Rata Tat Tat

World of Darkness (Boston)

As she pushed her way deeper towards the caern, breaking into the more open ground by the lake proper, she caught sight of one of the Pawtuckaway garou and almost snorted.

Aidan Samhain-Born, Warder of the caern. More like nanny, as far as she was concerned--what had he warded against of late? She couldn't remember the last time he showed his stuff to anyone but some upstart whelp who'd ticked off a spirit a little too much. They weren't exactly big on challenges at Pawtuckaway, or at least not combat ones, and who else actually wanted the job of warder? She was sure he must have done something to earn it, made some sort of mark on the world or fucked someone up awfully hard, but she'd never seen it happen and doubted it would. Call it boastful, but even in her new shoes she was willing to bet she could have taken him.

And he knew it--or at least knew she thought it--which made that 'pissed in my coffee' look so much better.

Not just him, though, he made a friend. A new friend, by the look of him, and not a bad look at that. Darker skin than most, darker hair than most, same shabby clothes as ninety percent of traveling garou... Definitely a fighter, by the way he carried himself, probably ahroun, wrong presence to be galliard. Michelle had a hard time figuring out people's auspice or feeling their rage--her own was so overwhelming, so fucking sharp on the tongue that even some of the less resilient garou could barely talk to her most of the time, which was fine by her. If they couldn't stand the heat, they could piss off. A few years younger than her, she couldn't tell if he really was that much more interesting than poor old Aidan or if she was just interested in some more exotic meats.

"Look at you, Sammy. Making friends." She called by way of introduction as she approached, the skulls clattering against her back. Ostentatious, she knew, but last time she showed up empty handed with stories about spiral-killing they'd looked at her like she had three heads and moved on to listen to one of their little theurges talk about an ancestor spirit he chased through the lake. Her voice was flat and almost atonal, apathetic and viciously bored, and if she smiled with her lips her eyes were the same dead black as ever. "Can I play too?"

Rolling her shoulders slightly, she made her way to the pair of them and stopped just outside arm's reach. She wore the short black dress like gang colors, the front of it dipping low to show off an inked chest with no tits and the hem of it falling to barely mid-thigh over more tattoos. Nothing garou, nothing tribal, just good old ink in a dozen different patterns, most of them (oddly enough) the outlines of flowers. They might have softened the look if they hadn't been placed over the same kind of lean muscle that hid under Michael's hoodie or been marred with clawed scars.

"Hi. I'm Michelle. I like long walks on the beach and candle-light dinners. Everyone here hates me."

She shifted, holding the row of skulls out in front of her to the warder.

"Brought you a present. Bet at least one of them would make a killer bong."

World of Darkness (Boston)

I'll get a post up to bring werewolf activity up a bit either today or tomorrow.

World of Darkness (Boston)

There we are, gathering the wolves in the hills and all that.

World of Darkness (Boston)

Michelle hated going to Pawtuckaway.

One hand surfing the breeze out the window, she screamed down the road in a piece of shit red Civic that might as well have been community property at this point. The ignition would have turned with a butter knife and the engine made such a damn racket that she had to crank the stereo to about a billion decibels to drown it out. It was almost at loud enough to erase the possibility of thought but not quite--the speakers were way too far gone for that, which meant Michelle still had plenty of time to think about exactly how much she hated doing this.

She hated driving at the best of times. Not owning a car, it was always a matter of finding which car to jack, or bumming of someone else or some other bullshit she had no interest in. The Gnawers had shown her how but it hadn't made the act itself anything more than an inconvenience. She'd been told that some people liked driving, that that was their thing, but she was definitely not one of them. Chain-smoking cigarettes to get her fix before she hit nature camp, she stubbed out the fourth cigarette of the night in the inside of her thumb before dropping it into one of the many cans that littered the old beater. It was a habit, and a bad one, but she didn't think about it anymore even as it hissed and burned at the skin--she'd been alone for too long, she thought with a slightly dry smirk. She was starting to eat herself.

The problem with the caern was the garou as much as anything else. She could start off with the fact that not a one of the tribes--Furies, Fianna or even the Children--were exactly fast friends with the Get, and hadn't been since the first time they met them. It quickly became apparent that the Get reinforcement pack she'd been a part of was less reinforcement and more invasion. Apparently an elder somewhere had decided that if they weren't going to take teeth and claws to the wyrm that was so prevalent in the area, the Get would have to. It hadn't been a particularly pleasant conversation the first time she'd been there, or the times since, especially considering their losses. The Children in particular were critical--it was a waste of time, they said. The wyrm was too strong in the cities, it couldn't be fought directly, they had to work at it sideways. That was back when Thunder's Teeth was still in charge, an awful long time ago, and he'd said to them what had etched itself into Michelle's mind as what it really meant to be Get, one of the only real connections she had with her tribe:

If you're not going to help then get out of the way. Just because it's difficult doesn't mean it doesn't need to be done.

When the pack had dwindled, when Thunder's Teeth was gone and it was only Michelle, she'd stayed away as much as possible because she didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to hear about how they'd warned them it couldn't be done, how they were wasting resources or how they were fighting a war because everything looks like a nail to a hammer. She was too busy grieving and killing and hating, and the Gnawers had their own little caern down by the docks that she could draw her strength from. Urban caerns were better anyway, like little medical tents staked up on a battlefield. You never got to slink away to the woods, to forget that this was about taking the world back from the wyrm not about guarding what was left.

Most importantly she hated Pawtuckaway because it was a place of peace, and Michelle didn't know how to be at peace anymore. Maybe she'd been with the Get too long, maybe things had gone South one too many times. Maybe she was just too full of rage, but what she was really afraid of was that Thunder's Teeth had been right. The Thrall of the Wyrm, they called it when a garou really lost it, when their frenzy got so deep that the primal destroyer took an interest and a hold on it, but whatever it was she'd felt it often enough that it made her skin crawl to think about it. None of the heroes in those stories she got told ever had to pick knuckles from the back of their teeth or came out of their killing frenzy spewing their enemies back up on the sidewalk. Nobody talked about what happened when you were so far in, so far under, so alone that the only thing you could do to hold on was lose everything you were and trust in the monster to see you through. These days she felt more like a serial killer than a garou, and if she thought about it too long it caught in her throat and she started spinning, that awful throbbing behind her temples--

The rumble strip woke her back up and she jerked up in her seat, ash falling to the hem of her black dress as her eyes snapped about. Had she nodded off? Was she just too caught up in everything? Her lips curled into a snarl, a long drag filling her lungs before she pumped it back out in a long gray cone to the window. Wake the fuck up, soldier. They're messing with your head. When it came right down to it, it wasn't about her--it wasn't about any of them. This was bigger than that. If she had to cry herself to sleep every once and a while then boo-fucking-hoo. There was a war to win.

She got stopped by a ranger on her way into the camping grounds, of course, but they knew her by now. Didn't much like her, but they knew her. They exchanged cursory greetings--he said 'Hi', Michelle stared--before she worked her way into the camp grounds proper and pulled the shitty little civic into one of the many empty places. At least she didn't have to worry about them finding the car here, the rangers wouldn't have reported a fucking Mercedes if a garou had rolled up in it. Looking to herself in the mirror for a moment she almost smirked--she looked like a fucking mess. It had been hard to sleep after fucking over that Spiral, but she'd made good use of the time. As she popped open the trunk, she found her normally expressionless face falling into something of a smirk.

Say what you will about Michelle--she wasn't very honorably, and she sure as hell wasn't very wise, but as she grabbed the knotted rope handle and swung it over her shoulder she could feel the weight of the four cleaned spiral skulls clacking against her back. If glory meant killing her enemies then that much she could do, and maybe showing them some visceral evidence would make them listen, or at least get her another gift or something out of the deal. She could use a new trick or two before they really started catching up to her.

Making her way into the forest wearing nothing but her tattoos and her short black sun dress, Michelle did not look like a camper. But anyone that'd been around long enough would know about the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing that lived in the city and ate up the bad boys and girls. She wasn't much worried as she strode for the lake where she could see a few of her kind gathering. If she stood out in the otherwise serene setting she paid it no mind.

She tried hard not to feel like she was coming home.

World of Darkness (Boston)

"Honey, where have you been all my life."

Her feet padded across the slick wet floor, tacky red sticking to the tile beneath them, the excess squishing out from between her toes to run down into the drain below. You lost track of time in the meat locker, or at least Michelle always did, and that was how she liked it. Nowhere to be, nobody to see, nothing but her and her toys and that snarling beastie who was trying so very hard to be big and bad when she'd ripped his wolf rug out from under him so fast he still didn't quite know what had happened. She'd had some close calls in her younger days--what, she was still learning, cut a girl some slack--but these days she really had it down. Industrial cable, the kind you found in old construction projects or at discount workman stores had been threaded through his arms long enough ago for his healing to have locked them in place, joints popped out of socket and kept there by the metal in his system. Same for his legs, the knees bent back until dislocation and secured with a length of metal just long enough to keep them out of position. Garou were strong--fucking strong--so you had to figure out how to keep them from using that strength if you wanted to keep them for any length of time.

And she had an awful lot of questions for Mister Kakhram.

He was snarling something about how awful he was, how his name meant Choker of the World Bitch, how he was going to turn her into his personal meat sack when he broke free, all that jazz. It was the same drivel she'd heard before from the lunatics but somehow it was always slightly endearing, all that hope that 'the Wyrm would save them' or 'kill me, Gaia will still drown' or whatever the hell they decided to say this time. She kind of tuned it out, honestly, by bringing a ballpeen through his teeth. He snarled past the slurry that was dripping down his chin and bubbling up from under his lips, white flecks of bone dripping through pulped muscle and fresh blood as she continued like she hadn't heard him.

"Nine times out of ten you fall apart before I even get to know you, you know that? Someone sure did a shitty job of putting your fucked up little family together." Her voice was flat and atonal, unpleasant to listen to--it sounded bored, venomous, harsh to the ears. Whether she was insulting them or cooing to them it stayed the same, her eyes dead as a doll's and black as a shark's, pupils swollen as she swayed slightly and paced around them. She was doped up, she had to be when she dealt with them because if she came at them normal then her fingers started shaking and her heart started pounding and her teeth stretched into these lovely little killing--

He was saying something. How long, she wondered idly, had he been talking? This big crinos voice, half growl and half snarl. Disgusting, she found herself thinking without feeling, looking at the massive, misshapen shoulders from the back. He was patchy, mangy, his hair coming off in tufts and sloughs even now, his lips curling back from shattered teeth already starting to heal. It almost wasn't important what he was saying--it took an awful lot of force o break a crinos bone, but even in Homid Michelle was a little bit more to deal with than a normal girl. She shattered one of his ribs with a well-placed strike from the hammer, rounded head delivering a body's worth of wind-up and force to a single point. The crunch and the coughing whimper that came from it calmed her down a little, and she leaned down to press a knee into the creature's back, leaning down onto it as she watched. She moved like the recently drunk or the intimately aware, flowing through the air with willowy, almost gentle purpose. "I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of how much I wanted you to shut up. Try again, I'm listening now."

Rolling his eyes back to look to her as best he could, Kakhram's voice was like a guttering candle through the slurry of blood, spit and fragments of his teeth that had already begun to heal. "Do what you want with me, bitchling. I am Kakhram Bane Dancer, I have split your Gaia's skin and raped the wound until--" Until he howled in pain and rage again, apparently, as this time she swung the hammer into his temple. No way he didn't have a concussion after that one, a tap like that would have cracked skull on a human and even in crinos is must have seriously rung his bell. He was losing strength, his roars becoming more like whimpers and his body beginning to shake. She'd give it to him, he was lasting longer than she thought he would.

"Really, please, tell me more. You know how much I like hearing you talk about yourself." She drawled as she walked around him once more--the garou body was really a remarkable thing. The raw abuse it could stand was fucking impressive, but even it had its limits. And speaking of limits, she really was drawing close to hers--she could feel her last hit wearing thin, evaporating under the rage that boiled up under her skin. The muscles in her forearms were already starting to ripple and change, her fingers curling into claws, hair beginning to sprout from the shaved dome of her head. She'd better finish this up then. "I'm sorry to say I'm losing my temper, baby, so here's what's going to happen." Leaning down, she smashed him across the mouth once more with a spray of teeth and broken jaw--she was stronger now, oops, she needed to be a little more careful--and grabbed him by the muzzle, raising his massive skull until he looked into her shark-dark eyes with his own sick yellow ones and saw the changes beginning to make themselves apparent in her.

"I'm going to start hitting you, because I can't stand the awful fucking sound of your voice. And you're going to start telling me exactly where your Hive is so I have somewhere to bring your lifeless, disgusting body back to. And if you're very, very smart, you'll tell me quickly and I'll end your miserable fucking life before I really lose it. Because if that happens you better just hang on, sugar." Looking down to him now, she could see he was really beginning to get it, just how fucked he was. Those yellow eyes were starting to shake, his tongue was starting to loll out the side of his fucked up mouth, and he was panting blood and dribble down to the mess at the floor that ran with a plit-plit-plit into the drain. She was almost seven feet tall, now, her body rippling with wiry muscle that tensed as she readied the hammer and smiled.

"It's going to be the night of your life."

---

It was almost an hour or two when Michelle came too, lying face down on the same chilled meat-locked floor she'd been at not long ago. The smell was awful, charnel and raw, filth and blood and excrement and anything else that could have been beaten out of the putrid little shit staining the walls and the floor. She could still taste him, that awful, sick taste of corruption and decay, like formaldehyde and stomach acid, and as she pushed herself to her shaking hands she doubled over once and vomited to the floor, homid stomach struggling to keep up with a few crinos mouthfuls. It hurt like always and by the end of it she was panting, doubled over and sweating even in the cold of the locker, but as memories of it all slowly came swimming back to her she got to her unsteady feet to hose herself and what was left of the corpse down. It hadn't been pretty, and he hadn't been smart, and in the end she hadn't gotten anything out of him, but hey. Another dead Spiral.

When she was as clean as she thought she was going to get, she turned off the hose from the wall spigot and made for the door, unlocking it from the inside and tugging it open into the light proper. Shaking, chilled to the bone, she stepped out from the locker onto the packing floor of R. Lambert & Son's Fine Meats and dropped the hammer like a punctuation mark. The three men outside looked like they were trying very badly to play cards and pretend nothing had happened, but the way their hands shook and they didn't look at her meant they could hear at least some of what happened in there, and would see at least some more when they cleaned it up. Good Get Kinfolk, salt of the earth. She didn't so much as look at them as she padded her way up towards the shower, shivering, arms wrapped around her chest as she grabbed the pack of cigarettes from her table and lit up the first of many.

"Thanks for sharing, Rob. Made my fucking night."

All she knew was that she was tired and out of gas. She'd need a refill soon, much as she hated it.

And a meal, now that she tossed her last one.