|
It's rare that Rena deigns to go to the fancy Elysium. Broken buildings are more her aesthetic than cocktails and dresses. But she's in a mood tonight. Not a bad one, per say, but a mood to go break out of her normal routines. And freak out rich people by dressing in an "Eat the Rich" shirt and ragged jeans.
So she sits down on a chair, arms wrapped around her legs, and looks for someone to either talk to or fight, the two Rena thought processes.
Is she rich? She looks rich enough, anyway: impeccable from top to toes. A sleek black velvet dress, the sort of thing that looks simple but costs for the fit and simplicity of it. Artje's tall boots click against the floor rather precisely as she enters, one hand resting against her stomach as her other arm swings lazily, the bracelet on her wrist shimmering in the light. She pauses upon spotting Rena, looks her up and down with an assessing gaze, and then the corner of her mouth pulls up a bit. "Promise?"
Rena looks her over. "Promise? I- oh, the shirt!" Her eyebrow quirks high. "Are- is this a sex thing? Because you'd have to buy me dinner first."
"And I'm married twice over," answers Artje with a flip of her left hand; she must have practiced that move to get it to catch the light just so. Fucking Daeva. "But it made for a good opening line, so I took it." Her accent is unplaceable, but definitely European. Maybe Russian? French? German? Ugh, who knows.
There's something slightly intimidating about the ease with which Artje does all of this. Rena clenches a little tighter. Fucking rich people. "And I had to finish the joke. Laws of comedy and all that. Heh." She actually says, "heh" and doesn't laugh it. "So, uh, I haven't seen you around before. Are you new in town or am I just out of the vamp loop?" (edited)
Her smile becomes an actual smile, if only briefly, and her dark brown eyes glitter amusement. "Indeed." A little wobble of that same hand as she perches herself on the edge of a chair, smoothing out her skirt. When the boots get subtracted from her height, she's quite little - maybe 5'1" - and tiny all over, delicate like a china doll. "Not new-new, but relatively so," she explains. "We were in New York before." A beat. "But forgive me - I am so rude to not introduce myself, my Jean-Louis would be appalled. I am Artje Berenyi-Winthrope, Carthian and member of O&K."
"Rena Harlowe, Ordo, Ashtifar," Rena mimes a curtsy. While sitting down. And hugging her legs. It's a bad miming. "Carthian, huh? Aren't y'all supposed to be punks and not... you know?"
She laughs softly at that. "Aren't all Ordo supposed to be stuffy prigs?" Artje replies, absently smoothing her dress over her stomach, even though she did that three seconds ago. "I'm afraid I didn't get the memo." Artje tips her head to one side. "The first Carthians were punks and well-dressed. There's a bit of an aesthetic turn these days, but... " She shrugs.
"Touche." Rena shrugs. "I'm the kind of Ordo that punches faces, not the kind of Ordo that sits in a room full of books all day," she says, "we can't all be fragile nerds." She flexes her non existent muscles.
"I gotta ask though. Are you rich? Cause I feel like that isn't very punk."
Her eyes glitter again, and Artje makes a small sound of approval in the back of her throat when Rena flexes her non-existent muscles. "Indeed, one does require diversity."
"Someone has to buy all the spray paint and post bail before dawn," the Daeva drolls.
Rena preens at the noise. "Yeah, I guess every group needs a backer. And I ain't exactly the type to think too much about what it means to be punk. Gatekeeping sucks, y'know?" She thinks for a second, "were you here long enough to know a prick named Victor Koenig? Weaselly guy, thin glasses, Night Doctor, left about a year and a half ago?"
She laughs softly again; it's almost mechanical in its precision, but soft enough, somehow, to sound real. Perhaps she practised it many times. "It does suck. And yes. I fill the place in the Carthian Movement which no one wants to think about but the Movement desperately needs." Artje cants her head just so. "No, I do not know him. Is he a Carthian?"
Something more or less the shape of a woman enters the Bellevue Elysium, but the resemblance to humanity mostly ends at the shape. The figure has black, rubbery skin much like you'd find on a xenomorph from the Alien franchise, and there are only black pits instead of eyes on its hairless head. On the creatures fingers are claws on the tips of the creature's fingers that glitter like diamonds, and its mouth is pulled into an easy smile that shows needle-like teeth -- and canine fangs -- that look much the same.
It's dressed in what looks more less like the kinds of robes that you might find on a monastic priest in the middle ages, except that they're denim and covered in a variety of patches that would not look out of place at a punk show, with frayed arm holes and no arms attached. There are even metal studs along its hemlines and spikes along the shoulders.
The figure glances around and then heads toward Artje and Rena, nothing really hostile in its movements or body language. Except the freakish appearance. Nosferatu are often strange looking, but this goes way beyond what's usually found even in Nosferatu.
"He was one, ye-" And then... that walks in. "Yo." Rena says, trying to look cool and collected. "Do you know them?" she asks Artje, mostly managing to keep the fright out of her voice. Mostly.
The answer comes in her reaction. Rena has seen Artje's Social Reactions, containing some shades of genuine but ultimately posed to a certain extent. Practiced, smooth and professional Artje slips away, like someone dunked a dyed cloth in water and all the blue just... leached away and was gone. Her eyes light up, her lips part just a little bit, and then the corners of her mouth curl into the most adoring smile. One gets the idea that, were she living, she might even blush as she extends one hand toward the horrific, jean-clad monstrosity, palm down, like a Tudor noblewoman greeting her secret flame.
It takes a moment for Rena's words to make it all the way into Artje's brain, staring at the xenovampire, and then she blinks a few times, rather rapidly, turning her face toward the young vampire with a slow blink of her large brown eyes. "Oh yes," she offers softly, as if revealing some great secret truth. "She's my wife."
As if that explains everything.
"She just likes to give me a run for my money dramatically now and again."
"Rena Harlowe, Ordo Dracul and Ashtifar, may I introduce my beloved wife, Annikah von Steiger, Dragon Knight, Attendant Philosopher of the Devouring Fiend, Carthian activist and Washington. We haven't named our coterie yet, which we should do, but pretend we have and I've added the name here."
When she arrives in their presence Annikah reaches for the extended hand and grasps it gently, then leans over it to place a gentle kiss on its knuckles. "Hello, dear one," she speaks in a strange dual voice, one that's pretty close to her own usual speaking voice and another, lower and more sultry voice speaking beneath it. Their harmony is perfect, and if they sung together it would probably sound absolutely lovely. "Sorry if I kept you waiting."
She rights herself and turns toward Rena with the eyeless pits that still somehow seem to contain her gaze. "A pleasure, Ms. Harlowe. I apologize if our appearance was cause for concern, but I assure you that you have nothing to worry about, especially if you're a member of the Ordo Dracul. I am, after all, sworn to defend your unlife with my own."
"Fuckin' hell. You could have stopped my heart a second time," Rena grumbles, standing up and extending a hand to shake. "S'up. I'm Rena Harlowe, something of the something or other. I'm Sworn to protect the secrets of the Dragons from goin' elsewhere. Knight of the Axe. So I guess we're both protectin' each other."
And then a realization dawns on her. "Wait. Wait wait wait, you can be in two fuckin' clubs?"
Those dual voices draw an actual blush from Artje -- clearly intentional, given all the givens, she hasn't started breathing or anything -- and the kiss to the back of her knuckles gets followed by a brief brush of her forefinger against the heart pendant hanging from a gold chain around Annikah's throat. (A matching bracelet dangles from the wrist of that hand, and the way Artje turns her hand in the light makes her engagement and wedding ring glitter. Fucking Toreador.)
"I will always wait for you," she answers Annikah, "but I do like not having to wait too long." Her attention turns back to Rena, then, and she dips her head to one side. "Often, one may. It can cause questions of loyalty, though that may not trouble one here so much as it might elsewhere."
Annikah reaches out to take the offered hand, careful with her clawed fingers. The rubbery flesh is a bit colder than room temperature, somehow, and firmer than human flesh, but her grip is rather gentle. "Not our intention, I assure you," her dual voice says. "Although sometimes it is a useful function of our merging, it's not a use of it that we tend to employ on our intended allies. Well, mine." One of the voices gets contemplative in tone, and the other sounds slightly bewildered, but the harmony is still strangely perfect. "I don't know that my Beast really understands that concept fully."
Then she flashes a grin that shows those too-long, too-sharp, glittering teeth. "My situation was a bit unusual, as well. Some leeway tends to be given when your Sire is the Rampant Dragon and the Prince, but the Ordo Dracul also has its origins as a secret society. There are protocols for membership without having that loyalty be a public fact, and a second membership serves as good cover. Even more so when it's genuine."
There’s a hint of chill breeze in the historical building, perhaps not uncommon, maybe it’s just a bit of a draft. The mist that creeps up the stairs is definitely unnatural, though, as it possesses a Beast. It curls around the corners of one side of the room, creeping close to the others and lapping like waves near their feet before rapidly retreating, condensing into a Guy, who promptly leans back against the wall he’s standing next to. “Evening. I’d apologize for the dramatic entrance, but I see I’m not the only one showing out tonight.”
Now that the Dragons are talking about Dragon things, Artje seems content -- for a moment -- to become Pretty Furniture. Her shoulders loosen just perceptibly, and her hands come to rest on her lap again. She turns her attention toward the incoming Beast, though, her forehead wrinkling up before it smooths again. "Ah! Herr Dagenham. A pleasure, as always." Her left hand smooths down her corseted stomach before resting in her lap once more, and she remains perched on her seat, just so.
"Boss." Rena nods. "I take it you've all met. But hold on, I gotta go deeper on this. You can fuse with your Beast? Like fuckin' Dragon Ball? Guy, can you do that? Is this a Gangrel thing?"
Annikah's twin voices laugh when Guy comments about his own dramatic entrance. "A little drama keeps life interesting," she remarks to him in return. "Good to see you again, Dagenham. I hope you've been well." She turns back to Rena and tilts her head. "A Gangrel thing? Only to a certain point. It's a trick of our bloodline, which happens to be a Gangrel one, so theoretically any Gangrel who wasn't a member of a line already could learn to do it. But yes. We Mystikoi have a particularly close relationship with our Beasts, and this is one facet of it."
“From the other direction, all Protean is powered by merging the Beast with flesh, in overcoming the lie of the vessel,” he says with a tap of his chest, “through the spiritual force of our primordial selves. Those who are colloquially known as Elders can master this fusion completely even if they aren’t Mystikoi, though in a different manner, I heavily suspect.”
“Gonna have to feed again,” he grumbles to himself, standing up from the wall.
And then his knees and ankles pop as his legs become digitigrade, skin turning jet black before short, fine black fur sprouts over his body. His fingers end in glittering, obsidian claws and he grows a second pair of arms under his normal ones. His face takes on a cat-like appearance before pits open across it, and red eyes open across his shoulders. He sighs, double pairs of slender, snake-like fangs visible in his mouth, and to complete the look, a pair of black feathered wings erupt from his back, spreading wide before folding up. “We may become quicksilver beings, changing form as our mind conceives, for a time. It requires an enormous amount of blood to maintain for an entire night, however. To unshackle ourselves from shape,” he vaguely explains, his voice shaded with a bit of rumbling purr.
Artje's big, brown eyes blink slowly again, like a cat's, and she tips her head just so to one side, observing the chance as if she's entirely unconcerned about any potential for violence which may come with such a form. (The tiniest glance aside at Annikah may explain the reasoning behind her calm, after all. Delicate little fripperies like Artje need defenders.) "Oh my."
"Fuckin' hell you two. I get it, you both have big monster dicks. You could have just told me, Boss, instead of wasting all that fucking blood for a demonstration." Rena throws her hands in the air. "So Artje, it's fun being normal, isn't it. Not having to waste all your vital essence on flashy bullshit. I can turn into shadows, but I ain't demonstrating that for everyone all the time."
Annikah doesn't seem particularly surprised, or at all concerned, by Guy's transformation. She just nods her head, motions his direction with one thumb, and says, "what he said." And then she laughs again and tells Rena, "we're not using any 'vital essence' as you put it to maintain this form. We just spend a considerable amount of our time this way, and it lasts for a few nights once we do it. It's a method of seeking greater understanding of our nature and the universe. What other people think of it isn't really much concern to us. With some exceptions," she adds with a glance over at Artje, who she makes finger guns at.
“Ugh. I wish I could do this for nights at a time.” Guy is suddenly a cat, a rather handsome black one at that, the charm of his kitty-ness undermined by Too Many Legs, and the human voice that sounds from his chest. “Besides the benefits of a practical demonstration, my Young Apprentice,” he begins, walking towards Rena, in what is clearly a joking tone before it returns to normal, “I wanted to see if looking like this was disarming for you, and might help with your acute awareness of personal space a bit. In other words, if you might give me scritches while I am a cat if you need to relax some time. But I can’t explain that when I’m a cat, normally.” As if that all made sense.
"Huh." Rena says to Annikah, looking her up and down, "Do you have a trick to walk around town like that or can you turn it on and off?" And then Guy turns into a cute monstrous cat. "Jesus christ, Boss. You don't need to put me on blast in front of these cool folx." Despite her protests, she squats down and holds out a hand for Guy to walk to, proper petting procedure.
"By whose standards?" Artje offers mildly aside to Rena when she asks about being normal. She follows it with a wink, though, precisely so, and the corner of her mouth curving up a bit. But then Annikah is flirting with her, and the fingerguns seem to disarm the Daeva. "I was about to say," she murmurs back, casually tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. The cat thing seems to amuse her, dark eyes glittering.
"Obfuscate," Annikah says with a shrug. "And a good hood, and so on. I suppose that if someone did happen to see us, they sure as fuck wouldn't assume we were a vampire, so at least we wouldn't be giving away our existence." She laughs. "But I'm pretty sure it would raise a lot of questions, that's for sure." She pauses and looks at Artje. "If we showed up in a video that made it onto the news, we wonder how long it would take before there was some monsterfucker website with people posting about wanting to get with us. An hour? Two?" She sidles over to the Daeva and leans lightly against her. "We're not a cat, but you can give us scritches if you want to relax."
Guy walks to Rena’s hand, the back half of his body talking a moment to catch up so he’s briefly long cat. He rubs his head against her hand and purrs, even as he speaks. “I was being…ah, circumspect, that is the word, about your boundaries, so our new acquaintances would have an idea of them. Anything else is yours to say or not. And I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to be scratched behind the ears, and modern people are frankly touch-averse, and I knew you would not like me putting a hand on your shoulder even if modern social norms were the only reason. There, I have explained myself.”
The apparent cat haughtiness brought on by Guy’s change extends to the rather regal pose he takes to continue rubbing against Rena’s hand as he talks to Annikah and Artje. “I do recommend spending time as a cat. Did it for several years, once, and it is one of my fonder memories of my…checkered past.”
"Telling them that I need boundaries isn't the best either, Boss." Rena grouses, grumpily scritching GuyCat's sides. "I gotta learn how to do Proton," the word is mispronounced intentionally though she tries her best to make it seem unintentional, "I wanna be a bear or somethin'."
Rena's brain doesn't know how to handle an elegant woman winking at her, especially not a married one, so she lets Artje be. "Ah, obfuscate. Another thing I need to learn. Wouldn't you blur on a video anyway though? They'll be fuckin' the blob."
"Everyone needs boundaries," comes primly from the Queen of Boundaries, perched still just so on her chair. "You could be a bear, if you wanted." A little shrug. "Or a wildcat." That seems to amuse her for some reason, and she glances up at Annikah -- who towers over her even seated -- before raising one of those porcelain-doll hands to thread into the figure's -- hair?? tentacles?? -- and start scritching at their scalp. "Oh, I can, can I?"
"My mom wanted me to learn how to be a bear," Annikah muses aloud to nobody in particular. "The way she tried to teach me how to do that was to make me try to fight a bear naked. Let me tell you, for most fledgling vampires, wrestling with a bear is not a good idea." She tilts her head into Artje's hand, and the lower of her two voices lets out a soft rumbling sound. "Proton is definitely well worth learning, but I think that's true of most of the things we can learn to do. All of them will teach you things about yourself and the vampire experience."
Guy sighs and sinks to the floor, his voice now slightly muffled, apparently by the carpet. “I wanted to prevent potential discomfort for you…” He looks up to Rena with serious cat eyes. “I’m sorry if I overstepped.”
"Hey, it's all good, Boss. Just for the future, y'know?" Rena takes the opportunity of him looking up to pet his chin. At some point the fact that this is her boss is going to kick in and she'll feel weird about it but for now kitty feel good.
Rena quirks an eyebrow at Artje's amusement at the phrase wildcat, but before she can react to that, Annikah tells her story. "Jeez. Parents fuckin' suck. My dad put me through some shit myself."
"Vinzent threw wildcats at me." Artje doesn't say that with any sort of regret whatsoever: in fact, her tone is wistful, almost sad, as she carefully attends to her wife's scalp with perfectly manicured fingernails. "We should go visit him, as soon as we find out where he is." She politely ignores the conversation between Guy and Rena, and all mention of Annikah's sire.
Guys purrs deeply, clearly very much enjoying the scratches and Rena’s comfort in giving them.
“Oh, yes, first animal encounters at a Sire’s behest. I was thrown to wolves. It was actually quite fun, all things considered. But then, I was already a soldier and swordman before my Embrace, I wasn’t being taught to fight the hard way, or anything.”
"In her defense, she was fighting it too. It still gave us some trouble, and she's a couple of hundred years old. Don't fuck with bears," Annikah says with a soft laugh, like she finds the whole thing pretty funny in retrospect. That's just kind of how she is. "We should go visit Vinz soon. But we shouldn't tell him we're going to, and just show up and throw a wildcat at him." She shrugs and turns her head a little, to have Artje get a better spot on her strange scalp. "I was a tattoo artist before my embrace. Still am, for that matter. I got in plenty of fights, but not because it was my job. Just because some people are assholes."
"People are fuckin' assholes," Rena agrees, absent-mindedly touching the soft kitty, "I learned to fight on the streets first. Then, uh, my Sire gave me some lessons in how to fight for real, especially with Vampire powers." She pauses for a second. "I bet I could punch a bear's lights out right now."
When people talk about what they were before? Artje just sort of looks up at Annikah and idly picks at the thread on one of her shoulder patches. "You must ask Hans to look at this one before it comes loose," she comments mildly, "he will be perturbed if you did not, and you lose a patch again."
Guy gives Rena’s hand a cheek rub, with that lovely feel of cat teeth on your skin. Proper petting experience and all that. “We’ve found better people now. Keep an eye out for each other from the assholes in the world, yeah?” He flicks his tail with a thwump on the floor a little too loud for a normal cat to make. “Too many good people in this city not to.”
Annikah turns to look at the patch in question, then reaches out with a diamond-glittery claw and presses the patch into place, though that does nothing to actually secure it. "Maybe it's that one's time," she says. "Maybe it has learned all it can from its time on my robes." She smiles and then leans down to kiss the top of Artje's head. "Or maybe I just think it's funny when he gets perturbed about that kind of thing. I'll ask him, though. For you." She turns to look at the other two again. "To be fair, sometimes I'm the asshole. I just try to do it for a good reason, when I'm doing it."
"Surprising amount of good people in the city," Rena sighs, before shaking her head and putting her grin back on, "Sometimes you gotta be the asshole. Especially when people are worse assholes."
She raises her eyebrows at Annikah when the two-toned voice starts talking about how it's the patch's time, and she clucks her tongue once, and glances at Guy and Rena as if to say do you see what I have to put up with? But then Annikah kisses the top of her head and she lets out a soft breath. "Thank you. You know what it's like when old ghouls get fussy." One hand brushes across her lap. "I'm not the asshole."
"I'm a bitch."
Oh, Artje.
Another thump with his tail. “Mmm. I used to be far worse than an asshole…now…well. Yes, when the time is right, I do those far worse things again, so our good people can have their peace.”
He licks Rena’s hand, and flops onto his side. “I think I may head out for the night soon. Thank you, Rena, for the pets, I hope this was nice for you. Thank you for the conversation Annikah and Artje, I’m glad you’ve come to the city.”
"Yeah, but you're our bitch," Annikah's dual voice says, the woman's voice light and teasing but the Beast's possessive and protective beneath it. Then there's a pause and she says, "it's adorable? Or maybe that was just one particular old ghoul. Hmm. I might need a larger data set." She puts an arm around Artje's shoulders and gives a light squeeze. "I should be on my way again. Are you staying here or coming with me?"
To the others she says, "stay deadish, my friends. Have a good night."
"Sometimes you gotta be SUPERMAN," Rena says, doing a voice that is clearly a reference to something. She giggles a little and starts rifling through their phone to send a link to the referenced video to Guy. "See you, both of you. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
Wordlessly, Artje holds her arms up toward Annikah and blinks rapidly for a second or two. Clearly, the way the Daeva intends to exit this conversation is by being carried out by a monstrosity like a princess dolly.
Daeva.
A moment later, she remembers there are people, and says: "Oh. Goodnight."
Guy sort of…unfolds back to being a person to head for the stairs. “Goodnight, everyone. See you all about.”
|