20s AU Post

[cryptsleeper]

"Land of the Dead" (Watch on YouTube)

Current Carmilla plot outline
--Post-fire, Carmilla and Mr. Peanut team up mostly to use each other. Carmilla's spent the past several months (since November, it is now February 1925) networking, and it's clear to her that Alucard's not suited for the position and that the other two are the obvious weakness. Mr Peanut needs something back, so this is perfect on her end. Mr Peanut can only imagine the joys of vampire blood in his work, and he'd like an army of vampires for his own ends.
--Shit stirring from Mr Peanut (all of March?)
--Mr Peanut also begins to sell mis Miracle Serum, which has vampire blood in it.
--Gang is very much trying to murder Mr Peanut during this.
--Start of April, vampire gets a call from one of the blood bank contacts that 3 patients have come in and are displaying some bizarre signs. Investigation yields the fact that they're in process of turning, and they've all taken the same serum.
--Additional investigation reveals O FUCK IT MR PEANUT
--Meanwhile Carmilla's been made aware of a familiar she didn't sire, so she knows something's up. Big fight with Mr. Peanut and thus Mr. Peanut is left depowered
--Gang commits a murder
--Carmilla's well sured up on her contacts now, and it's time for open rebellion (mid-April)
--In a more subtle attempt to let Alucard just step aside, she cuts the breaks on demon car and shows up to gloat/suggest he not pull a dad and go to deal with his grief quietly while she runs the city. The how he wants to do it is up to him (black widow joke goes here.) Treffy and Sypha walk in.
--1 week of straight up rebellion; feedings, no help from allies, need to do damage control instead of fight carmilla, every dracula rule is
--MEANWHILE IN GRAVITY FALLS, triangle shows Vlad what's up to try and psyche him out, somehow this finalyl snaps Vlad out of his depression and he heads home
--Just in time for Alucard and Carmilla to be tearing each other to bits in one of the bayous, it's not going well
--Vlad coming in means the king of vampires is accosted by a belmont with a pair of blessed knitting needles and a speaker with a fucking gun and he's just like what the shit happened to the world while i was gone
--Wards around the fight means that only demon car can break the wards, everyone has to pile in.
--Carmilla gets her ass kicked AND SENT TO THE JUSTICE DIMENSION

THEN THERE WERE FAERIES.
--Prior to all of this the vampire and Sypha have done a shit ton of research on how to get their Belmont back
--Sypha has also been practicing debating with dad, which leaves everyone Very Tired.
--When Trevor is actually snatched up (1 year after marriage, it takes fae effort. Taking Arn's shape fails, so it's a lot more kidnapping by force), Sypha and Alucard go into Faerie
--But they're playing this as politics, not as heroes rescuing their damsel, so that means the faeries are just "wait what now excuse u?"
--There are 3 gates and 3 trials (the particulars we're still bullshitting.) Each is asked to sacrifice 3 things. (Alucard: voice, his titles as bestowed upon by his father and his people, i forget the third; Sypha: her human form (she's a birb), fuck what were the other two)
--They enter the court at the end of the third trial. After LITERALLY ALL THE TITLES Sypha declares she Speaks for Trevor Belmont
--Claim debate over Trevor, turns out that the rules are in Sypha's favor.
--But that means debating to leave Fae without giving up what they've chosen.
--Sypha lawyers it all out, Alucard is a safety deposit and hangs out with Fae!Trevor
--In the end, safe passage out of Faerie consists of Sypha giving up her memory of the necromancer (billed as a great mage she studied under), the vampire gives up his immortality, and Trevor is replaced with Carmilla (dad was aware of this option and OK with it), but Trevor has his ability to swear taken. He now soundslike a rubber ducky when he tries
--Everyone gets home okay, except for the AU of this AU where the gang fails, but Trevor's on their doorstep like a bat out of Hell because time doesn't work right and he's been in Hell for a WHILE.

Comments

[cryptsleeper]

Show me the potatoes.

[He means it. They're stuck at a traffic light, the light from Hell itself, and you can't make a claim without proof.]

People walk fast here.

[He drums his fingers on the steering wheel idly, unhappy and grumpy about this light. And there's just enough oncoming traffic to prevent him from breaking the law.]

[miraclewhip]

Mm-hmm.

[ Someone finally gave him fucking instructions, thank you. So he falls silent while he tries to figure out how to not be awful, holding out his arm without much fanfare at all.

It takes him a few moments to figure out something not awful to say. ]

Knew speakers, back home. The traditionalists. Constant fucking struggle with my family, we've always been fond of writing shit down and they've always been- not fond of that.

[miraclewhip]

Fine, fine.

[ It's not like the car is moving anyway, so he grabs the knitting bag, pulling out a few very ugly, lumpy knitted Godbrands There's too much space between the stitches and the stuffing is coming out and- frankly they don't even look THAT much like potatoes, sharing the qualities of 'vaguely spherical' and 'not looking much like godbrand' with them. ]

Can't use them for any spells, they'd catch random people. Or maybe random root vegetables.

[cryptsleeper]

[There is a sharp bark of absolutely incredulous laughter. They're horrible. Ugly as sin. Yet Alucard loves them utterly because they're so terrible and Godbrand would hate them so. goddamn. much.]

They'd still be massive insults.

[There's actual glee in his voice as he says that.]

I want to keep them.

[willpowerful]

[...did that

did that actually work because that is a surprisingly benign thing to come out of the Belmont's mouth and — what the fuck.]

...Yes. I've heard that's how it is in the old country. Europe is a place of history, stuck in its old ways, and so the Speakers there had little reason to adapt their own ways. Only oral stories, always.

[She blows on her fingers again, and when they wrap gently around his wrist, again they're cool without being painfully cold.]

Here we focus more on how to preserve the stories as living things. We retell them in words, but we also know them as dances, as songs, as theater. I could dance for you the story of the raven that stole the sun.

[miraclewhip]

It was my first fucking try, okay? And my second. And my third. ...I think they're getting worse.

[ Defensive, at least in this way, fuelled by hurt pride instead of fear, isn't a common thing for him. But gosh! He tried his best! ]

But fine. You can have the Potatobrands. Godtatos?

[cryptsleeper]

Potatobrands. The second one is just...it doesn't feel right.

[They're going in Alucard's study. That he uses for work. Because they are hideous and perfect and they're going to make him laugh, and make at least Theodora laugh when she sees them.]

Is it bad I'm more inclined to favor the worse ones?

[miraclewhip]

You could. Dance it.

[ Yeah he doesn't sound convinced. Sorry, not a patron of the arts. If that wasn't obvious. ]

They did good work. Came to the front lines as medics, but they did- anything that didn't mean taking up a gun, just about. Took messages from side to side, to try to make everyone see each other as people. Took last words from people, figured out how to get them home. Even started delivering letters and photographs, though I can't imagine they were happy about that one.

[miraclewhip]

Probably. The worse they are, the more useless they are for giving anyone indigestion.

[ He puts them back into the knitting bag for now. ]

I still need to put the eyes on the last one. I'll do that for you once we're back.

[ Yes, googly eyes. ]

[cryptsleeper]

Can I watch?

[The light changes, and with that, Alucard changes gears and keeps driving.]

[miraclewhip]

It's just going to be sewing eyes on a potato.

[ It's going to be awkward. He knows it's going to be awkward, because once they're in the castle- he's already muted compared to how he was in the room with his collection of grandmothers. Once they're in the castle he's The Belmont again, and Alucard is The Vampire.

But then, he has no good reason to refuse. ]

Fine, but you don't get to laugh when I get one far too high and the other too low.

[cryptsleeper]

As far as I understand it, that's more accurate anyway.

[He doesn't dare to comment on please act like this at home. He can't, that kills whatever weird, rare moment this is.]

[miraclewhip]

I'll be honest, I wouldn't know. Never had a whole lot of information on him. Couple renditions of him by Irish monks, and I'm not sure if you've ever seen monk illustrations, but-

-you know, I think the potatoes might be accurate the the illustrations of him.

[cryptsleeper]

We have commissioned illuminated manuscripts in the library.

[Alucard says it mildly, then clarifies:] My mother and I couldn't quite figure out how that happened, but they're in there all the same.

[One of the many wonders of the library.]

They capture the essence which is what any good portrait does.

[willpowerful]

Stories can be danced. Some of them are all the more beautiful for it.

[She keeps her eyes on the swelling on his wrist, even as her thoughts turn back to that long blue coat.]

You were on the front lines? In the war.

[miraclewhip]

...Fuck, then, apparently the Potatobrands are fucking masterpieces.

[ It's nice, being able to laugh like this with someone who is not one of his many many grandmothers. He doesn't do it nearly often enough. ]

[cryptsleeper]

Why do you think I'm so insistent on keeping them? I know art when I see it.

[miraclewhip]

Yeah.

[ There's an element of 'of course????' to that, that he's trying to bit back. Because she told him to not be awful. It never really occured to him that there are people who weren't. ]

They tried to keep the Speakers out for the longest time, everyone thought they were everyone else's spies. But they kept people alive.

[willpowerful]

Mm. They would not have cared about sides. Their only side would have been against the war, and against all the lives it claimed.

[There. That's ice enough; now for the brace.]

Is it true there was a truce, on Christmas? I don't know if you were near there, wherever it was. But we heard that they had managed it, for just one day. The newspapers didn't report that it was because of the Speakers, but we learned of that part of it on our own.

[miraclewhip]

[ He kind of wishes that the castle was further, but sure enough the treeline begins to flicker and- it's a gate. It's always been a gate. And now, the task he's been given seems ridiculous. It's petty and small and lives are at stake.

But it's only the work of a few minutes. He can waste a few more minutes. ]

I should finish these, before anything else. I'll forget otherwise.

[ The weariness is back in his voice. Alucard is The Vampire again, and he is the Belmont. ]

[cryptsleeper]

Take the night and see if you can do any of them without instruction.

[He says it lightly. Because this will be refused, but Alucard feels a strange compulsion to try.]

[miraclewhip]

They knew it was coming. That's how my family knew them. They knew there would be a great disaster, but not how it would come about. They had us hunting for a supernatural cause, and all along it was just- a lot of individual stupid things, becoming a big stupid thing.

[ The swelling's gone down. He'd be glad to have his movement back, but that's not going to last. At least it hurts less once it's cooled. ]

There was. Only the first year. I wasn't there for it, few months before my time there. Wouldn't surprise me if they were involved. Good at getting people to listen, and all.

[miraclewhip]

Any of the- Godbrand dolls.

[ He looks utterly confused. HOW WOULD THAT HELP MATTERS AT ALL? It's tempting, he wants to just sit and knit potatobrands, but- ]

-is that a request?

[cryptsleeper]

...Do I have to say it as such?

[It's a shockingly gentle version of that question.]

[miraclewhip]

If you want me to spend the night knitting instead of something more- [ Belmont-y. ] -useful yes. You do.