We get into a fight, Part Five

This next part, I've been kinda avoiding, but only journaling about good stuff is a lie.  I'm going to at least do myself the favor of cordoning the bad stuff together in one entry.

After Andrew and I had finished talking, the giants reached the hall and started banging on the doors to get in.  Brynhildr insisted that we escape out through the tunnels out back so that even if the giants were to win at least they wouldn't be able to use the gems to start up the ritual again.  I'd gotten a good look at the maps and Hal had  done a "ground whisperer" thing while Andrew figured out a good route to take, so the three of us took point in leading the group out. The Valkyries covered us on our way out.  I hope they made it through ok.

The tunnels were dark and our flashlights weren't much help.  Hal was being cute and taking every opportunity to stay close to Ken, even going so far as to brush against her attentively.  (Ok, that sounds a little skeevie, but I promise it wasn't like that.  You'd appreciate a little warning before someone with a booming voice pointed out rocks not to trip on in the dark too!  Plus she was smiling here and there, but I don't think she thought anyone saw her).  Cindy and Claire were being their lewd selves, of course, but toned down from before as was befitting the situation.  They're cute too, especially how they think the slinky comments means they're just keeping everything casual.  You're not fooling me a whit, you too!  Gosh, I really should start hiding this in my sax case.  I'm pretty sure they'd, I dunno, give me a swirlie if they knew what I was plotting.  What sort of retributive pranks do you suppose the children of the gods play these days?

Anyway, we didn't get too far into the caverns before Claire did... something with the air and conjured a glimmering web of stars.  She tossed it over the whole tunnel which made it look like glowing spiderwebbing. It was pretty cool.  I guess there are some godlings who are really pretty and others that can control starsstuff.  Honestly, you'd hardly think we had anything in common at all.

Making things worse was the we seemed to keep stumbling over rocks, or bridges that would snap, or rope ladders that would fall unexpectedly, or stalactites that would bonk us on the head.  No one was serious injured, but it quickly became obvious that this was intentional.  While everyone was grumbling, I decided to try to do something about it.  After all, whoever it was that was trying to stop us (trolls, someone said) probably thought we were trying to attack them or something when all we wanted was to pass through, so I started trying to tell that to the nearby ones when Hal, once again, popped in and suckerpunched them.  It may have just been bad timing, but damned if it didn't feel intentional.  It makes me feel like such a... bitch.  Getting their attention like that just so they can get killed from behind.  It's like I'm lying to them, making friends with them and then stabbing them in the back.  I didn't mind helping distract those wendigo-lites (I didn't like it, but I didn't mind it) because they were already rushing to hurt us, but we could still have TRIED talking to these trolls!  Maybe nobody had to die.

So I went and sat behind a rock while the others fought.  I'd've just gotten in the way of them anyway, plus I really didn't want to make a bigger bitch of myself than I already had been.  As everyone's flashlights were flying around, though, I noticed there was one troll off behind us who was sawing at some sort of support that nobody had seen yet.  I thought about calling someone over, but then they'd've just tried to kill him right off the bat so I took my own advice: I tried talking to him.  But he already wanted to hurt us, obviously, so I figured I'd have to try being really really nice to him, so that's what I did, and it seemed to work... too well.  I swear, I didn't do anything but smile and ask him nicely if he would ask his friends to stop when I felt my birth mother's claddagh ring tingle and noticed that he had suddenly fallen in love with me.  That was weird and worrying, but I didn't want to show I was afraid until after we had gotten out of this.

He stopped sawing on the support and I went over to talk to him (the rest of the fight was pretty much over by then).  He said his name was Harkson and he offered to show us a way out, past something named "Graback," which we found out soon was a dragon.  It took us an hour or so to get to just outside Graback's lair where he was sleeping (fitfully, I could tell).  I had been worrying about this part: I could tell Harkson wasn't going to be happy when I asked him to leaving us, much less leaving me with a dragon, so I started trying to carefully explain to him why we should go our separate ways, and then everyone started talking at once and it all got away from me.  Andrew accused me of doing something to him, like I had hypnotized him or something.  That hurt, but I didn't have time to dwell on it: Harkson became angry and loud and started demanding to know what I'd "done" to him.  Hal put him into a headlock then and the others started arguing about what to do.

I just sat there and hugged my knees.  I know I said I'd write everything, but not this part, ok?

The others kept arguing, but Cindy decided to take things into her own hands.  She picked up her big axe and started to swing, and I decided that that was enough.  I stood up into her eyeline and let what shaky confidence I had in myself shine through and it knocked her back a few feet in a daze. How can that be normal?  Normal people can't do that. She got a few swears out first, but still.

I begged Harkson to understand, that I was just trying to be friendly, that I didn't want anyone to get hurt, that he could just walk away and be happy, whatever that means for monsters.  I don't remember most of what I said, and I think it was kinda rambly, but I meant it with everything I had and I think he understood that.  The look on his face... it was terrible, but it was exactly what it needed to be.

And then the dragon woke up.  See?  I'm ending on an up-note!

And now everything else explodes, Part Four

A warning, kits and kiddies: this journal entry gets a little "NSFW" in spots.  And this time, no pictures.  Perverts.

Well, the exploding truck exploded and cleared a pretty good hole for us to rush in there.  The others did their commando thing and we had the guys who were left pretty well on the ropes.  I helped a little; I tried that thing I did by accident on Josh a few weeks ago on two of the giants and it knocked them out for a bit, but not for as long.  Andrew let me test it on him later to see how long it would last against people like us, and it seems like it's just a handful of seconds.

But! I'm getting ahead of myself!  While we were dealing with those guys, Hal, or maybe it was Cindy?, spotted something and shouted at us to get back.  Hal flew superman-style out of there and snatched up Kennedy like she was Lois, and then grabbed me (Jimmy Olson in this analogy, I guess) along the way and squirreled us away behind a rock as whatever the hell he had seen exploded like a marthafocker and lit the whole canyon on fire.

Aaaaaaaaand then everyone was naked (well, Ken and I were fine, but everyone else was as skyclad as a witch on Samhein).  I think we need to get superhero costumes to wear under our civies, something that doesn't get burned off just because of a little explosion.  Though given what this precipitated, maybe it's better if we don't.

Hal flew into the fire and got out Cindy and Claire, who were a little singed but they healed up pretty quickly.  Andrew was nowhere to be found, so I asked the music where he was while everyone else took stock of the situation and oogled each other silly (I assume; I didn't actually notice they had gone au natural until after I finished playing).  Cindy and Claire were being pretty shameless too, while Hal was being a gentleman (mostly) and Ken was being a lady (partially).

Hal airlifted us all over to the other side of the blaze and we took off down the tunnels.  They were huge and cold and empty, and we didn't see anyone there, much less any evidence of Andrew.  We found a door and burst through, where we found a giant drinking hall (literally, a drinking hall forgiants) and Utgard-Loki's gate, guarded by a few more giants and a crazy-looking gianter-giant.

It looked like they were spoiling for a fight, but I was still worried about Andrew so I asked them nicely if they knew where he was.  That stopped them in their tracks and they let down their guard.  I described him a bit, they asked a question or two, and then BAM! Claire and Hal sucker-punched the shit out of him and he down.  I was pretty shocked/surprised, but I managed to keep the other giants from freaking out.  By this point Andrew and shown up in weird clothing and he had made his way over to the gate where he started digging the Utgard-Loki gems out of the structure.  I dismissed the giants and they ran for it, but just as they reached the door a mess of Valkyries headed up by the Madam Director burst in and skewered all of them to death.

It was about then that Utgard-Loki decided to start making his entrance.  We hurried to dig out the remaining gems, but the portal activated and he looked through at us and stuck his arm through.  I gave him my best blinding smile to buy us a few seconds and Andrew bought us a few more by doing that voodoo thing he do.  We managed to close the portal, but not before Utgard-Loki creeped us the fuck out by laughing and speaking Andrew's name. C-c-c-creeeeeepy.

Things moved fast for a while then, and then they slowed to a craw.  The Valkyries rushed forward and secured the room and pushed forward with the battle with the remaining giants while we were allowed to rest over by the wall (Andrew had apparently infiltrated their army and tricked most of them into leaving through a side entrance, but they were headed back now).

I... did a bad thing then.  Well, not bad.  Aphrodite's ring isn't bad, just a little mischievous, maybe.  But after all the oogling earlier, I just had to know: I used it and learned... well here, I'll stick in that chart I scribbled up for Andrew when I was conferring with him:

(Red lines are for relationships that are happening, pink lines are for relationships that are possible, and the black line is for A TERRIBLE IDEA.) The ring said that depending on how things went, Cindy might be a good match for Claire or the Director (who I'm pretty sure is Brynhildr), Claire had some sort of association with her tech eyepatch, and Hal might work with either Ken or Claire.  Well I was terribly curious about what Claire's association with here eyepatch might mean so I started wheedling information from her about that.  Hal and Ken would have a much more stable relationship, I think, so I touched them off together, and that just left Cindy and the Director, so I tried to get them to touch base about the plan, just to see what would happen.

Hal and Ken... well, they were way WAY easier than I could've hoped.  I barely had to do anything at all, so I can't really credit myself with them.  They got to talking while Hal was, erm, harvesting the guy he killed's hair, so he gave it to Ken since she "could make better use of it than him," which just opened her up like a flower.  They spent the rest of the time chatting and being all serious and adorable, so I pretty much just butted out.

Initially, I had thought Cindy and the Director might be a good pair, but after I let Andrew in to my little scheme and found out more, I'm not so sure.  I looked up a bunch of stuff online about Brynhildr (that's who she is, Andrew thinks, and it looks right to me too), and I get the feeling that she and Cindy would be really good for a good long while, and then horrible tragedy would befall the pair.  I'm sure it would make for a very mythic story, but I like to think we can do better than that for them.  Especially if half the shtuff the myths say Brynhildr went through actually happened to her.

Such a poor dear!  I'll find someone for her.  She saw through my smalltalk immediately when I went over to do some recon so I pretty much had to say right out that I was trying to matchmake for her.  She got one of those "I should've known" smiles on her face and said she wasn't interested in dating right then, but everyone says that and it's never true, in my experience.  I doubt she'll be so disinterested when Mr./Ms. Right shows up on her doorstep with flowers and chocolate.  I wonder if Valkyries would prefer swords and chocolate or spears and chocolate?  The chocolate, though, I'm quite sure of.

Then I went over to Andrew to get his advice.  He hadn't been napping when Claire had gotten hit with a paintball, so I figured he might know more about the eyepatch than me, plus I wanted a co-conspirator and since he didn't have any potential love interests in the room, I figured it was safe enough for him to know.  He told me what he knew and then we reassured each other that yes, all this Scion stuff was really weird, but at least all of it was pretty much equally weird (I can blind people by smiling at them, he gets blown clear of explosions without a scratch on him).  I promised him I'd find him someone cute and bookish and he got all flustery.  People always freak out so much when you tell them you're going to find them the love of their life. It's adorable, really.

As for Claire and her eyepatch, I'm pretty sure the ring was telling me she and the guy she's been arguing with online have potential, but Andrew says that that guy is Ares which makes me think that would be a BAD IDEA and I'm inclined to agree.  Everything I've read about Ares says he's a scary dude, and not in a fun way.  I tracked down this one TV show about the Olympian gods called "Valentine," and in that one he liked to turn whatever he had, ahem, had his way with the night before into some sort of fox or rabbit or something the next morning so he could hunt it down before getting on with the day.  Plus he's kinda dating my birth mother.  I don't think she'd mind me setting him up with my cute young Irish friend, but I should probably check in with her first anyway.

That left Clair and Cindy, and those two gravitated towards each other like freaking rare earth magnets.  Horny rare earth magnets.  They -- I kid you not -- had an amateur softcore porn shoot right then and there in the hall, with Valkyries bustling about and watching and everything.  They goaded each other into agreeing to go out on a date later, and then Cindy stripped naked while Claire took pictures.  I just, I don't even know what to say.  This is the easiest group of friends I've ever set up, and I've set up a lot of my friends.

So, my dear journal, that's where we are now: Hal and Ken are well on their way towards a nice, mature relationship, Claire and Cindy are going to volatile as all get-out but hopefully they'll find a way to make it work, I need to keep an eye out for Andrew and Brynhildr's true loves, and Ares I just need to keep an eye on.  Seriously, that guy scares me and I haven't even met him yet.

Maybe I should start keeping my journal tucked in my sax case, where no one else can get at it...

Surviving the blast, Part Three

Now where was I?

Ah, yes.  Huge chunks of mountain in the air.  Images of a roiling rock flushing towards us like a tidal wave.  The tunnel ahead, altogether too far away.  My next clear memory is the cars stopping in the tunnel, the second car covered in rubble, the car with Hal's boys totally crushed.  I had a surreal moment there, until Hal intimated that they weren't dead, or if they were, they were used to it and he could bring them back.  Too weird not to be true, and it made me smile.

The others drove ahead to scout out what had happened while Hal, Cindy, and I stayed behind to clear out the second car.  It felt... impious to just leave it behind.  So, we moved the rubble by hand, Hal and Cindy tearing the rocks off, me shuffling them away.  I've mentioned how even though I'm not any stronger than I was before all this, it's easier to lift heavy things now, but it turns out that applies to more than just groceries and suitcases. Gosh do I love this perk!  Like how I'm much faster and can jump much further, it's like things like "normal-sized distances" and "lifting normal-sized stuff" just aren't supposed to matter to me anymore.  I'd almost be weirded out if it weren't so much FUN!  Like that afternoon I spent jumping back and forth across that little estuary.  It must've been 20 feet across and I was just HOPPING.

Back on topic.  After we got the car out, we caught up with the others.  They had discovered where we needed to go.  Apparently, the minions of some sort of ancient Norse supervillain have blown up the mountain to get to the evil portal through which their dark master could be reached.  These guys clearly need to get out more.  They destroyed Whittier, though, and probably most everyone in it, which counters their adorableness factor.  Hal seems pretty pissed off at them, and no one else seems in much of a forgiving mood.  I don't like their chances.

So obviously we stole a truck, rigged it with explosives, and then gave it to Cindy to drive at their base with the fuses all lit and her jumping out of it while barreling at full speed only to land on her feet.  It was clearly what anyone else would've done.  Obviously.  More on what happened next after the break.

The day a mountain exploded, Part Two

Sorry for not keeping up with my writing but, well, that's what happens when a mountain explodes all over you.  I'll catch you up to the explosion now, and then I'm going to sleep for a thousand years and finish later.

After popping topside for a breather, Andrew's owls found us and told him that the construction crews had been digging where they shouldn't.  Some of the others thought we should split up, but thankfully we didn't; that would've been awful.  Awful enough that we were going back in.  I just don't know.

We went into the creepy construction site, sneaked through the creepy, shadowy tunnels, climbed down a damp, creepy old elevator shaft, and sneaked through even creepier tunnels until Cindy came up with a plan to call Ives out.  She tromped  forward shouting fire and brimstone at the darkness when suddenly the air turned a freezing cold that sliced through our coats, down to the soul, it almost felt, and Cindy screamed as a great hulking monster stood over her, her blood dripping from its claws I think.

I shouted at it to get away from her and started playing a song I hoped might disorient it enough that it might forget about finishing Cindy off.  The others opened fire and tore the monster, Ives, apart with a molten storm of lead but a group of its minions kinda like the horrible ones we had killed earlier ran forward and beat me up.  I jumped behind Hal's team while the others took them out; I still don't know what I'm doing with these guys, but I'm so grateful I'm at least not here alone.

Cindy was in bad shape, but Andrew was able to get to her in time to call for help.  Claire knows some first aid (I wonder what lead her to learn that?  I should ask her some time, since that sounds like a story) and managed to staunch her wounds.  It's hard to believe she was really going to die.  She's not that much older than me, and I mean, obviously people our age die but not... often?  Not often that I know of it, anyway.  Yeesh.

After that, we got out of there, climbed back out of the tunnels (which were filling with water by this point, a lovely way to make an exit), and collapsed back at the car.  I felt like crap, black and blue all over, so I took a very uncomfortable nap in the back seat of the car while the others called for backup.

And what backup! A while later, I'm not sure how long, a black helicopter landed with the Madam Director and a woman with powerful healing magic at her fingertips.  She gave Cindy and me potions and we were dancing around like happy ballerinas in no time.

The Director told us that Ives was a Wendigo and we had to drink his boiled heart to kill him dead.  Andrew elaborated: Ives had been trying to find a gate into Jotunheim, whatever that is.

I wanted to be helpful, so I tried that new thing I can do where I play a song and let answers come to me.  The song told me that there were two more Wendigo in Whittier, and there wasn't any way to kill them dead except drinking their heart.

So, we drank Ives' heart.  That's such a... surreal thing to say.  What's more surreal was what happened next: at first I felt cold, freezing cold, and then a strange sort of warmth.  I look... different now.  Better.  More beautiful, I guess is the technical term.  It's like what happened to me after I met my mother, but moreso.  I don't know how I feel about that yet.  I can still recognize myself when I look in a mirror, but... I don't know.  I'm not as me as I used to be.  I wonder if I'm going to keep changing like this.

Oh, and then the mountain exploded.  But I'll get to that tomorrow.

*[Second session August 3rd, 2011]