A late dinner in Chicago [Open]

Timestamp:
10:11 PM
Chicago

Keith Reynolds spent the whole day waiting and preparing for the night. It was his first day in the beautiful city of Chicago, in which he quickly has fallen in love with. Because Keith used to be a vampire, he really didn't need sleep, thus he didn't need to find any place to rest. The kishin egg left his car in a parking lot and went for a walk. Going for a hunt near the city center would probably be a suicide, that's why he decided to stay away from it. The night has started as the moon appeared in the night sky. Keith was extremely careful, if there was a Meister in the area, he would be in danger. The last thing he wanted to do was fighting with a powerful demon weapon wielder.
Keith found a nice, little, dark alley that was right next to a crowded bar. The vampiric kishin egg waited patiently until a very unlucky drunk man, probably by an accident, ended up walking into the valley, the corrupted soul was waiting in. Keith made sure no one was following the drunkard and approached him. "Sir, you can barely walk! Let me help you!" Reynolds said to the man, smiling friendly. The man looked at the kishin egg, he could barely understand what was happening around him, in the end, he accepted his offer. Or perhaps he was too drunk to actually protest? The vampire forced the man to lean on his shoulder and led him deeper into the dark alley.
Then Keith pulled out a small butterfly knife out of his pocket and stabbed the man in the heart, ending his life. Keith pushed the dead body against a wall and exposed its neck. The thought of drinking the blood of a drunk person disgusted him, but it was better than starving. Keith bit the neck of his prey and started sucking the blood like a proper vampire does. After the "feast" he picked up the blue soul and stared at it. He started pondering whether he should eat it or not...

An almost childish cackle sounded from the alley's back corner, a sound that was both surreal and chilling. Looking to the spot would bring about the discovery of a pair of bright, glowing even, vivid green eyes. They were locked on the man before him, staring with a combination of both amusement and fascination in equal measure at the kishin egg. Something about the creature was off; this became even more apparent when he stood. The possessor of the eyes and unsettling voice couldn't have been over four and a half feet tall, though not much shorter. His silhouette showed him to be, at minimum, humanoid in shape, though something on his face was definitely not human. In fact, it seemed almost like a gas mask. The figure walked closer, watching the drinking process with a perverse interest, his fingers flexing at his sides as if reaching to grasp things that weren't there. "Yer gonna get yer'self drunk on 'is blood there, mister." He said, and though his laughter was chilling and almost possessed, his voice managed to maintain the innocence of a child. He was walking closer.

Keith got lost in his thoughts. He started thinking about his past and about the life that he lost. He wished he could go back in time and save his beloved wife and his son. What he was going through as a Kishin egg wasn't life. It was just surviving. There was no hope for him and no salvation. Someone's voice stopped his train of thoughts. A cold shiver went down Keith's spine before he turned towards the one who spoke them. It was a young kid. However, that boy definitely wasn't normal. No child behaves in such way. No child approaches a scene of murder without fear. Keith decided to be extremely careful. "It is way better than starving, kid." He told him calmly, before wiping away the blood that was on his lips. "Is this boy a corrupted soul too?"- Keith asked himself in his thoughts.

"Mmmmm...." The boy's response was like a hum, his head tilting just slightly towards one side and then the other as his eyes, so far accustomed to the darkness that they saw better in it than direct light, took in the sight before him. "'Air, 'nough, I s'ppose." He said, and it was clear that the broken language from before was merely the extent of his speech pattern; he'd not learned to talk properly, or else was so used to shortening his words that it had become his norm. "Ahf'ta all, souls don' sate the 'unger so much a' the nee' for powa'."

ooc: Since he's going to keep up like this for a while...
"Fair enough, I suppose."
"After all, souls don't sate the hunger so much as the need for power."

"Things are different when you're someone like me. I need blood to satisfy my hunger and souls to calm my madness down..." Keith told him, studying the boy's behavior. His speech pattern indeed sounded weird. Luckily, he was able to understand what the child was saying. "Hey, kid, you eat souls too, am I right?" He said, poinint his finger at the blue, innocent soul, he was holding in his hand. "I wonder if I can have him as my ally..." -Reynolds thought.

Something flashed behind the boy's eyes, something almost inhuman. His breathing became suddenly more audible, a byproduct of the hissing echo produced by the gas mask. Reaching a hand back, he unclipped it, letting it teeter weakly at the side of his face, exposing his mouth. It was a wonder he had found a gas mask at all, let alone one so small as to fit him. It was a story he'd never tell. Grinning softly, his teeth, impossibly, shown in the darkness. The grin on his face seemed both innocent and sadistic all at once, a dizzying combination that had to be impossible. Yet, there it was, shining for the elder Egg to see. "I do." He clarified, the only complete sentence he'd managed that was proper English.

The kid surely wasn't normal. Keith's curiosity woke up- A child became a kishin egg. Who would push such a young, innocent being to become a monster feared by many? The vampire stared at Riel, seemingly unaffected by what would probably make many men wet their pants- by a sadistic, yet innocent smile of a creepy child. Keith tossed the soul towards Riel. "You can have this one, then." The kishin egg said, slowly with a deep voice and a calm tone.

The kid caught the soul like it was a scrap sent to the starving. Taking a hold of it, he plopped down onto the ground, pulling his knees up to his chest as he held it. He looked like he thought someone might try to steal it from him. Having learned long ago that you couldn't just bite a soul, he pushed the whole thing into his mouth and tried several times to swallow it. Not having food often had made it harder from him to swallow much of anything, even something as incorporeal as a soul. His attention then drew back up to the man, and he slowly pushed the mask back onto his face, clipping it into place as he watched the man. He seemed almost fearful, now, and yet something in him was raging, fighting for control.

The vampire carefully watched the kid and his behavior as he leaned against the wall. Using his vampiric ability to see in the darkness Reynolds looked closely at the child. He bit his lip and looked away for a second, realizing something. That boy reminded him of his son. Their age was similar. Their hair too. Once again his tragic memories started haunting him. Once the young kishin egg ate the soul, Reynolds looked at him once again. He noticed his fearful look. He noticed that something bad was going on with him. "You okay, kid?" The vampire asked, successfully hiding his worry.

"What...." he knitted his brows, scurrying back in his fetal position, back towards the corner he'd initially been in. Riel already knew that this was another Egg before him, but such became almost a complicated fear, now that he had given the boy something. "...what do you want back?" It was the best way he could think to phrase it; free things didn't come easy. There was always a price. Besides, he was wrestling with his own madness, a complicated mixture that was only just dominated by Control; that battle was still raging at present, however, and it would be some time before the malicious sadist came back.

Keith raised his brow when the boy spoke. Such a smart kid. The kishin egg put his hands into the pockets of his coat and slowly approached the child. "I..." The vampire made a short pause to collect his thoughts and find the right word. "... want an ally." He said, still using the same calm, deep tone. Reynolds looked like a sad man, a person who has been through a lot, thus a grim aura was following him around everywhere. "Listen, kid, it's difficult to survive in this world without allies or friends." Keith told him, trying to look him in the eyes. "We both know what we are. That's why I think we should work together. To survive."

Riel swallowed hard, a gesture that made the base of the mask, where it covered his throat, rub against the skin and hurt. His eyes searched the man's, darting back and fort between both pupils. He seemed unsure of how to respond in this instance. "Ally" wasn't among the words that he knew, but his siblings had taught him "friend" just fine. The boy could grasp enough of the man's meaning from that. In silence, the boy's form began to glow, a dark green color that shifted him from human to weapon. With a sudden whirl of light and wind, the boy changed from child to gunblade, the long, mutated butcher knife at its base spinning and lodging itself in the nearby wall with a sickening crack as the mortar gave way to his insertion. The revolver's body shone where the metal didn't need quite as much polishing, and the long black blade worked likewise. In the darkness, the small, seemingly carved-in etchings of vines made their way from the base of the blade, the few present ending in small, carved roses. One of them seemed to be new; if anyone were to count, they'd notice a total of fourteen.

Keith took a step back when the boy started transforming into a weapon. That was something new for the old vampire. He preferred to be extremely careful. The transformation was an incredible sight, perhaps a bit too bright for the sensitive eyes of the vampire kishin egg, but still incredible. Once the boy changed into a weapon, Keith approached him, frowning. So the boy wasn't just a kishin egg. He was a kishin egg who was also a weapon. Fascinating. Keith had heard about the infamous DMWA. A sad thought came into his head- "If not his transformation into a monster... into a kishin egg... He would probably be studying at that Academy... Poor kid... I think his fate might be even more tragic than mine. He's lost the childish innocence too soon". Keith stared at the weapon for a moment. Some instinct told him to touch it, but this time Keith preferred to be way more cautious than the last time he listened to the instinct. "Should I... try pulling you out of that wall, kid?" He asked, then remembered what he has read about the meisters and about wavelengths. Keith was curious if he will be able to wield the boy like one of the meisters from "Shibusen".

His image appeared in the grime of the blade, looking at him with a more controlled, almost sad gaze. Riel looked utterly exhausted, probably just as a byproduct of being a homeless, nearly starving child. "You cah'n try. It duh'nt always werk." The boy said, surprisingly honestly as he watched the man beside him. "Sum'tyms 'ey can, an' sym'tyms it 'urts 'em."

ooc:
"You can try. It doesn't always work."
"Sometimes they can, and sometimes it hurts them."

When the boy's image appeared, Keith stared at it for a minute. Poor kid. The long lost side of Keith woke up for a second- his good hearted side. With a quiet sigh, the vampire grabbed the weapon and closed his eyes. "Let us try, shall we?" Keith commented before attempting to pull the weapon away from the wall.


OOC: To be honest, Riel's dialogues aren't that difficult to understand ^^

ooc: Better safe then sorry ^^; It's driving my own mind nuts.

ic:

He had nailed himself into the wall pretty thoroughly, but with some effort, the weapon form came free. Honestly, if it weren't for Keith's statuses as both vampire and kishin egg, it would have been a lot harder. Still, there was no indication of rejection as the man pulled, and none seemed to come when Riel was free. After several moments, Riel's image reappeared and he grinned lopsidedly; his soul image didn't have the mask. Or a shirt, for that matter, displaying the criss-crossed markings of scars varied along his skin. "Seems fine to me."

Keith stared at the kid's image with curiosity. "I've never seen a demon weapon in my life... until now." He admitted, nodding. A new plan started forming inside his head. If he could wield the boy like a meister, then working with him would make him even more powerful, which also meant that his chances of survival in a world filled with the DWMA affiliated people would be higher. "But... What happened to this child..."-Keith wondered. "Hey, kid, what's your name?" The vampire asked.

"Riel." The boy answered simply, not offering his full name unless it was requested. "I call dis weapon da "Vorpal Blade." Guess tha' makesh meh "Vorpal Riel."" He laughed a little bit at this, seemingly amused with the title, though there was something in his voice that said that he actually enjoyed the thought of it. "Wha' 'bout you, mister?"

"I'm Keith... Keith the vampire..." The kishin egg introduced himself, seemingly not afraid of his old title as a monster. The grim aura around Keith was still present, but there was a slight smirk in the corner of his lips when Riel had introduced himself. "You can... transform back into your... human form." Reynolds told the boy. He started forming some sort of a plan for the rest of the night. The kid looked hungry, which meant that souls probably wouldn't satisfy him. Feeding the boy seemed to become a priority for the vampire. He preferred his new ally to have energy to continue their hunt or at least be ready for the next one.

"Okay. Mr. Keith." He said, nodding in the image before disappearing from it. In silence, his weapon form transformed from solid to plasma, taking on the light of his aura before forming his human shape. It took a moment, but the image solidified and the coloration faded, leaving him an unsteady human on his feet, looking up at him curiously behind his gas mask.

Keith closed his eyes for a second during Riel's transformation. The brightness of the process blinded the vampire temporarily. Once he was in his human form, Reynolds looked at him. The boy's gas mask made him curious. Why was he wearing it? Isn't it too suspicious? Keith had many questions. He started from the most important one. "Riel, tell me, do you need to eat normal food? Like... Bread, cheese, fruit et cetera?" He asked. Keith didn't want to have a starving ally, so preferred to take care of the kid. "If I made both of us strong, nobody will be able to kill us..." He thought.

He watched him, blinking once, twice before speaking. "You eat boff souls an' blood, don' you?" Riel asked, curious as to why anyone would ask such a question. The boy wasn't a good person, no, but he was a person nonetheless, and people needed to eat. Even kishin eggs couldn't survive off of souls alone; souls only fed the soul and the weapon, not the stomach and body. Riel knew these things, but articulating them into words was more difficult than he'd anticipated, let alone had the words for. "I still geht hungwy fo' food."

Keith nodded at Riel's question. "Yes, indeed. I eat souls and drink blood. I'm still a vampire, despite also being... a corrupted soul, after all." He explained, calmly, as he put his hands into the pockets of his coat. The vampire closed his eyes, the boy had answered his question. "I see. Then I'd like to know when... if you're hungry for food. I'll buy you something to eat, kid." Keith told him as he started to walk towards the street. The vampire suddenly stopped though and turned towards him, he didn't say anything, he was probably just waiting for the boy to come with him.

The boy's pupils dilated, eclipsing the green of his irises and making them seem like saucers. In the right lighting, he looked possessed. "Food....?" He said, the word retaining the childish innocence of his age, punctuated by not only the trailing off of his voice but by a loud growl that showed his stomach registered the word. He hadn't eaten in days, and the last thing had been from the trash, half molded and thus half discarded.

Thanks to his vampiric senses, Keith heard the growl of the kid's stomach. He nodded. "Yes, food. Do you have any...preferences?" The kishin egg spoke. Reynolds tried to remember what children usually love to eat- fast foods, pizza, sweets, spaghetti. He suddenly remembered that his son would often complain about having to eat vegetables. Children usually dislike healthy food. The vampire felt a sharp pain in his heart. Enough thinking about the life he had to abandon. Keith blinked a few times and sighed quietly, he couldn't run away from the past even if he wanted.