Author's note: This was originally written in February 2008 for a contest on another site. The story had to connect your favorite fandom to the season of Spring. For some reason, I never got around to posting it here. Thanks for reading!

Springtime Fills the Air: A Hellboy Tale of Communing with Nature

The Meadowlands, NJ
May 2005

With a final blast of his cannon-sized pistol, Hellboy watched as the weird demonic creature faded into one of the marshy bogs that comprised part of the New Jersey region known as the Meadowlands.

'Weird,' he thought, 'Just like watching mist and fog slide back into the swamp it came from.'

He toggled the switch on his belt communicator. "All finished, guys. No need to send in the cleanup crew this time. At least fans of the Giants can attend games in peace again. I'll meet you guys back at the truck." Switching off the communicator again, he started to move in the direction of his truck.

Stopping briefly to admire the view of Giants Stadium looming in the distance, Hellboy felt a vague sense of regret that he could never see his favorite football team play in public; but he could accept that this was just the way his life went. Still, he smiled; at least he had something to go home to now that he and Liz had been married in March.

Hellboy lived in an underground facility and usually his aboveground experiences related to chasing down and dispatching paranormal threats. For this reason, coupled with his own personal tendencies, he never spent an inordinate amount of time admiring nature.

Maybe it was for that reason as he made his way again, toward where he was joining with the other Bureau agents, that the beauty of his surroundings hit him like a ton of bricks. Stopping in his tracks, he took in the beauty of the trees and water, and the deep blue of the sky. Now that the swamp creature was gone, the air smelled fresh and clean.

For the first time, he wished he had a camera like Liz always carried around when she wasn't working. This thought of his brand-new wife, coupled with the magnificence of the scene before him, filled his heart with longings and desires too deep to even be completely grasped.

Hellboy stood there, mesmerized, until the light faded and dusk crept in. An impatient beeping jarringly interrupted his unusually contemplative moment. "Red, where the hell are you?" came the crackly voice of Bureau Agent Rod Underhill over his earpiece, "The rest of us wanna get back in time for the game on TV tonight."

"Yeah, yeah, I just got a little lost. I'll be there in a few minutes."

Taking one more look around the now darkling Meadowlands and one more deep breath of its wonderful scents, Hellboy again turned toward his truck and home.