something down there. something very wrong.

Echoes of the Lost

'Sup, Denver.

sinister guardians.

[THE RULES

1. There is no post order, but please post only once for each post I make unless I indicate otherwise.

2. Post in 10 minutes or less, and declare/roll in 2 minutes or less. "In 10 minutes" means 10 minutes from my post, not the last player to post before you. If you miss your roll it will be skipped. In character this means it automatically fails. And that kinda sucks. :[

3. You are free to multi-task, so long as you can abide by the above strictures. If you repeatedly miss 'deadlines' or are unresponsive in the scene chat, I will ask you to excuse yourself from this scene (or the other) out of respect for my time and the time of our fellow players.

4. This might be psychologically risky. This might be physically risky. LET'S FIND OUT TOGETHER. But seriously, if that's a problem, I will not take it personally if you want to bow out.

5. Please PM me now with personal phobias, triggers, or off-limits themes (if none, no need to tell me 'none'). If you're uncomfortable with anything in the scene, IM me once (outside of the chat). If you become uncomfortable/distressed due to content in the scene and need to immediately leave, please IM or email me as soon as you are able to let me know. I don't actually enjoy upsetting my players. Just their characters.

6. Please PM me now with any relevant merits/flaws/traits I should be aware of. If none, no need to tell me 'none'.

7. Keep track of your own health and tempers. Ain't nobody got time for that. Except you. What I mean is: I do not have time for that.

8. Ask questions in the AIM chat. If I don't answer after 2-3 minutes, ping me once in PMs here. In review: AIM chat for chatter and questions, IMs for personal distress, Jove PMs for questions I have not answered within a few minutes.

9. Don't be a dick.

10. Don't forget to be awesome.]

Hurricane

[Merit: lack of scent, Flaw: Mark of the Predator]

Storm's Teeth

It's questionable how Erich heard about this. Maybe Hector highfived him in the hallway one day and was like HEY BY THE WAY. Maybe the wyld!gorilla, like, spelled it out in glitterbombs. Maybe he just found out because SHADOW LORD and OOO SPOOKY, CROWS.

Regardless: he parks in the free cell phone lot. Because free. And then he hoofs it over to the airport, where he hangs out in front of the largest of the three terminals, B. He is wearing a hoodie under a thick winter jacket and his gloved hands are tucked into opposite sleeves, and his hood is up, and he generally looks like he's freezing.

Also he's carrying a big BRONCOS flag that earns him the occasional cheer/highfive/YEAHMAN. Because Superbowl.

Ruby

[Nightmares!]

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

Hurricane

The drive out to the airport is long, drawn out affair. What with the weather, and the construction along I-225, and the fact that Denver International is way out in the middle of nowhere, it takes time to get there.

Time that is spent however it's spent. Hector grabbed Ingrid almost the second she landed in the city and told her about his desire to investigate the airport, and of course she immediately offered her assistance. Told him, actually, in no uncertain terms that she would be attending as well. She's hired a driver, an unremarkable Shadow Lord kinfolk she knows in the city because this person can get a car, and they can drive that car, leaving the Garou to plan as they will. It's roomy enough for the tall ones, not so much for the press of Rage.

Anyway, it takes time to get out there, time enough for Hector to lay out his plans. Ingrid instructs their driver to park at the Conoco some distance outside of the airport. It's a mostly empty place, with few people to notice if a carful of people suddenly becomes a carful of one.

Javed Anubis-Sight

Javed's presence here might be considered somewhat surprising to some. After all, those who saw him discuss the matter in Cold Crescent with Hector saw him opposed to the idea of splitting their resources and potentially provoking an attack on a sept that is still under the gun to get up and running in a matter of a week or so. But the fact is, he expressed his concerns and Hector made some excellent points. The metis is not intractable or stubborn and he made a point to volunteer to help after the debate was finished.

And thus, he is here. And with his student, no less. Some might question the wisdom of bringing a cub on such a potentially dangerous mission, but there's no time to learn like the present. And he has faith in Ruby. He comes dressed in his usual attire, minus the army jacket. That means a beige shirt, sturdy pants of the same color and his boots. He is not carrying anything because--well, let's be frank. An Iranian man who gives off an aura of "Psycho angry man" walking around an airport with a backpack? Yeah, Javed isn't a fan of cavity searches.

And so he waits with the group, keeping his senses alert. Sniffing at the air occasionally, his single eye scanning the vicinity as they get presumably ready to cross the Gauntlet. His instructions to Ruby are simple, and given before everyone met up:

"Defer to Echoes of the Lost for the mission; it is his to lead until he passes it to someone else. Even if I, for some reason, push for something different. Which I will not; this is a wartime mission and he is not to be challenged."

Echoes of the Lost

Considering Hector hinted that he wanted to go off on this little field trip by himself and has somehow ended up leading the expedition he doesn't look like he's setting massive bullets. He is sweating bullets but they're like, BBs. Not .50 caliber or anything.

Hector doesn't know shit about bullets.

Somehow through the magic of television they all end up in the same place and Hector doesn't look nervous. Or cold. He is cold. But he looks grim like he doesn't usually look grim.

"Everybody heard you say you won't push for something different," he says. Is he joking? Maybe. "Alright, everybody cross over. Don't get stuck and don't touch anything once we're over. Buddy system time."

sinister guardians.

Tonight the snow falls thick, dry, and powdery. Flakes clump together as they drift, directionless, multi-directional, to cling to gloves and jackets and hats. But for the cold air and the way they melt on contact with skin, they could be easily mistaken for the puffs off of dandelions in midsummer. It's not such a wicked storm that planes are being grounded left and right or being refused landing at Denver International, but it is a bit of a winter wonderland tonight, and people drive slowly. People simultaneously drive impatiently.

Many, many people are wearing orange.

Avery is not with her packmate tonight; with snow and ice on the ground she is patrolling Cold Crescent with a fervency and ferocity that is terrifying the minions of the Wyrm for miles around the building. On nights like tonight, she is at her absolute best. She wished them well. Tamsin is not with them tonight either, nor Thomas, nor even Charlotte. The reasons for that belong to the packs themselves.

--

One way or another, two Fosterns, two just-about Fosterns, and one cub make it out to DIA.

The Conoco parking lot is not deserted, the Conoco itself is certainly staffed, mid-evening on a Friday night near the airport, and they have mirrors within Ingrid's car, but parking is still done carefully, in shadow, where it is not so much about how many people there are but how well those people can see what happens.

[Roll to cross the Gauntlet. Out here it is diff 7.]

Javed Anubis-Sight

[[Gauntlet Cross!]]

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

Hurricane

[cross! -1 for mirrororor]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Storm's Teeth

"What are YOU doing here?"

-- is what Erich says to Ingrid. Not like in a mean way. Just in a surprised way. And then they all get together and Hector lays out some ground rules, primarily no touchy, and he nods a few times to show understanding.

Also he takes his jacket off and leaves it in Ingrid's car. But leaves the hoodie on. That is dedicated. There is no Charlotte to help him cross, so Erich just sort of tucks his hands under his arms, squinches his face, and makes a face like a baby trying to pass an epic turd.

Annnnnd -- pop!

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Echoes of the Lost

[WHEE -1 because he's got a shiny thing around here somewhere]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Ruby

Since Ruby heard the plan, she has been carrying around a small pocket mirror. Maybe it's a crutch, but one quite honestly needed for one so new to the world where spirits roam.

She'll be going back there tonight, but not to have a leisurely stroll. Something dark sleeps at the airport, they say.

So she rides with them, seated next to Javed in that car, touching that mirror in her pocket every so often. Don't fail me now, she wants to tell it.

Jared, the ghost in her life, doesn't much care for wolves. Doesn't much care for the cramped car full of them, with nowhere to sit that isn't wolf. So he isn't around until they get to that Conoco, at which point the near-constant distraction pops into being again, and Ruby grits her teeth.

Grits her teeth, and pays close attention to Erich. It's time to leave. She pulls out her mirror, and slides it in her palm for a while, gazing at the reflection.

[Cross! -1 for mirror, spending WP!]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Hurricane

Ingrid is not wearing orange. She is wearing a black athletic jacket and black, cotton athletic pants and sneakers that are mostly black with fluorescent pink highlights and shoelaces. One must have a touch of color. Her hair has been pulled to the nape of her neck to be held with an elastic band.

Erich's astonished question is met with a calm look, one brow arched oh so slightly, as if to say without words, What do you think I'm doing here? It is a scouting mission on a cold dark night. She was made for such things.

She uses her reflection in one of the car's mirrors to help her across the Gauntlet. On the other side she holds her hand out to Hector. There's a small, prickly burr in the center of her palm.

"A beacon burr." She sticks it to her shirt, just at her shoulder. "Activate it and you can find me even if we become separated." She hopes that they do not, but hey, Hector's seen her in action. Or rather, he's seen the way she cloaks herself in darkness and disappears.

sinister guardians.

It takes Javed and Hector an eyeblink to slip through the Gauntlet. Ingrid and Hector are not long behind them, pushing a little harder, straining a little more. They wait for the cub. They wait for several minutes. Five pass before she makes it across.

For Ruby, the experience is like being caught in a cool gel, suspended in stasis, feeling the world move slightly around her. She can see both worlds but only through deep shadow and thick fog. It is unsettling, to say the least, until she is finally on the other side with her mentor and his -- their -- comrades.

The moon seems so much larger, so much closer, thin though it is. The cold seems alive, the wind and snow stronger here. They can see the airport across the distance, and the way the white peaks that are meant in the physical realm to suggest mountains actually do resemble somewhat jagged, uneven peaks here. Through the snow, which falls so much heavier here, they can still make out a pair of gleaming eyes, higher up than a man or even a crinos wolf, eyes that burn, not just red but the red of flames. It is far enough away that they cannot hear the breathing through those wide round nostrils or even see the puffs of steam that 'Blucifer' exhales, but they can see those eyes.

Occasionally the ground rumbles. Occasionally they hear a sound like wings taking flight and gasping, sharp cry, as though a hundred voices suddenly caught in the throats of their possessors, as though a hundred pairs of hands clutched at once at armrests, hearts lifting and stomachs dropping. Occasionally they hear souls leaving the earth and taking to air, or... at least they hear the spirit of it.

Here they can change, and run, and move the way that Gaia intended them to move.

Javed Anubis-Sight

There are a lot of interpersonal dynamics coming into play here, and Javed keeps them all on the edge of his periphery. Ingrid and Erich's past issues, Hector's finding himself at the head of a sneaking party when he was originally thinking a small solo issue. Even Javed himself and his mentor status to Ruby, not to mention the ghost and the problems that it may pose. He has absolutely no compunctions about trying to destroy that specter should it endanger their mission--which it certainly could.

But he simply listens and watches, and when the time is ready he nods to Ruby, letting her begin to cross before he slides across himself.

The second that he is on the spiritual side of the Gauntlet, he melts up into his breed form with the head of Anubis, his Deed Namesake. It is his natural form and in truth, he often feels confined by a human mask. In Crinos he feels more natural, more free. Like he's no longer wearing a straight jacket. He looks around the vicinity, his face impassive as he waits for Ruby. He has no disappointment over her taking longer to slip across. They've all been there.

Once she's across, he looks to Hector to lead the way.

Storm's Teeth

"This is the freakiest airport ever," is Erich's comment on the red eyes of Blucifer; on the always-just-out-of-earshot whine of jet engines and gasping throats.

And then, while they wait for the cub to cross, Ingrid gives Hector a burr. "Hey," Erich wants to know, "how come I don't get one? 'Cause if I don't know where you are, I might, y'know. Bite you again. Heh?"

It's probably the worst attempt at making a joke out of something unfunny in the history of ever.

Echoes of the Lost

While waiting for the others to mosey themselves on over Hector reaches out to pinch the burr that it might awaken the spirit bound inside. He checks to make sure it is securely fastened to her and then gives her a comradely clap on the shoulder. Stares off into the distance at the rumbling and the swooping and the gasping.

They have company.

His dark eyes flick between the two Lords as a quip about biting passes Erich's lips and then he remembers. Oh yeah. He heard that story. Hector widens his eyes at Erich all good-natured Dude! Shut up! and then slips into his wolf skin.

And away we go.

Hurricane

Erich's attempt to make light of the second to last mission these two Shadow Lords were on together is met with a quiet look and a slight smile. "I shall remember that next time." Then she shifts, melting down into her small, graceful, lithe lupine form, dark black and grey and shadowed. And turns her attention to the airport.

Ruby

Slipping through the Gauntlet isn't much of a slip this time. It's a dragging, shadowy mess, and Ruby seems relieved by the time she makes it to the other side, and finds the others waiting for her.

It's not like Forgotten Questions here. Javed said the Umbra would be vastly different depending on where one was -- and he was right. There is so little beauty here. Easy to see where darkness could fester in a place like this.

The others are changing form, and she does as well, becoming another Anubis-headed monster to match Javed. If this form is needed, it will be needed, she imagines.

Otherwise, she stays silent, looking to the others -- to Hector -- to lead.

Storm's Teeth

Well, that went better than it could have. Erich, encouraged, gets this sort of lopsided half-grin on his face.

And then he pops into his bigger-than-wolf form. A little more gracefully, and with a little less ... straining ... than he'd popped across the Gauntlet. His fur is dappled grey, which fits his bloodlines and that blond-blue look and even the smell of his breeding. It doesn't fit with the fact that he and Ingrid are, in fact, tribemates.

And, flanking Hector's smaller, leaner wolf-shape, he lopes airport-ward as well.

sinister guardians.

This is what you get when you bring three full-moons and the most anti-social ragabash ever with you, Hector. This. Is what. You get.

Awkward social situations.

--

Ruby gets there with them, the Garou shift, and from there it's on to Denver International... which looks different on this side of the veil, naturally. There's not a constant stream of cabs and shuttles and buses going to and fro. There's a ghostly wind of movement, an energy that heightens as they come closer, but that is not their goal. They need to get inside.

Which is not difficult. They enter from the west. Some claim that Denver International sits on far more land than it could possible need, acreage it does not use, acreage set aside "in case they expand". Not everyone believes this, but not everyone is a sane and rational individual.

Some of those not-as-sane, not-as-rational individuals say that DIA took too long to build and was too costly and had so many problems and occupies so much space because it is actually an underground military base. Oh, and don't forget: a civilian detainment camp.

The granite for the floors came from all over the world. The roof material supposedly reflects sunlight and doesn't, itself, conduct heat. So you can't see heat signatures, the lunatics say.

Lunatics.

That's what they are. What all garou are.

--

They run, and they cover great distance. They go inside, and they see echoes of what some of them know to be here: the strange murals, the time capsule with the Masonic emblem, the sculptures... not just Blucifer, but things like the gargoyle in a suitcase who sits high atop a plinth, watching over baggage claim.

Except here, these things glow with a strange light and warmth. Here, they shimmer and seem to move where they stand. Sometimes the people in the murals seem to be breathing. Shifting their eyes. Watching the Garou pass by.

They do nothing else.

Storm's Teeth

By the time they get into the airport's umbral reflection, Erich has chosen to go back the other way and revert to his near-man shape. Just feels more right, walking upright through an airport. He stops and stares back at some of the paintings, squinting as he sidesteps back and forth to see if they really were moving their eyes. He looks distrustfully at the gargoyle, and then -- he does what everyone always wants to do but no one's allowed to:

he runs around the baggage claim conveyor belt. He rides it almost until it carries him behind the scenes, but hops off at the last minute and then jogs to catch up with the rest.

"I wonder if those x-ray scanner machines are all Awake and perverted," he says. Growls, actually, because this form can only really growl. "I heard about them, they take naked pictures. Ugh, TSA. Where are we going, Heck?"

sinister guardians.

There are people lying in coffins. There are doves and soldiers. The murals are strange and unsettling.

There are also giant 'paper' airplanes that normally hang stationary but here swoop and fly around the air, dipping and soaring without ever needing to be thrown. Mostly they coast, not at all playful, but as though doing surveillance.

The gargoyle unrolls his tongue at Erich, the claws that he is holding up to his face twitching.

Down below, down escalators and stairs and elevators, where realmside there are trains, there is only... darkness. Halfway down the stairs and escalators, there is nothing but a shifting fog made of pure shadow.

Javed Anubis-Sight

He moves along, keeping pace with the others with the other Strider by his side. Like a lord and lady of the Underworld marching into this strange and terrible place amidst the other Garou. As always, his expression is largely impassive, although just a touch more unleashed when he's in his breed form. There's a bit more of the monster, a bit less of the man. This results in slight growls at the people in the coffins, the airplanes in particular. But not so much as to draw attention to them...just under his breath.

The murals, the other echoes...this things get suspicious looks from the Fostern. But he doesn't allow them to distract him from keeping his path with the rest of the group. No one splits off, at least not unless that is the plan at some point. He looks at Erich when he asks their direction, and then back to Hector.

Echoes of the Lost

Hector has never been in the Denver International Airport. He hasn't flown in an airplane since he was a teenager and his mother swore she was never doing that again because of how big of a pain in the ass he was.

Anyway - he has no clue what the place looks like on the other side but it stands to reason the murals and the statures are just as weird and creepy realmside as they are over here. All he has are maps he'd looked at once and memorized.

As they trot along Hector loses one of them. Doesn't stop exactly but orbits around the others to see where Erich went off to and when he sees the adventure he's having with the luggage conveyer the Galliard sneezes and keeps moving.

Where are they going?

Hard to translate wolf-speak into English. The Uktena just barks once and low. Hold up. Figures he wants to keep moseying on down the escalators. Figures he wants to get near the fog before he does anything else.

Hurricane

Ruby shifts into another form with greater senses not-so-great as her Lupus form, but still greater than her weak human form. One thing she'll notice, what they all notice but three of them have grown accustomed to, is that according to her nose one of them disappears. She can pick out the smell of the males, but the small dark female, she can see her, she's right there running nimbly at Hector's other side, gives off no scent whatsoever.

They get to the airport and Ingrid keeps to her four-legged form. Unlike most humans she feels comfortable in this one. She's not lupus-born, and given her graceful, elegant way of holding herself even in athletic gear, this form fits her like a favorite pair of pajamas, all warm and snug and comfy cozy.

They wander through to the baggage claim area. While Erich moves about, Ingrid explores in a different way. She sniffs at the conveyor belts, watches the paper planes swoop with cold golden, suspicious golden eyes, lays back her ears when she looks up at the gargoyle.

Erich asks their direction. Ingrid looks to Hector and when it looks like he's about to mosey on down by himself her ears flick back once. He is Alpha of this mission, his words are orders to be taken seriously. But still, she is a Ragabash, a hunter and a scout.

Alone? is her questioning yip when he nears the escalator after telling them to hold up.

Storm's Teeth

"Ugh," Erich sees the creepy fog. He drops to a crouch at the top of the escalator, one knee close to the ground, wrist balanced atop the other. Canid, he ducks his head and sticks his neck out to get a closer look at it, nostrils flaring as his sniffs more from instinct than any real attempt to get information. "Want me to throw something at it?"

Hurricane

[percept+alert (scents)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

Javed Anubis-Sight

[[Per+Primal Urge]]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Storm's Teeth

[Per+PU]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Echoes of the Lost

[perc + PU: woo! -3 diff because heightened senses]

Dice: 5 d10 TN3 (2, 2, 3, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Ruby

Erich gets an eye-roll from Ruby when he goes and rides the baggage claim. Because that's what we're here for, right?

Where Javed looks suspiciously at the murals, Ruby glares at them. Eyes, eyes, everywhere. What are they watching for? Ingrid and her no-scent barely register on the scale of weirdness in this place, at least to Ruby, the one who is so new to Umbral wandering.

And then, the fog. Twisted and black.

When she sees it, she growls out a response to Erich. "Ugh is right."

[Perc + Alert]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

sinister guardians.

[Something doesn't smell right. It isn't up here... everything seems generally 'normal', as far as the umbra goes. But down by that black fog, something smells strange. Slightly metallic, bitter on the tongue with each inhale.

Closer still and Ingrid can smell, distinctly, something reptilian, but like no reptile she's ever known to walk or slither the earth. There are remnants of what they found in the pit beneath Cold Crescent, that milkiness, that alien feeling.

She hears movement. And she can tell, where perhaps others may only guess: the fog does not go on forever.]

Storm's Teeth

Well, he doesn't get much of a read on the smoke monster. Oh, Lost reference, 10 points to Gryffindor! But at least he gets a pretty good vibe from the paper airplanes and the weird gargoyles and all that. Well, now he feels bad for thinking of them as freaky and weird. They're just guardians! They're just protecting!

Erich puts his palm on the ground for a second. And yes: in this form, his palm is hairy. The back of his hand is hairy too. His jawline is hairy. Everything is hairy, and also his canine teeth kinda stick out. It's just a moment of contact -- a moment of ... solidarity, almost.

Then: "Man, I wish Charlotte was here. Can anyone else talk to spirits? 'Cause all the planes and monsters and stuff," he waves at the gargoyles et al, "are kinda like guardians. I bet if we asked them nicely, they'd give us info."

Hurricane

The questioning note of that yip dips down into a low growl as Ingrid sniffs the air closer to the escalator. In her birth form she would be able to hide it, but there are too many tells in lupus. The way her fur twitches and her ears flack back, the way her tail lowers. She does not like this, does not like it one bit.

Smell bad, she says to Hector, just in case he or the others didn't catch it. Smell metal, smell lizard. Feel- she stops, ears twisting hard forward, hearing, listening. Her body lowers and her lips peel back in a low growl, but no, Ingrid. Growls don't necessarily tell people, comrades, party-members, Garou who will likely have to have her back soon, what lays down below.

She moves closer to Hector. He is definitely not going anywhere solo, he has his own personal Ingrid-shaped shadow.

Feel like bad pit under Cold Crescent. Fog not forever. Leaning her head over, she bumps his shoulder.

Storm's Teeth

"What smells and feels bad?" Erich, for one, is baffled. "The fog, or ... something in the fog? Dude, Ingrid, seriously, can you come back to human form for a sec so I can understand you?

"Also, if it's not forever," Erich goes back to staring at said fog, "where does it end? And uh. Is it safe to walk through? I still think we should ask the paper plane dudes. I bet they know."

Javed Anubis-Sight

The metis' nostrils flare and his eyes narrow. What he smells, what he senses...there is something not right down there. Much like Ingrid, his hackles raise. It makes his clawed fingers flex, almost like he wants to go down there and destroy whatever it is. But that is just his Rage reaction, and Javed strives so very hard to be its master and not the reverse. He follows the Ragabash's look to Hector and gives a nod.

"There is something down there, hiding," he rumbles in High Tongue. "Something very wrong."

Ruby

"Smells like metal. Bitter," Ruby says, adding her small bit to the proceedings, with words shaped wrong by a mouth that is shaped wrong.

She looks up at the paper planes, at the murals with their many eyes. Are they all watching for that cloud?

Echoes of the Lost

The Uktena does not stand there for a very long time. But he is thinking. The Ragabash beside him can see his ears twitch and the muscles in his legs and back twice and his nostrils twitch. Her tribesman has a good suggestion. Why don't we try asking the spirits.

Echoes of the Lost can and does talk to spirits. But he came in here to physically see what the hell is going on.

He shifts back into his human skin so that when he gives his orders the human-born among them understand. A lanky long-haired kid stands before them for a matter of seconds.

"Ingrid and I are going in," he says. If she objects to this now's the time to say so. "If we're not back in five minutes, you get down there, and you save our asses."

He taps her shoulder with the back of his hand and starts forward. For the horde and all that.

Javed Anubis-Sight

Javed's Crinos maw sets at that, his shoulders tense, his hands go to fists. A sound like a suppressed growl of dissatisfaction can't be held back. Most everyone here has seen him in combat; his actions are always as a protector. So to be told along with two other Ahrouns to stay back while the others go down into danger...it galls and frustrates him deeply, just about to the point of anger. And he even narrows his eyes a little.

But he doesn't disregard the Galliard's orders. What he said to Ruby applies to him as well. This is Hector's show, and it is his call. The Leader Shall Not be Challenged in Wartime.

"Five minutes. I will count to the exact instant and then we go."

Hurricane

Erich wants Ingrid to shift to her birthform so that he can understand her, but they are on a mission so she will not. They are investigating and for that she needs her senses to be acute. And besides, Javed and Ruby begin to fill in the gaps.

Hector says it's her and him against the fog and she gives him the most incredulous look a wolf can give to another wolf. She doesn't contradict him, however, only says, Five minutes too long.

A lot can happen in five minutes. A lot can happen in five seconds. It took less time than that for Erich to take her to the ground, and he's an ally. A foe would kill her where she lay.

On the last low whuffle, Ingrid snaps her teeth on a nearby shadow and gives it a tug.

[Shadow Weaving, dex+occult, diff 7]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Ruby

Ruby nods to Hector, a sharp movement. Save their asses? Sure. Will likely have to do that, yes, if he's decided on splitting up. That's the way these things usually go. Perhaps Ingrid, with that no-scent of hers... Maybe they'll go without notice.

Ruby, for her part, watches. Watches the eyes around them. Watches for what? Shadow Fog calling for backup?

The wolves should have eyes as well.

Hurricane

[whoops, she also spent a gnosis on that gift!

Storm's Teeth

"Er -- so. Still waiting for an answer here." Erich, unlike Javed, isn't known for his restraint and silence. "Can anyone talk to spirits? 'Cause I still think maybe we should ... talk ... to the guys who are here 24/7 before we barge into that evil-looking fog.

"I mean, Hector, not meaning to stomp all over your leadering or anything -- 'cause you're doing a good job, IMHO -- but remember how you stopped me from offering to jump into the Pit? Well, I'm gonna suggest that you stop yourself from walking into the Smoke unless we absolutely can't get any info out of these plane."

And on that note, he stands, turns, looks at those patrolling planes. Funny sight, really: hairy cro-magnon Erich furrowing his low cro-magnon brow.

"I mean they're spirits that live in an airport and look like paper planes. I bet they'd even understand a little English if we had no other choice."

Javed Anubis-Sight

He looks over at Erich when he speaks up. He agrees with the sentiment, clearly, by his initial reaction to the Galliard's plan.

"I cannot speak with spirits," he says, before he looks back to Hector to see how he responds to Erich's argument.

Echoes of the Lost

"The planes aren't going anywhere," he says.

Extra incentive not to die, then.

"Just keep them company until I get back. They straight up kick you out of the tribe if you don't walk into the smoke, dude. You don't even know. I don't want to have to ask Unicorn to adopt me."

Okay. He's going. Sorry Erich :(

Storm's Teeth

"NNNNGH." Erich literally balls his fists up and shoves them under his arms and squeezes his arms across his chest and makes exactly the sort of face one would imagine goes along with an NGGGGHHH sound.

Then bursting: "Well, wait, at least gimme that burr thing Ingrid gave you! So we can find you guys if we need to!"

Hurricane

Ingrid, more shadow than ever before, shifts and twists her head around and digs at her side like she's digging at a flea (but we all know Ingrid does not have fleas, fleas would not dare). When she straightens around again, she very. carefully. presses her muzzle into the side of Hector's thigh, depositing another little burr into the fabric of his pants.

Then, she gives a Galliard a look upward. Me scout. Me first. She's already mostly shadow, anyway. She waits until someone left behind activates the burr on Hector (because giving it to Erich wouldn't help Erich find them), she makes her way carefully down the escalator.

[YOLO: dex (preternatural grace)+stealth (urban) -1]

Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 4, 4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

sinister guardians.

[something]

Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (3, 4, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

Storm's Teeth

Erich (or more likely, Javed or Ruby) activates the shit out of that talen.

And then Erich goes over to one of the bigger paper planes and, like. Starts trying to flag it down to communicate. Or something.

[okay guys! i have to bow out here. thank you for the RP, and thanks for the STing, kai! it's been a blast, and i wish i could stay longer :] ]

sinister guardians.

[Hector, roll strength, diff +1]

Echoes of the Lost

[SO STRONG]

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (6, 6, 9) ( success x 1 )

sinister guardians.

To be fair to Erich, and perhaps all of them: the guardians are freaky and weird. They are creepy. There are 'sleeping', or possibly dead children watching them from murals, gargoyles clawing their own faces, paper airplanes whose points are a bit too sharp-looking. But they are, it's true, protectors. Or vigil-keepers.

The Garou have turned their attention to the fog. The guardians, too. The gargoyle, moving slowly as all stone must move, creaks and shudders as its wings spread a bit, what would be a flutter if they were made of flesh.

None here can speak to spirits... or else none who can will say they can. The guardians remain mute, at least as far as recognizable words are concerned, and -- alone -- Ingrid and Hector descend into the black fog.

Where they will stay for up to five minutes before anyone will come to save them. Five minutes that Ingrid flat-out said wouldn't be enough. Five minutes to the second, Javed said.

Ruby knows, from quite recent experience, that five minutes is forever.

--

Ingrid and Hector walk down into the shadow that envelopes them like water. It feels cold, seeping into them, sliding and slicking up their legs, swallowing them as though it would drown them. The urge to take a deep breath is strong, almost impossible to deny.

Above, the paper planes have gathered over the heads of the ahrouns. They hover nearby, swaying side to side a bit. The gargoyle's claws rake slowly, raspingly down its stone face. The mouths of the children and women in the murals open, millimeter by millimeter.

Whatever is below does not see Ingrid. She doesn't see them yet, either, though. But they don't know about her, don't want her.

They have been waiting.

A clammy, rough hand the size of a crinos paw and tipped with claws just as sharp grabs Hector's ankle beneath the black fog. The tips of the claws dig in, but not to harm. It is quick, lighting quick, thunder strong, yanking the galliard down into their home, their place, their turf.

--

Ingrid right at that moment is only a couple of feet past Hector into the fog. She can barely see the people above her. She can not see anything below.

The ahrouns see only the disappearance of Ingrid,

and the far too sudden, far too sharp way that Hector just

goes

down.

Javed Anubis-Sight

No pause. No shocked look. No momentary snarl or howl or tension.

Hector vanishes too quickly, and Javed leaps into the fray.

Hurricane

Ingrid is a shadow, a ghost, not here, not there, nowhere. Hector activated the burr on her so that he could find her if they became separated, but it's a good thing she makes extras. She's not too far ahead of Hector when the Galliard goes down, and then she's trying to get on top of him, or catch him by the shoulder, dig her teeth into the young man's soft fleshy shoulder and arrest his disappearance.

Ruby

The planes aren't going anywhere, he says. Yes, that would be the point. They aren't going anywhere, so why not ask for directions first?

But it's not like the new Ahroun knows how to speak Paper Airplane. They swim in the air, sharp white fish suspended and swaying, like they're trying to say something in bee-dance.

And then, the message becomes all too clear -- when Hector drops.

A lot can happen in five minutes. A split second is all that's really needed. A split second is sometimes all you really have.

And she takes nothing more than that split second to decide to hell with orders. She flies down after the missing.

sinister guardians.

And just like that, Hector is out of sight. Ingrid is the closest, the first to react. She lunges, guided by scent and sound and the feeling of movement, grabbing Hector by the shoulder. She feels his blood rush hot and warm into her mouth, feels him twitch, feels fur rush over his body as he changes his form. Oh, he's fighting, but not fighting her. He's kicking, snarling, raging at whatever is down there, as

with one motion, the three full moons who were told to wait behind lunge. The guardians behind them are moving, flitting through the air or moving heavy stone wings or crying out mutely from paint on the wall, but they dare not descend into the fog.

Halfway down the escalator is where the fog begins, and halfway down the escalator is where Ingrid is furiously trying to keep Hector from going any farther. The ahrouns, protectors though they all are, were never meant by Gaia to be the ones who grab the little babies and take them back to their mothers. They were never meant by Luna to be the ones who stand stoic forever at the gates.

They are the ones who go to where the threat is. They do not wait for it to come. They seek it out. They rip open its throat. The threat never comes to the door. The enemy never lays a hand on the child, because the ahrouns

slaughter it

before it gets a chance.

--

That doesn't always work out. But today it seems to; they throw themselves into the fog, fur and fang and claw, and Ingrid's rapid grab at Hector may hint at her position to the enemy, but it also gives him enough leverage to shift, to grow in strength, and cast off his enemy

so he can go where the ahrouns go. So Ingrid can stop saving his sorry ass and do what she does best.

--

Beneath the roiling, shifting black fog, the garou discover that they can see again. Several inches, maybe even a few feet, thick, the fog is just an overcast to what is beneath. It looks nothing like the bottom of DIA. There are no concrete floors, no trails. There are tunnels where trains might go. There are overhead lights more ancient than the building's mid-nineties origins would suggest, because they are the sort of lights that people associate with secrets, with underground lairs. Lights that flicker and dim at inopportune times. Lights held in metal cages. Lights that sometimes seem to sear your eyes, scream sharply into your ears.

They are surrounded by creatures that do not resemble aligators except in the composition of their flesh. They are surrounded by beasts whose claws mimic that of a warformed garou. They are surrounded by monsters who do not resemble aliens but for their enormous black eyes, their round heads, their sharply pointed jaws. Things that do not resemble dinosaurs but that they are upright, and they have tails, and their hind legs bear sharply curving, wicked hook-claws on the heels. Their mouths are small and bear only a single row of tiny, yellow-stained fangs. Their eyes are empty but intelligent. At least moderately so. Like drones in a hive, they think, these animals who are not hive-minded at all, but who understand the work of bees and ants.

There are three times as many of them as there are wolves.

Fuck.

--

Ruby is not the first to feel one of those insane claws raking a huge hole in her belly; that is Javed, whose torso is opened up. He feels his intestines move toward the outside of his body. The others fucking see it, which may be worse. Ruby gets a piercing hole in her hind leg, pinning her to the ground before Erich, eager as ever, grabs hold of that particular monster's arm and shakes it like a toy until the arm just... comes off in his jaws.

Ingrid can go home satisfied. She beheads two with her sword, another with her jaw or her bare claws. Hector keeps doing that thing he does, jumping in front of Ingrid or Ruby before a blow lands, and he will not walk out of here without help.

Javed and Erich grab one, tail and shoulder, and tear it in half. It is wrenchingly satisfying. It is also gruesome.

Ruby does not get her first kill. Not her first solo kill. But by god, she helps with plenty of them. Jared has run off; he can't handle this. He never could. But something in her feels savage joy every time a bite lands, every time she feels flesh tearing under her claws. It's a little sick, that she feels that way. But it's also good. They can't be okay. They can't be good. All those worried guardians overhead. The way they attacked Hector out of nowhere. Like they were lying in wait for him.

By the middle of the battle they've already figured out that the things are hungry.

The bite one takes out of Ingrid's arm... well. It stares at her with those endless black eyes, chewing, swallowing, lunging at her for more before she impales it on her sword, pinning it in place

where it just so happens Erich disembowels it with one last bite. Neither of them make a Like Old Times joke. No one does; it's likely that no one will. But for his trouble, Erich gets one latched onto his back, riding him around, trying to eat him throat first, and that one is strong and heavy and Erich is gushing blood from the wound. It's actually Ruby and Hector, who happen to be closest, who tear the thing off of him and get it to the ground, biting at it until it stops moving.

It takes them longer than usual to kill these things, with their tough hides and evil claws. And the sheer number of them. But they do kill all of them, every last one, even if Javed is holding a hand-paw over his middle to push his guts back in and even though Erich might have died under one more bite and even though Hector is bearing the wounds for at least two other garou and Ruby's hind leg has a fucking hole in it and Ingrid's sword-arm is nearly torn off at the elbow.

They won't last another round. Not unless there's just one or two of those things.

And from the sound coming through the tunnels, it's a lot more than just one or two.

--

Hector calls for a retreat. These things aren't of the Wyrm. But they are not allies of the Garou. They are hungry, alien creatures

who do not chase them above the fog.

One last claw reaches up, raking down Hector's leg where he was first grabbed. But they are not pursued beyond that layer. Gaia only knows why. Their hunger was everything, all-consuming, like the Devourer, but

not of this world. Not of this Triat.

an important job, but not one that keeps you popular.

Erich Storm's Teeth

So Erich calls Avery wanting to meet, and over the phone he sounds all nervous and excited and can't-sit-still-y. They set a place (Cold Crescent) and a time (now) and agree to meet. He thanks her, several times, and then hangs up.

Now he's there. 43rd floor, not camped out the way he used to back before this place was an official Sept again, back before it had real Guardians up on the floors, back when he put his sleeping bag and randomcrap over in the corner near the outlet and texted people howling about being bored. Now: just standing by the window, occasionally bouncing on his toes a little, trying not to cast that challenge mat too many glances.

When he sees her, Avery would justifiably expect him to burst into exuberant wolf-form and go prance all around her. He manages to contain himself, though, and instead just jogs over grinning. "AVERY-RHYA!" he yells, and then there is a bear hug, which in turn is followed by: "So, I'm gonna challenge. Like to level-up."

Avery Chase

Let's be honest: Erich being excited and animated and mobile is hardly that uncommon or unexpected or out of character for him. Avery merely sounds delighted, despite his nervousness, and not amused by it, not mocking it. Just happy, of course, to hear from him. She tells him she's been quite busy with some launches, openings, and of course the patrols that always need to be done. So they meet at Cold Crescent, so she can do two things at once: talk to Erich, and do her duty.

Avery comes up the elevator and steps off, wearing her dedicated gear, but currently shrugging out of the hoodie because, well, it's a bit bloody. He sees, perhaps for the first time, the scar over her left breast, revealed only in part by the scooping neckline of her tank top. He sees, if he sees her back, the small discolored scar of the exit wound. It is always startling, to see someone so otherwise perfect so marred. She smiles when she sees him, her hair disheveled, her body unwounded.

"Storm's Teeth," she says happily, as he's jogging over.

He hugs her. Big and tight and excited. She huffs a laugh, waiting for him to put her down -- as his hug did, indeed, lift her up an inch or two. She tips her head, reaching up to undo her bun and shake her hair out while he tells her he's! Going! To Challenge! Like to level up!

Avery's grin is large and bright. "Why, Erich, that's wonderful! When! And who are you going to challenge? Where! Come, we're going down to the dormitory to wash my jacket and you'll tell me everything," she adds, turning, smoothly looping her arm through his, walking him back towards the elevator.

Erich Storm's Teeth

The fact that Avery saunters in DRIPPING BLOOD doesn't alarm Erich. It doesn't send him into a protective frenzy either. She is, after all, a Fostern and a Judge of remarkable combat prowess. A Lawman, you might even say, with all the connotations of justice won with the barrel of a gun, or the edge of a sword, or the tip of her teeth.

He does note it, though, and as she's asking when-who-where-let's go down to the dorms he's asking her, overlapping the end of her words, "So what'd you run into? Man, I bet they wish they never met you. I bet you just ruined their night," saying this admiringly, happily, like this is an awesome thing. Which it is.

"And," they step onto the elevator, which hasn't had a chance to depart the level yet, "soon. Probably here? I mean, we all put so much into getting this place back up again, it seems dumb to run off to Eff Cue to challenge. As for who, well. That's kinda why I wanted to talk to you?"

The elevator is humming downward now. And Erich is leaning against the rail, gripping it lightly in both hands, looking at Avery. " 'Cause honestly, I'd love it if you'd oversee my challenge. I'd be honored, really. But ... I don't know if that's appropriate. I kinda think maybe it's not?"

Avery Chase

Please. She is hardly dripping blood. It's just a bit on her jacket! Calm yourself, Erich. Calm your silly towheaded self.

She bats a hand at his questions. "It was just a snively little thing on the other side. It's surprising that they even have blood, can you imagine? I suppose it's part of the way to purely imaginary blood, so perhaps it will just wash right out. Now enough about me," she says, with some insistence. Tsk, Erich, she's asking you questions!

Avery presses the button for a lower floor, slipping her arm from his again, listening as he finally answers her. She smiles to hear that he wants to challenge someone who has come to protect Cold Crescent, and looks at him as they begin their brief descent. As for who, that's why he wanted to talk to her!

Her eyebrows lift at that.

They lower, and draw together, when he says he'd love it if she did it. She shakes her head, even as he's saying it might not be appropriate. "No," she confirms gently for him, as the doors open again, "it's really not. Erich," she goes on, stepping off the elevator, "I'm neither your tribe nor your auspice. Unsettlingly, my packmate is a fostern of your moon. I think it would be inappropriate if that weren't the case, but it would be a mark of disrespect from both you and I to Javed if I accepted your challenge, and a mark of dishonor to you if you presented it officially."

She lifts her brows at him again, not displeased with him, nor even strictly disappointed, but chastising, all the same. "So it is a good thing this is just a friendly conversation," she says, wink wink. They walk, turning a corner towards the dormitory's laundry facility. "All the same, I'm flattered that you would even think of it. I do treasure our friendship, but it could also be seen as bias in your favor. I would be happy to help you consider other options, if you'd like."

Erich Storm's Teeth

"Sometimes I actually feel bad for the really little ones," Erich says, regarding snively little things. "Like the ones that are obviously just graduated Wyrm College like... a week ago or something, and just have no idea what they're doing? And they're all OH LOOK A WOLF I'M GONNA EAT YOU OH GOD OH MY GOD YOU'RE EATING ME."

That's about when Avery says enough about me, and so -- that's where that tangent stops. They talk about the challenge, and whether or not she'd be appropriate, and she answers with a gentle but rather firm no.

"Yeah, I thought that'd be the case," Erich replies, mildly disappointed but largely un-crestfallen. He really had thought it would be the case. He just, well. Wanted to give it a shot anyway. Just in case his understanding of decorum and law was flawed.

"I was sorta thinking another Shadow Lord, in that case. Just 'cause I don't really have that close a relationship with my own tribe? And I think it'd be nice if another Lord could take a look at me and be like, yup. You're up to snuff."

Avery Chase

Avery can't help but laugh. Wyrm College. Just graduated! She can just imagine the wormy little things tossing their caps up in the air. It's ludicrous. She goes on laughing, shaking her head at Erich's portrayal of a terrified sniveling things, oh god oh god.

But they go on. And the laughter does make the Bad News a little easier to take for both of them. At least she isn't appalled that he was even thinking it; after all, they are friends. She is a Fostern, and trustworthy one, and it's not out of turn for Philodoxes to manage the challenges of even garou outside their auspice. It's just... in this particular case... it would be even more strange.

"I think you're quite right," she tells him, opening a washing machine and tossing in a packet of detergent and spraying some stain remover all over the hoodie, which is still wet from that spurt of blood the sniveling little thing from Wyrm College let out when she slammed her paw down on it, piercing it with one wickedly curved claw.

"You are a full moon of Thunder," Avery tells him, tossing the hoodie into the warm water, closing the lid, turning to him to meet his eyes, "and sometimes you seem as though you aren't entirely sure what that should mean to you." She shakes her head. "I don't think it's simply about being told that you're up to snuff -- the spirits and the nation know your renown, Erich. You already are up to snuff. It's about understanding what that means within your tribe. Our tribes are not the only things that define us, but... they are a deep part of us, transcending even the bonds of family. I think you know that better than most."

Erich Storm's Teeth

That,

not her gentle refusal to accept a dishonorable challenge, nor her reminder that such a challenge would be dishonorable, nor even the subtly sad thought that maybe the wyrmlings they fight are just misguided and stupid and don't really want to die either,

but that, the reminder that one's tribal ties can transcend even the bonds of blood: that makes Erich's crest fall a little. It makes him quieter, and a little sad. He nods as she starts her laundry. "Yeah," he agrees. "Unfortunately.

"And you're right. I was never really around Shadow Lords -- or even just Garou in general, really -- enough to know what, if anything, being a Shadow Lord Ahroun is supposed to mean. And honestly? I think some part of me is afraid that it means I'm gonna have to be cruel and cunning and always calculating five moves ahead, and not trusting anyone, and always putting myself first, and stuff like that."

Avery Chase

She picks up on that ripple of sorrow, and her brows draw together as she looks at him, the washer starting to pick up speed. Her head tips slowly to one side, and she reaches out, resting her hand on his upper arm. "And the rejection of others, whether family or tribe or sept, does not define us entirely, either," she says quietly. She gives his arm a small squeeze, then withdraws, nodding toward the door. "Let's see what's in the kitchen."

Maybe they drift that way, then, as Erich is telling her what he's afraid of. "You told me, once, that you imagined that the worst thing that could happen if your family member turned out to be another tribe was if they were a Shadow Lord," she tells him quietly.

Her head shakes a little. "That made me so sad. Because you are a Shadow Lord, Erich, but that does not change who you are. I do not think that all Shadow Lords fit that awful stereotype. You certainly do not have to."

Erich Storm's Teeth

"Well, good," Erich says, lopsided-grinning. " 'Cause I don't want to. But, yeah. It'd be nice to understand my own tribe a little better. And figure out how I fit into that picture, and all. You have any suggestions? On who to challenge, I mean?"

They're making their way from the laundry room to the kitchen. They're moving through halls that just a few short weeks ago were silent and empty, almost creepy in the dead of night. It's different now. Life has returned, little by little, to this building. Erich wasn't the only wolf on the 43rd floor when Avery arrived. There are shrines there again. Avery's isn't the only load churning in the laundry room, and when they get to the kitchen, they'll find the fridge stocked with sandwich supplies and TV dinners collected on some trip to Costco or something.

"It's nice," Erich mentions. He nods -- well. All around. At everything, "that people are back here. It was really quiet for a while."

Avery Chase

Avery smiles at him. "I may have to start taking a closer look at the Shadow Lords in this city, so I can be of more help to you," she says, giving an odd little laugh as they reach the kitchen. She goes rooting through the fridge, hungry in that way where everything and nothing looks good to her.

"I agree," she adds, after he mentions the life returning to Cold Crescent. "There's a long way to go. Leaders to select. I --"

She pauses, glancing around, then looking at him. "I've been considering challenging as Master of Challenges," she tells him quietly.

Erich Storm's Teeth

"Okay well, if you find one that's just super cool, let me know." And he reaches past her to snag a five-pound tray of sliced honey-roasted turkey breast.

Definitely Costco.

And then! She confides. And he all but drops the tray of turkey, turning to her with an expression perhaps best expressed as :D!

"You. TOTALLY. Should." He's not very quiet about this. "I think you'd be awesome. And you should be something. Everyone looks up to you and listens to you anyway."

Avery Chase

Erich is beaming. Granted, Erich was super excited when she became a Fostern, and when she showed up, and when she existed. Erich is an excitable young wolf, who is coming up on not being so young anymore. She has no thought, whatsoever, that he will not destroy his challenge, conquer, return victorious and 'leveled up'.

He's not quiet at all, and she blushes, touching her face, fingers curled under and knuckles resting gently on her cheek. She smiles up at him, and she looks terribly charming, hair all askew and loose and coiled in memory of the bun she wore it in while fighting tonight.

"You don't think it's presumptuous?"

Erich Storm's Teeth

"No!" Erich almost looks baffled. "Why would it be? I mean this is our Sept, and you had a hand in making it a real Sept again as much as anyone. Plus it's not like you're a fresh Cliath who just rolled into town last week. You've been here for months, you've earned a rank here, not to mention the respect of pretty much everyone you've met. And everyone knows you're a really good Half Moon who respects justice and fairness."

A tiny hesitation, then. Tiny.

"Though," he adds, "I guess I'd be a bad friend if I didn't say this. Master of Challenges is a really important office, and maybe the one that Half Moons aspire to more than any other? 'Cept maybe the Sept Alpha. But ... sometimes it's the job that gets no thanks at all. 'Cause if someone wins their challenge then they figure it's 'cause they're awesome. But if they lose, sometimes they'll just blame it on you instead of sucking it up and admitting they weren't as good as the other guy.

"I'm not saying everyone's like that. But just. Yeah. It's an important job, but sometimes it's not one that keeps you popular."

Avery Chase

She smiles. "Thank you, Erich," and she means it, sincerely. Because he tells her the truth. He tells her even though he's excited and he thinks she should. "I suppose I would be very weak indeed if I allowed my popularity to choose my course, though."

She nods at the turkey. "I don't even want to make a sandwich," she admits. "Let's just eat the meat."

Erich Storm's Teeth

Erich nods. "And you're the opposite of weak. So yeah. Avery for MoC!

"And," he quips, "I've got a gluten allergy anyway. Let's eat."

you've earned the right, and ice cream soup is totally gross.

Charlotte

The building is flat and strange and glaring, with scrawling neon signs that flash and hum in a language Charlotte is not sure meets the definition of a language, and which she surely cannot read. Once upon a time it was the outpost of a long-vanished fast food chain (DAIRY DUKE, HOME OF THE MASHBURGER). Since then it has been home to, variously, a vaccuum-cleaner repair shop, a strip club, a head shop, and now this combination market / restaurant.

It is not as cold as you might imagine in Denver today and Charlotte stands outside the building with her thumbs hooked through the belt loops of her jeans frowning thoughtfully up at the strange sign, breathing in the peculiar mix of cast exhaust, fast food fumes, and the rather exotic melange of Central and South American and Southeast Asian cuisines to be found in the various mom-and-pop places up and down the Federal corridor.

Charlotte is dressed as she usually is, dedicated jeans, and a new Denver Broncos t-shirt since her Mexican Sprite one was ruined a handful of weeks ago, her winter coat open, her ubiquitous messenger bag, with all her tools and all her talens and all her treasures, slung rather negligently across her body.

"You've been here before?" Charlotte asks Erich, with a mixture of interest and skepticism, her pale blue eyes skimming his profile.

Erich

Erich was pretty sad when Mexican Sprite shirt got ruined. That might've been the night she came back healed up but still smelling of blood, which was also the night Erich just would not leave her alone. He kept finding reasons to come down from his loft, to visit her in her room, to bring her a mug of hot chocolate just 'cause he was making some for himself or poking his head in to see if she wanted to go get ice cream tomorrow or or or -- until finally Charlotte, in all her naivete and wisdom, understood that he just wanted to stay near his injured packmate the way all wolves do.

So he slept in her room that night, curled up at the foot of her bed in his wolf-shape. Which is rather large, all things considered -- way bigger than a pet dog, for one -- and pretty much ended up taking up half the bed. So it wasn't like she got very good rest. But still.

He felt better the next day, because she smelled better, and then they got ice cream and soon enough he sort-of-but-not-quite-forgot. Days went by; then this.

Ex-Dairy Duke. Now a buzzing neon-signed generic all-you-can-eat. The food isn't terribly good, but it's plentiful and it's cheap, and Erich seems to have a knack for sussing places like this out. He's locking up his car as Charlotte inspects the building. Bounding up on the curb beside her, he nudges her with a shoulder -- the impact softened through his heavy winter jacket -- and grins.

"Yeah. Once. It's good. C'mon." And he pulls the door open for her.

Charlotte

Charlotte eats the strangest things, sometimes. She also likes caviar and steak tartar and sweetbreads and champagne in teacups and there is no separating her strange and haunting purity from her spare and stark frame, at least not for the wolves, who know her blood and know her lunacy and know her promise and know the legacy of her ancestors as soon as they catch a glimpse of her: a nimbus of as yet untouched promise and divine, dividing madness. So, the lilting glance she sends winging upward in Erich's direction as he bumps her shoulder so familiarly could well seem tinged with a rather arch hauteur to any strange beasts who might happen upon the pair.

There are no strange beasts, however, just these two, and Erich of all people can see the quietly supple bend of light in her her eyes.

"It's weird," Charlotte is saying as she ducks in past Erich tonguing her cheek musingly as they walk into the little foyer and turn to slowly take in the setting. The gumball machines and half-broken crane game, full of dusty stuffed animals and cheap, gold-painted watches. ALL U CAN ATE EAT is written in four different languages on a posterboard sign.

"'Cos it feels all narrow and tangled and stifling but also different too," she continues, with a surprising degree of maturity, waiting for Erich the knower-of-things to show her the way. "Mutable.

"I like it."

Erich

"Really?" Erich perks at that. He hadn't really expected her to say that. Maybe she'd like the food or the fact that you could eat until your stomach burst after paying only $9.99, or maybe she'd like being here with him. But he didn't really think she'd like ... it. Whatever it is. This place. Its narrow tangled stifling mutability. "Aw, yay. I'm glad. I like it too. Don't use the bathroom though, if you really gotta go just ask the waitress if you can use the staff toilet. Anyway,"

there are two doors. To keep out the cold, and all. He pushes open the second one and they are inside that strange, flat building. The layout is simple: a bunch of tables and booths, and then -- near the double-swinging double-doors to the kitchen -- a setup of several buffet counters where entrees and sides and soups hang out under heat lamps, bolstered by wilted-looking salads and a softserve machine, which is in turn accompanied by toppings and poundcake and bite-sized cheesecake noms.

"We pay up front," he says. "I got it, don't worry. Then we grab some plates and just load up. And you can go back for seconds as many times as you want."

Charlotte

There are two doors. There were two doors in the Dairy Duke and two doors in Maeir's Sweeper Service and two doors leading into the strip club and everything else that has lived here before Main Home Buffet and Lounge. Where the lounge proper might be located is not precisely clear but -

Really? And, "Yeah," she assures him, an odd solidity in her tone. "It's like one of those lizards that changes its tongue depending on what it eats."

Charlotte ducks and she ducks again. Erich assures her that she needn't worry about paying and Charlotte was not ever worried about paying so she gives him a humming, spinning sort of look and allows him to pay. Even in the near-a-year since the creature ran away with him, she does not and has not worried about money. She receives an allowance. Sometimes she spends it all on caviar and pottery glazes and does not worry about when she will get more because she has never worried about that. And perhaps because there is that magic credit card that her brother gave her and which he pays, month after month, religiously. No matter what the charges, or where they are from.

So, "Okay," she tells him with equanimity, studying the buffet with her alien sort of interest while Erich takes care of the bill. Ahead of time. The clerk behind the counter hands Erich two plates still warm from the dishwasher and unleashes them on the steam tables. There are stranges in the room, but somehow even the hungriest of them find ways to stay at their tables or shift themselves away from the pressure of Erich's rage.

She wrinkles her nose when Erich warns her away from the bathrooms and is still sort-of-wrinkling her nose about that and says nothing more but: Charlotte will take the admonishment to heart.

--

Erich is the Ahroun. So Charlotte cedes pole position to him and follows him into battle, haunting his flank and watching as he fills and then overfills his place and maybe picks up an auxliary plate to go along with the primary plate. She's quiet, a flame of affection kindled in her eyes, animal and close. Pack. If he insists that she try the meatloaf Charlotte tries the meatloaf, but otherwise her choices are chaotic as strangely delicate as one might expect.

Erich

"I have never," Erich declares, "heard of lizards that change their tongues. I've heard of lizards that change their colors."

And so they descend on the spread. And Erich indeed fills and then overfills his plate with nothing but meat, meat, meat, meat and more meat. Roast turkey and bbq chicken and something stringy and tough that passes for beef steak. Sausages and bacon and kielbasa and ham. Meatloaf. Buffalo wings. Fried chicken. Fried catfish. Tiny, overcooked shrimp in a casserole, which he spends almost five minutes picking at because he doesn't want any cheese or pasta. There's one table where they serve each guest exactly one so-called lobster mornay, which looks more like large crawfish mornay. By the time Erich swings by, he has two plates already, and he is given his lobster on a third.

Which he then promptly overfills with more meat.

--

He is as laden as a bumblebee returning from the flower-fields by the time he comes back to their table. Three plates thunk down, and then he goes back to get himself a big cup of Sprite. American Sprite, not Mexican Sprite. When he comes back again, he's brought napkins and utensils and also straws, one of which he gives to Charlotte. Her plate, with its strange, chaotic, delicate choices, gets a stink-eye from him. Though in the grand scheme of things -- it's people like her, eating like birds, that make it possible for people like Erich to come here and chow down without bankrupting Main Home Buffet and Lounge.

(He hasn't figured the Lounge part out yet.)

"I heard broccoli is really bad for you," he says. "Like it'll constipate you for sure, 'cause it's too much fiber or something."

Charlotte

Charlotte's plate proper is arranged more for aesthetics than for any other reasons. There was no particular reason she chose one small teaspoonful of meatload and arranged it like an island sheltered by an umbrella-of-a-broccoli stalk and ringed by reefs of shrimp-casserole pasta gilded with its strangely orange cheese sauce. Erich did not scoop out all of the shrimp, two or three are sort of swimming in the little lagoon of barbecue sauce between the reef and the beach, and when Erich comes back with his Sprite, Charlotte trades him a straw for those handful of barbequed shrimp. And if her main plate resembles some sort of strange, outsider art diorama, by the time Erich returns with his Sprite Charlotte has returned with her Sundae. Which was created with a capital S. Soft serve fills a large bowl usually reserved for pasta, and is laden with a towering assortment of mismatched toppings, from skittles to candied peanuts, strawberry and peanut butter, hot fudge and pretzels and ever manner of sprinkles.

"Did you hear that from your stomach?" Charlotte is asking him, as she accepts a straw, tears the paper off with her teeth and blows the rest of the wrapper off the other end. "Or a real live person?"

Erich

Erich shoots Charlotte a pretend-scowl, which is pretend because, well, he can't really scowl at anyone who'll fish every last tiny shrimp out of a casserole for him. Plus: she is his packmate.

"Maybe," he says, which isn't an answer at all because he doesn't clarify which of the options he's maybe-ing. "Also, that ice cream looks AMAZING. I'm gonna make one after I eat. But I'm gonna do more fudge and no pretzels."

His mouth is already full. He is already eating. A lot.

"Hey," this is so casually casual that Charlotte, having spent near-a-year with him, likely knows at once that he's actually about to break some major news that he doesn't want to make deal about, just pretend it's not a big deal, "so I'm like, about to go challenge. For Fostern."

Charlotte

How do you FEEEEEEL about this Erich? (I can has empathy! WP because this is important.)

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 6, 6) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

Erich

[he is excited! and nervous! he's excited because after a very long time of being on the fringes and never quite feeling like he fit in, having a pack has really helped him feel like he has a place where he belongs. and having that grounding has enabled him to go out and commit to things like a city, a sept, etc. and that, in turn! has allowed him to gain the sort of acceptance and respect that he never really thought he'd have. and THAT, in turn, has empowered him to go and try to level up after SEVEN PLUS YEARS as a cliath.

but also: nervous. 'cause he's not sure he'll succeed. and he's not sure he's ready! and he's afraid he'll fail, and if he does fail, he's afraid that'll mean he actually does suck and doesn't belong and doesn't deserve to be respected etc etc etc.]

Charlotte

Charlotte is watching Erich over her meal nd wriggling about in her seat to check out the rest of the dining room. The people tucked away in their corners and the like, before she returns back to him. There is a sort of wary watchfulness written into her face and brow as she eyes the buffet attendants who drift out of the swinging-doors to the kitchen with steaming, stainless steel dishes of something to settle over the buffet.

All that wriggling stops when Erich is so casually casual and the teenager's sharp, pale eyes alight on him once more.

And stay there.

And sharpen.

Something about the intensity of the look feels lupine, wholly animal - the keenness, the committment to discovery - but Charlotte is not studying him with her strangely feral surety, but something else altogether. Human and selfish and selfless and strange.

Her generous little mouth is sealed a bit, the spreading curve of her strange expression pressed together.

Charlotte has a spoonful of sundae scooped out of the bowl but not yet lifted to her mouth and that spoonful lingers and starts to drip, melting from silverware back into the bowl.

"Good. You oughtta." This oddly sane, buoying surety in her eyes and in her voice, a maturity of spirit from which she absents herself so often. "If you don't wanna do it here in Denver I'm gonna go with you wherever you want to go. And I'll be there whether or not you make it.

"Losing a challenge isn't dishonorable, you know.

"Refusing one might be."

Erich

Something like relief, subtle but visible, settles over Erich when Charlotte assures him -- before he even asks! -- that she'll go with him. And be there. "Thanks," he says, sincerely and maybe just a bit shyly. "I asked Melantha if she could come along too. And she said yes. So like, I'll have you guys in the bleachers. Which is nice."

He hasn't stopped eating. Even talking about Serious Stuff like this, stuff that is clearly quite important to him even if he'd like very much to pretend it's not, hasn't averted him from his singular goal of stuffing himself like a turkey tonight. He eats turkey, he eats beef, he gnaws on a chicken wing and then he eats those hard-won shrimp by the spoonful.

A furrow-browed glance at her, though, when she points out that losing a challenge isn't dishonorable, but refusing one might be. "I can't tell if you're hinting at something?" he says, a statement that up-curves into a query. "I mean, with the refusing-might-be-dishonorable thing."

Charlotte

"I mean you're ready." Charlotte responds to him, quietly and seriously, with a mild stitch between her own brows. It does not correspondence to the furrow in his. Like the many iterations of All You Can Ate Eat, it is written in an entirely different language.

Charlotte's breath feels strange in her throat but she takes the breath and drops the sundae. The spoonful of sundae, back into its rapidly melting Lake Sundae bowl.

She is Very Serious but there's an alert, wolfish cant to her head as she studies him. "And now you know it. So if you make Fostern it'll be awesome. And if you don't make Fostern it'll be better than you think. It won't mean that you're a failure. Because you challenged and you'll challenge again. You've earned the right, and the only way you could really fail now would be to never try in the first place.

"See?"

Erich

"I do see," Erich says, all earnest: because he does. He does see that, he does get it, all that makes sense to him when someone says it to him or when he thinks it to himself. "But. Well. I'm still glad you're coming along. And Melantha. 'Cause if I don't make Fostern, I think maybe I'm gonna need you to tell me that again. Like five hundred times. Okay?"

And he reaches across the table, nudges her sundae at her. "It's melting," he reminds her.

Charlotte

"That's cool," Charlotte returns, with a rather bracketed little grin and a half-shrug of her spare shoulders. Aping someone else's language: perhaps his, perhaps someone long-since dead. "What I really wanted was ice cream soup."

Then, a spare flash of her eyes from behind pale lashes. "And of course we will. We're pack. We'll do it five hundred times plus one."

Erich

That flash of her eyes: caught, met, returned with a lopsided grin and, a moment later, a bump of his foot against hers. That's all the acknowledgment he gives, though, and perhaps all the acknowledgment he can give right now. In public. At a cheap buffet, where they've loaded ridiculous heaps of food onto their plates-and-bowls.

"Ice cream soup is totally gross," he says instead, or in lieu of whatever a more eloquent or mature creature might have said. "I bet your sprinkles are gonna get soggy. You should go get one of those lobster thingies. They're pretty good."

Charlotte

Charlotte rolls her eyes a bit. There's nothing gross about ice cream soup. It's the same stuff just no longer frozen. It's like saying that ice is amazing but water is gross. So: a roll of her eyes probably for Erich's denouncement of ice cream soup, of which she slurps a whole giant spoonful just to tell him that she is a rebel or something and does not care whether or not her sprinkles get soggy. They're still sprinkles.

They're still delicious.

But lobster-things, her sharp little chin rises and she glances over Erich's shoulder, following the drift of one of those workers past the steam tables to the lobster-thing-station, where they hand out the lobsters in their sad little glory,

"Maybe I will."

And maybe she does. No: actually she does, slip out of the booth and walk across the cheap little restaurant to take her single-allowed-lobster-plate. Brings it back and sets it down on the table, where she returns to consuming her melting ice cream.

It will not be long until Charlotte will be full, nudging that lobster back toward Erich, sharing the choice part of their odd, all-too-human kill.

SOMEONE MUST BE CUTTING ONIONS.

Erich

[STOP TRYING TO BAKE ME *SOBS*]

Erich

It is morning, and it is a day that Melantha doesn't have to go to work, and Erich knows this because he asked the night before. And it is a brilliant day outside, the skies clear and blue, the ground only spotted now with snow. It's forecasted to be in the fifties today, which is t-shirt weather, which might be why Erich is in a t-shirt. And jeans.

And also, on the ladder beside Melantha's sleeping nook, his forearms folded along the edge, chin on his figurative paws. When she sees her waking, he quite literally perks up.

"Morning," he whispers. And before she's even had a chance to rub her eyes: "So ... I think I'm about to challenge for Fostern."

Erich

[WHAT THE HELL, DENVAR. *LOL*]

Melantha

Erich asks a lot. They don't have a shared calendar on their phones or anything; they do have a new 2014 calendar printed on recycled paper and full of semi-surreal black and white photographs. Melantha has started writing her shifts on that, so when she's not around to ask, Charlotte and Erich can sniff around the paper and find out if she will be there, if she will be gone, when she is coming homehomehome. She is not working most mornings because they like her on closing shifts and she is not working at all today, and so she is sort of sleeping in, her curtains pulled because it helps keep her alcove warm. There is a banana peel near the ladder with a half-eaten banana in it because she got too sleepy to finish eating it last night.

Her coworkers kept her a little late last night to do some shots. And she did. And came home a teensy bit drunk but happy, flushed, and trying to explain jokes that only make sense to drunk people before she fell asleep with her banana and her mason jar of water by the bed.

She yawns deeply, rolling over, and that is when Erich perks, quietly climbing. And she's still sleeping but he waits! And pokes his head and elbows under the curtain. And she starts to wake up for real! And he brightens, telling her morning, and telling her what he obviously could not wait to say to her.

She has rolled over again, facing him now, smacking her mouth a little, quietly, bleary-eyed and drowsy. She yawns again. Blinks slowly after he speaks. Sniffs. Blinks a little faster, wetting her eyes, opening them a little wider, seeing a little more clearly.

"Tha's cool," she mumbles, and smiles at him. "You wanna come up? You have to hand me my banana if you come up and not make fun of my breath."

Or she will push him off the alcove. Just try it.

Erich

He does want to come up. And his reply is physical rather than verbal: a lickety-split scramble up the ladder and under the heavy curtain that keeps her alcove warm. He all but tumbles onto the little loft with her, reaching down only on afterthought to grab her half-a-banana.

"That's so gross," he says of the banana. "Your mouth-germs must've been multiplying on it ALL NIGHT." But he hands it to her anyway, and then he settles in next to her, the length of his body practically cramming in end-to-end, his arm coming around her shoulders.

"I still don't get that joke you told last night," he adds. "Something about dishwasher soap and rocket fuel."

Melantha

She sniffs, taking the banana from him and scooting over to make some room for him. The loft has light in it from her little windows, her skylights, but she keeps her eyes half-lidded until Erich's big shoulders are blocking some of those rays. She takes her banana, uses the peel to take off the topmost brownish chunk, and takes a bite. "See, I cleaned the germy part off," she claims, "and they're just going back in my mouth with new friends, that's all."

Melantha chews her banana, sticks out her tongue, makes a NYAAAH noise to taunt him. Grins when she pulls it back, swallows.

She snuggles, too, scooting back over to him as he settles, turning around so her back is against his front and he's warming her up warmwarmwarm. "I think that was actually a story someone was telling about trying to make napalm and the hijinks that ensued. I don't remember why it was so funny! But it really was," she adds, taking another bite of banana and a drink of water. She twists her head a bit to look at him. "So what... prompted this sudden burst of ambition?"

Erich

"Oh, that's gross. That's so gross."

They scoot around some more. She puts her back to him. He turns on his side, and then they're basically spooning, and she talks about napalm hijinks and he listens all bemused and -

Then the over the shoulder look, which makes Erich get this surprised in the headlights look. He thinks a second; shrugs.

"I have the renown for it. And... I guess I've been thinking about what you said. About like. Being somebody. And what Avery-rhya said, like at the moot and also the night she punched me. About sort of the same thing. Being somebody, being worth something. And how Charlotte kinda has so much trust in me, and how other people actually... didn't scoff, and in fact kinda thought it was a good idea when I talked about getting Cold Crescent back up.

"I guess it just kinda felt like maybe... it was time. And maybe I'm, y'know. Ready."

Melantha

Melantha smiles to her that, nomming her banana. "I think you're totally ready. The only thing you really need is to think you're ready, yourself."

She rubs her forehead under his chin. "Sometimes you are pretty derp and think that you're not all that great, but you are. Great, I mean."

Erich

Erich gets the biggest smile on his face. Like the BIGGEST. And he puts his arms around Melantha and he keeps smiling and he gives her a close close close tight hug.

"I don't always think I'm great," he admits softly, "but you make me feel like I am."

Melantha

"You should feel like you are whether I do or not," Melantha argues, as she does, even though she sinks into that enormous hug with as little reservation as he breaks into that enormous smile. "Because sometimes I don't think you're great, or I'm mad at you or you're smothering me when I'm menstruating or you peed on the seat and I think you need something thrown at your head."

She smiles to herself, snuggling into his arms, using her free hand to hold and keep his arms over her chest. "I have a lot of faith in you," she says quietly. "And the only thing I'd change is for you to have more faith in yourself. So if hanging around me makes you feel more like you might be great, then... I should keep doing that."

She smiles. Broader.

Erich

"You should keep hanging around me regardless," Erich argues, because this is what he does too, even though they're kinda enormohugging and sinking together and grinning and stuff. " 'Cause I think you're great, too."

A small pause, then. A quietening, as he hugs her just a little tighter.

"You think maybe you and Charlotte can come with me when I go challenge? I mean not during the whole challenge, obviously. And probably not even when I actually go challenge. But just. On the way there. For moral support."

Melantha

"I do what I want," she argues back. And bumps his shin with her heel, because he's being all cutesy now and she isn't having it. But she doesn't make him stop hugging her. She just lazes in bed, being snuggled.

She smiles to herself. "You can ask Charlotte about that. But I'll go with you, sure."

Erich

He gets bumped. He mock-growls and gnaws her ear. Gently, of course. Then she lazes, and he grins, and she agrees, and he grins more.

"I will," he promises. 'Cause yeah. Charlotte is an independent thinking being. "But, yay. Maybe afterward, if I pass, we can go grab dinner. Like burgers maybe. I'll have a meatburger. Oh man, do you remember when KFC had those meatburgers? That was the best thing ever."

Only Erich would think that. EVER.

Melantha

No, Erich gets kicked. Just gentle-like. No big deal. And he growls and noms her ear, which makes her twitch away, burying her face in her pillow, grumbling. And if he passes they can get burgers. He'll get a meatburger. KFC!

Melantha makes a gagging noise. "That's so gross. Yes I remember that. And that was so gross. And we can get burgers even if you fail. And ice cream."

Erich

That makes Erich go quiet again. A different tenor of quiet. He rubs his nose against the back of her neck for a little while, then settles with a sigh that heaves his chest against her back.

"I really hope I don't fail," he says softly. "I mean it took ... it takes a lot for me to screw up the courage to say hey maybe I don't suck. And even if I rationalize it, I just feel like if I failed that'd be like a great big universal middle finger saying HEY YOU DO SUCK."

Melantha

Melantha twists around, rumbling under the covers, to look at him again. It was the way he went quiet, and the way he rubbed his nose against the back of her neck. And then that sigh, so heavy and deep, and the way his arms sort of tightened around her when his chest expanded with the breath. So she turns, resettling, and he tells her that it took courage for him, and a lot of it, just to think and then say aloud that maybe he doesn't suck. Her brow constricts tightly, painfully, to hear that.

Her arms go around his neck then, holding him tightly. As a pack, this is how they seem to cope when one of their number is sad and they do not know what to say or do. They hug veryveryvery tight, and hold on, like they are trying to staunch a wound.

"That is not what it would be," she says, firmly and insistently. "You don't suck, Erich. You never have. There is nothing wrong with you."

Melantha

[argh]

Erich

Of course she would react that way. Of course she would hold him tighttighttight and tell him, very firmly, that he does not suck. It's what he would do for her, or Charlotte, if either of them said anything so blatantly and painfully false.

Yet somehow this only seems to discomfit Erich. He winces a little; there's stiffness in his backbone, resistance in his body. He doesn't push her away, but his hands hold her arms for a moment like he might. Then he exhales again, relaxing a little -- the best he can -- into that embrace.

"I know that," he says, uncomfortable. "I mean, I want to know that and remember that and always believe that. But sometimes I don't and ... in a weird way, being told that almost just makes me feel whiny and weak and needy. Like I'm being all emo and sulking in a corner about how much I suck."

He rubs her arm a little. He puts his arm around her too, loose and heavy.

"I don't need to be told that," he says quietly. "I guess sometimes I need to be shown that? And sometimes I just ... need you guys to flank me to a challenge and then get burgers and ice cream with me afterward. Even if I fail."

Melantha

She told him she felt like a mess, and he held her tight and told her no. She can be clutter. But not a mess. And not so long ago, sensing vulnerability and fear in Melantha's frame, Charlotte all but tossed a plate of sandwich to the floor to hug her, tight like this, to let her know it was okay, and what she wanted was not bad and wrong.

Of course Melantha holds him, tight, and tells him that there is nothing at all wrong with him. He doesn't suck. That is dumb and a lie and so not true at all ever ever ever. She is sad that he doesn't relax in her arms, that he winces, that he is stiff. That she can feel him not pushing her away, which is different from holding onto her. So she withdraws a bit, leaning back, looking at him, her brow still furrowed, worried, maybe

a little rejected. But that's a little bit. Not mostly. That's not even close to being Mostly what Melantha is.

He goes on. And she smooths her brow. She gives a small, sad smile. "That's kinda how I felt the first... umpteen months after I got here," she tells him quietly. And maybe he remembers all the time that his comfort was cold to her, that it couldn't make a dent, that it didn't change how she felt at all. She felt so weak. She felt so whiny. She felt like a mess.

But his arm goes around her, and she hasn't really let go of him. Her arms are still loosely wrapped around his neck. "I'm going to tell you it anyway," she says quietly, right back. "At least: when you say stuff about feeling like you suck. Okay? Cuz I think it's important to tell you that you don't suck. That's what you did for me. Even when I couldn't really accept it."

Melantha leans in, holding him closer again, putting her head on his shoulder. "Just so you know," she whispers, "I don't care about rank. I know it's important. But all I care about is that you keep trying, and that you never let feeling weak and whiny and needy and emo and sulky stop you from doing what you think needs doing. Even if the whole world thinks you suck and the universe thinks you suck, which they don't, by the way --"

She pauses for a breath, sighs it out. "I will always flank you as long as you keep walking into the challenges."

She isn't, one can easily guess, just talking about rank challenges.

Erich

It's good that Melantha leans in, because otherwise Erich might have to come up with some really dumb excuse for suddenly not looking at her. And maybe suddenly looking up at the ceiling a lot. And maybe also asking about onions and who's cutting them.

But she does lean in. And he hugs her: and now that hug is veryveryvery tight, and he's turning his face into that incredible thick hair of hers, and his chest heaves against hers as he takes and releases another one of those big huge breaths.

"I know," he whispers, and if he sounds just a little tiny bit choked up, well, SOMEONE MUST BE CUTTING ONIONS. " 'Cause you're my real friend and my packmate and I love you and stuff."

Melantha

Pfft. She knows what it sounds like when someone's trying not to cry. She's hardly a dummy.

Her hand rubs over his scalp, cups the back of his head. Cradles him. Not because he's vulnerable like a baby but because he is precious like one. Because he is dear and he is special in a particular way to her that makes her both adoring and protective.

"Yeah," she says, to his explanation for why she'll always flank him. Her fingertips rub at his scalp a bit. " 'Cause that. But because I love you, not because you love me. I mean I know you love me. But the 'cause is because I love you."

Her head turns. She kisses him where her lips land: neck or head or ear or cheek. Whatever. She lays their heads together, closes her eyes, goes on holding him for a while. She cuts no more onions.