Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death [Open]

[detectiveofthewest]

The old Kitterick hotel, long since closed and abandoned, sat silently in its abandonment. At first it seemed that this night would be the same as any other -- one more in the long series of nights spent settling, creaking, slowly but surely marching toward the dissolution that surely awaited it. Yet as evening settled firmly over the streets of Greenwich, something changed in the air.

A long car, sleek and black, rolled up to the front of the building. A woman got out; two men aided her in doing so. Her long dress was bright carmine, spilling out behind her in a whispering pool. In the dark of night, the cloth looked almost black.

"This will do nicely," she said. Her whisper was full of promise.

[This, should you choose to use it, is a catch-all post for the Bloody Countess plot! It's for investigations, encounters, and so on leading up to the main event.]

Comments

This isn't what I meant by habeus corpus [for Heiji, Sasuke, and Apollo]

[detectiveofthewest]

Heiji made his way down the steps toward the restaurant exit, one hand shoved in his pocket as he went. "So? Not too shabby, right? Too bad they don't serve food Kansai-style, but I think I'm gonna be back!"

C'mon, Sasuke, admit it was good. Heiji even paid for your food, you monster.

[apolly]

"... Okay, what exactly is the difference with ramen? The broth? The type of noodle? The toppings?"

This was probably a stupid question. Nonetheless, it was good to take a break from the office. Annoying assistant or not, though.

"I know sushi's, uh... assorted."

[detectiveofthewest]

"Heck, there're all kinda differences. Like Sapporo ramen's usually got roast pork, ginger and garlic. Kyoto ramen, sometimes you get a lighter shoyu flavor, but they also got this chicken-flavored kind..."

He glanced over at Sasuke; sorry your boss showed up, dude.

1/2

[eyeforaneye]

I have so many mixed feelings right now.

2/2

[eyeforaneye]

"There are four main bases: shio, shoyu, miso, and tonkotsu, though there's debate on them. Those define broth and seasonings, though, while the toppings don't really change the categories. That's like saying that pepperoni pizza and sausage pizza are different cuisines.

The noodles are a wheat flour base but are different from other noodles because of the addition of kansui." Socializing is so much easier when there's a direct purpose to it. Still.

"I guess it wasn't terrible."

[detectiveofthewest]

Congratulations, Sasuke, you were terrible at conversation.

"Basically, different regions have different ways of preparin' it! It's like how you got Chicago deep dish versus New York thin crust pizza in the States." Although lbr, deep dish was an abomination unto the lord and not really pizza at all, you might as well eat literal garbage.

He opened the door to the restaurant and stepped through. "We really gotta get you to a su -- "

Before he could finish the sentence, however, there was the distinct crash of window glass breaking. A man's body sailed down through the fifth story window and slammed down onto the hood of a parked sedan right in front of the building.

Yeah, that dude was dead.

1/2

[apolly]

Apollo stops, stares, and watches the dude die.

And screams.

[apolly]

"What the— what!?" Apollo then looks up at the broken glass, eyes squinting to hopefully see what the hell was going on up there. God damn it, this wasn't the time, and he instinctively pulls out his phone to call the emergency line.

"What just happened!?"

[eyeforaneye]

The sound doesn't even register at first as being what it is, disconnected from the possibility that something like that had just happened...

And as soon as it does sink in his body is moving, barely conscious of his instantaneous reaction but finding himself right next to that car and confirming that he is dead before anything else. Sharp eyes turn their gaze upward then to seek out the source of the broken window and catch a flash of movement, his normally stoic demeanor shattered as he now instead tries not to panic.

"There's someone up there... Someone moved up there, it's--" A quick count. "The fifth floor!" And Sasuke jerks away from the corpse then, seeming to realize just how close he'd gotten.

[detectiveofthewest]

Heiji's eye caught the wound on the man's neck, just behind his collar. Two little twin holes, deceptively small...

"Apollo, call the cops! Don't bother with the ambulance!" What was Heiji going to do...?

Run back up the stairwell at top speed, that was what. Luckily, it was quickly getting dark and most people would be gathering around the body. They wouldn't be paying much attention to the guy going up the stairs...

[apolly]

Apollo makes the switch immediately, talking with a dispatcher about exactly what the hell went down. And the woman on the other line had a hard time believing it, too.

Luckily him and Heiji are in the same vein, his eyes catching those wounds on his neck and it's pretty obvious from there what caused it.

"God damn it, I'm not sure if we can fight whoever did this." Assuming they caught him, anyway— and with these type of creatures, it was nearly impossible.

[eyeforaneye]

Sasuke's as quick to draw the same conclusion regarding just what they're dealing with, and the first thought through his adrenaline-laced mind is they wouldn't be enough, that the policemen would be overwhelmed should they actually be forced into a confrontation with a fully developed and aged vampire. It's that realization that actually motivates him to scan the faces in the panicked crowd, searching for calm in a sea of hysteria.

It's in the mouth of the alleyway between the restaurant and a cleaning shop that he spots a glint of white teeth in an unnatural smirk before the figure vanishes, head snapping back up to that fifth floor window and then back down again.

"Apollo, stay here!" he yells back, feeling it just as necessary that someone remains near the body as he does that someone needs to chase that man down and halt his escape. If there's any protest in return he doesn't hear it, taking off down that alleyway and out of sight. Good luck on your own.

[detectiveofthewest]

YEAH, APOLLO. STAY THERE. ALL BY YOURSELF. WITH A DEAD BODY.

If there was any doubt about the supernatural nature of the dead man's assailant, well. That doubt would quickly be set aside. Sasuke's perp was nimble, he was quick -- far too fleet of foot to be human. The vampire ducked around a corner with barely audible footsteps and if Sasuke should follow in pursuit, he was there in wait, ready to strike.

Meanwhile: It didn't take Heiji long to reach the fifth floor, though Heiji had to duck under a NO ENTRY notice to get in through the stairwell door. Empty space, not yet leased to a new tenant. But he could smell blood in the air. Coppery, like pennies on the tongue...

[apolly]

YOU GUYS SUCK, WOW.

Apollo catches the vampire's silhouette before it disappears, along with Sasuke altogether. Wow, he's by himself now. Great.

... He's not exactly sure if this person was turned into a new vampire or not, so he watches the body closely and stays on the phone. If the actual police get here, how is he going to explain the mass murder that will probably happen?

Later at Sasuke's apartment

[detectiveofthewest]

There was a knock on the door -- rather quiet and discreet, considering Heiji's usual method of making entrances. Don't ask him how he got Sasuke's address, he just did okay it's fine.

"Sasuke, you in?" Gosh, what if Sasuke really wasn't okay, though? Like what if he was lying on the floor slowly oozing blood out of his neck holes?

[eyeforaneye]

... Alright, he can only mentally afford to deal with one crisis at a time.

The sweat on his brow and all over exhaustion he's feeling, with anxiety just making him more tired and fueled by vivid imaginings of what that bite might do even though it's fairly innocuous, the intrusion he now has to deal with, the fact that Heiji somehow knows where he lives...

"Hold on," Sasuke calls back, pushing himself up from the couch in his flat and tugging on his discarded shirt -- still with bloodstains -- before he actually cracks the door.

"Why." That's it. Just why.

[detectiveofthewest]

Whoa, dude, you didn't change your shirt? Heiji lifted the bag he was carrying so that Sasuke could see it through the cracked door.

"I thought you could use something to eat!" You know, to make more blood. "Remember, you said you wanted some fish? So I picked up some sushi for ya. Of course, if you're not up for that I got some mackerel I could fry..."

Peeeering into Sasuke's apartment, hmm, did he have a frying pan...

[eyeforaneye]

In fairness he really hasn't done a lot of anything. Give him a second to feel like a human being again.

His eyes lower to that sack of food before he glances back into his own barren flat, trying to determine if he's actually willing to let him in... and finally takes a step back to do so, flicking on a light.

"You can sit on the couch or at the table only, no entering the back two rooms, and ask where an object is instead of digging around to find it." The living room is generic and cramped with few signs of entertainment beyond a full bookshelf and a currently covered birdcage. Luckily the kitchen is much more open and receives better natural lighting, visible just off to the side.

[detectiveofthewest]

Wow, Sasuke, what a wonderful host you were. Heiji totally felt welcome here, you plebe. Heiji was interested in the birdcage, but first thing was first. He put the bag on the living room table and then looked critically at Sasuke. He looked terrible, probably because his shirt had blood on it. Well. That was one factor.

"So you've got a rice cooker, right? How about a frying pan?" Don't make this difficult for him, Uchiha.

[eyeforaneye]

'That was one factor' omg get out of here.

He nods a bit vacantly before turning on his heel to approach the kitchen, opening two cupboards exactly in order to retrieve the requested items.

"Yeah. I can pay you back later, too." There's a certain finality to that offer as Sasuke again abandons that room, deciding that a fresh set of clothing would help. "Stay here." As he moves into his own bedroom to change, distracted momentarily by the nasty mottled mess of purple that is his own torso before re-emerging in blessedly clean clothing.

"So you're making the mackerel anyway?" ... "We can speak in Japanese if it's easier for you, you know." And there's a sudden shift in language with the prompt, revealing his own fluency. Knocking the rust off will help him out anyway.

[detectiveofthewest]

"Yeah. You can eat it later if you don't want it now." Heiji took the frying pan, put a little oil in it, and turned on the stove. Which didn't light up right away, so he put his hand to the burner. A brief bloom of blue flame licked at the bottom of the pan before settling back into the comfortable ring of a cooking fire. Someone not watching carefully would never have known what he'd done.

His Japanese was markedly different from Heiji's, though no one who didn't speak the language would have heard the difference -- a sort of lilting cadence with dramatic highs and lows.

[eyeforaneye]

"I don't eat too much in one sitting but I eat often." Hi, I'm Mr. Canonically-Orders-Diet-Food.

"... Have you always been able to use fire that well or did you have to train it?" This is more interesting to him than food is, actually approaching to get a better look. He pauses on remembering one or two words, perhaps, but his pronunciation at least doesn't suffer.

[detectiveofthewest]

"Wasn't always able to use it perfectly, but I was always able to use it," said Heiji, grabbing a splatterguard and placing it over the pan as the fish began to sizzle. "It's like a fish figuring out how to swim. You can feel it..."

He turned to Sasuke. "But you should know a little about that, right?"

[eyeforaneye]

"Perhaps for you. With me... more like an amphibian getting in the water for the first time. I thought I was entirely part of one world and then I started noticing parts of me that didn't fit.

I can practice on my own to improve, sure, but honing my control isn't easy."

[detectiveofthewest]

Heiji flipped the fish over with one deft toss of the pan and turned on the kitchen fan. "You gotta start small, then. With candleflames or something similar. That's what they used to do..."

For the clumsy ones who couldn't get it right away, was an excellent thing not to say to Sasuke.

"Anyway, if you can't control your powers, you could hurt someone. Especially if you're all keyed up in a fight."