Careless Nocturnal Wanderings [Erich, Anneliese]

Anneliese AdlerAnneliese walks down the street, pack on her back and grocery bags in one hand, leaving her right free as her silver grey eyes look over the area, cautious but not scared at all.

Drew RoscoeThe night was clear, the skies open to show the bright sliver of a crescent moon hanging in the skies overhead.  It was windy, though, not severely but enough that your hair would whip into your face inconveniently if you didn't secure it properly, and a chill would cut through you if you weren't wearing properly insulated clothes.  Drew read the weather report before heading out tonight, so she was well prepared.

Drew could be found in the small business district of the still half-destroyed town of Browntown.  She stood before the post office, balancing a decent sized brown package on the thigh of her left leg, which was lifted so her thigh sat at a 90 degree angle from the rest of her body.  She wasn't struggling so much as carefully taking her time in balancing the package and opening the door of the mailbox.  Managing might even be a better word, because she found a way to slowly (but surely) get the latch door open and slide the package in through the open door without jostling it too much.

With the task done, Drew straightened up and rubbed her hands against her thighs.  She was dressed for the weather, so there was no worry of catching chill in the wind.  Her hair was tied back into a braid that fell between her shoulders, and she wore an orange knit cap on her head to keep warm.  She had jeans and plain black sneakers, a red flannel shirt and a dark green down vest overtop.  Sure, she looked more like she should be stomping through the woods, but having opted to stretch her legs and walk into town for this task called for practical wear, after all.

Up the sidewalk, with a number of grocery bags in one hand and a backpack on her back, was Anneliese.  Drew recognized the Kinfolk from a couple Family Meetings, and smiled brightly and waved a hand covered with a tan-colored fingerless glove.  "Anneliese!  How are ya?  Where ya headed?"

Erich ReinhardtSince the devastation wreaked on Browntown, construction's been a pretty steady presence in the town.  All day and half the night you can hear it going on: cement mixers, dump trucks, jackhammers, generators, forklifts, steamrollers, and -- under the noise of heavy equipment -- the sharp, incessant krak-krak-krak of hammers on nails.

Like right now.  As Anneliese strolls down the street, coming out from the recently-reopened general store, that noise is assaulting her eardrums again.  This time it comes from Liberty Bar and Hotel, better known simply as The Bar.  For all its impressive old name, it's little more than a hole in the wall that was very nearly reduced to a hole in the ground by the recent calamities.  It's recovering fast, though.  Folks in town have a stake in their watering hole.

Erich has a stake in this watering hole.  Not that he drinks here every night or anything of the sort, but... well.  If he drinks in Browntown, this is sort of the only spot.  That makes it worth salvaging.

So there he is.  Up on the roof of the bar, working by the light of a gasoline generator hooked up to a big road construction spotlight.  He has a few stacks of new shingles next to him.  A couple crates of them on the ground below, next to the ladder leaning up against the edge of the roof.  Toolbelt around his waist, hammer in his gloved hands, he's using the claw end to yank up the shingles one by one.  He tosses them off the roof he goes.  He doesn't watch his aim.  Not like the streets are teeming four hours after dark.

Which is why one of the shingles -- old, frayed at the edges, dirty as you please -- comes flying off the roof and smacks Anneliese on the back of the head.  Or, if her reflexes are particularly good, misses her by a whisker and splats on the sidewalk.

Anneliese AdlerShe smiles a bit, the faint but becoming more familiar.  It seems like it fits on her face now where it didn't before. Her cheeks are pink from the chill in the air, her dark hair pulled back in two dutch braids that start in a center part and curve around her head, pulling her hair into a high ponytail in the back.  She's prepared for the cold... as much as she can be. One sweater layered over another which is layered over a thick henley.  Unlike what Drew has seen before, everything actually fits, including the tough jeans that cover her legs and cover the tops of the heavy, steel toed boots she wears.

She wears cheap, stretchy knit gloves, cheap, but they work nonetheless.  She waves a bit to the girl.  "Hey, Drew.  I'm good, I'm just headed..."  And that's when she hears it, the wind, but the shingle flying closer than the others as she walks by the Liberty.  She moves by instinct, but isn't quite fast enough to get completely out of the way as the shingle rips across one side of her head and into the back of her ear, making her breath hiss out and her teeth grit as she turns to look toward the roof.  "Loki's balls!  What the hell?!"

Drew Roscoe
I'm good, I'm just headed...
Thwack!
What the hell?!

Drew didn't startle too heavily when the shingle fell from above.  The sounds of construction were ever-present anymore, but were hard to miss.  She blinked, looked surprised at best, then turned her head to look up on the roof.  Brows furrowed, eyes squinted against the flood lights run by generators alone, and a gloved hand lifted to shield her eyes while looking into the light to determine who the silhouette on the roof belonged to.

"Ay!  Careful, that could'a been a hammer!"
Because family looks out for family, you see.

Erich ReinhardtCries of protest in the street.  The steady scrape-rip from above stops.  The nocturnal workman stands up, the light at his back silhouetting him.  Rather impressive for a moment, faceless and broad-shouldered, some modern icon of Hephaestus, he looks over the edge of the roof at the women below.

And then he laughs.  Coarsely, loudly, and without a scrap of regret, he laughs at what he sees.  And in that laugh Drew, at least, recognizes him.  He brings a gloved hand up, wipes his nose on the back of his wrist, then drops his hammer negligently to the side.

A moment later he swings himself onto the ladder, slides down fireman-style, jumps the last yard or two to land heavily and securely on the sidewalk.  The light hits him the same as them, then.  They can see his face: the very picture of a tribesman, blond and blue-eyed as a Viking off the northern oceans.

"Sorry," he says.  He's smirking, utterly unrepentant.  "Maybe you ladies shouldn't walk so close to construction.  God knows what might happen next.  You might get whistled at."

Erich sweeps the offending shingle off the sidewalk, frisbees it toward the growing pile.  Then he nods at Drew, the corner of his mouth turning a little higher.

"Miz Roscoe," he says.

Anneliese AdlerThe short girl looks up at the sillouette, frowning as her hand presses against that ear.  Her brows furrowed in a dark look and her expression holding the wrath their tribe is so known for.  Though her dark hair is unlike the stereotype, her high cheekbones and silvery eyes, the line of her solid, curvy body, compact, shows her line as easily as his light hair and Viking eyes.

She arches a brow at the apology and smirk, letting her hand drop with a dark smear of oil and something brighter and a bit more essential on the fingers and crossing her arms with her chin jutted out a bit.  "Yes, obviously you are.  Maybe you should watch what you're doing, as well."

Drew RoscoeThe figure that rises to stand on the roof, for a moment, is an impressive thing to behold.  Tall, big shoulders, shaped so that a snapshot of that image could be used in an old Soviet motivational poster to encourage people to do their share and work to rebuild their country.

Then came the laugh, unapologetic and downright amused, and familiarity rang in the sound and Drew's shoulders and posture relaxed into something far less defensive.  Her hands dropped from her face and shoved into the pockets of her down vest, and she watched as Erich descended the ladder, sliding down like he were in a hurry or an action movie, and grinned faintly at him when he came to stand nearer and advise them they should be careful about walking near construction zones.

"Mister Reinhardt," she mirrored his greeting back to him, and went on to say: "Heaven forbid someone assaults us with a whistle.  Not sure how I'd cope."  Her attention then shifted over to Anneliese and the bit of blood on her hand when it comes away from her ear.  It didn't look like too much, wasn't running down the other woman's jaw or anything worrying.  A small scrape was nothing to worry about, but out of courtesy perhaps more than anything else she still nodded her head upward and quirked an eyebrow to the Kin.

"Nothing damaged, right?  Just a scrape?"

Anneliese AdlerShe quirks an eyebrow back at the other girl, her eyes narrowing slightly and shrugs.  She looks from one to the other slowly, cogs working as she takes in all the clues from both of them.  She shakes her head.  She's seen impressive, he is not it for her.

"It would take more than a shingle, though a little sincerety might be a nice change."  She looks again to the man that obviously knows Drew, without any real belief she'll ever get it.

Erich Reinhardt"Yeah, I bet," he retorts to Drew.  "Might drive you to straight to the bottle again," the turn of his head toward the bar is a lazy thing, bearing the momentum of his shoulders behind it, "and the Liberty's all shut down right now.  Whatever would you do."

Erich's attention comes back to Anneliese.  He at least tries -- attempts it, really -- to stow the grin.  "Me?  Watch what I'm doing?"  He feigns shock.  "But why?  I'm the one volunteering my sweat and blood for a public cause.  You're the one interrupting my work with your careless nocturnal wanderings."

Drew RoscoeThe expression that Anneliese has on her face has Drew quirking one eyebrow a little higher than the other.  Her eyes-- dark brown, very out of character for her tribal lineage (washed thin with mingled blood, but still present none the less)-- hopped from the similarly small female Kinfolk to the tall blond Garou man.
"Oh I don't know," she returned casually enough to Erich's prod about being turned 'back to the bottle', and hopped her shoulders up in a small shrug.  "Probably just stock up in the city and drink my misery away in my kitchen."

Anneliese wants sincerity, and Erich doesn't want to give it and insists that the shingle incident had to be her fault by proximity-- she was carelessly wandering in the dark after all, so says the Shadow Lord.  Drew lifted a hand out of her pocket to tug her hat down one side at a time so it better covered her ears.  As she did so, she commented in an easy and relaxed tone:  "She was walkin' on the sidewalk.  You were working to fix the town.  Neither of you were doin' wrong.  Shit happens, shingles slide.  But, y'know, apologies don't hurt anyone."

She was comfortable with both of them.  Anneliese because she was Family, and another Kinfolk none the less, which meant they had more in common with one another than either would probably ever have with a Garou cousin, and Erich because of time spent and simple getting-to-know-you.  This is probably why she's so quick to glaze over the incident and instead shift the conversation toward other things by looking back over to Erich and raising both eyebrows in question.  "Y'all need any help up there?  My dad was a contractor, I picked up some know-how from him."

Anneliese AdlerShe snorts and shakes her head as her eyes are sharp on him.  She presses her lips together and gives him a look that shows she still doesn't believe him. Drew's comment about drinking catches her attention and she goes on.

A bit of mischief touches her eyes as she listens to Drew, then her eyes darken again and her jaw jumps a little.  "Everyone's working to fix the town, doesn't mean he can play target practice with shingles."
She looks Erich up and down, apparently not finding any redeeming qualities.  "He probably does.  I'll bet he's messing it up."

Erich ReinhardtErich makes a sound, somewhere between snort and laugh  "And there you go again, Drew Roscoe.  Brokering peace everywhere you go.  Relax."  His eyes go back to Anneliese, and now she's looking him up and down and he's smirking, not withering a bit under her regard.  "I was just playing."

A couple quick yanks tugs his workgloves off.  He puts his hand out.  There's dirt under his fingernails, and his knuckles are rugged ridges of bone.  His regret is so exaggerated it could only be false:
"I am so very sorry for throwing a chunk of roof on your head, Miss.  How could I ever make it up to you?"

Drew RoscoeRelax, the Shadow Lord advised.

Drew's response to that is to shrug once more and shift her weight and posture so that she was facing the bar that Erich had been working to help rebuild.  With her back to the street she stood, chin tipped up into the air, surveying the damage, equipment, and work that has been completed so far.

More than likely, though, she was just looking busy while letting Anneliese and Erich quip at one another until either decided that Drew should be tagged in for assistance with handling one another.

Anneliese AdlerShe smirks at his words to Drew, that bit of a smile growing and nods at his return. "Yeah, so was I."
She arches a brow at his display and shakes her head again, faint disbelief there as she tilts her head at him.  "I demand the golden fleece."

Drew RoscoeIn the relative cool calm of the night, in the midst of this encounter, Drew's phone in her pants pocket blipped and beeped at her.  She blinked in surprise, reached into her pocket, and fished the phone out.  It wasn't a call, but a text or an email or something along those lines.  She stared at the phone for a second, made a noise, then nodded her head to the other two.

"Sorry to run off so quickly, but I need to get home.  Neighbor was kind enough to inform me that they just had to chase a deer off my porch, and it wrecked some shit."  Fingers flitted over keys, probably shooting off a text in response, then the phone was put back in her pocket and she turned to the two.  "Y'all play nice.  Get the gal some golden fleece, Erich."

With a grin to the Shadow Lord and a wink to the other Kinfolk, Drew Roscoe turned and started at a light jog up the street, headed the couple of miles out the town and back to her house on foot.