RP:A Good Moonboy Pt 2

From HollowWiki

Summary: Several months after promising to help Hudson with his "werewolf problem", Eleanor scares the crap out of him by showing up out of the blue and luring him into a dark hole where she imbues him with a ton of arcane energy in the form of a protection rune.


A Park in Cenril

Hudson, as the good cop between him and Emelyan, has been handling a meeting with the distributor network that he's been wrangling since Eleanor had gone off the grid. These people are crude, he needs a palate cleanser. He waits until he's out the side door into the alley to go about lighting up an herbal cigarette. He is keeping a low enough profile in a baseball cap and glasses. That said, he seems friendly enough, on a first name basis even, with the nearby bodega owner, who doesn't care if Huds smokes in his shop, and who seems to have a good sense of what Huds is buying before Huds lays it all out on the counter. (Orange juice, protein bar.) Hudson pays, no words are exchanged during this transaction, and heads back out into the alley.

Eleanor had been following Hudson around for about an hour, waiting in the shadows, and hiding behind corners. Like a predator stalking her prey, she lurked in the alley, awaiting his exit with tattooed arms crossed under her bosom, left knee drawn up to press the sole of her boot against the bodega's outer wall. Wearing her usual gear, it would be easy enough to recognize her, but she spoke anyway, intending to startle the werewolf with her thick burr of words. “Ye better be sharin' 'at, mukker,” demanded the woman, her tone playful as if she hadn't actually been gone without a word for months. Without waiting for a reply, she straightened away from the wall and snatched the herbal cigarette from her mate, taking a generous drag before reaching out to return it. Her full lips spread in a smirk as she then took a moment to properly eye Hudson, a stoic glint to her eyes that would never betray her true emotions even as she plastered that amused expression in her features. With her grin broadening, she went on to add, “Miss me?”

Eleanor succeeds. Hudson is startled, and his features at first darken immediately with alarm before drawing into a wide grin. "Eleanor," he breathes, beginning to laugh, and then cough, on the smoke he's inhaled. He passes to Eleanor, or rather she snatches it from him. "Holy," he exhales, followed by a word that cannot be printed here. He looks at her, and, without taking his eyes off of her person, begins to unwrap his protein bar. "Where the hell have YOU been?" he asks, the question a pointed one but there being affection in it all the same. He takes a bite out of his snack and eyeballs her, chewing. "Yeah," he says, belatedly, reaching for his cigarette as she's handing it back.

She was obviously pleased by the reaction she had elicited with her unexpected arrival. For a moment, celadon eyes seemed to show a glimmer of affection in reply, before she managed to subdue the expression into a wry smirk. "Och, ye ken. Aroond," she replied, enigmatic as ever, shoulders rolling into a dismissive shrug. Without skipping a beat, she produced a smal coin purse from somewhere on her person, previously hidden from view in some enchanted secret pocket no doubt, reaching forward to thrust Huds' share of her recent efforts toward her companion. "Ah hae bin thrang." Eleanor's expression was damn-near wolfish, before settling into a comfortable aloofness. "Ah hear ye hae bin, tay." The spell blade eyed the man, a knowing glint to the otherwise unreadable pale green eyes. "Nearly got yerself a missus," she revealed herself to know, "but whit woods she hink abit yer side gig?" The phrase "side gig" had multiple meanings, alluding to the fact that Eleanor knew much more than she let on.

Hudson nods as he begins chewing. "Arrrroond," he imitates her accent with his mouth full. He swallows, takes a hit off of his herbal cigarette, and then gives it back to her, waving to signal that she should keep it. He's eating power bars and drinking OJ, that's that. He takes this coinpurse she's offered him after looking at her with a raised eyebrow. It goes into his pocket, and he gestures that they should walk toward the park and talk. There's something about the way she says side gig that gives him pause, and he slides a look her way, swallows. "She unfortunately knows about our work," he says with a shake of his head. "She wants me to quit, actually, but she hasn't really asked so I'm pretending everything's fine. How'd you find out about this, I guess you saw the wedding announcement in the paper?"

Eleanor made no objection to the change of scenery and easily fell into step at the alchemist's side. "Och, diz she noo? Come clean did ye?" That shyte-eating grin just wouldn't stop as it returned then; El was loving the hell out of this little reunion. Like she had an ace hidden up her sleeve, the rogue kept those glass-green eyes away from Hudson and forced herself to temper the smirk. "Och, Huds, I've got een an' lugs a' place." Ubiquitous as she claimed to be, she dismissed the shroud of mystery a moment to level a knowing celadon gaze at the only person she had considered to be a friend since moving to these lands. She dropped her voice, tone tense with the sobriety, "Ye cannae quit. Onie ay it. Ye dinnae hae a choice in 'at, dae ye hear me?" Hudson had to keep all his ladies happy, whether he wanted to or not. He had to keep Alvina happy, he had to keep seeing his little witchy side-chick, and he could not, especially not right now, bail out of the dust-peddling business she had slowly been working on from the shadows. The spell blade stole her gaze away to glance around, taking in the environment before she returned that stare to her partner-in-crime. "We hae a lot ay time an' bunsens tae make up fur." Beat. "An' Ah intend tae keep up mah half ay uir wee bargain." Another beat. "Ah tauld ye 'at Ah owe ye mah life. Ah huvnae forgotten 'at." Perhaps this was some strange way of her telling Hudson that they weren't going to talk about all the shit he had been up to, but that she was gonna have his back. Even if he didn't particularly want her help, he was stuck with her.

Hudson shoots Eleanor a sour look as he crams the last of the protein bar into his mouth. Obviously, he hadn't come clean; he doesn't need to say it outloud: he'd been busted. "Chill. I'm not quitting," he says, as if she were nagging him to clean his room. He opens his orange juice, drinks some of it. Gods damn it, he got OJ with pulp. He grimaces. He always does this. While he contemplates his poor choice in beverage, Eleanor swears some kind of fealty, and he does a double-take to study her. "What?" he exhales at her, as if her seriousness were unappreciated at this moment. He offers her the orange juice. "Well, you can start by doing what you were doing before. We tried to keep things running as best we could but honestly... Well, I dunno what you heard, but Emelyan started reigning down terror on rival gangs so..."

Eleanor may not have made her presence known to Hudson sooner, but she had definitely been a busy little bee lately. "Ah hae it under control," she replied, not even bothering to hide her annoyance of Emelyan's actions in her absence. She wasn't lying either -- if the rival gangs wanted to make a move on them, well, The Oracle would just have something to say about that. El was not about to let that strange little man-child disrupt her plans. She then said to Huds, "In th' future, Ah will be makin' mah draps at th' merc shop. Ah expect mair product by next week." A beat as she looked pointedly at her companion. "Can ye handle heem?"

Hudson's offer of orange juice appears to have been declined, either because Eleanor prefers non-pulp as well or because a black mood has descended upon her. If he had to put money on it, he'd pick the second. "We tried, El," he says, in the tone of an apology. He drinks from the carton of orange juice, it leaves him an orange 70s style mustache, maybe if he'd shaved within the last three days that wouldn't have happened. He bobs his head along with this most recent barrage of questions. "Yeah, of course," he answers her, shooting her a questioning glance for her sudden businesslike attitude. "I'll talk to him, don't sweat it."

Eleanor didn't care for pulp either, but that wasn't why she had more-or-less declined the OJ. Thankfully before she became too irritated, Huds went and got himself a nice little 'stache, and she had to smother an amused smirk. "Guid, coz if ye dornt, Ah will," she continued, arcing blonde brows above those imperceptible glass-green eyes. Even though her lips had aligned themselves with her mirth, the expression barely reached her eyes. Perhaps Huds was just enough weird to distract her from his iresome partner, but with a sigh, she rolled her shoulders. In a quick shift of direction, "Fit loch gettin' oan wi' yer wild side?" The last time she'd properly seen him, he'd come stumbling into her 'lair' raving about his recent encounter that had left him lycan and headed in every direction at once.

Hudson makes a noise of indeterminate meaning (but most likely meaning "Word") in the base of his throat. He chugs the last of his OJ, chucks the carton in a trash can that they move past. A suitable topic, his lycanthropy. "I dunno, it's a mess," he tells her, leaving out that he'd recently just murdered a dude who had bothered him and Alvina. Maybe Eleanor's little birds had related that rumor, or maybe not, it had been dark and the guard who'd come to intervene - and gotten a punch to the face for his troubles - was still working the case. "I was taking some type of magical medication for awhile, it helped, but also had side effects, now I'm just... doing nothing. I'm strong and fast now, but it's like I'm a bad drunk, if something pisses me off, well." He exhales in a rush, glancing her way. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't make more of an impression with our work, it's helped, sad to say."

Eleanor had suspected that things would turn sour in her - which she thought necessary and unavoidable given the circumstances - absence, but just how and how much, she had vastly underestimated. But, the woman sighed, accepting of everything that he told her without protest, a pensive wrinkle nestled above her glass-green eyes. Those hooded eyes were still slanted in Hudson's direction, and she was still for a moment, quiet, before, rather apprehensively, she went on to say, "Ah main be able tae help wi' some ay 'at." The spellblade straightened from whatever casual, lowered-guard pose she seemed to have adopted throughout their walk, shoulders squared as she glanced around with focus, as if looking for someplace more out of the way of others as they neared the park. "Come wi' me," El said, turning back to look at him over a shoulder as she reached back with her left hand to find one of his. Whether or not he allowed the tactile guidance into the park itself, she effortlessly dodged people toward a shaded corner of the park, far from any nearby benches or the scattered gathered of those also enjoying the weather.

Hudson fixes Eleanor with a look conveying dubious confidence. "Yeah....?" he says, as he trails after her, looking around them, as if expecting them to be followed. Why else all this cloak and dagger. They're coming up on a dense thicket of park goers, all milling about in dense packs, and he reaches for Eleanor's hand to stay with her. Always a little awkward, holding the hand of your mostly unclothed, hot lady business associate, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, can't let packs of roving and screaming children sprinting about red rover you. Even so, they still try to cut them off. It's stop and go, Hudson tries not to decapitate them with his arm, which of course is about even with their heads. "Yo, where are we going," he asks, after it seems the onslaught of children has ceased. "Also did you mean help with my werewolf stuff? What was that about earlier?"

Eleanor twisted back as the parkgoers swarmed them, paying her companion an awkward, pained grimace-slash-half grin. Something in those glass-green eyes darkened for a second, and she pursed her full lips, saying nothing as she then pulled him behind a curtain of trunks, low hanging branches nearly smacking her in the head as she ducked below. In what appeared to be an old fox's den long since abandoned, Eleanor released Hudson's hand in order to kick at a small, round wooden door that was only haphazardly covered by the underbrush a foot from the lip. It took two sturdy swings of her foot for the latch to give, a spring releasing as it then opened upward with a distressed squeal that caused the spellblade to look around suddenly, clearly on edge as she attempted to reassure herself that no one near enough would have been able to hear the sound save the werewolf. "Doon we gang, noo!" The door was just wide enough in diameter for Hudson to drop through, so it was a walk in the park - so to speak - for the much smaller female to step over and fall through, her cerulean tabard-style skirt flying up around her hips with her sudden descent. Below, in the shadows of the bunker-like hole in the ground, she grunted as her feet hit the ground, and angling a gaze up through the shaft, called, "Ye comin' ur nae?" El clearly did not want to discuss this out in the open, and as usual, she took things one step further in terms of her resourcefulness with this little subterranean cave that was probably no more than three or four yards across at its widest point. Inside, it was wet and damp, as if unused recently and likely near an underground water source. "Ah huvnae got aw day."

Hidden Underground Hole in a Park in Cenril

"Dude, what," says Hudson as Eleanor leads them into a literal thicket. Is this a joke? This shrubbery better lead to bloody Narnia because he's a great deal taller than Eleanor which means this is a great deal more annoying for him. He holds branches in abeyance from slapping him in the face, watches in stunned disbelief as Eleanor unearths a literal door in the brush. Never again the jokes about Narnia. This woman's for real. He watches her drop through and suffer some kind of wardrobe malfunction, not that he's looking. This is weird, man, but he's inclined to go with the flow here. "Yeah, OK," he says, and he braces a hand on the side of the frame for balance before dropping straight through. He also lands on his feet, beside Eleanor, likewise grunts for effect. He can't stand up straight without hitting his head so he crouches somewhat, uncomfortably. "So......"

With both of them through the doorway, it swung closed with a whoosh of air as it pretty much sealed them in; there were probably runes of some sort on the door itself if anyone was paying close attention to it. For a moment, the room was dark, then, slowly, designs began to form on the walls of the cramped cavern, glowing in brilliant blues and greens. They joined and criss-crossed and spread outward on all the walls, growing together into an intricate pattern of organic and geometric design: It was the magic she promised to get, all those months ago. She had been working diligently since then, building this bunker and inscribing every delicate part of every spell she could think of to allay the symptoms of Huds' lycanthropy. It would not make him human-- but it was a start, she hoped. Part of her was nervous as hell that this was not going to work -- she had not yet had a chance to test them out, because, well, that would require a wolf man as a guinea pig. And, here we are. Eleanor trembled almost giddily as she felt the magic of the room began to vibrate, the air humming around them as those eyes lifted to stare intently at Hudson. "Sae ... ur ye ready tae dae thes?"

Hudson looks around them as their venue becomes LIT with magic, literally and also in the figurative sense. This woman disappears for months, then reappears and forces him to drop into a hole in the ground that locks them in and then lights up with magical sparkles. He still hasn't the slightest idea what this is even about. He looks at Eleanor with an increasing sense of alarm, which is an upgrade from the general puzzlement that had followed them here. "What is 'this?'" he asks her, gesturing at the room. He nearly stands up too straight; his head brushes against the ceiling and a bit of dirt rains down on him. He releases a stream of curses, bends down and shakes his head like a dog. "Why are we in a tiny cave that's decorated with a holiday display?"

Eleanor didn’t have time to argue or explain things, and so with an exasperated sound, she grunts at him, “Ye asked fur mah heelp, Huds’. I hae tae lae tae dae it, bit--” The spell-rogue’s breath came out in a ragged, shallow pant, her head swimming as the gem in her diadem pulsed with chaotic arcane energy. It wouldn’t be enough, she knew; he’d still be the wolf, but maybe, just maybe ... The spell-rogue had been storing magic in this hidey hole for a long time now, and it filled the room with a crackling thickness, an acrid taste in the air as she lifted a hand to pull her crown from her brow.

Lowering the crown to her side as she leveled dazed-looking celadon eyes upon her best friend, Eleanor revealed to Hudson something no one else knew about at that point in time: the five-cornered turquoise in her forehead remained when the tiara did not, and it glowed even brighter with the iron’s restraints being lifted. As soon as she took her next breath, every spell inscribed in the walls of the underground hole glared with light so bright it was almost white before, with a resounding crack that reverberated and set the spell-rogue’s teeth on edge, every morsel of arcana was suddenly sucked up from the walls into the gem resting above the furrow in her forehead. Eleanor swayed on her feet, fighting the urge to vomit from the sheer amount of magic she’d just consumed in that single tick of time. She reached out, stumbling toward and into Hudson before pulling at his shirt to reveal any part of skin she could get her hands on; there was nothing lewd about her touch, but it was urgent, her hands shaking almost violently before she was able to smooth them across a revealed piece of the wolf’s flesh.

Both of her palms glowed as she snapped her eyes shut and concentrated all of that mana now back through her and into the brand that would perhaps one day save Hudson and Alvina’s lives: the wolf rune would sear into his skin, emitting a brilliant white-blue light before quickly fading -- along with all the remaining light in the room. Doused in darkness, the life in her diadem and the runes on the walls snuffed out, Eleanor sagged against Hudson as the spell-rune brand stained into the werewolf’s skin, the protection spell complete. Feeling like she’d just been trampled by a herd of mustangs, El could no longer holder herself up, and let herself crumple to the floor of the now-pitch-black cavern.