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[It's been a while since Hellboy's shown his face. Not since the zombie attack. Truth be told, he hasn't felt all that social over the last week or so. Liz is gone again. He's not really sure how he feels about that. But her absence has got him thinking, and too much thinking lead to old habits that really do die hard. He spends most of the week at the bottom of a bottle holed up in his living room, staring at the intricate star chart that had been given to him by a stranger. Trying to make sense of things. Just trying to figure out how this fits into the big picture.

He thinks a lot about Liz, and the seed of an idea she planted just before she disappeared. She'd wanted to start some type of Bureau here, and maybe that wasn't such a bad idea. If there's one thing the Foreigners needed, it was organization. And if there was one thing Hellboy needed, it was a distraction. This could very well be a recipe for both.

Though he's dubious of his actual organizational skills. His strategy for everything was almost always to plunge in head-first without any kind of preparation. He was nothing like Bruttenholm or even Manning, but he could damn well try. He'll do it for Liz.

So he cleans himself up a little, or about as much as Hellboy ever does, and puts on his best game face. (Which, when your face is mostly stuck like that, is never hard.)

The feed starts with a steady silence and a level, golden-eyed gaze. Then he realizes the thing is actually on and begins.

Here goes nothin'...]

Anyone who knew her, Elizabeth Sherman disappeared about a week ago.

[He can't say for certain she's back in their world. There's no way of telling that for sure. He tries not to think about it too hard.]

Before she left she proposed getting together an organization similar to the one we worked for back in our world here on the Turtle. For anyone who's not familiar, I'll give you a quick run-down.

It's called the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, an organization that studies the paranormal around the world and is responsible for fighting off any big nasties that might pop up in the meantime. Ghosts, demons, vampires, you name it.

Most of our employees are researchers, like to paw through rotting manuscripts and study trolls. Me... they just send me in when things get messy. Though I've trained plenty of new agents before.

I'm not really the administrative type. So if anyone's willing to help get this off the ground, I'd appreciate it. What we really need are people interested in the actual research end of things. Though field agents aren't a bad thing either.

I know a few people spoke to Liz in her first message. I'd like to speak to them again if I can. Just let me know if you're interested and what you might be able to bring to the table. Maybe we might start making sense of this place.

[Yeah, this sure won't be his father's Bureau, but it might be something.]

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[In an idle gesture, Dorian taps his fingers lightly a moment as he decides on letting the conversation continue on this way, at least for a little.]

He was a friend, and a good one. [His voice lifts a touch at the end there, querying if there is a particular direction of inquiry being followed here, or if it's just a general statement.]

[Hey, he's got the right to prod around about his volunteers. Consider this something of a background check.]

I bet.

[If somebody wrote a book like that about him, he'd be pissed. But Hellboy's one of the biggest prudes in the world, so there is that.]

Doesn't really paint you in the best light.

[Dorian laughs, not dismissing Hellboy's assessment, just that he has heard that before. And he has had a lot of time to think about it.

"I don't get how you can enjoy this book so much. It would drive me mad."]

Mm, well. Painting me in the best light wouldn't be the most accurate portrait, would it? That was sort of the point.

[He rests his jaw on a hand and considers how to put into words the conclusions he has come to about Oscar Wilde, their friendship, and that book.]

Neither Oscar nor I were much for moralizing. We were Aesthetes, and Oscar had written beautifully. Nothing else mattered. [a pause.] Oscar wanted the best for me, I know that. He said as much in our last conversation. These days, I wonder at times if that beautiful book might have been part of that. A message, left for me to read when I could understand it.

[And does Dorian finally understand it? He isn't certain. In a way so very different from his portrait, that book has shown him images of himself. And of his friends. It has been a shield in recent days. Dorian has begun to believe that The Picture of Dorian Gray is the greatest gift he has received in a hundred and fifty years of living.]

[He focuses back on Hellboy, breaking out of his own reverie.]

Does that answer your question? Only it was implicit, so I wasn't completely certain.

[Hellboy's expression doesn't change. The severe angles of his face make it seem like it's been cut out of rock. The big advantage of that: it gives him one hell of a poker face. You can never quite tell what he's thinking.

Right now he's just trying to come up with an opinion of his own, trying to push aside any preconceptions that book gave him. This isn't the Dorian Gray in the story. Supposedly a friend of Oscar Wilde himself. But he's pretty damn sure that story wasn't based on a real guy...

Though it's been over forty years since he read that book. He could be forgetting some details.]

Just trying to figure out how much of it's true.

[It's not the first time he's met someone - or something - that was supposed to be fiction. And every time it happens, he seems to have mixed results.

Usually it's just bad news. And this? This smells like bad news to him.]

I have to say, the stuff you did in that book doesn't look all that great on a resume.

[Dorian understands Hellboy to mean the matter of the murder. Deliberately, he misinterprets.]

Stabbing a cursed painting would speak of bad decision-making when it comes to the supernatural, yes. But that part was pure fiction, I'm happy to say, and in the one hundred and sixteen years since publication, I've dealt with demons, ghosts, and dragons and survived every one of them.

[Dorian then switches to private]

If you mean the crimes suggested or described, those are true. I've reformed, but I'd understand any difficulty trusting that.

[Hellboy's quiet for a long time, his expression still stony, always unchanging.

So the guy really is a murderer. Jeez.

And though he's made company with murderers most of his life, they had their reasons. All of them were accidental. That murder... it was nothing like that, only born out of the selfishness of a desperate man. You have to be a certain kind of person to be able to do something like that. Even if this guy lived like a saint for the last hundred years, that's something Hellboy can't let slide.]

Sorry, pal. I think I have to pass.

[Dorian is unbothered. He is an individualist. He has had censure from his own soul, his own ghosts, and so his own conscience. And they are the only judges he has ever truly cared to attend.]

As I said, I understand. What is it that they say in interviews? I don't do a lot of them, so I tend to forget—oh, yes. 'Thanks for your time,' isn't it?

[Dorian gives Hellboy that uncontrived smile, the one that looks twenty and sweet and innocent, before he ends the conversation.]

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