taxonomites | [Visual] [To everyone]

The tablet gives an image of... Paul Smecker, looking slightly disheveled, and Glitch looking seriously disheveled, as well as bleeding from scratches on his face. Both of them are rather damp although Glitch is fairly water-logged.

"--just fucking hold still and let me check you for--"

"--this is more important--"

"Alright, you talk, I check for concussions, genius--"

Glitch clears his throat and addresses the city via Paul's tablet. "We have a situation. There's... some sort of monster, I suppose, running loose-- ugly yellow-- ow! careful-- ugly yellow thing with... horns, fangs, claws--"

Glitch breaks off into a fit of coughing. He's cradling one hand with the other. Behind him, his shop can be seen-- with black smoke pouring from the roof. Paul grabs the tablet back while pushing a water bottle at Glitch.

"Yeah, I guess whatever the fuck did that to his shop is loose and screwing around. He-- what?"

(Glitch and Paul both talk for the next ten seconds, making what either of them is saying indistinguishable. Finally Paul looks back to the tablet.)

"--okaaaay, I guess it, he, was wearing a prisoner bracelet and he, uh, speaks in rhyme. The fuck, Glitch?"

"I'm not making that up! Here, give it back!"

Paul sighs, and hands the tablet over again.

[ooc: OKAY so as usual I fail at my own deadlines, but, WARNING IS NOW UP. Feel free to react. Keri, if you want to add more stuff from Glitch other than what we discussed, go for it like a boss. <3 Big Fighty Post coming soon.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

An agreement. With a demon.

"So what you're saying is," Horst measures his words out slowly, disapproval saturating his tone, "you struck a bargain with a demon? You went into some kind of... of negotiation with a demonic being I warned you about?"

He hops down to his feet and steps back, conscious that his instinctive responses to this situation are no good at all while Johannes is in this state -- while they're both in this state. Johannes still has the flu, and Horst hasn't fed in weeks again. If Horst doesn't keep himself in check, he could wind up with a very unhealthy Johannes on his hands.

But merciful heaven, he's angry with him.

"You idiot," he says icily, "you colossal idiot. Apparently you didn't learn anything from past experience, did you? Tell me, brother dear, what exactly did the two of you bargain, since you saw fit to keep it from me until now?"

"That's--not exactly how I would put it," says Johannes with his fingers pinched over the bridge of his nose.

That may have been a lapse in judgment. Johannes straightens up a little, very conscious of the distance between the two of them, and keeps his eyes averted. The overall impression is surly, though, not remorseful, and this would be accurate. Remorse tends to be a latecomer with him, a drifter on his street panhandling for donations he never does consent to making. "My soul wasn't involved," he clarifies. "No one's souls were involved. There were no souls, generally, involved in this transaction. It offered to leave us be if we left it. Nothing more or less. I suppose it wouldn't make a difference for me to point out my obvious lack of interest in adhering to this informal bargain in the longer term?"

Horst narrows his attention in on precisely one word this time. Much of the rest of it is no better or worse than he might've expected: typical Johannes amoral decision-making, the details of which he's sure he can get from his brother later once he puts the proverbial screws to him. But one point of order stands out.

"Us?"

"Yes, us," comes his living brother's peevish response. "It would rather defeat the purpose in the singular."

Johannes Cabal settles his gaze on the black surface of his remaining coffee, as if he's decided to spend some quality time with it in the possible face of being parted with it in short order. He takes another sip with a stuffy little throat-clearing noise.

He sets it aside. He has colored minutely, but aside from that he looks considerably more composed, having straightened up again and met Horst's unhappy bloodshot gaze again. "Are we done with the indignation?" he says tonelessly. "We've much to discuss."

Horst is off the countertop and in his brother's personal space in a heartbeat, the moment he sets his protective coffee mug down. He squeezes cold fingers around Johannes's chin to keep his gaze trained where it is. "Dearest Johannes," he snarls, "we're very far from done. You don't make deals on my behalf. But certainly, by all means; I do so love when you make a pretense of being willing to discuss things with me well after the fact of some unilateral decision you've made. Discuss whatever tickles your fancy."

He steps away, opening his arms wide in invitation. The floor is Johannes's.

To a body with even just the mildest fever, Horst's touch is repulsively cold. Johannes's fever is mild, less than a degree Fahrenheit off the normal temperature, but he turns his head reflexively with a restrained shudder, or tries to, anyway--failing that, he shoots his brother a glare of unbridled animosity. He raises his hands from the counter like he's on the verge of shoving him, but he stops and, perhaps, thinks better of it; instead he waits for Horst to let him go. The unfamilial threat subsides for the time being.

He rubs his jaw with the back of his hand like he's been punched there and gives his brother a look of wary assessment before going on. "So the answer is no," he says. "Save your anger, Horst. You'll have plenty of time for it later. Unless you're intending to go off and hunt the thing down without my advisement as a demonologist. You're certainly welcome to do so. Num custos fratris mei sum?"

Johannes looks up at him through his eyelashes with eyebrows arched, as if to say, and now may we continue?

Horst steps backward, arms still flung wide, and eventually he ends up standing with his back to the refrigerator. Its surface temperature is indistinguishable from his own.

He leans back against it, folding his arms across his chest, and gives Johannes the nod to continue. Like many aspects of their little sibling rivalry, this one's a power game, a silent little tête-à-tête between them.

Unable to resist rolling his eyes just a tad first, Johannes then clears his throat. This triggers another spasm of coughing--probably good for Horst's sense of leniency towards him, but positive hell on his dignity. He glowers at his hanky as if this will compel it to try harder at cough suppressing in the future and then continues.

"I don't imagine it expects me to keep my word," he says, "or vice versa, for that matter, so it's a matter of which of us moves first. I'm of a mind for it to be me. I've been--scrying," he says hesitantly, after a moment. "It's a demon. A powerful one, to be certain, maybe powerful enough to have devoured Blood--I'm not sure, potentially Holmes and Lupin as well, but I don't know why it would have gone after them in particular, many of us are more threatening. It went to me to broker my cooperation. That tells me that, if nothing else, it is a demon," he sniffs, "and it's wary of demonology. There are some powers any magician will hold over it--or it wouldn't have struck a bargain."

So why did you make it? is the tricky question there, but then again, it hardly bears asking, does it. Johannes supposes he and the demon Etrigan had the same reasoning. It was convenient.

"Scrying," Horst echoes him. There are some people who can muster the wherewithal to not take issue with minor details in a story that's being presented to them, people who can manage to put aside their quibbles on minor issues to focus on the task at hand, and save their remonstrations for later.

Horst, unfortunately for his brother, is not someone who has ever seemed to put off till tomorrow what can be chided about today.

"And you wonder why you're still sick. Well, I hope you're happy with yourself."

In this case, of course, the matter hits home a little more closely than it might otherwise. Here Horst has been, starving himself out of concern for his brother's ability to recover from his sickness, growing paler and hungrier each day from the inability to get blood from his usual source, and instead Johannes has been squandering it on sneaking around while Horst sleeps, playing some little game with Jason Blood's demon. Horst takes this somewhat personally.

"Tell me what I can do," he insists. "You're obviously in no state to confront this thing yourself, regardless of your newfound change of heart."

[Visual] [To everyone]

[location: the Cabal House]

[location: the Cabal House]

[location: the Cabal House]

[location: the Cabal House]

[location: the Cabal House]

[location: the Cabal House]

[location: the Cabal House]

[location: the Cabal House]

[location: the Cabal House]