Jack
Jack is glad enough to smile (ugh, must he?) when Helmer Rasmussen is named Prince.The Brujah has always been notable for his support of Clan Nosferatu, even against Winthrop and the other scions of more fastidious clans. His gladness is mixed, of course. Because he doesn't look for an intensification of the war between kingdoms, the one just beneath the surface of the Day's world, the one which is more twilight or midnight than the deeper and lightless Abyssal dark which tastes of a different kind of blood, which is more blood-sport and blood-frenzy, which tries to subjugate the Day's world by destroying it. But Rasmussen is calling for a more forceful push. Still. Once upon a time all Jacks are soldiers, or were, and Jack is essentially a[n Optimist] visionary. One night of true peace. Would it be worth it?
Rasmussen names his Court and sharp-eyed Jack is not quite as interested in that. By the time Lady Adelaide opens her mouth to say something, his arms are folded on the piano's top, his posture relaxed, ready to spend the rest of the evening socializing before skulking off, except
Enough.
The tip of wood through Lady Adelaide's breastbone. The sudden appearance of a pack-of-war, a gruesome battle-vulture set of blood-rite monsters, the Beasts You Might Become, the Beasts You Must Not Become, the Creatures that Have Devoured their Own Spirits and are Hungry. Jack is quietly astonished: his eyes widen with revelation (the curling, fear-soaked whisper, Henrietta) and cold understanding. He knows that shotgun. Now he knows the whole face of its wielder. He knows that shotgun. Now he knows why he saw it in the Underground. He knows those Henrietta stories. There are so many of them. Now he knows who the mole is. Now he knows how they have seemed so certain and so sure and came out of nowhere again and again and...
It is never enough. What he knows.
Jack is a creature with a (good) heart. He flicks a quick glance over to Gotfred, his primogen, where last Jack saw him standing in his suit-that-is-also-armor, and for an instant -- his hands flatten, rigid, on top of the piano -- and the feeling which defines that quick glance is apology.
I'm sorry this is where the story's taken you.
But that was just a moment hiding inside another moment, unnecessary and unremarkable. His hands are flat on the piano. His blood is flowing, not to his strength or to his agility, but to his abiity to weather a siege, and although Jack is a Vanishing Jack, Jack is one of those Jacks who can erase himself from your eyes and from your mind between one blink and the next, he doesn't yet vanish. No. Jack turns immediately after that unnecessary and remarkable (speaking [feeling]) glance at his Primogen (and it had to scrape past Donkey Teeth, if Donkey Teeth was still there, hadn't ducked and covered) ... to the dark-skinned Assamite in dark-shades he just happened to be beside. Because it would be a squandering a potential opportunity to fail to at very least give it a shot. Because Jacks aren't cravens.
"I have a business proposition for you I know you're going to like no matter who wins."
(To believe in coincidence is to invite the hand of fate to steer one's course, after all.)
----
Lux
Just a handful of nights ago, what had she said to Flood? I don't know why you think you know so well what it's like within the Ivory Tower's halls, as anything other than Hannibal in Trebia of course. It hardly hurts at all to be stabbed in the back. It's annoying, at worst; interesting, at best. But having your head ripped off and your soul drained? That sounds like a shit shindig, man.
Now look. Lady Adelaide. A back. A stake. A heart. And what is shaping up to be one shit shindig. Hannibal in Trebia.
Lux is shocked by the sudden appearance of the Sabbat. Henrietta in Rags. The shock thrills through her, sings in her like the stars falling from their courses or a constellation peeling itself out of the firmament to lift a flaming sword. She is shocked. But that shock doesn't cause her to panic. No, panic was last night's special. Fury was the night's before that. Tonight?
The Toreador had [covertly] her cellphone in hand [modern vampires of the city] to text news of Rasmussen's installment to St. Germain.
The text the fortunate non-guest gets instead is:
keep the chip
Her thumb depresses the call image as Lady Adelaide's body hits the floor. Not because she is going to hold up a finger and ask everybody to give her a moment while she makes a call. Not because she is calling for help. If the vampires here cannot help themselves than there is no point in calling for cavalry. This is the full weight of the city's Camarilla, of the Inner Circle's cavalry, this is a room full of luminaries and elders and Lux is not one of those luminaries or elders. So she's not calling for help. She's calling so that just in case they have some idea of what went on.
If her Anarch cohort answers the phone he will only hear the sounds of: whatever happens next. If it goes to message: the same thing, when he checks it. Until someone breaks the phone. Until the battery runs out. Until the message box is full. Until whatever happens next turns into what happened.
She casts Everett a look; she doesn't intend to die for the Camarilla or in a once-was Elysium with that 99 cent store photograph looking down. Abhorrence for the thought; it sparks in her crystalline eyes, it is the corrosion that makes them darker at the edges, that gets in her lashes like soot and delineates their brightness, and the blood moves through her too, waking and wicking. But there's also abhorrence [Rebellion] at the thought of allowing a well-timed surprise to wreck her on the rocks. As impressed as she was with the showmanship the Ventrue brought to bear upon Court and the City, she is just as impressed with Henrietta (though rather less keen to see the whole of this performance than she was to time-travel back and see that famous dance).
So Lux absolutely does not intend to flee like certain C words might. Retreat? Perhaps and probably. But not immediately: How could she? How could she, not knowing? And how could she just abandon her Sect-mate? Easily, but she won't. Does not intend to. Lux wants Rasmussen to win. He'd make a great Anarch Baron, and it would just really be the cherry on top of the ruination of her decade if Rasmussen was killed, the city locked once-again in a stalemate with the Sabbat having the upper-hand, and one of those Tremere sweeping in to claim praxis simply because they're the ones who survived.
Somewhere there's a Nosferatu who's turning to talk.
Lux is a Toreador who's reaching for a [make-shift] weapon, any weapon. Maybe she's taking her hair down, or maybe she's taking cover behind a couch in order to fineagle something. Maybe she's guaging her chances of zipping through the cluster of elders and war-pack to Adelaide, hauling the stake out of her heart, and using it to stab whoever comes to rip off her head.
Until whatever happens next turns into what happened.
---
tl;dr
Jack:
O_O;;;;
O_O;;;;
o_o
<.<
U:
Lux:
o_o
O_O;
>.>
V_V
>_<
---
ooc: If we can't manage to get scene times squared away (I'm sure we will), don't mind just banging out some rolls!
Jack is glad enough to smile (ugh, must he?) when Helmer Rasmussen is named Prince.The Brujah has always been notable for his support of Clan Nosferatu, even against Winthrop and the other scions of more fastidious clans. His gladness is mixed, of course. Because he doesn't look for an intensification of the war between kingdoms, the one just beneath the surface of the Day's world, the one which is more twilight or midnight than the deeper and lightless Abyssal dark which tastes of a different kind of blood, which is more blood-sport and blood-frenzy, which tries to subjugate the Day's world by destroying it. But Rasmussen is calling for a more forceful push. Still. Once upon a time all Jacks are soldiers, or were, and Jack is essentially a[n Optimist] visionary. One night of true peace. Would it be worth it?
Rasmussen names his Court and sharp-eyed Jack is not quite as interested in that. By the time Lady Adelaide opens her mouth to say something, his arms are folded on the piano's top, his posture relaxed, ready to spend the rest of the evening socializing before skulking off, except
Enough.
The tip of wood through Lady Adelaide's breastbone. The sudden appearance of a pack-of-war, a gruesome battle-vulture set of blood-rite monsters, the Beasts You Might Become, the Beasts You Must Not Become, the Creatures that Have Devoured their Own Spirits and are Hungry. Jack is quietly astonished: his eyes widen with revelation (the curling, fear-soaked whisper, Henrietta) and cold understanding. He knows that shotgun. Now he knows the whole face of its wielder. He knows that shotgun. Now he knows why he saw it in the Underground. He knows those Henrietta stories. There are so many of them. Now he knows who the mole is. Now he knows how they have seemed so certain and so sure and came out of nowhere again and again and...
It is never enough. What he knows.
Jack is a creature with a (good) heart. He flicks a quick glance over to Gotfred, his primogen, where last Jack saw him standing in his suit-that-is-also-armor, and for an instant -- his hands flatten, rigid, on top of the piano -- and the feeling which defines that quick glance is apology.
I'm sorry this is where the story's taken you.
But that was just a moment hiding inside another moment, unnecessary and unremarkable. His hands are flat on the piano. His blood is flowing, not to his strength or to his agility, but to his abiity to weather a siege, and although Jack is a Vanishing Jack, Jack is one of those Jacks who can erase himself from your eyes and from your mind between one blink and the next, he doesn't yet vanish. No. Jack turns immediately after that unnecessary and remarkable (speaking [feeling]) glance at his Primogen (and it had to scrape past Donkey Teeth, if Donkey Teeth was still there, hadn't ducked and covered) ... to the dark-skinned Assamite in dark-shades he just happened to be beside. Because it would be a squandering a potential opportunity to fail to at very least give it a shot. Because Jacks aren't cravens.
"I have a business proposition for you I know you're going to like no matter who wins."
(To believe in coincidence is to invite the hand of fate to steer one's course, after all.)
----
Lux
Just a handful of nights ago, what had she said to Flood? I don't know why you think you know so well what it's like within the Ivory Tower's halls, as anything other than Hannibal in Trebia of course. It hardly hurts at all to be stabbed in the back. It's annoying, at worst; interesting, at best. But having your head ripped off and your soul drained? That sounds like a shit shindig, man.
Now look. Lady Adelaide. A back. A stake. A heart. And what is shaping up to be one shit shindig. Hannibal in Trebia.
Lux is shocked by the sudden appearance of the Sabbat. Henrietta in Rags. The shock thrills through her, sings in her like the stars falling from their courses or a constellation peeling itself out of the firmament to lift a flaming sword. She is shocked. But that shock doesn't cause her to panic. No, panic was last night's special. Fury was the night's before that. Tonight?
The Toreador had [covertly] her cellphone in hand [modern vampires of the city] to text news of Rasmussen's installment to St. Germain.
The text the fortunate non-guest gets instead is:
keep the chip
Her thumb depresses the call image as Lady Adelaide's body hits the floor. Not because she is going to hold up a finger and ask everybody to give her a moment while she makes a call. Not because she is calling for help. If the vampires here cannot help themselves than there is no point in calling for cavalry. This is the full weight of the city's Camarilla, of the Inner Circle's cavalry, this is a room full of luminaries and elders and Lux is not one of those luminaries or elders. So she's not calling for help. She's calling so that just in case they have some idea of what went on.
If her Anarch cohort answers the phone he will only hear the sounds of: whatever happens next. If it goes to message: the same thing, when he checks it. Until someone breaks the phone. Until the battery runs out. Until the message box is full. Until whatever happens next turns into what happened.
She casts Everett a look; she doesn't intend to die for the Camarilla or in a once-was Elysium with that 99 cent store photograph looking down. Abhorrence for the thought; it sparks in her crystalline eyes, it is the corrosion that makes them darker at the edges, that gets in her lashes like soot and delineates their brightness, and the blood moves through her too, waking and wicking. But there's also abhorrence [Rebellion] at the thought of allowing a well-timed surprise to wreck her on the rocks. As impressed as she was with the showmanship the Ventrue brought to bear upon Court and the City, she is just as impressed with Henrietta (though rather less keen to see the whole of this performance than she was to time-travel back and see that famous dance).
So Lux absolutely does not intend to flee like certain C words might. Retreat? Perhaps and probably. But not immediately: How could she? How could she, not knowing? And how could she just abandon her Sect-mate? Easily, but she won't. Does not intend to. Lux wants Rasmussen to win. He'd make a great Anarch Baron, and it would just really be the cherry on top of the ruination of her decade if Rasmussen was killed, the city locked once-again in a stalemate with the Sabbat having the upper-hand, and one of those Tremere sweeping in to claim praxis simply because they're the ones who survived.
Somewhere there's a Nosferatu who's turning to talk.
Lux is a Toreador who's reaching for a [make-shift] weapon, any weapon. Maybe she's taking her hair down, or maybe she's taking cover behind a couch in order to fineagle something. Maybe she's guaging her chances of zipping through the cluster of elders and war-pack to Adelaide, hauling the stake out of her heart, and using it to stab whoever comes to rip off her head.
Until whatever happens next turns into what happened.
---
tl;dr
Jack:
O_O;;;;
O_O;;;;
o_o
<.<
U:
Lux:
o_o
O_O;
>.>
V_V
>_<
---
ooc: If we can't manage to get scene times squared away (I'm sure we will), don't mind just banging out some rolls!