multiversallogs | you might take one more night

Who: Deacon Frost and others! Open log.
What: The aftermath of Mafaton's siege, and ensuing broke-dimension chaos.
Where: Mafaton.
When: Throughout the first week, necessarily at night unless you're tagging in in the undercity.
Notes: Various places to tag in! Either clearing out remaining Candlelighters, or helping defend or simply socialising in Gutters, hunting during the night time for both food and big-uglies to kill. Feel free to PM/plurk me if you have any questions or need some ideas, I'm good for thread-starting!
Warnings: Violence, NPC death, monster horrors.

It's a cliche, about vampires being territorial. This thought strikes Deacon as funny, because sometimes he fancies himself a little more sophisticated than the average vampire. Enlightened, if you will. But it's Baedal's fault for marking the neighbourhood of Mafaton so clearly on the map, for giving them something to possess in the first place.

Whatever. It's his town, now.

They probably should have given it up when night time fell for a second time since everything began, but maybe it needed to be cast by the power of the moonlight or some shit, fuck knows. Or maybe there's still the innately human logic of needing to do things under the cover of darkness, all of them hooded and moving swiftly to what might be considered an abandoned corner of Mafaton's borders. Marks are hastily drawn on the asphalt in crumbling chalk. Radio crackles, coordinates. The mage-- Deacon can't tell if she's here by choice or not, as she moves with them, her face pale with fear, but it doesn't really matter. The cluster spread out, pace like wary coyotes - some have guns, even. One has a crossbow. Others have steel pipes, wooden stakes, and probably anti-vampire trinkets that Deacon can't see from the vantage point he's taken from the end of the road. He can hear the chanting begin from here.

They cannot hear his footsteps, though, and no one thinks to catch the glint of folded steel from the sword he doesn't entirely need.

And Deacon never claimed to say that humans were the enemy. That's sort of like declaring war on venison, isn't it? The multi-legged, big toothed, multi-dimensional invaders seem as fascinated with Mafaton as they are with anywhere else. Sometimes they get into the undercity, slithering and scurrying and clawing through the tunnels where the nightwalkers hide from the sunlight. Gutters goes into lock-down, club turned safehouse, but it doesn't mean that certain monsters might not try to break in. During the pre-hours of dawn, the nightwalkers gather, sometimes bringing snacks to share, whether they're docile donors and familiars or screaming and kidnapped.

When night does come about, Deacon feeds on whatever warm-blooded humanoid is unfortunate and weak enough to cross his path, and runs with Ilde's advice: kill everything that doesn't belong here. Sometimes he works with employees, sometimes alone, sometimes with what almost counts as 'friends'. Things that are substantially bigger than him might get poked with a sword before left to bleed and die or survive as they might; others are taken down, hacked with steel or simply torn with steel-hard nails and a locking bite.

All in all, at least he has shit to do.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Good - we should be able to catch him, then." Ivan's not much of a tracker - he's been too thoroughly an urban creature for too long - but he knows how cities work, and he knows Mitchell. "I'd as soon get this taken care of. Some Candlelighters are overdue for an expression of Mafaton's displeasure."

As the move, he adds, "Have you run into much trouble yet?"

"It's mostly on the borders," Deacon says, itching his jaw with the palm of his hand, cigarette angled so as not to burn himself in the process. "They've got some voodoo going on, because I guess supernatural shit and genocide is fine when they're the one's doing it. I haven't sunk my teeth into the action yet; just looked."

He is still agitated, quite clearly, and the cigarettes are only doing so much if they do anything at all.

"Everything is always justified in the first person," Ivan comments, offhand. "I've been trying to stay focused until John's off the street."

"Yeah."

That word is all near sardonic rue, sighed out passed sharp teeth. "You think we can talk him into ripping off some more heads for his girl instead of being an idiot?" Deacon posits, his irritation leaked into his tone, a hand turning. Like this should be obvious.

"Christ I hope so. What he did before - that was the old Mitchell, but ever since he went clean the first time, he runs hot and cold like this. If we can get him good and angry, he'd be a help." Ivan's smile is sharp, almost private. "He always had a talent for bloodbaths."

How do you go clean, even, is what Deacon wants to know, and doesn't care enough to ask. There are too many kinds of vampires, these days, to sweat the details on what they do and do not need to get by. It usually comes down to blood, in the end, in whatever quantity.

"I was only half-kidding about the boxes. It's where we keep live produce."

"If it comes to that, I'm willing. I'd rather beat some sense into him, but I'll not have him giving those bastards anything they want." Even if that "something" was "himself."

"Maybe he'll come around. He's not the most stable man."

Meanwhile, as they're having this conversation, Mitchell is too busy glancing behind him as he rounds a corner, only to stop when he sees what two vampires are conferring on the street.

Oh, shit--

There is a frozen headlights moment of: have they seen me? Do I want to take the risk of a full out run?

Don't mind him as he tries exit side stage left, as quickly as possible.

Ivan almost sighs as he picks up his speed. "Are we really going to do this, Mitchell?" he shouts after the other vampire. It seems a bit juvenile, but then again, Ivan wasn't going to let that stop him.

Damn, son, how guilty can you get?

"Mitch-- for fuck's sake."

Deacon is moving, then, like a dog let off the leash, cigarette pitched aside and chasing as easily as if he were born to do so. He is also, notably, fast - there's a moment where his shape almost blurs around the edges, but it's not energy he is going to waste on the likes of his employee, and simply subscribes to an animalistic level of speed, preternatural when fit into a human frame, rather than going into true bullet time.

It is altogether possible he catches up, and grabs a hold of Mitchell's jacket, and flings him into the wall. Unless Mitchell possesses his own cheetah-like speed bursts. Then it just might take Frost a little longer.

you might take one more night

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