Past Life

[hazlogs]

It is currently 21:31 Pacific Time on Sun Jul 29 2001.

The door to the upstairs is, as usual, locked. Evidently, someone has a key, 
  though, as there's soon the heavy steps of one person and the somewhat 
  lighter steps of another, coming down the stairs. "...Yeah," explains Kaz, 
  "I did the first one, an' then we all hadda crash dead. Ain't gotten much 
  further, but he seemed t'like my throwin' fire, for him."

Malachi isn't asleep, which means he's doing what he usually does when awake 
  and left alone -- pacing. His path keeps him close to the edges of the 
  basement, and is punctuated by an occasional slap or kick against the wall. 
  At the sound of footsteps, though, he stops cold and turns narrow eyes 
  toward the stairs.

Max follows Kaz down the stairs, her brown eyes casually alert, her typical 
  don't-give-a-shit demeanor tenable. "Deja-bondage," she mutters dryly about 
  midway down the steps. She stops and settles on the second to last step as 
  Kaz moves off the stairway in front of her, and, settling her elbows lazily 
  across her knees regards the cub.

Kaz jerks a thumb at Max. "Hey, this here's my packmate, Max. Max, Malachi. 
  Max was stuck somewhere quite like this, only a year ago." There's a brief, 
  "Shit, does time fly" expression on her face, then she shakes her head. 
  "Anyway, so I thought you'd probably be going insane down here, so I brought 
  some books, I brought some food, and I brought some company."

Malachi regards Max for a few moments before turning to Kaz. "I don't want 
  Junior to touch me," he tells her, getting right to the point. "I don't give 
  a fuck if he's the only other fighter or whatever, I /don't/ want him 
  touchin' me an' I don't want him /near/ me."

Kaz is just shucking her backpack off her shoulders as Malachi says this. 
  "Well." There's a pause. "See, I got a problem there. You wanna hear my 
  problem?"

Max's expression remains neutral as she listens to the exchange, making no 
  attempt to insert herself into the discussion just yet.

Malachi folds his arms across his chest, scowling. He's tense, wound up tight. 
  "What?"

Kaz explains, "Well, see, the..." She counts off on her fingers, silently, 
  "Fifth tenet of the litany, it says, in language I'd repeat to my cordial 
  enemies but not to you right now, that basically, you gotta listen and pay 
  attention to and /obey/ your elders. And the," she counts off on her fingers 
  again, though this time it's clear it's for theatrical reasons only, "Eighth 
  tenet, it says /we/ gotta be respectful an' polite t'you, an' treat you 
  /right/, you cubly types. But the thing is, we /all/ gotta have a hand in 
  raisin' you. In teachin' you. You don' gotta /like/ your teachers, you just 
  gotta /cope/ with 'em. I already told him I'd knock his block off if he did 
  something fucked up to you, but I'm sorry, you can't just up and demand, 
  "Hey, he can't teach me." Because he /is/ the only ahroun, an' you're just 
  gonna have to suck it up and deal." After a short pause, she adds, "Look at 
  it this way. You get to hit him all you want, when you're havin' practice 
  sessions with him."

"I din' say he couldn't /teach/ me," Malachi replies, fingers tapping rapidly 
  against his arm. He's apparantly been doing some thinking; unsurprising, 
  considering he has little else to do. "I jus' said I din' want him 
  /touchin'/ me." The cub's frown deepens. "Anyway, Junior said you guys don' 
  even /know/ that I'm a Bone Gnawer. Junior just got lucky 'cos he happened 
  ta /know/ me."

Max's expression goes almost wry, but still she leaves Kaz to do what she's 
  doing and seems respectful of it in a measuring sort of way as she watches 
  Malachi, drawing no attention to herself.

>From afar, Dane calls down the basement stairs. "Hello? Anyone home?"

Kaz shrugs. "We don'. But we've claimed you. Feel free to contact some other 
  tribe an' have them argue with us. Hell, I'll even introduce you to a 
  couple. You already met Alicia an' Dane. But that ain't even the point. 
  Teaching you to fight means he has to touch you. Period. And he's the person 
  gonna be doin' that, nowadays. You wanna appeal to some other tribe, go for 
  it."

At the sound from upstairs, Max shoots a look to Kaz.

Kaz grunts vaguely.

Max rises easily to her feet and clump-clumps quickly back upstairs, taking 
  them two at a time. There is the sound of a key in the lock and the door 
  opening and closing.
Max vanishes up the stairwell to the sanctuary.
Max has left.

Malachi pulls a face and turns away to go back to pacing up and down along the 
  wall, arms folded tightly across his chest.

Kaz regards the cub. "What's so bad about fightin' with him?"

Malachi replies with an unintelligible mutter. His arms unfold as he walks; 
  his fist bangs rhythmically into the wall. "He's a creep," the kid says, 
  more audibly. "A big fuckin' faggy shit-grinning /creep/."

Kaz says, "Well, he tol' /me/ he's straight, an' I believe him. But, more'n 
  that, he could /be/ a fag, and a creep, and /still/ be someone you'd have to 
  learn from. I'm sorry, I'd love to lie to you so I can gain your trust 
  quicker, but that'd just fuck things up in the end. So basically, you gotta 
  deal with him. At least a little."

Malachi slams his fist into the wall again, hard enough to make him grit his 
  teeth in a brief wince of pain. "Figures. Fuckin' /figures/." He hits the 
  wall with his other fist, though not with quite as much force.

Dane appears in the doorway leading to the stairs, arriving from above.
Dane has arrived.
Tyler appears in the doorway leading to the stairs, arriving from above.
Tyler has arrived.
Max appears in the doorway leading to the stairs, arriving from above.
Max has arrived.

Tyler follows Dane down the stairs, squinting his eyes as he looks around the 
  basement.

Dane waves. "Hey. Looks like I'm not the only new guy in town." He gestures at 
  Tyler and stands aside for introductions.

[Tyler]
The demeanor of the man standing before you is as rigid and cold as the body 
  it inhabits. A proud, dark Native American man, probably no older than 19 or 
  20, with a striking mohawk of wet obsidian-black hair, earth-brown skin, and 
  a well-muscled, athletic frame. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, 
  then the bright eyes with impossibly dark irisis of this man epitomize the 
  fact. He wears a pair of blue jeans, dirty and faded but still in good 
  shape, and a pair of heavy hiking boots. About the man's angular and muscled 
  torso is a red flannel shirt, tucked into the jeans; it's button's fastened 
  save for the highest two, and it's sleeves rolled up to the man's strong 
  biceps, revealing aspen-thick scarred forearms, with strong callused hands. 
  He wears a white undershirt beneath the flannel, and a tight necklace of 
  stark-white shells around his neck. He almost never smiles, and his thick 
  eyebrows seem set in anger or contempt. His face is young and clean, but 
  mirrors on a level deeper than perception the hardships he's faced.

Kaz is watching Malachi with a weary, tired look on her face, one that's got 
  worry tied behind her eyes. "Malachi, do me favor and don't kill the wall? 
  Why's it figure?" She doesn't look away from him as she adds, "Yo, Dane. Yo, 
  Pure whoever you are."

Tyler unshoulders his backpack, but doesn't drop it to the floor. He looks at 
  the two people in the basement, his gaze stopping at Malachi for a breif 
  moment, with a breif glimmer of recognition. He says, after a moment, "I'm 
  Tyler Rain-Cougar, Wendigo Full-Moon." He seems a little confused at the 
  casual nature of Kaz's greeting.

Malachi gives the new arrivals a sour, cursory glance, then abruptly sits 
  down. "Nothin'," he says in answer to Kaz. He pulls his knees up to his 
  chest and folds his arms on top of his knees.

Kaz says, "Kaz. Bone Gnawer Galliard, Alpha of Trouble, Daughter of Raccoon, 
  an'," she adds, finally looking away from Malachi to study Tyler, half 
  warily, "Metis. This here's a cub that we've claimed, name of Malachi. 
  Didn't have a 'fetch, exploded in public. He's wonderin' if we got the right 
  to claim him."
Kaz seems to be talking to both Tyler and Dane with this last comment, though 
  more to Dane.


Dane is 5'10", slender, with gray eyes and long dishwater blond hair he keeps 
  tied in a ponytail. He's wearing a parchment-brown t-shirt decorated with 
  the graphic from the "Steal Your Face" album cover, well-worn jeans, and 
  Birkenstocks. A cotton shoulderbag, of the kind sold in head shops as 
  "genuine Peruvian" carries what little he needs away from home.


Dane hrms at the cub thoughtfully. Then he looks at Kaz and cocks an eyebrow. 
  "No fetch? And you caught him before he could do much damage? I don't see a 
  problem so far. Does he show signs of being more suited otherwise?

Kaz shakes her head. "He had a moment yesterday when he had some kinda past 
  lives flashback thing, 'cause of my ears--" A fairly vague comment, that -- 
  "But he don' look like a Get or a Fang or nothin'."

Malachi keeps a sullen silence, watching the others with hooded eyes.

Max retakes her seat on the second-from-the-bottom stair, forearms draped over 
  her knees. While Kaz speaks to Dane and Tyler, Max's attention is across the 
  room on Malachi.

Tyler gives Malachi another look, both emotionless but with the same look of 
  recognition, if only slightly, before turning back to Kaz to listen.

Dane hmms thoughtfully and studies the cub for a moment. "Without a fetch, the 
  wisest thing seems to me to treat him as your tribe's cub, simply because 
  you're the ones who were on the spot. If someone with more understanding of 
  the situation is able to trace his ancestry, that could alter things, but 
  without that, he needs the stability of knowing he's part of a tribe. And 
  yours got elected.

Malachi lifts his head. "Junior jus' got lucky," he says, scowling. "An' that 
  only 'cos he's been chasin' me 'around for years."

Kaz says, "'s what I figured, too. We give a shit about him, we wanna help 
  him, an', well, we're gonna. He's mostly got the problem that he fuckin' 
  hates the tribe's main ahroun, just now --" She snorts, wryly. "The 
  aforementioned Junior -- and wants t'worm his way outta learnin' how to 
  fight from him."

Dane shrugs. "Gaia often works through circumstances. Trust me, kid. You'd 
  much rather have been caught by Junior than by the enemy.

Tyler cross his arms, and nods in agreement with Dane.

Max shoots an incredulous glance Dane's way and then shifts back to rest her 
  elbows on the stair behind her, still silent.

Malachi hrmphs and drops his head back onto his arms, only half his face 
  visible. He mutters something under his breath.

Dane shakes his head with a half-smile. "Think of it this way, Malachi. If you 
  really don't like Junior, then you've got plenty of reason to learn 
  everything you can from him. So you can use it to kick his ass, if you ever 
  learn enough to pull it off.

Kaz mutters, "Bingo."

Tyler turns to Kaz, and after a moment of gathering his thoughts, he asks, and 
  seems to be trying to be either very polite or very descreet about it, "So 
  what is this Sept called....?"

Malachi starts hitting the floor, steadily, with his fist.

Kaz says, "Hidden Walk. But y'know, it's Fog an' secrecy an' alla that shit, 
  so don' ask much more'n that. An' meanwhile," she adds, voice going a little 
  softer, "Malachi, why the /fuck/ are you doin' that?"

Dane cocks an eyebrow. "You know, when I saw them doing that in kung fu 
  movies, it's usually in big bowls of gravel, not on concrete floors."
Dane blinks suddenly as it sinks in. "Wait...Hidden Walk? But...I thought this 
  was the Wheel Renewed?

"Nothin'," Malachi mutters, still pounding at the floor. "Nothin'." Once, 
  twice, again and again, muscles tensing in his arm and shoulder.

Kaz says, eyes still on Malachi, "It renewed itself all the way to something 
  entirely different. Ask me sometime when I ain't tryin'a make sure my cub 
  don' go hurtin' himself." Hesitantly, she moves towards the cub, crouching 
  down near him.

Dane nods and leans against the nearest wall, where he can watch the cub 
  without interfering.

Tyler seems a little impatient, or agitated, but also seems content to sit and 
  watch, for the time being.

Malachi abruptly stops hitting the floor. Suddenly his shoulders hunch upward 
  and his head retracts like he's trying to withdraw it into his body. "You 
  know..." His voice has lowered in pitch. "I've been in cee-ment jails 
  before." He doesn't look at Kaz as he speaks. He doesn't look at anyone.

Tyler gives the cub a strange look, and cocks his head to one side.

Both eyebrows raise. "Well," says Kaz. "Speakin'a past lives. Whozis?"

Max stirs where she's perched on the stairs. Still she remains quiet.

Dane hmms softly and focuses his attention on the cub.

"...You know what them gooks would do?" The voice is still Malachi's, but the 
  accent's definitely from somewhere else, the South, maybe. "They would take 
  their fist..." He demonstrates, raising the fist that was pounding the floor 
  and bringing it up until it's inches from his face, middle knuckle aimed at 
  the bridge of his nose. Slowly, his fist squeezes tighter until the knuckles 
  are white. His eyes focus on his fist; his voice growls with anger. "And 
  then..." The fist moves as though of its own volition, hitting him smack on 
  the bridge of his glasses.

Tyler doesn't even flinch, but continues to watch with moderate interest.

Max rises to her feet at that. "Visiting hours is up," she announces blithely. 
  "Make sure you have all belongings and exit the vehicle to the left." She 
  monotones an amusement park ride operator and gestures to the stairs.

"Awright, everyone who ain't a Gnawer, get the fuck out," growls Kaz, who then 
  grabs for Mal's arms, trying to restrain him.

Tyler scowls at Kaz, but shoulders his backpack, and makes a slow turn before 
  heading to the stairs.

Dane nods...and heads for the door.
Dane vanishes up the stairwell to the sanctuary.
Dane has left.
Tyler vanishes up the stairwell to the sanctuary.
Tyler has left.

Max follows the duo upstairs and then relocks the door before heading back down.

Malachi is restrained easily enough; though his arms tense, he's not strong 
  enough to break Kaz's grip. Instead he bares his teeth and starts to laugh, 
  humorlessly. "They tried everything eventually... that cold sumbitch Giam 
  would devise new way to make me talk every week... pull out my claws... pull 
  out my teeth... he loved to watch 'em grow back in... hurt like hell..." He 
  looks up toward the ceiling, eyes glazed, grinning. "Never did talk, though. 
  That dink bastard was in /bed/ with the fucking Wyrm. Most of them fucking 
  Commies were. But I didn't talk." He snorts laughter again, staring around. 
  "You guys... heh. Fucking amateurs."

Kaz growls, softly, still with her arms restraining him, "You ain't in 'Nam, 
  you ain't /been/ to 'Nam, and we ain't none of us no fuckin' Wyrm ridden 
  assholes. You're /Malachi/, not whoever the fuck's takin' him over right 
  now. I ain't puttin' up with no fuckhead tryin' to live his life for him. 
  It's /his/."

Max approaches Kaz and Malachi, noting in mini-soliloquey, "That's messed up." 
  She crouches on the other side of him from Kaz. "Word, puppy-boy. You got 
  the market cornered on bouquet-o-/you/. Any o' you in there figured out we 
  ain't wyrm-ulated?"

Malachi goes rigid. Very quickly, he rattles off, "Kreiner, Peter. Lieutenant. 
  Serial number four-seven-three--" He stops and grimaces. "My nose hurts." 
  And that last is pure Malachi.

Kaz lets go, almost immediately upon hearing Malachi's tones again. "Well, 
  fuck, hi kid. You wanna see if we can talk you into shifting, so you can 
  heal that nose of yours?"

Malachi pulls himself away from Kaz and turns around, peering at her 
  suspiciously as he rubs the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses askew in 
  the process. "Who th' fuck hit me?"

Max takes this in with a bit of that semi-incredulous expression once more.

Kaz hits her forehead with the heel of her palm. "You are /so/ fuckin' not 
  gonna believe me. And you're just gonna stare at me and go, "Fuck off," or 
  something. But /you/ did. It, well, remember me mentionin' past lives? 
  Those're memories of people you used t'be, an' sometimes, they can take you 
  over. An', well, you had a visitor who liked us even less'n you did. I mean, 
  fuck, I don't /hit/ cubs, an' Max was off somewhere else entirely."

Malachi straightens his glasses, frowning; his eyes twitch from Kaz to Max and 
  back again. He doesn't, apparantly, have anything to say to this. But at 
  least nothing is better than 'fuck off'.

Kaz glances at Max.

Max meets Kaz's glance easily, as if she was expecting it. "Depends if Malachi 
  wants to know the rules o' the game or if he wants to know how to play the 
  fucker more." She looks to Malachi, offsetting the fact that she's talking 
  about him by turning to the question /to/ him.

Max seems to answer an inferred question.

Malachi gives Max a frowningly puzzled look. "Huh?"

Kaz grins faintly, and sits down again, evidently deferring to her packmate to 
  explain what she meant.

Max meets Malachi's tense gaze evenly. "Dude. Life's a game. You been playin' 
  blind. We's just here to give you the rules, Zee 'n me. Zee rocks that boat. 
  I's more into the /playin'/. Makes sittin' in this hole more tol'rable 'n 
  gets you outa here that much faster." Now the ragabash shrugs. "'n I ain't 
  in sayin' I's in your head at all, here, but when I was a puppy, all I could 
  think about was gettin' out."

Malachi clenches his fists. He's not close enough to a wall to hit it, though 
  it damn well looks like he wants to. "I want to get out /now/," he says, 
  gritting his teeth. "It /stinks/ in here. It stinks and it's too damn 
  /hard/." He emphasizes the last word with a stomp of one bare foot against 
  the floor.

Kaz shakes her head. "Ain't happenin'. Not yet. Gotta learn the Litany, gotta 
  prove you ain't gonna bolt. Gotta prove you got a handle on y'self, at least 
  a little. /Then/ we can spring you."

Max nods her head in agreement, "Fuckin' A you wanna get out." She pauses when 
  Kaz speaks, all the while watching Malachi. "She ain't lyin', Mal. Fact is, 
  she blew me out /early/ cuz I had jus' the same feelin' you had 'bout bein' 
  in a cage. You jus' gotta do those things. You gotta be a Sponge."

"GRAH!" In a spasm of rage, lacking anything else to throw, the cub rips off 
  his glasses and hurls them across the room. "I don't /wanna/ be a fuckin' 
  /sponge/! I wanna get /out/ of here. It /stinks/, it fuckin' /stinks/."

Kaz doesn't flinch; she just watches him. "You'll get out. Once you've learned 
  the Litany. Once you've proved you can cope. I /know/ it fuckin' sucks -- I 
  got locked up in a damn train station for a month. I fuckin' know the 
  /feeling/, Malachi. But it's gotta be done."

Max's expression is frank yet somewhat sympathetic for a brief moment. "Yeah? 
  You learn anything yet? You got a brain cell in there that's focused right 
  here, right now? Listen closely, Sponge, cuz I's gonna say it real slow 'n 
  easy. The way out's parta the game. You's playin' whether you wanna or not. 
  Don't learn nothin', sit right here in this shithole. Learn somethin', get 
  out." She pauses. "In the meantime, you wanna hit somethin? You hit me."

Malachi, face twisted into a grimace, runs his fingers back through his short 
  fuzz-hair, fingers clenched like he'd grip it and pull if it was long 
  enough. "Fuck," he says. "Fuckfuckfuck." Then, abruptly, "I don' wanna talk 
  anymore. Leave me alone. I don' wanna talk anymore right now."

Max seems content with that. She swings around and settles beside Malachi -- 
  though not in his personal space -- her back to the wall. Reaching down the 
  front of her shirt she pulls out a stainless steel lighter and flicks it 
  open and shut again, gazing across the half-finished basement without much 
  of an apparent care in the world. The only sound from her is the occasional 
  chink-chink of the lighter opening and closing.

Malachi, with another muttered, "Leave me alone," retreats to the corner where 
  a blanket lies crumpled; his foot steps within inches of his glasses. 
  Ignoring them, the cub curls up with his back to the room, not quite fetal.

Kaz says, "Yeah, sure, fine," and leans against the wall herself, looking as 
  if she might fall asleep at any moment.