Narrative: Prior to this scene, organized and discussed out of character without a written scene to accompany, Lola Hawkes had gone to explore the Lane house. She discovered some useful information, such as a journal hidden under floorboards. She was headed home from the Lane house when a dark car had fallen in to place to start driving behind her.
A glance in the rear-view mirror told Lola that the person behind the wheel of the car following her had no face-- no distinguishable features, at least, it was as though some great cosmic artist had taken an eraser and smudged the face of the man away. She drove faster to see if he would keep pace, and when she did this an identical figure appeared standing in the middle of the road.
A good Drive roll prevented Lola from hitting the man or rolling her car when she swerved to avoid him. Not far past this, a third figure (this one in another car) was idling at an intersection she was about to cross. When Lola drove through the intersection, the car moved to try and jack-knife her. Lola managed to avoid this car wreck as well, but fed up with the chase and unwilling to lead these things further home, she pulled off to the side of the road to confront.
One of the two cars pulled off to the side of the road ahead of her car, and the figure got out. Lola got out of her car as well, shotgun in hand. However, she didn't see one of the mysterious faceless figures creep up behind her. The figure behind her did something, Lola has no idea what, but whatever it was she was instantly rendered unconsciouss.
The scene that follows is what happens when she wakes.
-----------------
Hector Ghosh
He's
been gone all of two days and he's already blown up Lola's phone so
much it may feel as though he hasn't even really left. That maybe he's
just a train ride away. Though he hasn't come out and said it yet Lola
knows he is glad to be spending less time in the city after what
happened two weeks ago.
Not necessarily spending less time in the
state. He's been gone so much if their situation were any different it
would be easy to forget he considers her home his now.
Anyway:
it's early evening on a Tuesday when Hector's phone starts ringing. Lola
never calls him. That only happens when something has happened.
Wherever he is it's loud.
"HELLO,
BAAAABY!" he lows over the noise. It's a passable Jerry Lee Lewis
impression but now's not the time. "Hang on, lemme go outside."
Clomp clomp clomp hinge-whine sudden fresh-air silence.
"What's going on?"
Lola Hawkes
When
she came to, Lola was leaned forward over the steering column of the
Subaru Forester. The engine was off, the car door was closed, and there
was a mark on her cheekbone from where it was rested on the wheel. She
was stiff and fuzzy feeling, but that uncertain discomfort and groggy
sense of 'where am I' was quickly tossed by a sudden jolt.
The
black cars (plural). The men with featureless faces. Swerving to
avoid one only to nearly be T-boned by another at an intersection.
Getting out with her rifle. Seeing the gun. Then...
Her hands
went down her chest and stomach, and though she cringed to move and flex
about her right hand she's experienced worse, and has bigger
ice-bucket-in-chest concerns to focus on. Palms pressed to her stomach
and pushed. Faint rolling and kicking answered, and she breathed a sigh
of relief before doing an inventory check.
No blood, no wounds.
The car started and the tires were all intact. There was dirt on her
clothing and her hand suggested that she fell on it or hit something
hard-- she wasn't sure. After a few minutes of worrying and straining
her brain and cycling possibilities of what happened in her mind, she
got her phone out of the center console of the vehicle and called
Hector.
When he answered, she started to try and talk but cut off
and was quiet until he had moved someplace he could hear. Once out
wherever it was he'd vacated to, she tried again.
"I need your
expertise. You ever heard of a type of Fomori that has no facial
features and that's the only obvious abnormality 'bout them?"
Her voice was shaky and urgent. Something happened, but she didn't outright tell him what just yet.
Hector Ghosh
[wits + occult: IDK HAVE I?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Hector Ghosh
Give
him some credit for not immediately panicking like he did when she
called him to say she was in the hospital and needed him to come get
her. Though he hears the breathlessness and the implication of an
incident in her voice Hector focuses on the question. As far away as he
is he can't help her if he doesn't keep his shit together.
"That could be a couple of things. Actually."
A
short spell of silence as he gathers his thoughts. But there are few
things in the universe Hector can't remember hearing something about if
he hasn't actually seen it before. It makes the pit situation especially
frustrating.
What can you do though. Tribal elders have no idea what it is either.
"It
could be a--wait no it can't. It's still daylight. It's not a leech.
There are some leeches that can walk around when the sun's out but
they're practically not leeches. Fomori don't usually have... I mean
they have these really grotesque, you know, mutations to their face
structure... what do you mean, obvious abnormality? What's the rest of
it look like?"
Lola Hawkes
"There were three of
them. I think." She shook her head, and Hector can hear discomfort
along with stress. Something about the way she breathed through her
teeth with the next intake of breath suggested at least minor pain.
He'd
hear the sound of the car engine turning over. It was cold, she wanted
the heater running. She wasn't sure where she would be driving just
yet, though, so she stayed against the shoulder of the road with her
headlights off.
"They just looked like men. Average men, wearing
black suits. But they had sunglasses on, and I couldn't see a nose or a
mouth. It was just blurred out, like the reality in front of their
faces was smudged like wet paint, you know?
"I'm worried they're Pentex. I'm worried they did something. I lost... Jesus Christ, I lost a fucking hour. They knocked me out."
Hector Ghosh
"You're alright."
That's
the best he can do for her from six hundred miles away. Unless he
wanted to take the moon bridge back home to Forgotten Questions and hope
she could make it back to the Homestead without incident. Which she has
to guess he does now want to do that.
"You're alright, I... I
don't know what they're called, I've just heard stories. They're like...
androids or something, or cyborgs, you know? Robots that are supposed
to look like humans. Or humans that have robot parts. It's--"
Come on Hector you walking encyclopedia of fucked-up information help her.
"If
it's not Pentex then I don't know what the hell it is. But if they were
going to kill you they would have just killed you, they wouldn't have
bothered knocking you out. Where are you right now?"
Lola Hawkes
He
can hear her fussing around inside of the car a little. The ruffling
of clothes, the sound of the heater blowing heavily when the engine has
worked up enough heat to turn the air warm. He assures her that she's
fine, and when she speaks next her tone is a little more even, at least,
though no less grim and severe sounding.
"The baby's fine...,"
mostly announced for him, but a little bit for her as well. She was
scared of what things the men in suits could have done to the
still-growing baby while she was out, but Hector had brought up the
point of motivation. She couldn't imagine that they had any interest in
her pregnancy-- this was probably triggered by her snooping around.
She rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand.
"Outside
of Ft. Collins by a couple of miles-- out of the suburbs and everything
at least. Along the highway, just parked. The fuckers tried to wreck
my car to stop me, but I got out and one pulled a gun. The other snuck
up on me and then--..." She stopped herself and sighed heavily. She
sounded frustrated again.
"I gotta figure this out. But androids, 'eh? ....Shit."
Hector Ghosh
Until
she volunteers information about the baby Hector had been focusing on
Lola. She can tell it was a loud and blaring fear he was ignoring by the
heaviness of the breath he lets go then. Like he had been holding it
all this time and just remembered he needs to come up for air sometimes.
"Yeah, I mean, I don't know,
but you only lost an hour instead of like, a limb or something." Or the
baby. "I feel like if it were anything else you've be in seriously deep
shit right now."
She cannot see him as he drops back against the
side of the building and blows out his fear and the panic he didn't let
himself feel to begin with. But she can hear something. Some rustling
and some delayed-reaction breathing.
"How did they...? I just don't understand why they were messing with you."
Lola Hawkes
"An
old acquaintance came by-- Sweet Caroline of the Fianna. She asked me
to check on her grandparents. So I've been trying to track them down.
They've been missing for like a fuckin' week. They off adventurin' and
chasin' mysteries and shit. I was at their house and..."
She
trailed off. She was having trouble remembering what the inside of the
house was like-- specifically because she was trying to retrace her
steps from room to room to remember what she'd found out. She couldn't
remember which rooms she'd checked or what she'd found. Concern creased
into her voice when she continued.
"...when I left they were following after me. I think the old fuckers got mixed up in something too deep."
Another pause, and then almost begrudgingly she stated:
"I'm gonna have to go save them."
Hector Ghosh
"You're gonna..."
Oh he doesn't like that. He doesn't like that at all.
"Wait
a minute. Wait wait. Sweet Caroline? Oh, Lo, come on, her grandparents
are like the fucked-up love child of Teddy Roosevelt and Indiana Jones.
Twins fucked-up love children. Only they're not related because that
would be-- Don't... no no no, don't go after them, if they can't get out
of it themselves they're fucked."
Lola Hawkes
"Hector, I'm going after them."
She sounded firm about it. He can be sure that there's a stubborn set to her jaw even though he can't see it there.
"It
sounds like it's real trouble. I mean, if it's bad enough that I got..
got... fucking memory wiped or whatever just for looking into it?
They're in trouble. And they're fucking old. Whatever happened I don't
think they're gonna be able to handle it on their own, and they might
not be our Kinfolk but they're still, y'know, part of this."
She
sounded distracted, like she was rambling a little bit. He hears the
engine rev up a little and the phone shift and shuffle about, like she
was adjusting her hold on it. She was pulling off the shoulder of the
road and getting to driving again. Once comfortably on the road she
worked the wheel with her left hand and cradled the phone to her ear
with her right shoulder. "I've gotta get somewhere safe. I don't want
these fuckers following me back to the Bawn."
Hector Ghosh
"I don't want them following you at all."
He
would have lost this debate even if he were in town. He knows it. She
can hear in his voice that he knows it. The only time Hector can win any
sort of argument against Lola it's when he knows in his bones that he's
right.
If he were a more traditional wolf he might have told her
they dug their own grave and it wasn't worth the potential loss of life
trying to bring them back.
Hector sighs.
"Alright." Like
he's reassuring himself now instead of her. "Alright. If anyone can get
these two old bats out of trouble, it's you."
That said:
"I
swear, when I get back, I'm not leaving you alone again. Like, ever. I'm
going to be a stay-at-home dad. The kind that actually puts on clothes
and shit, not the bathrobe-and-sweatpants-all-day kind."
Lola Hawkes
The
quip that Hector made about being a stay-at-home dad earned him a
chuckle. That he managed this much in her current state of nerves spoke
volumes.
"That's just fine. I'll go... I don't know, shoot fuckin' bad guys for a living. People get paid for that, right?"
She
seems willing to let the conversation drift that way for now-- to just
talk with him for a few minutes before letting him get back to what he
was doing. Hector gave her an idea, a direction for the origin of those
men in suits, and that's what she'd called him for. That, and he
calmed her down-- that was the other reason she'd called. She wanted to
hear him, reason things out with him, and they'd accomplished this as
well.
So she'd spend the next minute or so continuing the 'what
if' scenario of her getting a job as a bounty hunter and him staying
home with the children. They'd make an A&E television series about
her, and it would get cancelled three-fourths of the way through the
first season. But at some point the conversation ends-- Hector goes
back inside and Lola turns off onto a driveway to ask for help from a
man that she'd broken her friendship with.
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