Sunny splutters, summersalting through the air. "Ghu- Three!" The cane, while not the massive pillar he was hoping for, was still a substantial threat to any shadows in the area as it's brought down.
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"Two!" The cane shrinks dramatically, and Sunny spins backward, planting his feet against the thin pole and pulling the top of the cane over his head. The cane bows with the tension.
Sunny rocks a lazy arc at the end of his extended cane before coming to a wobbly stop, scrambling at the top of a vertical pole, shoes slipping against the red lacquer of his cane. Catching his breath, he finishes his statement. "-I'm playing with a handicap!" "All right! I've given you all plenty of chances. I'm proud of my own discipline, and I think I've grown a lot, but now you've all got to the count of three, then I'm going to defeat every last one of you." Fumbling, Sunny pushes himself up into a precarious hand stand, like a drunk uncle showing his nieces and nephews how he used to keg stand when he was in college. "One!"
"You fools are-" Sunny ducks the first shadow to pass, plants his cane on the pavement outside the door, "-so lucky-" The cane extends, vaulting Sunny...
"Is this where you run? I don't think that egg is going to chase us. I think it's time for some chosen one-ing." Sunny takes an asian peach from his pocket and hurls it at Sean.
The rotten peach pegs Sean in the shoulder, splattering and releasing a weak burst of immortal energy.
Sunny grunts and spits on the floor. "That was a disgrace. The three of you should be ashamed. The fact that Tim had to carry you so-called professionals is a joke. You'd all be dead already if I wasn't here. You'd better hope there aren't three of those jokers in there." His face is turning red around the frames of his gaudy glasses, and while it doesn't look like he's injured, he does look like he might throw a tantrum. He may not need a field doctor so much as a couch psychologist. "If they hit me again, you better shoot something, champ, because I'm punching every shadow I see. The moon man can suck it."
Doh, I forgot I've got holy armour. >.< Dang ol' holiday season. Does that change anything? Does dragonscale armour protect against shadow sips?
"Hup!" Sunny spins off of the ground, scooping his cane off the pavement, and adding somatic components to amplify the Gale as it passes through his personal space.
He lands on one foot, cane, now staff-length, held out in one hand... then he has to hop as he gets a cramp in his side. "Ooo, ooo, atch~"
Sunny was sure Tom was in trouble, so rather than follow on foot, he simply crouched out of existence, leaving some disturbed leaves on the cracked pavement. Sunny steps out from behind Tom, brandishing his cane. "Stand aside patrons of darkness! You face Son Goku, King of Monkies and supreme being. -oo, and the chosen one. Him, I mean." He points at Tom. "I know he doesn't look like much, but I have it on divine authority that he's the one."
Sunny staggers back, dropping his cane, which crashes dramatically to the floor like a dropped semi truck. "Ow! Balls that's cold!" The monkey king clutches his arms and rubs warmth back into them.
Sunny returns from the trunk of the crew's vehicle, dropping a chicken bone into a mostly empty bucket. "Alright champ, it's do or die." He licks his fingers, then combs them through his thinning hair. He pauses, looking from Sean to Allison to Arianne. "Uh, any of you seen beanpole? We've got to get started while we've got light." In a series of fluid motions, Sunny undoes his belt and re-tucks his shirt. There's a pause. "Sean? He was with you last..."
"Hey, hey, hold up... Sean. I know this is way from left field here, but... could you give beanpole the gun? I mean, if you've got the gun, we've got one shot at this. If he's got the gun, I can come in an finish the job." Sunny looks up at Sean for four full seconds before elaborating. "I can't touch the thing till the chosen one gets a swing. I mean... I can. I could have beaten this thing into a shadowy pulp from the word go, obviously, it's just the kid's gotta get some wet work under his belt, you know?"
"We lucked out in that abandoned building, but I wouldn't count on security being lax. Cameras are everywhere these days. Ooo, maybe we can- like- some of us could roll in and demand to see their recordings, and while they're distracted, the others can break into the storage unit."
"Hmm?" Sunny blinks up at Sean over a bucket of chicken that's mostly bones. "Oh, the picture? No big deal, I didn't want to put you out is all. How are we gonna make them let us in?"
"Ooo, maybe they were summoning a cat to take care of a mouse problem, hoping to cage it once it ate up all the shadows."
"-now, what I don't get is why have a cage, but no binding in the circle? Unless the cage had snacks in it..."
"We goin' somewhere to get some chalk? 'cause I don't see how we're gonna find a better suspect in the case of the shadowless teen pensioners. You say you stitched her shadow back on, and she got better, right? D'you think one of those things in there is the kid's shadow, or are they shadow cannibals?" Sunny claps a hand on Allison's shoulder. "You feel like knitting, Als? -Ooo, Sean, do you think we could get a lightsaber like the one from that documentary on the star war?" Sunny cups his hand over the side of his mouth conspiratorially, but continues to speak at full volume. "I don't think mung bean is ready to handle my staff." Leaning back into his seat, Sunny bites his cheek. "I don't get what that circle in the basement was for. Those lights, and the generator? I don't think the kids set that up, or if they did, they were following instructions."
Sunny lags behind with Arianne. He puffs out his chest before producing a crumpled monkey-shaped sticky note with a magic circle scrawled on it. "This was downstairs, unused, with a cage. D'you think we could adapt it to contain this mess? I'm on strict instructions not to go twacking about, or we'd be done with these things."
Sunny kicks the cellar door closed behind the two of them. "The others went in through the front. We should find 'em and tell 'em there's something in the cellar."
Sunny follows Tom out. "Hey, hold on. One foot in front of the other, champ."
Sunny walks over to the chalk circle, crouching to get a close look. He and his shadow are fully inside the spotlight he shifted. "You got a piece of chalk? I might, but I'm kinda strapped." He scratches his balding head.
Sunny throttles one of the tripods, turning it to shed more light on the symbol on the floor, and leaving himself in the dark. Taking out his sticky notes and golf pencil, he copies down the details he can see. "What do you figure happened here, champ? The circle, the cage, the lights? What were they doing down here?"
Next week I'll be traveling for work. Don't know how it might effect my posting.
"Why would I do that? Kid can fend for himself. He's the chosen one! Eyes out for orange doors." Sunny nods as he toddles around to the back.
"Alright junior hero, go check for cameras."
"They're after you too? Heroes can't catch a break in this town." Sunny cranes his neck to look at the building behind him. "Do you think they've got those security cameras? Seems like I can't even catch a hotdog without Manager General Ken scrolling back his unseen eye..."
Sunny stands up from behind a hedgerow, dusting his hands off on his pants. He sucks his teeth and looks around, spotting Tom. "So, uh, what'cha up to?"
Sunny is incapable of an inner monologue while astroprojecting. Y'see, on the field of battle, as on the naked steppes, you might never see the enemy before she's breathing down your neck. So when you see the carnage left in her wake... If you choose the truly enlightened path to hunt the hunters that hunt the hunted rather than hunting the hunted because they're really not that much of a challenge even with one arm tied behind my back... My point is, fancy illustrations don't need to be put in books if they're not of the bodies left behind. Like a manual on diseases, the only thing anyone needs to recall when they recognize that carnage, is what kills what did it. Other than me, though. Because Beanpole needs to warm it up for me. Wow, kid's looking old.
"What's this?" Sunny looks at the monitors displaying dozens of empty halls on repeat, timestamps, the recognizable view of the parking lot, and the 'rec' icon in the corner. "Nazi boxes? Didn't they lose the war? I thought this was the land of the free. Why does everyone have these? How is a self-respecting supreme being supposed to break and enter for the greater good when every backwater outfit has an army of perfect witnesses?" He grunts. "No silent watchman is catching this monkey's paw." Finding no badge to gain access through the door (and lacking enough understanding of electronic locks to try and spoon-bend the door open) Sunny finds a quiet place near the morgue to meditate, hoping to astroproject through the walls. I'm the best. I'm the best. I'm the best. I'm the best. I'm the best. I'm the best. I'm the best. I'm the best. I'm the best. I'm the best.
Sunny grunts in consternation. "Hey, listen! Don't press your luck. I've got admirers to impress. I bottled you once before, and I'll do it again!" Brandishing his cane, Sunny looks over the unconscious officer, searching for one of the cards he saw someone swipe at the door. As he searches, he'll get a glimpse of the officer's place of work.
Sunny totters off.
As Sunny approaches the officer manning the station across from the morgue, he pulls the sticky notes off of the gently rattling jar he's been carrying. "Hey there officer, you sure no one's slipped you any drugs this evening?" Holding the jar under one arm and his cane in the crook of the other, Sunny traces the figures embossed around the rim with two fingers of the other hand. "I mean, who's going to believe a homeless man in a gold suit sicked a ravenous pixie on you. The mess is going to be hard to explain." Pulling the top off the jar with an audible pop, Sunny points the jar at the slot at the edge of the officer's window.
Sunny returns that night hoping to sneak in without having to punch any cops. It would be incredibly inconvenient for him to end up in jail again. He pictures many scenarios where he gains access to the morgue, and it doesn't phase him at all that neither is terribly likely. He's got a jar.
Sunny arrives at the police station on foot and circles the building looking for the morgue entrance.
"Gotta get those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers! -and before you even say something, containing your enemy isn't the same as defeating them. They don't say, 'all hail Sun Wukong, Sage Equal to the Heavens, container of the armies of the Jade Emperor.' People don't respect that. Next time we do it my way."
Sunny grunts and nods. "No, I guess we'll know it when we see it." He stuffs the page back into his pocket without trying to fold it.
Sunny spots Sean and fumbles with his cane for a moment, patting down his pockets and fishing out a crumpled piece of paper. After smoothing it out on his chest, he presents a watercolor painting of a metal roll up door, bright orange. The number 45 is painted on the door. Squiggling black lines radiate from the door. "What's that look like to you, Mr. O'Halloran? Why does it have the lines from side to side, and why is it orange? Is this kind of door common somewhere?"
Sunny stands from a crouch as if he's been squatting behind Tom's garbage can all day. The CIA and several academic sensor arrays register something weighting ten tons making landfall from outer orbit at near light speed, but the earth isn't annihilated so they figure it, like so many other of Sunny's landings throughout history, was an artifact of faulty equipment. A scientist in Laos once found a unifying theorem of physics by positing that these readings were a form of crude transportation by a hyper-dense alien, but she reached enlightenment soon after, and never published. Rounding the corner of Tom's residence, Sunny spots a familiar vehicle coming to a stop on the street. "Oh, good. I love when things move along at a decent pace. Getting you all together can be like watching peaches grow." Sunny is a short, balding, blond man with wild mutton chops and large, crooked hands. His wild eyes and smug smile suggest he's already pantsed you with his eyes. Still, he might pass as an ordinary homeless whack job if it weren't for the gaudy golden get up.
I don't mind if you never indicate if an answer is relevant to an episodic mystery or a seasonal mystery. Just so long as it's a piece to a puzzle somewhere. My grandma once gave me a collection of five puzzles that had the pieces of a sixth puzzle mixed into them. It was neat trying to figure out what the sixth puzzle was without a box cover.
Sunny collapses onto the park bench and loosens his tie, noticing he's lost another gold plated dollar sign cuff link. He'll have to check the pawn shop later. For now, he sets a ceramic jar on the ground next to him, where it begins to rattle gently against the cobblestones. Pulling a golf pencil and a pad of monkey-shaped sticky notes from his pocket, he writes "To: Tim, From: the best thing since sliced" He runs out of space with his crooked, barely legible handwriting, and proceeds to stick the first note on the lid of the jar before continuing on a second with "bread" and sticking it fully over the first note. Nodding with supreme satisfaction, the little balding man adjusts the fit of the crotch of his golden slacks and leans back into the bench, waiting to see if Guanyin will show up. He was never sure if whoever came was Guanyin, or the Jade Emperor's star messenger, or even if it was just an actual kindly old person. Sunny figured anything any of the above had to say was bound to be useful... if not exactly important. Any help he could get training Tad to be a true warrior would be welcome.
On a 7-9: On a 7-9, they ask you to do something complicated or difficult. You get to ask them one of the questions from the investigate a mystery move right now. If you do not accomplish what they’ve ordered, you cannot use this move again until you have made up for your failure.
No worries, it's a big corner. I made the mistake of watching Castle Rock with my wife, and then spent two weeks watching every SyFy mini series based on a napkin Stephen King blew his nose with. She's a fan. I like Dreamcatcher, Kubrick's The Shining, and to a lesser extent It, but I could have been spared Thinner or *groan* Under the Dome. I've started but never finished several King novels. Spinethorne sounds great.
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