Set in Stone

Just an fyi, more than anything.  Still out here, just not using this journal as much.

Zylly108 on AIM, if you need to really get a hold of me.  :-)

Post here, and I'll tell you what Elisa thinks of your pup!

Just wishing a happy b-day to Jubilee! Sorry we can't make it to your part--plans came up with my parents and a rooftop barbecue, but got a couple presents for you...


1) A jacket. On the back is stitched "Honorary Gargoyle" above a caricature of Jubilee with wings.

2) The Xanatos family has generously a week's getaway for her and Dean at Xanadu, their upstate getaway whenever they want it.

"They're beautiful," Maggie told Elisa, as she sat one of the hatchlings back in the crib. The black-scaled female cooed softly, snuggling into the blankets around her, her tail curling up as she did so.

"Try telling me that when they're all hungry at different times," Elisa laughed. "And that goes for you too, Hope," she added, tickling her daughter's tummy, before putting her in her own crib. Hope had several months on the others and until they got a little bigger, it was better to keep them slightly separate.

Four of the new hatchlings, along with Hope, were being kept here, in the new nursery that had been built to accommodate them.  Two males, two females, and Hope.  The males, one gold in color, the other silver, had been named Auric and Argent.  The two females, one coal black and the other green, had been named Onyx and Emerald.  The females too, were representative of a sub-variety within Mayan Gargoyles.  They had feathery wings, more reptillian features, and long sepentine tails instead of legs.  The beast hatchling, named Opal, was being rather smotheringly mothered by Moonlight.


Maggie smiled, placing a hand on her swollen belly.  "We'll have our own little ones to deal with soon enough."

"When're you due?"

Maggie shakes her head.  "We don't know, not really.  I'm almost at seven months, but with... how we are... there's no real way of knowing."

"If you're willing to get tested, Maggie..."

"No.  Look, Elisa, it's nothing against you or Goliath or any of the others... but we just don't trust Xanatos, or anyone working for him.  Not after everything he's done."

"I wouldn't believe it either, kiddo, but he really is changing.  He's done a lot for us.  And he'd like to make things right for you."

Elisa was about to press the point further, but stopped when she was the fur on Maggie's neck start to rise up.  The addition of cat-DNA had, on the whole, only made the mutates more readable.  "Sorry.  But look... just think about it, okay?  No pressure.  I just want what's best for you, and my little niece or nephew."

She looked over to the doorway, which she gently steered Maggie toward.  "You gonna be okay with this whole trial thing?"

"I have to face him, Elisa.  For what he did to us.  For everything he's done."

"All right.  But no one will think less of you if you duck out."

She nodded, briefly, to Owen, as they passed through the door.  The major domo would be tending to the children tonight, for the other Gargoyles, the Labyrinth Clan, Xanatos, and Jubilee would  be present in the Great Hall for the trial of Anton Servarius.

Had a pretty good one, actually. 

The trip to London had largely been uneventful.  Granted, the Gargoyles had been asleep for it, carefully packaged with plenty of form insulation in carefully prepared crates, but it was uneventful all the same.  Fortunate for Elisa, Lexington, and Icy.

London itself was largely like she remembered it from her brief time there during the World Tour, so she lead the way across the night sky toward the Soho district.  They were heading toward a certain shop, known as Into the Mystic, a money-making venture for the London Clan, which allowed them to pose as humans in costume.  They would reconnoiter with whoever was there at the time (Elisa hoped for Una, Leo, Griff, or Nina), and then hopefully head on to the main manor on which the rest of the Clan lived.

"You doing okay there, Lex, Icy?" Elisa asked, as she adjusted her flight path a little.

Okay, so next major project in our lives now that the bad guys have been dealt with is establishing stronger contact and connections with the other Gargoyle clans of the world. Several known ones, three speculated.... Going to be a bit of work, but also a pretty good chance to get to see some friends Goliath, Angela, and I made on our World Tour.

So the big ones are, of course, the London Clan, the Ishmuran Clan, and the Mayan Clan in Guatemala.  The Mayan Clan is especially important, because there's only four of them, and yet they have a rookery full of around thirty or so eggs that are going to be hatching very shortly, may even have hatched by the time we get there.  We're also probably going to be sending a group up to the Pacific Northwest to make contact with Bear's old clan.

So I'm taking charge of the London group, Angela and Broadway are heading to Japan, along with Kat, Nash, and Tachi, Goliath's going down to Guatemala, and Hudson's going to be taking Bear up to the Pacific Northwest.  Everybody else is still working out where they're gonna go on this trip.

Which leads me to my next point.  Since this is pretty much a road trip, it's meant to be fun as much as anything else.  While I can't really speak for Guatemala or the Northwest, London and Ishmura are great places.  Which, in a long story short, pretty much means an open invitation for company, if anyone wants to come along. 

Jubes, Sam, Dean, River, anybody?

And probably went about as well as could be expected.  We stopped Thailog and Sevarius's cloning scheme, totally ruined their lab and a good deal of the rest of their base of operations.  Managed to get a couple of the Pack--Hyena and Hound--captured and sent back to prison. 

We lost Luna, though.  Barely a week out of Sevarius's clutches, the last of her clan, and now she's gone too.  At least she can rest easy knowing we stopped them.  Doesn't make it hurt any less...  But she went out fighting.  At least that's something.

Did we do the right thing?  Destroying the lab meant killing the still growing clone/mutants Sevarius was making.  They'd have been programmed to be little more than weapons, we know, but...  

Being the good guy is hard, sometimes, I guess. 

But we owe a lot on this one to Jubilee.  Definitely couldn't have begun to do it without her.


Gwen, meanwhile, may be making the move to the other Gargoyle universe, at least, temporarily.  Says she wants to spend more time with Franklin, get her own ideas about herself settled for a while.  No real reason to stop her.

In good news, the TV program Lex and the other youngsters are doing is doing pretty well in the ratings.  General polling's good and overall opinion on Gargs is up a little, no matter how much the Quarrymen are trying to get it pulled from the air.

Get ten random numbers between one and one hundred from here, and use those to ask me ten questions from this list. I shall answer to the best of my ability.

I hate daylight savings time. What's so damn good about daylight?

- I _____ Elisa.
- Elisa is _____.
- Elisa likes to ______.
- I want to _____ Elisa.
- Elisa can ______.
- Someday Elisa will ______.
- Elisa reminds me of ______.
- Without Elisa, it will be _____.
- Right now, I bet Elisa is thinking about _____.
- Elisa makes me want to _______.
- If I could spend the day with Elisa, I'd _____.
- Elisa is made of _______.
- If I could be Elisa for a day, I'd ______.
- Elisa's alter-ego is __________.
- I want to give Elisa ______.
- If I could set Elisa up with someone it'd be ________.

Well, with my own personal identity crisis settled down, things are looking pretty good around here. Not that there aren't various causes for concern, as well as various good and potentially good things too.



So that's what's going on with us right now.

Prospero's words were enough to stun both Elisa and Salli, shocking both Gargoyle and human into silence.  Despite herself, Elisa felt a small tingle of relief upon this confirmation of her originality.  True, the words of this sinister sorcerer might not be genuine, but if Elisa had learned anything, it was that the bad guys loved explaining their master plans.

Okay, let's review the facts.  You discovered a duplicate of yourself who's neither a clone, alt, magical construct, shape-shifter, or anything else.  You discovered that touching each other causes your thoughts to blend together.  And finally, after getting the world's most powerful babysitter to perform a deeper scan, you're attacked in your own home by what looks like Christopher Lee and the incredible Hulk's cousin.

...And this still makes more sense than half the stuff going on around you.

"You want to explain this screw-up?  You want to explain how, with all your high and mighty fairy powers, you could miss something like the fact that I can't even touch her without feeling like my brain is coming out my ears?"  Elisa pointed an accusing talon in Owen's direction, her eyes briefly lighting up as she fumed.

It had now been four days since they'd found Salli, and Elisa could tell that the other woman was beginning to get more than a little stir crazy being cooped up in the castle. More importantly, she'd started expressing a desire to see some of the other people who were important to her life. Her/Their parents, along with Matt Bluestone, topped her list, though it was certainly a long one, among them many people Elisa herself had been forced to break contact with.

With the wing beneath her wings and the cold night air whipping over her body, Elisa began to feel some of the tension of the previous few nights flow away, if just a little bit. While no one would have faulted her for deciding not to, she'd volunteered to take one of the night's patrols. Together with Brooklyn and Desdemona, they were covering half of the island tonight. Katana, Hudson, and Othello were taking the other, while Goliath was staying in with Hope and the other children. Things were stretched a bit more thinly since the younger members of the clan had moved to the Bronx to shoot their reality television show, but considering fewer Gargoyles had once managed to do much the same, it they were making do quite well.

Elisa and the woman who might also have been her stood on one of the castle's towers, watching the city below. Desperate for something to call the woman--if only to herself--and not willing to use her own name, Elisa had taken to thinking of the woman as Salli. It was a good enough name, one she'd used during some different undercover operations while human and, strangely enough, the name of the woman who did her voice in the universes where her world (or variants there of) was just a cartoon.

Elisa had excused herself from the room, unable to cope with what she was feeling, with the various conflicts rolling through her mind.  She'd found what she thought was an isolated spot in the Labyrinth, when she felt a strong hand upon her shoulder.  Even without checking for scent, she knew immediately that it was Goliath.

Elisa was still fighting the urge to beat the truth out of the woman who had her face, who, for all intents and purposes, just might have been her.