|
Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 30, 2012 23:27:19 GMT -5
M6W2D5, at a K-Tech office building, semi-private.
Raymond Stantz has had a time of it. Thus far, he has discovered that it is not that he's afraid of the sky, as he previously thought. It is that sunlight sets him on fire. Reflected in a mirror, it still sets him on fire. Moonlight, however, which is still just reflected sunlight, does not set him on fire. Starlight also does nothing, even though stars are also suns. He thinks he needs to go find a natural spectrum lamp to test this development further and also that he needs to go to the store to buy more burn ointment. His eyes are almost painfully sensitive to light, though he has found that he apparently owns some sunglasses - he apparently owns a great deal of things, to go along with that ID of his, including a modest living space, a bicycle, and a small medical fridge, oddly enough. Running water, like rivers, terrifies him. He can't cross it.
And every living human he has ever met has smelled absolutely delicious.
But there's a call on the cellphone that he has managed to retrieve that says he ought to be at work - is he going to call in sick or what? And all he has is a sheepish explanation that he drank too much ethanol last night - he swears he'll never do it again - so he's a bit out of it, but he'll be there if the voice on the other end of the phone will remind him where work is.
Figuring out the bicycle takes a few tries. He's grateful for the helmet, because he's discovering that he really he hates it when he falls off and gets a scrape and bleeds - because he always ends up stopping everything he's doing to lick the wound, and the blood tastes about as delicious as he thinks everyone else smells.
Raymond thinks he is stuck in the body of what a human would be if humans were designed by Ratbat.
Biking to work is a chore unto itself, because the urge to jump off the bicycle, tackle a driver through a car window, and tear out someone's throat is so very strong. Also, headlights are nearly blinding - do humans really have so much trouble seeing in the dark? He parks his bicycle and locks it up, putting the helmet under his arm as he strides into the atrium of the office. He is struck dumb by what he sees it. It looks like, well... like someone has welded a dead Transformer up as a monument! Though Raymond could not put a name to the poor dead fellow, even if he looks familiar. There is a name rattling around somewhere in his head, he thinks. There is a small plaque that calls the piece 'Death of the Machine God' and lists the sculptor as unknown.
"Just a creepy cosmic coincidence," he mutters to himself, thoroughly rattled, and Raymond heads off to find the room number that was given to him.
|
|
|
Post by Victoria Raines on Jan 30, 2012 23:52:19 GMT -5
The room number that Raymond was given will bring him not to his private workspace, but to an office space on one of the buildings upper levels. The nameplate on the door reads, Victoria Raines, CEO.
Inside the room waits a tall, muscular, regal woman with dark, purple-black hair, violet eyes, and pale skin. Victoria is dressed in a well-fitted pantsuit of black shot through with tone-on-tone pinstripes. She is standing at the window and looking out across the city. There is a decanter of deep red liquid on the desk that might smell rather appealing to Raymond.
She turns her head toward the door as it opens. "Ah, hello Raymond. Are you now recovered from your rude awakening?"
|
|
|
Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 31, 2012 0:03:10 GMT -5
Raymond goes where he is told. He pauses at the sign on the door. The CEO? What would a CEO want with someone like him? Inside the room, the smell hits him before anything else does, and he shudders and whimpers, his fangs dropping down.
He half-turns and pokes at his fangs with his finger, trying to coax them into retracting back up, and he warns softly, "I, uhm. I'm really sorry. I think I need to go to a hospital. Maybe. If I won't be around anyone leaking."
She has a nice voice. Raymond doesn't want to find out what her vocal cords look like from the inside, though.
|
|
|
Post by Victoria Raines on Jan 31, 2012 0:23:25 GMT -5
"You do not need a physician, Raymond. We are well acquainted with the particulars of your peculiar metahuman abilities, and have made provisions for them. You might remember that such disclosures were a requirement of your employment. I do not care if my employees register or not, but I will not have such surprises in my labs."
Victoria crosses to the desk, takes up a lovely cut crystal glass and pours some of the liquid into it before offering the glass to Raymond. It is cold blood, not too old, but still cold, dead blood. It may not be as satisfying or as tasty, but may take the edge off.
"And yet, I have one. I know every employee in every branch of my company." She cocks her head and smiles slightly. "Yet, I do not know you, despite my having employment records on you going back several years."
The smile widens, "You have an excellent service record."
|
|
|
Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 31, 2012 0:45:57 GMT -5
"I am malfunctioning -" Raymond starts to say, over her words that he does not need a physician.
Her pouring the blood is the final nail in the coffin, though. The mere act of pouring brings out the scent, like a fine wine, and his willpower is not sufficient to help himself. The quibbles about where, exactly, that blood came from melt away, and he lunges on the glass, eyes dilated behind the sunglasses. Raymond snatches it away from her and throws it back in one go, the cold, dead liquid soothing his parched, itchy throat, not one precious drop spilled.
Staring into the empty glass, slightly stunned, he says again, "I am malfunctioning. This is not normal human behaviour."
This is atrocious.
One eye twitching, he grabs the decanter in his other hand and drains that down, too. Where are his manners? Raymond licks his lips and rolls his head around and looks at the CEO like a Texan cattle rancher looks at a side of beef. He wonders, perhaps, if she is Botanica or Perceptor, changed like Impactor. He works for those two. But her voice...
Several years.
Raymond stiffens, pupils contracting back down, and he hedges, "I am amazingly forgettable, ma'am."
|
|
|
Post by Victoria Raines on Jan 31, 2012 1:13:32 GMT -5
Victoria watches without so much as a twitch as Raymond drains first the glass and then the decanter. As he finishes his impromptu meal, she says, "Normal is a relative concept. We live in a time when anything is possible, where ones neighbor might have the power to walk on water, to conjure fire, or talk to animals. Were-creatures, vampires, and fairies walk among us unknown, and alien robots in disguise drive through our streets."
She leans back against her desk. After picking up a file, she thumbs through it for a moment before handing it to Raymond. His medical records- records that go back several years- are tabbed for quick access should he wish to take them and read over them. The records include several notes about a particular genetic marker that is apparently exceptionally rare.
"No one is forgettable to me, Raymond. I remember everything and everyone, down to what my secretary had for lunch three years ago today. I pay very close attention to the needs of my people, Raymond." Such possibly familiar phrasing that.
Victoria slips off her jacket as she talks, revealing a deep purple blouse that has an almost metallic sheen. She rolls her left sleeve up to her elbow and offers her cool, pale wrist to Raymond.
She has very well-pronounced veins.
"And you need a proper meal if you want to stay functioning."
|
|
|
Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 31, 2012 10:51:07 GMT -5
Raymond neatly sets the decanter and the glass back down on her desk, just where they were, but the vessels stare at him, accusing and empty. He pleads weakly, "Please tell me that was... surplus to requirements. Not suitable for human use. That I didn't just drink the blood transfusion that a haemophiliac is going to need half an hour from now. Or that this is... animal blood, not that I necessarily even approve of raising animals just to kill them, though I suppose if you kill an animal with a moving vehicle, you may as well do something with it instead of letting it rot..."
Raymond has put a bit of study into how humans function, not a great deal, but he thinks it would be rude to be entirely unaware of how the main sapient species of the planet he is visiting functions.
Most of the things she mentions don't get much of a response from him. Indeed, catatonia is looking like a great option right now, he appears to be thinking. He does twitch over the mention of alien robots, though. Raymond snatches up his medical records, if only to have something to be doing with his hands, which still shake faintly. He reads through his records, which confirm what he's already discovered for the most part, like his sensitivity to light, like his bad tendency to burn, but there's more. He's deathly allergic to garlic? He has an irrational fear of holy symbols?
The human concept of a vampire is not familiar to him. Yes, there were beings of a similar mould on Cybertron, such as Ratbat or Mindwipe or Bugly or... Pincher himself, but the stock package of a creature of the night that hates Italian food is alien to him.
Raymond insists, voice quailing, "No. Please don't offer that." He raises the medical file up to cover his mouth, since his fangs seem like they won't go back in right now. "Uhm, donate to a blood drive. There are sick people who could use it. This is probably just like a... strange form of pica. I'm deficient on something. Iron, probably."
That's not what his medical file says, and that's not what empirical evidence would lead him to believe. Raymond has drunk some water. That is supposed to make humans less thirsty. It did nothing, except make him feel slightly nauseous, and he doesn't think the water quality here is that bad. Once he found his wallet, he tried a street taco - it sure looked good - and he ended up initiating an emergency waste removal program in a back alley dumpster.
The scrawny, skulking rat he saw in that back alley looked more tempting than the taco.
If he had pica, Raymond would still be able to eat and enjoy normal food, if he understands correctly. He would just have a strange fixation on consuming one or more non-food objects, too. That's not what the medical file says. That's not what he knows in the back of his mind.
He knows that he wants to see what her blood looks like, and if she offers again, he is not sure he's full enough to refuse her a second time. She has his medical files. She had that decanter there. She knows his appetite better than he does. Did she give him just enough to take the edge off so that he won't kill her? Is this what she wants - him broken enough by hunger to take what she will offer?
Raymond recalls another leader who took power simply by feeding the people when their planet would not.
|
|
|
Post by Victoria Raines on Jan 31, 2012 12:35:05 GMT -5
"Kaonic maintains its own blood reserves and medical staff at our research locations. Accidents happen. The blood is donated by employees for employees, however they need it," Victoria explains, "You take nothing from anyone."
Raymond's continued protests cause Victoria's expression to grow stern. "Raymond, you are being slightly trying. You can see from your records that you do not have a form of pica. If you must put a more rational name to it, consider yourself to have a mutated form of porphyria, though even that is inaccurate."
"You are a metahuman, exhibiting all the classic literary markers of vampirism. You will require blood to survive."
During all of this, Victoria has not dropped her offered wrist. She extends it slightly further. "I do not wish to see you die, or worse destroyed, which will certainly happen when your will snaps from hunger and you murder some innocent. You will do me no lasting harm, I assure you."
|
|
|
Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 31, 2012 12:53:56 GMT -5
"It isn't porphyria," Raymond says firmly, raising the medical file to cover his eyes, too. Porphyria is, as she says, inaccurate. "There are at least eight different forms of porphyria, and only four of them involve sensitivity to light, and none of them involve, well..."
Catching on fire.
Also, the symptoms list just doesn't match in general. It is a silly old theory that just makes life harder on people who already have it hard enough.
"I don't... want to feed on people, whether they consent or not." No, but he needs it, his body screams, drumming in his ears. "Besides, I don't think they'd consent if they knew where, exactly, the blood would be... going..."
He's going down on his knees and trying to grab at her wrist with greedy hands, the medical file tossed into the air. Raymond wants nothing more than to sink his teeth into her and suck out that warm, ambrosial humour until she's as cold as he is.
Doesn't she worry? Raymond doesn't know them, but the stories warn about pretty women falling under a vampire's thrall.
|
|
|
Post by Victoria Raines on Jan 31, 2012 14:01:11 GMT -5
Victoria can't quite stifle a sharp gasp as Raymond's fangs pierce her flesh. After that one slip though, she makes no sound. Her other hand grips the edge of the desk hard enough to make the wood groan in protest. Her breathing becomes rather deliberate, and her eyes close as she fights to keep the pain from actually showing on her face. Never show a predator fear or pain. It only makes things worse.
It does hurt. All those romanticized tales of how it is an orgasmic experience are just that. It is an intimate act, yes, graphically so, and if one finds pain pleasurable... perhaps that was the start of the idea.
She means what she said earlier. She does not want him to die. Victoria knows who this lost one is, even if she does not know what version of Pincher is currently feasting on her blood. There have been precious few of her kind that she has ever wanted to die, even if the deaths of many have been necessary. This is what she failed to make Magnus understand, that the unpleasant is often necessary, that sacrifices must be made....
Victoria shakes her head. The lightheadedness is causing her mind to wander to unpleasant places. She takes her hand from the desk and rests in on Raymond's head.
"Enough," she says, attempting to pull her arm back. Raymond resists, and her fingers tangle in his hair, yanking his head back with much force.
"I said enough, Pincher."
OOC: posing w/ permission.
|
|
|
Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 31, 2012 14:55:53 GMT -5
His true name snaps him back to himself when force fails - when force just makes that salty, metallic tang all the more enticing. Raymond pulls back abruptly, falling back-first onto the floor. He stares at the ceiling, thinking about how wonderfully clean and fresh she tasted, so alive and vibrant. There are no drugs, no diseases, not even over the counter medications - perhaps she had a glass of wine, but if she did, it was days ago.
"You're Shockwave, aren't you," Raymond ventures hesitantly, saying something he does not want to be true.
Maybe he should have kept going. If she is who he thinks she is and if she did what the other Autobots told him that she did, she is too dangerous to live. Nothing ever deserves to die. Indeed, nothing ever deserves anything, to be perfectly objective. There is no intentionality to existence as a whole. However, on a smaller scale, being alive is nice. Being free is nice. Some beings threaten those socially-agreed-upon rights. Raymond should kill her and then turn himself in for trial.
What if the other Autobots are wrong, though? What if he just wants them to be wrong? What if the other Autobots are right but Shockwave still has a perfectly rational explanation for his actions?
Maybe monsters shouldn't be the first ones running for the pitchforks and torches.
|
|
|
Post by Victoria Raines on Jan 31, 2012 17:44:25 GMT -5
Shockwave always has a perfectly rational explanation for his actions. Except, perhaps, in regard to one individual, but that individual is not here.
Victoria open a small medical kit and covers the two neat puncture marks in her wrist with a sterile towel. She holds the her arm above her heartline to discourage more blood flow. It will take a several minutes for it to completely stop, however.
She smiles slightly at his accusation, for accusation it surely was, no matter how hesitantly he spoke. She nods her head toward a small door off to the right.
"The washroom is that way, if you wish to rinse your mouth. I imagine the residual taste might be slightly distracting to your more rational thought processes," she says.
"You are correct," she adds as she checks her wound, "Do you wish my death?"
Its a perfectly reasonable question to ask a potential enemy after you let them make a meal of your blood.
|
|
|
Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 31, 2012 18:58:44 GMT -5
"That was... inexcusable of me. I should have stopped when you asked me to. In fact, I should have stopped before you needed to ask me to do so by picking up on body language and other cues. I apologise," Raymond says, and he is being quite sincere. He is certainly thinking about killing her, but as long as he isn't actually trying to kill her, he should still be respectful of consent.
On that matter, he answers, "I don't think I should talk about that. Or anything."
If she has cameras in here, it would certainly be possible to cut the footage to make it look like Raymond is a monster - which is true, really - and get him locked up. (Indeed, wasn't a girl found butchered not long ago? Worked for a rival company?) If she has guards, however well he fights, he can assume that he is probably going to end up captured or dead and that, in the process of fighting, he will likely end up killing some people who did nothing worse than apply for a job as a guard.
Raymond can make no mistake. If he gets out of here alive, it will be because she willed it, not anything that he accomplished on his own. If he is alive, it is because it serves her will somehow. He supposes he could just commit suicide right here and now, but that would probably also serve her purposes by reducing the overall number of Autobots by one.
He's really not that important, though. Raymond is puzzled why she's gone to the bother of seeing to him personally.
Raymond walks over to the indicated washroom. He rinses and swallows. Unpleasant as water is, he's not going to waste any blood.
|
|
|
Post by Victoria Raines on Jan 31, 2012 19:53:01 GMT -5
The bleeding has ceased enough to make cleaning the wound worthwhile. Victoria wipes down the area with antiseptic before placing a bandage over the punctures.
"You were quite fastidious, even when starving. The punctures should heal cleanly. Thank you for that care."
Of course, Victoria would not have offered her arm to him had she expected to be savaged. This one could be nothing like the Pincher she knows, but he behaved enough like him for her to chance it.
She takes a seat in a seating area off to one side of the office and waves a hand negligently at the other seat. "Come and talk with me, Pincher. I have been trapped in a human body for nearly thirty years. I have not had the pleasure of conversation with an intellectual peer in much longer."
"Besides, does the scientist in you not scream for explanations to your current predicament?"
|
|
|
Post by Raymond Stantz on Jan 31, 2012 20:15:39 GMT -5
"I shouldn't have bitten you at all. I hope it doesn't get infected. I have read that the human bites tend to be quite bad," Raymond says dourly, which is really more than he ought to say, but he means it all the same.
If he was going to kill her with an infection, it would be some unholy mad science spawn of Ebola and anthrax, not random germs he had in his mouth. Raymond has his standards.
He can't help quite blurting, "Thirty years? Did you time travel or are you a different Shockwave? Or yes? Or - oh, blast me." Luring him with science is a low blow, woman! He is rather dying of curiosity. Raymond brings up a hand to his face, trying to steel himself to just walk out of here and... demand that the Autobots lock him up because Shockwave wants him for something, unless that is also playing into her plans...
He has no reflection in the mirror over the sink.
|
|