(Untitled)
By 4:45, the protesters who started at Grant Park have marched past the ruins of old City Hall, stopped for a speech, and then forged on to mass across from the building which houses the legislature at the moment - across because there's a handful of police just to make sure that everything goes smoothly
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Of course, the instant she hears someone yelling about wild animals, and hears the rottweiler's growling, she whirls around, yanking on Jon's arm, because hell no these guys aren't going to attack a dog. Even though they totally are.
"Hey!" she screams over the roar of the crowd, shoving her way over to the dog and the guy. Yeah, so maybe the dog's handling it. Whatever, there's like, eight billion other fucktards here that will take the dog out if it does manage to sink its teeth into the guy. "The fuck?" she yells at the guy with the pepper spray, shoving at his shoulder. Or, really, more like ramming into him with momentum brought on by suddenly fighting past some clump of protesters trying to go in a direction perpendicular to hers, but...she totally meant to shove the guy.
Said guy stumbles a bit, swinging the pepper spray around in surprise; it doesn't hit its original target, sure, but it sure gets Huck pretty good in the face.
Fuck. Bad plan. Bad fucking plan. Not much of a plan in the first place.
Huck starts to scream, then cough, and then the something in her head that's been bristling for a fight, for a change, since they got there kicks in, and her coughs turn into the desperate, angry growls of an almost-full-grown Timber wolf. A blind, angry, almost-full-grown Timber wolf. With a lot of teeth. That is currently flailing around in a scared, angry manner, and sinking its teeth into the nearest protester on instinct.
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Of course, he's got a lot of it himself, so while he might fault her for it, when she snaps at him he (usually) shuts up. And when she gets a faceful of pepper spray, no matter how stupid he thinks she was being, he snaps to. Literally. The original plan of running the fuck away is shot now, so he might as well fight.
Jon is not an almost-full-grown wolf. No. He's 17 and that's damn well close enough to full-grown for him, thanks. So now there's a slightly larger, completely black wolf joining into the fray.
Bridget, on the other hand, grabs the nearest heavy object she can, which happens to be someone else's water bottle (she makes a mental note to find some better weaponry, but it was the first thing she saw), and just starts bashing the fuck out of everyone around her. Her large form is a wolverine; it might have lots of claws and teeth, but it's not exactly something that can keep up with wolves and a dog when they haul out of here, which she's fully expecting to happen as soon as they're done mauling people. Human legs can't always either, but she's used to the indignity of having to ride on Jon's back. And it's better than being dragged by the scruff of the neck.
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All notion of being helpful aside, Jason is well aware that if the guy coming in with the pistol drops the wolf shifters, the next target is going to fall pretty fast on the unaccounted-for rottweiler. Looks like they're playing on the same team, at least so far as getting away from this mob goes.
He fixes on the nearest armed person approaching and shoots through the crowd, low to the ground, dodging legs and feet and launching himself at the CLF-goon's chest. One bite and this guy's dominant gun hand isn't going to be much of a problem any more, and Jason is looping back around to see if anyone else decided small arms were appropriate accessories for a protest march...
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She downs some guy just in time to see Jason take down the one gunner, but there's another woman a bit away from the rottweiler's range, closer to Bridget, reaching into her purse and pulling out -- well, that's the smallest gun Bridget's ever seen, not that she has time to judge. "They have guns!" she yells at the wolves. Then she lunges for the woman, throwing both of them off-balance.
However, stunguns make all of one's muscles seize up. And when one has a hand on the trigger of a gun, that kind of makes one automatically fire the gun. Bridget may have just been aiming to hit the woman rather than stun her, but either way, there's a bullet in Jon's shoulder.
He yelps, snarls, ears flat on his head, skittering away and snapping at the people in his way. Bridget's busy trying to extract herself from the crowd forming around her and the stunned woman, flailing around with the gun. But there's only one of her, and a lot of everyone else.
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She leaps over Jon as he skitters away, tearing into the crowd descending on Bridget -- not that the girl's not holding her own or anything, but that's quite a crowd. She takes out a few people, and then closes her teeth around the hood of Bridget's sweatshirt and drags her backwards, kicking and flailing, out of the small knot. Then she lets go, jerking her head in the direction of the rottweiler (because hey, they were helping him to begin with), and starts running.
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He hesitates, just a moment, when he reaches Bridget - of them all she seems to be the smallest and most likely to get hurt (even if only trampled by accident), but the signals he's reading say she's on their side. This is old training - you secure the team first, because all arguments of fealty or affection aside, the more of you there are, the better a chance you have.
Of course, what exactly he thinks he'll be able to do right next to her is debatable, but getting through the crowd is hard enough when you can bull your way through.
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And sudden appearance of rottweiler throws her a little off-balance, and she manages to stumble a bit away from him, into another man a bit bigger than her. Who grabs her. She kicks out, her snarl almost matching the wolves' (don't shift, don't shift, can't run as fast, don't shift), and squirms away. And when she turns to figure out where the various animals she's supposed to be leaving with are, gets someone's elbow in the face.
Ow.
It's all over rather quickly, really; one moment there's a shortish teenage girl falling backwards, the next it's pretty much only her clothing falling to a heap on the ground. Except the clothing is emitting a sort of high-pitched chittering, like a tiny, scared animal.
Of all the things that could happen in the middle of a crowd, shifting into her small form, a freakin' mouse lemur, was not one of the best ones.
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Jason catches the foot of the woman who's about to stumble and step on the clothespile, then turns around and takes out some guy's ankle as he shouts something unoriginal about freaks or Wanderers or whatever the epithet of the moment is. Jason moves to stand over the chittering, brain working furiously.
Okay. Shifter. Small form. Not good in areas with a lot of excitable people and stomping feet, unless it's a small form with wings, and even under the overwhelming scent of human girl that clings to the clothing, she doesn't smell birdish.
Only one thing for it, then.
He leans down, mouthing up as much of the clothes around her as he can, so that when he pulls back up she's mostly-secured in the bundle of cloth dangling from his jaws. That takes out his first-strike capability, sure, but he's not here for a brawl anyway.
He catches the wolves' position by scent and sound, and charges after them. I think you guys dropped someone...
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It doesn't help that soon she's being picked up and squished in the clothes by something that smells distinctly like 'predator'. So for awhile, Jason's going to have a mouthful of struggling, squeaking mouse lemur. Not that he knows it's a mouse lemur, but it's certainly freaking out.
And then, after a good minute or so of that, since it's apparent that said predator isn't eating her or anything, she just curls up into a frightened little ball and holds as still as possible. She supposes that if predator does try to eat her, she can always try to shift back suddenly. Then she'll be too big to eat.
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Of course, once they get further from the middle of the crowd, Huck realizes that Bridget isn't following them anymore. And they've lost track of the mysterious rottweiler as well. She whirls around, sniffing the air to try to get a bead on their scent; okay, still in the crowd, at least. Not completely gone.
She runs back and forth a bit near the edge of the crowd, aware of the fact that Jon is getting farther and farther away while she does. She knows she should be running as well, but that's her friend in there, her packmate. She doesn't really want to charge back in, though she will if they don't show up in a moment. Or if someone doesn't try to pick a fight with her first.
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He bursts onto a momentarily open patch of sidewalk and flicks his ears, scanning for the wolves. Wolves are better sprinters than rottweilers are and he's almost convinced that he's lost them, in which case he's not sure what to do about the shifter girl he's accidentally abducted, but-
There. A whiff of scent, a flash of grey fur. He pushes himself into a lope, had still low but trying not to convey any threat at the other shifter. Instincts are running high, here, and he's only getting over his because the Agency taught him how to use those - he's not giving the wolf any reason to want to tear him apart.
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And then she takes off running. Dog better follow her, especially seeing as he has her friend in his mouth.
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Where exactly they're going is up for debate, but at the moment "away from the mob" is all he really cares about.
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