(no subject)

[gone_byebye]

The door opens to a room decorated in blue and brown and the occasional bit of silver. The carpet is dark blue, the bedspread a lighter one (it's a bed for two people, clearly); the desk is wooden and brown and stacked with papers. And there are the bookshelves- wire things, silver wire, stacked with reference volumes and the occasional novel and quite a few slim, very neat cases.

"That's the video disc collection over there," Ray says, pointing towards the cases. "The books are mostly reference works, not fiction. Those papers tacked to the wall over there are the blueprints and deck plans for a Firefly class interstellar freighter- I'm very proud of those. That's my crystal-growing rig in the corner, which I mostly use these days for turning silicates and water into synthetic opals for paying my Bar bill... but here."

He heads over to a black mini-fridge, which has been painted in places with odd diagrams and lettering in three or four different alphabets.

"Most of the stuff here isn't necessary but I don't want to take chances with anything hairy trying to get in."

Comments

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

Bonzo follows Ray in and looks around as he points to each of the things, looking with interest at the Firefly plans and, more strongly, the crystal-growing rig.

"I didn't know any of those would scare off a Wookie..." he replies to Ray's last comment.

[gone_byebye]

"Wrong kind of hairy," Ray says. "I was speaking metaphysically. There's things around here that'd probably be more than happy to feed off whatever residual energy might be lurking in the demon bits."

Nevertheless, he cracks the fridge open with only a slight murmur of something Sumerian. After some rummaging around he comes up with two jars, one containing a saw-edged claw, the other a snaggled, oversized tooth- possibly a fang, or an incisor of some kind. "Those are the parts," he says. "The dagger I got's in the back."

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

"Ah...there's residual energy that can be fed off of in them?"

Bonzo looks with interest as Ray takes the parts out, having -never- seen things quite like them, even when the Buggers were discussed in Biology class.

"Interesting. Need me to hold anything for you while you rumage?"

[gone_byebye]

"Oh heck yeah," Ray says. "Here-" He passes his PKE meter in Bonzo's direction. "That'll detect it. Won't mean much to you, but you'll see the arms move and the numbers change, and it'll be a different set of numbers for each one. They're from different types of demon, each of them."

That's a good thing. Ray would be very, very worried if Bonzo had seen anything like those.

"Nah, I think I- ah, here." He comes up with the dagger. It's black, pitted, and wickedly sharp. One edge fairly gleams with malice and keenness; the other is hooked, jagged, with many back-slanting points and crooks. It's inscribed all over with crude, unwholesome designs. "You'd better believe that one's going home in a full Akkadian geomantic containment grid. I don't want to drop that sucker anywhere in the dimensional vortex between my world and here."

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

Bonzo looks at the PKE meter and notices that it -does- register a reading...of something. Then, of course, the dagger comes out, and Bonzo looks at it.

"Looks like it doubles as a sword and as...something that would not be easy to remove. And it looks cool. I take it your lightsaber made dealing with these relatively easy?"

[gone_byebye]

"As nearly as I can tell, the idea is for it to go in easily, and to yank out as much as possible when it comes back out. You can figure out for yourself just what's getting yanked." Ray nods. "Between the 'sabre and the proton pack it wasn't too bad, but the damn things move fast and we were grotesquely outnumbered. I know it was a case of 'the Maxim machine gun we have got', but we didn't have time or space to fortify- not to mention that I was on the mobile team. We were supposed to hunt down the portals they were coming in through. Leaves the back vulnerable."

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

Bonzo nods.

"How many portals opened up, and how did you keep closing them?"

He's still looking over the dagger, noting the intricate design...seems it would take a good deal of strength to pull it out, with all of the hooks on it.

[gone_byebye]

"Three that I know of," Ray says. "Peter and I recalibrated the proton packs to destabilize the energetic spatial distortion. Rupert Giles had the magic on tap to slam them shut once we took the mickey out of the spell. Unfortunately, the damn things popped open again right after he did that. Ultimately someone killed some of the other side's sorcerors and the portals stopped opening, but by that time I'd gone to find a portal somewhere out of line-of-sight and wound up fighting six demons entirely on my own. At least until Nita Callahan arrived, anyway. That's where I got the scars from."

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

Bonzo thinks about that for a moment.

"Six on one at once? You're lucky you only got scars from that...I can see why Qui-Gon declared you a Jedi."

[gone_byebye]

Ray closes his eyes for a moment, one hand going reflexively to his face. "One of them was a spitter," he says. "Venomous. I got this tremendous blat to the face and the next thing I knew my eyes were burning too much to see. I should've been demon chow- I would've been, if my arms didn't remember what my brain was too boggled to think of. I spent several months practicing Chinese broadsword solo techniques in the dark with a flashlight to get used to not chopping my own limbs off... one of those practice techniques kicked in and I took something's head off before I could see again."

He shakes his head. "It was a mess. I didn't think I was gonna make it out of there, to be honest. I don't know that I would've, if Nita hadn't arrived when she had- I might've been able to take down the rest of the demons but the way I was bleeding? I had about ninety seconds left before I would've joined the Aztec monkey gods or something. I should've been more careful about going off on my own like that..."

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

Bonzo looks surprised...he'd never heard exactly what happened during the fight.

"Man, I'm sorry...I had no idea it was that rough."

Despite all of his training, Bonzo has never, in fact, seen a real fight in person. Only in vids.

"What -did- Nita do?"

[gone_byebye]

"Sorry? What for?" Ray shakes himself off and starts putting the jars away. "You weren't there, you didn't know- it was a mess, yeah, but I got out alive, which is more than some people can say. Michael Guerin lost several people under his command, including his cousin's betrothed. At least I made it."

He smiles a little. "The shield spell, for one thing; she put up an energy field that held the demons at bay until I was able to widget my pack into working again. I had to get out of it in a handful of seconds when they got my shoulder. And then she got the poison out of my eyes, which was a very big plus, since I like being able to see. Didn't have time to close my wounds until I passed out a little bit later, but she's the reason I have scars instead of big gappy places where musculature ought to be. You gotta love that magical healing, really."

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

Bonzo hands Ray the jars back as he puts stuff in the fridge. It's rather clear to him, however, that Ray was rather...affected...by the experience.

"It proves helpful every so often. Val brought a healer in to help me when her brother put me on the floor, but it was nothing like that."

Pause.

"Like I said, I'm sorry that it was so rough."

[gone_byebye]

Ray smiles a little. "Thanks," he says. "I'll admit, it was kind of a rough thing to face. I've been in exactly one physical battle before this- in Tim's world- and even then I was fighting things that mostly fell like dominoes when they were hit with proton streams. This was way more personal. Talk about seeing the elephant..."

[mandercommander.livejournal.com]

Bonzo nods.

"You survived and you won. Considering what they sound like, even surviving is impressive."

He pauses.

"Thank you for showing all of this to me...and for telling me about it."

[gone_byebye]

"You're welcome," Ray says. "Glad it met with your approval."

He's smiling.