Saturday, January 31, 2009

waylaid.

1.30.2009
5:44pm

The last of the dusk is fading from the sky when Lukas descends the stairs of the Brotherhood, turns his collar up against the wind, and pushes out the back door. His ford is parked in the alley, but he finds he'd rather walk tonight. It's not so far to the Mile, and besides, he anticipates they'll be dragging trophies to the caern when all's said and done.

The streets around the Caern are mean and rough. Shambling buildings. Rusty cars. Shady characters loitering on streetcorners and on stoops by day; streetwalkers and hustlers at night. A man like Lukas would be an easy mark: too well-dressed for this area, unbowed by time and circumstance. But Lukas is not a man but a Garou. The rules are different for him.

He walks -- not fast, but purposefully, with a clear direction in mind. He cuts through dark alleys, crosses streets; proceeds steadily northeast. The wind is in his face and he keeps his head down, his newsboy cap jammed tightly on.

"Spare a buck, man?"

He's heading for battle. He's thinking about tactics and formations, about what might lie in wait, about what he might do to assure that his pack survives this, rises above this, succeeds in what they have to do. He's thinking about what he might leave behind, too, if he doesn't survive this. Who and what and where, the loose ends of a life shorn suddenly in its prime. He's thinking --

"Hey, man, just a buck, I ain't ate for days."

"No." Lukas is faintly irritated; most bums gave up if you didn't look at them. This one's persistent, jogging to keep up. Lukas takes a sharp turn into a tight alley, hoping to lose him in the crowded darkness.

"Come on man, just a dollar, or whatever you wanna give me. Just a buck, I'm starving, man -- " and he reaches out and grabs Lukas by the arm, his gnarled, grimy fingers twisting into the fine wool of the Shadow Lord's coat.

Lukas pulls his arm sharply out of his grasp. Turns on him, sudden enough to make him quail. "Don't touch me."

But the panhandler reaches for him again, locking both hands around his elbow this time. His eyes dart over the Ahroun's shoulder, and alarms are just beginning to tingle in Lukas' mind when the bum starts shouting, hoarse, his voice breaking:

"[i]Come on, what are you waiting for? I got 'im, just like you told me! I got 'im, now come on![/i]"

Lukas shoves the panhandler back. He hits the opposite wall with a grunt. The Ahroun snapshifts on instinct, and not an instant too soon -- a loop of razorwire lands around his neck and pulls viciously tight, shearing through the thick fur of his ruff, biting into the flesh. The bum is pressed back into a corner between a dumpster and a stack of rotting crates, pissing himself, gibbering. Wyrmbreaker can hear a high tittering laugh behind him, boyish, nasty, and the wire jerks another notch tighter.

"Dude! This is way better than that dog we did!"

Wyrmbreaker doesn't think twice. He doesn't think at all. He catches his distorted reflection in a dirty pane of glass -- reaches out with his spirit -- [i]pushes[/i] --

([b]pop.[/b])

Otherside now. The lacerating noose had simply ceased to exist. The pain was still there, sharp and bright as a new coin, but with every heartbeat his flesh closes in on itself, resealing, healing.

He can feel his rage, too. That does not heal. That does not subside. It grows, furious, outraged by the insult and the injury --

that he had been somehow stalked, marked, led like a prey-animal to this trap where two humans, two subhuman wyrm-things, wanted to use him as their prey. As their toy.

-- until he must tamp it down almost physically. It would do him no good to cross back in a frenzy, unable to think, unable to plan. It would do him no good to plunge thoughtlessly into combat.

His temper leashed, the Ahroun presses his mind against the Gauntlet; opens not his body's eyes but his mind's, and looks across the barrier.

--

"Where'd he go?" Stark puzzlement; then a rising, irrational fury. "That's NOT FAIR, that's FUCKING CHEATING, he can't just DISAPPEAR LIKE THAT."

There are two boys. The younger can't be much older than twelve or thirteen, freckled, with the sort of sunbleached blond hair that would darken as he aged. He looks like someone's little brother, some suburban soccer mom's little boy, if not for the fact that his body is packed, knotted, twisting and bulging with surreally hypertrophied musculature. His skeleton tops out at a boy's height; on that five feet or so of height is perhaps two, two hundred fifty pounds of muscle. His ripped jeans look ready to split down the seams. His skater-tee barely manages to encase the breadth of his chest, the circumference of his biceps. He's vibrating with wrath, gnashing his teeth, sweating even in the chill.

There's a length of razor wire in his hands, the ends wrapped to keep from cutting his own hands, the middle stretch red with an Ahroun's blood.

His friend is older, though the only real way to judge is by stature and, perhaps, temperament. He seems steadier, less prone to bounce between bouts of glee and fury. His face is hidden behind a hockey mask, Jason-style. He wears denim overalls, no shirt, no coat -- no shoes even. He doesn't seem to feel the cold at all. There's a gas-operated chainsaw in his hands.

"Chill out," he tells the younger. "He'll be back."

"I wanted to cut his head off. You said I could. You said! Cut his fucking head off and EAT HIS BRAINS. Did you see [i]Blood Vengeance of Krokk?[/i] DUDE." Moodswing, instantaneous. "It was the most awesome thing EVER, Krokk rapes this slut with a broken broomstick until it comes out her stomach, but she's STILL ALIVE, and then he cuts her head off with razor wire just like this one, and there was blood everywhere, if you pause at exactly 12:13:42 you can see the INSIDE OF HER NECK. And the TUBES and SQUISHY SHIT. Do you think it really looks like that? With like, dangly tubes and squishy shit?"

"I don't know." The older boy's voice is muffled through his hockey mask. The muscles in his chest bunch and flex as he yanks he ripcord of the chainsaw. It only takes him one pull to bring it to life. Then he rolls his head on his shoulders. "Let's find out." He nods at the bum, still incoherent in his flimsy refuge. "Hold him still. And keep your fucking fingers out of the way, unless you wanna lose 'em."

--

Wyrmbreaker has seen enough. He pulls his mind back, finds himself in the moonlit, ghostly world of the umbra again. He pushes against the Gauntlet, mind and body this time, feels it give, feels himself moving across...

...excruciatingly slow this time. It takes seconds on end, seconds he did not have. The world swims into view. The bum is dead; the air is coppery with blood. The younger boy is laughing, a high, excited, not entirely sane sound. The older's chainsaw is growling in his hand, and he wipes blood off his chest, almost thoughtfully.

"DUDE THAT WAS AWESOME. THAT WAS THE BEST THING EV--"

Wyrmbreaker, a black beast of tooth and claw, lunges at their backs. But the older boy-monster's senses are sharper than he'd expected. He wheels around, brings the chainsaw up, revs it up. The basso snarl of the power saw turns to a tenor scream. Its timbre and pitch change abruptly as the spinning, serrated chain bites deep into the Shadow Lord's flesh. While the younger boy is still staring slack-jawed, Wyrmbreaker roars with pain, and then with rage.

His claws flash out. He tears the fucking hockey mask off. He tears half of the older boy's face off, too -- a spray of arterial blood steaming hot on the alley walls.

This jolts the younger boy into action.

Things go fast after that. The younger of the two whips his razorwire out like a chain, seeking to grapple the black beast suddenly rampaging in their midst, but the monstrosity is too fast, too strong. The last few feet of the razorwire snaps off, sending chips and sharp-slicing metal flying in all directions. Wyrmbreaker snaps at the chainsaw-wielding boy again, and his nerve fails him, he turns, he runs, Wyrmbreaker bears him down from behind and crushes his head in his teeth.

The younger boy is screaming in mindless rage now, lashing at the werewolf's back with his razored chain, using it like a whip now. The wire strips off a stripe of fur and flesh, but it's mostly fur, not a lot of flesh, and now Wyrmbreaker is turning his fury on him now, wheeling around, hackles up, eyes glaring pale, and he drives his claws into the younger boy's side.

The claws detach. Remain stuck in the flesh, pinning the boy-monster's shirt against his body. But Wyrmbreaker had underestimated the boy's tenacity, his courage and his strength -- he'd left an angle unguarded, just for a moment, which is a moment too long.

The boy flicks his wrist, whips the chain out against the Shadow Lord's underbelly. The razors slice deep; they sink in. The boy [b]pulls[/b].

Wyrmbreaker's abdominal wall opens up as neatly as if someone found a hidden zipper and undid it. The damage is catastrophic. He can, in the last surreal seconds of his life, hear his blood pattering down on the ground, hissing as it melts the dirty snow. He can feel the last of his strength drain out of him as his joints unlock.

Wyrmbreaker hits the alley floor.

The twisting blue flame of his rage burns, burns ... burns out.

--

And sparks back to life.

--

And blazes into a bonfire.

There's no such thing as control now. White-hot, his rage is a force of nature, a monster with its own will, and it floods out of his deepest reserves, unstoppable, reknits the worst of the damage with its own sheer fury, burns through the walls and the cages and the chains that Wyrmbreaker imposes on himself, reveals them for the flimsy things they really are.

His entrails are still spilling out of his body. His blood is still a rapidly spreading pool. He does not care; he does not feel any of this. He lunges, he drags himself forward, his eyes empty of anything but hate and rage, and he goes for the boy-monster with everything he has.

And the boy falters before this onslaught. He throws his chain out, desperately; manages to entangle the Ahroun for a second; scrambles for his dead compatriot's chainsaw, still rumbling on the alley floor. Behind him, the Ahroun has thrashed, clawed, bitten his way through the bindings. The boy raises the chainsaw, but he doesn't even have time to turn before Wyrmbreaker descends on him from behind, an engine of destruction in black fur and white teeth.

The penultimate thing the boy feels is the werewolf's hot paws on his back, hot breath on his neck.

The last thing: the werewolf's teeth, tearing through his spine.

--

It's hours before Wyrmbreaker awakens from ... wherever it is his mind goes during the frenzy, and after it.

He finds himself on the alley floor in his underclothes, filthy and freezing, the white of his undershirt and the grey of his undershorts stained red with blood, the remains of his clothing scattered about.

He finds a gas-less chainsaw; a broken stretch of razorwire.

He finds a dead bum, almost unrecognizable.

And he finds the remains of two gorehounds, wholly unrecognizable now, little more than shreds of meat and gristle and bone.

Slowly, Lukas gets up. Sways for a moment, lightheaded, thoroughly weary. His wounds have already closed themselves, sometime between the time he succumbed to frenzy and the time he fell unconscious, spent and limp in its aftermath. There's a new tightness to the skin of his abdomen, his side, that had not been there before. When he rolls his shirt up (the blood drying and stiff-frozen, flaking off onto his fingers) he sees the mark there, long and thin, pale against his swarthy skin: a new scar, and one he'll wear to the end of his days.

He lets his shirt fall back into place. He would like nothing more than to go home. Go somewhere safe. He would like nothing more than to curl up with his pack and sleep for a thousand years in the warmth, the elemental comfort of their presence.

Instead, Lukas Wyrmbreaker bends to the task of cleaning the mess up. Preferably before the humans find it.



--

[Administrator] snail, welcome to In Character Room (Now)

[snail] ambush!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[snail] resist!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 4 (Botch x 2 at target 6)

[snail] (free attack +5 (3 succ, +2 botch) -- razor garrotte -- dex/melee diff 7 -2 (back attack))
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 5)

[snail] (damage str+1L +6)
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[snail] (soak)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[snail] inits!
gorehound 1 +8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4 (Failure at target 6)

[snail] gorehound 2 +8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[snail] lukas +9
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[snail] GH2 --> lukas --> GH1

[snail] GH1 declare:
3rage
Use razor garrotte as fighting chain -- attack 4 times

Lukas:
sidestep (+WP)

GH2:
fire up chainsaw and wait (and take out homeless dude while waiting)

[snail] sidestep (-1 diff totem, -1 diff mirror)
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 5) [WP]

[snail] sidestep back
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 7 (Success x 2 at target 5) [WP]

[snail] counter fucking ambush gorehound 2!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 7, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[snail] OK, guess not. same inits. new round. declares:

GH1
2 rage
1. chain grapple
2-3. tighten garrotte

lukas - 3 rage, split action 1. keeping back to wall.
1a. spur claws GH2
1b. spur claws GH1
2,3,4. biting GH2, then 1.

GH2
3 rage
1-4. chainsaw attacks

[snail] GH 2 chainsaw (dex/melee -1 accuracy, +1 diff)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7)

[snail] (damage str+3+2)
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[snail] (soak)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 8, 8, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[snail] spurclaws GH2 (dex+brawl -2 split)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6) [WP]

[snail] (damage str+5+1)
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)

[snail] GH2 soaks
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[snail] changing 1b: FINISH HIM! (bite) -3 split, +1diff.
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[snail] damage str+2+2
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 7, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[snail] soak vs auto 1 damage
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[snail] GH 1
reflexive WP to stand and fight
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[snail] GH 1 chain grapple (str+brawl)
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[snail] resist grapple
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[snail] GH2 WP to stand and fight (-5 dice)
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 4, 6 (Failure at target 6)

[snail] GH2 runs

[snail] lukas rage 1 -- finish GH 2 FFS (-2 diff back attack)
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 8 at target 3)

[snail] (damage)
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[snail] (GH2 soak)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 5, 8, 10 (Failure at target 6)

[snail] (GH2 ded)

[snail] GH1 WP check
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[snail] GH 1 rage 1 -- chain attack, flanking
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[snail] GH1 damage
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[snail] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[snail] lukas rage 2 - spur claws on GH1 (+1 diff for changing actions)
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 7)

[snail] (damage)
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[snail] GH 1 soak
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[snail] GH 1 chain attack, frontal, +2 diff from spur claws
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 10, 10 (Success x 1 at target 9)

[snail] GH 1 damage
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 6, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[snail] lukas soak
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[dice notes: at this point he is past 7 damage and must rage revive]

[snail] rage back
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8) [WP]

[snail] rage 3
bite, -5 dice (owie)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 8, 8 (Success x 1 at target 5)

[dice notes: actually shouldn't have taken -5 dice here. frenzy negates that.]

[snail] damage. HAIL KAHSEENO.
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[snail] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[snail] (new round. declares:
gorehound out of rage, splits actions:
1a. throws chain to entangle
b. runs to pick up dead buddy's chainsaw

lukas, in a frenzy:
3 rage
1a/1b, 2, 3, 4: biting)

[snail] 1a
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)

[snail] damage
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[snail] gorehound soaks
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 5, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[snail] 1b
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 5)

[snail] damage
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 8, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[snail] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[snail] gorehound attempts chain entangle
dex+ath diff 7 for throw
-2 dice damage
+2 diff spur claws
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 10 (Success x 2 at target 9) [WP]

[snail] resisted entangle roll
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[snail] GH1 1b - picks chainsaw up
lukas 2: bite through chain
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 5)

[Administrator] Yvonne Miyake, welcome to In Character Room (Now)

[Administrator] Milo, welcome to In Character Room (Now)

[snail] (hey! occupied room! *grin*)

[Administrator] Yvonne Miyake has switched to In Character Room (Night)

[Administrator] Milo has switched to In Character Room (Night)

[snail] damage vs chain
Dice Rolled:[ 15 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 9 at target 6)

[snail] chain is officially f'ing dead.
lukas 3: bite GH1
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[snail] damage vs GH1
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 7, 9, 10 (Failure at target 6)

[snail] (er -- 2 extra damage die due to back attack, bite diff)
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[snail] GH 1 soak
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[snail] lukas 4: biting GH1 already ffs
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 7 at target 3)

[snail] damage vs GH1
Dice Rolled:[ 15 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[snail] GH 1 soak
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[snail] (GH 1 ded. combat concludes!)

Friday, January 30, 2009

dominance.

[Armstrong] The ritual was complete. It was assured that it was nice to meet her, she said that the pleasure was hers. It was a given that she enjoyed the brief company, or maybe they just said these things because they were the things that were expected to say. It was ritual.

But Mrena saw no purpose in ritual without meaning. She found it insulting, and yete she indulged in these common courtesies. Maybe she intended on giving them meaning. A that point was being polite a meaningless gesture.

"... where are you staying?"

[Nessa] *Leaves*

[Nessa] (HAHAHAH! tecate rocks!)

[Matthias] "We have a place in the city. Not too far."

Matthias then moves, letting his eyes follow Nessa for a short while before taking a seat in an unoccupied chair at a comfortable conversing distance. He shrugs...

"Good enough."

He thinks for a few moments, then asks a question of his own.

"How long have you been in this city?"

[Armstrong] "The Umbroken Circle has been here for, roughly, two months now. We came in December," she said. Spoke in terms of we and not I. Because, realisitically, how much of Mrena was herself and how much was her pack?

They had been eight when they had arrived, and now they were seven. It was a familiar feeling, really. She was, again, the only theurge, and while her position as spiritual advisor to the pack was not disputed, it was pressure. It was a challenge.

"Why did you come here? What does Chicago have that you desire, or what do you desire to give to Chicago?"

[Matthias] Matthias' eyes take on a somewhat haunted look, a weary look, as he contemplates the answer to her question. Then, his deep bass rumble answers after a long moment of silent consideration.

"A fresh start."

[Armstrong] His eyes were haunted, hers were haunting. Something she had been named for in more than a spiritual sense. She looked at him, and despite that critical air, there was always a degree of curiousity. She would always, always want to know. IT was just who she was.

a pause.

"Where were you before?"

[Matthias] Matthias' haunted look leaves his face as he smiles amusedly; nonetheless, the look never entirely leaves his eyes.

"Ask Zeke."

Then, raising a curious brow, he returns the question.

"Where were you before?"

[Armstrong] It was funny, really, how much one look did, or did not say. She pushed some of her hair back out of her face; White Eyes was just too comfortable with her body, too comfortable with the company she was keeping. It was a quiet self-assurance. Mrena knew what she was, and had spent too long denying and fighting. Maybe that's where the confidence came from.

"The likelihood of Zeke telling me anything straight is slim at best," she said. Acknowledgement, yes, and then a continuation of conversation. "And I came from Boston."

[Matthias] Matthias nods, his expression returning to the stern neutral that seemed to be his regular expression. Then, after a moment's consideration, he answers her original question in part...

"Minnesota was my home."

His eyes grow distant, as the claw on the leather thong about his neck seemed all too noticeable all of a sudden. Perhaps he was lost in some silent musing, perhaps memory, perhaps not... Regardless, whatever-it-was lasts a mere moment, no longer. The steel grey eyes return to alertness all too quickly.

[Danicka Musil] Some decisions take hours to make. Most others are made in a span of seconds. They aren't even counted because they come so quickly, so easily. Caramel or Vanilla. Yes or no. Look or touch. Stay or go. And others take more time, if you have that luxury.

Danicka has a lot of luxury. Silk. Diamonds. Technology. Her apartment, the items in it. She has no apparent Garou brothers or sisters to make demands of her time and funds, her attention and energy. She lives in a gorgeous high-rise building all but made of glass, with King in the name. No one here knows what she drives, though a few have heard that right now she is not currently employed...and yet apparently is not hurting for cash.

It is a silver BMW convertible that pulls into a slanted spot at the Brotherhood. It's a woman in a black leather jacket, a knitted scarf with no fringe, and suede gloves that exits said car. At least it isn't snowing. Her straightened hair is loose, the heels on her boots bringing her up to about 5'8". She's wearing the same thing she was at the coffee shop earlier, and if she were a completely different sort of person, she might be muttering to herself as she walks towards the back door of the Brotherhood. She is not the sort of person to talk to herself. So she hunches against the wind, walks quickly, and releases a sigh of relief when she is inside the kitchen and the door is closing behind her.

[Erick Wujcik] (( Places?))
to Armstrong, Danicka Musil, Matthias, Sam Modine, Wyrmbreaker

[Matthias] ((Upstairs))

[Erick Wujcik] *A tall figure decended form the El platform a block away and headed down the street towards the Brotherhood. Glancing over his shoulder now and then, Erick shuffeled across the ice and though the snow.

He was tall, at a little over 6'5". Not huge and muscle bound, nor skinny or lanky. Just nicely porportioned tall young man.

Tonight he was dressed... DIFFERENTLY. Same ol sneakers with one strip of neon green duct tape mending a tear, but there were new black cargo pants, a navy blue sweater, and over it a brand spanking new German cammo jacket with pockets out the wazoo~! Even it's wazoo had pockets! The hood was up as he approached the pub and glanced around, sniffing the air*

[Armstrong] (brb!)

[Wyrmbreaker] "What the fuck are you doing here?"

Friendly tonight, Lukas. And in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast table. Staff table. Whatever the fuck you want to call it.

Sitting there, regardless. He has the remains of a lamb rack in front of him: nothing but bones. And a glass, empty. And a bottle of whisky, mostly empty.

His eyes are sharp but glazed: rage and inebriation, a war.

[Danicka Musil] [Willpower]

[Erick Wujcik] *Opening the front door the tall man stepped in and closed it behind him. Keeping the hood up he headed across the bar and though he slowed to look at the pastry counter, he didn't see anyone overly interesting down stairs. So he slipped though the doors and ascended. Slowing as he neared the top of the steps. Listening as he rose to the second level*

[Sam Modine] Sam Modine on the other hand doesn't have much in the way of luxury. One of the few luxury items he owns is currently in his hands. A baseball, weatherbeaten and with more than one seam coming loose is tossed nearly to the ceiling from the bed. A hand, larger than any human since prehistory catches it firmly and repeats the process. The shirtless form cranes across the bed to the small stand between his and Sampson's sleeping areas and reads the screen of his simple single piece cellular phone. He seems unhappy with the time and picks it up fully, laying back down flat. A thumb flips to the last made call, a name doubled at the top of the list then floats over the call button.

He sets the phone back down.

The Modi instead swivels about deftly, setting his feet on the floor and trotting to the door, past the half empty bottle of cheap whiskey on the nightstand that's long worked it's way through his system. By the time he makes it through the door he's simply a man again, albeit one brimming with rage under the hood of an over-large sweatshirt. He limps just slightly, the product of a calf wound, now under severe bandaging. The Modi makes his way through the shared bathroom and the common area, giving Mrena only a glance and an unspoken acknowledgement and heads down to the kitchen, looking presumably for something to eat.

[Danicka Musil] She manages not to let out a shriek, and she manages not to clap her hand over her mouth, and she manages not to jump. What Danicka cannot muster at the moment, however, is concealing the fact that she jerks, that she takes a sharp, truncated breath in through her mouth when Lukas's voice hits her. It takes less than that breath for her to go still, to keep her shoulders from staying hunched. They round down, as though she was startled and is actually relieved to see him, to see that it's just him, rather than some murderous monster coming out of the --

-- so of course it's a lie, that relaxation of her body language as she turns to look at him. Danicka unzips her coat, revealing the sweater she had on at the coffee shop. She exhales. "Looking for you," she says, somewhat breathless from the cold.

[Matthias] Matthias' eyes move to the stairwell for a moment, before returning to Mrena. Then, as Sam Modine moves through, steel gray eyes move to catch the blur of motion for just a moment before returning to the stairwell.

His hand makes a few idle seeming motions in that direction, slow enough to be dismissed as a stretch...

[Erick Wujcik] *The tall man steps out of the stairwell just in time to dodge Sam barreling though and down. A bit of a snort and shake of the head.

Pausing there, his hands rose to flip the hood on the jacket back. Each hand having an ultra dark black tattoo of a Barcode on the back and palm. Glancing around he smiled, headin' over to Matthias and Armstrong* Good evening.

*There's a bit of a bounce in his step and he seemed in a good mood*

[Wyrmbreaker] "Really now."

That's the same tone: what world do you live in?

He watches her. The kitchen is not dark, but it's not bright either. There's a light on over the stove. The exit sign glows red. And there's light filtering down from the stairs, the porthole in the free-hinged doors to the restaurant proper.

Whatever he had worn under his overcoat earlier, she did not see. What he wears now, though: a pullover, thin, ribbed, longsleeved, fitted. Dark. And his jeans: dark. And his hair: dark. And his eyes: pale, glittering, throwing back what light there is.

His arms are folded at the edge of the table, his weight leaning forward; his feet drawn up on the bar-style stool. The effect is predatory, like a raptor on a scarp, a mountain cat drawn in to pounce. Then he moves, unfolds one arm, refills his glass.

"Sam's upstairs," he says; dismissive, uninflected.

[Matthias] Matthias nods, his gaze moving to take in Barcode's new clothing. A blond brow raised curiously, before a low bass rumble asks the question upon his mind.

"Nice clothes... Go shopping?"

Matthias' head tilts curiously, giving them a second look.

[Erick Wujcik] *The tattooed hands smooth down over the new clothes and he beams* Um.... Something like that. I.... er.....
*Looking down* I do so exist on the charity and kindness of others.

You like?

*A nod of the head* Miss White eyes. Twice in one day. What will people think?

[Danicka Musil] She has many a black coat, but few black clothes. Danicka is usually seen in soft colors, about as pale as her eyes. Stark white seems to suit her; dark green is absolutely lovely. Cream makes her cheeks seem to blush. She starts to unwind the scarf from around her neck, shaking her hair off her neck and holding it in one hand. She hasn't moved towards the stairs, or away from the door, or towards the table, but she isn't looking away from Lukas.

No way. "And?"

One has to give her a little credit: she sounds confused, literally bewildered, rather than annoyed. Either she really has no idea what he means, or she's a moron. He's started to build up his opinion either way...or found some other option. "I just said I was looking for you," she says.

Now she moves, walking across the kitchen, winding around the stands in the dark til she stands at the other end of the staff table. She sets the scarf down so she can take off her gloves, slipping them into the pockets of her open jacket.

[Armstrong] She had been in her thought bubble, unable to really say much for the time being. She was, at her core, a social creature. There had to be others around, whether she was intending on interacting with them or not. Her reasons, however, were her own. There would always be some doubt as to whether or not her intentions were pure in surrounding herself with others. You never knew who could be useful. You never knew who could be a contact.

Minnesota was Matthias's home. Boston had been her's.
"Do you miss it?"

A question she had asked her packmate, once. Though, not the correct one. He had replied by not really answering, but ending it. Boston had not been Sam's home, either. And maybe, for a moment, she attempted this as a social experiment, to determine something of Fenrir. Were they all painfully honest? Were they all duty bound and driven?

Sam came by, she gave him a little smile, a half nod. He limped down the stairs and she watched him go. She looked back at her company.

[Matthias] Matthias simply shrugs at Mrena's question. Though his eyes do go distant again, remembering, as he speaks.

"The past cannot be quickened by mere desire. What was is gone. What is... Is all that remains."

Then, his eyes snap back to the present as Barcode asks his approval.

Matthias nods, then his eyes narrow warily. The low bass rumble is cautious...

"I'd like to know whose..."

Another slow hand sign, that seems a non-chalant stretch.

[Erick Wujcik] *A bit of a smile and a roll of his shoulders* Maybe I'm just that gooooood lookin'. Someone in this pack needs to be.

What are we missing or not missing? *Glancing between the two his hands dip into his pockets*

[Armstrong] And there was her answer.

She looked at Matthias and smiled a little, letting the look of satisfaction cross too innocent features for a moment. They both knew it was a lie, an accident of birth. That she was no child, nor something as pristine as she presented herself. The theurge gave a little nod, looking at those gathered.

"Don't stay up too late," she said.

[Sam Modine] The Modi emerges from the stairwell, a pillar of breeding and of Rage less restrained than one is used to seeing, even in full moons. His will is still sapped from myriad events near the week's opening but his Rage oh that's taken little time at all to replenish itself to considerable strength. The hood over his head almost completely obscures the features that mark him as only the latest in a long line of heroes from view. The considerable length of his frame strides with just a bit less effort than earlier in the day across the kitchen though still he does have a marked hobble every few steps.

It doesn't take very many of those steps before he stops dead.

One of the presences he already knew would be waiting down here. The other hits him as a familiar smell, intimately familiar it assaults his nostrils. A single hand reaches up slowly, his index and middle fingers taking the worn purple cotton between them rolling it back in the slow reveal of a long golden mane. His hair pools around the oversized hood and down about his neck, cool blues eyes turn on the both of them.

Things it would seem just got a little more interesting.

"What're you doing here?" If it isn't just the kinfolk that feels like they're being questioned there may be a reason for that.

[Matthias] Matthias laughed, a low rumbling peal, as Barcode mentioned being the good looking one in the pack. He nods, genuine mirth crossing his features.

"The past... Home."

Matthias shrugs.

"The lady is right. I should go."

[Wyrmbreaker] "And since when," Lukas says, cold, "do Shadow Lords bow to the whims of their kin?"

It's not like him to play power games like this. It's not like him to be so fucking petty, and some distant part of his mind is disgusted. Then Sam comes down the stairs. Lukas stands up, grabbing the whisky bottle in one hand, the glass in the other. Which is empty again. Had he drank that? It had been instinct, the urge to drown what he might've said otherwise --

Why don't you fuck him in the shower this time. Save Andrea the cleanup.

-- had he not.

"Sam, let's talk later." There's little indication what about. Could be the kinwoman. Could be the hunt tomorrow. Because they did have that: a fucking hunt, tomorrow, while he sat down in the kitchen getting shitfaced. On that note he starts up the stairs.

[Erick Wujcik] *Erick paused and raised a brow at Armstrong's ignoring of his presence, absently he ponders tripping her to see if she'd notice that*

GOOD EVENING MISS ARMSTRONG.

*A bright smile offered as she seemed about to go. One of the tattooed hands even came out of the pocket to wave cheekily*

[Matthias] ((Sorry folks... I'm starting to fall asleep on you here.))

[Danicka Musil] From where she is standing, Danicka can see the stairwell, but there isn't a lot of light over there. She quails. The firelight is behind Lukas, making him all the more just a dark sillhouette with glittering blue eyes, but it hits her around the edges of where Lukas's shadow falls. It makes her hair brighter, her eyes thin rings of green around wide pupils. When there are footsteps coming down the stairs she turns her head to look, quickly, feeling more than seeing.

There's no answer for Sam and no answer for Lukas's pseudo-question. Just a tension that is not quite as easily sensed as Rage, and: "Lukas, please stay."

Fear.

[Matthias] ((I'll fade Matthias here; we'll say he made his way to the door without incident.

Night everyone))

[Sam Modine] "Christ..." His brow furrows, lower lip twitches inward, outward, riding the tops of teeth. "Look, I'll leave." He jerks a thumb to the refridgerator. "I only came down for a sandwich," The large man's shoulders fall, palms turning upward and out from his body.

"I know," He's only looking at Danicka right now. Lukas, however dangerously is being ignored for now. "I'm a huge jerk and if you wanted to talk to me you'd have picked up the phone when I called." The rising crescendo of pace but not tone comes to a halt when he makes a conclusion that mirror's the statement's thesis. "I get it. I'm sorry."

At this point his palms find a hiding spot in the pouch of his shirt.

[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas doesn't even slow. He climbs the stairs to the second floor, turning sideways to let Matthias past him. He has enough courtesy for that.

His pale regard sweeps the common area as he comes up into it. He catches sight of Mrena; Erick.

"If you have healing talens," this is addressing the former, "Sam could probably use one."

[Erick Wujcik] *Erick turned and raised his brows.* I am gifted with healing touch. If your packmate requires it, I'm happy to share....

*His twice tattooed hands open in a universal motion of offering*

[Danicka Musil] One is placating, almost contrite, and she is literally taking a step back as he moves his hand to jerk at the fridge. Danicka's boot taps on the bare floor as she does so, watching him but not staring. Meanwhile, the Garou she actually came her to speak with -- the one she all but pled with to stay when she saw Sam -- has taken his whiskey and gone home, even if that home is just upstairs.

He's a huge jerk.

The woman at the table, scarf there and gloves in hand, takes a deep breath and gives him a nod. "I understand," she says, calmly enough.

[Wyrmbreaker] (folks, mindy's mouse is broken. she may be very slow.)

[Sam Modine] "Look." He offers exasperated. "Can we you know..." He leans back against the wall, grimacing and moving his foot up off the ground for a moment.

"Sorry. Can we try the talking thing again?" Lower lip is squeezed gently between teeth. "I can't possibly mess it up any worse than I did before right?" His hands reappear to wipe the hair from his face.

"If not it's cool."

[Armstrong] (I'm back on the laptop, it could go at any second)

[Wyrmbreaker] (LOL, oh man.)

[Wyrmbreaker] (well, if you don't post in 10 min, i'ma just jump order!)

[Armstrong] She had been so ready to let loose a stream of insults, derisive sweet tones and disgustingly perfect smiles to the Bone Gnawer. But then? Then, Lukas was talking and her Beta took precedence over her own desire to be... catty was not the correct term.

"Well, I'm more-than-willing to use a talen, but... Sam?" she called back, eyeing Erick for a moment. She weighed the pros and cons for a moment. "Would you like for me to help you, or him?"

One won't exhaust our resources, and he seems... eager to please.

[Danicka Musil] The way the kitchen is set up, Danicka would have to walk past the wash station and fridge to get to the alley entrance. Sam would get to her first. She might be able to skirt the staff table and go out the door to the dining room, but she knows where the front door is from there: Sam would get there first, would cut her off. And she knows better than to run. That doesn't always make anyone not run, though, the knowledge that it's going to provoke instincts better left undisturbed. The knowledge that you can't ever, really, get away.

Her other foot slides back, taps against the floor. Knowing not to run doesn't mean she doesn't keep moving out of his range. The conflict inside of her doesn't reflect on her face. Not in her eyes. Certainly not in her voice. She looks like she's shifting on her feet, the better to turn towards him, to give him her attention.

"To be honest," she says -- with some embarrassment, even -- "I don't really know what happened at the coffee shop." A little laugh.

[Wyrmbreaker] His eyes flicker to Erick, sharp and precise as a hawk's.

Only not quite so sharp, nor so precise. There's a looseness to his joints; a quickening of his pulse; a faint flush to his cheeks, all of which indicates a not-inconsiderable amount of liquor in his blood.

Not to mention, the whisky bottle in his hand. Three-quarters of the way drained. And the empty glass in his other hand, alcohol tears streaking the sides.

"Thanks," he says, polite, "but I'm going to have to decline. My packmate's Fenrir, a warrior to the bone. He won't accept it from a stranger, I think." A pause. "Lukas Wyrmbreaker. Cliath Shadow Lord Ahroun. I've seen you here before, I think -- the night the lights went out?"

[Danicka Musil] [Perception + Empathy]

[Erick Wujcik] *Erick nodded* I was at the bottom of the stairs that evening. Nice to meet ya formally. I'm Erick Wujcik. Known as Barcode... and if you won't be needin' a hand. I think I'm gonna catch up with Matt. He might buy me a chilli dog.

Nice to meet cha man.

*Stepping infront of Armstrong the 6'5" man bent and smiled to her* Good evening ma'am.

*There was no way she didn't see him. A nod and he headed for the stairs. Waving one hand, the dark black barcode tattoo standing out aginst his pale skin* Take it easy folks.

[Wyrmbreaker] "Matt's your packmate?" -- a quick question, as Barcode is moving to leave.

[Armstrong] Her beta had spoken, and with that the theurge continued on her way to her room to retrieve whatever wares she had. Mrena had put them together, grouped and ordered and categorized for reference purposes and ease of finding things. But?

The other theurge stepped infront of her. And her face was nothing more than innocence and too perfect smiles. All teeth, little mirth.

With that, the theurge didn't move. Let Erick make his way where it need be and went off to retrieve whatever talen she had been looking for to help her packmate out.

[Erick Wujcik] *Looking over his shoulder to Wyrmbreaker* One of them. Yeah. I'm the pretty one. He breaks shit. You know how it goes.

[Wyrmbreaker] The corner of Lukas' mouth tilts up -- a sort of lackluster smile, all told. The other was leaving; truth be told, Lukas didn't really want the company anyway. "See you, Barcode."

You're leaving too? This, to Mrena as he takes up his usual place on the sectional, setting his bottle and his glass down on the coffee table before him.

[Erick Wujcik] *A warm smile, no teeth, that could be mistaken for aggression or challenge, was offered and he waved again* Later.

*Then he was down the stairs. Entering the kitchen he looked to Sam and Danicka. Paused for a second, then waved and headed on out.

NOT. HIS. BUSINESS. And that looked like a seirous conversation*

[Sam Modine] "It's okay." His nose prickles up slightly, his voice hangs a little, almost imperceptibly on the last syllable. It's so quick even her ears, long trained for it can pick it up as something similar to fear, but well removed. A distant emotional cousin, perhaps. Guilt.

"Listen." He begins. "I'm not looking to settle down." His head turns on the wall so he's looking at her again. "If that's what you're worried about." Hands settle again into the pouch in front of him, asi if he were suddenly cold. "If that's what you're worried about." Turn again, speaking almost exclusively to the wall. "I do like being around you though. So if we could you know..." He'd started speaking without a true end in mind to the statement and he lets it stay that way, perhaps hoping she'll pick up the cue and help pick up some of the dropped words.

[Sam Modine] ((erg. C&P error when I was reorganizing that. Ignore the repeat phrase))

[Danicka Musil] At her side, hidden in the dark and the shadows, her hands curls into a fist, rounded and polished fingernails digging into her palm. She listens, better than one might think she would considering how much of a pooch screw this became.

She'll consider the irony of the moniker later.

"I'm not worried," she says mildly, sounding almost arch with amusement. Her head shakes, straightened hair shifting across her shoulders and the back of her leather coat. "I think...it might just be best if we spent some time apart." Her eyebrows lift apologetically. "I shouldn't have tried to talk to you about this today, knowing you'd gotten hurt."

[Armstrong] No, she started. He could hear her rummaging through drawers before one finally shut. The rustle of papers, then, and the movement of pillows. I just have to find that talen before I forget.

There was a pause, the theurge started her return, sketchbook in hand and messenger bag tucked over one shoulder and under an arm. Conserving resources. Rapture... how do you think tomorrow will go? "What are you drinking?"

Two conversations, but her eyes had traveled to the coffee table before they had traveled back to Lukas.

[Wyrmbreaker] It can wait. The talen. He's busy right now.

"Royal Lochnagar." Reminded, he refills his glass; then he holds it up to her, the lamplight resonant through the amber liquid. "Try it."

It's scotch whisky, strong but mellow, with a distinctive earthy aftertaste. He watches her drink, smirks if she coughs; takes the glass back and drains whatever remains.

It should be fine, as long as Sam's in good shape and focused on what we need to do. A pause. I met the Fianna Theurge today. Sebastian. I told him about the expedition. He might be along.

[Sam Modine] "I get hurt a lot." He shrugs and moves his foot on the wall again. "It's the job."

He swallows. "Time apart's fine," He laughs out loud, almost deliriously. Uncontrollably. "I just want to know if I call you next week or next month," the irony that two are the same probably won't ever hit him. "That you're going to pick up." Samuel Modine is few things, and that's fine by him. It's a fact that keeps things simple, uncomplicated, framed into a pragmatic perspective. One of those few things is earnest. He goes out of his way quietly to be honest, to be honorable. She'd never believe half an hour ago he was cursing himself quietly and tossing a baseball at the ceiling for his own ethical slip earlier in the day.

"You might not've noticed that outside of them," his hands inside the pocket hop toward the ceiling to emphasize his meaning. "I don't get to socialize much. I can't really." People run, the curse they call it. But to someone like Sam, brought up away from Caerns and Garou and the trappings of the supernatural a human community is something not easily given up. "Hell," His cheeks flush red and his incisor grinds against his bottom teeth, scratching his jaw back and forth. "Until this week not one of them had ever even seen me on a date."

[Armstrong] She took a position nearby on the couch; Lukas had his space, but she had hers and wasn't sitting on the floor.

Mrena was comfortable. She took the glass, inspecting the color like only an artist would. The lady took a drink of it, letting it stay in her mouth for a moment. She swallowed and then handed it back; his smirk would be shelved for another time. Mrena didn't cough; and she did hand it back. Either she had developed a taste for whiskey or she had developed a tollerence for things that should (and would, in a few glasses) knock her square on her ass. "Where'd you get it?"

The name sounds familiar, she said. Business came and went, and she seemed to have no problem holding both conversations at once. If he may be along, we could use another theurge. If he's not, fine either way. What were your impressions of him?

[Danicka Musil] [Willpower // +2 (Flaw)]

[Wyrmbreaker] "This bottle?" Wyrmbreaker looks at the emptied glass; he's lost track of how many he's had. That's the thing about rage. No matter what you feed it, it burns right through it sooner or later: like a chemical fire, unquenchable. You can only wait for it to burn itself out. "Andrea's bar.

"My father got me my first bottle, though. When I passed my Rite of Passage." A tick of silence. "That's the last time I saw my folks, come to think of it."

I haven't formed any. The dual conversation continues. We were in a cafe. Lots of humans around. We had to speak in riddles, and he didn't stay long. He didn't piss me off, if that's what you mean.

[Wyrmbreaker] -- speaking, Lukas stretches out lengthwise along the couch. Pillows his head on the arm; kicks his shoes off and stretches his feet out to the far end.

[Danicka Musil] Danicka takes a deep, careful breath, and lets it out slowly. Sam can't know, but the list of things she wouldn't believe is far shorter than the list of things she's willing to consider. Sam can't know a lot. Like why she's taking that deep breath, why her fingernails are digging all the harder into her palm now as she counts internally to ten. This is happening before he gets to You might not've noticed, but it has to happen again when he goes on.

"Well, I suppose it's understandable," she says patiently, slowly, to all of that. "...But as for calling me, how about we just see what happens? I don't think this will be the last time we see each other. Maybe just...let it be for now?"

Let me be?

She's already nodding as she says this, a subtle social cue to agree with her.

[cricket] (*peers* is everyone here going to bed in minutes?)
to Armstrong, Danicka Musil, first aid kit, Sam Modine, Wyrmbreaker

[Sam Modine] "Sure." He frowns when he says it but the tone, the delivery is all resignation. "I'm should go upstairs." His lips press together and he rolls his head to look at her again, his face almost pressing on the wall behind him. "And unless you brought that change of clothes maybe you ought to do the same."

His body raises off the wall and again his foot hits the floor, some of his weight suddenly balanced on it. "Sonofa-" it's screamed but not physically. All Danicka can discern is a sharp intake of breath and the young man's face pulling inward as though he's just eaten a lemon whole. He manages though after a few seconds to right himself, even bear himself better than he'd managed walking out on her earlier.

"We cool?"

[Wyrmbreaker] (i got about an hour left in me :D)

[Sam Modine] "Sure." He frowns when he says it but the tone, the delivery is all resignation. "I'm should go upstairs." His lips press together and he rolls his head to look at her again, his face almost pressing on the wall behind him. "And unless you brought that change of clothes I'm assuming you aren't doing the same."

His body raises off the wall and again his foot hits the floor, some of his weight suddenly balanced on it. "Sonofa-" it's screamed but not physically. All Danicka can discern is a sharp intake of breath and the young man's face pulling inward as though he's just eaten a lemon whole. He manages though after a few seconds to right himself, even bear himself better than he'd managed walking out on her earlier.

"We cool?"

[Armstrong] (I've got an hour and a half left!)

[Sam Modine] ((the second, not the first. minor correction))

[Armstrong] It was easy to lose track. One became another and became another. Whiskey, women, battles, tactics, days. It was amazing how so many of these things could blend together. At first, one keeps track. By the end of a long, hard road (in the case of an Ahroun, maybe a few years) they all blended together. You remembered the ones that were important. The first bottle, the third blonde- the one that damned near tore your arm off. You remembered the important ones.

A wretched few remembered them all. They were to be revered, but never envied. We digress.

"Has it been that long?" she asked. Though, the real question came shortly thereafter. "What are they like?"

They. His folks. What were they like? Did he know what sort of vicarious pleasure she took in learning about other people's families? The pack had to have known. at first she had watched Gabriella and Katherine and Edward interact with a sort of quiet fascination. Had caught observed Sampson and his wives. Had tried desperately to fight the urge to listen to half conversations her packmates had with distant relatives. But, we ramble.

that's better than others have done, should be an interesting place to prove his metal should we see him tomorrow. Probably for the best that it was brief should there have been so many humans.

[Danicka Musil] A couple of days ago she sat with someone in deep distress, so tormented he could not speak, and she had held his hand and then she had held him, while heavy tears poured onto her skin through her tank top. She had left him with a blanket, a glass of water. For nine years she watched over a child, from elementary school until the brink of adulthood. She was there in the morning. She was there at night. She stroked hair, she sang songs. She guided, she taught, she was gentle and warm and is still beloved. Before Sam fell asleep she touched his hair and pushed a sweat-dampened lock off his forehead, and earlier today and just a few minutes ago she expressed concern for the fact that he's injured.

It would be a mistake to think that she lives her life like this, that the welfare of others is her pulse and air rather than the less-vital (perhaps) bread and butter. It would also be a mistake to think that she is not somewhat nurturing, that she doesn't care. Then again, with how much she gives (with supple confusions) and yet how little that is in comparison to how much is withheld, how could someone like Sam ever begin to know that a moment ago she was more likely to slap his face, grab his jaw, and snap at him than she was to reach out and give him a comforting embrace?

She touched his hair. She ran her thumb over his cheek.

Danicka smiles slightly when he mentions a change of clothes. It's a reference to something she said earlier when they had coffee; she just gives a small huff of laughter and an accepting nod. And when he almost swears she tenses, but his attention is on his leg rather than her for at least a spare second. Long enough for her to breathe, to calm. One might think she'd wince for him, grimace in shared pain, run over and help him walk up, but she doesn't. She has her moment and she takes it to relax...enough that when she nods in response to his question, it's believable.

"Sure."

[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas laughs under his breath -- there hasn't been a lot of true humor in him lately, and this is no exception. "It's not so tragic as I made it sound. I talk to them all the time on the phone. I write letters. It's just the face-to-face that's become rare. I don't go to New York often; when I do there's a reason. And there's never any time."

Strange, that she's asking him what his parents are like now. Years after they've met. Years after they've been bound together, packmates, sharing blood and spirit, linked by mind itself. Strange that even now, he hesitates for a second.

Then: "They're good people. Normal. They're kin. They raised my sister well; I suppose I turned out all right too. My mother is soft-spoken, but she's stronger than she looks. She's an excellent pianist. My father used to have quite the temper. I remember getting thrashed by him once, when he caught me trying to cut a chunk of my sister's hair off. I deserved it. He's more settled now, older. He's very well-educated. Loves books. He's fond of his whisky too, but he only ever nurses it, just a little every night. Not like me."

A wry twist of his mouth at the end. And he tips his head back to set the glass down, carefully, on the endtable at his head. No more. It was enough, for now.

As for his parents: it was only a slice of facts, a smattering of details that didn't quite add up to a life. Not a history; not even a portrait. But that's all he's willing to give.

It's growing harder for him to keep two running tracks of conversation. The other one, the mental one, is abandoned -- only a sense of acquiescence rounding out his end of it. Anyway, Sam was coming upstairs now. Lukas can sense it almost before he hears the footsteps on the stairs. And this draws him alert again, turns his head toward where the stairs opened up to the second story common area.

"I need to talk to Sam," he says, quiet. "I wouldn't keep you from it, but -- perhaps it's best between the two of us, for now. It won't take long."

[Sam Modine] "Good." His smile is dimmed significantly from what she's used to, and bounds better still that what most ever get. But it's there closed lipped and just a little bit dopey. "Thanks." He turns his back on her, trusting she'll let herself out. Her, the Shadow Lord. Three weeks ago that was a ridiculous notion. Before he'd fallen asleep to one moving a lock of hair out from in front of his face, smiling at him in way he wasn't entirely sure possible.

It might not have bought love. But as is often the case it's the tiniest acts of human kindness that are taken in trade for our affections and that much-

she's earned that much.

He heads up the stairs, one leg lifted stiffly up each with the assistance of the banister. By the time he reaches the top his face can't hide the bestial vision of pain it wants to become. His teeth are bared, and he's nearly spitting, nostrils flaring outward as he heaves out his exhalations.

[Wyrmbreaker] (i have to sleep in 30, so ... let's shorten these posts up, folks! 30mps mode!)

[Armstrong] It was odd that she was asking now. One would think that this was the sort of thing that one would ask in the beginning. When things were new and shiny and when it made sense to ask these sorts of questions. "You don't wear tragedy well," she said.

Seemed to be reference to his first statement. He called his family good people. Called them normal people, kin.

He needed to take a moment with Sam. Mrena stood up and straightened herself out. "I need to take a shower anyway, take your time."

[Katherine Bellamonte] (oops, sorry. got caught up elsewhere. I'll stay out of this one for ease of people's sleepin' soon. :P )

[Wyrmbreaker] "You look like shit," Lukas comments, not terribly sympathetic perhaps, but at least not mockingly. "She gone?" Danicka, he means.

He gets up as Sam gets to the top of the stairs, cleaving to Sam's weak side. There's no fuss, no awkwardness at all in the way he ducks under Sam's arm and throws his own around the Get's ribcage. It seems only natural for him to lend the other some of his own strength and balance.

[Sam Modine] "You should see the other guy." He manages to grunt. "I should've been here all day healing." The second is offered in passing, a regret of his own used against him like a knife of his own wielding. A pause. "Yeah, why?"

His packmate gets a look as he's walking over. It's confused and in no part pleasant.

He allows Lukas to help him along most of the way into the common area eventually shooing him away with a few clipped words, "I can't really have you tending to my weakness." He turns and sets himself down into a chair. The cushions expelling dust from cavities untouched in years. "I appreciate the thought though."

[Armstrong] ((unless you guys want a lovely description of Mrena in the shower, I say skip me))
to Danicka Musil, Katherine Bellamonte, Sam Modine, Wyrmbreaker

[Danicka Musil] [I would like to belatedly note that -I- would like a lovely description of Mrena in the shower. She's hot.]
to Armstrong, Katherine Bellamonte, Sam Modine, Wyrmbreaker

[Wyrmbreaker] Yeah why: "So we can talk."

When Sam decides he can move on his own, Lukas lets him go. The modi settles himself on a chair that might possibly be older than either of them. Lukas takes up his previous location on the couch, though he doesn't sprawl lengthwise.

Serious now, he watches Sam for a moment. A Garou's metabolism is like a raging wildfire. The last haze of inebriation is rapidly clearing away, peeled back like mist before the sun. Lukas' eyes are sharp and clear, pale as ice; his expression grave.

There's no preamble at all, in the end. He just gets into it.

"I know what you did in the cafe today," he says, absolute, no room for denial. "Sam, I love you like a brother. But if you dishonor my kin again like that -- if you dishonor yourself again like that, I will not forgive you. I will not be able to.

"We're a pack of honor. We follow a totem of respect. You should have known better."

[Sam Modine] "Lukas." He starts. His own Rage only slightly dimmer than the werewolf across from him ow, but not nearly as controlled. It has, after all been a very, very long week. "You know what I did when I got home?" He lets the question hang, looking away, his angry grin like a few dozen ivory knives at this point. "I drank half a plastic bottle of whiskey." He taps each of his fingers against his thumb as if counting. "Took me maybe four - five drinks."

He turns his gaze to the other man, his face all anger and frustration between the golden locks that sway to partially cover it. "You think I'm proud of what I did? Think I don't hate myself right about now?"

"The Talons of fucking Horus is the tip of the giant iceburg of things I have to live up to. So please," This Fenrir isn't particularly prone to crude language. He's only uttered the word fuck a handful of times since they'd arrived in the city, once in verbal defense of one of their own kinfolk and a few others in the early hours of the morning in response to cries in a language he couldn't understand except for it's context. Those too, he might've changed given a little more control in the situation. The way he spits the obscenity out now only further underscores his point.

"Don't remind me of how badly I fucked up."

[Wyrmbreaker] "It's my duty to remind you," Lukas replies, flatly, "and it was your duty to own up to your own mistakes and stand for judgment. I should not have had to order you to come before me in the first place."

A beat. Then Lukas raises his chin a slight degree.

"I forgo retribution this time. When we're done here, go and see what Katherine wants you to do to set things right."

Sam might think he's dismissed -- but then Lukas continues. "There's one more thing."

And now the Ahroun shifts, his eyes briefly leaving Sam to skim over the bottle, the glass. Seems the Circle was doing well for whiskey and whisky these days. Sam's not the only one trying to test the limits of his Garou liver. A moment passes. Steady, then, Lukas' eyes return to Sam.

"I find myself -- drawn to Danicka. I did not intend it to happen. I'm not proud of it. But it's the truth, and I won't try to deny it to you." The Ahroun sits with his feet flat on the floor, hands relaxed on his thighs. One of them closes now, slowly, the fingers drawing in, opening again. "The fact is, you asked my permission to court her" -- one wonders if it makes it easier for him to stay detached, stay focused, when he uses archaic, stiff language -- "and I gave it. So long as she shows herself willing to accept your advances, I will not interfere.

"You have my word on that."

[Sam Modine] As the other full moon speaks Sam's face does most of the talking for him, through several shifting stages. Each tells a simplistic version of exactly how he's feeling at that particular moment.

No it's really not.
You do?
Does it really seem that important?

After that though, before Sam can begin to even think of arguing the point Lukas moves on. And there's no nuance to this particular expression. No room for error in judgement. Sam's pissed. His hands fleax hard around the arms of the chair he's sitting in, hard enough the wood beneath his hands creaks with the stress. "You," Slow. His voice wound like cable on high tension line. He keeps his breath steady, his words even. All of them have ways of excersizing control, this is one of the.

"are so lucky I don't get up out of this chair." His meaning is absolute, clear. It may never have been turned upon him but Lukas has seen Sam tear lesser men apart, perhaps already heard about him shoving one hand through a crinos dancer and promptly biting the head from another earlier in the week. "I don't care if you expected it to happen or not. And whatever she and I do is between she and I, you had your chance to say no, you can live with it." He's angry now and on a complete tirade now, all but pointing fingers. "Or isn't it enough that you're spending the night with out hostess you've got to play the field?"

[Wyrmbreaker] (inits!)

[Sam Modine] 7+

[Wyrmbreaker] (+8)

[Wyrmbreaker] (okay, i've got higher base inits, so it's your declare, man)

[Sam Modine] split pool

-2 dodge
1 wp - resist pain

[Sam Modine] (unless the gift is a reflexive)

[Wyrmbreaker] (it's reflexive man)

[Sam Modine] (kay so 1 wp resist pain

and full dodge

[Wyrmbreaker] (just the dodge then?

also: is he gonna try to take the totem boon? lukas will preempt him if he tries; otherwise he'll leave it be.)

[Sam Modine] (nope. he wouldn't take it to fight one of his own. kind of taboo with the spirit of the ban)

[Sam Modine] yeah, no rage actions

[Wyrmbreaker] (okay, declaration:
1 rage to hispo
3 rage for extra actions
splitting first one
1a Spur Claws (WP)
1b bite
2-3-4 bites

stop at incap and all, but yeah, sorry man: ANGRY LUKAS.)

[Sam Modine] (demmit. I guess i'll burn a reflexive rage too to get to hispo.)

[Wyrmbreaker] (spur claws. -2 for split. +WP.)

[Wyrmbreaker] (damage str+1(claw)+3(hispo)+3(succ))

[Wyrmbreaker] (shit... dodge. hang on.)

[Sam Modine] dodge 6 dex 3 dodge = 9

[Wyrmbreaker] (nice dodge! bite 1b, -3 for split)

[Wyrmbreaker] (damage str+2(bite)+3(hispo)+1(succ))

[Sam Modine] soak!

[Wyrmbreaker] bite 2.

[Wyrmbreaker] (damage +5succ)

[Sam Modine] soak!

[Sam Modine] soak!

[Sam Modine] wtf!

[Wyrmbreaker] (that was bizarre. same results!)

[Sam Modine] ded though.

[Wyrmbreaker] (nah, stopping at incap. come on, it's his packmate. back IC!)

[Wyrmbreaker] One second Lukas sits squared and at ease on the couch.

The next .... Lukas doesn't exist anymore. It's Wyrmbreaker instead, nothing but black fur and blazing eyes so pale they were nearly colorless. The Ahroun lunges at his packmate with a short, sharp snarl. His hindpaws rake into the cushions, splitting the fabric, padding boiling out. By then Wyrmbreaker has barreled into Mjollnir's Heart, and teeth are meeting flesh.

The fight is brief and vicious, and leaves Mjollnir's Heart in far worse shape than before.

Afterward, Wyrmbreaker's teeth remain locked on the Fenrir's throat for a second or three. It had happened so fast that his body is only now catching up; like a 100m runner, he's only now beginning to pant. There's a low growl still vibrating in his chest, forced thrumming out on every breath. He pins his packmate for a few seconds, throating him, long enough to make a point.

Dominance. Wyrmbreaker is the Beta, the higher ranked wolf in this pack.

Because that's the point here. Not girls, not kin, not philodox punishments, not permissions sought or not. All that, in the end, is incidental; symptoms of the root. It was the threat, the perceived challenge, that Wyrmbreaker responded to.

--

Slowly his heavy jaws unlock. Moving on all fours now, his hackles up all along the length of his spine, the black monstrosity backs away from the grey. Slaver runs from his jaws, red: it splatters onto the floor. He shakes himself like a dog coming out of water, the thick black pelt moving a second after the skin beneath, showing the duller, downier hairs of the inner coat in flashes and sweeps. He shakes, and shaking, slips his skin, reverts to homid form.

Lukas wipes his bloody mouth. There's blood everywhere: on him, on Sam, on the floor, on the furniture. He looks nothing close to human now, but there's no doubt of this: he's well in control of himself.

"I'll send Mrena out. Get yourself to Katherine for judgment." A pause. "That's an order, Mjollnir."

[Sam Modine] The words stupid pompous drunk are about to come out of the injured Modi's mouth when his packmate is upon him.

The packmate he'd just told was lucky he was such as it prevented what violence would other wise have followed. Perhaps Sam is astonished but the best he manages is to shed the human form and get out of the way of the first blow cleanly. He though underestimated the lengths this would go, merely watching in a mixture of disappointment, disgust and abject horror that this might even be happening.

Now he is a man again, albeit one naked and bleeding profusely, much of what formerly served as organs and muscle fallen about him on the floor.

[Armstrong] She had just taken a shower.

Mrena came out of the bathroom and had started to head off to her room to change clothes, but had stopped by the common room instead due to the over-whelming smell of blood. Lukas was a mess. Sam was a mess, but a different kind of mess. Mrena looked at her standing packmate (or rather, the one capable of standing) and offered him the shirt she had discarded in favor of a towel.

"... I'm not sure if this constitutes as a discussion going well or not."

She looked at the scene again, starting to make her way to her room to get whatever it was she needed. The theurge inhaled slowly, through her nose, taking in the scents and emotions and whatever it was that she could in this form, and then exhaled one strong, even breath. There was no contempt in what she had said; just a statement of fact. Incredibly even tone.

[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas catches the shirt out of midair. Curiously, the blood, the bits of flesh and fur stuck to his face and his arms, under his fingernails: these things are all the more grotesque when he stands in his homid form, in his undershirt and his underpants.

The pullover is in shreds. One sleeve did not tear completely, and hangs off his arm. The pants are in pieces on the floor, soaking up blood.

"I said what I needed to say," he replies. "Whether he listened or not, and whether he likes it or not, we are both bound by it now."

The Ahroun wipes his face off on Mrena's shirt, spits once or twice. The aftereffects of his rage is still jangling in the air, but for him at least, the release had been a good thing. He's less tense now, his mood not so dark. He does not seem to have taken it personally, any of it -- there's no rancor in him, even against the disrespect that had precipitated this violence.

As far as Lukas is concerned, these things have to happen. They are werewolves, and they settle their rank through aggression and violence. There's no discussion amongst wolves, no votes. This is not a democracy.

"When he wakes up," Lukas adds, wadding the bloodied shirt up and dropping it on the floor with the rest of the mess, "tell him he needs to report to Katherine. And don't heal him completely. Leave him something to think about. We'll patch him up before the battle."

[Armstrong] She had come back a few moments later, clothed in something that she would no doubt get disgusting in the wash. That she would, no doubt, get filthy while she helped clean up the mess in the common room. There was no frustration, no irritation, none of that.

Well, maybe a little irritation.
"I just took a shower," and it was the only thing that she could really say about that. She would, more than likely, end up taking yet another shower.

Her approach to Sam was a brief and focused one. Mrena was not Katerina, but she was thorough. She knew that this was an area where she was lacking, and thus made up for such by paying close attention and making sure that she left no loose ends. Nothing untied, nothing forgotten, every organ back where it needed to be. But, if nothing more, White Eyes followed orders. They would patch him up before the battle, nothing was healed completely. Just enough that was reasonable.

Besides, gave her time to replenish her resources.

"Alright," she had said. "Water should still be warm if you need it."

[Wyrmbreaker] "Yeah." He needs a shower. In fact he's already heading that way, tracking blood in dark smears and blotches. "I'll be in my room if you need me."

(craptastic post! thanks for the play folks! crashing now!)

[Danicka Musil] [Definitely thanks for the play. And the post-play entertainment.]

[Armstrong] (good night loves! See thee anon and thank you again!)

[Sam Modine] (going to bed)

Thursday, January 29, 2009

dishonor.

[Sam Modine] When Sam's voice had come over the phone it was recognizable as his but only just barely. There's been a gravely tone, a bass in it that he never normally possessed. Perhaps she knew the reason, and perhaps she's unfamiliar with the more obscure forms her shifting cousins take.

He'd been affable though, and had asked if they could get together for a few hours sometime. She'd relented to the advance and that led them here. It's not quite the same as the downtown place where they'd made their first date. The differences are easy to spot, the prices here are lower, the lighting is a little worse, the furnishings are simpler and until spring a small sign near the counter reads there will be no wireless internet access. But there is good coffee. Sam Modine sips at one, black from a white styrofoam cup. Even at the lunch hour a place like this has few sit-in customers, mostly it's just dock workers coming in for a cup on their fifteen minutes an hour and rushing back out to the heavy lifting and biting cold. So it is, too that he's got the place to himself.

There are a few different things to note about Sam today, his jacket and a hooded sweatshirt both hang on the back of the chair he's sitting in and in just a light grey t-shirt the bulges of multiple large bandages are visible. Every few minutes he can be caught rubbing a purple black, crescent shaped bruise that's just visible along his neck and clavicle. If she knows as much she'll see this as the first part of a well healed laceration, and a deep one. A similar bandaged bulge is visible under his leans on the rear of his right calf, which upon closer examination may look as though it's been mangled to hell and back but one can't truly tell with his legs covered.

The other thing though, and the one impressed on her is what he didn't come in here with. That fire, while not gone is dimmed by half it's intensity. If it were a blast furnace before it may now only be a simple winter's hearth. No wonder then, that in his battered form he finds it so easy to smile.

It's that-
or the company.

[Danicka Musil] That was one thing Danicka didn't talk about at dinner, or over drinks most certainly. He doesn't know her favorite color or her favorite book or where she went to school; he doesn't know about her family, her Garou relatives, her familiarity with all things precious or private to their kind. Maybe it's occurred to him over the past few days how very little he learned about her on that date, or maybe all he has been thinking has been tinged at turns with bloody wounds and silk under his hands.

On Tuesday he'd woken up in a room not his own, in a bed too narrow for two people to really sleep comfortably together anyway, without a trace of the woman he'd first gone to that bed with. No purse or coat lying on the desk, hinting that she was just in the bathroom or sitting in the common room. No earring dropped to the floor. And, though he might not have been expecting one, no note. The only thing he had left of her were hints of her scent, on the sheets and on his own skin. The bed was not warm except where he laid on it; she had been gone for some time.

Though when he called, she sounded pleased to hear from him, and does not comment on his voice. She is the one who suggests coffee when he says they should get together. She is the one who agrees to come meet him closer to the Brotherhood than to her apartment, and that's her, the one in the dark jeans and the cream-colored sweater, walking over to where he's waiting and giving him a small wave before going to the counter to get her coffee. In only a matter of minutes, she's sitting down across from him, her hair straightened.

"How have you been?" she asks, still fresh from the cold, her cheeks pink.

[Sam Modine] He stops running at his neck when she approaches from the counter, setting his palm evenly down on the table. "Better now." He replies. He takes a sip of his coffee as an excuse to just be quiet and admire her for a few seconds.

You've got to spend some time love

"I'm glad you could get all the way over here." He offers naught but a warm smile, grateful, genuinely. "I can't walk that well right now." The Fenrir mentions it as though he's suffering from a simple muscle spasm rather than having half of his calf ripped away in the teeth of a sickly dire wolf not a night before last. "How about you?" Sam counters. "How've you been?" He doesn't bring up that she was gone when he'd awoke, that he'd been puzzled at first, then a bit hurt before he'd rationalized things into a perspective amid memories of body heat and friction. No, he just makes conversation, she's here after all, isn't she?

Gotta spend some time with me

[Danicka Musil] "It's no trouble," she assures him, crossing one leg over the other under the table. She's not in a skirt; that was one thing Sam may very well never have noticed, but Danicka only ever crossed her legs at the ankle when she was in that green dress, ladylike. Modest. Considering how the night had ended, it might seem incongruent.

But she's in jeans today, well-fitted to her legs and dark enough to be new, or cared for more than most people care for their dungarees. Her eyes are as green as ever, the pupils widening to adjust to the dimmer lighting in here after being outside. Not that it's terribly bright outside: the sun is covered by clouds, lonely and missing the world as much as the world misses it. She shrugs out of the leather coat she's wearing, letting it drape over the back of the chair she's chosen, and then she tips her head, her smile faltering.

"What happened?" she asks, with immediate concern.

[Sam Modine] "Katherine and I ran into some trouble in the park." He brethes through his nose for just a moment, his head lightly shaking off an image. "Nothing I couldn't handle, though." A weak attempt at a smile slowly turns into a genuine one albeit not a shining example of openness. He adds though after a second.

I know that you'll find love

"Do me a favor and don't walk that way alone after dark." This, she'll have picked up by now is the way he deals with her. It's not conventional in the sense that he doesn't demand, doesn't force. He asks her to do him a favor, he takes from her when she gives permission. He seems to, in her limited experience at least, dote upon her.

I will possess your heart...

Regardless though Sam doesn't dwell overlong on the injury, simply brushing it off by moving along to the next thing. "You left early the other night," his grin goes wry for a second, twisting up one side of his face, "you missed one of Miss Locke's better breakfast performances."

[Danicka Musil] Do me a favor.

Pretend it's your choice.

Danicka's eyes don't flash wide open at the mention of 'trouble'. She knows what Katherine is and she sure as hell knows what Sam is, and 'trouble' in the park could mean anything. He was injured; that's implied if not explicitly stated. Danicka doesn't gasp, or reach over the table to grab his hand. There is no handkerchief waving, no token tied to his arm, and she does not cover her mouth in horror to guess that he's been wounded. That does not mean she is completely detached: her brow is furrowed, her mouth pulling slightly with a look of concern and acceptance mingled.

He dotes on her. She is kind to him. It is not the same. Danicka just lifts her brows slightly. "I don't walk many places alone after dark," she informs him, with a tone of reassurance more than dismissal. I won't, she may as well have said.

And then he finally goes back to it: the other night. The fact that she was there for perhaps an hour and a half before she slipped out of the Brotherhood, leaving him and not taking breakfast. Danicka laughs lightly and lifts her coffee to blow on the surface. "I didn't exactly bring a change of clothes, Sam. Might have looked a little odd, showing up to breakfast in a dress and last night's makeup."

[Sam Modine] "Next to my hair at ten a-m?" He chuckles. "I doubt anybody would have been the wiser."

He gives half a shrug, again letting loose on a thread of conversation. He sips at his coffee a little more, he's been here just long enough not to be retaining the cold from out of doors anymore and so the drink's warmth is merely a simple pleasure rather than a toll in the arsenal against the elements. It doesn't seem like he's quite so nervous as normal today he isn't falling on his words, isn't afraid to let it be quiet between them for just a second. The rest is the same, he didn't suddenly become cocky overnight, simply more assured than before. He doesn't speak for a time, giving her the opportunity if she'd like it.

After all. It had worked well enough before.

[Danicka Musil] He does have hair sort of like straw. This is how Martin had described it, in fact, when she was slipping into her heels before going downstairs. The Don't wait up had been a joke; he wouldn't have. The Silver Fang Kinsman had launched into a rendition of a song from The Wizard of Oz as she was getting her coat on, and yelled Wrap it up, Musil! behind her as the front door opened. The entire floor would have heard that shout as she left to go on her date, if the walls were thinner. As it is, only their immediate neighbor Charles Cravey had heard it.

But that has nothing to do with anything: Danicka can imagine, and is in fact imagining at the moment, what someone with hair like Sam's would look like in the morning. Sticking up everywhere, matted on one side, a cowlick over his forehead...she can see it clearly because his hair had been halfway there when she left him on Tuesday morning. He wouldn't know, but she did not pause to brush a lock off of his brow in the manner that she did when he was lying on his side with her, his hand slowly rubbing the outside of her thigh and hip, his breaths still coming fast after holding himself up over her.

That had been somewhat tender, that push of hair off his face, but she had not done it again. Nor had she kissed his cheek before slipping out the door and closing it quietly behind her. He doesn't know. All he remembers is that she was there when he fell asleep, on his side because of the thinness of the bed, and she was still facing him. That was the last thing he would recall, looking back, is Danicka smiling drowsily at him. Then waking up, and that side of the bed being cold.

"If I were all that worried about people knowing we slept together," she says, sipping her cooling coffee, "I wouldn't have gone to the Brotherhood with you, of all places." Her smile is somewhat wry as she sets the cup down again, looking up and finding that meeting his eyes isn't quite as hard as it was on Monday night. Fancy that.

[Sam Modine] "I was hoping,"

Sam begins speaking, holding her green eyes effortlessly with his own, noting the way her shoulders didn't tense when he did. It's earnest his tone, hopeful. "You'd be up for a repeat performance." He stops himself short, realizing his mistake. "I mean a second date, not necessarily the sex." He's not speaking loudly enough that the flighty looking college aged woman behind the counter turns her head when he says it, but it's close enough to draw a sort of 'oops' expression across his face. It's easy to see how given different circumstances this could have been a completely different person. The underlying personality is still there if not covered up by years of relentless training and more on that of living with the brother, the sister and their pack.

"Not," he appends. "That i'd be at all against it." His own ice blue orbs for just a moment reflect the same way they had at the beginning of the week. Wanton. But this time the man's passions outweigh the beast's. "Anyway, I was thinking maybe just a quiet night, you pick the place." The question is eveloped with humor and slid across the table. In the same metaphor she'll cross off one of three crayon boxes and send it back.

[Danicka Musil] There's always going to be tension. As burned-out as he can be, as weak, as wounded, as close to death and therefore as close to his mortality as he can ever come, he is still Garou. There is no removing that boundary, even with all the poetic staples and songs about how Kin and Garou are meant to be together: a werewolf parent cannot be near their children without making them run for cover, convinced that Mommy or Daddy is going to hurt them even when they have never laid a hand on the little one. Even if they bore them.

Sam is never going to stop being a Fenrir, never stop being a Modi. His Rage will only grow as he gets older, the battle will only harden him more and begin to scar him over time. He will not get easier to be around, will not become gentler or calmer with age. More than likely he will die years before the prospect of losing the wolf is even a dim shadow on the horizon. This may or may not be something Danicka already knows, but she seems to know quite well what she is. What he is. Even if they never talked about any of that, he is fooling himself if a temporary reprieve in the wake of a skirmish gives even a hint of peace.

He's Garou.

She's not.

And though she doesn't draw back when he meets her eyes this time, even though her shoulders are rounded with relaxation, there is still a spark of instinct in the back of her mind that is simultaneously drawn to and terrified of what he is, underneath all the pretense: skin, smile, human clothes. Fucking coffee.

Danicka, politely, does not cover her face with her palm and shake her head in embarrassment. She doesn't cringe or grimace at his too-loud mention of a 'repeat performance'. Not that he's just talking about the sex. Not that he would mind having sex again. Danicka just smiles with increasing amusement, tipping her head and lifting her cup of coffee towards her mouth while he stumbles all over his words. Her hands are warming against the sides of the cup as she waits for him to get to a stopping point. She is, if nothing else, incredibly patient. Maybe it's a natural trait.

I like you. Do you like me? Check one: Yes / No / Maybe

She sips slowly, since her coffee is still quite hot, and then puts the cup down again. Her body language doesn't change much; she doesn't lean towards him or lean back in her chair away from the man she's facing. She does drop eye contact for a moment as she thinks; that should be his first hint. When she finds his eyes again, her own are slightly more closed off. Not that they were ever particularly open to begin with, even when --

"I really enjoyed being with you," she says, not specifying whether she means dinner, or the tequila, or the hour and a half she spent trying not to cry out too loud and alert everyone in the warehouse-turned-pub what they were up to. "And maybe it was just selfish of me to go to bed with you...if it was, I'm truly sorry. But I just don't see this going anywhere more serious."

As nice as that sounds, as genuine as her apology, as softly sad as her expression, that doesn't change what he sees when in his mind he unfolds the returned slip of paper:

No.

[Sam Modine] "Wh-" The bottom lip on his face presses upward, pulled back in a way that makes his his jaw stick out that much further. "Selfish?" He doesn't provide any contxt for the question outside of the growing frustration in his voice. His eyes cat down toward the table between them, at his hands that flex inward on the surface, balling against themselves. He buries whatever it is deeply, in place where he won't even likely find it for awhile before he can address her again.

"I guess I don't understand. You enjoyed yourself, you liked being with me, I liked being with you... so no?" One of his fists unravels itself again to become fingers that scratch underneath his hair slowly at his recently cleaned scalp. "I just... that doesn't make a lot of sense Danicka." He sits up in his chair, large, lanky frame sitting a little straighter as though he's suddenly exposed.

[Danicka Musil] His frustration is not, intrinsically, the same thing as his Rage. That doesn't mean Danicka does not tense, in her thighs under the table where he can't see and with her toes curling up in her shoes where he won't be alerted to the effect that flareup of irritation has on her. Her hands don't turn into fists, she does not stab herself with a fork, and she does not even use the tongue-to-teeth trick she had to resort to in the car with Lukas. She sublimates. She buries that reaction as far down as she can and even resists the urge to take a slow, deep breath in order to stay sitting in that chair.

Even with him burnt out, he is still not strictly safe. He's not tame. And nice as he has been, she doesn't know how he is going to act, whether or not this will escalate. Danicka tips her head to the side as he gets control of his words and speaks. He is reacting, and she takes it.

It doesn't make a lot of sense. Not to him, at least. She takes a drink of coffee and thinks for a moment, looking at the table and then lifting her eyes to his. Does he want her to argue with him? Expect her to give him reasons that will make sense? She just looks at him, apparently -- as far as he can tell -- unruffled, and taking a moment before she answers. "I did enjoy myself," she says, with excruciating patience. "And I would honestly like to spend time with you again, but I don't want you thinking it's going to become something it's not."

[Danicka Musil] [So I don't have to IM both of you: making a run to the office real quick. Back in 5-10.]

[Sam Modine] You reject my-

He just shakes his head, slowly. She'll note that for maybe the longest time since they've met he won't look at her. Part of this surely is his upbringing. He grew up with them, around them, one of them. And Gaia knows, he still feels like they do, experiences the whole range of things that humanity is cursed to have alternately exalt them and twist their very guts about in ways that they sometimes never get untangled. There's another large part of the equation though, one battled with at first and then a thing they all finally accept in one manner or another. He isn't one of them. Will never be a human being. And even half dulled and out of the reach of slavery to it, the beast beneath him roils.

-advances and desperate pleas.
I won't let you-


"I don't remember asking to have and to hold." And he hadn't. He wasn't being coy when swaying just a bit on his feet and telling her that he'd like to see where their relationship went. That he enjoyed her company. He sits back again and tries to take just a little of the edge off halfway to the bottom his styrofoam cup. When it audibly taps on the tabletop he's still not making eye contact with the woman across from him.

-let me down
so easily.


[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The door to the cafe swings open. Winter has one interesting consequence: it makes it so that it's no longer even a figure of speech to say that the temperature drops a degree or three when Lukas comes in. Humans near the door draw into themselves as though to escape the chill, but what they're really trying to escape is the rage.

Which sweeps a clear path around him as the Ahroun advances. Which breaks against Sam's own corona, and harder against Danicka, who has no such supernatural buffer of her own.

The Shadow Lord looks wholly unsurprised to see Sam here, in the way that packmates are never surprised by one another's presence. However: he also looks wholly unsurprised to see Danicka, though his eyebrows lower and his brow knits, faintly, as though displeased. It's a microexpression, there and then gone.

Normally he would approach now. Clap Sam on the shoulder. Sit beside him. Not today. It's not just that Sam's with a girl -- normally, that wouldn't stop him at all. It's not even that Sam's body language says he's having a Serious Discussion with a girl; normally, that wouldn't stop him either. They were packmates, and theirs is a closer pack than most, bound by a totem that was in and of itself a pack, a flock, a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts.

Still. Something about today, Sam, Danicka, all this: something about it makes Lukas change his mind halfway to their table; to turn his back and face the counter instead. He gets in line to order an espresso macchiato.

[Danicka Musil] One more, she's thinking. One more and I'll go. One more what isn't defined in her thoughts; it's such an old, familiar thing that she does not need to necessarily name it. Danicka just watches, almost too placid. Too calm. Considering what she is sitting across from, how little she is fooled by the picture of normalcy and humanity they make, her surface is too untroubled. It's like there isn't even wind, where she is. There isn't even air.

How can she breathe?

Thoughtfully, she blinks at him even though he won't look at her. That's an odd turn, that he can't look at the woman who should be -- and may be -- afraid of him. Perhaps he's sparing her seeing what's in his eyes right now, but she can't tell and wouldn't be able to make an educated guess. "Well, then there's really no problem," she says mildly, her tone lightening but remaining gentle as before. As ever, with him.

The nuance is what's important, there: she is not mocking him, nor dismissing him. She is, however, lifting some of the gravity of her own bearing and waiting to see if he joins her. "If you know what to expect from me," and what not to expect "then I don't see any reason why we can't hang out." Beat. "A repeat performance. Not necessarily the --"

In the middle of what is perhaps an ill-advised (never know til you try) venture towards an earlier, less difficult moment for Sam at least, Danicka stops. She doesn't look behind her when the gust of cold air comes in and when something far, far more intense than the Fenrir feels at the moment slams into her spin. She does stop talking, and this time she does press her tongue into her incisor. This time she takes a breath. She won't look. She won't look. She keeps her eyes on Sam.

[Sam Modine] It takes a few beats before the fact that she's stopped talking has his brows climbing and his eyeline drifting up her way. His fingernails tap quietly between them, tucked under his hands. Had he felt the presence wash into the room like a force of nature? Sure. He'd felt it from before Lukas had even touched the handle to the door like a part of his own spirit being made closer to a whole. But right now the kinwoman is the Fenrir's concern and nothing else is really going to deter him from meting this the rest of the way out.

[Sam Modine] ((shit that's incomplete, one sec))

[Sam Modine] It takes a few beats before the fact that she's stopped talking has his brows climbing and his eyeline drifting up her way. His fingernails tap quietly between them, tucked under his hands. Had he felt the presence wash into the room like a force of nature? Sure. He'd felt it from before Lukas had even touched the handle to the door like a part of his own spirit being made closer to a whole. But right now the kinwoman is the Fenrir's concern and nothing else is really going to deter him from meting this the rest of the way out.

His voice is lower, subdued as compared to before, but it's clear. He doesn't choke or trip or any of the other stumbling he's become accustomed to in himself around the woman. "I kind of thought that was the point." What is clear is an abiding something creeping in. Something very unlike him. It's not anger, or joy. No, this is an abiding middle. A verbal sulk. "To learn what to expect." And what time have they had? comes the subtext, the underlying question still that he's asked half a dozen different ways at this point.

Why?

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas is still waiting in line.

He shifts from one foot to the other, impatient. He draws a quiet breath and lets it out -- hardly a sound at all. The man in front of him edges away until he's nearly crowding the man in front of him into the counter.

[Sam Modine]

[Sebastian] The gent's door at the back opens, and Sebastian emerges, absent mindedly wiping his hands dry on the seat of his jeans. How long he's been in there is anybody's guess, though neither Danicka or Sam saw him enter after they arrived. Coat folded over his arm, he drifts forward, gaze moving over the two Garou with mild interest, pausing on Danicka, and then settling on an empty seat to one side of the cafe. Pausing by it, he drapes his coat over a chair back, and then pulls down on his gray sweater, straightening it by tugging on the hem. He's wearing a rumpled white shirt beneath, button up, no tie. Arms of the sweater tugged up, cuffs of the shirt rolled back up and over. Dark jeans, black hiking boots.

Coat deposited, he steps forward, moving past other tables with absent minded sways of his hips, and fetches up like flotsam at the counter, gazing down at the goods and pastries arrayed therein like jewels and Faberge eggs.

Unmindful of the glances his ruined face draws from the man and woman working behind the counter, the already nervous fellow standing before Lukas.

[Danicka Musil] "You just learned."

Those words, calmly spoken, are perhaps the bluntest thing Danicka has said. They are not flat from her lips, or harsh. Her tone of voice hasn't changed, but there is simply something about the way she responds that strikes him like a slap across the face...or more accurately, like a ruler across the knuckles. It isn't anger, not really, not even frustration. Impatience.

With his sulking.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas has an Ahroun's awareness of the space he occupies. Details of the world around him are constantly filtered through his subconscious, the vast majority of it -- the young mother whose child is now crying in the corner; the barista who just spilled someone's cafe latte all over the counter -- are caught and released, passed through without retention. Once in a while, though, something blips into his conscious mind, relayed from the thalamus to the cortex, catches his attention.

Like Sebastian, coming out of the men's room.

The man ahead of Lukas places his order and steps aside, juggling his change as he goes. The Ahroun steps up to bat, orders his espresso macchiato, pays, steps aside for the next paying customer. But instead of stepping discreetly off to wait near the racks of mugs and tea steepers for sale, he heads rather directly toward Sebastian.

"I recognize you," he says, and with a face like that, perhaps Sebastian is self-conscious of such words. Or perhaps he would have been, were he not what he is. "From the street the other day. I think my friend spoke to you. Mrena?"

On that street, that other day, Lukas had seemed within a hairsbreadth of tearing Katherine's pretty little head off. Katherine had seemed rather the same: not so pretty after all, a vicious and snarling animal herself.

There's little sign of that now. Lukas is composed and contained; well dressed; civilized. He keeps his back to his packmate across the room even now, because if he put his back to anyone, he'd rather it be Sam.

[Sam Modine] "Yeah."

His tongue traces the inside of his lip momentarily. The tic helping him run through some unvoiced thought. He raises the cup again and finishes it's contents and gathers himself fully upright in the chair. The sudden motion brings with it an angry wince as weight is firmly deposited on his leg and he holds the table for just a second to steady himself. He finally resumes the eye contact, even smiling a little when he reaches up to try and ease the pain on what had a day previously been a bleeding wound.

"Alright, as long as you're serious. We can you know, put the brakes on. Try friends or you know..." He avoids the whatever at the end of the sentence, his tone hushed now a little more than it had been. That same something though still right behind those icy blues.

[Sam Modine]

[Sam Modine]

[Sebastian] Lukas may have an Ahroun's awareness of the space he occupies, but Sebastian has any Garou's awareness of the Ahroun that occupies the space. With a near tangible aura such as the Shadow Lord exudes, it's impossible to not notice, such that when Lukas steps directly over to the Theurge, he's met by an appraising glance, a sober acknowledgment.

The Theurge looks rumpled, half of his long, dark-chocolate brown hair pulled back in a rudimentary ponytail, the rest escaping to fall past his ears, frame his face. Partially obscure the mottled scar tissue that circumnavigates his blinded eye. Where the Ahroun is tense brutality sheathed in casual elegance, the Theurge seems to be absent mindedly playacting at being human, wearing the trappings but not quite bringing enough presence of mind to the role to play it convincingly. There is something of the beast to him, the inhuman, that stems from more than the scars. It comes from the raw manner in which he seems to inhabit his flesh, to be imprisoned by his clothing. As if at any moment he might shuck both, in favor of spirit.

"Mrena," he says, confirmation in his voice, matched by a slight nod. Lukas is directly before him, face presented in full, and Sebastian takes a moment to study it, frank and direct. "And I recognize you," he continues. "I've seen you twice now."

He doesn't continue. Content to see where the Ahroun wishes to take this, if anywhere at all.

[Danicka Musil] It isn't often that Danicka will meet a Garou's eyes for more than a moment. It is almost impossible that she will choose to make and keep eye contact if the conversation is anything but perfectly calm, perfectly amicable. Sam got to look into her eyes quite a lot on Monday night, at least when they were in public. When she smiled and when the shots of tequila took her tension level down, notch by notch.

The verbal rap on his knuckles passes without a backlash; Danicka doesn't find a Fenrir's hand flying across her own face. Instead Sam leans forward and there is simply too much Rage around Danicka for her to do anything then but lean back slightly, before she catches herself. It's in that moment where she realizes that she's showing her tension that she meets his eyes, and forgets at least two of the sentences he just said.

Danicka looks at him, and doesn't say anything. While Sebastian and Lukas catch up on the other side of the small coffee shop with its bad lighting and cheaper drinks than one would find in Danicka's area of the city, Sam locks his eyes on hers and she doesn't jerk away. She doesn't duck her eyes to avoid the appearance of challenge or defiance. She looks in his eyes and her lips, after a few seconds, part slightly.

Now, another woman -- or Danicka in another situation -- might have run her foot up the inside of his leg, touched him under the small table with no cloth. Might have reached over and traced his lips like they were something magical. Might have said something coy or flattering or dropped a key in front of him. Danicka takes a breath, and then gets out of her chair, skirts the miniscule round table, and climbs onto Sam Modine's lap. He's had her in this position before, only there's nothing on either side of him to brace her knees on. There's just him, and now her on top of him.

Kissing him.

In public.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (sorry guys, i kept crashing my computer futzing with my new sound card.)

Twice now.

Lukas can't remember the first time, but he knows for a fact that he was not on his best behavior the second. As such, perhaps Sebastian doesn't even know what Lukas is like, typically. He can see, anyone can see, that Lukas is not wholly settled at the moment, but perhaps Sebastian just attributes it to Lukas' moon. His nature.

Still. It says something that Lukas chooses to focus his attention on this, the new(ish) acquaintance. The Garou. Business.

"We haven't really been introduced," he says, taking a step closer, just outside arm's reach now, comfortable conversational distance between near-strangers. "Are you heading somewhere, or do you have a minute to grab a coffee with me?"

[Sam Modine] Did that just...?
Yeah. It did.

Sam's whole form straightens beneath her, one leg straightening again to relieve the pressure on a leg that should by all rights be a foot long and secluded in an out of the way room to heal. For just a few moments as she straddles, no, rides atop the Garou he loses himself and kisses back, letting his hands ride their way up her back. But it takes only a few more seconds to use those same hands and simply lift her up and off, setting her on the table as he stands himself to full height in front of her. He leans forward, kissing her cheek lightly but moving on quickly to simply get his lips, his breath right up close to her ear.

Then it's just a matter of a single step backwards, away from her. His hand the last thing to leave, drawing itself off from the spot on her stomach where it had braced him in a whisper. "I'm leaving Dani." He sounds guilty, even as he uses an abbreviated name to address her intimately.

[Sebastian] The Theurge doesn't respond at once. Instead he looks over to where Danica has mounted Sam, face blank, no judgement made, and then back to the Ahroun. Fatigue is apparent in his face, the rawness of his unshaven jaw, the shadows beneath his eyes, the drawn nature of his face. He's been awake for long hours, and been drained in some subtle, more intangible way. Bled something other than blood, something that solid food can not so easily replenish.

But coffee might make a good start.

"Sure," he says, and smiles. His smile is particular, idiosyncratic; it's quiet, lopsided, an acquiescence to the vagaries of the world, the unexpected visccisitudes. "Let me order and I'll be right with you. I've grabbed that table in the corner. Next to... Sam? And his friend."

[Danicka Musil] There are many, many pairs of eyes that stopped looking at what they were looking at and stared instead at the blonde woman climbing onto the straw-haired man across from her and kissing him as though they were not in a cafe or even in a car but in a bedroom, as if they weren't wearing sweaters and jeans but only their own skins. That is, indeed, how Danicka kisses Sam, with her uncalloused fingers sliding up into his hair and her eyes closing upon contact. And as the kiss goes on, as Sam decides to kiss her in return rather than shoving her to the floor or pushing her away immediately, people who were not looking that direction start to turn, to find out what everyone else is staring at.

They're staring at a rather lovely, gentle-looking woman arching her back as the young man's hand runs up towards her shoulderblades, her hips pressing against his and a small noise leaving her throat. A matter of seconds ago she was across the table looking patient but losing that patience, looking amused if a little tense, calm and maybe just hoping this would be over with soon or he would stop sulking. And now? Now she's finding herself lifted up onto the table like a doll and the dreamy look hasn't gone out of her green eyes, it's only intensified, as though he is putting her on mattress instead of a cafe table that can barely hold her weight.

Her eyes close again when he leans in to whisper to her, and whatever he says makes her smile in a sleepy fashion, but it's still bright. Oh, it's bright and genuine and almost happy to hear it.

Everyone uses a nickname with her. Every time they call her Danicka, even, they're using a form of name that is not what's on her birth certificate. Most people don't know it, and she's never really gone by anything else. But that he calls her Dani instead has no special meaning, at least not to her, even if that's how he means it. Martin calls her Danny Boy, after all. He's leaving. Her brow furrows quizzically, her smile tightening at the corners but fading so, so slowly the shift is almost imperceptible til it's done.

"Why?" she asks, her hands still resting on his shoulders, sliding off the table til her feet touch the floor; the table can't hold her for long anyway without being imbalanced and spilling coffee everywhere.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas half-turns to follow the direction of Sebastian's glance. We all know what he sees.

Now would be the time for dramatics. Now would be the cue for Lukas to leap across the room and attack Sam for mauling his kin. Or attack Danicka for toying with his packmate. Or throw a tantrum, pitch a fit, break something, break someone.

Instead, there's a single pulse of rage -- there, then controlled.

Then he turns back, and he's smiling of all things, quizzically, lopsidedly. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but they were just talking ten seconds ago, weren't they?" The barista calls out his order, and he heads over to pick it up. "I'll meet you at the table."

This is the sort of place that serves in-house orders in big earthenware mugs and saucers purchased via some free-trade agreement with the indigenous peoples of wherever. The barista's staring too, not at the Ahroun but past him at the young couple suddenly making a spectacle of themselves; and as Lukas approaches, the mug starts to chatter against the saucer.

Then it's stilled. Lukas' hands close over the items and still them. He thanks the barista, politely, and brings his coffee to Sebastian's table. When he passes Sam, he glances at the other briefly -- the two Ahrouns of the Circle could not be more different in coloring, one dark, the other bright. If there's one trait that much of the Circle has in common, though, it's a penchant for pale eyes, and Lukas' lock with Sam's for a second, two, inscrutable, before he simply walks past.

And takes a seat at Sebastian's table. And reaches over to the empty one beside them to pick up a discarded copy of the wall street journal, which he peruses idly while he waits for the Theurge.

[Sam Modine] "Because..." his hands take her arms in each, not roughly but her delicate structure feels when he sets her arms at her own sides that it's no a request he's making. They're a small spectacle, yes. But does Sam take any notice of this? It doesn't seem likely. He does hear the clatter of a mug on it's ceramic counterpart and meet his packmates eyes for just a moment. His lips purse and his eyebrows rise to indicate that this perhaps is not a good time.

He doesn't finish the statement though as he grabs his outer coverings from the back of his chair and tosses them on quickly. Other than the brief encounter with his packmate though his focus is intently and entirely on Danicka. Seemingly he has nothing further to say and turns away.

Those strong, wiry hands go roughly to he pockets of his jacket and he begins taking those first few steps toward the door.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (1 hour warning, folks! i'll be back later tonight (like 10pmish my time, i think))

[Sebastian] The Theurge watches the Ahroun go, observes the exchange of glances as he passes the other Ahroun, and then turns back to the counter, linking his hands behind his back. Connections are made in his mind, tentative but there, assumptions tested, discarded, stored for later verification. Then the woman is asking him what he would like while averting her eyes, and smiling politely, he orders a double shot of espresso and three chocolate chip cookies the size of dinner plates.

Waits. Moments pass as he gazes absently out through the front windows at the winterscape beyond, and then hands over the cash, accepts the change, and takes his items back to his table.

Sets the cookies between the two seats, clearly indicating that Lukas should help himself if he so chooses, and takes a seat, pulling back his chair, causing the backlegs to screech against the floor. Lowers his lanky frame into the chair, and sets the saucer of the espresson on the table, resting the base of the large espresso cup against the palm of his hand, as if nurturing a small flame there.

"Feels good to sit down on occasion," he comments, and then raises the espresso to his lips. Sips. Sets it down, leans forward and breaks one of the cookies in half, that into quarters, and brings back a piece which he demolishes in three bites.

[Danicka Musil] There is a lot vying for Danicka's attention at the moment. Sitting across from Sam was one thing. Lukas walking in made her feel trapped, not because of the man himself but the sheer amount of Rage she was pinned between. Sebastian's exit from the restroom and entrance into the rest of the coffee shop, her awareness of him -- that was enough to limit her patience and make her want to get out of here. And then Sam did something that made her forget everything else she might have wanted at the moment.

A werewolf never knows how a mortal is going to respond to that arousal of some primal instinct. Fear and disgust are just about as likely as sudden attraction. In Danicka's case, Sam should have known. He should have known better from the beginning, but after Monday night (Tuesday morning) he should have known better than to test those waters. Or maybe he did, and that's exactly why he brought that side of her out.

Only to leave it.

Danicka doesn't fall to her knees or run after him. She stands there as he starts to walk away, jackets going on and her hands placed at her sides. The rejection seems to puzzle her, not out of pride but something she can't even put her finger on. Her brow furrows, lips pursed, and after a few seconds her eyes slide from one corner of the cafe to another, asking the walls and the inhabitants, What the Hell just happened?

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Only on occasion?" Lukas might be lauded for his focus, if that focus weren't so absolute that it could only be an act of will. He looks directly at Sebastian, though with frequent enough cuts of his glance to the man's hand, his mug, the cookies, that his regard cannot be mistaken as challenge.

He does help himself to the cookies as offered, breaking one in half and dipping the jagged point of it into his mug. It wasn't quite the same as warm cookies and cold milk, but it's not an unpleasant contrast.

"Are you looking for something in the city, then?" It's not an unreasonable guess. Mrena was looking for something in the city; she's scouring the city low and high.

[Sebastian] Strange how innocent questions can flip casual conversation to business. How quickly the focus can shift from the banal and empty platitudes to delicately probing inquiries. The Theurge swallows, clears his throat with more espresso, and then settles further into his seat, somehow finding a more comfortable position in what should be a basic proposition, given the bareness of the chair.

"That's one of those questions, my friend." The tone of weary resignation is undercut by his smile. It's like a knife blade seen at dusk, or seen glittering at the depths of some wintry pond. "People like me, like Mrena, we're always looking, exploring, keeping an eye out."

Something about Lukas' gentility, politeness and etiquette eases what might otherwise be a tense situation, the Theurge seems inclined to speak. "But yeah, generalities aside, I am. Though I doubt it's the same thing that Mrena's after. I'm looking for sign of..."

He trails off, and the location they're in impinges on their conversation. A moment as he translates into innocuous terms that can be used in public. "I'm writing a book. In which homeless men get dropped in their tracks, or other transient types. They look normal, just frozen to death, but if you look at their reflections in a mirror? A lot more going on."

Another chomp of cookie, sip of espresso. "Something strange going on. Just starting up. But you know how it goes. I'm trying to get some information, and then bring it to the Caern."

[Sebastian] [*laughs* Man, Sebastian's fatigue isn't imaginary. Change 'Caern' to 'Publisher', please.]
to Danicka Musil, Lukas Wyrmbreaker, Sam Modine

[Sam Modine] Tables, metaphorically and nearly one of those in a low-end coffee shop have turned. Most would take pride in the fact that their own confusion in a situation was now mirrored hyperbolicly with that of it's source. Sam doesn't seem to. That confusion is contagious, spreading to the few other customers who've watched the sordid display only to see him scowling and walking in the opposite direction of the beautiful woman who been throwing herself at him not half a minute prior.

The door to the outside swingsopen hard enough to rattle and report like a firecracker against the doorstop. The Fenrir stepping through it doesn't turn around to hit the act break in a movie of the week wherein the leather clad boy from the wrong side of the tracks sweeps the closed off rich girl from her feet with a passionate kiss. Hell, he doesn't even look. He can't.

So he leaves in his wake a mystery. If one continues however to watch him through the glass of the shop's fourth wall they will see him crossing the street to become a customer again, this time at a liquor store that after work serves the same dockworker clientele drinking coffee on their lunch break. One to keep you going, the other to make you forget why you try.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Can't have a plot without something strange going on," Lukas replies, wry.

It's business that eases Lukas, ironically or not. He settles into this role as easily as others settle into their favorite pajamas, their favorite armchairs, their favorite books and movies. He bites into the cookie, now slightly soggy, washes it down with a swallow of his macchiato.

"A few of us," he says, settling into Sebastian's translated language with only a slight hitch, "are getting together tomorrow night to brainstorm on a couple joint-author books we've been thinking about. If you're interested, we're gathering at the usual dinner spot, then heading down to the Mile after to see where inspiration takes us.

"Mind if I ask if you're working solo?"

[Danicka Musil] Now, she could go running across the street after Sam and jump into his arms. She could pull out a compact and check her makeup, put on a nice little show of not caring. Or break down. Shiver in fear. Danicka glances over at Lukas and Sebastian for a second, but only as if to confirm their location before she shakes her head to clear it, sits back down, and lifts her coffee to finish drinking it.

A moment later, she's pulling her phone out of her purse and messing with it in between sips.

[Sebastian] "This would be your writing circle that's getting together? Your The one I saw you with, last time?" Sebastian finishes his espresso, and sets the cup down on the saucer with but a slight clink. Another deep breath which turns into a barely masked yawn, held back behind hermetic lips, the expanded jaws stretching his cheeks taut. Blinking, he sits up, takes another chunk of cookie, inhales it.

"But yeah, I've been working by myself thus far. I'd appreciate some feedback. What time are you guys getting together?"

[Danicka Musil] [All right, folks. Since Damon's leaving soon and I'm betting Phil's gotta go before too long, Danicka finishes her coffee and then heads out. Thanks for the RP!]
to first aid kit, Lukas Wyrmbreaker, Sam Modine, Sebastian

[Sam Modine] likewise, gracias!
to Danicka Musil, Lukas Wyrmbreaker, Sebastian

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Yeah, the writing circle." There's a shade of humor on Lukas' mouth, ironic. "Hm -- tomorrow, say around 6? You might want to bring your laptop. And any other tools you like to have on hand.

"We're going to be delving under the surface quite a bit. Looking at the structure of the narrative from the other side. So," he takes a sip, then folds the foam from his upper lip with one of the cafe's scrap-sized napkins, "it'll be good to have you along. Mrena mentioned you have a knack with the subtleties."

[Sebastian] Sebastian snorts, folds another cookie into quarters, and demolishes it in short order. It's becoming clear that he didn't order them for the taste, but rather for the quick energy it might give him, some sort of emergency fuel to tide him over till he can get some real sustenance, or sleep.

"Excellent. If there's one thing I like, it's literary spelunking." The raw boned Theurge takes up his own napkin, swipes it across his lips, and then tosses it onto the table. "In which case, I'm going to go and crash." Another yawn, and this one escapes him, distorts his face into a silent howl, causes his blind and good eye to crinkle closed, the scar tissue to warp and fold. With a snap he shakes his head, shakes the weariness away, and stands.

"Lukas, it was good to meet you. We should introduce ourselves properly next time. I'm going to go sleep, and then prepare for tomorrow. I'll see you there." And with that, he scoops up his coat, and leaves.
 
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