Two birds, one stone.

Serge Carlock

Cold, cold usually meant that crime decreased, that the angry, the stupid and the criminal went to ground until warmer days brought them forth like the vermin they were. But in the city of San Francisco it never quite got cold enough for this hibernation process to take place, and in the Tenderloin, the vermin ran the store, in the Tenderloin...it was as if every day was the middle of the summer.

Serge for his part could care less about the criminal element, at least in his day to day operations, if they were not an enemy, or a tool to be used, they were an irrelevance, a nuisance at best, a cooling, rotting vessel at worst. The Brujah made his way through the heart of their realm tonight, patrolling, investigating, searching out those few stray members of the rabble which called this place home. He had a job to do after all, being the whip it was his job to see to the foot soldiers, his job to make sure they toed the line...and on the occasion raged all over it.

He was dressed for the role as well, dressed to mingle with his kind, combat boots, black cargo pants, that menacing and effective vest that the smart realized was armour and the rest simply thought of as a garish fashion statement. The heels of his boots crunched against the sidewalk, as he moved along, looking into alley's watching store fronts. On the prowl, in the city....one of the best ways to spend a night.

Serge Carlock

[Per+Alert]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Dex + Stealth

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 5) ( fail )

Luce

Appearance + Performance

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( fail ) Re-rolls: 1

Luce

He sees her almost immediately; dressed nothing like she was or will be for court, in her golden gown. Wearing, instead, worn old jeans, an oversized hoodie over a t-shirt and a leather blazer, big enough to hide everything feminine about her shape. Nevermind the easy way she seems to disappear into that attire, her hair pulled back, the hood forward to shadow her features.

Serge recognizes the Toreador - who is now sitting casually on the low block wall in front of a burned out tenement building and watching the front entrance of the strip club opposite with a certain sharp and level attention. He can read that, too, somehow in the way the shadows fall across her body, which seems boyish, alert, masculine from this distance.

But which does not fool him.

The strip club has no name. Just a neon woman slowly removing her clothes to announce its presence and purpose, and a bleary-eyed bouncer standing outside the door, counting cash and talking on a cell phone.

And someone else, in the shadows down the alley flanking the building. Serge notices that, too.

Serge Carlock

His efforts, his out and about attitude was paying off, just not in a manner that Serge could have ever imagined. Marie-Helene, or Luce as she was now known appeared before him in anything but her refined Toreador glory, gone was the finery of the rose, replaced with the common threads of the streets, it does not surprise the man however, Serge himself knew all about switching roles, and there were times when he donned a fine suit, just as Marie-Helene now donned clothing to hide what she was.

He took a moment then to analysis the situation, to take in his surroundings, and he notes the bouncer, the club, the tenement, and the unknown element that lurked down the alley..he takes it all in before moving forward, moving towards the woman who was trying to remain incognito...he would do his best to aid her with that.

When he approached he did so quickly, moving with a purpose, his jaw set and his eyes narrow. As he stepped up to her he looked down at her, standing before her like a man about to confront someone who was where they weren't supposed to be.

His tone however is quiet enough for those around them to not hear, to them it would seem he was the quiet type...the type that you feared when at long last he raised his voice.

"Marie-Helene...it has been quite a while." He says warmly enough...for him at least. "What brings you to a place such as this?"

Luce

"You've heard about the graffiti around town?"

There is a brief flicker of - alertness - that runs over her narrow frame like water. Something electric to it; that movement, that gesture. The way her shoulders curve forward and her boyish body bunches, readying itself for movement. Which would be: retreat. She does not fill the space as he does. No one looks at her, this whip-slender, hunger-haunted creature, and crosses the street to avoid her. Not even in this boyish guise.

It cannot last; not when the streetlights hit her familiar features as she glances up at him, but there's something strained about her features. A flicker beyond his muscled shoulder at the entrance. The bouncer and his cash, the figure in the shadows.

"Wanted to take a look myself. Then," a faint lift of her chin across the street. "I saw him. Disappeared down the alley. So I'm waiting to see if he comes back out, or keeps going the other way." A faint flush of her half-smile. " - before I get the hell out of dodge.

"He might've caught onto me, though. That bouncer keeps looking over here."

Serge Carlock

Serge briefly turns to gaze back at the club, the look on his face like he couldn't give a damn as to why the person before him was here, he just wanted her out. The truth of the matter was of course...something else entirely.

Serge swivelled his head back towards them and let his head tilt ever so slightly. "The man in the alley is still there...but that does not explain why you need to run away when all you wanted to do was examine some graffiti left upon these walls."

He examines Luce's face in that piercing, intent way that he always did, Serge was never one to be concerned if another thought he was staring to much. It was part of how he operated after all. "Are either of them a threat in some way?"

Luce

"Is he?" she returns, lifting her little chin in a sharp gesture as if she might somehow see through the blocky immediacy of Serge's large frame, past him across the dark street. It is quiet, here tonight. The distant wash of traffic, the hum of the neon sign overhead. "He has a pale aura. And when he crossed the street and walked past those cars," this she indicates with no more than a flicker of her pale blue eyes. "he cast no reflection.

"The bouncer knew him; they talked for a few minutes, but instead of going inside the club he headed down the alley. No reason for that man to be outside just now, either. It's not like the have a line out of the door."

Indeed, quite as she said the street was empty; deserted except for the four of them. Serge and Luce on the sidewalk, the man lurking in the alley, the bouncer in front of the bar.

Serge Carlock

"Indeed..." Serge said as he looked Luce over for a few moments, considering options, scenarios. "A pale aura, and no reflection...I assume this is an individual you do not recognize from any of the meetings, from anything revolving around our little group of upstanding citizens?" He inquires as he begins to turn around, scarred arms crossing his chest as he regarded the club.

"Perhaps we should investigate." He says plainly. "Unless you would prefer to continue with your previous plan of leaving the area of course."

Serge Carlock

[Manip+Subt]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Luce

Per + Alertness

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Luce

Per + Alertness

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )

Luce

"I'd prefer to go," she tells him, unabashedly. A little hook of her narrow shoulders beneath that oversized jacket and hoodie, the weight of which seems far too much for her slim frame. There's a supple twist of her mouth then, she's lifting her chin up and outward, pale eyes shining, lovely, in the distressed amber light of the streetlamps.

"I'm not precisely an asset in a fight, Serge. A bit conspicuous in a strip club, too." A neat little shrug. "I can only carry the teenaged boy disguise so far."

Then something stiffens in her face. She braces herself on the retaining wall, one hand back on the frame, the other sliding into the deep kangaroo pocket of the hooded sweatshirt.

She is breathing; she always does. Part of the mask they were. Part of the masquerade. Her voice, when she continues, is breathy but sharp, a careful sort of whisper.

"Someone's coming. Don't look back. Not the bouncer. The one from the alley."

--

Serge maintains the show; that he's trying to chase her off his property, or the sidewalk. That those slump-faced tenements matter. That this kid's presence is unwelcome; and soon enough he hears the sweep of someone else's feet across the street, the crunch of boots on gravel. The sharp inhale of someone taking a deep drag on a cigarette.

"This little shit bothering you, man?" The stranger says to Serge's back, apparently taken in by his display. " - because I can take him off your hands. Harvey thinks he's been casing our place out."

If Serge glances up, now, he'll see an ordinary looking man in ratty jeans and an old t-shirt, black, advertising some Daytona Beach, Florida bar. Half-gloves on his hand, those leather, a cigarette in his mouth. When the stranger says Harvey he gestures back across the street at the bouncer.

"I'd like to know who for. Two birds, one stone man."

Serge Carlock

LUCE
"Is he?" she returns, lifting her little chin in a sharp gesture as if she might somehow see through the blocky immediacy of Serge's large frame, past him across the dark street.† It is quiet, here tonight.† The distant wash of traffic, the hum of the neon sign overhead.† "He has a pale aura.† And when he crossed the street and walked past those cars," this she indicates with no more than a flicker of her pale blue eyes.† "he cast no reflection.†"The bouncer knew him; they talked for a few minutes, but instead of going inside the club he headed down the alley.† No reason for that man to be outside just now, either.† It's not like the have a line out of the door."†Indeed, quite as she said the street was empty; deserted except for the four of them.† Serge and Luce on the sidewalk, the man lurking in the alley, the bouncer in front of the bar.

SERGE CARLOCK
"Indeed..." Serge said as he looked Luce over for a few moments, considering options, scenarios. "A pale aura, and no reflection...I assume this is an individual you do not recognize from any of the meetings, from anything revolving around our little group of upstanding citizens?" He inquires as he begins to turn around, scarred arms crossing his chest as he regarded the club. "Perhaps we should investigate." He says plainly. "Unless you would prefer to continue with your previous plan of leaving the area of course."

SERGE CARLOCK
[Manip+Subt]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

LUCE
Per + Alertness
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

LUCE
Per + Alertness
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )

LUCE
"I'd prefer to go," she tells him, unabashedly.† A little hook of her narrow shoulders beneath that oversized jacket and hoodie, the weight of which seems far too much for her slim frame.† There's a supple twist of her mouth then, she's lifting her chin up and outward, pale eyes shining, lovely, in the distressed amber light of the streetlamps.†"I'm not precisely an asset in a fight, Serge.† A bit conspicuous in a strip club, too."† A neat little shrug.† "I can only carry the teenaged boy disguise so far."†Then something stiffens in her face.† She braces herself on the retaining wall, one hand back on the frame, the other sliding into the deep kangaroo pocket of the hooded sweatshirt.†She is breathing; she always does.† Part of the mask they were.† Part of the masquerade.† Her voice, when she continues, is breathy but sharp, a careful sort of whisper.†"Someone's coming.† Don't look back.† Not the bouncer.† The one from the alley."--†Serge maintains the show; that he's trying to chase her off his property, or the sidewalk.† That those slump-faced tenements matter.† That this kid's presence is unwelcome; and soon enough he hears the sweep of someone else's feet across the street, the crunch of boots on gravel.† The sharp inhale of someone taking a deep drag on a cigarette.†"This little shit bothering you, man?"† The stranger says to Serge's back, apparently taken in by his display.† " - because I can take him off your hands.† Harvey thinks he's been casing our place out."†If Serge glances up, now, he'll see an ordinary looking man in ratty jeans and an old t-shirt, black, advertising some Daytona Beach, Florida bar.† Half-gloves on his hand, those leather, a cigarette in his mouth.† When the stranger says Harvey he gestures back across the street at the bouncer.†"I'd like to know who for.† Two birds, one stone man."

Serge Carlock

Serge does indeed glance to the man, his head swivelling around slowly to take in the man that he certainly did not know, and that Luce did not recognize either, with the Towers assets and active members numbering in not but a dozen it was a very...very safe bet to say that this pale aura'ed individual was not with the Camarilla, and for a few moments Serge sized him up, watchful, like most street thugs would be...at least the ones worth their salt.

"That depends." He says smoothly. "I already got this punk where I want him....what makes you think hes here to anything else but squat on the wrong turf?" He asks grimly as he watches the man, taking in the signs, watching for the que's that this man...was not really a man.

He took a moment to note the shirt and raise a brow at it...but beyond that he waited.

Luce

"I got reasons." Thinly; mouth spreading in the narrow definition of a sneer that reveals a mouthful of broken, ugly teeth. Tobacco stained, the lot of him. He has a thin, pock-marked face and sharp gray-green eyes, sallow in the ugly light from the streetlamp overhead.

He turns his head aslant, arching his narrow shoulders with vertebrae-cracking force. "'N Harvey has others. Best you leave him to me - "

Throws the cigarette down so that it sparks and flares, then gutters on the sidewalk. " - and my fucking friends. You see what I'm saying?"

Behind Serge, Luce has her head down; so far down that her face is no more than a pool of shadow, her tall frame narrow, shoulders hunched forward, her breathing just audible, under the skin of the night sounds.

"See - " the man continues, flexing his hands in the half-gloves, working to look around Serge at the Toreador on the retaining wall. " - he ain't even bothering to deny it, neither."

Serge Carlock

"Really?" Serge says raising a brow as he looked the man in the eyes with curiosity and defiance. The man' cracks his neck in a show of aggression, an action that Serge for his part never understood, yes it loosened up the neck...but it also weakened it. However he doesn't comment on that, not at this moment, instead he turns himself bodily towards the man and asks.

"And just who are your friends?" He says, the words implying that he expects a response, like he had just had another threat step onto his turf, like this guy was just as much trouble as the one behind him...sure he was fighting a two sided war now...but that was fine by him.

Luce

"Seriously man?" The stranger's grinning now. This quick, cocksure grin, the sort that opens up his face. Transforms it from this grim and dour thing into a pastiche of sudden, manic sort of glee. The spark of that glee never entirely animates his eyes, but is otherwise written all over his face.

" - I mean, seriously? That's how you're going to play this. Fucking HARVEY is my friend. And look, I have one, two, three, four - " this, counting off on his blunt fingers, left index finger ticking off each of his right fingers as he opens the half fist in hand one finger at a time.

Across the street, the bouncer at the otherwise dead seeming strip club frowns, shading his eyes against the glare of the streetlights, frowning across the street at them.

"Five, wait, double that, ten fucking more itching to rearrange your ugly fucking face. Except I ain't got time for it. So let me introduce you to my business fucking associate," reaching down underneath the old t-shirt, into the waistband of those ratty jeans like some gangster from a movie, to pull out a Colt .45. "Mr. Colt."

And swings it in an arc toward Serge and Luce, as if he had not yet precisely picked out a favorite target.

"Now get the fuck out. Kid's mine. And I plan to take my motherfucking time with him."

Serge Carlock

The man pulls a gun....a colt .45, a decent weapon, reliable, deadly to be sure. The man played with it, toying it back and forth between one target and the next, either being very sure of what he was doing, or just to damn cocky to realize anything different. The man might have expected fear, a look of concern flashing across Serge's face as his own life was put into jeopardy. He is not rewarded with such however.

Instead Serge's gaze narrows a hair, the blue grey eyes taking on an aspect entirely different from the one he had just worn, perhaps it does not terrify the man with the colt, perhaps he found it amusing, entertaining. But then...he had never seen Serge at work before. Had not seen the innumerable battlefields the man had strode upon and returned from alive and whole...where hundreds, thousands of others had fallen and perished.

He cocked his head slightly to the side as he examines the weapon and then looked up at the man. "Amateur." He says, and as he flushes blood through his system his own weapon, a P99 is drawn from a well hidden seam in his vest and brought steadily to bare upon the man, the trigger pulled in the next instant.

[BP for Celerity get the drop]

[Dex+Firearm called shot head]

Dice: 7 d10 TN9 (2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Serge Carlock

[Init +9]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Mr. Jones +7

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Harvey +6

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

Luce

Luce +6

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

Serge Carlock

[Damage]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )

Luce

Soak!

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 8) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Oh, forgot fortitude

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Luce

Mr. Jones: Dex + Firearms; -2 wound penalties

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 7) ( fail )

Luce

Harvey: 1a) grabs shotgun; 1b) blam. Dif +2 for distance, -3 for split. 1c) starts running.

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Damage: 8-2 for distance

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 7) ( fail )

Luce

Luce - soak!

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 3) ( botch x 1 )

Luce

(soaks cannot be botched!)

Luce

Luce: Dread Gaze on the fucker that shot her. -1 for wound penalties [Also: spending blood. 1 point to stamina, 1 point to celerity]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Luce

It happens in a split second; first the sallow-face stranger pulls a Colt .45 out of the waistband of his sagging jeans and swings it from Serge to 'the kid' and back again, as if he had spent the last three weeks watching Quentin Tarantino movies to ready himself for just this moment. He's a skinny man, starkly white, those half-gloves dark on his rough hands, grinning wildly and fucking angry now. Then Serge draws his own weapon, faster, like some confrontation out of an old western it all comes down to - quick draw.

Behind Serge, Luce is jumping down from the retaining wall - there's no way to maintain the illusion that she is anything but female when her body is in motion, when her head comes up and she swings a stark white face around to stare wide-eyed at the weapons drawn with rapidity of a pair of striking snakes and the sallow man is mid-snear about " - a fucking chick" when the bullet from Serge's weapon hits him squarely in the face, punches through his right eye and out through the back of his head in a spray of brains and sharded bone.

Across the street, Harvey senses movement, grabs his shotgun and levels it at 'the kid' for a wild blast that still punches her in the shoulder, sends the Toreador spinning a staggered step backwards from the force of the blast with a sharp noise of swallowed air. She throws her head back enough that the hood falls away from her pale face and hisses furiously enough that it stops the man in his tracks mid-way across the deserted street.

Serge Carlock

Serge's shot had been true, the bullet punching through the man's brain case, sending vital bits here and there, sprayed in a gruesome arch across the sidewalk and the street itself. But as he expected, the man didn't fall, didn't die in that instant of violence. Because he was already dead...and even with a wide hole through ones brain, one could still live, still fight.

Serge didn't let up, he pulled the trigger twice more in rapid succession, fully intent on not giving this creature the chance to do any real damage.

1a. Shoot Mr. Colt 1b. Shoot Mr. Colt

[Dex+Firearm]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 2

Serge Carlock

[Damage]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Serge Carlock

[Dex+Firearm]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serge Carlock

[Damage]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Luce

Soak 1:

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 7, 9) ( fail )

Luce

Harvey: soak!

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

Serge Carlock

Damage again]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Luce

Luce

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Harvey

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

Luce

Luce: extending dread gaze

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serge Carlock

Celerity 1 [Close the gap to harv]

Serge Carlock

[Celerity two! Disarm Harvey]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 5) ( botch x 1 )

Serge Carlock

[Damage]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Serge Carlock

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Luce

Luce: soak!

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 10) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Harv: run away! -6 dice

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Serge Carlock

[Dex+Brawl Knock out!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 1 )

Serge Carlock

[Damage +2 auto succ for potence]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5) ( fail )

Luce

Soak!

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Luce

Luce: extending Dread Gaze -2 dice for wound penalties

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serge Carlock

The battle ended, quickly as they so often did. Mr. Colt, for all his brazen posturing, for all his power and his unliving form was unprepared for what Serge was capable, and willing to do. The first bullet did not finish the man, but the second snuffed out what was left of his soul, and the body fell to the ground, aging at a disturbing rate.

Harvey across the way faired little better, after having drawn the ire of Marie Helene with that first shot, she was quick to drain away his will, destroying what resistence he could offer swiftly and surely. Serge for his part attempted to speed things along, only to...in his haste, accidentally discharge his weapon into Luce...who thankfully, remained standing.

With Harvey now whimpering upon the ground, in a fetal position next to his weapon Serge came to stand over the man, watching him carefully before he looked over to the wounded Luce...he had escaped surprisingly unharmed.

"Are you alright?" He inquired, the saying more mechanical...then showing any distinct concern for the woman.

Luce

She seems to be in shock; arms crossed low over her torso; holes in the hooded sweatshirt she wears, hair loosened from its tight coil, perhaps by the force of the first shotgun blast or the ripping shock of pain from the second. There is little enough blood; their kind do not, as a rule, bleed. No hearts to pump the blood through the body, no arterial spray - but there are dark, faintly damp stains on the gray material at the shoulder, and gut, where the cotton fabric was pushed into the wounds by the bullets' trajectory.

In shock, and still - wide-eyed, fang-bearing, her eyes stained dark with the subsurface flare of the beast - feral and unbound.

"No." She is still breathing; regular as clockwork, though not each breath is sharper, shallow from the pain she struggles to swallow with each breath she takes. Shaking with the effort at repression; or perhaps the residual brush with death. "I need." Gritted teeth, fangs still stark, sharp against her lower lip. "To out of here." Eyes closed as she tries to pull the beast back in; to store it underneath her skin.

Serge Carlock

Serge watched her, watched as she barely managed to hold her beast in check, oh what things would happen if it broke loose, would either he or Harvey be safe? Serge could simply wonder at that as he stepped towards her. "Heal Marie Helene." He says, firmly, but quietly as he put his gun away, the safety clicking on as he picked up the shotgun and the colt.

"If you are this close....then we should get you out of here...if you are able to control yourself. I would say take some of what you will need from him." He said gesturing briefly to the man who lay upon the ground, immobile.

He was practical as always, Marie Helene would need to heal, and this man was an easy meal....if she could keep herself from draining him dry, from sating her beast.

Luce

She gives him a swinging glance, sharply upward, her features starkly lovely, in that oddly alien way. Defined more by the architectural sweep than by ordinary, human standards of beauty. This time, the overt signs of the beast - the fangs, the clawed fingers, the stark strange eyes - on display with the gift are withdrawn. She seems human; nearly human, except for the stark pallor of her features.

"He's foul." This, with a sudden, visceral disgust that distorts her fine little mouth with a sharp, evident loathing. "Il a pissé outre lui-même." Her chin rises, a clear, nearly imperious gesture toward the man collapsed on the street. Voice thin, taut with tension. "It's too public. No. I can handle myself." Mouth flattening, briefly narrow. Voice wrapping low. "I don't want to heal the bullets in unless I have to." Half turning so he can see her back. "Did they come out?"

Serge Carlock

Serge looked back, briefly taking in Harvey as Luce found him to be foul, to be the lowest of the low, and he shrugged. Some people could afford to be picky in that sense. He stepped towards her, wiping a bit of grey matter from his vest like it had been a simple stray hair, or a piece of dirt upon his form as he stepped up and took in her wounds.

"The bullet from my gun...which I apologize for. Has passed through cleanly." He said as he examined her back, looking for signs of any other exit wounds. "The pepper shot however...did not." He said as he let her turn back with a slight grimace forming upon his features.

"Come...I'll get you too my vehicle, where we can remove the shot, and I can then take you wherever it is you would prefer to go." He said cordially, inviting her to step away from this scene of blood and violence, it was always a shame when such stakeouts went horribly awry...but at least Serge had been there to help her with it.

And so...off into the night they walk, leaving poor, delerious Harvey to fend for himself, his nights to come filled with nightmares of the woman with the wicked eyes and handsome face, and of the scarred demon, who moved light lightening, and dealt death like the reaper.

After

Luce

There's this strange silence in the aftermath of the sudden burst of violence. The city's ambient hum slowly impresses itself on the shell of quiet. First a siren, distant enough and lonely enough and immediate enough that it can't have been already dispatched. Not even if the mayor's grandmother was frantically dialing 911 in the corner tenement.

"Where are you parked." Luce asks, in that silence, through gritted teeth. She has buttoned up her dark coat to conceal the worst of the damage to her narrow frame, but walks with that slow, centered caution of the wounded in his shadow, refusing to stay behind even if he offers to 'bring the car around.' Maybe she does not trust herself with the man collapsed, wounded, bleeding in the middle of the street. Maybe she is concerned that there are more of them, somewhere close. The calvary come to wreak vengeance since they cannot relieve their comrades.

She says nothing more during the walk; watches with huge, dark, silent eyes as he opens the doors. Levers herself, gingerly, into the passenger's seat with a sharp stream of exhaled air, holding her narrow frame otherwise entirely still. Eyes closed as he takes the driver's side and the city lurches into motion around them. Still and silent as if he stops back in front of the strip club to clean up whatever he can and will before some dispatcher, somewhere, takes pity on the immigrant grandmother in the corner apartment and sends a patrolman to investigate her report of gunfire, an hour or three later.

Serge Carlock

The clean up itself was quick and efficient, anything incriminating had been picked up and dumped in the back of the blacked out black cadillac. Despite her pain, Luce would find herself rather comfortable in the plush leather interior of the older vehicle, and thankfully she would not be bleeding all over that fine interior. She might watch Serge for a few moments through the windows as he works thoroughly and efficiently until he deems it suitable to leave. With that point reached, he steps back into the vehicle and drives.

They leave the local neighbourhood in silence, Serge driving onward towards the edge of the tenderloin itself with a careful and watchful gaze to and fro about the neighbourhood as he drove, carefully watching for signs of pursuit, which thankfully there is none. When they come to a quiet spot on the edge of the Tenderloin, a quiet stretch of industrial sprawl he stops the vehicle and looks at Luce.

"Are you ready to extract the buckshot Marie Helene?" He asks slowly, his gaze falling upon her still form.

Luce

The creature is sitting forward by then, forearms braced on her thighs, her spine defining a convex curve, the sharp delineations of her vertebrae faintly evident, even through the layers of t-shirt and hoodie and jacket. The seatbelt is pulled across her body, distended to its greatest length by the curl of her body, and then only because it was necessary to stop the insistent beeping of the car's demanding electronics.

When they pull to a stop, she sits up as if she were surfacing from some great depths, blinks as she turns in a slow survey of the deserted industrial neighborhood. Her features are largely hidden by the deep hood pulled forward over her golden hair, but she lifts her chin, then, pushing it back as she reaches between them, depressing the latch and allowing the lap belt to reel itself back across her body.

Her pale eyes are dark, brightened by the reflection of the dashboard lights, only just. She shakes her head no and gives him a taut, wan half-smile. More tooth than lip, that - though the teeth are dull and human, thank whatever gods you will. "No." That wan smile quickens, briefly, around the word. "Though there's not much choice, is there. Will you give me a hand." And she holds out her left wrist, so that he can grab the cuff of her jacket and help her peel it off her body, without much help from her presently useless of right arm.

Serge Carlock

Serge nods, taking a moment to look at her clothing, and almost seems of the mind to simply cut it off rather then enforcing any kind of pain inducing situation by its slow and casual removal, the clothing was after all...already ruined. But she seemed insistent on the removal in that way, to peel it from her rather then to cut it off and so he slides over and moves to assist her with the removal.

"I have medical tools in the trunk...if you give me a moment once we have your wound clear. we can use them, instead of our fingers to remove the shot." He suggests as he brings the jacket to the point where he knows any further will hurt.

He looks Luce in the eyes, or at least where he assumed her eyes were at this point and indicated to the jacket. "On three.." He said calmly before starting a slow count.

"one.....two....three." At that point he quickly removed the coat the rest of the way, stripping it from her form as quickly as possible.

Luce

When he seeks her eyes, he finds them. She looks at him with a raw directness, the sort that might pass for trust in their world. Or, more likely - recklessness. Her own gaze is steady through the pain, which she seems intent on swallowing, on holding somewhere in the core of her body.

Until, of course, he makes it to three. She isn't a soldier. Just a monster, and she makes a sharp, clear, strangled noise as she lifts her right arm far enough for Serge to pull the her coat off her body. The process has to be repeated with the cheap cotton hoodie underneath, though this time she asks him to hold the waistband first as she unzips it, before peeling it off. Underneath, she's wearing a thin cotton t-shirt, vaguely pink, with I Eat Vegans in dark fushia lettering. And holds at the shoulder and flank. The latter clean - his stray shot, through and through - the former an ugly scatter of buckshot, blood and bone.

The clothes were the only thing giving her narrow frame bulk. She is a slight, stark thing, hunger haunted and still. And still breathing, as if it mattered.

He has medical tools in the trunk, he tells her. This time, her smile is close-mouthed, tight. It does not reach her eyes, which glitter faintly in the dark, but it lingers at the corners of her mouth.

"You're quite prepared, aren't you." Sharply exhaled at the end. "For every eventuality. I think that would be best. Thank you."

Serge Carlock

"I find it best to be prepared, in particular for damages that might be taken by myself or others." He offers simply as he takes in Luces form, almost surprised by the sheer...lack of her. She was barely there, almost emaciated in her existence, and somehow that was not apparent when she wore dresses or anything more fanciful, it was only here in the stark, harsh reality of their situation that it became apparent.

He unlocked the car doors then and stepped from the vehicle, giving Luce time with her thoughts, and her pain as he moved to the trunk and unlocked it with a heavy thud of metal. It would be several moments before Serge returned with a small, but comprehensive first aid kit. In his hands was the most pertinent piece of equipment, a pair of needle nose medical pilers, specifically designed to remove bullets and bullet fragments.

He slid within the cab of the car once more, closing the door so as to muffle the sound that would surely escape Luces lips soon and set down the kit. "I am certain that you are not prepared for this." He said as he held up the pliers and turned on the cars interior lights so that he could see better.

"But the sooner we accomplish this...the sooner you can heal."

Luce

Jacket and hoodie are discarded in the backseat. The car rocks faintly as Serge climbs out of the driver's side, and again as he gathers his supplies from the trunk. Were he to glance up, he might see her moving, sharply at certain points, turning in the passenger's seat to stare out of the window at the dim corridors of the old industrial neighborhood.

When he returns, switches on the overhead lights, sorting through the medical pliers from the kit in his truck, she has removed the t-shirt as well. Pulled it, half-torn, from the narrow definition of her torso. She has a model's spare frame, not a pin-up's - so there, the lone tapered line of her pale back, the pinpointed definition of her elegant spine, the curl of her ribs, the sharp wings of her scapulae all have the immediate physical elegance of one of the old master's sculptures, as if she had been hewn out of marble rather than born of flesh. Except for the ragged lines of her blood-laced though not bleeding wounds.

She is nude from the waist up, then. Hair coiled at the base of her neck beginning to come undone. Though some instinct toward modesty has her covering her small breasts with her left forearm, abducted across her body. When he climbs back into the front seat, turns on the stark wash of the overhead light, she shoots him a dark, unreadable glance over the curve of her (uninjured) left shoulder. Mouth just open, breathing soft and inhumanly steady.

"I know." She affirms; this sharp little lift of her chin in his direction. Another taut twist of her mouth by way of acknowledgment. "Do you need - " Her eyes drop from his face to the medical pliers; she loses the train of her thought and her eyes and mouth go still. Then, a sweeping glance upward. "I'll try not to scream. Which way should I face?"

Serge Carlock

Perhaps thankfully, when Serge climbs back into the front seat of his car he regards Marie Helene with no more interest then that of someone who doing what was necessary, in this case, prying chunks of metal from a fellow. He did not stare at her body, did not try to sneak a glimpse at her breasts. Though wether this is due to an overt use of willpower is unknowable unless she seeks to divine more from his neutral gaze then he lets on.

She gives him an unknowable look, he raises a brow ever so briefly, meeting her gaze as she continued to breath, Serge for his part, had given up on such pretences, his gaze stark and unmoving, his breathing having fallen still, the only thing remaining was a gentle warmth to his skin, the last remaining vestiges of blood he had pushed to the surface to warm him...just incase.

"Relax your neck as much as possible...and remain looking forward. A natural posture will aid the removal." He says as he brings up the pliers and considers something for a few moments and reaches into the medical pack and pulls out a medical mouth guard...sealed and contained he strips it out of its packaging, offering it to her.

"If you would prefer...if not...we should begin, I apologize...I am not the most...skilled of surgeons." He said as he leaned in close, and put the pliers to the wound of her arm.

Luce

Luce keeps her chin high, this regal posture made taut by her evident pain. The stark flare of tendons in her neck; the clear contraction of her right arm, curled against her body, the patent tension in the long curve of her trapezius, the sharp cut of her clavicle, forward, the ugly, raw scattering of buck shot in her dead flesh.

The overhead light has her pupils contracting, but her usually pale eyes are still darker, somehow - that withheld emotion; the force of will it takes to hold herself still, against the pain. Or perhaps, worse - the vulnerability.

Relax your neck he tells her, and she flicks him a look. Mouth curls - so briefly - wry. "Okay," she says through that, the irony seeping into her tone is so faint, and mostly substrate. Her eyes drop from his as he goes seeking the mouthguard in his medical kit, a lifting look of query a moment later as he offers it to her, confusion evident until he shows her the shape of the mouthguard and she mouths "Oh," without voicing it. Reaching out with her left arm to take it and slip the guard into her mouth.

Whatever resolution she made to follow his directions - relax your neck - disappears with the cold touch of the pliers against her skin. Which is warm enough it feels almost human. She tenses up, unthinkingly, and reaches out to brace her left hand against the arm rest, long fingers curling into the leather. Modesty, it seems, forgotten. The soft swell of her breasts - on an otherwise boyish, narrow frame - rising and falling, just so, with each breath she takes. Perhaps she's simply reassured by his spare efficiency. His refusal to allow his gaze to stray from the work at hand.

He begins to apologize, offers this explanation about his lack of skill. She's quiet, mouth fixed around the guard, but she gives him a sharp shake of her head meant to cut off the explanation. The need for an apology. Or absolve him before it begins.

Serge Carlock

Serge kept his gaze from her small but pert bosom, even as her hand fell to the arm rest, seeking succour from the pain in the grip the sturdy construct would give her. There is a slight downturn of his lips as her body tenses with the cold feel of surgical steel against her warm flesh and he shakes his head ever so slightly, not that it would be easy for anyone to resist, to remain relaxed. Such things were for hero's, warriors, or for those so damaged that pain was a thing of the past.

She shook her head, no longer able to speak, cutting him off and as she does Serge pursed his lips momentarily, the ice grey gaze of his eyes taking in the woman with a moments curiosity, the scar tissue on his left cheek twitching momentarily before he nodded.

"Then let us begin." He said as he took hold of her shoulder with his one free hand...and sank the business end of the pliers into her flesh, beginning the painful task of removing the invasive shards of buck shot.

[Dex+Medicine]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1

Luce

Willpower

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6) ( fail )

Luce

There's something grotesque about it all, stark and clinical in the deep shadows cast by the overhead light in the front seat. The sounds of the city are cut off, windows closed, doors locked. Just the faint murmur of traffic on some thoroughfare in the middle distance insinuates itself as an ambient hum in the air. He begins the tedious painful work of fishing the buckshot from the mangled wound on her shoulder; she closes her eyes, bracing herself more tightly as the pliers invade the wound.

- and then she begins to shake, this low-level tremor that opens from somewhere in the middle of her spine. Quite against her will. She bites down, hard, on the mouthguard, grinding her teeth together as if she could somehow stop the tremors by contracting every muscle in her body. Then she makes a soft cry that resolves itself into a gasp of pain, sharply indrawn.

They don't stop, the noises, not when her eyes fly open, staring starkly over his shoulder. NOt when she screws them shut again. Not when she wills herself to close her mouth and not open it through the count of ten. She throws her head back, so the crowd of her pale head is braced against the headrest. Each breath comes in sharp little contractions. "I'm sorry - " she manages to gasp out, head back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Blood at the corners of her eyes, welling but not yet falling. "I can't stop. Please keep going."

Willpower again!

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 8) ( success x 1 )

Occupy San Francisco

Serge Carlock

Occupy Wallstreet, Toronto, Washington, LA, San Francisco, it was all one big mess, a group of rabble lead by no one, going nowhere, but with a big heart and a head full of dreams and hopes. For some it was a vision of a better future, a vision of caring and awareness, for some it was an idiotic fantasy and for those that it targetted, nothing more then a common nuisance. It is no surprise that the rabble would be drawn here, that the great rebeller's of the Camarilla would find its way into this chaos, peaceful as it was and inflame it, engorge it with their own valour and determination.

Occupy San Fran attracted a great many individuals and its steadily swelling numbers was beginning to pose a greater, and greater concern for a variety of people both public and private, and because of it...and only because of it. Serge was on the scene.

He was not there dressed in leathers and invoking the fury and passion of those protesters, he was not there planning their next great move towards financial re-consolidation, he was not even there to promote simple anarchy in of its own sense...no Serge stood on the other side of the fence swathed in blackened combat gear, a shotgun slung over one shoulder, born openly a radio plug set firmly in one ear....it would seem the man was here on invitation...he moved slowly about the outside of the encampment, stopping to talk with the various officers present, before moving onward in his own, personal patrol.

Work was work....and as the Occupy movement grew...and if other brujah had their way, it would become violent...and Serge, well Serge would be well paid.

Luce

The protesters' encampment does not fill up Justin Herman Plaza. Not after the sun goes down on a cool Sunday night, that sends the more dedicated students from Stanford and Berkeley and SF State and Giant Community College scurrying back to their dorms and flats and rented rooms to throw themselves into their homework in one last moving gasp.

Nevertheless, there are still a good several hundred people out here tonight, in the shadow of the Embarcadero Fountain, which looks like nothing so much as several stories of air ducts crumbled together and left to slowly unkink, sometime after world's end. The huge fountain is bathed in soft, moving light, the palm trees that ring the plaza sway gently in the breeze, backlight by the city's subdued brilliance.

There's a mime in the southern corner trying to coax a few extra coins out of diners hurrying across the plaza. He's having a hard go of it since the protesters moved back in, restrung their tents and solar lanterns, restarted their "Love Kitchen" right in the middle of the encampment. Uniformed police can be seen dotting the far reaches of the plaza, but they have not yet started closer. Not yet shown up in the riot gear they wore when they dismantled it the first time.

Some people are singing; a trio of the ringleaders are giving an interview in the harsh, bright glare of television lights, the fountain prominent in the background. Others are unrolling sleeping bags and egg foam under the orange haze that passes for stars here, though it's far to early to go to bed. Someone with a guitar is has started a This Land is Your Land round, and a couple of hard-core homeless men are getting into a fight in the line for the evening meal

And, on the fringe of the organic mass, a skinny blond sits on the back of a park bench, her feet on the seat, arms crossed, leaning forward. Maybe she's listening to the speaker standing forward, going on about credit default swaps, bonuses and billionaires. There is a look of concentration on her face. But no, it's the crowd that has her attention. The living breathing mass of it.

She reaches up, pulling the long strands of her golden hair into a messy ponytail, glances up at the sky once, then back down at the crowd.

Serge Carlock

The police remained outside of the park, outside of the encampment itself, it was the way these things went, how society reacted in this day and age, they waited for the command to come from on high, for some bureaucrat to make the call that would send them flooding in, sending them in to dismantle this colony and send the rats scurrying for another day. Serge however...was not the police, he was not part of the government, he was not even there on THEIR behalf....he was here because someone else...someone greater wanted him there, and so the man...free of such bureaucracy..moved with impunity, tracing the edges of the encampment baring the cat calls and curses of those within who dared to speak out.

Serge noted the sight of the fight into his communicator, relaying the information to the authorities, just incase it became a good reason to do something, and as he moved around to the mass of gatherer's listening to the speaker talk of freedoms and glorious dreams for the people, His slow tracking gaze fell upon the woman on the parkbench...the woman he knew, and so his trajectory took him slowly around the crowd, bringing him up along side the bench with the slow but obvious crunch of his heavy boots against the pavement and he set his gaze on Luce.

Driscoll

It's common sense that if one would like to avoid becoming the victim of random acts of violence or targeted attacks by the defiler, one would do well to remain indoors after the sun has begun to sink beyond the horizon. Humans have, for the entirety of their existence, taken to their havens with the coming of darkness because it offers cover for those who know how to operate in it, and those who know how to operate in it take advantage of the fear of the unknown that is prevalent in societies where citizens hide instead of stand.

This is all well and good, but for the fact that it's after sundown on a Sunday night, Justin Herman Plaza is less than a mile away from the place where Nora Driscoll lives with her family, and she's run out of the house after having an argument with her father.

Nora is thirteen years old, was born in Bishop's Falls, Newfoundland, and has never seen so many people packed into one place in her entire life.

Hanging near the back of the crowd, glad just to be out of that house where her youngest sister is constantly laughing or shrieking or running around, where the middle one gets all the attention because she's special, where their mother acts as though this is all just something they have to do and don't have a choice and their father isn't ever around and when he is he thinks he can just waltz back in like no one noticed how long he's been gone, it would be a lie to say that Nora is easy to ignore. She's tall, golden-haired, her body getting away from her and her eyes bright and watchful.

This is the first act of disobedience she's taken part in as a teenager. The novelty of it is like perfume. Never mind the fact that her very being is a blessing from some pagan backwards gods, that her bearing is that of someone descended from heroes. None of these people need to know that.

Luce

Even from a distance in the dark, she is a difficult thing to miss. Should one know what one is looking for, as Serge does - the golden blond hair, the whip-thin frame settled bonelessly onto her perch, the evident poise, the easy composure, as if she could be both part of the crowd and apart from it, all at a gone. The creature is dressed the part tonight. Old jeans, loose on her narrow hips, a pale orange t-shirt, some retro style, the logo hidden by the sling of her lean torso forward, a hooded gray cardigan hanging open, and scuffed black boots.

There is a messenger bag on the bench behind her feet, and a discarded, hand-lettered sign that says "THINK: It's Patriotic" not far from the bench, the posterboard beginning to curl up at the edges in the damp. That may or may not be hers. More likely not.

When Serge comes walking up, not bothering to conceal the crunch of his footsteps on the concrete, her awareness is evident. She does not glance up, not at first, but he can read her reaction in the pull of her shoulders blades against the smooth, curving gray line of her cardigan, in the supple bunching of muscles at the base of her spine.

Then she lifts her chin, glances sidelong, her features in profile, half-shadowed, pale eyes bright with reflected light as they touch his face. Then flicker down his attire.

The quick flicker of a grin flashes at him like a shadowstep, and she makes a low nose in the back of her throat. "You look dressed to kill."

But her attention sharpens beyond his profile, just then. Locks onto the hair of a gleaming golden girl just beyond him. With the unerring steadiness of a briefly mesmerized cobra. This wound in the blood.

Serge has her ear. Nora has her eyes - that flashing moment of fascination has passed, and now the look is steadier, more remote, searching. Watching as the girl slips into the fringes of the group. Frowning faintly, with a flicker of her eyes around, looking for the girl's parents.

Driscoll

There is a lot to pay attention to. This is the closest she's going to come to being at a live show, or a revolution, something where the young and the wild congregate to make some purposeful use of all this energy they have inside of them, coiled up like something getting ready to explode, and her eyes are glancing about at everything they can find.

She doesn't look like the country bumpkin she's sure her classmates think her to be. Her clothing is trendy if not exactly expensive or fashionable; she wears red Converse sneakers, skinny jeans, a zip-up hoodie and little studs in the lobes of her ears. At her age, it's difficult to tell if she's topped out at her current height of 5'4" or if she's going to continue to grow as she gets older.

Someone is watching her, and the girl who looks as though she could just as well have wandered out of a barley field, some sunlit terrain in the Old Country, lets her eyes drift that way. It chills her, clearly, to have such focused attention on her, but she does not draw closer to investigate.

Into the crowd she goes, and then, several hundred meters off, barely audible over the din of the crowd, comes a man's voice:

"Nora?"

Serge Carlock

Dressed to kill, it was a statement that brought that slight, upward twitch of Serge's lips that seemed to pass for a smile when he was among vampiric kind, hell when he was around most people it was the most jubilant the man ever seemed to get. It made him something of a conundrum amongst his fellow Brujah, who mostly chose to revel in their passions, to exhalt in their fury and their feelings. Serge was the antithesis to this, cold, rigid, as if the man himself had done his very, very best to remove such things from his persona.

"I am as I always am, though tonight...i am a little more me then you might normally see." His response is somewhat cryptic, as his boot shod feet brought him up along side the woman, his body then turning to survey the crowd, briefly catching sight of the woman with the golden hair as she slipped in amongst the teaming masses.

"What brings you to this place?" He enquires, giving her a side long look as he took a quick headcount, before relaying it over the communicator to the men who stood further afield.

His attention was for the woman beside him, and the crowd before him...but somewhere in the mass of matter one called the brain Serge, made note of someone calling someone elses name....a sound of concern...of uncertainty...it could be something, or nothing at all.

Luce

"Ready and willing and eager to stomp your foot on the neck of some out of work longshoreman who has emptied out his savings and can't make next month's rent, are you?" If there is a not of reproof in her voice, it is buried within the words rather than the tone. There's a certain arch lilt to her pale brows that leaches away some of the nascent sting. Not that he would feel it, behind his chosen armor. Not that most of their kind would care. "The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies."

The girl disappears into the crowd, and Luce loses the gleaming flag of her hair somewhere amidst the tarps ahead of them. She straightens, sitting upward and cheating her frame toward Serge. The zip of her hooded cardigan is no more than a quarter closed, the logo of her t-shirt clear to him when she squares her shoulders and lifts her chest in his direction - a guitar on a bed of curl-i-cues, with the words This Machine Kills Fascists following the hourglass line of the guitar.

"I'm here to see who comes. Who stays. What they say. Whether this shit can last." The spark of her gaze is lambent in the dark, gilt with the reflected wash of lights from the jointed fountain. She breathes in deeply, her blond head canting aslant as the man's voice cuts through the relaxed crowd with a certain urgency. Following the sound to its source.

"Why else?" Her shoulders, narrow beneath the charcoal gray cardigan, rise and fall in an elegantly gallic shrug. Briefly, her gleaming eyes touch his face again. There's a supple edge to her smile then, though the look is otherwise distinctly engaging. That still way she holds her body as she cants her head, the steady upward lilt of her fine chin.

"Are you going to write me down in your master's black book, then? Say, she cleans up well." Then she glances away, the name again, her attention lifting as she listens to the layers of sound in the plaza as if she were trying to hear the inner harmonies in a complex Shoshtakovich symphony. "But may have seditious tendencies?

"Or - perhaps you are here on your own. No master at all?"

Driscoll

It's not difficult to surmise that the name being yelled across a distance belongs to the teenage girl; she turns to gauge the direction it's coming from, freezing like a woodland creature that isn't entirely certain of a noise it's just heard. Young, yet, she hasn't reached the age where lying and concealment are second nature to her.

Anyone watching her can see a small-scale battle being waged in her visage; whatever it is anger is fighting, it has decimated. It wins out, her gaze hardening and determination setting itself into her form, and she continues across the plaza, slipping into the thinning crowd.

The police were more interested in making sure this crowd, such as it is, doesn't get out of hand than they were on what the individuals in the mass of bodies were up to. They don't notice the figure as it trots down the sidewalk approaching the plaza, even after it has shouted.

So, the man arrives, and there is not much to say about him. Determining his age is an impossible task, the best guess being "younger than fifty," but he is of average height, blond, has not trimmed his hair in far too long, has allowed facial stubble to begin growing into a beard; he wears work boots and sturdy jeans and a plain olive green t-shirt; it does not take a genius to gather that this is the girl's father.

Standing not too terribly far from Luce and Serge, they cannot glean anything from him that might be remotely useful. He does, however, appear utterly out of place here in the city, and there is something about him that unsettles those who pay too much attention to him. No one in the area fits the bill.

Closer to the mass of bodies, now, he stands stock still and searches the crowd without shouting again.

Serge Carlock

"Officially?" He asked casually as he looked about, watched the people milling here and there with hope in their hearts, but no direction, no guidance. "I am here at the behest of powerful men, but the only master I have ever...or will ever serve has been dead for years, I stand here for my own reasons."

He looks briefly over towards her and one side of his face twitched upward slightly more then it already had. "But perhaps that will fit in my book regardless."

"As to this....this...herd." He said with a gesture of his chin towards the mass of individuals who stood in the cool evening air. "I do not see it lasting, not in the face of real aggression, of a real determination to stomp it out. It is idealistic...but it is without a solid voice, without guidance....it lacks the qualities that have made its enemy so successful...it will kill them."

The blonde woman, the out of place man...to the observant eye it was not difficult to match them up, to note how the woman froze at his call, and then slipped away, attempting to escape his gaze. Serge found it amusing perhaps, that the child thought she could escape so easily.

His gaze returns to Luce, but his attention remains on the man as well, listening, and occasionally looking towards him . "Do you support this?"

Luce

"That's an easy question," a supple flash of her gaze streaks back to the stoic Brujah's face. Her sharp features are still, in that moment. The clear blue gaze, the high, pale brow, the smooth pale cheek. With her hair pulled back, the delicate structure of her skill is evident. The soft hollow behind her head, the long line of her neck moving in concert with but apart from the soft drape of the hood of her cardigan.

She is always moving. Breathing - even and regular and tidal, as if she found it not simply expedient, but pleasurable, to remember the way her body was meant to move. All those muscles, their attachment to bones, the concert of it beneath her skin. "There are so many fools here. It's a great, querulous beast, full of noise, a good deal of it sound and fury, signifying - not nothing, but a terribly imperfect understanding of the world, the imperatives of history. The inevitable concentration of power in the hands of a perilous few."

A quiet noise, as she slides the heels of her boots across the bench, arches her long, lean frame to slide from the back of the bench to stand on the concrete pavement. She reaches back for the strap of her messenger bag, lifts it up and over her body in a sweep and settles it over her torso so that the strap bisects her chest diagonally, cutting the visual line of her retro t-shirt right in two. There are three pins on that strap. The top-most repeats the Woody Guthrie quote on her t-shirt.

The second says: Thy Fearful Symmetry, in great sweeping Gothic letters.

The last says: Dumbledore's Army.

"Still," a faint, almost cheeky shrug. "I prefer it to silence."

If they were in Elysium, she might lean in then; step into his space, press a kiss cool cheek to cheek while the impassive Brujah stands there like a stone, like a gargoyle, impenetrable. They are not, however. All she does is click her heels and give him a steady look as she steers around him, headed toward the man searching the crowd.

"Beg pardon. Are you looking for the girl. The blonde? Adolescent?" She pauses just long enough to wait for confirmation on the stranger's face, skin prickling unaccountably. It does not quite show on the woman's features - but she does keep a certain distance.

"She's here. In the crowd somewhere. The protesters' volunteer security tent is right beside the Love Kitchen. If you let them know you're looking for your daughter, they'll have her found in no time. Good luck,"

She doesn't linger for conversation, nor even step close. Just circles 'round and continues out of the plaza, long legs, long swinging steps, ponytail bouncing down her back, the messenger bag heavy on her hip, right hand tucked into her pocket, the left swinging free at her side.

Serge Carlock

Serge listens carefully as she spoke, taking in her agreement with this...mockery of a revolution, this headless beast that ran rampant through the streets of various cities without control, without a real target, the whole of the thing made Serge want to spit....but such luxuries were beyond him and his kind...lest he waste precious blood to do so.

"A headless action such as this does more damage then good, if anything, this revolution will hamper a true revolution from ever forming properly...because the sad example this sets...will do nothing to aid a real one." She moves then, moving away and Serge...well Serge simply nodded to the woman she departed. "Good evening." He said without concern as he too stepped free of the benches gravity, heading around the crowd...heading for the girl.

Might as well do something.

Driscoll

The conversation of the tall blond woman and the shorter scarred man become background noise, something that is simply an annoyance comparing to the size of the crowd, the energy pulsing from it, the presence of armed human lawgivers and the threat of violence looming. This is the worst kind of threat, idle and mundane, impossible to control for how miserable the American people are.

When he's addressed, the man looks over at her, his movements sharp but not paranoid, nostrils flaring once as his gaze narrows on her. A question as to whether she's looking for the girl, and he grinds his teeth once, thoughtful, before he says, "Right."

It's assent, but if Luce hears a question at the end of it, she wouldn't be imagining things. He gives no more information than is necessary to judge where it is her questions will lead, and if she looks close enough, she may be able to see that his eyes have that distant quality that a drunk's tend to, though he does not look or act or smell like a drunk.

Luck is bidden him, then, and he huffs, that being the only response she gets before he starts off in the direction Luce had indicated, long after he has lost track of Serge.

Meanwhile, Nora is just watching, drifting through the bodies looking for a way across the plaza.

Serge Carlock

[Per+Alert Find the girl]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )

brothers in blood

[Serge Carlock] Eylsium, supposedly the safest place you could possibly within this city as a vampire, it was sacred ground, neutral, in the fact that even the sabbat could stand within its grounds and so long as they did not violate its rules....could stand their unharmed even in times of war.

One could wonder then, why the man who stepped through over the threshold of the elevator as the steel doors drew open, looked so prepared for war, in a place meant for the war of the psyche and the socialite, and not the gun. He strode forward on black matt combat boots, the soles clapping softly off the floor, his body was covered all in black, combat pants, a black wifebeater, and overtop, a thin, but still present kevlar vest, there were no weapons as such things were forbidden even in the worst of times, but the man still screamed to the common view of blood and war and death.

His body bore the signs of such dealings, scar tissue ran along his arms, could be seen along his neck and peeking up past the kevlar, and covered his face. Slashes, burns, bullet holes, and other less definable scars were all present, maring, or improving, what was once a handsome man. His blonde hair is buzzed short, a hair cut the man will never be able to change, and his ice blue eyes scan the room as if almost like missiles searching for a target.

[Marie-Helene] The Elysium's lounge is quiet tonight; there is only the low buzz of activity from the Prince's ghouls, the attendants, the constant presence of the ghouled and the blood bonded, the dominated and the mindless men and women who stand everywhere, still as columns and as easily ignored until violent is offered, or someone stranger wants to play. Their eyes are not eyes, their hands are not hands. Their minds are are lost to the haze of addiction and want that ghouling creates. They are everywhere and they are nowhere, chained in their bodies by the shortest of leashes.

- she despises them. They make her skin crawl, these half-human things that live chained to their shallow skins by addiction and want.

She: is an elegant sprawl across an easy chair in the corner of the room. There is neither blood nor blooded cocktail on the elegant little table beside the overlarge brown leather easy chair over which she has draped herself. And she has draped herself over it - artfully, showing the long, nearly straight lines of her model's frame to best light without conscious thought. All is symmetry, here: a perfect, terrible, lovely symmetry, the golden hair loose about her milk-white shoulders, bared except for the sliding black strap of a sleek little camisole, the lines of her face seen in repose - a neat little mouth that could easily turn kind or cruel, a narrow nose, haughty cheeks and a certain - light in her dark eyes.

The fine camisole is paired, however, with oversized BDUs in desert camoflage, and these in turn are paired with a sleek pair of golden slippers with turned up toes and impossibly high heels. The left shoe is firmly on her foot, but the right one dangles from her big toe, ready to clatter to the floor.

She is - reading.

Something. Some paperback, mass market no less, the book held open overhand in her lap, against her thighs with her left hand. In the right, she turns an unlit cigar over and over and over yet again, the gesture both meditative and thoughtless.

[Serge Carlock] The scarred man moved looked through the crowd, through the sea of slaves, civilians, and addicts. To him, they were mostly expendable, unless they proved that they were of some value greater then the blood running through their veins. He is certain that they have their uses for whoever ghouled them, some...emotional attachment to them, but not for him.

He spots no one he knew at first, and he almost turned to leave, he wasn't one to remain within this place without a reason, no lounger he. However he stopped himself as his eyes located and locked onto someone who was clearly not a slave, nor a civilian. The woman who had conformed her body to the chair as a cat might was clearly no human, and he turned his body entirely in her direction, before making his way through the crowd, his destination now set, and she was it.


[Marie-Helene] There are no scars on her milk-white skin. There are no marks. There are no tattooes, no obvious piercings with the singular exception of her ears, which are pierced several times over. Fine gold hoops nip through the flesh of her lobe, and three flawless diamonds are punches through the cartilage.

Nevermind that the piercing was done tonight, when she awoke.
Nevermind that tomorrow, by morning, the holes will be gone, the foreign matter expelled, her flesh returned to its natural state - unbroken as it was the night she died.

The creature looks up as he approaches. There are few of them here tonight, and there is no mistaking the intent of his direct line through the room. So: she looks up, lifts her chin from the book she still holds open against her thighs. When he is closer, he may well catch a glimpse of the cover. It is neither Shakespeare nor Milton, neither Marquez nor Woolf nor Auden nor Elliot nor Loy. In short: it is nothing fine. The pages are yellowed, and the cover belongs to a particular age - a man in a fedora, a woman in a pillbox hat, with a black lace fringe covering her eyes. A body on the floor. - the distinctive cover of 1930s or 1940s pulp-noir fiction.

She looks up, and the cigar still in her hands, and her mouth is still as her cool dark eyes sweep over him - an appraisor's eye, that, from his shoes to his waist to his chest to his shoulders before they settle on her face. She offers him the edge of a slow-crawling smile.

"We have not been introduce, m'sieur."

The accent is distinctively French. Parisian, if he has the ear for it.

[Serge Carlock] The man stops just shy of three feet from her position and looks down at her those cool, icy eyes. Where her gaze was simply appraising, the feel of his eyes passing over her body might make her think of a pair of gun sights, looking for the perfect kill spot. But it passes, and the man's eyes are drawn up to hers, and he locks gazes with her, unwilling to flinch away.

She says they haven't been introduced, and that is entirely true, so much so that the man gives her a slight nod of his head before speaking. What might surprise her however, is that he responds in perfect Parisian french, the dialect, being from Paris herself.

~French~ "You are correct, we have not. I am Serge Carlock, who are you?"~French~ He may speak in the language of love, that famous and debaucherous language but his words are clipped and to the point, it would seem that this man, Serge, was direct and to the point, with little interest in mincing words.

At this distance two tattoo's become plainly obvious to Marie, one large and almost to the point of garish covers his right shoulder, a deaths head skull, emblazoned with a fleur-de-li from the tip of its nose, to over the top of the skull. The other, almost obscured by a swath of scar tissue along his neck is smaller and far more minimalistic reading simply as EI-49-01-12.

He settles in on that spot near to her, his hands unclenching from his walk, and his stance spreading slightly as he watches her, no interest in sitting it would seem.

[Marie-Helene] There are a half-dozen perfect kill spots. A fair third of her torso is bare to his eyes - the delicate architecture of her shoulder girdle - the subtle slope of her trapezius from the neck to arm, the straight, fine line of her collarbones, the hollows within. The long, langourous arms tipped by long, langourous hands and long, fine fingers. These are also tipped: by rather sensibly clipped nails painted a vibrant shade of chartreuse. Waves of golden hair brush her bare shoulders - a half-dozen shades of gold. The gold of a dying sun. The gold of glistening wheat. The gold of amber, shot-through with light.

She could have been embraced fro the color of her hair alone. For the symmetry of the impeccable face - the perfect, mutable angle of her cheek bone, the fine line of her jaw, the shape of her perfect little mouth, which is a natural moue that she employs for the sparest of moments.

"Bon nuit m'sieur," she murmurs, then, her French easy and natural, unforced. There's a curl to her mouth that he might interpret as pleasure, were he to take his eyes from her own. Which are dark, the color of the sky at midnight, some blue velvet tone. Which are dark, and framed by blond lashes just now - lowered in an expression that could almost be coquettish. "It has been some nights since I heard such perfect French -

" - from any tongue except my own. I'm pleased to hear it. I am Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais." Pause. "Toreador."

- of course.

[Serge Carlock] She regales him with her full name, and seems to be putting on some measure of charm for the man, or perhaps that is simply how she acts regularly, but Serge seems unaffected, she is a beautiful woman, something that mortals would clamor for, lust after, and give up their souls, and their blood simply to touch, but Serge was no mortal man, he was as she was, a vampire, and it was harder to impress him by a far margin.

When she indicates her clan, the man simply nods, as if he had expected that answer from what he had already seen, if he was displeased with the outcome, he kept it tightly under wraps.

"Brujah." He returns the exchange of information in kind and before taking a moment to briefly look about at any foolish kin which may be watching them, his eyes ensuring that they look away, or become otherwise busy.

When he speaks again, it is english and as he does so any hint of his former accent is wiped clean, leaving his voice almost flat. "You are newly arrived then?"

[Marie-Helene] "You are yours are well-represented in the city these dark nights, m'sieur," the creature replies, her neat little mouth carving a fine smile across her perfectly proportioned, bone-white face. "I met a handful of your brothers on the streets of Chinatown some nights ago."

She hasn't moved. Her sprawl might put her at some disadvantage, of perspective if nothing else. She is looking up at him, and he is looking down at her, and she is smiling as if, in fact, this situation were reversed. Her voice is velvet, the subtle charm of the French accent undiminished. "And, I am - new, in these nights, yes. M'sieur Carlock. I did spend some passing time in the Second City some years ago - a handful, who counts these things? So I do not consider myself new so much as: returned.

"And you?" she continues, her attention keen on his face. " - have you been in the city long? Or are you a wanderer. A transplant."

[Serge Carlock] "They are brother's in blood, that is all." He says curtly, it is a bold statement, said well and with a great deal of meaning, but then Brujah were prone to such things from time to time. She asks how new he is, and he simply shrugs before answering.

"New, within several months." He respond's as a brow rises, wrinkling scar tissue upon his forehead as he regards the woman and tries to figure out what shes thinking. "It is a difficult city to reside in, with this cease-fire in effect."

He speaks slowly and methodically now as if this was his form of conversational chatter, his arms moving upward and crossing infront of himself, becoming more comfortable it would seem.

[Marie-Helene] There are no scars on her milk-white skin. There are no marks. There are no tattooes, no obvious piercings with the singular exception of her ears, which are pierced several times over. Fine gold hoops nip through the flesh of her lobe, and three flawless diamonds are punches through the cartilage.

Nevermind that the piercing was done tonight, when she awoke.
Nevermind that tomorrow, by morning, the holes will be gone, the foreign matter expelled, her flesh returned to its natural state - unbroken as it was the night she died.

The creature looks up as he approaches. There are few of them here tonight, and there is no mistaking the intent of his direct line through the room. So: she looks up, lifts her chin from the book she still holds open against her thighs. When he is closer, he may well catch a glimpse of the cover. It is neither Shakespeare nor Milton, neither Marquez nor Woolf nor Auden nor Elliot nor Loy. In short: it is nothing fine. The pages are yellowed, and the cover belongs to a particular age - a man in a fedora, a woman in a pillbox hat, with a black lace fringe covering her eyes. A body on the floor. - the distinctive cover of 1930s or 1940s pulp-noir fiction.

She looks up, and the cigar still in her hands, and her mouth is still as her cool dark eyes sweep over him - an appraisor's eye, that, from his shoes to his waist to his chest to his shoulders before they settle on her face. She offers him the edge of a slow-crawling smile.

"We have not been introduce, m'sieur."

The accent is distinctively French. Parisian, if he has the ear for it.

[Serge Carlock] The man stops just shy of three feet from her position and looks down at her those cool, icy eyes. Where her gaze was simply appraising, the feel of his eyes passing over her body might make her think of a pair of gun sights, looking for the perfect kill spot. But it passes, and the man's eyes are drawn up to hers, and he locks gazes with her, unwilling to flinch away.

She says they haven't been introduced, and that is entirely true, so much so that the man gives her a slight nod of his head before speaking. What might surprise her however, is that he responds in perfect Parisian french, the dialect, being from Paris herself.

~French~ "You are correct, we have not. I am Serge Carlock, who are you?"~French~ He may speak in the language of love, that famous and debaucherous language but his words are clipped and to the point, it would seem that this man, Serge, was direct and to the point, with little interest in mincing words.

At this distance two tattoo's become plainly obvious to Marie, one large and almost to the point of garish covers his right shoulder, a deaths head skull, emblazoned with a fleur-de-li from the tip of its nose, to over the top of the skull. The other, almost obscured by a swath of scar tissue along his neck is smaller and far more minimalistic reading simply as EI-49-01-12.

He settles in on that spot near to her, his hands unclenching from his walk, and his stance spreading slightly as he watches her, no interest in sitting it would seem.

[Marie-Helene] There are a half-dozen perfect kill spots. A fair third of her torso is bare to his eyes - the delicate architecture of her shoulder girdle - the subtle slope of her trapezius from the neck to arm, the straight, fine line of her collarbones, the hollows within. The long, langourous arms tipped by long, langourous hands and long, fine fingers. These are also tipped: by rather sensibly clipped nails painted a vibrant shade of chartreuse. Waves of golden hair brush her bare shoulders - a half-dozen shades of gold. The gold of a dying sun. The gold of glistening wheat. The gold of amber, shot-through with light.

She could have been embraced fro the color of her hair alone. For the symmetry of the impeccable face - the perfect, mutable angle of her cheek bone, the fine line of her jaw, the shape of her perfect little mouth, which is a natural moue that she employs for the sparest of moments.

"Bon nuit m'sieur," she murmurs, then, her French easy and natural, unforced. There's a curl to her mouth that he might interpret as pleasure, were he to take his eyes from her own. Which are dark, the color of the sky at midnight, some blue velvet tone. Which are dark, and framed by blond lashes just now - lowered in an expression that could almost be coquettish. "It has been some nights since I heard such perfect French -

" - from any tongue except my own. I'm pleased to hear it. I am Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais." Pause. "Toreador."

- of course.

[Serge Carlock] She regales him with her full name, and seems to be putting on some measure of charm for the man, or perhaps that is simply how she acts regularly, but Serge seems unaffected, she is a beautiful woman, something that mortals would clamor for, lust after, and give up their souls, and their blood simply to touch, but Serge was no mortal man, he was as she was, a vampire, and it was harder to impress him by a far margin.

When she indicates her clan, the man simply nods, as if he had expected that answer from what he had already seen, if he was displeased with the outcome, he kept it tightly under wraps.

"Brujah." He returns the exchange of information in kind and before taking a moment to briefly look about at any foolish kin which may be watching them, his eyes ensuring that they look away, or become otherwise busy.

When he speaks again, it is english and as he does so any hint of his former accent is wiped clean, leaving his voice almost flat. "You are newly arrived then?"

[Marie-Helene] "You are yours are well-represented in the city these dark nights, m'sieur," the creature replies, her neat little mouth carving a fine smile across her perfectly proportioned, bone-white face. "I met a handful of your brothers on the streets of Chinatown some nights ago."

She hasn't moved. Her sprawl might put her at some disadvantage, of perspective if nothing else. She is looking up at him, and he is looking down at her, and she is smiling as if, in fact, this situation were reversed. Her voice is velvet, the subtle charm of the French accent undiminished. "And, I am - new, in these nights, yes. M'sieur Carlock. I did spend some passing time in the Second City some years ago - a handful, who counts these things? So I do not consider myself new so much as: returned.

"And you?" she continues, her attention keen on his face. " - have you been in the city long? Or are you a wanderer. A transplant."

[Serge Carlock] "They are brother's in blood, that is all." He says curtly, it is a bold statement, said well and with a great deal of meaning, but then Brujah were prone to such things from time to time. She asks how new he is, and he simply shrugs before answering.

"New, within several months." He respond's as a brow rises, wrinkling scar tissue upon his forehead as he regards the woman and tries to figure out what shes thinking. "It is a difficult city to reside in, with this cease-fire in effect."

He speaks slowly and methodically now as if this was his form of conversational chatter, his arms moving upward and crossing infront of himself, becoming more comfortable it would seem.

[Serge Carlock] [Per+Emp what are you thinking you devious woman?]

[Marie-Helene] "You have no fellow feeling, then?" the creature replies, her dark eyes lingering drifting down from his face, then, lingering on his many scars. "For M'sieur Schafer and M'sieur Romero?" Her eyes drop further, half-shadowed by a scrim of pale lashes. Were he a Toreador, he would understand her charms on an aesthetic level - the elegance of a perfectly turned and painted mouth, the art of an implicitly arched brow. "Or have I misread your words, cheri?"

Marie-Hélène offers the diminutive carelessly, casually, glancing fully away from him as she folds her book closed at last. He can read the title, now: Twilight Girl. And see the price (Ten Cents) typed above the veiled woman's dark head on the cover, in the right upper corner.

"I knew m'sieur Schafer once before. In New York, some years ago. Tell me, m'sieur Carlock. Where have you come from, before you arrived in this difficult city, with its foolish cease fire?"

[Marie-Helene] Manipulation + subterfuge.

[Serge Carlock] Serge raises a brow as she almost outright insults him with her familiarity, but she was right...in a sense. "They are Brujah, as am I. They were taught one thing, I was taught another entirely. They are blood brothers, but they are not at the same time."

He says so firmly, but what it is precisely that he was taught, he seems unwilling to divulge. He watches her as well, watches her coquettish ways, and how she chooses act about him. Some might think shes playing hard to get.

"Los Angeles, but that was sometime ago. I have been moving for sometime, I was recently in New York....it was bad for business."

[Marie-Helene] The cigar stills in her hand. The book remains against her body, in the concave hollow of her ribs, beneath her breastbone, balanced. She twists the cigar one more time, then draws it beneath her nose, slowly, savoring the scent of the packed leaves of tobacco rolled within.

The golden waves of her hair frame her features naturally, easily. Still: there is something terrible about her loveliness. Something ungiving about the perfect symmetry of her features, broken now - but only just - by the edge of a small, subtle, crooked little -

call it a smirk, the way her mouth curves for him. At him.

"Tell me, cheri, what business is that?"

[Serge Carlock] Serge raises a brow once more and the look on his face lets her know, that he knows she is pumping him for information, and that he is giving only the information he chooses to give. He uncrosses his arms and shrugs at the terrifyingly beautiful woman, acting as if she could be as impressive as a homeless person.

"That would depend on how much money you are willing to spend Marie."

A suitably vague answer for her question, and he responds to her smirk with a small upward twist of his own lip, causing more scar tissue to jump and twitch as he does so.

"And what brings you to this city again? Are you not bored of it?"

[Marie-Helene] "I never negotiate a price, petit," there is a pause; her dark eyes drift back up his body, again lingering on the scars that choke his skin. There is something intimate about her directness, no matter than they are far from alone in a room teeming with the blood-blound ghouls kept in the Prince's service. She pays them as much mind as she does the drywall. " - until I know what services are on offer."

[Marie-Helene] Then, finally - after a neat and narrow pause - the changeable creature flashes Serge a radiant smile, all white teeth and flashing eyes. "I am never bored, cheri," she cautions him. " - boredom is the habit of a meager mind."

[Serge Carlock] He nods thoughtfully, she at least had a brain in her head. It had been sometime since he had encountered a Toreador with such a feature, a dangerous feature in a body like that. He regards her for several long silent moments.

She had somehow made the moment intimate, personal despite the man's stand offish behavior and the pile of ghouls that watched and listened to every word that they said, surely to report it later to their master.

"My services are many suffice it to say, I am a soldier for hire, and I am very...very good at what I do." He says as he watches her go from smokey and intimate, to bright and vibrant.

"Is that why you are here...does this cities situation intrigue your mind?"

[Marie-Helene] Marie-Hélène rises then. And rises and rises and -

- rises. Her figure is lean, elegant as smoke sketching a slow coil against a night skin. The BDUs are overlarge, battered and worn, cinched at the hips by an oversized belt, but the shimmering camisole clings to her torso and sheens liquid with every move she makes. The heels on those golden sandals are nearly impossibly high. By the time she is done standing, the creature is a good five inches taller than her native 5'11". 6'4" with the heels, though the height is cheated a bit by her elegant slouch. A half-inch, no more.

"Cheri" she begins when she is close enough, her heels clattering with every step. She is so long-legged, so tall, to attenuated in those heels that she looks like some fantastical beast conjured from the air. When she is close enough, she ducks her head to murmur, "[i]je suis dans cette ville parce qu'il me plaît d'être ici." - into the region of his ear. Then, tucking the cigar into her mouth, the tip between her teeth, still uncut and unlit, she sway-stalks toward the elevator, without another word.

[Marie-Helene] Marie-Hélène rises then. And rises and rises and -

- rises. Her figure is lean, elegant as smoke sketching a slow coil against a night skin. The BDUs are overlarge, battered and worn, cinched at the hips by an oversized belt, but the shimmering camisole clings to her torso and sheens liquid with every move she makes. The heels on those golden sandals are nearly impossibly high. By the time she is done standing, the creature is a good five inches taller than her native 5'11". 6'4" with the heels, though the height is cheated a bit by her elegant slouch. A half-inch, no more.

"Cheri" she begins when she is close enough, her heels clattering with every step. She is so long-legged, so tall, to attenuated in those heels that she looks like some fantastical beast conjured from the air. When she is close enough, she ducks her head to murmur, "je suis dans cette ville parce qu'il me plaît d'être ici." - into the region of his ear. Then, tucking the cigar into her mouth, the tip between her teeth, still uncut and unlit, she sway-stalks toward the elevator, without another word.