Beauty, the awol elder of the Nosferatu will return one evening unnanounced. Wherever she was, she brought home as souvineer. She comes into the Hovel dragging a cart and wearing a new, freshly disheveled dress.

She drags the cart right into the center of the hovel without ever announcing her return and drags the tarp off of it.

Strapped to the cart is a massive clock. Like one would see on a steel post in a subway...

{Continued from: '[Love is a Feral Beast...]'-'Hunting'}

Carrying a body under each arm, and still wearing an expression of half-madness from the frenzy, Hyde lumbers into the enormous chamber that serves as the Nosferatu communal area. Seeing her, and her new accouterments, he comes to a full stop and cocks his head for a moment, as if expecting her to dissolve like a mirage one has approached to closely. When she does not, he greets her in a tired, yet relieved tone of voice often attributed to addicts in their ‘moments of clarity’.

“Ello ol’ girl. We’ve all missed you. Welcome home.”

He will not speak of the argument they had, they never do. Nor will he tell her how truly happy he is to see her, she would only leave again if he did. Instead they slip right back into the facade of complacency that has nearly always marked their conversations, a deliberate attempt to hide the emotions that the other is fully aware of, yet does not wish to deal with. Why they continue to interact at all is anyone’s guess, but it is certain that neither of them could give a succinct or satisfactory answer. All the same, interact they do, in their maladroit fashion…

“There is much to discuss. Would you like to go first or shall I, my lady?”  

--Last edited by Mister Hyde on 2008-07-22 17:58:49 --

'Watch this Hyde my dear, its perfect.'

Beauty rasps excitedly. She completely ignores the bodies under his arms. Beetween the two of them there must have been thousands sent to an early death...

Beauty in her odd nostalgic state has been lax on her duties as an elder and a primogen. Shes shoved them all off on Hyde lately. Probably for this...

She dissapears for a moment. Only to return with a power cord she jams gracelessly into the clocks bottom like a mad nurse giving an enema to a comatose patient.

The thing begins to tick loudly, Beauty pointing a clawed finger at the hands.

'They go backwards!'

Hyde simply blinks at her, then watches the clock. 'She's bloody losing it' he thinks to himself.

It is taken for granted that the Malkavians are all insane, the trouble is, one can't always see a Malk for what they are. They can hide their curse to a degree, if only in small bursts. The Noferatu however, wear their madness in their very skin, it is palpable, inescapable. At least some of the Kooks are spared from constant awareness of their condition. The Nosferatu are not so fortunate. Their monstrous visage is always there to remind them what they are, and what they are becoming. A little bit more with each passing moment.

After a moment, Hyde returns from his musings, nodding and thrusting his lower lip out in consideration of her new bauble. "Impressive" he says at last, though he does not seem to be impressed. "Where'd you manage ta dig that lil' beaut' up then?"

He figures, maybe if he can just get her talking, she will at least betray some detail pertaining to her whereabouts, if not her state of mind, these last weeks and he can fill in the blanks from there.  

He lets the drained female fall to the hard floor with a wet slap, then tosses the broken and bruised male about half the distance between himself and his Elder "That one still 'as a bit of the life, if yer 'ungry."

Beauty will squat and poke at the offered body.

'It came all the way from New York. One of the old subways...'

She gives the offering another poke before deciding against it. She has something else on her mind it seems. She looks up at Hyde.

'You have bad news for me Hyde?'

"Was jus' thinkin' th'other day that we needed some new eye-candy down 'ere. Nice lil' spot for it right over there," he offers "where you can see it from yer car."

He wonders for a moment whether she actually walked just to NYC to get the damn thing, he certainly wouldn't put it past her, but that can wait, the clock won't be going anywhere, he can't say the same for her.

He slumps straight down to sit on the floor next to the female's corpse, absentmindedly twirling a finger in her hair, unsure where to begin.

"Well... Quinn has returned to us, from wherever it was he disappeared to, and close on his heels is one by the name of Buggy. She is one of many Kindred which are hemorrhaging from some supposed cataclysm in Port Lussuria, Virginia, though no one is talking as to what it was.”

“Carter granted domain over Rape Street Park to some upstart newcomer. An’ she’s ruinin’ the place already. My people tell me there's been a bunch of weird crates coming into town, some of'em goin' ta that brothel, most of 'em goin' ta some warehouse, all of 'em tying back to mafia-types.”

“The Sheriff apparently sent some thugs over to Deirdre’s place to trash it. That fancy new tower downtown had the top couple of floors blown off of it. Ya ask me, it was the Ventrue whot did it, tryin’ta make sure that their precious ivory tower is still the tallest, penny-ante little prigs that they are.”

“That no-talent ass-clown, Randolf, has been collared and is currently enjoying the gracious hospitality of the Tremere, last I ‘eard. S'pose I'm gonna 'ave ta find someone else ta mess with at them Primogen meetings..."

He trails off, wondering if his assumption that he would still be the one going to them would irk her. 'Ta hell with it,' he thinks 'I'm tired a walkin' on eggshells 'round 'er anyhow.'

“The Brujah Elder has fallen. She and her entire entourage were massacred in her own haven and the whole thing is all over the news. Worse, our little Roach was apparently found dead there as well, his throat torn out and his hands bearing monstrous claws. Many of the victims are said to have the appearance of being torn apart by animals.”

“Most of the Kindred in the city gathered at the old Asylum, for what we thought was going to be a surprise attack on the Sabbat forces holed up there. From what I hear, they almost took out the Prince himself when they set off the demolitions they had rigged throughout the complex. Then tonight, I got a mysterious package, there is footage of a group of people in the elevator of Marlena’s building. I need to show it to the Prince immediately, but I don’t know where to find him.”

“The Shug-Monkey is dead. I tracked him down into some ancient caverns, apparently re-opened by that blast in the mountains. There was something else down there, something old and twisted. She was naked and feral, came out of some bottomless pit. Tore him to pieces. He was feeding the damn thing. Then she came after me. I thought I was done for. I think she might have been one of… Them.”

He has long since stopped looking at her to gauge her reactions to what he’s saying, figuring that she doesn’t really give a rat’s ass anyway. Instead, he has been pulling little chunks of hair out of the girls scalp. The grinners won’t eat it, so he has to incinerate it in the forge, and this saves him from having to do it later.

The girl is nearly bald by the time he is finished speaking, he looks up to Beauty once more and says. “So whatta we do, Boss?”  

--Last edited by Mister Hyde on 2008-07-24 19:41:07 --

Strangely; Beauty smiles.

Frantic activity is usually the only thing that keeps her from slipping into her depressive slumps.

'We have so much to do.' Beauty states the obvious. Her absence it seems, was ill advised. But as usual she will try to make up for it the only way she knows how...

She steps away from the clock, seeming to forget about it already. She will even pick up one of the bodies Hyde was carrying, to assist him in carrying them to the grinners for disposal...

'What do you think of this Buggy, can she be trusted?'
Beauty will of course make her own judgement of the newcomer but she trusts Hydes insticts.

'We will have to have a chat with this newcomer in the park. Carter must be trying to get her killed or ostracized by telling her she can have part of the rack. Foolish girl must have no idea...'

'Send Quinn to investigate the crates if you are concerned. I caught wind of his little snafu at the Asylum. Im just glad he didnt get anyone dusted.'

Beauty sneers a moment.

'The Sheriff and the arguing pretty-pretties arent our concern. Let them have their tower measuring contests, we have bigger problems.'

She seems unfazed at the news of Randolph, she never liked him anyway and would have loved to get her hands on him when he made a run in the sewers...

'Naked and feral... But did she resemble one of our clan? We will have to add to the Hovel security. Grey can cook up some new toys... maybe we should seal off a few entrances.'

She is loathe to limit their mobility. But theres nothing safer than a few tons of rock when one of them is after you...

'Was Roach one of the group on your footage?' She asks, starting to walk to wherever Hyde disposes of bodies. She can take him to the prince, but they have much to discuss first...

They will have ample time to discuss matters during the long walk to Goblin Town to feed Hyde's little beasties.

Hyde cocks his head a bit at her reaction, not because he has never seen it before, but because it never clicked. He dabbled in psychology along with everyone else back before it was a 'science', when he was learning to do Hypnotism because it was all the rage. He knew that she had fits of black depression, possibly even fugue, he had always chalked it up to Ennui, but he had not recognized the flip-side of the coin: Mania. Perhaps this was even a pre-existing condition, something she suffered from when she still drew breath? It was irrelevant at the moment, merely an observation that he would tuck away for future experimentation.

"Buggy? ... Hell, I don' know if I'd go so far as to say I trust her. She seems nice enough an' all, but... I dunno, there's somethin' bout her I can't seem ta put my finger on jus' yet." He shrugs, grinding the shoulder-joint of his armor, "But, it's like I always say, ya give a traitor enough rope... they'll eventually 'ang themselves wif it."

He grins at the prospect of confabulating with the park-ranger.

"The beast-woman? She sure as shite weren't pretty. I spose she looked as much like any of us as we lokk like one another... well, Grey and Buggy could pass fer kin, but you get my meaning. I dunno, pale skin, her jaw was... wrong, sunken in eyesockets... hard to say. I thought maybe she mighta' jus been starved at first, but she drank Shug like 'e wuz a pint."

"I dropped a couple'a tons of rubble down inn'a th' pit after she fled back to it, an' collapsed the entry to the cavern, but it won't hold her forever. She was stronger than me."

He considers collapsing some tunnels, also coming to the conclusion that it would only hinder the Brood and not the Monster, with enough time, she would simply find her way around the obstructions or go through them, plus there's no way to be sure she's still even at the place where Hyde last saw her.

"I dunno Beut, I fig'er there's only one way ta be sure she ain't lurkin' 'round tryin'a pick us off one atta time..." He trails off for a moment, 'pick us off' he thinks, the traps!

"Sonovabitch! Quinn an' me both've been nailed by beartraps whot none of us set. Maybe that freak is already outta that hole..." He trails off once more, shaking his head as he realizes how silly that sounds. "Well, we got someone down 'ere tryin'a take something out. I'm gonna head back over that way soon ta see if I can't figure out who an' why."

"Roach? Nah, he weren't in the video. Iss'a grainy clip from an elevator. Three blokes an' a chick. I think at least one of 'em's a Lycanthrope."

He turns to her to gauge her reaction, having not said this out loud until now, he is not sure how it will come across, but he is quite convinced that that must have been what he saw.

'We can tell the others of the brood about the beast woman. But she is a nosferatu problem and we will not let the other clans catch wind of her...'

Thats nothing new, the what happens in the sewers stays in the sewers has been a policy since there were sewers to inhabit...

'Do you think maybe another brood has set themselves up in our tunnels? Perhaps refugees from that Port city who dont wish to integrate...' Beauty speculates. The Bear traps are far less of a concern than the possible Lycanthrope and crew taking out elders...

'We should get that tape to Carter as soon as we drop these bodies. The Kook will go mad if the Furries are are in his domain again...'

"Agreed." he says. Hyde knows the drill, the other clans would not want to know what the hell goes on down here. Let them be content to be masters of all they survey above, most of them would claw out their eyes if they saw some of the things down here.

Arriving at Goblin Town, Hyde moves toward the small alcove where the possums often nest together. "One of 'em's missin'." he says, tossing the female on the floor. "Must've got tired of waitin' fer me ta bring back some food." There are almost a dozen of them, two of them having triple the mass of the others and looking rather diseased. As the body slaps against the stone floor, they engulf it like a swarm of piranhas. It has been a good while since Hyde has been able to feed them, and it seems that they are growing accustomed to the taste, even forgoing other means of sustenance in lieu of this delicacy.  

Grinning like a soccer-mom watching her children at play, Hyde continues "Another Brood? I hadn't really considered that." He pauses for a long moment, considering the implications "I should hope not, for their sake." He turns to face Beauty now, his grin growing to unbelievable proportions, his yellowed tusks seeming to glow in the pale light "We've got the home-field advantage."

"Right, to the Prince we go then." He does not recall a previous problem with 'furries', though, that does not really surprise him, there are a great many things he does not recall from those days when the last of his humanity slipped away. He has often been informed of deeds he performed which he had little to no recollection of, while still being confronted of irrefutable evidence. Luckily for Hyde, there are becoming fewer and fewer of those who remember that era these nights.

In truth, he was rather relieved to hear of Marlina's demise, she had far too much dirt on him.

Beauty watches the grinners with a morbid fascination as they consume the body. She will dangle the other one down to them, if they didnt have more pressing matters shed probably try to work the beasts into a feeding frenzy...

But tonight she just drops the body in. She remembers Hydes younger days, when he first came to this city. In truth they are very similar. She lost her humanity when he was a fledgeling, but it was much the same process. Obsession and degeneration, a new city.

She tells herself thats why shes so hard on Hyde. Their similarities, not their differences. And maybe if someone had been harder on her she wouldnt have needed to move to this third domain. Luckily for Beauty none she is aware of in this city have any real grasp of her past.

Beauty leans in real close to Hyde, her frame twiggish against his hulking body. Its almost like a show of affection as she speaks into his ear, but not to him...

To his Radio: 'Grey get ahold of Carters proxy, he needs to meet us in that subway station with the crumbling angel statue...'

Its the closest safe meetingplace, and No above groud travel is neccessary. Beauty gives Hyde a rare, slightly grimaced grin as her hand pushes off his shoulder and she heads for the tunnels again...