When attending a fancy art gathering, the Dr. Who Scarf is an accessory fit for any occasion. Be sure to shapeshift into an appropriate form for your human party.
There's this one show that Brittany and I used to watch on her Netflix, and it said something really smart: Nothing good ever happens after 2AM.
Naturally, Tylan calls us at 3 AM to tell us that Nick's job had a job for us. I like Nick. He's a good guy. I hate his job. He works for Black Fox, a monster hunting/private eye corporation. Solving the mysteries of the world, one way or another.
We drove to his work and met a woman who I thought was his boss. She reminded me of a burrowing owl, like the types you'd see popping up and down in the deserts around Roswell. She didn't seem like the type to pay attention to you until she needed something important. Until that moment, she was deep in her burrow.
She told us where to go. There was a situation at one of those museums dedicated to fun, rather than education. Their exhibits taught you something, but they usually revolved with whatever was popular. They had to compete with the Natural History Museum here in NYC so I guess it made sense. It rubs me the wrong way though. I don't think knowledge should be pop culture topics.
We arrived, and there was a dinosaur in the front entryway. I've always wondered what it would be like to become a Dinosaur, but there's not going to be any opportunities to try. I can't process bone. I have to eat their flesh. If you Black Fox guys ever find preserved dinosaur flesh, let me know okay?
There were blinking lights that Nick said called for help. The door locked behind us. I don't like it when doors do that. We followed the blinking lights down the dark hallway. They led us to a woman who was scared, and had seen the night guard dissolved by some kind of invisible being over security cameras. An earthquake had preceded this, and a statue had broken. She informed us that not only had we been called in, but the cops had as well. That's good. We always need scared humans with guns wandering around a dark human museum at night. Nothing ever goes wrong with that combination.
She gave us a map.
We all started to leave to go check it out, but Virgil the Virgin had to stop at the door and magick it to do something. It took only a small moment, but then he said something about the door being safe from beings such as himself. Good job, you flappy numbskull. You made a door that you can't go through. And they say I'm stupid.
We tried to find the others, but got lost. Instead, we found a room full of vases. Which is a stupid exhibit. It's just asking for someone to knock over your vases. Turns out, something was knocking over the vases. I changed my eyes to a cat's, so I could see in the dark.
Then dumbass Angelboy decided to flash his holy headlights around. I was blind. He was blind, and now the vase-cracking monster knew exactly where we were. They may have handed out phenomenal cosmic powers the day they made Angels, but they sure as fuck didn't hand out brains.
The monster attacked us. It looked like someone took ground beef, blended it into a meat slurry, and then tried to mold it like clay into a human shape, but the only reference they had to a human form was through one of those warped funhouse mirrors. There was a single eyeball on the front of its face. It tried. I give it a C+.
I bit it. It tasted like leathery, freezer burnt meat. It was somehow liquid, and solid at the same time. I bet Mom could have made an awesome dish out of it.
Virgil was useless. Thankfully Brittany and Nick and Tylan returned, and actually did something useful. The body dissolved into a pile of human goo, and whatever was inside it disappeared. Whoosh.
Nick called in the description, and the Owl Woman told us we were dealing with an Ogre. It made sense to me.
Ogres are distant cousins to us Orcs. Our abilities come from the need to eat whatever it is to bolster our own strengths. Orcs use flesh eating to shapeshift, blending ourselves into the natural world so we can better survive in it. Ogres are more spirit things that use their hunger to spin bodies for themselves from living prey. Mom used to think that Ogres were the spirits of Orcs who had died hungry, and that hunger drove them to keep eating and trying to rebuild their body so they could someday sate that hunger, and pass on.
She didn't like them, even if she did admire them.
Anyway, Tylan led us to the statue room. The one that was broken had four birds framing a central figure, which was what looked to be a bull. The birds were all different, but the bull is what caught my attention. Not only was it broken, but it looked angry. Bulls in real life were always fascinating for me. They were mindless grazing creatures, happy and content until something threatened them. Then, their bulk was devoted to eradicating the threat so thoroughly that it was ground into a paste. After that, they'd go back to grazing.
I've tried being a cow before. I am never going to be a bull, because that requires a penis, but my cow form isn't any less bulky as a natural bull.
What?
No, this is related. We were looking at a bull statue.
...
Okay.
The statue was broken, and the night guard was dead. He was missing an eye. It looked like that the ogre pulled its form from this man. This whole night sucked, and now we had an invisible spirit thing trapped in a dark museum with us. The Owl Woman she said we needed to banish it. The ritual required four feathers and a gold coin. The coin was easy, we are in a museum. The feathers had everyone worried, so I just turned into a chicken for them.
I made Tylan pluck four feathers from my tail. It hurt, but that's okay. I just hung around in chicken form while they talked, and volunteered to go find a gold coin. Nick told me to stop being a chicken. I turned back into myself.
I got stuck with the Virgin again to go hunt down this gold coin in the Pirate exhibit. They tried to give me a map, but it was poorly drawn and stupid. I didn't know what to do about it. I gave it back, and took Virgin with me. The others went to go save the booth woman that Virginia had made impervious to himself.
We got lost. We heard gunshots. We ran to help. There was an NYC cop shooting at the meat glob the Ogre was spinning out of her flesh and skin. I bit it, Virgil whipped it, and the meat glob died. The cop tried to shoot us next, but Virgil was useful for once and convinced her not to kill us, that we were helping. Which was the truth. She asked me what I was. I told her I had a terrible dentist.
I don't remember how we got to the Pirate exhibit, but we got there eventually. The others had found a deaf woman with a mop bucket when they met up with us there.
There were gold coins. They were going to choose anything gold-looking, but I said to check that it was real. They threw the coin at me to check, so I bit it. I made a hole in the top, but the metal was soft enough. The coin was real. The museum was going to be pissed that I made a hole in this.
We started performing the ritual. The four feathers were placed around the coin on the floor. They started to glow, webbing themselves to the coin by a glowing light. When the ogre attacked, it disappeared into the circle. So did my sister.
What a stupid way to cast a spell, anyway. What good is a ritual that eats the people casting it nearby? It was Nick's boss that gave us this spell. Now my baby sister was gone, and it was his fault. I was gonna eat him. It was good that she appeared in the same spot, moments later, because it was gonna become a Nick buffet.
The feathers and the coin had been physically changed from the ritual. There was a fiery orange one that Brittany laid dibs on. There was a soft, sparkly one that looked like moonlight that the Virgin took. Once was electric blues and reds and black, that Nick took. The last was the biggest, and brown. They gave it to me, and Tylan took the coin, which had a bull's head on it now. That didn't feel right, though. I couldn't place why.
We went back to Raquel, the boss woman, and she said that the CEO wanted to speak with us. I didn't know what a CEO was, so I asked. CEO means Chieftain. I asked why they didn't just say that instead of a stupid acronym. The owl woman didn't seem to like that, and sent us on our way.
The office we went into was the most beautiful room I'd ever been in. There was a large double-bladed axe behind the desk, and the walls were lined with canvases splashed with colors. They made me feel something, deep in my chest. There was one, where the way that the purples met the cerulean that was so intensely sad and joyous all at once. The playful greens and yellows mated and danced along the banks of red, swirling down into the deep mournful indigo. It made me happy in a way I hadn't felt before. I couldn't stop looking at it.
The woman behind the desk, the Chieftain Cara Driver, was pretty, when I looked at her eventually. She asked me if I was an orc. I told her I had a bad dentist. She asked me to stay after the others had left. I said I would. The others spoke to her, and gave a small briefing of the situation.
There's a god named Moloch. He wants to devour the world. Our job is to keep an eye out and report back on any more Ogre sightings while we hunt, because they're parts of his soul. It makes more sense than the Orc death theory that Mom had, anyway. Chieftain Cara dismissed the rest of them.
She told me that not only were Ogres parts of Moloch, but Orcs were as well, and whatever she was too. Our powers pull from greed and hunger. If we wanted to fully be rid of Moloch, we had to keep banishing ogres.
I asked her that, if we are both creatures from Moloch, if eventually we would have to be banished too. She was quiet, for a little while, then said she didn't know.
So at some point, I think I have to go into a box. I don't like that idea, but I think... it would be okay. Anyway, it meant that the roc feather (the big brown one) wasn't meant for me. I have to get the coin back from Tylan, so she doesn't get sucked into it again. Don’t tell her about the box, okay?
Also the Chieftain gave me the phone number to the artist that made the painting. Brittany is giving me a phone, so I'll call him later. I want one to hang on a wall.
That's it. That's all you need to know, right? Good.
>> blackfox.orcEK.tscript001 end
>>saved to driver C:ara
