(Open) July at Christmas

[Daniel Leto]

Hmm, storytelling. Last time he'd tried that at an event he'd ended up making some people uncomfortable. Not on purpose but the tales had turned a bit dark. Luckily, Daniel wasn't going first. He looked expectantly at Green.

[Malcolm Green]

The mountain finds a spare table and deposited beer and plate upon it. Finger's shovelled tender morsels into his mouth while he thought.

"Well... There was this time... Uh. Ever heard what happened in the shopping mall - and, like, how it was bound up with the... ah... Fear Maker... dude?"

He paused, not so much for effect (his mouth was full) but to gauge his audience.

"Anyway. This story is good. Happened a few Christmases ago, right? Down right appropriate if ya ask me. Anyway. So... Listen up!"

"Happened down at the Westfield shopping mall. Me and my good pal Shin Wei and Erik were down at the mall... Chillin' and shopping, you know? It was Christmas so the place was, like, packed. Damn tight squeeze. Food Court was jammed, man. Anyway, I sees my friends and make my way over just to say hi. There's a sleepless wreck of a shop manager sitting by his lonesome, staring at the coffee - no bigs. And then this bank teller dude breaks open the ATM, right? Its on the mezzanine so he cracks open the box and starts tossing cash everywhere."

"Major riot." Green's voice is deadpan. "I think we're the only ones who notice he's chanting and screaming that he's changed or some crap - this was the bank teller, okay? The manager dude was still crying in his cups."

"Ever fought a riot? Don't. We lost. I got banged up. Erik was knocked out. Don't know how we'd have got out of there if Perry di Carto, the 'Holds resident lawyer, hadn't turned up and helped with the cover for the EMTs and cops when they got there."

"Thats where we find the weird shit. Perry goes ambulance chaser on the banker; we find the manager is still sobbing in his cups. Now these guys have the same problem, it turns out. BAD DREAMS. After that revelation, like, we are on 'em. The manager's dreams keep coming true - and he's having issues finding out what a vindictive fuck he is. Yeah, he's sobbing in his cups because of what 'he' did to a front desk girl he fired... Somehow she ends up dead on the street and he saw it. Yeah..."

"Anyway, this story sets us thinking. We meet up later but not before I do some legwork of my own. Turns out this guy with Mutton Chops keeps turning up around Christmas with a stall. Old style nostalgic toys and shit is what he sells. Now get this - you buy form him you get bad dreams - big assed nightmares that change you, right?"

He's nodding now. Takes a gulp of beer and more meat.

"Guess what? The manager dude - and probably the bank teller guy - had bought from this guy. We found this out because Perry was doing his lawyer thing with the manager too. It was cover for a dream pledge, right? You know the one's that give us entry... Yeah. He and Shin had sorted that out while I went gumshoe..."

"So we end up at the Four Seasons, in a suite with the manager who is trying to sleep. We all dive in his dream, right, 'cause by now we pretty sure there is some Dream Poison or shit out there and this man is affected. Anyway, the guy's dream is set in an old speak; the street outside is blocked by snow and there's a storm raging, trapping us there. Nice plan, eh? Mutton Chop was there too, about to do his work, yeah? Kinda expected that. When he saw us he bolted - out into the storm he goes. We follow."

Pause for effect. Drink more beer.

"Now this Mutton Chop guy was good. Me and Shin were not dream weavers but Perry was and he turned the tables on the guy, taking control of the dream and all. After that, he came right at us. I for sure thought we'd have to fight our way out right then and there. And then Perry weaves his lawyer magic. Right there! I mean, he talked Mutton Chops into knots! By the time he was done, the guy was thanking us and vowing to leave our 'Hold alone from his - eh - work. See, it seems Mutton Chops was on a crusade against greed. Bank dude and the manager were greedy pigs (its true, I sat there talking to the manager guy and he was a two faced green eyed slime ball!)"

"Yeah... Uh... Well, like, I guess thats it."

Finish the beer in one hearty gulp.

[InvertedMonkey]

She grins and laughs as the Mountain finishes his story. "Damn, that's a tale of cunning if I've ever heard one. Lawyer magic. That's good." She hasn't heard these names before. It's tempting to ask of they're still around, but... they pretty clearly aren't. Maybe they left. Maybe they burned with the Four Seasons. Either way, it'd probably be painful to ask. "Classic. Fast-talking your way out of a problem? You hear that in a lot of fables."

When it comes to her turn, she pauses, searching her memory for a good story. So many of them trace lines directly back to Portland, and all the bodies buried there, and all the (metaphorical) ghosts that haunt her now and then. It had been getting easier to deal with that pain. To recall those times with more fondness than sorrow. It might actually help to try again. She clears her throat and takes another drink, "My turn I guess.

"For about the two years I was with the Portland Freehold, we had three wars, and plenty of minor skirmishes and beast-hunts. I don't know what it was about that area, we just seemed to attract anything that was spoiling for a fight. Quirk of the Hedge, I guess. The Summer Court was pretty strong there, at the time. We had good cover, plenty of contacts, and more resources than I realized back then. I was never more than a blacksmith that could double as a foot-soldier, but we had our knights. And you did not want to fuck with them." She grins, and sips her drink.

"The one you most especially didn't want to fuck with was Jerri. Jerri's day job was fighting fires, but her proper title was Red Victor. I mean, Jerri could kick your ass from here to next week without breaking a sweat. The court's cover was as a mercenary house for the SCA, and with the Hedge sometimes being finicky about modern weapons, Jerri trained hardest in the sword and the lance. She rode this big hedge-horse Calpa, in full plate and regalia, and all day in the joust she'd just have a ball knocking everyone into the dust.

"One day, we're having some war games. Partially to practice for ren-fairs and SCA wars and such, and partially to practice for the real thing. The court had firearms, and we shot with them too, but with the way the hedge works they're... inconsistent, so I learned to fight in a shield wall and shoot a crossbow. So a few of us, maybe more than a dozen, are out at a local trod when we hear things moving in the trees. There are these deep, rough sounds, like something snorting and ruffling around.

"Everybody's got practice weapons in their hands, but because we're here working in a trod, we came prepared. So in about ten seconds, everybody's got sharp steel, and real bolts in their crossbows, and a couple guns are being passed around just in case they work this time. And it's a good thing too, 'cus out of the forest pours this band of hobs. They're screaming and howling, and they all look sorta vaguely boar-like? With snouts and fur and sort of a hunched posture, waving crude spears and cleavers. And among them is this big fucking mamma-boar, just completely ripped, covered with fur and quills, with tusks like scimitars.

"So, I'm a foot soldier, and so are most of us. We do what we're trained to, we bunch up, shoulder to shoulder, and raise our shields in a wall. There's a couple of gun shots, a couple of crossbow bolts fly, but there's plenty of ugly for everyone. It was pretty early days for me, so I remember jumping when a thrown cleaver smacked into my shield. But I've got an axe in my hand, and when the first hobs start reaching me, I manage to remember to swing it. Really, my part of the fight wasn't that impressive, but I did have a pretty damn good view of Jerri.

"She'd looped around behind us to get a good look at what was coming at as, saddled up on Calpa and already covered in plate. With a real lance in her hand, she came around our wall and just pointed herself at the biggest threat and charged. If you've never seen a knight charging atop a destier into battle, you're missing out. The hobs that were in Calpa's way were flung aside or crushed under her hooves, while she and Jerri charged the mama-boar. There was this huge 'crack' when the lance hit, and then an even louder scream.

"It took mama-boar in the ribs, looked like a perfect heart-shot to me, but the boar queen wasn't going down. She's got this big fucking club in one hand, it looks like it used to be a small tree, and however badass Jerri might be, she and Calpa make a nice big target. There was this huge crunching sound, and then Calpa and Jerri were airborne, flying fifteen feet through the air to land in the dirt. So by now, we figure this is Bad Fucking News. Our Red Victor just took a big hit, and I can't see if she's getting back up, and I've cut down two of these god damn hobs already but there's another one in my face. Then Brendan goes down, and I can't see how bad, I've just got to step in and fill the gap in the line.

"The hobs are getting bold now. They're screaming and cheering. Mama-boar is down on one knee, taking a breather, looking down at this broken lance sticking out of her chest. Then she looks at something, and as one, we all notice that the Victor is up again. Calpa's gone completely fucking savage, she's showing her fangs and her claws are coming through her hooves, and she crushes and slashes and bites her way through the hobs while Jerri picks herself up off the ground and pulls out her big fuck-off bastard sword. She cuts down a hob or two, but no more than that dare get between her and the mama-boar.

"I'm distracted with my own fight, but the hobs are distracted too. I catch glimpses of Jerri fighting that thing. I didn't know anyone could move that smoothly in full plate. She ducks a club strike, and takes a slice off the boar. She wrestles with those tusks against her breastplate, and chops one of them off. There's plenty of screaming, on both sides. Then Jerri goes in, close, too close to swing her sword. She drops it even, then rams her shoulder into the stump of the lance, bashing it down into the boar's ribs. There's a strangled scream, and then a huge 'whump' when the mama-boar goes down.

"I can't see Jerri, but the hobs are routing. We mop up the last few of them, then look to the wounded. I run forward with Yvonne and Chen, and Calpa helps us all shove the body of the mama-boar aside. And there, under her, is a knight in full-plate, bit dented and scratched now, covered in blood. Jerri sits up, pushes back her visor, laughs at us all, and says 'Now that was a fucking war game!' "

[Daniel Leto]

Daniel supposed it was his turn.

"I'm up then." He did a quick run through of stories he could tell. Almost everything that happened in Minnesota was out. There was HAL and finding the Chatelaine's corpse but that didn't seem appropriate. Green's talk about dream weaving did bring to mind something though.

"So, I got a call from Ava one day. She had remembered me taking a dream class at one of Autumn's expos. The class was actually kind of a bust but she wanted to know if I would be interested in helping to take down a changeling that was terrorizing kids. The Sandman. Sick fucker from everything I could tell. We started out a fairly large group but we had to travel through several dreamscapes the Sandman had set up. It wasn't pretty. Kids falling in plane crashes, lost in a hostile crowd, being turned to stone, forced to eat their friends.

"By the time we reached the Sandman's mind there was only four of us, Lynn, Ava, Kyle and me. And we were expected. He'd set up an alarm system in one of the dreams to warn him we were coming. He'd even set up his dreamscape to fuck with Kyle. Poor guy lost it and fled. It was a field of roses with the Sandman pretending to be a little girl in a summer dress. He goaded Ava. He knew her true name. Tried to information out of Lynn and me too but we weren't having it.

"Ava made a sword out of one of her teeth and immediately went in to stab and managed to get him right in the gut. But he just kept on smiling and smeared blood on her face. Meanwhile Lynn was trying to break through mental defenses and see if couldn't learn the Sandman's true identity in the waking world. Unfortunately, there was another security measure, some kind of dream construct, that attacked her before she could get very far. I had more luck. I was able to burn the field and fracture the dream into several 'memory scapes'. Not sure what else to call them. Visuals from his past and clues to who he was.

And let me tell you that pissed him off more than having Ava make thorns out of concrete to snag his legs. She, sorry he still looked like a little girl at this point, let out this wave of bugs and rats that tore through her skin and. And boy let me tell you, if someone tells you there's no pain in dreams, they're full of crap. Those things stung like a bitch and there were rats..." He shook his head slightly "Any way, I had to change my skin to stone just to keep from being hurt." It was actually a little disturbing looking back on what he'd done. What he'd made himself into. But he didn't mention how natural it felt when he let himself go numb.

"I was able to focus enough to learn where the Sandman's Hollow door was, as well as the key. Ava took out the shadow construct but by then the nightmare girl was going after Lynn. Basically tore out her heart before throw it away." At which point Daniel had tried to break it. Again details best not spoke aloud "Then he started turning into this huge sea monster but by then we had the upper hand. Ava summoned an army and I summoned a flock of crows that pecked and ate him up. And with that, well, we woke up." It seemed a bit lame to end like that. 'It was all a dream'. Truth was it had been but it was easy to forget that even during impossibility of the battle.

"I wasn't there when he died. Had to leave right after opening the Door. Green might know more since he was part of that group, but I was told Coco ran him through and then Lynn him dragged his sorry ass back from the dead to get the names of all the kids he'd tortured before letting him go back to the underworld where he belongs." There, that was better. All the bad guys defeated. Very Summer. Right?

[InvertedMonkey]

If anyone wants to post some last thoughts, feel free. If not, I'll close this thread in a couple days.

[InvertedMonkey]

Daniel's story is a little dis-jointed. Sounds like parts running into each other. That's ok though, not everybody has to be the most fantastic storyteller. She nods as she follows along. Peps' story prompts a drink from her beer a few times. Dealing with Fetches is always a nasty business, and nobody ever seems to agree about what to do. Hell, Ramona's still not sure where she stands on that issue. Her concern about trusting the Courtless draws a small nod, "Definitely something to watch out for."

She kills the last of her beer, then tosses the bottle into a bin. "Alright, what do you say we light these puppies?" She asks, gesturing back to the fireworks under guard. It takes her a few minutes to set it up, but she's got all sorts of stuff for people to play with. Sparklers. Smaller street-fireworks and such. The mortars are the big show-stoppers though. She sets those off, and they fire their payloads high up into the sky, and light up the night with their terrific, colorful explosions. Ramona hoots and howls and wails and applauds, letting the Hedge hear her, reminding it, reminding everyone, reminding the world that she's alive, that Summer is alive, and they won't be backed down.

[Daniel Leto]

Daniel sat back and watched as the sky of the Hedge lit up. The sharp light of stars mixed the twinkling of pyrotechnics. Unbidden, the sparkling sky brought a memory of a woman whose tears had shone with the same light.

Daniel waved his sparkler as Ramona whooped and yelled, smiling whenever she turned his way, wiping glittering tears away when she wasn't.

[InvertedMonkey]

Closed thread. Thanks folks!