[Video]

[smallmediumwelldone]

Good evening.

[There’s a woman speaking, tone clipped. The corporate jumpsuit hangs off her small frame, and her hair is swept up into an old-fashioned bun. Or so it seems - she’s standing a bit away from the screen, and it’s tilted at an odd angle.]

I am given to understand that this is how to contact my new coworkers? My name is Beatrice Brewer, at your service, and I assure you I am quite qualified. I am - was - an apprentice of the fifth circle in, ah, a collection of magi, have experience in a thrilling variety of crises, and am quite keen to get started on - [a heavy sigh, more notable for the fact that someone observant might catch that she doesn’t breathe] - this situation.

[There’s a long pause.]

Drat, is this bloody thing even on? Dreadful place, what sort of dog and pony show are they running, honestly. Stuff? Stuff? Of all the names?

Comments

[smallmediumwelldone]

At least that's my name, Ms. Haynes.

[She's just not going to touch on – any of the rest. It was clearly a misunderstanding. Maybe a cultural one. Yes, that seems right, this is clearly all just part of Garou culture. Right, of course. With that assurance in mind, Beatrice manages to make eye contact with Kenzie once more. Or close enough. She may be looking a few inches off to the side.]

We use clans, not tribes. There's a difference – we do not select our clans, and there is a measurable difference in the blood and our resulting traits, which I have been given to understand is unlike your tribes. Nor are we a mafia, goodness. I'll gladly leave such tawdriness to the Giovanni.

[A pause, before she realizes Kenzie has no context for that salt. She explains sourly – not exactly being their biggest fan.]

A family of Italian vampires. Necromancers. Thoroughly obnoxious and besotted with their own deviance.

What was my own clan is known as the Tremere. [She's been thrown to off her game to stop herself from letting that past tense slip in - or notice that it had.] We're the youngest across all the clans – but acknowledged all the same, for no other Kindred have our mastery of sorcery.

[ragefeathers]

Yeah, but nicknames are cute.

[ She's not ready to leave that hill just yet. She crosses her arms, then reaches up to wipe away a stray bead of sweat from above her eye. She's been not moving for a short while now and it's starting to annoy her. Now she's engaged in this conversation though... ]

Tremere. Little babies who are really good at magic, got it.

[smallmediumwelldone]

[Kenzie gets a dirty look. It breaks only for Beatrice to track the movement of sweat and the casual brush of Kenzie's hand – it's important to know what the werewolf is up to, of course. Then she resumes scowling.]

We're far from infants. Even our status at being the newcomers still puts us at one millennium – you're scarcely a zygote. And while I technically can't stop you from calling me what you wish, it would only be fair that I then get to call you whatever I wish as well.

[Beatrice crosses her arms, smug, sure in her victory.]

[ragefeathers]

I might be a zygote.

[ Whatever the fuck a zygote is. ]

But I can kick a LOT of ass so it doesn't matter. What's your nickname for me then? Make it something sweet~

[ Kenzie is the worst. ]

[smallmediumwelldone]

Er – [Oh god oh fuck Beatrice wasn't prepared for this.]

That's for me to know and for you to find out.

[What does that even mean? She doesn't know. Beatrice sticks her nose up in the air and does her best to look like a malevolently plotting vampire and not at all like she's panicking.]

[ragefeathers]

[ Very few people are prepared for Kenzie, to be fair. ]

Awww, but princess, if I have a pet name for you, you just have to have one for me!

[ Kenzie is enjoying this way, way too much. ]