[Gwen Sullivan] Reading only took you so far when you holed yourself up in a house, or more to the point a particular room inside of a house. Several chapters in a novel could be consumed at a time before the entire experience became stale. You could shift from that to another activity-- painting, for instance, which was precisely what Gwen had done. Another couple of hours had passed before she'd gone downstairs and roamed the kitchen, had a chat with her parents, snapped a little too sharply at her elder brother for tugging on her ponytail playfully, and returned to her room with a cup of hot tea to continue her painting. But the moon shone too brightly through her window and made her ceiling feel low and her walls feel cramped. The smell of paint, something that usually helped her drift into the world she was painting, smelled unnatural and stung her sinuses.
She needed out. She needed to run. She didn't want to do so alone. Gwen knew where Cordelia lived, but a Kinfolk wasn't someone that you invited out to go roam the town, especially not with temperatures being so low, especially not after all the blood and mayhem that had come with the last evening that they'd come together to meet up. Besides, the Kin wasn't hers to take whenever she pleased, she was of a Tribe that she would never be a part of herself. The more she thought about it, the more she realized the only residences she really knew belonged to Kin. There was Kora and her pack's church, but she always felt a little out-of-place there. It was uncomfortable to sit as the odd man out while they lived together like a pack, something she wasn't a part of.
Which left another option that crept into mind while she wrapped a scarf around her throat and chin and tugged her gloves on at the front door. She remembered Howard, the Theurge with the curly dark hair and i-couldn't-give-a-fuck-less attitude, and after thinking between that and trying to remain peaceful and obedient at the Caern, she decided that the Fianna would make decent company for the evening. So she left with a call to her parents that she'd be back later (they never questioned where she went, she always came home intact [as far as they were led to believe]), and caught a city bus that took her out to the Bawn.
This came down to an essential knock at the door and seven-year-old questioning of 'Can Howard come out to play?'. As luck could have it, he happened to be hanging out at The Brotherhood of Thieves and was willing to come out into the below-freezing temperatures and roam the city with the teenaged pup.
So they hopped back onto a city bus, rode out away from the Bawn, and got out onto the streets in a neighborhood that crawled with gang activity and police cars that monitored the area as well as they could, if they weren't called into other ones to help with the innumerable crimes that occurred on a nightly basis in this city. Gwen, insulated in multiple layers with scarf, gloves, hat and boots to keep her warm whilst out, walked with a stride that suggested she had a destination in mind, even though she really just seemed to be hunting for an outlet. The moon was too close to full, it made her restless, and it showed.
"Thanks for comin' out," she said once they stepped off the bus and started up the sidewalk, hands in her pockets and shoulders hiked up to keep the scarf about her neck. "Walls were starting to close in, you know?"
[Heir of the Ruined Day] Howard is probably the worst person one could possibly choose to spend time with if all one really wants is to not be alone. Looking for a warm, quiet presence who will be a reminder that the world isn't so bad, and finding one's path led to Howard, means one of two things: he is going to pump substances into you until you can neither see nor walk straight, or he is going to talk so much that you will wish you had just stayed home and stared at the walls all night instead. When a person is looking for company, though, as Gwen is, when the walls have started to become too much and the only voice she's had all day comes from inside her head; if there are no expectations of etiquette, civility, or shame, then Howard Ivers can be vastly entertaining.
Plenty of people, however, expect him to be all of these things, for whatever unknown reason. As though any Cliath Fiann in the history of the Fianna has ever been possessing of manners or good decency. If they can manage to tie their shoes and not burn down half a city block in the course of their revels then it's considered a good night. Howard is, as far as Cliath Fianna go, one of the worst on record. The fact that he still clings to any sort of renown is telling: he has worth, but he chooses not to act on it. If given the choice between making sacrifices to Maelstrom and patrolling the Bawn and working to build a rapport with the spirits, or doing what he chooses to do with his time, he does this.
He gets high, and plays his guitar loudly and without care for the aesthetic quality of it, and answers the door half-naked when young, impressionable Cubs come looking for company.
It's later, not too much later, but later enough that he's managed to find clothing and get himself dressed to go out in the cold. He'd worn sunglasses to get from his room at the Brotherhood to the alleyway behind the kitchen, and they'd come off as soon as the light was dim enough that he could potentially function. They went back on when the bus pulled up to the curb and they boarded. He's been talking on and off since then, about things of absolutely no consequence, telling wild stories or making random observations about people and things around them, yet most of it has been amusing.
And now Gwen is thanking him for coming out. The walls were starting to close in.
"Do your parents know?" he asks, apropos of nothing. That's fairly standard amongst Theurges, even atypical breeds like Howard. "What you are, I mean."
[Gwen Sullivan] The impressionable cub was unphased by partial nudity, had been even before The Change and the shredding of clothes had become a regular occurrence for her. She'd waited for him to dress out in the common room, leaving her hands in her pockets while looking at the bookshelf and pool table thoughtfully. When he was ready to go, away they went.
Out on the sidewalk the flat bottoms of her black winter boots crunched on the half-melted ice and the salt that was there to take care of it. Her cream-colored wool scarf (now complete with a few stubborn flecks of blood stain that would not be washed away no matter how she tried) was snug around her chin, hat down over her ears with plain mousy brown hair poking out around the back and sides of her neck from underneath, and her gloved hands were jammed in the pockets of her thick canvas coat. Yet for all that her nose and cheeks were still braised red from the cold.
He was high, she didn't care. He was chatty and incorrigible, but she didn't mind in the least. She wasn't looking for someone who would be warm and pleasant, to talk about her feelings and dye highlights into her hair with. She just wanted a body, another one that understood Rage and the effects the largely-full moon had on it. Someone who she could talk freely with without worrying too much about being cuffed or throated. Howard seemed the best option for all that.
"No." She answered easily enough, in the same practical tone that she used on a daily basis. She was watching the sidewalk, the sky with its drifting clouds, and everything between. She was alert, and seemed to be able to pay attention to just about everything on the city block they happened to be occupying. Right down to the flashing blue and red lights reflecting onto the sidewalk and building sides of a narrow street up ahead. That caught her attention in the same way a car crash in the other lane catches the attention of daily drivers-- curiosity, sheer and simple, in seeing some damage as a separation from the dragging hours of the average day. "It'd be breaking the Veil, wouldn't it? To risk letting normal people in on the secret?"
That's followed immediately by a nod toward the lights and a hapless thought spoken aloud: "Wonder what happened up there."
[Heir of the Ruined Day] Flashing lights don't mean much to him. Sirens will catch his attention, but when he can't differentiate between colors, when he has to actually stop and figure out the make and model of the vehicle they're attached to it's all too much effort when he's sober. Now is not one of those nights. His sunglasses block out most light, anyway, so the strobe effect of the blue-and-reds is entirely lost on him. This might be something that he'd think would be pertinent to share with the people he goes out into the night with, but it either consistently slips his mind or else he just decides his little problem, like most else in his life that remotely resembles truth, doesn't bear sharing.
At any rate, Gwen is paying attention enough for the both of them. It makes sense. She is the Half Moon, even if she hasn't fully realized what this means, yet, even if she doesn't have the rank to hold any real sway over the Cliath next to her. If they were both Cliaths, perhaps, but in this scenario it ought to be Howard who is keeping an eye on Gwen, who is going to protect her from harm.
Before he can set the train of thought further down the tracks, Gwen wonders, aloud, what had happened up there. The taller Garou cranes his neck to get a better look, but something stops him from lowering his shades to attempt to clear his vision so he could, one would think, see what's going on.
"This neighborhood?" he asks, cynicism staining his voice. "Stabbin', maybe. What, should we go have a--" He stops walking without warning, his tone of voice executing an abrupt about face. "Oooh, that's a bad idea. That's a baaad idea. You know what happens you walk past the coppers smellin' like ganja and American English don't come out'a your mouth? They send you right back, man. Fuck."
[Gwen Sullivan] "If you're not talking with a south-of-the-border accent they assume you're legal, for the most part."
Her reassurance was matter of fact, and the words that followed were precisely the same, grounded with the sort of sense and logic that her Auspice was meant to have, solidifying the thought that you were precisely what you were born to be-- born a Philodox before you even knew what it was, the same with any other. It also leads you to wonder if she'd be a completely different person if her mother had needed a cesarean earlier due to complications and she'd been born under, say, a new moon instead. "Besides, if there was a stabbing or shooting or anything like that, I'm sure they've got a lot more to worry about than a couple of kids who smell like weed."
Still, her footsteps slow to something more idle and wandering as they approach the intersection where the lights bounced off the street and walls, enough in different patterns that there had to be several cars parked, lights flashing, on that street. Something big must have gone down.
They get within several yards of the intersection when a young man comes scrambling around the corner, shoes and hands skidding on the ice, tearing away from the scene as though the hounds of hell were chasing him. He was an olive-skinned kid, ethnicity likely blended enough that he gave the census workers a headache then they knocked on his door, with tattoos visible on his neck from under the collar of his hooded sweatshirt and his bare hands. His eyes were wide, panic stricken, and he made to push right through Gwen and Howard as though they weren't even there.
Some seven seconds after him came a pair of police officers, guns drawn, on the chase.
[Heir of the Ruined Day] They assume you're legal, for the most part.
"Those silly fat bastards..."
The conversation doesn't have much opportunity to progress beyond this scant back-and-forth exchange. Whatever it is that occurred prior to their arrival tonight, it necessitates the flashing of rooftop lights to warn away other drivers, to ensure that passersby are aware of the fact that officers are, in fact, responding to a crime and attempting to halt any further transgressions on their watch. As the pair of them draw closer, Howard's gaze narrows on the cars as they exist in the combined fog of his poor vision and his stoned inebriation.
With Gwen being considerably more grounded than he is, Howard takes cues from her despite her lower rank, her lower age, and her lower stature. She has found herself in the company of a young man who doesn't possess a considerable amount of respect for much of anything, with the Litany and the Nation coming in dreadfully low on the list of things he finds himself needing to pretend exist. There are documented instances of the young Cliath mouthing off to Garou far higher in station than himself simply as a matter of principle.
He doesn't have too many principles, either, so nobody can really claim to know what the hell is going through his head the majority of the time.
At any rate, a young man comes tearing ass around the corner, running faster than anyone thinks they're capable of running before they have the police chasing them, and Howard stops walking. The intent is to get the hell out of his way, but the kid isn't shy about establishing his escape route with or without a pair of bodies in front of him. It's when the police make their appearance, guns drawn, that he finally convinces his feet to move.
Howard takes Gwen by the wrist, his grip not at all tight, and tugs as he steps to press his back against a nearby building.
[Gwen Sullivan] The young man skids shoes on freezing cold pavement as he rounds the corner, and Howard stops walking. Gwen does as well. He's intent to bowl through them, and something about the moon and the headiness of power was whispering against logic to move, telling her she should stay put just to see if she could knock him down, withstand his momentum with the sheer force of presence.
Before given the chance to prove this there are cops with guns drawn, fingers at the triggers, ready to fire, and Howard tugs her wrist to draw her back to the wall. Despite being born to leadership, not the type of royal blood and tiaras but the more basic sort, born of charisma and force and a steady balance between respect and fear... despite that, she let herself be led just as easily as she was supposed to do so herself. They both pressed back into the brick side of the building framing the street, side-by-side, and watched as a common tragedy of the streets took place.
[b]Bang! Bang! Bang-bang-bang-bang![/i]
Shots fired, enough to say that either aim was bad, adrenaline was high, or the double-tap rule was used as religiously as fish on Fridays is with some people. The olive-skinned man hit the sidewalk and slid to a fast stop, and the pair of officers lowered their guns and stared, panting breaths that came out in clouds before their faces. They noticed Howard and Gwen simultaneously, and with a nudge and a mutter one went to check the body while the other approached the pair of Garou.
The one approaching had a plain face, easy to forget, and was missing the trademark mustache but made up for it with heavy nut-brown sideburns that came out from under his hat, with dark brown eyes to go along with them. He put his gun back in the holster but did not clip it shut, did not take his hand from the weapon entirely. The other hand rested at his tool-laden belt, and his gaze was flat as he looked at the two (but he stopped a few feet further from them than he would have other people, showing recognition of their Rage).
"The fuck are you two doing here?" Spoken like he was suspicious, hyped-up on adrenaline, and half-hopeful all at once. His chest heaved with the deep breaths he took.
[Gwen Sullivan] [Fix that effin' tag in the transcript]
[Heir of the Ruined Day] [Linguistics+Charisma: AMERICAN ACCENT TIME!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2
[Heir of the Ruined Day] That's an excellent question, if the enlightened elevation of Howard's eyebrows is any indication. What the fuck are they doing here? Where before it had not mattered where on the ladder of age and experience Gwen had been, for whatever reason in his foggy little brain, that ceases to matter anymore. He could just stand there, keep his trap shut, like he had insinuated would be the best course of action earlier: if he opens his mouth, he's going to sound either stoned or foreign, and he doesn't have any sort of identification on his person, not even a library card; any time he's asked for his green card, or it's demanded of him, the skinny bastard goes running and hopes disappearing into the Umbra is the safest course of action.
Running would be the most intelligent thing he could do right now, and if he were alone, that is exactly what would happen: Howard would answer the question by turning on his heel and running down the damn sidewalk, likely to meet the same fate as the poor bastard lying on the sidewalk behind them.
Humans are supposed to be surprised when they see someone gunned down right in front of them. Some niggling of self-preservation in the back of his head tells him to play human, the way a possum's brain will tell it to play dead in the presence of a larger or more superior predator, but it's worth mentioning that Howard doesn't smoke weak marijuana. He was coming down from his high when the evening began and they boarded the first bus, but now his buzz is being replaced by adrenaline.
It takes all of his energy to sound American, though... which he pulls off so well he doesn't sound like himself for a few moments. His vowels flatten themselves out, he stammers, and his unfortunate tendency to chop up his -ar sounds disappears.
"Well, uh, officer, we were, uh... we were just looking for a... a hotel... oh my god, is he dead?"
[Gwen Sullivan] [Charisma+Subterfuge: Play Along]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 6, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Gwen Sullivan] Gwen was a pretty good liar, it came from being a teenager and pretending that every time she hung out with Vince she wasn't buying or helping to sell weed. She had her parents believing that she was just out being a raucous teenager rather than fighting and bleeding and changing and killing and nearly dying on a near-nightly basis. Being a decent liar doesn't make you a great actor, though, and doesn't guarantee that you're going to convince a suspicious cop that you're utterly innocent and have nothing to be considered guilty for, though. Especially not when you've got blood flecks stained into your scarf from a bad night a week or so ago.
Sometimes, though, you pull an ace out of your sleeve that surprises even you, and do something you'll likely never be able to do again. For one person that might be landing an insane skateboarding trick that they end up breaking their arm over when they try doing it again. For another it could be singing into the microphone and hitting that high, important note in the song with the kind of sound that hits the heart and sends shivers up spines. For Gwen, tonight, it was convincingly playing a role that was the precise opposite of what she was.
Gwen was even rather than emotional, matter-of-fact rather than romantic. Howard said they were looking for a hotel and sounded stunned that there was a dead body. Gwen played off of this by seizing the sleeve of Howard's coat with both hands and holding his arm tightly against her chest, as though she's trying to stifle the hurt of fear in it with his upper arm. She stared at the body and the other cop crouched over it, then turned her head to look the opposite direction, like she was chasing the image away. When she looked to the cop her green-gray eyes were wide and fretful. Oh no that's a dead man, they shot him and I saw it and that was insane and now the cop is talking to me and I have to admit that I'm going to a hotel room with a boy and please don't tell on me or make me go home please just let us be. All the typical concerns of a teenage girl sneaking out into the night with a teenage boy plastered on her face and shining in those eyes. No hint of a monster or counter-suspicion in what the officer had done whatsoever.
----------
The officer looked from Howard to Gwen, his breath evening out. He straightened up some, clipped the holster and took his hand from the gun, though it stayed at his belt like the other one did. Yet, despite believing that they were innocent kids (the belief was on his face when the suspicion fled from it completely), he didn't seem to be ready to let them go, rather he stayed in front of them, shoulders turned directly toward them in a posture that said he wasn't finished talking to them (interrogating them) yet.
His head turned and he called to the other officer. "Gard, he gone? Yeah? Then move him off the damn sidewalk already, jeeze." And the other officer grabbed the not-yet-cool body by the ankles and began to drag it back toward the side street where the police lights flashed. Unceremonious, unprofessional, fishy as fuck.
[Heir of the Ruined Day] Lying, posturing, pretending to be something that he isn't is something that Howard had to develop as he grew older. Whether it came about as a matter of necessity or whether he just found it easier than the idea of being honest and forthright and open with the people he met, this is how he is now. There is nothing wrong, in his mind, with feeding a load of bullshit to a cop who's just been witnessed gunning a kid down on the sidewalk; he can pretend to be a teenager just looking for a place to spend the night with a girl, an American kid who hasn't been exposed to much outright violence living in this city for as long as he has, and it never occurs to him that maybe he ought to be doing something about the fact that these police officers took a life tonight.
It doesn't even occur to him that maybe they had a reason. Maybe this kid stabbed someone, or shot someone, or was wanted for rape or assault. Howard knows about the sorts of people who run from cops. He is the sort of person who runs from cops. As far as he can tell, the cops could have done something different, something better, and instead they killed the fuck out of some poor bastard who couldn't get away in time.
Better him than me, is how Howard thinks of it. Never mind that he would need a double-tap to keep from getting up again, that even if they did kill him he might just come roaring back to life in the thick of a frenzy.
Besides: it doesn't affect him. What's affecting him is the fact that now he and Gwen are witnesses, and he has better things to do than stand around talking to the cops about them shooting a kid in the back of the fucking head. They're going to want names and statements; identification; addresses.
He doesn't get nervous, yet, but he does slide his arm around Gwen's shoulders to keep up the act; if she punches him in the stomach or other, more sensitive parts of the body after this is over, it won't be the first time.
The accent stays in place, the nerves, the uncertainty that belongs to whoever this is that Howard is pretending to be.
"Oh my god... Officer, can we, uh... can we go?"
[Linus] Crack
It's the sound an apple makes when a rather large chunk, completely inappropriate in size for one's overly average gob, is snapped off the core and crushed between teeth and molars in some brazen attempt to seem casual.
He's fetched up against a telephone pole on the otherside of the street, the Pack House within this part of the city promising patrol detail that was at once unpleasant as much as it was monotonous. Breaking up the boredom with something akin to a little Variety Hour viewing was just what the doctor ordered.
He is grinning, juice climbing down the stubble on his features, patchy and suggestive of a twenty one year old. His clothes are the comfortable conformity of the area: cargo pants, sneakers and a black over-coat. Nothing stylish or even suggesting of fashion. Amicable in the weather and comfortable in the crotch.
One ankle crosses over the other while he continues to manage the large piece of Red Delicious currently going to war with his tongue for Maw supremacy.
[Gwen Sullivan] Howard's arm slides around her shoulders, and she behaves as though it's as familiar to her as the coat she wore, leans into his side and looks in awestruck horror as the second officer, the one called Gard, dragged the body back toward the cars around the corner-- from Linus's point of view that's visible to be three with their lights flashing, the third officer that would have to be there to drive the extra car is nowhere to be seen. This officer has a buzzed head, hair short enough that it's reduced to an indeterminate light color, it could be anywhere in the spectrum of pale blond to medium brown. He has the mustache that trademark to his profession, but it was grown down into a goatee as well, diminishing the effect somewhat.
He glanced at both teens as he passed, but didn't appear to have much to say besides recanting numbers into the radio piece hooked onto the front shoulder of his jacket.
Gwen's eyes followed him. To an onlooker she was staring, stunned at what she was seeing, like someone looking at a trainwreck with arms fallen out the passenger windows but unable to tear their gaze away. Internally she's checking for minute details. The fact that an officer was moving the body wasn't right, she knew that much, she was trying to find something that could clue her in to who he was, or perhaps something on the officer that would show him as a fake or a dirty cop.
Howard asks if they can go, and the officer with the sideburns is skeptical. He's looking over his shoulder at his partner every now and again, but is appraising the taller skinny guy and the incredibly average girl with the nose and upper lip piercing. Sizing them up a little, perhaps. They looked and acted harmless, but there was a quality about them he couldn't place and certainly didn't trust.
His answer comes after a solid block of thought.
"No. Come back to the car, you'll need to fill out witness reports." And his shoulders and posture shift some to open the path toward the sidestreet, indicating they should get walking.
[Gwen Sullivan] [Perception+Alertness: What's not right with this picture?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 7) Re-rolls: 1
[Heir of the Ruined Day] [Alertness+Perception: I SEE THINGS]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7 (Failure at target 7)
[Heir of the Ruined Day] "Oh."
The temptation to drop the Stupid American act and just try and talk his way out of the mess he's already started is a tempting one, but if he does that then all he's really accomplishing is opening up an entirely different can of worms. All they'd been hoping to accomplish by going out tonight is to get Gwen out of her parents' house, to ensure she wasn't alone, to give her something to do with her spare time outside of stare at the walls and feel the weight of their imposition upon her.
This is mildly more entertaining.
Maybe Patrick's right about him.
They're ushered to one of the waiting squad cars, and Howard keeps his arm around Gwen's shoulders as though that's going to help him transmit thoughts, as though that's going to make her feel any better about the fact that she's wandered into this situation because Howard can't keep his mouth shut.
Without a totemic bond, without a shared foreign language, without a long-standing relationship where they've developed a pidgin mode of communication just using their eyes and gesturing, they have no way of transmitting whatever half-assed plans are forming in their heads. He squeezes her shoulder, keeping up the Yeah Yeah Sure We're Cool façade even while the perceptive Philodox can sense the tension creeping into Howard's form.
Either he's going to draw a couple of dicks on some paper and move on with his life, or these guys are going to sprout horns and try to kill both of them in an enclosed space. Time will tell.
"O-Okay."
[Linus] "Oh fer fuck's sake..."
He's half-way across the street as the pair are being escorted toward the Squad car. He doesn't cross entirely. Simply pauses at the line divider between lanes and begins to parallel the trio as they walk. His face is a contortion of displeasure, long since lost the fun of the moment with the inevitable obedience of the lanky Rite-wrecker and the Cute Cub.
"Hey! Blueballs! What the fuck you think you're doing? This shit ain't legal! They got rights! I got rights! We All got rights, ya know? You can't just come out and take people all willy nilly dick 'n spit off the street 'cause you went and shot someone on the pretense of a small penis and an envy problem. Metaphorically fucking with people is what Literature is for. Well that, Alcoholism and Depressing works of art..."
He's a good twenty yards out, though his voice carries like he was standing alongside the pair.
[Gwen Sullivan] The officer starts ushering them toward the squad car, not actively waving hands to do so but communicating with body language instead. Howard, with his arms about his shoulders, starts to walk up the sidewalk, keeping up the pretense of being a frightened teenaged couple by stammering and agreeing and being compliant, because that's what scared kids do. Gwen, however, spied a hint of something as Officer Gard passed by that had her furrowing her brow a little. The wide-eyed act was fading away, and though she stayed close to Howard's side her face was dropping back to what it was usually was, away from the act of a teen out to late and toward the budding Philodox instead.
Her heels dug into the ground, stopping Howard along with her (unless he unwrapped his arm and pushed on forward, of course) and opened her mouth to say something, moving her eyes up to the officer that'd been addressing them's face. Then Linus cut in, and no doubt everyone's attention cut over to him instead. The officer frowned hard, but did not overreact, charge the boy or huff and puff and get hotheaded. Every police officer in Chicago was used to having hate slung their way, if they weren't and couldn't handle it they didn't last for long at all. Still, his attention flopped over to Linus, skipped off Howard and Gwen for now, and Gwen took advantage of this not to charge, not to attack, not even to slink away.
Rather, simple and straightforward, she stepped into the street and walked to go join Linus, fingers curled around the cuff of Howard's jacket to ensure he came along with, shrugging his arm off her shoulders in the process.
[Heir of the Ruined Day] And, just like that, Howard drops the act.
Call it shock, or call it reacting favorably to knowing that numbers are evened out, or call it not finding the entire affair amusing anymore, but when the blond spirit-talker who'd chased him down the sidewalk with a fucking spear not too long ago comes waltzing up out of nowhere with foul-mouthed invectives hurled at their would-be captors, the Fiann stops pretending to be anxious and scared and American.
"Oh fuck me," he announces, his strange accent and inexplicable confidence returning, "it's that guy!"
As soon as he sees the Godi, Howard takes his arm off of Gwen, as though he's been caught with his hand up or down an article of clothing it oughtn't have been anywhere near. He makes a muted "Whoa!" as Gwen tugs on his jacket and guides him across the invisible line.
[Linus] (Charisma 3 + Expression 2. Keep his attention)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 8, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Linus] "...Yeah! Just 'cause that dumb fucker's livin' in sin with that other dumb fucker-" He points at the pair making their way in his direction, eyes narrowed some and jaw working on a line of thought that just isn't coming. Gwen's little re-direct and Howard's drop of the act has...caught him off guard a little. Making an attempt to recover, as the pair make their way in his direction.
"Uhhh... Freedom! It's important. To all of us, yeah! You're trodding on our freedoms with this blatant act of-" He wishy-washys a hand at the policeman, eying him up and down "-Harrasment!" Pointing. Snapping and pointing. "We've got rights! Fourth-" A beat. Blinking. "Fifth Amendment?"
He turns to look at the other two with a confused scowl and a hand on the back of his head.
"Fuck, which one is freedom again?"
[Heir of the Ruined Day] "Fuck's an amendment?"
[Linus] "...S'what the humans use to smack each other around with." Beat. "Legally."
[Gwen Sullivan] "Most of them are freedom." Gwen announces this in that slight rasp of a voice that she perpetually speaks in, stated as a side-note more than anything else. Once she was convinced Howard was following she let go of his sleeve and tugged her beanie more securely over her ears, fingers pausing partway down her face to twist at the medusa piercing in her upper lip. She paused in the center lane of the street a few feet from Linus, glanced back past her shoulder and scarf to the officer, who seemed... well, indecisive more than anything else. Like he was at a turnpoint and had to make a decision on the spot, each with consequences of their own.
His decision appeared to be made because he waved his hand dismissively at the trio with a "Ehhh, fuck you kids," and tugged his jacket collar about his neck, jammed his hands into the pockets, and started after the faint trail of blood dribbling and smeared on the sidewalk from where his partner had dragged the freshly-deceased back toward the squad cars.
Gwen commented quietly as the cop with the sideburns turned his back, with a faint scowl on her face. "Dirty-ass cops. And people wonder about the gangs 'round here." Her head bobbed toward the sidewalk that Linus had come from. "Shouldn't we get out of the street?"
[Heir of the Ruined Day] As soon as they draw close enough, the Godi is informed of something that might help explain what just happened: Howard is stoned, or if he isn't completely stoned he was at one point in recent history in such a state. With black aviator shades in place, seeing what color the whites of his eyes are is impossible. The Fiann walks like he's drunk even when he's sober, wavering instead of outright staggering, and when he finally comes to a halt by the stranger he plants his hands on his hips and waits for the officers to turn away and return to cleaning up the mess they made.
He seems to know better than to yell heckling insults at the cops once they've started walking away, so he doesn't.
Shouldn't they get out of the street.
"What," Howard asks, "before someone calls the fuckin' cops?"
Yes, Howard, you are hilarious.
"I'm so hungry I could eat a buttered monkey," he announces, apropos of nothing, and starts to walk off in the direction he and Gwen had approached from in the first place.
[Linus] (Dexterity 3 + Stealth 0. Diff 6 + 1 for no skill. WP!)
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 1, 9 (Failure at target 7) [WP]
[Linus] Linus offers an eye toward Howard, something blank and unpleasant that immediately shifts toward Gwen, a quirk in his jawline flicking something over his lips that could be a scowl, a growl, a snarl or a burp depending on the mood he's in. It doesn't come of anything, instead moving forward to point at the retreating Howard's back whilst narrowing eyes down at the Cub.
"Shit like him gets you in shit like this-" Pointing then at the Police "-with Shit like Shit stains in your trousers. Quit fuckin' around with guns and humans and start acting like you know what you're doing half the fuckin' time."
And then he lifts a middle finger toward Howard's back, followed by the leveling of an index and the final mimed butt kicking that will ensue someday. For now, men with guns, dead bodies and the inevitable scene that could erupt are indeed the order of the day. Linus hooks his head at Gwen and motions in the opposite direction of the Fianna Theurge.
"C'mon. We're gonna see a lake about a Lesson..."
And off he goes.
[Gwen Sullivan] A snide cracked remark from a Fianna who declares in some roundabout way that the munchies have settled leads him in a direction opposite of the Fenrir and the Fenrir-in-Training. He's unceremonious about it, impolite if you wanted to go that far. He turns and walks away without farewell, and perhaps this is because he thought they would follow? Maybe, if you wanted to make excuses for him. Gwen looked at his back, like she thought about telling him to wait up or following after, but the scald of Linus's eyes on the side of her face had her letting the Theurge walk away.
A scolding followed in the center lane of the street, and Gwen looked up at him (not directly in the eye, though, more about the bridge of the nose) and took it face on. Gears whirred in her head to line up the scolding to the actual occurrence, and she decided that it was relatively accurate on at least one level. It was Howard's idea to play like clueless teens. If Gwen had been alone she would've shrugged the cop off and kept on walking, not have gotten involved at all. She nips the inside of her lip some with her canine teeth but doesn't argue, just glances back to the side street where the cops went, watches the officers talk with the body propped back against the car tire, discussing something unknown and passing a bag of methamphetamine from one hand to the next.
The Godi says 'come on' and starts walking, the Fianna continues his hunt for food, the cops get away with their dirty dealings, and the cub follows for a lesson to be taught by the hand of a tribe that would sooner stomp out ignorance than tolerate it for a moment.
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