Colfax is a long, long street with a long, long history and many more faces than Eve. There's the artsier district and the seedier district and where the artsy district and the seedy district overlaps. There're the patches everybody knows are dangerous where once upon a time the unhinged were loose in droves mouldering in Victorian-mansions as dilapidated as the mental scenescape of these people's minds (or so the rumors said, huh?), and there're patches where the gangs hold sway, little turf-kingdoms, little drug-wars, there are the places where gentrification is beginning to (re)set in again and the places where it's just a party isn't it and then there are the stretches where learning could happen where it isn't East Colfax because East Colfax is seedier is grungier is more saturated in the saturnine quality of despair and fuck it and jaded ennui and just trying to get ahead just trying to get your piece just trying to --
The point is this is Colfax. East Colfax. Where a creature of the Rom is in the shadows, a control, a baroness, and the night is full of monsters. East Colfax, Colfax, which eventually runs into Sloan's Lake, where ghosts of the murdered linger beneath the man-made lake (surely). This is Colfax where there are a series of warehouses used for anonymous purposes (for the purpose of anonymity, we cannot say), most of which involve 'storage,' although that warehouse over there looks like maybe it's a household appliance outlet that just never opens, hasn't been open since the 1970s.
The night is cool -- a slight breeze, leaning hard on the streets. Clouds obscuring the stars, blotting out the full-bellied gibbous moon, some clouds a-glow with that tarnished up eerie (ghastly) light but where is the light there is no light -- there was thunder not fifteen minutes ago, though no rain (yet), if indeed it is going to rain here.
Slaughter is a dark-haired woman sitting cross-legged on the hood of her volvo outside one of the warehouses. The volvo a dark blue colored thing which could use a paint job or at least an automotive pasture to be released into. Corrosion is setting in; but it looks worse than it is under the glow of the street lamp which she is in fact parked just under. Her hands are purposefully shuffling a deck of cards.
KaliKali would like to believe that the's the Queen of East Colfax. She certainly gives that impression in everything she does. She walks around like she owns the place, she talks about it as her turf, she fights over it and her little underlings spread their influence far and wide. She operates her strip club within its confines. Quite simply, Colfax appears to most people like it is her territory and she wouldn't have it any other way.
The truth is, perhaps, a little different. Her hold on the neighborhood isn't quite as rock-solid as she lets on. She is a power to be reckoned with, of course. But she's more like a warlord amongs others, fighting for dominance over a patch of desert. The biggest and baddest warlord? Probably. But a warlord nonetheless.
Still, that's neither here nor there right now. The point is, Colfax is the place that she acts like she owns, and that explains her walk down the sidewalk. Confident, with a little bit of swagger. Kali enjoys walking through Colfax, learning every nook and cranny even though she's learned them before. She stays alive in part because she doesn't let herself become complacent, doesn't let the years pass by without her checking up on things. Complacency is death, much like it is with sharks. Stop moving and you sink.
She looks up as she's walking along in her heeled boots and tight red leather corset, a leather jacket over. Is it hot? Eh, she can deal. The look of the jacket (and what it conceals) is more important to her than the heat. After all, dead skin doesn't need to breathe. She notes the woman on the Volvo shuffling her cards and cocks her head curiously. After a shift of her eyes left and right, she starts making her way over to see what she's up to.
SlaughterKali slants across the street and Slaughter's cards whirr against each other, sharp as a razor in the kingdom of paper, smack smack smack, a breathless repetition, and then she shuffles them again albeit more slowly once she starts notices Kali.
Kali, goddess of death. Slaughter, definition: well you know this one, don't you?
(Auspicious meetings.)
Slaughter on the hood of her old volvo seems fairly relaxed, if purposefully alert, if one is going to read the body language which is open as a book, a page for anybody with eyes to travel. Slaughter is wearing jeans, sensible boots, a black camisole with something also black and lace thrown over. Her hair is black and her mouth is red and she is somewhere in the vicinity of her early thirties; her brows are straight, sharp, low; her mouth has lines around which might indicate a quickness to smile.
"Evening," she offers, before Kali has quite reached her. Her voice is a smoky voice, not smoke-stained because she is a smoker, but because she hasn't said anything for a while. Perhaps Slaughter has already drawn her own conclusions about Kali's line-of-work based on her clothing -- doesn't everybody?
"Taking a break?" But see, her eyes are sharp and intelligent (and her expression is tinctured by wry), as if she expects Kali to say a secret password.
KaliKali has no illusions about what most people see when they first lay eyes on her. She loves that. She lives for it. She would be so very bored if she walked around and everyone knew on first glance that she was a drug lord; no one would ever let their guard down around her. It's part of why she doesn't walk around in suits or body armor (that and if someone wants to shoot her in the chest they're welcome to it). It's all about underestimation and getting people to open up to her.
"You know what's great about working for yourself? Setting your own hours. I'm off the clock, so to speak." She grings and takes a drag off her own cigarette, watching the woman on the Volvo playing with cards. There's something odd about this, and she finds it interesting.
Interesting is always a dangerous thing for Kali, but she can't help it. Moth to a flame, as they say.
"You know, there are better places to practice your shuffling skills. You drop those, they're gonna be all over the place."
SlaughterThat isn't the secret password. There was expectation; it dissolves, or is re-sheathed, though the tincture of wry just add a little bit more to the sharp red smile and then thin out that wryness with a sense of center. Slaughter's pale eyes sweep briefly from Kali, as if expecting to see henchmen or henchwomen lurking in the shadows, focused alertness rather than caual, before they return to the young (as far as she knows [let's keep it that way?]) Rom in leather. Kali of the dark eyes.
"Then I'll pick them up," she says. "I should practice my shuffling skills," shuffle, swoosh, and now that Kali's close she can see the backing of the cards is something that looks reminiscent of Prague, Eastern European complexity and ornamentation. "I don't know any tricks; do you?"
"If you're off the clock, feel free to take a corner. If you'd like."
Kali"Oh honey," she says with a grin. "I know more tricks than most people forget. And I'm not talking about the kind that you're probably thinking of right now."
Slaughter may be looking for bodyguards in the shadows or thugs down the block, some form of dangerous protection or underlings swarming around the Rroma woman. But there are none to be found. Kali doesn't usually walk around with a lot of protection unless she legitimately feels imminent danger, and rarely even then. She's a take things head-on kind of Kindred.
She winks and puts a the cigarette in her mouth, holds her hand out. "Here, lemme see them. I'll show you some shuffling tricks that may be of use to you. Depending on what you're trying to accompliosh at any particular moment."
Slaughter"A knowing air of mystery," Slaughter says, and there's a certain knowingness in her tone, that wide hook of a smile drawing lines around her mouth and even around her eyes again. Her eyes are very still; if she is cautious, and she is cautious, it is not without a sense of restraint at odds with a sense of humor. She doesn't wink, but she says that line like it's an audial wink. "And a tempting turn of phrase! I wonder what kind of tricks you are talking about, or," humor wells up like blood; it is serene, "what kind of tricks you think I'd probably be thinking of."
As she answers, Slaughter cuts the deck of cards one more time in the palm of her hand, then hands it over to Kali. Slaughter's skin is pale but it wants to be honey-kissed, and maybe she'll get more sun this summer, but maybe she won't. The deck of cards is not a deck of playing cards, although the cards are (almost) standard size for playing cards. It's a deck of tarot, not Rider Waite, something else, and Slaughter adjusts her position on the hood of the volvo, sneaking her phone out of its resting place between her legs to briefly check the time, then resting her hands on the ankle of one of her boots, ready to watch and to learn.
Tricks.
KaliKali only needs a moment's glance to recognize the Tarot, and her smile quirks. It's a look that is both amused and now that much more intrigued. It's not just that it's Tarot, but that it is more than just the standard pack that you can buy in any book store in the country. She takes them, holds them for just a moment, and doesn't shuffle them.
There's a careful air about the way that she cradles them in one hand, the other closed lightly over the top as if to protect them from falling to the ground. Her head tilts slightly to the right, dark eyes studying the other woman curiously.
"Man, I hope you're not playing poker with these things. That could go all sorts of wacky."
She's quiet for a moment after that, eyes shutting for just a second as she concentrates on them.
[[Spirit's Touch! She wants to know what she can about Slaughter through the cards. Imagining diff of 7 or so, to be safe.]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Slaughter[Oh, oh. Perc + Awareness. Things are happening.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
SlaughterThe discipline of augury and vision as expressed through a touch through an object through the spiritual residue left behind repeated use shuffle the cards shuffle the cards and Slaughter uses the cards quite often they're well-loved they're specific to Slaughter they're personal.
Here is a vision of Slaughter for Kali: eyes open and full of pictures or cards or smoke; writing on her skin, writing scrawling across her skin, writing disappearing into her skin; the rattle of bones; here is a vision, eyes open and full of a rising moon, cards hitting a(n altar) bar-top (Grain-growing from wood [rushes thick]) light trembling shadows stretching trouble and trouble and trouble. The last time Slaughter used them her fingers were shaking; look an illuminated root labelled again and again this twist and that and she is palimpsest and now it's the moon again hammered out by a smack of card smack of card becomes tremble of light on a glass hits the Grain-wood the worm-wood rotten bar-table, where she plies her trade like a temple-priestess on the steps see.
It's all symbols; there's a crow in her hair a snake around her brow, smack go the cards, the snake is the coalesced pressure of concern and fear and trouble, a weary waiting. Ten's a magickal number three times ten is even more potent isn't it. The last time Slaughter really used the cards there was a paper mask behind which seethes true-things, see it? Shadows held back just barely: go on look.
When Kali opens her eyes again, the woman's straight eyebrows have lowered and the shape of her eyes is an unhappy one, a still one, still with watchfulness, the focused on her surroundings alertness now more yoked to Kali herself. She'd smiled to see how Kali handled the cards; the smile vanished.
"I don't play poker with them," she says. Then a brief smile; narrow. If it spread just a little more, it would be a warmth to hold the palm of one's hands to. "But then," her eyes to the cards, then to Kali, "I don't think I know anyone clever enough or bored enough to play poker with cards they don't recognize."
"They're a bit strange I know, but I find playing with them more relaxing than playing solitaire. Queens and kings and, and aces are so boring."
Slaughterooc: no, not boring. "get so tired" instead of "are so boring."
KaliFun fact that not many people currently breathing (or even unbreathing but ambulatory) know: Kali was supernatural long before she lost her life on a muddy riverbank nearly a century ago. There was a point in time that, if her interpretation of the visions running through her mind are true, she would have related quite well to the woman sitting on the car in front of her. That time is long gone now, replaced with a different kind of strength. But she still contains a vestige of it in her vitae, in the way her bloodline trades natural skill in one Discipline for another. When she opens her eyes she sees Slaughter looking at her with what seems to be suspicion and that just makes the Ravnos' expression warm further. It isn't snarky; it's appreciative. Maybe even understanding.
"A joke," she says, explaining her little witticism before. She hands the cards back to the other woman--carefully, like they're a precious thing--without shuffling them. "I'm full of those things. Other things too, for that matter. Probably not the kinds of things you're thinking."
She cocks her head to the side a little bit then, examining the woman. Taking her all in again, but a little slower. "But then again, I don't really know what you're thinking. I kind of have an idea, though. Birds of a feather, and all. Was never one for the Tarot, though. My kumpania thought they were a little too...cliche, I guess is the word. We avoided crystal balls, too. Numerology was more our style. If we wanted something more serious, maybe something a bit more visceral. Amniomancy sometimes, when the situation called for it."
A hand is then extended, warmed by her vitae. She does love giving herself the blush of health. "I'm Kali."
SlaughterThe narrow awareness (the guarded curiousity) evident in the way Slaughter looks at Kali now and the way she holds herself, her hand no longer so casual on the ankle of her boot, but braced against the volvo's hood, a quiet readiness about her shoulders -- it is not a surface: she is not quite jittery, but guarded, oh yes, but where were we? What were we saying? That guarded curiousity and narrow awareness in Slaughter's posture does not mean the wry and almost invitational quirk of her mouth is a lie any more than it means the humor in her voice is fabrification. Because it is not fabrification: she is not amused, but there is humor at hand, mostly subsumed by a rising interest.
Brief pause before she accepts her cards back. Doesn't need to look at them: her smile spreads and her eyebrows rise. Then she looks down, quick quick, up again: self-possession. Slaughter accepts Kali's hand. Of course (?) of course her own is warm; dry fire. And perhaps it isn't humor staining the edges of her expression and voice at all, but self-directed mockery - light enough to have no real bitterness.
"I'm Slaughter." Look at that. We match. "Your kumpania you say? Your people are the -- romani, is that right? I'm rather a creature of cliché," and now there is warmth in the quick bloody-red smile. "I have actually worked the hotlines. The cards are comfortable to me and getting hold of placenta, yeesh."
"But I agree wholeheartedly on the 'crystal ball' front. Cartoons ruined them for everybody. Robin Hood wasn't it? With the little fox? Conning the king. I'm sure Bugs Bunny got in on the action."
Kali"Not to mention the gypsy fortune tellers in The Wolf Man and other Hollywood bullshit debacles," she says wryly. "Yeah, pretty much everyone fucked up the crystal ball for all involved."
It's said with a certain amount of humor, because Kali's always on the verge of a joke (except when she's not, and then either you should be afraid or she is). She shrugs a little, taking a drag off her cigarette, and nods as the smoke exhales out her nose.
"You got it right, though. Rroma. I come from the Phuri Dae...we have a history of the Sight. I don't remember a time from when I didn't have it. So, the hotlines eh?" She grins. "I bet that's fun. I always wondered what it would be like working for them, knowing that I was one of the few people not faking it. Is it fun?"
Slaughter[Int + Occult. Phuri Dae, you say?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Slaughter"It can be." A pause; now, a hint of laughter (whisky crackle ice settle). "Some customers. You get some weirdos and then you get kids and then you get people who just want somebody to complain to. I suspect it's a lot like working a phone sex line, except the caller isn't quite so clear about what they want from you, or when they're finished - " she can smirk too; or at least smirk with a look with the way her eyes are steady but her mouth is this sharp little twist " - with the conversation."
"I don't regret the job. But I don't know if I'd recommend it either. Especially not to someone who actually believes in the whole thing. Did you inherit the Sight?"
Phuri Dae. The black-haired woman recognizes the name; it does something to how she looks at Kali, a subtle shift; a different kind of light. Ah hah. Fixed.
"If we're being forthcoming," Slaughter says, adjusting her position on the hood of that volvo again so that she is more comfortable, so that her boots are better planted, ready to kick off. Thunder, distant, breaks itself against the clouds; they've moved so the dim ghasty gloom glow of the moon, filtering like a Gothic novel's warning across the vault of Heaven, is not in the same configuration it was. Her eyes crinkle as if to say: are we being forthcoming? Either way.
"What did you do? You did something."
She means when Kali touched the cards.
KaliWhat did you do? That question, which would strike fear or hostility into the hearts of many Kindred, instead puts a little smirk on Kali's face. It's a delighted little gesture, and she cocks an eyebrow.
"Did I? Well, well. You really do have the Touch, as Marky Mark the porn star said." She chuckles a little bit, dropping to a crouch on the sidewalk next to the Volvo and looking up at Slaughter. One may wonder how she can do so in the corset, but she manages it with relative ease. And even remembers to pretend to breathe. It's a skill she's spent her entire unlife working on, after all.
"I inherited it, yeah. Not directly from my mother, but from her mother's mother." She gives a light shrug of her shoulders. "It's not as common as the tales people tell of my people claim. But it happens. And the two most important things about the Rom are...we survive, and we remember. Na bister, we say. Never forget.
"As to what I did..." Those shoulders lift and fall again. "What I inherited from my lineage is a bit stronger than most gifts, I guess. Sometimes it can pick up on little things, if I try. I was curious about you...it's not often you see someone wandering around with the Tarot."
SlaughterNow, Slaughter does not have an air of having 'forgotten' the cards in her hand. She is too aware of the moment to have that distracted something about her, but she looks at them again now, letting the gilt-gleam edges touch on her fingertips. Her eyes stay on Kali but her smile comes and goes again, this time without anything approaching self-deprecation or wryness.
"In the spirit of being forthcoming, I usually fake it." This not-quite-conspiratorial-wink, a self-possessed and deliberate flicker of one sooty lash, lean-forward, mouth serious. "It's just telling stories. They keep me occupied after work when, like now, I'm waiting on somebody. Since the cards are what captured your attention," she fans the cards out, face-down, "why don't you pick one?"
"But you're right. I'm not always fake. Don't know where I get it from. What was it like, learning from your mother's mother? Or people who knew your mother's mother?"
KaliSlaughter offers Kali the chance to pick a card, and the Ravnos pauses a moment, brow drawing together. It's a brief moment though, and then its passed as if it was never there. A little smile, surprisingly without any snark, lights her face.
"Well, if you insist..." She winks and reaches out for a card, drawing it forth and holding it with its face concealed from both of them for now, cupped between her hands.
"It was..." She takes a breath, thinks about her answer to the other's question for a moment. There's a look of fond and faint, faint reminiscence. Her eyes have a bitterwseet expression. "It was the only thing I enjoyed learning at the time. Because it made me different. Of course, I was told that I should keep it secret and I did, for reasons I'm sure you understand. Never told a soul. Someone told on me once though, and..."
She shakes her head, and the grinning mask of a carefree, snarky Kali comes up to cover whatever may have been able to come out. "I had to do some ass-kicking. A lot of ass-kicking. Jet Li had nothin' on me, you know?"
She then holds the card out, still face down, to her. "Why don't you see what my card is? I'm curious."
SlaughterThe phone by Slaughter's lap vibrates against the volvo's corroded (poor [let's call it what it is: shit]) metal but Slaughter doesn't grab it yet. Her phone purrs itself a centimeter from her thigh and then goes quiet.
For a woman who introduces herself as Slaughter, the black-haired wry-mouthed woman doesn't seem violent or prone to anger or too many of the pretensions one would associate with the name. Slaughter is for violence, after all. Slaughter is for sabbats all bloody and dark. That faint reminisce and whatever Kali hides with a grin --
Slaughter's gaze stays on the Ravnos (Vampire [Monster]), and she does indeed understand. Her eyes are water; they are still; beneath the surface, old currents move, remember. But it's beneath the surface: who looks there?
"The things you learn stay with you. I became rather good at finding alternate hiding places. Then the spooky persona -- well there's something about it you can use to your advantage, isn't there?" Her smile is warm even if it is the color of cooling blood; blood that's hit the air.
Slaughter takes the card. (Her phone vibrates again.) Flips it over, simply and without fanfare. "The Ace of Coins."
Pentacles. Staves and Coins instead of Wand and Pentacles. Slaughter reveals the face: a Renaissance angel with ruddy hair and gilt wings in a rocky setting, holding a golden shield, lilies growing at its feat, face serene and behind it an abundance of foliage and pomegranate trees, the light stark and full of contrast.
"Vital opportunities for material wealth, a new beginning, an auspicious plan might turn you into quite the Midas -- be bold and seize the moment. You'll roll in it; but ah, this is reversed, isn't it? Everything you gain can be lost. Something's not as it seems, there's a flaw or a weakness ready to be exploited. Take care; change comes easily. Over all, positive but with a warning."
KaliShe knows the Ace of Coins, to be honest. She doesn't practice Tarot, but she knows it well enough. But she doesn't cut Slaughter off; she wants to hear what the woman has to say, because it interests her to see how she's going to interpet this. She nods with some level of approval at the fortune teller's assessment, flicking her cigarette butt into the street.
"Positive but with a warning. That would be a nice 180 degree change of direction for my life." She says it with a chuckle that belies the seriousness of the statement, the just kidding sort of twist to her lips.
"Sounds like you've got a caller burning up the lines, and I gotta go anyway. Lot of balls to keep juggled in the air, I do. But hey..." She dips her hand into her pocket, comes out with a card that reads Rapture across the top with a phone number and address. She hands it over.
"If you ever need anything, my personal number's on the back. Call me." A little wink. "We seers have to stick together, you know?"
SlaughterThe Ace of Coins (Pentacles) is tucked back into the deck and Slaughter picks her phone up with the hand that isn't holding the deck, turns it over to briefly see what the missed message was. The phone gets shuffled against her palm so she can take Kali's business card between her index and middle finger, turn it over awkwardly to read the name. Rapture. Hunh. The people you meet.
"Thank you." And a faint laugh; faint because it's almost stillborn, a troubling of the air. "And is that how it works? I might enjoy having someone else play at interpreter next time - "
Here's that ease, again; self-possession, self-assurance, call it what you will; control. It makes it difficult to tell if she is being self-mocking or not; it's just a flavor behind the face she wears.
" - and looks like my questionable friend isn't coming to let me into his warehouse after all. It was interesting meeting you, Kali."
She offers her hand one more time. The card and her phone both find a place in her pocket because she's unfolded her legs completely and jumped (without any sign of grace or energy; she is more languid than energetic, and even that is simply more deliberate than anything) to standing.
Kali"That's how it works in my city, for sure." She grins at that, the classic Kali expression.
Slaughter says her friend isn't showing up, and Kali sighs. "That's men for you. So very unreliable. Or just chickenshits when it comes to letting you see what's inside. Well, walk safe and I'm sure I'll be seeing you around."
And with that she's off her own way, walking along and whistling a little number as she does.
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