[Izzy Montoya]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7) Re-rolls: 1
[Izzy Montoya] This time, its different. It’s not a crime scene, but an arrest instead. It went something like this.
1 hour ago:
The lead came in. They had him at last- an address, a witness, an a team assembled. They head out quickly, working as a well oiled machine.
45 minutes ago:
An apartment building in Lake View, opposite side of the area than Izzy’s own. No sirens, no lights, but no less than 4 marked cars pull into the lot. One unmarked pulls up to the curb. They disembark and trunks open, ballistics vests slipped on, guns are drawn, and the move out. A well oiled machine under the direction of one female detective, Detective Izzy Montoya.
42 minutes ago:
They enter the building. A door crashes open. Shots are fired. Shouts are heard. Then silence.
30 minutes ago:
The perp is brought out in cuffs, held by the arms between Detective Montoya and Officer Finnagian. He’s placed in the back of Finns care and Izzy holsters her weapon once more, and clasps Finn on the shoulder. The ginger kid beams at the touch – it’s clear they share some sort of connection, though it has changed from what it once was. Friendship and respect is better. So they say.
10 minutes ago:
All the cars have pulled out, the search warrant has been executed, the evidence collected, and everyone is gone, save one lone unmarked police vehicle that does very little to hide the fact it’s an official vehicle at all. Izzy, as it is so often, is the last to leave the scene. First to arrive, last to leave – there are none quite so dedicated, though few know the reason why she works so hard. They just know she does, and that she is one of the best they’ve ever seen. Alone in the apartment, she stands, and listens. Just listens.
And now:
Izzy’s back at her car, alone. She’s removed the ballistics vest, and tossed it back into her trunk. Then, she untucks her blouse and lifts the edges of it to survey her belly, and the blossoming bruising there. She shakes her head, slightly, before re-tucking the shirt. At least this time- it hit the vest. A zig when she should have zagged, but it was to push Officer Belsom, the rookie, down.
She’s getting too old for this shit.
She slams the trunk closed, making a mental note to switch out the vest back at the station and the grabs her blazer and slips it back on, checking to make sure her weapon is correctly holstered at the small of her back, and within easy reach. She moves to the front of the car, digging out a battered pack of cigarettes, and shaking one free. The search continues until a lighter is located, and then she sets fire to tobacco and paper, and takes a drag. She tucks the lighter away on exhale, and leans a hip on the fender of the car.
[Bob] A homeless man has been watching the spectacle from across the street, silent and just about forgettable except for the fact that he feels edgy, that there’s something about him that makes most normal people not want to do so much as approach him where he’s crouching behind a Dumpster with a trench coat pulled over his head to protect from the light rain that’s coming down.
It’s pattering on everything, coating a mist of water onto windshields and darkening the asphalt, making the cold seem colder and the snow seem almost depressed as it sags into the gutters and clings to the city’s decorations, the concrete and the glass and the metal. There are piles of it drooping where plows have done their duty and pushed it off the streets, and maybe that’s why the police have left him alone thus far. Maybe it’s camouflage.
Izzy has to be aware of him even now as she fills the whispering air with the echoing thump of a closing trunk, as she leans herself against the fender of her car and allows herself a brief entertainment of one of the last legal vices. He stands, like a piece of the background scenery suddenly coming to life, and strides out from behind the Dumpster with the trench coat dropped into place rather held over his head like a tarp or an umbrella. He carries nothing with him, and he’s dressed all in black, combat boots and jeans and t-shirt, trench coat, save for the newsboy cap keeping his hair in place. He looks like he could be a mix of bloodlines, like somewhere in his history the Celts met up with the Vikings, but whatever he is, he’s ugly as sin.
He’s tall, with a lean yet solid build, and his face is one that isn’t going to earn him any favors or positive attention. It’s the sort of face that tends to come attached to a magnetic personality, and there is something about the way he moves, or just the way he looks, that draws the attention.
Then again, he feels like a prowling animal, so that might do it.
He strolls right up to her, stops just beyond striking distance, and asks with a voice that sounds strained and scratchy, “What’d he do?”
[Izzy Montoya] She has to be aware of him on some level – and she is. She’s very aware of her surroundings, at all times. Years of training, years of mistakes, years of learning from those mistakes, and she’s very very aware. It’s shown in the way her stance subtly changes wen he stands and heads her way. It shows in the way her right hand is no longer actively involved in the trail of cigarette to lips and down again, but her left. It shows in the way her right hand rests not on the edge of her car, but just behind her hip instead. If he was watching intently, he knows where she carries her weapon – and it’s now within easy reach.
While he may not win any beauty contests, Izzy’s features mark her as pretty, in a strong sort of way. Her bloodlines are sung in the scent of her blood, and the strength of her jaw, the snap of dark eyes. There is no doubt that she is Fenrir, through and through.
What’d he do, the stranger asks, and Izzy arches a brow, slightly. There’s a tug of something there, a twist along her spine that speaks of something familiar. She is cautious still.
“What’s it to ya?” That, first. Then, because it will hit the 6 o’clock news without doubt. “Held up a convenience store. Killed the clerk and two bystanders.” a beat, and a smirk. “Allegedly.”
But she knows. There is zero doubt in her. She knows.
[Bob] He doesn’t answer when she asks what it is to him. There may very well be no good reason for his question other than good old-fashioned curiosity, or perhaps fear that he’s done whatever the guilty man has done and wants to know what his odds are. This man has a scar on his right brow, scratchy hair on his jaws, eyes the color of a bleached-out summer eye.
He seems as though he’s practically humming with energy, as though he would be better served sprinting around the block than standing here talking to what is undoubtedly a Fenrir kinswoman. Izzy knows them well enough. This could very well just be conversation-making, an attempt to figure out who she is and feel his way around. She’s never seen him before. Very few people have seen him before. He has the haggard air of a vagrant.
“Why’d he kill them?” he asks, standing up straight and pushing his hands into the pockets of his trench coat rather than leaning against her car.
[Izzy Montoya] She notes little details, and tucks them away automatically. He has a visible scar, the color of his eyes, his height is judged in comparison to her own, his weight the same. Body type hidden under the trench coat but generally noted – as is the fact he fairly hums with energy.
He could be asking for a lot of reasons, though he doesn’t answer that question. She doesn’t push him too. She lift her cigarette to her lips, and inhales deeply. On exhale, she watches her hand fall to the side, and flicks the butt end, to send a cascade of ashes to the wet cement below. She doesn’t seem bothered by the rain, or the fact that it’s caused her hair to cling to her neck, a strand wrapped under her jaw. She just lifts her left hand again and pushes her hair back.
“Does it matter?” Why he killed them, that is, though she shrugs. “Money problems, they tried to stop him, wrong place wrong time… could be a number of things. The reasons why don’t always matter – he’ll try to justify it, but it don’t fuckin’ matter. He made a choice. A bad one.”
[Bob] Does it matter.
His eyebrows flick skyward, once, as if to say Well, yeah, but no sound leaves his throat to lend the sentiment any real weight. Thus far she’s only heard seven words out of his mouth, and none of them have anything to do with her blood, her breeding, her loyalty or her allegiances. For the moment, his mind is on what he witnessed, what he doesn’t appear to fully understand; his eyes are on her, but not in any way that would indicate the gaze is anything other than incidental. They’re having a conversation, so he needs to look at her.
A low rumble leaves his chest, a thoughtful sound, and he rolls his shoulders as though his need for movement is attempting to find its way through his form.
“How many people kill other people and never get caught?”
[Izzy Montoya] In some ways, it might matter. It matters when it is one of her own, that she needs to protect. It matters when it is something that her very blood demands she hide, cover up, work to ensure it’s pinned on someone else, or that it remains unsolved and forgotten. It matters when it is Duty above job, when it is The Nation vs. the Wyrm.
This case? It doesn’t matter.
How many kill and never get caught? Caught is relative. Sometimes she knows, and does nothing about it, after all. But, she smirks, and it’s an amused sort of thing, as that brow quirks upwards again. “Not as many as before I came back town.”
Confident, isn’t she?
[Bob] If the silence that follows her proclamation is any indication, he’s giving her words a great deal of thought. He pushes the tip of his tongue into the back of his left incisor, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and then back again, and there’s a shorter version of the rumble in his chest, higher up in his respiratory tract, a sort of unvoiced Huh.
And then the conversational train they’re riding abruptly switches track. It doesn’t jump them, necessarily, but one moment they are discussing matters of law and the next:
“What’s your name?”
[Izzy Montoya] Her name. Here we go.
She takes a final drag of her cigarette before she answers, however, and exhales off to the side as she flicks the butt into the gutter to sputter and die in the puddle there. She tucks her left hand into the pocket of her jacket, and the right remains right where it is, resting on the fender of her car just behind her hip.
“Detective Izzy Montoya.” A beat. “And you are?”
[Bob] She doesn’t identify herself as Fenrir Kin. She doesn’t need to. It’s practically etched into her bones, practically sings from her blood. He’s standing close enough that he can probably smell it underneath the acrid sting of processed tobacco smoke, but he’s not leaning forward to try and lift it from her skin and carry it with him when he goes.
“You know what I am?” he asks, as though she hadn’t asked him to identify himself.
[Izzy Montoya] She’s not in the habit of identifying herself as such – not to strangers that walk up to her, and ask 20 questions. That and she knows that the ones that have need to know, can breathe it in as easily as they do the fact she’s a smoker, she drinks too much, and she is quite often far more stressed than she lets on. It’s almost equally as easy to see she is a control freak, and fights for every little toehold she can, and keeps it with white-knuckled intensity.
He doesn’t answer her question, and somewhere, behind those guarded eyes, she groans. But she answers his question with a slight nod.
“I’ve a pretty good idea, yes.” And that reply is carefully neutral.
[Bob] [Empathy+Perception: I SEE YOU, GROAN]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 5, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Izzy Montoya] [You see NOTHING.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Izzy Montoya] [..dammit. ok. you see a little. Heh.]
[Bob] That reply is neutral, but that inward groan isn’t quite so carefully guarded as she might like to think it is. The creature who’s been talking to her for the last several minutes cants his head to the side when he sees it, and that may as well answer his question, because he takes a step away from her.
She’s got a pretty good idea what she is, and anyone passing by wouldn’t know what the hell they’re talking about. They’d probably assume that the tall man is high, or insane, or whatever it is that afflicts the stereotypical homeless person. Besides the fact that he’s worn and not that sharp of a dresser, he isn’t carrying every last earthly possession of his with him. Hell, maybe he just doesn’t have anything.
He hasn’t introduced himself. It doesn’t look as though he’s going to.
“Good,” he says, and takes another step back, turning to leave.
[Izzy Montoya] Her gaze narrows, slightly, as he takes a step away. And then another. And still doesn’t return the introduction. She doesn’t look away, her dark eyes watching him carefully. Snap decisions are dangerous but that doesn’t stop him from making them, anymore than it stops her. Front of the line? Another asshole. Fanfuckingtastic. With her luck, he’ll turn out to be Fenrir, too. Because that? Is just how her year is shaping up to be.
She doesn’t ask again, though, and she doesn’t stop him from turning, as he’s given her zero reason to. Instead, she finds her battered pack again, and goes through the post MeetingWithAnAssholeGarou ritual of lighting another cigarette.
[Bob] [Wrap!]
[Izzy Montoya] [Thanks for playin, lady!]