The White Haired Witch rolled her head slightly off to one side, eyes hidden in the shadow of her bone-colored bangs. Her lips pursed into a wry line as she gave the Shadow a surreptitious sideways glance, one violet eye squinting lightly while the other went pale. LJ inclined her head slightly at the spirit denizens, a measure of respect for them and their workshop from the campus' alpha female - a guardian to some, queen to others. The place's apex predator to those who didn't agree.



Lilith rubbed the Hisil out of her eye on a shoulder before she turned back to her cousin. She left her repose from the wall with an unhurried push, stalking to the door and killing the lights to the shop on her way out.



Valen's weirdness was starting to get on her nerves. She gave him a cold look before she started back down the corridor to the side entrance they'd come in from. The young wolf pushed her hands into her jacket pockets and let her pace speak for her - she didn't have time for bullshit.



"Let's go meet your friend."



"He ain't my friend," Valen said easily enough, following you along. His eyes caught a reflection of wintery light from outside, gleaming silvery and metallic in the dark when you clicked the lights off, a look of intense focus and motivation visible only briefly before he fell in behind you, final as that. He cracked his knuckles, carefully, one at a time, ignoring your cold look, simply following along. Perhaps he knew how you felt about him, about his ambitions. Hard to say. He didn't seem stupid but he seemed awfully detached.



Walking back out into the snowy cold, Valen bent down to take two big handfuls of snow, starting to carefully compact them together into a snowball as he followed behind you.



"I'm looking forward to trying out that lathe. The blast furnace too," he said off-handedly.



"You can join Shop Club if you're really into it," LJ offered from over her shoulder, though her tone wasn't as friendly as before. "Garvey's got this thing going on after classes. Who knows, you might even make some new friends..."



Lilith's boots crackled lightly through the snow as she shifted the weight of her side pack. She could barely remember how Valentine was back when he was twelve, and he was almost a stranger now. In a way, it hurt, but she coached herself on the way that this was probably for the best. Spirits were already taking notice of him, and the less she seemed to care about the guy, the better.



"I'm already signed up for Metalworking 204 and Components Smelting," he said offhandedly, packing the snow into a tight ball and tossing it idly between his hands, falling in at your side and glancing upward at the cloudy sky, yawning lazily. He put his hands behind his head and looked up at the sky with this dreamy expression that kind of reminded you a little of your mom, when she'd talk about things she coulda woulda shoulda done. Usually she was drunk but he was pretty sober looking despite his obvious exhaustion.



"The prereqs are so annoying...I already did Metal 204 but for some reason they're not transferring that specific credit," he finally complained, showing a hint of spite. "Not that it matters. I'm gonna get the Riggs Prize this year." Oh ho! How ambitious we are! The Riggs Prize was usually awarded to seniors in the sculpting and metalworking sectors of the campus, a prestigious award with a pretty fat grant attached to it.



You'd never heard of a sophomore getting it.



A dark brow raised up under the lip of her beanie. Kay. Huh. Well, at least that kind of confidence and ambition proved that they actually shared some DNA after all. LJ though, she didn't talk big and make declarative statements like that - she just did it.



"So, like, what's your thing, then?"



A glance at you from the side, as if he didn't quite understand what you were saying, furrowing his slender, pretty brows.



"Huh? Like, what do I wanna do here?"



"No," LJ said, not looking back. "Your -thing-. What are you good at, besides talking a good game and being really emo?"



He stopped when you said that, eyes widening slightly.



Looked a little hurt, but pushed it aside, dropping the snowball and shoving his hands in his pockets, looking stonily ahead. "Doesn't matter," he answered coldly, following behind you. "You'll see for yourself and decide if it's any good."



The implication being 'you will', of course.



"Mine's welding," LJ said, not missing a beat. "Shaping. Coming up with crazy shit. Sometimes it's art, sometimes it has a point. Sometimes it's shit - and sometimes it rocks."



"I know," he said calmly. "Your mom talked about it a lot."



"So what's your thing, man?" LJ asked again, a little bit of enthusiasm creeping back into her voice, finally turning to look back with a sliver of an encouraging smile.



viskarenvisla: (Hmm. Presence+Persuasion+1)

Mr. Shopping: (2))



He gazed back at you without enthusiasm, cooled off clearly, but that hint of a smile was infectious - you could feel Pangur shifting within your bag, pressing his ear up against the side to listen. Valen took a moment to consider the question as he unzipped a sidebag on his duffel, withdrawing a green apple in a plastic bag that he withdrew - it had been carefully separated into slices, one of which he withdrew and took a bite from, offering the other parts of the fruit to you, gazing ahead.



Blech.



"Well, I kinda got like, a couple things goin’ I guess," he said hesitantly. Reserved, like he thought you might think it was stupid.



"I really like robots," Valen stated bluntly. "I just think they're really super cool, and I want to make them, that's like the bottom line. Thing is I like things to look good and be beautiful - why should we look at ugly crap all day?" he asked, finally seeming to get into it now that he was talking about his ambitions.



LJ accepted the peace offering with that same errant smile, taking a slice between her fingers and taking a bite. Fruit was sweet but ultimately unsatisfying, as was most food to her kind, apparently. Just raw meat, bloody and hot on your lips. The White Witch didn't partake much - only when she went hunting did prey ever get between her jaws, but instinct was a visceral thing.



You saw shit. Felt it. Wanted it. You lived it in your dreams.



Part of the life. Part of the curse. Part and partial. She'd come to terms with that in her own fucked-up kind of way.



When Valen wasn't looking, she carefully lowered the rest of the apple into her bag for Pangur.



Lilith let him talk, smiling at the surprising irony. Yeah, the ones she was planning on waking weren't robots or anything. They were more like golems. Giants. Terror-machines with hearts of gold. But it gave the White Witch some admiration for the kid. In a weird way they weren't too different after all.



"Momma said something about that."



He nodded wryly, taking another delicate bite of apple, turning it over in his fingers and considering it, nibbling at the edge and removing the skin that he seemed to savor before the flesh. A creature of his senses, this one, flippantly casting the whole slice in his mouth before looking at you dryly. "Aunt Patty talks about like, three things. The dogs, the neighbors and their bullshit, and you. A lot about you. She says you're an inventor, you're a metallurgist, you're a smith like your great great grandpappy, I bet you've heard about grandpappy Walter and his great big hammer."



He didn't laugh out loud but his eyes did the laughing for him as he slid a hand in his pocket.



Pangur was distracted as he munched away at the apple, little eyes gleaming ferally.



LJ rolled her intense, otherworldly violet eyes off to the left before she started down the street again. "Anybody who leaves Steer Creek is big news to them."



Bitterness there. Just a little bit in her voice.



"I know..." he said with clear disdain in his voice, clearly pleased to be out of there, although he gave you a wary glance. Like you still might have had the taint of Steer Creek about you.



"Okay. So what's your thing then really? I wanna hear it straight from your mouth, none of the embellishments."



Black Magic. Shadow Arts. Hisil secrets. Power. Forgotten lore.



The good stuff.



The White Witch shrugged her shoulders, coying it up as she walked ahead of him. She chuckled as she put her hands on her hips.



"The riddles of steel. Mysteries of the universe and all that."



LJ grinned. "I like chill guitar. Trashy TV. Good weed."



"That's my thing."



You heard him laugh behind, clapping his hands twice. "Riddles of steel and mysteries of the universe? Which show is that from?" Valen chuckled into his forearm, a puff of steam exuded against the fabric, gaining control of himself quickly and clearing his throat.



"C'mon, seriously."

"What's your thing?" he prodded, sounding curious about the mystery you presented, catching up to you and looking your way insistently.



Lycanthropy, among other things.



"Get that Riggs Prize," LJ said with a pleasant curve of her lip, "and maybe you'll find out."



He sighed and gave a long, exaggerated roll of his eyes, of his neck at the mysterious nature of your answer. "Alright I'm holding you to that." You knew that Valen was actually interested though...he wouldn't have asked twice if he wasn't, didn't seem like that kind of dude. Maybe a little too smart for his own good, but obviously someone who had some pretty lofty dreams...for a mortal, anyway. Who could blame them though? This immutable, static world was all they'd ever know.



The two of you continued without much speech between you as the world began to wake up a little bit on a Saturday morning. More cars were rolling up and down South Ellis Avenue and the sun was starting to peek through the heavy cloud cover in a few places, even as flurries of snow continued to fall. Your cousin was deeply absorbed in his phone, holding it close to his face and narrowing his eyes, clearly caught up in something as he followed you.



In your bag, almost simultaneously, you felt your cellphone buzz as it received a text message, and Pangur stir, peeking at you with big silver eyes from the confines of the bag. "[Yo LJ. Herald's got stuff to tell you when you got a moment - the Mandarins are in an uproar for some reason.]"



They were always in an uproar for some reason. Despite the infinitely mutable nature of the Hisil, the Mandarins feared change. Anytime something different came along, or something happened that was just a little beyond their sphere of influence or experience, they lost their shit and made a big fucking deal about it.



She'd learned to pay attention though. The White-Haired-Witch had eyes everywhere, and the Mandarins often became their voice. Most of the time, it could be fixed with a few words. Or it took Git and Gatt. But sometimes, it was serious enough that LJ had to go out on the hunt and fix it herself.



Reminded her of the campus serial killer she'd dealt with months ago. That one had been careful; a visiting photography professor who liked to drug his female students and take them to his dungeon to photograph them at the point of death. Motherfucker covered his tracks so well that the police would never have caught on - but LJ had. It'd started like this - quiet ripples in the Shadow that had led her along a dark and winding path that ended with her running him down in the woods on the outskirts of town.



Lilith never enjoyed killing, but tearing him apart had felt good.



The White Witch doubted that this one would be about another serial killer, or a rampaging giant magath, or a schism in the Gauntlet - those were few and far between - but she'd answer the call nonetheless. LJ tousled Pangur's little feline head before she groped for her phone and checked the text as she stepped lightly through the snow.



Ah yes, it's Trisha of course.



You can practically hear her voice crackling and dry, familiar note of complaint running through it even through her texts. 'duuuuuude im so hungover lj, can u plz bring some magic curativez'



Good thing you'd taken care of that photography professor - he'd been getting closer to your strong jawed, bright eyed, energetic friend who'd deigned to take a photography class as part of her major, land surveying or something. Something having to do with buildings, typical of the kind of friends you kept to. Trisha had a good bullshit detector one, strong woman's intuition and something of a fearless streak. All excellent traits for a wolf-blooded ally, and better than that, she was fun. She could dispel bad moods, and she didn't let herself get down easily like Shay who had typical dancer's pathos.



Humans. You'd been one once, but your time in the Hisil had changed you so much, along with this exquisite, terrifying Curse that had redefined your existence. Despite the immutability of the world of flesh, humans were far more unpredictable and prone to sudden shifts than spirits. Friend would always be Friend - Pangur had changed drastically but he was still quite true to his core nature, his behaviors much as they always were, simply refined and 'felinized'. A person could totally transform themselves though, and Trisha was one of those people who'd come from almost as much nothing as you, inner city in her case, with none of your family's love, and overcome it.



Too bad she could be such a lusher on the weekends.



You noticed that your cousin had put away his phone, removed a ring from his hand, and was carefully taping his wrists, trying to be surreptitious about it.



LJ smirked under her bladed white bangs as her fingers danced over the touchscreen of her smartphone.



'Dun worry sista! Dr white, medicine woman is otw'



Send.



She paused, then sent off another one.



'better not be any naked guyz in there. or girls'



You received a response shortly after: 'no such luck, bring me 1 of each plz~'



LJ tucked her phone into her jacket pocket and chuckled little gusts of fog into the freezing morning air. Her sharp violet eyes took momentary notice of Valen wrapping up his wrists.



"Please tell me I'm not bringing you to beat this guy up," Lilith sighed in a monotone.



Valen's eyes flickered behind him, a little frown pulling at the corner of his lips. He didn't like your monotone, especially didn't like that he'd been discovered - must have been used to pulling the wool over the eyes of your less than perceptive fellow Steer Creekers. He simply turned his eyes forward casually and continued to wrap over the backs of his hands. "It's just a precaution. Johnny's a doper. Those kinds of dudes can get a bit overconfident, but I'm not gonna try and start a fight with him or anything," your cousin replied.



She gave him an incredulous look, purple eyes darkened but glinting from under the shadow of her bangs. "Whatever. You want to get suspended on your first day, be my guest," LJ said evenly. The witch was not going to help him out of whatever bullshit he'd gotten himself into.



First impressions were overrated anyway, right?



"I won't get suspended," he deadpanned with a sigh.



"You're kind of a pessimist aren't you," your cousin muttered, giving you something of a serpentine glance as he finished taping up his wrists, felt for something in his coat pocket, and slipping them under his sleeves.



LJ wouldn't even look at him. This type of bullshit was Steer Creek right here, downing a few beers and letting your fists do the talking when you had a problem with someone. She'd expected more from Valen than wanting to start shit even before he'd moved into his dorm.



"Considering you've been here for less than an hour, you won't even tell me what your deal with this guy is, and you're getting ready for a fight?"



"Yeah, maybe."



Valen stopped with a sigh from his nostrils, tapping his foot quietly.



Like he was debating if he should tell you or not.



He sucked in through his teeth and just continued onward, popping out a tin of mints - Altoids, the powerful kind - and biting down on one, offering the tin your direction while looking ahead. "Okay. Here's what's going on," Valen said with an aspish frown as he fell in beside you. "This guy owes me money. Like, enough to cover my rent for the year - that's what I'd been banking on in order to stay here, but he stopped responding to me, won't answer my calls and stuff."



"So, I'm gonna go and try to work it out, see if he can at least give me enough so that I don't have to like, overstay my welcome, scramble for a job, and try to do classes at the same time. Like I said, he's a doper, he might try to take a swing at me."



Valen shrugged, like he didn't have anything to apologize for.



Lilith just kept walking, her gait an easy stalk. She looked at Valen with only a skeptical, sidelong glance, hands warming in her jacket pockets.



"What does he owe you for, Valen?" LJ pressed. It was a lot of money, and that really only meant a couple of things. The answer was going to mean a lot for her rapidly-forming opinion of Valentine - whether or not he was a lot like her or just a piece of Steer Creek shit.



Her eyes were on him now, harsh and hard.



"Not drugs if that's what you're implying," Valen said dryly, unphased by the way you were staring at him, his turn to avert his gaze from you as he shifted his bag on his body, suppressing a yawn with his forearm as he slid his mints back into his pocket, clicking the lid shut. "To help get the money together to come here, I had a cash lending service that I did on the DL at Denver Community College. Johnny here transferred before paying me back what he owed me."



"I had to work for a bit legitimately to make all the money I needed after he hightailed." He seems to gloss over that quickest, like it's the legitimate work part that he really didn't wanna talk about. "So. Here I am. I suspect he has enough to pay me back and then some."



He doesn't like this. He feels embarrassed. You can see it in the way his jaw tightens, how he reaches for another cigarette, but to him it's a necessity to pursue his ambitions.



LJ accepted that, for the most part. Her intense violet eyes softened as she looked back to the snow-covered campus ahead. She nodded, but didn't give any further indication of her feelings. Moneylending. That was kind of enterprising. Not really the kind of thing that college kids normally did. And if you were from Steer Creek? If you couldn't get a free ride like LJ had, shaking down the relations wasn't an option - the branches of that money tree would always be bare. So it was student loans, drugs, or whatever Valen had been up to.



The White Witch could easily help him get his money back. She could also come up with it herself, or call in some favors with her friends on the Other Side to change the information in the university's financial system. Boop. Paid in full. Or she could go Wolf on Johnny doper and put the fear of the darkness in him.



But she wasn't going to do any of that. Valen was his own person and it was his life. Being the White-Haired-Witch didn't mean she needed to help solve everyone's problems. It meant making this place one where people could take care of themselves.



He gauged your reaction, watching you sidelong, expecting you to say something nasty or critical - he'd probably gotten used to that kind of whipping. When you were at the bottom of the totem pole in human society you got kicked left and right. Worse if you were at the bottom of Werewolf society like the Ratcatchers, little Urdaga punks up in Chinatown. When he saw no response was forthcoming he just turned his gaze forward and continued on.



You arrived at the front of the Field House - the Royal Crown was a pretty damn big structure, as might be expected for a place where high jumping, track, and other Olympic sports were practiced. Internal facilities had all the workout stuff you could need, benches and weights, a place to train calisthenics, and of course a nationally famous boxing ring. Of course, today being Saturday there were plenty of kids in the gym. You passed inside the lobby, a dark, typically administratively depressing room with a glass-fronted desk behind which a petite, big eyed girl from the Physics department wearing Chicago U sweats was doing her homework. The big glass door directly in front of you led outside to the track, over which the roof had been closed to protect it from snowfall. Looked like they were playing soccer.



The petite girl at the desk pointed you toward the stairs going down where you heard Metallica playing - typical boxer leadhead music. It stank strongly of sweat, chlorine, gatorade and cleaning supplies. Down a short hallway, locker rooms on either side, until you came into a blue-matted room with two boxing rings. Heavy bags were hung along one wall, and about ten people were here working. At one of the bags was John Brodsky. Shit that guy was fucking big.



He had that sort of...slightly inbred look you could catch in Steer Creek sometimes, although the squished shape of his nose, squinting eyes, and block-like head with its ruff of brown curls were all more distinctive of Tobersville about twenty miles West of the Creek. He was wearing a blue jersey, sleeveless, black stripes over it, boxing gloves over his hands, hugely defined muscles bulging as he slammed left and right hooks into the hanging bag while an equally buff, thickset Latino guy with a thin little moustache, hair shaved down to his scalp held it. "Harder boy, harder!" he encouraged. John slammed the bag hard enough to almost knock him off, laughing and taking a gulp from a yellow bottle of sports drink.



Valen's eyes narrowed to slits, and he let out a hissing from the corner of his mouth, setting his bag down and clearing his throat as he approached, not looking back at you. He cleared his throat once, twice when he didn't get the guy's attention. "John," he said evenly, pushing his hood back, platinum blonde hair catching the light.



Brodsky stopped punching and turned to look at the approaching sophomore. Momentary lack of recognition before an ugly frown came across his face, sighing and rolling his eyes, hand against the bag. "What are you doing here man?" the boxer grunted, gazing down at him like an Ogre upon a stringy peasant.



"I transferred here too. That's not important though," Valen said sharply. "You owe me upwards of ten grand-"



"I don't owe you anything," John chuckled, turning back to punching the bag casually. Valen stared quietly for a bit before opening his duffel bag, withdrawing a plastic envelope and holding it before him.



"I have the agreement you signed and fingerprinted here. With all the interest you owe me $10,450. Come on dude, I need it to get a place to stay."



John just continued to punch the bag, ignoring Valen, acting like he wasn't there. Your cousin's shoulders slumped, seeing he wasn't really getting anywhere. "Look. Can you at least give me some of it? I don't want to crash on someone's couch."



"Sorry dude, don't got it on me," the boxer grunted, his partner unusually quiet as he watched.



"So we'll go to an ATM and you can withdraw-"



John Brodsky turned and shoved Valen roughly by the shoulders, sending him stumbling back. "I can't believe you followed me all the way from Colorado you fucking faggot." Valen tried to regain his balance but was shoved again despite his protests. "You're not official, you're not legal, I don't owe you shit, and you can't do anything. So piss off before I fuck you up."



Lilith leaned her back up against a wall, keeping a comfortable distance with her arms folded over her chest. Her sharp violet eyes watched in an easy, predatory silence. Her nose crinkled at the heavy, stale scent of male sweat and undertones of body odor. She could hear each and every one of their heartbeats thundering in their chests, even blood pumping through their veins. Usually that took focus, but with all that effort and muscle being thrown around, she could pick it up even in Hishu.



As LJ watched with detached interest, she realized that one of two things was about to happen - Valen would either kick this thug's ass or would get the shit beat out of him. If It was the former, color her impressed. The latter? She'd probably make sure that Brodsky paid for it later.



Valen straightened himself out as the rest of the guys in the boxing gym watched, sneering and laughing at this intruder on their tribal grounds. A few high fives were thrown as your cousin fell into consideration, facing the door - he had the same look as you did when you were thinking. No one really paid you any mind - no, not true, they definitely noticed you, they were just afraid to say anything to you. You had that kind of presence.



Valen Gray didn't though. Instead he had a steely, determined look in his eye, like he had expected this would happen. "John," he said, turning around.



"Oh my goood what? What? You're not getting-"



"I bet you $10,000," he began, walking toward the guy fearlessly, puffing his chest out, stopping inches away from him, "that you can't knock me out in five hits."



He laughed in your cousin’s face, rolling his piggish eyes. "Oh fucking please Valentine." Valen's fists clenched at the name. "You'll go down in literally one punch."



You'd heard about John - he had a reputation for those knockout blows. Pangur liked to watch boxing sometimes or MMA, and occasionally the college's own teams fell under his purview, commanding his view from your phone or computer. He was peeking from his bag in interest, at the possibility of your cousin getting knocked out.



"Don't do it man, he'll fuck you up!"



"Back off bro, your hospital bills'll be more than 10k."



"Just go dude."



The other boxers were jeering.



"$10,000," Valen said again evenly, holding his arms open challengingly.



If there was one thing a big, asshole bully like John Brodsky couldn't resist, it was a chance to look like a badass easily. He gave a 'tch', adjusted his gloves, and pulled off his jersey to reveal his freckle-stricken back and muscular body. "Come on, let's get this shit over with. I've been wanting to knock someone the fuck out anyway."



LJ's dark brows raised. He was ballsy, she'd give him that. Making friends on his very first day. She tipped her head in growing interest as the challenge was laid out. Funny how this kind of thing worked on both sides of the Gauntlet.



Thing was, if you got one over on a spirit, they -had- to obey. It was in their DNA, in the rules of their world, as true as any kind of law of physics in that place. Call it LJ's Laws. But here? If Valen was actually still standing after this, the only thing that would make Brodsky pay up was his pride. And most people would put ten grand well before that.



"[Think he'll make it?]" LJ murmured down to Pangur.



Pangur looked up at you grimly and shook his head. "[Hope you had fun bonding, cuz he's bound for vegetable-city.]"



Valen walked eagerly into the ring, pulling his jacket off, revealing a white shirt underneath with an image of a caduceus in gold, scaly serpent wrapped around Hermes' wand. "$20,000 if I can knock you out in five hits." John frowned, clearly not expecting this, but his fellow boxers cheered him on, called him a tank, a bull. "Also, if you decide you don't wanna play John," he sneered, wide mouth giving him the smile of a cobra or something else unwholesome and fierce, "8:30pm. September 24th, Stolton Bridge South."



A grin and a 'ch-chk!' as he made a motion of a camera taking a picture.



Brodsky paled, put in a difficult situation by whatever your cousin had said. For a long time nothing was said as the two of them stood together in the ring.



With a roar, John launched himself at your cousin.