Lone Wolf Dies Alone.

[Sorrow] 1200 block of North Larabee Street

Imogen has been here before. It's the heart of another ethnic enclave, long dead now. Another casualty of white flight and the changing urban economy, urban renewal and decades of neglect. This is a block of modest brickfront buildings, once the commercial heart of the neighborhood, now this quiet backwater. Most of the storefronts are shuttered or shattered, papered over or broken into. The living quarters abovestairs have been turned into low rent Section 8 apartments - those, at least, that are habitable. Some fair number of the buildings have been simply abandoned by their owners, with no wish to pay taxes on property that returned nothing to their pockets, whose value - as the neighborhood died and the city changed - became a liability.

There is a bodega on the corner, selling cigarettes, cheap wine, cheaper beer, and cheapest: dollar-a-bottle mouthwash. The check-cashing/payday loan place on the opposite corner is surrounded by forbidding iron bars and closed down following some crime in the past couple of weeks. Until the owners can get someone in to replace the "bulletproof" glass, to paint over the blood.

Half-way down the block, though: Egglan's Butchery, Est. 1915, etched into the stone lintel over the front picture windows.

Some weeks later, the place is still open. Closed at this hour, but the building shows all the signs of thriving life. Since Imogen was last here, the hand-written REOPENED sign has been replaced by a red and white neon OPEN sign, shut off now. except for a handful of lights, the storefront is dark. The week's specials including HOMEMADE SAUSAGE and STRIP STEAK!! CHEAP!!! CHICKEN CUTLETS!!! PRE-BREADED!! GREAT FOR THE KIDS!!


Underneath, YES. WE TAKE FOODSTAMPS. announces another sign.

The street is quiet. The dealers have been chased off the corner for the last few weeks by the ongoing traffic of police and workmen in and out of the check cashing store. A pair sit now, on the stoop outside the bodega, but otherwise on this hot and humid night, there's no one out.

As before, there's no light seeping out from the living quarters above the boucherie, just a certain flatness that reminds Imogen of blackhout curtains. In the last few weeks, her contact has purchased different cuts of meat at different hours, different times, on different days. The steaks seemed to be steaks. The sausage, though. And the chicken cutlets -

Iron bars are pulled down over the front door after closing. The side entrance and the service entrance remainas as before. And the dumpster out back, where first she found her samples. There is that, too.

[Slaughter] She is alone, her car parked across the street in a patch of darkness, between two burnt out streetlamps. Innocuous and unimposing, it merely sits there, as Imogen, within merely sits there, watching the building. It is not the first time she's done this.

Tonight, it is slightly different. At some undefined moment, she opens her car door and gets out.

She is not quite as innocuous and unimposing as her car. She pays lipservice to the attempt, though, dull clothing, her hair pulled back simply. Her shoes are flat and brown, her jacket corduroy and dun, though tailored to her slight frame. Her jeans are not tailored, the cuffs rolled up to match her height, yet still long enough for her to fray the backs with the heels of her feet.

She is quiet as she crosses the street, and to the side entrance. She pauses there, still and quiet and listens.

[Sorrow] The side entrance is a wooden door, set down a bit from the level of the building. Maybe - Imogen might guess - the first landin leading to the basement. Once it might have had window glass set into the panels, but the glass has long since been replaced by a creative combination of plywood and metal panels riveted to the hollow-core door. The doorknob is rusted, and there's a small doorbell set into the wooden frame into which the door itself is set.

She hears the rush of traffic first, distant, ever present. This listens more closely. From somewhere within and under - the short, sharp sound of someone exhaling. One of those pained breaths she associated with effort, reaching. With pushing herself in the gym, or struggling for something just out of reach. That's under, lower somehow, and there is, sometimes, this faint and desperate edge to it, an animal keening more clear than anything else. And: deeper inside, floorboards shift underneath the weight of something. Maybe the clatter of metal against metal. The slick, sparking sound of a blade being sharpened.

And someone, whistling - just off key - fly me to the moon, let me sing among the starts. After a moment, the subtle, noisy crunch of a needle over the grooves of a record, amplified through scratchy antique speakers, and then Nat King Cole's velvet voice drowns out whatever she had heard from below.

Let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars
In other words, hold my hand
In other words, baby kiss me
Fill my heart with song
Let me sing for ever more....

[Slaughter] She rings the doorbell.

[Sorrow] The music stops.

- with a long, jagged scratch of the needle over the surface of the record. Then, through the door - which is thin compared to the stout brick walls - the sound muffled voices from somewhere above. The final say is had by the lower of the two voices, a vicious, disapproving sort of grunt. A moment later, the needle, the record, again.

This time, though, there's a skip.
And a repeat.
And a skip.
And a repeat.

Let me see what spring is like
On Jup-

Let me see what spring is like
On Jup-

and on, and on, and on. Someone's turned the volume up. It almost drowns out the sound of footsteps coming down three steps from the first level to the landing on creaky basement stairs.

The door opens, a smidge. Imogen can hear the clatter of the chain lock, see its glint against the two-inch opening, somewhere near eye level. Then, into that wedged opening, the sliver of a face, a woman's face - dull blue eyes and crisp, strawlike blond hair, the uniform color of a cheap dye job. Those eyes glitter with a dull belligerence.

"The hell do you want?" she says, first, baleful.

[Slaughter] She has some time before the door opens. Time enough to pocket the camera she had intended to use; to undo the holster of her gun. The door opens an inch, two inches, and a baleful gaze glares out. Imogen strains to hear any sound through the music, inhales a breath to catch any smell of coppery blood.

"Sorry t'trouble you," she says, offering a smile. "I was wondering if I could use yer phone. I've had a bit o' car trouble."

Her accent may be embellished, ever so slightly; surveys say Americans find the British accent rather pleasing. She doubts it would help in this case, but all things considered: likely won't hurt.

[Slaughter] (perception+alertness! HAIL KAHSEENO!)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Sorrow] There's a moment of hesitation on the woman's dull face. Her mouth is hanging just open. She has a piece of flesh-colored gristle stuck between the incisor and canine. After that moment of confusion - suspicion and confusion at war in her watery eyes, she leans back into the faint light beyond. Something heavy is moving inside the building, closer. Imogen catches the distinct scent of blood, sharply copper in the air, notes the rust-colored crust beneath the woman's fingernails, but cannot hear anything over the stutterstep of Nat King Cole's voice.

Let me see what -


There's a rumble.

"Says her car broked down, she does. Wants ta use the phone," the woman says, her head tilted up as if she were speaking to someone up the short flight of two or three stairs leading to the backrooms of the store proper.

There's another rumble, some deep voice underneath Nat King Cole's melting tenor. Then, the woman looks back to Imogen again, her eyes slitting with shrewdness. This weasel fact of it, both dull and sly. "You alone?" she asks Imogen, not yet opening the door wider. " - or you got peoples wid ya?"

[Slaughter] The question props Imogen's flagging sense of survival up. It is the slit eyes, the shrewdness. It is the very nature of the question. Now would be the point of decision. The point where she might step back, as she did the last time and turn away.

"I'm alone," she answers.

[Sorrow] The door closes.

It is shut directly in Imogen's face. There's a wuff of air that his her face and puffs out her hair, so fast does the woman on the other side of the door close it. The walkway between the buildings is narrow and dark. The scent rotting garbage overtakes the scent of rotting blood with the door closed, now, with the interior shut fast. She could still leave. Turn and run, dart out onto the street proper, angle toward the bodega and those kids on the stoop.

Hit some panic button on her phone.

Easy.

---

Then, beyond the door, the slick sound of someone undoing the chainlock. The door is closed for a handful of seconds, a half-dozen heartbeats before it opens again, wider this time. The slack-jawed, dull-faced dyed blond woman opens the door, pulls it back for Imogen to walk in. She has something stuffed into her lower lip, which reminds Imogen of the bulge of chewing tobacco. "'m Jo-Ellen. C'mon in." she greets Imogen, gesturing up the stairs with her chin. And eyeing her up and down. "My sons say they might be able ta see ta yer car, you tell 'em what kind 'n where ya done broken down."

Beyond Jo-Ellen, the basement looms unrelentingly dark. There's light from upstairs, though, spinning down handful of stairs. The suggestion of an old kitchen like area beyond. Linoleum and formica, wooden cabinets panted white, aged to Ivory.

A shadow against the wall.

[Slaughter] I'm Jo-Ellen.
"Mary." She lies without a beat. It's a familiar tune, and even, a familiar moniker.

She eyes the stairs briefly.

Imogen had time to leave, dart out out on the street proper. Time enough to dial a saved number in her phone and keep the line open in her pocket. Kora's phone has rung, wherever she is, and hopefully, it's been answered.

"I don't want to trouble you," Imogen says mildly. "I just want to call my husband and let him know where he can come pick me up, if you don't mind. Is it alright if I ask 'im t'pick me up at Egglan's Butchery on North Larabee? This is - what? 1230, 1232?"

[Sorrow] "Ain't got one of them cell phones, has you Mary. Mary. Mary, I like that name." The woman replies, stepping back, careful of the darkness behind her, falling into this rhythm of speech that Imogen has heard before. Some people just tal. Some people in her experience talk alot. This secretary or that victim's father or the former assistant DA. "Was gonna name me a girl Mary if I ever done had one. All I done had was sons, though. You c'mon on. S'1232 Larabee an' you get aholt of him you kin tell him we got the best country sausage you ever done ate in all yer life. Some people thank you kin git that kinda quality from tha market, but it ain't true. Ya need fresh meat an' good hands ta tenderize it." Jo-Ellen is looking up the steps.

The shadow against the wall shifts. It looks misshapen, inhuman though that could be a trick of the light. The position of the lights in the kitchen area - or some intervening structure, bulbous, broader than a human head An industrial mixer or -

Upstairs, the record changes. From Nat King Cole to Jimmy Wakely. The latter's voice croons long and lonely the way a lone wolf howls.

Mooooooon over Montana - as the needles sinks into th first crackling groove.

"Still, you c'mon in. Call yer husband, but in tha meanwhile you tell me what car you done got, 'n I'll send one of my boys out. It won't be no nevermind."

Half of Jo-Ellen's body is hidden behind the door. Her left shoulder and arm. She holds the door open with her right hand on the door frame, glancing from Imogen up the stairs, and back again.

"They like gettin' their hands dirty."

[Slaughter] Foolish, foolish - her mental tirade remains just that. Mental. "1232," she repeats, "No, I've not got a mobile phone," her gaze flicks toward the misshapen shadow. "I understand they gi' yeh brain cancer."

Her gaze flicks downward to Jo-Ellen, and she steps in, allowing her to close the door behind her.

of all the fool-hardy...

As she moves she shifts the angle of her body, half obscuring the lift of her hand to the small of her back.

[Sorrow] "I done heard that too!" the woman says, this sort of recognition sparking in her eyes, as if they were sisters. AS if they were more than sisters: as if they were tribe, fellow-travelers. "Told Sonny and said, Ma, that's horseshit. I said, it's them cell phones. And them music boxes everone carries 'round with 'm, what ruins tha meat."

The door swings closed behind her, with an assist from Jo-Ellen, who is pushing it forward. Now, Imogen sees that Jo Ellen holds a bloodied meat cleaver behind the door in her left hand. If Imogen's eyes touch on the weapon, Jo Ellen smiles around her mouthful of chewing tobacco. Or: whatever her has there, pushing out her lower lip., and says, "Cain't never be too careful, Mary Mary." - as she lifts up the meat cleaver to hang it from one of the hooks set into the wood framing visible between old plaster panels on the landing. "S'what I always say.

"Let me git them locks, now." Mary says, reaching around Imogen toward the door as she yells, "SONNY. YOU WANT HER TO USE THA PHONE UP THERE OR IN THE BASEMENT."

- from upstairs, underneath Jimmy Wakely's croon - rumbling back, " - you find out about her car, Ma? Like we done SAID?"

[Slaughter] A pause.

"It's an '87 Dodge Lancer," she says. Another lie. "About four blocks south."

[Sorrow] "IT'S AN NINETEEN AND EIGHTY-SEVEN DO - "

Jo-Ellen begins to shout, up the stairs toward the kitchen area. The shadow against the wall distens, grows wider and more grotesque, then resolves itself into the shape of a human man, maybe six feet tall, wearing a heavy rubber apron that reminds Imogen of the lead-aprons technicians wear in the presence of an X-ray machine, dark and industrial, with rubber boots and blood-stained leather gloves over his hands, which are fists, now, planted on his hips.

"I heard, Ma," Sonny says, with a snigglng snort at the end. Because his face isn't human. Because his head isn't human, and the distended shadow against the wall was not the shadow of some industrial mixer. Because Sonny is a man with the head of a pig, or a pig with the body of the man, a handful of fissures stitched together on his face - above the brow, over the snout, across and blow the lower lip - where the his pallid flesh, quivering with fat, has superated and been stitched back together again.

"You did good. Might as well send her up."

[Slaughter] Her gun had already been in her hand, half out of its holster, the cant of her body turned away from the woman, as if she were about to ascend the stairs. It occurs to her briefly to keep up the facade. To scream and crumple to the ground.

But if she is on her knees, she is in a position of powerlessness.
But if she goes to her knees, someone might come closer to drag her up, assuring the shot.
They're close enough now.

These thoughts take but an instant. Her gun is coming free of her holster, of her coat and lifting up to take aim, her thumb removing the safety, her finger finding the trigger like it had never left it.

A brief thought, before the squeeze of the trigger, the violent, deafening report. She hoped to - well, no-one - that Kora had picked up her phone, or the Skald would have a rather upsetting voicemail to hear the next time she checked them.

[Slaughter] (hiding the fact she's pulling her weapon)
HAIL ALMIGHTY KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1

[Sorrow] Per + Alertness. +2 dif Piggy doesn't expect prey to fight back!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 10 (Failure at target 8)

[Slaughter] SHOOT 'EM GOOD!
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Slaughter] Damage! HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 7, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[Slaughter] Damage! HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Sonny [Ack! Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[Sorrow] Everything happens in strobe-steps. Imogen slips in and Jo-Ellen reaches to close the door behind her, flipping home a pair of deadbolts, though the chain lock is dangling down the wooden doorframe. There's this sort of struggling silence from basement, dark below.

The butcher - in his rubber apron and with his face, supperating face - sniffs in Imogen's direction. When she speaks, his snout moves. His hands are human, and his body - which is large if going to fat - similarly human, but the eyes are narrowed, piglike, all wrong.

Imogen eases her weapon from her holster, and turns and fires faster than either the butcher or Jo-Ellen can react. There is the sharp scent of gunfire, this choking, anguished cry from the water-eyed woman who let her inside, and the dull, sick thud of a bullet striking the man-beast solidly in the meat of his chest. He lets out a flat snarl of pain and surprise, staggering back a step or two.

Already, Jo-Ellen is reaching for her butcher's blade.

And in the background, Jimmy Wakely croons moooooooooon over Montana.

[Slaughter] (+9)
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10

[Sorrow] Sonny: +6
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4

[Sorrow] Jo-Ellen: +5
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3

[Sorrow] Order:

Imogen: 19
Sonny: 10
Jo-Ellen: 8

Jo-Ellen: 1a. Grab meat cleaver! 1b. Slice Imogen!

Sonny: 1a. Take cover - duck out of door leading down basement stairs. 1b. Grab chainsaw! Rage 1: Start chainsaw!

[Slaughter] 1. Shoot Jo-Ellen (headshot) (WP)
2. Shoot Jo-Ellen
3. Shoot Jo-Ellen.
4. Shoot Jo-Ellen.

[Slaughter] HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6) [WP] Re-rolls: 1

[Slaughter] damage! HAIL ALMIGHTY KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 4)

[Sorrow] [Ack! SOAK!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 6 (Failure at target 8)

[Slaughter] Shoot again! HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 5, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 4) Re-rolls: 1

[Slaughter] Damage! HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 6, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 9 (Failure at target 8)

[Sorrow] Sonny: Frenzy check
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 4, 9 (Success x 2 at target 4)

[Slaughter] Shooting Sonny!
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 8, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Slaughter] damage! HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

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

[Slaughter] Shooting Sonny!
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 4 (Botch x 1 at target 6)

[Slaughter] (... I refuse to hail.)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 8, 9, 10

[Slaughter] Soak! HAIL ALMIGHTY KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 1, 6 (Failure at target 6)

[Sorrow] Without pausing for though, Imogen turns in quick succession and shoots Jo-Ellen, first in the head, then in the shoulder, sending the bleached blond woman tumbling back down the darkened stairs, bleeding from the mouth, the ears and a slow-blooming wound in her chest.

The woman gives a strangled cry before she falls, but fall she does, before she has wrapped her hands around the handle of the meat cleaver.

There is a roar of absolute outrage from the pig-face above, this blast of rage that remind Imogen, absolutely, of the rage carried by Garou. His ruined face screws up, and he gives a snort of such wounded outrage that she is certain he is going to come unhinged. Without hesitating, she turns her weapon on him. The first shot goes off beautifully, clipping one of his ears, drawing a bloody line across his fleshing head. The last shot backfires in her hand, a flash of gunpowder, acrid, white-hot and painful.

Meanwhile, Sonny has disappeared into the kitchen, and Imogen can hear the cough-cough of a gas motor starting up upstairs.

[Roman Turner] 8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6

[Sorrow] Sonny: +6
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8

[Sorrow] Dad: +4
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2

[Sorrow] Kora: +9
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5

[Slaughter] She bites back a sound of pain, sealing it absolutely behind her mouth. It reaches her throat though, her voice box, a sharp, wounded noise.

There are 2500 nerve receptors in the hand per square centimetre. Imogen is not prone to exaggeration, but in the moment of injury, it feels as if every one of them has gone raw.

She does her best not to think about for what she uses her hands. Grits her teeth and bears the pain as she clears the chamber of the maligned bullet, then moves the gun to her opposite hand, the handle feeling slightly awkward against her palm, misshapen, but otherwise, she is as steady as she ever was.

+9 (+8?)
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2

[Sorrow] Order:

Sonny: 14
Imogen: 11
Roman: 9
Kora: 9
Dad: 6

Dad: 1a. Grab pitchfork! 1b. Charge up stairs!

Kora: 1a. BITE Sonny. 1b. GRAPPLE Sonny.

[Roman Turner] 1a. claw pigface
1b, claw him again!

[Slaughter] 1. Shoot Sonny!
2. Shoot Sonny!
3. Shoot Sonny (WP)

[Sorrow] Sonny: 1. Chainsaw Kora! Rage 1: Chainsaw Kora! Rage 2: Chainsaw Roman!

[Slaughter] (switch actions from Sonny! to Dad! *and pray Sonny does not GET DOWN TO HER WITH THE CHAINSAW, OKAY GAROU?))

[Sorrow] Sonny: Chainsaw Kora!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5 (Botch x 1 at target 7)

[Sorrow] The chainsaw coughs and sputters, the engine choking and dying with a cloud of acrid smoke. Sonny snarls and heaves it aside, raw rage molten underneath his blistering skin.

[Action change: Rage 1: BITE Kora; Rage 2: BITE Kora]

[Slaughter] Shoot Dad!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 10 (Failure at target 6) Re-rolls: 1

[Slaughter] Kahseeno, y u haet me?
Shoot 2nd time!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 4, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Slaughter] damage! HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Dad: soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 5 (Failure at target 8)

[Slaughter] rerolling damage because Mei can't do math.
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Slaughter] HAIL KAHSEENO!

WYRM FEAR MY MIGHTY THREE DICE FOR THEY ARE MIGHTY!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 2, 5 (Success x 1 at target 6) [WP]

[Slaughter] pls?
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 4, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Sorrow] soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8)

[Roman Turner] 1a claw pigface
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1

[Roman Turner] damn
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Sonny: soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Roman Turner] 1b claw pigface
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Roman Turner] damn
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 4, 6, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

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

[Sorrow] Sonny: rage back!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 6, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 8) [WP]

[Sorrow] Kora: 1a. BITE Sonny.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 5)

[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Sonny: Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Kora: 1b. BITE Sonny.
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 4, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 5) [WP]

[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Sonny: soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Sonny: Rage 1. BITE Kora
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 5 at target 5)

[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Kora: Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Sonny: Rage 2: BITE Kora
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 4, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 5)

[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 10, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Kora: SOAK
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Then - chaos. The gauntlet splits, and a pair of Garou, hispo, descend upon Sonny, snarling. The first tears into him twice, and puts the beast-thing down. Then the beast-thing rises again, furious, his beady brown eyes clouded over with the unseeing fever of frenzy. He turns on the larger of the two, tearing into her once, pulling away a bloody chunk of flesh from her throat and chest. And again, though this time his tusks find no purchase on her hide.

Imogen hears the noise from below, and turns, leveling her gun on an old man - gray haired, rheumy eyed - who is charging up the steps with a pitchfork in hand. The pitchfork has dull tines and hay sticking out from it, as if he were tending... livestock, down there in the basement. She wings him, drawing blood, but he spits and keeps coming.

[Tally: Roman, okay!

Imogen: 3 L

Kora; 5 Agg]

Inits!

[Sorrow] Kora: +9
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3

[Sorrow] Sonny: +6
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8

[Sorrow] Dad: +4
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9

[Slaughter] +9
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4

[Roman Turner] 8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10

[Sorrow] Roman: 18
Sonny: 14
Imogen: 13
Dad: 13
Kora: 12

Kora: 1 WP, Resist Pain. 1a. BITE SONNY. 1b. BITE SONNY. Rage 1: BITE SONNY. Rage 2. BITE Sonny.

Dad: 1. PITCHFORK IMOGEN.

Sonny: 1. BITE. Rage 1. BITE. (Target Random between Kora + Roman!)

[Slaughter] 1. Shoot dad!
2. Shoot dad!
3. Shoot dad!
4. ....yeah okay, shoot him again. (WP)

[Roman Turner] 1 WP resist Pain.

1 Mother's touch Kora.

[Roman Turner] Mother's touch Kora
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 9 (Success x 3 at target 3) [WP]

[Sorrow] Sonny: 1. BITE!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 5)

[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Kora: soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Slaughter] Shoot dad!
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

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

[Sorrow] Dad: soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 3 (Failure at target 8)

[Slaughter] Two bodies, now, crumpled on the landing. Her ears are ringing and her hand is a blaze of pain, throbbing. She keeps her finger on the trigger guard of her weapon, reaching out with a flat-soled foot to nudge the pitch-fork-armed man with a toe.

When he does not move, she speaks.

"Are you both alone up there?" she sounds utterly calm, nearly detached as she looks down toward the stairwell, straining to see in the dark, straining to listen in it.

"When I spoke to her earlier, she said she had 'sons'." A flick of her gaze touches on the mutilated and deformed Sonny. "That's only one."

Roman, in his war form comes down the several stairs, ungainly in his size and the steps designed for humans. He leaves blood and brain matter on the floor with one clawed paw, a legacy to Pig-Face's final death blow. As he reaches out to her, she pulls back, deft and quick, the way a woman moves who might have had a hundred men try to touch her, when she wanted nothing to do with it.

The slight kinwoman is dwarfed by the monster and she eyes him warily.

"Whatever it is you're doing, I'd like you to not," she says, her voice sounding hollow to her ringing ears.

[Roman Turner] He let out a chuff of air and instead of finishing his reaching for her, he lifted that gory foot and shook it. If expressions could be read on a Warformed Garou, his was smiling with the utmost wickedness for shaking gore all around and maybe on her.

His head lifted, ears swiveling as he sniffed the air and listened for sounds of movement.

[Sorrow] One of the war-formed Garou - in the great, four-footed terror of its direwolf form - ranges away from the open doorway that leads down into the basement. From her perspective on the landing, Imogen can see that the beast's tail is held straight out from its body, alert and wary. There is no way to identify them. They all look monstrous, secondary sex characteristics evident in human or lupine skins subsumed into the functional primacy of the fighting form - they are simply monsters, undifferentiated except for their pelts and their scars.

Imogen asks if they are alone; she receives a short, sharp bark by way of response as Sorrow circles away from the corpse of the malformed pig-man, through the worn kitchens and workrooms of the butchery shop, searching for the second, ellusive scent of the second, missing son.

--

When the Garou returns: it is Kora. There's blood on her shoulder and neck, though there are no tears in her clothing, just this damp stickiness where her half-healed wounds are hidden by the her dedicated clothing, the black t-shirt, that conceals the color of the blood so well. Her hair is loose, and her mouth is tight, is taut. "I caught the scent of another, going further upstairs." The living quarters, Imogen will remember, above the shop, the black-out curtains drawn over the dead eyes of the windows.

Listening, half-way down to the basement, Roman catches the low edge of a muffled cry. Imogen hears it too, no doubt - closer. It isn't a whimper or a wail - just this - quiet sound, terrible, low and resigned, the terror drained entirely from, until it is nearly animal

- for all that it was made in a human throat.

[Slaughter] If expressions could be read on a Warformed Garou - Imogen probably would not be able to read it. They're alien to her. Inhuman, but not quite unreal. At least, not anymore. Imogen's face is not particularly expressive either, though there is a registration of irritation as the Child of Gaia sprays her jeans with with blood and gore.

She turns her head toward the sound, the whimper. Imogen pauses, not quite indecisive, but calculating.

"You both should check the upstairs," she says. "I can check the down." A pause, a tilt of her head to indicate it, "Sounds like a victim anyway. They were groundin' up human flesh in the meat."

[Roman Turner] He wasn't enjoying the small space, an area made tighter and smaller with his larger size. He looked to Kora and in a language that was likely just a bunch of sounds to Imogen, asked Kora.

~Ya hear that?~

Meaning the whimper, though he looked like he might go back up. He would spare Imogen the wonderful sight of his body shifting.

[Sorrow] There's a certain simmering brightness in Kora's eyes. Lost, maybe, given her position. She stands in the door frame, the light behind her, casting her face and her body in shadow, making a brilliant halo of her pale hair, loose and spattered with her blood. She shifts a tight glance from Imogen to Roman, then - her eyes linger there a moment, and he can see the way she lifts her head, struggling to hear with her limited human senses, what he has picked up with his own.

"Lone wolves die, doc." Kora says, the shadow of hoarseness from last weekend's poisoning still in her throat. Otherwise, though, her words glittering like her words. There's a certain tightness to her jaw that suggests the effort of holding back. "If you're going down there, we're watching your back. The scents are all over the place, anyay. Soaked into the walls and the floors. The other one could be a coward, hidden down below. Waiting for you to walk in."

[Slaughter] There is a pause. Perhaps she is about to argue.

In the end, she merely tilts her head toward the stairwell. A silent: After you.

[Roman Turner] With Kora's response to Imogen he turned another big ole toothy smile on the kin, his Goddess. Then he was squeezing by her, likely brushing her with gory coated fur and muscle and enjoying it completely.

[Slaughter] "Shift down first," Cool and controlled before Roman has a chance to brush by her. "If you please. I'd like a clear shot."

[Sorrow] "Tch." Kora makes that sound, low in the back of her throat before Roman disappears fully down the stairs. Her voice is quiet, but there's a certain lingering iron underneath. "If that's a victim, don't show it your warform." She speaks almost at the same moment Imogen does, then quiets when Imogen appends that she would like a clear shot.

[Roman Turner] They were complaining about his form, so who was he to argue? Also there was the entire, lone wolf thing. So he treated Imogen to the wonderful sight and sound show of his body shrinking, twisting, losing fur, popping and reshaping until it once again resembled a human.

"Now what?"

He asked because he was sure he was not going to get a word in edgewise with two females.

[Sorrow] Kora descends one step, then two, down toward the landing. The other stairs fall away into darkness. From their position, Roman and Imogen can see the faint glow of some distant light, concealed by a curtain or some other soft-sided substance, just shining through. There are two corpses, one fallen forward on the stairs, the other tumbled all the way down to the foot of the stairs, on the cold concrete foundations of the building, just visible in the light filtering down from above.

The whimper comes again; or the sigh.

"Let's go," Kora tells Roman, with a jerk of her head toward the basement, and a glance toward Imogen. "You first, though you keep to the shadows, yeah? Let's do this quickly. If the other one is upstairs, I don't want it getting away."

[Slaughter] (how sneaky am I? HAIL KAHSEENO!)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Roman Turner] He would try to stick to the shadows, though sometimes it just didn't work as well as he believed it was. He reached for the Gift of Blur and started off trying to be sneaky in following the whimper. Yeah, follow the whimper and it would be like one of those alien face suckers.

[Roman Turner] blur
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8)

[Sorrow] Kora: Dex + Stealth!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Slaughter] Imogen waits a moment as Roman starts down the stairwell. Then, she follows, her step steady, reasonably hidden by the shadow.

[Roman Turner] dex+stealth
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Roman Turner] per+aler
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Slaughter] per+alertness!
HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Sorrow] One by one, they file down the basement steps, reasonably quiet, reasonably hidden, reasonably concealed. Roman leads the way. Imogen follows, and Kora is a shadow behind the kinswoman. At the foot of the stairs, Roman steps carefully over the corpse of the dead woman, middle-aged, staring, her dried blood on her mouth and nose, a handful of bullets in her body, her hands empty, her eyes open, her mouth still round with shock, or outrage.

There's a curtain drawn across close to the base of the steps. It is hung from the crossbeams of then floor above, and held in place by a pair of hay bales on either side. Down here, the scent of blood, old and new, mingles with the sharper ammonia of urine on the flood. There's an unpleasant humidity in the air, and an ugly pegboard full of uglier tools - wire loops like those used by animal control to wrangle stray dogs, pitch forks and sickles, some with blood on them, shovels and picks and branding irons and metal traps with rusted teeth, weights of chain -

On the far side of the basement, visible in the dim light, a series of metal cells with drifts of straw and hay. Each cell has a pair of troughs affixed to the bars. From a distance, Roman can see the glint of water in several. Close to the cells. Three of the cells are occupied. There's a - human-shaped thing near the edge of one of them, the size of a small woman or adolscent body, her arm stuck through the bars, reaching, reaching, reaching for something just out of reach.

In the second, the crumpled mass of a larger man, sleeping admist the straw like the drunk or the dead.

The last cell, farthest alone the wall, holds a huge person, half-buried amidst the straw, face turned toward the wall, body language tight with fear.

[Sorrow] As Imogen descends the stairs, she hears the scrap of metal against concrete, the subtle tension in a hinge moving under weight, as if someone were opening a door. Or pulling one carefully closed.
to Slaughter

[Roman Turner] He lead the way and instantly his brain told him all of these had to die and another part said he hoped they didn't get out. Then a sound had him whipping towards it, trying to pin point it as he held his finger up to his lips in a shushing manner to warn the others.

[Slaughter] Imogen, utterly silent to begin with, arches an eyebrow slightly as Roman whips around to shush her, but her gaze soon moves away, searching for the source of a sound herself.

She studies each door, though without approaching them to see if any is even just slightly ajar.

Her bets are on the last one. Her finger moves from the trigger guard to the trigger, and briefly, her eyes touch on the young woman - reaching, stretching out, perhaps whimpering, perhaps silent. Her brow contracts, and then is forced smooth.

[Slaughter] perception+alertness

HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2

[Sorrow] Roman can stay concealed even in the open in the basement. The eye doesn't want to linger on him; he can find and cling to the shadows. Imogen and Kora do not know that trick. As soon as the pair of them are past the curtains held in place by the hay bales (and briefly, passing them, the sharp scent of cut hay chases away the deeper, more disturbing scents sunk into the bones and marrow of the place) the smallest of the (potential) victims look up, alert as an animal, and animal-quick, like a mouse caught out of its hole by a cut, and snags her arm back inside, pressing her spine up against the solid metal bar that defines one of the corners of her cell, holding her arms around her legs, keeping her chin carefully low, watching them out of the corner of her eye.

There's little - no? - movement from the second cell, and only that silent quivering from the third cell.

[Sorrow] None of the doors are ajar. Looking closely, though - the last cell, the one she scrutinized most closely - remains unlocked.
to Slaughter

[Slaughter] Imogen reaches up, silent and taps Roman's shoulder if she needs his attention, her gaze flicking to Kora to include her. She deliberately moves her eyes toward the third cell, the movement significant.

[Roman Turner] Well this was interesting. He saw the reaction of the small girl shape and then Imogen touched him and he slipped away to deeper shadows, heading towards those cells for a better look inside them.

[Roman Turner] per+alert
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 5, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Closer, and Roman can see what the smaller shape in the first cell was struggling to reach; a pair of scissors, discarded, half-concealed under spilled straw. Closer, and he can see the faint rise and fall of the chest of the inhabitant of the second cell, smell the sharp, almost clean scent of alcohol soaked into the air around him, a contrast to the darker, less innocent scents suffusing the air.

Closer, and he can see the last inmate in the last of the cells, huge, face hidden in the straw piled in the corner, find dark pants and crisp white shirt barely containing his bulk. The fabric is fine - finely gauged, well-woven, crisply put together - there is a half-moon of sweat under either armpit, but otherwise he seems to be clean, unsoiled.

Kora nods quietly to Imogen sends a look in her direction. She steps out, flanking Imogen, keeping her tall frame between the line of cells and the kinwoman without blocking her line of sight. As Kora's shadow falls across the girl, she draws back sharply toward the middle or back of her cell, but deliberately keeps her eyes averted.

[Roman Turner] He drew closer to the cells, passing each and stopping before the third. That was odd and of course, being himself he said so.

"Well I'll be danged, this one don't have no lock on it. Boy howdy don't that ring of the jail keeper or what?"

[Slaughter] Kora steps out, keeping herself between the cells and the kinwoman. Imogen steps wide, giving herself space and allowing her a clear shot at the body. Out of the corner of her eye, the girl's movement catches Imogen's attention and for a moment, the doctor's dark gaze moves, falling on the supposedly human girl.

Pity, perhaps for a moment.

Then gone.

Roman speaks, and Imogen raises her weapon, levelling it on the prone body. Her finger is on the trigger.

[Sorrow] Dex + Stealth:
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Slaughter] (HAIL KAHSEENO!)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Roman Turner]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 6, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Roman announces that the last cell has no lock. Imogen levels her weapon on the body inside. The inhabitant is at least 6'3", and well north of four hundred pounds. For all that, it is surprisingly light and quick. Both Imogen and Roman are sharper eyed, however, and notice the way its bulk tenses for movement underneath the mounded straw, readying to -

(inits!)

attack!

[Sorrow] Kora: +7
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2

[Slaughter] (+9!)
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5

[Roman Turner] +7
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9

[Sorrow] Junior: +7
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10

[Sorrow] Order:


Junior: 17
Roman: 16
Imogen: 14
Kora: 9

Kora: 1 rage - snapshift to hispo.

1a. BITE. 1b. BITE. Rage 1:BITE.

[Slaughter] Imogen:
Fire,
Fire

[Roman Turner] 1 Rage to Snapshift to Warform

1a Claw
1b Claw

[Sorrow] Junior: 1a. Charge Roman! 1b. Charge Kora! Rage 1: Run run run run run run runaway!

[Sorrow] Junior: Charge Roman! -2
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4 (Botch x 1 at target 6)

[Sorrow] They circle the last of the cells, the scorch of promised violence in the air. The human female shrinks back further under the straw, pressing her face against her knees. The huge form of the remaining son - in his fine suit, in his tailored shirt - tenses and turns ready to charge out, flinging open the unlocked cell door - human apparently, except for his size - faster than anything that large should be, head low, surging toward Roman -

and falls, hard, goes skidding on the floor.

[Action Change: 1b. GET UP. Rage 1: Charge Kora!]

[Roman Turner] 1a claw
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1

[Roman Turner] damn
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

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

[Roman Turner] 1b claw
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2

[Roman Turner] damn
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Slaughter] Shoot!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8 (Success x 4 at target 4)

[Slaughter] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5 (Botch x 1 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Slaughter] shoot! HAIL KAHSEENO!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 5 (Failure at target 4)

[Sorrow] Kora: BITE! -2
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 6, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 5)

[Sorrow] DAmage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10 (Failure at target 6)

[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[Sorrow] Bite -3
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 5)

[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Junior: CHARGE KORA!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 6, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

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

[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 5, 6, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Kora: Rage 1 BITE
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 5)

[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 4, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Slaughter] (+9!)
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1

[Sorrow] Junior: +7
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4

[Sorrow] Kora: +9
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8

[Roman Turner] +8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4

[Slaughter] rollyrollypoly
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7

[Sorrow] Order:

Kora: 17
Imogen: 16
Roman: 12
Junior: 11

Junior: 1a. Bite Kora! 1b. Bite Imogen! Rage 1: RUN RUN RUN AWAY.

[Roman Turner] 1a claw jr
1b do it again

[Slaughter] Shoot junior
Shoot junior
shoot junior!

[Sorrow] Kora: 1a. BITE junior; 1b. BITE junior.

[Sorrow] 1a. BITE
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 10 (Success x 3 at target 5)

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

[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Sorrow] 1b. BITE
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 5)

[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Slaughter] DIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 5 at target 4)

[Slaughter] BLOODY STINKING DEATH IN BLOOOOOOOOOOD!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Sorrow] x.x

[Sorrow] There is another spasm of violence; the Garou launch themselves at the huge man. He moves as quickly as a Garou, though otherwise his curse is less than his brothers, expressed in his size and his resiliance, in the corkscrew tail that is evident through a pinpoint hole in his pants.

One of the Garou claws him, the other bites, tearing away chunks of flesh dominated by cheesey yellow adipose tissue, rarely crunching deeper, touching little that is vital or internal under near the end. He scrambles to his feet, batters himself against Sorrow with a fury that clear in his brown eyes and quivering bulk. She's uninjured. The acrid scent of gunpowder is sharp in the air - and when it seems as if he were nearly immortal, having survived another pair of bites - Imogen levels her weapon and shoots him, and he falls with a deep thud.

In the third cell, the woman is a quivering mass of fear. She makes a short, sharp sound in the back of her throat and stuffs the heel of her hand into her mouth in an attempt to dampen the sounds from her throat.

In the second cell, the drunk inmate remains - drunk, unmoving, unaware of the vicious fight happening within feet of his unconscious body.

[Roman Turner] His ears were ringing so loud he couldn't hear a thing for a few moments. The smell here was so bad he sort of wished he didn't need to breath. Fear was the worse part though, he could taste it in the air. So much for not scaring the prisoners any more than they needed to. And here came more horror. He began the shift back to homid again.

[Slaughter] The man, more human than his brother, falls, crumpling and boneless to the ground. Imogen exhales her breath slowly and steps back away from the body.

Her gaze turns toward the girl. She studies her, crouching, terrified, doing her very best not to make a sound.

Imogen's gaze drops, turns away. She drops the clip from her weapon, replacing it with another, her gestures hindered by the burns on her hand.

A beat, and she chambers her first bullet, flicking a glance at the girl. The two Garou have a space to stop her, now. The moment where clarity comes, and Imogen's cold, rational decision is obvious.

"You have my sympathies." She sounds dispassionate. Disconnected as if she were saying this of no account. To someone simply because she should. One must hope that Imogen does not say such things in such tones to the families of her dead.

Three steps forward, her gun sliding between the bars.

[Roman Turner] He moved like someone poked him in the ass with a cattle prod when Imogen's actions became clear to him. In that moment he leapt right between Imogen and her target, facing Imogen.

"NO!"

[Roman Turner] "Ya can't just shoot her in cold blood. Look at her. It's like shoving little bunny foo foo in a stew pot while petting him and hand feeding him. Ain't right."

[Slaughter] Imogen stops, her gun not yet risen. Her eyebrow lifts.

"The things she must have seen cannot be undone." A lift of her chin, sharp, indicating the other cell. "Same with him."

He continues, her eyebrow remains lifted.

"And this delay is kinder?"

[Roman Turner] "Gonna hurt your soul."

He shook his head slowly.

"Ain't right. He's drunker than a skunk and she's so scared, who's gonna believe what she says? It don't hurt none to let a little light shine through sometimes, does it?"

He spoke each word as soft as the brush of a feather and as steady as a Preacher at Sunday sermon.

[Sorrow] Kora makes no move to intercept as Imogen begins to level her weapon, but her dark eyes flick over Roman as the young Garou jumps in front of the target. She does not stop him, either. She's human again - shifted, bleeding, her head tipped aslant, studying the girl in the cage, whose face is tearstreaked and absolutely white.

There's a deeper sort of compassion evident on the Fenrir's sharp features, considered, her mouth is still though.

"She's broken," Kora says, low to the pair of them, her attention direct on Roman. " - wounded. Soul as well as body. There's no going back from a place like this. Give her a quick end; it's merciful."

---

The girl is watching them now, her eyes huge, fixed on the back of Roman's head. Imogen, at least, will see how she keeps herself in his shadow, making her as small as possible.

---

"You can't just let her go. Nightmares, memories - how would that be any kinder?"

[Slaughter] "Humans don't come back from this," quiet, even. Calm. "And they pose a risk to us all. The right word in the right ear, or even just an interesting one in the wrong ear can bring attention that none can afford."

[Roman Turner] "I can't just let her be put down like a rabid skunk."

He shook his head slowly and turned to look at the girl.

"If she's so broken, what makes ya sure anything she said would mean anything to anyone? It just ain't right."

[Roman Turner] "What's yer name? I ain't gonna hurt ya none."

He reached between the bars holding his hand out to the girl as he cooed just as soft and sweet as if speaking to a frightened little puppy he was trying to tempt with a treat.

"Come on, I ain't gonna hurt ya. Come take my hand. It's gonna be ok. I'm Roman, what's yer name? I betcha got one of them Chicago accents, don'tcha? Me, I ain't from around here, but don't mean I can't help ya. Come on, come take my hand."

[Slaughter] "Your packmate wants a pet," Imogen says to Kora, annoyed. She turns away and walks to the body of the most recently killed pig, searching him for keys, one handed.

[Roman Turner] "That ain't right either. Ya know that ain't right. Your momma raised ya better than that. Just cause life has come up and bit ya on the hind end don't mean ya got to pull the wings off of flies."

He was still trying to tempt the poor girl towards him while murmuring the admonishment.

[Sorrow] "Humans might not believe her, Roman," Kora says quietly, watching him as he reaches back into the cage toward the girl. " - but cursed ones, would. Listen, Roman, she'd be a walking victim for the next monster, and the one after that. She would attract them like a magnet. Nevermind that she knows our faces. That even if no one believed her, she'd be able to break the veil, and that she could tell the cursed ones and any others our faces, even our names, maybe. Who we are. How we fight. The right word in the wrong ear, Roman."

--

The girl turns toward Roman, darting dark eyes up at his face as he reaches between the bars, she reaches out and grabs his hand, pulls herself upright and reaches out and grasps his hand. She puts her face against the bars, her eyes closing as she tips her head toward Roman. Murmuring, close and quiet in his ear.

[Roman Turner] He leaned in when she took his hand and put her face close to the bars. He was half listening. Instinct was telling him that she might bite his ear off. Then he heard her whisper and pain cut through the heart of his soul. That little part of himself that was pure took a serious blow with that whisper. Defeat shagged his shoulders as he nodded and slowly stepped back from the bars, barely getting the words out.

"She don't want to live no more. That's not the words of a crazy person. That's the words of someone hurt and feeling like ain't no other way out."

[Slaughter] Roman's jibes go unanswered. Her mother, her life or the status of flies; there is a sharp, tight line to her spine as she crouches by the corpse. Her gun rests on her knee as she slips her uninjured hand through the pockets of the corpse. The metal clicks and jangles against each other as she pulls the keys free from a pocket.

Roman steps back, defeated, and Imogen turns her head to look at him. There is no triumph there, but she gets to her feet. A pause, a moment, before she starts to step toward the bars.

[Sorrow] The girl stands close to the bars, watching Roman as he steps back defeat in his shoulders, pain lancing through him. Her eyes are dark, shining with unshed tears. She is filthy - older than he might have considered on first glance, thirty, or thirty-five, thin from a life on the streets, with track marks up her arms and stringy dark hair greasy from lack of washings.

"I'm glad it's you," the woman says, earnestly, watching him as he drifts away from the bars of the cage. Finishing with a look toward the cursed human collapsed across the concrete basement floor. " - and not them." Earnest and quiet, before she looks stark at Imogen, tightens her hands around the bars, and dips her head as if in prayer.

[Roman Turner] How did you take something like that graciously and not throw it back at them by saying you weren't glad you were involved at all? That it was killing a little of the light in your soul, dragging it towards that forbidden darkness kicking and bleeding the entire way? It made him want to be anywhere but here at this time. He wanted a do over card.

[Slaughter] A tendon flicks in Imogen's jaw, a brief tensioning.

She meets the woman's eyes when she steps up, dark blue, confident, an attractive woman with no track marks on her arms, no drug addiction, her thinness born of good genes, of hours at the gym.

They are utterly unalike. No similarities. From Imogen's washed hair to the woman's bare feet.

The doctor inhales like she might say something, but finds that every word is paltry. She places her gun to the woman's temple, and pulls the trigger.

Gunpowder embeds in her skin, the muzzle leaves a burn as the super-heated bullet leaves it. Flesh depresses then tears, bone breaks inward, and her skull cracks like an egg, each crack telling a story. Which one was first. Which one is last. The final damage, the bullet leaving the skull on other side, bevelling an exit wound outward, the wound coughing a spray of blood and brains backward. The drug addict's body falls, and Imogen steps back, her gaze lowering to her. A moment, and then she walks to the other cell.

[Roman Turner] He blinked with the gunshot, it was an auto response to the loud sound. Oddly the passed out drunk didn't bother him as much, but still he had to say something as he turned for the stairs.

"Ya know, if he ain't woke up yet, then maybe he was so drunk he never knew none of this happened?"

Nothing like the Devil's advocate.

[Sorrow] The woman lowers her had as if she were praying, and closes her eyes. She feels the press of the muzzle against her temple, and remembers the god she has long since cast away as a clear fiction, created by the powerful to justify their success and grind down the rest of the world.

She prays - half-wordlessly, the name of every god she an remember, trembling in the last moment before the trigger is pulled. Then the body collapses like a folding deck of cards, and the addict falls against the bars. The final look on her face is peaceful, still, except for the gaping wound in her temple, in her blown-out skull.

--

"There are no maybes in the litany," Kora says, quiet, flicking a glance back at Roman as he turns for the stairs. She's still in the middle of the room, gunshots ringing in her ears.

[Slaughter] She never answers him. Merely fires, twice. The man, in his drunk stupor, one which he clings to, perhaps, never gets up. She watches his chest rise and fall, painful stuttered breathes with gaping wounds along his spine. Twice, he breathes.

Then he does not.

Imogen pauses a moment, her back turned to both Garou, before she turns away.

"There's a lot to clean up," she says.

[Roman Turner] "They ain't all dead yet."

It was the stairs he started climbing as he said those words.

[Sorrow] When it is finished; the drunk dead, the corpses scattered around the basement, Imogen remarks on the cleanup. Roman climbs the stairs to scour the first and second floor to hound out anything else that might be living in the building.

And Kora, who is still, whose tension has never left her entirely, though perhaps for reasons wholly shifted from those offered by Roman, glancing at the good doctor with sparking. The struggle on her sharp features is clear as the restraint that comes quickly after the spark of rage that brightens her dark eyes.

Her rage is spent, but underneath, Kora is furious.

--

Instead of whatever she meant to offer initially - instead of that exclamation - she swallows back her words, and helps Imogen clean up the corpses. She treats the humans more gently, cleansing along. But sometime during the clean-up, Kora looks up, clear-eyed at Imogen over a body. And says, low, sharp, "Remember what I said about lone wolves, doc?" Quiet, a brief pause. Then, "Call me next time. Before you walk in the fucking door. If we hadn't been in the neighborhood - "

She doesn't finish the sentence. Not for the rest of the night.

[Slaughter] Kora speaks, low and sharp, and Imogen looks up, even-gazed. She meets the Skald's eyes, holds it. When Kora is done, she does not answer.

She merely returns to her work. No agreement, no denial, no response whatsoever.

The cleaning is long and tedious. There are bodies upon bodies. Tools. The meat is left to rot. A closed sign on all the doors. Imogen finds keys to lock the doors when they're done, her car weighed with corpses.

She does not bring herself to ask either to heal her hand; but if it were offered now, she would not refuse. She barely has use of her hand and even Imogen cannot deny that explaining this at her place of work would be difficult.

--

One imagines they work in silence. Words exchanged are utilitarian. What goes where. Where the car is. Where they are going after that.

Then the house is locked tight, the bodies are disposed of. They go their separate ways.

[Roman Turner] And he would of course heal her hand and later he would tell Kora that some times there should be a "maybe" in things. And that she might want to think about how what she said to Imogen might make her think twice and it might make her not call for help next time.

Last of all when it was all said and done he patted Imogen on the shoulder and murmured.

"I'm sorry."

Then parted ways.