Disclaimer: I do not own Hellboy, the title besides the 'sort of' or even the basic plotline. The details small and large however, are mine.
There was a great pause in the room as the image stopped, vanishing into black as the freckled woman pressed another switch on the video camera.
"Holy shit." Liz finally said, breaking the resounding silence.
"Not sure if it's holy." Hellboy said back, scratching the back of his head. Manning was standing behind them, dumbfounded, his mouth hanging open an inch and a half.
Abe had vanished, leaving the group to walk quickly but silently over to the spot in the corner he had been staring at before, the exact spot where the masked figure had stood, directly next to the hole in the ground where the roots had come up. He knelt down beside it, removing a glove and placing one webbed hand on the floor.
Seeing what Abe was doing, Hellboy quickly walked over, not even trying to avoid stepping on the broken rocks on the ground.
"We've checked the place where the plants came up, they seem to have come from below the basement. We had someone dig down a bit in the ground below, but it was nothing. The roots weren't even that long." A man nearby said to Abe, not understanding his apparent facination with the floor.
"What is it, Blue?" Hellboy said, ignoring the man standing next to his friend.
Abe blinked twice, his face contorting slightly in confusion. "I'm not sure. This... well, I suppose this man... he seems to have some kind of... well, like a barrier up, inside his thoughts. As though he knew someone would try to see what he was thinking."
Manning was still staring open mouthed at the television screen, but turned at the mention of this. "What do you mean, a 'barrier?' Has that ever happened before? Are people supposed to be able to do that?"
Abe shrugged, placing his second hand on the ground with the first for a moment, bringing his face down slightly as though he were about to kiss the floor. "Anything's possible. But I don't think that was any ordinary person, Manning." He said thoughtfully, seemingly without sarcasm, lifting a hand to make a strange motion at his own face before he blinked rapidly, leaning forwards and putting both hands on the floor again.
"What is it?" Liz asked.
"I'm not sure..." Abe muttered. He had the strangest look on his face as he pressed his fingers to the ground. "It's as though... as though there was someone else inside this person's head, while they were standing here..." He said the words quietly, as though afraid that person might hear them.
"What?" Hellboy said quickly, leaning down as if by doing so, he could see the things Abe could see through the traces of emotion left on the floor.
"I don't know... I think it's a girl, but I can't get much of her mind... It's as though she were another person, with a small thread attaching her own mind to his, and... I think she's the reason he put the barrier up..."
"Abe, you're not making sense." Liz said slowly, squatting down next to him.
"What?" He said faintly, his fingers still tracing the floor as though it had a face.
"Abe!" Liz called, as though he were asleep. Abe jumped, shaking his head and quickly taking his hands up off the floor. Bits of stone from the collapsed ceiling and splinters from the floor stuck in the creases of his palms, and he stared down at them for a moment as though seeing something else.
Then he looked up at them as though nothing had happened and said matter of factly "They left something here. It's under the auctioning table, hidden by the plants wrapped around it. The Prince dropped it there when he went to pick up the piece of the crown."
There was a very long silence.
"What? Are you kidding me?" Manning suddenly said, turning around. He began to sit down on a chair and then hurriedly stood when a leaf from the vine wrapped around the back of the chair touched him. "All that crap is true? Is this some kind of punishment for complaining? If I say I'm annoyed with hiding three they give me a whole other world to hide? I mean, seriously, I still have trouble believing freaks like you exist, and now you tell me some mythical golden peoples are coming up out of the ground? It can't all exist! And what the fuck do you mean, Prince???" He said, waving his arms like a mad man.
Liz let out a sigh that sounded like a growl as Manning inadvertently slipped back into his old prejudices for a moment.
"I was able to get that. Prince. He calls himself Silverlance. I wasn't able to get much else though, like I said, a wall put up for the girl." He said curiously, reaching a hand to his forehead as he considered the information.
"Wait, so that crap the seller was spewing about that thing being all mythical was actually true?" Hellboy said. Abe glanced up at him.
"Why do you doubt that so much? Everyone knows you've seen all the mythical crap. Why are things like this so hard to believe? I've actually expected it all along." Abe said with a wave of his hand. He was taking the discovery of an ancient ledged being true completely in stride, considering the thought of it in his head as though it were simply a new food being tasted in his mouth.
"You've expected it? Expected what?" Liz said. She had a rather odd expression on her face, as though she were debating whether or not to be horrified or curious, or trying not to be horrified since she didn't want to consider herself a hypocrite.
"Oh you know, many of the mythical things. Faeries, for instance." Abe spoke calmly, with another flick of his hand.
"Faeries? Wait, Brothers Grimm or Disney?" Hellboy said, considering.
Abe stared at him rather darkly. "Most definitely Brother's Grimm Hellboy. Or at best Shakespear or Hans Christian Anderson. I honestly don't think the world of all things unexplained likes us enough to give us Tinkerbell."
"Whoa, whoa whoa." Manning said, turning around to face them. "Let's not fly off the handle here. We don't know for certain that all this crap exists."
"Yeah, well most people don't think we exist, it would make sense there's others we don't know exist." Liz said in an oddly defensive tone.
"I mean, you said you couldn't really see their minds. Maybe it's just some weirded out cult kid who believes all this crap is real, which is why he came in here." Manning said to himself reassuringly.
"If a cult has the power to bring something like those two others with him to life, or even make him... well, the way he is, I think more people would want to join it, and that we'd have heard something about it before." Abe said reasonably.
"Exactly! And if there was a whole separate race of... of magic people, we would have heard something about that, that one's even more hard to hide!" Manning said rather desperately.
"But we have heard about it! That's why there's f'n legends, and why there's all these things in faerie tale books and everything! It's not that well hidden, it's just like Hellboy and how he's photographed every other day! People don't believe it even though it's right in front of them!" Liz shouted back and Manning, he teeth gritting with annoyance.
"I honestly think we can settle this much easier by seeing if there's any proof in what the Prince Silverlance... person... left here." Abe said hesitantly. "Careful, though. It's probably dangerous. He didn't seem like that good of a person."
"Oh, ya think?" Hellboy said with sarcasm dripping from his words as he walked forwards to the auctioning table, remembering the figure ripping the shredded wing from whoever his companion had been.
Before anyone could protest, Hellboy crumpled the vines beneath his stone hand, reached under the table and picked up what was under it, not at all carefully, setting it down on the place where the crown had been moments before.
"Hey, fingerprints!" A man in a white coat nearby said.
"Honestly kid, I don't think fingerprints are gonna help us this time." Hellboy said in a mock helpful voice.
"Don't worry about it." Liz said with exaggerated kindness, clearly, amongst all things, still pissed at Hellboy over their argument before.
Hellboy snorted at her, staring fixedly down on the things on the table. "Wow. What a pretty rock. Very nice of him." He said sarcastically. On the table was what looked like a grey brick, with a small handle made of rope attached to the top of it.
"Is it supposed to do something?" Liz asked after a moment of silence as they stared at the rock on the table.
"Uh... Red?" Abe asked in a questioning voice. He was standing on the other side of the table, looking down at the other side of the brick. Hellboy stepped over to him, looking down, his eyes widening for a moment.
On the other side was a circle of red, taking up about half of the tall stone, looking like a button. A deallocate design of a tree rested in the fine silver.
"Red, I don't think you should-" Abe started as Hellboy reached his fingers out to touch the circle.
But it was too late. A great buzzing filled the air suddenly, and the rock pulled itself apart like a puzzle, unfolding pieces where there had not even been a trace of a crack a moment before. The buzzing intensified, like a swarm of angry bees, and a single claw curled it's way around the opening formed on one side of the box.
Out crawled a small grey stone colored creature, black eyes glinting like drops of oil, the mouth hanging halfway open. The swollen red gums were stuffed with teeth that looked as though they had been shoved in, small teeth that looked disturbingly like those of children, tiny and pale like pearls. Ears, so large they folded inside out, hung down on the back of the head, pointed tips.
It was about as large as a human hand.
"That's it?" Hellboy asked blankly. "Ya know, somehow I expected something more..."
He didn't finish his sentence. The thing let out a horrible screeching noise that sounded like a baby shrieking, only never-ending and impossibly high pitched. The thing was suddenly joined by more screams, filling the air one by one with a horrible metal on metal screech.
It was like a grey blur of shifting stone. Creature after creature was suddenly flinging itself out of the confines of the box. The one in front of them seemed to almost smile at them, as small nearly invisible wings began flapping in a humming bird like blur, lifting the small creature into the air. The people who had been standing in the room, staring at the agents at work screamed, flinging their arms up as shields over their eyes, running for the exit.
"Oh, that's just great!" Hellboy yelled, lifting his own great stone arm to his eyes and reaching automatically down to the Samaritan at his side. Liz reached down, lifting out her own gun, turning on the spot with an eyebrow raised. She felt a tug on the back of her head and swung the gun around, hitting the thing with the back of it. Abe reached curiously into the air, grabbing one of the thousands of things dive bombing them and gripping it while still moving his other hand around in an attempt to keep them away from his eyes. He let go as the thing brandished it's claws, biting down hard on Abe's grey-blue flesh and slashing at him with the pointed nails. It hung onto him by the teeth.
"Let me help you with that." Hellboy said. The odd flying things whizzed about his head like mosquitoes, and one dove in and bit the tender flesh on his wrist as he aimed his gun at the small creature gripping Abe's hand. He winced, right before he fired, and Abe looked uncertainly at him.
"Are you sure about this?" He said.
Hellboy looked down as the things zoomed threateningly around them. One of the creatures had crawled onto his gun, it's head directly in front of the tip. It grinned up at him as though it'd stopped him from doing something. He snorted, aimed again, and fired. It was too fast to even see, the headless body dropped to the ground, a finger twitching, and Abe winced as the whatever-it-was was torn from his flesh in a hard blow.
The air was suddenly very, very still, the buzzing noise of a thousand suspended creatures' wings whirring.
Hellboy, Abe, and Liz looked up, and a thousand small vicious faces stared back. Their dead commered twitched again on the floor.
"Oh crap." Hellboy said quietly.
In a group, the creatures screamed, dive bombing as a group. They found their way into Liz's hair, one struck his claws against the small holes of Abe's ears, another one clawed into Hellboy's shirt. The swarmed in groups, slashing at eyes and sticking their sharp, pointed nails in noses. One sunk his child-like teeth into the tips of Hellboy's ear.
After a moment of hitting himself where the horrible creatures landed, the words, gradually getting louder, reached his ears. He turned, looking at his girlfriend. He face was beat red from effort, sweat standing out on her forehead. Her form looked like something through water from the waves of heat radiating off of her.
"Manning Abe get out get out get out get out GET OUT!!!" She screamed. Abe and Manning, recognizing the moment, raced across the room, not even trying to not run into the creatures in the air, and flung themselves behind a gargantuan hunk of fallen rock and shriveled black vines.
Liz let out a breath she had been holding, and out came a wave of flame. Hellboy didn't even try to move away, simply let it wash over him. He heard the sizzling pop of a few strands of thread on his shirt burning, and closed his long flame proof jacket closer around himself. Liz had a look of peace on her face he only ever saw there when she was like this, a weirdly beautiful blue beacon in the sky. Again, a strange kind of guilt came over him. That she seemed to only ever feel so at peace when she was lifted into the air a few feet like this, flame leaking from the pores in her body. It made him notice the premature lines on her eyes when he saw them go smooth in a look of calm.
And jealousy. It was so stupid that he was always jealous of fire.
The things in the air around him screeched and howled. The only problem was, they didn't seem to be burning. Their small bodies remained intact. He looked at them in slightly worried confusion. A few were quivering still, but they seemed to be learning to ignore the pain. The ones over where Abe was, where there was no fire, were diving into the flames now and hardly wincing.
"Liz!" He yelling in concern. She opened her glowing orange eyes, and the things dove at their attacker.
She screamed, flames leaping from her mouth like a dragon, the things yanking at her hair, scratching at her exposed skin. Hellboy heard a cry as well as one pierced her ear with it's long claw, digging through, it's nail covered in blood.
There was a terrible quivering of heat. Abe, who had been looking up over the edge of the rock, dove down again just in time as a wave of blue flame like never before flung itself out from Liz like a supernova. It poured over the top of the rock like mighty sprays of water.
Hellboy, in incredible shock, felt himself being lifted off the ground. He felt the glass behind him crumbling, as if going back to the sand it once was. For the first time, he actually felt the heat of the fire. He felt himself flying through the air by the force of the flame.
Liz's eyes flicked back and fourth as she stared at the broken winder, eyebrows up, worry crossing over her features. "HB!" She yelled. The fire dissipated. Behind them, the ash in the air; used to be monestrous fey; flew over towards the box it's original form had come from, before the box folded in on itself like a piece of paper, vanishing into thin air. Liz fell to the ground, but hardly noticed. Abe leapt upwards as soon as the waves of fire stopped, running forwards to the broken window Hellboy had just crashed through on the other side of the room, Manning hot on his heals.
As they looked down, relief crossed their faces for a moment. Then there was a slow "Oh..." From Abe.
Several live broadcast cameras, which had been interviewing any survivors they could find of the 'incident' were now focused on Hellboy, smiling in an awkward way as he stood up from where he had fallen directly in front of them, brushing dirt and glass off himself and waving happily.
Cameras flashed. Questions rained out. From somewhere in the audience, someone yelled "Hey, look up in the window." Half the cameras zoomed in on Abe, Liz and Manning, staring down in shock. Liz looked like she might puke. Abe lifted an awkward hand, shifting uncomfortably and waving slightly.
Manning backed away, horror coming over his features.
Writer: Well, review.