the hands of those monsters, ever cutting and scraping

[asklepios]

Who: Adam Monroe and Benevenuta Crispo
What: The first attempt. (If at first you don't succeed--)
Where: A few blocks away from Thames, in Flyside
When: Newdi evening
Notes: The polyvores never end. (Also, for clarity, this particular attack is not driven by Vicious' influence - he hasn't been in the city long enough - but will provide helpful context for later conflicts.)
Warnings: Blood, violence, temporary death (immortals just walk it off, yo). Self-injury to demonstrate healing properties.

Eccentric but sleepy, Flyside doesn't see quite so much excitement ordinarily - it must have seemed like an ideal opportunity to catch her leaving Thames, unprepared and undefended. Even on her own, she wouldn't have been either of those things, but Adam had shoved her into the doorway after the first blow (there's blood at her temple, and when one of the concerned onlookers gathering glances there she rubs her hand back into her hair to push it out of the way, smearing Adam's blood and providing an obvious explanation for her unbroken skin), and it had been a mess, violent and quick and tangling a confused and frightened group of bystanders in the ensuing mess.

The knife is still in his thigh, where it caught the artery - she's doing her best, but there's only so much she can do here on the side of the street, trying to simultaneously keep him conscious and force back the unhelpfully concerned members of the public who at least don't offer to call the Militia, avoiding the inconvenient position of being forced to either accept or say no. She's maintaining pressure on the wound with one hand and trying to dial her CiD with the other, but there's blood spurting through her fingers and his pulse is slowing and there's no time, which has always struck her as the stupidest complaint for her to make and that still doesn't change the fact that there isn't anything she can do. Well; palm the knife when he's dead, because even in moments like these she's a creature of forethought and she has no illusions about who the intended target was.

--and then she's swearing under her breath and improvising in a hurry, tearing strips from the bottom of her already-bloodstained blouse and binding them around his thigh in an effort to disguise the suddenly unmarked skin under his torn trousers. (She doesn't need to pull that tight, but her first instinctive response to his heroics was 'irritation' and now she's been blindsided twice over, as irked protests go it's a mild one.) “Act concussed,” she hisses in his ear, on the pretext of checking him over again.

Comments

[lazarusrisen]

Adam laughs, softly. "Anything I might've heard of?" He does like to read; when you needn't sleep there are so many hours in the day to fill.

He shifts forward slightly, one shoulder rolling in a half-hearted shrug. "If only I were so creative. Alas, no. I spent most of my life being a soldier of one stripe or another. But when medical technology caught up to me and made it harder and harder to hide what I was, I tried my hand at business." And here, he makes a face, because, if you can believe this: "While I was in Texas, I sold paper."

[asklepios]

“If you were ever an avid reader of French historical romances--” with a quiet laugh. She'd also worked briefly as a historical consultant for film and television, which had been...interesting; her employment history taken in full would probably make for an odd afternoon's reading.

“I've wondered at that inevitability,” she notes, thoughtfully. “Technology advances every day- and there are many of us, through history.” And she can't help but think it'd be a fucking blood-bath if they were ever outed en masse - the nature of what they are, the game that even people like Benevenuta can't entirely avoid. Enough of them believe in that prize; the arrogance and entitlement that goes so often hand in hand with immortality isn't always so benevolently applied as it is where the Serpents are concerned.

(And it's funny, that an assassins' death cult can be considered the benevolent option.)

“I think it would not be much like Baedal.” At least not much like it is now; she wonders at its history.

[lazarusrisen]

Adam shakes his head, wry. "I'm afraid not. Romances in general have never really been my thing--"

And not just in literature.

"--so I missed out."

He nods, a bit grave, at her observation. Things were different in his world; he wasn't one of many immortals but one of many people whose mutations, whose special powers were beginning to emerge and be questioned by science. "I was concerned about discovery," he admits, getting to his feet. "I worried what might become of me if what I could do got out. That I would be studied, examined, in the name of knowledge and understanding."

[asklepios]

“I have long suspected, for my own world, that it would mean war.” It'd be a clusterfuck, is what it would be - Immortals are by their very definition not team players, and although they might work together long enough to react brutally to any intrusion into their world and their business, it would never hold together. There'd be disagreement on how to react, there'd be factions-

It would be a mess. It wouldn't be Baedal.

“We are prone to that,” a little more wryly. “To fight is considered- our nature.” Does she consider it that way? Her tone doesn't suggest anything either way.

[lazarusrisen]

"Dear me," Adam murmurs. He's equal parts fascinated and horrified by that detail; it's interesting to him that there's an entire culture around his counterparts in her world, but he doesn't see the use if it would just lead to open hostilities.

"We--meaning those of us with the requisite genetic mutation--do not fight, but I can't say we wouldn't. I suspect it's a matter of us simply not knowing about each other. I do believe, were the larger world made aware of us, there might be conflict with them."