[Payne] It’s over in a matter of seconds.
Imogen, feeling the brunt of whatever the fallen young man had done to her, fires off three quick shots that take chunks out of her blond target’s back and neck. He wavers on his feet, blinking in bleariness, but does not go down. His mustached companion surges towards the stranger, aiming for her decimated neck, but he does little more than remove a layer of skin and meat from her midsection. The tall man who has positioned himself beside Muerte Fría likewise launches himself at the Crinos Garou but does little more than slide off of her arm. The stranger swipes her claws at the mustached man, glimpsing off of his arm at first before her rebound rake opens up his midsection, dropping him to the ground. Muerte Fría stabs at the tall Fomor with her spear, but misses.
He cackles.
The stranger finishes off the mustached man with another swipe of her claws, and Muerte Fría relieves the tall man of his left arm. He’s not laughing anymore.
For the last time, Imogen releases a volley of bullets, ending the smallest Fomor’s life without hesitation. The last man standing moves to bite Muerte Fría as the stranger is moving to grapple him, but they throw each other off of their marks. The Uktena warrior swings her arm, and her claws find their target: the top of the tall man’s head falls to the ground, spilling gray matter and blood on the floor of the alleyway.
There are four bodies on the ground, the stranger is heavily bleeding, and the kinswoman has been infected. The wind has died down, though, and the cover of darkness will be upon them soon.
[Combat over! Weeoo!]
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen sneezes, three times into her coat sleeve and straightens up with a look of distaste, lowering her gun and swapping hands, flexing her fingers as she represses a shiver as the fever flickers beneath her skin.
She draws a breath and feels the phlegm crackle in her throat and fights the urge to cough.
She approaches the beasts slowly, not quite hesitantly but with caution, her gun at her side, her finger on the trigger guard. A cough blooms in her lungs, suppressed at her throat creating a faintly abortive sound before she speaks to the wounded stranger.
“Can yeh get into the alleyway until I bring yeh bandages t’see you home?” Truthfully – both are strangers at the moment. In War-form, they all look the same to her.
Monsters.
[Muerte Fria] Soledad had been patrolling tonight, walking and walking until she was certain that she’d put at least a month’s worth of a normal man’s wear and tear on the tennis shoes she’d been supplied with a few months ago. She did this ducking in and out of the Umbra on occasion, in the Umbra when she had to go through a high-traffic area, in the physical realm when she was confident that she could cut through the evening and the alley and sidestreet shadows without having to be bothered for carrying her spear with her.
She heard gunshots, paused, and cut through the network of alleys she’d been walking in, making a straight shot across half the width of a block before peering from the darkness she blended in so nicely with to the Kinfolk with firey hair and similarly blazing breeding, the Garou she’d never seen before that was missing a nice hunk out of her neck and shoulder, and the wastrel of a man responsible for it. She’d tightened her grip on her spear and braced for the throw, but never got the chance. The man was down, and there were others flooding out onto her back.
The change was immediate, practiced and natural. She jammed her spear upward, missed, and the battle was around her, surrounding the alley mouth. A Garou fought with one, a Kinfolk gunned another down, and she battled with a man whose arm she chopped off with a slice of her claws. He attempted to bite her, but the other Garou tried to grab him and they conflicted with one another, accomplishing nothing. It gave Soledad the chance, however, to lurch forward like a great furred cobra and snap her jaws at the man’s head, slicing it in two, cracking and shattering the bone with such force that the cut was almost clean. Water and sludge that vaguely crackled with bio-electrical currents flooded her mouth, and immediately she spat that onto the ground, refusing to swallow any.
(It would look horrible in the toilet or on the pavement in a few hours, after having been heaved out of her stomach and purged from her system.)
She snorted and straightened up, regarding the other Crinos with eyes of melted gold and moon yellow. Soledad appeared as a tall, lean monster of clipped muscles and long, silky black-red fur. Her hair fell down her back in waves and tangles of the red of drying blood while the fur around her mouth was black, tinted red by Harry’s blood rather than natural tones.
She huffed, snorting a spray of blood from her nostrils, and glanced to Imogen before ducking into the alleyway and, smoothly, returning to Homid.
[Payne] The stranger is in bad shape. There is a chunk missing out of the right side of her strong neck, a scratch on her midsection, and her tawny brown fur is covered the blood of the Fomori as well as her own. She stands catching her breath for several seconds, great chest heaving, before turning blue eyes toward the kinswoman. A whuffling inhalation flares her nostrils, and then a suggestion.
Can they get into the alleyway.
The stranger nods, sharp and inhuman, and picks up first one then another leg of either man dropped on the sidewalk, dragging them with her into the alley. Her knapsack is left lying where she had dropped it; right now she is melting herself back down into her human skin, reappearing as a tall, young blonde in battered, four-inch black boots, a dirty skirt, and a black tank top. Blood is in her hair and on her hands, and she smells like she hasn’t bathed in a few days.
Whoever this is, she wasn’t at the last moot.
[Imogen Slaughter] Her breath comes more easily out on the street, by herself, surrounded by two more bodies. Another cough, an insistent sound as she turns her head toward her arm, then holsters her gun at the small of her back.
She picks up the backpack, and slings it over one shoulder, then grabs the remaining body under his armpits. The kinwoman is small, but not particularly weak, and at least accustomed to the inert weight of the dead.
She drops one body, then the back pack to the ground and draws in an unpleasant breath. A flicker of her gaze toward Soledad, a little ironic. “I don’t believe we’ve formally met.” Her voice carries a trace of hoarseness around its edges.
Despite her statement: “I’ll be back wi’ garbage bags ‘nd bandages. Sit tight.”
[Maija] The people of bronzeville? Really love their fuckin Family BBQ. The day was long, and she’s exhausted. Putting on a mask of friendliness and helpfulness and general good will in order to collect tips is mentally taxing at best, excruciating at worst. Today was somewhere in the middle.
Not to mention since that little debacle at the corner store, she’s had to walk twice as far to a different corner store than she had before. Thus, she’s headed home from a different direction than before, having hit up the store 4 blocks over. One grocery bag hangs by its handles from one hand, and the other is tucked into the pocket of her zip up hoodie – unzipped, though the hood is up covering her hair.
She walks quickly, her steps even and sure, as she turns to corner and sees a vaguely familiar figure down the way. Ok – that’s a lie, no one could miss Imogen’s hair, and mistake her for someone else. She’s not the type to call out though – and she certainly doesn’t alter her path, though truth be told, the idea does occcur to her.
[Muerte Fria] Imogen had already grabbed the body and started to haul it in, so Soledad wasn’t concerned. She was eyeballing the blonde woman with the tall boots, the hunk missing out of her neck. Her eyes were dark and intense, but a hue different than what one would expect with her sternly Caucasian-less heritage. The body of someone missing their head was dragged into the alley, head nudged in as well, and Imogen coughed and wheezed just a little as she addressed the Hispanic, who looked at her flatly.
“Top floor of The Brotherhood of Thieves. You were there with Decker. Silent, largely.” A huff, then a name. “Soledad.” That’s all she really needed to give. Something to be called, her last name and deed name, her rank and tribe, none of that was important to Imogen. Kinfolk, by and large, didn’t have need for such information.
She said she would be back with bandages and garbage bags, and Soledad nodded, her spear still grasped in her left hand, the butt of which rested on the pavement. She looked back to the woman in the skirt that was pouring blood still, huffed, and leaned her spear against the wall, then reached down to grab the edges of her own shirt– navy blue and cut for a man much more broadly built than she– and pulled it off over her head, leaving her in nothing but a thin white sports bra that was probably snagged from the preteen’s section at Wal*Mart and a pair of light colored denim shorts.
The shirt was wadded up and held out to the woman with a nod. “Press that against it. Plug the bleeding up at least a little.”
[Imogen Slaughter] “Hm.” Vague acknowledgement. She’d been to the Brotherhood with Decker once, yes. “Imogen.” Introductions passed.
She exits the alleyway, closing her light corduroy jacket to hide the blood along the front of her t-shirt.
A cheap-ass Volvo is parked by the curb. She pauses to clear her throat before fitting the key into unlock the front driver’s side door. By now, Maija’s approached and Imogen sees her as she opens her door.
“Come fer a short drive wi’ me, will yeh,” she says in lieu of a greeting. “There’s some clean up to do.”
[Maija] A brow arches, slightly, as Imogen skips the greeting, and instead suggests that she’ll help. She hefts the grocery bag in her hand slightly, a flex of her fingers around the canvas straps for a moment, two. She nods then, the movement barely perceived.
“Yeah, alright.”
She quickens her step, enough that she doesn’t keep Imogen waiting, but not making it obvious, and moves around to the passenger side of the car and waits for the lock to click before opening it. Her groceries set in the back, she slides easily into the seat and closes the door behind her. “Messy is it?”
[Imogen Slaughter] “Four bodies,” she says once Maija’s in the car, fitting the key’s into the old Volvo’s ignition and turning it. The car sputters but doesn’t start. “Plus a badly injured Garou,” the infected kinwoman pauses to sneeze turning her head to do so into her arm, sniffing slightly as she straightens, “So I imagine she won’t be much help.”
[Maija] She nods, slightly and slides out of her hoodie. Better to have it not messed up, and able to cover whatever gore she’ll get on her now for the walk home after.
“Bless you.” The reply to the sneeze, and she folds up her hoodie and reaches behind her to toss it on top of her grocery bag. “Alright.”
Garou. Injured. Lovely. Bet SHE’S in a good mood. And Garou aren’t Maija’s favorite on the best of days…
[Payne] The kinswoman has had an infection transmitted to her through the touch of the first Fomor, yet she had fought on and is now going to help them get the alleyway cleaned up and back into a state of orderly compliance.
“Thanks,” she drawls when the woman carries her knapsack over, and pops herself down into a crouch before splaying her legs out in front of herself and parking herself on her ass in the alleyway. She does not appear overly concerned that she is going to get herself dirty; there is blood soaking her right side, and as she is woozily reaching for her knapsack, the Uktena girl pulls off her t-shirt.
Blue eyes lift from the earth to take in the wadded-up blue cotton, and a bloody, jewelry-free hand reaches up to take the t-shirt. She does as she’s instructed, pressing the t-shirt against her wound with only a slight flinch coming across her face.
“Well this is embarrassing,” she says. Now that the kinswoman is gone, she takes a soggy breath and swallows to clear her throat. Her accent is difficult to place; it’s mild and slow, almost Midwestern. “What’d you say your name was?”
[Imogen Slaughter] “Ta,” absent response to the good blessings. “Bloody hell.” This quieter, a mutter as she suppresses a cough.
She pulls her car away from the curb, and executes a three point turn.
“I ha’ bandages t’give t’the Garou,” she says, “and there are garbage bags in th’trunk. If th’Garou disarticulate the bodies, they should all fit.”
A pause. “Just make sure not t’touch me.”
[Muerte Fria] Soledad is a tall woman with a young, smooth, symmetrical face that had plenty of potential for beauty if she bothered with make-up or smiling or putting any sort of light behind her eyes or skin. She wore this face like a mask, it displayed so little. When she spoke, her voice gave as much as her face did. It was washed and bleached and scrubbed over and over until it was completely void of an accent, which caused her words to be slow and bland. However, this doesn’t make her sound stupid. It made it seem that when she spoke you should bother to listen, because she struck one as a woman of few words.
The blonde did as Soledad had said and pressed the shirt to her neck, and Soledad moved to stand near the alley mouth, arms folded across her chest and brow knitted into the faintest of creases.
“Muerte Fría,” she answers. It was a different name from what she gave the Kinfolk. Her Rite-given name, her Real Name, her Warrior’s Name, whatever you looked at it as. She licked at her lips and looked back to the woman. After a moment of thought, she followed up with what should be delivered. “Cliath Uktena Ahroun, with no pack to share den with, no totem to follow.”
[Maija] She blinks, and looks over at Imogen. “…alright. Contagious is it?”
Bandages and garbage bags and dis… ok. Must mean cut ’em up. Logic, right? Right. “Do this often?” Often enough she has supplies readily available, it would seem, so the question might be redundant, but it’s mainly so that she doesn’t think about what they’re about to do. She ran from all this, and so much more. She hid from the nation for so long – to do this on a regular basis is not something she looks forward too.
[Imogen Slaughter] Contagious is it?
She shrugs her shoulders slightly. “Better safe than sorry.”
The next question that Maija asks draws a sharp-edged smirk from the flame-haired kinwoman, “Yes,” she says, sounding ironic, dry, or wry, some dark humour that isn’t really humour, with resignation running beneath, “I do this often.”
They pull up alongside the alleyway, marked by the blood out by the mouth. Imogen pulls the car into park and gets out, walking around to the trunk to open it with her car keys.
[Payne] The young woman moves to the end of the alleyway, perhaps to guard against those who would attempt to enter before they have a chance to cleanse and dispose of the bodies. Holding the rag to her neck, it doesn’t seem as though very much of Soledad’s charge’s Rage has diminished despite the expenditure of energy during the short-lived fight. Perhaps being grievously injured had shot her through with anger, recharged her somehow. Perhaps the sight of the moon climbing out from hiding had helped it along. In either case, there is a predator dropped on the ground in the alley behind Soledad, yet she is simmering, not roiling.
Perhaps the pain is helping to ground her, rather than putting her in a position to fly off the handle, launch herself into a furious frenzy.
The Uktena identifies herself the way that warriors do, giving her her deed name and her rank, her tribe, her auspice without needing to be explicitly asked or even ordered to do so. Blood is soaking through her once-clean t-shirt; it isn’t going to kill the stranger, but it certainly looks horrific.
“That makes two of us,” she says after a moment to digest the information. A beat, and then she adds, “Walks the Tracks. Fostern Gnawer talesinger. I’ve been in this city for maybe an hour, tops.”
[Maija] Better her than me – the unbidden thought, but she doesn’t allow it voice. Instead, she just steals herself for what she is about to see, and exits the car when Imogen does. Without the hoodie, there are faded bruises around the kinfolks neck, visible now above the neckline of her tanktop. Someone went for her throat – and someone with larger hands than normal too. She doesn’t mention it. Perhaps it won’t be noticed.
She closes the door and moves to help gather the garbage bags with Imogen.
[Imogen Slaughter] If Imogen notices the bruises on the young kin’s neck, she doesn’t mention it. Instead she lifts the trunk lid and pulls out a large steel brief case, the weight of it it jerking her arm.
She muffles a cough against her shoulder as she skirts around the blood, walking into the alleyway.
She comes to crouch beside Payne, spinning the combination of the brief case and opening it. It’s a field kit of sorts. She pulls out several packages of gauze, bandages and closes the lid, dropping the bandages on top. “For you,” to Payne.
She clears her throat slightly, straightening and casting a glance to Soledad, “Would you dismember th’bodies, if you please?” she asks the question coolly, as if they were speaking of ordinary things. Something simple like they were merely taking out the garbage. Her affect is marred only by the raspiness of her voice; the faintly audible sound of her breath.
[Muerte Fria] [Sorry, I had a delicate combination of my connection flopping and my baby demanding food. What happened to Jamie?]
to Imogen Slaughter, Maija
[Imogen Slaughter] (I dunno! It looks like her connection has died. It died about 10 minutes ago.)
to Maija, Muerte Fria
[Muerte Fria] Soledad made a noise that would have been a chuckle in a normal person, but was more like an exhale of air accompanied with some kind of a hum from her vocal chords that signified understanding. Walks the Tracks had just barely gotten into town and this was how she’d been greeted. The Uktena tipped her chin up some and rolled her head on her neck to look back at the blonde.
“Sets the tone for what to expect, hm?”
And then Imogen and some other Kinfolk that she thought she might recognize vaguely but couldn’t put her finger on how or why or where from (she assumed The Brotherhood, she had seen plenty of faces there) rolled into the alley, bandages and garbage bags in tow. The red-haired woman had asked if Soledad would dismember the bodies, but she was already at it. Soon as the two had entered, Sol left the post of sentry to them to handle. She’d grabbed her spear and crouched down over the body of the mustached man, held the weapon just below its blade, and began to hack away.
She may as well be building a birdhouse, one of a line of a thousand, for how involved in her work she appeared to be. Which is to say, not very.
[Payne] [Hey guys, my Internet fell down go boom. And now that I’m back, I’m actually getting really tired and am going to fade myself out here. Sorry! Sheridan’ll help clean up the bodies after she bandages herself up.]
[Payne] [Thanks for the RP, I’ll catch y’all later!]
[Maija] Imogen sees to the injured garou, and Maija carts the garbage bags while she does so. If the rage that still boils about the alleyway, especially once the bodies are started dismembered, she does her best to hide it. The click of the muscle in her jaw is all that gives way her tension. That at the way she tries to stay out of the way, in the shadow, while stilldoing her part.
AS the bodies are dismembered, she works at picking up the pieces and getting them bagged. From her thinness, the apparent frailty of her frame, she’s stronger than she looks, and made of stronger steel than one would expect. She goes about it silently, and methodically. Despite the length of time, it’s still somewhat second nature to go about cleaning up the Nation’s mess.
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen leaves Payne to dress her own wounds while moving to help Maija and Soledad with the bodies. She suppresses whatever outward signs of the infection she has, muffling coughs and sneezes, repressing shivers.
When the bodies are bagged and in the trunk of her car, she straightens, turning her head to glance at Maija. “I don’t suppose yeh know some ‘folk tha’ can come ‘ere and get t’work at washin’ away th’blood on the street,” she asks wiping flaming hair away from her face with the back of her hand.
A glance to Soledad makes the question slightly more general.
[Muerte Fria] She lifted her eyebrows when Imogen asked if she knew anyone who could come clean up the mess, and responded by grunting and jamming a foot into a bag, which was now full enough that it had to be triple bagged just in case. She tied it off, tucked some loose hair away from her face with a very blood-caked finger, and went to work chopping up the last body on the list.
“I can manage that myself, if you two can find a place for these.” She gestured to the bags that were beginning to make a pile on their own with strong knots tied at the top of each. Her knees bent outward and she leaned her mostly bare torso in between them as she worked, the long handle of her spear bobbing in the air past her shoulders, each small cut exaggerated to appear larger by simple physics and laws of motion.
After a short while, though, recognition would click. Without looking hard or staring for any period of time at the thin, brown-blonde haired kinfolk that looked like a strong wind would break her, Soledad glanced up, then back to her work.
“You were Ryan’s, weren’t you?”
[Maija] She shakes her head, slightly. “I kin get a hose from work or someth…”
And then Soledad says that she can take care of it. She’s opens another bag and holds it for the pieces that Soledad is currently breaking up. “I’ll help yeh with these then.” the switch in plans. Truth be told, she’d rather help Imogen anyway -she has no rage, though she is no less dangerous. She is, however, Decker’s, and oddly enough, the thin kin respects him in a way she has few other Garou in her life.
Then comes the question. She falls still, perfectly still, and takes a slow breath. Then with a sharp nod. “Yeah. He was m’friend.” All too briefly.
[Imogen Slaughter] If you can find a place for them – Imogen sneezes, grimacing slightly, “We’ll burn them,” she says succinctly, “Then find a way t’get them out on th’water.”
Ryan’s, weren’t you? She can catch the undertones of the conversation, but does not understand it. She closes the lid to her trunk, and goes to retrieve her brief case from where she’d left it. This goes in the back seat beside Maija’s groceries, an unlikely combination.
[Muerte Fria] “Hm.”
That’s all that Soledad had to say about that. A curt nod, and she was done. She had the connection, the identity to go with the face that was hovering in front of her and tickling the front of her mind while she tried to figure out why she knew it. This was the Kinfolk that she’d spied once or twice and known only vaguely because she was Ryan’s, and therefore a responsibility of the pack. For a brief moment in time, Soledad had some form of custody over the willowy Kinfolk in front of her.
Not that any of that mattered now. Ryan was gone, the pack was dissolved, Hatchet had moved on from her but not from Ryan, never from Ryan, and Soledad was alone, helping out a new kid to Chicago and a couple of Kinfolk in doing dirty work that typically would not have bothered her in the least but tonight, and every night as of late, had her stomach churning and her airways wanting to close up so that they wouldn’t have to suffer the hot stench of freshly killed meat any more.
Nausea aside, nothing was allowed to show on the surface. She worked diligently until the last body part was sliced up. The blade of her spear was wiped clean on the leg of her shorts, then tucked into a makeshift sort of case strapped onto her back so that she could rise and hunt for a hose faucet that most stores, old and new alike, had at their back walls, the walls that flanked the alleyways.
[Maija] There are no more questions and there is a definite sigh of relief – internally, of course – that it stops there. The loss of Ryan so quickly after she arrived still aches. How she found out about it hurts even more, the edges of it red and raw and aching. But she says nothing of all that, nothing bleeds through, her face a careful mask hidden behind.
She helps with the last bag, and stands wiping her hands on the edge of her tank top. She look to Imogen then – ready for the next phase. Apparently burning, and dumping – while sneezing. “Best hurry, so you can get some.. chicken soup or some shit…”
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen smirks faintly at Maija, “I’m not all tha’ fond o’ chicken soup, truth be told.”
A glance toward Soledad, “D’yeh need anythin’ t’get started?”
[Muerte Fria] Soledad had found a partially rusted water faucet, and was crouched in front of that, twisting it with a bit of extra force until the rust gave way and pipes creaked and water glugged, gurgled, then flowed from it. She straightened up and wrapped an arm around her, bent upward at a funny angle so that she could scratch at the scar tissue fully visible across her back.
These scars took the shape of skeletal wings, taking up as much space as a very large tattoo mural would. The tips touched her shoulders and spilled under her arms to mark the sides of her ribcage, and the bottom-most mark could be found just above where her back started to curve into the lumbar region. It looked as though something with massive clawed hands, probably a Black Spiral Dancer, had attempted to take a hold of her ribcage and spine and tear them out of her from the back. From how devastating the damage was, how bold and horrible the mark left behind, it probably succeeded, if only for a period of time.
She turned about to face them, showing another awful scar. Like a sideways crescent, it swiped an arch over her belly, the dot of her navel under the center making her stomach look as though it had a large fermada painted onto it rather than a music sheet where it belonged. Something had tried to slice her guts out, and again, probably succeeded briefly.
“Bucket. Rag. Something I can move water and scrub with. Can use my hands if I must, though.”
[Maija] She nods slightly. “I kin get those at my place – ain’t too far from here. If you’d drive by that way I kin grab em, we can drop them back off afore seein to the…” she gestures at the remains, without actually saying it. Some things go without sayin, anyway.
If Soledad’s scars cause more reaction than a second glance, it’s not remotely obvious. She simply concentrates on doing what needs to be done so that she can get home to a hot shower. Unsurprisingly, she’s lost her appetite for dinner.
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen regards Soledad clinically. As her eyes touch the scars, she can imagine the kind of damage it was, leaning toward the side of gory, given that the Uktena was a full-blood, the way blood would have spilled, bones would have poked white through tan flesh or fur. She knows, vividly, the smell of viscera, of fecal matter spilling out of a gut the grey-blue curve of the intestine sharply contrasted by the red of blood, the yellow of fat and the colour of skin.
Her mind marvels, briefly, that there was a creature built, by God, Gaia or evolution that could withstand that kind of damage. That such a beast existed, framed in the bones and skin of the slender woman before her.
Imogen swallows a cough. “We’ll be back shortly wi’ what yeh need,” she says, simply, turning back toward her car.
[Muerte Fria] Soledad had nodded simply to the two Kinfolk and looked back down at the running water, which was puddling and hovering, trying to decide which way to flow. It would inevitably flow toward the alley mouth, the way she wanted it to go, but the incline was so slight that the water would, and was, taking its sweet time reaching that point on its own. So she jammed her hands into the front pockets of her shorts and stood, waiting, nudging and sweeping the water with one foot to move it faster.
Even as the women would move to leave, Soledad would be following the water, walking beside it as though it were an old friend, watching it move like she was listening to it speak and learning from what it had to say.
Uktena were strange, strange creatures.
[Maija] If she had any idea how the redhead’s thoughts went, how vividly imagine what had happened to Soledad, she would probably be even twice as glad that is not as intimately aware with the scent of anyone’s blood but her own.
[…and that is a whole nother can fo worms… the warm slick of her blood flowing, the sent of it thick and copper in her nostrils, the distinct flare of pain as bones break and skin bruises…
but that was then. this is now…]
She takes a breath, and turns to follow Imogen to the car, taking a seat in the passenger side of the old volvo once again.
[Imogen Slaughter] She joins Maija in the car, clearing her throat slightly as she shuts the door and starts the engine. “Which way?” she asks, arching an eyebrow at the younger girl before pulling her car away to follow directions.
Somewhere on the blocks between the fated alleyway and Maija’s home, the redhaired kinwoman speaks.
“If yeh’re not comfortable t’be close to a Garou,” she says matter-of-factly, “I can hand off th’ bucket and so on while yeh stay in the car.”
A flick of a glance, an arch of an eyebrow. “I noticed th’marks,” she says, simply, lifting a hand to gesture to her own white throat in indication.
[Maija] She gives directions quickly – and it’s really only a couple of blocks away. “Th’ buildin next to the family bbq there.” Easy enough found. Then her breath catches a moment as Imogen mentions the obvious. Her hand starts to lift to her throat, only to be stopped halfway and forced down to her lap again.
“S’cuz she’s female… truth be told. An’ garou.” That explains the reaction to Soledad, though she had thought she was getting better at hiding it. “Ain’t miss much, do ya?”
The smirk is barely across her lips before it fades again. “Ain’t garou what done this though. Garou stopped it afore it went worse that night – Charlie saved my ass.” She points to the burned hull that used to be her nightly store stop after work as they pass it. “Hear about th’explosion there? Weren’t an accident. Coverup. Four fuckers – one’a’em thought holdin me by my neck was grand fun. Until I stabbed’im.”
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen does not bother to even acknowledge the compliment, merely turning her head to glance at the girl in brief spurts as she pulls up to the building near the family barbecue.
A brief pause, broken by a quickly suppressed cough. Her skin is flushed in the dim ambient lighting, the normally pale porcelain showing colour the way a faded rose might. One imagines Imogen does not feel pleasant at the moment.
“Good for you,” she says after several seconds, simply.
“I’ll wait ‘ere ’till yeh get what yeh need.”
[Maija] She shrugs. “Ya do what ya gotta.” As she has all her life – and will until it’s no longer enough, and she’s dead. She nods, and digs her keys out of the pocket of her jeans. “Won’t be a minute..” And she gets out of the car, moving quickly to the lowerdoor, unlocking it, then heading upstairs to her apartment upstairs.
She’s true to her word – she doesn’t take long. When she reappears, it’s with a bucket in hand. Inside the bucket is small container of bleach and a variety of rags – old clothing and the like,in a bunch of different colors. She locks makes sure the door locked behind her, and shoves her keys back into her pocket again. She gets into the car, settling the bucket between her feet, and pulling something out as she shuts the door.
“Ain’t know what ya got – but this might help keep th’fever down til ya kin get home.” She sets a small bit of foil that contains two Tylenol cold n sinus tablets in it. “Figure it ain’t gonna hurt none, anyway. Here’s a bottle a’water t’wash it down, too. An’ a clean t-shirt t’get ya home. Case ya wanna burn that one.”
She ain’t got much, but Maija is Gnawer. And Gnawer kin do what they can when they can – even when they’d rather the Nation never find them at all.
[Imogen Slaughter] The kinwoman eyes the offered pill packet for several seconds; her first instinct is to refuse. Then, she merely holds out her hand so that Maija can drop the pills into her open palm and takes the water from her.
“Thank-you,” she says simply, tearing open the foil to retrieve the tablets, popping them both in her mouth before taking a swig of water. She sets the bottle in the cupholder between the seats and starts the car again. Another three point turn and back toward the alleyway.
[Maija] She sets the shirt in the space between them too, and just nods her ‘welcome’ rather than voicing it. She settles back into the seat, and watches the street go by in reverse, back to the blood soaked alley, and the Garou that waits them inside.
She’s tends to be at home in the silence as they drive. She’s not inclined to break it unless Imogen asks a question, either.
[Muerte Fria] Back in the alleyway, Soledad was doing precisely as she said she would be. Imogen and Maija would find her down on her knees on the pavement, guffing the blood toward a drain after mixing it around with the water using simply the heels of her hands. She didn’t have a whole lot to work with, was managing only the smallest corner of the pool of blood her ‘downsizing’ of the bodies had created.
Her face was rather dour looking, however, and the dark skin on her face was ashen, would be pale if it had the capability of being so. Her lips were parted so she could breathe through her mouth and smell as little as possible, and her muscles were coiled and tight with determination. Rage danced a small jig of irritation through the air about her, but was a bit diminished from the whirlwind battle that had just occurred, not to mention that the moon crawled further and further from fullness and visibility every passing night.
All things considered, she was aggrevated and unwell, but calm. And calm was the important thing here.
[Imogen Slaughter] The silence is not broken – Imogen simply drives, sometimes coughing, or sniffing, but every sound she makes is involuntary; she coughs only when she must. Sneezes when its unavoidable.
The kinwoman pulls to a stop at the front of the alleyway, and regards Soledad briefly through the window before unbuckling her seatbelt and starting to push open the door. “Here,” she says, a little hoarsely, clearing her throat before continuing, “Give it me,” meaning the bucket.
[Imogen Slaughter] When Maija passes it over, she exits the car, stepping around the blood and water to approach the Uktena. From this perspective, the Garou can see that Imogen’s shoes, while sedate, are made of very fine material, well-built. There is a small splatter of blood over the cuff of her jeans, dried to a faded brown.
“Here,” her naturally quiet voice is even lower at this moment as she passes over the bucket, containing its wealth of old-clothing rags. “This should make it easier.”
[Maija] She hands over the bucket, with its rags and the small bottle of bleach, without complaint. Then, rather than watching the delivery of the items, she instead watches the street…
..just in case. Clearly, this isn’t the best stretch of neighborhood.
[Muerte Fria] Soledad reared up onto her knees, no longer crouched down on all fours but lifted upward instead, stretching out her long, lean, dark and primarily undressed body as though she’d been bent down for far too long as it is. Her arms curled up behind her head, elbows pointing toward the sky, and in a sudden half-jerk response to what may as well have been a pulled muscle from getting too comfortable, too in depth with her stretch, a hand dropped down to touch the bottom edges of the scar on her stomach, below her navel.
She frowned softly for a second, but the expression was gone when she focused her dark amber eyes on Imogen.
“Thanks,” she replied flatly, and pushed herself up onto her feet. The bucket was accepted, and she looked down at the rags in it before nodding simply. “This will do. You two should leave.” Not because it was unsafe anymore, because she thought beasts would jump out of the woodworks and snag the Kinfolk and use them against her, but because if anyone were to get caught in this mess, stumbled upon it should be Soledad, a woman without identification or any sort of life that the government was aware of, beyond that of a missing pre-teen out in Texas from close to a decade ago. Imogen and Maija, however, could have homes, jobs, credit scores, real human identities at risk if they were discovered in such a compromising position.
So Soledad nodded, the bob of the head an indication that they should leave, and turned to take the bucket over to the flowing faucet. She would make quick work of this and do quite fine on her own. No need for extra hands, extra faces to be found when they weren’t needed.
[Imogen Slaughter] “Hm.” The faint wordless sound Imogen makes is remarkably eloquent – a certain level of dryness which marks that Soledad’s advice to leave was unnecessary. “We’re on our way.”
The kinwoman takes a step back, then another before turning to exit the alleyway, again avoiding the blood with careful precision. She has a rather concise way of moving – graceful, but only in its utter lack of adornment. In its starkness, the way the colour white can be beautiful.
“Good luck,” she says, over her shoulder, stifling another cough as she gets into the car and starts the engine again.
[Maija] Imogen returns to the care, and only then does Maija look to the Garou who had recognized her. Truth be told, she doesn’t share that recognition, as fleeting as it was. She’d just as soon forget them all – but one such as Soledad would likely stick out… right? Right.
She takes a breath, and lets it out slowly, and then repeats. Outwardly she’s fine. Inwardly, she’s still looking forward to that hot shower.
But first, there’s the mess in the bags. “Where we goin t’burn all that?”
[Imogen Slaughter] “Near th’docks,” Imogen answers, coughing sharply and picking up the water bottle to take another deep swallow.
“There are some oil barrels near there. Some stores o’ gasoline t’help burn them. Four’ll take a bit, but it’ll be done.”
[Maija] She nods, slightly. “Alright.”
The last time she was at the docks, it was with marcus, encouraging her to experience the delight of her food. Damn that kid was weird. Doubt this trip will be as appetizing, for sure. She watches out the window as the streets pass by, a flicker of her gaze to Imogen as she coughs again, as if to judge if it’s getting worse, if she’ll have to take over and drive the kin home…
[Imogen Slaughter] Maija’s glance is calculating, perhaps slightly concerned. Imogen’s mouth twists slightly, the expression hidden as she smothers another cough in her throat as she pulls out into an intersection, heading toward the water, “I’m not about to keel over yet. I’ll do.”
[Maija] A smirk is born across her lips, briefly, and chased away again with a breath. She isn’t one to let her feelings show on her face other than brief flashes – the ability to laugh without reservation, to react freely… those times can be counted on a single hand since she can remember.
“Good.” is what she says though. Followed by “If ya feel bout to though, say somethin. I ain’t as frail as I look, any more’n you is. Ain’t bout t’answer t’Decker if’n he thinks I did somethin what got ya sicker, though. Just so y’know.”
[Imogen Slaughter] Her breath exhales slightly. “Tell yeh what,” she says, not truly with humour. “If I do keel over, I shall promise not to breathe a word in his direction about yer involvement. Does that work?”
She coughs again, the sound restrained and repressed.
[Maija] She snorts in what might be amusement. “Deal.” Though they both know if she does keel over, Maija’d have to do the delivering to the Modi in question, which makes the point moot. Either way, she turns to watch the streets fly past once again.
She doesn’t fidget like some might, she is all but motionless, with the only show of any nervousness appearing first in the slide of her thumb over fingers, stilled moments later. Other than that, she’s the picture of calm. For now.
[Imogen Slaughter] And so, silence again, broken only by Imogen’s infrequent coughing or sneezing, the sound of plastic as she picks up the water bottle and takes another swallow.
Perhaps it is to drown out the sounds of her sickness that prompts her to speak again.
“Who is Ryan?” Or maybe it’s just simple curiosity.
[Maija] She doesn’t answer right away, her eyes closing briefly at the mention of the name, before she opens them again. This time, she doesn’t see the streets outside, though. This time, she sees the streets of Oregon highways, from the cab of an 18 wheeler in her memory. When she does answer, her voice is quiet, and the fact that she still mourns his loss is clear in the careful and controlled way she answers the question.
“Ryan was th’first Garou what ain’t tried t’break me in 15 years. He helped me escape, without askin questions, without anythin’. He let me ride in his rig all the way cross country, t’Florida. I was movin North again when I came cross his rig at a truck stop. Followed him here.” a pause, and then bluntly. “He’s dead.”
No one told her for months, no one thought the kinfolk that was Ryans would want to know… it took someone new to the city to get answers, and even then… “ain’t realized any of th’rest of’em knew I even existed.” in reference to Sol’s recognition earlier. “Ya’d think if they’d did, they wouldn’ta waited for months t’tell me he got killt.”
[Imogen Slaughter] A pause. Some silence.
Imogen must seem like a true-believer to Maija. Claimed by an Adren mate, a clear expert at cleaning up the messes of Garou. Performing her duties, going about them without complaint and doing so even now, feeling ill as she must. Learning how to fight the Wyrm in the bargain, going that extra step which gets her recognition, at least from time to time.
A kinfolk like that, one who believes wholeheartedly in the Garou and what they do, they should defend what happened. That Garou cannot be expected to think of Kinfolk when one of their own dies. That recognizing her, and knowing that she needed to be told of Ryan were two very different things. That she cannot think of herself at times like this, and she should have expected it anyway. After all, all Garou die, and always soon.
What a true believer might say.
She says none of that and after her silence breaks with a cough, all she offers is this:
“I’m sorry fer yer loss.”
It seems she’s said that more often lately. It seems she does a lot of things more often lately.
Speaking of:
The water looms black to their right and she turns suddenly, causing the Volvo to bump over the uneven road way toward one of the piers. It’s old, abandoned and made of concrete with a gate swung shut and locked, blocking the way out to the edge. Imogen seems disinterested with that anyway, turning the car off to park it in its shadow, leaving the high beams running. The light glancingly illuminates beneath the pier, the water beyond. Maija can see the large oil drums set within the pier’s shadow between the shoreline and the water. There are scorch marks over the metal and the ground bears sign of char.
“Let’s get this o’er with,” she says, pushing open the driver’s side door.
[Maija] “He was a good man.” Not a good garou – -though he certainly was that too. More importantly, he as good to her, when so many have not been.
A true believer may say a lot of things, none of which Maija would listened too, or remembered. Those are the things that is heard so often, the teaching of what they should be what they will be, what they should expect, and it’s all – to be blunt – bullshit. A true believer also thought they could beat a change into a skinny child, by breaking her over and over again.
In the end, however, it simply is what it is, and they all do their part when required. Like now.
She takes a breath, and nods, “Yeah, alright.” She pushes open the door to join Imogen in their grisly task. She steps out, and closes the door behind her, moving to the trunk to help unload the bags.