Molly Toombs
Monday nights didn't leave many clubs
open, truth be told, but there were always a few bars that would be
happy to comply. The music didn't tend to be as deep, as bone-thumping
in bass, and the floors weren't crowded with the dancing and grinding
and lost. Bars were a different breed of hunting ground entirely, one
that required more finesse and involvement and investment in the prey
before the reward could be sought.
Molly thought about things like
this now when she went out, but from the prey's point of view and the
observer's as well. She was a far cry from being a hunter herself.
Perhaps a hunter of knowledge, but she wouldn't be seeking secrets in a
bar.
No, this tall painted black building front with neon in the
windows offering different brews and brands of drink available housed
Molly only because she'd been convinced out by friends that she'd known
for years. College buddies, people she's been very good friends with up
until vampires became a fact of her life and ghosts and magic-twisting
blood mages followed along with. Since shadows were pulled back and
truth was revealed, though, Molly's been more distance. Partly because
she didn't want to endanger these two men, a starting attorney and
police officer respectively, and because many of her current events and
focuses and passions and interests had changed dramatically. She
couldn't chat with these gentlemen about what's been going on in her
life like she used to.
She also couldn't drink with them, not if
she wanted to be able to take her prescription when she got home. Not
if she wanted to be able to relax enough to breathe and get some proper
rest before starting the next day. So, she was leaving early.
This
is why Alex sees Molly stepping out of a bar rather than into it at
about 10:00pm in the evening, with a furrowed brow and her hands digging
for keys in a purse at her hip.
Alex Fisher
This
wasn't Alex's usual scene either, she preferred music venue's, or dive
bar's where it didn't feel quite so much like a meat market. She didn't
come out to be accosted of have drinks spilt on her or lame jokes spoken
just so someone could try to hit on her...hit on her and then realize
that she was probably more macho then they were. It was an awkward
situation she preferred to avoid.
But she was here, some of her
friends from the firefighters recruitment program were inside tonight,
celebrating for the sake of doing so, because firefighters knew what it
meant to survive, to live and to thrive. It wasn't just a catchy bit of
wisdom or a phrase to go off on. It was a survival mechanism to keep
them going.
So here she was, standing outside the club with her
arms crossed as she waited in line, less that pleased to be here, but
here for her friends. Because she was always there for her friends, even
if they were drunk, insane, or in the middle of a brawl.
Standing
out in the cooling evening air she rubbed at her arms through the plaid
shirt she wore over her blue denim jeans. She'd note Molly of course as
she stepped out, noted her as she started to rummage around, and its
only with the narrowing of her eyes that she recognized the nurse from
the pawn shop.
She looked at her place in the lineup, still some
distance from the door itself and shook her head. "Fuck it, I can get
back in line." She said under her breath as she ducked under the rope
and strode towards Molly, an italian style fedora pushed back up over
her brown hair as she said.
"Hey."
Molly Toombs
Molly
is a woman built like a more realistic version of the pin-up models
they use for 1950's-inspired fashion these days. She'd average of
height, built a thick and curved, and that was put on show especially by
the high-waisted shorts that she was wearing and how high up on her
thighs they sat, hugged tight with a floral pattern of fabric with white
lace at the bottoms to fake at being a more modest hem. She wore a
white T-shirt tucked into them, neckline not swooping into cleavage
territory but not restrictive to her throat either. Over this, to fend
the still-spring cool nights, a dark green wool cardigan, unbuttoned
with sleeves neatly rolled to her elbows.
Her hair was up, her
make-up was done. She had been dressed up for the prowl, but decided
that was a less good idea once she got there and after thirty minutes
found no one inspiring anymore, wanting simply to go home instead. Such
a nice outfit wasted on an outing that would have been a good time if
she didn't let herself be so burrowed in her own personal, private,
unbelievable, and deadly interests.
Molly had looked disgruntled,
paused in brown oxford-inspired shoes out on the sidewalk. She hadn't
quite discovered her car keys when Alex approached, and Molly paused her
search and blinked up at the woman. It took her less than a second to
place the face and name, even if they had only met once.
It was a hell of a meeting.
"Oh, Alex. Hey." She forced a polite smile that didn't last for very long, and inquired: "How are you doing?"
Alex Fisher
"Oh
you know, living, laughing, had planned on drinking..but." She frowned
at the building before looking back to the curvy shortness that was
Molly.
Alex noted how the smile didn't last long, only there
enough to account for the appropriate level of niceties. Maybe she was
just having a bad night, or maybe it was something more. For the moment
Alex didn't take it as anything other then what it looked liked. Molly
was trying to go home, Alex was interrupting, such things so often
happened.
"Molly right?" She asked with a tilt of her head and a
quick pursing of her lips before she turned her gaze back towards the
club. "Tell me its a waste of time in there so I can find a way to stay
out of the line." She said as she looked Molly over. "Figure its gotta
be if your walking out of there alone looking like that."
Molly Toombs
"Oh,
it's not all that great in there," Molly explained, and she smiled
again as she did. This time the expression looked at least like she
meant it, even if it was still a bit distracted and not so full of
heart. She was humored by the memory of the place, if nothing more, and
happy to shit-talk on it to help this woman save her time waiting in
the line.
"The DJ thinks he can remix things on his own too
loudly. The people in there try and set you up on dates with people
that don't want to be there with you in the first place." She rolled
her eyes, showing Alex the hand of cards to explain her bad mood. She
was aware of her own huffiness, enough that she even permitted herself
to resume feeling around in her purse with her hand. Her eyes no longer
accompanied the task. Molly gave enough of a shit about what this
firewoman who asked the kinds of questions that she herself looked at a
situation and asked to care what she thought, at least.
"This
street isn't so bad, though," she picked up on the comment about
stepping outside alone, specifically, and justified the action. "I'm
parked in the lot across the street."
Alex Fisher
That
was all the confirmation she needed, all she really wanted. She'd come
for her friends, but she'd be stuck in the line till 1am, and by that
time there wouldn't be enough time or booze in the world to get Alex to a
place anywhere near capable of handling that sort of situation. She'd
text her mates, apologize if she still didn't feel it after talking to
Molly. She could always change her mind.
"Not to sound to damn
chivalrous, but if you feel like some company I could use the chance to
stretch my sorry ass legs, I've been stuck in that meat line for way to
long as is." She said looking across the way towards the lot Molly
indicated. Normally such an offer would just be a formality, women
travelling together to potentially cut down on the number of drunks that
accosted them. On Alex's part however the breadth of her shoulders, the
way her shirt held her body, rather then hung off it, seemed to
indicate that Alex might well be able to handle those drunks.
She
waited then, hands held loose at her sides as she waited for Molly to
chose to have company across the way, or to dismiss her, eitherway it
wouldn't be any sweat of off her back.
"Whats new on your end?"
Molly Toombs
Alex
offered to walk Molly to her car, and the red-haired nurse who cleaned
up nicely took a moment and no more time than that to consider before
smiling and nodding her head. "I'd appreciate that, thanks." She knew
firefighters, they came in with more severe trauma patients on rescue
trucks on a fairly regular basis. Men and women alike, they all had to
be strong enough to be able to break through burning buildings and carry
people bodily out from within.
Molly kept a knife in her purse, but having the company of somebody more imposing was more preferable a deterrent by far.
"Oh,
not very much." That was a lie. She'd had visits with individual
vampires that each fed her details and information, insights into the
world of vampires and the structure of politics, war, belief, and
mystical existence that encompassed them. She'd seen her doctor and
cried shakily and quietly (convincingly) and lied and said that her
stress came from the situation that she'd met Alex within. Thanks to
them she now coped with the confirmed fact that she should expect to be
used or hunted and killed by vampires that may figure out what she knew
by taking benzos.
"Just... keeping on. No more crime scenes since
the other week, so that's a plus." She smirked. "I hope you haven't
seen anything quite so.... gruesome since."
Alex Fisher
"Nah,
not really, since they caught that freak show out in the east end
things have been surprisingly quiet around here. Guess everyone's had
enough excitement for a little while." She said as she stuffed one hand
in the front pocket of her jeans and started towards Molly's car. A
tiny, almost impercetable lift of the edges of her lips indicated she
was pleased to be moving, or perhaps simply in the company of a person
who had shared an experience.
"Work still keeps you busy though,
training, cleaning, training more...cleaning even more then that." She
shrugged as she reached up with her free hand and pulled the brim of her
hat down a little and kept on, those blue eyes shrouded by shadow as
they passed under a street light.
"To be brutally fucking honest?
You don't see nightmare's like that every day, which is a god given
mercy no doubt about it. They still don't know what happened though,
they're calling it a gas pocket explosion though....bullshit."
She smirked over at Molly then and shrugged. "Everyone's gotta label something right?"
Molly Toombs
"Well of course they have to label it."
Molly
had a keen understanding of the need to label things-- one situation in
particular stood out in her mind. A Ghoul had been in an auto accident
and taken to St. Luke's hospital through the trauma ward. Molly had
gone in to check on what she thought to be a man in his thirties and
found a man in his sixties in his place with matching tattoos and
identifiers. She'd recognized him for what he was, brought him help,
and put him in the employ of a Lasombra to save his life.
She did
this partly because she didn't feel right letting the man wither away
when she knew what it took to save him. More than that, though, she
knew that the hospital would need to label the situation as well. She
knew that her involvement in it would raise a lot of eyebrows and
questions. All because doctors would need to understand what
deteriorated the man so rapidly, and need to be able to explain it even
if they didn't understand it.
"Well, calling it a gas pocket is
better than anything that I can come up with anyways." Molly shrugged
her shoulders, and when she finally retracted a small ring of keys from
her purse she clutched it in her hand, then tucked both hands into the
pockets of her cardigan.
They had the luck of not needing to wait
long for the signal to cross the street and reach the lot across the way
from the club of neon and black brick. "I mean, what else can you
think of?"
Alex Fisher
Alex listened without
looking at Molly directly, instead her eyes swept the street before
them, and the lot beyond looking for anything that might be construed as
a threat, as a danger to herself or more potentially to Molly. She knew
of course that Molly could handle herself at a crime scene, she did not
however know just how much Molly could handle.
She chuckled as
they crossed the street to the lot and looked at Molly with a shake of
her head. "Nothing that makes a single lick of sense. But a pocket of
gas? Inside a pawn shop? I mean first off thats nuts on its own, because
there was no damn evidence of anything in the store that might contain
it, and no trace gasses were found. Secondly? The door in the back was
pulled inward, not pushed outward. Gas does not suck a door off its
hinges, not the last time I checked."
She shook her head
repressing a disgruntled look that flashed briefly. "It's what I get for
training to be an arson investigator, shit like that you just know. But
as to what it was? Animal maybe? But you'd need some kinda fuckin
miniaturized King Kong to do that much damage to a guy and I don't know
about you but I haven't seen any little big apes carrying off damsels or
knocking over pawn shops."
To that she offered Molly a smile,
her words had been a mixture of serious and joking, it was up to Molly
to take it whichever way she would.
Molly Toombs
Molly's
brow creased, just a little, while she listened to Alex explain her
line of reasoning. It was the kind of light frown that someone had when
they had to consider that what they were content to believe was wrong,
and from there start trying to decide on what the right answer was
instead. People, by nature, didn't much like having world views
upheaved, no matter how small they may be.
Still, she glanced up
and saw the smile Alex had offered, tinging the honest observations with
at least some humor, or the acceptance thereof. No King Kongs had been
stomping around downtown Denver, not that Molly could see, that was
true.
She hadn't parked too deep into the lot. This is clear for
when they finish crossing the street and move to the lot that sat on the
corner Molly was already pulling her keys from her pocket and thumbing
at the unlock button on her small remote. Two rows in and several
spaces deep the lights of a mid-sized white Volkswagen flashed and the
alarm system blipped.
"When you put it that way, I'm frankly just
hoping that whatever it was ran off into the mountains already, or the
Boys In Blue will catch the maniac and get them taken care of. I just
hope that whatever it is, it doesn't come across my path at all." She
smiled again, a final time, the expression grateful. "Thanks for
walking me to my car. You take care, Alex, don't go hunting madmen or
monsters now."
Words of wisdom were given in the guise of a joke,
of a quip, of charm. She's being thoroughly sincere under that facade,
though. It's the best advice she could offer; do as I say, not as I
do.
Farewell given, Molly would get in her car completely sober and drive away to alleviate that condition promptly.
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