Still a Demon (Toby)

[Ellwood]

Heavy armored boots clumped their way through the city night, enchanted steel glinting under every dull streetlight. The block seemed vacant, deserted, with old buildings darkened from disuse and windows smashed by the violent young. The knightly cougar was out of place, and carried himself above the squalor that surrounded him.

His footsteps halted as he passed one alleyway, the thrill of evil setting off warning alarms in his mind. A normal person would have - should have - been running. The paladin didn't. He reached for the massive blade slung across his back, undone straps flowing loosely behind him like a makeshift cape.

He strode inwards, both hands gripping the person-sized slab of metal, moving it around with completely unnatural ease. His pose was ready to strike, ready for the imminent battle between man and evil. Feline night eyes provided him all the vision he needed in the deepening dark.

Something stirred to his left, and he reared to strike. The hooded homeless man held up his hands in fear, the incoherent noise pleading for mercy. The knight heeded it, even if he grunted in annoyance.

"Get out of here," the cougar ordered, throwing his hand in the direction he just came from. The hobo nodded rapidly, the many layers of his clothing rasping as he rapidly scrambled to leave.

The beastfolk paladin, annoyance diminishing caution, began moving faster through the near black alleyway.

A wet squelch signaled he'd found what he was looking for. Eyes focused in on the dark tentacle, leaving a trail of slime on the ground, drawing his attention higher up to the abomination itself. The thing was like one giant shadowy corner, incarnate, reaching out and trying to drag more into itself.

A pine green eye opened in the dark, practically invisible. A second followed. The beastfolk knight held the sword in front of him, a sharp barrier between the two. A hundred more eyes opened.

The cougar licked his lips.

"Prepare to meet you end, vile thing!" he shouted, screaming a warcry. The mystic blade thrust forward at the dark, piercing and eye and causing the whole shadow to writhe in distress. It shifted left, and half a dozen tentacles thrust and thrashed at the armored figure.

He dodged two, slicing off another pair while the steel heels smashed down at one of the first. The last tentacle slipped in down low, smacking the knight's legs right out from under him. He didn't hit the ground, but his sword did. The wet shadowy limbs grabbed around the knight and threw him high into the air.

Two more limbs spiraled around each other, and wound up for the pitch. They smashed the beastfolk in midair, a line drive down the alleyway. The air was knocked out of him instantaneously. His path was set to collide with the building opposite, a living meteor.

A brown figure jumped up from around the alleywayr corner. It caught the armored figure in mid air, and the pair crashed into the street. Ratty boots hit the ground, dragging through a foot of concrete, before the two stopped, and then paladin was set down. His dazed eyes tried to focus in on the hodded figure, now stepping in front of him.

"You might want to sit this one out," the man's voice spoke to the cougar.

The massive shadow went on the offensive, slinking down the alleyway and seemingly encompassing everything as it approached. Tentacles helped drag it along, before finding new purpose in spearing towards the pair. The prone paladin finally focused in enough to make out the homeless man's back and watch him release a black-red light from his left hand.

The tentacles were smashed away on impact with the glow, deflected this way and that. They struck brick and concrete with the force of a wrecking ball, leaving holes when they retracted. The hundred eyes looked this way and that, trying to see each limb and each hole and the street in general. 50 some turned their gaze directly upon the ragged hobo that dared intervene.

Paladin watching, the hobo approached with silent confidence. A pair of tentacles spiraled together, lifting to the sky. They plummeted down like a crashing pillar. The hobo smoothly sidestepped just far enough to be out of the way. Another whiplike tendril lashed out from the side. A ratty-gloved hand grabbed it from the air, twisting it around his forearm eight times before using its length to catch and entangle with a second.

The cougar saw another glint of light, reflecting off the bastard sword suddenly appearing in the other's hand. The monstrous shadow writhed again, as another bit of his essence was hacked cleanly away. It recoiled away, retreating into its alleyway sanctuary. The ragged man moved in faster.

Tendrils thrashed madly in the alley's confines, adding half a dozen more, then a full dozen more. They didn't smash into the walls - they sliced them, leaving gashes in their wake. But they hit everything, except their real target. The hobo flowed, jumping through and over the tentacular onslaught, a single blade slicing each limb that moved too slow to avoid a counterattack.

The dark demon's essence disintegrated on the air with every lost limb, and eyes grew bigger and wider as they focused completely on the man who refused to stay away. It sent out tendril after tendril - enough to overwhelm avoidance and finally make direct contact. A dozen tendrils stabbed through cloth and thrust him back.

His feet ground against the ground for the second time, refusing to budge. He braced his arms in front of his chest, as another dozen smashed into him and threw him back.

He staggered on his feet, a few steps backward to distance himself from the threat. The demon's eyes shrunk once more, and saw weakness - and weakness, gave it confidence. The living shade steeled itself, tendrils appearing as spikes and multiplying all over the whole of its form.

Sword tip pointed to the ground, he brought the weapon slowly around in front of him. The alley suddenly burst into light as fire roared along the surface of the sword. The multitude of shadow spikes shot forward, countless lances aiming to kill.

The firey blade arced over his head, and the alleyway exploded. Fire blast through the shadow and vented to the sky, a burning pillar that lit up the clouds so much higher in the sky. When flames dissipated, there was only ash and emptiness left between the two abandoned buildings. Smoldering flames left only a handful of natural shadows behind, with nothing demonic left behind.

The armored cougar looked on, his mouth partially open. He searched for evil, and still felt a surge of infernal energy somewhere in the alley.

"L-look out!" the paladin managed the warning, pointing a metal-covered finger past the ragged warrior. "There's! There's still a demon in there!"

The hooded homeless man turned around, the fire licking across his blade disappearing into darkness. The blade, too, vanished, as he scratched at the short brown beard with his other hand.

"Yes," he replied to the cougar as he approached. "But you don't need to worry about that one."

The cougar looked at him, pride injured and utterly flabbergasted.

Thirty feet away, Ellwood stood with his arms crossed over his chest.

"I call bullshit," he growled.

[Toviyah]

"I know!" Toby beamed at the bigger man. "Who would ever believe the police report?" The Celestial Realm, or what he'd glimpsed of it, didn't appear to have a department for processing paperwork either. Sometimes death could be a blessing that way.

The distant sound of car alarms, set off by the blast, drifted to them moments later.

"Ruh roh." He turned to the streets behind them, glancing to where flickering streetlights marked the border between civilization and the urban wasteland. He dashed a few steps forward, then thought the better of it and filled his lungs with air. "Turn off the car alarms!"

The clamor was cut off in the wake of his echoing voice.

He turned back to the scene of the battle and hurried on, beckoning for Ellwood to follow. "Oh, that was brilliant of me," he muttered. "Delayed the authorities for a few minutes. Hopefully they won't turn up at all now that nothing's wrong. Nothing that a non-mage can't sense. Just need someone with the right talent like Galahad over there to talk about the two or more high-tiered spells that went off in this alley, and I'll have to skip town for a few weeks."

He closed in on the knight and clapped him on the metal-plated shoulder. "Police. East Silicon Police Department. Uh, I forgot my uniform."

The cougar yelped and sprang off his feet, executing a skilful midair pirouette that brought him face to face with the middle-aged man in plain clothing. "What?"

Toby jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate Ellwood. "He forgot his uniform too."

"Huh?"

"And our badges. We forgot our badges."

"What?"

Calm eyes flared with light, burning orange flames around solid blue coals. They locked with wild, wide feline pupils. Toby reached for the twisting, thrashing panic in the beastfolk's mind and held it down until it lost its stranglehold on the cougar's senses.

"Police," he repeated, eschewing the string of wisecracks from before. "Mages' department. We'll take it from here."

"The - the other demon -" Fear spiked again, fighting back, at the memory of the second monstrous tide of infernal power.

Toby brought an imaginary foot down on the throat of the tangible fear and filled his voice with the echo of magic once more. "We can handle it. Calm down."

The man's expression went completely blank.

The angel glanced back and forth between the hobo in the alley and the impatient were at his side. "Uh..." he focused on the armored cougar again. "There was a demon in the alley. You fought it, but it knocked you out. That's all you remember. You'll forget our faces. You are going to turn this incident into the most boring report you've ever had to write." He cocked his head. He thought he could hear sirens. "And you'll return to HQ and take an honest, thoughtful, introspective look at the real extent of your abilities."

Images and voices flashed in his mind. Shouting. Blustering. Sneering. Looking down on a goat-horned jackal, physically and metaphorically speaking. He released his unconsciously deepening grip on the knight's soul before more memories could filter through. "And beginning right now, you'll make a concerted effort to be nicer to other people."

The feline nodded, open-mouthed and blank-eyed and silent, at each pronunciation.

"Get some rest. You'll feel better when you wake up." The knight's eyes rolled back into his head before his eyelids fluttered down and his body went limp.

"Almost done." Toby breathed orange fire into his hands, then cupped them to the cougar's armor where he could sense pain throbbing. "Right. Short introduction. 'Rion. Hi. Long time no see. This is Ellwood. He's not really a cop, either, but he likes fighting crime. With swords. Ellwood, this is 'Rion. He stood upon our mortal soil before the landmass parted and he saw the first choanoflagellate that congealed from the simmering oceans. He fights crime too. Also with swords. Anyone know how to get us out of here fast?"

And the clouds rolled back, and the veil concealing the Realm of the Holies was pierced, and a Bright Light issued forth to the sound of trumpets. And a Voice boomed from the sky, "Getting real tired of your shit, Toby."

He was imagining it, of course. But he couldn't have imagined the small, blunt impact to the top of his head, or the solitary grape that bounced from there to the ground.

He picked up the grape, inspected it, then stared up at the empty night sky. "What?!"

[Ellwood]

"I know!" Toby said a little too enthusiastically for Ellwood's tastes. "Who would ever believe the police report?"

The hairy were of a young man growled to himself, rolling his eyes to the sky before arms settled in across his chest. His eyesight was just good enough in the dark to notice that the raggedy dressed man with a bunch of holes in his clothes was probably rolling his eyes too.

Well, he should have been anyway. It deserved a good eye-rolling. Or something.

The same figure - the person Toby thought could do the job, whoever he was - glanced down at the largely downed knight. Some internal conversation must have been carried and answered, because it took him a moment more before moving closer to the newcomers.

"Toviyah," he said what sounded like a name, in the direction of the as-of-yet unsqueezed grape head. "You shouldn't -"

Car alarms interrupted him, unsettled by the shockwave from a blast too huge for its own good.

"Ruh roh."

Ellwood growled again as he watched Toby running off to do … something.

"He's … excited, today," the homeless man said, unsettling the gruff were with how quietly the man had approached while he'd been watching Toby.

The sabertooth glared at him, already feeling his wounded pride brimming in defiance that this man was supposed to be "at least as far out of their weight class, as we are out of theirs." His clothes had clearly seen a better day, before being pierced by too many threats.

The sabertooth sniffed once, and realized he didn't smell blood. He didn't know why that made him angrier, or growl louder.

"Yes," Ellwood said back curtly. The aging mage came back for only a second more, and then ran off to deal with the staring knight. Another roll of eyes preceded the sabertooth turning to the ragged warrior.

"Has he always been this … eccentric?" he decided to end his sentence nicely.

The ragged man scratched his jaw along the beard, clearly having to think about times past - times which Ellwood didn't know whether to envy, or dread.

"He might be worse," he managed to say after another moment. Then he shook off that line of thought, to focus on things that mattered more. "That was a - what do you call it - a tier 4 blast, at least. I'll have set off sensors. Authorities will be teleporting here soon, and if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not have to talk to them again."

The sabertooth grunted in acknowledgement, having had his own share of irritating interviews. A connection to the Dragon Knights had helped get him out of a few otherwise questionable jams, but that was only half the annoyance.

"We've got no plans to stay," Ellwood answered. "Toby thinks we need your help with a demon, and wait what's this 'at least'?"

Toby unhelpfully interrupted after having finished whatever patch-ups were necessary with the knight, inserting a rapid, "Right. Short introduction. 'Rion. Hi. Long time no see. This is Ellwood. He's not really a cop, either, but he likes fighting crime. With swords. Ellwood, this is 'Rion. He stood upon our mortal soil before the landmass parted and he saw the first choanoflagellate that congealed from the simmering oceans. He fights crime too. Also with swords. Anyone know how to get us out of here fast?"

Something fell from the sky, both warriors tracking its bounce to the ground and the way Toby picked it up. The ragged man simply looked confused, as if he wasn't privy to some kind of joke that made sense to everyone but him. Ellwood's face merely contorted in dumbfoundedness, brows furrowing so hard the whole of his forehead wrinkled.

"What?!" Toby yelled at the sky.

Ellwood was still stuck looking that way as Rion gripped his shoulder, and Toby's as well.

"That would be me…" Rion said, answering Toby's earlier question, and as easily as that, they were gone, with a knightly cougar left sleeping in the street.