rust.

[-rust-] Earlier, Warcry gets an email from lukas_k@gmail.com:

Aren't you almost Fostern? Maybe this'll put you over. Joel Martinez mentioned some haywire elementals.

-Lukas

Attached: a link to a googlemap address. It's in the middle of the industrial corridor along Chicago river. Also --

PS: See if Asha wants to go too!

The industrial heyday of Chicago has come and gone. These days, the money is in technology, in biotech and drug development and IT. Out here in the Industrial Corridor, once so polluted from the exhaust and wastepipes of factory row that the river itself caught fire numerous times, there's a lot of silence and bygone glory. Their car rolls past old, long-silent factories slowly rusting under a leaden sky. Shambling warehouses, the roofs caving in. Sooner or later some real estate development firm will buy up all this land, knock down all these factories and mills and storehouses, level the place, build up row upon row of homes, sell them for the river view.

Until then, an aura of disuse and decay hangs in the air. And -- as they get closer to the address -- a certain metallic greasiness. A heaviness, a dread.

They end up parking across the street from a long-bankrupt factory. A sagging chain link fence circles the property. The main gate is chained shut and locked. The gatehouse is abandoned, the windows shattered. Beyond it, the mill itself: a brick facade scarred by acid rain; the sheet-metal smokestacks and ventilation pipes are covered in rust. Tall, narrow, arch-topped windows give the building an oddly ecclesiastical touch. Many of the panes are shattered, dark like missing teeth; the rest fogged with disuse and grime.

A fire escape jags up some five or six stories along the outside of the factory. Faded paint on the brick wall reads: DELCO MANUFACTURING PLANT. The asphalt around the factory has long since crumbled. With the onset of spring, plant life is beginning to push itself out of the cracks, sickly and wan.

There are a pack of stray dogs outside the factory. Some six or seven of them. They snarl and bark. They appear to be fighting over a sizeable hunk of meat.

[Warcry] Sinclair's response to her Alpha's email was immediate and thoughtless. Aren't you almost Fostern? She smacks her hands over her face in a silent Ack. Sends back a reply from the GW.net account he sent the email to in the first place: Roger. And, because she's a Glass Walker, her first order of business is tracking down whether or not Asha has an e-mail account. It's roughly ten seconds into the search that she decides to just bother Kate, get the tiny Ahroun's number, and call her.

It's like setting up a playdate. She has to talk to the goddamn butler first. Organize when she's going to pick Asha up. Let them know it's a dark green El Camino and it's got black fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview and she finally has Illinois plates now, etcetera.

When they get there, Sinclair's got her hair slicked back and tied into a savagely tight bun, off her face and out of the way. She's in torn-up jeans and black boots and a thermal shirt and a Respect Your Mother! green tee with a picture of the Earth on it and a denim jacket and fingerless gloves and a gray cap jammed down over her head to boot. She parks, climbs out, locking the doors on her way, and slams her own.

Kicks at the gravel and debris beneath their feet. And, seeing the dogs, flicks her eyebrows up. "Let's see what that's about." But that doesn't mean peering more closely. It means, for Sinclair, that she lets out a low snarl that builds into a loud, jagged bark. Without another backwards glance, she runs forward at the pack, growling and snarling and snapping her jaws as though she isn't, actually, just an athletic blonde girl running forward like she thinks the dogs are going to back off that easily.

She totally thinks the dogs are going to back off that easily.

[Warcry] [str + intimidation!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[-rust-] [dogs: collective resist! we strongr in pack!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Kalaratri] The goddamn butler answers. Surprisingly, he does not demand that Warcry bring Asha back by a certain hour. Outside of the formalities of Silver Fang business, the man is quiet, efficient, and cooperative. He offers to rent them an anonymous car if Sinclair would prefer.

Late, Asha is silent in the car. She does not attempt to change the channel, and appears to ignore whatever music Sinclair prefers after offering, once, a great CD called The Rough Guide to Bhangra - whatever the hell that may be. "It's really good," Asha said, without the sort of conviction she would bring to it were there not a hunt in the offering, were she not intent on the idea of it, the flash of hunger in her deep brown eyes.

Asha is all in black - black boots, black jeans, and a black leather coat, so fine that Warcry can smell the money radiating from it. This is cut with a white oxford shirt, menswear-style, still crisp with spraystarch and smelling of hot metal from its recent aggressive ironing. The creature stalks in Warcry's wake, her lush mouth neutral and therefore silken, sulky for her, her dark eyes flashing, the sunglasses left on the dashboard of the car. When Sinclair barks, snarling and snapping - Asha follows, charging forward with the same sort of directness, ferocity.

[Kalaratri] [str + intimidation!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[-rust-] The dogs are a ragtag bunch. The largest looks like some sort of shepherd mix: the distinctive dark saddle on the back and dark face, though the ears are a little small and the hindquarters aren't as low. There are two others that might equal a retriever for size. The rest are medium-sized at best, and all are starving, their hides loose on a rack of bones.

As Warcry charges them, barking viciously, the pack flinches as one. They gather around their meal, whining uncertainly, tails low. Then Kalaratri backs that threat up, and the dogs break and run. Yelping, they scatter tailtucked in all directions, disappearing into piles of debris, dark windows, around corners and into bushes.

Sinclair and Asha can see what they were chomping on now: a dark, meaty lump. It's wrapped in bloody cloth.

It's someone's severed leg -- a chunk of it from the knee down.

[-rust-] [percep+alert!]

[Kalaratri] [per + alert!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 2, 5, 10

[Warcry] [perception + alertness]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Warcry] Her firsts shoot into the air. "We rule!" She offers her hand to Asha then for a high five, awareness of the fact that the dogs were eating a human leg notwithstanding. Fived or not, left hanging or not, a second later Sinclair is peering over at the nommed-on leg with disgust. She wrinkles her nose, and tips her head to the side, listening to something.

"That's weird," she says quietly, and turns to the Ahroun. "I think there's some machinery in the factory that's moving. Working on something. And some really, really low booming. You hear it?"

[Kalaratri] Sinclair offers her hand for a high five. Asha frowns up at the proferred palm for a snap-second. Clearly, she was playing hookie on the day they covered how to respond to Glass Walkers who want to high five you in etiquette class. Still, she cannot miss the enthusiasm in the gesture, and so the young creature flashes Warcry a blade-like smile and reaches up, punching Sinclair's open pale enthusiastically with her fist. Perhaps they were supposed to dance after? Asha's dark head is low, briefly on Sinclair's booted feet, then flashing back toward the factory when the latter remarks on the moving machinery.

"I hear something creaking." Asha frowns, turning to eye the vast brick ediface, the rusted fireescape and the blank, shattered pains of glass framed by oxidized metal. "Want to circle around, find the entrance? Or - " a gesture at the firescape. " - climb up and see what we can see?"

[Warcry] The bump of fist-to-palm gets an odd quirk from the Walker, slightly taken aback and a bit befuddled as to how to respond to that. So: she closes her hand over Asha's fist for a moment, grinning back at her. Maybe it's a show of dominance. Or friendship. Or paper-beats-rock, which makes no sense, but it's a game, those are the rules, live with it.

She lets go, and looks up at the stairs and ladders, all rusting and creaking, themselves, in whatever wind there is today. "I trust those about as much as a sheep with a zipper down its belly, tell the truth," she says, because there's really no point in behavin' above her raisin', even next to a purebred drink of clear water like Asha. She cracks her neck. "Let's find a way in that involves doors."

And off she goes.

[-rust-] It's not hard to find a door. They've approached from the side of the factory, and there are several small, man-sized emergency exits here. If they circle around to the front, they'll find vast loading-dock bay doors, large enough to drive forklifts and trucks through.

Also, if they're really bent on looking in, there are innumerable shattered windows along the way.

[Kalaratri] Asha runs in Warcry's wake, darting like a shadow behind the pale-headed Glass Walker. She circles, searching for a hunk of concrete or some other boost she can use to hop up and peer into the shattered windows for a look at what's inside - but only after stopping, and shooting a questioning look at Sinclair. This was the Glass Walker's hunt. There is a sort of hunter's etiquette at work here.

[Kalaratri] [Per + Alert]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Warcry] [per + alert! it so dark!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Warcry] They aren't packmates. It's in the works, sure. It's under discussion. Sinclair recently missed a hunt her pack went on, but she's heard at least one story from it: while Lukas held them down, Asha took the heads off of two Spirals. Other than that, she doesn't know what's going on with that. Why Asha isn't bound to Perun, whether she's going to be bound or not. She'd ask, but she didn't ask on the drive over, and she isn't thinking about it right now.

That said: she's older, she's so close to her rank challenge it's like a constant smell in her nostrils, and the weight of that hangs in the very air between them. She invited Asha along on this: without it being said, Sinclair is sort of in charge here. Even though she's not the Full Moon.

She's cupping her hands around her eyes and peering in the lower corner of a window, standing on tiptoe. Asha glances her way and Sinclair, after a moment of consideration, shoots back a nod. From different angles, and from different heights, the two of them peer in. Sinclair, however, is at least half-distracted; she's keeping an ear out in case they're snuck up on.

[-rust-] It's dark inside. A vast floor littered with debris and refuse. Ceiling high, rafters exposed. Everything's concrete and steel and brick; nothing organic at all. Windows let in the light of the full moon. It's all there is to see by.

Only -- no. In the darkness, a sullen red glow. Like a furnace, or perhaps a crucible. And the occasional bright-white of acetylene torches. By that light, in fits and flickers, they can see...

they can see small, metallic creatures, blocky, orbiting a great, riveted, metal-bound sphere: like moons around a central planet. There is a large, heavy door in the front of the sphere, like a bank vault. Massive cylinders positioned at intervals around the sphere pump and piston, the pneumatic hisses that Sinclair heard corresponding to the upstroke, the deep, hollow boom to the down.

Two men stand around the machinery, one with arms folded across a brawny chest; the other scratching himself incessantly, compulsively: scalp, side, armpit, asscheek, knee. Presently, the pistons stop. At a word from the first man, indistinct, the small metal-creatures, knee-high at best, scurry to attend to the spherical chamber's portal.

[Warcry] Once upon a time -- that is, not very long ago at all -- Sinclair's first order of business would have been to automatically assume responsibility for the half-eaten human leg outside to these bastards in here. She would have broken the window, rolled on in, and gone on a rampage.

If Lukas and Kate were here, she'd be looking to them instantly, wondering what to do. They aren't here, though, and neither is the pack's ragabash. So she screws up her face, gnawing on her lower lip, thinking. She's not an idiot -- far from it, in fact -- but you can almost see the gears turning, creaking through processes they haven't bothered to use since her First Change altered her response to every possible situation.

She stays where she is to see what happens, but says quietly to Asha: "I have no fucking clue. Electric Sky-rhya said something about haywire elementals, apparently, and I'm gonna take a wild guess and say those metal guys are it, but I don't want to go in guns blazing til I know what they're doing." A beat. "So if you see something I don't, speak up."

[Kalaratri] "That guy," Asha says, in quiet response, lifting her head and nodding toward the window. The nod is non-specific, until she identifies him, "looks like he has scabies or lice, or something. Lookit him scratch? But otherwise I don't see anything else. We can go across and take a look from the other side - "

The creature looks up, at the sullen cast of the sky, the concrete broken all around. " - or, shift and find the scent of the leg the dogs were eating, follow until we find where it came from. See if those guys smell like the dead person. That's what I think we should do."

[Warcry] She blinks. "I hadn't even thought of that," she says, but Sinclair isn't displeased. Proud she is, overconfident she was once, but resentful of ideas that aren't hers: hardly. "Okay. Shift down and sniff around; I want to see what happens when that door opens."

[Kalaratri] And lo! it became so. Asha drops back from the broken threads of the window, crouches down, low - shifts beneath the light of the full moon, her body contorting through the forms until she is a pale, silver-furred lupus with startling eyes, ice-blue and ghostly. She picks her way over the tarmac back toward the leg, her nose low to the concrete.

[Per + Primal-Urge, -2 dif for lupus]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 7 (Success x 1 at target 4)

[-rust-] [scent trail definitely leads inside the building!]
to Kalaratri

[-rust-] Fortunately for Warcry, it seems whatever they're doing in there is about to be demonstrated.

The brilliant white flashes of blowtorches fade as the small creatures gather around the portal. The dull red glow remains -- emanating from the core of their bodies. The tiny metal creatures -- metal elementals? -- work silently and swiftly, ratcheting open the portal. A great gout of steam escapes, the two men stepping back from it hurriedly. When the hinged door swings wide, the interior is perfectly dark.

And then not. A dull red glow begins to beat to life there, pulsing, stronger with every beat. A massive, slablike hand emerges. Clamps down on the outside of the sphere. Pulls.

Out of the sphere steps a giant, a vaguely humanoid being of rusty metal ingots and sheets, bolts and rivets, ball-bearing joints gummed with old oil, leaking pistons. When it unfolds, it stands ten feet tall, mighty and decayed, like a goddamn transformer someone dropped in an ocean and fished out a year later.

It core beats a pulsing red, red, red. Its head, blocky and featureless, moves to and fro. It has a mouth, or a maw, which yawns open as it roars: a voice like shredding metal; teeth like a wheat thresher. It drops to all fours and advances on the two men, something unpleasantly eager and dumb and hungry in its motion.

The taller of the two says something to the other. The other, the itchy one, runs off.

He's back moments later. He's dragging something. It's a body. It's a decapitated, mangled body, one leg missing. He whistles at the giant metal thing, bending at the waist and the knees, slapping his thigh the way one might call a dog.

The metal giant's attention is caught. It lurches toward the bait, maw dropping open, thresher-teeth cycling up.

[Kalaratri] The wolf pads quietly back toward the windows where Sinclair watches. She takes cover before getting there, shifting, then circles back to the Galliard. "The leg came from inside there," Asha's voice is low. She darts a direct, dark-eyed glance back through the windows. " - there's no question about it. It's the right place. They've got corpse parts, and they look gross. I saw, we go in."

[Kalaratri] "Uhm," Asha adds, watching the tail end of the show from within the factory. " - as you can see from the fact that they, like, just fed it to that gross thing."

[Warcry] "Hoooly shit," Sinclair exhales, muttering to herself as she watches the giant emerge from the sphere,

falls to all fours like a metal crinos,

and then is fed a one-legged human corpse.

Asha returns from her sniffing reconnaissance mission to find the Galliard still staring into the windows. She frowns to herself. "I wanna know why the little metal guys are doing their fucking bidding. But we'll deal with them after. Try not to hurt them too bad or chase them off if you can avoid it; maybe we can cleanse them or something. Or herd them to the caern and let someone else cleanse them, cuz I don't know how."

She steps back from the window and digs around in the pocket of her jacket, tossing a black pin with a white symbol on it to Asha. "Shield talen," she tells her, taking out a second for herself and pinning it to her jacket. As she does so, the symbol turns a faint, glittering blue with activation, and then fades.

She shifts slowly into hispo, a dark, thickfurred monster next to the currently-lithe wolf that is Asha, and grunts, snarling softly as she goes towards the doors that will take them inside. "Big male first," she says. "Ready?"

Set.

Go.


[-1G, Soak Talen]

[Warcry] [Also! -1WP for Resist Pain!]

[Kalaratri] Ancestors! -> Brawl
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8) [WP]

[Kalaratri] answer my IM! hee.
to -rust-

[Kalaratri] "I know how." Asha says, quiet and alert. How to cleanse things, she means. While Warcry gives her instructions, Asha drops back and accepts the talen offered her by Sinclair, pinning it to her white blouse underneath her jacket. There's a moment where Asha leans forward, intent, concentrating, her dark brows drawn together, her eyes gleaming, calling on something deep inside her bones and blood, the thread that ties her inherently to the depthless past of her people. When she straightens, her dark eyes are older, somehow - her body language more dominant than it was before.

She sits, tossing a bloodsoaked bandage to Sinclair, then unwinding a second bloodsoaked bandage and applying it carefully to herself. At last, she drops to all fours, hispo-formed, silver and bright, blue-eyed in her warformed, impossibly noble, the past ghosting over her like a slipstream.

[-1 G - Bloody Bandage!
-1 G - Soak Talen!
- 1 WP Resist Pain!]

[Warcry] When she takes the bloody bandage from Asha, Sinclair seems a bit surprised. Gratified. Also... nervous. She doesn't explain why. She just wraps the bandage around her hand, closes her fist, and lets the fibers unwind and soak into her skin as they glow the same pale blue as her soak talen. The bandage itself, and Asha's blood, disappear. Sinclair breathes deeply, rears back, and with a nod to the Ahroun,

slams through the doors.

[and -1G for the BB!]

[-rust-] The door doesn't so much crash open as it simply flies off its rusted hinges when Warcry hits it, furred and fanged and ferocious. The Glass Walker rides its momentum to the floor and hits the ground running, literally, the Silver Fang close behind.

The men across the empty, litter-strewn floor wheel around instantly. The larger of the two bursts into what they must already suspect: a crinos form, bat-eared, mouth leering wide into a horrid rictus grin. The smaller flings the body wholesale at the metal monster, which catches it eagerly. The slicing, screaming razors of its thresher-mouth make literal mincemeat of the corpse. It raises its head and starts heaving it down whatever gullet it might have -- more intent on its meal than on the intruders. For now.

Meanwhile, the smaller man tears his shirt off. His body is covered in boils, weeping sores. Fists clenching, muscles tensing, he strains until his face turns red

and rising like a rack of skeletal wings, jointed, segmented arachnid legs erupt from his back.

Spiders. Why is it always spiders?

The direwolves charge. The Dancer and the ... fomori? turn to face them, bracing for impact. The metal giant is still enjoying his meal. And the little metal creatures run around in circles, whirring in a blind panic.

[inits!]

[Warcry] [+9]1
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4

[Kalaratri] +9!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4

[-rust-] [bsd! +8]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[-rust-] [itchy! +6]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4 (Failure at target 6)

[-rust-] [metaldude +6]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4 (Failure at target 6)

[-rust-] BSD 18
Asha/Sinclair 13
Itchy/Metaldude 10

Declares:

Metaldude: OM NOM NOM

Itchy:
1a. Grapple with legz!
b. CHOMP WITH TEEFS

[-rust-] [Hurr, Itchy is grappling/chomping Sinclair]

[Kalaratri] [Asha: 2 rage. 1a. BITE; 1b. BITE; Rage 1: BITE; Rage 2: BITE. Start with the Crinos BSD, move on the Itchy.]

[Warcry] [1a. Evade that grapple!
1b. Flank BSD
1c. Bite BSD
R1. Bite BSD again]

[-rust-] [Also: 1a must be spent charging the enemy, as they're quite a ways away and waiting. However, building up all that speed will add +3 to your very first hand to hand attack]

[Warcry] [1a. CHARRRGE
1b. Evade grapple
1c. Bite BSD
R1. Bite BSD]

[Kalaratri] [Asha: 2 rage. 1a. CHARGE; 1b. BITE; Rage 1: BITE; Rage 2: BITE. Start with the Crinos BSD, move on the Itchy.]

[-rust-] BSD
1. Bite Asha when in range!
R1. Bite Sinclair!
R2. Bite Sinclair!
R3. Bite Asha!

[-rust-] BSD
1. Chomp!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 5)

[-rust-] Damage +2!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10 (Failure at target 6)

[Kalaratri] 1b: BITE -3 for split and +3 for CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGE.
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 5)

[Kalaratri] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 10 at target 6)

[-rust-] Ack! Holy shit! Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Warcry] [1c. -5, +3]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 10 at target 5) Re-rolls: 5

[Warcry] [damage! +9]
Dice Rolled:[ 17 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[-rust-] soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[-rust-] The Dancer turns to face them, and they can see he's no novice. There's balance in his posture, readiness, ferocity. He's faster than they are. His teeth flash for Kalaratri's throat

and glance off her hide.

Then she's on him. She and Sinclair both, matched perfectly for speed. A pair of direwolves barreling into you full-tilt and then biting for your throat is no mean thing, and they prove it: tear his throat out nearly in unison, drop him to the floor.

Itchy was grinning a moment ago. Leering actually. Now he's just staring.

[-rust-] Itchy
Grapple sinclair! -2 dice
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6 (Failure at target 6)

[Warcry] [1b. Changing action to biting Itchy! -4]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 5) Re-rolls: 1

[Warcry] [damage, +6]
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[-rust-] There's no resistance beneath Sinclair's teeth. Itchy's flesh collapses like meat, like a sausage, like a flesh-sack. So thin, so breakable.

So poisonous.

[no soak -- but sinclair soaks 5L from icky boils!]

[Warcry] [Soak! +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[Kalaratri] Rage 1: change to claw Itchy!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 10, 10 (Failure at target 7)

[Kalaratri]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 7) Re-rolls: 1

[Kalaratri] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8 (Failure at target 6)

[-rust-] [Soak 3L from lessened splash!]

[Kalaratri] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 4, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Warcry] [R1. Clawing Itchy! +1 diff for changing targets, changing actions]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 7) Re-rolls: 4

[Warcry] [damage! +5 COME ON KAHSEENO YOU WHORE.]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[Warcry] [soaking the splashies! +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[-rust-] Itchy begins to laugh as the wolves close on him, snapping and clawing. He laughs hard when Sinclair bites him and gets a mouth full of pus and venom; laughs harder when Kalaratri claws him and splashes toxin back in her own face.

He's still laughing when Warcry opens him from neck to navel. It gurgles; he spits up blood. He collapses in a heap, nearly cloven in two, his eyes glassy and glaring, mouth fixed in a death-grin.

The metal creature has devoured the last of the corpse. It begins to look around, head swiveling creakily on the neck-joint, hunting for more morsels.

[Kalaratri] Rage 2: BITE METAL MONSTER! +1 dif for changing targets + WP because come ON!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 9 at target 6) [WP] Re-rolls: 3

[Kalaratri] Damage! Hail!
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[-rust-] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[-rust-] Asha's claws clang off the metal creature's body. Its head lowers. It looks at itself, stupified by the faint scratches left by the Ahroun.

Then it raises its head. Opens its mouth. ROARS at Asha, all outrage. The thresher-blades in its mouth, wet still with the blood of its previous meal, begin to spin up again.

Its small attendants stop wheeling about in a blind panic. They snap to attention as though short-circuited, or electrified. Then, whirring, they converge on the Garou, bumping into ankles, smashing into shins, wheeling about underfoot, generally being little pains in the ass.

[Declares:
Metaldude
1. Metalmonster SMASH! (Asha)
R1. Metalmonster THRESH! (Sinclair)
R2. Metalmonster GRAB! (Asha)
R3. Metalmonster SMASH TOGETHER! (Both)

Little dudes
1. Collectively get underfoot! Dex+Ath vs diff 7 -- if fail, take -2 dice penalty for this round.

[Kalaratri] [Asha: 1a. Fur Gnarl!; 1b. BITE; Rage 1 BITE; Rage 2 BITE!]

[Warcry] The metal man's roar sends Sinclair's fur flying back from her face. Her ears fold back for a moment, then snap forward as she claws at the dirty floor, roaring right back at it. Then come the little guys. Zooming towards her legs, nipping at her ankles, spinning around with electronic-sounding squeals of confusion.

[1a.
1b.
1c.
R1. -- all bites on Metaldude, aiming for Fur Gnarled spot]

[Refletive: Dex + Athletics]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 7) Re-rolls: 1

[Kalaratri] Dex + Athletics - merit PERFECT BALANCE
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 5)

[Kalaratri] Fur Gnarl: -2 + WP
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7) [WP]

[Kalaratri] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[-rust-] [-2 soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Kalaratri] BITE: fur gnarled spot! -3
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 7)

[Kalaratri] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[-rust-] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Warcry] [1a. -3 / +2 diff for aiming]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7) Re-rolls: 1

[Warcry] [damage, +1 -- right, i get it. you're a little tease. slut.]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[-rust-] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Warcry] [1b. -4 / +2 diff for aiming]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 7) Re-rolls: 3

[Warcry] [+3 YEAH RE-ROLLS THAT'S WHAT MAMA LIKES]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 9 at target 6)

[-rust-] [ow!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 6, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Warcry] [1c. -5 / +2 diff for aiming]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 7)

[Warcry] [damage! +2 DON'T YOU TEASE ME, BITCH.]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[-rust-] soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[-rust-] Their teeth screech off metal, rattling their brains. When they puncture through, the sharp edges of the metal cut at their gums; hot oil boils out of the gashes to scald their tongue.

There's a rough whine beneath the steady rumble of the metal creature's heart/engine now. Still bellowing in wounded outrage, it lifts one hand(? paw?) from the floor and pounds it down on Asha.

[SMASH!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 8 (Failure at target 6)

[Kalaratri] Rage 1! BITE!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7) Re-rolls: 1

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

[-rust-] soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 8 (Failure at target 6)

[Warcry] [R1! Aieee]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 7)

[Warcry] [+3!]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[-rust-] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[-rust-] Even scarred by claws, the metal creature's armor is formidable. The Garou's teeth glance off as often as they sink deep. Though the monster's steel hide is scarred with innumerable scratches and gashes now, few seem to have actually penetrated deep enough to do significant damage.

It's slow, though. Clumsy. Its smashing paw crashes down a foot away from where Asha's standing, braced to take the blow. It bellows louder, frustrated, and then clamps its jaws down on Warcry's arm. Drags her hand between the rotary blades in its mouth.

Threshes.

[R1. Thresh! Damage is calculated as though attack were +2 diff -- special effects may apply.]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[-rust-] [okay, nm about special effects then! *LOL* just normal chomp damage.]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[Warcry] [Soak! +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Kalaratri] Rage 2: BITE!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 7) Re-rolls: 2

[Kalaratri] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[-rust-] [ow!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[Warcry] She would scream, if she could feel it. There's something horrific about seeing her foreleg being chewed by whirring, threshing metal blades, gnawed deeper and deeper into this thing's mouth. Warcry thrashes her head, snarling and growling with more Rage than fear, and though her own blood is drenching her fur now, she doesn't sound or look like she's in the sort of agony she should be in. She digs the claws of her hind legs into the concrete, but it isn't doing much good. So:

she roars in the metal-thing's 'face' even as it threshes at her arm. Roars louder, howling now in something like shared triumph, as Asha tears into its steely frame.

[-rust-] While it's distracted, Kalaratri cleaves an enormous hole into its side. Oil thick as sludge spills on the floor, drenching the smaller metal creatures, causing more than one to skitter away with squeals and screeches of dismay.

The underlying rumble of the metal giant's engine is growing distinctly choppy, rough. There's a rudimentary, low intelligence in it which knows only anger, hunger, survival instinct, destructive impulse. It hangs onto Warcry with all its might, its jaws crushing, the whirring, flashing, redsoaked blades of its razorbladed thresher dimly visible behind them.

It grabs abortively for Asha. Its paw is huge, a solid chunk of metal with a barely-functional thumb.

[grapple Asha!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[-rust-] [smash together! using standard diff because even though Asha is grappled, Warcry needs to be targeted]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[-rust-] [Damage +1! This is bashing, evenly split between the two of you.]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Kalaratri] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Warcry] [Soak! +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Kalaratri] [Per + Primal-Urge - how bad off is this thing! -1 dif for hispo!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 5)

[-rust-] [summary - after rounds 1 and 2:
BSD dead
Itchy dead
Metaldude has taken 18 agg, is fur gnarled for 2
Asha is grappled. Accumulate 5 succ to escape.
Warcry is being nommed, but since this was never rolled as an action, no actual effects.

Metaldude Declare:
1. Thresh Sinclair!
R1. Smash Asha into ground!
R2. Smash again!

[-rust-] [Quite bad off!]
to Kalaratri

[Kalaratri] [ASHA: DECLARE - 1a. ENLARGE FUR GNARL + WP 1b. BITE; Rage 1: BITE; Rage 2: BITE]

[Warcry] This time, Sinclair yips. She and Asha slam together, but it doesn't even rattle them. Infuriated by being treated like a little rag doll, Warcry yanks her arm free from the thing's mouth, barking loudly and repeatedly at it. All of her steps leave bloodsmears now. One of the little metal elementals goes careening forward, slips in a puddle, and lets out a wail as it spins out of control and out into the shadows at the edges of the building.

EEEEEE!

Sinclair lunges.

[Soak +1 for yanking arm out of mouth!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Kalaratri] (Redeclare: ALL BITES. NOM NOM NOM. PTOOIE.)

[Warcry] [1a.
1b.
1c.
1d. -- BITEBITEBITEBITEBITE]

[Warcry] [1a. -4]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 5) Re-rolls: 2

[Warcry] [+6]
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 10 at target 6)

[-rust-] [ack! ded. soak anyway!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Kalaratri] 1a. BITE. -2
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 6 at target 5)

[Kalaratri] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 8, 9, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[-rust-] The guttural, grating whine of the thresher wails to an abruptly higher pitch as Warcry yanks its substrate free. There's blood all over her paw, blood matting her fur, but her flesh is amazingly free of damage -- every bit of it regenerated as fast as it was done.

She barely has time to register any of this. Perhaps she doesn't even care. That was her arm he was chewing, damn it

and she pays him back with interest.

When the killing blow lands, the little metal critters let out a piercing, whistling shriek, slamming to rigid attention as one.

When the thing's head crashes down on the concrete ten feet from its body, the small metal constructs come slowly to life again. They spin in small, aimless circles. They whirr a few feet in one direction, pause, go in another.

Little by little at first, and then in sloughing sheets, the rust and oil and grime coating their bodies falls away. The red pulse at their cores fades away. They begin to gleam, and are soon recognizable as the materialized metal gafflings they are.

As for the giant: headless now, the red beat of its engine-heart slows, slows, dims, dies out.

Then it falls apart into chunks of metal, sheets of shrapnel. Finally revealed at the core, mangled and charred and nearly unrecognizable: the corpse of a stray dog, bolted and fused in place.

[-rust-] [Final tally!
Metaldude 20agg +6 overkill.
BSD 7agg (technically incap)
Fomor 7agg +5 overkill.

Asha and Sinclair both still OK +1]

[Warcry] "You [fucker]!" Sinclair pants at the metal thing, perhaps unheard except by herself, teeth bared in aggravation at it as it falls apart. The little gafflings begin to purify, never deeply corrupted, and she's glad to see it. She's glad to see that the thing is dead, that the Spiral is almost not breathing, that there is nothing slimy or sinister or tentacled living at the heart of the beast.

She pads forward in hispo when its core becomes visible, though, and keens softly as she looks down at the dead dog. Puts her paw on it, as though thinking to shake it awake, but it's long gone. She pulls her paw back, and one of the gafflings -- flailing its arms a bit -- wheels over and bats at her leg questioningly.

Sinclair looks down. Chuffs. Turns to look at Asha.

"End the Spiral."

Looks back at the gaffling that has, now, wrapped its slinky-like arms and legs around her uninjured foreleg, looking up at her with its boxy head and gleaming eyes. Sinclair blinks her own blue ones back at it, as though to say

Whut?

To which the gaffling has no answer. It just hangs on, and Asha goes over and claws or bites or steps on the Dancer to destroy it utterly. Sinclair just stares at what's left of the place, and then a moment later -- elemental attached to her notwithstanding -- begins barking levelly. Time to cleanse. Time to rip trophies from bodies. Time to bury the evidence. Which she and the Fang do together, dragging what they need to the back of the El Camino.

It isn't until they're safely back in the car itself that she contacts her Alpha.

We took care of it. Asha was badass. We're headed to the Caern now. I apparently have a pet now. I'll explain later.

[Kalaratri] The great metal monster begins to disintegrate from head to toe, from top to bottom. Kalaratri snarls and tears at the metal arm grasping her monstrous body. She comes away without a mouthful of rust, falling head over hindquarters back to the floor - and landing on her feet, all four paws on the ground. There is a moment when she snarls at the little metal monsters, baring her teeth, expecting some renewed attack from the attendants - but they are already resolving into something cleaner and brighter than they were. The Silver Fang paces a widening circle around the battlefield, shifting down into lupus during one of the circuits the better to find scent patterns, to sniff out any remaining enemies hiding in the depthless shadows of the massive old factory.

There are none, just the barely breathing Spiral sprawled out on the blood slicked concrete floor. Asha's survey of their surroundings ends there. She is hispo again, pale and thrumming with the promise of her blood, her ancestors still a sinuous, exotic hum deep in her veins, bone rhythms, the beat of blood and sinew, the visceral ties that bind.

Wyrmbreak-rhya Kalaratri huffs back, when Sinclair orders her to end the Spiral. Questioning: might get something from it? If Warcry repeats the direction, the Silver Fang tears out his throat without further question.