Shadows and Secrets

To: Shein
From: Dmitri

Thank you.

Dmitri

About two hours later, the Raptor shows up in orbit around Rhea. Dmitri is contacted and told Lucas is on board and ready to assist with the hunt.

There's been no further communication from Shein.

The Nightwing accepts him and takes him to the surface. He's introduced to Emily Briggs, the resident vampire, and the others in the team.

Lucas doesn't seem too interested in talking. He's more interested in finding the vampires. He barely acknowledges Emily other than a brief, "thin blood," and a little growl. He doesn't look like he's going to attack or anything. It's just clear he doesn't like those who can be in daylight. Yes, there are a few on Esoteric like that, but they can't do anything else. Thin bloods are what they call them and it is derogatory. He turns to the rest of the team. "I assume you've mapped things out. Right? If so, show me where you've been and where you haven't. Also, where were the first few spotted?"

At the statement, "thin blood," she turns on a really bright light inside. Dmitri flips the switch back down before the switch could be flipped entirely. "Cut that out."

Flash Freeze points out the cemeteries and basements that they or their troops have already checked. While this was going on, Dmitri fetches an automatic crossbow with two dozen wooden bolts in the magazine. The Legionnaires with them in the craft have them, too. Dmitri himself has a Mother Box with him to port any elder vampire into the sun. Pariah is there to catch anybody who is thrown in by accident. That part of the plan is run by Lucas.

Lucas looks toward Emily briefly. "I can leave, you know. I'm here because I offered help and it was accepted. Try that again and I'm gone. These guys would eat you alive if they caught you alone. You want to catch the elders among us, you need to be one of us. Any of them you catch without us is sheer dumb luck and catching them off guard. You won't get a second chance at the same strategy. Once they know I'm here, they're going to be even more cautious or they're going to get downright reckless. The Nosferatu will become more cautious. The Toreador can go either way." He's got his bow and arrows, all wooden arrows at that. They're all tipped with metal, though some have a different color metal. Lucas turns his attention back to the briefing on the locations. "I'll want to see the cemeteries. I'll be able to tell if they were there and if so, I might be able to determine where they went if they left." He glances toward Dmitri. "Some of these guys can hide in plain sight and you'd never know they were there. Oh, and I'm estimating at least six from each clan, so twelve total. They had thirteen elders on Dreva. Eleven on Burninandom."

Yes, Lucas knows he's an irritating bastard at times. He also knows he's baiting Emily. He doesn't like her because she can walk in the sunlight. Not one of his kind.

Dmitri gives Emily a glare, too. A boom tube opens up and they're taken to a military cemetery where they leap out of the Nightwing.

Lucas walks over to the nearest solid object and touches it. He's silent for a moment, then shakes his head. "They weren't here. Next cemetery?"

To make a long sequence short, this repeats until the fifth cemetery. The Rheans might have become a little irritated with Lucas, but that fifth cemetery might change things. When he touches something, he almost immediately stiffens. When his hand falls away. "They're here. The Nosferatu." He's immediately got his bow and an arrow in hand, eyes darting left and right. "No, too bright there." He shakes his head slightly. "Now is not the time, Andrew." He raises the bow and arrow, pulling back. He moves so swiftly that likely the only one there that can actually see the individual movements is Dmitri. He's nowhere near as fast as Dmitri, but he is faster than the average person. He whirls around, letting the arrow fly. It hits something in mid-air that's revealed to be one of the ugly vampires. Nosferatu. "Be ready." He hisses at the others. "They know we're here."

The three speedsters ready themselves, crossbows cocked and ready to go. Before anything else happens, Dmitri opens up a boom tube and throws the Nosferatu through it and towards the sun. Briggs smells them, too, and starts probing for them with her mind.

(OOC: Jackie Frost was left behind to watch the ship. The two others with Dmitri are also speedsters, though not as fast, and have an added power beside speed. Mr. Olympus has lightning, Flash Freeze does ice.)

Smelling them won't be that easy since they haven't been roaming around sewers. Right now, everything smells like dirt. Including the vampires.

Lucas looks around, another arrow ready. "They're all hiding in plain sight." The corners of his mouth twitches in a smile. "Can you see them?" The question is for Emily really. He really doesn't wait for a response. "I can." A second arrow is fired and hits something. Again, there was nothing there but when the arrow hit, there the vampire is.

Lucas is hit from behind by something that sends him sprawling, at least for a second. He's turned, crouched, and snarling almost immediately. There's nothing there, but that's not stopping him from leaping. He literally lands on, well, nothing, but he's in mid air. If the situation weren't what it was, it might appear comical. Whatever he's on, he's fighting it with nothing but hands and teeth. There's no boom tubing this one away without taking Lucas with it. Not too long into the fight, the other figure is revealed as one of the Nosferatu and it's hurt bad. Lucas is barely scratched. Lucas finally seems to get a good enough hold and literally rips the vampire's head off. He crouches down and looks around the cemetery. "Yeah, you know your ash if you fight. Give up now and I might be willing to take you back to Esoteric." If it's a lie, there's no indication of it in his voice.

Two Nosferatu drop their hiding and stand from behind tombstones. They're caught by surprise when Lucas fires two arrows at them. One was one of the strange metal tipped, the other was a normal one. The strange metal tipped one causes the vampire to burn from the inside before exploding into ash. Yes, it screams.

"Yes." She stands back and watches the fight. She doesn't show any sign of being impressed by the display, but she is.

For good measure, Dmitri plucks the brain out of any vamp shot by Lucas. He vibrates his hand through, makes the part touching the brain solid, and then makes the brain not so solid and removes it. He's not sure if it does anything, but just in case.

Briggs acts now. She summons forth a stream of cockroaches at one hidden vampire and has them all bite down. Flash Freeze does her thing and freezes it solid. Dmitri grabs it and runs a few miles away before throwing it into another boom tube and returning.

Lucas is pretty quick in scrambling to a high spot. He doesn't have to shout any warnings down. He just fires arrows. Once the elder ones knew he was there, they decided to come at full force and maybe have a chance of taking him down. No such luck for them. Each one that he spots he puts an arrow through. He does glance at Dmitri. "It's the heart you want, dumb ass." He's smirking a little, clearly not meaning the insult portion of that, but he's probably serious about the first part.

As if to make it harder, some of the younger ones are forced into combat by the elders. The younger ones can't do anything but bite and scratch. The older ones start to turn on their abilities. They'd have succeeded if they didn't start screaming and swatting at, well, nothing.

Lucas does shout out from his sniper's position now. "Try not to hurt the younger ones. They don't have a choice. Get the elders. They're obvious at this point." He gives Dmitri an 'I'll explain later' look. Doesn't look like he wants to lose the younger ones as they might really be innocent in all of this.

The three speedsters do the vibration thing and start plucking hearts out of the elders. The young ones are knocked away, but not in a lethal manner. Psionic blasts and concussive lightning and whatnot.

Between the arrows and speedsters, it's over pretty quickly. Once the older ones are dealt with, the young ones seem to come out of whatever control they were under. They're all pretty stunned to have been fighting against their own people. Some of them even start apologising. If these vamps could cry, a couple would have been doing so.

Lucas drops down from his high point and faces Dmitri. "I'll take the young ones if you don't want them here. Otherwise, at least let me send someone to teach them properly. They won't be a danger if taught."

"It's up to them if they want to stay." Around half of the young choose to stay and the other half elect to go with Lucas.

Lucas nods. "May I send a teacher for the ones that want to stay?" He looks over the ones that chose to leave, then the ones that chose to stay. Regardless of the answer, he does go over to the ones that chose to stay first, if only to wish them luck, before going to the ones that wanted to leave. He finds out names, then assures them they will be well taken care of on Esoteric. They'll be with others like them and have a choice of where to live.

"You absolutely may."

Lucas nods and leaves Rhea, taking the vampires with him that wanted to go.

Not too long later, two other vampires show up. One Nosferatu and one Toreador. They make contact with Dmitri immediately. The Nosferatu is named Cassandra and the Toreador calls himself Smoke. They tell Dmitri they'll need to be there for at least a couple of years and they both swear they'll follow all local laws and they will not Embrace any others while there.

And he accepts them.

Rutianas wrote:

To: Thorgood; Jenova
From: Shein

Lucas tells me you're missing all the fun and how you missed out. Can you send me the information on what you did or maybe come get these bastards off my planet? I'll explain later. Just warn me if you do help us since we have two friendly ones here, Lucas and Esteban.

-Shein

TO: Shein
FROM: Thorgood

I'm sorry for not replying sooner, but something glitched the private mail system here. We worked it out and eventually found this message. We figured you'd have sent another message if you really needed us.

Being the one who coded the fix, I can be 100% when I tell you that it won't happen again.

What we did was locate the life signs of all the vampires on our planet, and beam them up to a time dilation field where three days in normal space time is equal to 1 second of time within the field. We then transported the vampires back to Esoteric and beamed them down there at our leisure.

Of course, if you haven't solved the problem, the same can be done for you should you want us!

Sincerely,
Thorgood

To: Thorgood
From: Shein

That must have been some glitch. The problem's been solved here. Kind of. They got to Arren. The vampires were right. They wanted him and me both. They didn't get to me. Esteban set up a trap for them and took out the one sent to get me. Arren went to track down the vampires, but he was captured. Probably the only good thing to come out of this is that where he couldn't affect them before, he can do so now. I'm not likely to make many daytime appearances anymore though.

Lucas tells me the situation is under control on Rhea as well. The older vampires there were dealt with. The younger ones were split on whether to stay or leave. Same here as well. We've got some of them still here. Lucas sent a couple older vampires to teach them. He also promised they wouldn't be a threat. The young ones are too young to know what they're doing. How they're taught now will determine how they act later.

-Shein

TO: Shein
FROM: Thorgood

Yeah, it was a big glitch for sure.

You got Arren back right?

Sincerely,
Thorgood

To: Thorgood
From: Shein

He's in the Citadel, yeah. He damned near attacked me at first, but Esteban stopped him. He's being trained by David Antares, who is one of the leaders on Esoteric. They said he jumped at me because I smelled tasty. They also said he was near starved and had almost no control over it. I've been around him quite a bit since with no problems. Esteban is still here for now teaching Arren a few things as well. They've said they're going to train him in certain abilities so that he'll end up being an even better guard for me than any other Rutian could ever be, with the exception of Esteban. I'm just hoping none of them decide I'll be a tasty snack! In all seriousness though, I've donated to Arren a couple times already. If you ever get the chance to let a vampire feed from you, you should. It's like nothing I've ever felt before. Amazing doesn't even begin to cover it. They also don't leave any kind of evidence of feeding. It might be something interesting to study, from a purely scientific perspective, of course.

-Shein

(OOC: Nothing really to say here.)

(OOC: Didn't think so. It's pretty much done here.)