Ornature

Shorty Lu's, up in Golden, CO. From Yelp:

Shorty Lu's is, on one hand, a super awesome true greasy spoon, where the waitress will call you Hon and have your home address by the time you pay the bill so she can send you a hand-knitted scarf. It's a dream come true for a hangover breakfast, when really you just need grease in some form in your system, STAT. On the other hand... it's pretty questionable food, and I don't think cleanliness is high up on the priority list.

So that is the setting.

This is the scene: nine thirty a.m. on a Saturday, sort of straddling the line between the hangover crowd and the brunch crowd. Not that the brunch crowd, fashionistas that they are, would haul themselves all the way up here. Still. There's a mixed crowd in here. A couple truckers up at the breakfast bar chowing down on 3x3x3s. A small crowd of twenty-somethings over in the corner booth, raccoon-eyed after a night out, almost certainly hung over. And a retiree over in his usual booth, getting his usual breakfast and coffee.

Two waitresses. A fry cook. A dishwasher boy.

Enter one Lola Hawkes.

Well, she's been there for about twenty minutes, at least. Passing back through after a wee-hours-of-the-morning hunt. She didn't get much, no large game at least. Nothing she wasn't afraid to leave in the back of the Forester in the parking lot out front, with the windows cracked just enough to ventilate.

She was set up at a two-person table against a wall, alone, no Hector Ghosh across the way to put on-edge the locals and cause nervous silence and fork-clatter serenades while she ate. She looked... oddly, not very surly for once. Neutral. Content. At peace, perhaps. Taking some small happiness in a quiet plate of waffles and strawberries and a mug of coffee that nobody was telling her not to drink.

You see, she was quite visibly pregnant. The waitress had clucked disapprovingly but Lola impatiently told her that the baby would find a way to survive the trauma of eight ounces of coffee and went back to looking out the window.

Melantha is not here for hangover food. She is here because she has her own Jeep now, see, it's easy to get places without disturbing her two besties. Not that she isn't disturbing one of her besties. This one tends to stay inside and tinker with bones or gourds so sometimes, just sometimes, Melantha takes her on field trips that aren't to patrols or killing stuff. Like going back to Golden, scene of one of the worst nights of Melantha's life, to go to a candy store.

And buy candy. But they end up at Shorty Lu's somehow anyway, sitting up at the diner bar on barstools. Melantha is eating something without gravy that normally comes with gravy and after seeing the food she's wishing she'd gotten the gravy. There is also a chocolate-strawberry shake between them.

There is no reason whatsoever that Alexis Theron Lambros would stop here as a rule. He isn't a trucker, he lives in the city, he doesn't eat this kind of food and...yeah, it's just not his thing, at all. In any way. That being said, he is here because of one reason: the mofo jogs like nobody's business. He enjoys a nice, long run and I don't know how far this is from the city but it doesn't matter because he came out this way for the air.

And so he has been on a nice, long run and his water bottle is empty. So covered in a light sheen and dressed in a T-Shirt, shorts and tennis shoes, his car parked in the driveway where it's been for a few hours, he comes back into the parking lot and makes his way for the door.

10:30am and Samantha Evans is about to pull a Ron Swanson. At least, such is the hope as she walks up to the diner. She wants, no needs to eat all the bacon and all the eggs to restore some of the energy expended on an early morning hike. They better have bacon and they better have eggs, that is the thought chief in her mind.

The Glass Walker kinswoman does not cut the most impressive figure. She stands at a little over five feet, and that little over is entirely due to the soles of her hiking boots. Yoga pants (yes, yoga pants for a hike), a t-shirt, and a light jacket complete the bulk of her outfit. There's also a pack slung over her shoulders and a hat pulled low over her eyes.

"Alexis!" she calls, recognizing the kinsman immediately. "Hey, wait up!" Then she trots a little forward to catch up, just as he reaches the door.

Charlotte has several clear bags of candy on the table in front of her. One of banana-runts and one of grape-cluster-runts and one of bing-cherry-runts. They are small bags, the sort that a heroin dealer might use to package his product. She also has several more small-bags of jelly beans. These are mixed not by flavor but by color: coconut and buttered popcorn and cream soda, for example, fill the white bag. And so on.

Inside Shorty Lu's the creature - who is somehow both taller and more slight than one might expect, from a distance - counts out the green Jellie Bellies and tries to guess which ones are the watermelon and which are the Harry Potter themed snot flavor. Fortunately for Melantha, Charlotte does not ask her to guess.

Melantha has her food, not covered in gravy. Charlotte sent back (!!) her waffles.

There was not enough whipped cream.

They will come up shortly, waaaaay better than they were before.

"I think the watermelon ones looked reddish inside?" Charlotte asks Melantha.

Charlotte has three fingerbones inside the right front pocket of her jeans, and a crumpled up twenty dollar bill in the left front pocket of her jeans, and an iphone in the back pocket of her jeans and a messenger bag tucked beneath the table, just FYI.

None of the kinfolk can smell her breeding, but isn't there, still, something about her.

[make that 9:30 where in the world did I get 10?]

He's about to open the door when he hears Sam call out. His attention jerks over his shoulder and he smiles, wiping at his forehead with a forearm before he raises his hand to wave at her. Alexis is the kind of guy who's always happy to see other members of the Nation, and of course it always seems to happen at the most random times (or is it random hoo hoo hah hah...). But random or planned, any such meeting puts a smile on his face.

"Hey, Samantha." He nods to her as she comes up. "Long time, no see. I hear you've been busy though. How are you?"

This is what he says as he opens the door, holding it for her and intending to follow her inside the place.

Melantha prefers gumball-sized sours, chews, but she has at least one speckled jawbreaker in her bags. She also has chocolate-covered nuts and jelly beans of her own and she does not sort by color or by any pattern at all. She is trying to help Charlotte decide on the green. It is her opinion that the darker-green ones are the watermelon and the sort of yellowish-green ones are, clearly, snot. Charlotte didn't ask her to guess but she is guessing anyway.

"You should bite one," she says, regarding the watermelon one, "to see if you're right." She picks up a pink one that is cocktail flavored, this one cosmopolitan, and pops it in her mouth. She is not touching her biscuits and sausage. Well: maybe the biscuits, in a while. She has her backpack, which is a dusky blue smattered with flowers, a retro-themed pattern on canvas from Target's clearance aisle once upon a month ago or so. And in that backpack there is stuff you might need when you go to Golden.

She looks over her shoulder, sees Sam outside the glass and peers. She has seen Lola but the last time she saw Lola was in City Park and there was yelling and she never made a point of talking to the woman about the yelling and apparently she's pregnant. And Melantha has no idea how to begin a conversation that old, so she is avoiding it. For now. Plus: jelly beans.

[whoops, nightmares!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

And all the same, Lola had spied Melantha and Charlotte on the other side of the establishment. She was sitting when they came in, waiting for her coffee with her hands folded together over the top of her stomach and leaned back in her chair. She didn't approach not because she was worried about old conversations or conflicts-- truthfully, most of what had occurred in the park that day was gone from Lola's mind, one scuffling conflict among many in her history. She didn't get along with many.

That right there was more her reason for staying at her table rather than smiling, waving, joining, conversing, connecting... Socializing wasn't her strong suit, and proactively reaching out to a pair of near-strangers to try just wasn't up her alley.

This is is why she's sitting alone, eating almost the same thing as what Charlotte had ordered (sans whipped cream, though), when the other two Kinfolk come through the door. She glanced up at them, then did a double-take upon recognizing both of the faces. Two more Kinfolk. Her eyes narrowed, just a little suspicious. She didn't believe in serendipity.

But, with that said, there were no immediate threats. Was no reason to believe there would be aside from the unsettled old borderline superstitions that the rural Kinfolk harbored. So, she simply went back to eating for now. May as well while she had the time.

"Not bad," she says, which is pretty true. She is actually a wee bit bushed and would like to eat all the carbs and maybe, despite the sizeable Nalgene bottles (yes, plural) in her pack she would still like two pitchers of water made available to her for hydration.

Truth is, she is actually not bad at all. It's a Saturday morning and she had George come over to watch Jake so she could get away for a little bit. It's a new arrangement that they're going to be trying out for the next few months because as she told a certain Ahroun, sometimes she has to get away, and only sometimes does her son come with. Because, you know. Break.

She does not recognize the other people in the diner. She's seen Lola and Melantha mostly - no, only in passing. Melantha was with Erich in Cold Crescent but Samantha was pretty out of it from a night of very restless sleep.

Point is, she doesn't recognize them. So her attention is all on Alexis. "What about you? Are you still teaching at the dojo?"

And this is when the door explodes.

Well; no. It doesn't explode. But it seems to. There's a single, terrifically loud noise that makes every last person in the diner reflexively jerk: hands flying to head, shoulders hunching. There are suddenly several new holes bleeding sunlight onto the floor.

For a couple seconds, at least. Then someone's booted foot kicks that door right in. It splinters: half of it yawing open on the hinges, the other half spinning off sideways, clipping a table before slamming to the floor. People scream. People cower. One of the truckers, big guy with a big belly and big arms, lumbers off his stool and wants to know what the fuck-- but that's as far as he gets before his face blanches white and his hands come up in surrender because

three men are rushing in that door, tactical gear and armor vests, helmets, goggles, masks, guns. No visible identification. No S.W.A.T. on the backs of their vests, no POLICE, no MP, nothing.

Just three men. One of them discharging his shotgun into the roof, raining plaster and dust down.

"EVERYONE DOWN. GET DOWN ON THE GROUND."

"I'm gonna try the other one I think," says Charlotte, daring-Charlotte, gross-Charlotte, the girl with the finger-bones in her pockets. They are not human finger-bones. They are smaller than human finger-bones. The nails are old and yellowing; were old and yellowing even when the thing was new. The world is very full of very strange things.

Like the group gathering here, of whom Charlotte - for the moment - remains rather oblivious, though she does glance up, catch a glimpse of Lola's profile. Which she recognizes. Beneath the table, she nudges Melantha's foot with her own. Whispers, or stage-whispers, that she knows that girl, and from context she could mean Sam or Lola or either or both. Recognizes, she means. Charlotte knows - very few. People terrify her.

In ways she can hardly begin to measure, except when she forgets to remember how opaque and strange and everything else they can be.

The other one.

The snot one.

Charlotte bites it in half, all delicate teeth.

"EWW." The girl says, delighted. "That one is definitely snot."

---

The shotgun blast makes her seize, for a moment, catatonic; makes her snarl. Charlotte ducks down onto the seat of the booth and reaches for her messenger bag. Loops her hand around the straps and starts pulling it close to her. Gives Melantha a wide-eyed look.

Stay down. Behind me.

Keeps her body between the men and Melantha, no matter what.

Lola is a hero for her people. Her People.

There are a number of her people here, granted, she knew that, but for the most part there were humans here. Just regular, plain old people that she didn't know, didn't care about, wasn't invested in saving.

So, when the door seemed to explode all of a sudden, then was kicked in by a team of three people in tactical gear, Lola did not play the hero (not yet). Instead, she slowly (calmly, too calmly, she doesn't look scared she just looks pissed, inconvenienced, Lola what is wrong with you) pushed her chair back from the table so that she had enough room to maneuver herself down onto the floor.

One hand on her stomach, the underside of it, tucking up the fabric of her calf-length pink dress so her knees could be bare, so her skirt wouldn't be caught under them and hinder movement if she had to move. Her other hand was in the air, fingers splayed, palm forward.

But watching. Watching like a junkyard dog when people get near to the fence.

All of a sudden there are people charging in right behind him and Sam, and firing a shotguns within a few feet of him. His first action, without thinking about it, is to maneuver himself in between the attackers and Samantha. It's an automatic motion, turning to face the armed men as they run inside.

He doesn't resist though. Because that would just be stupid right now. He just makes a quick look around, getting the quick layout. He notices Lola, who he's met. Charlotte and Melentha he has never met and doesn't know immediately and doesn't have time to act further. Then he's moving to the ground, matching Samantha's speed in doing so (meaning if she doesn't for some reason neither does he, but he's assuming she will) as he watches the three culprits quietly. Watches and waits to see how this is going to go, when he'll get his opportunity.

The sound of a sudden shotgun blast is startling. Samantha whirls around, dark blue eyes wide to see just what the hell. The sound of a shotgun blast is a familiar one, but why here? Light filters in through the new holes in the door. That's not good. She starts to take a step back, but then someone is striding forward and the booted foot that was lifting to move back changes direction. Alexis goes to the ground, but he doesn't go down with her. She goes forward instead, is just a step or two in the massive shadow of the trucker when the door gets kicked open.

And when the trucker throws his hands up he nearly steps back on her. She sidesteps, rests her hand on his forearm. People are yelling, screaming, terrified, and Samantha Evans who looks so tiny next to the blanched trucker, she does not do these things. She puts her hand on his arm to get his attention, that trucker, lifts her chin to give him a slight nod and then tilt her head, Come on. And she nudges him over to the side.

"We're going," she says to the three men, mostly calm but hey man, they have shotguns and tactical gear and all she has is a light jacket and yoga pants and moxy. And she does go, nudges the trucker off to the side and stays near him and whoever else is over thataway. Drops to her knees at least.

Melantha remembers Samantha from one very specific moment, almost a year ago. She remembers her in conjunction with another woman who kept calling her chica, over and over, getting huffy when Melantha told her to cut it out and storming off -- after informing Melantha tersely that they would work this out!!! -- never to be seen or heard from again. She remembers her being level-headed, listening more than she spoke, and she remembers appreciating it.

She remembers, and she is eating Jelly Belly candies with her best friend, licking her lips as Charlotte eats snot. Not literally, but close enough. And then the world flips upside down and Melantha's eyes fly wide. The noise of a gunshot is powerful when it's far away; up close it leaves the ears ringing, the head pounding. No one in here came to breakfast with ear plugs unless they left them in from a concert last night, maybe the Kongos down at the Marquis. Melantha has a solid case of those ringing ears for a few seconds, enough to vibrate her skull. This is why experienced shooters wear earmuffs.

No one be confused about why Melantha's first instinct is to hunch over and cover her ears, as though to hold her head together. Because shotguns. Are. Loud.

She slinks to the ground from her barstool, toes curled under and knees on the ground, hands over her ears, eyes on Charlotte, who she can see snarling but not hear. She is staring at the men, and there are beautiful tears in her beautiful eyes.

The diner isn't large. There's a kitchen in the back, but the area up front where the guests are -- it's basically a breakfast counter in the middle, booths off the to wings. Seven on each side, six of them in three rows of two and then a big semicircular one at the corner.

The waitresses are down on the ground. One is behind the bar, peeking over the edge, big terrified eyes. One is just down down down in the middle of the floor, between two rows of small booths. The twenty-somethings are all as down as they can get, squashed and huddled together under their big corner booth like rabbits in a warren. One of the truckers is gripping the edge of the breakfast bar, his eyes darting from gunman to gunman to gunman. The other whips his head around when Samantha touches him, letting out a startled and strangled yelp.

The old fella: he's still at his table, too stiffjointed to get under it easily. Just cowering, trembling hands covering his head, head down on the tabletop.

And then our heroes. Or our hapless bystanders, at least: Melantha on the ground. Lola on the ground. Charlotte and Sam and Alexis ... not really. There's not given much time to rectify that. The gunman that fired into the ceiling, the one that yelled at them: he swings that shotgun around, that matte-black, high-tech, tactical shotgun of his, points it right at Alexis.

His partners take aim too. At Sam. At Charlotte.

"I SAID. EVERYONE DOWN ON THE GROUND. NOW."

From the kitchen: the fry cook peering out between omelettes, pancakes, breakfast platters. Cautious-eyed.

[willpower]

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

[i ain't afraid of no ghost shotgun: WP]

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

Is he scared? Of course he's scared. Deep down, Alexis is scared because for Pegasus' sake, THERE'S A SHOTGUN POINTED AT HIM. At point blank range, nonetheless. But he doesn't seem it outwardly. He learned a long, long time ago: fear does not mean "freak out." In fact, fear is the absolute worst possible time to freak out, because then people die.

He's stuck close to Sid and he looks at the man pointing the gun at him, speaking under a tight calm. "Easy man, relax. I'm going down." And he is, slipping slowly to the ground before the words even come out. He gets to his knees, watching the three as he goes to his knees and then puts his hands on the ground in clear view of the trio.

He spares a glance at Sam, imagining (and hoping) she's following suit, but the vast majority of his attention is on our villains of this piece, to see what they're up to. Why would someone rob THIS place of all places in riot gear? Why not hit a bank or something more?

Something isn't right.

Melantha is down on the ground, next to the backpack she stowed beside her stool, but it's zipped and she's in full view. She has lowered her hands, at least off her ears, but holds them open. She tenses when they point a gun at Charlotte, partly out of sheer rage, partly because she wonders what Charlotte will do. She's not Erich. If she were Erich, she'd be in crinos in an eyeblink, she'd tear those gunmen to pieces in another, she'd roar into the morning -- if she was able not to frenzy.

But Charlotte isn't Erich, and no one is pointing a gun at Melantha, which she's pretty sure would make Charlotte on even her most docile day frenzy. She swallows hard, holding very still, staring at the only man who has spoken so far. Staring. watching.

There is a shotgun leveled right at her. Samantha swallows hard, but she doesn't look at it. She's looking at the face, masked or otherwise, of the person holding it. There is a tension between her brows that it hidden by the bill of her hat, but it's there in her eyes. There's a tightness in her shoulders. In her spine. There was never, ever a time in Samantha's life where she decided to play the hero. It's never a conscious decision, really. It's only that there is a right thing to do, and nothing else. The right thing to do was soothe Fern and the right thing to do was try to talk a Cliath out of fighting a monster and the right thing to do was save an innocent child's life.

Right now, Samantha doesn't lower herself to the ground because she is afraid, or she's afraid of her son losing another mother. She does it because it's the right thing to do to keep herself and these people with her safe for a little longer.

Slowly, she rolls her shoulders back so that her pack drops against her calves and then to the floor, and then she leans forward. Her face upturned to watch them, these men. Try to figure out what in the world they're doing here without having to speak and risk having that shotgun's barrel shoved into her face.

[percept (not sure if it counts, but "insightful" is the spec) + alertness? trying to notice if there's anything out of the ordinary about these guys other than being three yahoos in tactical gear apparently holding up a diner]

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

Here is Charlotte, pale-skinned and pale-eyed and platinum-haired, wide-eyed, all the signifiers of youth. Sylph like, really, startled and startling and never-quite-here and entirely-mad.

She breathes out, sharp and fast, and lips her too-dry lips and tastes there salt and artificial snot-flavored jelly-something and the strange, errant flame of her own rage and the beat of her heart. Back of her throat. The world is still and it is noisy and she wraps the palm of her hand once and then twice around the strap of her messenger bag and

inhales

then eases herself off the seat, onto the floor. The hand that is not wound around the strap of the messenger bag slips inside one of the smaller, outer pockets.

She is talking a bit beneath her breath.

Doubtful that anything on this side of the gauntlet can understand what she's saying.

Perception + Occult: Sense Wyrm

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

[There's Wyrm here. It stinks of the Wyrm.

It's not the three gunmen.]

Something come to her through Volcano. It sounds like the earth rumbling and the world splitting in her mind, even though the voice is Charlotte's. Melantha gives a sharp intake of breath, her eyes flicking around the room suddenly, not on any of the gunmen.

She's not sure what she's looking for. She's just trying to feel something. Anything.

[perception + primal urge + volcano!]

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

[seriously, jove?]

[OKAY SINCE YOU'RE BOTH TRYING TO FIGURE THIS OUT:

It's not the gunmen. Everything here feels faintly off now that they're paying attention. It's like something's been rotting in a cabinet, forgotten -- left there so long that the smell pervades everything. But it seems to be concentrated in the back of the diner.]

No one tries anything. No one makes any sudden moves. No one attempts anything heroic, not with those three men watching them. Those three index fingers on those three triggers.

There's no protracted wait here. No long delay to make sure everyone was compliant. Alexis gets on the ground, Sam gets on the ground, Charlotte gets on the ground and the three men: they're moving. They're moving smooth and sure and well-oiled, a warmachine, pivoting as they move through the room, backs to each other, turning, always turning, gyring like a whirlwind in slow-motion. Every angle and every approach covered. To the counter, to the truckers, one of them staring straight ahead, the other still watching, watching, some wild light in his eyes that almost turns into action

but then he sees the way the morning light sheens off the dull black barrels of the shotguns and he thinks better of it. Smart man.

To the counter, then. The gunmen move to the counter and down the aisle, past the first whimpering waitress on the floor. Behind the counter. The second waitress flinches backwards, wants to run, isn't sure what to do and then one of the gunmen grabs her and shoves her forcefully out of the way, up and over the counter. Plates go crashing to the floor. She goes crashing to the floor with a yelp; there's a gun in her face when she pushes up.

"STAY DOWN."

She stays there. She lowers herself back to the none-too-clean floor, eyes squeezed shut, hands over her head. And then gunmen, guns leveled to their shoulders, grips sure, movements so exact and precise:

they pause a second, just a second to get in sync.

Then they burst into the kitchen. It's called shock and awe. The shouting, the slamming, the doors flying open, the shotgun blast into the air. The ones out in the diner can hear the dishwasher boy in there screaming, screaming, he sounds like terror itself. And they can hear

something in the kitchen

growling.

[Guys seriously stop. WP]

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

Samantha is watching them, confused. Their movements, what she can see of their expressions, they're not here for money. They're here for something else entirely but what? Are they on a mission from God? Are they part of a cult that is just that insanely crazy?

She watches them move until they're past her and she can't watch them move anymore. Then she just listens to their feet on the tiled floor, listens for where they go, where they go, they're behind the counter. Pause.

Burst.

She pops up onto her feet in an instant. "Alexis, c'mon," she says quietly, and she runs to get behind the counter, to see if there's some way they can just...lock the men back there (sorrysorrysorrysorry dishwasher boy and fry cook and whoever else!). Nothing would be a permanent solution, but if they can at least get the people inside the diner out of the diner...

She doesn't think beyond that. It's one step at a time.

[dex+stealth to be quiet not like it matters but it matters, y'know?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Melantha watches the men, the way they move. There's calculation in those eyes, which sparkle and gleam like little blue-white stars only because it is hard to look at her without descending into poetry. There's something about her, something about her and Charlotte both, that captivates.

When the gunman grabs the waitress and shoves her down, Melantha's teeth are bared. As if she were an animal. She stays where she is and does not throw herself flailing and clawing at the men with guns. She flinches a bit when they burst into the kitchen, but then she's reaching into her backpack, unzipping, grabbing the small but useful firearm inside, shoving in a clip.

She looks across the room at Lola, then at Sam, and guy-with-Sam who she doesn't know. "They're not dirty," she whispers, mouths, hoping they hear, can understand, something. She jerks her head back at the kitchen,

where something is growling, and someone is screaming, and Melantha is hunching her shoulders up and rising to her feet.

People get pushed around and yelled at, including some of her people. Some of Her People include one person she knows to be a fully fledged gnosis-dizzied example of a Spirit Walker, and they all end up with guns in their faces when they don't find their knees on the floor. Lola's brow hardened, flexed into a heavy scowl. Not a protective one, but a disapproving one. Something of: Why didn't you guys just get down? I got down and I never take a knee but even I knew that's what you should do.

But not one sound uttered. Not a one.

Very soon enough, her eyes were back on the three men as they progressed through the diner, putting guns in the faces of others and in one instance even bodily throwing a woman over a counter and hollering for her to stay down. Lola, even still, didn't budge a goddamn muscle. Just scowled along after with eyes that only manage to be brown because of how much light the windows let in (they're black in most other settings, flat and challenging as the matte finish on those guns).

There's screaming, then. Screaming and gunblasts. Lola had flinched a little at the sounds for how sharp and loud they were, shifted her hand for the adrenaline and the noise and the stress were causing the baby to stir protestingly.

But, before the sounds had finished completely, Lola started to stand. Hand moved from her dress, arms at her sides. Eyes hopped quickly to Samantha when she began to move. Lola stood, upright and tall, perhaps the highest point in the establishment in this current moment. She does this, she points with a big obvious gesture of her arm, and then she swings the other to wrap the motion.

Everyone to the door.

Following that, a finger to her mouth and another hand pressing downward, palm to the floor: Quietly.

[Charisma 2 + Leadership 3]

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

Once they're in the kitchen--once that growl sounds--Alexis is on the move. He and Sam have the same idea and whatever it is that's going on in there, they should probably know for the safety of everyone out here. And so he starts to move quickly, crouched as far to the ground as he can possibly be. He's used to this, although it's been a while. He practices martial arts and keeps in shape, but he doesn't practical tactical movement. It's been a while but you never forgot those precise motions.

It's idiocy. He's unarmed. There are some of his practice weapons out in the trunk of the car, but there's no time to get to them. So he just keeps moving, heading with Sam to where they can get a vantage point at what's going on in there.

He does pause along the way, to look back at the others. His head tilts at what Melantha says and then nods. Okay. He looks to Lola and gestures to wave, as if to indicate the people inside here with them, and then points at the door. He's betting that growl isn't something they need to see.

[[Dex+Stealth also!]]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

The gunmen burst through the swinging doors into the kitchen; Charlotte is on her knees in a heartbeat and on her feet a second later, though see - she ducks a bit, slight creature that she is, shoulders narrowed, heart racing, her nostrils filled with the sick scent of -

- yeah, that.

Growling

From the outer pocket of her messenger bag she pulls out a small leather pounch. It is full-of-teeth. Or rather, not full-of-teeth but there are teeth in it. Slender and white, root and crown and all. They explode when you through them.

Charlotte and Melantha act in concert, without speaking. Charlotte glances back, and she's still muttering beneath her breath and has settled the messenger-bag cross-wise over her body and look, and see, there is even in her something animal in the way she moves, toward the kitchen rather than away from it. Prey-stalking. Shadowing the gunmen toward the Thing in the kitchen,

whatever that may be.

(So, piercing the gauntlet. Dif -1 b/c natural channel.)

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 4, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Wits + Rituals?

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Melantha, with that mouth that so easily pouts and those long-lashed eyes that twinkle and the nice legs and the nice everything and the Oh My God That Hair, is armed. Yup! Look at her, refusing to go to Golden without a gun because last time...

Alexis catches her eyes, acknowledges. Lola is basically yo, humans, GTFO and Melantha hopes in her heart of hearts that the swell of Lola's belly has the Gaia-given effect of making those humans listen up, because Mother is speaking. Everyone has a Mother, after all. And Gaia is Mother of All, and blesses all Mothers.

Charlotte is up, reaching, and she knows that Melantha is going toward the kitchen because ...well, in part because Charlotte isn't Erich. Erich, Melantha thinks, would be wanting her to run away, hide, something, and maybe there's a reason why they're a 3 and not a 2 in any division. Maybe there's lots of reasons, and this is one. Charlotte with her fingerbones, Melantha with her gun, going towards the screams.

Three out of five Garou Nation-ers agree: getting out of here is the thing to do. Almost as one, Sam and Alexis and Lola are getting up, are motioning for the mundanes to get out of dodge. The twenty-somethings don't have to be told twice. They scramble out of hiding, some of them in tears. They run for the door, bent double, going as quietly as they can. Feet shuffling, jeans scuffing. They're the first ones out.

Then the waitresses. Last the truckers, the one with the fire in his eyes hesitating a second, lingering, looking at the wimminfolk in there, the pretty dark-haired girl that looks just a little bit familiar to him, isn't she a celebrity or something?, and the pregnant lady and the frail-looking blonde and the cute brunette

who is all but pushing him out.

"I'm gonna call the cops," he promises Sam. "I'm gonna call the cops and get 'em to come right now. Get whoever you can out and -- "

Hell breaks loose in the back. Shotgun blasts. The crash of dishes. The stink of gunpowder and singed hair, and roars, roaring, like a ten-foot bear got in the kitchen somehow. The dishwasher boy is still screaming, but his screaming has hit a whole new level, shrieking, mindness. Those doublehinged doors suddenly burst open and the boy comes running out, slips and falls, is running again before he's even on his feet again.

The trucker runs too. He beats the boy to the door. So much for chivalry.

The boy -- he sounds like a boy -- is screaming and there's a nightmare child in her head screaming I HATE YOU I HATE YOU and it's hard to tell the difference for a second so, so

Melantha thinks fuck it and Charlotte hears it,

and she kicks in the door, weapon up.

Samantha and Sam rush to the kitchen, one to bar the door, the other to see what the hell is going on. But then Charlotte and Melantha get ahead of them or between them, hey isn't that woman sort of familiar?

Jesus, Sam, now is not the time. Because the woman is kicking through the door to see what's going on in the back and Samantha is thinking of her 9mm that's in her bag which is way over there, and hey didn't those guys have shotguns?

She slips back a little, let those who are - that one who is rather - armed go before those who would just make nice little meatshields. She'll bring up the rear and she'll look for any discarded weapons that she can use, well, in case she needs to use them.

Charlotte hears that; not the boy in Melantha's head but the fuck it and Charlotte is reaching see but she also is holding something in her hand. She does not closer her eyes but expends something like water and Melantha kicks in the door and Charlotte, for god's sake, is getting in

front

of her kin.

[-1 Gnosis to activate her firetooth talen.]

Garou in there? Yeah, he's not going to be able to help. He doesn't have a weapon and guess who doesn't get in the middle of fights where there are fullblooded Garou involved? His parents raised him right.

So he moves to help Lola instead, moving to help get any stragglers who are not currently moving out get out.

[Samantha and ALEXIS what the eff, self]

"Shut the fuck up and go."

Lola cut the trucker off, spoke over him at and get 'em. She wasn't particularly loud, no, but she was very sharp and very firm. But still, in a face that's hard and firm by default but made softer just by nature doing what nature does at this point in this cycle, it's easy to see that it comes from a place of concern. Of worry. Of urgency. She needed him to get the fuck out of there along with the rest.

Thankfully, more gunshots and crashing and the man is moving. She didn't have to worry about him much more. But it wasn't just the shotgun blasts that moved him. It was the primal, scraping squeal in the boy's scream (prey caught in the claws), and it was the feel-it-in-your-deep-gut roar that had him moving even more. Lola's eyebrows flew up-- she knew that sound. Knew it because she loved it because it was an anthem for her cause and her War.

"Jesus fucking christ," she uttered under her breath with the realization, then cast an eye about the joint to make sure it was cleared out. No, there was still the old man shaking like a leaf in the corner of his booth. Lola's nose wrinkled, she was impatient with him already (her mother would have cut a tooth on her for such disrespect for the elderly, this isn't her parent's fault really), and she was brisk but light on her sneakered feet when she walked over to his booth and said: "Get up." Voice quiet, but again firm.

When he looked up, he'd find her hand out waiting to help. If he didn't, if he just kept quivering, then she would simply take hold of him by arms and shoulders and get him moving manually. Needless to say, she isn't slow or particularly gentle about it.

There's a hard look in Melantha's eyes that no one here has ever seen, because no one here has ever bound her or hurt her in ways she never talks about nor describes, no one here has ever broken through some wall in here to make her hollow and howling and no one here has ever done it again and seen her sending fiery fury through her gaze at them, refusing to cry again, refusing everything again. There's a reason she was able to do, for most of her adolescence, what she has done,

but none of them know what she has done, either. She, for reasons somewhat obvious, hasn't ever really talked to Charlotte about it.

But yes: pretty young thing, emphasis on all three words to everyone she ever destroyed, aiming a firearm into a kitchen after kicking in a door, looking upon someone -- not something -- who can only be a werewolf. Charlotte gets in front of her and Melantha gives a brief scowl, snaps a hey at Charlotte in her mind, moving to stand beside her, because sisters, another word she sends, context-free, into her packmate's brain For Reasons.

She has a hardness to her she had almost forgotten. An anger.

A Fury.

[dlp, will recycle most of it though probably]

Through the pass-through,

and through the swinging doors,

and in the room with her because Melantha made a Good Decision there,

they can see it. They can see the rampant chaos in the kitchen, the abattoir that room has become. Amidst the tubs of beaten-eggs and the sizzling deep fryers and the cutting surfaces and the megafridges and the industrial sinks and that enormous dishwashing machine in the corner:

three gunmen. An enormous, roaring monster, moving too fast to resolve. Shotguns going off, muzzle-flashes, deafening noise. They can't hear anything at all. It's all muffled and cotton-stuffed. They can see, though. They can see the monster recoiling from the impact of the shots. They can see its blood, brilliant red, splattering the walls. They can see its enormous handpaw come swiping out, unbelievably fast, and then suddenly there are only two gunmen; the third goes flying, slams into the wall just to the right of the double-hinged door, knocks a small avalanche of plates and bowls down.

His chest is caved in, clawed open. Eyes staring through ballistic goggles. The other two gunmen close ranks. They don't even look at him. They're trained for this. It's life or it's death, and the blink of an eye could be the line between.

--

The cry of a falcon on the air. Though they can barely hear anything else at all, this cuts through clear and fine and pure. And suddenly the gathered find themselves stronger, faster. Their resolve strengthened to iron.

--

And out in the dining room. Out in the almost-deserted diner, where that one regular, that one retiree, widower, old-feller who's been coming here the last twenty years but will probably never come here again,

is still cowering at this table. He doesn't get up. He doesn't move. He yells in terror and shrinks as Lola touches him. She can feel his joints popping as she hauls him to his feet, and he's cringing. He's trying to sink down and away from her. There's nothing but animal terror in his mind.

[Charlotte has summoned Merlin! All present receive Merlin totem benefits for the next 4 rounds: +3brawl, +2dodge, +3WP against opponents larger than themselves.]

Merlin, no Merlin, whatever's going on in the kitchen. He's still helping get people out, and moves to help Lola with the old man.

[willpower vs. phobia]

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

[are my empathy senses tingling? percept (insightful) + empathy (emotional states), she's toward the back so hopefully no diff modifier?]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 2

[Dexterity + Athletics, WP because Hector will never shut up if I kill a man while trying to save him]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) [WP]

[[Dex+Athletics, Spec Fluidly Moving]]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1

[OW ALEXIS MY ARM. rolling vs 1 bashing.]

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

Samantha is toward the back, because she is thinking, well. If there is going to be fighting then she may need to wait for a weapon to appear. Or maybe she'll grab one of those vats of frying oil, or maybe she'll grab a cleaver, or, oh. She feels a twinge when the man slams into the wall, obviously dead. The cool, calm, collected part of her head that tries to stay rational in times of crisis says Hey Samantha, there's a gun for you right there.

But there's something else in this diner. Toward the back, she's able to...to hear, to sense, to notice the terror of that last person. That old man who will probably never come back again. And then there's Lola, draggin him upward and before Samantha even consciously thinks about it, she is bolting back across the room toward him. Toward them. Lola's got him and probably he's still freaking out, Alexis has him, and he's probably still freaking out, and then Samantha is there. Because someone needs to keep this man from having an aneurysm in the middle of the diner. Glancing back at the chaos a moment, then back to this, them, where she should be rather than where a part of her, the warrior part of her, wants to be.

"Shhh," she says. "It's okay, it's okay," she says, and her tone is the same as she would use for Jake when he's crying and crying because he's sick and miserable and all he can do is wail.

[charisma+empathy]

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

"STAY BEHIND ME." CHARLOTTE to Melantha amidst-that echoing cotton-wool ring and maybe Melantha cannot hear her but that's fine. Charlotte can talk in her brain and does, so somewhere Erich hears little interstitial pieces of their conversation.

STAY BEHIND ME. and in the kitchen the girl-thing takes that single tooth and throws it at the beast and then for fuck's sake she's shifting; changing; erupting into motion and

launching herself at the Crinos across the kitchen. A direwolf; with silverwhite fur.

In the kitchen, more noise. More gunblasts that are still loud and sudden and still make Lola's shoulders jump a little each time they pop off. Another crash. When the old man didn't answer she touched his shoulder. He yelled and tried to shrink into his seat. He was terrified, quivering. Old and ancient and just about ready for his heart to give up for the sheer fear of what's going on around him.

This, she's pretty sure, is why ancients put people on ice floats when they hit this point.

Alexis was moving in to help, but Lola was more or less blocking the booth's bench by standing with just barely enough room for the old man to stand up in, between the table and her stomach. So, when the man refused to move, Lola decided that she was going to move him and that was going to be the end of it. She was strong-bodied, she ran miles upon miles without tiring and kept up with packs of wolves moving an old man would be nothing.

And, sure enough, it was nothing. His attempts to fight her off were the playful bats of friendly kitten paws. He was light as a feather. She took him by his upper arms and lifted him bodily out of his seat, arms stuck to his sides so that he couldn't use his arms very effectively to fight her. His legs were slipped smoothly from under the table without catching on anything, until Alexis put hands on him to try and help.

The man flinched under Alexis's fingers at his forearm when he tried to help relieve Lola of some of the burden, and the Uktena Kinfolk just looked flatly at the Fury and told him: "Pretty sure I got this." Clearly she did. She was holding the man up against her side, having adjusted her grip on him as though he were some sort of a very large sock monkey, except impossibly gentle about it. Proving a point, perhaps, about her ability to care for something small and frail and helpless and infuriating.

She jerked her head back toward the kitchen, though, back toward the mayhem.

"Put on your big boy pants and go help the ladies out."

And with that, old man tucked into her side with one arm around his torso and the other supporting his hips and thighs now, Lola Hawkes turned to be shepherd to the last stragglers of this flock.

There's a hard look in Melantha's eyes that no one here has ever seen, because no one here has ever bound her or hurt her in ways she never talks about nor describes, no one here has ever broken through some wall in here to make her hollow and howling and no one here has ever done it again and seen her sending fiery fury through her gaze at them, refusing to cry again, refusing everything again. There's a reason she was able to do, for most of her adolescence, what she has done,

but none of them know what she has done, either. She, for reasons somewhat obvious, hasn't ever really talked to Charlotte about it.

But yes: pretty young thing, emphasis on all three words to everyone she ever destroyed, aiming a firearm into a kitchen after kicking in a door, looking upon someone -- not something -- who can only be a werewolf. Charlotte gets in front of her and Melantha gives a brief scowl, snaps a hey at Charlotte in her mind, moving to stand beside her, because sisters, another word she sends, context-free, into her packmate's brain For Reasons.

She has a hardness to her she had almost forgotten. An anger.

A Fury.

--

Blood splatters. She can smell it and she imagines she can feel it -- hitting her, seeping over her, but it isn't, it isn't, she repeats to herself until she believes it. It's not her blood, it's okay, even if for a moment her vision fuzzes black and white and bright and dark. She swallows again, trying not to breathe in the coppery-tang smell because it makes her want to throw up. It makes her want to faint.

Something comes over her, then. She breathes it in. She feels stronger. She feels her mind clear. She opens her eyes, breathing in, awful smell and all.

The screaming dishwasher was not the Enemy. The gunmen are not of the Wyrm. She's not sure if the werewolf is. The werewolf might be frenzied. All the same:

Melantha lowers her gun. She takes a breath. "Hey, YOU," she calls, directly to the monster.

Charlotte is yelling at her to stay behind. Melantha doesn't say it out loud, or in her mind, but Charlotte's not her boss. The Baklava Republik does not have an Alpha. And if they do, it's just as much Melantha as it is Charlotte, so there. Granted: she is reasonably sure that she'd be outvoted if Erich were also here, but Erich's not here, so NYEH.

Still, it doesn't matter. Whatever she was thinking of doing when she called to that monster is pretty well undone as soon as her best friend changes into warform and launches herself at him. Yup. That is happening.

[people in the kitchen, init up! people outside the kitchen: take 1 turn to move to the kitchen if you're so inclined.]

[dex + wits + volcano = 7]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )

[[Not moving into kitchen]]

dex (hispo) + wits = 10.

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )

[dicers, to Foothills Night!]

Before Lola has the chance to roll out with the old man, though, a petite brunette of a Kinfolk shows up. Lola recognized her but vaguely-- she wasn't very social on any outward level but she was a creature studied of war and tactic. Armies were a very important part of a war, and armies were only so good as their soldiers. She got to know names and faces and identities as well as she could, even if she didn't interact with them directly.

She didn't have a name for this one yet, but she knew she was a Glass Walker, or a Child of Gaia, or something like that. Knew she was a Kin and that she kept her head and that she was worth her weight, though, and that was important. She was gentle to the man's mind and terror where Lola was gentle to his body, and the man was all but lulled to compliance. Mothers really are comforting, what do you know?

The second roar joining the fray had Lola reconsidering, pausing at Alexis, and then deciding: "Yeah, maybe you both should come too."

Then she'd head for the door.

In the kitchen, Melantha HEY YOUs the Crinos. The Crinos -- bloody-pawed, fresh from tearing a guy open -- wheels about. Its ears perk. Its head tilts. It starts to make this questioning noise, and then

Charlotte-wolf barrels into it. And it snarls, tearing at the Silver Fang with claw and tooth.

Outside: Lola gets the retiree out. It's not hard, actually. Just had to pry him out of the booth. After that he goes all-but-catatonic, dangling limp, eyes staring. Alexis helps: grabs the guy's feet. Bangs a knee into the doorframe. No problem. Nothing permanent.

Then they're outside. They're outside and the sun is shining and the birds are singing and it's a beautiful spring day and

a monster roars. Off in the trees, people -- those poor frantic humans out of their minds with terror -- scream and run just a little faster.

If Lola had considered that she would get his goat by suggesting he go "Put on your big boy pants and go help the ladies out," she has another thing coming. Alexis may have his flaws--and make no mistake, he does. He makes mistakes, he has an ego about things, just like anyone. But snarking that he needs to man up and go help the women? Yeah, that's not getting him at all.

But then she reconsiders, and tells him he should come. He frowns a little, as if he's not sure what Lola plans, and moves to go with her for now.

The last time Samantha saw Lola the encounter was very brief. Names were not exchanged out in the parking lot of a building downtown, where they all convened to meet the sender of weird anonymous letters. Samantha took off, figuring the woman - the letter-sender that is - to be a crazy person just trying to cause a ruckus. Or something. It's been a while and her player has a terrible memory sometimes.

Anyway, the time before that was one of the war moots, or for Sam the only one she attended. She didn't stay long, because two werewolves started bearing down on each other, as their kind are wont to do, and the kinswoman grabbed her brother and got the hell out of the way.

She recognizes the woman a bit, but she doesn't have a name, either. If she did, if she sat and spoke with Lola, maybe they'd find they have more in common than they realize. Lola was raised to fight, to prepare for a Change that would never come. Samantha was raised to be prepared for anything, to be ready and flexible and most importantly to survive. Not quite the same situations, but similar.

And those backgrounds have brought them to this moment, with Lola carrying a frail old man out of a diner while Samantha tries to sooth him while thinking, Well at least this place isn't on fire. Don't jinx it, Sam.

Then they're outside and they're getting the man settled on something. Samantha lingers, hand on his shoulder, still murmuring to him words of comfort and compassion when Lola says the two other kinfolk should go with her. Samantha looks at the old man first, but really they've gotten him out and there's not much else they can do. Fine then. They're going back inside, to help or to fight or whatever needs to be done. Squaring her shoulders, 'Roach's kinswoman starts for the door, perhaps to see just how difficult that totem's children are to squash.

Once outside, out through the doorframe and into the parking lot, Lola lets the man down. Alexis has to cooperate, but of course he does because he already knows Lola does what she has her mind set to, and if he doesn't follow her flow then the old man would run the risk of hitting the pavement and shattering a pelvis. He gets back to the ground, Samantha puts her hand on his shoulder to comfort him, and Lola looks around for thoughts, options.

There was no guarantee that the battle didn't bring itself outside. She couldn't just leave the old man quivering, trembling out here with no place to be, no cover to take. Her brow furrowed, and she reached into the pocket of the army-green jacket she was wearing over her dress (unbuttoned, of course, she couldn't button that thing if she dreamed of it now) and pulled out her car keys. Hit a button on the remote, and the locks on a used blue Subaru clicked and the lights blinked.

With help from one another and access to Lola's car, the old man was guided to the back bench seat of the vehicle. Told to just stay put, lay down if he wants to, comforted and soothed and convinced that it was the safest vehicle in the world to be in (nevermind the dead animals in the back). He listened, and the Kinfolk straightened up to get back to brass tacks.

Samantha was already headed inside. Lola should have been going to the driver's side door of her car. She should be driving this old man out of here, to safety. Instead, though, she reaches over the back seat into the storage space in the back of the vehicle. Shifts a blanket, and when she straightens back up from that lean and reach (and jesus did she need to brace her hand on the frame of the car door and grunt to get herself back upright like that) there is a shotgun in her hand.

The door smacks closed on the car. Hopefully the old guy has the sense to stay put. Lola apparently didn't.

He has no problem of course with helping get the old man out to the car. He squints a little in his T-Shirt and shorts as they come out into the sun but is perfectly gentle in his own right (a slight mismovement aside) and guides him with Lola, letting her help him into the car. Maybe this is fine, maybe he had nothing to be worried about. He's seen Lola in crisis situations and he genuinely likes and respects her, but he had a baaaad feeling that something would go wro--

Wump goes the car door. Alexis turns around to see Lola and the shotgun, and he looks incredulous.

"No. Hell no." He's already between her and the door by the simple fact of the situation but he moves more specifically to interpose himself. "You're not going in there with a shotgun for more reasons than I can possibly say in the amount of time it's going to take for it to be over."

DICE

[okay, i know this will make things very confusing, but! if you post IC, please post in the other room so we have one consolidated log :D

monstar init! +8]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )

[melantha-charlotte-monstar]

[Monster:

Reflexive -- ERNGH? at Melantha

1. BITE CHARLOTTE

R1. CLAWSWAT HER ACROSS THE ROOM. or at least claw her.

R2. ONE MORE TIME.]

[Charlotte: 1a. THROW TALEN. 2b. Er, Bite!. Rage 1: BITE.]

[1a. LIKE HELL YOU DO. 3rb.]

[talen will be last round. soaking fire!]

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

Dex + Ath

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

FIRE.

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

[1a. 3RB. dex + firearms +3 // diff +1 (w/in 2 yards, diff is 4) (WP)]

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) [WP]

[base 4 + 5]

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

[soak!]

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

1a is now a BITE. er. Dex + Brawl + Hispo + MERLIN :DDDD -2

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Damage Strength + Hispo + 2 + 1

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

[soak!]

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

Bite the Second. -3 + WP

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

Damage: Str + Hispo + 2 + 4

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

[soak!]

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

[CHOMPITY.]

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

[base crinos bite dam+2]

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

OUCH.

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

[Charlotte is stunned. Spend rage to recover?]

(Spend rage to recover!)

Rage action! -5

Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Damage!

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )

[ACK]

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

[x_x]

[we can adjourn to the other room, i think! i shall take a TS.]

Charlotte

This happens in the diner; two young women burst through the swinging kitchen doors. There is a dead man in his body armor, and two more firing with precision. Charlotte hears fuck it and sees Melantha kick the door down and there is a Crinos tearing open a man-in-armor with the high tech shotgun Charlotte not long ago wanted to ruin and she can feel the nipping background presence of one of Falcon's smallest children and fuck it see -

- they break through the doors and there's an explosion but it fizzles, just blackens the doors to the walk-in freezer and does nothing to the hide of the snarling beast in the back. Melantha shoots and the thing that was going EERGHH? goes SNARL instead and Charlotte is not-Charlotte she's a direwolf, launching herself, changing in mid-air, landing and tearing into the other Crinos.

Once,

twice,

and then he turns, and tears into her, and tears her open, and tears her apart and sends her, staggered, hide torn open, ribs-and-lung exposed, viscera on the verge-of-unraveling, reeling backward.

Only rage keeps her on her feet.

Only rage keeps her moving somehow moving and how do you move after than; the pain is an inferno, but somehow she keeps her feet and somehow she throws herself at the Crinos again and somehow,

she

eviscerates

him.

Panting and reeling in the aftermath, she wheels to face the gunmen and -

[wp]

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

Three bullets fire off. Melantha shoots them but they barely make a dent. She thinks: I'm gonna get yelled at.

She thinks at Erich: don't be mad at me and right that second, he might have no idea what she's talking about, or he might be feeling his pack-sisters pulling on the strength of their totem and be freaking the fuck out, she doesn't know right then. She just doesn't want him to be mad at her, or Charlotte. She doesn't want anyone to be mad at her, that's the truth. It's a vulnerable and raw thing, but it's real.

Melantha tries to remember the last time she saw Charlotte fight like this, and finds that she can't. Has she ever seen Charlotte fight? She trembles a little.

Blood goes everywhere. Melantha sways but stays upright, her hand still on her gun and her finger on the trigger and the safety off, off, off, ready to go, go, go. She does not fire again. Charlotte destroys the thing that is a werewolf but not one of theirs, not good, and then Charlotte wheels on the gunmen and

Melantha wheels on the gunmen, firearm up, eyes hard even if they sparkle, even if she looks like a perpetual 'girl', even if she's so pretty and soft and delicate.

"If you fire on her, I'm shooting your dicks off first."

Samantha heads back once she's certain that the old man is okay. That means not hanging around to see if Lola gets into her car and drives off. A car door closes and isn't followed by an engine starting. Sam keeps walking toward the door but then

No.

She looks over her shoulder, and then she stops. Turns back to look at Alexis and Lola, but her attention really is on Alexis. Really? Looking at Lola Hawkes and looking at Samantha Evans, there's only one major difference between them. Physically, anyway, and what other reasons would Alexis have to keep one back and not the other?

"Wow, seriously?" Yes, that is a bit of annoyance in the Glass Walker's tone. "Alexis you can't force your philosophies on other people. If she wants to come, she should come, and I for one would prefer her with a weapon than without one. Now come on, we need to see if they need any kind of help."

[I can be a leader-type, maybe? charisma+leadership]

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

- and those gunmen have hardly had the time to blink. They were leveling their weapons. They were taking aim. They were preparing to fire and everything happens and now

the Crinos is eviscerated. Is staggering back. Knees giving way. Eyes rolling back. Falling, a mountain of deadweight, sending one last pile of dishes crashing to the floor.

A silence.

An unadulterated threat. From Melantha.

And then the gunmen glance at each other. They draw their weapons up short. One of them goes to his fallen compatriot, kneeling amidst the muck and the debris. He puts his fingers to the dead man's carotid, but it's more habit than anything. A fool could see he's dead.

The other gunman pulls his goggles up atop his helmet. Tugs his mask down,

and suddenly is not a man at all but a woman, large-boned, long-limbed, hard-faced.

"Our apologies," she says. "Especially to you, wolf-born. Didn't realize you were on our side. Would've exercised a little more tact, maybe.

Her partner, meanwhile, has unfastened the dead man's vest and shirt; removed the dog tags. They're blank, at least to mundane observation. Charlotte can feel the faintest glimmer of spirit-energy there, though. He pockets the tags, slings his combat shotgun over his shoulder, and takes his place at the gunwoman's side.

To look at this realistically, Alexis should have the upper hand in this situation. He was bigger-- taller, broader, all of that. He wasn't in his third trimester of pregnancy either. Lola was holding the shotgun in this confrontation, true, but for as mad-dog crazy as she has the reputation for being --

yeah, cut a Garou clean open and then Lola went and killed it with her knife

-- Alexis still knew she wouldn't shoot him. Samantha knew it too. There was no danger of that.

All the same, when the man blocks her path from going back in, Lola's grip on the weapon adjusted and she bared her teeth at him. Samantha came to her cause-- let the woman fight! She knows what she's doing, I'd rather have her at my back with a weapon than not have her.

"Or," Lola suggested to begin, and adjusted her grip again, this time to loosen it and hold it out in front of her. Presenting the shotgun to Alexis, giving him the opportunity to take it. "You can go in my stead." A beat a moment to watch his expression, his eyes mostly, before she snapped and told him in a rush:

"Those are our people in there, including a Kinfolk just like you or me and you're just going to turn your back and let them fight for their lives? Walk away from them and say it's not your problem? Why, because you don't have claws?" She mimicked spitting on the ground in disgust.

"Grow a goddamn spine. You go in or I am."

The gun(wo)men lower their weapons. They're not a threat.

That's all the direwolf genuinely comprehends in that moment. She remains alert (SOME TRICK AFOOT?) for another spine twisting, gut-wrenching second or two, then melts into her humanskin.

She's torn apart. There's blood everywhere and it is dark, dark red and it is still oozing. The shredded bits of her t-shirt stuck in the deepest wounds.

I'm gonna heal myself. Charlotte tells Melantha; reassures her really: she is whole and intact and entire. She remembers how Melantha feels about blood. Will you check the diner to see if everyone left?"

He looks back at Sam, looks forward at Lola. His jaw sets. "Okay fine, give it here." He reaches out and takes the shotgun from her.

And, assuming she does, he starts ejecting the shells, one at a time.

"Reason 1. That's an enclosed kitchen, and you're looking to spray shotgun pellets in there in the hopes that you'll get close enough to hit them and not people." CHK-CHK.

"Reason 2. If you do get close enough in that enclosed kitchen, you or I'll be in the Garou's way." CHK-CHK.

"Reason 3. Yes, because you're pregnant. There's no nice way to say it, but you shouldn't be handling the recoil of a shotgun, much less going into life or death combat, at what I'm assuming is your current stage of pregnancy." CHK-CHK.

"Reason 4. I'd go in, but I'm shit with guns and useless otherwise." And that's when he rapidly pump-ejects all the rest of the shells.

"You want to get yourself or someone else killed? Do it when I'm not around. You can hate me all you want, I don't give a shit. I guarantee you it has nothing to do with spinelessness. I'd go in there and die with pleasure to save them if I didn't know I was endangering her by going in there."

(I DIDN'T BREAK IT!)

OOOOPS close tags liz.

[[WOW all the missing words.

"you'll get close enough to hit them and not OUR people."

"I'm shit with guns and useless in a Garou fight otherwise"]]

Yeah, she'll shoot the woman's dick off, too. Try her. She doesn't lower her weapon when she sees the woman's face behind the goggles, the helm. Gender has (almost) no influence here for her. She'll shoot the crotch first, she doen't give a shit.

Charlotte will heal herself. Melantha nods, absently, a strange gesture to anyone who can't hear the Theurge's thoughts. She then shakes her head.

Not leaving. She doesn't need to add the 'you' to the end of that for it to be clear. She just holds her aim. "My packmate," she says, firm and clear as the daylight outside, "is injured and in no mood at the moment to accept or reject your apologies. I will accept it on her behalf."

There's a pause. She exhales. "I'm sorry about the one who fell." The one who died. And she means that; her sorrow is real. "I wish we'd realized what was happening in here earlier."

Samantha remains quiet, listening. Not exactly ready to step in and mediate, just. Listening.

Because Alexis didn't say anything about not having claws.

But Lola's choices, how they affect her and her child, how they could possibly affect the others, they're her choices to make. They are all Kin here, and all of them (relatively) young still.

"Except there's no telling that by going inside she'll even make it a fight. Maybe she hands off her gun or maybe she finds someone was hiding in the bathroom or whatever. Maybe it's over by the time we get in." There's a werewolf in there, after all. And Charlotte-wolf can shift into forms that are stronger and faster and better equipped to fight another like herself than any of them.

"What Lola does is her choice, Alexis, and what you do is yours. That doesn't make either right or wrong, you know. It makes them different." A pause. They probably aren't going to kill each other.

"I'm going inside."

And so she does. She turns and heads back to the door.

Alexis took the shotgun, and Lola let him. When she did, her arms folded stubbornly across her chest to rest right above her stomach. The sleeves of her coat pushed up to her forearms this way. She was wearing some hemp-looking bracelet around her wrist these days, perhaps something she stole away from her much-traveled Galliard mate.

He started ejecting the shells onto the ground, and she furled forward. Something like an animal ready to snarl, ready to lunge and put teeth in a face and show what force they really have. For what Rage she lacked, the spirit of the moon she was born under still rattled hollow in her bones.

But she is quiet. Her eyes are bright, not-quite hateful, perhaps resentful instead. But attentive.

When he finished, she was still and quiet for a few long thumps of adrenaline-saturated hearts behind the ribs of the Men of Wolves. Then she unfolded one arm and held out her left hand, asking for the gun back. All she said was:

"I am not bending over to pick those back up."

The woman's eyes are hard and clear. She shrugs, a terse motion. "There's no way you could have realized. So there's no point regretting it. As for Wendel; he knew what he was signing on for and he got what he signed on for. A Good Death.

"You should clear out of here. You and your ... packmate, and anyone else you guys are allied to. We're going to have to torch this place, and I don't like waiting around."

The gunman, still masked and goggled, nods to Melantha. "Was a good shot there. I saw. You want to do something with that talent, you let me know."

Charlotte would tell them that Melantha is already doing something with that talent and that something involves being in a goddamned pack with her and with Erich and she would tell him that if she was really conscious at this point of very much in the world aside from her own pain. Homid she's a teenaged-twenty-something woman whose chest and abdomen have been torn open and the pain is so intense that she can hardly think and she thinks about many things and strangely but this is like the intensity of the noise except it all opens up from her body and she cannot law hands on herself but she does have gourds in her messenger bag and retrieves one and crushes it in her right hand and mixes the dust - poof! - with her own blood.

The worst of the pain eases. Melantha and Erich can feel that in the back of their minds.

She finds an apron, perhaps, with which to cover the remaining evidence of her wounds, and most of the blood and glances at the gunwoman and the gunman and the Melantha, and starts, shaily, heading toward the door.

There's no point regretting it.

But there doesn't have to be a purpose to feelings like regret, like sorrow, like loss. And those are the feelings that Melantha, whose eyes are sparkly and whose eyes are hard, can feel in equal measure. There may not be a point, but that doesn't mean they don't matter. What purpose, for example, do so many things serve? None but pleasure, and joy, and liveliness. These things are blessed, and matter, though they do not have a 'point'.

She slowly, slowly, lowers her firearm to her side. She really doesn't want to shoot anything else tonight. There's already so much blood, and she clicks the safety back on.

"Who are you?" she asks, ignoring the compliment, her shoulders tight, because you want to do something with that talent reminds her of something else entirely. She exhales, keeping her eyes on the leader. "Before you set everything on fire."

This is, quite literally, the best response in the wide spectrum of responses he could have received from Lola. He expected to have to try and avoid being beaten unconscious with the shotgun, or kicked in the crotch, or chased around the parking lot in her car so she could run him over and pin him, then kick him in the head repeatedly.

He actually envisioned that possibility. As a 1970s Schoolhouse Rock-style cartoon, for some reason. Don't ask how the brain works.

But instead, she gives a gruff response and he nods slightly. "Wasn't expecting you to. I've got it."

There is a place on Blake Street, a little gated entrance in front of which sits a man on a stool with his arms crossed over his broad barrel chest. It's a bar, obviously, but it's not like the other bars in the area. The lighted sign above the man's head has a green mushroom cap, and if it looks like the kind of thing seen in most Mario games, that's not a mistake. The sign reads The 1Up. It's a bar, and it's an arcade.

And it's one of Sam's favorite places to go after work. Or after a workout, or after a run. Or after a turn at the shooting range or any of the other dozen things the short kinswoman gets up to in her spare time. She was introduced to this place only a little after she moved to Denver, and she's made a point of hitting it up a few times a month if she can.

At the door they ask for her ID because they always do. It's the curse of being so short for one, and for tending to dress like a punk for the other. Today it's a black shirt that reads in a simple white font "One does not simply Telnet into Mordor" over a pair of boot cut jeans. Her shoes are faded blue high-top Skechers. Her hair is down but tucked behind an ear to reveal the numerous hoops and studs that travel around the outer edge of the cartilage. There are wristbands a plenty on each of her wrists. She doesn't really look like a full grown adult, which is why when she walks up to the man - who is taller than her even sitting - she has her ID at the ready. Her smile when she hands it over is understanding and full of her natural, friendly charm. He looks at the plastic, looks at her, and he can't help a small answering smile that sort of starts to crack that gruff, bouncer exterior, so he looks down again and hands it over.

Down some stairs, through a door, down some more stairs, and finally Sam is into the bar proper. The walls are lined with classic arcade machines. And there's the bar with its walls of liquor, and seating for those who come here to chill, and tables with huge, heavy blocked giant Jenga games, and and and...

Sam smiles, breathes in a deep breath, just like she does every time she comes. It's her favorite place.

[Am I persuasive, this scene? Does the gift work? Will it help me not pay for anything while I'm here?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 3, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Tamsin has never been to the 1-Up before but the name appeals to some homesick part of her. 1-Up is 7-Up is Home and Mom and Bed. The bouncer at the door asks Tamsin for id, too, but she doesn't have it ready, and lofts her porcelain doll fine eyebrows but without a great deal of offense. Her driver's license checks out and says she's from Wisconsin. The picture ain't good - she looks apple-cheeked and too, too shiney, maybe a little bewildered, like she's just a second away from saying 'done?' and the camera flashed just as she was unhinging her jaw to ask the question. The bouncer waves Tamsin in: wolf in sheep's clothing, galliard's moon tucked away and burning behind her ribs, contained by enough will to make it easy enough to kind've sort've fit in, wearing a pair of secondhand leather boots that've seen way, way, way better days, jeans that keep sliding off her hips and a blouse-y peasant-y shirt with red threads winding through it. Wolf in sheep's clothing, right, and she is on the hunt, and what she's on the hunt for is some fun, and also for someone to buy her some food and maybe just maybe for a moment or two of getting completely woozy-brained world-spinning trashed without Hector judging all judge-y judge, and it's with that in mind - with just a little edge, thanks to the spirits, when it comes to convincifying and charming (because wolves are convincifying and charming, see) - that she comes down the stairs and

"Hey, this place is pretty cool," Tamsin says, right-out-loud without even thinking about it. There are some quarters in her pocket--they were for laundry, theoretically, but Calden's place is pretty much set for that kind of stuff, so maybe this is the place to lose her quarters.

Let the adventure begin.

It's early enough that there are people, people like Sam who come here more for the games and a bit of nostalgia than the comeraderie and the Friday night partying, but it's not packed. It'll happen soon enough, but for now there aren't any lines for Street Fighter and the bartenders are still looking a little bored and no one's knocked over one of the Jenga games on accident (yet). It's quiet enough that Sam, on her way to the first stop - booze - can hear the right-out-loud exclamation. She turns a little, looks over her shoulder, smile already blossoming even though she hasn't seen the owner of the voice. It's the smile of a kindred spirit, someone else who thinks that this place is pretty cool, cool enough to lose a lot, and I mean a lot of quarters. Then again, Sam doesn't need quarters to do her laundry.

She sees the woman standing over kind of near the entry place, scoping the place out. Just before she turns away to place her order, Sam tries to scope her out. Not in the way of one looking for their next bedtime partner, but checking as she sometimes does to see if she can recognize the touch of Rage or the hint of wolfishness. She's not as adept at it as some other kin, but then her experience with the shifting ones is relatively limited. There was that time spent in Virginia and DC, but it wasn't a long time, and she didn't get to meet that many people.

Turning away, she turns that smile on the bartender closest. Orders something dark and local.

[percept+PU, diff 7 (assuming she has R4)]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

There is a hint of (low-simmer, simmer, simmer - ) wolf isn't there. The shepherd usually notices the wolf eventually: just it takes a while sometimes. Doesn't it. There're good wolves and there're bad wolves. Tamsin - well. Tamsin looks innocent enough, right. Dark hair that's not red but's burnished just the same, especially once she strolls over to the arcade games lining the walls and gets illumined by the flashing lights of PAC*MAN BATTLE ROYALE and PUNCH-OUT! and aw yeah Mortal Kombat and she stops in front of Paperboy, forehead crinkling in amused tolerance, like she doesn't quite get the appeal.

But who knows. Innocence isn't always obvious, is it.

Tamsin has her hands in her pockets and there's a guy playing Leap For Your Life who she starts to watch. He is completely oblivious though a friend who'd been yawning and looking over at the bar in a speculative you-want-to-share-fries sort of way notices and you can just see that he's going to say hey that girl was checking you out as soon as she goes away.

The Fianna doesn't go away though until the first guy washes out and then she flirts shamelessly [there's an edge (but who doesn't like an edge)], ending with a sweet and grinny, "Hey bet you two drinks a girl wins the next game of Double Dragon, what d'you say?"

Then once she's locked down her target she bites the inside of her lip, side-smiling all hopeful, and turns to examine the bar.

Sam's alone, so Sam's who she waves to -- hoping to catch the punk's eye. The guy says: "Friend of yours? I warn you, I'm a master at Double Dragon," and Tamsin says, "I'm sure you are."

Sam seems innocent enough, as well, despite the clothes, the accessories, the thick thick eye make-up that makes her dark blue eyes seem a little darker. Her smile is all winning and friendly. The 'tenders greet her by name, and when she makes her order they make suggestions based on her previous visits. They're learning her tastes and what she likes, which might look like the first clues to a problem but really isn't. People don't forget someone like Sam, someone who's nice and treats them like they matter. She gets a glass of something dark and foamy and she stays a little bit longer while someone tells her about their friend. She's a good listener, is Sam Evans.

Normally once she's gotten her drink she'd turn and eye the machines like she's trying to pick her next dance partner. Instead, tonight she looks for the wolf-girl she saw, innocent with that touch of Rage. The look is helped by the fact the girl is waving to her, trying to catch her attention. With a curious tilt of her head, Sam heads over in that direction. She looks at the girl, brows tight and eyes questioning, trying to see if she can figure out just what she's walking into before she gets all the way over there.

[can we have one of those unspoken conversations of the EYES? oh plz plz: let's say, percept+expression?]

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

[Oh you lookin worried there. Let's say Char+Exp (or, hm, Empathy? either way same pool -1 diff 'cos gift) for Let Me LOOK You My Plan Before I Just Reveal it.]

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

Tamsin can't help but notice [because these things are things that she notices the way a nicotine addict notices that whiff of cigarette smoke in an alleyway when the smokers're long gone and the breeze is still] Sam's shirt. Her smile - this wry, promise-y thing right now, a joke-y thing - widens a little. Tarnishes up some luminosity in the ol' eyes, but Tamsin doesn't let a t-shirt logo cause her to accidentally scope out a lady's rack. Sam gives Tamsin an expressive look, and the corners of Tamsin's eyes crinkle reassuringly. There is a little half-roll toward the guys, and a lilt to her now less wry and more open smile that promises (still with the promises, the bribery) nothing but fun.

"Hey," she says, when Sam's near enough: "This is Jess and James, like the famous no-good train-robbing gang-leading outlaw bastard, but split into two nice guys one of which apparently rocks the socks off of Double Dragon."

"You look cool; play me? I'll fund the enterprise." Jingle-jangle, hand in pocket. Tamsin looks just a touch pleading: "Please."

Sam can tell what Tamsin is, but there's no way for Tam to know that Sam is part of the old extended fam. There is no breeding to catch the senses, and nothing about her appearance that shouts out a tribal affiliation. It doesn't give Sam much in the way of upper hands, knowing that the person she's walking toward could shift in an instant and clear this whole place out. Except, well, knowing that could happen makes her a little bit prepared for the possibility. But Tamsin notices her, anyway, notices that shirt, too, which covers a particularly curvy rack.

She moves her left hand to rest at the edge of her messenger bag, where the strap meets the pouch. When she stops her feet are planted just a little apart, weight more or less distributed evenly between them. It's a casual pose, but a ready one, because her dad taught her to always be ready.

"Really?" she asks, looking between the two boys once Tamsin's introduced them. "Sam," she says by way of her greeting. "And I've been known to rock the socks and shoes off Double Dragon in my day." Translation: Gauntlet Thrown.

However it's Tamsin who asks to play, not the boy. She grins. "Sure, but I get to be Billy."

There were some places that just drew a crowd, places of import or whimsy, places of imagination or necessity. To some people, the 1Up bar and arcade were both these things.To the woman named Argo it was neither, not yet anyways, she was to new to this city, its tenuous position between a rock and a hard place something that just drew her in. But she'd heard of this place, heard of it through the digital grape vine and had, on a whim, decided it was as good a place as any for a drink.

The bouncer had been no problem, the gift she used was unnecessary, but she did it anyways. Some folks were just turned off by her appearance, and one could not blame them. Argo was a woman of less then pleasing sensory input, what was once a woman of pleasant appearance was now....something else. She smelled of smoke and oil, metal and heat, her hair wild and unkempt like someone who'd not showered for days...yet her skin was clean. Her face was a mess, scars running up and down the one side of her face, the weary look within her large dull green eyes only made her less approachable.

She moved languidly, first to the bar to get herself a tall pint of beer, and then as she moved about the bar, looking this way and that. She wore simple clothing, a pair of black cargo pants and a black sleeveless shirt that was so close to wife beater it was almost funny, except it didn't seem to be an ironic statement, simply....a fact.

It was Jess who'd claimed to be a master and he laughs a little sheepishly when [Charming] Sam joins the mix. "Well all right then! All right. Though uh, I've never managed to successfully rob a train, I did once borrow a Trainspotting dvd from a roommate without asking."

He looks the punk-girl over, then eyes James, who's containing himself and not barely. James is one of those guys who is deadpan about everything, whose friends have mostly known him for a long time. He's not maladjusted, he's just a creature of habit with a certain sense of humor best appreciated by those who've become used to it. James has figured out what Jess hasn't: that there's no way he's not going to owe two drinks to the girl with burnished hair and a smile.

Tamsin is a lot less serious when she is surrounded by people. Just people who expect her to be just people too. Every now and then she'll start to get all serious and grave again - but that's when she goes hunting for places like 1Up for to lose herself in mindlessness for a little while. Jess and James, they don't expect anything, and Sam doesn't [as far as Tamsin Hall knows] expect anything either.

"Give me a man in a red any day," Tamsin says, "and I'll turn that red-jumpsuit wearing weirdo into an ultimate badass."

It's when she's dropping quarters in, little gleaming metal Moons, and they've taken their places, that Tamsin says to Sam, "Oh! Um, I'm Tamsin."

"So you've tried," Sam responds regarding attempted train robberies, brows lifting and for a moment it almost seems like she's serious. But then her face is relaxing into that smile again, and Jess knows he's being teased. It's easy, both as far as challenges go and in her demeanor. Sam is nice, she is charming, she is harmless.

And Sam, as they head over to the machine, she hangs a little back, lets Tamsin get ahead of her just a little. She puts herself automatically between the wolf and the boys who have likely noticed the Rage. It gives them a breather for a moment, a little opening to get the feel of it off their skin. And then they're crowding around to the sides of the women. "Hold this," she says to Jess who's come around to her side. If he's going to stand there watching, he's going to make himself useful. As a cup holder.

Tamsin feeds the coins into the machine and for the moment, at least, Sam doesn't notice the scary, dirty looking woman coming down into the bar proper. She looks like she belongs in a regular bar, the kind of place where truckers and Hell's Angels go to drink and sing to old country songs on the juke box. That's just going by her appearance, though. One never knows what habits and hobbies a person might have beneath their exterior. Just look at Sam. She looks like a rebel-type, which she is definitely. She's rallied against the man, she's fought a little, she's cracked codes to bring down empires. But she's neither sullen nor angry as was once the stereotype.

So, Sam doesn't notice the newcomer, but she might notice Tamsin with her little bit of Fianna bloodline coloring the air around them like a soft, gentle fog.

With the boys so close, Sam can't lean in to Tamsin, can't tell her that she knows what she is, and here is what she is, and make with the introductions. So she smiles at Tamsin, sunny and warm. Then it's game time.

[Do I Notice Cool Scarred-Up Chick?!]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 6) ( success x 2 )

"We've played Ticket to Ride a lot. There was maybe some robbery involved." Jess accepts his new role as cupholder with decent grace. He tries to telegraph something to James with his eyes and James who can read him really plain just snorts a laugh and folds his arms, bracing himself like he's rooted in his new place. He's watching too, see. "Yeah," James says, blunt and to the point. "You hid some'a my pieces under the board."

"That's a dick move, Jess," Tamsin says, "not very outlaw glamourous, not very worthy of remembrance forever-after and a day."Then: the game starts. All nostalgically hilarious graphics, all dun dun DUN, just when you think you can punch and steal a woman off the street a garage door rolls up and two dudes in jump suits " - are those actually jumpsuits? They maybe look kind of like - well I don't know. Garbage-men suits but colorful - " - rock out and start kicking ass. The game is on in all its glory.

To those who've got the eyes to see there is something faint but mythic [stag's blood, stag's heroes, stag's Greatness: Fianna] about Tamsin Hall. Tamsin Hall who when she first discovered that her tribe was evident because of this subliminal thing, this sixth-sense, this - this whatever it is - this reaction that the garou have to one another had been angry and then wondering, because the stories, see, the stories about fairies, the tales about honor and honor in cunning and brave-words, and it was real. It was really, really real? This is a hint of brightness, see, just a hint like when there's a promise of rain in the air but no clouds in sight.

Maybe Tamsin's just edgy, considering things, maybe it's the edge she's hoping to blunt with some free booze, but the moment Argo's profile is briefly flashed, Tamsin notices her. Notices the scars, because you start to look for them instead of flinching your eyes away like it's rude to see, one you're in the business of remembering why scars exist and reminding others why scars exist and - so right - a moment of distraction after a half-glance toward the bar, guaging what she's gonna order. Then she pulls her eyes back to the game, a prickle between her shoulderblades.

[I'M SORRY SHAY I SKIPPED YOU BECAUSE IN MY HEAD MY OTHER POST WAS BEFORE YOURS.]

It might be noted that Argo doesn't smile, not when she went and asked for her drink, and not when she moved through the bar's seating area with her drink in hand, despite the fact that she drew attention enough, even if it wasn't the most positive kind. She truly did look like she belonged in one of those decrept bars filled with outlaws and dissidents, the sort of place where the alone come to be apart of something...but still alone.

She moves out of the bar's seating area smoothly enough, not a glance spared to any of the other patrons and steps towards the rows of games both old and new. It is here, and here alone that a smile, imperfect as it is, spreads across her lips. Her teeth give you that 'british' feeling, some of her teeth pressed against each other, but overall it was simply...imperfect. She smiled as let one hand run along the edge of a pac-man game and she strolled on through the machines like an art lover at a gallery of classics.

It is about now that she starts to draw up on the group standing before the ancient and venerable Double Dragon console, and those who can feel it, though they sense no pure breeding about the woman, can feel the echo of rage...barely present...but there none the less. Those dull green eyes flicker upward and regard Tamsin for several long moments as the woman shifts the weight from one foot to the other....waiting...considering.

[oh hey, totally forgot about this as usual: nightmares]

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

If the situation were set up a little differently Sam might try to read into that look that's passed between friends. But, one hand on a joystick, the other with fingertips resting on buttons, she's leaned a little forward and her attention's on the screen. And it's really easy to look at people over the top of her head, which barely comes to most people's shoulders. So she misses that look and what it might imply.

"How do you even do that?" she asks completely seriously. "Wouldn't the board bump up?" It should be noted that Sam isn't the best at flirting except sometimes when it flows all easy. If they're flirting she misses it, particularly if this is one of those macho types of flirting where they try to sound tough and talk smack at each other. Sam never really understood that sort of flirting, and never found herself attracted to men who engaged in it.

"It's a, um," she starts to answer Tamsin, but frowns and stops because here come some bad guys who need a good karate chop. "They're those karate uniforms, I think. Except all ripped and shredded because apparently in the post-apocalypse they don't have tailors."

If there's Rage creeping up on them now, it doesn't really register to Sam. She's small but tough, able to withstand the heat of some of the mightest Garou's Rage most of the time.

[do i notice Scar Lady?: alert +2diff for distraction]

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 5, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Jess is flirting. James, he's a little more mysterious. He's definitely giving Jess shit for his ineptitude, this goading smugness tucked away behind a not-quite-smirk. He says, "Well," just as seriously, "it's mostly a lot of cards, really. You girls ever play an Ameritrash game?" James is going to remember that pick-up line forever, and he is going to mock Jess for that line forever and that day the young woman who brought these people together predicted earlier. James is the first one to sort of display signs of edginess, though you'd think it might be Jess - it's just this fleeting discomfort and more rage closes in.

Sam is shorter than Tamsin. This endears Sam to Tamsin who wishes - who often wishes - that she'd been blessed with taller genes. Among other things. Tamsin who is to the best of her ability keeping a wary, wary eye on someone who's behind her (it's more an Awareness, a hypothetical paranoia, than an actual eye) is one of those people who plays arcade games with a lot of movement. Not twitchy movement, but she leans in hard, presses this button or jerks that joystick hard. But she doesn't plant her feet on the ground for added stability - she goes up on the balls of her feet almost tip-toeing like that'll help sometimes.

She shakes her head at the ameritrash game comment, focus, focus, focus. "Oh," she says to Tam, after another badguy swarm. "Right! Gis!" She bites the inside of her lip--leanin, leantotheleft, stomp!, and then with a laugh: "D'you think those gis were more expensive than, like, the standard? Kinda like distressed jeans? Shit, I could distress some jeans…"

Here, there is the swallow of a melancholy sigh: because she needs money. Her pack needs money. Money is a thing they need so they can get a real live place. Hector's not going to be any good at that. Jack, well, maybe, but Tamsin doesn't want to rely on just Jack. So that means she'll have to think of something. Lola and Calden are great, but -

and maybe it's thinking about her kin that has her looking over her shoulder again, or maybe it's the double-take flinch-grimace that Jess does when he sees Argo's face.

Maybe this is when at least one of the Double Dragons gets k.o.'ed and then DEAD.

ooc: Er, it's Jess talking in that first paragraph. Not James, sorry for the unclearness.

Sam doesn't spot Argo immediately, engrossed in the game as she was. Neither does Tamsin, but slowly but surely the others begin to notice, first it was Jess, catching the 5'9 woman out of the corner of his eye, and then perhaps James, and then in the end Tamsin herself. Argo simply stood there, her legs spread ever so slightly, and the cold glass of beer held in one hand as the other hung limply at her side.

She regarded each individual silently before a dry smirk crackled along her lips and she nodded to them, speaking in a soft...but strong voice. "Your dying..." She said with a waggle of one finger. "Better pay attention." Her voice deepened in that moment as she strode closer and looked into the screen, almost inside of the others personal space.

"This game...it loves to chew you up and spit you out." Her tone is reverential, a smile spreading across her dry lips as she looked at Tam and Sam, and then to the others as well. "But you know that don't you?"

[are you a good witch, or a bad witch? empathy!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1

Jess asks if they've ever played an Ameritrash game and Sam, her eyes sort of flutter and then they roll, and then she's watching the screen again, headed for the pixelated knife on the ground. She shakes her head, no and also something else all at once. He sort of almost had her at We've played a lot of [boardgame], because Sam hasn't gotten to play a lot of board games in a while. Board games tend to call for more than one player, and Sam's life has been more or less stuck in Single Player mode for most of the last few years.

She notices the woman, too, or rather she notices the effect she has on those around her. As the girls are playing their game, more people are coming down into the bar looking for booze or games or whatever. Sam notices the shift in James, a way over on Tamsin's side. Her eyes shift toward him and she sort of almost kind of angles her head - don't look directly, she was taught, when you notice things aren't right - so that she can see the woman with the scars. Sam doesn't see her that clearly, she doesn't see the scars on her face or much of her body, even, but she knows she's there.

It's Sam's guy who gets KO'd. By Tamsin's. When the Galliard turns away and hits a button and just stabs Sam right in the back. Sam lets out a groan that's lightened by her smile. She's not a sore loser, not by a long shot.

She's just turning to Tamsin, about to nudge her to remind her that she's still going, when suddenly the other woman is there, leaning close to their space. Sam sees the person who has been making her new friends uncomfortable, and she frowns at her. The scars that mar her face, Sam doesn't mind those. She's seen much worse.

Her head tilts as she looks at the woman, considering her and her veneer of bristly sarcasm. The corner of her mouth lifts suddenly, making her smile lopsided. "You wanna play?" she asks, stepping aside just as Billy blue man respawns on the screen behind her. Including the woman.

Jess's fingers tighten on his - uh, Sam's - drink reflexively. He tries to play it cool, though, play it with swagger, though it's obvious he thinks that Argo's a little strange, or maybe he's just still reacting to her ugly face. He'll get over it. Maybe it's just the but you know that, don't you? "We're, uh, still talking about Double Dragon, right? heh, heh," he says, and James rolls his eyes at Jess and gives Argo a nod. He stares a little, but does a much better job at pretending he's not.

Tamsin bites the side of her lip again, scraping her teeth across the corner and flicking an apologetic look Sam's way: Oops.This is one of those he knows and she knows and she knows that she knows but she doesn't know that she knows moments. Tamsin looks at Argo and she reads rage in her linaments reads rage in her stars and lots of things have rage but Argo doesn't seem like a bad guy, and there're those scars. Tamsin looks at Argo, dark smoulder-gaze slipping down like ash-drifting, then flitting up all spark-twirl, just trying to illuminate the truth, right, to set it down in story-of-now, and she has no idea that the girl beside her knows that she's a wolf inside a girl and a girl inside a wolf. Has no idea that the girl beside her, stepping back away from the console to let the scarred woman step-up, is part of this world too, and more: has cottoned on to the fact that Tamsin is. And Argo. And Argo knows that Tamsin's got that Fianna somethin' somethin', feels that rage, but does Argo know that -- you see. It's one of those scenes. The boys just know that it's going to make a good story, and Jess thinks he might have half-a-shot and if James plays it cool maybe he has half-a-shot too.

But you know that, don't you? Jess gets his ding in. Sam says, Wanna play? Tamsin, firmly - and with meaning: "Yeah." Beat. "Play with me while Jess and James go get me my two drinks."

Here, a flash of a grin - it shouldn't disturb them, but they're on edge; they're not disturbed by it, but they're still a little restless - smile back, but restless, restless, and then Jess is gawking, like, shit! and tries to offer her Sam's, which she does not take.

They sat at the Fulcrum of the moment, two roads diverged in a yellow wood as Robert Frost would say, things could have gone bad, the stares never helped, and the woman before them was bristly indeed, her nature, her very personality seemed ready for conflict at any moment, if she felt it was the thing to do at the time. She looks at Jess, looks at him directly and asks. "What...never seen roadkill before?" Her tone filled with caustic sarcasm as she cracked a smirk.

Oh how it could have gone wrong....but then Sam, dear energetic Sam stepped up to the plate and saved the day. She did the simplest of things, she offered Argo a place amongst the group, and the tall dark woman surveyed the smaller punkish kinfolk and then, offered her a small, oh so small smile before nodding.

"Sounds good." She said as she stepped up, her gaze still upon the kinswoman for a few long moments, an intent look held there before she looked at Tamsin and smirked once more. "Watch where you point that pig sticker eh? I like my back unperferated." She said as she took ahold of the joystick and started in. Her beer finding a place on the floor, next to her booted foot.

"Time to kick ass and chew bubble gum kids. Anyone got gum?"

In this instance, Sam probably knows the most of any of them. She knows that these women are wolves, one of them more battle-hardened than most. They know what each other are, but they don't know what Sam is, except for this: Sam is friendly and charming and welcoming. She saw that this wolf had this crusty, bristling armor and she didn't question it. She doesn't poke at it or try to strip it away or assure the woman that this is a safe place. What she does is include her in the group.

And when the woman starts snarking at the boy-toys, Sam sidesteps a little. She is shorter by nearly a foot than anyone in the room, and she makes herself a shield between Garou and human, not to protect him, but to protect her, Argo. From losing her temper and causing a scene. Tamsin tells the boys to go get her the drinks they owe her. When Jess tries to hand her Sam's drink, the kinswoman doesn't miss a beat. She turns a little and takes it from him. "Thanks, man. We'll still be here when you get back." Subtle, but firm, with a charming smile to top it off. The boys are being told to scram.

The look she gets from Argo is met squarely, and she shrugs. What? Then the woman is turning to take up Sam's character's place and asking about gum.

Sam smirks. "Just ran out yesterday."

Jess's eyes fill up with caught-out trouble when Argo's causticity hits him. His voice goes a little soft and his shoulders go a little straight and he protests. Not very well - just - he protests: "I, ah," like he doesn't know what to say, "uh, it's not," but Sam saves that too, and if Sam hadn't saved it James probably would've - well, maybe. James seems to like to watch his friend flail around in awkward social situations. James gives Sam and Tamsin a jerk of his chin and says "we will be back." Jess tamps down on the urge to keep apologizing, letting himself get angry instead, and he says, "right." Then: the boys are firmly, but charmingly, dismissed to go acquire drinks, and that's what they do.

Now, Tamsin hasn't noticed how deftly Sam is coraling the humans away from garou [sheep-dog instead of shepherd, maybe, and wouldn't a sheep-dog spy the wolf first anyway?], or at least not consciously - but maybe there's something to the fact that she isn't immediately trying to figure out a way to friendlily send the punk-woman off over there so she can have a talk with the scarred up woman and size her up proper.

"You're smooth," she tells the kin, with another quick burnt-ash laugh, and then it's back to the epic journey that is Double Dragon, eyes on the game, eyes on the prize. "And don't worry, the pig-sticker is mostly for vile street scum and servants of destruction. Sorry, Sam, but Billy is a more sinister name than Jimmy. You guys ever know an evil Jimmy?"

Time to kick ass and chew bubble gum, kids: that gets a smile. The kind that makes her ears go up, see.

So the door opens and in comes two kids that you know, you just know were in some Abercrombie & Fitch ad somewhere. They are tall, and they are blond, and they are tanned, and the boy is broad of shoulder and hard of body, and the girl is just skinny enough, bird-wristed enough, to be chic. Though, she's not dressed for a runway.

And neither is the boy, really. He is wearing blue jeans and he is wearing a t-shirt that advertises something in spanish and he has a pair of aviator sunglasses atop his head, which makes him look douchier than he actually is.

He's midsentence (something about if you keep feeding all those pigeons they will CRAP ALL OVER THE TINYHOUSE) when he breaks off and points right at the Double Dragon machine that Everyone Else (tm) is playing on and yells:

"I'M CALLING NEXT GAME AGAINST THE WINNER."

No, Charlotte's not dressed for a runway. She's wearing an old SPRITE t-shirt that is green and yellow and faded and since returning to the land of the living or at least of the USA where pink hair dye is readily available well, Charlotte's hair is tipped in bright pink again. She has a bracelet made of hempen rope around her right wrist and another of beads around her left and she got long, spare lines and sharply articulated bones and pale, pale blue eyes and she has an aura of distraction about her and Erich's complaining of the pigeons and Charlotte is telling him to put up an upside down umbrella or something and her hair is longer than it was and loose and she sometimes walks with a rolling gait and sometimes wishes the sidewalk moved and she doesn't quite belong here, not really but she walks in after Erich anyway setting her shoulders and gritting her teeth as she surveys the place with a sweeping, wary glance.

An errant shiver ripples up her spine, like there are spiders just crawling through her hair.

So Charlotte frowns and shoves her fists into the pockets of her jeans and keeps watching and follows in Erich's wake like an eccentric little satellite.

She's not challenging anyone to any of these games. She's not touching them, not even with a knee or the back of an elbow.

Nothing unusual (especially) about her to the kinfolk except for her scrawny wariness, but to Tamsin, well. She must look like Arwen, like Galadriel, her breeding a coronal flare all around her, impossible to ignore.

Poor Jess, caught out on his staring doesn't really seem to know what to do, he stammers at first, and then he walks off with James, flustered and unhappy. It doesn't seem to register for the woman as she started into the game the joystick moving quickly and surely, buttons tapped to stab and punch, kick and throw. She gets around behind one of the enemies and holds him in place for Tamsin to beat up on, grinning in that crooked smirking sort of way the whole time.

"Sure did." She says with that self same smirk aimed at Tamsin. "Jimmy the Glitch....what an asshole." She chuckles as the guy she was holding goes down, and she moves on, looking for others. Her eyes flicker from the screen to Sam for a moment before she spoke to the kinswoman.

"You must have a pretty big collection." She says this, but never finishes as some blonde guy yells down the aisle about playing the winner, which draws something of a sneer from the woman before she shook her head.

Tamsin tells her she's smooth and Sam grins and shrugs in that way that is the modern form of a bow or curtsy. One might almost expect her to tip a wide brimmed hat and say something like Just doin' my job, ma'am. This is what she does, this kinswoman. She clears space so that werewolves don't have weak-willed humans freaking out all around them, possibly starting up fights they couldn't possibly win.

Now, it's about the time that the tall and broad and blond man and the bird-thin blonde girl head through the bar, beelining for the Double Dragon machine, that it might become apparent that Sam is Not Your Average Human. As short as she is, one might expect her to balk and turn and flee right about the time they come upon the group. But though Rage gets piled on top of Rage, Sam just wraps one arm beneath her breasts, leaving the other free to hold her drink, and leans against the side of the machine, watching as the werewolves start mowing through bad guys.

She looks up briefly, greeting the strangers with an upward nod and a smile. "It'll take a while," she says. "Wanna pass the time on Mortal Kombat?" She pushes off from the side of the machine and gestures with a nod of her head toward the machine on her other side. This to Erich, of course, not Charlotte, who is trying not to touch anything.

Of course Charlotte doesn't like this place. It's all machines and flashing lights and weird artificial noises and how could any of this not be infested with Spiders. But Erich moves ahead, oblivious or immune or perhaps -- maybe -- attuned to some primal undercurrent of pure joy, pure enjoyment beneath all the webbing. Crowds part for him like the red sea; he's grown so accustomed to it he doesn't even notice it anymore, and

oh, soon enough he's there at the coveted machine, eyeing Tamsin openly. His mouth opens. Oh god, here comes the Line. Except:

"So, you with the Crescent or the Question?"

-- has got to be the weirdest Line ever. And then, whup! Someone else talks to him. He turns, looks for the voice, finds it. Thinks a moment.

"Is there something multiplayer? So my friend can play too." He jerks a thumb at Charlotte.

Tamsin is considering whether or not she could get away with a did he do that to your face in regards to Jimmy the Glitch who is an asshole and Argo the scarred-up. The moment passes; Tamsin decides to be discreet and valorous, rather than bold and reckless. Fog's influence, maybe - fog's string-playing, do this, be this way. But Tamsin wants to know. Wants, wants, wants to know, even if - especially if - it's some sad before-Change story. It looks so bad. It's given Argo that permanent - is it permanent? - curl to her lip, spirit and flesh and bone, right? She wants to know. She wants wants wants wants to know. She's trying not to focus too much on how badly she wants to know and to play the game and soon there'll be whatever drinks the boys get and maybe she will actually share one of them with her co-victor, but likely not.

Then here comes a blonde guy in a bar hollering on a Friday night and Tamsin doesn't realize it's directed at the Double Dragon crew at first, not until Sam replies, and then - okay, then Tamsin officially starts sucking at Double Dragon and poor Jimmy of the red apocalyptically chic gi gets bashed by a bad guy. It isn't the guy who's got Fenrir's history on his shoulders [heroic], but his companion who - yes. Does remind Tamsin of an elf: whose presence eases - subtly, so subtly Tamsin doesn't even get that it's happening - something tight in Tamsin's shoulders, some lingering what-if-bad-things-start-happening-right-now-and-these-humans-and-that-nice-girl-get-involved, because even if they do it'll turn out fine with something that full of hope and greatness around. Right?

She wants to know these stories too, see. Wants, wants, wants, with every wistful don't be shy don'tbeshy beat of her heart. Damn it. Tamsin bites on the inside of her lip, and then looks directly at Erich 'cause Erich's the one who's talking. And it's a weird line, but hey, this game's already witnessed the Ameritrash boardgames line not to mention Argo's line, so it's in keeping with the weird wth tradition.

"Neither officially. Not yet. You ever hear of Celduin?" If he says no, she says: "You will," with a grin. In the not THAT likely event he actually says yes, she looks completely gleeful. "I'm Tamsin."

"And yeah, too bad there's not a - " quick-count " - five player game."

Easy for humans to imagine they're related - blond hair, pale blue eyes, well proportioned. Even Charlotte, spare as she is, has a physical grace about her, an animal athleticism that her wariness only heightens. In here, with all these noises and all these people and all these electronics that all dovetails bad into this wary little dance that as delicate and fine and precise as the way one of the great raptors backwings and closes its claws around a branch that does not seem large enough to hold its weight.

Though she seems more sparrow than raptor ask her and Charlotte will tell you that sparrows were dinosaurs and even sparrows remember when they rended meat from the bones of their prey.

Or at least, you know, grass seeds.

Since some of them were vegetarians. She went to the Smithsonian. She was in DC. She knows these things.

But see: arms crossed, knock-kneed.

"No." and forceful, when she wants to be. When Erich is threatening her with getting spider webbing all over her hands. "I don't wanna play. I'll - " and her look is sort of flailing but then she gets that this is a bar and bars have drinks and - "I'll get something to drink. You want a cerveza or a Grand Marnier?"

So there's quite a Sophie's Choice, Erich.

Tamsin and her grin and and her you will earn a rather shy little half smile and wiggling wave of Charlotte's fingers. Nails are painted a color called melonberry and we can all guess what that looks like. Maybe.

Doesn't quite introduce herself. Not yet.

Argo is a shadow next to the brightness of Charlotte and Erich, one might expect to hear the songs of heroes in their words, to feel the drum beat of history in each step, Charlotte far more so then anyone Argo had seen or met in a very..very long time. She shifts uncomfortably, rolling her shoulders before cranking her neck to one side with a pop of vertebrae. That smirk flashes at Tamsin as the woman starts to lose, and with the swarm of bad guys on the screen the Glass Walker can only hold the horde at bay for so long before she too...has lost.

"Game over man..." She says before reaching down to drag up her glass of beer and take a drink, her lean body turning to lounge against the sturdy weight of the Double Dragon console as she licks her lips and watches the newcomers, who really...were only newer then her by fractions.

"They only like you as much as you like them." She says to Charlotte as she turns, the comment speaking of her desire not to play. She then looks around, the rage that filters off her body a minor, infinitesimal thing next to Erichs but present none the less.

"Five player arcades don't exist, unless you count a row of racers." She said with a shrug. "Best your gonna get..is four." She pats Double Dragon then lovingly. "But the best are always with two."

"Well..." Erich slides a glance at Charlotte, decides convincing her otherwise is a lost cause, and switches tack. "Maybe there's an air hockey table? We can play three-on-two." He nudges Charlotte with his elbow. "I bet me 'n Charlotte can take you three."

No answer about cerveza or Grand Marnier, though.

[you alright, Charlotte?: empathy (emotional states)]

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

"You can see the Crescent from my balcony," says Sam, and lo and behold, the kinswoman reveals her nature at last. Or does she? Certainly being part of the Nation, albeit one without a drop of Rage, is a part of her nature. There's much more to her than that, though.

Of the lot of them, Sam is the only one who doesn't respond to Charlotte's overwhelming pure breeding. She doesn't have the sense for it, but that doesn't mean she doesn't notice her. Charlotte says No and offers to get a beer for her friend. Sam tilts her head at her, watching her, brows tensing into the slightest of thoughtful looking frowns. Her eyes flick to the scarred woman, to Tamsin, to Erich, and finally, when they return to Charlotte, her mouth quirks.

"There's a giant Jenga table out on the patio. That's multi-player. Ish." And a little more open, with a little more air. She doesn't know Charlotte's discomfort is with the presence of the Weaver and not the closeness of the crowd, but either way, Outside would take her away from both. And get her away from Argo.

"I'm Sam," she adds, stopping with still some distance between herself and the Theurge and the huge huge huge Ahroun. The smile with which she looks up at the both of them is warm and charming.

Er. Charlotte is nervous and alarmed and alert. There's an edge of paranoia to her around all these electronics but she's mostly keeping that under wraps. She not really sane or ... you know, so all of the stimulation is a bit overwhelming but her forceful little no was probably a proud moment for her since she stood up to someone a little bit and when Erich nudges her elbow she's going to smile, especially when he says they can take him on, because she TOTALLY believes in Erich, like hero-worshippy levels of belief.

So: yes, she is mostly okay? even if the whole place makes her feel like she's wrapped in spider webbing.

Charlotte holds herself so still when Erich nudges her because she does not want to be jostled into one of the machines. She has an iPhone and she likes her iPhone and she takes pictures with it of Things she sees and inundates her poor brother with them and soon will be inundating Melantha (or perhaps, already is) but she doesn't want to touch these things, which are much larger and do not take pictures.

But see: the way she nudges him back and cuts her eyes back up at the Shadow Lord. Like: yeah, we can take you on. But also, sotto voce, a knot of puzzlement between her brows. " - can you skate on air?" Mostly just for Erich.

But also, a pale eyed glance at Sam, who also gets a little wave. "I'm Charlotte. That's Erich."

"Strange, isn't it - " she comments, on a lack of five player arcades. "Five's such a good number, y'know? For teams and things. Not as good as [insert whatever number the Fellowship of the Rings has, Jess isn't a fan and doesn't know off the top of her head and is too lazy to mentally count], but still very good."

Jenga? - Tamsin's expression clouds with doubt. Just a little bit of doubt. Is Jenga - even Giant Jenga - as fun as potentially totally obliterating the ass of some Fenrir boy (or, she will perhaps concede, getting her own ass oblite - nah, actually, no concession) at a game? Jenga is more like a riddle-game. Riddle-games are fun, but - but is she patient? Tamsin searches her soul for the answer to this question, and while she's searching her soul her eyes wander back toward those two boys from not-all-that-long-ago and the two drinks a-waiting next to Jess's elbow while nerve is not got up to come back on over.

Tamsin is easily lured into passionate enthusiasm for contests, see. And so: "I will take that bet. I'll take any bet, anywhere, air hockey table or arcade game, outside or inside, but um - first I'm going to go collect my drinks. I'll meet you."

Where-ever.

ooc: ahem. let's make tht - "Not as good as nine, but still very good."

Erich raises his hand as his name is given. Yup. That's Erich. Strapping upper-midwestern boy, all blue eyes and biceps, blond hair, north-euro descent. Fenrir boy. Yup.

And sidebar back to Charlotte: "No, you just play it on a table. It's not as exciting as it sounds." He's long since stopped being surprised by the narrowness of Charlotte's exposure to pop culture.

"I'm down to Jenga too," he adds. "Actually, let's do Jenga. I bet Charlotte'll kick ass at that."

There was talk of air hockey or giant jenga, and while the latter sounds interesting, Argo had come here for a reason. She shook her head at the offer of other games and gestured to the machines that surrounded them. "As much fun as giant 3D puzzles are...I'll stick with these." She said as she looked at member of their would be group in turn and then shook her head.

"My name is Argo....for the record." At that the woman turned and seemed ready to go, to disappear amongst the stacks of the ancient machines. "Don't forget your helmets, gotta watch out for those giant falling blocks." She says with a wave over her shoulder as she started to stroll of down the aisle.

"I probably will," Charlotte agrees, when Erich says that he bets she'll kick ass at that and she says it so solemnly and so wide-eyed and so steadily that it has the feeling of owlish prophecy to it. Like she's figuring out that she probably will kick ass or perhaps, more likely, she believes almost anything Erich tells her, or is disposed to believe it, especially when it seems like praise. Or something close to it.

Argo receives a ... survey. Wide-eyed and steady see as she announces her intention to keep playing video games. Charlotte thinks that Argo probably has spiders crawling in spiders crawling on spiders, an endless recursive loop of spiders and that gives her a little shiver as she watches the stranger start to leave.

"Do you at least get sticks?" she inquires of Erich. Then informs him, "Charles played hockey."

Shake-of-head: "You get these little round things you hold. I'll show you later. C'mon! Jenga first! Do you know how to play?"

Air hockey would be good, or skeeball maybe, but those aren't outside on the patio, in the open clear warm air of the evening. And that's the thing Sam wants to get Charlotte to the most, clear open air.

Tamsin is going to go get her drinks from the boys from earlier, boys Sam hadn't really forgotten about, per se, but what interest could she have in humans once they've left the dangerous collection of Rage? She turns a little though when Tamsin looks that way, lifts up onto the balls of her feet to sort of see through a break in the crowd. She offers them a wry grin and the shrug of a shoulder, the shrug probably below their line of vision.

"Are you sure?" she asks of the scarred woman, brows lifted and head tilting, inviting her to join them or at least letting her know the invitiation is there, on the table, ready for her to take should she change her mind. Truthfully, Sam would probably prefer to play more video games herself, but more important than that is the comeraderie. The last time she was able to really be social with werewolves had been that Beltane bonfire at the end of spring, and a little at the Solstice, but not really.

She looks around their little group of four, maybe five. When her eyes land on Erich her eyes land at about the level of his collar bone, taking in the width of his shoulders, considering. Then her dark blue eyes lift and she smiles. "You can do the honors. It's that way," she says, lifting back up onto the balls of her feet to point above and through the crowd. The door leading outside isn't immediately apparent, it just sort of looks like another hallway. A hallway to air and freedom.

"Okay. Jenga first," Tamsin says, the first being a 'we'll see maybe later' sort of thing, and she fixes her eyes on Argo when she casually begins to wander-off, says, "Tempt, tempt? Stay and play a little," and then repetition like a chorus an impression and an emphasis: "I'll meet you."

Then: Tamsin really does vanish off to the bar. For now.

"Of course I do!" lies Charlotte, rolling her eyes ever so faintly, with a certain degree of over-convincing enthusiasm. Though really, she thinks probably, if it is a giant puzzle game all being a puzzle she can probably figure it out. Most everything a theurge does is a puzzle, a half-hidden door here, a knot there, a stitched together memory threaded with the blood from a salamander's heart and the memory of the prey-you-caught and the way rain hears.

The way rain hears and the way rain hears things.

No wistful look for the machines they are living behind though maybe a bit of one for the bar but Sam shows them the way and Charlotte looks down the hallway and gives Sam a shy little grin, sliding out of the corners of her eyes, then takes off running down the hall.

Flings a "Race you!" at Erich only after she's already given herself a headstart.

The offers of camaraderie are extended to Argo, several people suggesting she stick around with the group, to partake in this little cluster of the nations people, and to feel comforted by it. She seems to consider it briefly, but...out of the corner of her eye she spots Ms. Pac-man, and the decision is made.

"Sorry kiddies...next adventure." She says as she starts down the row towards her intended game.

"Gotta go tend to the Misses."

Tamsin heads for the bar, Argo heads for Ms. Pacman, which leaves Sam momentarily alone with the Ahroun and the Theurge. The latter gives Sam a shy little grin, and gets a wide warm one in answer.

"Later, Argo," she tosses over her shoulder. Then, if the Ahroun takes off after the Theurge, Sam is hurrying to stay in his wake. The sea of people parts for him in a way it won't for Sam Evans.

"See ya Argo!" Erich tosses over his shoulder as he, too, tears off down the aisles and the rows of arcade machines, pinball machines, soda concession stands, door, outside! Giant Jenga. Where there are other people playing -- but really, not for long. Not as two or more werewolves come bearing down on them. Not when Erich

rather rudely kicks the existing Jenga tower over, raising a chorus of HEYs and WHAT THE FUCK, MANs.

"Help me set it back up," he says: to Sam, to Charlotte, to anyone who intends to play. "The idea is to make a solid tower. And then we each take a piece out one by one until it falls over. Okay?" And he starts to build.

Sam can't run after the pair because Sam is carrying a beer, and while she's had a bit of it, she's not willing to let it drop and slosh just so she can keep up with a pair of reckless werewolves. Just before she gets outside she hears the rather loud clattering fall of a huge pile of large wooden bricks. She gets outside and she sees Erich crouched and picking up the two-by-fours and a bunch of irritated and angry-ish people parting around the fall to leave. None of them are brave enough or crazy enough to say anything to Erich that he might actually react and respond to, mostly glares cast over shoulders when they're sure he's not looking.

Sam offers them an apologetic smile, then she sets her beer down on one of the wrought iron tables and goes to help set up the game. "It's easier with the regular game," she says, continuing the explanation of it to Charlotte. "The pieces are smoother and it's more about skill and precision. This," she holds up one of the bricks of wood, which is all uneven and not very smooth in one spot, "makes this game pretty evil."

Charlotte gives Erich a set-jawed look as he kicks over the existing Jenga tower, but then that set-jawed look shifts into something darker as the poor bastards who were playing it start shouting at her packmate. And then, Charlotte crosses her tanned arms over her Sprite logo and fixes a pale glare at the lot of them, looking absurdly like an enforcer or a lieutenant or something.

"Hmmmph." When the last players are gone, scared off by Erich's rage. Charlotte flashes Erich recalcitrant look that is all hey I know! and I'm not stupid! then watches Sam heft the brick of wood and picks up her own and slides her fingers over the uneven whorls all thoughtful and feels a bit bad for it because it is no longer part of a tree but it makes a kind of tree as it grows and comes down again and again, like a memory of a forest rising vertical.

Doesn't say anything, Charlotte. Not more than hmmph. But she does start to play.

Dex + Wits! TWINKING OUT YO.

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

FINE I'M DEX+WITTING TOO.

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

[dex+crafts: IT'S ART SHOOSH]

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

Dex + Wits!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 9 ) Re-rolls: 4

WTFFFF LOL

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

['GAIN]

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

[EVANS NEVER SAY DIE]

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

12 and counting!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 8 ) Re-rolls: 3

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

Tamsin finds them again - maybe it was the sound of the tower, toppling like babel, or maybe it's just the instinctual here there be monsters (mine), or maybe it's the end of another game, somebody grumbling about some guy who knocked down their tower and how this place used to be cool - with a napkin between her teeth and two drinks that are whatever it is Sam was having earlier, because that's what the boy asked for because that's what he thought was the safest, and a basket of onion rings that somebody didn't want after all [story later]. Tamsin is not accompanied by the human guys, and as she carefully sets the drinks down and the basket down where-ever it looks vaguely safe, so maybe off to the side on one of the chairs, right, and settles to watch what turns out to be THE END with a head-cocked [wolfish] all wide-eyed interestedinterested and intent. The tower falling this time causes her shoulders to jerk up; or maybe it causes her to choke on an onion ring.

As it turns out, Charlotte is rather fucking awesome at giant Jenga. With her nimble little fingers attached to her spindly little arms, she pulls one long brick out and carefully lays it atop the pile. Sam and Erich are less dexterous. The tower wobbles every time they touch it, sometimes dangerously close to toppling, sometimes just enough to make one or the other of them hold their breath. Unfortunately, Sam's lack of height finally comes to bite her - she can't quite reach the top of the tower anymore. Unless she gets a chair (pass) or asks for a boost from Erich (absolutely not) she has to gently press her brick down on the top and sliiiiiiiide and there it goes, toppling over in a loud loud clatter on the paving stones of the patio area.

Sam lets out a little sort of a cry of distress and hops back, body curling, shoulders hunching, arms coming up to her chest as she twists a little away.

When silence descends - or maybe it does, maybe someone is laughing - she uncurls herself, goofy sort of grin plastered across her face.

"I guess next round's on me."

AND THEN THE PLAY GAMES BUT CHARLOTTE DOES NOT PLAY MORTAL KOMBAT THE END.