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Alcohol, Mayor of Steelbird Landing
Al was rubbing his temples, leaning his elbows on the wooden desk, sitting in a wooden chair. The floor was concrete, with some decent rugs scattered about to make it easier to walk on. There were a few windows, with no glass, but instead wooden shutters with curtains on the inside. All of them were currently closed. On the wall behind Al's desk was a painting of a quaint farm, peaceful and serene with easily managable shrubbery and amber waves of grain. There was also a poster, a very old poster made of the old materials, durable, plyable and shiny. On it was a picture of the Steelbird itself, the ancient airplane slumbering somewhere in the jungle, from which the town got it's name. A reminder of things that once were. Al had never had an opportunity to learn to read, but apparently the poster was marketing for an airport, where people used to ride airplanes and fly all over the world.
But here, in the ground floor of the mayor's office, Alcohol was dealing with much more grounded issues. At least, he would like to be, but apparently the boogie man himself was getting ready to bust in and make a mess.
"...so that would be the third this month an alleged monster was spotted outside of town." Twice finished.
"Right." Al grumbled, exasperated. "Dismissed." He waved a hand. Twice swallowed dryly. "That's not all." He spoke up after a brief moment of silence.
Al raised one eyebrow and made eye contact with Twice, expectantly.
"Apparently, according to Coop, this time it talked."
Al didn't seem to react. "It...talked." He slowly said.
Twice nodded.
The mayor raised his hands into the air and put his weight on the back of his chair. "Well. By all means, what did it say?"
Twice hesitated once again. "Harbinge, sir." Al nodded, wisely, as if this was all expected. "Harbinge?"
"Yeah," Twice nodded his head, "Just the word 'harbinge.' Over and over and over again. Allegedly. Apparantly. According to Coop." He distanced himself from the theory.
"Harbinge. Ain't even a real word."
"No, sir, I suspect not."
"That all?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Thanks. See you around, Twice." The messenger guard nodded and exited the room, shutting the door behind him. Al exhaled. Monsters. They talked, now, though they said no words. Coop was either crazy, or something terrible was about to happen. The mayor stood, and locked the door behind Twice with a wooden bar that clunked heavily on two pegs.
Then, he approached the map of Steelbird Landing. It was one of the only maps in a town. A similar map was in the headquarters of the police force. It was hand drawn, a rough representation of the different streets and districts of the town. N, S, E, and W, the letters Alcohol knew to represent the cardinal directions, were marked down as well. There was a little X on a square towards the eastern side of town, which repsented where the mayors office was. Towards the center of town, there was a symbol of a gun that represented where the police office was. A big, bold line surrounded the whole thing that represented the walls, that thinned at the northern and southern points into gates. Around the town, not fully pictured, were the farms of Steelbird that provided the towns food and a lot of jobs.
It was a beautiful town, really. It had it's issues, sure, but it was the best he'd seen. Alcohol might have had something to do with it, but really it was the hard working people of this town that kept everything running. People like Twice. People like Coop, even though he was delusional. Still, to dismiss the notion of encroaching "monsters" outright was to be foolish. Clearly something was happening out there, and perhaps Coop's monster sighting were a side effect of these events. Or, maybe, there was really a horrifice beast on the outside of town saying made up words. What a shitty time that would be, huh?
As his eyes scanned the town, he began thinking about what to do. The patrol was already thinner than he'd like. Could he really afford to have guards on monster patrol? Peeking over the walls at night with lights, hoping to catch a glimpse at some abomination? What if these rumors and sighting amounted to nothing? See the guards looking for monsters would only confirm the rumors in most people's minds. Panic might spread. But if they were true...what would happen then? So far, no guard had seen it, and only a few townspeople had claimed to have spotted it. No guard had spotted it, no one really trustworthy. Just people seeing things in the dark, acts of the maelstrom and drugs, perhaps. So many reasons for it to not be true.
Yet the seed of doubt remained. The primal part of all humans that feared the dark and the monsters that lurk within. The mayor could not allow fear to spread. If one of his guards corroborated these tales, than yes, he would act. Until then, the town's guard detail would continue to be the well-oiled machine it was today. Of all the things the Mayor had done, revamping the police was the thing he was perhaps most proud of. No longer were they the lazy, apathetic brutes of old who were just bullies in uniform. Now, they were loyalists, benefactors of the community who did fine work to help keep the town safe. It was important to get that right; the police were representatives of the law, and by extension, everything Alcohol believed in. The town had to like them, had to trust them, for this whole thing to work.
Alcohol turned and pulled open a wooden shutter. The sun poured in and his eyes adjusted to the bright outside lighting. The mayors office was on a slight hill, and it was a taller building than most, so he could see over the rooftops of many of the houses. He could see some people milling around, going about their business. And on the very edge, he could the walls, and beyond that, the mysterious jungle. Somewhere in that jungle there were monsters. Metaphorical monsters and perhaps literal monsters as well. Al couldn't tell which was worse, which one he would choose to deal with. The good news was he wouldn't have to choose; the choice was being made for him.
