* The next evening, at the Gargoyles clock tower*
The following night, after waking from their nocturnal sleep, all the gargoyles had dispersed to busy themselves with their own hobbies. All except Goliath, the clan leader, he'd gone to visit Elisa. Brooklyn, the second-in command was reading a novel on the veranda. Inside, Broadway and Angela were occupied in the small kitchenette, cooking a stew of some kind.
"Ok Broadway, the next thing to add would be the vegetables and seasonings", said Angela, paying more attention to the recipe in the cookbook, rather than on her mate, as he was already helping himself to samples of the unfinished stew. "Broadway, you big glutton, you could at least have waited until the stew was finished before helping yourself!" she said, giving his brawny shoulder a light 'thwack' with her tail. Broadway blushed bashfully as he turned looking at his mate's scowling expression.
"Oh, right well I was just...uh, checking to make sure that it was coming along nicely", he said, sheepishly scratching the back of his head. Angela rolled her eyes, tugging lightly on his finned ear, pulling him away from the soup pot.
"Right, remind me never to leave you alone in the kitchen", she chided light-heartedly; returning he attention to the cook book.
In a small nook behind the stair case that lead to the veranda, Hudson sat in his favorite beat up recliner, watching a game show on the small television provided by Elisa. Lexington was sitting on one of the stair steps, tinkering with a new computer he had found earlier that week. Lastly Bronx, the clan's blue dog-beast, was slumped lazily against Hudson chair, snoring loudly.
"Ha, I did it!" exclaimed Lexington, giddily typing on the keyboard.
"Did what, Lex?" asked Broadway, coming over to look over his friend's shoulder.
"I was finally able to hack through security firewall on this computer. Now that I've done that, I can focus on cleaning out the system," he explained, not taking his attention off the screen as he worked.
Broadway huffed in confusion "I just don't get all that techy stuff. It only seems to bring trouble for us", he replied, crossing his arms.
"That's because all you seem to be interested in is food and old detective flicks," said Lexington, pulling his eyes away from the screen to glance at his portly friend.
"Food is tastier and those movies are cool, right Brook?" replied Broadway, directing his question to Brooklyn outside.
"Uh huh, sure thing guys", replied Brooklyn absentmindedly, his focus clearly more in his book.
As he continued reading, he noticed a shadowy figure appeared from overhead, blocking out his light. Looking up he saw that Goliath had returned with Elisa in his arms. Silently he wished he could have someone to hold like that, safe and secure with him. It still hurt him sometimes to see those two together as well as being duped by Angela for Broadway. His first attempt for love with Maggie was shot when she chose Talon as her mate, over him. He just aways had a bad streak of luck when it came to love and didn't seem like his fortunes would ever improve.
"Hey Goliath, Elisa welcome back", he said, pushing his lonely thoughts aside and putting on a casual grin.
"It is good to see you again, Brooklyn; Elisa brings us news about something she recently experienced as of late", Goliath responded, gently placing Elisa on her feet. By then the rest of the clan had already paused on their activities and gathered on the veranda to hear what she had say.
*Back in Staten Island's woods*
"Sir, any trace of the supposed "meteor" landing site?" asked Owen's voice through the speaker in Xanatos's gargoyle-like droid suit.
"Nothing yet, Owen, my scanners aren't picking up any radiation or abnormal changes in the area", Xanatos replied while adjusting the settings on his droid arm, adjusting the vision of the droid helmet to thermal readings. The area was calm and quite; most of the wild life in the area had already retreated to they're burrows and nests for the night. The only thing that the thermal reading could see was the occasional deer wondering around or a night owl hunting for small wayward rodents.
Resetting his vision to normal settings, Xanatos was about to call it a night, when he suddenly spotted something unusual entangled in the branches of a nearby oak tree. Taking a closer look, he noticed that the whole section of the tree limbs and branches were broken as if something airborne had blindly crashed into the tree. He noticed a few strands of brown hair and torn strips of tan fabric like that belonging to a tunic. Smiling confidently, he collected his new findings and stowed them in a storage compartment in the droid suit.
"Owen, set up the lab equipment, I may have found a clue as who our mysterious visitor may be," he said, activating his suit's flight, heading back to Manhattan. Yet for all his renowned astuteness, even David Xanatos took no notice of the glowing fire eyes that watched his retreat...
