Rose continues to face Dillan, fidgeting as he talks to her and Dante looks on.
Dillan returns his attention to the last pair of dishes in the sink, washing them with uncalled for energy. "I asked if we had a deal." He queries, voice cold.
Derrick ambles in, somewhat wet. "Hey there."
Rose says "I don't steal from you... and what do you do?"
Dante L Coyote dries those dishes, wondering what happened between the two of them.
Dillan shrugs. "I dunno. What?"
Rose says "You don't call me bad words. Is that fair?"
Dillan closes his eyes. "Fine. Deal." He dumps a frying pan into the wet dish rack. "But don't you dare touch any of my stuff."
Rose smiles. "Okay. That's good. You can be my friend now, if you want to be."
Derrick, leaning on the door to the kitchen, mumbles, "Define bad word..."
Dante L Coyote smiles. "That's good. Let's all be friends. All the grown-ups are made at us already, let's not be mad at each other."
Dillan blinks. "I walked into an episode of freakin' Barney. YEah, friends, fine."
Derrick sings quietly, "I hate me, you hate you, we all have no self esteem..." He shakes his head, and says, "Umm. Right. Am I included in this mass friendship stuff?"
Dante L Coyote says "If you wanna."
Rose looks around, confused. "Who is Barney?"
Dante L Coyote says "Someone on TV, Rose."
Finished the last dirty dish, Dillan empties the sink and wipes his hands dry. "Yeah. Quite possibly the closest thing to the antichrist that ever stepped into a dinosaur suit."
Rose says "Oh. That sounds neat. If we are all friends, then the big people won't hurt us like they did to me.""
Dante L Coyote dries the last of the dishes.
Derrick grins at Dante. "Definitely."
Dante L Coyote says "Okay, all agreed, we're going to be friends then."
Derrick nods. "Sounds good to me. Rose, which "big people"?"
Rose says "The Katana Man, and the Giant Doggie."
Dillan hmphs. "Me and Derrick been chillin' forever. Timothy still slapped me around... hey, speakin' of Timster, where's he been, along with everyone else, D?"
Dante L Coyote says "Isaac told me they like to hit you when they think you're stupid, we'll I'm not going to let them hit me."
Rose says "If we just all are friends, and go to them and ask nice, they won't hit us ever again."
Dillan says "They just plain like slappin' kids around..."
Dante L Coyote says "No way, my stepdad hit me and now he's dead. And I'm not lvetting no onehit me ever again."
Dante L Coyote his eyes moisten a bit and he runs upstairs.
Dillan looks at Derrick, jerking a thumb at Rose. "You been slippin' her prozac?"
Rose hugs Dante. "We'll be smart, then. If they promise they won't hit us, we can promise we won't be stupid.... What's prozac?
Dillan waves at Derrick. "I'll let the boy wonder field that one."
Derrick blinks. "_Who_?"
Rose says "Please, what is 'prozac?'"
You say "It's a medicine to make people less depressed. What Dillan's saying is, your view of the world is a bit simplistic."
You say "Just 'cause we're friends and ask 'em nice, they're not going to get any less hard assed."
Rose's eyebrows furrow. "Is it a bad word?"
Derrick tries to think of a better word. "Hardassed, that is, rigid and mean."
Rose says "I mean prozac. What Dillan said. Is it a bad word?"
You say "No. Prozac is a medicine."
Rose says "Oh." She visibly relaxes, going from simple-mindedly friendly to wrathfully tense and ready to explode to simple-mindedly friendly in a span of seconds. "Medicine is good. And we can try to be nice. If they're still bad, then we're together, and that wil"
Rose says "Will be better than being alone."
Dillan nods. "Yeah. I almost, uh, never use bad words. Honest." He looks at Derrick, almost unbeleiving Rose is for real. "Uh, yeah. Well, we can try all we want. Best thing to do is not say much whenever an elder's around."
Rose nods. "You are very smart, Dillan. I like you."
Derrick grins. "I still think it won't work too well, but it's a nice idea. And yeah, it's way better'n being alone, that's for sure."
Derrick adds, "By the way, the Giant Doggie is a friend of mine. He's actually rather nice, when you get to know him."
Rose says "But he hurted me."
Rose says "Real bad."
Derrick says in confusion, "Huh? How'd he hurt you?"
Dillan uhms. "Giant doggie?"
Derrick explains, "Stormcloud."
Rose says "The giant doggie held me and hurt me while the Katana Man choked me so I couldn't breath. It was so awful and it hurt so much. It was the worse thing in my life."
Rose shakes with the memory. Even the plane crashed by Fomori didn't affect her so.
Dillan hops up on the countertop. "So why's Stormy runnin' around in hispo? An' far as I can remember, Shin hadda choke you so you wouldn't flip and hurt no-one..."
You say "Waitasec, why'd Stormy hold you? Last I heard, Stormy offered you meat, you flipped, and Shin tried to help. What's this choking stuff?"
Rose's eyes go wide. "But he dropped a big dead animal right down in front of me! And I tried to run back here, but then a wolf bit my leg, and it hurted. Then I changed, and the wolf kept coming after me, so I run faster.
Derrick sighs. "Right. Rose. He's Garou just like us, is Stormcloud, but he's a wolf, normally. So it's _polite_ for him to offer you a big dead animal."
Rose is on the verge of tears. "They chased me and chased me, and tried to bite me, and when I tried to find my way here, they chased me away, and then they caught me and hurted me real bad."
Derrick uhhs. "Way I heard it, though, you were totally panicked. They were tryin' to help, but you wouldn't listen to 'em..."
Rose starts to sob, wracked by the horror of the memory. "And they were to strong, and I was so weak, and they kept hurtin' me and I couldn't breath. You can't know what it's like. To not breath. For a long, long time, squeezing and knowing you were going to
... die and your lungs want air and there's nothing, and it feels like fire." *wail*
Rose collapses, heaving and bawling.
Derrick sighs. "No, I don't. I almost drowned once, though. Sounds sort of like that." At Rose's collapse, he blinks and sort of stares at her for a minute, then stoops down and puts a hand on her shoulder. "Rose...?"
Rose says "I was so scared. And then I was in the Shadow Place, and I could see them carrying me here, but I couldn't wake up, and my poppa came and wanted to take my into the Light Place, and I was so SCARED!"
Derrick starts rubbing her back comfortingly. "Uh? Shadow Place? Whassat?"
Dillan uhms. "Shadow Place? Sounds like something from my tribe. Dunno 'bout any light place, though." He shrugs. "Far as I was told, you flipped and they hadda stop you." He shrugs, doing his best to stay unsympathetic.
Rose sniffs, rubbing her face with her hands, blubbing. "It's were you go when you _daaaiiiieee_!"
Derrick blinks, and tries to rub her back some more. "Rose - they wanted to be your friends just like we did. They wanted to help. They still do, I bet. They were in NO way gonna kill you. Really. I promise."
Rose keeps blubbing, not really terribly coherent.
Derrick keeps rubbing her back awkwardly, trying to be comforting and probably failing.
Derrick sighs. "Basically, Stormy screwed up, which Stormy does a lot. And then you panicked. But no one's gonna kill you, and _they_ weren't planning to, either."
Rose quietens more and more as Derrick ministers to her, reducing her anxious outburst patiently step by step. "I... I do' know if I kin ever be frien's with... with someone who strangled me. It was soooo awful. But I'll try. For your sake. I will."
Derrick keeps a rubbin'. "Well, Shin's hard to be friends with anyway, and he's the one that strangled you. But geez, it's not like you have to be friends with _everyone_ I'm friends with, and I don't have to be friends with everyone you're frinds with, either. But if you feel like you should try... Thank you."
Dillan chuckles. "Stormy's good at screwin' shit up. An' far as I know, they ain't allowed to kill us 'till after they've rited us. Then we're fair game - as long as they challenge us first."
Derrick gulps. "Yeah, but killin' even then ain't encouraged."
Rose says "What's... what's "rited" mean?" She seems to be feeling much better, but looks a mess. "It sounds imp... dangerous.""
You say "Rited. Means you're an adult, accordin' to the Garou."
Rose says "How?"
You say "Y'gotta go on a Rite of Passage thingy."
Rose says "Whatsat?"
Dillan shrugs. "Some sorta crap involving running around killing things and getting killed."
Rose looks doubtful. "I'm already a grownup," she protests.
You say "I dunno, one RoP I headd about didn't involve any killin'."
Derrick heard
You say "Not accordin' to the Garou, you're not"
Dante L Coyote steps back down the stairs, his eyes a bit red.
Rose's features set. "I am too a grownup!"
Dante L Coyote sits down on the floor, somewhat near the three of them.
You say "Accordin' to who? I'm not tryin"
You say "Tryin' to insult you, it's just different places have different rules."
You say "Yo, Dante."
Dante L Coyote says "Hey, Derrick."
Dillan smirks. "I'm sixteen. They all treat me like I'm eight. Go figure."
Rose says "Where I come from, when a girl can make babies, she's a grownup."
Dante L Coyote wonders where exactly Rose comes from anyway.
You say "Yeah. An' in the US, they don't say you're an adult till you're 18. It varies. Right now, you're under Garou laws, and you're not an adult till you've gone through a Rite of Passage. Someone said varies from like 3-9 months."
Dillan hmphs. "I heard of a Gnawer in the city who's been a cub for three years. I'm aimin' for that at the rate I'm goin'."
Rose looks at her hands. "I'm all messy. I should go clean up."
Derrick glares at Dillan. "Ok. Fine. "Tends to vary.""
Rose has left.
Brian steps in from the porch, closing the front door behind him.
Brian has arrived.
Dillan blinks. "Little touchy there, Derrick?"
You paged Dillan, Brian, and Dante L Coyote with 'Whup. I'm gonna go drive my housemate to the T. Be back in a bit. Mind if I hang out and listen?'.
Brian enters, quietly, through the front door, a couple of academic-looking textbooks held beneath his left arm. His manner is tense and tired, though he does pause in the doorway to place the other denizens of the downstairs by the noise they're making.
Derrick grins. "I'm not. But Rose is. Anyways, I gotta go do stuff. I'll be back in awhile."
Dillan flashes a peace sign. "Werd, holmes, catch ya on the flip."
Derrick wanders out.