thanks for ruining my mental fap stash.

Erich

They pull to a stop somewhere in the wilderness. Maybe it's the same place as last time. Maybe it's not. Erich peers out, opening the door, sniffing the air.

"So what's the main event?"

Ingrid

He swears. Ingrid tilts her head, angling it every so slightly to look at him from the corner of her eye. He can - if he tears his eyes from the road and looks her way - see the slight upward curve of her lips at the corner, the gleam of amusement in that one dark eye. Her attention shifts back to the road. The Mustang had been fun, but she is better suited to the R8.

The wilderness is a park, albeit a fairly large one that shares a border with a golf course.. It is not the place she called him to before, but it's close. This time of night it's quiet, empty.

"We won't know until we find it."

Erich

"Sometimes I think you just say that to sound mysterious," Erich complains, "and to see the look on my face when I finally see whatever it is we're dealing with."

He follows her into the darkness, though, pulling off his undedicated sweatshirt as he goes; leaving it hanging prominently from a passing tree-branch. They can see it from yards and yards away, a pale flag in the night. The rest of his gear is dedicated, t-shirt and jeans. Well; not his underwear and socks, as that would be gross, but he doesn't think Ingrid's frail heart could handle the excitement if he were to remove those articles.

"Why don't you be a good little Ragabash," he suggests. "Run on ahead and see what 'we' find."

Ingrid

She removes her gloves and coat, tossing the garments haphazardly onto the driver's seat. Her shoes are kicked off and dropped on the floor before she finally closes the door. This might lead Erich to believe that her outfit, her perfectly color coordinated outfit that really did not take any longer to put together than the time it took pull from hangars, is dedicated. The car is left unlocked, the keys in a pocket of her coat. Everything together in a ripe little package for even the most inept car thief to find and see as an open invitation to take.

Truth be told, Ingrid almost wishes the Audi is gone when they return. Hunts, chases. Gambles. These are the games the games the Ragabash plays for fun.

By the time she's ready, Erich's well ahead of her. She passes his sweatshirt, pale banner marking the shadowy vehicle's location, glances at it briefly. Already her attention is shifted, her senses alert. The change in her is subtle and difficult to notice, even for the one person who knows her best in all of D.C. Her posture, her movements, her expression. None of it has changed. The difference is a matter of energy. It's a though she's light and someone's finally found an outlet to plug her into. Not on yet, she never the less thrums with electricity waiting to ignite.

Her eyes, shifting darkest brown to gold as she begins the shift, almost glow when she looks at Erich as she passes the Ahroun, heading to the fore to be a good little Ragabash. In Glabro they are very nearly the same height, though she is no longer quite so beautiful. Her clothes, perfectly tailored to a more delicate figure, are already beginning to burst their seams. Up in Crinos they shred completely, fluttering to the ground in a flurry of beautifully expensive rags. So much for any notion of her having delicate sensibilities. The change doesn't stop there. Her shift through the forms is easier than it should be for a city Garou, but then Ingrid, for all her trappings of humanity, has always been more animal than human.

In lupus she is lean and slender and graceful, her fur dark but not completely black. Lifting her snout, she sniffs the air, searching for a scent. When she has one of interest she takes off into the night, leaving Erich to keep up or hope she comes back when she finds something.

Storm's Teeth

"Run on ahead and s-- DAH!"

That's what he ends up saying. Because right as he's saying 'see', he's looking over, and Ingrid's six inches taller and about twice as heavy. And hirsute, let's not forget that. Mercifully, a moment later she's Crinos, the last of her expensive color coordination shredding to scraps, and a moment after that she's a wolf.

"Stuff of nightmares!" he yells after her. "Thanks for ruining my mental fap stash!"

The undergrowth snaps back in her wake; she's gone. Erich follows in her general direction. He doesn't even try to keep up.

Night's an ally to a Ragabash. The shadows hold few secrets. Her senses are preternaturally sharpened; she can discern the tiny scrabbling of mice in the undergrowth, the near-silent flap of an owl's wings. Scent is a tapestry all its own; the rich dark tones of the earth, the wet scent of greenery,

and acrid, sharp, out of place, the copper sting of blood. It wafts from the south; too much to be split from the veins of some small prey-mammal.

Ingrid

If they were bound she might be able to make a quip back at him. Other things would be different, too. If they were bound. Maybe Ingrid would put Erich up in a hotel with her. Not with her, of course, but a room adjacent to hers. Maybe she'll do that, anyway. Not out of any sense of compassion for the Ahroun's homelessness, but just to see. What would Storm's Teeth look like in a five star hotel? How would the employees react?

Hm. Perhaps.

They are not bound, and the thought of playing that game is a distant one. Dances With the Hurricane is a wolf in the wilderness, more at home here than the clothes that are now tatters littering the forest floor. Whatever quip she might have made she keeps to herself. And she carries on with her business.

Her ears swivel forward, in the direction of the familiar coppery scent. Then back, listening for Erich, trying to gauge how far back he is. She does not wait for him, but presses onward on silent paws.

[I AM THE NIGHT: dex+stealth]

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( fail ) Re-rolls: 1

Ingrid

[oh FUCK YOU]

Dice: 10 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )

Storm's Teeth

She's... well, not as quiet as she could be. Or perhaps should be. She tries, but then her paw slips, she hits a patch of dried winter leaves, they crunch. The noise is horrendously loud to her heightened hearing. She tries harder. One paw in front of the other, she slips forward -- slower now.

The air fills around her. Blood-scent, thick as soup. And beneath that, something oily, insidious, almost as familiar. Taint. Ichor. Wyrm-smell, unmistakable.

Her paw sinks into something cold and wet and clinging. The scent is suddenly all around, bursting up from whatever-it-is-she's-stepped-in like spores from a rotten mushroom. Up ahead, the foliage seems to thin; there's a small clearing through the trees.

Ingrid

Were she in her human skin, the smell that rises up around her would activate her gag reflex. Even in that weaker, less perceptive form her sense of smell is stronger than most. As it is, she fights the urge to sneeze, to rid her nostrils of the awful stench. Tainted, that smell. Wyrm-smell.

Her ears flick back once more, listening for her comrade. It's dangerous to go ahead, not knowing what awaits them, but not knowing makes it impossibe to plan an attack.

With almost painfully slow deliberation, Ingrid moves forward, just to the line of the trees, keeping in shadow as much as possible.

Ingrid

[percept+alert: sniffin']

Dice: 7 d10 TN4 (2, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1

Ingrid

[percept+alert: everything else]

Dice: 7 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 5, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Storm's Teeth

IT SMELLS REALLY BAD.

The stuff she stepped in smells bad. As in, wrong. Not okay. Twisted. The smell gets worse farther on; she suspects it's concentrated in the clearing ahead.

She also smells something human. Or maybe what used to be human. Now it smells dying... maybe dead. There's something else, too. Not the bad-smell, not the dying-human smell. Something just as wrong, just as twisted, but alive. Dim, faint, as though it's ... buried somehow. But there, and waiting.

She can see, too, that whatever she's stepped in clings wetly to her fur. Hard to shake it off. Will probably need to wash thoroughly with soap and water for 20 seconds, yadda yadda. Or maybe even shave the fur off. Might not want it on her skin.

She creeps forward. Now she can hear breathing -- rattling, sickly, dying. Another few feet and she'd be able to see into the clearing, but then whatever's waiting there might see her.

Ingrid

The smell is terrible, so strong in fact that at first it's hard to separate single threads from the whole. Ingrid is not new to this scent business, however. Here, a few steps away from the clearing, ears alert for the sound of an enemy attack, she takes her time. Not much, however. With the sticky, viscous liquid clinging to her fur she has a scent now. She is no longer completely a phantom.

And neither is the thing in the clearing. Which she still can't identify or gauge or measure. Erich will surely have a snide remark for that, but her ability to remain hidden has been compromised. Even if she pulls on the Blur, there's still a smell.

Carefully, slowly, she moves straight back, ears pricked for movement in the clearing ahead. If nothing jumps out at her, once she's made it a decent distance back she turns and hurries off to find Erich.