piper90 | [Video]

The touch of mortal warmth is more disconcerting than that it comes from metal, really. The handshake is exactly as brief and perfunctory as Beatrice can make it. Something about Saturday's phrasing seems to strike Beatrice's funny bone, however, judging by the minute turn of her mouth.

"What are stories of history if not what people want remembered more than the truth? Just some are more successful at blotting out the truth than others. Accounts such as the Norse Eddas - do they recall ancient warfare with and between the Elven people, then? History, warning?"

"I can only imagine how essential managing the impressions of such stories were for when you reemerged. My own people had - attempted a similar gambit of harnessing what people wished to remember but." A wry twist. "Those with their heads stuck seven thousand years ago."

"Some history, some pop culture, some made up shit 'cause it's seven thousand years between high ends on the magic cycle an' people got imaginations," Saturday says, cheerfully assuming that Beatrice will ask if she wants to know more. "An' nobody re-emerged. People just started waking up as orks an' trolls an' elves an' whatnot. And also able to fling fireballs, an' deflect bullets, talk to spirits... dragons started buzzing Mt. Fuji... wild time."

She throws up her hands, waving them elaborately to punctuate the sense of chaos she's trying to invoke.

"Except for a couple batches of immortals, no one knew it was coming, see? The history got forgotten. Still is, except me an' my friends have had a real weird time lately so we know some stuff. Anyway, who're your people, exactly? You didn't say."

The question is so sudden and innocent one could almost suspect she genuinely had just tacked it on to keep Beatrice part of the conversation. Except Saturday very much didn't. Woman's ice cold and not breathing, an' she ain't stupid.

She arches one brow at the elf. As if she ever trusts innocent. "I was under the impression that more than one of us had already made themselves known here," Beatrice points out. "But if you are unclear, I am a vampire – although we typically use other terms amongst ourselves. We're no strangers to pop culture either."

Beatrice still seems more interested in the practicalities of how the Awakening worked. "But surely there is someone interested in sorting out the line between history and the made up? Or are your 'batches of immortals' the self-proclaimed authority and power on that front?" People are, after all, very predictable, but if this girl 'knows stuff' as she claims, perhaps she can elaborate. Particularly on what truly has Beatrice's eyes gleaming with interest.

Look, immortals are consistent, but evolutionary matters? That is interesting. That is new. That is her own precise area of interest. Which means Saturday gets hit with an absolute barrage of questions, not even giving her time to digest the other points.
"..Sorry, can you clarify woke up as these other - species? Subgroups? Does that mean you are all genetically the same as a human? Did expression follow determined paths, or was it random? Are you one of those that awoke, or are you ah. Native, so to speak?"

"Oh, yeah, we got those too - " Saturday starts to say, pleased to have guessed right. Then Beatrice hits her with five questions at once, and her eyes widen.

"...okay, like. I can probably answer a lot of that but like I'm not an expert an' mostly I'll be telling you what other people told me, I can't - get super into detail and stuff. I mean I dropped outta school in the ninth grade. But okay.

"So like, our world is on this cycle where magic rises to a level where it starts expressing genetics for being an elf, or a mage, or an orc, or whatever. And people who like already had the potential could suddenly use magic - not that they couldn't before, but there wasn't enough, right? Like being born with gills in a world that doesn't have water, all this stuff was just kinda hanging out in our DNA doing nothing until the magic levels rose.

"Don't ask me any questions about the magic levels 'cause there's math with letters in it involved. What I know is magic is tied into essence, which is like the life energy of everything, but more so. It's the thingness of being. Kinda like what the Stuff is supposed to unravel which is deeply freaky, honestly. It's also kinda like a soul but it's no religious. I dunno, sometimes I think of it as like, the air the electricity in my nerves leaps through, but I dunno if that's just poetry or whatever.

"What that means is, I'm an elf, my parents were elves, my grandparents were human. We're all genus homo, but subspecies, sapiens included. Got latin names and all. The Awakening was a while ago, like I said - my grandparents' generation. It wasn't random, 'cause genetics. And we're all native earthpeople, we didn't come from anywhere else, just some of us had the genes that woke up when the magic levels rose an' some of us didn't."

Whew. Saturday looks exhausted by remembering all that, and corralling it into something like coherent order.

Beatrice seems to be following along with what Saturday is saying with easy attention. Most definitely someone who would have soaked up Scylla's lectures like a sponge.

"Some of the concepts you describe are - startlingly familiar, actually. We underwent our own rise and then ebb of magic centuries ago, and there was some panic once it wasn't able to sustain what..the current mages were accustomed to. Although vampires were not, ah, impacted to the same degree in my world, while it sounds as if they were part of this reawakening in yours? My home's magic is, as well, tied into the energy of life, although possibly determined, to some degree, of what perception of it says it ought to be? That was, at least, blamed for the shift in how it could be accessed, although blood sorcery bypassed that quite handily." Perception is a concept familiar to Scylla's pet UMT as well. It's so sad they can't be here to nerd at each other. Well, except for the whole blood magic thing.

"Essence," Beatrice muses. "A solid word for the concept. Much less unwieldy than quintessence, and certainly better than juice."

There's around a solid minute where she gets lost in her own head, scooting around various magical puzzle pieces and reverberations across worlds when Beatrice snaps back into focusing on Saturday with a sudden intense focus.

"I'm sorry, did you say dropped out of education? In the ninth grade?"

Saturday starts to respond to Beatrice's comments, then recognizes the look on her face and lapses into the familiar, homey silence of someone smarter than her figuring things out. In fact, she's just starting to consider steering Beatrice to the mess so she can get a snack while the serious business of heavy cognition occurs when Beatrice suddenly snaps into focus, almost glaring at her.

Saturday about jumps out of her skin.

"Uh, yeah," she says, a little baffled. "Some stuff happened, I didn't wanna go anymore, and pops didn't make me."

"You didn't want to go?"

She's somewhere torn between that outraged focus and sheer bafflement.

"Good heavens, why not? An education is the most valuable gift anyone can provide to a fledgling-" oh wait, that's not the right human word. "-to a child. In my own lifetime, I would have traded a great deal to have been permitted to go. The subsequent struggle by the next generation-ahem." She's getting off the point, even if Beatrice is having trouble wrapping her mind around that this young woman of some magical capability would willingly give up what she had ached so strongly for. That someone would have different desires and experiences, of course, is not to be counted. "Surely you - your father continued your education at home, yes?"

The tone strongly indicates she is hoping Saturday says yes.

Saturday raises her arms behind her head, crossing them and stretching to buy time. She kinda doesn't want to defend herself to this woman, who is asking questions she has no right to ask. Most people woulda got the hint at "stuff happened."

But. The lady just got here, Jorgmund aren't exactly gracious hosts, and community solidarity is about the only thing the New Hires have going for them, as a collective.

"Like I said. Some stuff happened. I didn't wanna go, and after the stuff that had happened, pops wasn't gonna make me. He didn't stop me learning anything I wanted to, I just didn't go to school anymore."

The hint was there and blithely discarded in order to get the information she actually wanted. Dancing around it is just a slowdown from answers.

It's hardly as if Beatrice cares about the details of 'stuff' or the travails of this elf's life, so skipping right past it works for her. In either case, Saturday's answer seems to mollify her.

"So you still covered it then, just not..there? I suppose information is much more readily available in the modern age. You seem to understand the mechanics of your world's magic well enough – where did you learn that?"

"I learned whatever I wanted to learn, yeah." Her wording is precise, on purpose. "And whatever stuff pops figured I might need an' could get me to sit still for."

She's willing to breeze by the details. They'll come out, sooner or later - she saw Beatrice eyeing her arm hungrily.

"My best friend's a mage. She talks at me to figure stuff out a lot. Eventually I picked things up."

Beatrice, malicious compliance winner of the Tremere cup olympics, definitely does not miss the wording. It's evident from the way her gaze sharpens, but all she says is, "It's good that he valued learning."

"That's a fair bit to have just picked up," Beatrice observes in a tone just as bland as the first comment. She's not quite buying what Saturday is selling about herself. "In any case, it's interesting how much you mention is similar to more recent observations of my world. Is this more established information in yours? What of vampires, do you know much of them? I would be curious if they are likewise similar across worlds."

"I can, of course, answer any questions of my own land in turn," she adds after a beat, remembering to be gracious about the Sacred Exchange of Information (tm).

"For sure. We got vampires, though not as many as you'd think - most people who get infected go ghoul."

She's relieved enough to be off the subject of her upbringing that she has to take a beat to remember that might not make any sense to Beatrice.

"Human-Metahuman Vampiric Virus," she explains. "HMHVV. Though I mean, what you turn into depends on a lot of stuff including like, your metatype - human, orc, elf, whatever - and what strain you catch. Most common one's actually the Krieger strain, HMHVV-III, that turns people into ghouls, like I said - kinda like zombies, if you have those? Except they can keep their minds through it, which, let me tell you, fucking sucks. Bullshit contagious, too. Basically it fucks up your essence generation so you keep leaking it out and can't like, make more? So you have to get it from other living things. How you have to get it depends on strain and your metatype, like, vamps only happen if a sapiens gets infected? Their thing is blood, they gotta take in essence with blood or they get hugely sick all over the upholstery, ask how I know."

"..Hrm."

Beatrice folds her hands behind her back, expression reserved. "That is interesting. We have had some attempts to classify our nature as – akin to a virus, but they have been – questionable in methodology and attempted treatment."

"Our kind have several sub-classifications, but the differentiation is directly passed down, typically, from creator to childe, not based upon any aspect inherent to the person. You don't chose what clan you are embraced to, as the saying goes." There's nothing at all bitter about her half-smile. Why would there be? "Not to say there are no similarities at all. We do require some - vital aspect of life-essence that is found in the blood of the living, and possibly elsewhere. Much of my recent work has focused on the attempted isolation of that essence."

"Ghouls, however, mean something rather different for us. Those are the living who consume the blood of vampires and are, in turn, bound to them. Not at all zombies, which are entirely the domain of necromancers. How does the public perception in your world handle these...zombie-ghouls and vampires?"

"They hate 'em," Saturday responds with acid cheer. "Doesn't matter that it's not their fault or that they're still people. They still figure as soon as you catch the virus, you're better off dead."

She shrugs broadly. "Sucks all around. What d'you mean about drinking blood and being bound? Like a thrall or a pawn? Some of our vampires can do that - it's kinda shitty."

She doesn't exactly look shocked by what Saturday says, just resigned.

"That's unfortunate, but unsurprising. It's largely what many were people were afraid of in my home - to the extent of mandating that we hide our existence away. Those that disagreed adopted a strategy of inundating the world with more..positive media relating to us, but I suppose given the sudden nature of your world's Awakening there was no chance for such tactics."

Beatrice isn't lying, but it's not difficult to guess why that answer comes to her much easier than the other potential ones. She's above shifting awkwardly like some neonate, but Beatrice does shoot Saturday a sidelong glance as she notes, "Are you certain you wish to discuss this in the hallway? And surely thrall or pawn is a distinction without a difference. The answer is merely yes."

"There's a lounge 'round the corner. Or I can show you the mess, if you're hungry?" Saturday is, but Saturday is always hungry. Magic churns in her like a furnace, encouraging her to run hot and lean.

"Positive media - yeah, that'd be nice. Hard to put a pleasant spin on a lot of - I mean, it's hard. I get why people are scared. Some folks who get like, the nicer versions, where you don't get all rotted, can get - weird about it. But that's everyone, you know? They'd be shits no matter what weird powers they got. Powers just let 'em be better at it."

She starts wandering in the direct of the lounge, assuming Beatrice will follow.

"And most people who stuck with the virus wanna be cured more'n'anything. People can get real mean when they have to survive, is all. It's just one of those things."

It's not a subject that makes her comfortable - ghouls are easy, morally. They don't need to feed off the living, they don't even need that much dead flesh. They're just sick people. Vampires, though, vampires can be different, if they want to be. And a lot of them choose to be. Because the alternative is helplessness, and victimhood.

She understands that. She doesn't approve - but she understands. Maybe better then you'd think.

"The mess is fine with me, so long as you are volunteering yourself for its grotesque entry vaudeville," Beatrice says dryly. More blood doesn't hurt, and hey, this chance appearing before her saves Bea from having to figure out entry herself or cajole someone into it.

She falls in line next to Saturday, hands clasped behind her back and eyes fixed warily on the elf to the side. Beatrice doesn't quite understand why Saturday seems invested in any of this, and it's setting off an alarmed 'fakefakefake' ring in the back of her head.

"There's no cure. At least not where I'm from. Those who can't deal meet the sun and no amount of positive media fixed that," she notes too bluntly to really match the idle tone Beatrice's going for, still watching Saturday carefully as she prods. "There's an instinctive terror when people realize that we are all part of the same food chain and there's no opting out – why wouldn't they be scared? Why shouldn't they? It scarcely effects you, anyhow." You have no reason to care.

"Day shift's a bunch of jerks, but night shift is cool. They'll let you cook for yourself and take stuff back to the rooms and such. And yeah, I can get us in." Saturday grins easily, in demonstration.

Beatrice had gone stiff what Saturday started in about HMHVV, eyeing her from the side like a cat with a toddler. Saturday is all the more elaborately chill for it, sauntering along with her hands in her pockets. It makes perfect sense to her - it'd be weirder if the woman wasn't on guard, with all the shit Jorg puts newbies through.

"I got some friends with the virus," she explains. "K3 - kriger three, the zombie strain. This human rights shit like affects them personally, you know? They don't got exactly the same problems as the other strains, but they've all got that essence drain and stigma thing an' people newly infected in the Seattle Metroplex usually end up in Ghoultown sooner or later. Even if they end up somewhere else later. It's the place your parents drop you off after they make you sit through your own funeral, dig?"

It's lightly said, but not a joke. That kid had almost gone over the edge, afterwards; the memory puts an edge in her voice.

"You don't have to be okay with how some assholes go about things to think something like that's fucked up."

"I don't know about that, being able to see my own funeral was an interesting experience. The gravestone was delightfully tasteful." Her voice is just bland enough that it leaves it ambiguous if she's serious or not.

"It's good to know that about the mess for future reference, I suppose, but it's hardly as if I'm greatly concerned with dayshift or the ability to cook. Perhaps Leanne will at least be delighted–" Ah. Right. But Leanne isn't here. It's funny how easy it can be to forget. "–Nevermind. A - chef I knew. Despite also one of the Kindred. It's not important." Not important, not relevant, not here. Put it neatly into the compartmentalization box with the same neat efficiency that Beatrice tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and move on by finding a different avenue to prod.

"Frankly, being herded and forgotten is still a milder response than one would expect. It may be upsetting, but it's still survival – and being left alone is more than most can hope for no matter the circumstances. Although you were generous enough not steer clear. Those with magic must have a great deal of essence to consume. Not concerned with that or infection?" Hrm. She glances at Saturday's easy grace, the gleam of the mystic prosthetic, the hint of lean muscles and refusal to say what she had been learning. Beatrice thinks now she knows what the angle of a zombie's usefulness could be to her. "Or do you really need to dispose of that many bodies?"

"Forgotten...? That's one way to put it. People hate them, and they're easy targets because legally, they're not people. A lotta folks view wiping out ghoul squats as a public service. Some places put a special line in the budget, even."

Saturday rubs her metal arm, looking briefly at the ceiling.

"There was a thing a while back. Place in Illinois - they passed a law, okay? They said, okay, come here, we'll house you here and help you get by and no one will be able to fuck with you. So people came. Not even a month later the self-fucking-appointed defenders of humanity sweep in, kill over a hundred people. Come back two weeks later, kill a hundred more. They call on the government for help. Government says 'actually, it's too much fuckin' trouble.' And a lot of people died. Which is bullshit."

Her voice rings too loudly in the hall, sharp with anger.

"You make a promise to protect people, you don't get to take it back because it was too hard." Then she glares at Beatrice, not wanting to be worked up, but very clearly just that. Big brujah energy. "An' if I need a body got rid of I sell it a chopshop. Where it goes from there ain't my concern - Alice an' I aren't buddies cause she does me favors."

Beatrice doesn't so much as bat an eye, just watches Saturday back with that infuriatingly imperturbably blank expression. A mortal's raised voice doesn't exactly rate next to a Kindred in frenzy lunging towards her throat.

She nods, like seeing something she wanted. "Alright." That's all Beatrice says for a moment as she turns and starts heading towards the mess once more.

"That sounds distinctly more realistic. Do me the courtesy of skipping trying to sell the act next time." She means it, too. The previous descriptions were too mild, the relaxed friendliness too suspicious, the motives too inscrutable. This however - this sits on Beatrice easier, easier to slot into her experiences, into what she expects. She knows more what do with this than the open expectation. "It hasn't been the first time or last time a government – the American government, even, has merrily stood by and allowed the slaughter of inconvenient communities, legally people or not. Promises are worth only the breath they're said with, nothing more – particularly ones that I doubt were ever intended to be upheld. Although, of course, that applies to most promises as well."

"The act? What act?" Saturday stops full in her tracks, facing Beatrice, caught between outrage - an easy, almost friendly thing to feel - and sheer bafflement. "I was trynna express that I got some vague idea where you're comin' from, maybe. Didn't wanna get into the rough stuff because it's fucking rude, maybe you don't wanna talk about it, an' maybe it ain't your business anyhow!"

She crosses her arms, glaring; the degree to which that made sense or didn't is Beatrice's problem. "An' sell what? Basic fucking courtesy? You used to people flipping their shit and going ooo, a spooky vampire or some crap? 'Cause I've seen worse 'n your kind."

Edited 2020-11-17 01:35 (UTC)

"No doubt you have. I'm far from the worst of my kind, after all. I've yet to even eat the Eastern Seaboard. Slacking, I know."

There's still that dispassionate assessment from Beatrice as she looks at Saturday. A Kindred would be able to catch that she's frowning, but a mortal might struggle to recognize the minutiae. Her own walk is the polar opposite of Saturday's easy grace when she was leading the way to the mess – Bea is so stiff you could probably iron something on her back.

"I am referring to whatever it is you want from me. You needn't butter me up or coax me into playing along. Be honest and simply ask, and I will extend you the same courtesy." She aims for cool, professional, but mostly lands on weary. Beatrice is so very tired of feeling maneuvered, but damned if she won't give breaking the games people like to play with a blunt hammer her best go anyhow.

Saturday just stares. A look of profound and weary exhaustion crosses her face. She lets her arms falls to her side, thumb hooking back into belt loop, silver hand sliding into pocket.

"What I want is to be friends. Like if we can get along and shit. Allies, failing that, in a sincere way, like we're all on the same side here. Jorg doesn't think we're people," she says flatly. "If they could get those shock collars to zap us every time we think bad thoughts about 'em, they would. This world is literally falling apart at the seams, and it's gonna take us with it if we don't find a way out or save it. Which means we gotta be for each other first and foremost, you know? Even if we disagree internally sometimes."

She half-grins, a little embarrassed by saying it outright.

"Some kinda power of friendship deal, you know? Or maybe a union," she adds thoughtfully.

Oh. Oh Heavens no. Not this again. Beatrice stares right back, her steps faltering. She feels torn somewhere between dismay and the desire to burst into hysterical laughter, which does rather effectively cut through her current armor.

"Another one? Where do you all come from? Is there a handbook that has been written – some sort of stamped procedure for would-be rabblerousers that say power of friendship with a straight face?"

She rubs a hand down her temple, an oddly human gesture that jars against her what was her carefully-maintained air of stillness previously.

"Very well, Miss Saturday. I appreciate your candor. You're shoring up the defenses, yes? Rest assured, I will not be the weak link. This isn't my first time bound into orders...although I can't say much for the power of friendship's effectiveness in the workplace. To see you present the demands of a union to Jormungand and the "hires", however, would be an enjoyable sight. Worth the price of admission. Perhaps a pamphlet? People do like pamphlets."

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