[Nash] This is not the neighborhood to be in when the vehicle one has been driving for the last two thousand miles decides it has had enough of one's bullshit and breaks down after dark. It's not the neighborhood, and the weather is crap, and the truck had been making weird fucking noises ever since he passed the border between Indiana and Illinois but what did that matter, it ain't like he stopped to deal with it.
So it punishes him. As he pulls down a side street, the tie-rod flips him the finger and shears off the axel. There are a few rattling thumps as some mechanical part or another stop functioning, a horrific squealing, smoke, and then the thump and crash as he barely avoids running the truck into a stationary object. Many of them are lying in wait for him to perform such a maneuver, and he hits a roadside garbage toter instead of the much-larger Nissan Sentra some jackass has left with its back-end sticking out of a rather sorry-looking driveway.
It's below freezing, which makes this evening Cold As A Witch's Teat, but he's out of the truck so fast one would think he has a passenger holding a gun to his head and this is his first chance to escape. Given that it gave up on him like this, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that the vehicle is hardly new or well-maintained: it's a blue Ford that looks as though it was manufactured when Reagan was still president, rusted out in places and coated in mud and road salt. The door hangs open like a gaping mouth, the silenced engine adding a layer of mayhem to the quiet in the aftermath of that collision.
"Son of a bitch," he says, his anger taking on an almost musing quality.
The vehicle has Alabama plates.
[Gwen Sullivan] Pulling one's weight is what lets you earn your keep. Gwen did her duties at the Caern when she could, whatever she could think of when Fire Claws wasn't bearing down on her. She'd pace along with the Warder's Pack when they'd tolerate her, and when they wouldn't she'd pace the area surrounding the Bawn independently, or keep an eye on the Winchester without getting too close, or the Brotherhood with the same distance maintained.
When she stayed with Last Watch, which was less often these days for one reason or another, she patrolled their turf as well. She wasn't a member of the pack, their Totem didn't recognize her just like spirits and Garou alike didn't see her as much more than a whelp (a deadly whelp, though, she saved the asses of two Cliaths and a Fostern just last month. Fenris would be proud of it.), but she paid her dues like she figured anyone should if they were going to take up hospitality. Linus needed sleep pretty much all the time, and while Gwen would never dismiss him to go catch some shut-eye, she readily offered to take the patrols so he could 'do other things'. She could only hope he was resting.
Gwen had been staked out in this area for some time. She figured that evil things moved just as much as she could, that if she was always moving there was a higher chance that she would miss them. If she was stationary and they were moving, chances were higher they would pass through her field of perception-- which was wide spread and meticulously maintained.
She would have heard the tick of an engine, but it wasn't necessary, the bang! of the blue Ford up the road was more than enough. The vehicle wobbled, clacked and clanged, and bounced into the curb and a garbage bin before coming to a stop. This would be about a third of a block away from Gwen Sullivan.
The Cub was wrapped up in a faded brown work coat that was a size too big, with a black hood from a sweatshirt underneath over her head. Plain brown hair licked out to surround her face from underneath, now utterly clean of make-up and piercings alike. The Nation, the time away from her parents house or any steady home, took luxuries of vanity away from her, made her more utilitarian, more of a street rat. Jeans and scuffed black boots completed the ensemble, but no matter how grungy she might appear it didn't take away from how sharp her gray-green eyes were, even across the distance, on the man that hopped out of the car to baffle over what he could do.
Unhelpful suggestions spout from the girl kicked back on the bus bench with her arms wrapped tightly to her chest to maintain warmth. "I hope you have Triple A." Followed by the kind of territorial warning that you'd expect more from a six-foot-something black guy with a sports jacket and pants slung low enough to show the gun jammed into the front of them, not from the painfully average teenage girl. "Your car says you're a long way from home."
[Nash] Getting a good look at this guy doesn't take a great deal of energy or effort: he, like seemingly every male above the age of consent in this city, is well over six feet tall, his build concealed beneath his clothing though his facial features are angular and lean, almost hungry, like he spends most of his money on cigarettes and alcohol. Wherever he's coming from gets a good deal of sun, if the bleached quality of his already-blond hair failing to match the darkness of his facial scruff is as truthful as the plates on the Ford, yet he isn't shuddering and complaining with the force of the wind and the sharpness of it.
It's cold. It's fucking cold, truth be told, but at the moment he seems more concerned with the fact that his ride just bit the dust and there's a tiny yet hard girl talking to him as though this sort of thing happens all the damn time.
She hopes he has AAA.
This provokes a jubilant scoff.
Now, Gwen doesn't look anything like a gun-slinging gang banger, but this guy is harder to place. He couldn't be mistaken for a young adult if his life depended on it; he's grizzled, worn, like ten miles of hard road, yet he lacks the brooding, pessimistic quality that ages men in his line of work faster than they feel they deserve. His clothes fit, seem if not new then at least cared-for, and his jacket drapes in such a fashion that Gwen can't exactly tell if he is or is not armed.
By now she's beginning to learn that different tribes have different blood; their ancestors fulfill deeds that trickle down through the ages and stick with those who bear the purity of breeding. This guy, with his hawk-like countenance and his lackadaisical way of moving, looks no more noble or stalwart than any other nomad who's plowed through this city since her fostering began, and one might suspect his blood to lie dormant and tell no tales.
His ancestors, distant yet not so far gone that they're shrouded by time, were barbarians, known to fight until their swords were removed from their hands by the cold grip of death. He does not appear as though he has that degree of loyalty in him, yet there is an immovable stubbornness about him. He stands surveying the damage he's done to the vehicle, and when the female speaks beyond that initial assessment, he looks over.
"Does it, now?" he asks. While hardly pronounced, there is a slight drawl to the man's speech. He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a red packet of cigarettes; it isn't offered to her. "Well if you're gonna take that piece of shit's word, I didn't take care of her, neither."
[Gwen Sullivan] The man is studied without being leered at, like he's a directional guide to putting together a new desk or a homework assignment that's due three weeks down the road. Her gaze isn't intense, she doesn't have enough Rage or experience for that. It's not hungry, there's no lust about the girl, perhaps she just hasn't grown into that particular sense yet, she was quite young looking (especially when her make-up was taken away from her, hunched down with her half-formed curves all covered up she could pass for thirteen if she wished).
The breeding to him causes the bridge of her nose to wrinkle with discomfort, like she'd just stuck her hand in saltwater and discovered she had a papercut in the webbing of her fingers that way, brows furrowing down to make the frown all the more obvious. She senses what he is easily, tastes it in the back of her throat after inhaling through her nose. It's frost and blood and dirt and iron that she picks up, and a warrior's chant is put in the back of her mind to rhythmically repeat itself like a march into battle, setting pace for a thousand sets of feet. She knows what he is right away, and that is what makes her frown.
No cigarette is offered, and that's just fine. She doesn't get up off her bench to go join him, but instead stays seated precisely where she is, arms over her chest, hands tucked under her arms, and shoulders curled forward so she was hunched nearer to her own lap. Her voice rasps faintly, but is clear despite that when she speaks.
"I'd probably believe her." There's a pause, wherein she thinks about the best approach to what she was going to bring up next, and when she decides the quiet is cut away once more by her half-husky voice. "If you're looking for Kora and her church, you're off by about three or four blocks."
[Nash] There is an effortlessness in the way he lights up, as though he has decades of experience under his belt; he squints into the wind, blows the initial belt of smoke up and away from them, and saunters over to the bench with a lilt to his walk that suggests he'd be more comfortable in a dry, arid climate, sun beating down on his neck rather than wet wind slamming at his jacket-covered torso.
With that cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger, the kinsman doesn't drop himself down next to Gwen. Perhaps she strikes him as Too Young, or else he's conscious about the fact that she's likely to not be too partial to the stench of burning tobacco. For his part, he seems to recognize her for what she is, even if she has not earned the rank and right to be considered Garou. There is Rage in her, yet, and there is power. She is not weak. Even he can see that.
So, he comes to stand by the bench, ignoring the truck's predicament for the time being. She says she'd probably believe 'her,' as if just by the looks of him he hasn't got a clue how to treat either his machinery or his women, and the observation makes him crack a lopsided grin.
"You're smart, Squirt," he says, and keeps smoking.
Then the Philodox brings up the matter of Where To Go Next, what to do with himself now that he's in the city and recognized for what he is. He huffs, the exhaled breath stained with smoke, and reaches out an arm to tip the ash into the wind.
"Now, who, pray tell, is Kora and why would I be looking for her church?"
[Gwen Sullivan] The girl is easy enough to read for what she is in Nash's eyes. He knows what to look for, he recognizes Rage (though hers doesn't overpower, she's got it well in check, especially with the moon being as skinny in the sky as it is) and knows the Animal under the skin, how it looks behind human-colored eyes. The fact that she's a white teenaged girl hanging out alone on a street in a bad neighborhood speaks plenty to this as well. If she was an average human, she wouldn't be here. She'd be with a group of friends, or at home, or anyplace other than here where she would be turned into a victim or a Missing Person in ten seconds flat were it not for the fangs and claws lurking underneath to prevent this.
He grins and tells her she's smart while he approaches, and she doesn't tense or change her posture one bit when he does. Either she doesn't see him as a threat and is overconfident in her own ability, or she hasn't been around the block enough times to know that she should be prepared for anything, to recognize that he could have a silver dagger hidden in that coat, or a tazer, or chloroform, or anything really. His blood told her what he was, but not who. He could have any motivation in the world, any thoughts in his head, and she couldn't read them.
His questions are answered flatly, she moves only to lean back enough to dig in her pants pocket for a tube of chapstick, which she applies to lips that were chapped but not to the point of cracking. This little tube kept that at bay. Balm is applied, lips are rubbed together for a moment, and the chapstick is put away again, back where it came from in the pocket of her jeans.
"She's the Boss of your people." Yours, not ours. Gwen wasn't bold enough to call herself a Fenrir just yet, she didn't get the okay from Fenris himself and she would accept nothing less. "And I'd imagine anyone who decides to roll through her turf smelling like you do wouldn't have any destination but that in mind. I'd guessed you were coming to let her know you had arrived like they always do."
[Nash] Thus far, Gwen cannot rightly call herself anything. Sure, she has her lineage to fall back on; if she were born of one Garou or another, if she had a history preceding her First Change, perhaps it would be different. To look at her she would belong to a tribe consisting of the descendants of Celts, perhaps one of the urrah. If he's attempting to guess who claims her, it isn't written anywhere that she can see.
Then again, he might simply be one of those Kinfolk who feels as though his particular skill in life revolves around his ability to lie. He's got that easy sort of charm that comes with being good-looking and experienced, yet there isn't anything outwardly deceitful about him. Thus far it's been nothing but good-natured bullshitting and half-hearted attempts at joking.
Despite the weather and the fact that he's awfully far from home, he isn't digging through his pockets to try and find a cell phone, or frantically asking where he can hire a tow truck, if there's a mechanic around here someplace. He watches the ticking truck more so than he watches the nameless female, but that's just as well. Someone might try to jack the fucking truck; nobody's going to mess with Gwen, whether or not he's standing right here keeping an eye on her.
She's the Boss.
That means Jarl.
"Great," he says, taking another drag.
She continues on, says folks who smell like he smells, who roll through here are usually looking for her and hers. This doesn't seem to be the case with him. He sniffs, coughs, spits whatever came up into the gutter, and eyes his cigarette thoughtfully rather than suspiciously.
"Is that protocol, Squirt?" he asks. He gestures in the vague direction of this church she's mentioned. "Best mosey on over there and introduce myself, then, that what you're tellin' me?"
[Gwen Sullivan] "I'd worry more about your truck first."
Gwen moves her hands out from under her arms and lifts them to doff the hood from her head. The hair beneath is clean, she's showered recently, and a very boring tone of brown, easily described as being mousy though nothing else about her could qualify as such. She drags her fingers through it, lets them rest buried close to her scalp to pick up heat from her head, regain feeling in her fingertips that was stolen away by the cold wet air, then finally snaps an elastic band off her wrist, and ties her hair back at the nape of her neck (save for a few shorter pieces, overgrown bangs in the front). This leaves her ears exposed to the cold, but she doesn't seem too worried about that right now. She's more worried about listening, not having the hood muffling her sense of hearing anymore.
"I wouldn't call it protocol so much as good manners. And way I see it is if you're putting roots down you're going to have to tell her eventually, right? She's the one that looks over you until somebody else does."
Eyebrows raise, and gray-green eyes focus more sharply on his face. She's sitting straighter now, no longer curled down over her legs to keep her body heat bouncing between her torso and her legs. "You are putting down roots, right? People just passing through don't meander these streets unless they're looking to score something strong and toxic."
It's not so much accusation on her face as it is bald curiosity--... no, not even curious. Demanding to know. Something about the truth runs deep here.
[Nash] Either he savors his damn cigarettes, or he's smoking a 100; it doesn't disappear with any great celerity, considering how tall he is, how deep his lung capacity must be. He looks as though he could stand out in this sharp-cold weather all night just waiting to figure out what to do about that truck of his, and the reminder coming from the teenager just has him flicking his eyebrows as if to say Yeah that'd be smart, huh? as a buzzing vibration sounds from somewhere on his person.
The length of the conversation, the fact that the female is pulling her hair back, seems to give him the impression that they're going to be here a fucking while. With another drag off of his cigarette, the tall man sets his ass on the back of the bench, as far away from the teenager as he can get without toppling onto the pavement, and parks his boot on the flat slats where he's supposed to park himself. His boots are designed for motorcycle driving, have heavy metal buckles on the lateral sides, and when he pushes aside his jacket to fish a cell phone out of his hip pocket it becomes possible to see that he is, in fact, armed.
It comes in the brief flash of a leather shoulder holster. She cannot see the butt of the gun protruding, but she can see the bulge where its muzzle is encased, if she's looking in his direction. If not, it slips back behind the fall of the jacket a moment later.
His attention doesn't stay on the face of the cell phone for long. He presses a button on the side, huffs, and drops it into his jacket pocket before looking back at the girl.
"What," he asks, sounding skeptical, "I look like the kinda guy who needs pharmaceuticals to have a good time? Shit, girl, I'm gettin' too old."
Exhale.
"I got roots all over the damn place. What's a couple more gonna hurt?" This is almost to himself, as though he has to convince himself that staying here is a sound decision. "Better get this hunk of shit off the road." He hauls himself standing. "Don't suppose this Kora's got a number for a tow truck handy."
[Gwen Sullivan] Gwen sniffed a bit when the Kinfolk settled on the far edge of the bench she sat firmly in the middle of. She didn't slide to the side to give him more room-- she was there first, after all, but didn't close in on him either. He kept what distance he could while keeping comfortable, and Gwen looked past the still-ticking truck, to the corner that lay behind it, the shadows beyond that. She knew what being near Kinfolk meant-- immediate danger, all the goddamn time.
The last time she was with Cordelia for longer than three minutes they got into a heap of trouble with a pair of Fomori and she lost clothes, blood, and stability (but gained flint, and that she still carried with her, it was essential to what she had to be).
She doesn't comment on the kind of guy he looks like when he asks, just lifts an eyebrow at him, as though to ask whether he truly wanted her answer or not, then went on to shake her head when he asked about a tow truck and stood back up again. He was up and down, and this whole time she'd remained stationary, planted to that bench like it was going to be her bed for the evening, like it was a guard post assigned to her by a higher up.
"Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure one of the other Kin drives a tow truck." She remembered the fact, but never bothered to learn the name. He was just another Kin, another body of breeding and trouble that she would do better to avoid than anything else. The amount of Kin gathering within the walls of the Church was making her uncomfortable, she spent more time out on patrols like this, or at the Caern, whatever it took to avoid encounters like this. Because Kin were always the territory of someone else, and it could be construed as disrespectful and dishonorable just to look at one funny.
Again, without getting up, she offered: "I can help you push it out of the way for now, if you like." Though she couldn't imagine what was more out of the way than half up on a curb.
[Nash] His boots thump against the unforgiving pavement as he walks up to his truck as though he's about to ask the vehicle to dance. All the while he's tugging on his cigarette, cycling the poison through his circulatory system as the teenager speaks. She doesn't supply a name, doesn't supply a means of getting a hold of this mythical other Kin who is in possession of a tow truck; the fact that she doesn't instantly provide him with what it is he's looking for seems to strip him of what limited Give A Fuck he'd possessed before driving the Ford up onto the sidewalk.
Given that he's been driving for a considerable amount of time, across a space and distance, it seems likely that he's highly caffeinated, highly cramped, and highly keen to get himself to wherever it is he's supposed to end up eventually. The kinsman drops into a crouch as if he can get a good look at the underside of the vehicle without crawling underneath it. That dwindling yet persistent cigarette is plugged between his chapped lips and left there as he scowls at the invisible mess he'd made of his mode of transport.
She can help him push it out of the way.
The man cranes his neck to look back over his shoulder at her, squinting slightly, grizzled amusement creeping over his face at her offer. An autumn leaf-dry "Heh" leaves his throat, and he plucks the cigarette out of his mouth to blow a breath out. When he stands, his knees pop. There isn't a thing about him that's young, other than his propensity for cracking droll jokes. His spirit isn't antiquated and dusty yet.
"I think she'll be alright right where I left her," he says, as though he had any say or put any degree of forethought into where the vehicle ended up rested. "But thank you."
The cigarette, it seems, has about outlived its usefulness. The man takes a final departing drag and casts it into the gutter, holds onto the lungful as he speaks.
"Your folks know you're out talking to strange men this late at night?"
[Gwen Sullivan] The Kin marches toward the truck and hunkers down to peer at the undercarriage in the dirty orange light cast dimly from one flickering streetlamp on the other side of the street. He can't possibly see much, but then for all the ruckus the vehicle had made whatever he'd done to jack it up had probably been monumental enough that you wouldn't need a flashlight to surmise the damage. Gwen finally stands, tugs at the thighs of her jeans so that they wear comfortably instead of stay ridden up from sitting for so long, jams her hands into the pockets of her coat, and follows on over to stand a good seven or eight feet behind the thirty-something Kin.
She's not watching him, or the truck, this could be worth noting. Instead she's watching everything around them, up the street then down it. Her eyes are pulling shadows apart from an alleyway across the street from them, made all the more black when the street light was placed directly in front of it, when he straightens up and says that the truck will be fine where it is.
She makes only the vaguest sound of affirmation when he thanks her for the offer, and glances back toward him only when the glowing red cherry off the cigarette bounces into her peripheral vision off the curb and into the gutter. Eyes snap there, then move at a more natural pace back up to Nash's face. This is when he asks about her parents, if they know that she's out with 'strange men' this 'late at night'. The question is answered with anything but amusement on her face, and certainly not right away either.
"I'm sure you know full well how involved in the picture my parents must be if I'm out here, if I am what you already know I am." There's a scoff, and she shakes her head once to toss the overgrown bangs that hung down to her cheeks out of her eyes. "'Strange men' are about the least concerning thing anymore."
Another pause, this time for Gwen to take a deep breath of the cold night air, like she's pulling up resolve. "I'll walk you to the Church if you like. The wrecker driver's been staying there too."
[Nash] "Well, isn't that convenient?"
This is said with the same musing quality with which he'd cursed the fate of his truck. He doesn't appear either moved or contrite to hear that this teenage girl doesn't have a parental figure in her life. Given how young she looks, how old he looks, it's entirely possible he has a child her age by now. The Philodox could pass for a middle schooler rather than a girl about to blossom into adulthood. By Garou standards, she hasn't hit that point yet: until she attains rank, it doesn't matter if she's seventeen or seventy, she will be viewed as a child by even the Cliaths, who are themselves viewed as unruly miscreants by the Fosterns, and so on up the chain of command until death.
Death makes heroes of all of them.
Whatever wheels are turning in his head are doing so far more quietly and efficiently than the ones that had been carrying his truck from Alabama to Illinois. They don't fall apart and grind and leave him stranded; they get him to the thought he'd been pursuing, and then he does to it what he'd done to the poor Ford now sitting partly-on the sidewalk.
He walks away from it.
An offer to walk him, and he huffs, seemingly charmed by the offer of escort from a tall, tough-looking teenager. To his credit, he doesn't make another joke or call her Squirt again. He drops his hands into the pockets of his jacket, casts a glance down the street, and looks back to her with a surreptitious yet conditionally trusting expression.
"So where you stayin', if your folks ain't worried about what you're up to at night? They got a Caern in this city?"
[Gwen Sullivan] He huffs at her offer to walk him and turns his back to the truck, content to leave it where it is, as it is. It'll likely be towed by morning if what she's saying about a tow-truck driving Kinfolk is true and he's anywhere to be found. She doesn't pay too much mind or bother to however he decides to react to or accept her offer to walk him like he's her prom date and she's wearing the tux, but instead starts her march up the sidewalk. The gait she keeps at the moment in those increasingly broken-in looking black boots is automatic and thoughtless. She's obviously walked this path, with the same destination in mind so many times that she didn't even need to think about it anymore.
"There is a Caern, yes, and sometimes I stay there." She nips at her lower lip, dragging her front teeth over the outside of it, then pauses when she doesn't find a piercing there that had been for a good two years prior to all of the Changes that came a fistful of months ago, frowns a bit, and stops trying to chew at non-existent piercings. "Other times I stay at the church. Other times yet I'm in the woods with my Mentor. It just depends on what the day held."
[Nash] Without a cigarette in his hand, he doesn't have anything to do with his hands. They stay curled in his pockets, and his eyes stay cast ahead of them rather than drifting over and down to the female at his side. She's over a head shorter than him, just barely comes up to his shoulder, yet she has an animal's grace as she moves. It makes up for her comparatively short stature: few men would want to toss themselves into her line of fire.
Idle conversation doesn't seem to be his forte. Unless he's verbally sparring, or pressing for information, it seems as though he doesn't have any true reason to speak up. In this instance, his digging is almost half-hearted, as though it doesn' t affect him one way or the other if there is a Caern in Chicago. There are Garou, and Fenrir at that. It goes without saying that there has to be some element of Gaia or the Wyld around here. They lose their purpose in the absence of wilderness.
She'd referred to the Fenrir as His, though, as though they were separate from her, as though the idea of her joining the tribe after her passage into maturity was sealed hadn't come up yet. He doesn't press.
"Now, this mentor of yours," he segues. "He-She one'a Kora's, or...?"
[Gwen Sullivan] She's getting a lot better at this 'animal grace' thing, truth be told. It didn't necessarily mean that she was, in fact, graceful or particularly quick or well balanced, but still training under a Lupus had its effects. She was beginning to prefer four feet to two for most situations apart from relaxing or shooting the shit when she got the rare opportunity to do so. It wasn't so much physical ability that defined this as it was confidence. It came from battle, from readiness to throw yourself teeth first at something that was doing precisely the same to you.
It made common drug-peddling street thugs not want to fuck with you, and that made patrols a lot easier. They had been difficult when they'd first started, but a few fights here and there and a few weapons tossed down sewer grates later and the gangsters more or less left her alone. She had the courtesy to do the same-- she wasn't hunting them after all, she was after real Monsters.
Neither seem that great at idle conversation, so they walk quietly for a good half a block before Nash speaks up, inquiring about the mentor she had mentioned. While she wasn't particularly chatty, that didn't mean she was reluctant to answer his questions, or curt when she did so.
"He is, yes. Wolf-born half moon of Fenris. You'll probably meet him if you stick around, he comes by the Church when he needs to report to Kora too."
