Path of the Vampire forum

--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--

December 31st, 2013

Madison: New Year's Eve. The day was just another day to the telepath. She hadn't celebrated the New Year since Mike had been alive. This was her third New Year without him. Granted, Madison had had Blake with her last year but she'd barely talked to him more than a handful of times since. Instead Madison was at her Beta Tower apartment, lounging on the couch watching television. Pierre was who knows where and she wasn't too worried about it. He was probably off killing things in the quarantine zone or maybe he was off at the pubs, finding himself a pretty little thing to spend the turn of the year with. Not Madison though. She was at home, by herself. Well not completely by herself. There was the cat Blake had given her. The Cat was off in a window somewhere, his fat ginger *** probably staring down at the city with narrowed green eyes. He was such an evil little ********. And then there was Shan's body.

After killing the other vampire, Madison had brought the body home. She had felt wrong just leaving it there. So she had brought it home and cleaned the body up in her tub. That had been a little awkward. But she wasn't going to let the blood just stain the flesh and let it start stinking up the place after awhile. She dressed it in some of her own clothes just so it wasn't naked. Again, still awkward. But after asking around, Madison had found out that killers left their bodies behind and came back into them when they returned from the Shadow Realm. So Madison had rigged Shan's body up inside of a shock cage trap and waited. Weeks had passed and the body lay immobile, inanimate. Madison was starting to wonder if Shan was ever going to come back. She also wasn't quite sure why she was keeping the body.

Shan: Floating. Shan was floating through the Shadowy Realm, right up to the point where there was almost a flash of light. Like a cop shines a flashlight into ones eyes, Shan felt blinded. She raised her hand instinctively to shield her eyes, not realizing that her spirit had found its way back into her body - as it should have. She blinked. Again. And again. Red hues focused on the vibrancy of her skin. Skin. Peachy, pale skin. She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again as she lowered her hand. An apartment. Not the morgue, like all the other times she had been killed. What she was doing there, she had no clue.

No clue. She knew she was back. She knew she was here, in the real world. These clothes were real. Her skin was -- these clothes. They weren’t hers. She reached for her gun, but it wasn’t there. Nor her blade. What the hell? She blinked again. A cage. She narrowed bright red hues on the door to the cage, stepping forwards to touch it, only to have thousands of electricity shoot through her body for a good five seconds, until she had managed to release her grip on the cage and fall back to the floor. "Holy, Jesus ****!" She cried out, clutching her burned hand to her. It was more the initial shock, for lack of a better term, that got her... the pain was welcomed.

It meant she was alive, no longer dead. She was back. She blinked, shaking her head, trying to shake this. What was this. A dream? No, it was real. She was real. "The ****?" She asked out loud to an empty apartment room, or was it? She looked around, spotting a window with a cat in it, a cat who once their eyes locked freaked the hell out. Hissing and spitting, clawing at the air until Shan laughed. She laughed, at how funny all this was. Alive, but trapped, now what? She watched the cat bound over to its owner, as her eyes narrowed harshly. Madison.

Madison: Her head snapped towards the sound of electricity flowing and the exclamation from a now living...well somewhat living person within the cage. Again her head turned its attention as The Cat flipped the **** out. Hissing up a storm it jumped down from the window sill and came racing towards where Madison sat. She stared down at it and gave it a shrug as though to say, 'What do you expect me to do about it?' Rising from her spot on the couch, she used the remote to turn off the television and tossed it on the cushion. Her bare feet padded across the hardwood floor, towards the cage where Shan was kept. Madison stopped along the way and grabbed one of her lockboxes. She picked it up and brought it with her, setting it down a few feet from the door of the cage. Madison took a seat, her ankles crossing as she leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees. Her cornflower blue eyes ran over Shan before looking directly at the woman's blood red ones, "I was starting to think you were never coming back. It's been over a month if you care."

Shan: Madison shrugged, and Shan glared. Hard. As hard as she could; had it been any harder she was sure her glare would have shot fireballs out of her eyes. Her eyes dashed to the woman’s lock box, then back to those polar opposites, those bright blue hues that almost looked like sheens of watery pools. Shan licked over her lips and reached up to slick her hair back behind her ears, realizing that the wound she had to her head was gone. Or maybe that was just in her mind? Shan checked for other wounds then, pulling at the collar of her shirt and realizing that those were gone too, as they usually were - though there was always that one that stayed, that lingered long enough till she had floated out of the realm.

Madison sat and spoke then, and Shans eyes snapped back up to the woman. Why am I here. Why does she have me here. She thought, then she blinked. A month. So it was a little over a month now that she had been gone. She idly wondered what had changed. How much exactly had changed in the city. It always seemed to change just as she was leaving. She stayed where she was, though her arms crossed over her chest. "Well here I am. Now as to why I'm here-" She splayed her hands out to signify Madison’s apartment, then crossed them again, "-I'd like to know why."

Madison: A hand moved back to brush a lock of blonde hair away from her face, revealing the scar that curved around her left eye. She had expected this question when and if Shan had ever returned to her body. Madison had asked it of herself a million times over but it honestly came down to the same question. "I want to know why too. That's why you're here. Because you were the only one with the balls to fight me. Who didn't hide up in that tree of yours. You spoke with your weapon and not pathetic half-witted insults. I'm sure your reasons for attacking me are because I came after you and your friends. But the reason I came after Tytonidae was because my friends were dying at your hands. People who weren't on the bounty list, who hadn't done anything wrong. And yet you and yours slaughtered them and I'd like to know why."

Shan: Shan growled a little under her breath. So this was a questioning. An interrogation. Shan scoffed. Madison would get nowhere with this. Shan contemplated how to word her next words. What would her sire do? Probably say nothing. But Shan's pride was too much for that. She couldn’t not. It didn’t help that Madison had feathered her ego, inflated it with her statements. "I stood up to you, yes. And look where it got me." She grumbled, inspecting the wound on her hand that had already started to heal. Minor. She chuckled wryly, clearly unimpressed. Unimpressed with the situation. Unimpressed with the outcome. She looked around the apartment, as if interested in it.

"It's simple really. Why wouldn’t a gang pick off those who opposed them?"

Madison: A smirk graced her lips. Madison didn't care if Shan was impressed or not with the situation. Why she was here. She wondered though if it would have made Shan feel better if Madison had intended to torture her. It had been a thought but she kind of figured it was a moot point. She knew she only had an hour since the cage had been triggered. An hour before the electricity would wane and Shan would be able to break free. Sure she could use a power or two and replace the parts needed to keep it going but the telepath didn't think it would do much, if anything. No, in the end, she only wanted this small chat and then she would teleport Shan to the wilderness by the Eyrie and let the woman go home to her tree-house.

"At least you're not a coward," Madison stated calmly, "Though I'm sure many of your ilk think the same of me. Can you blame me though? Two on twenty. Those odds aren't exactly in my favor and yet everyone but you always ran. Well there was Nemesis too, who ran and then challenged. Seems you guys only like to play on your own terms. But that's not really here nor there. The bounty is different now. Tytonidae hasn't hunted a bounty offender in weeks though the list is full of them. Yet the alert level is the lowest it's been in months."

Shan: Looking around, Shan let her red hues trail the rich red wood floors. Little specs of vibrant red jumped out at her, the mix of browns and reds almost too much for her to handle to stare at. So she didn’t, she let her eyes look lazily over everything that was the place she was in. It was secluded, a small area of the apartment that was probably meant originally by the builders to be used as the dining room - though seeing as how Madison wasn’t human and didn’t need the space for that, the woman had seemingly turned it into a viewing area with a black couch and large TV against the wall.

On the side table next to the couch was a lamp that wasn’t on, and Shan was mildly thankful for that. Because looking around there were multiple candles placed in several different areas, and those she definitely couldn’t look at. The bright flames bore the vibrant colors of orange yellow and white into her retinas and she almost verbally exposed her distaste for them but remained calm as her eyes drifted to the book case and cabinet behind her; her head cranked enough to see it clearly. She idly wondered what was in the cabinet as her eyes scanned over the books on the shelves and she listened to Madison.

New system, different. She blinked, then brought her hands up to rub at her eyes. How confusing. Why. Why not. She couldn’t help but ask herself. Though it was more of a general question... because in the end it didn’t really matter. She turned back to Madison and gave her a smooth calm look. No sense in getting riled up. "Two on twenty sounds like fun." She snickered, eyes narrowed, "Tell me more about the bounty system."

Madison: "Is that really what you call fun? Ganging up on an unsuspecting or sleeping vampire and slaughtering them with your friends? Where there's little to no risk to yourself? And that's supposed to be honorable?"

Madison shook her head and sighed. She couldn't deny the pleasure she had felt when she went after Tyonidae. How good it had felt to kill Shan when she had done so. But she had never taken pleasure in any of the cripplings. Perhaps the difference was the justification in doing so. And she had stopped when they had stopped hunting. Maybe she shouldn't have, but she had seen them from time to time. They had several opportunities to kill her and hadn't. She still wasn't sure why.

"The Crow doesn't seem to put bounties on our heads anymore. Now it's up to us to report them ourselves. And when we do, it puts them up on the list and it's us who funds the hits now. Only a few have died since this changed. Ones people already didn't like, like Ivy. But other than that, most people remain untouched. Doesn't seem to be a way to get off of it anymore though. Time perhaps. Hasn't been that long since it changed. The independent hit list has changed too. Now we can't put it on our own reasoning for killing someone. It's all based off the Old Code and a few pre-written reasons that aren't part of the Code."

Shan: Fun. Madison had asked Shan's idea of fun. In which she had completely misunderstood Shan's stance on the matter. Shan would take on fifty if it meant a good battle. She would take on challenger after challenger, time and time again if she had, to prove that she was the best. Sure, egomaniac in the works, but she also held high standards for herself. She shook her head. "No, it sounds like fun to have so many enemies." She turned to the side and crossed her arms back over her chest. Eyes still floating, as Madison’s stark blonde hair was too bright for Shan to look at. No, not bright. Vibrant. Too much color. She reached her hand up and scratched at her throat. Damn was she thirsty.

Clearing her throat lightly, she listened to the new systen. She ever so lightly shook her head at Madison. None of that made sense. Did the crow get sick of upkeep? Did Ty get sick of hunting bounty offenders? Of being the cities 'saviors' so to speak? But Madison had said that the city alert level was the lowest it had been in weeks. Shan was mildly confused. The other part of her just didn’t care. She kept glancing back to Madison, then over to the black couch. It was the only thing that was dark enough in the room not to spark vibrancy in her eyes. Damn she was thirsty. She growled under her breath and continued to scratch at her throat.

"Old code..." She made a mental note to ask her sire about that. "There is no way, are you sure?" She asked, raising a brow. Now that intrigued her.

Madison: "None that I can tell. Then again, I haven't gone out of my way to get caught doing something stupid to find out either. But not everyone who hits the list is getting funded. I'd say at least a third, maybe half even are just on there with no price on their heads. If there was a way to get off, I'm sure Velveteen would have been up Zenn's *** about it. He's on there for exposing vampire kind to humans and a total of twelve grand. The only way to get off so far seems to be death or crippling."

Madison cocked her head to the side as she watched Shan avert her gaze from her. The way she scratched at her throat. She idly wondered if she should offer Shan a blood bag, she knew how it was to come out of the Shadow Realm. At least Shan had come back in clothing, even if they were Madison's and not her own. The telepath didn't quite understand the killer before her. Maybe it truly was a trait of the path that Shan walked to be so much more inclined to violence. Why else would someone want so many enemies. Madison hated it. Regardless of whether or not Tytonidae had made a move against her yet, she never doubted that eventually it would come. It was possible they were just waiting for Shan.

Shan: No way to get off the list. Wow. Shan wrapped her thin fingers around her throat and held her hand there, as if her cold touch against her cold dead skin could help the bubbling thirst that drove her mad. Snapping her fangs, she then pushed the thought aside of grabbing a terrified human by the collar and sinking those long fangs into its throat only to drain them dry. Not leave an ounce of blood left in their veins. She shook her head again and closed her eyes, starting to pace in the cage, like a wild tiger. Feral, to the core. She then had a thought. Madison was still alive. Seemingly not hurt. And that urked her... rubbed her the wrong way.

"Tell me, have you been hunted by Ty?" She asked, tipping her head to the side and stepping as close as she could to Madison without getting shocked by the cage the other woman had put her in. She knew the answer would be yes. She knew it. Right? But there was a nag in the back of her mind, that she hadnt. That Ty was doing their own thing, for right now, seeing as how Madison had said that the bounty offenders had been left alone. Shan clutched to her throat a bit heavier.

Madison: "You know, I thought so for awhile there. But after seeing quite a few of them in a couple of raids, they don't seem to give a rats *** about me anymore since I stopped shooting at them."

She got up then. It made her feel bad the way that Shan clutched at her throat. Madison turned away from the cage and from Shan, moving towards the couch til she turned towards the kitchen, out of Shan's sight. Making her way to the fridge, she grabbed a couple of blood bags. She was even going to be nice and heat them up for her, while she let Shan stew with what she had told her. Grabbing a pot from the lower cabinet, Madison filled it with water and set it on the stove, turning it on to high. Throwing both blood bags into the water, she pulled her cellphone out of her pocket and checked it for texts. Nothing. But it was getting close to midnight. Looked like she wouldn't be spending it alone after all.

--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--

Shan: Shan blinked. Those words of Madison's etched into her eardrums. What...? Was all that she could think. They weren’t hunting Madison? Shan watched Madison get up and move out of sight. She stared. She growled. How could they not want avenge her? She was one of them, struck down in battle, and they werent putting up for her. Shan got angry. She felt the emotion well up in her like a thousand lightning bolts surging through the pit of her stomach up to her head. Hands dropped and balled into fists as she clenched her jaw. Why... She had so many questions. Questions only her sire could answer at this point. What she needed was her tome. Her tome! Velveteen had told her to guard it with her life... and as she had, where was her stuff?!

The anger swelled. It surged, swelled, until she couldn’t handle it any more. She couldn’t control the swell as her fist pushed forwards and until it was too late, swung right into the cage door. Again, thousands of bolts of electricity flowed through her body until her fist found a way to drop from the cage and she hit her knees. God she was so angry! At herself, at her enemy in front of her, at her sire, at people she hadn’t even met yet! Raking her fingers through her hair she clutched to her head, crying out. Releasing the tension from within, she instantly felt better.

Madison: The cage went off again, shortly followed by the anguished cry from the creature inside. Madison sighed. Good thing she had found out that majority of her neighbors were vampires. Otherwise that noise may have been a bit awkward to explain. Probably nothing that gruesome horror flick couldn't cover up though. The water on the stove began to simmer and Madison decided that was good enough. Plucking the two bags of blood from the pot, she sauntered back to where Shan was held. Not stupid enough to get too close, she went to the closet and grabbed a plastic hanger. Turning it upside-down, she held on to the corner of it and slipped both blood bags onto the hook before offering both of them to Shan, prepared to just let go of the hanger if the other vampire tried to pull her towards the cage.

"Here. Do you feel better now? If not, these will probably help a tad."

She didn't really care if Shan took them or not. If she did, she would take her seat back on the lockbox. If she didn't, she'd still take her seat back on the lockbox and then she'd drink the blood to boot right in front of Shan. If Shan couldn't tell, Madison was actually trying to be polite. Well, as polite as she could be for keeping Shan in a cage.

Shan: Shan heard Madison come back into the room and she looked up from her spot on the floor in the cage. Her eyes were still their normal (or as normal as the hue was to her to have) shade, but they did offer Madison inquiring instead of anger. She was thirsty. So thirsty, she couldn’t say no to Madison’s offering. Peace offering as it may have been, Shan would still always be cautious to Madison’s ways. She stood up and dusted her knees off, then went over to the hanger and held the metal edge still in order to slip off the bags of blood without yanking on the hanger. What was the point? She knew in time she would be freed of the contraption, so it was just a matter of waiting out the time she had left.

Not thinking twice she clutched one back in the palm of one hand and sank her fangs into the other, squeezing it for the blood to come out faster. She couldn’t drink it fast enough, and it was clear that Shan had issues when it came to being thirsty. It was something that controlled her, something entirely uncontrollable for her. As were her fangs that never went away, but if you asked her she would tell you that she thought that was how it should be - and that she was a normal pire while all the others were defects. Draining the first bag dry she didn’t hesitate to sink into the second one, dropping the garbage to her feet.

Madison: Madison let Shan drink her blood in silence. She didn't even watch her as she did so. There was no judgment either. The one and only time Madison had come back from the realm, she had been damn near feral. If it hadn't been for Blake finding her naked and on the ground outside the morgue, she very well may have gone feral. She heard the first bag hit the floor and looked up. There really wasn't much left to say to Shan. Madison debated if it had even been worth the hassle of bringing Shan's body back with her. The people at the morgue would have done the same damn thing that Madison had for her, well, besides put her in fresh clothes. And they got paid for it.

"Do you need more?"

Shan: The silence wasn’t awkward. At least to Shan. She didn’t mind the silence. It gave her the time to gather her thoughts. To put the lingering shocking pain aside that crept up her arms and try to focus on other things. Things that mattered. Things that Shan now had to face from entering this realm from the bleak, no-responsibility shadow realm. She drank, though her thirst wasn’t entirely satiated, she dropped the garbage and brought her hand up to her mouth to wipe it clean. She remembered her sire telling her about the shadow realm. Telling her to fear it. That she would. Shan almost laughed. She raised a brow over at Madison. How confusing of her to ask that. What kind of interrogation was this? A comfortable one, that’s what. "No, I'm fine."

She took a step towards her then, peering at her with her eerie red hues. "You ever been killed?"

Madison: "Yeah," she nodded her blonde head, causing hair to fall forward from behind her ear. A hand lifted to brush it back from her face again before returning to her lap to clasp around the other. Her pale blue eyes met Shan's odd colored red ones but she wasn't really looking at them. Instead it was almost as if she was staring right through the other woman, her mind unwillingly recalling the two...or was it three...months she had spent in the realm.

Even though Shan hadn't asked for details, Madison opened her mouth to speak again, "It was two weeks after I'd been turned. Robert was dead, I don't remember why now. Probably something stupid and Pratt-like. He hadn't really had the time to tell me much about bounties and all that. Somehow I acquired a decent sized one. I'm not even sure if I knew I had one anymore but I was in the deserted multiplex killing zombies and ferals, more out of frustration than knowing it would help me lower it. A man named Caine found me and he attacked me. I fought back but he was more skilled than I was at the time. No one had ever told me about the shadow realm. What it was like, or that I could use certain powers there. I didn't even know that we could return. I was gone for months before I figured it out."

Shan: Pratt. Madison had insinuated the male was her sire... the one that had put himself as a stupid thorn in the side of Tytonidae and continuously cursed them while they had hunted the members of Fifth. The opposing faction hadn’t even so much as put up a fight, aside from the few curses and Madison's gallant efforts. Shan smirked. She would never, ever admit it, but Madison had earned a certain type of respect from Shan. Shan remembered the fight the two of them had had, and how Shan hadn’t even so much as gotten a single blow in. Sure, that fact still urked Shan, but she was finding it easier to accept as she stood in the electrified cage in the others clothes. She even found them rather comfortable. Though she still couldn’t wait to get out of them.

Madison then recalled her stint in the Shadow Realm. Caine... Shan had never heard the name. She remembered the tales of Cain and Abel, as her mother had sent her to Sunday school only once and that story had happened to be the one that the teacher had taught that one day in her attendance record. She never went back. It sounded ridiculous, to put your faith and beliefs in a book. She let her smirk grow. She herself didn’t have any powers that had worked in the other realm. She had tried, time and time again to use them, even though they consistently failed. She didn’t realize that they were failing though - not with that nasty head wound Madison had finished her off with. Shan scoffed lightly.

"Months... that’s nothing. Try a year. Tell me, did you grow to like it? The quiet darkness?"

Madison: "Grow to like it?" Madison scoffed and shook her head slightly in a negative fashion. "No, I hated it. I attacked everything I could find down there. It was cold, or at least I think it was cold. I'm not really sure I could physically feel anything but I suppose the absence of everything would feel like cold to the mind. I don't know. I just remember being angry and bitter. I thought I was dead permanently and stuck in that hell-hole. After awhile I think I started hallucinating. I would think I saw things, saw people. But they would never talk back to me when I tried to talk to them. Towards the end, I think I just shut down, ran on auto-pilot or something. I remember seeing color one day...night...whatever. I went towards it and found myself naked on the ground outside of the morgue, almost completely out of my mind."

And that's when Blake had found her. He had wrapped her up in that leather trench-coat of his and taken her home. It was in him that she found the support and stability that she had needed, the consistency that her life had been lacking. Blake had probably taught her more about being a vampire than Robert ever had but after time, he too had faded away. Just like everyone else in her life except for Brick, her thrall but he was bound to her by magic. He had no choice but to stay and she was too selfish to let him go.

Shan: Shan laughed. Madison had hated it. She couldn’t help the next question that flowed out of her mouth. "Did you fear it?" She couldn’t help but remember her sires words. 'You will come to fear such a place.' Shan had never feared anything a day in her life. and yet, somehow, at some point, she had done just what her sire had predicted. She had come to fear the place of the shadows. When she had died at Madison’s hands, she had felt that miniscule twinge of fear course through her veins before she felt that anger, then that calm. The place that she had considered home for herself after all her time there. It seemed natural to her, to be there. But now she was back, in this realm, and being blinded by the vibrancy of it all.

Madison: Madison was quiet for a moment as she contemplated Shan's last question. She had never really thought about it. It had always been the idea of self-preservation to avoid being killed so she didn't have to return, but did that self-preservation stem from fear of being confined to the shadow realm? Her brow furrowed ever so slightly and she mentally compared it to the the last time she had been truly afraid. When Adrian had turned up missing and Madison couldn't find a single trace of his existence. That had been fear, fear that something had happened to him or that he had decided that he no longer cared for her because of their differences of opinion. In the end, something had happened to him though she still didn't know all the details.

"I don't think I fear it so much as I do resent it. It's by no means enjoyable and I try to avoid dying so I don't have to be stuck there but I don't think I'm afraid of being there. Not knowing what I do now. It was scary when I was there before but I didn't know the things I do now. Hell, I could watch youtube videos til the end of eternity if I wanted to," Madison paused, canting her head slightly as she gave Shan a pondering gaze, "Do you like it there?"

Shan: Shan listened intently, almost reaching out to rest her palm against the cage but remembering the pain and deciding against it. Sure, she liked pain, but that didn’t mean she went searching for it. Nor did she go searching for death. If it happened, she accepted it. Like she had the mere seconds after finding herself in the realm. Of course, without landing a single blow to her enemy, who would have expected differently? Not to mention she wouldn’t have tomed in the middle of the fight - no, that wasn’t her style. So she had died, and landed herself right back to her own purgatory. A purgatory she found she had grown to deal with.

She shrugged again. "Its not as bad as everyone makes it out to be, really. Though it gets wicked crazy at times, like you said; seeing things and ****. But being there for as long as I had been - one has to adapt to survive, right?" She asked lightly with another shrug. It wast like she cared if Madison thought she was right or not. She knew she was and that was clearly all that mattered as she wiped her hands on her captors pants that she was clad in then started to pick at her nails.

Then a thought struck her. A month? A month already... she had missed the holidays. Huh. Oh well. Although... "What day is it exactly?"

Madison: "I suppose," Madison said quietly after Shan's rhetorical question about adapting to survive. While she was still listening to Shan, her attention was distracted. Her hearing had always been ultra-sensitive since being turned. It was why she always kept her phone on vibrate and watched television with the sound practically muted. Down the hall, or maybe even another floor up, she could hear people starting a countdown. After they reached one, they cheered and Madison flinched when fireworks went off outside nearby. More than likely off of the roof of the casino or possibly even the Wickbridge bank. She gave Shan an empty and half-hearted smile before answering her last question about the day, "It's now January first, twenty-fourteen. Happy New Year, I guess."

Shan: Shan stared. Had Madison flinched at the loud noises coming from outside? Seriously? Shan looked towards the window, out of reflex, the fireworks catching her attention. It was an odd thing for humans to do, shoot off explosives for fun. Shan never understood that - and in fact she didn’t like it really, as it showed on her face in the amount of distaste she found for them. The way people ooh'ed and ahhh'ed at them, the happiness they brought, and meant, ugh. Shan hated them. She looked back to Madison as she spoke then, tipping her head to the side. Huh. Who would have thought, Shan spending the new year with her murderer. Well, one of them.

"Yeah, sure, you too." Was all she muttered, then lowering her gaze to the ground. This wasn’t where she wanted to be. She wanted to be back at the Eyrie, talking to her sire. And then the questions bubbled up again, all the questions she had for her. Oh, how that would be a fun conversation.

Madison: She acknowledged Shan's mutterings with a nod but said nothing as she rose to her feet. Crossing the short distance to her bedroom doorway, she disappeared into the room and went to the closet to gather Shan's personal items. The tome that Shan had internally wondered about before was included in the effects. Of course, Madison had gone through it but it had been useless to her. The pages of the book had been completely blank but she'd been told that only those that the tome had been made for could use it and only the person who had bound the tome could be the one to give it to someone. The only thing she didn't grab was the enchanted blade that Shan had tried to chop her head off with. That, Madison would be keeping.

Coming back out of the bedroom, the telepath put down Shan's things right beside the cage. Next she went to the weapons cabinet behind where Shan was held captive and pulled out her spare rifle, loaded it and clicked the safety off. Returning to the cage, gun in hand, Madison tinkered with the box that controlled the electricity that ran through the bars whenever it was touched. After successfully disabling her own contraption, Madison stood quickly and brought her weapon up, pointing it at Shan.

"You won't get shocked now. While I actually, sort of, enjoyed talking to you, I hope you understand the precaution. You can come out now and grab your stuff. I'll teleport you home or you can tome out, but you're not using the door. Try to come at me and I'll send you right back from where you came from."

Shan: Shan blinked, looking back up to Madison as she rose to her feet and then walked out of the room again. Shan muttered to herself, inaudibly, shaking her head. How all this happened, the spiral of events, infuriated her. But that emotion was safely locked away, tucked into the darkest corner of her mind as she sighed out of reflex. This was all a whirlwind around her. She idly wondered if she would have done things differently before all of this happened, knowing how things turned out. No, no she probably wouldn’t have. But who knew? She would never know that, at least not for certain. But it didn’t matter, dwelling on the past. Everything was in the future now.

Madison came back out of the room, and Shan nudged at the contraband blood packs that were empty as her thirst bubbled up inside of her again. It wasn’t long after she fed ever that it came right back, haunting her day and day and day again. She silently watched Madison drop her stuff to the side of the cage, and she perked a brow. Everything seemed to be there - everything but her sword. Well damn. It seemed Madison would be keeping a trophy after all. Shan muttered again under her breath but nodded slowly. It was understandable. Shan had every reason to want to tear right into Madison the first chance she got. But surprisingly, after tonight, she probably wouldn’t.

Madison had found a small bit of respect from Shan, and that had Shan merely shrugging her shoulders at the thought of attacking Madison again. She stepped to the door of the cage and swung it open; though she did it slowly in case Madison had that itchy trigger finger that Shan had. Picking up her stuff, she slung her gun over her shoulder by its strap and then lastly picked up her tome. Thank god. Her sire would have killed her all over again had she lost that. She glanced over to Madison who had her gun raised still - for good reason, and gave the woman a nod. "Until next time then, Madison." And then she flipped her tome open to read it as she slowly disappeared from the woman’s apartment.