It is currently 15:41 Pacific Time on Mon May 30 2005. Currently in Saint Claire, it is a cloudy day. The temperature is 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius). The wind is currently coming in from the southwest at 7 mph. The barometric pressure reading is 30.10 and steady, and the relative humidity is 75 percent. The dewpoint is 51 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius.) Currently the moon is in the waning Half Moon phase (51% full). [Glass Walker safehouse] Grey's been out since morning, taking off for parts unknown shortly after breakfast. Though he's been looking less outright exhausted since the day Kevin last got shot, he never looks completely well-rested, and he continues in his usual taciturn habits. The target of that shooting has been a very quiet little cub since the last moot, dividing his time between poring over Tu's textbooks, lurking in the basement in lupus, and housework. At present he's doing the first, though at least he's come out of the bunkroom for once, and is sitting in the living room with his nose in a math text. It's been a quiet week all around, really. Jeren has been all but completely absent from any public part of the safehouse, which would lead one to suspect she's been out altogether, except that her car hasn't once left the driveway. The elder Ragabash herself has been seen only very rarely since coming home from the Revel-- the times she's so much as offered a hello to anyone else are probably countable on one hand. So her descending the stairs at this time of day is unusual to say the least. She looks, not tired exactly, but more like she might have been getting a little too much sleep. Her unruly hair looks as though a half-mad sparrow might have been trying to make a nest in it, minus the feathers and twigs. Outside, the growl of the Ford Torino's engine signals Grey's return, growing louder and louder until it cuts off with a disgruntled rumble. Kevin looks up over his book at Jeren and gives her a smile. A small one, but definitely a smile. Jeren's mouth twitches as she notices Kevin, but that's as close to 'smile' as her face seems willing to go. Without pausing, she continues through the living room and down the hallway to the kitchen. As Jeren disappears into the kitchen, the door opens at the other end of the hallway to let in a distracted Thomas Grey, who smells like he's been chain-smoking every single moment of his time out of the house. He takes a glance into the living room and, notcing Kevin, offers up an unsmiling (but unhostile!) "Studying hard?" "Meh," Kevin responds, but the noise sounds more positive than negative. "Seen Nat recently?" Jeren isn't bothering about being quiet, so the rattle of things being moved around in the refrigerator is easily heard. Grey shakes his head. "Not today." He glances toward the kitchen, then back to the cub; his eyes narrow slightly. "Talked to Jeren?" Kevin gives a little smile. "Not exactly /talked/," he says, "but we sorted stuff out, yeah." He marks his place in the book and sets it beside him. More rattling from the kitchen, before the refrigerator door is closed. Shuffling in cupboards. And finally, the tap is turned on and off, though no footsteps can be heard heading back toward the living room. Grey glances back down the hallway, eyes flicking to Jeren and then away. He gives Kevin a nod. "Good." Stepping back, he gives the other Cliath another glance, greets her with a mild-sounding, "Jeren," and then heads up the stairs. Kevin repeats his previous smile and amplifies his greeting. "How's things?" he says to the other ragabash. Yrrf, acknowledgment. Jeren slips out of the kitchen now, giving Grey a slight nod and Kevin an even slighter approximation of one. Her mumbled, "Fine," is possible one of the most ridiculous uses of the word since its invention. In her hands, she's carrying both a glass of water, and an opened beer bottle. Kevin gives Jeren a very searching gaze, but doesn't challenge that statement, even though he plainly doubts its veracity. Jeren seats herself on the floor at the foot of the couch, rather than in a chair or on the couch itself. She balances the beer bottle against her, and proceeds to practically guzzle the water down. Thirsty much? "Looks like you needed that," Kevin prompts Jeren as he watches her chug a whole bottle of water. Grey's footsteps recede down the second floor hallway; dimly, there's the sound of the door at the end opening and closing. "The weather can't seem to decide if it wants to be summer or not," Jeren replies in a rather thick, somewhat rougher voice than usual. "Gets hot upstairs." Upstairs, a door bangs open. Footsteps again, getting closer. Heavy and fast -- Grey's not running, but he's striding at anger's top speed, and comes down the stairs like thunder, his scarred face tight with fury and his good eye spitting rage. Kevin jerks upright, before he can continue the somewhat strained conversation with Jeren, and tenses up. He doesn't say anything, yet. Jeren sets her empty water glass aside, and is just about to get started on the beer when Grey returns. She too, tenses, eyeing the Philodox like one might a particularly venomous snake. Grey stalks into the living room, pauses to give Jeren a brief, narrow-eyed look, then turns the full brunt of his gaze on Kevin. "/You/." His voice is rough with anger; he all but lunges at the cub, making a grab for him. Kevin leaps from his seat and backpedals. "What'd I do?" he yelps, eyes wide, looking all innocence. Jeren staggers upright by putting one hand on the couch for balance, and hopping backwards, still gripping the beer bottle by the neck with her other hand. Grey's good eye flashes from brown to yellow, Kevin's dodging and protests of innocence only serving to enrage him further. He lunges again, this time moving faster than the eye can follow, and takes hold of the cub by the joint between neck and shoulder. He spits something at the boy in Serbian, his fingers digging in painfully, and starts pulling Kevin out of the living room, heading back for the stairs. Kevin keeps gasping out his innocence as Thomas Grey drags him away, the British boy's heels making scraping noises as he tries ineffectually to resist the older garou's inexorable force, his eyes pleading to Jeren. Jeren abandons the bottle on the nearest flat surface she can find, then moves hastily after the two. "Whoa, whoa, what's going on? Thomas?" She's keeping about three feet of distance between them yet. Grey, heedless of Kevin's protests or Jeren's attempt to get an explanation, drags the cub down the second-floor hallway and all but hurls him into the bedroom at the end. "Is this your idea of a /joke/?" demands the Philodox, looking to be a bare inch from exploding into Crinos. "Do you think shit like this is /funny/?" Grey's room, neat and tidy as it usually is, has gained a new decoration -- the words 'BAD DOG' scrawled in large letters upon the wall opposite the bed, in what looks suspiciously like dried blood. Kevin looks at the wall, then back at Grey. He shakes his head mutely. "I'm not laughing," he says in the sincerest of tones, and indeed, that's a truthful remark. Jeren comes to an abrupt halt as she gets a look at the scrawling. Her eyes bug a little, invisible hackles lifting. Grey snarls, aiming a heavy smack at the back of the cub's head. "Govno yedno," he says thickly. "I want an explanation. /Now/." Stepping closer, he adds, "...And don't you /dare/ fucking lie to me, supak. I will paint the floor with your /blood/ if you lie to me." He sounds like he means every word. Kevin swallows hard, and lets out a gasp of pain as Grey's hand clouts the back of his head. "Cross my heart," he gasps, "it's nothing to do with me. Nothing." Jeren tries to slip fully into the room without drawing too much attention. She looks about as wound as a spring, and her jaw is tight enough that her teeth grinding is audible. Grey's arm jerks, his hand balled into a fist, but the blow is stifled. Still seething, he prowls around to the boy's front and, trembling with barely-repressed fury, glowers down at him. "Say that again." Kevin's eyes drag themselves up to meet the philodox's. "Do I look crazy enough to scrawl on your wall?" comes his plaintive voice. "I. Did not. Do it." Jeren remains where she is; silent. Grey's good eye remains yellow and shows no white at all, and the man's three-day beard -- starting to go white at the corners of his mouth -- seems to have gotten thicker in the past few minutes. He looms over the cub for several long seconds, jaw clenched, breathing hard through flaring nostrils. Then, quick as a cobra, a fist rockets out at Kevin's face. Kevin can't evade that fist, held firmly as he is in Grey's grip, and the philodox's fist smashes firmly into the youngster's face. He lets out a cry of pain as his nose splinters and blood starts to spurt from it, and whether by reflex or as a desperate counter-attack, he swings one foot in the direction of his accuser's crotch. Jeren sprints forward as soon as she sees Grey's punch. The Ragabash really doesn't have much of a chance of pulling the two apart--they're both taller and likely stronger than she is. So instead, she stupidly tries to push herself between them. "That's enough! Thomas! --Agh, Kevin!" The kick, desperate or no, acts like the starting gun at race -- or the ding of the bell that signals the beginning of a round of boxing. Grey's genitals are saved by a reflexive shift of the experienced brawler's weight, and the cub's sneakered foot skids over the Philodox's thigh instead; the dodge blurs into an all-out attack as Grey -- still in homid, for a wonder -- strikes out with both fists, supernaturally fast. Luckily for Kevin, Jeren -- ducking in between them just as Grey lashes out again -- takes the brunt of this... and at the moment, the Philodox doesn't seem to give a damn /who/ he's beating to a bloody pulp as long as it's /someone/. Kevin drops to the floor, rolls, and bulks up as he takes the glabro form and regains his feet a few paces from the fight. "Pete's sake!" he snarls to the two battling garou. "What the hell is going down here?" It'd be more accurate to say the one battling garou--and Grey isn't really battling so much as engaging in a beat down. Jeren does try to avoid what she can of the blows, but they're rage fueled, she's still in homid, and close quarters has never been her strongest field. The Ragabash mainly concentrates on covering her eyes and nose with her arms, and trying to keep her feet--no return blows from her. It's Jeren's nigh-supernatural grace that allows her to remain standing under the majority of the swift, savage abuse, as she takes the bruises and cracked ribs that were meant for the cub. Then Grey's foot lashes out, and her left knee explodes in nova of pain, and the leg collapses beneath her. As she goes down, Grey snarls something angrily at her, then turns his gaze to Kevin and says something more. Though it's not in English, the way he stabs a hand out toward the door makes the message pretty clear: Get out. Kevin's newly huge hand dabs at his bleeding nose, even as his schnozzle starts to slowly fix itself and the torrents of blood slacken that have stained his shirt and Grey's floor (though thankfully without leaving any recognisable letters on the ground). From the look he gives Grey he seems to be reluctant to leave, but there's no denying the command in that furious eye and its dead, blank counterpart. He slinks round the fallen Jeren and through the door, then whirls to shout in a Parthian shot "But I still didn't do it, you crazy bastard!" before scooting down the corridor. Jeren crumbles right after her leg, still doing what she can to shield her head, but little else besides. Somehow, she actually managed to /not/ cry out during that onslaught, though this can be attributed to the fact that the blows were coming so fast she just didn't have time, not from any special quality or conscious effort. Her breaths are coming in very short, very savage, uneven bursts. Grey looks, for a moment, like he might go after Kevin, but something jerks his attention back down to Jeren. He says something to her, curt and cold, and when she doesn't respond immediately, he snarls it again, bulks up into glabro form, and grabs her by shirt and waistband to haul her bodily up off his floor. Jeren's head rolls forward with the motion, as though she weren't willing to dedicate enough effort to actually keeping it in one place. Along with this comes an even sharper exhale, followed by a squeaky attempt to force air back into her lungs. Her hands go to Grey's wrists, just sort of hanging on to them, and her head lifts just enough to peer up at him warily through scraggly, even more out of place hair. The Ragabash's teeth are still grinding, and her eyes are looking just a little yellow themselves. Still, she remains homid. [Grey, Glabro] He's a huge brute of a man, well over seven feet tall, broad-shouldered and exceedingly muscular but, judging from his appearance, barely human. His face is lean, bony, and feral, with a heavy shelf of brow and an out-thrust jaw; sharp fingernails, pointed ears, and overlong canine teeth add to the general impression of animalistic menace. The left side of his face is disfigured by a number of prominant scars, thick keloid tissue making a ruin of already thuggish features. Under heavy, hairy black eyebrows, his deep-set eyes -- the left blind white, the right wolfishly gold -- are often shadowed as though from lack of sleep. His thick black hair hangs just past his ears, shaggy and unkempt, and his lower face is a forest of black stubble, a few days' worth of beard-growth that's touched with grey at the corners of his mouth. He wears a grey and black flannel shirt open over a dark red t-shirt, both untucked over a pair of loose-fit, straight-legged blue jeans. His sneakers are black Chuck Taylors, hightops with the distinctive star-in-circle logo on the ankles. Grey, thankfully, does nothing more violent than to carry Jeren to the doorway of his bedroom and, from there, unceremoniously tosses her out into the hallway. "Pizda!" he shouts at her, and then slams the door shut. Almost immediately following the door slam, there are the very audible sounds of shifting, followed by a loud, furious snarl. No sounds of destruction follow this, at least, though she's panting hard enough to be heard through the wood. Like the aftermath of a violent storm, everything seems to go quiet. So too, does the panting. Heavy footsteps, too heavy to be anything human, and rather uneven ones at that, can be heard going a short ways down the hall. And then a door slams /hard/, hard enough that it's a wonder the thing isn't splintered right off of its hinges. Then silence on that end too.