Post by Grimm on Aug 11, 2020 13:36:54 GMT -5
…such a geographical oddity, as it were, would serve our purposes perfectly. The town and its immediate environs exist as something of an in-between place. A liminal space that is not recorded on any map that we have evidence of, which, as you well know, is every act of cartography ever put to parchment, paper, digital clouds, etc. It should only exist in folk tales. But here we are.
Other than one particular family, the residents should not be an issue. And once we include this family into our workings they could be quite useful. We may be required to place them deep into the hierarchy for this to be successful and for our efforts to be worthwhile, but preliminary studies indicate they could help us far more than any difficulty we might anticipate…
~~~~~~~~~
The lamplighters quickly made their rounds before skedaddling back to the shanty that served as their guild. Under the pale yellow flicker of the gas lights, Phinehas Dillinger, he of the Ginger Brotherhood and blue eyes hewn deep within the Arctic, walked down Main Street. A weather-beaten rucksack hung loose over his shoulder, and in his left hand he dragged a Hangtown Hardware Grimm Signature Edition Shovel (meaning, it was mottled with rust and splinters). Shutters were drawn and nothing but silhouettes wafted past windows as he moved along. No sound but the scrape of a shovel blade as it sparked along the cobbles. That, and a few orphan leaves skittering along as portents.
Phinehas passed what had once been the Tub of Blood Saloon and now served as a confectionary shop. He slowed as he approached a filthy ragamuffin, bristling with slack-jawed enthusiasm, splashing in a puddle with a stick. A dark shape in swirling skirts rushed out, grabbed the little boy beneath the arms, and disappeared back into the shadows. Phinehas heard her whispered warnings even as they melted away. Warnings of all the terrible things the Hangtown Horror would do to a lad who dared look upon him, and the grin of exceeding great joy that would flash as he did them.
Phinehas kept walking. He followed traces of lightning bugs leading to what served as the city limits.
The cobblestone walk continued outside of Hangtown and wound its way across a rolling moonlit field. Phinehas followed it along its crooked way until it deposited him at the base of a set of crooked stairs. He tilted his head, looking up at the crooked house standing sentry, a scarecrow alone in the dark. Tall and skinny, it rose as if sprouted from the earth. Phinehas lifted his head further and looked towards to very tiptop. Weather vanes, lightning rods, smatterings of other ironmongery jutted from the many angles of the roof. He propped the shovel by the crooked door and grasped the brass doorknob, but paused. He turned and took in one last glimpse of his surroundings. Dark hills spread out in all directions, the occasional rock outcrop, the faint line of trees encircling Hangtown at a distance. Without a knock, without a hue or cry, he pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Phinehas stood in one monstrosity of a room. Sconces of flickering candles lined the walls, the flames reflecting off aged silver and polished stone. Iron chandeliers hung from timbers, and they too dripped wax as candles guttered overhead. Across the entire breadth of the room, lanterns sat on table after table, each one illuminating a figure in a chair bent over a table. Each figure held a fountain pen, and the sound of metal nib scribbling on paper was paired with the occasional clink of a pen being dipped in one of hundreds of ink wells. They were all shadows of slightly tilted heads and jotting fingers, and no one looked up from their work to the stranger in their midst. The figures were all dressed in black and each wore a simple silver ring on their writing hand.
Phinehas breathed in a room full of brittle yellowed papers. He nearly choked on binding glue disintegrating under the ages. Another figure, appearing as all the rest, sidled up to him.
“Mr. Dillinger! It’s been some time, hasn’t it? You’re looking well.”
~~~~~~~~~
…been suggested that our hopes may have been misplaced. Its temporal displacement has been a boon beyond anything we could have hoped for, but that no longer outweighs its liabilities. More specifically, the liability of the family. Whether or not they recognize our true intentions before it is too late is irrelevant. They will not be compromised. The fact that they somehow dictate the course of the locality without any intentional effort that we can detect only makes this more troubling.
This concern also includes our attempts at weaponizing the mycotechnology that appears to underlie most of the area. As with most of the frustrations surrounding these ongoing efforts, they have been able to utilize it for all manner of their own purposes.
~~~~~~~~~
Phinehas followed his host down the center aisle with row upon row of tables and pens and hoods spread out on both sides. His black-boot-clad feet threatened to snap the floorboards with each step.
“I have to say I am surprised to see you here. I would have thought you’d be readying yourself for whichever number event was coming up next.”
“Is that so? I have to say I’m surprised you know anything about that. You don’t seem the type to follow that sort of thing.”
“Come now, Mr. Dillinger. We keep tabs on such proceedings. You know as well as anyone…”
The man waved his arm, almost spinning in place in the process. Here, a figure in the act of copying what looked to be an arcane illuminated manuscript, centuries old and slowly turning to dust. There, another shadow scribbled furiously on a thick sheet of paper. After reaching the bottom, he turned it over beside him and continued at the top of the next sheet in the thick pile. The figure did not pause. He did not look up. He just wrote. And over yonder, beside them as they stopped walking, the guide carefully slid a piece of parchment out from under the pen of another hooded cloak. The figure immediately stopped writing but remained bent over, waiting to resume his work. The guide handed the paper to Phinehas and took a step back. Pale blue eyes flickered over the writing for a few seconds. Expressionless, he looked up at the guide.
“Anything could still happen. Holden Ross is still fighting to keep his shot at the Genesis title. Rick Majors is waiting and watching if Ross manages to do just that, or if he’ll be facing someone else the next go round. Gerard Angelo is treading water ‘til his own title shot manifests. This could be a mere repeat of the last time we were all in the ring together. Well, officially sanctioned, that is. Or something completely unexpected could happen and throw the whole thing off. Rick and I…we’ve squared off a lot lately, but we remain on the up and up. We’ve shown what we can do as partners, when necessary. I don’t have any concerns about our corner of the ring, but I’m not so convinced someone else may not have something to say about our opponents. One never knows until it starts.”
The host looked at Phinehas.
“You’ve mentioned everyone else involved that night. The title shots, the defenses, the upcoming battles for glory. What about you? What do you offer as part of this?”
“Me?”
A pause.
“Well…I’m Grimm, ain’t I?”
His host took the sheet of paper and handed it back to the man at the table, who set back to work straight away. He then put his hand on Phinehas’s shoulder as they resumed their walk.
“That you are, Mr. Dillinger.”
~~~~~~~~~
We had hoped the introduction of a secondary, competing organization would have served to fulfill our requirements, but it was not to be. We recognized the tangle of bloodlines and subsequent blood oaths would not result in the efficiency we preferred, but the suspicion was that they would resolve themselves. It was a mistake to assume such an outcome, and for us to take the position that it was ultimately no concern of ours.
Not only did the Chronological Order itself fail to bring about the anomaly’s downfall, but project Chrono Trigger failed to produce any results whatsoever. The anticipation was that even if the event had not completely eradicated the target, as we were unsure of how it would respond to such energy, it would at the very least result in something of a reset or respawn, in which case we could involve ourselves earlier in the process and thereby ensure a more preferable outcome.
This was not to be.
~~~~~~~~~
His escort stopped short.
“I was sorry to hear about your bookstore. I know how much it meant to the people of Hangtown. And to you.”
“Thank you. But there’s nothing there that can’t be repaired or replaced. Just a major inconvenience at this point.”
The other man said, “Nothing…too important destroyed or gone missing, you say?”
“Nope.”
His attention turned to the rucksack on Phinehas’s shoulder.
“Do you have the…item with you, perchance?”
“What, here? No.”
A shadow passed over the host’s face, but not so sudden that Phinehas did not see. He knew better than to acknowledge it, though.
Quickly recovering, the guide said, “Oh, that’s a pity. I’m certain it needs updating. Don’t get me wrong, you’ve done an admirable job recently, but we need it back as I am to take responsibility for it now. There are certain…events forthcoming that you are not to be privy to, and in order for that volume to continue as the Black Hand’s Preferred Text, I must insist on expanding the record myself. I’m sure you understand. “
“I do. But I don’t have it.”
“Where is it?”
“Someplace safe.”
“This is of utmost importance, Mr. Dillinger. I must ask again, where is the book?” he said, with an incline of the head.
Phinehas tilted his head in return. “Someplace. Safe.”
A standoff, but a brief one. “If that’s the case, why have you come here?”
Phinehas looked around the enormous, candlelit room. A room fit for a mass. “I was going to do some research in hopes of discovering some possible culprits who might be responsible for the mischief at my bookstore. And then I was going to visit them.”
The man / host / guide / escort put his hand on Phinehas’s back. “Sorry, we’re closed. We’re in the middle of updating everything. Rearranging, cataloguing, whatnot. Just a lot of administrative tasks we’ve put off for far too long.”
And with that, before he could verbalize even a hint of a protest, Phinehas Dillinger was back outside at the bottom of the crooked steps, looking up at a dark house in the middle of an otherwise empty field. Taking up his shovel, there he stood.
~~~~~~~~~
Our contingency plan remains. If the final device has been absorbed by the anomaly or otherwise remains unaccounted for, we must resort to other means at our disposal. For they are indeed beyond our reach. Beyond our control. This must be addressed with utmost prejudice, and with our most lethal and efficacious resources. Ties must be completely severed lest we risk an unfortunate…follow-up on their behalf.
~~~~~~~~~
He did not leave for some time. A rim of orange and purple lit the eastern hills as morning broke. As he made, finally, to leave, a crow settled on what was left of a split rail fence. Phinehas stopped. Man and rook locked eyes. The crow crooked its head. Phinehas did the same. Then he thought.
Hangtown was a place that punished. And Phinehas Dillinger – Grimm – was its sole mediator and advocate. If this was going to work, if he was truly going to follow through with this, the organization was going to have to be dismantled by the same methods which propped it up. He would have to initiate an offense as pre-emptive self-defense. And who better to mount an offensive than he?
He reached into that rucksuck and pulled out an object roughly the size and shape of a softball. Mostly black, constructed of various types of plastics and rare metals. A smattering of circuits, and batteries, and magnetic field generators-and-disruptors of miscellaneous constructions. Phinehas tossed it in the air and caught it. He repeated that a few times, as if it were indeed the softball previously mentioned. And then he turned and walked back to the crooked house.
~~~~~~~~~
A leaf fell and the people of Hangtown flinched, hearing it as the final page of the Book turning over, only to be followed by the slamming shut of the cover. But it was so much more than that. They could only wait now.
Other than one particular family, the residents should not be an issue. And once we include this family into our workings they could be quite useful. We may be required to place them deep into the hierarchy for this to be successful and for our efforts to be worthwhile, but preliminary studies indicate they could help us far more than any difficulty we might anticipate…
~~~~~~~~~
The lamplighters quickly made their rounds before skedaddling back to the shanty that served as their guild. Under the pale yellow flicker of the gas lights, Phinehas Dillinger, he of the Ginger Brotherhood and blue eyes hewn deep within the Arctic, walked down Main Street. A weather-beaten rucksack hung loose over his shoulder, and in his left hand he dragged a Hangtown Hardware Grimm Signature Edition Shovel (meaning, it was mottled with rust and splinters). Shutters were drawn and nothing but silhouettes wafted past windows as he moved along. No sound but the scrape of a shovel blade as it sparked along the cobbles. That, and a few orphan leaves skittering along as portents.
Phinehas passed what had once been the Tub of Blood Saloon and now served as a confectionary shop. He slowed as he approached a filthy ragamuffin, bristling with slack-jawed enthusiasm, splashing in a puddle with a stick. A dark shape in swirling skirts rushed out, grabbed the little boy beneath the arms, and disappeared back into the shadows. Phinehas heard her whispered warnings even as they melted away. Warnings of all the terrible things the Hangtown Horror would do to a lad who dared look upon him, and the grin of exceeding great joy that would flash as he did them.
Phinehas kept walking. He followed traces of lightning bugs leading to what served as the city limits.
The cobblestone walk continued outside of Hangtown and wound its way across a rolling moonlit field. Phinehas followed it along its crooked way until it deposited him at the base of a set of crooked stairs. He tilted his head, looking up at the crooked house standing sentry, a scarecrow alone in the dark. Tall and skinny, it rose as if sprouted from the earth. Phinehas lifted his head further and looked towards to very tiptop. Weather vanes, lightning rods, smatterings of other ironmongery jutted from the many angles of the roof. He propped the shovel by the crooked door and grasped the brass doorknob, but paused. He turned and took in one last glimpse of his surroundings. Dark hills spread out in all directions, the occasional rock outcrop, the faint line of trees encircling Hangtown at a distance. Without a knock, without a hue or cry, he pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Phinehas stood in one monstrosity of a room. Sconces of flickering candles lined the walls, the flames reflecting off aged silver and polished stone. Iron chandeliers hung from timbers, and they too dripped wax as candles guttered overhead. Across the entire breadth of the room, lanterns sat on table after table, each one illuminating a figure in a chair bent over a table. Each figure held a fountain pen, and the sound of metal nib scribbling on paper was paired with the occasional clink of a pen being dipped in one of hundreds of ink wells. They were all shadows of slightly tilted heads and jotting fingers, and no one looked up from their work to the stranger in their midst. The figures were all dressed in black and each wore a simple silver ring on their writing hand.
Phinehas breathed in a room full of brittle yellowed papers. He nearly choked on binding glue disintegrating under the ages. Another figure, appearing as all the rest, sidled up to him.
“Mr. Dillinger! It’s been some time, hasn’t it? You’re looking well.”
~~~~~~~~~
…been suggested that our hopes may have been misplaced. Its temporal displacement has been a boon beyond anything we could have hoped for, but that no longer outweighs its liabilities. More specifically, the liability of the family. Whether or not they recognize our true intentions before it is too late is irrelevant. They will not be compromised. The fact that they somehow dictate the course of the locality without any intentional effort that we can detect only makes this more troubling.
This concern also includes our attempts at weaponizing the mycotechnology that appears to underlie most of the area. As with most of the frustrations surrounding these ongoing efforts, they have been able to utilize it for all manner of their own purposes.
~~~~~~~~~
Phinehas followed his host down the center aisle with row upon row of tables and pens and hoods spread out on both sides. His black-boot-clad feet threatened to snap the floorboards with each step.
“I have to say I am surprised to see you here. I would have thought you’d be readying yourself for whichever number event was coming up next.”
“Is that so? I have to say I’m surprised you know anything about that. You don’t seem the type to follow that sort of thing.”
“Come now, Mr. Dillinger. We keep tabs on such proceedings. You know as well as anyone…”
The man waved his arm, almost spinning in place in the process. Here, a figure in the act of copying what looked to be an arcane illuminated manuscript, centuries old and slowly turning to dust. There, another shadow scribbled furiously on a thick sheet of paper. After reaching the bottom, he turned it over beside him and continued at the top of the next sheet in the thick pile. The figure did not pause. He did not look up. He just wrote. And over yonder, beside them as they stopped walking, the guide carefully slid a piece of parchment out from under the pen of another hooded cloak. The figure immediately stopped writing but remained bent over, waiting to resume his work. The guide handed the paper to Phinehas and took a step back. Pale blue eyes flickered over the writing for a few seconds. Expressionless, he looked up at the guide.
“Anything could still happen. Holden Ross is still fighting to keep his shot at the Genesis title. Rick Majors is waiting and watching if Ross manages to do just that, or if he’ll be facing someone else the next go round. Gerard Angelo is treading water ‘til his own title shot manifests. This could be a mere repeat of the last time we were all in the ring together. Well, officially sanctioned, that is. Or something completely unexpected could happen and throw the whole thing off. Rick and I…we’ve squared off a lot lately, but we remain on the up and up. We’ve shown what we can do as partners, when necessary. I don’t have any concerns about our corner of the ring, but I’m not so convinced someone else may not have something to say about our opponents. One never knows until it starts.”
The host looked at Phinehas.
“You’ve mentioned everyone else involved that night. The title shots, the defenses, the upcoming battles for glory. What about you? What do you offer as part of this?”
“Me?”
A pause.
“Well…I’m Grimm, ain’t I?”
His host took the sheet of paper and handed it back to the man at the table, who set back to work straight away. He then put his hand on Phinehas’s shoulder as they resumed their walk.
“That you are, Mr. Dillinger.”
~~~~~~~~~
We had hoped the introduction of a secondary, competing organization would have served to fulfill our requirements, but it was not to be. We recognized the tangle of bloodlines and subsequent blood oaths would not result in the efficiency we preferred, but the suspicion was that they would resolve themselves. It was a mistake to assume such an outcome, and for us to take the position that it was ultimately no concern of ours.
Not only did the Chronological Order itself fail to bring about the anomaly’s downfall, but project Chrono Trigger failed to produce any results whatsoever. The anticipation was that even if the event had not completely eradicated the target, as we were unsure of how it would respond to such energy, it would at the very least result in something of a reset or respawn, in which case we could involve ourselves earlier in the process and thereby ensure a more preferable outcome.
This was not to be.
~~~~~~~~~
His escort stopped short.
“I was sorry to hear about your bookstore. I know how much it meant to the people of Hangtown. And to you.”
“Thank you. But there’s nothing there that can’t be repaired or replaced. Just a major inconvenience at this point.”
The other man said, “Nothing…too important destroyed or gone missing, you say?”
“Nope.”
His attention turned to the rucksack on Phinehas’s shoulder.
“Do you have the…item with you, perchance?”
“What, here? No.”
A shadow passed over the host’s face, but not so sudden that Phinehas did not see. He knew better than to acknowledge it, though.
Quickly recovering, the guide said, “Oh, that’s a pity. I’m certain it needs updating. Don’t get me wrong, you’ve done an admirable job recently, but we need it back as I am to take responsibility for it now. There are certain…events forthcoming that you are not to be privy to, and in order for that volume to continue as the Black Hand’s Preferred Text, I must insist on expanding the record myself. I’m sure you understand. “
“I do. But I don’t have it.”
“Where is it?”
“Someplace safe.”
“This is of utmost importance, Mr. Dillinger. I must ask again, where is the book?” he said, with an incline of the head.
Phinehas tilted his head in return. “Someplace. Safe.”
A standoff, but a brief one. “If that’s the case, why have you come here?”
Phinehas looked around the enormous, candlelit room. A room fit for a mass. “I was going to do some research in hopes of discovering some possible culprits who might be responsible for the mischief at my bookstore. And then I was going to visit them.”
The man / host / guide / escort put his hand on Phinehas’s back. “Sorry, we’re closed. We’re in the middle of updating everything. Rearranging, cataloguing, whatnot. Just a lot of administrative tasks we’ve put off for far too long.”
And with that, before he could verbalize even a hint of a protest, Phinehas Dillinger was back outside at the bottom of the crooked steps, looking up at a dark house in the middle of an otherwise empty field. Taking up his shovel, there he stood.
~~~~~~~~~
Our contingency plan remains. If the final device has been absorbed by the anomaly or otherwise remains unaccounted for, we must resort to other means at our disposal. For they are indeed beyond our reach. Beyond our control. This must be addressed with utmost prejudice, and with our most lethal and efficacious resources. Ties must be completely severed lest we risk an unfortunate…follow-up on their behalf.
~~~~~~~~~
He did not leave for some time. A rim of orange and purple lit the eastern hills as morning broke. As he made, finally, to leave, a crow settled on what was left of a split rail fence. Phinehas stopped. Man and rook locked eyes. The crow crooked its head. Phinehas did the same. Then he thought.
Hangtown was a place that punished. And Phinehas Dillinger – Grimm – was its sole mediator and advocate. If this was going to work, if he was truly going to follow through with this, the organization was going to have to be dismantled by the same methods which propped it up. He would have to initiate an offense as pre-emptive self-defense. And who better to mount an offensive than he?
He reached into that rucksuck and pulled out an object roughly the size and shape of a softball. Mostly black, constructed of various types of plastics and rare metals. A smattering of circuits, and batteries, and magnetic field generators-and-disruptors of miscellaneous constructions. Phinehas tossed it in the air and caught it. He repeated that a few times, as if it were indeed the softball previously mentioned. And then he turned and walked back to the crooked house.
~~~~~~~~~
A leaf fell and the people of Hangtown flinched, hearing it as the final page of the Book turning over, only to be followed by the slamming shut of the cover. But it was so much more than that. They could only wait now.
