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Boy, have I got a story to tell you! [Joey, anyone at Elysium!]
#11
Eavesdropping is such a dirty word. A word with filthy, vile connotations. Jack doesn't eavesdrop. He fortunately overhears.

Other Kindred are there, because it is Elysium. The faceless members of court. Those who've chosen to keep in Denver in spite of the brutal winter, or perhaps even because of it: there are some who learn to take the nights night by night because they can lose themselves in the thrill and the promise of a perilous game.

The nosferatu - one particular nosferatu - is there tonight for a purpose. The purpose was over now, but it had its roots in the ground shaking, and now at his leisure he is reading over the last week's papers and keeping an eye on the rest of them. His demeanor is as polite - neat, trim, dagger-oiled, at-ready - and approachable even if his countenance is, uh. He's polite about it, let's just say that.

And he is extremely interested when Winthrop's mad protegé is given admittance. What luck that it would happen when he happened to be about. Cat. Jack likes cats. He likes Cats, too. And Kats. He's not fond of Kitty's, but there's been a Tom or two. Cat. The second Independent-ish with a strange and eldritch tale to tell in seven days. That means something, doesn't it. And here's the earth shaking, again, and the animals screaming a story or three (the tic of a frown [compulsive]), and hmm. He curls his tongue against the back of his teeth. He doesn't actually click it. Well, well, well.

And when Cat fixes him, in particular, with a stink eye, he just wiggles his fingers in an affable and beside-the-point huhllo, later using that same hand to turn a page of the newspaper, then to fold it up neatly and take the other up.
#12
There are things to be seen in fingerprints. Enigmas. Riddles. Great and wonderful mysteries. No two are alike and Cat studies every single one that she ever sees with a focus and intensity that few could ever understand or own. It's only the rich, confident baritone of the Brujah Elder that snap her out of it. Dark eyes lift. Her back straightens.

Was he...agreeing?

Rasmussen is agreeing with her. Agreeing! And Cat? Well, she couldn't be more validated - more proud. The edges of her mouth begin to tug outward and she's nodding her head deeply as if to say to all of them. See? SEE. Who's mad now? SEE.

[Wait, what? Oh, this isn't good. Not good at all. What did he say about Winny? {He said nothing, shut up. Pay attention. Pull your shoulders back!} His entourage? But Prince Winny is not gone. He's not!]

I thank you, Cat.

[Did you hear that? He thanked us! Ha! Things are looking up, yes sir-e!] Cat is smiling. She is young, caught in stasis and eternal youth somewhere between her eighteenth and twentieth year. When she smiles, it's a confusing thing to witness; on one hand she looks young and so a young woman smiling is, at first, a pleasant enough thing...yet on the other, there is a plasticine feel to it. Her skin looks cool and pale and not at all soft to touch, her eyes do not twinkle or sparkle or shine with any sort of life. If a human could meet a shark beneath the ocean, and if that shark were to smile a big toothy grin, that might be similar to Cat's smile. Dead dark eyes and a predators countenance.

[Did he just smile? {Do Brujah's smile?} Of course they smile you ponce! {Oh shut up. As if you knew..}]

Cat has to look away so that the King incumbent does not see her expression shifting in response to the Others as they bicker over Brujah and their smiles. Rasmussen doesn't have to really say to her that she can go. Or that he is finished with her. When he seems to leave the conversation Cat is already gone. She noted the little wiggly fingers from Jack. No one else offered her any wiggly fingers.

While he reads his paper, Cat is sitting near him. She'll sit in the chair next to him. She'll prop herself on the table if it'll hold her weight. She'll even sit on the floor at his feet, near his right leg, and watch him with a gaze that has been labelled on more than one occasion as unsettling.

"Do you know what I saw tonight?" She asks Vampire Jack, mouth twisting as she waits anxiously for his response.
#13
It is providence, perhaps, that this is the night that Kali decides to stop by the Elysium. She's checked in a couple times before of course, made appearances. She claims membership within the organization, after alll...and yes, we acknowledge that this is strange for a child of Ravnos, but that's not the point. Actually, perhaps it is the point. The tribe that is nicknamed Deceivers and Gypsies (the former is typically quite accurate, the latter also true but with less frequency) is usually viewed with such suspicion that it behooves any member of both the clan and the Camarilla to show up with semi-regularity so that people don't have an excuse to wonder if it wasn't all an act that has been thrown aside like a Halloween mask. That's why it isn't entirely unusual for the dusky-skinned woman (relatively dusky-skinned anyway; she is dead, after all) to be seen at the place.

And that's how it is tonight. Kali has taken time away from her business of peddling chemicals to the kine in order to show up at Richthofen Castle. She's always as sociable as people allow her to be; it is one thing to be of the low clans within the Camarilla but another to be a member of a clan that does not as a whole claim membership in the Sect. Kali takes whatever snubs she might get in stride and never seems bothered by them; she has more important things to worry about then how far down one's nose it takes to look at her, unless there is an active threat in those imperious stares. Even those, she disarms with a smirk and (if appropriate and not getting her ass in trouble), a sharp-tongued comment.

It so happens that tonight, she's more interested in information before she addresses the elephant in the room. That elephant, of course, would be the "earthquake" at the zoo...which she assumes wasn't from an actual elephant. There are rumblings of a much less physical nature that have reached her ears...rumors and speculation that could spell out bad things, for her and for everyone. She's standing in the middle of a couple of licks talking about some other nonsense about territory and such when she sees Cat come in and hears her mention the zoo.

Jack calls it fortunate overhearing. Others call it eavesdropping. Kali, for her part, calls it "taking the pulse of the city." The irony is not lost on her, and is likely why she chose it as her synonym du jour for spying. She tunes out the prattling flying past her ear and focuses on Cat's tale, a delicate brow raising. Mouths and animals losing their shit and more. She frowns deeply, though it's a quick and instinctive reaction before she banishes it away.

This is not good.

Kali waits until Cat has stepped away from Rasmussen's presence and gone over to speak with Jack before she approaches. (The other two Kindred don't get the courtesy of an "excuse me" and probably don't care.) The Ravnos is in her usual style of dress, which means she's rocking a black and red corset and jeans with knee-high boots and a leather jacket. (Hey, corsets lose a lot in discomfort when you don't actually have to breathe.) She doesn't offer wiggly fingers, but she does give the Malkavian (and the Nosferatu she's approaching) a grin of greeting as she steps into their vicinity.

"Quite a story." It counts as a 'hello,' the words of course said to Cat. There's nothing suggesting she doesn't believe it, though her general (and usually-present) amused stance could conceivably be interpreted as such. "Are the gorillas okay?"

That second sentence, at least, sounds sincere. Cat expressed that she liked the gorillas, and Kali wants to know whether the other's favorite primates made it through okay.
"The anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules."
"Good men don't need rules. And today's not the day to find out why I have so many."
#14
The finger wigggle: apparently the appropriate bait when fishing for cats. Cats. Cat-fish. Get it? Right.

There is something in this tableau of a little girl sneaking up on an adult. Here is Jack, reading the paper after that finger-wiggle. Here is Cat come like a cat herself, closer and closer again. Here she is, sitting near him, looking. She is using the chair, or perhaps she is propping herself on the table, or maybe she is going from one to lean against the other; perhaps she is at his feet near his leg, staring. Decidedly creepy, those dead shark eyes in such a sweet girlish face, even married as it is by anxiety.

Jack abandons the paper when she speaks, laying this final fold genteelly across his leg. His right ankle is on his left knee and he leans forward to pay her the attention he believes she deserves. Now, there is a brightness to Jack's eyes - a gloaming vitality that acts as much like a star in Dream's eye than anything else. How many kindred look him in the eye? Easier to flinch away, to look None Too Close. But Cat's looking at him anxiously, and

Do you know what I saw tonight?

"Let's see if I do. And since my eyes weren't there, help me flesh out the details. The kine were down? Were they wounded bloody, or in a faint? Conscious or," wry, on the word, "blissfully unaware? The mouth opened and ate them: Was it a clean kill?"

He adjusts his position with the air of someone in horn-rimmed glasses adjusting his spectacles and clearing his throat before a full room. The adjustment is gentle and it gives him a moment to scrutinize the approaching Ravnos, whose grin of greeting and presence seems welcomed by the nosferatu Jack, if his nod is anything to go by and why wouldn't it be Jack is not inherently threatening and a nod is a welcome, before his attention returns to Cat. Are the gorillas okay?

ooc: So, y'all, we should totally try to play this in the chats. I'll try to shout around the ooc room for you.
#15
She had, originally, opted for the floor. Her knees were bent, drawn up so that she could wrap her arms around them. But in her unbearable anticipation of Jack's response, Cat had slowly been moving. Inching her way up. Closer. Unable to be still in any remote sense of what the statement 'to be still' means. By the time the Nosferatu responds she is perched somehow on the arm of his chair without care or concern for his Clan or the confounded expression on the face of the other Kindred nearby.

"Yes." She says with a deep nod. "But. No, no. That is what I saw, but not what you need to know." Cat's face becomes almost contorted with the amount of effort she's putting into whatever is going on behind her eyes. [you can't speak to his mind, you're not a Jedi, you don't have the force. No Midi-chlorians here!] Sighing, she draws in closer and says to him: When you build walls, that is dangerous. A dangerous thing. Walls mean something is going to want in. Right? Something will want in. No walls.

Then, without as much effort for privacy though she speaks quietly all the same, "I saw...corvus brack-e-o..." [brackeosoreus!{no, you idiot, brackensores is what it is.} don't listen to him, he just wants you to look stupid.] "..brack..brak-e-ryen-chos. Do you know that? I saw a crow. Do you see the significance in this? Do you understand? No. Yes. Yes you do. You're smart. I can smell it on you. It's important because they roost. Crows roost. But this one was not. Was not roosting. It was cawing at me. CAW CAW CAW!" Her imitation is, quite honestly, awful and it very probably elicits a few dirty looks and snorts of laughter from the other Kindred. At least she didn't imitate the apes.

"Crows are omens. Yes. The Irish say the crows are pets of Morrigan. You know that? Yes, you do. The goddess of war and death, right? Right? And the Norse, and the dirty Australians..." Her hand lifts and she starts to tuck fingers under for each thing she names off.

"The Chaldean, Greeks, Hindu, Buddhists, the Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Hindus." Her voice starts to elevate as she draws out her point. "Thessalians, Illyrians and Lemnians and Veneti!"

[Shhhhh{don't let her hold you back, you're doing well!!}hhhh!]

She is hushed by her own Other's when the Ravnos approaches. Cat is gnawing at her fingernails by now. By this time, she's rocking back and forth. Dark eyes latch on to Kali and she nods to her.

"True story." She corrects the pretty Kindred. "Yes. The mouth only had a taste for sheep tonight."

Cat stands and gives a stare at a neonate sitting in a rather high backed chair - quite comfortably - watching the goings on all around him with an expression that is half fascination, half apprehension.

"He's in my chair." She says. "You let them take your chair and then they want your shoes and your coat. Then they want your skin! You can't let them have any of it. Not one bit."

[[That sounds good. I should be around save for an hour or two the whole morning / afternoon!]]
#16
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.
#17
[ And with that we're going to close up this thread. Like I said, even if you didn't get a chance to post in by now, you can still say your PC was around Elysium to overhear some of what got said, even if it's repeated by someone else. ]


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