A Bitter Pill To Swallow

"Not too long ago." Melissa sits taller in her seat, struck by an idea. "You know ... one night he told me he had found a new recipe for a drink. Some colorful thing with layers of different liqueurs. I don't know anything about drinks but I told him I was game to try. After he added the liqueurs he added a teaspoon of something white. I figured it was sugar but maybe it wasn't. Come to think of it, it was soon after that I told him to take a hike. I saw him with some other woman. They were holding hands. I'm not sure I call that being a really great man."

Wrapping her hands around her warm coffee mug she takes a few sips. "Did he make you any cocktails?"

Her eyes go wide. Her words, timid, disbelieving: "Rainbow Paradise, that's what it was called. He brought the ingredients since I only keep baijiu in my house."

She feels the betrayal, the resulting anger boiling up within her. Her hand closes on her tea mug until it shatters, and she darts from the booth, scrambling over Dave's lap before he has barely sat down, running, nearly crashing through the glass doors of the dinner and out into the heavy pouring rain.

Her scream of rage pulses through the falling rainwater which seems to almost wrap around her like a cloak.

"That's the one! It was really good. But why would ..." Melissa stops talking in mid-sentence. "Augusta?" She watches the angry woman bolt from the diner.

"What just happened?" she asks the others. "Should we go after her? I think I'm a little afraid though. She looked really, really angry and freaked out."

It might not look it, but Eva is listening intently to the two women as she eats. Their discussion is focused on a topic she know so little about, and feels so strangely drawn to -- men. Specifically, romantic... stuff... with men.

The hyper-fit, shapely blonde's eyes follow Augusta's delicate fingers as she steals a French fry, and suddenly her heart's pounding. She has a decision to make. Follow her instincts. Use her training. Rely on her amplified strength and reflexes. Put a boot right in the brunette's pretty face. Or...

Making purposeful eye contact with the Asian-American woman, Eva slowly pushes the plate forward, offering her fries to the table. Her heart continues to pound in her ears.

But before she can be proud of this decision, before she can look to Dave for some reassurance and affirmation, the conversation turns and Ang is fleeing the table like a scalded cat. Eva watches Augusta go, and when Kort wonders aloud if they should go after her, she nods and rises. "I'll see if she's okay," the former special operative says to the table, then she's rising and heading for the front door... only to return, seconds later, to grab three more fries before she goes. Then she runs for the exit, and after Ang.

Outside, in the downpour (does it ever stop raining?), Eva looks for where the other woman went, calling out after her into the rain. "Augusta? Augusta! Are you alright?"

GRAYBRIDGE, 28 OCT 2023[/b]
Outside the Sunny Side Up Diner

Augusta feels the rage swell, and she lets it go. Her skin hardens, her teeth grow pointy, and her claws sharp. Best, her body tightens with growing lean muscle. No, the best is the righteousness, that whatever she does in this state is justified, pure. Her rage turns from anguish to the vengeance.

She's about to go look for trouble, for hoodlums to beat up, when she hears Eva crash into the rain behind her. She turns, and looks, uncaring who sees what she is.

GRAYBRIDGE, 28 October 2023 Outside the diner
Melissa follows Eva outside. She wasn't willing to follow the enraged woman by herself, but once Eva left the diner, she decided to follow too. There were unknowns that she and Augusta had to figure out and maybe she could calm her down too.

Having picked up a pie from the counter case and having barely sat down, Augusta scrambled over him trying to get out of the booth. The other two followed her out into the cascading rain in the dim parking lot. He looked around to see if anything was amiss, inadvertently locking eyes with the two men canoodling in the booth a few spaces down from him. He just smiled unconvincingly, sighed and stood up to go after them. As an afterthought, he dropped his wallet on the table as a signal that they were coming back and grabbed a fistful of pie, cherry, to take with him.
"Did I miss something? he asked, ignoring the torrential rain as he consumed a mouthful of pie. Augusta had decided to wear her goblin on the outside and that usually didn't bode well.

Shit!

Melissa freezes her pursuit in mid-stride. Flinging her arms up in supplication.

"Hey, hey chill! I was concerned for you and came out to ... whoa! Despite the pouring rain, Melissa could see Augusta was something other than human. "What is happening to you? Did Brian do that?"

Appealing to Augusta's better nature doesn't have the desired effect. Melissa's posture changes into one of self defense in the the hope that she can avoid the crazed woman's attack with a quick sidestep while continuing to talk her down.

"Please Augusta! I mean no harm to you or Brian."

Augusta lashes out at Melissa, and feints several times before she picks her up, about to toss her into the mud by the dumpster. The woman's voice breaks through the roar of blood in the woman's ears and she holds her there, have to face for a moment.

Rain pours down around them, as the goblins ears twitch then she lowers her slowly, setting her in her feet. She transformed too, somehow, after meeting Brian. Did she say he dosed her with something? Was Melissa filled with the same fear and confusion? She feels a kinship suddenly to the wet girl.

"I... I'm sorry. Tell me. About what he did."

Just as this brief moment of aggression and tension appears to resolve in the parking lot, a car pulls into a parking space not far from the group. The passenger side door opens and a woman steps out, long coat, hood drawn up over her head to protect against the pounding rain. She closes the car door and the vehicle pulls out again, turning back on the street and returning towards Graybridge from where it had come.
The woman takes a couple of steps towards the entrance door to the diner, but then seems to change her mind, walking instead towards the odd group in the parking lot.

"Is something wrong?" the woman's voice asks, barely audible over the loud rain as she approaches. She comes closer but stops before she quite reaches your group, tilting her head in apparent surprise. "Mr. Draven?" The woman's face is still hidden under her hood, but there is the glint of light reflected on glasses and Dave makes the connection who this new arrival is. "What a coincidence," Tanya Gable says with a chuckle. She almost certainly hasn't spotted the goblin, hidden behind the more human members of this gathering, yet. "Who are your friends? What are you doing out here rather than inside?"

Eva's offering of three more delicious diner fries goes unproffered when Augusta (was that fucking Augusta?!) and Melissa get into it... so the food is cast onto the wet pavement and the blonde's dukes are up as she approaches the goblin-thing from the rear, preparing to unload on the thing, stepping into a punch that can shatter a brick wall.

And that's when the car pulls up and things take a turn...

As Dave responds, Eva tries to put herself between the other two women. Well, the other woman and the monster.

"Family disagreement..." Dave quickly covered the situation. "Stuff you just don't hash out in a diner. No sense in disturbing anyone's dinner." He looked at the woman trying to place her face while using his bulk to shield the Goblin mischief behind him. He flashed a suspicious smile, "What brings you out this way? Not much out here other than the Diner and the TANC. " Dave moves, not inconspicuously, to block Tanya's view should she become more curious about the goings on near the dumpster.

"That was nice of Brock to go out of his way to drive you home. The rain was pretty intense..." as if it wasn't just as bad now. "Just a word to the wise, Brock's got a bit of a wandering eye, not to mention his hands, and a girlfriend you probably don't want to be on the bad side of." Tanya was a big girl and could make her own decisions but needed to be apprised of the consequences. "Say, why don't you join us at our table? he pointed at their booth inside the warm, inviting diner interior somewhat oblivious to the disturbing looking red stain of the pie on his pointing hand. "We'll be in soon and can have a lovely conversation over dinner."

Relieved to see that Augusta had come to her senses literally and figuratively ... what was that? Must be the goblin change Augusta mentioned... Melissa replies to the troubled woman. "Later okay? We can talk it all out later but for now, it looks like we might have company."

"It's okay Eva." Melissa sees Eva's fists up and ready for a fight. "We're good." When the car pulls up, she tries to get a look at the woman who seems to be headed their way but Dave manages to stop her. It looks like they know each other.

Augusta is a thin woman, and with her anger assuaged, or at least replaced with remorse, she smoothly reverts to her slender Asian appearance, hidden behind even Melissa's thin body.

Despite the heavy, cold rain she's really less wet than the others. She says, "Let's go back inside. We need to talk about all of this. I think it affects all of us, even you, Eva." She takes Melissa's arm and leads her inside. A gesture of peace? Or guilt?