Stomping Grounds [attn Joey]

[phil]

Being part of the barking chain means keeping certain connections active. Connections he's allowed to let slip ever since the Beloved Horror came knocking around the first time, ever since they committed certain atrocities that struck too close to home, and soured the Bone Gnawer kin on being too close to the Family. It's been over a year since he's had any form of regular interaction with the Full Bloods, and now, well, it's time to drum up some of the old folks, see whom he can find, and where he can find them.

Course, he could go round Cold Crescent and press the buzzer, look up into the security cam and give them a smile, but that place, well, it gives him the willies. No. Best to look around, dig up some folks the old fashioned way.

So Marcellus shrugs on his old army jacket, the camo faded and the elbows torn, the collar a smooshed thing about his dirt seamed neck, and heads out to do the circuit. There are places, old places where the Family used to congregate, back in the day. Spots where they could be found, or signs of their passing. It's too those places he heads.

First it's an abandoned railway overpass. Back in the day, its dark underbelly hosted nightly parties with raw liquor, tales around a few fires, and occasionally some free grub for the locals. Marcellus draws up close and sees that the railway up ontop has been converted to a bike path, and that the underbelly has been turned into the site of some art project renovation thing. No dice.

Over to an old warehouse that used to serve as a halfway home for the downa nd outs. Marcellus stands before it for a long while, riding the memories that the sad old facade evokes, but there's no sign of life there, not any more.

A twenty minute walk brings him to the Tunnel Bar, a long, subterranean dive which features one long bar, plenty of grimy photographs, and little lighting. He shells out some hard earned cash and buys himself a whiskey, which he nurses for a good forty five minutes while waiting to see any familiar faces before knocking it back and heading out.

Finally he ends up in Prayer Alley, and plants himself at its very end right under the magnificent street mural of Mother Theresa DJing in heaven, rays of sunlight spearing out from behind her as she bends over her set. Back in the day this place was always watched, a safe space in the madness of the city. He leans back against the bricks, kicks out his legs before him, crosses them at the ankles, and prepares himself to wait.

[Joey]

Developers redevelop and the modern gentry gentrify. It's like sweeping dirty water with a push-broom. It doesn't get clean any cleaner. It just goes someplace else. Old mugs and fresh muzzles come and go, shuffled back into the deck more bent and worn with each hand dealt. Except the money always goes back to the house.

Marcellus doesn't have to get further than Tunnel Bar before he finally finds what he's looking for. There's a large old man shooting pool with a younger version of himself, part of a raucous group of men and women making friends and getting under the influence around the game table. They all wear the denim and leather of a biker gang, and there's a pile of lunch coolers, tool belts and gloves in the corner that tells their occupation.

They're all getting drunker by the minute, having a good time and cutting loose after a long day at work, all except for one that's sitting at the back corner of the bar. The only hint he's with them is that every couple minutes they shout to him and he shouts back an answer, then goes back to contemplating the glass of water in front of him. He's short. His feet barely touch the rung of the barstool his thick and muscle-piled form is perched on. Wide as a Buick, even though he rides a Harley. Wouldn't get caught on four wheels for his life.

Not after the last time.

Jack's hood is pulled up, and he wears a leather vest of the same cut as the rest of them. Even as they shed their work uniforms, they keep on the layer that makes them a family.

"Goin' out t' watch the bikes," he says as he rises, most likely referencing the long line of hogs outside, because as darkness falls outside it becomes less easy to simply glance up out the front window and check for their safety. He gets up and passes by Marcellus on his way out, and it's at this point the reason he is a man apart becomes apparent.

No man bellows such menace and burning fury simply by existing. Simply by walking by him toward the front of the bar. The feeling is familiar for kin, but even then he avoids subjecting his own to it fully. No, he is not a man apart, but instead a protector watching the edge of camp for the dangers he knows will come.

Jack passes through the portal, the door slamming shut behind him, and kicks up one of his jackboots over the other as he leans back into the facade of the building and crosses his arms. He stares intently at the motorcycles, like doing so long enough can imbue them with the same foreboding in his heart, and he can leave them safe and return to his man-pack.

[phil]

Marcellus stiffens reflexively as Jack walks past, not turning to look at him, not reaching out to pluck at his sleeve. Rather, he simply feels the muscles between his shoulder blades grow tight, feels the spot between his brows grow scrunched, and the pit of his stomach drop. He clenches the whiskey, then when the door closes behind Jack, he raises it and downs it in one smooth, practiced pull. No hiss, no showing signs of the alcoholic burn - Marcellus has had enough practice over the course of his life to take a hit of cheap whiskey in stride.

That done, he sets the short, beveled glass down, and rises to his feet. For a moment he simply stares at the door, and then he takes a deep breath and marches down the length of the Tunnel Bar, and pushes his way outside.

There he is. Like a glowing ingot of iron, radiating heat and menace like a sleeping junkyard dog. Furious enough that he's probably an ahroun, maybe a galliard. Or who the hell knows. Marcellus adjusts his belt, then walks over a few steps and stops again.

"Hey." He's of medium height, Marcellus, worn and weathered by the streets, in his late forties perhaps, or hell, who knows given how the streets can age you. China blue eyes with irises rimmed as dark as the pupils, startling almost in that creased and leathered face, his matted mane pulled back into a rough ponytail, his broad lips pressed into a line. No doubt Jack can smell him even from where he stands.

"Hey there." This is always the awkward part. If only there were gang signs they could flash. "'scuse me, but uh, you wouldn't happen to be related to Rat?"

[Joey]

Jack has his own malodorous aura that hangs about him. Maybe their scents begin to clash and war. More likely they commingle and put off a few patrons from making their way into the bar as the sun falls from the sky.

The man speaks, and the Bone Gnawer's eyes begin to relax before he even gets to the word 'Rat'. Like someone with a pair enough to talk to him deserves to be rewarded for their effort, he doesn't try to lord that presence over another living being. Not one that so far hasn't meant him any harm. His just-as-savage will subdues the sharp and clawing edges of his soul to an extent by the time the important part comes out.

Jack kicks up off the building front and lets his arms drop to his sides. The bulldog-built Garou turns toward him, his round and grisly face breaking into a toothy grimace of a grin. The bunching of stubbled cheeks make his eyes seem to narrow like this might turn into an interrogation.

"Yeah. This a family reunion?" No, not an interrogation. His tone (friendly, despite the Rabid honorific prefix to the name Jack stitched onto a patch of his leather vest) clarifies what his ill-favored visage simply cannot. "Ain't seen you before. But we's kinda new in town."

[phil]

"Yeah, family reunion," says Marcellus, trying for a smile but not quite making it. There's a flash of yellowed ivories, a hint of the garrulous cheer, but face to face with the Full Blood, it doesn't quite manifest. Instead, the older man runs his fingers over his hair, smoothing it down, patting the scruffy tail at the back of his head as if making sure it's still there, and then shoves his hands into his pockets.

"And me?" Flash of a nervous smile. It's so damn easy to imagine Jack losing his shit, losing his cool, and things going bad. Going ugly, fast. "I've been in town longer than you've been riding hogs." A pause. "That'd be about ten years or so now. What year is it? Maybe more by this point. Long enough. To notice when things are getting funny. Which they are."

He's rambling, he knows he is, but he can't help it. "A friend of mine, she almost checked into a place called The House of the Covenant? Anyways, I tagged along to make sure things were kosher, and they weren't. I had to get her out of there before signed away her right to an attorney, right to, uh, well giving others medical rights over her, and restricting her ability to meet with anybody else without approval. 'Re-entry' program, it was called, but with funny spelling. Supposed to help folks get back into society, but they, uh, they straight up lied to her about what was what."

Marcellus rubs the back of his neck. Can't seem to stand still. "So I went and talked to another friend of mine, a pastor, and he had some shit to say about this group. Really thinks bad about 'em, especially, their - what did he call it - their Tuskagee Syphilis program? I don't know what that is, but it sounded real bad. They got all kinds of programs goin' on, and they're all really successful and really weird. Strings in Town Hall too, I reckon, seeing as how they're able to get permits and shit where nobody else has got 'em before."

Marcellus cuts Jack a sideways look. It's clear he's got more to say, but he's also nervous about talking too much. No telling what'll annoy a Full Blood.

[Joey]

The man begins spilling the beans to Jack, more of a heaping helping than he had given in return to his question of the Philodox's lineage as Ratling, and it is enough to earn his trust.

Jack comes at the man with an open hand, reaching out with his own sausage-fingered mitt to shake his, leaning in with an introduction as the other's palm slaps down on Marcellus' shoulder. "Rabid Jack Rabbit, Cliath, called Law in War. Born t' wolves under a half moon," and then, the description of a moon, maybe he's not entirely sure the kin will understand it. "Philodox," almost an afterthought, and as much an affirmation that all he's sharing is something he cares about.

"Yeah. Not a damn thing good about them. Found two of the flock cannibalized one of Rat's kin, Gerhart. Some kind of fuckin' Wyrm cult, 'n' wouldn't be surprised were the Black Spiral Dancers runnin' it, the way they seem t' twist Man's Good Book. I ain't never read the thing, but seem t' be they're usin' church like a cover."

Some of the things he mentions seem to take Jack closer to the edge. His gruff tone takes on a growling and snarling underbite as his own teeth snap together, his lips chuffing and puffing with blasts of angry breath, nostrils flaring as he describes what he'd discovered. "Tuskegee," wrapping his jowls around the unfamiliar word. "Syphilis? Think one o' my brothers had to go to the clinic with that one time. We're lookin' into it. But another pair of eyes can't hurt.”

He looks up and down at the man, like that army camoflage and his own grizzled countenance gives the lupus some idea what history this kinsman might have in common with his own father. "You tryin' to soldier up, or just want to keep us in the loop?" He doesn't sound like he would be upset by either answer, just that he wants to know how much Marcellus is willing to commit to this fight.

[phil]

"Rabid Jack Rabbit, eh?" Marcellus' hand is not large, exactly, but it's callused, almost swollen like a famer's, the palm thick, the fingers strong, the lines and whorls seamed with fine dirt. He shakes Jack's hand at first tentatively and then firmly.

"Macellus Williams. Don't know what moon I was born under. Erm." He pauses as he rubs both hands up and down his hips, still a little uneasy. "That was a joke. About the moon thing."

Then Jack reveals - almost casually - that the place Marcellus and Georgianna had visited was a nest of the Wyrm, a violent cult that harbored cannibals and worse. He blanches. Shakes his head. Tries to picture the folks he'd seen there, tries to imagine that lady, Maria? Marissa? The ex-con - tries to picture her face covered in blood as she ate out of somebody's stomach, and his lips purse with revulsion.

"Soldier up?" A pause. He honestly hadn't considered it. But. He thinks of Georgianna, back on her corner, thinks of how close she came to locking herself away with a bunch of cannibals. Something inside him hardens. "Well, sure, if you think I could help." He straightens some. Smooths down the front of his shirt beneath the army jacket. "I can swing a bat, and hell. I know how to fire a gun." It's bravely said, but doubt flickers across his face. One thing you learn on the streets is to not go asking for trouble. Before he can change his mind, he moves on.

"Speaking of Black Spiral Dancers... I ran into another kin. Eva? Shadow Lord." The words cross his lips awkwardly. "She said - she confirmed that the Beloved Horror are back in town. So I did some asking around. Asked a friend of mine - a detective in the Major Crimes unit - and found out that some nine people have disappeared recently under strange circumstances. Six of 'em match the, uh, massacred bodies, the, um, dismembered bodies that were found. I found one of the other three, just some runaway kid, but the other two, they're still missing. And I turned up more. Word on the street. Folks missing, and all of them fit, in good shape, you know? Ex-marines, fitness models, that kind of type."

Marcellus cuts a glance up and down the alley, then back at Jack. "I got the files on the other missing folks. If you guys want to follow up on that too."

[Joey]

When Marcellus mentions files (paper work) Jack's lip curls up toward the side of his broad nose. It's reminiscent of a child assigned homework. But he fights it back down and only nods, then gives another smile, like the unfortunate facial tick is supposed to pass for some kind of positive reinforcement.

"More we know," tapping the side of his head with his index and middle finger, like he's beginning some cliche that he doesn't even need to finish, parroted from another source. He jerks his thumb back into the bar.

He looks Marcellus up and down. "Where you livin'? You got someplace? 'Cause we lookin' t' buy a clubhouse. Been talking to Angelica - You know Angel? Kin over at the Villa? - 'bout who she knows worth givin' Ma and Pop's hard earned paper. Someone ain't a slum lord. You want a drink? Meet the family?" Like they can discuss the minutiae surrounded by the bellowing, laughter and yells of the men and women at the back of the bar, pulling open its door and filling the streets with their raucous din as if to usher him back inside.

[phil]

It's Jack's turn to hit Marcellus with a barrage of questions, and in truth, most of them go sailing by the older kin's head. So instead he latches onto the one question that makes sense to him, the one that rings true and clear like a dawn clarion call to arms, and claps a callused hand on the Philodox's shoulder.

"A drink, Senor Jack, would go down a treat. I've recently been nurturing a yearning to try a glass of Macallan, but I'll settle for rotgut, things being as they are, and count myself lucky to get some."

He turns toward the door, buoyed by the prospect of imminent cheer, noise, and company.