Wiping the floor with our faces

[Owle Isohos]

"Good luck," Kelsey said to Alex. "But even just that is good to know. The fey spoke of the dragon like they belonged to the kings - it'll make me feel a whole lot better if that's not exactly the case." For a moment, she was tempted to ask him to introduce her, but she decided it was probably better for her overall life expectancy to pass.

She grinned at Sally, then turned her attention over to Amelia, Eden, and Nick's conversation. "I sure would like to know why everything's happening here. I think Slicewick said something about this place being on the borders - and I'm pretty sure weird shit was happening here long before Burning Sky. But I'll bet you anything Burning Sky made it weirder, and darker."

Kelsey turned to Ness, a thoughtful look on her face. "Didn't Brett say he was looking into some kind of project called 'Gold Page'? Some sort of hush hush thing that the mega-corps were working on he's trying to find out more about? Might be unrelated, but...might be someone thought they were being clever with their code names."

[Sally]

Sally drums his hands on the table, his fists nearly pumping as he listens to Kelsey, Ness, Nick, Amelia, and Eden discussing their predicament.

"Sky's on a fire, dragons roamin' the fields, we's pawns in an ancient war fer The-Anythin'-But-Iron-Throne, an' a bunch a super corp-o-rations is in coll-us-ion? Oh, an' some sortsa Death Gods wander in, an' another sortsa Spirit 'a Vengeance has me hackin' up townsfolk in the woods on iss be-half?"

His eyes are positively wild, and his voice isn't quite a yell, but isn't all that far off.

"Somebody cue up some fuckin' Queen on that there Jukebox 'cuz we is in the thick of it an' ain't nobody betta stop me now!" Sally clenches a fist- his arms and knuckles are covered in a good deal of dried blood (he was out their punching those Fae while they swung at him with swords, after all)- and it shakes from the sheer exuberance in his voice.

"Kelse' just said it- we on the Boarders and the Boarders have don' run weird , an I made it through the weekend withou' gettin' dru- well, without gettin' puke-all-over-myself drunk!"

Sure, he'd lost his damn mind out there in the woods with that inky goo splashed all over him, and he'd kicked a few back on the field to keep that Big Knife from shakin' out of his hand, but Sally Lautner wasn't wrong. He hadn't drunk himself stupid, even with 6 days of being dry.

"Don't ya'lls get it?"

He looks around the room, his wild eyes lit up, "If these is the borders, then we's the Shields that Guard the Realms of Fuckin' Men! An' women! An' chilluns an' puppies an' FUCKIN' EVE-RY-THANG! Shit, we's guardin' things we didn't even know exist! The night is daaaaaark and fulla fuckin' terras an' WE'S THE TORCH LIT AGAINS' THAT!"

If no one stops him bastardizing poor George R.R. Martin's words (words tattooed on Alice's arm, no less), Sally plows right ahead, "Er'ry-thang, er'rry-thang in our golldarn lives was jus' leadin' us here to be big darn heerahs. It was jus' PRACTICE fer what we's doin' now. What we's don'! WHAT WE'S GON' DO!"

His crazy eyes- the same crazy eyes that, when carrying the Big Knife make whoever meets them backpedal in sheer dread- scan over the room, and he looks right at the darkly-sparkly little girl,

"You hear that, kid? You wan' some golldarn FUN? Well there's yer fuckin' fun! We gon' slay dragons and cage Bug Headed De-mon Kings an' de-throne Faerie Princes an' banish bo-gey mans!"

He turns to Kelsey, a gore-stained finger leveled at her, "An' we's gon' do it to-geth-er, cuz as bad as it was out there, we took our lickin'! Ain't nobody turn jack-rabbit!"

That same finger goes to Eden, and Sally's nutty smile somehow gets even wider, "They dun' picked the wrong golldarn set-a-folks ta fuck wit', an' the next time they show, we's gonna put the pain to 'em... who-eva the hell THEY IS!"

Sally hops to his feet, grabs the nearest beer, and rather than kick it back, he spikes it straight onto the floor and lets out a raw "WHOO!" as it shatters. You can take the hillbilly out of high school football, but you can't take the high school football out the hillbilly.

That particular punctuation seems to register with the man, who looks down, looks around, and says, "Shit! Flo's gon' be pissed 'bout that. I gotta find me a mop n' broom!"

And with that, Sally Lautner half-bolts, half-limps off to find said mop and broom.

[Nick Sleet]

Nick winces at the volume of Sally's rant/tirade, and the crash of the bottle actually brings a gun halfway out of a hidden pocket before he controls his reflex. As Sally stomps off, though, he turns back to the others and smiles.

"He's not wrong. Overly exuberant, but not wrong. I don't usually go for crusades, but I'm tired of things using us as playtoys to advance their own twisted agendas. I don't care whether its faeries, cults, or factions within the megacorps, but if they keep destroying people's lives I'll enjoy helping to crush them."

His mouth twists into an ugly grin for a moment, then smooths out again into a non-expression.

"If ya'll will excuse me, I think I need to meditate for a while to wind down."

He collects his things and wanders off in the direction of Main Street.

[Amelia Casselman]

Amelia nods along with the discussion, making a mental note to have a sit-down discussion with Billy once things have "calmed down" as much as it ever is calm. She remembers reading a bit about Burning Sky when she found the wiki article before she made her trek out this way. What was the year on it? She couldn't remember.

She nearly gets up during Sally's outburst, catching that wild look in his eyes that she despises, but the crash of the bottle seems enough to right him, even if it makes a mess. Still, it makes her almost want to exit-stage-left with Nick.

She stays put.

"Okay then, one more question to add to the ever-growing god-awful pile, though maybe it's already been answered. If we're acting as the 'Shields' as Sally gracefully put it..." She really hopes he mops up that mess before he gets in trouble with Flo. "Have there been different 'Shields' before us? Or are we behaving as... something different?" She really needs to start talking more to the locals, but really, aside from the other recent residents, she's been trying to keep her hands out of the Crazy.

It's getting harder and harder to avoid it.

[Eden Jones]

Eden is at first somewhat nonplussed at Sally's rant, but is grinning faintly by the end. She jumps slightly at the victory beer smash, then settles back into her seat.

She turns to Nick as he gets up, "Between the candle and the star, yeah. I thought that's where we already stood." She reaches for a cookie, "I'm not going to jump on every grenade, though. I'll take the missing girls and the shadowy things. Someone else can fling themselves at the Fae Court. There's plenty of pain to go around."

Her interest piqued, she turns to Amelia, "That's a good question. I'd guess that there are always people who have thrown themselves in the path of the baddies, either informally or in an official capacity." She looks as though she's about to say something else, then changes her mind.

[Owle Isohos]

Kelsey grinned at Sally's tirade, then chuckled as he went off to find a broom. She turned to look at Amelia and Eden, a thoughtful expression on her face.

"The way everyone's talking about things...the fae, and the locals...things were in some sort of balance before. Like, the weird shit still went on, and the bad shit still happened, but...it was never so bad as this. Something kept it contained, kept it in check, kept it in balance. And then a whole bunch of outsiders came swarming in here, and all of a sudden the Dawn Court is stronger than it should be, the Sheriff's relatives are getting murdered, and all manner of nasty is crawling out of the woodwork. I think maybe, there's always been some way of keeping this crazy stuff under wraps...but now the megacorps are here. And now we're here. Everyone seems to be coming to Whisper Hill, and someone's done gone and pried out the cork keeping all the weird shit in.

"I'm not sure there's ever been a need for Shields here the way there is now."

[edseel]

The sound of the door shutting can now be heard as all the yelling has settled down some. JD shakes his head looking at the broken bottle on the floor and moves twords the others. He is leaning on his Iron pipe/walking stick and has the old goat skull poking out from a bag among his things. One of his arms is tied up in a sling, and a good amount of cuts and scrapes cover his exposed skin. He quickly shuffles to an open chair and joins the conversation.

“Their have been those that keep ‘what goes bump in the night’ in check. Whole groups of them passing down their information from one generation to the next, working nonstop to keep hidden all those things that would seek to destroy ‘normal.’ I don’t know if this place had anything specific that did that job … but a lot of those groups that worked as protectors have found their numbers thinning … rapidly.”

The smell of cigarette smoke settles over the area as JD makes himself comfortable.

JD sighs and picks up some of the big pieces of glass from the floor.

[Sally]

As Sally comes back with a mop and broom, calling over his shoulder, "Don't you were yer pretty little redhead non, Flo!" and starts sweeping up his mess, he notices his employer,

"Hey boss," he says, furrowing his brow, "Why you got the Ram skull down? What's ta keep the fuckin' bed-bug-a-boos outta ou' sheets?" he says, grinning some at Victor.

Positively beaming, Sally goes to work.

Almost non-nonchalantly, he says, "You talkin' bout ou' folks?"

[vVv]

victor grins wide and dances a little in her seat. sally's ain't the only set of crazy eyes in the room, and her excitement might be positively unsettling if people weren't getting used to her by now.. "well, it's a good thing WHISPER HILL'S GOT THE BEST SET O' SUPER SPIES AND GUARDIANS AND BUGABOOS IT EVER HAD!!! baddies ain't got no chance, and here we go 'cause it's time to live on the RAZOR'S EDGE!!!" she jumps up to offer sally a high five (maybe as much out of need to dispel her manic energy as anything), and returns to her seat's edge, bouncing a little, wide grin intact..

[Henry Gondorf]

"Sorta a who guards the guardians situation, no?" Henry asks swiping another cookie. He took a moment to collect himself before parsing down his thoughts.

"It makes a lot more sense if you take the long view in this matter. When things are in balance for a while, everyone is happy. Great works finally get started or finished. Folks have a chance to stop and smell the roses. What no one ever counts on is what happens when you're done sniffing all the roses and you exhausted all your grand plans. After a while; boredom sets in and you start to wonder if it wasn't better when the world tittered on the brink. Desperation being the mother of all Inspiration and all that. Some these bored bastards start asking all the wrong questions. 'How can we get the roller coasters running again but without needing those pesky safety bars?'

" 'Do we honestly need to pay for staff to just stand there pushing buttons? Doesn't the chain pulling us along and gravity do the rest?'

" 'How hard is it to take over a dinky little ride like this?' "

Henry shrugs "Forgive the metaphor, please, but you see where it is going. After so long with everything running smooth...ish, there are those who start wondering what if the warnings of yesteryear mean nothing now. They think because they have the guns, the brains, and the science to bend the old wives tales to their will. They'll even bring in those they consider sideshow mystics to wave their hands like they're told. And if they find out there are those standing in their way...well, you know what comes next."

"They find a spot between 'The Here' and 'There' and begin pushing and podding. They see dollar signs where they should see warnings. They read 'Wealth for Ages" instead of "Abandon all hope".
And what no one expects, what no one realizes until too late is that we're not the only ones who enjoy times of balance. This world gets tired of wars. It gets tired of swallowing its children generations at a time. It does not relish the feeling of vermin trying to dig into its sensitive bits. So, The World gets mean. It gets cunning. It gets those it trusts to get the job done and brings them to where they need to be. Be it by hook, crook, carrot, stick, or unpleasantness unique to each of us."

Henry nods to Kelsey "I'll admit, I don't think it's ever been so serious so many...uh...unique individuals have been brought together before. It should give you a good idea of how deep in the hole we are right now."