[Muerte Fria] Soledad had only a clip of flesh missing from her left forearm, from where the massive beast's teeth had clipped her when she tried to shove its maw away from her. Overall, though, she was unharmed. Lukas invited her into his car-- or more, dragged her in by force of words, smooth and calm, and the implied, ever-assumed pulling of freshly-obtained rank that went with them. She folded her long body into the back seat, behind him, allowing the other Fostern, Walks the Tracks, another tall, leggy specimen of Garou quite like herself only lighter in color, to occupy the front seat.
They'd stopped at the Caern, Soledad stood outside of Lukas's car leaned up against the passenger door while he occupied Walks the Tracks on the walk to meet up with one of the Warder's pack, to explain her aid to a Caern she had yet to pledge herself to, to make himself known and properly introduced to the woman. Soledad remained silent, as always, and cleaned the rust-colored ichor out from under her fingernails while she waited.
When Lukas came back, she tipped her chin up to look at him, her face level with his, eyes flat, expression void. Her hair was a complete mess, a voluminous mane that swept back from the crown of her head to tumble over her shoulders, where it would mix with the slowly seeping blood from her shoulder wound. It almost glimmered with the watery rust-blood that had misted it in the battle, giving her the appearance of some sort of nymph of the netherworlds. Her dress was as plain and comfortable as ever-- a pair of dark jeans with the knees blown out and a large tear up the back of one thigh, along with a navy blue T-shirt that came from a men's three pack at Wal*Mart.
Her arms rested at her sides, her eyes stayed on the Shadow Lord's face, and she waited for him to address her, to say what he needed.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] When Wyrmbreaker comes back, he's alone.
He looks nothing like the sharply dressed, courteous creature that makes his way around Chicago or New York in woven shirts and designers jeans; in silk sweaters and wool overcoats. He looks nothing like the lazy, quietly dominant creature that sprawls in the common room of the Brotherhood reading, either.
He's bloody, messy, plain and utilitarian in his dress, with a terrible clear focus to his eyes. He looks directly at Muerte Fria as he approaches, his stride long, his gait smooth and low, edgy as a caged animal's.
There's no preamble. Lukas gets right into it: "Why did I have to give the same order three times before you obeyed, Muerte Fria?"
[Peep] (This ok?)
to Lukas Wyrmbreaker, Muerte Fria
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (yep!)
to Muerte Fria, Peep
[Muerte Fria] Lukas gets right into it, as Soledad expected. He knew how to speak with her, he understood that there wasn't a bush to beat around, that there was no cushioning a conversation, no softening a blow for her. She was a straight-forward creature, and she expected that from everyone around her. They could do somersaults with their tongues to one another all they pleased, make puzzles out of each others words and elude to what they were trying to get at for the sake of courtesy or denying something later on... but they knew all that would earn them from Muerte Fría was a piercing gaze and a flat response.
Which, honestly, isn't too different from what they get when they are to the point. Like now.
"Because I believed that four others punching holes in one area was plenty, and intended to disable the head so that no one would be consumed while bringing it down." Slim shoulders made to appear almost frail under the excess of fabric of her shirt rolled in a small shrug. That was all there was to it.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker's eyes are direct, his stare fixed and ungiving. He stops an arm's reach away, his hands loose at his sides.
"But it never occurred to you to say something."
It's not entirely a question, but Lukas waits a beat -- enough time for the Uktena to speak, or for her silence to speak for her.
[Muerte Fria] Were she anyone else, she might fidget under his icy stare. She might sweep her hair off her shoulders, pull it away from the wound that, already, was beginning to scab over, to ebb in the flow of blood. She might chew on her lower lip, peel dead skin away from it. She might pick at her fingernails or tug uncomfortably at her clothes or fold her arms over her chest just so that they could be somewhere, doing something besides dangling useless and idle, full of potential for unbridled violence at her sides.
"I saw no reason to."
She blinked once, and her expression didn't change in the least. "None of you are my pack, my communication would do little for you. Your orders were useful, pulled us together, but my intentions would not change the actions of others. My stating that I planned to immobilize the head would not change Walks the Tracks's bites to the opened area, the Italian from pulling away scales and skin. All it would change is your snarling at me." Beat. "Even that is questionable."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] I saw no reason to.
And Wyrmbreaker cuts in: "You saw no reason to."
The words are the same. The inflection, nearly so. The surprise, the disbelief, the utter aghastness that underlies Wyrmbreaker's repetition is present only in the slightest emphasis, the slightest slowing of each word.
She goes on. Wyrmbreaker eyes her for a moment, faintly frowning, critical. Then, an apparent shift in direction:
"You disagreed with my tactics. You thought your claws would not add to the effort. You wanted to do your own thing. So instead of following orders, instead of barking two words to explain your intent to me, you simply ignored my orders. Twice.
"Do you think you were right to do so, Muerte Fria?"
[Muerte Fria] "No."
The response is curt, if anything. Her brows were only a fraction lower, a touch more tensed than they had been before. She was growing tired of this conversation, felt as though it was moving in a large circle, back toward the beginning. Her fingers flexed a little at her sides, but relaxed.
Her Rage had been largely burnt out, she felt slow and sleepy, sick and achy. There was still fight in her, there always would be, but it was more difficult to provoke, to get rolling now.
"Though it did not effect the outcome of the battle, no."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker cocks his head to the side.
"Does that matter?"
[Muerte Fria] "The outcome?" Her brow knitted, her nostrils flared, and she expelled her breath in something of a huff. Lupine, even in the most human of forms. This was a girl long out of touch with the human world, forgetting the roots that she was born from. A girl slipping into her solitude, forgetting the 'whys' and functioning only on the auto-pilot of 'how'.
"I would say yes. None dead, none gravely wounded, no damage greater than what needed to be or would have been."
It was her turn to cant her head to the side, mirroring his motion almost precisely.
"I submitted to your order, did I not? We slayed the beast, correct?" A pause, then she straightened her head. "Correct. Your status is recognized, you are dominant. Do not push the issue further than necessary, Wyrmbreaker."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] After the word yes, there's a sense that Lukas has heard what he needs to. There's a sense he's only waiting now, patient and calm, for some inevitable misstep.
And then Muerte Fria says, Don't push the issue. Like a camera shutter, Wyrmbreaker's brilliant eyes blink once.
Soft as velvet: "Or what?"
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (y'all should PLAY too. in this scene or some other!)
to fly, Muerte Fria, Peep, peeper, Peepest, sunglasses
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (passive percep!)
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 1, 5 (Botch x 2 at target 6)
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (oh kahseeno. what have i done to you?)
[Muerte Fria] She had straightened up when Lukas approached, but when the Fostern's voice dropped to a deadly, cruel tone that was almost like the purr of a tiger before it pounced on a fawn, Soledad responded by relaxing, of all things. She stretched her body backwards, leaning against Lukas's car once again, pulled her shoulders back and stuck her chest out to pull tension from the muscles in her upper back. She arched her lower back, pressing her stomach against the fabric of her shirt and, for a short series of seconds, bringing into relief a small but out-of-place swell to her abdomen.
It was gone as soon as she stopped stretching, as soon as she relaxed into a comfortable half-sloped lean against the vehicle. The same flat, low tone droned on as though there was no threat (promise) of violence as thick in the air as smoke was at the Mann Gulch fire of '49.
"Or I lose my patience, you lose yours, and we tear one another's flesh like beasts. You will leave me bleeding on the ground for the Maelstrom-chained Garou to take care of, and you will go home to your pack, or to your woman, assured of your status." The words would be mocking, would be snide were it not for the simple matter-of-fact way that she spoke. She sounded like she was reading a summary of a scene on a script, or telling somebody what happens in a movie, she was so removed from the situation.
[Muerte Fria] [*Covers Damon's roll with a black sheet*]
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] A beat; and then Lukas exhales faintly under his breath. It's a laugh, or some shadow of one, utterly mirthless. He lays his words down like stones, cool and hard, heavy, methodical.
"I understand. You seem think this is about my status. My rank. You think I'm dressing you down to raise myself up. That's not what this is, Muerte Fria. Don't lay that on the table, because you don't want me to have to address it.
"This is about how your mind works. This is about whether or not you're going to repeat your mistakes next time and cost someone their life. So far, you've given me nothing to assure me that you won't. You've barely even made sense, Muerte Fria.
"There were five of us. None of us were packed. We could not predict one another's moves. We did not know one another. We were five, not one, and we faced a Thunderwyrm. You decided this made communication less necessary, not more so."
He takes a step closer.
"You recognized that my orders were useful. That they pulled us together. Created direction and order where there was none. So you ignored them."
And another.
"We survived the battle. We triumphed. Your insubordination did nothing to aid us. And you think it no longer needs to be addressed. You admit you acted in error. And you think it should be forgotten."
He's right in her face now, eye to eye, and she'll either have to lift her chin or roll her eyes up to maintain eye contact. Wyrmbreaker is not shouting. He does not appear angry. He's steady, flat, controlled, implacable.
"Explain yourself to me. Explain how the hell all this makes sense to you. Explain what's going through your head, Muerte Fria, and how I can believe you even understand the situation.
"Make me believe this won't happen again. Or tell me how to teach you this lesson."
[Muerte Fria] It was a tedious combination of both that kept the Uktena's warm-colored cool-feeling eyes locked onto her superior's. Her chin tipped upward a fraction, but when it hit a line where she was uncomfortable with offering any more of her throat without being ordered to do so she started turning her eyes upward instead. This gave her an almost lazy appearance as opposed to the kicked dog one she would have had if she didn't lift her chin at all, or the insubordinate child appearance that would have existed if she lifted her chin alone.
There's a large gap of silence between them in which Soledad debates what to say, if anything, how to escape the situation, perhaps turn it on to something else. Though truth be told, at this point she was heavily considering taking the message that she had for him and walking away with it, leaving him to figure things out on his own, to see if he even bothered to care for the Kinfolk that he denied her yet paid no mind to besides to hang him over her head, just out of reach.
Her lip curled at the trail her thoughts had taken rather than anything Lukas had done, the flash of white teeth easily misinterpreted. Her chin ticked up a touch, her nose very nearly brushed his, he had leaned in so close, and when she spoke her words were slow and deliberate, her breath smelled like the kill, just as his and everyone else's did.
"I did not consider myself part of what the rest of you were. An outside force aiding another, separate one. I would act on my own to aid according to my judgment because I trust it, because it has served me well. This will not happen again because you have addressed the issue. I will remember and act accordingly to this night."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas doesn't even address the first half of what Muerte Fria says. It's recognized, received, remembered. He lets it lie. For now.
"And if it does happen again? What then?"
[Muerte Fria] "Then remove me."
The reply is bitter and sharp, ended with a snap of teeth.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Snap your teeth at me again, and you'll be picking them off the ground."
Lukas's tone doesn't even change. It's level and soft; rather courteous.
"Explain yourself. Remove you from what?"
[Muerte Fria] Lukas's tone remains even and soft and controlled, and he proves himself the better, the superior in the situation by that mercy alone. Soledad's teeth clamp together and remain that way, bared for a moment before she forces her lips closed, pressed together and gone pale as possible for her skin tone from that alone. Her eyes burn with the last remnant of Rage that her breast held after the battle, and her molars ground together.
Rage was hard, and emotion was harder. She's been alone for three weeks now, in a large house with nothing but silence to wake her in the morning and greet her when she gets back. She had a spare key and nothing more, no contact phone numbers, no addresses for anyone else. She was painfully lonesome, but entirely too stubborn and confused and out of practice to remedy the situation.
She finally had a conversation with another Garou, and here it was turning into a fight, infuriating her to the point of wanting to put her teeth in the man's Adam's apple. And how easy that would be, it was less than a foot from her mouth....
"The picture. The battle. The world. Whatever you deem necessary, -Rhya."
[Hatchet] Right around the time that Sol is suggesting that Lukas kill her if she ever fucks up again the way she did most recently, her former Alpha is walking towards the edge of the bawn to head back to the Brotherhood. He's been here all night. He's already heard about the new Fostern Bone Gnawer that helped fight a Thunderwyrm. He hasn't heard that Wyrmbreaker and Muerte Fria are having a chat right around the bend. He's been at the Graves and challenge area all night. He's got a guitar in hand, but it has no case.
He also has an empty bottle of Wild Turkey, the label worn and beginning to peel. When he sees the two Ahrouns he pauses, though he's within sight. For now he waits a moment, and watches. He hasn't heard what they've said so far. He waits to see what they do.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] A beat.
"No. If you disobey me in battle again, I'll finish the fight with or without your cooperation. And then I'll drag you before the elders for judgment. With or without your cooperation. That's our agreement, and it's not open for negotiation."
A moment's consideration. Then he adds, "You're teetering close to some precipice, Muerte Fria. I don't know if it's Harano or Ronin or Wyrm and I don't care to wait and find out. Go to La Familia. Their alpha is a Half-Moon of your tribe. Their beta is our auspice elder. Their totem is one of Unicorn's. If you can't help yourself, maybe they can.
"Consider it an order."
[Muerte Fria] [WP: Emotions-- Reign them.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 5, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Muerte Fria] Soledad's eyes hadn't broken away from Lukas's face yet. But there's movement, a spectator in the form of an outline that was still familiar, despite months apart. Now her gaze wavers, flicks away from Wyrmbreaker's face to confirm who was there watching them
(with a bottle of Wild Turkey and his guitar and a torch still carried that he'd chased her away in favor of)
have their dispute.
Her eyes hardened and she turned her face to Lukas's again, training back to a perfect mask of neutrality with a pinch of effort in the corners of her eyes. She sniffed lightly, once, and replied blandly.
"I will chose my own pack, and that one does not include White Oak."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (okay - inits *LOL*)
[Muerte Fria] [Init + 5]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[Hatchet] [+7]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (init + 8 + 10)
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4 (Failure at target 6)
[Muerte Fria] [Action 1A: Dodge
Action 1B: Dodge Again!]
[Hatchet] [Hold Action]
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (action 1a: move behind
b. jawlock.)
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (sorry, 1R --> hispo
1a. movemovemove.
b. step one: dex/brawl -3 (split) vs diff 5 +1(jaw lock) -2(back))
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 4) [WP] Re-rolls: 2
[Muerte Fria] [Pitiful Dodge: Dexterity + Dodge, -2 Split]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 2, 3 (Botch x 1 at target 6)
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (step two: resisted str + ath +1 (botch) +5 (succ) = 14 dice, which I'm splitting into 7 and 7. Keep an eye on 1's for me to make sure it's summed up!
Soledad resists with straight str+ath.)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Muerte Fria] [Resist Jawlock: Str + Athletics, +1 Diff for Change Action]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (damage roll, str + 2(bit) +5 (succ))
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Muerte Fria] [Panic Snapshift to Hispo, Soak]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The reaction is instantaneous, premeditated and brutal: Wyrmbreaker leaps on Muerte Fria in the blink of an eye. The singular, low snarl that leaves his throat seems to reach her ears after his teeth have found her flesh. His weight is on her, bearing her down; the Uktena twists to get free; the Shadow Lord's teeth tear a ragged chunk of her flesh away.
Which he whips to the side with a sharp snap of his head. It swings back. Glaring, blazing, his pale eyes lock onto Muerte Fria to see what comes next.
[Muerte Fria] Muerte Fría was still but a fragile human when Lukas exploded out of his manskin and into one of his more favored war-forms, hers as well. She pushed away from his car, attempted to dart forward, to dive away from the open maw coming at her. A blend of several stresses at once make for wavering balance and sluggish motions, however, and all she manages to do is half-slump to the side when the blood rushes from her head from the sudden movement and she find the world closing black, down to nothing but a pinprick of light in front of her eyes.
The massive wolf's jaws are about her neck, and she shoves her hands at his front legs to push herself away. As she feels teeth pull at flesh, threaten to tear it, though, the world slows down, her mind knows that this will be devastating, she will lose her head. So her body snaps into something larger, a form to imitate and compete with Wyrmbreaker's. The black-red dire wolf twists and tears herself free, losing a good chunk off the back of her neck in a spray of blood. She scrambled to her feet, away from him by a few feet, and let out a harsh snarl of conflicting sources.
She twisted to give him her right flank, to turn her head to stare at him, her liquid-gold eyes flashing just as his do. For several long seconds it's almost impossible to say what's going to happen. Chances are high that the leaner, longer-legged female is going to lunge forward, take death over shame, ride out on a blaze of Rage.
...But she has no more Rage to ride upon.
So, with a chuffing noise of self-conflict, she bent her knees (no, no! what are you doing?! get up and fight you bitch, you whore! you toothless waste!), rolled onto her side, and showed her belly and blood-soaked neck to the male.
[Hatchet] He waits, while Wyrmbreaker tears at Soledad. And he stands still, as Soledad shifts in order to cope with the massive injury being done by his teeth, whether that's what he intended or not. He can see her struggling to get away, no longer blessed with the aid Weasel used to give them both in such endeavors. He sets down the empty glass bottle and he sets down the guitar, and as Soledad shows her stomach to Lukas, Hatchet starts to walk towards them.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] In this form, words are nonexistent. All there is to read is body language, the glaring of eyes and the raising of hackles, the laying back of ears, the baring of teeth. All there is to hear are snarls: the low rumbling growls on the in-breath; the short, choppy roars of the out.
"I was not asking you to join their pack." Wyrmbreaker's red teeth snap to make the point. "I was not asking at all."
The direwolf's eyes flick sideways. Almost imperceptibly, and certainly instinctively, he shifts -- places himself so he faces both of them at acute angles. But his attention stays on Muerte Fria.
[Muerte Fria] Lukas snarled and snapped his teeth, splashing droplets of her blood on the ground from his jaws in doing so.
Soledad's position was forced to be submissive, even though other parts of her body language were not. Her eyes blazed, staring at nothing, rather than looking up at the lower half of Lukas's face and begging for him to relent, showing that she'd been beaten. Her ears were pinned back against her skull aggressively rather than pressed down in a pleading, sulking manner. Her muzzle was still wrinkled, and her tail simply would not tuck.
She heard Hatchet's footsteps, the very faint twang of the guitar strings inside the hollow of the instrument from the vibrations of each step, and her eyes squinted some, but that was all.
She did not move, did not communicate anything to Lukas. Just laid still, belly shown, waiting for him to finish the job or walk away.
[Hatchet] Still in homid, Hatchet walks down to the two full moons, the guitar left behind and silent on the ground. He's in a t-shirt and jeans, the gradually cooling weather still not enough to send him into longsleeves or coats, not with the amount of rage burning inside him these days. He looks at Wyrmbreaker, hearing -- understanding -- some of what he's saying to Sol, and then he looks down at Soledad.
Hatchet breathes out, and shakes his head. He crouches, and puts his hand above her eyes. If she struggles, he shoves her head down.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Don't touch her." The snarl is sharp and rough as a woodsaw. This time there's nothing of rhya in the tone.
[Hatchet] The moon is thin enough overhead that Hatchet does not immediately twist around and lunge at the Shadow Lord in response to that snarl. He turns to look at him, eyes narrowing. His hand is motionless on Soledad's head, his body still folded into a crouch. There's a protracted moment where he considers, one thing after the other, all in silence.
Then: "So it was punishment?"
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Hatchet] [erase that roll]
[Muerte Fria] Hatchet comes up to her head, crouches down with his knees apart, and brings a hand toward her eyes.
Don't touch her, Lukas snarls out in a half-roar of rage, and Soledad's chest fills with a rumbling growl like the wind-devouring roar of a fire on a mountainside, unrelenting, everpresent, but not close or hot enough to touch or damage.
Don't touch me, don't touch me, don't touch me, the growl repeated in something of a mantra. But, if his hand did come to her eyes and cover them despite what Lukas warned, she did not fight. Her muzzle would wrinkle as much as it could, her teeth would flash in the dull light of the sliver of a moon overhead, but she would not snap or bite or shake.
[Hatchet] [perceptino + medicine]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 4, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Hatchet] [*kan spull*]
[sunglasses] [It's Italian!]
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "It's a promise."
Then Wyrmbreaker takes his Crinos form. His handpaw comes down on Muerte Fria's scruff. He lifts her the way adults lift cubs; drags her if he must.
[Hatchet] "Okay... not to be rude here, but what you just said?" Hatchet tosses back at Lukas, lifting his eyebrows and rolling back on his heels, "Did not entirely answer my question. I just need to know if that was a Fostern Ahroun whipping a Cliath Ahroun into shape or not. If so, superb. If not, she's saved my life more than she's ever pissed you off."
[Muerte Fria] Lukas's body twisted into something just as large as what it was prior, but now more erect, elongated into something vaguely more human, able to do more in the sense of grabbing and lifting and crafting. Something with hands. These hands grabbed at the loose skin on the back of her neck, claws threatening to bite in, just shy of doing so, with one finger dipping over close enough to the freshly torn flesh that she was making a noise somewhere between a snarl and a whine to warn him.
Her considerable weight is hefted off the ground, her shoulders and chest at least, but her hips remain. So she twists about, tightening the skin about her neck as she turned to put her feet on the ground. Better to stand and walk than be dragged through the dirt, even if she did suddenly empathize acutely with a pitbull being led from a match lost by its disappointed owner.
She felt a little far-away, a touch ill. Rather than contemplating the shame of the situation, she mused over the irony that Hatchet, who had cast her out, was suddenly defending her.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Some things don't change: Hatchet still gets under Wyrmbreaker's hide far more than ten minutes' worth of brickwall conversation with Soledad ever did. More than second seconds of bloody, brutal combat with Soledad ever did.
That was controlled. That was, beginning to end, both acts disciplined and acts of discipline.
This is the first true glimmer of anger.
The Ahroun rounds on the Philodox, black lips peeled back from red teeth. The short, choppy chuff of a word blasts a mist of blood out into the night air:
"Yes."
And then he goes back to marching Muerte Fria ... somewhere. Off the Caern grounds, it seems. As he goes, Muerte Fria can feel him starting to push at the Gauntlet, dragging her with him not by pack bond or spiritual link but by the sheer force of a crude, physical grip.
[Hatchet] He's a talented man, that Buried Hatchet. Able to send other Half Moons into torrents of profanity at the mere mention of his name. Able to infuriate Full Moons with nothing more than a lift of his eyebrow. Able to switch between pissing off everyone he talks to and earning their wary respect without even seeming to try to do either. He rises to his feet, ignoring the Ahroun he's supposedly defending, and looks up at the warformed Lord baring his teeth at him.
"Wyrmbreaker," he says flatly.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Beneath his thick black fur, the Shadow Lord's sides heave with a long, deliberately suppressed breath. And then he swings around again, silently, to see what more Hatchet had to add.
[Hatchet] "You earned your rank," Hatchet says, his voice level, no longer carrying that infuriating trace of flippancy, "and so have I. You have every right to discipline Muerte Fría without interference. Which is why," he says, the ends of the words snapping in half, "I asked when you ordered me not to touch her."
It seems like it's going nowhere, this informing Lukas of things he already knows, but then Hatchet frowns. "Don't snap your jaws at me again without damn better reason than being interrupted."
[Muerte Fria] The thick black-red pelt, long and silky despite the warmth of a dying summer, shimmered and stood on end when she felt the Gauntlet beginning to ebb way by physical force rather than choice or guidance. It was a sensation she hadn't felt in a while, and one she disliked wholeheartedly. Again a growl rumbled through her frame, but quieted to a dull vibration rather than a true sound when the sensation faded away and Lukas spun about to face Hatchet, dragging her along his side with him.
Her teeth clicked, her tongue swept over them repeatedly showing irritation that mounted on top of itself over and over only to tumble and rebuild. Without Rage, it amounted to nothing, and she was dragged about like so much garbage.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Poor Soledad, swinging this way and that at the end of Wyrmbreaker's rather firm grip on the scruff of her neck. Poor Soledad, caught in the proverbial crossfire as the two Fosterns digress onto their own issues.
Which, for what it's worth, Wyrmbreaker gives due consideration to. He studies Buried Hatchet for a moment. Then his muzzle dips faintly.
"I was wrong to snap at you. But Buried-Hatchet," this is something of a rhetorical question, "when have I ever torn another Garou open simply because I was angry?"
[Hatchet] Hatchet just gives him a nod in return. Lukas admits fault, Hatchet accepts it. And they move on. He's asked a rhetorical question, but that's the danger in asking a Philodox a rhetorical question: they still have an answer.
His head cocks to the side. "You never have... that I know of. You likely won't... as far as I can tell. But no Garou's control is perfect. And while it is the responsibility primarily of Truth's Meridian and Two Ravens to watch you, that doesn't make me exempt from watching those around me."
Hatchet glances down at Soledad, still bloody. There's years of history there, all of it flickering past in a moment, before he looks back at Lukas. "I also know the sort of frustration she can inspire," he says bluntly. "In the future I will ask before laying on hands."
[Muerte Fria] If there was any sort of fight in Muerte Fría before, it extinguishes with Hatchet's brief, dismissive glance and following comment. The rumble of a growl she had rattling her bones silences, and her muscles go a mite slack. She may have sat down if Lukas's hand at the back of her neck didn't ensure her balance.
The beast inside her, small and defeated, stirred feebly.
I'll fucking kill you if you come near me you bastard, you monster, you traitor, you Charach! I'll tell the world your secret, touch me again, come near me again, look at me again. I fucking dare you, I dare you!
But eternally, she was defeated.
[Muerte Fria] (( externally, not eternally. Yeesh. ))
[Hatchet] [Perception + Empathy: What was that? Hmm?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker's reply is not vocal, and it is not human. It's a closing of the eyes, acknowledgment and acquiescence in the shuttering of the gaze.
Then he turns and starts walking again. Muerte Fria is coming along, walking of her own accord or being dragged, with or without her cooperation. A few paces later their outlines flicker, blur, and then vanish across the Gauntlet.
(to Bronzeville!)
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It's a long walk to Black Unicorn's territory. Wyrmbreaker doesn't say a thing the whole way. He walks, step by step by step, with a sort of grim patience.
At the edge of their turf, Umbraside, he stops. And throws back his head. And howls.
[Muerte Fria] In the Umbra, Soledad and Lukas walk side by side. Except Lukas is in Crinos and Soledad in Hispo, with a good chunk torn away from her throat, and Lukas guides the Uktena by keeping a hand at the scruff of her neck, because occasionally, when she catches whiff of where they're going or the smell of someone else's territory, she will tug, or pause, stutter in her steps, growl... something. Lukas will snap his teeth or snarl at her, give her a sharp tug, and she's walking again.
Like a prisoner.
Or a disobedient dog.
They come to the edge of Black Unicorn's domain, and Lukas throws his head back and howls, announcing his presence, requesting permission to enter, someone to speak to. Soledad stands by his side, tongue rolled out of her mouth, pink and bobbing as she pants. She felt too warm, she felt ill, and she felt weak. Her Rage was gone, her driving force, and her heart still hurt from the twisting knife of Hatchet's parting words.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (reposting for dre--)
It took a while, but soon there came the sound of something shifting through the umbra. The meeker gafflings fled, taking to the sky when they could, and otherwise making themselves scarce.
And soon there came chuffing sound of a wolf with mottled grey and brown fur. He'd been running for long, and the excitement still showed in his muscles, even as it stalked up and down, back and forth, just on the border of La Familia Territory.
It was as if he were saying 'This better not take long.' But there was no High Tongue involved. Only instinct. Just a wolf.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It's a strange contrast when the Philodox is restless, pacing, and the Ahroun is still.
But Wyrmbreaker is still, and stony. He lets go of Muerte Fria as Brother of the Lost appears and nears, unless of course she tried to run. He doesn't think she'll try to run.
She might expect him to recount her faults now, each and every one of them that led to this pass. Disobedience. Noncommunication. Insubordination. Every step on the road to Muerte Fria at the borders of Black Unicorn's territory
(or what would be Black Unicorn's territory, did he still reside here.)
bloody and beaten, angry, resentful, sullen.
But there's no such retelling of tales. Wyrmbreaker, Crinos-shaped, nods to the wolf as he appears. And he says, quite simply, "Your tribeswoman is in need of succor, Brother of the Lost. She's apathetic, self-destructive, full of aimless rage. I think she is very close to falling to Harano, or worse.
"I know you have not claimed the duties of a tribal elder, but your totem is Unicorn and your packmate is the elder of my auspice. Will you help her?"
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (sorry guys, gone again for 20-30!)
[Muerte Fria] Soledad stayed near Lukas's leg like a dog told to heel, growling and glaring off to the side.
Boy appeared, pacing along his territory, whuffing and urging them to be quick. Soledad's eyes, the same bright yellow of liquid gold, turned onto her tribesmate and watched him carefully, studying his movements until Lukas began to speak. He said that she was mad, apathetic, She didn't argue, didn't disagree, but if she fell into Harano it was her goddamn business.
He asked for Boy's help on her behalf, and she spat out a snarl to interject before Boy can give a response.
"He is a Boy. Young, aimless as I am. Only leader because Marrick lets him. He has as much direction as I do." The growl rises to something loud and destructive, almost a roar. The beast, supposedly dead, existed beyond Rage, and it climbed its way from the ashes to rear its ugly head. "Wrong choice. Can't even keep his Totem."
Said the kettle about the pot.
[Boy] The wolf paced one way, wild eyes analyzing Lukas. The wolf paced the other way, those same eyes regarding Soledad.
The wolf paced, but slowed, until eventually the wolf was no longer a wolf. Boy was a bit more still in his homid form. Those eyes seemed no less wild as they pooled around Soledad.
"But I can keep a pack!" He spat the words in his birth form, and there was still a curl in his lip. But was it anger, or more disgust?
"Where is yours, Muerte Fria? Who counts themselves proud to stand by you? The floors of my house are already heavy with full moons. I would help you because of your tribe. Because there are too few Uktena in this city for us to ignore one another. But I won't keep you."
And then he stands, this time addressing Lukas.
"How's that sounds to you?"
[Muerte Fria] The Hispo was a rather daunting figure to view, something straight out of a nightmare. She stood on long legs, not like the stilts that Skinny Legs teetered around one but like tree trucks, thick and laden with muscle with large paws that could curl to grasp if they needed to, much like the paws of a bear. Her coat, while long and luxurious, was pitch colored and tinged red, as though she had bathed in the blood of her enemies so often that it had stained her fur. Around her mouth it was even redder, supporting that theory moreso. She had a thick mane of fur around her neck and on her chest, a slightly lighter red than the rest. Her ears were tall, her teeth were long and cruel, and her eyes glowed a chilly sort of fury, the kind without mercy, without reason.
These sharp, slightly backward-curved teeth flashed in the air, gnashed with an animal hate that had no Rage left to back it. Had there been any, though, chances were good that she would've flown into a frenzy on the spot. She tossed her head and a roar ripped through the air. Her hackles stood completely erect, her ears almost vanished they were so tightly pressed to her scalp, and it seemed impossible for her to put her lips together now, they'd been curled back so hard for so long.
"It is NOT your choice! I have a home, and it is NOT YOURS."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker does not wince at Muerte Fria's idea of pleasantries, though in a handful of sentences she makes it very clear what he meant by aimless rage. He doesn't cuff her upside the head, either, nor discipline her further. It's not his place or his business anymore, what she wants to say to her tribesmate.
Instead, he listens carefully as the Philodox speaks. At one point the black-pelted Crinos twists his head on his shoulders, a gesture at once human and bestial and -- very faintly -- raptorlike.
"Her packmates," he interjects quietly, neither obvious censure nor excuse, "disappeared or died one by one until she could no longer hold the Totem."
He falls silent while Boy decrees and Muerte Fria retorts. The latter may as well be wind by his ears. He ignores her utterly: like a man ignoring the ravings of a madwoman. Which is, in effect, what this is. He replies to Boy instead.
"You don't need to look to me for approbation. Whether you aid her or leave her to her devices is between your tribesmate and yourself."
[Boy] "Alright then. Choose, Muerte Fria. It is your choice. You gonna come with me willingly?"
There was a bit of that impatience in him again. That pacing wolf made itself known in his voice and in the way he glanced over his shoulder.
[Muerte Fria] "Or what?"
The words were spat out as something of a challenge, tossed to the ground off a pink tongue that licked irritably at her snout and teeth repeatedly as she snarled and growled and huffed. She had yet to relax since Boy showed up, since she'd forgotten the hurt that the last remaining piece of her past had caused her some thirty minutes ago and replaced that pain with rage, simple and pure rather than supernatural and hot as fire.
He told her to chose, and this far it seemed like her choice was obvious-- she'd rather fight and leave the men here gasping for air or end up doing so herself.
[Boy] "Or nothing. Not from me at least. But you are sick, that's plain enough to see. You know the law. You know what can happen if you don't get help."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker draws a breath as though he might answer -- but Boy speaks first. He releases it slowly.
[Muerte Fria] "I will find my own help. When I want it. In my own time."
As though to emphasize the point, she stamped her front right foot on the ground.
That was her final answer.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "You're a child, Muerte Fria," Wyrmbreaker says; not angrily, but flatly, "petulant and stupid. This might be your last best chance, and you're spitting in its face. Squander it if you want. Die alone, be forgotten. It's nothing to me.
"Brother of the Lost."
The name is a sort of acknowledgment and farewell. Wyrmbreaker turns and walks away the way he came.
[Boy] He doesn't stop them, but he doesn't leave. He stays, at least long enough to watch Soledad. Who knows, maybe she would change her mind.
"If you change your mind...."
[Muerte Fria] Her ear flicks when Lukas addresses her but that's about all he gets. He's already put a hole in her throat, tossed her about like a rag doll while bickering with the Alpha that cast her aside, then dragged her across the Gauntlet, across Chicago's Penumbra, and threw her before a boy younger and less experienced than herself to be taken care of.
Her pride was shattered, her dignity bruised and limping. Her mind was torn in several different directions, she was ill to her stomach, hurt, bleeding, and so damn tired. As that short burst of rage died down, the weariness, the wear and tear began to show. Her hackles fell back down, but her ears remained aimed backward.
Several long seconds of silence passed, in which the two wolves were content to glare at one another. Then, slowly, Soledad shrank, went from Hispo to Lupus. She almost cautiously, hesitantly put a paw across the invisible line that marked pack boundaries, then crossed over to stand a few feet away from Boy.
She didn't want to say it, didn't want to admit that she needed the help. Broken and beaten as her pride was, it still existed. She simply bobbed her head, partially deferring, partially gesturing for him to continue forward.
Let's go.
[Boy] It seems that's all that needed to be said. Boy shifts back down to Lupus and trots off toward home. No more words. No more talking. They both needed the silence, it would seem.
When they arrived at the Umbral reflection if the house Boy stopped, turned once in a canine sort of 'follow' motion, headed up the stairs and stepped, back to the physical realm.
They were in an odd sort of antechamber. A tiny opening with a side table and coat rack on one side, even though they hadn't even been here long enough to require coats. The front door, which didn't seem to match the surrounding wood finishing, was to their backs, and the rest of the house was ahead of them.
"Welcome." Boy said, once again in his Homid form.
celebration.
9 years ago