DISCLAIMER: Gargoyles currently belongs to Disney, is the intellectual property of Greg Weisman and the rest of the team who helped develop it, etc., etc. I don't own anything having to do with the rights to the show, comic books, movies, game, or anything else Gargoyles-related. You don't own it either. Unless you do. In which case I have fan-fits because you're reading this at all.
AN: Hey! It's me! rool! You don't know me yet, but you will. This is the first chapter of the first part of my first fic, but there is already a lot more to this fic, and others, you will see. Thank you Storyseeker for the great signed review on , so here it is, the first chapter, re-vamped, dedicated to you. Now read the fic!
Jumper Chapter 1.1 : The Summoning
In my beginning is my end.-T. S. Eliot
Demona etched the last line of the pentagram into the floor of the room and set up the proper wards to keep the spirits she was about to summon from breaking free. Lifting an aged scrap of paper in her hand, she carefully read each word to herself before lighting the last few candles and beginning the summoning. (AN: Use your imagination and translate any words in all caps into Latin for me. I couldn't find a translator.)
"MAGIC, BRING FORTH A SPIRIT! MAKE IT NOT OF THIS WORLD." A dense fog appeared above the pentagram.
"MAKE IT AS I AM, MAKE IT POWERFUL!" The fog formed a loose ball in the middle of the star shape.
"LET IT BE LOYAL, LET IT BE STRONG." The fog started to spin.
"LET IT HAVE AN INTELLIGENT MIND, TO BE ABLE TO THINK AND ACT, AND MAKE IT KNOW THAT WHICH IS NEEDED." Strange lights appeared within the haze, flickering.
"GIVE HER A HEART LIKE-"
Boom! Something crashed above her head and she dropped the spell. A group of quarrymen fell through the rotting ceiling of the abandoned home. One stood on top of the pile of rubble and stared at Demona in awe.
"The Demon..." whispered the bulky man.
"None other," replied Demona coldly, reaching for her magic book. The quarryman noticed the fog, which was spinning quickly and spitting lights and flashes of unknowable things. He ran forward, Demona diving after him, and managed to barely break the line of the protective pentagram, knocking over one of the candles and scraping the lines on the floor with the edge of his gun. The ball of fog burst with a blinding flash of light as Demona threw the quarryman aside.
"No! You fool!" She muttered a few words in Latin which seemed to echo strangely and threw a cloth over where the pentagram had been so that it covered a large lump on the floor. She was about to start after the quarryman again when the sound of the police entering the house came from the front of the warehouse. She gathered the edges of the cloth she had thrown and ran, with something large and heavy inside of it. Around the back of the building she threw the bag into an old shopping cart, slipped on a large hooded coat which covered her to the ankles, and walked hunchedly in the other direction toward her home, just another crazy old homeless woman.
She kept to the shadowed alleys and side streets as she made her way from the dirty slums of the lower city up and into the densely wooded hillside, following a winding dirt road until she came to her house. She had called earlier that week from a cell phone that had been dropped in the subway, completely untraceable to her, ordering groceries for the 'reclusive authoress' who reputedly owned the house. She pushed her load into the garage and unlocked a door which led down to the basement. Hauling the bundle onto her back, Demona went down the stairs, depositing her burden on the concrete floor. She turned to the refrigerator to dig out something to eat when she heard a moan from behind her. She whirled, prepared to fight, only to see the large bundle on the concrete shift. Backing away, ready to bolt into her specially protected 'bomb shelter', she watched as the folds of cloth moved and slid open to reveal a white taloned hand.
The magically warded cloth, which was supposed to open only at Demona's touch, fell easily around the body of a young female gargoyle, pale as the moon. A tiny row of spikes ran along her hairline under the golden-tan lines of her hair and she appeared to be dressed in the torn remnants of human clothing- loose blue jeans and a black t-shirt. She stirred more, finally opening green eyes to stare around at her new surroundings.
"I... Where am I? How did I get here?" She leapt to her feet and whirled from side to side, eyes wide in panic. "What's on my back!" She turned in almost a full circle before she looked down at herself, seeing her wings as if for the first time.
"AAh! I have WINGS! And a Tail!"
"Calm yourself," said Demona angrily, glaring at the in her opinion unsatisfactory demon. "I have summoned you here for a purpose." The other female gargoyle turned to look at Demona.
"I…you?...Demona? How? Why can't I remember?" The young gargoyle looked like she was on the verge of tears, shaking her head in confusion. Demona took a new look at what she had summoned. It seemed that the spell had not been a failure after all- she had said for the demon she summoned to be as she was, and a gargoyle just reaching adulthood with no memories could be useful in a number of ways.
"I brought you here, child. Yes, I am Demona. I will be your mother now. You are here to help me get revenge on the ones who took my children from me. They stole you away from your family, and I rescued you from them. Sadly, I could not stop them from taking your memory from you. I can only hope that you will still trust me, after all we have both been through." The girl looked at Demona, processing her words. She didn't know whether to believe this stranger or not. The story made sense- she did have vague memories of faces and another place that felt very far away, and she had known Demona's name. But what was her own?
"What…did you know my name," she asked Demona. The older gargoyle looked at her for a moment, thinking.
"I shall call you Twillo. Now, I have a purpose for you. I will call you a taxi cab, which will take you to New York City. There you will see the tallest building in the world. Do NOT go there. That is the place where our enemies hide, waiting to attack us. There is also a large building with a clock tower at the top of it. Here you will wait, until you see a woman with dark hair and a red jacket come out. Her name is Elisa Maza. She is a police officer. You must follow her and find out her routine. Report back here to me in two weeks. Our enemies must not find out this location. If anyone follows you here, you will not survive. Come now, you will need a few things."
Demona led Twillo upstairs and gave her a hat and trenchcoat like the ones she used when she needed to pass for a human. The entire time she was explaining to the younger gargoyle how 'Their enemies' had cruelly attacked her repeatedly and had done the same to Twillo, who quickly agreed to help Demona save their families. Then she gave her some money to buy food and a bag with a notebook and pens to record what she saw, and soon the taxi pulled up. Twillo got in and tried to watch the route, but quickly fell asleep.
Twillo woke up as the cab rolled to a stop. She sat up and rubbed her eyes clear, exiting the cab with her bag. She looked around to see if she recognized anything, but it was all just a blur of cars and bright lights. The weather was just starting to change to autumn, making the night air chilly, but Twillo didn't notice the cold, sliding into the shadows of a building to look through her bag once again. Demona had given her a pair of gloves which had inserts in the fingertips so that her talons wouldn't rip the fabric, an pair of high boots with modified bottoms so that they would fit gargoyle feet, and a sock hat with flaps to cover her ears and the odd, almost hornlike spurs along her hairline. With these additions to her wardrobe Twillo was almost too warm, but it was nearly impossible to tell that she looked any different from the crowd around her. She knew that if she stepped out into the street, the cars may or may not stop, but wasn't willing to risk it. She hesitantly walked into a gas station and bought a map of the city, finding herself and the police station on the map. That was the name of the building Demona had described to her. The words all sounded familiar, bringing to mind more things she felt she should know more about. She knew what a police station was, and the people in it were the police, and they made people follow the law. But Demona had told her that this policewoman was their enemy, and everyone's open to corruption. She knew that much as well. She walked the few blocks between the two and stopped across the street from the building, looking up at the clock tower. Somehow it just didn't look right. Besides the fact that the tower was nearly destroyed, it seemed to be at the wrong angle. She looked behind her and up at the building that she had stopped in front of. Maybe from the top she could see it better. She walked around to the side and found a fire escape leading upward to the top of the building. She leapt up, catching the bottom rung of the ladder. She wiggled herself up until she could throw a knee up onto the bar, but her trench coat got in the way and she slipped off, landing flat on her back on the ground. She bit her lip- landing on those wings HURT! Wings. She had wings. Did that mean she could fly?
Twillo got to her feet and slipped out of her coat, making sure that no one could see her. She flexed her wings, getting used to the feel of them, and tried a small jump into the air, leaning forward. She glided for a few feet before her boots touched the ground. Looking around, she saw a tall dumpster. She climbed on top of it, gathering her coat and her bag, and launched herself across the alley at the ladder. She caught it easily and climbed up to the top of the building in time to see the woman Demona had spoken of getting into a car and driving away. She followed the woman in the red car through the heavy traffic, gliding from rooftop to rooftop through the city. When the car finally parked in front of an apartment building, Twillo followed the woman with her eyes, finally seeing her emerge out into the apartment at the top. It was a longer glide to that rooftop than she had been taking, but she decided that she could make it. Taking a running start she launched herself across the alleyway just as the first rays of the morning sun peeked over the horizon. She was sure she would make it with plenty of space to spare, but searing pain shot through Twillo's entire body and she rolled as she hit the next rooftop. She crashed down through the skylight and landed unconscious on the floor of the apartment.