2015.01.15 - Evil Rod Starling Being Evil

Rod Sterling. Beloved short story to screen icon, is, last time we checked, quite quite dead. And yet here he is, walking down a beach community sidewalk, looking into thin air and narrating, "A relatively calm town, on a relatively calm night, and yet nothing could be farther from the truth. Two erstwhile heroes, misfits really, are about to encounter something from....the Twilight Zone."

Rod is entirely black and white, like he stepped right out of a television. A few folks on the sidewalk stare in curiosity or horror and get out of the way.

Dark hair pushed from his face, Zack really doesn't have a clue who Rod Sterling was. He's totally the wrong generation for it and not even remotely American. The British teen, and sometimes member of the Young Justice was actually using a ring to fly tonight when he saw Rod in all of his awesome Black and White glory. If he was aware who the man was, it would probably send even more warning bells off in his head than already are sounding. People just don't exist in black and white. His bright electric blue eyes look around tracing the paths of magic in the air and looking to see if there's an easily identifiable source.

Croyd appears in a thin ripple in the air next to a taco stand. The guy tending the stand sees Rod and runs away as fast as his legs can carry him. Croyd, in this incarnation, is tall, thin, blond with green eyes and a beach bum Abraham Lincoln. He has a scraggly beard and is ravenous. He begins to chow down on some Tacos. He puts a twenty down but doesn't yet notice the dude coming up behind him.

Rod continues his narration. "Behold, one Croyd Crenson, aka the Sleeper. Recently awoken with a ravenous hunger. Behold, one Zachary William Evingston II. Mystic Tinkerer, looking to see if there is some magical source...but will the magic look BACK. In...the Twilight Zone." Trumpet music plays in the background briefly. A man with a box comes up to Zack and says, "Excuse me did you order this?" He seems to radiate magic.

Seeing people radiate magic like that isn't usually one of those things that Zack is hoping for because it generally ends with him going through a wall... or three. However, he was raised to be polite,"Sorry, I didn't order anything today." He says in clipped tones of someone from the London Upper class. His blue eyes don't leave the man with the box though. "I do believe perhaps you have the wrong person. Besides, usually people don't stand on corners waiting for a package of any legitimate sort."

The man snorts, "Really? I've got a box here that has ...stuff in it. Including a phone, some boxers, and a sword. It has your name on it."

Rod walked right next to Croyd. "Croyd Crenson, who's powers now include Clairaudience, will hear that."

Croyd looks at the man with the box, "I heard that." He thinks a moment...and doesn't care that he did, and resumes eating Tacos. Lots and lots of Tacos.

"Well first of all, I would never request boxers to be delivered in such an open place. Second of all, how do you have all of that in the box." Zack says blinking a little bit at the man carrying the box,"Something tells me that until I accept the box, you're not going to leave me be, am I right?" He asks quirking a dark brow at the man. Sometimes he wishes he himself didn't seem to attract such strange thing to happen to him.

Rod nods sagely in the background. "Zack had an ominous portent that if he didn't take the box, he was never going to be let be. He did not realize until he looked at the box that strange and disturbing magical creatures were to be found inside. One of them was a cloaker that was about to eat his face."

At THAT, Croyd finally stops eating Tacos and looks at Rod. He then teleports across the street near Zack in a ripple of light, "Hey dude, I wouldn't open that box...it'll eat your face. Weird guy over there..." he points at Rod, "is muttering strangeness under his breath."

"Oh joy... Another face eater. That makes the third this week." Zack says as he pulls the sword from his hip and points it at the man and the box,"Why don't you just set the box down nice and slow and then run very far away. I have a feeling that what's about to happen is going to be significantly less than pleasant experience for anyone that's around and knowing my luck lately, I touch the bloody thing and I'll have a nasty face eater coming at me."

The man runs away as he sets the box down. Out of the box, a large cloaker emerges and tries to eat Zack's face. An animated sword comes out, and the box itself attacks Croyd who points his finger at it and makes the box really really heavy....so it hurts all the more when it hits him in the face too.

"Croyd would find that his powers were no match for the Mimic that had been the box. Meanwhile, the man who had carried the box was unfortunately run over by a truck."

He said as he stepped right past the truck that ran over the surprised courier, causing him to vanish in a puff of smoke.

"See this is why I do not care for boxes." Zack says as he makes a gesture with the sword and his finger, a nice little swirl of flame come out from the tip of the rapier to form a snake between him and the face eater. "I'm not going to just let you eat my face. If that man thinks I'm going to I am going to have to throw a right bit of flame up his arse for it." He says quite matter of factly as he takes a defensive stance in case the animated sword comes at him.

"Zack believed he was going to throw some flame up my posterior," Rod continued, "but ironically was backing up toward a barrel full of rocket fuel...."

The serpent and the cloaker get into it until the serpent bites the cloaker and it begins to die of poison, making tiny coughing noises.

Croyd makes the box as weak as tissue paper, and grabs it, face hurting, as he rips it to shreds. The floating sword tries to herd Zack onto the Rocket Fuel.

Croyd howls, "We need to do something about Rod!"

"Yes. He's starting to get on last nerve." Zack says as he continues parrying the sword. However, he does decide to stop moving backwards. "If you have any suggestions then I will be glad to hear them. I am not sure that I can just cast a spell on him." He says taking a breath,"Maybe a silence spell would work on him but it might not do so well considering I am not sure that it is actually a real person there." He says stretching a bit.

Croyd says, "My name is Croyd."

"He said his name was Croyd."

"Wait...I think we're getting ahead of him..."

"He foolishly said believing he could defeat the narration of their episode."

"Silence spell. Yeah that sounds neat."

"Unfortunately, Zack was unable to cast the a silence spell due to the blow torch that landed on the nearby barrel of Rocket Fuel...." Zack hears an ominous CLUNK behind him as he parries the flying sword with his own.

"Make with the spell dude!""

"Ha! You think something like that would stop me." Zack says as he goes flying straight up,"Let silence fall upon he would dictate the course of events, let nothing escape his mouth. " That's the spell that he needs to cast in order to silence Rod. If he thought he was going to lay around and let him dictate what was going to happen in his life, they had another thing coming. He had to figure out a better way of dealing with thing.

"Ironically, Zack didn't realize that his spell was going to-" He grabbed his throat and looked with annoyance at Zack as he slowly started to fade.

As he flew up, the rocket fuel exploded, and fire and heat spread around the area, some getting near Croyd as he teleported away. "I think its working!"

"Cold as the winter winds, wet as the ocean, snuff the flames of the skyward fuel." Zack says gesturing with the rapier again. As he speaks, an icy water pillar appears coming to crash down upon the rocket fuel fire. "This is quite dangerous you know." He doesn't know how he's going to totally eliminate Rod but he was thinking of it.

Croyd says, "Oh, wait...wait, I got it....try a 'TV off' spell? Can you do something like that? Maybe like 'Hexus Pocus, Lose your Focus'...only...for like...remote controls or...off buttons...or something..."

Rod walks rapidly toward Zack and Croyd. Perhaps he was trying to move farther than fifteen feet out of the silence spell?

The rocket fuel calms down slowly and the flames are doused.

"A stop I call, to that which is here. Render the black and white, like the black and white tv." Zack says as he tries to make Rod vanish and nonexistent like the old fashioned black and white tv is now. "I'm trying a few things. This isn't as simple as science. There are a lot of components to things that will cause problems."

Apparently it was good enough because Rod blips off like a black and white TV...For Now.

DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!

"Whew. Who the hell was that guy? Way to make with the mojo their dude."

"I'm going to guess that someone brought something from an old TV show or movie." Zack says as he lowers himself to the ground,"Who though I have no idea." He says shrugging indifferently about the whole thing,"So you don't know him either then? I am not up on old American TV shows."

Croyd says, "Oh him? He was an Evil Rod Sterling from the Twilight Zone...anthology sci fi show during the 1950's and sixties, quite good really."

Croyd begins to eat more Tacos.

"I may try and see it but may not. It is a bit... much." Zack says laughing a bit,"Anyway, I should be off. There's a lot of ground to cover and that probably won't be the last bit of weirdness that I encounter this evening." He says before lifting into the air so that he can continue his patrol.