Some Fights Are Just Stupid

Characters in this scene: Silver, Glory

Location: Indianopolis

Immediately follows: King Leer Fight

Glory looked up from her laptop to see Silver, fully-clad in armour. “Shit, looks like you had fun in Britain.”

"Honestly?" Silver grins. "Oh, I really did." Her Glamour slips, just slightly, and her voice is grating metal. "Mind if I put this fella on the couch for a bit? He's a little out of it, I think."

"Man, I wish I could've been there," Glory said, adjusting her arm in a cast.

“I think you'd have had fun, though it went... pretty bad, at the end there."

"Hm, I can guess. That King guy was an upper-tier, right? Pretty high above our weight-class."

"I'm honestly not sure if Dust is alive. He went... it looked like he went nuts, before II got us out of there. I think Mien actually died?"

"I have no idea who any of those people are. Except maybe Dust, I think. I think I did a favor for him once? Anyway, you the only survivor?"

"Hardly. II is mostly alive, Dust is... hard to kill, Mien probably has a way out of death. Uh. Who else went. Echo didn't head in. ... I'm like 95% sure the Fool is dead though." Silver paused. "Shit."

"Fool? The creepy guy that kept trying to bang you?" Glory said, raising an eyebrow. "He finally kicked the bucket?"

"I think so. Frankly, the shit I saw on that TV was highly fucking confusing."

"I have no idea what you are talking about. I didn't know that they got cable that deep in the Warrens."

"It was a crystal? That looked like a TV? Damn it Glory, I don't know what I'm talking about! ... Oh, I threw Yoobie into the Abyss. I think."

"Oh," Glory said, with a sigh of a relief. "Finally, got that cleaver off my neck. Looks like we can check off two of our problems off the list at the same time."

- Trip into the Abyss (Grey's Seed Problem)

- Stella is hunting down Brian.

- Stella is attacking Landis.

~~- Big Goblin on OMO.~~

- Officer Ted and New York Cop's are still looking for them.

~~- Yoobie is somewhere loose in New York.~~

- Erectus is somewhere loose in New York.

"Hah." Silver sits on the floor. "Fuck. Oh. Right. I... oh hell, what did I do to me again?"

Glory stands up, with a look of concern on her face. "Silver? You alright? Did one of the goblins down there end up throwing another curse at you?"

"Not that I can recall. No, I drank one."

"What?! Why? Didn't you already have one? Weren't you still low on Self?" Glory said, eyes wide and quickly rushing over to her side.

Silver looks... fine-ish. "Don't panic, Glory," Silver says, amused. "The curse was... relatively friendly. Though don't break my Glamour while I'm anywhere breakable. Just, uh. Don't."

"Well... okay," Glory said, scratching her head. "Hey, by the way, I wanted to talk to you about something, before you left. What was that text you sent about the Abyss trip being off?"

"Oh, that. Landis still hasn't talked? He made a bargain with Grey to get all the seeds into one building, the poor guy."

Glory blinked her eyes, as if was trying to process what she had just heard. "What?"

"Didn't you hear me?"

Glory slowly stood up from Silver side. "Wait... go back to the start. Explain all this to me again. What did Landis do?"

"He made a deal with Grey. Promised him a place if he got all the seeds into it, and also... a bunch of stuff about letting people go?" Silver rubbed her face. "I'm so tired, fuck." She looks down at herself, at her armour. "Aww, shit, can I even get this off me?"

Glory didn't say anything. Instead, she turned around and took a few steps toward her desk. "So Landis struck a deal, huh?" She said, not looking back at her. She was tightly clenching her fist.

Silver... hesitates. "Glory. You realise I do that with him a lot?"

Glory didn't answer. She just slowly lifted her hand, and gently stroke the lamp on the desk.

"Glory - for fuck's sake, Glory. Other people trying to help the situation isn't a betrayal of you."

But Glory didn't seem to hear her. She didn't seem to hear her at all, as she suddenly grabbed the lamp off the desk and threw it a nearby window. As the glass shattered and shards fell onto the floor, Silver could see her heavily breathing, her expression nearly completely blank, but her eyes clearly filled with rage. It reminded her of when Glory was driving the van. "That fucking bastard," She growled through her gritted teeth.

Silver eyes Glory, but she's just too tired to be actually worried. "Alright, fine, if you're going to be like this," Silver mutters.  She starts undoing her armour, and as she does so her Glamour... very slightly undoes. The sound of scraping metal is lightly audible as Silver carefully unwinds the armour from herself, peeling it away from the swords.

Glory glances over to Silver, as her shape was beginning to change. Her eyes began widen in concern, but they soon flashed back to anger. "No no no, don't you fucking dare change the subject," she said, looking away.

"What even is the subject?" Silver asks, not looking up. She was mainly maintaining her human shape, but there was something very sharp and unnatural underneath her armour.

"Landis! Fucking hiding his whole shit from us! There's no way this whole thing was something he just came up on a fly! He knew we were planning to go down there! What, was he going to let us go down there while he struck up the deal? Fucking blindsiding us with his shit," Glory said, as she punched into the wall with her free arm. Her hand was bruised, but she left a sizable dent in the plaster.

She looked over to Silver. "And all the shit we went through. If he told us earlier, we wouldn't have to go through all that. I had to give away a book from an old friend to get that information on the Abyss. If he told us, we wouldn't have gone down to the warehouse, and Stella wouldn't have realized that Brian's your brother, she wouldn't gotten the letter, and we wouldn't have gone through all that bullshit!" Glory was seething, her eyes glaring right at Silver.

Silver cocks her head. "I hadn't thought about it like that," she remarks. She shrugs. "Oops." There were several strange snick noises, and Silver managed to wriggle out of the armour... only to be still wearing the same armour underneath, so far as Glory could see. She sighed with relief. "Whew. I was actually worried that was stuck to me now."

"God. You better have whatever's going with you under control. God, that fucking bastard. I expect being blindsided by you, but not by fucking Landis of all people." Glory said, kicking over the desk.

"Hard to tell, only had this curse... has it been an hour yet?" Silver glances herself over. "Genuine possibility of my Glamour shattering at random, so please don't be too violent, it would be incredibly uncomfortable for everyone in the room. Anyway. Landis. I don't think he did this to deliberately fuck you over. Frankly, I think he's just absent-minded and distracted as fuck."

"Oh really?" Glory said, turning and looking Silver straight in the eyes. Her eyes were more tire-looking now, but still filled with anger.

"So there's nothing that he's still hiding from us, is there?" She asked, taking a few steps closer to her. "You're smart, Silver. You can pick up whenever there's something fishy up. So, I want you to look me in the eye, and swear that in your own persona, honest opinion, that there is nothing that he isn't anything that he isn't still hiding from me. Something that's gotta do with Grey or Stella that I would like to know, but he's still not saying. Not out of forgetfulness, or being distracted, but in a whole-hearted effort to keep information to himself, when it's something that we would've wanted to know. Look me in the eye, and say it." She put her hands on Silver's shoulder's and looked directly into her eyes, wide and unblinkingly.

Silver looks back at her, serious, eyes bright and blue. "Glory," Silver says flatly. "You've implied very heavily that you love me, and I genuinely have concerns about you killing me. I am very, very paranoid. Asking me a question like that? Not very nice."

Glory briefly looked away, her eyes glancing down at the floor. She then looked back to her, the anger out of her eyes, this time filled with begging. "Just... please. Tell me he isn't hiding anything more from me. Tell me he isn't keeping secrets of things that would've concerned me, about Grey or about Stella. Please... just tell me, is he still me friend?"

Silver exhales, then reaches up; she pulls at Glory's uninjured shoulder, tugging her down next to her, and then takes the armour off of her lap and puts it on a nearby table. Glamour shifts, and Silver looks like herself, like the young British woman with silver in her hair who wears pinks and blues. She meets Glory's gaze squarely. "Yes, Glory," she says. "I do think he's still your friend, and I think that anything he hasn't told you? It's because he's distracted, or not thinking, or because he can't, or because he thinks its a kindness not to say it. I do think this, as a genuine thing, not as something that I'm thinking just so I can say it. Alright? I don't think he's out to betray you." Silver exhales, utterly weary. "Alright?"

Glory looks at Silver, trembling in her position. "I... I'm not sure. I hate being left out of the loop. I hate being a pawn in another's game without even knowing it. I hate when the people I think won't betray me do. I think I need to talk to Landis himself about this. I have to go." And with that, Glory got up from position and immediately began to head for the door.

There was a very peculiar noise, then a growl, and then Silver leapt. Glory fell to the floor under the weight of a large grey wolf, which snarled. "Glory," Silver said, and under the canine snap was something very metallic. "How about. You stay right there. And calm the fuck down."

A loud whistle then rang throughout the house. They both looked over to see Shatbraggart, over by the corner, with his fingers in his mouth. Soon at least a dozen goblins began to stroll over to where they were in the house, closely watching and hiding behind some cover. Silver noticed that a couple of them had brought the Glamour-breaking bombs with them. One of the goblins walked over to Shatbraggart and turned into a shotgun, which he pointed at her.

Glory wiggled Silver's weight. "I'm sorry, but I need to see him. I have to find out the truth for myself. Not through anyone else but me."

Silver looks back at Glory, completely unphased. "If they break my Glamour right now, Glory, you will die," Silver says, very clearly. "My true shape is made out of swords right now. I don't have enough control not to kill you, this close, if my Glamour shatters.

"Glory. What I want, right this moment, is for you to calm down. I very much want you to have the information from Landis. But I don't want you to do so like this."

Glory glanced over to Shatbraggart, who had a concerned look on his face. She then looked at Silver, and thought for a moment, before finally speaking. "No bombs or guns. Nothing lethal," she ordered.

She then took her jammer out of her pocket, whispered a quick incantation, and pressed it. All the lights in the house went out. As total darkness blanketed over them, Silver felt something immediately tackle into her, giving Glory enough room to crawl out from beneath her.

Silver snarls, all fury, and her Glamour wanes, just a bit, swords starting to bleed out of her hide and cut into whatever hit her. "Glory, you think darkness will hide you? I am a wolf and you smell like shit!" She smacks whatever it was with one paw, sending it flying.

Glory did smell like shit. Luckily for her, the goblins had made quite an effort to make the entire house just as bad during their time here. Not to mention the dozen goblins that are surrounding her that smelled twice as bad. They were also screaming all around her, right in her ears, making tracking her movements by sound nearly impossible as well.

As she quickly got back up to her feet, Glory reached into her pack and bit into a goblin's eye. She blinked, as she could now better make out the outline of the near pitch-black room. She couldn't completely see everything in the dark, but at the very least, pretty much as well as a goblin could now. She began make her way to the door.

Silver snarls with frustration - at this point she's probably angrier than Glory is, if anything. She smashes several goblins aside, probably cutting into them, but she's retained enough of herself that the swords are still mostly just inside her fur rather than erupting out completely. "You fucking bitch," she snaps. "You won't listen to kindness. You won't listen to force. What the fuck will you listen to?"

The sensory overload was hell on a wolf, particularly a furious one that was basically running on fumes. Normally, she'd just head for the door herself based on memory, but she'd completely lost track of the house's makeup. Not entirely; she managed to smash her way through the pile of goblins vaguely towards the direction of the exit. But she hit the wall next to it hard enough that it cracked.

Silver then heard the sound of the door being opened and shut, as well a dozen footsteps heading for - not the door, but the window. The one Glory smashed with the lamp earlier.

Silver took a step back, shaking herself. Her ears flicked as she reoriented herself, her Glamour shifting until she was more cat than wolf, though still far too metallic, and then she leapt for the window herself.

A goblin grabbed at her, twisting her off-balance, and she hit the shattered glass. It cut further through the Glamour, more metal coming out; Silver shook off the goblin with a hiss and shoved herself out, into the city. "Fucking..." Oh. There was only one real way Glory could think she'd outrun a wolf in her injured state. "Do you even know which house is his?"

Silver's voice was losing a lot of its humanity, twisting down to the scrape of blades and nothing more.

Glory did not. But she could easily trace back all their calls and messages with Landis back to his location. Glory looked at her map on her phone as she ran down the streets. When they first got here, she was paranoid that Stella could track them down through the van somehow, so she ended up parking it a rather unfortunate distance away from the house.

A few of the goblins were keeping up with her as they ran around the corner, away from where Silver should be able to see them from the house, quickly making their way down the dimly lit streets.

Silver's ability to reason was rapidly degenerating - whether that was due to repressed emotions, the curse, some lingering effects from the fight, or what, she was mostly just fucking angry at this point. She leapt into motion, and she was frankly quick now that she was out of confined quarters and not surrounded by goblins. The house? Oh yes, that was far too soaked in everyone's respective smells. The surrounding streets, however, weren't, and Silver had spent a lot of time studying Glory's particular scent; she'd curled around her neck, tasted her blood, investigated her demesne. A fresh trail of it was hard to miss.

Silver ran.

Neither Glory or Silver went out of the house that much while they stay'd there. But with a bit of technomancy, Glory's phone gave her a basic layout of the surrounding area, allowing her to navigate even when she can barely see shit in this dark. The van was only a couple more blocks away.

A couple more blocks she wasn't going to get. Silver wasn't the injured one. Silver was the cursed one.

Silver leapt straight over Glory's head, and twisted midair, landing on all four paws. It was hard to see, but there was something clearly wrong with her silhouette, slices piercing out of her back and her limbs. A low, rumbling, constant growl was rippling out from her.

"Can. We. Fucking. Talk?"

Silver was barely understandable, between anger and the steady disintegration of her shape. She was shaking. The fact that she wasn't trying to rip Glory to shreds was frankly a miracle.

Glory tried to squint Silver's strange wolf form, but the goblin eye could only do so much. "We can, after I'm done talking to Landis. I doubt anything he can say can wreck our relationship, so just wait here till I'm DONE!" She says, and with that, the goblins with her charge.

Glory quickly grabs another goblin body part from her pack, pops it into her mouth, and chews. The goblin's foot was unpleasantly gamey and crunchy, but it gave her the boost she needed to dash between two nearby buildings as the goblins jumped on top of Silver, screaming in ecstasy.

Silver's snarl lowers, hitting some strange unnatural register it shouldn't be able to. "Oh, is that what you fucking think?" Silver straight up ignores the goblins, which were probably accidentally impaling themselves on her; she held still, shuddering as her Glamour cracked further, as she increased in size and metal replaced fur. "Then you're fucking wrong."

With that, Silver turned away, padding back to the house with goblins stuck to her 'fur'. She was still growling, a low, furious rumble.

As Glory ran, she set up a number of traps and barriers behind her. She then breaks into one of the buildings and hides out, listening to when Silver runs by. But she never did. After waiting for a reasonable amount of time, Glory peeks her head out of the door, and begins to make her way to the van.

She arrives to it, swiftly looks around herself to make sure nothing is watching or waiting for her, and get in. She then checks her side mirrors, up above her as well, and when sure that there's nothing coming, start up her van, and begins to make her way to Landis's house.

The goblins, fucking idiots that they were, steadily beat Silver down, gradually tearing through the Glamour... and literally slicing themselves to shreds. By the time Silver was back at the house she was in her now-true form, a car-sized wolf constructed entirely of gleaming blades followed around by rats. Glamour wasn't gone from her Self, exactly; her shapes and preferences still lingered, in the places where it couldn't be removed from, but she had nothing left she could use.

This was too big to fit in the house.

Silver bared her teeth at it in frustration; she leapt, clearing the wall, and landed heavily on the lawn out back, leaving clawed tears in it. She settled herself down there, goblin corpses slowly dripping down her swords, dripping shit and viscera all over her.

As you might imagine, this was one pissed off wolf.

Silver’s head then turned over to the sound of farts and raspberry’s coming from the house. The goblins that were still alive and were left behind were standing at the windows and doors, openly mocking her from the safety of inside the house. A few of them had found what little stuff she brought with her to the house, and were now rubbing it against their asscheeks, right in front of her.