#norman 01

His mind was racing, his only thought had been on rescuing Emma-- no matter where it was, no matter how hard it was, he would do it. He had to. He had to or else... or else he would never be able to redeem himself, he’d never be able to face Norman. 

Yet before he had realized it, he was somewhere else, his head throbbing as he looked around. Confusion would set in for a few moments, the pressing emotions racing within the young boy. Was I taken by the Poachers? But I don’t remember feeling anything of about the situation... Nor did I notice any rope try to grab hold of me... Did the poachers use a different method to get me and that man? No, if that was the case, they would have used it on Emma too--

Eyes flicker from their downcast focus towards the screen that lit up, thought process pausing to focus on the screen before him. 

There was a sickness in his stomach at the revelation. Wherever he was just thrust into, it didn’t seem to be any better than the world he had just come from. He was... human, right? An experiment? Say, I just got thrown into a world devoid of man-eating demons, but this is a place where human experimentation is normal... Is the world we want to go to like that as well? 

His eyes turned towards the door the scientist had indicated earlier. If he never stepped outside he would have no idea what to expect. Good or bad, there was hardly a choice in the matter. Aside from the chairs and a table, there was only the TV and metal platform he had been sitting on. There was no where else to go. Resolving himself, Ray checked his belongings-- only to find them replaced with a lone BB gun. Better than nothing, he supposed. Gun in one hand, the boy opened the door to face the outside world.

Ray had only opened the door, ready to find their housing, get them self together, and find a way out. Only... Only, a face he thought he’d never see again, stood. Living, alive, focus on somewhere else-- Norman. 

@inherlikeness

It was definitely too early to be awake—never mind that their ‘early’ is most peoples ‘midmorning’—and having failed in going back to sleep, they decided to go get a coffee. Made themselves all human-y and everything! And then, on the way to whichever some-what busy coffee place they had decided on, they failed to notice a very big dog. They were then pushed over by said dog, and stumbled backwards… into a trashcan. God only knows where the mutt was running off to, either—just that it was big and graceless. And dumb. Stupid and dumb. They’d be glad to never see it again.

They sighed. They were tired. Tired of everything.

They sunk a bit further into the can—it was going to be troublesome to escape anyways, they couldn’t really make their predicament worse. Truly, the only thing they felt could make things worse, was if someone was there to witness the whole mess!

…And of course, that was indeed the case. Damn it all.

Not that the individual in question was terribly impressive, of course. A skinny little thing, dressed in white and sporting a strange tattoo. An interesting sight, yes—and he was a master on top of that—but that didn’t change the fact that he was a kid.

Actually, that probably made it worse. Definitely worse, actually.

But it wasn’t like they were going to show some form of concern for his predicament. They were feeling a little too sour for that.

@inherlikeness​

If you wish for more information, it was probably best to look elsewhere.

Somehow he always found his way back here. Huddled away in the corner of some library or another, pouring over a tower of books. Funny, wasn’t it? Maybe it was true. Maybe he really was a creature of habit.

But what else could he do? He was fighting a war here, a cold war, and no war could be won in the dark.

He had done it on a very, very, very cautious whim-- too obvious, too hopeful, too naive, too-- but the whim turned out to be a good one. A few critical key words, master, servant, command seal, GRAIL, and he found more than he could have ever hoped in the database. A lot of it junk, true, total nonsense that he couldn’t make heads or tails of, but Cael could make enough sense of it all to know exactly what kind of situation he’d gotten himself into.

He had scribbled down one entry in particular in his new trinket, which he better understood now as a sort of glorified tablet, more than anything else. It had explained everything quite simply -- though it gave him little confidence to read.

The Holy Grail War is a competition that decides the ownership of the Holy Grail through intense battle royale. While there have been many conflicts over supposed Holy Grails in the past, this term refers to those specifically based around Masters, usually proficient magi, summoning Servants, Heroic Spirits brought forth as familiars, and meeting in battle until only one pair is left to claim the Holy Grail.

He’d be flattered, if it weren’t his own life on the line.

Whether or not it was the Grail, the Grail that so many had thrown their lives away for, he hadn’t found a clear answer to yet, with vague answers and vaguer explanations, but one thing was very clear -- real or not, people were still throwing their lives away just to have the chance to wrap their hands around its brilliant stem, even if only for a moment. Because all these wars, all the summaries that he had read, mentioned only one winner.

One winner, one survivor.

Just one.

“Jesus,” Cáel breathed to himself, “You’ve really gotten yourself into it this time, haven’t you?”

Had he, though? He couldn’t say for sure, his captors hadn’t said anything about a war... yet. Still, he couldn’t ignore the coincidences. The words, the phrases, it all came together too cleanly. Cáel shook his head, pocketing the Triplicata-- which, in a blink of an eye, was now a cute and completely innocuous key chain-- back into his jacket. No time to think about it. He couldn’t think about it. It’d swallow him up if he let it fester in him. Drag him down, down, down, down into the rot, and the cold, and the emptiness, and-- He needed to find more information about these wars, is what he needed. Pushing himself out of his chair, he stood up from his little corner desk, and made his way to one of the computers, or, well, where he thought one of the computers were... until he saw a boy, deep in some kind of thought, looking up at a shelf that was much too high for him to reach. Ah, poor kid, probably wondering how he could climb up the shelves to nab it. Lord knows he’d been there himself!

It’d be easy for Cáel to grab it now, of course, but... children weren’t usually fans of adults, strange adults, no less, butting into their business. Even still, it felt cruel to leave him hanging, especially when Cáel had spotted a stepladder only a couple of aisles over. He made his way over, making sure to be very obvious and very visible in his approach. Didn’t want to spook the poor boy -- if there’s one thing Cáel hated more than adults butting in, it was adults scaring the living daylights out of him, something they all just loved to do. “Ah, they always put the best books on the highest shelf, don’t they?”  Cáel mused, hand under his chin, as he studied the hated shelf. Then he looked down, seeing  blonde hair, baby blues, gentle golds, soft ripples on a quiet lake, the smell of camellias... must be a real sweet kid. What was he doing here? This, this bleedin’ arena, this violent war, was no place for children. His parents are probably somewhere around here, He thought to himself, remembering all the perfectly ordinary people he had seen, Don’t think too much about it. Something slithered in his gut. Something slimy. Something horrible.

Don’t.

    You think by now, that someone who not only had experience in the paranormal but had also been living in this city for just about a year would know what not to do around the pariah. Okay, so sure, it was a mistake that Dipper had provoked the three of them to begin with, but these things weren’t the type to be easily negotiated with, so running and hiding was pretty much his only option. 

    Things had been clear up ahead– at least, as far he could see. if he could just find where he came in, he could have a straight shot back to the elevator–

    Not long after rounding a corner were his thoughts interrupted by a collision. In the panicked moment between making sense of who he’d un full-force into (new kid, probably no older than he was) and how far away the angered pariah were, Dipper decided it would be smarter to act first and explain later.

    So what else can he do but grab the other boy’s elbow and try to pull him along?