Cafe Chaos (Open)

[Shya (DELETED 6054)]

In such a large city there was always bound to be a park. Whether that park served as a playground for children, or just an area to mingle and relax was of little importance. When living in such a crowded space, a place to be outside the same cement forest was practically a safe haven. The fact that Harper Rock operated on what appeared to be nighttime hours, the darkened park made for a pretty gothic scene. The snowcovered lawn sparkled from the few lamps overhead, the moonlight casting an eerie glow. It remained untouched, outside of the various animal footprints marking their travels. Perhaps it was beautiful. Or, perhaps it was depressing. It was all a matter of perspective.

Shya moved down the crudely shoveled path, kicking up bits of snow on her boots. The silence was welcome. In the two days she had been within the city limits, it seemed like there was no lack of quiet. On every corner, down every street, there was some means of noise. Be it a car horn, a gathering of people on the sidewalk, or the howling of the wind. Tonight, however, all was still. Save for her own movements, but that was just fine. What reason would she have to bother herself? If that were even possible.

It was only when she came to the end of the park path that she stopped, peering in each direction. Immediately the sounds of the city registered once more in her ears, the short moments of silence ripped away. In a split second decision, she took a left and headed down the road in search of another quiet place. She had come across various cafes, but had yet to see a library. If it was hidden among the side streets or alleys, it was quite possible she would need to find a map.

After a few minutes of walking down the streets, the crowds slowly began disappearing into their homes as the night wore on. Thankfully, a cafe came up and with a quick glance inside Shya found it relatively empty outside of a few couples and some lingering singles. Sure it would be quiet enough, she ventured on inside and made her way to the counter. After a quick scan of the menu items, she waited patiently for the barista.

"Good evening, ma'am. How can I help you?"

Shya forced a smile to the young female, reaching for her wallet in her purse. "Hello. Could I get an Irish Breakfast and...a cup of broccoli cheddar soup, please?" she asked, putting the proper inflection into her words to avoid her usual monotone. It was occasionally a struggle to remember something so fundamental to human interaction, but she tried her best. The barista smiled and rung her up, and she handed over the proper amount of money. After several minutes of waiting at the counter, the female returned with both items and wished her a good night.

Without offering the same good fortune, Shya turned her back to the counter and settled into a table far away from the other patrons. Rather than integrate herself into the feeling of the cafe, she remained an outside observer and simply watched. Occasionally, she would create a story for the people she saw passing the window, if the impulse struck. But most of the time, she just watched with no other motivations. It was from doing so that she had come to accept her own differences, while maintaining a forced image of normality.

She lifted her mug to her lips, taking a sip. The sting of pain from the hot liquid went ignored, though she let out a soft whoosh of air to try and cool her tongue. The remaining pain stayed behind, of course, but it didn't bother enough to prevent another steaming sip. "Mm..." she hummed, returning the mug back to the tabletop.

The atmosphere was exactly what she had needed to escape the hectic city streets. In the back reaches of her mind, she knew the moment was unlikely to last. It would only take the smallest disruption to break the entire scene into chaos. Or, chaos by her standards, anyway.

[Jaxon]

Jaxon's last memory was of wrapping up his magic show, saying good night to the owner of the comic shop (Whit, that's his name, he reminded himself sternly), and packing up his items. He'd made a veritable killing that evening, enough money to not only afford the rent without dipping into the proceeds from the sale of his grandparents estate, and some left over. Which was great news considering he had a dozen new tricks he wanted to begin learning, and had circled the required items in a magazine. With red ink. Hope was definitely part and parcel of Jaxon Silver. He'd slung the backpack over his shoulder, ducked out of the shop with another wave behind himself, and strode down the streets with nary a care in the world.

And now he was here, stumbling into a little cafe with a raging head-ache and no clue how he'd gotten here. A glance at his watch told him he'd somehow lost about an hours worth of time, and that served to piss him right off. He was seriously starting to think there were aliens inhabiting the town. Wasn't that how X-Files had always claimed it happened? Loss of time, loss of memory, waking up in strange places? He rubbed his neck, because that ached too, and was oddly surprised when he pulled his hand back that there wasn't any blood on his fingertips. He didn't know why he'd expected otherwise.

Still silently trying to figure it out, the sorcerer-in-training shuffled to the counter and made a half-glance at the menu. There was a cure-all for the way he felt: hung over.

"Coffee with a double-shot, please." He drawled, because manners were always appropriate even when he was upset and feeling this side of ill. "And a glass of water." He added. His mouth was dry, so he grabbed up the free water the second the woman set it down in front of him. He guzzled it, and the iciness only served to intensify his headache. Perfect. He pushed a finger into his left temple and rubbed in firm circles, eying the steaming mug as it was set in front of him. The woman was staring at him, and he wasn't sure if it was because she expected him to say anything else or because his shirt was hanging open. Why the hell hadn't he noticed that before? He tugged his worn denim jacket over his chest irritably and the woman smirked. "Thanks," He muttered, pulling free his wallet - and wasn't he glad to see it was still there - to drag out a few of the bills he'd earned a couple hours prior.

Picking up the mug, and the refilled glass, Jaxon found himself a table where a newspaper had been left behind. The head-line made him snort and he realized it had to be more a tabloid than an actual news paper. Some garbage about vampires. Still, he took a sip of the caffeine and found his eyes pouring over the words. Though he didn't believe in the undead - had seen too many B-rated flicks - he couldn't deny there was definitely something strange about this town. After all, he could do magick. Real magick. Not like the crap he demonstrated to humans for easy money, either. And the other things he'd seen sure hadn't been anything like what he'd ever seen before. There was a reason he carried a gun and a knife on him at all times now.

Outfit
Theme song

[Enver Marshall II]

He should be packing for his trip to England, Enver kept telling himself as he tried to wrap up some last minute matters of business before leaving for the foreign country. In the end, he figured whatever he didn't pack, he could pick up in England. It wasn't as if the guy was exactly hurting for money.

He ducked inside a cafe to get a cup of coffee, because asking Crash to complete that task just wasn't ever going to happen. Time and time again the guy fucked it up by slipping something extra in it. Be it creamer [flavored and unflavored] or some liquor when he thought Enver needed something stronger to get through his night.

"I'll take a grande coffee. Black. To go." Enver spoke after nodding to the woman behind the counter, whose name was apparently, Star. He would have shook his head, feeling somewhat sorry for the early twenty something woman, but she exuded confidence from her very core. She was the star of the cafe. It was clear in the way she maneuvered around, completing orders in an insane speed. Enver fished a twenty out of his wallet and left it in the tip jar.

As his order was being completed, his phone buzzed and he grabbed it from his suit coat pocket. He flipped it open to read the text, chuckled and replied to his thrall. I'm at some small cafe, grabbing a cup of joe before the meeting of the minds. Drop the supplies off to Keara at the asylum. Stay out of trouble too. Enver hit send, then pocketed the phone as the Batista called his order up. He gave her a small salute with two of his fingers that didn't wrap around the cup as he grabbed it and nodded his head in appreciation at her.

He turned to leave, but was stalled when he heard an all too familiar voice. Leave it to Crash to not listen to whatever Enver told him to do. The guy, who appeared to be in his late forties or so approached Enver, cigarette still in his hand, not giving a damn about the no smoking rule before he opened up his yap. "Hey, bro. I was down in the slums, doing you know what and got some good-" Enver cut him off with a stern glare and an elbow to Crash's side. He didn't care what Crash did in his free time or that the guy had a shady reputation (as most dealers would), but Enver did care about his own reputation. "Put that out." Enver snarled at the guy before grabbing it from his lips and snuffing it out for him between his finger tips. "What do you want?"

"Sir-there's no smo-" The Barista interrupted, but was cut off when Enver pocketed the cigarette in his suit coat, still glaring at Crash. Crash waved a hand in Enver's direction, then started spinning around, knocking over condiments like sugar, fake sugar and stirrers. He laughed and let out a small howl before running both his hands through his bright orange hair, revealed as Crash was spinning because his hat fell off. "Come on, man. Blow the meeting and let's hit the Met. Before you go and leave me with that crazy ghost." Crash obviously wasn't one for discretion, or forgot just how public of a venue they were at.

Crash

Enver's outfit

[Shya (DELETED 6054)]

The relaxed air of the cafe remained the same as various people came and went, every now and then a blast of cool night air taking away some of the warmth. Each time, a series of goosebumps arose on Shya's skin. When it hit, she shivered with a wrinkle of her nose. There was no need to hide her dislike of the cold due to the fact that no one had bothered to pay her a lick of attention. It bothered her little, as she was used to blending in with the crowd and becoming a nameless face. It kept people at an arm's length, never allowing them close.

She stood from her small table with her mug in hand, having decided it needed some sugar. A male was making a scene up near the front counter, with another male snapping in a rather annoyed tone. With slow steps, she planned out a route that would keep her out of their and focus. While staying quiet as a church mouse, she made it the counter, grabbing a couple packets of sugar. Rather than take it back to her table, she ripped open the small paper packets, dumping them into the dark liquid. Taking a stirring stick from the rack, she gave it a good stir before dropping the small stick in the side trash bin. Only then did she turn around to head back across the cafe.

Due to her attention on the sugar rather than the buzz going on around her, Shya missed the male's movements that put him directly in her path. Before she had a chance to move away, he crashed into her, his hand knocking her mug from her hold. The hot liquid dumped down the front of her shirt and jacket, staining it almost instantly. And in her wild attempt to catch the glass mug from hitting the ground, she stumbled, only to land on the ground, her legs bent beneath her in an odd angle. The mug shattered around her, scattering across the floor.

Her chocolate eyes closed for a moment as everything seemed to come to a silent halt. That was always the way these kind of things worked. An accident happened that was loud enough to draw the attention of everyone around, all of them going silent and still. It was the quiet she had longed for the entire night. In that moment, there was literally not a sound, and it was perfect. For that sole scene in time, her universe was in order. She almost felt a tingle of happiness, the feeling so foreign she questioned its validity.

But all good things had to come to end, and so she opened her eyes so that she could peel herself off the floor, "Ow..."

Attire

[Pi dArtois]

Pi only hunted Blood Thieves when fate decided to have one cross her path. She didn’t make it her mission to go out and find them, although in her past she had once set a bounty for them to be hunted en masse. She had called all of vampire kind to make it their business, to hunt them, one by one with the intention of complete annihilation. When she was Under Secretary and she thought it was in the best interests of all vampire kind for their kind to be wiped from the city.

It had been a plan doomed to fail, as all things tried against large groups of humanity they rallied, their numbers building back up in direct correlation with the amount of force used to wipe them out. The attempt had proved futile and was evidenced by the Blood Thief attempting to out run her, unsuccessful.

She hunted them now for Elliot, and only for him. She’d heard a rumour of a relic some held, a relic that could negate the need for any vampire to feed each night and given how Elliot needed to feed it was .. well he needed it. Needed it because Pi wasn’t always around when he needed to …. Feed and she couldn’t be reasonable when it came to him feeding on anyone…. Else. She wouldn’t at all.

Which was the only reason she was running like a mad thing through the streets of Harper Rock. The Blood Thief had fed, that much was clear. There was no way he’d have kept up this pace under his own human speed and that told her all she needed to know. She didn’t want to kill him, although at this rate she probably would because this was obviously not going to end well. She only wanted what he might have, what he might give her but he wasn’t going to cough it up just because she asked for it.

When he ploughed into the café at full speed, the door swinging off its hinges and slamming against the inside wall as he pelted through she followed him. Her voice raised as she cleared the entrance. “Thief!” she yelled, a cover and the truth, although a version of the truth easily sanitised by its obviousness. No one was going to bother too much with a woman, chasing a man, yelling thief. They were more likely to help her than not, poor defenseless female that she was.

The male skidded across the floor, his snow soaked shoes turning his Nike Air’s into skates on the slick tile. With a growl he sprawled across a table with two people at it, their drinks falling all over them and him and the floor, the table a sad casualty one leg buckling under the pressure as they all went down.

Grabbing him by the scruff of his jacket she hauled him on his back. Her hands reaching into his jacket. “Give it back!” she growled, keeping her cover story in tact, the man beating against her reach and attempting to scramble backwards.

“Get your hands off me you undead *****!” he yelled in her face.

[Jaxon]

Jaxon lifted his head at the sound of argueing in the little shop, and couldn't help the amused quirk of his lips. Like everyone else in the world, watching Other Peoples Drama (OPD) was right up there with watching sitcoms. Maybe Jerry Spring was a better comparison, he amended. He could always intervene, or try and make a scene of his own. 'That's not my baby!' style. No, wait, that was Maury. He swallowed another gulp of his coffee and secretly hoped no one ever got a good look at his viewing habits.

And then a woman was sprawled on the floor and he winced, standing abruptly like the gentleman his grandmother had raised him to be. He took two steps to the girls side to offer a hand with a small smile intended to exude an almost-apology. "Are you okay?" He asked with a curious expression. She was covered in coffee, so he half-turned to snatch a fist-full of napkins from a nearby table with the hand that wasn't held out.

No sooner had he spoken the question did the door fly open, and he flinched at the sound of it smacking against the wall. A woman was chasing someone - a thief apparently - right into the shop. He watched with the same gleefulness he'd watched the previous bit of OPD. She'd overpowered him and he whistled, because hot damn a woman who could take some guy down was definitely not a woman to be messed with. The man was yelling right back at her though, fearless, and Jax winced with the hope he didn't get kneed right in the jolly-be-goods. Then the words really settled and Jax perked right up. Undead? He'd definitely said undead hadn't he?

"Did he call her undead?" He hissed out to anyone that would listen. Now he was squinting at the strange female, trying to see if she looked like any of the zombies he'd taken to slaughtering - putting out of their misery he silently reminded himself. She didn't, not really. A little pale, but then everyone in this creepy little town seemed to be that way. Maybe due to the god-forsaken weather.

[Enver Marshall II]

"I can't blow the meeting." Enver said with a shake of his head. "Some of us have responsibilities." Crash sighed and then grumped at about the time some woman came in talking about some thief. Enver wasn't here to play hero, not with a trip in his sights. His wife would probably kill him if he got hurt the night before they took off to another country.

But when the guy called her an undead *****, his eyes moved from left to right to see if anyone had heard it, and they had. Enver narrowed in on the male and then chuckled before running a hand through his hair. "You know how women can be, man. Always sucking the life out us men." His grin grew double the size at his own joke before he pushed Crash towards the door by a shoulder. "You should go." Enver asserted to his thrall by giving him a gaze that spoke more than his actual words did. Crash noticed the look, nodded and then flipped Enver a peace sign, because apparently, Crash was bringing that back again.

"I've called an ex-wife or two the same thing. Souless bitches." Enver knew Pi in passing and had seen her once or twice, and while he wasn't going to get involved in anything pyshical, he didn't mind taking some attention off her and the vampire population in general. Humans needed to be slowly adjusted to the mass of blood sucking 'monsters,' and not tossed in deep waters and expected to swim or else.

[Shya (DELETED 6054)]

As the male rushed to her side and offered aid, Shya looked up at him with a rather blank stare, unsure how to respond. She knew that she should thank him, show a bit of that gratitude that normal people were so capable of. Without a word, she placed her hand in his as he offered it out to her. The contact of skin against skin felt strange, her whole arm beginning to tingle in the worst way. In an attempt to shut it down, she forced a small smile on her lips and began to form an appropriate 'thank you.' Except she never got the chance.

There was a time and place for everything. Shya strictly believed that what ever happened, there was a logical reason behind it. That reasoning allowed for a perfect explanation for what events occurred when they did, to who they did, and how they did. At first, that reasoning could be hard to find, and could require more research or searching than anyone wished to put the effort into. But, eventually, it would all fall into place. That was just the way of the world. As it should be.

But, for the life of her, Shya could not see the reason behind the sudden chaos taking place in the cafe that had previously been so quiet. Her hand rest in that of a stranger, a man and a woman had rushed into the small space screaming like banshees, and now there were hissed gossip about the concept of the undead. Her mind spun, taking her down so many different avenues of thought that she worried she couldn't keep up. The male whose associate had crashed into her scurried him away, and then seemed to brush off the incident occurring, as if it were perfectly normal. If thievery and muggings were normal, let alone a chase over it, was normal...there was definitely a need to reevaluate her choices in staying.

She looked up to the male helping her, then to the casual observer. "Are you both insane? There is a thief standing there...and you are worried about his use of the term 'undead?'" she voiced, unable to bring herself to include her usual forced inflection while hauling herself up from the floor with only a little pressure to the man's hand. When she was firmly situated with her feet on the ground she took in the scene, and frowned.

The sight of the fight caused her chest to constrict, flashbacks of a time years ago brought to the surface. With a soft huff, she involuntarily shifted herself to stand partially behind the kind gentleman that helped her up. Though he made a rather terrible shield, considering, it was something between her and the horror going on. "Please, stop..." she whispered, well aware that there was little chance anyone could hear her.

[Pi dArtois]

People saw what they wanted to see. They understood only as much as their brain chose to process and for the rest they constructed convoluted (but potentially plausible) explanations for the seemingly unexplainable. In this case, Pi had given a very plausible explanation for the chaos that rode with her into this picturesque little café with its coffee scents and its (now shocked) patrons.

And she had no doubt in her mind that they would run with that explanation and take photos on their iphones (that’s why her back was turned to the masses) and post up on FB the dramas of the night ending in a scuffle with a tiny slip of a woman scrambling up from her dominant position, hauling the thief with her and frog marching him out the door.

Or maybe they wouldn’t take photos because they forgot the phones dangling uselessly from their hands as their eyeballs remained glued to the scene, shocked bystanders too caught up in the action to garner much reaction than eyeballs focused squarely on what was happening.

Not that she took much notice of anyone’s reaction, not after her initial sweep of the room. She was too much a publican in her own right to allow herself to be pulled into a situation where she would be too easily identified. This was rare for her, very rare, public disturbance, overt gestures of hidden violence.

She didn’t look back when she left the café, the recalcitrant thief in front of her. Of course, given the rather public display, she wasn’t going to kill this one, just pat him down, see if he had what she wanted then let him go. Catch and release. Vampire styles.

Outside on the curb, she did exactly that. Making a show of watching him walk away, hands on her hips. Just in case anyone was watching out windows (and assuming correctly there probably was). Catch and release. Yes, that was a good way to describe this night’s activities.

Not every thief was that lucky.

[Seiji (DELETED 6165)]

It had been yet another long day for Seiji, but then again, weren't they always like that as of late? Day twisting into night, crawling by with the speed of a snail uphill, filled with the same repetition and uncertainty that left him repeatedly on edge. Nothing new for the teen, but that didn't make it any better. Boots that had seen better days did little to protect his feet from the cold, but after a few years of life outdoors, the cold didn't quite bother him anymore. Well, not as much as it once had, and surely still did for others.

Still, the sight of a cafe was welcoming, its lights luminous as it beckoned his approach. The tall, lithe figure couldn't help a faint smile illuminate Asian features at the thought of maybe having enough for something warm to fill his belly. His thoughts were so fixed on that, he didn't notice the figure scrambling away, roughly elbowing past. A grunt flew from Seiji's lips as he stumbled to the side. Misfortune always seemed to bat her lashes his way in times like these, as the boys foot found a slick stream of ice that sent him careening clumsily. Feet tangled, and like a tree he tumbled face first at anothers feet.

A hand reached up, getting some kind of footing in the snow... and promptly skidding out again. On his third try, the violet haired boy managed to lift enough to glance over a pair of shoes situated in front of his face. Blue eyes traced upwards, finally taking in the red haired females features. With a small yelp of surprise, Seiji scrambled back to his feet, nearly taking another nosedive. A bumbling string of apologies tumbled out of his mouth to the unfamiliar woman as he eagerly slipped past, making his way towards the entrance, hopefully unhindered, and all too aware of the multiple gazes locked her way. His head hung slightly at the thought, unaware of just how he might have accidently made a scene into an even worse one with his fumbling antics.