~Please gaia /please/ watch her for five... ten minutes?~

[renferret]

A series of scenes in which Ex makes friends.



Tenement Building - Ground Floor(#2451RJ)

The ground floor of the apartment building is taken up mainly by the lobby, an open space with the front doors at one end and the elevator and the door leading to the stairwell at the other. The floor is covered in black and white tile in a checkerboard pattern, and the walls have been painted a neutral grey shade. A couch, two squashy armchairs, and two wooden chairs have been set up in a rough semi-circle around a square wooden coffee table, facing toward the front doors and positioned so as not to interfere with any traffic moving between there and the stairs. The furniture does not seem to be very old, but it has been well-worn in its short lifetime. A few potted plants have been set in corners, to give the old lobby a more welcoming atmosphere.

To the right of the main doors are mailboxes for building residents, and off to the left is the doorway into a cramped rental office (see +view), and other doors that lead to the building's large laundry room.

Contents:
Moros
Sue

Obvious exits:
Stairs Salem's Apartment Out

Sue takes the opportunity of being up here to retrieve his hiking pole, then closes and locks the door behind him, the ride back down to the lobby in silence, before Sue looks over at Moros. "There a better way I can get ahold of you, brother, than just you showing up and such?"

Moros answers with a shrug as he shakes out his coat, prepping to put it back on. "Not really."

Sue nods, moving back over to the couch to sit down again. "Alright." The philodox is absolutely nonplussed by this, though he glances over at Moros. "Not like I'm terribly hard to find. Not going out to the woods much, right now."

Ex is lurking when they return; lurking being the optimal word. She's half crouched just inside the laundry room doorway, eyeing the lobby's camera and the office door with equal amounts of suspicion. Rina's long bowie knife is still in hand; she looks like she's preparing to spring at some invisible phantom, though no actual springing occurs. When the two Furies enter, she turns narrowed, feverish eyes on them instead.

Moros pauses briefly in the act of putting his coat on to tilt his head at Sue, but X's presence keeps him from poking at the other Fury's statement. Instead he just kind of makes a growly grunting noise, finishes putting the coat on, then pulls the cub's switchblade from his back jeans pocket. "Here," he says, tossing it underhanded toward her.

Sue looks over towards Ex, nodding at her. "Hey," he offers, quietly.

Instead of catching it, Ex recoils from the throw, but as soon as the poor, abused switchblade hits the ground, she snatches it up in the hand not already armed. The look she gives Moros is intense, but difficult to parse; it doesn't /seem/ threatening, overall. She licks her lips. "You leaving?" Sue's greeting goes unacknowledged.

Moros's lips twist in a way that's kind of halfway between a sneer and a smile. "I'll return," he answers, and heads out.

Sue pushes back to his feet as Moros leaves, heading to just check and make sure the door closes behind him, perhaps simply to keep himself between Ex and the door, though the expression on the younger metis' face is pained.

Nieve arrives from the stairwell.

Nieve has arrived.

It's immediately obvious that Sue's precautions were warranted; Ex gives him a sharp glare and a flash of teeth, before she jabs the bowie knife at the laundry room doorframe.

Sue just bares his teeth a moment in return, folding his arms across his chest. "Hey," he starts. "Enough, enough. We managed to talk last night, can we manage to talk now? Please?"

Ex hisses through her teeth, "Fine." She jabs the doorframe with the knife again, before saying, in her previous, hoarse voice, "tell me."

Sue: Oh, ToG btw.

Sue: As of now.

Ex nods.

The entire time he stands there, Sue watches Ex, and there's a furrow of conversation. "What do you want me to tell you?" he asks. "I have a few questions if you're up for them, but that's entirely up to you, okay? Only thing that's /not/ your choice right now, that door over there." He jerks his head towards the door that Moros left through. "Other than that..." Shoulders lift in a small, uncertain shrug.

Sue: ERGH. CONCENTRATION

Sue: NOT CONVERSATION

There's the sound of footsteps on the stairs, hopping down two at a time. Nieve emerges from the stairwell - and pauses as she sees a standoff of sorts. Waits there, glancing between Ex and Sue to get a reading on the situation.

Ex answers without looking back toward Sue at all, as she's focusing her feverishly bright eyes on the doorframe that she's currently attempting to mutilate at knife point. Really, the knife is probably coming off worse on this one. "The things I gotta know before I can leave." Her nostrils flare. "Tell me so I can go."

Sue is drawing in a deep breath to answer, when Nieve comes in, and he holds up a finger. "Cub," he explains. "'S... okay." Sue, at least, doesn't seem to be bothered too much by the knife. Then, he looks back to Ex. "It's not all that simple, not going to happen all at once," he tells her, patiently, though his voice is slightly thin at this point. There's one step towards Ex, brows furrowing further. "Hey, this is a friend of mine," and he points at Nieve. "Can she talk with us, too?"

That muscle just below Ex's scarred right cheek twitches noticeably. She looks at Sue, then to Nieve, and gives the latter a long, narrow-eyed looking over. "Whatever."

"Newly changed?" Nieve asks mildly, inferring this from the snippet of conversation she heard. She doesn't seem to be at all tense or worried by this, crossing the room towards the sitting area to settle, unconcerned with turning her back on the new cub.

"Complicated," Sue corrects. "But anyway, telling you things would be a lot easier if I had a name I could call you? You don't have to. But my name's Sue."

"No," is Ex's petulant answer, though it's not immediately clear what she's answering. She lowers the knife from the doorframe, and her study of the Theurge turns into a brief, sharp glare. To Sue, she says, "Said I'd stay the night. Night's over."

"You asked what thing you needed t'know before leavin'," Nieve addresses the cub quietly. "An' that one thing is control. How t'control the anger so y'don't explode into a hairy, toothy, murderous monster next time someone flips you off."

Sue doesn't get out of the way of the door. Boots strike the tile floor with sharp noise as Sue adjusts his stance to something a little more solid. "I'm sorry," he offers towards Ex. "But. Next time someone pisses you off you might not be lucky for it to be my brother, and myself, who can deal with it. You said yesterday you get angry and people end up dead, but it doesn't have to be that way, and moreso, we can't just let you go back out there if you can't control yourself."

Ex inhales slowly, and lets it out as a sharp huff. "...Fine." Her next breath is quicker. "Tell me how. Then I'm fucking gone."

Nieve: How old does Ex look?

Ex: Early twenties at best. Maaaybe late teens (she's actually twenty-one).

"There's a second thing," Nieve notes, her voice soft and her accent unnusually absent. "At the moment? You may be able to kill humans with ease, but you've got no chance against even one of us who has had any amount of practice. There are werewolves out there who would -love- to get their hands on you, and turn you into their little killing machine. How do you feel about being turned into somebody else's weapon, unable to control yourself and with no say about where you're pointed?"

The timer goes off, and Rina shifts laundry from one machine to the other. She's just been listening, a quiet and unseen presence.

Sue keeps his point in between the other two and the door. "What's it you have to go do, anyway?" he asks, curious.

Ex flashes teeth and a wild, barely controlled look toward Nieve. It's coupled with a half-lunge from the doorway, and a strangled noise that's mostly snarl.

"Easy," Rina says in a low voice from behind the girl.

Rising from her seat as Ex lunges and then aborts the motion halfway through, Nieve regards the taller girl with a steady gaze, before shifting up slowly through the forms to Crinos. It's deliberately slow to show off the frankly quite unnerving reshaping of bone and sinew as she goes - Rina and Sue are both well aware the change can be over in a matter of moments, but perhaps the Adren is trying to make a point to the Tenement's newest cub.

Sue crosses his arms a little bit more, watching for Ex's reaction to this /very/ carefully.

Rina watches silently, slipping out behind Ex. She's ... not *quite* at ease, but close to it; she clearly trusts the monster not to harm her. "Easy," she says again quietly.

The cub watches the change very, very intently, her eyes traveling over every inch of Nieve as she reshapes herself. One thing is clear; she doesn't seem startled by the crinos form at all. On the other hand, she also seems unable to look Nieve in the face at all now. She keeps flicking little glances upward, and immediately jerking her head away, muttering something under her breath. The only really audible word sounds like 'colony'.

Regarding Ex steadily from her taller vantage point, Nieve flexes claw-tipped fingers, bares sharp teeth - not to threaten, but as a display of the weapons readily available to her, to all Garou. And then without so much as a blink or breath or split moment, she's back in her breed form, a dreadlocked and scruffy thirty-something woman who looks about as threatening as a particularly sharp butter knife. "You're armed an' dangerous, girl. Not with that thing," she notes, dismissing the knife, "But with the teeth an' the claws. Can't disarm you. -Can- teach you how to control 'em, so people don't end up dead, an' so you don't get turned into a mindless shock troop for th' enemy."

"And so you can better go do whatever it is out there that you've got that need to," Sue adds, quietly, lips pulled into a faint line. He pauses, a long moment, looking down at his feet. "Can I ask you that question, now?" he adds. "It's important. Don't care about your name, keep that to yourself, I understand."

Rina heads for the couch and flops into it. She's casual, jeans and bare feet, but she *is* wearing her jacket. And her gaze stays trained on Ex, the dark eyes haunted.

"You're not so scary," Ex mutters, but she's still not looking at Nieve's face, and as Sue speaks, she flicks several short glances toward him. "Needles don't care how fucking big you are."

"They don't," Rina says softly.

Sue moves over to lean on the arm of the couch, a little more at ease, but close enough that he can speak to Nieve, and Rina, in a fairly hushed tone.

Sue: Ex's perception score?

Ex: 3

Sue pages: Which is enough for Ex to hear part of it, "--More luck asking her things--if she remembers--" :)

"The purpose of that wasn't to scare you. If I wanted to scare you, that'd be another thing entirely. I am trying to get through to you that at the moment, you're a danger to yourself and to all the humans out on the streets. In here, you're safe and so are they, until we can teach you both control." There's a slow blink. "Do you -want- to have control of yourself?"

Glancing to Sue, Rina gives a small shake of her head. "Not yet," she says quietly.

Ex's temper sparks again, this time actually resulting in a raised voice (though it remains rather hoarse sounding, all the same). "I /don't/ want to be a prisoner of your freaky fucking mutant cult!" She stands up, and jams the bowie knife's tip /hard/ against the wall--thankfully, it doesn't break. "They're going to come here and find you and cut you open, and I'm /not going to be here/ when they do!"

Sue looks at Rina and furrows his brows, and swallows, but the halfmoon just keeps quiet, right now.

"Breathe," Rina says quietly. "We've got the resources to protect you. No one's experimenting on anyone around here."

"Who's gonna come here?" Nieve asks Ex patiently. "Who's gonna cut us open? If y'gonna be so kind as to give me a warnin', be a little clearer? 'cause it might just turn out, we're able t'protect you from them, too."

Ex rakes the fingers of the hand that's not holding Rina's knife roughly over her face, jaw to forehead, and then into her short hair, where she digs the nails into her scalp. She breathes, but the breaths are shallow and rapid. "/Them/," she snaps, as if it should be obvious, and Nieve is being intentionally oblivious. "The doctors."

"We're /not/ going to let them get you," Sue repeats, not entirely as patient as the other two. "You know any of their names?"

Rina gives Nieve a guarded, dark look. "Give it time," she says quietly. "This is gonna take a while. They... whoever had her..."

"Doctors," Nieve echoes, lip curling a little bit at the image that invokes. "And they are aware you are a werewolf?" she continues, straightening and glancing to Rina, offering a slight lift of one shoulder. "If there's a threat to the Tenement, we should know about it sooner rather'n later."

Rina takes a slow breath, and rolls to her feet. "We got any way to scan for tracking devices? I would think if there was anything on her, she wouldn't be able to run, but... you're right about the danger bit." She paces across to Nieve and touches a hand to the woman's arm. When she speaks her voice is far lower, almost inaudible. "Listen, we can't treat her like your usual cub. There's some serious damage here... and I need time, with one of you guys watching my back. But I think-- I can get through t'her. Common ground."

"Not werewolves." Ex is back to muttering, with her nails still digging into her scalp. "Genetic mutation. Disease. Presents cross-species with near identical patterns of body distortions. Aggression, manic delusions, deteriorating mental state." It's something in Rina's words that brings her snapping back. "I have to get it /out/."

Rina winces, bowing her head. "Fuck," she whispers.

Sue pulls his lips back from his teeth, a minute, somewhere between grimacing and wincing, then looks over at Nieve and Rina. "You know the gift to jam tech?" he asks. "That'd disable anything, for short periods." He looks over at Ex, now. "No. Not a disease," he says, quietly. "It's not a disease, they were /wrong/."

"Not jamming, no. But I can scan her and identify anything nonorganic," Nieve replies softly. There's a moment where she seems to be looking off into the far distance, then a strange colour-shift comes over her eyes, from their usual dark brown to a bright, almost luminous green. She begins to study Ex quite intently.

Nieve: Cybersenses, going for the X-ray specs. Should identify anything hard (like bone or metal or plastic) in the body.

You paged Nieve with 'There's no sign of any foreign objects that would show up on x-ray at all, other than the usual bone structure of a young female.'.

Ex appears to have her own 'solution'. She yanks down her left sleeve and lifts the knife, eyeing her forearm critically. "'Course it's a disease," she snaps. "Just /look/ at you."

By then Rina's turned to face Ex again, and she gives a swift shake of her head. "No, no no," she says gently. "Not like that. Don't need the pain to set ya off, aright?":

Sue gets up, paces several steps away from Rina and Ex and Nieve, and towards the door. There's a sense that he's removing himself from the situation, just a little, evidenced by his own series of deep breaths.

Rina glances to the movement with a flicker of concern--but most of her worry is focused on the cub.

"It's not a disease. There's also nothing that looks like a tracking device inside of you," Nieve notes, her eyes dulling to their usual brown. "And it's not a disease. It's not catching, we don't bite people to infect them, we don't suffer with it. It's a gift." She sounds quietly resolute there, even as she nods to Rina. "If you want something cut out, be knocked out first. It'll save a lot of stress."

Ex glances to Rina with a frown. The knife remains hovering above her skin, but she doesn't actually press down with it, and Nieve's words bring a soft snort. "It's a genetic disorder." She jerks her chin toward Sue. "He was going on and on about killing fucking babies. That's /sick/."

"The rules for metis are different," Sue mutters, to himself or to Ex, it's not entirely clear. "And yes, it /is/ sick."

Rina purses her lips in thought. "Yeah. We don't do that shit, though." She takes a slow breath, and releases it. "It *is* genetic. But there's a reason for it. And we're gonna help you."

"There's a time and a place for talking about the treatment of the different breeds, Sue," Nieve tells the metis quietly. "In the presence of a frightened, violent cub is not it." She doesn't say anything further to Ex, instead adjusting her sight a second time, this one for temperature. If whatever might be in there is not solid, or solid enough to reflect radiation, perhaps it's noticable this way.

Sue just wraps his arms around his chest, hugging himself slightly, and he doesn't turn back towards the others yet. "I'm sorry I should go I should..." a few steps are taken in the general direction of the elevator.

"/No/!" Ex says to Rina, her volume nearly approaching a shout this time. "I don't want any more fucking help! /No more fucking help/. I just want to /go/."

You paged Nieve with 'Nope! Nothing suspicious at all.'.

"Okay, Sue," Rina says quietly. She doesn't approach further; she is very, very calm. "It's all right." Her attention returns quickly to Ex. "I'm sorry," she says gently. "But we can't let you go until you learn the truth."

Sue makes it to leaning on the wall by the elevator, though he doesn't press the button to call it yet, pausing and turning around to face Ex and Nieve and Rina at the cub's outburst.

As Sue moves away from the front door, Nieve steps forward to cover it in his place, letting Rina handle the talking for now.

Ex exhales heavily, and gives Rina a narrow eyed glower. "What truth?"

Rina takes a slow, careful breath. "About what you are, and why. We're not gonna hurt you. No needles. I gave you my knife, right?" Everything is quiet, soothing.

Ex keeps a narrow-eyed, careful look on Rina as she steps back and leans one shoulder against the laundry room's doorframe. Her jaw tightens.

Sue looks over, seemingly going to stay now, though he remains close to the elevator.

Rina returns to her spot on the couch, then. She doesn't take her eyes from Ex. "Look," she says quietly. "I know this sucks. And I know it's like a cult from the outside. And you can't trust us, because in the end you can't trust *anybody*."

The woman's nostrils flare. She gives a sharp jerk of her head; a nod, maybe. "I want a gun."

Rina shakes her head minutely. "I can't," she says, the regret in her voice sincere. "Too much danger to you. Too much danger to others. We'll prove we can protect you by *doing* it."

The look Ex gives Rina is skeptical in the extreme.

Rina's mouth tugs up at one corner in a humorless expression. "Yeah. I know. It's all I got."

Sue looks one last time at the elevator, before taking a deep breath in and moving away from it again, giving Ex a wide berth before Sue moves to sit on one of the chairs in the seating area, crossing his legs.

"One bullet," Ex says, hoarsely. "You can give me a gun with one bullet. That's just one shot."

Sue shakes his head. "No, we can't," he says, quietly.

Rina gives a tiny shake of her head. "Could be enough to kill y'self. Or really hurt someone else."

Ex turns and kicks the doorframe, /hard/. She flashes teeth again, and both the hand holding the knife and the one that's currently empty clench tightly.

Sue leans back in his seat, and pulls in a deep breath. "Gaia help us," he mutters, though it's fairly quiet, and he turns to look at Ex. "I'm sorry," he says, quietly.

Rina's dark eyes still have that haunted look. "I've wanted to," she says quietly. "Or sometimes wanted to just kill everyone I could get my hands on. Burn the world--" For some reason her voice catches, as if her throat closes off with tears.

Ex is silent, apparently intent on glaring a hole in the wall, rather than looking at either of the other two. Eventually her head snaps back up, and she mutters, "Ex."

Rina tips her head, and swallows to clear up her voice. "X?"

Sue turns to look at Ex, and offers her a nod, clearly connecting the answer to the question he'd asked earlier. "Alright, then. Ex it is."

Ex gives another jerk of her head, lifts her right arm, and yanks back the sleeve, so that the series of numbers tattooed on her forearm--X75V-31--are visible. She jabs the first letter with her index finger. "/Ex/."

"There somethin' else you'd rather be called?" Rina asks quietly.

Sue sighs, turning to look at the tattoo, and nods affirmation to Rina's question. "You can choose anything you want, to be called," Sue adds. "You don't need to... that."

"Subject Ex Seven Five Vee dash Three One," the cub recites, while glaring with open defiance in their direction, "Is me."

Rina's brow furrows, a flicker of disturbance crossing her expression. She schools it with a tightening of her jaw. "I'm aright callin' ya X," she says quietly. "But you gotta right to choose your own name, if y'want one."

Sue clenches one hand, though it's not quite a fist, and he looks up at Ex. "You're not just a subject--you're a person." There is a definite harsher insistence in the words, comparatively to his heretofore gentle tone.

Ex abruptly spits in Sue's direction--the actual spit doesn't carry nearly so far as to actually threaten to hit him--and kicks the doorframe again, followed by leaning forward and bumping it with her forehead. "Animals aren't people," she hisses. "Fucking animals don't get talked to. Fucking animals don't know what's best for them. We're doing /good fucking things/. Be quiet."

"You're not there anymore," Sue retorts, voice still carrying that edge of insistence. "You're not there anymore, you're here." Then again, his insistence could be for himself, just as much.

Rina swallows, watching the young woman with a pained look in her eyes. "Where are you?" she whispers.

Ex smacks her forehead into the doorframe much harder this time, but she answers. "Fucking white rooms. Floors, ceilings, walls, door. Why the fuck do you have cameras in here?" She gives the one over the actual exit door a dark look. "Sick to death of fucking cameras and faces in the windows and /fucking questions/."

"Okay," Rina says firmly. "Then there won't be too many questions for a little while. I'm tryin'." She takes a slow breath, and releases it. "We can head back up, if you want. To the apartment. Where you slept last night. You hungry?"

Sue looks at Rina, a moment, and murmurs quietly. "/Please/ try and get any of their names, at some point," he says, though it's pitched mostly so Ex doesn't hear. "Sooner that happens, the sooner Moros and I can go find the fuckers."

Rina slants Sue a look, and gives him a swift nod.

Ex rolls her eyes ceilingward. "You don't introduce yourself to /animals/."

Sue just pulls his lips back to bare his teeth, clearly not pleased with any of this. "Did you overhear, maybe...?" he suggests, but the suggestion is gentle.

Ex flashes her own teeth again. "Don't remember."

"Sue," Rina says, with a touch of tightness in her voice. "Now is *not* the time. Please leave it. We'll go after them, but it's more important to take care of *her* for now."

Sue nods, pulling his lips closed into a more neutral expression, and just squints his eyes shut. "Here now," he reminds himself.

Ex inhales sharply, jerks her head, then looks at the two of them. "So why the fuck do you go and kill babies?"

Rina's chin tips up a fraction. "*We* don't," she says firmly. A glance to Sue, a moment's compassion behind the mask. "But where he came from..." Returning her focus to the young woman, she says, "Let's just say he's had a pretty rough time of it, too."

Sue has his arms wrapped tightly around himself. "Here now, can't make me go back not going back won't ever--" he says, just barely above a whisper as he tries to steady his breathing, eventually succeeding and glancing between Ex and Rina.

Ex gestures at Sue, as if he were proving some kind of point, and informs Rina, again, "That's /fucked up/."

Rina nods, raising both eyebrows at the young woman. "Yeah. I'm not gonna argue." She looks over to Sue, meets his gaze. "You think you're gonna lose it, you'll go, yeah?"

Sue looks at Rina, and takes a deep breath, and nods. "Yeah," he agrees. "I'm..." There's a deep breath. "I'm okay for now." Which is reflected in a slight relaxation of his posture, lessening of his grip.

Ex crosses her arms over her chest--the knife, of course, still in her right hand--and watches Sue carefully.

Rina takes a slow breath, and glances over her shoulder to Nieve. "Let's head upstairs, aright?" When the dreadlocked woman nods, Rina gets up and gives Sue a slightly concerned, apologetic look by way of farewell. There are a few quiet words exchanged, when she goes over to the Metis. Sue stays downstairs, but the others return to that apartment--the Kin protected by a Garou buffer, as before.

Rina knocks on a door, says a few low words to Flint when he answers, and then introduces the two--carefully observing them both, their reactions to one another, before she leaves them to head into the breakroom.

Ex is not happy about the whole 'stay in this room' thing. Not happy at all. Flint will have /fun/.



Tenement Building - Cubs' Bunkroom(#1657RA)

This large studio apartment has been set up as a communal living space for the tribe's cubs, as well as a temporary crash space for those who don't have their own apartment in the building. It's extremely sparse in furniture, consisting of two bunkbeds set opposite each other against the walls, and little else. Fortunately, it does possess a small kitchen and an even smaller bathroom.

Contents:
Flint
Crate Fort

Obvious exits:
Out

Once the introductions are done with, Flint gives the woman currently confined to the cubroom a rather long once-over. The door's open, per demands, but the skinny, gangly teen leans on one side of the doorframe, legs crossed, making it rather an awkward thing to leave. So far, however, he's just watched Ex with a rather critical eye, and seemed quiet and thoughtful.

"You gotta fucking stare?" is the first gripe out of the confined cub. She's spent the past few minutes since Rina left pacing back and forth like a caged tiger, and not a few glances have been tossed toward the windows (though they have been long since secured. This IS the cub room, after all).

Flint shifts his attention to some point /past/ where Ex paces, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. "Better?" he asks her. Not that it likely is.

Ex waves the bowie knife at him in response, scowling. She resumes pacing for another minute or so, before she abruptly shifts both her course and her attention to one of the beds. She flops on one of the lower bunks, like a petulant teenager.

"Oh well," Flint mutters aloud. There's a general glance at Ex's whereabouts within the room, but Flint eventually pulls out an iPhone from his pocket, tapping at the screen.

Ex is nice and quiet and still for a period of time that might be suspicious right about the time that a sudden rriiiiiiip can be heard from her direction, as she plunges the bowie knife through the sheets into the mattress, and draws it several inches downward, opening up a sizeable gash.

It's the sound that gets Flint to turn his head. "Stop that," he grumbles, pushing off the doorframe to stand in the doorway, hands folding across his chest, chin jutting out. "You. If. If you want to stab something, stab. The walls. Or something. Not the bedding."

Ex pulls the knife out of the mattress, looks directly at Flint, and jams it back in, creating another hole. Her eyes are narrowed, jaw set.

Flint grunts, annoyedly, though for the most part the teen is relatively mellow. "Doesn't do you any... any good," he adds. "Not going to change things."

Ex's response is to jam the knife several times into the poor, poor pillow. Little bits of bird fluff escape into the open air. "Nothing /better/ to do," she mutters.

Flint tilts his head to one side. "Sure there is," he tells her. "There. If you... if you wanted to read. You could do that. You're allowed books. Or such."

Ex pulls out a wad of feathers and flicks them toward the door. "Allowed books," she echoes, in a grating, nasally sort of tone. "Why's a fucking thirteen year old guarding me?"

Flint responds by swelling up to glabro, and nearly fills the doorway, carefully shoving his phone into his pocket before he leans on the doorframe. "Because I'm cliath, and Rina asked me to," he grumbles. "Also, fourteen."

"What the fuck is a cliath?" Ex snaps. More feathers emerge as she sticks the knife into the pillow and, for the moment, leaves it there. "Why do you have so many fucking stupid rules?"

Flint raises one hand to rub at his forehead, and squints at Ex. "It. Cliath is an... it's a rank. It indicates the dynamic, between me, and other Garou--werewolves," he corrects himself. "It means I'm an adult. Unlike you."

"What the /fuck/?" Ex wrinkles her nose and turns her head to stare at him. "You're a fucking thirteen year old. I'm way older than you."

"Fourteen," Flint repeats, stubbornly. "I'm an adult because, because I've learned. To /control/ myself, to make decisions, to not just bite people's faces off, if I'm unhappy with them. Years don't matter quite. Not the same." There's a shadow of shift in Flint's posture, as well, a subtle confidence.

Ex flashes her teeth at Flint. "/Fuck/ you. Like you know anything. Years /matter/."

Flint leans on the doorframe some more, and doesn't even bare his teeth in response. In fact, he smiles, and just looks to one side, watching the far window of the cubroom for the moment.

Ex gives an almost immediately aborted lunge at him, snarling, her facial muscles rippling. She turns and yanks the knife out of the pillow.

Flint stands his ground, moving one step into the room and downright glaring at her. "Next time that. Next time you do that, if you /actually/ do that, you lose the knife, okay?" his voice is relatively level, growly and annoyed in this form.

Ex glares right at him, her eyes uncomfortably bright, but she breaks it off quite quickly, head jerking to the side. "Freaky fucking mutant cult," she mutters.

Flint mutes his snarl, quite well, and he half looks like he /might/ be distracted, except there's enough attention still on Ex as Flint shrinks down to his birth form and moves to stand in the doorway again.

Ex crosses her arms over her chest, with the knife gripped tightly in her right hand, and bows her head enough to rest them on her arms. This leaves her in a position to be looking at her new mattress handiwork, and for the next few moments, she looks as though she's trying to set the bed on fire with her mind.

"Why're you sulking?" Flint eventually asks, though he lets her have a good few minutes peace. "What... what's out there, that's better?" The galliard sounds genuinely curious, and there's no force behind the question. "You may as well get used to it here. If. It. Things can get better."

"No fucking walls," Ex responds. She's quieter now, if no less hoarse and aggravated sounding. "No fucking walls, no fucking locks, no goddamn lists of fucking questions, no one telling me what to do but cops or people that don't fucking matter."

Flint nods, accepting the answer. "Right," he acknowledges, then returning to his silence in keeping watch. "How old /are/ you anyway?" he asks.

Ex scowls at the bedding. "Fuck if I know." She adds, as a stinger, "Older than /you/."

Flint bares his teeth at her, almost a smile but not quite, then turns to pull his phone from his pocket, and the slightly tinny sounds of Angry Birds begins to come from the speaker.

Ex is able to maintain a stony silence for about two or three minutes. Then her gaze jerks toward flint and she demands, "What the fuck is that?"

"It's a video game," Flint responds, evenly. "It's also /my/ video game, right now."

Ex declares, "Well, it's a piece of shit, you can keep it."

Flint shrugs his shoulders. "Didn't ask you," he mutters, propping one foot up on the opposite side of the doorframe and setting about to playing the level that he's selected.

Ex returns to resting her chin on her arms and glaring a hole into the bedding. This time, there's peace for what might be almost five minutes. ...And then she abruptly swings her legs off of the bed and marches toward the bathroom, knife in tow.

By the time that Ex heads for the bathroom, the videogame has stopped, phone put back away in Flint's pocket, and he's staring at the opposite side of the doorframe, head tilted askance at something.

Ex stalks into the room and, quite contrary to her previous insistence that the cub room door be kept open, slams the door behind her. And then locks it.

"You going to hide in there forever?" Flint calls out, aloud. "I'm not s'posed to let you hurt yourself. I. I /will/ pull the door off." In fact, there's the cautious sound of footsteps that turn to heavier footsteps as Flint resumes Glabro and moves to stand about ten feet from the door to the bathroom.

"I'm going," the cub says slowly, and in a tone that's trying to be aggravated, but sounds rather shaky and ragged, "to take a fucking piss, pervert."

Flint turns around. "I wouldn't have. Opened the door, you could. Have just closed it. Not locked it. No locking it," Flint says.

There's no sound from inside the bathroom, and decidedly no sound of the door being unlocked.

A minute or so later, there's the sound of Flint pacing back to the doorway, and a long sigh.

The cub is being very, very quiet. There's only a slight ceramic scraping noise.

"Stop knifing the bathroom," Flint calls out, punctuating it by thumping the wall. "You have five minutes, in there."

"I'm not!" Ex calls back. "I'm taking a piss, god."

Flint doesn't respond, just leans back to resume his post in the doorway, pulling out his phone and in fact, setting a timer.

There's actual sounds of rustling in there now, hurried movements. It doesn't last too long, but it's audible from Flint's position.

This, at least, Flint seems to be patient through, and he starts to hum one of the teaching songs, this one about duty. Just the melody, though, not the lyrics, but even from his humming it's obvious that he has a good voice, clear and bright.

Riley comes in from the hallway.

Riley has arrived.

Things eventually go completely silent again. No sound of flushing. The time ticks by without Ex emerging from the bathroom, despite Flint's ultimatum.

Flint leans on the doorway to the cubroom, which is open into the hallway, in glabro. WHen the beeping of the timer goes off, he steps slightly into the room. "Ex, five minutes," he calls out.

No response.

"Ex, five minutes is over," Flint repeats, a louder rumble.

There's still no response. No sound of movement, no click of the lock, nothing.

Flint strides into the cubroom, now, right up to the door, which he raps on once, hard. "Ex. Either you come out, or I can. And. I will, pull off the door handle."

It's not that the sounds of loud voices especially /summon/ Riley, it's largely that she's an exceptionally poor sleeper and has been in a sour temperament over... well, let's face it. The past several months have been a period of duress for the ragabash. The door to one of the empty apartments swings open with a thump, and Riley's head lurches out, hair wild from lack of sleep. She squints down the hallway, eyes narrowed. "Fight over the fucking bathroom a /little/ more quietly?" She calls down, grumbling and tucking her head right back in.

Nothing but silence meets Flint's threat.

"Riley?" Flint calls out, in question. "Cub. New cub," is further explanation. And then, there's another loud rap on the door, before he adds, much more quietly. "Last warning, Ex."

Riley either doesn't care for this response, or doesn't care in general. She grunts and shuts the door again.

Either she's calling his bluff, or she's vanished into thin air. Ex /still/ doesn't answer.

There's a moment of pause, and Flint grabs the door handle, giving it a tentative yank once, and sets his foot against the door to keep it closed and simply rips the door handle, and a good chunk of the door out, and nails drag through the wood of the doorframe, too. It's rather loud, in any case, and then Flint moves to discard the handle on the knifed-up bed.

It's as he's turning that things go to hell. The door is suddenly shoved open behind him, and a thick, heavy, urine-soaked towel is swung right at Flint's face--which isn't, it appears, Ex's actual attack. Her /actual/ attack is what she immediately tries to follow that up with, which is the porcelain lid from the back of the toilet, swung as heavily as she can, just as she lets out a rage filled, wild yell.

Nothing quite highlights rage like a serious case of bed-head. At the sounds coming from down the hall, 'Riley's' apartment door SLAMS open, and the Fostern stomps her way loudly down the hall, teeth grinding, and sans pants. "So help me /fucking/ god, if someone isn't frenzied in there, someone's getting knocked into /fucking/ oblivion." That last curse is accentuated with a pound of her fist against the flimsy drywall, which shudders but mercifully doesn't break.

There's a heavy snarl and the first assault is enough for Flint to burst into crinos, a howl of annoyance and frustration following. ~Evac, wake up and come help me /now/!~ the galliard gets in, loudly enough perhaps to wake most of the floor even if Riley wasn't already on her way, and the toilet lid sends him staggering a few steps. He's still well and between Ex and the door to the room, however, and moves to rush the cub, and hopefully restrain her or knock her out.

Slug comes in from the hallway.

Slug has arrived.

Ex's war cry is a wordless yell, as loud as she can make it, as she swings the lid as hard as she can at the onrushing crinos's face. Versus a crinos, of course, there's not much else she can do after that--she's easily outmatched, and apart from flailing kicks, Flint won't find taking her down very hard at all.

It's not an exceptionally long walk to the cub room, especially at the furious pace the half-dressed Fostern is beating. She rounds the bend and kicks the door open the rest of the way, fists tightly clenched as she roars, "What the -fuck- is going on in here, and why does it smell like old people?"

Slug steps out of Ishmael's apartment in Glabro, looking bored and vaguely agitated. He wanders towards the sound of the commotion at a brisk pace, following along some distance behind Riley.

Requiem pins Ex to the ground now, in crinos still. ~Evac-rhya, this is Ex,~ he explains. ~Cub. Crazy. Also, not here of her own free will. Also crazy. Please gaia /please/ watch her for five... ten minutes?~ It takes a moment longer for the cliath's residual rage to simmer down to a less furious level, and he stalks away from Ex, hackles raised. ~She's not allowed out of the room.~

Riley snaps Slug an immediate glance over her shoulder, and her eyes narrow dubiously for a moment as she looks down at herself, immediately shoving a finger in his direction. "Not a fucking word, man." She then stomps into the room. She grunts at Flint's explanation, nodding her head once and shouldering past his massive frame, cracking her knuckles as she looks down at--- "The fuck?" Her brows lift upon clapping eyes on Ex.

Ex kicks furiously and futilely at Requiem's underside, in an attempt to free herself that's utterly doomed from the start. "You smell like fucking piss, /fucker/!" Hey look. She's wearing the shirt and hoodie Riley bought her. Aw.

Riley snaps a glance to Requiem. "Cub. Ours?"

Requiem grunts, nose wrinkled. ~Cub, here for now. More, ask Rina, or Kavi-rhya,~ the galliard grumbles. ~Bigger issues right now, than. Than whose she is. I need to go shower.~ There's another, quieter snarl, before the cliath looks at Riley. ~Are... ten minutes?~ he asks, quite clearly waiting for permission to leave.

Slug laughs when Riley speaks to him, deep and loud. He continues into the room with his packmate, quickly heading well off to the side. "Something smells like Coors in here. Huh. Heh. Newbie, huh? At least she's got spirit."

Riley reaches a hand back to smack the Crinos in the chest. It's a light thing, more a dismissal. It's clear from the way that she's occupying the doorframe that she's not inclined to budge right now, "Yes, yes. Go." It's not said unkindly, only impatiently. She's not in the most fantastic of moods, and clapping eyes on Ex hasn't done wonders in improving it. Her arms fold, "...So. This explains a lot."

Requiem doesn't waste time in stalking off down the hall towards his apartment. Still in crinos.

Ex picks herself up from the floor, eyeing both Slug and Riley with dark, suspicious looks. One hand reaches back to retrieve a rather large bowie knife from the back of her pants, though she doesn't make any move to attack them with it. "...How many of you /are/ there?"

Requiem looks back, behind him, in the hall, as if remembering something. ~Knife. She's lost the privilege, of having it, for now,~ he adds.

"Beats me. They're their own thing." Slug moves over to an unoccupied bed and lays down upon it, stretching out on one side. The presence of naked steel doesn't make him bat an eye. "I'm just a freeloader. Just a lil' rat living in the walls, nibbling on their scraps."

Grinding her heel against the tiled floor beneath her feet, Riley snaps, "The answer is 'Not nearly enough', but more than enough to hold you here until you cool your heels. I don't have to dunk you in water again, do I?" That last bit sounds more exasperated than anything, and she leans slightly against the doorframe.

Ex continues eyeing both Ragabash for a long moment, before she huffs and settles onto one of the beds; the bed seems to have suffered a recent and unfortunate case of 'cub with knife', because there are several large rents in the mattress and bedding, and the pillow has half of its stuffing spilling out all over. "You want /more/ mutants?"

Flitting her eyes down to regard the damage to the mattress and then to the large knife that's lingering in Ex's hand, Riley squints. "Are you just /made/ of knives, or something? No, don't answer that. If you're gonna keep throwing a tantrum, throw a tantrum. But you're doing it without the sharp objects." She doesn't ask for them, though her brow does furrow.

Riley pages: Your knife starts to feel like it's been sitting on the kitchen stove.

Slug laughs again at the mention of mutants, then shakes his head. "Not really. Us 'mutants' are usually bastards. Angry, angry motherfuckers with chips on their shoulders the size of the Space Needle. The world might even be a better place if none of us freaks existed, but, y'know. Here we are."

"That lady said I could have it," the cub responds, eyes narrowing, and if anything, her grip on the knife becomes tighter. ...For a moment. Then she abruptly drops it onto the bed with a startled yelp. "The /fuck/?"

Giving her hand a brief swipe of her tongue as she steps forward, Riley reaches down and plucks up the fallen knife, lips curling briefly as the contact against her skin makes a soft little hiss in the moments before she slings it, sending it skittering out into the hall on its side. "Well, the lady didn't intend you to start stabbing our expensive furniture with it." She gestures to the ratty, ruined mattress.

Riley extends her hand again. "The other one, please."

Ex hunkers down against the bed and glares daggers at Riley. "Don't know where it is."

It doesn't take overly long for the galliard to actually make his way back down the hall from his apartment, a moment after the knife goes down the hallway. Requiem is clean, now, fur still dripping with the effort of showering, and he steps into the doorway, content for the moment to just stand there.

"The furniture here is expensive?" Slug lets his body melt down into the form of Homid, his features softening up into a more human visage in a matter of moments. "You don't really need a weapon here, for what it's worth. No one'll hurt you. Well. On purpose. If you stick a finger in someone's eye or something they might flip out, but..."

Riley frowns for a moment, lifting a hand to rub the bridge of her nose, "Look, I don't want to be even more of a bitch then I've already been, if I can avoid it. The other one, please."

Ex's shoulders roll forward. "I need it," she says, a little lower than before. "I /need/ it."

Requiem huffs, watching Ex. ~Let her keep it, if. If she keeps it, put away?~ he suggests.

"Trying to take it away from her is just going to piss her off, make her hate you, and cause an even bigger mess. Just let her have it, it's not a threat." Slug glances sidelong at Riley. "We've got like ten Fosterns just hanging around here. One cub with a knife ain't no thing."

"I'll give it back," Riley murmurs, bristling. "When you've calmed down." She snaps her gaze to Slug, "One cub with a knife can mean one less cub. Our roof, our rules."

Ex shoves her right hand into her pocket, her expression dark and angry. "Can't kill myself with a fucking /knife/," she protests.

The crinos in the doorway remains silent for a long moment, and then eventually shrinks back down to homid. Flint's got clean clothes on, though it seems that /something/ didn't survive the haphazard process of Dedication, given as his shirt's slightly torn.

Riley grits her teeth, "If I can kill you with a fucking knife, you can kill you with a /fucking knife/. Just give it here. I know we got off on the wrong fuckin' foot, but I'm not a goddamn thief. What I /am/ is tired, and wanting to get a good night's sleep without you throwing your piss around or slitting, slicing, or stabbing /anything/."

Slug gradually sits up, but makes no move to rise or assume an aggressive posture. He whistles a low note, then wriggles his fingers at Ex. "You know how to shift, right? You've got ten blades on your fingers, any time you want to use them."

Ex pulls her hand out of her pocket, clearly clutching the switchblade, but she's still not keen to hand it over just yet. Slung gets a dark frown, and a muscle in her scarred cheek tics once. "Yeah, I get fucking angry and then I wake up naked."

"Riley. Slug." Flint's voice is quiet, but the pitch and tone are pitched to cut. "Easy. That's complicated. Not. Not right now okay?" It seems, that despite things, Flint's coming to the cub's defense. "We're taking it easy until Rina gets back, /right/?" The question, is directed to Ex.

Riley gestures to herself. Currently clad in her undergarments, it makes for a fitting analogy, "Whereas I wake up half-naked, get angry, and have to deal with--" Flint's interjection cuts her off, and she sharply frowns back at him, but doesn't otherwise respond. She turns her head back to regard Ex. "What's complicated? Let's not get cute, here. You're being dangerous, and dangerous people with knives aren't conducive to me getting /any/ sleep."

Slug shakes his head at Flint, then reaches into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. "I'm not saying we should teach her how to shift." Slug sparks up a smoke, then takes a puff. "I'm just sayin'-" Slug looks in Ex's direction, mustering a weary smile. "She doesn't need that knife. You're new to this, and I get that you're scared. I was. Them too, probably." Slug waves at the two Walkers, then shrugs. "But you're stronger than you know. You're beyond knives. Your body is a living weapon that can do great things, or terrible things."

Ex fixes Slug with an even more intense stare. "You're /wrong/." And in that, she seems utterly confident.

Flint leans against the doorway. "Rina only gave me the. The cliffnotes version," Flint mutters, but doesn't explain further than that.

Riley rubs at the bridge of her nose, leaning in close to Ex. "Promise me you won't stab anyone with it that isn't trying to actively cause you pain."

Slug puts a hand upon the scarred side of his face, and traces his fingers down the ragged trenches torn into his flesh. "See these? Some asshole did this to me. If I was just a human, I wouldn't have survived. It's only being a freak that's carried me through a lot of things that should have killed me. If nothing else, you've got the power to survive anything that's thrown at you."

Ex recoils from Riley, though with the wall, she doesn't have much room to lean back. "I promise." Her eyes slide toward Slug, and her lips peel back from her teeth. There are clearly words there, but after several muscle twitches in her jaw, she still can't seem to manage to form them.

Flint watches the exchange with a brow raised, halfway. "Pain," he clarifies, half-asks, "does /not/ include cleaning up the mess she made." There's a hint of tired in the cliath's tone.

Riley casts a look from Slug to Flint, her teeth still gritted. She gives an aggravated noise and raises both of her hands to ruffle her own bedhead-ridden hair and fixes a final look at Ex. "Don't make me come back here tonight, alright?" There's a perceptible softening in her tone there at the end, but she's still not especially in cuddly-mode. She states loudly, "Going back to bed. Anyone wakes me up, I'm coming back with a gun."

"I'll clean it up." Slug volunteers instantly, wriggling the cigarette in his lips. He spares a glance at Riley, then ticks his eyes back to the new girl. "If you want a smoke, ask. If you got any questions, let'em fly. There isn't much on TV right now anyways."

Ex remains on the bed, clutching her switchblade in one white-knuckled hand. She doesn't show any sign that Slug cleaning up her own mess bothers her at all. "I want to go."

"You're not going. Anywhere," Flint remarks, though he moves out of the doorway so that Riley can leave. "We've. Been over this." Slug gets a studying glance, brows raised, and a nod. "Thanks, Slug-rhya. I... thanks."

Slug pulls himself up to his feet and scratches the side of his head, his posture loose and lazy. "If it was up to me, I'd let you go. But the thing is, you waking up angry and naked? That won't stop if we let you go. You'll hurt a lot of people. You'll hurt yourself. You won't ever learn to control yourself if you leave." Slug closes his eyes and huffs out a smoky breath. "Don't call me Rhya. Where's the cleaning crap?"

Ex huffs through her teeth. "So tell me /how/. No one's fucking telling me yet."

Flint leans against the wall, and points towards the kitchenette of the cubroom. "Still thanks," he informs Slug. "Lower cabinet." Then he turns to Ex. "Well, start by knowing, being aware you're angry, thinking about. How you feel," he says.

Rina comes in from the hallway.

Rina has arrived.

Slug nods at Flint, then moves as directed to the lower cabinet. "Well, kinda... Like what he says." Slug takes out a bucket and tosses it into the sink. "Your anger is the fuel that'll keep you living. It'll keep you moving. It'll keep you fighting. But it's like fire, y'know? You let it burn too hot and too fast, and it just consumes everything or burns out." Slug empties some pinesol into the bucket and tosses in a sponge, then draws some nice hot water.

Ex flops back onto the knifed up bed--an action which sends more pillow fluff onto the floor--and releases a drawn out, exasperated breath. "I know how I feel. I feel like I want to fucking break shit." Her nostrils flare. "Slit them open and see how they like it."

Rina knocks quietly a couple of times and then slips inside. "Everything all right?" she asks.

Flint looks over at Rina, and huffs. "Yeah." The bed that Ex is laying on is pretty well knifed in a good number of places, though, and the young Galliard looks tired. "Is now." He tilts his head towards Ex. "She," he says, "thought she could attack me, with. The toilet lid. And stuff. But. Alright, I. Fine now."

Slug walks on over to Ex and her mess, holding a big bucket of water in his right hand. He doesn't get closer than about five feet, and when Rina walks in, the Gnawer stops and waves to her. "That ain't such a bad thing. I've met a few evil motherfuckers in my life, and I can straight up tell ya the world is a better place without them. You can use an anger like that. Thing is, sometimes... Well." Slug sets down the bucket. "You're just so fuckin' angry that you start thinking *everyone* deserves it."

Ex says, without looking toward Flint or Rina, "I /did/ fucking attack you with the toilet lid. Fucking pervert." Slug gets more of a glance, but it's still very brief. "Well, that's what I fucking feel."

"Did you eat, yet?" Rina asks as she comes in far enough to see the woman. She's carrying a glass casserole dish, covered with foil. "I brought in some ziti, just in case."

"I told you not to lock yourself in the bathroom," Flint grumbles, and there's an evident annoyance in the tone. Being insulted for over an hour on end doesn't seem to have done wonders for his temper.

Slug eyes all the fluff scattered on the floor around him, then smiles. "The same stuff that gives you enormous power also makes you feel like that. A bad dream, a sudden sound, any sort of thing like that can make you freak out at the wrong time. Makes life kinda hard... But it has benefits." Slug raises his hand and holds it out, his fingers fanned. Bit by bit the fluff on the floor begins to gravitate towards his hand, as though carried by an invisible wind. The toilet seat is far less graceful, and makes an audible scratching down as it drags across floor in his direction.

Ex looks as though she's only half listening to Slug by this point, and Rina receives more of a grunt than a reply, when suddenly.../that/ starts happening. She sits up so fast that it's a wonder she doesn't crack her head into the wall. "What the /fuck/? How are you doing that?"

Rina heads for the kitchen, as if this sort of weirdness happens all the time. She looks over to Flint, assessing. "You need to take a breather, feel free ta hang out in the lounge, yeah?"

Flint looks between Slug, and Rina, and shakes his head. "I'm good," he assures her, though he doesn't engage in conversation for the moment.

Slug bites the tip of his tongue to keep himself from laughing. "Well, I did tell you that I was a freak, didn't I?" Slug watches the fluff gather upon his hand with a dreamy adoration that abruptly vanishes when the toilet lid wobbles into the air and attaches itself to his palm. "It's kind of hard to explain. For me? This stuff is like breathing. How do you explain how to breathe to someone that's never taken a breath?" He looks at Ex, then shakes his head. "But I can tell you this. You can do stuff like this, stuff you'd think was impossible- And we can teach you."

Ex's mouth opens, and then closes. "...But--" Pause. "That--" She rakes her fingers over her scarred cheek--hard, as usual, this time leaving brief red lines--"--Nothing magnetic."

Rina lets out a breath. "Flint, you hungry? Why am I askin'. You're always hungry." She sets the cold pan on the burners, and turns on the oven.

Flint has turned interest to Slug for a moment, not quite as rapt as Ex, but close. "That's pretty cool," he admits. "Seriously, Slug, thanks for. For cleaning up." He looks between Slug, and Ex. "Nothing I. Nothing I've got, is that flashy." Rina gets a nod, "Ziti?" The teen sounds excited, more animated than he's been in the entire time he's been cubsitting Ex. "Of course I'm hungry." A pause. "Ex, are you hungry?"

Slug lifts his hand up to show Ex, without extending it in her direction. "There is no trick... It's magic. It's real. But it only works on things that people have thrown away. It doesn't work on things that are whole, things that people still want. Just things that are discarded, or destroyed. Kind of sad, isn't it?" Slug smiles at Flint, and walks over to the trash bin. After a muttered word, the garbage drops off his fingers as though someone flipped a switch.

Ex gives an irritable sort of sigh. "It's not /magic/," she says, as though Slug should really know better. "It's some...some part of your mutation. Like the one with horse feet." She glances toward Flint at the question, and frowns.

Rina turns around to lean her ass on the oven while it warms up. "And the difference between magic that works and genetically conferred special abilities would be... what, exactly? You can shapeshift. To most people, that's magic. Semantics."

Flint lifts his chin and looks at Ex. "Rina's a good cook," the teen says. "Rina's an awesome cook." There's a hint of pride in his voice.

Slug walks back over to Ex and the mess, then gets down on his knees and rolls up the sleeves on his hoodie. "Mutant or not, we can still teach you how to do all sorts'a neat stuff. Like that." Slug grabs the sponge out of the bucket and wrings the water out of it. "You remember the X-Men movies? We're kind of like, y'know. Xavier's school for mutants. We just wanna show you how to use your power. Then we'll let you go." Slug scoots off to the side and starts to scrub at the remaining mess on the floor, keeping Ex just inside the corner of his eye.

The cub frowns very faintly, one eye narrowing a little more than the other. She glances at Rina, but there's no answer from her there, and when she looks back to Slug, the frown has only deepened. "I don't--" Her head shakes abruptly, almost violently, just once. "Maybe."

Rina blows Flint a theatrical kiss, a faint smile crinkling the corners of her eyes.

Flint shifts his weight from one foot to the other and stretches his arms out above his head, grinning over at Rina. For the moment, he's simply keeping a post by the door to the cubroom, alert.

Slug stops what he's doing, then turns towards Ex and nods at her. "I almost forgot, I'm uh... Slug. It's not the prettiest name, but it's mine. I'm also known as Black-Light, but that isn't really an important thing right now. My 'mutation' makes me really good at getting into places where I shouldn't be, and avoiding people that don't want me there. If you could tell me your birthday, I could tell you what your mutation is. If you wanna."

Ex's head gives another violent shake. "No." After a moment, during which her fingers repeatedly clench and unclench, she pulls back the right sleeve of her own hoodie. Tattooed on her forearm in black ink is 'X75V-31'.

Slug pages: How does it look? Like, big bold letters, ragged prison ink done with a pen and needle?

Rina's smile is gone, almost as soon as Slug mentions birthdays. That slightly haunted look is back, a kind of empathic pain that lines her face and makes her seem more than thirty. "Did I mention? Ex, here, really doesn't like questions right now. So, ah. We'll just leave that box ta get filled in later."

Flint looks at Slug. "There's a rite," he says. "There's a rite to tell. I. Maybe someone at the sept knows it." And then Flint gets the oddest look on his face, as if he's seeking confirmation for what he just said.

You paged Slug with 'Very neat, very easy to read.'.

You paged Slug with 'Definitely wasn't done with makeshift materials.'.

Slug 's face falls flat when he sees the marking on her arm, as though all the mirth were sucked out of it in the blink of an eye. He casts a somber look at those behind him, then at the mark on the girl's arm. "I'm sorry, Ex. I won't ask you anything else, but if you ever wanna tell any of us, we'll listen."

Ex tugs her sleeve back down over the tattoo. Her jaw works briefly. "Patrick Stewart."

"...is the bomb," Rina says quietly. "I *love* him in the bard. What about him?"

Flint looks at Ex, and looks at Rina, then looks at Ex again. "You mean, Patrick Stewart the actor, or? Who?" The words are quiet, easy, not at all like the sharpness from earlier.

Flint pages: Persuasion on the who. :)

Slug looks on at Ex, waiting patiently for her to reply without issuing any questions of his own.

"He's Professor Xavier," Ex says. That faint frown of hers remains. "...Played Professor Xavier," she corrects. This second statement seems somewhat less certain than the first.

"That's right," Rina says quietly. She watches the young woman with an absorbed attention, that trace of pain lingering behind her dark eyes.

Flint grins a little. "I liked the X-Men movies," the galliard says. "I... I got to see them in theatre. My school teacher, gave me tickets, once."

"You know, we could probably set you up with a way to watch some movies and stuff. If you want." Slug offers, in a kindly, almost meek tone.

Flint looks at Rina. "She could... she could use my laptop," Flint offers, quietly. "It has a pretty good screen."

Ex looks just a little swayed...but the moment passes, and she shakes her head; more naturally, this time. "I just want to learn and go," she says. One hand clenches into a fist again.

Rina nods minutely. "That's fine," the woman murmurs. A beep comes from the oven, and she turns to put the pan in. "And understandable." When she straightens, she stands there a moment with her head bowed.

"I know. I did too... But, you can not learn every hour of every day. A lot of the stuff you'll learn takes time to digest. You'll need to rest. But we'll still teach you as fast as we can." Slug sighs wistfully, then reaches into the bucket for his sponge. "I wish I had a TV when I was learning. I was lucky to have a book."

Ex leans forward suddenly, staring at Slug. "You'd better let me go when you're done. Don't fucking lie to me about it."

"If..." Flint begins, moving to lean on the wall on the other side of the door, not quite pacing. "If you do want to?" he tells Ex. "I. You can, I have a Nintendo DS, too. Or, if you want to play the games, on my phone." He pauses, and takes a deep breath. "They... when I was a cub, I. I wasn't allowed off this floor, because, I ran away once. But, when I was done learning? Now it's... it's my choice to stay here, and such."

Looking over at Ex, Rina says, very quietly, "*No* one in this room is gonna lie to you." As if to underline the point, she gives a serious glances to the others.

Slug turns his head to look at Ex, meeting her eyes with his. The Gnawer looks far more thoughtful and sad than he normally does, as though he were half in some reverie. "There isn't anything more important to me than freedom. If you listen to me, I'll do everything I can to make sure you get your's. A lot of that will revolve around you behaving, kay? I promise that I won't lie to ya." Slug dips his head, then turns to look at Flint and Rina. "So long as they'll let me up here to talk to you."

Ex doesn't look quite convinced. "You teach me how to control it. Then I get to leave." A beat, and she adds, "And I get to keep a knife."

Flint looks at Rina, and nods, quietly, then turns back to Ex. "Learning is... is easier, having eaten. Not being hungry." There is a tone, in the boy's voice, that suggests he still well remembers what it's like to be hungry, hoard food.

Rina looks to Slug for a long moment, meeting his gaze. "I'll talk it over with people," she says quietly. "This one is... real touch and go."

Slug finishes up his cleaning and tosses the sponge back into the bucket, then slowly rises up to his feet. "I don't mind supervised visits. I know it's your space, and all, but I do kind of live here. Just sayin'." Slug turns back to Ex, then takes two steps back. "Show me how you hold your knife."

Ex eyes Flint for a moment, then looks back to Slug. She fishes the battered switchblade out of her pocket, and flicks it open. The way she holds it is, apparently, a freaking death grip, white knuckles and all.

Flint turns his head, half-paying attention to the lesson on holding the knife, but mostly, humming to himself, very quietly.

Rina's brow furrows. "Ah. What happened to *my* knife?"

Flint turns to Rina. "Riley-rhya has it I. I think," he responds, moving over to the kinswoman to be able to speak more quietly, in an undertone meant only for Rina. "Took it, after she'd went and had the tantrum with the. With the toilet-lid."

"Riley took it. She's cranky now." Slug says comments offhandedly, looking at the knife in Ex's hand. He reaches into his hoodie's waist pocket and comes up with a knife of his own, a blue balisong blade. He casually flicks it open with practiced grace, and turns it over in his hand so the short blade is oriented towards the ground. "Look." Slug points his arm well away from Ex, then raises his arm and pumps it up and down quite slowly. "See the way the arm bends? If someone grabs your arm in a fight, they can fold your arm up and stick you with your own knife. You hold it down, and it's much harder."

Rina nods to Flint, and then watches the interaction between Gnawer and cub, her eyes narrowed.

Ex does indeed look, observing Slug's motions very carefully before she drops her gaze to her own hand. She appears to have to focus for a moment to actually loosen her grip, but once she does, she mimic's Slug's hold.

Flint looks to Rina once more, then walks a few steps towards Slug and Ex, though he's careful to stay well out of her personal space. "Again?" he asks Slug. His own switchblade, with a wooden inlay in the otherwise well-cared for steel, is drawn out, though held closed and not opened, and it's clear that the cliath's interested in the knife lesson by the way he adjusts his own grip.

Rina bares her teeth in a little smile. "Maybe I should go find Riley," she says dryly. "So both your students have sparring partners.

"Good." Slug remarks in a pleasant tone, the traces of a smile returning to his face. He studies her hand and opens his mouth, but then looks to Flint when the Cliath pipes up. "Knife fights are very close, y'know? People will try to get it away from you, or stick ya with it." He flexes his arm a few more times, then folds his blade shut. "I learned from my teacher, when I was a cub. I can also swing a sword, but I haven't held one in a long time." He laughs, then shakes his head. "I'm sorry, I'd like to tell you more, but uhm... " He glances at Rina, and smiles sheepishly. "I kinda have to go make Ishmael something to eat. He's been working really hard, and if I don't feed him, he'll forget to feed himself."

Rina raises both eyebrows. "Oh," she says, with an oddly confirm-me sort of inflection and a question in her eyes.

Ex wrinkles her nose and gives Slug a look of absolute disbelief. "A fucking /sword/?"

Flint looks from Ex, to Slug, then back to Ex. "Some. Some people... still use swords," he says. There's a deep breath, as if there's an anecdote and story there, but then Flint shakes his head, shakes it off, and looks at Rina, then past Rina to where the ziti is heating.

Slug actually laughs, but it's light and good natured. "Yes. Sabers and rapiers, mostly. I think he taught me because he thought it was funny. It kind of is, really, a rat with a sword. Get me a pair of blades, and I can teach that, too." Slug tucks his knife back into his hoodie, then turns and starts to walk towards the exit. "Call me if you need somethin'! I'll be downstairs. Try to save me some ziti, eh?"

Ex slants a look at Flint. "Yeah, in /movies/." She flips her knife closed, and stuffs it back into her jeans pocket. There's a strange twitch--more like a shiver--that passes over her body as she leans a little off of the bed to peer toward the kitchen.

"I'll leave the rest out, down the hall," Rina replies easily.

Flint gives a thin smile, then looks over at Slug. "Seeya, Slug," Flint calls. "I. I'll catch you around, I. I always need more practise." Attention returns to the cub, and he tilts his head to one side, shrugs. "Mostly," he admits.

Rina falls silent, just watching the two with dark, almost unreadable eyes.

Ex curls her fingers into the slashed pillow. She falls silent now as well, eyes slightly narrowed.

Flint turns back to Rina. "Food ready?" he asks.

Slug waves at the group over his shoulder as he walks out of the room, and down the hallway. The Gnawer breezes past the apartment doors and heads to the elevator, which may be heard when it arrives to take him out of Walker Land.

Rina glances over her shoulder at the microwave's clock. "Ten minutes. Go wash your hands, kids," she says dryly. Looking across to Ex, she takes a slow breath. "Kavi's not gonna like it if I stick around, here," she says quietly. "But I'll be right out in the hall if you need anything. Just yell." Her gaze shifts to Flint. "Same goes f'you. Anything happens... I'm your hall monitor, or whatever."

Ex doesn't make any move to wash her hands, but her attention does shift again toward the kitchen. Her eyes narrow a little.

Flint pushes off the frame of the bunk bed to make his way to the kitchen to wash his hands, and nods as he does so. "Yes Rina," he affirms. Ex is offered a very faint smile. "C'mon. Rina's cooking's awesome, and. Food helps. Well." Flint pauses, and amends. "Food always helps me. And there's... there's always food, around here."

Ex slips off of the bed, though her motions are, at best, reluctant. She follows Flint into the kitchen.

Flint offers a thin, attempt-to-be-encouraging smile as he moves out of the way to let Ex wash her hands, and then goes to get down two of the plastic plates that are kept for use in the cubroom, setting them and forks out on the counter. "I never got homecooked food, before. Before I came here. And then, I found out, people actually care. Kavi-rhya, Rina. Mouse, Ishmael, Kevin, Riley. Even Slug." The words have regained their usual hesitation, no attempt right now at authority in his voice. More, attempt at conversation.

Rina's brow furrows in thought for a moment, as she watches Ex.

As it happens, while Ex does regard the sink for a moment, she /doesn't/ wash her hands, or make any real movement in that direction to suggest she intends to. She gives Flint another weird look, and ends up leaning up against the wall. "Nutri-mush."

Flint leans on the counter, raising his brows in silent question before furrowing them. "Rina's cooking's better," he says, as if that settles the matter.

Ex doesn't say anything. Neither does her expression indicate her opinions, one way or the other, on Rina's cooking versus 'nutri-mush'. In fact, it looks like she's just going to stay silent, but eventually she lifts one eyebrow, and says, "Rhya?"

"Remember, I talked a little, about rank, earlier?" Flint asks, thumbs hooking into his pockets. "About how I. I'm cliath? Kavi, and. And Mouse, a-and Kevin are. They're adren. They're ranked higher than me. Twice. Ishmael, Riley, and Slug are-- are. They're fostern, ranked once above me. Rhya is... it's a term of respect, acknowledging that."

Ex looks at the ceiling, and declares, without raising her voice, "You have too many stupid fucking words."

"Yeah," Rina agrees. "Don't worry too much about most of them yet. This is... Like, you know-- sort of like sir. Or like if y'talkin' to a judge, you hafta say 'Your honor.' Shit like that. Manners."

Flint huffs, not quite a sigh, but he seems more than content to let Rina explain right now.

Ex seems to have found her voice again. "And there's tons of you. And you've got /ranks/. And you kill babies and shit. And that one bitch was talking about 'the enemy'."

Flint raises his brows. "... Kill babies?" He sounds confused, moving over towards Rina for the time being. "Don't mind Riley," he adds, to Ex. "She was. Was just mad because you. It. Because you woke her up."

Slug leaves the bunkroom.

Slug has left.

Rina lets out a breath. "There aren't tons," she says quietly. "And *we* don't kill babies. Sue just had... what ya might call a fucked up childhood. You and he oughta get along like two peas in a fuckin' pod."

"He's weird," Ex says, with a wrinkled nose. "You're /all/ weird. Talking about sins and abominations and creepy cult things."

Rina crosses her arms and raises both eyebrows. "I haven't," she points out.

Flint raises his brows again, looks at Rina. "Sue having a. Bad week?" he murmurs, quietly.

Ex glances at Rina, and then away. "...No," she admits. "But probably soon."

Rina gives Flint a subtle nod. "Peas. Pod," she says, waving a hand vaguely in Ex's direction. Then she winces.

Flint sighs, leans against the wall and looks at the timer for the microwave. Still a little bit longer to go. "I. Also talked about. Perfect normal things. Movies. Books," he tells Ex. "But. It's things, like what Slug was talking about. That. That will help you learn."

"Holding a knife?" Ex asks. And then, with utter derision, "Talking about my feeeeelings?"

Rina looks to the girl sharply. "No one's gonna make you talk about anything. In case the guns and knives didn't clue you in, this isn't fucking therapy."

"Acknowledging and. And talking about. Are different things," Flint mutters.

Ex crosses her arms and frowns, focusing narrow eyes on the toes of her shoes. No answer this time, just jaw tightening.

"Anyway, food," Flint says, not-quite-cheerfully changing the topic. On-cue the timer goes off, and Flint moves for the kitchen, again.

Rina's voice is a little softer. "Yeah." She turns to grab a couple of potholders and take the pan out, the melted cheeses and sauce bubbling at the edges. She serves up messy squares of the pasta without saying anything.

Ex's interest is eventually snagged by the pasta; Rina's cooking, after all, is a little hard to ignore. Her nostrils flare a little, and she looks over the dish with the faintest of frowns. It doesn't look disapproving, exactly, but there's an uncertainty about it.

Flint picks up his plate, and the second, and carries it over, offering the plate with the slightly bigger serving over to Ex. "Here," he says, quietly.

"Pretty similar to last night," Rina murmurs, looking over to Ex and seeing that expression. "You liked that lasagna okay, right?"

"It was..." Ex hesitates. "Strong." She takes the plate from Flint; snatches it might be more accurate.

Rina glances down to hide her rather bemused expression. "I think I'll just... leave this here," she murmurs. "Flint, don't get between Ex and her food, yeah? Careful." She scrubs at her hair. "I'll see you guys tomorrow. I gotta crash."

Flint looks at Rina, and grins a little once Ex has taken her plate. "Remember, don't. Don't inhale your food," he offers, but it's clearly just a suggestion, with a wry smirk, and clearly he seems to think that there's something amusing about /him/ offering that suggestion. His own plate is taken to lean against the wall, slowly and deliberately beginning to eat.

Rina studies Ex for a moment, her expression that shadowed, brooding mask again. Then she turns to head out into the hall, most assuredly *not* closing the door all the way.

Ex completely and immediately ignores Flint's advice. Despite her reluctance, she immediately begins eating once she has the plate, and eating /quickly/. Her portion vanishes very, very fast.

Flint watches Ex eat in between bites. It doesn't take him that much longer to finish his own food, and there's not /anything/ left on his plate when he does. "There... you can have seconds," he tells her. "You... you need it. More than I do." Though, in fact, the portion Rina brought and heated up is enough for both cub and cliath to have second portions just as generous as the first.

----


Tenement Building - Cubs' Bunkroom(#1657RA)

This large studio apartment has been set up as a communal living space for the tribe's cubs, as well as a temporary crash space for those who don't have their own apartment in the building. It's extremely sparse in furniture, consisting of two bunkbeds set opposite each other against the walls, and little else. Fortunately, it does possess a small kitchen and an even smaller bathroom.

Contents:
Crate Fort

Obvious exits:
Out

Flint comes in from the hallway.

Flint has arrived.

Given her immensely un-restful night, Ex did, eventually, drop off to sleep a few hours ago, still on the ripped up bed and torn pillow. Miraculously, it was also a relatively deep sleep for a while, but all that appears to have come to an end. She has, without any understandable trigger, decided to start yelling, wordlessly, as loudly as she can, while kicking her heels into the wall the bunkbed is propped against.

The door's been open, and Flint's been leaning on the wall in the hallway, but the ruckus gets the galliard to pace into the room, arms crossed and one earphone in, one out. He moves over, standing about five feet from the torn up bed, and winces. "You're gonna disturb /everyone/," he informs her. "Remember last night, Riley was mad at you for. For waking her up? You should be quiet."

Ex glances at Flint--she's clearly aware he's there--but she only pauses in her yelling, and not in her kicking, long enough to bring her fingers curling up into her short, untamed hair, before she starts it again, louder than ever.

Flint steps a step towards the bed, then crouches, furrowing his brows at Ex. "Whoa," he says, forcing himself to speak loudly enough to be heard, hopefully, even over the screaming. "Ex. /Ex/!"

Ex clings to her hair, closes her eyes, literally drums her feet into the walls, and barely pauses for breath. It's one long, drawn out, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Good thing the Tenement's outer walls have good soundproofing, really.

Flint turns away from Ex for a moment, bringing one hand up to rub at his forhead, then takes another step, two steps, so he's only just out of reach of the edge of the bed. "Ex. Quit it, come on. /Focus/."

Ex's only change is that she stops kicking the wall so that she can start kicking at the underside of the top bunk. WHAM, WHAM, WHAM. The screaming continues unabated.

Flint watches for a moment, grimacing as the noise is clearly giving him a headache, before he simply moves forward, bulking up to Glabro and moving to set one hand on her shoulder, the other hand to stop her from kicking the bed.

She fights him, of course. The instant he actually touches her, she starts flailing at him rather than the furniture or walls, with hands /and/ both feet. And yet somehow /she still doesn't stop yelling/. Flint certainly overpowers her, but she's being a squirmy nuisance.

Riley comes in from the hallway.

Riley has arrived.

Flint sighs, and sits down on the edge of the bed, and though it seems to be wearing on his patience, just lets her squirm. "You going to. To be done yelling, any time soon?" he asks. "Come on, Ex. /Try/." The words aren't encouraging, so much as annoyed.

Ex continues to yell for a few more moments before she appears to run out of steam...temporarily, at least. Not so with the kicking. She returns to pounding the walls with both heels, kicking as hard as possible, even though her face has turned red and she's got to be tiring.

Okay, seriously, this is the most compelling point that Riley can probably make to change her sporadic sleep schedule, because it seems that no matter when she manages to struggle herself to sleep, something wakes her up, whether it be useful intelligence or raging and caterwauling cubs. This, right here? This is Riley's last nerve snapping after being worn thin. BLAM. The cubroom door opens, smacks against the waul, and closes again. Somewhere in the interrim, Riley has stormed her way into the room, eyes bloodshot and facial features contorted. She's more dressed than last time, her coat zipped up over herself, but she has still failed to obtain pants, and her bedhead is no better. "/ENOUGH/." It's not a suggestion, not a statement. It's an order. A loud, loud order.

Flint sits on the edge of the bed still, and eventually moves to stop her from kicking the wall, when Riley comes in. There is a frown furrowed on Flint's face, and the galliard looks over at the ragabash at the order, then back at Ex. "Seriously," he says, more quietly. "Ex, you /need/ to calm. Calm down."

Riley's entrance /is/ enough to get her to stop. She startles a little, and that throws off her kicks. They subside for a moment as Ex turns her head, eyeing Riley sidelong. There's a moment--two, three--where she is completely silent. And then, while still looking at Riley, she yanks back both legs and kicks at the wall, /hard/.

"No." Comes Riley's angry snap at Flint, "/NOPE/." Then, there's that sudden THUMP against the wall, and Riley's nostrils flare. Up through Glabro, up into Crinos, and a massive paw curls tightly around Ex's ankle and yanks her down off of the bunk to thwump down on her back, likely driving the breath out of her. Evac leans in, baring her teeth directly into the girl's face, repeating in a scarcely intelligible roaring growl, "No, cub." She sends a warning glower to Flint. It's clear she's not in the mood to debate, or to brook any disagreement.

Flint had, apparently, been trying to be patient with Ex's temper tantrum, but he just stands back and moves over for the door, to lean against the doorframe. "Have at," he mutters.

Ex doesn't really even have time--or breath--for a startled yelp. She's barely able to flail before her back cracks against the floor, and the sudden crinos muzzle in her face, growling, leaves the cub wide-eyed and /blessedly/ silent. There's a faint trembling about her, suddenly halted energy, fear, or both.

The doorframe is the exact wrong place for Flint to be standing, as it turns out. Ex's ankle is not released - in fact, the grip upon it only tightens as Evac turns and stomp toward the door, giving a jerk of her head to indicate to Flint that he needs to move, and he needs to move now. Meanwhile, Ex is being hauled along the floor on her back.

Flint steps out into the hallway, eyebrows raised in question, a little.

Ex starts flailing again as she's unceremoniously dragged, but it's about as effective as flapping her arms to fly. She's either too winded, or too disoriented, to do anything as sensible as trying to latch onto something. She just moves her arms in various directions.

Out into the hallway, with Riley jerking her ankle up in elevation to put the pressure less on the flailing girl's lower back and more on her upper back, giving her at least the cushion of her clothing on her uncomfortable journey without allowing the opportunity for it to slide up and start chafing her skin off. Drag, drag, drag. When they reach the door to the stairs, Riley jerks her ankle again to lift her completely off of the floor and descends with the flailing girl held upside down by her ankle. Down, down into the basement.

Evac leaves the bunkroom.

Evac has left.

Tenement Building - Basement Apartment(#1849RJh)

The basement apartment is roomy but windowless. The wooden steps come down near one wall, against which is the boiler and a large washer/dryer. The area underneath the steps is used for storage, though the boxes tend to get quite dusty and cobwebby down there.

The rest of the area is set up as living space, albeit rather unlived-in at the moment. The battered rust-orange couch and heavy, scarred wooden coffee table still hold court in the main room, and a scattering of rugs soften the hard concrete floor. But the bookshelf is mostly empty, and there's a pale spot where the entertainment center used to be. Instead, hanging on that wall is a framed painting, two and a half feet by a foot and a half; the landscape merges a dark, brooding city into a primeval forest, in an Escher-like transformation that moves from left to right. There's a subterranean aspect to it -- not a simple cutaway view, just a hint of energy and movement around the roots of the towering trees.

Everywhere there are cockroaches, oval brown forms often seen scuttling from point A to point B or hanging quietly on the ceiling with their antennae waving.

Doorways lead to a narrow kitchen (colored in dull yellows and browns) and a small bedroom that contains an empty bed and an equally empty desk.

Obvious exits:
Out

Flint follows, arms crossed and grumbling the /entire/ way.

Stairs. Stairs are /not fun things/ to be dragged down, even with the minor cushion of the new hoodie. Ex does try to latch a few times onto the railing as they go, but she's not in a good position for it, and she stands no chance of maintaining a grip for even a moment with a crinos pulling her. Her descent to the basement is entirely ungraceful, punctuated with occasional, lower than one might expect, noises of wordless protest.

Once they're off the stairs, Ex is discarded in a heap in front of her, and Riley snaps down out of Crinos back down to Homid to stand in front of the other girl, though inexplicably now fully clothed, her eyes narrowed. "Explain yourself. Explain yourself right now. Explain your histrionics, your shouting, your kicking, and your pissing, biting, and every-fucking-other thing that you're doing."

Flint grumbles. "Rina's gonna be pissed," he mutters, loudly enough for Riley to hear, though there's no actual questions in the

Flint: in the tone.

Ex stares a moment at the clothes, clearly bewildered. The demand, however, drags much more on her attention. She looks up at Riley from her undignified heap status, a muscle in her cheek working for a moment, followed by a tensing in her jaw. It takes her a few moments longer, a few moments of ragged breathing, before the answer comes. "You won't let me fucking /go/!" It comes out as a near growl, her eyes suddenly bright and feverish again, too intense to be healthy.

Evac snaps to Flint, "Then let her be. You both had your fucking chance, and whatever your fucking intentions are, you're both failing spectacularly." Riley's teeth grind against eachother, clicking and crunching audibly as she looms over Ex, and shouting down at her, "Because if we let you go, You. Are. Going. To. /Die/." She leans down and grabs the downed girl by the front of her hoodie, yanking her up to her knees and leaning in close, "You're going to /murder/ innocent people until you draw the wrong attention, and you will /die/."

Flint crosses his arms, but there's the sense that he knows better than to argue at this point.

Ex quails under Riley's shouting. Her eyes--still too bright--go wide again, her nostrils flare, she shrinks back as much as she can given the very little room for doing so. The cub is silent again, silent and staring.

Dropping down to her own knees, Riley's narrowed eyes lean in closer to Ex as she continues the verbal assurance. "You are going to lose control. It'll start small, maybe. Maybe you'll just wake up in the woods, gnawing on a deer. But then you'll run into the wrong things, and you'll wake up chewing on someone you knew." Her voice lowers just the slightest bit, her grip tightening, "Someone you loved. Do you want to know what it's like to wake up to half-eaten corpse?" Riley's eyes are intense, "Is that what you want? I can let you go right now if it is."

*a half-eaten corpse

"Kavi-rhya's orders," Flint mutters. "We are /not/ letting her go."

Flint pauses, and adds. "Yet."

Riley jerks her head towards Flint, eyes wild. She doesn't even bother to say anything.

There is absolutely no change, no change whatsoever, in Ex's body posture, expression, or silence for a good long few moments after Riley finishes speaking. Then she breathes in a little, carefully, as if afraid this might not actually be allowed, and says, "I already do." Her voice is low and quiet, but there's a hint of resentment there that she doesn't quite manage to hide.

Flint backs off, returning to his birth form to go sit on the stairs up and out of the basement.

The grip on Ex's hoodie doesn't ease. It tightens. But what does ease is Riley's expression. She doesn't say anything, not for several seconds, and when she does, her voice isn't quite as intense, and it's several decibels lower. "Me too. You're here so we can help it not happen again. I know it doesn't feel that way, I know it feels like we're holding you prisoner. But if we don't help you get this, you're going to go full-monster. You'll kill so many people that you'll forget what it was to be human, and you'll lose every last part of yourself."

Ex seems to regain a little bit more of her confidence. She breathes in again, and says, flatly (though notably, she doesn't look Riley in the face), "You /are/ holding me prisoner."

"Yup." Responds Riley, every bit as flatly. She scrunches the front of the girl's hoodie a little tighter, and leans in to throw an arm around the girl's back. Aggressive hug. "I'm sorry, but that's the way it's going to be."

It's the hug. As soon as that arm goes around her, she suddenly squirms and twists like a snake. "No. /No/."

Riley drops her immediately.

Ex ends up on one knee, with her hands splayed against the floor. She breathes again, but the moment of panic--if it was one--seems to be gone. Instead, she regards the other Ragabash carefully, with her head slightly lowered, and her eyes peering from under her eyebrows.

Riley crosses her arms, transferring her weight from her knees to her backside and pulling her knees close to her chest so that she can drape her arms over them. "If you're not here, learning to control what you are, then let me ask you something, and tell me true. Where else is it that you have to be?"

Ex looks from Riley to the floor. Her jaw works slowly, and the answer is slower. "I don't know." A beat. "/Out/."

Riley reiterates, "To frenzy, and eat more people."

"And get mad and wake up naked," Flint says. "No. Controlling it... learning. You need to do that." Then, he looks back down, butting back out of the conversation.

"Frenzy?" Ex says, as she rolls the word over her tongue. Her eyes flick toward Flint, and then away. "No one's teaching me yet. They said if I learned, I could go."

"Probably," Riley ventures, "Because you've kept us busy with watching you and cleaning up after you." She rolls her eyes, "That, and my guess is that they're trying to coddle you. If you're looking for that, you're going to have to find someone other than me. I don't have the patience anymore."

Flint lifts his shoulders. "Or because. I. When, every time, you go on about. Too many stupid words, or otherwise. Make it difficult," Flint says, grumbling a little. "Frenzy. Lose control of the rage, get angry, wake up naked. Words. /Learn them/."

Ex flashes teeth at Riley. "I don't want /coddling/." Flint gets an equally unpleasant look.

"Then don't act like a child." Riley snaps right back, bristling. "Whatever it is that you've done, know that I'm sorry that it happened - and you have a hard truth in front of you right now that you need to come to terms with. Whatever you thought your life was, that."

that's over now."

Ex is back to eyeing Riley from under her eyebrows again. She gives a sharp jerk of her head as he finishes, her agitation visibly flaring. "You can't promise that. You /can't/. /You can't promise that/."

Riley doesn't seem to be willing to let her go with being so painfully obtuse. Instead, she presses, "I can promise that."

Ex says, louder, "No you /can't/!" She pushes up from the floor and takes several quick steps back from the other Ragabash. Her fingers are twitching now, almost spasmodically. "You think you're big and tough! They don't care! They've got needles, and gas, and guns, and darts, and you can't think and you can't get out and there's nothing but walls and silence and crawling and whispers and people without faces--"

Flint tenses, watching the cub and fostern, almost at the point of getting up from the stairs, but still, he keeps back for the moment.

Riley rises smoothly to her feet, bobbing her head, "Sounds a lot like your old life. Do you know where you are right now? You're in a building that's clogged to the gills with people that not only have guns, but that when they get pissed off, they look like this." She winds right back up into Crinos, making a point to flex her claws out into sight, her mouth opening and letting out a throaty snarl. She eases back down into homid, "And all of those, all of us? We're your allies now. So if anyone from that old life comes knocking, you can just point a finger and watch them disappear in a fine red mist."

Ex drops back into a crouch. She rubs her knuckles over one scarred cheek--roughly, as usual--and studies the floor for a moment before slanting another sidelong look toward Riley.

Flint pushes to his feet, then moves to lean against the wall. "Riley's right," Flint points out. "It. The-- They ain't gonna, they're not. We won't let them get you. You're here, safe." It takes a long moment for Flint to properly articulate what he's trying to say, but the galliard says it.

For a change, Flint gets an approving nod from the Fostern. "Exactly that. So the way I see it, you've got a choice." Riley murmurs, taking a step back and settling with her hips cocked, and arms folded, "Either you think of us as kidnappers, or you start looking at it the other way around. We're your armor. And soon you'll be your own armor."

Ex inhales. Slower this time, but still rather heavily. She pushes up, moving again, pacing. "You have too many fucking cameras," she mutters, more to the floor than the other two. "Fucking cameras all over the place, spying for you. Too many walls and not enough windows."

Flint shakes his head slowly. "No. The. The cameras are there, so that..." Flint pauses, face screwing up in frsutration, and looks to Riley, then looks down, and continues. "For /our/ safety. So, so they can't just, sneak in, unnoticed."

It's Riley's turn to give her a sidelong look. "Your life won't be inside of this building. This is temporary, and we're not going to keep you here. But hey, guess what? While you /are/ in here? No one is getting in to hurt you, if you'll just accept that we're not here to hurt you. What have you had to endure since coming here? Hot meals? Showers? Far cry from needles, darts, gas, and guns."

Ex twists around, partially facing Riley. Her eyes are still narrowed, her mouth set into a faint frown that seems be her default expression. "Why?"

Flint looks at Ex. "Why what?" he asks. "Why what?"

Ex shakes her head sharply. "/Why/?" She waits a beat. "So uninfected humans are safe?" Her eyebrow quirks. "Do you think you /are/ the X-Men?"

"First off, there's no 'infection'. And as far as I remember, I was talking about you being safe, I didn't make any promises for anyone else. And like it or not," Riley grunts, "If we're the X-Men, congratulations. You're Jubilee."

Ex huffs. "Genetic mutation, fine." And then there's a snort. "No, fuck that. I'm Rogue. Rogue from the movie if you want. Then nobody fucking touches me."

"Rogue? Alright, then." Riley jerks her head toward Flint, "Flint, this is Rogue. Rogue, Flint." She turns her attention back to Ex. "I can't promise that no one's going to touch you, unless you take the effort to actually tell them - like a mature human being - that you have a problem with it, and you're sorry, but you don't want handshakes, or hugs, or whatever it is that twigs you out so hard." Riley frowns, "...You've got an opportunity, here, Rogue. Because right now, you're dead. It's up to you to figure out how you wanna be reborn."

Flint offers a faint, still-tense grin to the cub. "Rogue it is," he says. "See, and. And here, you've said that. No one touches you? So that's what we-- what. What happens. Like. Like Riley said. Like I said. Like Rina said. You're safe here. If. If no one touching you, if, keeping the knife. If those help you, know you're safe, good."

Once again, Ex flashes teeth at Riley, but this time it's more of a feral grin than displeasure. "Okay. Okay, yeah. /Good/. I'm Rogue, and no one fucking touches me. Okay." She draws herself up straighter now. She doesn't seem more relaxed, necessarily, but there's a hint of calm at least. "Now what?"

"Now," Riley murmurs, "I'm going back to bed, and you're going to cool your heels. If you start to feel antsy, tell someone. We have an open-air roof that you're welcome to pace around on if someone's with you. No cameras there, and lots of space."

Flint looks at Ex. "Breakroom. The apartment. Roof. Here, if you want. But. No more kicking the walls, or ruining. The mattress." There's a tinge of amusement. "'kay?"

Ex's right cheek twitches. "Fine. But I need shit to do." And abruptly. "The roof. I want to go there."

Riley casts Flint a look, and nods her head, "Your ball." Without a second glance cast to either of them, the Fostern stomps back up the stairs, presumably to get herself back to bed.

Flint nods, waiting for Ex, before starting up the stairs, himself, heading for the roof. "Roof, fine. And yes. Okay. I get it, you're bored."




Tenement Building - Roof(#1899RJ)

A low stone lip surrounds the edge of the building's flat roof, about three feet high. Though the stone is stained and filthy, scattered with pigeon droppings and the occasional bit of litter, it does provide an excellent view of the surrounding neighborhood.

Perhaps unexpectedly, there's a small garden that stretches along one side of the building, shielded from the street by height and the rooftop's stone lip. In stark contrast to the neighborhood itself, it appears well-tended.

A narrow structure near the center has a door which leads back down into the building's stairwell.

Contents:
Flint

Obvious exits:
Stairwell

"And you're a fucking thirteen-year-old," Ex mutters as she follows Flint back up the stairs--right-side up, this time.

Flint rolls his eyes as he steps out onto the roof. "Yeah and? Can still kick your ass if. If you lose it," he responds. "Let's not, not push that, yeah?"

The young woman only appears to avoid shoving past Flint by her dislike of physical contact; otherwise, she's through the door as fast as she can squeeze, and she actually breaks out into a swift jog for a few feet before stopping. "Whoa." Ex skids over to one of the sides, and peers over the edge. "Your neighborhood's a fucking /dump/."

Flint moves over towards the small garden, brushing his fingers against the leaves. "Yep. But. It's home," Flint says, quietly.

Ex leans a little further over, peering at the late evening traffic, and a few pedestrians. She's braced against the stone lip with both hands splayed flat against its inside. Then she twists her head so that she can look up, possibly at the other buildings, or maybe the sky itself.

The galliard sits down on the roof, cross-legged but not necessarily so relaxed as to give Ex the impression that she's not still being guarded. "Fresh air's nice," he says. "Eventually. Eventually, you'll be allowed up here. Without someone with you, by yourself. And. And even, after you get to where, you're allowed to leave? You'll be allowed to. Come back."

Ex shakes her head as she rights herself. "No way. I'm not coming back here once I'm out. Dumpy old building full of cameras and creepy people? Not a chance."

Flint shrugs his shoulders, content to sit and watch the cub. "Your choice."

Ex leans over the rim again. "Good."

Flint hums to himself, the tune mostly that of a Metallica song from a recent album.

Ex puts up with it for a few moments, but a short while into his humming, she plucks up a long spent cigarette butt and flicks at the back of his head.

Flint looks over at Ex. "Let me guess. No humming?"

"It's annoying," Ex says. "What are we waiting for, anyway?"

Flint huffs. "You said. You wanted to come to the roof. We. We did. However, up here, there's..." a shrug. "Less 'shit to do'."

Ex rolls her eyes at him. "Less to do than in an empty room? Or an empty room with beds?"

Ex says, suddenly, "There's this." And hops up on the cement lip.

It takes the barest moment for the galliard to snap into crinos, and he moves over, one massive hand wrapping around Ex's arm to pull her down from the lip. "No," he grunts, gutteral, and quite certainly annoyed. It's with the same force that Requiem just /carries/ her into the stairwell, though he's at least more gentle about it than Riley was earlier, and he doesn't let her go until they're back on the fifth floor, inside the cubroom, at which point he sets her down, shrinks to glabro. "Sorry, Rogue. There's not that. Not. Not yet."

Rina's cleaning the kitchen when they come... well, monstering in. "Jesus *fuck*," she says swiftly, turning, towel suddenly dropped on the floor and a mixing bowl falling with a clatter.

Requiem looks, apologetically, to Rina. "Were on the roof," he explains, gaze dropping to the floor. "Ledge." Head jerks to the cub. "She. Anyway."

Ex yelps as she's snatched--someone, it seems, is still not used to how fast crinos can move--and is full of nothing but squirming and protests until she's deposited in the cubroom. "You're /supposed/ to not fucking touch me!" she snaps at him, as she scrambles back up to her feet. "It's five stories, I counted."

Kavi` comes in from the hallway.

Kavi` has arrived.

Rina's jaw tightens a little, and she gives Flint a look. "There was a reason I din't take her up to hang out in the garden," she says pointedly. "You've been hangin' out with her *how* long?"

Flint folds his arms, glancing once at Ex, before leaning on the doorway, in glabro. "Now, I know," he acknowledges. "Next time, you don't do something, like that," he tells Ex, "I don't have to, to do what I did. Until then," and he takes a deep breath, returning all the way to homid. "Sorry, Rina."

Ex stalks back to the knifed up bed, and flops herself onto it, rolling so that her back is to the room, and the others.

"Saright," Rina murmurs, bending to pick up the towel and the bowl, returning to the sink to wash the latter again.

Flint looks at the floor, and takes a very deep breath, then looks at what Rina dropped on the floor. "Can I...?" he asks, quietly.

Flint takes a very deep breath, then moves to sit down just out of the doorway, in the hall.

Rina's brow furrows, and she glances over her shoulder. "Flint? Hon?"

Ex kicks the wall, lightly, just once, with the toe of her shoe. Other than that, she remains where she is, with her back to the room.

The door from the stairwell opens and Kavi steps through. It closes behind him, and he pauses, brow furrowing as he regards Flint, and then looks beyond the other galliard to the open door.

Rina listens, as she continues to wash dishes.

"I..." Flint looks over at the stairwell, and Kavi, and then back at the door. "'Sokay, Rina. Just, a minute or two, yeah?" There's the lingering rage in his manner, still, though.

Ex drags the pillow over her head. This has the unintended consequence of scattering yet more pillow fluff over the bed and below it, not that she seems to mind.

Rina lets out a breath, and turns off the water.

Kavi` nods to Flint, but doesn't speak. Instead, he passes the young cliath and steps into the cub room. His gaze takes in the state of things, passing over the destruction to rest on Rina. "Hey," he calls, his voice soft.

Rina looks over her shoulder to him, offering a wan smile. "Hey."

Flint spends a moment at the outside of the door, before he comes back inside, but when he reenters the cubroom, it's with headphones on and his phone in his hands, though there's a grin spared for Rina, and Kavi.

Ex remains, head en-pillowed, facing the wall. There's no movement out of her just now.

Kavi` gives a glance toward the cliath when he enters, and another to the new addition, before he crosses to Rina. One hand brushes her shoulder before he reaches for a towel to dry the dishes she washes. "I forgot to buy milk," he says, as though there were nothing at all out of the ordinary happening.

"I'll run out tonight," Rina murmurs. "I could use some air, anyway."

Flint leans against the wall, then eventually pulls one earphone out, yawns.

Ex abruptly sits up, and throws her slashed pillow at Flint. "Fuck's sake!" She pushes off from the bed, though it's not really clear where she thinks she's going.

"Ex," Rina says quietly, "you ever tried meditation?"

Kavi makes no move to intercept, though he does turn, and his posture speaks of readiness. The tip of his tongue touches his upper teeth, a word, a thought, unspoken.

Flint pulls his lips back from his teeth when the pillow lands at his feet, and he looks to Kavi, and Rina. "I. I should go rest, and," he says. "I. Is... 's that okay?"

Ex twists around to frown at Rina. "What?"

Rina dries her hands on a spare towel, and comes out of the kitchen to offer Flint a small smile. "No worries," she says quietly. "Take care of yourself however you need to. I know this is hard."

Kavi gives a nod of approval to Flint, but most of his attention remains on the new cub.

Flint slips out of the room quietly, and a minute later the door to his apartment can be heard.

Ex crosses her arms over her chest and lowers her head, glowering at some place between the two remaining people. "Whiny little kid."

Rina glances down to the floor, brow furrowing.

Kavi` looks to the doorway, and then back to Ex, but what he says has nothing to do with Flint or the woman's comment. "Did you get enough to eat?"

Ex's shoulders lift for a moment. "Came back up."

Looking across to the woman sharply, Rina studies her. "They-- shouldn't have been able to alter you permanently," she murmurs. "That happen a lot?"

Kavi frowns, but when Rina speaks he nods, and looks again to the woman for her response.

"Sometimes," Ex says, flicking a leery glance Rina's way. "Most of the time. I don't know."

Rina's expression darkens further. "Suck."

Kavi swallows, gaze ticking to Rina and then returning. "Did it... Was it that way, before?"

Ex turns that leery look toward Kavi. Her forehead wrinkles. "...Before?"

"Before you changed," Rina says quietly.

Kavi gives a small nod at Rina's explanation. "Before all of this?"

Ex stands still for a moment. The only movement is her jaw, clenching and unclenching, and then that muscle in her right cheek. "...There isn't any before," she says, flatly. "We don't talk about before. Okay? /No/ before."

Rina winces. "Yeah," she says softly. "Right. That's over."

Kavi`'s gaze drops, rising again only slowly as he nods. He glances again to Rina, speaking softly. "There's more. If you do get hungry, again."

Ex nods once, a little sharply, and meanders toward the kitchen. "Your food's better. Maybe that's why."

Rina nods, and watches her approach them with a hint of surprise. "I'll make some plain stuff, then," she says quietly. "To help you get used to it."

As Ex heads toward the kitchen, the galliard takes a step back, giving the woman space to move. He finds a small smile for Rina, though, and reaches out for her hand.

Ex makes her way to one of the corners, and leans her shoulder into it. "Okay." Her gaze flicks to Kavi.

Rina twines fingers with Kavi's, briefly, and joins him in making that tiny adjustment. "You want something to drink? I can bring over some mint tea, to help settle your stomach if it's still upset?"

Kavi offers that same hint of a smile to Ex as she looks in his direction. "Or if there's something else?"

"Yeah," Ex says, at the second offer. There's no hint of a smile in return. "Since I have to stay here, tell me about your freaky cult."

Rina purses her lips. "Ouch," she says dryly.

Kavi gives Rina's hand a squeeze before letting the touch drop away. His first answer is a simple nod, but it's followed by a frown. "It's not... We're not a cult. Not like that." He looks to Rina, a furrow in his brow as he tries to formulate an explanation.

One of Ex's eyebrows slide upwards, with her eyes remaining narrow. She looks distinctly skeptical.

Rina gives Kavi a Look. "No, she's right." Her tone is dry. "By every definition in the book. Religious beliefs, opposition to aspects of law and mainstream society, secrecy... you name it."

Kavi frowns as he listens to Rina, the deep furrow remaining. "Except," he says, and looks back to Ex. "Except that what we believe... It's not just faith. It's... I wish the moon were bigger. I wish Mouse-- What we believe, we can see and feel and touch, and..."

That skepticism on Ex's face doesn't fade a single bit. "Well, you believe you're werewolves. Of course you can."

Rina seems like she might object to Kavi's words in some ways... but then Ex's reply causes a lift of the raven brows and she asks, "And... you think they're not? *You're* not? Yeah, it's genetic. For all I know, parts of it are quantifiable by freakin' science. But I don't care, it doesn't change the fact that Kavi can change into a wolf, or a nine-foot-tall death machine."

Kavi starts to say more, but Rina's response stills that impulse, and he glances downward, gaze only slowly rising again.

"Yeah," Ex says, "But not /real/ werewolves. You don't bite people to infect them, or...or get cursed by a witch, or make a deal with Satan. It's a genetic disorder. It's just how you're born, because your parents were either infected or carriers."

Rina raises her eyebrows again. "No, these are *real*, therefore they're real werewolves. The myths we have circulating in our culture are just that: myths. There are multiple versions out there, all of them completely wrong... but what *is*, what the Garou *are*, is their truth. And it goes way beyond what your science assholes can explain away."

Pulling his gaze back to the woman, Kavi gives the slightest of nods to what Rina says. "I. We say Garou. That's the word we use, for what we are. And there's more-- There's much more than just being able to change shape." He takes another step backward, leaving the women in the kitchen as he moves into the more open space. "Don't worry," he says as he closes his eyes. "She won't hurt you."

Ex shrugs one shoulder and moves her chin to the side. "That one guy did some kind of weird mutant trick with the pillow feathers and th--" She gives Kavi a sudden, deeply suspicious look. "Who?"

"Me?" Rina says, bemusedly.

Kavi` doesn't speak, but he does give a small shake of his head. The air beside him shimmers, almost the mirage above a hot surface in the distance. Rather than remaining formless, the shimmering takes on a shape. Still vague, at first, it is taller than the galliard, and broader. Then the shimmer of air becomes more opaque, and then solid. Golden fur covers the lion's body, golden feathers adorn her wings, and golden hair falls in fine ringlets, framing the beautiful face, falling down over her shoulders. Her feline body is muscled and strong. Tufts of yellow-white fur feather out from each of her four, broad paws, hiding the sharp claws within. When the spirit speaks, her voice is like the whisper of sand. "Shhhh," she whispers, and Kavi opens his eyes to look at the sphinx with a soft, cautious smile.

Don't worry, he said. If Ex hadn't already claimed the far corner, she would be darting for it, but as it is, she gives an undignified yelp and flings her arms over her head. When she fails to be immediately eviscerated, one of those feverish, ice-blue eyes opens and dares to glance over toward the impossible thing, but it almost immediately closes again. "Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck/fuck/."

Rina swallows, the color draining from her face. She backs up until she hits the kitchen counter. She isn't *afraid* exactly. Hell no. But her eyes are definitely wide, and there's apprehension in her posture. "Caro," she says hoarsely, "y'oughta *warn* people when y'gonna break out the mojo."

Kavi seems oddly surprised by the reaction to the spirit's appearance, but only for a moment, and he gives Rina an apologetic look. "I'm sorry," he says to her, his voice just a whisper. Then, only slightly louder, he says, "She can't stay very long. It's... It takes a lot of energy for her to stay on this side." He looks again to the sphinx, who settles onto her haunches, letting her wings fold at her sides. "You have questions," she says, most probably to the cub, though it isn't entirely clear.

Ex peeks at the spirit again, between her fingers. She lowers one arm, just a little, breathing heavily as she goes. "...It's like that other mutant trick. Some sort of optical illusion or weird pheromones or--" She leans abruptly off of the wall and takes a few steps forward. "I can't touch it," she declares (though she doesn't sound quite so certain as she might want to). And she reaches out to do exactly that, fingers stretching for one of the wings.

Pursing her lips in a wry expression, Rina just watches.

The galliard gives a soft shake of his head. "She's real. She's... Her name is Skokiaan. She's a spirit. A sphinx. She's solid." He looks up to his totem as though to check, and then returns to Ex. "You can touch her. She won't hurt you." As he speaks, he turns his gaze to Rina, including her in the invitation to approach.

The spirit remains still, not even a ruffle of feathers, though her gaze follows the cub's movement, and her enigmatic smile remains.

Rina turns both hands palm-out in a polite demurral, without taking her eyes from the sphinx. "Nah, I'm good," she says, as if turning down a beer.

Ex's fingertips brush the sphinx's wings, and she yanks her hand back with a hiss. "/Shit/." And almost immediately, she reaches out again, this time less cautiously, to poke at one of the oversized feathers, and then to feel along the wing's bone structure. "...Could still be an illusion," she says, out of the side of her mouth. "Just making me think I'm feeling things."

"Your whole *life* could be a hallucination," Rina says. "Or this could be the Matrix. Get over it, and *live*. Experience." Her tone is matter-of-fact.

Kavi glances to Rina when she chooses to remain where she is, though the slight furrow to his brow lasts only for a moment. He turns back to spirit and cub and nods. "How... How will you decide what's real and what's not? You can touch her. You can see her. You can... You can smell the sweet musk of her fur. I." He looks up at Skokiaan and nods to himself. "I can't know everything. I can't know all the ways we can be tricked and. And sometimes we are. But this? This is real."

Skokiaan allows the prodding, though she does shift her weight enough to keep watch on the cub. "What will you choose to believe, child?"

Ex looks right at the smiling face of the spirit now, jaw set, eyes narrowed, and pulls her hands away from her wing. "Okay." She yanks back the sleeve on her left arm, and holds it out to the creature, bare forearm turned upward. "Let me fucking experience it. If you're real, scratch me with one of those lion paw things." Her chin juts. "Draw blood, Miss Skokiaan. It's cool."

Rina wets her lips, eyes narrowing slightly as she watches.

It's not the speed of rage, but the spirit does not hesitate. That oversized lion's paw rises and swipes across the extended arm, ripping four lines through her skin.

Kavi starts, a half-breath caught in his throat as he moves, too late, to intervene.

Ex doesn't look away--in fact, she clearly, intentionally keeps her eyes open through the sharp wince, and the hiss of pain, and the utterance, half pained and half amazed, of "/FUCK/." She stares at her bleeding arm, then brings it near her nose and sniffs once. Her right index finger swipes some of the blood away, and then she looks over the top of it to stare with renewed, wide-eyed shock at the spirit. "Holy /shit/."

"That real enough for ya?" Rina asks, her tone conversational rather than challenging.

The spirit immediately resettles, wings ruffling and then folding again at her sides.

"I'm sorry," Kavi says, taking a step, only a step, toward the cub. He looks up at the spirit and then back to the woman. "I'm sorry," he says again. "I didn't--"

"Holy shit!" Ex exclaims again. Her injured arm seems mostly forgotten, as she's still partially holding it out, and a little trickle of blood has gone running down to her elbow, and dripped once onto the floor. "You can make fucking mythological monsters appear out of thin air! Can she fly?" She looks right at the spirit again. "Can you fly? How come nobody knows about you? Do you eat people who don't answer your riddles, like in kid's stories? Everyone went and stole your four and two and three legs riddle for their dumb movies, you know."

Rina actually smiles, just a little.

"I can," comes the answer from the spirit, the voice almost musical, laughter in her eyes. "The people have forgotten the truth. The wall crashed down between the worlds, and their memories are short." Her form begins to shimmer again, and she pushes up onto four legs. "Riddles are important. They lead you to the truth." In the small space, she can't quite extend her wings completely, but they stretch as far as they are able before refolding. Her gaze turns slowly to the galliard, granting him a soft smile before she fades from sight.

"She can fly in the umbra," Kavi says, once the spirit fades. "The spirit world. It's. That's where she lives, and it takes a lot for her to come here. I can't... She came because I asked. Not because I made her. I can't-- She's not a pet. She's a spirit. The totem spirit for my pack."

Rina swallows. "She's beautiful, caro," she says quietly.

Ex's look of shock and wonder doesn't fade quite so quickly as the spirit does. "Alternate dimensions?" She finally thinks to put her hand over the four slash marks on her arm, but it's an idle gesture merely meant to somewhat slow the bleeding. "How'd you m...how'd you ask her to come? You didn't say anything."

Kavi` catches his lower lip between his teeth as he looks to Rina, a small smile forming in response to her words. The cub's voice pulls him back, and the smile disappears, a frown taking its place. "I'm sorry," he says again, as he looks at the state of her arm. "I. I didn't think she'd do that." He casts another glance to Rina before heading toward the cupboard with the bandages. "I. We're connected. My pack? She lets us... stay connected. We can feel each other. And... She can feel us. Hear us. And I just... I asked. And she came."

Rina watches, hands wrapping around the counter's edge.

Ex gives her arm a distracted glance. "It's just blood. Won't kill me." She squints at Kavi's back as he goes to retrieve the bandages. "So you've got a mythological monster friend who lives in an alternate dimension and you can talk to it with your brain?"

Kavi retrieves the bandages, but stops once he's facing the cub again. "I... You can heal. If you shift? Or. Or you can-- Or one of us can cover it, for you?" He leaves it there, bandages held loosely in his hands. "She's a spirit," he says. "But. I guess that's. It's close enough? There are a lot of different kinds of spirits. She's just one. If... If the moon were bigger, we-- I could teach you to cross over, to see the spirit world for yourself. But the umbra is dark when the moon is small."

Rina's attention is on Kavi, as he speaks. "And more dangerous, yeah?"

Ex is back to that vague frown of hers. She reaches for the bandages with her slightly bloodied right hand. "I can do it. Shifting's a bad idea." The rest of what Kavi says only seems to cause her frown to get deeper, but she doesn't offer up any remarks.

Kavi nods as Ex takes the bandages. "It is," he says in answer to Rina. "It's... It's never safe. But here at the tenement is better. We keep it as clean as we can. And in the woods it's better. But in the dark... That's when it's worst. When the moon is full, it's brighter and safer."

Rina gives a little half-smile, her brow furrowing.

Ex takes the bandages with her as she eases over toward the sink, and flips the faucet on. She only partially turns toward it, keeping both Kavi and Rina within the corner of her vision. "Why's it bad when it's dark?"

Kavi` moves closer to Rina, again reaching for her hand as he nears. "It's. There's a lot to understand," he says. "It's about why we exist, and what we are, and what we're supposed to do. There are different kinds of spirits. Some are like Skokiaan. Some are animals. Some are just... thoughts or ideas. And. And just like there are people with different... different goals? Spirits hae different goals, too. The ones that are strongest in the dark are the ones we fight against. The ones that... that have goals of destruction and corruption. They're the strongest in the darkness."

Rina lets her fingers lace into his again, though she's watching Ex now.

That skepticism has returned to her voice and the shape of her eyes, though it's rather less than it was before. "You fight evil spirits," Ex says, glancing sidelong at him.

Kavi's finger close around Rina's and his head bows as though the start of a nod that never completes. "I. That's part of it. That's..." He draws in a breath and lifts his gaze back to Ex. "If I say yes, you'll think it's silly, or made up. But it's not wrong, what you said? It's just. It's not all of it."

"You're the one who said it," Ex says, as she runs her arm under the tap water. There's a faint wince, barely visible.

"There's... like, a--" Rina doesn't go any further than that; she just shakes her head and looks helplessly over to Kavi. "Fuck it, that is *your* shit, caro. I got nothin'."

"I-- It's hard to explain?" Kavi gives Rina's hand another squeeze and then releases it. "It's not just good and bad. It's not just evil. It's... There are three forces in the universe. Three ideas? Creation, formation, and decay. If any one existed without the others... The universe wouldn't be able to exist. But none of them are bad or good. They just are? But. But what happens if one of them starts to think? Starts to... to want? The balance gets lost, and things start to fail. That's... That's what happened. That's... That's still not all of it. But it's more. The Wyrm. The embodiment of decay? It became corrupted. And that's... That's most of what we fight against. Not just in the spirit world, but also where it appears here. In our world. The... A lot of the bad things that happen to people is because of the Wyrm. Not everything... people can do bad things without the Wyrm. But. But a lot of it."

Ex's forehead starts to wrinkle shortly into Kavi's explanation, and it doesn't stop as he goes on, though she does look more toward her arm than the Galliard as he continues. She shuts off the water, and starts wrapping her arm up--pretty inexpertly, really, but she's not completely oblivious to how it should go. "That's really fucking weird."

Kavi swallows again and nods. "It is. It's... It's complicated, and strange, and. And there's a lot that we don't understand. But that's enough. That's why we exist. We're Gaia's defenders. We're here to fight against the Wyrm. Maybe..." He glances to Rina and then returns. "Maybe tomorrow I can sing you some of the stories? Maybe that will help?"

"Lemme help," Rina says quietly, going over to Ex without invading space at all. "It's hard onehanded. Can I?"

Ex double-wraps her arm, and then starts to rip the end of the bandage off. "If you want. It'll give me something to pay attention to." She eyes Rina warily. Her cheek tics. "Just don't touch /me/."

"I'll try." Rina's dark eyes are serious, as she carefully takes up the gauze and rebandages the scratches, with a cool efficiency that suggests experience with such things.

Kavi` nods, falling quiet as he watches the pair.

To say that Ex is twitchy about this would be an understatement. She holds still--too still--for the most part, but whenever it seems like Rina might accidentally brush her arm, she partially yanks away. It makes the bandaging a lot more complicated than it might otherwise be. Still, it gets done soon enough, and once finished, Ex expresses a desire for sleep. Shortly after, she curls up on the slashed bed, fully clothed, and facing the wall.