Picnic in the park

The door to the strip club opened up with a shove. Out of it rolled a cheap lowlife loan shark, landing on his face and dragging it across the cement. The guy was one of the biggest landlords of the slummiest parts of California and tried to pull off scams on the weakest of his residents; Eldery people were conned into paying for things they didn't even understand or have, the handicapped were given substandard living requirments and the poorest were treated simply like animals. And then when they were desperate for money they needed, he'd loan to them with outrageous "rates" he simply made up. Bones stepped out of the doorway, the light from inside shining through his clothes and making him look like a coloured version of an X-ray. The loan shark twisted on the ground and looked up with shame in his eyes, but he bared his teeth like a dog and crawled out into the darkness, kicking with his hands and feet. Bones pulled the Mauser from under his arm and armed it, squaring it on the face of the man who groaned out in fear. "Oh, god, please don't shoot. Please don't shoot me." He moaned low. Bones walked out slowly as he stepped down the curb, the Loan Shark now resting halfway across the line.

"Oh, I ain't going to pull no trigger, Pal." Bones growled low, moving to press an itallian shoe on the kneecap of the man. "I think if I pulled a trigger you'd be getting off easy." He lifted a hand up to pull his hat down low over his eyes, forming two balls of glowing energy deep in his eye sockets. The move struck terror into the heart of the man as he tried to struggle away, crying out in a squeel as he wet himself. "Tommarow, you are going to empty your bank account. You are going to give all of your money to the list of names on this list." Frankie ducked his hand into his raincoat, lifting a note and throwing it out on the chest of the man. "I've labelled cash amounts to the people who need it more than the others. Then, you are going to give them the deeds to their homes. Understand? Or do I have to beat you until you look like me?"

"I'll do it! I'll do it! Por favor déjenme vivir, Ángel de la muerte!" The man lapsed into his own native tongue as he held up his hands in a prayer, babbling more and more words in spanish.

"I'm no angel of Death. But just as a Aide-mémoire..." Bones flipped the gun in his hand, holding the barrel in his hand as he lifted it up to smack against the Man's eye. There was a pop as the cheekbone broke under the heavy swing. The man yelped and lifted his hands up, shouting in spanish as Bones moved his hand up to slip it into holster. He buttoned it and lifted his foot up, delivering a swift kick into the man's side and moving around the side of the strip club. The Buick '51 sat gleeming in the parking lot as the sun began to peek over the horizon of the city. He opened the door and slipped inside, knocking his fist against the glove compartment and pulling out the small black book. It was hard being awake 24/7, because unlike other people he didn't have the chance to have breaks in his day. The address book gave him the ability to keep track of what he was doing. Frankie blinked in surprise at the picture before he gave a short laugh; Aurora had been needing to get out of the house so Frankie promised her a day out. To give her proof, Bones had asked her to put it into the book for him. The little picture of a tree was cute, but he would have to teach that girl to write in English one day. With a gentle sigh he closed the book and slipped it back into it's place, starting up the purring engine as he pulled out for the Park they agreed on.

The sun begin to glow through the buildings as Bones made his way towards the park. He cranked up the radio and listened to some old classical station, finding the other stuff too weird to really handle. He pulled into the park about two hours before he had to be there, but that was okay. Pulling a book from under his chair he sank down in his tinted windows and began to read the King novel, tapping his foot as he kept himself busy. The hours passed quickly as he cut a large chunk out of the book and threw it onto the chair next to him, pulling a watch from another raincoat pocket. Ah, ten minutes to go. He glanced out of the window and immediately noticed Aurora skipping into the back, being watched by a whole lot of people in some honestly curious fashions and some rather predatory ones. But the Cat kept them back, Leo being the thing that held most people back in the modern world. It was a good thing they found him.

Bones opened the door and stepped out, lifting the raincoat and throwing it onto the passenger seat. He slipped into his own, shrugging the jacket off and leaving himself within the shirt and suit vest. Frankie moved his hands to unbuckle the holster, dropping it into the lap as he shrugged off the left shoulder of his vest, then fitted the holster back on. Concealing the gun he he buttoned up his vest and pulled his gloves back a little, while pulling the license for the weapon and sticking it into his pants pockets. He wasn't really paranoid, but whenever he went somewhere he never felt comfortable without having a single firearm on him. Frankie got out and slammed the door, before walking across the firm summer dirt in the bright sun. Leo was bounding away as he made his way to Aurora's side, laughing gently. "Hello." He said in high spirits.

Bones smiled as Aurora bounded onto him, one bony arm wrapping around her so as he put a foot back. If he hadn't been prepared for it, the very lightweight skeleton would have been toppled back as the girl kissed his bony cheeks. When she slipped off, she grabbed hold his gloved bony hand and began chattering the adorable way she always did when he came home from his work. He nodded his head when he heard about Archie and kept quiet about the others being a little distant; he suspected that soon they'd probably go their own ways and he hoped when they did it wouldn't upset little Aurora too much. Frankie laughed as she asked him to come home and he squeezed her hand, remembering that there were people out there that considered him apart of their family. ”Sorry, Princess, I gotta keep working for a lil' bit, but I'll be back soon. Then we can spend some of this fine summer weather hunting glow worms and gardening.” He turned his head, looking to make sure Leo hadn't flipped an Ice Cream stand and was eating the contents.

Fortunately, the Ice Cream vendors of the park were safe for a moment. However, Bones arm was not. When the big cat landed on him, his arm was pulled the socket and sleeve, left hanging in Aurora's hand as the Sabre tooth licked him. Frankie laughed loudly, bringing a bony hand up to Leo's snout and pushing it away from his face as he dragged himself up, wiping the pre-historic slobber from his jaw, teeth and nose.

When he noticed the missing arm, he blinked in surprise and looked up at the Dryad, laughing gently. ”Gimme a hand here?”

Bones moved his gloved hand to help the girl slide it into place. Soon, the magic field seemed to magnetise bones together and Frankie moved his elbow up and down and curled his fingers. It was always an odd but familiar sensation, like pulling on a glove. The Dryad pulled him up and he laughed happily as he patted the Sabre Tooth behind the ear. ”My trip?” He said after a pause, lifting an arm and crossing it over his ribcage. ”My trip was good. I beat some bad guys up, like I usually do.” He laughed gently, nudging her shoulder with his own as watched the tiger bound around the park. Frankie liked the animal, even when it use to pull him around by the spine and bury him out in the garden like a dog in a cartoon. The fuss the others used to caused always made him laugh.

Frankie did have a small problem though, with telling Aurora about his job. Sometimes, he was a private eye who was just taking small weird jobs like escorting magical artefacts. Other times, he was a consultant brought on for things that defied explanation. Some jobs were... darker. He remembered a werewolf attack that left plenty of people torn apart, and that kind of stuff he never wanted to share.

”There was a good one recently though,” he began, smiling gently. ”Some rich thought he had been conned out of buying a magical cloak. Turned out it was just Invisible.”

It was now turning to the wee hours of the morning and even at this early a time a man was running, or rather tromping through a boggy part of the woods, as what appeared to be a fallen tree floated in his wake. He screamed for help and prayed for mercy to some god it was hard to tell who given his thick accent and that he occasionally slipped back into his native tongue, which sounded to be African or something of that sort. Looking back the man noticed the tree following him and only yelled and tried to run faster, leading him to fall forward and finally sealing his fate. The man watched the tree get closer and closer, still praying to someone that was not listening, and tried to swim backwards as quickly as he could but it was no use. His fate was sealed.

The tree nudged the man in the ribs before it came to a sudden stop. Then it slowly began to rise up out of the water and stood straight up taller than the man could ever hope to be, the thing standing at almost ten foot tall, and looked down on the terrified man with cold eyes. Moving it’s arms with tremendous speed, almost like that of an athlete, it checked the water proof watch that covered it’s wrist. “Good show man, you did very well. That was the longest time it has ever taken me to catch someone. You should be very proud of yourself, almost outsmarting a mind such as my own is no easy matter,” the half human half crocodile thing said with an upbeat tone to his voice. “Now that being said, you should know this I still intend to make sure you never tell anyone of what you saw or this little game that we have played,” moving his hands again, the thing took the African man in his arms and brought him to his mouth, devouring him in one enormous bite. “I think my highly evolved stomach acids will take care of him, after all he looked to be nothing more than bones,” he said with an uproarious laugh.

Sometime later, in the comfort of his own home and after a good bath to wash away all the dirt and grime from the bog and the filthy man he had consumed. He sat in a reclined position, wearing a casual three piece suit, with his mouth wide open as his personal dentist scrubbed here and there to make sure that his smile would be as beautiful as ever. Having a jaw one foot from the base of your body and so many teeth made it hard for the man to take care of his teeth so he had hired someone to do it for him some time ago. Once his mouth was thoroughly cleaned of everything he had devoured that night, with a sneaker that had not made it to the back of his throat in the trash, he stood and checked his pocket watch and noted that it was now a good deal later in the day. Walking from his house Gentleman Crocodile decided that it was as good a time as any to see what was happening around town.

It did not take long for him to walk past a quaint little park with only a few people in it, looking into it he noted that there was an unusual number of men just looking in one direction. Following their gaze he saw a small girl throwing a Frisbee for her Sabre Tooth Tiger, something not even common in the strangest places on the planet, the Gentleman had to get a closer look. Making his way over to the owner of the beast, he then saw something even more wonderful, an old friend. “Good day Detective Bones, it has been too long,” he called out to his old friend, one of the only people on the planet that knew his dirty secret of being a not so charitable person. Once he reached the pair of people he stopped and waited for the bag of bones to react, surely he knew that if he made a scene he would kill the girl with either the sword in his cane, the gun hidden in his vest pocket, or a simple chomp of the teeth.

Frankie watched the powerful, prehistoric creature leap and bound across the warm green grass. It immediately caught most of the attention of the parks inhabitants, including dogs that had been out for a walk but now cowered behind the legs of their masters. It still astounded him when he saw a natural predator like that cuddle up to the doting Dryad. He smiled, although to other people they would have only seemed to have guessed at it. His life was one weird thing, from day to day, especially as he remember back to the whole thing in Mexico. His attention pulled away from the big cat as he caught the big plastic disc, to his little sister. She was talking about going on adventures with him again and he sighed as his hands moved up brush lightly at his forehead. ”Princess...” He says softly, before feeling a plastic disc bounce against his hip. He looked down at the great big cat and moved his hands down to scratch behind it's ears, tugging the Frisbee out of his mouth lightly. ”You know I can't let you do that. There are things that I do that aren't nice... Things that I don't think you need to see.” He turned his head and smiled a little more, shrugging his bony narrow shoulders. But then a voice called out to him. A very familiar voice, one that still haunted him sometimes when he slipped into dark places. Turning very slowly the Skeleton looked across the warm green field and was transported back to the Amazon.

The Jungle was hot and wet, but Frankie cut his way through it like a machine, unable to use the roads. Croc had them locked down with hired Mercenaries, so he had to take a boat down from the coast to reach the small mountain hidden away deep inside. About three months ago an underdeveloped Tribe had practically disappeared without a trace. Bones had been in the area for one of his usual jobs, but he decided to investigate the whole disappearance because of a child that claimed to have been attacked by a Crocodile God. The small boy, apparently apart of the missing tribe, had lost an arm and was covered in bite wounds, delirious from fever and dehydration. He kept babbling about mining for material and worshipping a green scaled god that would eat the sick and the weak to make the tribe stronger. So that's how he found himself suddenly outside a hastily built mining compound, which seemed to be strangely deserted.

What he found was sickening. A collapsed mine full of bodies, with most of them showing clear signs of starvation and abuse; Most of them seemed to show evidence of bullet wounds after the event, as if Mercenaries had walked thought the stone prison and ended their lives one by one. And then when he walked out he was surrounded by a private army, armed to the teeth, with a big, fat, ugly, scaly bastard grinning happily at him, as if he had just rode out of the Love Tunnel. What followed was violent, but in his favour. He killed more than twenty men as the Crocodile opened his mouth to begin a monologue. The pistol jammed at number 21, but a hard thrown ball of fire burnt out his eyes as the Crocodile made a steady retreat, laughing as he went. He didn't need to fight, he had others to do it for him. He didn't need to to mine, he could force people to do it for him. And as the helicopter rose out of the jungle and sped away, the first meeting of many between the Skeleton and the Crocodile, Bones understood that Croc didn't need to die. He could pay others do that for him.

”You...”

The reactions he received upon meeting the two abnormal people was something that the crocodile man would have expected. Surprise, fear, and possibly a hint of anger from the bag of bones and maybe surprise with a hint of fear from the girl, this was all to be expected though and it did not deter the man crocodile in any way. The tiger on the other hand was more than a bit of a problem, as it showed clear signs of disliking the new comer right off the bat. Reginald was never able to keep animals since his appearance always put them off right away. The sad thing was that Reginald was never able to put them at ease since he was unable to communicate with the beast, not even his half-brothers the crocodiles.

“That seems to be a truly remarkable specimen you have there,” the crocodile man said with a positive smile on his face that showed his long row of gleaming white teeth. “Although the real specimen is you my dear, and a beautiful one at that,” and with his kind words Reginald gave a low bow to the woman and to her Sabre Tooth Tiger a like, attempting to put their fears to rest so they would not suspect him of wrong doing. Speaking to the woman once again, the crocodile man continued his well-mannered introduction, “Yes, I know Franklin very well. We have a very colorful past him and me.” He looked to the bag of bones with sorrow in his eyes as he said his next well-rehearsed line, “We have been what feel like all over the globe encountering evil and pushing it back.”

Turning to Franklin with a look of companionship, “You never told me you were back in town.” The crocodile man took one large stride to the once man and looked down on him, pointing his long and powerful jaw at him with a stern stare, making sure that it was veiled in a sort respectful eye but that it also told Franklin what would happen if he were to give him away, and said his next words with as much malice as he could hide, “You never let me know when you are or are not back in town these days. Have you considered my offer any more since our last encounter?” Reginald was referring to his offer to hire Franklin as a detective, with the one rule of never snooping into any of Reginald’s affairs.

If Frankie had a heart it would have skipped a beat, as his skull slightly jerked towards Aurora's voice. She was still here. He tried not to shove her out of the way, shout at her to go run to the car and call Archie or the police or something. He resisted the urge to pull his gun from his vest and open fire, aiming for those dark, beady eyes that were dim and glassy like any predators, but could flare to murderous life at the scent of blood. Metaphorical or literal. Instead, he took a slight step back and moved diagonally to the two of them. To anyone else it would look like he was trying to see both of his conversational partners at the same time. To Bones it was a tactical move, allowing him to rush forward to barrel into Croc if he made a move for the Dryad, or to pull a gun and put a bullet in the kneecaps of the big lizard. Then maybe Leo could pounce on him and have a meal from the Nile.

”Oh, I know him.” He murmured as one hand moved to pinch the base of his other glove, pulling them down with a small snap before doing the other. The tight material made a small sound as he squeezed his fists, one finger move to slide to the button on his vest while the other slipped to his hip. Another move to promote security; he could pull his Mauser out if he was quick enough. Frankie kept his cool as the large creature stepped forward, his face impassively grinning like it usually did. He knew that the Crocodile latched onto that emotion, sought to bring that emotion out in people. When they were afraid, they were easier to handle and intimidate. Frankie remembered that trick. He used it when he was in the Mob. ”Aurora, this is Reginald Theodore Scaly the Third. Oh, sorry, I mean, Reginald Theodore Henry the Third. I just call him Croc, on account of his pleasant smile. Croc, this is Aurora.”

His gloved hand drifted from one to the other. His hand stayed down on his waistcoat, near to his gun, as he turned and whispered softly. ”Still building Shoddy Ships, Reggie?” The short sentence related to why the Crocodile Business man offered him investigative work; Bones had turned into a sharp thorn in Croc's side after a fiasco that involved a purposely dangerously built Ocean Liner Hotel. Croc, working slightly freelance and managing the project, was cutting corners on construction and siphoning the excess budget away. ”Because if you are, I'll still be telling the public about it.” He mumbled, before smiling at the Dryad. ”But!” He said loudly, talking to the two of them, ”Why don't you tell us about your work? I always take an interest in it, you know that.” He tried to keep a light tone, but there was a slight edge directed at him.

“There goes Franklin telling his wonderful jokes just like always,” Reginald said to the woman before him with the large sabre toothed tiger in front of her. “I have always loved that about the sack of bones, never loses that sense of humor and truly that is what I like about him most,” He proceeded to the picnic spot that the girl had gestured to. Taking a firm seat and using his tail for support, Reginald was rather comfortable, despite the fact that he was potentially getting grass stains on his suit to attempt his intimidation of one of his greatest rivals. “Tell me miss, how long have you had the pleasure of knowing my old friend?” He said with another falsely warm smile to the tree nymph.

Perusing over what the girl had brought with her for the little picnic with her friend and his enemy he noted that there was nothing that he would really want to eat, everything looking as though it was homemade or something equally disgusting to the aristocrat. Looking to the girl again he spoke gentle words, though they were not meant for her but rather they were meant for Bones, “I am afraid I am not hungry as I had a little African this morning and am still rather full.” Reginald knew Franklin would understand the meaning beneath it and though the crocodile man was sat firmly on the ground he still kept his cane sword in hand and was ready to use his long and strong tail to his advantage. Though he had evolved well past his cousins he still used many of the same natural weapons.

After a slight moment, wanting his words to have time to sink into the dead man, and then began to speak to Franklin directly, “Tell me Franklin, at our last meeting you never told me what you found in those mines in South Africa. I would really very much like to know, since after all that was our first time meeting and it will always be a special moment to me,” The man crocodile made sure to lay the fake emotions on nice and thick, bordering on sarcasm and obvious disdain, but he made sure that his voice pitch would not alarm the girl as she still would have no knowledge of Reginald’s business or most likely his past dealings with Franklin. Just something else that would add to the future, Reginald’s plans to destroy and kill everything Bones loved was already in motion.

Bones smiled softly at Leo. He was proud of the sabre tooth as it slunk down to the ground and protected Aurora like any good friend should. He reached down slightly, his bone fingers brushing through the thick fur between it's ears, his eyes locked firmly on Croc as he did it. Maybe it was an intimidation move, or maybe it was an actual expression of affection, but his empty eyes were locked firmly on the damn mutated crocodile. But his hand was snatched up by Aurora, who squeezed and tugged him down lightly. He kept his eyes on the Croc as he descended. But he didn't sit, instead he crouched low. His pelvis almost rest on the back of his ankles as he placed his elbows on his knobbly knees. Like this, he was ready to push forward and back at the drop of hat, simply using the momentum of his body to achieve what he wanted.

Down came Croc, who seemed to decide it was a good idea to mimic his own actions and prepare his body just in case a pin dropped and they were suddenly in the middle of a fight. He shook his head as Reginald began to talk, his jaw coming up to gently grind against the upper one. ”Did I ever tell you the joke about the pair of Crocodile boots? You look familiar with it.” The joke was one of his lamer ones, and he'd probably use it more than once with Reggie, but he liked to remind him that no matter how hard he tried to pretend to be the sweet charming business man, he was still a monster. Just like Bones.

When he made the comment about the African, Bones hands clench firmly, the gloves making a little squeaking sound as he did. That meant he was going to have to search through the missing persons of the entire city now, for any African people that had gone missing. If they had, he'd have to talk to some of his friends at the Precinct whom he had told about most of their exploits. And then the grinning crocodile brought up a scene from many of Bones dreams. ”I found what you left me to find, Reggie.” He looked up slowly, eyes on the face of Reginald. ”I've got a tank all set for you.” The threat was vague sounding to Aurora, but to Croc it was a reminder of a promise Bones made as he made a retreat. One day, Frankie Brokedell would seal Gentleman Croc in a reinforced glass case. It would be Croc's permanent cell.