nanowrimo day 4

TETRAGRAMMATON HEADQUARTERS- THE PENTAGRAM. [Yelgnal,] VA.

The trip back home had been uneventful, mostly composed of sleeping, though there was a strange recurring dream that Moone had, reflecting something of his fears. One can never trust anything a spy says, except in the cases of certain magically binding contracts (many of which Moone himself was [person] to,) but the way that the Pontifex had looked at him, hunger in his eyes, had shaken him.

Each of the dreams started the same way, Moone dreaming he was drowning in those eyes, his aura of both bane and boon glowing orange and lifting off of him, the bane swallowing the boon. From there the dreams diverged, as every creature that he had ever bested in combat, from the time he was [6] on up, now coming back to him for revenge, and this time there was nothing he could do about it, he had to rely on his own strength to save him- and he had relied on his boon to much, he had grown soft.

Moone had always felt more comfortable in the mundane world, because the mundane world was not actively malicious toward him, but these dreams made him realize, when he awoke from them, that if he were to encounter a problem in the mundane world, for whatever reason, he would be just as helpless in real life there, as he had at the end of each of his nightmares.

It was a few weeks later now. The Pontifex was engaged in regular debriefing sessions, in a secure room at [cool nickname for the Pentagram,] giving retreads of intel he had already delivered via the encoded Usenet [communiques,] going into more detail on every subject, as well as [interrogation] at length about details of the Cabal's organizational structure [and stuff like that.]

[...]

The Pentagram was a ten-story structure nestled within a spatial fold in Langley, Virginia. There was also an underground parking level, and a mezzanine level between the lobby and second floors, which looked out over the lobby floor with a five-sided balcony in the dead center of the building.

[The Secretary of Tetragrammaton, High Priest of Wicca, King of the Gnomes probably. Do more research on what a Secretary does, so that we can get some action for him to be doing, and segue these two parts. Also to give some ooph to his eventual assassination. Probably something to do with the CIA's threatened closing.] The threat was over. With the Cabal's secrets being exposed, and about to come down, the loose threads were being tied up.

But with that happening, Moone would be left out in the cold. As dangerous as this world was, he could weather it. Which life was worse: one of high risk but relative predictability, or low risk, but what risk there was being far more injurious?

Moone glanced over to see the Secretary below him. Here, on the balcony of the mezzanine floor, he could look out over and see the ground level, with its marble flooring and bustle of people. [would today, with the Secretary being there, be any different, or would he be, just, going to and from meetings and everything?] The mezzanine floor was relatively empty today; Moone had this side of it all to himself, as far as he could see.

Moone had been trying to reintegrate into civilian life, but found a funk hanging over him with his realization of half a month ago. The world was indeed full of more threats than just the supernatural, of things that go bump in the night, and the more Moone listened to the news or tried to make small talk with his neighbors, the more restless he became.

The end of the Cabal didn't truly mean the end of supernatural threats to the nation, did it? There were certainly other organizations- radicalized covens, packs, clutches and clans. But if one began hunting down these more ephemeral threats, where would one stop? And was it truly worth it for Moone to feel secure, if it also meant giving up on rest for the remainder of his life?

There was a [brief] puff of air, like a cough to Moone's right. He looked over, something small out of the corner of his eye... and there was a commotion going on down on the lobby floor. The Secretary, lying in a growing pool of blood, a polygram-shaped bullet hole flaming through his torso. Eyes turned to look up at where the shot must have come from, and Moone stumbled back.

The Secretary, assassinated, in front of everyone. Everyone as a witness, but Moone had a key vantage point. That smudge that he'd seen, flitting away from his vision, heading downstairs...

Moone realized there had been two people near the angle close enough to have made the shot. Moone was the first. And the second- the second didn’t like to be called a person at all.

Moone ran to find Gef. Downstairs. There were people scrambling about, but as far as Moone knew nobody saw him, and nobody would suspect him. He slipped out of the stairwell when no-one was watching, and made his way to a map on the wall. The Pentagram had no security cameras, but it did have a real-time system in place tracking where everyone in the building was at any moment. Moone made his way to the building map, pinged the system- and received more than one signature back.

He followed the nearest one. There, stuck into the wall, into the base of a load-bearing pillar...

A bomb. Gef’s bomb. Moone could recognize the wiring, and the [stamp etc] indicated it was Gef’s ordinance, with Gef’s aura around it shed off like strands of fur. How many bombs had been planted back in [Russia]? Had they all been detonated? How many did that leave left? Moone tried to think. How many pings of Gef’s aura had there been? He stepped closer, and realized that the bomb was [primed.]

It’s not just a bomb, Moone told himself, exhaling a shaking breath. In this case that’s a good thing. It’s not just a bomb; it’s a magic bomb. Whatever the magical component is to this bomb, I can at least circumnavigate that.

The bomb’s [primer] was a thumb-sized crystal, flower-shaped, which contained within it a small non-sentient clone of Gef’s aura, linking back to the [male mongoose] himself. With the crystal connected to Gef’s aura, he would be able to activate, through a flex of mental command, the detonation sequence. Fortunately, as far as Moone could tell, the connection to Gef was one-way; Gef would have no inkling that Moone was at the device trying to disarm it.

There was a boom some distance away, close enough to shake the walls. The building’s alarms began sounding, the sprinkler system turning on and the air filling with mist and smoke.

The [priming component] of the bomb may have been magical, but there were still electric wires exposed on the outside of the [dimensions] bomb, now threatened to be short-circuited by the cascade of water coming down from the overhead sprinklers. Moone shielded the wiring by placing himself between the sprinkler system and the components, but that only served to draw the center of his body mass closer to the bomb.

Another boom, closer this time. Smoke filled the air more heavily, in spite of the water raining down from the ceiling.

Moone ran his trembling hands over the wiring, which crisscrossed in elaborate ways, following the particular [wire] wire back to [wire hole.] [More bomb stuff here, research!] Gingerly, he tugged the wire loose--

And the crystal flower blinked, and the bomb exploded.

With the non-magical component of the bomb removed, the blast remaining was a shock of mostly magical energies, from the [ignition system] itself. Energies directed outward, away from the load-bearing pillar, which was good- but instead of being directed inward, was directed straight out, at Moone, which was bad.

Moone used [awesome dodge skill thing] to survive the blast, and landed on his face. The pillar survived, but the blast still sent dust and plaster raining down, a large piece of which landed with a hard thump on Moone’s head. Moone’s boon was to be able to survive. Some things were yet impossible to get out of unscathed.

Moone tried to peel himself off of the ground. Something scurried right in front of Moone. He looked up. And found himself nose-to-nose with a nine-inch-long marsh mongoose, fur slick with water from the overhead sprinklers.

Gef blinked his beady eyes. “...oh my gosh!” he bleated, voice even higher-pitched than normal. “You killed the bloody secretary!”

Moone pulled himself up to his arms and knees, and tried to speak, his mouth full of the iron taste of blood. “I--”

“Stay right there!” said Gef, extending a warding paw toward Moone’s face. “[you killed the secretary, and people are coming to collect you.]”

“And then blew myself up?” Moone sputtered. “Why would I blow myself up?”

“Bah, don’t shite me like that. You were the only one standing in the right place. You probably put yourself into danger knowing you’d just get out of it.”

Moone frowned at this. That- that was actually pretty clever.

From the way that Gef was talking, it sounded like Gef actually believed it. It wasn’t true, of course. But Gef was the only other one on the mezzanine, and it would have been impossible for it to have been an outside force like a ghost [for some reason.] Not to mention the bombs that had been set up...

Moone pulled himself up to his full height, and growled down at Gef. The creature soiled himself, and scampered away down the hall, leaving Moone dumbfounded.

Moone glanced around, and considered. Gef, being a poltergeist, was by nature a lover of mischief. But could he really go to these depths? The mongoose may have been a sapient being, but he was also an animal. He wasn’t even currently in the state of mind to call himself a person. What sort of ethical system did that leave him with?

There was, of course, another way that Moone could definitively prove his innocence...

There was another explosion, and in an instant, Moone made up his mind.

Moone chased after the furry spirit, who was scrambling up rubble from a fallen wall. Moone caught up, using his long legs and his ability to jump the rubble, and grabbed Gef. In a fair race, a mongoose can outrun a man easily, but Gef’s own machinations had [gone] against him by creating the terrain. When he grabbed Gef, Moone made sure to do so by the neck- the scratch of a mongoose’s claws may not be pleasant, but their bites contained neurotoxin.

“Gef, you’ve got to listen. Please.” At this the mongoose stopped squirming considerably, and locked eyes with Moone, his chin held high. “We can take this to Cloud, if you don’t believe me. I’m not sure how it looks, but I’m not the one who’s doing this.”

“My shiny pink arsehole, you didn’t,” Gef spat, and with those words seemed to realize something.

Oh dear, thought Moone, as a wicked grin came across the mongoose’s face. Beyond scratching and biting, there is one last defense that a mongoose has, and both Gef and Moone knew it- Gef deftly threw up the lower half of his body, Moone attempting to adjust his grip to prevent what was coming next, and sprayed Moone right in the face with a stream of pungent skunk-like spray.

It was true that Moone could always escape supernatural danger, but he couldn’t always choose the method of escape, and sometimes the cost was too high- his boon’s instincts had screamed to snap the mongoose’s spine, but he had fought against those, being an extreme action against a relatively minor threat. A threat that stung his eyes and made his head swim, but he wouldn’t have killed just to escape that; Moone still considering Gef to be a friend. A friend who assassinated a major political figure and blew up half a building, but a friend nonetheless.

A second alarm sounded, a magical one this time. Moone spun, dropping Gef to the ground. Gef had alerted the ping system to point everyone toward Moone’s signature-- Gef had done this or at least had gotten Lovecraft to do so. Their psychic connection, right. And like that, it was no longer just Gef, but the whole building, against Moone.

Supernatural danger. But without even needing to pause to think, he knew exactly his path he needed to get out of it. Mushroom Cloud. He just needed to use her to convince the whole agency instead of just Gef, was all.

Cloud had obeyed his commands so readily back on the mission because they were bound together. She was in a position to trust Moone, not through eyewitness and having been with him when the attack had occurred, but through [some] magic bond, through just his word. Cloud and Moone at [some point in the past, maybe have a flashback here] had entered into a deal, contractually binding him to tell the truth to her. Cloud didn’t wish Moone ill will. Cloud never wished Moone ill will. The bond was not just magical but two-fold [psychological.] Not only would presenting a danger to Moone make him a threat, leaving Cloud no motivation to break her side of the contract, but Moone would not lie to Cloud, and could not of his own power break his.

As such Cloud trusted Moone implicitly. All Moone needed to do would be to tell her that he didn’t do it, and that would be a second witness, irrefutable under the laws of magic.

Moone looked around through stinging eyes, Gef disappearing behind a corner. There was still one more bomb out there. Moone lifted his face to the sprinklers and attempted to wash his face free of the noxious fluid, wiping his eyes clear with his wet hands- then took off at a run to find Cloud.