goneawayworld | Garou 101 [Closed]

Entry tags:

Garou 101 [Closed]

Who: Stacia and Merton
What: Stacia teaching Merton why you don't want to fuck with Garou. In an educational way!
Where: The gym in the late evening/night time.
When: After the memshare.
Warnings/Notes: Possible werewolf transformation body horror. Will add other warnings if necessary.

The gym had to be just about Merton's least favorite place on the rig, including the one hall that had recently become particularly choked up by needle-spitting plants. Normally he'd try to avoid it and Planker as much as he could get away with outside of their mandatory daily training sessions. But this late in the day it was one of the few places on the rig that wasn't tortuously hot and muggy, and it would be blissfully Planker free, so it worked pretty much perfectly for their needs.

So he makes sure to show up to their meeting early, with a pen and beat-up spiral notebook he'd managed to scrounge up. Not the kind of stationery he'd normally choose to take these kinds of notes. All the research he'd done on Tommy's version of lycanthropy, as they'd tried to work through the in's and out's of it together, had been spread over sketchbooks, loose scrolls, near countless photos, text files on the computer, and eventually were all scanned and collected in a medical dossier he printed and bound himself. But, beggars couldn't be choosers, and that was the kind of enthusiasm that was likely to chase anyone who wasn't Tommy away. A garbage-picked notebook would just have to do.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Oh my god, you brought a notebook. That's so cute!"

Stacia has also arrived early, mostly because she wanted to use the shooting range and to make sure that the gym was unoccupied for this conversation. She likes to keep track of who knows what about her (and Kenzie) so that if something gets out, she knows who is to blame.

She pauses and considers her words.

"That came out sounding more condescending than I intended it to. I am genuinely flattered that you're taking this so seriously you brought note-taking materials."

She gives Merton a smile that is more toothy than strictly necessary. Judging by his reaction last time, he'll pick up the implication. "That being said, I'd appreciate if you took your notes either in some kind of code or shorthand, or you make very sure to keep it hidden from the Jorg. I don't want them getting their hands on any more information about me than they already have."

That toothy smile manages to get just about the same reaction it did the first time. Nervous smile and all. Message definitely received. He unconsciously holds the notebook to his chest, tapping his fingers on it as he talks.

"Heh, can do. On both parts. I've kinda been down that road before actually." And he pauses for a moment after that, remembering something.

"Which reminds me. Since you're doing this for me, I should be honest with you about something. It's really not something I wanted anyone to know,” and like Stacia, he planned to keep note of all the people who now knew about his friend. Just in case. “but then the whole memory invasion thing happened, and well...cats out of the bag now anyway." And boy, does his tone ever turn notably sour at that, but he shakes it off, returning to something brisker and possibly a bit too quick. Like he's trying to spit it all out before he can think better of it.

"The main reason I'm so interested, is my friend back home, Tommy. I don't think his version of lycanthropy is the same as it is for you and Kenzie, but I've been trying to help him with it. And all we really had to go off of was his personal experiences, scattered bits of mythology, and research collected by an evil crackpot. So, you know, not great. I figure, even if things aren't one-for-one between you, any information you gave me, might still be helpful to him. Hence, notebook." And he holds the book up a bit, giving it a little wave in the air, before clasping it in both his hands again and anxiously tapping it against his chest.

"But I promise, I can keep it in code, and hidden. And, of course, you can look them over to make sure there's nothing too obvious or relieving."

Edited 2021-04-18 20:47 (UTC)

On one hand, the fact that he's a human with such a good eye for perceived threats probably says upsetting things about his past. On the other, it's really going to serve him well dealing with werewolves in general.

"If it helps, there's a general unspoken agreement to not gossip about what we see in each other's heads," Stacia says. "It's bad enough we're all stuck here to begin with; everyone's either sympathetic about how much it sucks to have your memories spied on or they just don't want to have open season declared on their own shit. Mutually-assured destruction and all that. So this is the first I've heard about your friend, but I can tell you some things about my and Kenzie's kind of werewolf and a little bit about the other werewolf we had here for awhile."

She grins and this time it's only a smile, not a baring of teeth. "I don't think we're going to have time tonight to get into much that's too revealing, but I'll definitely take a skim of your notes when we're done. Did you have a place you wanted to start, or should I pick a spot and go?"

It is something of a comfort to know that no word of Tommy has gone through the grape vine. But then, he might also just be lucky enough that a werewolf in this place probably didn't make for particularly juicy gossip. He was probably over thinking the whole thing in the first place, honestly. But still, it's good to know.

"Another werewolf? Are they one of the ones that have disappeared?" That had been another subject that had been worrying him. One he tried not to think too much into because it felt like the answer to where people went when they vanished was probably just not good.

The more natural smile gets him to relax a bit. Not completely, but then, wound up and anxious was just sort of his natural state since he'd been on the rig. At this point, it was about as relaxed as he got, short of being too exhausted or heat-miserable to care. He mulls the question over for a moment before shrugging and gesturing toward her. "I'll leave it to the expert. Whatever you think I need to know most."

"Yeah, he's since hopefully snapped back home," Stacia says. "Which is what I'm choosing to believe has happened to people, because otherwise I'll worry myself to death. Nice guy, very different kind of werewolf. Also a wizard, so that's fun."

She folds her arms, tapping a finger thoughtfully against her lips.

"Okay," she says, " 'how someone becomes a werewolf' seems like a good place to start. There's a few different stories, but the one most people jump to first is biting. Remus -- the wizard who was here before -- he was bitten and his being a werewolf is an infection from that bite. Kenzie and I, on the other hand, are werewolves because we are werewolves. The only other werewolves we can make are our own kids, and even then it's a roll of the dice. I could pop out a whole baseball team's worth of kids and still not get one who can shift."

She grimaces at the mere thought. Bad plan, very bad plan. Maybe she should look into donating her eggs; the Glass Walkers certainly have the technology.

"So, what happened to Tommy?"

Assuming everyone that had disappeared had somehow ended up back home was probably the best way to deal with the issue for now, and he nodes when she tells him that, briefly looking at the ground. There were already so many other things to worry about with their current predicament that fretting over what was happening to the people who disappeared was something of a lost cause without any information one way or the other. Of course, if it was true, the prospect of being snapped back home and killed all over again, without any warning, wasn't exactly a comforting one for himself, but there wasn't much point in dwelling on that right now either.

So he concentrated on the conversation, looking back up at Stacia as she continued into explaining the ways they became werewolves. And at the mention of popping out a baseball team's worth of kids, he grimaces with her. Interesting to know it was that hard to pass lycanthropy onto their children in her world. If it was true in theirs too, that would be something of a relief to Tommy. But man, why would anyone try that hard to have a kid that could shift in the first place?

"Tommy was infected by a bite as well. He's not a wizard though." He almost jokes that magic is more his thing, but catches himself. Probably not great to advertise that when none of the spells or rituals he knew were useful for this situation or even possible to cast without all the correct materials.

"We recently learned that at least some people are capable of fighting off the infection in the early stages with the help of wolfsbane. But that wouldn't work for him now, it's been several months since he was bitten." There's a pause before he remembers something else and adds, "And apparently, only certain werewolves are capable of spreading the infection via bite. I'm not sure exactly why that is. But they refer to the ones that can as Alphas."

"Good old alpha-beta-omega dynamics," Stacia says with a laugh, shaking her head. "That's from the human side of things -- real wolf packs in the wild are basically just family units. Which isn't to say my kind of werewolf doesn't have them; we just use them as shorthand for who's in charge in a given situation. I'm the alpha of my pack, but it doesn't give me any special abilities or powers." She shrugs. "I just so happen to be the bossiest and most willing to fight for the right to tell everyone else what to do."

She thinks back over the other stuff Merton had said. "Wolfsbane isn't really much of a thing for us," she says. "Apparently it messes with some people, but it is a poison so that's not much of a surprise."

It makes it hard for Stacia to shift to anything but her Breed form, but she and Merton aren't good enough friends for her to share that information yet.

"Unless you've got other questions along those lines, have you or Tommy noticed any other changes since he was bitten? Has he been moodier, or developed any new allergies?"

It’s not exactly a surprise to hear that Stacia was the leader of her pack. Even as young as she was, she clearly had the talent for it based on what he’d seen during the network morality blowout. And she held herself with the confidence of someone who knew what she was doing, and probably knew what you should be doing, too.

"It's kind of the opposite for ours. It signifies having that one select ability but has nothing to do with rank. The one pack we ran into chose their leader by seeing which one was best at beating the ever-living tar out of all of the others. Not sure how that's a good measure for efficient leadership skills. But who am I, a mere mortal, to judge." He puts his hand to his chest with a bit of dramatic flourish as he said that last sentence, using the tone of one who was choosing to judge them anyway. After everything that went down with the Syndicat, he felt he actually had earned that right. Even forgetting everything else they did, their leadership sucked.

At the mention of a change in moodiness in his friend, his eyes widen.

"Yes! On both counts. He's allergic to silver now. If you could call it that. It burns him and heals pretty quick, but slower than his normal wounds. Also...less important but odder, our werewolves are prone to mild lactose intolerance. Not sure why...But the moodiness! That! It's...weird.” Where he spoke more clinically of the allergies, he trips over talking about the mood changes. Like he’s still not quite sure how to word that right.

“It's not so bad with Tommy exactly. Most of the time he's okay. More prone to growling and jealousy, and he has the occasional temper tantrum, but for the most part, he can control it. Or he's not too hard to talk down. But Lori..." He stumbles to a pause there, grimacing at his mistake. Talking about Tommy was one thing. He’d gotten Tommy’s consent to share information about him in the case that it would help him. But he’d never asked that of Lori. It never really occurred to him to do it. Her ordeal was over and she barely even remembered what happened to her, supposedly. But now he’d already given her name, and it was important, so she’d probably be okay with it...he’d just keep it brief.

"She's...the reason we know the wolfsbane works. And she's always had something of a temper, but when she was turned it was like that was all that was left of her...That and her talent for particularly hurtful barbs."

"Ah yes, the 'do what I say or I'll beat you up' leadership technique," Stacia says dryly. "I'm familiar with it. If you can manipulate them into fighting each other, it's a good way to keep them off your back; but that does take time and effort. If I may offer a suggestion? Study how the mean girls at your school do their thing. You're going to get your ass kicked in a straight-up fight, so don't let it come to a straight-up fight."

She's gotten off topic, into the talking-to-Kinfolk mindset. She takes a moment to reset herself listening to his answers to her questions. Silver isn't much of a surprise, lactose intolerance is curious enough that she's going to have follow up questions later, but it's the moodiness that she seizes on because she wants Merton to really understand a few things before he ends up in a room with Kenzie.

"Moodiness wasn't a problem Remus had that I noticed, but werewolves like me and Kenzie? Hoo boy. Even our gentlest and most level-headed can go from 'zero' to 'rip you apart' in seconds." She flexes her fingers. "If Kenzie didn't kill anyone during the on-boarding process Jorgmund put us through, it's because they had her strapped down. I know I did kill people when they demonstrated the shock collar. I don't remember it clearly, but I remember enough to know that much. And Kenzie's angrier than I am."

At the suggestion that he take some lessons from the mean-girl handbook, he can't quite help an amused smile.

"Yeah, I'm somewhat familiar with that tactic." More than a little familiar, considering he’d once taken down a whole witch coven armed with nothing but weaponized mean-girl tactics. He was all for using any tools he could to keep himself out of a direct physical conflict, and that mean-girl psychological warfare was something of a favorite. He wasn't always the best at wielding it, but when he really wanted to be, he could be as shrewd and cutting as the worst of them.

That amusement quickly fades as he listens to Stacia talk about the moodiness though, unconsciously slipping the pencil out of the notebook's spine but not cracking the book open yet. Instead, tapping the pencil on the cover in a nervous habit as he mulled over her words, chewing the edge of his lip.

"I..uh...I think that's something that's compatible with our werewolves, to some extent. It fits what I know of it. Right down to sort of blacking out when it gets too extreme. It's something I've worried about with Tommy in the past. Like I said, I've always been able to calm him or talk him back down, but there were times-..." They were few and far between, but no matter how sweet-tempered and doe-eyed Tommy was in his everyday life, Merton could never let himself forget about just how close he'd come to tearing into Dunleavy's throat. "And I'm not sure how well he would handle it if he ever did get pushed over that edge."

It was one of many reasons he didn’t want Tommy getting dragged here. He had no idea how his friend would react to being kidnapped and shocked. Especially after everything the Syndicat did to him. But it wasn’t too much of a stretch to believe he might have a similar reaction to Stacia’s. And if the boy who looked away during horror movies, got squeamish about the prospect of staking a vampire, and turned half the people who tried to kill him into his friends, were to suddenly wake up covered in someone else’s blood...Merton wasn’t sure it wouldn’t break him.

"I'm sorry that happened to you." Even if it wasn't the first time she’d had to kill someone, he suspected that waking up to find you'd slaughtered someone, wasn't something that ever got easy. Especially on top of being kidnapped and finding out you had a shock collar tangled around your spinal column.

"Are there any specific triggers I should stay away from? Aside from the obvious?"

"It's not a fun edge to find yourself having tripped over," Stacia agrees, mouth twisting unhappily. "Meditation and mindfulness training might help. Even if it doesn't keep him from going into a frenzy entirely, it might be enough for him to determine friend from foe. I'm lucky enough to have never had to worry about that, but I know plenty of people who have."

She taps her fingertips against her thumb, one after the other, as though she's counting something off. "It's a fight-or-flight instinct kind of thing. Anything that pisses you off or scares you might do it if it hits you hard enough or in just the right way. And the closer the moon is to full, the snappier we get. We're not controlled by the moon, but we're certainly influenced by it."

Like how the phase of the moon you were born under is a central part of your identity and influences your ease of access to the supernatural rage that fuels all Garou. That's not 101 for Non-Garou Werewolf Studies though. Merton can come back for that later, when they know each other better.

He probably will, though. Stacia smiles at him, a little grateful, a little sad.

"Thanks. It's not my favorite part of being a werewolf. For us though, the Rage is important. It's what drives us, and we can tap into it to be faster, to survive things that would otherwise kill us. And a lot of things want to kill us."

Merton gives a solemn nod at Stacia's reply about it not being a fun edge to trip over, and her suggestion about using mediation and mindfulness to help Tommy avoid that.

"That's essentially been the avenue we were taking, in the vain of breathing exercises and soothing poetry. And that seemed to be working for him so far. Hadn’t thought of using actual meditation. I would have to see if I can convince Tommy to try that." It was a bit hard to imagine fidgety, always on the move, Tommy Dawkins having the patience to sit down long enough to meditate but maybe they could work something out. He could look up some shorter mediation exercises. And maybe it would help if he could get Lori in on it, too...then again he’d probably have just as hard a time getting her to sit still.

This time he flips the notebook open and jots a few quick notes down, before looking up to chew on his lip again as he listens.

“The moon has a similar effect on him, too. The full moon still forces him to transform, but so does anger, fear, pain, anxiety, and extreme guilt.” He's just going to leave out arousal. That was a little too personal, and he couldn't imaging Tommy would want him telling anyone that. “Which has made trying to hide it while attending public high school a real fun venture for him.”

“Unfortunately, the part about having a lot of things that want to kill you is another point he has in common with you. As soon as he was turned it was like a switch flipped and all the supernatural hostiles of the world came crawling out of the woodwork.” Or maybe they had always been there but were harder to parse when you didn’t believe in them, or we’re constantly being convinced they were figments of your ‘overactive imagination’. He had his suspicions that was the more likely case.

"I'm not sure if rage does the same thing for him, though. I'll have to ask him. I know it can make it harder for him to control himself, but we've always been more occupied with helping him to keep it under control versus tapping into it further."

"When I say 'Rage', I'm not talking about the emotion," Stacia says. "I'm talking about something that's a form of magic. It's like anger, but it's like anger the same way falling off a cliff is like tripping over your own feet. It's an anger so deep and vast and all-consuming that the only way to meet it is to literally change our shape. It's not something that can be passed on with a bite, it's part of what we are."

Things she's not going to get into now: Harano and losing the wolf. She's fortunate enough to not have personal experience with either.

She snorts. "Oh yeah, being a werewolf in a regular high school sucks. My relationship with my Rage is such that I can resist the urge to choke-slam jerks against the lockers for getting in my way between classes, but oooh boy do I ever want to."

She stops drumming her fingers against her thumb, but immediately starts tapping her chin. "It's possible that other supernatural gribblies are drawn to him, even unconsciously. They're drawn to us, too. Well, not vampires, vampires generally prefer to avoid werewolves because we tend to want to murder them, but they can still recognize us and us them. Does it seem like Tommy's developed a sixth sense for noticing other supernatural critters?"

Edited 2021-07-12 21:49 (UTC)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Garou 101 [Closed]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: murder

cw: murder

Re: cw: murder

Re: cw: murder

cw: violence