John Barrister

[J.B.] It's a late night, and a quiet night at JB's pawn shop. The man himself is outside. He's surrounded by cats. Mangy, straggly stray cats. He has a can opener in one hand, a stack of cat food cans in the other, and a big mastiff-sized feeding bowl on the ground, cheery cherry red.

Needless to say, John is feeding stray cats.

(SOMEONE HAD TO START!)

[Maya Nevskaja] Winter is setting her talons into the city of Chicago.

It is no longer pleasant to stroll about after sundown but rather a test to survive the cooling wind and rain. It is not yet snowing, but given the mutinous cloud high above, obscuring much of the moon, it seems a given that the weather waits only for days before it begins.

The figure walking the streets of Cabrini-Green is not phased by the cold, if anything she would be one of the few that embraced the changing seasons, the ebb and flow of Gaia -- Maya was never one to question that which would never be understood but simply was. So, she enjoyed the sensation of the cold against her skin -- tanned now, time spent in the sun had given her color, though her hair remained quite black, long and uncombed. Something akin to a wraith, haunting the curbside.

Where she went, and why were mysteries best left unsolved.

There is a healing abrasion on her lower lip, the wound days old at best, and the Godi's knuckles are bruised, scratches decorating the skin. Still, for the most part, the passing months have not changed her. More tanned, perhaps, her hair grown long. In need of bathing, there would be little dispute.

It is the sound of her jewelry, that heralds her proximity to the kinsman. That, and the chorus of spitting felines mingling about his feet.

(I was TYPING!)

[Nessa] Tonight she walks in as much safety as she can manage, with her babies beside her. Furry babies, complete with fangs and muscles and thick black fur. Neither she nor the Alsatians are intact anymore, with their ears tattered and their coats scarred from fights, and her own hand maimed, missing two fingers on her left hand.
If she's married, she sure as hell isnt wearing a ring on the finger that's missing. Too bad too, cause she's less than two months from exploding into motherhood.
In this neighborhood, seeing a woman alone and pregnant isn't that unusual. In fact, maybe its pretty damned common, as she walks towards her home from the direction of the restaurant a few streets over. Every day, her uniform comign and going the same. White shirt doing nothing at all to hide her belly, black pants possibly capable of hiding at least a couple of women inside.
The scent of cheese and onions and cooked cornmeal product in the bag keeps the dogs in line-- until the scent of cats wafts towards them. Something else on the menu?

[J.B.] The cats are half-tame things at best; at worst, they were so feral you couldn't get near them without risking an eye, a finger, or at least your eardrums in the cacophony of spits and hisses that would result. That's how they were two weeks ago, anyway. After two weeks of steady nightly feedings, some have come close enough for the big kinsman to reach out and offer them morsels by hand. Once or twice, the more trusting ones even allowed him to gently scratch behind their nicked ears.

In fact, he was just holding out a chunk of something the can proclaimed to be lamb'n'rice toward a small, tortoiseshell cat when she suddenly arched her back, hissed, and turned and ran. In a matter of seconds the sidewalk is deserted, felines scattering every which way to disappear like ghosts into the shadows and the crevices of the night. One or two of them streak by Nessa and her dogs, pausing only to cast gleaming glares their way.

Barrister gets ruefully to his feet, flicking the morsel of cat food off his fingertips. "You're not much of a cat person, are you?" he asks of the raven-haired Godi, who was most certainly not a cat person.

[Maya Nevskaja] "Sorry," She begins, as the cats flee from such an unnatural creature, darting into alleyways and shadowy nooks to appraise her from a safer distance, eyes flashing distrust and resentment at losing their meal.

"It is instinct for them to run." She defends, though she sounds neither unduly sorry or defensive as her footsteps bring her what she deems a safe distance from John Barrister. Without even her feeblest attempts to coloring her eyes, the Godi appears pale, tired and dirty. Her shirt is torn, and the skin across her belly smeared with what looked suspiciously like dried blood.

The kinwoman across the street warrants her eye, a flare of her nostrils, like a horse tempted to rear back, but instead she lowers herself into a crouch, bracing a hand against the ground and returning her gaze to Barrister. "Are you not well, John Barrister," The foreigner attempting small talk, she seems an awkward conversationalist at the best of times.

[Nessa] Nessa's dogs are not precisely cat-anything either, as they spring into excited happy snapping at the fast food that runs their way. Nessa is nearly jerked off her feet, leaps --some-- and spins to pull them up short with shouts in mixed English and Russian at 'Moose' and 'Squirrel'.
Not a particularly peaceful scene, with leashes tangling and cats wrecking havoc on training and Nessa yelling, one more thing to draw attention to her tribal Breeding, as if Maya could not already tell.
One thing about the Russian kinfolk-- she's still apparently flexible.
The cats are definitely denizens of Cabrini, and continue not to give a damn.

[J.B.] "Me?" Puzzled. "I'm fine." Pause, delicate -- or what might have been delicate, did it not come from John Barrister with his bowling-ball shoulders, his everpresent five o'clock shadow, and his big hairy hands. "You look tired."

Which is a polite way to say: you look like shit.

Across the street, Nessa's German Shepherds explode into barking. J.B. calls across to her with the confident advice of a long-time dog owner, "Give 'em a sharp check on the leash and tell 'em NO."

[Maya Nevskaja] A smile stretches across her face, or what passes for a smile when you are, delicately put, feeling like shit. Her lips curve and bend, and she offers a soft sort of acknowledging sound -- more akin to a grunt than anything else. "I have been traveling for some time."

Courts the Storms Eye slides down to settle against the wall, only her eyes visible behind her nest of hair, glinting up at him like polished beads. There is something of the beast to this woman, even without knowledge of what she truly is beneath the skin. Something not dissimilar to his alley-cats, fed and clothed almost tamed but never quite without the inclination to bite, to return to the wild once more.

"I fear that I look, what is the word," She tilts her chin, wearily amused. "Crappy, da?"

[Nessa] Check on the leash. She does just that, just after her pale, plain face turns from John back to her dogs.
"NYET!" Close enough.
One, then the other. The wild barking cuts back as they get it through their fur-rooted brains that Cat is not their chew toy tonight. Not That cat, at least. Eventually, Nessa has only to untangle the wound-together leashes without losing more appendages in the process, as she does some sort of arcane little untwisting dance just right there on the cracked sidewalk, under the dim light.
Very poor stage.
The whole dance is accompanied by quite a fluent discussion of proper dog behavior in her native language, and none of the explanation allows for the tormenting of their human or the knocking of her over or the ripping of her arms out of their sockets, etc. It gets monotonous, but then, she's never been the most imaginative kinfolk ever, save for that recurring dream about being free.

Agnessa finally calls out to JB, when her tirade and the unwinding is over. "Thank you. Is helpful jerk." Her words compete with a window-shaking car stereo blasting through the so called peace of the night, and fainter music pouring out from an apartment with the windows open, too-sweet s smoke offered to the night. Brotherly love ala closet hydroponic garden.

[J.B.] Maybe this is his cue to offer a flattering denial. No, she looks fantastic. No, she could grace the cover of Vogue and Vanity Fair. No, he's never seen her look better.

"Yes." At least he smiles, wryly, to soften the blow. "You look rather crappy. You look like you could use a shower too, to be honest."

Meanwhile, Nessa is entangling herself in dog leashes. After watching for a few seconds, the gentleman in John Barrister can't take it anymore. He looks both ways and then trots across the street. "Here," he says, and "Give me that leash -- no -- yes, that." After some jumble of arms, leashes, and furry feet, John pulls Moose away from Squirrel and untangles 'his' leash before handing the looped end back to Nessa. He bends to the dogs, and when one stands six-four one has a long way to bend, even to large dogs like these. He gives their heads a rough, affectionate rub if they allow him, and then straightens up.

"Dogs are like kids," he explains, smiling. "You have to be stern sometimes, but you can't be cruel and you can't panic."

[Maya Nevskaja] The Get of Fenris is still lazing against the wall when J.B. leaves her to go tend to the fallen kin across the street. Ah, perhaps that was a presumption of the Godi, to think of her so. But the things she had heard, in passing and in person while living at the Eagles Kinhouse and her own instinctual feeling on the woman labeled her as something to be viewed with considerable suspicion.

Never-mind the baby in her stomach.

Eyes narrow, and she rises to her feet, cracking her neck and rolling tender muscles as she crosses the street in the hulking man's wake. To the stranger's eye, the Godi must appear -- must smell, surely -- like some homeless wanderer. But there is a certain manner in her walk, a confidence with which she puts herself into the woman's line of vision that suggests otherwise.

That, and very few others would deign to reach a hand to place against her swollen stomach with no preamble.

"Not far from birth." Maya's hand is warm against the skin, it prickles before she removes it.

[Nessa] The helpful stranger butts in and she couldn't be happier about it.
In fact, she's rather quiet and content watching him untangle leather from flesh. A gentle smile appears on her too-Shadowlord face, as the man bends down in front of her. On a chilly night like this, she can feel the heat radiating from him, he's so close.
Not bad, for an after work encounter.
When he finally straightens, she's got that endorphin smile going, radiates any number of naturally occuring airborne chemicals. "I will find out about kids soon enough, I think. Thank you. Is nice, you feed cats. They are too skinny. In fact, maybe I think most people are too skinny now." Oh yeah, her blood chemicals tells her that's a very funny joke, and her grin widens to beaming.
"I am Nessa." An offered hand. Dreamy eyes, as a second hand opens inside of her, presses outwards towards the stranger's voice.

[Nessa] Was a presumption, for she hasn't fallen. And instincts can be wrong. Sweet Nessa, kind and gentle and carrying a hell of a lot of knives here and there and with a werewolf's baby in her belly to protect.
However, her dogs like the helpful man just fine and he was talking to this street bum just a few moments before.
She tolerates the rudeness, raises an eyebrow at the rather obvious pronouncement, unaware of exactly how right Maya knows herself to be.
"Da. Not long." Tolerates, but her face tenses as the woman reaches out, one of Nessa's hands, the intact one, hovering near her waist, her gaze direct and firm against Maya. If the Russians-- maybe both Russians-- have met, Nessa does not seem to recall.

[J.B.] (fuck! no one told me i got bumped!)

[J.B.] (and ffs stop posting simultaneously!)

[Maya Nevskaja] (i got booted. :/ )

[J.B.] "John," replies the helpful stranger. He grips the offered hand solidly. He has a firm handshake, John, and his hands are big and wide, with coarse black hair on the back. In fact, he's fairly hairy all over, and though he must attempt to keep himself clean-shaven, by this time of night his jaw sports a heavy beard-shadow that takes more fortunate men days to grow.

Releasing her hand, he turns his attention back to her Shepherds. "Nice dogs. Both boys? I have a hound, myself. Blood- and coonhound mix. He's a mean one, though, not like these." And he gives the nearest dog another scuff on the head.

[Maya Nevskaja] They have not met. Not in the proper sense of the word, not with handshakes as she gets with John, with smiles and polite chit-chat.

Maya does not 'get' chit-chat, it isn't in her programming to toss her hair and smile like some women do, it isn't in her nature to want to participate in such a ritual -- it seems silly, frivolous. The Godi takes her hand with its bruised knuckles from the kinwoman's belly, she scrapes aside a layer of dark eyes to reveal a face that while feral at present, dusty and in need of severe scrubbing, is lovely. Well sculptured cheekbones, a regal set to her mouth, a fine, delicate neck.

Maya Nevskaja could be a beautiful woman.

Were it only for her qualities, such as the perfunctory throw away of her namesake toward the girl -- "I am Maya Nevskaja, you may call me so" -- and perhaps the way she outright stares at Nessa, there is no shielding of blatant interest here. Only raw consideration.

[Nessa] "Hmm. They used to be junkyard dogs, and fought in dog fight place too before i took them away from that." Nessa stares at her suddenly poodly cuddly black beasts with what might be a hint of disappointment. "Boy and girl. Is Moose and Squirrel." Unaware of the rhyme or in fact pretty much poetry in general, Nessa reaches out to pet one of Moose's torn ears.
One of the words doesnt seem to translate well. "Bloody coon hound?" She looks up at him and stares, as if he's just said something pretty damned awful, and she's trying really hard not to say anything.
His hand is furry. A man with a furry hand. First time to shake one of these in a non-crinos or glabros. Nessa peeks at his shadow, then jerks her gaze back to his eyes for a moment till she realizes she is being considered.
Rage low or high, Nessa's head turns to consider Maya right back, calm. Still takes a step back though, a cautious movement from a properly paranoid woman, murmuring, "Nessa."
Maya at least, is not so hairy, for all she's a true furry albeit a messy one just now. Similarly, Nessa has been working too, smells of that distinctly off-work waitress smell of dishwater, cleaner, many different foods and a light sweat, for those with particularly sensitive noses. And, of course, Shadows, though only Maya present could catch that part.
Her damaged hand raises, leashes in hand, to rest on her belly, the baby inside working on dropkicking his own mother, belly button first.

[J.B.] "Oh, no," John hastens to correct her. "Bloodhound/coonhound mix. A mutt?"

[Maya Nevskaja] Maya, it would appear, has tired of the conversation already. She turns her attention to the man of her blood standing beside her. Maybe that, or she's suddenly felt a month's worth of exhaustion and grime, seeping into every pore on her body.

Take your pick.

"John Barrister, may I use your shower?" If the question raises eyebrows, the Godi clearly does not care. And let's not put to delicate a point on the fact that of the three of them, only one could crush a skull with her teeth -- likely more the reason why she pays little heed to reaction.

[Nessa] If it were a Chocolate skull, now...
Nessa though, wild though her spirit is, does not appear in her current condition to be the soul of deadliness. She has no rage, could be potentially tossed into a basketball hoop with her current shape. Might not know she has feet still.
This Maya is very formal-- even Nessa can recognize that. Someone with worse English usage than herself? And with bloodstains? Hmm. Ok so there's danger, but Maya is Interesting now. This kin sort of perks and listens.

[J.B.] You might expect a man like John -- tall, gruff, polite, with the look of a man who works with his hands -- to be puzzled or scandalized or perhaps a little too delighted with such a request. He's nothing of the sort, though. He's lived too long amongst the trueborn Get of Fenris; knows too well their sudden requests and spartan needs. He glances at Maya, nods.

"Yeah, of course." A big square-palmed hand reaches almost automatically into the pocket of his faded denims, and then he remembers his pawn shop. "Just let me close up, ok? Nessa? Could I give you a lift somewhere?" After all, it's cold outside, and the streets were far from safe. And the woman was pregnant, for the love of god.

[Nessa] Here come the thoughts. Stranger, wants to give the woman a 'ride home'. Oh yeah. Sure he does. But her dogs like him. And he was helpful. And if he likes dogs, can he really be all that bad?
Oh yeah. Totally. Axe murderer waiting to get her home. But-- he works ((lives?)) around here.
Like that's a character reference or something.
Squirrel, that Bitch, decides her when the dog pushes up against John and demands more attention with an extortionist growl.
"Da, if is not trouble. I am not far though." Through a gang-ridden neighborhood. "Is appreciated."
This guy though has the ever-formal Maya dropping by for casual showers and John will be possibly joining her shortly. One can make certain assumptions then, right or no. Nessa glances to Maya for her reaction, not quite a permission request, but something.

[Maya Nevskaja] It may well have been the clumsiest attempt to harangue her way into the kinfolk's home that Nessa has ever born witness too. But, with the way the Godi is now observing her battered hands, turning them over and rubbing at the skin, it seems unlikely she has even considered the idea.

Any port in a storm, as long as their blood was your own.

A jerk of her chin is her response to John's request, and Maya's gaze, one dark eye focused upon Nessa studies the Shadowlord as surely as she studies the Godi. It is not uncommon knowledge that there is no close camaraderie existing between the two tribes.

Courts the Storms Eye has little reason to trust the girl; she has seen nothing likewise yet to hold against her. "You should take more care," her voice is low, a Russian's unsympathetic rasp. "You are an easy target to be walking alone at night."

[J.B.] "It's no problem," John replies to Nessa. Then he turns and crosses the street again at a trot. A man of his size could look awkward on the run, but John has a sort of innate, physical confidence. That, and the look of a man who ran five minute miles in his day, and hasn't quite gone to seed yet. The blood of Fenris, after all.

Across the street, the pawn shop's lights darken. The display cases are locked tight, the windows battened down, and a heavy folding iron gate lowered over the front windows. J.B. takes the time to check the locks a final time before going to fetch his car. A few minutes later, a behemoth of a king-cab Silverado rumbles up to the curb where the women (or rather, the woman and the Godi) stand. It's one of those enormous, gas-guzzling trucks with an engine displacement larger than the volume of a human body's blood supply, built as much for comfort as they were for utility. Barrister gets out and, coming around the passenger's side, pulls open both front and back doors to let them in.

"Probably best if we put the dogs in the back," he says, and goes to lower the tailgate.

[Nessa] This wisdom, she cannot deny. Her head nods utter and serious agreement, and black waves, set loose the second she left her workplace, fall forward, pointing away from her pale, plain face. "Next paycheck, i get car. Safer. Until then, I take dogs to work, and they wait for me in alley till I am done." One hand smooths Moose, who isn't all that happy about Maya, hasn't yet relaxed in the garou's presence.
Maya's been in a recent fight, and looks rather, from the living state of her, like she'd won. Blood, hands, messy face, then eyes. One last look over, and then the kin's chin dips in a tiny nod. "Perhaps next time, I hear about your fight, Maya Nevskaja." And that is the closest she's gonna come to voicing rabid curiosity just now, as Nessa takes her leave.
Over to the truck, to the metal behemoth which is probably single handedly draining the oil wells of Texas. She doesn't necessarily approve, but then Pawn Shop John might be using it to haul things for work. Still suspicious of it.
And of being separated from her dogs with a stranger.
AND of the sewer grate right over there, which she goes far around to avoid before circling back to the truck.
The dogs of course could care fuckign less, happy to go wherever the hell the stranger wants them to go, damn it. Nessa sighs, lets the dogs into the back as directed. He opens the door for her-- but she jumps into the truck herself, gymnast that she was. Is. Was--ish. Got some moves on her still, though it probably looks a bit odd now.
"Pawn shop. I have not been in yours before, I think." Ok, well she knows actually rather damned specifically, but she's being polite. What is your procedure for pawning things? Is complicated?"
Like... he wants proof she didnt steal it?

[J.B.] Once the dogs are loaded up, John gets into the driver's seat. The cab is big and spacious, well-appointed, all beige leather and new-car-smell. Newish, anyway. There's also a slight scent of dog inside, and a few short brownish hairs on the seats, the carpeting. It seems J.B. made an exception for letting his own dog ride in the cab.

The dashboard is loaded with bright displays, gauges, dials and screens. The GPS system welcomes him when he turns the key in the ignition and the engine roars back to life, though he ignores it utterly. When Nessa asks about his pawn shop, John Barrister's eyes crinkle in the rearview mirror.

"I don't run a very good one, I'm afraid. I'm not very ruthless about conning little old ladies out of their antique heirlooms and selling it at a grossly inflated price. I just like the stuff. You'd be amazed what people bring in to sell."

When Maya gets in and shuts her door, the smell of unwashed Godi joins the smells of new car, new leather, and hound-mutt. Barrister thumbs his window down a crack, letting a bit of the cold night air in to war with the heated air hissing quietly from the vents.

"So, directions, Nessa?"

[Maya Nevskaja] Nessa chatters on, climbing into the front passenger seat which leaves the Godi with the back, and the rear of one of her dogs, pressed against the window.

Maya climbs in, and swings shut the heavy door with ease. She is a smaller figure that is expected of her tribe, built for speed and not so much for brute strength, the Godi's true power lay in the hands that settled against the front seat, small, delicate devices of lethal power. Perhaps it was that she was such a paradox that some found Maya Nevskaja interesting.

She finds little reason to talk to either John or Nessa, but once or twice he will catch the Godi's eye in the rear view mirror and witness genuine amusement quirking her lips at Nessa's apparent interest in the life and times of John Barrister. "I like your store," she says quietly, finally, her gaze on the passing street, on the hint of moon that escapes the clever netting of cloud. "It is full of stories."

[Nessa] She offers the fastest way to get there, any number of streets over to the miniscule home she rents. "And is little tiny red boxy house, used to be ahh mustard bile color. But has place for my dogs, so.. I am there. And some neighbors are surprisingly not completely unpleasant."
Which is, after all, a very interesting way to describe certain people. Faint sad hint to her expression.
"I have pawned some things, before. I like you do not rip off of elderly women. Is good. " Her face turns towards the window, stares out at the night and the next words are maybe a touch diffident. "Is good here, in Cabrinii Green. Is not all rotten. Hidden. Needs cleaning, repair, paint. But is not all ruined. Some people is good. And places."

[Maya Nevskaja] (okay, I shall BRB! going to order some dinner.)

[J.B.] "Well," Barrister replies with an ironic tilt to his mouth, "I wouldn't go looking too hard for the good in the bad. Especially not at 2 in the morning."

It's a short drive to Agnessa's little cottage. John pulls up to her stairs and sets the handbrake, turning toward the kinwoman. Not that he would know her as such, yet. "It was nice to meet you," he says; a politeness, but one that he pulls off sincerely. "Have a good night."

[J.B.] (i'm probably heading to bed soonishly, myself :P)

[Nessa] This gets John and Maya a sudden bright grin. "Oh? People who give pregnant woman lift home? You think I should not look?" The question is for them both. Something gleeful starts up inside her besides the child.
Finding pleasant happy good sides in people. The ultimate Shadowlord rebellion. Gleeful and naughty grin.
"Yourselves too. Thank you both. Goodnight." Nessa takes time to free the vastly uncomfortable and suspicious Moose and his sweeter bitch from the truck, takes her meal and eyes the couple in the truck one last time.
No kidnappings, murder, finger eating OR sewer monsters! What a nice night!

[J.B.] When the door opens, the engine noise rumbles into the cabin. When Nessa shuts it again with her goodnight and thanks (John replying something about don't-mention-it), the sound insulation is impressive. The doors seal tightly and the engine noise is reduced to a low, smooth rumble.

Barrister watches Nessa let herself in. Then he glances into the rearview mirror, meeting the Godi's eyes in reflection for a beat before he lowers the emergency brake and pulls away from the curb.

"Was she kin?"

[Nessa] Round the house though the gate and to the back-- the kinfolk lets the dogs out for a frolic in there wild outdoor backyard and completely avoids the deathtrap of a porch.
The humming she begins is something terribly hopeful from John Lennon, should anyone be able to find her melody.
Which ispossibly doubtful.

[Breeze] (May I watch?)

[J.B.] (yep, though jacqui's VERY AFK and i'm heading to bed soon :P)

[J.B.] (...okay, i need to crash! dying! JB will let Maya borrow his shower and then give her a lift to wherever if she needs it. thanks for the scene, folks!)