happy turkey day: also, dangerous heroes
Nov. 23rd, 2006 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardHappy Thanksgiving, all! I have no fic, but that's because I've been working assiduously on my NaNovel. I can give you a sneak peek, though:
When Vittoria had been fifteen she’d spent a year on the streets of San Francisco, staying in the bad parts of the city and shying away from anyone in uniform or anyone that looked like they’d be happier in one. That was when she’d learned that field agents, FBI and Pariah both, were the ones that fit in with the crowds on the streets far too well. Some of them she could pick out from the gangbangers and the drug dealers and the mobsters, but most of them slotted into their chosen positions flawlessly, emerging only when they had a foot on the neck of some Yakuza boss and a gun notched carefully into the base of their forehead, just between the eyes, where it would do the quickest damage. None of them had been looking for Vittoria, though; west of the Mississippi, Pariah’s goals were much clearer, much less complicated. They went after murderers, drug dealers, gangs and mafia, serial killers and terrorists, anyone with a grudge against the world – or better yet, the U.S. of A. – anyone with a grudge and a seed of magic, a piece of genen or paragen tech, anything that was too weird to be handled by the FBI and too secure to be handed off to the local police departments Special Crimes Unit. Vittoria had tangled with them once or twice, and there was no doubting they’d recognized who and what she was – genens were rare, Pariah X-series unmistakable – but they hadn’t given a damn about her so long as she was keeping to herself and keeping her hands off national security. The West Coast especially had too many things to deal with on their own to worry about the East Coast’s missing genetically engineered killing machines, so long as said genen killers weren’t killing indiscriminately. Typical East Coast-West Coast rivalry existed even within the secret walls of Pariah, divided as it was between Field Ops and Research – impossible to break back east, nearly nonexistent in the west.
The Midwest, though, that was something different. They were a closed off society, entangled more with the East Coast offices than with the West Coast bureaus as far as they were entangled with Pariah at all. The American heartland bristled with arcana Americana, too deeply connected to the land itself for the people to respect the government’s interference in it, like wildlife conservationists, only Alaska’s grizzlies and Washington’s pumas had nothing on Kansas’s imported bollas and Indiana’s wendigos. Vittoria would have thought they would have hated the hunters as much as they hated Pariah, or even more, but she learned different in her first year on the job. Barney had explained it to her much more clearly one night when they sat on surveillance in front of house currently home to a poltergeist, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Ohio.
“We’re born to this,” he’d said, face still cut and bruised from Maribeth. He shifted in his seat, bandaging around his ribs creaking with the movement, and he let out a tiny hiss of pain almost immediately bitten off. “Most of us – we’re born to this. We don’t know anything else. Most of us have our own territory, but that doesn’t limit us, we’ll go wherever we’re needed, and we have bases. I grew up in Maine. Bobby MacBride lives in North Carolina; he lost a leg in a hunt years ago and can’t do it anymore, but he trains the best damn hunters you’ll ever see and his nephew Biggs is better than Bobby was in his prime. We’re part of the land, part of the ebb and flow of the tide, prey as much as predator, part of food chain. We hunt the beasties and the beasties hunt us, and sometimes we win and sometimes they do. The people tolerate Pariah at best because they’re strangers. At worst they’ll run them out because that’s exactly what they are, and how the hell are they supposed to know what’s right and what’s accepted? They’re not part of it. We are. We always have been.
“And they know that, those of them that know anything at all about the supernatural, or can guess. They know we’re the ones that keep them safe in their beds of a night, even if we get their too late to do anything more than take something out before it hurts someone else. At the very least we’re civilians, not some secret government agency with a badge and a grudge. At the best we’re just like them, only with extra training and a little more firepower. Go to the right places and the cops will turn a blind eye to you, even help you if they know more than they’ll usually let on. They trust us because we’re human, and clearly so. We drink, we fight, we fuck, we bleed, we live and we die. We don’t know how to pass, and they know that, so they make it easier for us. We don’t pretend to be something we aren’t for the pleasure of it, just for the need. We live, we breathe, we die – we’re part of the earth and have been for millennia before Pariah was even dreamed of. Someone has to keep the monsters away in the night, and who better than a hunter, trained and bred?”
Vittoria turned to him in the dark, revolver loaded with blessed silver bullets a heavy weight in her lap. Despite the darkness, Barney’s face had the glow of conviction. “What if we’re not human?” She didn’t add you aren’t. She didn’t have to add I’m not.
Barney reached out for her and put his good hand over hers. Vittoria’s eyes closed slightly at the touch – his skin was cool from the night air, hers fever-hot as any X-series – then she was able to meet his steady blue gaze. “Does it really matter?” he said. “You’re not government, and they can’t tell.”
Vittoria stiffened slightly and pulled her hands back. “Can’t you?” she said, and lapsed into silence, turning all her attention back to the house, waiting for the telltale sounds of smashing china and breaking wood. Barney followed her gaze, touching the pistol he was balancing on one knee, but she could still feel all his attention fixated on her.
When Vittoria had been fifteen she’d spent a year on the streets of San Francisco, staying in the bad parts of the city and shying away from anyone in uniform or anyone that looked like they’d be happier in one. That was when she’d learned that field agents, FBI and Pariah both, were the ones that fit in with the crowds on the streets far too well. Some of them she could pick out from the gangbangers and the drug dealers and the mobsters, but most of them slotted into their chosen positions flawlessly, emerging only when they had a foot on the neck of some Yakuza boss and a gun notched carefully into the base of their forehead, just between the eyes, where it would do the quickest damage. None of them had been looking for Vittoria, though; west of the Mississippi, Pariah’s goals were much clearer, much less complicated. They went after murderers, drug dealers, gangs and mafia, serial killers and terrorists, anyone with a grudge against the world – or better yet, the U.S. of A. – anyone with a grudge and a seed of magic, a piece of genen or paragen tech, anything that was too weird to be handled by the FBI and too secure to be handed off to the local police departments Special Crimes Unit. Vittoria had tangled with them once or twice, and there was no doubting they’d recognized who and what she was – genens were rare, Pariah X-series unmistakable – but they hadn’t given a damn about her so long as she was keeping to herself and keeping her hands off national security. The West Coast especially had too many things to deal with on their own to worry about the East Coast’s missing genetically engineered killing machines, so long as said genen killers weren’t killing indiscriminately. Typical East Coast-West Coast rivalry existed even within the secret walls of Pariah, divided as it was between Field Ops and Research – impossible to break back east, nearly nonexistent in the west.
The Midwest, though, that was something different. They were a closed off society, entangled more with the East Coast offices than with the West Coast bureaus as far as they were entangled with Pariah at all. The American heartland bristled with arcana Americana, too deeply connected to the land itself for the people to respect the government’s interference in it, like wildlife conservationists, only Alaska’s grizzlies and Washington’s pumas had nothing on Kansas’s imported bollas and Indiana’s wendigos. Vittoria would have thought they would have hated the hunters as much as they hated Pariah, or even more, but she learned different in her first year on the job. Barney had explained it to her much more clearly one night when they sat on surveillance in front of house currently home to a poltergeist, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Ohio.
“We’re born to this,” he’d said, face still cut and bruised from Maribeth. He shifted in his seat, bandaging around his ribs creaking with the movement, and he let out a tiny hiss of pain almost immediately bitten off. “Most of us – we’re born to this. We don’t know anything else. Most of us have our own territory, but that doesn’t limit us, we’ll go wherever we’re needed, and we have bases. I grew up in Maine. Bobby MacBride lives in North Carolina; he lost a leg in a hunt years ago and can’t do it anymore, but he trains the best damn hunters you’ll ever see and his nephew Biggs is better than Bobby was in his prime. We’re part of the land, part of the ebb and flow of the tide, prey as much as predator, part of food chain. We hunt the beasties and the beasties hunt us, and sometimes we win and sometimes they do. The people tolerate Pariah at best because they’re strangers. At worst they’ll run them out because that’s exactly what they are, and how the hell are they supposed to know what’s right and what’s accepted? They’re not part of it. We are. We always have been.
“And they know that, those of them that know anything at all about the supernatural, or can guess. They know we’re the ones that keep them safe in their beds of a night, even if we get their too late to do anything more than take something out before it hurts someone else. At the very least we’re civilians, not some secret government agency with a badge and a grudge. At the best we’re just like them, only with extra training and a little more firepower. Go to the right places and the cops will turn a blind eye to you, even help you if they know more than they’ll usually let on. They trust us because we’re human, and clearly so. We drink, we fight, we fuck, we bleed, we live and we die. We don’t know how to pass, and they know that, so they make it easier for us. We don’t pretend to be something we aren’t for the pleasure of it, just for the need. We live, we breathe, we die – we’re part of the earth and have been for millennia before Pariah was even dreamed of. Someone has to keep the monsters away in the night, and who better than a hunter, trained and bred?”
Vittoria turned to him in the dark, revolver loaded with blessed silver bullets a heavy weight in her lap. Despite the darkness, Barney’s face had the glow of conviction. “What if we’re not human?” She didn’t add you aren’t. She didn’t have to add I’m not.
Barney reached out for her and put his good hand over hers. Vittoria’s eyes closed slightly at the touch – his skin was cool from the night air, hers fever-hot as any X-series – then she was able to meet his steady blue gaze. “Does it really matter?” he said. “You’re not government, and they can’t tell.”
Vittoria stiffened slightly and pulled her hands back. “Can’t you?” she said, and lapsed into silence, turning all her attention back to the house, waiting for the telltale sounds of smashing china and breaking wood. Barney followed her gaze, touching the pistol he was balancing on one knee, but she could still feel all his attention fixated on her.