aterat | Intro Logs

Entry tags:

Intro Logs

Who; Ivy + Open to anyone
What; Arrival and wandering around. If you'd prefer bracket spam action, feel free to do that rather than prose!
Where; Heading to the buildings + Wandering around at night
When; 5/04 in the morning and night.
Warnings; None at the moment, will update if any come up
A. Arrival at the residential area and the Green building.

Ivy arrived in a bad mood. Due to that sour mood she headed straight to the residential area without even the slightest desire to look around. It was morning, way too early for a vampire, and she'd somehow just been abducted from one alternate dimension into another. What kind of shit luck was that? Her shoulders were hunched forward and her expression was dark as she walked with purpose to the area with the colored urban buildings.

"You have to be kidding me," she muttered as she looked up at each building. They looked like the type of city apartments Rachel had lived in before they'd moved in together. Which meant they were shared apartments. Shared apartments. At least in the last place she'd had her own place where she could try to avoid other people as much as she wanted to. This? This made it seem like avoiding people would be a lot more difficult.

After a few seconds more of just glaring at the building, as if that would somehow change what they looked like, she opened the door to the green building and went inside. She took a look around the common room and adjusted the blood red silk scarf around her neck as she sighed.

"A common room. Quaint..." she said with obvious irritation leaking into her voice. "B-10. Third floor then? These look so...small." Well, this was going to be an adjustment. A decidedly unpleasant adjustment.

B. Night and wandering around.

A little bit of sleep and the familiarity that night brought put Ivy in a slightly better mood. There were positives to this situation. So far from what she'd gathered on this place's network the place didn't seem quite as bleak as the underwater domes she'd just come from. They weren't underwater so it was a lot less claustrophobic. People seemed to know a lot more about who had brought them here and why. It even seemed like it might be possible to speak to some of the people in charge, which could lead to more information. It wasn't all bad. The living quarters were crap but at least she wasn't rooming with anyone. Try to focus on the positives, Ivy. That's what she kept telling herself over and over again. Maybe it'd actually convince her that this wasn't that bad.

The network could only tell her so much though. What she really needed to do was look around. Of course she waited until night to do that. Everything was easier (and more familiar) at night. She started with the market just as the sun was beginning to go down. Periodically as she walked through she stopped to write things down in a small notebook she'd brought with her. If anyone noticed her they might be able to pick up on the fact that she was sketching out a small map as well as taking note of any major businesses. They might also notice she was completely absorbed in her note taking. Which, unfortunately for anyone else walking around, meant she wasn't paying attention to people in the slightest. Maybe she's still a bit more tired and out of it than she thought...

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"You can't knock a classic, and any who try are committing heinous crimes against humanity. Aren't you a cop?" Or at the very least a former cop, and from the long time he's known Karrin Murphy, he knows that doesn't die easy no matter what your superiors do to you. Being a pillar of justice in a world gone mad was in your blood, or maybe it was even deeper than that.

"About an hour ago. I tracked the little guy who gave me this bag to a shop off the market district. Evidently, he deals in things you can't get from the other shops, because what quaint little fantasy town doesn't have a gnome with connections?" He found it all a lot more disturbing than he was letting on, and it was even more strange now that Ivy was here too. They were people from two different parallel Earths. Theoretically, there were countless others out there including the one they'd both been on previously, and now they'd both been shuffled off to another completely random dimension in the vast sea of dimensions and...

Okay, Harry. One thing at a time. "Do you feel any different?"

"I was an agent," she correct. Though, after her demotion, cop had been more accurate. "Runner now." Which was clearly very different than being something as low as a cop. Justice had never really been her concern, more than anything it had just been what was expected of her. It just happened to be something she'd ended up discovering a particular talent for. Then she'd realized she really enjoyed the analytical side of detective work, it gave her something that worked to completely take her mind off of the disaster of her life. The bad part had come when she'd suddenly realized that she actually enjoyed the common work of a Runner. The problem with that was that she'd also realized she lacked the control to do it properly.

"Gnomes," she said with a shake of her head. Of course there were gnomes that dealt in oddities. It could only get more predictable if there was a leprechaun too. "A fantasy town with urban apartment buildings." The tone betrayed her annoyance with the low standards of their housing situation. "Strange isn't it? They really don't seem to match," she mused more to herself than to him. Why did they seem to not match more than anything else?

She shook her head. "No. Other than tired, but I'm used to that."

'Runner' was a term he wasn't familiar with. Given the supernatural world stuck to the shadows where he came from, and there wasn't much use for openly operating enforcers. With no laws other than their own, the supernatural tended to keep charge of its own, and when it didn't that's when he and his ilk got involved.

You know, like when an emotionally compromised and hot-headed wizard attacked a vampiress of considerable influence on her own turf at a neutral function and the vampires declared war in retaliation. That sort of thing.

"So...what's a Runner?" Because it sounded like something specific, and it also seemed to be something she at least partially enjoyed. She at least didn't seem annoyed by the position.

He looked around again at their surroundings as she pointed out the oddity of their existence. On the way here, he'd passed what looked like a Grecian fountain, several open-air market stalls, an honest to God tavern, and several dozen carts, then he got to the middle-class housing district, evidently.

"Yeah, this whole place sort of feels like when you were a kid and you decided jigsaw pieces were jigsaw pieces and it really doesn't matter which puzzle they belong to." Everyone did that when they were a kid, right?

"The closest equivalent might be a bounty hunter. We do anything from finding stolen items to finding wanted criminals. Private Runner agency's handle whatever the client wants us to. We just started but I was...well known at the IS." Which meant she'd already gotten some well paying cases much to the frustration of her partner. At least that wasn't due to her Master's connections but rather her own talent. There was a reason her bosses at the I.S. had been furious to lose her.

She tilted her head at his description and then, shockingly, actually chuckled. It wasn't much of a chuckle, but it was something. The sound was light but with a seductive hint that just crept in naturally.

"What a specific example," she said with a traces of a smirk. "Sounds like something you've got some personal experience with." It couldn't possibly be something that happened to many people.

"And made a good enough impression that people still wanted to work with you, even after you left official channels." He sounded impressed and he was. Normally when things went sour for a person, they went really sour. Ivy was pretty capable, even in Supernatural circles. It was easy to pull the wool over the eyes of mortals, but their ilk were harder to navigate. It was comforting, really. She could take care of herself.

That wasn't to say Harry would just leave her to her devices if she was in trouble, but he wouldn't worry quite as much.

"Hey, I was an only child and we traveled around a lot. Plus, my dad was busy a lot and I spent a lot of time entertaining myself." And pretending to understand how to do magic. If six year old Harry could only see himself now.

"There was a reason the IS was so unhappy to lose me. Not that they ever like losing people. You usually don't get out of your contract." Most who tried ended up dead pretty fast. Contracts weren't something the IS took lightly. They took things even worse when someone got out of their contract and then managed to take cases from them. Not only had Ivy managed to buy her way out of her contract but she'd also managed to help Rachel get out of hers. If she hadn't had enemies before, she definitely did now.

"And you decided mixing jigsaw puzzle pieces was a good source of entertainment?" She chuckled and shook her head. "At least nobody can say you're not capable of entertaining yourself."

Edited 2021-05-08 01:36 (UTC)

"Hold on." He even held up a hand to slow her story. "I think I got the wrong idea about IS. It sounds more like the mob than an agency." He would say 'and not in a good way', but in his experience, and he had more than he cared for, there was no good way to be in the mob.

He grinned. "Hey, it worked." He shrugged. It wasn't long after that things got real for him, so he was glad he'd had a unique childhood.

"A little of both," she said with a wry smile. "It's an officially recognized agency but undead have a lot of influence over it." For the most part undead vampires ruled it and used it to keep control over their empires. "Is that really different from how humans ran things?" From what she'd seen, it wasn't. They'd played political games with underhanded transactions just as much as the supernatural community did. They just didn't have the practice that some ancient supernatural creatures did at it.

"Well, if it worked then who am I to argue," she smiled. "So, how long have you been here?"

"Good point. Politicians take bribes from all kinds of places. I can't even argue that point." He nodded. In fact, it might be even better for them to be out in the open. At least then you knew who to trust.

"A Couple of hours...I think. What about you?"

"Exactly. It makes you wonder if we're really all that different after all." The biggest difference was probably just that some undead vampires had more experience than a human would in how to play the game. "Imagine the amount of bribes that get exchanged between a politician and a cities Master." Bribes and threats, so very many threats.

"About the same." That was strange. "It's a little early for me."

"Or why we call some politicians and lawyers 'blood-suckers'." He grinned at his own terrible joke. "I already kind of have an idea." Gentleman John Marcone, the guy who cleaned up the streets, but making sure he controlled all of them, even making sure he had the non-human entities in the city on his side. Good old John Marcone.

"Planning on heading upstairs to take a nap before seeing the sights?"

"That's almost an insult to vampires." Her tone held some amusement, which was honestly a bit surprising. How he'd managed to get through her more cold defenses was a mystery to her. Perhaps it all came back to how understanding he'd been about the situation they'd ended up in on their first meeting. It wasn't something she thought she deserved in the slightest, but he'd seemed insistent on giving it to her anyway. There'd been no arguing with him and she'd definitely tried. The worst part of the entire thing had been how he'd somehow turned it in to offering her help with her undead probably. He wasn't going to be able to help, she'd given up on hope for that a long time ago. But...

She shook her head in response. "No." Yes, she had been. "It seems smarter to look around first. Get an idea of what I'm dealing with."

"Probably. I appreciate that about the supernatural community. They're old school. You settle things with duels instead of bureaucracy, or at least you do in my world. It's refreshing and a lot easier to deal with."

He didn't know if he would be able to help her with her problem, but he could try. The soul was tricky business, and if he was honest, he'd never heard of anything that could bind it to anything aside from the divine, but he'd give it his best shot.

"What we're dealing with." He nodded. "Mind if I tag along?"

"That does sound more upfront." Though not without it's own problems. Then again, everything had it's own problems, didn't it? "We handle things more privately." And in much more underhand ways, but she left that part out. It was implied enough in her tone.

"I'm," she corrected with a shake of her head. Ivy was stubborn, there was no way around that. With that stubbornness came an intense desire to do everything alone. The closer you got to people the more problems came up. It was better to keep some sort of distance, wasn't it? At the very least it'd be safer for Harry. They'd only spoken on prior to their initial meeting and she'd nearly bitten him back in the other place. She didn't want that to happen again. "Why do you want to?"

He nodded. "Some do, usually in pretty bad ways." He frowned, sympathetic. He could tell from her statement she didn't agree with how her people handled things, and from what he knew of her, she wouldn't.

"Because I help people. It's what I do, and I'm starting to get the feeling I like your soul, and I'd really appreciate it sticking around."

"You shouldn't," she said with a shake of her head. "I'm dangerous, you've already seen that. Even..." she looked down and closed her eyes. When she spoke again her voice was quiet and she clearly struggled to admit this to him. "even without a nightmare I can't always control myself. Piscary made sure of that." Why was she telling him that? Was it some weird attempt to try to push him away? Probably.

Her admission made a muscle twitch in his jaw and he clenched his teeth. There were a lot of things that pissed him off, but bullies were at the top of the list. He didn't know much about Piscary or about how vampires managed themselves, but he knew something about human suffering and about pain, and he saw it in her expression.

"I don't know what happened to you," he began, his voice low, controlled, "but I know you're more than whatever it was, and I know I can take care of myself."

The laugh she let out was bitter and she moved closer to him, stretching her arms out in a sensual motion. "You're right, you don't know," her tone was strange, almost seductive in a way. "You don't know that either. I'm not. What it was shaped everything I am." Stop, Ivy. Stop yourself now. She repeated the words in her mind over and over as she reached for the large cross around her neck and blinked back tears that were stinging her eyes. In less than a second she spun around without a sound.

"I'm going to look around this place then get some sleep."

Harry wasn't sure what he'd said, but what he did know what he'd made a pretty girl cry. Sure, she was a pretty girl who could rip his throat out if she really wanted to but that didn't mean he hadn't stomped all over her feelings without even realizing what he was doing. He seemed to be pretty good at that if he really thought about it. He shook off that train of thought, though, and made a conscious effort not to go after her.

He'd done enough damage for one day.

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