RP:Snatch

From HollowWiki

Part of the Two If By Sea Arc


Part of the A Line Drawn in the Sand Arc


Summary: Hudson has stumbled across a precious, magical gem which belongs to the seaborn. Oblivious to the gem's properties, he shops it around at a jeweler and considers turning it into a necklace for his fiance. The jeweler is an informant for the rare and magical artifact collector, Gevurah D'Artes. She makes a rare trip to the surface by day, finds Hudson in a park, attacks him, and steals the stone.

Grassy Turf, Cenril

Hudson is at some distance from the picnic-goers. It's a good day to throw a ball around, and that's what he's doing, with Alfonse from the gym. It had been a productive morning. He'd spoken with the gemologist and learned the monetary value of the stone currently residing in his pocket. Question was whether he'd sell it or mount it in some kind of necklace, for Alvina. He's thinking he should do the latter. He doesn't have a use for it otherwise. Probably because he doesn't know that it has properties beyond being the sort of sparkly object that attracts the attention of his girlfriend. Alfonse launches one a bit too far, into a picnicing family, and Hudson cups his hands around his mouth, yells, "FORE!" The ball just misses them, and he trudges over to retrieve it. "Sorry about that," he apologizes, making a rude hand gesture to Al as he jogs further away from the frontier of picnic blankets.


Gevurah has a third idea for Hudson’s gem. Shopping the gem around for appraisals landed the ballplayer in her invisible web of spies, pawn shops and jewellers being a favorite outpost for the D’Artes estate’s notorious fetish for rare and magical artifacts. Although she knows the stone is magical (information the jeweller withheld from Hudson for obviou$ reasons), she isn’t quite sure what this one can do. It doesn’t matter. Judging by what the jeweller said, the magnitude of power is enough to warrant an in-person visit. Hudson is spared the insult of a low-rank delegation of thieves. Of course, when the most senior person the evil drow organization makes a personal call, she is pressed for time. She arrives already irritable, in large part due to the sun which she abhors. (The sound of children laughing nearby also grates her.) Hudson’s ball finds her first as it rolls to her feet. Chin held high, she lowers her gaze to the ball as if it were a turd, then looks at Hudson with identical disdain. If she knew for a fact he had the stone on him now, she’d kill him and loot the corpse, but he could have left the stone elsewhere and so she must converse. (This days sucks.) “You have something I want,” she says in a thickly accented voice. The blue-black drow wears a full-length black and wine gown complete with a bustle and corset. She dons a few pricey pieces of jewelry, and her white hair is piled high like she just leapt out of a gothic ballroom painting.


Hudson meanwhile obliviously continues his chill game of catch. He launches the ball a few paces away from Alfonse, who is unable to field it because he trips over a handily sized stone and face plants in the turf. A laugh automatically rattles out of Huds before he can catch himself, launch the appropriate amount of concern for what's happened here. Al is acting dramatic, won't get up, and Huds jogs over to where the ball is, finds himself face to face with Gevurah, whom he doesn't know, and whose initial proclamation hits him in a way she surely didn't intend. Because he, child of privilege, has never had to untangle drow accents before, he mishears her as saying the following: 'You are something I want.' This misinterpretation is reinforced by her fancy getup. "Um," he offers her a generic smile. "Yeah... I'm really flattered, but I'm engaged." He lifts his chin in the direction of the ball. "Do you mind?"


Gevurah doesn’t immediately understand Hudson’s response as surfacer customs elude her grasp. When she returns to Trist’oth and replays the encounter she’ll realize what he meant and be disgusted. But for the moment, she assumes he means he is engaged in this ridiculous ballgame with that foul-smelling man who thrashes in the grass. The expression ‘do you mind?’ similarly flies over her head, but the chin’s lift towards the ball is clear. She ignores it. The fact Hudson seems to fail to recognize a drow priestess only reinforces her desire to commit surfacer genocide at a future date, but for the moment her agenda is narrow and small, tunnel-visioned on that precious gem. “You have a stone. I want it. Give it to me and I’ll spare you and your, uh..” She’s searching for the common word for ‘friend’ but forgets it, and instead substitutes the next best thing, “lover.” She nods at Alfonse for clarity’s sake.


Hudson 's mind is really running with his understanding of the facts, which as noted are both inaccurate and highly subjective/self-involved. He has never been with a drow woman before, mostly because he had been brought up to think that they were evil and violent, but hey, he's seen some drow ladies in racy magazines before. They can be hot in their own way, and the times, they are a changin'. Like this chick here, if she smiled more, and wore like a slinky tube dress, he'd totally have slept with her back in the day. Man, maybe he should have bedded a drow woman before hitching his wagon to Alvina. He bets that drow women are into some real wild stuff... Gevurah interrupts where that thought is going by demanding the gem on his person and then suggesting that he and Alfonse are gay. Wow. He gapes at her, laughs once, explosively. "No, I..." he struggles to answer her. Clearly this woman is having cultural integration issues here, if she thinks that calling him gay for refusing to shag her is acceptable. "...I'm engaged to a woman, that's... Look." He shakes his head. Maybe this is all a misunderstanding. "You said you wanted a stone? Do you work for the jeweler I just saw?"


Gevurah chuckles patronizingly at Hudson’s question. The idea of her working for anyone is comedy in its highest form. Oh surfacers, the say the craziest things. “No, the jeweller works for me.” She smiles, as Huds had just fantasized about (still no tube dress), but the smile menaces and her teeth are slightly pointed. “You say you just saw him? Just before arriving here now? Excellent.” Her arm, stiff and straight, lifts, palm facing outward towards Hudson. She blasts a crackling, black ball of energy at his hideous pale face.


Hudson is getting a bad feeling about the gothic attired drow hottie that's just infiltrated his life. She is clearly not what she seems, or rather she is exactly what she seems and the error had been entirely his. Alfonse has gotten up, in the meantime. Al hasn't spent his life swaddled in privilege, so he blanches noticeably when he sees Gevurah lift her arm. "Dude, give it to her, whatever it is," says Al, who's a second too late in trying to guide his friend out of trouble. Hudson has the second it takes to turn his face away and body to the blast, but it knocks him off of his feet. Puts a hole in his shirt, his shoulder too. Suddenly the picnic-goers screaming, maybe it's the blood. They're getting up and fleeing, causing mayhem. Hudson curses, loudly, finding himself slavering involuntarily, his body pins and needles, itching to go wolf and tear this woman's throat out. Like a dog that's run to the very abrupt end of its leash, the Lycanthria pulls him back from the brink, hits him like a punch to the gut. Hudson tries to get up but somebody fleeing knocks into him, and he vomits on them, like a squid defensively squirting ink. Alfonse, stupid and brave and not as worthless as he always seems, goes after Gevurah before she can get a second shot in. He charges her, head down, like a battering ram. Yelling, because of course. "Here, here it is!" Huds has the box with the stone out of his pocket now, and makes an exemplary showing of athleticism when he pitches it to the far end of the park.


Gevurah cackles delightedly as Hudson loses a large swath of flesh. Panicked bodies shield Hudson as they flee, their paths to scoop up children or hide behind tables bring them between him and the drow of his dreams. The park goers scramble like minnow, and Gevurah is the shark they all avoid. She’s at no risk of being shoved or trampled, save from brave, stupid Alfonse. He charges at her and she simply levitates (by far the most annoying of the noble drow traits), leaving the human to run head first into a tree. Hudson throws the box too fast (next on the genocide list: baseball). Gevurah doesn’t have enough time to spellcast and snatch the ball mid air through magical means. She shouts a word in drow and a massive, black lizard bounds over the bushes and clears the treeline behind the priestess. She drops onto its back and chases the box, which by now is already in the grass. Pray Gevurah reaches it before someone else, or shell will work out her frustrations on Hudson’s body, and not in the way he had hoped when he first saw her. She leans to one side and scoops up the box without breaking the lizard’s stride. Having gotten what she came for, she leaves without thinking of Hudson. If he's lucky, she’ll never have to think of him ever again.