destinystrings | Time Of Truthiness!

"Palutena... doesn't ring a bell, sorry." There's a possible connection there, but Maugris doesn't know enough about the Japanese language to make it.

"I guess that's sort of like the gods-in-disguise thing. The idea was that the gods wandered around looking like travelers to check up on mortals and make sure they were being good and doing things like observing hospitality. Philemon's story is that he and his wife were the only ones in their town who welcomed Zeus and Hermes in when they came around disguised as travelers. All their neighbors were richer and more prosperous, but they also didn't let a couple of scruffy wandering types in, even though they were supposed to be hospitable to travelers. So the gods destroyed the village, but because Philemon and his wife had taken them in, given them dinner, things like that, the gods tipped them off and let them get away before doing it."

Maugris gives a sideways little smile. "The gods could kind of be jerks. That happened a lot in stories, actually. Zeus tended to turn up looking like a mortal a lot just to screw around with people... occasionally literally."

"...Huh."

Phantom Girl ruminates on this explanation of Greek mythology for a few moments. She had learned a tiny bit of it in school, of course, but on the whole, Bgztlian studies didn't give much weight towards ancient Earth cultures, regardless of how influential they were.

"So the moral of this story is, you should let everyone inside your house if they claim to be weary travelers because there's totally no way they could be thieves waiting for you to go to sleep so they can take all of your stuff. ...Wouldn't it be much more sensible to just give them some money for the inn?"

Phantom Girl: Representing the Altruistic Superhero's Point of View.

"And yeah, our gods slept with us, too. Isn't it funny how that's the universal running theme?"

"Well, I skipped over a bunch there - there was a bunch of stuff like jugs refilling themselves and things that proved these were gods. But yeah, different morality. A lot of cultures have had a sacred hospitality deal at some point. I'm pretty sure there was supposed to be some sort of divine retribution for abusing it by, say, stealing from your host, though. I'm not ancient Greek, I don't know the details."

He chuckled a little at the point she brought up. "Kind of, yeah. I'd ask how your gods managed it if they were pan-dimensional cosmic things, but Zeus managed it as a shower of gold coins once, never mind all the animals, and I'm not sure I really want to know."

"Let's just say that being able to pass through dimensions makes you pretty flexible and leave it at that."

Elaboration on the subject wasn't exactly where she wanted this to go, either. As they continue strolling down the street, Phantom Girl pauses and thrusts out a finger to the south.

"There it is. Down that road and to the left." ...A short pause. "This was supposed to be a throwaway conversation starter, just so you know. We were supposed to move on after you said 'wow cool' and appreciated my scintillating spontaneity, which I carefully cultivate in the hopes of impressing a sense of self-confidence and disregard for the prosaic."

...She blinks for a moment or two as she glances down at herself. Well, it wasn't what she had been planning to say, but it wasn't something completely out of character for her, either. Still. Strange.

"Ah. Sorry, I've never been great at spotting that stuff." He cocks an eyebrow at her, a little surprised at that particular admission. Oookay.

"So you can feel free to shut me up any time I start rambling. Anyway. Where were you planning to go from 'hey, there's this temple here'?" He's honestly kind of curious now.

"Hey, I didn't say it was a bad thing. Think of it as a compliment. You can, um, take boring things and make them interesting. ...And conjure up really strange and uncomfortable images."

Phantom Girl shrugs and rises a few feet up into the air again.

"I didn't actually have a game plan from there. Where are you off to?"

"Sorry. I was just heading to the library. I'm trying to get a grip on what people know about the city's problems." If she deals with Maugris in problem-solving mode a lot, Phantom Girl will probably end up picking up on the fact that he tends to refer to "the city" as if it's a distinct entity on its own.

"I'm hoping there's some sort of actual solution we can work out for this whole mess. Preferably one that doesn't involve people getting all weird because I'm Kindred. I should probably see if I can get in contact with someone in-" He pauses. If he didn't have better uses for his blood he'd probably blush. "... in charge. I just let that slip, didn't I.

"I think 'working out the mess' probably entails defining what 'mess' we're talking about in the first place. As far as I can see, there's nothing wrong with the city apart from that demons exist at all - all of these problems just come up sort of... naturally. But I'm starting to think 'eradicate all demons' isn't what we're here for, either."

Phantom Girl heaves a sigh. Being kidnapped hadn't improved her opinion of the city much. "And you'd probably have a better chance of contacting someone if you were ever awake before sunset. You can't seriously be that used to night shifts."

A slight arch of the eyebrows at the last bit.

"Who are you related to now?"

"Well, not on its own, no. Even if we did it probably wouldn't stop them coming back. What we ought to do is work out what's making them show up in the first place so that we can stop that."

He sighs and shakes his head. Well, there's really no point in it now. "I was going to have to get around to telling you eventually, anyway. 'Kindred' is what the Camarilla call themselves. The word you'd actually recognize is 'vampire'."

"..."

Phantom Girl stops floating.

...
...
...

"OK, I know I made a lot of cracks before, haha running joke, but seriously. What does 'Kindred' mean?"

"That's seriously what it means. You know why I never get up before sunset? Because I lose consciousness as soon as the sun comes up unless I try really hard, and there's nowhere to go anyway because I catch fire in direct sunlight."

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "Look, I didn't know how people would react if they found out I was actually a vampire. That post about the jokes a while back was me trying to find out if there were any others in the city. Basically everything I told you about me was true except the 'not a vampire' thing."

"Bu -- ...Vampires aren't real! They're just things in Bouncy's stupid horror films! There aren't actually blood-drink...ing..." Just like there aren't actually demons or aliens with dimensional phasing powers Phantom Girl shuts up. She chooses the time-honored route of 'blank staring' instead.

"...You know, you didn't laugh once at my jokes. You should have a sense of humor if you're going to be a bloodthirsty maneater."

"I didn't laugh because I was busy trying to work out if you actually knew or not. And 'maneater' kind of implies that I kill them. I never take enough for that - and I haven't been feeding from humans at all since I got here, anyway."

Maugris rubs his forehead. "Weird for me to slip up and mention that in the first place, honestly. I don't usually do that... Advertising isn't exactly a survival trait for us."

"I'm all for full disclosure, but yeah, this is probably one of those things that shouldn't be used as an icebreaker." Phantom Girl peers at him carefully before crossing her arms. "I'm sure I taste terrible. Just warning you in advance - I bet alien blood is like acid."

Not that she was seriously concerned about losing her blood given she could slip away to her special dimension, but.

"...Well. Since you did spill the beans, you mind telling me a little more about this stuff?"

Maugris rolls his eyes. "I've been feeding from the animals out in the woods, mostly. Even if I was going after people I'd stick to normal Earth humans - supernatural blood does strange things to us, which is something I thankfully don't know firsthand, and I have no clue what alien blood would do." Living mostly off of animals isn't generally looked upon well by Kindred society, but none of them are here even if he cared.

He sighs. "I may as well, I guess. It's not like we've got a Masquerade here, not when we summon monsters out of our heads. What did you want to know?"

"...I don't even know where to start."

She begins to slowly pace around him in a circle, as that was scientifically proven to improve thought processes.

"So... what does being a vampire mean? There are a bunch of stories, but. What's actually real? You suck blood? Sunlight kills you? You're not actually evil with a capital E, are you, because I'm pretty sure superheroes aren't allowed to fraternize with the Really Evil. My mother definitely wouldn't approve, anyway."

"Okay, so yes, yes, and no but an awful lot of us seem to be complete jerks." He ticks them off on his fingers, and sighs. "I don't know about from a religious point of view, but we're not really inherently evil, any more than humans. We get a lot of opportunities to be worse people, though. I try not to. If you run into a Kindred who calls humans 'kine', they're probably not somebody you want to hang around."

After a moment, he adds, "Before you ask, 'kine' is a Middle English word for cattle, which tells you all you need to know about the kind of vampire that uses it."

"...Hey, 0% body fat right here. My meat would be the stringiest stuff."

Not that vampires ate meat.

"I mean, I guess it's slightly understandable though. Whenever there's a predator-prey relationship between sentient species, it's easier for the predator to evolve a sort of... superiority complex. No one's ever heard of polite vampires because no one will want to give you their blood if you ask politely."

"At least not anybody you'd want to hang around." Maugris has a ghoul - well, had, anyway - but he never fed from the guy. "But yeah. When you're the perfect predator everybody starts looking like a meal. But even guys like that are usually smart enough to remember that 'kine' have horns."

He pauses, looking up at the sky. "Remember when I told you it was my job to keep normal people from finding out about the supernatural? That was true. Technically I was only responsible for making sure the other vampires I was in charge of stayed hidden, but... it's easier all around if we try to make sure everybody lies low. There are people who'll hunt down anything they think poses a threat to humanity, and they aren't too discriminating about what they kill."

"So. You're kind of the vampire police. ...No wait. You're the security guard at border control. You keep the humans on one side and the supernatural on the other and if they have to commingle, you check out their credentials first."

A slight pause as Phantom Girl tries that thought out in her mind.

"No offense but I'm hoping there's more than one of you with this job."

"Um, I'm more like the vampire mayor. The title's actually Prince, but that's mostly because a lot of vampires are old-fashioned. Vampires mostly organize within one city, so it ends up looking like a Wild West boomtown - the guy in charge of the actual vampire police is even called the Sheriff. And it's usually the Sheriff and a few deputies doing that job, but there aren't usually that many vampires in a city that it gets to be a problem."

He pauses for a moment as if calculating. "Metatropolis was a pretty big city and had a lot of vampires for its size, and I don't think there were ever more than about forty of us at the absolute most."

"...Huh. So vampires are suckers for historical dramas. Maybe I'll start calling you Prince Maugris from now on. ...Or London whatever your real name was." She would have to go take a look at the apartment listing again.

"So what happens if a human does find out about you guys?" Drawn and quartered, each vampire gets a limb. "Or if one of your vampires gets out of control?"

"Landen. And nobody calls me that. I'd prefer just Maugris. I can't really be Prince if I'm here, and anyway I really hated being Prince."

He shrugs his shoulders, looking uncomfortable. "There are... different ways. If it's just a glimpse of something they shouldn't have seen there's a trick some vampires have where they can basically wallpaper over someone's short-term memory." He's deliberately picked the most harmless option - and it says a lot about the other options that he thinks that one is the most harmless.

"A vampire who gets out of control mostly gets threatened with the fact that there are bigger and badder vampires out there who would prefer they stay in control. If that doesn't work, they get kicked out of the city and have to find somewhere else - and vampires do communicate with each other, enough that if they go to a new city they can expect the people there to know. If they're really bad, the threats even get carried out." He doesn't like that part.

"As you please, Prince Landen."

Phantom Girl will, of course, sweep her cape out as she descends to one knee in a bow as is customary with royalty.

"So what happens if, say, some plucky investigative reporter is watching in an alleyway when one of your vampires takes the blood he needs from a passerby? And then he follows you around because that's what plucky investigative reporters do?" Whether or not she had said as much, the point of these questions were, of course, to make a judgment concerning Maugris and his vampire culture.

Edited 2013-08-27 02:06 (UTC)

"Well, for a start the vampire in question gets in serious trouble for not just getting spotted, but letting himself get followed around. As for the reporter... any evidence he has gets mysteriously lost or damaged. His stories never quite seem to make it to print." He shrugs. "He keeps pushing, he might lose his job, even get recommended to see a psychiatrist about his delusions about vampires. A lot of vampires are good at manipulating mortal society behind the scenes - assuming a reporter trying to break news about a conspiracy of vampires doesn't get put on psychiatric leave all on his own."

He really, really hopes she doesn't ask what happens if the reporter keeps going. That's where things get ugly, and Maugris is starting to work out that he can't actually lie at the moment.

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