Participants

Summary

The Cliath have showed up following rumors of something potentially wyrm-related at an illegal street race in southeast Houston (see lead up). The atmosphere is tense with around ~30 spectators remaining, and Omar, a street racer whose car was sabotaged (by Archimedes, who then disappeared) starts having a violent breakdown. Three plainclothes security men at the event turn out to be more than local muscle - they're watching Omar with just as much interest.

When Omar spits on the ground, smoke rises from his saliva. He attacks Treshawn (a bookie) by grabbing her throat, and when he spits on her face, it burns her skin like acid. The Cliath immediately intervene. Delia sucker-punches Omar and sends him falling like a sack of bricks, Tori interposes herself to block his acid spit (ruining her shirt!) while Ajax not only restrains him, and but he also convinces the untrustworthy trio that he aims to help them collect Omar, and gets the keys to their Maxima in the chaos.

Gabriel intercepts the trio to interrogate them as the Cliath make a getaway. They're momentarily tailed on their way to the woods before the interloper pulls back towards the outskirts. They reach a southerly stretch of forest and perform a purification ritual using sage and water while Ajax holds Omar down. They successfully purge the Wyrm corruption from Omar but that personality of his is apparently permanent. They let him and his ungrateful, bewildered self stumble away into the woods, where they abandon the car.

Lead Up

Sideshow Freakshow Part 1

Log

--| Medina - 05:11 PM |-- Late Friday Night keeps unfolding under that waning gibbous moon: the Gulf air still hanging thick, hot and humid, and that orange industrial glow in the sky casts harsh shadows that make every face look gaunt. The air still reeks of burning rubber and gasoline. The oil stains and broken glass underfoot now look less like party debris and more like dried blood and glinting teeth. The remaining crowd numbers around two dozen and change. Not all the cars who showed up were in the race, as they were built for show, not speed - the candy-colored slabs and old lowriders lurk in the lot, and the old heads that own them are using them to add steel to the distance between themselves and whatever's about to go down. As Omar slams that car hood down hard enough to make the whole thing rattle, the hangers on are either too curious, too invested in the money they put on the line, or too proud to back down from some tweaker having a breakdown.

"Huh, would you look at that? All of that hype and he's just a big loser." Archimedes's voice cuts through the crowd, as he wasn't too quiet about it: "Guess all the talk was for nothing." Omar's bloodshot eyes dart across the crowd, his hands shaking with barely contained fury. The overhead streetlight catches the greasy sheen of his hair as he whips around to the direction of Archie's voice, but he's disappeared into the crowd. "Who the FUCK said that?!"

A couple of folks in the crowd start pointing and murmuring - yeah, they remember the creepy dude talking shit. "That weird-ass white boy! Man was right here talking shit," someone calls out. "Saw his punk ass book it that way --"

That's when Treshawn the bookie steps up, her earrings swaying as she moves with purpose and the controlled demeanor of someone who is not going to let her fear stop her from protecting her interests. "Omar!" She steps right into his personal space, one hand reaching out to grab his arm. "Baby, you need to get your head right. I know you pissed, but you scaring everybody and we still got business!"

"MOTHERFUCKERS SABOTAGED MY RIDE!" Omar practically roars at her, his voice cracking through that lot with a promise of violence.

"What? How --" Treshawn pivots before she questions someone she knows better than to handle like that. " -- You sure it wasn't fuckin' /Jerry/?"

"Maybe someone can get a look at it!" calls a young Asian dude whose rocket-red Olajuwon jersey swallows him. "Marquis, what do you think?"

Near the fence line, it's those same three men the Cliaths spotted earlier, and they move with the kind of purposeful nonchalance that screams 'security.' One of them has a thick set of dreads crowning their fade that have been plaited in two sets of dutch braids that give him an almost ramlike vibe. The other two are two takes on more corporate-friendly hair, except one of them has a lineup so sharp it could wound a man and the other has a plaid overshirt. None of them are quite close enough to overhear individual words, but their body language says they're reading the situation, calculating distances, deciding when to step in. Ram checks his watch. Corpo mutters something that makes Plaid nod grimly.

In the distance, engine noise echoes off warehouse walls as the race continues. Back in the lot, the music keeps thumping, but now it feels wrong. Geto Boys' Mind Playing Tricks on Me spills out of a sulfur yellow Buick on swangas: '... my finger on the trigger. My mother's always stressin' I ain't livin' right, But I ain't going out without a fight ...'

--| Delia - 05:20 PM |-- Luckily, Delia looks nothing like Archie and so she just stands about doing her best impression of an interested crowd-member. She is definitely interested after all. She even turns to her compatriots (Ajax and Tori) to whisper. "How long do you think it'll be before he ends up taking the car.... anywhere else?"

--| Ajax - 05:23 PM |-- Ajax blinks, and puts his hands up in front of him like he was being held up or under arrest. "I'm afraid I'm not much of a mechanic -- I barely understand what's happened here," he says, to the surprise of absolutely no one who might've heard it. Lowering his voice, he leans in to Tori and Delia, bowing his head a little as he does. "But we need to follow him, don't we? Like your initial plan was: to corner this befouled miscreant in a place where there are many fewer witnesses..."

(Ajax rolls Perception + Alertness vs 8 for 1 success)

(Delia rolls Perception + Alertness vs 8 and fails)

--| Gabriel - 05:25 PM |-- Late to the party. Gabriel was just here to watch a race, but he was like thirty minutes too late and so he missed the race, only to end up t the aftermath of it. He stops out of the car, looks at his watch. Spotting the three Cliaths from a certain relative closeness, he locks his car and waits.

(Tori rolls Perception + Alertness vs 8 for 2 successes) (Gabriel rolls Perception + Alertness vs 8 for 2 successes)

(Delia, You strain go hear, but all you do hear is the music: "See, everytime my eyes close I start sweatin, and blood starts comin out my nose...")

(Ajax, you hear Ram say, 'Fuck waiting. Omar's about to snap, and...' but the music overtakes it. Then a little snippet - "Ram, you grab Omar, I'll...")

(Gabriel and Tori, you hear Ram say, "Fuck waiting. Omar's about to snap, and that girl's too close." To which the professional looking guy says, "You know what we gotta do, before he does something stupid that fucks us." Plaid says, "We move in thirty seconds. Ram, you grab Omar. I'll handle the girl if she gets loud.")

--| Medina - 05:36 PM |-- Some guy named Marquis and the asian in the oversized jersey step forward with his hand raised peacefully. "Yo, Omar, let me take a look, man," Marquis says. Seems the wiry Asian Hakeem fan is here for backup in case Omar doesn't like the suggestion. "I work at the Jiffy Lube, let me take a look! I heard it turn over when you tried to start it, so your starter's good, let's--"

"Don't TOUCH my FUCKING car!" Omar snaps, but he's torn between watching the two approaching him, Treshawn, and scanning the crowd for that white tweaker. Treshawn tightens her grip on Omar's arm, trying to keep his attention. "Omar! Baby, let the man help. We can figure this out! Shit happens!"

"There ain't gonna be no more races!" Omar jerks away from her and then spits contemptuously on the ground, but she holds on -- and she misses that smoke rises from the asphalt wher Omar's spit landed. "Somebody's trying to fuck me over!"

--| Tori - 05:37 PM |-- Tori is just that step or two away from the others and she holds up a hand at Ajax and Delia's whispers to let her pause and listen. Security are whispering and she's good at listening. She leans back towards the other two after a moment, her voice back to a quiet murmur. "The beefy guys are going to grab Omar and hopefully take him somewehre to cool off. We should follow them there, not make a scene here."

--| Gabriel - 05:39 PM |-- The situation is interesting for sure. Gabriel just closes in on the distance without actually getting so close that he'll take initiative on this. It's a holding pattern, only... it's not certain what he's waiting for, but his attention turns from Omar to the Cliaths with rapt interest now. He does, however, retrieve a small plastic vial from his pocket.

--| Delia - 05:40 PM |-- Delia nods along with Tori's murmur, giving a quick glance back at the security guards. "I have a feeling even if they manage to get him somewhere quieter... keeping him there might be an issue. One we don't want to get any bigger." Smoke doesn't normally rise from spit on asphalt, not even on the hottest of Texan days.

--| Ajax - 05:45 PM |-- Ajax watches the peals of smoke wafting from where Omar spit on the ground as he rubs his chin, the interaction between the various members of staff and the fellow percolating in his mind. "Let's follow them," he agrees, as all three of the Cliaths are starting to align in their overall intention to keep it a little quiet and preserve the Veil. "I think...we will need to beware whatever boiling cauldron is percolating inside him...I can't put my finger on it, but I get the feeling that the people trying to walk him around don't have very good intentions for him either. This could get ugly."

He straightens up and puffs out his chest, putting his arms on his hips. "Let's watch carefully for our chance to separate him from them. Delia...you are a hunter, much more than Tori and I. Why don't you take the lead?"

--| Medina - 05:50 PM |-- As the Cliath wait for the right moment and the Walker oversees it, Marquis tries to troubleshoot with Red-Jersey, popping the hood again. Marquis leans in, gold chain glinting under the street lights, and he says, "The fuck?" A pause, then, "Omar! Somebody definitely fucked with your car, man, it's some kind of --"

"I FUCKING KNEW IT!" Omar bolts around wildly, his glare striking Treshawn who's still got her hand on his arm. He grabs Treshawn by the throat with one hand: "YOU CUNT YOU SET ME UP! You and that little white freak!" As he starts to strangle her, his sweaty grip leaves black, oily stains on her neck, and she's instantly going for the nuts with a swift and desperate knee - only for him to spit in her face. "You want to fight, bitch!?" The saliva hisses and steams against her skin like acid and she screams.

The crowd recoils, not yet processing what just happened. "Jesus FUCK!" Ram is already moving, hand going for his waistband, his two buddies moving in. They're headed straight for Omar. Marquis whips around with his friend, and he's grounded in place from the sheer what-the-fuck factor, gripping that electric device Archie had macgyvered like he might just try and use it to crash in a skull if anybody comes too close.

The Garou should know these humans can't understand what they're about to get into.

--| Delia - 06:23 PM |-- It's instinct really. Centuries of Black Fury instruction boiling over to one quick move as soon as Delia sees Omar laying hands on Treshawn's throat, the ahroun swings a sucker punch right to the man's chin. Between surprise a little gifted help, down he falls like a sack of bricks. "Mind your manners."

--| Tori - 06:34 PM |-- Any spit that made the pavement smoke cannot be good for humans. It's probably not good for garou either, but at the very least, Tori regenerates. She squirms her way over as she spots Omar aiming to start spitting on people like a lizard being put down and gets herself in the way. Nap time via Delia isn't great for Omar's aim, but he still manages to clip her favourite (only) thrift store t-shirt.

"Hey. Not cool." Tori frowns down at the smoking hole in her shirt. "I like this shirt."

--| Ajax - 06:42 PM |-- Once Omar has been crumpled by Delia's sucker punch, Ajax quickly moves in and simply decides to do the knuckle-dragger thing of tangling with the aggressor. That's more or less his modus operandi for handling conflict, and he didn't have any brighter ideas, so as he calls upon the power of Falcon to enhance his grip into terrible talons, he does a wrestling shoot and plants his hands on Omar on the ground and starts to restrain him, working on wrist-control and keeping his chin up so he can't get sucked into the scrabble. The way he strains against his plaid and jeans makes him look a little like a Greek statue given a modern update as he grunts.

--| Medina - 06:43 PM |-- Delia wrecks Omar's jaw with a sucker-punch and the man falls down. STRAIGHT down - like a demolition. Like a cartoon who walked off the cliff and just looked down. And even as he reels, you can hear the hawk before the tua! Tori lunges in the way as Ram closes in, and Treshawn staggers with the chaos, but her neck is free. She drives her foot into the man's stomach and calls him something SHE can say amid other insults, as he spits, and Ram staggers just a touch when suddenly some random woman is in his way juking over between Omar and Treshawn. His acid spit wrecks Tori's vintage couture, and fuck a full Nelson, Ajax snatches Omar in some kind of wild-ass grasp like some kind of Greco-Roman platonic wrestler ideal, his submission hold an essay in form. In the chaos of the scuffle, Ram grabs onto Omar but it's more like an awkward 'me too' bear hug alongside Ajax like when way too many cops have to hold down one dude, and the two men with him pull Treshawn away. Treshawn is yelling something about it being in her eyes. "The fuck!?! Augh, what is that, CHAW?!"

(Ajax, Your hands are stinging from the sweat on Omar that wicks through his clothes.)

As chaos ensues, Omar will be inebitably writhing and thrashing in Ajax's iron grip! His body is getting slick with a sheen of sweat that carries an acrid, chemical stench, with an oily, unnatural quality. Up close Ajax can see it seems to eat at the air around it with visible wisps of vapor!

--| Gabriel - 07:08 PM |-- Those guys are skeevy. And he overheard them. Gabriel lets the Cliaths handle the main event while he tries to make sure their logistics work out just fine. He stands in front of Plaid, before stating, in monotone: "I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

--| Medina - 07:10 PM |-- "Do what?" Plaid says. Marquis is yelling for someone to bring Treshawn some water. It's only been a chaotic few seconds - the engines are still distantly rumbling, and the squeal of tires and a distant BOOM! of somebody side swiping -something- echoes through the night. Matter of time before an event like this attracts HPD, but no sirens yet. The man Gabriel is intecepting protectively hold Treshawn who is rubbing at her eyes. "What did he fuckin -- it STINGS, man!" Someone scrambles up with a bottle to help flush Treshawn's eyes.

--| Delia - 07:12 PM |-- "You hold him, I'll drive?" Delia volunteers when it seems this party is finally moving on to more confined quarters of a car. That they can definitely do!

--| Ajax - 07:36 PM |-- Fwump. At the invitation to do so, Ajax gives the fellow a smile, lifts Omar bodily off the ground, and chucks him into the back of the car like he was tossing a newlywed onto the honeymoon suite bed, only with a little bit more banging the head on the nightstand -- or door, in this case. Yes, fwump. He claps his hands together a couple of times as if clearing them of the terrible fluids, straightens his back to corpo, and with a little head wiggle, holds out his hand "Don't worry chief, let me just lock him in there for you and I'll get the car started." Totally natural! He was in control, and oozing with confidence, and the worst part was, he kind of meant it! Only, when he receives the keys, he tosses them across his own body into Delia's waiting hands. "Your cooperation is highly appreciated, my good fellow. On to better and brighter!" With that, he turns to join Delia and Tori with the getaway with the car. --| Delia - 07:38 PM |-- Delia grabs those keys smoothly enough, like she's done this dozens of times before. With a quick little salute of said keys, she's jumping into the driver's seat, only waiting until both Ajax and Tori are in the vehicle before she's taking off.... might not even be waiting for them to fully close the doors. --| Tori - 07:39 PM |-- One (1) Omar gets loaded into the back of the car, and one (1) Tori piles in after him to (ideally) keep him there. It pretty much looks akin to trying to get a toddler into a snowsuit and then into a car seat. There's flailing and swearing and the car door gets locked and unlocked and relocked a couple of times. Some slapping, some sitting on people and some clear indications that Tori's stories about being part of a large family are ENTIRELY true. Somehow it ends with her using her entire self to pin Omar to the rapidly staining and vaguely dissolving upholstery and she's discovering that why yes.. this oozing shit DOES hurt. And her poor, poor t-shirt.

Delia's driving ensures that Tori slams a little more fully into Omar with an "AAAAH" of surprise. --| Medina - 07:40 PM |-- Just moments ago, Omar was writhing and thrashing in Ajax's iron grasp, his body slick with that sheen of sweat. His struggle is desperate and violent, muscles straining against the Silver Fang's supernatural hold. Gabriel practically materialized before Plaid could whisk Treshawn away, and now Plaid is acting put-off while one of Treshawn's buddies has provided water she's pouring into her eyes. Alas, her glorious makeup and her false lashes are a muddy ruin. "Put him in the car" was a directive that the Cliath stuck to much like you swear loyalty to the throne, not the king!

Ajax, having maintained his crazy vice grip on Omar, con-mans this stranger out of the keys to his Nissan Maxima. One beautiful thing about being an aristocrat is their command of bald-faced self-assured reasonableness that makes even the most ridiculous requests sound /perfectly logical/ and the Galliard delivers in spades.

Tori takes charge of the physical containment, clearing a path to the Maxima and then diving into the backseat to RASSLE Omar into submission. What follows is... an increasingly desperate struggle as Omar's body continues to secrete that disgusting-ass, black-staining fluid. The chemical burns sting and cling to Tori's skin, eating through fabric and leaving angry welts, but her determination eventually wins out over his thrashing resistance. The Maxima's upholstery immediately begins to show the damage and the smell is RANK, dude.

Meanwhile with Gabriel, the man in a plaid overshirt shifts to professional confusion: "I don't know what you're talking about," his denial smooth but not entirely convincing.

Witnesses are generally giving the increasingly contained situation a wide berth - fortunately that Maxima's windows are tinted.

In the distance, HPD sirens wail, but there's enough time to scramble and gun it. It's hard to tell where they'll end up - wre they called to the warehouse? Was it that car wreck heard from afar? Who knows.

(Delia drives off of the industrial lot and away from the scene. Gabriel can't see Delia hitting every pothole along the way. As she goes, the group will eventually notice they're getting tailed -- not by anybody they recognize from the event, but a new car that seems to be following them for a bit. It's a 1992 Mercedes 300E, a car that says 'I don't want to show off, but I do want to be comfortable; I fill my car with premium and I don't look at the price'. Delia changes course. She hooks it south to a woodsy patch of nowhere down south, and eventually, the car that speaks of a moneyed driver stops tailing them -- whoever's driving it probably has better sense.)

--| Medina - 08:01 PM |-- The trio has gone deep in the Houston woods, far from prying eyes and innocent bystanders, and Tori is, indeed, proving she had a billion siblings keeping this fuckin' guy restrained. It seems the man has the powers of the Fomor but not the wherewithal to use them properly or else he'd probably get creative in the back seat. The canopy filters the moonlight across the forest floor, while the sound of distant traffic fades to a whisper beneath the creaking of pine. When Omar is cast to wherever they put him, that disgusting caustic sweat of his immediately withers the grass and sizzles the dirt, but one of the Garou keeps his freaky little body still while the other two perform the ritual around his prone figure, marking out a sacred circle...

--| Delia - 08:06 PM |-- Much like a scout, Delia's childhood included always being prepared. Her water bottle and a cconvenient bundle of sage are pulled out from her bag and passed over to the Philodox. "We should do this fast...." Because she definitely doesn't want to explain to Emma or Meridian how they let a possible fomori start a forest fire.

--| Tori - 08:10 PM |-- It takes two to make this work. Tori might be the one leading this ritual, but Delia's got the goods that make this a THING. Someone really should start carrying useful things with her, but that's future Tori's problem. "Thanks." She murmurs softly to Delia as she accepts the water bottle and the sage.

Forest fires are bad. Worse in the summer. So clearly one needs to light more things on fire. The difference here is that the sage is just smouldering, in Tori's hand and being used to splash water on the pinned down Omar.

A step. A flick of the water. Another step. Another flick. The philodox is quiet, she's often silent truly. Her howl starts as that quiet, eerie note that doesn't sound right coming from a human throat. A step. A flick of the water. Circling Omar and Ajax and Delia. Her howl grows in volume as the water and smudge smoke builds around the group.

--| Ajax - 08:12 PM |-- Ajax holds Omar down on the ground and keeps him from thrashing around like the friendliest, most congenial serial killer while this all happens, keeping his head up and doing his best not to interrupt. It was a little unnerving how little he was able to move, and he was even dealing with the toxic sweat okay. He felt so certain it would work, even if that basis was on nothing.

--| Medina - 08:16 PM |-- Omar's muffled protests and struggles send small puffs of dirt up around his nose and mouth as he struggles agaisnt the restraint. Tori and Delia move with deliberate precision around him, and whatever obscenities he's shrieking into the dirt. The Maxima quietly ticks the way a cooling car does some yards away on the forest floor. Omar convulses on some straight up Rosemary's Baby shit as the rite builds to its crescendo, the layers of spiritual corruption burning away and leaving him in pain as he fights it. But the very earth beneath Omar begins to respond to the cleansing: clean groundwater seeps up through the soil around him, forming small pools that hiss and steam where they contact his toxic sweat, neutralizing it, bringing the smell of coming rain. As the wyrm taint that hs riddled his body and mind is driven out, agonizingly extracted, dark, acrid smoke rises from his skin as the grip of the Wyrm is literally burned away. The toxic secretions begin to slow and change color, shifting from that deadly black ichor to something more akin to just a mixture of sweat nd blood, before stopping entirely, leaving the street racer a confused, raggedly breathing man.

"Whah -- What the fuck," the exhausted stranger says, coughing out some dirt as he turns his head. "I'm gonna fucking kill you," he says, but it's exhausted machismo. "You fucking freaks."

--| Ajax - 08:19 PM |-- "You're not," Ajax replies with the sort of serenity and aplomb and self-assurance that an angel might.

(Delia rolls Perception + Occult and botches!) (Ajax rolls Perception + Occult for 3 successes.) (You both are fairly confident that wahtever conclusion you come to is the logical one beacuse this dude is right in front of you, and it's not hard to sense what you know is right in front of you. Delia, you think he could use another slapping around, Ajax, you're pretty sure he's good. In fact, you'd bet another $200 that hes good.)

--| Delia - 08:23 PM |-- "Guys... I think the Wyrm's still got him. Why else would he be making death threats?" Delia ignores the signs of Gaia reaching up with the spring water rising out of the ground through the ritual and the oil slipping away and instead, she's flexing her fingers even now as if this might still be coming to a fight.

--| Tori - 08:25 PM |-- "I think that's just who he is as a person." Tori comments quietly as she extinguishes the sage such that she can tuck things back into Delia's kit and not light anything else on fire. "It FELT right." She notes, not commenting on the 'fucking freaks' part of Omar's accusation. He's not WRONG, per se.

--| Medina - 08:25 PM |-- "You're a fucking psycho," Omar says, still ass-up face-down in the dirt, the outline of his wallet visible from his jeans and everything. Her mention of the 'wyrm' is downright confusing: "What- what are, what the fuck, -worms-?"

--| Ajax - 08:30 PM |-- "I think your most commendable efforts succeeded," Ajax says to Tori, trying to convince Delia with a sweeping hand gesture. "From what I can tell, he was able to be saved. Some aren't so lucky, at least, so I've been told -- here in Houston, we never seem to have suffered a loss in this regard. Maybe we can chalk it up to the powerful spiritual energies that suffuse the lands we're in."

He puts his hand back on Omar, once he's done. "Listen, friend. You suffered some hard losses. You lost your car, you lost your street-racing reputation, and you have lost the respect of your peers. You lost in a fight, you've lost your friends, you've lost your dignity, and much more besides."

He stops for a second, and tries to catch himself and remember where he was going with it. He reaches up and snaps a finger, and points it at the side of Omar's face. "But you haven't lost your life, or your soul. When you think back on today, try to remember, not all of the many, various and sundry things you've lost. But what you've gained." He pats Omar a little on the side of his face. "I'll let you figure out what that is. Now don't get up and handsy or I'll put you to sleep. Alright." He finally gets off him and claps his hands on Delia and Tori's shoulders. "Well done, comrades!"

--| Medina - 08:36 PM |-- Omar just... Stares at Ajax. He blnks a couple of times, then his lip curls like he miiight just spit at the guy. He stumbles to his feet and then the only thing keeping him from -shoving- the guy is the memory of not even five minutes ago. "Fuck you, man, -fuck- you." He looks at the ground for a second, then grasps at his own shirt, which itself is ruined to shit because of his caustic sweat, but this is a family friendly program, so not /taht/ ruined. He starts to leave of his own accord, probably to put distance between himself and these weirdos, but he carries the confused, haunted countenance of somebody who has /no idea/ what just happened, but certainly remembers it.

"Fucking ... new age psychoes," he mutters, as he makes his way off.

(They leave Omar to his own devices in the woods and elect to investigate the Maxima.)

Aftermath

Third Ward Gossip

Word spreads through the older heads with the candy-painted slabs and vintage lowriders. They don't come to race, so when everything went sideways in southeast Houston Friday night, they saw it all unfold from a distance. Stories like this flutter through the subculture, in shops and on front porches from Third Ward to the Northside:

"Y'all remember that creepy white dude with the big mouth? Dude felt like bad news from the jump. Had everybody's fight-or-flight going just standing there, then Omar's car dies and suddenly he's the loudest one talking about how Omar ain't shit. But when Omar started choking out Treshawn, where's Mister Scary? Gone!"

"Man, Omar fucked UP Treshawn. Did you see her face? Must have had something on his hands, maybe battery acid or some chemical from work? Andrea took her to the hospital. Then this country girl just stepped up and dropped Omar with one punch. Lights out, Mike Tyson. Some Baywatch looking white dude threw him into a car and the two honeys with him took care of business. They saved Treshawn's life probably. Whole thing was weird as hell, no idea who they were."

"And where's the asshole who started it all? Dude caused all that chaos and just bitches out, drops a mess for everyone else to clean. Marquis found this crazy circuit board thing under Omar's hood, white boy must have left it, talking shit like he did and then bouncing like he knew exactly what was gonna happen. Some kind of kill switch? Marquis been carrying that device around in his toolbox, showing it to everybody. Says it's like nothing he's seen before. Pro work, spy movie shit from scratch parts."

Some of the people who were there don't agree on what just happened to Treshawn:

"Maybe he had chewing tobacco or dip juice mixed with something nasty," says Francis Tubig, the high schooler who sneaks out in his dad's IROC-Z. "That can burn if it's got chemicals in it."

"No way, I was right there," says Andrea Betz, who waits tables. "I SAW him spit directly at her face. Omar hawked up something gross and spat it right at Treshawn. That stuff was hissing and steaming the second it hit her skin."

But most people aren't so sure. Everything happened so fast, they're not sure what he hit her with. Something definitely burned her though.

The Bone Gnawer Kin

Jerry is in his shop with a filthy wad of steel wool, a sock, and a jar of bacon grease (I wonder where Brent learned it). With surprising delicacy, he balls up the sock, shoves the steel wool inside, dips it in grease like he's breading a mozzarella stick, and says, while he stuffs a muffler in front of God and everybody with a wrench handle as a plunger: "Thank God somebody stepped in when they did, 'cause he was almost gone. I heard about that acid spit at the races. Yeah, that sealed it for me. Problem is, whatever got Omar the first time is still out there. Dude works at one of them chemical plants, right? If they cleansed him but he goes back to the same job, same routine, same exposure... he's gonna get infected again. Maybe worse this time 'cause now he knows something's wrong."

Grande is still working washing dishes at Monterrey House, and he's outside on a smoke break but he's suckin' lollipops so he can try to quit the camels. "Been thinking about Omar talking to his rearview mirror all those times. That ain't crazy, that was something else talking back! Wyrm gets its hooks in you slow, makes you into something else.... And you can clean the Wyrm out of somebody, but if you don't fix what caused it in the first place, it just comes back. Omar's still gotta pay rent, still gotta work wherever was poisoning him.... Unless somebody handles the source, we're just gonna see this whole thing play out again in a few months."

Carlos is picking up groceries at the WC Mart, including but not limited to a veritable tower of tortillas and so much of that jet puff marshmallow shit - the HEALTHY stuff you can buy on EBT -- so much of it that looking at it might give you diabetes. "Omar never collecting his winnings makes sense now. He wasn't betting on himself, whatever was inside him was. Thing probably knew it was gonna win 'cause it was juicing him up somehow. Eugh, gives me the willies. When I heard about that acid spit burning Treshawn's face, I knew exactly what we'd been dealing with.... But now, someone gotta help Omar get a new job, or something. 'Cause if Omar goes back to handling whatever chemicals turned him the first time...I mean, hell."