Tensions

Kalen Holliday
[How awake are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Kalen Holliday
[How distracted by Resonance are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

Grace
Perhaps it's a bit disconcerting to find the woman who feels like an embodiment of hack-and-slash hanging up man-like dolls in order to smash them into teeny bits.

But then, they're only man-like. They don't look like vampires, not really. Their skin is whiteish grey and they smile a lot, showing off their fangs. Vampires just look like normal people. That's what makes them all the scarier.

Aside from the pinatas (one hung up in the kitchen to look like it is flying, another in the living room by the arms, and one outside) there are also sticks and blindfolds. Staves for a band of mages? How appropriate, no?

Grace is in the living room, while her grayish, black-clad victim swings from the rafters, a gummy heart already pinned to its chest. She is trying to tie a knot in the string such that it won't fall, and yet can be untied later.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen glances over the staves and smiles faintly.  "Really?"  He asks.  "I thought we were staking them?  For extra hilarity.  And fake candy blood spattered stakes.  You know you want one.  As a trophy.  But we have to varnish it or something, to keep the ants from erasing all the delicious sugary traces of your valor."

He picks up one of the staves, gives it an absent twirl, and then sets it back down.  "Although, I suppose, that cuts down on the blindfolding options."

"Though...these could be serviceable spears, with a bit of sharpening....."

Grace
"Hmm. I have the stakes too. Those are in the kitchen. I figure we can do both? Maybe break the thing with a stick and then stab it with a stake? Or we can make spears. Though handing a spear to a blindfolded person and telling them to stab at things might not be so wise.

Or it might be perfectly wise. Hand one to Alexander and have him practice how to really take a vampire down? Assuming the 'staking with wood' thing isn't just a myth."

Tied down, the poor thing swings from the ceiling, twisting a bit. Soon, your candy will flow, beastie. Soon.

Kalen Holliday
"We might want to bring them all outside to kill them.  But they can menace the inside until then."  He sighs.  "Halloween parties seem doomed around here.  But...pinatas.  We will get them.  Even if it turns out to be only us."  He taps the pinata on its gummy heart.

"Because, really.  We must."

Grace
"We must. Yes. And I do want a souvenir," Grace says, grinning like mad. Something about stabbing monsters in the chest, finding the heart... it resonates with her. Literally.

"I hope nothing happens between now and Halloween, but you know. Got to make the good memories while you can."

She goes over to grab a stick, hefts it up in fake inspection of its balance (as if she knows weaponry). "It's a good stick."

Alyssa Solomon
[[Magedar!]]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Alyssa Solomon
Truth be told, Alyssa isn't really here for the Halloween party.  Kalen may know this, but it would surprise many to find out that Alyssa isn't gaga over Samhain the way that other Hollow Ones are.  She doesn't dislike it but it is a time when the spirits are out in force and she often finds herself inundated by them.  Sometimes it leads to good things, like Molly leading her to Connor.  Other times she just finds herself irritated or worse, assaulted because Alyssa Solomon is no one's errand girl.

Anyway, the point is that she's here less for festivities than she is for reflection.  That little flap of wings and drip of blood graces its way into sensory range as she pulls her car into the driveway and kills the engine.  She's not made up today at all, looking far more like a "normal girl" than usual.  Heavy eyeshadow lines her eyes of course, but there's no foundation to pale her face, no high-heeled boots or green lipstick or colored hair.  She's dressed in an old Fields of the Nephilim shirt underneath a leather jacket, jeans and steel-toed boots as she stubs her cigarette out in the ashtray and heads to the door.

She picks up on the presence of those in the house, Kalen and Grace.  There's a little quirk of a smile and she forces it brighter.  She's not here to start anything, after all.  Putting up the mask of a smirk she opens the door and lets herself inside, calling out.

"Hollower in the house.  Hide your respectability and Tradition secrets and bring out the hard cider and heavy liquor."

Grace
[Magedar too!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Kalen Holliday
"Really, Angel?"  Kalen calls back.  "Because I thought you were probably most dangerous to the liquor."

He turns back to Grace and nods, just slightly more serious, though he still smiles.  "We do.  And it is a good stick."

Grace
Oh. Shit. Alyssa.

Well, it's not as if ever meeting Alyssa again in the flesh wasn't bound to happen. But, in a place with beating sticks handily supplied? Grace's grin disappears and her face goes paler.

It doesn't help that Alyssa's presence brings with it the scent of blood. Real blood, not the fake candy stuff in wrappers that the vampire pinatas have.

She turns to Alyssa, still holding her stick, but it seems as though as far as Grace is concerned, she's forgotten about its existence. "Uh. I have respectability to hide?"

Alyssa Solomon
"Fuck that.  I wasn't talking about what I was more dangerous to.  I was talking about how you could make me feel like a proper wannabe."  She makes her way into the living room and if she has any problems with Grace, she's not showing it.  Their little spat is far from forgotten, but at the moment at least she doesn't bring it up.  Instead Grace gets a wry smile and she shrugs, which turns into a shuffling off of her jacket.

"If you have a Tradition name that doesn't start with 'H,' you have more respectability than me."  She unclips the gun holster and sets it on a side table, looking around at the decorations.

"Looks like you guys are keeping yourselves busy."

Kalen Holliday
"Hey!"  Kalen sticks his tongue out at Alyssa.  "That...sometimes includes me when I don't feel like using alllllllllll the Names."

"And yeah.  Halloween is still on and we're still with the pinata staking.  Possibly just beating.  And some drinks.  Because...the world is apparently always about to end and we shouldn't refuse to have any fun ever.  Or...you know...life will be even more depressing."

He grins.  "And, you know, that would be bad.  I am not actually that cute in black eyeliner.  I've tried."

Grace
Grace ponders what to say for a good while. None of the options seem quite like they're too keen. Mostly they all seem to be trying to start a war over who is least respectable in the room, which, yeah. Why?

People certainly liked her a lot more before she joined the Virtual Adepts. Nobody cornered her and told her that her practices were akin to baby murder. Respectability be damned if it comes with all this political baggage.

After a while of silence, watching Alyssa and Kalen happily converse, she wanders into the kitchen with her stick.

Alyssa Solomon
She gives a snort of amusement at Kalen's self-deprecation.  "I'm gonna make you try again so I can get photographic evidence of that shit for my own personal amusement during bad says."

Then Grace wanders out of the living room into the kitchen, and she frowns, looking to Kalen.  "Okay, what the fuck did I say this time?  I wasn't even trying to be insulting."

There's a shake of her head and she goes for the alcohol.

Kalen Holliday
"I...don't even know?  Maybe she's still unnerved by the blood thing?"  Kalen frowns.  "Although, she does seem mostly over that."  He shrugs.  "I think she'll be back?"

"But.  I am trying, very hard, to do fun things.  I'm not sure how fun this will be, but it will definitely be ridiculous and Grace loves pinatas, and actually they're kind of fun.  I think laser tag will be fun, particularly if more people end up coming.  If not, we'll just beat up all the pinatas.

"You know I never went trick-or-treating that I can remember?  I'm probably too old for that, but look.  I want a Christmas tree.  I'll even let you hang little skull ornaments on it and mock me, but you should help me decorate it."

"Anyway.  How have you been?"

Grace
Once in the kitchen, she goes for the kettle under the sink. It will give her some time, and an excuse to be... you know... in the kitchen. Away from all that.

They'll hear the water running, and the stove starting, and a stick prodding at the superman-style vampire hanging in the kitchen. She doesn't want to break it yet though, so she leaves her stick on the table next to the stakes, and wanders back into the living room.

And... nope. Still nothing coming to mind that would be at all advantageous to say.

"You can hand out candy. Nobody's too old for that," she says, finally, but the glee is totally gone. "I'm making some coffee," she adds, and it comes out in a blurt. Yeah. No ulterior motive to that at all. Just randomly went to make coffee.

Alyssa Solomon
"Oh hell no."  She frowns.  She really doesn't have the patience for this right now.  Kalen's question is forgotten for now, a wave of her hand in his direction as she follows the Virtual Adept into the other room.

"Grace, I'm not even playing.  What the hell did I do that completely destroyed whatever good time you seemed having to be virtue of the sudden dying-off of banter before I showed up?"

Alyssa Solomon
[["after I showed up." Not before.]]

Kalen Holliday
Doesn't have the patience for Kalen's bizarre desire for Christmas trees?

Oh.  No.  That's maybe not why she is frowning.  And, judging by the fact that she addresses Grace then, probably not.  So he stays silent.  They can address the Christmas tree thing later.  Sure.

Grace
Stopped short, Grace blinks and rubs an earlobe. "Last time you and I talked, it didn't go so well. Like, it sounded like you wanted to track me down in real life in order to scratch my eyes out? And so this confuses me. I don't understand why you're being so cool about me being here.

"Which, I don't know, I'm just... Maybe I'm wrong?" she shrugs, and her entire countenance betrays just how lost she is. When people don't make sense, and they're people like Alyssa... Maybe outside would make a better hiding spot?

Alyssa Solomon
She stares at Grace for a long moment, with a lot of emotions rolling around underneath the frustrated surface.  There's a little tilt of the Hollow One's head, a moment of consideration.  There are many ways to respond, and some of them are ways that she wants to respond.  Others are ways she knows she should do instead.

Finally, after a couple of beats, she puts her hands on her hips and shifts her head into a tilt in the other direction.

"Do you want to get into it now?  We can.  Settle it all out, move on.  That wasn't my goal because I, like the majority of other people on this planet, am capable of being angry at people that they otherwise generally like.  I can still have major problems with what you said to me and not get into it for the moment because I would rather we be pleasant and friendly, since you seemed to be enjoying yourself.  But I'm honestly not sure if that's possible with you the way you're reacting and I'll be honest, I'm really tired of being treated like a leper by the mages around here.  So if you would rather, we can settle this out now."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen's eyes widen, just a touch.  And then he settles into a chair.  Quietly.

Grace
Well, okay. Retreating to the outdoors would be 'treating Alyssa like a leper' even if that's not the intent. So, she stays.

"People are treating you like you're a leper? I just... didn't want to get kicked, to be honest," Grace says, and raises a brow.

"Actually? I'd much rather run and not deal with it ever, because of that aforementioned not wanting to get kicked thing. But I can see the benefits of trying to deal with it now. Not that I think talking with me is actually going to work. It might make everything much worse. You haven't seen me shove my foot halfway down my digestive tract yet."

Alyssa Solomon
She sighs, and the frustration doesn't go away but she looks...a little drained.  Disappointed maybe, whether in Grace or something else.

"I'm not going to kick you, or punch you or stab you or whatever you may think I'm going to do.  I'm not someone who just goes around beating on people who irritate me.  Even when he..."

She jerks her thumb back at the living room and Kalen.

"...pissed me off over something I thought at the time was much more serious than what you did--misunderstanding though it was--I didn't attack him, whatever you may think.  I talked with him and we argued, and it was settled because shocker of all shockers, I am a rational human being.  I'm an angry person sometimes, but what went down between you and I was very different than even that.  And if I'm ever going to attack you--which I don't see happening--I will make it clear ahead of time.  I don't sucker punch people, and when I say that we'll have a conversation in person, I actually mean conversation.

"As to our dispute..."  She shrugs.  "I want to make this clear, and I'm not trying to say you don't know what you're doing.  I've been hiding from the Technocracy since I was fifteen years old and was taught about them starting at age six, before I Awakened.  When you try to lecture me about what can and can't be said over email and suggest that you know better than me because you've had friends taken down, I counter that I had almost literally everyone I knew destroyed by the Technocracy as a teenager.  I've seen other people make mistakes and die, and I not only know the stakes, I know what can and can't be gotten away with.  Suggesting that I don't is insulting, but I know you don't know my story so I'm willing to overlook that.  This is what I wanted to say to you but I knew that if we tried to have this conversation outside of a face-to-face it would just get worse and worse."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen stays still.  And quiet.  He, after all, was trained to wait and to watch by a cat.

He is not nearly so indifferent as that cat could could be, but this fight isn't his.  And, it is looking less and less like it will even be a fight.

But Alyssa hooks her thumb at him and brings him up, and he does speak, if only to soften the tone a little and give Grace a second.  "It's true," he says.  "And if she hasn't hit me yet, you're probably pretty safe unless you do something horrific.  We fought a little and then co-founded a cabal.  Seriously.  Same conversation.  She's not actually terrifying in the sense that she'll come after you without any warning or reason.

"Terrifying in other ways, sure.  But those are why I wanted her in my cabal."

Grace
Grace sighs. Okay, so this is not going to go well. There is no way this is going to go well. And the good memories will not be made tonight. When will they be?

"So, okay. Suggesting that I don't know what can and can't be done online is even more insulting, considering that it's my entire... thing. Don't you think?" Grace says, and her eyes swivel up to the ceiling, where they will stay, in her effort to forget that there are other people in the room.

"The email thing is big in hacker circles right now. They're saying about the only safe email server is one you set up yourself using your own encryption, because then you have control over the keys. That's been the buzz for about... since Spring. I'm sorry if you thought I was treating you like a child. I wasn't. I was treating you like someone who has less computing knowledge than myself, which includes just about everyone.

"You don't trust me to be able to do my job. You question my knowledge in an area I'm incredibly versed in. And I'm the insulting one? Granted, it didn't make me mad. More distrusted. Very much like a leper, and more like I totally needed to do something, anything, to gain people's trust. But how, I don't know."

Alyssa Solomon
"You're not getting my point here."  She shakes her head.  "I trust you implicitly to do your job.  As much as I trust anyone to, including myself.  But when you're talking about computers--and make no mistake, I know you're amazing at that--you're talking about a tool.  I'm talking about the people using the tool who want us dead.  Two entirely different things.  That's like saying you know what ISIS is going to do because you know how IEDs and AK-47s work.  Not the same, but very similar.  You know risks, and I understand and bow to your knowledge in them."

She puts her hands up in front of her chest, palms out to Grace.  "I get that.  But is Sleeper hackers say that's the case--and I assume you mean Sleepers because I figure you'd say Virtual Adepts or the like otherwise--the Technocracy has been able to do that kind of thing for years, probably decades.  They can track you down wherever you go if they have reason to.  And yet I'm not dead having used these tactics for years."

She sighs.  "Paranoia is good, Grace.  But you can't let it run your life.  You can't live afraid of the fact that I might hit you because I'm angry, or the Union is going to come swooping in if you used the wrong code word.  I have never doubted, nor have I claimed to doubt, your superiority over me in computers.  But please, trust that I know the Technocracy a little better.  If they have the technology to find us via a random email sent to a random email, then we might as well surrender right now.  But they don't, because we're not all dead already.

"Fear them, yes.  But don't live in fear of them.  We have to take risks sometimes in order to do what we do.  Which is help people and sometimes save them from monsters or worse."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen sighs.  "You both know what you're doing.  And you both know that.  There's nothing to fight about there.  Can we please hit pretend vampires with sticks now?"

He looks between the two of them, a bit hopefully.  "I would use more words and all, but I'm actually too unnerved by being the one suggesting we all be calm and do this party thing that I can't really do sentences.  And, unlike Alexander, I have horrible aim and no peaches to throw at anyone."

Grace
Grace turns her head over to Kalen, sad-eyed. "No."

And then, she actually looks at Alyssa while talking to her at last.

"They found me using some random text I sent to some random person. We were talking about the wrong thing. We used the wrong code words. And now he's disappeared. So they have that technology. You're saying they don't want to use it because, hey, maybe they just don't have the resources or the willingness to go after everything that goes 'ping' on their radar. All I'm saying is that they do get the pings. They have that capability. It's been used against me before.

She looks down at the ground, then, threads fingers into her messy hair. "I didn't mean to insinuate that you didn't know what you were doing."

Alyssa Solomon
She sighs, and then smiles.  "I've heard.  And I get that.  I understand.  But I worry that you live in a way that isn't really living.  Part of the reason I dress how I do and act how I do, why I became a Hollow One and not a Hermetic, is that I refused to let anyone control me or my life.  That includes myself and my fear, and my anger, and all that.  If I'm going to die--and I will, and so will all of us, one day--I want to look back and say 'I don't regret anything.'  It won't happen because I have regrets, but the biggest regrets are the ones that you could have done something and didn't."

She looks back at Kalen, then at Grace.  "We're cool, I promise.  Go hit things with sticks.  Don't be upset, because there's no reason to be.  Hit things with sticks because that's how you show your fears that you're not afraid of them.  I just came to hit up the library anyway."

She takes a couple of steps back and then pauses.  "And if you tell anyone I got all touchy-feely, I...probably won't do anything, but please don't.  Image to maintain and all."

She smiles again and then heads off toward the library, winking at Kalen as she does.

[And Hollower out!  Thanks for the scene!]