awe

Marie-Hélène Alette

Mon 09:43PM CST
The Elysium library is lined with leatherbound volumes in great profusion: all the classics of the last five centuries in very fine if not first editions, and most of the volumes that strive to become classics of the contemporary age, again in fine editions, printed on creamy papers and bound in rich corinthian leather.

Sprawled across an easy chair, all long legs and elegant, sylph-like arms, the Toreador ignores the whole wisdom of remembered history in favor of a cheap paperback that still smells like the greasy spoon and the waitress from whom she stole it. The inexpensive pulp is rough against her fine fingers, the cover is ridiculously lurid, but the creature seems to prefer it to everything else accumulated in the library.

Sonatine Vidale

Mon 09:44PM CST
The gates slowly creaked open to the private estate of Bryce Stavenson. The Elder Brujah was someone Sonatine was very eager to speak with about matters concerning the clan. After-all, it wasn't going to be too long before Bryce would start asking questions about Sonatine's power struggle on the streets. With Erikka's growing reputation among the streets, he was going to need her in more than just servitude.

The black 2004 Lincoln Continental slowly made it's way down the drive. It's headlights died to give way to the amber colored foglights. The light would be sufficient enough to guide his car into the parking space he normally occupied.

While Bryce's home was considered Elysium, it was still the haven of an Elder. As such was the case, certain formalities always were in order. As usual, Sonatine Vidale; Primogen of Clan Brujah, was expected by the head servant. As the car's breaks clamped onto the inner drum of the tire, the car would slow to a stop. It took several minutes before the door opened; these precious minutes being reserved for private instruction for his chouffer.

Marie-Hélène Alette

Mon 09:52PM CST
One long leg curved under her body, the other cast over the arm of the sleek chair, the Toreador shifts quietly and sinks deeper into the comfortable depths. Air sighs out of the cushions as she changes position, faint response to the shifting of her slight weight.

The combination of old army surplus camos and expensive heels is a strange one, made stranger by the narrow sleeveless tee in the blaze orange usually favored by deer hunters that completes the ensemble. Somehow, however, it all seems to fit. The creature's eyes are narrowed in concentration, her mouth half-open, thoughtlessly. Otherwise, she doesn't make much move.

Sonatine Vidale

Mon 10:05PM CST
Stepping out of the car was a black suited individual with a menacing appearence to boost. His suit was expensive, and his looks cold hearted. The pinstripes suggested something of a proffessional career; wether it be legal or not wasn't revealed just yet. Rising from the car, the armani tailored individual gripped the framework of the car, and looked out at the manner from over the top of the door. Moistening his lips, he'd continue to step forward and allow the door to close behind him.

Each step took him closer to the front door, his eyes focusing harder the closer he got. Without his trench coat, he looked a bit more business oriented. With it, the whole criminal element would come out on top. Tonight, he chose to not wear the coat. The fact that he almost looked elegant was coupled with the black tribal tattoo's staining his bald scalp. His skin was a bit pale this evening, but in the company of others, who would honestly care?

His hand moved to the doorhandle, and slowly pulled it open to clear his path. His dress shoes mad ehis presence known to the caretaker of the house, Nino. As the Italian ghoul approached him, they exchanged greetings, and Sonatine was allowed entrance. His path was chosen, and his intentions lead him toward the private study. Soon the wooden doors would slid open, and the menacing figure would make his entrance.

(Flaw: Obvious Predator + Intimidation 4) When at first glance, Sonatine is not the type of person you'd wish to associate with. It was as though on first thought, you would pin him as untrustworthy, and dangerous beyond all comparison. Perhaps it was coupled to the extreme confidence that radiated off him that made him seem in full control of himself; or maybe it was because of the horrible reputation that followed. Whatever the case; few people felt that Sonatine Vidale had anything good for them to deal with.

They would receive no mercy until seeing through his nature.

Marie-Hélène Alette

Mon 10:16PM CST
The sounds of greeting, the usual shuffle of entrance from the front hall pricked the Rose's consciousness and drew her attention away from whatever held it (could it really be the horrible paperback? Shouldn't she be conditioned against that sort of thing?) to the quiet sound of footsteps, the subtle scrape of the door against the floor. Still, she kept her head down, studying the pages with an intensity sometimes thought to be peculiar to the artists in her clan (shh. I am making something sing), and lifted her head, startled, only as Sonatine at last made his entrance.

It was more dramatic that way, the sweep of her dark gaze up from the pages of the novel, just shadowed by a faint shimmer of pale lashes, the sweep of her attention across the strange Kindred, the slow-crawl of a porceline smile. If she were human, her breath might catch in the back of her throat, or her autonomic nervous system would betray her: pulse rate, respiration, the usual signs of anxiety.

She is not mortal, however. She is dead as he, and only the apparition of a smile dances across her mouth as she slipslidesslithers out of her sprawl in the armchair.

"Good evening," it is all a game, and the prick of fear is also the prick of excitement, enlivening a dead heart. The ghost-smile slides full and wide, as the Toreador offers one longer-fingered hand in greeting. "I don't believe we've met, and I hope you don't think me too forward for saying so."

Sonatine Vidale

Mon 10:29PM CST
It was as though tension had halted his steps. Dark eyes casted themselves upon the female form of Marie-Helen Alette. His hands were clasped at his back, his expressions erious and cold. Little did he have time anymore for laughing and carrying on. Pleasantries had been written out of his little black book for a century now. His posture was stern, and his demeanor cold and unforgiving. Dark eyes held her gaze steadily as she felt bold enough to make his aquaintance.

That could be her first mistake. Treating him as a commoner might a fellow peasant.

The Brujah Primogen stepped further into the room as he turned his head to look her over some. As he hand extended, a distant gaze would follow down the smooth and pale skin of the Vampiress before him. A slight murmer was her responce, as though to touch her might give him an illness he'd rather not deal with. "Delighted. I am Sonatine Vidale; Primogen of Clan Brujah." His tone was laced with malevolence, his voice cold with a lack of passion. Sarcasm was the prime weapon of choice for many arrogant bastards alike.

Note, he did not change his posture to accept her hand, but instead decided not to touch her all together. At the small of his back his hands would stay, for now.

Marie-Hélène Alette

Mon 10:39PM CST
"Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais, M'sieur Vidale," the Toreador murmured, withdrawing her hand as casually as she could muster, as if the slight did not begin to bother her in the least. Perhaps it didn't: perhaps she preferred it that way. Her expression remained, sly and rapt, and her eyes continued to linger upon his face without ever precisely meeting his eyes. "Toreador. If you're planning to take advantage of the library this evening, there's a very fine volume of Aesop's fables you should consider.

"Beyond that, I must apologize for my intrusion and presumption. Good evening, M'sieur Vidale." The creature offers a brief sweep of a bow, and returns to her armchair and her paperback.

Sonatine Vidale

Mon 10:45PM CST
"Yet another Toreador, how lovely." He said, his words rolling with sarcasm. His eyes held their gaze confidently, and why not? Sonatine had the age, experience, and strength to hold his own in several conversations. The problem with this was that there were many other's that could do the same; and perhaps better than he. Simmon Ledeux was one of them, and Sonatine knew that. Fear wasn't the word best associated with what he felt for Simmon; but vigilance was.

The Toreador rarily left s good taste in his mouth. How would this one fair, he wondered.

"Tell me, Marie-Helene; what do you bring to Chicago?"

Marie-Hélène Alette

Mon 10:53PM CST
The Toreador's blue eyes swept upward from the cheap pulp, returning to Sonatine's face once more. Her own features were now as still as a frozen lake, and her eyes had darkened with the returned chill. "Aside from my excellent taste, my familiarity with the classics, and my ascerbic wit?"

Her glance grew fixed, and then drained away, as the corner of her mouth twitched upward into the smallest of cultured smiles. "I'm afraid that I give away my secrets less easily than you your hand, M'sieur Vidale. Surely, you wouldn't expect any less, would you?"

Sonatine Vidale

Mon 10:58PM CST
The problem with Vampires these days was that they made things way to obvious. It was as though every one of them had some vast secret life they kept to themselves when in actuallity they were already doing that with the mortals.

How very trite it must be.

A breif smile came over his lips as he decided to take an interest in the youth. His steps guided him carefully toward the leather chair just feet from her placement. Before he lowered into it, he casually unbuttoned his suitcoat and hung it on the thin wooden coat-rack. Afterwards, Sonatine removed a switchblade, a thin metal cylander, and a zippo lighter from the various pockets and sat down. After setting his affectes off to the side, the Primogen would settle into the chair and turn his gaze back upon her.

"Tell me, of these classics.." He said, his voice growing a little more alluring, in a darker quality then most would consider enticing.

Sonatine Vidale

Mon 10:59PM CST

Dice Validated
to Marie-Hélène Alette: 3D10 Dice Roll: 8; 6; 8


Sonatine Vidale

Mon 10:59PM CST
to Marie-Hélène Alette: (Presence 1; Awe, is in affect.)

Marie-Hélène Alette

Mon 11:10PM CST
"The classics, M'sieur Vidale," the creature repeated, sitting up, perhaps, and leaning closer to him as she murmured the words. "Literature, history, philosophy. Where would you prefer to begin? With Homer, or would you prefer something more recent? Moby Dick, perhaps, and the eternal maddened quest for that which you can never truly find? Or perhaps we could even turn to the contemporary period, when even the precepts of modernism have been torn down into an endless cacophony and the very foundations of language and thought have been destroyed. What makes a cat different from a bat, beyond some convention we affect to know?"

The paperback snapped shut, and the title - though half-obscured by her hand - was mostly visible. Something about love or lust, some contemporary faery-tale of Prince Charming and Mrs. Right, complete with just enough in the way of euphemistic sex to appeal to the average housewife. "Except, now Derrida is old hat, and even the Language poets are old men, drooling into their oatmeal and pissing into their diapers, and they are turning back to a vicious cycle without ever learning the lessons they were so very close to capturing before it all got captured by the academy and calcified by tradition." Expelling the rest of her deep breath, the Rose leans forward again, in a manner that verges on the besotted (to those who know her), but might still seem remote, and lifts a cool, pale brow. "If you tell me where your interest lies, I will be happy - " a faint shrug, as she trails off.

Sonatine Vidale

Mon 11:24PM CST
His eyes settled upon her as she went into her spleal about Moby Dick, Homer, and the true classics of the world. It was good the modern school system still valued their history. By now his interest in her had peaked to a point where he could realize that her intelligence was well off and her rationale qualities were stable. No, she was not the typical young Kindred, abusing the great gifts granted by the blood of Elders.

"Tell me, of your own views about this world you live in. Obviously your death must have had some impact on you, what changes in mentality did you share with those of the classical sence? Did Poe's morbid world excite you to mourn your death, or has such ideals been passified by an unjust God?"

Marie-Hélène Alette

Mon 11:38PM CST
"Poe is yet another unfortunate genius, too driven by his brilliance - thank whatever god you know - to see that, essentially, the brittle world he created was simply a creation, not some undiscovered country, some new reality to which he and only he bore the secret key." Her pale eyes half-closed, the fine lashes glancing across her high pale cheek, as she settled back in the chair. Her attention was still rapt upon him. "I - " Her nostrils flare, briefly, some irritation that nuzzles at the core, with the terminology, perhaps, the limits of the same. "I did not mourn my death, M'sieur Vidale, though perhaps I mourn the loss of certain essential portions of the world that I will never again see: the sun at noon, a shadowed summer day. To seperate these things from our experience thins us, until we become a pale core of beaten metal: what is the point of continued existance without something to compel one forward? Power is a dry husk of a thing, and so is immortality, to pretend otherwise is to invent blindness, loss, the cacophony our gibbering enemies would bring to life in the world."

And she continues, speaking with clear force and passion rarely given shrift within the Elysium, which she would never allow to surface under any other circumstances. "Decadent games are simply that: decadent. I do not believe in God, nor do I not believe in God, nor do I believe in the ideal of justice, what is justice, beyond that which we want? As for my death, M'sieur, what would you like to hear? Something was given to me, and something was taken away. This is the way of the world."

Sonatine Vidale

Mon 11:46PM CST
"Ahh.. a true philosopher I see." He mused. His sire was something of a philosopher; until she was murdered.

Sonatine tinted his affects with a light touch. Fingertips edged over the switchblade as he tormented himself with the idea of lighting a cuban cigar. Eyes settled once more upon the inspiring girl as he did indeed find her, inspiring. It was something of an oddity that he find comfort in anyone these nights, besides his blood-doll; Erikka Brennon.

"And what of this city? Your thoughts in particular.."

Marie-Hélène Alette

Mon 11:56PM CST
"If you will, M'sieur, I would not call myself a philosopher." The curve of her smile; the flash of her gaze - serious now. Her calm, sharp features are oddly expressive under these circumstances, in ways that she could not begin to imagine or control. "Although certainly, you may. It is, however, tempting to the ego, and as important as the ego is in the everlasting Elysium game, I cannot allow it to master me."

"As for this city - " her shoulders rose and fell again, a mild and calculated shrug, " - I have met but few Kindred, and those that I have met are thus far - " she leaned in, confident in her confidante, but some habits are well-ingrained, and perhaps this one, to decline to pass such overt judgment on other Kindred, at least in the hearing of another. " - why, I do not know them well-enough to say." She was surprised for find that to be true. "Although," another skimming almost-smile, more distant and withdrawn. "the Camarilla seems fractured, the ties are loose: it makes me think of wolves, hunting, and how easily they hunt stragglers. This city is vulnerable."

Sonatine Vidale

Tue 12:00AM CST
"Mmm, yes. I think we see eye to eye, you and I." He said, a short taunting smirk approaching his lips afterwards. Sonatine sighed, and rose to his feet. "Regardless, life itself is a mere game, Ms. Alette. .. Good evening." He said with a slight nod. Gathering his things, he would sip the coat on and begin making his way out of the Elysium without another word.