Zoo Grounds

The sign over the locked gates reads "St. Cl ire oo," with the missing letters nowhere to be found. The small abandoned zoo has been home to a sucession of vagrants, drifters, and the occasional gang, and it looks as if each successive resident decided to trash it just before they left. Spray paint both ancient and new scrawls over all the buildings, walkways, and exhibits. Septic puddles remain in some of the exhibits, drains having been clogged years ago. Mosquitoes thrive and swarm. Weeds have long since begun their assault on this abandoned zoo, taking over the green patches and making remarkable progress in the cracked cement. The main offices, simple cinder block constructions, sport only broken windows and cracked tile floors. Everything else has long since been cleaned out or broken; if it had any value whatsoever, it's gone. Even the toilets in the restrooms have been unbolted and carried off to sell for a couple hits of crack cocaine. To the north, the constant buzz of traffic on I-90 intrudes on any conversations. This zoo is little more than a weed-choked, litter-strewn cement wasteland, doomed to be bulldozed some day into a parking lot, office complex, or shopping center as the city grows.

A cracked walkway littered with weeds leads towards the main office. To the northeast, there is a small hole leading out underneath the fence and to the street.

Contents:
Joey
Olga
Flash

Obvious exits:
Main Office Under the Fence

After shaking the twelve-foot-tall, razor-wire-topped fence around the zoo for a bit and poking around in a terribly nosy sort of way, Flash starts climbing the chain links, putting his skinny fingers and pointy-toed boots to good use. The toy light saber hanging from his belt swings liberally.

It's a dreary sort of day today, though it's much warmer now than it was in the morning, and the rainclouds above are a little less threatening. Olga and Joey had just picked their way through the garbage strewn Zoo, and were preparing the difficult entry of the main office, when there's a noise and commotion from the fence blocking the place off from the outside world. Olga spins around and peers off at that the distant figure scaling her fence, and grumbles loudly. "God damn," she says to the girl beside her, before setting across towards the trespasser, bag bouncing against her back as she moves.

Joey narrows her gaze, then falls in step beside the Gnawer. "Someone ya know?" she asks softly.

What is he, a pimp, dressed like that? Or just a retard? And what's with the light saber, which gets jumped and jostles open, the plastic cone-blade extending like something from a bad porno flick? He's a good climber, though, and his hands have nearly reached the top of the fence when Olga and Joey come into view. Pausing, Flash looks through the chain-link at them. "Hello."

Olga threads her way around piles of trash without much attention, or need for it. "Hey, you!" she shouts out at the man on the fence in answer to his greeting, voice loud and angry, like a guard dog's sharp bark. "The hell are you doin'? You're gonna hurt y'rself. Y' aren't welcome here. Go on, get." Her steps don't slow, and she puts on her best angry face to show that she's as much bite as bark, though it's not very convincing.

Flash:

He's tall but gawky, a rail-thin, bit-over-six-foot beanpole with dark blond hair and muddy blue eyes. While he's not out-and-out ugly, he's not particularly handsome, either, and depending on what he's wearing he looks to be anywhere from his late teens to his mid-twenties. His tenor voice, which tends to rise in octave when he's worked up, has an accent that's hard to pin down.

He's dressed himself with an eye for flash and glam today. The shirt's a shimmery silver, and the buttoned vest over that is dark purple with metallic silver threads woven throughout. The red jeans are a bit faded, but the pointy metal toes of his cowboy boots have a nice shine, and the plastic raincoat he wears is a bright, shiny, fire-engine red.

Carrying:
Light Saber

Joey remains quiet and a bit behind Olga, letting her take the lead yup yup, no need to get in on this, she'll just watch.

Flash clings to the fence like a squirrelly monkey, his sharp gaze moving from Olga to Joey and back again. "Where's your shot-gun?" he asks the older of the pair and the obvious leader.

Olga storms on up towards the fence with obvious displeasure. "Left it in my other pants," she snorts back at him, coming to a halt a fair ways off, looking up at the man. She stands there with a bag over her shoulder and a 'kerchief around her head, staring up at him, apparently at a bit of a loss as to what to do next. "God damn it," she repeats to Joey, under her breath, though with little concern for making sure the other can't hear.

"It's just, well, you know... you seemed worried about insurance agents and 'revinooers', so I wondered." Flash's accent is hard to pin down, though he exaggerates a hick drawl for "revinooers". He seems quite happy hanging there on the fence. "I'm not either of those, you'll be happy to note. Just your friendly neighborhood Avon lady."

Natalie ducks through the fence that surrounds the zoo, straightening and tugging at her clothes with irritation. The woman dusts off her jeans before heading toward the others, frowning faintly, though she doesn't speak.

Joey pipes in then, "What ya want buddy? The animals here are all gone, and all that's left is a farm of homosexuals, who'd eat you up in a heartbeat." She smiles sweetly too, which makes the whole thing a little more confusing.

"SWEET!" cries Flash at Joey's 'warning'. He surges up to the top of the fence and startes wriggling, one arm at a time, out of the plastic red raincoat. "Faggot orgy, here I come!"

Olga's much too busy dealing with this peculiar character on the fence to notice Natalie's arrival. She's about to respond to the man's statement when Joey speaks up, and she grins a little at first, though her face quickly droops into a sour frown. "Hey, wait, I'm not a -" she begins to protest at the girl, watching her with knitted eyebrows, when Flash makes his exclamation. "You stay right the fuck where you are," she shouts out at him testily.

"Problem?" the Walker asks quietly, falling into place behind Olga. Her words are aimed at Joey, though she makes no effort to keep her voice down. "Who's the freak? One of yours?"

Flash swings the red plastic coat over the razor-wire topping the fence, getting that far before Olga makes her protest. "You can NOT deny me this, woman. Do you know how long it's been since I've had a good hard anonymous cock up my ass?" With one hand still clinging to the links and his pointed toes still jammed into two more, he fumbles the light saber off his belt and presses the sounds-button with a thumb. "WOOOOM," goes the light saber, threateningly.

Joey was trying to be serious, but no, this guy is too hilarious. She busts out into laughter and shakes her head, "You are a nutcase, you escaped from the ward didn't you?"

"Perhaps he hasn't noticed we're all women," Nat comments loudly.

Olga darts around with a start to regard Natalie, eyes hard, like she were afraid she were somehow in cahoots with the man above, and were stealing her wallet while he distracted her. A brief look of confusion manifests as she recognizes her, and then she darts back towards Flash, and then Joey. "Joe," she chides her in mild censure for she-knows-not-what-anymore, and then she grunts at the man on the chains. "God damn," she repeats again. "I can' kick the shit out of a retard, can I?" she asks the other two women, almost pleadingly.

Flash pauses to study the new arrival, Natalie. "You sure?" Then he turns to Joey. "How do you farm homosexuals anyway?"

"They watch a lot of Bert and Ernie." She looks to the strange man on the fence. "Seriously dude, what'ya want to be in here for? Smells like piss and looks like a barnyard after a twister." [Joey]

Natalie only folds her arms over her belly, though she acknowledges Olga's look with a nod. This is the Gnawer's turf; let her defend it.

Olga's frown only deepens. "Wait, what the hell's that supposed to mean?" she demands of Flash's `You sure?` Her bag drops to the floor with complete disregard for anything that might be in it, and she strolls up to the fence and stands just underneath the man, glaring up at him angrily, eyes darting about as she tries to figure out what to do.

Flash smiles in a way that's either charming or something one would want to slap off his geeky face, depending on mood. "I wanted to feed peanuts to the bears and Oreos to the wolves," he says flippantly, answering Joey's question rather than Olga's. "WOOM CRASH," goes the light saber, on command. "Anyway, nothing wrong with piss. Some of my best friends are pissy."

Joey looks to Olga then, deciding that she is done questioning the guy.

Natalie's contribution - thank you, the Walker - is a calm, "Chocolate's bad for them."

Olga slips from her shoes to reveal dirty bare feet, and with angry mumbles and grumbles she latches onto the fence with her fingers and toes, and begins the frustrating work of scaling it. She moves diagonally so that she's not coming directly up under Flash, but she's not nearly as good at it as he is, so it's slower going. "I gotta talk t' you," she informs him surlily as she mounts up to the top.

"Wouldn't it be more comfortable if I came down there?" Flash asks, head tilting to one side. He looks past Olga to wink broadly at Joey, and then he turns back to Olga, smiling a great big shit-eating smile.

Joey giggles again, though it probably isn't the time for it. She then gives Natalie a look and a nod, before resuming her attention on the show at hand.

Time to let the monkeys play. Nat continues to watch, silently, giving Olga and her new friend all her attention.

With a grunt and a heave Olga brings herself up so that her head's about level with the barbed wire topping the fence, though she doesn't go further for obvious reasons. She looks with some perplexity to see how the strange fellow on top manages it, but with a shake of her head she dismisses it and glares at him. "Look," she says to him angrily, still looking up but not nearly so far, "we gotta get somethin' straight. You like the fence, fine, you sit here; but you take one step down on the other side I'm gonna beat you shitless. Seriously. This's our turf: you're not welcome. There's no cocks for you here," she explains slowly, as if to a small child, returning to a previous point. "Y' understand? No cocks for you here. We don' like you 'nd we want you to go away; and if you get off that fence on the wrong side you ain' gonna be able to remount it."

"Shitless? Beat me shitless?" Flash smirks. "That'd be something, yanno. I have a lot of shit in me. I'm full of it. To the eyeballs. But a'right." He swings one long leg back over the fence to the street-side, awkwardly grasps the handle of the light saber in his teeth, and tugs the plastic raincoat off the razor wire. Then, monkeylike, he scrambles halfway back down the fence and drops the rest of the way.

Olga stares after the departing crazy person, still clinging to the fence. She breathes in short huffs and occasionally looks back down to the two women on the ground. The Theurge waits until Flash is well and truly out of sight, and stays there for a quarter of a minute.

Upon reaching the ground, Flash pushes the 'blade' of the light saber back into its handle and puts back on the raincoat, which shows some definite damage from being used as a buffer against the razor-wire. The cuff of his jeans is ripped, too. Before he goes, he blows a kiss to Joey and promises, "I'll be back."

Joey waves a hand to the fellow. "Not here though. Out there." She nods with a smile and shoves her hands into her pockets. "Guy was crazy."

"It's gotta be me," Nat drawls. "Everywhere I go there's headcases. Came to give my sympathies," she continues, jerking her chin toward Olga. "Heard about Craig."

Olga slowly lowers herself down to the ground with some awkwardness, searching about for her shoes. Her toes reach out to them, careful to step back into them rather than some discarded diaper or food container. She turns with an angry but unfocused glare, which dissolves a bit at Natalie's words. "Thanks," she says rather sullenly. She stands there for a moment, 'nd then she adds, after a bit, as she lifts her bag back up over a shoulder, "Poor guy."

Joey remains quiet now, looking to Natalie with a smile as the condolences are offered.

"Didn't expect to see you in town," says the Walker, eyeing first Joey, then Olga. "She finished with the low down out there?"

Olga shakes her head slowly, and finally jerks her head towards the main office, inviting the others along. "Naw," she answers Natalie, "no, not nearly. Got tired 'f waiting for everyone, though. You heard? Megan's lettin' the kid choose her own Tribe, rather 'an jus' letting us snatch her just because we found her 'nd I'm looking after her." Her face manages not to work itself up into too much of a frown, though, and she sets off towards the only building in the place that doesn't have bars for walls. "So we were hopin' to catch you, 'nd Ali, down in the city. Convenient."

Natalie says, "Maybe she wants to avoid another Josh."

Olga's eyes trace a path along the ground in front of her, picking out her route carefully. "I wouldn' ever make another Josh," she says, though without any aggression in her voice, rather softly, actually.

Joey rocks back and forth, "So, do I get the low down today then Natalie-rhya?" She at least uses the term very quietly, so as not to sound too cultish to any passersby.

Natalie beckons curtly to the cub and follows after Olga without answering.

Zoo - Main Building

The doors to this squat, ugly, single-story, 3,000 square foot cinder block building were stolen long ago. The main doorway has been replaced with thick piece of plywood, warped by weather, time, and decorated with the spray painted words "Rat's Home". The plywood covering really doesn't fit the doorway all that well and one can wriggle past fairly easily, to gain entrance to the building.

The entire place is dark, devoid of water and electricity. All the toilets have been stolen, leaving the building's two bathrooms little more then sad stall-filled rooms, which are surprisingly popular with the local rodent population. All in all, there are about ten offices and what used to be a lunch room within the giant cinder block. Some of the rooms have been blocked off with hanging blankets, while other remain open and show a varying assortment of old mattresses, blankets, and seemingly useless junk. The whole place smells of musty, rotting cloth, and unwashed bodies. The only saving graces to this place are the building's roof, which doesn't seem to leak, the windows in the outer rooms, which save the building from being pitch black inside rather than just dark, and the privacy from the outside, fenced off city.

Obvious exits:
Olga's-Room CAfeteria Renee's-Room Cell Exit

After a moment's indecision, Olga decides to hold open the `door` for Natalie, prying back a section of plywood with some effort, so she can step inside. "Squeaks 's asleep, in 'er cage," she informs the two quietly. "Lyra's been seein' to 'er while I was at the farm; she's gone now, though." As soon as the two are in, Olga squeezes herself and her bag through as well, and lets the board slap shut behind her.

"Not by trying, no." The Walker waits until the 'door' is closed before continuing the outside conversation. "Thanks. --Nah, and give some other cub the same teaching the nutjob did, and you'd end up with something completely different. Anyway. Sa... Thomas just goes to prove that Tribe isn't anything."

Joey looks between the two. "Oh well that's a very encouraging start to this all." A wide smile partners with her words though to show that Joey is not wholly dissuaded by this. She takes a quarter from her pocket then, to start fussing with, always preferring to have busy hands.

The bashing of the previous Glass Walker Elder does go someway towards pacifying Olga, and she even grins a small bit. "Tha's my corner," she says, pointing to one of the cleaner spots in the room. There's not much there but a green crate turned over to provide a seat and a couple of stale-looking garments thrown up against the wall. The pointing hand opens in invitation, and she says, "Sit, sit." Meanwhile she pulls up a pair of crates for Joey and herself as well, lowering herself on to them. She grimaces a little at the place, the smell of urine and garbage, the rotting trash, the rats, and says, with a helpless sort of look, "Sorry 'bout the mess."

"I'll stand, thanks," Nat replies, adopting an 'at ease' posture that puts her carefully no where near the mess. "So. Joey, right? No one's had a chance to tell you not to blab in public yet, huh?" Her eyes flick toward Olga, but the other cliath escapes her censure. For now.

Joey ohs and looks down, "Oh uh, sorry 'bout that Natalie-rhya, I didn't want to seem disrespecting out there, and no one was around at that point, and, I thought I said it soft enough. I knew, I, uh, was between a rock and a hard place?" She plops down on one of the crates offered by the Gnawer and gives the floor a quick looking over.

Natalie grimaces at the girl's choice of location, a quick wrinkling of nose. "It's all right. In public we usually don't bother with titles and such. So. What do you want to know? Which of the Walkers have you talked to already?"

Olga sits herself down as well, but she takes her own crate, seeing as Natalie passes on it. "Zoo isn' exactly public," she says simply, before falling quiet, and looking around at the mess. Her eyes narrow distastefully again, and she then she looks at the other woman expectantly, listening to the two.

Joey shrugs her shoulders, "Tell me what the Walkers thrive with, what they believe, what they follow." She smiles, "How they treat their cubs." She chuckles a little and seems quite unbothered by the mess of the zoo.

The Walker Elder's quiet for a few minutes before she snorts. "...All right. The Walkers - and mind," she adds with an almost apologetic nod toward Olga, "That this is my point of view, not some Gaian let's-all-be-bestest-friends crap - run the City. Gaia grows and changes, and this is what she's evolving into. We chose our territory long ago: this is where the Wyrm concentrates, so this is where Gaia needs us most. Not out in the woods banging on drums and talking to squirrels. Here, taking down the drug dealers and child molesters, making sure that the Wyrm doesn't take any more of what's ours."

Joey hmms for a moment, canting her head to the side. "So what makes you so different from the Gnawers then?" She glances at Olga now as well. "You both live in the city then right? What makes one a Gnawer and not a Walker, or vice versa.?"

Olga opens her mouth but doesn't say anything, she just rubs her hand against her stretched cheek. She listens very carefully to the conversation even as she looks off into the bowels of the office building, pretending not to pay much attention. Her fingers tap against her crate.

Natalie manages to keep her teeth covered when she smiles, though it's an effort. "What makes one person a CEO, and the other a bum? Money and attitude. The Gnawers have information, I'll give them that. But the power in the city - that's us. We run with - you'll forgive the expression - the big dogs. Hell, we are the big dogs."

Joey ohs and nods, "I see. So what would be expected of me as a cub, and growing into uh, thing after cubhood?"

Olga oddly enough doesn't say a word, though her fingers do stop their tapping as Natalie continues her explanation. She's very, very still, for a while there you'd think she isn't even breathing; but, she says nothing.

Nat's eyebrows furrow, she glances toward Olga as if expecting a translation but quickly comes back to Joey. "As a cub? Not a lot. Learn. Listen. Obey. You're ragabash, right? Yeah, so. Figure out where you can make yourself useful, and do it. I'd probably put you with Tony; he's a good guy, even if he doesn't have much spine. Leala's..." Her chin lifts, "not around as much. Our Ragabash make pretty damn fine scouts, and if we can get you set up with a gun, even better. We treat our Kin like family, not doormats. The only thing they can't do for us is get hairy. Got it?"

Joey gives a nod, "Alright." She doesn't seem overly enthusiastic, but she minds her manners more or less. "Well, I never had family before, so don't know rightly how to treat someone like it."

Olga runs her tongue along her teeth, as she tears her gaze away from all the interesting things against the blank wall opposite her and towards the two other Garou. She's quiet except for the few occasional strange noises she makes, a clicking of the tongue, a scratch here and there, and she does her best to seem unobtrusive.

Natalie shifts her weight onto one hip and sighs. "Well, look. You trust yourself, obviously." She doesn't wait for the 'duh'. "Family's like that. I'd trust any Walker to do what's right. That's part of what's wrong with the headcase. I wouldn't trust him farther than I can drop kick my truck in lupus. He doesn't have the first clue about Tribe. But I'd throw myself in front of a train for any of the rest of 'em: Tony, Quentin, Thomas, Leala, Cat. Hell, Jeremy and Rina too. Because they're Tribe. They're family. They're mine. 'Nd I expect that any of them'd do the same for me. If you decide to Walk Amoung the Glass, you'll find out real fast what family means." She winds up, eyes the cub. "Got it?"

Joey gives a nod, "Alright, sounds good. I mean, sounds like you did a good job explaining, will have 'ta think about it still and all. Seems like everyone is real into this family thing. Not sure that means I'll fit in anywhere t' be honest."

Olga emerges from her dirty coccoon to say, "Still think y'd make a good Strider, Joe; but yeah, all 'f us are big on family. You sort 'f have to be; when you gotta depend on others for your life, for more 'an your life, `family`'s the only way t' do it." She scratches again at her cheek and looks to Natalie curiously.

Nat offers the pair a sincere half-smile. "You seem all right, Joey. You'll do." She shifts her attention from Ragabash cub to Cliath Theurge. "You guys figured out who's Elder yet?"

Olga glances quickly towards Natalie and gives her short "No." Eyes turn down then to the floor as her mind whips over some thought or other, obscure and difficult to grasp.

Joey chuckles, "Well thanks, you seem pretty keen yourself Natalie-rhya." She gives a stretch and fusses with her feet a bit, then lets the others get to talking. "We should get some chinese Olga."

From afar, to the room, Olga apologizes for stepping out of order just then; didn't know if Joey was work-idle or not.

The Walker Elder studies Olga for a minute or so. "Well, let us know when you do," then looks back to Joey. "Thanks. You have any questions, want me to add stuff, just let me know. Way Megan has you doing this isn't traditional, but hey." She lifts a shoulder. "Anyway, I gotta get. Gaia watch you."

Olga looks up to watch Natalie leave. "G'bye," she offers weakly, without rising from her seat. She shakes a little as she goes, as if from cold, which isn't surprising given that the zoo lacks heating.

[End of log]