Talk Only Gets in the Way

[Samson Krahn]

Rapidfire: Max 300 words per post. Any combat must be roleplayed and should involve the attack from thread feature. Use the dice roller or roleplay action feature where applicable. Expect randomness via ARES. Obviously open to everyone! =D

Shamelessly taking advantage of 10x RPP, but will keep things rolling even after the weekend is up.

He had been a hunter from a young age, when his father had taken him out with a bow and arrow, and showed him how to put down smaller game with the twang of a bowstring and the air whipping power of a loosed arrow. When he’d gotten older, it had been a rifle, and much bigger prey, like wild rams, bucks. These days? Well these days, Samson preferred to use his hands, because firearms were a good way of putting mental distance between hunter and hunted, but he believed that all life was inherently precious. This meant that he didn’t want that distance. He wanted to be in the face of the things he struck down, to be so close that there was true danger in the chase. If there was going to be blood on his hands, he wanted there to well and truly be blood staining his skin.

That was why he hollered. He was standing in an alleyway, and there were two other people there. If things continued, it was going to be two people in that alley and a corpse. But if Samson had his way, it was going to be two living, breathing humans and one pile of ashes. The vampire he had been tailing whirled around, dropping what looked like dinner onto the wet alley ground. Samson’s heart told him to call for some kind of pause to check her pulse and make sure she was okay. But the undead did not allow for those in his limited experience. So the moment the fanged guy was turned around, there was an axe flying through the air at full speed. The thing thunked right into a skull and Samson’s eyes widened. He dug a boot into a chest and yanked back, which threw the vampire towards a dead end brick wall and left the Paladin reeling back a step to find his footing.

[Lecovio]

The noise of metal against metal rang through Lecovio's head in a way he immediately wished he never had to experience. It was like a freight train derailing and plunging into a passing sheet steel warehouse, where it ground its way through great heaping aisles of cold alloy.

Of course, anything sounded bad when it was inside your skull. He'd never been so pleased about the metal plate in his head as he was in that single moment. Though, to be fair, it had come in quite handy in past fights too.

Lecovio's chest let out a hollow huff as his back struck the damp, uneven brick wall. With blood streaming down his square, broad face and into his angled brown eyes, he straightened up and stared at the axe wielding maniac.

"Ey! What the **** are you playin' at mate?" He said, in a cockney accent so thick that you could almost hear the London smog rolling out from between his lips as he spoke. "Can't a fuckin' man enjoy a bit of dinner in peace these days? Blind old bloody Peter!"

[Sawyer]

Half-empty bottle of whiskey in hand, the lithe paladin stumbled her way down the nearly deserted streets, tip of her blade gliding across asphalt. Ephraim had warned her of the dangers of going out without him, which he had to have known was ******* stupid. He should have learned by now that by telling her not to do something, she would do it. It was in her DNA to be a complete and utter nuisance. Shaking her head, she ran her fingers through her hair, and as they trembled against her skull, she sighed. “Oh, yeah, this is so ******* dangerous.”

She hated to admit that she was disappointed. With everything reaching that maximum boiling point, she was anticipating some sort of action. There was absolutely nothing. Lifting the bottle to her lips, she took a long pull of the amber liquid, and as the alcohol burned its way down her throat, she paused. At first, she thought what she had heard had to have been a result of the whiskey – but then she heard the faintest whisper of voices. Finishing off the bottle, she tossed it to the side and lifted her sword, hilt resting against her shoulder as she followed the voice into the alley.

“Samson,” she hummed, blue eyes sparkling with mischief as she casually leaned against the brick, fingers drumming an unsteady beat against the steel of her blade. On the outside, it would appear as though the paladin didn't give a damn about the body at her feet or the impending battle before her. She was calm and collected - but her intoxicated gaze missed nothing.

“Sure they can, but you’re no man,” she chimed, her eyes finally finding the crumpled form. There was a brief flash of anger that lit her eyes with fire, and then she was crouching, two fingers pressed to her skin to search for a pulse.

[Samson Krahn]

If Lecovio’s accent brought to mind dense air pollution, then Samson’s was the clear and clean thinness of the low Appalachian mountains from which he had come. He spoke with the slowness of a drawl that came from the States to the south, in a way that made most people in any urban area stare at him blankly. “The ****?!” He asked. That was not the look he had been going for. He’d been aiming to cleave the vampire’s head in two. Of course, he was new enough to this paladin thing that he was very aware that he was essentially ‘winging it’. But how was a man supposed to learn his God given calling if he didn’t dip his fingers in the mud and grime to pan for the proverbial gold?

“No!” He said, thinking on his feet. “That’s an innocent.” He said as he motioned to the woman on the ground with one hand. She looked a little dazed, but no worse for the wear - though that was entirely beside the point. In his opposite (non-motioning) hand, he held his axe, ready to leap into combat if the situation called for it. ****. What had the Order of Steel said about this? Leaving a vampire bleeding and injured was bad for business because they were likely to go around attacking people to replenish themselves. That had been what they’d said right?

“She didn’t ask for this ****!” Actually he had no way of knowing that, but the whole ‘feeding in a dark alleyway’ thing felt like a dead give away. Lips twisted in a snarl above his beard, and his eyes widened. He had been about to tell the vampire to be on his way when he heard a familiar voice. Oh ****. He nearly dropped his axe as Sawyer approached. He had not been expecting back up but he certainly would not turn it down.

"You take care've her and I'll handle this one." He said, gaze narrowing, following the vampire's movements.

[Storyteller]

==========AUTOMATED RANDOM EVENTS SYSTEM==========

The group hears the sound of a voice shouting distantly about the evils of 'blood sucking monsters'.

[Storyteller]

==========AUTOMATED POST==========

Lecovio attempted to perceive something about Samson Krahn, and was successful!

[Lecovio]

Lecovio squinted and brushed the blood on his brow aside with the back of his slate suit jacket sleeve. The blood simply smeared over his skin rather than being cleaned off to any real degree.

"She's alright aint she!" He said, looking a little unsteady on his feet. "Just a nip. I wasn't gonna finish her off. **** off will ya? Cor, can't even go out for dinner no more without a couple of fannies coming at you with axes and swords. What's this city come to, I ask ya." It was more of a statement, really.

Lecovio's head turned just an inch as the shout rang out, perhaps just a street away. His eyes narrowed and he leaned back on his heels slightly as he appraised the situation. Two hunters, and maybe one other just around the corner. He was outnumbered, that was for certain, but was he outmatched? He attempted to size up the axe wielding do-gooder for a moment, as he spoke trying to buy himself a little time to figure out a plan.

"Tell you what, let's all just agree it won't happen again, put away the tools, and go on our merry way, ay? I got a bit more than nine lives, mate, and you barely even got one. So let's call it a night."

[Samson Krahn]

He could hear shouting in the distance. It wasn’t a voice he recognized, but that didn’t mean much, because he frankly was only familiar with a handful of people. That was, in part, because he was relatively new to town, and partially because he was a mountain man born and raised. He felt at home in the forest, and was none too pleased the moment his surroundings turned from lush and green life into cement, glass, and asphalt. All lifeless, hard things that lacked the ability of a simple flower to bring a man a moment’s joy.

But the loudness of it rang like an alarm bell in his ears. Was there another vampire close by who needed to be dealt with? Or was it a potential friend drawing closer?

Did he stay where he was and deal with the present threat or did he go looking for more trouble?

He was offered an out by the vampire, and he wasn’t sure how much he liked that. He certainly didn’t like the way the man said he had more than nine lives. And Samson. Samson had the one. It was a reminder that vampires, despite being unnatrual things had the upper hand. Would always have the upper hand. How many people had died at Longslade just doing their jobs? At the hands of guys like this?

His gaze narrowed and his nostrils flared.

The vampire looked a little dazed. Axe to the head would do that to you.

But his instinct was to let Lecovio go. He didn’t think vampires all needed to be culled. Just the dangerous ones.

So there it was. The problem. Stay or go? Let the vampire free and race to the scene of another crime...or stand his ground? He wasn’t too worried about the injured woman - Sawyer would take care of her.

“Prove it then. Give me your fangs and you can go. Don’t need em if you’re drinkin’ from a bag.” His free hand slid out expectantly, gaze steady.

[Ephraim Steele]

“And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people.”

His voice rang out clear into the night, the hard sole of his boots snapping against the concrete sidewalk like a metronome, keeping even time as he pulled free the blade that he had forged from the silver of the sacred adornment of Father Uphrim’s regalia, his own way of carrying on his mentor’s work. The blade shone in the crisp light of the street lamp, a gleaming weapon of polished lethality, almost reflective in its meticulous finish.

“For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”

The verse was one that had become like a mantra to him in these dark times, an affirmation that the work he was doing here in this city of the damned was God’s work, and that his was a righteous cause. The verses he quoted, from the seventeenth chapter of the book of Leviticus, was about as black and white as one could ask for, in a war against an unholy abomination that survived by pilfering the blood of the living. It was good to know the words were written so long ago, and still rang so hauntingly true thousands of years later.

“Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourneth among you eat blood.”

He paused, then, at the mouth of the alley that he had watched Sawyer duck into. Often, she thought herself clever, having given him the slip, and just as often, she was wrong. He stood at the only exit, eyes moving from the prone figure, where Sawyer knelt over the faint woman, to Samson, the newest member of the Order, giving each of them a knowing glance, and finally to the other man, whose name he did not know. The vampire.

“Evening, Stranger. Dangerous times to be taking young ladies into dark alleys alone, don’t you think?”

[Ripper]

"I'd almost be more worried about the two of them attacting some more unwanted attention."

Ripper had no inkling of recognition on either of the two fighting, but when he saw Sawyer (who was a bit snappish towards the undead; and wouldn't be surprised if she had been the one shouting) and knew that Gideon must be somewhere not far off by--but only then for this reason did his investigations start to begin to bear fruit--for it was difficult to deal evenly with them when only in the presence of one.

"As matter of fact, strike out the 'almost' there. My advice though is that neither of you lads lay a hand on the lady here--if you're at all interested in trying to keep them firmly attached. I'd sooner rather take my chances to pet a tiger... If were given the choice between the two ."
*winks at Sawyer*
The noises and sights around them became muted and faded as if the night's darkness had slipped over the area and covering the immediate area with a swathe of obsidian curtain that settled over them all like a shroud shielding view and notice from mortal eyes.

"Alright there then, now we can continue further without any worry about the Man and his imposing martial law. 3 against one is a little steep, but first I'd like to see how this is going to play out."


[for_peace][/for_peace]

(Power: Commander of Darkness-Lower Security)