[Rory] (and not it. *L*)
[S. D.] ooc: CURSE YOU
[S. D.] Bronzeville. Chicago’s version of Harlem Renaissance. (What does a dream delayed do.) Sunset Cafe. Ghost of a place on the Jazz Track, place where an automobile garage got transformed into a jazz spot of legend (Chicago Times may’ve hung there, once or twice; others, long dead and gone). Used to have people like Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Devil Jack. All it has now is a real sad story, boohoo, closed except as something of a museum for people hunting the old smoke of old songs, not a club (maybe one day soon again), not an office (but it was) and not a hardware store (still find nails, some days). That’s where Keith Sommers is — taking in the sights?
The ahroun is standing in front of the Sunset Cafe, his hands in the pockets of his slacks, his eyes hooded (temper, temper), and his mouth crooked. His aristocratic feaures are expressive only of curiousity, right now — only of a thoughtfulness that manages not to be (quite) savage.
The place is locked tight right now. He’s thinking about going in, eyeballing the remnants of Art Deco. It’s not a very flashy building at all.
[Rory] (Testing 1 2 3…. how sneaky can a redhead be?)
Dex+stealth+Fox (2)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[S. D.] (Er, how perceptive can an ahroun be? Hahaha…)
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 8, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Rory] Rory’s not trying to be overly sneaky today. Perhaps because people keep bumping into her, people keep looking her way just as she tries to hide, people are…
…well. They’re annoying today, and while the moon is only approaching half full, tugging at her senses from where it rests deep in the winter skies, she’s all but given up her sneaky practice for the night.
Thus, we have a redhead who’s blood sings of [wasted] potential, her curls trapped under a knit hat, though still sneaking free to brush around her cheeks, the nape of her neck. Her coat isn’t exactly warm enough for winter weather, though she’s bundled up with 3 other shirts underneath it – and she still looks way too thin. Her jeans are worn, but not quite worn through, and her boots have certainly seen better days – as has the backpack on her back.
And through the streets, she is stalking, patrolling, wandering – turning the corner to move toward the Sunset Cafe…
[S. D.] This is something that Keith knows, behind his breastbone. That place where he keeps what some might be pleased to call a heart. He shifts his weight from one foot to the next [.coiled. predator. prepared to spring.] and Rory is coming around the corner, such purity in her blood, such a lineage to boast of, such red hair, and not so sneaky today: Fox ‘gainst a hound (big bad wol-).
He blinks. Maybe this is Rory’s territory, maybe there’s a sign somewhere. Maybe it isn’t. Either way, Keith blinks at the Sunset Cafe like it just told him something, and then he glances up and down the street. He’s not looking for anything like Rory, but there she is. He watches her calmly, steadily, unblinkingly for a second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
Then he whistles, long and low. A: Hey, hey there.
[Rory] A long, low whistle, and she’s jerked from whatever place she was sorta lost and thinking about. She tips her head, slightly and then recognition filters through, and that shy little grin appears across her lips. She ducks her head, slightly, to hide it, but continues toward him, her hands tucked into her pockets.
When close enough, a shy. “Hi.” Single words are easier.
[S. D.] “You’re coming dancing with Moira, Keron, Lonna, Indira and myself,” he tells her, raising both eyebrows [this gives him the air of a smartass; a noble smartass, but still, a smartass. Decadent aristo: is he serious?]. He sounds serious.
[Rory] She blinks, and tips her head. He tells her they’re going dancing, and she can’t quite tell if he’s serious or not, and who are these people and she…
blinks again. “….I dan’t cance…”
[S. D.] He cocks his head, sharply, trying to consider what it is she means. “What’s dan’t cance?” Now he’s just being cruel: he gets it, a second after. Hasn’t she explained her little defficiency? Hasn’t he picked it up? He isn’t slow-witted — far from it. He drops that particular facade after a second, though, expression growing easy, amused, a little bemused. “Sure you can. How do you know? Did you have an accident when you were a little one, Michael Jackson playing in the background too loud?”
[Rory] She blushes, when he asks, and she ducks her head, embarrassed and shy. She doesn’t curl away in shame as she used too – that much is an improvement, but she is still embarrassed, and it’s quite evident.
She doesn’t look back up, doesn’t meet his gaze, as she scuffs her toe against the cement, until something doesn’t make sense and.. “Who’s Jichael Mackson?”
[S. D.] [how AWESOME are his vocal stylings gonna be?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 5, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[S. D.] [how LAME is his michael jackson dance?!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[S. D.] “You don’t know?” The ahroun cocks his head to the other side. His gaze slips to the side: rests on the Sunset Cafe for a long, considering moment. Then he clears his throat and — in his best Michael Jackson falsetto, which as it turns out, isn’t too terrible (for the tenor, strong voice, untrained by any and everything except frequent serenades to his showerhead) — belts out Thriller. And, yeah: He does the dance. Keith is the final product of a very, very long line of Silver Fang heroes who have lived and died for Gaia, who have clawed entrails out of monsters that the garou in Chicago don’t even want to know about — he’s the final, shining beacon (hope, hope, hope) in a terrible war, and maybe he’ll be the price paid, rather than the stepping stone for a future. But he’s there.
And he does a pretty good Thriller dance, too. Maybe it’s because of how amused by it he seems. His gaze practically crackles with it, and he’s smiling at Rory anyway.
[Rory] She blinks and tips her head as he bursts into song and dance, right there in front of the Cafe, and it’s like zombies and he even backs her up a few steps as he continues on and then finishes, and she…
…stares. He’s smiling at her, delight and amused and she’s a little confused but well, a good performance deserves applause so she gives him exactly that, applauding with that little shy smile of hers. “Your gery vood. I’ve never seen bat thefore.”
[S. D.] Delight? Delight, now. Delight is not a mood anyone would tend to subscribe to Keith. When you got right down to it, he was too wired. […Especially with the shining moon swelling, inching ever close to… Well, no satisfaction.] His eyes crinkle up and so does his mouth when he smiles, lopsided, the way he is now [devil’s charming, too].
He doesn’t seem to notice she’s mixing her words up now. He responds just as if she’d spoken naturally, in the proper order of things: “Thanks. Seems a bit sacrilegious. This place,” and he jerks a thumb at the Sunset Cafe, “is supposed to be some holy Jazz Mecca. Michael Jackson, he wasn’t jazz. You recognize him now?”
[Rory] He doesn’t make fun of her words this time, and perhaps she thinks she managed to say everything right. Sometimes it happens – or sometimes people are just too nice to point it out. Either way, it eventually becomes second nature to translate. Rory would never know the difference, either way – she hears no mistakes.
He mentions Jazz, and there’s no real recognition there, and the if she recognizes him. She shakes her head, slightly, sending curls bouncing a bit around her face. “They never met le listen mo tusic.” a beat. “What’s Jazz?”
[S. D.] That sentence gives him pause. They never let her what? The second question: that he gets. Keith is beginning to frown at Rory, somewhat more seriously than before. “What? Where were you raised?” What are you?
[Rory] He begins to frown, and she takes a step back, her shoulders hunching slightly as he fires the questions toward her. She lifts a hand and rubs at the side of her nose, lightly, and then tucks it away in her pockets once again.
One at a time, voice soft [submitsubmitsubmit], she answers.
“Arizona.” that much is easy. “Mule.” Not so much.
[S. D.] Metis. Now that? That was a sin of the father’s, a sin of the mother’s, visited on the son [the daughter]. Not only in the shape of a short, nasty, secretive childhood — but in their aspect (twisted, deformed). They aren’t pure. They’re as far from pure as one can get. Lineage aside. That lineage of hers — that purebreeding; that just means two better Fianna broke the law. He snorts.
Has looked her over. Has looked her over thoughtfully, carefully. And now? Now he’s shrugging, as if it didn’t matter. As if he didn’t care enough to make it matter; as if it was just another failure of someone else’s that could’ve been worse (noblesse oblige: will ignore it). She’s still an Ahroun. She’s still useful enough. “Ah,” he says, mild.
Then: “You should go to a musicstore and listen to some jazz.”
[Rory] She waits. She waits for what seems like forever as he studies her, looks her over carefully, and makes whatever judgment he needs to make. She is used to this, she has been through it before, and knows the variety of reactions the circumstances of her birth can bring about.
He chooses to shrug it off. She tips her head, looking through a curtain of bloodred curls at him. Mild, his reply is, and she waits to see if there’s more. Then she smiles shyly and shrugs. “Ok.” Maybe she will. “Good?” the music, she means, not that she’d know any different.
[S. D.] “Meandering,” Keith replies. “A lot of noise; loud. I like it.” He grins, and this time, there are teeth. “You’re Fianna. I’m surprised you didn’t get a crash course on what kind of music sounds like what. They didn’t let you listen, pfah.”
[Rory] She’s Fianna, he stresses, so she should know. She shakes her head, slightly, and reaches up to tug her hat down a little before she shrugs. “They treferred po forget I existed. Easier what tay.”
Hours upon days upon weeks, months, years – and she rarely saw, heard anything. She was a disgrace, she was evidence of sin, she was wrong and wasted and damaged. She was worthless. Until she could fight, she was worthless. There is a very long list of things she’s never done, never been exposed too. It’s a large scary world when you finally are thrust out into it, completely unarmed against the masses.
Well, not completely.
[S. D.] “Did you kill your parents?”
The question is simple. And perhaps not welcome. He doesn’t say it nastily, or blandly — covering up nastiness. He just asks with mild curiosity, as if her answer couldn’t possibly hurt her. “Or know them? Still.” A beat. “No music. I’d play music at some unChanged mule all the time, and hope music soothed it.”
“How long’ve you been,” he nods at her. Her, walking on two legs. Her, all human. “This form easier than the four-legged?”
[Rory] She blinks. That’s a new one. Then she shakes her head. “Mot ne. I don’t know tho whey are.” a beat. “Or were.”
She chews her lower lip, briefly, as he asks his questions, her eyes dancing around the area once, then falling somewhere to the ground between them as she answers. She always answers. She wouldn’t know how to resist, to say no.
“Changed tirst fime when I was 10.” Is this one easier than lupus? She shrugs. “All forms easy now.”
[S. D.] “How old are you now?” Keith is oblivious. It never occurs to him — not even once — to think that she may not want to answer his questions. That he had no right to her answers. That she would lie to him. In a way, Keith Sommers is very trusting. “Which do you like best?” Which form, he means. He’s still curious. It’s not a very interested curiousity, but it is curiousity. He blinks, frowning sideways at something [that isn’t there] across the street. Flicker of movement: corner of his eye. “So no dancing, no music; what do you do for fun? Read?”
[Rory] She furrows her brow, slightly, trying to come up with a right answer. She tips her head, slightly, and then tentatively… “…18? Maybe?” she chews her lower lip again, worried that it is the wrong answer, as it’s something she honestly doesn’t know. That she changed when she was 10 was something told to her – she knew she changed, just not when. She doesn’t even know when her birthday is.
He doesn’t stop to think she may not want to answer, or may not know the answer. She never once thinks to hide anything. He asks, he is her better, and she answers.
“This is fine. I hight in Fisbo.” She shrugs. the other forms are just there, though he may find it odd she would not fight in her crinos birthform…
No dancing, no music. Reading. Again, the flush, embarrassment painting itself over her face. “I ran’t cead.” barely whispered.
[S. D.] He looks at her for a steady moment. Then he says: “What do you want out of life?”
[Rory] Want? She blinks, and actually meets his gaze for a long
[Rory] Want? She blinks, and actually meets his gaze for a long moment, and gives the question some thought. And then, with a shrug. “Knon’t dow.”
[S. D.] “Do you think ’bout it?” The color of his eyes isn’t a clear color. In this halflight outside the Sunset Cafe, its exact hue is difficult to discern. His pupils nearly disappear into that color, and his eyelashes are long. He isn’t blinking. He’s just watching her, his head tipped slightly to the side. His hands are in his pockets again, and it’s far too cold for this conversation — far too cold to be out. Their Rage keeps them warm, though, doesn’t it? They’re furnaces, each, and if they share very little in the manner of their upbringing, they share at least this: born equally desiring of violence in the name of Her. “Or did you just never?”
[Rory] She shakes her head, slightly, her brow furrowing as she tries to find words to explain, though they will come up jumbled as always, and have to be translated into something that makes sense. Assuming she can come up with an answer, of course.
She shifts her weight side to side, and then falls still again, so used to not drawing attention to herself, to hiding away despite the burn of rage deep within. “I am wood gith tools. There’s a tool jor every fob. It’s not food gor anything else, just that one thing.”
A pause, and she looks up again, though doesn’t quite meet his gaze as she shrugs. “I am mule. I am the Tations nool.”
[S. D.] “Well, yes. But what kind of tool do you want to be? What do you want to do? What do you want to do — here — for Maelstrom?” He seems genuinely curious. “We know what job you’re meant for. We’re all meant for that job. You can’t lead; so what? Do you want to be muscle? Do you want to learn tactics? Do you want to learn things like reading?”
[Rory] The questions come, fast and furious, so much so that she takes a step backwards, and shoves her hands deeper into her pockets, her gaze dropping to the ground between them. She chews on her lip, worriedly, as if afraid to make a mistake, not sure what he wants from her and terrified she’s about to be punished for saying it wrong, doing it wrong.
“I….i…” frustration bleeds from her and she stops and tries again, and finally just whispers. “knon’t dow..”
[S. D.] “Well.” He pauses. And he also relents, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. “Think about it. And you should still come dancing with us, but maybe listen to some music first.”
[Rory] She nods, slightly, her frustrating bleeding away, slowly. until she just nods, slightly. “Ok.”
[Rory] ,
to Rory
[S. D.] “Learn to read, too,” he says, after a second. He smiles, raising his eyebrows, and again: it’s like he doesn’t care. That it’s not really worth ‘not caring’ about. He’s (royally) dismissive. Keith Sommers: creature of contradiction. And she was just a mule. But she was also an ahroun. “I’m leaving,” he says, and he glances at the Sunset Cafe for a long moment. Whatever reason he had for standing outside it, a considering look in his eye, was gone now. At very least, it was subsumed. He waves a hand — casual [arrogant] — and turns to do just what he said. He walks away; doesn’t look back. If she says something else, maybe he’ll listen, but he won’t stop — and soon enough? It’s Keith, around a corner.
[Rory] He commands her, and then dismisses her, as is his due. She simply waits until he is gone around the corner, without saying anything else. And then Rory, too, turns and walks the other way.