strangetrip | [GP] Shoot that poison arrow

[GP] Shoot that poison arrow

None of the guests noticed when the spiky-haired man-child in jeans and purple t-shirt, wrists wrapped in cheap leather and metal bracelets, arrived at the Madonna Inn a few hours before midnight on February 13. That, in itself, wasn't all that surprising. Eros, otherwise known as Danny Valentine, had millennia of experience doing his job without being spotted.

What was surprising was that the dude at the front desk did see him. Tall and Nondescript waved him over and then gave him a room number 'in case you wanted to rest'. But Danny didn't.

Want to, or rest. He spent the time before the clock struck midnight polishing his love gun. Not like that. He'd find a girl to spend his nameday with. He always did. No, this little beauty was made by Hephaestus himself. It shot love darts that disappeared on contact.

At midnight, kitted out with more love darts than there were people in this pink and gold monstrosity, Danny left his room and shot the first person he saw--and didn't wait to see what would happen.

No point getting a slow start. He had a lot of work to do.

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That he was teasing seemed to have gone completely unnoticed in the mess of everything serious he'd just rattled off. That was fine, he supposed. There wasn't any harm in letting her think he was frustratingly literal.

"Well, that is a relief. I hope we don't work so hard at avoiding each other that it completely backfi-" He cut himself off. He felt it this time. A sharp impact before the lust flooded him. No. No no. Not Kitty. He had so few people he thought he might count as friends as it was. He couldn't...

"You should go," he said, voice strained. face gone pale. Seconds. He had mere seconds that he was going to be able to resist this. He didn't know how to kill an angel without an angel blade or holy oil, but he was going to figure it out, so help him. "Please. I'd rather be in agony than the sort of man who throws themselves at someone who hasn't explicitly asked for it."

"Henry?" The look on his face...poor man. She thought, at first, he was saying he'd be poor company, but then she realized... "Oh, Henry." She'd heard people saying what it was like, and...

"It's okay," she told him. "Really." She squeezed his hand and leaned close to invite a kiss. "It's not your fault." No, she didn't have any romantic feelings for him, but what kind of friend was she if she couldn't give up a few kisses to spare him pain?

"Thank you," he managed before he leaned in to kiss her. He forced himself to keep it slow, to give her a kiss that said she was treasured, that he cared. His heart belonged to his wife. Even so, he still cared deeply for his friends. His fingers sank into her hair. He might not have had a choice about whether or not he had to act. He certainly had a choice about how he was going to act when he did.

In her life, Kitty had been on the receiving end of a lot of kisses. A lot of first kisses. Some fumbled, some groped, some smoldered, but none had ever been so sweet, so tender, and so completely unexpected. Rather than ending it, she gave in to it, kissed back. Kitty'd never been one for random makeouts, but he cared about her and she missed the people who cared about her like this.

For all the trauma that having any shred of control ripped from him brought, he was more grateful than he could say that it'd happened around largely compassionate people. The kiss continued a few moments longer until Henry felt like he could breathe again. Briefly, he rested his forehead against hers, the most intimate gesture he could think of that wasn't explicitly sexual.

"Thank you," he said softly once more. He hoped desperately that whatever cherub he'd managed to get on the wrong side of was finally done with him now or if the new game was to see how many times Henry had to be shot before he was reduced to tears. He wasn't the same sort of Winchester as his grandsons. It wouldn't take much more of this sort of ethereal treatment.

He seemed so distressed still that Kitty's heart went out to him. She took her hand in his and murmured, "Thank you," and then quickly kissed his cheek.

As though nothing at all distressing had passed between them, Kitty sat back and looked him in the eyes. "Are you all right now? What happened?"

The brief kiss startled a smile out of him and he ducked his head shyly, squeezing her hand in return.

"Quite alright, yes." He rubbed the side of his neck, frowning now (though more thoughtfully than before,) as he worked on cataloguing the sheer amount of bizarre that had happened to him that day. "It felt like I was shot with something." An arrow would be the cliché. He didn't think this place was above all that. Especially not today. Perhaps soon, he'd go find something to knock himself out with and whatever this was could simply continue assaulting him in his sleep without forcing him on anyone else.

Shot. Cupid. Arrows. Without thinking about it, Kitty phased as she always did at any sign of danger. Her hand still on his, slipped through it, and she pulled it away, hopefully before he noticed. She did trust him, but now wasn't the time. "Stay here. Look for a dart or an arrow or any kind of shimmer on the air. I'll be right back."

Before he could protest, Kitty moved off, mind honed by years of training already in search of what or who might have shot him. And Wyatt. And why. If he happened to look very closely, he might notice Kitty's feet didn't bend anything she stepped on.

Kitty was lucky on the first count, but not the second. He noticed her feet, caught up in taking note of everything that was happening around him. He was a scholar, not a fighter.

He let all that slide for the moment. He didn't have a reason to fear Kitty. Fear for her perhaps, but not of her. Any questions or curiosity he had about that could wait for later.

He took a deep breath and focused on the world around them, trying desperately to feel for any magic or anything angelic. It was a bit hard to focus on that when he'd spent much of the day being enchanted and apparently shot. It was like his senses were just a hair too dull for the moment. He hated it.

Once away from Henry, Kitty went insubstantial and slipped through everything in her path to scour the immediate area. It was pointless, and Kitty knew it, but she had to do something. She couldn't just let someone go around lust-bombing everyone...

After a few minutes, though, she gave up. Whatever magic it was didn't lend itself to being easily tracked, so she went back to Henry and (mostly substantial again, just phased enough to let a weapon pass through) sat down. "Let me guess. You didn't see or hear anything," she said with a little shrugging smile. It was hardly the worst invisible threat she'd ever phased.

"I'm afraid not, I'm sorry," he said apologetically, running his hand sheepishly against the back of his head. He'd need a haircut soon. He was feeling rather unkempt and not just because of the events of the day.

"If it's truly a member of the cherubim playing some games, I doubt anyone would see them unless they truly wished to be seen." And if it wasn't a cherub, then there was every chance it was a Trickster and Henry really didn't want to think about trying to fight one of those with limited resources. A cherub could be passed off as relatively benign if not annoying. He'd keep an ear out if anyone was turning up dead or eaten. It was about the best he could do.

Kitty wasn't sure which was more interesting, cherubim or the fact Henry said it so earnestly. "It seems like a strange thing for a celestial being to bother with," she said after a moment. "Have you run into cherubim before? And wasn't Cupid actually a Greek god, not an angel?"

"For the higher orders, I definitely agree, but a cherubim with a grudge or on a mischievous kick could absolutely be prone to this. They're about the only order of the Host that's still regularly active amongst people. The- We used to have contact with the occasional seraph or throne, but very rarely." He scratched his jaw in thought. "My other thought was that it might be a trickster, but it seems to just be compulsive kissing and no one's died violently yet so perhaps not."

Henry shook his head. "Cupid himself is a Greek god, but no one religion has exclusive domain over anything, much as each might think so. It could be Cupid, but that seems...well, statistically speaking it seems a lot less likely than a random cherub playing around." He pressed his lips together. "I suppose we could test that theory rather easily. If it's Cupid, an angel banishing sigil won't work on it and if it's not..."

"Okay, that makes sense." Strangely, Kitty had no problem believing both that all of the religions existed and had truth and having strong faith in the God of Israel. She'd experienced too much not to believe in the first, and needed her faith too much (even when she was pissed off at God) to reject the second. "Technically, any one result is as possible as any other result, but if there's only one Cupid, yeah.

"There's another possibility, though, which is that there are multiple versions of both Cupid and cherubim, and countless other beings capable of something like this, and that the angel banishing sigil--" How cool was that? "--that you know won't work on those angels. We've speculated about alien Celestials in our world for a lot of years. Way before the Kree and the Skrull." Not to mention that one of her oldest friends had been the avatar of a primal cosmic entity.

Henry thought about that for a long, heavy moment. "I think the first step would be to try to bait whoever or whatever this entity is into acting again. I can set up a sigil somewhere nearby or even simply set up some warding sigils somewh-" He cut himself off and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Which, of course won't be likely to work since this place doesn't seem to take kindly to anything resembling paint on the walls or an attempt to alter the decor too much." Something he'd learned very early on when he'd tried to change his room both with magic and with actual pigment.

The hotel was going to absolutely leave them defenseless against angels and demons both, wasn't it? The banishment sigil was worth a shot, but how they'd bait whatever was doing this into action was a little less clear. "Other wardings, other protections you can weave the magic into the fiber of a place, make it hidden. Sound. Heat. Cold. Things like that. Celestial and Demonic beings tend to be a little more direct about things. They can be made to be invisible to the human eye, but I don't know if whatever magic seems to run this place will be offended by that as well and remove it." He shook his head. "I'm sorry, I'm not very helpful at the moment."

"That's where science might come in handy," Kitty suggested, smiling encouragingly. "I know spirit isn't supposed to be quantifiable and people have been trying to measure the weight of the soul for millennia, but energy is energy. It might take me awhile, but with enough time, I can tune a standard EMF reader like a radio to pick up other types of energy fluctuations. Once we know what range we're dealing with, disrupting it shouldn't be that hard."

Kitty reached back to twist her hair into a knot. "I've been working on a surveillance drone. If I can get it to work, adding a scanner is a piece of cake."

Henry smiled, bright and excited about learning new things and the prospect of applying science to the supernatural instead of simply fighting magic with magic. "I swear, the more I get to know you the more brilliant you show yourself to be."

Kitty laughed, shaking her head. "I hope you won't think I'm impossibly arrogant if I say that's not the first time I've heard that."

He thought she was impossibly something, but arrogant was definitely not the word for it. "Not at all," he said, "I'm just glad someone else has had the good sense to acknowledge it."

Impulsively, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. "You're pretty awesome yourself."

If Henry hadn't been a father, he swore he wouldn't've had a clue how to react. His wife had been the sort who telegraphed every movement, someone steady and predictable. John was much more free with his affection, or the little boy Henry had known was at least.

He hugged her back almost immediately, not even thinking before he kissed her hair the same as he would've for John with the boy threw himself into his arms. "Thank you," he said, sure that she had no idea how badly he needed to hear something like that.

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[GP] Shoot that poison arrow

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA

Re: Henry Winchester - Done Been Zapped (or rather will be zapped again) - OTA