June 04, 2003.06.04.03. - battlehungry. bloodthirsty. [rune][newark]
(rune)
Canal Street
NewarkThe streets are empty, mostly, in this long-dead portion of the town, night and day. Seventy years ago, the factories around here ran three shifts: day and night, day and night, immigrants downing in the foul stench of one of many leather tanneries, textile factories, slaughterhouses, ironworks, what-the-hell-ever. But mostly: tanneries and slaughterhouses,
slaughterhouses and tanneries, a symbiotic relationship if ever there was one.Sixty years ago, what with the war and the shortages and all, most of the factories scaled back: two shifts. The workers were needed elsewhere, in then chemical and metal factories, in the ordinance factories and the tire factories, in the army, over there. Everyone figured it would pick up again, after the war ended.
Everyone was wrong. The war ended, and the tanneries cut back further. Two shifts to one shift. One shift to a smaller shift. Until the first of the tanneries closed, shipped the work off to Mexico, laid the employees off. The city was starting to look shabby, the old neighborhoods, though still intact, were starting to decay as the newly constructed suburbs swelled with those who could afford to leave.
Only the most desperate find themselves drifting down canal street, with its broken streetlights and great industrial hulks lining either side of the street. There's plenty of abandoned housing in the residential neighborhoods to accommodate the homeless population, and only the crazed would be willing to sleep so close to the sprawled hulk of the slaughterhouse down the block. Rumored to be haunted, it is.
The tip came from one of James' kinfolk. Easy for them to insinuate themselves among the trash and riffraff (because they are the trash and riffraff) and drift like forgotten newspapers down the city sidewalks, unseen, all-seeing. Little less than a month ago, they destroyed the budding base of activities for a gang from New York found to be a little "too close" to the Wyrm. Now, a little less than a month later, a Bone Gnawer kinfolk brings 'em word that someone's poking around then Goldmeier tannery, wearing those same colors. Seems their ambitions are not easily quelled, and Newark, well, Newark is a perfect target, after all.
"You take front, I'll take back," dark eyes sweep up across his features, bathed in the wash of greenish light spilling from the dashboard. Her fingers tap in rapid rhythm against the steering wheel of the rental: the Beemer would stand out like the sorest of thumbs, here.
The hulking mass of the slaughterhouse down the street catches her eye. Her gaze flickers up and her mouth thins with distaste, but it would be suicide, nothing more than suicides, to try to do anything about that blighted sink. Urrah practicality: one thing at a time.
"Ready?" she swings open the driver's side door and flashes him a brief, wicked grin, freshened by the first rush of battleawareness, the sharpened senses, the heightened response to stimulus, the heavy dose of adrenaline quickening her blood.
(james)
good ol' Golemeiers - that's one place he won't easily forget
(sometimes, at night, he still hears that keening wail)
even if he doesn't actually remember the closing chapter of the last time they were in this area
his jaw drops somewhat lower, working in a circle, tongue running over the topography of his teeth
there could actually be a rather scandalous remark to her directive choice
tossed between them on curve of a slanderous grin
however that is not the one thing that they think of at this timehe settles for just the grin, instead
just as breif, just as wicked, just as primed by the pump of adrenaline thickening their blood
battleready: this is what he was born beneath the full moon to do
the door to the rental clicks quietly closed, his grip pulling off the raised handle to sling arm up and mirror the lazy (seeming) drape that sets rebar across broad shoulders like a yoke, and for all the wolf in him tearing at the gates - the stroll that flanks the GlassWalker is long and easy, Cochran's beating an even rhythm on the grimey, forgotten sidewalk"Web crawl or just flush?"
somebody been pokin' roun' that tannery his kin had said two guys wearin' their colors proud, ain't sound too happy f'what they don't find that shoulda been there, they was smartin' off all sortsa shit, maddoggin' ev'yone - we jus' lit out and sent the call to ya
dark eyes drift over towards his Beta
brow lifting towards the heavy dreads framing his face(rune)
James has his length of rebar. Rune has a nine millimeter, dull and heavy and black against her pale hand. She tosses him a sidelong glance, then her eyes fall to the weapon, checking the clip.There's a moment of rumination - gears whir and click behind her eyes - but it all ends with a brief shrug. "Flush." Her arm falls to her side, brushing along the leather and creaks faintly with every long stride. "If that doesn't work, we'll try plan B."
Their path has taken them to the corner of the building, and without a word she veers off, circling back down the narrow walkway separating the tannery from the warehouse next door. The only farewell she offers him, a brief pat on the ass, almost possessive, before she saunters away into darkness. The echo of her booted feet fades, but he can still feel her presence a bright, hot point in the back of his mind as she circles the building. Wordlessly, she communicates her arrival at the shipping bay doors - a thought, an impression, an image, with crimson undertones: bloodthirsty.
(james)
[.... to be continued at a later date]
Posted by james at June 04, 2003 12:00 AM
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