The Best Thing About Not Being Home is Missing You

[preuxchevalier]

There are people back home that your character hates. Or maybe they love them, but they're terrible people/influences. Here's your chance to talk or play out that special someone turning up in the Meadous. Are they so far out of their element that they're now defanged tigers? Do they lead right in with their wicked ways? What is your character's CR even going to think when they meet this person?
 

Post with your own character or the person they most/least want to see again who's a bad thing for them. Feel free to play out encounters in the snow between this character and your regular character's CR, or talk it out with if you're not sure you've got the voice down.
 

Fun for all ages! And by fun, we mean misery!

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[preuxchevalier]

Bertie had reasoned to himself that it was only half an hour. He'd walk about just for a half hour, avoid anyone that set his mouth to water, then right back to Terezi's little room. He was going absolutely crackers being cooped up in one place for an age, though. Young Bertram wasn't one for exercise on the whole, but he liked some change of scenery. Terezi had threatened that it was on his own head if he attacked anyone, and that she'd smelling him. She'd licked her tongue around her mouth after that, which was incredibly disconcerting.

In any case, he was out and taking full advantage of it on his way over toward the wishing pond to make one more go at appealing to their ailing deity on Ienzo's behalf. He was pulled up entirely short by a presence nearby that was shortly accompanied by a man.

He was a vampire. Bertie wasn't entirely sure how he knew that - something like with darkness inside Hajime? - but he was certain.

Bertie stood, still as a statue, on the path, watching the other man as he drew near. It wasn't often he saw another chap in a doggy suit sporting a walking stick. He didn't look or smell particularly pleasant. Certainly nothing to eat, which was a relief. "What ho," he called a bit stiffly when the other man was in hailing distance. "Just arrived?" He really hoped so. Terezi hadn't mentioned another vampire in their midst last night.

[skullmotif]

"That I have." Jacob's posture indicated a small amount of discomfort as well. It would have been far more pronounced had he not gone to check the bulletin board first and not gotten a vague idea of the village's supernatural social situation. Now it was just the regular sort of sizing up one's opponent. He walked a little faster to close some of the distance between them, and stopped a respectful distance away from Bertie. Best let both their Beasts settle themselves down before getting too chummy.

"I must say, this place is... underwhelming. And small. And hardly a place for people like us."

[preuxchevalier]

'People like us.' Were he any other sort of fellow out for an evening walk, Bertie might cast a sympathetic eye on him and told him that gentlemen have to make do, what? Bertie was fairly certain the cove meant something else, though. "I don't imagine it is, old boy," he replied, still guarded. "We've been trying to manage that issue, though it's gone a bit sideways."

There was a drawn out pause as he continued to consider the other man, the Beast wary within him, as well. This chap made Bertie feel like there was something unpleasant oozing down his spine. Something that was reminiscent of- "Ah! You're like Ms. Waters! The Notre Dame type?" He'd meant that to come out a little more certain, but he didn't think he was remembering that right. Natalie was from Canada, not France.

[skullmotif]

"Sideways. Really, now? Do tell." There were some stories that he couldn't glean from the message board. In the end, he'd need to actually talk with the residents of this little pastoral prison. He does smile and try to be pleasant, but it's not a very good attempt at it. He looks too cold and too inhuman for it to possibly be genuine.

And then Bertie's muttering things about 'Notre Dame', and any effort at a smile is entirely abandoned. Not just a vampire, but an idiot vampire. "Nosferatu. For a vampire yourself, you seem woefully ignorant of the most basic information." He takes a step closer, his grip upon his walking stick tightening. "I'm not sure that I'm pleased that you've apparently been associating with my daughter." Now this might be familiar territory for Bertie, once all the unpleasant undead bits are stripped from it. Angry parental figures expressing that anger in regards to some young woman he's managed to bumble his way into the company of are almost a taste of home, aren't they?

[preuxchevalier]

Bertie bristled instinctively, and took a step back. "Y-your daughter?" Wait, Natalie's father was a vampire? She hadn't mentioned-

It hit Bertie like a bit of lead piping to the back of the head. Her sire. This was Natalie's sire. But, wait, he was a Waters, too? Was that coincidence, or had he... adopted the girl properly? Regardless, Bertie took another step back from the other man, holding up his hands.

"I'm not a vampire! I-I mean, I'm not meant to be," he babbled, Beast growling at the other man's presumption and audacity. There was no reason to back away. Bertie ought to stand firm, give him the talking to he deserved. Show him what becoming a vampire had meant. Except Waters was... stronger, older. "I turned Ms. Waters back into a human, and she turned me into a vampire. It-it all got mixed up, she just wanted me to understand, and now the wishing pond isn't working we're both bally well stuck."

He needed to get to the pond. He needed to wish this man human at once. The talk with Natalie about this man was rising to the forefront of his mind.

[skullmotif]

As Bertie retreated, Jacob advanced. If simple verbal intimidation was working, he'd hold off on the stronger measures for now. "You are a vampire. Whether you're meant to be one is irrelevant." He could fix that, of course. He could stake the man and leave him for the sunrise. He could chew him into bloody chunks. And that dark part of him that made him what he was very much wanted to. But not now, not yet, for what would that accomplish?

The explanation of the condition swapping that the two had been subject to made Jacob's lip curl in something akin to disgust. "Back into... and then..." He gave a sniff at the air, eyed the anxious young vampire up and down, and outright scowled. "You're no Nosferatu. What did that wish make you into? What clan? Answer. I would hope that my child would have taken it upon herself to educate you properly." And to find him in the daytime and throw open all the windows if he were too stupid to be allowed to continue to live. "She is well, isn't she?"

[preuxchevalier]

In spite of their open surroundings, Bertie was beginning to feel cornered. Angry fathers he was used to, angry fathers who also held unspeakable evil in their hearts was new. As was his wont, Bertie cowered away from Jacob. "S-stop. Stop!" he commanded with as much force behind it as he could muster. "Don't come any closer. She said I'm a Ventrue!

"She's been teaching me all sorts of things about, erm... v-vitae and... controlling the Beast and sunlight! Dashed bit of trouble the old soleil du ciel, what? She's also doing marvelously. Not a bit bad, I'd say. Happily dashing about in the sun, getting her fill of proper food, and being dippy for a young chap. Not me! She's not dippy about me. Not in the slightest!"

[skullmotif]

Jacob's head gives a sharp lift at Bertie's command to stop, but he does no such thing. He's felt such words before, and to one of his experience and power, it was nothing. "Yes, yes. You would be, thinking to be ordering me around like that." It was almost a pity. He had very much wanted to smash his walking stick into the fool's head. Now that was off the table, for he didn't want to damage the walking stick.

He does come closer, but his pace is slow. "...she's being what? To who?" And though the look of disgust and disappointment hasn't left his face, inside he's more amused than anything. How clever of her, feigning interest in some man in the interests of manipulating him. "That's a suspiciously specific denial, sir. Are you sure?" ...okay, now he's just screwing with the man.

[preuxchevalier]

Bertie was seriously beginning to wonder if Natalie hadn't told him wrong about these powers he was meant to have. Fat lot of good they seemed to do most of the time. He shot a glance over his shoulder as he considered legging it. This man was making him incredibly anxious, and Bertie's Beast was beginning to claw at him. It would be so easy to let that deal with fending off the angry Mr. Waters.

Of course, that might set him off, and then they'd be a pair of monsters running crazy about the village. Bertie reins in the increasingly powerful urge to lash out at the other man, to break him. To bend him to a will that should be far away and above his.

"No. No! I mean yes! Yes, I'm sure!" Surely a man in a suit wouldn't pursue him if Bertie took to wing. That would require divesting himself of the top half of his oufit, though. And Bertie also wasn't entirely sure it would work. He hadn't tried to form his wings since he'd been transformed. His Lamb powers seemed to work, though. "Sh-she's an absolute ungrateful wretch of a girl."

That... might not have been the best piece of opinion to use in evidence of his lack of interest. "But don't, um... I've got terrible opinions. 'Bertram,' they say, 'have you got an opinion on that girl?'

"'Just so,' I reply, cocking the old chapeau at a doggy angle, 'she makes Stiffy Byng look like a regular angel.'

'Chuh!' they return, with not a little feeling. 'We knew better than to ask you, you chump!'"

[skullmotif]

The direction that this conversation was proceeding in was doing little for Jacob's urge to biff this Bertram upside the head with his walking stick. He even shifted his grip on it, holding it lower, ready to swing it back... needing to vent that rage somehow, he instead snapped the stick upwards, the head of the cane coming to rest roughly beneath Bertie's chin.

"That's enough. Enough of your 'terrible opinions'. Perhaps its time that I find Natalie and have a word with her, myself. You wouldn't happen to know where I might find her, Bertram?"

[preuxchevalier]

It was reflex, pure reflex born of having monsters swing at him with things far worse than walking sticks, that had Bertie's hands up and attempting to grab and twist the thing away from the other man with a desperate force. "Don't!" His fangs were out, and he bared them at Jacob in fear and anger.

This was bad. This was very bad. He needed to disengage right now for everyone's sake.