flick on your loosest tooth with your tongue

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

Who: Réjean and Anna
What: Meeting, chatting, and an introduction to the Baedal vampire community.
Where: A thoroughly filthy dive bar.
When: Newdi night.
Warnings: For now, expect language.

The Crown and Tiger is a low-slung, semi-basement type of establishment where the only thing stickier than the bar is the floor. Among it's other qualifications -- such as the walls, floor, and upholstery, all being a similarly mysteriously stained brown -- the owner doesn't mind trading favours with Réjean and that alone is worth his patronage.

After speaking to Nuala and setting up a time and place, Réjean can be found sitting in a quiet booth with the paper and occasionally checking his CiD.

Comments

[indiscreet]

She sighs; tries her best to take it all in, but the truth is that it is deeply unnerving, to hear of these Kindred who are...not Kindred. Who are other, and deadlier for it.

"Can you believe that when I came here I actually found myself thinking that at least things couldn't get any stranger, any more dangerous, than in the place I had just left? All this...it might actually give the Baron a run for his money." A pause, and it occurs to her to clarify. "He was True Fae, the Baron. And an ass." And, for all she knew, he had turned Chicago into some hell of metal shards and his own endless, changing whims, because none of them had known how to stop him.

She flips the paper around in her hand and runs her eyes over the names, not so much taking them in as noting their presence. Time to get to business: this Réjean says he will help her, and she sure as hell isn't going succeed in impressing him, apparently.

"I suppose this is the part where you're lenient, then, and tell me what I'm supposed to do. Who do I need to speak to? Whose good opinion matters? And...if I should seduce some young nobody who's half seas over, then leave him alive and the happier for having met me... Is that something I can ever expect to do again without bringing about whatever stands in for a blood hunt in this city?"

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"Life sure is hard, isn't it? And full of all kinds of wacky misadventures, too." Réjean rolls his eyes. Does it matter to him if her life wasn't a primrose path before Baedal? No. All that matters is that she adapt and do so before raising the ire of the citizenry.

"We've already passed the part where I've been lenient. I didn't call the sheriff and report you for assaulting me and everyone in this bar." Kindred may be able to walk among the kine without the Masquerade, but it means that they're also held to the same rules as all the rest of the riff-raff. "What you need to do is keep your nose clean, get it up out of the air and everyone else's ass, pay attention, remember that no matter how many years you have, you're nothing here. I'm nothing here. If you can seduce some dumb fuck into a snack, more power to you. It's not illegal to feed with permission."

/edits into this into the Longest Post

[indiscreet]

Oh, that eyeroll was just too much.

Normally it wouldn't have mattered. Even you shouldn't have known what I was doing, you self-satisfied bastard.

And was he making up words, just to mock her? She'd never heard "wacky" before in her life, and half-suspected it might be sexual. It would be like him.

"You know what? I've stopped using my discipline when you asked -- despite, I might argue, not a little personal risk in going unprotected around such a trustworthy group as ourselves -- and even apologized for the offense. Despite what you're so determined to think, I'm not a fool. We're both nothing here? That makes us equals, with the exception that you've had more time to learn what in God's name you're doing."

Her temper apparently vented, Anna pauses; collects herself -- though this time she doesn't have to shift her appearance back to normal, so either it's been something she could control all along, or whatever triggered it the first time isn't here now.

"Granted, I suppose if any of this actually helps, I will be in your debt." She gives the word a meaningful emphasis. She had been Harpy once, after all; she knows her way around boons. "But these names don't mean much of anything to me, yet. They don't tell me whose ass my nose should be in, to use your phrase. I'd say I have even more a desire that I not fuck this up than you do, so could you please be more specific."

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"Are you done or should I hold your purse and earrings?" Réjean can appreciate that some people feel the need to hold onto their dignity in uncertain situations as a coping mechanism. He also knows that it makes them so much more enjoyable to cut down.

"The rules are: one -- you can live openly, but don't get caught feeding from the unwilling; two -- do not embrace anyone, ever; three -- flavours of vampire stick together, don't go looking for the others, during your short existence you won't like what you find, and finally -- if you screw the pooch on those, pray Hellsing gets to you before any other xenian. Hellsing will kill you, the xenians have fleshcrafters."

[indiscreet]

"Actually yes, holding my earrings would be quite considerate." She makes as if to remove one of them (a sparkly thing, pretty enough, though the design suggests costume jewelry).

Then she leans back in her seat, seeming satisfied. (Though, in truth, the word fleshcrafting brings back unpleasant associations. Anna has, in fact, encountered it, and the creature that resulted was... truly nasty, and all the worse for having once been Kindred.)

"In any event, Mr. Sept-Heure, thank you, you have been very helpful." A beat, and she adds, "If I haven't been staked and left to the sun within the week, I will consider myself to owe you a favor. And I'm sure you'll find some way to make me regret it."

With a quirk of her lip, Anna rises from her seat (another fluid motion).

"Shall I give your...regards to Ms. Barrett?"

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"Mon p'tit chou, I don't give a ripe fart for Ms. Barrett beyond how her own pigheadedness can get us both staked out in the sun. Don't send my regards, send along the warnings I've given you, hein?" Baedal doesn't need a Prince like a traditional Kindred city and Réjean doesn't need to need to act as a traditional Seneschal or Scourge, but he will fight for some semblance of order.

"Ask her what's worse, a little sting to her pride or being grafted into a piece of living wallpaper for one of the deep-city Kindred."

[indiscreet]

At that, Anna actually stifles a snort of laughter: if there is anything she shares with Réjean, it is a pleasure in seeing Mina squirm.

"I shall be certain to pass on the information -- and the question, Mr. Sept-Heure."

She begins to walk away, then turns one final time.

"Can I find you here, should I need to contact you again?"