multiversallogs | i understand how riots start. i just don't understand why they ever stop.

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i understand how riots start. i just don't understand why they ever stop.

Who: Ilde, Remy and Erik
What: Erik needs 'reading material', and also a beer. Remy and Ilde are here to help.
Where: A riverside restaurant and bar of Remy's choosing.
When: After this log and this post.
Notes: I'M SORRY I'M ALL OVER THE LOG COMM >_>
Warnings: Mentions of blood and sex.

While Ivan may ordinarily be a light sleeper, the intoxicating nature of Ilde's blood tends to knock him out like the dead (so to speak--) and when she disentangles herself to pack up her sealed bag for the water, he doesn't stir. The folders go into the bag first, followed by clothes she won't have trouble pulling on by the river, a pair of shoes and her purse. She leaves it open, sitting on the end of her bed in Ivan's shirt to call Remy and Erik both before she leaves (letting Erik know she's on her way, letting Remy know she had copies handy and she'll bring Erik to the bar) and before she drops the CiD in with everything else and seals the bag. There's something extremely useful about having something she can take into the water with her, and knowing her luck one of these days it's going to get broken, but until then...

Ivan- I've got something to do tonight. I'll be back before morning. If Angus gets in again, just put him out.

Once she's refastened the bracelet she was wearing earlier, she slings the strap of her bag across her body so it'll rest against the back of her hip when she hits the water and lets herself out of the villa to go down to the river. It's familiar territory, by now, and she changes form mid-motion, diving deep down where she knows it best. She has her own landmarks to follow - rivermarks, if you will - and getting to Brock Marsh isn't terribly complicated.

Surfacing when she reaches the bridge, she lingers in the water for a short while, just watching.

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(Once, Remy went on a two-day bender with Wolverine, and the both of them actually managed to get pretty smashed. He had the worst addiction to Canadian beer for months after.)

"Despite all the lead up," and he speaks on the slower side here, reflective, "It don't feel like a political statement to me. Nobody took credit. Right?" He looks at Erik and Ilde both, like, Did I miss something that obvious? He doesn't think so. "It's vicious but it ain't targeted at vampires. It's targeted at everybody. Grotesque - they used 'em as a weapon. Terrorists always take credit, no matter what it is. Anonymously, usually, some big collective message to spread out the blame, so they can hide behind a cause. And not a word out of 'em."

He takes another swallow of his beer, shakes his head. "Somethin's weird about it."

The way he speaks of these attacks - it's not flippant or callous; there's compassion, but his anger is old. Jaded. This is not the first time he's sat somewhere and pulled apart the threads of something blood-soaked and hateful.

"They could be waiting." This he says while flicking ash from his cigarette, just now taking on the air of a man genuinely engaged in conversation, however subdued it may be. "Either way, I'm not convinced that it wasn't done primarily as a means of decimating the city's population of cruorvores." He learned not to use the term man-eater very quickly, courtesy of Mafaton. "Whoever's responsible must've known they would end up being exterminated."

With a nod to Ilde, "And who benefits? Depends on who you are... some might say everyone does. Fewer predators to worry about." He does a sort of shrug here, mostly with his hands, then rests his elbows on the table, still trailing a little smoke with each gesture. "The remaining cruorvores will certainly benefit from reduced competition, once they've recovered, but that seems like too convenient an answer to me."

Ilde shakes her head, quickly. "Not convenient. You can kill cruorvores with the right kind of blood--" she sounds awfully familiar with that, which may or may not be interesting, "--but they didn't do that, they took their control away. Piss poor control already, at the edge of desperation."

If decimating cruorvores was the primary goal, even considering the population drop, it was an unnecessarily convoluted plan that put most of the rest of the city at risk. It doesn't sound right to her, somehow.

"If you wanted to make life harder for xenians, obvious predators are like a gateway drug for bigots. I think."

"Whomever infected the blood supply coulda just poisoned 'em," he agrees. "It's overkill. You do that when you're so mad you lose control, or if you're doin' a fan dance. No?"

And it was an awfully precise operation to be someone furious beyond reason. Remy is skeptical - annoyed, yes, but still skeptical. (It is interesting, and not altogether surprising, to watch what details Erik digs his heels in over.)

His voice is dry when he continues, "Not that terrorist bigots ain't capable of multi-tasking." Blow away a huge chunk of the cruorvore population and make a smoke screen for whatever your real purpose is? Fantastic! "Efficiency at it's worst."

When he exhales this last time, it's done quickly, just to make room for his reply. ...He sure burned through that thing, didn't he. It can linger between his fingers for a moment, though, as sort of a prop while he points at the two of them.

"That's precisely what I mean. Look at all they've accomplished with this one stroke—that period of unease caused by the shortage was the perfect lead-in to the riots. If the infection had come out of nowhere it would've been a shock, but with all that time for unease to fester, and for the propaganda to be distributed, it was definitely set up to linger. And now, not only is there a palpable sense of fear and anger on both sides of it, but a significant number of those who pose a serious physical threat to those involved in the anti-xenian movement are no longer a factor."

Consider it a form a punctuation when he finally presses the cigarette butt into...hopefully an ashtray, but if not, whatever's handy will do. Perhaps a spoon.

"It'll only get worse from here."

"People are arseholes," she observes, with a bare little sigh, and she might mean humans but she's always reminding herself that they're not all like that. They're not all just waiting to put her in a cage. (She knows this when the decent sorts are around; it's harder to remember when they're not.) "Of course it gets worse."

There's no use asking when she became such a cynic; anyone paying attention already knows.

"It's already worse," he deadpans, and stubs out his own cigarette before tossing his pack in the center of the table - go for it, y'all. "It always is."

Beneath the surface.

Remy refills his beer, offers to do the same for Erik if he likes. (He's gonna scream when he gets home - no, he's not. He's just going to laugh, and lay his head in Wanda's lap and try not to have a goddamn migraine.)

"So. We can try an' figure out what they're gonna do next. We can try an' figure out what they're really doing. We can try an' find them, ask very politely what they're doing, and blow up the rest of their fuckin' buildings - or." He takes a drink. "We can look into all of those things, pending we network this properly."

Erik completely approves of both their summations—he accepts a refill, too, and lifts his glass briefly in thanks. With any luck, he'll actually catch a few hours of sleep before his shift begins tomorrow.
Yes, he has a day job. Right now they're laying train tracks. Imagine it. (He's being paid to hone his skills, basically.)

"Absolutely. Our terrorist friends aren't the only arseholes capable of multitasking." Gosh. Ilde's a bad influence, clearly.

"I like all of the above," the theoretical bad influence in question observes, reflectively, fidgeting with her cigarette. Sonja's working on something of her own with regard to the Candlelighters, she's vaguely aware; she doesn't have details and it doesn't bother her when it's Sonja. (At the end of the day, no matter how much she likes anyone else in the city, Ilde'll do what she tells her to do. Thus far, there hasn't been a conflict.)

Though she's considering asking for a definition of 'networking properly', a thought diverts her and she says, "Someone was speculating that the blood was vampire politics. Jockeying for position. I don't think that fits, but if part of anyone's goal was removing threats, I think it was a miscalculation. The stronger ones will have survived. Annoyed."

She's just saying. ...it could be useful.

Well we can't have too much honing going on here, so drink up, dude.

"See," he leans against one elbow on the arm of his chair, and smiles at Ilde. "That's the kind of networking I'm takin' about. Annoyed vampires sound like people we need to know. So everybody go make some friends, no?"

This is a very shallow, but nonetheless accurate, peek into how Remy gets shit done in Baedal. Mixing and shifting people and information like cards, stacking the deck the whole way.

He could use this as an opportunity to say that he's a step ahead of this word of encouragement, but it seems unnecessary—that and Njoki would no doubt prefer to be left unmentioned. So, instead: beer, and agreeable nodding. It's been a while since he raised his drink to anyone without intending to murder them, honestly—besides Charles, anyway—and he takes a moment to reflect on this as he swallows. Turning the glass in his hand, watching the foam sliding down. The ghost of a crooked smile lingering. That's...probably best left unmentioned, too.

"Who else is working on this?" With us, he means.

Edited 2011-10-24 21:13 (UTC)

"Directly?" Ilde shrugs, glancing at Remy, thinking momentarily about making friends and the various ways in Baedal that she acquires her own information. After a beat, "Less than indirectly, I think. Maybe I'll go talk to Ivan's new friend with him, if I can swing it."

She seems confident that she can, and she's probably right. How that'll actually go is anyone's guess at this point, but it's too interesting not to pursue and if it could be helpful, later...well, that would be something.

"What the hell does directly mean?" Haw haw, that's only funny to Ilde... and not actually very funny at all, Gambit. He just flashes her a smile, and then nods about Ivan and whomever the new friend is; presumably somebody of the undead variety.

"I got some people." He lights another cigarette. "Wanda's the brains of my operation, obviously, but she don't do too much fieldwork."

He's just going along with the assumption Erik knows, really. They live together with her children, it's not at all a secret, and the tone of voice in which he delivers that potential nervous sledgehammer is both familiar and steadily affectionate. Heedless, he carries on.

"I figure John'll be in. Clarice, too, even if she hates my ass. There's a guy over up by the north border who's been doggin' me for a conversation, I gotta go see what's up with that."

Those pale eyes of his flick between Remy and Ilde maybe twice, as though this will help him understand whatever inside joke they've got going, there. In any case, That Which Shall Not Be Named is known to him, and by the way he looks at Remy after the mention of Wanda's name—obliquely, relaxed, measuring—it's likely he is still deciding how he feels about it. There's no sense of bristling, anyway. (If there were, would he even be here?)

He's considering lighting up again, himself, but sticks to the beer instead. "I've spoken with John and Clarice; they seem interested. Not about this, per se, but in general." In him, he means.

Remy's joke makes her laugh, quietly, terrible as it is - she really does enjoy her James Bond routine, she'll continue volunteering to do more of it - but she says, "I think mostly the vampires will be interested so far as what affects vampires. It's like that in New York, too; it isn't our monstrous world that bothers them, they just don't like to be prey as well." Her tone is tolerant, almost indulgent, like she's just talking about bad puppies that nevertheless deserve a biscuit.

"They're prone to that." Being interested in Erik? ... Apparently. But he sounds so effortlessly business as usual about it that it's hard to tell. He doesn't mind cultivating the appearance that he's the man with all the answers, anyway, and he doesn't seem inclined to give the other man any particular Looks about the subject of himself and Wanda. There are bigger, badder parental units back at home to really worry about, where that's concerned.

(One time he got into a fist fight with Mystique on the lawn of the Xavier Institute For Higher Learning. True story.)

"The ones I grew up with tended to be a little better adjusted," he says, chuckling a little. The vampires at home for him are familiar faces, at least in New Orleans. Past that, they get a little weird, but everybody's pretty used to the fact that vampires are not the heaviest hitters by far.

"I've had no prior experience with vampires, personally." It doesn't sound like he's worried that this may mean he's missed out on something special. The overall air about him can now be qualified as 'chill', actually. More or less. The beer may have something to do with it—that and feeling like he's actually making steps toward a goal, now, thanks especially to these people. "Apart from the metaphorical kind, of course." Of course. "Any tips for a beginner?"

This is quite a drink he's taking now. Behold it.

"Let them think that they're important," Ilde advises, thoughtfully, stirring her drink with one of the cherries still in it. She's easing into good humour, which is equal parts nicotine and company; she likes them both, even if she's more inclined to trust Remy than Erik. (Timing is everything, there - her loyalty is worryingly easy to gain.) "They like that. Ego."

"Watch their hands, and don't drink anything they give you." Thrall: not actually all that fun.

"We had a pretty old local community in New Orleans," he says, with the air of someone who is now going to tell a story, and this is basically what they get for sitting down with beer with a pleasant-tempered Cajun, "And one of them big old graveyards over catacombs from fuck-knows-when. Most of 'em lived in houses just fine, but every so often if somebody went back in a grave, they'd sleep there. We had this game as kids in the winter, when it'd get dark real fast, to go wait by the gates at sunset, and we'd dare each other to run in and touch the headstone of the clan elder, and see if we could make it back before it got black out." He starts chuckling a bit. "And if anybody was there and you were too slow, they'd reach up outta the ground and grab at your ankles, and we'd just run screamin'."

Erik nods as though he understands Ilde quite well—you know the sort, chin up first, the nods coming slowly after, looking like he's recalling a specific thing. And so he is. He's not going to mention it, though. That's a little heavy for this table.

..Even though Remy is now talking about being attacked by dead things. "They actually grabbed your legs?" Somehow, he looks both concerned and entertained at the same time.

"Wait--" Ilde leans back from the table slightly, gesturing with a cherry she'd been about to put in her mouth. "What about drinks? Isobel tried to compel me with eye contact, but she couldn't manage it-"

He nods at Erik, still chuckling a little, because his sense of humor is... like that.

To Ilde, "If a non-vampire drinks a vampire's blood, you can end up bound to that vampire until it gets out of your system. There's a whole lot of species of 'em, so it don't work the same in every instance, but it's still not somethin' you want to mess with. Some of 'em can hypnotize people too through suggestion like that, which-" he holds up his hands, like see? "If you watch their hands and not their eyes, you can break up continued contact, and check if they're slippin' you a roofie." He takes a drink. "I think you're too high on the evolutionary chain for 'em to get away with it unless it's one hell of a mind whammy, though."

The briefest thought occurs here to Erik—something about it being too bad that trick doesn't work on telepaths, for which he immediately feels sort of contrite, and then feels sort of strange for feeling contrite, the whole thing culminating in a little brow-frown and a sort of fluttery blink. It's a complicated thought, yes, and leaves him looking vaguely perplexed. Perhaps it will succumb to death by swallowing.

He could just be pondering vampires. Yes, that is what's happening here.

"Are there any vampires in the cohort?" See.

"Ivan, a few others. One or two at Hellsing." ...Ilde knows too many fucking vampires is what they can take away from this conversation, apparently. "Isobel, but she's gone- she couldn't compel me, I think because I can do that, too."

How casually she drops that into conversation.

"I know some of them can heal with their blood, too. I wonder if she just left that part out of her offer or if it's not binding with that breed." ...not Isobel, but she's thinking out loud in her slightly disjointed way, putting the last end of her cigarette out.

"There's a couple, yeah." Remy saw some nervous-looking familiar faces at the tolerance rally, and he had is suppositions prior anyway. He doesn't seem shocked by Ilde's admission, but then, being as genre-savvy as he is, he more or less already assumed. (He's not actually as reckless as he seems, despite having no defenses against magic, he just knows where to pick his battles.)

"It's usually the trade-off of that, I've seen people gain the good bits of vampiric powers from blood, but it puts you in thrall all the same. I'd avoid it, personally." You know, like some mediocre restaurant, or whatever.

i understand how riots start. i just don't understand why they ever stop.

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