Little Uproar
The day was almost aggressively bright
and hot, like an angry shout of defiance before the harsh winter that
all forecasters agreed would bury them in blizzard after blizzard in the
months to come. Goldie Lennox was a child of the sun, and she reveled
in every last dying breath that summer heat had to offer.
She was
hanging around outside when Matthew got off work, enjoying a grape
popsicle while waiting. They had agreed to buy a proper table and
chairs to eat at, and were going to hunt for a deal in some of the
downtown shops.
To love the sun so much more today, Goldie had
twisted her sandy hair up into a number of braids, twined with purple
and blue thread, all collected into a bun at the back of her head. She
had a black top that was cropped to show some stomach, and a pair of
light-washed shorts. Sneakers instead of sandals, though, and with a
necklace of bronze charms to hang and jangle from around her neck. She'd used the day as a perfect excuse to wear her giant white Hollywood
sunglasses too.
As they walked the red stone sidewalks of the
Downtown streets of Denver, Goldie peered ahead and gestured to a little
vintage boutique shop sign up ahead. "Do you think they'll overcharge
too?" The last place they'd visited had, by almost offensive amounts.
Matthew Murphy
"Why wouldn't they?"
Regardless
of whether Matt actually has to show up for work on a given day or not
he's never ready to do anything productive until mid-afternoon at the
latest. What he calls Going For A Run most people would call Torture.
His runs take up at least an hour and then there's the matter of
stretching and warming up and cooling down and showering and then he
tends to start drinking at some point. Already more than one random
woman has shown up at the house and gone into the bedroom with him and
been gone by the time morning rolled around.
Matthew is not the adult in this equation.
Eating on the couch has gotten old though. Adults need a table and a couple of chairs.
"The
clientele in this neighborhood consists of trust fund babies and
new-age yuppies, they're used to dealing with people with ample
disposable income."
They have to pass by an alleyway to get to the vintage shop. That's never a warning sign in broad daylight.
[we might as well roll alertness here]
Little Uproar
[Perception 3 + Alertness 2]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (7, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Matthew Murphy
[perc + lol he doesn't have alertness]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )
Matthew Murphy
And
Goldie knows as sure as if the brick walls had turned to glass that
something is lurking in the alleyway just up ahead. It smells like
disease and if it doesn't smell wrong then the sense of wrongness finds
another way into her system. Crawls its way up her spine. If she were in
her lupine form her hackles would rise.
Matthew has the same
wariness of alleyways that anyone else does. It's diluted by the
daylight though. He's not oblivious but he makes nothing of it either.
Little Uproar
"Yeah,
I suppose that's true." Goldie frowned at the thought and wrinkled her
nose in distaste at a following one. "I don't want to have to build
all of our furniture out of pallets. I'm not a Pinterest Mom." She was
of the generation of the internet, after all.
Up ahead was an
alleyway, and Goldie's eyes slipped from the little blue-and-white sign
hanging over the shop door to the alley mouth. They would need to cross
ahead it to reach the store they were aiming for, and as though a
spirit had breathed warning in miasma form through her nose and into her
lungs, Goldie knew that there was something there. Crouched and
waiting and terrible, like an oversized trapdoor spider waiting for
prey to stray too close.
Goldie stopped walking and put her arm in
front of Matthew's ribs to stop him as well. She rarely looked serious
or stern, so even now she didn't seem to be entirely that. She did
look a bit stressed, though, when she smiled up at Matthew and said
ever-so-casually:
"There's boogymen ahead, Matty."
Matthew Murphy
Like
a woman who was alive in the time before seat belts Goldie holds out
her arm like to keep momentum from throwing Matt forward and he does run
into it because he was not expecting the collision. He doesn't keep
pressing forward but throws her a questioning look.
There's boogeymen ahead.
His
father was a Theurge and his older brother was a Theurge. His older
sister has a gift few of their kind can understand let alone ever wield
and his lone living brother has a sense of intuition honed like the
knife he keeps in his boot any time he leaves the house. Matt doesn't
arm himself even though he knows what's out there. Matt runs whenever he
encounters danger.
Goldie doesn't enjoy that sort of luxury. It's
right there in their rulebook: combat the Wyrm where it breeds and
where it dwells. He doesn't question how she knows. He doesn't tell her
they ought to get the fuck out of here then either.
"Great," Matt says. "What do you wanna do?"
[doo de doo]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Little Uproar
[Dexterity 3 + Stealth 4: Sneaky Knife Stash]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (5, 5, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Little Uproar
"More
than anything? Wish whatever's there into oblivion, so that way we can
keep on our merry way." Goldie had been carrying a small canvas
backpack with her, with long loose straps that made it hang low and
bounce off her lower back while she walked. She glanced left and
glanced right -- the streets were not crowded though there were
certainly pedestrians within sight.
The way that she turned her
body when she pulled the pack off sheltered what she was doing from the
eyes of the people up the sidewalk in either direction. Matt was
nearby, so he could see very well that she was taking the holstered
knife that she carried with her, with the black grippy handle and the
angry well-sharpened blade. Swift and smooth and seamless the knife
went from the bag to her hip, tucked down into her shorts and out of
sight.
Smiling brightly, she tossed the pack to Matt for him to catch.
"What I'm gonna
do, though, is go start making a name for myself." She curled one side
of her lip up and winked an eye at him, snapping her fingers into the
shape of guns (pow-pow) at him. She jogged a few steps backward when
she did that, then started forward to hug the wall behind the closest
piece of cover she could locate-- be that a trash bin or postal drop box
or fence or what have you.
Little Uproar
[Blur of the Milky Eye: Manipulation 3 + Stealth 4]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (2, 2, 3, 7, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Matthew Murphy
He
does not intend to leave her but neither is he going to go into that
alleyway with her. He has not been brought up from youth knowing that
his purpose so far as the Nation was concerned is to gather intelligence
and blindside the enemy and force the others to question and rethink
and broaden their beliefs. Temper them if they were weakened by defeat
and loss.
His purpose insofar as the Nation is concerned is to
stay alive so he can impregnate a female in the hopes of bringing
another trueborn into the world. At least a metis would be considered of
some use in the war. Matt is just breeding stock and he hasn't even
accomplished that at the age of 28.
When Goldie tosses the pack at
him Matt catches it. He holds it against his chest a moment before
letting his eyes dart to the alleyway. He is tense and she can read the
tension in his frame skinny as he is but he isn't anxious. At least not
that she can see.
And what they can't see has already started to
respond to their voices and their movements. She hears a shuffling in
the alleyway. A grunt and a wheeze. Only one creature that she can hear.
As
she gives him a quip and starts to creep forward Matt holds up a thumb
and rifles around for his cellphone. Might as well look like he's
waiting for someone and not engaging in deviant behavior while she's
doing whatever it is she's doing.
So she ducks behind a broken bit
of wooden fencing. The alleyway is shaped like a T. Whatever is hiding
in it is around the bend. She hasn't got much cover to work with.
Little Uproar
[Dexterity 3 + Athletics 2]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Matthew Murphy
[does captain alertness notice? +3 bc milky eye.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN9 (2, 4, 5, 6) ( fail )
Little Uproar
Goldie
learned a trick once from an ermine spirit. It taught her how to slink
through a landscape while blending into it and going unnoticed. It was
almost as though she could get light to fragment differently from the
air around her, so that people were less prone to notice the outlines of
her body and colors of her clothing when she slipped along a wall and
past wandering eyes.
This is how Goldie managed to go from girl
crouched behind a fence to, in the blink of an eye, nowhere to be
found. She couldn't teleport, Matthew knew that much, but he certainly
knew by now of the tricks that Ragabashes kept up their sleeves to go
places unnoticed. Goldie was particularly good at tricks like that.
This
is how she soft-footed her way along the edge of the street wall,
without notice from the pedestrians that made their merry way on this
nice sunny day as well. It's how she hugged herself up close to the
wall and peeked around the corner to evaluate precisely what she was
going up against.
Matthew Murphy
Goldie wasn't the
one who went to New York to collect Matthew when he had his nervous
breakdown or whatever it is they've been calling the incident that had
him leaving his job as an environmental lawyer for the oblivion alcohol
and running bring.
She has seen mold before though. Her father was
not a slob but sometimes food stayed in the refrigerator longer than it
ought to have. Bananas stayed out too long or a piece of meat hid in
the back of the refrigerator until it had turned a soft gray color more
liquid than solid and threatened to cough spores if a finger poked into
it.
This is what is waiting for her when the fleet-footed Ragabash girl peers around the corner of the alleyway.
It
might have stood Matt's height once but its deformity has twisted its
back so that it has hunched in on itself and collapsed at the same time.
Its skin was healthy pink once. That was before the mold got to it.
Gray and green compete for dominance and from where she stands Goldie
could argue with herself whether it looks greasy or fuzzy. A colorless
ooze has pooled at the thing's boots and it does still wear boots though
they are beginning to rot and rip off and the rest of its clothing has
been consumed by the ooze and the fuzz. She can make out no facial nor
any other discernible features. All she has is a bloated vaguely-human
mass of fungus.
When it breathes the breath comes in in a wheeze
and it comes out in a wheeze but when it comes out a fine gray mist
comes out too.
It doesn't know she's there. Its head is tilted
towards the sidewalk where it heard something a moment ago but it hasn't
moved yet.
Little Uproar
[Perception 3 + Melee 2: Hunting for something useful in this alley]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Little Uproar
Disgust,
something more emotional and less of a bile-rising impulse this time,
settled in Goldie's chest when she saw the fuzzy moldy gray-green lump
that was human shaped but not much else anymore. She pitied the foolish
human that transformed into that-- it was probably a slow transition,
something that started out like a scab or a rash that grew to this point
over the course of weeks. He probably sought a doctor's advice once,
was given some cream that failed to fix the problem. Or maybe he failed
to seek any kind of medical aid due to money or shame. Who knew.
She
couldn't gauge how long it took something like that to grow, but Goldie
knew for damn sure that she didn't want it getting on her skin. She
didn't want to have to go through a Theurge's hoops and remedies to get
it cleansed and washed off her, and she certainly didn't want to risk
bringing it into her and Matt's house.
Eyes skimmed the alleyway
she peeked into. There was a bit of fence that she could use, provided
she snapped the end off and took to prodding and stabbing. There was
her knife as well, but that would get her close. Unless, of course, she
threw it.
Yes.
But no, not from here. A peek over her
shoulder reminded her that she was still hugging the wall of a downtown
street on an afternoon. She'd need to bring this back deeper into the
alley, away from the people and the cars and the storefront windows.
Back into the shadows, where people didn't want to see.
So, with a
swallow and a leap of faith, Goldie crept around the wall and made her
meticulous way around the creature, toward the T-juncture of the
alleyway.
Little Uproar
[Dexterity 3 + Stealth 4 (Sneaky Feet specialty)]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1
Matthew Murphy
[herp a derp]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 7) ( success x 1 )
Little Uproar
I am so fucking cool right now.
This
was how Goldie pumped herself up, silently hugging the edge of a wall
with nothing so much as a deep black shadow to hide herself in. She
relied heavily on the gift of milky eyes to keep the fluffy-greasy-moldy
beastie in the center of the alleyway from seeing her. It felt a lot
like sneaking around a rhinoceros, she imagined-- moving slowly and
keeping your steps as silently light as possible.
Look at me. The sunshine can't even expose me.
She
stayed quiet and careful even once she was around and behind the thing
-- she gauged that she was behind it because that was the way the jean
pockets were facing, and it seemed to lean toward the mouth of the alley
too. Once a good distance up the alley from the thing, so it would
need to cross distance to reach her, she pulled the knife and holster
from under the waistband of her shorts. Quietly, slowly, carefully, she
eased the blade from its protective cover and left the cover to rest on
the ground for now.
You ain't got shit on me, fluff beast.
She straightened up, lined up her shot, and let the knife fly.
Little Uproar
[Knife Throw: Dexterity 3 + Athletics 2, -2 diff for ambush]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (4, 4, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Little Uproar
[Damage(L): Strength 2 + 4 Suxx]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Matthew Murphy
And
the knife flies from the Ragabash's grip as straight and pure as a
raindrop comes to earth from a cloud grown swollen with rain. It is as
if that knife's destiny was to strike and lodge in the chest of a
creature once human now mutated into something wretched and damned.
Something for whom death is the only merciful end.
It hits home
and from where she stands Little Uproar can see a pint of wet gray
sludge burst from the wound. The creature hunches even harder in on
itself and that wheeze becomes a hiss that might have been a scream if
it could draw the breath to do so. As its withered lips pull back from
translucent teeth she can see the canines have become fangs. This lump
of fungus could bite her if she draws too close.
Matthew has not done so much as poked his head around to investigate. He's staying out of this for now.
The creature shudders and hisses again and then it starts to stagger towards her.
Little Uproar
The
knife struck true and deep, and Goldie couldn't help the lick of
satisfaction that curled her lips up. The expression turned to a sneer
when the wheezing gray mass turned to bare fangs and hiss at her.
The
illusion of invisibility was broken, and a lean-limbed young woman was
left to stand challenge to this thing. But soon, quite soon, that
sneering face stretched out, and the body grew and grew. A werewolf
golored sand-gold and dark-muzzled stood in her place, Little Uproar
instead of Goldie Lennox.
Muzzle wrinkled, and the hiss was mimicked back.
It's on.
[Init + Dex 5 + Wits 4]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
Little Uproar
[Make that Dex 4, lawl]
Matthew Murphy
[LET'S DANCE +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )
Matthew Murphy
The
creature shuffles closer shuffles closer shuffles closer like a zombie
in some old '60s horror film and when it's close enough to strike:
[action: BITE.]
Little Uproar
[Split Actions! 1.) Grab Fence Post 2.) Jam in thing's fucking mouth (WP!)]
Little Uproar
[Action 1: Reflexive
Action 2: Dexterity 4 + Melee 2, -3 split penalty, diff 8 called shot, spending WP]
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (4, 5, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Little Uproar
[Damage(L): Strength 6 + 1 Called Shot]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Matthew Murphy
[-1 WP
stam + medicine: activate numbing?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Matthew Murphy
[wait i rolled too many dice]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
Matthew Murphy
The
fencepost broke off at the end Little Uproar deems the pointy end and
it is not so sharp as a knife but it is sharp enough to spear through
skin and muscle. To find a place underneath its ribs and thrust through
its back and send another wet cloud coming up through the exit wound.
Another spore-choked wheeze and she can see as the thing writhes with
the pain burrowing down roots that cannot find purchase.
It shuffles forward two more steps.
[dex + brawl: CHOMP.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Matthew Murphy
[+1]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Little Uproar
[Soak!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Little Uproar
[Resist Fungal Touch: Stamina 5]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Matthew Murphy
Though
its fangs find her forearm beneath the fur they find no purchase.
Little Uproar rolls her arm out of its maw and rear back to strike
again.
Little Uproar
This poor fucker now had a
knife sticking out of it, and a fence post to boot. Goldie had hoped to
keep it at bay, far enough away that it couldn't touch her. But even
though she'd impaled it with a stake it kept forward-- really, this
thing was just a husk now wasn't it? A shambler made of rotting fungus
that had taken over where skin had long since rotted away.
Its
teeth gnashed at her arm, through fur and pressing hard on her forearm,
but not enough to puncture skin and tear the flesh. She didn't snarl,
because Ragabashes knew to keep a kill quiet when it needed to be so.
Instead she curled her lips and bared her teeth in a silent
representation of the sound and jerked her arm roughly from the greasy
pointy mouth of the shuffling monster.
Well she figured, eyeing the spores that had clung to her forearm fur, since we're already here....
And with that, she lifted her arm and flexed dark claws to prepare for the strike.
Little Uproar
[Action 1: Claw! Rage Action: Claw again!]
Little Uproar
[Claw: Dexterity 4 + Brawl 1]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Little Uproar
[Damage (A): Strength 6 + 3 Suxx]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
Matthew Murphy
If
Little Uproar had been born beneath a full moon it may not have ended
so quickly. She does not need to call upon her Rage to end the thing. To
have called upon Rage would have been a shortcut and an unnecessary
one. She kills the creature in two strikes three if we count the thrown
knife and if it takes her nine seconds instead of three...
Well.
It still takes her kinsman ten seconds to call up a route home on his
smartphone. A route that will have them in scarce contact with humans in
the event that Goldie emerges from the alleyway drenched in blood.
Both
of them have known the feeling of fresh blood gone to tack on their
flesh and in their hair. The metallic tang of fresh panic gone to dry in
the backs of their throats. This isn't the first time and it won't be
the last. Little Uproar is known for her prowess and her bravery in
combat and by the time she reaches Fostern glory in battle is all she
may know.
Matt though is renowned for nothing. When he peeks
around the alleyway he can see nothing for the fight has taken place in
one of the wings beyond a corner where he cannot see. He can hear the
heft of the war-beast's breathing and the dying wheeze of the monster
who will appear to the next shopgirl to take out the trash and the
responding police officers and medical examiners to be a homeless woman
stabbed to death with a fencepost by another crystal meth tweaker.
These
humans will open no investigation. They will look for a next of kin and
find an estranged adult child in another city. But they can gather no
useful evidence and even if they would no one gives a shit about an
aging drug addict stabbed to death in an alleyway.
Her kinsman
does not call out for her. He waits and when she reappears he will hurry
her off to the car. But he does not lift his voice. He knows better.
Little Uproar
The
death is a fast and quiet one. Goldie counted herself lucky that the
mold had filled up this once-person's lungs and voicebox so much so that
they couldn't create proper screams or cries of agony. She'd thrown a
knife into it, stabbed it with a wooden post, and then tore it
completely open with a well-executed rake of her claws.
Rage
fizzled in the air off her shoulders, unspent but bucked up close to the
surface because she was ready to burn it off if she needed to. Turns
out she didn't.
When she emerged from the alley it was about five
minutes after she'd vanished in the first place. She looked about as
normal as when she'd walked in, save for the smear of gray stuff across
her arms and chest and neck-- she managed to successfully keep her face
clean, but just barely. She was whistling merrily through the slight
gap in her teeth and brushing her arms and hips and belly free of the
dusty green-gray stuff as she approached the sidewalk and the Kinsman
that waited there for her.
Matt wouldn't be able to find a scratch on her. The stuff she was covered in probably smelled terrible though.
"I'm
gonna need to make a pit stop before we go anywhere else," she told him
simply, then nodded her head back in the direction of the great tall
skyscraper on 1999 Broadway. She'd find a Theurge to help cleanse her
before she could play bumblebee to this plague-pollen.
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