InsaneJournal

Harbinger was sketching. Things had gone well recently; there had been an upturn in the membership of Child of Leviathan (no doubt due to the recent bizarre happenings) and tax-exempt status was hovering in sight. Just a few years, and they'd be legitimate. Not to mention that with all the usual corporate loopholes and creative book-keeping, taxes weren't much of a problem anyway. And every single day he was getting up-to-date information on Tyra Shepard and her crew from his...well, his eyes. His people. His feeling fingers.

So why was he dissatisfied? He was slouched in his chair like a troubled ancient king, barely focusing as he dragged the pen back and forth. It felt like there was something more to do, something....important. Something he was failing to do. The thought set his teeth on edge. And it was the fault of Tyra Shepard. She was important, yes, but more important than him? Ridiculous. Yet she had the insolence, the damned temerity, to carry on as if he was nothing to be taken seriously. Well, he'd make her see. Her and T'soni, and Vakarian and Moreau and the rest. When he'd visited Goto, he had briefly considered walking right back into her home and squeezing the life right out of her.

When Harbinger had been Harold Heisen, a young boy, he was compelled to seek out the lesser creatures that dwelled near his home. Cats and dogs and rats and mice and the like. He'd sought them out, or lured them with titbits of food, and then he'd just...ended them. It felt like his right, and it wasn't even the ending of them that made him smile. It was watching what came next. The little insects that crawled over the broken bodies and slipped inside to feast on the treasures within. Sometimes he'd even lure the animals with pieces of the animals he'd previously lured. There was something about it that was just....lovely. A cycle.

Harbinger came back to the world, and realized he'd been writing Shepard's name again. Over and over until the end of the page, where the pen had gone right through the paper. He set the notebook down and walked over to the cuttlefish tank. They hadn't been fed for two days. Harbinger lifted the lid of the tank and reached in, grasping a cuttlefish at random. It squirmed in his grasp, and he gently plucked one of its tentacles off. He dropped it back in, and waited for a moment. It didn't take long. The other cuttlefish recognised the wound, and moved in to feast.

He needed to lure Shepard. And he could do it by harming one of her own.