Basil's Checks and Balances

1/22/2009

09:57 PM
Logfile from GarouMUSH.

Currently the moon is in the waning Crescent Moon phase (21% full).
It is currently 21:55 Pacific Time on Thu Jan 22 2009.
Currently in Saint Claire, it is a cloudy day. The temperature is 37 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius). The wind is calm today. The barometric pressure reading is 30.12 and steady, and the relative humidity is 85 percent. The dewpoint is 33 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius.)

Odeon - Upstairs Lounge(#3729RAJ)
This is one of the few rooms in the theatre which gets enough light during the day not to trip over one's own feet. One whole wall has a wide bank of filthy windows which look out west onto the filthier street below. Across from the stairs are the washrooms, and the projectionist's booth is nestled in to the left of them. In a corner is a wooden construction that must once have been a wide, comfortable bench, but all the padding has been removed except for rare traces, and it's now just rough plywood and unsanded boards. The walls are a creamy yellow though they probably weren't painted that colour, and everything's grimy and dusty. The corner opposite the bench, near the stairs, seems to be serve as the garbage, which spills about a metre out from the wall at its deepest. It's a gruesome heap of organic and inorganic rot, needles, bottles, and styrofoam containers, to which a family of rats has staked its claim, which they defend with violent chittering at the slightest provocation. Open windows keep the place from stinking up too bad, but there's still an underlying, unpleasant funk.
See +view for more details.
Contents:
Basil
Obvious exits:
Projectionist's Booth  Downstairs

Gaunt would be an apt word to describe the general build of this particular urban youth. He stands at a height of six feet, perhaps more depending on his choice of footwear. His hair is loose mess of straight brown hair, kept out of his face by a black, wool cap rolled up on his head. One side of his clean shaven face speaks of a man that had the potential to be fairly attractive. His nose is slim as is his chin, his white skin fair and unblemished by acne or birthmarks. Perhaps not masculinely handsome in the classical sense, but 'pretty'. The right side of his face is marred however, cut from eyebrow to jaw by three jagged curves that look as though someone ripped the skin away with a meat hook. While both of his eyes are blue, the right isn't quite the same shade as the left, and many of his expressions can seem awkward, strained, or muted on the right side. He often wears a semi-loose zip-up hoodie, the color of which changes infrequently but always remains drab. Greys, blacks, dark blues, never anything bright or with a pattern of any sort. The hood is often up wherever humanity can be found. His pants are similarly nondescript, often a pair of blue or black jeans that are held up by a leather belt. The only constant article of clothing are his wool cap, and a pair of black zip-up paramedic boots on his feet.

The Odeon is quiet, and tucked in one corner of the debris-strewn, darkened lobby is the hunched over form of a young boy in a hoodie. He's bathed in a pale electronic glow, his concealed face directed upon the screen of a battered laptop. His mouth moves, as if he's reading, or perhaps praying silently.

Footsteps up the stairs towards the upper lounge of the Odeon are made more audible by them falling on concrete. Yi comes up those stairs, this time bearing a newer handheld hammer and a crowbar upon which a small camping lantern is hung from, burning away to provide the light she sees by. The glow of the screen attracts her attention there, and she calls out. "Hello?"

Basil looks up at Yi, the curve of his hood lifting enough to expose his face. "Hey." Basil turns his eyes back down to the screen, his thumb trailing across the small touch pad. "Enjoying living in the world again? Showers? Music? Toilet paper?"

Yi laughs as she swings the crowbar down to unhook and leave the lantern to a side. "To come back and find the Odeon rolling in money?" she says with a gesture to the six walls covered in concrete and spare change pressed into them. "I think my birthday wish must have come true. Now to wait for the man of my dreams to sweep me off my feet." Jokingly said, of course. She looks over towards the laptop with a curious air and asks, "Where did you get that?"

"I thought I heard from the others that you were seeing someone?" Basil glances up at her again, only briefly, his eye drawn to the screen. "I've had this thing for a while. I repaired it. It's ok for looking at websites, and reading. Nothing more. The audio doesn't even work. I own another, but it's in the hands of a Walker. I use it to code for money for a contact of her's, and for her, I play the violin when she sings."

Yi finds a spot to lay out her jacket on so she can kneel upon the floor. "I'm seeing you right now," she continues to tease as she lowers herself to the ground. Hammer in hand, crowbar in the other, she evaluates the change plastered onto the floor below her. "Is that what you have been doing? Does it make good money?" She raises the crowbar over the concrete, aiming.

"I don't think I've ever seen you express interest in anyone. Surprised me when I heard from Masao, that someone actually made you blush. Have the woods made you soft?" Basil teases back, a touch of light creeping into his voice. "It is one thing. Jobs are infrequent though. The pay is alright. Mostly I still steal. I kill people that are no good, and free them of their worldly possessions. What I'm doing right now is brushing up on my bomb making."

Yi brings down the crowbar with a sharp clang against the concrete. Alas, not enough. "The woods? The woods have made me hungry," clang, "angry," clang, "and if nothing else, horny after over a year and a half of self-imposed celibacy." Clang! Clang! The soft tink of the coin flipping out of chipped concrete yields a quarter for her troubles, which she sets down the bar to go and retrieve. Once the quarter is picked up she glances back over to the ahroun, eyes narrowing. "I hope you do not mean you actually kill people on a regular basis. Good or bad. More important... how are you getting internet?" She looks around, not immediately seeing any set up.

"Then you should find a Kin to take you out to dinner, spar with him, then screw his brains out." Basil folds his screen downwards, putting the laptop off to the side. "Of course I kill people. I'm a Garou. But I don't kill people for their money, I kill people that need killing, and take their money. Pimps that grab runaways and hook them on drugs. Gangs that start shooting up the neighborhoods. Pedophiles. I watch them. I watch what they do. Then I judge them." Basil reaches into his left pocket, fumbling around as if digging for his cigarettes. "No internet. Floppies. Floppies store a lot of text, if nothing else. Copied from her house, copied from sites at the library. I have a small collection in a tuperware, labeled and sorted."

Yi returns to her crowbar to resume the next coin extraction, but instead of starting up again she shakes her head at Basil. "That is a quick fix only. There is no balance to that. What you take out, you leave a hole for the next Wyrm-bait to come along and spawn three more. Maybe it is satisfying to you, but it changes very little." Her bitterness shows quite plainly, but so does her determination as she turns back to try and pick out the next coin - this one a nickel. "And I am honestly in no mood to simply 'find a Kin' to 'screw his brains out'." She struggles with the nickel.

"It is. But for a night, it stops the shooting. It's a check, not a balance. All that is needed for the spread of evil is for good men to do nothing." Basil turns his head to the side, grimacing at the girl. "And I need the money." Basil sits in silence, waiting for Yi to start striking at the next coin before he announces. "Charlie's pregnant."

A particularly hard strike sparks the crowbar against the concrete, but it gets the nickel out. Yi blinks at the announcement, turns, and blinks some more at Basil. "Oh," she says initially, hesitant on the warring mix of emotion. Ultimately she settles on a smile. "How many months?"

"I don't know. Educated guess? Two to three. First couple times we messed around, I didn't have any... " Basil shrugs his shoulders, pushing his way up to his feet. "You're the first person I told. You'll tell no one else. I'm going to tell Olga, and Kaz, and probably no one else. Not even Kevin. No one outside the Tribe is to know."

Yi's brow creases together at that. "Why does it matter?" she asks in investigative curiosity.

"Because, there are always people watching. There are always people listening. Charlie being attached to me makes her a target. The less people know about her, her family, and my child, the better." Basil tilts his head downward, announcing with his eyes on the floor. "I'm going to be forming a pack when I find the people. Kaz gave me a list of Totems, and I have a few of my own."

Yi's creased brow doesn't smooth out very much. "And 'people' are more watchful than you give them credit for. What about your pups? The ones from... you know?"

"I sent them south to a Sept that was more secure. I see them still, now and then." Basil lifts his hands back to pull the hood away from his head. "People aren't watchful. They watch the obvious. The less obvious something is, the more of a blind eye they turn."

"I meant," Yi explains, "the people who are watching you because you have drawn attention to yourself." She pauses in a thoughtful moment before adding, "Are you in trouble, Basil?"

"No. But there are still Spirals around. Their Kin. Wyrm things. Monsters that follow us, hidden in our shadows with their hands reaching for our necks. Someday I will die. That is an inevitability I can live with. Charlie dying isn't something I can live with." Basil lifts a hand and presses his finger to his forehead. "If she dies, if my kid dies, I'm out."

Yi looks disturbed by the gesture, reading the meaning clearly. Yet, she hardens in her gaze for it. "But you would protect Ed," she states accusingly.

Basil tilts his head to the side, his eye lingering on Yi's. "What does Ed have to do with what I just said?"

Yi sets the end of the crowbar down against the concrete, going back to prying coins for a moment as she collects her thoughts. "Ed was Kin too. And you told me she died. She turned into a vampire." Her next words come out in an unsteady manner, "You warned her. She ran. And now she is dead too. Again." The penny is particularly stubborn. "I do not see you wanting to kill yourself over her either."

"Why would I warn someone and then tell someone guaranteed to kill her that she was a leech?" Basil asks, taking his hand out of his left pocket to dig into the right. A quick motion and soon a burning cigarette is sitting between his lips. "I was the one that first suspected, anyways... Months ago. Charlie is different from Ed, for a lot of reasons. For one, Ed isn't going to marry me."

Yi doesn't give up on the penny so much as lose her cool as she swings the crowbar up in an angered motion. The hooked end points at the ahroun and her eyes flare with rage. "You have NO idea what I went through because of what you did!" she snaps at him, figure and grip trembling. "Do you know what it is like to have to look a mother in the eye and tell her, her daughter is dead? That she lies to herself, denying that? To be called a monster who abandons Family?"

Basil doesn't even flinch when the bar is swung in his direction, his eye lingering on Yi's. "She had to die. As good as she was at helping us at times, and as nice as she was, she was still a liability to the Tribe, to the Sept, to everyone. I looked for her myself. I couldn't find her. She got too good at hiding, or maybe I'm not as good at trailing as I thought I was. When you went to kill her, why didn't you take me?"

Yi lowers the crowbar though her breath sucks in and out no less harshly. "Why did I not take you? Why did you not kill her yourself when you had the chance," she counter questions back, tossing the crowbar aside in a loud ringing clatter and turning away.

"Because I didn't have the chance after I was told." Basil hesitates, then he steps up behind Yi and puts his hand firmly on her shoulder. "I told you not to punish you. I told you because you knew what had to be done, and you knew how to do it. I told you because you had a right to know, but I'm sorry that I had to."

Yi is tangibly tense beneath the ahroun's touch. Forcing her gaze to stay away from his, she takes several more moments to compose herself enough to reply. "Yes you did," she hisses out, her gaze turning back to him and staring. "You knew so much about her. You knew far more about her than I ever did. Maybe that is why you came to tell me, huh? Send a killer after her, and now your conscience is clear. Now you can marry and have fat babies with your kin."

Basil leans forward so close that his nose nearly touches Yi, his eyes staring intently into her's. "My conscious is far from clear! Not of Ed! Not of Tu! Not of the innocent people I've had to kill over the years! Not even of the guilty ones!" Basil's face screws up like he's swallowed a stink bug, his voice taking on an angry venom and bile suitable to the one once named 'He-Who-Speaks-Poison'. "Do you think I would use my teacher as a tool to spare myself? After all you've done for me? You might as well spit in my face or wipe your ass with my right hand."

Yi brings up her hands to push the ahroun back from her. Teeth gritting and showing in a feral defensive expression, she snaps right back at him, "You said it to me yourself that day! The only way to save face was to tell me."

"And that was the only reason I told you. Not because I thought it was wrong to keep it from you. Not because I knew that if there was any *chance* that Ed deserved to be left alive, that *you* would have been the person to make that call." Basil huffs out a deep breath, lifting his hand up to slap his forehead. "If I was a real Ragabash, if I had what I needed to track her down myself, I'd have done it."

If there were any sound that were out of place coming from the short Chinese woman as she whips her gaze back to stare at Basil, it is the growl that comes rolling out deep from her chest and throat. "No /ifs/ anything! You are not a ragabash, you are an ahroun!" Her voice tightens in anger spurred on by the very lack of the moon in the sky.

"Yeah. That's why I said 'if'. There are a couple Ragabash that I'm better at doing the sneaky, scout thing. That's cause I had the best one in the Sept as my teacher." Basil looks Yi in the eyes, holding it just long enough to get a good look at her. "But at the end of the day, when shit needs doing that a *real* Ragabash, and not a wannabe should be doing, there is no one else I'd turn to but you. Especially for a Tribal matter."

Yi straightens up considerably as he looks at her eyes, reciprocating with a dominance stare until he looks off again. "An ahroun is no less a hunter, and sometimes greater a warrior. But this is not about auspice or calling. This is about Family, Basil. A kinfolk of ours was turned by a vampire who to this day still is somewhere out there, maybe turning more innocent people into vampires themselves, to suffer their own kind of inner beast and thirst for blood." She forces herself back to a tentative calm, sucking in a long breath and exhaling in a wavering steadiness.

"Back when I was still with Ed... We kind of saw each other for a while, I mean- " Basil huffs out a sigh, putting a hand in his scruffy looking hair. "I asked her to move in with me. To an apartment. She always said no, she insisted she could take care of herself. She never wanted any protection, never wanted to learn. Not even after she was nearly beaten to death and I had to save her at the last second, then *beg* Mouse to come heal her." Basil looks back up at Yi's face, shaking his head. "Just the way she was. She wasn't even here when she got it. You didn't fail her. I didn't fail her. None of us did. The only thing left for her was a quick, merciful death."

Yi turns her gaze away and moves to the grimy window, watching the adult bookstore below catering to the night. "A second death that she did not want. That nobody wanted, but everyone knew must be done. I do not understand," she says in a quieter volume, but with a tone that betrays her to hidden grief brought up to the surface. "I do not understand why. How. Her family... her mother." She shakes her head, hanging in unwilling defeat.

"If Olga turned, I wouldn't hesitate. I would put a silver bullet right between her eyes. I love her, I love her like my own mother.. I call her mother. I'd still kill her. If I turned, I would expect the same. Mercy to the tainted, to the fallen, brings risks that we just can't take." Basil walks up behind Yi, and if she doesn't pull away, he wraps his arms loosely around her shoulders from behind. "There is no joy killing. There is no glory in doing what needs to be done. There is only blood, but once that blood is washed from your hands, you are left with only your own flesh. If you can't wipe that blood away from your flesh, it dries, it will fester, it will rot your flesh until there is nothing left but maggots and bone."

Through the touch to her shoulders, he can feel the tension that still courses through the fostern. Submission, if temporarily, to the battle of her emotions within is taken deep within - pulled, rather, to be locked back away as she inhales another deep breath and lifts her head. "Glory comes from being dependable, being generous enough with your strength to be defending those who cannot defend themselves, and /doing what needs to be done/. Slaying the Wyrm, cutting away the corruption that rots. Blood is something that will always be around us. I accept that." She reaches up a hand to lightly touch his as she turns around to face him, looking upon him now with a near resolve to her inner battle. Finally... "Are you hungry? I missed supper and came up here instead."

"You're far more eloquent with your words than I. Reminds me a little of my motto for battle. If you know yourself, and you know your enemy, you will be victorious in every battle. If you know yourself, but not your enemy, for every victory you will suffer a defeat. If you know neither yourself, or your enemy, you will succumb in every battle." Basil lifts one hand to lay it upon Yi's, squeezing it firmly. "How about I take you to Denny's? Or we could ride out to Edgewood on my bike, and I could cook for us."

Yi gives the ahroun a much wryer look for his words. "Now who is being the more fancy?" She considers his offer though, and looking about the room with all its change pasted to ceiling, floor and walls, she decides. "What about in back of Denny's? Saves money, and I feel like reviving an old tradition." She smiles, pushes up her sleeves some (though they fall back in place soon) and motions with an 'after you' gesture.

"They aren't my words, I'm only regurgitating them. Every Ahroun should read The Art of War." Basil starts to walk towards the door, one arm still wrapped around the woman's shoulders. "Sure. God knows I ain't too proud to eat scraps and left overs.. Y'know, I still think you'd be a great packmate." Basil smiles nice and big, nodding as if in agreement of himself. "You'd make a great /beta/ for me."

Yi arches a brow at that last part, and with a pushing off of his arm around her shoulders halts. She says nothing, but her expression tells of a spike of insult.

"I'm kidding. Hell, I can't even believe Kaz served under me." Basil pauses near the door, flashing her a full smile. "C'mon, Yi. I'm just trying to lighten things up! Shit, I know. Sometime we gotta go see a movie together. Something funny, to celebrate you being back."

Yi has to ease out of the offense, sniffing once in her skepticism. "There was purpose for that," she says in response to him. "But you're right. I need to 'lighten up'." Her features eventually even out and she steps forward, though she makes a point of bullying around the fullmoon to get out in front and down the stairs first. "Last one to the dumpster eats the rotting egg!" she calls back to him and speeds up her pace.

"Maybe I could be your beta." Basil chides her, snickering under his breath. He's urged along without much resistance, thumping his way down to the bottom of the stairs. "It's Denny's! All the food is rotten already!" Basil calls out before sprinting after her.

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