Ivan Press

[Sinclair] Last night there was a rumble on the docks right at the edge of the bawn. Story's everywhere overnight: big octopus thing with a human mouth on the underside and dozens of eyes and a tentacle that grabbed Height of Mountains to drag him underwater and there was this explosion and ...well. Stories get told. People hear them on patrol, hear them through gossip and from spirits that linger around Maelstrom.

From that battle, Sinclair, called Warcry, Brutal Revelation, Fostern Galliard and member of the Unbroken, packmate of Christian's tribal elder and packmate of his auspice elder, came back to the Brotherhood, found an empty bed -- didn't matter if it was in a room occupied by someone else -- and fell facefirst into it, shifted to lupus, and slept for roughly twelve hours.

It's daytime now, and the surface wounds she had -- wounds that would hospitalized a mortal -- are gone. There's still blood matted in her fur and dirtying the sheets she slept on, but that

is why she's in the laundry room around the corner from the common room now, washing the bedlinens. Her hair is still wet from her shower, dripping in fact, leaving a wet V on her back and dampening the shoulders of the plain white t-shirt she grabbed from the extra clothes pile. She is also wearing an old pair of men's plaid boxers that was found in that extra clothes pile. Her own clothes are in the wash with the linens.

After closing the washer, she walks barefoot out to the common room, picks up the cellphone lying on the coffee table that she put there not so long ago, and calls the number she got from either Lukas or Katherine.

And a few seconds later, wherever he is, Christian's phone goes off.

[Christian] Funny...he's actually walking down the sidewalk towards the Brotherhood of Thieves when his phone rings. He's been staying at the Loft since the night he let the Wyrm take him over. It has more to do with two of his elders offering it to him, making it seem like an order, than wanting to stay away from the place where it happened. Getting to stay away from the place where it happened is just a nice added benefit. He had left the room he's been sharing with a tall kinswoman. Only a note had been in his wake, the bed stripped and his meager effects gone from his side of the room.

Christian pulls out his phone, and frowns at the number. He doesn't recognize it. Still, he answers it. "Hello?"

[Sinclair] She's seen him around the Loft since that night. Sinclair often stays there. Or here. And that's... about it, these days. One or the other. No other options, but she doesn't claim a room in the Brotherhood. Very occasionally, she sleeps in her car. Even more rarely, she gets a cheap-as-shit hotel room where she can sleep in total solitude, a thing she has rarely in her life wanted but a need she learned a long time ago not to ignore.

"Sup, homeskillet?" she says, and maybe her voice is familiar to him -- maybe he's heard her talking at the Loft -- and maybe it's necessary that she adds: "It's Sinclair. Whatcha up to, man?"

[Christian] He has a bed, now, but Christian doesn't spend a lot of time in it. He doesn't take his meals in Katherine's kitchen. He doesn't watch her television or use her Internet. Occasionally he uses her pool. But mostly he just goes there to sleep. Sometimes he doesn't even do that. Still, he's been around enough for the housekeeper to recognize him and to know that the voice calling him is the Fostern Galliard who sent him into the Thrall the other night. "Uh...hi, -rhya. I'm going to the Brotherhood." He pauses. She can almost hear him frown. "What's up?"

[Cordelia] Why does she even live here?

Seriously. This is a question one has to ask themselves on a semiregular basis, because she doesn't... quite... fit. Then again, she doesn't quite fit into a lot fo places, and she shows up anyway. It's either because she simply doesn't care, or she is looking to please a tough crowd. Endear herself to a more difficult group of people. Then again, she's watched almost every DVD they have here with Spanish subtitles and has learned a few more interesting phrases.

We won't go into that, just rest assured they are interesting and we move on.

The note Christian had left made her frown a little, and now it seems she's int he room by herself. Her things haven't exploded into the other spaces, though. In fact, she has less stuff here now than she did when she started. Which begs the question: where does she put it? Whatever it is, though, it has her wandering out of her room with tangled hair and a tooth brush in hand.

People are talking. She doesn't get a word of it just yet.

[Sinclair] Katherine Bellamonte has a pool the size she does now thanks, in part, to this Fostern right here. This Fostern who has been giving her Alpha swimming lessons to better take advantage of -- and compensate for -- his sheer weight and size while in the water. He is getting good enough now to beat her when they race. With Lukas, she can be as competitive as she could never be with human beings. She can also lose her temper, because as fast and vicious as she is,

he can put her down.

As can Katherine, quite frankly.

"Oh, awesome," she says, glancing up past her phone at the tall [Fang, obviously a Fang] girl who just strolled in. "You should come up to the common room. I'm doing some laundry here and I wanted to talk to you."

[Christian] That's not good. Right? That's like when he used to get called into the administrator's office for fighting or destroying school property. Christian freezes on the sidewalk, as if the thought of going into that building has suddenly become something he has to think about. There's another pause. He is right at the alleyway. All he has to do is walk down it and go through the kitchen, up the stairs.

"Um...okay. Sure. Be there in a minute."

[Cordelia] She's out, and Sinclair gets a wave. It's a raise of her hand, and the little back-and-forth motion that one seems to reserve for parades. She even smiles at her, even if she doesn't know who she is. The girl's glasses are atrocious- we've established that these things are just terrible. She's wearing sweatpants, and a tee shirt... which stands to reason that there is a strong possibility that she just doesn't ever... well... change out of her pajamas most days. She would fit in with any group of underachieving American college students. Or overachieving. Or maybe just people who like to milk the snooze bar for all it's worth.

she even mouthes hi to Sinclair, and goes off to brush her teeth.

[Sinclair] She doesn't really know the girl, but she smells like Kate's tribe. So Sinclair waves a little, and blinks as the girl walks away. She says goodbye to Christian and hangs up, and when he gets upstairs

she's right where she was a second ago, hair wet, in a v-necked white t-shirt and baggy boxers, sitting on the sectional. No makeup on. No heavy eyeliner, nothing to conceal the fact that once upon a time she was human.

"Have a seat, tiger," she says, and gestures with her head at the couch she's on.

[Christian] He doesn't take his time getting up there. Though he has short legs compared to others, he takes the stairs two at a time. Sinclair can hear him coming. She can probably feel him coming, too, his Rage pushing up the stairs ahead of him. When he appears he's dressed much as he was the other night...in boots and cheap jeans and a cheap t-shirt. Clothing that doesn't do his breeding justice. Maybe it's a costume. His cell phone, a cheap little pay-as-you-go thing, is still in his hand. He puts it away when Sinclair tells him to have a seat, and does as he's told.

[Ivan] Ivan doesn't live here. And he'd never live here. Which begs the question: why is he in the bathroom, stepping out of the shower?

Ah, but to answer that, we have to consider the facts. Fact: the Brotherhood is open to all kin and Garou. Fact: the Brotherhood is also a working restaurant and bakery. Fact: there are waitresses in the restaurant. Fact: one of them is young, and pretty, and -- shall we say -- openminded.

So, somewhere in this building there's an unoccupied room, and somewhere in that unoccupied room a pretty young openminded waitress is putting herself back together to go down for the lunch rush. Meanwhile, Ivan is stepping out of the cheap tiled showers with the cheap plumbing that runs hot and cold depending on who's using water where, and he's wrapping a towel around his waist and draping another over his head and

he grins to see Cordelia brushing her teeth.

"Very nice!" he says. "Who was it?"

[Cordelia] Make no mistake. If this conversation were in Spanish, she would still be confused.

She turns around, and... this is the second time she's seen Ivan in a towel coming out of a shower. Her hair's a mess, she's wearing sweats that were probably meant for a man anyway, and the shirt fits off one one shoulder. Realistically, she could be wearing someone else's clothes. Much to the chagrin of the vast majority of Fangs in this city, she isn't. Those clothes smell like her.

The cyan toothbrush is held in one hand and she's got a halfway decent lather of... well.. toothpaste there.

"Eh?" she turns around and turns the water back on, and spits. It's not a very dignified sound. Not at all. She bends over a little and gets a mouth full of water. Spits again, and it's on to mouthwash.

While she's doing the obligatory thirty seconds, she turns and looks at Ivan. It's hard to look confused with listerine in your mouth- mouthwash just tastes gross. It's the prevailing look on her face right now.

[Sinclair] So obedient, this son of kings.

Sinclair observes him for a few moments as he sits down, his submission -- one could call it respect, if one was inclined to make assumptions -- evident somehow to her. But she's not human, and she's no good at acting like a human, really. She doesn't think much in terms of respect unless she's trying. Right now, feeling the way she does when her moon is waning, she isn't trying very hard.

So: submission. That's what she senses. Submission to her rank, to the fact that she's proven herself to the Nation in ways he has not yet. Ways he will, if he survives long enough.

"The other night my Alpha apologized for allowing me to heckle you when you were already so close to the edge. He called it a miscalculation." Her eyes are on him, light blue and yet somehow sinister in their paleness, this morning. "Now on the one hand, he was truthful: he didn't have to let me. He could have told me to shut up a half-second after the first noise was out of my mouth, and I would have obeyed."

Brutal Revelation. That's the name she was given when she achieved the rank of Fostern. Christian is seeing why, now. "I think the way he phrased it could have implied that there was some manner of communication between he and I on the subject beforehand. And that isn't true. I don't want you to think that Wyrmbreaker-rhya,"

as she calls him, though they are both Fosterns, and he has not yet challenged for the rank his renown has earned,

"asked me or ordered me to do that." She stops there, watching him, to gauge his reaction so far.

[Christian] He's still young and human enough that he doesn't see anything wrong with making eye contact. Not that looking Sinclair in the eye makes him comfortable. It isn't that she's ugly, or that her Rage makes him think she's about to tear his throat out. He knows what she's capable of even if he can barely remember her harrying him before his vision went black instead of red. He gets the idea that if he showed her anything less than submission that that's what would happen. He isn't afraid of being hurt. Of all the things he is afraid of that's not it. So Christian doesn't know why he looks at Sinclair's chin instead of her eyes. But he does.

This kid has no deed name. He didn't have a House until Katherine "adopted" him. If he has parents, they're not around anymore. When he introduces himself it's short...his lineage is either forgotten or forsaken. He knows he hasn't proven himself to the Nation at large, let alone to this Fostern. She speaks, and to his credit his Rage doesn't rear its head when she brings up what happened the other night. It's not until she finishes speaking that he looks up from her chin.

"So why'd you do it?"

[Ivan] Cordelia doesn't understand. Or she doesn't get it. Well; he wouldn't expect her to get it, but if she was going to survive in this damn country she'll have to learn to understand.

Ivan crosses the cold tile floor of the unisex bathroom. He comes right up to the mirror, right up beside her, holds his towel up with one hand and plants the other on the edge of the sink. His body is long and lean when he leans over, haaaahs a breath out over the mirror, steams it up.

Using his finger, he writes it in big, spaced-out block letters:

W H O
W A S
I T ?

And under that, a smiley face. Winking.

[Sinclair] "The same reason my Alpha made cracks oh-so-subtly comparing not frenzying with erectile dysfunction," Sinclair says flatly.

Christian doesn't remember which of the two Fosterns put him down after he did frenzy. He doesn't know that they each did as much damage as the other, but that Sinclair's blow was so... very... precise. That she could have torn his head off. That there is a reason why nothing yet that's gone up against both Wyrmbreaker and Warcry has survived more than a matter of moments.

And yes. There is that sense of her, especially now, that a wise wolf is one who doesn't give her reason to feel that her dominance needs to be reasserted. There is that sense that by mortal reckoning she is a sociopath. There is that sense, among wolves, that she is the hungry one, always hunting, always slipping through the dark to find something weak to sink her teeth into.

But also this: no flickers of rage when he meets her eyes. No indication that she takes it as a challenge. She sees him that clearly, at least, to know what his eye contact is... and what it isn't.

"I'd say I had no idea it would push you that far, but pushing you over the edge was the point. Pushing you when there were wolves around strong enough to put you down if necessary was the point. As far as I understand it, at least." She's quiet a moment, then cocks her head. "You know why I'm packed with the Unbroken?"

[Christian] The kid looks like he's having trouble sitting still. The urge to kill is strong in him. Lukas had said it was uncontrolled. If he could have proven him wrong...there's no point thinking about ifs, though. Lukas had said they'd work on that and he had no reason not to believe him. Still he should have burnt off some of his anger before he came here today. He was planning on seeing a particular kinswoman who's terrified of him when he's like this. He doesn't fidget or squirm as Sinclair talks. When she asks if he knows, Christian shakes his head.

[Cordelia] Cordelia raises a finger, and keeps that hand raised for another fifteen seconds before she spits in the sink. It's followed by a half gagging wretched sound that comes with having almost swallowed the stuff. By this time, he's written a message on the mirror.

"I live here," she says. And it's pretty plain, too. She has a nice voice. Nice is the accurate word, it isn't overly assertive or overly rar or even that remarkable, but she has an accent. It's a definite accent, but it doesn't muddle the fact that she's fairly articulate.

"Dónde están tus pantalones?" She stops, raises a hand and waves it off, "no es importante."

She points at the mirror, and taps once... twice... and raises an eyebrow. There's half a grin and a quarter of a sidelong glance. She is a woman who is good with fractions.

[Ivan] Ivan looks appalled. "You live here?" There's a pause. "Why?"

[Cordelia] "Why not?"

Oh yeah, that's a real answer. she doesn't sound confused, though. It's a legitimate answer.

"Parece usted sorprendido," but the last word is accompanied by her raising both of her eyebrows and putting her hands to her cheeks. Her lips make a small pout and her jaw drops. This is the face people make when you expect to hear them goOoo?

[Ivan] "No hablo español," Ivan replies, which is, in fact, very much the truth. "And really, Cordelia, if you're going to stay in this country, you need to learn English. Learn English," he holds a finger up, "and get contacts." A second finger.

"As for why not: because I refuse to believe your family hasn't given you enough allowance to live someplace nicer."

[Cordelia] "I will learn English before I get contacts," she tells him. Critical thinking skills dictate that she can string these two sentences together. Which, if some had their ways, meant that Cordelia would have to be fluent in English before the end of the month. There was a definite push for contact lenses.

She sounds half exasperated, half disinterested. She looks at him from over the rims of her glasses. He's a pretty blur.

"They did," she says, "mi apartmento es... big... y... elegante... y... lonely. No es gut."

Okay, it's her turn to try and piece together what she's seen or heard or read so far. Which, of course, meant that she was having to pull from movie quotes. The next thing she does is gesture to the common room where they can hear people talking.

"Total immersion learning."

[Sinclair] In answer to his silent no, I don't, the Galliard naturally moves to explain. To tell him the truth, and the history. She draws up the right leg of the boxers she has on to show him the full tattoo there. Black viper, wound and wound and wound about her leg, covered in various green glyphs and markings. It is digging its fangs into her thigh. It is stylized, but the realism of those teeth is disturbing.

"Last year there was a minion of the Wyrm who came to us -- Kin and Garou -- in our dreams. It tempted many. It corrupted, as far as I know, only one." She lets the flannel fabric fall, watching Christian all the time. "It took me a long time to realize what it was having me do. I almost handed over a purebred Kin of Fenrir to it before I snapped out of it. And then I ran away. I left the female I was packed with under Twister at the time, and I left a trail of destruction everywhere I went til I finally had the courage to come back and face what I had done. I helped destroy the tools of the minion in the end, but nothing is going to change the fact that I was too weak to begin with. It got in, because I wasn't strong enough to resist it."

She draws up the right sleeve of the t-shirt she borrowed and shows him a list of names tattooed on her bicep. There are for. She points to the last one: Arthur.

"Strikes With Valor in His Heart," she says. "Cliath Child of Gaia Ahroun."

Sinclair drops the sleeve, watching Christian. "I killed him in an alleyway." Brutal, brutal truth, and she doesn't flinch from it. "He and two other Garou were fighting these beings made of shadow. They were strong, and quick; Strikes With Valor had fallen and risen again once already. Near the end, the strongest of our enemy was close to death, and it possessed me."

This is a Fostern. Twice, just from this telling, the Wyrm has used her. Twisted her. Gotten inside and corrupted her. "I killed Arthur. I killed Joey. I killed Charlie. Charlie and Joey came back. Arthur couldn't rage back a second time. I wasn't even the one to bear his body back to the Caern for burial. I beat the demon out of me, but too late. And I hunted the thing that possessed me and I killed it, but Strikes With Valor In His Heart is still in a grave he never should have gone to, because I was too weak to resist the Wyrm."

She looks at him. "Actually, I joined the Unbroken in between those two incidents. And a big part of why -- though it'd be oversimplifying to call this the only reason -- is cuz I needed someone to teach me how to control myself. Not restrain myself, not fake it, not rebel against it, but accept what I am and learn how to be it without bringing down the world around my ears."

Her hands lace. "Frenzied last night, myself. Because some fucking tentacle monster threw me halfway across Chicago, it felt like. Fucking humiliating. Tell the truth, I feel like a retard for frenzying just because, surprise surprise, some Wyrm-thing managed to land a nasty hit on me. Frenzied another time because some stupid thing knocked a door into my Alpha and sent him skidding, and that set me right off." She shakes her head, exhaling, sounding aggravated. "Tell you the truth, I'm fucking sick and tired of frenzying over stupid, stupid shit like that. Every time I come out of it I look around because I don't know what the hell I did and I'm sick to my stomach thinking what if."

A beat. She looks at the ceiling, then at him. "I'm better than I used to be, though. By a lot. But to be honest, Lukas and Kate didn't sit me down and give me lessons. They didn't take me up on the roof and test me. And I think if they had, I wouldn't have come this far. Christian, man... I'm not your tribe and I'm not your moon and I don't have much say over you at all in the long run, but ...I do think I get where you're coming from. And really I just wanted to talk to you to get it straight that Lukas didn't tell me to do what I did and that I really am sorry it ended up pushing you that fucking far because I can't even imagine how you feel about it, but, uh..."

She wrinkles her nose. Sniffs. Shrugs. "Anyway. Anytime you wanna go hunting and fuck some shit up with someone there who can deal with you if you lose it and keep you from doing something really retarded? I'll be down."

A long beat. She blinks slowly. "Cool?"

[Christian] Lone wolves usually end up dead. There are a number of reasons why. He's heard the stories. Maybe he hasn't heeded them. Maybe he came to Chicago thinking he'd be okay. That he didn't need anyone. That he wouldn't end up on a couch in a Fianna-run building listening to an urrah tell him how they aren't that different. That she can understand where he's coming from even if she can't imagine how he feels about being turned into a vessel for the Wyrm because her Alpha was trying to teach him something. Christian isn't the world's most understanding young man, but when he wants to he can sit still and listen to what's being said. He looks at her tattoos and he listens to her stories and by the time she gets to telling him that if he ever wants to go hunting he feels like he isn't alone anymore.

Christian nods as slow as she blinks. He doesn't try to force a smile or pretend like even the idea of hunting something isn't making him want to get up right now and go to it. He says, "I'd like that." Then he adds, "Thank you." He doesn't specify what for. Just thanks her.

[Sinclair] "Awesome," Sinclair says, like actually connecting with someone and maybe understanding them and them understanding her and having a Lifetime moment and da da da makes her grotesquely uncomfortable. She hefts herself to her feet, swinging off the couch. "Let's play Ping-pong, I've got like an hour before my clothes are done."

[Ivan] She'll learn English first, she informs him, and Ivan's mouth quirks. "Well let's get cracking," he interrupts, quipping.

Then she goes on. She strings words awkwardly together, her accent thick, her words lapsing frequently from one language to the other. His smile spreads into a grin ... and then changes again when she says the word, lonely.

Doesn't turn predatory. Doesn't gleam like a tiger's a second before the pounce. If anything, the grin softens a little. Becomes fond. He reaches out to her, threads her hair behind her ear, wraps his hand behind her neck.

When he kisses her, as even someone of limited experience as Cordelia knew he would, it's not on the mouth after all. It's on her forehead, just above the big gawky rim of her glasses. And it's gentle. Sweet, even.

"I like you," he says, drawing back. "And if you want to have a little fun, you can look me up any time. But you shouldn't do it if you're going to get all emotionally entangled." That quirking grin is back. "Fair warning and all."

He nods her out the door, then. "I'll catch up," he says. "After I put my clothes on."

[Christian] Oh, good, she doesn't want to hug or something. Christian relaxes as Sinclair gets up, as if the idea of a heart-to-heart doesn't exactly make him feel all warm and fuzzy either, then follows her. "Okay...I'm just warning you, though...you're dealing with the Pulaski Heights Middle School ping pong champion."

[Cordelia] She's interrupted and she looks up and to the side. Heaves a half dramatic sigh- and it's a good thing she's a fairly expressive young woman or else she would be nearly insufferable. Up and to the side. She heaves a sigh and throws her hands up a little. There'll be no arguing with him on this.

While she is a smart young woman, she switches between languages, not all of it Spanish or English. She doesn't blush when he kisses her on the forehead- it was, in fact, sweet. And surprisingly more gentle than she was expecting, or possibly used to. He gets a hug in return, but it doesn't linger for too long.

She draws back about the time that he does- timing is everything. To his response, however, the right side of her mouth upturns and her right hand gives a little dismissive wave, "psh!"

It's hard to tell what she's pshing to, though, and she turns around to head back to her room.

"Door's open," she says. Something she's heard a lot recently.

[Sinclair] "Oh ho," Sinclair shoots back, as she walks around the couch towards the ping pong table. "Then maybe we should play video games. I don't like losing."

[Christian] He doesn't really know what the general opinion of him is. He doesn't know if his tribe is talking about how he lost his temper the first time anyone saw him or how he walks around feeling like he's about to blow a gasket every time someone else sees him. Katherine had told her alpha that his Rage was uncontrolled, and Lukas had passed this on to him...but that's nothing he hasn't heard before. So he doesn't know if Sinclair is expecting him to fly into a frenzy if she beats him at something. They're joking right now, but he doesn't know that Sinclair won't lose it if he does in fact beat her at table tennis.

"Nobody likes losing. You said ping pong. You can't back out now."

[Cordelia] She heads back to the common room after the following has occurred: one, she's put her toothbrush away. Two, she's brushed her hair. Which, given the fact that one could hear it in the other room, one could assume that Cordelia was an aggressive hair-brusher. She wanders back out and to the common room, a little poofy, and with a laptop under her arm. It's blue. She likes it.

"Hi Christian," she says. Quite openly and obviously pleased.

[Sinclair] She's an urrah, but he hasn't called her that to her face. She's obviously kind of... primitive. Tattoos on her legs and metal all up the edges of her ears. She's packed with his tribal elder, the pure heart of a pure tribe in this city, a woman of self-admitted gleaming perfection. She's packed with the elder of his moon, the strongest arm of warriors in this caern, and she whips out folding axes he got her as a present and slices the Lord up on occasion just because

they are Garou. And they fucking need it. They need the violence. They need the ferocity of their own hearts beating towards death. They need it like they're mad for it, and though this creature is urrah, is a fucking Walker, is so far from purity her ancestors won't even talk to her anymore if she could even find out who they are,

she's also a beast. An animal. A warrior. And she actually gets it.

"I wasn't backing down," she says, perhaps ruffled. "I'm just saying that if you do beat me, then we're gonna play video games and I'm gonna --"

Hi, Christian.

Sinclair looks over at the girl. Looks at Christian. Doesn't really know that Cordelia doesn't speak English. Flicks an eyebrow up. Whistles to herself, looking elsewhere for the paddles and the box of little white table tennis balls.

[Christian] Cordelia comes out of the bathroom dressed for bed, wearing those glasses that makes the rest of their tribe want to do something about her, and Christian looks as though she's just walked out wearing a thousand dollar dress with her hair perfectly coiffed. He stares at her for a few seconds, unable to form a coherent sentence. He recovers, eventually, but he can't hide that he's pleased to see her. He actually smiles a little, then waves to her. His Rage is unbearable. She can feel it lapping at her from across the room probably.

"Hi. Vuoi vedere me percuotere Sinclair a tennis da tavolo?"

[Sinclair] There's a ping pong ball whipped, suddenly, at Christian's head. Granted, it's a ping pong ball. It hurts about as much as someone blowing in your ear.

"Hey," she says sharply. "Rude, much?"

[Christian] He ducks out of the way but not fast enough to avoid having a tiny plastic ball smack him in the ear. Christian whips toward her. His eyes flash. "She doesn't speak English," he says. It's not as sharp as her admonition but it does rankle a bit.

[Sinclair] "So," Sinclair says slowly, like she's explaining something to a child. No, not a child: a teenager. And one who's testing her patience and damn well knows it, "you translate. Either you speak to her in Spanish and then tell me what you just said, or you tell me what you're going to say to her and then say it to her in Spanish. Or hell, speak to her in English but repeat certain words and phrases and combine it with pantomime, that's how my French teacher in high school did a lot of things. For one thing, it'll help her hear both languages side by side, conversationally. For another, it'll keep you from having to decide who you exclude from the conversation: your elder or your crush."

She makes a weighing motion with two flat, palm-up hands. "Hmm."

[Christian] "I don't," he says, "have a crush on her. And I just asked her if she wanted to watch me play you at table tennis." He stops just short of appending that thought with a God! or something else that would only drive home the fact that he's one of the youngest Garou in the Sept right now. That he's still a teenager. That if he had stayed in human society he would only have graduated this year.

[Cordelia] "Okay," she says. It's all she can really offer at that moment, and to Sinclair? Well, her first reaction was to say something, probably her name or something in broken English, but her arm comes up and the laptop is brought in front of her. In case she needed to use it as a shield from flying pingpong balls.

Something about sinclair was offsettling. It wasn't rage, but something else entirely. Factoring in the fact that Christian was an ahroun with quite a bit of rage, this was.. well... it was what it was. She looks at the laptop and-

"Oh! Google!"

She looks left, then right, then finds somewhere to sit herself down and precariously perch her laptop on her lap. she's got a good enough battery life for this. And, like any other modern young woman with internet access and two fingers, she asks google for what to say.

[Sinclair] "Thank you," Sinclair says, a little overly firmly. But he just did exactly what she told him to. She mostly ignores Cordelia, truth be told, and doesn't chase down or harry or tease Christian about whether or not he has a crush on the girl.

She looks at the ground. "Fuck, now where's the ball?" She does look up now, whistling sharply for Cordelia's attention. "Hey! Blondie. You see the ball?"

And in this, she demonstrates her own point: points two fingers at her eyes, then at the floor, and holds up her hand as though her fingers are wrapped around a ball. Granted, this might mean she's asking Cordelia if she'll help look for the ball. Either way, hopefully the general message gets across.

[Cordelia] She types about as fast as one can type without being a Glass Walker. If she weren't interacting with a glass walker, one would be impressed. Since she is, the response is probably god, n00b. You see the ball? She shakes her head side to side. The young woman sets her laptop down and leans a little to one side to get a lower vantage point.

"Iiiii do not see," says the girl with the glasses. Though she is looking for it.

[Christian] The ball's gone missing, and now Christian is irritated. He isn't on the verge of frenzy...but he looks as though his feathers have been good and ruffled. If Sinclair were a Cliath he probably would have punched her on principle but she's not so the thought hadn't even crossed his mind. He turns away from her, looking at the floor. The ball was last seen clipping his ear, so he looks on the floor immediately around him. He finds it underneath the coffee table at an angle that would make it invisible to Cordelia.

"Under the table," he says. A beat, and then he tries to pantomime. His left hand is held stationary, and his right hand points underneath it a few times.

[Sinclair] If there is one thing Sinclair is so good as to be defined as epic, it is pissing people off. She made a pregnant kinswoman cry just the other night because she told her this isn't a good place to raise a baby. She has pissed of Lukas and Kate and Kate's brother Edward and probably that kinswoman Erika and Joey and Charlie though Joey's gone and Charlie's dead now and oh the way she and Alex fought, especially at the end of it all, because he didn't want to hear it and she wasn't going to hold back and he told her what he needed and she balked and they pushed and pushed and pushed on each other until something broke

but she knows exactly what broke, and what's broken, and it isn't her.

Fact remains: she's really good at pissing people off, but she was telling him the truth. Not kindly, not gently, not even with the utmost respect. Blunt, brutal, and yet undeniable. If she were a Cliath he would've hit her on principle. If she were a Cliath still she would've been even more of an asshole about it, and she knows it, so if Christian hit her now

she'd understand, probably better than he'd like to think.

"AHA!" she crows, when they find the ball. It gets tossed around until it ends up in her hand, or Christian's hand, and then, frankly

the game is quick. And Sinclair, who as a cub tended to play ping-pong only until she got frustrated and threw the paddle through a television screen which got her in so much trouble that she snapped and they put her back in that room and they wouldn't let her out again and when they did there was no more ping-pong in the game room --

well, she loses to the Pulaski Heights Middle School table tennis champion. And despite what she said, she doesn't look too rankled by it. She looks disgruntled, but she held her own, and she's satisfied with that -- with herself -- in a way she wouldn't have been a year ago. She lays her paddle down flat at the end of the game and looks levelly over at Christian.

The washer has stopped by now and it's time to move her clothes to the dryer. "Next time, we're playing one of my games," she says darkly. Ominously, in fact. Points at him. Then rotates and points at Cordelia. "You're up," she says, and jerks her thumb at the table.

And so she is. Because Sinclair seems to be done. Sinclair has laundry to switch over to the dryer. The thing is, though, when the dryer starts and they hear it tumbling away, the Fostern doesn't come back into the common room. So it's just them.

Alone. Together.

~*~♥~*~