"Goddamnit, I'm a Metis..."

Greek House: Upstairs
The 2nd floor has much the same theme as the first floor; simple light-and-dark contrasts, Greco-Roman touches here and there. The hallway is fairly short, leading to a handful of doors on either side.

The bed would be a comfortable one for Kevin in his lean homid form, but, no doubt in order to heal in his sleep, he's crashed out in it in glabro, and his feet come close to sticking out at the end like the guest of Procrustes in the Greek myth. He's lying on one side, and snoring quietly. Blotches on his face betray the severe burns he's suffered recently which have only been healed in part as yet.

The door comes open slowly and quietly, a soft footed Emma walking in with a tray that has both tea and fresh oatmeal cookies on it. No doubt, neither of which were made by the Get. She looks over the occupant of the bed, eyes lingering on his rear end in curiousity. The tray is set down on the stand and she moves to sit in one of the chairs and wait for him to wake on his own.

Kevin's keister is well hidden under blankets, and doesn't seem unusual in shape or size. As Emma sits, he stirs, drowsily, then suddenly jerks upright in bed with a yelp of dismay, rubbing his eyes and breathing fast all of a sudden. "Goddamnit," he gasps out. "I'm a Metis..."

Emma looks to him and stares, "Whoa, Kevin. Wake up." She leans over to reach a hand out to steady his shoulder, "You're not a metis. Relax. I brought you something to eat and stuff."

Kevin cleans his shaggy hair out of his ugly face. "What would you call a wolf with five tails?" he demands bitterly. Then he looks a little ashamed. "Uh, are you and Laura doing okay?

Emma snorts, "Disfigured during the course of battle is what I would call it. Besides, Laura is going to get you sorted out." She sighs, pouring some of the tea and handing it over. "We're fine. She healed me up just about perfect last night and she is resting still in bed."

Kevin reaches out for the tea, the cup seeming small in his huge meaty glabro hand. "Sorted out?" he queries, frowning as though he isn't entirely sure that this portends well.

Emma nods her head, "Yeah, as in cleansed and de-tailed."

One long drink and the teacup is half empty. Kevin reaches for a cookie. "And what does that entail?" he asks. If the pun is intentional he's keeping a remarkably straight face.

Emma shrugs her shoulders up, lying horribly, "Not totally sure." She settles herself back down. "Do they hurt?"

Kevin reaches below the blankets to feel at where the extra tails sprout from. Or at least, one assumes that's what his hand is doing down there. "I haven't gone back to a form with tails since I quit the umbra," he says quietly. "I probably should... just to see..."

Emma nods her head, "Yeah, could see what's going on with it." She shifts in her chair a little and takes in a deep breath. "You should shower too."

Kevin sniffs himself cautiously. "Sweat, smoke, wyrmstuff, ugh. I certainly should. Does this joint have hot water?" he enquires.

Emma shrugs a little, "I'm sure - it's not like the boondocks or nothing. I mean just because there ain't weaver shit all over doesn't mean it's not functional." She stands up then and gives him some space, "Go on, shift. See what those tails do."

Kevin remains under the blankets, rolled on his side, as he nervously shifts up to Crinos. Now that form is definitely too big for the bed. And as he swells into the war-form those tails come back, all four of the extra ones as well as the usual fifth, and the sweet-sickly smell of the necrosed one begins to fill the room.

Emma pinches her nose at this, shaking her head, "Go back to homid.. gah, fast." She almost even retches, but stops herself with a hearty gag. "Fuck man... you ever hear about that kinda shit happening before?"

Kevin is all too happy to shrink all the way to homid and gather the blankets back round himself protectively. He peeps out from under at Emma. "No way," he croaks. I never heard of anything remotely like it. You... you don't think..." He licks suddenly dry lips. "You don't think it's because I had corruption already within me? Because of what I got punished for? Cos you and Laura, you didn't grow any sick extra parts..."

Emma frowns at Kevin, shaking her head, "We didn't get hit with the balefire. No, I don't think it's that Kevin. It's, I dunno, what it is. I didn't tell anyone yet about this. I'm going to have to.. though."

Kevin retreats further under the covers until only his eyes are visible peeping out as though from a cave. "They'll say it was bad of me," he protests. "They'll twist it round and find another excuse to punish me for it."

Emma looks to Kevin, "They will do no such thing." And then after a moment, "I will not let them." She looks under the covers and tries to find his eyes, "You did nothing wrong last night, and acted above the call of duty to make sure Laura and I made it out. That whatever struck you was able to ... disfigure as oddly as it did, is not. your. fault."

Kevin's head protrudes from the blankets rather like a tortoise's. "Thanks," he says with gratitude. "I... was pretty scared yesterday. Thought I was gonna..." He draws one finger across his throat. "Still got burns all down my legs, but that's nothing, they'll heal up in a few days. The tails, though. God, those tails." His hand snakes out and steals another cookie, likely comfort-food.

Emma nods her head, "Yeah they're creepy. But if you yourself are free of taint and corruption, then they are just that. Just creepy. Morgan deals with her extra limbs well enough, you'd figure it out too - but.. the one at least, has to go."

"Morgan's a metis," Kevin points out with a less than pleasant sneer. "She was born with them. I wasn't. And believe me, I want them all to go. The smelly one, the bony one... the... hell, I don't remember what they all looked like, but they are wrong, wrong, WRONG." He thumps the bed and scatters cookie crumbs. "Did Laura check me for taint?" he asks nervously. "While I was flaked out in the car, or after I got put to bed?"

Emma lifts her shoulders, "I am not sure if she did or not, I'll go find her and we'll get you checked out Kev. You should uhm probably stay here until we can .. figure things out more."

"Can I grab that shower at least?" Kevin asks plaintively. "And I'll go back to glabro if that's okay? At least it'll keep healing the burns up. The extras don't show in the mannish forms," he explains. "Just a few bumps and knobbles."

Emma nods her head, "Yeah of course. I just mean, - I don't want you going out anywhere unless you have me or Laura with you. I want you vouched for until this is brought to light."

"You mean," Kevin says acidly, "you don't want someone like Blackriver assuming I've danced the spiral and throating me without stopping to ask questions. Uh huh. I take your point. Sheesh," he sighs, "what a disaster. OK, if I stay here," he says, "do you think you, or someone else, could..." He hesitates, then steels himself to continue. "At least get word to Basil I'm more or less okay, and the plan is still on track?"

Emma looks to him then, eyes hard. "Get word to him as a would be packmate would want word?" she asks, for clarity.

"Precisely," Kevin responds in a crisp voice. "Or Kaz would do if she could be found more easily. One of those two would tell the other, as tribemates as well as packies-to-be."

Emma nods her head, "Alright Kev. I'll get word to whoever I see first at the farmhouse. I'll come back later tonight too, to see how Laura is making out on things."

Kevin flops back against the wall and for a moment the pain and shame he's obviously feeling show on his face, before he banishes them and reverts to his stonier visage. "Appreciated," he thanks Emma. "I'll see you later, then."

Emma nods her head, "Try not to fret too much Kev, we'll get you through this." She nods encouragingly to him and then slips out the door, sighing heavily once she is on the other side.

and within a few minutes...

Following the departure of Emma, Kevin has put himself through the shower as threatened, and then has retired back to bed, though he's not looking such a dishevelled wreck any more. He's leafing idly through a paperback book he's found lying round the house, the book quite small-seeming in his hefty glabro fist.

Early to rise, and just as quickly gone, Laura's early-evening return to the house is heralded by the close of the door, a few muttered curses, and the hiss of a couple of beer bottles being opened. Then she comes upstairs, feet fairly quiet on the carpeted floor.

Kevin doesn't fail to hear the soft pad of footsteps come up the stairs and towards the room. "Emma?" he calls out loudly enough to be heard through the door, setting the book aside.

"Me," Laura answers, walking to the room the Glass Walker was housed in. She's carrying a pair of beer bottles, and offers one to the wounded teenager when she enters. "How do you feel?" She takes a drink out of her own bottle, already studying the Ragabash's injuries.

Kevin waves away the offered beer. "Thanks, but I don't drink," he explains. "And it's a damn good job I don't. If I didn't keep myself in peak form I couldn't have run as fast as I did when... well, you know." He shudders at the memory of the fiery creature snapping at his heels and singing the fur from his body. "The burns are healing nicely. Been resting up in glabro all day. But." He goes no further, and gives Laura a dark look.

Laura sets down the offered alcohol, then her own bottle. "But," she echoes. "How do you feel?" She continues watching him. "And when I say that, I mean exactly how do you feel?"

Kevin blinks a few times and looks away from Laura at his massive hands, seemingly for want of anything better to look at. "I feel like I woke up and I was turned into a metis," he says eventually. "Like I became even more of an omega and pariah than I already am. Like my... my weakness... made me vulnerable to the Wyrm seizing on me and twisting my body like it did. Emma made me promise not to leave the house, you know," he adds, looking back at Laura finally, "and I know damn well why. Because if someone like Blackriver or even Vera saw me in that state with those tails, they'd assume I'd danced the spiral and have my throat out, no questions asked."

"They would. They'd have cause." Not one for sugarcoating, Laura is. Her nostrils flare and her eyes narrow as she moves in closer to the boy. "Gaian Garou don't have...those." Her lip twitches a bit, and she steps away. "Have you ever seen a Black Spiral Dancer? As I said yesterday-I believe that balefire is where their deformities come from."

Kevin shakes his head, eyes widening. "Only heard of them," he says in a hoarse whisper. "There... there is more to becoming one of them than... than what's happened to me? Isn't there?" His fists have clenched up and are gripping the blanket very tightly.

"First you are taken, or you go willingly. They welcome you, reward you for your betrayal. Then they torture you and drive you past insanity. Then they set you loose on the ones who used to be your friends." Laura looks away, takes a long drink of her beer, then sets the bottle down hard enough to rattle the table it's on. "Becoming tainted is as simple as contact with Wyrm stuff, or a loss of control. Becoming a Black Spiral Dancer takes will. They are two separate things, and you are neither."

Kevin's knuckles turn a little less white, but he doesn't relax a great deal. "I did what I did with Basil willingly enough," he says, looking away from Laura again. "Broke the Litany. Shamed myself."

"For some, that's enough. For Clemency or Vera-rhya, to violate the first law would be such a compromise of their principles that the rest of the Fall would be quick." Laura stares at her beer for a moment, then drinks the rest of it quickly. "Which of the Laws do you hold most dear? All of the rhetoric and learning that's been drilled into your head aside-I don't expect you to fire off the expected one if it's not the one you feel strongest about."

Kevin seems about to give a reply without stopping to think, but then he reins in his mouth and does stop to think. His lips do move, but silently, as though he's repeating the Garou laws to himself while mulling them over. When he eventually responds, it's with "Combat the Wyrm."

Laura turns to meet his eyes, deadly serious now. "If you find yourself faced with a Wyrm threat and you do not do something to fight it, that is when you have Fallen. You fear corruption, you fight it even when it's left its mark on you. If you fought me when I searched for it, or welcomed the bane with resignation or joy, you would be Fallen and soon dead. Do you understand?"

Kevin sits up a little straighter on the bed, and his jaw sets in a resolute style. "I understand," he says firmly. "Then I am not tainted or fallen. No matter how many tail-things I have in Crinos and up."

Laura nods, reaching for the other drink. "Understand, though, that is only your last line. This is not permission from myself or the spirits to toss the rest of the Laws to the wind. It's not an argument you can use in your defense for any other violation of the Litany."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Kevin says, giving Laura a forthright look. "But I hope you can persuade all the other garou as readily as you've convinced me..."

"I will try to plead your case to the Philodox as well as to Vera-rhya. I've found you untainted. That has been enough in the past." Laura takes another drink of her beer. "Remain in here. When I have found some silver, I'll be able to get rid of those...appendages for you."

Kevin tenses right up again at those last words. Then he throws himself back on the bed and begins to laugh without humour. "Oh boy, oh boy," he says. "Are you going to use the same knife as last time? Leslie probably still has it." He gives Laura a smile that's all darkness and no amusement.

Laura snorts. "No. I only use my own tools. I can be sure they're properly honored and cleansed, suitable to be used on the bodies of Gaia's defenders."

Kevin's laugh dies away. "Sorry," he mumbles. "The irony of the situation suddenly smacked me between the eyes. Laura, don't think I'm ungrateful or spiteful... please. I just shoot my mouth off a lot. It's my damn Ragabash-ness, that's what it is."

Laura rolls a shoulder. "It's expected," she replies, waving off the boy's discomfort. "Don't think of me as such a stodgy old woman. I'm a Mother, not a Crone. I think it's this Canadian sense of humor that puts people off."

Kevin seems a little nonplussed by Laura's statement, but he shrugs cheerfully enough. "Okay, mom," he agrees. "So... that's all settled. You're going to fix things in the tail department and I'll be able to go out in public again. Happy ever after. Or until the main attack on that damn thing, anyway."