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Halifax
I HOLD SECRETS FLAME
Rain ran down the dull gray buildings of Halifax with a steady rhythm. The masked coyote sat in a nondescript window, the glass of which was long gone. Every once and a while a drop of the cold liquid would hit the top of his hat or roll down his nose, but he sat there like a statue. Just watching the dead city sprawl out beneath him. For a moment he almost found himself missing the business of an inhabited city. At least in those places there was always something he could do. Someone committing some crime that needed to be punished. While it might be the same here it was harder to find. Sitting idle made the man restless.
True enough, he still needed to track down Conri Church. The man was a rapist and a possible mass murderer. He had so little to go on it was difficult though. He knew the man was missing a limb, but that was all he knew of his appearance. He had no scent. No location. Stumbling through the lands with nothing to go on was little better than waiting to find the necessary information. Not to mention he would be useless if he did find the man now. His run in with Cwmfen's sire had left him more debilitated than he had been in years. It was maddening to the coyote. So he had been staying mostly inside the city. The one place in these lands where the coyote felt any kind of solace and comfort. While his natural body may have been made for the forests, his mind was not. Honestly he was probably more human than coyote in many respects.
While only a few weeks ago he had thought about moving on once the murders were solved, that was no longer a possibility now. There was a much darker force in these lands now and Onus could not let it go unchecked. Something like that would go against every fiber of his being. Not only that, but he had promised the woad woman to protect her from her father's ill intent. He owed her at least that much.
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A dark shape limped along the street in the rain. At least he weather was okay. No thunder. No sleet or hail. He loved rain, but ice was another matter entirely. Mismatched red and yellow eyes raked the old storefronts aorund him, watching for any sign of danger. He'd recently pulled a muscle, and while that wouldn't have any major effect on his fighting abilities, hit would serve to distract him, if only slightly. And, of course, he was in his Optime form, and he was a batter fighter in his Secui form. Fortunately, no one was around to bother him. Thank goodness.
His head was still killing him from the last three days. He'd met a couple of people, but he didn't remember the events too well, as the haze of gin and vermouth served to cloud his memory. For the moment, and perhaps for a while, Vukasin had had enough of alcohol. He only drank rarely, or on brief binges, like this last, but when he did, he had a habit of getting smashed flat out of his mind. His hangovers were more epic than the humans' armageddon, in his own opinion.
He sighed as he continued down the street, just letting his train of thought stop at whichever stations and rail-road crossings it wanted as rain dripped from his saturated black hair. He briefly pondered what Pumpkin Butt (Haven Aatte) and Susquehanna, the two he'd met during his last trip into the martini glass, were doing, before shoving everything form his mind. He just let it wander, hoping for something in his surroundings to jump out at him.
He'd heard in brief about the recent mass-murder, but he had no idea what had acctually happened, and he honestly had little drive to find out. Such things made him sick. He was a healer, after all, with a respect for life more powerful than his own existance, and he thanked god that such abominations were few and far between. The word "death" was enough to send shivers down his spine. He was content to stare off into space until he felt a larg drop of water hit his head at an angle that differed form the rest of the rain. In his paranoid, hungover state, this was enough to put him on edge. Glancing around briefly, he soon cast his gaze skyward, spotting the mask man up above.
"Howdy... It's raining, you know, so you really shouldn't be out here," he let his voice trail off. Sure, the mask and the trenchcoat creeped him out, but his inner mother-hen decided to rear it's head. It might be odd from a guy like him, but he was always concerned about the health of others. It was something his mother had drummed into his mind in teaching him all she knew about healing, which was a good deal. He stood there with his muzzle in the air, hands in the ockets of the cut-off denim shorts that were his only clothing, watching the statue-esque window-sitter as his satchel hung limp and soggy from his shoulder.
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Thanks for picking this up!  Also I edited the first post a little. He was in a fight and got a nasty bite wound after I wrote it so I updated.
I HOLD SECRETS FLAME
The man's mind lingered on the thought of the banded woman. Did he have a friend now? An actual friend? The word sounded wrong to him. Like some foreign thing that he couldn't understand. But what else could their relationship possibly be. True, it had been one of mutual respect between two warriors, but now it had moved forward. Someone didn't save another they didn't care about. At least not someone like her. He did. But it was more because of punishing the criminal than actually saving someone. To him it was just an added bonus. He didn't know what to think about Cwmfen, mostly because he didn't even know what he felt towards her. This was unknown ground to him, and that always made him wary.
His large ears twitched as a voice reached them from below. Slightly the veiled eyes looked down to take in a sopping wet wolf looking up at him. "Perhaps should take own advice." There wasn't any anger or spite in his voice. Rarely was anything. Just that same flat and rough monotone. Really he was only partially in the rain. While his coat protected him from the moisture, he knew better than to risk getting his bandages wet. "What are you doing in the city in the rain at night?" Most people would be taking shelter in a building or be back at home, not wandering the streets by themselves. Onus made no move to descend the building or to retreat inside. Perhaps this man had some information he could use.
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Shrugging, Vukasin began to kick at the edge of the puddle he was standing in. "I like the rain," he replied, grinning like an idiot. Which wasn't rare for him, especially when he was hung-over and just beginning to sober up. But, he wasn't a stupid drunk, or a mean drunk. Just a lazy, good-natured, affectionate drunk. Affectionate drunks were annoying. Talk about the pot and the kettle.
He kept his eyes locked on the older guy. What was he doing there? Who was he? Raking his brian for anything he'd heard about people in the city, he sighed. His brain hurt too much after the night before, talking with that kid Haven. SquashButt, he'd been calling him the whole night. Or, something like that (it was actually PumpkinButt, but Vuk is, as I said, only "half there"). "I'm in the city because... Hell, I can't remember. Something to do with medical supplies. I think I was raiding the old hospital and clinics for suture material again," he continued. Why he was out at night, he wasn't sure. He guessed he just, well, felt like it.
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I HOLD SECRETS FLAME
He just liked the rain? "Hrm." That was strange. Liking the rain was one thing. Onus kind of liked the rain, but he didn't necessarily like getting soaked out in it. Especially when it was cold. If it hadn't been raining he would have been able to detect the lingering scent of alcohol on the man and that would have done more to explain things. But he couldn't, so he was just left thinking that this dark wolf with the mismatched eyes was an odd one.
Though at the man's continued loss of knowledge of what he had been doing, the coyote made an educated guess that he had recently been intoxicated. He couldn't understand drinking alcohol. It never lead to anything good. It only dulled the senses and the reflexes. It made people do stupid things that they would not normally do, including crimes. Anything that made it easier for people to commit wrongs was not okay in the man's book. "Lot of wounds you have to suture?" If this man was a medic it wasn't suspicious, but it sounded almost like he needed a lot. If that were the case it was a bit suspicious. It also reminded him of the throbbing pain in his neck and shoulder.
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He shook his head. "Nah, It's just that I used the last of mine to sew up Hanna's leg..." he stopped to think for amoment. He didn't even wonder wether the other would know who he was talking about. He was tired. He'd been wandering around the entire day. And he was still a little blue from his encounter with PumpkinButt, no, Haven. He must of pissed him off bad, because the little snot had growled at him to leave after one of his lectures. He had been right, though. Just because your father was a rapist didn't mean that you'd be. The kid had been handling it all wrong.
When Vukasin came back to the present, he looked around. The city was kind of depressing at night, all dark and broken down. It made him think of the old shack back home, where his mother used to take him and his brothers on hotter-than-usual days. It had been this rickety thing in the middle of the desert. Who put a shack in the middle of the desert, anyway? "I'm Vukasin. You can call me Vuk, if you'd like. 'Most everybody else does."
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I HOLD SECRETS FLAME
Hmm. So he was a medic. One that had simply run out of supplies. That was of no concern then. For his oddness, the black wolf seemed of the honest sort. Onus could easily tell when someone was lying and this man certainly wasn't. He didn't know why he bothered to use the woman's name. It was not as if the coyote knew this "Hanna". Still, if she had gained her injury from an unwarranted attack on her then perhaps he would have a new suspect to keep his eyes on. "What happened to her leg that needed suturing?" Perhaps the female had just been careless and hurt herself. Still, anything that could lead him to a criminal was worth asking into.
He listened as the man offered up his name. Vukasin. Quietly he stored it to memory, though he doubted he would have much use of it in the future. All he did was offer a nod in response, making no actions to give this Vuk his name. Onus did not give his name freely. Only those he wished to know it were given it, and those few were usually given it with a reason of some sort or another. As of now, he saw no reason to give the wolf such information.
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He waited a moment for a name in return, then shrugged when none came. Mayeb the coyote -he thought it was a coyote, at least- was just paranoid or something. He deliberated for a moment over whther or not he should tell the man about Hanna. After all, he could be an enemy to her, some one who didn't like her, who hated her, who might even be out to get her. Or he could be the sick, twisted type who would seek out people to torture just because they could. Thsi thought made him shudder, but, despite the trenchcoat and the blindfold, which was odd, the coyote man didn't seem at all odd or threatening.
Finally, he decided that it would be okay to talk about the incident. "I met her at a bar. I'd just limped in after pulling a muscle in my calf, and she came limping in. She'd fallen and scraped her hand and cut her leg open on a broken bottle on the ground. I looked at the wound, and offered to sew it up for her. In doing so, I used up all but the last three inches of suture material I'd had with me. So, I stuck around long enough to find some more. Oh, an we had a couple of drinks in there, somehwere, but nothing funny or hinky occured," he explained, probably with more unneeded detail than the man would require, but, when he started telling a story, he couldn't just tell it half-way. Well, not very well, at least.
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So sorry for the wait D: I was trying to think of a reason Onus would stick around...but I couldn't XD Sorry, he's just kind of anti-social, don't take it personally!
I HOLD SECRETS FLAME
There were a few moments of silence before the wolf with the mismatched eyes spoke again. He probably was worried that Onus was someone who would go after this woman, but he was very mistaken. It was whoever had done this to her that he would go after. He had found that more often than not people, regular people, got the wrong impression from him. It was probably his odd appearance and his rough demeanor. It worked against his favor in social situations. But the coyote was not a social creature, so that hindrance didn't bother him. He was built to fight and right wrongs, not for small talk.
But then it appeared Vukasin decided that he wasn't a threat and told him what had happened. Told him, in fact, much more than he needed or wanted to know. A disappointed sigh exhaled from the vigilante. She hadn't been attacked, she had only been clumsy. There was nothing, it seemed, of any importance that this man could tell him. A shame. Onus was already in a fouler mood than usual due to his injury, so he was less inclined than usual to suffer any more useless conversation. "Good luck finding your suturing material." With that he moved back inside the building. He hoped the wolf would have enough sense not to come in and try to pursue him further. It would only vex the coyote and he was in no mood for annoyances.
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