Forever Halloween: Night II (RPG)

@marcus_crowne

The old Shackleford Apartment Complex glared over the empty street, ashen windows sunken into the framework. It was condemned, schedule for demolition within the next month or so. A lot of people had memories with this building, ever since it was raised in the 60s. The current landlady Deloris Marlboro kept a tight shift, and ran the tenants fairly. She would have to find work elsewhere, which would be easy for someone of her pull in the community, but the same could not be said for some of those who rented from her. At least a hundred people, put out of a home, just like that - and no one knew why or how.

Smoking was kept to a strict outside only policy, and the electrical wiring was checked monthly, every room, just like clockwork. Faulty insulation was also a dead end, due to its recent replacement and evaluation. The only clues to what started it in the first place were two spheres in one of the upper levels, a corner balcony rented to an Alicia Lawson, age 34 with no children. She denied ever having seen the orbs in her life, and she had no previous history of arson or really any big crimes. She didn't drink, didn't smoke, the drug testing confirmed it.

It seemed as if someone had flown up and thrown the spheres into her apartment through an open window, one dousing the carpet with gasoline, and the other lighting it with an errant spark.

But nothing about the case made sense, and the community wanted answers. However, despite any intensive investigation, it was almost always a clean-cut answer that the perpetrator returned to the scene of the crime.

---

Sure enough, on the stroke of midnight, seemingly from nowhere, a thick trail of black smog choked the night sky as a stranger hovered on what seemed to be a flying broomstick attached to a customized and, admittedly, rickety jet turbine engine. He stood completely upright, with his feet adjusted inside of sturdy footholds in the bizarre device. He floated around the exterior of the building, admiring the scorch marks and blasted-out furniture and wiring. Perhaps most unsettlingly of all, was the pumpkin-shaped mask he wore, carved into the likeness of a sneering jack-o-lantern, and blazing with an unidentifiable source of the fire.

@thisisgonnahurt:

Shackleford Apartment Complex;
The Street; 00:00.

The Wolf is at Your Door...

Bumming on the curb opposite of the apartments sat a ragged man on a sheet of cardboard. He's been sitting there on cold stone next to a flight of stairs for a few hours now. Just another hobo, probably. Except he wasn't. For the first time since he arrived, his stone-hard face changed into a knowing smile. A knowing smile at the sight of fire in the sky.

The man didn't act or move and his fleeting smile vanished shortly after. None-the-less he remained sitting and observing the Jack-O'-Lantern hover about the scene. Whoever the pyromaniac was, they clearly seemed enchanted by the arsony that took place at Shackleford earlier. So mesmerized by the scorching pattern on the wall and interior mayhem.

Marc then laxly brought the cone of his hand to his mouth. “HEY, MAN! HEY! Would you mind lighting this here fire for me? I'll share!”, he inquired in a raspy voice while pointing towards an adjacent dumpster filled with crupled paper, pizza boxes and other trash. It would light up easy and the night was indeed cold.

@marcus_crowne:

Samhain didn't expect to hear anyone from the street, let alone someone inviting him to burn something. His mask seemed to stretch into an incomprehensibly wide and cruel grin as he piloted his broomstick down about three feet from the asphalt. He leaned in close to the bum, flicking a lighter so that the sparker clicked but the butane didn't emerge. The heat from the fire ensorcelling his head would be palpable regardless.

"You want to see something spark up, huh?"

As per the bum's request, Samhain tossed the lighter into the dumpster and it went up in smoke within seconds. Flames as high as some of the nearby windows licked at the sky. But Samhain wasn't interested in the fire. He kept staring at the bum, and suddenly reached out for the collar of his jacket, intent on bringing him along for a ride as a thick column of black smog choked the city block. Laughing a howling, screeching cackle, the pumpkin-headed madman would try to wrestle his host into the inferno by any means necessary.

@thisisgonnahurt:

Marc placed his palms closer to the dumpster fire but before he could act along in his disguise he felt a tug at it's scruffy collar. “*Chhrt!*”, he choked on the neck of his hoodie after being caught by surprise and felt being forcibly yanked off the ground. The noise he let out was one indicative of panic, but it was also a reflexive vocalization. In his mind he was serene. He trained for worse scenarios. He has been in worse scenarios.

In one rapid motion, natural cynicism paid off, a 21' telescopic baton slid out of his sleeve and whipped into full length ready to hit the arsonist into the shin. The force of the telescopic blow enhanced by the weighed tip to bone fracturing potential. His other hand in the meanwhile unzipping the middle of his weathered hoodie for him to slide out off and touch the ground.

As he landed three massive, bold letters emerged that were hidden under flea-ridden fabric: FBI. Stretching wide across the back of his hitcoat. “You're under arrest on arson charges. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law...”, he spun back around and seamlessly flicked a dark, cylindrical canister up towards the pyromaniac's personal space where it would go off. A pressurized fire foam grenade that sought to douse his fiery nature and possibly even blind him.

After covering his eyes from the explosion he would then attempt to leap up and grasp the tip of his flying broom. Intent on using his sheer weight to tilt it towards the ground. He assumed that the broom's controls were based on the distribution of weight and if he suddenly titlted the broom then maybe the arsonist would fall forwards and crash into the ground. “...You have the right to remain silent while I shove this f***ing broom up your ass, you giant flaming hog-head motherf***er.”

@marcus_crowne:

The wet snap of shattered bone told him that his shin was split almost down the middle, but he didn't need sound to understand that. Samhain dipped out of control in the sky for a brief moment, sundered in his resolve as the newly-adorned FBI agent sang his song of justice in a tired and nonchalant manner. The pumpkin-headed madman regained dominance of his counterbalances, ensuring that he would stay afloat, but he did not stop. A Hallowling, one of his miniaturized robotic assistants, caught the foam grenade with its clockwork body and carried it out of range, sacrificing itself so that its master could maintain air superiority.

Samhain didn't bat an eye, focused instead entirely on his new friend.

"You want to arrest me? On a night like this? Where's your festive spirit?"

He prepared for another javelin charge, zooming forward on a trail of black smog, but his friend was waiting for him this time. They tilted and twirled in corkscrews, the weight distribution on the customized implement of jet-powered flight flipping haphazardly. Samhain purposely grappled with the agent, throwing punches and headbutts at dangerous high altitudes then almost crashing headlong into the street only to pull up at the last second. He had control of the broomstick, however, and aimed for the top floor of the abandoned apartment complex, intent on throwing his friend through ashen glass and torched furniture before disappearing again.

Halloween was all about the tricks and the treats, after all.

@thisisgonnahurt:

“Dead and buried, bitch--.”, he managed to utter a response just before getting socked straight in the face. His head cocked back into place instantly but he had briefly lost grip on one of his hands. Whatever tactic the detective had in his mind quickly fell apart thanks to one animatronic gizmo. And just like that The Crown Wolf found himself off his paws and being violently flung around in the air by the maniac. Not only had he been rendered dizzy by the blow to the nose but now also had to hold on literally for his life.

Strong but without superstrength he was a hopeless pendulum under the sway of centrifugal forces.

Eventually, he was jettisoned into the scorched apartment building like the dead weight he was. Crashin in through the remainder of a window and punching through the ruins of a sofa. He got up instantly with a wheezing sound, not out of volition but rather out of instinct. It hurt too much to walk right now but yet he sprinted to the window like a proper zombie-- Only to find the flaming horseman's ignited halo nowhere in sight.

“Shit.”, Marc squeezed out whilst clutching his ribs.

@marcus_crowne:

Samhain howled with laughter in the distance, but remained out of sight. A slight clanking sound came from the nearby rooms, first one and then another. He was pelting the upper levels with Hallowings, tossing them carelessly into the cremated guts of the complex. Instantly, they sprang to life and started floating and gliding towards the agent, sneering and making all sorts of obscene childish gestures as they shot small streams of napalm out of their mechanical maws. Of the arsonist himself, he wasn't really in the mood for fighting himself, what with a displaced splinter of bone in his leg. He painfully shifted right, idly spinning a pair of Pumpkin bombs in his hands, eager to see what the clockwork imps were up to as they started to swarm towards the blasted-out room.

They could easily be dispatched with a solid punch or kick, but there were a lot of them - at least a score or so - and their small hands were strong enough to tear off tiny fistfuls of skin or punch through muscle.

The walls were certainly weak enough for him to burst through, to make a break for the nearest stairwell.

"Come on out and play! First we show you our tricks, now it's time for our TREATS!"

Clicking the ignition switches on the bombs, Samhain lobbed them into the rooms just underneath where he had tossed his new friend. The explosions would rock the underside of the flooring, but do little else besides destabilize what remained - at least for this first salvo. He prepped two more from his Bag of Tricks, cackling as he did so.