Michelle hated going to Pawtuckaway.

One hand surfing the breeze out the window, she screamed down the road in a piece of shit red Civic that might as well have been community property at this point. The ignition would have turned with a butter knife and the engine made such a damn racket that she had to crank the stereo to about a billion decibels to drown it out. It was almost at loud enough to erase the possibility of thought but not quite--the speakers were way too far gone for that, which meant Michelle still had plenty of time to think about exactly how much she hated doing this.

She hated driving at the best of times. Not owning a car, it was always a matter of finding which car to jack, or bumming of someone else or some other bullshit she had no interest in. The Gnawers had shown her how but it hadn't made the act itself anything more than an inconvenience. She'd been told that some people liked driving, that that was their thing, but she was definitely not one of them. Chain-smoking cigarettes to get her fix before she hit nature camp, she stubbed out the fourth cigarette of the night in the inside of her thumb before dropping it into one of the many cans that littered the old beater. It was a habit, and a bad one, but she didn't think about it anymore even as it hissed and burned at the skin--she'd been alone for too long, she thought with a slightly dry smirk. She was starting to eat herself.

The problem with the caern was the garou as much as anything else. She could start off with the fact that not a one of the tribes--Furies, Fianna or even the Children--were exactly fast friends with the Get, and hadn't been since the first time they met them. It quickly became apparent that the Get reinforcement pack she'd been a part of was less reinforcement and more invasion. Apparently an elder somewhere had decided that if they weren't going to take teeth and claws to the wyrm that was so prevalent in the area, the Get would have to. It hadn't been a particularly pleasant conversation the first time she'd been there, or the times since, especially considering their losses. The Children in particular were critical--it was a waste of time, they said. The wyrm was too strong in the cities, it couldn't be fought directly, they had to work at it sideways. That was back when Thunder's Teeth was still in charge, an awful long time ago, and he'd said to them what had etched itself into Michelle's mind as what it really meant to be Get, one of the only real connections she had with her tribe:

If you're not going to help then get out of the way. Just because it's difficult doesn't mean it doesn't need to be done.

When the pack had dwindled, when Thunder's Teeth was gone and it was only Michelle, she'd stayed away as much as possible because she didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to hear about how they'd warned them it couldn't be done, how they were wasting resources or how they were fighting a war because everything looks like a nail to a hammer. She was too busy grieving and killing and hating, and the Gnawers had their own little caern down by the docks that she could draw her strength from. Urban caerns were better anyway, like little medical tents staked up on a battlefield. You never got to slink away to the woods, to forget that this was about taking the world back from the wyrm not about guarding what was left. 

Most importantly she hated Pawtuckaway because it was a place of peace, and Michelle didn't know how to be at peace anymore. Maybe she'd been with the Get too long, maybe things had gone South one too many times. Maybe she was just too full of rage, but what she was really afraid of was that Thunder's Teeth had been right. The Thrall of the Wyrm, they called it when a garou really lost it, when their frenzy got so deep that the primal destroyer took an interest and a hold on it, but whatever it was she'd felt it often enough that it made her skin crawl to think about it. None of the heroes in those stories she got told ever had to pick knuckles from the back of their teeth or came out of their killing frenzy spewing their enemies back up on the sidewalk. Nobody talked about what happened when you were so far in, so far under, so alone that the only thing you could do to hold on was lose everything you were and trust in the monster to see you through. These days she felt more like a serial killer than a garou, and if she thought about it too long it caught in her throat and she started spinning, that awful throbbing behind her temples--

The rumble strip woke her back up and she jerked up in her seat, ash falling to the hem of her black dress as her eyes snapped about. Had she nodded off? Was she just too caught up in everything? Her lips curled into a snarl, a long drag filling her lungs before she pumped it back out in a long gray cone to the window. Wake the fuck up, soldier. They're messing with your head. When it came right down to it, it wasn't about her--it wasn't about any of them. This was bigger than that. If she had to cry herself to sleep every once and a while then boo-fucking-hoo. There was a war to win.

She got stopped by a ranger on her way into the camping grounds, of course, but they knew her by now. Didn't much like her, but they knew her. They exchanged cursory greetings--he said 'Hi', Michelle stared--before she worked her way into the camp grounds proper and pulled the shitty little civic into one of the many empty places. At least she didn't have to worry about them finding the car here, the rangers wouldn't have reported a fucking Mercedes if a garou had rolled up in it. Looking to herself in the mirror for a moment she almost smirked--she looked like a fucking mess. It had been hard to sleep after fucking over that Spiral, but she'd made good use of the time. As she popped open the trunk, she found her normally expressionless face falling into something of a smirk.

Say what you will about Michelle--she wasn't very honorably, and she sure as hell wasn't very wise, but as she grabbed the knotted rope handle and swung it over her shoulder she could feel the weight of the four cleaned spiral skulls clacking against her back. If glory meant killing her enemies then that much she could do, and maybe showing them some visceral evidence would make them listen, or at least get her another gift or something out of the deal. She could use a new trick or two before they really started catching up to her.

Making her way into the forest wearing nothing but her tattoos and her short black sun dress, Michelle did [i]not[/i] look like a camper. But anyone that'd been around long enough would know about the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing that lived in the city and ate up the bad boys and girls. She wasn't much worried as she strode for the lake where she could see a few of her kind gathering. If she stood out in the otherwise serene setting she paid it no mind.

She tried hard not to feel like she was coming home.