Who: Cú Chulainn, Badb What: planning Project Mayhem When: Friday Where: Leabhair Fado (Badb's shop), Greenwich Village Warnings: TBD, definitely language and maybe talk of violence
Badb might have picked up a smell of death in the air (did crows even have nostrils? That didn't sound right) but Cú Chulainn was a simpler man. He didn't have any sense of what fate required or what was the will of the higher warlike gods. No one had ever accused him of being hypersensitive. But he did know that the summer was humid, that the city was crowded and tempers were short. Tensions rose in the heat, a fever of suppressed hostility that never quite broke.
The fucking pubs are fucking dull the fucking clubs are fucking full of fucking girls and fucking guys with fucking murder in their eyes. A fucking bloke is fucking stabbed waiting for a fucking cab. You fucking stay at fucking home. The fucking neighbors fucking moan: "Keep the fucking racket down! This is fucking Chickentown..."
It wasn't that Cú Chulainn relished a state of affairs like that--no, he preferred the release from all that, the lancing of the boil, an explosion of violence that would loosen the city up like a long massage from a wholesome ponytailed girl. A day of madness, a night of it or a week of it, and their blood would be racing, a city that felt alive again. They would know that they weren't just wage-slaves and effete students, that when push came to shove they could do what men in every other society had always been expected to do. Or else they would know they were cowards.
So really, if you thought about it, he and the Scary Lady would be doing Philadelphia a favour.
He was a little cautious as he went in the door of Badb's shop; these days, every other trinket shop full of crap sold crystal balls and pewter wizards and ceramic idols that tried to look "magical", but he was well-acquainted with the dangers of the real thing. A warrior was supposed to trust to his strength in arms and not be thrown into a superstitious frenzy by women's magic, but that didn't mean you fucked around with them either. Fortunately the front room was just books, smelling of coffee and perhaps a drifting scent of herbs from the back. He realised he didn't know what Badb was calling herself these days, so instead he just wandered past the shelves looking for her.