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Thread: Reaching Out, Reaching Up

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    Closed Roleplay [WoD] Reaching Out, Reaching Up

    As soon as the sun set on Kings College, Sansa said an awkward goodbye to Rod Stafford and took her leave of his flat. She stopped at a few stores, buying a new outfit so she wouldn't have to show up at the Dunsirn flat in sweatpants, and acquiring a new mobile phone as the mages had made her last one disappear and hadn't seemed to give any thought toward getting it back to her.

    She called Ewan Dunsirn and left a message. "It's Sansa... I'm fine, sorry for staying out all day, I'll explain later. It's not Liam's fault." She paused. "Bye."

    Sansa looked down at her mobile and chewed her upper lip before entering the next number. It was one that Gabe had made her memorize, but also promise never to call, so she felt more than a little conflicted as she pressed the number buttons. The impersonal voice that picked up the call eventually told her that the man he represented would meet with her. A place and time were given.

    And so she found herself staring up at the Barbican Arts Centre around eleven, a flood of memories washing over her. With effort she started up the steps, gaining resolve with each one she took. Sansa wasn't quite sure what help she could get from the Prince of London, but it would be better than Rod's grudging assistance. Anything would be better than his cold judgement.

    The front doors were unlocked, and she stepped inside, not quite expecting Roland Salisbury to be standing in the entrance waiting for her, but a little worried that he wasn't. She walked through to the art gallery, her ballet flats making little noise on the floor.

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    TheHolo.Net Poster Has been a member for 5 years or longer Roland Salisbury's Avatar
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    There were two types of people to be found in art galleries. For some, a venue like the Barbican was a window into the human soul. Each brush stroke and daub of paint was precisely chosen, placed with all the care of a master craftsman and capable of communication so much more than words.

    - and then there were people like Roland Salisbury.

    He stood in front of an eight foot by three foot canvas, painted solid black. The view was good, in that while he stood in front of the canvas, he had a good angle on the galleries various entrances. He could also be seen by the coterie he had stationed throughout the gallery: a group of equally disinterested looking men and women loitering about in front of artwork that they didn't have the capacity or inclination to understand.

    Given what had happened on the last occasion that Kindred had gathered at the Barbican, Salisbury was taking no chances where security was concerned. The thought of that night stirred up mixed emotions and memories of Prince - no, Gabriel Rodermark. What was it that Sansa Martin hoped to inspire in Roland by contacting him out of the blue and asking for a meeting, here of all places?

    Salisbury turned towards the sight of the young woman, taking stock of her appearance with a glance.

    “Miss Martin.”

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    She resisted the urge to run her hands through her long hair, trusting instead that everything was still in place. How would she address him? She hesitated a moment, and then did a little curtsey in the light blue sundress she had bought to replace her missing clothes. "My Prince."

    Sansa looked up as she straightened, and added, "Thank you for meeting me." She hoped she didn't sound too timid...and not too bold, either. "I... need help. Ah... Ga- Gabriel was killed. Last weekend." She clasped her hands together in front of her, her fingers icy cold.

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    TheHolo.Net Poster Has been a member for 5 years or longer Roland Salisbury's Avatar
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    Some part of Roland had been waiting to hear those words for so long now.

    For decades, he had been steward to the city of London. When the Prince had been dethroned, it had been Roland who had shouldered the responsibility of filling the void he had left behind – but the title had never sat comfortably with him. It had always felt as if he was merely... holding onto it, keeping the city safe as he had always done until Gabriel returned. It was a foolish thought, given what an idiot Rodermark had been, but as a Ventrue he was nothing if not a conservative.

    If Gabriel had met his Final Death, did that mean Roland's time as Prince was over? His brow wrinkled into a frown as he contemplated the prospect of ruling London for decades and decades to come. He returned his attention to the painting.

    “By whose hand?”

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    "A human," she said simply, looking to the side as she couldn't help but remember the bloody scene. "Vampire hunters, I believe." Sansa paused. Now that she was here, and they were talking, she wasn't sure how much to tell him.

    "Last night they followed me to a house of a...friend. Another bunch of men. Hunting me." She wrapped her arms around herself as if she was cold. "The humans of the house were murdered, even though they had no idea what...what I am."

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    TheHolo.Net Poster Has been a member for 5 years or longer Roland Salisbury's Avatar
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    Roland inhaled, slowly. It was an old habit that he hadn't quite shed with his mortally. A long, deep breath in which to consider the gravity of what he'd just heard. The death of a powerful member of the Kindred community was one thing, but to lose someone – even an exile – to a hunter, a kine no less? That was... difficult.

    Gabriel had never been the Camarilla's greatest warrior, or even anything more than a passable fencer, but he had committed diablerie on the vitae of an ancient, feral Gangrel. That hot blood would take a long time to cool in his veins. It would make him reckless and perhaps, Salisbury thought ruefully, sloppy.

    With all this in mind, what Roland said was simply: “Ah.”

    Though it wasn't the girls doing, and Roland blamed Gabriel for all of it, wherever Sansa Martin went murder and misery inevitably seemed to follow. He frowned and reached out to her, settling one hand on her shoulder.

    “I'll... see to it.”

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    She flinched, hard, as he touched her shoulder, and found it hard to relax the tension even after she realized she was in no danger. One objective down.

    "I... I need a place to stay." Sansa looked down, humiliated. "I don't like to ask but my current place is ...it isn't good for long term. Gabriel handled all our money, and I don't know how to get into it now."

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    TheHolo.Net Poster Has been a member for 5 years or longer Roland Salisbury's Avatar
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    Salisbury withdrew his hand. It was important to remember, he thought a moment too late, that he was dealing with a Toreador and not just any Toreador. The blood of their clan was already thick with melancholy, but few of them embodied their tragic ennui so purely as the young woman standing before him. Barely more than a fledgling, she had experienced almost nothing of kindred society save for the brief, violent clash with the Baali some years ago. There was so much she had to learn, so much that Gabriel should have been teaching her -

    The waspish buzz of a mobile phone interrupted Roland's train of thought. Reaching into his blazer pocket, he pulled out his smart-phone and frowned at the screen. “Excuse me, I must take this.”

    He took a step away from Sansa, his back turned to her as he held the phone to his ear. The conversation was efficient. Roland said little, asking only short questions. After less than a minute it was over and he turned back to Sansa, his expression no more or less neutral than it had been before.

    “If you will uphold the Traditions, I can arrange somewhere safe for you to stay, temporarily – but first we need to take a drive down to the Thames.”

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    She was nodding before he finished talking. "Yes, yes I will. I can. Thank you." Sansa knew she started to talk quickly, like Gabe, when she was excited, so made an effort not to slip into his manic mannerisms. She pressed her lips together, and took a step backward, toward the door. "You won't even know I'm there."

    Roland nodded, distractedly, and she followed him out of the Barbican to where a car with darkened windows was waiting. He opened the back door and let her in first, then went around and joined her in the backseat. His driver pulled smoothly away from the curb as Sansa put on her seatbelt.

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    TheHolo.Net Poster Has been a member for 5 years or longer Roland Salisbury's Avatar
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    A glance in a rear-view mirror confirmed to Roland that the coterie he'd brought with him were following behind in a second, identical car. The driver had turned out onto Aldergate Street before he spoke. “Where to, sir?”

    “Factory Road. The old Tate and Lyle pier.”

    The driver nodded, tapping the address into a sat nav unit. It didn't matter that he and Roland had been living in London for long enough to know the city inside out; Roland insisted on the use of such technology, if only to make sure that they could arrive as promptly as possible. “Twenty minutes. Maybe half an hour in this traffic.”

    Whitechapel, Stepney, Limehouse and Poplar flashed by the cars window, still alight and alive in spite of the late hour. Kindred or kine, London never slept. Roland glanced at his watch as they made the turn onto Silvertown Way. To their right, across the waters of the Thames, the O2 Arena was lit up blue and red. The banks of the river were crowded in equal parts with industrial buildings and parks, a strange duality.

    The car came to a halt at the back of a redbrick and corrugated iron building. The driver got out, Roland following wordlessly. The coterie approached, scanning the surrounding area: dark, silent. The group shared murmured words as Roland opened the car door for Sansa.

    “Miss Martin, I need you to-”

    The whip-crack of a gunshot shattered the stillness of the night followed by a distant shout. Roland flinched. As one, the coterie drew firearms from inside of their jackets and began to stalk – in a military formation – towards the source of the sound.

    “I need you to come with me.”

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    There was something eerily familiar about the entire situation, and the sense of dιjΰ vu only got stronger as the car came to a stop. Roland put his hand out to help her from the car, but she shrank back at the sound of gunshots.

    You already died, Sansa, she scolded herself, forcing herself to take Salisbury's hand and get out of the car. Her summery dress felt flimsy and stupid as she followed the elder Camarilla as ordered. Walking directly toward confrontation, the opposite of what she and Gabe had been doing for the last five years, felt very wrong.

    She wasn't that girl she had been, though. She was strong, and fast. She had the blood of the Toreador, and could protect herself, as she had done against the kine who had taken Gabe from her. Sansa looked around her, the breeze carrying murmurs that seemed to come from behind her. They always seemed to get louder when she thought about Gabriel.

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    TheHolo.Net Poster Has been a member for 5 years or longer Roland Salisbury's Avatar
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    Sansa was not alone in her deja vu. The Isle of Dogs incident was almost six years ago, but the passage of time had done little to mend the damage done on that day. For Sansa Martin, the damage was irreparable. Roland had witnessed her first awakening into her new existence as a Kindred, born among the crackling hell-fire and malformed corpses of Kindred, Garou and Baa'li hell-spawn alike. The Camarilla had gained a member in Sansa and almost certainly lost one in Gabriel on that day.

    Rodermark and his childe's own melodrama aside, it had been ill-advised to meet with the Garou as they had done. They had been on the back-foot from the start – but not this time. This time he thought, reaching for the strength in his blood as they neared the sounds of shouting and gunfire - this time, they would have the upper-hand.

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    She forced herself to stand tall, and to trust in her strength and agility. A simple bullet would not permanently harm her. Sansa pulled her long hair back into a tail, securing it with a bit of elastic as she trailed behind Roland and his henchmen. The juxtaposition of the frivolity of the Games going on across the Thames with whatever it was they were walking into was almost jarring, and she had to force herself to concentrate on the situation at hand.

    Roland's men fanned out, using hand signals to communicate as they made their way into the red brick building. Sansa balked at the entrance, but as Roland stepped inside she steeled herself and did the same. The gunshots seemed quieter, as though they were on the other side of the building at the banks of the Thames.

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    TheHolo.Net Poster Has been a member for 5 years or longer Roland Salisbury's Avatar
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    Roland pressed against the cover of a doorway, listening to the clatter and clang of noises reverberating throughout the inside of the warehouse. He stole a glance around the door-frame: the room beyond was lit by strip lights on the ceiling, their fluorescent light barely bright enough to reach the warehouse floor. Crates and shipping containers of all sizes covered the floor, though there was space enough to move between them – and get a line of sight on firing a gun through them.

    On a cue, another frenetic burst of sound rattled through the building, the hail of gunfire under-written with shouting voices. Roland ducked backwards as he saw a flash of movement, someone darting between the shipping containers. A second shape – familiar – sprung upwards onto the top of one container, leaping the distance between it and the railed walkway that clung to the upper half of the warehouses four walls.

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    Dylan landed with a clang. Beneath him, someone swung the muzzle of their gun upwards and fired, shots shredding through the metal grating. Dylan's running footsteps rang loudly against the walkway for an instant, charging away from the gunfire and towards the figure taking cover at the opposite end of the walkway – and then, surging forward, he was silent. His flesh misted away, his bulky frame suddenly nothing more than a ghostly apparition. Lurching out of cover, his prey fired off a handful of rounds before Dylan misted through him, twisting and turning, suddenly solid once more and tearing at the hunter's throat with teeth and claws.

    Below, another gun was silenced as one of his pack pounced from the cover of a crate onto an unprepared foe.

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    She tried to focus, to look at what was happening and process it rationally and figure out where she could be useful. Roland ducked back behind a shipping container, and she stood there for a moment, completely exposed as gunfire rattled in the warehouse.

    Sansa's head snapped upward, looking at the catwalks that crisscrossed the warehouse. Someone was attacking, but who? Someone was defending ... or maybe they were attacking, and the other defending. She came back to her immediate surroundings with a gasp, reaching for the power of her blood and accelerating behind a crate.

    Sliding down out of sight, her blue and white dress was crushed against the filthy concrete floor as she moved to her knees to look for Salisbury and his men. He was across from her, still standing safely behind a metal shipping container as the sounds of fighting grew nearer. Nearer and nearer. Gabriel would - They had often - he was useless, better off without him dear - Gabe hadn't ever -

    Sansa clamped her hands over her ears, screwing her eyes shut and leaning against the shipping crate in her crouch, the thoughts coming too fast to keep up with. Stop, just stop. Stop stop stop.

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    TheHolo.Net Poster Has been a member for 5 years or longer Roland Salisbury's Avatar
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    Roland had scarcely moved. He was listening still, listening and watching when he could. He could hear the Scourge of London moving through the warehouses upper levels, the mistakable snap and squelch of a Gangrel let lose from his leash. The air was thick with the scent of kine blood; a good sign. If his estimations were right, the fighting would not last much longer. Feeling the buzzing of his phone in his pocket, Roland frowned and reached for the device. A figure in a hood sprinted, panting, into view and thrust his gun at Sansa.

    “No,” Roland barked out the word as an order, his voice reverberating with the power in his blood, and the kine froze. In ordinary circumstances, Salisbury would be loathe to draw upon the Kindred power to dominate others in such a heavy-handed fashion – but he could not deny the brutal simplicity of it. Unable to bring himself to squeeze the trigger at Sansa, the hooded gunman swung around and fired at Roland -

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    - Dylan barreled shoulder-fist into the hooded gunman, the two of them crashing to the ground in a heap of limbs. The gunshot ricocheted against the ceiling and the firearm was soon slapped aside as the Gangrel claimed another throat, clawed fingertips raking through the gunman's shirt and the armoured vest beneath as if they were little more than tissue paper. Wide, unbelieving eyes stared up at him as he crouched, hunched over the gunman's body with nostrils flared and chin dripping with blood. He sniffed the air and, with a curl of his upper lip, swung his gaze towards... Sansa.

    He didn't know how she was here – he didn't know why – but the truth of the matter was, he didn't care. If ever there was a deserving candidate for the Scourge's justice, it was Sansa Martin and her clan-forsaken sire. Teeth-bared, he tossed the body of the gunman aside and charged at Sansa.

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    "No," she breathed, transfixed as the Gangrel barreled toward her, her back pressed against the crate. For a moment she considered fleeing, or at least attempting to flee, but couldn't quite get her legs moving.

    She'd already lived past her expiration date. Without Gabriel... Sansa closed her eyes, her arms out as if she would embrace the Scourge as he tore through her flesh.

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    I fell on the Scourge like lighting,crashing down from above. The moment I revealed myself, his eyes darted up to meet me – the look of ragged, feral fury in his gaze darkening to a murderous menace. We collided, Dylan's broad chest taking the impact of my fall with no trouble at all. He staggered a step, but it was for only a moment. Resisting the overwhelming urge to go to Sansa, I kept her at my back as Dylan lunged in, swinging wildly. He was strong – stronger than I could ever hope to be –but my blood was not without its strengths. What I lacked in brute force, I gained in quickness of limb. A blur of movement, I side-stepped Dylan's incoming blow and caught his hand, spinning the big Gangrel away from me - away from Sansa - with the full force of his own momentum.

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