06-27-2013, 05:39 PM
Kali
Cat starts to get all...Malkavian-y.A lot of people might curl their lip or wrinkle their nose at the mix of obsessive/compulsive and paranoid delusion that Cat is emitting right now, and truth be tell there isn't any certainty that Kali wouldn't do it too if she didn't have a use for Cat. (There's no certainty that she would, either.) But she does have a use for Cat; one of the Ravnos' better traits in her estimation--besides her killer fashion sense--is her ability to find a use for just about anyone.
She's the fucking MacGuyver of socialites; give her a shattered psyche, an airhead bimbo and an impulsive, bullying hothead and she can build a god damned helicopter.
So she just smiles here, the expression sympathetic as she looks at Cat. "S'okay, Dian Fossey. We'll get your chair back if you want it...no one's taking your shoes."
A pause there, as if she suddenly realizes she hasn't introduced herself yet, and she has an instant where she looks like she wants to smack her head. "Oh, Christ. Sorry, how rude. I'm Kali of the Phuri Dae jati within Clan Ravnos. Nice to meet you two."
Make friends first...THEN pump them for information. Interpret that however you wish; Kali surely does.
Jack
Jack is not pitching his voice for privacy, although he is soft-spoken, whenever he speaks. They're in Elysium. They're in court. There are sharp ears and sharper eyes with years of watching lips form words. There are no secrets here. Nope, not a one. Not a singular mystery, except for the mystery under discussion. The nosferatu adjusts his position again while Cat sticks her face closer-closer, anticipatory, really very much like her namesakes, and both his feet on the floor now, elbows on his knees and look now his fingertips meet and point downward, long bone-y hands [all veins and knobs] hanging from wrists all interested ease, dumb wreck of an ear not quite twitching when Cat whispers her wall-warning her dangerous-things her something-gets-in, and he taps his index fingers together oncetwice thrice.
"It only had taste for sheep tonight, but they told you to run." Hmm. He's back to hmming, thoughtful, pensive Jack, Jack Away With the Fairies, Jack Who is Utterly Sane In Comparison, just a thoughtful man, grave.
He doesn't address the issue of the chair or the neonate, though he flicks the latter a look when Cat accuses him. The Ravnos addresses it, so he doesn't.
He says, "I wouldn't say 'nice.' Too neat a word, that. But I'm glad to make your aquaintance, Kali." Beat. Cat already knows this: "I'm Jack." He doesn't bother with his clan; he doesn't need to. "Do you also have stories about the ground moving, or do you just find the idea worrisome?"
Cat
Cat cannot stay focused on all of these things. There is that young baby Vampire in her chair. There is the pretty girl with fire hair of that shifty sneaky clan - worse than her own! - and the others in that corner, over there, who she is quite certain are planning and plotting against her. [spies! trojan horses! cut them open and see who's hiding inside!] Cat's nails dig at the side of her pale neck. Dig at that tough, old old old skin as she wonders idly if they've gotten something back inside of her. Tracking her.
"Get out of my chair!" She barks at him. Startling him. "Don't you know crazy is contagious. You'll catch my crazy if you sit in that chair, then what will you do, hm? You don't have it in you to share space with Others!"
Her eyes focus on the young undead man. Willing her insanity on him the way she had willed her words into Jack's mind. It doesn't work and she groans in frustration, looking back to Jack and Kali.
"Jack. Kali. Ravnos." Her fingers are leaving angry red marks on her skin. It stops only when she points at the air, as if to say a-ha! "These next few nights. We must tread carefully. Carefully. Feed them your childer and your youngest." A look is cast toward the man that has her chair. "They make good fodder."
Kali
Kali actually grins as Cat screams at the poor neonate to get out of her chair. She already likes the Malkavian and she could care less about some kid deciding to spend their time at the International House of Secrets (sadly, pancake-free) relaxing in a chair when they could actually be useful. She tilts her head to the younger Lick, as if to say "Well, are you moving or what?"
Then Jack introduces himself. Obviously, he needs not name his clan and he doesn't waste time doing it, which Kali appreciates. Timeless they may be, but these are not nights in which time can be spent frivolously. He asks about whether she's heard anything about the earthquake, and the smile fades a little. There's not much room for witticisms when this kind of thing comes about.
A little (there's always time for a litte), but not much.
"I've heard rumors and stories." A little nod. "Something possibly waking up, which Cat's story here backs up. There's whispers through the grapevine from contacts I have in Vegas that something might have woken up there. My source suggests it could be our not-so-friends that make their home south of the border..." She doesn't say 'Sabbat' as there's no need to get the Malkavian worked up about that again. "...or possibly our slithery, scaley brethren."
She shrugs, dropping to a distinctly un-ladylike crouch that would again make her corset uncomfortable if she had to breath, elbows resting on the surface of her knee-high boots. "Of course, it could all be bullshit and it's possible that nothing is waking up at all. Or that whatever's waking up in Vegas has nothing to do with our new toothy buddy that Cat encountered. But I don't believe in coincidence. It isn't very profitable...and considering I don't have childer or youngers to offer up..."
A conceding nod to the Malkavian there, before she continues. "...I would much rather find a way to NyQuil Big Nasty's ass for another millenia or so, if that's what we're facing."
Eyes & Ears
Those last few words about feeding whatever she's raving about childer - the youngest - does manage to get the young Toreador out of the chair and send him across the room.
Oh, he makes it seem like he's going to get lost in some work of art, not even making eye contact, and sure the way his finger trails across a piano as he walks looks casual and confident, along with how he stops in front of it and revels in its beauty, but that quick glance over his shoulder at the trio of Kindred he's left behind says they're why he had finally gotten his ass moving.
That and the quick glance at Lucille, the elder Toreador, like he can't believe she let him talk that way.
But she is too far engrossed in her own conversation to even notice, despite Cat's earlier outcry. She seems to be going out of her way to ignore the Malkavian until she gets whatever she came to get out of her system and make her way back to whatever loony bin she'll now calling home, if her story about the zoo is even partially true.
Jack
Jack plays the straight-man to Cat's erratic madness (and to Kali's sharp, shrewd, streetwise & smirking wit for that matter) rather well. It's old slippers, lads, and he's slipped into them, wiggled his toes, set his feet up in his favourite chair and started smoking his pipe. But let's not mistake 'straight-man' for 'impervious mask sans reaction.' He's unbeing dead, but he's not unalive, y'know? So he blinks, soft-hearted, at Cat's spite, and watches the lady Ravnos with interest (shrewd, sharp, bright) as she spins the rumour mill.
Then he offers - ugh, man, take it back - the Ravnos a grin [NyQuil Big Nasty's ass, etc.]. It touches his voice and changes it into a fall of light through amber voice, y'know, one of those. The grin fades of course. Sabbat? Settites? Complications.
"Let's not feed anything, I agree." Here. He'll offer this for free: "And I like your attitude, Kali. I've heard things, too, which I thought unconnected, but," and a shrug which is eloquent (or perhaps not) of future poking around the creep Nobody Nosferatu Jack will be doing.
"If you ladies wish me to keep you informed," he'll let that trail away. It's a give-me-your-card or just-say-yes-and-I'll-find-you sort of trail-away, because perhaps motivated by story-telling rumor-swapping Jack's on his way out.
New thought: "Cat, do you have a place to sleep today, safe from the Sun, or do you need a place to crash?"
Cat
"Yes. I told you. Something woke. It was eating their blood but it wasn't there. Yes. And I saw that crow, crows are omens for nothing good. Death and war and pestilence and..."
Her eyes look back to Kali and she studies the Ravnos as she crouches there, unconcerned for being lady-like or how that shift in stance would be otherwise impossible if her lungs weren't covered in cobwebs. If they weren't dried up husks. The Malkavian twists her mouth and leans forward, "No. No. You don't understand. We have to find it and hunt it and cut it open and pull Winny from it's gullet. Because that is where he is. In the gullet of a monster."
"Jack. Don't use mobile phones. There are things inside of those things that track you. Did you know this? When the sheep rise up with pitchforks to come at us - or when those shifty Tremere send out the wood army, they will know where we are like that!" She snaps her fingers loudly and looks around her before whispering to the Ravnos and Nosferatu. "Like that. No mobiles. No facebook either. Don't trust Zuckerberg. His head is...all fucked up. No computers, it's a hive mind. It's all automated. Yes. Automated. Machines are producing more machines and fuck us all if they rise up with the sheep."
"I'm going to go hunting. I know things. Right? So I will find things. Then I will find you both and tell you things. I usually charge $3,000 for my services but for the two of you - no charge! No. Charge. Maybe you should make childer. Or take that one. He looks useless and he'll be crazy in a week. A week! No good to anyone."
Cat stands up, turning to give that Toreador neonate a thumbs up. "I sleep...in places no one thinks to look. Don't you worry about me Jack old boy. They've been trying to get rid of me for decades. DECADES!" She yells, but turns an apologetic eye to the Toreador Elder and offers her a thumbs up too.
Kali
It's a good thing Kali is a successful puppet-master of her own emotions, so she doesn't laugh when Cat mentions not using mobile phones. Not that she doesn't think people tap mobiles, but she's more worried about the DEA tapping her for a bust than a clan who thinks Vienna is the pinnacle of civilization coming for her via her smartphone.
But no, she doesn't laugh. She just smiles and shrugs. "I'll keep that in mind. If you run out of hidey holes though, call me. I have landlines." She slips out a card and hands it to the Malkavian. "And I have a lot of great hiding spots. Don't have to, but if you want, you've got the option.
"And don't worry. If we can get Winny out, we will. IF." Hey, she made the offer, even if she thinks the odds of it happening are less than that of her successfully tanning tomorrow. That has to count for something, right?
Jack, of course, also gets a card. Te card advertises "Honest Toshi's Corporate Dog Grooming" and lists a couple of phone numbers." Please lemme know, yeah. And I'll do the same. The quicker we get this taken care of, the better."
Jack
"I'm sure somebody said something about the evils of industry, some-when," he says, in response to Cat's warning.
And, okay. He'd wondered before what Winthrop's tie with Cat was, or vice versa. What hold was there. What grasp. Was it just that every king needs a Fool, to speak his story plain? Was blood involved, some stray resemblance sketched out by tell-tale features? Was blood involved in other ways, or was it just that carpetbagging Ventrue's dominating acuity? He thinks about it now when Cat speaks of rescuing 'Winny' from the gullet of a beast. Aww. Loyalty, even in this kingdom of darkness.
Cat stands; Kali stays crouching. Jack stands, too, tucking those papers under his elbow, and from his trouser pocket he pulls one of those very boring very flat wallets that embody nondescript. He digs through businesscards before finding one for Kali.
"Be safe."
Then with another wiggle of fingers, Jack leaves. Exit, stage right, all appropriate [invisible (the under-world has its demands)] motions made.
Cat starts to get all...Malkavian-y.A lot of people might curl their lip or wrinkle their nose at the mix of obsessive/compulsive and paranoid delusion that Cat is emitting right now, and truth be tell there isn't any certainty that Kali wouldn't do it too if she didn't have a use for Cat. (There's no certainty that she would, either.) But she does have a use for Cat; one of the Ravnos' better traits in her estimation--besides her killer fashion sense--is her ability to find a use for just about anyone.
She's the fucking MacGuyver of socialites; give her a shattered psyche, an airhead bimbo and an impulsive, bullying hothead and she can build a god damned helicopter.
So she just smiles here, the expression sympathetic as she looks at Cat. "S'okay, Dian Fossey. We'll get your chair back if you want it...no one's taking your shoes."
A pause there, as if she suddenly realizes she hasn't introduced herself yet, and she has an instant where she looks like she wants to smack her head. "Oh, Christ. Sorry, how rude. I'm Kali of the Phuri Dae jati within Clan Ravnos. Nice to meet you two."
Make friends first...THEN pump them for information. Interpret that however you wish; Kali surely does.
Jack
Jack is not pitching his voice for privacy, although he is soft-spoken, whenever he speaks. They're in Elysium. They're in court. There are sharp ears and sharper eyes with years of watching lips form words. There are no secrets here. Nope, not a one. Not a singular mystery, except for the mystery under discussion. The nosferatu adjusts his position again while Cat sticks her face closer-closer, anticipatory, really very much like her namesakes, and both his feet on the floor now, elbows on his knees and look now his fingertips meet and point downward, long bone-y hands [all veins and knobs] hanging from wrists all interested ease, dumb wreck of an ear not quite twitching when Cat whispers her wall-warning her dangerous-things her something-gets-in, and he taps his index fingers together oncetwice thrice.
"It only had taste for sheep tonight, but they told you to run." Hmm. He's back to hmming, thoughtful, pensive Jack, Jack Away With the Fairies, Jack Who is Utterly Sane In Comparison, just a thoughtful man, grave.
He doesn't address the issue of the chair or the neonate, though he flicks the latter a look when Cat accuses him. The Ravnos addresses it, so he doesn't.
He says, "I wouldn't say 'nice.' Too neat a word, that. But I'm glad to make your aquaintance, Kali." Beat. Cat already knows this: "I'm Jack." He doesn't bother with his clan; he doesn't need to. "Do you also have stories about the ground moving, or do you just find the idea worrisome?"
Cat
Cat cannot stay focused on all of these things. There is that young baby Vampire in her chair. There is the pretty girl with fire hair of that shifty sneaky clan - worse than her own! - and the others in that corner, over there, who she is quite certain are planning and plotting against her. [spies! trojan horses! cut them open and see who's hiding inside!] Cat's nails dig at the side of her pale neck. Dig at that tough, old old old skin as she wonders idly if they've gotten something back inside of her. Tracking her.
"Get out of my chair!" She barks at him. Startling him. "Don't you know crazy is contagious. You'll catch my crazy if you sit in that chair, then what will you do, hm? You don't have it in you to share space with Others!"
Her eyes focus on the young undead man. Willing her insanity on him the way she had willed her words into Jack's mind. It doesn't work and she groans in frustration, looking back to Jack and Kali.
"Jack. Kali. Ravnos." Her fingers are leaving angry red marks on her skin. It stops only when she points at the air, as if to say a-ha! "These next few nights. We must tread carefully. Carefully. Feed them your childer and your youngest." A look is cast toward the man that has her chair. "They make good fodder."
Kali
Kali actually grins as Cat screams at the poor neonate to get out of her chair. She already likes the Malkavian and she could care less about some kid deciding to spend their time at the International House of Secrets (sadly, pancake-free) relaxing in a chair when they could actually be useful. She tilts her head to the younger Lick, as if to say "Well, are you moving or what?"
Then Jack introduces himself. Obviously, he needs not name his clan and he doesn't waste time doing it, which Kali appreciates. Timeless they may be, but these are not nights in which time can be spent frivolously. He asks about whether she's heard anything about the earthquake, and the smile fades a little. There's not much room for witticisms when this kind of thing comes about.
A little (there's always time for a litte), but not much.
"I've heard rumors and stories." A little nod. "Something possibly waking up, which Cat's story here backs up. There's whispers through the grapevine from contacts I have in Vegas that something might have woken up there. My source suggests it could be our not-so-friends that make their home south of the border..." She doesn't say 'Sabbat' as there's no need to get the Malkavian worked up about that again. "...or possibly our slithery, scaley brethren."
She shrugs, dropping to a distinctly un-ladylike crouch that would again make her corset uncomfortable if she had to breath, elbows resting on the surface of her knee-high boots. "Of course, it could all be bullshit and it's possible that nothing is waking up at all. Or that whatever's waking up in Vegas has nothing to do with our new toothy buddy that Cat encountered. But I don't believe in coincidence. It isn't very profitable...and considering I don't have childer or youngers to offer up..."
A conceding nod to the Malkavian there, before she continues. "...I would much rather find a way to NyQuil Big Nasty's ass for another millenia or so, if that's what we're facing."
Eyes & Ears
Those last few words about feeding whatever she's raving about childer - the youngest - does manage to get the young Toreador out of the chair and send him across the room.
Oh, he makes it seem like he's going to get lost in some work of art, not even making eye contact, and sure the way his finger trails across a piano as he walks looks casual and confident, along with how he stops in front of it and revels in its beauty, but that quick glance over his shoulder at the trio of Kindred he's left behind says they're why he had finally gotten his ass moving.
That and the quick glance at Lucille, the elder Toreador, like he can't believe she let him talk that way.
But she is too far engrossed in her own conversation to even notice, despite Cat's earlier outcry. She seems to be going out of her way to ignore the Malkavian until she gets whatever she came to get out of her system and make her way back to whatever loony bin she'll now calling home, if her story about the zoo is even partially true.
Jack
Jack plays the straight-man to Cat's erratic madness (and to Kali's sharp, shrewd, streetwise & smirking wit for that matter) rather well. It's old slippers, lads, and he's slipped into them, wiggled his toes, set his feet up in his favourite chair and started smoking his pipe. But let's not mistake 'straight-man' for 'impervious mask sans reaction.' He's unbeing dead, but he's not unalive, y'know? So he blinks, soft-hearted, at Cat's spite, and watches the lady Ravnos with interest (shrewd, sharp, bright) as she spins the rumour mill.
Then he offers - ugh, man, take it back - the Ravnos a grin [NyQuil Big Nasty's ass, etc.]. It touches his voice and changes it into a fall of light through amber voice, y'know, one of those. The grin fades of course. Sabbat? Settites? Complications.
"Let's not feed anything, I agree." Here. He'll offer this for free: "And I like your attitude, Kali. I've heard things, too, which I thought unconnected, but," and a shrug which is eloquent (or perhaps not) of future poking around the creep Nobody Nosferatu Jack will be doing.
"If you ladies wish me to keep you informed," he'll let that trail away. It's a give-me-your-card or just-say-yes-and-I'll-find-you sort of trail-away, because perhaps motivated by story-telling rumor-swapping Jack's on his way out.
New thought: "Cat, do you have a place to sleep today, safe from the Sun, or do you need a place to crash?"
Cat
"Yes. I told you. Something woke. It was eating their blood but it wasn't there. Yes. And I saw that crow, crows are omens for nothing good. Death and war and pestilence and..."
Her eyes look back to Kali and she studies the Ravnos as she crouches there, unconcerned for being lady-like or how that shift in stance would be otherwise impossible if her lungs weren't covered in cobwebs. If they weren't dried up husks. The Malkavian twists her mouth and leans forward, "No. No. You don't understand. We have to find it and hunt it and cut it open and pull Winny from it's gullet. Because that is where he is. In the gullet of a monster."
"Jack. Don't use mobile phones. There are things inside of those things that track you. Did you know this? When the sheep rise up with pitchforks to come at us - or when those shifty Tremere send out the wood army, they will know where we are like that!" She snaps her fingers loudly and looks around her before whispering to the Ravnos and Nosferatu. "Like that. No mobiles. No facebook either. Don't trust Zuckerberg. His head is...all fucked up. No computers, it's a hive mind. It's all automated. Yes. Automated. Machines are producing more machines and fuck us all if they rise up with the sheep."
"I'm going to go hunting. I know things. Right? So I will find things. Then I will find you both and tell you things. I usually charge $3,000 for my services but for the two of you - no charge! No. Charge. Maybe you should make childer. Or take that one. He looks useless and he'll be crazy in a week. A week! No good to anyone."
Cat stands up, turning to give that Toreador neonate a thumbs up. "I sleep...in places no one thinks to look. Don't you worry about me Jack old boy. They've been trying to get rid of me for decades. DECADES!" She yells, but turns an apologetic eye to the Toreador Elder and offers her a thumbs up too.
Kali
It's a good thing Kali is a successful puppet-master of her own emotions, so she doesn't laugh when Cat mentions not using mobile phones. Not that she doesn't think people tap mobiles, but she's more worried about the DEA tapping her for a bust than a clan who thinks Vienna is the pinnacle of civilization coming for her via her smartphone.
But no, she doesn't laugh. She just smiles and shrugs. "I'll keep that in mind. If you run out of hidey holes though, call me. I have landlines." She slips out a card and hands it to the Malkavian. "And I have a lot of great hiding spots. Don't have to, but if you want, you've got the option.
"And don't worry. If we can get Winny out, we will. IF." Hey, she made the offer, even if she thinks the odds of it happening are less than that of her successfully tanning tomorrow. That has to count for something, right?
Jack, of course, also gets a card. Te card advertises "Honest Toshi's Corporate Dog Grooming" and lists a couple of phone numbers." Please lemme know, yeah. And I'll do the same. The quicker we get this taken care of, the better."
Jack
"I'm sure somebody said something about the evils of industry, some-when," he says, in response to Cat's warning.
And, okay. He'd wondered before what Winthrop's tie with Cat was, or vice versa. What hold was there. What grasp. Was it just that every king needs a Fool, to speak his story plain? Was blood involved, some stray resemblance sketched out by tell-tale features? Was blood involved in other ways, or was it just that carpetbagging Ventrue's dominating acuity? He thinks about it now when Cat speaks of rescuing 'Winny' from the gullet of a beast. Aww. Loyalty, even in this kingdom of darkness.
Cat stands; Kali stays crouching. Jack stands, too, tucking those papers under his elbow, and from his trouser pocket he pulls one of those very boring very flat wallets that embody nondescript. He digs through businesscards before finding one for Kali.
"Be safe."
Then with another wiggle of fingers, Jack leaves. Exit, stage right, all appropriate [invisible (the under-world has its demands)] motions made.