Path of the Vampire forum

“Well, you are glorious, we can’t have that lost to frivolous training, can we?” She watched him move his knight to take her pawn and studied the board, the corner of her lip caught beneath a fang as she plotted. There was a good reason to win now, after all. “Mm… I feel like this education,” she started, moving her knight from G8 to F6, “Is going to be unlike anything I could expect.”

Planting herself a little more on the stool, she watched him remove the metal and then proceed to spin in a circle while still holding it. Lilianne’s eyes went a bit wide, not entirely prepared to treat that kind of wound, but then he seemed to hone in on what he’d been looking for.

“What kind of ammo you using these days anyway?”

A nervous laugh escaped her, but she closed it off quickly to answer him. “7.62 by 39mm now… Habren gave me a couple of new weapons because the glock wasn’t cutting it.”

As the molten silver poured - oh so carefully - into its respective casings to cool, James craned his neck to look over at the board and see what had changed. "Knight to C3 for me, would you?" He asked, turning back to look at what he was doing just in time to prevent a spillover. "Guarantee you ain't had an education like I'll give you," he added, "it probably won't be useful, but it'll make you happy."

Now emptied, he dropped the cruicble into a bucket of sand near the forge and returned the tongs to where he had taken them from. "7.62," my mumbled to himself, over and over again as he moved back behind the counter and started rummaging through cupboards in search of the right size casings. "You should've told me about the glock," he said, his face appearing briefly above the countertop as he spoke, "I could've fixed you up with something. You like what you've got now, yeah?"

He disappeared below the surface again for a moment before emerging finally with a stack of plain cardboard boxes to spill them messily over the counter.

Lilianne watched him pour, unconsciously worried that if she so much as took a needless breath, he'd end up spilling. As usual, though, he seeemed to have a knack for avoiding catastrophe at the very last moment. "How is it that you do that?" She asked, moving his knight from B1 to C3 and then made a cautious move shifting her pawn from A7 to A6. A look of suspicion followed, her brow arching in question. "Can any education be useless? I mean, really... especially one that proports the ability to make someone happy?"

As he shuffled through his casings, she started work on fixing the shoddy bandaging over her wound. She'd tore a strip from her shirt and hastily secured it with her teeth and free hand- but now that the bullet was close enough to the surface to remove, she needed to sort it out. It wouldn't do to be admonished (again) for a careless job after her sire had taught her how to care for such wounds. Several times.

She offered a light grin, having set the bullet in her lap and moved on to the wrappings. "Funny, that's exactly what Habren said... and yes, I'm pleased with what I have. She spoils me," biting her lip through the discomfort, she paused for a moment to tack the bandage cover in place, "I feel fortunate." Finishing just as he popped back up and spilled his boxes over the counter, she chuckled and cleaned the blood from the bullet in her lap with her sleeve. "What exactly are you doing, James?"

"How is it that you do that?"

It took a second or two for him to realise quite what she was asking about, but then, she was hardly the first person to wonder about the safety or sanity of what people politely referred to as his haphazard working methods. The less polite versions of assessment tended to include the words "*******", "stupid" and "dangerous" in various orders and volumes. "Practice, I guess? Lot of fires, lot of explosions. You get used to it after a bit." He shrugged as he spoke. Honestly, he'd tried being organised: getting everything ready beforehand and laying it all out as it would be needed, but the end results were never as good and he spent most of the time stressed about the entire thing. His way worked and he hardly ever blew anything up any more.

His bishop swept along the black squares of the board to threaten her knight, seating itself at G5 between ventures. "I found most of high school pretty useless. I either already knew it or didn't care enough to learn it," he offered as he made his move and then, at the sight of her fiddling with bullet wounds and bandages, he pulled a small white box down from a top shelf nearby and set it in front of her. "Bandages," he said, "for next time." There was always, always a next time.

He opened one of the boxes and spilled its contents over the counter. Empty shells, of the size she'd specified, spilled out and rolled everywhere, some lost to the floor behind the counter or under the shelves.

"What exactly are you doing, James?"

"Those," he started, pointing at the cooling silver he had already dealt with, "will be silver bullets. Useful against most anything here; humans'll bleed, vampires'll burn. I figure zombies can't much like them either. ****-" he pulled the bunsen burner out from beneath the flask about to spill over and then shut off its gas supply. "Sorry- these'll be smoke bombs. I made two kinds, but I'll tell you about it in a second and that," he added, nodding towards the crucible in the flames, "is a surprise that I probably shouldn't even be thinking about making. Big game only," he added, sounding serious for just a moment.

"Well," she started, watching him move his bishop, "I think it has given you some kind of sixth sense." While fires and explosions weren't things that she opposed, especially, she did wonder anxiously about how many he'd inflicted on himself. He worked at the breakneck pace of a tornado and, to anyone else, left as much destruction in his wake... at least, it seemed so until he presented the finished product. It made Lilianne wonder what would happen if she simply gave into the chaotic nature of her magic every so often instead of exerting so much control on it.

She had to search the recesses of her mind when he mentioned High School. It was a topic her father had brought up when she returned to him and then, for some reason, forced her to sit some sort of exam that somehow made up for her missed years. Beyond that, formal education was a mystery to her, though she felt a little lucky in that moment about not having to endure it.

As he set the little white box down in front of her, she nudged the pawn in front of her King from E7 to E6 without giving any indication why. "Thank you..." An embarrassed smirk directed a faint blush across her cheeks at the thought of being so damned predictable in her recklessness, "that's really kind."

The embarrassment was forgotten as soon as he mentioned silver bullets and bombs, but was only really replaced with anything when he hinted at something a little more dangerous. She wasn't sure she could take on much bigger than a Greater Mooncalf, but she'd take another few wounds to test anything out. A light of excitement hit her eyes, though she tried not to show it too much in her face. "What kind of big game?"

James had finally stilled, standing behind the counter and setting the spilled shells that hadn't fallen to the floor in a rack so the open, flat 'bottom' faced towards the ceiling. It meant he could watch her shunt the pawn forward and frown for a second or two at the board, considering its layout and the options before him. After a moment, he almost matched her, nudging a pawn forward a single square from its starting position to F3, looking again at the board as a whole before releasing his hold and confirming the move as complete.

"What kind of big game?"

"You ever been in the Maw?" He asked, abandoning his half completed racking of empty bullet shells to turn back to the haphazardly stocked shelves. Somewhere here, he was sure... Or maybe.. Over there? He pulled out a number of plastic containers, looked inside, shook his head and abandoned them wherever they happened to be to look to the next one. Eventually, after six or seven abandoned boxes, he found the one containing small rubber spheres; they looked like tiny balloons without the longer neck usually associated with the party or water varieties.

Lilianne rubbed the bridge of her nose when he mentioned The Maw, groaning as she recalled the injuries her accidental venture had inflicted on her.

“Pst, hey kid…”
He was uniformed, clearly some sort of official, but sounded about as creepy as they come.
Lilianne glared at him as she moved toward the graveyard.
“Why are you talking to me?”

He gave a throaty laugh, beckoning her over. “You got any zombie ears?”
Every aspect of this caught her off guard. Unless she was being chased or something was attempting to eat her, communication on the streets of Harper Rock had echoed her life on the island in being kept to the absolute minimum. This guy clearly hadn’t gotten the memo.

She’d gone stiff, not sure whether this could be a trap or if the crooked man was being serious. Scolding him was the only natural recourse.
“Will you please keep your voice down?”
With a childlike smirk, the man moved toward her and ‘hushed’ his scruffy tone so that only the neighboring two blocks could hear instead of the entire district.
“Don’t worry so much, this offer is one hundred percent certified. Completely legal,” He paused and popped his tongue, “Military grade.”

Unimpressed, she sneered at him as his breath congested her personal space. She could have hurled. He smelled of beer and sweat and where she might find a sweaty musk attractive on another sort of man, this one simply put her off her lunch.

He placed his right fist on his hip and smoothed his greasy mustache, appraising the haughty look on the girl’s face. It was clear that he didn’t like it.
“Look precious, all I need you to do is to bring back the ears off any zombies you take out while you’re frolicking in the fields, ok? I’ll pay you generously… more than you’ll get in the shops.” His attempted charm had worn away almost as fast as her patience. Without a word, before the temptation to snap his neck won her over, the young Grigori walked away from him, intent on the cemetary.

“What a pompous little tick he was...frolicking in the fields. Do I look like the type to frolick? The nerve.” The girl grumbled to herself, not at all paying attention to where she was going, misplaced faith in familiarity leading her somewhere much more hostile.

By the time her temper had dampened, Lilianne had an unsettling realisation that the surface underfoot was not grass and dirt. In the dark, it appeared to be some sort of volcanic stone that she would soon note made up the walls and ceiling as well. She turned on her heel, hopes of being guided toward the entrance immediately dashed when she came face to-ambiguous-body-part with something she couldn’t have thought up in her nightmares.

What she would later learn to be an abomination swiped overpowered arms at her, lifting and throwing her hard against the wall. She hit hard enough to fracture her skull.

"Mm. Yes, I've been... it was an unpleasant accident that ended poorly." She nodded to the array of things he had spread out over the counter, curiosity returning to her features. "Will it really take something like those beasts down?" Her gaze lingered on those strange little balloon looking things for a moment before she turned back to the chess board, moving the pawn in front of her King's sidecastle forward by one space. "Pawn to H6"

"Well..." He started uncertainly, snagging one of the chemical flasks now that it had cooled enough to pick up bare-handed. "I think so. Maybe. I don't really know what they are to be sure, you know?" As he talked, he dragged a tall stool over with one foot and sat down, carefully pouring the colourless liquid into the small red casings until the rubber stretched and became transluscent. Each was balanced carefully, if precariously along the counter before he began the next.

"If they're organic, it'll damage them at least," he continued, green eyes focused unblinkingly upon the task at hand in what may have been a world first. "Can't use them 'round humans you don't want dead, so... The Maw's the best place to do a test run."

He paused just long enough to exchange the now empty flask for the other and begin filling black casings just as carefully. "Move that bishop at G5 to E3 for me, would you?"

His uncertainty gave her pause. It occured to her that she'd either walk in and decimate whatever laboratory abomination she'd run into, or she would just piss it off and have to deal with another head wound. With those thoughts in mind, Lilianne peered suspiciously at him. "I can't say it isn't tempting... but I may need a," both hands motioned around her head, as if she were holding an invisible box and moving it up and down, "One of those... skull protectors. A hamlet?" The look on her face revealed doubt about her guess, but she simply shrugged and carried on. "Whatever it's called. I'm not very strong and seem to be prone to head injuries."

For a moment after he asked her to move his piece, she watched him fill the next casing expertly. It all seemed dangerous- extraordinarily so- and for the tiniest moment, the girl considered listening to him and separating the things in her bag from that point on. Rubbing at her shoulder with one hand, the other moved his Bishop to E3, and her pawn from B7 to B5, and quite open for attack. "Perhaps you should come with? See them in action?"