Ornature

They do not have a Galliard to tell the story and it will never be clear who can claim ownership of the idea. Who said it first aloud, who brought the notion from something vague and half-formed that the kicked from thought to thought, at the edges of consciousness, to something stronger: a promise, a plan, a story.

Maybe in the days and weeks after Charlotte woke up with her own death in the back of her throat and the sudden scissoring immediacy of it a bright fire in her spine, the girl found her tongue. Maybe it was Erich, returning from a raid-gone-nearly-wrong with the copper burn of a tribesmate's blood still on his tongue. Maybe it was, in the end, Melantha who knocked their heads together:

but knocked together they were.

--

Charlotte does not know the rite and they have decided on it just as the skies are opening and the mountain streams are becoming torrents and the roads are being overrun and washed out and the mountain towns cut off, homes flooded, businesses washed away and the trio have some warning - the whisper of it in the air - so they fold up the steps and fold down the shutters and bring all the many things that have ended up outside back in and take the tinyhouse and the big truck to higher ground. Which is more precarious and less idyllic and they stare out over a great valley that has been utterly though only temporarily changed by the impressive spectacle of an undamned waterway - even a small one - in flood. Debris churn in the surging waters and the snaking banks of the small stream are reshaped by the press of water and the trees are drowning and the disruption delays the process somewhat, as Charlotte must craft their chiminage by hand. Must make the talens and infuse them and bind them, must consider carefully to whom to offer them, and where, and why.

There are many things Charlotte wishes to learn. A Glass Walker named Trigger Finger teaches her the rite she wishes to learn. She remembers it from another lifetime, someone else's lifetime, and not-so-long ago. Garou do not live long lives; each generation accumulates a new trail of corpses. But listen: the rite is bloody, requires needle-and-thread and the first several times Charlotte attempts it something goes wrong and leaves them merely with bleeding fingers.

Charlotte considers carefully whether to ask a Shadow Lord or a Silver Fang to perform the other rite, which she does not have time now to learn. In the end, she asks a Black Fury to perform it. Sara's Rest.

How you hunt a volcano?

Listen to the earth beneath your feet.

--

In truth, they do not know what spirit they will seek when Sara's Rest performs the rite. They know merely that they want and need a totem, and that there must be some spirit out there that will accept their spirit and flesh and bind them more solidly together. No engling comes for them to chase. They do not catch a glimpse of Falcon through the leaves or of stag through the solid, stolid trunks of the trees.

Justice does not appear to them, blinded and robed in white. No, nor the muses nor the city's embodied spirit nor do they hear Grandfather Thunder's low, familiar rumble on the horizon.

But they do feel the call, so deep underground that it is hard to know and credit, so hot, so molten that it cauterizes even as it burns. Through the familiar regions of the front range, the slopes of their valley, and then beyond, through the spine of the front range to the lands of Never Summer. The mountains are younger here. Richtofen and Norku Crags. They remember how and where they were formed; are still raw with the work of creation. Weathered masses of granite covered with lichen, surrounded by scree from the old peaks broken apart in their making. This is where they are drawn, called, where they go, the wolves. Padding past alpine lakes, following the hard line of the steep ridges higher and higher, past the tree line, where the free remaining trees are stunted and pennant-shaped, all their limbs flung out in the direction of the prevailing wind.

--

Needle and thread. Thread and a fine, steel needle. Charlotte is no seamstress but each time she pushes the needle through her packmates' skin her stitches grow finer, more precise. And there is a day when the rite works, when the work catches, when the thread that binds truly binds.

And the feeling is indescribable.

One day she wakes with damp hands and damp eyes and water in her mouth the memory of it and not salt water. Sediment yes but the tang is mineral, is metal, is granite, is mud. Even the sheets are damp and her pink hair is wet and the tinywindow is open but there was no rain last night and no scent of it in the air. The promise of it to come, a foreshadowing perhaps but this was then. Before the rains: it was high summer dry summer brilliant summer and there was a moon in the sky which was a different moon and she can hear them,

feel them,

her pack all breathing-close when she sits up and pushes the damp sheets off her body. Feels like sweat maybe but she knows it is not. She knows that somehow in her sleep she died and was reborn and see, remembers it all in the strangest ways. The searing shock of pain. The sudden uncoupling of spirit-from-flesh. Where time dissolves because there is no body to mark it, to heart to beat for it, nor lungs to breathe it in. Nothing except nothing which is everything, the world inverted and un- and re-folded and no time for sorrow. Sorrow is a thing for skin; is made for beating hearts and bleeding hands and breathing mouths. Sorrow is made for flesh.

The sudden reassertion of life the demand, the furious surge of a kind of fury that usually sleeps inside of her like a hot, uncertain little seed. Blood in her mouth and also bile you see; it is a girl's body flung down and a girl's body that returns and a girl's death-mad mind that remembers the water and the river and the pact and calls it now, for a different sort of flood.

Come come come.

And -

- she wakes up in her cubby-of-a-bed in a dark and quiet hour and the little window open to the idyllic valley and the air sharp with pine, not the acrid flash-pan of gunfire.

Sits there upright on the mattress the sheets wound around her skinny hips her hair a wild, unshakeable mess, a pale nimbus around the crown of her skull. Rises to her knees and scoots to the window and pushes open the curtains and breathes in sharp and whole the cool, dry, familiar air. The surreal sheen of the moon in the dark night sky calling to some wayward piece of an animal soul.

Charlotte slips out of the bed and out of the tinyhouse and out of her girlskin into a different one which is: small and sleek and the same silver-pale as moonlight on a mountain lake. Scrambles through the underbrush and follows the familiar cut of the stream down to the mountain lake it feeds and plashes into the shallows amidst the reeds and settles on her belly and laps at the water, open mouthed, tongue lolling, and not because she is thirsty.

--

In the days and weeks that follow Charlotte returns to the lake. When it is roiling and mudladen and furious from the rains, overtopping every boundary it remembers and then more, sluicing down the canyon like a waterwall. When it is calm and clear again in the aftermath of the rains, on a brick and clear September day, blue skies turning pink at the edges, the mountains sheened the color of the setting sun. She brings with her clear glass vials that have been both cleansed and purified. Corks with which to stopper them and wax with which to seal the corks over the glass. Wades, fully clothed, into the shockingly cold mountain lake up to her calves, up to her knees, up to her thighs, up to her hips, up to her waist, teeth chattering now, her breathing sharp with the shock of it, up to her ribs, up to her breasts, up to her neck, until the ground has given way beneath her feet and she's treading water, furiously, to stay both vaguely warm and somewhat afloat.

This, in its way, is a kind of chiminage.

Charlotte fills the vials and returns with them to the graveled shore where she has laid out her implements. A bronze bowl, clear as the morning sky, which sings when empty and gleams when full. A switch of willow, a silver coin. A knife, on edge dull, one razor-sharp. A whetstone. A handful of purslane flowers, already wilting from the heat of her hand. She kindles a fire and begins to work.

--

The next time Charlotte and Erich go to Denver, and the time after that, and every time after that, Charlotte insists that they take a detour. They go to Confluence Park, follow the Platte River Trail, walk the river's shadow beneath and against the crawlingly human city. Sometimes Charlotte follows its tributaries. The winding skein of them through the city's parks and under the city's streets and shunted beneath culverts and through concrete tunnels and on and on. Once Tamsin finds her crouched at the edge of an open culvert near East Colfax where Westerly Creek emerges briefly, before going back to ground.

Each and every time, Charlotte pours a small vial of water from that mountain lake into the river, or its streams. Watches it disappear into the swirling rapids and makes a small, self-satisfied noise as it goes.

--

[The rolls are the boring part. But Charlotte is making and pouring an activated clear water talen into the Platte downtown or its tributaries at least once a week throughout September and into October.

mnemosyne

Charlotte: Rite of Binding for Clear Water Talen. Dif is talen's gnosis: 4 -1 for gnosis spent? Or something? WP

Dice: 6 d10 TN3 (3, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 6 )

Rolls at different times since I realized she is doing this every week of the month so. Smile

mnemosyne @ 9:09PM

Clear Water Talen Week 2. Dif 4 -1 (gnosis spent) Roll: 6 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 3, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) VALID

mnemosyne @ 9:09PM

Clear Water Talen Week 3. Dif 4 -1 (gnosis spent) Roll: 6 d10 TN3 (2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 5 ) VALID

mnemosyne @ 9:10PM

Clear Water Talen Week 4 yadda Roll: 6 d10 TN3 (1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) VALID

mnemosyne @ 9:10PM

aaand Clear Water talen for the first week of October Roll: 6 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 5, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) VALID

Samael @ 9:10PM

Witnessed!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch that first week, what the heck:

mnemosyne

Charlotte: Rite of Binding for Fire Tooth talen. Dif is talen's gnosis 8 -2 for gnosis spent. WP.

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Samael

[[Don't forget to check the WP box, you're robbing yourself of successes! That's 7 and 5 succ.]]

mnemosyne

(Oh, no. I'm not spending WP. I'm rolling WP versus talen's gnosis. Smile)

Samael

OH! Never mind then, ignore me. Witnessed on those though!

mnemosyne

Nightshade! Rite of Binding. Dif is talen's gnosis 5 -1 for gnosis spent. WP

Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (1, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

mnemosyne

Lessee. And some Gaia's Breath. Dif is 4-1 for gnosis spent.

Dice: 6 d10 TN3 (2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 5 )]

Near Akron Street and East Sixteenth Avenue, Westerly Creek emerges from belowground, its corridors and shunting tunnels, to inhabit perhaps a block-long, narrow little wallow that is protected by chain link fencing and a concrete culvert. It emerges from a concrete tunnel and disappears into another, only to emerge again later somewhere else in the city, loop its way through parks and greenways before spilling into the Platte. Here, though, in East Colfax, not far from the glow of cheap motels and neon signs advertising the Home of the Sugar Steak, it is merely a concrete lined culvert.

There is: a lanky creature with platinum hair tipped in pink crouched at the edge of the culvert, on the muddy bank, frowning with a certain intensity at the dark water rushing past. She has: collected all the trash from the narrow greenspace into a recycled plastic bag and has a small vial of water in hand. And is considering the current, the glimmer of lights on the surface of the water, and on and on.

Tamsin is fairy-blooded some-how, some-where, has spoken to wolves who know stories about their fairy-ancestors and who believe in them, who speak of the cities not only as a blight on Gaia's-face, scabs over gaping wounds, but what happens if you pick a scab? It'll never heal, the wound, oh um I'm sorry, um, sorry so sorry, and they speak of the cities as a thing of iron, too, and Tamsin is listening to a melody she wrote earlier and borrowed somebody's computer in order to record and put on her ipod, drumming her fingers as she considers what to change, what chords to add or take away, what words to use, and she is thinking about fairies and about darkness lurking below cities, and her expression is grave and serene and that is how one wolf-girl who follows Fog finds Charlotte who is lanky and burns so brightly with the promise of heroes and heroes and heroes and heroes and the men of Numenor would bow-before and Tamsin's gaze snags on the fair hair and then the chainlink fence rattles as the Fianna winds her little fingers through the links and rattles them.

"Charlotte?" she calls. "Um," flushing, blushing, because -- because. "HI." She waits a second and then untwists her fingers from the fence and accidentally bops her braid into her mouth and spits it out while climbing unnecessarily over in order to come closer, galliards are social creatures where theurges are dreamy half-elsewhere-things, so. So.

so. SO: theurges are dreaming things and Charlotte does not know of or believe in faeries but she certainly seems like a fey thing, small and made of moonlight, the sort that kills softly, seven daughters for seven slights for seven days and seven nights or -

- well, she also looks like a girl who would be pretty if she were not so strange and awkward and long-limbed and coltish and weird weird weird.

Charlotte has in hand a small glass vial and the vial seems to glow with promise-or-something. Purity. The faintest hint of power. She is wearing worn jeans and hiking boots and a Mexican Sprite t-shirt and the boots are muddy and she looks up startled when someone calls her name but then oh Tamsin Charlotte flashes a shy(ing) little half-smile.

"Tamsin." Quick-clear, the glance drops back to Westerling Creek. "Hi! Uhm, did you come to see the creek too?"

Tamsin hits the ground hard her boots ragged and water-splotched and there's a tear in one of the soles not quite a hole but it's opening, opening soon she'll need a new pair of boots and, and, and hitting the ground also jolts one of her earbuds out've her ear, she pulls the other one out and shoves them into the pocket of her coat. It's a thin coat, and there are goose bumps up and down her forearm, cold enough to shiver which she does occasionally, should've had a drink, should've - actually she does have a drink, Tamsin, has a little flask, nothing smart, nothing special, the kind of silver-colored thing you'd get at a camping store, and it's got something for warmth inside, something she finds suspect because of where she got it, the back of some musician's house, home-brewed, lifted from a recipe book of moonshine, and her mind wanders to it when her tread brings her up and over to the Westerling Creek. Naw, not to the creek, to the Silver Fang, to the weird changeling-limbed should-be-pretty is-actually-pretty girl with the big eyes who is not a girl nope, "Nope," she says. "I'm just out walking. Don't have anything to do. Kind of bored, trying to write a song, trying to - you know. Um, sorry, that's boring. Being bored is the ultimate in boring, um. The creek? What'd you come to see it for? I mean on this side. Because it's pretty?" She brightens, "Does it need clearing out or help or anything? How are you? Um, and how's Erich? and stuff."

"Well it's not cause it's pretty." Charlotte explains, uncorking the vial and then yes indeed, pouring the water into the creek. No more than a few ounces, hardly enough to be noticeable except that there is the silver-quiet hum of something in the air and Tamsin can feel the seal of a binding dissolving, the brush of the spirit bound and now free. " - it's because it's not-pretty and sometimes gross and sort of all chained up beneath the concrete and they just let it out some places but only a little bit.

"Sometimes it gets mad and then when the rains come it floods and it stole this one guy and carried him a long way it told me 'til some men pulled him out but I told it that the guy was probably poison anyway so it's good it spit him out.

"I would've too. It should just eat concrete and streets if it wants to eat stuff.

"Oh, but I brought it water! From the mountains, clean from the rain and stuff. It's a talen and it helps clean up the water for a little while. This goes all the way to the river and I like the river. I mean the river saved my life. So that's why."

Then, a bit wistful as the last of the talen-water swirls away.

"I like songs."

Tamsin preserves a respectful silence as the river water is poured into the creek something pure and moonlight-touched and wild, something like a little prayer, a little talen, a little gnosis, and she tries to watch the water disappear into other waters, but that doesn't really happen now does it: can't track water through water, not unless it's colored.

"I haven't been up to the mountains since I got here. Now I kinda wanna go. Before it gets too snowy. Have you been to Blue Lake before? How'd the river save your life?"

Tamsin bites the side of her mouth, shy, shy, shy, fiddles with her zipper, then says, "Ummm. Do you know how to sing or play any instrument or anything? 'cause maybe you can help me out with one! with a song. You don't have to though. I just," and she pulls on her hair, biting her lip again, "ugh. I like songs too but sometimes they don't like me and they keep trying to get away, but they try to get away and like, if they do get away they'll disappear and be nothing, you know?"

Charlotte doesn't do any of those things: play an instrument on sing or anything and she's frowning, faintly - not a mad-frown but maybe a thoughtful frown or a sad-frown that she doesn't - and shakes her head no. No, she doesn't know how to do anything like that. The no has her shoulders a bit tense but then the frown folds into a different sort of frown, considerably more thoughtful, more things-under-consideratino than the first frown, the way it folds into itself and Charlotte nod-nod-nods as Tamsin explains how songs try to get away and if they get away they disappear and Charlotte does not notice the shyness she herself is such a -

- well, look at the darting way she glances at Tamsin, which is sidelong and curious and animal. Think bird, think bird-winged, thinks sparrow before you think hawk but then think: hawk, red-tailed and curious. Think merlin, think kestrel.

"If it's trying to get away you oughtta stalk it. From the side maybe. Pace after it until its distracted, or get your pack to flush it out for you so you can snap it in your jaws.

"And you can come visit our tinyhouse if you wanna come to the mountains. That's where we keep it. Maybe I could tell you about the river then too, I don't know. It's a long story and I'm not good at stories."

"You don't have to be good at stories to tell me," Tamsin says, suddenly earnest and -- or okay, maybe not so suddenly. Tamsin is always earnest. Almost. Unless she's lying, or being a manipulative brat, but even then there's a well-spring of earnestness, of gravity, and that's what's here now. "Because you know stories aren't very good at being stories either until I get to 'em, sometimes. So if you tell me, maybe I can make it good. Not that it won't be already, um, I mean - fuck. I'm sorry, I think I'm screwing this up. I just mean that you can't really be bad at stories and even if you don't tell it like a bard or anything that's okay because that's my job, you know? I'm not very good at talking to creeks or rivers. I did once almost drown in one. My foot got caught under a bike that was caught in the mud. Oh! and my pack, one of the first battles we were ever in together, it was under a river. Celduin means the river running, you know? Can I," a delighted smile, "really come visit your tinyhouse? Uh, is it just like, a small house or... is that it's name or... something?"

"Well," the creature frowns to herself, darts a glance up at Tamsin, takes her in aslant, then makes the decision to tell something of the story. Whatever she can. So, Charlotte rises and grabs her bag of trash and tosses it over the fence and climbs the fence and waits for Tamsin to come following-after and when Tamsin comes follow-after Charlotte shows her beneath the ground where the stream moves, beneath the ground-and-concrete, where it snakes and stirs and burbles, hidden away.

And tells a story. Charlotte is not particularly good at telling stories but this one is a strange one, full of imperfect, slanting movement. It starts with, "It wasn't now it-was-then."

See: Charlotte woke up and wasn't in her bed. Wasn't anywhere she'd ever been before. She was on a hard ticking mattress in the attic of a saloon except she doesn't quite know all the proper old West-like words but it is easy to gather what she means: Charlotte woke up 150 years ago. Charlotte and Avery woke up 150 years ago, in old Denver, and older-Denver, when it was a stone house and a bank and a jail and dusty streets and falling-down buildings and horses and whiskey and spurs and gold miners and everything was close to the surface closer than it is now, not so terrible and calcified and separated and

- well. They were under attack.

There was this gang the Kane Brothers Gang and everyone in Denver City not-a-city knew that they were coming and knew that they would take everything and knew that they were wrong. The Sheriff was a kinsman who asked the Sept for help and Charlotte and Avery were that: help. They had a few kin and then mortals and a town to organize and defend against an assault by a gang of Spirals and others.

So they did. See? Charlotte is not especially good at telling stories but she knows that Avery talked all the men into staying to defend their houses and arrayed and organized them for the last stand while Charlotte oh Charlotte made deals with the spirits-of-earth and the spirits-of-the-river to open up and swallow swallow swallow if they could, or storm the banks and flood and drown. Charlotte made talens too, clever little talens called arrow killers to protest the men firing their guns from places with too little cover.

And when they were done Charlotte - who got to ride a horse named Misty - and Avery and the kinsmen and the men fought against the Kane Brothers and their gang. The earth opened up and swallowed some of them and the men killed others and Avery and Charlotte, the two of them fought an Adren Ahroun who killed Charlotte with one bite. She knew she was dead and clawed her way back through not even to consciousness to barely-conscious unable to move lying covered in blood and mud and -

- the river. She had a deal with the spirits of the Platte River curling through the town and so instead of flooding and drowning the fallen the river rose up and up and up, and healed her.

So she could continue to fight.

And she and Avery killed Sherman Kane and the kin and the men and the earth killed the rest and many of the men died and often bravely in the face of monstrous odds but: they still died.

And then they started to fade and Charlotte woke up in her bed in the tinyhouse, damp.

And it is a tinyhouse, a Very Small House on Wheels and of course Tamsin is invited. Of course of course.

It's one of those nights:

one of those nights when they're just hanging around Cold Crescent -- the parts not sealed off by whatever-the-fuck the elders, those disgraced and increasingly distrusted elders. When they're just minding their own damn business when someone, not one of those elders of Cold Crescent but one of those hard-eyed badasses Forgotten Questions has sent to keep tabs on the Crescent, barges in on whatever it is they're doing.

He's mid-40s. Lean and swarthy and tough as jerky. One of his eyes is lazy, drifting outward. He speaks, it seems, through eternally clenched teeth.

"Heads up, pups. You hear about those floods up north? Well, there's a truck northbound on the I-25 full of tainted waste. From everything we've gathered, they intend to drive it over the railing when the highway crosses the South Platte just north of Colfax Avenue. They want to dump all that wyrmbegotten shit into the river at full flood. Try to imagine the results.

"We need you to go out there. We need you to find the truck and get to it before they get to their destination. We need you to get rid of whoever's inside, and drive it back down here. That means no blowing it up, no crashing it, none of that shit. Get it back here and we'll take care of the cleanup.

"This," a scroll -- supple hide tanned and etched with crude markings of the city and its terrain, its streets, "will show you where they are. You've got about ten minutes to intercept. So move it."

[http://goo.gl/maps/VAoHy - see where I-25 crosses the river in the middle there? that's the dump site. i'm gonna say given transit time and whatnot, the earliest point of intercept the characters could conceivably catch the truck at would be at around 6th avenue so... you've got about a mile over which to work out, set up and execute an ambush/heist. feel free to use googlemaps/streetview to plan. go! :D]

[oh and also. in order to simulate time pressure, all planning needs to be done on the fly, en route. in other words: NO MORE THAN THREE ROUNDS OF IC YAKKITY-YAK BEFORE SHIT GETS REAL.]

Avery is with Javed. And that is a new sight, outside of regular guard duties around the sept's protectorate. She perks up when they say move it and looks at Javed eagerly, eyebrows up, hands lifting to clasp in front of her chest.

Because.

She has a car that goes 0-60 in 4.2 seconds and he hasn't gotten to ride in it yet.

The metis looks up from his spot next to the Silver Fang; they make such an odd pairing, but it seems to be a thoroughly comfortable one for the Iranian. A lack of recognition, of course, shines in his one good eye when the man speaks up, but he doesn't need to know who he is. He just needs to listen.

He takes in everything the man has to say. The Strider's brow furrows when he commits the directive to memory, and he looks to Avery. She looks so pleased at the opportunity to take the car whose speed she spoke about so proudly out and test its limits.

"One vehicle," he rumbles, looking around at those present. "We can all fit, I believe?" It is a question, but he's already moving. It's harder to plan and coordinate when they're separated. "We must move quickly."

And with that, he's heading (presumably with Avery) toward her car that accelerates so quickly. He's hoping it won't be damaged...she does seem to like it.

Thomas is considering, probably something else, but then he just nods to Javed. Whatever else he might have been thinking, he is perfectly willing to abandon it for whatever Javed has planned. Is planning. Whatever.

"Then let's go." He heads after Javed, leaving a little distance between himself and the Fostern now that he is so clearly paired up with Avery.

Charlotte is there for reasons best left to the imagination, on one of those not-quite-closed-off floors. Maybe she had to spend a night or two in one of the subsidiary hotels to which the Sept's residents have been shifted. The floods or road closures or - well, something. A strange, gawky creature with solemn features mad, pale blue eyes and short, chunky hair that is half platinum blond and half bubblegum pink.

Her pale eyes flick to the elder when he brings in the map, and there's not even a hint of bristling about her as they are called collectively pups. They are collectively pups, and Charlotte seems somehow like the runt of the litter.

Would seem like the runt of the litter were it not for her damned breeding, which - to Garou senses - seems to take up twice the space that she does. Halos her like the corona around the sun. Crowns in all that distingrating glory: not a queen, no. But the queen's hand. The left, the eldrich one. Not the right.

Charlotte can fit anywhere, skinny little thing. If no one else has taken the map - the map of the city drawn crudely onto the hide of some beast - then she has. And if she were someone else she would laugh at the juxtaposition, but she's probably pretty pleased to have a hide-in-hand. Keeps it rolled open as she falls into step behind Avery and Javed.

"There's a bridge here," she says, " - that might hide us some. If we stopped it underneath." A flicker at each of the other Garou, then back to Javed. The only fostern. "Do you know the gift that would break the engine down where we wanted it?"

[oh shit, i forgot to mention: that map they've been given is a talen attuned to the Truck o' Doom. it's basically spirit-GPS. yay!]

Avery nods so fast her hair -- up in a ballerina-worthy bun tonight -- almost bounces free. She looks at Thomas and Charlotte. "It's a four-door. But it's ever so fast," she assures them all, sweeping to her feet, keys already in hand, beaming. As if they aren't about to go save the world from toxic spills. As if they aren't about to go kill things.

"I do not." Short and sweet; Anubis Sight isn't one to mince words, even when time isn't of the essence. When they're on a deadline, it's an absolute economy of speaking. "However, if we get close enough and I can get on the back, I may be able to disable any threats back there before they can react properly. Although the problem with that is, I am not skilled at driving."

Once they get down to the car, Javed lets others in before taking up the passenger side. It's not about wanting to sit in the front so much as potentially being the guy to climb out and leap across the freeway at 60 MPH (achieved in 4.2 seconds!) and having quick access to do so.

"I am open to suggestions on how to stop the vehicle without getting on it first. They are not exactly my specialty."

"If we can get into the truck, I can drive it. But all the ways I know of to stop it for sure without boarding it maaaaay involve crashing and or explosions. Or having someone ahead of it crash into a different car. Which, if they did that far enough ahead could be helpful. I don't know we can get far enough ahead though."

There is a little involuntary flash of a grin at the car, because really, really...if you can't take at least half a second to love that car, you are dead. Or, well, perhaps hopelessly disinterested in cars. Thomas is neither of those things though.

So there's a point in there where Avery is sweeping to her feet, keys in hand. Charlotte hands her the talen-map then. Because navigating the city streets with cars and one-way ramps and concrete barriers and hurtling traffic in the middle of a concrete-bound city is not precisely within the small theurge's skillset. When she and Erich drove through the LA metro area, she spent the whole time with her hands over her ears.

Someone else will navigate.

Charlotte flicks a glance to Javed as he suggests that they just get him close and he will climb on and they will take it that way. The girl shrugs, quiet, even a bit diffident, and taking not even a half second to love that car. Which means that she is perhaps both dead and hopelessly disinterested in cars. Because Charlotte seems willing to tuck herself in the back but -

"If you board and you're winning they'll probably crash it where they are anyway. Then you have the waste and whatever is attracted to the waste and maybe some of it makes it to the river anyway.

"Gremlin teaches that gift. I could try to summon some. Maybe they could break sometime in the engine for us. Or in a bunch of cars ahead of it, making all the cars stop so they have to stop too."

In this grouping, at least, the people Javed is working with are reasonably easy to pick out by voice and shape once he knows who they are. One would never, ever mistake Charlotte for Avery, or vice versa, though Avery's pleasure at Charlotte accompanying them is as evident as her pleasure at working with Javed again or driving her new toy and showing it off for Javed. She's the one who has the map, at least at first, tracking the truck as its representative glowing-dot roams up I-25.

"We'll have a less crowded area to work with on either side of the interstate before Colfax," she points out, thinking of what's in that area. "If we can get them to exit after Yuma." She frowns. "We definitely want to stop the truck before we deal with whoever is inside," she says, only echoing, only confirming. "And we don't want police coming our way as we steal a truck that isn't ours, so any avoidance of collision with any car is optimal."

After everyone gets in and she's settled behind the wheel, Avery looks back at Charlotte, the one she was about to ask to --

-- be brilliant, utterly brilliant, and make Avery's eyes just light up with fond... no, not fondness. Respect. Gladness to have her along. Again. "I would begin invoking the spirits now, Yuf. If they are having problems significant enough to make them exit, even if not at a location that would be perfect for us, that would be a great boon to our cause."

He listens as they throw out ideas. Crashing cars in front of it, breaking them, making it stop. There is risk there...they could realize the trick and decide to wreck it. But breaking down the engine itself...can they fix that? They are supposed to bring it back, after all.

And Avery suggests another option that Charlotte could do...make them divert and exit so they stop, but the vehicle doesn't fully break down. He nods a little bit at that, looking back to Charlotte. "That would be ideal, if you can do that. Make them stop without irreperably destroying something. If it does not work, boarding will have to be plan B."

See, Charlotte catches the edge of Avery's look in the rearview. The skinny creature - in worn jeans, a bit stained at the bottom cuffs, with mud rather than blood, and a Mexican Sprint t-shirt and hiking boots - is looking up and there is a glint of hammered silver over the discs of her irises. This fey little smile ghosts across her lips as she absorbs - well, the fondness beneath the respect. Or perhaps merely the respect, with a leveling of her skinny shoulders and a sort of errant willfullness that rises only sometimes.

Summoning: on the fly. Piercing the Gauntlet, pulling and pushing and needing her will in a matter of moments what usually requires hours. Beyond her dedicated clothes, she also carries a small messenger bag, and has swung that out in front of her. She starts.... digging through it for a few supplies. Clay beads, bird-bones, fine pieces of granite glittering with flecks of mica. The long, jagged tooth of a dead something you prefer not to know about. The shed skin of a small snake; the skull of another.

"Gremlin's a spirit of the Wyld." Charlotte replies as she starts laying out the small treasures she will sacrifice to the ritual on her thighs. "I don't know if it can be that controlled. But I'll try.

"I need each of you to break something you have though. When I ask. Something you want to keep, as chiminage for the ritual."

Then takes a small clay sunbead - her favorite and smashes it as her eyes go unfocused, and she begins to call.

"On the diversion tactic, with no damage, you think we could get them anywhere useful to us with a few broken traffic lights? At that point, if we can get them somewhere easy enough and quiet enough to board, we don't have a broken engine." Thomas offers, but then sighs. Very well, breaking the engine it is then. He turns his attention to figuring out something to break.

But Avery doesn't want to break any of her things! She looks briefly saddened, then just nods sharply in agreement and presses harder on the gas. "Other cars would be diverted with the traffic lights, too," she points out. "If not crashing. It could work, but it might complicate matters." She steals a glance at Javed, then drives on.

Gnosis for piercing the gauntlet. Dif 5. Gauntlet at Sept 6 - 1 (natural channel)

Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Annnd: Wits + Rituals for the actual summoning. Going for a Gremlin jaggling. Spending WP cos we need help FAST.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 5, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

That car of Avery's. It accelerates like the proverbial silver bullet, rocketing away from stoplights, hitting the freeway at seventy, eighty, ninety miles an hour.

Traffic isn't quite light. Not at this hour, not in the heart of the city. Not on a Friday night. It's lighter, though, which means there's room enough to maneuver. To swerve, to weave, to accelerate, to catch up.

That moving target of theirs, that bloody red blotch on their hide-map: it begins to resolve. They're in luck. There's only one eighteen-wheeler on the freeway at this hour, and it is about a quarter-mile ahead, on the number-two lane. No markings on the truck. Not a logo, not a sign. Just plain white.

In the back, on the move, Charlotte works magic. There are tools and there are rituals and there's perhaps even some esoteric mumbling and handwaving -- all of which Thomas has a rather up-close view of. Then, all of a sudden,

all the instruments on Avery's panel flare searing-bright -- then go dark. The car weaves in her hands for a terrifying instant. It stabilizes. The headlights are still on. She still has no instruments.

A gremlin has blessed them with its presence.

[Gremlin has arrived and is friendly! No roll needed to persuade it to do stuff. Charlotte just needs to tell it what to do.]

When it is time for them to sacrifice something for Charlotte...well, to be honest, Javed owns nothing but the single set of clothes he is wearing. And a knife, but that is not within reach and he would cut his hand off first anyway.

Which is related to what he's doing, actually, as he grabs his middle finger and yanks it back, snapping the bone as chiminage. Having nothing does not mean giving nothing to the Strider.

Charlotte is half in this world and half in the next. The creature always has that far away look; but now it is even farther. She does not react to that brief, terrifying, stomach-lurching swerve as the instruments all go out and that car of Avery's nearly fishtails before stabilizing. No, Charlotte just sways in motion with it, her eyes wide open and entirely unfocused, mumbling something that is both wrong and somehow absolutely incoherent to human ears. The liquid language of the spirit world, silver-bright and gleaming, each work leaving a sort of afterburn in the ear that one cannot quite trace or begin to understand.

And Charlotte, Charlotte is smiling - with a kind of open delight that few outside of her pack have seen. Mostly because she can hardly see them; just the chaotic delight, the sudden frenetic immediacy of the gremlin she summoned. She can feel the lick of its Wyld energy across the gauntlet and that absolutely delights her.

Another one of her little treasures in hand, the skull of a rattlesnake, all bone-bleached white. Still joined at the mandible and her hands find it unseeingly, and she grasps it firmly enough that the ivory fangs draw two small drops of blood from her palm, and snaps it viciously in two as she begins to communicate.

Charlotte knows nothing about trucks; nothing about truck parts. She slips back to the here-and-now in time to see the flickering instrument panel, the truck ahead of them. Asks Thomas tangentially for confirmation that this is in fact the target, then slips just as easily back to commune with the summoned spirit. Shows him the car; the flaring instrument panel. Paints the image of the truck flickering, flaring, dying. Dying-but-not-permanently. Slowing enough that they have to move it from the road; take the next exit, all that jazz.

"Rhya," Avery says, as they are driving and her eyes are on the road and Charlotte is losing herself in ritual, "if you don't mind, there is a Mont Blanc box in the glove compartment. It has a ribbon, but please don't worry about opening it. And when you can, if you could lay the pen inside in my hand, I would be most appreciative."

There is indeed a slender box from Mont Blanc in her glovebox, and there is a thin white ribbon tied around it, and there is even a little tag with blue ink on it that says To my father. And the pen inside is black resin and platinum, the Mont Blanc emblem created from diamond. It is a seven-hundred-dollar pen engraved with her father's name along the side. It's completely extravagant, and this is what she chooses to break.

When Charlotte calls for it:

Javed breaks his finger.

Avery exerts as much force as she can until the pen cracks. She winces like it's a broken bone, like it physically hurts, which perhaps it does, because it was a gift she was going to give.

She does so love giving gifts.

--

Her car stutters and she almost shrieks, but then braces herself to control the car as best she can. It returns to life and control, making her exhale the breath she almost held, hoping to Gaia that she doesn't have to take it back to Chauncey and tell him her instruments are all broken already, he'll be so fussy about it.

She tries not to listen to the strangeness coming from the backseat; she follows the truck and if -- when -- it exits, she follows. She does not, cannot, conceal her presence overmuch. That wasn't part of the plan, unfortunately, and it may be too late now to try and add it.

Thomas doesn't carry much, but he's a step or two away from breaking any bones. Instead, in a sharp movement he brings the butt of a penlight into the screen of his phone. It is the least convenient thing on him to replace, but he doesn't carry interesting and fragile things with him. Of course, he also doesn't find he often needs to offer chimiage to spirits, certainly not often so unexpectedly.

He gives Charlotte her answer about the truck in a slightly tighter tone that says he was a lot more aware of the swerving, for all he didn't make a fuss over it.

Gremlin's Gnosis

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Charlotte is the only one who sees the Gremlin -- if such a word can even be employed. Let's say instead: she perceives it, a bundle of chaos, a highly-compacted point of frenetic energy and gleeful destruction. Everyone else in the car is aware only of the effect it exerts on its environment: the blacked-out instrument panel, the briefly out-of-control car.

And then:

the instrument panels comes back on, as suddenly and inexplicably as it had gone out. A mere second later, there's a blare of horns up ahead. A screech of tires. Two or three smaller cars swerving out of the way of that large, unmarked truck, which has abruptly lost power. It drifts, like a schooner with its sails cut down, listing toward the side of the road.

It doesn't make it to an exit. They are reasonably lucky, though. It comes to a standstill beneath the shadow of an unlit overpass. Nocturnal traffic, eager to get wherever they're going, pass it by without so much as slowing.

A moment later, the headlights on the truck go dark. And the running lights. And last, the brake lights.

No movement from inside. Yet.

Well. They aren't lucky enough to get it to exit. Avery slows, pulling up behind it, flipping on her emergency lights like a good citizen to make sure passing traffic perceives everything as normal. Some nice person in a Tesla is going to help the stranded truck. They've probably already called AAA.

She puts her hand on the door, looking at Javed for instruction. For a now. For direction.

Charlotte perks right up as that humming ball of chaotic energy flares and sizzles and takes whatever she managed to communicate and surges after the 18-wheeler. Which is a shadow in her vision until she refocuses and then she is leaning forward, between the seats, watching intently as that extraordinary little spirit - which she cannot perceive as a particularly shape because it is so antithetical for the mere form-of-things - dances ahead over that shadow and -

oh -

darkness. Charlotte claps her hands, pleased and more than a little taken with the daring of the thing, surrounded as they are by stasis, by the great running lines of blue-white energy that are the Weaver's webbing. Claps her hands with delight before she sees that the truck has drifted to a stop beneath the overpass, without making it off the highway after all.

Hmmm.

The girl seams her mouth and shakes her pale head to clear it. No need to break anything else right now but -

- she glances sharply up at Avery then, and then at Javed, then out the window at the traffic rattling past their now-stopped car.

And starts mumbling beneath her breath again.

When the finger snapped back...well, we're not going to say that the Iranian didn't cringe or grunt. Because that motherfucker hurt. But he doesn't lose it, either. Which is probably a good thing, as high and full in the sky as Luna is. This wonderful vehicle would be a bad place for a frenzy of the worst magnitude.

Javed carefully does his best to set the finger back into place, but doesn't allow it to heal until the truck is fully stopped. Likely, that means twitching the broken bone back and forth so it doesn't knit; he heals in this form after all, unlike the rest of them. His jaw is clenched as he does so, watching until the truck comes to a stop, and them behind it.

"Reverence of Dawn, if you could provide us with cover and go up as if a concerned citizen to to see if they need help, we will be ghost our way up right behind."

Thomas watches Javed for instructions, then nods. Slipping up behind the truck sounds like a plan. He waits for Avery to get out of the car, then for Javed to be moving. Once Javed is out of the car, he'll follow.

(BRB)

Wits + Rituals: night jaggling! Plus WP because this is happening now.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 3, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

The driver's side door of that swift little Tesla opens with a quiet, expensive snick. Avery's foot finds firm asphalt. Cars whipping by on the interstate rock the car on its springs; blow her hair into the wind.

Up ahead, the overpass. The shadows underneath. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, they seem to darken as Avery goes under the bridge.

The truck is quiet. She closes the distance. Those shadows work both ways; it is too dark for her to easily see into the cab, especially when the windows sit so far above the ground. And then --

[roll wits + alert!]

[wits + alertness]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

When Avery is pleased about something, sometimes she claps her hands together. Apparently Charlotte does the same thing. What pleases the two women is generally different, but their delight is equally palpable in their smiles. Charlotte is so gleeful about the gremlin's daring even though Avery has to bite back a swear when her car swerves. They slip behind the car, Avery flicks on the emergency flashers, looks at Javed,

who shall be her Alpha,

and he tells her to do exactly what she was thinking, which -- oh -- makes her ever so happy. She gives him a little nod, checks traffic, then slips out of the car carefully, walking in her yoga pants and yoga jacket and pretty, high ballerina-bun of golden hair over towards the truck, passenger side, out of traffic. She's smiling, if a bit tightly, a bit warily, waving through the window to see if they're okay.

-- then she sees the dull, telltale glint of metal inside. Gun. And movement: the door, flying open, the passenger inside doing his level best to clock her in the face with it.

[reaction posts if you guys want! and roll inits. also i'll allow one turn's worth of combat prep for everyone cept Charlotte, who was summoning.]

As the luminous Silver Fang makes her way up toward the passenger side, Javed quietly opens the door and slips out. His Philodox will play her part and he trusts her to do it well; it is incumbant upon them not to fail her.

"Take the passenger's side," he murmurs to Thomas...then he uses the cover of darkness, keeping low to the ground, to slip around to the driver's side and move forward, letting the shadows hide him as he melts up to his dark-furred war farm where he looks like his Deed Name's sake.

And he sees the gun on his way to cross to the driver's side aiming at Avery's face...he's no longer moving quietly. And he drops to a crouch to score his claws against the ground with a grating sound, sharpening his claws as he charges at the driver's side door.

He would run to his packmate-to-be if possible and protect her, but he already told Thomas to take that side. He is as bound to them as Thomas, and switching would just cause confusion. He *cringe* Trusts The Shadow Lord.

[[Razor Claws!]].

There are problems with Avery.

Avery cannot take one shape with her hand and another with her body. Avery's warform does not incite the delirium in mortals. Avery cannot speak to any of them through her thoughts while she is out there under the overpass, momentarily alone, facing who knows what.

But then: this is Avery. Whose shape can become most lethal even when it is small. Who knows full well she is not alone and who has only the highest regard for the wolves behind her, the most implicit trust. Who sees the glint of metal and hears the click of the door that says it is about to be thrown open, who jumps back and bares her teeth.

She doesn't need the delirium right now. They just opened wide their door to the wolf.

Stupid piggies.

[[And Init +18]]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

[-1 WP for Fangs of Judgement. Not sure if it applies but it might!

-1 WP for Resist Pain

-1 Rage to shift to hispo as she leaps into the cab of the truck]

[+9]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )

Someone must pull the strange theurge out of the car. Perhaps Charlotte does this herself, slipping out onto the dark, cinder-covered shoulder of the interstate, still murmuring as she calls to the night spirits closest to them for some sort of cover: from the humans rushing by. Darkness beneath which to work. True night and not this light-clouded, city-bound shadow of it. The promise of a half-remembered secret and the fight against the wyrm to sweeten the call.

[Init: +8!]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )

Thomas nods to Javed, slipping over to the passenger side of the truck. He is not the most sneaky of Shadow Lords, but the Gremlin has done a considerable job in helping him with that. If course, it has also hidden some things from them.

Inside that darkness, he shifts to glabro. He's not quite to a point yet where even in darkness he's comfortable shifting into war farm on the side of the highway, but mostly human-shaped, sure.

His lips twitch back a little when the door swings outward at Avery, and continues moving toward the front of the truck.[Init +5]

[It helps to remember dice. Wow. Sorry.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )

[Butch inits! +10]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

[Joe inits! +8]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )

[Trey inits! +9]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )

Javed 20Avery 18Trey 18Butch 16Thomas 15Joe 13Charlotte 11

Dec's in reverse!

Thomas and Avery on the passenger's side. Charlotte follows Javed half-way up the driver's side of the truck. Watching warily, guarding the approach to the back of the truck. Or the back of the truck itself.

[1. Uh, basically holding action for now.]

[Joe: 1. open back door of cab. R1. SHOOT INTO BACK OF TRUCK WITH A SHOTGUN. R2. TWICE.]

[Grab the guy on the passenger side who just tried to open a door into Avery (Grapple)]

[Butch: 1. shoot out the driver's side door! +2 diff for untargeted shot. R1. shoot Javed, assuming Javed is the one attacking through driver's door. R2. shoot through the ground at gas tank!

Trey: 1. slam Avery with door! R1. shoot her! R2. shoot Thomas too!]

[1a. The fuck you will. Leaping into truck in hispo as she sinks her teeth into Trey. Any old place really.

1b. Doing it again!

R1. Biting Joe before he shoots that shotgun.

R2. Joe again!]

They need the truck, and they need the truck in a condition that it will not be pulled over. That means that he cannot just rip the door off its hinges.

That being said, he has seen truckers drive my with the elbows capping their bloated arms hanging out the window. That means they don't need the window.

[[2 Rage spent!

1a: Grab driver by head/neck.

1b: Pull driver out through window (or if head only comes, that is acceptable too)

R1: claw driver

R2: Claw driver]]

[[Strength+Brawl]]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

[resist!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

[[Strength!]]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

[soak!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

[1a. Dex + Brawl - 2]

Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 4, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )

[Damage. Str + 1 + 1 + suxx -1]

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 7, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 8 )

[+2 for FoJ]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 3) ( fail )

[ow!?]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

[1b. Dex + Brawl -3]

Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 3, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )

[Damage. Str + 1 +1 + 2 + suxx -1]

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 8 )

[STAHP]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

[Trey: 1. Slam! taking off 3 dice for damage mods. they're not immune to pain, but they're highly resistant.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

[dam+1]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

[SOAK!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

[3 bashing + knockback. -2 dice from next attack due to closing distance. regen 1 bashing at end of round!

Butch: shooting blindly out driver's side! +2 diff]

Dice: 8 d10 TN8 (3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

[dam+1]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

[[Soak!]]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

[Bite that almost dead guy!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

[2sux+2bite+5str=9]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

[ow!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

[joe: OPENS A DOOR.]

[Charlotte: 1 rage - reflexive shift to hispo. 1a. BITE JOE; 1b. BITE HIM AGAIN + WP.]

1a. Dex + Brawl -2 for split. +1 dif.

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Damage: Str + Hispo + 2 + 1

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

[soak!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

1b. Dex + Brawl -3 for split +1 dif

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Damage!

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

[damned dice. soak!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

[[Claw fucker through the now-shattered window! Dex+Brawl, diff 5 for razor claws]]

Dice: 9 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 3, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 6 )

[[Damage Stre 7 + 1 claw + 2 Razor + 5 succ = 15]]

Dice: 15 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

[erm. soak]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 5, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

[R1. Dex + Brawl -2 for closing distance again.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 4 )

[Damage!]

Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 6 )

[soak!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

[Trey: shooting avery! -3 dice]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 3, 4) ( fail )

[Butch: shoot Javed!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

[dam+1]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

[[Soak]]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

[Joe: blasting into the back of the truck. i'm gonna say 10 total damage before Something Bad happens.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

[dam +4]

Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 7 )

[truck 'soaking'!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

[[Die, please. Thanks.]]

Dice: 9 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

[{Damage]]

Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

[soak!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Charisma + Enigmas!

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

+1 for natural channel!

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )

[gremlin: trying to break shotgun!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

[shotgun jams, 1 action to un-jam.]

[R2. JOE, JUST STOP IT.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

[Damage!]

Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 8 )

[soak?]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )

[Trey: shooting thomas -3dice]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

[dam+1]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

[Soak!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

[Butch: shoot the gas tank! 7 damage for Bad Stuff.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 6, 6, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 5 )

[dam +4]

Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

[soak!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

[Joe: UNJAM MY FUCKIN SHOTGUN.]

Javed 20 - Avery 18 - Trey 18 - Butch 16 - Thomas 15 - Joe 13 - Charlotte 11

[Round Two - FIGHT!]

Charlotte: 1a. BITE JOE. 1b. Spending 1 Gnosis - Gaia's breath on Javed.

[Joe: 1. SHOOT TRUCK R1. SHOOT TRUCK R2. I'MA BLOW MA TRUCK UP.]

[1. Bite Trey (WP because OMG he needs to die like right now!)Rage: Bite Trey again!]

[Butch: 1. I'ma kill you, Javed! (BLAM) R1. AND YOUR PRETTY FRIEND (BLAM @ Avery) R2. BUT MOSTLY JUST YOU (BLAM @ Javed)

Trey: 1. Argh, stop biting me! (BLAM @ thomas) R1. KILL THE HEALER! (BLAM @ Charlotte) R2. KILL THE TRUCK! (BLAM @ gas tank)]

[Out of rage and thankfully her friends are not close to death and making her lose her shit.

1a. Charlotte can kill Joe. BITE BUTCH.

1b. Thomas can kill Trey. BITE BUTCH.

1c. Please Kahseeno reward my faith in my friends. BITE BUTCH. +WP]

[[2 Rage and1 Rage to ignore wound penalties

1a: Claw Butch

1b: Claw Butch

1c: Claw Joe's SHOTGUN AW YEAH DIE YOU WEAVERY METAL BOOMSTICK

R1: Claw Butch

R2: Claw Butch and if the fucker isn't dead by then, Javed commits god damned harikari because seriously]]

[i just fell off AIM! but roll away!]

[[Claw 1, diff 5]]

Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

[aw man i forgot to give you guys rage back :[ +2 Rage to all. if you wanna change your actions, just post your actions when it's your turn to roll. no diff penalty.]

[[Damage

Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

[FUCKING 1's]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 5 )

[Amended:

1a - Bite Butch

1b - Bite Butch

R1 - Bite Butch, Joe, Trey (in that order if any go down)

R2 - See above]

[[Claw 2, diff 5]]

Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (3, 5, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

[{Damage]]

Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

[i almost don't wanna roll this soak]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

[[Claw Shotgun, +2 for called shot - 1 for razor claws]]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

[[Damage]]

Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

[broken gun!]

[1a]

Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

[D!]

Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 5 )

[soak!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

[1b]

Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

[D!]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 9 )

[OW]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

[x_x]

[Trey: BLAM @ thomas, -3 dice]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )

[dam+2]

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 9 )

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

[Thomas: beyond incap on lethal, dropped to breed form, unconscious.]

[butch is dead, thomas is down.

Joe: SHOOT THE TRUCK D: -3dice]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

[dam +1]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

[RETRACT THAT.]

[Joe: grabs Butch's gun]

1a. BITE JOE. -2 dice for split. + WP because die.

Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 3, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Damage

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

[soak!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 7 )

1b. 1 Gnosis - Gaia's breath. 4 health levels for Thomas.

[i'm going to say 1 hp goes toward bringing him up from the brink of death, since he'd taken a total of 9L. and then 3 toward actual healing-ness. so he's at 4L.]

(Her permagnosis is 6. Is that 6 health levels?)

[scratch that, 2L!]

[[HEY LOOK ANOTHER SHOTGUN HI JOE WHASSUP? +1 diff for changing actions, +2 for called shot, -1 for claws]]

Dice: 9 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 5, 5, 5, 5, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

[[Damage]]

Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )

[joe: OKAY SERIOUSLY? gun: x_x]

[R1. Butch died? Butch died! Yay! And we're back to nomming on Joe again.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 2, 4, 4, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

[D!]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

[I AM INVINCIBLE!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

[Trey: shooting charlotte! -3]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

[dam +2]

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )

Charlotte soak!

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

[{Claw Trey. Die Trey. No really, DIE TREY.]]

Dice: 9 d10 TN5 (3, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 8 )

[Thomas seconds that! Trey! Die!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

[DMG! DICE!]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )

[soak!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )

x_x

[Joe: GRAB TREY'S GUN DAMMIT]

[[DAMAGE BITCH]]

Dice: 17 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

[soak!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 7 )

[R2]

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 3, 5, 7, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1

[D!]

Dice: 14 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 8 )

[soak!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

x_x

FINAL TALLY:

Javed 5L

Avery 3B

Thomas 2L

Charlotte 5L

Butch x_x +1 overkill

Trey x_x +4 overkill

Joe x_x +4 overkill

Truck 6L (4 left before catastrophe)

Gas tank 3L (4 left before catastrophe)

And

it's

pandemonium for a while. Guns! Guns everywhere. Shotguns, twelve-gauges, double-barrels, shells dropping from the chambers. The blasts are deafening in such close quarters, but even so they can hear, they can all hear one another snarling in pain, in rage, in fury, in victory as they lunge through the windows and claw through the doors, bite those men inside with their cruel faces and their hard stares, their hides too tough to be human, their endurance too extreme to be natural.

Two of them should have died in seconds. They hang on, moment after moment, blasting shot into the Garou until finally, finally, they wear them down. Avery tears one down. Thomas -- as though he'd suddenly had enough -- rips the other one into pieces.

The last of the men, though: he tries over

and over

and over again to blast a hole in the cargo compartment, set loose whatever foul substance awaited within. He doesn't even care if he dies, at this point. He just wants to make sure no one else lives. Several times, he's a hair away from success. A pull of a trigger away from catastrophe, when Charlotte sends that gremlin after his gun. When Javed breaks the gun in his hands, claws it in half once. Twice. Would have done it a third time, but:

Avery gets to him first.

--

It is still dark under the bridge. Cars, oblivious, rush by in the dark. The acrid scent of leaking gasoline is seeping into the air from the damaged tank. The foul scent of something far worse is wafting from the back of the truck.

Time for them to complete the mission.

[You guys are awesome.]

[you guys totally are! :D]