[Joey] Though Joey hadn’t failed her gatekeeper, it was a near thing. Their guide and chimed her bell, and everyone had been filled with the voices of the lost. But she had persevered. She had given the reason why her grief couldn’t take her, couldn’t control her, couldn’t define her.
Joey values life. Unlike most of her brethren, while Joey can be brutal, and violent, she hasn’t made a habit of it. It’s not what she’s known for, hurting people. Joey is known for protecting people, kinfolk, humans, other Garou. It’s part of why Buried Hatchet invited her into his pack, back in the days when it was just he and Charlie.
It’s why she gave her eye to a spirit, to save the lives of a building’s tenants.
She gives the Godi an address. “It’s one of Hill House’s.” She braves not being able to see the way ahead of her for a few moments to look up at Blood Summons. “I can show you if you want. The reflection of it was really weird. Like, the building’s just a building, right? But on the other side it had all these, like, towers and shit. And there was a revolving door, and stairs and ladders goin’ everywhere inside.”
[Echo Quinn] Echo Quinn was like a shower of sparks.
You just never quite knew when she’d hit you, and if she did, would precisely would occur. She was unpredictable; in an Alpha, that had made her both dangerous and incredibly good. If your opponent had no idea what you were about to do next, you had the upper hand. As a pack-mate, it can make her challenging to get to know, and sometimes hard to abide in long stretches.
Luckily for the Glass Walker, she had possibly found the one pack in Chicago that was also full of other sparking personalities. Put them together and suddenly things weren’t quite so shocking — they operated without [many] glitches. Tonight, she’s not been out working, or patrolling, but rather exhibiting herself in another long term habit — boxing. Any of her room-mates could attest that Echo had a love for the sport [if the rather large poster of Ali on the wall or the boxing bag she insisted on hanging in her corner at the Brotherhood didn’t give it away already].
She’s meandering down the street, two corners removed from the club already with her gloves strung around her neck like she just wandered from the ring and forgot to remove them — which, let’s be honest — is highly possible. There are earphones in the No Moon’s ears, and she’s jigging her stride as she goes in time with [you hope] the beat.
[Bob] It’s hard to tell what will strike this guy as strange. Being asked to dig a grave for a season had not done it; falling god knows how many hundreds of feet through packed earth to land in a breeding-ripe field had not done it; finding a Rage-mad version of his tribeswoman sitting on a log around a fire had not done it; yet peering in a window and seeing an array of medical equipment had had the creature all but swearing in confusion. It says something about the things that he has been through in his life that he can listen to Joey talk about the Umbral reflection of this building and not do so much as bat an eye when she tells him how different it is from the realmside reality of things.
There are times when he has the thousand-yard stare of someone who has seen things that he can’t possibly begin to describe in words, but right now is not one of those times. He seems interested, like it’s utterly important that he remember what’s being said, like there’s something lurking in the shadows of this story that he needs to keep an eye on lest it leap out and overtake him.
The Godi blows smoke out his flared nostrils, idly reaches out to ash the tip of his cigarette into the breeze.
“I want you to show me this place,” he tells her, echoing her earlier offer to do just that in a scratchy voice. “I want to go with you when you talk to the goat-spirit again, too.”
[Joey] Joey doesn’t tell him she was invited to bring whoever she wanted to her next meeting with the goat-man-spirit. She grins up at him with the closed smile reserved for her tribemates.
“Cool,” is all she says to his wanting her to show him the place, and wanting to be there when she speaks to the spirit again. “I need to talk to Waking Dream, too. See what she can do on this side. Maybe we can all go together soon.” Her mouth quirks to the side, thoughtful. And she slides that one good eye up to the taller Godi.
“You stayin’ somewhere yet? How’m I gonna get hold of you?”
And then, quite suddenly, her head snaps up, a bull dog with a scent. Joey can feel in the back of her mind the nearness of a packmate. She doesn’t know which one it is yet, doesn’t have the ability to feel out whether it’s Hatchet or Echo or Nate. But she’s on the alert, dark eye scanning the area for a familiar figure.
She finds it in the dark haired woman bopping along to the music being pumped into her ears. Joey’s freckled face splits into a broad, excited smile, and she lifts her left arm to wave. The empty right sleeve of her black coat sways with the motion. Her face is half-obscured by a pageboy cap worn low over her eyes, but if Echo turns, she’ll see that smile. If Joey looks up, that smile can be seen from space it’s so bright. She’s been smiling a lot more since she and Blood Summons and a handful of others participated in a rite to bring spring.
“Echo!” she shouts, cupping her hand to her mouth to help amplify the sound. And she waves again.
[Echo Quinn] Echo looks up not because Joey hollers her name or waves madly in her direction, a broad smile spread over her face but because she feels the tickle along her senses that speaks of pack and home. She perks up, lifting her face and catches sight of the Rotagar wearing one of her many [and variable] page-boy caps. Echo’s fingers touch against her brow in a mock salute and she’s jogging across the street in another minute; jostling the gloves strung around her neck like bizarre earrings.
“Hey sexy,” she’s drawling as she slows down into a leisurely step; tugging first one, then the other earplug from her ears, and feeding the white cord back into the pocket of her coat. Echo Quinn’s style in clothing was only what one could call eclectic. There was almost some twinges of hippy-esque sensibilities to it, the way she could pair corduroy pants in vivid purple with shirts that read things such as follow the white rabbit with tiny rabbits dotting across the chest and throw over this a techno-color calf-length coat like she believed she was auditioning for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
For a minute it’s hard to gauge exactly who she’s calling sexy, as she’s smiling at both Blood Summons and Face of Death. She hip-checks the Ragabash when she nears, and juts her chin at Bob. “Sup, what are you guys doin’, hangin’ out on street corners like a pair of bums?”
[Bob] Joey wants to know how she’s going to get ahold of him if he isn’t staying someplace easily accessible, and the Godi doesn’t have an answer ready to give to her; or, at least, not an answer that can crop up quickly enough to compete with whatever it is that has her attention. It’s as though something interesting just scampered across her field of vision, something that Blood Summons can’t see, and the taller creature’s steps slow as he follows the cast of her one remaining eye. Down the street is where the mystery stands: a tall, skinny Glass Walker Fostern, dancing along to whatever is being pumped through her headphones.
It’s not Blood Summons who’s bellowing the young woman’s name this time but Joey, and to the Godi, who does not share a bond with the two woman, it looks as though the Ragabash was snared by the sound of her name coupled with the waving from her sister. That’s not what does it, and he has to be at least marginally aware of the fact that they can feel each other across the street. As Echo jogs across the asphalt, he clears his throat with a painful-sounding harrumph and answers Joey’s question.
“I been spending a lot of time at the Caern,” he says, “but Waking Dream’s been letting me stay at her place.”
Been letting him. As though he had done more than slept in her bed before disappearing into the Umbra for almost three days. His spiritual energy is high, higher than his inner anger, makes him seem as though his attention isn’t completely cemented to the here-and-now. He’s as easily distracted as the young woman next to him, though it’s not because of anything so concrete as the presence of pack or the feeling of belonging and nearness that comes with it. As they pass by an abandoned-looking building with boarded-up windows he sharply turns and looks at the glass housing the reflections of the compact Rotagar and the rangy bastard next to her, looks at it as though someone had shouted Hey! at him.
He doesn’t say anything, though. He just takes a drag off of his cigarette and takes a long, ground-eating step to catch up with Joey.
Echo greets them with a Hey, sexy, and it’s hard to tell which of the two of them she’s referring to. Anyone overhearing would have to assume that she’s talking to the eyepatch-wearing blonde, or else that she’s got an offbeat sense of humor. There is nothing ‘sexy’ about Blood Summons. He smells like tobacco smoke and three days without a shower, looks like he’s been sleeping on the street if he’s been sleeping at all, and there’s a wild look in his bleached-out eyes.
“Nice gloves,” he counters, blowing smoke in a thick plume over their heads. “What’re you gonna do, bop the Wyrm to death?”
[Joey] By the time they’re abreast of a building, it’s out of Joey’s field of vision. Blood Summons looks sharply at their reflection in the boarded up building, and if Joey wants to try and see if she can see something, she has to turn her head completely to the side. She doesn’t turn, fights that urge, even though she wants to know. She purposely walked in a direction where her sightless side would not be faced toward traffic, not that it will make much difference. Enemies of Gaia don’t always pop out of mundane things like windows, doors, or alleyways. Sometimes they pop out of the very air.
Echo hip checks her, and Joey rolls with it, letting out a small low laugh. She doesn’t look much different from the day she came home to room 8, left eye milk-white and right arm dead at her side. Joey had been smiling then, too. She smiles a lot these days.
Her dark eye moves from Blood Summons, dressed simply in his shirt and jeans, and Echo, dressed in light clothes. Joey is wearing her black winter coat because, well, fifty degrees is still far below her temperature tolerance. There’s a bulge in the right side of her coat, where her arm is strapped to her rib cage. The patch that Echo gave her covers the eye that has a tendency to freak people out these days.
“We are a pair’a bums,” she counters, grinning. “Careful, bro, Echo’s got the fastest fists in the Midwest. She’s a holy fuckin’ terror unless you give proper chiminage.”
[Echo Quinn] What’re you gonna do, bop the Wyrm to death?
She’s already dumping her gym bag down at her feet in exchange for pulling out a packet of cigarettes and lighting one; snickering under her breath at her fellow Fostern and gesturing at him with the smoke fresh lit between two fingers. Her voice possesses the husky timbre of a frequent smoker; and she blows a ring or two when she exhales. “Fuck yes if the Wyrm gets cocky, I’ll introduce it to my right hook.”
Joey chimes in with noting that End Transmission is a holy fuckin’ terror and the Ragabash snort-laughs. “Amen, sister, tell it straight, tell it true.” She bends down and scoops her bag up, slinging it over one shoulder and nodding sharply at Joey’s funky new eyepatch. “J tell you all about her wacky adventures, man? I swear, she wanders into our room smiling like nothing ain’t wrong I look over and almost jumped clear outta my skin.”
[Bob] The cigarette Blood Summons is working his way through was hastily rolled a few minutes ago, and it looks it: there is no filter for him to pinch between his fingers, and the scent of the burning tobacco is not as noxious as that of cigarettes that have been treated with preservatives and put together in a factory. It’s almost sweet, the smell, even when it settles in his hair and clings to his clothes.
A laugh leaves his throat when Echo claims she’ll introduce the Wyrm to her right hook if it gets cocky, and he doesn’t continue teasing her, as though she’s won this round. Echo is a thin woman, without much to her, but Blood Summons know she follows Bear, knows what sort of strength that totem grants even the weakest of his children. If the two of them were ever to get into a brawl there’s a very good chance that the smaller woman could knock the Godi on his ass, and he seems well aware of this even as he teases.
He’s seen her in combat, after all. He knows how deadly she can be.
There’s a question as to whether Joey’s told him about the adventure she’d had the other night, and Blood Summons takes a long drag off of his cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs as the other Fostern relays being startled when her sister returned to the room as though nothing were wrong when one of her arms was out of commission and her eye in a similar state of malfunction. He glances over at Joey as though trying to imagine what’s underneath the eyepatch, then laughs again, the sound like gravel in a meat grinder.
“She left that part out,” he says
[Joey] Joey’s smile turns decidedly sheepish when Echo tells the Godi about her grand entrance on her return from this particular adventure. Her left hand is in the pocket of her coat, and suddenly the Glass Walker’s gym bag is a point of extreme interest to Joey’s good eye.
“No,” she says, defensive, when Blood Summons says she left that part out. She looks up at him, the brim of the cap shadowing her face and the patch there. “I didn’t leave it out, just didn’t get to it.”
That one-eyed stare swivels back to her sister, excited again. It shows in the way her already good posture straightens, and Joey stands at her full height. Which is still quite a bit shorter than the rangy Godi. “I got to the part where the shadows tore off my arm an’ now I can’t use it.”
[Echo Quinn] Echo was thin; she was all lean musculature and deceiving strength as well, however. Combined with Bear’s the little Glass Walker became a match for many larger, heavier Garou within their Sept. On their quest within the Red Talon homeland, when Blood Summons had been possessed and turned on The Sentinels, it was Echo alone that was not attacked; not torn down by the Metis; by Face of Death; by any of them.
It’s worth wondering how long End Transmission might have lasted, had the red haze been turned on her before Griffin appeared.
“Y’know,” Echo muses as they stroll along. “I think I’ma get you some different colors for your eye-patch, you can have like, glittering ones for when you feel perky.” The Glass Walker grins that infectious grin of hers then, and then settles into a companionable silence as Joey starts up with her story again. Chiming in here and there with a gross or that’s fucking epic right there at the best bits.
[Joey] Dark blonde brows rise at the prospect of multicolored, multifaceted eye-patches to switch between during her month without her left eye. Despite her boyish appearance, the stocky muscular build, the rolling athletic saunter, Joey isn’t so much of a tomboy that she’s against glitter. Make-up. Polish. In fact, her fingernails are currently a deep shade of purple. Her toenails are turquoise. Sometimes, occasionally, if she’s in the mood, she’ll wear make-up. Without the use of her dominant arm, however, she’s not going to be trying to do that any time soon. Beneath her black coat is a fitted black tee with a heart embroidered at the chest, a colorful burst-pattern surrounding it, palm trees blacked out in the middle, and the KILLERS embroidered at her abdomen.
Joey is not against pretty girly glittery things. The black coat, however, is better for sneaking, better for stealth, and sometimes practicality goes before her aesthetic sense.
She continues the harrowing tale of how she lost the use of her arm and gave up her eye as they walk along toward wherever the three of them are actually headed. Which may or may not be where Joey had intended to go when she walked to this part of town.
“Well, my arm went dead, but that’s when we had the question-answer game. I gave a song in exchange for him tellin’ me how they were helpin’ the people in the building. That’s when he said they were sad, that they were takin’ away their sadness by cutting them free. I tried to tell him they were gonna run out of dealmakers, but they said they wouldn’t without a trade. Said they wanted attention and chiminage, so I offered up my eye so they’d leave people alone.”
Joey shrugs. “I’m hopin’ a month’s long enough to come up with a better solution.”
[Bob] They start walking again, heading in the direction that Joey had chosen when she ventured out into the Near North Side in search of an auto shop. The Godi doesn’t seem as though he has any place he needs to be, yet he’s walking quickly, his long legs taking strides that reach further than the females’ can, the distance disappearing at a pretty quick pace.
Joey defensively informs him that she had not neglected to mention what had happened when Echo got back to the room, just that she hadn’t gotten that far yet, and Blood Summons holds up his hands in a Don’t shoot motion that is as short-lived and benign as it is decidedly human. It’s like shrugging: it’s an action that most creatures aren’t physically capable of making unless they’re upright and conditioned to act in a certain way. He had to have picked it up from someone else somewhere along the line, or else seen it on television once.
At any rate, he gesticulates, and then he continues smoking his cigarette, listening to the two packsisters converse aloud as they move down the sidewalk. Joey continues on with her story, explaining what had happened after she lost the use of her arm. She gave up her eye so that they’d leave people alone.
“So,” he asks, after a brush of silence, “they’re feeding off the sadness of the people living in the apartment? Are they making them sad, or do they just happen to be sad and they’re exploiting it?”
[Joey] Joey’s hand leaves her pocket to scratch at the end of her nose. The gesture lengthens out, and she runs her fingertip beneath the edge of the eye-patch.
“It sounded like they were taking away the sadness already there. It’s a Hill House place, so a lotta the people there are from bad backgrounds, y’know? He said Indira, she’s a Gnawer Ahroun, used to live at The Broho, she joined this girl’s dream. That the girl didn’t like it when her brothers woke her up.”
This part, this particular fact, is told easily enough, openly. But Joey didn’t learn to start hiding her true feelings until she started living through heartbreak and loss and grief. She’s not very good at it. The Fosterns — especially Echo, her sister, whose bed Joey has shared on more than one occasion — can see tension in the line of Joey’s mouth, in the set of her jaw.
“So yeah. I think the sadness is already there,” she repeats. She may be shorter than the long-limbed Godi, but Joey is fast, faster than most of the people she’s met. She’s more than capable of keeping pace. “And the spirits hangin’ out in there are cuttin’ people loose and, I dunno, feading on the sadness or what gets left behind.”
[Echo Quinn] “What the hell,” the Glass Walker comments idly, finishing one cigarette and lighting a fresh one with the stub of it. “That’s messed up.” End Transmission turns her attention on Blood Summons, and breathes cigarette smoke away from him; licking the corner of her lip to chase away the bitter aftertaste.
“Why do spirits do that shit, man?”
[Bob] Why do spirits do that shit, man?
It’s a reasonable enough question coming from an urrah, and one he had to be expecting after hearing Joey’s explanation for what had happened to cause the sadness of the people living at Hill House’s apartment. It’s a question that a human-born Theurge approaching his or her Rite of Passage would be inclined to ask, their familiarity with the motivations and desires of the spirits not something that is quite as ingrained in them as it is in the lupus-born or even the mules. The human-born, clustering in cities as they tend to, are not as versed in the olds ways as the other representatives of the Garou Nation are.
Though they are all part-spirit, there are a great deal of Garou who have lost track of that part. One has to imagine that Blood Summons has had to answer this question before, but the answer he gives doesn’t sound practiced. It doesn’t sound as though he’s reciting. He takes a drag off of his cigarette as he considers how to say what it is he wants to say, and then he blows out a breath as he starts to answer.
“Spirits are amoral,” he says. “Some of the things they do seem or the demands they make seem, ah… well… fucked up. But that’s just because they haven’t got a compass like humans do. They aren’t compelled to act a certain way to try and live up to others’ expectations. They do what they’ve been doing since the dawn of time, and it doesn’t always match up with what we might expect them to do. Doesn’t make it bad, necessarily, just… you know… there’s always a reason for it, even if we can’t figure out what it is right away.”
[Joey] That’s messed up.
Joey is inclined to agree. That is messed up. She was born in one of the biggest, brightest cities in the United States, and if she were still who she was when she left Las Vegas, she would be at just a much a loss as her Fostern packmate. But for the better part of a month, Joey was completely silent. And in her silence she sat in the umbra and watched spirits move. She watched them dance. She listened to them communicate in a way that she will never understand.
Since then, her spiritual energy has been the stronger for her observations. It makes the battle-ready Fenrir more likely to do something like offer up her gnosis to heal a wounded gaffling, or give up her eye to protect a building full of people for a month.
Blood Summons explains to Echo why spirits do what they do. Joey doesn’t interrupt, just listens, putting together pieces in her head.
“So yeah. I was really surprised when I still had an eye. Felt like he bit it out. That’d probably be less freaky than what actually happened. I thought Buried Hatchet was gonna have a fuckin’ aneurysm.”
[Nate Cross] With the winter snow finally melting with the warmer weather, the Galliard had lately been taking opportunity of the exposed concrete pavement that had for the last several months been completely covered with snow.
At the moment the Gnawer was knelt in a crouch with his hands and face covered in chalk dust. The colours smudged together creating almost a rainbow on his fair skin. The cracks in the pavement creating a border for the seperate scenes that had been created in each square.
A creased photo was placed on the pacement before him, held in place by a rock he had found. The photo was of a particluar piece of art Nate had found he quite liked. But art should be free, so here he worked re-creating the painting on this concrete canvas for passers-by to appreciate.
[Echo Quinn] Spirits are amoral.
“Huh, that sounds like a lot people I’ve known, too.” Echo says musingly, breathing in a mouthful of smoke and then letting it out slowly; considering. Then Joey notes that she thought Hatchet was going to have a fucking aneurysm and she’s laughing silently, her boxing gloves swaying with her movements.
“I think he just has them silently now, like little poppoppops inside his head.” Echo scrubs her free hand back through her short dark locks, and adds, in lieu of Blood Summons’ explanation regarding spirits: “Y’know, my rite of passage we went Umbral for part of it, and like, New York?,” she smiles, flashing white white teeth. “It’s pretty amazing from that side, the Weaver is just — she’s everything. Anyway, we had to track down these Spiders ‘n all.” A beat, the No Moon adds.
“Makes sense, I guess, that they’d have reasons for what they do, like why they exist, why we need ’em, all that. Never much saw it back then, but think I’m beginning to now, the more I see.”
[Joey] The thought of their alpha having silent aneurysms sends the Rotagar into a fit of low laughter, the sound catching her mouth for a moment before it’s released into the air.
“Oh man. I never really went umbral after my rite in Vegas. I bet the Strip’s pretty cool on that side. I should check it out when fuck.”
As they’re walking, Joey looks down at her stomach, where her arm is strapped beneath her coat, before looking back up at Echo. Dark blonde brows come together in a stricken frown.
“I’m s’posed to go home this weekend, but there’s no fuckin’ way I can drive with this.” Joey lets out a growl of frustration. “I’m gonna have to postpone. My mom’s gonna kill me. Is that Nate?”
A ways down the block, someone is crouched to the pavement, drawing with chalk. As with Echo, Joey feels the tingling nearness of a packmate, that sense of bond that can’t be compared to any other. Like she did with Echo, Joey cups her hand to her mouth, and shouts for his attention.
“Nate, you ignorant slut! Get the fuck over here!”
[Nate Cross] The Gnawers head snaps up as he first hears his name and then the insult. Eyes going hard, but then softening as the vision of Joey comes into focus and he makes out her face. Shaking his head with a laugh, he raises his hand in recognition and then gesturing for her to wait a minute.
The last touches placed on his masterpiece, he finally stands dusting off his hands on his faded jeans. Collecting his belongings and the creased photo. He starts making his way back down the block to the gathered Garou.
“Hey Sis” he greets Joey, when he closes the distance between them. “Hey Echo” he greets his other packsister. A bit of a nervous look to Bob, the last time he had spent time with the Theurge he was under the effect of somethin in the Red Talon homeland, the result the Theurge disembowling him. He shakes it off though and gives the man a nod “Hey there.”
[Bob] Blood Summons doesn’t miss the way that the Cliath looks at him as they draw closer. The Godi is walking closest to the road, flanked by the two females, and is the last one to whom Nate looks. It takes him a few seconds for recognition to come across his features, the small Gnawer’s form having been something other than human nearly the entire time they were on their trek to the Red Talon homelands, but when it comes, he does not seem repentant or otherwise shamed remembering having torn the street artist’s intestines out.
He doesn’t reply with words. A low rumbling sound stains the air, coming deep from within his throat, and then he takes one last drag off of his cigarette. The cherry is pinched off with the fingers of his left hand, and he tosses the roach into the gutter.
[Joey] Nate holds up his hand, gesturing Joey to wait wait for him. Rage crackles in the air around the Rotagar, and her dark eye narrows. Nate closes the distance, greets her. As soon as he turns to greet Echo, Joey steps forward, left hand swinging for the back of his head.
It’s not a good shot. Her depth perception is gone, and she’s not as strong with her left arm as she is with her right. Mostly, the blow glances off. But the intent is clear. Joey cuffs Nate up the back of his head to the best of her ability.
“You come when I call you, got it?” she snarls, echoing nearly verbatim words snarled across the totemlink the morning she gave up her eye.
As docile as Joey sometimes seems, she’s a wolf, through and through. Dominating and territorial, that’s the sunny faced No Moon of the Sentinels.
[Echo Quinn] Echo doesn’t call out, or yell at Word on the Street; her greeting is subtler, something more along the lines of a jerk of her chin upward and a Cheshire-cat grin curling around the edges of her mouth, wisps of smoke emerging. “Sup,” then, back to Joey and her predicament regarding going home: “See, this is why I’m happy I have no family but you guys, I don’t gotta worry about wandering home with one arm and a pirate eye patch and people going yo what the shit, Echo Quinn, y’know?”
She throws a companionable arm around the other No Moon’s shoulders here, and then glances at Blood Summons when the Cliath Galliard gives him a somewhat edgy look and is cast back a — well — growl, followed by Face of Death cuffing him about the back of the head. End Transmission does not step between the two, she stands back with the other Fostern and turns to observe his tossed-aside roach.
“You make your own?” Asks Echo, as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening before them.
[Bob] Neither does the Godi make any attempt to step in between his tribeswoman and her pack’s Omega. If anything he steps back to give the one-eyed, one-armed woman room to swing, then reaches into the breast pocket of his button-up shirt as Echo is asking if he makes his own. He looks up from his fishing to meet the Glass Walker’s gaze, then opts to use his words rather than simply grunting out an answer.
“I got some tobacco from Mississippi,” he says, pulling loose a battered bag of tobacco and a sleeve of rolling papers from his pocket. The contents of his gym bag rattle and clatter and slosh as he rests his weight on one hip; as he speaks, he works on packing a piece of rolling paper full of flakes. “One of my old packmate’s brother has a farm down there. Can get me a lot of cigarettes outta a pound of tobacco.”
This, as though nothing is going on between the Delta and the Omega of the Sentinels.
[Nate Cross] Nate would have ducked the blow as it struck out, but that would probably have meant a pummling rather than a palm up the back of the head. He was the Omega after all. “Yeah sure…. Just wanted to finish off what I was working on. Sorry to keep you waiting.”
When Echo mentions something about having no family but the pack, there is something that flickers over Nate’s eyes. Was it that he found something that both he and Echo seemed to have something in common or was it something else.
Asking questions of Joey as he allows the Fosterns to talk, not wanting to interrupt their conversation “How’s Cassius going by the way Joey?.. Hope I wasn’t too heavy on the gears the other night?”
[Joey] Joey tips her head to the side, her expression even with the eye-patch and the low drawn hat easily reading Seriously? Her fist — not palm — lashes out again, this time aiming for his shoulder. “No excuses, bro.” Then she’s grinning again, throwing that arm around his shoulder awkwardly. After a certain point, the Gnawer disappears from her immediate field of vision. It’s possible she accidentally knocks her brother harder than intended. But in the end, she grapples him into a position of fraternal closeness, not quite putting Nate into a headlock.
If she had the use of her good arm, she probably would throw him into a headlock, but what good is a headlock if one can’t follow up with a good noogie? Joey just keeps Nate close, instead.
“Cass’s fine. I gotta do a little tune-up. Don’t know how long my arm’s gonna be outta commission. It sucks, the weather was just gettin’ good, too.”
[Rory] (is everyone random street outsideish? and is it still open? :) )
to Bob, Echo Quinn, gnosis, Joey, Nate Cross
[Echo Quinn] Echo looks keenly interested when Blood Summons takes out the bag of tobacco from Mississippi and his papers; she’s finishing off her second cigarette of the evening [somewhat amusing, the sheer amount this woman smokes and yet manages such an active lifestyle] and exhibiting the sort of dedicated concentration that suggests she wants him to make her one as well.
“Huh, that’s cool. Roll me one, man.” It’s less a request from the Glass Walker, and more a demand she naturally [of course] expects him to fulfill. Nate; Nate’s eyes tell a little story somewhere in the middle there, and the No Moon tilts her head a little at him, eyebrows dancing in a what’s up, kid fashion.
[Joey] [yep to both questions!]
[Bob] The last time they saw each other, Echo had donated a cigarette to the cause of polluting the metis’s lungs; she had not partaken in the beer with the awakened spirit of the Grain within, had actually been somewhat snockered when he’d sat down to accost her. He technically owes her one, and so he doesn’t snap his jaws at her or make another joke as he finishes rolling the first cigarette he’d started.
He grunts, a sort of Sure that doesn’t quite make it into words, then seals up the cigarette with a few quick flicks of his tongue and rolls it into a neat if somewhat fat tube. There is no sign of a filter on it, but to his credit he doesn’t have to issue a warning that there is the chance of her being knocked on her ass by the tobacco.
“Here you go, sugartits,” he says, passing it over by the midsection rather than one end or the other.
[Rory] There are any number of little dive eateries in the ‘green, and some of them are more welcoming than others. Out of the side door of one such welcome one, steps the red-haired mule, shyly accepting a little bag of bagels and cream cheese, payment for the bit of work she’d done. A few more moments, and she slings her backpack on her shoulders, and then steps down the alley and to the street beyond -where, unknowingly, waits a few Sentinals and a Fenrir.
She is slender, and well used to slipping through the shadows, keeping out of attention. for now, though, her attention is quite firmly attached on spreading one of those bagels with cream cheese, and taking a bite to sooth her grumbling belly. there’s no missing that hair, or the breeding that runs [wasted] though her veins… and yet she seems blissfully unaware of her current surroundings.
for now.
[Nate Cross] He still hadn’t got used to his Fenrir sisters ways, though now that he had claimed a bed in Room 8 he was beginning to just relax and learn. So when her fist hits his arm and then is thrown around his shoulder. He just shakes his head and grins “No excuses.. got it” the statement seemed to apply to many things. And then lets out a small grunt as indeed she does knock him harder than intended. But soon finds himself in a friendly grapple that he relaxes into.
“Good good.. I’d volunteer to give you a hand but best if my hands don’t get near Cass. As for your arm any feeling back in it yet? ” A nod given in agreement about the weather. Eyes looking towards Echo as he spots the look she’s given him “Just a familiar tale is all, might share it with you some time.”
[Echo Quinn] He calls her sugartits, and she bares her teeth at him in a faux-growl. “No! That’s my name for you, you gotta give me your own nickname, but I warn you,” she takes the cigarette in hand, displaying it proudly between forefinger and thumb as if it were a trophy of sorts:
hey look what the metis fenrir gave me, ya’ll!
“If you mention my lack of ass, there will be blood.”
[Joey] Both Sentinel No Moons have figures with a decided lack of feminine curvature. But where Echo is tall, lean, wiry, Joey is tall, stocky, athletic. Her figure is boyish, square, powerful. The only thing she has going for her, that has people realizing that this person is female and not male, is the fact that she has a pretty face, and she sometimes wears things that glitter and sparkle in the light. Sometimes, very very rarely, she wears pink.
She grins at Echo’s trophy cigarette, briefly tightens her grip on Nate’s shoulders. He hasn’t quite gotten used to his Fenrir sister, but then, he was surprised by Daniel’s treatment of Izzy Montoya. A lot of people were. A lot of people forget how brutal, how violent the Fenrir can be.
Joey has her bad eye, the side that Nate is on, to the shopfronts and the alleys. She doesn’t see the Ahroun with the bag of bagels when her head is turned toward the Fosterns with her. But she can sense the breeding, and she turns — dragging Nate with her — to find the source. When she sees Rory, Joey grins. She’s seen the girl at moots, mostly, knows she’s a member of the Bogeymen. That’s about it.
“Hey,” she greets, and releases Nate from her vice grip at last. “Aw, shit, I think we passed the auto store I was lookin’ for.” She turns to look back the way they came, leans out a little to look at storefronts, bumping into someone’s shoulder in the process.
[Rory] Joey greets her, and Rory stops, her eyes widening slightly as she pulls her attention away from her bagel and to the people on the walk in front of her. She chews and swallows, while green eyes flit back and forth, before turning to joey again. She never quite meets the Fenrir’s gaze, and if she does it’s by accident and merely a few seconds, before Rory drops hers.
Instant, that submission.
Her voice is soft, as she answers in kind “Hi.” before she steps to the side, a shoulder thumping against the brick of a building, so that she’s out of the way.
[Bob] If he mentions her lack of ass, there will be blood.
The metis bursts into laughter, his head thrown back for several seconds as the sound leaves his throat, the lack of restraint creating a sound that’s less gravelly and more open than most of the sounds he makes. He recovers quickly when a shoulder bumps against his upper arm, clearing his throat as though to rein in his mirth, then gets to work rolling a second cigarette.
“Oh, I will give you your own nickname,” he tells her. He indicates the length of sidewalk ahead of them with a jerk of his head as if to say Let’s go, then actually gives the sentiment words a moment later: “Let’s get outta here, my stomach’s making a valiant effort to consume itself.”
[Echo Quinn] When Blood Summons bursts into laughter, Echo’s dark eyes; sharp as razors, gleam with shared pleasure. She enjoyed making others smile, or laugh. Perhaps that was a side effect of her moon. She lights the cigarette the Metis gave her, breathes in sharply and then blows out a slow exhale of smoke.
Her voice, when it reinstates itself, is almost drowsy with delight. “This, is a thing of beauty.” She declares it much the way one might admire a sturdy piece of craftsmanship before the Fenrir is declaring they should get outta there and find something to eat. “That’s the best offer I’ve had in at least six hours, let’s do it.” She agrees, and turns to wave at Joey and Nate, making finger walking motions with one hand before she heads out, her varied hand motions suggesting she doesn’t quit talking for some time.
[Bob] [Thanks for the play, y’all!]
[Echo Quinn] [likewise!!]
[Joey] “Food!” Joey whips around, but the Fosterns are already headed off, leaving Joey behind with Nate and Rory. She frowns after them, and shrugs her left shoulder.
“I gotta go to the auto parts store, anyway,” she says, but there’s no hiding that note of — sadness? loneliness? who knows.
She nods to Rory, brow quirking at that instantaneous submission, bops Nate in the shoulder, and heads off with a, “See ya later, gators!”
[Joey] [Joey is also out. Thanks for the play! Monki needs ta sleep!]
[Nate Cross] Nate had followed his pack sister and when they came across Rory, he had stopped and was about to give her a smile. But he just watches as the red-head instantly offers Joey submission without a second glance. He was about to raise an eyebrow but stops himself, not wanting to make the girl any more uncomfortable.
“Hi there” he adds, his voice pleasant and friendly.
[Rory] Two others wave and disappear, and Joey follows. Rory watches through the red fringe of dusty lashes, and takes another bite of her bagel. She normally wouldn’t, waiting, but her belly grumbles desperately and she does what she can to sate it.
Joey is not the only that receives instant submission – Nate does too. Green eyes flick towards him, touching his gaze for the barest of seconds before dropping again. Her voice still soft, she murmurs another. “Hi.”
[Nate Cross] Nate can’t help but chuckle softly as he listens to the Ahroun’s belly growls. He has known that sensation before and he wasn’t about to deny a hungry wolf it’s meal. “Those look good, get them nearby ?”
As the ahroun goes to offer him submission. Nate just shakes his head “Nah, none of that. I’m Nate by the way… don’t think we’ve met before?” a question asked to ensure he hadn’t forgotten some past meeting.
[Rory] She takes another bite, and then points to the eatery nearby, before she shyly offers him the bag to take one if he wants. He tells her that submission isn’t necessary, and a blush paints itself across her cheeks, highlighting her freckles as she ducks her head to hide behind those bloodred curls.
“Rory.” Her name offered, with a slight shake of her head, unsure they’ve met before – only seen each other at Moots, where she remains out of the way and quiet as much as possible even then.
Under the swell of the moon her rage is unmistakable, boiling under her skin, approaching full potency – even so, she remains obviously shy, timid… so easily overlooked.
[Nate Cross] He shakes his head when he declines the bagel “Nah I might grab something later. Seems like your hungry and I wouldn’t want you going without your fill.” A puzzled looked as he watches her blush, a timid thing she was.. perhaps even more timid than the Galliard and in some minds that was quite something.
“Nice to meet you Rory.. I’m Nate.” a smile curling the corners of his lips.
Nate nearing the ending of his own moon, was edgy.. but he seemed to have an easy going nature about him. Perhaps developed to try and cover for the beast that lay within.
[Rory] He says his name is Nate, again, and she hides a shy little grin behind her hand, behind her bagel as she peeks up at him though those curls. “You thaid sat already.” She doesn’t seem to notice the odd switch in her words, sort of a verbal dyslexia – as if she hears what she intended to say, instead of what she did.
He declines the offer of her other bagel and she quickly finishes the one in her hand, before going about slathering creamcheese on the remaining one -almost with a sense that he’ll change his mind, but certainly with a sense of appreciation, as she is, indeed, hungry. “I can met gore.” bagels she means. “I forked wor it – exchange.” a skinny shoulder shrugs, but she digs in anyway. Just in case.
[Nate Cross] He offers a smile when she peeks up at him and frowns a little as he notices the words mixed up. Taking a few moments before sorting it out, eventually responding “Yeah I did’ was just checking to see if you were listening.” giving her a playful wink.
He watches as she consumes the other bagle, quietly pleased that she did so. It wasn’t right for one to go without a meal, and he had gone without too many times in his childhood. She speaks again and again the Galliard plays the letter rearranging game in his head before speaking “Nah that’s okay, I’ll get something for myself later. Ahh a barter?.. that’s the only way to do things.. a favour for a favour”
[Rory] He winks, and she blushes again – it seems her default reaction to many things, to any sort of attention at all. She lifts a hand and rubs absently at the side of her nose with fingers long and slender, almost fragile looking despite the heat of rage that suggests she could be – and is – just as deadly as any of them. She finishes off the second bagel, and then crumples up the bag and steps to the side to toss it in a nearby bin, before she shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans.
“I thix fings.” a little shrug. It’s how she survives, though her pack is anything but stingy. “and they meed fe.”
[Nate Cross] He notices how nervous she is, the way her skin pinkens to any gesture he gives her. Stepping to the side as he allows her access to the bin nearby
“What sort of things do you fix?” his curiosity piqued “Seems like a fair trade to me… I used to wash dishes for food and a place to sleep. Seems like it would be more challenging to do what you do”
[Rory] She chews her lower lip, absently, and watches a spot on the cement somewhere between them, still not looking up other than brief glimpses, and never meeting his gaze. She answers his questions though, her voice soft, respectful – and terribly mixed up.
“Thechanical mings, mostly. Small things, though I gixed Fina’s washer, and hater weater.” She shrugs, skinny shoulders lifting and falling in a gentle roll. “I fan cix almost any mall smachine.”
[Nate Cross] A longer answer now and it takes the Galliard awhile to unjumble the words and make sense of it all “Well that sounds like a useful skill to have. I’m sure Gina would’ve been very appreciative of that fact. I’ll have to keep you in mind if I ever have a need.”
Then he looks around as if thinking about something or a distant voice in his head “Well I gotta make a trail and get back to my pack. It was nice to meet you Rory, see you around I hope.” the comment genuine and friendly. It might have taken him awhile to work out what she was saying, but Nate wasn’t the type to hold that against her.
[Rory] She nods, slightly, as he says he has to go, and she slips her hands from her pockets to re-situate her backpack on her shoulders – it clatters and clanks and there’s no telling what’s really inside there. She doesn’t move to step away until he does, though, waiting for him to make that first move – submissive in then.
When he does, she only adds a soft “bye.” Before turning and heading back toward Bronzeville. Or Chinatown. Somewhere around there, where exists the home of the Bogeymen.
(and that’s a wrap, thanks for playin!)