Spirit Rep

Zoe was having a hard time dealing with the Prodigals new negative reputation among the spirits. She had always prided herself on keeping good relations with spirits and always being able to find a spirit or two willing to help in any endeavor. However, the recent actions of her pack mates - the full guttural consumption of Akna - was sure to cause great disdain for the Prodigals in the spirit realm, making it difficult if not impossible at times to find help among the umbral dwellers. She hoped they still had at least one ally among the ethereal realm.

"Stranger, if you're around, I could really stand to benefit from talking with you. I really hope that you have not chosen to abandon us based on our recent decisions concerning the disposal of Akna. They, well we, only did what we thought possible considering the presence of the Storm Eater and the difficulty of finding Akna were she to regenerate again. We really need you to be on our side in this. I hope that you are."

"I'm always around." The Laughing Stranger stepped out from behind Zoe's blind spot. "I ain't going to abandon anybody, but you always got a choice... always. Walks-with-Spiders was ready to trap the Phoenix, but as a pack, y'all made the decision to unmake Akna."

"Whether that was the right or wrong choice, well, I ain't so sure that matters. There is gonna be consequences no matter what you or anyone did." The spirit's voice had dropped to almost a mutter as he hunched over his coffin nail and attempted to light it, his lucifer spitting and sparking temperamentally.

After a minute of grunted curses and the insistent scritch, scritch, scritch noise of the sparkwheel, the Stranger finally managed to coax a flame out of the recalcitrant device. He gave his coffin nail a content drag and looked at Zoe as he exhaled, watching the Iron Rider through the pale blue smoke. "Way I see it, sooner or later, some Garou is going to have to bite the bullet and put her down... might as well have been us."

"The fact that you are willing to off spirits who get too uppity might be seen as a problem by some, sure, and there is that irritating curse to contend with. But ask yourself this- if you had trapped Akna, and she got loose, say, a year, or ten years, or a century from now- then what? I could be wrong, but I think making a sacrifice now isn't so bad, when the alternative is having blood on your hands down the road."

The Stranger looked at Zoe with a grin that did not quite reach his golden eyes.

Zoe laughed mockingly and shook her head as she turned to face the spirit.

" Always have a choice? The Storm Eater was bearing down on us; Walks-with-Spiders' trap wasn't a sure thing; our only real 'choice' was to let her get away or to devour her whole. Or I suppose we could have stood there and let the Storm Eater destroy us while Walks-with-Spiders hoped and prayed her device worked. And like you said, even if Akna was captured, she'd be released again one day. It would only be a matter of time. Okay, fine, perhaps there is always a choice, but there is not always a reasonable choice. We took the only reasonable choice we had, and now we have to live with it."

Zoe snarled in disgust. "These damned curses are a nuisance at best, but our jeopardized relationship with the spirits is what really frustrates me. I think what bothers me the most is that Akna was capturing spirits and feeding them to her Skin Rippers, destroying the Gauntlet, and burning the Nation with her balefire flames. We should be the heroes of this story for destroying her once and for all, but instead of thanking us, now the spirits despise us and want nothing to do with us. Would it help them to know that Rends, Zas, and Eaton did not enjoy it? Are there spiritual authorities to whom we should have brought her to receive justice?"

Zoe sighed and shook her head. "Either way, what's done is done. Do you have any advice for rebuilding a positive rapport with the spirits? Or will it simply be on a case-by-case basis?"

She met his golden eyes and found a comfort in them. He said he would always be with them. She believed him. And though he was as crazy as any of coyotes minions, for some reason that brought her peace.

The Stranger removed his coffin nail and stabbed it towards Zoe. "Half the pack went through that gateway with the intention of destroying Akna permanently. The other half, well, they didn't have a plan at all. By the time you got down there and the biggest bane this side of the Mississippi was rampaging around, yeah, I reckon it was a tad late to change your mind or come up with alternatives better than Walks-with-Spider's magic box."

The coyote spirit let out a sardonic chuckle. "For the record, I think you made the right choice...but don't tell me you never have a choice at all."

"As for the damage to our collective reputations..." The Stranger trailed off and jerked his head west, toward the trackless plains. "You and the rest of the Prodigals are not respected arbiters of... well, anything, as far as I know. Lots of other spirits are going to see this killing as a reckless move, whether you figure it was justified or not. Often it is harder to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. If I had to guess, the Garou won't punish you, but they are not going to outwardly approve either, most of them. Hell, some of the other Garou might be breathing secret sighs of relief, knowing that you lot took one for the team. I figure, sooner or later, someone had to man up and put down that Phoenix for good."

Zoe nodded, reassured that at least their pack totem thought they made the right choice. Zoe smiled to herself and shook her head.

"Perhaps Gaia ordained us to be in that position because she knew we were just crazy enough to do what needed to be done despite the way others might view our actions."

Zoe paused as she turned her eyes to the clear starlit sky.

"It makes me wonder...how much control does Gaia hold over us. How much does she interfere with our actions and how much does she just hope we do right by her? Was it her who assembled this pack? Or Coyote? Or you? And why? Why choose five Garou from completely different backgrounds and territories and pull them into Texas at such a time as this?"