"Well, he reads Hitchiker's Guide, he can't be all bad."

[hazlogs]

Wednesday, 28 May 2003. Night.

The abandoned warehouse is not quite that, tonight. A lone occupant awaits visitors, having graciously set up a pair of overstuffed sofas and a tall stool in a back corner of the open floor area. Next to the stool is a large cardboard box, the kind you might expect theatre props to come out of, in a one-man show.

The werewolves arrive together -- in a pack, unsurprisingly, with K. C. driving. Salem takes a few moments to make a quick scout-out of the warehouse (one can't be too careful) before going inside.

It's with a notebook tucked under one arm and a pen nervously twirled between his fingers that Quentin emerges from the car, waiting a moment for Salem to check things out before heading after him; glancing around from beneath cerulean bangs to keep an eye on the area, a bit wary of things.

K. C. locks the car doors behind her tribemates, pockets the keys, then waits for Salem to give the all-clear. She brings up the rear rather than insisting on a lady's right to go first. Take that, vampire.

Salem comes back around to the entrance and gives the other two Walkers a nod. Then he pushes open the door and steps inside. First of the kill to the greatest in station, and the first to the risk, too.

There's no immediate sign of the vampire, though he's definately /been/ here. One of the couches looks recently-sat on, even still having a dent from the sitter's weight. Also set up to one side is a table with a pot of coffee on, steam still rising as if it's been recently brewed.

Quentin cranes his neck a bit to peer around the room, moving slowly to follow Salem in. "Hm. Where is he?"

Salem prowls the interior of the warehouse, hands in pockets. He eyes the pot of coffee, then glances back toward Quentin and K. C. "Hiding, probably." He nods toward the coffee. "Don't drink that."

K. C. shakes her head, taking a segment of the warehouse to wander herself, squinting at corners. "He's here," she opines. "Hiding, yes, but hiding in plain sight."

The vampire was always on the couch. That's the first thing to register, as he allows whatver chicanery he's got going to drop. In the mind, there's a distinct conflict of opinions; now that he's visible, memory says he was always there, and always seen. Sense knows otherwise. "You injure me, sir," Orion comments, to the quip about the coffee. "Besides, it's not like I would have much to gain by killing you."

That sudden realization causes Quentin to drop back a half-step in a startled jolt, his brow furrowing as he looks back over with a frown.. his hand raising to rub the butt end of his pen against his temple as though trying to figure out what just happened.

Salem simply stares blandly at the vampire for a moment or two, then turns toward the adolescent. "Quentin, meet Orion. Orion, Quentin."

K. C. stops where she stands, weight on one hip, and folds her arms across her chest. Her eyebrows quirk upward. "Told you."

"The lady is indeed right," Orion affirms, rising to his feet and sketching a bow towards the youngest Walker. "A pleasure to meet you. Nice hair." He moves over to the stool now, perching idly on it and gesturing to the two couches. "Please, make yourselves comfortable."

Quentin looks Orion over a bit dubiously for a moment, before offering back simply, "Hey."

Salem nods to K. C. At Orion's invitation, he does prowl over to one of the couches, but takes a perch on an arm rather than sitting or getting comfortable. He folds his arms across his chest.

K. C. paces to one of the couches and sits, easily enough. Comfortable? Maybe not, but at least she uncrosses her arms. "Did you make finger sandwiches too?"

"Alas no...finding fresh fingers at this time of night is nigh-impossible," the vampire responds, resting his hands on his knees. "Without going direct to the source, anyway. So......I suppose I should get on with the teaching. Hard to know where to begin."

Quentin steps along over to the couch, easing down to sit and dropping the notebook in his lap. He flips it open to a page covered in D&D stats for vampires, pen absently ticking back and forth in his fingers as he gets ready to write.. watching Orion with a suspicious sort of look.

"Start with the basics," K. C. suggests. "What works, what doesn't work." She dares a very faint smile. "How you do that little disappearing trick."

Exhaling thoughtfully, Orion muses, "That's something I learned from a very wise book. A 'someone else's problem' field, or SEP field for short. If you don't notice me, I'm as good as not there, right?" Sitting back a little, he shakes his head. "That's not important, anyway. I guess first I should explain some of the myths about...well...us."

"Well, he reads Hitchiker's Guide, he can't be all bad," Quentin comments under his breath, the tip of his pen moving as it starts to note down things about invisibility, SEP fields, Slartibartfast, and will saving throws. Hey, /he/ knows what it means, even if the average person reading it wouldn't.

Salem snorts softly at Quentin's remark, but otherwise makes no comment.

K. C. purses her lips. "Wherever you like. We're your eager audience, after all."

Hmming softly, Orion ventures, "Well, as you've probably noticed, the whole thing about night and sunlight is true, to begin with. All of Vampire-kind is on a perminant night-shift, so to speak. Sunlight hurts, so it's avoided."

"How about the other stuff," Quentin asks, a brow quirking as he looks up and over, "Garlic, wooden stakes, running water, holy water, crosses..?"

K. C. says, "Stakes only work if they actually have a heart. Sorry. A heart in the right place. There are stories from Awakening in DC about some real dust-gatherers who didn't."

A shrug, now, as Orion defers to KC. "More'n I care to learn, myself. Only one way Caitiff is going to learn stuff, and that's from experience. A stake sounds like a little /too/ much experience." Reaching down to his box of props, Orion pulls out a large wooden cross, roughly a foot long by half wide. This, he casually tosses towards Quentin. "Ever believe in god, kid?"

Quentin lifts a hand to catch the cross that's tossed his way, quirking a brow at it before looking over with a slight smirk, "What, you mean, like, the Christian one? Maybe when I was a kid."

Salem takes out a handrolled cigarette and lights it casually. The Elder continues to observe the lesson silently.

"There are a few of us who do," K. C. says. "The Fianna are good about going to church and all."

"Any god," Orion muses to Quentin. "See, you can wave that thing at me and it won't make the tiniest bit of difference unless it's in the hands of a priest." Not /quite/ true, but he dosen't know any better himself.

Quentin experimentally waves it through the air, as though the cross could get god-cooties on the vampire, before with a smirk he tosses it back. "A'ight. And the rest?"

Orion snatches the cross out of the air and casually drops it back into the box. Next out is a string of garlic, as worn by cliche frenchmen and vampire-hunters everywhere. The smell begins to waft as it's drawn forth, and the vampire drapes it around his neck without showing the slightest sign of discomfort. "Myth number two."

Quentin smirks slightly, "Didn't think so. That one never made sense to me anyway.."

K. C. says "You might keep a vampire away just with the smell, though."

"I'd imagine, as a guess, it comes from garlic in the blood," Orion offers up, discarding the second prop as easily as the first. "For the record, it tastes foul." Arms cross again, as he adds, "As for the rest...don't know about running water or holy water. Never touched the latter, never really crossed the former."

Salem speaks up, voice dry. "There's running water under you right now, probably... if you count the city's water system."

"So," Quentin asks then, a brow quirking upwards, "None of that's any good, I guess, 'cept sunlight. What else is there?"

"Fire," K. C. offers.

Making a slight face, Orion nods an affirmation. "Yes, fire. God-awful stuff. Little flames, like this, are bearable," he notes, pulling out a cigarette lighter and sparking it alight a few times before tucking it back. "Anything bigger and....well.....dry, dead bodies burn real easy, is all I'm sayin'."

Quentin's head tips in a slight nod, glancing down towards the notebook as he scribbles a few more things down. "Makes sense.."

"That they do," Salem says quietly, still smoking his own cigarette. "You fear large flames too, don't you?" He arches an eyebrow at Orion. "I've seen your kind flee in terror, sometimes."

"Woulden't know," is Orion's automatic response. "Never been stupid enough to go near one." He's got a slightly haunted expression, though, albeit brief. "So. What was the next question?"

K. C. leans forward a little. "How long can your kind go without eating, Orion? Without eating anything."

A slight frown, as Orion considers this. "I've heard that some of us go to sleep for like...years on end, without eating or anything," he volunteers. "But I also know that waking up uses a little bit of blood every night....so I'd guess until that runs out. Maybe a week or couple of weeks, depending."

Quentin grimaces slightly as he does some mental math.. and then glances over with a brow's slight quirk before asking, "..tell us about 'ghouls'."

K. C. frowns a little, and nods. "Tell us about how someone can be ghouled without knowing it, too."

"That bit's easy," Orion replies to KC. "A bit of blood on the lips while they're asleep...s'all it takes, really." He shrugs. "Ghouls are like.....advanced humans, if you will. They get the advantages of the Embrace with none of the faults."

Quentin quirks a brow upwards, "Of the what?"

Salem snorts, flicking ash onto the concrete floor of the warehouse.

A pause, as Orion thinks how best to explain the term. "It's what made me a Vampire," he offers, awkwardly. "Hard to explain, so I'm not going to until we've covered more ground." He reaches down into his prop-box and draws out what look like a set of plastic teeth, like you might get in a cracker or novelty shop. These, predictably, have the canines elongated on both upper and lower jaws.

Quentin tips his head a little to one side, absently tapping his pen against the notebook as he watches the vampire curiously as the fake teeth are dug out.

K. C.'s eyebrows lift. "You're not going to ask us to put those on ... are you?"

Fitting his fingers around the teeth so he can make a 'snapping' motion with them, Orion replies, "Of course not. I'm sure you've got better fangs of your own, when you've a mind to. This is just a bit of illustration as to how we /don't/ feed." Snapsnapsnap, and so on.

K. C. dares a little hint of a grin. "I think we'd figured that much out already."

Orion mmhmms absently. In a little show of his own daring, he faux-snaps in KC's direction, his own fangs extended fully. Not as impressive as a crinos' set, it's true, but there's something distinctly eerie and...not-quite-right about them. "In any case, there's one more thing I want to get across for tonight, before I go and hunt."

K. C.'s eyebrows lift sharply and despite herself, she leans back a little on that couch, though it's not quite -- fear -- that creeps into her expression. Nor is it curiosity. It's a sort of curious puzzlement. "Go on."

Quentin quirks an eyebrow slightly, leaning back slightly as well.. his fingertips curling over his pen's haft as he regards the vampire for a moment. "And what's that?"

"That, dispite our frailties," Orion begins, his tone distinctly sarcastic, "Most vampires are strong creatures. Very strong. As I said before, if it weren't for my manners, Lady KC might not be with you today. Think about that, next time you encounter one of my brethren."

K. C.'s eyebrows draw together and she takes a breath. "While I'm sure you're very powerful -- and I respect that -- you ought to remember that you're living in the 21st century now, Orion. My mistakes with you notwithstanding, Lady K. C.," and the sarcasm just oozes off that title when she speaks it, "can hold her own. I'm not the corsetted, delicate creature you might have grown up with. I don't need to be protected. There's no room for that in our world, and frankly? It's not appreciated. Our first meeting aside, I've treated you on equal footing. It'd please me immensely if you could find a way to do the same, regardless of whether my plumbing's internal or external. Thanks."

Quentin listens to the exchange with a slight, amused smirk at the implied chivalry.. before in wry tones pointing out, "We're not exactly fragile ourselves, you know."

"Aside from that 'first meeting', have I ever treated you with less respect than I would one of your male friends?" Orion counters. "Let an old man have his habits; you never know when they might come in useful." Sitting back, he then regards Quentin. "No...I know you're not, but there's one crucial thing that I believe your Mr Salem knows....and I'll share it next time."

"Well then." K. C. stands and dusts her hands against her legs. "We should leave you to your dinner."

Quentin's lips purse tightly for a moment.. before he flips the notebook closed, after a final scribble, and pushes himself up to his feet as well.

Orion mmhmms quietly. "Indeed. Much as I'm sure you appreciate the need, I doubt you'd be too interested in /watching/ a Vampire on the hunt."

"No, thank you," is K. C.'s opinion. "I'm sure we all look forward to the next lesson."

"Yeah, I think I'll pass," Quentin says dryly, regarding the vampire warily, "And thanks for the lesson, and all."

Tipping a salute to the pair, Orion bids his goodbye. He dosen't vanish, or anything quite so cliche, instead moving over to dispose of the now-cold coffee.