I Saw A Werewolf With A Chinese Menu

Participants:

abby4_icon.gif cat_icon.gif

Scene Title I Saw A Werewolf With A Chinese Menu
Synopsis Abigail brings lunch to Cat's, plus a few requests for help and materials.
Date June 20, 2010

The Verb - Cat's Penthouse


She knows Cat like Piccoli's, but her travels didn't take her there. They took her to other parts of the city, dropping off messages, picking up something else. A deli none the less. Access granted to the top floor where the panmnesiac resides, she toes off her shoes, aligning them against he wall near the door with her feet. "Cat! I brought lunch!" Hoping, praying that the woman is somewhere nearby. "Not Piccoli's, but just as good. Peter and I go there all the time!" And in her wake, on a leash to which he is currently chewing in an attempt to get off it, is the roly poly runt of the feral litter, brown and black with huge eyes.

"How is Peter?" Cat asks as she emerges from the music zone with the red Fender Strat across her torso. "Last I saw him was the day he came to help send Antarctica back where it came from." Eyes scan across the now barefoot person with pink hair, then the food she carries and the miniature wolf. A gesture invites moving further inside. "Thanks for the food, Abby."

Eyes lift to settle on Abby again as a brief deliberation has her heading for the kitchen table not far from the entry door she came by. The canine is welcome by default, no objection raised to that presence.

"Tired. But we're keeping busy. Corpse runs have stopped and now we're back to business as usual. It's not bad though, keeps things going, very little time to stop and dwell on stuff." The leash is unclipped, food put down on the table that Cat's led them to and she digs into her bag to bring out a Glad bag with a large rawhide bone in it that is fresh and new. It's put onto the floor then pushed over towards Rhett who only grumbles and grunts before clip clopping over to thump down beside it and start chewing. "Do you have ways to rent medical equiptment without my name being put down on it?"

"That wouldn't be too hard," Cat muses aloud, "Wireless can be asked to carry out the transaction electronically, if need be physical paper trails can be constructed too. But I am curious. What sort of equipment are you after, and what for, Abby? Something wrong?" She raises an eyebrow while moving to the refrigerator where exist cola and stout among other things. Words aren't used in offering such, she simply gestures to the contents in a manner suggesting availability.

"Something to help me, with my ability." Her bag is put down, tossed towards the door and away from the table as she eschews drinks in favor of setting out the food. "Given what it is though, the thing, I don't want to have a trail going back to me. Too expensive to buy, but I can rent it." THe piece of paper she plucked from her bag is passed over. "I don't even know where to even get it right now, but either of those will do. The latter one is the preferred, so I don't look like i'm carting GPS around on my hip all the time."

"Or I'll buy it and divide the cost into payments you can afford," Cat suggests as she looks over the documentation. "I'd say not to worry about paying back, but," she remarks with a quiet chuckle, "you're you." Eyes shift back to the food, then the refrigerator, hands extract a bottle of stout. Whenever Abby decides to act upon thirst she may or may not have the contents remain available.

"At this point, I may just take you up on the offer to buy it. I know the first one is … just shy of five grand. Which is a great deal of money, and I could afford it. I don't know how much the other is. The first is being discontinued, so it could be bought for less, I'm sure. But the second one sends the information to the phone. So I can keep an eye on my temperature and know better, if I'm needing to stop and take a break or just stop what I'm doing."

There's a glance to Rhett, making sure that he's not going for anything in the apartment before back to Cat. "I can wear the second one at night too, and i'm sure Wireless can work it so that it'll set off an alarm on the phone, if I go too high, and wake me up or someone else up. These drugs, the supply is not going to last forever. I heard Eileen at the meeting, managing the negation drug supply. It's working, it's keeping me able to work, but on my days off, when I'm with someone, I can tell when I don't have control because Peter makes comments about me needing iced coffee or I'm making others move away and I have to go dunk my head in a sink of cold water. This way, there's more for others who really need them." She doesn't consider herself in desperate need of them, even though in a way she does. For now at least.

"That's your call, as to whether you pay me back for it. I'm perfectly willing to buy the item, I may even buy two and keep one for personal use. It's easy enough to explain if I were asked. I work out, do physical training, so tracking vitals makes sense." Cat's eyes rest on Abby after commenting in that regard, contemplation of the ability ongoing.

"When you manifested, you'd just been injured and were under assault. Do you think the trigger then was being hurt, being angry at the assault, or fear of not making it out? Maybe some or all of those combined. I recommend keeping a journal of where you are and what you're doing whenever temperatures start to spike up."

"I was shot three times in the back, Cat, and Francois had been hit. It'd been building up too. My temperature had been creeping up. I didn't manifest when I was attacked in the bar the first time. It's… emotional triggering, I know that much. I've managed to do it a few times on purpose and then a couple times it's been… accidental. Once down in the terminal. Joseph was with me and I had enough time to warn folks away and they hosed me down with a fire extinguisher. I have a few seconds warning, if it's really bad. Mostly I've had someone with me who pointed out I was getting hot and I can douse my head in water. Hurts, but… the cold water helps. better a migraine than burning a building down."

Two of them sounds good. "Get one of each, I suggest, then? The first, if I trigger, I just lose a dermal patch. The other… if it's under my clothing then.. I might not get it off in time." And then there goes the device, burned. "I can pay for the patches. At the worst, they don't work and they can be used by the Ferry to keep an eye on sick individuals who go through, or like you said, for you."

She wriggles her toes at Rhett, seeing if he'll get distracted by her feet and want to play instead of the bone, but no go. He just grunts and ignores, teeth raking across the item. "I can't keep a journal. If someone comes across it who shouldn't, then it's a record of my ability. Nothing on paper."

Nodding, Cat suggests "It seems your best training method is from time to time directly exposing yourself to triggers, until you reach a point where you can flame on and off at will. Meditation would help. You'll likely laugh to hear it from me, but I suggest prayer." She flashes a brief smile in lifting her stout bottle, then imbibing a small amount from that vessel. "Documentation is risky, yes," she agrees quietly. "Being methodical is just how my brain operates. Isolating each and every facet of what was going on at any time temperatures rise."

Then a silence settles in, her eyes focusing on a wall. It doesn't seem so much as it would when she's experiencing a memory flashback, more like being in thought. Perhaps an idea of a solution arising in there.

"What'd really be good is if a way could be found to dose yourself on demand when temps start to rise. It doesn't have to be the ability negation drug, really. Anything that promotes calm should work."

"Like, a mild sedative?" Abby murmurs, squinting a bit. "Pills take time to absorb into the system, Cat, and short of wearing something akin to an insulin pump…" Which she doesn't know if that would be an option, she could ruminate over it with Peter over dinner. "Prayer hasn't been working. I don't… know why, but it just doesn't. Breathing helps, meditating. I'm working on it, Cat. I have three months, that's the timeline I set for myself. It's only been a few weeks. A few weeks and I know at least one trigger to set myself deliberately off. "

"An insulin pump is what I'm thinking of, in a modified way," Cat states. "The first step, of course, is to get the monitoring gear. There's plenty of time to figure out what drugs if any to couple it with. Finding one that isn't addictive. Working out what dosage level does the trick and lets you stay lucid, how long it needs to take effect. Modifying the device wouldn't be hard, we've got a technopath who could code instructions into it that trigger a dose when temps start to rise. And/or provide a way to do it yourself."

That requires needles.

Abigail hates needles.

"How much easier is it to get the liquid sedative for a pump like that as opposed to the negation drugs?" It's something to mull over at least, an alternative and a back up for when she has more control enough to feel comfortable about being off the negation drugs. "Probably both options, if I go that way" If she goes that way.

"Insurance is coming through, for the bar. But I'm not going to rebuild where it was. It might be too costly, and the logistics and the like. I know that you have your thumb on things in the city, you have access to people and places that work at finding buildings. I'm hoping that you might know of a building where there used to be a bar, that's now empty, or a place that just needs renovation in the interior to make it useful again."

"We've time to explore options and methods," Cat states, in setting the topic of fieriness aside and moving on to business matters. "There are some good spots in SoHo," Cat suggests, naming the addresses of locations near the loft Isaac Mendez once occupied. That's a partial reasoning for her choosing to suggest them, another is her musical tastes. Warren Zevon once saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand…

"You could name the place Lycanthropy, and use Come Let Your Hair Down as an advertising hook."

Some days, she just does not understands Cat.

"I'd be more apt to call the bar Kamikazi before I call it Lycanthropy…" The pink haired woman retorts back prior to taking a bite of the club sandwhich in hand. "SoHo though…" It would be a bonus, probably plenty of places besides what Cat mentioned that would be amenable to a bar, or already have the building she'd need. So much had been abandoned closer to Midtown.

There's a pause, Cat chiding herself. Of course Abby doesn't get the reference, being not into rock so much. She quietly hums a few bars. "I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand, walking the streets of SoHo in the rain. He was looking for the place called Li Ho Fook's, gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein. OwOoooh, werewolves of New York…"

She relents soon. "I still think it's a great hook, but maybe you don't want so much to encourage people letting out their inner beasts." A grin forms. "Any chance of having that same wallpaper, Abby?"

"Oh Lord, that wallpaper. I suppose, if Brenda can find it again. So long as I didn't look close, it looked okay." But once you got up close. "Suppose I can find some money in the insurance for it. Was expensive last I knew, nearly a hundred dollars a roll and from somewhere overseas. Where she found it, how she found it, I don't know."

And the song is familiar, if only the refrain, and not the rest. Something the girls played at Halloween. She turns in her seat to regard the well behaved dog, satisfied that he's still not making trouble then back to the front, continue lunch with Cat. "Did you know, about being made one of the leaders of the Ferry, before we went to the meeting?"

A grin forms, regarding the possibility of that wallpaper resurfacing. If nothing else, it's still fun to tease the eternal virgin about such things, not knowing the joke is on her.

The grin shifts back to a neutral expression as talk shifts back to other business. "It was mentioned to me," Cat replies. "I found the idea had merit."

"I like who they've chosen. It's a good cross section of people." Abigail rises from the table, heading for where Cat had indicated drinks before. "You and Joseph, you both have opposites, but … I think you'd want opposites, because if both can find a way to co-exsist."

In the kitchen, unrefrigerated, are some wine bottles of the kind meant for room temperature consumption in a rack. The cooling machine has others which are best at lowered temperatures along with Pepsi, orange juice, and stout. There are also ingredients for cooking a variety of meals and some leftover sandwiches in wrappers.

"Opposites have their value," Cat concurs. "It's not good to always be around people who have complete agreement. Or who'll say only what someone wants to hear."

OJ is good, and OJ is what she takes, avoiding any caffeine for now. "No, because then it's just… wrong. No one should agree all the time. Not even on the little things." She trudges back to the table, pausing to kick the bone away from the dog which sends it scuttling off, paws thumping on the floor in the wake of the tumble, desperate for his bone again. How dare she.

"Besides, with your ability, it makes sense really." Cat's place has all the amenities one could desire, and then some, as she settles back down. "I got something else, I promise, last thing, to ask you." OJ put down, sandwich picked up. "I figure you'd be more than willing to pitch in, and know others who'd be willing to help. You see… there's this building…"


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