Portland In Black 28: The End Part 1

Noir Badarte is a necromancer with a heart of gold- and he finds himself in Portland Oregon, to find a new serial killer called the Wolf- but Portland's own insane undead have plans of their own for him.

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"So..."

Noir waved at his coffee.

"Yeah."  The man who was called Wolf responded.  Without his mask, the man wore glasses.  He had stubble on his face, his hair long.  He had a sketchpad in his hands, drawing with chalk and pencil.  "Best coffee in Portland, I told you."

Noir shrugged.  Coffee... wasn't the only thing he noticed people partook at this establishment.  More than a few people smoked joints.  Hippies, yuppies and a variety of weird looking portlanders sipped their drinks, reading and surfing the web.

"I guess."  Noir said uncertainly.  "I wish Jesha had come along or something... I don't know what to talk with you about, really."

The Wolf looked up at him.  "Biggest bookstore in the world, fresh coffee and books in front and behind you.  And you have no questions at all?"

"Jesha is the one who worships you."  Noir answered.  "I'm just a guy with a trick or two."

"Necrokinetics always fascinate me."  The Wolf responded.  He poured more sugar into his coffee.  "Still, she needs her rest.  That monster did some serious harm to her internal shapeshifting.  It'll take her longer than you or others to recover, really.  That, and I wanted to talk with you honestly."

"You don't want to deal with a fangirl in other words."

"You could say that."

Noir looked up from his coffee.  "Necrokinetic, eh?"

"Good word.  You coined a more useful term than Necromancy.  Good to have the right kind of word.  In this language, anyway."

Noir took that in for a moment.  A question hit him.  He decided to go with it.  Why not?

"What happened to her?  Black Anna, I mean."  Noir asked.

The Wolf shrugged.  "I didn't kill her, like you asked.  I... placed her somewhere where she might learn from her actions."

"But not somewhere I can go."

"More or less."  The Wolf said.

"Why did you not kill her?  I thought you had said she broke your law or something..."

"You remember a lot, for someone who's been in a hospital bed for two or three weeks."  The Wolf paused.  "It seemed more prudent to listen rather than enforce that rule mercilessly.  Its a important rule.  It is something I don't ignore on light terms, but at the same time, I can't just kill everything people would call monsters."

"People get scared."  Noir agreed.  "Its a scary world out there.  You can't just obey what the crowd wants, even if it seems like a good idea I guess."

"Well, correction."  The Wolf interjected.  "The world gets better every day.  You and yours get better at taking care of yourselves, and give me less and less reason to have to interfere.  You make the world a better place, you all seem to forget how bad things were."

"So... you don't trust people then?"  Noir asked.

The Wolf nodded.  "And I listen to individuals.  I like to invest in whose potential might later make everything better."

Noir took that in.

“You have a great heart, Noir.”  The Wolf said.  “And its easy to take power and creativity and energy and use it to burn the world down.  Destruction is so very easy; the unmaking of a thing can be so very enticing.  Its harder to make a thing.  To Create.  To build a better world.

“Long ago, a woman wearing my Mask made that decision.  She decided to build a new world, to try and stop a cycle of violence, hate and destruction.”

“What happened to that woman?”  Noir asked.

“What happens to everyone?”  The Wolf replied.  "She died fighting."