[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen is not near the alleyway, the dumpster or the bar, but she is across the street. A young boy, dressed in the clothes of the homeless sits crouched on the ground huddled against the rain while the slight kinwoman stands in front of him, her own head and body protected from the droplets by her raised umbrella.
She does not tilt the umbrella near the boy, and this more than anything sets her apart from the idea that she might be talking to him out of the goodness of her heart. Their conversation is quiet, low, the woman's accent, English, the other's, the flattened and muffled accent of Massachusetts. She holds a small pack of cigarettes, palmed in one hand, and her hair is bright beneath her black umbrella, flaming red and brilliant surrounded by all the half decay of the city's slums.
The loud clang half turns her head to glance over her shoulder, even as she absently moves the cigarettes closer to her body and away from the questing hand of the man-child.
A moment later, Adamidas exits and the boy stiffens, his heart leaping to his throat. The curse has its effects, even from across the street.
Imogen turns back, offering him the pack of cigarettes.
"You should go."
[Adamidas] She's a different sort of creature, and if she plays her cards right, she's either homeless or crazy,a nd not at all missing. Cops in Chicago don't care to bring in the ramblers on street corners. Luckily for them, Adam hasn't had the problem of keeping her vision straight. She hasn't had the problem of differentiating between what is here and what is There.
Oh, but there are days.
There are always days. They're fewer, now. They used to be more numerous than she liked to think they were. Adam doesn't realize how closely she rides the line of on-balance. No matter, though, because here she is. She looks across the street and sees Imogen. She cocks her head to the side. The boy with her stiffens, though the Fury is barely perceptive enough to notice.
She crosses the street. Looks both was (because that's what good kids do, you see), and makes her wa over. She's wet. So is the young homeless boy. Imogen tells him that he should go. Adam stops shy and looks at him. In a way, it's too direct. Doesn't matter the phase of the moon- the Curse is called the curse for a reason.
[Imogen Slaughter] The boy snatches the offered cigarettes from the doctor, muttering 'thanks lady,' and then something else too low to hear, at least from Adamidas's distance. He leaps to his feet, all long limbs and sharp knees, leaning down to scoop up his rucksack. He stops, mid-departure to glance briefly between Imogen and the approaching (paused) woman as if he might feel a pricking of conscience. Then, it is gone, and so is he, disappearing down an alleyway with a muttered 'see ya!' as he goes.
Imogen, for her part, turns to face the approaching Garou, flicking a glance briefly toward the alleyway from which she came, before back toward the Fury. Much like Adamidas, Imogen's gaze is too direct, though without the rage behind it. She has a direct regard, a steady attention. She looks more closely at Garou than she should - than just about anyone else could.
She does not flinch, if Adamidas approaches. In fact, she merely moves her umbrella from one hand to the other, reaching into her coat pocket to retrieve a half finished packet of cigarettes. She is too practised at this one-handed to fumble. Tapping a cigarette out, and fitting it between her lips before pocketing the packet again. She retrieves a bic lighter, thumbing the wheel.
By now, the boy is long gone, and if Adam approaches, she's in speaking distance. Imogen lights up, inhaling smoke deep into her lungs and half turning her head to exhale, her mouth moving around the filter as she speaks. "Did yeh stub somethin' on a dumpster?" she asks.
[Adamidas] Few people flinch when Adamidas aproaches. She is some kind of contradiction, because to look at her, she is cute. She isn't pretty, she's cute. The manner about is is that of a feral child who has since been reintroduced into polite society. The world is looked at with the familiarity of an alien world.
She looks at Imogen, and her right hand moves to hold her left elbow as she walks. And she moves forward, stepping softly. There isn't a lot of bodyweight behind her steps for it to really be considered stalking.
One would not think this to know her, but she has the potential to be terrifying. War form aside and discarded, she has the potential to be terrifying.
"I don't think you can stub your head," she tells Imogen. There is a smile, there, and it lingers briefly. The cap is bridged, and doesn't invade Imogen's space.
She's Imogen Slaughter.
She knows to respect her space.
She's heard stories.
[Imogen Slaughter] One can only imagine how Imogen might react, hearing the stories. Scorn, or irony, or quiet pride? Adamidas does not know her well enough to be able to guess. The truth is, there is no one here anymore who knows her well enough to guess.
Maybe the stories will fade a little now. Perhaps they will grow ever wilder without those in the know to temper them.
Imogen smirks faintly, in response to the smile. She stands straight, spine unbowed, shoulders even, relaxed. Her expression is restrained, reticent and quiet, the smirk doing little to light her dark eyes, little to add mobility her face. Her lips move. Little else follows.
"I suppose not," she says, "though I'm curious how one might hit one's head on a dumpster - unless you were sleeping in it." Her gaze flicks over Adamidas's frame without any sexuality in the gesture. Appraisal, eyes quick and sharp. "And I don't think you did."
[Adamidas] "I had a bit of a rough landing," she says.
She watches Imogen. THe stories might fade, but the renown doesn't. Imogen Slaughter is more accomplished than most cubs. She is more accomplished than some garou Adam knows, too. It might not be the people she hears the stories from. But the spirits? They rant about her. They sing her praises, even if she is kinfolk. The Fury looks at the older woman, the one who looks small but is the epitome of human grace.
The best a person can be. Greek ideal, but with Fianna breeding.
She drops her voice.
"Sometimes when you try to come back, it doesn't go the way you had planned, and you end up in a slightly different location, or you don't look before you leap... or Rat thinks it's hilarious to help you chill in a trashcan."
[Imogen Slaughter] A pause, lingering. Imogen's eyebrow lifts up the smallest measure, then settles as she interprets Adamidas's meaning.
"The shadow," she says. "Ah."
She takes another drag from the cigarette, her eyes narrowing as the wind tosses the smoke back in her direction. She turns her head slightly to exhale, the smoke spilling from lips.
"The brightside, I suppose bein' tha' yeh didn't end up in a wall."
[Adamidas] "I've heard horror stories that, sometimes, people don't make it through, and when they try to cross back over, they either get stuck in between, or flung to another realm."
A moment passes.
"... I'll bet you get sick of people doing the whole accost you with stuff thing."
She's not the most specific of creatures. Endearing, yes, but not specific. Blame it on the trashcan lid to the head.
[Imogen Slaughter] She blinks a little sooner than she might have otherwise. A moment before she speaks again. These are the symptoms of her confusion.
"'Accost me wi' stuff'," she repeats Adamidas's words, an American's words in a Cornish accent. "What d'yeh mean?"
[Adamidas] "You know," she starts, "people coming up to you, mind dumping on you about their days, and then running off without ever bothering to ask you anything... or even pay much attention to what you were doing."
A beat.
"Like, folks like me coming by and scaring off normal people and stuff."
[Imogen Slaughter] She studies Adamidas for a moment, a moment of intense regard. "If I had thought th'conversation I was havin' with the boy was important," she says, "I'd ha' asked you to leave."
[Adamidas] She took a second, and the Fury didn't say anything for now. She looked at Imogen, and was regarding her directly. Took in that moment of intense regard and absorbed it for what it was. She didn't say anything. It bore mention twice, that instead of running at the mouth and labeling herself, she just takes it for what it is. She just regards Imogen, and is regarded in return.
She's no where near as sharp as Dr. Slaughter.
The Fury nods, once up and then down, but she doesn't say anything.
[Imogen Slaughter] The silence lingers. Imogen glances away, lifting her cigarette back to her lips, letting smoke and poison fill her lungs. She exhales slowly, turning her head so that it spills away form the Garou. The scent still wafts, distinctly, carried on minor molecules of air.
She takes another drag, taps cigarette ash toward the sidewalk. The rain begins to slow, and she lowers the umbrella, fitting the cigarette between her lips to free her hand to close it. She shakes the umbrella free of water, wordless.
"D'yeh ha' anythin' t'accost me wi' then?" she asks, her mouth twisting faintly in irony. "Or shall I go?"
[Adamidas] "... how long have you smoked?"
[Victor Oseragighte] Eventually he does leave the bar, prepared to brave the elements. He zips up his jacket and steps out into the driving rains, face to the sky as it was instantly soaked and he had to close his eyes against the force of the wind pelting him with water droplets.
[Imogen Slaughter] Her eyebrow lifts, but she merely takes another drag of her cigarette before consenting to reply. "Almost twenty years."
A smirk. "Long t'be quite skilled at quitting."
[Adamidas] "Well," Adam muses, "anything that can be done for twenty years is worth continuing to do."
A pause.
"Why did you start?"
[Victor Oseragighte] He does not yet notice them. The storms come in waves, sometimes tapering off to nothing, sometimes lashing everything with rain and even hail. It's a lull presently, just enough rain to soak his hair and make him feel refreshed. He breathes it in and lowers his head, opening his eyes to look around.
[Roman Turner] Rain ran front and back from the curled rim of the straw hat that had once been brilliant white and new. It had taken months to get the sides curled up just right and the front and back curled downwards so sun and rain stayed off his face and neck. His shoulders were slightly curled against the rain, still he straightened some likely just as a little tingle might of run up Victor's spine and his voice came from behind.
"Boo."
[Imogen Slaughter] She's beneath an awning, protected from the rain, her umbrella by her side. Her shoulders are brushed with rain, but little else - Imogen takes care of her person, her attire, even when dressed in worn jeans and a nondescript windbreaker.
Adamidas asks her next question and the kinwoman's mouth twists further, the wryness deepening as she lifts her cigarette back to her lips.
"Are yeh makin' up fer all th'full bloods who ask me nothin' at all?" she asks.
[Victor Oseragighte] There were some who, surprised so, would have reacted badly. As it was, Victor spins, pivoting on one foot so that the hand on that side comes up ready to swing, his other foot swinging about to drop back down and secure his stance. He does not know the Ragabash well enough for his voice to register immediately, nor can he quite see his face fully at first beneath the brim of the hat, but Victor is not given to punching out strangers, even when surprised. This means he has time to recognize Roman finally and relax, raising a hair to push soaked strands of hair from his face and shake his head ruefully.
"Fool." He does not say this insultingly, more naming the no-moon's role, acknowledging that he's been duly pranked. There is even a chuckle with that word.
[Adamidas] "No," she said. She pauses, she thinks.
"Maybe," she reassesses, "I've heard about you... and I wanted to... you know... know more. Though, honestly, there probably is a component of True Guilt in there."
[Kora] The streets are dark when the stormclouds open, the light dampened by the rain, by the moisture in the air. When the rain tapers, though, the dark streets seem illuminated, the orange streetlights gleam off the pavement and are trapped and reflected back at the earth by the constantly moving clouds overhead. Roman has a straw hat. Kora has neither a hat nor an umbrella. Just a pizza box from the place down the block, SULLY'S TAKE-OUT PIZZA the sign in the window says, "NO EAT INS" is written in thick sharpie underneath, with INS underlined several times over. The booths in the locked up interior are like a mirage in the desert. The front door remains locked up tight, and Sully's serves pizza only through a grated window right onto the street.
It's good stuff, though. A shame to sacrifice it to the storm gods, by using it as a makeshift bumbershoot, and as long as the weather is gentle, the Fenrir woman protects the box rather than the crown of her head. Taller than Roman or Victor, taller than anyone on the street, she holds the box against the lean curve of her torso, waist level. Kora's dark eyes linger on Roman and Victor as Roman sneaks up behind then later, then rise down the street, catch on good doctor's flame colored hair, and linger then.
"You two've met?" says Kora, behind the young Ragabash, his senior by nearly a decade, for all that they share the same rank. Her gaze has returned to Roman, and Victor. Her voice is easy, low and rich, her left arm occupied with the pizza box, the fingers of her right hand worked half-way into the hip pocket of her jeans. The question is rhetorical, really. She answers it herself. Or appends to it. Ends it, somehow. "Cool."
[Roman Turner] "We are mighty hunters together. We prowl the skies, chasing dreams as they come crashing down to sink out of sight."
He snickered, nodding his head towards Victor as he explained in his own twisted poetic way before touching the brim of that dripping hat in real greeting to Victor.
"Hail the mighty hunter and good evenin, Vic."
[Imogen Slaughter] Adamidas has heard of her. Imogen's breath exhales sharply. "I shudder to think," she says, her gaze moving over the street. She sees Victor first, her eyes narrowing; the expression relaxes as she sees Roman, then Kora.
"Looks like yeh ha' a true blood gathering," the kinwoman notes.
Her breeding is sharp in the air. It is more potent than the colour of her hair, which is bright enough to retain its red shades, even in the cloud-covered night.
[Victor Oseragighte] His hand moves from his hair to shade his eyes against the rain a bit, looking up, up over Roman's shoulder to the woman behind him. He wondered absently if Josie had alerted friends to his presence, nodding to the both of them. "Good storm. Bad climbing weather. 'evening. You two looking for me?"
He had to assume they might be. It did not seem likely that they had just come upon him, but you never knew, right?
[Kora] "Dreams, eh?" the response to Roman is quiet, direct. The right corner of her mouth is higher than the left, but the expression does not have the aspect of a smirk. It's something else, the edge of a smile that lives at the corners of her generous mouth, as likely to turn full as it is to disappear. " - did you catch any in your dream-hunt?" The response is brief. She looks up, over the kid's shoulder at Victor. The rain hits the sharp planes of her face, trails down her cheeks and jaws in shifting ribbons that catch the light and shimmer. Underneath, she is pale as the moon - for all that it is summer.
"If we were," Kora taps the underside of the pizza box with her index finger by way of demonstration. "I'd've gotten you a slab of something other than bread and cheese. Just looking for a place to eat this." Kora lifts her chin then, beyond Victor's shoulder, down the street. Non-sequitors, easily. "Have you met the doc yet?"
[Roman Turner] "Dreams are, well some aren't meant to be captured, it's the chase that makes the magic."
He grinned to Kora, then shook his head hard enough at Victor to send rain flinging off the tip.
"No sir Vic, weren't looking for ya, but ya know how fate it sometimes."
Already he was squinting towards the gleam of red hair that made heat rise to his face. Crap, it was HER. Well, it was one of the hers that made his brain scramble and his body stand up and do the Hokey Pokey.
[Victor Oseragighte] He nodded once they'd confirmed this was mere coincidence, turning then at Kora's prompting to peer through the rain. "Doc?" He sees two figures, one... yes, one he'd met. One he'd seen but barely once. Neither he knew of as a doctor, but he knew neither very well.
[Roman Turner] "It's Miss Doctor Slaughter, Ma'am and, some other lady I don't believe I recall."
For a moment he studied the pair before looking to his two current companions.
"Welp, best get to being neighborly."
And just like that, he started marching towards that gleam of red hair and the other lady.
[Kora] "That's rather poetic of you, kid," Kora replies to Roman, the edge of her half-smile coiling around the corners of her generous mouth like the suggestion of smoke after a burn. "Makes you sound like some besotted Fiann." There is a supple tease embedded in the words, and not a hint of approbation. "You might want to save it for the kinswomen, though."
Such is Kora's advice to Roman, before he's setting his hat and marching off to be neighborly through the rain. Kora is several steps behind, but she walks quickly, her long stride drawing her abreast of Victor before Roman is far off. "My pack," she explains to the half-moon, "claims territory not far from here. A few blocks east, along the lake and the river. And the kid and his cousin have a house somewhere close, as I understand it.
"C'mon," she echoes Roman's promise to get neighborly in a different tone, jerking her head toward the pair of women down the street. "Doc Slaughter is the kinswoman. If you spend any time in Chicago, you'll know her worth soon enough."
[Adamidas] She looks down at the grouping of people, then looks to the side at Imogen. She is a woman who is six feet tall in a five-foot-body. Imogen Slaughter is a presence; that makes two teenagers who are amazed by her for varying reasons.
"And they're migrating."
[Victor Oseragighte] "Doc... Slaughter?" He suddenly had the sensation that he'd stepped into a 70s exploitation film, or maybe a comic book. He was wise enough not to voice either possibility, however.
He watches Roman kite off to see her, then smiles to Kora's more in-depth explanation and falls in beside her, heading over at his own measured pace, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. The more kin he met in this city, the more he approved of their apparent strength.
[Roman Turner] He didn't crowd under the awning and didn't get too close to Adamidas out of simple politeness. All the same when he drew close enough he touched the brim of his hat and very politely said.
"Evenin Miss Doctor Slaughter Ma'am."
Imogen was greeted first, then Adamidas got a touch of the brim and a.
"Ma'am."
"Y'all don't want to make sure ya don't get wet. Sweet as you are, I'm sure you'd melt in the blink of an eye."
[Imogen Slaughter] She makes a brief sound of acknowledgement, dropping her cigarette to the ground, crushing it out beneath the toe of her flat-soled shoe.
In other, nicer parts of the city, Imogen is not seen without heels. They augment her petite frame, adding the appearance of height. Like this, there is no illusion; she's slender, slight. There are teenagers (Roman and Adamidas being two of them) who have overtopped her height as a full-grown woman. Still, as the others approach, she looks up over their heights as if it were of no consequence. Her spine is straight, her posture perfect. She is poised in ways that denizens of this part of the city can never manage. Poised less like a dancer or a warrior (as she is neither), and more like someone who is pragmatic; aware that posture requires less energy than a slouch and therefore taking the effort to perfect it.
The Garou approach. Roman offers a witticism, a bit of gallantry out of place in his youth and what she knows of southern Garou.
"Roman," she greets him, for once, recalling his name, though she does not actually acknowledge his hammer-blow flattery.
"Kora." The Fenrir next.
The kinwoman turns her dark eyes to the relative newcomer. A brief pause, her mouth immobile, a tendon along her jaw moving. Then, "I don't believe we've met, then."
[Kora] "Mmmph," Kora makes a low noise by way of agreement. Or approval. Then clarifies, her voice low, pitched to carry just between them. "Doctor Imogen Slaughter. The redhead. The other woman is Adamidas. She and her pack stay at the Brotherhood, yeah?" The whole of the quiet explanation is proffered before they are half-way there.
Kora is quiet for the rest of the walk. She walks easily, comfortable on her feet and on the streets of the failing, low-rent neighborhood marked by poverty and decay in every direction one turns. Her blonde hair is pulled back sharply from her features, twisted into a haphazard knot at the nape of her neck. Her black t-shirt clings to her lean frame, which is decidedly unfeminine except for the subtle curve of her hips against her worn jeans. The black boots make a quiet, solid sound on the concrete, and the now damp cardboard box creaks faintly, the pizza inside sliding against the corrugated walls when she steps down off the curb, crossing the mouth of the alley.
"Doc," Kora greets Imogen, lifting her chin in a neat gesture of acknowledgment before her dark-eyed attention cuts to the Black Fury. " - Adam. This is Victor. Victor, Adamidas and Dr. Slaughter."
[Victor Oseragighte] He does not have Kora's stride, yet there is no impression that he is having to rush to keep up with her. He measures his own steps well, moving with inexorable certainty. Kora makes the introductions so he does not have to say anything really, just nod politely to each of them. He has no right to look so comfortable there in the rain, especially as it starts to pick up again more. Sharp black eyes assess each of them, having met 'Adam' only briefly before.
[Roman Turner] He didn't know Adamidas, but he smiled just as cheezey as his cousin claimed only he could do and once more touched the brim of his hat with a...
"Ma'am."
While inside he was on cloud 9. Imogen said his name. She remembered his name. God save him, she smiled at him.
[Adamidas] Adam isn't much older than Roman. Not at all, as a matter of fact. Maybe a year at best. They're about the same size, and he seems to weigh a little more than she does if for no other reason than the fact that he has muscle mass on her. She inspects him, and she tried- oh how she tries- not to snort or laugh or giggle at the display of flattery.
It's the best she can do, and the dang Yankee finds her shoes interesting.
Back to reality.
"Your name's Roman, right?"
[Roman Turner] "Yessum, Roman Turner. Pleased as punch to meetcha."
He was sure somewhere in the city that Sparrow was rolling her eyes about now, but what the heck? Just the same he was giving Adamidas a big ole smile while his little heart fluttered with Imogen calling him something other than Bloody something or other.
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen affects not to notice the starry eyed gaze of the
... child -
as she inclines her head briefly toward the silent Victor. "A pleasure," she says, words which are more simply because they are part of her traditional meet and greet of his kind than because she meant them. "Been 'ere long, ha' you?" the redhead speaks with a distinct accent; the kind that causes most North Americans no end of confusion. Not quite the Queen's English, it results in guesses of birth places from New Zealand to Ireland.
"Your pizza is getting damp," off-hand to Kora.
[Victor Oseragighte] He could not fail to miss Roman's infatuation either, remembering with a chuckle when his own hormones ruled him so completely. And to be Garou as well... poor kid. He chuckled silently.
Imogen draws more than a shake of his head at least with her question. "Week and a half. Still getting settled. Staying at the Brotherhood." His own accent marks him as a foreigner as well, Quebecois softened by long trips abroad, down into the States. There is no doubt from his accent he is at least bilingual.
[Kora] Kora casts a sharp-eyed glance between the smitten Roman and the diminutive Doctor. Her dark eyes shine in the dull orange light cast by the nearest streetlamp, which halos them in ugly splendor. The rain begins again, in earnest. Like a fool, Kora tilts her head back, squinting up at the rain now pelting down from the stormclouds as if she might divine something from the view.
Just rain, hitting her in the eye. Imogen remarks that her pizza is getting damp, Kora glances at Victor as the kinswoman greets him, then flashes a full smile. See this: white teeth behind her the pale twist of her unglossed, unpainted, unvarnished mouth, an easy smile that still speaks to the wolf in her. "Yeah," the Skald agrees, this hint of good humor insinuating itself into her rich voice. With another glance at the sky - this one less full, just a sketch of a look defined as much by the curl of a blond brow upward as by the movement of her head - Kora shifts the damp (soon to be sodden?) box from arm to arm. " - so it is. They've got only take-out back there," here, a quick gesture over her shoulder, back down the street. "the booths and tables inside are all just for show."
One too many murders, maybe.
[Roman Turner] "Ya know, we should eat it before it tastes like the box."
He nodded towards the quickly soaking box as rain ran in runnels down the front and back points of his hat. The back flow was soaking his shirt and he could feel it drenching the back end of his jeans. Still he got to stand in the glow of his own personal moon (Imogen) and for that he would gladly stand in gale force winds.
[Kora] "Here," Kora to Roman, now. " - that's not a bad thought." Her fine mouth is curved into the faint, easy smile that seems to be her default expression. She shifts the box out from underneath her arm and against her side, balances it carefully, and opens the damp cardboard box. It isn't deepdish, Chicago-style, this pie. It's a good solid New York style pizza, big slices on a handmade crust that is neither thick or thin. Maybe a bit damp, now, or maybe the glisten on the surface is fat rather than water, oil from the pepperoni or the cheese.
Standing there, she offers the damp pizza to all and sundry. The scent of tomato sauce, oregano and basil is a sudden counterpoint, sharp and rich, to the must of the rain in the air. "Have at it."
[Victor Oseragighte] The scent of the pizza wars with the assault of the rain and wind. He wrinkles his nose openly and looks mildly ill at it, curiously, his lips puckering into a round O before he gives a shrill whistle. The wind shifts, whipping about him as if they are briefly tethered together and pushing the worst of the rain away for the moment, as well as alleviating him of the pizza's odor.
[Imogen Slaughter] Above them, lightning flashes, a low rumble of thunder. Imogen flicks a glance upwards as the sky, her eyes losing their focus, or at least, their intensity.
"The waitress was shot," she tells Kora, bringing her attention back, "and maybe a waiter or cook or somethin' too." A negligent, callous shift of her shoulder. "I don't recall the details. It was a few months ago." That she remembers at all then might be a symptom of an exceptionally good memory.
"I suppose they decided it wasn't worth th'effort to hire new ones."
She shakes her head slightly in answer to Kora's offer, stepping further to the edge of the awning, as she retrieves another cigarette from her pack, fitting it between her lips. She can smell the pizza more clearly now, mixed with rain and damp cardboard. The cigarette smoke is blown further downwind as she lights up.
Lightning flashes again, thunder rolls. The summer storm settles in, the rain picking up, lashing at the buildings, streets and people. A car rolls by, a junker with tricked out rims, the windows open, a youthful male shrieking his weekend joy into the night. Soon afterwards, they're gone, the tires whispering against the pavement.
Victor whistles and the wind shifts, blowing smoke back toward Imogen as she exhales it. Her reaction is restrained, a brief flick of her cigarette-bearing hand to wave it away.
[Roman Turner] He sang softly.
"The thunder rolls and the lightning strikes...."
He reached for pizza shaking his head at Victor.
"Gonna make me deaf yet with that whistling."
Kora was saluted with the slice before he folded it in half and stuck the pointy end into his mouth to start munching, mumbling around a mouthful.
"Thankee."
[Adamidas] She would have things to say. And there might be words, but she can't come up with anything to say, really. Instead, she looks at the pizza, to the air, to the rain falling, falling, falling. It's a summer storm. It wants to be summer. And while her mind wanders it's one of those moments which is becomes quite clear how far in the distance she actually is. How connected [detached] she is with this world.
The waitress was shot, and that was enough to bring her back from thinking about pizza and sacrifice.
"What happened to them? Are they okay?" her concerns, her priorities, are made clear.
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen casts Adamidas a brief glance. "They're dead."
[Victor Oseragighte] He leaned forward a little as well, curious about the answer to Adamidas' question. The answer, sadly, was all too expected. He shook his head. There were things he loved about the cities, strange as many would find that. And there were things he definitely hated.
[Adamidas] She is decidedly quieter, now.
[Roman Turner] "Dead only hurts them left behind. Nurtures some too because with time all the little wrongs are put aside for the better memories."
He mumbled around pizza as he wolfed down the first piece despite the rain running down his backside.
[Victor Oseragighte] "Anybody check for lingering banes," he asks out of the blue. Violence like that... well, it could leave echoes, he knew.
[Kora] Victor whistles. Kora cuts him a sharp glance, sidelong. IN the moment when the wind curls about him as if they were one, not separate, her dark eyes linger on him, searching his expression - or rather, the edge of it, the shape of bones beneath skin, the way the light cuts across his features. Then something breaks, then moment ends. Imogen offers them a story about the pizza place, and Kora, just under the awning but not fully protected, looks back toward the store, over her shoulder, her hair a heavy knot at the back of her head. The light cuts through the intensifying storm in unpredictable ways, scattershot, and there's a certain dampening in the air, too - sound shifts, waves broken or redirected in the curtains of falling rain.
Adam asked what happened to the waitress or the cook. Kora merely offers a faint sound in the back of her throat. This subtle acknowledgment of the information offered by the kinswoman.
"Cheers," she says quiet to Roman when he gives his thanks for the pizza. She lifts the box faintly, the way you lift a glass for a casual toast, then reaches for a slice herself, holding the box out for anyone else before closing it, to use the damp lid as something like a plate. " - I suspect it hurts the dead, too," Kora offers, quiet, to Roman. "Things they haven't done. Things they've left behind.
"More than a few, I'd guess," to Victor, her dark eyes shifting to the half-moon, "neighborhood like this, which no one's claimed as territory. Hard place to keep free of them. The cursed ones are definitely active around here, too." Kora lifts her chin toward Imogen, her pale brows drawing together, her voice still low. The pizza slice sits atop the damp cardboard now, forgotten. " - you've not seen any more of that graffiti, have you?"
[Imogen Slaughter] They speak of the dead, those who might be hurt. Imogen glances away, her eyes touching on the heavy rain as she lifts her cigarette back to her mouth. A deep drag fills her lungs with poison and tar.
Kora addresses her and she turns back, turning her head only slightly to let the smoke slip from her breath. "No," she says. "Not so far."
[Victor Oseragighte] He had not, and a shake of his head confirmed that. In that instant when the wind had curved about him it seemed a very natural thing; he was the eye of the storm, a perfect calm around which the wind danced. Those wild gusts brushed across his skin, plucked at his soaked clothes, and he looked... right. As if that was where he belonged entirely.
[Adamidas] She drops her voice, and like the little theurge that she is, she speaks about spirits. States what they probably already know, probably for their benefit as well as hers. She's right there.
"What would make things easier would be, possibly, if we worked to help people who lived here? And in places like this? Bitter rage breeds Bitter Rages, and violence and contempt, which perpetuates the cycle, which-" she pauses. She stops. She thinks and she speaks.
"The laws says to combat the wyrm whenever it breeds, wherever it dwells. It dwells in victims and the wounded."
You know what to do.
Bless her idealism. Bless her youth. Bless her plans that should not, could not, will not work that she believes with such fanaticism. There is a piece of pizza taken, but instead of eating it, she holds it out for the rain with both hands.
A beat.
"I'll get on that," she says a little louder.
[Roman Turner] "Well, seems to me, last time I saw Miss Kora was at the river and the breeding was going on in the water or there abouts."
He had downed the slice of pizza in record time. The odd wind thing with Victor was nothing new to him, he recalled the wayward kite. If only the wind had been a little more faithful that day.
"Likely some we didn't see done ate my kite too."
[Kora] Kora's gaze track's Adamidas' hand as the rather younger woman takes a piece of pizza and holds it up to the sky. Again, she cranes her neck, squints up at the storm clouds, the rain sluicing down from the sky, watches for a beat as the water pours down, cool now, pounding the sidewalk, the rumble of thunder overhead, away somewhere, distant enough that it sounds like an El train on overhead tracks rather than the crack and roar of a firecracker close at hand. "I've been thinking," to Imogen, quiet when she catches the kinswoman's eyes, " - about heading back to that mortuary sometime. Poke around a bit, if you're interested."
There's a certain - intensity - to Kora's regard in that moment, her dark eyes linger on the kinswoman's face, watch the spare expression there, the subtle tense and release of muscle, the way the light and the damp sheens her skin.
---
A glance back to Adamidas, Kora's pale head is canted to the right, her hair heavy and damp, a pale wash over her shoulder, haloing her sharp features. Then Kora glances to Roman and back to Victor. "If you want to check it out sometime," head tilting back toward the pizza place, "on the other side, I'm game."
[Victor Oseragighte] He empathized with the young Theurge, knowing that she had a point, that tending to such matters could do some good, but there was only so far that would go. He was not about to discourage her, though, nodding thoughtfully at her words, smiling faintly. "Good place to start." When he looked to Kora then, his words doubled easily as an answer to her suggestion, and his canted head questioned her mention of a mortuary.
[Roman Turner] "Ya know, I gotta say that is one place I ain't never been on either side, a morgue. I'd be right pleased to accompany y'all for a trip to the Twilight Zone."
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen's gaze settles tightly on Kora as she makes her offer of inclusion. After a moment, she nods. Her own muscles - in her jaw, tense and release. Tighten, then ease. Roman speaks, and the moment passes. She lifts her cigarette back to her lips.
"Mortuary," she corrects him, off-hand. "S'not a morgue, s'more like a funeral home."
[Roman Turner] Funeral home, now that made him cringe inside and he pushed all the racing thoughts that came with the mental cringe in to a little box and slammed the lid down tightly.
"I stand corrected."
[Adamidas] "I'd be up for going," she says. Perks up and keeps her hands on the now soggy piece of pizza. Storm keeps coming, but one may as well offer.
[Victor Oseragighte] "What are we looking for," he asked, raising his hands to turn up the collar of his jacket against the rain a bit. In that one quesiton he affirmed that he wanted to tag along.
[Kora] "I think we'll keep the mortuary team," the faint curve of her mouth her, neat, nearly self-mocking, though it is just this side of that. " - small. The smaller footprint the better. It's not demanding a war party quite yet. Though a scout would probably be helpful. Give me your number," to Roman, " - and I'll give you a call when we're going. Or leave you a message at the docks, yeah?"
Her chin rises, as she cuts a glance between Victor and Adamidas, back to Roman. Lingering there, before returning to Victor. "Doctor Slaughter found a fake glyph hidden in graffiti near the service entrance to this little funeral home. We found a couple of cursed ones and some accomplices stealing bodies. Or maybe just taking them, from inside. We'll have a peek, and you'll have first dibs if there's more.
"The pizza place, though," Her pizza is forgotten; Kora looks back over her shoulder. Why, suddenly, does the picture window, with its iron bars banding shadows through the light the place casts onto the rainy sidewalk, seem to have an eerie glow. " - I suppose we're looking for whatever remains behind, to feed on the death. Or whatever inspired it in the first place. And of course, now that I think about that," she glances down at the slice atop the sodden box. "I'm not sure I want to eat what they're offering."
[Roman Turner] He gave his numberto Kora while digesting both what Kora said and the slice of pizza that now that she started talking about not sure she wanted to eat what was offered, made his stomach consider protesting. Damn, if he was going to get sick just from the thought of "What if?", then he hoped it all came out the way it went in and not the back exit too.
"Ya call or drop by, I'll be there."
[Kora] Hey guys! We have a choice with re: pizza place. Mei has offered to run something for us related to it, though it is too late for her tonight.
Or: I can try to bang out something tonight. I would rather have Mei run something since: hey! I could play without knowing what's going to happen. :) But I'm good with like, doing something tonight on the theory that momentum in the scene is RAWR oriented and this is a sort of casual jaunt thingy that I could do in (eyes) an hour and a halfish.
(eternal. optimist.)
So: thoughts?
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Roman Turner, Victor Oseragighte
[Roman Turner] (( I think I am vegetable matter, so vote for mei and pizza joint later LOL! ))
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Kora, Victor Oseragighte
[Victor Oseragighte] (( I am open to whatever is decided. ))
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Kora, Roman Turner
[Imogen Slaughter] The rain begins to slow, as the Garou take, a break in the downpour, though the lightning and thunder have not yet abated.
Imogen casts a glance toward her watch, then the Garou as they speak. Her interest in the conversation appears permanently waned.
"I'll be in touch," this to Kora, as she opens her umbrella, lifting it up over her head. "Goodnight," and the last to no one in particular.
She steps out into the rain and starts down the street.
(Blu may be vegetable matter but I am mulch. OR BLOOD MEAL. thanks for the RP, everyone!)
[Adamidas] (I am totally up for that! Whatever you guys choose, I am down for. Shall we shoot for a Mei-and-later?
to Imogen Slaughter, Kora, Roman Turner, Victor Oseragighte
[Roman Turner] ((thanks Mei))
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Kora, Victor Oseragighte
[Victor Oseragighte] (( Sounds good to me! ))
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Kora, Roman Turner
[Imogen Slaughter] (okay, I posted up something in the scenes forums for you guys to mention schedules, etc, so we can arrange a scene of fun and pizza. *grin* Or something like that.)
to Adamidas, Kora, Roman Turner, Victor Oseragighte
[Kora] (Brilliant, Meiling. You are my hero.)
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Roman Turner, Victor Oseragighte
[Roman Turner] ((I responded and if no one is insulted, I need to sleep something fierce.))
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Kora, Victor Oseragighte
[Kora] (Roman could walk Imogen home? HAHAHAH. Ahem.)
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Roman Turner, Victor Oseragighte
[Imogen Slaughter] (*wiggles eye-- OH GOD.* *goes shave eyebrows off*)
to Adamidas, Kora, Roman Turner, Victor Oseragighte
[Kora] "Night, doc," is Kora's farewell to the kinswoman. In the interim, she circles the mouth of the alley and tosses the pizza, box and all, into the nearest dumpster. Her speculation has done her own appetite no favors.
[Roman Turner] He was quick on the uptake when Imogen opened her umbrella. He made sure Kora had his number, made quick farewells to all and hightailed it off after Imogen.
"Wouldn't be proper if I just let her go alone in the dark. I'll see y'all later."
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen turns her head as Roman trots up alongside her, her expression betraying half-hidden resignation. The teenager doubtlessly misses it.
After all, he thought she had smiled at him before.
"Walking me to my car, are you." it's not really a question. Teenager and doctor disappear around a corner.
[Adamidas] She takes the piece of pizza and, very calmly, goes to throw it away. There are a few words given to whatever rested there. Promises and what-have-you of what she may need to do soon enough should the suspicions be correct.
"Summer is brought into the world by a Great Hunt," she calls back to Kora.
[Victor Oseragighte] Kora's sudden suspicion about her pizza had him stooping to examine the box, but he could not tell much really. He glanced over to the restaurant it came from, then rose again and looked to the two remaining women. "Out of the rain," he suggested, glancing skyward where thunder rumbled. His control of the wind only went so far.
[Roman Turner] She loved him, he was sure. All he could do was give her a goofy, wet smile with a nod and at.
"Yessum."
The last thing the others likely heard before they were gone around the corner.
[Roman Turner] ((thanks guys, I gotta go die. Night!))
[Imogen Slaughter] (me too! thanks for the scene!)
[Victor Oseragighte] (( Enjoyed, you two! ))
[Kora] "I could stand a drink," Kora replies to Victor's suggestion. "There's a place about eight blocks south that has a decent selection of both draft beer and whiskey or," she continues, lifting her chin toward Victor, "we could try the Brotherhood if you're game for the walk."
She does not tilt the umbrella near the boy, and this more than anything sets her apart from the idea that she might be talking to him out of the goodness of her heart. Their conversation is quiet, low, the woman's accent, English, the other's, the flattened and muffled accent of Massachusetts. She holds a small pack of cigarettes, palmed in one hand, and her hair is bright beneath her black umbrella, flaming red and brilliant surrounded by all the half decay of the city's slums.
The loud clang half turns her head to glance over her shoulder, even as she absently moves the cigarettes closer to her body and away from the questing hand of the man-child.
A moment later, Adamidas exits and the boy stiffens, his heart leaping to his throat. The curse has its effects, even from across the street.
Imogen turns back, offering him the pack of cigarettes.
"You should go."
[Adamidas] She's a different sort of creature, and if she plays her cards right, she's either homeless or crazy,a nd not at all missing. Cops in Chicago don't care to bring in the ramblers on street corners. Luckily for them, Adam hasn't had the problem of keeping her vision straight. She hasn't had the problem of differentiating between what is here and what is There.
Oh, but there are days.
There are always days. They're fewer, now. They used to be more numerous than she liked to think they were. Adam doesn't realize how closely she rides the line of on-balance. No matter, though, because here she is. She looks across the street and sees Imogen. She cocks her head to the side. The boy with her stiffens, though the Fury is barely perceptive enough to notice.
She crosses the street. Looks both was (because that's what good kids do, you see), and makes her wa over. She's wet. So is the young homeless boy. Imogen tells him that he should go. Adam stops shy and looks at him. In a way, it's too direct. Doesn't matter the phase of the moon- the Curse is called the curse for a reason.
[Imogen Slaughter] The boy snatches the offered cigarettes from the doctor, muttering 'thanks lady,' and then something else too low to hear, at least from Adamidas's distance. He leaps to his feet, all long limbs and sharp knees, leaning down to scoop up his rucksack. He stops, mid-departure to glance briefly between Imogen and the approaching (paused) woman as if he might feel a pricking of conscience. Then, it is gone, and so is he, disappearing down an alleyway with a muttered 'see ya!' as he goes.
Imogen, for her part, turns to face the approaching Garou, flicking a glance briefly toward the alleyway from which she came, before back toward the Fury. Much like Adamidas, Imogen's gaze is too direct, though without the rage behind it. She has a direct regard, a steady attention. She looks more closely at Garou than she should - than just about anyone else could.
She does not flinch, if Adamidas approaches. In fact, she merely moves her umbrella from one hand to the other, reaching into her coat pocket to retrieve a half finished packet of cigarettes. She is too practised at this one-handed to fumble. Tapping a cigarette out, and fitting it between her lips before pocketing the packet again. She retrieves a bic lighter, thumbing the wheel.
By now, the boy is long gone, and if Adam approaches, she's in speaking distance. Imogen lights up, inhaling smoke deep into her lungs and half turning her head to exhale, her mouth moving around the filter as she speaks. "Did yeh stub somethin' on a dumpster?" she asks.
[Adamidas] Few people flinch when Adamidas aproaches. She is some kind of contradiction, because to look at her, she is cute. She isn't pretty, she's cute. The manner about is is that of a feral child who has since been reintroduced into polite society. The world is looked at with the familiarity of an alien world.
She looks at Imogen, and her right hand moves to hold her left elbow as she walks. And she moves forward, stepping softly. There isn't a lot of bodyweight behind her steps for it to really be considered stalking.
One would not think this to know her, but she has the potential to be terrifying. War form aside and discarded, she has the potential to be terrifying.
"I don't think you can stub your head," she tells Imogen. There is a smile, there, and it lingers briefly. The cap is bridged, and doesn't invade Imogen's space.
She's Imogen Slaughter.
She knows to respect her space.
She's heard stories.
[Imogen Slaughter] One can only imagine how Imogen might react, hearing the stories. Scorn, or irony, or quiet pride? Adamidas does not know her well enough to be able to guess. The truth is, there is no one here anymore who knows her well enough to guess.
Maybe the stories will fade a little now. Perhaps they will grow ever wilder without those in the know to temper them.
Imogen smirks faintly, in response to the smile. She stands straight, spine unbowed, shoulders even, relaxed. Her expression is restrained, reticent and quiet, the smirk doing little to light her dark eyes, little to add mobility her face. Her lips move. Little else follows.
"I suppose not," she says, "though I'm curious how one might hit one's head on a dumpster - unless you were sleeping in it." Her gaze flicks over Adamidas's frame without any sexuality in the gesture. Appraisal, eyes quick and sharp. "And I don't think you did."
[Adamidas] "I had a bit of a rough landing," she says.
She watches Imogen. THe stories might fade, but the renown doesn't. Imogen Slaughter is more accomplished than most cubs. She is more accomplished than some garou Adam knows, too. It might not be the people she hears the stories from. But the spirits? They rant about her. They sing her praises, even if she is kinfolk. The Fury looks at the older woman, the one who looks small but is the epitome of human grace.
The best a person can be. Greek ideal, but with Fianna breeding.
She drops her voice.
"Sometimes when you try to come back, it doesn't go the way you had planned, and you end up in a slightly different location, or you don't look before you leap... or Rat thinks it's hilarious to help you chill in a trashcan."
[Imogen Slaughter] A pause, lingering. Imogen's eyebrow lifts up the smallest measure, then settles as she interprets Adamidas's meaning.
"The shadow," she says. "Ah."
She takes another drag from the cigarette, her eyes narrowing as the wind tosses the smoke back in her direction. She turns her head slightly to exhale, the smoke spilling from lips.
"The brightside, I suppose bein' tha' yeh didn't end up in a wall."
[Adamidas] "I've heard horror stories that, sometimes, people don't make it through, and when they try to cross back over, they either get stuck in between, or flung to another realm."
A moment passes.
"... I'll bet you get sick of people doing the whole accost you with stuff thing."
She's not the most specific of creatures. Endearing, yes, but not specific. Blame it on the trashcan lid to the head.
[Imogen Slaughter] She blinks a little sooner than she might have otherwise. A moment before she speaks again. These are the symptoms of her confusion.
"'Accost me wi' stuff'," she repeats Adamidas's words, an American's words in a Cornish accent. "What d'yeh mean?"
[Adamidas] "You know," she starts, "people coming up to you, mind dumping on you about their days, and then running off without ever bothering to ask you anything... or even pay much attention to what you were doing."
A beat.
"Like, folks like me coming by and scaring off normal people and stuff."
[Imogen Slaughter] She studies Adamidas for a moment, a moment of intense regard. "If I had thought th'conversation I was havin' with the boy was important," she says, "I'd ha' asked you to leave."
[Adamidas] She took a second, and the Fury didn't say anything for now. She looked at Imogen, and was regarding her directly. Took in that moment of intense regard and absorbed it for what it was. She didn't say anything. It bore mention twice, that instead of running at the mouth and labeling herself, she just takes it for what it is. She just regards Imogen, and is regarded in return.
She's no where near as sharp as Dr. Slaughter.
The Fury nods, once up and then down, but she doesn't say anything.
[Imogen Slaughter] The silence lingers. Imogen glances away, lifting her cigarette back to her lips, letting smoke and poison fill her lungs. She exhales slowly, turning her head so that it spills away form the Garou. The scent still wafts, distinctly, carried on minor molecules of air.
She takes another drag, taps cigarette ash toward the sidewalk. The rain begins to slow, and she lowers the umbrella, fitting the cigarette between her lips to free her hand to close it. She shakes the umbrella free of water, wordless.
"D'yeh ha' anythin' t'accost me wi' then?" she asks, her mouth twisting faintly in irony. "Or shall I go?"
[Adamidas] "... how long have you smoked?"
[Victor Oseragighte] Eventually he does leave the bar, prepared to brave the elements. He zips up his jacket and steps out into the driving rains, face to the sky as it was instantly soaked and he had to close his eyes against the force of the wind pelting him with water droplets.
[Imogen Slaughter] Her eyebrow lifts, but she merely takes another drag of her cigarette before consenting to reply. "Almost twenty years."
A smirk. "Long t'be quite skilled at quitting."
[Adamidas] "Well," Adam muses, "anything that can be done for twenty years is worth continuing to do."
A pause.
"Why did you start?"
[Victor Oseragighte] He does not yet notice them. The storms come in waves, sometimes tapering off to nothing, sometimes lashing everything with rain and even hail. It's a lull presently, just enough rain to soak his hair and make him feel refreshed. He breathes it in and lowers his head, opening his eyes to look around.
[Roman Turner] Rain ran front and back from the curled rim of the straw hat that had once been brilliant white and new. It had taken months to get the sides curled up just right and the front and back curled downwards so sun and rain stayed off his face and neck. His shoulders were slightly curled against the rain, still he straightened some likely just as a little tingle might of run up Victor's spine and his voice came from behind.
"Boo."
[Imogen Slaughter] She's beneath an awning, protected from the rain, her umbrella by her side. Her shoulders are brushed with rain, but little else - Imogen takes care of her person, her attire, even when dressed in worn jeans and a nondescript windbreaker.
Adamidas asks her next question and the kinwoman's mouth twists further, the wryness deepening as she lifts her cigarette back to her lips.
"Are yeh makin' up fer all th'full bloods who ask me nothin' at all?" she asks.
[Victor Oseragighte] There were some who, surprised so, would have reacted badly. As it was, Victor spins, pivoting on one foot so that the hand on that side comes up ready to swing, his other foot swinging about to drop back down and secure his stance. He does not know the Ragabash well enough for his voice to register immediately, nor can he quite see his face fully at first beneath the brim of the hat, but Victor is not given to punching out strangers, even when surprised. This means he has time to recognize Roman finally and relax, raising a hair to push soaked strands of hair from his face and shake his head ruefully.
"Fool." He does not say this insultingly, more naming the no-moon's role, acknowledging that he's been duly pranked. There is even a chuckle with that word.
[Adamidas] "No," she said. She pauses, she thinks.
"Maybe," she reassesses, "I've heard about you... and I wanted to... you know... know more. Though, honestly, there probably is a component of True Guilt in there."
[Kora] The streets are dark when the stormclouds open, the light dampened by the rain, by the moisture in the air. When the rain tapers, though, the dark streets seem illuminated, the orange streetlights gleam off the pavement and are trapped and reflected back at the earth by the constantly moving clouds overhead. Roman has a straw hat. Kora has neither a hat nor an umbrella. Just a pizza box from the place down the block, SULLY'S TAKE-OUT PIZZA the sign in the window says, "NO EAT INS" is written in thick sharpie underneath, with INS underlined several times over. The booths in the locked up interior are like a mirage in the desert. The front door remains locked up tight, and Sully's serves pizza only through a grated window right onto the street.
It's good stuff, though. A shame to sacrifice it to the storm gods, by using it as a makeshift bumbershoot, and as long as the weather is gentle, the Fenrir woman protects the box rather than the crown of her head. Taller than Roman or Victor, taller than anyone on the street, she holds the box against the lean curve of her torso, waist level. Kora's dark eyes linger on Roman and Victor as Roman sneaks up behind then later, then rise down the street, catch on good doctor's flame colored hair, and linger then.
"You two've met?" says Kora, behind the young Ragabash, his senior by nearly a decade, for all that they share the same rank. Her gaze has returned to Roman, and Victor. Her voice is easy, low and rich, her left arm occupied with the pizza box, the fingers of her right hand worked half-way into the hip pocket of her jeans. The question is rhetorical, really. She answers it herself. Or appends to it. Ends it, somehow. "Cool."
[Roman Turner] "We are mighty hunters together. We prowl the skies, chasing dreams as they come crashing down to sink out of sight."
He snickered, nodding his head towards Victor as he explained in his own twisted poetic way before touching the brim of that dripping hat in real greeting to Victor.
"Hail the mighty hunter and good evenin, Vic."
[Imogen Slaughter] Adamidas has heard of her. Imogen's breath exhales sharply. "I shudder to think," she says, her gaze moving over the street. She sees Victor first, her eyes narrowing; the expression relaxes as she sees Roman, then Kora.
"Looks like yeh ha' a true blood gathering," the kinwoman notes.
Her breeding is sharp in the air. It is more potent than the colour of her hair, which is bright enough to retain its red shades, even in the cloud-covered night.
[Victor Oseragighte] His hand moves from his hair to shade his eyes against the rain a bit, looking up, up over Roman's shoulder to the woman behind him. He wondered absently if Josie had alerted friends to his presence, nodding to the both of them. "Good storm. Bad climbing weather. 'evening. You two looking for me?"
He had to assume they might be. It did not seem likely that they had just come upon him, but you never knew, right?
[Kora] "Dreams, eh?" the response to Roman is quiet, direct. The right corner of her mouth is higher than the left, but the expression does not have the aspect of a smirk. It's something else, the edge of a smile that lives at the corners of her generous mouth, as likely to turn full as it is to disappear. " - did you catch any in your dream-hunt?" The response is brief. She looks up, over the kid's shoulder at Victor. The rain hits the sharp planes of her face, trails down her cheeks and jaws in shifting ribbons that catch the light and shimmer. Underneath, she is pale as the moon - for all that it is summer.
"If we were," Kora taps the underside of the pizza box with her index finger by way of demonstration. "I'd've gotten you a slab of something other than bread and cheese. Just looking for a place to eat this." Kora lifts her chin then, beyond Victor's shoulder, down the street. Non-sequitors, easily. "Have you met the doc yet?"
[Roman Turner] "Dreams are, well some aren't meant to be captured, it's the chase that makes the magic."
He grinned to Kora, then shook his head hard enough at Victor to send rain flinging off the tip.
"No sir Vic, weren't looking for ya, but ya know how fate it sometimes."
Already he was squinting towards the gleam of red hair that made heat rise to his face. Crap, it was HER. Well, it was one of the hers that made his brain scramble and his body stand up and do the Hokey Pokey.
[Victor Oseragighte] He nodded once they'd confirmed this was mere coincidence, turning then at Kora's prompting to peer through the rain. "Doc?" He sees two figures, one... yes, one he'd met. One he'd seen but barely once. Neither he knew of as a doctor, but he knew neither very well.
[Roman Turner] "It's Miss Doctor Slaughter, Ma'am and, some other lady I don't believe I recall."
For a moment he studied the pair before looking to his two current companions.
"Welp, best get to being neighborly."
And just like that, he started marching towards that gleam of red hair and the other lady.
[Kora] "That's rather poetic of you, kid," Kora replies to Roman, the edge of her half-smile coiling around the corners of her generous mouth like the suggestion of smoke after a burn. "Makes you sound like some besotted Fiann." There is a supple tease embedded in the words, and not a hint of approbation. "You might want to save it for the kinswomen, though."
Such is Kora's advice to Roman, before he's setting his hat and marching off to be neighborly through the rain. Kora is several steps behind, but she walks quickly, her long stride drawing her abreast of Victor before Roman is far off. "My pack," she explains to the half-moon, "claims territory not far from here. A few blocks east, along the lake and the river. And the kid and his cousin have a house somewhere close, as I understand it.
"C'mon," she echoes Roman's promise to get neighborly in a different tone, jerking her head toward the pair of women down the street. "Doc Slaughter is the kinswoman. If you spend any time in Chicago, you'll know her worth soon enough."
[Adamidas] She looks down at the grouping of people, then looks to the side at Imogen. She is a woman who is six feet tall in a five-foot-body. Imogen Slaughter is a presence; that makes two teenagers who are amazed by her for varying reasons.
"And they're migrating."
[Victor Oseragighte] "Doc... Slaughter?" He suddenly had the sensation that he'd stepped into a 70s exploitation film, or maybe a comic book. He was wise enough not to voice either possibility, however.
He watches Roman kite off to see her, then smiles to Kora's more in-depth explanation and falls in beside her, heading over at his own measured pace, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. The more kin he met in this city, the more he approved of their apparent strength.
[Roman Turner] He didn't crowd under the awning and didn't get too close to Adamidas out of simple politeness. All the same when he drew close enough he touched the brim of his hat and very politely said.
"Evenin Miss Doctor Slaughter Ma'am."
Imogen was greeted first, then Adamidas got a touch of the brim and a.
"Ma'am."
"Y'all don't want to make sure ya don't get wet. Sweet as you are, I'm sure you'd melt in the blink of an eye."
[Imogen Slaughter] She makes a brief sound of acknowledgement, dropping her cigarette to the ground, crushing it out beneath the toe of her flat-soled shoe.
In other, nicer parts of the city, Imogen is not seen without heels. They augment her petite frame, adding the appearance of height. Like this, there is no illusion; she's slender, slight. There are teenagers (Roman and Adamidas being two of them) who have overtopped her height as a full-grown woman. Still, as the others approach, she looks up over their heights as if it were of no consequence. Her spine is straight, her posture perfect. She is poised in ways that denizens of this part of the city can never manage. Poised less like a dancer or a warrior (as she is neither), and more like someone who is pragmatic; aware that posture requires less energy than a slouch and therefore taking the effort to perfect it.
The Garou approach. Roman offers a witticism, a bit of gallantry out of place in his youth and what she knows of southern Garou.
"Roman," she greets him, for once, recalling his name, though she does not actually acknowledge his hammer-blow flattery.
"Kora." The Fenrir next.
The kinwoman turns her dark eyes to the relative newcomer. A brief pause, her mouth immobile, a tendon along her jaw moving. Then, "I don't believe we've met, then."
[Kora] "Mmmph," Kora makes a low noise by way of agreement. Or approval. Then clarifies, her voice low, pitched to carry just between them. "Doctor Imogen Slaughter. The redhead. The other woman is Adamidas. She and her pack stay at the Brotherhood, yeah?" The whole of the quiet explanation is proffered before they are half-way there.
Kora is quiet for the rest of the walk. She walks easily, comfortable on her feet and on the streets of the failing, low-rent neighborhood marked by poverty and decay in every direction one turns. Her blonde hair is pulled back sharply from her features, twisted into a haphazard knot at the nape of her neck. Her black t-shirt clings to her lean frame, which is decidedly unfeminine except for the subtle curve of her hips against her worn jeans. The black boots make a quiet, solid sound on the concrete, and the now damp cardboard box creaks faintly, the pizza inside sliding against the corrugated walls when she steps down off the curb, crossing the mouth of the alley.
"Doc," Kora greets Imogen, lifting her chin in a neat gesture of acknowledgment before her dark-eyed attention cuts to the Black Fury. " - Adam. This is Victor. Victor, Adamidas and Dr. Slaughter."
[Victor Oseragighte] He does not have Kora's stride, yet there is no impression that he is having to rush to keep up with her. He measures his own steps well, moving with inexorable certainty. Kora makes the introductions so he does not have to say anything really, just nod politely to each of them. He has no right to look so comfortable there in the rain, especially as it starts to pick up again more. Sharp black eyes assess each of them, having met 'Adam' only briefly before.
[Roman Turner] He didn't know Adamidas, but he smiled just as cheezey as his cousin claimed only he could do and once more touched the brim of his hat with a...
"Ma'am."
While inside he was on cloud 9. Imogen said his name. She remembered his name. God save him, she smiled at him.
[Adamidas] Adam isn't much older than Roman. Not at all, as a matter of fact. Maybe a year at best. They're about the same size, and he seems to weigh a little more than she does if for no other reason than the fact that he has muscle mass on her. She inspects him, and she tried- oh how she tries- not to snort or laugh or giggle at the display of flattery.
It's the best she can do, and the dang Yankee finds her shoes interesting.
Back to reality.
"Your name's Roman, right?"
[Roman Turner] "Yessum, Roman Turner. Pleased as punch to meetcha."
He was sure somewhere in the city that Sparrow was rolling her eyes about now, but what the heck? Just the same he was giving Adamidas a big ole smile while his little heart fluttered with Imogen calling him something other than Bloody something or other.
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen affects not to notice the starry eyed gaze of the
... child -
as she inclines her head briefly toward the silent Victor. "A pleasure," she says, words which are more simply because they are part of her traditional meet and greet of his kind than because she meant them. "Been 'ere long, ha' you?" the redhead speaks with a distinct accent; the kind that causes most North Americans no end of confusion. Not quite the Queen's English, it results in guesses of birth places from New Zealand to Ireland.
"Your pizza is getting damp," off-hand to Kora.
[Victor Oseragighte] He could not fail to miss Roman's infatuation either, remembering with a chuckle when his own hormones ruled him so completely. And to be Garou as well... poor kid. He chuckled silently.
Imogen draws more than a shake of his head at least with her question. "Week and a half. Still getting settled. Staying at the Brotherhood." His own accent marks him as a foreigner as well, Quebecois softened by long trips abroad, down into the States. There is no doubt from his accent he is at least bilingual.
[Kora] Kora casts a sharp-eyed glance between the smitten Roman and the diminutive Doctor. Her dark eyes shine in the dull orange light cast by the nearest streetlamp, which halos them in ugly splendor. The rain begins again, in earnest. Like a fool, Kora tilts her head back, squinting up at the rain now pelting down from the stormclouds as if she might divine something from the view.
Just rain, hitting her in the eye. Imogen remarks that her pizza is getting damp, Kora glances at Victor as the kinswoman greets him, then flashes a full smile. See this: white teeth behind her the pale twist of her unglossed, unpainted, unvarnished mouth, an easy smile that still speaks to the wolf in her. "Yeah," the Skald agrees, this hint of good humor insinuating itself into her rich voice. With another glance at the sky - this one less full, just a sketch of a look defined as much by the curl of a blond brow upward as by the movement of her head - Kora shifts the damp (soon to be sodden?) box from arm to arm. " - so it is. They've got only take-out back there," here, a quick gesture over her shoulder, back down the street. "the booths and tables inside are all just for show."
One too many murders, maybe.
[Roman Turner] "Ya know, we should eat it before it tastes like the box."
He nodded towards the quickly soaking box as rain ran in runnels down the front and back points of his hat. The back flow was soaking his shirt and he could feel it drenching the back end of his jeans. Still he got to stand in the glow of his own personal moon (Imogen) and for that he would gladly stand in gale force winds.
[Kora] "Here," Kora to Roman, now. " - that's not a bad thought." Her fine mouth is curved into the faint, easy smile that seems to be her default expression. She shifts the box out from underneath her arm and against her side, balances it carefully, and opens the damp cardboard box. It isn't deepdish, Chicago-style, this pie. It's a good solid New York style pizza, big slices on a handmade crust that is neither thick or thin. Maybe a bit damp, now, or maybe the glisten on the surface is fat rather than water, oil from the pepperoni or the cheese.
Standing there, she offers the damp pizza to all and sundry. The scent of tomato sauce, oregano and basil is a sudden counterpoint, sharp and rich, to the must of the rain in the air. "Have at it."
[Victor Oseragighte] The scent of the pizza wars with the assault of the rain and wind. He wrinkles his nose openly and looks mildly ill at it, curiously, his lips puckering into a round O before he gives a shrill whistle. The wind shifts, whipping about him as if they are briefly tethered together and pushing the worst of the rain away for the moment, as well as alleviating him of the pizza's odor.
[Imogen Slaughter] Above them, lightning flashes, a low rumble of thunder. Imogen flicks a glance upwards as the sky, her eyes losing their focus, or at least, their intensity.
"The waitress was shot," she tells Kora, bringing her attention back, "and maybe a waiter or cook or somethin' too." A negligent, callous shift of her shoulder. "I don't recall the details. It was a few months ago." That she remembers at all then might be a symptom of an exceptionally good memory.
"I suppose they decided it wasn't worth th'effort to hire new ones."
She shakes her head slightly in answer to Kora's offer, stepping further to the edge of the awning, as she retrieves another cigarette from her pack, fitting it between her lips. She can smell the pizza more clearly now, mixed with rain and damp cardboard. The cigarette smoke is blown further downwind as she lights up.
Lightning flashes again, thunder rolls. The summer storm settles in, the rain picking up, lashing at the buildings, streets and people. A car rolls by, a junker with tricked out rims, the windows open, a youthful male shrieking his weekend joy into the night. Soon afterwards, they're gone, the tires whispering against the pavement.
Victor whistles and the wind shifts, blowing smoke back toward Imogen as she exhales it. Her reaction is restrained, a brief flick of her cigarette-bearing hand to wave it away.
[Roman Turner] He sang softly.
"The thunder rolls and the lightning strikes...."
He reached for pizza shaking his head at Victor.
"Gonna make me deaf yet with that whistling."
Kora was saluted with the slice before he folded it in half and stuck the pointy end into his mouth to start munching, mumbling around a mouthful.
"Thankee."
[Adamidas] She would have things to say. And there might be words, but she can't come up with anything to say, really. Instead, she looks at the pizza, to the air, to the rain falling, falling, falling. It's a summer storm. It wants to be summer. And while her mind wanders it's one of those moments which is becomes quite clear how far in the distance she actually is. How connected [detached] she is with this world.
The waitress was shot, and that was enough to bring her back from thinking about pizza and sacrifice.
"What happened to them? Are they okay?" her concerns, her priorities, are made clear.
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen casts Adamidas a brief glance. "They're dead."
[Victor Oseragighte] He leaned forward a little as well, curious about the answer to Adamidas' question. The answer, sadly, was all too expected. He shook his head. There were things he loved about the cities, strange as many would find that. And there were things he definitely hated.
[Adamidas] She is decidedly quieter, now.
[Roman Turner] "Dead only hurts them left behind. Nurtures some too because with time all the little wrongs are put aside for the better memories."
He mumbled around pizza as he wolfed down the first piece despite the rain running down his backside.
[Victor Oseragighte] "Anybody check for lingering banes," he asks out of the blue. Violence like that... well, it could leave echoes, he knew.
[Kora] Victor whistles. Kora cuts him a sharp glance, sidelong. IN the moment when the wind curls about him as if they were one, not separate, her dark eyes linger on him, searching his expression - or rather, the edge of it, the shape of bones beneath skin, the way the light cuts across his features. Then something breaks, then moment ends. Imogen offers them a story about the pizza place, and Kora, just under the awning but not fully protected, looks back toward the store, over her shoulder, her hair a heavy knot at the back of her head. The light cuts through the intensifying storm in unpredictable ways, scattershot, and there's a certain dampening in the air, too - sound shifts, waves broken or redirected in the curtains of falling rain.
Adam asked what happened to the waitress or the cook. Kora merely offers a faint sound in the back of her throat. This subtle acknowledgment of the information offered by the kinswoman.
"Cheers," she says quiet to Roman when he gives his thanks for the pizza. She lifts the box faintly, the way you lift a glass for a casual toast, then reaches for a slice herself, holding the box out for anyone else before closing it, to use the damp lid as something like a plate. " - I suspect it hurts the dead, too," Kora offers, quiet, to Roman. "Things they haven't done. Things they've left behind.
"More than a few, I'd guess," to Victor, her dark eyes shifting to the half-moon, "neighborhood like this, which no one's claimed as territory. Hard place to keep free of them. The cursed ones are definitely active around here, too." Kora lifts her chin toward Imogen, her pale brows drawing together, her voice still low. The pizza slice sits atop the damp cardboard now, forgotten. " - you've not seen any more of that graffiti, have you?"
[Imogen Slaughter] They speak of the dead, those who might be hurt. Imogen glances away, her eyes touching on the heavy rain as she lifts her cigarette back to her mouth. A deep drag fills her lungs with poison and tar.
Kora addresses her and she turns back, turning her head only slightly to let the smoke slip from her breath. "No," she says. "Not so far."
[Victor Oseragighte] He had not, and a shake of his head confirmed that. In that instant when the wind had curved about him it seemed a very natural thing; he was the eye of the storm, a perfect calm around which the wind danced. Those wild gusts brushed across his skin, plucked at his soaked clothes, and he looked... right. As if that was where he belonged entirely.
[Adamidas] She drops her voice, and like the little theurge that she is, she speaks about spirits. States what they probably already know, probably for their benefit as well as hers. She's right there.
"What would make things easier would be, possibly, if we worked to help people who lived here? And in places like this? Bitter rage breeds Bitter Rages, and violence and contempt, which perpetuates the cycle, which-" she pauses. She stops. She thinks and she speaks.
"The laws says to combat the wyrm whenever it breeds, wherever it dwells. It dwells in victims and the wounded."
You know what to do.
Bless her idealism. Bless her youth. Bless her plans that should not, could not, will not work that she believes with such fanaticism. There is a piece of pizza taken, but instead of eating it, she holds it out for the rain with both hands.
A beat.
"I'll get on that," she says a little louder.
[Roman Turner] "Well, seems to me, last time I saw Miss Kora was at the river and the breeding was going on in the water or there abouts."
He had downed the slice of pizza in record time. The odd wind thing with Victor was nothing new to him, he recalled the wayward kite. If only the wind had been a little more faithful that day.
"Likely some we didn't see done ate my kite too."
[Kora] Kora's gaze track's Adamidas' hand as the rather younger woman takes a piece of pizza and holds it up to the sky. Again, she cranes her neck, squints up at the storm clouds, the rain sluicing down from the sky, watches for a beat as the water pours down, cool now, pounding the sidewalk, the rumble of thunder overhead, away somewhere, distant enough that it sounds like an El train on overhead tracks rather than the crack and roar of a firecracker close at hand. "I've been thinking," to Imogen, quiet when she catches the kinswoman's eyes, " - about heading back to that mortuary sometime. Poke around a bit, if you're interested."
There's a certain - intensity - to Kora's regard in that moment, her dark eyes linger on the kinswoman's face, watch the spare expression there, the subtle tense and release of muscle, the way the light and the damp sheens her skin.
---
A glance back to Adamidas, Kora's pale head is canted to the right, her hair heavy and damp, a pale wash over her shoulder, haloing her sharp features. Then Kora glances to Roman and back to Victor. "If you want to check it out sometime," head tilting back toward the pizza place, "on the other side, I'm game."
[Victor Oseragighte] He empathized with the young Theurge, knowing that she had a point, that tending to such matters could do some good, but there was only so far that would go. He was not about to discourage her, though, nodding thoughtfully at her words, smiling faintly. "Good place to start." When he looked to Kora then, his words doubled easily as an answer to her suggestion, and his canted head questioned her mention of a mortuary.
[Roman Turner] "Ya know, I gotta say that is one place I ain't never been on either side, a morgue. I'd be right pleased to accompany y'all for a trip to the Twilight Zone."
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen's gaze settles tightly on Kora as she makes her offer of inclusion. After a moment, she nods. Her own muscles - in her jaw, tense and release. Tighten, then ease. Roman speaks, and the moment passes. She lifts her cigarette back to her lips.
"Mortuary," she corrects him, off-hand. "S'not a morgue, s'more like a funeral home."
[Roman Turner] Funeral home, now that made him cringe inside and he pushed all the racing thoughts that came with the mental cringe in to a little box and slammed the lid down tightly.
"I stand corrected."
[Adamidas] "I'd be up for going," she says. Perks up and keeps her hands on the now soggy piece of pizza. Storm keeps coming, but one may as well offer.
[Victor Oseragighte] "What are we looking for," he asked, raising his hands to turn up the collar of his jacket against the rain a bit. In that one quesiton he affirmed that he wanted to tag along.
[Kora] "I think we'll keep the mortuary team," the faint curve of her mouth her, neat, nearly self-mocking, though it is just this side of that. " - small. The smaller footprint the better. It's not demanding a war party quite yet. Though a scout would probably be helpful. Give me your number," to Roman, " - and I'll give you a call when we're going. Or leave you a message at the docks, yeah?"
Her chin rises, as she cuts a glance between Victor and Adamidas, back to Roman. Lingering there, before returning to Victor. "Doctor Slaughter found a fake glyph hidden in graffiti near the service entrance to this little funeral home. We found a couple of cursed ones and some accomplices stealing bodies. Or maybe just taking them, from inside. We'll have a peek, and you'll have first dibs if there's more.
"The pizza place, though," Her pizza is forgotten; Kora looks back over her shoulder. Why, suddenly, does the picture window, with its iron bars banding shadows through the light the place casts onto the rainy sidewalk, seem to have an eerie glow. " - I suppose we're looking for whatever remains behind, to feed on the death. Or whatever inspired it in the first place. And of course, now that I think about that," she glances down at the slice atop the sodden box. "I'm not sure I want to eat what they're offering."
[Roman Turner] He gave his numberto Kora while digesting both what Kora said and the slice of pizza that now that she started talking about not sure she wanted to eat what was offered, made his stomach consider protesting. Damn, if he was going to get sick just from the thought of "What if?", then he hoped it all came out the way it went in and not the back exit too.
"Ya call or drop by, I'll be there."
[Kora] Hey guys! We have a choice with re: pizza place. Mei has offered to run something for us related to it, though it is too late for her tonight.
Or: I can try to bang out something tonight. I would rather have Mei run something since: hey! I could play without knowing what's going to happen. :) But I'm good with like, doing something tonight on the theory that momentum in the scene is RAWR oriented and this is a sort of casual jaunt thingy that I could do in (eyes) an hour and a halfish.
(eternal. optimist.)
So: thoughts?
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Roman Turner, Victor Oseragighte
[Roman Turner] (( I think I am vegetable matter, so vote for mei and pizza joint later LOL! ))
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Kora, Victor Oseragighte
[Victor Oseragighte] (( I am open to whatever is decided. ))
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Kora, Roman Turner
[Imogen Slaughter] The rain begins to slow, as the Garou take, a break in the downpour, though the lightning and thunder have not yet abated.
Imogen casts a glance toward her watch, then the Garou as they speak. Her interest in the conversation appears permanently waned.
"I'll be in touch," this to Kora, as she opens her umbrella, lifting it up over her head. "Goodnight," and the last to no one in particular.
She steps out into the rain and starts down the street.
(Blu may be vegetable matter but I am mulch. OR BLOOD MEAL. thanks for the RP, everyone!)
[Adamidas] (I am totally up for that! Whatever you guys choose, I am down for. Shall we shoot for a Mei-and-later?
to Imogen Slaughter, Kora, Roman Turner, Victor Oseragighte
[Roman Turner] ((thanks Mei))
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Kora, Victor Oseragighte
[Victor Oseragighte] (( Sounds good to me! ))
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Kora, Roman Turner
[Imogen Slaughter] (okay, I posted up something in the scenes forums for you guys to mention schedules, etc, so we can arrange a scene of fun and pizza. *grin* Or something like that.)
to Adamidas, Kora, Roman Turner, Victor Oseragighte
[Kora] (Brilliant, Meiling. You are my hero.)
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Roman Turner, Victor Oseragighte
[Roman Turner] ((I responded and if no one is insulted, I need to sleep something fierce.))
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Kora, Victor Oseragighte
[Kora] (Roman could walk Imogen home? HAHAHAH. Ahem.)
to Adamidas, Imogen Slaughter, Roman Turner, Victor Oseragighte
[Imogen Slaughter] (*wiggles eye-- OH GOD.* *goes shave eyebrows off*)
to Adamidas, Kora, Roman Turner, Victor Oseragighte
[Kora] "Night, doc," is Kora's farewell to the kinswoman. In the interim, she circles the mouth of the alley and tosses the pizza, box and all, into the nearest dumpster. Her speculation has done her own appetite no favors.
[Roman Turner] He was quick on the uptake when Imogen opened her umbrella. He made sure Kora had his number, made quick farewells to all and hightailed it off after Imogen.
"Wouldn't be proper if I just let her go alone in the dark. I'll see y'all later."
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen turns her head as Roman trots up alongside her, her expression betraying half-hidden resignation. The teenager doubtlessly misses it.
After all, he thought she had smiled at him before.
"Walking me to my car, are you." it's not really a question. Teenager and doctor disappear around a corner.
[Adamidas] She takes the piece of pizza and, very calmly, goes to throw it away. There are a few words given to whatever rested there. Promises and what-have-you of what she may need to do soon enough should the suspicions be correct.
"Summer is brought into the world by a Great Hunt," she calls back to Kora.
[Victor Oseragighte] Kora's sudden suspicion about her pizza had him stooping to examine the box, but he could not tell much really. He glanced over to the restaurant it came from, then rose again and looked to the two remaining women. "Out of the rain," he suggested, glancing skyward where thunder rumbled. His control of the wind only went so far.
[Roman Turner] She loved him, he was sure. All he could do was give her a goofy, wet smile with a nod and at.
"Yessum."
The last thing the others likely heard before they were gone around the corner.
[Roman Turner] ((thanks guys, I gotta go die. Night!))
[Imogen Slaughter] (me too! thanks for the scene!)
[Victor Oseragighte] (( Enjoyed, you two! ))
[Kora] "I could stand a drink," Kora replies to Victor's suggestion. "There's a place about eight blocks south that has a decent selection of both draft beer and whiskey or," she continues, lifting her chin toward Victor, "we could try the Brotherhood if you're game for the walk."
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