Pack beginnings [Ben-Ferdinand]

[Linnea Bartlett] Linnea is seated on the ledge overlooking the battlefield once more. Her shift belowground has just finished, and her eyes and mind are bright from the hours spent in lupus and hispo - sharpened to a sliver-thin point, forged from feral instinct and little else. Life as a wolf-thing is simple, the past recedes and the present expands. After duty in the low tunnels, it takes time for her to return to herself, for her human mind to reassimilate the wolf-mind always entwined with it.

She sits just beyond the mouth of the tunnel, one leg dangling over the twenty-foot drop, one bent at the knee, crooked. She has stretched out her t-shirt over her knee, tenting the cotton over the V defined by her thigh and skinny torso. Her lumbar and dorsal spine skin the cavern's wall, but her upper body is canted forward, enough that she can rest her chin on the taut cotton of her stretched-out t-shirt, just above her knee. The bodies below glint in the faint light, and she watches them, almost without seeing them, the honored dead whose company she seeks... more often than she should.

[Benjamin Keyes] "...People don't tell me a lot but the Whispers do. The Whispers said I'd find you here..."

The voice creeps through the tunnels, distant enough not to startled, close enough to be heard. It's even, nothing near baritone or rich with base, not even a high pitched tone, just even enough to pass the puberty test and subdued as if he were always in thought. Ever thinking and his talking was only absent-minded after-actions meant to placate those around. Placate them until they could be ignored again in favour of those thoughts. Those many...many...thoughts...

"...It's not healthy to keep looking at them like this, 'Nea" The pet name was something he'd adopted, 'cause calling your alpha to be (And she was, at least to the Rotagar it would seem) Little Fang was demeaning and cast her in a punishing light to others. Something no alpha needed. He'd poke her in other ways...

Hard-toe boots scrape the edge of the tunnel, dangerously close to the half-way tipping point, cargo pants hanging in volume around a slim waist and lean form, draped in the large hoody that could fit two Linnea's and a baby sister. Gray and sporting some graffiti street emblem hardly discernable to the untrained eye. The hood was up, deep and obscuring his features whilst gazing out across the Obsidian Garden.

"...Have they talked to you at all?"

A reciprocation of their last conversation.

[Linnea Bartlett] Ben warns her enough - his voice drifts through the tunnel ahead of him, so that when he reaches her side and she shoots a pale glance upward, her eyes are wide only because such is necessary to drink in the meager light. Her pursed lips twitch into a vague shadow of one of her usual friendly smiles - the absent-minded version - then - "Ben!" - the smile deepens, curves her cheek where it is cushioned on her stretched out t-shirt, the dedicated SWARTHMORE tee, grimy from overuse.

"They - " her right shoulder hooks upward, an indifferent curlicue of a gesture, " - they don't talk to me anymore than they talk to - than they talk to you or anyone." She is rarely still, but here - perched above the memorial gardens, the battlefield - she is, contained and somewhat withdrawn. "I'm not - " the smile disappears from her cheek, a certain vehemence enters her voice, whether to convince him or herself, she isn't wholly certain. "I'm not being morbid. I just - " Just - just what? She can't say, so she swallows the rest her words and ends with sentence with another adolescent shrug.

[Benjamin Keyes] "...Thoughtful. The Word you want is thoughtful. Just 'cause I said it isn't Healthy doesn't mean you shouldn't do it."

He creaks, joints and hinges cracking here or there beneath those voluminous clothes, down into a position beside her, settling both heels against the inner wall of the steep slope downwards. He slouches at the shoulder and mid-back, letting the curve his spine push his head over the lip of the edge without endangering him to falling forward, perched like some great Raven, draped in the cloth of a monk, sleeves folding in his lap until he's more clothing then man. The hood remains facing forward.

"...We're Garou after all. S'not like battle's real healthy for us, right? Or smoking for that matter but plenty of us go to it with zest and gusto. So staring at a bunch of statues, unless the elders tell us not to, isn't so bad."

He was for lack of a better term, irreverant in his regard and words for those below. Less a Battlefield and more holy ground. He did not pray, he did not worship (as far as anyone knows) and he was not the Gaia-fearing. She was too weak to fear in all honesty. Which meant the 'Holy Ground' before them didn't hold much sway. Purpose. Just a reminder...

"...So what are we thinking about today then, Wyrmfoe? Weapons? Packs? Cute boys?" The grin is there. It's just...there despite the hood obscuring his features.

[Linnea Bartlett] The last words set her into motion. The teenager swallows a yelp - half-delighted, half-outraged at the teasing and turns, burying her face in the stretched tee. The fibers protest the mistreatment, the weave stretches further, conforming to the shape of her face, and her free heel swings against the raw earth exposed beneath the ledge, dislodging a sprinkling of dirty and pebbles to scatter at the base of the cliff. "I'm not thinking about boys - " she mumbles through a mouthful of dirty cotton. "I don't even know any boys to think about. I was - I was - "

She turns her head, exposing her narrowed right eye, studies the shaoe and shadow of his obscuring hood, then snorts out a breath. "I was thinking about Grecco?" As always, the sentence becomes a question when her voice lilts upward at the end of it, like the human girl she resembles, in name (almost) only. "I need a pack."

[Benjamin Keyes] "Well that saves me the trouble of bringing up that particular subject..."

A chuckle, somewhat pleased, drifts off the Rotagar's lips, his hands (garbed in tightly conformed fingerless gloves) lift to pull back the hood and set it around his shoulders. His hair is tucked neatly against the back of his scalp, keeping his plain features pulled taut and exposing each line of former tension, stress or exhaustion slightly more pronounced then it needed to be. It made him anywhere between 20 and 35 in most circumstances and under the right sort of light.

His gaze continues out across the Obsidian Garden "Well I've kept an eye on a number of folks. Few of 'em really come to mind as potentials and there just isn't enonugh of the Moons around to form the traditional 5 Man" Pause, glancing at her out of the corner of one eye "Person, Pack of each of Luna's faces. Atropos has been making some headway though. Good with her Axe and a hardass Philodox. Cute to boot too..." Pause.

"...But don't tell her I said that." His heels start kicking up against the cliff wall once again "What about that Ferdinand fellow of yours? Any promise there?"

[Linnea Bartlett] "I - " Linnea lifts her head at last, shooting Ben a sidelong glance before following his gaze out over the frozen battlefield. The teenager catches her breath, the exhales another flaring breath. "Severina - Atropos? and I we were going to pack with Armina. Before Armina left." There's a low thrum of distaste beneath the name, accompanied by a narrow snort, half-animal, half-petulant girl.

"Without a word." Her shoulders curve forward again, and she brings her left foot onto the overhang to join the right, wrapping her arms loosely around her crooked legs. "Ferdinand," her mouth twists briefly, the expression is lost in the darkness. "I - I know I don't know him too well? I mean, I knew him a long time ago? But I was pretty much a kid then?" As if she isn't now. " - but he was too? He's from a good family, though and I think - he's here to stay? I - I could - say something to him - "

[Benjamin Keyes] "No better way to renew a good friendship then with the bonds that tie us together. If you and Atropos were talking about a Pack before, no reason you still can't venture down that road." Armina wasn't mentioned. The Get don't complain. They don't make mention of cowards or run aways. That was for the Shadowlords to play at.

"...But ask him. When you see him. I'll talk to Severina when next I find her and then we can all sit down and have a nice chat over a cup of tea over what we want to do about this Pack business."

The flicker of digits running across his thigh comes up, slipped free of the voluminous sleeve to begin that maddening dance of reflex and fidget, the one that exercises the nimble digits to keep the instincts as sharp as the blade that was supposed to go between them. His gaze seemed rapt on the Warder, though his voice was still for 'Nea, seated here at the edge of the Hallowed Heroes Grave Site.

"...I know a Spirit. Long and far and hard to remember, but you and yours talked about her a few times when my Sept got taken over by the Fangs. Reverent and Respectable but fuck knows I've got no way of making contact with her. She seemed made for the right stuff though. The right idea for your..."

A pause, the glance and grin something of mirth and entertainment.

"...Well goals. Name was Justice...Least that's what they called her. I'll read more into it when I get the chance and give you a proper low down later."

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] The home of the garou within teh Sept of Echoes, the caern was udner the holy house of St. Michael's. It was a wonder of a place, a maze of tunnels and crypts that ran under the divine place of the Catholic god.

However Ferdinand was not in the mood for sightseeing, he had been looking for a specific person, a person he knew. Linnea. And quiring the guardians he would find his way towards the place devoted to the most recently wounded, the main battlegrounds of the sept.

[Linnea Bartlett] Linnea almost adds I told my mom. About the pack: Armina, Severina, but she's watching Ben and she's a clever thing, when she wishes to be. She notes the absence, his refusal to say the Forseti's name, or even dwell on the loss. Let go, she tells herself, words not (ever) wholly her own. It wasn't meant to be. "I'll talk to Ferdinand." Her words are subdued, quiet, the petulance, the swirling spirals of words missing. Her attention draws inward, rests on an imperfect point someone deep inside her and the stillness draws itself out somehow - infects her respiration rate, the subtle jostling of her knees and calves beneath her hands.

"Jusitia." Linnea breathes out in a whisper. She isn't looking at Ben, and she cannot - perhaps - properly see him. The young Wyrmfoe falls silent for some time, then - perhaps when Ben might think she's fallen asleep - shoots him a glance shaded by pale blonde lashes. Her dilated pupils contract with focus, and her mouth twists in a faint half-smile. "Eventide knew her. She says - " Linnea's shoulders are tight with internal tension, " - she says that she is appropriate for a pack - a pack" Linnea half-closes her eyes, to try to bring her ancestor's precise words to the tip of her tongue, but they're already slipping away. " - I, she says it's right. For - for me." Briefly quiet, then - " for us. She wasn't a Theurge, though. And they aren't - " Her mouth twists again, " - quite the same. I know you'll find what we need, Ben."

[Benjamin Keyes] "Don't worry yourself about it for the time being. Right now we need the members more then we need the spirit. I'll talk with Sam and see what he thinks. We'll have to deal with the Rite Mistress of cour-"

It's the boot heels on the rocken ground, drifting their way in echoes and thumps of authority without pressure. Happenstance courtesy in each motion, brings his head around, gazing down the way he'd come only minutes before to take in the new arrival (a reflexive flicker of those fiddling digits, vanishing within the sleeve, to grip hard 'round something as yet unseen) the silhouette offered a whisper of a sniff and a half-grin both amused and sardonic.

"Devil's make their presence known when the world makes mention of their name it would seem. Hello, Junior. Come to join the party?"

There was enough room for a third fourth and fifth on the ledge overlooking the obsidian Gardens, a Tableau of battle washed in black figurines from Wyrm creatures and fallen bodies, to the still standing, still fighting among their own kind and the enemy. Sickly in it's beauty or Beautiful in it's morbidity. Take your pick.

[Linnea Bartlett] "She's cree-pee." Linnea mutters on the heels of Ben's comment regarding the ritemistress, then she turns and cranes her head, mimicking Ben's glance backward moments after the Rotagar. "Ferdinand!" she exclaims, an enthusiastic counterpoint to Ben's sardonic greeting. Unhooking one arm from around her crooked legs, she offers a quick little wave. There's the flash of her grin over Ben's shoulder, the shuffle of her heels against the dirt. "He means we were talking about you? Do you wanna sit down?"

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] His deep brown eyes look almost midnight black within the dim lighting of the tunnels. But more to the fact is that he does not, as Ben noticed, hide his approach. Well tendered boots continue to make there way across the ground, towards the pair.

"Evening Linnea, Ben."

A smile set across his face as it seems that he had come at a proper time.

"Is that so, pray tell what of?"

[Benjamin Keyes] "Linnea can fill you in. I've got someone to visit for the moment."

The Rotagar goes tumbling over the side, his feet skidding down the length of the steep incline, hands planted to catch the rock (and any number of scrapes and friction burns along the way) before reaching the Bottom at a brief run. A few stumbling steps forward and he comes to a halt next to a writhing Black Spiral Bat creature, impaled on a spear.

A few moments of gathering himself up and he's stepping 'round it, dissappearing into the farther edges of the Gardens, angling towards a familiar spot in the Memorial site.

[Linnea Bartlett] Linnea watches Ben dislodge himself, watches his half-jump, half-run over the edge of the cliff and snorts beneath her breath. Her jaw juts foward, sets briefly, molar grinding against molar as she tucks herself carefully in and around herself once more. She knows where Ben is going, she's certain, and her gaze flickers to that spot well ahead of the Rotagar's progress, then drifts up to meet Ferdinand's. It takes her a moment to find and form the words - she doesn't plunge ahead as she often does, she doesn't tangle herself up in the space between thought and meaning and expression: she takes her time.

"We were talking about packs." Her lips compress, thoughtfully, the pale brow wrinkles, her eyes narrow, and flatten. She shakes her head, dislodging her french braid, making it slide and drift across her back. "No - we were talking about packing. About making a pack. Are you - " Her mouth stills, she loses the thread of a thought and finds it again. " - are you free? Are you - are you here to stay?"

Her voice echoes, distortedly, over the canyon of the dead. As usual, the dead do not respond.

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] His eyes concentrate on the moving fernir, heading off through the battleground below. His eyes forever searching upon what has happened.

And even though I walk through the valley of death I shall fear not...

Linnea soon enough gets his full attention as the young wyrmfoe searches for her words before speaking. And he carefully listens to her words.

"Yes, I am here to stay. And I am more than free, I, too, feel the needs for forming a pack."

[Benjamin Keyes] Crack!

The sound of bones, unmistakably, breaking echoes up from the Gardens. Then silence once more.

[Linnea Bartlett] "There's - there's Jackson? And his pack? I like Jackson? But - " Linnea is no longer constructing her sentences. She turns her head, resting the high curve of her cheekbone against her knobby knee. The gesture hides the slow-staining color that seeps into her cheeks. She pushes one thought away and replaces it with another, perhaps more worthy, " - that isn't where I was meant to be. And - and Carmen and - that isn't - " again, the reassertion of certain feelings that make her stomach twist in strange ways. Still draped around her skinny legs, the muscles in Linnea's arms tighten, her knuckles go briefly white. " - they aren't all we need." She finishes, her voice dropping a quiet fifth. "I - I want - " She turns her head abruptly away from Ferdinand, cheek rising until her chin is again resting on the apex of her knee. "This can't happen again." Another sidelong, winging glance - seeking reassurance - or, no - intent. Resolve as she slips and slides across the line between Silver Fang Ahroun and overwhelmed sixteen-year-old. "You - you know what I mean? And Ben - I know him? And Severina, we were going to - I mean - if you'd - "

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] He watches her as she stumbles about for her words, seeing that she having problems with what she was trying to express.
"You didn't have Ms. Worthington for public speaking did you? But I would find it a priviledge to be a packmate of yours if that is what you are trying to say."

[Benjamin Keyes] The Rustic (Disheveled) gray form of the Crinos is suddenly on the peripheral vision of the pair, down within the Gardens, shaking out one large clawed hand. It is no where near as muscular as many, more lean and long limbed then anything. The snout stretches forward narrow, almost jackalesque were it not for the abrupt end and feral flicker at the edge of the lips.

He remains standing where he is, gazing up at the pair. (No more lies. No hiding what we are. We're monsters and if you're going to honour them, honour them as you are. A monster fighting the Good War). Claw tips crackle against the flesh of the obsidian statue next to him, a Gaian bent, scooping up it's own entrails, non-chalant and patient.

[Linnea Bartlett] "It gets caught in my throat - " Linnea explains, abruptly, her voice low and strained, the low coils of frustration darkening her speech. "It gets - I can't - I get ahead of my tongue. I feel things and it's too much, it opens up and then goes back and I - " Linnea's head whips around, her pale eyes narrowing to focus on Ben, in Crinos, clawing at the frozen body of a Gaian frozen mid-death throes. "C'mon."

She unhooks her arms, straightens her legs and pushes off the side of the overhang with her palms, jumping onto the battlefield below. She keeps her feet easily, her body folding into itself to absord the force of the impact, then rising to stand to her full height. She begins picking her way across the battlefield, to Ben's side.

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] He listens to her words with patience, it was apart of his moon to do so. And when she finishes with her explanation she heads off to the crinos within the fields of death. And as she asked, he responded. Following her in turn.

And he does not take the steep hill as well as she does, taking off at a run at the base to not stumble upon his face when he reaches the dispair that was the loss of so many garou. This was a war that came to the heart of the Sept, a war he missed. He should have been here and ready. All he can do now is give silent prays of respect to those that give the ultimate sacrifice.

[Benjamin Keyes] The Gray Crinos awaits for the pair to come wandering his way, those dull black eyes regarding the pair with infinite patience or certainty or whatever all could be described on Ben's seemingly ordinary face (No matter his form), the lips curling forward to hide his fangs, while arms slide up to criss-cross over his furred chest.

He stands, seemingly waiting, unwilling or incapable for the moment of shifting down to that of his Breed form. A snort erupts from his nostrils though, seemingly a command without a word.

[Linnea Bartlett] Linnea scrambles over the dead and the dying and the pieces of the dead and dying immortalized in black and white marble like so many flies trapped in amber. She shoots a glance at Ferdinand, over her half-lowered shoulder, as she reaches Ben, then looks up at the warformed Fenrir. Her mouth is set, and her eyes are quiet - the physicial activity has cleared her mind.

Her pale brow creases, blonde eyebrows rising. She should say something clever or meaningful, something worthy of her blood and the moment. She should - Ben wants something, but she can't read what. Her arms twitch, she wants to cross them, but she settles for stuffing them, fist-first, into either pocket. "Ferdinand Corozon, Councils the Divided to the Nation, will pack with me. We need your strength and your skill, Slays-Before-the-Warcry. Will you join us?"

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] He moves up behind the one known as Vanguard of the Dawn, watching the reactions of the Get and his actions of the large Crinos figure standing above them. And he does not say anything as Linnea questions him of being apart of the pack.

[Benjamin Keyes] The flicker of his eyes is determined, suggestive of something deep within, hidden by the Shadow that covers Luna's face, slumbering to let the Ragabash play and prank at their leisure. Yet he is no Ragabash. He is Rotagar, there to push the Warrior of Warriors. It is his hand to slaps at Fenrir Tradition, his hand that smotes hubris and his hide that accepts what pains might come for such actions amid a Tribe to rival that of the Silver Fang's own pride.

And so near the tail end of Linnea's speech, the growl rips forward from Slays~Before~the~Warcry's lips, cutting off that 'Join' before it has a chance to venture into an 'us'. The arms flex and bulge and the eyes stare almost angrily down at the frail little sixteen year old with her fists in her pockets.

This was his Alpha...?

And eye is tossed in Ferdinand's direction, the snort sharp and somewhat derisive. Monster to Man, then back to the Girl-child. Waiting it would seem...

[Linnea Bartlett] Linnea's shoulders swell with a breath she takes in and holds, full of the detritus of the dead. Her jaw sets, her brow darkens, and her fists flex against the pockets of her jeans, straining fabric always worn half-white. She scuffs the edge of her boot against the milk-white ridge of some hero's once-steaming small intestine and feels herself - feels herself opening up to the unsubtle furnace that manifests as her bright, skittering energy, that clots her throat with feeling and clogs the pipeline from her mind to her tongue. " - you - " God, she sounds petulant, even in that one word, and she can hear her voice almost as clearly as they can: the voice of a child, not a warrior.

Her eyes are stinging and she shakes her head, expelling one breath and replacing it with another almost as quickly. Her eyes half-lid, and then the half-child's body begins to change, the terrible pop and creak and groan of joints being remade, bones lengthening, (silver) fur sprouting from the pale flesh of her homid form: to Glabro, still looking up to the Rotagar, and then Crinos. The jeans in which her fists were buried change with her and then disappear as she stands tall in warform. Her massive hand-paws are firm on her powerful thighs, the claws gleaming in the faint light. She chuffs out a half-snarled breath, a thin bead of saliva spraying from her maw, glistening on her fangs.

In the high tongue: We fought together on this field of battle. The nostrils flare with a snort - her snout rises, encompassing the dead. When the enemy came to us. Now we seek the enemy. Follow me. Join me, and we will hunt them to the ends of the earth or the end of the world, whichever first we find.

[Ferdinand Corozon Jr.] And Ferdinand was the last of the three to call upon his primal beast to bring upon that which was asked of him, his gift from Gaia. And soon enough his body would push outward, stretching the clothing to its limits before fading within.

And so too did his brown hair give way to that of almost pure silver fur, capturing his very form in almost all its features. Only his brown eyes was left of his homid form.

Muscle began to stretch and change, bone adjsuting to there new form as sinew and joints were modified to match externally what he was internally.

And there stood the silent philodox, in his silver glory, unblemished outside the tattoo (faint, almost non-existent) of a glyph on the inside of his right forearm. Those who know can see it as the word "Hunter."

And he awaited the response of Ben.

[Benjamin Keyes] The flickering eyes of the Rotagar dance across Linnea's form, the expression of the pure blood running through her veins, much more clear, precise, focused (Visible) in the form gifted her by Gaia. Monsters they are, Monsters they should be. Gaia made them this way and they should be proud to wear the form.

This...Ancestral, Heroic, Blood of Blood on claws and in veins...This was his Alpha.

Worlds are many and we shall find them together, the earth knows only limits and those shall be ours to find. Cuoncils~yuf has joined with you and so to will I, do you lead. This pack will find patronship and the Sept of Echoes will know it's strength in our Deeds and Eyes, Dawn~yuf. Amidst those of the Fallen as Witness, this Pack shall rise to Glory

The flicker of the claws on his bicep is testament to the fidgetting, even in this form. His eyes find Councils~yuf a moment later, a nod turned to the Philodox and the power of Breeding and Ancestry that sang through him. Two Fangs of Propriety and Heroes. It demanded great things of this pack and he was fine with that. Never look to a Fenrir to take the easiest path.

Time would be had for knowing each other once the Pack was fully formed. Yet another needed to be drawn to their ranks...such would be taking care of in time.

...But for now, the Tale had it's beginning.