Just a GPSL NPCs (birthrightnpc) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2021-01-31 18:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | npc |
The Good Son (NPCs Rob and Sarah)
Where: Boulder, Colorado
When: Very Early
Who: NPCs Rob Corrigan and Sarah Hurley
Rating: Low
“Rob?”
“Yeah?”
The weather in Boulder was brutally cold; twenty six degrees and dropping as the smell of snow on the air intensified. No white flakes yet, but it was coming. Rob Corrigan was eating cold french fries and looking at a map, placing black pushpins through the paper in strategic spots. His group was crashing in a house near the water, which made it even colder. It was two-sixteen in the morning and he’d thought the others were asleep, so he was surprised when Sarah Hurley tapped his shoulder, distracting him from his study. A thumbtack in each hand, he cut a sideways look at her to see her scratching the back of her neck and looking uncertain.
“Is there any more coffee?”
“I think so, yeah. Though it’s probably turned into mud by now, since Carl made it.”
There were muted noises as she moved past him on his right, and he went back to looking at the spread out map on the table. There’d been some activity since they’d arrived, but not as much as expected. He’d written it down, that even vampires could be affected by intense cold. Another pin found a home, punching a tiny hole in the paper.
The coffee was gross, but Sarah drank it even through the face she made. She was a twenty-three year old high school dropout who’d been working at Walmart when she found out that the things that went bump in the night were real, and she fell in with Rob’s cadre through a distant cousin who introduced them and then went back to Milwaukee. The younger Corrigan had developed the habit of acquiring strays, non-bloodline hunters who showed up and then just never left. He was teaching her to use a crossbow.
She stood there for so long that the silence picked up weight, her staring down into her cup and him cherry-picking his way through the map of Boulder’s city streets. Rob became aware that she was nervous, and he paused before dropping the last of the pins into a plastic container. It was late enough that he should have been in bed an hour ago, snoring like everyone else, but he was always filled with wired energy in a different city at first. He knuckled a spot above his left eye as he looked at her more closely.
“What is it, Sarah?”
Kindly, but with some impatience. His dad was the yeller, who berated and browbeat until you wished the earth would swallow you whole just to make it stop. Even at closing in on three AM, Rob seldom raised his voice. The was a clunking noise as she put the cup down on the countertop.
“I was listenin’ to the CB while getting ready to crash for the night. And the police scanner, to see if there were reports of attacks or anything. There’s a bunch of weird chatter about hunting parties, only not local. Out of state, in Nevada. Some place called Searchlight got put on the map big time. Sounds like it’s gonna be a real party.”
It was like a punch in the mouth when it sank in. Rob usually had the newbies monitoring communications or doing scouting until he was sure they could survive on their own or at least in pairs. That was currently Sarah’s job and she took it seriously, keeping close to the radios with a notebook ready to write down addresses or neighborhoods. A short, stocky girl who’d proven handy enough with ranged weapons that she’d be in the field soon.
What are you doing, Dad?
Except he knew what Sean was doing, and when he looked towards the kitchen window he could see a thin slice of the gray sky overhead. He’d told his father about the conversation with Rhiannon, the message to stay away. Sean had simply looked at him, the bland stare of a man who was not used to being told what to do. And then he’d smiled before changing the subject. So yes, he knew what Sean was doing. Rhiannon had given what amounted to a challenge, and Sean Corrigan did not like to be challenged.
If Rhiannon didn’t already know what was coming, she would soon.
“Put on some street clothes. Get your coat. It’s freezing outside.”
“What? Why? I thought…”
“Sarah. Just do it, okay? I’ll explain when we’re in the car. Wake Carl up. And Victor. Dump water on him if you have to, I don’t care.”
The clipped tone was Rob slipping into leadership mode. Over the past couple of years, some of the younger hunters had begun to look to him for guidance, just as much if not more so than his father. Most of them were volunteers rather than bloodline, but they paid attention to what he said and - usually - complied without much complaint. Rob stalked out of the room in search of his boots, his heaviest jacket. Of all the stupid, prideful things his father could have done, this was the most stupid and prideful. And now he understood the timing of sending him on some bullshit ‘mission’.
The T shirt he was wearing was switched out for a black sweatshirt, and he caught a look at himself in the mirror after pulling it over his head. He had hit and cleared thirty-two in the time since he’d spoken to Rhiannon, was close enough in resemblance to his father that the relation was obvious. He’d needled her about poverty and she’d told him he’d have to make a choice, between being the good son and making his own decisions.
He was the good son, that was the hell of it.
But people would die if someone with a cooler head didn’t intervene, and that wasn’t Sean. His father’s people were mostly bloodline, born into the hunt and with the skills to go with it. The volunteers, the strays who got in because of losing a friend of a family member, were powered solely on rage and grief. If someone didn’t stop this, people would die.
Rob grabbed his pack of Winstons where it sat on the dresser, lit up as he heard a sleepy protest in the back bedroom. Smiled grimly as he exhaled smoke through his nostrils. If it didn’t snow before they left the city, they could probably make the state line in reasonably good time.
“Grab a towel and dry your head before we leave, Victor,” he called as he started to pull on his boots. “Last thing we want is for you to come down with pneumonia.”
[Written by Stargazer]