The First Council of Neonates

[Violet Clyntahn]

Violet stops dead as the body of a man flies past her, the glass of the window he just came through raining down upon her. She doesn’t quite know where to look, she wants to check on the man, but gets distracted by the horror of the scene unfolding the other side of the window. She takes a second to stare inside, both fascinated and horrified at the monster her friend has become. Fear quickly overpowered her again. She needed to run. Perhaps Zhaspar was right about Lilliana? No. The thought hurt her too much to be true. She just needed to breath, to clear her mind, to escape the various offences and errant lusts of the south, to run. One final glance into the bar and she was off, she didn’t think she could stop her legs even if she wanted to.

[Viktor]

Tallow is almost at the door when out of the corner of his eye he catches sight of the Stray fleeing the scene, at least one welcome thing had happened. He stops before he reaches the entrance though. Perhaps it was because it was obvious the Blonde hadn't followed; perhaps he heard the Idiot's plea to her through the din; perhaps the courageous shouts of the good Doctor over the noise spoke to his own courage; perhaps his consideration for his fellow man would not let the true carnage the Rebel was moments away from causing occur.

Or perhaps he had just had enough of children and their inane fucking shittery.

He turned sharply on his heel and upon spotting George carrying the Blonde toward the bar, immediately strides across it after him. This time he uses as much violence as is necessary to make his way unimpeded back to where he once stood, seeming to give no care to who does or does not end up shoved or sprawling near the Rebel. Bloody scrapes adorn his knuckles and fingers like rings as he places one hand on the bar-top, reaches over with the other and grabs Georges upper arm in a vice like grip and pulls him sharply toward him and against the bar.

"Where do think your going you little piss-filled ratfucker?"

The previously normal, calm, weathered features of the older man are now contorted in an angry, unpleasant mask through which the words are spat at George.

[rhiann90]

"FIGHT ME! HIT ME! COME AND DANCE!"

Either the doctor was insane or a genius. Two sides of the same coin, some have been heard to say. His trick worked. The raging monster ignored the sights around her. The first assailant unconscious being scooped up and taken away by the host. Another trying to protect, or hinder, their escape. Her ward bolting into the night. No sight of the bastard that egged her on to this point. None of them mattered. His trick worked.

The doctor had not thought through this thought though. She was harder, faster and, more importantly, on fire. In one blurry motion, the Brujah swirled around the chaos and flung the poor doctor back up the stairs, hitting the door. A burn mark in his chest. Singed clothes around the core. Had he been mortal, this may have led him down the same path as the whore's whose remains smeared the bar's floor.

It was an injury, painful and hard to heal. His lack of combative training evident. Fortunately for him, the neonate Brujah had focused her training on hitting hard, not frequently. It drew her attention away from others who scurried away like cats from a rabid dog.

Now is the time for swift action. Lest another share a horrible fate.

[George Williamson]

The sharp grab and pull took George by surprise causing him to lose his foot. Only the bar stopped him from falling over completely. He hadn't been able to stop looking at her. It was as if he were in a dream, he couldn't quite believe this reality. The silver eyes and long, long hair. The seemingly fragile frame that held within the power to defy the whole world. And just like before, someone tried to wrench it away from him.

"Away from fuckin' here!" George yelled. Somehow it just being Tallow he thought he could, but that grip wasn't something he could easily escape.

'Eevie?' He couldn't escape, but maybe she still could, so he put everything on being able to open the mental connection between them. 'You've gotta wake up. You've gotta run, Eevie. Tallow left ya here, but I'm trapped. Ya gotta run.'

Nine months of anguish and pain had all come to having the dancer back in his arms with Tallow stopping them from going anywhere. " 'Cos you just left her!"

[Samuel Taylor]

Even as the raging Neonate seemed to fly towards him with fist pulled back to strike a blow, Taylor was locked in another battle of the mind. His face twisted in sorrow and rage, then pain as the Brujah's fist connected. He crashed over a table and slammed into the door leading up the stairs. Briefly glancing down he assessed the blackened scorched patch of skin clearly visible through the remains of his shirt

Huh, I'll have to run some tests on that later.

Snarling in pain he locked eyes with Lilliana and his mind flexed mentally pushing a command into the woman's brain, for the moment their minds were locked in a stalemate, then Taylor's Will triumphed. Withdraw

Rising to his feet Taylor shook his head in disgust and set off at a dead sprint for the broken window.

[rhiann90]

Withdraw. Lilliana's desire to turn her opponent into paste diminished. New target.

"Where do think you're going you little piss-filled ratfucker?" Excellent timing.

The man known as Tallow felt a dense, brick hit his chest. It winded him. Air was forced unnaturally from his body. Although it wasn't a brick. It was Lilliana's fist. New target acquired. He gasped, coughing a few droplets of blood. He spat them onto the floor, not that anyone would be able to distinguish it. He was more fortunate than Taylor, but only just. He at least saw her coming so could brace himself for impact.

Glistening fangs salivated at the thought of another round. Morality was being thrown faster than her punches. The beast was winning. Will anyone be able to stop her?

[Viktor]

The wonderful thing about being old is that you end up with a wealth of experience of a wide variety of situations. It was also very helpful having dealt with a number of Kindred over the years about the various tricks and traps that could be employed. It was also very helpful in being able to cope and adapt in an enclosed environment to sudden situation changes. It was especially helpful with situational changes that involved becoming the direct target of a frenzying Kindred.

The Rebel had given up on the Doctor (who he caught out of his eye running off) and seemingly turned their attention to himself. He had attempted to avoid the blow but keeping hold of the Idiot had, admittedly, caused some difficulty in doing so. Which was unfortunate. The growing warmth of anger was joined by screaming agony as a red hot fist crunched into his flesh. It did nothing to diminish or snuff out the growing heat of his annoyance.

One of the wonderful things about a frenzying Kindred is that are not the most logical or rational of creatures. Experience had taught him that they would likely go for a threat or squirming body than a fallen unmoving foe, especially as the bar was still quite full of people all things considered.

Tallow had certainly not survived as long as he had by being a nice person. The clever will always outlast the stupid. The cunning will always outlast the clever. The ruthless however will (nearly) always outlast them all.

Tightening his grip on the Idiots arm, Tallow cried out in pain as his flesh was incinerated and a not insignificant number of his ribs shattered and blackened as he crumpled under the force of the blow, sliding down the front of the bar and into a suitable position on the floor. In truth the blow would have killed outright a number of people in the bar. Luckily he was not a normal man. Unfortunately his plan to drag the Idiot over the bar as he slumped to use as a Vampiric meat shield didn’t quite go as well as he planned and the little shit wriggled out his grasp. It was just another thing to add to the list of reasons to pull the Idiots insides out through his own arsehole at a later date.

This whole thing was certainly managing to sour his opinion of the night to new depths, ones that had certainly not been plumbed in some years.

[Rebeka]

Consciousness gathered itself, tightened, struggled up through the darkness.

Rebeka's full awareness came rushing back as her head slammed into the bar, her captor's previously safe embrace gone. George went careening backwards - it looked like Tallow was dragging him. A queer mix of emotions followed - then gone, replaced only by fear.

She felt sicker than before, confused and dreamily high. Giant nausea. The same hot reek of blood filled her nostrils. And eclipsing all physical phenomena was the grinning face of injustice: the angry woman had just ploughed her fist into Tallow.

The flower that had been opening all the time Lilliana rushed towards him as if in slow motion turned into a black red hole that sucked Rebeka in, head-first, a long fall that ended when she cracked her fist into the girl's throat and the first warm spurt of the stranger's blood splashed across her knuckles.

That image, actually – Lilliana looking down to see her own blood dotting her dress before she snapped her attention up, blood hot and eyes wild – was the last clear snapshot. Everything after that swims red. Rage (the dark twin of ecstasy) is transcendent, in that you only know you were gone in it by virtue of coming back to yourself. It’s a blank Somewhere Else defined by the return to the all too vivid Here and Now, where you find yourself still saddled with insufficient finiteness, still in dismal possession of fingertips and eyebrows, a face, hands, legs, the whole maddening corporeal package. Maddening because every cell speaks the reality, the new reality – in this case the reality of what Rebaka had lost. Her freedom.

Lucidity comes and goes, however, and almost as immediately as Rebeka thought it, she was instead moving onto how proud she was to defend him, to divert the wild woman's attention from him and onto her. Joy. Joy. This is what joy is. Like those flying dreams the moment you first realise you can do it...

Everyone was moving in slow, stiff snapshots, their limbs jerkily paused. She slid past and around the frenzied female, close enough to touch, to brush, a clear notice: Behind you. This way.

[George Williamson]

Things just kept getting better. Lilliana's sudden appearance was the opportunity George had been after. He'd felt Tallow trying to pull him over as he fell to the ground, but George had the wonderful leverage of having a bar between them. Stocking his knee into the lip of the bar kept enough resistance for Tallow grip to slip as he fell. Unfortunately, this left little between himself and Lilliana. George had to think of something fast.

But someone else was faster. Rebeka had awoken and was vaulting towards the flaming Rebel.

At this point, George really wished he had a solid plan to deal with a very angry Kindred bearing down. Not for his sake, but for Evelyns. She was a dancer, not a fighter. Then again, neither was George. He did however, have an imagination and the training of madmen.

George created the scene. The beautiful streams of sunlight coming from the door to the attic, from behind the bar, and leaking through the cracks in the back wall of the establishment. The Great Fear coming from everywhere except the front door. To have a single point of safety, a single exit of which a Beast could escape in fear. It needed something extra; something to put the urgency of the situation. He knew well what a Kindred turning to ash looked like, unfortunately well, and so he thought of Tallow crumbling, himself, and most heartbreakingly, Evelyn.

Then he pushed. With all his mental might, fueled by fear and determination, into Lilliana's mind. It may only be an image but, if it worked, sometimes that's all it takes to break a person.

[Samuel Taylor]

Oh Bugger

The scream of pain from the older man at the bar, the one who stopped George washing his hands of the situation he helped cause penetrated Taylor's brain, and something clicked. Even as he dived towards the window to follow his Fair Lady's commands to withdraw, the weakness of Clan Malkavian caught up with him.

In mid-stride Taylor went limp. Still going at full speed he crashed into the wall underneath the window where he had been aiming for, eyes rolled up into his head and a faint mumbling can be heard uttering forth from his mouth as his fingers tap out a repeating rhythm on the wooden floor in front of him.