Brother Gypsy

Subject: Brother Gypsy Sat Aug 08, 2009 6:10 pm

The setting before her was the vast and sprawling manifestation of societal skeletons in the closet… the waste from the large and roaring beast known as capitalism upon which the rich and the liars rode. The streets were black, dull crimson, and green, dirty with waste both spirit and human. The massiveness of the smog filtered out most of the sunlight. Today proved a good day for pollution, as the fat, tan fog fed itself with the exhaust of cars and industry.
Down in a back alley under this illustrious scene, a demon finished her meal she’d caught last night happily and messily, the soft fur of her chest, legs, and snout caked with gore. A gang member with a blue bandanna stared without sight into the sky, no longer possessing any power to resist. For many of the street organizations bred in this area, the ability to survive in the spirit ridden back alleys of the slums during the night was a desired skill indeed, more desirable than police evasion, for at least there is a return from prison. Thus, a common initiation for fellows who would ordinarily be banned from such organizations was to simply spend a night out on the street and possibly capture a small demon, depending on the maliciousness of the thugs giving the assignments.
There would be no joining whatever this fatherless street urchin wished to hail from now, the wicked vixen spirit thought, smacking noisily and jerking her head back and forth as she swallowed a large chunk of rib meat. Stopping, from fullness, she looked left and right, wondering where she could hide the rest of the body so she could come back for it later. Last time she killed she hid the body in a dump she’d come back to find it quite missing. The trash man came by once every other week when he felt like it. Not many places remained that she could expect it to be safe at either, a pity the unyielding asphalt covered almost all ground here and a pity this young man’s life would only go for a small meal.
Hoisting the carcass unceremoniously into the dumpster, she decided to just let nature take its course. If he didn’t remain for the week, then she could easily catch another the next night. The projects pumped out these delectable young men like a factory. She did, however, keep his gold chain. Collecting such trinkets and reselling them provided spare income per kill, much like monsters dropping gold in games.
Having been exhausted by the previous day’s exertions and satiated from her previous meal, the vixen sat on a relatively clean pile of discarded paper and began to wash herself. The tongue proved a useful instrument when one lacked access to a shower. Though she’d spent long periods of time neglecting her hair and fur until they were matted, greasy, and breaking off no matter what form she took, she found that the more upscale student delinquent customers required a minimum amount of cleanliness as a prerequisite and were otherwise frightened off.
The bath took the better part of an hour and a half, and when she finished she simply lay on her side, breathing in the rancid air and preparing to take a nap. Schools were closed today and most of the real addicts could be best reached at night when they assumed the already astoundingly low police activity sunk even further.
Just as her thoughts got fuzzy and vague, something on the outer edge of her field of vision caught her attention. It took awhile for her to realize that the monster coming towards her wasn’t from a dream, but the creature definitely hailed from some spiritual realm. Blinking herself awake, she looked, sizing up the monster. It stood on two legs like a man, but at the same time its feet were hands… very unusual. The tail of the alien creature waved out behind it, doubling the length of the body. Its face, though manlike, was covered in hair and puffed out in an unusual manner. It grinned as it came towards her, his canines long like a woylf’s. The fox had never seen such a creature in her life.
She still had some vestiges of sleep paralysis on her still, however, and the strange little humanoid creature snatched the shiny gold chain long before it occurred to Grunty to get up and go chase him. “Hey!” she barked, growling and baring her teeth as she chased the little ape down the back alley. He caught a passing Cadillac and stood on the trunk, sticking out his tongue and waving the chain, making the most irritating shrieks in victory.
Of course, Grunty wasn’t one to take such theft laying down. Bursting suddenly, she shifted into her unnaturally skeletal higher demon form and started chasing after the van, roaring her vengeance all the way. The monkey shrieked and many curses in an ebonic dialect reached the monster’s ears as the people in the car floored it. Of course, they couldn’t be allowed to escape with their lives either, as they might attract the undue attention of Division 12.
Thus, she stopped in perfect silence and simply concentrated on the car. Her newfound strength might help, but she’d never done anything like stopped a car in mid-motion with what powers of magnetism she had. Such was her anger that she found herself able to, however. The thugs inside freaked out, drawing their guns and shooting with gross inaccuracy. The monkey, still with the prize in his paw, jumped over the roof of the car and began to gallop away.
Fuelled by a fiery bloodlust, the demon simply swatted one of the thugs to the side, sending him into a wall and slashed the other one in the chest, leaving him in the street to bleed to death and resumed her chase of the small spirit. Out of fear, the monkey dropped the chain and scrambled away.
Grunty magnetized the chain and brought it close, but that wasn’t enough for her. The beast in her was awake and rampaging, and she wasn’t going to be happy until she’d ripped the small spirit to tiny bits, thus she roared to let him know she was coming and took off with renewed vigor, dragging the car behind her with the magnetic field and crashing through the early morning streets.
The monkey took a hard left turn into another dark alley, shrieking. Devilishly, the demon dumbly drooled and breathed hot air on his neck right up until the turn. Lacking the ability to check her momentum that quickly, she simply smashed into the corner and kicked out against it, sending her forward with more force than previously.
Cut into the door was a little door that might be designed for a dog or a cat, and the monkey used this to escape into a building. Ignoring this smaller door, the demon simply knocked the door down and burst into the shop, letting her eyes adjust to the light and sniffing around.
Unfortunately, her olfactory senses were clogged by the strong smell of incense. Indeed she couldn’t smell anything else and it made her sneeze.
“That’s enough!” a strong female voice spoke from inside.
The demon purred gently, huffing a spike out of her nose. “And who is the dumbass who wants to tell me what to do?”
There were no further warnings, just some chanting. “Shtipni me tuk i tuk i tuk…”
Confused, the demon looked about in the darkness for the source of the chanting until she found herself hit by some invisible force. Whoever it was forcibly reverted her back to her smallest, weakest form, a very painful process that resulted in much shrieking. Panting and slightly panicked, she found her limbs wouldn’t respond to what she said.
Only then did the woman reveal herself. Old and bent with age, she made her way forward with the help of a cane. Scarves and robes adorned her form, including a bandanna on her head and two large, looped earrings. Her eyes were blue and fogged over with a gray cloud. With a smug expression on her face, the monkey perched in victory.
“This is the spirit of my deceased brother. You will leave this place and not come back until you learn some better manners, you got that?”
Now Grunty’s worst fear was the unknown, and this force that had disabled her was certainly something she wasn’t aware of. Whimpering and yelping, she agreed all too readily, but not in a language the woman could understand.
“Good. Now get out. Maybe if you come back later I can teach you some manners.”
The small demon left that place, very quickly, but still with an air of curiosity about her. Who exactly was that woman and what exactly was it that she could teach? Ah, she could always come back, the spirit thought as she trotted off, regaining her dignity.

Subject: Re: Brother Gypsy Sat Aug 15, 2009 6:33 pm

The night had been occupied by hustling, and now the sun hovered over the horizon... shy, precautious. Yawning, but still uncharacteristically focused, a small, black vixen made her way across the dripping black streets and towards a place she found herself kicked out of so disgracefully only a day or so ago. This time, instead of rushing through the now patched up side door, she trotted silently up to the door, her paw shaking with every step.
Once at the door, however, she merely sat there for several minutes, trying to recall what purpose she had for being there. When things got rough, this purpose could strengthen her resolve.
For the first time since her arrival on this plane, she prepared to go through something purposefully not for pleasure but... for some other purpose. Then again, the training she sought from this gypsy woman held a vast significance that failed to escape even the fox's shallow mind. The woman, barely batting an eyelash, bound her yesterday, and no actions on her part could save her, had the woman had worse intentions.
First of all, she knew not the nature of the spell that had been used on her. She'd heard of humans... special humans, including the Ren she'd captured earlier, find a way to weild a most fearsome magix they developed in response to the predations of wicked spirits such as herself, but other than rumors, she knew very little. Most of the demons that she ran into, the rumor mill, and just people on the street who were spiritually aware and yet not magically aware, only knew very little. Some stories seemed exaggerated, but such exaggerations must have come from experiences such as hers. Still, pleasure was and probably always would be the oni's bottom line, and if such magix existed and she had no way to counter it, her pleasure could be ended very quickly and with much pain. There was a time to be dumb, and a time to understand, and this, more than ever, was the time to begin understanding.
Thus, she scratched on the door insistently and kicked her back feet against the wood, trying to wake or otherwise get the attentions of the inhabitants within.
Soon, the "Closed" sign in the window was replaced with an "open" sign and the door creaked open wearily.
There stood the woman from before, her eyes still cloudy and blue, her hooped earrings still clinging tenaciously to her sagging lobes, her gray hair still framing her swarthy, wrinkled face, her lips still only a thin line along her mouth, her body still drapped in what could better be described as curtains than garments.
"Yes, little vixen..." she croaked with a thick Slavic accent. "I see you've returned a little more civilized and in search of knowledge, no? Come child, you will come inside." Waving her hand into the scented darkness of the store, she disappeared and waited in a chair for her.
Creeping inside with her tail between her legs and her ears flat against her head, only slowly making it to the interior. The woman rocked back and forth, back and forth, as though contemplating some great matter until the fox approached within a yard or so of her and crouched at her shoes, trying to appear harmless and friendly. Power, one of the only things the demon could respect, rested in this woman. Power that she could share the knowledge of.
The woman didn't seem to be in any particular hurry. Grunty found herself wondering how the old lady managed to breathe in all of the thick smoke. She herself could only breathe because she was crouched so close to the ground in an attempt to make herself look smaller.
But breathe she did, eventually speaking, "You see that sign up there, the sign with the same logo that was on the front of my store, little beast?"
Grunty looked up at the indiscernable characters that did in fact form a nice storefront logo. "Yea ma'am... I see it."
"What does it say?"
"Signs dun't speak..."
"Nonsense. You don't understand the concept of reading?"
"Reading?"
The memory of such a thing as using marks to convey meaning lay buried beneath all of her memories of her parents. Distinctly, she recalled laying in bed, snuggled up tight in her pre-Earth form as her mother read her a bedtime story from a picture book.
The memory of her mom, warm and smiling, appeared in her mind, pointing to a bunch of different animals in a book, assembled in the usual fairy tale manner. She hadn't told her daughter she was scheduled for trial the next day, but her voice was unusually sad as she read her daughter her favorite story.
"One day, long long ago after Bleus rose the heavens out of the water..." she began, "He made a greeeeat big celebration. He invited all of the animals so he could bless them according to the gift they give.
"The lion, saying that his kind were king of the beasts roared, walking boldly to Bleaus. 'I've hunted 100 deer for your feast today'.
"Bleaus nodded, 'this gift is good. Thank you lion', and he blessed him to always represent great strength and power.
"The dove, saying that his kind were the purest of the earth, flew proudly to Bleaus. 'I will sing 100 songs for your party today'.
"Bleaus nodded, 'this gift is good, Thank you dove', and he blessed him to always represent great peace and comfort.
"The dragon, saying that his kind were the most feared of the earth, stomped to Bleaus. 'I will destroy 100 of those who hate you in your honor today'.
"Bleaus nodded, 'this gift is good, Thank you dragon', and he blessed him to always represent great victory in strife.
"The sheep, saying their kind were the most faithful of the earth, flocked to Bleaus. 'We will offer you 100 pounds of the fleece off of our backs for your heaven today'.
"Bleaus nodded, 'this gift is good, Thank you sheep', and he blessed them to always represent innocence and purity.
"Now after these gifts, the other creatures stood silent, too afraid to offer their own talents for fear they would seem small next to the excellence of those who had gone before. All but one.
"A fox walked forward. All of the animals laughed and made jokes. 'You can't hunt, what will you bring him, dead rats?' said one. 'Surely you won't hurt the great Bleaus's hearing with your horrible voice, 'said another. 'Your coat is rough and short and stinky, it is useless as a gift.'
"The fox ignored them all, and trotted quietly to Bleaus. 'I will give you my cunning. You've given it to me so generously, it is yours.'
"The other animals continued to scoff and laugh. 'What would the great Bleaus do with your useless cunning? Do you not see how he has made the heavens from nothingness?'
"Bleaus spoke, and his voice made the whole plane shake. 'Silence you cowards,' he roared. 'Lions and Dragons will kill again, doves will sing again, the sheep will have new wool with the winter, but what is a fox without his cunning? Surely his gift is the noblest of them all.'
"So Bleaus multiplied the fox's cleverness from his own infinite wisdom, and made the fox and his descendents always able to always defend himself with trickery. It's even been said that they could outsmart the guardians of the gates themselves. The End." Such a silly little story. People who write children's stories must be some sort of untapped market of hers...
Apparently the reminiscing took a long time, as the woman banged her fist shortly against a counter. "Reading! Have you heard of it?"
"Yea ma'am. My mom read me dumb stories all the time when I was just a little one..." she almost grumbled, unsettled by the memories.
"Then tell me what that sign says!" she shouted, her voice hoarse.
"Uhh... let's see... there're two Cs... they make a sss sound... uhh... an A... I r'member that... ass?"
The woman laid back in her chair, making a low noise in her throat. "Can you even spell your name?"
Of course, Grunty couldn't. She rejected reading and everything else she associated with heaven the day she adopted her fox form.
Frowning, the woman got up slowly, and cast a spell to bind the spirit where she stood again, much to the fox's dismay and panic, there was nothing worse than a trap.
"Come, beast. You aren't a demon in soul, you should stop acting so much like one."

Several moments later, the fox moved about once more, however, she was trapped in the basement with some dog kibble, a stack of tapes, and a stack of books on a shelf. On one end of the room, the only source of light was a big screen TV and a bulb hanging tenaciously to the ceiling by a thread.
The first tape in it was an odd, instructional sort of cartoon with fuzzy characters explaining the sounds of a letter in different words. Entranced by the electrical screen and colors, she simply sat and stared at it for a long time, absorbing the explainations. Often she found everything blocked out by the noise, action, and fervor of the streets, an environment where one must stay in constant, intimate contact with one's earthly senses and instincts, an environment where the higher thinking swiftly fell under as weak and were consumed as though by the sagging projects themselves.
But now, she had plenty of time to just sit and watch the inane little play before her try to impart to her what symbols meant. Besides, the woman left the pile of books with a parting statement that she wouldn't allow her out of the cellar until she could read one aloud.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and Grunty found she held some buried cleverness or genius suffering from long disuse. Perhaps it was the cleverness supposedly imparted to her kind by the great Bleus himself, as the folklore said. Perhaps it was merely a buried memory. Perhaps she lay squinting at the symbols for longer than she thought, but as the hours turned into days and the days seemed to melt into indiscernable weeks, she found much encoded in the ink on the page. Amazing vats of knowledge suddenly lay bare for her consumption... not that she valued the knowledge in itself, but with the expansion of her mind she found that thinking proved less painful. There were words in these books to help with abstract ideas, and there lay a big, dusty dictionary to assist her through the tough passages. Her favorite eye opener, "The Art of War", clarified several vague ideas about combat that she'd developed from experience, and it made her happy to see those tactics put into words and improved.
Yet, despite the range of selection, the picture books still appealed to her the most. They brought her mother's sweet voice back to her rememberance, and the stories were on her level of simplicity.
One in particular, didn't seem like the author wrote it with children in mind. "The Tale of the Very Proper Gander" started out with a perfectly innocent male goose (she looked up the term) who a bystander called a "Proper Gander". A dove overheard it and told her husband, who always thought the gander was up to no good. He in turn went and told the rooster about the propaganda scheme, who told everyone else that the gander was a hawk masquerading as a goose. One of the hens even recalled seeing him talking with a hawk. A duck remembered him saying he hated them all. A pidgeon recalled the time someone who looked a lot like the gander tossed something that looked a lot like a bomb.
Thus, the birds all set upon him at once and strung him up before he could cause any more damage.
Somehow, the fox found something to relate to in this goose who was so persecuted by his peers simply for what he was. Cracking open the dictionary once more, she looked up the word "Propaganda".
The meaning of the word... how it was tied up to making what was bad look good, or what was flawed look perfect...
Smiling in her doggish way, the demon thought this word perfect for the organization that seemed to be crumbling. This was what she needed to get out of the rut she was in!
Howling in triumph (and the howl of the fox is a truly horrible noise), she managed to summon the old blind gypsy woman and passed the test by reading aloud the tale of the Proper Gander.

"I'm very impressed," the old woman coughed, her monkey perched on her shoulder and regarding the other demon with suspicion. "I guess I knew you could do it. Now, you have what you need to comprehend what I'm about to show you." In fox form, Grunty sat. This is what she'd come here for, finally. A sphere began to glow on the ground, and the vixen growled involuntarily, recalling previous bondage. "Relax," the woman croaked soothingly. "I'm not going to hit you with it this time, but I think you should know that humans are, above all things, gifted with the ability to manipulate things. They didn't stop with the material world."
She tapped a piece of the wall, causing a case with a sword in it to jut out suddenly. Taking the sword, she swung it around weakly. Grunty viewed this as another unknown and thus a thing to fear, growling at the weapon and not being sure why. "You might sense it, but there's a spirit sort of like you sealed in this weapon. Should you come across some spirit blacksmiths, you may want to exercise caution. Your mind will break from the procedure most likely, and you won't go through the spirit cycle again."
Actually knowing what was so evil about the weapon calmed the demon down a little bit, enough to speak. Manifestations of things like this entrapped soul and the slums and the city itself that replaced the free growing woods with cagelike cubicles convinced her long ago that mankind was across the board evil, but useful for pleasure. "So... how'm I s'posed to defend myself against... this kind of evil?"
The old woman coughed into her hand. "Simple, it's a weakness all demons have. You can't hope to escape it except through caution, my little beast, but should you be caught, it's important that you develop a toughness that defies anything normal, much like your heart is tough."
The answer seemed oddly deficient, incomplete even. "So how do you expect me to get tougher than I already am?"
The old woman approached slowly, leaning her entire weight on her cane, then brought her hand around with surprising force and smacked the little fox's forehead head on. "You're on the right path already. Keep learning, keep struggling. It will come to you naturally my child. It's a hidden gift of yours, one you don't understand yet. It's your destiny. Now go!"
Not wanting to upset the obviously stronger than she looked old woman, she scrambled out of the door, her new eyes hungry to view her world.

Subject: Re: Brother Gypsy Sat Aug 15, 2009 7:22 pm

Wordcount: 4,064
Rewards:
Defense Package
x [-0.5k: Package Intro Quest]
x [-2.5k: Additional Introductory Words]
Capacity
x [-1.0k: Learning Words]
x [-10 TEXP]
64 exp

Subject: Re: Brother Gypsy Mon Aug 31, 2009 4:20 pm

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