Hell Toupee 1

Egged on by a spirit, a man gets aggressive with his girlfriend. Maya intervenes.

Date: 01/22/2018	Nightclub A nightclub full of articial fog, coloured lights, and people dancing their cares away.
Cast: Maya Storyteller: Aster
Your log, properly marked up. After a good deal of self-destructive carelessness, tonight Maya is being sensible. Her third eye is open, her mind primed to process the insane stimuli of the club. Emotions pour through her, seen or felt or intuited; she sees glimpses of inner truth, in flickering images around people. There are other senses open as well--Life, for that intensity that marks out the Garou, and Energy as well. Just in case. For Maya, it's a night out like any other. A club full of artificial fog, coloured lights, and dancing bodies, mostly not wearing very much clothing. The press and exertion on the dancefloor keep people hot, even in the mid-January weather. For her, there's even more colour to the club than others would see. Violet streams of passion reach out from others' auras, and energetic fun tingles throughout the club. A few odd spirits drift nearby, sipping on that positive energy. Well, mostly positive. While she's being more sensible, Maya can pick out the feeling of someone who means harm, and that sense glows like a signal flare, out towards the club's corner. A bigger man stands pressed in tight to a woman, holding her to the corner while he hisses at her, anger in his tone. It hasn't turned violent yet, but his hands ball up ready to change that. Nobody else in the club seems to have yet noticed or cared, and the bouncers are more concerned with the front doors. Maya's movements change, before she even reaches the usual wild abandon; she's dancing her way into the crowd, and then threading her way back out again, toward the pair. She attunes herself to both, but concentrates a little more on the man. The woman's a petite black girl, the kind who seems younger just by her figure, dressed in gleaming white silk with her hair puffing out around her. The man's taller and broader, an older man with a couple of thick scowl-lined on his face and a bad hairpiece. There's a complex sense buzzing between them, a mix of passion, affection, and anger. He shoves her harder against the wall. "Did you think I wouldn't see you, getting out there with some hot new thing? What, you think I'm not /good enough/ anymore?" She evades her eyes, looking down at her shoes. "Nothing happened, Damian. Nothing was /going/ to happen..." He snarls, pressing into her. "You look at me when I'm talking to you, bitch." Looking at him with ordinary sight, she just sees an angry 30something man. In the second sight, however, she can see it plain as day: a spirit hanging over his shoulder and whispering in his ear, formed of red mist and shaped like the bloody rage of broken promises. Maya hisses out a breath through her teeth, and then puts on the best spaced-out look she can manage before approaching them from one side. "Hey," she calls out over the club noise. Damian's hand comes off his girlfriend's neck when he hears Maya approaching, but still keeps his hand on her shoulder, pinning the smaller woman. "Fuck do you want?" he demands, aggression rising to a fever pitch in his tone. The woman looks at Maya with a pleading look -- pleading her to back away and stay out of it, rather than pleading for help. She doesn't want to make things 'worse' for either of them. Maya's lips tug upward at one corner. "Hey, easy, dude... just don'want you to hurt the pretty girl, yeah?" "That's none of your damn business," he says. Still pinning her down with one hand on her shoulder, he turns to face Maya more fully. "What are you, high? Get out of here. This is a /private/ conversation between me and my girlfriend." He stretches himself up to his full height, trying to make her leave just through imposing presence. "Hey," Maya says, turning a palm out and getting a little more serious... and curious. "You're not okay, are you?" Always, that spirit on Damian's shoulder continues its whisperings, its voice like a bellows fanning flames. His fingers dig in hard to the woman's shoulder, before he lets go and turns to Maya. "That's it, I warned you." He steps in and swings one thick fist at her. His wild, probably-drunken swing is too easy to predict, and Maya can duck out of the way without getting hurt. Maya jumps back, hands spread. "Whoa!" she yells, hoping to draw a bouncer. The shout cuts through the club's music, and the bouncer looks over. He sees her, and he starts over immediately -- but it'll take him some time to cross the club, and time is precious in the middle of an assault. The failure to hit just makes Damian growl with all the more frustration. He abandons his girlfriend entirely, his blind rage narrowing in on Maya. He chases after her, swinging again and again, forcing her back. Yet that force just makes her dodge and retreat; he still hasn't yet laid a hit on her. Maya continues to back away for another step. "Yeah, big strong guy," she taunts. "You like to hit women, huh? Come hit this." Damian roars. A stool topples as he stumbles past it, still reaching and trying to grab for Maya. "You'd like that, wouldn't you, slut? Nosing into my business, it's like you /want/ to get yourself hurt." But still, she's just that little bit more slippery, keeping just ahead of him. The bouncer is coming closer; it won't be too much longer until there's another in the fight. Something happens to the woman's eyes, when he calls her that--and she turns and tries to run for real, this time. Damian makes another wild swing as he gets close to Maya. She manages to duck it, but at the expense of her speed; she half-slips on a spilled drink, and he catches up for what little lead she'd had on him. As he gets closer, he makes a grab for her with both arms. Those thick arms wrap around her. For now, Damian focuses on just trying to get her /still/, not having noticed the bouncer still approaching. "You little bitch. Maybe you want to take her place, huh? Take the hits /she/ earned." There's a wildness in Maya's eyes as she tries to pull free. But some part of her doesn't want help, thew part that is still capable of reason. "You'd like that," Maya gasps out, as she tries to pull free of his hold. "Wouldn't you. Put me up against a wall and--" She cries out when he tightens his grip. The man growls, one arm around Maya's waist and the other grabbing her hair, harshly pulling to force her ear towards him. "You needy slut. I already /have/ a girlfriend; you think I'm going to run out on her like she was on me?" Well, she's definitely getting him more riled. The woman shudders, trying to twist in his grip as he forces her head back. "Not," she gasps out, as her heart starts pounding hard and the first shiver of fear courses through her. No. Not this, not now, not here. Damian snarls into her ear. "Just what should I do to punish a slut like you? There's not much you wouldn't simply /want/--" He gets interrupted, then. By a punch to the face. The bouncer, a tall man in a polo shirt, has caught up with them. That hit's likely to blacken Damian's eye, and his arm releases by reflex. Maya's free again, and now has an ally. They've ended up near the fire exit set into a side wall. Maya doesn't need to fake her fear, and may even need to try to moderate it a little. Breathing hard, she looks over to the bouncer, letting him handle the situation. In the commotion, Damian's hairpiece falls away, dropping to the floor. The bouncer slips around him, showing much more controlled grappling technique that pins his arms behind him. "Let go," Damian said. "What are you -- where..." He frowns. The anger seems to have faded, switching places with confusion. Maya alone would see that the spirit is gone from his shoulder, leaving him blinking in confusion about what had made him so angry so recently. Maya's eyes go wide, and she searches wildly for the lost hairpiece. And the spirit. Possibly both. The bouncer carts Damian away, and the balding man at least doesn't resist as he's shown the door. A slim, brown-haired bartender gets away from the bar and crouches by Maya. "Are you alright, miss?" She puts a hand to the Dreamspeaker's shoulder. In the club's dim light, it takes some searching, but she soon picks the hairpiece out from the mist. "I'm okay," Maya says quickly. "I'm okay--" Then she's pulling away, darting between people to grab up the object, then making her way quickly toward the bathroom. "Hey, wha--" the bartender calls, but Maya may not even hear the end of the last word before she's slipped into the bathroom with her prize. The bartender blinks on in confusion, but heads back to work. She'll keep an eye out for Maya's return.