#centurione temporis strider

[tanoraqui]

@allacharade said: does dave have a run in with rose before they start working together? what kind of contact to Roxy and Rose have and Dirk and Dave? Scenes involving dersedorks!

You are in so much trouble.

For one thing, you are fucking with the literal forces of Darkness. The Eldest Gods, the Horrors of the Void, the Cthuluan Abominations of the Farthest Ring. Whatever the kids are calling them these days, they are in the dictionary under “not to be fucked with”, which is definitely all one word. And what are you doing? You are fucking with them.

Technically you are aiding and abetting in fucking with them, or, to be even more exact, the necromantic re-awakening of your friend’s dead cat. You are, in fact, sitting on the floor of an unused garden shed, holding its oddly well-dressed kitty corpse while Rose and Roxy draw designs three feet away with blood they bought from the butcher’s last Saturday.

You’d be a little freaked out by this but, honestly, you’ve seen much more ornate ritualistic diagrams. This is just basic pentacles with a couple extra twisty, tentacular bits to please the Dark Gods. And you’ve always been sort of fond of the corpses of small animals. In a non-creepy way. If there is a non-creepy way to be fond of the corpses of small animals. They’re cool, all right? This particular corpse is actually sort of adorable, with its cat-sized tuxedo and frozen kitty smile. The formaldehyde smells sweet.

The way you see it, the way you’re rationalizing it to yourself, is this: it’s just a cat. It’s not like they’re (you’re) raising the real dead, human dead, and definitely not for evil purposes. Rose just really wants Jaspers back. She loves him. She looked wistful when she talked about him, and you’ve known Rose Lalonde for over a year and you can honestly say you’ve never seen her look wistful before. She said she wants you to help because she knows she can count on you.

Yeah, you are basically facilitating necromancy because a pretty girl made sad eyes at you. A pretty girl who’s sort of your best friend, the first best friend you’ve had since you were like five years old and had way lower standards. Why do your standards now include casual necromancy? Well, in your defense, you didn’t know about her affinity for the darkest arts when you turned around in freshman English and asked if she agreed that Horatio was totally gay for Hamlet. (She did, at much more length than you had anticipated.)

One thing led to another. You had lunch, partnered on a class project, met her sister—it’s a buy one, get on free deal, there’s no befriending Rose Lalonde without acquiring a bonus Roxy to fling her arms around you at random intervals and call you “Davey.” It’s not inversible; Roxy is sort of a friend slut, totally friends around, while the intellectual, analytical, enigmatic piece of porcelain art that is Rose requires a much more refined friend palate to appreciate. You, it turns out, are like a pig bred especially to root out and enjoy such fine, Rose-flavored friend truffles, and before you knew it you were letting her psychoanalyze you from your raps while you read her Lovecraft fanfiction. She revealed that she and her twin sister have a sort of rapport with the Gods of the Abyss, you admitted that you might know something about the arcane yourself, or at least harbor a willing sense of curiosity...

…You may have neglected to mention that your brother is a renowned hunter of the sort of people (creatures) who have rapports with eldritch horrors, and that the reason you moved to town in the middle of ninth grade is that you travel the country with him while he hunts, one step ahead of Child Protective Services, because he’s really the only parent you’ve ever known and he’s raising you to do the same monster-hunting job. He pretty much has raised you by now, damn it, you’re fifteen years old and basically an adult. Definitely a hunter—you’ve killed like 20 different monsters by yourself, not counting the salt&burns.

Which means you’re totally qualified to judge whether a situation is supernaturally dangerous or just two teenage girls innocently raising their cat from the dead, with as many assiduous safety measures as can be fit into one ritual. They weren’t even all your idea—the Lalondes are smart, savvy practitioners who could probably wreak a terrifying amount of demonic havoc if they chose to—but they WON’T because they are your FRIENDS.

Dear god, you hope Bro never finds out about this.

“Dave, is Jaspers ready? The altar is set up.”

You dip your finger into the bowl of blood at your feet and add a couple final touches to the sigils of attraction and containment on Jaspers’s fur. Okay, so you’re doing a little bit more than hold the cat. Really, you’re just making sure nothing gets out of hand.

“Can’t rush true art,” you drawl as you hand the marked kitty corpse up to Rose. She passes him to Roxy and offers you a hand to pull you to your feet.

“Gimme a sec, ‘kay?” you ask, and dash out of the shed to grab your sword out of your bike bags. It’s ancient, Welsh, and covered is semi-visible runes of power, warding, and whatever other good things can be used to fight off the forces of darkness. You’ve been training with it since you were about three.

You hope really hard that neither girl asks why you have an incredibly sharp, well cared for, demon-repelling sword. You don’t want to have to explain yourself. But you also don’t want to be caught unprepared in case anything does go wrong. You’ve seen what happens then, and you aren’t sure which would be worse: the actual consequences (eldritch terrors loose on this plane, Rose and Roxy dead or worse, etc.) or having to explain to Bro how you fucked up so bad. You’re pretty certain you’d rather just die stopping the Horrorterros from getting loose in the first place.

Thus the sword, and Rose raises one slim eyebrow when you slip back in but she doesn’t ask anything but, “Nerves assuaged?” She and Roxy are both kneeling inside the largest pentagram, holding candles over Jaspers’s finely tailored corpse.

You adopt a guard stance, false confidence blooming like a flower in soil enriched with dread and forced optimism. You’re a hunter, and keeping people out of supernatural trouble is your job—including, in certain circumstances, helping your (best) (only) friends raise the dead. Safely.  

“Assuaged as fuck. Let’s get this necromantic show on the dark, twisted road.”