[Lonna] “You’re goin’ down, Whelan,” she assures her.
She sits on the couch, and the blonde looks rather intently at the screen. Lonna doesn’t say much at that moment, though she does glance over at Charlie and offer him half a smile. “Wanna play winner?”
She looks back at the screen, and there are no questions. there is no pressure, there’s just Lonna being incredibly focused.
She could have been more devoted to so many, many other things. As it stood, her attention and her incomplete college education was helping her play video games and beat people at pool.
[Charlie] Wanna play winner?
“Okay,” he says, hesitantly, his eyes going to the control pad in Lonna’s hands rather than the screen.
Lee might recall the kid stating that he’d only ever played video games in an arcade one of the first times they met, implying that he had no idea what the difference is between an MMORPG and FPS, but he does not confess this to Lonna. He just watches.
[Jeremiah] There is the distinctive sound of the first floor stairwell door opening from the kitchen, carrying upwards in the somewhat cavernous manner of stairwells everywhere. It might go unnoticed where it not for a loud, gravel-hard voice calling from the kitchen, a voice that could only belong to one Reuben Coltrane, middle-aged, black skinned and possessed of an outrageous cockney accent.
“Oi! Don’t care wotcher coz’ ben tellin’ yeh, duckie. Aren’t nu’tin a’tal pothetic ’bout my…”
Whatever it is that Reuben vehemently and drunkenly declares isn’t pathetic is lost between laughter in the kitchen and the closing of the door. Mia chuckles to herself, putting one hand to a flushed cheek, before making her way up the stairs, the distinctive tapping of her guide cane adding a staccato tattoo to her own light steps.
[Andrew] He vanishes down the hall for some time. They hear him thumping around a bit. Pacing the halls of the house. Checking on a room or two. Finally, he comes stomping back into the main room.
He is still, as ever, man on a mission. Irritated. Imagine all the people, living life in peace. Not fucking HERE. He was here for something. But while he was here, there was something he’d been meaning to do for a while. His search hasn’t gone well. He’s built up the proper head of steam.
His knuckles bang on the door to room 4. The one that used to be right next to his own. Shared a wall with him. Fucking drums.
[Lee] [liar liar pants on fai-yah!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Lee] The digital match is on.
Lonna said she’d probably suck at video games, but Lee has started to learn not to believe people when they say that. Curata said he didn’t know how to play basketball, and promptly trounced everyone on the court. Hell, she herself told him she couldn’t sing, and then got up and wowed a restaurant with her karaoke skills. It seemed everyone lied, at least a little, or they simply didn’t know how good they were at figuring things out.
And Lonna is pretty good at figuring things out, apparently. Or she had been lying, but Lee didn’t get that impression from her. The first round went to Kokoro. The second and third rounds were close, but ultimately went to Hitomi. Lonna was the victor.
Lee sits back, defeated. “Augh. You’re totally better than I thought you’d be.” She’s grinning a little, apparently a pretty easygoing loser. Twisting at the waist, she holds out the controller to Charlie. And she frowns at him, remembering something.
“Do you know how to play, Charlie?”
[Lonna] (whatchoo doin’? per+empathy)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 6, 6, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Charlie] [Empathy+Perception: Who’s lyin’ now? +1 diff (humans are weird).]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 4, 6, 10 (Failure at target 7) Re-rolls: 1
[Gabriella Bellamonte] Someone came pounding on the door, the first knock in longer than she can remember. Typically the door just flies open, and this didn’t quite bother or startle her anymore. Alexander would come waltzing in, tossing his gym bag down, peeling off sweaty jogging gear and flopping down on his bed to do god-knows-what with his laptop. Gabriella, for the most part, ignored him, let him do what he pleased, barely spoke. She just read, studied sheet music, did her homework, worked on whatever she had to keep herself preoccupied.
Heaven forbid her thoughts wander anymore.
She stood up from her desk, from where she had a simple piece of 8.5 x 11 paper that she was sketching out a project on, and walked to the door, pausing half a second before turning the knob and opening it.
She looked like she was ready to turn in for the night, as far as dress went. Her face was void of make-up, her hair was down and brushed out, left to hang about her shoulders, down her arms and back, getting ridiculously long, in need of a good cut or a new style. She wore a pair of short black biking shorts, the ideal garment for sleeping yet remaining ‘decent’ in case you had to appear in front of people. This was topped with a loose lavender long-sleeved shirt that hung from her shoulders, showing white straps of some kind beneath. She was barefooted and her fingers were stained with graphite.
Clear blue eyes peered first at the chest she was greeted with, then up toward the face, expression puzzled and curious.
[Lonna] Whatever just happened didn’t seem to really matter, because the reaction that came from her lips was all the same. She laughed,and she put the controller down. About midway through the second bout, she squeeked. And then she giggled about something.
BY the third bout, she was more than willing to take her victory, no matter how ill-gotten it was. Lonna grinned at Lee, then it faded into something of a small smile. Pleased, flattered, something.
Then? Back to Charlie.
“It’s really easy to pick up.”
[Charlie] He can’t make much sense of what slamming the buttons makes the pixelated characters on the screen do, but his eyes continually flick between Lonna’s thumbs and the television as he attempts to keep up with them. For three rounds he hunkers behind the sectional, intently watching, and when it’s over, the victor appears to be Lonna; a controller is held out to him, and Charlie gets to his feet, climbing over the back of the couch to park himself between the two women.
If one of them doesn’t scoot over, they’re both going to wind up with a skinny mule sitting on them.
“I do not know how to play,” he confirms, taking the controller from Lee and turning the controller one way and then the other as he tries to figure out how to hold it.
Eventually the ergonomic design reveals itself and it fits into both of his hands to mimic Lonna’s, and he experimentally fiddles with the joystick. His eyes go briefly wide as it makes the cursor on the screen skitter, and then he stops fooling with the buttons.
“What do I do?”
[Lonna] “Essentially? Mash buttons,” she says as she’s scooting over. Just enough room so they’re not a pile of people trying to inhabit the same couch cushion.
[Andrew] His fist… stopped… an inch from her face. She could see the grooves in the knuckles. The aged mountains of bone pushing and pulling the flesh into rounded shapes. The tendons standing out along the back. The figments of bristly hair caught in the light.
Then his fist dropped. His face registers surprise. He had a roommate? Oh right. Shock. You almost punched out some poor kinfolk. Anger. Shoulda been the other fucking kinfolk, the fuck’s your problem answering the door?!
“You’re not him.” What was the first clue? And he turns abruptly and heads back to the common room. His brows furrowed low, irritated. The front of his black t-shirt I said stop STARING at my TITS! is a little dusted with, well, dust. Like he’s been crawling around on his belly.
He stomps into the main room and stops to look at the two women with the mule between them. A skinny ass mule. His eyes don’t roll. Those of lower station… fuckers. And without a word, he flops down on his belly and begins looking under things.
[Lee] The second time Lee met Charlie, they sat together on the couch and shared a plate of mashed potatoes. Lee had handed him her last bite of meat on a fork as if it were some strange new kind of metallic-organic flower hybrid. She also remembers him saying that he played Tetris in an arcade one time. Lee had found that admission unaccountably adorable. She rarely finds anything adorable.
When Charlie climbs over the couch and plants himself between the two kinswoman, Lee slides to the side, giving him some room. Lonna tells him to just mash the buttons, and Lee clarifies which buttons actually do what as far as high and low punches and kicks. Except she simply tells him which buttons are for kicks and which are for punches. No point confusing the kid more than necessary.
And then she sits back to watch the carnage.
[Lonna] (Does she pull punches?)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Charlie] [Dex+Wits, just to piss Kenna off]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Jeremiah] Up the steps and onto the second floor, where the sounds of voices drift from the common room. The voices mean a lot to the petite, dark-haired woman; studiously observed as much as the sighted bight absorb their attentions upon a face, a body, whichever. Two female: unrecognized. The differences between them are noted. [perhaps one is given more to an alto range; perhaps another is fuller, its undertones richer; perhaps both are similar and light; airy as birdsong.. whatever the case, she drinks it in.] The third voice is masculine and quickly recognized.
She remembers that voice from back when it was still given to occasional escalations of shifting falsettos.
She moves to the door of the common room and simply stands there for the moment, listening… the trace of a smile slipping along the supple lines of her mouth.
They are teaching Charlie to play video games?
Apparently this pleases her.
[Charlie] A monkey might have had better luck on his first attempt, but once Lee shows Charlie how to choose his fighter and which buttons will make the avatar kick versus punch and the fight begins, Charlie manages to hold his own.
“Wow,” he says, as breasts and backsides bounce with abandon, “how are they not falling over?”
Lonna had attempted to watch a movie with this kid once. He wouldn’t shut up then, either.
“You guys get in a lot of fights… is it easier to fight in a leotard than in regular clothes? Because if it is then I’m totally doing something wrong.”
Mia appears at the top of the stairs just in time for Charlie to narrowly lose his first match. He laughs, watching his fighter fall down in a heap, then sniffs loudly and calls, “Hi, Mia!”
[Gabriella Bellamonte] She’s looking at a chest, trying to figure out why there’s an exclamation telling her to stop staring at tits when it was an obviously male chest she was viewing. Before she could see a face, though, there were knuckles coming right toward hers. She had enough time to flinch, to tense up, brace herself for a blow that would probably send the world black, have her awake with a healer leaning overtop of her, blood all down her front from her own nose and teeth. She didn’t cry out, though, and perhaps that would strike him as odd. She looked like the kind of girl that would scream when confronted with violence or danger.
The knuckles stopped close enough that she could lean forward and bite or lick them if she really wanted, but that was the last thing on her mind. Wide, startled eyes jumped up to the mangled face with the scar that cut through the hairline, and recognition registered though it wouldn’t crease her brow yet.
You’re not him.
And he’s gone, walking away, like he hadn’t just scared the hell out of her, caused her heart to pound, disrupted the quiet monotony of her last few weeks, months even. She stared after him for a second, then returned to her room.
Andrew gets out to the common room, is about to flop himself on the floor to start digging around and hunting for things when a heavy, yet simultaneously soft and impressionable block of substance wrapped in wax paper thumped him square in the back of the head. A block of clay that weighed about two pounds with a nice dent in the shape of a skull in one side of it thumped on the floor. And Gabbie stood glaring in the hallway, fists at her sides.
No words still. Screw ’em.
[Rory O’Bryne] Marrick had been called away once they got to the Brotherhood, leaving Rory in the capable hands of the people that run the place. Soon enough she’s been told what bed she can take, and given a rundown of the rules and regs, and given a plate of food to eat, too.
Soon after, she’s carrying the plate, and an unopened soda upstairs. She intends to find her room – room 9 – and eat in peace, but there’s quite the crowd in the common room, and it grabs her attention.
She’s hard to miss. She’s pulled the hood of her jacket down, leaving the fiery mass of curls uncontrolled, to bounce and curl around pale features. Those who can can see that she fairly bleeds purity, though she also has a distinct lack of scent to go with it. It’s disconcerting. She’s small, pale, almost fragile looking.
Looks can be deceiving.
She pauses at the top of the stairs to simply take it all in for a moment or two, using the time to take a bite of her sandwich as well.
[Jeremiah] “Hey, Charlie.” Her own voice is soft-spoken, though it manages to carry well enough assuming the talk of video games and assorted other background noises aren’t too raucous. The greeting is simple, but undeniably warm, made more so by an undercurrent of mirth in response to this highly amusing situation.
Moving into the common room, the long white guide cane preceding her by a few steps, she settles amber-brown eyes upon the general vacinity of where the voices come from. “If you ladies manage to get him into a leotard I want a detailed description from someone…”
[Lonna] She plays. It’s not to say that she’s good, or that she’s particularly bad at this, but Charlie, even as a new player, is on par with the Child of Gaia. He gives her a good showing. The blonde bites her lower lip as she plays, as though this is something that she really had to focus at. And it was. Lonna was really trying and she just barely succeeded.
“I don’t know,” she tells Charlie, “but if mine bounced like that I would have a black eye every morning. Just saying.”
She had to think of this, and then- “I guess it’s easier to fight in a leotard. it’s easier to do gymnastics in a leotard, so a roundhouse kick should follow the same principles-”
hi Mia. And then she talks about the leotard thing; it made her laugh.
“I’ll be sure to remember that,” she says, and then to Mia? “I’m Lonna, it’s great t’meet you.”
[Arthur] The door to Room 6 opens a few seconds later.
It brings with it an inevitable wash of Rage, the blight of the Full Moon and guess whose it was brightening the night sky out of doors? The kid who leans out of it, bracing hands on either side of the doorframe is tall, somewhere close or just bridging six foot and handsome, or perhaps would be if he took the time to put some decent clothes on and comb down the unruly mop of black hair on his head.
He had unusual looks, the Ahroun. Somehow at once exotic yet familiar and at present, they were drawn in, blackened by the confusion of the loud noises and thunking of something heavy being tossed around the common room. “Is someone bein’ killed out here?”
He asked, his voice thickened with a Southern twang, a shirt dangling from one hand, perched against the door.
[Lee] Lee, eyes to the screen, is about to say I’ll be sure to get a picture when she sees the white can from the corner of her eye. She clamps her mouth down over the comment, and instead focuses on the video game fight.
Lonna says a leotard would make for a better roundhouse kick. Lee would have to agree. “It’d sure as hell be better than trying one in in stilettos and a little black skirt.” A reference to the fight the other night.
“Do I get the next round?”
[Andrew] There’s a thwack. And he registers pain. And a softness of something on the back of his head that has now cartwheeled down to the floor. You’re under attack! His animal mind screams. He spins on a dime. His Rage bursting in a shower of sparks like a firework at it’s apex. Boom, watch the sparklies fall.
His eyes flick to the lump on the ground. His large broad hands scoop it up quickly and he does a little skip-dance into the hall, hauls back his arm, and flings the lump of clay right back at its source. It wobbles and flops it’s way on towards Gabby.
[Andrew] [Hit’er in the face!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Gabriella Bellamonte] [Dodge!: Dexterity + Dodge, spend WP ’cause That’s Gonna Hurt Like A Mother]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]
[Charlie] Something seems to dawn on Charlie as the slight kingirl he met one evening several months ago hurls a block of claw at Dances On Fire; he glances between the television and Mia a few times, then hands off the controller and climbs back over the sofa rather than trying to navigate the wires and the legs between the sectional and the coffee table.
Mia can hear him clapping towards her in shower shoes. He looks between the two Ahrouns who are hovering in either doorway. Art is given a motionless wave while the Fiann he hasn’t seen before isn’t given anything. He stops just within arm’s reach of Mia, then says, “I got your letter. Do you wanna like, talk?”
[Jeremiah] Her eyes sweep, a useless byproducts of genetic makeup and the optical nerves refusal to just give up the ghost already. They settle near Lonna with an uncanny accuracy – which means the blind gaze settles somewhere over the blonds shoulder, never raeally focusing. A bemused tweak of the lips at not being recognized is all that passes; perhaps simply not rude enough to point out that they already met, perhaps trying to save face though she doesn’t seem perturbed. Maybe just good manners, then, like Lee keeping herself from talking about taking pictures.
“Jeremiah. Feel free t’call me Mia, though, if you like. Nice to meet you, too.”
Assorted sounds of ruckus in the hall makes her smile falter somewhat, her body tensing fractionally, her ear inclining slightly to keep a sharp ear out for any possible projectiles heading her way. Not that it’s likely to do any good.
She moves closer to the couch.
[Andrew] [Hurt some poor unfortunate wall]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Lonna] “Yeah,” she tells Lee, “you can have my spot after this. Charlie’s giving me a run for me-ohshit!”
She almost fell off the edge, there, but replies to Lee.
“Oh, totally, you can take my spot.”
[Rory O’Bryne] Video games, a blind girl, clay tossing, and someone calling from another room. The description of the place she was give seemed fitting enough. She swallows and takes a second bite, before she takes another step into the room, and then a few more, sinking to sit on one of the oversized pillow/beanbags to watch the carnage on screen.
Balancing the plate on her knees, she shrugs free of her backpack and sets it on the floor at her side. She tucks curls behind her ears, opens her soda, and watches quietly as she eats her dinner.
[Gabriella Bellamonte] Arthur, impossibly handsome and showing up out of goddamn nowhere (has he been here this whole time? Where have I been? Oh yeah. New York City. Fucking Lucien.), leaned out of Room 6, hanging out around the doorjamb to see what was going on. Gabbie was mildly bewildered by his sudden appearance, turned her head to look at him with light colored eyebrows high on a freckled forehead, surprise and perhaps a touch of embarrassment rampant on her face.
Then sudden movement up at the other end of the hallway. The scar-faced bane of her existence had twisted around and lobbed the hunk of clay back at her in return, much much harder than she’d thrown. It would easily break her nose if it hit. She twisted at the waist, dropped to the side so it flew by in a space of air above her shoulder and head. It looked almost like a martial arts movie, or something from the Matrix, except it wasn’t in slow motion. She turned to look at the clay splacked against the wall, poured out of the wax paper it’d been contained in, then turned to stare incredulously up the hallway at Andrew once more.
Stalemate.
Now what?
[Lee] Lee glances up when Charlie climbs over the back of the couch and heads for Mia. The smallish brunette (because really, when one is nearly six feet in height, most women are ‘smallish’) is looked over. But she doesn’t think she’s the one being greeted, but rather Lonna.
Who had tried to pass the controller off to Lee, when now only the two kinswomen remain to play. She takes the second controller and selects Kokoro once more.
“We meet again, blondie.” Lee grins to Lonna, waiting for the Gaian to choose her character so they can begin again.
[Arthur] The Ahroun steps more fully into the hall as Andrew lobs the lump back toward the girl. His blue eyes scan her, his expression smoothing from confusion to something akin to curiosity before the clay hits the wall and his chin jerks up, eyes nailing the Theurge in place.
“Stop that.”
Bristling.
[Jeremiah] For what it was worth she was determined not to go huddle in a corner until the passing of the possibility of being accidentally whacked by some projectile mass she would have precious little chance to duck, dodge or… anything. A few years ago she might have done just that. Less than a year ago she probably would have simply offered up some quiet excuse just to leave. But here and now she stands, feeling assorted impluses to huddle or leave but trampling down all of them.
…but it is undeniable that when Charlie makes his way over to her [she tracks him slightly, with useless eyes and keen ears], all flip flops and gangly height, there is a bit of relief in her gaze, a slight lessening of tension in her lithe, diminutive frame.
On the heels of that faint relief is the recognition of his words. She clears her throat slightly, her lips tweaking – then finally nods. “We can… but if you want to keep playing that’s alright.” Another splattering of clay [she has no idea what it is] thumps against a wall. Arthurs voice – which she recognizes – from the hall, obviously displeased… She grimaces slightly, though she quickly masters that little tell and finally finishes with a rather strained, “Is it, ah.. always like this here?”
[Andrew] The theurge pauses. Meets Arthur’s eyes for a moment. And snarls. His lips pull back from his teeth. There’s a feral glint in his eyes. A challenge? Oh, he’d love some action tonight. The thin shirt stretched across his chest can only barely contain the monster it’s wrapped around. And he’s itching to tear out of it and wreak havoc. STOP staring at my TITS!
But his eyes flick up and down the guy. New. Fool. Of no importance. He snorts and turns his head back to the common room. He’s got a mission. He stalks back into the common room and dives to the ground in front of the assorted game-playing hot-like-barbie kinfolk and turns his head to the side to scan under the sectional.
[Rory O’Bryne] Pale eyes, green in color, try to take everything in at once. Andrew, walking past with his shirt that causes her to lift a brow slightly. Charlie and Mia, the two playing games on the couch, and voices. It’s a lot to take in all at once.
So she works on her sandwich again, and watches.
[Charlie] Is it always like this here.
“Sometimes,” he says, his attention audibly wavering.
There is too much going on in here for him to attend to everything at once, between the clay-throwing and the video game-playing and Art’s temper and the newcomer and his kinswoman–it’s likely she won’t be designated as his after Sunday night, but until the Moot and the naming of a Black Fury Elder, she’s his responsibility–and though Mia can’t see the expression on his face, she can hear the distraction in his voice.
“Let’s go in my room.”
[Gabriella Bellamonte] Arthur bristles, Andrew snarls, and the males face off. Tension flicks through the hallway like rivers of electricity between two tesla coils, and there could very well be a take down in the hallway, all fur and claws and blood, and Gabbie would just have to press back against a wall or duck into a room until it was done.
Thankfully, though, Andrew turns and tromps his way out of the hall and into the common room. Gabbie’s shoulders relax visibly, lavender overshirt slipping further from the left shoulder as a result. Her hand lifted, fingers dragging through almost impossibly long brown-blond hair, and she looked back to the boy that could be a man, hero that could be a monster that now stood in the hallway as well.
“To be fair,” she started, “I threw it first.”
[Jeremiah] Andrew passes by [to her simply the sensation of someone large; emitting a lot of Rage and diving at something] and she only just manages not to snatch out for Charlie’s arm and do a quick step backwards. It’s a close enough call that her fingers flex with the urge, her knees stiffen with the constrained urge to move. It isn’t that she has a problem handling a fair amount of Rage; it’s so much going on all at once most from people whose voices she doesn’t recognize; what seems a whirlwind of activity and noises in darkness like pitch.
She doesn’t hesitate this time in her response to the Metis. “Yeah. Lets. Ah… is the hall clear?”
[Lonna] “Oh, a battle for the ages,” she tells Lee. The blonde chooses the same character that she had earlier. She shoots Lee a sideward glance, her lips curve upward in a smile. For now, she is trying to focus, and she is trying not to engage in whatever is going on around her that isn’t, well, Lee and the game.
Conflict. Beautiful, epic conflict. It was not her strongsuit.
“Bring it, red, prepare to be defeated.”
Knowing full well that she hadn’t actually won earlier.
[Lee] [i’m a gaming masterrrrrr]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Arthur] Strikes with Valor clearly doesn’t think much of the snarling coming from the guy wearing a shirt that asked the world at large to stop staring at his breasts. He merely shrugs a plain white shirt over his head and shifts his focus to the young girl who had almost been obliterated with clay. Stooping over, the lean Child of Gaia collects together a few pieces of what was left and rose, the action bringing him closer to Gabbie for a moment.
He could smell the scent of her skin.
His lips twitched with a crookedly charming smile, all white teeth and Southern chivalry. “I think these are yours, Miss.” He could have doffed a cowboy hat right now, and made it seem fitting. To be fair, she admits, she started things and Arthur’s stance shifts to press an arm over his head, his body relaxed against his open door.
“Huh. Is that how it was?” His voice was quiet most of the time, even when angered it seemed to barely rise above a low-baritone rumble and with the N’awlins twang threaded through it, it certainly added to his strangely beguiling appearance as her [sort of] savior for the evening. “Well, you know my Mama always told me that it ain’t a right thing to aim a weapon toward a lady.” He pauses, and looks down at the clay in his hands.
His brow furrows a little.
“I guess this would count.”
[Rory O’Bryne] Bring it, red, prepare to be defeated.
She blinks and looks up, almost answering automatically. Fortunately, she realizes that this time the ‘red’ in question isn’t her, and returns to her meal. Old habits, and all that.
[Lonna] (don’t get pwned!)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Charlie] Is the hall clear.
“Just a second,” he says. “Follow me.”
Charlie waits until the kinswoman has readied her guide cane, and then he leads her across the common room in Andrew’s wake, pausing at the doorway to mumble a “‘Scuse us” to Art and Gabriella. He slides past them first, hoping that they’ll give Mia enough room that she won’t feel cloistered, and then reminds her how many doors they’re passing by before they’ll come upon his.
It was three last time. It hasn’t changed since then.
The door to the room he shares with a thus far unseen Ahroun is wide open. Hopefully they can get inside before another fight breaks out.
[Lee] The masculine voice announces that the fight has begun, and this time Lee doesn’t hold back. She doesn’t pull her punches for Lonna, and lays down her years of gaming experience.
Lonna does pretty well. One of the rounds is actually pretty heated. But in the end, she is trounced.
Lee, at least, does not rub her victory into the other woman’s face.
She gives a little triumphant laugh. “Wow. Good game, Larson.”
[Gabriella Bellamonte] Art leans down, skims past her side and drops his shoulders level with her legs to scoop up the clay that had poured out of its wax paper from the impact, lump it together for her again, and put it back into a holdable shape. Thankfully the stuff wasn’t too warm, too melted down. She hadn’t been handling it, so it wasn’t very sticky, and lifted from the wall and short-fibered carpet with ease. His nostrils flared just a little when he moved by her, close enough to know that she smelled vaguely of some kind of soft, subtle flower petal and Royalty, and she pressed her teeth together while she watched him.
His mouth quirked into a smile and he straightened up, handing the clay back to her. She glanced down at the mess in her hands, then grinned a little bit in return and re-worked the wax paper around it so that she could stash it back on her closet shelf full of art supplies again.
“Most mothers do say such things,” she said idly, and stepped back to allow Charlie and Mia, one face new and the other familiar only in the sense that she’s seen it in passing, through the hallway. Her eyes trailed after them for a second, she absently wet her lips, then looked back up to Art.
“I..,” she started, paused, then glanced back down to the clay in her hands. “I wasn’t unprovoked. I’m not so childish as to pick a fight for no reason but boredom.”
[Andrew] Andrew, for his part, is certainly one to rub victory in the face of defeat. He’s searching under the sectional while the blond and redhead play about on the machine that makes funny images of impossible women that should be toppling over like drunken oil tanker captains.
And there’s a glint of red. He’s got it! Wedged near one of the feet under the sofa. He hops up. Suddenly animated. The kin are sitting on the sectional, sure. They won’t like what’s about to happen. Undoubtedly. He doesn’t care. Nope, not in the least.
Up like tigger after pooh and piglet, he sproings over the sectional in one little vaulting leap and lands behind it. He squats down a bit, hooks one hand under the edge of the sectional and lifts. Grunts faintly, lifts with both hands to get it started. The piece of the sectional they’re on yaws. Creaks a bit. Banks suddenly to the right. We’re going down, captain! He lifts it up three feet. Pauses with one hand holding it there, leans in and snatches his target out from under the couch.
The couch free-falls back into place with a crash and he holds in his large hand, squished into deformity, a red rubber ball. Tension making it creak as he squeezes it. A brief moment of contentment crosses his face. He has succeeded.
[Jeremiah] Mmm. A sound of agreement, she adjusts her hold on the cane, hanging back slightly so he can move ahead and she isn’t whacking his flip-flop clad feet with the tip of it. She hears him mumble; registers Art’s southern drawl speaking smooth as cream towards another unknown female who speaks as well, her voice shiftingas she moves aside for herself and Charlie to pass through…
“Thanks, Arthur… miss… excuse me…” It is soft from the simple merit of how her larynx was made to function, she doesn’t cringe or wince her way past, showing palpable dread of being randomly pummeled; she is certainly hyper-aware of what she can hear around her, but otherwise her tone is affable and polite.
They make it to Charlie’s room [she really thinks of it as his room alone, having never met his packmate though she knows of his existence in the barest of terms] without fanfare or major mishaps and she frowns slightly – apologetic, though only mildly so. She is sorry – she isn’t beating herself up about it, though. Her unease of unknown people experimenting with trajectories aside she is calm. “You know, I really didn’t come here to pull you away from your friends… Marsh is playing poker downstairs, so I figured I’d come say hi while I waited for him.”
[Rory O’Bryne] She pauses with her sandwich halfway to her mouth as she watches Andrew lift the couch with the kinfolk on it. Not because she hasn’t seen such feats of strength before, but because, well, it was unusual. And amusing. And kinda rude.
Though so is staring. She shakes her head, and takes another bite.
[Lonna] “My honor is tarnished, Whelan, however will I sleep at night?”
She laughed again. The fight had been a quick one, but not too bad overall. Lonna had held her own, but at the end of the day Lee had superior skills. She was about to go do something, but then the couch moves. The sound of Lonna’s voice is high pitched and shocked.
her first reaction when the couch moves is to hold onto the nearest thing to try and keep falling off. The nearest thing, however, was a person: Lee.
Eyes widen and she seems to expect the worst. The couch is put back down, and she doesn’t relax just yet.
[Arthur] Any fool worth his weight as a Garou could smell the potency of Gabriella Bellamonte’s breeding. It was in her blood, in her movements, in the sort of surety with which she spoke and presented herself to the world. As for the boy, well, he too carried a hint of breeding but it was nothing in comparison to her own. His beauty was something far more raw, it was the masculine equivalent as such as it existed to the feminine ideals of it. Some deity had decreed in his shaping to give him the face of a dark warrior angel while he carried the added bonus of a monster’s yearning under his skin.
Charlie and Mia pass by them, and Art merely nods toward the Metis, and tilts his head a little toward the Kinswoman. He knew her by scent as much as he knew her by vision. She was often carried around with Liam when he saw the other man in recent days. He wondered about their connection, but had not yet asked his future pack-mate.
Somehow, he wasn’t certain he wanted to know to be truthful.
The Creole’s eyes return to the young girl before him, and his expression turns considering, attentive. “Well of course you were provoked, ain’t no questionin’ that.” A beat, he drops his arm from above his head and holds out a rough, calloused hand. “I’m Art by the way, pleased to be saving you from death by clay.”
[Lee] The couch starts to move, and while Lee doesn’t squeal like a little girl, she certainly tries to hop off it in a hurry. She’s held in place, however, by Lonna. So Lee digs her feet in to brace herself, keep from toppling into the blood spattered coffee table. And she wonders if the couch is going to keep going until it’s eventually flipped over. After a moment it stops. Hesitates. And crashes back down.
Lee turns to stare at the heavily scarred man behind the couch, who is staring at a red rubber ball as if it were something immensely precious. Lee’s not one to judge. She looks at her cameras, at pictures, and the oddest things as if they were more important than her own life. A reddish brow quirks at him, just a moment, and then she turns back to Lonna.
“Are you alright, Lonna?” Lee wraps an arm awkwardly around the blonde’s shoulders, an gesture of comfort she’s clearly not used to making.
[Gabriella Bellamonte] The man and woman pass, disappear into a room, and she pretends that this didn’t imply something. No, people here didn’t have sex in the rooms, not with the thin walls and easy to listen through doors. They were smarter, more discreet and considerate than that, after all. And most certainly Alexander Vaughn hadn’t broken his word about not bringing girls into their room. No, the only souls to be any state of undress in that room were herself and her temper-igniting roommate.
Art dropped an arm to extend a hand to her, and she shifted the clay wad into her left hand to hold out the right one, fingers silver-gray with graphite, something that would make her older sister insane.
“Gabriella Bellamonte,” she returned. “Or Gabbie.” And, with something of a smirk, as she took his hand and gave it a small squeeze and shake, something feminine yet not terribly breakable feeling, she added: “I believe I saved myself from that, but thank you for the intent.”
[Lonna] “Yeah.. just… yeah,” she nodded. The Child of Gaia is comforted, but…she doesn’t quite uncoil from the Fianna just yet.
The blonde relaxes, and then shrugs it off. She doesn’t move away from the Fianna just yet, and is more than content to sit close to her. Lonna is comfortable, and she seems to find comfort in having someone close.
Funny, she can stab a fomor with a stiletto heel, and yet being on a moving couch spooked her.
[Rory O’Bryne] She finishes her sandwich, and half her soda. Since the game seems to be on pause, she clears her throat, and finally says something to the girls on the couch.
Not much, but something. “S’cuse me…?”
[Arthur] He smiled, a boy’s charming sense of himself on the rise with it as he enveloped her hand in both of his a second, allowing her to feel the sharp spike and tingling of an Ahroun’s touch under a full moon. For an instant, something moved behind his pale blue eyes, something far more darker and instinctive than merely a handshake, than merely a jest in reply to a jest.
He let go of her hand almost reluctantly, and took a small step away from her, leaning instead against the opposing side of his bedroom door as if he were wary suddenly of her. His black hair was scrubbed through with a hand as he chuckled lowly, throatily. “Well heck, I guess if I can get away with thanks for good intentions, I’m on the right track.”
He slouched a little, his shirt pulling taught across his shoulders with the action.
“That said, I believe there’s also some sayin’ about the road to Hell being paved with them, ain’t there.” His mouth moved a little, humorlessly.
[Andrew] He squeezes the red rubber ball in his fist. Twice. Glad to have it back. It creaks again with tension. Not quite squeaks. It’s not a dog toy assholes. It’s red, heavy rubber, the kind you can only get from petshops now since they tend to break things and kids don’t play with them as much. His eyes gleam. And then seem to suddenly realize he’s around other people. And they sometimes laugh at him which makes him all RAWWR and them all FUCK YOU and then mayhem ensues.
But the blond isn’t looking at him funny. Just clutching the red one like something terrible happened. He eyes the two of them. An unspoken, “What?” on his face. Like he’d done anything wrong. Pfft. They were sitting on his ball.
[Gabriella Bellamonte] The man, ‘Art’, as he’d introduced himself, flickered a little. Something behind his eyes, in his face, his muscles. Gabbie was keenly aware of such things, had to be, spending so much time surrounded by so many Garou, considering how many of them had such massively high amounts of Rage. He pulled his hand away, she didn’t resist, didn’t grasp for his fingers to get him to hold on, even if the urge, no matter how minute and crazy, was there. He stepped back, leaned against his bedroom door, and regarded her warily. Humor drained, even the chuckle that came from his throat instead of his mouth sounded a little bland.
The clay was held with both hands again, idly molded back into a square inside the wax paper, and she studied the Ahroun almost as carefully as he had done her. “I disagree with that.” The second statement, that is.
“I’ve never understood how trying to do good can take someone to Hell. That’s for people that intend to do wrong. Good intentions may lead to mistakes, but mistakes don’t damn you.”
[Lee] Amazingly, Lonna takes comfort in Lee’s fairly stiff, one-armed hug. And she even seems content to stay there, pressed against her side. Lee, on the other hand, is starting to feel the rage swirling through the room.
She doesn’t know that the woman eating a sandwich on one of the bean bags is Garou, any more than she knows the woman is of her tribe, reeks of breeding yet has no other scent to speak of. But the newcomer, along with the glaring and posturing of the man with the red rubber ball and a face that looks like it went through a meat grinder, are making her uncomfortable. Not so many days ago, Lee and Lonna went to a club together, and wound up in a battle for their lives. She still has a lingering weariness, not much, not enough that she has bags or even dark circles under her eyes. It doesn’t affect the way she perceives things, or the way she moves (clearly, since she just trounced Lonna at a video game), but it’s enough that she doesn’t want to deal with this right now.
So she gently untangles herself from Lonna, though the fact that the woman would cling to her at all suffuses her with a sense of contentment.
“I think I’m done for the night, how about you?”
[Lonna] “Hmmn?” she blonde perked up. She was an amiable sort. The blonde looked at the other redhead. Rory. The one who was rife with intensity, who had bene watching, who had faded into the background for so long.
Anywhere that she didn’t have to look that wasn’t Andrew.
Lonna looked back at Lee;she said she was about done for the night. Lonna was untangled, and it was done fairly easily. There was a quiet sort of compliment paid to the fact that she was seeking Lee out for comfort or what-have-you. There was a lot of rage in that room, however, and not quite enough sleep or restfulness to really make that big of a difference.
She regards the Fianna kinswoman, and nods. “Yeah, I’d say I’m done. Want me to take you home, or do you wanna swing by my apartment?”
[Arthur] Mistakes don’t damn you.
Something about what she says must touch something in the boy because he seems to visibly relax a little. Even his shoulders seem to melt downward in a further sort of slump as if he were practicing the art of muscle relaxation. It doesn’t all stop, though. There are still flickers, still moments where for no real accountable purpose his agitation will suddenly pick up and swirl in the air, stifling and smothering everything within its reach.
It was nights like this that he made every kind of mistake.
“I hope that’s true.” His expression softens, becomes gentler and far more appealing than when it was constricted by anger, or dancing with rage. It was hard to imagine, when he seemed at his ease, all southern charm and guileless conversationalist, that he was the same boy responsible for tearing the limbs off Formori, for sinking teeth into the agents of the Wyrm.
“So, you live here alone?” He glanced down the hall idly, hearing snippets of conversation from familiar voices.
[Rory O’Bryne] And gets nothing at first, until a look from Lonna. She stands then, and grabs her pack with one hand. As she moves, there’s no doubt that she is garou, with the press of rage under the almost full moon. She is still polite though, and offers a little nod.
“S’cuse me. Do either of you know where I can find Huried Bachet? I was told to hind fim.”
Her words are often switched, backwards, confused, but she doesn’t seem to notice at all – to her, she hears what she means. Buried Hatchet. Find him.
[Gabriella Bellamonte] His shoulders relaxed, and hers rolled in a shrug when he asked if she lived there alone. One hand lifted, tugging the loose sweater back up over one shoulder, even if it would slump down to her upper arm after a couple dozen seconds anyways. A nod was aimed over her shoulder, to the door in the hallway that made an ‘L’ with Arthur’s, Room 4, only ten feet away at best.
“In a sense. I have a roommate, and my sister’s packmate sleeps here as well, but we don’t speak often.”
Another shrug, and a faint downward cast to her eyes and mouth.
Oh yeah, I’m alone.
“So, yes, I suppose so.”
[Andrew] He flicks his eyes around again. And only now seems to notice the bottle of Rage known as Rory. He was distracted. What with the new olympic sport, couch-kin-lifting, and obtaining his little mission. He hadn’t paid much attention. Now he turns to her. Looks her over a moment. And goes back to not paying much attention. Huried Batshit. Harried Batshit. Buried Hatchet. Something like that. He looks at the woman, grunts, and points with his chin towards the back rooms that line the showers/bathrooms area. He’s obviously back there somewhere. She’s on her own for the rest.
And his eyes go back to the two kin women getting ready to desert and without realizing that he, Jason Voorhees was making them uncomfortable, asks. “I make sure you get home safe.” As a statement. Not quite a cheerful one. He wasn’t finding his ball all over again, afterall. But he was riding the high.
[Lee] Lee rises, stretching and pressing the heels of her hands into her lower back. There’s a low series of pops along her spine.
The newcomer rises, as well. Though Lee is taller, and more sturdily built, there’s a sense of power in the smaller woman. Who is looking for someone named Huried Bachet. Lee frowns, tucks loose strands of red hair back behind her ear. A name surfaces, slowly. And she remembers the other name of her guardian.
“I don’t know where you can find him now, but he lives in room 1. He’s not in right now, though.”
[Rory O’Bryne] “Thank you.”
She swings her pack onto a shoulder, and turns toward the door. She’d waited till they were done to be polite, and now having gathered the information she needed, it’s time to find her room.
[Lonna] She looked at Rory for the time being, and the blonde seemed confused. Even without the verbal disadvantage, Lonna didn’t know who she was asking for. She then looked and Andrew,and spent her time immediately going off to explain what was going on.
Andrew was a Child of Gaia. Andrew was telling them that he’d see them home safe. Andrew was also a prospective member of the Eagles.
This. Was. Not. Good.
“We’re fine, we can make it to the car, thank you though… Andrew, right?” The Child of Gaia was more than content to start to head on her way, too.
[Andrew] He smiles like a dope. Like a scary leper-gnome slasher-victim-ressurected angry jason voorhees-wannabe gnome. But taller. Maybe an ogre. Yes, leper-ogre slasher victim etc ogre. As if they could refuse his offer to watch out for them on their way to wherever. Tonight was a high and he was more than willing to put up with reluctant kin who needed safeguarding – as they always did – on their way to wherever. Maybe he’d catch a ride back to the packhouse too. But why’d he go there? Maybe wander instead.
But he wasn’t going anywhere… unless they did. They had a puppy. An ugly hateful puppy. And it was following them.
[Arthur] Strikes with Valor seems to think on that a little, he straightens his long body up to its full height, tonguing the inside of his cheek a little in contemplation of her words. She was alone, in a sense. In another, more blatant way, she wasn’t. She wasn’t his tribe, or his sister (her shoulder had been bare, and her skin looked soft and–) definitely not his sister to watch over, and yet —
There was a sort of lingering melancholy to her words and the way she lowered her eyes that made something pang deep inside his chest. What was it about this near-stranger that made him want to do stupid manly things to impress her? To protect her?
It was just like Lonna all over again, really.
Just like M–
No, he wouldn’t even think the name. It hurt too goddamn much and he wasn’t some sort of sadist to get off on it.
“Me too,” he offers and then clarifies himself after a second. “I’m alone, I mean. I ain’t got family like you except in the tribal sense of the word and I mean, if you need, or, if you want,” what in Gaia’s name was he trying to say? His cheeks flushed a little pink at the stumbling over of his words, his temper flared in unison as if to mock him, too.
“If you want someone to talk to or…whatever, you know, I’m right here.”
Sometimes, he was still just an eighteen year old boy.
[Lee] Lee watches as the one giving her the uneasy feeling heads down the hall to find a free room. By tomorrow, Lee will be better able to cope with the rage. But for now, she turns to Lonna.
“We can go to my place. Let me just go grab my things.” Though Lonna had offered, Lee is not about to force herself on the Child of Gaia’s hospitality. She disappears into room 1 for a moment, just long enough to grab her bag, her jacket, put her socks and shoes back on. When she leaves the room, she closes the door gently behind her, even though no one’s in there to disturb.
She looks at Andrew for a moment. Her face is blank, impassive. And then she just shrugs.
“Ready?”
[Gabriella Bellamonte] Gabbie glanced from him to her door, as though trying to measure the distance between them. If the floor gave out and only rooms existed, as was a game she would play by herself, in her mind when she was a child, she could probably manage a running leap from her room to his door, so long as she aimed it right and didn’t bounce off a corner of the hallway.
“Yes, I suppose you are.” The grin she offered was deceptively bright, much more so than what her mood seemed to have been when she sighed quietly and admitted/explained that she was essentially alone here at The Brotherhood. His face and ears flushed when he worked at his words, the Rage that she was so accustomed to that she was very nearly numb to it now, like a bee farmer to their livelihoods’ stings flared and sizzled for a moment, and she pressed the flat sides of the cube of clay in her hands.
“Well… Thank you, Art. I’m glad we met.” The words felt honest enough, and she was still smiling a little in her eyes, so it couldn’t just be courtesy that she was saying that with. “I’ll talk to you later, then.” She was hardly awkward, not terribly abrupt in the farewell either. She simply nodded, flashed a bit of a smile again, and turned to retreat into her room, to enjoy the time she had in there without Alex crowding the space.
[Arthur] The boy just watches her with a small smile, something shy of roguish and offers a small wave with his hand before he ducks back into his own room and shuts the door.
Girls, they were gonna kill him way before the Wyrm did.
[Lonna] She nods to Lee, and takes a step back to head off to the car. The Child of Gaia is making her way off with the Fianna, and the blonde seems content to keep quiet right now and pretend that her tribemate isn’t there. Not by a long shot, that Andrew isn’t going to be following them. Besides, Lee lived in someone else’s territory, so it was fine.
There wasn’t much to say. She almost forgot her coat.the woman’s eyes widen and she scampers back to get it. Lonna is getting herself into her jacket while she’s going down the stairs. Afterall, it had her carkeys in it. Couldn’t leave without those.
[Andrew] He nods to Lee. The ball in his hand creaks. Creak creak! He’s ready. Always ready to fight. Protect. Hound the Wyrm. Chase tails. Mmm, tails. Those big brown eyes on his in that mangled face glitter as he glances over at Lonna. Starting to follow them down the stairs and having to dodge out of the way as she scampers back up. He hears the keys in her coat jingle. He knows the humans seem to drive everywhere. He perks up a little bit. Oh god. A perky ugly hateful puppy.
Things just got grim…er.
“We going for a car ride?”
[Lee] [thanks for the scene, dudes!]
[Andrew] [y tu, tambien]