isn't really the best place to do a lot of thinking

[fuckin_thirsty]

Who: Deacon Frost, Ilde Decima and Ivan.
What: An invitation accepted.
Where: Gutters.
When: Now.

On the surface, time is dictated by the sun, a given constant. Down here, it's a subjective measuring of wound watches and the steady, relentless tick of digital numbers, but it can also be measured by the amount of people flowing through the underground passageways that stem into Gutters.

Otherwise, the lighting doesn't care. The shadows are thick where there isn't that piercing sheen of artificial light staining the concrete walls, iron bars and steel pipes, and that's just the corridor, currently playing host to the nightlife ducking down underground. The space itself is as impervious to the logical progression of time as the people it caters to, permeated with the scent of the underground, water and earth, with cigarette smoke, with copper and salt. Music aches through the floor, a heavy bass, and security isn't particularly overt, but certainly present - that isn't counting the guy at the door handing off the money people give to get in.

This isn't really the best place to do a lot of thinking.

But it is Deacon Frost's natural habitat regardless, for all that he doesn't feed here, doesn't dance much, doesn't strike up meaningful conversation a hell of a lot. He's moving out of the backrooms and into the larger space, doing up the sleeves of his shirt with his CiD gripped in one hand, and going about his evening. Eventually, he's going to need some fresh air.

Comments

[deservesadaisy]

"And because she's the most stubborn woman," he says, mild. "I had a conversation with a man recently via CiD. I was hoping I might continue it, if I could find him."

[fuckin_thirsty]

Oh.

Somewhere between guessing outright (he didn't) and being entirely unsuspecting (he wasn't), Deacon raises an eyebrow with half-smirk turning into a more knowing smile of confirmation, minorly oversized canine teeth a-flash in the dim light, a display that should surprise no one down here. Hey, if she can show her teeth--

"I fucking hate texting, so, glad you could make it. Walk with me."

Mostly to get out of the crush of crowd, which Deacon navigates well enough, leaving the winding trail of smoke like a trail to follow. "You too, princess."

[rhinemaid]

At home it was usually principessa, but nevertheless the appellation isn't exactly a new thing and Ilde doesn't react to it-- though maybe she just missed it when he turned to lead them on. Either way, she's got no intention of being left behind and just digs her thumbnail into Ivan's palm for that (entirely correct) crack about her mulish tendencies, trailing them through the space they make in the crowd.

It's easy to let them take focus, to fade a little into something pretty and ostensibly pointless, because she honed that ability long before she started trying to use it to slink into places she shouldn't be. It's what she does now, catching hold of Ivan's elbow with her other hand so she doesn't get lost, wondering only fleetingly if anyone can tell what's in her veins just by smell.

[deservesadaisy]

Ivan would rather her along; if she was listening to them, she wasn't getting eaten by someone else

"Texting has its uses," Ivan agrees, as they go, "but I do feel we hit their limit. Nice to meet you."

[fuckin_thirsty]

"Ivan, right? Call me Deacon."

If Ilde wants to offer her name and purpose, she is free to. Deacon doesn't otherwise stop to make sure people feel included as he more or less leads them out of the pack of wolves they're surrounded by, for all that snapping and biting at people clearly within the company of the management would be a stupid idea.

Up towards a low rise railed off in wrought iron, which signifies a measure of privacy in principle only. He finds a spot to lean. "At least it got you curious. To be honest, I've been hearing a lot of apologetic bullshit over the lines, and I sort of expected more of the same. Thanks for surprising me."

[rhinemaid]

The fact Ilde neglects to supply a name is no deliberate desire to be mysterious- it just doesn't immediately occur to her to do so. Of course, that she leaves off her purpose is more to do with the fact that she's still assessing whether or not she thinks this is actually going to be worth her while, worth their while, and she's curious but not yet committing. Vampires, she'd observed, are likely to care most about what directly concerns vampires; he could be the useful angry vampire they speculated about, or he could be preoccupied with one thing and disinterested in how it connects to the larger tapestry of bullshit.

A handful of remarks that she got secondhand won't tell her which, so she leans against Ivan and watches him, keeping her valiant protector (ha) between her and the iron. (It's fucking everywhere, it drives her up the wall.) "It was smart to use vampires," she murmurs, testing. "Introduction to Bigotry 101. Predators are the easy target. Push the city off-kilter. Especially if it's normal. Vampire numbers grow, then something happens- then there aren't so many vampires. It's a pattern in Baedal."

So Réjean told her. It's fun, having friends in strangely low places.

[deservesadaisy]

"It's also a population disinclined to band together," Ivan points out. "And people are angry, yes, but they're outnumbered. Xenians who aren't crurovores are hoping if they disassociate themselves, they'll be left alone. For the most part," he amends, as Ilde is an exception, and not the only one.

"Still. I dislike being used in someone else's power play."

[fuckin_thirsty]

Frost's attention is needling and interested when Ilde speaks up, listening with his head tilted cattish and filter tip of his cigarette hovered not far from his mouth. That focus is passed back to Ivan, finally, before he takes another deep inhale of smoke, cycloptic orange eye flaring brighter as the embers burn. Breathing being a thing he only does when given specific reason.

"They can be unified," he counters. "Given reason that's not too complex to grasp, like blood, power and freedom to fuck around. But you're right - all I'm hearing is rhetoric about laying low and going to ground. Disappointing."

He flicks ash off his cigarette with more agitation than his voice suggests. "So who's wanting the city off-kilter?"

[rhinemaid]

Ilde's gaze, in turn, is frank and frankly assessing; she's not unconscious of where she is (who she's with), but she isn't afraid and that may have a lot more to do with the things that are wrong with her than anything else.

"Candlelighters," she says, because while the extent of her activities are something she takes more care with - she's not inclined to indulge the Jane Austen book club's desire for secrecy. "This isn't an isolated incident."

[deservesadaisy]

Ivan nods. "I'm not sure yet it was only them, but it seems likely they're involved. All cloak and dagger, but they seem to have resources."

[fuckin_thirsty]

"All I know about those," Deacon says, after a moment's consideration that drags from fairy to fellow bloodsucker, "are fuckin' rumours and hearsay. What, they want some sympathy before stepping out of the shadows? Turn us into animals first?"

There's that edge, but Deacon isn't expecting these two strangers to answer him - thinking out loud, bitching, whatever you want to call it. He gets to the point along with an exhale of smoke when he adds, "If you're looking for information down this way, I'll be honest with you and say I got nothing, assuming that's the transaction you're after."

[rhinemaid]

"Not exactly." There's something very deliberate about those two words- maybe it's just the way she is, stiller than some dead things with a kind of bladed precision that skews her faint smile into something odd and out of place. (She is something odd and out of place.) "It's more of a networking endeavour."

They - or she, at least - have a little more to go on than just rumours and hearsay, and it can't hurt to establish contacts further through the city. Especially if they're thinking of being a little more forthright, ultimately, and in that case Deacon might be interested in being involved.

[deservesadaisy]

"No one knows much about them," Ivan clarifies. "But I thought it make sense to meet someone else who's properly angry about the whole thing."

Other people, like Ivan, might be hiding it. But he has his doubts. They should not be creatures of fear; they were the creatures that caused it.

[fuckin_thirsty]

That manages to be unexpected, enough that after a second, Deacon smiles wide, a dry, smokey sounding chuckle at the back of his throat. "Glad to have made the right impression," he says, with a glance back over his shoulder at the thinner crowd of vampiric life and their food, cut into silhouettes in the hard intermittent light of the bar.

He refocuses on his current companions, releasing another sigh of smoke. It's to Ilde, he asks; "What's in it for you?"

[rhinemaid]

Ilde studies him before she actually answers that question, measuring and steady. After a moment, she settles on, "That depends. Best case scenario, useful contacts. Worst case scenario, Ivan made a fantastic series of expressions when I said I was coming." Worst case where she still gets something out of this, yes, she's well aware how badly it could go. Ivan.

...it's not actually necessary to mimic his 'are you insane, tiny fairy' face, but she does, disregarding the fact she's still tucked up against him close enough to get pinched for it.

With a blithe smile, "I'm proactive." And she wants to blow Candlelighters to hell.

[deservesadaisy]

"She doesn't trust me not to get in trouble," Ivan speculates, "which I think is rather unfair." But then again, he's gotten over expecting fair from Ilde. And he might be playing off her, just a little.

"Also, she was in Mafaton when this idiocy happened." Which would give anyone good reason to dislike whoever caused it.

[fuckin_thirsty]

The ~couple~ act gets an eyebrow raise from Frost, for all that he allowed a half-smile to split across his face, too much sharp analysis behind his expression to ever truly seem friendly. But they weren't after friendliness in the first place.

He leans back against the iron, considering. "I didn't drink any handouts," he says, seeing as they're sharing war stories, more or less. It's said in a tone; one that communicates, he never drinks handouts. "But fuck if it still didn't hit us where it hurt. I figure--" He gestures with his cigarette, stabbing the air with it. "--if these Candlelighters were after bloodshed, if they want us to be fuckin' ravenous animals, hey, I'm more than happy to give it to them. Personal like.

"What happened in Mafaton wasn't anything."

[rhinemaid]

"It was an insult," she says, deliberately, her gaze following the wrought-iron railing with an absent and alike kind of mistrust; she really wishes they weren't talking so close to it. (It's displacement- the iron irritates her, she isn't thinking about whether or not she might actually get into trouble here, it's easier.)

She shrugs. "They hate all of us, 'xenians'. According to the rhetoric they left in one of the buildings they abandoned before the plague. We took what they left behind, blew the building. I'm interested in finding out more, and..." A shrug. "No one was in that building. Better luck next time."

There will be a next time, that smile says, and they're working with more than just rumours.

[deservesadaisy]

"I think it was likely a stepping stone. A demonstration. Crurovores are an easy target; get the humans properly afraid, and you can extend it out to the non-predators too." Not that there wasn't legitimate reason to be afraid of Ilde, but she didn't routine eat people.

[fuckin_thirsty]

"Fantastic. Politics and PR. Sounds like a sorry excuse for a war, if you ask me."

Not that what happened in Mafaton was anything to dismiss, but that's what it boils down to - how it looks and ensuing propaganda. Deacon isn't disagreeing, however, more open to listening to possibly informed theory than contributing his own. "But that's humans, what else're they gonna do."

[rhinemaid]

"Not an isolated incident," Ilde repeats, patiently, hooking her fingers through Ivan's belt-loops and letting her attention settle properly on Deacon.

"The plague shut down the entire city, forced divine fucking intervention from the Twelve Point-" the first hint of something under that coolly fey exterior, now, but it doesn't present as anything more remarkable than irritation, "-and then before that, the invasion. Genetic experimentation- one of the animal breeds they sent out acted as a receptacle for the smaller ones. Not natural. Diseased, too." They were disgusting; Ilde had spent her time in the river, and when they'd been stupid enough to come near her she'd made them regret it. Briefly. "After the invasion, we found the houses- what they had inside. Candlelighters. The houses became the hives that carried the plague, and the book club propaganda is consistent with the texts they left behind."

With a tilt of her head, she says, "But they get dismissed as rumours and stories and incitement and that doesn't seem like a bad strategy if you don't want anyone looking closely at what you're doing and why."

[deservesadaisy]

"Sounds rather like how we operated at home." 'We' being 'vampires generally.' "If you can get dismissed as a legend, you're halfway there."

[fuckin_thirsty]

"Except they're not. They've got buildings, and influence, and presumably, a jugular."

Deacon is just saying, really.

"Back home," he says, since we're on the topic, "we did it the same way. We also did it through politics, written treaties slide to human politicians under the table. I'm curious about whether the Candlelighters've got some arrangement with the authorities or if this is just their own very special crusade. Seems kind of unwieldy for just a hate-on for vampires. Xenians," he corrects, with a look tipped to Ilde.

Not a word he's completely used to, yet. Or a concept. At the very least, they're still 'delicious'.

[rhinemaid]

Some of them more than others- some of them significantly less so, as will inevitably discover the first vampire who pushes hard enough to find out just why Ilde refuses to take them seriously. (The reason is 'Sonja', and she is the far more frightening predator than any of the three people in this conversation.)

"Anti-xenian prejudice is common, maybe institutional." Which means it could go either way, as she sees it; it seems likely that they have high level allies, but it's equally possible that some people just don't give a fuck. Large parts of the city, in fact, routinely fail to give a fuck when it's a 'xenian problem' and not a human one - heaven help the first sanctimonious hunter pearlclutching at the thought of taking a human life to cross Ilde's path. As though their species is better, somehow-

Not that she's bitter.

"Not surprising. But interesting to pursue."

[deservesadaisy]

"My sympathy for the authorities is small. Either they actively helped, or they turned their heads." Which, in Ivan's opinion, is not much more helpful.