Scene #9475: A Blood-red Night

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Petra Soroka	The Backstreets of District 23 are a hellscape even by the standards of the City, or so the common wisdom goes. Cannibals roaming the streets, murders happening in every alleyway, a carnival of human suffering that even the residents of other Backstreets speak about in tones of glee and horror-- 'at least we're not there'. In reality, of course, it's still the majority of the District, with millions of people who live their lives without being murdered at all. People go to work, have families, hold potlucks with their friends, decorate their apartments for holidays, and do all the things that life is made of; and to the people living there, all the 'danger' of District 23 is is a habit to avoid certain places, at certain times, and more than likely, you'll be fine. This is one of those places. At two in the morning, only an hour before the Sweepers inundate the streets, no one decent is found outside of their homes. Flickering streetlights and boarded over windows, dripping moisture down the brick walls that's uneasily dark in the shadows; for the people who live here day to day, this time of night doesn't exist. For the Syndicates, the killers who delight in killing, the Rats scrounging up what scraps they can outside of the light, and the monsters, this is the time of night where all of their leavings will be gone by morning. One of them is a corpse slumped against a wall on a side road almost dark enough to be invisible. The inside of the victim's head is painted across the wall behind it, making it totally unidentifiable, and the flow of blood has by now slowed to a trickle that mixes in with the rain puddles on the brick. Hunched over it is another shape, half obscured by the shadows of the buildings to either side, with a squirming mass of metal that catches gleams of light as it roils around. Cr-clack. R-r-r-riiiiip. The corpse's collarbone gives way under Petra's jaws, and a jerk of her head tears away a strip of muscle down its chest. Both of her hands snap up from where they were digging into the corpse's shoulders to cram the meat down her throat, blood-bubbles foaming up around her lips as her throat spasms to force down the fist-sized chunk of flesh without chewing. When she does, she affords herself a few seconds to heave gasping breaths with her esophagus clear, shuddering and with her pupils blown wide, before diving back down to tear at its neck forcefully enough that the body scrapes sideways against the wall.
Angela	You have ''two'' blocks of cannibals and suddenly that's your whole District. Before the Abnormalities of L Corp, before the Distortion, before the Backstreets of Cuisine--there were still those who thirsted of blood. A nurse with brown hair pulled back in a loose bun, wearing a yellow jacket and black slacks, walks her way down the road. she is unarmed, so she seems like the sort of person who especially shouldn't be walking down this road--but she doesn't seem to be particularly stressed about it. Nor, as she approaches the corpse and the Petra at two in the morning, does she seem particularly perturbed. She shows no claws or fangs, just yet. So focused is Petra on her meal that the nurse gets closer and closer until her feet are near just a bit of blood that hasn't been wholly submerged by puddles, which her feet are instinctively avoiding. She holds up her finger and then leans forward, her face entering Petra's peripheral vision. "I don't think my skills as a nurse are going to do much good here." She says. "I've heard so much of you, but nobody mentioned your appetite, poor dear." She runs the finger across her lips, smearing it with the blood from her finger then presses her lips together before pouting them back out. "You must be starving, to be so desperate in your bites." A bit of moonlight hits her, her eyes glowing scarlet in it. "But you traipse over water so easily." The nurse murmurs. "What sort of monster are you, friend? Made or born?"
Petra Soroka	It takes so long for Petra to notice the woman in the corner of her vision that she can just linger there as long as she wants until she starts to speak. When the first words leave her mouth, Petra startles and jumps like a cat, skipping a frame to shoot upright, the morphmetal tendrils on her back lashing around to menace a lattice of needlepoints at the woman. Coated in blood from her chin and cheeks down, soaking her chest and the cuffs of her sleeves, Petra reaches up with the back of her hand to hide her mouth as if that'll conceal anything. Heavy breaths are hot and ferrous, quickly drying out the blood on her hand into a tacky mess. "I've heard so much of you, but nobody mentioned your appetite, poor dear." "Heard about me? Why?" Petra narrows her eyes at Elena, intuitive processing leading to her disguise making her look more dangerous, not less. "You're...." After her precognition causes her to skitter upright like a nervous animal, her stance quickly weakens as her interrupted hunger catches up to her. Like a feverish flash, when several seconds pass in a row without any more meat to eat, her body is wracked by a shiver as her skin beads with cold sweat. Her stomach seizes with a cramp and her knees tremble, simulanteously so full that it sends shooting pains up her chest and still so hungry that her vision swims. Petra's mouth droops open to suck in more of the smell of blood on the back of her hand, and then she chokes and gags. "What sort of monster are you, friend? Made or born?" Petra weakly shakes her head, trembling getting worse. "I'm-- not-- both, I guess. But I'm managing." She swallows. "You're a bloodfiend. I've never met one of you in person."
Angela	Elena could've just bitten down and that would've been it. But she sympathizes with the hunger. She smiles, mouth open enough to show a fang, but it doesn't linger. The disguise is a good enough one that it isn't free for Elena to slip free of it. "We have a mutual acquaintance. Actually, not so long ago, I would have been his enemy but we share a certain hope now. A man who can't stand the silence." ''Several seconds pass in a row without any more meat to eat, her body is wracked by a shiver.'' "Ahhhn... I interrupted your feast. But I promise I won't steal your kill. I'm not that desperate... Anymore." She raises her hand and pushes one of the tendrils out of the way so she can duck around and move around them to approach Petra, feet still avoiding the deeper puddles. ''I've never met one of you in person.'' Elena exhales through her teeth. "...It's because we are zoo animals managed by the bigger zoo animals. We are legal citizens of The City. So long as we mind our bloodlust. So long as he temper our hunger. So long as we keep our families nice and small. A fate given to us by traitors and cowards." She sighs. "...We did not ask for this hunger, yet we are expected to temper it. Ah, you might think, that is normal--yet humans can kill a thousand others and be lifted up as--" She wrinkles her nose in disgust. "--heroes. But a bloodfiend does so? Their own mothers and fathers will send killers after them." She lowers her head, pushing it forward into Petra's view again. "Would you like to share my table? If this is not enough? Do not go to bed half starved on my account. I'd consider it my pleasure." A third individual starts hobbling into view, a vacant-eyed man, eyes bloodshot as he hobbles heedlessly into view. Elena beckons him forward with a hand and he obediantly walks up beside her. Blood is covering his arms and legs, partially hardened. An ancient technique, not her own. "My name is Elena. But they used to call me The Blood-red Night." It's a legend in the City, one of the most recently fallen(?) Stars of The City, though the how of her fall is unknown to this world. "I have no home with the Bloodfiends anymore. We have philisophical disagreements." She cups the man's chin and then throws him forward towards Petra.
Petra Soroka	Each heartbeat passes Petra like a stuttering keyframe, blood thudding in her ears as motion seems to happen in leaps and blurred lines. If it'd been someone else, some random Syndicate goon thinking she'd be easy prey, Petra didn't have a doubt in her mind that she would've ripped them to pieces without a second thought, but when Elena brushes the Silver aside, it drifts through the air with no resistance at all. She can walk right up to Petra, pink-faced and hot to the touch, with a trail of sweat carving pink lines through the blood on her cheek. "But I promise I won't steal your kill." Needy and thoughtless, the first word that crosses Petra's lips is, "Promise?" "...We did not ask for this hunger, yet we are expected to temper it." What dimly floats across Petra's mind is, 'Oh, Rita would hate you.' What comes out of her mouth is instead a nasally whimper, throbbing obsession through which Elena is only visible as a smudge, as she takes one shivery sidestep towards the corpse again. "If Argalia sent you, th-then, can't I get back to...." The moment Elena affirms that she isn't stopping Petra, the morphmetal tendrils whip into motion, whistling through the air to just barely arc around Elena instead of passing through her. They snap like elastic around the arm of the corpse on the wall and RIP it off, bone splintering to pieces, bringing it to Petra's hands, and only a moment later, her mouth. The skin-crawling sensation of cramming ghoulishly-cooled fingers, stiffening in their curls from rigor mortis, down to the back of her throat so that she can close her teeth around the wrist, is overriden entirely by the need to swallow. And then, she can talk normally again. As normally as she can while blood and bile spit up from the back of her throat from her stomach's seizing attempts to reject what she's doing. "If Argalia wants you, are you a Distortion? That's the only hope I can imagine you sharing. I haven't known him to be super interested in..." A cough and a heaving few breaths, "... Bloodfiend liberation." "My name is Elena. But they used to call me The Blood-red Night." Petra's eyes widen slightly. "I know you. The Star of the City." In that moment, dripping limb in hands and blood running down the corners of her mouth, Petra has to wonder what rating she'd end up with, if some poor soul walked by and assumed she was a bloodfiend. This circumstance calls for a certain attitude adjustment. Normally, recently, Petra would avoid her habit of meditatively breathing to flood herself with the scents and intangible atmosphere of the scene around herself, when that might risk getting caught on the smell of blood. Now, though, that's what she wants. After a short pause where Petra closes her eyes and breathes, they open again, and gold meets scarlet without flinching. "Thanks, then. So, if you're gonna wine and dine me, what is it you were sent for? What's a fallen Star want with me?"
Angela	Elena leaves the man she brought on the floor for now. ''Are you a Distortion?'' "Mm... Bloodfiends are similar to Distortions, but we are not Distortions. I haven't heard the call of ''that'' Sun. Similar enough for Argalia, I suppose. The Elders go back millenia." She exhales again. "But I am still aberrant. Most Bloodfiends cannot disobey their parents without ... particularly extreme stress. The parent is in charge of the children in imitation of family." Yeah Rita probably wouldn't like Elena. "Argalia has a way to feed the Library. And the vengeance of another recent recruit--Jae-heon. You've heard of the Warp Train? The secret of the Warp Train is more monstrous than any vampire. Our target will be the people in the First Class Cabin, the ones blissfully dodging the Train's true nature." She quirks her head. "Have you ever hijacked a train before?" She'd love to make sure Petra was seen as a Star. "I have an apartment here. I've had to live low for a while. You can clean up and get a fresh set of clothes."
Petra Soroka	"Mm... Bloodfiends are similar to Distortions, but we are not Distortions." "Oh. So you're an 'outside hire'. Like me, sort of." Petra doesn't really believe any of that about bloodfiends being 'similar' to Distortions. Bloodfiends are notoriously 'part' of the City, not just in the way that Elena means it, but in the way that Elena wants to be, too-- like Lilian said, the self-interested, amoral, and cannibalistic are meant to rise up in the ranks here. As bad of an opinion as Petra has of Carmen, she can't really consider 'that' to be like the Distortions in any way-- meaning, more likely, that Elena is a contact of Argalia's. Petra frowns slightly, readjusting her expectations of the company the Blue Reverberation keeps. Colors are fucking weird. "But I am still aberrant." "Mwomen lub to be abberant," Petra mumbles, mouth full with gnawing through the forearm of a corpse. She swallows, forcing down the blood and meat like desperate gulps of air, but her stomach finally rebels against her. Abruptly, she swivels away from Elena and hunches down facing the wall, making squelchy gagging noises as her esophagus spasms around the chunk of flesh in her throat. A morphmetal tendril whips around to scoop up her hair and hold it behind her head like a scrunchie, moments before she retches up a stream of blood and undigested human flesh. She can barely get through coughing before she's back to the rest of the arm in her hands, gagging down bites even though she can't keep them down. "Argalia has a way to feed the Library." "Mm. I am that way." More specifically, the Invitations, from Angela, are. Elena not being a Distortion, and also giving off truly horrible vibes, means that Petra has to hope that she isn't told about Angela-- and Petra is the distribution method. "The Warp Train?" Petra's face shoots up, staring at Elena. "So, what, this is just a convenient revenge quest against Warp Corp, and you're roping me in to feed the Library along with it? Believe me, I am down to fuck over Warp Corp." "Have you ever hijacked a train before?" Petra swipes a hand through her hair, leaving fingerstreaks of blood on her ear. "You're talking to an expert at hijacking trains, Madame Blood-Red Night. What do you know about the details on the Train? I have some guesses, but I'm mostly in the dark about their Singularity." "You can clean up and get a fresh set of clothes." Petra smiles wryly at Elena, gesturing to the 70% of her one corpse that's still remaining. "Still an hour left until Night. No reason to change when I'll just get dirty again, but I'll swing by when the Sweepers come if you don't mind." Folding her arms and tilting her head, Petra has one last question for the monster that, until just now, she was pretty sure had been killed. "What about you, though? I have a grudge against Warp Corp. Sounds like Jae-heon does too. Is it bloodfiend-related tech? Was it someone at Warp Corp who made you fall? Or is this just, like, wanton violence you'll have the chance to do from relative safety, to build back up some of your strength?"
Angela	What Elena thinks about herself that she sees as 'similar' to a Distortion might just be her opinion rather than a comment on the metaphysics or origin or anything like that. To her, they are both entities that used to be humans and then became something else and The City might not banish them from its sight but that doesn't mean they're approved of. She undoubtedly has no insight into Carmen. In a way, maybe even Argalia doesn't. He wasn't there. And neither was she. When Petra turns around, she takes a moment to suck on her finger. She wasn't expecting the blood and flesh to come back out. Sure, there's a new fiend here and there who try to resist their new instincts but they don't usually puke it back out. ''Believe me, I am down to fuck over Warp Corp.'' "And I am down to fuck over the people benefitting from this current order, I hope Warp Corp is just the first." ''What do you know about the details on the Train?'' "The train is actually... Barely using Warp Corp's Singularity at all. 'Warping' is actually a pretty old Singularity that's long since gone public. Warp Corp's Singularity is the ability to designate a sort of 'save point' that they can revert people back to--at least, that's according to Argalia. Whether the 'Sun' told him or he always knew, I couldn't say. They put people on the train, and it travels--mm--actually very inefficiently in a whole other dimension for up to thousands and thousands of days, preventing them from dying, going hungry, or anything like that--and then revert them back to who they used to be none the wiser." Elena's eyes glow faintly, a sign of irritation and anger but she decides to let that horror stand on its own. "Wings have used us before." Elena admits. "But no. Wing Corp hasn't done anything to me. I just despise the Head's laws binding me. It's as simple as that. Jae-heon...Well, that's his story to tell." ''Wanton violence you'll have the chance to do from relative safety, to build back up some of your strength?'' "Mm...Maybe a little. I certainly would like to see those people who treat us as vermin to writhe on the ground. But we shouldn't need to be there too long. Since we're hijacking the train, no?"
Petra Soroka	"Warp Corp's Singularity is the ability to designate a sort of 'save point' that they can revert people back to--" When Elena just starts explaining Warp Corp's Singularity right here in the middle of the street, Petra's eyes widen and she quickly looks around. The Silver flows down and flattens into stairs, and Petra hastily climbs up to peek over the rooftops for anyone that might be listening in. Not seeing anyone, she brushes her fingers against the surface of the Silver and grabs a ratbot from Qetra's hand, releasing it up into the air to patrol the area. The stairs melt away, carrying Petra back down to the ground lightly. "That's-- I had thought something along those lines, but the exact opposite temporal relationship. I can use that, though. Thousands of days? That's, what, maybe a decade at most?" Petra starts gnawing on her thumbnail in thought, and then gets distracted by sucking the caked-on blood off of it. "Ten years might be long enough for me to figure out how their Singularity works, given what I already know. I've got some other resources at my disposal that'll help with actually taking advantage of it, depending on what goes on there. If the Warp Train works in such an obviously bad way, then that'll be a deathblow to W Corp, though I'll need more than one." "I just despise the Head's laws binding me." Petra leans back against the wall, smiling at Elena. Gripping the severed arm by the bicep so that the stump of a forearm flops to the side limply at the elbow, she bites another chunk out of it with the sickening crrrrrsh of splintering bone. "Well. I think we'll get along great, then." "But we shouldn't need to be there too long. Since we're hijacking the train, no?" Petra shrugs. "Hey, I can ride out a decade or two if I need to. I've done worse. The Invitations should work to teleport the people inside out, but you're not gonna want to take one-- they're a contract, you know. But," The morphmetal whistles through the air to swipe through the corpse's other shoulder, severing flesh and bone like tissue paper. Petra tosses it into her free hand, then holds it out to Elena with its wrist held between her two middle fingers like an offered wine glass. Smiling, "How about we talk about this more at your place? My treat."
Angela	"There's a way out if we need it." Elena says. "But we'd rather not rely on her." She'll tell Petra about Argalia's connections with the Purple Tear later. Honestly, she wasn't expecting to get along with Petra at all. Her understanding of Petra before now was so different from what she's seeing now. Is this something that Petra had always hidden away? Partially yes? Partially no? Not even Argalia knows about it, does he? ... Well, he has that Sun whispering to him--maybe he does. Having a near-City-omniscient Voice giving you tips must feel like the world is on easy mode. And that's to say nothing of what he already was. ''Hey, I can ride out a decade or two if I need to.'' Elena is practically a baby as far as how Bloodfiends are concerned--she's largely powerful because of a lack of restraints, rather than because of ancient experience or ancient powers. ''Petra offers a dead man's wrist like a wineglass.'' Elena lifts up her head, tilting her chin up at the offer. "I said I wouldn't steal your meal, but if you offer it freely." She dips her head, swinging her hands to the side as if she's greeting someone at the ball. She must have feeded recently, because she takes that offered wrist-glass as if it actually IS a a wine-glass, or perhaps even a goblet, and tilts her head back as she guzzles it down. Some of it drips down the side of her mouth but she might be doing that intentionally for the vibe. She wipes her cheek clean anyway and licks her wrist clean like a cat. ''How about we talk about this more at your place? My treat.'' Elena says, "A wonderful idea. My place has space for company." She offers Petra her arm. "Best to avoid Fixer patrols, this far from where our appearances would be unremarked upon."