[Marrick] [how is she today?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[corpse] *twitches*
[Rory] .
to Rory
[Imogen] Chinatown is full of closely built edifices, creating tight alleyways with just enough space to walk and move.
This particular alleyway is on a residential block. The smell of blood mingles unpleasantly with the reek of garbage, the smell of the homes and food of various residents. The smell of viscera is even worse.
There is police tape blocking off part of the alleyway, but no sound of police activity, almost no sound at all except for a rare footfall when Imogen’s step scrapes the cobble stones at her feet.
Any Garou following the scent of blood will quickly realize the presence of a pure bred simply by tasting the air. And, turning around a corner – there she is. A slight woman, pale skin, red hair, her coat removed and put aside, her body tensed to soothe the shivers that come from the sub-freezing temperature. She wears latex gloves, as yet unbloodied, and there is a heavy steal brief case against the alleyway wall.
The body is pinned to the wall, its guts spilled out to dirty the ground, several coils of intestine split open to smear faecal matter and half digested food into a footprint. The corpse’s neck is flaccid, its head rolled to the side of its shoulder. It’s pinned by its arms with something large, white, shoved through the wall.
Blood mixed with viscera is smeared across the brickwork – a spiral clearly evident.
[Rory] It’s not exactly part of the territory of The Forgotten, but it is close enough to get her attention. Her hands are shoved deep into the pockets of her coat – a coat that’s tattered at best and not near warm enough for the recent weather – which is worn over every item of clothing she owns. It’s COLD. Socks are doubled up under boots, jeans are over a pair of leggings, and not one, but three t-shirts, one of which is long sleeved, is under the coat. She still looks far too thin, however, even bundled up. A knit hat attempts to corral her curls, and yet they still manage to escape.
She follows the scent of blood, and finds breeding in one who’s familiar. She pauses at the end of the alleyway, and takes in the scene. “…hi.”
[Imogen] Imogen turns sharply toward the sound of someone speaking, her body tensing – her hand reaching to the small of her back, touching the butt of her gun.
It is not panic. Merely pragmatism.
“Rory,” pulling the young redhead’s name from her memory.
“Gi’ me a hand, will yeh?”
[Rory] Imogen reaches for her gun, and Rory tips her head, slightly. The move is sharp, animalistic, though still more curious than anything. When Imogen recognizes her, she smiles shyly, and then nods.
“Sure.”
Single words are easier. She steps deeper into the alley, pulling her hands free from her coat, and waiting for Imogen to tell her what she needs her to do, careful not to mess up any part of the scene that she may need to take care of still.
[Imogen] Sure, Rory says and waits for Imogen to tell her what to do.
Imogen turns her attention back to the corpse, regarding it for several seconds.
“We’re not goin’ t’perserve anything,” she says, simply. “Could yeh try and get tha’ … ” a pause. “Whatever it is free from his wrists?”
[Rory] “Alright.” They’re not going to preserve anything, so Rory stops being careful where she steps. She’s well used to getting disgusting things on her, such is the nature of the War, living and fighting on the streets.
She eyes the white thing, curiously, and then reaches up to wrap her fingers around it – she’s so slender, so small, her fingers almost look fragile. But they’re far from that – and wiggles it a little, testing it. Then, with a grunt, she yanks as hard as she can…
[Ethan] It doesn’t matter what he’s doing out here at this time of day in this type of weather in this particular neighborhood. He could be going to the bank or stepping off of the El or picking up dinner for his family, if he even has a family, and it wouldn’t particularly matter to anyone but him. What does matter is that he’s here, and he’s walking the streets out of uniform and without expectation.
Lacking foresight and preparation does him little good. He comes upon a police taped-off area of the city, yet there are no squad cars, no crime scene investigators, no media or detectives trolling the neighborhood. His footfalls give him away before he actually appears in the alleyway, tall and dark-haired and wearing a windproof coat to protect against the cold, black knit cap in lieu of a hood. Rory will not sense any breeding with him, his blood no more pure than that of the average human walking the city’s streets, and she may very well not recognize him from the coffeehouse the other day. She may not remember that he had the child who chose to hide his face rather than scream or run away like most normal children do.
Imogen may very well not recognize him at all. They existed in the same broad space for a few moments the other night, but they did not make eye contact or exchange names. They passed each other like ships in the night, not even flashing their lights at each other.
He pauses, not out of morbid curiosity but out of a sense of duty, perhaps, and when he speaks it is in a voice subtly accented but American in theory.
“You ladies need help?” he asks.
[Imogen] The white thing, after regard, is bone. She can recognize the discoloured hue, see the small bits of gristle and tendon trapped in the crease.
It cracks as she yanks, but it will take more effort to budge. On the ground are shards of similar bone, likely slivered off from it when it had been forced into the spaces between the brick.
Ethan speaks and Imogen turns sharply, looking at him and his unfamiliar visage. She does not, after all, recognize him at all.
He offers help. Imogen turns her head slightly, glancing toward the eviscerated corpse, the girl grasping a bone used to pin the human to the wall. Back again.
“I cannot imagine any sane human offerin’ help when faced wi’ somethin’ like this.”
Consider it an opening.
[Rory] She grunts. It doesn’t budge. She furrows her brow, and just as she’s about to shift and give it a really GOOD yank – Ethan speaks. She whips her head around, and studies him a long moment, then drops her gaze. She remembers. He gave her back her quarter.
She glances at Imogen, then back. There’s no breeding there in him, though the Doctor has a point. So she waits, idly working the bone shard back and forth in her hands, trying to loosen it, before needing to shift and pull.
[Imogen] (eating food!)
[Ethan] The corpse has not met the sort of end that would lend the police an easy time attempting to explain away its existence. Its guts have been tread upon, its arms are pinned over its head with a spear of bone, and it is currently being tended to by a Garou female and a slight if somewhat severe woman. She looks over sharply when he asks if they need help, then looses a quip into the night air.
A plume of smoke leaves his throat as an unamused laugh is born, and he ducks under the police tape to join the females.
“I never said I was sane,” he counters, and unzips his coat to pull a pair of purple nitrile gloves out of an interior pocket. Clapping them onto his hands, he asks the slight woman, “Did you find him like this?”
[Imogen] The kinwoman is poorly dressed for the weather. She draws her elbows close to her body to attempt to maintain her warmth, her coat nearby on the floor.
“Why?”
[Rory] She narrows her gaze, slightly, and studies Ethan. He asks questions, but doesn’t answer the opening. “Who are you?”
What are you, is what she means.
[Ethan] Why?
“If–”
Who are you?
He is almost directly inside the Trueborn’s personal bubble when he stops walking, getting close enough to see what it is has been dropped in Chinatown but not drawing close enough to be lashed out at should the Rage-filled redhead remain in her human skin. When she asks her question he stops, zipping his coat back up to his sternum, and does not draw any closer.
“My name’s Ethan Yates,” he says. “I’m a Chicago police officer and Kin to Rat.”
[Imogen] I’m a Chicago police officer, Imogen’s hand strays toward the gun at the small of her back. He continues.
“Should ha’ led wi’ the second,” she observes, a little coolly.
“The body was found by another kinfolk, as is.”
[Rory] Her green eyes flick toward Imogen as her hand goes for her gun again, and then back to Ethan. He’s kin. She nods, slightly, and turns back to the bone, and after making sure that no one is near, she shifts upwards to Glabro, stronger now, and yanks the bone again.
If it doesn’t come free this time – she’ll give up and shift completely to take care of it.
[Ethan] Should have led with the second.
A quiet snort leaves the man’s sinuses, and he says, dryly, “Noted.”
The Trueborn is having difficulty hauling the bone spear out of the corpse’s wrists. Ethan finally ducks into a crouch beside the Fianna female, blue eyes moving between her form and her hands wrapped around the bone shard.
“Here,” he says, reaching out to help pull the bone spear free. He has nothing to say about the body being found by another Kinfolk, or if he does he chooses to keep it to himself for now.
[Imogen] Imogen does not move to assist with the bone shard – doubtlessly because her small hands, her slight strength would hardly be worth it when compared to a Garou’s violent abilities.
The bone had begun to give, while Rory tugs it. It would have come out completely wit her glabro pul, and certainly does as Ethan adds his human strength to hers.
Imogen steps forward as the bone comes comes free, a razor sharp spike, splintered and cracked. “May I see?”
The body, freed of its pinning, slumps forward, slack joints and muscles allowing the body to collapse like a rag doll.
[Rory] She ducks her head as he offers to help, and then concentrates on pulling it free. The body slumps, and she does nothing to catch it’s fall. It’s dead, anyway. Instead, she turns to Imogen with a shy smile, and offers her the bone spike.
Then, a glance toward Ethan, and a soft offering – her name. “Rory.”
She looks to Imogen, and then the body. “Meed ne to dismantle it?” As always, she doesn’t notice when her words twist – she simply hears what she intends, not what she actually says.
[Imogen] Imogen reaches out to take the bone spike, turning it over in one hand and glancing toward the body, then back toward Rory.
“I think we’d better,” she says, “easier t’manage.”
She sinks to a crouch and turns the body slightly, pulling up the back of the shirt and glancing at the pale unblemished back.
“S’not been here long,” she says, simply. “Hopefully no one else saw it.”
A glance toward Rory, “Start dismembering it, and I’ll get th’bags, shall I?”
She sets the bone down on the ground. “S’not human,” she says, gesturing to it with one hand before starting back toward the brief case she’s left off to the side.
[Elliot] [should’ve asked first, but is it alright if I jump in on this action?]
[Imogen] (scene is open!)
[Elliot] [awesome!]
[Rory] She nods, slightly, and then within a breath, snapshifts the rest of the way up to her birth form – it’s fast enough that it is either rage fueled, or her birth form – It doesn’t really matter either way, as she does not stop there and put her claws to use, but continue on until she is in massive hispo form to make use of her mighty jaw.
If they pay attention, they’d likely figure out why.
She doesn’t stop to explain – she simply gets to work tearing the body apart.
[Elliot] The alley is not part of The Forgotten’s territory, but it’s near enough. Elliot has been wandering the streets for the better part of the day, watching, listening, learning. They have a packhouse now, their numbers are expanding. There’s no reason their territory shouldn’t expand, as well.
It’s late now, when Elliot feels along the totem link, reassuring herself with her sisters’ continued presence.
As always, she’s listening to her surroundings. She can’t help it. Her senses are overly sharp. If the world were completely still, she could hear a pin drop across the street as if it were ringing just beside her ear. If the lighting isn’t overly bright, she can see farther than most. Her sense of smell is as good as any canine’s. It’s a curse, living in such a huge, loud, bright, disgusting city, but she can’t help it. Now that she’s finally settled, the Gnawer prefers to stay as near to civilization as she can.
She hears the pop and snap of bones being broken and joints being separated long before she appears in the open mouth of the alleyway. She stops, and for a moment she just watches. There is her sister, dismantling a body in her dire wolf form. There are two others, not Garou and yet not shying away from the Ahroun’s rage. And not vomiting at the grisly sight unfolding before them.
Elliot is tall, her incredible thinness disguised by layers of clothing. There are huge, oversized sunglasses pushed up on her head, holding back red hair that has recently been cleaned and brushed. Her hands are shoved into the pockets of her coat, and she stands still as stone, her face impassive as marble. Her eyes are pale and colorless in the darkness.
[Elliot] While she works her jaws on the thing that was a body, Rory hears her alpha’s words across the link they share.
Did you fight?
to Rory
[Imogen] Imogen does pay attention, but not for the specific point of watching for an explanation, but instead because she wants to watch.
She finds the shifting of a Garou horrifying. She finds it fascinating. It flies in the face of all the science she knows. She’s lost count of the number of times she’s seen a Garou change. But every time it is in moments of stillness – moments where she can watch – she does.
So she watches now.
A frown touches her brow, a brief contraction, that smoothes as the Garou reaches its hispo form. She takes a step back as it begins to tear the body apart with its teeth.
She gathers plastic bags and begins to bag the torn appendages. Her latex gloves are soon red with blood.
[Ethan] No matter how many times he watches it happen, no matter how many times he sees a human (humanoid) morph into something nightmarish and unnatural, he is never going to reach a stage where he can do so without his heart racing and adrenaline dumping itself into his veins.
Rory bursts into her war form so quickly that it would have taken a burst of Rage or her being born in this form to facilitate the change, and Ethan cannot get to his feet and out of the way quickly enough. He has professed to be a police officer, approached the scene without hesitation, clearly has little qualms with getting his hands dirty, and yet the sight of this slight teenage girl unfurling into a hulking machine of muscle and fury has him launching to his feet and taking several steps back, eyes briefly wide with controlled fear.
It doesn’t so much go away when she takes on her dire wolf form as it does sublimate, change forms much as Rory did. His fear becomes action. He takes a bag from Imogen and begins to work, picking up the pieces as they drop to the ground and feeding them into maws of plastic.
When he speaks, he has to clear his throat first.
“You got a car nearby, or shall I fetch mine?” he asks.
[Rory] ((OOC: sorry, had to pick up my SO!))
There’s a mental shake of her head, that matches the tearing motion of her jaws. No. clelping Imogen hean up. She found it.
to Elliot
[Rory] (OOC: Sorry so long – had to pick up my SO! Typing Now!)
[Imogen] Ethan reaches out to help, and Imogen speaks, her voice sharp enough to arrest movement, or at least get attention, “Here,” she says, mildly. “You hold th’bags. I’ll put the body in.” She raises her hands, gloved and bloody in illustration. “No sense in gettin’ it on both o’ us.”
Elliont appears in the shadows – and Imogen pauses, half straightening from her crouch on the ground.
“Either o’ you know her?”
[Rory] She is viciously efficient when it comes to tearing the body limb from limb. It makes one wonder how wickedly fast she is in a fight, when she goes all out, when she holds nothing back.
She pauses, blood smeared across her jaw, as Imogen asks her question. Her reply is a simple nod of her great head. That she does not stiffen, does not attack, does not slink away – it all says volumes. She is known, very well known to Rory. Elliot is Alpha.
[Ethan] It doesn’t take much to convince him to work more efficiently. All it takes is a ‘Here,’ and the man–it’s hard to discern how old he is, but he can’t be too far into his thirties if he’s even that far–reaches out to hold open one of the bags.
A question, and it seems as though Ethan hadn’t even noticed the redhead until she was mentioned. His gaze snaps from Imogen over her shoulder towards the pale-skinned Garou, and he mutely shakes his head.
[Elliot] Elliot’s head cant’s slowly to the side, and then turns to face the one who must be Imogen. She stares, openly and unflinchingly, at the kinfolk. Eventually she turns her head to the man, pinning him with that deadpan stare. He hasn’t a drop of breeding, but he’s here. The logical conclusion is that he is also kin.
She steps into the alley beside her sister. When Rory answers with a nod of head, Elliot answers with words. If Rory were not in Hispo, the opposite might be true.
Elliot introduces herself simply and succinctly as, “Elliot.” Without another word, she begins picking up pieces of body to add them to the bags.
[Imogen] The open, unflinching regard is met with a regard of Imogen’s own. Even gazed, unfaltering, as she watches the Garou. Then the redhead’s eyes move elsewhere, and Imogen turns her attention back to the reeking gummy pile of viscera, picking it up carefully in her hands, and sliding it into an open bag.
“Imogen,” she introduces herself as concisely as Elliot has, before stripping off her gloves, “I’ll go move my car ‘nd get a bucket.” There’s a spiral marked in blood on the wall. Bits of faecal matter and undigested food which will not be easily picked up and moved, now that its congealed.
She bags the gloves and grabs her coat, slipping half-gratefully into its folds, stepping out beyond the false police tape to head out toward the street.
[Rory] When she has the body torn into pieces suitable for bagging, smaller and easier to handle, she steps back and after a quick shake, she melts back down into her homid form. Her clothing seems to have all survived the trip, and she spits to the side, making a face wipes her mouth with the back of a pale hand.
She smiles shyly at Elliot, then steals a glance at Ethan. “Didn’t scean to mare you. Sorry.” It’s an odd switch of words, one she doesn’t notice. She did, however, notice the way he scrambled back, and kept his distance.
[Ethan] When Rory returns to the form that the world can tolerate seeing her in, Ethan seems to relax somewhat… at least, insomuch as a person could possibly relax while helping to load pieces of what used to be a human being into plastic sacks. He does it with no amount of glee or joy, seems rather grim as he’s doing it as a matter of fact, and watches Elliot and Imogen as they exchange names.
The body bagged and the task completed, Ethan peels off his gloves, balling one up inside the other, and gives the girl a tight yet not-altogether-forced closed-lipped smile. He says nothing about her speech impediment. Maybe he doesn’t notice either.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” he says.
[Elliot] Elliot doesn’t tell Imogen that her introduction is unneccessary, that she already knows the woman’s name from her sister and recognizes it. She is silent as she fills up the bag. When they finish, her bone white hands are covered in blood. She wipes them on her ripped and faded jeans, no doubt staining them forever, and she doesn’t care.
Imogen and Ethan remove their gloves, and the woman with the Fianna breeding moves off to no doubt retrieve her car. Elliot is not inclined to stop her. Let the kinfolk use her vehicle to dispose of the mess discretely.
She looks at Ethan, pale eyes traveling over the strong figure.
“Who are you?” she asks abruptly.
[Ethan] For the second time in as many minutes, a Trueborn is asking him who he is. Whoever he is, he turns to face Elliot without the fear on his features that had been present when Rory morphed into a monster moments ago. He isn’t exactly stone-faced and stoic, but he carries himself like a man with some degree of confidence in his bones. It doesn’t quite make up for the lack of purity in his blood, but it allows him to keep his shoulders back and his head up when he’s conversing with the full bloods.
“Ethan Yates,” he says, without offering a hand to shake. He keeps them plunged in the pockets of his coat. “Kin to Rat.”
[Rory] She lifts a hand and rubs at the side of her nose absently, then tucks her hands into her pockets, shoulders hunching slightly in the chill of the air. If not for her rage, she would be frigid indeed. She doesn’t know how the kinfolk do it.
While Elliot and Ethan chat, she starts to use the side of her boot to scrape up some of the gross congealed mess into more of a central location for easier cleanup.
[Imogen] It is an occasion she has repeated more times than she can count.
She moves her car, and retrieves a bucket and several rags which will not survive the night. Her breath steams in the air, and the chill of the night has worked its way into her bones. She won’t feel warm ’till later tonight in a shower with her bathroom full of steam.
That’s a ways away for now. Closer, the prospect of cold water and scrubbing down the wall, washing away the viscera and bits of flesh from the ground. She ducks beneath the ribbon, glancing briefly toward Ethan and Elliot as she steps toward an outside tap – conveniently placed.
[Elliot] Having arrived when Rory was already on four legs, Elliot did not see the way the dark-haired man’s feet tried to carry him back and away from the timid girl turned horrific monster. He looks at Elliot with calm assurance.
He offers his hand to shake. Elliot tips her head down, staring at it as though instead of a hand he was offering her a handful of fairy dust. Her eyes move slowly back up to his face, carefully studying the set of his jaw and the tension of his shoulders. Kin to Rat, he says, and Elliot’s expression changes almost imperceptibly. Tension eases from the corners of her mouth, some of the hardness shifts out of her eyes.
Eventually, provided his own is still extended by this point, Elliot reaches out a somewhat bloodied hand. “I am also one of Rat’s.”
Behind her, Rory continues to work on clean-up. Elliot will join her shortly, but for now her attention is fixed on the kinfolk. “Do you live here?” She is aware of Imogen, hears the rumble of her car as it pulls up to the curb, the closing of a door loud as a slam to the metis.
“Help her, Rory,” she says without turning. Though it’s doubtful she needed to say anything at all.
[Rory] She had already moved toward Imogen as she arrived again, when Elliot tells her to help. She doesn’t do what some others might at such a thing, she simply smiles that same little shy grin, before she takes some of the rags from the kinfolk who shares her breeding, and precious little else.
She runs the rags under the tap first, so that she can get started while Imogen fills the bucket. Moments later, despite the frigid temperature of the water, she’s scrubbing down the wall where the body was hung with conscientious care.
[Imogen] Imogen glances up at Elliot briefly as she orders Rory to help, then returns her attention to the bucket, letting it fill. “Ta,” simple as Rory takes the rags.
The alleyway reeks. Blood, shit, food that smells rotten, the stink of fear, long faded but not quite gone, clinging to the clothing and skin of the dismembered corpse hidden inside large bags, thick and large enough for this purpose.
Imogen breathes easily through her nose and exhales through her mouth. While Rory begins the job of cleaning the wall and its telling spiral, Imogen soaks the frozen and congealed remains of viscera, scraping it away from the ground. Her mouth twists slightly, a well-bred expression of distaste.
[Ethan] With the wind as brutal as it is, the temperature as low as it is, Ethan does not remove his hands from his pockets unless he absolutely has to. Now that the body has been partitioned and he finds himself the object of the tallest redhead’s attention, he does not absolutely have to do anything other than answer the questions being posed.
They’re both Rat’s. They are not equals in eyes of the Nation, but amongst their own kind, they are family. There is little separating the Trueborn from their Kin other than the ability to do as Rory had done earlier, other than the fact that Kinfolk scar with far greater ease than do Garou, die with far less damage doled out.
Kinfolk were not born to die fighting this war, but that doesn’t mean it never happens.
Does he live here.
“I moved from New York a few weeks ago,” he says, moving to pick up two of the loaded bags. His voice carries with it the faint accentuation of a country across a great expanse of water; rather than being washed away by years in America, it has simply faded. It’s still there.
[Rory] She is very meticulous and careful as she washes down the wall, making sure to scrub not only the tell tale spiral, but to remove all evidence that there was anything there at all – blood, viscera, waste… she has an eye for detail, and though her fingers are ice cold instantly, she works with a single mindedness that’s born from an innate need to please those above her.
And everyone is above her.
She works quickly, so that Imogen would have the smaller portion of the clean up to deal with as well. Courtesy, perhaps. Most certainly it’s an empathetic reaction – if Rory is this cold, Imogen must be longing for a hot shower.
[Elliot] Elliot is not quite as tall as her kinsman, but their heights are similar. That is where any and all similarities outside of their tribe stop.
He moved here from New York a few weeks ago, but his accent is from farther away. Elliot’s, when she chooses to speak, is without much inflection, either emotional or accented. She lapses into silence while she helps Ethan with the bags of bloody body parts and fecal matter. Unlike Imogen, she is careful to breathe through her mouth lest she upend the contents of her stomach all over the alley, adding to the already arduous chore of clean up.
She misses Rory’s smile and passive acceptance of her alpha’s order. Even now, she merely flicks her pale green-grey eyes to her sister before returning to her own task. There is nothing amiss about her leaving a smaller section for the kinfolk to clean. The job of cleaning the evidence away belongs to all of them, equally, Garou and Kin alike. Elliot is by her very nature stronger and faster than Imogen. If she cleans faster, that is only because she’s able to go faster, not because she’s deferring to the kinswoman.
She and Ethan carry bags to Imogen’s car. It’s there that she resumes the conversation.
“I meant now. Do you leave near here, or is it fate that has you cleaning an alley with my sister and a Fiann?”
[Imogen] Imogen is a strong willed woman, who allows little in the way of weakness to show in her mannerisms and expressions. Though her fingernails are blue from the cold and her skin pale with it, she visibly suppresses her shivers, keeps her jaw tight against her teeth chattering.
Rory makes a concerted effort to do the worst of the work. The difference: Imogen is skilled in this. She not only has an eye for detail, but the training to support it. They work at a nearly even pace.
Elliot and Ethan start to walk toward her car and Imogen straightens slightly from pouring bloodied water over the ground, toward a nearby drain, conveniently washing several smaller chunks of flesh and viscera with it.
“The trunk should be unlocked. S’the old Volvo by the curb.”
[Rory] She glances up as Elliot and Ethan take the bags toward the car, and then returns to the work of scrubbing the walls, the alley floor, getting the grit and grime up and washed away. She takes the bucket when it has been emptied, and fills it from the tap once more, before kneeling again to help Imogen.
She nods toward the car, and smiles shyly. “I’ll help burn, if you want te moo.” When they’ve finished, of course.
[Ethan] They don’t speak much as they’re lugging bags to Imogen’s car. They ought to consider themselves lucky that they haven’t been stumbled upon by any of the few pedestrians who are struggling their way through Chinatown at this time of the evening. Despite the weather, despite the threat of snow and the wind chill and the hostility of the evening, people are still walking from bus stops to restaurants, from parking lots to second-story apartments, are shopping and tending to their financial affairs. Ethan doesn’t belong in this neighborhood any more than any of the redheaded females do, and yet here they are all, regardless.
Imogen calls after them, and Ethan finds the old Volvo without much difficulty. He pops the trunk, and heaves the bags inside as Elliot clarifies.
“I was actually going to pick up dinner,” he says. “Guess it was more fate than anythin’ else.”
[Imogen] Imogen’s mouth twists as she continues to pour the water, the back splash spraying the cuffs of her finely pressed black slacks.
“I believe after this,” she says, stepping back out of the way. “We’ll both do well wi’ a fire.”
[Rory] The smile widens, just a touch. There’s truth in the words. Imogen may be more acclimated than Rory, who dreams of her dessert in the depth of the night, where she was never quite so cold as she has been since moving here. If not for the fire of rage, she would be hard pressed to go outside at all.
Except when it snows. That holds a childlike fascination for the metis, and she will freeze herself near to death just to catch one more snowflake, to roll another snowball, to make form a snowman to perfection. It will likely fade in time, but for now, the novelty still holds sway over Rory’s senses.
She scoots out of the way from the water, reaching forward only to slosh a bit in a more straight forward direction, to make sure some bits and pieces get carried away down the drain. “I sometimes think I’ll never we barm again.”
[Rory] (ooc: she dreams of deserts. not desserts. Currently, anyway.)
[Imogen] Imogen’s breath exhales, a brief steam as she walks back to the tap, turning it sharply to open it again, filling the bucket.
“You will,” she says, in what is obstensibly meant as reassurance. Imogen, however, is not a compassionate person. She doesn’t truly mean it as reassurance, “In May or so.”
[Elliot] Elliot lugs a bag easily into the trunk of the Volvo. When they’ve finished, she wipes her hands on her jeans once again, smearing what’s left of the blood and gore into the denim. She should be cold. Even though her figure is covered in layers, they can see by the gaunt angles of her face that she is underweight. Her jeans are ripped and torn, exposing near translucent white skin to the bitter winter wind. And yet she hardly seems to notice. This is not cold to her.
Fate brought Ethan to this place, much as fate has brought all of them together. It was fate that has them all arriving too late to destroy the Spiral that made this mess in the first place, fate that it wasn’t lurking in the shadows, lying in wait for the weaker, less combative kinfolk to arrive.
“Are there more of you?” The car is closed up once more. Before Elliot heads over to Rory and Imogen, she stares at Ethan. There’s something in that gaze that may or may not be pleasure. In a city where their numbers are oddly diminished, here is a kinfolk.
[Rory] That makes her laugh. It’s soft and light, and swallowed back as she smiles up at Imogen, and continues to scoot the mess to the drain. “Sat thoon? No problem then.”
Imogen may not have meant it as reassurance, or as a joke, but Rory takes it with her natural quiet good humor. Sometimes it’s hard to believe one so passive was born under the fool moon. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe her Garou at all – until you look closer, until you feel the press of her rage, until you see her destroy a body in seconds in order to help bag it up and dispose of it.
Then you remember.
[Rory] (OOC: I should give up! FULL MOON.)
[Ethan] He’s got to be unnerved being stared at like this. It’s not human, the way Elliot is looking at him; then again, what’s looking at him isn’t human, and he knows this on a level that supercedes having to witness a physical transformation in order to confirm his suspicions. There are tells that give away the Trueborn, anything from high levels of Rage to the way they glower out at the world to the way they hold themselves or walk or interact with their packmates.
If he is unnerved, he’s doing a damned good job of acting as though he is little more than cold.
“I’ve a twin brother named Aaron,” he says, “and a seven-year-old son. They’re both living with me at the moment.”
[Imogen] The alleyway is hardly bloodless, but it is cleared up beyond the faintest tracings. The smell has significantly faded, and is more in her nostrils than anywhere else. On her skin, lingering in her clothing.
All that is left is the last bit of congealed mess that Rory is guiding toward the drain. Imogen steps back out of her way, shoving her hands into her coat pockets. Her gaze moves slightly toward the alleyway, where she can just see Ethan and Elliot lingering at her car.
[Rory] Imogen steps back, and Rory guides the last bits to the drain, before settling back on her heels in a crouch, and surveying the alley. She does not proclaim it finished, but instead looks to Imogen to do so. The kinswoman knows more of hiding evidence than Rory is likely ever to learn.
She rubs her hands vigorously over her thighs in an attempt to warm them, and once Imogen gives the all clear, she stands again.
[Elliot] He has a family. A brother and a son. Elliot’s brow twitches slightly, a facial tick perhaps. She stares at Ethan like she’s never seen another human being before, never met a kinfolk, never met a male of her tribe.
It passes. Elliot shifts her weight from one foot to the other, her head tilting slightly to the side. It’s an almost canine expression of interest, although there is almost no warmth in her eyes. Elliot doesn’t look at him like she’s man’s best friend, but a mangy, wary stray.
She should ask permission before saying what she says next. Maybe she’s forgotten how.
“I will go with you.” A beat, a moment of silence too short for him to interject with an objection or excuses for her to stay away from his child. “That was old, but the Spiral may still be near.”
She glances over her shoulder to Rory and Imogen, the young Ahroun’s laughter carrying on the chilly winter wind. She should say something to Imogen, thanks for the clean up, pat the kinfolk on the back, either figuratively or literally. She should say something to the woman now burdened with bags of body parts taking up space in her trunk.
Instead, she gestures for Ethan to lead the way, and walks with him to where he’s going to get dinner.
[Elliot] When Elliot glances over her shoulder to Rory, the other redhaired metis, as well as their Theurge, wherever Chloe is, can hear Elliot’s voice.
I have tribe business to attend to. It’s all the explanation they’ll receive for why when Rory returns to the packhouse, Elliot will not be with her. Make sure Imogen leaves safely.
A beat later, she says again, her thought voice tinged with a kind of gentle comeraderie, a closeness her speaking voice rarely ever holds, Stay out of trouble.
to Rory
[Ethan] [Thanks for the play, ladies! I have to go die of sick now.]
[Rory] She smiles. Of course.
Maybe there’s a bit of a chide there- as if Rory would do anything different for the once fianna kinfolk, or for anyone in such a situation. But if it’s there, it’s extremely subtle, covered by her agreement, and promise instead.
to Elliot
[Imogen] (thanks for the scene!)
[Elliot] [thanks for the play!]
[Imogen] Elliot and Ethan are starting away from the car. Imogen’s eyebrow arches slightly, before turning her attention to Rory.
“I’ll come back in th’morning, in case we missed anythin’,” she tilts her head slightly toward the alleyway mouth. “C’mon.”
[Rory] She nods, and then seeing Imogen’s glance toward where Elliot and Ethan walk off. “Bribal Tusiness.”
She looks around one more time, and then nods. “Me too.”
And then she falls into step with Imogen and moves toward the car, grabbing her backpack on the way by from where she’d left it earlier, and rolling her hands up in her shirt for the short walk in an attempt to warm them.
[Imogen] Bribal business, Rory says. Imogen smirks a little – and it is easy for the metis to see that she screwed up – and in a way which amuses even the stoic kinfolk.
To the car they go, the cab of which has already begun to be permeated with the smell of innards and blood. The car turns over choppily as she turns the key in the ignition, and the engine finally catches. The vents blow no air, the heat is off.
She begins to drive away – and makes no attempt at conversation. To speak with the metis and her mangled conversation is an effort. Eventually she turns on the heat, which is lukewarm, and never gets any better.
Later, the smell of a burning body is almost pleasant, like a barbecue, and she stands close to the flames to bake the cold from her bones. She drops the bone which – as she’d claimed before – was not human inside and watches the orange flames as they lick at a body of a victim who has no name, and who perhaps had a human family, a wife, a child. He’d had no purpose or stake in this except for some wyrm creature’s grisly painting.
And now, he is the kindling for Imogen and Rory’s fire. And that is all.
[Imogen] (ahem “Bribal tusiness”)
[Rory] Imogen smirks, a little, and she flushes, even if she’s proud to have amused the kinfolk, as it’s no easy feat, to be sure. She wrinkles her nose, a little, but doesn’t try to correct a mistake she didn’t hear. She simply accepts that it happened, and Imogen, who’s never looked down on her for her disability, enjoyed it.
She’s well used to the quiet, to not speaking because she cannot hear her mistakes to fix them, to resting easily in silence that others seek to fill with inane babble. She’s content to hold her pack in her lap, to watch the city fly by, to shiver in the lukewarm offerings of the heater.
As they burn the body, she idly wonders who it was, what happened that brought him to this end, but she lacks the conviction to find out. Right now, he burns, and he helps soak the cold from their bones, as they ensure he does so completely.
She stays until it is finished. She stays until the fire has died away, until the oil drums are cooling, until the job is deemed finished completely. Only then does she look up at Imogen again. “Be careful hoin’ gome.”
She won’t impose on the kinfolk any farther. She’ll hit the brotherhood for a shower though, before returning home. The Forgotten House is still lacking running water.
[Imogen] After the fire is burnt down, the body is charred bones and grey ashes. It takes a while. A long while. Imogen is thorough because she knows exactly how much can be told from a sliver of bone, though it be by an expert outside her field. She keeps the fire burning hot. She keeps it burning in a lidded oil drum where it is critical to keep an oxygen flow.
Some time later, she stirs the ashes, eyeing them as she pokes through it with a metal bar, gently pulvervising several part of the remains for no purpose whatsoever. She’ll return later after it’s cooled. One must wonder what Imogen does with these ashes, the remains of bodies that are never fully consumed by fire.
The most ghoulish, and most amusing idea would be that she’s got a room filled with ashes. That they were her company, as she keeps herself as isolated as she can from Garou and Kin alike.
Of course, it’s not true. More likely, she buries them. Drowns them. Adds another layer to her destruction of evidence.
Whatever she does, it won’t be done ’till morning.
A glance at Rory as she bids her to be careful. She does not return the favour, merely saying, “Goodnight.” She does not offer the Ahroun a ride. Her head bows to the wind, and her hands slide into her jacket pockets as she walks back toward the car, pulling open the door to get inside.
[Rory] She waits until Imogen is in the car, till the car starts and begins to pull away, and then she starts her walk to the Brotherhood, where she can wash body and clothing, before returning home.
[an’ I do believe that’s a wrap!]
[Imogen] (yep! thanks for the scene!)
[Rory] [Thank you!]