thebrownacid | Random Encounters

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Random Encounters

[This is a casual rp starter for scenes with Jen Daring, the world's most harmless Malkavian Antitribu. It serves as a warmup spot for character ideas for the After Gehenna game.]

San Francisco was a fishing village now. Bay water lapped the bases of the surviving skyscrapers, so clear now you could see down to the shattered street. Some brave divers went for artifacts down there: jewelry, surviving tools, random items to decorate their chambers with and claim bragging rights just for surviving. An old hubcap could cost you your life now that the Farrallones and the Bay were wed in one stretch of water over the drowned city. Sharks--the main risk in the area and also the main livelihood. They might get a fisherman now and again, but most nights in the high village with its precarious catwalks, it was they who became dinner.

When the sun went down the fishing crews lowered ropes down the side of the buildings and hauled up the boats along with their catch. The hard, ugly end-of-the-day work was necessary, for one breed of shark hunted at night and could take out even the few old yachts they had left.

The grunts and creaks of the ropes and thunk and scrape of the rising boats were the first thing Jen heard when she woke that night. She opened the closet she was curled up in and spilled out, yawning hugely. The outer wall of the hotel room she was squatting in had shattered outward, and a huge, battle-scarred gray cat crouched among the bricks, messily dining on a pigeon the size of a football. He looked up at her with his one good eye and meowed conversationally.

Within half an hour they had both eaten, and Jen was sitting quietly on the edge of the cracked rooftop plaza of the hotel. Other villagers, human and otherwise, milled on the rooftop by torchlight, enjoying a barbecue out in the cool night air. The cat sat next to her, keeping watch. Jen was a little unfocused, distracted by the blobs of golden and royal blue light dancing through the air. She knew something was going to happen soon and she should be here for it, but not what.

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"What kind of work?" Is she a vampire or what? He shows no signs of fear--maybe a little frustration with himself for walking eight miles for nothing. It's eight miles back too, if he decides to go back.

"No, I'm not from around the area at all, until the last few days." Let her assume he's been hiking across the country, for whatever reason.

"I help people. It depends. When my family doesn't need me I usually look after this or that person I run into. Some need to learn things. Some need a sandwich." And some need to be fed to the Pack, but she always feels bad about that and doesn't want to bring it up.

"You have to watch out for the sharks around here. Most can't travel onto land yet but Megalodons can jump really, really high."

"I'm not short on food--I know where to look." A lot of things were left at old campsites and cabins in... worlds like these. Yes, worlds.

"And I don't much go for the ocean, either way. I don't think I'm in any danger."

"Okay!" she pauses, hand in mid-gesture, eyes suddenly getting a middle-distance stare.

"They have only attacked the towers a few times. They don't like the metal bones inside the building. They give off magnetic fields that make the sharks dizzy and make them lose their direction. But if you leave a boat on the surface they get all chewed up and stuff."

What other drugs have been consumed?

"I don't own a boat... or know how to sail. It's not an issue."

Whatever else has been consumed, the good trip she was on before is giving way to a crushing sense of apprehension. "Uh-oh. Bad." She looks around worriedly. The cat lifts his head to stare at her, licking his muzzle.

"Something's coming." She can hear that goddamned theme music in her head...and then it starts spilling out of her head and into everyone else's heads and suddenly everyone had a Jaws themed earworm. The crowd milled nervously, looking around. Some started backing away from the edges of the building while others stepped forward to peer cautiously over it.

"They...they should get away from there. They should get away from there...."

He's older than he looks, not to say he looks young, and he's oddly experienced with outside sources trying to shove feelings in his head. Especially since he doesn't have a shark phobia.

"Stop that. Get ahold of yourself. There are no sharks coming and there won't be."

She stares up at him blankly, her lips trembling. "I wish that was true," she manages softly after a moment. "But I wished it was true when I saw the world ending and that didn't help."

The cat actually walks away from a lump of meat and goes to paw at her leg. He meows once, sharply, and she gathers him into an awkward bundle which he bears somewhat indignantly. "Kitty."

The music hasn't stopped. More and more people are edging toward the center of the plaza. Up on top of the broken spire overlooking the plaza, a searchlight flashes on and scans the water.

Suddenly the clanging of a makeshift gong sounds out and a man's voice starts bellowing from the spire "BREACH! BREACH! GET AWAY FROM THE WALLS!"

If only he knew what happened in the area. It would give him away if he asked. The only thing that won't is following her lead...

Something explodes from the water down below, close enough that the air is suddenly filled with spray. A collective yell rises from the crowd; the fairy lights shake and one of the wind turbines shakes loose and dangles from the wires. Then a massive shadow emerges, looming above the south side of the plaza. Only the head makes it high enough to tower over the crowd: a heaving black-gray cone split by a red slash full of teeth the length of a forearm. A single black eye, liquid, soulless and the size of a truck tire, gazes at them for a moment. But the creature starts to fall before it can turn to snap....

What is going on? The mutant sharks... exist?

He carries a gun, but it isn't meant for something that size. You'd need a harpoon.

"Well?" He's trying to snap her out of her shock. "What do you do?"

She shakes out of it with his help. "The Pack. Gotta call my clan, have them call the Pack, only the Pack can take that thing...."

A secondary plume of water shoots up as the thing hits the surface again. People start to pick themselves up and look around.

Jen meanwhile turns to the cat. "Find Maggie and Khan! Tell them!" The cat yowls and scampers away.

Finally she looks at him, eyes unfocused. "That's the problem. They...they like to jump."

"Yes? And? What's your--usual plan of action?"

Please, do have harpoons. He can work a harpoon.

"I'm one of the only noncombatants. But the Pack fights. They can kill it. They kill monsters once I find them for them." She's trembling like a leaf as she looks around. "Poor hoomins. At least I got them to get away from the edge but now everything's wet."

The shark leaps again, and this time manages to snap at the dangling turbine and drag it down with it. The lights go out on one side.

"Rogues. That's what they call them. Most sharks hate the big buildings. But something like this happens every once in a while still..."

"Hoo--you mean humans?" Not much of a joke. He supposes there's nothing he can do, not being a real soldier-type himself.

"Not the best hunting strategy. It's suicide for the shark, it can't breathe."

She blinks at him. "It's unnatural for them?" Her brow wrinkles in confusion. "Dangerous?" That doesn't make any sense. She rubs her face and glances back over the edge of the building as the shark crashes to the surface again.

"That makes even less sense. Sharks are all about survival."

She looks up. A big shaggy-haired Tarzan looking dude wearing nothing but tattered cutoffs is striding over. He glances at Donald curiously, then turns to the little hippie.

"Cat says you got problems up here." His voice is raspy from disuse.

"Hi Khan!" Jen nods rapidly. "Big shark, killing itself to jump this high. This guy's right. That's not normal."

"No," Khan replied slowly, looking back out over the edge. "Not normal at all."

"They're fish. They have gills, not lungs. It is suicide for it to beach itself."

Unless the shark has changed in other ways...

Khan stares at him with pale brown eyes, if anything reading less human than Jen. He nods. "Point." He went to the edge of the wall the shark keeps appearing near and peers down. The air seems to gain in tension and Jen wiggles as she watches him. Then, the big shaggy man starts to growl, low in his throat.

Jen squeaks "That's not good" very quietly, but it's not anyone there that Khan is angry at. Instead he looks back at them with a thunderous scowl.

"Someone's controlling it. Someone's forcing it."

"What for? Aren't there better weapons out there?"

Ones that make it farther onto land.

"It's not the point--" Jen starts, but the big nonhuman with her is already moving. Snarl growing loud in his throat, he bounded for the edge and promptly dove over it. Something big and black flapped off toward another building.

"It's a challenge," she says sadly as she watches Khan leave. "Only the strongest can control the megalodons. Khan can, Maggie can. And whoever is risking humans and sharkies to get his attention can too."

She squirms worriedly. "He should have waited!"

"For? Has anyone called your friends?" Pack, she said... Vampires aren't the sort to use that word.

It's a silly word, in his opinion. He'll never have a 'pack', just a family who are so far away.

"Kitty did." Even now said cat is bounding back up, with a rolled up bit of paper in his mouth. She takes and reads it. "Three minutes."

She looks at him worriedly. "They're fierce. I play human better than them. But if you want to stay you can."

He tilts his head, just a little inhumanly.

"Not everything is divided into 'your kind' and 'humans', you know."

"Oh I know, I've talked to a few kinds who are alive but not human. Got a friend who turns into a big kitty!" The idea that the Pack is soon to arrive has calmed her some.

"I was curious about you but we were still you know, kind of circling around each other before crazy sharkpoop started happening. But my point is, um, some of my Packmates are scary."

A slim figure in black ninja-like attire and a blank, doll-like white mask is now standing behind Jen. Its eyeholes are black and unreadable but it gives the impression of considering him.

"I... can become a wolf." It's so much more than that, though.

"And I've seen scary, believe me." Incredible, insane things. He can hold his own.

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