Lola Hawkes
The last two nights Lola has spent in a
largely empty home, sleeping solo in a bed she'd grown accustomed to
sharing. The moon was fat and full, blood red one of the two nights, so
she did not call to summon her mate back home. She let him have his
time under the moon, reveling in it and wetting his teeth and working
through his stress. It showed on him. She spied new silver hairs
('They're silver', she had insisted, 'not gray,' when he drew
attention to them to complain or give them names at one time) in recent
weeks and understood full well it was what would come soon with the
summer that caused this.
She let him be one night, perhaps even two, but that was plenty time enough.
No
longer content with busying herself and returning to life alone, as she
had known it before Celduin returned without her older sister running
with them, Lola had finished with tending to the large functional garden
she'd made her Project Of The Year, taken up her walking stick and
satchel, and set out into the Bawn proper.
A pause and a quick
chat with one of the Warder's Pack gave her directions to where she
could probably find Hector floating around-- they'd spied him where he'd
slept the night before, at least. So she'd set off, and at some point
or another she'll hopefully be able to pick Hector out of the
landscape. When she does, he'll find this approaching on the horizon:
Lola,
quite pregnant. Well into her third trimester with at least a month
left to go before the child would be full term. She's dressed in a
short-sleeved dress that's hemmed to mid-thigh, white and navy
horizontal stripes, stretched across her stomach because everything had
to stretch there now. She wore functional sneakers on her feet, of
course, with a wide-brimmed hat on her head to keep the sun off her neck
and shoulders. Her hair was piled up so a neck and upper back both
misted with sweat could catch the breeze and cool her. She couldn't
imagine that April while pregnant could be hotter than August of last
year ever seemed. She's not quite huffing with exhaustion while she
walks, but that's probably because she takes her time and utilizes the
six-foot tall walking stick freely.
Hector Ghosh
Celduin
might not have even gone to the moot. It's hard to tell what Celduin
has been doing with themselves lately. One of them is always gone off
somewhere on some quest that they don't see fit to share with anyone
else. They had always had a reputation for catching a breeze and letting
it carry them in one direction or another. But that was when Willow led
them. After Willow fell it was a matter of falling back down to earth
and then trying to keep moving after they'd hit the ground.
A lot
has changed for the children of Fog over the course of the last year. In
June Maria and Glen will have been dead a year. Hector and Lola's baby
is due then.
Hector started losing his fucking mind months ago but
sources say it appears to be good and gone now. Maybe he's spent too
much time around the pit or trying to find a way back to Beloved Horror
that won't let them trail him. Maybe something happened at the airport.
That's the last anyone's seen much of him after all. That was his first
moment of disgrace as a Fostern and it wasn't even that bad.
When
Lola goes looking for him no one is surprised. He's been out of his mind
for so long that when his mate comes around trying to find him it's
just another instance of the Fostern Galliard falling asleep on a rock
somewhere or drifting off into the Umbra for too long. She's in luck
today. The last time anyone saw him he was off by the rock he and Tamsin
use as a gathering place.
He has his shoes off because it was
warm today and his jeans are rolled halfway up his shins because he was
in the creek earlier. His shoulder-long hair is tied back in a bun at
the nape of his neck. He's not wearing a shirt. Fuck that. It's
springtime and it's warm. At the time Lola comes up over the rise where
she can see him he's sitting cross-legged on the rock and scrawling
something in his journal.
Something tells her of her approach.
Something on the breeze or in his ears. He looks up and Lola can see
even from a distance the love staining his eyes. It's been a permanent
fixture in his gaze since the day he jumped down onto that ledge to save
her from falling.
It isn't until she gets closer that he starts
to get nervous. It could take her a moment to sort out why he didn't
come home after the Revel.
Lola Hawkes
Hector
finds his woman in good health, she takes the hill in stride and leans
into the stick so she can push with her arm to help propel herself up
the slope. She's unsurprised to find him at this rock, the same one
that he tended to gravitate toward. It had a good slope, made for a
good surface to sit on and warm up in the sun.
That appeared to be
precisely what Hector was doing when Lola saw him. He knew she was
coming, there was no sneaking up on him. She wasn't trying to sneak,
she'd probably be miserable at it in her condition anyways, plus he was a
Wolf as much as a Man and each had their own ways of knowing when their
mate was about. Their eyes found each others faces across the brief
distance, and Lola lifted her hand to wave (though she didn't wave so
much as just show him her palm and fingers for a few seconds before
dropping her arm again, but he got the idea).
When she drew near
enough to be heard without having to call out to him, Lola said: "I'd
kind of figured you'd be hanging around here. Nice day and all, good
for sunning...," And when nearer to the rock she stopped and looked up
at him, lifting the brim of her hat with her free hand. The other hand
planted the walking stick into the ground-- it was a solid thing, carved
from some heavy branch of a dense wood. It was smoothed and polished
once but worn and dusty with much use. Lola had tied three bundles of
sage with twine and hung them near the top. They weren't lit yet, but
one could imagine that she probably left a trail of lingering sage smoke
behind her when the time came for mosquitoes to be out in force (or
when she needed to keep evil away, but that was another thing entirely).
She'd
paused when she peered up at Hector and saw the signs of nerves in his
eyes and mouth and manner. Her brow crunched down into a frown. "I'm
not interrupting something here, am I?"
Hector Ghosh
In
order to find an analog for this nervousness of his she would have to
think back to the first time they coupled on a heavy moon after learning
of her pregnancy. To remember that Hector's greatest fear right now
first-time father as he is is being the thing that kills their child.
He'd
been a strung-tight mess during Cassandra's visit last month. Lunch had
not been a disaster but it had been tense as the human woman killed the
silence with talk of her own family. How Vijay was doing with his
practice and how their son was doing in school. Little talk of how
Hector's resurfacing had affected him. Likely not at all. His nephew had
been a very small child when he disappeared.
Even if he wanted to
he couldn't be around the boy now without scaring him. His Rage isn't
enough that he can't have a conversation with a normal person but a
normal person can sense the monster in him. It's an instinctive thing.
Lola
thought he'd calmed down a bit after calling his mother. She'll be here
on the third of May. It's a Saturday. They had to go to the library one
day to set up an email account so she could get them her itinerary.
It's printed out and affixed to the refrigerator with a magnet now. The
flight will arrive in Denver from San Francisco at 11:28 in the morning.
His
eyes tick to her stomach and he laughs a tinned laugh. In his muscles
she sees the war between going to her and staying back.
"No!" he
says quicker than he means to. Clears his throat and puts down the
journal and starts to inch towards her. "No, I just... hi."
Lola Hawkes
[Perception 3 + Empathy 2: We probably have a good idea of what's up, but...?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Lola Hawkes
Never
known for being much of a people person, it was a surprising thing that
Lola was able to pick up on their moods and temperaments with any
proficiency at all. For Lola it wasn't really about being able to
soothe or heal those that need it. Rather, she read people because she
knew even as a preteen that in order to lead her people she would need
to understand her people, and Lola was dreaming of leading great War
Packs into battle in those formative days.
With Hector, of course,
her ability to read him comes from other places. Familiarity. Love.
Things of that nature. She watched him waffle on whether or not he
should come down from the rock to join her on flat earth, watched his
eyes and heard the tightness to his voice and throat and words. It
didn't take her very long to sum up where the jittery behavior was
coming from.
More level now, even with her hair sticking to her
neck where it had fallen loose from its place under her hat on account
of how hot she felt in the sun, Lola didn't become impatient with the
Galliard. Instead she set her mouth flat and her eyes resoled, sighed
quietly, and lifted her walking stick to extend the sage-decorated end
to him. An offer to guide him down off the rock. He didn't need the
guidance, but the point was encouraging him to come join her. The
equivalent of an extended hand.
"I've missed you." It's a good place to begin.
Hector Ghosh
He
can't even try to reassure her with a reminder that he's only been gone
a couple days. Ever since he and Tamsin left with the intention to hit
every sept that would listen to them he's been gone near as often as
he's been home with her. Twice now he's been gone so long that he's been
surprised at the difference in the size of her belly between departure
and homecoming.
It isn't entirely his anxiety and his flighty mood
that has had him gone from her but Lola's missing him isn't unfounded.
Hector has been unpredictable since nearly dying down in the airport
basement. Like he doesn't trust himself anymore.
Everyone has forgiven him because everyone makes mistakes.
When
the stick comes forward he is reminded of a Tolkien character because
his brain is saturated in Tolkien stories. If he and Tamsin could move
to Middle Earth they would in a heartbeat. But a smile comes across his
lips and he laughs an uncertain yet grateful laugh and climbs the rest
of the way off the rock.
His approach is a halting hesitant thing
but when he gets near enough to her that he can read her face for signs
of distress so can Lola see the depths of his own. It doesn't stop him
from putting his hand over her belly. It just means he's slow about it.
And when the baby doesn't react to his presence Hector doesn't hesitate at all to wrap his woman up in his arms.
"I'm sorry," he says into her neck. "I'm so bad at this."
Lola Hawkes
With
visible pregnancy comes the risk-- nay, the promise of unwanted
attention from strangers. It was often harmless, really, typically
questions from well-meaning elders or other mothers or people working in
the stores Lola needed to visit to make conversation. But there were
always a few that felt just because a person looked warm and matronly
(due only to physiology, mind you, rarely ever did Lola look very warm,
especially for strangers), who felt that there was an open invitation
for touching.
Two people touched her stomach the other day while
she was waiting around Anthony's tattoo parlor for him to finish a
session so they could go to dinner. One was uninvited, a woman who
seemed perfectly nice but was unwelcome all the same. Lola had twisted
the poor girl's wrist to a point where she could quickly fracture the
joint with more pressure. The time following was an incredibly stoned
young man in the middle of his session that was talking with Lola for
twenty minutes or so during a session break outside. Lola had warmed up
to the hapless young man enough after fifteen seconds that she let him
touch when he was incredibly impressed by how a stomach looked when a
baby flipped around inside of it.
When Hector stepped down and
approached to reach for her stomach, Lola did nothing to stop or warn
him. Strangers had to chat her up for a long time, or they ran the risk
of broken fingers and wrists. Hector was the one person with open
invitation, so he received no reluctance or resistance when he comes
near. He'd see no signs of discomfort in her face-- his Rage was a
palpable thing but Lola was calloused to it.
What passed between
them and reassured Hector was not words, or anything really of men. It
was touch and sense and breathing. When it had passed he wrapped Lola
up in his arms, and Lola tipped the walking stick out away from them and
curled her free arm around his back and splayed a hand between his
shoulders.
"You wanna tell me what 'good at this' even looks
like?" There's a note of humor there, no laugh or chuckle in her voice
or twinkle in her eyes, but a subtle shift to her tone. Hector hears
and senses it more easily now than before-- when they were years younger
and fresh to each other it had probably been much more difficult to
interpret. "Because I don't know that I've seen it from anyone."
Hector Ghosh
Her
question and the followup make him laugh a quieter laugh than Lola has
grown used to hearing from him. With only one arm free and her belly
between them she cannot grasp him tightly. A few inches of height allow
him to envelope her and he holds her as secure as he can without
squeezing her. Presses his lips first against her throat and then her
jaw and then her temple. Scenting her as he goes. A hand at the nape of
her neck assures him that even if he can't be sure of the next several
months no calamity is going to strike them today.
"One day we're
gonna look back," he says, "and it's gonna be like 'Remember when we
didn't know what we were doing?'" His voice takes on a softer edge but
doesn't rise in pitch. Like he's imitating his mate. Tough and feminine
at once. "'Yeah. I remember. You were completely fucking useless.'"
Lola Hawkes
Theirs
was a people between species, given traits of two because they would
best be used to protect Gaia. Because they were what She needed. So
they were Men and Wolves both, and they operated as such. Some things
were best processed with a human approach and mindset-- structure,
detailed plans, battle attacks, puzzles and logic and things that man's
quick and deep-folded mind would be able to work through. Other things,
though, were more real and bright and certain from a wolf's standpoint.
How
Hector held her with his taller body curved down past the space forced
between them by the child she grew, how he breathed her scent and knew
it was her with no poison or altering or injury, how he held her near
and assured himself of the fact that his mate and young were intact and
well, all of that was more primal.
But the Ghosh and Hawkes family, they didn't really subscribe themselves to many human norms, did they?
What
Hector had to say earned him a low chuckle from Lola, the sound in her
chest and throat rather than reaching and bubbling from her lips. She
pressed her temple to his, forehead to his, breathed with him and then
eased back. Being near and touching was well and good, but she was
sweaty and Hector didn't exactly run cool himself either. "You're
being too hard on yourself," she told him flatly. "I don't know what
you think it is you're supposed to be doing, but I'm not noticing anything that you've missed."
Pause, and then as an extra thought she added: "You made the crib."
Good job, Lola. Way to reassure.
Hector Ghosh
More
than one story of Lola's exploits have come to him in the last month.
Always it is with the sense that Hector might be better off not knowing
that the mother of his child got into an argument with Alexis the Black
Fury kinsman over whether she ought to bring a shotgun inside a diner
kitchen or that she was seen with Erich Storm's-Teeth again even though
she and Erich Storm's-Teeth no longer have qualms with each other.
Nothing
wracks Hector's nerves more than knowing he cannot protect his baby and
his woman at the same time. His woman is capable and strong and can
protect herself and yet his is a memory that holds tight to everything
he has ever heard. It will take him a long time to forget the fear leapt
up in his throat the morning she called him from a hospital bed.
As
much as he can remember fears and pains and sorrows his is a warm
heart. He prefers playing and laughing and telling stories of triumph
and foolishness and rejuvenation more than he wishes to dwell on the
dark things. Dwelling on dark things makes him angry. He's a traveler
but not a dweller.
Lola starts to disengage herself from him and
he lets her go. It's hot and they're both tacky with sweat and she has
more than one body to keep cool.
He made the crib.
Given the
melting of his expression and his muscles and the tension in his body
it would be an understatement to say he needed reassurance and yet
hearing it lets him take a deeper breath to blow away some of his
uncertainty.
"That crib," he says as he picks up his journal and
his knapsack, "is going to survive the Apocalypse. It already made it
through Tamsin jumping in it. I am the king of carpentry."
Lola Hawkes
While
Hector gathered up his journal and knapsack, Lola reached into the
satchel that rested at her left hip, supported by a strap that crossed
diagonal over her chest and back. She procured two things-- a lighter
and a bottle of water. The water was offered to Hector first, a drink
to wet his mouth and throat if he wanted it. Whether he accepted or
not, Lola would follow by taking a drink for herself before tucking the
bottle away. The lighter was used to ignite to a smolder the end of one
of the sage bundles tied like a tassel to the top end of her walking
stick. A keen eye at the horizon had told her the sun would be setting
and that was precisely when the bugs liked to come out to chew on your
legs and neck.
"Tamsin is lucky the crib survived her. She would
have gotten the honor of bringing back all the things you'd have needed
to fix it." Lola's tone is casual, and she speaks while holding flame
to sage. Hector can find a sort of matter-of-factness that's
reassuring. He can hope that it would carry over to parenting more than
her hot temper and harsh hand.
When content with the smoke
curling from the dusty dry green bundle, Lola returned the lighter to a
satchel pocket and fixed her eyes on Hector again. Her mouth didn't
make the shape of a smile often, but her earth-brown eyes were warm
enough. She didn't come to find him because she was angry that he'd
been absent. She'd come simply for the reason she'd stated-- she missed
him, she wanted to bring him home.
"That crib will survive
whatever beasts we unleash on the world, though. That's for sure." A
beat, and a hint of a grin formed. "You're the only person that thinks
you're gonna fall on your face. You know that, right? Folks think I'm
more likely to fuck up than they think you will."
Hector Ghosh
Hector
accepts the bottle with a murmur of gratitude and takes enough to rinse
the dust from his throat before handing it back. His knapsack goes over
his shoulder and he takes whatever extra burden Lola will offload
before they fall into walking beside each other. His legs are longer and
his center of gravity is not skewed by the weight of new life. But he
is perceptive and he knows her and he walks slow so she does not have to
push herself to keep up with him.
They're going home together.
More
than one person has joked about Hector's being better suited to
parenting than Lola is. He has Rage lapping at his breastbone and wasn't
born into this but he's become a leader despite all of the hurdles he
had to overcome. His lack of desire or natural ability or confidence
didn't stop him from taking up the mantle when it was necessary. One day
he could be a great hero of the Nation.
But he is the only person
expecting that he will fail. Lola tells him this and he doesn't doubt
her. She knows he doesn't doubt her.
"Yeah, well," he says. "That's because you've got an itchy trigger finger."
He
isn't sure if they're talking about their reputations within the Nation
or within the context of parenting. Either way his joke has solid
footing.
Lola Hawkes
The start of a grin that had
been there before cracked full and spread across the Kinswoman's face-- a
face that was rounder, less pronounced in the cheekbones as it had been
before. This is the softest she's probably ever appeared-- Hector's
dredged up a childhood picture of Lola or two, and as a child she was
wiry and long-limbed and lean. She's always been built of tough stuff.
It took bearing children to put fat on her body and round up the edges
of her face for the first time.
They started walking, but were in
no hurry. Hector would wait for Lola's new shortened gait, and the sun
was only just settling into dusk. There was time to make it home, and
they were a people that lived without alarm clocks anyways.
One
day that may change. Lola has been considering quietly to herself how
she could begin to earn money, to take the financial responsibility of
The Homestead off of her cousin's hands so that they wouldn't be a
burden to him. Maybe if he looked at his connection to the Nation as
less of a chore he could become more involved in it. Lola wasn't
entirely sure yet what she could realistically do to earn money,
though. She wouldn't fight a human country's wars and was left
uncertain of where else a soldier would fit in. This would be a
conversation, perhaps, for another day. For now they spoke of parenting
and reputations and walked at a comfortable pace through the Bawn, Lola
now without her satchel as Hector had requested to take it from her
shoulders.
"Well, probably because they think you'll live longer.
Or that you'll be less likely to beat the children." This was the same
matter-of-fact tone that she'd had earlier, but it's not appropriate
here. Perhaps making jokes about beating kids could pass as humorous,
considering that both of them would more likely take someone's throat
between their teeth for laying a finger on their child than anything
else. She probably shouldn't joke about the fact that her reputation
for recklessness pegged her at the same lifespan as what she would've
had estimated were she born True instead of a Kin.
"More than
that, though, it's because you're good." She glanced sideways at him,
pondered for a second, then clarified while reaching for his hand if
only to squeeze it for a moment. "Just... Overall. You're Good." Good
with a capital 'g', clearly.
Hector Ghosh
They
will have to have this conversation one day. Both of them are physically
capable of performing any manner of general labor jobs. Hell - Lola has
the brains and the lack of Rage that could lead to a high-paying
skilled trade. But they haven't ever had to think of themselves outside
of their roles as younger siblings. This is the first time in their
lives that they are equal halves in a partnership. That they have had to
rely on another person in order to survive.
If it weren't for
Lola then Hector would have fallen into a depression from which his
spirit could not recover. Well enough to say that Tamsin kept him afloat
but Tamsin has her own demons. She needs an alpha. And Hector has
managed to fill that role to the best of his abilities.
But he
also told Tamsin that the thought of Lola being alone caused him
anguish. It was within the context of her giving birth to their child
that he made this confession but it was a general truism. He's carried a
torch for the angry kinswoman for years. She might have devolved into
isolation-induced lunacy were not for someone to keep her grounded.
This
isn't an act of altruism they're performing for each other. If anything
the Nation stands to benefit the most from their loving one another.
But they are going to need money to support themselves and their
children. Both of them agree they're going to have more than one child.
The Homestead was built with a brood in mind.
Their hands grasp
for so long as the warmth and the exertion makes the contact tolerable.
Hector's thumb grazes her knuckles before releasing her again.
"I know," he says. And humble too. "I just... hope I stay good. You know?"
Lola Hawkes
Were
it not for Hector coming back and making sure that Celduin kept its
ties to Denver, despite the fact that its one packmember who had come
from the area was dead and gone, then it was difficult to say what would
have come of Lola. Without someone to be there with her, to give her a
reason to stay grounded in life in this realm, then she would no doubt
have continued down the path of a soldier and made her life worth the
tide of a battle that she hopefully helped to change.
If War
hadn't claimed her, then some well-ranked Uktena, or possibly even
Wendigo may have come through the area, sensed her breeding, and decided
to snap her up and away from her family's land. Without surviving
Garou relatives to defend her name per tradition, there wouldn't have
been much to stop some Fostern or Adren from having her return to their
Sept with them.
"It's a gamble," she confesses when he says that
he hopes he can stay good. Lola didn't wax philosophical much, the most
scholarly or philosophy/theory-based conversations she had usually
circled around war and battle tactics and the plotting of enemy paths.
To speak of the goodness or wealth of a man's soul wasn't really
expected of her, but there were always exceptions to Lola's
granite-chipped demeanor for Hector.
"Or a test of endurance, I guess. We don't all stay good, and those of us who stay entirely
good die much younger than you or I are." His thumb had grazed her
knuckles, and she'd dusted fingertips over his palm and wrist when their
hands parted. With her right hand dedicated to managing the walking
stick and the satchel strap leaving her without anything to hook her
thumb into to rest, the left hand came to the underside of her stomach
for support. Some woman at some store that Anthony had dropped her off
at to "buy some goddamn clothes that fit you barbarian" had shown her
this elastic and velcro band that was supposed to help with the extra
weight, but Lola called it a stupid waste of thirty dollars and now here
we are, using hands for that support instead.
"Besides, we've
already gone over this-- you're not going to be the one bringing harm to
Raksha or I. We won't need to worry about that."
Hector Ghosh
"I dunno."
Because
he does worry about it. He doesn't know if He Who Waits For Dawn ever
gave any thought to the height from which he could fall but he did fall
from on high and when he landed it was a bloody mess whose shrapnel
carried far. The stories they continue to tell about the spirit-talker
out at Sept of the Painted Sands are tinged with foreshadowing. Sure he
exorcised this Bane or cleansed this Blight but he also drank too much
and raped human women and was alone when he made a martyr of himself. In
death he reclaimed his honor but he would have been more use if he
hadn't been an ass towards the end.
Now he's a shadow hung over
Hector if only because the Fostern is not tall enough to step out from
under it. He's working on it. It was only within recent years that he
began to make sense of omens and prophecy. That he began to realize that
there may be some weight to his and Tamsin's meeting. They were both
Lost after all. They were both Lost because of things their ancestors
did.
But they are not their ancestors. Even Lola Hawkes has had to
work to gain her own reputation. She wouldn't have the reputation she
had if she lived alone. It's taken others singing her song to ensure it
will live on after she's gone.
"No," he says after a moment, "fuck
it, you're right. It's just..." He sighs hard. "Everything'll be easier
once she's here and I can hold her. You know? Maybe not easier,
like I know that's when everything's going to change, it's just... I am
worrying. It's like when you have a scab that's all itchy and you know
if you scratch it you're gonna bleed like a bastard and you scratch it
anyway and then you've got worry all over your clothes."
Lola Hawkes
"Won't
be easier," she agreed in that methodical way she spoke when she was
thinking hard on what she was saying. There was a small furrow of focus
to her eyebrows when she spoke this way, a telltale sign of investment
in the subject at hand. Or of puzzlement, though that was usually
accompanied by frustration as well. There's no frustration written
through Lola's frame today, just thought.
"But it's good to know,
still. To be there, past the unknown. It's the unknown that scares us
most, and that's why our people seek the shadows." She was speaking of
the Uktena, of course. Radical and forward-thinking in some ways,
traditional back to the centuries before in others, Lola was a person
who harbored strong tribal ties. This is why she looked warily upon
Calden and Avery, Thomas and Reese, and other non-traditional pairings.
But, in one of many lessons that Lola was still learning, she opted to
do her best to keep her concerns of such affairs to herself for now.
She had plenty of other things to worry herself with than the love lives
and political turmoil of other tribes.
"Can't tell you not to worry. Wish I could give you all the reasons you need not to."
She swished her walking stick into the air in front of them, clearing a cloud of gnats out of their path.
"But I can tell you I'm pretty fuckin' certain it's all gonna be just fine."
Monday, April 21, 2014
Curiosities - 4.15.2014 [Sam, Erich, Melantha]
Lola Hawkes
Santa Fe was a popular part of town, pretty and eccentric and full of art and culture as it was. This was a part of Anthony Tirado's success-- he'd opened his first tattoo parlor here, and between location, catering to his demographic, and a damn fine hand in art, he was able to open two more parlors around the area as well. He could make enough money to support his out-of-city cousins on this business.
It's this very tattoo parlor, the one that started it all, that Lola Hawkes is hanging out in front of. Behind her the shop is wedged between two other buildings, other businesses leased out-- a salon and a market store, to be precise. The shop front was brick and classic, but the awnings over the window were black and the sign over the door was tall and wood and black as well, the letters in a tall jarring white font declaring the place to be: LA LUNA SONRIENTE TATTOO. Out front there were a ramshackle collection of chairs collected on either side of the purple-painted door. In one of these chairs sat Lola, recognizable by some for different reasons.
She wasn't here getting inked, not as far as anyone could see at least. Dressed for the warm weather, she had on a short-sleeved and short-hemmed dress of thin white-and-black stripes, a light gray cardigan left unbuttoned over top that, and a straw hat atop her head to keep the sun off her. Granted, the sun was quite behind the mountains by this point, but it hadn't been when she'd come out this way.
She was conversing with a tall and very thin man who was getting an octopus tattooed across his chest-- he was here getting the color filled in and sat in a plaid button-up shirt left undone. Her expression was skeptical but relaxed-- the kid wasn't bothering her any so she was content to share the cooling night air with him. If he had it his way they would've shared a hit off his small false cigarette pipe, but she'd hit him with strong skeptical 'Are you kidding me?' and he shrugged it off (apparently it helped his sister's pregnancy, but whatever).
Around the time that the Uktena kinfolk may fall into Samantha Evans's line of sight is the time that the door opens and the tall skinny boy gets called back inside. He bumped fists with Lola and she told him not to cry too hard when he walked back inside.
Sam Evans
The evening is young and pleasant and Sam Evans is walking alone, and like any typical Glass Walker she's holding a cell phone in her hand which she is looking at intently as her thumb works its way swiftly across the lower half of the device. That doesn't mean she's not aware of her surroundings. The kinswoman neatly side-steps a couple headed in her direction and pauses when someone practically bounds down the steps of an upper floor gallery into her. She glances up briefly to shoot the person a look. That look spurs the young woman - a girl, really, out with a group of her friends for who knows what reason - to apologize. Then it's back to the screen for at least a few more steps.
Steps which are made in a pair of mid-calf combat boots. The rest of her outfit consists of shorts and a black t-shirt with a huge skull over the front (the Punisher emblem for those in the know) worn beneath a red plaid flannel shirt converted into a long vest. Her hair is down but tucked behind her ears to reveal the piercings that run from lobe up along the outer cartilage of both ears. Stabbed through her right lobe is a thick black spike. There's a messenger bag slung across her body, the pouch resting against her left hip.
Suddenly she sighs, all the air in her lungs pushed out in a single exhale as she slides the phone into the hip pocket of those denim shorts. Which is when she looks up and sees Lola Hawkes sitting outside of a tattoo parlor. Huh. Increasing speed, she heads for a woman she only properly met about a week and a half ago.
"Lola, hey!" she calls, one corner of her mouth tugging upward in a crooked grin.
Lola Hawkes
Lola really didn't look the type to be hanging out in front of a tattoo parlor, except for the tough exterior one would suppose. Her attire didn't suit the crowd, and the long bare length of her legs left out in the air by the length of her dress didn't have a lick of ink on them. Her hair was twisted into a dense braid that sat on one shoulder, and her stomach was big enough to take up much real estate into her lap when she sat upright as she was doing now.
When Lola's name was called she had been leaning down to retrieve a water bottle from where it was sitting on the ground under her chair. She looked surprised and alert to hear her name, and glanced about with an intent and severe gaze until she found Sam's face and figure coming her way. A face and identity matched to the call, Lola relaxed and leaned back into her chair. One hand lifted in a greeting, but she didn't verbally call back across the distance. Instead, she opted to take a drink of her water.
When Sam was nearer, near enough for speaking anyways, Lola answered.
"Sam, right?" She's not as good at names, but it's probably confirmed one way or another that she's correct. Lola'd continue, unabashed by her own lack of proficiency with remembering names (they stuck with her after a few times). "How's the evening treating ya?" Eyes cut up toward the sky, brief, then back down to the Glasswalker. "Secure, I hope." The moon was full, and their peoples tempers did run quite high on nights like this, after all.
It's worth noting that Lola Hawkes didn't smile to greet Samantha Evans, crooked or otherwise. Her mouth was a straight line, neutral as can be. She didn't seem unfriendly necessarily, though. This was her friendly face.
Sam Evans
To look at the pair of them, it'd be easy to make a lot of assumptions about them. That Samantha is younger, perhaps, because of her height or because of her attire, or the difference between her demeanor and Lola's. Lola is friendly, but a reserved sort of friendly. At least she's not scowling, though probably a scowl wouldn't deter Sam. They survived an ordeal together, of course Sam's at least going to stop by to say hello.
Lola's gaze cuts upward, Sam's stays on the woman in the straw hat. She doesn't need to look up to know what night it is. She was up part of last night watching the eclipse, after all. "About as secure as it can get," she says with a one-shouldered shrug. Then she looks at the sign for the parlor and back to Lola. "Are you waiting to get inked or waiting on someone getting inked?"
Lola Hawkes
The question was an authentic one, and it earned Sam a relaxed, comfortable looking shrug and shake of her head before she gestured toward the purple wooden door with a hitched thumb. "Nah, my cousin Anthony owns the place. I'm waitin' up on him to finish a session, then we're headed out."
She took another drink of her water then went on to clarify: "It's hot as fuck in there. Nice night out here, though."
Another pause, this time for her to glance up the street and wrinkle the bridge of her nose up some. She was a woman of the rural wilds, after all. 'Nice' was a comparative thing between city blocks and the stretching land she called her own. "Well, neverminding the obvious."
She'd next gesture to one of the remaining chairs (there were plenty left to choose from) in front of the shop with a sweep of her water bottle before she leaned sideways (not forward, leaning forward was a goddamn ordeal) to set the bottle back down on the cement. "If you're stayin' around you might as well sit."
Eva
Nor is Éva the sort to hang around in front of a tattoo parlor, and assuredly she is not hanging around anywhere. She is on the street however; half a block away, emerging from a non-descript glass door sandwiched between a headshop and a coffee shop, which must assuredly lead to some sort of generic offices tucked away on the second floor.
The door is closing behind her; she turns around and catches it with the flat of her hand. A stranger comes out behind her: a shaggy-haired man with sharp features and beaten-up leather jacket walks out behind her.
He says something to her.
She lifts her chin, and cants her head in response, listening.
A beat passes and she shakes her head. He slips past her, turns one day down the sidewalk. Éva goes the other, a briefcase head lightly in hand, heels a clipped beat against the sidewalk. Sam and Lola draw her gaze; which is dark and impassive.
Her gaze and the faintest hint of acknowledgment. No more.
She walks on.
Erich
Well well WELL.
Sam and Lola are not the only ones to witness Eva Illeshazy coming out of a tattoo parlor. There is also Erich, who is coming out of -- good god, is he coming out of that vegan-friendly, gluten-free, all-organic, paleo-diet cafe? Yes, yes he is. He is coming out of it and his eyes are lighting up and he is about to ask Eva what tattoo she got and where, how scandalous, except then
some shaggyhaired dude walks out after her. And now Erich's all high-alert, hounding-scenting-rabbit, standing very straight with his eyes keen and his head tipped just so, about a hair short of sniffing the air. Who is that? Why is he with Eva? Is it a threat? IS IT A BOOTY CALL, GROSS. But then they part ways, and Erich relaxes minutely, his head turning as he follows the disappearing form of his kinswoman
(ridiculous to think of her like that, really, like maybe he could and should take care of her better than she could take care of herself when the woman is like forty years old with three kids and a full-time, high-paying, respected career)
until she, in fact, disappears. Hmm. Odd odd odd. He mental-shrugs. He pops the lid off his hot chocolate and he blows across the steamy surface. Sips.
Sam Evans
Sam does confirm that Lola has the correct name for her. She's better with names, probably for a lot of reasons, but mostly it's training. And working in public relations once upon a time. She doesn't fault Lola for having to ask, doesn't mind it at all, actually. They only saw each other really the one time (the other times were almost too brief to count, and they didn't include names given), so far anyway.
"Oh, nice," says Sam, because that does sound nice. Going out with family after a day of sweating it out over a chair with a tattoo needle in hand, and whatever it is that Lola does with her days. Sam makes no assumptions about what the kinswoman does with her time, since she herself has so many hobbies and work-related and family things on her own plate, and they don't ever seem terribly connected.
"What are-" she starts, but a rock guitar riff (that sounds an awful lot like the award-winning song from a recent Disney musical) issues from her pocket. Holding up her finger to Lola, she says, "Hang on a sec I need to take this."
She turns away briefly to answer the call, and what she hears causes her brow to furrow and her mouth to twist. She nods her head even though obviously the only witness to the motion is Lola and the other people on the street, but she adds an, "Uh huh. Hm. Okay. Yeah, I know. Thanks, George, see you soon."
Ending the call, she slides the phone back into her pocket and returns her attention to Lola, her expression apologetic. "I'd love to, but my kid needs me. Rain check?" She would have given Lola her number after the Shorty Lu's incident, and gotten some means of contact her in return hopefully. If not, Lola would definitely have her number. She heads off in search of her car, saying, "Enjoy your evening. Stay safe!" as she goes.
Lola Hawkes
A question began, but ended just as quick, interrupted by a ringing phone. Lola didn't look put off, but simply tipped her head to one side so her neck would pop before simply sitting still, casting eyes about while listening to Samantha take her phone call. In this interim of time the distinguished Shadow Lord woman, Eva, caught her eye. There was a moment where they nodded to one another, then the woman was on her way. Up the sidewalk a ways there was Erich the Shadow Lord Ahroun, sipping something from a cup and looking like a lion scoping out the plain before him (he couldn't help it, it was just the nature of Garou to appear as such).
Attention was brought back by Sam explaining that she had to be on her way. All that she got in answer was a bit of a 'Hmm', a hum of affirmation and understanding, followed by: "See you around."
Then the Glass Walker was on her way.
This left Lola to sit, staked out in front of the tattoo parlor as though she was anchored there, like she belonged there. Something about it spoke of a guard dog's behavior, though motherhood in the making did a fair job of counteracting that.
If Erich looked her way she would wave. Otherwise she would simply keep an eye on the Garou where he was and let him have his night. She didn't have any business to talk, and she remembered the last time they attempted to speak politics when the moon was heavy as it was.
Melantha Argyris
They walk out of the weird cafe. Erich, and then a second or two later, Melantha, in jeans and hoodie and sneakers, following his gaze. She sees Eva, sees Erich go all abuzz with energy about it, all curiosity and so forth, but she doesn't think much of it. Eva is a lawyer, right? Maybe she has a reason. Or.
She's holding Erich's hand, fingers laced loosely and comfortably, and she notices Lola, who is like, seriously pregnant at the moment. She blinks, also slightly recognizing the shorter woman hurrying off. Erich may or may not be looking that way. But Melantha is. And a second later, Erich will be, because Erich is being tugged slightly, is seeing Melantha give a nod in Lola's direction.
Erich
Erich is tugged along. Erich, naturally, looks to see where they're going. Erich sees Lola! He waves back.
And then they kinda catch up to Lola, and Lola is ginormous, and Erich kinda stares at her belly for a while before coming up with the same question she's been asked ten thousand bijillion times:
"When are you due?"
Lola Hawkes
Some odd number of weeks or so ago, Lola may have still gnashed teeth at the question. That was back when she'd initially started showing and the question was still new. She'd gotten tired of answering truthfully because then the questions of 'what, how do you not know?' would come, but she was too stubborn and proud a creature to just curve her spine to what was expected and make up a date to recite to people either. So, her patience to the question has improved, and the answer she'd settled on telling people when they approached was precisely what she had to offer Erich and Melantha (whose interlaced fingers were stared at openly as they approached, but not for too very long because soon she was looking up into faces instead).
"Summer." She glanced to Erich when she answered, then glanced down at her stomach to follow his eyes. It's true, she was big. Third trimester, they would probably believe her if she said 'anytime' big. Except people who worked within doctors offices or those who were simply around people bringing babies into the world often for other reasons knew that women still got plenty bigger than that. If Lola and Hector's calculations were right she still had plenty (not enough never enough) time left.
Still, she folded her hands to rest them at the shelf made by that stomach and added: "Hopefully, anyway." And, to swing the subject: "What are you two up to?" There's a hint-note of curious suspicion there, but she was a Uktena after all. They all had their way of being drawn to curiosities and secrets and mysteries like moths to flames.
Melantha Argyris
'Summer', Lola says, and Melantha just nods, looking her over, thoughtful. "June, maybe," she says, without really thinking of it, without really thinking it's a 'thing'. It's a guess. Her eyes are a bit pink on the lower lids; did she weep recently? Not much. No splotches. No puffiness. Then again, girls like her always cry pretty, don't they?
Her eyes come back up; the kid will keep til the kid stops keeping. She doesn't balk at the question, just sips her chai. They both have paper cups. Compostable, biodegradable cups. "Just got some food over there," she points with her cup at the cafe across the way. "What about you?"
Erich
"That's still a really long time," Erich says, unenviously. "I guess less so if it's June, but. It could be a really long time.
"And yeah, we were getting some food. They have chicken. It's not all granola. I hear the granola is good though. I didn't get any, I can't eat that stuff." And then echoing without quite realizing he's echoing: "What about you?"
Lola Hawkes
Melantha's answer was considered with a nod. That's about what Lola was figuring too. Erich's expressing how long of a time it was until June came around was met with a flat stare. The Kinswoman's lips pressed together, her brows flexed down some, and she half-scowled half just flatly stared at the Ahroun for a second before stating in a tone as dry and flat as the look she'd given him: "Yeah. It sure is."
But she isn't one to scold someone for their lack of sensitivity. Instead she moves to other topics, other thoughts. She's distracted by something about the pair. Not that they are together, they ran in a pack together (though if you asked Lola and her traditional roots there wasn't any sense or reason to have a Kinfolk actually added to the ranks of a pack, not when they couldn't go all the places the wolves could go, but again nobody asked her). She was curious about Melantha's crying eyes, and about Erich's rambling about granola.
Soon enough she decides the pair of them are probably stoned, and she had no qualms with that. Found it a damn fine idea, given the moon's blooded face last night and the continued swell to full tonight. To answer the question that both had posed to her, in their way:
"My cousin runs the shop." Of course, she's referring to the one she's set up in front of. "Waitin' up on him." Simply put, but most things that she had to speak to tended to be. She moved her hands, pressing the left palm to the side of her stomach (a kick or flip had made her uncomfortable), then she reached down for her water bottle before grabbing the back of her chair and pushing herself up to her feet. Though balance and range of motion were impacted, she was still able to get her ass up out of a chair unhindered. Being built for nothing but the physical in the first place helped.
"Things've been quiet, it seems. Good time for it." Her voice was low enough that their conversation could be skipped and missed by any that passed by. The other chairs were empty, they weren't crowded by pedestrians. So Lola twisted the lid off the bottle, took a drink, and added: "Storm always follows the calm, though. Just hoping it gives another two months before it does."
A raised eyebrow, then, and this question is directed more at Erich: "Anythin' been goin' on at the Spire?"
Melantha Argyris
Lola's little 'half' scowl and 'half' flat stare at Erich just being Erich, before that dry bit of snark, already has Melantha's back up. She may not be one to scold, but she sure doesn't play her cards close to her vest, either. Melantha's just staring at her, holding Erich's hand in one and holding her chai in the other, and she stares unabashedly while Lola breezily judges them in the back of her mind.
Melantha is still staring at her as Lola rises. Her brow quirks at the storm always follows the calm comment. She asks Erich a question. Melantha's the one who answers.
"Not much," she counters. "Anything going on at the old rock quarry?"
Erich
Erich just looks confused.
Lola Hawkes
"Nothing worth reporting, especially."
Whatever stiffness may have gone into Melantha's spine went unnoticed, must have, for Lola didn't bat a lash at it, didn't refocus that semi-scowl onto the other Kinfolk instead. Her expression had relaxed once more and she tucked her free hand into a cardigan pocket, the one holding the water bottle tapped out a rhythm with the mostly empty container lightly against the bare skin above her knee.
"Like I said-- quiet. Hector and I ran across some unpleasants out hunting few weeks back, but they were quick business. No whispers from the East or West about Our Old Friends either. Just... no pulse."
Clearly she's more focused on her distrust and suspicion of things being relaxed and easy. Lola was made from the same iron that greatswords and spearheads were born of, and in a War as great as theirs a lack of movement on the field only made her wary. It couldn't occur to her to just be thankful instead, it seems.
Erich
Finally the penny drops. "Oh -- you guys are talking about Lola's place and the Cold Crescent? I didn't know you lived in a rock quarry. And man, tell people to stop calling it the Spire. It's like... not a spire! That makes me think of pointy things. I still don't know who Our Old Friends are supposed to be.
"But anyway, it's actually not that quiet. Or it is? But there's some action going on in. Uh. Dreams."
Yeah, that sounded insane.
"I mean," he adds, "some of us have been having just these repeating dreams. I mean repeating, night after night. Gradually moving forward a little every night? But really, really slowly. And so far no one really knows what it's about yet, though -- but we all seem to kinda be in the same dream. Really far apart? But in the same ... like ... universe."
Lola Hawkes
Then, Erich mentions something about dreams. That catches Lola's attention. She neverminds his correcting her about whether it should be called a Spire or not, and neverminds that he didn't know who the old friends were either. She was over the old news, on to the new. Considering what detail he'd given about the dreams.
"Huh." It's all she has to say at first, but a few more seconds of thought and she pressed on.
"Tamsin mentioned something like that. Had trouble with her hands-- said they felt old, brittle, something like that. I told her she should seek a Dream Walker, one of the Galliards that has the gift to see into the dreams. You looked into one of them yourself?"
Melantha Argyris
Nope. Nope. No, Erich, see, Melantha was making an underhanded point about -- oh, nevermind. She just looks at him, sort of wry and fond, shaking her head and sipping her chai. He goes on to tell Lola that it's not so quiet, which Melantha had actually wanted to come over her and ask Lola in the first place, but Lola... well.
Her eyebrows go up. "Erich was just talking about that inside."
Erich
"Yeah! We totally talked to Tamsin. We were gonna go find a Galliard or a Theurge or something too. Do you know any good ones?"
Lola Hawkes
"Knew a great Theurge. Know a great couple of Galliards, but they're all pretty young yet."
Her mother, and Celduin. This is who she's referring to.
She may have gone on further, but the shop door opened up and a dark complected man stepped out, pulling a hat on and finishing some farewell over his shoulder as he went. His hair was black and stuck out at angles that suggested need of a haircut under the hat. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt and his arms were sleeves of colorful design. The fact that Lola glanced over to him and lifted her eyebrows in question suggested this was probably the person she was waiting for.
He looked curiously at Melantha and Erich both, nodded his greeting to them, and asked if Lola was ready to go. She was. So she bade the pair farewell: "If you learn anything, let her know huh?" It was kind of a Take care of Tamsin for me in tone-- the concern for the Fianna was there, folded in to the surly demeanor that the woman kept.
Soon, though, she was on her way with a Kinfolk that Erich could sense had only the faintest hum of Uktena heritage in him-- it ran much stronger in Lola by grace of her mother's blood. They spoke as they walked, bouncing comfortably between Spanish and English as they pleased. Sounded like they were going for food.
Erich
"I'll let you know too," Erich calls after Lola as she departs. "Well, if I see you again soon."
And he turns to Melantha, raising his eyebrows. "Home?"
Melantha Argyris
Melantha just nods to Erich, smiles. "Home." As they turn, she looks back, nodding to Lola. "Night, Lola." Gives a little wave with her chai-drinkin' hand, and the kinfolk part, going opposite directions.
Santa Fe was a popular part of town, pretty and eccentric and full of art and culture as it was. This was a part of Anthony Tirado's success-- he'd opened his first tattoo parlor here, and between location, catering to his demographic, and a damn fine hand in art, he was able to open two more parlors around the area as well. He could make enough money to support his out-of-city cousins on this business.
It's this very tattoo parlor, the one that started it all, that Lola Hawkes is hanging out in front of. Behind her the shop is wedged between two other buildings, other businesses leased out-- a salon and a market store, to be precise. The shop front was brick and classic, but the awnings over the window were black and the sign over the door was tall and wood and black as well, the letters in a tall jarring white font declaring the place to be: LA LUNA SONRIENTE TATTOO. Out front there were a ramshackle collection of chairs collected on either side of the purple-painted door. In one of these chairs sat Lola, recognizable by some for different reasons.
She wasn't here getting inked, not as far as anyone could see at least. Dressed for the warm weather, she had on a short-sleeved and short-hemmed dress of thin white-and-black stripes, a light gray cardigan left unbuttoned over top that, and a straw hat atop her head to keep the sun off her. Granted, the sun was quite behind the mountains by this point, but it hadn't been when she'd come out this way.
She was conversing with a tall and very thin man who was getting an octopus tattooed across his chest-- he was here getting the color filled in and sat in a plaid button-up shirt left undone. Her expression was skeptical but relaxed-- the kid wasn't bothering her any so she was content to share the cooling night air with him. If he had it his way they would've shared a hit off his small false cigarette pipe, but she'd hit him with strong skeptical 'Are you kidding me?' and he shrugged it off (apparently it helped his sister's pregnancy, but whatever).
Around the time that the Uktena kinfolk may fall into Samantha Evans's line of sight is the time that the door opens and the tall skinny boy gets called back inside. He bumped fists with Lola and she told him not to cry too hard when he walked back inside.
Sam Evans
The evening is young and pleasant and Sam Evans is walking alone, and like any typical Glass Walker she's holding a cell phone in her hand which she is looking at intently as her thumb works its way swiftly across the lower half of the device. That doesn't mean she's not aware of her surroundings. The kinswoman neatly side-steps a couple headed in her direction and pauses when someone practically bounds down the steps of an upper floor gallery into her. She glances up briefly to shoot the person a look. That look spurs the young woman - a girl, really, out with a group of her friends for who knows what reason - to apologize. Then it's back to the screen for at least a few more steps.
Steps which are made in a pair of mid-calf combat boots. The rest of her outfit consists of shorts and a black t-shirt with a huge skull over the front (the Punisher emblem for those in the know) worn beneath a red plaid flannel shirt converted into a long vest. Her hair is down but tucked behind her ears to reveal the piercings that run from lobe up along the outer cartilage of both ears. Stabbed through her right lobe is a thick black spike. There's a messenger bag slung across her body, the pouch resting against her left hip.
Suddenly she sighs, all the air in her lungs pushed out in a single exhale as she slides the phone into the hip pocket of those denim shorts. Which is when she looks up and sees Lola Hawkes sitting outside of a tattoo parlor. Huh. Increasing speed, she heads for a woman she only properly met about a week and a half ago.
"Lola, hey!" she calls, one corner of her mouth tugging upward in a crooked grin.
Lola Hawkes
Lola really didn't look the type to be hanging out in front of a tattoo parlor, except for the tough exterior one would suppose. Her attire didn't suit the crowd, and the long bare length of her legs left out in the air by the length of her dress didn't have a lick of ink on them. Her hair was twisted into a dense braid that sat on one shoulder, and her stomach was big enough to take up much real estate into her lap when she sat upright as she was doing now.
When Lola's name was called she had been leaning down to retrieve a water bottle from where it was sitting on the ground under her chair. She looked surprised and alert to hear her name, and glanced about with an intent and severe gaze until she found Sam's face and figure coming her way. A face and identity matched to the call, Lola relaxed and leaned back into her chair. One hand lifted in a greeting, but she didn't verbally call back across the distance. Instead, she opted to take a drink of her water.
When Sam was nearer, near enough for speaking anyways, Lola answered.
"Sam, right?" She's not as good at names, but it's probably confirmed one way or another that she's correct. Lola'd continue, unabashed by her own lack of proficiency with remembering names (they stuck with her after a few times). "How's the evening treating ya?" Eyes cut up toward the sky, brief, then back down to the Glasswalker. "Secure, I hope." The moon was full, and their peoples tempers did run quite high on nights like this, after all.
It's worth noting that Lola Hawkes didn't smile to greet Samantha Evans, crooked or otherwise. Her mouth was a straight line, neutral as can be. She didn't seem unfriendly necessarily, though. This was her friendly face.
Sam Evans
To look at the pair of them, it'd be easy to make a lot of assumptions about them. That Samantha is younger, perhaps, because of her height or because of her attire, or the difference between her demeanor and Lola's. Lola is friendly, but a reserved sort of friendly. At least she's not scowling, though probably a scowl wouldn't deter Sam. They survived an ordeal together, of course Sam's at least going to stop by to say hello.
Lola's gaze cuts upward, Sam's stays on the woman in the straw hat. She doesn't need to look up to know what night it is. She was up part of last night watching the eclipse, after all. "About as secure as it can get," she says with a one-shouldered shrug. Then she looks at the sign for the parlor and back to Lola. "Are you waiting to get inked or waiting on someone getting inked?"
Lola Hawkes
The question was an authentic one, and it earned Sam a relaxed, comfortable looking shrug and shake of her head before she gestured toward the purple wooden door with a hitched thumb. "Nah, my cousin Anthony owns the place. I'm waitin' up on him to finish a session, then we're headed out."
She took another drink of her water then went on to clarify: "It's hot as fuck in there. Nice night out here, though."
Another pause, this time for her to glance up the street and wrinkle the bridge of her nose up some. She was a woman of the rural wilds, after all. 'Nice' was a comparative thing between city blocks and the stretching land she called her own. "Well, neverminding the obvious."
She'd next gesture to one of the remaining chairs (there were plenty left to choose from) in front of the shop with a sweep of her water bottle before she leaned sideways (not forward, leaning forward was a goddamn ordeal) to set the bottle back down on the cement. "If you're stayin' around you might as well sit."
Eva
Nor is Éva the sort to hang around in front of a tattoo parlor, and assuredly she is not hanging around anywhere. She is on the street however; half a block away, emerging from a non-descript glass door sandwiched between a headshop and a coffee shop, which must assuredly lead to some sort of generic offices tucked away on the second floor.
The door is closing behind her; she turns around and catches it with the flat of her hand. A stranger comes out behind her: a shaggy-haired man with sharp features and beaten-up leather jacket walks out behind her.
He says something to her.
She lifts her chin, and cants her head in response, listening.
A beat passes and she shakes her head. He slips past her, turns one day down the sidewalk. Éva goes the other, a briefcase head lightly in hand, heels a clipped beat against the sidewalk. Sam and Lola draw her gaze; which is dark and impassive.
Her gaze and the faintest hint of acknowledgment. No more.
She walks on.
Erich
Well well WELL.
Sam and Lola are not the only ones to witness Eva Illeshazy coming out of a tattoo parlor. There is also Erich, who is coming out of -- good god, is he coming out of that vegan-friendly, gluten-free, all-organic, paleo-diet cafe? Yes, yes he is. He is coming out of it and his eyes are lighting up and he is about to ask Eva what tattoo she got and where, how scandalous, except then
some shaggyhaired dude walks out after her. And now Erich's all high-alert, hounding-scenting-rabbit, standing very straight with his eyes keen and his head tipped just so, about a hair short of sniffing the air. Who is that? Why is he with Eva? Is it a threat? IS IT A BOOTY CALL, GROSS. But then they part ways, and Erich relaxes minutely, his head turning as he follows the disappearing form of his kinswoman
(ridiculous to think of her like that, really, like maybe he could and should take care of her better than she could take care of herself when the woman is like forty years old with three kids and a full-time, high-paying, respected career)
until she, in fact, disappears. Hmm. Odd odd odd. He mental-shrugs. He pops the lid off his hot chocolate and he blows across the steamy surface. Sips.
Sam Evans
Sam does confirm that Lola has the correct name for her. She's better with names, probably for a lot of reasons, but mostly it's training. And working in public relations once upon a time. She doesn't fault Lola for having to ask, doesn't mind it at all, actually. They only saw each other really the one time (the other times were almost too brief to count, and they didn't include names given), so far anyway.
"Oh, nice," says Sam, because that does sound nice. Going out with family after a day of sweating it out over a chair with a tattoo needle in hand, and whatever it is that Lola does with her days. Sam makes no assumptions about what the kinswoman does with her time, since she herself has so many hobbies and work-related and family things on her own plate, and they don't ever seem terribly connected.
"What are-" she starts, but a rock guitar riff (that sounds an awful lot like the award-winning song from a recent Disney musical) issues from her pocket. Holding up her finger to Lola, she says, "Hang on a sec I need to take this."
She turns away briefly to answer the call, and what she hears causes her brow to furrow and her mouth to twist. She nods her head even though obviously the only witness to the motion is Lola and the other people on the street, but she adds an, "Uh huh. Hm. Okay. Yeah, I know. Thanks, George, see you soon."
Ending the call, she slides the phone back into her pocket and returns her attention to Lola, her expression apologetic. "I'd love to, but my kid needs me. Rain check?" She would have given Lola her number after the Shorty Lu's incident, and gotten some means of contact her in return hopefully. If not, Lola would definitely have her number. She heads off in search of her car, saying, "Enjoy your evening. Stay safe!" as she goes.
Lola Hawkes
A question began, but ended just as quick, interrupted by a ringing phone. Lola didn't look put off, but simply tipped her head to one side so her neck would pop before simply sitting still, casting eyes about while listening to Samantha take her phone call. In this interim of time the distinguished Shadow Lord woman, Eva, caught her eye. There was a moment where they nodded to one another, then the woman was on her way. Up the sidewalk a ways there was Erich the Shadow Lord Ahroun, sipping something from a cup and looking like a lion scoping out the plain before him (he couldn't help it, it was just the nature of Garou to appear as such).
Attention was brought back by Sam explaining that she had to be on her way. All that she got in answer was a bit of a 'Hmm', a hum of affirmation and understanding, followed by: "See you around."
Then the Glass Walker was on her way.
This left Lola to sit, staked out in front of the tattoo parlor as though she was anchored there, like she belonged there. Something about it spoke of a guard dog's behavior, though motherhood in the making did a fair job of counteracting that.
If Erich looked her way she would wave. Otherwise she would simply keep an eye on the Garou where he was and let him have his night. She didn't have any business to talk, and she remembered the last time they attempted to speak politics when the moon was heavy as it was.
Melantha Argyris
They walk out of the weird cafe. Erich, and then a second or two later, Melantha, in jeans and hoodie and sneakers, following his gaze. She sees Eva, sees Erich go all abuzz with energy about it, all curiosity and so forth, but she doesn't think much of it. Eva is a lawyer, right? Maybe she has a reason. Or.
She's holding Erich's hand, fingers laced loosely and comfortably, and she notices Lola, who is like, seriously pregnant at the moment. She blinks, also slightly recognizing the shorter woman hurrying off. Erich may or may not be looking that way. But Melantha is. And a second later, Erich will be, because Erich is being tugged slightly, is seeing Melantha give a nod in Lola's direction.
Erich
Erich is tugged along. Erich, naturally, looks to see where they're going. Erich sees Lola! He waves back.
And then they kinda catch up to Lola, and Lola is ginormous, and Erich kinda stares at her belly for a while before coming up with the same question she's been asked ten thousand bijillion times:
"When are you due?"
Lola Hawkes
Some odd number of weeks or so ago, Lola may have still gnashed teeth at the question. That was back when she'd initially started showing and the question was still new. She'd gotten tired of answering truthfully because then the questions of 'what, how do you not know?' would come, but she was too stubborn and proud a creature to just curve her spine to what was expected and make up a date to recite to people either. So, her patience to the question has improved, and the answer she'd settled on telling people when they approached was precisely what she had to offer Erich and Melantha (whose interlaced fingers were stared at openly as they approached, but not for too very long because soon she was looking up into faces instead).
"Summer." She glanced to Erich when she answered, then glanced down at her stomach to follow his eyes. It's true, she was big. Third trimester, they would probably believe her if she said 'anytime' big. Except people who worked within doctors offices or those who were simply around people bringing babies into the world often for other reasons knew that women still got plenty bigger than that. If Lola and Hector's calculations were right she still had plenty (not enough never enough) time left.
Still, she folded her hands to rest them at the shelf made by that stomach and added: "Hopefully, anyway." And, to swing the subject: "What are you two up to?" There's a hint-note of curious suspicion there, but she was a Uktena after all. They all had their way of being drawn to curiosities and secrets and mysteries like moths to flames.
Melantha Argyris
'Summer', Lola says, and Melantha just nods, looking her over, thoughtful. "June, maybe," she says, without really thinking of it, without really thinking it's a 'thing'. It's a guess. Her eyes are a bit pink on the lower lids; did she weep recently? Not much. No splotches. No puffiness. Then again, girls like her always cry pretty, don't they?
Her eyes come back up; the kid will keep til the kid stops keeping. She doesn't balk at the question, just sips her chai. They both have paper cups. Compostable, biodegradable cups. "Just got some food over there," she points with her cup at the cafe across the way. "What about you?"
Erich
"That's still a really long time," Erich says, unenviously. "I guess less so if it's June, but. It could be a really long time.
"And yeah, we were getting some food. They have chicken. It's not all granola. I hear the granola is good though. I didn't get any, I can't eat that stuff." And then echoing without quite realizing he's echoing: "What about you?"
Lola Hawkes
Melantha's answer was considered with a nod. That's about what Lola was figuring too. Erich's expressing how long of a time it was until June came around was met with a flat stare. The Kinswoman's lips pressed together, her brows flexed down some, and she half-scowled half just flatly stared at the Ahroun for a second before stating in a tone as dry and flat as the look she'd given him: "Yeah. It sure is."
But she isn't one to scold someone for their lack of sensitivity. Instead she moves to other topics, other thoughts. She's distracted by something about the pair. Not that they are together, they ran in a pack together (though if you asked Lola and her traditional roots there wasn't any sense or reason to have a Kinfolk actually added to the ranks of a pack, not when they couldn't go all the places the wolves could go, but again nobody asked her). She was curious about Melantha's crying eyes, and about Erich's rambling about granola.
Soon enough she decides the pair of them are probably stoned, and she had no qualms with that. Found it a damn fine idea, given the moon's blooded face last night and the continued swell to full tonight. To answer the question that both had posed to her, in their way:
"My cousin runs the shop." Of course, she's referring to the one she's set up in front of. "Waitin' up on him." Simply put, but most things that she had to speak to tended to be. She moved her hands, pressing the left palm to the side of her stomach (a kick or flip had made her uncomfortable), then she reached down for her water bottle before grabbing the back of her chair and pushing herself up to her feet. Though balance and range of motion were impacted, she was still able to get her ass up out of a chair unhindered. Being built for nothing but the physical in the first place helped.
"Things've been quiet, it seems. Good time for it." Her voice was low enough that their conversation could be skipped and missed by any that passed by. The other chairs were empty, they weren't crowded by pedestrians. So Lola twisted the lid off the bottle, took a drink, and added: "Storm always follows the calm, though. Just hoping it gives another two months before it does."
A raised eyebrow, then, and this question is directed more at Erich: "Anythin' been goin' on at the Spire?"
Melantha Argyris
Lola's little 'half' scowl and 'half' flat stare at Erich just being Erich, before that dry bit of snark, already has Melantha's back up. She may not be one to scold, but she sure doesn't play her cards close to her vest, either. Melantha's just staring at her, holding Erich's hand in one and holding her chai in the other, and she stares unabashedly while Lola breezily judges them in the back of her mind.
Melantha is still staring at her as Lola rises. Her brow quirks at the storm always follows the calm comment. She asks Erich a question. Melantha's the one who answers.
"Not much," she counters. "Anything going on at the old rock quarry?"
Erich
Erich just looks confused.
Lola Hawkes
"Nothing worth reporting, especially."
Whatever stiffness may have gone into Melantha's spine went unnoticed, must have, for Lola didn't bat a lash at it, didn't refocus that semi-scowl onto the other Kinfolk instead. Her expression had relaxed once more and she tucked her free hand into a cardigan pocket, the one holding the water bottle tapped out a rhythm with the mostly empty container lightly against the bare skin above her knee.
"Like I said-- quiet. Hector and I ran across some unpleasants out hunting few weeks back, but they were quick business. No whispers from the East or West about Our Old Friends either. Just... no pulse."
Clearly she's more focused on her distrust and suspicion of things being relaxed and easy. Lola was made from the same iron that greatswords and spearheads were born of, and in a War as great as theirs a lack of movement on the field only made her wary. It couldn't occur to her to just be thankful instead, it seems.
Erich
Finally the penny drops. "Oh -- you guys are talking about Lola's place and the Cold Crescent? I didn't know you lived in a rock quarry. And man, tell people to stop calling it the Spire. It's like... not a spire! That makes me think of pointy things. I still don't know who Our Old Friends are supposed to be.
"But anyway, it's actually not that quiet. Or it is? But there's some action going on in. Uh. Dreams."
Yeah, that sounded insane.
"I mean," he adds, "some of us have been having just these repeating dreams. I mean repeating, night after night. Gradually moving forward a little every night? But really, really slowly. And so far no one really knows what it's about yet, though -- but we all seem to kinda be in the same dream. Really far apart? But in the same ... like ... universe."
Lola Hawkes
Then, Erich mentions something about dreams. That catches Lola's attention. She neverminds his correcting her about whether it should be called a Spire or not, and neverminds that he didn't know who the old friends were either. She was over the old news, on to the new. Considering what detail he'd given about the dreams.
"Huh." It's all she has to say at first, but a few more seconds of thought and she pressed on.
"Tamsin mentioned something like that. Had trouble with her hands-- said they felt old, brittle, something like that. I told her she should seek a Dream Walker, one of the Galliards that has the gift to see into the dreams. You looked into one of them yourself?"
Melantha Argyris
Nope. Nope. No, Erich, see, Melantha was making an underhanded point about -- oh, nevermind. She just looks at him, sort of wry and fond, shaking her head and sipping her chai. He goes on to tell Lola that it's not so quiet, which Melantha had actually wanted to come over her and ask Lola in the first place, but Lola... well.
Her eyebrows go up. "Erich was just talking about that inside."
Erich
"Yeah! We totally talked to Tamsin. We were gonna go find a Galliard or a Theurge or something too. Do you know any good ones?"
Lola Hawkes
"Knew a great Theurge. Know a great couple of Galliards, but they're all pretty young yet."
Her mother, and Celduin. This is who she's referring to.
She may have gone on further, but the shop door opened up and a dark complected man stepped out, pulling a hat on and finishing some farewell over his shoulder as he went. His hair was black and stuck out at angles that suggested need of a haircut under the hat. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt and his arms were sleeves of colorful design. The fact that Lola glanced over to him and lifted her eyebrows in question suggested this was probably the person she was waiting for.
He looked curiously at Melantha and Erich both, nodded his greeting to them, and asked if Lola was ready to go. She was. So she bade the pair farewell: "If you learn anything, let her know huh?" It was kind of a Take care of Tamsin for me in tone-- the concern for the Fianna was there, folded in to the surly demeanor that the woman kept.
Soon, though, she was on her way with a Kinfolk that Erich could sense had only the faintest hum of Uktena heritage in him-- it ran much stronger in Lola by grace of her mother's blood. They spoke as they walked, bouncing comfortably between Spanish and English as they pleased. Sounded like they were going for food.
Erich
"I'll let you know too," Erich calls after Lola as she departs. "Well, if I see you again soon."
And he turns to Melantha, raising his eyebrows. "Home?"
Melantha Argyris
Melantha just nods to Erich, smiles. "Home." As they turn, she looks back, nodding to Lola. "Night, Lola." Gives a little wave with her chai-drinkin' hand, and the kinfolk part, going opposite directions.
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Everyone Down - 4.5.2014 [ST'd by damon][Alexis, Sam, Melantha, Charlotte]
-shorty lu's-
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.
Lola Hawkes
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 Argyris
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.
Alexis Theron Lambros
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.
Sam Evans
9:30am 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
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.
Alexis Theron Lambros
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 Argyris
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.
Sam Evans
[whoops, nightmares!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Lola Hawkes
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.
Sam Evans
"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?"
-shorty lu's-
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."
Charlotte
"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 Hawkes
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.
Alexis Theron Lambros
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.
Sam Evans
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 Argyris
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.
-shorty lu's-
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.
Melantha Argyris
[willpower]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 6, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )
Sam Evans
[i ain't afraid of noghost shotgun: WP]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Alexis Theron Lambros
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 Argyris
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.
Sam Evans
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 )
Charlotte
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.
Charlotte
Perception + Occult: Sense Wyrm
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )
Melantha Argyris
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 )
-shorty lu's-
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.
Melantha Argyris
[Guys seriously stop. WP]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Sam Evans
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 Argyris
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.
Lola Hawkes
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 )
Alexis Theron Lambros
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]
Charlotte
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.
Charlotte
(So, piercing the gauntlet. Dif -1 b/c natural channel.)
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 4, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )
Charlotte
Wits + Rituals?
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Melantha Argyris
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.
-shorty lu's-
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.
Melantha Argyris
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.
Sam Evans
Samantha and Alexis 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
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.]
Alexis Theron Lambros
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.
Lola Hawkes
"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.
-shorty lu's-
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.]
Alexis Theron Lambros
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.
Melantha Argyris
[willpower vs. phobia]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )
Sam Evans
[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
Lola Hawkes
[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]
Alexis Theron Lambros
[[Dex+Athletics, Spec Fluidly Moving]]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1
-shorty lu's-
[OW ALEXIS MY ARM. rolling vs 1 bashing.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Sam Evans
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 )
Charlotte
"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.
Lola Hawkes
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.
Melantha Argyris
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.
-shorty lu's-
[people in the kitchen, init up! people outside the kitchen: take 1 turn to move to the kitchen if you're so inclined.]
Melantha Argyris
[dex + wits + volcano = 7]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Alexis Theron Lambros
[[Not moving into kitchen]]
Charlotte
dex (hispo) + wits = 10.
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )
Lola Hawkes
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.
-shorty lu's-
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.
-shorty lu's-
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.
Alexis Theron Lambros
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.
Sam Evans
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.
Lola Hawkes
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.
Alexis Theron Lambros
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."
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 -
Melantha Argyris
[wp]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Melantha Argyris
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."
Sam Evans
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 )
-shorty lu's-
- 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.
Lola Hawkes
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."
Charlotte
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?"
Alexis Theron Lambros
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 OUR 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 in a Garou fight 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."
Melantha Argyris
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."
Sam Evans
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.
Lola Hawkes
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."
-shorty lu's-
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
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.
Melantha Argyris
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."
Alexis Theron Lambros
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."
Lola Hawkes
Lola would wait patiently (enough) while Alexis followed through with gathering up the shells. She wouldn't make him put them back in the gun, but she sure wouldn't argue if he did either. One way or the other she straightened up when all was said and done with gun in hand, possibly shells in coat pockets, and gave Alexis a solid look.
Then, she'd stick her hand out to shake his. Hope to god he takes it, and if he does then there's a moment there where she squeezes his hand and seems like maybe just for a second she might be about to hug him. Because she is thankful that he stopped her. Because when put on the spot she still faulted to what she perceived as duty. She couldn't just leave anybody behind. Alexis stopping her could have saved the entire Hawkes line for all she knew, and she was grateful for that.
But instead it's just a squeeze of the hand (a squeeze after all, not actually a shake when it came down to it, she just held his hand and squeezed it for a second), a bright-eyed stare in the eye, and then stepped away from him.
"Do you, then. I'm going."
She would then put the gun in the back of the Subaru, climb behind the wheel, and drive away. The old man would be deposited shortly at a grocery store. He could probably figure it out from there. Lola was going home.
-shorty lu's-
The woman with her hard face, hard eyes, hard bones gives a hard half-smile. "We're der Schwarzen Adler. We hunt the Wyrm. Specialize in high-risk, high-reward missions. This bastard here?" She kicks the dead Crinos. "Might look like a simple fry-cook gone bad to you, but he killed a Warder's son and then went into hiding. Took a lot to track him down, but that's what we do."
"If you haven't heard of us, ask a Fenrir," the gunman puts in. "Even the wolf-born respect our work."
"More specifically, we're the west-central United States cell," the woman adds. "Part of it. If you want to find us, most Fenrir of Adren rank and above know how to contact us. But I'll warn you. Our standards are high. So's our mortality rate."
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.
Lola Hawkes
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 Argyris
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.
Alexis Theron Lambros
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.
Sam Evans
9:30am 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
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.
Alexis Theron Lambros
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 Argyris
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.
Sam Evans
[whoops, nightmares!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Lola Hawkes
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.
Sam Evans
"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?"
-shorty lu's-
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."
Charlotte
"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 Hawkes
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.
Alexis Theron Lambros
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.
Sam Evans
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 Argyris
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.
-shorty lu's-
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.
Melantha Argyris
[willpower]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 6, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )
Sam Evans
[i ain't afraid of no
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Alexis Theron Lambros
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 Argyris
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.
Sam Evans
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 )
Charlotte
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.
Charlotte
Perception + Occult: Sense Wyrm
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )
Melantha Argyris
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 )
-shorty lu's-
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.
Melantha Argyris
[Guys seriously stop. WP]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Sam Evans
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 Argyris
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.
Lola Hawkes
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 )
Alexis Theron Lambros
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]
Charlotte
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.
Charlotte
(So, piercing the gauntlet. Dif -1 b/c natural channel.)
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 4, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )
Charlotte
Wits + Rituals?
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Melantha Argyris
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.
-shorty lu's-
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.
Melantha Argyris
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.
Sam Evans
Samantha and Alexis 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
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.]
Alexis Theron Lambros
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.
Lola Hawkes
"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.
-shorty lu's-
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.]
Alexis Theron Lambros
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.
Melantha Argyris
[willpower vs. phobia]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )
Sam Evans
[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
Lola Hawkes
[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]
Alexis Theron Lambros
[[Dex+Athletics, Spec Fluidly Moving]]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1
-shorty lu's-
[OW ALEXIS MY ARM. rolling vs 1 bashing.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Sam Evans
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 )
Charlotte
"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.
Lola Hawkes
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.
Melantha Argyris
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.
-shorty lu's-
[people in the kitchen, init up! people outside the kitchen: take 1 turn to move to the kitchen if you're so inclined.]
Melantha Argyris
[dex + wits + volcano = 7]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Alexis Theron Lambros
[[Not moving into kitchen]]
Charlotte
dex (hispo) + wits = 10.
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )
Lola Hawkes
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.
-shorty lu's-
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.
-shorty lu's-
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.
Alexis Theron Lambros
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.
Sam Evans
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.
Lola Hawkes
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.
Alexis Theron Lambros
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."
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 -
Melantha Argyris
[wp]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Melantha Argyris
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."
Sam Evans
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 )
-shorty lu's-
- 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.
Lola Hawkes
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."
Charlotte
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?"
Alexis Theron Lambros
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 OUR 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 in a Garou fight 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."
Melantha Argyris
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."
Sam Evans
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.
Lola Hawkes
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."
-shorty lu's-
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
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.
Melantha Argyris
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."
Alexis Theron Lambros
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."
Lola Hawkes
Lola would wait patiently (enough) while Alexis followed through with gathering up the shells. She wouldn't make him put them back in the gun, but she sure wouldn't argue if he did either. One way or the other she straightened up when all was said and done with gun in hand, possibly shells in coat pockets, and gave Alexis a solid look.
Then, she'd stick her hand out to shake his. Hope to god he takes it, and if he does then there's a moment there where she squeezes his hand and seems like maybe just for a second she might be about to hug him. Because she is thankful that he stopped her. Because when put on the spot she still faulted to what she perceived as duty. She couldn't just leave anybody behind. Alexis stopping her could have saved the entire Hawkes line for all she knew, and she was grateful for that.
But instead it's just a squeeze of the hand (a squeeze after all, not actually a shake when it came down to it, she just held his hand and squeezed it for a second), a bright-eyed stare in the eye, and then stepped away from him.
"Do you, then. I'm going."
She would then put the gun in the back of the Subaru, climb behind the wheel, and drive away. The old man would be deposited shortly at a grocery store. He could probably figure it out from there. Lola was going home.
-shorty lu's-
The woman with her hard face, hard eyes, hard bones gives a hard half-smile. "We're der Schwarzen Adler. We hunt the Wyrm. Specialize in high-risk, high-reward missions. This bastard here?" She kicks the dead Crinos. "Might look like a simple fry-cook gone bad to you, but he killed a Warder's son and then went into hiding. Took a lot to track him down, but that's what we do."
"If you haven't heard of us, ask a Fenrir," the gunman puts in. "Even the wolf-born respect our work."
"More specifically, we're the west-central United States cell," the woman adds. "Part of it. If you want to find us, most Fenrir of Adren rank and above know how to contact us. But I'll warn you. Our standards are high. So's our mortality rate."
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