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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"No, it doesn't." It is a nasty situation, but what are they wandering for if not to do some good when possible? Purpose is worth it.

"Any other weapons you won't be using yourself?"

"Leave the Cassulls, those .50 caliber bullets are for them. They'll break your damn wrists." She reaches past them and scoops up the two huge pistols.

Danica's radio hissed and she snapped out of her trance to grab it. "Petra? ...Right. Right. Okay. Tell me what you've got."

Jen's eyes glaze again, and this time, she whimpers in fear. Catherine and Eight glance at her worriedly.

Roland stands, leaving the rest of the weapons and watching Danica's radio. Waiting's almost over, it seems, which is just fine by him. Waiting's the worst part. He much prefers being shot at.

He nods, no more talkative than Roland. It's their show, let them say what they need to among themselves.

Jen lets out another whimper, claps her hands over her mouth and gags. "I saw it," she mumbled through her fingers. "The monster."

Danica starts passing on the information as she gets it. "Between five and six...old Pack...oh right. Shit. No, of course they weren't gonna be friendly, not if they remember us." She pauses, listening.

Whatever gets said next, she doesn't relay or respond to. Instead her eyebrows just go up, and she mumbles an acknowledgment and signs off.

"Old Sabbat pack. They may have been hunting us. Or maybe just here. But they're old school. Humans are just meat to them and I don't think they like to see us mingling."

She swallows and glances down as the others go quiet, watching her. "They've got some...modified...ghouls with them. They made them out of the sharks."

Maggie rubs her face. "Could you be more specific?"

"They gave them lungs. And legs."

"...fucking landsharks."

"Yes."

Roland, having stepped out of Jen's way a moment ago in case her gagging turned into something messier, thinks on this. "Does what you said about headshots still apply? Or would the eyes be the only major weak spots?" If he's lucky it won't be. That'd be a hell of a shot to have to make repeatedly, not that he doubts that he could, at least a good part of the time.

Being a stranger to this land is working in his favor, here - while he's concerned about the, ah, walking sharks, he's coming into this expecting anything, knowing of sharks only as vague, distant legends he used to hear about as a child. The rest of them, to whom all the creatures here are supposed to exist by certain rules, seem to be having a harder time accepting things. Roland isn't worried, either, that he and Donald are going to be useless - his aim is the same as it ever was, and Donald might be able to track who they're looking for even if he doesn't have anything that belonged to them to scent first.

Donald feels like he's getting further out of his depth. Shooting walking sharks with a pistol. Sure, that'll work. (Hint: no, it won't.)

Hasn't it been ten minutes yet? He's ready to move. Do something.

"Six of them and... how many sharks?"

Growltiger climbs up Jen's back and straight into her open, purple backpack, which he then proceeds to zip up with his teeth. "Mow!"

Jen and Catherine exchange glances, then Jen speaks up. "Brain damage or fire. Or massive body damage. I hate having to fight but you need to know how if you do it. Oh I wish it didn't have to be."

Catherine touches the Malk's shoulder. "Jen."

"I know, I know." She wipes something red out of her eye. "Let's get moving."

Danica raises her voice again. "We have a total of fourteen targets according to Petra. Six pack members, six shark mounts and two watch sharks. That we know of. There's a gondola round the side of the building we can take down to water level. Follow me."

Edited 2014-08-23 04:43 (UTC)

Roland follows, letting himself settle toward the back of the group rather than settling in the middle and being surrounded by all of them. It's not that he doesn't trust them, it's just- well, nope, he doesn't trust them. Enough to fight with them, which is something, but they are strangers. "Is this purely a rescue mission, or are we aiming to take them all out?" Very different strategies involved, there.

He's copying Roland, hanging towards the back of the 'pack', though he relies more on reflexes than paranoia, and this doesn't smell like a trap.

"And how will we recognize the ones in need of rescue?"

"We distract the others while Petra and Danica work to grab Khan. He's...um, well, he looks like Tarzan except not white. Only wears like cutoffs or a loincloth or something. We kinda had to talk him into that because it was really distracting. See, he's got these really big super hairy--"

"Jen," Maggie collars the young Malkavian and tugs her along. "Stop talking about my sire's frank-n-beans and get moving."

Danica leads the way to the drop gondola, a spike-bottomed affair bolted together from a combination of old bolt hull and corrugate steel as makeshift armor. Most of the Pack moves silently, and it's the Malkavians and Catherine who keep closest to the newcomers.

'Tarzan' doesn't help, and neither do 'cutoffs'. Roland doesn't say so, though- if he sees a mostly-naked, dark skinned man near their enemy somewhere he'll just have to take an educated guess. Roland looks over the thing as they reach it, watching the others climb in before turning and offering a hand to Donald to help him follow.

Why is he always the lady in the situation? He can't help being the shorter one, come on.

Into the boat goes the 'big wolfie'. No comment about Tarzan vampire beanie wienies. (It is funny, though, the rambling.)

Silence is golden. He hasn't spoken a word.

As Catherine turns the big crank to lower the gondola, Jen manages to stay quiet for a while. But the tension in the air is driving her batty, and after a while she just sort of starts talking randomly.

"Torpor's kinda like when a water bear gets all dried up and can't move any more. Tardigrades. They can survive all shriveled and dormant for a long long long time. Even in a vacuum! But they're not conscious and they come out all starved and need healing and stuff. Danica can fix it."

"Yeah," grumps the witch. "If I get the chance before they diablerize him or something."

The rambling is hitting Roland much differently. Not amusing, but too strangely familiar to be an annoyance. Listening to it - or, rather, listening past it, because the knack of listening to the tone of such chatter without hearing the words never quite leaves you - is moving rusty memories of a couple people he hasn't thought of in a long time.

So probably he'd be too distracted to care much about her words even if he did understand them. He looks to Donald instead, eyebrows raised in a silent question: Did you get any of that? Or, more probably, Was any of it important?

Edited 2014-08-25 00:17 (UTC)

Their own little private language. Isn't it cute?

He's not whispering, a whisper sometimes turns out to be louder than speaking normally and quietly. Very quietly. He's learned over time exactly how good Roland's hearing is.

"A sort of coma. They must have forced the one on our side into it. Hence him needing rescue."

"Oh yes, yeah, exactly. Sooooo look for a big muscly hairy guy wearing not much who has dreadlocky dark brown hair and dark skin and I'd tell you yellow eyes but they'll be closed. And he'll be so unconscious you could drape him in Christmas lights and take pictures. Except that would be a bad idea because then his daughter Maggie would have to kick your butt."

Maggie looks up from sharing a cigarette with Grey. "...Yep."

The gondola lowers down the mossy, damp side of the building, past candlelit windows and windows lit bright by the few solar-battery generators. One of the intact windows they go by has a floor scattered with straw and scrap paper and patrolled by chickens.

Roland stares at the chickens as they pass by. The chickens stare back. "However they put him into that coma, they may try the same on us" he says, watching the chickens slowly rise above the level of his head as the boat lowers. "Might be with drugs, or might be some version of mental control. Do you all know how to defend against that?"

"It sounds to be a 'vampire' problem." he offers, a bit late and perhaps not so helpfully. It's only a guess. He hasn't so much as read Dracula, honestly. What does he know?

"Well, actually to put someone into Torpor you hit 'em. And you hit 'em again. And then you hit 'em again. Sometimes it takes a while so you need a brick, or a baseball bat, or a falling wall. Maybe a dropped safe, you know, or a couple of cars. I saw Catherine Torpor someone with a frozen burrito once. It was awesome."

Catherine grins awkwardly as the boat nears the surface of the water. "...lucky shot."

Jen rambles on. "Usually I just make people sleep with my mind or if they're really bad I throw my cat at them. Or if they're really really REALLY bad I throw my cat at them and then throw Eight at them."

Eight nodnodnods mutely, then taps the handrail next to her suggestively. Everyone else is reaching for it except rambly Jen.

Roland takes the hint. "Miss," he says to Jen, raising his eyebrows. "You may want to-" and here he takes hold of the rail in big, deliberate movements so she'll know what he's talking about. Then he twists around to check that Donald's done it too. Got to make sure all the little duckies are in rows like they ought to be.

Donald has, Roland. Please stop nagging with your stupid eyes and stupid face.

"If you do make them sleep, please not us too."

Does Jen have that much control while high, he wonders.

A pair of furry paws shoot out the back of Jen's backpack and grab the railing as she's wandering around, preventing her from being knocked off her feet as the boat splashes down. There's no immediate clue as to how the HELL the cat was strong enough to do that. But from his kitty grumbling, he must wish Mom was paying more attention.

"Oops!" Jen giggles. "We're here!"

"This crate actually seaworthy?" Catherine kicks the bottom a few times as she slips them free of the guylines.

"It's good enough," Danica rasps, her eyes starting to glow a deep, watery blue. "You guys sit down in the bottom, we're going to move fast."

Roland, of course, obeys. He does crane his neck to try and get a better look over the edge, though, looking quietly fascinated. The glow to the leader's eyes does get some attention too, but not nearly so much as the water around them. "Keep your mind closed and you should do well enough," he mutters to Donald, not quite looking away from the water. "One of them should remember us well enough to carry us back if her touch misfires."

"My mind is always closed. It's stuck that way." Too deep of a habit to break after his life depended on it so many years. He's hunched down far as he can be, posture hinting he's not fond of boats and water. Everyone has their weaknesses.

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