Moon Moon | Chapter 02 : The World Wide Web

[dandydelphox]

The aftermath of the fight with the Mokolé is a very long road trip from the wallow in Florida to the Appalachian mountains in Virginia. With two pickup trucks and a third car (which was hotwired and just stolen from the Mokolé that had attacked and run off without said car), everyone was careful in squeezing everyone into the vehicles. Abida's cult had... quite a few children. One of the pickup beds was taken up by the youngest clutch of crocodile babies, as well as the eldest brother crocodile that was also destined to be Mokolé. Ray drove his truck, and Moon Moon in the bed of that truck... the cars were then stuffed with the abundance of children. Abida's cult has three men, two women, and eighteen human children under the age of eight - and every stop along the way was stressful for all parties involved. It wasn't very hard for Moon Moon to decide that she did not like tiny children and snarled at them more often than not, though didn't bite for fear of evoking rage from Abida. Instead, she did her best to intimidate them off, though it's not terribly effective every time and small toddlers have a harder time knowing that growling means "no".


This is the face of terror

Still, there was enough of a stable routine to avoid any incidents. Moon Moon ate from the dumpster, occasionally allowing the human toddlers to eat some dumpster food after her (much to the parents' collective chagrin), and kept to her bed of the truck. When they were forced to camp, Moon Moon (though very clearly not the brightest thing) was able to light a fire for them. As everyone settled and rested, they were alerted to a sudden thud on the forest floor and a deep gasp for air. Going to investigate the sound, Moon Moon and Abida moved through the trees and found a young Caucasian man. Naked, shocked, confused... but able to speak English, despite not seeming to have a name or know where he came from. The two brought him to the campfire, where he was given clothes. Moon Moon then went to retrieve a deer for the group to eat, eating her portion raw and leaving the rest for someone else to cook (as well as skinning and gutting the deer brought by Abida the next morning, since none of the humans seemed to be versed in how to do that). Though a few of their questions seemed to be answered when the boy (named Arin during the evening prior) dissolved into a swarm of spiders and went to try and fit more amicably in the car. However, that... did not go over terribly well with the 18 children, so after some of Abida talking down Arin and giving him advice, he ended up sitting in the back of a pickup with Abida and her crocodile children.

Still, they completed their trek into the Appalachians and got to meet the Mage that Ray claimed to know. She had a rather pleasant and large house... which was, after examination, larger on the inside than the outside. Moon Moon began to assert dominance over Arin when he began opening drawers and not heeding the mage's request to stop, grabbing the scruff of his neck (really just wrapping her hand around the back of his neck) and pulling him off, before pushing down and holding his head down until the mage snidely commented on how she wasn't expecting guests. Still, she offered to show some of the rooms, and when Moon Moon oogled at a room filed with crystals with a large empty space in the middle and guessed that it was a ritual room, Abida decided to bring out the Canopic jars to discover more about Arin. After all, Arin was having very strange memory issues - he claimed to have no family, but had a fairly solid image in mind when he thought of a "mother". He remembered things like hamburgers and cheetoes, but missed a lot of social cues. It seemed to everyone that he had appeared out of thin air, but he knew a lot more of the staples of being American than the others (Moon Moon having lived in a cabin in the depths of the Yukon and Abida having lived as a crocodile most of the time, so it's not THAT big of a feat to begin with). He claimed that he only remembered working tirelessly on a large web, but was perfectly aware of what a car was or what television was. So to get to the bottom of it, Abida decided to delve into Arin's Mnesis, something she had never tried before, and offered for the mage to sit in on the ritual.


Imagine this perfectly symmetrical and going on literally forever

Stepping into Arin's Mnesis was a lot different than entering the proper Mokolé Mnesis. Everyone was greeted with the symmetrical and infinite "American dream", with a dog (the same dog) running out of the dog door and to the newspaper (each newspaper looking the exact same and having the exact same things on it), picking it up (at the same time) before trotting towards the adult that exited the home in a robe (impossible to tell male or female). The adult whistles for the dog (all at once), the dog barks (absolutely simultaneously), and a child comes out of the home. They are impossible to discern the sex of, and are wearing a cap on their head. They wander out into the yard, and look up just before walking face-first into a web on the single tree in the yard (it is the same tree with the same parallel branches as the other yards). A spider bit into the child's eye, and the child screamed, flailing and staggering until they tripped on the concrete sidewalk and slammed their head on the hard pavement. The blood came out in circuitboard-like patterns, evenly and at the same pace. There was an inconceivably massive voice echoing from above.

Experiment failed.

And from the sky descended eight massive and terrifying appendages, which grabbed the body and lifted it. The group 'followed' to the next part of the memory, where the body was then neatly placed on a perfectly square stack made of nothing but this one child's endless bodies. It rode a conveyor belt towards a tall and square opening that was filled with bright fire... but before the stack made it to the furnace, a single crow (no strange symmetrical laws applied to it) appeared from nowhere and hit the stack. The body we first saw fell from the stack as the crow flew off, and fell with the spider still on its face, getting tangled up in a web. It is then that the Mnesis abruptly ends, with Arin vomiting furiously and the mage ripping out her hair and going absolutely hysterical, screaming about knowing the order of all things. In the confusion, Moon Moon managed to piece together old lessons from her father and contextualize what had happened - Arin was a being created by the Weaver as an experiment to create a more ordered world, and mixed with a pattern spider before being scrapped and recycled, and appeared in human form before them the night they met. However, she had a very difficult time explaining this to everyone, unable to properly explain a single thing that happened until she finally settled down (and even then...). Moon Moon kept watch over Arin, who was convulsing (and shifting wildly through forms) in a seizure-like attack and simply waited for him to settle. When he did, he was a female, strangely enough. Ray and some of the cultists tended to the mage, who passed out after a fit of hysteria. Though they were intially intending to meet in Boulder, the bird spirit that accompanied Abida (the very same one that brought Moon Moon to assist her) told him that a Cat was waiting for their group in Baltimore - and as such the group decided to risk yet another detour in order to meet with what was presumably another Bastet. Abida decided to talk again to Shadow from the Sky, who was waiting outside.

Moon Moon joined them after their long time of waiting for the other to continue a conversation/open up to the other (reptiles, man, Moon Moon will never understand how Mokolé can just sit and WAIT all the time), and offered to break his leg to put it properly back in place. It's then that Arin displays another surprising fact about herself - she placed her hands on the freshly broken wound and sealed it right up. The bone was a little crooked, but certainly could be walked on again. Still, Arin brought up that she was hungry for blood, and asked Moon Moon to help her hunt. Moon Moon agreed, boasting that she was a much better hunter than Arin - and she went to track down a deer to kill. However, luck was certainly not on her side, as she stepped on a hibernating rattlesnake.


Spoilers: no one wins.

After receiving a ferocious bite to the face from the panicked snake, Moon Moon reeled and yowled loudly in pain, immediately attacking and tearing up the snake. Unfortunately, murdering a snake doesn't get rid of the pain of the venom, so she writhed and yowled and entered a panic state (just shy of frenzy). Attempting to help, Arin decided to do what she thought would be best - restrain Moon Moon, suck out the poisoned blood, and then use Mother's Touch to restore the blood that is lost. And she began to try this, binding Moon Moon up in webbing and grabbing her. Moon Moon panicked, thrashed, and tore at the bindings. Arin took a bite, and began sucking blood out. Completely unaware of Arin's plan, Moon Moon turned Crinos and shredded at the webbing, desperate to get out of it. Arin attempted to use Mother's Touch, but the Gift failed and a backwash of Moon Moon's current agony bounced onto him instead. Recognizing that she had failed, she wisely dissipated into regular spiders and made off through the woods towards the house, Moon Moon only having a chance to smoosh a single handful before losing sight of them entirely. Abida arrived, enormous and crocodilian, to hold Moon Moon still and understand what was happening. Mediating between the two, she learned that Moon Moon had been bitten by a snake, Arin attempted but failed to help, and Moon Moon wailed that she had been bitten and her blood sucked away. Abida sent away Arin to retrieve Ray, and held Moon Moon until she also gave up flailing and panicking, replacing roaring with miserable whining as her face completely swelled up.

Ray came down to see what went wrong, and somewhat exasperatedly, summoned a spirit of Mongoose to come to Moon Moon's aid. Where most spirits are a bit ambivalent towards assisting the Garou (depending on disposition and personal agendas), most are willing and eager to assist Moon Moon - Mongoose happily restored Moon Moon's health and said to call again if he was needed by Gaia's chosen one. With all of that settled, things calmed for a bit, until Arin approached Moon Moon and commented "You're a terrible hunter." Abida caught Moon Moon before the furious Garou tore into their pseudo-Ananasi friend, reminding her that a punishment for a lesson is better than a punishment for spite. Moon Moon nodded, agreeing not to use claws, and grabbed Arin. Arin properly took her licks, Moon Moon punching bluntly two good times to cement the sentiment.

Things remained still and awkward for the evening, as Abida said goodbye to her family and everyone else prepared for the next leg of their journey. After all, they had a rendezvous with another cat in Baltimore.



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