zg_shadows | In the Backwoods

I've left out Royce coz I wasn't entirely sure if he was there. If he was, sorry, Scott, but you'd be treated as an Elder and Fi sent running on errands, if that's ok? Otherwise--oh, never mind.

As it happened she was with the Elders. As one, the tribe looked up, then glanced at each other. They switched from Garou to one of the Old Tongues.

In those few hours Fi and Leira were run ragged. As the Elders gathered information, they bridged again, fighting off—well, things was an adequate name for them. She and a couple of others didn’t stop to analyse before ripping them apart. She touched base with the Tenders—the fact that they were alive and as untainted as could be expected was all the information she needed to relay.

After a while, pleading duties in London—they couldn’t have it both ways, dammit—she bridged to somewhere in the Green Mountains. She ran and ran as she couldn’t in the UK, snow under her paws, until she was fagged anhd the wounds she’d incurred pulled too much. She slowed to a trot, then crawled under a ledge, waiting.

She may have slept, for she could hear a manic giggling that sounded almost like a purr. She padded out.

A huge, splendidly bewhiskered cat sat on its considerable haunches, with a writhing, bleeding ratkin under one enormous paw. The cat giggled. “I’ve got a present. It’s for you.”

“I wouldn’t dreaming of poaching it,” said Fi.

“Oh,” poohed Paws, “I’ve had must be a dozen already.” She lifted the oversized extremity that had given the Qualmi her name, and the beleaguered ratkin shifted and ran for it. Fi, obedient to the game, tensed, but was stopped midleap as Paws made up a rule. “One, two, three!” she chanted, then let the Garou go.

Fi saw no reason not to dispatch it as quickly as she could. She came back to her friend and cocked her head to one side, raising a doggish eyebrow.

Paws, who meanwhile had set a fire and put water on to boil, said chattily, “In the end the 10,000 Nations don’t seem to care much about the whitemen cities exploding.” She added a hunk of meat to the water, waving it to show it was rabbit, not rat. “Mmmm. Tea.” She didn’t believe in steeping leaves for beverages—where was the good in that? She continued, “We’ve got rescue forces out for known city-dewllers, but some of us told some of them to get out weeks ago, and they didn’t.” She looked around at the miles of forest, and added smugly, “We’re fine here.”

The qualmi seer giggled. Fi waited for what she hoped she’d hear. Paws said it.

“Five Nations had a little accident with an armoury. Fortunately no one was hurt.”

Fi grinned. “Bless you.”

“It wasn’t me,” said Paws, offended. “I wouldn’t dare annoy the Iroquois Nation in a time of trouble.”

“’Course not,” agreed Fi, still grinning. She’d known Paws for years. “Usual place?”

A miffed lynx did nor reply and dished out the squirrel tea huffily. It wasn’t until she’d had the lion’s share—Fi was mixing her metaphors—that Paws finally grinned and agreed, “Usual place.”

Paws stretched and disappeared into the woods. A throaty voice floated back from the direction Fi had chased the Rat. “MMmmm. You want this?”

“All yours,” said Fi, trying not to think what use Paws would have for the body. She wasn’t sure if the lynx eating it was the best or the worst option.

Fi trotted off to the cache of highly expensive (and mostly illegal) ammo, complete with a few grenades tied with sparkly bows. By the early hours she was on the London rooftops, invisible, taking out ratkin stragglers and leaders of ratkin mobs. Hard to regenerate, she said to herself, when high ex takes your head clean off.

She wondered where MSR was.