RP:The Potato Peeler

Coastal Street

Since arriving in Cenril more than 2 months ago, Cesaria had built a small reputation among the recently bereaved. In this time of terrible plague, most Cenrili knew someone in mourning, or, just as likely, were themselves in the harrowing vise of grief. Rumor had it that Cesaria could dull that ache in exchange for a significant sum of coin. The dock workers knew she lived in a second-floor flat that overlooked the docks, and that she often left her home only after sunset, always alone and dressed in head-to-toe black. She dressed professionally, though it was hard to say for what profession. The sun had set just two hours past when she emerged from her building on this brisk, cloudless night in a double breasted black suit, heeled boots, gloves, a wide brimmed hat, and, most curiously, a veil. As she moved northbound along the coastal street something moved in the shadows, slipping in and out of alleyways, under awnings, over gutters, each building no more an obstacle than a garden fence. Cesaria seemed oblivious to the creature that stalked her movements, perhaps even carelessly so. An unaccompanied woman walking South Cenril after dark rarely turns a corner blindly, but Cesaria just did. And so did her stalker.

Clement has two buckets, one right side up and one upside down. He sits on the latter and works over the former. No matter the season, no matter the weather, plague or no, come anything save a famine, there's always plenty of potatoes to peel. Crouched on the back stoop of a local restaurant, Clement hums and peels, gradually turning one pile into two--rough spuds into peels and clean quarters. It's easy, tedious work, but hungry mouths need fed. Beneath the brim of his simple hat, his dark eyes stay fixed tight upon his work. He's got his own business, and the folks on the street have theirs, and there's no real reason to mix the two up. One pile shrinks, two piles grow. A woman abruptly rounds the corner. Dag nabbit, he looked. Clement hadn't meant to look, but wouldn't you know it, he was startled, and he looked, and now his business is getting mixed. "Ma'am," he nods and tips his hat, the paring knife flashing in his hand as he does. Then a little too loudly, in fact rather indicatively he clears his throat and tips his hat likewise at her pursuer, "stranger."

Cesaria had been lost in a waking dream, the very same that haunted her idle mind for a week now. And so the potato peeler’s simple address yanked her out of it, made her stumble a little to avoid him like a puddle of urine on a public street. No one said hello to strangers in South Cenril. “Y-yes?” she said, guarded against what she assumed was a solicitation. On these pauper-paved streets, everyone had a hustle or a con. Or perhaps he was a potential customer, had heard of her gift. She looked over her shoulder at the ‘stranger’ Clement had addressed and found no one. The shadowy stalker leapt onto the roof of the restaurant where Clement worked and peered down ominously at the laborer. It had no heartbeat, gave off no heat, moved with supernatural speed and agility, and had the faintest scent of death, undetectable by human noses such as Cesaria. Her heart raced a little, like a rabbit who heard the snap of a twig but had not yet seen a beast.

Clement had meant to give the woman a look of warm apology for interrupting her walk, but instead his expression turns sour as the darting shadow pulls his eyes up to the rooftop. "Oh, hell." It's the same look he'd give a potato if he sliced it open and found worms in the middle. "Through the back door, ma'am, go on." Keeping his eyes on the malicious shadow, he pushes the restaurant's kitchen door open with his elbow. His fingers shift around the wooden handle of his knife. "Get in." It's a queer command to take from a stranger, but through the door is light, warmth, laughter, and the smell of good food cooking. Dag nabbit, he had to look, and worst still, Clement is pretty sure he knows too well what he's looking at. Don't stand just there, lady, please, please... Don't be the rabbit tonight...

Cesaria followed Clement’s glance to the rooftop and this time she saw it, the backlit humanoid that stalked the night. Her face pinched, confused, unable to read the situation. The stranger kept addressing her as ma’am, with the level of respect that is typically bought, not granted. He beckoned her to a place that looked warm, lively, safe. Could he be…? “Do you work for him?” she asked Clement as she moved towards the open door. The creature leapt down from the building and lunged at Clement, baring its fangs and brandishing a dagger. The vampire aimed right for Clement’s throat, determined to rip it out of the fellow vampire’s neck as it sought to plunge the dagger into Clement’s quiet heart.

Clement doesn't have time to consider Cesaria's confusing question. This is trouble. This is bad trouble. "So bad, you just couldn't stay out of it," he silently, sardonically rebukes himself, and right on cue everything goes straight from bad to worse. From Cesaria's human perspective, there's a flash of action, a loud KROMFCHH, and a wet spray of wood splinters and potato pulp. Evidently, Clement has broken the vampire assailant's charge by smashing him in the face or thereabouts with a bucket. Frankly, it was fast for even Clem's eyes. There's a dagger in his shoulder, and his fingers are digging into the cold skin of his attacker's face, curling and trying to pry at the eyes, the nose, anything he can just grab and pull at. They're staggering together. He's stabbing with his kitchen knife again and again. Stabbing flesh? Don't think about it. You don't win a fight by thinking. Just push and strain and stab until one of you stops. Oh, you're in bad trouble this time, Clement.

Cesaria did not scream. Braced against the open door, she watched the breakneck, gory violence with eyes accustomed to grislier sights. Each of Clement’s stabs met flesh wetter and softer than before. The rhythmic squelch of the barbaric attack echoed in the alley long after the vampire’s snarls ceased. Cesaria waited for Clement to deliver the fatal blow — or beheading, then shut the door to the lively scene behind her and re-entered the alley in the company of the potato peeler who just revealed himself to also be a vampire and a killer (to put it redundantly). Fear no longer animated her heart. She circled the bloody pulp of the dead vampire. The deceased wore a suit and a crossbow strapped to his back. “I bet you’ll be getting a raise,” Cesaria said, evidently impressed.

Clement comes abruptly to his senses as the fight abruptly ends. "Oh gods." The hand that was clutching at his opponent's face has found its grasp and succeeded in crushing away much of said opponent's face. The limp body hangs against him, still suspended on Clement's knife and in his grasp. He lets go and staggers back. For a couple brief seconds, he watches the body begin the rapid and gruesome transition from undeath to death. "Oh gods have mercy." Clement tears his eyes away. His own condition is nothing pretty. The man's clothes are stained and slashed. Open, bloodless cuts hang limply agape on his shoulder, back and chest, blueish red like meat in a butcher's window. "I have... I have to get..." A raise. "A raise?" A hint of anger enters his bewildered face. "You tell me, you tell me exactly what's going on here." Cesaria suddenly isn't the simple victim he thought she was. Clement's entitled to some answers, ma'am.

Clement’s self-loathing stopped Cesaria in her tracks. “Are you new to the job?” she asked, her voice less sure of itself, her tone pleading. Please let this be what she assumed it to be, or she would be deep in it now. The woman took a couple steps back towards the restaurant door, her expression obscured by her veil, though her panicked heartbeat revealed what her face did not. “Is he a colleague? Is this a mix-up?” she said in a foreign accent found nowhere on Lithrydel. Then Clement’s anger revealed itself and his demands made her error self evident. She ran! Away she fled into the restaurant through the back door, bolted through the dining room, knocked a tray off a waiter’s hand, and exited through the front door onto a cobbled street on ordinary, human legs that she knew could not outrun Clement, but it was in her nature, as prey, to try, as futile as that may be.

Clement only gets to "enjoy" a brief respite of stunned confusion before he is thrown unceremoniously back into chaos and frantic action. "Stop," he yells after her the door, "stop her!" Everyone in the restaurant is caught off guard, and the general reaction is to watch agape as the brief woman crashes through. She's out, she's on the street, she's making her run for it. "Hold it." She's been anticipated. Knowing vampires, Cesaria might guess (correctly) that Clement has circled around the building to cut her off with that uncanny, preternatural speed so characteristic of his kind. He is battered, and the wounds have taken a visible toll on him. Even without his wounds, the friendly potato peeler couldn't pass as human in this state. It's as if something vital has ebbed out of him and left him grey and shrunken in its absence. "What did you get me into? What did you do?" The buzz in the restaurant has turned into cries of alarm and outrage. In seconds, bystanders will be pouring out the front doors and into the street after her. "Talk fast, darn you!"

Cesaria’s heels caught on the cobblestone as she broke hard and stumbled to a stop. “Come near me and he will kill you!” She trembled with indignation and fear. The words surprised her as they left her mouth. How quickly she had come to depend on another’s fury as her sword and shield. She snapped a bead off her dangling earring and threw it onto the ground. The bauble exploded into an inky puddle and as she stepped into it, she disappeared from sight and sound. Clement would still be able to catch her scent, though as gawkers and would-be heroes poured onto the street her scent was masked. Counting on this and with the instincts of a gazelle, she relied on the herd to shield her and cover her escape.

Clement definitely hesitates when Cesaria threatens lethal force, and true to the old saying, he who hesitates is lost. It's a clean escape, and there's nothing Clement gets to do about it. As the crowd rushes out of the restaurant, the strength rushes out of the vampire. He sinks to his knees, then he sits in the street. He knows what the rest of his night is going to look like. Already, a chorus of questions rings around him. For now, it's the bystanders and the onlookers, but soon it will be guards, doctors, and maybe worse. Just had to mix up in her business...