The Chained Watcher

Eye Spy

Brain has Brained! Woo!

Oh, I wonder who could have noticed a certain Watcher doing very not-Watcher things? Hmm...

~~~

Jimmy and Martyn are in the park, backs to a tree while trying to comprehend what they just saw. Sure, it's not like they're not aware that Grian acts a lot different from normal Watchers, but this legitimately doesn't make sense.

"I- did I get drugged somehow?" He looked a little lost. "Because I'm pretty sure I just saw a Watcher willingly letting someone touch their wings."

Martyn shook his head, just as confused as Jimmy. When training to fight Watchers, they'd been taught how to leverage the violent reaction Watchers have to direct contact with their wings to their advantage, and they'd never seen it not work. But somehow, Grian, the weird Watcher that really doesn't act like a Watcher, didn't show any reaction despite his feathers making contact with a normal human for several seconds.

He probably hadn't spotted them, or he would have said hi before leaving, but they can't be sure. They had been taking a walk through the park when they'd heard the quiet sniffling of a kid, and when they reached the area they heard it from they found Grian carrying a kid out of a tree. Their reflexive reaction was to direct their gazes to about a foot above his head to avoid detection, but they had still seen what happened next.

Grian had wrapped his wings around the kid, nearly giving the both of them a heart attack. It doesn't matter who touches a Watcher's wings, the immediate reaction is an attempt to commit murder. Apparently this doesn't apply to Grian. He didn't even twitch or bare his teeth, casually defying one of the commonly accepted facts about Watchers.

They had needed to hide to stay out of sight of a group of adults searching for the kid, which would have made them think Grian kidnapped the kid if he hadn't been so... gentle, when putting them down. The kid had definitely had a scare, they could hear the slight shakiness in their voice whenever they spoke, but all the signs point to the source of the scare being something other than Grian.

Martyn pulled out his communicator. "I'm gonna check how much longer until Taurtis gets here, can you check for any security cameras that might have seen what happened?"

"Sure, don't forget to tell him about this though."

"He's gonna think we managed to mistake a normal avian for a Watcher."

"Honestly, I don't blame him. Nothing he does matches up to normal Watchers."

"Mhmm."

Jimmy started accessing the feed from various security cameras around the park, but even knowing where to look he didn't have any luck spotting Grian. That's not to say he found nothing out of the ordinary, but none of the cameras caught any images of the Hermit.

There should have been a camera in the tree they saw him under, but it's broken. A maintenance request had been logged for that camera a full two years ago, so it's not even like Grian was the one to break it.

What he did find was a few seconds on several different park cameras where a kid clinging to something invisible zipped past, and looking carefully he could spot the faint potion particles in the air. Okay, he should be able to trace where he started from using this.

Following the path back, he ended up tracing Grian's flight path back to the city using the kid's position. The media is definitely going to be going feral over the 'flying' kid, but that's not important right now. What is important is what Grian was doing flying a kid through the city, and... Oh.

Well now he feels bad for thinking Grian might have done something to the kid. Zooming in as far as the grainy image can go, he moved forward frame by frame to find the moment Grian reached them. No... No... There. The way they're falling changes, like they hit something, then the sleeve on their right arm compresses like someone grabbed it. After that their flailing changes to clinging onto something, and their downward momentum is turned into horizontal speed.

Bumping Martyn's arm to get his attention, he replayed the snippets he'd gathered from various cameras in chronological order, going from the fall all the way to the park.

"Oh..." Martyn blinks at it, seemingly at a loss for words. "That's... not what I was expecting."

"No kidding." Leaning over to look at Martyn's communicator, he asked, "What did Taurtis say?"

"He should be here in a couple days, give or take. I told him about what's happened since we last updated him and sent him a picture of Grian, and I think he doesn't entirely believe us that Grian's a Watcher anymore."

"Me neither. If I couldn't feel the magic whenever he touches me I would think Grian's just another of the Hermits."

Martyn, sounding genuinely surprised to say this, remarked, "Honestly, at this point I don't think I would be surprised to see him save a Listener."

They stared at each other for a few seconds before shaking their heads. As weird as Grian is, he's still a Watcher. He might not take the initiative to attack if unprovoked, but he wouldn't act to save a Listener.

He... He wouldn't, right?

~~~

(Media reaction)

-Breaking News! Miracle above Main Street, a life saved from a sudden end!-

-Guardian Angels, Myth or Truth?-

-How to contact your Guardian Angel, a Comprehensive Guide-

The internet was flooded with all sorts of headlines and articles about the so-called miracle witnessed yesterday. Some of these were just covering what was known, others analyzing the footage gathered through 'legitimate' means, and more still trying to market themselves and their hastily made products for a quick buck.

Forums discussing whether or not this whole thing is a hoax are littered around wherever you look, filled with people arguing heatedly about editing software and footage legitimacy. The one thing most have started to come to terms with is: there's too many phone-recorded clips being posted for this to be fake.

Somehow, although none of them can agree on the how or the why, this random kid got saved from falling to their death. Be it an act of god or something to do with the so-called wizards invading, this kid was saved.

Even if for only a day or two, this news managed to eclipse the leaked files on invading wizards riding flying reptiles (the government didn't want to put a name to what they were fighting, for some reason) and slinging magic around. Never have the conspiracy theorists had more ammunition for their conspiracies.

There were a few whispers of strange people with strange features walking among them, but with just a few blurry photos to go by the common consensus is that, well, people are mistaking furries for actual animal people. Wouldn't be the first time an urban legend spawned from someone running around the woods in a costume...

~~~

Short chapter, but I was struggling to write this one. Took a couple days to stop thinking about it before managing to get it finished, but hey, at least it's done!

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