Nick "Nicodemus" Dalton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nick_garou) wrote2012-01-14 03:26 pm
nick_garou) wrote2012-01-14 03:26 pm
(no subject)
I was in Harbor Park after a parkour run when I met this upscale woman there: Shelby. (Cute, but maybe too high maintenance/superficial. You should have seen the shoes she had on!) Then I ran back into Rajani. Before I could do much more than introduce two strangers, who I hardly knew myself, The Hotline(tm) rang. Missing girl, 15, single parent father. Divorced. Mother was a bit crazy. I checked her out first, but she didn't have her. Runaway?
I was following a lead that took me to a dance club, Slaughterhouse Five, and things got more exciting than anyone anticipated. There was a drive-by shooting outside right as I was leaving. Judicious use of some coincidental Entropic and Correspondence magic enabled me to escape being crushed or trampled in the ensuing stampede. I made it to a wall and used some Forces to help get one guy off the floor before he was trampled, then dissipated Forces in the crowd to prevent anyone else from getting crushed in the panic. As things started to calm down, I managed to squeeze outside.
One woman, shot twice in the drive-by, was on the ground. I got over there and applied pressure to the chest wound, as that was more serious than the gut wound. Another guy with a badly scarred face was there, and he said she was going to die and it was hopeless--but I tried anyway. He helped a bit, but then slipped away as the sirens got closer. Heck, nearly everyone fled as the sirens drew nearer. God damn, that pisses me off. These are the same people that will bitch and moan about how the cops can't catch criminals, but when they're at a crime scene and witnesses, they disappear and any leads they might have in catching the criminals disappear with them. But I digress.
The paramedics got there, took over, and she was whisked away to the hospital--still alive. I sat through about an hour of questioning by the police when they arrived, but no big deal other than being inconvenient. I had all my paperwork for my pistol, and the tasers are legal and didn't draw much attention compared to my gun. I suppose things went easier in part because one of the cops recognized me as being a former detective with the SCPD. Helps to know folks! I told them I was working a missing person's case as a PI, shared some details, and they're keeping an eye out just in case. I got one of them to promise to let me know how the shot woman--Holline Crosby, 30--was doing in the hospital. The next morning, while I was staking out one of the missing girl's friend's houses, I got a call from a police contact. Crosby was on the brink of death, and most people figured she wouldn't last much longer.
I was incredibly frustrated with myself. Life magic has never been my thing. It's elusive to me. Ethereal in its concept and execution. Dana and Chloe and Cox--they could heal themselves and others. Not me. And if I had a little talent with Life magic, I might have been able to save that woman right there on the spot before the paramedics arrived. Instead, she's on the brink of death and about to die. Here's a kicker: And there's a voice in the back of my head telling me it's not her time. Is that the latent Euthanatos in me? A Euthanatos that works to prevent untimely deaths? Do they even do that kind of thing? Regardless, this was something I couldn't do. In checking voice mail, I found that I'd received a call from a garou I'd once known: Mouse. She's a friend of Salem's, and she'd healed me once after I managed to wound myself with that goddamn lightsaber I made about 3 years ago.
That's a kind of coincidence I can't just ignore. I called Mouse up, got her voice mail, and left her a message seeing if she might be able to lend this Holline Crosby a hand in the hospital before she passed on. As I kept searching for the missing girl, I wondered what Mouse would do. Would she act in a noble manner? Do garou have a sense of nobility? Do they care about anyone other than themselves? If I had the power to heal, I'd be making regular visits to the hospitals to do so. Do the garou quietly do this sort of thing and no one ever knows?
Mid-day, I had another couple voice mails. One from Mouse about how she'd dropped in on Crosby. One (later) from a police contact exclaiming how Crosby amazed the doctors and is going to live.
Mouse's stock has just gone up considerably. Con-si-der-a-bly.
I called the police--24 hours had passed since the girl had been reported missing--and shared all the information I had with them. I had six more leads, and I was in the process of running one down as I relayed the information. It was a conference call, so the father was able to hear the work that I'd done and the leads I was giving to the police. The lead I was running down turned out to be a dead end, but one of the leads I shared with the police struck gold. She'd run off with a boy.
Ah, love. Love makes us do such amazingly stupid things.
I was following a lead that took me to a dance club, Slaughterhouse Five, and things got more exciting than anyone anticipated. There was a drive-by shooting outside right as I was leaving. Judicious use of some coincidental Entropic and Correspondence magic enabled me to escape being crushed or trampled in the ensuing stampede. I made it to a wall and used some Forces to help get one guy off the floor before he was trampled, then dissipated Forces in the crowd to prevent anyone else from getting crushed in the panic. As things started to calm down, I managed to squeeze outside.
One woman, shot twice in the drive-by, was on the ground. I got over there and applied pressure to the chest wound, as that was more serious than the gut wound. Another guy with a badly scarred face was there, and he said she was going to die and it was hopeless--but I tried anyway. He helped a bit, but then slipped away as the sirens got closer. Heck, nearly everyone fled as the sirens drew nearer. God damn, that pisses me off. These are the same people that will bitch and moan about how the cops can't catch criminals, but when they're at a crime scene and witnesses, they disappear and any leads they might have in catching the criminals disappear with them. But I digress.
The paramedics got there, took over, and she was whisked away to the hospital--still alive. I sat through about an hour of questioning by the police when they arrived, but no big deal other than being inconvenient. I had all my paperwork for my pistol, and the tasers are legal and didn't draw much attention compared to my gun. I suppose things went easier in part because one of the cops recognized me as being a former detective with the SCPD. Helps to know folks! I told them I was working a missing person's case as a PI, shared some details, and they're keeping an eye out just in case. I got one of them to promise to let me know how the shot woman--Holline Crosby, 30--was doing in the hospital. The next morning, while I was staking out one of the missing girl's friend's houses, I got a call from a police contact. Crosby was on the brink of death, and most people figured she wouldn't last much longer.
I was incredibly frustrated with myself. Life magic has never been my thing. It's elusive to me. Ethereal in its concept and execution. Dana and Chloe and Cox--they could heal themselves and others. Not me. And if I had a little talent with Life magic, I might have been able to save that woman right there on the spot before the paramedics arrived. Instead, she's on the brink of death and about to die. Here's a kicker: And there's a voice in the back of my head telling me it's not her time. Is that the latent Euthanatos in me? A Euthanatos that works to prevent untimely deaths? Do they even do that kind of thing? Regardless, this was something I couldn't do. In checking voice mail, I found that I'd received a call from a garou I'd once known: Mouse. She's a friend of Salem's, and she'd healed me once after I managed to wound myself with that goddamn lightsaber I made about 3 years ago.
That's a kind of coincidence I can't just ignore. I called Mouse up, got her voice mail, and left her a message seeing if she might be able to lend this Holline Crosby a hand in the hospital before she passed on. As I kept searching for the missing girl, I wondered what Mouse would do. Would she act in a noble manner? Do garou have a sense of nobility? Do they care about anyone other than themselves? If I had the power to heal, I'd be making regular visits to the hospitals to do so. Do the garou quietly do this sort of thing and no one ever knows?
Mid-day, I had another couple voice mails. One from Mouse about how she'd dropped in on Crosby. One (later) from a police contact exclaiming how Crosby amazed the doctors and is going to live.
Mouse's stock has just gone up considerably. Con-si-der-a-bly.
I called the police--24 hours had passed since the girl had been reported missing--and shared all the information I had with them. I had six more leads, and I was in the process of running one down as I relayed the information. It was a conference call, so the father was able to hear the work that I'd done and the leads I was giving to the police. The lead I was running down turned out to be a dead end, but one of the leads I shared with the police struck gold. She'd run off with a boy.
Ah, love. Love makes us do such amazingly stupid things.