[Imogen] The weather hovers around freezing, far warmer than most January’s. Global warming, mutters some. El Nino, says another with an eyeroll. Imogen does not often talk about the weather – she has no care for small talk.
She stands in the shelter of a building’s shadow, protecting from the wind, a plastic shopping bag with the logo of a nearby bookstore, sitting at her feet.
She cups a hand around the flame from her zippo, and touches it to the tip of her cigarette. The cool wind rustles through the flame of her hair. She straightens, remaining still, rather than continuing on her way, and takes another drag from the cancer-stick, her eyes moving over the passing pedestrians.
[Marni] There are transportation methods, and then there is TRANS! POR! TA! TION! and the difference usually involves a bit more danger than one might think of otherwise. Which would explain why – when that bus pulls up to the stop just down from Imogen, and the doors open, it’s not just the normal folks stepping from inside, but also a shadowy form climbing from the top, down over the back, and dropping lightly to the ground behind the bus with a satisfied smirk… then, the girl – it looks like a girl, anyway, she’s curvy in the right places, even under her jacket – stands only part way, and scoots through the shadows of the bus to the sidewalk, to by the wall, where she finally stands up, and makes sure the backpack is settled back on her shoulders comfortably.
Bus Surfing. It’s the wave of the future. Honest.
[Imogen] Imogen’s eyes lift to the shadowy figure and move to track it as it drops. She lifts her cigarette to her lips. As the figure – a girl now, with a backpack on her shoulders – straightens up, the slender, redhaired woman is still regarding her, her expression even.
Eventually, she arches an eyebrow in silent commentary.
She’s a slim female, eyes dark enough on a moonless night as to appear almost black. Hair vibrant enough that even with the cover of darkness, the hues shine like the centre of burning embers. She is dressed in slacks, a wool coat open over a v-neck sweater over a blouse. Beneath her skin and in her blood and bone is breeding, pure and indelible.
She does not offer a greeting.
[Marni] Marni, well. Marni isn’t very big, isn’t very tall, all told. She’s maybe 5’5″ and while curvy, she’s slender too. It’s the mop of curls – light brown in the amber light of the street lamps. And while there’s not as much rage as most folks, there’s that little tingle that says she’s more than she seems. Her coat looks warm – an old army jacket with a multitude of pockets, and under it jeans and a couple layers of t-shirts, and a thermal shirt too. Not that all that can be seen, of course. And on her feet? Boots that look like she’s walked quite a bit more than ‘a mile’ in.
And then there’s Imogen. All put together and dressed well, and the burning song of heroe gone by. Marni’s not shy – nope. She just grins in the wake of that arched brow, and lifts her fingers from the straps of her pack. “Hi.” a beat, and then. “can I bum a light?”
[Imogen] Imogen, in her modest heels is only an inch or less shorter than the unfamiliar Garou. Her eyes flick briefly over the girl, then up again, her dark eyes narrowing.
She had only just pocketed her zippo. She reaches back inside and retrieves it, passing it over.
“New?” she enquires.
[Marni] “Dude, thanks.” She grins, and takes the offered Zippo, and after a ritual search of pockets, she comes up with her battered pack of cigarettes, frees one that’s relatively uncrumpled, and props it between her lips. She angles herself against the win, touched fire to the edge of tobacco and paper, and then flips the zippo closed and offers it back.
“Yup. You the welcome wagon?”
[Monty] There’s nothing like some Winter shopping to get you in the mood. The mood for expansive walks through the slush lined streets of the Second City, to glide along, glissading like a ballet dancer, you vast and deliriously plentiful form a bobbing helium balloon, a parade float that all others circumvent, clearing a path for you. He was Fenrir, he was great, and the mere mortals sensed this and parted before him like the Red Sea before Moses. Forward and on, resisting the urge to grab telephone poles and attempt to spin around them. To take the hands of winsome girls and twirl them around, to launch them across the street to crash screaming and laughing into the shop windows of wedding dress stores.
Monty moves along, light on his feet, humming and whistling, dressed in a charcoal gray suit, a bowler hat plopped atop his great and gleaming head, smiling to all and sundry and carrying a little black plastic briefcase in one hand. The kind you might have a powertool within, a Black n’ Decker drill, say. Or, as the case reads along the side, a Colt Anaconda.
A wonderful season, it would seem, for shopping.
[Imogen] Her mouth twists, but it does not suggest a smile, or friendly humour. It is a smirk, a touch of wryness sharpened by sarcasm.
She retrieves the lighter and pockets it, her fingers gloved in leather. “Not as such,” she says.
Imogen’s cigarette is straight and smooth, the smell of it rich, imported. It had come from a metal cigarette case. Before that, it came from Britain.
“Do you know where yeh can find any o’ yer family?”
The conversation might seem odd – unpredicated by queries or lead up as it is. Marni has had no prroblem identified Imogen for what she is – and Imogen, it appears, is much the same.
[Marni] She takes that first heavenly drag, her eyes closing to mere slits, before she exhales and tucks her free hand into her pocket. Her grin is an easy thing, and there’s a sly sense of fun that lingers around it, too. “Not really. Figured I’d put the word out on the Chain soon as I got settled.”
Which, for her, could me just about anything – from setting up a box, to conning some man out of a hotel room. Never can tell…
[Imogen] There is a flicker of her eyebrows drawing inward as Marni speaks that suggests that imogen does not fully follow what the Gnawer says. However, it’s smoothing and her reply says something else: Imogen does not think she needs to understand.
“So long as yeh ha’ a way,” she says.
“There’s a place called Hillhouse,” she says, her eyes moving away – and falling on Monty as the pedestrians part before him.
“They can help yeh find a place t’stay fer a few days ’till yeh get yerself sorted out.”
[Monty] Whistling, jaunty and quietly ebullient, Monty continues down the street, nodding affably to those who side step and shuffle out of his way. Were he any taller he would be a veritable wall of a man, but standing just shy of six feet he is more akin to a heavenly body that has lost its orbit and now plunges benignly where it wills, not trapped by any star’s gravitational well.
Pausing at the sidewalk’s edge, waiting for the light to turn red so he can cross, he continues to hum, and then, in the near distance, spots Imogen. Flame burst of red hair, a sense of gravitas and lethality. It brings a smile to his broad liver lips.
“Imogen!” he calls, voice deep and rich like waves of undulating chocolate. Lifts a black gloved hand to wave, “Hello, my dear!” Looks twice to check traffic has stopped, and then pleased with his discovery, begins to cross the street toward her.
[Marni] She nods, slightly, chuckling. And then after another drag, she flicks the ashes to the side, and shrugs. “Hill house, huh? I’ll remember that, though I don’t need much. The city provides well enough.”
A beat. “At least, it did back home. New place new stuff to learn, right?”
Imogen’s gaze shifts to Monty and Marni’s follow along. She doesn’t ask though. Unassuming, this Gnawer. Well, until he calls the kinfolk’s name, and heads their way. “Friend of yours?”
[Imogen] “Something like that,” Imogen says, her tone a little dry. Monty shouts ebulliently, waves a hand, calls Imogen ‘my dear’. He gives every impression of friendship, familiarity.
Imogen raises her own black-gloved hand, but does not move it enough for it be considered a wave.
She waits while the distance closes.
“Montressor,” she greets him.
A glance down at the case, her eyes touching the words on the side, then up again. She flicks a glance back toward Marni, her eyebrow lifting, “I didn’t catch your name,” she says, as though it were not that Imogen had previously had no intention of asking for it.
[Monty] He comes up, smiling, not taken aback or stalled by Imogen’s lack of overt warmth or gushing familiarity. Instead, he gains their side, and beams a smile at both women, little plastic briefcase held before his bulk with both hands. He nods to Imogen, and then pauses, waiting for the second lady to introduce herself, looking her up and down as he does so.
[Marni] Ah, but Marni, she grins. “Cuz ya didn’t ask.” A beat where it might seem like she’s not gonna answer, and then she does anyway. “Marni. Marni Geller.”
Her eyes are on Monty though, taking in the whole of his visage, from head to toe, while fingers itch a little, stretch a little flex against the strap of her pack, around the cigarette – and finishing with a greeting that’s just as easily given as the rest. “Evenin.”
[Imogen] Imogen seems as unconcerned with Monty’s effusiveness as he is with her stand-offishness. It is a balance they’ve set – complete and utter disregard for the differences in the other.
“She would be considered a cousin,” she offers to Monty, with a faint lift of her eyebrow. “O’ the angrier persuasion.”
A turn of her attention to Marni, an offer of a small nod. “Imogen Slaughter,” she says. “A pleasure.”
[Monty] Monty leans forward and looks Marni in the face, bending at the hips, his heavy body balanced on the balls of his feet. Frowns as he gazes into her face, but he can’t hold the charade for long and his expression breaks into a smile. “An angry cousin! Oh dear. I think we must buy her some ice cream, strawberry and nutella flavored, with melted fudge and cherries and all manners of cheering goodness piled on top.”
He straightens, smile remaining on his moon of a face. Broad lipped, small nosed, eyes glittering and dark, hair lacquered black and gleaming straight back and under his small bowler hat. “And I am Montressor Sabine, a cousin of sorts, though not prone to fits of anger, thank god. The last thing I need is hypertension.”
[Marni] Now, then. She doesn’t look very angry, even as Monty looks forward and stares at her. She simply takes another pull of her cigarette as he discusses how he’s gonna cheer her up and her smile, oh that smile grows. Like a kid in a candy store – or offered one, as the case may be.
“If it’s that easy to get chow around here? I’m gonna LOVE Chicago. Pleasure to meet ya.” The last, for both of them.
[Imogen] Imogen arches an eyebrow. “Bit cold for ice cream, wouldn’t you think?”
[Monty] “My dear,” says Monty officiously, “It is never too cold for ice-cream. One needs merely to enter the appropriate state of mind, which is that of a supplicant, bent knee at the altar of sucrose, glucose, fructose, you-name-it-ose, and prepare to receive.”
He smiles, clearly bouyed along by his good mood. “Deprived as I have been by the sacred rites of the Catholic Church, I have been forced to forage for communion in some other form, and I have found no better substitute than wafers of the finest gelato.”
He looks back at Marni. “Come. A welcome committee has been assembled to greet you. An impromptu one, to be sure, but they desire to shower you with blessings and gifts to make your coming a propitious one. Ice cream, immediately!”
[Marni] She…
….blinks.
And looks at Imogen. Then back to Monty. And then back to Imogen. “He always like this?”
But far be it from her to turn down anything to eat, like ever. “Though I have to agree it’s never too cold for ice cream. And I never turn down a free treat. Lead on, Monty m’man, lead on.”
[Imogen] Someone else might make a joke. Say something like ‘Unfortunately’, or ‘You have no idea’.
Imogen merely answers, “Mostly.”
A glance at the rotund businessman. “Yer gelato place ha’ good coffee?”
[Monty] “The best, my dear.” Monty nods, not taken aback in the least by the commentary. “It has the bonus of being a mere two blocks hence, and serves Colombian, Gautemalan, Brazilian, Jamaican, Peruvian, Caribbean. A number, a host of delectable beverages for your casual imbibance.”
He smiles again, and attempts a bow, foiled by his bulk. “Shall we, my dears? I shall lead us hence.”
[Marni] She’s trying really hard not to laugh, she really is. Her lips press together and she watches him list the exciting array of coffee’s that Imogen will be able to choose from. When he asks if she’s ready, she just nods her head, takes a final drag off her cigarette, and drops the butt to the cement, stubbing it out with the toe of her boot before she gestures ahead of them.
“After you.”
She manages to say it without laughing out loud.
Barely.
[Imogen] Like Marni, Imogen takes a final drag of her cigarette, her eyes narrowing as the breeze blows the smoke back toward her face.
The scenario is a little surreal. A bus-surfing Garou dismounts to find a slight kinwoman, not waiting for her, but here by happenstance. They’re greeted by an overweight man in a business suit who insists they all go out for ice cream.
Marni gestures for them to precede her, barely restraining her laughter. Imogen flicks her cigarette toward the curb, casting a glance toward Monty.
“Istria’s cafe?” she enquires before stepping in the indicated direction.
[Monty] “Precisely, my dear. I see that you know it!”
Monty walks along, content with the company. Turns to Marni. “So, my angry cousin, what brings you to Chicago? And what are you angry about?” He smiles, and then winks at Imogen.
[Marni] Monty is content, and they know the place where they’re headed, so Marni just wanders along with them, idly marking the streets on the map in her head as they move along. Then Monty’s asking her a question, and she blinks, and turns to grin at him.
She certainly doesn’t look angry. Of course, it’s possible it could change in the blink of an eye, what with it being her moon hanging darkly above them. “I heard they’re dropping like flies here, and thought I’d pop in to see what could be seen. And angry – oh… so many things…”
The grin remains, as she wiggles her brows. “But MOST of all? Chicago’s El is a hell of a lot harder to surf then the subways back home… I’ll find a way though, just see if I won’t!”
[Imogen] Imogen allows the conversation to pass over her. She attends it, but does not participate, at least for the moment.
[Monty] Monty listens, and grows confused. Something is not clicking here. He walks along, face growing grave as he tries to puzzle it together.
An angry cousin. They were dropping like flies. Had come because of that. A cousin. That meant family, he had thought kin, a Fenrir kin like themselves, angry, Fenrir. But maybe, maybe–
“Ah,” he says, face growing a little pale. “Are you… are you a full blooded cousin of mine? Er. If you know… what I mean?” He shoots Imogen a glance. “Angry as in full… full cousin. A real, flesh and blood, uh…”
[Marni] She can almost SEE the wheels turning, clicking and ticking and tacking and clacking and then her eyes widen as she looks at him and he finally puts it all together… and she leans closer and stage whispers..
“You mean… as in.. the beast your bed, in your closet… in…. your… heaaaaaaaaaaaaad….?”
She grins over at him, and bends into a moving bow. “I that case, yes. Full blooded and gnawin that bone…”
[Marni] (beast… UNDER… your bed…)
[Monty] This actually does seem to spook Monty. He steps out wide, away from Marni, and gives her a sickly smile. “A gnawer of the bone, eh? How quaint. I thought… I thought you wanted… ice cream.” It’s almost plaintive. He looks down at his little case, and then over to Imogen.
“I completely completely mistook you for… a half blood? A… uh…” He continues to walk, flummoxed, without words. Beads of sweat have appeared across his brow, and he stares fixedly at the pavement before him, mind swimming, thrashing, trying to figure out what to do. What to do, that is, except run.
[Imogen] It is now that Imogen speaks as Monty falls into a flummoxed silence. “She means tha’ she’s a Bone Gnawer – s’a name o’ a tribe, rather than a description o’ what she would like to eat.
“My explanation was vague,” she offers without apology. “S’easy t’see how yeh might ha’ gotten confused.”
[Marni] That makes her laugh again as she shakes her head. “Relax, Monty, m’man. I ain’t gonna eatcha. And I’m greatly looking forward to ice cream!” She nods to Imogen with a grin. “She’s got the right of it. I’m just making fun.”
There’s no spike in rage, and she certainly doesn’t look like she’s going to attack him… “Ain’t nothing wrong with being a half blood – or Kinfolk – either. Some of my best friends are Kin.”
[Monty] “Ha!” says Monty loudly, “Eat me! Why would you want to eat me! I have… I have too much adipose tissue! Ha!” He stares at Marni, and then says again, more quietly, “Ha. Um.”
They walk along a little more. “And… yes, ice cream seems like the perfect… ice breaker. For.. the meeting of minds, and all.” He’s rambling. And suddenly furious at himself for not picking up on all the subtle clues. For stumbling along like a bumbling fool. Brows draw close. “In fact, I just… I just realized.”
He pauses, stops. “I’m carrying a new purchased gun.” He holds up the case. “I should take this home. It’s… not appropriate to carry it around like this.”
[Imogen] Imogen turns her head to look up at the large, broad man, then down again at the brief case.
Up again. A brief pause, before she offers. “Perhaps we shall take a raincheck on the gelato?”
[Marni] She looks at the case, as he finds a reason to suddenly not want to have ice cream with her, and she sighs, obviously disappointed.
“Oh. Oh well. Maybe another time then.”
[Monty] “Yes, a rain check! We shall continue anon.” He stands still a moment longer, wretched in the sensation of cowardice that engulfs him, but he can’t, can’t force himself to meet Marni’s eyes. Hesitating for a moment longer, he then raises his chin, offers them both a tremulous smile, and then nods energetically.
“A pleasure! Welcome to Chicago. And… ciao!” The last said with forced flair, and then he turns and begins to walk quickly in the opposite direction.
[Imogen] “Goodnight,” Imogen regards Montressor’s departure, her expression composed, unrevealing.
A glance toward Marni, a pause. “S’only another block. C’mon.”
She’ll buy a gelato for Marni when she gets her coffee. The coffee, she’ll order to go. She needs to work, she’ll say.
[Marni] Monty walks away, quickly, and Marni is disappointed – until Imogen offers ice cream anyway – and then, she’s all smiles, once more. Some days, it’s really that easy.
[Marni] [Thanks for helping me break her in! :) ]
[Imogen] (thanks for the RP! *crashes*)