View source for Log: Patrol of Fair Flames and Fierce words

{{Log
| Synopsis           = Fair Flame patrols and comes across wicked men conducting wicked deeds, but the Khan is watched by another.
| Characters         = Kira, Namkhai
| NPCs               = Mooks and mobsters
| Location           = Woods
| Date of Scene      = 30.04.2025
}} 
The forest is quiet. The night is cool. In the world of 1995, there is not enough appreciation for the quiet places - but there is a distinct presence of ill will in those isolated realms. Of black Buicks filled with four men in longcoats, the stink of gun oil and cigars wafting into the clean air. The yellow headlights illuminating the skeletal remains of trees where two men kneel, sniffling, duct tape over their mouths while a single man hovers nearby with a pistol in hand. "Fucking journalists..." The cigerette is puffed on, a soft red glow over a frightening face of crags and pocks. "...You're basically just paid snitches, you know that? Snitches. Not even worth a grave."

The other men are still in office clothes, shuddering. They stink of piss, of fear, and that acrid reek of adrenaline.

The pistol is racked, and as the cig is pulled on again a large exhale of noxious smoke exhales through the nose. These are foul men. Vile men. Dangerous men. Demons, really, and the perfect kind of prey for those old Tiger Gods.

-

Where was home to a Tiger? Ecologists and Zoologists could tell you their habitats, but that was a picture painted with the colors missing, unknowing of the war of rage or the vicious actions of sultans passed. So many of their breed had wandered, nomadic or simply looking for a place to build something of their own and thrive. That story had been how 'Clawed Mountain' had founded his own little empire, and how his daughter had found her way to making a home in the United States where the Sept of the Holly King had welcomed her. 

An answer in a practical sense then, but tonight there was a more literal one. 

Daylight pyrio or not, the -real- home for the Tiger was in the dark, in the shadows. A creature with a coat like flame that still managed to be invisible beyond the firelight and evoke fear and legend in the hearts of humankind about what might be waiting in the dark outside the safety of the village. Well tonight, the dark wasn't empty. 

The hunt had called, but tonight it wasn't simply some dear that had crossed the path of the tiger sought to stretch her legs. Instead in creeping shadow the first notes of warning slip from the darkness, reverberating through the trees like nature itself were warning against their action and intrusion. 

A rational person might know the 'growl' of a Tiger in the darkness might be out of place in the forests of Texas. 

That didn't make it any less terrifying!

-

There are more tigers in Texas, than all the world...how sad is that? How marvelous? How glorious? To the eyes of humans, it seems sad. Awful. A testament to the greed of Americans, and the raucious nature of Texans...but what if it wasn't random? What if it were not impulsive consumerism, and the rape of nature - but a strategy. A war strategy of such grand scale, over so many generations, that in thirty years it will bolster tiger numbers beyond endangerment.

What if...

The man with the gun puffs that cig again, sighing as it shortens. "You two couldn't just fucking keep your traps shut...I didn't wanna kill anyone. But now I gotta - because you're fucking SNITCHES!"

He yells, it echoes. The gun raises and in that yellow light his comrades will see their companion go white - as that primal fear grips his balls in a vice, and Leo cannot suddenly find his will to breathe, let alone speak. The pistol pointed at one victim now raised to the forest where the eyes flick around nervously, and one of those kneeling men so stinking of piss cannot hold himself; but actually leaps to his feet and starts to run! It is this that breaks Leo free of the cat-spell, three shots ringing out. A body drops. He's sweating, staring around at the dark forest.

-

Guns are dangerous, weapons of the modern age of smoke and metal that were well known to Kira. Once a bow and arrow had been the means for the great Khan to rule his empire...now the modern iron was traded by Kira's family. But guns were not flawless either: they were loud, they brought false confidence abused by too many due to their simplicity...and their noise and smoke only added to the confusion in the dark. 

Wicked men, clumbsy, loud, blind to the night thanks to the headlights that only served to ruin their night vision and cast long, wild shadows in the dark for scarier things to hide in. 

They had their warning, that growl from the prowling cat in the dark whose form shuddered as will and gnosis hardened her fur to jade, sharpened her claws for what was to come next. 

A roar was a warning, but violence? It was terrifying, and silent as the tread of a cat's paw when Fair flame surged from the dark in a flash of orange and black, claws and teeth. 

Maybe the beginning of an urban legend, maybe the delirium would leave any survivor thinking it was an unbelievably large mountain lion...but one of the gunmen's stories would end there in a single bloody instant before the Tiger's motion carried her back into the woodline.

-

Blood. Violence. The rip of leather and silk, of flesh and muscle. Even as Leo screams - so will the gush of hot blood flood Fair-Flame's maw, and the messages read in the waving grasses, the passing of birds, the rippling of a brook becomes clearer - even as the giant cat lays waste to one human, does time seem to slow to a pause and there that message is divined in blood drops:

:::A tiger's death is only worth its pelt.:::

Even as she flees back to the forest, those four doors open and the gunfire really starts -- the ripping of bullets through wood, leaves, branches and underbrush. The ricochet off of stones, the sparks in the dark - the men who would be executed are undone. Riddled with bullets, and Leo's corpse erupts into violence. Four men, four who shout at each other and when the shooting stops there is so much smoke, the tang of pyrex powder, and that reek of cigars. "The fuck was that?! We get it?"

-

Magazines drop. New ones slide and rack as they begin to spread out - and her eyes are not the only eyes in the dark. Watching. For The Khan, there was no difference between this -- and a good Russian ballet.

A 'normal' animal, even a predator, doesn't understand the concept of a magazine, nor a bullet beyond the sound and the pain it could bring. Nor could it feel the same anger at the fact the journalists had been cut down. Were they innocent? Who could know, but they were still cut down by the same wicked men all the same. Maybe there was a more cunning way to approach this if one wanted to see them spared, maybe cold truth was it was better the only witness here was the forest and the eyes within it. For the younger Tiger, it was just a factor removed from the battle. Noone who would walk away, only prey. 

Magazines might seek to be reinserted, but they would not get such a chance. A gun that was empty was little more than a paperweight for the men to cling to as the wrath came upon them. 

The cat was bigger, more primal, a change that should have taken longer and more effort little more then a heartbeat and a breath as the Tiger swelled and grew to something more ancient and terrifying: the echo of the great cats that terrified man when it was only just coming to be 'man'. 

Chatro claws enhanced by the gift surge out, rage and muscle guiding claw and tooth with impossible speed as a roar fills the night with sound and the men about to be dead with terror.

This creature is the stuff of legends, the sort of thing that rests in some deep sub-conscious of humankind from an age long past told around the shadows of the campfire. The Chatro is a great primeval sabertoothed cat, liquid muscle and wrath in the black and orange tiger stripes stalks, its growl the stuff that sends a chill down the blood and a roar that shakes the ground. 
         
While the colors are right, so fearsome in size and surrounded by that primal delirium-inducing terror to be mistaken for a normal tiger. Instead, this towering feline on four legs stands before you with eyes betraying the intelligence beneath the primal savagery.

-

Blood. Guts. The spilling of intestines over her coat, as the roar of a Chatro drowns out the screams of men. Screams of agony, that quickly become intermixed with terror - The Rage tickles her veins, prickling like needles in the brain. Like razorblades. Every life she snuffs out only fuels the growing fire in the tiger's belly - a pistol goes off near her ear, only as the arm of the man to be found in her jaws. Broken, crunched bones as she tears it free right from the socket.

The smartest of them tries to run, eyes wide, his mouth agape -- and he runs. Running in expensive shoes in completely the wrong direction of the road, deeper into the woods -- but he runs. His primal urges awakened, and that monkey brain screams: RUN! For it is this man that remembers his ancestors, and the terror they felt in the night of the Cat Kings.

-

To run was to die...but to stay was to die faster. As the last man ran the mind born to two legs might ponder simply picking up one of the fallen weapons, ending the man the way that he'd ended others. But the terror in the fleeing prey's heart was earned. 

Besides, that same primal predator instinct loved a chase. The young woman was just that, young among the Tigers, Tekhmet...but the gifts the spirits had given her and what she'd learned had the tiger flowing between the trees as easily as water in a stream. Maybe there was no cat magic, simply the truth that outrunning a tiger in the dark was always going to be impossible. He'd run and scream, but he would do neither for long. 

Finally the night falls silent with a scream ended and the crunch of bone, a roar to the night that even the galliard of the garou could not know if it was a noise of triumph, rage or offering...then all would return to silence save for the soft sounds of metamorphic shifting. 

She wasn't far from where the others had been slain, the runner easily caught, but slowly Kira's form stood from the bloody remains on two legs once more. Not naked this time, it seemed growth had come with the knowledge of the rite to preserve her clothing, but no less coated in the blood of those she'd torn down as the noise that followed was a very human exhalation. 

Ironicly, it was only now that she'd stop, that her eyes would seek those that watched her in the dark.

-

Screams echo into the forest, across the lake - and then all is quiet. All is silent. Blood, is the truth of things that all of The People seek. Even as it drips down her legs, her fingers and throat; the remains of the dead, their secrets, are exposed in the splashes of blood across the landscape.

The eyes that watch from the darkness glint that dull green of a big cat. He doesn't move. He doesn't speak. Not at first - the Buick's yellow lights harming the ambiance and dark of the forest, but The Khan can now be seen as an outline in the dark. A massive 'boulder' fit with a halo of his wild hair left to move in the wind. She a ballerina, her violence a ballet, another moment goes by and that large figure stands in the dark, only a few dozen feet from the car. His figure clothed in pelt and pants, every bare step is silent. Every footfall one of grace. "Do you feel it...in your guts?" His voice rises and falls as a growl, and Namkhai still moves closer. Closer still to the woman of Rage and instinct. "It is right for The Huntress to kill her prey; for The Tiger to slay and disembowel Demons - be them in the skin of Man, or their own."

-

Did she feel it? The girl's eyes moved to look at far far more intimidating figure who moved closer to her. Of course the rage of their tribe was known, even those born new to it would feel it in their very soul...but she still could feel that fury in this clawless form. Wrapped in those simple shorts, that sports top, she looked like some other twenty-something out to work out, go for a jog. But as her eyes cast up that eerie reflection in the night of a cat her blood-spattered from seemed to stare at him for a moment before she nodded. 

The Eurasian's hand comes to her lips, wiping the taste of those she'd slain away as she lifts her gaze to the Khan. 

"I do...but facing something like this, it seems a small gesture. When I have seen things far worse I could not match." Still, his own words do beg the question that only now would she finally ask. "Is that where the pelt you wear comes from? A demon in the form of our own?"

-

Step. Step. Each footstep brings him closer, until The Khan can set his hand upon the hood of the car...and a single finger begins to press. The metal whines...crackles, and begins to dent and bend inwards.

"I have heard of your near-death experience, nearly dying in the maw of a well-springed trap." Another finger presses into the hood, then another, and one might see how strength punches through the metal. It is this question the young tiger asks that, as the wind blows so does the Khan turn his eyes upon her. "This is the skin of my father." A pause, gaze unwavering. "For the crime of dishonoring our family: He promised aid to Fangs-First, decades ago...and then in Texas grew his harem, grew his children, his own power and status - and it is by Hanshii, that I took his place, and his shame to wear before Lord Earthquake, Fangs-First and The World." 

Then there is that screaming of metal as fist closes, crunches. Brown eyes filled with orange as The Khan looks down to his smaller companion. "In your veins is the blood of emperors, and goddesses.
-- I expect to see you, Huntress, with your pile of trophies...to prove that past experience a fluke."

-

"I came here an ignorant, excited child. A warrior, but there is a difference between someone who has fought, and someone who has been in battle, lost things." Kira looks up, their gathering a juxtaposition in the moonlight and the errant shadows cast by the headlights: him a towering warrior that looked exactly like those who had rode the steppe and conquered, her some fair and feminine beauty, but also the one coated in the blood of her foes almost head to foot. 

"I have fought, hunted the secrets and names of those who hide in the shadows, used steel and lead against monkey who would ignorantly threaten the sept's cubs, fang and claw against foes. 

"Some of my trophies are small, warmaster...but I gather them none the less.