The Pumpkin Thief (8 ) : Every now and then, a few pumpkins will disappear from a local pumpkin patch. It’s probably just some teenagers playing pranks, or some wild animals, or—oh, this is Destiny City. Of course there are rumors that it might actually be some furry, moss covered behemoth from the forest. And, there’s credence to that rumor, because maybe you’ve seen it, too. It’s a strange creature that keeps its distance. It almost looks like it might be a skinny, malformed bear but there’s something just off about it. Sometimes, it just steals pumpkins and you find their carcasses strewn about not far off. Sometimes, it throws the pumpkins—at people, at places. Sometimes, it carves out a hideous face and wears the pumpkin like a mask. It cannot be caught, and it will always run off into the wood if engaged. Sometimes, you can hear a strange, ghoulish bellow as it disappears into the forest.
Growing up in Destiny City, Sable had heard plenty of nonsense about the weird cryptids who allegedly ran amok all over town. Some monster or other lived out near the reservoir. A different one haunted city hall, or the library, or wherever some intrepid storyteller felt like slandering today. Yet another stalked through the alleys of the gayborhood, probably trawling for a good time like anybody else and instead making a scene by virtue of being a twelve-foot-tall, fire-breathing, undead velociraptor-jackalope with a hook for a hand and a hankering for cute boys, rather than a normal (human) person.
Needless to say, Destiny City cryptid lore sounded perfectly ludicrous and she’d never put much stock in any of it. Spurious tales made up by bored idiots looking to get a laugh at the expense of idiots who’d look at the ceiling if you told them somebody had written “gullible” up there.
Since joining the Negaverse, however, Andesine had tried to look at things more closely.… Tried to consider them from more enlightened perspectives, with her newfound knowledge of youma, senshi, starseeds, and so on fresh in her mind.… Tried to hunt down ways that she could make a better name for herself, stick out from all the other lieutenants and prove that she could handle the Negaverse’s power, that she deserved to have more of it in her hot little hands. Getting abruptly yote into the sticky dimension with all the nasty gargoyles, getting kidnapped to Astraya out of nowhere and doing little more than name a knockoff Tamagotchi, getting to the scene quite late when that White Moon senshi had popped a set of giant wings while fighting off the Blights—all of these misadventures………had been experiences, she supposed?
But none of them truly felt like she’d accomplished anything—and that was where the so-called Pumpkin Thief came in.
From what Andesine had heard from her gossipy coworkers at the theatre, said local cryptid surely sounded like a youma gone rogue. They were such piteous things, really. There had to be smarter specimens of youma out there, but Andesine had yet to meet any personally. All the ones she’d run into so far had been wild, unruly, truly little more than fancy-looking beasts—and if one of them had gotten harmed in some way that damaged its cognition, then would that not have explained the Pumpkin Thief? Chasing after pumpkins for the momentary rush of chowing down on savory-sweet plant-viscera and devouring literal seeds rather than starseeds? Some senshi and their knights had illusion-based magic up their sleeves. Perhaps they saved their own skins by afflicting the youma on their tail with illusions that it couldn’t shake off.
Perhaps some poor youma had been injured and degraded into this, and it needed the help of a Negaverse officer to get back into Negaspace, back to the Rift where it could heal (……maybe. ……Andesine thought. ……Hoped. ……Needed to verify with literally anyone but herself, but had not done so as yet). If nothing else, Andesine figured it couldn’t hurt to investigate.
The trap she’d laid outside of town was hardly complicated. Some ropes hidden under very strategically placed leaves, with a large pumpkin right at the center. She wasn’t entirely certain of the knots she’d tied—all the tutorials on Youtube and WikiHow had felt more baffling than helpful—but as she lurked amongst some bushes, Andesine told herself not to worry so much. She had this! So what if her knots maybe weren’t exactly perfect? She’d get this all right sooner or later, probably.
genovianprince_
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2022 11:26 pm
Monoceros hummed lightly to himself as he went to go investigate the pumpkin patch. It didn't seem like anything truly interesting was happening—something was stealing pumpkins. People had reported seeing some kind of cryptid-esque creature, that he suspected was a youma, but who knew, maybe chupacabra was real and he liked pumpkins.
Or maybe it's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! And he's taking his minions back home to take over the world! Or something. He snickered at himself thinking that, if nothing else, his bat wings sort of totally fit in with the seasonal aesthetic. He didn't usually like them, but for the time being, they felt like they fit. Sort of. Mostly just because Halloween was right around the corner.
He felt the presence of another officer and drifted towards them, then perked up when he recognized her silhouette.
"Andesine?" he called out, grinning. He liked her, even if he hated what he'd done, now. That he'd brought her into this world as one of the darker beings.
He hoped someday she'd see the light. But he couldn't discuss it with her. Not if he valued his plan of getting out.
"Picking out your next jack-o-lantern without a bunch of three-year-olds underfoot?" he asked jokingly.
Although she was trying to stay focused on the task at hand—which currently mostly involved watching the trap, waiting for something, anything, to happen—Andesine perked up at the approach of a familiar aura. Something always felt so warm and pleasant about being around others of the Negaverse……but she broke into a genuine smile when she saw who it was.
“Monoceros!” Excited or not, she kept her voice down and motioned for him to join her behind her cover. The sun was getting low, but there was still enough light for her to see the bat-wings attached to his lower back—and oh, how she yearned to advance herself like he clearly had. “Promotion looks good on you. Seasonal too, but mostly, it makes you look powerful. How new is it?”
He hadn’t had it when she’d last seen him—but in fairness, it had been a while since she’d last seen him. She’d kept busy and so, apparently, had he.
Peering back out at her trap, she added, “Well, hopefully, I won’t be the one picking the jack-o-lantern.… I mean, I hope they’re fresh enough to lure the thing out—the pumpkin thief thing, I mean.”
genovianprince
Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2022 12:19 am
Monoceros walked over quietly and crouched next to her for approximately three seconds before deciding he was not in the mood and just fully sat on the ground, crossing his legs.
"It's been, like. A couple months? But I kinda dropped off the face of the Earth for a little while there." Literally. He shivered. "Just needed some time, y'know?"
He hummed lightly at her answer, shifting a bit to get a good look into the distance. "Oh, right, the creature. I heard about that. Suspect it's a youma that needs a home?"
Listening attentively, Andesine nodded and frowned—out of genuine sympathy. A rarity for her admittedly, but she liked Monoceros. As uncommon as it was for her to feel genuine sympathy for too many people, it was even more of a precious anomaly to find someone like Monoceros in any workplace: someone kind, rather than simply being nice (the way Sable/Andesine made herself behave around people), but with enough backbone to avoid being crushed under the heel of everybody else’s boot.
He must’ve had that necessary grit, making it all the way to Eternal Senshi—but even so, Andesine could see how that might have stressed him out. With a small smile, she extended a hand to pat his shoulder (but held up to wait for permission; Monoceros was sensitive, after all, and just touching him out of nowhere might not have gone well for him). “Well, whatever time you needed? It’s good to have you back.”
At the sound of something rustling, she perked up—but pouted when it seemed to have been the wind and nothing more. Still, she huffed and explained, “Not a home so much as a trip back to Negaspace. I mean, think about it: youma hunt energy and starseeds. The pumpkin thief has a description that sounds like a youma, except for how it’s hunting pumpkins. If it is a youma, then that could be a sign that something’s wrong with it and it needs help.”
Not that Andesine knew what kind of help it could even get.… Did youma have a veterinarian equivalent?…… Eh, questions that Future Andesine could worry about, honestly.
genovianprince
Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2022 12:57 am
Monoceros hummed softly and shifted closer to her, allowing her touch to land on his shoulder. Damn, he really did like her. It was too upsetting to think about how much he liked some of the people here, especially when he'd brought to Ashanite himself. He'd done that to her. And now she was going to be another person he was just going to ******** leave. After he'd stepped in and ruined her life. Damnit, he really was an awful person, wasn't he?
He shuddered, not shifting away from her touch and feeling worse for it. "Heh. Maybe someone named Linus got into a youma," he suggested, still thinking about his dumb Charlie Brown joke. He turned to her slightly to grin and wiggle his brows. "Never know what kinds of traits might stick around, right?"
... Man, he really hoped she knew what he was talking about. People their age? You had no idea what stuff they might know or not know from things earlier than the 90s. Depended on so many factors, he couldn't even begin to guess. So he really just hoped that Andesine had parents that liked Charlie Brown or something, because he did not want to be making a fool of himself, here.
Fortunately for Monoceros, his joke did fall on an appreciative audience: Andesine may not have enjoyed It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown more than the Charlie Brown Christmas special, but she knew the reference enough to laugh at it. “Maybe I should’ve brought a blue blanket to set up with the pumpkins, then,” she quipped back, smiling easily in a way that she didn’t manage for most people. That kind of way with people was just one of the many things that Monoceros brought to his role as an Eternal Senshi, she supposed. “He could just carry it off, I guess, but supposedly, that’s what he’s going to do with the pumpkins, so…I don’t……I don’t see……”
As she looked up and back toward the clearing, Andesine trailed off, struck speechless by the sight before her. Skinny, almost mangled-looking, shaggy, moving on all fours, overall kind of like a bear but somehow also distinctly not a bear—and absolutely going to town on the pumpkin. While one hand trembled around the rope for her trap, she used the other to tug on Monoceros’s sleeve. Whispering, she asked, “It…do you feel a youma aura on that thing?”
Because Andesine sure didn’t. And if it wasn’t a youma, then……what was it?
genovianprince
Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2022 3:43 pm
Her easy response made his heart jump with elation, and he couldn't help but beam broadly back at her. Nice! He loved, always loved, being able to just click with people.
Even if he was planning on leaving, he loved it. Maybe he'd be able to convince her to leave. He doubted it, but... He would always try.
As she trailed off, though, he looked back out and... Huh. Yeah, no, that was really ******** weird.
"It's definitely not a youma," he whispered, face paling. This... this wasn't good, was it? What the hell was that thing? Should they worry? It was only stealing pumpkins... but that was how it usually started, wasn't it? If it was perhaps some kind of alien animal that was similar to Earth bears, it could get too comfortable around humans and start getting into trash cans. Into cars and homes!
"Alien creature, maybe?" he muttered under his breath, keeping a lid on his other concerns for now. Andesine seemed to have a trap ready, and he nodded at her. May as well try it.
Andesine did indeed have her trap, and from the look of things, the pumpkin thief should’ve still been within the ring.
But the more she looked at the Pumpkin Thief, the more Andesine’s hands trembled around the rope. Even with some of the youma that she’d seen, this thing freaked her out somehow. Youma, at least, generally made sense and even mostly felt right, when you knew what you were dealing with. Blobular impish creatures that looked like the ugly-cute demon-things from some Cuphead video games her brother liked. Squash-faced little kitties with longer talons than they should’ve had and maybe some little bat wings. Scantily clad sexy ladies with their skin done in blue or purple or polka dots, and dragon tails curling down from their impeccably trim, devastatingly embraceable-looking waists. So many youma seemed to follow the “hat on a hat” or “you got your chocolate in my peanut butter” philosophies of design when it came to their appearances, but everything about them remained overall discrete and therefore, not particularly upsetting to behold.
But something about the Pumpkin Thief just felt so……wrong. Like that Uncanny Valley thing, where photorealistic art of people or people-shaped robots tried too hard, got too close to looking human despite technically not being so. And Andesine’s hands trembled on the rope—but Monoceros’s words yanked her out of her own head and back into the present moment. A quick deep breath, and she tugged on the rope.
Unfortunately, she’d learned how to tie the knots on youtube and wikihow, from some tutorials that hadn’t explained the knots especially well. When Andesine tugged, instead of tightening the rope around the Pumpkin Thief’s legs, the knots decided to come undone. The rope plopped out of the sky, deader than disco, doornails, and Diana ******** Vreeland.
Startled, the Thief snatched up what remained of the pumpkins and took off, deeper into the forest from whence it had come.
“Oh, no,” Andesine lamented, staring up at where her trap should have taken the thing, then down at where the rope had landed. “So much for all my years in Girl Scouts.… Making us sell cookies and learn how to sew instead of tying knots and stuff.…”
Would a joke help her feel better? ……Well, it wasn’t working yet, but maybe it would?
genovianprince
Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:44 pm
The hair on the back of Monoceros' neck stood on end. That thing.... whatever it was, it made him want to run far, far away. And it seemed like Andesine didn't really want to acknowledge it, either. Which was totally fair.
"Oh, yeah, that is annoying. I wanted to be in girl scouts as a kid because I thought the stuff they did looked more fun than camping," he admitted lightly, standing up with a groan. Ugh, ******** joints. "Never really a boy's boy."
He picked at his shorts, frowning slightly. He missed when it used to be a skirt, back when he'd first started.
"Wanna hitch a ride back to the 'verse, or somewhere else? I'm pretty good at teleportation."
Well, this little misadventure had turned out to be a waste of time. Unfortunate, really, but……nothing ventured, right? And at least Andesine hadn’t been alone for it. That was even more helpful now: having Monoceros around gave her some objective proof that things were still real and she hadn’t started hallucinating whatever that pumpkin thief was. Moreover, his voice and his general demeanor were both so soothing. Really helped settle her nerves after the system-shock of whatever that thing had been.
“Based on all my experiences with boy’s boys? You’re much better off not being one. Boy’s boys were always the ones who’d pick on my brother for being too sensitive, or pick on both of us for having two moms, or whatever.” Wasn’t usually her custom to talk about family too much with colleagues, coworkers, or even “work-friends”……but Monoceros was different. Andesine would have happily been friends with him on her own time, without them needing to have the Negaverse in common. Getting back to her own feet, she smiled. “A trip to the Dark Kingdom sounds great, actually? I can catch up on filing some reports and turn some things in to General Ashanite in person.”
“Things” here mostly having the meaning of “energy she’d drained off some of her coworkers at the theatre throughout the day.”
“Before we go, though?” Quickly, Andesine reached into her subspace pocket and pulled out a tupperware container full of cookies. “Happy Halloween, courtesy of my Mama.… She didn’t actually specify who they were for, just…‘those new friends you’ve made lately’? And, well. Captain Arsenolite got the last batch so it’s someone else’s turn, but giving them to General Ashanite still feels like ‘Oh no, am I being too much of a suck-up,’ and here you are, being such a good friend?” She shrugged, smiled at him. “They’re peanut butter chocolate chip?”
genovianprince
Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2023 9:32 pm
"Ugh, sounds like someone else I know," he said with a frown. "Look, I probably shouldn't say this? But don't get friendly with Arsenolite. Keep your distance. He's gotten a bit better, but he's still like... midkey homophobic. The kind that's like 'yeah, hold hands, but no kink at pride'. Ashanite is cool, though. Very cool."
A dreamy look overcame him, and he gave a gusty sigh thinking about Ashanite. He was so... amazing. "He'd love the cookies, and certainly wouldn't accuse you of being a suck-up. Trust me. We're, um. Close." He blushed, taking a cookie with a murmur of thanks. "I love peanut butter chocolate chip."
Part of Andesine—the part of her that probably would’ve deserved being called a suck-up and yearned to impress more superior officers in the Negaverse—wanted very much to behave and only take an appropriately professional interest in what Monoceros had to say.…… Unfortunately for any hopes of being dignified and impressive, the part of her that was a messy b***h with a taste for Drama perked right up as soon as Monoceros said that he was imparting a secret, something that he shouldn’t have been saying.
Too bad the secret made Andesine wrinkle her nose and scowl. “Oh, ew. Don’t worry, I’ve only been professionally cordial with him for the most part? He just got lucky when I had some of Mama’s coconut chocolate-chip blondies with me and needed someone to foist them off on. But……eugh, with opinions like that, he’d get along great with my Papa—my Dad’s husband, that is? And I don’t mean that as a compliment.”
Not that Andesine didn’t love Papa, because she did? At least for the most part? But for someone who’d been a wild, punk rock rebel in his youth, Papa certainly had mellowed out into a comfortable life of listening to respectability politics more often than he did his husband. Made her roll her eyes and shake her head, just thinking about that, but her expression melted back into an earnest smile as she looked to Monoceros.
“Thanks for the warning about Arsenolite,” she said, “and the encouragement with General Ashanite, and just for……everything today, really.” She reached for his hand. “To the Dark Kingdom, then?”
