Difference between revisions of "Alley Chat"

The post-mic-feedback chaos is substantial. You would think that a certain woman in a hoodie down in the small mob of similarly dressed antifa types might keep her attention focused the direction of the incoming garou, knowing that they're incoming, but no - she's watching the retreating bikers, the dispersing crowds. The double-triple line of police between. Their riot gear. But mostly, the bikers. She's watching them, watching the direction they go. Sandra and Oliver? She won't hear their approach.

...that certain woman being Kai. Ahem.

At least one of the two Garou is looking every which way in response to something said by her sign-toting companion, though she's doing so in a manner that's more downplayed than perhaps she'd like it to be. And, likely, this is an effect of the police presence, they themselves given more than a few glances, and given a wide berth. More than a few seem as painfully aware of her as she is of them, and, undoubtedly, the same can be said of the man beside her. At least where it comes to the scrutiny he's being afforded.

It doesn't stop Sandra from approaching the woman, though she may not be entirely aware of the 'la la la I can't hear you' effect going on, as she speaks before she moves in alongside Kai. No 'fancy meeting you here,' or any dry remarks, just straight to business, which *could* have a startling effect were it not for the people that start to disperse from around the Verbena, as if repelled by something.

Hell, given the laser focus on the bikers, it may still go unnoticed.

"I take it you know what those men were?" is stated softly, meant for Kai and Oliver alone, though only the latter is likely to pick up on it. And he's already been informed.

The other Garou is taking some fair scans around as well, though it could easily be taken as perhaps looking for someone in particular. If he even notices the scrutiny they get -- which surely it would be difficult not to -- it doesn't show; aside from the crowd-scanning, he walks almost serenely along with his companion. That may itself be a bit unusual, of course, given the tension in many attendees on either side. Unlike Sandra, Oliver's apparently got slightly more time for niceties, since he contributes a quiet, "Good evening," toward Kai.

Yeah, the first thing that registers for Kai is the rage-perimeter forming around her when the garou approach. She turns eyes on the pair, tight-lipped, and after about ten seconds (in which her eyes flick down from eye level to watch their mouths move), she shifts back on one foot. There's a flick of her eyes up toward the podium - vacated, but there's someone heading back up to fill the air with more malevolent dreck. She jerks her head - away from the rally, past all the riot gear, down the way. They can have this conversation elsewhere? Her eyes turn back on the biker's exit, and she starts walking. Won't do any good here, anymore.

To the uncertain look - at least, what the Ahroun reads as 'uncertain' - she raises one of her hands as a subtle white flag. She's not here to cause any trouble, an sure as hell isn't here to dole out any more warnings.

There's only a brief look cast in Oliver's direction before Sandra lifts her chin in a way that's as much acknowledgement as a repetition of the directions given. One last glance is afforded to the speaker, as if she expects something more to come of it than just words, but she doesn't wait around to discover, one way or another, if this has the same lulling effect as the prior speaker.

Should Kai begin to move, she falls in step, wordless save for her initial question.

Oliver casts a brief look in Sandra's direction at about the same time, and there's a faint nod, apparently of both acknowledgement and agreement, as he falls in as well. His eyes fall briefly on the speaker as well, and there's a faint shift of his jaw as he returns his attention to their more immediate surroundings. As they pass by the police, he lets the sign that's been resting on his shoulder drift down, to dangle upside down from his hand; less likely to draw attention, down there.

Ok, so - Kai leads on down about - say, six, eight blocks. Something on that order. Out of PA system orbit; past the vestiges of dispersing crowd. Despite a roughly parallel path to the biker's retreat for a few blocks, there are problems: chief among them, the weird trio is on foot, and bikers are on their titular bikes. Still, a direction is a start. Kai ducks back into an alley, tosses her hood off. "We're out of range?" she asks, though - given the trickles of blood coming from her ears, it's super unlikely she can actually hear the answer. She's pulling a little Swiss Army knife from her jeans pocket. Problems to solve.

Sandra's brows furrow at the sight of the blood, her head canting slightly as she looks it over. There's the vague temptation to take hold of the younger woman's chin, do a more thorough inspection, but she restrains it. Instead, she looks around, getting a sense of who's around, and who's watching.

She gives a non-verbal affirmation that they are, indeed, out of range, the question that goes unasked instead signalled by briefly pointing in Kai's direction, then lightly tapping close to one of her own ears. Need any help with that?

Oliver's eyes continue to survey their surroundings and those in them as they walk, in a manner that somewhat belies the composed, wholly unconcerned impression his movements and expression otherwise suggest. Still true when they enter the alley, although there he actually fully looks around, with even a glance upward. It's only after that that he looks back to the women, and sees the blood on Kai's now un-hooded ears. A glance to Sandra, who's just making that signal-offer, and he looks to Kai again, head slightly tilted in question. Seconding it, maybe.

That's a... very speculative look that Kai gives Sandra. Skeptical, almost. She glances to Oliver, eyes lidding lazily, then back at the more familiar ahroun. Her lips press, and then she looks down on the knife as she opens it. "Blood?" she suggests, lifting it between them but not brandishing. It's like she's trying to figure out if that's what's on offer, here. Casual requests in alleys. Terrible ideas. Hey, at least it's nowhere near her moon, hmm?

The tilt of Oliver's head increases a fraction, though his expression doesn't particularly change. "No, thank you, I ate before we came," he says, regardless of the likelihood she not only can't hear him, but probably can't read his lips, "Or possibly, I gave at the office." The sign gets set down on the lid of a handy trashcan, meanwhile, and he pulls a phone from his pocket, lifting one finger briefly. A few taps, and he turns it for her to see: Do you need any help with the ears?

Sandra's brow lifts at what's said, moreso at Kai than at Oliver, though the latter gets-- well. Nearly gets a look. She restrains it, for the most part, for whatever reason. She merely glances down at his phone while he types down his message, noting, "The damage may not be purely physical," under her breath, "but if it is--" She digs in the pocket of her coat to produce a handkerchief, one he'll recognize as the type she uses for finer-detail cleaning after a kill, when at least a cursory effort needs to be made to wipe the blood off of her. A newer one. Presumably, it's just being offered as cover. 'Clean,' she mouths to Kai, as-- there'd be at least some reason to be concerned that it might not be.

Kai, meanwhile, also gives Oliver a look - you know, sorta: miss me with your boyish charm, or your text messages, or whatever. But she does give her chin a lift, his direction. Just - acknowledgement. Now Sandra? She gets a smile, and honestly, a smile that slight oughtn't look so Cheshire. She folds the knife, puts it back in her pocket. Takes the cloth. Closes her eyes and - with great care - wipes the blood from her ears. It's such a subtle effect that there's not much to it, right? She's just cleaning up. After which she folds the cloth neatly, passes it back to Sandra. "Thanks," she says, with a lazy lid of eyes. To Oliver - who likely felt that as a queer warming of the air - she offers: "Those fucks don't need me on their side." A smile, a little more placid.

Oliver's chin lowers so slightly at Sandra's sotto voce remark that it can barely be considered a nod, though it probably is. Once Kai acknowledges the question, he taptaps to erase the message again, and the phone disappears back into the pocket, though he doesn't immediately reclaim his sign.

A hint of interest at that feeling in the air, coming as it does with the Mage's cleaning and subsequent apparent hearing improvement. "I'm fairly sure they ought to do without any of us, ideally," he agrees, though he seems to also be taking it as an explanation for her just-cured state. There's no observable sign of the chagrin that Sandra, at least, can fairly confidently guess is there.

Sandra's own head tilts slightly at the apparent healing that's taken place, though she seems to shrug it off easily enough, the rag accepted and slipped back into her pocket. Not a whole lot concern about blood-born anything going on here.

Oliver is, of course, afforded a brief glance, given what's said, one of her hands raising to brush briefly against his wrist. "Whatever that nonsense was back there had more than a few people nodding along like it was God's own truth," she says, more to Kai than anyone, though one could easily imagine it's not entirely for her benefit. The Verbena clearly knows what happened. "Even some of the Muslims in the group I was keeping watch on." A beat. "We'll just have to hope the effect isn't a lasting one." At least for the mere mortals among them.

"Any idea what it was?" she asks.

Kai's mouth makes an uneven line; it speaks disgust. "Ideally," she agrees with Oliver. To Sandra: "Some kind of emotional manipulation," she says. "Short of straight-out mind control. Not my bag, but it's a problem." No shit, Sherlock. "The size of that crowd, the lack of subtlety? It suggests someone with a lot of power. Or a bad headache, now. Or who just doesn't give a fuck. Maybe all three." There's a pause, and she shoves her hands in her pockets. "I don't know if it was the guy speaking pulling it, or one of the bikers. I'd buy either."

Oliver gives Sandra a sidelong glance and a small nod, for her tiny gesture, the observations, or both. "My money would be on the speaker," he says after considering Kai's remarks, "if I had to make a wager. The lack of subtlety feels more like it would go with someone enhancing his own effect rather than someone else's. But there is always the possibility they did manage to be subtler than that, at least. Still -- did you notice the others with the same armbands, afterward? I saw a few of them, heading away, all with little groups of others like ducks with a small gaggle of ducklings. Not others all from the same subgroups, either. Little fascist variety packs."

"I only saw them when you pointed it out to me," Sandra replies to Oliver's observation. "And even then-- I'll admit, I was trying to get a sense of where Shadi was in all of it." The girl *was* and technically still is a high priority, though she seems to think that the weirdness factor has cooled down enough to warrant stepping away. "Being fair, I'm not familiar with what all those bikers can do, but the fact that they're around at all is-- concerning. My--" A pause. There's two reasons to keep from delving too deep, here, but nonetheless, she turns to Kai, and says, "One of the wolf tribes hunted them down to the last man in the early aughts. Made sure they were eradicated. Referred to them as--" she thinks on the term, all the while casting a careful glance around the alley, "hedge wizards?" said in a fashion that's meant to test out the words.

"To make matters worse, there were a couple wolves from that tribe in the crowd with them." Beat. "Not 'with' them," she corrects, "and they may have only been 'family,' themselves, but, but-- close enough. Hell of an alliance to forge-- and not what I'd call common, even among the hate groups. But I suppose we drove both of them far enough underground that they may not have felt they had many people to turn to." Doesn't sound like she's shedding a tear for either of them, though. "Still-- there's more than just an absurdly 'talented' speaker at work, here."

To Oliver, Kai gives an easy nod. "I'd -tend- to agree? Though a circle of -" she glances toward Sandra, then back. "- talented folks behind a speaker has advantages. Opposition focuses on the mouthpiece instead of on the pricks behind the effect." She turns to listen to Sandra, mouth making an increasingly tight shape. "No disrespect," she says, "but I wouldn't trust the word 'eradicated' if it came out of my /own/ mouth. Weeds. Anything you have to work to get rid of tends to spring up again in the corners you don't tend. Extinction is driven by neglect." She shifts on her feet, and tips her head Oliver's way, now speaking to both of them. "I wouldn't be pointing at the bikers if I hadn't seen the runes. Hedge wizards weren't the only ones who broke that way. Wolves, though?" She makes an 'ugh' face - wide mouth, full of teeth, not a smile. Similar to 'yikes'. "Not what I expected when I showed up."

Oliver returns Kai's nod. "That's what I meant about managing to be subtler than the obvious. If they expected a fair chance of the effect being noticed, and didn't have a way to counter that, it =would= be a smart move. But, Occam's Razor and all. Barring contrary evidence, the simpler version's still the way I'd bet."

He glances over to Sandra, adding, "I suppose if it's the sort of thing one can learn, even if they genuinely succeeded in eradicating them, they could pop up again. People who hadn't been involved finding out about it one way or another and taking up the mantle... I'm not sure how much it matters, practically, though. And to be honest, it isn't precisely what I expected either. But it's certainly... interesting."

Sandra mn's-- to the both of them, not seeming particularly offended by the answer Kai offers. "The stories are widespread enough that I wouldn't have counted the wolves to be wandering the same circles," she says. "The only groups I'm aware of that shared similar beliefs may have been broken to begin with, but they had their priorities-- and Asatru Futhark were closer aligned to a common enemy, not to anything that could be considered an ally." This, more for Oliver's sake than Kai's, given the wording.

Then, to the both of them, she says, "As you say, anyone can pick up the brochure and try for a revival. I don't know all the finer details of that particular hunt, but it's obvious that it stopped when those responsible for it believed themselves to be successful. Whether it was the idea that was revitalized, or 'down to the last man' was an exaggeration is splitting hairs, either way. Those wolves know who those men were, same as I did." She glances back in the direction of the crowd, chewing lightly on the inside of her lip as she considers.

Then, "I'd like to have a word with them, personally," she says to Oliver. "Once things have calmed down." She glances over to Kai, considering the woman for a moment. "You any good in a fight?" she asks, bluntly.