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 [right][b]Interactions: Clancy [@Zombiedude101][/b]
[code] Veni Vedi Veni[/code][/right][hr]

[b]"Shut up, Sully! Clearly, you should have the brains to see who's really in the wrong here."[/b]

No, clearly Sully didn’t have the brains, as the brains would’ve told him how terrible of an idea it had been to try and hold Alizée’s hands. Sully dropped to one knee and wheezed as Stormy’s spell banished the hands. He gave Stormy a shaky thumbs up in gratitude as he fumbled for his pack so he could get the Chalice. His body felt heavy. It was like he’d just worked a double at a non-union site doing backbreaking construction without a single break for a paycheck that possibly wouldn’t clear. His hands gripped the cold silver of the Chalice. Maybe he’d bail on going to the club after all. He put the Chalice to his lips and a gunshot rang out followed by the roar of motorcycles, causing him to jump and spill the cranberry colored elixir down his shirt. 

The Wolfpack had arrived just like the kid said they would. See, this was why Sully was inclined to listen to the stripper’s son—they were always mature beyond their years, like wise sages specializing in feeling out bad vibes. The Wolfpack were all leather jackets and tough expressions hiding low self-esteem and a need for a sense of belonging, like the bullies on his team who Sully always attempted to reform back in high school. Being big had its benefits when it came to people like that, but it didn’t matter how big he was when a firing squad of one percenters were staring him down and accusing him and the others of being killers. He deliberately avoided looking at Alizée. 

He could feel the sweat forming on his forehead. Why was it getting so damn hot? He wanted to wipe it away, but took to heart the whole “do not move” order. He looked over to see the kid being beckoned forward by one of the bikers. Sully huffed out a heavy sigh of relief. Okay, good, some of them had a conscience, maybe they could listen to some reasoning after all. His throat was dry. He sucked what little bit of spilt elixir he could off of the beard hairs under his lower lip and swallowed. He felt a little better. They could talk this through. He cleared his—

[b]BANG![/b]

Time slowed. Smoke slithered out of the barrel of the woman’s gun. Another woman started cackling like a hyena, the slo-mo laugh track sounding like a demonic entity in Sully’s ears. The kid’s body went limp and fell backwards, all of him vanishing behind the wheels and frame of a car except for his shoes. Sully felt himself choke, his eyes watering. The barrage of gunshots as the woman emptied her clip, the little shoes kicking with each one, sounded like the bombastic finale to a deranged symphony. His hands shook. Stormy called out for somebody to help the kid as Eve moved to retaliate. Sully blinked. A wall of shields went up. A werewolf snatched up Alizée. He was quivering on the ground, and then he was quivering on the other side of the parking lot with a gun shoved in his mouth.

"Make one wrong move, and I'm going to give you another hole to suck dick out of!" threatened Élodie.

A brave idiot would have taken the opportunity to make a playful quip, or summon forth a brimful of lava and chuck it at the psychopathic biker bitch, or use the fact that she was thinner than the rails she bumped and try to wring her like a ragdoll. A brave idiot wouldn’t walk away from this. Sully didn’t feel like a brave idiot today. He felt like a useless, stupid idiot who muttered mkay, mkay into the barrel of the gun and didn’t make any sudden movements. He sniffed and felt sweat roll down his cheeks, or maybe it was tears. His eyes didn’t leave her trigger hand, widening as he saw a familiar appear and wrap itself around Élodie’s hand. He saw her finger squeeze and there was no click, no bang, and (thank god) no second hole. Why would you ever want to disappoint an additional person? 

Sully spat the gun out of his mouth, grabbed Élodie by the shoulders, and jerked his leg back. It’d been a while since he’d delivered a punt, but the concept wasn’t hard. [color=goldenrod]“Oh yeah? Well I’m gonna make it so your h-whoa!”[/color]

Élodie blasted Sully with a wave of sand that knocked him up and away, his mouth sputtering as he tried to spit out the sand. He remembered now why making quips was fucking stupid. He caught a brief sight of the carnage as he soared—bullets ricocheting off of parked cars, Greenwood and Coven members alike dropping here and there, spells flying, folks screaming, a massive fucking scorpion tearing things up, Linqian’s voice somehow (okay, not somehow, it was Linqian after all) cutting through all of the chaos. Sully landed hard behind a row of cars and felt the wind get knocked out of him. He rolled on to his side. Fortunately, nothing was broken. 

He blinked tears and sand away as he gasped for air and looked around to place where in the parking lot he actually was. He rolled one way and saw a clear path into the strip club. He rolled another and saw the shuffling feet of people fighting beyond the cars. It turned out that Élodie had inadvertently knocked him clear of the fight. Sully could probably crawl inside of the stripclub and take cover until the shooting stopped. Greenwood and the old team had it. He was just a little rusty. He’d only be in the way. Probably just get shot. Next time, he’d go through a bit of conditioning and then be right on the frontline. He promised. He rolled onto his belly to inchworm himself to the door when he saw it again: a pair of kid shoes poking out from behind a tire, unmoving. 

Sully paused. The kid was probably dead already. He’d taken, what, five, six shots? There was no way he was still breathing. Absolutely no way. Sully looked to the safe haven of the tastefully blacked out stripclub door, spat out a bit of sand, and pressed his forehead to the pavement.

[color=goldenrod]“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,”[/color] he whispered to himself as he began to crawl to the kid.

If Clancy was still alive Sully would crack open an ice cold Chalice and give the kid his first drink, making the bullet holes nothing more than a few little scars that he could use to impress his mom’s work friends when he was older. If he wasn’t, well, it would be the next thing on a growing list of shit that kept him up at night. 

[hr]
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 [right][b]Interactions:[/b] DQ Gang[@Punished GN][@Fernstone][@QueenBea][@Damycles][@Blizz]
[code]Dairy Queen[/code][/right][hr]

[color=6B8E23]"There wouldn't be any bodies if it had been me,"[/color] said Luca.

[color=silver]“Likewise,”[/color] said Sloane. If it had been anybody else it would have clearly been a dark joke. However, as far as anyone at the table could tell it could have also been a confession, a threat, or a truly tone deaf humble brag. 

[color=6644ff]"The only common link are the wolf carvings... Do we have any of them with us that we can study? There could be forensic information that would give us some direction,"[/color] said Jack.

[color=silver]“His people had one. I doubt we would be able to ascertain any more information than the FBI, forensically speaking,”[/color] said Sloane, gesturing towards Kali.

 He had shown them a picture of it at the meeting, but it was reasonable that Jack might’ve missed it considering Drake had shoved a lightning sword in his face. It also appeared that Jack must’ve missed the static charge that accompanied Drake’s spells, or else he wouldn’t have brought Victoria into it. She was thankful that he made the accusation, if it could even truly be called one, because it meant Drake wouldn’t think too hard about what she had implied. If Jack hadn’t said too much, Drake might’ve realized that Sloane had implied that there existed a reality where he killed his own wife. She kept her hands folded but lowered them to rest on the table, leaning back ever so slightly, relaxing her shoulders. 

[color=3874f4]"Like, what if it left some kinda... [i]programming,[/i] or something in our minds that it could use to turn us into sleeper agents at will? I'm not sure how it would work, but what if the Snake planned for this and is using one of [i]us[/i] to enact its revenge [i]and[/i] break it free?" asked Drake.[/color]

Immediately Sloane tensed back up, her knee hitting a table leg. She had not considered the possibility. Was it even a possibility? Their Emotional Fields had prevented them from being influenced, but perhaps there was another layer to the Stygian Snake’s abstraction that they were unaware of, or perhaps they had been aware of it but it had been wiped alongside their memory of sycamore tree. She glared at the water bottle, the rippling spring water morphing into the tide of a beach as she thought about how willing and how close she had been to letting Greyson into her mind. Perhaps that had been the case because of a familiarity—not with Greyson, but with letting something else in.

It could explain things that had happened to her in the past year. Mistakes, oversights. She’d chalked it up to stress, to being drawn too thin and not having nearly enough support. Perhaps the reason why none of her security measures stopped the intruder who had robbed her of her Counterfeits was because there had been no intruder, no physical one at least. Just her, dangled along by invisible puppet strings, ignorantly doing the bidding of another,  supplying who the hell knows with an arsenal of dangerous magical artifacts, memory scrubbed of the whole ordeal, unaware that she ever had anything to do with it. Perhaps she’d killed Ashley during her visit, replacing the murder with an argument. Perhaps she could be controlled at any moment with no chance of stopping it, complete and total vulnerability.

Her left eye twitched.

[color=silver]“Luca, don’t entertain this,”[/color] said Sloane, fixing him with an icy glance. It had been confusing if she had been playing with him or not early. Now it was obvious she was dead serious. [color=silver]“It’s an interesting idea, Drake."[/color] [i]He could be right.[/i] [color=silver] "It’s also based on nothing more than completely unfounded conjecture.”[/color] [i]Jade could’ve scanned it.[/i] [color=silver]“It goes against any kind of mental manipulation abstractions any of us have ever dealt with or heard of.”[/color] [i]Kari could’ve sensed it.[/i] [color=silver]“We’ve all had the Stygian Snake in our heads before; you’d feel it if it were there.”[/color] 

[i]Ashely could’ve cut it out.[/i]

[color=silver]“You know what’s also interesting? How quickly you changed topics when we were on the subject of alibis,”[/color] said Sloane, pushing herself up from the table and glaring across at Drake. [i]Cut it out.[/i] She leaned forward and caused the lock of hair tucked behind her ear to come loose, casting a shadow over her dead eyes. [color=silver]“Drake, I know you didn't do it.”[/color] 

[i]cut it out cut it out cut it—[/i]Her hand slammed down on the table, shutting the pesky thoughts up. She deserved to know the truth about Jade.

[color=silver]“But why the [i]fuck[/i] weren’t you there to stop it?”[/color]