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."

Night outside and the pair of barista working the close are wiped out but it's a Monday night so everything's slowed down now. Someone has brought the chalk sandwich board in from the street and and even though there's another half-hour maybe the young man at the register is just itching to count the till. There are a handful of strangers in the shop, a pair of young women in rather fine clothes, their corner of the place littered with bags from a number of now-closed boutiques, and a tall, dark-haired man in the far corner with today's Wall Street Journal folded on his lap in front of him.

Charlotte looks nothing like those girls or that gentleman, and indeed nothing like she really belongs here, but she's been here often enough, at such damned odd hours, that the girl dragging the sandwich board back into the place gives her one of those odd smiles that border on the compassionate and the tight one gives to near-strangers one sees semi-regularly when they seem --

-- well, a little bit disconnected.

Charlotte seems a little bit disconnected. Strange, fae thing, rail-thin, dressed in worn jeans and a t-shirt with a picture of red-riding-hood sliding a gun from beneath the towel covering her basket front-and-center. Pale blond hair tipped in pink, a corded bracelet on one skinny wrist, a chain loose around her neck.

Orders the most ridiculously frothy concoction, the sort that make the real coffee aficionados roll their eyes. Pays for it with an AmEx and finds herself staring at a reflection of the rest of the shop in the polished chrome of a napkin dispenser while she waits for it to be made.

He’s talking on his phone when he shoulders the door open and walks in off the street. Jeans, good loafers, and a peacoat over a sweater are good quality, fit him well, and have long been worn in. By the accent he’s a New Yorker, not from around here, and he’s listening more than he does the talking, answering a few questions here and there, asking his own, and it’s clear he’s familiar with the person on the other line with the casual ease.

There’s a satchel on his hip, brown leather, worn around the edges and peeling on the strap that digs into his shoulder. It’s stuffed full, the latches barely restraining the contents. A manila folder, a pale yellow, peeks out the corner with a couple of white pages, some crumpled the others crisp, lying within. He keeps it all tucked against his side, shifting it with his elbow when the door swung it back behind, and he pauses to adjust it, jamming the phone between his shoulder and ear to free the other hand in order to do so.

“Yeah, listen,” he says into the receiver, looking around the café, “I’ve got to go.”

Pause. “Yeah, I think you should do that. Go with that angle. It’s about the best you’ve got at this point but I’ve really got to go. I’m being that obnoxious twat in the middle of a café, talking loudly on their phone.” He throws an apologetic smile to anyone looking his way, lifting the phone back out from his shoulder.

There is a young woman hovering near the semi-circular counter where the coffee-drinks are slung and she has platinum hair and sharp elbows and rather casual attire. She's middling height see, but looks taller, looks like something more than it all adds together to be. There is an aura of distraction about her, a kind of discomfort one might read as skittishness, a native awkwardness in this place, in this setting, that settles into her frame even deeper when Christopher walks into the coffee shop.

The girl gives him a look and the first look is merely watchful: a door is opening behind her and she is an animal and she is a wolf and she wishes to know what is behind her.

The second look is something else: sharper, this notch of awareness between her brows.

The third look is wary, alert. That awareness deepening into something that trends both aloof and startled, this snaking tension in her shoulders and brow.

Charlotte does not realize that she's staring, and that everytime she yanks her gaze away from Christopher and cuts it back to him she makes it that much more obvious that she recognizes him. Him, or something in him or about him.

His blood.

Her nostrils flare. The ridiculous concoction is placed on the circular counter. She's forgotten about it.

She doesn't know what to do.

She’s looking, keeps looking, and he’s noticed. Slowly, he smiles and finishes up his conversation with, “No, no. I’ve really got to go now. I’m getting eyeballed.” He’s laughing, a low half-restrained sound in the back of his throat, flashing teeth as his hazel-gold eyes watch Charlotte. “

No. Nope. See ya.” Dragging the phone away from his ear, he makes a show of hanging it up and depositing in the hip pocket of his jeans.

“There,” he says to Charlotte, smiling at her. His expression is warm despite the way she’s looking at him and at her obvious awkwardness. “Sorry about that.”

After stepping closer he stops, looking over the counter, the menu board, anything that indicates that there’s something here that he might be able to grab and curb the hunger that gnaws at her belly, growling audibly to sensitive ears. He rubs a palm just under his chest, quietening the sound. And, if she’s still standing there, before him in the queue, his gaze darts to her and he gestures with an open palm. “Are you… ?” ordering, he wants to know.

When Christopher says that he's getting eyeballed the girl frowns and looks sharply away. Then steals another, warier, glance back at him. By now Charlotte has crossed her arms over the print of Red Riding Hood on her tee and finds herself frozen in place.

That lasts for a heartbeat, two.

He smiles at her, warmly. There is a beat beneath the moment and then she returns the gesture, though somehow from her it seems like merely a showing of teet.

Then he speaks not merely around her but to her and the creature cannot supply the proper ending to the question he's asking: is she ordering. is she doing something other than standing ridiculously at the counter watching him, suspicion a reflective sheen across her pale blue eyes, wary grace written into every inflection of her posture.

"I know you." Startled from her, really, when she inhales sharply with the surprise of being so directly addressed. "Did Philip send you?"

“Oh, do you?” This catches him off guard. He hadn’t expected this from her, a girl he doesn’t recognise, not in the least bit. Glancing over her quickly, he seeks out something other than her pink hair, the violent tee-shirt, her posture and clear, wary eyes, that might jolt a memory out of him. But she’s remains unfamiliar and she can see that he’s processing this, quickly, barely a falter before he adds. “Unfortunately, you’ve got one up on me, Miss, because I’m at a loss.”

So, instead of ordering, he ignores the insistent growling of his guts, which is being tempted by the freshly brewed coffee waiting for Charlotte’s attention on the counter, he extends out a hand towards her. “Christopher,” he tells her, introduces himself.

“And I have no idea who Phillip is.” Again, a smile, coming easily to him and without restraint. Christopher, throughout this exchange, watches her face and meets her eyes with a light cant of his head, interested.

"I meant - " and of course he doesn't know her. She doesn't really know him, she just knows his blood. His breeding. The way it speaks for him, and it is his blood, and his breeding, and the way it speaks for him that makes the usually skittish theurge all the more wary, all the stranger, all the more haunted-looking. He's hungry and some animal part of her must understand that he has decided to forgo ordering to exchange scents with her, to shake hands, to proffer names, but that is decidedly too direct and personal for Charlotte.

And no, he doesn't know Philip. Who is Philippa, who is her mother and he says it in a way that is absolutely convincing because it is true and Charlotte blushes - furiously, this rush of red beneath her cheeks, and she is such a pale-skinned thing -

and she's staring at his hand as if it were a claw or a razor blade and has forgotten all about her triple-mocha-marshmallow frappuccino-banana-smoothie that has been left on the counter with her name written on the side in sharpie -

and that blush just keeps creeping downward and the stiffness darkens and deepens and the awkward young woman really cannot speak. Makes an attempt, though -

"Oh," startled, see? "I - I'm sorry. I - I - I gotta go."

So she does. Just turns and dashes; away from the store and the stranger and all of it.

(Hah, Charlotte is kind of horrible with people so that was ... yeah, Apologies for her, but it also helps coincide with my stupid schedule, which has been getting up ridiculously early. But hopefully we can play again sometime soon? Or, we can pause that if you want to - and take up later?)

[Sounds fine by me! Grab me anytime I'm around. Best on weekends - I'm a day ahead though.]

(grins) got it! Thank you for the scene. :)

Charlotte crouches at the concrete edge of the small lake, remote control in hand. She is down on her haunches, balanced easily on the balls of her feet, slight yes but strangely feral, hauntingly inhuman to those who catch a certain glimpse of her profile from the appropriate angle, at an hour like this, which is dusk. No one is out renting these remote control sailboats, not on a cold day when the lakes are as like to be skinned with ice as they are to be clear, as they are today. Maybe Erich liberated the small ship; perhaps Charlotte did.

They came so that Charlotte could pour a clear water talen into each of City Park's artificial lakes. They haven't done that yet, but they will soon. The vials are at her feet; they glitter with this promise of retained light, somehow. Sun-on-snow, even as darkness starts to gather at the edges of the world.

Now though, a remote control sailboat bobs in the water; and here on the shore two wolves. One of them with a plastic box with a metal antenna and that seems to make the faintest of buzzing noises in her hand. The wind whips up, bright and cold.

Charlotte is smiling; unselfconsciously happy as she watches the tinyboat cut its prow across the slight waves that chilly wind whips up on the water.

It's not that Charlotte is a child, of course. Erich knows that. Some days, he even knows, in a small corner of his mind, that she is not only not-a-child but a mother, and a mother of a cursed thing; a sinner, though he thinks of her as a saint, and though she will one day -- maybe soon -- be the martyr every one of them was born to be.

He knows that. But right now, standing on the concrete shore with her, watching her uncomplicated quiet joy at such a little thing, it is impossible not to think of her as -- childlike, perhaps that is the word. Not a child, but sometimes, yes: childlike.

Not that Erich can claim different. Sometimes he too is boyish; as though with his tinypack he can reclaim a little of that innocence and joy that was stolen from him too soon. Perhaps that is the common thread that binds their disparate souls. They have all lost something, had something taken from them. They can, none of them, ever go home again. There is no home for them to go to except the one they made themselves.

--

The tinyboat bobs and sometimes it lists, but it does not capsize. It cuts rather swiftly across the water. Charlotte is crouching, and Erich is standing: her sibling, so close to her in looks that anyone seeing them would assume their connection was biological rather than spiritual. Blond and blue, both of them, long-boned. The girl slight and narrow and lovely-feral. The boy with good tackling shoulders and a sharply defined jaw, standing with his feet apart and his hands in the pockets of his thick sherpa-lined hoodie.

"We should take a roadtrip," he says. "Go to Oregon or California or something. Surf. I bet we can find a big sailboat and go watch whales or something." A big sailboat, he calls it. Not a real one. Because Charlotte's tinyboat is real, too.

The sun is setting. Somewhere the sun is always setting; somewhere the moon is rising. Somewhere night is coming home, and somewhere it is being chased away by the dawn. Charlotte tips her head back; her hair is all fly away in the cold dry air, the ends dancing in these little eddies that seem to dart and swirl across the surface of the lake.

Her carefree smile settles into something else; less carefree but no less, on some level, inherently happy in that precise moment. The failing sun sheens golden across the surface of her irises, which makes her look - oh yes - all the more feral.

Here is her smile, spreading but close-lipped. She is a wolf and they are packmates. There is no challenge here. She does not show him her teeth.

"We could go the way we came. The same roads. Except with Melantha, this time."

A year ago Charlotte fashioned talens to bind them; now, they are shadowed by a pair of small spirits, imbued with the intensity of Erich's and Melantha's respective longing.

"Or we could try new roads; all together."

Except Yellowstone. They probably cannot go back there.

"We should do both," Erich agrees. "We should go back to Baja on the same roads. And then we can wander our way back here on new ones."

There is no question there. No suggestion that perhaps they will not come back here, perhaps they will go somewhere new. They have somehow -- as if by magic -- put down roots here. Tenuous, tender little roots, and roots that are all spread between Evergreen and Cold Crescent and Forgotten Questions: but roots.

There is a quiet, then. A slight, slow, subtle sea-change in Erich's thoughts and mood and manner. His shoulders fold on themselves a bit. He lowers himself to the concrete, folds himself crosslegged at the water's edge.

"Melantha told me she wanted to build her own tinyhouse," he says. "She said she'd told you too. She said we'd still be welcome there and we can all come and go as we please and sleep and eat where we please, but ... it'd be her tinyhouse, because she's never had her own place before. And we'd have ours, and she'd have hers, and we wouldn't live all-together anymore.

"I'm sad," he admits, which is an utter waste of breath because a clod of dirt could see that. "But I get why she wants it and she deserves to have what she wants. Maybe ... maybe we can do that roadtrip before, though. I just thought of it, I haven't asked her yet at all. But it'd be nice if we did that together, all-together, before she moved out."

Roots go blind into the soil, worming and unseen and absolutely anchoring and necessary. Still, Charlotte notices. Erich, after all, was the most rootless of them. Sleeping in his car, which he moved at a whim. Haunting the fringes of their society. Neither of them so much as attended a moot in DC. Now look at him,

fighting passionately for the existence of a Sept, telling stories, challenging; leading.

Confessing his feelings quietly to a rather fey and a rather mad young Silver Fang, who holds the remote control lightly in the palm of her hand, and does not always know how to steer her sailboat and yet still, somehow, mostly it sails, more or less upright, sometimes akilter.

"I wonder if that guy is still there. And his wife." Charlotte's smile in this moment is rather older than you might imagine. This lovely edge, all sickle-moon. Haunting. "Cervezas and ceviche. We can teach Melantha to surf."

Charlotte just nods quietly, without looking aslant at Erich as he tells her that Melantha wants her own tinyhouse. She nods: she knows. She remembers. Erich is hunkered down now, beside Charlotte on the concrete verge of the lake, and he admits that he is sad, and for the first time she pulls back and looks at him, all in profile against the sparse trees and the dramatic skyline, the mountains all toothsome against the sky.

And sways into him; bumping shoulders, familiar, animal. This solid, non-verbal agreement that they can go, all together, before Melantha builds her house.

"We'll always be all together." Charlotte assures him, rather quietly, a moment later. This quiet underlayment of confidence in her tone. A solid surety. Places don't matter. Things don't matter: they are pack. "In our heads. I bet, in the end, you'll be more happy for her than sad for you. You know?"

Erich is bumped, and bumped, Erich is comforted. This is how they comfort each other in their low moments: with contact, with connection, with friendly and supportive little nudges and bumps. The corner of his mouth turns up. He steals a sideglance at Charlotte.

"Yeah. I know. I will be. I am. 'Cause she's never had her own den, and now she will, and we'll help her build it. And that makes me happy, too. Even if I'll miss waking up and looking down and seeing her reading on the couch or something. Well, maybe she'll still do that sometimes."

He fiddles with his shoelaces for a while. He looks out across the water where that funny little tinyboat is now drifting aimlessly on the wind. The waterbirds are back from their winter migrations, responding to the whisper of spring that humans can no longer hear. A duck paddles out of the way of the boat, quacking as it goes. It sounds offended.

"If you ever want your own tinyhouse," Erich adds quietly, "I'd help you build it too. And I'm sure so will Melantha."

Oh, duck.

Duck duck duck. No geese yet. Just ducks. Here is a secret of the animal world: sparrows might remember when they were dinosaurs. Mallards, however, have fucking forgotten.

The duck quacks; Charlotte grins. Her hand tightens around the controls and she bits her lower lip in concentration and the listless boat comes back to lift. Starts chasing the duck - who is just settling back onto the water, unruffling his considerable dignity with a slow, prim preening of his pinfeathers.

"I don't." This is a measure of how very far they've come. Erich tells her he would help her build her own tinyhouse if she wanted to go. Charlotte thinks about it, very quietly see? Takes the idea into her body and turns it over in her mind and then glances back at him, only briefly because she is chasing a duck with a mini remote-controlled sailboat she hardly knows how to operate and that, my friends, requires concentration. But see: Erich offers and Charlotte considers and understands from that consideration that she doesn't want a tinyhouse. Understands, too, that Erich is not telling her that it is Time To Leave his Tinyhouse. Understands each possible iteration; trusts him that he means what he says.

A stangely clear-eyed glance, sidelong, but bright. "I like where I am right now, just fine. But if I want one, we can build another.

"Together."

He does. Mean what he says, that is. It is perhaps the first lesson anyone else learns about Erich: that there is barely any filter between his brain and his mouth, and barely any capacity for deceit in the whole of his body and soul.

Maybe not Charlotte's first lesson, though. Charlotte, with her own war-wounds and old-scars. Charlotte, who perhaps as much as Erich had to learn to trust. Who had ground to cover, miles to go. An entire mind-country's worth of meandering and wandering to come to this point, where she can hear what he says and understand it, trust it.

He smiles when she says she likes where she is right now. He is relieved; maybe a little ashamed to be relieved, but relieved all the same. He is a wolf, and a pack animal perhaps moreso than either of his packmates. He likes having everyone near, everyone all-together. In his head is good, but physicality, corporeality, actual contact and closeness: these things are vital to him.

"I like where you are right now too," he echoes. "But yeah. Together."

Keisha can be found on a college campus as a rule. She can even be found on this particular campus; she was here earlier today, hitting up the library for one of her classes. But she's not here for study tonight. Tonight she has a mission, and she's here with two members of the Baklava Republic as well one of Celduin's Galliards. She's dressed more for function than anything else, in little more than a T-Shirt and jeans with a jacket to handle any cold issues (snow be damned). Her backpack is slung over a shoulder with her ritual tools, dreads pulled back and bound together as she walks into the building alongside the others.

Her eyes look around the inside of the place, frowning lightly. As if it's standard operating procedure, she looks to the others.

"Gonna look across." She slips a pocket mirror out of her jacket pocket to do just that.

[[Look across Gauntlet! Using mirror, spending WP 'cause that's one I hate botching..]]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Someone who is not Charlotte drives or maybe there are two someones or three. However they get there includes: Charlotte with Erich, quiet is his shadow. With their shocks of blond hair and pale blue eyes, their long limbs and open, attractive features, and perhaps even just the way they move, together, as if they know how to move, together, through some sixth sense (which they do), strangers often assume that the pair are siblings. So,

like siblings, rolling out of the cab of the truck, weaving through the campus to meet the others at Tivoli, then ducking inside to the auditorium.

The air smells like snow. Doesn't it? Feels like snow; tastes like that - bright and cold and metallic, the sensation of it in the back of the throat. Charlotte has a small messenger bag slung across her body. With her pink hair, it makes her look more like a student who actually belongs here, rather than the interloper she is. Charlotte is shivering in little more than a heavy hoodie, a t-shirt and jeans, but her winter coat would probably get destroyed so.

Here she is, watching the shadow of the building against the sky until it swallows them, then allowing her attention to drift over the interior lines with a kind of thoughtlessness that nevertheless feels rather present as they arrive and look around.

Sense Wyrm

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 3) ( fail )

"So." Her hands are in her pockets. They're on their way or they're there and Tamsin's got her eyes open looking around yes looking around but also thinking this looks like a good place to do that green club thing maybe and what is weird anyway. Maybe they all rode together in somebody's car or maybe they carpooled but there they are.

Tamsin: she likes to have a plan, of some sort. A plan, when it comes to poking her nose into things. Of course, Tamsin also likes poking her nose into things. Of course she would, Fog's Fianna galliard-darling, moon on the wane, falling towards and through justice and spiritual mysteries and secrets but too simmering for any of those wasn't there yet. She has positioned herself, or tried to position herself, so that the theurge girls are somewhat perteckted by Erich and herself, even though they're just a sneaky standing around bunch of loiterers right now, one loiterer checking her makeup in a compact, the other one looking around and shivering.

The 'So,' it turns out, is directed toward Erich, though her gaze skims over Charlotte and Keisha. He's Fostern; she defers to him automatically. It is in the somewhat graceful dip of her posture, the cant of her head. She's got on some kind of silly warm hippy hat. Gonna look across, Keisha says,

"So... Weird. Anybody, um, feel the Wyrmd? Uh, weird." Tamsin says, followed by, "How're you thinking we do this, Erich? Maybe, um, two of us should go otherside and two of us should stay thisside? Split up you guys, uh, Baklava, since I guess you can talk across, well you know. What'cha thinking?"

The two of them are certainly of the right age to be students here. Perhaps Erich's the older brother, a fifth-year senior cruising his way to graduation on the tail end of an athletic scholarship. Perhaps Charlotte is the quirky, eccentric younger sister, surely an artist or a poet or something of the sort with that quiet, quirky demeanor and that pink-streaked hair.

Erich is talking as he strolls up with Charlotte. The conversation is entirely unimportant. It has something to do with meatburgers, which are of course burgers composed entirely of meat, and the subtle distinctions, benefits and drawbacks to meatburgers with meat-buns vs meatburgers that are just meat-patties. When Tamsin Cinder-Song so's him, Erich looks -- startled, if anything. He's so new to this Fostern business. It feels weird, like wearing a coat still a little too big for him.

"Uhh...."

He thinks for a minute, brow beetling the way it does. Then he glances at Charlotte; a little uneasy at, or at least just unused to, the idea of separating from her. Still; it's a sound strategy.

"What do you think, Charlotte? You and Tamsin on one side, me and Keisha on the other?"

Back at Cold Crescent, Shieldwind's pack is recruiting. They are the new Guardians. It's not an easy task; everyone knows what happened to the last pack of Guardians. Everyone saw what was stripped of their Alpha at the punishment rites. Cold Crescent still relies heavily, and may always rely heavily, on every Garou in the sept doing regular patrols, serving regular duty. At many septs in many places, that's the norm; coming from before, where Forgotten Questions is so self-sustaining that it hardly needs help outside of the official Guardian packs, it takes some wolves some getting used to.

No matter: Shieldwind pulled from multiple corners tonight. A Fostern Ahroun, a couple of Theurges, throw in a Galliard, and no matter if they're from three different packs. If they have the skills he needs and they're on duty, they're who he sends.

Something weird is going on at Tivoli. A recent rash of attacks. Fights and sneak assaults, mostly; campus police on high alert. But last night someone actually went missing. And now campus police is on high alert and everyone else is trying to keep it quiet and the Warder is interested.

--

Charlotte smells the cold. Keisha flips out a mirror. Tamsin asks Erich dubya-tee-eff we gonna do. And yes: they all are taken for students by the campus police car that drives slowly by. Four kids together, one of them a big guy. They all look like they go together, weirdly: hoodie dude, braids, pink hair, hippy hat. Oh yeah. They're just like every other student at the three schools that use this campus, where plenty of the matriculating students are coming back to school or dropped out once or are just taking a few classes while they work.

While Charlotte's nose takes in nothing, Keisha feels the cold air become as thick and soft as cobwebs that she can brush away with her hand, like walking through a haunted house. It's dark on the other side, dark from winter and cold and a new moon. It takes a while for the lights on buildings and corners to flicker into view in the penumbra for her, crawling with spiders who, themelves, seem to throb gently in time with the buzzing of the lights. They are quiet. On the other side, it is already snowing softly, silently, though the flakes never seem to touch the ground.

There is darkness in that building. Where the other buildings seem to hum with a golden inner warmth, a curiosity and energy that mingles with sleepiness and boredom and is broken here and there by spikes of anxiety, Tivoli is black inside. Particularly in one arm of it, where they hold lectures and even wedding receptions.

She hasn't shivered despite the chill in the air; she's used to chilly weather and she's adapted to the chillier weather here. But once she looks across, the frigid feel there and the feeiling that something is just wrong sends that tremor up her spine, back to reverberate throughout her body.

"Yeah, there's something wrong here." She says it perhaps a little too loud, the problem that comes inherent with peeking across and losing access to all your senses on this side of the Gauntlet. She shakes her head, reorienting her attention to this side, and points off toward the arm where the darkness is. "Along with the usual pattern spiders and such, it's exceedingly dark. Particularly over there."

She looks around to each of them, tightening her grip on her staff. "Seems like a good place to start, if you ask me."

Charlotte gives a sharp-shouldered little shrug. It is elegant and a bit spare, the gesture. She has one hand tucked into the front pocket of her jacket; the other wrapped around the shoulder-strap of her bag. As they walk, she considers Erich's speculation, her mouth drawn to one side. She's inhaling too, but she doesn't smell anything out of the ordinary and she gives Erich a silent look and a little shake of her head to communicate that she hasn't detected anything.

Still; Tamsin asks if they should split up, and Erich considers it, and Charlotte glances at Tamsin and then Keisha, then the building proper.

Then shakes her pink head: a silent no.

"The Gauntlet's thick, here. Maybe you could get over quckly if we needed you, or vice-versa. Maybe not. I don't think we should split up. Let's we check out inside, then go over to the otherside together."

"'kay, you have a point. Especially since last time we split up it was kind of a shitstorm. Let's go inside," he nods toward the rather grand-looking hall, "and have a quick peek around. Then we'll duck into a bathroom and cross over together."

The campus police car drives by: slow-ly, and Keisha's voice is as loud (to Tamsin [near]) as the plink of a stone on a frost-rimned lake: plink, crack. Tamsin pulls the brim of her floppy hippy hat down over her ears, earringless because it's too much of a pain to find earrings again after a shift and dedicating them seems wasteful (and too hard, anyway). They still get lost.

"So it's just like, dark on the other side if you look? Thick dark that's beating all sinister-as-fuck heartbeat-style dark, or just sketchy suspect dark?"

Charlotte: shakes her pink head; Tamsin looks alert, and slopes a glance toward Erich, but doesn't argue, though she shifts restively. The Gauntlet is thick. So at his word --

-- a grin. "Let's just hope it's unlocked, man."

[Tamsin: just in case talking people into ignoring us sneaking into dark building is necessary, Persuasion On?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

[Per + Alert or PU, same!]

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

[[Per+Alert, Spec: Uncanny Instincts]]

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

"Oh!" Erich thinks of something else. "I actually have a new Gift now. I can talk to Earth for a while and see what's going on. It takes me like... ten minutes though. So when we get in I can maybe do that while you guys look around? Just stay close enough that if you yell I can get to you pronto."

Per + Primal Urge

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

[percep+pu!]

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

[That building is creepy and dark. Charlotte has the feeling they're being watched, and then she begins to smell something like blood and decay. Some cold, and it's a dim scent.]

Tamsin asks Keisha if the darkness is sketchy-suspect dark or a more sinister one. She shakes her head, her attention shifting as the hair on the back of her neck stands up. "Not just sketchy-suspect. Like, full-on blackness. Garden-variety dark doesn't get a 'something's wrong' assessment.

Erich suggests that they go inside first and he talk to the earth, and she shakes her head. "Do you think that's wise if it turns into a fight? We're talking about something that plays and hides in the darkness. I don't figure if one of us gets attacked, it's going to give us enough time to yell to you, Erich."

A pause. "Also, splitting up in the darkness, when I'm getting a feeling like we're being watched? That's that what white girl victim number two in a horror film does."

Erich looks a bit impatient now. "Okay, good points. But we're getting to the point where we need to quit talking and start doing.

"So, here are the options as I see them. A: we sit out here being watched while I talk to Earth and see if I can figure out what's going on in there in detail. Then we can hopefully go in and take care of shit. In the meantime, we run the risk that whatever's in there -- and I think it's a goddamn vampire, and not the sparkly kind -- is preparing to mow us down with a silver gatling gun.

"B: we just charge the fuck in as a group and kill whatever we find, and fuck finesse and planning-ahead and all that. We'll do a sweep of realmside and then check umbral to make sure we don't miss anything. We run the risk of barreling headfirst into a boobytrap, of course, but honestly that's kinda always been my MO so I'm cool with it.

"Any thoughts before I pick one?"

Charlotte inhales and she does this the way a cat does it, mouth-open, pale eyes flicking over the facade of Tivoli building; the dark windows of one particular wing. Her expression is twisted, after. Pulled to the side, her mouth a moue of distaste. The faintest of shudders rattles gently down her spine, but only her packmate is likely to sense it.

A glance at Erich, the sweep of her gaze quiet and gleaming.

"If you want to talk to the Earth, do it here. We can wait now. Maybe earth'll have some idea where to slip in or what to expect. Except it'll think like earth, see. Slow and solidly, and it might not know what is inside because inside the earth is all smothered with the stuff that makes up the building, and suffocated and it can't breath so it might be a little bit mad too.

"But out here it might know what comes and goes and where it goes and what stays and when it stays.

"So I guess I say you talk to the earth, then we go in."

Tamsin, Fianna-woman, waning-moon, looks at the darkness. Looks at it good. Or maybe it just begins to act on her -- to tickle her senses: to sharp them up, hone them, whettstone, knifeknifeknife oh and Tamsin's eyes narrow and her muscles tense-tense like they're remembering how easy it is to switch-blade out a war-monster because that blooddeadsmell that no it's in the back of her throat and she says:

"Do you guys fe - it's because we are; gotta be a leech; it's all grave-clot yuck; it's all like, scabby shadow lightlessness; it's - " - she spits on the ground.

Looks at the building. Looks at Erich. Ready to rar. "Let's just go the fu -- hmm, uh, a silver gatling gun you say?" A beat, because she is deeply suspicious of Erich's just-run-right-in plans, specifically. "Yeah okay. Talk to Earth and maybe we can get a bead on its location because it never hurts to try to get more info. Well, actually, I dunno Theurges, don't suppose while Erich's talking to earth, one of you can talk to Fire or something Sunlight-y or Garlic-y?"

The Garlic-y is a joke. Tamsin is restless, sort of bouncing in place.

"I have some fire tooth talens," says Charlotte. "I can start waking them up."

Tamsin: >:]

Another one of those beetle-browed moments. Arms folded, lips pressed flat together and all. Then a nod.

"Okay. Lemme talk to Earth then. Meanwhile, Charlotte can wake up her talens and Keisha can maybe prepare too. And Tamsin -- keep your elf eyes sharp. Or something. You know what I mean."

And on that note: Erich sits on the ground, crosslegged, and. Uh. Communes. It's his first time doing this. He isn't actually sure what he's doing.

[oh god i have 2 dice. +WP! 100yd-radius of info per succ.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (6, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Aw. Elf! Tamsin half-smiles, but all she does is - oh, fiddle with a phone, something, so they don't look too strange, all in a clump snow in the air night falling and something bad going on, should somebody else come. Maybe she hums, or sings something, unless that'd break any concentration.

Tamsin, she's ready for the signal, for ending something old and dead and a long time ago ended anyway, time goes on.

So, Erichs sits and Charlotte flicks her gaze up at Keisha and then Tamsin and then back to beetle-browed Erich, considering all options for approach. Back to the building, a frown deepening, pulling the corners of her mouth down into a quietly solemn expression. Charlotte hunkers down to her haunches and rummages through her messenger bag, sorting through the contents until she finds: her slingshot and a small leather pouch. She takes out the slingshot and tucks it into the back waistband of her jeans, then pulls out the leather pouch, opens it, and starts working to activate a small handful of... well, teeth. Human teeth. Girl-teeth, roots and all, quietly ivory in her hands.

Fire tooth talen the first!

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )

Fire tooth talen the second!

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (4, 4, 5, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )

So...

Erich doesn't move for about ten minutes. Or well. He moves. Obviously: he breathes so they know he's not dead. Or petrified. He breathes slowly and deeply and regularly, almost like he's asleep, and in a way he is. His body relaxes. His shoulders slump. After a while his head falls forward, and at this point, honestly, if Charlotte doesn't kinda re-right him, he just kinda topples over and sprawls for a while.

Not too long though. After five, ten minutes, Erich's blueblueblue eyes pop open. He takes a quick inhale, like someone waking from an unexpected nap, and sits up.

"I think it's just the one vampire," he says. "A... former college kid, I think? And now it's nomming on its classmates." He frowns. "It's kinda sad actually. I wonder who turned it in the first place. Maybe we can ask it. I mean I think we still have to kill it, but... maybe if we ask it and at least tell it that it'll be avenged, in a way?

"Unless of course it wanted to be a vampire. Then, I have no sympathy. Anyway." He climbs to his feet. "Let's go kick some ass."

Fire tooth talen the third.

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

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

She narrows her eyes when she hears "vampire," and a sound not unlike a growl comes from the Child of Gaia. In Homid form. (Yes, the one who is all peace and love and doesn't ever kill.) Because that...well, that's something different. One or two have seen how she reacts to the undead before. And, it may be noted, she takes her backpack off, and sets her staff aside.

"Say the word."

[His name is actually Mike but he introduces himself as Jedediah, smirking when he says that you can call him 'Jed' for short.]

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

[[Init +6]]

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

+6

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

[forgot: that's Jed + 7]

+8

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

[for Erich: +17]

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

[Erich

Jed

Keisha

Charlotte

Tamsin.

Declare in reverse!]

[Uh. Go... inside building.]

[Note: this actually should have come before inits.]

While they're talking, suddenly there's a howling sound. A shriek, almost, and then the sound of footfalls racing across concrete. Thin-soled shoes, very stylish, skinny black jeans, skinny black t-shirt, big black spacers in his earlobes and sharp, yellowing teeth. He's running at them, wild-eyed,

blood already dripping out of his mouth.

[1a. BITE the monster!!! while staying between it and the theurges.

1b. Bite it again!

-1 Rage: Snap-shift to Hispo.]

[1a/b slingshot previously activated talens at the monster hopefully while he's far enough away that she won't kill her friends.]

[[Snap-Shift: Hispo.

1a: Bite

1b: Bite

R1: Bite.

R2: Bite]]

[Strike R2 for Keisha.]

[PREPARATION? WHAT PREPARATION? FUCK IT WE'LL DO IT LIVE.

-1WP Resist Pain, -1R snapshift hispo as well SINCE MY CLAWS ARE DULL AS FUCK RIGHT NOW.

1. Spur Claws -1R!

R1-3. Bitings! Unless Liz deems other actions more appropriate!]

[1: zip behind Erich! effectively: dodge

2: grab Charlotte!

3: BITE CHARLOTTE AND DRINK HER SHINY BEAUTIFUL BLOOD

4: still drinking]

[Spur Claws. DODGE THIS, MOTHERFUCKER. >:|]

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

[dodge!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5) ( fail )

[dam +6]

Dice: 15 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

[[Dex Brawl for Bite 1, -2 dice for split.]]

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

[[Damage Str + 4 (Crinos) + 1 (Bite) + 1 (Succ)]]

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

[note to self: move those rolls down a bit, it's Jed's action(s)]

[2: grabbing charlotte! st + brawl]

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

Strength + brawl

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2) ( fail )

[3: delicious.

difficulty lowered due to hold.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )

The vampire moves fast. Wickedly fast, rushing at them, zipping behind Erich as Erich lunges at him; Erich catches flesh, cold and clammy, in his teeth. But he doesn't hurt it enough to keep it from latching hold of the still-homid Charlotte, arm around her upper body and hand grabbing her hair, yanking her head to the side before he sinks oversized, yellowing fangs deep into her jugular.

The thing makes a noise like a groan, eyes rolling back as it starts suck, sucking deep and hungrily at that glorious, shining, silver-pure blood. He's moaning, shaking from it.

[[Dex+Brawl #2. -3 for split, WP spent.]]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

[[Damage]]

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

(Changing Charlotte's action. Snapshift to Crinos. 1. Boom.. Dropping talen.)

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

[Jed: Willpower]

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

[1a. bite of oh fuck no you do NOT bite cotton candy hair girl. :< Dex + Brawl -2 for split.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Charlotte soak!

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

[damage! 5+1 bite+1hispobite+3suxx? i think?]

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

[1b. bite again, no! bad! wp 'coz NYET. -3.]

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

[damageagain!]

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

Erich's frenzy roll

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

[diff 7 (8 for New Moon -1 for IC reasons) = 2 suxx]

[?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4) ( fail )

[Per/Alert - for Erich]

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

Per+Alert

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

Per + Alert (Charlotte)

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

Seeing that thing, that dead gray douchebaggy thing, sinking its teeth into his sister and drinking deep, Erich feels the edges of his vision go white. It's not like when he chooses it, when he pulls the blankets of his rage up over his head and snaps his own mind in two. It's more animal than that. And everyone around him should be glad, in that moment, that the moon overhead is dark. There is not enough of the vampire left to slake the enraged bloodlust of a frenzied Ahroun,

only allies.

Allies who are, like Erich, turning towards Charlotte in the grasp of that hungry, deliriously happy leech to rip it the fuck off of her. And rip and tear they do, biting and snarling, leaving giant bloodless tears in his body and clothing. Hell: Tamsin the Faerie-Lights-slinging crooner rips off his arm before opening a hole in his belly that lets his leathery but blood-engorged intestine start to slip out.

Which she then has to drop very quickly, because it is on fire.

--

You see, Erich knows better than anyone what Charlotte really is. She may seem a sparrow, but sometimes she remembers she was a velociraptor. She remembers she has fangs and claws and violence. They all see that she remembers, even as Erich's vision is clearing, because she shrugs the vampire off as her body bursts into a gleaming white crinos, blood drenching the ruff of fur around her throat, dropping a fire-tooth to the ground.

The vision then is horrifying and glorious: Charlotte, so white that even without the moonlight she is nearly translucent, blood on her throat, teeth bared, fire at her feet reaching upwards, trying to eat her flesh, barely licking the ends of her fur. The thing that dared to make her its prey is engulfed, fire consuming those slipping intestines, that stump of an arm, saturating the air with the smell of burning skin, sizzling blood. Charlotte's blood, and the blood of whatever it ate last.

The vampire is still standing, barely. His eyes are sparkling with hunger, with awe, with feverish glee that borders on frenzy. Even the fire could not keep him from trying to get back to Charlotte's blood. But, frankly: Keisha, Tamsin, and Erich can. There isn't much left of him. There is even less, after they pile on. After Charlotte leaves the fire she created and helps. After his head comes off. After he is soaked clothing, well-shredded pulp on the ground.

Or rather: there is the same amount of him. It's just more spread out.

--

When the fire is out, stamped into the cold ground, and for reasons he won't be able to explain to himself later the campus policeman gave only a cursory glance toward the Tivoli building before driving quickly onward,

that is when they hear the crying. The soft help. help me. please, someone...

Tamsin doesn't hear it. Tamsin may or may not be harvesting that left arm, complete with shitty mustache finger-tattoo, as a trophy. Maybe. Who knows what Tamsin is doing, when the rest of them feel their ears flick towards the tears coming from just inside the doors to Tivoli.

Tamsin is: gleefully ruminating on whether or not 'fire' and 'vampire' is too obvious a rhyme, while frisking about the gore.

She shifts down to Homid the second she hears the crying, thoughts of sending the twisted mockery of life to the rest it deserves gone. And she's moving with purpose and speed toward the building, snatching up her staff on the way.

Keisha Ballard: vicious when confronted with the undead, but if gentle in all other situations.

Not-Charlotte - oh some of them know her Garou-name but she does not speak it unless it is asked of her so - not-Charlotte remains gloriously Crinos. None of them want their faces associated by anyone within their viewshed with the crime scene before them. So: not-Charlotte flicks an ear at Tamsin as Erich lopes off to shadow Keisha. Some mental communication assuring him that Charlotte is fine, fine, fine. Will be fine, too.

To Tamsin, a rumble to draw her attention. Then a flicker: which sayshear that? and come on - while she herself gives the air another sniff.

STOP.

They are somewhat bloody. Just from the digestive tract of the vampire, still full from feeding, but it is less gore than they usually get covered in when battling the Wyrm. Keisha is up and moving as soon as she hears the crying, leaving the others behind for a moment while Charlotte reassures Erich and tells Tamsin that something is up, even if that's a flick of ears, a signal of body language.

Erich makes some low sounds, growls and whuffs, effectively telling Keisha to hold up: that he totally doesn't really think it is, but it could be a trap so they should go together. Like what he said before about how splitting up equals shitstorm equals ugh.

At which point he nods Tamsin on ahead: Tamsin the arm-ripper-offer, to go alongside Keisha to the doors, Erich and Charlotte close behind them. Partly because, when all is said and done, he's still going to lean over and lick at the already-healed spot on Charlotte's neck where the bad thing bit her, leaning into her side protectively in hispo.

The frisking ceases, Tamsin-monster's bright-bright eyes flicking soulful-ly thought-ful-ly toward everywhere everywhere because she doesn't know until after Charlotte there is Erich or no maybe there is Keisha's purposeful stride because she is a Child of Gaia and somebody is crying for surcease and and and the point is my friends

that the frisking ceases

and her ears prick upupupupup like I was always alert wary hearing things and and then though she prowls forward

to go alongside Keisha, staff-warrioress,

and see what there is to see

(and maybe scare what there is to scare)

wary wary

Charlotte leans into Erich as he comes alongside her, makes some noise in the back of her throat; a wuff, or a low-growl, or something that has weight and presence and purpose because Charlotte has weight and presence and purpose beyond her rank and beyond her years and beyond most anything because she is a goddamned silver fang, and likely mad as a hatter.

Alert; wary. Tail low and sweeping, shadowing Tamsin and Keisha to the door.

She's singed and hacking a little bit from the fire that scorched her and Charlotte along with the leech, but she is paying it absolutely no mind. If not for Erich, she would have charged headlong into that building by herself...and she gives a sound of frustration when she's told to hold up. There's someone in there in need, and as much as Keisha acts like she's wise and reasonable most of the time--and really, she is reasonable (wise, we'll leave up to debate)--she's still a nineteen (no, twenty this week) year-old girl who acts more like a human than a Garou. And twenty year-old humans are the impulsive types.

So she frowns, and she makes her sound, but she waits for Tamsin. "It might be a human in trouble, guys." She looks at the others as she rests her hand on the door handle. "Maybe Homid would be best. We can always shift back otherwise"

That's as far as she'll push it--the suggestion--and she'll give them enough time if they so desire before moving to open the door and head inside.

Keisha is frustrated, but Keisha stops, and the others catch up. No one has indicated that they aren't going to check it out. Her hand is on the door handle, though, and Erich tells her again to just wait a second while he turns to Charlotte, asking her if she can sense if something on the other side is Wyrm-tainted.

None of them, just yet, smell another vampire.

Erich asks and Charlotte stops and Charlotte studies the door and Charlotte settles herself and pulls on sometime deep inside of herself and just - inhales. Quiet.

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

[nope!]

The communications are gruff and quiet. Charlotte and Erich can manage this without speaking, so even Melantha hears the echo of it over their totemic connection. Now, however, here and now the beast wuffs her impression aloud.

No wyrm.

Swinging back around, checking their sight lines to assure herself that everyone who might observe them has been chased away by the Delirium.

Tamsin, restless, restless, still simmering from the recent joy of killing something that is blasphemy to Gaia, does pause; waits for No wyrm, also looks around, edgily, and then - unless Erich indicates otherwise (see how deliberately she keeps his signals in mind? Looks to him? Welcome to being a Fostern) - if no one seems to be around (although with Tamsin, who's to say she'd notice?) - she shifts to homid, too. Girl-Tamsin, who whispers, "Does it still look fucked up across the Gauntlet?"

Charlotte says there's no Wyrm, and Keisha relaxes a bit and moves to go inside, when Tamsin asks if it still looks, as she herself had previously said, wrong across the Gauntlet. And the Gaian's urge to move in, to help, makes her tense again. She's not used to letting go like she just did against the undead thing. It's a very different kind of fighting than you usually see from her. But there was a time that she was once that wild and unrestrained. Pushed down for so long, having let it rise to the surface means that it's difficult to push back down.

"I don't know, but it could take time to look across, and someone could be bleeding to death from a leech bit in there for all we know. If there's no Wyrm, I'm going in."

Which is what she's moving to do now, unless she's stopped. The sanctity of whoever's life is in there is paramount to her right now.

Erich remains in hispo, perhaps a bit stubbornly; it is dark. The door will shield him from view, a bit. And if anything jumps out or runs out at them if anything tries to BITE CHARLOTTE or attack Keisha or Tamsin he's half a foot away and can tear it to tiny tiny pieces and this is how he deals with the fact that really, if you get down to it, he's not okay at all with allowing Keisha and Tamsin to take point at all, it seems like a really bad idea even if Charlotte says there's no Wyrm.

But here you have it: there's no Wyrm. Someone is crying in there, gasping, begging quietly for help, asking is someone there? and sobbing, begging please, please,

and the last person or thing she wants to see right now is Erich, no matter what form he's in. Keisha isn't even reiterating, again, what she thinks they need to do before he's giving a nod at the door. After all: no one, at any point, has been about stopping Keisha. Just getting her to wait. To not rush in blindly, or on her own, no matter what her heart is telling her. She's wiser than that.

--

The door opens outward, unlocked right now. It's dark inside, but for some emergency lights and an EXIT sign they can see on the other side of the building that matches the EXIT sign above the door they're opening. It's hard to see the woman at first, young woman, student-aged, because she is slumped over on her side, panting softly, her begging getting weaker, and though her hand is clutched over the wound on her neck, there is still a pool of blood under her, blood soaking her clothing.

She's not crying anymore. She's passing out.

--

When she comes to, it's because someone has healed her, and because her body is starting to do the rest. That someone isn't there anymore. She's woozy as hell. Vague memories of someone jumping her from behind, stabbing her with something, like maybe a pen. Hearing some 'screaming' and something like growling or something outside, then normal human voices but she didn't see who it was. It won't make a lot of sense to them, with the charred ground outside that is already being dusted with snow. A lot of what she says will be chalked up to blood loss, delirious hallucinations, and she'll buy that, too. She'll talk, months and years from now, about how she lost so much blood she though she heard and saw dogs or something in Tivoli while she was trying to regain consciousness.

Her name is Holly. She'll have a scar. She'll have PTSD and won't walk anywhere alone, even in daylight, for a long time. She will also write about the experience, the random attack the likes of which they say don't happen that often and how much time she spent torturing herself trying to understand the 'why' of it all, and that essay is going to help her get into grad school for social work and repeat that lesson for many, many other people: stop asking yourself why you. Stop trying to figure out what you did or what you could have done.

The truth is, Holly won't even know that she was on the verge of death when the werewolves found her. She will never know how much blood she really lost, because most of it was torn up and burnt up with the vampire. She will not know that she was saved.

--

Just one vampire lurking around Auraria, they'll tell the new Warder of Cold Crescent. There was an unconscious victim, they healed her and let security find her. He'll nod, and for a while, he'll increase patrols to the area to make sure there's not a nest or a sire vampire nearby.

It seems like it should be a bigger deal. Holly should know the magnitude of what happened to her,

but she can't. She would go mad.

The Garou should be able to sit back and relish the magnitude of what they did, measure it against the endless-seeming war and all the bigger battles against greater foes with more extreme outcomes, feel the true weight of a single life's course being altered so dramatically, rest on that for the rest of their lives because how many people can say they saved someone's life,

but they can't.

They move on to the next area on their patrol. It's not that they have to do it all again tomorrow.

It's that they aren't even done tonight.