6570/Ghosts Aren't Real -- right

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Ghosts Aren't Real -- right
Date of Scene: 15 June 2021
Location: Long Island - Jones Beach State Park
Synopsis: The Titans take in a horseman mostly so they can pun themselves hoarse.
Cast of Characters: Pol Hevonen, Terry O'Neil, Kian, Gar Logan




Pol Hevonen has posed:
    "Where do I go to get a decent star-map then?" Pol says.  He's standing in the back yard of his cousin's house in Brooklyn, looking up at where the stars should be.  Back home, if the night wasn't too hazy, they'd be right up there, millions of points of brilliance, mostly white, some red or orange, one green, then the massed stars along the plane of the Milky Way, and the faint blur of an actual galaxy there just off of Andromeda's kneecap.  But city lights and haze are keeping out all but a small handful of the brightest stars.
    Cas appears beside him, transparent like a ghost, and waves at the sky.  Lines appear, as the decorations of their shared Astral realm appear.
    "It's the right time of the right month.  We should get some decent sight-line to Sagittarius at midnight."
    Pol nods.  "The constructs look good.  You want to do the breaths or should I?"
    "We'll roll dice or something," Cas says.  "I get the body tomorrow and the next day."
    "Right, I know, I'm sorry.  But you didn't want to do the test that I prepared for," Pol replies.  "So, we're going to need to get to the top of a building or something."
    "I know a few places," Cas says.  "You forgot we have dinner with the Korhonens tonight.  We won't have time for that.  I can do it tomorrow."
    "Barbecue or trying to talk to ancient centaur myths," Pol says, grinning.  "I choose barbecue."
    "Just give me the body for part of it," Cas says.  "I want to taste it real-time."
    The Korhonen compound is huge.  It's three houses on a half-block with a shared center garden and a three storey sporting goods store that takes up a half-block across the alley, and a five storey brick building with the upper four storeys now taken up by residences, and a laundry and a bodega and a post-offices block.  All this owned by fifth, sixth, and the beginnings of the seventh generation of Korhonen family members.  There are Smiths and Dietrichs and a Mason or two in there as well, because the family had girl members in the olden days as well.
    Pol watches the lights move around as they woke up and their lives lit up with kind gestures and family teasing and the love that good families share.  It made him a bit homesick.  There are some sour and dark places, but they aren't festering.  He wakes Cas up, pushing his twin into the body they shared and sending a twinge of adrenaline along to keep him from going back to sleep.
    Twenty minutes later, showers done, backpack filled with the stuff he needs for the day, Cas yawns hard.  Chugging a cup of milk, because who knows, he might have ANOTHER growth spurt soon, because 6'11" isn't tall enough.  He rummages through the icebox—they still call it that.  It's a refrigerator, folks.  Anyway, it is treasure trove for the day.  Fruit.  Juice box, which he is allowed to take two.  Frozen seed-roll sticky things that his cousin Janne makes as food supplements for him, because "Giant Yooper Behemoths Need More Calories."  She's not wrong, but the little seeds get in the teeth.
    Oh, here it is.  Jackpot.  Leftover barbecue, especially with the corn bread and maple butter, is the perfect breakfast.  He slathers the thick cold butter onto the too-cold-to-crumble brick of baked corn cake.  Someone moves and makes a startled noise.
    "We bein' raided by a moose, or is it a bear?" the noise says, turning out to be the youngest of his random aunts.  He met her last night.  Missed the name.
    "I don't think I'll be back until day after tomorrow," Cas says to the random Auntie.  Six of them and two in training, it's like a real Aunt farm in the Korhonen house.
    "Don't worry, we're used to you kids coming and going.  It's summer, right?" she says.
    Cas nods and grins and collects the remaining piece of his slab of cornbread on a paper plate.  The bus is a few blocks away.
    And at the other end of the route, the south shore of Long Island, because today, it's supposed to be clear.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    There are many reasons to visit Long Island—the lighthouses, for starters!  Bug Light!  Horton Point!  Montauk Point!  Fire Island!
    Actually, it is towards Fire Island that our intrepid Titans are heading.  Why?  Because Kian hasn't yet visited it, and it is Terry's quest to expose Kian to just about everything and anything he can think of.  Fire Island in and of itself has a lot of history, and a lot of interests, that the bird-man will find absolutely puzzling and very hard to relate to… so of course, Terry thinks it's the perfect place to start!
    It's such a lovely night, though, that the redhead Rabbit Holes them a little ways from their destination, so that they can enjoy the early summer eve before it is later in the month, and everywhere they go becomes Moist Armpit Island.
    The redhead, in tank top and shorts, walks with his hands in his pockets.
    "…I can't believe I made myself a total and complete ass in front of Queen Hippolyta.  Dear god."  He shakes his head.  "I am going to be remembered as a fool for all eternity.  I embarrassed myself in front of an immortal!"

Kian has posed:
    "You also fainted in front of Diana," Kían "helpfully" reminds him.  "After Gar fainted when you reveal yourse'f to him, and before I fainted because Rae iss very very creepy.  Maybe you shoul' avoid the Amazons.  They seem to haf an impac' on you."
    Lacking pockets in his kilt, Kían's hands are clasped lightly behind his back, strolling alongside Terry.  The weather is within stone-throwing distance of perfect, so it's sandals, kilt and pendant and nothing else.  If he gets looks from the locals… well, that's right and proper.
    "This iss a beautiful place," he says, gazing out over the ocean.  "Fin' me a stand of trees to build a home in an' I think I could be happy here."

Gar Logan has posed:
    "I can. It's what you do," Gar offers ever so helpfully, dressed in costume because that's just the kind of mood he was in.  And, he raps Terry lightly on the shoulder.
    "Also, I did not faint when he revealed himself to me.  At least, not in that sense.  The one I'm talking about, I was getting mauled by a mecha-spider, you'll remember."
    He looks around the place, noting, "Who needs the Hyperloop when we've got rabbit holes?  I forgot the donut holes, though.  Silly me."  He's been in one of those moods since the Themysciran thing, upbeat and talkative and dare we say it, bouncy.  No brooding from him right now!  "It's a little away from some things, but it's not bad.  And it's not like we don't have ways of getting places faster, either.  So what'd we come here to check out?"

Pol Hevonen has posed:
    In the darkness, Four stirs.  It's time.  They can capture the lummox again, and this time, perhaps the sacrifice will work.  Two is prodded awake by one of Four's minions, which makes an escape before the retaliation can be mustered.
    "It's time.  Send your little toys into the vault, Two.  They can try the candy."
    "Your drugs are stupid and freaky," Two says.  "You disgust and terrify me."
    "Thank you.  Now do it."


    All five of them are under-age, of course.  But they've been on a variety of different kinds of "candy" since before they put "teen" in their ages.  The new stuff is better than anything they've had before.
    It's called "Ghost" and it makes you feel like you're someone else.
    Because when you take Ghost you become a beacon and all the actual dead fragments of people, the echoes and sometimes the actual spirits, get to come party in your body.  The sensation of power is amazing.
    Reyes and Seda and Agrón get into the first three, and the two slow-pokes are stuck with Filosa and Lavonchino.  They killed one another back in the day, and their personal hells involved being stuck with each other.  The sensation of having bodies again, of not being ineffectual intangible wisps of bad ideas, that is just intoxicating.
    Then Four speaks, a voice from somewhere in some shadowy nowhere.
    "You can keep the bodies if you do what I tell you to do."


They got the stuff that the creepy voice told them to get, and they went to Jones Park to find the mark.  The voice said to look for a Lummox.
    The Lummox is easy to spot.  Some sort of tree impersonating a human, a very tall dark-skinned guy who looks like he might be a candidate for the Chaplains.  Huge.  Lavonchino mumbles something vulgar, and Filosa tells him to shut up.  Reyes has the thing they need, the tranquilizer gun.  They wait for the right chance, and shoot him.  The dart doesn't hit right, it sticks for a moment and then falls off, still full.  And the Lummox is fighting them.  He's strong.  He throws Lavonchino pretty far.  If Lavonchino wants to keep that body he'd better be more careful.
    "Use the rag!" Seda says, and Agrón manages to get in and hold the chloroform-soaked towel over the guy's face for long enough that Reyes can pick up the needle and jam it hard into the Lummox's arm.  And the guy goes limp.
    They grunt in unison when they pick him up and drag him into intangible-land… and appear at the carnival where the highway runs between Jones Park and the beach, and they spot the right place.  There's a stretching-rack in there, part of a torture scene in a funhouse.  Tie him to that, yeah.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    Terry gives Gar a Look.  "Right.  What you don't know about that particular time is that I manifested my Cheshire side naked and I had to steal from a clothing store.  In my defense, the window was already shattered."  He pauses.  "And I went back later and paid for it."
    "What are we here to check out?  You, mostly," Terry teases, and mock-swats Gar's butt before jumping ahead to avoid a swat himself.  "I just thought we'd expose Kian to some local flavor of the more subdued kind.  That, and… well.  I thought a bona fide carnival might be quaint enough, right?  Coney Island was a little extra, but carnivals have their own kind of charm," he says, leading the way as they approach their intended destination.

Kian has posed:
    "So, it iss like Coney Islan', but not as much?" Kían asks, quite possibly getting closer to the mark than he expected.  "As long as they haf… nnh, what was it call?  Cotton candy?  If they haf that, then a carnifal is a good thing."
    Kían glances out over the ocean again.  "In fac'," he says, and without warning shoots into the air, maybe 50 meters or so, before coming back down.  "Yis, iss what I thought.  I haf a cousin who lifs on an islan' much like this.  An'…."  He blinks twice, and shoots back into the air briefly.
    When he lands again, he looks troubled.  "An'… an' I do not know why somethin' off that way," he says, pointing towards the carnival, "iss bothering me.  I thought I hear somethin'.  In my mind."

Gar Logan has posed:
    Gar Logan swings and misses after Terry, who knows him well enough by know that retaliation was forthcoming.  It will come yet, only because of this Terry won't know when or where.  "Why does none of that surprise me one bit?"
    Glancing Kian's way as he walks, he considers.  "Kind of, yeah.  But you gotta watch out for the carnies.  They'll rob you blind with their rigged 'games of chance' if you're not careful."  He does the classic finger quotes with this.  "Their favorite prey: dudes trying to impress their girlfriends.  Oh, and the freak shows?  Usually fake.  The Bearded Lady is always some chick with either a fake beard, or a girly-looking dude or someone in drag.  It is known."
    The joking around ceases when Kian reports something seeming off up ahead following taking to the skies.  "Yeah, I see the place.  Is that where it is?  Doesn't look like it's ready for anyone to go in yet.  But what'd you hear?"  Suddenly, he's looking considerably more alert.  "Time to get catty, you," he adds to Terry.

Pol Hevonen has posed:
    Pol is furious.  Cas is unconscious.  Pol is in his astral form, thus, should be able to fight ghosts, but these ones, there's something about the spell that pulled them together and stuck them in the bodies of the… he has to call them children even though they're older than he was when he started college.  But they're stunted, their light is pretty dim, under the spark of whatever that drug is, and the blue-green gleam of the ghost things.
    They resist being pushed away and he can't touch them.
    Pol tries to awaken the Shield, but without Cas doing the Ki manipulation it doesn't gel, and they've got Cas strapped onto a rack.  Unfortunately it's big enough to stretch him.
    "Wake up, Cas. Come ON!" he says, trying to get through the drug-thickened sleep that has his brother trapped.
    The shadows are watching.  Of course Four is in shadow, even though it's a stupid cliche, because shadows do conceal, and nobody wants One or Three or Five to notice them too suddenly.  That would be boring.  Two is sour-faced scowling, because the astral wall around the lummox is too slippery to seize on.
    The warlord, Reyes, he's got the athame, and he's trying to puncture the skin over the solar plexus.  The ghosts, for some reason, don't seem to see the astral form of Pol, reaching into the constellations in the sphere around them.  Furious and feeding that rage into the body, burning through the tranquilizing drug.
    The shell pulses out, again and again, pushing away at the manipulation tentacle that Two is trying to insinuate.  Rage building.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    The redhead frowns, "Yeah, sounds like it, Gar."  He turns the bracelet in order to uncover the mirror out of reflex, and then frowns.  "Not enough light…."  It's awkward, but he has to use his phone to shine a light onto his face, almost blinding himself in the process, so he can have enough light to see his eyes in the portable metallic band that acts as a mirror.
    "We're All Mad Here!"
    There is the obligatory Magical Boy Transformation sequence and light show, and Vorpal stands there.
    "Kian, bird's eye view—try to pinpoint the source of the disturbance in your mind.  Gar and I will approach from the ground and do recon from different angles.  Gar, take the leftmost, I'll take the right.  Titans—go!"
    It happens very quickly—first there is a Vorpal, and then there is nothing, because he's gone invisible.  Gar should be able to track where he is by scent.

Kian has posed:
    Kían shoots skyward, reacting more like a Titan than a baffled alien expat.  Amazing what a year-plus on Earth can do for someone.
    Instinctively he casts his mind outward, trying to contact whatever it was that got his attention in the first place: {Can you hear me?  Is there anyone there?}
    There's a low cluster of buildings that draws his attention—absent a reply, not enough to be certain, but enough to make him curious.  He flies off to circle over the cluster of trailers.  "It iss below me," he radios to his teammates.  "At leas' I think it iss.  The contac' iss not clear."

Gar Logan has posed:
    "Yeah, I'm gonna go small and be ready to surprise someone if I need to," Beast Boy responds, zipping off as a hummingbird after a quick change.  By going aerial, he also gets the opportunity to see what's ahead of them from a different perspective, leading him toward the entrance to a funhouse-style place, only it seems to be done up with a horror theme to it.
    The little bird mutters to himself, "Yeah, this doesn't remind me of haunted houses at all here."  He can still hear the others over the comms.  Even he doesn't know how or why it still works when he's changed, or how he can still communicate with them, but he reminds Kian, "Of course it's below you.  I'm going in further.  Don't worry.  I'm small.  Smaller than Robin, I mean."
    What he's headed toward, he hasn't a clue.

Pol Hevonen has posed:
    Reyes is eager to get the blood to come out, but the Lummox isn't cooperating.  This borrowed body is WEAK.  He hisses at the shadows where Two was hiding, "Give me MORE, I can't—" but the air gets hot and the Lummox opens its mismatched eyes, the blue one unfocused, the amber one gleaming red as if it were about to shoot eye lasers.  As… if only.
    Pol pulls on the astral walls, bringing them tight against the body he shared with Cas.  The star-map on their astral defenses aligns with the star-map on their body, for just a moment.  The athame slips and skids off.  (*CAN YOU HEAR ME?*) something says, and the body twitches.
    Agrón grabs the towel and the bottle of chloroform.  He says something very rude about body parts and ancestors and tries to climb the rack so he can use the towel.
    "Whose idea to put this vertical?" he says petulantly.  "What's wrong with horizontal?"
    Four hears a humming noise.  "Hssst!  Two!"  The other shadow makes a sniffing sound.  "The stench of heroism."
    The shadows are abruptly gone, leaving behind merely places where the lighting isn't very good.  The ghosts, their attention focused on the person they're trying to sacrifice, don't notice the absence at first.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    The Cheshire cat narrows his eyes as Kian pinpoints the area.  "Got you.  I'll bring up the rear—and shut your mouth, Logan."
    He anticipates Gar's answer, because he knows Gar, after all.
    The advantage of being a Cheshire Cat is invisiblity and extra sneaky sneaky.  He moves wthout making much noise at all.  And he also has that nifty night-vision that cats have.
    Some people just get all the luck.

Kian has posed:
    {Where are you?  Who are you?  I have friends on the ground, we need direction and we can help, but we need to know who and what we're about to encounter,} Kían 'sends as best he can.  He can only hope his message is clear; the connection is there, but it is odd, not entirely like he's used to.
    He spirals down lower, interfering with the ambient light around himself.  It's not invisibility, but it is a bit more cover than he might have otherwise… and then jerks in mid-air.  "Someone iss bein' hurt in there," he informs Gar and Vorpal.
    After a moment, he radios down to Terry, "So this iss not a normal part of a carnival?"

Gar Logan has posed:
    "Didn't say a word, and I'm going quiet anyway.  Talking and sneaking doesn't work so good."  Beast Boy scurries along as a little mouse, the better to close in further without—hopefully—being spotted.  Little does he know someone or something has already figured out someone is approaching, someone indeed heroic.
    Skitter skitter, next to a wall, until he comes upon the scene before him.  And he sees… someone on a rack, someone else having been trying to cut him up.  That's something he simply cannot abide.  "I'mma let you finish… no, actually, I'm not.  This is a funhouse.  You don't do the sacrifice thing for realsies."  Who said that?  The mouse that has just become a tiger.  "ROAR!" it roars, leaping toward both Reyes and Agrón.

Pol Hevonen has posed:
    It's not very far inside to the chamber, as the mouse skitters.  There's five weird looking guys, dressed like extras for West Side Story.  They have blue smoke trails that move when they move, and they're trying to stab a huge guy who's strapped to a rack.  Their ghost-fire knives don't seem to be able to break his skin at first.
    A green tiger impossibly appears from nowhere, and Agrón and Reyes are knocked down, two human teens taken by the green Titan.  But the two ghosts are hanging in midair, they're furious and they want to spill that blood because if they don't it's back to being NOTHING.
    Cas wakes up abruptly, with an incredible hangover.  Pol is RIGHT THERE, almost too close.  They haven't both piloted at the same time since that one frat party with the guys from NYU, when they got plastered on jello shots and didn't remember how to walk.  Someone is calling out, something about friends underground.  Cas realizes he isn't breathing right.
    "Poisoned," Pol says in a strangled gasp, and Cas starts trying to center and pull their Ki into alignment.  It might not cure the poison but they need to breathe properly… they're strapped to something stupid.  He gets his Ki circulation going while Pol twitches just enough to deflect the point of the athame a second time, and then the other four pull out knives, as well.  They're wreathed in the blue smoke.  The big guy flinches hard and something in the rack goes POP but not enough to free him.  Just enough that the stab that would have gotten his kidney instead skids off his side.  Two other knives just don't have enough strength behind them to cut, but the fifth, it has enough force behind it to break the skin and go in for an inch or so.
    Right into the star-map where Sagittarius is marked out.
    Blue fire erupts from the wound, dissolving the ghost-powered knife.  There's a profound sense of tension, like the three Titans are violin strings being cranked JUST A BIT TOO TIGHT, and then a THUMP as the man strapped to the rack is gone, and the rack is broken.  Instead of the human, a draft-scale centaur stands over the broken beams of the torture frame.  The other three humans have been knocked aside and are (for the moment) free of infesting spirits.  The five man ghost band shrieks in unison, fit to waken a banshee.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    And out of nowhere comes the Cheshire Cat, invisibility discarded like an old coat.  The mystic energies that gathered and were release were enough to set him into action, as the five-man ghost band makes its frustration known.
    "Enough horsing around!  We don't serve spirits here!"
    What can one do against ghosts?  Well, he wasn't an exorcist, that's for sure, but there was always The Thing—the unpredictable thing that he used to breathe life into objects.  What might happen when spirit meets Chaos magic?
    We're about to find out.
    He extends both hands towards the ghosts, and the bright purple-red beams of crackling energy that is the Chaos Wave are unleashed.  "Kian, we've got psychic entities that need to be chased away," he says into his com just as he casts the wave.  Just in case it does nothing and the birb needs to play psychic ghostbuster.

Kian has posed:
    Kían touches down and runs inside after his teammates—especially since he has lost what tenuous contact he had with the other mind.  "I do not know what that iss," he replies, filling the space with bright light, "I only felt one mind, an' he was bein' hurt, an' now I do not even feel that!"
    He really doesn't want to come across a dead body to explain the disappearance of the mental touch.
    "I can not even say which exac'ly iss the vic-tim anymore!"
    That said, he knows he felt some sort of pain, and tries to look for someone injured, rather than someone doing the injuring.

Gar Logan has posed:
    The green tiger bats the targets to the side like they're nothing, but Beast Boy doesn't know what's really going on yet with the possessions and everything.  The way the strange trails move after them is one oddity, and he's just trying to keep the poor but big guy on the rack safe long enough to free him.
    "Hang on!  I'll get you out of that and whoa…!  Is that what I think it is?"  For starters, the tiger is talking.  The green coloration is abnormal enough, then there's that.  Even stranger are the entities that are now more visible in the room.
    Turning around at this, he says, "Ghosts?  Nobody told me there were gonna be ghosts here!  Or… dude, is it me or is it getting tighter in here?  I don't get it."  In that moment, the loud thump follows, the rack is trashed, the tiger is staring at a centaur of all things, and the keening from the spirits becomes more than his ears can handle.
    Tiger becomes Beast Boy again, his hands going up to his ears.  "We really could have used Raven for this.  Any bright ideas?  And did you guys see that right there?"  He nods toward that centaur.

Pol Hevonen has posed:
    Chaos energies do not make happiness for Filoso, and Reyes, Seda, and Agrón.  The energy disrupts the hold that Four had on them, and they dissipate into a blur of random urges and attitudes, which flow down the nearest ley thread to dissipate into nature.  The one who is actually really a ghost is Lavonchino, who was murdered by the latter three.  The compulsion from Four is broken, but the five humans here with the perfumed scent of the Ghost drug seem to be warded for the moment, and his grave is across the city.  So Lavonchino fades, heading for his resting place.
    The remainder of the chaos wave washes over the centaur, dripping off and pooling around his hooves, without interacting.
    The Centaur looks at the Titans who have come to the rescue, a bit of confused awe on his face.  When he speaks, it's in a moderately dense Yooper accent, a Michigan drawl with a Nordic twist.
    "Wait, I know you," he says to the former tiger.  "You're Beastie Boy, wait no dat's a band, it's just Beast Boy rite?  An' you're dat bird guy, you was talkin' in my head, eh?  That woke me up good."
    The cat-boy gets a head-tilted-sideways look with one horse-ear flat.
    "Borple?  No wait it was some kind of literary thing, Cheshire Pies, right.  Snicker-Cat!"
    Apparently not all of the literature classes from first year actually TOOK.
    He looks around the room at the destroyed rack, and at the other three people there, and realizes his feet are hooves.
    "Well, carp."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    The cat raises an eyebrow and puts his hands on his hips, smirking.  "Whoa there, Silver.  Gar is the one who makes the bad puns."  He glances around at the downed teens, and he frowns.  He extends his arm and a Rabbit Hole opens.  Retrieving several coils of rope, he says "First things first.  Tie them up!"  Another spark from the Chaos Wave, and the ropes move like serpents, to tie up the miscreants.
    "And for another thing… it really should be-hoove us to find out who you are, why they wanted to eviscerate you… and how exactly did you go from boy to My Not So Little Pony… but before that—I heard you mutter you were poisoned."
    He wiggles his ears.  Of course he heard.  "…Do we need to rush you to a hospital?"  Pause.  "Veterinary?"  Pause.  "I am so confused."

Kian has posed:
    Certainly Vorpal and Beast Boy can predict the next word they hear from Kían: "c'Rhys'yw!"  Needless to say, the birdman has never seen anything like a centaur before, although he does hazard a guess: "I think you are the one whose mind I fel'?  I do not know why the min'-touch went away… I was worry that somethin' very bad had happen."
    And being a creature of logic, he carries on, half to himself, "Unless it was not your min' and I have fel' someone else who iss not here anymore… nnh.  I woul' like to haf jus' one day on this qokh planet that iss not confusin'.  But that iss too much to ask of Earth."

Gar Logan has posed:
    As the possessed ones, who are now no longer in such a state, are bound, Beast Boy runs a hand through his hair and comments, "Guys, we all look like we've seen a ghost."  Which is, evidently, completely true.
    But, the specter is gone, leaving just the three of them, the tied up ones, and Mr. Centaur over there, who Gar is pointedly trying not to just stare at openly, or at least do so from an angle that doesn't cause any embarrassment.  "Yeah, and everything you hear from him, I taught him myself."
    Remember when Gar missed swatting Vorpal in return on the way over here?  Now as he heads closer to him, a hand darts out to smack the back of the cat's head.  "That's for the hoof joke, and the Not So Little Pony one too.  And for earlier."
    Squinting up at the taller centaur again, he notes the ears, then he notes the hooves, and finally he notes the… he's glancing away again.  "Yeah, I'm Beast Boy, the birdman over there is Kian, and this here is definitely Borple the Snicker-Cat.  You, uh, wanna explain what this is all about?  Because there's nothing I could guess that would probably be as weird."

Pol Hevonen has posed:
    Interesting and nifty rope trick.  The Centaur narrows his eyes as the cat tries to establish a monopoly on the highest form of low humor.
    Okay, first things first, in random order.
    "I'm… uh.  That's weird.  Brother?" the Centaur says.  "Huh.  I guess I'm just me at the moment.  Sagittarius Archer."
    He pokes at his right shoulder where the knife went in.  It's a relatively tiny slice, and has already clotted.
    "I would guess," he says in a contemplating way, "that when the knife broke my demense it triggered the Myth associated with the Constellation it was intruding on."
    He closes his eyes for a moment—still mismatched—and opens them again a second later.  "Nope, not poisoned.  They hit me with a tranq dart, enough for a 300 pound human.  I'm a bit bigger than that now."
    Bird fellow seems pretty upset.  Sagittarius tries to figure out how to alleviate that.  These guys are so SMALL, he could probably hurt them by accident.  Well maybe not Beast Boy, because he can be whatever he wants.
    "I'm sorry?" he says to the bird guy, offering his hand to shake.  "I know you were talking to me…."
    OK, and the one guy he knows has been around more and who is asking for explanations.
    "Okay.  I'm normally a human, but I have this… weird power.  I have a star-map on my body, and I can draw on some of the myths from constellations."
    Sagittarius tries to draw on the Scutum, which still covers his left arm as a tattoo.  But it does nothing.
    "And apparently while I'm in this form I can't use THAT one," he mutters.
    "Also I've been kidnapped by weirdo cultists TWICE now.  This better not become an annual tradition."
    He looks around.  "Anyone hungry?  I could go for a stack of pizzas."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "I see.  So what we have here is a myth-understanding of epic proportions.  And it sounds like the thingamajig that makes your thing majig has gotten borked, all of which are incredibly technical terms that apply to this situation."
    He rubs the back of his head and mutters very quietly, "I know where you sleep, Logan."
    But then he returns to the matter at hand.  "Well.  Part of you is horsie.  The other part is human.  I am thinking that… you probably aren't fit to go back to… wherever you are in this shape.  Not a lot of habitations in Long Island are adequated for equine habitation, only equitation."  He narrows his eyes in thought, briefly.  "And considering you seem to attract cultists… you might need to be watched over.  But let me confer with my colleagues for a second."
    He turns around and reaches out to grab Gar and Kian in for a huddle.  He will also give Gar another swat, because revenge is a dish best served when two birds are in the bush.  Or something like that.
    "…So.  Supernatural happenings.  And there seems to be an evil cult that uses ghosts who wants to pony-nap this kid to send him to the glue factory.  I think the best place for him is, honestly, the Tower.  If cultists come over, Donna can punch them.  And if they bring ghosts, Raven will scare them off."  Like she does everything else.
    "All in favor?"

Kian has posed:
    Kían gives Terry A Look.  "I only understood about a third of what you say… but I think you are sayin' we shoul' take him back to the Tower for his safety?  If that iss what you are sayin' then yis, I agree.  An' if that iss not what you are sayin'…."  He looks to Gar for mercy on his incomplete English.

Gar Logan has posed:
    There is a moment, as the trio confers amongst each other, where two of them appear to be in a reenactment of a Three Stooges skit.  Vorpal swats Beast Boy, Beast Boy swats Vorpal back, something said about how even he wouldn't make a joke that bad (he would), and it continues for a few seconds longer until….
    "Did somebody mention pizza?" Gar blurts, his head poking back up from the huddle.
    His hands go up like he's calling for order, and he adds, "So, look.  It's been a cheesy, I mean, crazy last few minutes here."  Pizza on the mind.  "I'm not gonna pepperoni, I mean, pretend to understand all of this 'constellation changing you' steak, I mean, stuff, but if they tranqed you to try to do some kind of ritual… that's pretty bad, especially if it's hamming, I mean, happening more than once.  Uh… we're kinda thinking you'd be safer with us while we figure this olive, I mean, out, but we're not gonna need to find you a sausage, I mean, stable, are we?"

Pizza very much on the mind.

Pol Hevonen has posed:
    Okay, strange bird guy doesn't shake hands, gotcha.  That's not all that uncommon and honestly, Sagittarius… bah, that's too long.  Saj.  Saj thinks to himself, looking at his hand, would I want to shake hands with a back-hoe bucket?  Because that's not a far-off comparison.
    He rolls his shoulders and shakes it out, with a two-stomp stamp at the end.
    It's true that they took out the stable at the Korhonen compound a few years back, because they hadn't kept horses there in well over 50 years.  And the Hevonens, despite the family name, never kept horses, and their places are more distributed over a neighborhood.
    "If you're offering me sanctuary, then yah, I'm happy ta go witcha, jus' call me Quasimodo.  Axually don't, call me Saj.  Saggitarius is too long.  Anyway if ya got a phone or internets, I need ta call my Aunties an' should call my Mom soon.  If this is like d' las time, I'll be okay after my birthday.  But I need ta get some of my stuff an' let my work study guy know an' tell the summer rugby league I'm… wow, I'd crush at rugby right now wouln't I?"
    He grins at Gar, "Pizza cake, I can sleep on my feet.  Just don't you sleep on my feet."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "Yeah, calling your Aunties will help rein in any misgivings they might have when you don't show up back home.  Better they get it straight from the horse's mouth.  But let's get you fed—Giorgio's delivers to us wholesale at the tower… and after that, it might be pasture bedtime."
    The Cheshire opens a Rabbit Hole that leads to the entrance of the Tower.  Not the inside, because it's always cool to impress newcomers by starting from the outside in.  "So we won't stall too much and bet to the mane event once we have the pizza, and you can tell us all about these cultists who are after you.  It seems you've been saddled with some mystical purpose and the sooner we find out how to help, the better.  So… after you," he gestures to the Rabbit Hole, "Neigh-bor."

Gar Logan has posed:
    Gar Logan eyes Vorpal in a very -.- sort of way, and he mutters, "This is a cat-astrophe."  Has Vorpal out-punned Beast Boy, or did Gar just let him have a victory for once?  "Pizza cake.  Great idea.  Can't believe I never thought of that before."
    Of course, just prior to passing through the rabbit hole—and for security purposes it is a very good idea they don't just bring a stranger right into the middle of the tower—Gar swats the back of Vorpal's head one more time for good measure.
    Then he unloads.
    "A horse walks into a bar.  The bartender says, 'Hey!'  The horse replies excitedly, 'You read my mind!'"
    "To be or not to be… that is the equestrian."
    "My horse is nocturnal… a true night-mare!"
    "Go to bed!  It's pasture bedtime!"
    "Who were the two best horse thieves in the world?  Bonnie and Clydesdale!"