.

WHO: Heather Mason and Maurice Hutch (OC)
WHERE: Dogtrot, Texas
WHEN: Just easing into spring.
WHAT: What probably would have been a night spent loitering around the drug store and breaking bottles in the alley like generic malcontent youths takes several unexpected turns when a vampire hunter interrupts Maurice while waiting for his friend from up north.
RATING: Probably PG. CW for violence, mild body horror and transformation.

awsum ill be outside where the rentareel used to be

Maurice had put out the call and now he was in his place, hands in his coat pockets. He hadn't seen his friend for a while now. One thing or another would come up (said things including worrying mothers, various injuries, and plain bad weather) and now that at least the weather had calmed its bad self down, the world was ready to be trampled again.

And what a night for it! It was clear with chilly breezes sneaking around buildings and down alleyways. An orange moon hung low on the horizon and kept the clouds far on the edges of the horizon. It wouldn't rain for two more days. Spring was coming. The tiny green shoots had just barely started poking out of the ground where there was enough actual soil instead of the red clay of Dogtrot. Crispy dead leaves still hung in the corners where the buildings met the sidewalk. Easter candy all but overflowed on super market shelves.

The vampire thought of all the things they would do once Heather got there. They could graffiti the old building marked to be torn down the following week since it was technically not illegal anymore. They could eat pizza at Tod's until they were sick. And DRANKS. And Sega. If Meranda hadn't taken over the sofa for the night. An outlet in her room had blown (or so she said) so she spent a lot of time on the sofa during her WoW raids.

Something interrupted his thoughts. He had lived in Dogtrot for years now and not a lot surprised him. He knew the local vampires, he even knew a local spook or two. He knew the drug addicts and the few homeless and what they sounded like. What he heard on that empty chilly street was none of those things.

"Quack quack!" It was mechanical. Grainy.

Maurice lifted a brow and tugged his phone out wondering if Meranda had passive-aggressively changed the ring on it again.

"Quack quack!"

"The hell...?" It wasn't his phone. Maurice pocketed it and looked all around. The quack came from an alley across the street between a now defunct QUICK CASH and what was going to be a shiny new laundromat. Maurice looked both ways and ventured forward into the gloom.

The garbage can at the end of the alley quacked. Maurice screwed up his face in thought. Broken toy that suddenly came back to life? Stranded cyborge duck?

Up above on the rooftop, a long and lean and very crafty hunter was watching his prey fall for his trap hook, line, and sinker. His father had been a hunter--a normal hunter. Deer, ducks, rams. He had watched him make odd noises to get the attention of the deer. A whistle or a click to make them stop in just the right place. Sometimes to even lure them in.

Humans were the most curious animals that he knew of and though the thing in the alleyway wasn't human (not in the slightest) he had to watch it in fascination and amusement before he made his move.

Maurice peered into the trash. There was an old Talkboy straight from the eighties in the trash quacking away.

"Oh, man, sweet!" It was all his! He reached for it. Something dressed in full army camo descended upon him and drove a thin knife into his shoulder. Maurice screamed like a wildcat and the fight began.

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Anthony rolled. His knife spun across the street like a coin. He hit the edge of a public mailbox and for a moment he curled around it like the hurt animal he was. Then, that good old lizard brain pushed him up on an elbow--opposite of the one he'd temporarily ruined on Maurice-- and then a knee. Shock pushed him to his boots--boots that should have belonged to a soldier and not him. Blood rolled over his swelling lips and his head was full of bells. Through tears and smoke he saw The Devil in the alleyway.

He wobbled there like a newborn fawn for a long minute (and perhaps something within him was newly born--not only a crippling fear but a respect for the unknown) and promptly turned and skittered away into the night with a darkening patch running down the inside of one camo-clad leg.

As Anthony's footsteps faded, Maurice peeled one pale hand away from his ear. It still rang but nowhere near as bad as the hunter's would for days to come. He was glad the guy was gone but now he had to deal with this...thing. What was--RIGHT. RIGHT, THE PLAN.

The vampire held his breath and shrank together there by the trashcan, trying to look as small and unnoticeable as a three hundred pound man with stupid blond hair could. If he'd had a pulse, his heart would have already torn through his Ghostbusters shirt.

Please go away, please go away, please go away.

Aw yea consider yourself fuckin' SMOTE, you son of a bitch!

The creature stood and watched as the would-be hunter staggered away, making sure to let him feel her eyes on his back until he was well out of view.

Then she lifted her oversized hands and dusted them off in a way that seemed far too human to be coming from a giant specter.

It was only after that that she turned around, seemingly remembering the victim of attempted-slaying that she'd just prevented from being turned into a pile of ash. Oh, right! Probably ... a good idea to make sure he was all right.

She took a step towards the cowering vampire, hand raised-- ... only to freeze as the second thoughts hit.

And they were pretty big second thoughts.

Rescinding that step forward, she started to back away instead, giant claws balling themselves into unsure fists.

Shit.

Please go away, please go away, please goOOOOOD IT SEES ME OH GOD.

Maurice, cringing all over with pain, backed himself as tightly as he could into the corner between the trash and the brick and what looked like an old box full of empty beer bottles and newspaper. He saw those huge skull-crushing hands reaching for him. The sassy little dust-off didn't even register because he too was getting the mousy feeling. Only his wasn't full of holier-than-thou indigence.

He just knew and accepted that he had pretty shit luck.

The dead man opened his mouth and spluttered out a half-hearted little hiss.

If she weren't intimately familiar with fear and all its brain-clouding glory, she might have felt hurt at his hiss. But no, she totally got it. It was cool.

That didn't get rid of the dilemma, though.

Because GUESS WHAT? She totally didn't think this through at all.

Backing up to the mouth of the alley, she leaned back to peer out-- as much as she wanted to skidaddle, return to normal, and THEN come back as though she'd never been here in the first place, that wouldn't work. It didn't matter that barely anyone was awake right now, there were still some people awake and she couldn't go lumbering through the middle town when she was being a giant demonic bird.

She looked back at Maurice, scuffing a giant, clawed foot on the ground.

Fear wasn't easily dissipated, but Maurice's blinding panic would probably at least go down a notch or two when Slenderbird uttered a gravelly but very-human "... Um."

His eyes never left her, not for a second and they stayed wide and red. His pupils hardly existed and he forgot to blink for...he didn't remember the last time he blinked. Every twitch of every claw, every shifting feather, every drifting ember, he took it in.

However.

However there was a kinship he held with all monsters, no matter how fearful or grudging or full of wonder he felt and when the being didn't immediately launch at him or let out another of those terrible roars, Maurice started to wonder. That wonder was cut off by it speaking up. Luckily the sound The Devil made registered as a word but he didn't catch the voice.

How could he?

Instead, he swallowed all the blood that had pooled in his mouth and coughed once.

"D'...do I owe you m-money?"

Why else would it have spared him?

... You know, if this situation hadn't been what it was, Heather would have been tempted to think back on all the times Maurice's pockets had turned out empty and she'd been the one stuck paying for soda and burgers.

In hindsight, she would probably regret not doing that, because what better way to gently out yourself than by pointing an abominable hellfinger and rumbling 'YES, MAURICE HUTCH, YOU NEVER FUCKIN' PAID ME BACK FOR THAT MIDNIGHT TRIP TO IHOP.'

But the fact of the matter was that this was not only the first time she'd slipped into this skin in front of anybody, it was also the first time she'd done it anywhere but the safety of her own apartment with all the doors locked and the shades drawn.

So the giant creature stared down at Maurice sheepishly and said, "No..."

Maurice found himself in a world of confusion. It didn't act like it was going to eat him. It didn't want money...but whatever it wanted, the vampire was at its mercy because with a bum arm and his back full of holes. He coughed again.

Damn that guy. Whoever he was. Some overgrown football player it looked like. Or felt like. He hadn't been tackled in a good long time and he'd forgotten what it was like to have his bell rung.

The awkward, ember-filled silence that stretched between them started making his stomach hurt so he coughed again and offered up a new question. "What...d'you..."

No, that wasn't the right question.

"What..."

No, not that one either. It was rude.

"Who?"

That was the ticket.

Give 'em a break, Mason, he's trying to figure out why the train has just stalled on the tracks five feet away.

SHE'S TRYING OKAY.

The awkward silence wasn't so silent in her own head (though it was just as awkward)-- her brain was racing, trying to find an out. Technically she could probably climb the wall of the alley and disappear across the rooftops-- there probably wouldn't be anybody randomly watching the tops of buildings right this second.

But this had stretched onwards too long. If she'd ollied out the moment she sent that hunter packing, that might've worked, but no. Too late for that.

So after a moment or so, she heaved a smoky sigh and reached up to fluff up the tuft of scraggly blond mane (fur? feathers? it was hard to tell) on top of her head.

"What, you don't recognize me? C'mon, Zilla. I'm hurt," she said, feebly trying to sound casual.

Speaking of Heather, though Maurice was frantically worried over his own skin, he was hoping and praying that his buddy was held up in traffic somewhere. He didn't want her walking in on this.

But then the bomb dropped and pulled him out of his thoughts. The thing's beak opened and a familiar voice came out. It called him by the name only one person called him. He stopped shivering and he stopped trying to draw his head into his body like a turtle. He was going to have to do something about this because Maurice Logic dictated that one of two things had happened:

a) This being was his friend to whom something horrible (and possibly his fault) had happened and now they had to go on some complicated adventure to reverse before the next full moon.

b) This thing ATE Heather and her voice was actually coming from inside it.

Through all his fear and pain, Maurice actually managed not to pick the stupider of the two.

"I'm either...really...really drunk or you're a giant chicken."

Maurice felt dizzy.

Well, let's be real, given how many things were possible in a universe of infinite other universes, some monster eating people and stealing their voices wasn't all that weird a conclusion to jump to.

But fortunately, yeah, that wasn't the case.

And as if to prove that she still had a sense of humor even when shoved out of the closet (the monster kind of closet, not the gay closet) in front of someone, the bird creature looked Maurice dead in the eye and said "Yes. It's true. I'm a giant chicken."

Oh!

Well that was sort of a relief because he didn't remember drinking before Heather arrived. He was still on the wagon (the wagon of knowing his fucking limit). It also meant that there wasn't booze in town to make him hallucinate his friend as a giant bird monster curb stomping the shit out of army guys. Hah.

O-oh. Oh.

Maurice sat up on his knees and gestured wildly with his functioning arm. "Oh, God, Heather, I'm so sorry! W-we'll fix this! I swear to God! We'll take you to a...I don't guess a priest would know anything. My m-mom might know what to do! She knows everything!"

She lifted her monstrous hands again, this time holding them palms-out in the universal 'whoa slow down' gesture.

"--wh-- no, ZILLA, stop. It's fine. STOP."

"No, it's not FINE! This isn't fine! A-oowh! Ssshhhhhit." He tried to heave himself up but a ripple of pain shot through his back and sent him back to one knee.

What's-His-Face had jabbed a few important muscles in his sides as well. Good grief who is teaching these people how to stab a man? It's something when a vampire knows more about how to stab somebody right and proper than a vampire hunter.

Maurice looked her up and down again taking in her claws, her scraggly little tail, those feet that could stomp a man's head in. What was she? Who did this to her? Oh, God. Oh, God what if it was BLOODSPUR? That wouldn't explain why she seemed to be slightly on fire though...

"What happened, Heather?"

Edited 2014-03-15 02:27 (UTC)

"Nothing happened, just..."

You never realize how hard it is to describe something supernatural until you experience something that isn't even the norm for the abnormal. If it had been a werewolf bite, it might be rough to tell people, but at least you could always sum it up as 'Yeah, I got my ass bit on the full moon. Sucks.'

But rolling out of bed one morning with black hair and feathers sprouting in all kinds of places that people weren't supposed to have them was really weird.

"Anyway, are you okay? Who was that guy?"

Derailment for 500, please!

Maurice managed to make a face at Heather that wasn't either terrified or the blue screen of death. He shot her a little frown from his place on the concrete and huffed.

"No and I don't know! Are you okay? What...when did you get...what happened? Tell me what's going on!"

Why wasn't she telling him? Why weren't they gearing up to go kick whatever-it-was's ass? Though...after what he'd seen her do (and it was just now sinking in that Heather didn't just appear after the fight was over, she was the one who wrecked that guy's shit something awful) he was sure that she could have fucked up whoever or whatever did this to her.

He felt weird and out of the loop--like he was the only one in the room that didn't understand the ax sticking out of someone's head was a joke or a prop and everyone was looking at him funny for freaking out. Only the ax was a giant bird monster. A giant...weirdly scrawny bird monster. But that would start eating at him in a moment.

She didn't want to tell him what was going on, she wanted them to hang out like normal and she could go on being his perfectly normal human buddy who did normal things and this big fat secret could continue being kept all to herself.

But the problem with bursting into an alleyway as a giant monster and seriously injuring someone was that you couldn't exactly blow it off with 'I don't wanna talk about it'. She'd more or less revoked that right when she hurled that dude into the street.

"It's complicated. Can you like... shut your eyes, please?"

Maurice glanced around and after a moment of paranoia that he was instantly ashamed of, he sat back on his knees and obliged.

"Okay..." He covered his eyes for good measure.

The pain he was in was finally starting to seep in now that the threat was gone. Ow, his shoulder. Ow, his lungs. Ow his everything. He hoped that dude had nightmares for as long as he lived. Whatever had happened to Heather, he sure had been lucky.

Perhaps surprisingly, there weren't any grotesque crunching sounds or squelches or other weird noises generally associated with bodily transformation.

There was, however, some rustling and scraping.

She'd... she'd pretty much ruined the shirt she was wearing. 8[;; Oops. Good thing she'd pulled off that hoodie long before monstering out. And her jeans were already shredded to hell and back anyway. She yanked them both on, thanking whatever was listening for the fact that baggy clothes made going commando less uncomfortable.

"Okay..." she said at last, voice back to normal. "Nudity averted, it's safe to open your eyes."

Those noises were a little unnerving but he was thankful for the lack of crackling or twisting bone. He parted his fingers and beheld his dandilion-headed friend standing there in a hoodie like it wadn' no thang.

He heaved out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding in and leaned his back against the trashcan. It didn't last though because the last few pegs were settling into place.

"Augh! You were naked! Oh, God, I'm sorry!"

Like you aren't naked every time you're a dog or a bat, Maurice.

"NOW will you tell me what's going on?" He tried to stand again. This time he made it all the way to his boots but he leaned heavily on the trashcan. He could still see that stupid Talkboy inside. Maurice fished it out and mashed the button. The tape squealed as it rewound.

"Quack quack!"

"Hhhhh," sighed Maurice. "I don't think we're gonna make it to Tod's..." He was kind of full of stab wounds and Tod's was a respectable pizza place where you couldn't just waltz in covered in your own blood.

Maurice, you don't need to apologize for the fact that she ripped off all her clothing and turned into a giant hellmonster to save your ass. THAT CHOICE WAS ON HER END, even if she was somewhat regretting it. Couldn't she have probably fought that guy off as a human? It wasn't like she hadn't fought much worse.

When he opened his eyes, she was smoothing down the front of the hoodie with one hand and holding the shredded remains of her tank top in the other.

"What's going on is you're hurt and we should get outta here before someone else comes along. Can you walk?"

He frowned at her but he knew that she was right. That guy was bound to tell somebody that something happened and the sooner they got lost the better.

"Yeah..." He took a few shuffling steps toward her to prove himself and pocketed the Talkboy. "I think I'm gettin' the feeling back in my arm. I don't think that guy could shoot a fish in a barrel. And uh...holy shit, thank you."

Now that he was closer, Maurice was looking her over again trying to find some telling trace of I AM BIG BIRD that he somehow missed all these years. He wouldn't put it past himself.

If it made Maurice feel any better... there really wasn't.

She was the same old Heather, and there really wasn't anything remarkable about her. Not on the surface.

"Don't mention it."

She shoved her hands into the hoodie pocket, scuffing a bare foot (now distinctly less clawed and massive and distinctly more pink and fleshy) against the ground.

"Do you like... need a doctor?"

Were there any vampire doctors around here? She knew there was that hospital in Daggit, but...

Heather was a mysterious little being. He'd known her for ages now but he knew so little about her besides things like which songs she could scream/swing all the way through while intoxicated and her unfortunate love of Spice World.

Damn Spice World.

But now he felt strange. Closed out.

"No, I just need a drink and, uh...a coat that's not full of holes." He looked at what he could see of his feet. "Maybe two drinks."

That was the thing. It was easy to be a shallow friend. The one who you partied with and told dick jokes with but didn't do anything too deep with. It was easy to be the friend who knew more about you than you did about them.

Keeping secrets wasn't a problem when no one knew she had secrets to keep.

But now Maurice DID know, and that opened doors to questions that Heather had been hoping would never come up.

Still, she quelled the worrisome dread in her gut as best as she could, offering Maurice a hand.

"Maybe we should just try and get back to your place. We can order delivery."

"Yeah...if I wanna be covered in blood in my own home, they can't do shit about it. Ow." Okay, so Heather was going to pretend she hadn't turned into Big Bird? Okay. He'd let her get by until they crossed over onto Hutch/Leeds territory.

They would have quite the walk too because Maurice had flown. He had wanted to save gas and hadn't plan on being brutally attacked outside the old Rent A Reel.

And so that long walk began. Maurice didn't ask any more questions. He kept his eyes on the road because the last thing he needed was to be ran over that night. Town had expanded and the gap of open farmland was shrinking more and more by the month. Any questions about his well being were answered with short grunts--partially because he was distracted thinking up questions and partially because he was in too much pain to really be much for conversation until he had some alcohol in him.

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