Salesman from Dogwood

Kragen

God Bless America, sweet America, home of the free, the blessed, and the damned fools. It had been years since Kragen had stepped foot onto American soil, years since he'd drank over priced craft beer at an overly glorified chain store that made itself out to be the height of culture. It had been years since he'd sat around in a fine silk suit he managed to find at the good will cause some poor bastard had lost it all and been forced to sell it for whatever he could.

Kragen Kingsmith loved America, it was like the greatest punchline to the worlds funniest joke.

He was doing all these things, dressed in a grey silk suit the man in his late forties reclined like a rakish king as he drank a beer, a cigarette close at hand along with an old beaten and bent zippo lighter. His hair was askew, muddled and messed but only so much that it made him simply look like he didn't care. The stubble on his face was turning into a goatee which he certainly didn't seem to mind.

Grey eyes surveyed the 16th street mall and its passing herd of human's and a grin cut across his face like a knife had put it there, sarcastic and jagged...mean as hell. The patio seat he had occupied was at the very edge of the bar's seating, but positioned ever so perfectly that getting behind the lean man..was nigh on impossible. 

Flood

Flood is aimed down the long stretch of pedestrian mall, the thoroughfare's streets bustling with groups hopping from bar to bar and the occasional shuttle bus powering slowly and steadily up and down between the heavy foot traffic. He is given a certain birth in every direction probably because of the sureness of his gait and the cold menace his body radiates.

The man is pale as Denver's native yule marble. To the keen observer, someone skilled at dealing with corpses, there are few differences other than the face he's walking down the street between him and those cadavers. His chest does not rise or fall. He does not often blink. When he does it's for effect and usually with the cadence of his words, and right now he's not speaking. There is the slightest olive tint to his pallor, hinting at Mediterranean ancestry muddled in the jade dagger points that are his eyes.

The dead man's demeanor still manages to be open. Not only past life, but larger than it, a cult of personality. One might imagine him making promises and delivering them, playing on the darkest vices and yearnings and addictions, or promising power in a Devil's contract and not making you miss your soul once it has been sold.

He wears a light grey three piece suit in like silk fabric, tailored expertly to encase his pillar of a form, six feet and some few inches on top and all perched on the heels of brown brogue ankleboots. His tie is blue and ties in a tight single knot, raking and pulled loose like the top button of his white dress shirt. A man on the town that cares about style without being stuffy about it and tightening the noose. A man of independent wealth, by the looks, everything bespoke. Even the hat on top of black hair precisely combed in a part and back with an intentional swoop of a ruffle tipping the hat back to the rearmost of his head's crown.

Flood has not yet noticed that kindred spirit with the breath of life still in his lungs. So many similarities, his own smile curling as he takes in humanity in all its forms. It can't be long before Kragen is included in that appreciation. And it can't be long after that before such an interesting specimen is approached for closer analysis. No, it's Denver and Flood looks like he's searching for a place to anchor for the night, not simply pass ships and go about his business.

Kragen

[Corpse alert?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4) ( fail )

Molly Toombs

Come out with us, Molly, they said. It will be fun, they said.

This was about three hours ago.  Molly had gotten a phone call on speaker, where a woman and two men were on the other end crooning that she needed to put on a dress and come out to the bar with them.  She had resisted initially, but when the trio threatened to string her up by her toes if she spent another Saturday night inside she agreed laughingly.

Then they arrived one of a handful of nightclubs that bounced and thumped with music along 16th Street.  They'd each gotten a drink and settled at a table (never the couches, those things are fucking filthy), and by the time the drinks were consumed Patricia and Devin were pulling Molly out to the dance floor.  She got seperated from them, as so often happens in crowds, and found herself dancing with some latin fellow she'd call cute.  But when the song shifted and she decided she was done the man whose leg had been ratcheted between her thighs for the past three and a half minutes figured the best way to get her number was to bounce an ass cheek in his hand-- just so that he was sure his point got across.

Molly's point got across precisely as well when she shoved him back into the crowd, which was now bouncing up and down because a more popular song had started up with a heavy thump of bass.  Molly went back to the table to find Devin and Frankie, the two men from the phone call.  She told them what happened, they laughed and said she should have gotten his number.  Molly finished Frankie's drink for him and said she was going elsewhere.

In present time, Molly was walking along the bustling 16th Street, aimless and not sure if she was wanting to hit up another bar to cap the night off with a beer or if she just wanted to head straight home and take off her heels.  She was dressed to go out dancing, so of course that meant a short black dress that was immodestly clingy and scooped low in the back in favor of leaving the front more covered.  Her dark auburn hair was piled up on her head with a few licks hanging about her face that had fallen loose.  Her make-up was well done, smokey about the eyes and bright red on the lips.  Her heels were tall, stretching her legs and thinning her figure.  She wasn't drop-dead gorgeous, she wasn't a 'skinny bitch'.  She was just some woman out trolling the town as far as anybody who looked at her could care.

The thing that made her stand out was simply that she wasn't surrounded by other girls in clubwear.  Most of the time when women were dressed in short dresses and hunting for bars they were travelling in a herd.  Molly, though?  She ditched hers, and now as she clacked on heels along the sidewalk with her arms at her sides, expertly alternating between avoiding eye contact with people she walked past and holding gazes challengingly (Come at me, bro) if anyone stared too long.

Did she know that the patio she was about to pass had something unnatural lounging on it?  Was she aware that the tall man who was approaching that patio from the opposite direction was even less natural than the first?  No.  We'll see if she catches the drift.

Kragen

The throng is thick this evening, and Kragen, sharp eyed as he was in his slowly [very slowly] mounting years missed Flood as he slipped behind a pack of tourists who were ripe for the picking, fanny packs and exposed wallets would make fine pickings for even a moderately skilled pickpocket.

He ignores those prime pickings for now, instead turning back to what lay before him with a rub of his hands together. From his beer, he takes a swig, before sliding it back onto the table so that he might instead pick up his cigarette. This he holds up gingerly, almost reverently as he held it between his index and middle fingers, turning his hands ever so slowly as he watched the heater sizzle in the air. He then stuffed the cigarette between thin lips and took a long puff, letting the stick of nicotine remain between his lips as he picked up his zippo and played it along the length of his leg, bringing it up lit and looking at the flame before he snapped the lid shut once more and tossed it on the table.

He became distracted by the passing waitress in that moment, the intensity of his grey eyes taking on a subtler heat as he watched her bus a neighbouring table. His gaze shifted though as a finely honed inner sense brought his gaze around and he met the eye of Molly Toombs, that knifes edge grin holding on his lips as he watched slide closer. 'Her come at me bro' stare met with,' I'm already here darling'

Because Kragen Kingsmith was a man of fine breeding and class, of that you could be certain.

Lux

Lux wasn't bar-crawling, wasn't clubbing. Lux wasn't coming from the glass-and-metal spiderweb of light and shadow that was the Performing Arts Center: Was she? Not dressed like that. Or perhaps she -- ? Lux wasn't in a crowd, either. And she wasn't texting, her head down as if a crowd were a thing that she was moving towards, as if her pack were waiting just around the corner. Lux wasn't looking around with disdain either, no superior curl of the mouth, no white-as-paper marbled skin, no fashionable grey silk suit.

Those are things Lux was not.

Here are things that Lux is:

Out for a stroll between Here and There, Hither and Thither. Placing a cigarette between her lips, and drawing a lighter out of the pocket of her jacket, angling her head just so, the debutante slouch of her spine insouciant [Carelessly, Casually, Rebellious],  flicking a glance toward the marquee of a movie theater that-a-way, the dim lights snaking through a spider-pale summertree catching in her tarnished-up [crystalline (enshadowed, todnight, oh - full of shade difficult to see through like a wall of smoke or)] eyes and teasing out a hint of brightness.

Her jacket is unbuttoned, but the broad collar -- see, Lux can be rakish too -- is angled up so the edges stab past her cheekbones. Her jeans have been scrawled all-over, and the messenger bag on her shoulder looks like it's full of heavy, heavy things.

And now she is looking at what movies are playing, just before she lights her damned cigarette.

Flood

Molly is sans gaggle of giggling women and let's be frank, without Frankie or Devin there to beat back the wolves, a stray sheep grazing such pastures as the city of Denver's expansive Rack would usually get Flood's attention. In a different way than it might any other red-blooded man, because his blood is ichorous vitae that wells near an unbeating heart, but he can usually veil that fact long enough to...

But there is Lux and there, in her, is a woman that blips on his radar with an assertiveness that makes all else fade away. Predator and predator. Lovers of fashion each in their own way. Embodiments of the finer things. Followers of extreme philosophies, if of differing viewpoints, who can agree on at least some things.

And one of the most glaring characteristics in common... Both had been at Richthofen. Not that Flood is entirely aware of this fact, but he comes to the table as cognizant of what he does not know as of what he does.

Comes to the table, walking up to her, like them crossing paths is predestined. Expected. He, in fact, looks delighted to see her. His smile grows, spreads like butter, more full and offered. He glances over at that patio once he's stopped before her, placed himself before her lighting that cigarette so his shadow is in her line of vision past the cherry and he will be there when she looks up. Hands resting for but a moment folded before his waist before one gestures up to the establishment. The aforementioned and expounded upon Patio.

Because we might as well make it the place's name.

"Shall we?" There it is. His voice, not too deep and not too high, but what it is more than anything is clear. It in fact possesses both tones and those between, and is played like a mandolin. Those first two words are him tuning it for what will come. It impresses itself upon those who hear it like a particularly strong current in an ocean.

Kragen

[Do i notice?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Lux

[Yayy. Flood. Manip + Subt, first o' the night.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )

Molly Toombs

There wasn't much worry to being bothered.  Molly was a grown woman, and she has lived alone for enough years to have a firm enough grasp of taking care of herself-- not in the sense of physically 'taking care of herself' if she were confronted, necessarily.  Rather, she knew how to best avoid that confrontation.  She knew already that the technique of ducking one's head and trying hard to fly under the radar just didn't work out well for women travelling solo.  Instead, she found it made them look weak and easier to harass.  That's why she instead walked with the same sort of comfort and self-assurance that most people had only in their own home.  Young bucks in Tapout tees didn't worry her.  A duo quipped as they passed her, she answered with a smug half-grin and a middle finger.  They laughed and carried on, and Molly was left to go on her way.

The man who looked a little more weathered, somewhere in his forties and well dressed, though....  He unsettled her a little bit.  She felt his eyes casually wander and rest in her direction, and she met them with a challenge.  How he answered, though, faltered her just the tiniest bit.  She was accustomed to being answered either with the other party looking away or being raucious toward her.  Kragen's calm, the even confidence and the open invitation in surprisingly light eyes... That unsettled her a little but simultaneously caught her attention.

She stopped on the sidewalk with the pretense of fixing the back of her shoe and how it sat on her heel.  This bought her enough time to make up her mind.

Why not?  You bitch about monotony daily.

Rather than bee-lining for the patio, for that man, she instead walked past the enclosed tables and umbrellas, watched the older gentleman as she went (and lifted eyebrows at him with some modicum of significance), and entered the bar.

Inside she would be lost, for a moment at least.  Perhaps at the bar hidden between other bodies, or maybe in the ladies room.  Wherever she was, it was inevitable that she would resurface.

Flood

[ Perception + Subterfuge. Don't you dare lie to me, Big Mike. ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Lux

[FUCK TIES. Tie-breaker.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Flood

[ Break it. ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Flood

[ BREAK IT I SAID DAMMIT YOU FOOL ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Lux

[Are you kidding me?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Lux

[Chat, YOU will be baked and cake.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Flood

[ And eaten. ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kragen

It was the rarest of moments in modern times, where two unknown individuals gaze's locked, locked for a second, and instead of turning away immediately or instantly becoming defensive the pair of them held each others gaze. Kragen seemed to find this fact immensely entertaining, perhaps even intriguing if such things could be thought of inside what passed for his mind in these days. He watched Molly as she stopped for whatever pretense she chose, and then slid into the bar.

Kragen didn't move a muscle, no he remained where he was boneless and relaxed, he simply tilted his chin upward and scratched at the stubble that was growing upon his neck and smiled toothily a chuckle escaping between clenched teeth as the smoke in his lips stuck straight up like a candle in some nightmarish cake.

The moment passes, and Kragen reasserts some control over himself, dusting the fanciful cobwebs from his head with a rough and speedy shake, his eyes widening as they cleared and he patted down his arms and shivered his coat into place.

It was then...then that he noticed the two predators standing amongst the sheep, considering each other, considering the patio... HIS patio. He was on his feet then, staring intently at them with that toothy, almost feverish smile as his hands gripped the wrought iron railing of the patio. He shifted his stance in anticipation, waiting, almost dementedly eager for one of them...or both of them to look his way.

It was only a matter of time.

Lux

His shadow falls across her and Lux looks up and into the face of a smiling, delighted, Lasombra. Her delight is rather less evident to the shrewd examiner-of-Lux. He can see it: the tell-tale whisper of tension in her shoulders, the tell-tale caress of wary speculation in her glance, whettstone eyes dragging up, touch his briefly then drift away, and she has dragged smoke into her lungs, held it there and held it there, and tucked her right hand under her left elbow, slouch still in full and elegant effect, and then she turns her head and exhales. Smoke's a thing, isn't it? Even when there's no fire, it's a thing, and Lux's mouth compresses for a second, a rather uncompromising line, before one corner snicks up (softens) and she reaches out with her still-right-hand to adjust Flood's hat.

"Did you bring me a present; will you draw on my jeans?"

Conditional yes.

[Heh. Favourite Dice Pool. Alert + Percept! Do I notice some dude staring like dudes do?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1) ( fail )

Flood

[ Do I? Because this chick is trippin'. ]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Flood

"I present you with my presence and hope you won't find it wanting; I'll draw as best I can, knowing on you it'll look like a work of art," answering as she adjusts that hat, his back rod straight and his head still as she does so.

Grooming is a thing, isn't it? A sign of intimacy. Or maybe she just doesn't want to be seen with a tall accessory of a dead man that doesn't look his best in his unburied attire.

Either way Flood hopes his answer will solidify her conditional consent and eventually he turns and his gaze will come Kragen's way. Flood will turn to that patio and notice a leather lash of a man looking and smiling at them and he won't skip a beat as he allows his gaze to meet and hold and keep on holding even as he is a portrait of a predator ascending the stairs onto the patio and walking across it.

"Do you know that gentleman?"

He says it with absolutely no intention of being quiet about it, never breaking his gaze on Kragen as he continues to an empty two-top table, standing there to see if the man will approach him and his Anarch accompaniment.

Kragen

The woman, that all rakish beauty misses Kragen's gaze, but oh joy of joy's the man, the man in a startlingly similar grey silk suit catches the man's gaze and holds it with an unbreakable tenacity. Kragen's grin tightens, the lines of his older face becoming more creased, more weathered as he watches Flood ascend to the patio with Lux, his stance becomes one of almost shifting eagerness, the man sliding his weight around like he might break into dance. He spins around as Lux and Flood find a table and he runs a finger under his nose before clapping his hands together.

There is no hesitation, no moment of consideration. Kragen turns and strides towards the table of the vampiric predators, one hand gracefully sweeping out to catch an empty chair and then purposefully, capriciously dragging it across the patio, its legs grinding upon the patio top in a morbid and painful hello.

When at last he stands before them he lifts the chair off the ground and plants it in the space between them, on the one off side. His erratic energy seems to subside for a moment as he looks at both of them, the toothy manic grin seeming to have subsided into a smirk as he seated himself and slowly slide his gaze from Flood to Lux, his hands spread out from his body in greeting.

He crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair those grey eyes alight with life in a way these two never could be...not anymore and he said.

"Ahh my moon flowers, my evening primrose. You are the rare one's I have sought. Hello Hello. Kragen is my name." He said planting one hand firmly over his heart with a quick repeated nod of his head.

"Tell me, tell me do...are your evenings...peaceful?" 

Lux

The conditional yes was conditionally solidified by his willingness. See? The hat adjusted, Lux takes a step back. Then she rocks back on her heels, bending over in order to ash her cigarette out on the cement and tuck what's left behind one ear, the backs of her fingers catching strands of hair that in the commingling of amber street light and the brighter fluorescents and the softer twinkle lights and the occasional neon is of a questionable color. Something dark, you'd think, something that drags gloom into it -- Lux is, it must be confessed, the kind of creature bright things get sublimated by, drawn into, it's all about the presence you see, the indefinable [Magnetic. Not so indefinable, but- but why?] pull [--the thing that masters the Morning Star through all its paces]. So why wouldn't her hair seem dark? Why wouldn't an old friend Lasombra come up to her after Richthofen and shall we? Why wouldn't some man gaze at the pair of them with highly suspicious fever?

The point is she tucks the cigarette behind her ear and she also brushes her hair behind said ear and then rakes the whole thing so it's tumbling over the other side of her skull past and around her up-turned collar, laying bare her jaw and a flash of throat just below her ear and a tiny row of metal studs and

Also, she walks with Flood over to the Patio. Do you know that gentleman? asks he, and Lux looks at somebody entirely different and says, "Sure. Dreams of a sports car, considers himself a poet. Has never read a damned thing worth reading except the dictionary, doesn't get John Wayne, probably loves his job but pretends to hate it." Her tone changes abruptly, the texture of it, the warp and weft of it. "Flood, were you -- "

Oh, this gentleman. This one who is standing in front of them? Not that other gentleman over there? Lux watches Kragen take a seat. Lux looks from Kragen's suit to Flood's suit and Lux looks at the street again and then Lux looks back because Kragen is talking.

Lux watches Kragen as he talks and, now now, don't assume. By the time he gets to 'moon flowers,' Lux's expression brightens up into something ardent and contained something-or-other. "Evening primrose?" she echoes. Maybe that something-or-other is just the will to enjoy something strange. Then he gets to the:

You are the rare ones I have sought. Are your evenings peaceful.

And the flower of laughter dies a quick death, see, replaced by a cool eyebrow quirk: "You sound likes a salesman. Are you? Or just a botanist?" 

Flood

The Toreador asks a question and it is direct so Flood continues his stare at the man.

It had begun earlier and is continuing onto now throughout his dramatic approach. Kragen's dramatic entrance into two unlives, welcoming rare creatures into his own. It's plain to Flood that Kragen seems to breathe, seems to have a pulse, seems to blink, and perhaps he even has a sheen of sweat that Flood does not from the heat. But even that could be nothing more than dew condensing on cold and undead flesh turned warm, a play of the microclimates of a living corpse.

But he says they are the rare ones.

And even then perhaps he is an old vampire of an old school of thought referencing their membership in what was one and still is known as the high clans, though in increasingly confined circles.

But maybe he's startled from his revery, his analysis as drawn out as it is, when he realizes this well-dressed man mentions peace. He does not wait for an answer to Lux's direct and to the point questions. This is a topic, that once it takes root, brings Flood's voice back to life.

"Hardly," is his answer, like that's the way Flood likes it, especially how his smile returns with a quirk. His own interjection into the conversation while they wait for Kragen's answer as to his profession.

Kragen

Kragen laughs, the sounds intensity is palpable, the look etched upon his face one of manic glee as he claps his hands together once as he turned to face Lux. He leans forward then, resting one elbow on the table, the fingers scampering across the table towards Lux but never quite reaching them as he said.

"My dearest darling, I could be a selling botanist and it would barely matter an Iota." He taps the table with an open hand before withdrawing it himself and letting it settle into his lap. "I am the light which starts your fire deepest darling. But...at this moment more importantly, I am the eye and the ear of men and women who may fill your darkest dreaming darling."  He turns then, slowly and surely to look at flood and points a finger at the man before letting it fall to slap his knee.

"A poignant answer, I like that, because it tells me exactly what I want to hear. Isn't that the way of it?" He says as he regards Flood. "Tell me more....SIR."

Lux

[Doo-dee-doo, Manip + Subt.] 

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )

Kragen

[Per+Subt?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

Flood

[ Ditto. ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Lux

Tell me more, SIR, and now it is Lux's turn to play second fiddle, because that question was rather direct, wasn't it? The [Anarch] beautiful thing leans back in her chair, folds one leg over the other, rests her elbow along the chair's back, slouching again.

Of course, Kragen and Flood are both favored by [fickle gods] a moment of acuity, and they perhaps read more in the creature's body language. Her interest in Flood's answer is -- oh, just look. You can see it in the way she doesn't blink. You can see it in the way she looks, the way she holds herself so still and poised, not quite distant, no, certainly not removed, not Lux, but -- knife's edge of balance. Lux also appears to, when Kragen walks those fingers of his across the table toward her, be wondering whether he really did that. I am the light which starts your fire deepest darling, well.

Let's just say -- it's not a scoff. Not quite. Malice has not been activated. But a more thoroughly unsold connoisseur of the English language there could never be ever. She seems to be wondering whether or not he was joking, at least for the second her attention was still on the strange intense man.

Lux

ooc: ahem, strange intense man's strange pitch (?).

Flood

Sir, at this point, seems like it would suit Flood just as well. But to hide his name, to obfuscate anything about himself, much of this would go against what it mean to be him. So, when he offers it up, "Flood," remaining mononymous, it is offered like a gift even though Kragen's addressing of him hadn't help much of an interrogatory feel.

This Kragen has more questions. He can sense it. He's presented himself as the eyes and ears of another force, the kind of dark dreams and that can mean nightmares or that can been deep desires kept within the cave of the mind and hidden from the light because of their own dark nature.

The Brit doesn't seem like he's threatening them. Flood gives him the benefit of the doubt instead. Gives it to him because he at least seems interested. Curious. Locked upon and focused on what this man (thing) is that has presented himself and what he means by all these well-strung together words because Flood can appreciate them all.

"I would say that it is a very dangerous place, if asked," which the man has. "I would say that it is the kind of place that is already filled with dark dreams made real. What do you spin your dreams out of? Dried primrose and moon flowers?" He tilts forward to look at the tips of those fingers that come a-walking toward Lux.

"If there's black under your nails, is it soil or dried blood? Swords or plowshares?" Tell me more, his own quirked eyebrow says back.

Kragen

Lux isn't quite repulsed by Kragen's words or his display, not quite, but such things can be measured by the breadth of a single hair and so  one could really wonder. But Kragen seems unmoved by such displeasure...perhaps he was used to it. A man as curious as he needed to exude charisma, not simply confidence and though he held plenty of the latter, the former simply did not hold up.

But Lux has no questions, no words at this moment for the strange man, thing, creature that sat before the two vampires calling itself Kragen. So it is entirely upon Flood that the man places those vivid grey eyes, that intensity burning, roaring within, perhaps if it ever truly escaped it would burn this city to the ground.

"Neither." The ghoul says as he takes his hand and holds it up for both to see, the fingers waggling as that toothy nasty grin spreads across his lisp. "The others would argue, of that I can be sure." He says before leaning forward. 

"But what you would find under MY nails?" He inclined his head slightly to regard them as he lay his hand flat upon the table once more. "Is ash." He lets those words float on the evening air, like it was something magical to behold, his eyes gazing up at the building around them as if he saw something else entirely. "I spin dreams with fire, and terror."

His gaze shifted at last to Lux, that intensity still burning within. "I am a poet, fire is my pen, ash my paper...all in the name of anarchy...my dearest muse."

Flood

"And what if it rains?" Flood says it simply. The edges of his lips do not curl up anymore. Not at the mention of fire. If he is playing the straight man he is doing it too well. He lets the question linger before interrupting the silence he creates with more of his own words.

"If you farm fire and ash then I guess a desert is the perfect place to ply your trade," leaving that poet metaphor out of his assessment. "The soil is right for it."

"But you are the eyes and ears of a whole? And what purpose do you serve, other than anarchy? You see, in my time, I've heard many speak of anarchy. I'd seen so very few practice it. So, you must understand my curiosity." His lips are just a bit purse, like he has to keep his mouth closed from saying more.

Kragen

Lux remains silent for the moment, and so Kragen turns his gaze back to Flood with a shrug. "Rain does very little to napalm." He answers simply before chuckling and rapping his hand on the table as he leaned forward towards Flood and places his chin upon the open palm of his other hand his fingers moving fluidly against his own jawline.

"I...I serve Anarchy, its a wonderful hobby. You never master it and there are always such wonderful opportunities to learn. But otherwise? I serve myself.." He says tapping one finger on the table top. "But I suppose what you wish to know..is of the whole." His grin widens once more into that toothy expanse as he looks between the two vampires.

"I serve...Dogwood." The word is whispered, but the man is almost giddy as he says it. Perhaps they would know of it...or maybe they wouldn't. 

Flood

Kragen's return volley is met with a smile, finally, edges of his lips turning up like puppet strings at that line about napalm.

Really, it was a sharp answer, and it illustrated more about the man than he'd originally gotten from all that about fire and ash earlier. It's a more practical and literal perspective to frame him from.

"You must get up very early in the morning to serve so many things," he says. "One I feel I understand, even if I have no willingness to master it. The other I've only just met. But Dogwood?" Sounding like he would like to hear more.

Lux

[? Is this more flower crap?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 1 )

Lux

No, Lux did not say anything when Kragen claimed Anarchy as his dearest muse, though that not-quite-scoff, that unimpressed really, you're joking, has been sublimated entirely by this new sort-of attention. Happened when he claimed his fingernails would be dirty with ash. Happened when he puts 'fire' and 'terror' together, and the Red Fear is too recent a thing in Lux's memory. Look how sharpened she is, how, when Kragen gives up his allegiance to, she executes a fluid gesture [beautifully, it dies for love], plucking that cigarette from behind her ear and then (like it's a test, baby, gimme some fucking poetry) lets the end hover-in-the-air, c'mon, where's your light? Light me up. Produce fire. 

But maybe Kragen doesn't recognize the sir-the-lady-needs-a-light gesture. Regardless: Lux shifts her weight from one side of her chair to the other, so she's draped over one of its arms, "But is one supposed to serve Anarchy? Doesn't such service rather defeat the point? Are muses in their natural state meant to serve or to be serviced? What's your proudest poem, Mister Kragen?"

"And how the hell'd you get into such a noisy racket?"

Kragen

Kragen is not one to miss a chance to light..well...anything. A hand disappears into his pocket and a moment later that battered and beaten Zippo is run along his pant leg, sparking and lighting as the man holds it aloft, offering it to Lux with a terrible need to light it. Perhaps he wanted to light more...perhaps  he wanted to burn everything  in this mall till it was not but cinders. His gaze holds on Lux as she asks her questions, his gaze flickering steadily between her features and the fire which burned between her lips. Both hold his attention just as equally as the next, something that might displease the vampire. But Kragen seemed unconcerned as he gave voice to his answers.

"I am one of Dogwood's four initial members, alas the architect died in the 80's...there were some..contract disputes which ended badly. I'm sure neither of you knew him." He then smiled, a real smile, not that twisted knife of a smirk or the toothy rictus. It is a smile of remembrance, a smile of good times and deeds well done. "A nameless little castle in northern Ireland, made of stout stone and solid foundations, a beautiful view." He sighs as he imagines it. "Over the course of five days I secreted ten thousand gallons of diesel fuel into the castle's beautiful little underground reservoir. On the sixth day...just as fifteen night walkers, and thirty five of their servants prepared for their night. Their precious castle evaporated around them in a blaze of purest flame, the force was enough to send the castles ramparts hurtling through the air..and sending the rest into the firey reservoir beneath." He seems to move one hand like he was hearing music, lively and jaunty as he repeated the tune.

"You could see it for miles...." His gaze became normal once more, its intensity returning as he grinned. "On the seventh day..I rested quite comfortably." He then shot Flood a look and tilted his head.

"We are a team for hire sir, a team of upstarts and go getters, no master save ourselves and those who pay. We have a wonderful success ratio if you'd like to hear a list of our accomplishment's...but it might take a while to do so."

Flood

Lux seems to know something that Flood does not and in this moment he wants to ask. Wants someone to enlighten him. But to say those words might leave him aflame and this suit is expensive. The tailor that made it is long dead and his son just doesn't fill his shoes. Not yet. Needs a few more decades under his belt. Look at Kragen with his Zippo handled so easily and handed off.

And then he starts talking and Flood needn't ask to be enlightened. The tale opens his eyes as to what Kragen is more than that final summary leveled his way. A menu of services.

It tells him what Kragen is as soon as he says nightwalkers in the tone that they are others. Masterless. Never does he say independent. There is a difference.

"You're a mercenary," he says, in a matter-of-fact tone. Not like he's realizing aloud. He's setting up for his next statement: "Sir, you are capitalism in its rawest form. If the first profession was prostitution, yours was the second, and there is no anarchy in what you do. You sell a service." He stops himself.

"But a good salesman, nevertheless," he pipes in a moment after what might be considered an insult, as if to smooth it over. "The great painters were no less artists when paid for their work."

Flood glances back over at Lux next, curious as to her take on it, to see how she will react to what he says.

Lux

He talks of fire. Of castles, burning -- immolated. Ash and nothing, and Lux who is breathing, Lux ceases to breathe, forgets it. Lucky Kragen. He's got representatives of two Sects for the price of one impromptu meeting.

"Very bold," Lux agrees (?), and then stands. The chair-legs scrape against the patio ground, a small sound of protest. "Do let me know when the late-summer early-fall catalogue's ready for the mail, hm?"

Pivot, toward Flood. Hand with cigarette in front of her mouth, other hand on the back of her chair, she leans forward to say, "And you." A brief pause. "When will we stop snatching a handful of minutes together, and make it an hour instead?"

Lux

[Eh, for the kicks. Last manip + subt of the night!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Kragen

[Per+Subt]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Flood

[ Perception + Subterfuge because why the Hell not. ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Flood

[ Tie! ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Lux

[ -_- ]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Flood

[ ... ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Lux

[ >_< ]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 9) ( success x 1 )

Kragen

Lux stands, and Kragen...for his part sees it as an end to this meeting. So he reaches into one of his pockets and pulls out two cards, spreading them out, one towards Lux, one towards Flood, one can have no doubt that upon it is a number to call, perhaps a name, but more then likely just a simple, abstract symbol, and the word Dogwood under it.

"We do our best, simply let it be known that Dogwood is very interested, and very...very eager to lend its services in the coming transitory timeframe." He looked at Flood and shrugged as he rose, cranking his neck to one side as he straightened his suit.

"Perhaps....but then Philosophy was never really my strong suit. Good evening, do enjoy the stars, I know I always do." At that Kragen turns on a heel and is off through the patio, he almost shimmies, even dances slightly as he goes.

Strange nights lay ahead....perhaps now they would be just a little bit stranger.

Lux

Lux despises the ghoul; it is sheathed. Lux also truly does wish to catch-up (conditional [cautionary]) with Flood for an hour, though it's not without a lick of wariness.

Flood

"Let's meet where Jack use to do wheelies on his motorcycle. They're still open. Call it Friday?" Flood ventures a recollection to ages past and puts a date on it, trying to leave it vague enough that ears listening in who don't share their collective history won't be able to pin the location down.

He says this as he nods to Kragen, taking his card and giving him a nod of thanks. "We'll have to discuss rates. I contract out now and then. Mostly then, but one can never keep oneself too sharp," his reply as the three part ways, Flood heading in a different direction once he's down off that patio. Veering off 16th Street and then Northward toward Union Station.