Cockroach Mansion -- Downstairs

The heavy, dark opulence to this mansion known as Dominion is perfectly exemplified by the room vistors first enter, this front hall. Dark-stained wood serves as paneling on the walls, gleams with high gloss in the hardwood floor, and supports a semi-circular balcony in carved pillars. The heavy double doors, made of oak, open into the hall from the south, opposite the huge, hourglass-shaped staircase composed of red and black gneiss which soars up to the balcony; both are fenced in with a wooden railing of simple spiraled posts. Several doorways can be made out on the second floor, nearly blending in discreetly with the back wall. The wall to the left of the front doors is composed entirely of windows which run from the forty-foot-tall domed dark wood ceiling to the floor; if drawn, the heavy velvet drapes of deep red would completely mask them from view, but when parted, as they often are, one has a marvelous view of the grounds outside.

A doorway to the right of the front doors leads to a parlor, and towards the back are the kitchens, the large dining room, and Salem's office.

(+views set)

Contents:
Anthony
Salem
Cat

Obvious exits:
Tower Stairway Salem's Office Front Doors

Anthony stops for a moment, glancing back at Salem, then turns to face the staircase. "Hey," he says casually, heading towards the two on the steps.

Cat stares at Anthony like he doesn't recognize the cliath, and looks back at Salem again. "Months?" he repeats weakly, as he clings to optimistic threads. "Was she on a really long Rite? She'll come back though, won't she?"

Salem grimaces a bit. "I have no idea," he says to Cat, his voice edging toward impatience. "I'd ask Alicia, if I were you."

Anthony walks up to the staircase and leans against the bannister, draping his jacket over it and resting his arms on it. "So... what's going on?"

A key rattles in the lock; a moment later Nat comes in, shoulder leading the way. As usual in this mild weather the Galliard's coat is worn, but left unzipped. A short struggle with the key and lock, and the door clicks closed behind her, the woman heading for the staircase.

There's a cub on the staircase, and an Elder and a cliath leaning against it. Cat grasps the ball very, very tightly, and just mumbles "Okay," back at Salem, before observing his shoes sullenly. There's also a crude slingshot (two rulers taped together) on the floor next to the boy's feet.

Salem gives the arriving Galliard a smile, then cocks his head, hearing a ring from the direction of his office. He excuses himself and heads that way.

Salem disappears into the office at the back of the house.

"Evening," Nat announces herself, giving the cub a faint frown and Salem's back an equally faint nod. "Hey Anthony - just got back from the farmhouse. Saw Josh."

"Oh, really? And?" Anthony asks, looking up at Natalie curiously, pushing himself up off the bannister.

Cat's quiet as Salem leaves and the two adults begin to talk...suddenly he bolts upstairs, leaving the makeshift slingshot at the bottom of the staircase as proof he was there.

"Wait!" Nat calls - too late? - reaching toward the boy as he makes his attempt. "Are you Cat?"

Somewhere far upstairs is the slam of a door.

"Yeah, that was Cat," Tony says, scratching his head at the sudden departure. "He doesn't like strangers. Or me." He leans down to grab the left-behind contraption.

Natalie comes to stand beside the Ragabash, leaning on the bannister and peering upward. "Lovely. Well, you're strange, but I dunno about a stranger." She grins sidelong at him and 'bumps' her hips his way. "Oh, and Josh. Sheesh. Don't get me started on him."

"How's he doing?" The ruler-slingshot gets a cursory examination, and Tony moves to sit on the steps as he starts to unravel the tape holding it together.

Natalie sets her chin on her folded arms. "Annoying as ever. 'F it weren't for the fact that he looks like he got hit by a semi, I'd've popped him one. Plus I hear it's bad juju to do any shifting in that house."

Anthony crumples the tape into a ball and puts the rulers aside. "You should've popped him one anyway; on top of what he's got already, another smack shouldn't set him back too far," he says, sprawling back on the stairs and spreading out his arms.

"Not if he's supposed to Rite... what, Saturday? While I'm sure it'd be amusing to send an Ahroun off with both his legs and his nose broken, I believe Salem would make the frowny face he does so well." She tilts her head to consider the stairway. "Should we go up after him?"

"I dunno. If you really want to talk to him, go ahead," Tony says, shrugging at Natalie.

Natalie says, "I should." But she doesn't make any move to go up the steps. "And that's supposed to Rite too? Shee." In a lightning-swift change of subject she wonders, "When'd you get into town, by the way? How long've you been here?"

"Some time between Christmas and New Year's, so I guess that's... January, February... two months?" Tony says, counting out both months on his fingers.

"Six weeks," the Galliard corrects, then immediately contradicts herself. "No, you're right. Closer to two months. My brain thinks it's the teens still." She sighs as she looks up the stairs once more. "Gaia bless us all. First time I've seen the cub, and he runs off. Is it my breath?"

"No, I don't think so." A beat. "It's your armpits," Tony amends, his mouth widening into a grin as he slides along the stairs to the bannister opposite Natalie.

Natalie snorts and aims a kick at him through the wood, one designed to miss. "And I just got a new bottle, too. Well, c'mon. Let's go see if we can pry this Cliath-to-be out of his room. I'll knock on the door, you stand behind me making scary faces."

"Any excuse to make scary faces is a good one." Anthony pushes himself up off the staircase with a grunt, looking up the staircase thoughtfully.

"C'mon, then," the Galliard orders as she heads up the stairs. At the top she stops, stymied by the sight of open and closed doors all along the hallway. "Uh... you know which one of these is his? Or d'you think he went higher?"

Anthony follows behind, making it to the top a few steps behind Natalie. "Um. It's that one, I think?" he says, pointing at one of the closed doors. "Or was it that one? Wait. Yeah. This one. That one was Josh's." He passes Nat and stands beside the correct door.

Natalie shrugs, a 'what the hell' shoulder lift, and gives the indicated door frame a sharp rap. "Y'get three chances. And then you have to go down and knock on Salem's door and make scary faces for him." Dire threat indeed, but there's no heat behind her words.

There's a slight noise of papers falling. "G'way," are the muffled, empty words.

"On the first try and everything," Tony says, cheerful at his small success. He takes a step back so that he's not in the way of the door when it opens.

Natalie cheerfully accuses him of being a, "Lucky bastard," before giving the frame another sharp knock. "'Fraid not, kiddo. Not before I've gotten a decent intro." She adds a sotto-voiced, "My cubs are going to learn decent manners, dammit."

"Nayercub," is that same, sullen voice again. There're two muffled sobs. "Jus lemme alone."

Anthony glowers at the door. "Come on, at least say hi," he insists, folding his arms.

Natalie murmurs, "Nayer cub??" before rapping on the door again. Someone cannot take a hint.

The crying noises soften, but no words are spoken. Clearly he's praying that they'll just go away.

"We could always break the door down," Tony says a bit loudly, intending to be heard inside the room as well.

"Not a bad idea," Nat agrees, equally loudly. "Oh no, wait. Salem'd make us replace it." What about another rat-a-tat? Yes, that'll do.

With a reluctant sob, there's a click of the lock and the door moves slightly inward, springing open as the lock is released.

Anthony starts to say something else, but the click interrupts him, and he turns expectantly to look at the door.

Natalie grins at the Ragabash, then gently pushes on the door. "Of course, replacing it wouldn't be much of a problem." Door swings open, and she transfers that grin inside. "That's better. You must be Cat."

The room is dark- with no windows and the lights off, only the light of the hallway comes spilling in. The floor is littered with scattered sketches, paper airplanes, notebooks and shirts and socks and books. The bed is in the corner. Cat's curled up in a tangle of bedsheets and papers, hugging a stuffed Golden Retriever plush tightly and sobbing. It's unclear how he unlocked the door, since it appears he's been crying in the bed for some time.

He sits up slowly, rubbing at his face and glaring balefully at Anthony and the grinning Natalie. "Please just leave me alone," Cat whispers.

Anthony sidesteps and peers over Natalie's shoulder into the room, chewing his lip thoughtfully. "Pretty messy," he notes, somewhat randomly.

Natalie says, "I'll say. What's the deal, Cat? You mind giving me a real introduction? I don't leave people alone in dank pigsties until we've at least exchanged names." One blessing, at least: she doesn't reach over to flick on the light. "I promise I won't bite much harder."

Cat just stares at them... then wearily, gives up. "Cat Hopkins, Theurge cub, Glass Walkers," he sniffs, giving the plushie an extra hard squeeze. "An' I like my room."

"What do they call you on four feet?" The woman presses gently, but as promised, doesn't leave the doorway. "Don't forget that, please."

Anthony idly backs up from the doorway and leans against the opposite wall, hands behind his back.

"Nobody calls me anything on four feet," Cat shoots back defensively. "I'm Cat."

Natalie's eyebrows head skyward. "Really? Well, when I'm on four feet they call me Holds-the-Line. Otherwise it's Natalie Baker. Galliard and Cliath." She pushes off the doorway, checking over her shoulder for the Ragabash. "What about you, Tony? It's Shakes-the-Earth, isn't it?"

"That's what they call me," Anthony agrees, nodding slightly from his spot in the hallway.

Cat groans weakly and buries his head in the covers and the plushie dog. "Leave me alone," he repeats, starting to cry again. It's the furious, frustrated kind of crying, laced thick with fear. "Jus' lemme alone..."

Natalie considers the sobbing cub with a mixture of concern and derision plain on her face. Once more she looks to Tony for advice, jerking her head toward Cat in an 'any ideas?' sort of way.

Anthony stands on his toes to try to see what the fuss is in Cat's room. He shrugs stiffly, arms remaining behind his back.

Natalie returns the shrug before reaching out to pull Cat's door closed. "After you, m'sieur."

Cat's frustration finally boils over- snatching up the closest object, a short book titled 'The Mysterious Flame' and throws it at them. "Leave me alone!" he shouts angrily. "Y'don't even -care- that she's dead an' nobody even -told- me - lemme alone!"

Anthony gives the doorway a good long contemplative stare. "Geesh, what was his problem," he muses aloud as he starts shuffling towards the head of the stairs.

Natalie doesn't leave Cat's door immediately, though she jumps at the sound of the door thumping against the wood. "We have," she doth declare, "Some really messed up cubs." She reaches for the doorknob, then thinks better and turns to follow Tony. "I take it you've no idea what the hell he's talking about?"

"When I got here, Salem and him were talking about someone that had disappeared, I think," Tony recounts as he starts back down the stairs. "I came in on the tail end of the conversation, though, so I don't know who exactly or why..."

Natalie huhs as she trots down. "Nevertheless, messed up. I see now why Jer's so hot that I train Kat - Katrine - properly. Compared to the two boys, she's a paragon of sanity."

"Jeremy wanted me to straighten out Josh, but look how that turned out," Anthony says, rubbing his shoulder absentmindedly. "Then again, he was a nutcase when he got here..."

Natalie snorts. "And now he's a bastard. So, really, two thumbs up for you. I don't think you could've done any better. You wanna go sit, or hang out in the kitchen?"

"I dunno, whatever," Tony says somewhat dismissively, arriving at the bottom of the stairs and stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Whatever you'd like."

Natalie comes up behind him, grabs at Tony's upper arm to stop him drifting away. "No, really, I mean that. Honest. He's one whacked-up git, and I've been fantasizing about shoving him off on some other tribe since the day I met him."

"I didn't know that was a good thing," Anthony remarks somewhat confusedly, glancing over his shoulder first at the hand on his arm, then the person attached to it.

Natalie releases him, but not without giving the arm a friendly tap. "What, that he's a bastard now, instead of just a nutcase? Maybe he's a bastard nutcase. ...Say, d'you know what this name is he's so... so wacky over? He made this huge deal this afternoon over how it was worse than calling him a charach, and how he'd renounced it, and blah blah blah. He says that's the reason that he got into the fight with that Metis."

"Wrestles-with-Wolves or something like that. No idea why he hates it so much." Anthony scratches his head. "Well... maybe kind of an idea... he got it from some Get chick that Salem had come over to try to teach him how to shift. I had tried, but all I got him to do was panic and frenzy on me..." He starts to head towards the kitchen. "And then he got packed up and sent to the farmhouse and now he's all granola-and-treehugs and doesn't want to come back."

"Cry me a river. Y'think there's any way..." She drops her voice as they pass Salem's office, "To foist him off? He's no Walker, not with that attitude. We don't need an Ahroun like that. Did he have a Fetch?"

"We're stuck with him," Tony says, none too cheerfully, dropping his voice down a few notches as well. "Apparently if Josh doesn't end up a Walker one way or another, Salem'll have to answer to some Shadow Lord guy Josh conveniently made friends with, is what I heard."

Natalie says, "I dunno, if I were Salem, I'd be thinking reeeal hard about my options right about now." She slings into a chair, propping her elbows on the table. "I mean, Shadow Lord. Twisty backstabbing bastard. Or we end up with Josh. Argumentative nutcase bastard. How, really, is this any better?"

"Or Josh fails his Rite of Passage, gets culled, dies a Walker on a technicality, we don't have to deal with him, and everyone's happy." Anthony roots around in the fridge, speaking about the possible death rather casually.

"I like the way you think!" "--So, what d'you think it'd take to convince Salem?"

"I would be surprised if he hadn't thought of this already," Tony says, producing a carton of orange juice, which he drops onto the counter as he goes to search for a glass.

Natalie sets her chin on her fists, elbows still on the table, and watches him perambulate. "Damn, I hope so. Because if he comes out of this Rite and I have to deal with his snot-nose attitude, I'm gonna frenzy on his butt, and I won't stop until he's a lot of leeetle tiny bits."

"It's too bad he's an Ahroun; if he were anything else, we could just stick him in a closet with a computer and a bag of chips and tell him to hack the whatever-it-is people like Jeremy hack," Tony says, finding the cupboard with glasses in it, carefully taking one and setting it on the counter beside the carton.

Natalie, unfortunately, is all about the logic. "Except that you're Ragabash, I'm Galliard, and both of us get glazed eyes when Jer really gets going. And somehow I don't think Sits-in-the-dark-and-sulks upstairs is all about the gigabytes. Which leaves Philodox."

"Salem's a Philodox. But he used to be a Ahroun, too." Tony takes the glass back with him to the table, pulling out a chair for himself. "But anyway."

Alicia enters the mansion from the outside.

Natalie sits up like she's just been goosed. "He what? What's the story there?" A quick glance at her watch makes her add, "Crap, but make it short. I've got to get up early for a job tomorrow. Hopefully a job tomorrow."

The buzzer goes off at the gate a few times.

"Something with leeches and a chick and I really wasn't paying attention at the moot when he was saying it, but I heard it was pretty interesting." He leans back in his chair a little to look down the hall into the entryway.7

"Proof that you're," Nat begins, only to be interrupted by the buzzer. "Uh - you expecting anyone?" Clearly she isn't, but she eels out of her chair and toward the front door anyway.

"No..." Anthony shrugs as Natalie goes to get the door, going back to nursing his orange juice.

On the monitor outside is a young woman that appears to be in her early twenties, wearing a long white trench coat, blue jeans and a baggy sweater. Her hair flips about in the breeze, eyes darting around the mansion as she reaches out to tap the buzzer again.

Natalie eyes the monitor dubiously. "S'nobody I know. You wanna c'mere, Tony? It's some girl. 'Bout my age, maybe."

Anthony puts down the glass and walks briskly into the entry room, heading towards the door as well, peering at the screen. "Huh. That's... uh, what's her name, Alicia. Wonder what she'd be doing here?" He answers the buzzer. "Yeah, what?" he says into the intercom, none too smoothly.

"Hey there!" Comes a happy voice into the speaker. "Open up or something. Its me, Alicia. Is Salem there?"

"He's busy," is Tony's reply. "Whattaya need?"

Natalie keeps out of this one, except to wonder off-mic, "Alicia? Who's she?"

"Wow. Warm welcome I got here." Alicia says rather bluntly into the intercom. "Well, ask him if he can unbusy himself. This is important."

Anthony turns off the intercom for a moment. "I guess I should, uh, go check with Salem, maybe," Tony says with a shrug, barking a quick "One sec," into the intercom before heading off to the office.

A loud sigh echos from behind the intercom. The girl crosses her arms, flopping herself against the gate as she stares up at the heavens. "Geez, an here I thought being a Fostern would at least get the door open."

Natalie wordlessly watches the self-proclaimed 'Fostern' while Tony fetches the Elder. "Look, I'll watch her until Salem's made his decision, but then I'm heading up to bed. Five o'clock's not getting any later."

Anthony pauses, looking at the door to Salem's office dubiously before retreating to the intercom. "You know what, just come in," he says to Alicia, unlocking the gate. "I'm leaving now anyway, so if Salem doesn't like it, he won't have anyone around to blame," he explains in an aside to Nat.

"Cool beans." Alicia says, striding through the gate doors and heading towards the doorway. She gives it a slight knocking upon reaching the porch, clearing her throat. "Will I need a password to get through this one? Maybe a retinal scan?" She jokes loudly past the wood.

"Well, hell." Nat frowns at the figure heading up the path, then announcing itself loudly at the door. "I'm going to bed, you're leaving, Salem's got his door closed, and Sulks-in-the-dark's upstairs. I dunno exactly what she thinks she's getting, but. Watch my back, wouldja?" That said, she pulls the door half open, heedless of the cold night air, and frowns at the other woman.

Anthony slips on his jacket and stands near the open front door, waiting for Alicia to enter before exiting himself. "Salem's office is over there," he explains, gesturing vaguely at the bank of doors at the other end of the room.

"Hi to you too." Alicia says as she steps past Natalie, stretching herself out with a soft yawn. "I love the new digs. Looks like ya'll came a long way. Hey Tony, nice seeing you gain'." She says, nodding her head over to him. "So, whats up? I hear you all got Wyrm tainted Russian's ontop of the ninja gaiden wannabe katana's group that I've just about got done dealing with. Shit. Its like an uphill climb sometimes just to finish a single task." She glances between then, then juts out a hand towards Natalie.

"Have fun with Salem," Tony says as he backs out of the front door, disregarding the attempt at cheery conversation.

"Coward!" Nat calls after him, closing the door with a displeased not-quite-a-slam. The look she turns on Alicia is most definitely Not Pleased. "Look, I don't know who you are, but it's late. Where I come from, phone calls and personal visits after ten means someone's died. I suggest you go deliver your news to Salem. I am going to bed." She heads for the stairs, remembering to add a slightly-more-polite, "Good night."

[End of log]