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One large, dark hand raised and beat a playful series of knocks against Isaiah's apartment door. It was the same little song he'd played every time he showed up on the smaller man's doorstep, to announce that it could be none other than his favorite knight in shining armor.

After he'd walked Isaiah home, he'd swung by the next day just to make sure that he hadn't died of alcohol poisoning. One invitation to join him had led to another and before long, well, it was simple history. The weeks had drifted by, filled with bars and clubs, parties and any good time the dreadhead felt like dragging Isaiah along to. Kam genuinely enjoyed his company, despite the minor differences in certain preferences and the major difference in their weight class. No matter how many times he had to walk an overly-inebriated Isaiah home, it never seemed to bother him. Truthfully, he was just enjoying having another man around - especially when Sana was in one of her moods.

"Come onnn," he groaned at the door, "your eyeliner is fine." It was a joke and even if Isaiah was incapable of seeing the smug grin plastered over his face, he'd have known it was there by now, just by the tone in his voice. It never took long to grow accustomed to Kam's particular brand of humor. His head leaned forward until he could brace his forehead on cool metal, giving off the very picture of impatience and boredom.

In truth, he was simply eager to get their night underway. There was an interactive art exhibit in one of the old warehouses downtown and though it sounded like little more than an excuse to get drunk and roll around in paint.. well, it was an excuse to get drunk and roll around in paint. New ways to get as drunk as normal were always appealing to the big lug.

The muffled yell came through the door like a man screaming underwater, but the tone was enough to tell the dark lug that he was going to be standing there for a while. His assumption definitely wasn't wrong and by the time Isaiah wrenched the door open, Kam had all but fallen asleep against the support. He teetered forward as it was pulled away from him, but caught one hand on the door frame and let the darkly-clad figure slip by.

"I'm not sure who takes longer to get ready, you or Sana," Kam grumbled after him as he lead the way down the hall, his own words somewhat mumbled beneath the sound of his boots clunking against the floor. Truthfully, he was just glad to finally be on the way. He'd learned a long time ago to start telling both of them earlier arrival times than he truly intended and though they always assumed he showed up late, it saved him from waiting around through all the trial and error.

"They called it an interactive art exhibit," and by they, he meant the slutty hipsters that had been passing out flyers. There had been promised booze and music. "I think it might be some kind of social experiment, but I figure if it's anything like paint night at Outburst, I'm not going to complain."

By the time Isaiah was asking which car they were taking, Kam was already fishing in his pockets for his keys, dragging them out with a jingle of success.

"Oh, mine, definitely. I couldn't find anything but a handicap space." And, true to his word, as he hit the unlock button, the lights of his army green jeep flashed twice - in the handicap spot closest to the apartment building. Clearly, he'd been banking on Isaiah being close to ready. "But we might have to leave it and catch a bus or something." Even as he was saying it, he crossed to the driver's side door and climbed in.

Kam plunged the key into the ignition and the jeep roared to life with a quick flip of his wrist, the tone and vibration suggesting the dreadhead had done some alterations under the hood.

"Man, ********," he grunted out as Isaiah pointed out a slip of bright pink paper tucked under the wipers. A snide quip about how it would have been totally fine if Isaiah had been ready when he arrived was internalized and stifled. Much like Sana, he knew arguing over that was a lost cause. The time they took was not up for negotiation, no matter how much he bitched. He swung his door back open and leaned out, one hand gripping the door frame for support. The slip was caught in his free hand and tossed into the back of the cab, where it fluttered down among various bits of hiking equipment and some old, empty red bull cans.

"Who do I have to sleep with to get decent parking in this damn city?" He might remember to pay it, later. The door shut and he reached up to snap his seat belt on in one fluid motion, though he spared a glance for Isaiah as he pulled the jeep onto the street.

"Buckle in." Although it might have just been a joke about his driving, Kam was generally pretty serious about the seat belt situation. It wasn't something he talked about, but it was more than just a what if concern.

"I promise, I won't let you drink anything that might kill you. Just don't wander off when you get distracted by something pretty, ok?" As they rolled to a stop at one of the more notoriously long lights between Isaiah's condo and the old warehouse, he pulled out his phone and tapped out a quick text response before he shoved it back into his pocket. Sana, of course.

"I hope you don't mind getting paint on your clothes, though. I definitely can't promise you won't get a little dirty." There was some underlying humor to his words, but he didn't make any outright jokes. If he knew Isaiah at all, he'd probably supply them himself.

Despite his directions to the warehouse, Kam pulled off onto a side street and the pair rolled up slowly to a liquor store flashing several, neon lights. He wasn't dumb enough to think a bunch of struggling art students were going to give away free alcohol, or even cheap alcohol, when there was no door charge. Luckily, he had majored in the art of pregaming.

"Want to go shopping? My treat." One dark hand gestured at the window plastered in liquor advertisements, where a Kona sign splashed the sidewalk with neon green light from its shaking palm tree.

The distance that Isaiah put between himself and reality was not something new to Kam - he'd noticed it the first night as the darkly clad creature had spun a tail of whimsy and betrayal, though at first he'd simply chalked it up to his BAC. As time went on, he'd noticed the way Ice's gaze dimmed as he retreated into his thoughts, or the way he never seemed to hear the first half of a sentence. Unfortunately, it was simply easier for Kam to ignore the part of the situation caused by feelings and try, instead, to change the attitude with the same self-prescribed medicine he used for his own problems.

Alcohol.

Glorious, destructive, distracting alcohol.

One strong arm pushed the door open with a jingle and held it for his companion, drawing the eyes of the slinky man behind the counter. There was immediate suspicion in the gaze, as there often was when Kam walked into a store in the dark of night, though suspicion changed instantly to curiosity as soon as Isaiah passed the threshold. The two couldn't have possibly been more different, and the lingering hand on his shoulder was an oddity in and of itself. Thankfully, Kam's shameless demeanor meant he didn't shy away from the questions. He only smiled and followed Isaiah into the isles as if they were the most natural pair in the world.

"I won't argue with that," he answered, his path diverging until he found himself among the whiskey. He toyed over decisions, tossing his own preferences among the idea that he would inevitably (hopefully) have girls to please as well. Girls never brought their own booze. By the time he found Isaiah among the tequila isle, he had secured a pint of Black Cherry Jim Bean in one hand.

"Do you think they'll have soda there?" His eyes were on the label of his booze as he came to stand next to him.

"Probably not, college kids are stupid," he murmured in answer to Isaiah's own question, watching him for a moment as he sauntered around the isles gathering what he wanted. With the necessity of at least two non-alcoholic liquids in mind, he stared out across the series of low shelves until he saw a corner near the front crammed full of a variety of plastic bottles. One-stop-shopping, even if it was all likely to be marked up to take advantage of the laziness in the general public.

By the time he rejoined Isaiah at the front, he had a surplus case of plastic water bottles resting on one shoulder and the flavored whiskey tucked under the opposite arm with a bottle of cola. Everything was deposited on the counter with minimal effort, but he did spare a quick glance at Isaiah.

"Once you're drunk you'll completely forget how long this took, so just hold onto your panties."

That did seem to grab the cashier's attention away from the display, making her half turn toward them. Kam had already plastered on his best charming smile in hopes of a discount, but just as he opened his mouth for whatever pick-up line he had prepped in his head, he realized that she had only turned halfway to face them. A single, timid finger raised and pointed at the window as her eyes widened.

"Is.. that your jeep?"

Afraid suddenly that some hooligans were up to no good, his head whipped in that direction. It took only seconds for him to see the pale, broken china doll sitting on the hood, her legs crossed one over the other as if she'd made a throne out of his wheels. One hand worked over the metal next to her, dragging rock-hard nails across his paint job in lazy strokes. It should have been enough to make the short-fused dreadhead rush out of the door to confront her, terrifying visage be damned, but instead he had gone rock still, stiff to the bone at Isaiah's side. The space of a few moments passed like a life time to Kam as he tried to imagine different ways of getting the ******** away without her seeing him, but even he knew that there were no coincidences in this life. She already knew he was here.

"Can you run in that outfit, Ice?" It would have been a jest if Kam's face weren't glued to the woman outside.

She looks broken.

The words drifted past Kam's ears and his teeth grit as they left a sour taste in his mouth. She was broken, but also more powerful than he could possibly explain to Isaiah without giving away all of his own secrets.

It was only his preoccupation with staring out the window that kept him from noticing the moment that his companion left his side. With a plan of how to escape without being detected at least half-assed in his brain, he turned to explain what they were going to do - only to find that Isaiah had already gone ahead without a word. With a wary second glance at the puppet sitting on his Jeep, he followed the pathway he assumed Ice must have taken, just in time to shove open the double doors and watch him engage a sequence that he had seen time and time again.

He was a ******** knight. And if he was powering up, then he was the dumbest ******** knight Kam had ever met.

"You can't fight her, god damn it," he hissed. His voice was low, out of paranoia that she might hear them even in the back alley of the store, but the anger that laced his words was undeniable. The hulking brute crossed the space that separated them in a few long strides and clamped his hands down on the smaller man's shoulders. Powered form to civilian would give Isaiah the advantage, but he didn't want to take on Gehenna if he could avoid it right then.

"Do you feel it? The way it makes you want to choke?" His wild, dark eyes stared down into Scholomance's, a knight he didn't know by name, though he knew the man that bore his power. The muscles in his jaws were tense and though he was trying not to squeeze the knight to death, every tendon in his arm had gone rigid with the effort. For what was probably the first time since Isaiah had known him, he was genuinely afraid of something.

Which meant he knew what it was to be afraid of.

"I can't," he began, immediately, spitting the words out in a tone that had fear laced through it so thickly that it almost made him stammer over two simple syllables. They could still retreat if they just left, right then.

But close by there was a laugh, shrill and high pitched, echoing off the closed in walls of the alleys and stores so that the direction was distorted. A predator chasing her prey, playing mind games, knowing that she had cornered something fascinating. In the split seconds that he had left to make a decision, Kam decided that he would have to face her as Gehenna if he didn't want her to connect Isaiah, or whatever he called himself in this form, to his civilian identity. They'd never out pace her now.

The choice settled over him like defeat and he dropped his hands from where they were tangled with the Page's.

"We should have run, when we had the chance."

It was almost effortless, even after all the time he spent running from it, to draw his power over him. One moment he was Kam and the next he was Gehenna, Squire of Mars, as different from Scholomance as he was from Isaiah himself. With the magic running through his veins, he seemed to have reclaimed some bit of his courage, though he still looked more somber than Kam ever did. He could feel what he'd wanted to run from, now, like smoke so thick in the air it made it hard for him to breathe. The trademark of his nightmares.

His dark eyes turned back down to his friend, offering him a sad, apologetic smile. There were clearly things that the two of them had been keeping secret, but he'd made a decision and right now he had to follow its course.

"When the light comes, just stay behind me."

The echoes of laughter had died off but as soon as Gehenna's lips closed around the last word, the sound of heels on pavement joined them in their dark alley. No doubt drawn by the sudden appearance of their energy signatures, Alkaid stepped out of the shadows with a pleased smile stretched across her fragile face. The fissures of her skin were aglow with her most recent victim's essence, pulsing a bright orange behind the seams.

"Here I was, looking for a dear friend, and he's disappeared." She stopped just outside of the alley mouth with her hands laced together at the small of her back. "Would you happen to know anything about that, little knights?"

Alkaid's bright eyes shifted from the tall, dark man that stood before her to the smaller, pale page next to him. Glamour was a funny thing, making all reason fly out of the window, created to purposefully distort things that seemed so.. easy.

"Oh, I don't know," she began, taking a few idle steps forward and slightly to the right, as if she needed to pace to recall her memory. She was aware of their eyes on her as she did so, though she showed no outward concern over it. "He's tall and dark, with a mess of tattoos all down one side. Very handsome, a lot like his little brother." The words had been said so nonchalant, but they had been intended as anything but.

Gehenna reacted immediately, incapable of containing his temper in the face of the taunt. The hands at his side curled into fists and the thick, dark arms trembled with the effort it took not to barrel in swinging. For a creature so accustomed to studying the human condition, it didn't go unnoticed. The amber eyes cut back to him and trailed quite notably from the trembling arms up to the grimace stretched across his face. A small, knowing smile settled on her lips, as mocking as any words could be.

"Would you happen to know him?" Now she looked to the smaller Page at his side, eyeing him from head to toes, trying to discern how much of a threat he might be.

Watching her attention shift was almost harder than staring into her face and knowing that she could see right through him. How many times had she played this game with him, as Kam? The rage was building in the pit of his stomach and very slowly beginning to outweigh the grip of fear she held over him. If he could use Isaiah's knight as a distraction, even the smallest one, perhaps he could shatter that broken body into a thousand pieces. If she was no match for a strong punch from Kam, maybe Gehenna's berserker magic could seal her fate.

He needed the right moment to strike, and enough courage to do it.