World of Darkness World of Darkness: Attrition - Club Policy [Fin]

[Jeremy]

October 28, 2008...

A burst of semi-drunken hoots of annoyance and frustration was directed at the TV as the patrons of the Amphora nearest the television expressed their disappointment at the Dodgers' performance in the sixth inning. Jeremy casually ignored them, knowing that they could be subtly nudged into continuing to expand their tab for the night, though not to the point of full drunkenness.

Pouring drinks and acknowledging the regulars, hustling and bustling, Jeremy handled his job with casual and unconcerned grace and wit.

One of his co-workers, Candace, walked over to him with a slight frown. "Poor man. We need you to help resolve some frat argument in the Emerald Room, I'm covering for you till you can fix that mess." That was the special room themed to serve for college students, which helped make up a fair portion of the club's clientele.

Jeremy nonchalantly shrugged, nodded without worry and moved from out behind the bar, heading for the scene of the incident. Happened one in a while, no biggie. Compared to the shootouts in the Mystery City that spilled over to Jeremy's place of involuntary servitude, this was a walk in the park.

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

"Draft," Sarah said, plopping a dollar bill, five quarters, seven dimes and a nickel on the bar. Aside from the clothes on her back, it was the sum total of her worldly wealth, hard-scrounged over the previous few nights.

As the barmaid - Candace, by her nametag - slid the frosty cold mug toward the redhead and scooped away the money, Sarah sighed. She hated wasting the last of her money on something she couldn't even drink, let alone enjoy. But there was no good way to hang out in a bar without buying a drink. And with how badly things were going, a bar was pretty much the last chance at a good meal she had.

How the hell did I wind up in this shit? Frustrated, the vampire looked around the room, carefully remembering to keep breathing and blinking, trying to find a suitable mark. But her mind wandered, and she found herself pondering just how things had gone so sour.

Holmby Park, it turned out, was a great place to sleep... and damned little else. Hunting in the park at night was negligible at best, non-existent at worst. The denizens of this miserable city - or at least those of her neighborhood - weren't of a park-strolling mind after dark (or even during the day, as the minimal use of the park's facilities and trash cans attested). The neighborhood itself was also slim pickings; with the exception of a cheap Chinese restaurant at the eastern edge of Frat Row, hunting was slim.

For the past two weeks, the Red Dragon had been closed for repairs. And that had been a lesson in just how much Sarah had relied on that little oasis in her desert home.

Things had gone no better with trying to contact the local werewolves. For whatever reason, the spirits that had helped lead her here had gone disturbingly silent. That had placed the onus on Sarah to go scouting, and those efforts had been grim indeed. In the hills to the north, she'd found border markings... backed by a growling reception by one of the Uratha who was plainly unwilling to have a nice talk with a muth luzuk like her, regardless the heritage. She'd gotten back down the hill intact, but had a couple bite marks in her jacket to show for her troubles. The pack along the rocky beaches at foot of Palos Verdes was, if anything, even more insular.

And there of course hadn't been so much as a trace of her cousin.

The beer, still untouched, was still cold in her hands; she certainly wasn't helping it warm up any. Faking a sip and trying her best to ignore the ash-like taste, she went back to scanning the room for a likely meal.

[Jeremy]

Jeremy walked back into the main room, looking as unconcerned as ever to the patrons. Candace caught his eye and then left to switch back to the Emerald Room. Jeremy slid in behind the bar and went back to scanning the patrons.

The sullen red-head caught his eye, in that 'possibly needs a friendly pair of ears' way. She wasn't really even trying to drink her beer. Walking back on his circuit, he came to a stop in front of Sarah.

"Well, it's not going to get drunk by itself." He started in a friendly, casual voice. "Rough time?"

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

There was a brief flicker of hope in green eyes as they glanced up in the direction of the voice. That flicker fell away as she saw it was the bartender speaking.

Well, so much for a meal, she thought, eyes falling back to watching her hands idly slide the glass around a bit more, condensation on the bar giving it a bit of glide. "Yeah, rough time. These are rough times. It happens."

And they'll stay rough the longer you hover there. "Just not as thirsty as I thought. I'll get around to it."

[Jeremy]

Jeremy shook his head, in experienced knowledge. "C'mon." He smiled brightly, as if Sarah could do worse than to humor him. "Bury your problems, they get worse. Do you want to let them get worse, or make you feel worse?"

He leaned forward slightly, even as he quickly took a new customer's order, a man who looked as if he'd gone to the gym a thousand times a week.

Then he turned back to Sarah and smiled reassuringly.

Click to reveal..

If it would help:

(17:54:26) (Jeremy): Man+per

(17:54:37) ChatBot: (Jeremy) rolls 5d10 and gets 9,7,2,8,8.

3 sux

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

Despite herself, Sarah let out a dry thing that might have been something close to a chuckle. Bury your problems? If you only knew....

And then, he launched into the ancient ritual practiced in bars and pubs around the world: the bartender as counselor.

For a moment, she considered just up and leaving. She actually started to push away from the bar, preparing to disembark her stool and head for the door. What stopped her was more stubbornness than anything else. Her last dime - literally - had gone into the beer. Her last decent chance of the kind of meal that wouldn't leave her going down some pretty dark moral highways was probably right here in this club.

And as much as she hated to admit it, she missed talking.

"I've been worse." It wasn't a lie; there's been times on the road where the only thing that had kept her going was dumb luck and the old hitchhiker routine. And of course, there was the one time when she died; that qualified as worse.

"But I've been better, too. Between jobs without much in the way of prospects right now." That still was a truth of a sort; she'd hoped that there might be a pack she could join in L.A., and that sure hadn't turned out well. "Getting a decent bite to eat is getting tricky."

Oh hell, did you actually have to say that? She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Either the guy would figure her to be a bum and start pushing her toward the door, or a charity case and shove some pretzels or a sandwich or something in front of her to stare at.

[Jeremy]

Jeremy had a slight bitter look on his face as he appeared to digest that suggestion of Sarah's "poverty." The two new people that showed up gave him a reason to move away, and after filling their orders, he grabbed a pen and scrap of paper and scribbled something on the scrap.

In a few moments, it and the pen rested in front of Sarah, left there.

Hard up? Mind some charity? If no, just never mind. If yes, can you wait till 10:45 pm?

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

From her initial reaction, the paper might have been acid, or the pen a viper ready to strike. It was a strange dichotomy, really; in stolen clothes and surviving on stolen blood, something in her recoiled at the idea of being deemed a charity case.

But as Sarah stared at the brief message, an opportunity showed itself. This bartender was subtle, and showed her a significant courtesy in handling what he surely thought an embarrassing state of affairs discretely. If so, then if he really meant to help her out, he'd likely do it away from prying eyes, maybe even in his office. Alone.

A faint curl formed at one corner of her mouth. She thought for a moment, then took pen in hand and jotted a short line on the scrap.

I'd be thankful. Very thankful.

Turning it over, she finally rose from the barstool, taking her still-full beer off into deeper parts of the club, looking for a convenient place to pour it.

[Jeremy]

Time went and passed in the LA Amphora, and 10:44 PM rested upon the clock. Jeremy's shift tonight was up, and he put away a stray glass resting on the table. As he wrapped up, he wondered how to pass on the the ill-fated redhead where she should meet him.

Probably at the back of the building, where he could take her into his office and pass her some money. He could spare a couple hundred bucks, that would certainly cover food for a little bit. A good thing he felt needed doing.

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

By the time the clock ticked over to 11:45, Sarah was stalking back toward the source of her sole point of hope for the evening. Sure enough, the hunt had gone badly; by dint of bad timing or just plain bad luck, she'd no opportunities during the previous couple of hours that lasted long enough to take.

So there was a certain hungry look in those green eyes of her when she stepped up to the bar and gave a faint smile and nod to the barkeep. If her gaze didn't quite meet his, well surely it was from the shame of dealing with a possible handout. Surely that, and not because she was looking at his smooth and slender neck.

[Jeremy]

Jeremy nodded with a smile, and gestured to lead the woman onward to the small back room leftover in the building that he had appropriated. He noted the gaze, which was a tad angled towards his neck.

Jeremy had dealt with driving vampires away from the Amphora before, using the power of his whispers to play on their paranoid nature to scare them off. This very fact caused the scant suspicions he had about that gaze to evaporate.

The leeches knew not to come around here. It was surefire, he figured. As they entered the backroom, he switched on the light and paused. "I have some money hidden away in this safebox." he told her, and reached into his pocket for the key and turned to open the lock on the door of said box.

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

Excitement and anticipation showed on Sarah's pale features, as the young man delved into his hidden reserves. That the show of apparent emotion wasn't actually for the money didn't really dull the effect. What did set her a bit off-kilter was the way that the bartender - no, owner, she realized - had made such a show of the safebox. Was this a test? Was he waiting for her to try to steal the contents?

The thought wasn't alien to her. Every penny she'd had for years had come from ill-gotten means. But it had always been a matter of clothes taken from an untended dryer, or money from the pockets of a particular asshole of a victim. Knocking over a club... that wasn't really on her to-do list.

To her surprise, it wasn't just a spare ten or twenty that her benefactor withdrew from the box. Bill after bill was carefully counted out, as Sarah watched with widening eyes as the man eventually set an even two-hundred on the desk, then carefully locked the box and returned it to some hidden recess within his desk.

With a smile, he took up the stack of banknotes and crossed the room over to where the red-head, still with eyes wide, waited. "This should tide you over for a while," he offered, gently pressing the money into her palm. "Hard times require kind moments if we're all to make it though."

Sarah was stunned. She was sure - even ready - for a demand of something in return. It wouldn't have been the first time she'd delved into sexual acts in the furtherance of her hunt, and this time the reward would be both blood and money. But something about this strangely generous man belied that expected requirement.

Still, she'd spent a tiny bit of her remaining reserves preparing herself for the moment, softening her lips and giving her skin a touch of the warmth stolen from it by death's hand. With a grateful (if somewhat faint) smile of her own, she whispered, "Thank you," then leaned in to give thanks of a different sort, a kiss before the Kiss.

Her lips brushed his own, the kiss tentative and a bit uncertain in those first moments, but certainly a kiss nonetheless. Her breath was free of the taste of beer... of any taste, really, aside from a very faint and difficult to place earthiness. And his was strange as well; like lilacs and rosebuds and a spring rain, it held a scent that bespoke of one more alive than most, of hope and desire and a promise of better things to come.

[Jeremy]

Jeremy's eyes widened in surprise, but he smiled and humored her for the moment. Then he laid a hand on on her shoulder and asked in a humorous voice, "Now why did you need to do that?" The rhetorical question needed little answering.

The readhead smiled, faintly, before leaning in to kiss his neck. "Because I should." As she did so, something in her eyes seemed to change, but it was barely perceptible to Jeremy. The changeling had very little time to register this before teeth seemed to press against his throat, and smoothly cut their way into his veins.

Pleasure struck Jeremy in overpowering waves, and he gasped, his head leaning back, and body pushing against the desk.

Unfortunately, the parts of his mind that had realized the truth of who he was dealing with and the danger involved were fragmented by the neurotransmitter assault given off by the Kiss, and he couldn't focus. It was comparable to the does Mr. Bigmun had given him as rewards...

The sudden thought was not good, and the mental backlash allowed him to recover over the course of several seconds.

Sarah thus was allowed to drain some blood, but as she did so, the changeling hallucinogenic properties took effect. Jeremy's voice, suddenly more dangerous and demanding rasped. "Get your teeth out NOW, leech."

Click to reveal..

(09:15:52) (Jeremy): Resolve+COmp to resist Kiss

(09:15:59) ChatBot: (Jeremy) rolls 6d10 and gets 9,2,8,7,4,8.

3 sux

Jeremy resists, but Sarah gets 2 vitae, and thus -2 to perception. Have fun.

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

She heard him, even through the incredible pleasure of the unusual nectar that flowed from his veins. She even did as he said, withdrawing her fangs from his throat and absently sealing the wounds with a slight lick as she pulled away. But this was suddenly the least of Sarah's immediate problems.

The "man" standing before her suddenly wasn't such a man afterall. He was different. Too lean in half a dozen indescribable ways, the distressingly aware vessel bore shadows far deeper than any a man should show. Worse were the whispers, sounds that she could somehow see trailing around him like whisps of mist. Fingers long and lean and downright fae pushed her away from what had seemed moments before a normal man.

And the rest of her world was doing no better. The room twisted and turned, the walls covered with vines and flowering thorns while the carpet became a grassy lawn where the grass reached actively at her ankles. Moonlight filled the place with a silvery sheen, the ceiling somehow disappearing entirely. And dozens of shapes and eyes somehow peered from what she could only pray were still in fact walls.

"What..." she tried, her own voice sounding terribly flat and wan in this bizarre twist upon reality. "What," she tried again, with a tad more success, "is happening? Who the hell... what the hell are you?!?"

[Jeremy]

"A being just as removed from the normal scheme of things as you are." Jeremy replied smoothly. It seemed surprising her change of demeanor, but he supposed the Wyrd in his blood was having an effect on the leech.

Good. "I thought I'd kept all the vampires away from the LA Amphora, but this is what overconfidence gets you." He continued, hoping to capitalize on his sudden advantage and the vampire's fear.

"Still, you're on my turf, and we have to figure out what needs to be done with you." Jeremy said this in a manner that was both calm and darkly threatening.

"Any ideas?"

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

Despite the unreality of the situation, a few things leaked through to Sarah's addled mind.

First, that this thing in front of her wasn't mortal and seemed every bit as interested in keeping things on the low-down as the vampires (which she loathed) and werewolves (which she envied) tried to do. That was at least some cold comfort.

Second, that he seemed to be operating from the position of power. This was indeed his turf, his territory, and from the look of things he controlled it pretty damned well.

Third, that getting out of here looked very, very good indeed.

"I've got a great idea," she managed. "I give you back your money, you show me the door out of this nature show, and I leave you and your club right the hell alone. That sound good?"

[Jeremy]

"I don't know about that." Jeremy murmured, very quietly.

"Here's the deal, I, Jeremy Noctis leave you alone, you don't harm me, and if either of us can't keep this for a year and a day, then shit to the liar. Repeat that for me on your end."

It seemed a simple price to pay to get out, and he expected her to take it. Of course, the pledge that this was would secure the situation.

It wasn't the nicest thing to do, he thought with a tinge of doubt, but rather necessary to resolve the situation peacefully.

Click to reveal..

(10:49:15) (Jeremy): for Man+Persuasion+Wyrd to get Sarah into the pact

(10:49:35) (Jeremy): +1 for her hallucinating

(10:50:11) ChatBot: (Jeremy) rolls 9d10 and gets 10,7,1,1,2,5,8,10,4.

(10:50:22) (Jeremy): kicking 10's

(10:50:27) ChatBot: (Jeremy) rolls 2d10 and gets 2,2.

(10:50:37) (Jeremy): 3 sux

(10:50:54) ChatBot: (Sarah_Dead-Wolf) rolls 5d10 and gets 4,2,9,5,5.

(10:50:58) (Sarah_Dead-Wolf): One success.

(10:51:02) (Sarah_Dead-Wolf): You've got her.

Good Neighbors pact.

Clarity roll, tricking a supernatural is Clarity 5 breaking point

(11:16:42) ChatBot: (Jeremy) rolls 3d10 and gets 7,2,10.

No drop

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

Getting out on any terms that kept her intact was fine by her; if this other creature was a little crazy and formal about it, that didn't really bother Sarah, who had seen that kind of formality with some of the older leeches she'd reluctantly met. Under the haze of whatever it was that was happening to her, she didn't hesitate.

"I, Sarah O'Neally, leave you alone, you don't harm me, and if either of us can't keep this for a year and a day, then shit to the liar. You've got my word. We good?"

She had no idea just how 'good' it was for the changeling, as the unwitting pledge took hold.

[Jeremy]

"Yes." Jeremy smiled, everything was working out, and the vampire would be dissuaded to leave. "This room's door is behind you, and two left turns will take you to the back door."

Crossing his arms, he waited for the redhead to get out.

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

He was right; as she looked, there amid the tangle of waving fronds and sharpened thorns was a doorway. There was no hesitation as she followed his instructions; two turns to the left dumped her into the back alley.

At least, what had been a back alley before.

Oh, to be sure, it was a road of sorts. But it should have been cracked asphalt flanked by brick and concrete buildings, not a dirt trail in a deep hillside cut. Those hills certainly shouldn't have had dirt the color of dried blood, or flowers that shone beneath the moon like silver. No sirens or engine sounds cut through the night air; instead, there was strange nightbird song and the rustle of things somewhere beyond the cut.

Wondering what exactly had happened - was this the Shadow? she couldn't help but wonder - Sarah wandered dumbstruck out into a world that bore only the slightest semblance of her own. Beyond the cut, woods far thicker than home filled what she remembered as yards but here seemed to be forest floor, with strange hut-like houses looking like something out of Willow. Streets were instead dirt lanes cutting through the forest, straight as an arrow and with cart-like enclosed vehicles using them that had no business in this or any other world.

Without any idea what else to do, Sarah hurried through the darkest patches she could find, hoping to reach her makeshift home in Holmby Park.

What she found was an ornate, nearly Victorian-looking sign denoting "Holmby Green" and an expanse of groomed parkland beyond that looked like something out of a 19th-century photograph. An occasional man or woman strolled the brick-paved pathways in what she imagined was the height of fashion over a hundred years ago.

This was not, she realized, the Shadow - at least, not any version of it she'd encountered during her few brief visits via her werewolf relatives over the years. It was something different entirely, and she started to fear that the club owner had sent her to a world entirely apart from her own by some eldritch means.

A bit of pink began to show in the sky off to what she hoped was still the East, and the old feeling of warning came as it did toward the end of every night. Alien world or no, she needed safety from the sun, and amid a cluster of distressingly blue trees, she melded into the soil in a state of confusion and near-panic.

When she emerged the next night into the familiar surroundings of Holmby Park in a city that had the familiar stink of pollution, Sarah couldn't be happier. It was hours later that she found, stuffed deep in her pocket, ten crumpled bills with Jackson's portrait on the front.

"Stay away from the Amphora Club." The words passed her lips in an emphatic reminder, and never did she hear a better idea.