New Cthonic 9.2

Did she ask him out on a date?

Nah. That'd be crazy. It was probably a common thing among supers, a sort of 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours.' Women like that were not interested in men like him, especially not when they were fresh from the kennels. Though, she apparently smoked like a chimney, so she may not have noticed the smell. Still, it was wishful thinking – typical small-town behavior; the limited selection made you hot for any new face. She'd have had every man in town sniffing around her even if she wasn't pretty. And she was pretty. She was very pretty. Lift-Off was the kind of beautiful that could cloud your mind, make you doubt your better senses. He bet she dealt with this anytime she was halfway nice to a man, him thinking she was flirting or what not. It was all in his head.

But did she ask him out on a date?

Moose sent an inward growl at the source of that thought. He had too many actual problems at the moment to be acting like a teen before the Sadie Hawkins dance.

This job had been a lot simpler not that long ago, when Troyer was content to treat him like a dog trainer. He didn't know exactly when that shifted, but he'd picked up his check yesterday only to learn his salary had been quietly tripled. Which could have been a reasonable adjustment after revealing his powers – you'd, of course, pay more for a dog trainer that could speak to dogs – except that the check had been dated for Thursday and it had been paired with another, an exact reimbursement for the Japanese all-terrain armored suit dated for the day Moose had special ordered it from the Guns&Ammo in State College.

He couldn't fathom how Troyer had found out so quickly. Any licensed dealer could have imported the armor for him, but he'd specifically chosen a gun shop in the city to not make waves in town. The dealer was relatively new to the area, one of the many that had flocked to State College after the population exploded, but had been around for a few years before Troyer arrived; he shouldn't have had any connections to Dudlin. The only explanations Moose could think of were his employer was wire-tapping his phone or that he was tracking all high-tech armor imported to the area, but neither was plausible. That kind of spycraft didn't work like it did in the movies; you needed people to keep tabs on that information, and it was a mind-numbingly dull job most of the time. Why would Troyer pay for a room full of bored desk-spies just to uncharacteristically micromanage an employee, and where was he keeping them, for that matter? Moose knew everyone who worked at the Lodge, and the only reliable form of communication right now was a wired telephone line. It felt impossible – but then, who could say with the man?

The old rattlesnake had finally stirred. Others in town had, shortly after Troyer's arrival to Dudlin, conflated him with a wealthy businessman, just another come to Appalachia to play king. The Lodge itself, originally an estate, had been built by a man like that, a textiles baron from Philadelphia; he wouldn't dare to live anywhere close to his workers, so he'd moved here – not so far that he was inaccessible and not so near that he had to worry about being firebombed. The prevailing attitude was that Troyer was as best as you could hope for from the type. He wasn't here to retire like a dragon atop his hoard; he was here to bring much-needed business back to the region, and he was fully aware that one had to spend money to make money. He was ambitious but generous, demanding but reasonable, and as good as his word. On the surface, in every way, Zachariah Troyer was an ideal neighbor, boss, and landowner.

Moose knew better. Maybe it was hypocritical of him to judge the man so harshly just for being a former SEAL, but Troyer’s generation of special forces were a different breed. The War had done something to all of them, cut open their personalities and cauterized everything that did not serve a purpose. Where others saw a man, Moose saw a weapon. He had to remind himself weekly, sometimes daily, that no matter how friendly, Troyer was nobody's friend, that there was nothing behind those eyes but cold calculation and a relentless drive to remake the world to his liking. The man was a trained and practiced master of insurgency, assassination, and rendition.

Troyer was in reverie, standing with his hands behind his back at the window when Moose returned to the office, the morning sun reflecting like a halo off his grey hair. In the otherwise dark somber of the study, he appeared almost as a silhouette outlined in white.

“Prince Charming,” greeted Troyer dryly, head twitching in his direction. “Took your time.”

Moose grunted and closed the door behind him, its click as ominous as thunder at sea. His footsteps were hushed, barely there, as he moved to take a seat opposite Troyer’s desk, the unnatural silence of the room almost demanding he fall back to his stealth training. Each time he walked into the office was as unnerving as the last. That Troyer subjected himself to this deathly quiet for hours at a time with only the sound of his breathing for company disturbed Moose in a way that he couldn’t quite put the words to.

“Went and grabbed Babs some cream for her eye.”

“Expensive bruise,” said Troyer sardonically. “May as well leave her the jar. Which was it this time, the breakup or the reunion?”

Moose frowned. "Didn't ask." If it wasn't the one, it would be the other soon enough anyway.

His employer hummed noncommittally, taking a step back from the window and half turning to him. “What did you think of our guest?”

He'd been asking himself the same question since laying eyes on the woman. The blonde had been enigmatic but distinctly dangerous. She wasn't at all what he expected when he imagined a Hollywood actress. There was a brutal pragmatism about her that had at first been refreshing, then deeply off-putting, and finally charming at the very end, when she’d been pilfering cigarettes. Interacting with Lift-Off, thought Moose, was a little like reaching blindly into a drawer full of loose knives – no matter what else happened, you would, at the very least, find a knife.

There was a moment, as well, if he allowed himself to think back on it, when the woman had been starkly and inhumanly other. After he mentioned the possibility of the boy's death, Lift-Off displayed a flash of capital-D, Displeasure that brought the room to a halt, less of an emotion and more of a supernatural force that had emanated from her. In those brief seconds, the air hung like a noose around his neck, pinning him breathless in his chair, his fate hers entirely to decide.

“Too soon to say,” said Moose simply. “She didn’t seem to like you much.”

Troyer gave him a patient smile, condescending through body language alone, and shifted slightly toward the plaque behind his desk. He reached up and, with one finger, gently tapped the sword on the hilt, moving it, at most, two millimeters to the left. "Merely overcompensating for a lack of experience," he said, contemplating the sword for a second longer before sitting down. "Swilling passed on a warning to her, I assume."

Moose recognized the name from the radio but was otherwise unfamiliar with the man. “Colonel Swilling? What’s he got against you? How’d you even meet, anyway?”

“I know him only by reputation.” The older man leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Your usual scheming senior officer, projecting his own tendency for conspiracy on every shadow and finding one in every headline. He is a part of a loose coalition within the Department of Defense who view themselves as a necessary counterbalance to more radical elements within the government. Naturally, they are, in practice, as radical as their perceived opponents. Men like Swilling tell themselves that everything they sacrificed, from the lives of their soldiers to the time they could have had with their families, they sacrificed for their country. Their egos need War. Without War as justification for all their self-inflicted suffering, their egos collapse. It would be tragic were it not for the influence they wield.”

Troyer had swiveled his chair and was back to staring out the window. “He no doubt views my past in the Empire as my condemnation of the American project, and considers my investment into this region as some elaborate, winding way of establishing a Satrapy for myself.”

Moose shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Troyer had never spoken to him like this before; their conversations had been strictly project- and work-oriented in the past. The disclosure, along with the higher salary, had him feeling as if he'd been press-ganged. His first instinct was to grunt in response and engage as little as possible in the hope that ignorance might keep him from falling deeper into Troyer's web. There were some facts that could not be unlearned, and the man very notably hadn’t denied any accusations of sedition, but for whatever reason, Moose was afflicted by a rare bout of terminal curiosity.

“You think Swilling’s having Lift-Off keep an eye on you?”

“He’s asked, certainly; gave her quite a lofty do-nothing contract to be paid quarterly. If you noticed, there was an old, hefty satellite phone peaking out of her jacket pocket. Tech of that age wasn't chosen without a reason; Swilling wanted a secure line he could be sure wasn't being monitored, so he dug something out of storage and dusted it off."

“You…don’t sound too bothered,” said Moose warily, worried for the woman’s continued survival.

Troyer, turning back to him, reached for a cigar box on his desk and flipped it open. “Of course, I’m not. The young Elemental is too headstrong to be trusted to do anything except for exactly what she wants, nothing less and nothing more. Cigar?”

Moose waved him off. Cigars were for celebrations and funerals. “Her priority was Salem Cooper, but how can you be sure she won’t bother you?”

His employer shrugged and took the time to light his cigar before answering. “We can’t be certain, but we can deal with probabilities. Miss Serova is here for personal reasons related to the missing boy. You felt her reaction to the thought of his death. Salem Cooper is more than a priority to her; she is profoundly invested in his case. So long as we are assets to accomplishing her goals in relation to it, then she won’t scrutinize us beyond what is convenient for her. Swilling’s raison d'être is the preservation of American representative democracy in its current form. Lift-Off is a twenty-six-year-old woman who can fly at nearly the speed of sound and can cross into the Elemental Plane at will; what do borders and terrestrial politics mean to her? She is here for one reason, and she will place that reason far above anything the Colonel could sell her.”

Moose hated how much Troyer was using the word 'we .' "Which was why you wanted her staying here." He wasn't sorry that he'd helped Lift-Off get out of that. His momma had raised him right; if a lady wanted out of a conversation with a fella, then by God, he'd do whatever he could to make that happen.

Troyer sipped his teeth in annoyance and said disdainfully, “That’s just basic hospitality in most of the world.”

The short sentence was spoken with the first real emotion the man had ever displayed in front of him – disdain.

“No,” he continued, “other opportunities will present themselves. We need only be patient. If Swilling thinks he can better charm a super than a man who spent a decade in Farshid Moazenzadeh’s court, then he is sorely mistaken. Lift-Off is an asset to me, not an obstacle.” Troyer gave him a teasing smirk. “So, you can stop worrying over your new girlfriend. What are you thinking, by the way? Take her for a hike up Horseshoe Trail with the dogs, stop at Holden’s for ice cream after?”

Moose soured his face and slumped in his chair. Damn it, that was a great idea. “Wasn’t there a point to this meeting?”

Before Lift-Off’s surprise arrival, they had been discussing how Moose might train the dogs to sniff out tunnel wolves around the hills surrounding the Cave.

Troyer chuckled and puffed on his cigar, the red ember of the tip and the smoke curling from his mouth casting his face in a red glow. His smirk grew carnivorous. "Why, Mr. Blyde, I'm beginning to think you don't enjoy my company. But, very well, to business, then. Lift-Off coming advances the need for adventure infrastructure around the Cave but puts a pause on the timeline for building it. It would be bad form to look like we were interfering with her investigation, not before establishing a working relationship."

Moose leaned forward and tilted his head. “Building the what?” He must have misheard the man.

“What did you think we were talking about in the kennels?”

“People been hearing rabbit and squirrel screams coming from the ground around the Cave,” he said slowly. “I thought it was about safety.”

“It is. It’s imperative that we keep the population of the monsters down before they spread closer to Dudlin. But let’s not play pretend here. If there's a way to make a profit in the defense of Dudlin, I am going to take it. There are men and women in the cities that would pay thousands of dollars to come along on a tunnel wolf hunt and many tens of thousands to wrestle the beasts from their fissures themselves – under a watchful eye, of course."

He’d assumed as much when the topic was brought up. Troyer was nothing if not self-serving. “Yeah, that part I followed along with. It was the ‘adventure infrastructure’ I got hung up on. It sounds like you’re talking about sending people into the Cave.”

The older man’s condescending smile returned. “Moose, the crabs produce a chitin capable of bouncing bullets off it. There will be adventurers whether you like it or not. What I’m talking about is different. Do you know who actually prospers in a gold rush?”

Moose clenched his jaw. “It is a damp, dark hell, Troyer. There ain’t a square foot in the place that couldn’t kill a man dead for trying to cross it.”

Troyer took a large puff of the cigar. "Yes, it's a gold rush; most who come will be coming to early graves and broken hearts. The men who actually prosper in a gold rush are the men selling the pickaxes. I am going to make sure that before the Zaibatsu research teams, the failed supers, and the rest of the drifters, dreamers, and daredevils get here, that Dudlin is full of men and women selling pickaxes.”

“What if the labs get the specimens and issue an evac order? What if one of those insects is polluting the water supply?” It would break his heart if Dudlin became a ghost town – most wouldn’t return even if they were ever cleared to come back – but that might be better than what Troyer was proposing.

“The specimens will be deemed safe enough, I’m sure.” Of course he was, thought Moose with a bitter realization. Troyer was the one picking which labs to send the samples to. “But, regardless, those plans must be largely paused until Lift-Off’s initial investigation is concluded. With Swilling’s do-nothing long-term Bulletin, you and I have far more pressing matters related to the safety of Dudlin to handle.”

“Like what?”

Troyer sighed. “Use your head, Moose. Swilling wouldn’t have risked his reputation to give Lift-Off that contract unless the Guard were on their way out of Appalachia. He wants her here in his absence.”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh,” he said again slower, the blood draining from his face. For as irritating as the curfew, all the road closures, and the constant distant thrum of helicopters could be, the military's presence in the region had suppressed a lot of the ambient rural chaos. Without them, all that pent-up chaos was going to tear out of the hollers and woods like a bomb. "Shit. What do you want me and you to do about it?"

The old man sipped on his cigar for a while, clearly savoring the moment as much as the tobacco. “Success has softened my edges. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the field, and I’d like to be prepared for surprises. I need to stretch out the old muscles, sharpen my blade before things kick off. And you, Moose, need to see how far your new abilities can take you.”

Moose’s stomach began to turn. “I know exactly how far they can take me. I’m four minutes down on my 5k time.”

“I wasn’t referencing your physical changes.”

He studied his employer’s face for a long while. As far as Moose knew, there was only one way around Dudlin to test his power to talk to cats that could also get the man back into fighting shape. “Troyer, they can rip a car to pieces in seconds.”

“Come now, Moose. Did the Rangers’ standards so fall after the War? You’ve surely thought of a dozen ways to counter one.”

“I ain’t exactly eager to test any of them out, man,” he said, raising his voice. “How are you planning to lure it out, anyway?”

“One of the boarded horses is in a legal gray zone. The mafioso paying us to keep it for his mistress is dead, and the mistress is missing. We can’t sell it, and no one’s paying for the upkeep – might as well get some use out of the thing.”

“Holy shit, Troyer. You listen to yourself when you talk?”

"I don't know why you're so upset. I'll be the one without the fancy Japanese armor." Troyer leaned back and hummed thoughtfully. "You know, the fact that the Lodge doesn't have a taxidermied helcat in the lobby is something of a tragedy. I assumed one of our men would bag one sooner or later, but perhaps it's time to force the issue."

He groaned and threw his arms up. “Jesus Christ, you’re out of your fucking mind. What if I say no?”

Troyer didn’t miss a beat. “Well, I can’t force you, but at least wait nearby. The Guard is leaving after the progenitor is dead, but we’ll be left dealing with her remaining children. Your new power could give us some much-needed insights into how to deal with them. I’m not sure how I would transport a living helcat back to the Lodge for you to speak with, nor do I think we could do it without revealing your power to others.”

Moose scowled. “You’re a real prick, Troyer. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“In more languages than you can count, my friend. Are you sure I can’t offer you a cigar?” he asked, already reaching for the box in anticipation of his answer.

Burn one down for his own funeral? “Fuck it. Sure.”