voyagers | [party post] come sail away with me

Entry tags:

[party post] come sail away with me

You've come through a door, and you are on a boat. Specifically, you're on a cruise ship in the middle of some giant body of water. You've come through the door behind you which is attached to nothing and may now be locked. It's relatively empty as giant as it appears to be. The only other passengers that are here appear to also have come through the door for the most part and it is not nearly enough to fill up this entire cruise ship.

Also, who knows who the hell is driving this thing since all of the employees appear to be either ghosts or holograms...

Is this your first time here or your hundredth time here? Do you want a drink or a dip in the pool? Is it day or night? Do you stumble on your room or some other situation either fun or painful within its many rooms, shops, and facilities? Do you run into someone you know or a complete stranger?

The possibilities are unlimited!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"My liver doesn't damage. My everything doesn't damage, actually. It's as much of a perk as it is downer."

Don't feel bad, Damon, everyone has trouble getting a read on him. He throws people off deliberately; it's a thing. The only person with the ability to properly suss him out isn't here. (Thank God.) There was only so much of her hovering he could take, even when he was thoroughly enjoying the attention. Sometimes, a person just needed to be left alone — especially a person who prefers the company of pigeons over people more often than not.

"No getting drunk for you," Damon says in a lightly snarky voice as he gets alcohol of his own. Granted... it takes really, really, really fast drinking to get him anywhere near tipsy for the same reasons. "So that makes you what then?"

Damon tilts his head to the side as he watches him carefully. He would find this throwing people off deliberately thing impressive if he didn't want so badly to figure out what the hell his deal is. It's the way Damon operates so he can know how to deal with any particular person though he will always be that asshole, too damaged (if he ever got what he wanted, he would break it, destroy it, wouldn't know what to do with it).

Yes, well, there were downsides to everything. Not being able to get drunk just happened to be one of the biggest when it came to unlocking the vampire lineage hidden in your DNA. It was a small price to pay for immortality. He's paid bigger ones, both willingly and not.

Nikola tsks the question. "Someone who's not in the business of sharing his secrets."

Immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be, but Damon is a bit damaged in that sense. ...in a lot of senses, lbr. He is a terrible person that does terrible things and always will even if he gets a bit less terrible sometimes. There's growth. It's just never enough to make him anything better than what he is.

Damon smirks at the response.

"Didn't think it'd be that easy," Damon says as he picks out his drink from the bar. "So how about a who the hell are you? A name'd work. No need to get into the business of sharing your secrets for that one."

It's with a light, mirthless chuckle that he shakes his head and in spite of himself, decides to surrender at least that.

"Nikola Tesla."

Okay, that makes him pause, and he has been to Chicago where anyone and anything could fall through its Rifts to the city sidewalks below so it's not completely out of the question. He's lifting an eyebrow like he's trying to tell if he's joking.

"... the Nikola Tesla?"

Except he isn't joking. He's dead serious — but not dead. Vampires in his version of the world are a little more complex than your standard, run of the mill variation on the traditional mythos. They're an ancient, legitimate species that evolved alongside humans that are virtually extinct these days. Nikola's something of a rare specimen, thanks to a couple of blood experiments at Oxford.

They'd been so certain the vampire blood sample they'd acquired wouldn't turn any of them into vampires. Too bad they hadn't taken someone with pre-existing vampire lineage into account.

Not that he was complaining. He rather enjoyed his immortal existence, even if he was forced to fake his death back in the 40s. Humanity hadn't been ready for the truth of vampires or other abnormals, and he was getting tired of world governments breathing down his neck, beckoning him to develop this and that for them. Those days were over.

He grins toothily. "Precisely. I take it you've heard of me?"

Damon can tell. Despite that toothy grin, he is completely serious, and he has no idea how this ship works, where or when people can come from, but that is one more question to add to the many mysteries. He knows Nikola Tesla died... or he thinks he knows that.

Then again, he may have been from another world entirely. He half smirks-half smiles as he leans against the bar with the drink in his hand.

"Vaguely."

This is not true as he's more than vaguely heard about the inventor and engineer, but who is Damon to ever admit anything? This time he's actually being sarcastic ass though, because obviously people would have heard of him. "What brings a guy like you to a place like this? And I don't remember ever hearing anything about Nikola Tesla being completely impervious to damage. Funny thing to leave out of the history books." He's just sayin.

At the drop of a hat, Nikola transitions from sarcastic to serious.

"Ask yourself this: Was the world ready to hear that someone had managed to render themselves impervious? Invisible? Or, how about, being told that Jack the Ripper was a teleporter, hmm? No, no. They weren't ready. They still aren't ready. Society as a whole considers themselves to be open to otherworldly concepts, but the truth of the matter is, if they were made aware of the abnormalities that are more commonplace than they think, they'd go ballistic. It'd be a witch hunt."

In regards to what him to this boat? What brought any of them here? That wasn't the big question on everyone's minds: who? Nikola couldn't say, and he didn't like not knowing. He wasn't James, didn't enjoy the mystery or unraveling it — at least, not like this.

Damon is quiet though he doesn't drop his casual stance for a second. He takes in each detail mentioned as it is mentioned. There are more secrets here, but he knows very well the truth in what Nikola is saying and why he knows the truth of it.

He had to clean up the messes that he made so hunters wouldn't suspect a thing. Damon knows not reacting to the fact that there are more abnormalities out there is giving him away too. He knows for a reason, but things are getting complicated. Give a little information to get a little information.

He takes a long drink from his glass. "I'd say you sound like you could use a drink, but we both know that won't do you much good. Jack the Ripper as a teleporter?" Damon grimaces, swallowing more of the drink and just picking up the whole damn bottle. "Do you really think the world will ever be ready? People are idiots."

"A mad teleporter, though I suppose mad was always a popular part of the Ripper scenario. One of the few things the various takes on the 'legend' have managed to get right."

John's name had graced the list of suspects for a time, but only because his whereabouts could not be determined. He'd been removed from it shortly after due to his connections to James, who was assisting Scotland Yard with the case, and the misplace trust he had in him. And while John was the real Jack the Ripper, very rarely was the crime actually pinned on him. Lore tended to favor those who weren't even part of the original case, like those absurd claims that the Duke of Clarence had gone on the murder spree.

Ridiculous.

"Hey now," Nikola interjects, "I said I couldn't get drunk, I never said I didn't like to drink. Which I do. Very much so. As for people..." He shrugs noncommittally. "They used to be more aware than history lets on, but the things that humans fear tend to either fall in line with myth and legend or fade away altogether. If it can't be used to advance something, why keep it around? There's no point in bringing what's faded back to the forefront until there's a point in doing so. Perhaps one day there will be a worthy enough cause, but until then... It's the faded life for me — and for you as well, or so I gather."

Extremely quick on the uptake, this one.

Edited 2014-04-20 02:47 (UTC)

"That's the part that is especially making me grimace, because as far as I've ever known, mad was always part of the tale so teleporting, mad Ripper, and I've had my experience with Rippers."

Even if tales hardly have any baring on the truth especially after so much time, it tends to get lost, but still any person that goes by the Ripper (like his brother who Damon is so not thinking of now) and has the ability to teleport wherever the hell he pleases? It is not a comforting thought in the slightest.

"You can't even get a little bit drunk?" Damon asks, and he definitely has to drink nearly an entire bottle as fast as possible before it affects him in any sense of the word, but... he can reach a somewhat affected state. There's a quietness to him, and Damon wonders if he should admit it or not, except he gets the feeling even if he tried to deny it, Nikola already knows the truth. He's a smart dude even if Damon won't admit that. "I don't know if I'd call it faded, but I don't go advertising, and I'd be perfectly fine if there was never any cause because after the cause is over? I'm sure witch hunt would be next in line."

Faded might be accurate to the life he is forced to live in that world, but here? Here, he's planning on 'living it up' to the fullest extent as much as a vampire ever can.

"Oh, have you now?"

Color Nikola morbidly curious, as there's something in the way Damon says that that seems to denote that there's more to the story than simply having come across someone who liked to rip people apart for fun. Even when Nikola was at his misguided worst, at the very peak of his bitterness, he never stooped to such diabolical means. Low for him was tampering with the genetics of a few drug addicted rich kids tossed into rehab by their parents. (Not the best choice he ever made, but that hadn't ended too badly, all things considered...) Being a Ripper put you in an entirely different category of person; a person who was on the very verge of not being a person anymore.

If he'd had it his way, they would've taken care of Johnny a long time ago like they thought they had Adam. Damn Helen's sentimental attachment to him.

Nikola shakes his head. "Not since Oxford. Blood experiment gone wrong — or right, depending on how you choose to look at it."

"I have. The uncontrollable kind."

That he couldn't put down because it was his own brother. Granted, he never helped him as much as he could have, as much as he should have. He was bitter and angry, and Stefan paid for that and paid for all of Damon's lashing out. Damon made his own decisions. Other people always try to save him when he doesn't deserve saving. It's Stefan he should have tried to save, but he was so wrapped up in Katherine who never even felt the same. If he thinks about it, the bitterness becomes like a knife in his chest again and again. He's been so stupid.

Over and over and over again.

"...you became the way you are because of an experiment?" That's... different than Damon pledging his undying love for someone who didn't feel the same. Maybe it's easier to not have regrets when there's another case. He takes a bigger drink from the bottle in his hand, swallowing it like it's glass. It burns, and he likes it, the burn, the pain (he's a masochist through and through). "So you don't regret it?"

"What were you expecting, a radioactive spider bite? Toxic waste? A mauling by a werewolf just outside of town?" He laughs, tsks, and shakes his head. "No, no. It was nothing so cliché as to be worthy of Stan Lee. Alan Moore, on the other hand... He could probably do something worthwhile with my origin story, so to speak, especially given what he did with The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, but I digress — and I don't regret it."

He finishes off the rest of his wine in one gulp, sobering a bit in spite of it. "Though I think we can all say we regret his teleporting. That... That was, and continues to be, a problem. As uncontrollable Rippers tend to be — you understand."

Nikola knows the matter would be so much simpler if the four of them hadn't contributed to John's ability to teleport alongside him. They'd all had a hand in it, were all to blame for the results they all experienced after taking the serum.

Damon just smirks at the question, leaning forward against the bar as he looks across it at Nikola, and the smirk widens, because okay, this guy's amusing. He'll give him that. "I had no expectations. All I know about what you are is you can't get drunk or get damaged in anyway. But inventor guy whose experiment goes wrong somehow isn't cliché?" There's only the slightest of pauses when Nikola says he doesn't regret it. Damon doesn't anymore despite how he misses his humanity in that way that deeply destructive way, because he'll never be human again.

And reaching anywhere near those levels of humanity is even more painful, because it's never going to be human enough. Damon's smirk widens even if he's imagining Stefan during his Ripper phases with teleporting abilities (if Damon had them even, he is not good and never will be after all).

"Yeah. Makes an uncontrollable killer that much more difficult to control." Or track down or stop.

"Who said the experiment went wrong? The results were an infinite number of possibilities and my current predicament is all by one of them. Granted, I'm something of a unique variable in that, given the fact that in order to achieve said results, one needed to prepossess the specific genetic markers required to produce it — which I did."

Unknowingly so. Nikola had no idea that he'd had Sanguine Vampiris ancestors, that once upon a time, vampires mated with humans spawned his family's bloodline until they started to look into why he wound up a vampire as a result of the serum when the other four were vampire-free. He'd had the potential to be one locked away in his DNA since birth; it had taken exposure to pure, untainted vampire blood to trigger those genetic markers and bring them to life — which the serum (and more recently, Afina's blood) did.

"I'd argue the problem is less the teleporting and more those who have sympathy for someone who can't be saved when it comes to controlling him."

Helen was the problem nine times out of ten. She was more than willing to take down Adam when he was threatening London, but John? Oh no, John had to be fixed. Saved. He didn't understand it, his more compassionate side having wilted after being dealt blows by men who laid claim to the changes he brought to the world.

"So it worked in a way you didn't expect it to work, but not wrong. Either way, science experiment is still pretty cliche and apt material for a movie."

Not that Damon thinks that Nikola seems like the Stan Lee-superhero type, but he can still see Hollywood taking a story like that and running with it. It's a lot more interesting than the reason that he became the way that he is (pathetically falling hopelessly, madly in love with someone who didn't feel the same but told him that she did

promised him they'd be together forever. God, he was an idiot).

"...compassion can be a pain in the ass that way or at least the people who have it endlessly." Damon doesn't have any though he never would be able to do what needs to be done in terms of Stefan, no matter how far down the line he was. That's because he loves his brother and doesn't care about the people he kills as the ripper. "So why didn't you just do what needed to be done anyway despite the compassionate ones?"

"As long as they get someone who didn't duet with Freddie Mercury to play me. Honestly, David Bowie looks nothing like me, but when you put a film in the hands of Christopher Nolan, you get two of three things: Batman, that kid from 3rd Rock From the Sun, or big names in awkward roles. Sometimes you have Shinzon playing Bane, other times a rock star playing me."

He shrugs, muttering something under his breath about how rock and roll isn't real music — because it isn't. He knew some of those great composers of that transitional period in the early 20th Century. JJ used to bring in symphonies to the Waldorf-Astoria for them to conduct while his guests danced the night away. Nikola's almost nostalgic for those times.

Almost.

"Because the one with the compassion is the one person who stands a chance of living as long as I will, and I'm not about to spend eternity listening to them rag on me at every opportunity for kicking Jackie's proverbial bucket."

Helen would never forgive him, and that would grow to be intolerable after a few centuries, if not decades.

Damon smirks at that. He is fairly well versed in movies and pop culture (at times), but he hasn't actually heard about that particular one. Now he's thinking he's going to have to look it up though. "...did David Bowie as you sing a song? Because that would just be the icing on the cake."

He is going to be amused by it no matter what especially with the way Nikola is both shrugging and muttering about rock and roll music under his breath. Damon's thinking he should probably not mention Taylor Swift songs either, but he might one day. Or maybe he'll just blast it over the loud speaker like the asshole that he is.

There's a soft, knowing smirk at what he says, and Damon swallows.

"So you don't want to lose the only person that might be able to keep you company all that time."

Loneliness is a dangerous thing and a powerful motivator. He should know. Not that it ever stops Damon from doing stupid, terrible things.

Nikola's a rare surviving member of The Five in that he is actually well acquainted with the times. He blends in easily with the people and the era, and not just because he's learned how to guise that thick Slavic accent that would otherwise coloring his voice. John and Helen, on the other hand, are oftentimes still far too Victorian to function in this modern century. James had been the same way before he'd been lost in the depths of Bhalasaam. Yet Nikola, in spite of his grumpy disposition and antisocial tendencies, got along just fine with the 21st Century.

(He did help usher it in, recorded history's accounts be damned.)

"Something like that." Because his relationship with Helen was as complicated as it was simple, stagnant, and impossible.

Damon lifts his eyebrows up curiously at the Something like that. There's a tiny smirk on his face, because well, the only relationships that he has in his life are all complicated, impossible. It was impossible that Elena should care about him, and yet she did-- she does.

He's used to thinking of her in the painful past tense way that tore open his chest.

"Something like that," he says quietly, lifting up his glass as if in response, as if in toast to relationships that are something like that.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[party post] come sail away with me

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject