It is currently Friday Apr 8 2005. Currently the moon is in the waning New Moon phase (1% full). Currently in Saint Claire, it is mostly cloudy. The temperature is 44 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius). The wind is calm today. The barometric pressure reading is 29.92 and rising, and the relative humidity is 70 percent. The dewpoint is 35 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degrees Celsius.) Safehouse: Basement The basement runs about half the width of the house above, with a concrete block wall separating the two. Most of the the area is open and unfinished and sports the usual basement decor of cobwebs, exposed rafters, and cockroaches scuttling along the walls. The furnace and hot water heater stand in glory in the northeast corner along with the fuse box; the northwest corner has been set up as an open workshop with a pair of fluorescent lights bolted to the ceiling. In the southwest corner stands a vault: more concrete blocks enclose a room perhaps ten by ten and a sturdy steel door denies passage either into or out of the place. Steps lead up from the southeast corner. Grey heads down to the basement bunker shortly after suppertime, carrying a covered plate and a bottle of water. He takes a listen at the steel door before rapping briskly. From the other side of the door--silence. Sleeping, perhaps? The captive was looking rather sleep-deprived the last time he visited, after all. Grey waits for a moment or two, frowning, before knocking again, more loudly. "Cy?" There's a rustle, and a grunt. "Yeh," comes the muffled reply. Her usual sullen greeting. "Dinner," Grey announces blandly and then opens the door and slips inside the bunker. It comes fast, and it comes low: an instant ago, the girl was crouched against the wall adjacent the door, far below eye-level. Now she's shoving forward with a small growl, hoping to knock the taller man off-balance as she hammers a fist downwards in a stabbing motion towards the region of his groin and thigh. For the cub, there's a moment of sweet, savage success as she seizes the element of surprise and her makeshift weapon -- the toothbrush broken into a pointy plastic fang -- sinks into the meat of the man's upper thigh; she's rewarded with a yell of pain and the clatter of plate, cover, and bottle hitting the concrete floor. Two legs of fried chicken, a portion of mixed vegetables, and a thick piece of garlic toast go scattering. The triumph is only momentary, though, for a second later, Cy finds herself grabbed and /slammed/ into the opposite wall. A high-pitched screech escapes the little ambusher before she hits the wall. /Hard/. The impact is enough to shove all the breath out of her lungs with an audible grunt, knocking the back of her skull against concrete. Grey brings his lean, black-stubbled face close to hers, giving her a good look at his scars, at the dead eye. He bares his teeth and growls at her -- literally /growls/, a deep-throated, thick, lupine sound, full of menace. Strong fingers dig painfully into her arms. Pinned like some hapless red-haired bug, her feet dangle about a foot from the floor. Whatever color was in the girl's face has drained away, leaving her bug-eyed and stricken in the face of her opponent. The cub's breath comes in staccatto 'huffs' now, stinking of fear and french fries. Grey's devilish features are reflected back at him from the terrified pools of her pupils. Grey holds her pinned with gaze and grasp for a few seconds more, and then abruptly lets her drop to the floor. Limping back to the door, he yanks the shiv out of his leg, chucks it out into the basement, and then shuts the door, closing both himself and Cy within the small, rank, concrete room. The spell is broken--she crumples to the floor easily enough, flopping in a pile of too-baggy cotton clothes. By the time he turns around, she's back to that sullen glare he's seen from her before. This time, though, there's a flicker of triumph in her eyes, mingled with instinctive fear. Grey notices it and tightens his jaw. He stares at her with narrowed eyes, then stretches upward with an easy, practiced movement, growing hair and claws and fangs, topping out at over nine feet before dropping to all fours and losing mass again, all traces of humanity -- and all traces of the wound in his thigh -- vanishing as he turns full wolf. Wide eyes follow him through it all--up into man-wolf, down into four-legged lupine. She's stock-still and unblinking, hands clutching both drawn-up knees. A tremor begins to take hold of her wiry frame from somewhere deep beneath the skin, and the man-turned-wolf may very well be able to hear the violent hammer of her heart. The stench of fear is intense, now--if she were any other species, she would probably wet herself. Mismatched eyes -- one gold, one white -- stare back at her. Then, amazingly, the wolf talks to her. Not in English, and not in words at all; it's a language mostly of subtle gestures, posture, and scent, and somehow it's completely understandable. Your food is on the floor, the man-turned-wolf tells her sternly. Her narrow chest rises and falls rapidly, and the kid can barely manage to swallow, pressing her spine flat against the comparative reality of the concrete wall behind her. After an eternity of staring--not a single blink--she moves. It starts out as a twitch in her left arm, then shakily expands into an outstretched hand towards the animal. Palm up, grubby fingers slightly curled. If she's drugged, there can't be any harm in indulging a little hallucination. A subtle cant of the black wolf's ears expresses a thin, dour amusement. The wet black nose twitches visibly as he takes in her scent, but otherwise he holds himself fairly still, letting her touch him. Or not. The hand that touches the creature's shoulder-pelt smells of cooking grease and chocolate; the rest of her is a mix of fear and excitement. Her wide brown gaze blinks once as she contacts real fur. The cub's eyes don't exactly meet his--they're more unfocused, glazed in disbelief. Quivering violently, she breathes out: "Do it again." The fur isn't as soft as it looks, but it's clean, far cleaner than a wild animal's would be. Cleaner than that of any stray dog. He cocks his head slightly, looking quizzical. Do what again? She's entranced. Completely spellbound. Her fingers push into that fur a little more, gently sifting past the rough guard-hairs to the downy pelt beneath. "..Change." Grey lets out a huff of warm breath, then does as requested, reversing the transformation -- from wolf to man-wolf to man. The hole in his trousers remains where she stabbed him, and there's blood on the cloth, but no sign of the injury itself. Standing, he gazes down at her, unsmiling. "Like that?" There's no denying the rearranging of skin and fur and muscles that takes place beneath her hand. She recoils as though burned, and the spell is broken. Both hands knot themselves in her stop-sign-colored hair as the scrawny girl groans, curling in on herself. "I'm insane," she states dismally. Grey snorts. "You're not insane. You're a werewolf. 'Garou' is the term we use, to be precise." He slips his hands into his pockets. "Nice bit with the shiv, by the way. Where did you get the toothbrush?" Cy rocks slightly back and forth on her haunches, not looking up. The fingers tangled in her hair flex spasmodically. She's disoriented enough to be caught off-guard and answer automatically, quietly: "S'm guy named 'Too'." Grey nods slightly, his gaze still intent upon her. "It'll be a while before you get another." He purses his lips. "I don't like keeping you in here, you know." "Then let me out." Her reply is hoarse and plaintive, the most well-spoken he's heard since she arrived. Was all that streetrat-mumbling a ruse? In any case, she continues her spastic rocking. "Not until you can control your shifting," says Grey. He might be sympathetic -- it's really hard to tell, but that /might/ be sympathy around his tired-looking eyes -- but he's implacable. "Not until you accept what you are. Not until I am reasonably sure that you're not going to try to run out on us." To that, she says nothing, but instead curls deeper in on herself. The rocking, the fetal position, the manic twitches--they all seem to come from agitated, pent-up energy rather than sadness or fear. Grey grimaces and looks away as though pained. "I'll see you in the morning, Cy." He gives her another look, touched with worry, then exits the bunker and locks the door behind him.