Catalysts: IC (Oh the thread is slowly dying...)

Rodney's cartoon dog wandered off, but Rodney was too oblivious to notice. He was investigating his own properties of stickiness: if he could lift things, and how heavy they could be, which types of floor lint he would or would not pick up, etc. He had re-summoned his keychain and was experimenting with how finely he could pick it up and manipulate it.
In a couple ways, it was preferable to using his hands, in that he could manipulate things at a very fine level of detail. He wasn't limited by a number of fingers he had, so he could pick up the keychain flat, then selectively let go of keys in the middle if he thought hard enough. Once he'd picked the one he wanted, he could work the office lock with it, so long as he kept enough surface area in contact with it.

On the other hand (no pun intended), it had its disadvantages, like not having the reach of arms. If he wanted to pick something up, he basically had to ooze over it or get within a few inches; goop didn't support itself well over distances. He also wasn't going to be using keypads very efficiently or playing any instruments, but he was pretty satisfied as to the capabilities of goop.



Meanwhile, elsewhere, the dog wandered about the rearwards departments of the store, mindlessly sniffing around and occasionally eating something off the floor. But then it smelled something - a person! Oh boy, oh boy, a person! People were awesome!

It perked up and took off at a full dash towards the front of the store, spraying comical amounts of slobber everywhere as it went.

But when it got to the front of the store, nobody was there. Confused, it barked a couple times before laying down next to the door.

Nox woke up, confused as to why he had not went to his bed. He looked over what had happened last night. Pretty successful, I guess. he thought. Might as well get out now. 7:00 PM. The dusk light would be dimming. He headed up the worn stairs. He would have to visit the store. He walked around the empty streets, listening for anything. He found the store after some searching and entered.

Rodney had simply spent the day in town; he was between projects, and he was trying to save on his electricity bills anyway.

The slightly goofy dog had been curled up in a corner until Nox entered the store, but it smelled him again. Recognizing the scent, it got up and bolted for Nox, barking as it went.


~~~~~~~


"Just don't go too far," Rodney muttered. He was back to being himself, and he was busy on a mural-size creation that he was roughing in with a pencil. He did a double-take. If the dog ran off like that, that meant he wasn't alone anymore. Someone else was coming in, and they might not be friendly.

He'd need to defend himself, and he needed a weapon. He took a brown marker, drew himself a large cartoon mallet in about twenty seconds, and summoned it. But then he tried to lift it. It wouldn't budge, and it wouldn't budge, and it wouldn't budge... and then the handle snapped off in his hands.

Note to self. Make sure not to make it too heavy next time.

He needed to come up with something, and fast. At the very minimum, he'd need something to stall... yesterday's bull looked pretty inviting in that respect...

Nox jumped back. The dog seemed almost HAPPY to see him. His second observation was that the dog seemed cartoonish, in ridiculous colors. As it bounded around his legs he found the area he was looking for: pharmaceuticals. He looked for anything useful. Neosporin. Check. He had found nothing more until he saw an interesting find: Anbesol! The benzocaine solution could be boiled into a concentrated painkiller. He found a bottle of NyQuil. There was nothing else as to drugs. He then went off to his next destination: spray paint. He found nothing, but he heard human activity. He drew his katana with a purposely loud clang.

After a typically enthusiastic greeting, the dog simply took to following Nox and intermittently begging for some of whatever was in those boxes.

Nothing was moving in Nox's part of the store, but there was an odd snorting sound coming from the door to the back room. If he decided to enter the door, the first thing he would see was the cartoon bull, pawing the ground, and he would have about two seconds before it charged. Rodney would not be anywhere obvious.

Nox walked over to the back. He leaned his head against the door, listening. He heard a snorting noise. It seemed to be a large animal, but not cat large. Herbivore large. What the hell it was doing in the store, he had no clue. He kicked the door, and found himself face to face with a fucking BULL. He jumped to the side, because a charging bull can't turn corners all too well.

The bull raced straight past Nox, just as he had hoped, then kept going, and going, and going... Finally it hit something in the front of the store, and then there was silence.

Rodney finally made his appearance, swinging open the office door and walking out in an almost Zorro-esque outfit, replete with mask, rendered in ballpoint pen on particle board. There was a post-it in his hand. He crept out around the assorted boxes, then stepped out from behind them, roughly where the bull had been.

"You've bested my bull," he said, "which means you're quick. You've bested my dog, which means you have a pulse."

He paused. "Actually, this was going to be kind of a badass speech, but I was a bit limited on time to plan. Just take what you want, there's plenty for both of us."

"Eh, I'm not looking for much. I have most of what I need." He sheathed the katana and opened his trenchcoat showing the 4 blades on each side. He hoped this weird artist guy wouldn't get the wrong idea from the fact that he was carrying painkillers. He asked the artist "Do you have any spray-paint?"

"Yeah, I've got some around, it's right over there," Rodney said, pointing. "Looking to supplement some violent crime with some graffiti?"

Rodney was not at all at ease about the way this guy had weapons all over the place, or the casual way he showed them off to people. He was sorely tempted to just stay out of the way. Or give him a free sketch of a bear, one or the other.

"Violent crime? The only crime I go about comitting is killing people who would hurt people otherwise. And I need it to decorate my home." He chuckled a bit, then continued. "A metro station is a drab place, and the least I could do would be to spray a giant anarchy symbol on the wall. Thank you for your time, stranger." He tipped his hat to the man and walked away.

Winter was in the woods, that much was clear. It was completely silent, and though no moon was visible to give light, light was present in eery quantities.

Hearing sounds of movement, Winter turned to see a far-off shape in the distance lumbering towards her, pushing over tree after tree. She fled, but her legs moved sluggishly and would not run. The shape came nearer.

As the creature emerged from the undergrowth, she looked and saw that it was the mangled corpse of a rabbit, bleeding think mud. It slid towards her as if being pulled by an unseen puppeteer and twisted its head with a sickening crack to meet her eyes.

"Bloom," it said, and opened its mouth to emit an unearthly howl. Winter's skin felt as if it was covered in spiders, and she shrieked against the terror.

Winter awoke with a gasp, raising one hand to her mouth. She felt unbelievably hot and sweaty, yet could feel the tiny hairs of her arms and legs standing on end as if a sudden chill had passed by. Throwing the dead rabbit as far away as she could, she exited the tiny hovel and stood in the cool night air to breath heavily.

Judging by the moon's position, she had been dozing for only an hour or two. Feeling simultaneously too unsettled and far, far too hungry to return to slumber, Winter retrieved the detestable rabbit and resolved to cook, eat, and be rid of the thing as quickly as possible. She made her way out of the city and into the woods. Caution could, for the moment, wait.

Nox walked off, wandering aimlessly. He walked into the clearing where he and Winter had first met. It was growing foggy, and hunters would be afoot. He didn't care. All that mattered was having time to think.

Once she considered herself a relatively safe distance away from the city, Winter set about the task of making a fire.

She had no artificial lighter nor the skills to fashion a bowlighter like so many of the hunters used, so Winter searched an old dried-up riverbed until she found a flint of preferable size. Retreating back to her clearing, she struck the flint against a fragment procured from an old Franklin stove which had, in its time, resided in Winter's shelter inside the abandoned city.

When sparks fell upon the tinder she'd laid out, it was a simple matter to throw large and larger logs on, making sure they were dry so as to minimize smoke. Granted, it was night, but the smoke would be visible against the moon. There was nothing she could do about the light, however, except work as quickly as possible.

She used a small carving knife to skin the rabbit by the firelight and thrust its organs upon a stick, holding this carnivore's shishkabob out over the fire to roast.

He sat there, considering the benefits of boiling the painkillers out of the medicines. On the one hand, he could use some strong anesthetics. On the other hand, possession of narcotics was VERY illegal. In the end he decided to make them. What exactly could go wrong? If he kept them in the Haunt the worst that could happen would be Winter not approving, and she wasn't likely to come over for a visit.

After about half an hour of dedicated cooking and nervous backwards-glancing, the rabbit meat was sufficiently cooked. Too ravenous to bother extinguishing the fire quite yet, Winter let in to the meat savagely.

Her meal passed largely without incident, though in one frightful moment of foolish relaxation she could feel the morsel gain life in her mouth and wriggle about, squealing, attempting to free itself. Horrified, she spat it into the ashes and stamped the thing into oblivion, cursing loudly.

Moments later, after having regained her composure, she disposed of the remainder of the meat, too horrified to consume it, and began erasing all traces of the fire. Winter quickly set on her way back to her hovel, afraid that her yells would have attracted attention.

Nox began his walk back to the metro. How would he justify having these on him? How could he justify it? No. It was better not to worry now. He hurried on his path through the woods and hoped he would meet no one on the way. Even having narcotic creating materials would be VERY bad legally.

It was a long walk through the woods. Winter, freshly shaken by her recent experience, was not as cautious as she should have been; more than anything, she wanted to get back to the shelter and at least gain an hour or so of sleep until morning.

Sooner or later, Winter reasoned, she would have to come to terms with this ability of hers. She sighed. It was not a moment she looked forward to with enthusiasm.

Nox Began his long walk back to the haunt. This would be mildly difficult, at worst. He would just have to boil the narcotics out of the medicines. He was close to the haunt when something utterly unexpected happened: some dumbass thug had the bright idea of mugging him. Appearing nonchalant was vital. He crossed his arms, reaching for the inner pockets of his trench coat. "I said give me all that you have!" shouted the mugger, totally unaware. In an instant Nox had the blades in his hands and slashed across the thugs throat in opposite directions. As a result, his carotid artery and jugular vein were severed and the windpipe was slit. The thug fell to the ground, bleeding a puddle onto the ground. Nox raised the knives to his face, licked the blood off, and kept walking.

Winter paused suddenly, hearing a sound that she did not believe she'd made. After a moment, she concluded that a muffled shouting was coming from somewhere ahead and to her left - before the voice fell silent. Wary, and most definitely not in the move for a skirmish, Winter held both her position and her breath, not daring to make a sound until the danger had passed.

Nox chuckled a bit. That'll show him. Honestly though, he was worried by the speed at which he had decided to and then gone on with slitting the man's throat. He worried that he could be losing his humanity. There were only a few remaining tethers. The memories of his parents, sent off to some damnable death camp in the Reclamation. The memories of his time when he was forced to work in a labor camp. Those were some of the low points of his life, but they tought him things. Mister Policeman wasn't always nice. "Working" for the government doesn't work out too well. But now there was this newest tie to his humanity, Winter. If anything, it was love. She was the first good thing to happen to him in a long while. For so long his drive had been hate... But now, what?
By god, what?

Rodney slumped back against a box. That had been the most nerve-wracking experience he'd had in quite a while. He wasn't sure if he was going to get lacerated or what. He waited a few minutes, then looked at the post-it note. On it was a drawing of a handgun: some generic semi-auto. He summoned the gun, pointed it out the door, and fired. Nothing about it worked properly. First, the bullet slid out of the chamber and fell to the floor, having been given a light push. The casing tried to eject, but the slide only went halfway back, and the casing jammed.

Evidently, Rodney had a lot to learn about drawing machinery.

~~~~~~

That shout... Rodney heard it too, just barely. It was the only noise he'd heard all night that hadn't been made himself. He paused in the middle of drawing a wheeled contraption from a multitude of different angles, complete with cutaways. He shuddered, fearing the worst after seeing the man with the undue proliferation of sharp things.

He partly wished he'd stayed back at home, where the police were around to keep his type off the streets. But here, he'd have to take things into his own hands.

He rapidly finished the drawings, then summoned them all as a group. What appeared in his hands was a bit larger than a combat rifle. It had a pair of wheels at the front end, one on top of the other with a slight gap in between them, and a channel leading into them. At the back, just in front of the stock, there was a stack of metal disks, about three inches across, with a little arm right behind them. To the side of the bottom wheel was a flashlight.

Rodney put a piece of posterboard with his ammo drawn on it in his pocket, then picked up his new weapon. Hopefully, this had a lower chance of failing miserably than the laser and the gun. A switch on the left side turned on a motor and started the wheels spinning. So far so good. He pointed the weapon out into the store and pulled the trigger. The arm pushed a disc in between the wheels, launching it at high velocity into a carton of laundry detergent, where it disappeared and presumably stopped.

Now he had a weapon. For a sidekick, he summoned the slime monster.

Together, they crept out to the front doors, watching from the shadows to see if there was anyone nearby.

Seeing no-one, he slowly walked towards where he assumed the shout had come from. He had to know if it had been that guy who did it.

Nox climbed the steep slippery steps down to the haunt and entered the supply areas. This was where he kept all his loot. He browsed for a while until he found what he was looking for: an alcohol burner and a beaker. He lit the burner, set the beaker on top of it, and poured in the drugs. Now it was just a waiting game to get concentrated benzocaine.

After what seemed to Winter like a safe period of time, she dared to breath again. There was nothing forthcoming in reply to her hurried rasps other than the quiet wind. She moved one foot, and then the other, and found herself racing through the dense forest before she could think any further ahead.

She reached her hovel without incident and threw herself down in a dark corner. Not caring how the awkward sleeping position would cramp her muscles by morning, she was quickly seized by slumber.

After the benzocaine was done, he put it in a small vial. He grabbed the spray paint from his bag. He had something to write. He painted a poem on the wall:
Once upon a moonlit night
A single rose dared grow
I always found it quite a shame
No man will know its hue.

It wasn't quite a perfect rose,
Not mediocre, nay.
But god, as gods are wont to do,
Had hidden the rose away.

Winter's dreams that night were filled with rabbits and fleet, squealing things that hid in the dark corners where they could avoid being seen in their horrible entirety.

Through it all was whispered "Bloom."

And a man called Nox stepped silently from shadow to shadow.