After dealing with that midget loligoth, Gothic Rose, Jake and I were inducted into the Summer court. It was a cool little ceremony. Well, it wasn't actually cool, it was rather hot, given it took place in the Georgia heat. But I guess that's appropriate for the Summer court. Speaking of hot, [[nwod:changelings:violet_busby|Violet]] was looking rather hott during the ceremony. She managed to get the right mix of regal and skimpy.

Afterwards, I asked her how I could get my hands on a little hollow for myself since I had that Hedge-wolf coming to me and would need a place to keep it. She pointed me to someone who could give me a line on where I could find a safe part of the hedge to set up shop. So I have a nice little den for myself now. At the appointed time, I met up with Widget in the clearing where we defeated Gothic Rose and he brought me a Hedge Wolf as he was bound to do. It looked mean, with a wicked claw mark across its face, but it could sense my bestial nature. I quickly asserted dominance and it was touch and go there for a second, but I managed to cow it into submission. I took it to my lair and dubbed it "Sir Scratchewan", or "Scratchy" for short after its scratched up face. Since I'm not actually using the hollow for anything, I've been giving it free reign of the place, though Scratchy isn't too keen on being cooped up, so I have to take it for "walkies" every once in a while.

But without those fae-related issues hanging over my head anymore, and things being pretty easy going at work, I decided to ask out that [[nwod:humans:deena bishop|Deena]] chick from Agnes Scott.  So I called her up, and we got to talking and I asked her if she wanted to do something some time. She was receptive, and so we went out a couple of times- some indie movie she'd been wanting to see with a bite to eat afterwords, and a show at Little 5 points. I thought they were dates, but I wonder it she thinks we're just hanging out. Its been all very chaste so far after all (which is somewhat frustrating), but there are times when we're talking that she sounds interested and she gets all touchy flirty.  But when I try to roll with it she pulls away. 

Owel, she claims to be bi, but I think she's leaning more towards girls than boys right now. And I also think I'm making some girl in Deena's hall jealous. When I picked her up for the show, we bumped into this kinda cute strawberry blonde friend of hers, [[nwod:humans:faye sitwell|Faye]], who also lives in the hall. The two of them seemed to have a close rapport, and when we first bumped into her, Faye's face seemed to light up and she got really animated talking to Deena. Faye pretty much ignored me except to shoot me a couple of dirty looks. Ida know, Deena's interesting enough, and we have a pretty fun time, but I don't think its going anywhere right now.

I was contemplating this when Lana called me up saying she was going ahead with her plan to change her old records from UGA. I'd hardly seen her or the others since the Gothic Rose incident- Jake's always in front of his computer, I never know where Holden is, and Lana has been disappearing off to some mysterious place every so often.  I don't live with Holden or Jake, but I do with Lana, so not seeing her for long stretches of time seemed kinda weird. But the times I did see her, she seemed pretty excited about transfering to Georgia Tech to finish her education, but she needed to change her records at UGA so she wouldn't lose all those credits. Heh, I figured she'd need Jake's help with getting that done, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't looking forward to asking him. Prolly because she was worried the two of them would get into their "just frak already" arguments. 

Anyways, so we headed to UGA, but before we did Lana asked for my help in picking out a slutty outfit she could use to distract folks while the rest of us snuck around. "Don't mind if I do," I said! Definitely that white miniskirt I'd seen her wear once a couple weeks before but was disappointed she hadn't been prancing around in more ever since. I also found a nice and skimpy green halter top in her closet that would go perfect with it. 

So we got to UGA, and she did a good job of distracting some library desk jockey so Jake could sneak in to use their computers. The rest of us snuck into the records office, but frickin'-frick, all that was in her file was a note saying the file was somewhere else. So we decided to head to that place, which was in a shady part of town by the train tracks. As Holden and I tried to break in, some hobos took notice and were about to head over to us when Lana picked a fight with them. Now, a girl dressed like she was in this part of town, I worried for her safety, so I confronted the hobos before they decided to try something. I managed to freak them out at first. I think they could sense the predator I try my best to keep locked within.

But then Lana had to push them again. Now, I was pretty sure I could take these guys. I could feel the Hunter, that remnant of who I was when I was imprisoned in Faerie, chomping at the bit, wanting me to tear their throats out. It would've been easy enough. But that's not who I am anymore. So I gave them a twenty to get some food over at the Junior Varsity. They had the gall to ask for more, but I harnessed some of the animal within and finally got them to back down.

Other than that incident, the rest of the night went off without a hitch, so we headed back to Atlanta. A few days later, that [[nwod:changelings:massimo_sombra|Massimo guy]] from the Autumn court wanted to meet with us. We seemed to have gained a bit of notoriety for getting rid of the Gothic Rose problem, and he brought our attention to another incident he hoped we could look into. He basically showed us a snuff tape, some footage taken from a Bank of America atm camera. In it, some thorny hedge vine attacks this Asian girl and ends up decapitating her before ripping her face off. Gross. He told us he tried going to Violet with this, but she didn't feel it was a concern of the courts.  We agreed to look into the incident, then Jake approached Violet and asked her why she didn't feel this was a threat. She made vague mentions of other "things" out there, and thought it might be involve one of "them", and if it did, it was no concern of ours. Best to not draw the attention or ire of those other things. Knowing that was just giving us more questions than answers, she gave us a card to take to [[nwod:changelings:jae_kwon|Jae]] and that he could elaborate on matters.

And so he did. Apparently, werewolves, vampires, and mages do exist. Only a select few of them know about our kind, and vice versa, and its best that it was kept that way. Its possible what we saw was their doing. But we wouldn't know for sure unless we checked, so we did. Jake hacked into the police and found that the previous incident on the tape had been flagged along with six other cases. Seeing what the connection is between those cases is as good a start as any.