The riverside park is cut into squares of gaslight and shadow, hedgerow and topiary borders of grass and weeds and causeway stone. Veser grips his flashlight tighter, shaking it to reaffirm the durability of its flickering battery charge. "So, eh... are they bunnies? Australian bunnies the size of cars?"

Worth lets out a gruff laugh, voice wet with smoke, "Actually they look more like capybara. Prehistoric capybara the size an' temper of a hippo, mixed with a gator, mixed with a dog. An' maybe 's got tentacles an' a platypus snout." He dangles two fingers in front of his mouth to illustrate, "fangs. Evil an' huge."

"Remind me never to visit the land down-under."

Weeds and bracken are overcome by Worth's long stride as he advances through their route, fumbling his smoke and cursing at its loss. He straightens with another cigarette in bony hand. "Awr kid, what doesn't kill ya only makes ya stranger."

Veser sniffs, unimpressed. "Thanks a lot, Heath." His large green eyes scowl out along with his flashlight beam, clearly more alert and invested in Hanna's outing than Doc Worth (who was more concerned about the frequency with which he was dropping shit in the mud).

Worth then loses a fold of matches in the attempt to tear one free, and he stands at the side of the path to glare imperiously down at the soaked ignitions before thrusting his arm back into his coat for a butane lighter.

An insect whines in Veser's ear and he slaps at it, panicking. "You know all that smoke might like, scare away our quarry and shit, right?"

" 'Xactly." Worth levels his haggard attention back to the teenager with whom he had been paired. It hadn't taken lots to divvy the group up, since Hanna and he were the only two with any real supernatural experience, and Count Snaggletooth had protested wildly at the suggestion he be left alone in a swamp with 'that junkie psychopath'. "Yeh don't want t'meet a Bunyip, Sharky."

"Okay, Steve Irwin? Cool it on the nickname; I'm part Selkie, 'n shit's insensitive."

"So what's it matter t'me, Sharptooth?"

"Nng, fuck okay whatever be that way." The two descend into a moody silence, punctuated only by the rustle of cattail reed and the squelch of riverbank under their boots. Worth would pause once or twice, edging toward the lap of the water to listen for any telltale song - Bunyip sang like whales - flashing his torchlight methodically along the murky sweep. Fidgeting with the crowbar he'd found under an old tire in the muck, Veser breaks the verbal stagnancy. "Think Cross 'n Orlock are doing any better?"

"We're about to th' bridge, so's you can ask yer own damn self."

"You always this much of a crank, or is it just my natural charm bringing out the best of people again?"

That draws Worth up short. Sure, he'd noticed the kid's black eye, and overheard the conversational detritus that Conrad Achenleck's couch had played host to this mouthy halfbreed for unspoken stretches. Something tickles at the back of Lucian Worth's sharp mind, and he grumbles around his cigarette, "That a usual prollem, eh?"

"Tsch." Veser shoves through a patch of cattails, "It's my special talent." His flashlight beam dodges wildly around the choppy water of the river.

Worth is on the verge of offering some sage advice on the merits of harnessing one's inner ass-hat to one's benefit, but a much expected blood-curdling scream interrupts him. He sighs, hitching up his coat collar and canting a light jog to match Veser's cautious hustle toward the bridge. "Princess musta seen a frog," Worth grumbles as they slow on the paved path.

"Who?" Veser turns in the middle of the bridge, casting around for the source of the scream.

"Count Fagula."

"Heh," it comes out of Veser's chest like a gasp of pain, does that laugh, and his shoulders fold in a slump. Shivering as he peers down the opposite side of the bridge, "That kinda sounded like a girl, though."

"'S my fukken point exactly, sharpness."

"Yeah," Veser edges back the way they had come, attention glued to the bridge where Hanna and Conrad were supposed to show. "Yeah, I know. I get it. 'S funny." The tickle at the back of Worth's mind grows into an itch. Veser readjusts his grip on the rusty crowbar. "Listen, hey, Doc... Hey, so uh. Is it true?"

Worth exhales a cloud of fragrant smoke (the reason, he surmised, why Veser was so keen on sticking close). "'S wot 'true'? Gonna need specifics."

"Is that true, I mean, about Orl – Conrad?"

"That he's scared 'a frogs?" Worth hides his grin behind a hand poised at his cigarette. "Fuck if I know. Better to ask 'im yerself... yanno, unless it's one 'a them things that's none of yer goddamn business." Worth ashes his cigarette, inhaling sharply through his nose. "Real embarassin', somethin' like that. To some people, byrate."

"But not to you, huh."

"Well I never been afraid of much of anythin', truth be told. Wouldn't really know nothin' about all that, frogs er otherwise." A cough, a clearing throat and phlegmy contribution to the cobblestones.

Veser pulls his mouth back in an unsatisfied grimace and returns his attention to their rendezvous point. "Think we should maybe go and see what – "

Across the bridge, between two decorative topiaries, Hanna skids in and then promptly out of view - a flash of red and white rugby shirt. Worth throws his cigarette down with a curse. Hanna reverses course, limbs flailing. His words come between the labored breaths of extended cardio, and Worth and Veser turn to match haphazard directions on which way to run. "THANK GREEN FUCKING," Hanna shouts as a blur behind him proves at last that Conrad had not been too far behind, "APPLES YOU STAYED HERE GO GO GO -"

They run, flashlights swaying and sweeping, the riverside park now a disco of draping willow branches and pulsing fog banks. The scream heard moments ago caterwauls after the retreating group, and sounds nothing like a whale at all. A tree interrupts the path, forking it to either the picnic tables or back around to the river, and instead of going either way Conrad (who was the fastest runner, for obvious reasons) slows enough to take Hanna by the elbow and more or less drag him up the gnarled oak. Conrad returns groundside promptly, assisting Veser by nearly throwing him into the branches, and even holds still long enough for Worth to step up his shoulders like a particularly fragrant spider, losing patience last-minute to shove upwards.

"Oi! Not on a firs' date," Worth grunts, lifting himself into the branches as Hanna and Veser scrabble higher in a scattering of bark and old leaves. Conrad scrambles to find a branch that isn't already supporting a fully grown body, and there he sits to fix his glasses to better scrutinize the thing now prowling the trunk of the tree. Worth wasn't so interested in the monster below as he is in the state of his companions, glancing Hanna over before nodding above him at a rambling-breathy-whisper-cursing Veser, and then focusing that clinical gaze of his back on Conrad.

"That," Hanna pants, "is not a Bunyip."

"HOly fucking fuck," Veser gains some coherency to add. "It's a fucking werewolf."

"Seriously," Hanna pants, still in the process of catching his breath. "You guys. Thanks. I told you to stay at the bridge if anything went wrong or sounded suspicious and you did exactly that. Go team." He laughs down at the monster, "Scooby Doo got nothing on us. When we split up we split up smart. Hell. Fucking. Yes."

"Oh, sure. Nobody eviscerated? Let's break out the champagne," Conrad drawls, clearly angry now in the wake of his panic. "Please tell me that isn't who I think it is down there."

"Er." Hanna is already scribbling furiously along his carpentry hammer with a marker. "Toni? No way, man. Just 'cos she's the only werewolf we know. Yikes dude. I mean. That's racist." Conrad bristles. Hanna amends, "But it might be part of why her friends can't find her. All sorts of weird gang issues with werewolves. Territories and things like that. Maybe growly McRabies-face down there scared Miss Ipres into hiding?"

"Growly McRabies-face is making an unholy racket while she's at it, whoever she is." As if to illustrate Conrad's point, the creature cringes in on itself to let out another tortured scream.

Veser leans forward to get a better look, wincing away from the sound. "She's got Toni's necklace."

Hanna stops mid-rune. "What. The one I fixed for her?"

Three people in that tree stiffen, reaching a single conclusion. It is Conrad who breaks the stupefied silence. "Fixed. Fixed? Fixed. You."

"Yeah," Hanna is less sure now, finding no confidence in Worth's slump against the trunk or Veser's death grip on the branch above. "It was cracked down the middle, so I took the enchantment off to mend the stone with some glue and sand and then put it back on. Easy fix, coulda given her a new stone too, like one that maybe matched her eyes or at least didn't look so obviously like a magical-weak-point. Hehe."

"So you broke that totally rad musician babe, and now she's after your ass!" Veser moans, hugging crowbar and flashlight to his chest so he can scrub his face in exasperation.

"What! No, I didn't break –"

"Ain't a full moon," Worth muses quietly. "Awfully weird, there bein' a werewolf when it ain't a full moon." He peers up through the dry branches at the quarter-moon hung distant and cold in the night sky.

"Well. Yeah." Hanna sits back on his branch, defeated. "I guess that makes sense. Toni's necklace allowed her to force shifts out of phase, even to control the shape and intensity of the change. But she wouldn't even be a werewolf if that magic stopped, she'd just be a normal half-blood."

"There's no such thing as a 'normal' half anything," Veser grouses. "Man, you fucked up big this time."

"Hey– " Conrad bites his protest in half, swallowing down the instinct to defend Hanna's capabilities. The tree waits for Conrad to make his point, but Worth loses patience and snatches at Veser's crowbar, the beginning stages of a tug-of-war killed by a sharp glare. Veser relents his weapon, Hanna mumbling down at his runes while Conrad crosses his arms in front of his chest and pretends to be keenly interested in whatever was happening on the riverside.

With his knees hooked over the branch and his torso dangling upside-down over the prowling werewolf, Worth throws his flashlight to the distant underbrush and, using the crook of the crowbar, snags the necklace while the werewolf's head is turned. The change is immediate, and Worth shrugs out of his furred long-coat to drop it cautiously over the naked body trembling a good eight feet below. Worth curls up to shove crowbar and necklace at Hanna before scaling awkwardly back down the tree with a grumble. Brushing at the scrapes the bark left on his exposed, scarred arms, Worth steps gingerly over Toni and kneels to take her pulse. "Out cold."

Hanna falls from the branches with considerably less grace (despite Conrad's helping hand) and curses quietly under his breath. The totem is pocketed with the marker, the crowbar reclaimed by a wide-eyed Veser with leaf-litter in his hair. "H-hey, dude," Hanna turns to Conrad, who doesn't shrug away from the hand imploring on his arm. "Think you could go bat-wise and lend Miss Ipres your clothes? Just for the bus home?"

"Nnf..." Conrad grouses, exhaling dramatically before turning his back to unbutton his shirt (lest he get lost or otherwise tangled in it going 'bat-wise'). There is something in the detached way Hanna had referred to Toni that doesn't settle well in the air, and the light in Hanna's eyes has dimmed under the tension in his forehead.

As Conbat flaps unevenly to a nearby park bench, Hanna gathers the clothes carefully and shuffles to Worth without looking directly at the lump under the ruffed coat. "Okay guys, let's give 'em some privacy."

"Hold the fuck up," Veser snipes. His voice lowers, strengthened with an emotion that makes all present a little embarrassed on his behalf. "You're going to dress her?"

Worth sniffs, carefully placing a cigarette behind his ear for later. "I'm a doctor, en't I?"

Conrad mutters, "And gayer than Sunday Christmas." Every eye that turns to the squeak from the bench holds a spark of complete disbelief (which is to say, Worth pays no such attention). "What," Conrad pipes. "I'm sure Miss Toni would be relieved to know that the back-alley skeeze who gets to see her naked isn't going to take any sort of delight from it."

"Dude," Hanna already has Veser's elbow and is leading him toward the parking lot. "Bad taste."

But Worth, as he turned to the task at hand, was smirking.