Don't Envy the Judge His Job

2/4/2009

07:01 PM
Logfile from GarouMUSH.

Currently the moon is in the waxing Gibbous Moon phase (66% full).
It is currently 18:58 Pacific Time on Wed Feb 4 2009.
Currently in Saint Claire, it is partially cloudy. The temperature is 47 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius). The wind is calm today. The barometric pressure reading is 29.92 and steady, and the relative humidity is 65 percent. The dewpoint is 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius.)

Odeon - Lobby(#4049RJ)
The Odeon's lobby is testament to a faded and perverted glory. The deep crimson carpet is thick in places but in others stubbly as velveteen, and the rich pattern of tangling flowers is everywhere marred by dark stains. The walls are clothed in kingly purple tatters of wallpaper, and covered with faded posters featuring women and men in various states of undress, posing with various degrees of tastelessness, and screaming out titles like "Male Service", "Bang Bang: a Sexual Explosion", and "A Slip of Her Tongue" in garish lettering. There's no light in the room but what comes in from the street, and during the day the actresses look grey and ghoulish, and the bright reds and purples of the room faded and dusky; and at night, the place might as well be covered in thick black paint.
Immediately in front of the entrance is dull matte turnstyle which no longer turns, where once tickets were taken. To the right are a pair of doors which some joker has labelled "Pimps" and "Hos" with red spraypaint: these are the washrooms. To the left are a pair of doorways which lack actual doors, and opposite is a grand set of boarded doors which lead into the theatre proper.
Please check +view for further description.
Contents:
Salem
Lefty
Obvious exits:
Upstairs  THeatre  Street

[look Lefty (homid)]
She stands at roughly five-seven, lean and fit, even for a woman well into middle-aged. Her ginger-red hair is streaked with strawberry blonde highlights and falls just past her shoulders in a simple, uncomplicated wave. Bright hazel-green and copper-brown eyes produce a rather piercing gaze, full of ingenuity and acumen, while her bearing can be at times almost facetious. The one sober and glaring feature about the woman is a scarred right-arm, completely missing below the the elbow joint.
She wears a pair of faded Levi button-fly jeans, a black long-sleeved shirt, and a pair of scuffed, old sneakers. The shirt is tucked into the jeans, and a finely crafted leather belt is looped through the Levis. The carving in the fine leather depicts a forested scene with a wolf, rat and Pegasus running through it. Overall, a black canvas duster that has seen better years is worn to protect against the weather.

[look Salem (homid)]
Jack Salem is in his mid-thirties, but he looks about ten years older. His hair and beard have both gone entirely grey (his thick eyebrows are still black); the former is long and shaggy, inches past his broad shoulders, and the latter is thick, trimmed but full. His face is long and thin, hawkishly aristocratic; he'd be more handsome if not for the thick scars ripping down the left side of his face. His eye on that side is dead white, the other dark brown; both often have dark circles under them. Despite everything, there is a definite regality to him, the look of a king scoured by adversity.
At six-foot-three, he stands taller than many men, and an inherent athleticism indicates that he could probably hold his own in a fight. There's also an aura of potential violence about him, tightly controlled.
He's definitely not dressed to impress, however; he's wearing black sweatpants and a black hooded sweatshirt along with a dark green t-shirt and battered black Chuck Taylor high-tops. Outdoors, he wears a bulky olive-drab Army jacket and a pair of knitted gloves that are a rather eye-searing combination of red, yellow, purple, and green. If there's daylight, he's probably wearing sunglasses.

The Odeon is awash with the noise of Yi's continued deconstructive efforts to loosen the coins from the concrete that's plastered itself ceiling to floor in within the adult theatre. The lobby, on Olga's request, is untouched and gives visitors the full display of oddness that is spare change and concrete lining the entire room's ceiling, walls (except for those posters), and floor. A battered metal trash can currently serves as cracked and crushed concrete depository, its lid perforated to act like a virtual coin colander. Down comes the ragabash from the upstairs lounge where she's been at work, her sweater carrying a load, a small lantern used to light her way hanging from the crowbar in her belt.

Lefty pushes through the glass door. The older Gnawer ragabash hasn't been to the Odeon since the 'redecoration', and in the midst of it she stops to let out a surprised chuckle. Hearing the clang and bang of the determined, younger new moon, she calls, "Yo!" and makes her way into the theatre proper, looking for Yi. "Earning a new deedname? Gold Miner?"

Salem knocks twice on the door a moment after Lefty gives Yi a new nickname. The Walker's dressed in black sweats and bundled in a bulky Army jacket, his hands jammed deep into its pockets. He glances up and down the street, frowning.

Yi sets the lantern down to a side, dumping the concrete onto the holed lid just as Lefty makes her way in. "Lefty!" she barks back in gladness. "There's no gold, but I have the feeling Wall Street is missing some of its money. But... How long has it been? How are you?" She busies herself with wiping down her concrete powdered hands and looks up at the knock on the door. Her brow furrows at that. "Did someone follow you?" she asks of the other Gnawer.

Lefty flashes a grin, and she's about to answer the flood of questions when the knock follows her. She stops, looks back, and then shrugs at Yi's follow up question. "I don't /think/ so. But let me see who it is." Making her way back through the lobby, she peeks out the door. Seeing the Walker, she relaxes only slightly, then grimaces. The door is opened, and she steps out of the way to let Salem in. "Hey Jack."

"Evening." Salem steps inside, reaching behind to close the door firmly behind him. His eyebrows go up. "Hnh, just the two Ragabash I wanted to see." He looks from Lefty to Yi and back again, his expression neutral. "I wanted to talk to you both about Ed."

Yi finishes wiping off her hands as Lefty goes to answer the door, taking a few steps to follow in a quiet back up. Once she spots who it is, though, her friendliness falters. Even worse when Salem states his purpose, her eyes dart to Lefty and back. "What about her?" she asks tentatively.

Lefty has been expecting the visit from the philodox, though perhaps not during this haunt to the Odeon. Her reaction is a lot more resigned. "Yeah, I kinda figured. Might as well get this over." There is a brief glance to the other Gnawer ragabash before she gestures for all of them to go into the theatre and have a seat for the chat. "What exactly do you need to know?"

Salem looks at Yi. "The Warder has tasked me with finding out the details of the situation and with making an official judgement on it." His glance goes then to Lefty. "First of all, when and how each of you found out that Ed had become a vampire." As he speaks, he moves to follow Lefty into the theater.

[OOC] Salem flicks on Truth of Gaia. Insert whirring computer bootup noises here.
[OOC] Yi hears the Macintosh startup.

Lefty finds some place to get comfortable where she can still face Salem and Yi. Her hand runs briefly through her hair as she thinks back. "Can't say I remember the exact date. But. Months ago. Kaz called me out to her place and she told me. She said the kid had gone and gotten herself bitten and that she wanted me to follow her. Find out where she went, what she did. Tail her completely. Which, I did. For several weeks. There was a time or two when I lost her, and a time or two when my real duties held me up. But for the most part? I knew everything she was doing."

[OOC] Lefty's words are as honest as Abe's.

Yi acts a rear escort for them as they head to the theater. A worried look peers towards Lefty's back as they go, but the younger fostern doesn't say anything until they've settled. "Basil told me first," she answers simply, but listens to Lefty tell her part with an almost fearful interest.

Salem seems willing to get Lefty's story in detail before Yi's. He perches on one of the theater seats, leaning forward and looking at the one-armed Ragabash intently. "And what was she doing?"

Lefty tilts her head, drawing a deep breath before answering. "You know, it surprised me. I think Kaz was, in truth, asking me to find a reason to kill her. But I couldn't find one. For the most part she did what a lot of us do. She fed the homeless, she fed the rats. When she /did/ feed, it wasn't so much off innocents as it was off drunk, abusive assholes, and even then, I never once saw her kill someone. I can't say the same for myself that entire time. You know what I mean?"

Salem nods slightly. "Did you ever speak to her? Ask her about her condition, how it came about?"

Yi makes a rather halted noise when Lefty mentions Ed's feeding off of homeless and rats. Her eyes narrow as she growls, "And she claimed never to have thought of taking human life to keep her thirst away. She said she received help from a butcher named Ben. He gave her animal blood."

Salem's eyes narrow. "Sean mentioned getting blood from a butcher. He didn't mention that the butcher was helping directly." He strokes his beard (which is rather thick these days), then sits up. "Yi, you mentioned that Basil told you about her?"

Lefty frowns in thought, Yi's reaction earning a concerned and perhaps even wary look, but she quickly turns back to Salem. "Yeah, she did get blood that way, but I did see her feed off humans. I just never saw her kill any of 'em." that said, she answers the philodox's other questions, "Yeah. We had one or two talks. She figured out I was following her, after a while, and didn't much like it. But, we chatted, and I think we actually came to a small understanding. I didn't need to hide from her after that. She didn't seem to mind the watchdog. Anyway, what was said? Um. Let me see.." The Gnawer leans back, trying to recall. "She never really wanted to talk about the one that did it. I never got anything like that out of her. At the time, she seemed pissed at Mouse for some reason, we talked about that a little." There's a shake of her head. "Nothing really overly useful beyond that. I didn't engage all that often. I just watched her. Then, she disappeared. I used the gift I learned from Yi here to track her, but she musta been long gone, because I couldn't find her. She did leave me her computer when she finally skipped town. I was sick from the battle at the time, so I didn't actually see her. And it got left at the Tenement. I got it from Mouse later. But I gave it right back. They're supposed to be checking it over for anything useful or dangerous she might have left on it."

Yi straightens as she's addressed. "Some time ago," she says with a slow nod, "he told me about a kin named Ed. And eventually how she was acting strange. I told him to watch her, but not until he came to tell me that he heard she was discovered to be a vampire did I realize what had become of her." As Lefty goes on though, Yi's expression darkens considerably and she falls silent with a clenched jaw and slow, deliberate breaths.

Salem's expression grows increasingly somber, his eyes narrowing; the dead one all but closes, its lid drooping lower than the other. He nods to Lefty, then turns back to Yi. "Jacinta told me that she sent you to track Ed down and kill her." He pauses a beat. "Did you?"

Lefty falls silent as the philodox turns his attention to the younger Gnawer. She also turns that way, one eyebrow rising in slight surprise, and she waits with interest to hear the answer.

Yi's answer is surprisingly curt. "Yes." Her gaze drops to her gray-powdered hands in her lap.

Salem regards Yi for a few seconds after her reply, as if waiting for more. When more isn't forthcoming, he nods and steeples his fingers. "All right. Finally, did Ed know of or display any interest in the caern?"

Lefty chuckles. There's no intent to insult Salem, but she clearly finds the question amusing. After a beat, her expression sobers, and she sits up a little. "I never got that impression, no. Not in the least. She never mentioned it, she never even hinted at it. And in all the time I tracked her, she never even got near Kent Crossing, let alone the woods."

Yi shakes her head as well, working her hands together. "She hardly knew anything about us. Nothing of the Warder." The Walker philodox eventually gets her gaze again, straight on and serious. "But that does not deny what she was. She showed me her true form. She showed me, and Diego."

Salem's mouth twitches into a slight grimace. "Diego... hmph." He considers the two of them, then says, in a flat tone of voice, "Kaz claims that she did not smell of the Wyrm." He studies their reactions to this statement.

Lefty's jaw tightens with Yi's statement, but what Salem says is even more surprising. Licking her lips, she says, "I'm not surprised. She'd only been turned, what, a few months? Like anything else, evil takes time." She glances at Yi again, finding a certain amount of camaraderie, even if the other Gnawer doesn't seem pleased with Lefty's role in all this. Lefty adds, "Regardless, she inevitably /would/ have slowly grown tainted. And when that happened, like with a rabid dog, we would have put her down. This is probably why Kaz had me following her. So we could be there when it needed doing."

Yi's response is dark, eyes half-lidded and shoulders hunching as if there were a sudden chill in the room. "You could have said the same about Ebony."

Lefty is lost. Her gaze shifts from Salem to Yi to see if either's reaction lends any insight into the name. "Ebony?"

Salem's jaw clenches. He stands up abruptly, pacing a few steps away with his hands jammed into his jacket pockets. "...Ebony was a mistake," he says eventually. "Wyrm or no, he should have died when I found him in Seattle."

"Then you know why I killed Ed," Yi says softly towards Salem's back. She glances back to Lefty with a small hang of her head as she explains, "Ebony was Kinfolk. He also... was turned. Against his will. When I found him, he--" She chews on her lip. "He understood."

Lefty leans back, gaze once again shifting between the two and perhaps lingering a little on the philodox. "Ah," she says, although there are obviously still a lot of unanswered questions. The curious ragabash keeps them to herself, for now.

Salem inhales a breath and lets it out in a huff. "I don't blame you for your actions. Nor for killing Ed. I agree with you." He rolls his shoulders back, straightens up, and looks at the two of them -- though Yi a bit more than Lefty. "All right, I'm done. Thank you for your time."

Yi peers at Salem in a long and regarding manner. Her question comes warily. "How many are you judging?" Her eyes glance towards Lefty briefly.

Lefty, despite being dismissed, remains seated and watching the other two with rather intense curiosity. She seems just as interested in the answer to Yi's question, so once more her gaze follows the proverbial tennis ball to back to the philodox.

"More than a handful," Salem answers, folding his arms across his chest. "Ed's condition was not... well. Not the /best/ kept secret in the world." His expression turns wry.

Yi nods in understanding, though she doesn't look particularly happy about it. "She said she would have helped us find others. If she were allowed to live." Her head shakes and she stands back up to her feet as well.

Lefty gives Salem a somewhat sympathetic look as she rises from her seat. "Sorry about all this, Salem," she says, and then looks to Yi as well. "I don't envy your job."

Salem shrugs. "My fault for renouncing to half. I could have stayed full. Much simpler." He starts for the door.

Yi stows her initial reaction with a press of her knuckle against her lips. However, she does turn to Lefty and says in a quiet volume, "That explains a lot, doesn't it?"

Lefty's eyes widen. "Wait, what?" she asks, but not quite loud enough to be addressed to the retreating Walker philodox. She looks to Yi, then, expression at least mildly surprise. It tapers to bemusement with the other ragabash's words. "Yeah. I suppose so."

Salem, not hearing the muttered exchange between the two Gnawers -- or not caring -- heads out the door and then briskly out into the night.

"Oh, you didn't know?" Yi remarks once Salem's headed out of the door. She doesn't say much more to that, however, smiling back mildly before noting with a gesture that she's also headed out - and up - to resume her work on the coin crisis upstairs.

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