It is currently 15:06 Pacific Time on Wed Apr 6 2005. Currently in Saint Claire, it is a cloudy day. The temperature is 61 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius). The wind is currently coming in from the south at 5 mph. The barometric pressure reading is 29.92 and falling, and the relative humidity is 57 percent. The dewpoint is 46 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius.) Currently the moon is in the waning New Moon phase (17% full). Safehouse: Common Area The foyer of this house is set off from the living room with its octagonal bump-out by a four foot high halfwall. Stairs lead up from the foyer, turning and disappearing to the right, and a steel door with a keycard lock claims the wall opposite the living room. The rest of the main floor is taken up by a small bathroom across the hallway from a dining room which is separated from the kitchen at the back of the house by another half-wall. The decor is decidedly sparse - white walls, beige carpeting in the living and dining rooms and down the hall, unremarkable vinyl in the foyer and kitchen. A used couch and a pair of recliners are grouped around a coffee table in the living room, with a foursome of wooden chairs claiming the bump out for quieter conversation. The dining room boasts a white laminate table with four aluminum and vinyl-upholstered chairs - too new to be 'vintage', too old to be trendy. The appliances and cupboards in the kitchen are new - or at least refurbished to look like it - and a door leads out to the backyard from there. Up the stairs are a number of empty rooms where anyone affiliated with the Sept can crash and an office for private meetings. The Glass Walkers have their own area accessible via a locked door off the foyer. The main doors themselves lead back out to the front porch of the house. Thomas Grey is a man hard-used by the world. It shows mostly in his face, a hawkish visage that's extensively scarred down the left side, twisting keloid making a ruin of aristocratic features. If not for the scars, he'd probably be fairly handsome in a severe sort of way. The angles of his face are sharply defined, the nobility in them scoured nearly to the bone. His thick black hair hangs shaggily around his face, clean but unkempt, and a short, well-kept black beard lines his mouth and jawline. He looks older than his thirty-something years; his deep-set eyes -- the right dark brown, the left blind white -- are often shadowed as though from lack of sleep, and the set of his mouth is usually tight and grim. At six-foot-three, he stands taller than most men, and an inherent athleticism indicates that he could probably hold his own in a fight. There's also an aura of pent-up violence about him, a tightly-controlled rage and bitterness within the lanky, muscled frame that could be lethal if unleashed. He's wearing an ivory-colored, long-sleeved thermal undershirt tucked into a pair of olive-drab BDU trousers. On his feet are a pair of Matterhorn tanker boots, heavy black leather fastened with straps instead of laces. Grey looks at you. [Megan gets into the house common side, then uses the doorbell on the door leading to the GW side.] The entrance to the Glass Walker portion of the house, which is sandwiched in between the common Safehouse area and the owner's apartment on the other end of the structure, is a heavy, solid wooden door at the end of a short hallway located on the left-hand side of the foyer approximately midway between the front wall and the beginning of the stairway. A security keypad has been installed along with a doorbell and an intercom system, as if it was an outside door rather than inside the house. Natalie pages: FYI - Cy was throwing tantrums last night. Nat said 'ignore her'. Went down around 8 this morning - came back upstairs to say 'ignore her' s'more. Nipped down around noon, but only to flick on the lights. She went downstairs just a few minutes ago, carrying a bottle of Coke and some cold pizza. The door to the Glass Walker half of the house opens only a few moments after Megan rings, revealing the very familiar figure of Thomas Grey nee' Jack Salem. Upon seeing who it is at their door, he freezes slightly in not-very-pleasant surprise before shifting his expression quickly into a guarded, wary, careful neutrality. "...Megan-rhya." How he manages to keep his voice perfectly even is something of a mystery. [Megan] This woman is rather attractive in an Amazonian kind of way. She looks to be in her mid-twenties, with thick auburn hair falling in heavy waves down her back and around her shoulders. Frequent use has sculpted her 5'10" height into a body of strong muscle-definition, long of limb and long of torso, softened only by the definite feminine curves of full breasts and hips, and the inward dip of her waist. Her features display character: fresh, tanned skin stretched cleanly over the sharp edge of jaw, rounding at her chin, across a wide brow and gently sloping cheekbones. Finely arched eyebrows curve over expressive black-green emerald eyes, often found narrowed with keen interest or dreamy in inward contemplation. She is dressed down in a pair of faded blue jeans and an oversized blue and white SCCU sweatshirt that falls to mid-thigh, and a pair of brown leather ankle boots. Check '+detail Megan's info' for other things noticable. Whether it was catching the momentary glimpse of Grey's original expression or how she was going to appear anyway, Megan's features are composed into something cold civility, the green eyes nearly black with reined in emotion. The next thing that would almost be obvious to most people is that she is likely pregnant, given the swelling at her belly. The third thing Grey *might* notice is that that condition is exagerrated by the fact that otherwise, she looks much thinner everywhere else, especially in her face, the skin stretched tight as drums across the angles of the bones as if there is almost no flesh under it, giving the normally sturdy looking Fianna an air of unwellness. But all that may be taken in a moment, or in that moment and the time it takes for the Adren to say, "Jack. Or I guess it's Thomas now," she says, canting her chin to one side and giving the statement a punctuation of query. "Natalie called me and said you were back in town." Grey nods once or twice, very slightly. "I am." He pauses a second or two in the doorway, fingers tapping absently on the frame, then takes a step into the common area of the house and lets the door swing shut behind him. "I assume that she also told you the... particulars." "No," Megan answers. "Only that you were back, and hinted there might be more to it than that." Grey grimaces, his gaze shifting away from the Fianna and toward the living room area. He gestures toward one of the couches. "Have a seat." Megan does as suggested, the tiniest sighs escaping her as she sinks into the couch and settling herself. "Why didn't *you* try contacting me?" she asks, taking the direct approach. Grey remains standing and is clearly even less at ease than he did when he answered the door. And now that she's asked that question, he seems to be finding it difficult to answer. "Thought I'd let Natalie do her Galliardly duty." His jaw tightens slightly, as if he's chewing on something hard and bitter. Megan's response to that is a subtle tightening of the muscles of her jaw, perhaps not noticable, but the few seconds of silence would be. "She tends to keep things abbreviated on the phone," she finally says. "So she does," says Grey in a flat voice. He rakes his fingers back through thick black hair that's grown shaggy and ear-length since he left a year ago. Then, with a quick, sharp gesture, as though to get anticipated unpleasantness over as quickly as possible, he pulls up the right sleeve of his thermal shirt and shows Megan the ash-darkened Charach glyph carved into the top of his forearm. Megan's reaction may not be the expected one. For a few moments, she only looks at the glyph. Then, it's as if comprehension dawns, and if her expression was chilly before, it's down right Arctic now. Her eyes turn as hard as the emeralds they resemble as she looks from the arm square into the Glass Walker's face giving him the full and unmitigated brunt of a purely instinctive show of dominance, the weight of her rank and her presence and even that little bit of Pure Breeding behind it as she lasers an icy look at him. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that her silence is a screaming for an explanation. Grey, for his part, holds himself still, watching her look at it, watching her face change, and when that frozen glare lasers onto his face, he takes a quick step back, jaw clenched, his gaze withering away from hers and his lips pulling into a submissive grimace that's as much a wolfish expression as a human one. Yanking the sleeve back down, he takes another step backwards and drops himself onto the edge of a chair. The explantion doesn't come right away, but eventually he says, "She was a Ronin I met, years ago. A Metis." His voice is, more or less, calm, but his whole body radiates tension. "I don't give a fuck to hear details," Megan says in a low-pitched voice, stuffed with razorblades. "I just want to hear how you got the brand. Unless you gave it to yourself?" she asks, scorn sharpening the edges of the words. Grey's fingers tighten on the seat of the hard wooden chair, the normally self-possed Glass Walker looking tense and cowed by the thin, angry woman on the couch. His throat works visibly, and again, he manages to keep his voice even. "No. I -- we -- were judged at the Sept of the Hundred Stars, by Bearpaw-rhya of the Children of Gaia. I received the Satire Rite along with that mark and... this other." 'This other' is revealed when he pulls up his left shirtsleeve to bare the scar-glyph of Dishonor marked into his flesh, darkened with ash like its sibling. "Satire Rite," Megan repeats acidly. Still looking straight at the Fo--Cliath Glass Walker with deadly intensity, she says, "You got off easy." Grey pulls the sleeve back down. He hasn't done so much as twitch a glance her way since she started glaring at him. He offers no reply, only sits tensely at the edge of his chair like it's taking all his will not to go belly-up on the floor at her feet. At this tense juncture, the silence in the room as Megan waits for Grey to speak, or make some reply, is broken by the opening of the door from the Glass Walkers' side of the house, and the popping through of a head that will be familiar to one of the garou already present if not to the other. "Thomas?" says the mouth attached to the head. "I got the email! We've got a new cub? What's she like?" At this point he sees the other person present. "Is this her? She's a bit old for a cub...?" he continues, falling into a perhaps understandable but very, very regrettable error. Megan's radioactive glance darts from Grey to the interruption, for a moment, the poor cub getting the full blast of intense attention that nearly has the tangible presence of a quick punch to the gut when its leveled. She pulls it away after only a second, pushing to her feet and looking down at the still seated Grey. "I don't think I have to tell you what will happen if you put even one toe out of line from here on out. First Renee. Then Ebony. And now this. I mean it," she says without even enough wiggle room for an atom. "Perfect line." She then stalks, as well as she can given the change in her center of gravity out of the living room into the front foyer, past Grey without another look, and pauses to look at Kevin once more. Some of the acidity of her gaze is masked, like the shutters drawn against a sunlit window, or perhaps more closely the hood of a falcon, as she jerks a nod at him. "I'm Megan. The Sept Alpha. I'm sure we'll meet again under better circumstances. Good day to you." And without waiting for either of them to respond, she's then onwards to the front door. Somewhere in this, around the time that Megan looms over him and delivers her ultimatum, Grey finds himself off the chair and on his knees, head turned to the side, throat bared, eyes closed, his posture one of abject and utter submission. He remains that way as she stalks out, not budging an inch, hardly even breathing. Kevin's jaw drops and his eyes go wide, a horror-stricken look on his face as Megan identifies herself, and Grey drops down to a pose in which the cub has surely not only never seen him in before, but never dreamed of seeing him. He seems rooted to the spot in the doorway. Only his cheeks betray his continued existence by going pinker, and pinker, and pinker. For long, long seconds, silence reigns in the wake of the Sept Alpha's departure. Eventually, Grey starts breathing again and slowly, gropingly, uses the chair to lever himself back to his feet. His back's to Kevin, and he doesn't seem to have noticed the cub at all. Kevin after a moment or three regains the use of his faculties. His face remains in a horrified stare of dismay, now turned in the shattered-looking philodox's direction. Kevin notes Grey's indifference or unawareness of his presence after several seconds more, and slides noiselessly back through the door to the safety of the Walkers' abode, leaving Thomas Grey to his own thoughts and counsel, whatever they may be, for now. [Never even realizing that Kevin was there, Grey retreats to the porch for a much-needed cigarette.]