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Fawkes stood, dumbfounded as his gaurdian's car drove off, leaving only dust in its wake. He had basically been dumped infront of this house and left with a "Have fun!" His gaurdian always did this so that she would not have to hear him complain and talk her out of leaving him. You'd think he'd learn by now not to get out of the car.

With a Gallic shrug, Fawkes slowly turned his head towards the house and frowned. It wasn't much of a house, and the fact that he had "came" from this house made him scoff. His gaurdian must be on drugs or something. This could not be a safe place to hang out. Whether he hated to stare at the old house or not, he felt an odd connection. A shiver ran down Fawkes's spine then, and he hugged his arms to try and suppress it.

" Well that was awkward," he muttered under his breath.

< What was awkward? And why did you have to shiver!? I was sleeping!>The voice was high pitched inside of Fawkes's head, and he only wished he could tune it out at the time. The voice belonged to his Daemon, Rouge. As if on cue, the little crimson fox poked her head out from the shadow of Fawkes's hair, getting a good look around.

< I don't like the house,> she mummbled then dove back under Fawkes's hair. Fox of many words.

Fawkes's let out a sigh and pet Rouge's head absentmindedly, as he walked up towards the house. As usual he would listen to his gaurdian's pleas and would 'have fun.' Even if he was willingly going, however, he still took each step with little haste and took his sweet time. As he reached the stairs of the old house, he caught sight of another teen.

Fawkes stopped in mid-step and stared at the other boy for a moment. Then as the other boy walked inside of the house, he felt compelled to follow. He stepped through the door the other boy had gone through, yet forgot to duck as the other had. With a loud, THUMP, Fawkes fell on his bottom on the floor, clutching his injured head with both his hands, blinking back tears.

" Son of a--" Fawkes cursed under his breath, rubbing his forhead as much as he could, as if pressing on the bump would make it and the pain go away.

They were in the House, now. Retch was leading the way, for fear of being called a scaredy-scat. The crocodile was a splendid explorer; she was also quite adept at getting herself vexingly lost, and although the pair had spent less than ten minutes inside those splintered hallways and stacked corridors, 'vexingly lost' would have described their situation perfectly.

Not that, of course, Retch was going to admit this. Especially since it was all her shitty Forgotten's fault. Darn him (to heck)! Damn the promise! Quim was a butthead to have forced his Forgotten to agree to such a preposterous thing. Hell, if she hadn't been enticed by the offer of pickles, if she had just said "No, dammit, you have the shittiest ideas," then maybe this wouldn't have happened and they wouldn't be ******** over, confused and stuck in some HOUSE a mere five minutes after they'd snuck inside. Retch had never wanted to revisit their birthplace (so to speak). It was all Quim's idea, and she had no idea where it had sprung from. It was probably just to piss her off. If there was a campaign to keep Quim indefinitely from visiting the House, Retch would have headed it and headed it gladly; without thinking any further on the matter, the crocodile could name three reasons why they shouldn't ever visit the shithole, ever, right off the top of her scaly head:

1. It was old and looked to be eff-falling apart. You don't ******** with something that's falling apart. You don't just go into that there unless you want to die or some s**t. (Retch didn't like things that were simply Old, without any charm; disgusting buildings had no charm, and old disgusting buildings probably counted as negative.)

2. There were so many better things they could be doing just then. Like eating, or sleeping, or watching ******** television. Or Scrabble. Retch liked Scrabble. She was very good with four-letter words.

3. Quim's whim. That was what it had been: a whim. Numbero uno rule in Retch's stupid book? Don't do the Quim whims. They land you in serious s**t.

And of course there were more, but it just went to show how ******** lameass this whole dig was.

Quim cleared his throat, coughing dust out in small puffs. "Retch, you zinglish twitchwad, where (I may ask) are-now we headed?"

Somewhere. Now shut the ******** up. Retch burped, rolling her eyes about (quite literally, since one had just fallen out of the socket). With any luck, she'd spot some people, or a lit room, or (she dared to hope) a ******** exit hatch.

"Yessir ma'am, and intrepid we are, and five minutes, it's been. But see now, Retch, I'm jolly starving and what iznat anyway?"

Yes, now shut the ******** up.

Quim didn't. "Jo, iznat that a light? Iffin's a light, poihaps we do have, indeedly, somewhere to go."

It was a light, shining dimly down the corridor just around the corner. The shadows were friendly, Retch thought, in that they seemed fuzzy around the edge and (except for a few) mostly didn't move. Thank god for lights and shadows and anything but splinters and being lost. Thank GOD. Retch blinked a weary eye backwards at her Forgotten, the boils on her eyelid gleaming in the halflight. Thanks, she started to say, or Keep it up, you b*****d. Somehow, all that came out was an irate Don't tell me things I already know, dumbass.

But Quim wasn't listening, so it wouldn't have mattered anyway. The two figures ahead of them in the corridor (the generators of those moving shadows, Retch thought) were far more interesting - a wolf and a boy? Fellow Forgotten or fiends? Friend or foe?

If Simon and Death hadn't been blocking Retch's view of the doorway, the Daemon might have seen the sprawled Fawkes and marked the two down for bloody assault-and-battery. As it was, Simon and Death seemed decent enough to Retch and she marked them down as 'neutral' in her mental book.

Neutral and shittarded, she thought, angry for the hell of it. She was made angrier still by the thought that that hulk of a wolf could probably snap her neck before breakfast.

"Hey!" Quim shouted out, waving frenetically, a few paces behind the roller-blading crocodile for safety's sake. "I dunno you, iznat right now?"

((@ crucru: http://www.gaiaonline.com/guilds/viewtopic.php?page=1&t=3470603#65405865 ))

Starting at the sudden call, Simon smoothed his ruffled features and let his eyes travel from the situation at hand to the one that was barreling towards him -- a boy with arms flailing, trailing what appeared to be an undead crocodile. Steeling himself, Simon adopted what appeared to the casual observer to be a relaxed stance, but he was balanced on the balls of his feet, ready for action, if the need presented itself.

The boy smelled -- hurried -- and a bit flighty, but there was none of the stink he had come to identify as danger, so he calmed, but only marginally. "No. I don't believe we've met." His voice echoed out in a deep, rich baritone -- thankfully not interrupted by the occasional cracks and squeaks that plagued him since his voice had changed. "I am called Simon. This," he indicated the she-wolf, "is DeeDee."

He offered nothing more, nor asked for anything in return. Golden eyes glinting in the dim of the hall, he turned -- Death's eyes still riveted on Quim and Retch -- to take in this new arrival. He had smelled him coming, so he wasn't surprised by his appearance, but Simon liked to put a face with the scent. It was his human mind's way of coping with the wolfish ability.

"Take care with the rotting one," Death locksent to him. "There is a darkness in her." He patted the wolf on the rump, trying to comfort her, all the while knowing her instincts were usually correct. Filing the information in his mind, he held out his hands to the fallen boy as well as to the boy crouched by the other's side, saying nothing, but the offer to help was plain.

As Ethen hefted up the fallen, long-haired teenager to his feet, he noticed that the other person assiting him had also held out a hand to Ethen. He couldn't figure why initially, but after a few moments he figured that the gesture must be a handshake. It was a way of greeting people, more traditional than helping someone regain their balance, but nonetheless Ethen hesitated before placing his hand in the other's.

"It's a pleasure to meet you." Ethen didn't try to smile, though the figure seemed nonbelligerent; big-boned, perhaps, but without harsh intentions. The wolf accompanying him looked more vicious; in response to its countenance, Ethen had picked up Underneath, petting her head gently after she was settled in his arms.

The smile of the boy he had just helped was reassuring, but also somewhat chilling. Ethen wondered how he could smile so easily...

"And you, are you sure you're okay?" Ethen squinted slightly, attempting to look for an abrasion through the shrouds of hair and shadow disguising his face. "Just what exactly made you fall?"

Quim had known how to count for years. It was no longer neccessary for him to curl his fingers or his lips around the numbers; this slow counting was more of an addiction, an unbreakable habit. Like a chainsmoker or longterm cocaine addict, he reveled in small doses of his drug not only for comfort but also to remind himself of the worn, comfortable knowledge that he would never have to be quite free of it for a while yet. The boy would have to count to a thousand or aim for a million to get a real thrill, but for now, simply knowing that ten was reachable and definite was enough.

For now, Quim restricted himself to a round two. He allowed his thumb and index finger to free themselves from his fist, and as the tips of those two fingers formed a loose circle and his index finger started to straighten, he reached over with his other hand and quietly cracked his knuckles. Once on the index fingers, for the large wolf, and once on the thumb for her Forgotten. "Simon and Didi," he repeated after the former, adding a light stress to the first syllable of Didi. "Jolly to meet d'you. I'm Quim, rhymes with Quiche - er, sorta doesnit? - and this's Retch. Say how do you do, Retch!"

I don't like you yet, the crocodile drawled at DeeDee. Her tone was mild, and why wouldn't it be? Retch was simply stating a fact. And you know what? It'd be just too ******** bad if some fathead thought some otherwises.

Be 'greeable, you disguster, Quim thought at his Daemon warningly, as he turned his attention to the rest of the group. Ethen and Underneath were labeled as three and four on Quim's fingers, and five was Fawkes, who had been helped up by now. But where was six? Up until now, each boy had had a Daemon. Fawkes was the odd one out. Quim couldn't see Rogue from where he was standing, and even if she'd known, Retch wouldn't have told him about the quiet fox for anything.

Disregarding Fawkes' earlier question (to be honest, Quim simply hadn't heard it), the boy nodded at Ethen's query. "Yah, what didja dut? Hopely you're aight? And uhm," he wasn't quite sure how to word this, "are ya like us?"

Retch snapped her jaws open and closed almost threateningly, and Quim hurried to clarify his question. "I'ma mean, you don' - I guess you hafta have a companion. Do you? Uh, I mean, dimon, d'ya now?"

Way to ******** up, Retch said as an aside to Quim, but rapidly turned her attention to more interesting matters - for example, the sheep. Mutton was one of her favorite foods, and she knew it came from sheep. Too bad she'd be grounded for months if she made any sort of move. Ignoring the whine of hunger, the crocodile smiled sharply at Underneath, parting her jaws oh-so-slightly in a grin of sorts. You're kind of runty, are you? You feel bad sometimes?

The older boy at the door was also rather interesting, Retch thought, but not worth it. You had to keep your eyes on the target at all times and she was sure as hell not going to look away from the sheep. Even though Underneath was neither a threat nor an impending entree, the sheep was still a better target than that wolf. Rule two: don't ******** with something with almost more teeth than you have.

"Nice glasses," Quim chirped at Declan, ignoring the question. Again.

Fawkes gazed at the boy with the crocodile. He had been asked why he was on the floor by the blonde haired boy, but he wasn't too sure what this one was asking. His accent and manner of speaking confussed him so much. He guessed that he had asked him the same question.

" Well to be honest, I hit my head on the door." He pointed up as he spoke, motioning towards the door frame. Now the boy wanted to know whether or not he was similar to them. So many questions.

"What do you mean?" He paused as he watched the other boy fumble with his words then smiled as he grew to understand. " Yes I am like you. I do have a companion, but she is a wuss and likes to hide." As if on cue, Rouge's nose poked out from the shadows of Fawkes's hair, sniffing about frantically.

She left the sentence at that, for Fawkes knew what she would say. There would be no way she would be coming out into THAT group of beings.

With a sigh, Fawkes pulled back his hair and tucked it behind his ear, but what was behind his hair was still unseen, for as if by magic, Rouge replaced it, standing solidly infront of his face.

< Sneaky devil,> she hissed, shivering slightly and she sat upon his shoulder. Fawkes chuckled softly then turned his attention towards the older boy, the one he had followed into the house in the first place.
'Who the hell ARE you all?' he had asked.
Fawkes frowned at the tone of voice. He did not quite like the older boy's attitude, so he decided to return it.

Fawkes turned his whole body towards the older boy, fixing his arms across his chest in a defiant manner.
" I am Guy Fawkes, you may call me Fawkes." He paused, looking the older boy up and down, sizing him up. Although one could not see his eyes, it was obvious as to what eh was doing. " And who might you be?"