[Kora] The night is cool, damp and gray. Orange saturates the sky, except when the clouds open and the rain falls, narrowing the world to the immediate. There are puddles in the potholes, light sheening their oilslicked surfaces, and trash drifting toward the storm drains, discarded fast food wrappers, newspapers, the glitter of broken glass vials. The air is cool enough that most city residents have closed their windows against the damp chill. In Cabrini, most residents close their windows for other reasons. Shadows lengthen as evening tucks itself back into night. There's always a crime scene. There's always a dead body. Sometimes, there are more dead bodies than one can count on one's hand.
The glyphs hidden amongst the graffiti are fading; so, too, is the threat implicit in the air - more felt than heard. The dealers have moved two blocks north in the past few weeks, slowly retaking corners thay had long since abandoned for reasons no one could articulate.
There are three businesses on this particular block of Monroe Avenue. Or rather: three are three businesses that are still hanging on. Bell's Mortuary, Joe's Diner, and a bodega identified only by its blue neon CARRY OUT sign, which pulses against the shadows of the evening like a bruise. The latter two are still open. Light spills onto the street from the picture windows at Joe's, but the windows into the bodega are boarded over, and caged in.
Kora stands just to the side of the entrance to the bodega. The paneled storefront is covered with stapled flyers and old graffiti. She searches through the graffiti for certain signs, subtle, tracing the layers of glyphs layered into the gang tags and street art, a narrow frown sketched neatly across her pale face as she does so.
[Slaughter] Imogen stands beside - silent, her hands pocketed in her corduroy coat, her expression neutral heading for grim. Her mouth is a drawn line, but her eyes reveal nothing.
Two days ago - someone had been murdered in the alleyway beside the bodega. Felony murder, the police called it. Also: NHI. No Humans Involved. The scum who had died had been killed by scum like him, and the interest in catching the perpetrator had been in the negatives even before Imogen had shown up.
The case itself had been unmemorable. Scumbag A killed by Illegal Weapon F, matched up to a robbery seven years ago. The original(?) gunowner had long since been arrested and jailed and released. The gun had never been found. Doubtlessly, it's passed through half a dozen hands, since then, if not more.
What had been memorable was this: this wall. A curve of a glyph seen beneath the layers of spray paint. An almost familiar shape, or at least: a familiar style of drawing.
She had one tattooed to her bicep. She has seen them tattooed on countless others. She knows very little of their meanings, but Imogen can recognize a glyph when she sees them.
"Too much like the wall at the park for comfort," she says, finally. Then, "Can yeh understand it?"
[Kora] The Fenrir woman's response is a silent shake of her head. Her blond hair catches the flare from the ugly orange light, catches the light and gleams. She is damp from an earlier shower, still - at the crown of her head, over the straight line of her shoulders. The hips and thighs of her old jeans are darker from the rain, which lingers in the air like a memory of smoke, the scent of it, with exhaust fumes and a certain suggestion of preservative in the air. Kora imagines it to be the lingering suggestion of formaldehyde from the morgue, or pumped into the air by the funeral home down the street. It is as likely to be the ammonia the bodega's clerk is using to clean the inside of the glass door.
"It looks like it should mean something," she says at last, her voice low, her dark eyes tracing the shape of the thing where it has been elegantly insinuated into the graffiti. There is a certain suggestion of frustration beneath the surface of the dark sea of her voice, staring at a rorsharch blot that refuses to resolve itself into anything, no matter how much it tickles the mind. She cuts a look over her shoulder, the dealers on the corner are quiet now, waiting. " - but," she continues, her mouth tightening. "it doesn't."
Pause. Then,
" - you said there was another one?"
[Slaughter] She is elegant, even in worn jeans and a dun corduroy jacket. Flat soles do nothing for her height, but the erectness of her spine and the set of her shoulders dispels any idea of child-like, doll-like, though she can do nothing for petite.
Her hair is pulled back from her face, the vibrant flame contained by a covered elastic band, strands escaping from her temple, from the nape of her neck, uncoiling from her bun.
She frowns when Kora says it doesn't mean anything - a line coming between her eyebrows.
"It's this way," she says, rather than dwelling on the possibilities. Markings which look like Garou glyphs - but aren't.
She leads Kora in past the mouth of the alleyway, down around the building. Garbage is piled near the bodega's back door, and the lingering smell of cigarettes hangs in the air, a butt still burning it's ember on the ground near the stoop. She walks past that. The buildings here are old, and their street facades have begun to crumble. Their alley faces are even worse, bricks chipped and cracked, uneven, the mortar coming away. Graffiti and obscene language deface the walls. They're near the mortuary when Imogen stops, choosing another patch of vandalized wall.
"There," she says. "S'to the left of the Anarchy symbol. See it?"
[Slaughter]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 6, 6, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Slaughter]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5 (Failure at target 6)
[Kora] The light here is indifferent. A handful of buildings have incandescent bulbs burning in security sconces beside or above the battered metal fire doors. Mostly, though, the light is ambient, cutting through the center of the alley, where the asphalt dips into a worn groove and rainwater and runoff collect in long, narrow puddles gradually seeping through the cracked and broken asphalt to whatever lives below. To whatever is below, what earth remains underneath the concrete, sleeping, dreaming maybe, partitioned little dreams.
There, Imogen says, obligingly quantifying the word. Kora steps forward, her boots gleaming not from a spit-polish but from the sheen of water, runoff, over the blunt toes. Steps forward and leans, her head canting sidelong - the gesture unconsciously animal, wholly intent, as she studies the shape of it.
"This one - " her voice is low. It lives beneath the sound of traffic, beneath the chatter of a television, heard through a cracked window not far away. One of her hands remains in the front pocket of her jeans, the fingers tucked into the first knuckle. The other, though, is up, tracing the faint shape of the pseudo-glyph in the air. " - this one means something. Like a marker." The bile is in the back of her throat, sour. " - a place-claim, yeah? Not territory, exactly. It's too specific for that."
---
Without a map - without an excellent sense of place - it is difficult to tell which of the closed and silent doors belongs to which of the closed and silent storefronts. There are a handful of dumpsters in the alley, several overflowing, and more than a handful of clearly abandoned buildings, the doors broken, the windows shattered, dead eyes staring open back toward the alley. Others, though - show signs of use, if not care. Fresh metal scrapings at the locks new light bulbs in the metal fixtures.
While Kora studies the glyph, Imogen notices the newly installed security door, dull green metal, unmarked by graffiti, two doors down. There's a buzzer beside the door, but no sign - and there is no light hanging over the narrow stoop. In quick succession she notices - the low, constant rumble of an idnling engine, sees the flare of brakelights at the opposite end of the alley, from a car that is parked just forward of the mouth, only the trunk and tailgate visible, hears the scrape of movement behind the door, and associates the door with the mortuary - Bell's - evident on the street. Bell's is one of those neighborhood funeral homes, vagrant and depressing, catering to both the cheap, pine-box ceremonies for the poor unfortunates, and the tasteless extravagences of those with enough money to wear gold teeth to the viewing, if not into the ground.
Then: voices. Maybe two? both low - male, but one with a strange, whistling undercurrent.
[Slaughter] Kora points out the faint shape of the glyph, and Imogen turns her gaze toward it, only half absorbing the shape and sight of the marking. A place-claim.
"Brilliant," the kinwoman says, her tone carrying more than a touch of irony.
A sound catches her attention, and she breaks her gaze, looking down the alleyway toward the mortuary. She stills - and in this moment, it is easy to remember that though not blessed with rage or touched by a half-animal mind, Imogen carries the blood of Garou in her veins. The blood of wolves, of predators. It is an animal stillness - that kind of utter completeness.
"There's someone approaching from behind that door," she says, quietly. "Maybe two, definitely male."
[Kora] There's someone approaching from behind that door.
There's someone behind that door. It's clear now, to Kora, when she listens for it. The sound of feet on the ground, muffled behind the metal door, the faint shuffle of someone with a burden, in the dark in narrow space. There is a soft thud, the impact minor, but close enough to the door that it sends the light fixture hanging over the door (its bulbs burned out, its trajectory dark) swinging in a slow, circular arc, like the pendulum at the science museum that keeps time. Behind the door - a wheezing whistle, like the laugh of an asthmatic breathing through a straw.
They do not have enough time to retreat from the alley, even if they wanted to. Instead, Kora looks up sharply, her eyes narrowed on the door, her lean body tense. She reaches back, tugs the damp hood of her cotton jacket up over the crown of her pale head, just enough to hide the gleam of her blond hair in the faint illumination of the alley, and steps closer to the dumpster, finding space in the shadows that hug its rusting, leeward edge.
The handle clicks, and the knob begins to turn.
[Slaughter] Kora retreats toward the shadows of the dumpster - and Imogen, sensing the Fenrir moving back behind her, moves forward - and to the side. She steps around the corner and into the side-alleyway, between the mortuary and the neighbouring building, sinking back into the shadows away from the illumination and into the edifice's shadow.
There is a soft click. She undoes her gun holster, her hand slid behind her, gripping the butt of her weapon, but not yet drawing it.
She no longer has a view of the doorway, a fact which unnerves her, nor can she see Kora - but what she can see is the open space between the buildings - the space that they - whoever 'they' are - would need to cross to reach the Fenrir.
She does not move, her breath quiet, her heartbeat too loud in her ears.
[Kora] Stealth!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 2, 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Kora] PEr + Alertness!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Kora] Wheezy Per + Alertness
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Kora] The door swings open. The wheezing laughter becomes louder, more pronounced. There is a certain glottal nature to it, suggesting that the wheeze arises not from inflamed, struggling airways, but from somewhere further up the repsiratory tract. "This one's a big boy," - wheezy laughs, then snorts, long and grotesque, clearing away globules of mucous from his soft palate and spitting it in an arch powerful enough that the congealed mass lands at the edge of the long, narrow puddle running down the center of the alley, visible to Imogen, from even from her blind position in the bisecting alley. " - the hell do I always get the big ones?"
"Because," the second voice is quiet and clear. There's no whistling, no speech impediment to mark it. " - you're the big man, right?"
The door swings closed, clangs shut. Imogen is blind; she sees the lurch of shadows before the figures cross her field of vision. Then they are crossing her field of vision: two men, one large, one small, both with black burdens slung across their shoulders - body bags, full, not empty, the scent of formaldehyde sudden and sharp and unmistakeable as it cuts through the garbage, the excrement, the filth in the air.
Two men: one with stringy brown hair, barely six feet, with the sickly frame of an addict almost overburdened by the corpse he carries away from the morturary. The second, who shuffles behind the first - no.
Not a man. His face is deformed, the upper lip pulled back in a sharp cleft that quite literally connects directly with both nostrils. The black hole dominates his face as if the flesh had been eaten away, and the roots of his teeth are visible in pale gums. The monster carries the larger of the two body bags, a corpse almost as large as he himself is - not tall, but broad through the body, already going to fat.
He hocks another globular mouthful of snot, then stills, stops the other man with a touch of his booted foot. " - whuzzat?"
"It's the fucking car," the smaller man says back, quiet. "C'mon - "
[Slaughter] Imogen stills, watching the men. Her jaw works, unseen by Kora. Her hand leaves the butt of her weapon, swinging down, open, and she draws a long, slow breath.
She has been, more than once, connected to a pack via their totem link. The connection allowed the beasts to speak in her head, and caused her no end of disruption. She hated every minute of it, and dropped it the moment that she could with relief.
For a moment, she wishes for that connection. Just for thirty seconds.
But that had been the Eagles. That had been then. This is now.
Now, she takes a breath, and leaves her weapon in its holster. And lets Kora fill in the blanks, as the pure-blooded kinfolk steps out of the alleyway.
"I beg your pardon," she says, almost nonchalantly. "But I'm hoping you can help me."
[Kora] Imogen's voice is clear in the alley, a clipped contrast to the lower voices of the two males. Both turn, the smaller one startled enough that he lurches around, and nearly loses his grip on the body bag. The larger one - the grotesquerie she knows to be Garou - sweeps sideways and hangs back a step, two three, keeps to shadows just on the other side of the center of the alley. His hands grip the body bag reflexively tighter, digging into the dull material, the shape of the corpse within evident - some larger limb, a thigh maybe, the head flung back over his shoulder - and stares at her. Stares at her - the the sort of hunger and covetousness she has rarely seen in the eyes of humans, the sudden, absolute want of an animal.
"Hhnnheeeh." The thing says, still in the shadows, accustomed to them. This is routine. This is a routine, one that not even the sudden coil of want in its gut can overcome. "Hnnnnehehh." It snorts again, shifting its grip, drooling now - without noticing that spittle mixed with mucous is stringing down from its half-open mouth.
The smaller man shifts, uncomfortable, cuts a look back down the other alley, toward the taillights Imogen spotted earlier, then looks back at Imogen. His mouth moves, the corners twist upward.
It is not a smile, though the attempt is clear. He takes one step closer to her, leans forward, peering.
"What can I help you with."
---
In the shadows beside a dumpster, a woman becomes a beast. The change is nearly soundless, and grunts of the sinborn serve to cover up what sound there might be.
[Slaughter] That kind of animal focus is disconcerting. It is not entirely unfamiliar to her. The absolute absorption of desire, the maddening combination of her looks and blood.
How awful to know that it works on both sides.
She represses her reaction - sucks it beneath the surface, lets it fall beneath the still-water surface of her mask. Ironically, that which draws him to her, which disturbs her so much, makes him more likely to trust her. More likely to fall for whatever scam she offers.
The other, perhaps not so much.
Still; it is not merely her blood that allows her to commit subterfuge. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the shadow of Kora change. "I know what you are," she says. "What he is, at least" The grunting sinborn in the shadows. "I can guess what yeh stand for.
"I'm a forensic investigator," she says, and does not quite lie. "And I'm offering my help. Wi' the bodies, if yeh get discovered."
This is quite possibly the most stupidest thing I've ever done.
The thought flashes through her mind with a blinding, loathing clarity.
[Sorrow] "She can guess," this is the smaller man. Grinning, wide enough to reveal a mouthful of poorly cared for teeth. Even from this distance, she can imagine if not smell the rot of his ruined teeth. " - what we stand for, boss." He remains in the center of the intersecting alleys, his feet in the dirty puddle that runs down the middle of the cross-wise alley, the body bag heavy over his shoulder. There is a moment where he cuts a look across his shoulder, at the beast in the shadows.
"Hhghgnnngggeeehehem." - the beast from the shadows returns, rendered incapable of human language, of human thought, by the want that runs unchecked beneath its skin. There is a terrible, slobbering sound as it clears its nares of mucous, hands tightening reflexively over the stiff body in the bag. Somewhere in that noise, the is a word that almost sounds like - mine.
"A foreign-sick instigator - " the small man parrots, then, low, his mouth still pulled into a ruinous grin, lips closed not over his rotten teeth. He is pleased, now - the grin is reflected by a madcap glint in his eye. " - how are you going to help us?"
---
In the shadows, Imogen can see the hispo-wolf slink forward, gather itself, ready to leap.
[Slaughter] Imogen can see Sorrow from corner of her eye, but she dares not look directly on. She forces the tension from her body, and resists the urge for her fingers to twitch, for her hand to move toward the comfort of her gun. In her imagination, the weapon is heavy at her back, a great weight. She can almost feel her blood pulse in the skin beneath it, as if her whole body ached for the tool which to protect herself.
She keeps her body language open. Arms at her side, back erect. She barely dares look at the beast craving her, snot and spittle and mucus drooling from the raw wound that was his mouth.
She does not even dare swallow.
"It depends on what you're doing," she says, her gaze moving, significantly to the body bags.
"But I can help you hide the evidence. I can keep the other side from ever finding out."
[Sorrow] "We're gardening," the rat-faced man returns, her mouth twisted into a passing snear. He rattles the body bag, deliberately scrunching the material under his grip to make it crinkle, punctuation to his little joke. " - we've gone into - " here, he laughs, an ugly sound, barely voiced. " - aquaculture."
Behind him, the monster chortles - the sound of it is thick and wet, like tissue paper soaked with clabbered butter had been stuffed half-way down the beast's throat. Best not to look at him. Best not to see the ruin of his face. Best not to imagine what it must look like when the beast is changed, wearing the terrible skin into which he was born, into which he always returns as if it were natural, as if it were right.
"Trust me, the other side will find out." The beast is wheezing its laughter. " - that's the point, eh?"
--
There is a blur of motion, then, as Sorrow leaps for the beast hanging back in the shadows.
[Sorrow] Ancestors!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8) [WP]
to Slaughter
[Slaughter] That's the point, eh?
"Then tell me how -" until the last second, she plays her part. Until Sorrow in the air, until the attack is definite. Then, her body language changes, closes, her body turning sideways as her hand dives beneath her jacket for her weapon.
[Sorrow] [Bite! Dif -1 - flank attack!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 4)
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Sorrow] [Wheezy soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Slaughter] (+9)
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[Sorrow] 8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[Sorrow] Wheezy: +5
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[Sorrow] Mr. Jones: +6
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[Sorrow] [Order: Imogen: 15
Wheezy: 14
Sorrow: 13
Mr. Jones: 7 :( ]
[Sorrow] [Mr. Jones: 1a. THROW BODY AT IMOGEN. 1b. draw knife!]
[Sorrow: WP - resist pain! 1a. BITE. 1b. BITE; Rage 1: BITE; Rage 2: BITE]
[Wheezy: snapshift to crinos! 1a. THROW BODY AT SORROW. 1b. Bite! Rage 1: Bite!]
[Slaughter] 1a. 3rb at Mister Jones!
1b. SHOOT!
[Slaughter] (three round burst!
dex+firearms-2(splits)+3 (3rb)
HAIL KAHSEENO!)
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6) Re-rolls: 4
[Slaughter] Damage!
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Mr. Jones: soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 6 (Failure at target 8)
[Slaughter] Second shot!
dex+
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 5, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Slaughter] damage!
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Mr. Jones: soak?
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 6, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Sorrow] [Mr. Jones: redeclare - 1a. DROP BODY. 1b. RUN (crawl?) AWAY.]
[Sorrow] The sinborn is dreaming of her, was dreaming of her, was imagining his special places, the bolt holes, the secret hideaways where he could take her and have her and keep her, all his own - no one else to steal away his prize, no elders to claim his prisoner, no packmates to share - mine, he thought, mine - clear as a brand - mine, mine, mine.
- then the direwolf comes leaping through the night, tears through his soft flesh, leaves him bleeding, staggering, pain blooming like fireworks against a dark night sky. The staccato retort of gunfire fills the night and the kin staggers, collapses to his knees, stunned and reeling from the terrible wounds, his breath comes in great, gulping wheezes, he is swallowing air and breathing blood.
The sinborn roars into his birthform, launches the corpse in his arms at the direwolf. The two monsters fill narrow confines of the space.
[Sorrow] [Throw body! -2 for split; -2 for wounds]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 5, 9 (Failure at target 7)
[Sorrow] BITINGS. -3 (split) 1 rage spent to ignore wound penalties.
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 5, 5, 5, 7 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 5, 5, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Sorrow: 1a. CHOMP. -2
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6 (Success x 2 at target 5)
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] There is a scrambled moment in the darkness, the sudden eruption of volume - rage and mass and fur - in the dark shadows of the alley. Imogen shoots and the rat-face man staggers under his burden. She shoots again and he goes reeling, blood spilling from his nose and mouth, his eyes wide with shock, his bloodied mouth working itself open and closed like a hungry fish. The weight of the unwieldy body is too much for him, but he lacks the strength to even so much as throw it aside. Instead, he staggers two steps, three steps away from the center of the alley, then falls to his knees, choking on blood.
The sinborn turns with a snarl, erupts into his warform and struggles to throw the corpse at his attacker. Something is wrong, though - some muscle has lost function, some necessary tendon has been snapped in twain - and the body hits the concrete rather than the direwolf, a deep, solid thud with the impact. He throws himself at her, the flare of rage like ozone in the air as he pushes it through himself to ignore the wounds. He tears into her hide, comes away with a chunk of flesh and a bloody mouth, blood spraying as he growls something hot and challenging. Then she is on him again, and the great beast is collapsed on the asphalt, incapable of moving, bleeding from a pair of terrible wounds.
[Slaughter] Her expression shows very little - not an iota of sympathy. Not a measure of empathy for the open mouthed - what is he, kinfolk? Fomori? Both? - rotten-toothed man.
What it shows mostly, faintly, is grim determination.
And maybe, just maybe, as her target falls to his knees:
Triumph.
She steps forward - one-two-three her gun lowering as she does, not to her side, but to the dying man's head.
She pulls the trigger. Taps it, the report echoing loudly against the closed in walls of the alleyway.
[Slaughter] (point blank, immobile target, called shot, difficulty 3+2!)
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 5) Re-rolls: 1
[Slaughter] Damage! HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Sorrow] [You can shoot me in the head but that doesn't mean I have to die!]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Sorrow] [Sorrow: BITING the mule. Dif -2 for prone.]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 6 at target 3)
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 5, 8, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Sorrow] Blood mingles with the runoff, sharpens the offal stench of the dumpsters with the metallic tang of blood heavy in the air. The rat-faced man collapses them, face down onto the asphalt. Somehow, he is still breathing - though, face down in the puddle in the middle of the alley, he might well drown before he bleeds to death. His respirations are shallow, and blood continues to seep from his wounds, staining the oil-sheened water crimson.
Two feet away, the sinborn is collapsed, on his back - his mouth open, teeth bloodied, tongue lolling. The direwolf circles, lips peeling back from her maw, and tears out its throat. There's a moment where the beast is still, her head low, breathing deeply. Then, she shakes her head, shakes her body, the crystallized moment of battle falling away almost before it started. Where the wolf was, then: a woman. Young, blonde, hunkered over the corpse of a monster, her face smeared with blood, savage, her t-shirt sticking wetly to her ribs.
She flicks a look up once, studies Imogen with that direct intensity she always wears, her eyes sheened with unspent rage and the echo of the moon in the sky above - studies the kinswoman, up and down - then, satisfied, toes the corpse in the bodybag, half-expecting it to move. It is solid, stiff and unwieldly in the bag, and mercifully unmoving.
- at the end of the cross-wise alley, the brakelights flare from white to red, as someone eases off the brake, slides the waiting car into park.
[Slaughter] Blood flecks her hand from the blow-back of the bullet, a small spit of brain matter. She lowers her hand, wiping it against the thigh of her jeans, her eyes downward cast, watching her victim as he began to expire. She watches the fluttering pulse in his throat, the way his chest rises and falls as he breathes. The stutter in both, as his life force begins to fade.
It occurs to her briefly that all the things which she has learnt, which was taught with the intent to allow her to save lives in medical school, she uses in death.
The weight of Sorrow's gaze is on her, and Imogen turns her head slightly, looking at the Garou down the line of her shoulder. Her gaze fixes on the beast-now-woman, resting there, unwavering as Kora studies her. Checks her for signs of injury.
The Skald turns to the body bag. Imogen's attention flicks down toward her victim - and discovers him dead, his moment of passing missed and unremarked. At the far end of the alleyway, the car's brakelights flare, and she can hear - or can imagine she can hear - the sound of gears changing.
"You may need to change forms again, presently," she says. In another, the phrase might be flippant. In Imogen, it is resigned. To her ears, her voice sounds hollow - far away beneath the constant ring of tinnitus.
[Sorrow] Sorrow's attention sharpens with Imogen's remark. She, too, looks off down the alley. The brakelights are off, now. There's just the red gleam of the taillights, scarlet against the darkness. "Shit," Kora curses, quiet, her mouth twisting briefly into a narrow frown that. Straightening, she wipes off her hands on the thighs of her jeans and steps over the massive corpse of the sinborn, sinks to a crouch just behind the corpse, hooks her arms underneath his armpits, and tugs. As she tugs, her body grows, seeking strength of the near-man form, the change thoughtless and liquid. Half-stumbling over the fallen body bag, she makes quick, inelegant work of it, dragging him until he is just out of the line of sight of anyone coming from the bisecting alley.
She doesn't bother to hide him. They have minutes, if that. Her abdominal muscles are torn; she can feel them, underneath, the wrongness, but cannot feel the pain. Straightening, Sorrow crosses the confines of the foul little battlefield to stand just out of the line of sight of whoever might be coming and grabs the kin by the legs, tugging the his body out of sight, not bothering with the lumpen shadows of the body bags. She glances back, then - over her shoulder, listening as two car doors open, as two car doors slam shut.
"We'll hit them as soon as they're in sight. Hopefully," her voice is grim, her brutish face smeared with blood - the eyes are the same, though, and the pale threads of her hair. " - there aren't too many of them."
[Slaughter] Sorrow begins to pull back her body, and Imogen, doing up the zipper of her coat to protect her shirt beneath, follows suit. Blood no longer pumps from the body, but it still smears and spills, soaking the arms of her dark brown coat, the blood nearly lost in the deep colour.
She nods slightly as the Garou speaks, acknowledging the plan wordlessly. It is not complex. It does not need to be.
She retrieves her gun from its holster again, training it on the mouth of the alleyway.
[Sorrow] There is a moment of stillness. The car doors open, slam shut. There are footsteps, the sound of voices hushed in the darkness, the distance between there and here making the sound seem attenuanted, though the close confines of the alleyway, the metal dumpsters, the sodden wood, the marching rows of buildings stretches it. Easy to imagine them closer. Easy to imagine them close.
"The hell is going on - ?" one of the strangers has raised his voice, lifted it, hailing down the alley. Metal against metal, then, echoing against metal: the sound of someone checking a clip, the sound of someone ramming it home. They wait. Imogen has her weapon trained on the mouth of the alley. Sorrow has a bag, then, slung across her body, bisecting. There is a book inside, and a notebook, filled with her narrow handwriting. There are a pair of talens, nestled too. The human-thing flips open the flap and pulls one out, cups it as if it were precious, then lifts it over her head and crushes it. Water drips down, splashes over her pale head, over the sloped, caveman brow, the heavy jaw, the hint of spirit slaking/silver in the air.
[-1 G]
Then she melts to all fours, skulks huge and heav, her head swinging, her ears flicking to listen to the sound of footsteps on asphalt. The strangers jockey and joke, boots splashing in the puddle as they walk down the center of the alley, their voices indistinct as the murmur of the ocean heard through three layers of drywall. When they are close enough to see the body bags sprawled in the intersection of the alleys, one says - " - the fuck? Are these ours?" - as if there were any other possibility, as if there were other roaming gangs of body snatchers at work in Chicago. "Where the hell are Jonesy and - "
Two men cross the edge of the alley, their body language cautious now, but not yet alarmed. One obviously misshapen, a hunchback distorting his shape. The other has the same facial cast - the narrow eyes, the sharp nose, the small, twitchy mouth - as the dead man Imogen shot and killed.
[Slaughter] Shooting!
dex+firearms - 3
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Slaughter] Shooting again!
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Slaughter] Damage!
COME ON KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 4, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Slaughter] Shot 3!
GO KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 5) [WP]
[Slaughter] damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 6, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 3, 7 (Failure at target 8)
[Sorrow] The stranger crosses the threshold, intent on the body bags rather than the other arms of the intersection. In another moment, he would look up and see them. He does not have another moment. Three shots ring out in the darkness, two strike home. Then, the direwolf is upon him.
[Bite! Dif -1 for flank attack.]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8 (Success x 5 at target 4)
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak?
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 5, 9 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Sorrow] - he falls, peppered with bullets, his throat torn out, falls to his knees, swaying, stunned, and then collapses to the asphalt, one arm nearly detached from his body, blood bubbling from his mouth and welling from the bullet wounds. Another corpse in the alley.
Inits!
[Slaughter] (+9!)
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[Sorrow] [+8!]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[Sorrow] [Hunchback +6!]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[Sorrow] Order: Imogen 18
Sorrow: 11
Hunchback: 9
[Sorrow] [Declare: Hunchback - 1 rage - snapshift to Crinos. 1a. BITE wolf; 1b. BITE wolf; Rage 1: BITE wolf. ]
[Sorrow] [Sorrow: so clever! 1a. BITE. 1b. BITE. Rage 1: BITE; Rage 2: BITE]
[Slaughter] also clever!
1.b. 3rb!
1.b. FIRE AGAIN!
[Slaughter] Three round burst
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2
[Slaughter] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 6, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Slaughter] Shooting again!
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Slaughter] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 4, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 4, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Sorrow: 1a. BITE.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 5)
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] The fight is over. There are six corpses in the alley. Two in body bags, cold and stuff, already embalmed and stinking of the chemical compound pumped through the bodies to preserve them. Four are freshly dead, still steaming in the darkness - a pair of Crinos-formed Garou, and a pair of humans, their narrow faces ghostly echoes of each other, such that they must be brothers, or cousins - or perhaps some terrible, direct relationship unknown outside of the sick world of the fallen Garou and their kin.
Six corpses to dismember, quickly. One car, the taillights still gleaming, to search. Blood, everywhere, to be cleaned up, as best as can be managed.