15 ⚓ Video/Spam ⚓ Gather yourselves, with all your heart and strength

[hearrrtofgold]

[Video]
Duke Crocker of the Cape Rouge calling Haven P.D. Anyone out there? [He’s got only small hope that anyone will answer, almost certain that Audrey and Nathan won’t. But still, he’d come through the last time the network glitched (before he showed up on the Barge), as had she. Maybe it could happen again with them, or anyone he was familiar with from back home.

He pauses for a long time, mulling over what he’s about to share, and suddenly blurts it out.] Oprah Winfrey.

[Gym Spam, evening]
[After the last of the messages had trickled in, Duke had shaken himself off and tried to calm himself walking Brownie, fixing himself a very heavy chicken salad for supper, and tried to do some yoga poses. None of the activities had provided him any peace, and he eventually decided to just embrace the discomfort and beat the crap out of something.

So here he is, standing in the gym with knuckles bound in tape and taking out his frustrations on a punching bag. He’s more than competent in street-fighting, not exceptional but still practiced and forceful. He doesn’t even remember his first fistfight, although he’s sure he lost it, and that drives him on.]

Comments

[gym spam]

[hearrrtofgold]

Oh, don't be an ass. [He smiles back, withdrawing his hand. While she goes to get the punching pads he motions toward her bag.] Mind if I borrow some tape?

The glitch? Yeah. [He turns to punch the bag.] A couple strangers. [Another punch. Then he grabs the bag and evens it out for when she gets back.] A couple friends from home.

[gym spam]

[theresalwayshope]

Yeah, mental note: apologize to you forever for my father. [She smiles, nodding in silent permission for him to help himself to her tape as she wanders back over, punch pads in hand.] He's from before the point I got here...I promise, he's mellowed since then.

...at least as a hunter. As an overprotective father...

[She trails off, making a face and wrinkling her nose wit ha somewhat helpless shrug.]

So, the friends from home...anyone interesting?

[gym spam]

[hearrrtofgold]

Apologies are cheap. Black forest cake works much better to smooth things over. [When she nods he lifts the roll and wraps it around his left knuckle before ripping off the end.] Good. Obsessive hunters? Are not my favorite kind of people.

[Something they've both avoided so far, something Duke knows takes a lot of strength. Something he respects Allison for.]

There's Nathan. He used to be a warden here awhile back - cop, a jerk, kind of annoying, but overall a good guy. [Ignore the many times they've beaten each other senseless or pulled guns on each other.] And Audrey. [Slowly, he begins on his right hand.] When I left, we thought she was gone.

[gym spam]

[theresalwayshope]

Lucky for you, baking is the other thing my family's known for. [She grins, toying with the punch pads as Duke tapes up his hands. She wants to ask him more about what he knows, what he's seen...she's heard about other hunters back home, other families that followed the Code and all it represented, right down to the way they were ruled...]

Tell me more about Audrey. I know enough cops back home, but I wanna know more if you've got a girlfriend... [The last is singsong and teasing, her eyes sparkling playfully as she gives Duke her best Innocent Little Girl smile.]

[gym spam]

[hearrrtofgold]

Bartending and gambling are my family's claims to fame. That and murdering Troubled people. [Murdering, not hunting or killing. That's what it is in his opinion, even when he'd done it. Still, he gives her a half-smile.] Cooking's one of mine. We should combine our powers and take over the culinary world.

Audrey? She's... [He grins, shrugging at the same time.] She's a cop too, but she's the first cop I ever liked. If you know what I did back home, that's a big deal. But she's just special. Really tough, really sweet, really smart. Hot too, but don't tell her I said that. [He winks.] You don't meet people like Audrey Parker very often.

You'd like her, if you met her.

[Despite the fond honesty he reverts back to immature mode and smiles playfully as he raises a middle finger to her.] Not my girlfriend. We're just close.

[gym spam]

[theresalwayshope]

[The more she learns about Duke, the more she likes him, ne'er-do-well tendencies and all. She doesn't doubt he's got a checkered past, but so did a lot of her father's men before they tried to get out.

And the way that Duke talks about the supernatural...Troubled people...it chills her a little with how accurate a description it is.]

I know good cops. My friend, Stiles? His dad's the sheriff back home. He's kind of the same: really cool, rolls with the punches...and he's kind of a silver fox, but you never heard me say that.

[With a grin, she hands Duke the punch pads.]

But I get it with the Audrey thing...my ex and I are still really close. But he's also my alpha, so...

[gym spam]

[hearrrtofgold]

[He does extremely well! He just does well illegally. Smuggling, shipping, and stealing are very lucrative businesses. Moreover they don't end with people dying.

Troubles do. And he doesn't like to be the one causing death.]

Okay, I grant there are some good cops out there. I've met two, so I believe you. [Duke smirks.] Nathan can roll with the punches like a champ.

[He slips his hands into the pads' gloves and holds them up, elbows bent and arms braced in front of him.] What does that mean, Alpha? It can't be just like it is for real wolves.

[gym spam]

[theresalwayshope]

It sort of is. [Raising her hands in a defensive stance, Allison rolls her shoulders a little and starts with a few swift combinations of stiff jabs to the pads.] They're the leaders, the superiors...they have all the power. They're stronger...faster...they can force a wolf to change with their roar...they can manipulate minds...and they're the only wolves with the power to make others. The bite of a Beta is harmless.

[gym spam]

[hearrrtofgold]

Stronger and faster, I figured. The bite makes sense. [When Allison begins striking he has to move, solidly blocking her jabs and anticipating her next moves.]

How many people in your town can manipulate minds?

[gym spam]

[theresalwayshope]

Technically? Just the one. [Her combinations get a little quicker, and her blows a little harder when she feels Duke's strength and gauges what he can take comfortably. She did, after all, promise to be good.]

There was one other time, but it was...kind of a special situation. Alpha bite gone wrong, the creature it produced...needed to be controlled, it sought out a master.

[Without meaning to, her next blow is especially stiff, most of her strength behind it.]

And that's just the supernatural element. [Gerard hadn't needed anything supernatural to get inside her head, after all...she'd just been that gullible.]

[gym spam]

[hearrrtofgold]

[Duke's fast too, always trying to stay one step ahead of her. In regards to the punches, at least - in terms of her world, he's still catching up.]

An Alpha bit someone not human, you mean?

[That can't have softened her blow at all and he takes a step back to brace himself when she throws the hard punch.]

Who else is there? Werewolves, hunters - do you have vampires too?

[gym spam]

[theresalwayshope]

The Alpha bit someone that should never have been bitten. They say the form you take after the bite is a reflection of who you truly are. This boy became a kanima, a creature with no identity. That's why it seeks a master, it's a tool of vengeance. But the guy...got better. Once his crisis was resolved...he became a normal werewolf.

[Suddenly she spins, throwing a kick at one of the punch pads.]

We don't have vampires...but we have Gerard Argent. Or we did, until Scott stopped him. And saved me.

[gym spam]

[hearrrtofgold]

Ah, that's a horse of a different color. [Kanima... Duke has traveled to South America before and picked up a few local legends. That one sounds familiar, and he frowns deeply.] Were-jaguar?

Dammit! [Instinctively he brings the punch-pads in place to block her kick, definitely uninterested in receiving a foot to the mouth or chest. He breathes in deep to recover and takes a small step back.]

I feel that. Haven has... weird problems.

[gym spam]

[theresalwayshope]

Lizard man, in our case, but way to know your South American mythology. Literally, giant lizard guy with paralytic venom.

[She forgets herself after another series of punches, then comes at Duke full-throttle with a side kick to his outstretched left, punch-pad covered hand.]

And my grandfather used him to try and kill me, after I nearly killed for him. [She's breathing hard now, a mixture of emotion and exertion as she steps back, realizing she's taking out her aggression on Duke now and rests her hands on her thighs as she bends over for a second, collecting herself.]

Can Haven beat that?

[gym spam]

[hearrrtofgold]

Please tell me you didn't fight a Gorn. [He grins momentarily while raising the pads.] You got him though, right?

[Duke has to press hard to block all her punches, and has to place one foot back behind the other to brace himself against her kick even behind the pads. Allison may be young and a human, but she's powerful.] Crap, [he says, eloquently.] I'm sorry.

Haven can... [He tilts his head.]

Tbere was a Trouble that brought people back as ghosts. I talked to my dad - he's been dead since I was eight. He tried to convince me to start killing in the family name. [Duke laughs briefly, humorlessly.] The man with the Trouble didn't want to deal with it.

[gym spam]

[theresalwayshope]

[Allison shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath, because she's letting her emotions get the better of her. She's not channeling them to work or hunt, she's losing herself in them, and she can't do that.

She has to thread the needle...hold onto the pain and the anger without letting them control her.

The people she loves, the things she cares about...when they can be used against her, she makes herself forget them, cuts them out of herself, but the bad things...what she hates, what she fears...she has to store them away, so she keeps Gerard and puts him back in that box within her head and heart reserved for him, until she needs that bitterness and hatred to fuel her, to take her to that place where she hunts and kills.

When she's steady again, she opens her eyes and offers up a small, apologetic smile before she returns to her punches...this time, not trying to see how hard or how angry she can hit, focusing instead on the center of each pad, making each strike as accurate as possible.]

Tell me more? [It's a question, a gentle one, not a prompt or a demand.] About your family, about these...Trouble things. Is that what people in Haven call the supernatural?

[gym spam]

[hearrrtofgold]

[The moment Allison has to take in order to ground herself, to ready herself for the next series of blows, makes Duke hang back a little bit. The pads are still held at the ready but he relaxes, looking at her with a wistful expression.

Then she's striking again and he has to redouble his efforts trying to keep her punches at bay.] Not exactly. It's what they call weird abilities that run in different families. [He feints back a bit to avoid a particularly close punch.] They're also called Curses.

[gym spam]

[theresalwayshope]

So, then...it's what you call the supernatural?

[That comes with an extra hard blow to the left pad, this one on purpose and accompanied by a playful smile.]

Supernatural is supernatural, Duke, even if it's hereditary. Or bad, y'know?

[gym spam]

[hearrrtofgold]

[Duke rolls his eyes but holds his ground against her punch this time.] It's what we call our kind of supernatural. If wizards started battling fairies, that would be supernatural too.

Then again if that happens, it's probably due to a Trouble. A lot of the myths in my world are based on Troubles.

[gym spam]

[theresalwayshope]

[Allison quirks a curious eyebrow at that admission.] Yeah? Ever come up against anyone with a werewolf style Trouble?

[gym spam]

[hearrrtofgold]

Not exactly. There was a guy who accidentally turned all the animal shelter's rabid dogs into humans but that's not the same. There were a couple of wendigos once.

[gym spam]

[theresalwayshope]

Wendigos...yeah, we have those, too. I mean, I've never seen one, but I've seen them in our bestiary. Cannibalistic shapeshifters...they're rare, and they're dangerous. How did you deal with them?

[gym spam]

[hearrrtofgold]

The ones we met aren't shapeshifters, just fast and superhumanly sensitive. Two of them could control the cannibal urges and survived off of hunting animals. The third one tried as hard as she could but couldn't get a handle on it.

We talked to them, and protected them and tried to help them. These three weren't evil, they just had a Curse. They were regular kids, sisters, and their Trouble kicked in when their parents died. Suddenly they needed to eat people in order to survive, and they didn't want to any more than you or I would.

You know when you said the Troubles are what we call the supernatural? That's not exactly it. The Troubles are what cause the supernatural.

[gym spam]

[theresalwayshope]

[Allison huffs a little, shaking her head.] Not the way things are back home. Oh, there are things like werewolves that aren't dangerous unless they choose to be, but the rest...it's a sad fact that there are a lot of things out there that just are.

[Like Jackson, who still had to die to be saved. Like Stiles, who's destined to lose his humanity if she doesn't get her deal. Like Peter Hale...who she can't kill for the sole reason that she actually has to set an example for her father.]

Supernatural things...maybe your Troubles are where they start? But when the line between where they start and what they are goes away? They end with hunters. Hunters like the Argents, families like mine...

[She stops, lifting her taped hands as she catches her breath.]

Another splash of blood on hands like these.

[gym spam]

[hearrrtofgold]

One thing you learn fast in Haven is that no one wants a Trouble. [He thinks of Nathan, which flickers into thoughts of Jordan, then to dozens of other Havenites. It circles back on Audrey, of course. James, the Barn, the Hunter storm. Nobody had wanted any of that. Ignore the crazy Troubled people who used Curses to their advantage.] Well, almost nobody.

[There were people like Harry Nix, like Arla Cogan, who had been amoral even before their Troubles kicked in, and had become monsters after they did.

And Allison is starting to sound like Simon, like the Rev's men did when they pushed Roy - not always wrong but far too black and white for the varied spectrum of his morality. Duke doesn't agree, just nods a little.]

I don't know if your world has Troubles. If it does, it makes sense there would be Argents, and in Haven there's a reason there are Crockers - but hell, wouldn't it be great if they didn't need us?

[He doesn't stop smiling, but his face loses its humor.] You should see what happens with a splash of Troubled blood.