2021.11.24 - Rabbit, Rabbit Finale: Rich Man, Poor Man, Bitterman
This log follows the story from: 2021.11.24 - Rabbit, Rabbit Finale: Trailer Park Throwdown
The trailer and the park both have seen better days. Most of their inhabitants have, similarly, seen better days, though there are plenty of them who never have. In the world of Bubbles McGee, trailers represent the symbols of both success and failure; in her world, a trailer of one's own is one of the highest achievements. But in her world, the trailer is simply a private shelter, however luxurious, surrounded by the outside world.
In Larry Bitterman's world, the trailer is a refuge, a lair, and perhaps most importantly, a home. And it's surrounded by the outside world. But the feeling as the door opens is that perhaps inside...might also be a form of outside.
Bubbles, wearing a stunning gown and flawless heels, stands with her hand up as the door swings in. She glances around, then back to Noah, Ruth, and Rey.
Ruth, the survivor of the original screening, looks a bit more together today, a little tidier, though this could be from staying at the hotel with the witches for a few days. Her eyepatch has been upgraded, on Myrtle's insistence, and she may have touched base with a certain pair of brothers staying at the hotel. It's hard to miss them, in the same living quarters. She's not wearing a coat just because it's chilly outside.
The interior of the trailer is dark, and quiet. Too much of both things. It feels wrong, but subtly wrong. As if something's waiting to go awry, but it's biding its time and hasn't reached there yet.
Rey Devoss stands nearby, attired as usual in his biker leathers and burgundy duster. The Autumn Blade hangs at his side, silent and dark for now but stating plainly enough their intent at this place. Taking in the site with his inhumanly keen senses, the fairy knight too reflects on those trailers and their complex meaning--once, groups of trailer-villages represented gatherings of travelers, a place to build a fire and hold back the night when taking rest from the business of wandering, of a life both unfettered and without roots. Here, instead, those trailers represent almost a kind of trap, a place where people with likely nowhere else to go have found themselves. These trailers do not travel, but what this one conceals is better off this way: cornered, ready to be flushed into the open so that its threat to others may be ended.
Noah looks, quite honestly, nervous. He looks around at everyone gathered, his gaze continually drawn toward the trailer. "This...is it, then? This is the place, and the time for...finishing everything, right? So noone will ever fall victim to this film again." He looks toward Ruth, his face serious, yet he dare not show pity toward the woman. He wouldn't want to insult her, after all. "What is....our plan, then?" he asks, smiling softly toward Rey, then Bubbles. "What can I do?"
Bubbles lets her gaze rest upon each of the people assembled, and then she turns back to the trailer and the open door. "We're going to have a...discussion with Mr. Bitterman. After all, we've gone to a lot of trouble to find him."
She turns and steps in, past the threshold, and looks around herself carefully. Her eyes narrow as she senses it; there's psychic static of a sort, and even the slightest-inclined among them will find it easy to detect. It's unpleasant, as if someone forgot and left something on, some appliance somewhere, which simply will not quiet.
Ruth notices Noah's regard and smiles a little, though her heart isn't fully in it. She's been waiting years to do this. Years to confront the man, to find out why... "Let's finish this." She hurries to back Bubbles up, reaching into her coat but not withdrawing the hand yet.
Rey's hand rests on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw the blade instantly should the need arise, as he follows Bubbles closely. He's well aware that the senior witch is no one to be taken lightly, but Rey is a knight. He'll protect the others no matter what, so long as he can, and Bubbles is in the lead, so he walks with her and offers whatever protection he can. He grimaces at that field of psychic static, a grating and unwelcome sensation, and focuses on tuning his other senses, seeking to notice any details that might be obfuscated by the more overt, intrusive sensation. At Ruth's declaration, he spares her a nod of agreement. For once, the Autumn Knight is quiet, even grim. He, too, is clearly ready to put an end to this evil.
Noah moves closer to Rey. He's seen the fellow in action in the past, after all, and knows he's unlikely to die in the fairy knight's presence. He draws a large chunk of rose quartz from his pocket and holds it in his hand, his gaze shifting from Bubbles to Ruth, then back to Rey. "It'll be okay," he says, more to himself than anyone else. He, too, feels the strange buzzing of psychic static as they enter into the trailer. He remains quiet, though ready to draw his wand should he need. He's ready for this pain to end and for innocents to be safe once more.
With the coven as it is, they're all in good hands. But there's such a sense of the unknown here, and it's all too familiar, at the same time...
"Come in, come in." A voice croaks out, in the darkness. It's so dark, it's almost absolute somehow; even those with enhanced senses and perception will find it difficult to perceive anything that isn't projected, in this inky shadow. There's seemingly no end to it, and it's hard to get a full portrait, as it were, of the place's interior. It would be premature to declare it larger than it looked outside, but darkness does have a way of distorting things.
Bubbles steps in farther, perhaps empowered by the presence of the others. "You're a hard man to find, Mr. Bitterman." She says his name almost as if testing it on her tongue, and judging by the tone and the way her expression changes, she doesn't care for it.
A phlegmatic chuckle -- if it can be called laughter -- rings out in that same almost mechanical voice. "By my design." Bitterman answers. "Please, make yourselves comfortable. I've been expecting you. Ever since the drive-in."
And to anyone with the senses to perceive, alarm bells sound. It's wrong, it's so wrong. His voice, his presence, it's all wrong. All of it. Even the darkness is unnatural. It doesn't do that by the physics of the planet.
The sleek rasp of steel answers that chuckle, as Rey draws his sword. He keeps near Bubbles and ahead of Noah, not letting Ruth escape his perceptions, either--his awareness may be limited in this supernatural gloom, but what perception he has, he'll still use fully. Raising the shining sword--shining, even in this darkness, though its light does not fill the room as it would normally--the Autumn Knight lets out a low growl, "Quite kind, to invite our comfort. Perhaps I might see to it, then?" With a flick of his wrist he raises the blade from looking poised to strike to a guard position, and he passes his off hand along the blade, murmuring in tones that still strike clear as a bell: "I call upon the light of autumn stars, the Northern Crown, and the Harvest Moon. May their celestial fire pierce these shadows and light our path, for true!"
That voice is quite enough to send a shiver down Noah's spine and, for lack of any better term, creeps him out. "I...have quite the bad feeling," he murmurs as he narrows his eyes in the obscurity of the darkness. He pulls his wand in one hand, clutching his crystal tightly with the other. Rey's fae magicks draw Noah's attention, but he mostly settles his a glowing, silver-eyed gaze upon Bubbles and Ruth when not taking his time in getting a sense of his surroundings. He remains silent, watchful, channeling energy in preparation. For what, he's not quite sure, but he's certain he'll need it soon enough.
When Rey acts, everything changes suddenly and sharply: the light called upon pierces the shadows exactly as it's called upon to do. There, sitting in a battered old chair, across what could charitably be called a living room, is a canister containing a brain, a number of wires running from it to a number of things seen and unseen. One of those things appears to be something like a speaker, which goes some way explaining why the voice was so distorted.
But the voice doesn't seem startled. "If that adds to your comfort." It's dismissive without seeming to show much emotion at all. "The film is my masterpiece. It is the first and, to date, only film to my knowledge that has been crafted with the assistance of the spectacular technology of superhuman, extraterrestrial beings."
"It drives people insane!" Ruth shouts, voice rough with the fury so conspicuously absent in Bitterman's distorted voice. "It kills them!"
"Their infirmity kills them," Bitterman's brain rasps, remarkably drily. "Allow me to demonstrate."
Suddenly, a ripple of utter revulsion slams out like the aftershock of a bomb. Bubbles somehow manages standing, even on those high heels of hers, but Ruth is knocked to a kneel. Fortunately, Bubbles McGee's superlative talent lies in the psychic realms of the mind and soul, and at the very least, she's determined to shield her allies from the worst of it.
"Yog-Sothoth is the gate and the key both," Bitterman continues, words ringing in the air like mechanical vibrations on vocal chords, with no warmth or humanity to pick out. "He knows where they broke through of old, and he knows where they will incur again. He knows where they treaded and where they tread now. And he knows why nothing earthly may behold them as they do."
The force of that sensation, that assault on the senses, hits Rey like a physical impact, but his senses are not only sharp, but they are well-shielded against such attacks. Bracing himself, he grips the hilt of his sword with both hands and thrusts the blade forward like a blazing brand, pouring his strength into the light that shines from it. He puts the raw magic into the light, giving it shape and form, until the light itself embodies a warding spell effect; he literally seeks to push back the darkness, not only literally but on a deeper, even conceptual level. In effect, the knight seeks to draw a barrier against the darkness and the onslaught, letting the light radiate out as much as defense as it is beacon.
Noah lifts an arm to shield his eyes from the sudden light, only to settle his gaze upon the brain before them. "O-Oh...ew," he whispers before he can catch himself, his attention shifting slightly toward Bubbles and Rey. "That brain...isn't speaking about aliens, is it?" Alien extraterrestrials, Noah could handle. The idea of other extraterrestrials, outsiders, that he can't quite contend with. There could scant be any worse news, in Noah's opinion. The young witch seems quite unsure of what to do, for a moment, but he pushes past the oddness and feeling of ink and sickness, holding tight to his crystal as he summons his energy. "Let this realm be reinforced, the light, the dark, the grey in nature's course." He chants softly to himself, applying his essence to bolstering Rey's barrier and reinforcing the stability of their immediate space as best as he can.
Before anyone else seems to gather their bearings, it's unexpectedly Ruth who finds the courage she needs to act. Bubbles notices early, and her psychic shields shift to protect the woman, who is only human. In a group of the fantastic and the fabulous, it's only Ruth's courage and her persistence that drives her to act in such a situation far outside of the normal experience of any human on Earth.
From that coat, she pulls a hatchet. Drawing it back, she lets it fly...and her aim is true, thanks to the brilliant illumination provided by the Autumn Knight and bolstered, enhanced and added to by Noah's determined will. The small axe smacks into the top of the tank, which explodes in a brilliant burst of sparks that shower down on it. They start to kindle in the already devastatingly aged fabric. It hasn't been well maintained, and fire spreads quickly over the chair.
This, finally, seems to elicit an emotional reaction. "Fools! Short-sighted fools! You cannot stop us." Another burst of psychic torment shoots out, though this one is slightly weaker than the last, distracted by the immediate predicament.
"A correction." Bubbles extends a delicate hand and gestures very delicately. "We just did." As if on cue, the flames intensify, spreading instantly. The fire reaches out with its dancing fingers, spreading around.
There's one more burst of nasty on the mental level, but this is even weaker than the last. Then, thankfully, it's over.
Rey's blade flashes in an arc, dancing around, and the light blazing from it focuses at the tip of the blade. Flames kindle there, trailing after the flashing steel, and then Rey thrusts the blade forward, letting the flame leap from the tip and enter the blaze, bolstering the natural fire as well as Bubbles' own efforts, just to make entirely sure. As the power dances around him, around all of them, he raises his gruff voice to bark out, "Do we expect more of them? Shall we just destroy the entire structure?" The situation is strange to the knight, filled with a far different brand of horrors than he knows, but sometimes the old ways seem best: burn it down, and salt the earth.
Noah isn't quite sure what he's seeing. The psychic bursts, weakening as they are, rattle the witch's mind as he continues to channel his energy into the task of reinforcing the space around them to the best of his ability. It isn't the sort of magick he's able to keep up for long periods of time, but he knows the dangers of an other seeping into reality and eroding away at it. Anything he can do to strengthen their immediate space can help to prevent the brain and its sickening ways from speeding the collapse. Yet, just as quickly as everything begins, a hatchet and flames seem to take out the brain. "That...was quick. I do not feel that...it isn't the end, is it?" he asks, checking around with Rey and Bubbles.
The fight with the abomination outside ended, Nic sees the flash of lights within the trailer and bounds in that direction. Still in his werewolf form and dripping with the remains of the creature they fought, Nic leaps through the window of the trailer with a crash and splatter of glass around the inside of the lit area. He lands in a crouch, snarling as the foul odor assails his sensitive sense of smell. When it's clear things seem well in hand, the werewolf stands slowly, arms bent at the ready as he glances between the others. "It seems you have this in hand." A deep rumble of a growl escapes, "We've dealt with the trash outside."
The flames pop and weave around, and it really is remarkable how quickly they spread. The formerly -- unnaturally -- persistent shadows have fled in the face of a radiant heat they could never have expected. Or perhaps they did anyway and only resigned to their fate. The loss has been cut, and whatever astonishing force Bitterman implied, it has not manifested.
Ruth turns to look to Noah and step closer to him and closer to the door out. "Maybe it's aliens. But I think maybe it's something that's been here for a long time." She takes one look back at the burning organ in a jar, as the wires melt around it. Gently, she puts an arm around Noah to try and coax him out the door with her. That's going to get smoky soon. "Something that got into humans. Whatever it was."
"What an entrance! I knew I could count on your youthful potency." Bubbles chuckles, stepping back from the fire and ushering Nic in the same direction the others are headed. She moves at a rather leisurely pace, throwing up a lace-gloved hand. "Burn it down," Bubbles finally answers Rey, a smile curling her lips. "And salt the earth."