Interdit.

Tesla Orloz

[Room for another, even if your just starting?]

Luce

(Sure! Is an open scene. I'm letting Sid start!)

Sid Chavez

Lucky for those denizens who don't tend to stir from their lairs until after the sun has plunged beyond the bay, there is plenty to do in this city when cloud-filtered rays have been replaced by street lamps and the unnatural pink hum of billions of watts bouncing back to the surface of the earth.

Unfortunately, most of those things involve the presence of other people, and Christ knows what breed of person one is likely to encounter once darkness has come swooping down.

It doesn't matter why he's here, really, and asking him what on earth he's doing at an after-hours gallery showing would have him telling you something to that effect, but Sid has come stomping out the front door of such an after-hours showing within the last several seconds. Most of the storefronts are dimmed, either because they've closed for the day or because the activities going on within are not for public consumption. This particular drag is choked with secondhand stores, record shops, realtors, chiropractors... there isn't much sense to some of the neighborhoods, but downtown is where everything crashes headlong into each other.

Suits Sid just fine.

"God damn," he says, to himself--because there isn't anyone else escaping outside to smoke--as he sticks a cigarette between his teeth and lights it.

Tesla Orloz

Sid had thought himself alone out here just beyond the dim lighting of the late night gallery showing, where the rich, the in the know, and those that wanted to be congregated to feel special, to feel hip, and to spend outlandish amounts of money on their chosen pet artist. They would call it an investment to their friends, while secretly they hoped the artist would die nice and soon, so they could get a good solid return on their 'investment'.

This sort of outting also attracted another sort of person though far rarer and less obvious, the sort that just loved to show up dressed nicely to such places and help themselves to the avails of the evening...and those attending. Tesla was one such individual, and after a little while of working the crowd she had taken a breather, and had seated herself a little ways down the street on the next doorstep.

She wore a nice little green cocktail dress that hugged her thin but athletic form, her glossy black hair fell in its straight lines to frame her expressive green eyes and adorable mouth. The heels she wore were practical, two inches if you were lucky, which kept the five foot three inches of woman still on the decidedly short end of the height spectrum.

She sat in the half light inspecting the contents of her clutch, rummaging through its insides as Sid steps out and she clicks it shut quickly, looking over to see just who was interrupting her...a surprised smile spreading across her lips when she realizes...she had seen this one before.

Luce

There is someone else escaping outside for a smoke, though. The door swings open, a rush of crowd noise buoyed by the electronica playing in the background. The lights inside are bright and white, so her shadow cuts over the broken sidewalk first, long and narrow as one of those stick-based insects, always masquerading as a broken branch. Though particolored and gray instead, from the clash of lighting sources on dimly lit street.




And: Luce. The stranger is tall and blond and leggy, dressed in dark skinny jeans, and a closely fitted tee, the logo hidden beneath the lines of a tailored blazer. Burnt orange, a short-napped velvet, of all fucking things. An impression of her eyes - the ring of dark shadow - purple - gives her a smeared, decadent look. Her lips are nude, a sheen of gloss, nothing more, and as she steps out of the door in Sid's wake she snaps a dark, narrow little cheroot between sharp white teeth.



Smiles around the smoke as she joins him outside. "Got a light?"



And there's this moment where she's taller; standing on the stoop of the gallery. And [i]then[/i] she steps down and she's... [i]still[/i] able to look him in the eye without lifting her chin. Practically as tall as he is.



Those are fucking six inch heels. And they are [i]killer[/i].

Her gaze sharpens into focus beyond his shoulder, though - a spare alertness impresses itself about her thin shoulders, her long lean frame - clear gaze flickering over Tesla, then beyond her, over the shadowed street before returning to Sid. Expectant. Which is to say: waiting. Light her cigar already, asshole.

Sid Chavez

Were not for the fact that she'd seen this son of a bitch out during the day a few weeks ago, it would be easy for Tesla to mistake him for one of the undead. Plenty of other people have joked, in the past, that he sure as shit acts like one. He skulks around, has the social skills of someone who doesn't interact with other people unless it's to eat them, has sallow skin and lank hair and bruises under his eyes. Everything he does seems to take a monumental amount of effort.

And then there's the black clothes. There's the bored look he wears constantly. There's the fact that sometimes he wears sunglasses inside so he doesn't have to meet other people's eyes.

There's the fact that when the tall leggy blonde wanders up to him, smiles, asks for a light, he looks at her without much in the way of interest in his eyes. Someone had referred to him aloud as "an aging rocker" the other night, and that's as good a descriptor as any. He's wearing Doc Martens and dark-washed jeans and a button-down shirt beneath a leather jacket that doesn't have metal punched into it, so he's at least trying to make himself presentable, but he has a patch of hair on the right side of his head that he's either bleached or has gone white from shock that he dyes primary colors instead of trying to get it to match the rest of his hair. Tonight it's red.

He doesn't seem overly impressed that she can look him in the eye. This is San Francisco. Chances are he thinks she's a transvestite. Tesla, for whatever reason, isn't acknowledged. Maybe he doesn't see her; she does have a great view of his backside.

The battered Zippo is back in his pocket by the time she asks, and he's smoking his cigarette with the silent acceptance of one who knocks back medication because he has to, not because he enjoys it.

"I fuckin' hope so," he says, to her question, and has pulled out a battered Zippo in the amount of time it takes her to look away and back. This is not a gentleman she's found; he lobs it underhand at her instead of handing it over like a civilized person.

Luce

I CAN CATCH STUFF. Dex + Athletics.

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 9, 9) ( success x 1 )

Tesla Orloz

Was his ass worth scrutinizing...well yes it was. Sid was a decent looking guy as far as the city of angels went, especially if you weren't always into that whole movie star sort of man, preferring the sort of man who has lived a few days in his life. She was ignored however, in exchange for a tall, leggy blonde woman who strode from the gallery like she owned the place, asking for a light. Typical. She thinks to herself but a shake of her head clears such negative thoughts, and the woman is up on her feet with a surprisingly energetic bound.

She stepping then, stepping towards the duo with light exaggerated steps, an adorable and approachable smile spreading across her lips as she clasped the clutch in the small of her back.

"Hi there." She says as she steps up between the pair, having to look up into the street lights to see each of them. The great green orbs of her eyes settles onto Sid and her smile took on a mischevious bent, just for him.

"Feelin better big guy? Staying clear of weddings?"

Hazel

Hazel's got something on a wall in there. She got it in because someone, somewhere, said that she had talent while she was scrawling something on their arm and the piece was commissioned. Hazel doesn't like to paint. Hazel likes chalk and skin and ink, but she couldn't flay a man and stick him on the wall. Though, it would be offsettling. Though, someone would call it art.

The little asshole told Hazel that she'd need to shower before she showed up, she had a place she could do that... right? Hazel wanted to shove his skinny jeans down his throat and tell him he could go fall off something tall. But, here she is. In a blazer and a pair of nice pants and freshly laundered. You take money where you can get it, and while people don't really notice that she is there, they do notice her art on the wall. Don't ask what it is. Just know that it has amazing texture.

Hazel has come outside, though, because she needs to go chek on her van to make sure no one has towed it. She announces her presence with the smell of FreBreeze and a call to her vehicle. "Babydoooo-" she stops in time to notice that there are people smoking.

Luce

That body of hers must have made for an awkward adolescence. Bean pole tall and willow-thin, made not for red-blooded American men, but for their brethern: fashion designers. Whatever terrors adolescence held for her are over, now, and her frame is defined by a certain - composure.

Sid lobs the Zippo; the blonde reaches out to grab it from the air. She fumbles the snap but recovers it at the last minute, long fingers twisting around the battered metal.

Her mouth is rather small, until she laughs, but finely made. And it twists into quick, self-deprecating smirk as she flips open the cover and - carefully - lights her cheroot. A cheap one, tonight, the sort you could pick up in the bodegas in the Tenderloin. The scent is sharp in the cool, damp air where it trails from the tip of her cigar, heavier when she exhales her first breath of smoke, all in a great gray cloud that mutes the yellow light from the street lamps.

Thank you - she mouths over Tesla's head so as not to interrupt their conversation. Then, tosses back the lighter before settling back against brick.

Now see: Luce doesn't smoke like it's a drug. She smokes like it is a pasttime. Like it is her motherfucking hobby. She inhales that cheap tobacco as if she were teasing out the intricacies of this year's Nouveaux Beaujolais, as if she could taste summer in a glance. The ironic stamp on her features lingers as Tesla inquires about the [i]big boy's[/i] [i]wedding plans[/i] and as she tosses that lighter back, she lifts a pair of perfectly arched blond brows above her dark ringed eyes at Sid. Question, or challenge. [i]Big boy.[/i]

Then swings her head abruptly, her sleek ponytail flying as she whips her head around to see Hazel emerge, calling out - that hint of tension surfacing in her form, like the brief glimpse of something from the depths gliding through dark waters - eases as quickly as it appears.

"You had a piece in the show?" A hint of something foreign in her voice, worn smooth.

Hazel

[fuck, room mate, brb]

Hazel

[back]

Sid Chavez

And here comes his pint-sized savior, slinking along like she's either hiding something or looking to pick someone's pockets when they aren't paying attention. To accuse him of purposefully ignoring her would be implying that he'd seen and was aware of her, but Sid doesn't exactly hint otherwise when she moseys up to them. His expression is as neutral as it had been when Luce joined them, but she can hear a spark in his voice, a vulgarity that has an edge to it that was missing the day Tesla had to pick him up off the street so he wasn't nailed by a car.

He seems only peripherally aware of the blonde's difficulty in catching the tossed lighter. If he's afraid of what will happen if the thing hits the ground, either he has the means to replace it or can just fix the damned thing. Though he is still and not overly inclined to speak if he doesn't have to, he just has that look about him; things breaking has no impact on his state of being.

Which reminds me: anyone paying close attention to his face will notice that his nose is broken. The swelling is going down but it still presents extensive bruising to the world. Oops! It's dark.

Anyway, Tesla comes up, and keeps up with the 'big guy' routine, but he doesn't correct her. He is big. And a guy.

Her question has him huffing out a nasal snort before blowing a thick stream of smoke over the blonde's head.

"Marriage is a killer, man," he says. "What, you think I got a headache because I got sensitive ears? That was a piece of my goddamn soul dying."

Hazel

"Yeah," she replies, and there is a flash of bright white teeth and her shoulders slump inward, "yeah, I have a piece out there. Last week. I mean, you should be able to touch it? But they said at the opening that you really shouldn't encourage people to touch the stuff on the walls, which really is just a load of bullshit."

She shrugs. The blazer seems to fit a little too well, and thank god for a lack of lighting. Where Luce is lovely, Hazel is uninspiring in terms of her appearance, sure, the top of something peeks out from the V in her blazer. She turns just right and there's little white knicks and scars against some fairly tan skin. Her dreads are back in a ponytail. She's clean enough for the residual dirt to seem artisitc.

"Are you showing a piece out here?"

Ceilidh -Kayley- Casey

((Anyone mind another?))

Tesla Orloz

"I don't know...I really enjoy them. Lots of fun to be had, people to be met, things and moments to be shared. Drinks...oh yes and the drinks." She says in a high, clear voice. She might have had a similar experience to Luce in high school, not because of being lanky and tall, but simply because...she might not have fit in general. She certainly didn't look like the sort that still clung to any left overs of high school, even with her age not topping anymore then twenty at most.

She briefly nudges the man with her shoulder, hitting his elbow as she did so. "Course that would imply you like to have fun, which obviously you don't." She says as she takes a few meaningful steps over to the blonde and looked up into her face instead.

"Now YOU." She says looking her up and down with an energetic bob of her head. "Look like the sorta lady that just has a rocking good time and doesn't give a damn what the next woman thinks." She says nodding her head like it was the final judgement on that topic, a serious look on her face but a moment before that adorable grin stretches across her lips once more.

"I'm Tessa, nice to meet you." She says, offering her hand to the blonde...if there was any enmity from Tesla towards Luce....due to height or startling good looks, it certainly didn't show. "Killer shoes by the way, I love crazy spike heels...they just aren't really practical."

Sid Chavez

[Y U NO ON AIM]

Ceilidh -Kayley- Casey

The dancer had been practicing Ballet. There wasn't much she could do for Sid at this point and if she hovered he'd accuse her of all sorts of things and really she'd much rather be dancing than deal with the abuse for trying to help. But then a text stopped her and so she was walking home looking less than pleased. Thankfully she sees Sid. Sid is big and burly and ....got taken out flat by the guy. Shit. "Shit." Nothing for it. She wasn't going to go alone. "Sid, we gotta go. I think your new friend with the mean right hook is pounding on our door."

Sid Chavez

First she nudges him. She'd have better luck nudging a lamp post, for as pliable as he is; he doesn't so much as budge, and he doesn't seem to even acknowledge that she's touched him. The leather of his jacket is thick, and the elbow beneath it isn't bony. Despite his general worse-for-wear appearance the fucker is solid.

That would be why he was a bitch to pick up off the sidewalk, but that's beside the point.

After she nudges him, she accuses him of not being very much fun. This, to a guy who looks like the only reason he isn't having fun is because he's like a fish out of water at this thing and has a broken nose. He's probably been asked 'what happened to your face?!' somewhere in the neighborhood of five times in the last hour. All he wants to do is smoke his stupid cigarette and get back to ignoring everyone.

"Whaaaaat?" he asks, like the accusation is completely unfounded, but with his low voice and deadpan facial expression, there isn't much emotion to be gleaned, there.

A young woman halfway between Tesla and Luce's heights comes prancing down the sidewalk, and she doesn't have to do much more besides address him before he's giving her his undivided attention. The lighter is stuffed back into his pocket, and he pulls away from the small gathering without bidding anyone farewell.

"That schmuck hurts the door I'm gonna put this fucking thing out in his eye," he says, holding up the cigarette as they start off down the sidewalk.

Luce

That seems to amuse her. Smoke curls from her nostrils as if she were a dreaming dragon; then she opens her mouth and allows another lung-full to escape into the cool night air. "Non - no, I'm - " laughter undergirds her voice, then. Bright enough that it seems natural, that it seems native to her existance, with a touch of sharpness that gleams at the edge. " - not an artist."

Her eyes, a pale but saturated blue, gleam through the ring of dark purple shadow, belying the look of bruised indifference the make-up gives her. "Last Week, right? I think you might have a buyer in there, but canvas is too confining for you. You need another medium."

Her shoulders twist in a modest shrug beneath the burnt orange jacket. A double row of bronze buttons gleams down one side, catching and scattering the indifferent light. Two sets of letters, AK and AC are reading on the fitted t-shirt underneath, which clings to her thin torso.

Then Tessa introduces herself; extends a hand. Luce looks down briefly - this flicker of her pale eyes - shifts her cigar from her right hand to her left and reaches out to take the stranger's hand. Her fingers are cool and long and fine. A narrow band of gold circles her right thumb, and her nails are polished red black. Two of them are already chipped.

"Luce," She names herself with a supple movement of her mouth; that gleam of genuine amusement rather more hidden now. And - "these?" she extends a foot. The shoes aren't just killer, they are works of art. "After wearing them up and down the hills of Languedoc-Roussillon, they're like bunny slipper in San Francisco."

Ceilidh -Kayley- Casey

*She nods at the others there but hurries off with Sid. She doesn't really want to have to replace the door if they crazy, scary guy thinks that they just aren't answering.*

Hazel

"Who cares about heels," she tells Tessa, "shoes like that are meant to be admired and then summarily worshipped in some kind of Quentin Tarantino-esque kind of way. The only way they could get better is if they were on a pedestal in there, but I'll bet they cost about the same as some of the crap on the pedestals in there."

She waves a dismissive hand, lets out a pffb and grins anyway. The young-ish woman offers Tessa a hand, smiles like she means it, "I'm Hazel. And I'm normally a tattoo artist. Someone told me I should try drawing on canvas instead of people, though, so I gave it a whirl."

Tesla Orloz

Sid was suddenly and irrevocably dragged off into the night by a dancer like woman who obviously knew the solid and burly looking man who for the record, she still didn't know beyond being the 'big guy' and Tesla can only raise a finely shaped brow as they disappear before turning her gaze back to Luce and that hand shake.

Tesla's hands were an odd match for Luce's, long slender fingers seeming to move fluidly and quickly, perhaps she was a pianist, or some other form of artist who used their hands....it made sense in a way.

"I have no idea where that is, but it sounds fancy, and wonderfully rich also, who did you have to kill, stuff in a ditch, and then frame it on another person to get those things!." She says as that adorable smile simply radiates energy and good feelings, up at the other woman. When her hand is released Tesla shrugs enthusiastically as she looks from Hazel to Luce her one free hand coming to rest on her hip bone, her weight shifting to that leg.

But then Hazel offered her a hand, a hand to shake and the wide smile upon her lips somehow grew wider as Tesla reached out and shook it. "Oh man, now THAT is talent." she says with an encouraging laugh. "I don't wear ink myself..but I am a huge...huge lover of the art." She says as she looks over Hazel's arm...at least what is visible.

"Do you do your own? Or do you trust your personal canvas to others?"

Sid Chavez

[Thanks for the scene, guys!]

Luce

(and these: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPxF7a-DMflmnOyDm285vRhXqmfsUUmIosD1jj0XWyyXgDJrPJsoEp7IldkJua-Kr86yZyvnaVLHEibCTzwcc2acK9GGiwyNKllOxqIvfgZLge02VQvyNV5NrbzyUtJtqX1fEkKw/s1600/PG_501312036__3_ZM1.jpg are her shoes tonight.)

The creature's chin rises, pale gaze tracking Ceilidh and Sid briefly, before dropping back to her more immediate companions. She is looking down at both of them, which gives her eyes a look of hooded intimacy - some trick of the shadows and planes of light. Her features are sharply drawn. High cheekbones and a high, clear forehead, a faintly turned up noise and a precisely curved mouth set above a small chin. She breathes out another smoke cloud, holding the cheap cheroot away from her body when it is not clenched between her teeth.

Tesla does not know where that place is. "Provençe," the blond supplies, in the interregnum when the enthusiastic woman in the green cocktail dress pauses to take a breath. She utters the word with the precision of a native speaker.

Then glances back to Hazel, "Trying a new medium's not bad advice. You stay in one place for too long, you get too comfortable. But if you're going to work on canvas, you have to stop wishing it were skin. Or start treating it like skin. Leave it unstretched. Drape it over your subject. Show it the way its meant to be showed."

Hazel

"It's the only art you can take with you, so I do trust other people with the rest of me. The only person that's been allowed to come back and do touch ups is my ex, but that was more a tit-for-tat situation. I fucked up his tattoo, he messed up mine, we went back and forth until we got it right. Lesson learned, joys of being young, stupid, and with tattoo guns. I do actually do my own, Mary's mine."

Which she does show off. Hazel pulls her left sleeve up enough that Our Lady of Guadalupe- with all her blues and shading and vibrant colors is visible, "I'm always afraid I topped out with her, I kind of feel like I should have given her to someone else but you know? I'm kind of attached to my left arm, so!"

She does catch what Luce says. She watches, nods and catches the bits of information. Now Luce, Luce is a work of art all on her own. Hazel's eyes are dark and she takes the art critic for... well... everything she can really offer at that point, "so, essentially, treat the medium in the same way you would when learning a non-romance language. Quit trying to make the language speak like English when it's not."

Tesla Orloz

Tesla takes the time to appreciate the art that had been woven into the other woman's arm, her hand slipping forward unconsciously to touch it, to trace a brief outline of the woman's face before her hand would drop once more, stopping herself from invading the others personal space.

"Nooo it belongs right there girl! With you she will always stay pretty, cause you can do the touch ups and keep her clean and safe...i mean baring any serious industrial accidents that maim you horribly but thats a long shot right?" She giggles, but it is not vocal, it is more like the action happens...but no sound accompanies it.

She then looks back to Luce and raises a brow. "Ok....I have never heard someone talk about art like that, you just made it sound like the dirtiest, and the most heavenly thing on the face of the planet." Her face holding honest appreciation for what the woman had said before she looks over her shoulder at the gallery behind them. "And you made this place seem like a strip club for art lovers. Not that there is anything wrong with strip clubs mind you."

Luce

The creature makes a small sound of appreciation for the analogy, fine mouth twisting wry as she concurs. "Bien sûr. Let the language shape your tongue."

Luce's pale gaze is then captured by Our Lady. A moment's stillness so utter she forgets to breathe. Reaches out - unasked, without even a glance to seek permission, and brushes the cool tips of her long fingers over the vibrant blues, tracing the curve of Mary's head scarf. The cheroot is forgotten and her free hand holds it, drifting, away from her narrow frame as she traces the sinuous line of a falling lock of hair across Hazel's bicep when Tesla has let go. There is something both intimate and utterly impersonal about the study; in that moment, she has no sense of personal space. .

Then she straightens, eyes flicking upward to match Hazel's glance, sure and intense and clear. "I wouldn't give her away. Some things you need close."

And at last she steps back; remembers her damned cigar, nearly smoked out now, wreathing the trio in thin links of oily smoke. Luce turns, following Tesla's line of site toward the gallery, the gleaming interior, the softly shuffling crowd.

"That place?" a glance back at Tesla, then Hazel. "It's a meat market. There are a few good pieces; a few mediocre pieces showing flashes of promise, and a few monstrously bad ones wrapped up in enough highbrow nonsense syllables that most will pretend they're brilliant. No one wants to be left out. But it's what we were meant to do since Lascaux, right? Draw our bodies on the walls. Write ourselves into history. Say one word another can hear. Maybe even tell the truth. Some truth."

Irony lingers in the curl of her mouth; glints in the pale eyes, with the frame of dark smeared shadow as she glances from Hazel to Tesla, back again. " - but if you'll excuse me, I'll climb down from my soapbox," the irony in her mouth sharpens, " - and take my leave. It was a pleasure to meet you both."

Luce

I think we lost mindy! I need to sleep so if you wanna make another post, please do! but then I need to get to bed. :)

Tesla Orloz

[nah lets fade, i dont think i have the brains left for proper coherent posting, thank you for the play!]

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.

A meeting on the streets.

[Paul Schafer] The sun set less than an hour ago, dipped down over the western horizon to stain the sky in varying shades of Dark before disappearing entirely. With natural light replaced with the sickly glow of ailing street lamps, with the piercing illumination of headlights and the flickering of neon signs, the streets have cleared out considerably. Gone are the scampering children chasing toys and each other around dismal lots and publicly-funded parks, retreated are the pedestrians outside for the mere enjoyment of the warmth of the day. The only people who are outside right now are the ones who have reason to be, who are hurrying from cars and subway stations and buildings to other buildings, who are out for dinner or picking up coffee or heading to work.

Chinatown is aglow this time of night, and shows no signs of slowing down. With the rapid approach of summer and the temperatures to show for it, the cows are finding reasons to stay out later. Restaurants and tea shops are packed, bus stops are crowded, and all around is the promise of immortality, bared necks and the hum of health beneath the skin.

Moving through the crowd is a man of insubstantial height, dressed well enough considering what he is, with whom he is affiliated. He wears a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, slacks, a tie, a watch, has his hair combed back out of his face and a pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket. To look at him, no one would guess that he's any older than 25: he's got a young face that doesn't quite match the hard cast to his gaze, the sense of detachment people get from him.

They don't know any better.

[Kyle Rayne] Brooding only slightly, Kyle Rayne, that meek vegetarian vampire, tries to look tough
in his polyester purple button up as he wanders through the dangerous streets of Chinatown.

He is not successful.

He looks about thirty, with ruffled blond hair and soulful eyes. If there are any clues to his clan of origin in his gait, it would be the almost paranoid furtivity to his glances, but then he knows there is much to be wary of in the darkness.

Kyle scans the alley with his preternatural senses, hunting for a sizable stray to sate his hunger

[Benicio Romero] Its a matter of aging. Perhaps after the first three or four decades, you're memory of it skews. The sunlight in your mind looks different. Colors that you never see again except in neon signs. A few more decades, and you don't remember that at all. Sunlight becomes something akin to the fear of lurking smilodons, something that exists in the deepest parts of you. The parts that say 'I am human, somehow.' The parts that cower in fear from the other parts, which say 'I am as far from human as you will ever see.'

Perhaps that's why kindred these days liked these parts of the cities they infested. Perhaps that's why Benicio likes it. One can almost see it in that disturbingly pleased smile that he shines toward the businesses, as if happy with the neighborhood, with the city. One can almost see it in the way the pinks and purples and the oranges reflect dimly off his gold teeth. A reflection of a false memory that he doesn't even remember having. Or doesn't even remember missing.

Life starts with the night for Benicio Romero. He breathes in the smell of the city, standing in front of a certain strip club, caressing the bare scalp on either side of his mohawk. Life has started again tonight. He can almost taste it.

[Paul Schafer] There are some of them who never grow used to the knowledge that society as they know it is going to continue on without them, that they're going to watch the world they were born into reach its apex and then come crashing down to give way to a new time, a new generation, a new way of working and living that they have to choose to either keep up with or remain separate from. There are Kindred who are several centuries old who haven't been able to keep up with the shifting of the cultural tides and have wound up secluding themselves within their own personal anachronisms; there are Kindred who make valiant attempts to keep up with the progression of society's whims, who make sure their dress remains consistent with what the rest of the world is wearing, who learn the lexicon of forward motion, who don't allow themselves to become too wrapped up in how they remember life being.

Even a decade of remaining exactly the same is enough to drive home the fact that life as you know it is going to end eventually while you are afforded little choice other than to keep on moving.

Out of the shadows come those who feed on humanity in order to survive. The baby-faced man in a tie has his hands in his pockets, is moving down the sidewalk without any particular destination in mind or objective at hand when a smiling specter from another lifetime appears out of the edge of his awareness.

New York. The 80s. A time of boundless consumerism and rampant drug use, of war on a distant shore. You remember the people you fight with. You remember the deals, the promises you make.

"Benicio fuckin' Romero," he calls, his brassy New York accent unchanged after all these years. "Is that you?"

[Kyle Rayne] The weight of this endless night can be too much for some to bear, the call of the sun or the hunter's stake too strong when life itself was burden enough. For those souls who had more to give than take, the use is little in eons of taking. The wounds of old did not heal from the embrace, they had more time to fester.

The harmless psychotic monster finished his meal, a simple cat that had no home. He finished quickly, whether from mercy or hunger. He did not seem sated, but that could have been a yearning for something more full-bodied.

His senses always sharp and alert, Kyle heard the strange accent, like out of an old movie, unmistakably American, almost comically coastal. Then he saw them. Two revenants like him, as dead as the concrete they stood on. Yet unlike him, and they were acquainted. Kyle stayed in the shadows, unsure of how to proceed, whether to greet his fellows to bolt to his haven.

[Benicio Romero] If he had a heart, it would have jumped right then. Ripped from the odd, momentary rapture, his eyes turn with a furrow toward the voice--

Familiar. The way birds are familiar.

"What the..."

That furrow deepens, but the curve of his mouth changes angles from defensive to curious, and slightly amused.

"Schafer? You gotta be kiddin' me. I thought for sure your punk ass was got got years ago. Its been...fuck...FUCK!"

And finally, to full amusement. A cruel grin on his face as he takes the few steps toward the man. A fist bereft of rings (Back when they knew each other there would have been at least one. A wide one. Across the entire fist. Knuckle rings had gone the way of fingerless gloves) punches at the man's shoulder, half in greeting, half intending to dispel the apparition.

[Marie-Helene] There is a noodle shop mid-way down the block, with a scattering of tables on the sidewalk for patrons who might like to soak up the sun of an afternoon. The sun is gone, and the owner's daughters have lowered the umbrellas and lashed them tightly, chained the iron chairs together and stacked them alongside the tables. There are two tables, eight chairs stacked high enough that it would be dangerous to remove the topmost. Certainly, some physical law would be broken, someone's skull would be endangerous.

The shop is closed, too. The neon light is off, and the iron gate has been pulled across the storefront. There's the pale blue glow from the drink colors - blue, and red - and a light somewhere in the back, cutting onto the street through the picture windows.

Closed store, no chairs in which to sit: no matter. There is someone sitting on one of the iron tables, directly in front of the window, backlit by the glow of the pepsi case, her spine straight against the lashed umbrella, her long legs crossed. Her costume is hardly elegant: battered BDUs, the khaki coloured desert camoflage, these, and a mismatched black camisole, silk and lace, which leaves the delicate architecture of her shoulders bared except for two thin black straps. Her sharp features are sunk in the shadow of brim of a black baseball cap, the logo unreadable in the darkness, except when she brings a small, stinking, cheap little cigarello to her mouth and inhales. The embers spark, sucking in oxgen, and she holds herself still, thrilling in the the autonomic response of her dead body to the embryonic flame. Smiles a sharp, thin smile around the filter, holds the cigarello negligently away from her body as she exhales -

- in Kyle's direction, a stream of smoke. "Are you going to watch them all night, cher?" Her voice is quiet, but her eyes spark beneath the brim as she casts the stranger a sidelong look. " - do we need to buy tickets?" Then, stretching her neck, tipping her head sidelong, insouciant, she glances back toward the pair of Brujah greeting each other.

"Will this, do you think, be a good show?"

[Kyle Rayne] Each new night is an opportunity to learn -- or get eaten. Kyle's first lesson of the night -- not to be distracted, not to overestimate his abilities. Okay, that was two lessons.

To his credit, the newborn did not jump out of his skin, and for all Kyle knew he could do that. He wrinkled his nose at the malodorous herb and narrowed his eyes at the woman before him. He couldn't keep up the illusion, however, and dissolved into congeniality, smiling.

"Didn't want to interrupt their reunion. I've only met Benicio, and I do not believe I've had the pleasure."

He extended his hand in greeting.

"I am Kyle."

[Paul Schafer] The body Benicio's fist comes into contact with hasn't changed one ounce in either direction since they last saw each other. His shoulder is a solid force beneath the older Brujah's fist, strips of unrelenting muscle laid overtop of tenacious bone, and he rolls with the strike before returning the gesture. That amusement is contagious, splitting his lips into a teeth-baring grin as laughter slips out of his throat.

What pedestrians are still out after dark are taking pains to step around the two men, granting them as wide a berth as is possible without plunging footwear into the gutter or crashing into a parking meter or a trash can or another hapless bystander. Attempting to gauge whether they're simply enthused to see each other or whether they're about to burst into a brawl is difficult for the average person, and with the exception of the cigarillo-smoking woman perched on a nearby tabletop, no one is overly interested in sticking around to see what the outcome is going to be.

"Y'know," he says, when they've got their hands back to themselves but before the initial shock has completely worn off, "I heard you were out this way but I didn't fuckin' believe it."

Something over Benicio's shoulder attracts the younger man's attention, some odor or some lilt of speech on the wind, and his eyes find a blond woman in a baseball cap, legs dangling over the side of a packed-away table, cherry of her cigarillo winking through the wan light of the never-sleeping city.

"Shit."

[Benicio Romero] "Believe it, fucker! I'm still kickin', and there's still ass to be kicked."

That grin falters, and he stretches his neck as if working out a cramp that had been there for...so long.

"Well, at least it there was, till recently."

He turns, following Paul's gaze, then traces it back.

"Friend of yours?"

[Marie-Helene] The little cigar is cheap. It might have been flavored cherry, but the smoke has the odor of sawdust and brown paper bags wrapped around dishtowels. Something like it. Kyle offers his hand, and the tall blond stranger shifts the cigarello from her right hand to her left, holding it airily away from her body, sparing him both the worst of the scent (should he deign to breathe it in) and the inherent threat of the glowing cherry.

"The pleasure is all mine," she says, her head tipped back, the light cutting across sharp features so perfectly symmetrical, so pleasingly balanced that she could well have been embraced for that along: an ornamental beast. The light cuts across the sharp planes of her face, highlighting the cut of her cheekbones and the thin, fine twist of her mouth, now crawling into faint, sure little - smile, or smirk, some bitter/sweet doublehelix of the two. Kyle holds out his hand to shake. Marie-Hélène takes his hand, instead, the way a persistent courtier might take the hand of an easily flattered dowager, bending the tips of his fingers to sit neatly in her hand.

She takes his hand, and leans over it as if she meant to pay him the compliment of a courtly little kiss - but instead, breathes out a lungful of smoke over his skin, watches the way the light plays over the surface of it, the pattern of dead skin cells, the shifting billow of the smoke. "Marie-Hélène." The faintest French accent touches her speech, which deepens when she offers him her name. She pronounces it like a Parisian. "Don't," she cautions him hard on the heels of the introduction as she straightens and releases the hand. " - think about shortening it, cher."

[Kyle Rayne] "Marie-Hélène." Kyle mulls it over for a moment, the cuteness of his demeanor almost overpowering. "Beautiful. I just hope I pronounce it well enough."

There is something improper about talking to a lovely lady from a shadowy corner. Kyle steps under a glowing streetlight. With boyish charm, he puts his hands in his pockets and stares at the waxing moon. A wolf howls in the distance.

"I think our friends have spotted us. So much for spectating."

[Paul Schafer] By the time Benicio's attention has drifted back from the distant shores to which Paul's had been cast, the younger man has reeled in his gaze and centered himself on the conversation that he's having with his clansman. They have not yet drifted into the realm of nostalgia, haven't started telling old tales and reliving old days, but there is still a sort of exuberance in their reunion, a muted delight in seeing that the night had not claimed the other in the time that has passed.

It was a different time back then, a time when there was a clearly-drawn line dividing the sides, a line drawn in blood and ash, beset on either side by bullets and fire and good old-fashioned staking.

Friend of yours, Benicio wants to know, and Paul reaches up to push his hair back out of his face.

"Sort of."

He doesn't rush over to reintroduce himself, though, doesn't even seem entirely sure that the woman he's looking at is the same one who has a space in his dusty memory banks, who shares a space in history, whose feet have tread the same sidewalks and whose fangs have fought for the same scant supply of necks. Something the older Brujah had said had stood out, and Paul frowns now, pushing his hand back into his pocket.

"Whaddaya mean, 'until recently'?"

[Benicio Romero] "Eh." He sounds as if he doesn't really want to tlak about it. As if its hardly anything quite worth talking about. This is a ruse. it is worth talking about. And he does talk about it.

"This fuckin' ceasefire the Prince has goin on. Something's been nabbin Licks from both sides, so now we gotta sit around holdin' our dicks till they figure it out."

Even if you weren't in earshot, simply watching the conversation taking place would have been quite amusing. The previous statement, for instance, coupled with the animation of Benicio's hands as he speaks, was as good as a punch line.

"And lemme tell you man, up until then, I was fuckin roarin' to go! I mean, you know me! I had a fleet in the works. I had territory staked out. Domain. Our fucking domain! A huge fucking chunk of the city for the family to call our own. And now? Its all fuckin' useless. Ceasefire."

He doesn't spit. He makes the sound. The motion. But there's not white stream from his mouth. No globule of moisture hitting the sidewalk. Its just a pure expression of disgust.

"Ptew! Ceasefire. Peace. Pain in my fuckin' ass, man."

[Marie-Helene] "Non - " the creature murmurs, low, gradually unfolding her endless legs, arching her lean hips as she searches with her toes for her shoes, discarded on the sidewalk. The shoes brilliantly made stiletto pumps, with five inch heels that bring the dead thing to a towering 6'4" in height. They have the signature red soles of a pair of Christian Louboutin originals - but have been spraypainted blaze orange. " - Kyle, the spectating has only begun."

The discarded shoes located, the creature slips her feet into them and stands - and stands and stands and stands. She has a model's proportions - so specific, those to a certain time and a certain place, a certain spartan aethetic, where the body disappears into itself - impossibly tall, with long limbs defined by sharp joints and a certain spare elegance - matched with the sort of perfectly formed, wholly mutable features that can be made to look just so with this or that application of paint and cosmetics. Tonight, her mouth is bare, pale - not stained crimson from an evening meal, not yet - but her eyes, pale blue discs that sheen silver in the light of the full moon - are framed in a rather astonishing shade of chartreause.

"Come." Perfectly comfortable in her ridiculous shoes, the creature gestures to Kyle and offers him the edge of a smile that creates a certain aura of intimacy. "Let me introduce you, and then you can spectate up close."

With that, she leads Kyle through what remains of the late evening crowd, across the street, directly toward the pair of animated Brujah.

[Kyle Rayne] "You're the boss."

Some would say that the view Kyle was getting was wasted on such a boy scout. He should have been thinking nasty thoughts; even a dead man could get lost in those eyes. Kyle just tried to stand straighter, intimidated by her model's height.

While she led him through the night, Kyle moved seamlessly among the passersby. He knew where each cockroach scuttled in the night. Something or someone was out there, waiting for him. He wanted to be ready for what came next. The look on his face revealed by the light of the lamps told a different story: he expected to be caught off guard, an inevitable meeting with his nightmares.

[Paul Schafer] At mention of the ceasefire, Paul scowls. It's as if a previously-believed rumor has had light cast on it, clinical and dissecting, revealing all the putrid wrongness about the situation that he hasn't taken pains to closely examine up until now.

He doesn't interrupt Benicio as he rants, doesn't agree with him or ask any further questions. Standing with his hands in his pockets and his feet planted, his spine straight and his head up, he embodies stillness, personifies it. No breath passes through his lungs, his thin chest remaining quiet and motionless as he listens. It's almost eerie, the stillness; but their lot are used to it. There is no need to pretend at liveliness when they know better, when they aren't looking for it.

"Ceasefire," he repeats, as if trying the word out for himself. "Wha' the fuck."

[Benicio Romero] "I dunno man. Aint nobody talkin'. Aint nobody sayin' shit. Oh...oh shit."

He turns himself, now grinning maliciously in a sudden shift of mood.

"Here comes your girlfriend, man. Just so you know, if you owe her money I aint spottin' you."

[Marie-Helene] Ceasefire - says Paul -

- and here come two more licks. Benicio says something, low. Marie-Hélène catches the edge of the word girlfriend and gives him a sharp look and a twisted, lilting sort of smile, lovely as the flash of a shark beneath clear waters. Her right hand is in the side pocket of her BDUs, the left holds the cigarello - down somewhere near the level of her hip. "Gentleman," she greets them, her faint French accent enrobing the words, just, with a hint of the exotic. Then, an ironic little bow toward Benicio before she turns to Schafer. "Paul, cher. It's been a while."

"I've come to present young Kyle here to you both." They create a loose circle. She stands, her right arm now held negligently across her lean torso, her left bringing the cheap cigar up to her pale mouth. "Introductions all around?"

[Kyle Rayne] Feeling a little incidental, Kyle matches the Toreador's casual grace by being up front and in the moment.

"Hey, Benicio. Good to see you."

Turning to Paul, he seems relieved to see someone who closer fits his definition of normal. Appearances had deceived him in the past, however.

"Paul, is it? I'm Kyle Rayne. You and Mari-Helene know each other, then?"

[Paul Schafer] Benicio makes a joke about not spotting him if he owes the approaching Toreador money, and Paul returns fire with a "Some friend you are."

Gentlemen.

Even barefoot, Marie-Hélène towers over Paul. Right now, she's not barefoot. She's got those ridiculous painted stiletto heels on, her approach announced with each clack of the soles against the pavement. The Brujah is not tall by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, when he was Embraced, 5'8" was a rather generous height for an American male. Americans are getting taller, though, they're getting bigger, and these days he's several inches shorter than his breathing, bleeding counterparts, to say nothing of the fact that his head barely comes up to the towering Parisian goddess's shoulder now.

It's been a while.

"You're tellin' me," he says. A while. It's been the better part of a decade, long enough for time to have ravaged most individuals; neither of them has aged a night, though. For his part, the Brujah looks exactly the same tonight as he did the last time their paths crossed. His clothes aren't exactly the same, but his hair, his eyes, his skin have all retained their youthfulness.

Kyle introduces himself, and Paul shifts his body so that the quartet forms an imperfect circle underneath the awning of a sleeping business's storefront, out of the way of traffic. When he speaks, his voice carries with it the caustic croon of Brooklyn New York. It's not pleasing to listen to, but it does little to detract from the man's charm.

"Yeah," he confirms, eyes briefly flicking towards the female. "We knew each other back in New York."

New Yawk, is how it comes out.

[Benicio Romero] He's still grinning as the other two step forward proper, and offers a quick chin-raise in response to Kyle's greeting.

"How you doin' there, milk-tooth?"

Paul and the tall woman do indeed know each other. And from New York, of all places.

"No shit? You sly, fucking dog. And I'm only gettin' an introduction now?"

He smiles even wider at the Marie-Helene now.

"How ya doin', gorgeous? Benicio Romero."

[Marie-Helene] "You haven't changed a bit, chéri," the creature murmurs to Paul, with more than a hint of irony bleeding into the supple thread of her tone. Her mouth still twisted into a faint little I-have-a-secret smile, and her cool eyes gleam from beneath the shadow of the baseball cap. IOWA, it says, in big bold letters. She leans in toward Paul, makes an airy gesture toward the French kiss-kiss that suggests at the full gesture but does not come cheek to cheek. They are on the street, afterall. She has smoked three-quarters of a cheap cigar and stinks of cheap tobacco, rusting metal - when she should smell like Chanel Number 5. They are on a street, and they are dead things, predators, for all her fine manners, and one is careful around others. "Mais, bien sur, I am pleased to see you still in one piece."

Note how, when she turns to the wide-smiling Benicio Romero, her own half-smile spreading to match his own. "M'sieur Romero, the pleasure's mine, though it's been nearly a decade since I left New York, and when I was there, I'm sure I was beneath your notice. I'm Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais." Much as she did with Schafer, the creature leans in toward Benicio when the introduction has finished, makes the airy gesture of a kiss at either cheek. Her own are smooth and pale, shadowed by the brim of the IOWA ballcap, her eyes framed by poisonous green shadow.

" - now Kyle, isn't this preferable to skulking in the shadows, watching?" - as if it were a magnanimous gesture, as if she were holding court, dressed in mismatched clothing made elegant by the sheer virture of her presence, as if they were in the plushest Elysium rather than some sidestreet in Chinatown, the dark night moving around them, livid, alive.

[Kyle Rayne] Age and experience is here, events spent together and apart, forming friendship and wreaking havoc, some instances the two colliding. All the gravitas Kyle sensed here threatened to push him out of the circle, heat like the oven in mother's kitchen, dangerous but inviting. He kept his back straight and his head high. He took Benicio's gibe and replied, "Tried some lamb. Wasn't bad. Thanks for the suggestion."

Kyle admires Marie-Helene as she socializes, weaving through the subtle currents of propriety with the grace of a natural. He looks at her, probing with his gaze, searching for a hint of what lies beneath her carefully crafted demeanor, down to her true needs.

"I wasn't skulking, mon cherie. I just didn't want to get in the way of these two lovebirds."

[Marie-Helene] Kyle's quip earns him a sidelong look, the faint curve of half-smile, and a hint of laughter like smoke on the wind. "Touché," she murmurs to him, sotto voce, the faintest gleam gilding her pale blue eyes platinum.

[Marie-Helene] [ooc: WREAKS HAVOC WITH POSTING ORDER THEN HUSHES UP. :) ]

[Paul Schafer] [*FRENZIES*]

[Vincent McCann] How could the showman resist such a gathering? A break from the dull and drool day to day activities to meet both new and old faces? Well, McCann certainly wasn't going to pass up this chance. Or chances.

McCann as always, never passed up the opportunity to have some amusement at Benicio's expense. Which would most likely be the reason why the Kindred's own presence or apperance wasn't made aware until he was mere feet behind the Brujah, appearing out of the night air like a bolt of lighting in the blink of a eye.

The Caitiff tonight went without the suit, favoring his trim and well kept black denim jeans and jacket. A matching ballcap with a white crosshair over the center of the forehead kept his hair out of his face and those sparkling emerald eyes clear.

" Good evening gentleman and lady. "

[Benicio Romero] "Oh Shit! Listen to you! Found some balls on ya now that you got this idea of the good doctor out there lookin' after ya huh?"

He's grinning at first, turning to Paul as he jerks a thumb toward Kyle.

"Love birds he calls us."

And then...he's not smiling. He's certainly not smiling indeed.

"Well the doctor aint fuckin' here, is he? And even if he were, it'd just mean I'd have to kick his ass instead of yours."

He's close now, glaring at the neonate who seems just as tall, just as physically built as he is. Close enough to jab him in the shoulder with a finger as he speaks.

"Don't forget who the fuck you're talkin' to, y'hear me?"

[Kyle Rayne] Kyle almost backs down. He knows he's looking at two undead monsters who could probably tear his head off before he could blink, but he also knows what happens when a dog backs down. He becomes a bitch.

"I knew the Brujah could dish it out, but I didn't know they couldn't take it. I wasn't trying to start anything, so you just back off and don't take it so personal."

The last he says with a disarming smile. Who could stay mad at such an adorable face?

[Paul Schafer] Kyle makes a quip about the two Brujah being lovebirds, and the previous placidity in the younger, decidedly more pretty of the two of them abruptly vanishes, immediately replaced by something harder, something more predacious. He doesn't lunge for the Malkavian, doesn't growl threats or posture, but there is a visible tension in his form that speaks of the potential for violence that his kind is known for.

In the presence of his elder and the city's Primogen, he controls himself. At first, Benicio is jovial, grinning and joking. Paul's attempts to play along are tempered by his... well... temper. He forces a smile that looks more like a scowl than anything else when Benicio jerks a thumb towards Kyle, and when the Primogen's smile disappears, strangely enough, Paul seems to recover from the flash of irritation that had bristled beneath his skin. He reaches into the breast pocket of his shirt to fish loose a packet of Dunhills and a lighter--

... and then the Scourge appears right behind them.

Paul does not startle or drop his things. He does, however, tear his gaze away from Benicio's handling of the Malkavian and turn towards Vincent.

"Evenin'," he replies, sticking a cigarette between his lips and cautiously, respectful even of so small a flame, lighting it.

And then Kyle keeps talking.

Paul coughs out a touch of laughter, then turns to Marie-Hélène and asks, "The hell'd you find this guy, Luce?"

[Marie-Helene] Marie-Hélène's attention attaches to Benicio - intense, fixated, unblinking - and she is watching him rapt, (quite literally) breathless - capturing the fractional moment when the grin twists into itself, melts from his face like candlewax. He stalks closer, jabbing Kyle in the shoulder with a finger, and she looks away, out beyond the pair of them, down the street, shifting her stance subtly - moving from hip to hip, her body balanced perfectly atop the tottering heels, the now guttering smoke still held negligently in her left hand, the arm trailing away from her hip.

Vincent appears behind Benicio; she doesn't see the moment when he coalesces, as it were, in an eyeblink. Instead, she cuts a simmering pale gaze back at him when he greets them.

"I assure you," quiet back, "good sirrah, I'm no lady." Then, back to Paul, her mouth twists into a neat little moue. "I found him on the sidewalk, Paul." She hasn't moved, though; cuts a look back to Kyle as he responds to Benicio, her eyes still pools, considered. "I think we should keep him."

[Vincent McCann] McCann stepped around from behind Benicio and Paul, off to the side to be able to see the group more clearly. His hands were idly tucked into his jacket pockets, his eyes decidedly guarded against them all while his lips were curled in unabashed amusement. Yet those emerald eyes lingered on each briefly while he spoke to them.

" Truly, Marie? I bet you'll be fun to play with them. "

Kyle earned a measuring gaze before he spoke to the young neonate. " He's all talk, don't you worry. Benicio wouldn't hurt a hair on that precious head of yours. "

Benicio earned the most lavish of his attention however. " Benny, my boy, should I bother taking bets? Or will you end it too soon for me to enjoy it? "

[Benicio Romero] "Do you like your teeth, motherfucker?" Benicio barks back on the heels of Kyle's attempt to diffuse. He seems anything but appeased. Vincent's appeared. Out of nowhere, as usual. Benicio barely seems to notice anything beyond Kyle. Barely hears anything with the angry ringing gradually growing in his ears.

"If you do, you better hide 'em with them fuckin lips!"

[Kyle Rayne] Kyle's hands ball up into fists, and he tremors slightly, his eyes, full of steel, on Benicio. He crosses his arms and stays silent a moment. Then he turns his head slightly and begins bobbing it, as though listening to someone speaking, someone no one else can see. He chuckles. "You're right, Sam, he does. He reminds me of you, actually."

[Marie-Helene] "Marie-Hélène," the creature corrects, with a sharp, clean breaking of a look back at Mcann. "Pas de Marie. - Marie-Hélène. And," mildly, her mouth still, her gleaming eyes cutting back to Benicio and Kyle, "I am purely ornamental. Unless you wish to spend the evening discussing Foucault's model of power, Panopticism, Rene Dumas or pulp fiction, I'm afraid I don't - " here she pauses, cutting a glance back toward McCann, "play well with others."

Then, she dips her head low enough to murmur into Kyle's other ear. "Cheri, try not to anger the Brujah. They do have tempers." The irony is low, mild, every present. She straightens, cuts a look back to Paul. "Another night, hmm? And soon. We should catch up. Or at least smoke a decent cigar together."

Then, stepping back, she offers her remaining farewells - "M'sieur Romero." to Benicio and " - sir." McCann, and turns, elegant and impossibly tall, like a giraffe wearing stilts as she balances easily on the spray-painted orange stillettos, in her baggy combat BDUs, the obsuring (and absurd) IOWA baseball cap, the silk camisole the only fine thing against her skin, stalks off down the sidewalk, her heels clattering with every step until she disappears around a corner, and is gone.

entre act

Marie-Hélène Alette

Fri 11:09PM CST
Sometimes it is easier to escape notice when you are a thing apart. There is the crowd, young and wild and utterly banal. Someone is drinking shots from the glossy skin of a bombed out co-ed; or, rather, a series of someones, a moving circle of glassy-eyed young men (and women) half-dancing, half-drinking, half-chanting, the crowd-become-organism alive, vacant, thoughtless, always moving. Marie-Hélène steps delicately around one of the crowd's foremen - a squat young man, with broad shoulders and the clear beginnings of what may become a steel-belted radial version of the middle-aged tire, who holds two plastic tumblers of suspicious-looking eel-green liquid, and a hypodermic "shot" between his teeth.

In her own hand - the long fingers delicately jointed as a spider's spindly legs, the nails blunt and raw, unpainted except for the lingering remnants of some old job, the malignant colour fading to an unappealing brown - a finely blown martini glass spearing rainbows of color from the pulse of lights on the dance floor, red liquid sloshing up the sides as she moves, as she lifts the drink half an arm's length above her head to protect it from the crowd, a crescent of lemon pith floating in the dead center.

The crowd barely registers her presence: they are looking for others of their own kind, and she - pale, strangely reserved, apart, is sufficiently other that they ignore her and she shifts with the tides, sliding through them like oil through water.

When she reaches a still pool on the other side of the dance floor, she lowers the drink to shoulder level, leans over it, breaths over the tension-laced surface, sees the pale, strange reflection of her own sharp features distorted in the liquid and smiles. Her eyes flicker over the rim of her glass toward the large booths lost in patterned shadows and tick with brief recognition. The rim of the glass hides the sharp little smile as she approaches; only the curve of her lower lip is visible, and that only through the liquid distortion of the drink. "Jason." A moment, her gaze rising behind him to Sonatine. "M'sieur Vidale." Still cool as you please, to Brigitte, a flickering study of her features, bathed in the chromatic light. "Mme."

Jason Malone

Fri 11:14PM CST
~he smiles, looking down at the young torrie. False bravado is always amusing. At hearing his name, his head turns, his mouth opening slightly in surprise then curling into a smile~ Holy fucking shit... the dead have arisen. Nice of you to call me back... we were getting worried. Guess you got wrapped up in some project.

~his head shifts his gaze to Brigitte then back~ Good timing though... you should meet one of your own. Marie-Helene... this is Brigitte DeMourney, a relative of yours who is fairly new in town. ~looking to Brig~ This is Marie-Helene, she's the one that speaks for your family when Alinor's lips aren't moving.

Brigitte DeMourney

Fri 11:19PM CST
*She grins up at Jason and is just about to speak when Marie-Helene makes her appearance. Brigitte turns her eyes toward her and studies her as she makes her greetings to Jason and Sonatine and then to her.* "Bonjour Mme, a pleasure." *Brigitte looked young, almost too young to be in the bar, but what difference did that make when you had the resources to have identification made to state you were 21. Her soulful moss green eyes linger on Marie's face then, curious and wondering. Another of her clan. Good someone besides Alinore and the Prince to talk to perhaps.* "It is a pleasure to meet you."

Sonatine Vidale

Fri 11:21PM CST
Thoughts of extinguishing the burning cigar in his hand passed his morbid mind for only a second. As his eyes fell to it's glowing embers, he'd think twice of the realistic qualities it imposed. Sonatine had enough strength to actually light his own cigars, despite the dwindling fear in the back of his mind that the fire might actually come alive and eat him; but that courage wasn't enough to actually go through with self-mutilation in that sort.

With Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais' introduction to the small gathering, his eyes would rise as though questioning it's truth. Ashe Kincade told him about her before the detective left the city, but it was nothing Sonatine hadn't already realized for himself in dealing with the playgirl. An almost timid smile met his lips as he looked up at the Toreador. It was a bemused look that soon passed when he flicked the remaining ashes into the awaiting tray.

He said nothing in responce, figuring that Brigitte and Jason would assume the role of greeting her formerly. Whatever the reason was for the social black sheep of the Camarilla to lessen her presence in the city was her business. He had other things to worry about right now.

Marie-Hélène Alette

Fri 11:31PM CST
The creature's gaze rests fully on Jason's face for a full moment longer than necessary. Were they still alive, they might measure the glance in heartbeats, or the hollow moments between them. As it is, there is only the low, insistent pulse of some mindless dance remix that resonates through the martini glass in her hands to time it. "Returning your call was on my evening's agenda." A quick, sharp smile. "Forgive me, petit, but I only just received the message, on my return to town. Reception is so bad sometimes." She offers a vague wave of her left hand, sloshing the crimson drink over the wide mouth of the glass. Droplets cling to the rim, drip-drop down over her curved hand as her eyes shift back to Brigitte. Pale lashes flicker, brightly brushing the sharp curve of her cheek, and her wide mouth thins briefly, then curls about the edges, like paperwings catching flame.

"The pleasure's mine, of course." Her voice is clear enough, in all the noise, her accent almost swallowed by the echoing din. She flickers a mild glance (her lips press briefly together, swallowing the suggestions of further expression) at the silent Brujah, and then she leans half-forward, resting her left hip on the edge of the table, splaying her empty hand wide open on the wood surface. "This seems a lively party - " The song changes, abrutly blasting louder than the previous one. If she says anything else, it is lost in the noise.

Sonatine Vidale

Fri 11:38PM CST
The cigar finally burned out as he stamped it in the bottom of the tray. With eyes rising along pale and slender curves of a women's body, he'd meet Marie-Helene's gaze and snicker a bit. "It just started with your arrival, what can we say?" Settling back in the boothe, it would seem that he was trying to be funny. That, of coarse, wasn't really his specialty, so most wouldn't understand the words comuing from him as anything but a sarcastic remark toward a wittier opponent.

Jason Malone

Fri 11:38PM CST
~With a grin he shakes his head in amusement~ I'm sure returning the call was on the top of your list, Little One. It's good to see you again, none the less, especially with what's been going on around here of late... but that's a story for a different camp fire and night. For now, I've got some baddies to go look in on and some food to get... I'm feeling like.... italian. So, Marie ~said purposefully~ I hope to talk to you soon, ~he looks to Sonatine~ I'll let you know what else I come across. If you need anything... just call. ~he offers a nod before moving on to Brigitte~ Be careful, I don't want to have to deal with you know who if you don't make it home safely.

~he starts to walk off~

Brigitte DeMourney

Fri 11:41PM CST
*looking between Sonatine and Marie her courage fails her. she doesn't want to be left alone with them. not yet. she's not quite as ready for being on her own as she thought.* *she rises* "Jason wait ... I'll catch a ride with you." *she smiles to Sonatine and Marie* "Good night. Pleasure to have met you." *and she moves off with Jason*

Marie-Hélène Alette

Fri 11:49PM CST
"Of course - " the pale creature steps out of the direct path toward the door and watches as the pair of kindred disappear into the crowd. The faintest crease appears between her brows as she studies the space where they were, now filled once more. Nature abhors a vaccuum. Others might ask permission to join a crimelord in his particular booth, but the Toreador lacks either the insight or foresight to offer Sonatine even that basic courtesy. Abruptly, she turns and levers herself up to sit on the table, pausing only long enough to put her drink down between herself and the Brujah. More of the cosmopolitan sloshes out with her rough handling, and she flicks the droplets of the drink from her long fingers with an irritable fastidious, then gives it up and wipes her fingers, instead, on the worn thighs of her cargo pants.

"Do you have another of those?" Dropping her chin, she nods toward Sonatine's extinguished cigar, her absent expression dovetailing into a private, perhaps imperious half-smile.

Sonatine Vidale

Fri 11:56PM CST
"No.." He said. It was a lie of coarse, but why would he give her his last one? The only thought that made any sense to that question was maybe watching her burn herself in the act of lighting it. But then again, why would she ask him if she wasn't capable of lighting her own? Regardless, he wasn't inclined to do so..

Sitting in the most uncouthe of positions, Sonatine would look the socialite over some more and then glance down to her drink. Of coarse it was for show, but he still wondered what might be in the drink. Looking back at her casually, the brute would soon speak up again. "Ashe spoke very highly of you, before he left.." He mentioned, watching he reaction.

Marie-Hélène

Sat 12:22AM CST
The Toreador manages a moue of distaste, something sullen - spoiled, perhaps, or indulged - underlying the brief expression. She did not merely want a decent cigar, she coveted one, if only when the scent lingered in the air. Her eyes half-lid, nostrils flaring as she takes a breath necessary only to steal the heavy scent of charred tobacco from the air, and leans back, arching her body at the hip to slide her hand into her right front pocket. From within, she produces her usual crumpled pack of cheap, rank cigarellos and a flameless lighter decorated with - of all things - a weeping clown.

She glances down, sorting through the wreckage of the package in search of a half-decent smoke, and pale golden ropes of her fine hair slide over her shoulder, across her cheek. Her fingers still at Sonatine's comment, and she glances up - indeed, stares quite briefly but directly into his face, her own features strikingly neutral, her bare shoulders curving upward, emphasizing the hollows of her collarbones, an expression of Gallic indifference. "I hadn't heard that he had left, though of course, you would know." Now her mouth wicks wider - a twitch at the corner - as she picks, at last, a mostly intact cigarello from the crumpled package. "And I daresay I'm not sure I believe you, cher. Few people speak highly of me, as you say." The little smile remains, prescient, and she offers another small shrug. " - and I do believe I prefer it that way."

Sonatine Vidale

Sat 12:30AM CST
"I think his opinion was based on as far as your clan went.." He said, not bothering to look around himself. The Masquerade was still important in his eyes, but Sonatine had grown comfortable in his superiority. Should anyone call him on it, he'd no sooner beat them down or outsmart them int he debate than submit to the breach. Looking over her smoke of choice, he'd toss the idea of the weeping clown around in his head. Sonatine brought a curled arm up to his head as he rested it silently, still staring at her. "That could be why, there. You're the most non-conformist Toreador I think I've known.."

Marie-Hélène

Sat 12:44AM CST
"We're not all fluff and bunnies, you know - " she tucks the little cigar neatly into her mouth and cups her hand about the tip, talking briefly around the impediment. Her gaze dances from the tip of the smoke to the Brujah primogen, then back as she upcaps the lighter and depresses the mechanism with her thumb. There may be no flames, but there is heat, the supple swish-hiss of the gas and a wavering of the air. Her shoulders tense, the cipher-curve of her narrow body grows rigid as she allows the strange frisson of fear and want to flare somewhere deep in her dead body, then trickle shiveringly up her spine. She doesn't even register the first deep breath, the flare of the now-smoldering tip lending some illusion of colour to her pale digits. " - recent company and - " she is herself, entirely, again, her eyes rolling in mild exasperation. " - almost everyone else I've met here notwithstanding. I think the human stock is failing, some combination of television and genetically engineered corn has made the human race, generally, more sappy and banal than ever. It translates, of course, across the barrier. Or perhaps - " another draw, she lifts the smoke meditatively from her mouth, rolls it between her fingers as if it were a fine thing, which it is not, a foul, almost oily scent clings to the smoke as she burns the very dregs of the worst sort of tobacco, swept up from the floor and packaged for the lowest of society's low. "- perhaps it has always been this way, conventional lives, conventional minds, flowers and mint and I am so very pleased to meet you, Sire."

Sonatine Vidale

Sat 12:54AM CST
He was staring at her now, watching the flamless lighter ignite the cigarette and her tense up accordingly. He looked bored with her, for what it was worth. It was liek watching a NASCAR race; hoping to see a car wreck into the wall at 125MPH. He stared at her, intently imagining her own flesh catching light and peeling back within the blink of an eye. And yet, al lat once, he is brought back to reality when she goes into the fine details of the modern kine.

He said nothing in responce, however, just listened. Finally as she said she was pleased to meet him, he'd finally level with her. "Well, with Henry's wishes, you're part of the council. So I;d guess some manner of respect is required for you.." He said synnically.


Marie-Hélène

Sat 01:02AM CST
Her mouth twitches minutely in response, bemusement stirring beneath her changeable façade. She is the picture of repose, now, the trappings of that bone deep fear have curled up and peeled away much as he imagined her skin might do, were she to twitch her wrist backward rather than forward, or drop the ugly little cigarello in the middle of her lap. The pale creature opens her mouth to speak - undoubtedly some bright little barbed quip - but the expression cools and stills as her pale brows shoot up half-way to her hairline. The cigarello drops between her fore and middle fingers, drooping dangerously toward the table. " - I beg your pardon?"

Sonatine Vidale

Sat 01:07AM CST
Patience, wasn't a virtue Sonatine had.

Sighing almost unamused, he would wonder what the hell was going on. Apparently no one had bothered telling Marie-Helene that she was now the Toreador Primogen, since Simmon Ledeaux had left the city unannounced. Staring at her longer, he'd casually amuse the thought of rubbing it in her face, despite his complete lack of interest. "Henry released a formal letter in the Marlowe house of the new council's formation. Not that we've held a decent meeting of the Primogen since I've been here; but you're among them. Just as, Malone had announced to young Brigitte DeMourney.." His tone was level.

Sonatine Vidale

Sat 01:07AM CST
Patience, wasn't a virtue Sonatine had.

Sighing almost unamused, he would wonder what the hell was going on. Apparently no one had bothered telling Marie-Helene that she was now the Toreador Primogen, since Simmon Ledeaux had left the city unannounced. Staring at her longer, he'd casually amuse the thought of rubbing it in her face, despite his complete lack of interest. "Henry released a formal letter in the Marlowe house of the new council's formation. Not that we've held a decent meeting of the Primogen since I've been here; but you're among them. Just as, Malone had announced to young Brigitte DeMourney.." His tone was level.

Marie-Hélène

Sat 01:22AM CST
"I tend to ignore the convoluted family crap." The pale thing takes the news with a certain almost chilly aplomb. Her irritation bleeds out only in the subtle shift of her weight on the table, the drum of her fingertips against the surface of the table as she takes another deep breath of smoke. She glances up, toward the ceiling, and breathes out a foul smelling cloud of smoke, watching at it first coalesces - like seeking like - then dissipates, rising toward the dark ceiling high above. "Does that mean I get to call you by your first name?"

Her gaze slices back to Sonatine, her eyes made large in the darkness, some impression of his reflection floating in her corneas. But her mind - of course - is moving ridiculously quickly, following the absurd trails of irritated speculation like a dogged, loping hound. She doesn't hold the glance for long, and instead - animated by the rising tide of her own restlessness - slides easily from the tabletop, gaining her feet with a clatter of ankle-turning high heels. "Ridiculous - " half-muttered beneath her breath, half-offered as a concession to the Brujah - (doesn't everyone love to see the French en dishaibille?) - she repeats herself, with more force now, and an incisive shiv of righteous anger livening her tone. "Utterly ridiculous. Perhaps one of the most ridiculous things I have heard in my life. The possibilities are - " and now her mouth, which seems almost frozen in a flat, unattractive pout more appropriate to the pages of a fashion magazine - splits into a brief, ironic little smile. " - absurd. I do thank you for the information, M'sieur Vidale. I won't forget it."

Sonatine Vidale

Sat 01:29AM CST
Her comment almost made him smile. He rarily smiles anymore, that was betraying who he was in this modern age. Bleak and dissmal, he'd stare at her as she moved to stand. Leaning back some, Sonatine would glance toward the crowd of people dancing. He said nothing in her obvious disinterest in being the Toreador Primogen. While he couldn't understand why, him being who he was, afterall; he wouldn't say anything to discredit her. The less interest she was in being on the council, the better off he would be..

Marie-Hélène

Sat 01:38AM CST
Standing, the Toreador glances briefly at her cigarello, the smoldering tip, the long finger of ash hovering precariously at the end. She flickers the Brujah an irridescent smirk, then tips the cigarello into her Cosmopolitan, now half-empty thanks to all the strategic spilling across the dance floor. The ember spits, sizzles and hisses as it is doused in the liquid and the ashes spread out across the surface like befurred shroud. "Goodnight, Sonatine - " the creature quips, her mouth twitching narrowing, a plastic sort of humor in the set of her gaze. " - thank you for the - " another quickling smirk, tossed off with an elegant twitch of her bare shoulders as she turns and saunters off into the crowd.