Gnawer Cubs Rite of Passage
9/28/2005 - Part 1
Logfile from GarouMUSH.
[Basil (Resists-the-Dance), Christine (New Fire), Aaron (Mad-Dog / Slower-than-a-Speeding-Bullet), and Masao (Pokes-Her-Nose-In / Poker) go on their Rite of Passage.]
Odeon - Theatre(#3973RA)
The floor sticks to one's shoes like flypaper, and the seats all sag limply under even the slightest pressure. It's dark and dank with the evaporation of untold unknown liquids, and sounds echo menacingly off the soundproofed, honeycombed walls. The theatre is like a giant abandoned hive filled with row upon row of empty egg sacs; about a hundred of them, arranged in two columns, with three neat walkways, one through the middle and one on either side. High up and inset over the lobby doors is the projectionist's booth, a small alcove overlooking the theatre; opposite it is the screen, framed by ratty curtains that no longer close, and taking up most of the wall. It can no longer serve it's purpose, though: the screen is no longer blank, scrawled across it, from top to bottom, is a disconcerting mess of fluorescent grafitti which glows out bright oranges and greens even in the dark theatre. Like massive glowing worms the lines coil in and out of tags and outlines of images, in a roiling, reeling, psychedelic nightmare. The hundred empty seats all point towards it, mute and dusty.
Contents:
Squeaks
Obvious exits:
LObby Alley
Candles are lit to provide flickering light in the theater, and in this one circle of firelight a complex chalk 'scribble' is contained within the glow. Up on the stage, Yi stands, her shadow long behind her on the dirty silver screen. Waiting. Squeaks has been diverted to a sidepath, occupied via food and something that squeaks just as she does when she squeezes it. The fostern works at a small mortar and pestle, mixing some powder in it.
Olga stands at the theatre door, her hands wrapped around herself, locked tight on the rough fabric of her sweater. Her face is impassive, tentative, though her skin is stretched tight, there's tension there. She's hidden by darkness, well away from the ritual at the theatre's bottom, though her eyes are fixed on the flickering glow down there.
First through the lobby doors slips the pale-haired presence that is Masao, the no-moon cub turning from her entrance to blink in curiosity at the newer light. Blinking to acclimate her eyes a bit more, she moves away from the door and comes to a stop at the back of the first row of seats. "Whoa...is it party time or what?" she says aloud, raising a hand to scratch at her head out of nervous habit.
Next up is the crescent moon cub. Christine is in her one dedicated pair of clothes. What sequins are left on her blue shirt glimmer wanly. "A party for us," says Christine, stepping up beside Masao.
The feeling inside of this Ahroun is one of unease, feeling unprepared for the task of becoming a grown-up within the Garou Nation. Aaron sucks in a breath and tucks the sheath of his knife into the belt loop of his pants as he steps in, following the two girls in front of him. He walks up to the caulked-out circle, looking at it before his eyes squint at the flames that flicker from the wicks of the candles. "It's not a party," Aaron replies in a stern, southern accent from behind the two girls. "It's our judgment; to know if we're worthy enough to be adults."
Basil walks in with his hair tied back with a thick rubber band, stretching his arms out with a yawn and a chop of his lips. His yawn abruptly dies, his eyebrow shooting up and his eye blinking. "Mm, voodoo stuff going on? Place almost looks pretty with all the candles." He looks at Aaron, shrugging, then looks back over to the others. "It's that time already? Mm." He strides further down the aisle to stand near Masao, his attention focused on Yi.
Yi directs the arrivals to come in, and take up spots behind the circle of candles that surround the drawing. Masao to the north, Christine to the east, Aaron on the south and then finally Basil on the west. "Well," Yi begins after another pause. "We have tonight very rare occassion. A party you might call it, but tonight, if you have not worked your mind about it, is the night that your elders have decided to send you to your Rites of Passage." She looks to each face, smiling a little. "We will be sending you to a test, where your strengths and your weaknesses will be revealed not only to yourself, but to those around you. It is time for you to 'grow up'." Hopping down from the screen stage, she continues to mix the powder, and the concoction is set in the middle of the circle, atop the ground drawing. The space of silence she gives the cubs is long, for any last words, questions, comments.
Olga doesn't move, she stands wooden as a cigar store Indian, though she can't be called disinterested. Her eyes are intense, staring out over her hooked nose at the gathering below, gaze burning and impatient.
Masao laces her fingers behind her back as she takes her directed spot, looking from the circle to Yi with an expression that changes a bit too much to be pinned to a particular emotion. Taking a long, deep breath, she expels the air gustily and turns her eyes on her cubmates with a small smile. "All for one, one for all?"
Christine takes her place solemnly, and with a befitting awe of all pomp and circumstance. Her eyes move to each point on the compass rose of cubs. From the back of her throat comes a dim sound of assent.
Aaron keeps his back rigidly straight and remains at his southern corner. His eyes shift to each of the other cubs, watching their expressions quietly. "Was there anything that we were supposed to bring with us on this journey?" he asks Yi. "Is there anything that we should keep in mind or beware of?"
Basil looks from Yi down to his position, seeming bemused at his location on the drawing. "This is going to be interesting." He turns his gaze over to Masao, flashing her a grin. "Something like that. Any differences we have, lets set them aside until we're done with this." He glances over at Yi, interested in her answer to Aaron's question, then over to Olga.
Yi tilts her head at Masao. "That could be the truth of the Bone Gnawers," she replies before turning to Aaron. "Bring what you wish to bring, and keep in mind what this test means. To be a cliath of the Bone Gnawers is to be a Child of Rat. What it means to be a Child of Rat... perhaps you will find the answer upon your journey." No more questions taken. Yi shifts up to her warform, red and ivory fur spreading out from her disappearing clothing. The shift done, her claws scoop up a small, waning candle that has been left upon the stage and she walks forward. The flame is dropped. Then the mixture within the mortar ignites, sending up a bright burst of light into the room followed by acrid blue-grey smoke that smells somewhat like woodchips and perfume. The ragabash, lifting both arms into the air, howls out brilliantly. ~Grandmother Gaia! Sister Moon! Mother Rat! Hear me tonight. I call to you, look upon us with your shining eyes...~
Olga stares at Basil when the boy looks at her, but beyond that she doesn't respond until Yi rises up into Crinos; at that she rises like a parishioner when a priest starts talking, her slouch disappears, her arms unfold and hang tensely at her sides. She watches closely, and remains quiet.
Masao counters with a lean of her head and an enigmatic smile, then drops the demeanor to stand up straight and scrabble her hair back from her face. The flash of light causes her to raise one arm slightly and blink owlishly before the howl commands the entirety of her attention.
Christine steps almost imperceptibly back from the circle. Her dry lips twitch silently. Tonight, the girl has her own prayers, her own god to reconcile with. And at the same time, the howl demands that she watch the ceremony in synch with her tribemates.
Aaron does not twitch as the fire ignites. He only blinks after the flash of bright light like a camera light going off. When he is able to see again, his attention turns to Yi and the teenager has a lurching rumble-sound in his throat, wanting to howl in reply to the Fostern.
Basil maintains his gaze at Olga a few seconds before he bows his head to Yi, nodding in agreement with her. His head lifts again when the mixture in the pot burst into flames not long before she bursts into a howl. His posture rises up to it's full height and he crosses his arms, waiting patiently for the orders about to come, fighting down a squirming feeling in his stomach.
The chanting, supplication of spirits and even seemingly Destiny itself, goes on. Minutes tick past, with the ragabash ritemaster circling around the cubs, all the while the contents of the bowl smoldering into the air. A soft whine pierces the ceremonial chanting, coming from the side where Squeaks sits, also in rather rapt attention. The smell of the smoke seems to cling thickly around the ceremonial circle, as one by one the ingredients inside the mixture light and burn, sending up different scents that blend or contrast with what is already hanging in the air. Still the chanting continues, getting hypnotic with seeming repetition, but in variance as the fostern calls endlessly. ~Spirits, hear me!~ The fostern finally cries out, howling freshly four times, the names of the cubs, their auspices, and finally, ~Test them tonight as the Garou shall. Test them tonight, as the Corrupter shall. Test them tonight, and watch as they prove themselves under your eyes! Test them, that they will join us as Children of Rat, Gnawers of Bone!~ When the final howl fades, absorbed into the worn wallpadding, the smoke dissipates with a swipe from the ragabash over the heads of the cubs. Energy has filled her golden eyes, and it doesn't disappear as she reverts back to her breedform. "Go now," she breathes, nodding towards the theurge waiting for the cubs at the door. "Olga will tell you what happens next. Go. And Gaia be with you."
Olga still doesn't talk, she waits, at the top of the long sticky walk through dark theatre seats, watching the cubs, arms folding again around her, face obscure and impatient.
As the chanting goes on, Masao's eyes half-close against the smoke that a deep breaths suck into her lungs. When her name is howled, her eyes snap open and she lifts her head slightly to follow the Fostern. Licking her lips and nodding, she turns her focus to Olga and breaks from the circle to walk up the aisle to wait before theurge with nothing approaching calm in her posture.
Christine starts at the sound of her name, and begins to cough up that dry, diffuse smoke. Masao before her, the Ahrouns behind, she marches up the walkway to face Olga.
Aaron follows Christine, his expression still stern and set in determination. The smoke does not seem to bother him or at least he ignores it.
Basil stands still and gives his full attention to the Ragabash the entire time and when he's directed to the next place, he shows a peace sign to Yi. "See you later, Yi-Rhya." He turns as soon as he's excused stepping quickly and with bold sounding foot steps towards Olga, his excitement plain on his face. He pauses after a few steps and runs over to Squeaks, emptying his pockets of an impressive amount of candy and a McDonalds toy. "See you, Squeaks." He gives her a light pat on the head then sprints up behind the others, falling into line.
Squeaks sneezes a few times in the smoke, and watches the cubs leave. With the candy and toy dumped in front of her though, the metis' attention diverts right onto the new shower of gifts. Yi nods to each cub, and watches them go. Behind them, the ragabash utters a quiet prayer of her native tongue, and stoops to pick up the bowl and gently brush the chalk glyphs into obscurity.
When she speaks Olga's voice is low and dry, respectful of the mood of the ritual, worried for her cubs. Her lips and words crack and turn quietly and quickly as the candles' flames, like she's trying to get it done before she changes her mind, like she's trying to get them away from her again. "Yi and me, we found out today there's been people disappearing down around Yopina- Yopinawphawa- you know where they turned that old factory into a night club couple years back and it went belly up? That street. People've been disappearing, street people mostly, we heard. We poked our noses around. It's a leech. There's an old clothes factory down there, at Lye Street, it's holed up there. You guys take care of it." Her hands tug at the fabric of her jacket, like she wants to pull them loose, stretch out to the kids before her, but instead she just stares at them, before stepping away from the doorway, and repeating, "You guys take care of it. Go on."
Masao blinks rapidly as the task is given, looking vaguely poleaxed for a moment as her mind processes what it's heard. "Yes, rhya." she says, more automatically than anything else, giving her head a violent shake afterwards as if to put something in place. Half-turning to the other cubs, she puts on a tight grin and places one hand on the door. "All for one, one for all. Let's rock." Pushing through the door to the lobby, she holds it for the others on the other side of what could be eternity.
The prayer breaks from Christine's lips as the instruction begins. Confusion draws her face tense, and she looks to the others to see that they understand. She files out into the lobby.
Aaron looks towards Olga carefully before he nods his head, jumping from the stage and then turning towards the three others. "Alright," he replies. The teenage boy turns to his fellow cubs. "A few things," he addresses. "We all stick together. No one going fucking Jesus and trying to act like they're going to perform miracles by getting in front of everyone else. We all have strengths here and we're going to use them wisely, a'right?" He puffs up his chest. "No being a smartass either, we're all gunna look after one another. Keep your attention on what's around us and remember that we still have the litany to follow and all."
"A Vampire? If it's only one, we should be able to do this. Nah, we can do this. Come on guys, lets go kick some clammy, cold dead ass." He states after Aaron is done with the pep talk. Basil grins a bit, turning his eyes to Masao. "I know she knows the way. Olga?" He pauses as he walks past the Theurge, giving her a pat on the arm. "Thanks. I'll see you later too. I'll even bring back something to eat." He waves over his shoulder, smiling at Masao for holding open the door.
Olga doesn't speak a word, not even a goodbye, but she doesn't let the cubs leave her line of sight for a second until they pass out of the theatre and into the yet darker lobby beyond. Her eyes are fixed on them like hands.
Masao nods quickly to Aaron, quirking one eyebrow at Basil over the grin on her face. "Gotcha, no heroics. Good thing I'm no avenging angel or nothin'. Wings'd just get in the way." That seems like a last attempt at wit from the ragabash for the evening, as her tongue stills as she looks back through the doorway at the candlelit theatre one more time.
Christine is silent. Her lips still move noiselessly sometimes, and when they don't she seems disturbed, as though she has forgotten something she shouldn't have.
Aaron curls his lip up in a brief smile towards Masao and bumps her shoulder before he opens the door to the Odeon up for the ladies and Basil out from the theater.
Basil walks out without the slightest bit of hesitation, only sparring one last glance back at where he assumes Olga and Yi to be. He turns his attention back to the streets and the group assembled outside the Odeon. "Masao, lead us. Preferably from a concealed path."
9/29/2005 - Part 2
Wharf Street, Industrial Sector
An untidy sprawl of warehouses and the occasional factory, particularly the power plant, spreads westwards, through several blocks around and west of the wharves. The wharves themselves are decrepit, rotting from the river inwards, though the landward ends are still maintained sporadically. Ash and dirt and smoke cover everything in a dark film that dulls color and darkens whiteness. Rainbows of small oil spills are nothing unusual in the warren of streets and alleyways; nor is the presence of rust along metal eaves. In the alleyways, huge trash bins are accompanied by oil drums, tires, and the waste of decades of industrial carelessness. The smell of smoke from the power plant overlays all; between smell and residue, all combines to lend an air of desperation to the empty collapsing warehouses and one of depression to those warehouses yet standing and in use.
Obvious exits:
North West
Christine and Basil arrive in the lobby, both stepping deftly around the rubbish Yi has strewn there, more props than real garbage. "Still raining," says Christine, and it seems that the adrenaline of the rest of the cubs has not fully infected her. She sounds low.
Masao moves by Aaron as he holds the door open for everyone else, walking out onto the sidewalk outside the Odeon and scanning up and down the street. Tugging her hood up over her hair, she peers off in the direction that the cub-group is supposed to go or at least somewhat approximating it. "Quick and dirty or quick and quiet..."
The rain turns to drizzle as the cubs trudge and slip through back alleys and parking lots. The scenery doesn't change much, it's almost all grey, whether sky, concrete, or people; all of it seems sculpted from the same grey lifeless clay, it all bleeds monotonously together, washed out and vile. Flashes of colour flare up and melt away: someone woman has a bright red hat, there's a rainbow spill of oil, graffiti winds around buildings like vines, a bum maintains a collection of broken emerald bottles; and then it's all back to greys of different hues, some filthy, some simply dead. The buildings begin to thin out as they reach their destination, and there are fewer eyes about. The hour is late, just past midnight, somewhere between one day and the next. Yoknapatawpha Avenue is almost a main street, there are closed restaurants and corner stores, it might almost be believed that at certain times of the day, there is life, here. These turn into factories and then warehouses, and by the time it dribbles into Lye Street it's broken chain link fences and parking lots, buildings like prisons. In old white paint and boards one of them says TATE BROS. CLOTHING MFG. It's surrounded on all sides by a many times punctured chainlink barbed wire-topped fence which no longer keeps out anything. Black plastic-wrapped windows are like rows of black eyes, five metres off the ground. There are a pair of metal doors immediately in sight, olive and rust, unwelcoming.
Basil walks along the entire time with nothing but a quick 'thuck thuck thuck' of his boots on the sidewalk and the occasional glance around. When the building finally comes within sight, the Ahroun sighs and closes his eye briefly. "Once inside, once the target is sighted, kill. Don't speak. Don't hesitate. Don't listen to him. Kill him as quickly as possible, and fuck everything else and anything he might have to say. That shit always leads to trouble in the movies."
Christine giggles nervously at Basil's pronouncement. "Aye aye," she says, her head low as she follows in the slight wake behind Basil.
Aaron grabs a hooded sweatshirt and throws it over his head, snuggling into the fabric. On his way out the door, he doesn't forget to grab a broomstick that is propped up against the wall. As the rain hits his head, he pulls up the hood over his head and haunches his shoulders. He ignores most of the stares that they get from people wandering the streets at this time of the night. Aaron has the impression that most of them have to be drunks or thugs, or perhaps a combination of the two. His eyes narrow at Basil, mostly because of the rain drizzling onto his eyelashes. "Just be cautious of what is around you as well," he murmurs.
Masao half-turns from her lead-scout position and nods once, then refocuses her attention ahead of her. As they near the building and it's rusted doors, she drops out of that role and moves back by Aaron. "Lock an' key, lock an' key...where's the lock and what's the key?" she muses under her breath, eyeing the shadowed windows.
The sky spits, but there's a foulness in the air that the weak rain can't dispel. Both streets are empty, but the feeling of being watched can't be shaken.
Basil glances around him quietly when he feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand and do jumping jacks, casually taking a step away from the double doors to one side. "Just bust it down if you have to." He murmurs quietly. "I just wish we had some lights to throw in after we get inside."
Aaron looks for a place in the fence to duck under or around to get closer to the building. "Is there any other way inside the building?" he asks, looking towards the other three cubs. The Ahroun looks warily towards the foreboding double-doors that look like the mouth into the inferno of doom. He leans on his stick, preparing for what might be festering behind those doors.
Christine slips through the barbed wire to follow after the cubs. She looks askance at Basil as he speaks, and turns the handle. "Not locked," she says softly. A rusty click proclaims the truth of her words.
Masao slips through one of the numerous punctured sections of fence, coming to a stop on the other side of the double doors from Basil. When Christine tests the lock, she holds her breath for a second and then lets it out in a soft hiss as the handle turns. "Well...gotta go in -sometime-. Count a-three and open it?"
Basil says "Sometimes, the most unexpected attack is a one straight on. Everyone always knows a sneak attack is coming. Besides, if he trapped the front door the back door is probably trapped too." Basil murmurs to Aaron, then quickly turns to Christine and Masao. "Right. Rush in and shift as soon as you get in. Don't hesitate. I'll count... " He whispers much more quietly. "Go on two." Then starts the count down. "One... Two!"
A wince is given as Aaron hears the rusty click of the door resounding in his head like a pin-drop in an empty audience hall. "Alright," he replies before Basil does. "Basil, Christine, Masao, and I." The Texan pointing his fellow Ahroun towards the door. "Be prepared for what's inside," he responds with a nod to Masao.
Masao inches forward a bit, glance shifting up to Aaron briefly to return the nod quickly. "Zoomzoomzoom..." she whispers, eyes bright and wide as she fidgets a little in place.
"Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God," says Christine. And there's more, but she's in the door already, her mouth becoming by the second less suitable for the saying of psalms. Her dedicated clothes flicker. She's up, up through Glabro, into Crinos.
Basil steps in last and stops, his shift coming slower but to the higher form, only his dedicated gloves remaining as clothing. As soon as he's able to he's sniffing at the air inside, scanning quickly from left to right.
From afar, to the room, Christine spends Rage. I think she's the first one in the door, and taking no chances?
Aaron blurs into crinos as he quickly slips in the door after Christine incase there were something to happen as soon as they enter the interior of the warehouse. His form and composure transforms as soon as he is inside. Ears rise, hackles rising as he sniffs at the musty air inside.
Masao ducks through the open door and moves slightly to the left, sliding through the forms to Crinos with a soft intake of breath. Her head moves slowly back and forth like radar, and she sinks down into a light crouch to get a lower view of anything before them.
The first thing to hit the Garou is the smell. It's only slightly more permeable than brick. The air is thick here, thick like wet and rot, like a greenhouse that's been left to shrivel and starve finally being opened after a hundred years. There's blood and faeces and something even fouler in the air, the decay of organs, sewers packed with bodies, decades of death and squalor packed into olfactory sensation. The plastic-taped windows have sealed it in, it's been germinating forever. It scrapes at the lungs and nose, it's like breathing in sandpaper. All other senses are black. Eyes struggle against the blackness of a hermetically sealed building, trying to adjust; ears pick out only the scrapes of the others' claws against the rough cement floor, and, from deeper in the building, a quiet throttled groan too quickly-passing to distinguish, and the sudden rattle of furniture knocked over as people get to their feet, muffled by distance or doors.
New Fire brushes against Masao, reaching her full height only shortly before the ragabash does. ~Bad~ she comments, nostrils flaring. ~All here?~
Resists-Dance blinks rapidly in an effort to adjust his eyes, moving quietly to take a position up near Christine, nose wrinkling at the foul odor. ~Here, yes. Hear? More... Wait until eyes adjust, move forward.~ Basil starts walking slowly into the foul darkness, glancing from side to side.
Mad-Dog closes his eyes for several moments allowing is other senses to be his guide, acting on all of the training that he gone through. He quickly tries to determine the number of footsteps he hears. He hisses at his fellow cubs to stay together while adjusting to the light as he opens his eyes again. The male crouches over, lowering to all fours as he haunches up with his thigh leaning against Masao gently.
~Here. Foul.~ comes the quick, quiet, and disgusted response from the no-moon as Poker as she contacts New Fire. Staying still for a moment, she lets her ears acclimate first since the darkness is so thick. ~Ears make better eyes.~ Touch lets her know where at least two cubmates are, sound alerting her to Resists drawing near.
~Nose make better ears~ New Fire says. She lifts a hand, her claws chime flatly against Poker's. A drawn out pause. ~Not here. We wait?~ It's difficult to understand her; even were it not like pitch in here, she is far from proficient with the tongue.
Resists-Dance starts to make his way forward quietly, lifting a paw to the others to indicate silence on the off chance they see it. He tries to make his way slowly, crouching down a little, distributing his weight in an effort to remain silent.
The only light spills in through the open doors; the moon's half face barely manages to break through the clouds, and the street lamps are sparse and pale. The light strains through the thick air just enough to illuminate the cloud of gas, thinly visible, spilling out onto the world outside, and the Garou's immediate surroundings: it's empty, at least a couple metres away there's nothing but cement and foul air. There's movement deeper inside, the sharp slap of heavy feet, and then silence; somebody whispers in hisses, below the level of intelligibility. Then slow, steady, determined movement; the steps are crisp and rushed, there's purpose in them.
9/30/2005 - Part 3
New Fire hunches low so that she looks more wolf than warform. She's quieter this way, but she's off balance as well. Tentatively, she pads after Resists-Dance, and her hackles stand up like porcupine quills.
Resists-Dance continues forward with his eyes held wide, taking in as much light as he can in thee odorous, large dark room. He licks his lips as he continues forward, continuing to breath through his nose despite the smell, his ears perked and alert.
Poker's ears flick up, then lay back slightly as the sound of footsteps, trying very hard to push down the growl that wants to start in her throat. When New Fire moves out of touch, she cautiously edges forward into that empty space. Her own eyes flick towards the darkness before them, narrowing rather than widening.
Mad-Dog's hackles rise stiffly, he curls his lip and moves forward with the other to step forward. The Ahroun touches Poker lightly and takes a bold step nearer to the other two while remaining with the Ragabash.
New Fire smells of apprehension and revulsion. She moves so long as there are footfalls before her, footfalls behind her. Her tail, stuck straight out behind her, swats Poker's breastbone, and in her startlement, she takes a swift step forward. The claws of her feet clack upon the floor.
There's a scrape and a shuffle and the click of a flashlight, and the Garou can see. The light comes with the suddenness of a gunshot, about ten metres ahead of them, somewhere in the middle of the building. It struggles through the thick air and reflects off a floor that shines with fresh blood; the red blotch along the concrete stops just a few steps away from the cubs paws. The light shows to the left the skeleton of an ancient metal machine, a couple metres off, tall as the Garou, rusted as an ancient boat, with presses and pulleys and wheels growing out of it, its purpose uncertain and alien in the brief glance they get of it. Propped against it is a person, its eyes empty and glasslike, its skin flaccid and alabaster, hanging off in rolls. Long dead, naked, so emaciated its gender is hidden, inhuman. There's another to the right, just legs, half-removed from the light, spread out across the bloody ground. The flashlight shows beaten metal folding chairs near whoever's holding it, but he can't be seen himself except for an obscured glance of an arm, cut out of the scene by the glare of his light, nor can anything can be seen behind him; nothing new is shown but the dead and the machine. Most of all though the light reveals the Garou, flashes of fur and claw and eyes which glow bright as the flashlight itself, giant monstrous forms skulking away from the door. The light is completely frozen, the hand holding it immobile, for one second, two, a moment of quiet and sudden revelation.
Resists-Dance freezes for just a moment when the light touches him, when he sees the light spreading throughout the building for the first time. He almost wishes for that one second that they'd remained in the dark. Getting over his moment of surprise, he taps Christine on the shoulder and starts to run quickly and to the side. ~Move! Rush! Attack! Two on two teams!~
Poker hisses and slits her eyes further, letting in as little of the light as possible to avoid dazzling sharp vision. The human remains curl her lip up in a silent snarl until Resists' words signal action. A brief duck of her head to Mad-Dog and she's moving, taking the opposite side as the Ahroun-Theurge team and all business.
Mad-Dog squints his eyes as the light reflects in his eyes. He bulks up, looking bigger than he appears and drops his jaw as he snarls towards the figures which he cannot yet see. He leaps forward, gaining forward momentum on the silhouette baring the ray of blinding light.
At Resists-Dance's urging, New Fire takes one blind, clattering bound. She skids to a tensed stop. ~Human~ she whines, as the image of the hand at the flashlight imprints itself on her retinas. Her peeled-back ears flick up, and strain forward.
When the Garou lunge the hand paralytically opens and the flashlight drops to the red cement; the light seems to hang a little longer in the air and then it drops and twitches in jerks and starts, the whole muddy world shakes, sloshes violently around. Whoever was holding the light backs away but there's a sharp and immediate clatter of hard footsteps: five or ten or fifteen, it's impossible to say before a scream shatters all attempt at distinguishing sounds. It comes from a five metres off the flashlight, weak and throttled at first, like the throat is full of mud, but then finally unclogging and whining out high and fierce as a kettle thrown into a smelter. Creatures appear in the light just as the Garou reach the flashlight, three or four of them, their mouths distended, their lips have been peeled away, screaming a wheezing wet gas, any sound they make blotted out by the scream behind them. Their bellies are bloated, the skin stretching, struggling to hold them, and their eyes are white and scrambled. They charge towards the Garou, leaking brown chunky liquid from their noses, oblivious, charging with fingernail and tooth.
Resists-Dance's nose scrunches up when he catches sight of the monsters and hears the peculiar sound, pausing just a moment in his step. With a growl that turns into a roar, the Garou shouts at the top of his lungs. ~Hail to the king!~ And rushes forward, snarling as he slashes at the disfigured creature with his Crinos might.
A wordless growl tears out of Poker's mouth as she ducks lower and charges at the grotesque foes. Her claws come up before her to go for legs or lower bodies first.
Mad-Dog has his claws at ready in his defense as he leaps at the first foe that he comes up against. His expression is fierce as he concentrates on his instinctive movements, slashing with his claws like swards down upon the scum of the earth.
When the first set of claws come down against soft pink skin, it splits it wide, readily, making a great gaping hole in the creature that immediately explodes in a whining, stinging expulsion of gas, leaking the foul acidic stuff like a burst pipe. The small Ragabash alone is quick enough to scrape against the cement, bolt away, aborting her attack and getting away from the roiling expulsion of gas. More claws, powered by inertia, will, and rage, come down against the creatures, splitting them wide, letting spill the air they have for blood. It sits in the Garou's eyes, it steams their noses, burning away all the wet tissue in their throats, like the air itself had turned to acid. It has the foul taste and smell of dung and fever to it. Two of the creatures go down, their screams still silent and throttled, nothing but escaping air, muffled and blotted out by the deeper piercing one beyond; a third leans back, his distorted belly bulging, his shoulder torn apart and still whistling gas, and with a jerk and a turn spews gallons of vomit up at the Garou which tower over him, just a vile brown fast-approaching blast.
Resists-Dance reels back at the scent of the god awful gas, feeling as though something had expelled hell itself down his nostrils. Intangible words spill forth from his muzzle, as unpleasant as the gas itself as he takes a quick few steps back. When he catches the sight of the next attack he's already moving backwards, and continues to do so, glancing around them and coughing. ~Back!~
As Poker bolts away she swipes into something solid, though it gives as she pushes against it, and then a terrible force and pain drives down against her skull, smashing her ear and spinning her world. The light only vaguely reveals the attacker's feet, and the billy club he raises.
Mad-Dog jumps back as the figure vomits, his hackles spiked at the back of his neck as he hears his fellow tribemate's command to draw back. The Ahroun dances swiftly on his feet and turns to snarl at the vile, grotesque creature. He swiftly surveys the scene; the other cubs and what they are up against.
[From Poker's POV: You're the only one who can really see the one who stabs you; she's small but she leaps at you to sink the blade into your bent over body. She must be incredibly strong, the way she so deftly skewers you, and you can feel the blood come bubbling warmly up into your mouth from where the blade punctured your throat. What most strikes you about her, though, iss her face: even in the dim reflected glare of the flashlight, it's hideous, her nose is arched like a bird's beak, her ears rise high over the top of her bald head, and her skin is wrinkled like it's been fired and cooled a hundred times. She's at your left, on the side away from everyone else.]
The sound from Poker's mouth ends up being somewhere between a yelp and a snarl, balance thrown off by the impact as much as the sudden lack of sound on one side of her head. She scrambles to turn and retaliate, letting loose a vicious snarl of anger and pain accompanied by her claws.
The air blows among the cubs like mustard gas; New Fire sucks in a searing lungful. She gargles wretchedly, begins to paw uselessly at her eyes and snout, and then jerks her claws out around her, to keep at bay whatever's in the dark.
Resists-Dance jerks his head quickly around him, giving a quick look among the darkness, wiping briefly at his eyes with the hand he didn't use to strike the corpse. ~Don't spread! Maintain formation!~ He rasps out.
New Fire is bathed in the putrid onslaught, it boils against her exposed stomach and chest; Mad-Dog it splatters more loosely, long chunks hanging from his fur, speckling him with brown. It's foul, the smell is overpowering. The stuff bubbles as it clings to their fur, full of chunks of faeces and the decayed remains of animals and insects, clung to the liquid in gobs, at places thick, at places heavy and fluid as mercury. It eats away at the Garou's flesh, worms digging in underneath their skin, acid eating away fur, flesh buckling out. The creature which spewed it out draws in great wild sucking breaths, his eyes spinning from Garou to Garou, lipless face peeled into as close to a grin as it can come, almost orgasmic in its ecstasy. Its belly has shrivelled. Another of the things lumbers forward, into the glow of the flashlight, towards Resists-Dance. Poker's find only glancing contact against their target, tearing apart clothes, dripping thin strands of blood, as the man who'd clubbed her stumbles out of her way; she catches a small glimpse of metal in the flashlight's glare as a baseball bat shears the air towards her. The gas billows out from the creatures on the floor, filling the sealed room.
~Bastards I'll kill any of you that gets in my way!~ Resists-Dance doesn't shrink away from the thing turning towards him, though he sees it as less of a thing and more of a figure. This one he lifts up a big arm and swings it lengthwise at the rushing creature's face and neck, then turns in a blur and slashes at the face of the vomit spewing attacker.
Poker wastes no time on vocals, instead going for the bat with both clawed hands. Her aim is to either stop its progress or get it to break and deprive her attacker of his toy.
Mad-Dog lets loose his rage, attacking the first threat that he takes notice of in front of him. He is now at all-or-nothing, gashing teeth and claws tearing boldly through the enemy's flesh. He is Gaia's warrior and this is his moment to do her deeds of ridding the world of the creatures that corrupt it and turn it into further darkness. He squints his eyes to keep the gasses from making them water as he lungs forward into battle to assist his fellow cubs.
New-Fire shrills as the substance spatters her, and it is a sound that reaches the highest register of inhuman throat. Her snout snaps instinctively to the floor, but the gas, unlike smoke, swirls viscously around her feet. New-Fire is not half the fighter Mad-Dog is, and has only barely half the distilled anger. Yet she too is Garou: she plunges forward. Her teeth reach for the creatures as if they held the good air she sought.
10/5/2005 - Part 4
The flashlight provides a thin beam of illumination, which most of the combat rages outside of. It's hard to pick out even who or what is an enemy, let alone how many of them there are, their strength, the status of your friends. It's all rage and gas and the rich blotting smell of blood and faeces. The two dead things on the floor are nearly spent, the gas no longer hisses and shoots from their wounds like water from a kettle: their limbs have begin to shrivel, their eyes have gone glassy and the filth in them no longer bubbles. Two more, though, immediately join their fate and the gas continues to spew. They go down like men made of tissue, flesh ribboning as Mad-Dog rips his claws through it, collapsing as he brings his teeth down between the thing's arm like a clamp, crushing it so that it spill that filthy gas into his mouth, straight and undiluted, like a catheter straight to his lungs. New Fire lunges out with her teeth, too, though she only catches the back calf of the deflated beast that had thrown up on her, as he turns to flee now that he's given what he could. The skin peels away like paper, she can clutch it between her teeth, stopping him, but the man's gaseous blood comes whistling out in her face. Behind the two Garou in the thick of the gas, Resists-Dance and his quarry meet in a clash of liquid and claws; the contents of the man's stomach comes screaming out against the Ahroun's face and chest, coating it with caustic filth, and just as soon as he does Basil's claws come after, tearing great chunks out of the man's shoulder and side, pressure-blasting away the vomit with the gas escaping from his wounds, revealing great scarred bits where the chemicals have melted away the muscles of Resists-Dance's chest, gleaming pink in the light. Both of Poker's great hands come against the bat hurtling towards her, but only one of them manages to snatch, wrapping tight around, completely absorbing all its momentum: it's obvious which of the two, the swinger and the catcher, is the stronger. But as she grabs hold of it the one she'd clawed at earlier swings again, again aiming at her head, connecting again only grazingly as she flinches away; and something seems to manifest out of the darkness and gas itself, a lithe, small form, almost all black, who drives a rusted bowie knife up to its hilt in the Ragabash' neck, angled down, piercing throat.
Resists-Dance roars in pain and Rage as he feels his skin melt away like so much butter before the toxic substances thrown at him, lifting his other hand to quickly wipe across his face. He quickly lifts his foot as the gas starts to build around him, kicking the corpse as hard as he can away from him and moving back about four feet. ~Report in if you're still standing and fall back! The gas!~
Mad-Dog wheezes at the toxic gass that burns in his lungs with his face feeling much of the same amount of pain. The Ahroun doesn't retreat, becoming in-coherent within exception of his foe.
Poker's voice gurgles thickly as tries to summon a response to the new attack even as her head smarts from the slight blow. Caught with three shadow-bound opponents, she arrows in on the lithe thing whose blade bisects her throat. Lips peeling back from her teeth, she spins to the left and slashes in an arc that tries to cover from low to high at a right-to-left angle in hopes of catching her. ~HELP! Too many!~ she tries to choke out around the metal and the blood in her mouth. As she spins, her other hand clenches on the bat and yanks on it without much conscious intent.
New-Fire hangs stubbornly to the man's calf for long seconds after her tribemates' summons. Then the air runs out. She lets go, dragging in her breaths like sobs, and scrambling away from the gas. Even in her panicked state, she tenses at Poker's call, and tries dazedly to make out her own bearings and the ragabash's.
The man Resists-Dance had sunk claws into isn't quite dead: he lurches forward, right in the middle of the flashlight's glow, so that his figure and his wheezing gasps for breath and the strange look in his shit-weeping eyes as he stares down at the injuries, one at once of horror and release, is silhouetted against the factory doors. He still hisses air, like a walking gas grenade. The one New-Fire was pinning runs, unabashedly, his hands scraping against the cement floor, working themselves bloody, until he finally finds his feet and his footsteps pound away. Mad-Dog tears after him in the throes of frenzy, crossing the distance in seconds and nearly upon him, leaving the fountains of gas behind as he moves deeper into the factory. Poker's swipe catches nothing but air: the one she'd targeted leaps back froglike, fast as a fingersnap, leaving the knife in the Garou's throat, though her feet only glance the misty ground before she's hurling herself again towards the Ragabash. The other two near her have redoubled their efforts, the club comes down across her shoulder, and the other has abandoned his bat to deliver a startling kick to her doubled-over stomach.
Resists-Dance finding the foe at his feet and not quite dead, Resists-Dance lashes out as his face with a quick, growling swing of his claws and darts past him towards the flash light. When he reaches it he immediately turns it at waist level towards where he believes Masao to be, though it takes a bit of frantic scanning, and immediately rushes forward to attack the closest one.
Poker gurgles and sprays blood out of her mouth a little at the kick, doubling more at the impact and letting her body wrap around the leg. Growling around the blade as best she can, the Ragabash shifts to Hispo and turns her teeth on the closest limb that they can reach indiscriminately.
Mad-Dog sinks his teeth into whatever Wyrmy body he can find purchase, claws acting like knives as they dig into body parts he can sever off from the creature. He snarls, drool dripping down from the side of his maw in a thick wad.
New Fire lumbers towards Poker, perhaps the most slowly moving thing in the room. ~Where? Where?~ she intones, and then, in her confusion, she's almost upon Poker.
There's a scream, as Slower-Than-a-Speeding-Bullet comes down against the fleeing man, and then another; the first is hoarse and unheard, as the victim tumbles, and the Ahroun deftly, sharply, begins to rip flesh from his bones and spew gas into the air. The other is sharper though there's still desperation in it, and it struggles to pierce the fog and clamour of battle: it's from deeper in the factory, near the charging Ahroun, and though strung-through with outright terror and panic, it's pretty simple. "Oh God," it echoes hollowly against the distant walls. "Oh God help me." Poker grabs the leg of the man with the club, clenching down, scraping bone, making the man gasp and sieze and try to beat her off with his club, violently, desperately, as the other one, the one who'd knifed her, comes in again to drive something hard and dull straight down against the Ragabash' rigid skull. Resists-Dance tears into the one who'd kicked her: he siezes his arm, hurls him halfway across the room, slicing his belly while he's still in the air, spilling old blood blood and letting organs fly; the man cries out and curls as he almost hits the ground. Poker's skull splits with a crack. All the fight leaves her, blood gushes from the new hole in her head, bits of bone go flying from the wound as the orbit of her eye snaps in two. Resists-Dance is attacked from the side, distracted by the opponent he'd just thrown across the room, and he's sunk into by a knife just at the side, where pelvis meets looser flesh. The man who does it comes out of the musty darkness of the room, a look of desperation in his eyes and movements.
Resists-Dance snaps his attention to the direction where the cold metal jams into his warm body, his eyes wide and burning with an inner fire, his breathing fast and ragged from the gas and his own excitement. The battle of the others and the carnage around is lost to him, save for that right in his own personal space. He reaches up a hand and grabs the man by the neck, digging his claws forcefully in and promptly brings tries to lift and slam the man into the floor.
Poker hits the floor with a muted thump beneath the cacophony of sound, slack jaws release their hold on the club-bearer's leg. Her hispo body gradually reverting to breedform as the blood pools around her head and turns her pale hair livid scarlet.
Mad-Dog wheels back around, ignoring the calls from in back of the factory as he lunges for what bodies are left undead in the main part of the factory. His ears are pinned back against his head and he snarls as he leaps at another body close by, aiding the unconscious Poker and New Fire.
The sound of the screaming man plucks at New-Fire; she's frozen until, beside her, Poker slumps. At that, she too heaves herself onto the attacker. It's hardly a concerted attack--she's simply pitting mass against man.
Resists-Dance's attempt to grab the man by the neck is fumbling and uncertain: he catches only fabric, though that's enough. The man lifts into the air is terrified and furious, his eyes wild, and his legs wilder as he kicks against the Garou's stomach, right where he'd knifed him before, compounding the injury, nearly taking the Ahroun's legs out from under him; Resists-Dance lifts the man effortlessly as a child lifts a ragdoll, with that same loose grace, and smashes his face into the ground, breaking bones, sending teeth skittering across the floor like marbles. He's still alive though, already struggling to push himself up onto his feet. Seven or eight metres off the man Resists-Dance had tossed is struggling on hands and knees towards the factory front doors, crawling on his belly sluglike to keep his guts in place. The woman who'd brained Poker pulls back immediately, clinging to the shadows and fumes and darkness like someone falling off a building clings to the edge; the pipe she'd held in her hands drops as she looks around herself, and her feet begin to beat towards the back of the building, straining backwards to avoid Slower-Than-a-Speeding-Bullet's claws as they come ripping through the air just in front of her, dodging aside. The bloody-legged man tries to get away from New Fire's shove but it catches him right at the shoulder, he goes stumbling back but his bad leg can hold no weight and he goes tumbling down; he struggles, terrified, up onto one hand while the other hurls his club ineptly towards the Theurge. In the back of the factory someone still screams out, more weakly now, terrified and stuttering, just over and over again, "Oh God, oh God, oh God."
The Ahroun's ears perk as he hears the clattering of the metal pipe as it drops to the ground. He turns once again and with all of his might, he leaps for the woman running away, eager to strike her down and tear her body apart. Mad-Dog snarls as he leaps, teeth bared and waiting.
Resists-Dance just goes right for the kill against the target he's focused on, looking down at him for only a minute or so, seething in anger. He claws at the man's neck just above the shoulder, aiming for his spinal cord area.
New Fire swats the club away, so that it goes rolling across the floor away from them. She has the leverage here; she swats again at the man's arm, kicks him back, and hops onto his chest.
Mad-Dog, slowed down by clogged lungs and oxygen-starved limbs, manages only to scratch at the woman's beefy middle; she cries out at the pain of it though the sound is hideous and stretched, but it doesn't slow her down for a second. She moves as fast as pounding legs can take her, along the line of the wall, desperate to get out, hurling a folding chair behind her as she passes it. Resists-Dance's and New-Fire's prey both flail as they struggle against the weights pressed on them, like fish out of water. They struggle through their intense pain, trying to focus, but their struggles amount to nothing. The gas is beginning to rise up into the Garou's brains, it muddies their thoughts and is like lead in their limbs: it coats the whole floor now, so that the flashlight barely illuminates anything, so thick is its path with clogged air. Masao, shrivelled into Homid form with unconsciousness, is visible through it only like a mountain cresting fog, half of her still buried, curled on her side. People still pray and cry in the factory's depths, and the one disemboweled still struggles to leave.
Resists-Dance falls to one knee after his strike, inadvertently bringing his knee and a good portion of his weight down onto the foe beneath him. ~We... Need... Air.~ He pants out, turning the flash light in the dark until he finds the unconscious form of Masao shrouded in the gas. With the last strength he can muster, he picks up her limp form in his arms and makes his way quickly over to the door, her head against one beefy though wounded arm.
Mad-Dog attempts to duck the flying chair to gain up on the woman still fleeing. He gives one last fleeting chance to attack her and being her down. His hackles remain stiff through the whole battle, making his fur pinched at the back of his neck. He just needs to finish this, then he can get air and come back to save those still inside the factory that he can hear screaming.
New-Fire reaches down and grabs the man beneath her by his broken leg. Pulling it, she kicks him in the head. She looks up, shivering furiously. And, without pausing to see if he's conscious or even alive, she starts towards the door, dragging him behind her.
Mad-Dog hurls himself forward, mere, pure anger pushing forward limbs that otherwise wouldn't be moving. The chair he tries to duck smacks him flat against the head but it doesn't even slow him down. He grabs his enemy by her leg as it kicks back, claws digging into her calf; she swings back immediately, with a savage needy grunt: it too smacks him across the head, rattling his brains, blurring his already blurry vision, but it doesn't put him out and within seconds it's over, the monster is scattered across an area two metres square, the Ahroun tearing her to pieces. The two Garou exiting the front doors, dragging bodies behind them, overcome the man who tries to crawl out them; he looks up at them, teeth gritted, eyes wide and pleading, wet, though he doesn't say a word.
10/6/2005 - Part 5
Resists-Dance sets Masao down once having briefly stepped outside, and steps back in after a quick few breaths of air to finish the wounded man. He remerges in Glabro, wearing a long coat and an old fedora tilted down over his face. "Whatever we're doing, we need to do it quickly. Masao needs help."
The frenzy of Mad-Dog subsides, but not easily. The fight leaves his limbs, but so does consciousness, as the ahroun collapses inside the warehouse from exhausted energies. Basil's latest victim is killed with little resistance, save a pitiful gurgle of blood-drowned whimper before the lights go out more permanently. Those who step outside to the night's air find themselves sucking in great breaths. Even so, the toxic gas stubbornly resides in the respiratory system, refusing to leave easily. It is minutes of coughing, hacking, wheezing and gasping great gulps of less sullied atmosphere, before there are signs of improvement as far as breathability.
There is still that one victim of Delirium inside the factory, bound, gagged, chained with two others against the opposite wall of the door. They're almost impossible to see in the gas and darkness, but that one guy continues to moan and whimper in quiet, futile prayer. "Oh god... oh god..."
New Fire drops the man by the doorway and stares at him puzzledly with her great, watering eyes. Her form pulses once, Glabro, again, human. Once out, she gasps in the air of the St. Claire night, and sits heavily, bowed over, just breathing.
Basil looks down at his closed coat and at the gunk all over him, removing some napkins from his pockets to clean himself off of the burning, vile bits of muck that remain on him. He pants for air for quite a few minutes, his other hand clasped to his leg. "Where the fuck is Aaron?" He asks after a moment, looking at Christine with a foul expression.
The man with the broken leg, having been kicked out of his wits, lies where he is dropped by the doorway. It's almost impossible to tell if he's still alive. His skin is clammy and horrifically pale, facial features wrinkled and gaunt with the skin stretched against his bones like a rocky crag. The broken limb lays twisted at an utterly unnatural angle. With the door of the factory open, the heavy, toxic gas seeps out and dissipates up along the frame of the door. Its color, difficult to tell in the dark, is as putrid as its stench and twice as deadly.
It takes a minute for Basil's words to percolate through to Christine's oxygen-starved brain. Her face twists then, and together, they heave themselves back into the darkness, Christine easing into wolf-form as she does.
Basil reaches down and drags the dying or dead man back into the factory, only letting him go once they close to the other body. He lets go of the man's leg and walks with the flash light out, scanning around for Aaron with a quiet mutter. "Can you see him?"
~Mad-Dog~ New Fire calls, keeningly. Her ears go flat as she steps past the body of the lightly-breathing man. She calls the Ahroun's name again, and flicks her ears up. Her breathing is haggard and painful.
Venturing into the thick pseudo-gas chamber renews bouts of hard hacking and coughing. For Christine, returning inside as the wolf multiplies the effects. The gas is still thick as ever, and the flashlight's beam is weak and dissolved. Like staring into brownish greenish yellow month-old peasoup. Still the whimperings of the man chained to the far wall are heard, accompanied by smaller dry heaves. "Oh god, ohh.. god..."
Basil says "Do you think you can find him alone?" Basil asks with a growling cough, spitting on the dirty floor of the factory. "I'll go find out what that damn sound is if you can. I don't know how wounded you are."
New Fire shuts her eyes and proceeds with ear and nose alone. Quiet, quiet, she begs of the whimpering man, stream-of-consciousness translated into garbled wolf speech. Quiet, quiet, quiet. She lowers her nose to the floor and trails Aaron's watery scent like a bloodhound, with Basil fast behind her. Here, she announces, before a wracking fit of gasping takes hold of her.
Basil walks up behind New Fire and gives her a light pat on the flank. "Go get him." He says quietly, then starts his shift back up into Crinos. The new form does nothing to ease his suffering of the gas, and if anything the new nose only makes it worse. ~Fucking Wyrm shit.~ He mutters in the dark, searching for the source of the pleading.
The gas stings hard with heightened senses of the wolven forms. After lots of blind searching, the ahroun comes upon the source of the cries. "OH MY GOD! Oh my gooood, oh god, oh god..." The clanking of chains against concrete rasp against the ears.
New Fire is terribly slow when she shifts this time. ~Quiet~ she murmurs hoarsely to Mad-Dog, chanting it like the refrain of an old lullaby. Her big hands close around Aaron, claws arching over his chest like a second set of ribs. Murmurming all the time, she carries him to the door.
[From Basil's POV: You see three humans, naked, bound and chained. One, the freaked out guy, is staring straight at you with wide eyes but he's way too weak to fight against the chains and bindings. A dirty cloth gag half hangs off his chin. The other two, one is so thin it's impossible to tell what gender. Hairless, unconscious, looking pretty much on the verge of death. The other is somewhat catatonic, silent but alive and conscious. And with the weirded, most unnerving smile plastered permanently on his face.]
Basil stares at the scene he sees in front of him, the pain of the gas stinging at his eyes and ripping at the walls of his lungs temporarily washed away. After a few moments of almost silence, Resists-Dance takes the head of the chanting man in his hands suddenly and twists. The others get the same, quick, systematic deaths signified by a 'pop' of their necks breaking.
Mad-Dog comes back into consciousness a few moments after being dragged out the door. Fresh air filling his lungs and making him gasp, coughing up the gas that has settled in his lungs from inside of the factory. "Ugghhh" he says in a hoarse groan.
The deaths are quick, but hardly saved from being messy. For the last of Basil's victims, he pulls a little /too/ hard, claws catch, and the smiler's skin tears with a fleshy burst, leaving the wound to bleed and the ahroun's fur painted with a fresh splurt of blood. That extra effort, it seems, sends Basil into a renewed coughing fit. Aaron's cough reveals a hot wad of ichor and blood getting hacked out of his lungs, stickier than it ought to be. Masao, in the meanwhile, is still unconscious, and still bleeding out.
New Fire's whispers don't stop with the deaths of the men. ~Quiet~ she says, again, again. She gives Mad-Dog's chest a little squeeze, and sets him down in the doorway. ~Quiet~ She shifts down, with exhausted finality, into breedform.
Resists-Dance shifts back down to Glabro after the deed is done, staring at the bodies for only a moment or two longer before grabbing his light and hastily making his exit. Shining the light briefly at Christine and Aaron, he quickly turns it off, walking over to Masao and kneeling down. "Wake up. Come on... Get up." He gently pinches her face with his finger nails, increasing the pressure with every second.
Masao's skin is clammy, damp from the latent humidity in the air, and gathers into a small fold under Basil's fingers. A small, slight twitch of one limp finger is the only outward response to the attempt at first.
Aaron sits up, scratching behind his head and looking around him as he takes in deep breaths of semi-fresh air. "Is it done?" he asks, seeing that everyone has made it out alive.
Christine spontaneously embraces Aaron, pressing her bleeding chin to his shoulder. "Yeah," she answers him, her voice choked. "Oh my God, yeah."
Basil pinches her face hard enough to make his finger tips around the nails go white, his hand trembling as he starts to cough again. "Everything in there is dead. Everything we found." He rasps out, leaning down closer to Masao, staring at her face. He's panting for air but it doesn't stop him from suddenly shouting at the top of his lungs. "Wake up goddamn it!"
Basil's effort earns him a fresh round of Cough City.
Aaron embraces Christine with as much care as a loving sibling before he stumbles up to his feet. He walks over to Masao and gently scoops down to pick her up from the ground and hug her to his chest. "Come on, Masao." he whispers as he hugs her carefully.
Christine stands by, surprisingly placid, for all of the burns on her. "Gotta move her," she croaks.
Masao's twitching hand raises up slowly, then falls before it gains an inch of clearance from the ground. She doesn't protest being moved, her head instead settling against Aaron's chest softly. A shiver, possibly involuntary, runs through the length of her body.
Basil bends over on the ground, leaning forward on his hands and coughing quiet loudly. "Someone that can needs to move her." He sputters. "To the Odeon. Or a healer." He tries one last time to wake her up, reaching for her ear and pinching it with two elongated fingernails. "But we all can't leave."
"What about the building?" Aaron asks, looking between Basil and Christine as he remains with Masao in his muscular arms. He looks as haggard as the rest, although he does his best to keep remain strong. "Stopit, Basil." Aaron growls at the other Ahroun. "I will take her back to the Odeon." he replies. "You two stay here and I will run to go get someone from the Odeon to come back here to help and to find a healer for Masao."
"What?" asks Christine, and a vague horror troubles her serenity of her expression. "Oh God," she says again, coughing.
Masao's hand moves with what her muddled brain thinks is great alacrity, aiming with imagined precision for what ever is messing with her ear. Really, her hand rises in a lazy arc and smacks into some part of Basil lightly. "Nnng...?" she utters sluggishly, tone starting out annoyed and ending in confusion. The one functioning eye flutters open to stare unfocusedly at a point just over Aaron's shoulder.
Basil snorts at Aaron, his attention momentarily diverted to the Ahroun. He's about to say something when he feels the Ragabash slap him dully through his thick gloves, looking instantly down at her. He takes her hand in his and gives it a firm squeeze, leaning over to look down at her. "Masao! Shift!" He loudly whispers.
"Shut the fuck up, Basil." Aaron replies. "You want to break the Veil?" He shakes his head as the two just stand there. "You two stay here, guard the doors and I will be back as soon as I can get Yi or Olga." He shifts Masao up in his arms and begins to walk down the street, if anyone asks on the way, he will just make the excuse that the Ragabash had been drinking.
Aaron takes Masao and heads off, keeping way from areas where he should be seen. "It's okay, Masao. We'll find you a healer." he mutters as he strides purposely towards the Odeon.
Basil says "She's runnin' outta blood." Basil murmurs quietly, coughing again after Aaron is gone, slightly doubling over. "He better make it."
Masao squirms weakly in Aaron's grasp as he rises, the voices warring for dominance with the pain in her head. "Wha?" As he moves and speaks, she subsides and just stares blankly at the Ahroun's chest. "Ow..." she says thickly.
The route to the Odeon is... long. Even slower with injured, and even /slower/ if one is trying to keep to the shadows and not drip blood and gore on the streets in plain view of the world. Even so, Aaron does not get very far before his legs refuse to move any faster than the slowest walk imaginable. Oxygen deprived lungs, as well, suck hard for air and get very little.
Basil takes up a lean against the wall near the factory doors, scanning from left to right every so often, his arms folded across his chest. "How long do you think they will be?"
Christine slumps onto the cracked concrete in front of the warehouse. "Mmmf," she says, noncommittally, closing her eyes. "Oh my God."
Basil says "What? What do you think we should do? You want to start work on the bodies, dump some in a sewer, or something? I don't want to wait here alone."
Aaron drags his way back to the Odeon, slipping into an alley when he needs a moment to breath. "We'll get there," he mutters.
Masao dimly feels Aaron's pace slowing and focuses her vision on his face. Moving her hand a bit, she tugs on his clothing and makes a pass at speaking. "Thhtop...thtop. Goo' alleee. Pumme down. Godda thiff, 'Run. Cand think!" Her voice is little more than a whisper, but it gains a bit of vehemence on the last iteration as her fingers curl with an almost last-ditch tug.
Aaron grunts, but he puts Masao's feet on the ground. "Okay," he replies, letting her walk on her own but offering himself as a crutch.
"I dunno," says Christine, scratchy-voiced and scared. "Burn it. He told Aaron to burn it." Her eyes go wide and unfocused.
Basil says "Burn it? Sounds fine to me. You think that gas is flammable?" Basil walks a bit away from the building with his head held low, scanning around to see how far it is from other buildings."
"It'll burn," says Christine, fervently certain.
Masao leans on the ahroun cub very heavily once her feet are on the ground, using him and the darkness as a shield from eyes enough to pull herself into Glabro. A hissing inhalation of breath accompanies the sluggish change and the throbbing pain of flesh beginning to agonizingly pull itself back to the proper shape. After a few minutes of this, the Ragabash lets out a long exhalation of breath and lightens her lean on Aaron. "Oh...Gaia, tha fuckig hurrrrt."
Basil shrugs at Christine and walks over to her, tapping her own the shoulders. "We need to check out the inside and do a sweep, look for any other acceler-" He suddenly starts coughing again, then straightens up after a minute. "Gas stuff. And Veil stuff. Then we burn it."
Aaron nods to Masao and props himself up against the side of the building, taking in a deep breath as he remains calm for a moment."This is going to be a long, fucking night..." he mutters as he looks longingly in the durection of the Odeon.
Aaron follows Masao's example and shifts into glasbro for a few minutes to consentrate on healing because at this rate, they will never get back to the Odeon by sunlight.
Masao leans against the alley wall and cradles her face in her hands while she focuses the majority of her returned energy into healing. After about five minutes of silence, she moves her hands slightly to uncover her mouth and speak a great deal more intelligbly than before. "Is everythin' dead in there, Aaron?"
"As far as I can tell," Aaron replies as he leans against the side of the building, his back to the Ragabash as he looks out of the alley with his arms crossed. His clothing is going to have to be burned after tonight, reeking in gruesome smells and stains that will never come out.
Masao lowers her hands and pats at her head gingerly, fingers exploring her slowly-darkening, thickly spiked hair and scalp. "We gotta go back, I'm not leaving them there. We got shit to finish and I sure as hell ain't fuckin' this up. Gotta be somethin' in there that we missed."
"That's why I am trying to get back to the Odeon," Aaron explains. "Just as long as the other two don't try to blow-up the place while we're not there."
Masao shakes her head vehemently, wincing at the lingering pain in her head before shifting back down to breed form.. "No. We're all going back together. We didn't get that far, they can't have blown the fucking thing up that fast. No heroics, no leaving ANYONE behind!" Hissing her words through her teeth, the Ragabash's eyes glint with a touch of Rage as she focuses on Aaron. "We are not scattering like roaches when ya turn the light on." Combing some of her blood-colored hair over the one side of her face self-consciously, she coils the longer length into a knot at the back of her head tightly. "When you feel up to moving, -we- are going back. Both of us."
Aaron nods agreeingly to Masao and concentrates on getting back on track to be able to have the engery to get back and finish off the job.
10/7/2005 - Part 6
Masao moves to the edge of the alley after having shifted back, taking a moment to peer back and forth down the street suspiciously. Looking over her shoulder at Aaron, she raises both eyebrows and jerks her head back towards the factory. "You ready to head back, get this shit off the fan?"
Additionally, the time could be approximated to a couple hours or so after midnight.
Aaron shifts back into homid and looks at his tee-shirt for a moment. He nods, "Lets go," he replies, determination now in his step as they head back to the factory.
Basil stands outside of the factory, head and hat tilted downwards, glancing from side to side every so often. The imposing figure doesn't move much, aside from occasionally doubling over in a coughing fit.
Masao nods with a ghost of a smile and leads the way back, eyes flicking here and there warily. Her cautioun redoubles as she and Aaron draw within earshot of the two left behind. Rather than call out names, she purses her lips and whistles a short snippet of song towards the ahround and theurge, choosing 'Pop Goes The Weasel'.
Aaron scratches his chin as he approaches the place again, feeling a little better after resting and feeling more relieved now that Masao is better.
Basil glances over when he hears the whistle, trying to do a bit of whistling himself. He fails after a few wavering notes and coughs, spitting out a bit of God knows what onto the ground. "Fuck."
"Not going back--," Christine says, at length. She seems about to say more, but where words would be, a wet, phlegmy cough comes up. She puts the back of her hand to her mouth to blot at a stream of saliva and blood. She hides her face from him, and keeps her quiet for the long static stretch until the sound of Masao's whistle pierces the dark. Where Basil fails to whistle, she tries--and fails also. Their joined coughs should, though, be more than enough to find them by.
Masao lets out a faintly relieved breath and picks up her pace a bit, trotting up to the side of the other two cubs. "Hey, hey, easy there. Easy." she murmurs lowly, looking back over her shoulder quickly to gauge distance. "There's a dark alley up there. Y'all should go take a trip up there and get yerselves healin'. There's enough cover for it." Looking at the foulness leaking out the door, she frowns and peers into the gloom while crouching beside Christine. "Y'all ain't done nothin' else yet, have ya? Ain't no one come out while we were gone?"
"Why don't you two take a trip to the alley and then come back, we'll keep watch for a few minutes." Aaron suggests. "Nothing is going to happen and Masao and I are feeling a lot better."
"I've already shifted. I got the clothes for it." Basil coughs, quieter this time, one hand clutching at his leg, leaning against the wall outside the factory. "Lets just finish this, and get out of here."
Christine pulls herself to her feet, nodding. She starts off towards the alley, shuffling her feet in a way more zombielike than the 'zombies' themselves.
"A'right then, lets do this." Masao says quickly, eyeing the ick that trickles out of the doors. Wrinkling her nose, she tugs her shirt over her head without a second thought. Wrangling with the neckline a bit, she ends up poking her head through it and settling the layers of shirt about the lower half of her face and her neck. Of course, this leaves her rather bare from waist to flat upper-chest, but the Ragabash doesn't appear to care. "Anyone want to join me for a scouting run? I'm not goin' back in there by m'self, but it might do t' take a look while Chris heals." her voice is muffled, but she speaks carefully enough to be heard.
"I will," Aaron volunteers immediately, following Masao inside the factory again.
Basil says "That shirt isn't going to do anything unless it's wet." Basil mumbles, looking away at something else after a moment or two. "I'll go too. I finished off a few of the things. Killed the witnesses. I think everything is dead."
Masao looks after Christine and then at the two boys. "Okay...someone needs to stay with her, we're not splitting up -that- much." Scrutinizing both of their faces, she turns her attention on Basil. "Will you go with her? Please? It'll do you some good, too, to rest away from this place for a few minutes." Gesturing towards the open door and its contents, she narrows her eyes and speaks again, "It's just too close."
Basil stares at Masao for a minute then shakes his head with a grunt. "Fine. I'll go. Just get it done, and here, take this." Basil turns on the flashlight and passes it to her. "And don't lose it. I want to keep it." He turns without another word, walking promptly after Christine with slow, light steps, a bit hunched over.
Aaron is about to bitch at Basil but as he takes after Christine, the young man settles. If he were in any other form his hackles would certainly be bristling just a little with annoyance. "Come on, Masao." he says gruffly.
Down once more into the nasty dark, the three inspectors venture. The gas sits heavy, thick, stinging against the lungs and eyes, stinking so much that skunks would probably run. Immediately to the right of the doorway, the decapitated body of one of the attackers lies bleeding out of the messily ripped hole where his neck ought to be. Further from that one by a couple feet, another body of another man, this one disemboweled and with eyes still open but glazed over with death. Around the area in general, making the floor slick, are the remnants of the female which Aaron tore apart nearly limb from limb, or chunk from chunk. Her body seems to have bled an obscenely profuse amount. Streaks of blood are everywhere, revealed in circular spotlighting when the flashlight shines down to the floor.
The alleyway where Christine and Basil sit is, comparatively, almost cleaner than the factory floor. That's only by comparison though, and would be for most people, absolutely filthy. Piles of trashbags here and there, rusted pipes between the bricks, everything harder to see but certainly not hard to smell. At least it is dark with shadows, as the grungy light of streetlamps do not pierce the night there.
Masao simply shakes her head after Basil and delves into the factory again. Narrowing her eyes against the gas, her free hand readjusts some of the cloth about her face for all the good it does. A breathy snarl is her reaction to finding the remains of the small female. "Fuckin' bitch. Got yours, didn't you." she whispers before continuing to scan the area with the flashlight, pausing here and there to illuminate darker patches to her satisfaction. "Gotta be somethin' useful in here...somewhere for all this to go...somethin'..."
"Is that you?" comes the voice of Christine from the alley. Her voice is so significantly improved, one could almost hear the threads of her throat mending themselves. It's difficult to tell where the darkness ends, and where she begins--even her eyes are matte in this light.
Basil says "Yeah. It's me." Basil grunts out, kicking a beer bottle down the alley with a heavy booted foot, well away from Christine. "You alright? You sound just like I do. Like shit." Basil rolls over a metal trash can and sits on the light aluminum, bending it slightly, leaning back against a wall. "I'd go for a smoke right now if it wouldn't kill me."
Aaron takes out his knife and looks for corpses that need to be torn up into unrecognizable chunks. He clearly dislikes the smell and tries to breathe in as little as possible. "Shine your light around and try to look for anything that will burn," he requests to Masao. "Material, gas... anything flammable." Once the corpses are cut, he cuts down the ones hanging with much disgust.
In Aaron's immediate view, lit from the slim rays of light from outside, are the corpses of the leech and two. As Masao ventures further into the factory again, her light pushes against the fog of gas that shows up in a rather rotten mustard yellow-green. The ragabash finds the three humans, naked, chained to the wall, two with their necks broken and the third with an unnerving Joker's smile still expressed sickly with his bulging eyes and purple lips. That guy's beyond dead, given how his head hangs off from the lump of flesh that was half of his neck. Things are quiet and moving along. Until, both Garou in the factory hear movement behind them.
"Not all right," says Christine, haltingly. "Getting there." She's on the ground, staring up at the sky. "I'd go for...an Altoid."
Blink. Masao stops dead at the sound and spins in place to shine the flashlight behind her in a low angle that is more floor than anything else. Raising the beam slowly, she opens stinging eyes a little wider and backs up until she can put something solid and wall-like at her back. The dead humans are forgotten for a moment in the wake of unexpected movement.
Aaron turns almost imediately, but he remains low to the ground where he was crouched as he hears movement from behind him. He tries to keep himself out of sight while looking for the source of the sound.
Basil says "I had some of those." Basil bows his head, chuckling lightly. "I gave all my candy to Squeaks though, so they're probably halfway down her throat by now."
"Figures," says Christine. "Well, first thing I'ma do during my official time as Cliath, is buy a bag of skittles. I want some sugar, /now/." There's a wry smile in her voice.
Masao's flashlight shines just barely through the fog, revealing the exact moment before the Gnawer ahroun is dropped down upon by a heavy, weighted body. Fingertips grody with dirt and slime cling and scratch, an arm grappling his. It's at least a hundred fifty pounds or so. In the dim light from the doorway, the ahroun can see something of a human shape to what is attacking him.
[From Aaron's POV: Just your left arm is held onto. Fairly tightly, but not impossible to break out of. The main thing is weight. This guy is heavy.]
[From Masao's POV: You can sort of see, a big guy (remember the glimpse of one of those guys with the baseball bat?) drop down on Aaron. His leg is twisted badly though, no weight on it at all. Guy's got Aaron's left arm.]
Basil rolls his shoulders. "Look on the bright side. You're alive. We're all alive. Well, we might even be real live adults in the mornin'. I'll even buy you pizza if you want some after this. After we heal up."
Masao curses under her breath and makes her way back at a run, shifting up to Glabro for a longer stride. Her hand hefts the flashlight and shines it directly onto the man attacking Aaron as she gets closer.
Aaron can feel the weight of the man behind him, but the Ahroun is not taken for a fool. He throws his opposite elbow at the man's chest holding him. Then, he takes that hand of the side that he had elbowed to throw the attacker over his shoulder and onto the ground. He grapples to get his hands around the other man's throat to pin him down and rests his blade against the man's throat. The Ahroun wants some answers before he decides what to do about this man.
"Just remember," says Christine. "No matter what they say, you're still thirteen tomorrow."
A grunt whooshes forth from the man, chest elbowed. Throwing him, though, proves not as successful as toppling both Garou and attacker onto the ground. Where Aaron's hand reaches the man's throat, so does the man's to the ahroun's. Both squeeze tightly, and he bucks beneath the fullmoon sitting on him. Eyes roll wide, showing nothing but hate amidst the absence of logic. Masao reaches the pair shortly, her light shining stronger now.
Basil says "Actually." He looks towards the mouth of the ally, then up at the night sky framed by the two building surrounding them. "I'm fourteen now. Shame. It's a pretty nice night. I'd rather be doing something other than this..."
Masao's lips curl back as she nears, circling the pair a bit until she can get reasonably close to the man's one twisted leg. Savagely, she raises her foot and moves to slam it down on the injured limb, aiming to break it if she can and perhaps distract.
"Happy Birthday, Long-Wind," says Christine.
Basil lifts a hand with a cough, having at Christine. "Thanks. But I could think of better ways to celebrate. Happened a while ago anyways... "
Aaron feels the man's fingernails sinking into his neck, making the Ahroun hiss in pain. Kill or be killed, it looks like to the young man as he blurs into hispo and snaps at the man's neck, trying to rip out the man's throat with his teeth.
A gurgled scream of pain, cut down in volume by the ahroun's suffocating grip, is all what gets out of the attacker before his life is quickly ended with the snapping jaws of Mad-Dog. Stale and fresh blood enters the hispo's throat. The man goes limp, dead. Once more, the factory is quiet.
[From Basil and Christine's POV: Per 3 and higher folks, you might hear the scream from the factory. They're not far from the door.]
Christine tilts her head to angle her ears outwards. She's on her feet instantly. "Sounds like.../somebody's/ getting killed."
Basil rises up to his feet and suddenly clenches his jaw, sucking in a breath through his teeth. "Yeah." He clutches at his side. "Sounds like. Come on, lets go back before we have to drag back some corpses."
Mad-Dog stands and shakes himself off, looking a bit paranoid. We need to get get rid of evidence quickly before we are seen, the dire wolf growls towards Masao. Begin looking for things, quickly.
Masao relaxes and slips back down to homid as the man goes still, grip tightening on the flashlight and nodding to the ahroun. "Yes." she says shortly, turning on her heel and hotfooting it back to where she'd last been. Moving deeper in, she takes perhaps a little less caution in her searching, now. The flashlight's beam bobs back and forth again ahead of her as she trots across the factory floor.
There still are the remains of the gaseous vomiting fomori, lying dead somewhere further in the factory. The gas keeps seeping out from the door, slow without an extra push of air to help it waft out. By the time Christine and Basil return, they find the throated man lying upon the ground. It is the one that Christine dragged towards the doorway - apparently, he /was/ still alive. The rest of the factory is still very dark though, and only Masao's flashlight provides illumination.
Masao talks to herself as she moves, as much for her own reassurance as to give an audible way to track her progress. "Found the screamers. What'm I missin'. Gotta be somethin' back here..." The beam of light halos her faintly as she shines it before her and continues on. Eyes slit again against the stinging gas.
Mad-Dog remains in hispo now, his fur matted with what remains on his fur and he heals from the punture marks around his throat. He looks quite pissed, but he helps look around the main room some more as Masao looks more towards the back.
Christine surveys the carnage, or what she can see of it within the narrow swath of light the flashlight cuts. She draws her hand inside her sleeve, up into her shirt, and she holds the fabric below the neckline up to her mouth.
Basil says "The next time we go do something like this, we should bring a.... Wood chipper, or a cannibal or something. How the fuck are we gonna clean all this up?" He mumbles quietly to Christine, glancing around the dark interior of the factory. "Maybe a bulldozer."
Cannibal smells like Wyrm to me, Mad-Dog growls through the darkness. Cannibal, well, you may as well be one of these guys. His hackles rise and he remains stiff. You two, help Poker look for something to burn this place down with. Hurry.
The flashlight cuts along the darkness. The gas, nearly unbearable again as it attacks weakened lungs. Blood and ichor seeps along the floor.
[From Masao's POV: Perhaps, as you're controlling the light, you'd notice that the blood trails in tiny rivulets. They all are headed in a similar direction, though that could just be coincidence.]
Masao blinks and refocuses the beam in mid-swing as something hits her about the crap on the floor. "What the..." she murmurs, peering at the trails of blood on the floor closely. Curiousity overtakes her and she begins to follow one of the trails across the floor. "Where ya goin'?"
Basil says "Hannibal Lectur, bit of BBQ sauce, this'd all be cleaned up in a jiffy." He shrugs, then coughs a bit and starts walking towards one of the windows. "First things first, we need this goddamn fucking gas out of here. Open the windows. More oxygen'll feed the fuckin' fire anyways."
Stay around here with New Fire, I go to Poker; Mad-Dog growls at Basil before he runs off after Masao and is is soon trailing a few short feet behind here. He quitely tells Masao that he is with her now and wonders what she is doing.
Christine goes faintly green, the hairs on her cheeks pricking up like goosebumps. She leaves Basil's side and moves wordlessly towards a wall, then, she even has time to pull her hair behind her ears when she vomits.
Given the slight incline, as Masao trails along the small rivulets of blood, there are undoubtedly pools and stops. But eventually, the ragabash's flashlight shines no longer on concrete, but on blackness. A circular opening, leading down, down, is seen to one corner of the factory. It reeks, but unsurprisingly so considering the area.
Basil starts to fiddle at at one of the windows, cranking it open with a bit of elbow grease, swearing, and coughing. He looks around himself then moves onto the next, careful to remain on his toes in the dark, gassy interior of the factory.
Masao startles slightly until she recognizes the sounds behind her as Mad-Dog. "Following the trails...they're sorta going in the same direct-" she cuts off as the light diseappears into darkness. "Oh my. I found something. I wish I hadn't...but I did." Not to be daunted, she moves closer to the hole, holding her free hand to her shirt-covered face and stifling a cough.
Christine is in homid when she comes up behind Basil. Her eyes are watery. She picks a second window and, without asking, throws herself into dislodging pane from its paint-stuck frame.
A few of the windows are purposefully nailed shut. Others, not so, are opened a bit easier, but not even that far. The cold breeze from the outside flows in through the cracks, letting some badly needed fresh air.
The flashlight shines down into a bricklined pipeway. Covered in grime, slick with slime, here the strongest scent-sensing, Mad-Dog, feels a combination of nausea and the absolute need to retch assaulting his olfactory areas. The hole is fairly large, wide enough to fit two average size people shoulder to shoulder in diameter. It leads down into further black, where the flashlight's beam is swallowed into darkness.
Basil, unaware of Masao's discovery, continues in the task of roaming the factory and slowly opening up one window at a time, pausing every so often in a doubled over coughing heave.
Mad-Dog looks down into the tunnel depths and gets nauseous as he peers down into the dark depths. Should we go down?
Christine plunges her head out into the fresh air each time she opens a new window. "Oh God, that's good. God of all comfort, oh thank you..." For each new openable window, she gives a new thanksgiving.
Masao's heavily muffled voice shakes a bit as she looks down at the hole. "Um. No. I don't see any railing and I sure as hell ain't jumpin' down there. Think we can shove our mess down there, though...I can't see the bottom at all." Backing up a bit, she raises the shirt and resists the urge to gag as fetid reek reaches into her airways. "Basil! Christine! Get over here!" she calls, shining the light back the way that she came to help guide them.
Basil lifts his head up from a window sill and looks over at Masao's voice, stepping quickly with a loud 'thud thud thud' of his boots on the floor. "Marco." He coughs out in the darkness, nearly tripping over a pipe.
The small rails that do stick out don't look very climbable, given they're covered in you-don't-want-to-know. The trail of blood shows how the floor inclines towards the opening. With the help of the ragabash's flashlight, one is able to see the brick and grime of the pipe leading downwards.
Mad-Dog waits on the others to arrive, standing at the side of the tunnel, although he quickly picks up on Masao's idea. The hispo gives an approving chuff at his fellow tribemate.
Christine gasps in the rainy air as though she were about to submerge herself, and starts towards Masao. "Ahh, turn it away," she calls, holding her hand up for the light to glance off of. "I can see that light fine already."
Masao shrugs and turns the light away and back to the hole, "Found this pipe-thing. Looks good an' deep. Could probably get all the bodies down here, wouldn't be surprised if it went to the sewers or somethin'." Taking a moment, she scans the floor for something to drop down the hole as an experiment.
Basil says "I don't care if it leads straight into the devil's asshole, lets just dump the meat down there and get done with it. It's so dark though... I'm worried about missing something. No matter what we do, we should definitely have a follow up visit or have our Elders do it. They're better at this."
Mad-Dog grunts and begins to shift into Crinos and looking for the nearest carasses to shoove down the dark passage. The male is begining to look and feel like he has been through the nine-levels of hell and back again. ~We'll try to pull the brick down on top of it when we're done,~ he rumbles deeply in his chest.
"So what happens if people show up here to renovate the place, and smell the rot down there?" asks Christine.
"If we're lucky, they'll be tearing this place down b'fore they fix it up." Masao grunts, carefully setting the flashlight down so that its beam shines across the hole at floor level. "Think 'bout it, Chris. It's been here long enough that a leech set up in here. If it makes ya feel better, we can come back in a fuckin' week and do a sniff test?" Before the other girl can respond, she shifts up to Crinos and retraces her wanderings back to where the three human corpses are.
Christine growls throatily. "I'm just covering all the bases," she snaps at Masao's receding back.
Shifting to Crinos renews the putrid stench of the lingering gas. Things are only a minute level better with the open windows, and every so often a mild breeze pushes through. Corpses are gathered in messy remains, and bloody trails are smeared along the concrete floor as bodies are brought to the open sewer.
Mad-Dog begins throwing the corpses down the long corridor, making a twitch as their bones snap and flesh makes enough noise to make the Ahroun snarl in disgust. Once that is done, he goes back for more bits and pieces to make sure that most of the evidence is discarded. ~I'm not smoking for a month,~ the Ahroun growls in his throat. ~I think I have gotten enough toxic gasses in my lungs than most get in their fucking lifetimes.~ The fullmoon is rambling now as he grows cranky and in a sour mood. Clearly all the cubs are there at this point, after all they have been through.
Poker drags the humans to the sewer by arms and legs, stopping occasionally to let her nose take in the whiffs of clean air that brush by and hack bodily. Slogging to the side of the sewer, she stops and looks into the darkness before reaching down and hefting a body into her arms. Tossing it into the open pipe, she cocks her ears and listens for the sounds it makes on the way down before following it with the others. ~Makes bean farts seem like flowers.~ she rumbles flatly.
Resists-Dance draws the leech over towards the sewer in his Crinos form, but stops when he reaches it, looking down at the collected parts in front of him. ~Which one of these fuckers is the Vampire anyways? Did we already toss it?~
Christine steps aside, startled, as an already stiffening body slides her way, lubricated by its own blood. She coughs, and retches again. "I'm sorry," she says, between gags. She bows her head and brushes past them on her way back to an open window.
~The one with two big /pointy/ teeth,~ Mad-Dog replies in a dry tone. ~I don't fucking care, lets just get done with this.~ He looks in the direction that Christine has ran off to and he folds his ears back, an expression of concern on his face towards the girl. He grabs up as much as he can at a time, collectively throwing bodies and extras into the shaft. ~Done?~ he asks after he scans to make sure that everything has been cleaned up.
It's all going well and good. Harder to tell which one is the vampire, and possibly, the leech's body has already been tossed. The human corpses chained to the wall require extra gruesome tasks of separating limb from body, and tossing the severed hands and feet with. Not very pleasant at all. With all the movement around, the flashlight is knocked by a stray corpse limb, and it rolls towards the open sewer mouth.
Poker glances over at the bits that Resists has and snarls, ~It was probably the one that was my height in homid and put a knife through my throat. The female.~ She finishes shoving one of the bodies into the sewer and notices the sudden wavering of the flashlight. ~NO!~ she cries and goes after the light, skirting the edge of the hole in her attempt to keep it from disappearing and returning the darkness.
Resists-Dance looks down at the parts again in front of him, feeling in the relative dark at the corpses' chest. ~This corpse as boobs. Some boobs. Guess it's her.~ He lifts a paw and takes her hair in his grasp, dragging it towards the hole. Seeing the light begin to roll he growls out. ~Grab the fuckin' thing!~
As avid a killer as Christine made during the battle, she seems ill-equipped to deal with the dirty leftovers. She hangs onto the window like a sailor without sealegs hangs on to the rail.
Mad-Dog does the gruesome task of remaining the humans from the wall that are chained up. He doesn't like the task but seeing that he is the only one really fit and equiped for the job, he does it. He's not about to have the girls do it and appears to leave Christine alone as he gets more blood on his tattered clothes that are caked in god-knows-what. ~Shut the fuck up for five-seconds,~ he rumbles in his chest, he would pop another blood-vessel in his skull if he had enough rage in his body to do so.
The flashlight drops. Poker dives. Poker's quick reflexes saves the flashlight from spiraling down to darkness and doom, and she hangs over the edge just long enough to truly see down to the bottom of the sewer. Something launches itself up at her, crawling up her outstretched arm with rapid speed. Basil gets a bare glimpse of its shadow - and it's big. Squeaks echo out of the pipe then, too deep to be those of tiny rats.
[From Masao's POV: That brief fleeting second, you saw something that was big enough to pass for a dog in size clinging against the wall, but with two bulbousy red eyes, nasty yellow teeth and black-slicked fur. And then it jumped straight at your face, crawled up your arm, and out o' that hole. There were, at least, 3.]
Christine stops dry-retching long enough to lift her head. "Guys?" she queries, tremulously, and her voice echoes through the warehouse.
Resists-Dance stares for a moment at the shape in the dancing light of the flash light, then suddenly shouts ~Mother FUCKER!~. The Crinos fumbles in the dark as soon as he hears the squeaks coming from down below, slamming the sewer lid back on the hole as soon as he finds it and holds it down.
Poker lets out a yelp of surprise as her arm is used as a conduit for whatever is making the noise and scrambles back from the hole with all available speed. ~Wyrmspawn! There's a bunch down there! Went up my arm! New Fire! WHERE ARE YOU!~ She scrambles to shine the light first at the hole, then at the surrounding area looking for the one that got past her.
Christine sheds her homid form gleefully. She changes as she runs, which is difficult, like trying to pull on a suit while moving. Once, she trips, and is up again, in full Crinos.
A chorus of growls, swears and spits erupt from Resists-Dance with a new fevor. ~We're too fuckin' wounded to fight them all! Sounds like a lot, run if you gotta! We accomplished our mission, plus!~ He tears off the leech's head, then throws the body down the sewer drain with all the force he can muster.
Mad-Dog appears to suddenly get an idea. He blurs long enough to get his shirt off and his lighter from his pants. He balls up the shirt and lights it, tossing it into the shaft with the bodies. "Let's get out of here!" he says and begins to turn on his heels. As Resist-Dances has proclaimed, they have finished their task.
Soon as the light is shown again on the hole, another form can be seen crawling out of the opening. And another. And one last one that makes it out before the leech's body knocks a fourth back down with a squealing chitter. Large, too large, black putrescent furred rats with red, bulbous eyes, nasty yellow teeth and mangy green patches of skin clamber out, each the size of a dog. In the face of the light, one is for the moment blinded. As Christine shifts and runs, she feels a heavy furry form contact with her back, claws scratching into her fur, and teeth that sink deep enough to grind against her spine. The two that aren't blinded sniff around, whiskers twitching, voices squeaking.
New Fire bucks and halts, rolling her great mass onto her back to rid herself of the parasite.
~We leave now, these will follow us out! We can not allow that!~ Masao growls, clambering to her feet and focusing the light on the newly emerged, trying to keep at least one blinded and hopefully the others. ~For Gaia's sake, fight! Combat the Wyrm where it dwells and breeds! Are you forgetting the Litany already?~
Mad-Dog hadn't realized what had come out from that tunnel until Masao calls to them the tenet of the litany that rings like a bell. The Ahroun, now back to crinos, attacks the overgrown rat closest to him. His teeth bared and claws ready to attack.
~Goddamn you and your pissing on my parade Poker!~ Resists-Dance roars at the top of his lungs, moving a few bold steps forward to swing his claws into the blinded one. With the speed of Rage be passes it by after the first strike, turning to strike the second closest one to him.
The rat on Christine's back manages to slash that spinal wound into the theurge's behind before she stops, drops and rolls. With a surprised squeak and squelch, the theurge is rewarded with additional sound of cracking bone. The rat is not completely out though, as it lets go and starts to limp off. Mad-Dog and the ROUS closest to him lay into each other as it turns and attacks back. Claws gouge deep into it, spraying greenish goo instead of blood, revealing purple muscle that suddenly extents and clamps onto his face as he bites into the rodent, digging viciously down into his ear. The third rat jumps to help its injured companion, sinking its big teeth into Aaron's leg, severing tendons and dropping him down a usable leg. Basil claws the blinded rat with such force that it bursts open much like the other, but this one has no chance to attach onto the ahroun as it's knocked away. His second strike doesn't hit, catching the air of where his target previously was.
Mad-Dog limps and snarls, he gives a violent shake to try to rid himself of the two rats attacking him. His left leg doesn't seem to hold but at least he is not immoble yet. He tries to whack at them with his arms, hopefully sending them into the brick walls.
~Better than pissing on your cold corpse!~ Poker deposits the flashlight on the floor behind her as far as possible and springs up from the ground, launching herself towards the one that's gone after Aaron's leg with her claws.
Maddened, New Fire hops up and pounces catlike on the limping rat, claws moving fast as a sprung trap. Her lips are pulled back grimacingly.
Resists-Dance takes a step back as Masao leaps forward to guard the hole, his body tense and ready to bring down the furry wrath on anything that dare pop out. Life or death whack-a-mole.
And with about as much fight as a limp rag, Christine's rat is slain with a hard squeak before its guts explode open, no match for the claws of the crinos. The violent shake of Mad-Dog's slavering jaws, his large teeth crunch into body of the huge rodent and severs its spine. In disorientation, his claws miss the rodent attached to his leg, but Poker is quick to take up the slack. Its attention undiverted, the last rat doesn't really see what hits it, as ten wicked claws slash down and rake death into the ROUS's future. The hole is dark as ever, and squeaks still echo from the bottom up where Basil guards, but nothing more comes out.
Resists-Dance glances in the dark when he hears the squeaks, turning back to look towards the hole just as quickly. Holding the leech head in the crook of his arm, Basil digs out it's fangs with his other hand then spikes the head down the hole. He walks over cautiously to the flash light and grabs it, shining it around, well away from the entrance of the hole. ~Lets get the fuck out of here.~ He says when the light finds Masao and Aaron, and he kicks a large rodent down the hole.
Poker snarls in triumph as her claws end the rodent, letting its jaws slack in death before flinging its limp body into the sewer as a warning to whatever else lurks below. Eyes a-glitter, she scans about to make sure all visible threats are gone before daring to shift back down to homid. Tugging her dedicated shirt back into place from being a mask and sags slightly. "Now, we should go. Before anything else comes up. I'd say to four-foot it back if we could, but that's not safe."
New Fire sniffs at the dead rat, and gives it a perfunctory kick. Yes, yes, yes, she agrees, her body tense with assent.
Mad-Dog gets the last rat flung off from him, although the Ahroun hobbles around a bit as his left leg seems to limp. He shakes and then shifts back into homid, now without a shirt.
Bodies of dead ROUSes, if examined more closely, show that their muscles are actually purplish tentacles bound together. Most evident in the one that fought Aaron, it's extremely painful to pull the rat off his face, causing his ear to bleed and a temporary loss of hearing in that ear - not to mention feeling like he had the nastiest, most violating wet willy ever. The other rats are dragged and tossed, resulting in more quiet thuds of flesh against flesh down the open sewer. The large dyeing machine, pulled off its bolts with the efforts of all the Gnawer cubs, is bodily dragged and dropped to cover the hole. Then, as the night draws on, the four cubs return to the Odeon where Yi sits at the center of the candles that have burned down to low nubs. She smiles as she sees each one, despite their conditions, and stands. "Welcome back."
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