Prompt 4 (Fear and Feathers): The moon is bright tonight and reflects off of the snowy ground, illuminating everything with an ethereal glow. Destiny City feels almost safe, even at night. The fresh fallen snow seems undisturbed and brings a sense of peace. Only, nothing is ever as good as it seems, and there’s something eerie about it. After a while, it feels like someone--or something--is watching you. In the shadows of the trees, a set of milky eyes watches. Whatever it is, it’s tall and bulky. If you walk quickly, you feel it follow you but once you leave the line of trees, it disappears. If you try to approach it, a great beast will screech at you: a six foot tall snowy white owl takes flight. It may tackle or claw at you, depending on how you approach it, but it will always take flight and disappear in the night. If you choose to attack it, for the next few nights any time you look out your window you will see glowing eyes in the distance--or worse, hear it scratching to get in. Eventually, the temperature rises and the visits stop. For now.

Note: The owl is not a youma but can be used as a battle requirement for a character. It can only be used as a battle if there are two powered characters involved; you cannot write a solo and count this as a battle, and your character must be powered to count this for a battle. If you repeat the prompt with the same character, only one will count for a battle requirement. The owl will not appear to have any magical abilities and seems to simply be a very large, aggressive owl.

Gremlin shifted his weight on his paws, coiled his tail close to his body, tried to get comfortable against the lieutenant’s sleek uniform and epaulettes against his shoulders. A good perch in terms of shape, but metal and so cold in the snowy air. This whole person was still in the ‘trashy human’ category: didn’t have Cervantite’s warmth, lacked Rakovanite’s bribery techniques, totally missed the mark on Narcissus’ softness. Weissite was just A Human in A Uniform that happened to coincide with Gremlin’s ‘side’ in all this.

And Tanwyn shared space in the home Gremlin occasionally kept (the details were lost on him, mostly. He was pretty sure it was just because Tanwyn was Sad, and Nataniel being his friend wouldn’t let him suffer alone, or something. Sentimental human nonsense). It was convenient for them to go out in tandem, though not necessarily encouraged.

Rakovanite wanted his team to patrol in pairs for safety. Gremlin wasn’t interested in being a part of all that. He wouldn’t leave the house just to look for a fight or gather intel on whatever the White Moon was doing. He didn’t care what they were doing. His only interest was pizza that had cheese stretch like a cartoon, loaded with tiny pepperonis, and just oozing grease. He didn’t get why that was so much to ask for in a house full of vegetarians and healthcare professionals, but they could suck it. He’d get what he wanted one way or another.

Weissite needed a partner to go out with; Gremlin would supply, provided they stopped by that little pizzeria once they were finished. And if he had anything to say about it, they’d be finished fast.

“What are you walking so slow for?” He seethed irritably, tail lashing out to smack against the agent’s neck. “Can you pick it up so we’re not out here all night? You humans are all the same, so entitled. You think it’s easy for me to just hide a whole person’s aura for hours and hours so you can meander about at your own pace? ********. Get on with it, already.”

—-----

It was a distraction.

All of this was just a distraction, something that felt so impossible in his perception of the real world that he could almost believe it wasn’t, or that anything he’d experienced prior had been a Matrix-like implant of what reality was ‘supposed’ to be. Weissite wanted to fall into this life and smother himself in it, because he didn’t know how he’d handle existence if he couldn’t.

If his general wanted him to go out frequently, he would. If he needed to dedicate the extra thought into being discrete, making careful choices, being an observer more than an antagonizer, watching, waiting, listening, he would. Weissite wanted to see someone as an enemy, something that he could fight against, win against, overcome. It didn’t even matter who it was or what they served.

Tonight he’d gone out with the Guardian as his partner. A prickly, judgmental thing that Weissite had not taken the time to get to know much about, besides that he could conceal them.

The hope was that others wouldn’t have such a boon, and Weissite could hang back and see where they went, what they did, how they behaved, without ever being noticed, however…

“I don’t feel any other auras,” he grumbled quietly. So there wasn’t much to ‘get on with.’

—-------

Gremlin groaned in annoyance, claws scraping against metal as he rolled his eyes. “Shouldn’t have bothered coming out here in the cold if you didn’t even have a plan. What a waste!” But it wouldn’t be for him. Gremlin refused to say he’d wasted any of his time and his energy and his safety braving the snow this evening. Pizza, he reminded himself. It was for the pizza.

They’d set out in their own neighborhood. No teleportation on this one, so it was easier to hang around familiar places. They weren’t full-blown into the city proper. The general’s house was kind of a spooky and unkempt thing, among a nest of similarly disheveled houses in a neighborhood that was located in the ‘old’ part of town, where grass and weeds grew rampant and the fencing was made of warbled chain link, and the trees around the back were dark, shady, and unloved. They walked behind the houses, keeping away from the road and nearer to the treeline for obscurity’s sake.

Even if there were no auras to be felt, there were still sounds of wood and metal creaking, naked branches cracking together, the occasional… shout from someone in a house, maybe? The kind of place a self-respecting adult wouldn’t let their children walk around alone, for sure.

He wondered how many agents sent their youma to gather from places like these.

“If there’s nothing here, let’s beat it,” Gremlin advised in a snarky tone. “Have some compassion for someone with thermal regulation troubles. I don’t wanna be out here for nothing! Let’s go get that pizza from the shop downtown? We can go back to the house and take your car…”

—---

The Mauvian didn’t understand how Weissite needed this, needed something to occupy himself instead of sitting at the house, in his borrowed room, invading on his friends and their hospitality.

“Do you have somewhere to be, or something?” He demanded tartly. “If you were going to complain, you should’ve stayed at the house. I didn’t force you to join me.” He would’ve been just as happy to have Feldspar or Cervantite accompany him. Neither would cop this kind of attitude, and even if they couldn’t conceal auras, they were helpful in their own ways. “You only came along for a meal…”

Shouldn’t have been surprising. Nataniel almost always had a food bribe prepared when he needed to ask something of this ridiculous cat.

“Fine,” Weissite grumbled. But only because he didn’t feel especially distracted walking around with the wind stinging his nose and the cold stabbing his eyes. If there was nothing out here, he couldn’t force anything of merit to happen.

—------

’Fine.’ A delighted, raspy purr emanated from Gremlin’s throat as they turned and began to head down the path of gnarled trees and back to the house. He wasn’t making an unreasonable request, or anything. He needed to be kept in an appropriately warm environment, or he risked getting sick! And that wouldn’t be a pretty picture, would it? A useless Mauvian scuttling around headquarters, nose snuffly and eyes watery, not well enough to perform his duties. It’d be a bad look for that to be an agent’s fault.

“With everything on it, too, alright? The pepperonis there are those little small ones that get all crackly and turn into grease pools. You better get your own if you’re planning on having a slice. I need a whole pizza to rejuvenate the energy I’ve lost from being out here, cold and shivering-”

He cut off as he heard a crack of branches and a rustling, like something living was nearby. He didn’t sense an aura, didn’t see a person, but when Gremlin craned his head forward to lift his nose to the air, he thought he smelled something… musky, earthy. The scent of something that hid itself before a hunt and preyed upon other things, crunching into bone and blood.

But there were trees around. Could be a dog or a fox or something, and probably was, given the time of night.

Gremlin’s ears angled for the sound, and his eyes scanned the trees warily, until he thought he spotted something… Milky orbs like glass, reflecting the dim light. But as he strained to see, he blinked, and they were gone. No other sounds gave anything away.

He hunkered against the agent, and hissed out a soft, “Hurry up.”

—-----

Weissite didn’t sense, see, hear, or smell anything out of the ordinary. From his perspective, nothing had changed, besides the abrupt way the Guardian suddenly looked alert and then beckoned for him to move along. “What?” Weissite demanded quietly, taking a cue from the creature. “Do you sense something?” It wasn’t just impatience, the Mauvian barked and snapped when he was upset. This had to be something else, something that made him quiet and encouraged him to lean in close.

He kept moving, but he couldn’t help the way his eyes roved to the trees, searching. What reflected back at him wasn’t anything he’d seen in the city before. Most youma weren’t. But he’d be able to sense a youma, wouldn’t he?

The eyes lurched forward, coming with a cloak of shadows that followed from the trees and perching on a low branch just a handful of feet away from where Weissite stood.

An owl.

A massive owl that stared down at them through unblinking, milky eyes.

Weissite went still as he stared back at it. He’d never seen a natural creature so huge, certainly not one staring at him like it wanted something. If he turned his back and kept going, would it give chase? Or was it only here to supervise and see that he didn’t trod too close to its nesting area? Powered or not, there was no fighting such a creature. His best hope was that it was merely curious. He stepped forward, still on the path to the house, and kept his gaze locked firmly on the owl.

—---

Weissite stepped forward, and the owl dove from the trees.

Gremlin yowled against the agent’s ear, claws scrabbling against the metal of his epaulettes before he plopped unceremoniously down into the dense, packed, freezing snow in his attempts to pelt away. Whoever said a Mauvian shouldn’t have a prey instinct had no idea what they were talking about! When something that big, with a mouth that size dove into his vicinity, Gremlin’s body screamed at him to get away as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, his paws had already committed to something his mind hadn’t thought all the way through. Gremlin landed with a grunt and a crunch of snow as he was swallowed up to his muzzle in ice. Fear propelled him, made him bound from one hole and into another, taking leaps away from Weissite while the creature swooped in.

It would go for Weissite, it would go for Weissite, it would go for Weissite. Why would it follow a bite of a yowling cat when there was a human it could antagonize?

The cold clamped down on him like a vice, made Gremlin lose all sense of what he was doing, all feeling in his limbs. Rapidly, it was starting to seem like there’d be no escape. Even if it did dive upon the agent, how would Gremlin get through the cold unescorted? He’d die here, he’d die by owl or freezing snow, and all for a pizza.

The shadow cast over him, and all at once, Gremlin flattened himself into his snowy cavern he’d created with his weight and lurched forward, sticking himself hard into the packed snow until he was stuck face-first, with his claws desperately scratching to try and back up or get out or- did it matter? He was owl chow, either way!

—------

“Gremlin!” Weissite screamed after the Mauvian as it bounded away. “Gremlin, come back! Don’t run!” This was supposed to be a smart cat! One that knew better than to just flee when a predator was prowling around. Weissite may not have known what they’d do if it attacked, but he figured they’d be better off not running! Or at least staying together!

If that beast’s claws even scraped the Mauvian, he’d be ripped to shreds, and a sensation like dread, panic, fear, welled up like a spring at the thought of seeing this cat’s body dismembered in the snow.

He didn’t know what to do to stop it, but he had a ‘weapon’ and the advantage of not being the owl’s immediate target. Weissite let his adrenaline carry him after the cat, let force of will summon his fountain pen to his hand. It was all he could do to careen forward with all the strength he had and stab the pen into the feathered wing of the owl in hopes of just distracting it from Gremlin.

—----

It’s beak jabbed into the ground near his hind paws.

Gremlin was trembling and howling and hissing at nothing. With his body wedged into the snow, he couldn’t see or hear what was going on at his back, he just felt that the creature was there, scritching at the earth to try and get to him. “Help!” Gremlin screamed. “Do something, you worthless human! Get it off of me!”

What could Weissite do? What could a basic-a** lieutenant, barely more than a few months into the fold, do against something so sizable and eager to get a meal out them? Nothing. Weissite was useless, and they were both dead here. They were both so dead just because they hadn’t gone out with more help to do- They hadn’t even come out here to do anything! No one had anticipated facing enemies, let alone antagonistic wildlife! Over, it was over. Let it be quick, Cosmos.

Even as a gifted Mauvian, he couldn’t spare himself the tragedy-

But he was a gifted Mauvian, wasn’t he? Full of trucks and deceit and ability. Not so long ago, he’d unearthed another. He’d thought it a fun trick, but maybe not incredibly useful at the time, since he didn’t want to drain himself, but if he was ever in danger, it would be useful for an easy escape.

He could teleport. Not often and not in excess and not with a partner, but Gremlin didn’t need an agent to teleport him to safety or to summon him away from here when all he had to do was think about showing up in the general’s window, and he’d be there. Allegedly, it was a skill Mauvians had had in the past, but Gremlin certainly couldn’t ever remember utilizing it, so he’d tucked the ability away for later, when he really needed it.

He really needed it.

He didn’t want to be owl food.

He curled in his back paws as tight as he could, pinched his eyes closed, and tried to think of the magic, tried to call on an ability he had only one experience prior with, and with a little ’pop!’ he jerked away in a flurry of stars, to land on the wooden floor of the general’s house. He’d done it! He was alive, alive, alive! And Weissite could get ******** on an owl’s beak-

Ugh, no, he probably shouldn’t. He wouldn’t have to hardly do anything to inform Nataniel that he should power up and summon Weissite from here. Gremlin could conceal them fine enough so that no one would be able to detect and pinpoint auras coming from this house. And then Weissite would owe him. He could get as many greasy pizzas as he wanted out of the guy. So Gremlin skittered across the floor, seeking out the general to abruptly spit at him that he needed to call Weissite to him right now.

—----

Weissite was never even aware that the Mauvian had vanished.

One second, the cat had jumped into a hole, hissing and yowling, the next, the owl was on top of him, cawing and scratching to scrape away the snow and reveal its morsel. When Weissite stabbed the beast’s wing, it gave a great, powerful flap, enough to knock Weissite away, and send him sprawling out into the snow.

Then the owl rounded on him. It hunched and waddled, and moved with surprising speed for being a creature of flight walking on the land.

He didn’t hear Gremlin’s cries, anymore, wondered if the owl had managed to stab him with his beak into a permanent silence, and that was all he wondered. Weissite didn't think on what might happen next, only silently lamented the likely loss of the Guardian. Another thing that had fallen in his charge. He fumbled backwards, scooting across the snow as the owl dove for him, all wings and talon and cawing beak.

The tug was familiar, but not painful. It was like something had grabbed onto his shirt and lurched him forward, ripping him from icy snow and cold wind into stability and warmth.

Weissite landed on his back in the living room, staring up at Rakovanite and Gremlin, after having been teleported by his general's will back to the house. No one was even dead.

But he definitely owed the cat a pizza.