Bob spends a fair bit of his time at the Sept over this year. He gets to know Joker pretty well, and takes a hand in his education - fairly unsurprising given they are both lupus bonegnawers in a sept of mostly homids.
Kirsty Surfs-the-Train is also interested in Joker, so Bob gets to spend time with her too. She seems interested in getting Joker's help in actually accomplishing things - and she doesn't seem as nuts as Abby or Corey made out. Kirsty basically thinks that the rest of the Sept ignore the mess the humans are making, because they are all too homid, and sympathise with the humans. A lot of her arguments make a fair bit of sense to both Joker and Bob - maybe her remedies are a bit extreme (tear his arms off!) and she's a really intense about things, but functionally she's right. Joker doesn't really hate the humans, but he really hates cages, and thinks that the humans would be a little less gungho if they had to live their lives in one.
Kirsty offers to take Joker out to see the damage that humans are doing to the world, and suggests that Bob should come too (and not just because he knows Spirit Awakening). Kirsty generally goes with "friends" who might, just possibly, be easily labelled ecoteurs. Kirsty takes them on a number of trips out into the wild, to the Otways, to the high country and once or twice out of the state. They meet a number of the other garou, including Melissa Freedom, Howls-Across-the-River and Straightens-the-Spiral from Reconciliation. They are all intensely against human encroachment on the remaining wilderness. Joker doesn't take on Kirsty's intensity of focus but he is definately in agreement with her about needing to actually take steps against the humans.
Bob gets an insight into Kirsty's mental state during one of her extended rants - basically she is very lonely. She feels a bit isolated from the rest of her pack, and from the Sept, in part because she is a metis, and feels a bit disconnected from the normal lives of the homids. Bob can sort of identify with that, being the only lupus in a pack of mostly homids (even Krieg is a very homid metis).
Bob also visits Patrick at his farm at Whittlesea.
During the Moot on Monday, Kirsty approaches Bob and asks if he'd like to go out with her and Joker tomorrow. They're going to go out and fix some problems. Bob says that he sort of has to hang around, but Kirsty says that Bob is always around - let one of the other members of his pack handle caern duty for a couple of days. And with regards to Melissa - does he really want to spend a week babysitting an annoying human brat? Bob laughs and asks when they are going - after dark on Tuesday - and says that he'll let her know before then.
Given that his pack will be stalking Melissa for the rest of the week, Bob decides they can do without him and tells them so before heading off with Kirsty. Joker comes too, as does Melissa Freedom, a Garou from Reconciliation, who is driving. The drive heads out towards Gippsland and then turns north into the Great Dividing Range.
After a couple of hours, Melissa Freedom slows down and turns down a fire access track. You're in the midst of old growth forest, somewhere in the middle of the mountains. The garou cut through the forested area for a while, and Bob begins to smell oil and sawdust. Not too far away, they start to encounter a wide belt of devastation. Trees that were obviously unsuitable for whatever purpose the loggers wanted them for have been left where they were felled or knocked down. Kirsty looks really pissed off, Melissa just looks sad.
"This whole area is supposed to be protected, but there is logging just over this hill. Someone is going to make an official complaint tomorrow, but the usual thing will be said - we misread the map by 20 metres or so, sorry. But I think tonight we might just push the forest back 20 meters or so the other way."
Kirsty changes to crinos and begins to gleefully shove bulldozers over and then drag them up to the edge of the ridge. "Grab something and break it. Having weakened trees apparently fall on them is good too, so they can't move the dozers before the press get here - if you move one of them near a fallen tree, then pick the tree up and drop it on it, it works quite well." Melissa Freedom drags a bulldozer over to a patch of blackberries and starts a rite around them.
[Assuming that you join in, the night goes fairly well. Much damage is done to the offending company's equipment. At some point, Joker and Melissa head off north east while you head northwest with Kirsty. Kirsty is all but skipping around, laughing at what she thought their expressions would be like....] Kirsty stops suddenly in front of you, with an odd look on her face. She suddenly lunges forward and kisses you rather passionately, half knocking you off your feet....
Bob is a bit surprised and jerks backwards a lot. He and Kirsty have a long discussion about what she wants and about the Litany - Kirsty feels that the Litany doesn't apply here because she is sterile in the first place, and she's not stopping Bob from going out and mating with others if he wants. Its not that she is disregarding it because its inconvenient, it just doesn't apply. Bob says that the sept won't feel that way, and Kirsty says that they ignore the wyrm part of it easily enough, and surely that's more important. Bob says that its not that he doesn't like her, he just hadn't thought about it. They walk and talk for a while, and Kirsty is obviously very nervous about this - she mentions that its not something she's done before - she's not entirely comfortable with the wolf kinfolk, and humans ... well, when she reverts to crinos form in her sleep, that kind of nixes that.
After much talking and walking, Bob decides that Kirsty is right and that its not wrong, and he likes her and wants to. Dissolve to moonlight....
They meet back with Melissa Freedom and Joker a bit later, and neither of them seem to say anything, so its not written on Bob's head in big letters. The rest of the trip goes to plan, and they come back on Thursday night.
Bob goes back to his bin and sniffs around to make sure its all ok. Kirsty has been here, it looks like she has been moving her cannisters of wyrm goo. All of his stuff is still here apart from that though. Now that he has a pig tail, clown nose, drug dealer ear and a spiritual representation of the guard in the deadlands, he only needs one more token to get Rat's favour.
Bob decides to go and find Kirsty - she's down at the Elizabeth St maccas. When Bob shows up a couple of the street kids that think she's cool decide they have urgent appointments somewhere else. They go for a walk down the Yarra. Kirsty says that she went off out near Croajingalong with some people and the goo she collected and it went off. She spiked a couple of bulldozers with the goo, and made sure that there was other suspicious activity, and she heard that the Silver Fangs found it a couple of days later, and went apeshit, figuring that the loggers were all tainted. Bob agrees this is cool, finally getting the stinky humans to do something. Just talking about it is putting Kirsty into her normal outing good mood, and the two of them end up finding somewhere quiet...
Bob feels the shotgun pellets tear through his chest like trails of fire. His lungs fill with blood and then he feels something punch into him in two or three places. The burning sensation turns to excruitating pain and something surges within him.
Its dark, and Bob is within the earth. He is struggling through a tunnel, pushing through the earth. Above, he knows things are looking for him, and they are important, but he's safe in the ground. Some places he can move on while standing, but too often he has to wiggle forward through the cold ground. It is getting colder, and the ground is harder.
He struggles out of a tunnel and shakes dirt off. In front of him is a rat. A Rat. A RAT. Although Bob is bigger than the rat, he feels a thousand times smaller. Fire burns with the rat's eyes, flickering and leaping as if destruction was joy.
Something says "Not Yet" and the fire leaps from the rat's eyes to Bob's, cascading through his eyes, head and body.
Kirsty comes and finds Bob early in the morning, before dawn. She says that she wants to slip away for a bit and use the black goo she has stored up - she figures that if the Silver Fangs see it being used now, they'll go apeshit, given the attack on Sleeping Lore. She's cleared it with Chris, telling him she's going to deal with "spirit stuff".
Kristy has a motorcycle (stolen) and a load of silver shotgun shells as well as her thermos of black goo. She drives Bob up into the hills and down backroads. They find a couple of spots where hunters come regularly, and scatter some of the black goo and leave fallen shells as if people had been practicing shooting. This is repeated at a couple of locations before they return to Melbourne.
Bob asks Emma if she's help him learn the Exorcism gift. Emma agrees, but suggests that Bob do the appropriate summoning. They have a chat about what spirit to ask, and Emma says that would be something something go to Pangaea, something. Hooray
Bob takes off west, planning to mostly stick to the Realm, in case the Umbra eats him. He is cut off from the pack almost straight away, leaving him in blessed silence to just be a wolf.
Night comes and goes, changing the smells and sounds of the world. Bob rests when tired, eats when hungry and generally doesn't have to worry about anything homid for a day or two.
At night, he dreams, in a very visceral style. A pack of wolves runs through forest. Snow lies fresh on the ground, the path is barely visible and winds past copses, over waterways and fallen logs. One, smaller than the others, starts to fall behind. The pack run on as the lesser one slowly lags. The pack veers at a split in the path, heading left into darker, more foreboding woods. Bob's dream follows the younger wolf as they are left further and further behind, and the darkness closes in. The wolf slows to a walk and finally stops, head hanging. The darkness grows thicker and more substantial before finally closing around the lone wolf.
Bob is pissing about in a fountain when he sees Kirsty come along. He heads over and says hi. She seems a bit twitchy - not quite nervous, but definately agitated. Kirsty wants to talk about going out for one more shot of black goo into the Silver Fang territory, but she wants to have some more silver shotgun shells too. Bob doesn't quite grok why, but she says that it will make it more urgent for them. Unfortunately, she's out of the empties she got at New Years, and Graeme won't give her any more. She wants Bob to get some for her - either from Graeme or wherever. He thinks he can get some from Abby, and makes a mental note not to forget.
Kirsty is still all over the place, and he remembers that she gets a bit weird on some waning Philodox moons. Bob suggests going somewhere, and Kirsty says she has a car - some arsehole was trying to scare bikeriders off their bikes by nearly hitting them in Collingwood, so she threw him in the river. They go there and Bob sees the big claw marks in the drivers seat, and the fact the seatbelt is broken, but wisely says nothing. They head out southwest until there's water, and hang out in lupus for a while. Bob feels the others searching for him, but ignores them. The two of them head back after dark.