Gerhart Evans. That's his name. What they know about him isn't much, except that he's kin and someone's concerned about him and wanted them to look in, check and see. It's Snails and Tails, a Fostern Ragabash, who snags Rabid Jack at the Cold Crescent sept and gives him the task. Then does a doubletake at the lupus, gives a sniff of consideration, and grabs the next cliath who happens to walk down the otherwise empty corridor. Hector is lucky enough to receive this honor, and is address by Snails and Tails as, New Kid, Do This Right and I Might Remember Your Name Next Time - with a needling, no-moon sort of grin, all shiny.
Gerhart is her boyfriend's cousin's uncle, and he's Bone Gnawer, and he's mostly-homeless, but he just does not disappear, not really, not for longer than it takes to go on a bender when you gather up cash enough for a few fifths of the cheapest vodka and a cheap hotel room for a week.
Of course, he ain't been homeless now for three or four months, not since his old lady - on again and off again and not known to be kin except in the way that all the downs and all the outs might be considered kin to the street mutts, by circumstance, not blood - got outta jail and graduated from her halfway house to transitional housing in one-bedroom apartment in a rundown building in a rundown part of East Colfax and invited Gerhart to move in and enjoy the luxuries of four walls and a roof and running water and occasional heat and a fridge that keeps most of the cockroaches out of the left over hamburger helper. The stuff you make with gristle and bone or maybe wet cat food because that's all you got in the house that night.
Her name's Carlena or Carlita that's all Snails and Tails knows, that and the address for her apartment.
Snails and Tails tells them that her boyfriend's cousin's been over three three or four times in the last few weeks, knocking on the door. Don't no one ever answer except the first time and that was Carlita. She had her teeth out and her eye out and she was sucking on a fifth of Jack like there was not going to be a tomorrow for her, and said that Gerhart wasn't there, he'd be back later, he was at church.
That was three weeks ago and Gerhart still hasn't showed up.
Do us a favor and go and find something out.
JackThe extent of Jack's introduction is as brief as a brush of his brutish lupus form against Hector's leg and a sniff, and the Galliard might think that's all the Philodox is willing to give until they're almost upon the elevator and he becomes a man.
What passes for a man, at least. Jack is butt ugly. That's the nicest way of putting it. Okay, unfortunate looking might be the nicest way of putting it, but butt ugly fits a helluva lot better. The shift from mottle-furred bulldog with muscle piled upon muscle in a brawny mountain of flesh and fur to stout stubble headed-and-faced man doesn't do much for him. He's missing a few teeth, though thankfully has most of his front ones, even where a few are discolored and therefore probably dead, the Garou's ability to heal and hearty constitution is keeping them in place and functioning. They show when he finally pipes up.
"Jack Rabbit. Law in War," holding out a meaty-palmed-and-sausage-fingered mitt, the Bone Gnawer grins up at Hector. He's the 5'7", a runt for their race but wide as a Buick for it. Looks like he could go out for World's Strongest Man and just eat his way through the obstacles.
"Philodox. Cliath," though his bearing already speaks that last part. So many new faces at each moot, so Jack seems happy to go over his Bone Gnawer fides. "Just rolled into down last month. Got my bike downstairs. What you ridin'?"
Hector"I ride the bus, cous'."
New Kid stood at the moot the same as everyone else and howled but he didn't introduce himself or the other two-legs he rolled in with. Introduced himself to the warders of Forgotten Questions all proper-like when they did roll in but not around that fire under that fierce moon. Two septs pushed together makes it easy for someone who doesn't normally blend in to blend in.
Must have been at Cold Crescent to introduce himself there too, like he's networking or something, because he was on his way out the door as light and easy as you please when the Fostern nabbed him.
Alright. Chilling with the Bone Gnawer. He doesn't argue. He's not much taller than Jack but he's a hell of a lot smaller and he's a hell of a lot prettier. Doesn't make him a hell of a lot weaker but to look at him with his long hair and his cartilage piercing and all them erroneous necklaces and ringers nobody would think oh yeah sure he could probably hold his own in a fight. His Timberlands look older than he does.
He still shakes the Rat's hand.
"Echoes of the Lost. Hi. You know where we're going?"
Jack"The hood," is his answer, punctuated with a couple nods of his bobbling round face. He pulls up the hood of his sweatshirt as he does so, under the leather vest he wears. The thick-fabric Carhartt welder's pants and worn jackboots complete the look that goes with...
That bike they come upon, a chopped up Harley that is painted a flat matte green in this incarnation, streaked black it what looks like an attempt at camouflage but upon closer inspection turns out to be the dried ichor of less-sapient Wyrm beasts.
"Want to hop on the back?"
Jack's been ranging, the same on a bike as a wolf might out in the wilderness. Actually, he's been doing both, splitting his time between the two Septs and getting to know both in equal measure. Leave it to a Philodox to think he can balance the two worlds the Garou of Denver were split up into.
He looks like a he knows the way, but waits to swing his leg over the motorcycle until after Hector gives his answer, though it's obvious he would prefer they ride there on his hog. His nose scrunches as he casts a glance at the bus stop down the sidewalk.
HectorWearing jeans and a t-shirt doesn't leave him with the option of putting up his hood but the other Cliath doesn't look like he's going to fare too well in this heat anyway. Once they get outside he tries to fan air up under his shirt by pinching the hem and flapping it back and forth.
Want to hop on the back?
"Oh, man, really?" he asks and a lightness pierces his voice that wasn't present when they were upstairs a moment ago. "I've never been on a bike before, that is badass! How fast does it go?"
That would be a yes. He waits to see how Jack mounts the thing before he climbs on behind him.
Jack"Let's find out," Jack says, another toothy grin lighting that creased and gruesome jack-o-lantern of a face as he throws a leg over the bike.
Jack doesn't seem to shy away from physical contact, not from any Garou willing to share it with one of the Omega Tribe, and he waits for Hector to mimic the kick that leaves him astride the iron horse before turning back and handing him a hard skullcap helmet from inside his saddle bags. It's just like the one Jack pulls on.
"Hold on around my waist," easier said than done, "and lean when I lean," is all the direction Jack gives. The Fat Boy is low with wide tires and big enough to bear Jack's weight and Hector's without much protest. Jack kicks the thing until its engine wakes up and pulls out into the street, picking up speed and carrying them through the city toward the street - if not the exact address - they're looking for.
HectorThe grin and invitation to figure out how fast the Fat Boy can go, if anyone needs this information for later rendition of the tale, would be about the time that Hector gives the wolf-born shit-kicker a look that accidentally says you're so cool. He doesn't actually say it but he gets moony-eyed with the celerity that's only possible in men who haven't relinquished their youth yet.
Hector has to rake his hair back off his forehead and hold it with one hand so the brain bucket will keep it out of his face and he clicks it shut under his chin and doesn't hesitate before latching his arms around the broad male's waist.
"Holy SHIT that was awesome!" he says when they come to a complete stop outside the place.
TwilightIt is just edging toward twilight outside, maybe 8:30, maybe 9. Garou've never kept normal hours. They hunt while others sleep, dark things torn to shred in the dark night. This is even more necessary in the cities, where everyone has a cell phone and there are fixed cameras on half the storefronts downtown. Twilight: a hot and smoke-filled night, the horizon lost in the haze, this pall of smoke settled over downtown.
The moon, though - the moon is huge, hazey and luminous in the darkness. It just looms over them as they emerge from the climate controlled indulgence of 1999 Broadway in the great dark Denver night.
It's twenty or thirty minutes from the Sept to the hood. Could've been more if not for Jack's ranging. He knows the way well enough, where to cut away from the main streets to avoid any late-evening traffic or inconvenient night-time roadwork, where to cut back to avoid the nesting lanes of residential streets that brood quiet all around flanking downtown.
And they find themselves in the hood indeed.
It's not quite a scene out of Baltimore proper, or North Philly, but there's a certain seedy sameness to streets like these, which feel nothing like the rest of Denver. Past check cashing places and White Castles where the late-evening cashier is locked in behind a metal grille and bullet-proof glass. (Bullet-resistant glass, Earlene Foster learned three days ago, while she was making change for an order of Chicken Rings. Now she's in the ICU and they're trying to convince her grams that there's nothing wrong and nothing sinful about organ donation and nothing can touch Earlene, or make her feel pain or fear again.)
Past Shepherds Motel, down Valentia street: a desolate block of old storefronts. The pawn shop is open, as is the suboxone clinic and at the end of the block, three out of four corners boast liquor stores and the fourth boasts a medical marijuana clinic.
Everything else is shuttered. The Soul Food Shack kicked it three months ago and the upholstery store has been closed for years. Three iterations of ALL AMERICAN THRIFT PRIDE PRIDE PRIDE!!! have been attempted in a linked series of three rundown stores across the street from their destination and all that remains are the windows scrawled with soap announcing their final sales and a jumbled mess of cast-offs that no one, not even in this neighborhood, can bring themselves to want, piled in dusty old windows.
Their destination is a second-floor apartment above the shuttered DENVER UP-HOL-STERY SINCE 1956 store. Lights are on, visible in one set of windows upstairs, where light bleeds beneath the bottom seam of old roller blinds and the narrow door between the stores leading upstairs is easily identified. If one or the other tries it, they might find it open.
Hector[perc + alert]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Jack[ Perception + Alertness. Specialty: Uncanny Instinct. ]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1
TwilightBoth of them see a shadow against the shade in the windows above the shop. Smaller in size, with a big halo of hair. Mostly safe to assume it is either a woman whose sense of style was arrested in 1988 or a pint-size glam-rocker from the self-same year.
JackJack was raised right, and that balled fist of calloused meat knocks three times on the door of the apartment they had been pointed at by Snails and Tails. A second later he takes a step back, making sure it's Hector's pretty face whoever opens that door will see. The lupus seems intent on pigeon holing the Galliard into the duty of mouthpiece, if only because he knows the public relations havoc having his face waiting on the other side of an opened door can do.
HectorHe would have forgotten to take the helmet back off were not for Jack doing it first. It's a wonder the adrenaline rush doesn't leave him tunneled against his surroundings: his eyes flick skyward at the dark-lit movement over them and he cants his head just-so before trotting the rest of the way after Jack.
And then being requisitioned as the friendly Face of the Neighborhood without further discussion. No one to impress yet but the Galliard fixes his posture and runs his hands through his hair once so it doesn't look flat as hell and clears his throat.
Jack[ Dropping a Gnosis for Heightened Sense. Reflexive. Then Perception + Alertness. Subtracting 2 from the difficulty for the Gift. Specialty: Uncanny Instinct. ]
Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 1, 3, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1
Hector[-1G, activate Heightened Senses
perc + PU, -2 diff from le gift]
Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )
TwilightBANG BANG BANG.
Jack beats the battered old door upstairs hard enough to rattle it in its flimsy doorframe. The landing smells like cat piss and talcum powder and the sewer. Smells like
What they hear are raised voices beyond the door, not one set but two at least, back and forth and forth and back. They were quarrelling Soon as Jack hits the door with his meaty fist, those voices go silent. The sort of guilty silence some people can never break themselves of, maybe, that startlement that maybe someone coming to fuck with you is at the front door.
That silence ticks on a minute.
Maybe two.
Then both hear the creaking tread of footsteps over the floorboards, inching closer to the front door.
TwilightJack smells cat piss and talcum powder and the sewer. Jack smells rotting Chinese take-out and rotgut whiskey and old blood. The faint, sweet, sick suppuration of rotting meat. Cheap perfume and the sharp piney scent of even cheaper cleaning products.
He also hears pieces of that argument. A few passing words from the two voices beyond the door, both of whom he identifies as human and female.
"...that's the devil talkin' in you, girl. It's him what loves this world and all the damned thangs in it. You gotta root him the fuck out. Light that righteous fire and - "
"..."
[Here, the conversation is arrested.]
TwilightThe fine hairs stand out sharply on the back of Hector's neck. Someone on the other side of that door has rage, or something like it. Does not quite feel like a source as sacred and strong as a Garou, but - it is not natural and it sets his hackles stiff.
HectorStood behind the Uktena as he is, Jack can't see his teeth threaten to bare themselves. He can maybe see the cold-iron sort of adrenaline that comes in moments like this, not like the warm weightless sort comes from going almost-too-fast on a motorcycle down city streets near dusk.
If he were in any other form he would growl. In his birth form he shivers.
Fuck it: he mimics Jack's force and cadence with his own fist against the door, leather-and-bead bracelets jostling where they're strapped against his wrist.
JackBlood or the heat of a shewolf and sirewolf (or even man and wife shacked up). The latter bumping uglies not from from where he sleeps, hard and fast under the moon to make pups or babies out of their lust-love. These are the things that Jack respects most, and despite all that the Bone Gnawers are want to call kin, Gerhart is neither of these things to Jack. Not directly.
He's Sonny Jr.'s wife's father, and he love and be willing to die for Marg, but he's no part of his pack of men and women, and that's a level of removal that leaves him cautious, especially when he'd heard of Carlita's state upon the tribe's last visit from Snails and Tails.
The words he hears from the other side of that door does little to ease the tension that sets into his jaw and balls his fists.
And when Hector grows a hefty pair (in Jack's eyes at least) and knocks, Jack's voice pipes in:
"You open up, old man, don't you make us knock again," a growl behind it. Rage behind it. Rat's fury behind it, turned into the law of right and wrong judged by sheer instinct.
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
HectorIn a hiss he aims low for their sharpened hearing and the thickness of the door:
"You feel that? Like Rage?"
It's an alert, or a warning, and the sparseness of it comes from knowing that door's about to open one way or another.
TwilightIt's not an old man who opens the door but an old woman. Or maybe, charitably, a middle-aged woman with a headfull of white (call it blond) cotton-candy hair and one blue eye and one green eye and a mouth full of teeth, teeth enough that her previously collapsed jawline is all filled in. Not too many teeth yet, not from where they stand. But if this is Carlita she has snagged herself a new glass eye and a new set of dentures since the last time Snails and Tails' boyfriend's cousin came buy to check on her uncle Gerhart.
She yanks the door open and there's a startlement crawling over her that bleeds into a sharpened and forward posture, her shoulders stiff and her spine straight and her skinny, leathery neck wattles swaying as she swallows down her first and more aggressive greeting in favor of the second, less aggressive greeting.
"Hell do you want." Low-voiced and mean, the green eye swiveling between them, all independent in its fucking socket. Poised between her instinct to aggression and her livid wariness in the face of Jack's growled warning. "Ain't no old man here."
They have a glimpse beyond her junkie's skinny frame of a cheap apartment, and a dull-eyed, dull-haired 30-something brunette in the shadows of the room. An assortment of flyers and a great big-ass wall calendar on the wall opposite that shows a beating human heart surrounded by flames. Which is different than your usual puppies and kittens and golf-greens calendar.
--
Dear Jack: the scent of old blood and organ meat is strong soon as the door flies open. Kidneys and spleen and iron-rich organs charred to deliciousness over a burning heat. Not today or maybe yesterday, but not long ago. Not yet.
Dear Hector: that sense of something like rage is not necessarily coming from Carlita-who-has-clearly-opened the door, but from someone else in the living room behind her.
Jack"Was lookin' fer Gerhart," and there's still no apology in his voice. He gives the old lady a good stare right down her middle, with an axe of a look still meant to cut her in twain.
And he does so for two reasons. First, because he's surprised she'd held up to the heaping (heaving beast) helping of browbeating he'd leveled through the door, and because he wants to see if she can do it more than once. If it was through sheer force of will the old battleaxe stood up to the first onslaught, or something else. Like the feels like rage that Hector was just talking about.
That little clarification is the extent of Jack's bad cop, and he leaves the rest of the parlay up to Hector. His eyes scan the apartment. Well, not really the apartment. Or at least not the part of it they seem to.
Jack[ Gnosis to peek. ]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )
TwilightDo di Do
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Twilight"He ain't here."
Jack - both of them - can see the alarm in the woman. Gritted in her teeth and jaw that she holds onto like they're her own and not some cheap-ass second-hand dentures she scavenged outta the remains of AMERICAN THRIFT - PRIDE PRIDE PRIDE.
They can also see her push forward against that fear, like she's pushing through a wall of wind or a yawning membrane of rotten skin.
A certain, call it fervor, in her eyes. The blood-shot blue one and the gleaming green.
"Maybe he's at church."
HectorThe Uktena doesn't flinch away from the stink behind the door and he doesn't bristle again. Might wrinkle his nose a bit, but Jack won't see it. Even stood before chewed-up Carlita he doesn't look like a threat. His voice doesn't wobble though.
"Where's the church?"
And [if she gives him an answer he can hold onto] a flick of his eyes over her shoulder, a jerk of his chin, indicating the room behind her:
"Who's here with you?"
TwilightThe umbra here is dark. Darker than Jack expects or perhaps that's exactly what he expects, right now. These buildings have only a passing substantiality in the spirit-world, more structure and suggestion than physical place-of-existance, laced with the delicate webbing of the constantly working pattern spiders. Here thought the graceful, orderly hum of downtown Denver has turned into a murky, blue-lit twilight world. Jack sees within view, at least three banes. One vaguely human-shaped, with a sunken blackened-red skin and sharp spikes lancing through its skin, just seems to be soaking up the atmosphere. A furmling floats through on the wind, and at least one skeletal creature covered in chitinous armour is crawling up the strands of pattern-webbing like a ladder, needle-spiked fingers digging into the humming conduits of weaver energy.
JackThe look to the otherside is brief, and when Jack lets the material side come back into focus his eyes fall right back on the woman. They they drift to the younger lady deeper inside the apartment, but right back to the one at the door a moment later. Keeping an eye on both of them, he simply lets the weight of that look do its job.
His arms come up and he crosses them over his chest, looking expectantly, and though he's dead quiet it's plain he wants his companion Hector to get answers to his question. There's a huff of impatience before even much time gets the chance to pass.
Twilight"Fuck if I know." Carlita returns, with a sudden, wide, vicious smile. "That bastard buggered off weeks ago. Took my good fucking china too. So if you see him tell him I want my shit back."
Seems like she's done with this conversation and is holding the door with one wretched, leather-looking claw-like hand so that it is three-quarters open and shielding some portion of the interior of the apartment from the pair of them. Like she's ready to force it closed and Hector can read that in her body language before she turns almost autonomically when he asks who's here with her. Glances over her shoulder.
The pallid, mousy, thirty-something woman in the background has risen from her seat on the old naugahyde couch. Scratches her ass and pulls down her cut-offs as she rises, still itching at something on the back of her thigh. Looks sick and hungry but there's a gleam to her eyes. Maybe she's been crying, too.
"Do you see this, honey. Do you see what the devil sends. Do you see why He gives you the gifts you got."
--
"Stop it momma," the mousey woman returns, a warning note in her voice. But she's not looking at Carlita. She's looking past her. Staring first at Hector, but then, abruptly shifting that attention to Jack as Jack returns his focus to this world.
"Just stop it."
TwilightDice: 5 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 2, 2, 5) ( success x 1 )
TwilightFrom prior primal-urge roll: Mousey-lady is the ragey one.
TwilightFrom prior alertness roll: Carlita has more than one row of teeth when she smiles.
Jack"Wan' get the fuck out of here?" Jack shifts, his back rolling, like he's setting his stance, though it's more body language than anything. In lupus it would be the raising of hackles, and then a toss of his head back down the stairs to say, maybe they ought to regroup. Or at least let them think they're on the way out. He's still watching the new woman, who reveals herself as the other's daughter, now maker herself part of the conversation.
[ Charisma + Primal-Urge. Lupine body language in homid. ]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )
Jack[ Recognize Garou: Perception + Primal-Urge. Unknown difficulty. Specialty: Uncanny Instinct. ]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
HectorThere's something to be said for garnering information from agents of Grandfather Serpent before tearing their spines out. There's also something to be said for not standing in a corridor in your squishy human skin for too long when you're talking to two women who may or may not be fixing to tear yours out first.
The tension in Hector's shoulders says he's not going to walk out of here without putting down whatever threat lies behind the threshold but he isn't a blood-starved lunatic either. Jack asks a question, and the other Cliath says, "A--yes."
And then tiptoes back down the corridor without turning his back on the door. Waits until it closes to turn towards Jack, eyebrows lifted and palms out like to ask what he thinks he's doing the Wyrm is in the other direction come on peacemaker what the fuck.
TwilightJack studies the mousy woman, studying her to see if she's Garou. She feels off the way Garou do, sometimes, but there's nothing lupine about her body language. She looks like a human being ridden by something other and Jack gets the same sense that Hector did that she has rage or something like it somewhere in her body.
TwilightActually PS: Jack, probably just saw the mousy woman resist or fight off a frenzy when Carlita was goading her.
JackJack doesn't just stop at the landing, he keeps on a-walking right out the front door and down the road toward where they left his bike, letting Hector make all the faces he likes.
The peacemaker finally turns to Hector.
"Three banes-in-the-ass on the otherside, and they might be rotten with their own. See all them teeth on that dried up old cunt? That chica on the couch wanted t' lose her shit, too, go frenzy-fuckin'-batty from the that old lady running her mouth. But she weren't no wolf," rattling off facts in his own gruff way.
"No one says we gotta be polite and use the front door," and as he says this his eyes narrow with a savage gleaming of their own, a ruthless want to go tear something limb from limb, but in a dirty and underhanded way that something (those somethings) deserve. "Don't think they'll be as polite once we get inside."
TwilightThe daughter is still staring. Staring as Jack makes his suggestion, staring as Hector takes the suggestion. Staring as her mother, who in turn looking as self-satisfied as an alley cat with a mouthful of pigeon might ever look upon seeing the retreat of the Devil's agents.
"They don't know no better, honey," Carlita is murmuring, soothing now rather than goading, this sort of victory in her throat, closing the door against the Garou. "He makes 'em cling to the things of this world. Devil wants to keep us here, trapped in his web of sin and lies, when we all know that we were meant to go home a long-ass time ago.
"I know it hurts sometimes, but that's holy - "
And click. The door closes behind them.
They head downstairs and outside, the exterior door swinging shut behind them.
HectorSomething goes chill and briefly distant in the moondancer's eyes when Jack says what he saw on the other side. Whatever it is he pushes away as fast and hard as something physical sidled up to him in the dark and focuses on the rest of the sentence. His brow furrows in the push-back of the torn-off scab but he hears him. She ain't no wolf.
"We gotta get inside though," he says. "Can't just leave them in there."
He holds his hair back off his forehead as he looks up for the window where he first saw Carlita, for a corner or an alley leading to another window.
Jack"Damn right we do," and with that, leaving the entirety of the discussion and planning to that exchange, Jack starts toward the fire escape and sets to climbing it as quietly as he can.
TwilightThe storefronts here are all joined together, sharing walls and facades, with linked roofs of mildly varying heights. They have to head around the block to find the alley, but find it they do and they can easily count off back to the apartment by identifying the back of the old upholstery store, the lights in the windows above. The A/C set roughly into the old window sash, hunkered out above the fire escape. Few enough apartments on this block seem to be inhabited.
Jack[ Dexterity + Stealth. Blowing a WP. ]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Hector[dex + stealth! +1 because fog.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
TwilightHow they manage to move the a/c out of the way, hold up the old window sash, and climb in through the back bedroom window without making noise enough to alert the inhabitants of the apartment is anyone's guess.
Still, they do, shimmy into the ruinous back bedroom.
Hey, Jack. Things smell ever dead-er in here.
Hey, Hector. What did you just step in?
There door is open and a square of light cuts in from the front parlor where they can hear Carlita and her daughter have resumed their earlier argument once more. Low-voiced and inaudible because Liz cannot come up with the substance of it right now.
TwilightPer + Alertness:
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )
TwilightPer + Alertness:
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
JackJack lurks through the darkness with a quiet that seems almost ridiculous given his size and shape. And then, all is right in the world, because a moment later he lifts one of those stout legs and kicks through the door into the next room, bearing down on the older woman and wrapping suddenly larger hands around her skull, looking like he wants to twist it clean off if he can. But a nice loud crunch and snap will certainly suffice. Still holding onto it, if he can get a hold of it in the first place, he looks ready to send a knee into the cartilaginous front of her face if she's still kicking.
[ Spending three rage. One to get to Glabro. One to burst into the room and snap granny's neck. If she ain't dead... He's kneeing her in the face. ]
HectorHector isn't quite as creative in his dispatching techniques as is Jack. He's played his fair share of video games but that's not the same thing as actually trying to smash someone's melon-sturdy head with your bare hands or whatever that great big hunk of wolf-man is going for after he introduces his boot to the door and kicks it in with a crack of surrendering wood.
The Galliard shifts to his wolf form so as not to go crashing through the decrepit floor and launches himself at the girl.
[-1R to insta-shift and then biting Honey. Aiming for her throat. Sorry girl.]
Jack[ Dexterity + Brawl. Called shot. ]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 4, 4, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )
Jack[ Damage please! ]
Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
TwilightGranny: soak!
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (10, 10) ( success x 2 )
TwilightJack hears the distinctive snap of vertebrae popping and cracking in the old woman's neck, but she does not so slack and paralyzed in his arms. Drop kicking it is.
Jack[ Kick ]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Jack[ Damage ]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
TwilightSoak!
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Hector[dex + brawl lupus style, +2 diff for called shot]
Dice: 9 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Hector[dmg +3]
Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 9 )
TwilightSOAK
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
TwilightSo: they burst in: Jack and Hector - one wolf, one man-monster. The man-monster grabs the razor-toothed old woman by the neck and twist her head around with a sickening crunch, but she's made of leather and booze and demonic investment and little else, and is harder to kill than that. Then he drops her and kicks her in the face, another hard blow that shattered her nose and sprays blood and snot in a blooming array over the floor. She's still crawling to her hands and feet and praying now.
Hector flies in after Jack: leaps for the mousey daughter's throat. And takes her down.
TwilightGRANNY +5
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Hector[+9]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )
Jack[ +6 ]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )
TwilightORDER:
Granny: 11
Hector: 10
Jack: 6
TwilightJack: 7 but still last. heh. SORRY.
JackJack tosses the woman around like a rag doll onto to find she is made of sterner stuff than simple flesh and bone. He'd almost expected this, but also expected to be able to dispatch her quickly anyway, even in this less wieldy of forms. He balls his fists and begins pummeling her with punches, wide hay makers and practices jabs both, as if this is mere practice.
[ Split. Punch, punch, punch. ]
HectorLook out.
[1: chomp granny! from behind. because fuck it.]
TwilightGranny: chomp Jack, the way Jesus would!
TwilightDex + Brawl -2 (wounds)
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
TwilightDamage:
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Jack[ Soak ]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Jack[ Soak ]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )
Jack[ Reflexive: Resist Toxin. ]
Jack[ + 3 dice to second roll. ]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Hector[chomp! -1 diff (flank-age)]
Dice: 9 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Hector[+4!]
Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
Twilightx.x
Hector[perc + alert]
Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Jack[ Perception + Alertness. ]
Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (2, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
TwilightHector put down the daughter; she was still breathing but unable to move. Was that a twitch? Probably not... Who heals that fast.
TwilightHector put down the daughter; she was still breathing but unable to move.
She's healing, though. Already. Skin knitting up at the edges of her terrible throat-wound.
JackJack moves from one woman-thing that has earned his ire on to the next, brushing past the Uktena wolf in his hulking form. He wraps his hands around her throat, lifting her head off the floor roughly only to slam it down again in an attempt to knock their surviving asset unconscious.
[ Changing actions. Spending a WP. Slam. Slammy slam. Slam. ]
Jack[ Dex + Brawl - 1 dice + 1 difficulty. ]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Jack[ Damage. ]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
TwilightSoak:
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Jack[ Perception + Investigation ]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
TwilightHector and Jack go exploring. They do find Gerhart. Or rather: parts of him. Organs and eyeballs and choice bits in the freezer.
Severed arm under the bed in the spare bedroom.
They find a Bible or three, with all the choicest bits of Revelation highlighted and underlined. I mean: the bloody bits. They find more tract literature about the end of the world and the signs and how gods people must be prepared for the end times and how the devil protects the world to trap god's people in his web of lies, collected from a half-dozen area churches with varying names. The End Times Assembly. The Dawn Brigades. The House of God.
They find Carlita's graduation certificate from rEEntry, her ex-con half-way house / job training center.
And a graduation picture: Carlita with her sunken jaw and a patch over her eye smiling gummily and happily right at the camera, one arm around Gerhart and one arm around her mousey daughter, whose hair shone chestnut in the sunlight that afternoon not so many months ago.
And, Dear Jack, what Church's name is on the calendar?
House of the Covenant.
Snails and Tails arrives to glance over the scene and their prisoner, huffs a quiet note as she glances over the carnage, later. Thanks them for their work, tells them to come see her in a few days, she'll let them know what, if anything, they get out of the fomor.
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