Chapter 62 A Group of Crows is called a Murder Part 3
“Caw!”
“CACAWR!” - The philosophical discussions between Jingling Keychains Sunders The Street Light and I Shit Daily On The Human Named Ophelia Steelsoul Nelson The Immovable For The Crime Of Wronging Me, which devolved to fisticuffs, in the Cantos of Crowkind.
Perhaps Ranpo should’ve expected that he would not rest long, after all, when he summed up the events of the past few hours in his head, why would the world let him sleep off his first hangover? No, such a thing was for a world that made sense.
So it was with great consternation that Ranpo awoke to the sound of shattering glass and the cacophony of squawks.
A cinderblock had smashed through the tarnished glass, letting in a harsh crimson light. The sun was a ball of blood red today and it highlighted their attackers charging in through the breach in the ceiling. Flying figures of styrofoam white with wings dark as an oil spill. Three Toed Headphones flew past him, cawing, “The gulls are attacking!” Before the one-eyed crow took up a shiv with his beak and gutted a seagull that came too close.
Around them the crows were waking from their drunken stupor, cawing war cries as they took flight. Three Toed Headphones licked the blood off his shiv and joined. Outside murder and colony fought a battle of aerial dominance. Darting bodies of black and white as they tried to outmanoeuvre and dive bomb the other.
Ranpo saw this and vomited glitter. After hucking up a pile of purple, he looked around again, saw a seagull much larger than him dive him and then heaved up a fruit pit that was stuck in his throat.
He moved before the beak made contact, not with the three-dimensional paper body, but the true two dimensional one overlaying it. Shifting his wing away from where the gull made contact and pierced into the folded origami. Ranpo spat the fruit pit at the gull’s eye, getting a confused squawk in response as they broke off.
Jiggling himself back into place with his body, Ranpo’s still addled mind briefly pondered an appropriate metaphor for his state. If Aiden’s usage of tattoos was akin to putting on a suit, then Ranpo himself was that suit piloting a mannequin. What he had just done was akin to taking the arm out of the arm sleeve and folding the sleeve across his chest. The ‘mannequin’ arm was what was damaged, while he, the clothing remained safe.
But the ‘mannequin’ was getting a bit too damaged. Both the Umbrella and the t-rex managed to animate both sand and concrete respectively, neither continuous, connected or even shaped like them, they merely forced the medium into their shape through physical strength. Ranpo was doing this as well, there were plenty of holes, rips and tears in his origami body, even in pristine condition it wasn’t perfectly shaped like a crow. He was physically holding these parts together in place and it was getting tiring.
The opposing gull seemed to get over its confusion, lunging at him again. Ranpo took the opportunity to slip completely off his body. The torn paper fell to shreds as the gull slammed into it, rips and tears from the previous night falling apart the moment he was no longer there to keep it together.
Now that he had more time to think about his powers, he would have to say that being two-dimensional was a lot like being underwater, lacking gravity or true up and down, with the surface being the water’s surface. He could go deeper into the water, further away from the surface, which appeared to others like him becoming smaller. Despite this distance, he could return to the surface at any time and retain whatever size he had shrunken himself into, but naturally he was only about as capable as whatever his relative size indicated. His physical strength didn’t condense when he was the size of an ant. Any form of movement he tried while two dimensional also worked, swimming, flying and even walking, as if there were phantom surfaces for him to push off of.
He flew now on the floor’s surface towards his prize. An obsidian blur as he slid onto the bleeding corpse of the stabbed gull. Black feathers overtook white ones as Ranpo rose once again. Jiggling his joints into place with the gull’s equivalents. The gull was a bit larger than him, but that just resulted in the wings and tail being outlined with grey, and a black beak that ended in an orange hook.
Inhabiting a three dimensional body broke his water analogy, because he covered every part of the creature’s body, not just one side of it. The black of his wings covered both the under and upper side of the dead gull’s wings. Not to mention the fact he could digest things. Actual, physical digestion and subsequent defecation. His two-dimensional body was still susceptible to wounds, but he could get poisoned. He was poisoned. Alcohol counted no matter how many drug addled humans claimed otherwise.
Diving the confused gull, Ranpo got a good peck, ripping off a wicked line of feathers from the gull’s crown. They were about the same size now, and much more equally equipped. They brawled against each other on the ground and air, each attempted flight interrupted by the other with a timely kick or peck. The gull was good, managing a wing bash on his breast before he could move his two-dimensional body, winding him and opening him up to get grabbed by their claw. In midair he had no surface to flee to, and his distracted mind could only wonder how he managed to breath air while two dimensional and lacking inflatable lungs.
It was the crow that had covered herself in golden bracelets last night that saved him. Dive bombing the gull and freeing him. “We have to flee!” the crow called out. Above, the fight was starting to turn against them as many crows chose flight. “Help me grab the treasure!”
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“Which one?” Ranpo yelled back.
“The fish!” His saviour dived towards the fountain that held the glowing fish head.
The crow, which he would later learn was named Shattered Moon Cannot Fathom The Traffic Light (or Traf for short, because the other abbreviation was rude in both Crow and Human for different reasons), grabbed the upper lip of the fish head, while he grabbed the bottom.
Both fled for the skies. It didn’t take long for them to have pursuers.
The first gull dived Ranpo, he narrowly avoided at the cost of throwing both of them off balance. The second swooped by but was beaten back by Three Toed Headphones still wielding his shiv. The one eyed crow cawed something garbled by the handle in his beak, but Ranpo figured it was something along the lines of: “I’ll hold them off!” Since he charged the first gull, dipping at the last moment to draw a deep red line into the gull’s wing.
Ranpo and Traf recentered themselves, still holding the fish head as they flew off. Ranpo’s last glance backward showed him Three Toed Headphones flying circles around four gulls, like David facing four Goliaths, the older crow’s smaller size gave him the edge in manoeuvrability. Unfortunately, four seemed to be the limit he could keep preoccupied as two other gulls chased closed behind them. Eyes locked onto the literal beacon of light between their claws.
“What is this stupid head thing!” he cawed at Traf.
“Meta artefact!” Traf cawed back.
“Is it even worth it!?” Ranpo asked, but was left tragically unanswered as Traf simply yelled, “I’m diving!”
They dived trying to find cover amongst the city buildings, the two gulls chased close behind. The crows weaved through cars and waking crowds, managing to just dodge a hot dog stand, while the a gull behind them slammed into a proffered hot dog, slowing it down for but a moment.
“We’re going up!” Traf changed direction, heading towards the glass walls of a skyscraper.
Ranpo nodded, both gulls following close behind them, they rushed towards the skyscraper, at the last possible moment they braked direction, flying up the skyscraper instead. The less manoeuvrable gull simply slammed headfirst into the glass.
The second gull that had been slowed by the hot dog braked in time, chasing them up the skyscraper.
“How do we lose him!?” Traf screamed.
“I’ve got an idea!” Ranpo cawed back, “Fly towards the sun!”
The other crow didn’t question him, changing direction towards the rising sun. For a brief moment, the light of the fish head obscured them within the much brighter light of the sun, and the gull lost sight of them.
That was when a dark shadow slipped away and dived the gull. Ranpo’s foot curled into a fist, smashing the head of the last gull. He noted with some surprise that it was the same one that attacked him, his beak mark was still on its crown.
The gull squawked rage as it fell. Ranpo hovered for a moment, confirming it hit the ground before he moved to catch Traf who could not bear the weight of the fish head by herself. “This thing better be worth it,” he muttered as they flew off into the distance.
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Ranpo vomited a cigarette butt, he wiped the phlegm on his lip with disgust. “What the fuck was this guy eating?” He admitted he didn’t have the most hygienic diet as a crow, but heaving out what the seagull was eating made him look fussy in comparison. “Anyways what does the fish head do?”
They were at another crow nest hidden in the bright signage of an abandoned fast food restaurant, this one much more sparsely decorated than the green house, but the wiring that once powered the sign now arced electricity in a violently lethal light show. Judging by the scratch marks on the exposed wiring, the crows had done this intentionally.
Traf didn’t answer him immediately, instead she and a few other crows picked out a bottle of beer, apparently they kept a stash at every hideout they had. “It turns water to beer, and makes beer taste better.”
Ranpo waited for more.
He was disappointed in himself for expecting something other than disappointment.
“Seriously!?” he yelled as the other crow tried to work the bottle open. “We risked our lives for that!?
“Worth it!” Traf exclaimed as she smashed the bottle open and they rushed to drink the contents.
“No!” Ranpo shoved Traf aside, a dormant volcano of frustration and rage finally erupting within him. “You crows are most hedonistic little shits I have ever seen! And you don’t even do that right! You are all as or almost as smart as humans, so why do you live in their cities living off their scraps? You’re smart enough to organise and you can see what benefits that brings you! Instead you keep doing immature shit like this without grasp of a greater goal or purpose! You could better your living situation if you just tried!”
Shattered Moon Cannot Fathom The Traffic Light growled, “My name is much longer and better than yours, and yet it seems only you got the stick up your ass!”
“Yeah!” “You’re stupid!” “I fuck your dad!”
“He’s right.”
Three Toed Headphones declaration cut through the chatter. Silencing all of them. The one eyed crow was drenched in blood, only some of it his. He had dropped his shiv by the door when he came, and its edge had been dulled with repeated use.
The elder crow hopped toward Ranpo, the murder parting around the him. “Eat The Skies And Shit Out The Clouds is right,” he repeated.
“We have been stealing tricks, hiding in shadows, waiting for the day where we become the next ones after humanity, assuming that doing things the crow way will bring us there,” he quietly rumbled. “But where has that brought us?”
Three Toed Headphones looked around to the battered crows, many sporting bruises and wounds. He spoke with rising cadence, “Wounded and fleeing from our homes? Robbed of our hordes!? I say no more! EAT THE SKIES AND SHIT OUT THE CLOUDS IS RIGHT! FROM TODAY FORTH WE SHALL ORGANISE! FORM WARBANDS AS HUMANS DO AND BRING THE BATTLE TO THE GULLS! WE WILL EXTERMINATE EVERY LAST GULL, HATCHLING AND EGG! UNTIL THESE SKIES BELONG TO ONLY US!”
“Race war!” A crow cawed out.
“Race war!” Another echoed.
“Race war!” “Race war!”
To the chants of ‘Race war’ repeated, Ranpo could only look bewildered before he screamed the sole voice in defiance. “You guys are fucking idiots!”
They paused as Ranpo huffed, trying to catch his breath. He breathed in and yelled, “IT’S NOT A RACE WAR SINCE WE’RE NOT THE SAME SPECIES! IT’S A SPECIES WAR! A SPECIES WAR YOU DUMBASSES!”
One crow looked at the other and whispered, “That’s what he’s bothered about?”
“Eat The Skies And Shit Out The Clouds,” Three Toed Headphones loomed over him. Ranpo was technically the larger beast with his new body, but he had seen Three Toed Headphones gut at least three gulls on his lonesome. “You know how humans fight and humans are the greatest at fighting, even their Living Concepts excel at only war. Teach us war as humans know it, and we will follow your requests on other things.”
Ranpo palmed his face, groaning, “That’s what I’ve been trying to say all along!”