"But it was a piece of New Avalon's history," insisted Abby.
"I had never heard of it."
"Sadly, many hadn't, that's why I was doing a story on it."
"Then it's a success! The building's news now! Everyone's heard of it now! Journalism, right?" He nodded up to a wall mounted television which was playing news footage. The smoking crater of Avalon's Hope had been playing nonstop for the past few minutes, banners across the bottom giving details of the city's response. Channel 5 News anchor Tug Johnson had appeared a few times to give a summary of events. Abby was a little comforted that they were mentioning the name Avalon's Hope a few times. Tug had even gotten New Avalon historian Linda Grayson via video feed to talk about its historical context. Dane had smiled fondly during this segment.
The Greek man who owned the cafe had tried changing the TV channel to something else, but the smoking crater was on every New Avalon station, interrupting all daytime television. Abby had persuaded him to keep the TV on Channel 5. They were glad that the owner seemed largely oblivious of Dane and Abby's explosion-related conversation.
"I just... I can't even truly process it," she said. "We were in the building. Just minutes before. We could have been inside when it went off!"
"Luckily, due to some well done cardio, we were not," said Dane, taking another bite of his donut.
"We should have stayed! We should have seen what the authorities were doing. We should have told someone what happened."
Dane nearly choked on his donut, finally swallowing it and taking a sip of coffee. "No, no, no. Ha, no! Think of it this way: did you want to try and explain what you were doing in an off limits condemned building right before it exploded? Or how you knew it was going to explode? I have some tricks up my sleeve, but explaining harmless coincidences to police in a way that doesn't get me brought in for questioning is not one of them."
“But –“
“No,” said Dane sternly.
“How did you know it was going to blow up anyway?” said Abby. "You just said you smelled something and suddenly got from that to running for our lives."
"Ah, well, in my line of work, you pay attention to little facts like that and put them into a bigger picture. It's like I said earlier. A potassium chlorate smell I couldn't place, some suspiciously antagonistic people, and evidence left out for anyone to see. These details get the wheels of my mind turning. Villains always clean up their evidence unless it doesn't matter. And why wouldn't it matter? Because they're going to clear the board. And strange, unexplained smells in empty areas always cry 'explosion' to me. I've learned some good safety instincts. I mean, danger is part of my line of work and it's exciting, but I'm not going to be stupid about it. Well, not ridiculously stupid about it."
"Dane, what is your line of work?"
He paused in his eating, staring at the donut in front of him. "How would you react to finding out that the world is much stranger than you would think?" His voice was almost distant.
"What, like weird people who try to blow up buildings with me inside them?" said Abby. "Because that's still freaking me out."
"What if I told you, that sometimes the news hasn't reported things correctly?" he said. "Or more specifically, they just report what they know and miss the story."
"What do you mean?"
"Let's take Egan Street," he said.
"Avalon's Hope," she corrected him.
"Sure," said Dane. "What's the news story?"
"That's easy. Unknown men trespassed on condemned property, then used an incredibly large amount of explosives to destroy a historic building while there were people still in it. Arson, conspiracy to commit murder, local history angle, possibly a terrorism lead in."
"And what other details?" prompted Dane.
"I know they were doing some type of evil magic ritual in it," said Abby.
"And how do you know that?"
"Because we were in the room right before it happened. We saw how the room was setup. At least for a few minutes, before we had to run to not be blown up," she said.
"So you have no evidence of the magic?"
"I was there!" she said.
"Do you have proof of that?"
"I have my camera. I got some footage through the dirty window."
"How well can you see the details on dirty window footage? Can you see enough to show what you just told me? Can you even prove that's Avalon's Hope?"
"No," she said glumly.
"What about the explosives? Can prove them?"
"Maybe?" she said. "It depends on what the police say."
"And if they are not saying anything? Or if they don't want to announce the presence of explosives in a broken down building in the bad part of town?"
"They'd hide it?" said Abby. Then she suddenly remembered that the city wanted the building destroyed so they could redevelop. She wasn't one for conspiracies, but the destruction was in the city's best interest. They might not want to look deeply into the cause.
"Maybe the police don't want to cause a panic until they know something for sure," said Dane. "Who knows? But say you're not getting anything from them. Can you prove it was explosives and not a gas leak or an act of God?"
Abby sighed. "You know I couldn't." She was annoyed, but she was seeing his point.
"So if you took this to an editor, would they take this story?"
"Yes!" said Abby. "It's the truth! Journalism is about the truth!"
Dane kept staring at her. He raised his eyebrow.
"No," she said in frustration. "They'd make me trim it back to just a building was destroyed. Just verifiable facts. They'd probably see the Avalon's Hope angle and want a historic tragedy article, not an explosive magic conspiracy article. They wouldn't want to risk credibility by saying anything that couldn't be backed up by facts."
"Exactly," said Dane. "So how often do you think things are reported in this town that miss what really went on? Not just explosions, but other notable but inconsequentially reported news: fires, assault, arrests, burglaries, murder."
"So you're saying those are always a symptom of something weirder?" she said. "There are no real crimes of that sort?"
"Oh no, there are definitely crimes of that sort! I'm just saying that sometimes only the most normal and visible part of the weirdest events get reported. You see someone stabbed in an alley, not that they were stabbed by cybernetic death robots for the schematics on the flash drive the person carried. Context is missing."
"So," said Abby, "you're... what, like some cover up group? You find this stuff and keep it out of the news?"
"Good guess," said Dane, "but no. I think there is a cover up when things are too big to ignore, but that's someone else's job. My job is to investigate and stop the bad things and bad people... the weird bad things and bad people nobody else can stop."
"You what?"
"Abby," said Dane gravely, "I fight the forces of evil."
She stared at him in disbelief. Somehow the fact that he could say such a thing with a straight face was more unbelievable than the fact of it being true.
"Well, maybe not all the forces of evil," said Dane, his expression softening as he scratched his head and backpeddled slightly. "I deal mostly with mad scientists, magicians, robots, demons, cybernetic beings trying to learn how to love... y'know, that sort of thing. Dangerous science and runaway magic. Maybe they're not all quite evil, but, for example, if Professor Honnenheim keeps making death rays, he might as well be evil. And have you ever seen a cyborg trying to figure out love? It probably would be less destructive if it were learning about death."
"You're a madman," said Abby.
"Maybe!" said Dane with a sly smile. "But that's unrelated to what I'm telling you."
"You're telling me that... that you fight sorcerers and robots?"
"Sometimes even monsters!" he said enthusiastically.
"How much do I owe for the bill?" said Abby, grabbing her purse. "Because I think it's time I go."
"You can go
," said Dane, "but then you'll never know if what I'm saying is true. If you stay, you can see it for yourself."
"Even if it was true, who would believe me? I don't even believe you."
"Sometimes we just need to know things for ourselves," said Dane. "And I'm feeling magnanimous. I've been working alone for a while and I miss having another set of eyes. How would you like to take a day and find out how things are in my world?"
"I think you miss having someone to explain things to," said Abby. "You're like a demented Sherlock."
"I'm not denying that might be true," he said, "but I'm not asking you to be my shrink. Just my partner. My ride-along if you like!"
"You mean sidekick," said Abby.
"No costume required," said Dane with a smile, grabbing another donut.
"Are we going to be in any more exploding buildings?" said Abby.
"Probably not," Dane said sadly.
"That's a good thing for me," said Abby.
"Oh, then probably not!" Dane said more confidently.
She rolled her eyes while he took a bite of his donut. "Those things are going to kill you, you know."
"My dear Abby," Dane said. "I've faced down lasers, demons, monsters, mutants, robots of nearly every shape and size, entities that defy any sort of classification, and just a short while ago you even personally witnessed me narrowly escaping an exploding building. Do you really think I'm going to meet my final end due to my eating habits?"
In the end, she agreed. She wasn't sure if it was the influence of New Abby, if she was feeling reckless (possibly due to New Abby's influence as well), or if the shock from the explosion caused her to start making poor decisions. Either way, she wasn't doing anything else for the rest of the day and the subject of her news story had just been obliterated. She had time to kill. It wasn't at all that she might be curious or Dane might be convincing. She was sure that neither of those had influenced her.
They took a cab down to Chinatown; the distance was short and they could have walked, but their legs were still a little wobbly. Once in one of New Avalon's famous yellow cabs, Dane swiped his credit card on the touch screen console in the backseat of the cab. The city was implementing them to all the cabs now in an effort to have passengers interact as little as possible with cab drivers. The drivers themselves could stay behind their bulletproof glass, keeping their music and smells to themselves. It mostly worked; the music stayed up front, but certain smells seemed to penetrate no matter the material.
“So what’s our next move?” asked Abby. She decided she should try to at least figure out the mode of Dane's insanity.
“We’re visiting my friend Wong,” said Dane. He pulled out the small statue they had found in the ritual room. “I think this is our only lead. Unless the case finds us.”
"But what exactly are you investigating?"
"At first it was just the apartment, but now I feel like we should be following the magic. And why the magic was worth blowing up a building to cover up."
"So something occurs to me. How did you even know about the apartment and the building?" she asked. "I'm mean, it's not like they did anything of note or were even there very long. No smoke or fire until after we got out of there. I was only there by accident. But you just showed up and knew exactly what apartment to go to. Do you have some sort of... I don't know, a magic radar?"
"Magic radar?" he asked with amusement.
"Or something like that," Abby said awkwardly.
"I was told about it in a dream," said Dane.
"A dream?" said Abby incredulously.
"Oh, a magic radar is plausible, but tell her it's a dream and she finds that unreasonable."
"Point taken," she said, "but a dream?"
"Dreams are informative things," said Dane. "Sure some of them are meaningless, but in others you can really learn some interesting things. You can learn the past, the future, your deepest fears, or even where you lost your phone!"
"So what happened in this dream? I'm guessing it wasn't a phone-finding dream."
"Well, in this one I was on Jeopardy with Alex Trebek," he said.
"Are you sure it wasn't one of the meaningless ones?" she suggested.
"Ah, but it got me to the building, didn't it?" said Dane. "And think, if I had ignored the dream, who would have opened the window for you?"
Abby frowned. If nobody opened the window for her, she might have still been in the building when it exploded.
"So you just have dreams and then go wherever they say?" Abby asked.
"It's not always dreams," said Dane. "In fact, it's rarely a dream. I just get these messages from... somewhere. Something in the universe gives me a message or puts me where I need to be, then I do what comes naturally and stop things. The messages are always varied and... strange."
"How did you sign up for that job?" Abby asked.
"I never actually signed up," said Dane, "It's actually just my life. From a very young age, weird stuff has always happened to me. I was always in the right place at the right time for the wrong things. Ever since I was seven and my treehouse gang thwarted Old Man McNealson and the Chainsaw Chipmunks of Evergreen Place, it's been my job to stop evil and madmen."
"What? Chainsaw chipmunks?" said Abby with confusion.
"The point is, I'm some type of nexus for strangeness. It's hard for me to go to the grocery store without stumbling over some weird plot to mutate half a city block. When I was sixteen, I had a succubus who would come talk to me in the middle of the night. She didn't try to seduce me or anything like, she simply just came to hang out after her shift was done. So for a whole summer, she'd show up about two in the morning and just complain about her job and her boss. This stuff has happened my whole life. The older I got, the more I realized that it was my job to stop the crazy stuff. I couldn't let people down."
"So it's your job to fight evil save the world?" she said. "That seems a lot to lay on a single person's shoulders."
"It is and it isn't," he said. "Usually it's not so bad. It's typically small scale things. I only save the entire city sometimes. Usually it's just about saving a few lives. That's not to say the responsibility never felt like too much. I admit that in my early twenties I did have a phase where I didn't want to do it. I was all depressed and bitter, with all the 'why me' nonsense. Luckily, that phase didn't last long. I mean, what was I going to do if not this? Get some desk job where I stared at a computer for eight hours a day? I could do that... or I could see some of the most amazing things on the planet, save lives, and get to use cool gadgets. Which would you choose?"
"You started out sounding mature, but by the end of it you came around to sounding like a child again," she said.
Dane grinned. "If becoming mature means I can't fight villains, robots, and magic, I don't want to grow up."
Abby rolled her eyes and looked at the statue in his hand. "So who's Wong and how is he going to help us?"
"Wong's... well, you'll see. He's a friend. He helps me when he can. When it comes to magic, he's one of my best leads. If he doesn't know, he can usually tell us what direction to head in. Unless it's more Alastair's area..." He trailed off with a frown.
"Who's Alastair?"
"Oh, look, we're here," said Dane, tapping in a tip on the touchscreen. "No time for questions!"
Wong
Wong's shop was not exactly an easy place to find. The chances of someone finding it by accident were low and further diminished by magic. For the most part, if you didn't need to find Wong's, you weren't going to find it. But if you had never been there before and your need was particularly great, then maybe you might get lucky. Wong enjoyed having his own hidden spot within a dense city.
Even with directions, the small shop was difficult to locate. It was hidden down two "streets" that were really glorified alleys. They were so tight that only a small car or motorcycle could get down them without overturning trash bins and store displays. The streets curved and would have probably been blocked off with cement pylons
to insure pedestrian-only traffic if the city planners even realized the street was there.
The storefront was nondescript and didn't reflect the shop inside. The windows made it look rundown and in need of a wash. There was no English writing on the storefront, which was not at all strange, since the shop was in the heart of Chinatown. Nothing outside gave any indication of what it sold. The windows were dirty enough and covered with enough signs and pictures that nobody could see into the shop without going inside.
The bell on the door rang as Dane went inside. Following after him, Abby was assaulted by a hundred odors at once. Most of the scents were pleasant, a mélange of herbs and bark, flowers and incense, powders and potpourri. Dane sneezed once and only once, as he did every time he had ever entered the shop. Abby's eyes watered, but she did not sneeze.
After wiping her eyes, she grabbed her camera and began filming the walls of the shop. The walls were covered with shelves holding glass jars, potted plants, mortars, pestles, trowels, shears, incense burners, various cooking implements, hookahs, and more. What shelf and wall space not taken up with those things were covered with the various greatest hits of Eastern iconography: Buddhas, bagua mirrors, Taoist immortals, brushwork scrolls, thangkas, and more.
“No! No film! No film!” called out the proprietor in accented English.
"I keep telling her that, but she is very persistent!" said Dane, up at the counter with the proprietor. "I kind of admire that persistence."
Abby sighed and walked over to the counter. Behind the counter was a larger space filled with lines of shelves containing an even more endless expanse of jars, cans, bottles, and boxes. But it was the proprietor himself that caught her attention and confused her.
“The honorable Mr. Monday, how you once again grace my humble shop,” said proprietor.
“Wong, this is my friend Abby,” said Dane.
“Ah, much pleased to meet you Ms. Abby,” said Wong.
“Uh, I’m pleased to, uh, meet you too,” forced out Abby.
She was still in shock from his appearance. She looked him up and down again, as if another look would dispel the illusion in front of her eyes. It was undeniable, but it made her uncomfortable. Wong looked like every Asian stereotype jammed together. He was maybe five foot four and had long black hair that was braided behind him. His chubby face had a thin Fu Manchu mustache. He wore thick glasses and he had a very pronounced overbite. He wore colorful green and gold silk clothes that were some sort of traditional Chinese dress. When he talked, he even sounded like the terrible accents done in movies that seemed worse than anyone could ever actually have. She wasn’t sure how someone so stereotypical could exist.
Manic Monday: (Dane Monday 1) Page 5
