World Tree MUSH

There's a vine leading into the husks of Berlin, the city was nuked and never rebuilt. An old nuclear bunker is nearby, and within Diana has made a hideout. It's small, but there's enough room for her and a guest to live comfortably for some time. There's a computer, Serrah's been given a guest account to use if she wants it, and an old Playstation IX loaded up with a variety of games. The controller is a bit questionable at times.

At this time, Diana is out, handling some business; but she ought to be back soon. The bunker is locked up, no functional emergency exits, to ensure no remote control can be used to convince Serrah to bail while Diana is out.

Serrah has been slightly worried about all this. Well ... of course she's worried; she's a vampire, and she's shacking it up with a vampire slayer. She's still taking stock of her whole situation; she would have mentioned at one point that she's been on the run since the first time she fled her home Blossom from Vincent, and this is the first time she's really been able to rest, without Vincent being a major problem. And even if he did reach this Blossom ... well, the hideout is airtight. He can't get in, and he can't control her into getting out.

Right now, she's playing on the Playstation IX, some hack-and-slash dodgeroll-RPG or other. Occasionally, a nervous grin appears on her face, and she furrows her brow.

There's a brief rush of air as the entrance is opened and closed, and a thunk when the lock is put back in place. "Having fun?" The vampire hunter asks her guest, before placing a sixpack of what looks like soda cans on the table. "I brought you something. Let me know how long this'll last you." She sounds a bit strained, like this is not a thing she enjoys doing. The cans are labelled simply as 'travel rations' containing '1 bc worth each' without fancy logos, no ingredients list.

Serrah tenses up as Diana enters, and doesn't relax until the doors are closed and locked once again. She grins. "We're only up to Playstation 4 in Hartford," she says. "By comparison, this level of graphics just feels kind of ... I dunno. Unholy?"

She gives the soda cans a blank look. She doesn't even need to ask what's in them. "I have mentioned that black puddings are fine, right?" she says flatly. "And animal blood, which I can locate in literally almost any Blossom or Branch."

"Yes, you have. But we don't have black pudding, and as for hunting animal blood; I figured it'd be good to have a backup option. These'll keep for months even if you can't hunt." Diana answers, glancing back towards the cans, "Besides these are cheap ones, they'll have been heavily cut with cattle blood to begin with." She shrugs, "I'd rather you don't use these unless necessary, but I'd also rather they're here if you need them than that you end up going hungry while under my care because something prevented you from hunting."

The hunter shrugs and claims her seat, and takes off her helmet and goggles for the first time, there's more scars on her forehead; these depict a burning city. "I figured, at this point. I owe you my story, abridged version of it anyway." A pause, "Unless you don't care."

Serrah nods, and sighs. "Yeah, okay, sorry," she says. "It's just ..." She shakes her head. "Yeah."

She raises her eyebrows in surprise as Diana reveals her face for the first time they met. She hesitates, then simply nods. "Sure, D," she says softly. "I feel like I owe it to my lost humanity, and, and what remains of what I *haven't* lost, to listen to someone who's been this much help protecting me. Y'know?"

"My name is Diana B Positive, Recycled ID #62412." The vampire hunter answers calmly. "Like most humans in this world I grew up in a collective nursery, until I was selected as an aspirant." She pauses, briefly. "And if fate hadn't intervened I'd likely still have been serving my master, likely as his progeny rather than his aspirant. But fate did intervene, and I was fortunate enough to be able to bring him to rest. I decided not to stop there." A pause, "It's not much of a story, but it's more than you had."

Serrah raises her eyebrows. As the full implications of the story hit her, her expression becomes one of pure disgust. "Jesus," she says softly. "So, like ... all the vampires in this blossom are as bad as that guy who hired us, huh?"

She stares ahead at nothing for a moment. "... In Hartford," she says, "the different sapient species are pretty much, like ..." She gestures vaguely "They've all historically gotten up to roughly the same levels of evil." She shakes her head. "It's only, like, a coincidence that I was born in a century where literal bloodsuckers are running the show."

"Not all of them. Young ones haven't lost all traces of their humanity yet, but they will eventually; and the old ones are running the show." Diana answers, calmly. "And with age also comes power, both personal power and built up connections and favours owed. The Duke who hired you was personally weaker than most dukes, he was of a lineage of vampires skilled in fleshcraft, if he'd been at home he would have been defended by a legion of once human monstrosities, their mind warped as much as their flesh." Diana shudders faintly, "If I really wanted to, I could replicate that skill... but..." There's disgust on her face.

She ndos at Serrah's answer. "Humans have done their share of evil things, but mostly to other humans. Until the vampire war, most humans weren't even aware vampires existed. Not that you'll find that mentioned in the history books, according to those vampires have always openly ruled over humans."

Serrah rolls her eyes. "Oh, that kind of rulership," she says dryly. "I mean. I'm not being dismissive, it's just." She gestures vaguely. "That does not feel to me, a woman who hasn't been a vampire for even a year, like something that's all that tenable."

She sighs softly. "In Hartford, it's all ... economics, and shit like that," she says. "Life is ... uh ... comfortable, basically, if you stay in your lane, you fit some definition of 'normal', and you don't give a shit about anyone else." She gives Diana a lopsided smirk -- thin-lipped, to hide her fangs. "I was only ever in the first category, and even that one stopped, ironically after Vinny put the bite on me."

"The way things are set up, they're very... uh, like some of those dystopia novels from the period of the Russo-American Fued." A pause, "Not like the dystopia novels from after." Diana leans back and smiles faintly as Serrah goes out of her way to hide her fangs, and her own smile is with just enough of a glimpse of teeth to show that she lacks vampire fangs, "Anyway. I've got some tricks up my sleeves that give me a fighting chance against even some pretty old vampires."

Serrah nods. "Yeah! There's a lot of that kind of thing going on in the World Tree. Like ..." She gestures vaguely. "Looking at some of the changes that have happened since I was born alone, like ... I kind of want to say that my world is a 'cyberpunk' one. Just ... y'know ... lower-tech."

She smiles faintly and nods at the comment about tricks up Diana's sleeve. "I won't insult your intelligence by asking for details," she says dryly. "The first friendly vampire-slayer I met had conniptions when she saw me stop time. But, I mean ..." she shrugs. "Even if my Duke can't make me talk ... eh."

She looks uncomfortable for a moment. Then she takes a deep breath and says, "... I'd rather be permanently dead than just lose myself completely. That doesn't always happen with vampires where I'm from, and even Vincent doesn't know what the fuck is up with his maid, but ..." She shakes her head. "Yeah."

"Yeah, lots of weirdness like that. Makes me wonder what could've been." Diana answers, opening up a can of some kind of actual soda and taking a sip. "Stop time, huh. I wonder..." Diana's face goes into thought mode, as she considers some possibilities. "Do you mind if take some of your blood for analysis?" She asks. "It'll help me better understand the differences between the vampires I'm familiar with and your world's."

She nods at the mention of losing oneself completely, "Well, my offer remains open. If you feel like you're slipping, just ask and peace will be yours. Or, if I notice you cross some lines, I will make that decision without consulting you. Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

Serrah smiles wanly. "We can actually see 'what could've been', in worlds that have similar enough histories." At the question, she hesitates a moment. Then she shrugs. "Sure, go right ahead," she says. "Even if I'm stuck as a vampire, I more-or-less approve in a general sense of the business of ... well ... vampire-slayers."

She nods. "Right," she says; she's clearly uncomfortable with the whole conversation, but to her, losing her mind is worse than permanent death. "If I'm not able to approve or deny, that's, uh, yeah." She shrugs. "But, uh ... if it seems sudden, instead of like a logical conclusion of the way my life's been going, could you do me a favor? Just ..." She gestures vaguely. "Try to see if there's something making me behave like that first, please?"

"I'll try." Diana promises, and then she gets up and when she returns it's with a needle and some prepped containers, clearly she's used to extracting blood. "I'm sorry if this hurts. I've never done this when my subject was awake before." She offers up, sitting down next to Serrah, "Have you ever donated blood when you were human, or had blood taken for medical testing? If so, this should basically work out the same."

Serrah nods, holding her arm out to Diana. "Sure!" she says. "I had regular blood work as part of ..." She peers at Diana's equipment. "A certain ... medical condition which ... basically stopped being a thing when I, y'know, died." She sounds like she's trying to choose her words carefully until the end there.

Diana is clearly not a nurse, her work is a bit sloppy, but eventually she gets it right. The bottles are put into a case. "I'll do my analysis later." She promises. "Did you die, though? If you were a vampire from my world, then yes you definitely would have. But if vampirism in your world is reversible, is it truly death?" She asks next, clearly curious.

Serrah considers this a moment. "Dunno," she says. "I'm just using the traditional terminology. I'm no undead-biologist." She gestures vaguely. "There's a million things I take for granted about my world that I've learned just sort of ... aren't a thing on other worlds." She smirks. "And I only have a noblewoman's understanding of the way my own damn species works!"

But then she turns more serious. "I do know that if Holly does that trick where she summons me away from the Blackheart Scepter's control, she's gonna wanna be really careful, because due to some really complicated stuff around the way summoning works on magical beings that even I only half-understand, and how this curse is sort of entangled with me, weird things might happen when I get resurrected." She looks at Diana. "It isn't a thing here that you can kill a recently-turned vampire's sire and they'll change back?"

"Nope. A vampire is a corpse, walking. Part of the process of creating progeny is killing them. If the living ingest vampire blood, it does not turn them. Even if you could lift the curse by killing the sire, there'd just be a corpse." Diana shrugs faintly, "And it seems like your vampires are less resilient. Holy Water hurts a vampire here, but only the same way a flask of sulphuric acid would. It's effective as a weapon, but it can't kill them unless you submerge them and let them stay submerged for long enough to dissolve entirely. The only thing that kills a vampire is complete destruction of the body, and the easiest way to do that is to shut down their regeneration and expose them to sunlight."

Serrah nods thoughtfully. "Magic is a lot more ... intrinsic to the way my world works," she says. "Being a vampire is not, y'know, a simple curse, it's like ..." She gestures vaguely. "I don't want to say 'a form of life', since we're dead, but it's ... a different process of life. Which can be disrupted by, like, 'meaning'." She shrugs. "I know that injuries that would be fatal to a human would kill a vampire if they're caused by weapons made out of silver, and we can't regenerate injuries from 'divine' or 'light' or 'holy' stuff without help ..." She shakes her head. "... I 'unno, I've never heard of just covering a weapon in holy water, but that just about sounds like it'd be perma-lethal to a vampire, if you gave a 'em a fatal injury."

"Also, as a word of warning. I doubt you'd try anything like it, but..." Diana takes out a little bottle of holy water, and drops a single drop of it on her cheek. There's a sizzle and burn, and a wince. "Holy stuff is no good for me, I'm not sure why. But that's why I take care to wear gloves when I bring out the holy juice." Using a napkin, she cleans up the residue. "I can regenerate from it just fine, if I need to, but regeneration doesn't come easy for me."

That said, she looks towards the locked door of her lab, "Is there anything you'd like to bring up? If not, I'd like to get started on this analysis."

Serrah snorts. "I'm not gonna want to put my hands anywhere near holy water for the foreseeable future, so you're good," she says. She winces sympathetically. "... I wouldn't have demonstrated it on myself like that, but ... yeah."

She considers this a moment. "Nah, you go ahead," she says with a smile. "I'll probably be interested to hear what you find myself, even if, uh, I don't understand everything. I'll yell if I start to sense Vincent getting too close to a Vine near this place."