L.A. Fright Night

[Narrator]

Soundtrack


"Over there!" Manny's submachinegun barks out a spray of bullets into the side of a shipping container cast in the dim twilight of the dock's meager streetlights. A blood-curdling scream echoes through the canyons of stacked crates and containers and Tony stumbles around a corner, holding a pistol in one hand and pushing along a young latina trying to put up some resistance.

"Move! Fucking move!" he barks at her when something snares his foot and yanks his leg out from under him, sending him sprawling and forcing him to let go of the woman. Before she can stumble too far the other man wraps an arm around her, torn between aiming his gun at the merchandise as some sort of hostage and pointing it down towards what is bearing down on his buddy. Tony is pulled along the floor towards the small crouching silhouette as if he'd been hooked to a car. His hands claw at the ground to stop himself but the twin blue embers piercing the night pounce on his back and a flat hand spears out, striking him in the kidneys and strangling his scream with the shock to his system. The follow-up strikes happen too fast to even register at first, snapping his upper arm and multiple ribs in the blink of an eye.

Manny empties his magazine regardless of his friend? Colleague? Accomplice? But the small shape darts away, jumps against the side of a container and kicking off to disappear over the lip of the one opposite. He finally lets go of the trafficked young woman to reload his weapon as he stumbles backwards, frantically glancing around for any signs of their attacker. "The fuck do you want? Is it money? I can get it for you!" he shouts, though something in the pit of his stomach tells him that whatever this... thing is, it's not interested in cash. He backs into a stack of crates and jerks his gun left and right and finally cranes his neck up when he hears the crack of wood above.

He finally catches a good look at the monster and lets out a strangled laugh at the absurdity. It's just some ch*nk woman clinging to the crate, one hand gripping a torn piece of wood in her hand tauntingly. She intentionally made a sound, he realizes, wanted him to see her and the chilling ice her eyes drive through his spine. He silently screams at himself to riase his weapon but his hands are shaking too much to obey him and judging by the wicked grin on the woman's face she knows it. Her lips peel apart and if the eyes weren't enough to tell him then the sharp fangs make it clear this isn't anything even remotely human.

The seconds stretch like minutes and he finds the strength to put both hands on his SMG and tear his arms free from the terror. He's dimly aware of the warm urine running down his leg as he squeezes the trigger but the monster is already moving, falling and twisting mid-air around the spray of bullets and swinging back in towards him, suspended by something further up. Her foot hits the grip of his weapon and slams it against the crate, both wood and fingers snapping like twigs and his mouth opens to scream. Instead he finds slender fingers plunge into his mouth and grab his tongue, tearing free in a spray of blood that splatters in an arc against the wall.

The monster pushes off of him and lands gracefully on her feet, watching him crumple to the ground in a heap as she brings her bloody hand to her mouth. The last thing as the darkness closes in around his vision is the realization that the slow, deliberate chewing motion of her blood-smeared chin means she is eating his tongue.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

She'd been right. There is no shortage of scum to be found in the Angels' City and having spend some times around humans she knows where to look to follow one to another. She wipes the blood from her chin with the back of her hand and looks at the little book she fished out of one of the men's pockets. A lot of it is non-sense, numbers and shorthand, though she can make a good guess that at least some of the numbers represent people. Young women mostly, judging by the shipping container she pried open. But more importantly, she knows what addresses look like and in the back certainly is a list of them along with names. Meticulously pieced together information on anonymous clients as blackmail for emergencies. Not that Ryn has any idea about that but her instincts tell her that they are where she will find her biggest prey...

[Erynies Adrasteia]

The mansion sits on a hillside, separated from it's neighbors by terraced trees and hedges and, hidden within the zig-zagging boundary and stairs running through them, a substantial wall. Ryn has been perched on a tree, watching the place for a good hour now. The stalking is as much part of her indulgence as any actual violence driven by the Deva's burning heart. And even she has to admit this is clever. Too clever for a human, by far. The guest house is actually a gate checkpoint full of armed guards, big clunky shoebox-sized cameras are hidden everywhere around the property, slowly turning their mechanical eyes to and fro, the planters in front of the main building look like they could withstand a deceptive amount of force. But all of those are normal, if excessive. What no regular human would spot or know how to work is the hidden layout of lines that come together to form wards. A wall here, the line transitioning to that of a path, curved by a flowerbed, intersected by following the line of the straight side of an artificial pond. Roof angles that project out to connect at certain points. It could be a mage, some human have dug up enough forgotten knowledge, but no ward could contain the foul stench of an Asura's nest. A fancy one but when has she ever cared about human aesthetics.

She scoffs out a low growl and all but glides across the branch, leaping to an adjoining palm-tree, clinging to it's bark and scrambling up to it's crown in moments. She's circled the compound multiple times now and there's been some activity that started up not too long after she arrived. Guards wandering the grounds, lights turning on. Then a van pulls up and is stopped at the main gate. Humans gesture and argue and the car backs up, swinging along a side road towards the back entrance. Ryn grabs a bundle of palm-leaves and steps off her perch, letting the stiff leaves slow her fall enough to let her drop the last three yards or so without a single sound, the only sign of her being on the move in the swaying fronds as they bounce back up. She scrambles low to the ground and waits for the van's headlights to pass her by and rolls out onto the dirt-road, passing between the front and rear tires and grabbing the undercarriage. There's a slight bump and click and her back is brushed the curved metal of tyre-spikes as the van pulls into the compound proper. With her ear pressed to the underside she can hear faint sounds over the noise of the machine.

Strangled sobs. More than one voice. Whispers she can't fully make out, one full of dread, the other soothing but shaking with worry. The sound of metal chains shifting. Then the car stops and the rear door is opened to startled, fearful noises. Guards bark harsh orders, impatient. Boots visible from beneath the van. She could pull them down, sink her teeth into femoral artery and force them to save themselves rather than worry about anything else; but instead she waits. Two pairs of high-heels join the boots and are dragged off and Ryn drops to the ground, rolls out from underneath the car and onto her feet, slipping behind a low wall before the turning camera can sweep across the spot. Basement stairs, hidden from outside looks via careful layout, a heavy metal door with keys and some kind of card... thing. The guards open it up, usher the two women through and Ryn moves. Silently down the steps, three at a time, foot against the coarse stucco wall, up and above the camera mounted above the door, fingers holding on to the uneven surface by their nails. Her kanaf unwinds into a narrow band and slides along the frame as the door closes, catching the latches before they lock the door.

She waits, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, her fingers cramping. Finally she eases the door open and in one swift motion grabs the top of the frame, swings herself down past the camera so fast it catches only a couple frames of obscuring shadow, and up around to the inside ceiling above the door. Her feet find the top of the frame and her hands press against the ceiling, holding herself still once again as she waits for any signs of alarm. Ahead of her a corridor runs straight for a while, the guards still walking. One of them turns, double-checking the door since he didn't hear it shut. Ryn scrambles higher up the wall with her feet, then stays stock-still. The ceiling mounted lights are sparse enough to not illuminate every nook and cranny and the guards attention is on the door as he watches it swing closed. Ryn's fingers on the ceiling slowly slide forwards away from the wall, fingernails grinding against the stone and slowly but surely losing the angle keeping her propped up as the guard's eyes skip over the monster up in the shadows of the ceiling. He turns back around and Ryn allows herself to drop into a silent crouch.

Keeping a little more distance she follows until they pass through a door into a more finished part of the basement. She presses her ear against the door and listens to the sound of footsteps moving away, the sound of another door opening and closing. After a couple minutes the same door opens and the guards footsteps, without the two women now, pass by Ryn's door and off into another direction entirely. The guards baited the trap for her, of this she is certain now, so once again she waits patiently for her prey to arrive...

[Erynies Adrasteia]

She doesn't have to wait very long. The clacking of footsteps, followed by duller steps and finally a wet scraping sound. They pass and Ryn slips into the corridor after the and to the door they vanished through. Ear pressed against it she listens to the voices.

"Why is it only two?" a gurgling male voice demands with the sound of pulling a limb from a bog.

"One of our contacts went incommunicado. Until I can follow up this will have to do, Ghorm." a dry, reedy voice responds that makes Ryn's throat itch from just listening to it's rasp.

"I call dibs on the brunette, you two can split the other one." The final voice is that of a woman, barely a whisper but somehow sounding crystal clear in Ryn's ear as if it was right up against the woman's lips.

Asura, all three of them. And not ones merely riding human skins. They're coherent, intelligent, established enough to have been like this for a while without driving their hosts to utter ruin. Which can only mean one thing. These hosts are willing, accepted these spirits of corruption into themselves and merged into something stronger. There'll be no driving them out of their hosts. Soul spirit and flesh are one and will have to be destroyed as such.

While the three are arguing, Ryn slips into the room. It's large, filled with all manner of restraints, implements and contraptions Ryn can only guess as to what their purpose is. Nothing good, that much she knows. The room reeks of spilled bodily fluids and terror. The three Asura stand in a rough semi-circle around two women with their arms pulled above their heads and shackled to a chain on the ceiling. The female spirit is closest to one of them, holding her victim's chin and uncoiling a tongue that hangs a good foot out of her mouth. She's wearing an ostentatious if not outright ridiculous outfit, her free arm being grabbed by the elbow by the person next to her.

To call him human would be misleading at best, though he's still close enough that he can probably wrench himself into a halfway passable approximation. Right now though, any human anatomy ends at the waist where a large mass of pale skin bulges like the pseudopod of a slug. Complete with a stubby triangular 'tail' at the end that contracts and extends with undulating pulsations. His upper body isn't any more pleasant, skin pale to the point of near-translucence, multiple chins, fingers nearly as short as they are wide and wiggling with anticipation on his unoccupied hand. He's wearing small, round glasses, the arms of which press into his flabby skin on the side of his head, nearly swallowed entirely by the flesh.

The third one of them is standing half a step back and watching the bickering two with mild amusement. He's tall and skinny but his face and hands where his skin is showing shows moving flakes, arranged like scales but looking soft and flexible like little bits of frill. He's the one who notices the intruder, though at this point Ryn isn't trying very hard to conceal her presence anymore.

"Look at that, a stray has found it's way inside to solve our conundrum for us."

The other two turn around, the woman hesitatingly, without letting go of her prize in case it's some kind of trick to make her relinquish her claim. The slug slowly on account of having to heft his mass around.

"Something not quite right with this one, Saxby." the woman whispers and Ryn can feel the words try to wind into her ear as if trying to convince her of their truth. On a human it would probably work in moments and begin to settle in their mind.

"If Toloo doesn't want her..." the slug gurgles

"Be my guest." Saxby rasps, though Ryn gets the sense he's a bit more suspicious than Ghorm and is gladly letting someone else take the risk. Not that it'll matter in the end for either of them.

The slug inches towards her and she feels the world slow to a crawl. Every eyeblink stretches into an age of darkness, every breath a geological movement. Ghorm is taking each moment to it's fullest, every errant movement of air a maddening eternity of brushing against her skin, each uncomfortable fold in her clothes, each imperfectly held muscle a mounting torture. And through it all Ghorm slowly advances and looks at her with hunger, waiting for that moment when she begins to break at the infinite space between each moment. Confusion sets in on his face and his efforts redouble, seconds spread thin and still nothing, no panic, no fear, no hint of insanity or pleading in the tiny thing that stumbled into their nest.

Ryn lifts her eyes to look at Ghorm like a mountain rising from the earth and it's his composure that cracks. "How? Who are you?" he gurgles into the crawling moment. Ryn simply grins and curls her lips back into a snarl. "Adrastei--" Before the realization fully leaves his mouth in the form of one of her many names she moves and Ghorms hold over the moment shatters with Ryn shooting forward and driving her fist straight through his doughy chest.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

The fight is as swift as it is brutal and in the end she's devoured Toloo and Ghorm's hearts along with their very essence. She'd torn the chains of the two women and given Saxby enough time to wrench his body into a snaking abomination that had burst through the building above them, disappearing into the night sky. The two mortals had gotten away in time and the Agency would have her chase them down, make sure they never uttered a word about this, but Ryn couldn't care less. She doesn't know about re-traumatization or victim care, at least not in those terms, but she knows that the last thing they need is to be chased down by something that ripped their would-be abusers apart like twigs. She's not any different than the monsters she slaughtered. Not really.

After dragging herself free of the rubble of the collapsed building she found a concrete pillar still jutting out at a slight angle and perched herself on top of it. Maybe she'll hunt down as much of the dregs and scum in this city as she can, rip out as much rot as possible so Katarina can at least long to return to something that's less horrible underneath the surface. Something better than her.

From somewhere slow guitar twinges fill the air and Ryn cranes her neck to look into the night sky, the frayed cloak of her wings spilling down behind her and gently drifting in the wind.

♪♫"Long lost Deva sitting, antiquated, so outdated.
Vengeance-dealing sin-eater, I am.
Living in the ruins of a dream
And Broken dreams never feel the pain.
Running tally of violation, in my heart just desolation."♪♫

♪♫"Humanity’s believes mean nothing more to me
Than a ball and a chain inside of my brain.
Holding me back from living a life
I have to stretch my wings to fly."♪♫

♪♫"I am what I am, being all that I can
Nothing heavenly within my command.
With everything to lose I reached out to you...
Who would love a creature like me?"♪♫

♪♫"I thought I'd trapped the wind in my pocket, but then she flew away
I thought I had the music's aid but some things can’t be helped.
Would you kiss a monsters cheek?
Would you hold a monsters hand?
Would you look into my eyes and say that you understand?"♪♫

♪♫"I am what I am, being all that I can
Nothing heavenly within my command.
With everything to lose I reached out to you...
Who could love a creature like me?"♪♫