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Tweak says, "wow, fantastic baby"

Bellum Letale Tempus (bellum_tempus) wrote in bellumlogs,
@ 2010-06-24 11:21:00

Entry tags:

plot: tempus, plot: xi

Russia, Day 4
Who: Group Xi
What: Dinner for the Grand Duke
Where: Alexander Palace
When: Day 4 (OOC, this will probably be open through the weekend)
Warnings: Could be anything. It's a party post.
Notes: Put your character's location in the subject line!

Dinner is an opulent affair.

The formal dining room has place settings for all scheduled attendees. Darcy and Helena are seated at either side of the Grand Duke, who keeps taking liberties with his hands that everyone at the table can see (including Vlad). The dinner is informal, and parties can dine at their leisure while enjoying the other activities of the evening.

The ballroom is chandelier lit for the evening, and an orchestra plays formal dance music, though the collection of nationalities present means that anyone can dance without standing out (as long as they're appropriately attired). There are curtained alcoves off the ballroom that afford some privacy for those so inclined. Lvov will stop his spies periodically, reminding them of the price of betraying him, while Pavel will be watching Joanie from a distance throughout the evening.

[Guests: Helena, Darcy, Vlad, Luther, Joanie, Nicky, Ella, Tegan]

Palace employees are all working the evening of the dinner/dance, and they have access to clothing in the guests' rooms (should they want to crash the festivities), and to the entire palace (should they want to work).

[Palace employees: Oliver, Will, Sam, Rosalie, Jane!Vaughn]

Outside the palace, the mob has seen Vlad, and they remain convinced he's Rasputin and that Jane!Vaughn and Ella are his witches. Even Alexandra seems to feel the same way, as she keeps drawing him aside and whispering to him. The mob is also still in pursuit of a Beast and a Tiger. Therefore, our village-hangers-on have been forced to hide in and within the palace, to keep from getting pitchforked. This group better sneak a bath and some clothing if they want to enter the palace proper.

[Hiding in the Palace: Daniel, Sebastian, Lily, Bernadette ]

[This is a party style thread. Put your character's location within the palace in your subject line. Have dinner, mingle, dance, sneak into one of those alcoves, go take a bath in a huge claw-foot tub, steal clothes, eat the Grand Duke for hitting on your woman, have fun!]

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Re: Outside the Palace

tiger_says_rawr
2010-06-27 07:50 pm UTC (link)

And now things had gotten even more insane, if it were entirely possible. Something had to be done because, hello, McFly! Pretty soon the sun would rise and the s00per powerful vampires, vampire harem/cheerleaders, witches, and beastly animals would turn back into pumpkins. Or pithy humans, rather. And then they would all be fucked sideways.

Sam was about ready to suggest that they make like a tree and get out of here when the largest fireball he had ever seen came barreling toward them all, toward the lifeless peasants and living ones (that weren't going to be alive for much longer) and toward the tiger he was currently letting drive. Oh shit. He was dead. So very, very dead.

This is how your darling venus fly trap of a woman thanks me for saving her pathetic life??! Shere Khan roared, and his vision went red. Not just red. But angry, vengeful, and he was seething so badly he probably shot a few fireballs himself, straight from his retinas.

RUN! Sam yelled, twisting and turning and trying to find a way to escape, just out of instinct, but he was trapped in the tiger's mind and they were both going to be turned into charred s'mores. He never thought his last moments would be like this. Well, way to make a dramatic exit. He was going to be burned by the flames of Hell, because that's where he belonged. At least Joanie was going to live. And Ella, and Tegan. There was some consolation there, even if this was like a bad episode of Powerpuff Gurls/Gurl Powah!! gone horribly wrong.

Fortunately, tigers were fast runners - only slightly slower than a cheetah, which was the fastest cat in the world. They could also leap ten feet in a single bound, being naturally great jumpers. Shere Khan was about to demonstrate all of this, and he took off like a bat out of Hell. Only the end of his tail caught fire, and Sam didn't even want to imagine how badly that would hurt in the morning - for him. It would probably be a nice tramp stamp burn on his lower back. Right now Shere Khan sounded like a train wreck of pissed off t-rex dinosaurs with all of the snarling he was doing. He ran at breakneck speeds, leaping over the stupid fucking metal barriers like an Olympic gold medalist on crack and then when he spotted a clearing of snow he hurled himself into it to put out the fire. There was a hissing around, both from the tiger and from the squelched fire, but at least they were alive.

Check, please?

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Re: Outside the Palace

vespertine
2010-06-27 10:06 pm UTC (link)

She was glad Sebastian was here to help her. Him having been here since before any of this occurred acted as a cognitive anchor. So lovely and helpful to Lily... and Lucy.

But, entirely aware of how very brilliant John Seward was and not wont to believing fibs, she still persisted to ignore his acknowledgement of her condition and even her identity. Though her unintended slip of his name had hinted otherwise, she relentlessly sunk her claws into the act of obliviousness and clung to it.

Lucy could feel John's blood sticking to her forearm and biceps as she aided him. There existed a naughty little instinct to delight in savoring some of it, right in front of him, just for a scare. To see his reaction. There was even still a bit left over on his face... it was quite a feat not yielding to the temptation to taste it. The villager was discarded and abandoned early before she'd had her fill to... was Helena still nearby? By the fires? Was that even Helena? The way she'd moved, it was so swift and precise... was it even her at all?

"My apologies, sir." She'd daintily spoke to keep her mind from rampantly sprinting off, the words powdered and clothed with sugar. Any vulnerable tooth nearby surely fetched a cavity from their delicateness unassumingly. "We can watch the fire from here. The snow may slow it. Let's bring you to somewhere safer than out in the open, hm? Where have you been hurt? You'll have to tell us what to do--" No! You don't know that he's a doctor, silly girl! "... what we can do; how we can make you more comfortable."

The noise of the fire bellowing and people shrieking drown out the sound of the tigers resonating roar, but not the sight of it getting away. It was closer to them than the fire was. At this point, nothing surprised her. And could she not recall that tiger from earlier... ?

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Re: Outside the Palace

thimbledarling
2010-06-27 10:54 pm UTC (link)

It was dark. Tegan was moving. She was held in someone's arms.

Her throat was on fire, her lungs ached, and she could smell smoke.

Her body was cold, but her feet felt tender and hot.

Her arm throbbed from wrist to elbow.

Sound rushed back all at once, along with a shaking gasp that threw her into a fit of coughing more painful than anything she could remember. Between her own choking coughs, she could hear screaming in the distance and the sound of wind whipping by her.

If this was a nightmare, she wanted to wake up.

Instead, between one cough and the next, practically gagging on air while trying to catch her breath that never quite came as it should, the world began to fade out again.

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Re: Outside the Palace

bookshelved
2010-06-27 11:10 pm UTC (link)

Beauty was safely in the cover of a very unnatural collection of trees, and on the floor was Joanie, withe Tegan held against her, and Mina, who Beauty hoped didn't decide to eat anyone now that they were locked in together. The tree trunks were thin, but sturdy, and they circled them completely. In the center, as they were, none of the villagers could get to them, and they had not managed to get any torches between the tree trunks yet, thanks to the leaves fending them off.

The smoke from the crowd was thick in the air, and she crouched down and dug her hands into the cold snow again. They were going to freeze to death out here, she realized, in their burnt dresses, and even the grass she'd grown underfoot couldn't keep the people outside the circle of trees alive and safe. And there was the matter of injuries - all bloodied and all burnt - they'd be lucky to survive the night.

She sat down on the grass, and she ran a hand over Joanie's arm reassuringly, then over Tegan's hair, and she listened for sounds she had only just learned - the growl of the tiger, the cry of the vampire - and the very familiar sound of her Beast.

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Re: Outside the Palace

old_fashioned
2010-06-27 11:32 pm UTC (link)

It wasn’t quite adrenaline that spurred Mina on, more like extreme desire for preservation, for both of her selves. She didn’t like what she was, staunchly maintaining that she was a monster, that shouldn’t exist, and if there was no cure for her condition, then she should be eradicated. But there was a world of difference between a merciful stake by Van Helsing, or her husband, or someone she trusted, and the sharp end of a peasant’s weapon in the middle of Russia.

Carrying Tegan was no trouble; the girl’s weight felt like nothing in her arms. The same went for the other woman’s contraption, her requests to lift the heavy stake, light it, and send it hurdling down to the villagers were also easy enough. In another time – it felt like so long ago – Mina might have had unkind words for her. Witchcraft was something she never thought she would approve of, in any form. My, how times changed.

Now as she looked at the tall barriers that the woman had erected, she felt her panic ebb away. She stood staring at the fire, her dress singed and in tatters, her bare legs unbothered by the cold snow she stood in. And the nagging feeling in her throat return once more: the thirst. She had managed to push it aside long enough but now they were all safe, it returned tenfold. The agonized screams of the villagers by the fire made her wonder how hard their little hearts were pumping, how fast their fear would make the blood would spill. Behind this wall she could clearly hear Ella, Joanie, and Tegan, their blood flowing so furiously, their hearts enticing her with their steady song.

Her thought was cut short with the tiger leaping across the line, and watching him land in the snow to put out his fur. She was worried for a moment, such a fierce animal now with the women. But there were no tigers here, not normally, and she knew he was one of them. She didn’t have much more time to worry. If she didn’t leave she might do something more drastic.

“I’ll secure from the outside. Just in case,” she called out to her companions, and then fled the safety of Ella's trees and hopped over the metal barrier gracefully. Just in case meant a lot of things, and while Beauty knew what she was, she had a feeling the others hadn’t stopped to realize she was a danger to them as well. From the outside she could protect them as best as she could, and could keep an eye out for any more who needed rescue.

Mina dreaded the thought of any stray villager coming close to their makeshift stronghold. Dreaded, and maybe... hoped. Just a little, and not without guilt. Her thirst would only grow otherwise.

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Re: Outside the Palace

wickedwicker
2010-06-27 11:55 pm UTC (link)

The further they ran, the less Joanie felt. Running and performing magic on the fly, having to create strong barriers as she went, was taxing. She could feel her strength faltering, her hands shaking, but she pressed on because she had nothing else. If she stopped, she might shatter. She might realize that she had just lobbed a ten foot long pole that was on fire into a mob of living human beings that included residents of her own apartment building. She might actually confront the fact that she had nearly died, or that she had been beaten at the hands of anonymous faces that she could neither remember nor forget.

Seeing Shere Khan streak along beside them before diving into a pile of snow barely registered in her mind. She was focused on just moving, though that focus broke the second Ella created a little sanctuary for them.

She sank to her knees, expression blank, as she watched the vampire woman lay Tegan down with Ella. After saying a few words, the other woman left, and Joanie barely reacted. Her gaze shifted to Ella's hand on her arm, and she stood, knees shaking slightly. "I can make us some blankets," she said, tone quiet and even. She walked over to the snow that remained, spreading some of it over the grass in a large rectangle. Running her hands over the icy crystals, she slowly turned the blanket of snow into a warm blanket that would keep them from freezing. She made a second, then a third, feeling the sweat run from her temples as she picked them all up and carried them over to Ella and Tegan, sinking down beside them.

"Here," she said, giving them both blankets. She helped Ella wrap Tegan up in one before giving one to the other woman. Draping the last around her own shoulders, she shifted to sit cross-legged, tightening her fingers in the blanket. Her hands were trembling visibly now, body shaking with both cold and exhaustion. Though her eyes felt heavy, she looked to Ella. "I'll stay up," she said. "Just in case."

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Re: Outside the Palace

tiger_says_rawr
2010-06-28 12:37 am UTC (link)

Well, this was just peachy. And was that...Helena, the woman who liked saving baby seals? She was...what the hell was she? Shere Khan silenced Sam's groggy ramblings - the human's voice was getting on his nerves, he was just worried about Joanie - and stood outside the makeshift shelter as well, pacing back and forth. Back and forth. His paws were sore and bloody, his sides hurt, and his tail was burned but he wasn't going to stay with the human girls and sleep. Especially not with the green one, who should never be allowed to play with matches. And he certainly didn't care if Sam changed back, bruised and completely naked, in the morning and ended up freezing in the snow. Ridiculous ape.

So he continued to pace, snuffing out of his nose occasionally, watching the forest for any movement.

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Re: Outside the Palace

veridicality
2010-06-28 12:59 am UTC (link)

He moved along side them like he was half-there, feeling as though it was simply a dream world he had lost himself in. But there was Lucy, sweet, wonderful Lucy, though she refused to acknowledge him. And why should she? Arthur was much more suited for the young lady, but here she was, holding onto him.

"It's okay. It's..." John let out a breath, trying to focus despite the way his vision continued to swim. In the forest, he could spy others he recognized, and one arm lifted, pointing in that direction. "Over there. There... there are others. I recognize them," he managed to get out before he started to slump, and distantly, he could recognize the signs of shock setting in.

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Re: Outside the Palace

nobleblood
2010-06-28 01:28 am UTC (link)

By the time Dracula finally escaped the fiery inferno, his eyes were the color of congealed blood and burned with suppressed rage. He could have easily stood aside and let the humans be torn apart by the peasants, but instead he'd gone straight to the heart of the battle and ended up helping them. Just thinking about it made his lips curl into a sneer of disgust - never again would he lower himself to such a level. He had done as Vlad asked this once, but never again.

He'd been forced to dive into the snow like a dog in order to quell the fire, as unfortunately the clothes Vlad was wearing were rather flammable. He felt no pain, but his mortal counterpart would need a great deal of time to heal after this. For a few moments he lay pressed against the ground, listening to familiar voices and pinpointing who was in the vicinity. Then, with a frustrated growl, he got to his feet and surveyed the others. Protected by a wall of trees was the witch, Beauty and another girl he didn't recognize... the tiger was on the outside, pacing back and forth, and once he spotted Mina a mirthless smile tugged at his lips. He didn't notice Seward and the others just yet, striding forward and shaking snow from his shoulders.

"Who decided it would be a good idea to set the entire forest on fire?" He snarled, keeping a decent amount of space between himself and the makeshift shelter. The fact that he was covered in blood didn't seem to bother him one bit as he stood, arms folded across his chest with an air of scorn. The peasants had sated his hunger for the time being, and he had no intention of killing anyone here unless they made the first move.

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Re: Outside the Palace

vespertine
2010-06-28 01:58 am UTC (link)

"You poor, poor man." When she spoke, it sounded a bit more like poetry than conversation, and resembled notes rather than words. They had helped him to at least the sturdiness of the trunk of a nearby tree, so that he could choose to stand, or to sit depending on his level of comfort and pain. In either case, Lucy would have stayed by his side, cradling his shoulders still with one, adoring arm. After all, John was wearing a very delectable, bloody cologne. "I'll find your friends for you..."

Having not spared a glance yet toward where he'd pointed, she did now... and her eyes narrowed--was that the figure, the shape, the woman she thought it was? Was that Helena? A gasp shot into her throat, an icy thing which caused the warm breath afterward to barely dust the breeze.

Lucy moved away from John and Sebastian to get a better look at who she believed Lily recognized, and did she not recognize her, herself? Her hands had John's blood on them, which smudged the sides of her lips as she cupped her mouth to shout: "Helena!" as crisply, loudly, and clearly as she could. "Hel-en-a!" One last articulation, before she lowered her hands and awaited a reaction.

... and since no one was watching, as she'd had her back to the two companions she was with for the calling of who she believed was her cousin, she'd checked her sides with only her eyes to confirm her privacy. And then shamelessly collected what fresh blood was around her mouth with an eagerly curled, accomplished tongue.

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Re: Outside the Palace

bookshelved
2010-06-28 02:11 am UTC (link)

Beauty had tugged Joanie into the warmth of the blankets that she'd created and so selflessly given up, and so the three of them (Joanie, Tegan and herself) were huddled in warmth and shielded by trees and wood. She could see Mina outside the enclosure, keeping anything from getting too near them, and she reminded Ella to thank her friend for her tale's assistance and bravery.

She recognized the tiger when he neared, and she could see Dracula from here, and she could hear her Beast (who she assumed had found Jane along the way.) She worried about Nicolas, who she had not seen throughout the evening, and she worried for the man whose hand had slipped from hers in the fighting, and she would have worried even longer if the sound of villagers regrouping hadn't reached her ears. You would think they'd tired by now, but no.

She had little strength yet, and she couldn't tell who was burning up more with fever between herself and the two woman huddled close to her, but she used her remaining strength to slam the villagers back with leaves and branches from the tallest trees, and then everything went dark from exhaustion, and she couldn't be of anymore help to anyone at all.

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Re: Outside the Palace

veridicality
2010-06-28 02:57 am UTC (link)

When he was deposited at the trunk of the tree, John wasted little time in slumping down to sit bonelessly, his head rocking back to hit the trunk as he let out a soft breath. He wanted to hold on, to try and be of help again, but the darkness pulled at him and he simply couldn't resist it any loner.

And then there was only darkness as he gave in, falling to the side in the blood-stained snow.

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