Snow Fall 11.1

 "As you four open up the doors to the Duck and Rabbit Inn, you are met by a sparse yet comfortable dining area. The log walls look and smell as if they had been varnished by years of spilt whisky. By the scattered plates and glasses of half-full ale, it looks as if the few tables surrounded by their individual assemblies of chairs had been recently at capacity with locals."

Evan glanced up from behind his fold-out privacy screen covered in depictions of blue stone dragons. "However, now all you see is a man sitting in a far corner with a crooked straw hat covering his face. A long green nose covered in boils pokes out from beneath the shadow of the brim. You can hear deap throated snoring from all the way across the drinking hall.

"Behind a bar along the wall to your right is an orc. Wide as he is tall, he looks as if he is hard at work cleaning up the place after another busy night."

Kurt pushes the tricorn hat back on his head after it had been steadily creeping toward his face. "I walk up to the barman, lean on the bar with an elbow, and subtly pass him a gold piece."

"Alright. He picks up the piece and looks at it." Evan clears his throat and goes into a weird blustery Cockney, Scottish, hybrid voice. "A lot of money without asking for nothin.'"

"What I want, my good man, is information."

"What sort of trouble is a little teifling boy like you looking to get into?"

"You heard of The Diablo?"

"Course I have, and like everyone else I know well enough to stay away from such things. If I had a good mind, I'd kick you and your lot out for asking after such things."

"But you wouldn't do that." Kurt's character scoots another gold piece across the table.

The orc picks up the piece and bites it. "What's your name, pup?"

"Zerzer the bloodless. Perhaps you've heard of me?"

"Well, Zerzer, you keep going after Diablo, someone will make your lifeless corpse into a doormat soon enough." The orc looks past Zerzer. "I'll rent you and your people rooms for the night and that's all. I'll hear nothing more of your fool's quest, you understand?"

"Fair enough, good sir." Zerzer makes to walk away when the orc grabs him by the arm.

"Oi! You haven't paid for your rooms yet."

"I just paid you two gold!"

"That was just you being friendly."

"Alright!" Anna said in real life and cracked her knuckles. "Galloway walks up to this clown."

"What are you supposed to be?" Asks the orc, "Little man's bodyguard?"

"I'm nobody's bodyguard." Galloway drops an elbow on the bar. "How about a contest of strength for the rooms?"

"A contest? With you? A little squishy boy?"

"If I'm a little squishy boy, then it shouldn't be too hard to win, should it? I win, you give us our gold back. We lose, Zerzer pays double for the rooms."

"I don't remember agreeing-"

"I accept your challenge! How do you propose to hold this contest of strength?"

Galloway raises a hand with his elbow mounted on the bar top. "A classic. Arm wrestling."

The orc smiles a toothy grin. The gold tips to his tusks glint in the torch light. "Easy money."

Anna heared Evan roll behind his screen as she picks up a die, blew on it, and let it fly toward the center mass of the table. She leaned over to get a good look at how her fat green-skinned die had landed. "That's a 21 with my modifier there, Ev!"

Evan mumbled behind his screen. "Fuck." He pulled his purple silk wizard hood off his head. "Galloway, you and this guy are locked in this arm wrestle for, what is best described as an uncomfortable amount of time. Your veins in your arms and temples are bulging. Your palms are sweaty. You feel like you might actually fall over. Still, you can see he is just as bad off as you are. When you feel like it might end in a draw, you find a surge of energy within yourself and-" Evan mimics slamming a hand into the table. "Smash his hand down!"

Anna raised her real arms, "That's right motherfucker! Eat it!"

"Very well-" Evan returned to his orc voice. "I know when I've been bested." The orc slips Zerzer the two gold back. "You ain't half bad for a squishy boy."

Galloway cocks his head to one side then the other. "You aren't bad yourself for being a douche."

A blonde high elf dressed in leather and patchwork leafs appears from behind Galloway. "Excuse me, sir. Could we possibly get a room that's not drafty?"

Evan looks up at Scott. "Roll for persuasion. The D20 plus your modifier."

Scott pursued his meticulously organized dice. His self-made crown of plastic twigs and green leaves adjusted on his head. "Which one is the D20?"

Anna leaned over. "It's the one that looks most like a ball."

Scott plucked up the thickest and fattest of his dice, gave it a few good shakes in his hands, and dropped it on his character sheet sitting in front of him. "Uh… that's a 9?"

"Sorry, fancy boy," Evan's orc grunted. "The place is old, you know. All we got is drafty rooms. You know how it is."

"Great," Scott crossed his arms over his chest. "How about the real-life draft in the real-life attic? I feel like my nose is going to fall off."

"Oh don't be such a whiner!" Kitty stood, walked over to the open window, and looked out. "It's not that bad! I bet it hasn't even broken freezing outside!" She turned her head to look at the sky. "Pretty cloudy. I wonder if it's going to snow!"

"I hope not." Scott zipped up his jacket. "I hate the snow."

"You're living in the wrong place." Evan leaned back then took a drink from his soda. "Well, we don't get much snow but it does get cold. We had a few snowy Christmas's in Brooklyn."

"Ooooh," Kitty hopped up and down, "I hope we have a snowy Christmas!" She pulled out the stick keeping the window open and let it slam shut. "Stay inside, drink hot chocolate, have some latkes, play board games."

Kurt took off his hat and shook out his hat hair. "What are latkes?"

"What are latkes? Only the best thing ever! It's this deep-fried potato pancake thing that you have with sour cream. Ooooh, it slaps! My mom makes them right!" Kitty plopped down next to Scott and looked at the others. "Don't tell me none of you have had them? Geez, it must be hard not being one of God's chosen people."

Anna rested her elbows on the knees of her crossed legs. "Speaking of, were you able to get permission to visit your folks on Hanukkah?"

"I get on a plane next week, baby!"

Kurt drained the last of Evan's drink when he put it down. "Mmm," He mumbled through a mouth of fizz. "You excited to see your parents after so long?"

"Yeah, it'll be good!"

"Just good?" Anna asked.

"It'll be fine! I mean…" Kitty rubbed her face. "I mean, of course, I want to see them. It's just hard going back to the town that… well it's not like I got run out of exactly…"

"I know what you mean." Evan gave a knowing nod and looked at Kurt. "You and An got chased out of your towns. Which is worse than awful." He then looked at Kitty. "For me, I was just sorta packaged up one day and sent here without anyone telling me anything."

"Same." Kitty tugged on her ponytail of long curly hair. "There were a couple of incidents but nothing major." She sighed. "Just a lot of memories in Deerfield."

"That was Fort Lauderdale for me." Scott took off his crown of leafy twigs. "Like you said, Evan. Just packaged up one day and sent here."

"By Douglass MacArthur." Anna said Scott's stepfather's name in a squeaky nazily voice. "Fucking biggest dick-whistle of America."

Kurt smiled, "I bet it was satisfying to watch him get thrown out by Xavier. I've never seen the professor so big-mad before!"

"It was a lot." Scott nodded slowly and lowered his head. "Still a lot. I'm glad he ultimatly got kicked out, but its still a lot to process. Parents are complicated, right?"

Anna blew her bangs out of her face. "You can say that again." She felt a sudden buzzing and vibrating on her wrist. She glanced at her watch and saw a giant pulsing red 'X' on its screen. When she looked up next, she saw the others were looking back at her with the same wide-eyed stare she probably had.

"We've got a mission." She mumbled. 

** AUTHOR'S NOTE

Hey there! I wanted to let you know that I've decided to publish the entire backlog of Rogue Evolution on my website, artoflupin.com. There you'll find chapters as far ahead as "Snow Fall 11.6", and in a couple of weeks, I plan on having the log on my website be a chapter ahead of any other site I post to!

If you'd prefer to wait for uploads here, no worries, uploads will continue here as scheduled.

Thanks! **