Dr Hannibal Lecter

"If he tears down my house, I'll make 'Bob' fix it," Hannibal said drolly. "And he isn't wrong about that last part."

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furnaceface

Jono was once again eyeing the both of them. But now he was at least giving a grudging nod of his head.

//Fair point,// he replied. //Well then... brace yourselves, I suppose.//

He squared his shoulders again, gave a quick scan of the area with his telepathy - not that he figured it would do him any good - and tried again.

//Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Be-- HNNGH.//

Well, that was a lot of snake teeth in his shoulder, right there. And they were all connected to the biggest, most horrifying rattlesnake Jono had ever seen.

Edited Date: 2014-12-06 12:18 am (UTC)

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And that would be a very bright bolt of greenish energy spearing into said snake, to hopefully knock him back. Not as strong or as focused as it might have been, maybe, but then Bob's attention was divided between that and urgently querying Hannibal for the location of the nearest iron.

Fireplace irons, skillet, some fixtures, Hannibal answered promptly, eyeing the snake warily.

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The snake let go of Jono's shoulder, twisting his head as he did so in an attempt to leave as much damage behind as he possibly could, and reared back to hiss at the one who had thrown the energy at him in the first place.

His tail rattled angrily.

"Asshole," the snake spat, impressively eloquently for a snake as he watched the human -- and the fellow ghost -- carefully. "What the hell do you care what I do with this meatbag, huh?"

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"Me?" Bob raised an eyebrow. "I don't care at all." Except for the whole hating sleazebags who took people over and...well never mind! "However my gracious host here rather cares for him." He shrugged. "And I don't like your face."

He summoned the poker and tongs to him, then pushed a bit of energy into the poker and tossed it to Jono.

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"Aw, now, that's how you go about hurting people's feelings." Betelgeuse gave a mock pout as Jono caught the poker with his good arm, and then twisted about as fast as lightning to avoid being stabbed at. "And we were gonna practically be neighbors, too. Is that how you treat neighbors? I come over for a cup of tea," another dodge, "and you try to stab me. So rude."

... Lecturing Hannibal on manners was a hilarious notion from most people. From Betelgeuse, it was practically comedy personified.

"I'll tell you what," he added, shifting back from a snake into his human form, coming up behind Jono and putting one arm around his neck, another hand to the side of his head. "You let me and my buddy here walk, and I won't snap his neck. How does that sound? Got my doubts it'll kill him, but I can sure as hell make his head hang funny."

Jono didn't struggle a hell of a lot -- he wasn't in any hurry to have his neck broken today, thank you -- but he did swing his good elbow back to try to catch Betelgeuse in the ribs. Stabbing at him with the poker would have taken more fumbling than he was willing to attempt, just yet.

Interestingly, the ghost flinched.

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Bob's eyes narrowed.

It won't kill him, Hannibal said certainly.

Bob nodded, let his hand drop, and then flung the tongs fast as magic; they grew and twisted as they flew, aiming for entangling Betelgeuse in a web of iron arms.

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"Hey, now! Bad touch! Bad touch!"

Said the horn-dog who didn't hesitate to crawl all over anyone who even remotely managed to fall within the blanket category of 'female.' Still, for as powerful as he was, it had been a while since he'd had to deal with somebody who could hold their own against a manic, shapeshifting poltergeist.

The iron arms were new and exciting. They weren't hideous sculpture or anything of the sort, and try though he might, he couldn't quite writhe his way out or even take control of the arms.

"And that's damn inconvenient," he muttered, temporarily letting go of Jono's neck in order to struggle against his bonds. If that meant backing up and trying to break them against anything nearby - walls, bookcases, whatever looked convenient and satisfyingly fragile - so be it.

Edited Date: 2014-12-06 04:01 am (UTC)

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Hannibal snarled and swore that one of the ghosts would be fixing those, damn it!

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Bob ignored him for the time being, focusing his will into the iron, adding a unique binding spell to the metal.

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Oh, and that was definitely new. Who the hell needed to even know his name when there were party tricks like that out there?

Betelgeuse writhed some more, letting loose with a long string of very creative curses that put everybody's mother in bed with at least two different sandworms and the devil himself, before finding that he couldn't quite stomp around quite as conveniently as he had a moment before, at that.

Hell, he was starting to feel... drowsy?

"What kind of ghost are you, anyway? C'mon, just give me a chance, here. I just want what you want, that's why I stuck around. A stab at a body, re-living the good old days. I wasn't even hurting anything."

With the possible exception of Jonothon's sanity, but that was arguably already damaged to begin with, right?

"You, buddy, are an asshole."

Compared to the other things he'd already said, at least that part was fairly polite?

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In contrast, Bob was feeling better than ever. "No," he said patiently, smirking a bit, "I am a necromancer." One of the best, if he said so himself, but he really didn't need to brag or get cocky in front of this (occasionally literal) worm.

He soaked up the power the spell was draining off of Betelgeuse, sending a bit of it back into the spell to speed the process.

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"... Shit."

Yeah, it took a lot to get Betelgeuse to recognize when he was pretty royally screwed. Apparently, necromancers were a good way to go about that.

"What- what are you doing? Look, pal, you can let me go, I'll go somewhere else, leave Furnaceface here alone, if that's all you want. Let's cut a deal, okay? Mano a mano? Spectro a spectro? You're a reasonable guy- we're both reasonable guys! So, let's reason!"

//Betelgeuse...//

"Fuuuuck, no. No, nonono. Let's not be hasty, here."

//Betelgeuse...//

"Give a guy a break!"

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"I am very reasonable," Bob agreed equably. "You, however, are unbalanced, greedy, and..." he grimaced, "mouldy."

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"I'll have you know that mold is carefully cultivated," Betelgeuse protested, squirming against the irons. "It adds character!"

It added a funky odor.

"C'mon, I didn't even hurt anything!"

... He said, as Jono picked himself up off the floor, bleeding profusely from one shoulder, where he'd been bitten by the nastiest set of teeth on the island.

"I just got out!"

//Betelgeuse.//

"ARRRRRRGH."

...

"I hate you all so much." He wasn't going anywhere, still trapped in the irons that Bob had unleashed on him. But he wasn't going to be possessing Jono any time soon. "Really. You're terrible."

Edited Date: 2014-12-06 04:51 am (UTC)

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"Thank you." With another gesture, Bob tied him up firmly and banished him to the cellar. "And good riddance."

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furnaceface

//Good riddance,// Jono agreed, and if he was wobbly before, that really had nothing on the way he was standing now. There had been a bit too much excitement for one day, apparently. //... Ugh. I'm never going to be clean again.//

That nasty thing had been inside his body.

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Bob waited for the inevitable sarcastic comment from his host about his cellar, but it didn't come. Nor was there anything pushing him toward Jono to help him stand, and...

"Oh. Oh, no. The spell's power, I drained it, it amplified me..." What was he doing? If he kept up like this, he'd be killing Hannibal, and really he had no qualms about that, but. No.

He jumped out of Hannibal as if he'd been burnt, and behind him Hannibal crumpled to the floor, Bob's hands going through him uselessly. "Damn it!"

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furnaceface

Jono's eyes went wide as Hannibal fell, and, while he really wasn't in any position to make the attempt, he was lunging forward to try to catch him anyway, stepping clear through Bob (to hell with every bloody ghost on the island, so far as he was concerned) and managing, at the very least, to get one arm under one of Hannibal's armpits before his legs buckled and he went right down with him.

At least this time, he landed beside him, as opposed to on top or underneath him.

//Christ,// he murmured, ignoring the burning in his shoulder and how bloody dizzy he was feeling, //what the hell did you do? Hannibal, mate? You okay?//

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"I didn't do anything," Bob insisted, giving Jono a grumpy look at being walked through. "The spell I used siphoned energy from your unwelcome guest and funneled it back to me. Apparently it boosted my presence even further, and started pushing his out."

He came to kneel by Hannibal and drew glyphs over him, frowning. "Wake him up. Don't let him slip any further." Oh, what had he been thinking?

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furnaceface

//No shite,// Jono muttered, giving Hannibal a shake by the shoulders and a little psionic nudge, trying to push Hannibal's consciousness back to the fore. //C'mon, mate. Wake up. Th'floor's a terrible place to nap, you can do better than that.//

One might think it would be difficult for a man on fire to manage a cold shoulder. Jono, somehow, had it all figured out. Sorry, Bob.

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Bob would survive. So to speak.

Hannibal slowly swam up out of blackness and became aware of being shaken. He opened his eyes blearily and raised a hand to shield his eyes from a bit of the light. "Jono." Something about...He closed his eyes and focused. The ghost!

He opened his eyes again and looked around, catching no sight (or smell) of Jono's problem ghost. But over Jono's shoulder was another man, smartly (if conservatively) dressed and looking rather worried. "Who -?"

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Bob grimaced. "It would seem my bit of spellcasting had a rather unexpected side effect, and strengthened me at your expense. I hadn't thought to account for that; after all, I've never done it outside of my own body before. Nor has any other wizard I'm aware of."

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