Echoes of the Lost
DRESS REHEARSAL HECTOR DON'T FUCK THIS UP.
---
"It was a bright, sunny day. End of June. Chirping birds, giggling kids, booming boomboxes. I was inside the Sept of the Cold Crescent minding my own business when I heard--"
Pale imitation of Snails and Tails, Fostern Ragabash of the Bone Gnawers:
"New Kid! Do this right and I might remember your name next time!"
Pantomime of whipping around all Who, me? Flail-y pointing at self, pointing over at nobody else, shrugging.
"The uncle of the cousin of the boyfriend, one of Rat's, mostly homeless. Good chap if you ignore the fact he's got a taste for spirits and disappearing when he can find a place to crash long enough to drink a plastic jug of the stuff. I hadn't ever met him but Family is Family and this particular family was staying with a human gal. Sounded alright: ex-con, went from the halfway house to the Section 8 one-bedroom, had heat and hot water, la la la, nobody's seen him for three four weeks."
He turns to Tamsin. Doesn't have cue cards or anything. His brain is his outline.
"Slow burn, or boring as fuck?"
Furious Lament
Tamsin's legs are crossed and her chin is resting on both fists. "Too soon to tell. Let's see where you go with it."
The Fianna is totally the kind of serious-about-being-a-Galliard creature who wouldn't call Hector 'Hector' times like these.
Did she actually acquire a trash-box full of trash to throw? Yeah, she totally did. It's sitting there, no pressure.
Echoes of the Lost
"Baby, I am gonna take this places you never dreamed."
It's his moon. He's always been the showman of the pair of them. Just gets worse when Luna waxes over them.
"Okay that's a lie it's pretty much the same story I already told--"
He preemptively ducks away from any incoming detritus and clears his throat and gets back into it.
"So if you're asking yourself well why would she send an Uktena to do a Bone Gnawer's job let me tell you something: you see that humble-looking bag of fur sitting over there? -- pretend there's like two Septs' worth of people and I'm pointing at the man of the hour in front of them, he'll love that shit --"
He does point but it's to where he imagines their packmate is going to be hunched during all of this.
"-- looks like a bulldog fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. That dude is a stone-cold badass. He was just standing there all Where's your ride? and I'm all Yo my ride is the BUS, cous! and he's like Okay that's stupid I have a bike let's go and I was thinking it was a bicycle, like he was going to put me in his basket or something, but no, he was talking a straight-up fat-tired no-muffler-having louder-than-anything-you've-ever-heard-in-your-life--"
Sigh.
"I became a man that day. I really did."
Focus, Hector.
Furious Lament
Tamsin face-palms when he tells her to pretend like; she also starts to grow pale, because what she doesn't need is a reminder that there are Two Septs worth of garou going to be watching, the very thought just makes her want to die, literally to just die, and she has to steel herself to keep paying attention. She grins at 'that dude is a stone-cold badass,' but as a listener, Tamsin isn't very expressive, choosing to keep her reactions secret and hidden and blame it on the waning moon.
"Okay, maybe a little fewer 'likes,' and nobody needs to know how deep your fetish for Weaver-thunder-machine goes, but you've got something with the introduction man."
Echoes of the Lost
"Yeah? Alright. Less tell, more show."
He clears his throat, shakes out his shoulders. This would not be a long story were not for his love affair with the goddamn motorcycle.
"Okay. So I'm thinking I'm going off to knock on some toothless broad's door with someone who wouldn't know subtlety if it tiptoed up and tapped him on the shoulder. And we did end up on East Colfax knocking on some toothless broad's door but before we even knocked just--you know that sense, right. Sometimes it isn't something you can point to on this side of the curtain, like the smell of rotting meat or the sound of buzzing flies, it's something slides up out of the center of you. That cold oily something-isn't-right warning. Jack, man, he smelled it, he knew what was on the other side of that door because he got the rotten meat and the droning flies, and it got worse after we started talking to these... they looked like women. Women who'd been through the wringer, but the one who answered the door... other than a glass eye didn't match the one she had left and a jaw that was a little on the trollish side she looked... you know. Normal.
"Of course she acted like she didn't know where Gerhart was. The Wyrm is like an oil slick, man, and if you aren't paying attention it looks just like water when the sun isn't shining. Jack, he looked across the Veil and saw these Banes drifting around, three of them--"
His voice wavers for just-a-second. He hadn't told her this bit before. He realizes it as he tells it now. Doesn't stop.
"--and he pulled me back into the stairwell. Made out like we were going to leave the building altogether, just go back to Gerhart's nephew's cousin's girlfriend and tell her we couldn't find him just like nobody else could find him but then we heard this voice behind the door: You see this, honey? You see what the devil sends? You see why he gives you the gifts you got?
"And the other woman was begging her to stop, called her Momma.
"We got out of there, man, but we didn't leave." Points to where Jack sits in his mind. "This crazy son of a bitch is like No one says we gotta be polite and use the front door!--" He stops pointing. "--So we sneak up the fire escape, right, and I'm thinking they're going to hear us, he's going to make the whole thing just... no. You'd think he was a ghost. Just... whoosh! Up these rusty-ass stairs, through this fire trap of a window, moves an air conditioner must have come off the line in the nineteen-eighties, and we're in."
Pause. Pleading look.
"You're seriously not going to come up and be the Fomori?"
Furious Lament
Tamsin bites her lip. Then, a note of pleading in her voice, "I'll suck. I'm trying to save it for the Ambush Tale. You know I'll suck. What do you want me to do as the Fomori?"
Echoes of the Lost
"All you have to do is stand here and let me pretend to snap your neck and kick you across the room."
Furious Lament
"I don't think you need a prop for that," she says. "Like, they can imagine it, um, without me literally being thrown across -- you just want to beat me up!" Tamsin reaches into the box and pinches a banana peel out've it, her intention clear.
Echoes of the Lost
Now he counters with pleading of his own but with palms out in the universal DON'T SHOOT sign.
"And I'm not even gonna actually kick you, just like, pantomime the kicking. But it'll look dumb if I'm up here Riverdancing around by myself. Come on, Cinder-Song, when's the last time I asked you for anything?"
Furious Lament
Tamsin sinks lower and lower to the ground, but the banana peel gets dropped back into the box. She chews her lip again, then, in a voice that is as angry as any he's ever heard her use, she snaps, "Fine!"
Then slow-ly stands up.
Echoes of the Lost
Slowly she stands up.
Hector keeps his palms out, arms extended, teeth half-shown in a smile that's not even close to comforting because he looks more afraid of her than she is of embarrassing herself in front of a hundred Garou. His eyes in full-blown puppy-dog mode, worse for the fact that he can't fucking manufacture that expression because he can't lie his way out of a paper bag.
Furious Lament
"I said fine!" she says, edgily. "What should I do, where should I stand, what the hell was the creature doing before its neck got snapped again. Show me and I'll copy."
Echoes of the Lost
And when she comes close enough he loops an arm over her like to wheel her into proper position and then holds her there with both hands on both shoulders.
"Your motivation for this scene is to keep praying to a god who doesn't exist even while a Rage-y motherfucker is kicking down your door and trying to snap your cervical spine."
Furious Lament
"Uh, should I say something about god, I guess?" She pauses; her eyes darken. "Maybe like from the interrogation."
Echoes of the Lost
She can't see his expression because he's standing half behind her but she can hear the admiration in his voice.
"You beautiful bitch." It evaporates. "Yeah do that, that'd be hardcore."
Furious Lament
Her shoulders come up and she looks abjectly miserable. "Okay. Uh." She clears her throat, and clasps her hands, and then begins to mutter-rock spit-hurl injectives much like a certain prisoner had.
Echoes of the Lost
"Less fury, more ecstasy. You haven't had the shit kicked out of you yet."
Claps his hands, springs back, projects his voice now that he's back in storyteller mode.
"Alright so we sneak inside, Jack kicks the door open, the younger one's on the couch not knowing what's going on, Carlita's--" He indicates Tamsin with both hands making an encircling motion. "--raving on about God, and Jack's all--"
His hands clamp onto her head but not hard. Not even really clamping. The same kind of presence-not-pressure that he uses whenever he decides to grab her head because he knows he's stronger than her and doesn't want her feeling trapped even if she couldn't burst into a nine-foot-tall car-flipping-over lunatic and rip off his arms in the amount of time it would take him to blink.
"Okay Jack wrenched your neck but didn't break it, now you just sort of kneel down-like and keep going on about god and shit."
Furious Lament
There's a brief-pause; then Tamsin adjusts the texture and tenor of her voice. Ecstatic, rather than furious, although she doesn't do away completely with the darker edge. Pauses, after the head-grab, and says, "So okay, wrenched my neck like a badass, right? Like it is ridiculous that she's still going on, right? 'cause you should totally just like, savagely gesture or something to show how badass it really was, so the 'oh boo hoo I'm kneeling but just like before' is even creepier. Um, maybe?"
Echoes of the Lost
And she hears him sigh not out of disappointment but out of the weight of revelation. He keeps his hands where they are, collects his thoughts and when he speaks next it's to her, not to their invisible audience.
"I didn't even think, after Jack kicked the door open. I figured the floor would be half-rotten so I barely wanted to be in my wolf-skin with him running around all near-man but--they're Wyrmlings, we need to put them down. Maybe not kill them because we can pump them for intel later. Him kicking in the door and knocking her down and keeping the other one from regenerating and biting me because I didn't one-hundred-percent throat her was badass, but... yeah. In hindsight it was seriously fucking creepy. An actual human would have been in too much pain to move but they were... I mean you saw the other one. They were possessed."
Clears his throat.
"Anyway--bam!" His hands leave her head and she sees them move around her periphery. "Savage wolf-man head-twist! You're on the ground."
Furious Lament
Tamsin falls to the ground -- or more to the ground than she already was, kneeling. She looks up at Hector, her hair all a-muss, says nothing, just waits for direction.
Echoes of the Lost
"So after he gave her the old head-twist he was like--I'm gonna pretend to kick you in the head, you're going to fall down to your left and stop jabbering but you're not dead yet--boosh!"
And he who played soccer as a kid pretends he has no human-ingrained athleticism but scores a sweet goal-kick anyway only he's standing a good meter behind Tamsin so he doesn't clock her in the head.
"--dropped her in enough time to turn around and knock out the one on the couch, we found Gerhart, ritual sacrifice, Law-in-War is with Celduin now... don't fuck with him, he's a bad dude."
A hand comes to help her up.
"See? Imagine how stupid that'd look if I did it by myself."
Furious Lament
"You're going to tell that better though, while you do the acrobatics, right?" Tamsin says, sounding anxious, when he offers her his hand. "Because that was all like, blah blah detail at the beginning, then look look we have a prop rush through blah."
Echoes of the Lost
Hector looks out over the nonexistent audience with his hand still extended and then back.
"Should we not do the prop?"
Either way: "Whatever. Get up, we got another story to run through."
Furious Lament
"We can do the prop," Tamsin says, because he already defeated her on that score. "I just want to hear you tell the end properly, Hector." She takes his hand and uses it to drag herself up.
Echoes of the Lost
"Okay," he says, amused in the face of her admonition, "be a good maniac and I won't lose all that momentum in the middle of breaking your neck."
Braid-tug.
"Seriously. Next story." Clap, clap. "Call the ball."
Furious Lament
[DON'T CRY LIKE A WUSS.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 5, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Echoes of the Lost
[CAN I TELL YOU ALMOST CRIED]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Furious Lament
Tamsin looks mutinous. Her jaw sets, and she glares at Hector, but the glare sort-of shivers like breeze rippling on water, drops and her lashes flutter-flutter, and her shoulders square, hands curling inside her pockets. All signs he sees, reads for once quite easily. "FINE."
Echoes of the Lost
"Hey...?"
This time he knows he's not about to get cake batter smashed into his hair because he can actually see the liquid threaten to leave her lacrimal glands. Doesn't mean she won't still punch him in the face.
"Shit. Tamsin, I'm sorry, that wasn't funny." He puts a hand on the back of her head and then hauls her into a hug. If she struggles he lets her go. "Don't be... cry. You were good, okay? It was really creepy. I want creepy. People need to know, And we're gonna take down this fucked-up church and the next time I'm gonna tell everyone what a badass you are and you can sit down the whole time and it'll be fine. I just didn't want to accidentally kick you in the face."
Sigh.
"I could really go for some goddamn apple juice right now. Let's take a break."
Furious Lament
"You just don't take it seriously," Tamsin says, although that's probably not true, maybe she doesn't mean it, she's just upset that he noticed she was upset, and she's angry and snarly and she never pretended to be nice (okay, she did, and she does, quite often, just see how many people actually claim to have heard her cuss here, not Mr. White that's for sure). "But you're still better and out of my league and you're just," Tamsin scowls, again, and scrunches up her face, "I should've been something else."
Echoes of the Lost
If he were trying not to laugh she'd see it in his muscles, in his eyes.
"Really, dude? Like what?"
Furious Lament
"Idunno. Maybe a ragabash. Question things and get beat up and get to fuck things up all the time, I could do that."
Echoes of the Lost
He adjusts one of the rings on his off-hand the way he does when he's venturing into awkward conversational waters. She's seen him do this when he's talking to a girl he thinks is way too hot for him. Or when he's about to get chewed out by an elder for doing something indicative of his having brain damage.
"Yeah but Glen suuucked at dusting off all those old folk fables you whip out like it's no big deal. And he could kick my ass. He used to kick my ass all the time. You can't even land a hit unless I like, throw myself into your fist."
Furious Lament
"So that's just another -- " Tamsin takes a deep, deep, deeeeeep breath, closing her eyes and forcing herself to stop whatever it is she was about to say. "Ugh, Hector. I don't know. I just think sometimes that this was really stupid of Gaia. She should've like, chosen someone else. Or my mom shouldn't have... I just, maybe God, I dunno, whatever, yeah rock out fucking be oblivionated by my amazing Galliard eloquence it's a true folk fable."
Echoes of the Lost
"If you think this isn't what you're supposed to be doing... Gaia fucks up sometimes. You know? That's why they have the renunciation rite. You can pack up your moon and your people and just go--"
He pantomimes picking up a huge bundle of laundry or something and shifts it across his body before plopping it down. Adds a mouth-fart sound effect for good measure.
"But you've gotta start at the bottom and claw your way up all over again. And if you really think Gaia fucked up and that's what you want to do, I'll stand by you, but I think you're freaking out because this is the first moot we're ever actually going to stand up at and you think it's going to suck. I don't know about you, but I think it's bullshit that Glen and Maria and--"
His throat clicks shut for a second.
"--Cockhead aren't here. And that sucks. You know? There's a lot. But I think you're gonna be fine, because we're gonna rock everybody's faces off. So... see if you can survive my amazing rendition of The Tale of Law-in-War and the Two Old Broads without going into a fangirl convulsion in front of everyone and maybe help me tell The Tale of Reverence of Dawn and Law-in-War Killing Everything in Sight and then if you still think you're the worst, you know. We'll fix it."
Furious Lament
He's helping, but he's also not helping, or at least that's what it seems like. Her Rage spikes, and she paces away from him, backs away, putting her weight hard on her heels like that's the easiest thing to do, "Those titles suck. I was thinking more How Celduin Totally Whupped Ass, and the Silver Fang Was Kind of Badass. Oh, and," a pause, reflective, "I guess also how these things are trying to come into our homes. They already did once but it's getting worse."
It's deliberate, how she's not actually answering anything he said, not rising to the bait of Corey's name not mentioned, Maria and Glen, and it's deliberate now how she goes: "I think I got enough for pizza. Or maybe Jack can rustle us up some grub."
"I'll hide the trash-box before we ask though."
Echoes of the Lost
He lets it drop for now but he still sticks too goddamn close to her heels as they leave their staging area. Doesn't try to hug her again but if she throws an elbow out she'll catch him in the spleen.
"Well what's Jack going to eat if you hide the trash? You have to be considerate of other people's needs, Tamsin, that's called not being a jerk."
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