cryptsleeper | 20s AU Post

20s AU Post

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.

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[He leaves in the sunlight.

A personal decision. No oncoming darkness, no threat of it. Alucard leaves for the fight that will bring the city’s nightmare to an end half an hour before sunset, wrapped in a cloak of lightning. The good-byes are painful, but he mentally cannot label them as good-bye forever. Defeat begins with that thought.

The lightning envelops him. He arrives at the only place this fight could happen a moment later, no worse for wear. It is a short distance after all, and that means the spell has no effect upon his person. Agatha is there waiting for him, dressed in black and looking every inch the overseer she has agreed to be. There is a stool beside her, as they both know the matter could drag on, and Agatha’s legs are not as young as they used to be. Alucard only nods to her, then focuses on unlocking the front door.

They stand in that open front door, the two of them, aware that those passing by see the Gardette-LePrete Mansion as nothing more than an architectural marvel in the city. Alucard isn’t sure that those going by even see them - an old Hungarian woman in black, a young man in a dark blue suit and tie, sword at his side and long blonde hair swept up and off his neck in a single braid, pinned in place by his mother’s hairpins. Waiting.

Silence sweeps in at sunset. Alucard’s posture stiffens, and Carmilla’s presence is announced before she appears with thick rolling fog that smells of death. An old vampire skill, one not used in the city these days because fog is too uncommon. The vampire doesn’t react. Agatha simply looks bored. Then the other vampire is before them both, her own hair long and hanging, her choice of clothes not dissimilar to Alucard’s. A suit, black with maroon accents, and at her side a morningstar. It’s a detail that she smiles thinly at as Agatha begins the act of inspecting both party’s weapons. She brokers no reaction, and Agatha moves onto inspecting the two of them. Claws are tested for poisons. Pockets are cleaned out, suit jackets are told to be removed and remain as such now, placed down beside the front door.

There is a small crowd watching it all. Vampires, mostly, and Alucard stares at them each in turn as Agatha completes the final inspections. When she is completed, his words are brief.]

Whoever wins controls this city until Dracula returns. No rest or quarter is given. The rebellion against my father’s laws ends with this fight, and the results are not to be questioned.

[And that is all. Alucard walks into the mansion first. Carmilla follows. Agatha is last, and she closes the door behind them all. Locks it, leaving the crowd to wait.

Once in the basement (cleared of everything), Agatha sets her stool down, a spell is placed around her for her safety, and it begins.

Alucard’s prediction of an even match turns out to be correct. Carmilla’s choice of a morning start was to grab at his weapon at all available opportunities, but it shows ignorance of how Alucard relies upon his own mind to control the thing. For the first hour, it is the vampire wielding both sword and morningstar together, Carmilla given no rest or even an opportunity to shift form. Her defenses, unfortunately, serve her well, and there is no chance to get as close as Alucard needs to in order to end the fight.

The second hour sees the tables turn. There is a moment where Alucard’s sword goes into the wall, and he cannot rely on his mind alone to retrieve it. Using his hands means finding a way to not turn his back on Carmilla, and there is failure. She regains the morning star. She picks Alucard up throws him into a wall badly enough that there’s a concussion to slow him down.

Hour three sees the worst of the concussion clear, and the vampire retains enough of his calm to attack her without giving into a fury that might cloud is vision. The fourth means they are both showing signs of weariness, for four hours is a long time for anyone to fight, man or vampire. It is also at the fourth hour that weapons are abandoned in favor of claws, and there Alucard’s healing skills falter.

No one among New Orleans’ vampires knew of the great scar on Alucard’s chest and the source of it. None knew that it took time to heal because of the great age of the elder who inflicted it. So when Carmilla sees blood, sees it still running, sees red flesh refusing to heal, she is invigorated. Alucard’s defenses don’t falter, but it’s bad. He only thanks Trevor’s thinking that rosewater and salt was something applied not just to his sword, but to his own claws.

So neither of them heal. Things remain even.

As the fourth hour becomes the fifth, they are both worn. Their attacks are slower. There is blood on the floor, and they must be careful not to slip. Carmilla is ready to leap upon a crouched over Alucard when the entire mansion begins to rattle, and all three freeze.

Is that either of-- Carmilla starts, and soon the room’s lights begin to flicker. Alucard rises to his feet, one hand pressed against a deep gash in his side, and shakes his head no.]

Neither of us have had a chance to cast a spell, everyone else knows interfering would be death...

[Darkness starts to gather at the edge of the room. There is a weight to it, a presence, and the darkness begins to move inward, inward, inward, engulfing them all. Alucard goes still, not for fear of the dark, but for fear of the dark’s presence. There’s a single, terrified noise from him, and he names the source plainly.]

Father.

[ This has been an extremely weird, upsetting day.

Twenty four hours ago, just after midnight, he got shot in the head and tied to a sink. Then he had to have an awkward conversation with his boyfriend. And then only a half hour after said boyfriend ran off to participate in a fight to the death, his father-in-law attempted to murder him. Then there was some extremely irresponsible driving.

And now he's trying to bring a fading demon back to life with garden supplies while his father-in-law uses his blood to break into his own weird torture house. The Demon Car is exhausted - in the literal sense, the way a candle is exhausted when it is entirely gone - from breaking through the wards made to keep anything from intruding on the fight. Sypha using her own magic to force the demon car's engine to keep running, to keep it alive and connected to the car as he waves a container of sulphur powder around, trying to figure out- ]

Sypha, which part of the car counts as this thing's fucking mouth?!

Gas tank!

[The gas tank is empty. The gas tank has been empty since approximately a week and a half after she'd first put the demon into the car, which was also the amount of time it had taken to run down what had remained of the gas in the tank to total empty. The demon moves the car without the necessity of gasoline — a homunculus in a bottle, a little god in a machine — in exchange for a nice vehicle to reside in and a steady diet of...

...Well, she's never really asked, honestly.

That part of it doesn't really matter. What matters is that the Demon Car is a Good Car, a Good Car Like She Wanted, and right now she's standing between the headlights, hands out while she chants words of power in Enochian, blue power crackling from her fingertips and rebounding in black fire as she physically, forcibly holds her demon in its place when the blood seal is doing everything it can to crack and splinter apart into dust.]

[ He's a half-decent mechanic and a half-decent Belmont and if there was ever a point at which those two things would overlap it's here. Demon medical care isn't exactly a family skill, but demon murder is. So probably he just has to do the opposite. He pours the sulphur powder into the gas tank, checking off a list of 'things used to tempt demons' in his head. ]

Do you think you count as enough of a heretic? Or do I have to get a lock of hair from-

[ IS HE GOING TO HAVE TO SNEAK UP ON DRACULA WITH A PAIR OF SCISSORS WHILE HE'S WORKING. ]

I'm chanting in Enochian to preserve the existence of a demon I summoned into an automobile with blood magic, which itself is a material excess given to me by the half-vampire I regularly fornicate with!

[In short, if that's not enough sin and heresy, we're going to have to resort to drastic measures. Somewhere in the engine, the demon groans, which makes the car creak and a little sputter of smoke cough out of its exhaust pipes.]

I can start reciting Gnostic gospels if you think it would help!

Good enough!

[ And there's a snip of the scissors from the medical kit, and hopefully he hasn't messed up her hair too much. He tosses the hair in with the sulphur and pulls one of the bottles of wine from the back of the car, pulling the cork with his teeth and pouring that in there as well. And then blood, from his hand where Dracula had drawn it before. ]

Right, I think- probably, you set it all on fire. Demons like fire! I think!

[Honestly, at this point it's a miracle they're not pouring pepper into the gas tank just because it's the opposite of salt.

This is going to be tricky, however, because the need to hold the blood seal in place is consuming essentially all of her focus, and if it gives for even an instant she might lose him. But early, early on — the very day she'd met Alucard, before he'd even known her name — she'd known how to put fire in a man's hand, and so with a burst of will drawn up from some deep and subconscious reserve, she musters a tiny ball of liquid fire and floats it over toward Trevor's hands while she gets back to chanting.]

It won't burn you! Take it and do what you must!

[ He can't do fire. Never has been able to. He can find information, he can communicate, he can set up half-decent wards and counterspells. Not fire. So it's kind of a novelty, to capture the flame in his hands. He crushes it in his palm, squeezing it like a fruit into the mixture of hair and wine and sulphur and blood.

Somehow the flame catches.

The car creaks and shudders, and thick red and gold and black smoke comes from the gas tank, and from somewhere in the roaring flames there's howling laughter. ]

I...think that is a good sign?

[It certainly sounds demonic enough! And it doesn't feel quite as much like she's trying to hold a ship at anchor in a storm anymore, so she cautiously starts to relinquish her spellchains, wary but curious.]

It...sounds happier.

[ He scrambles through the collection of things that seemed useful that he tossed in the back of the car. A bottle of rubbing alcohol from the medical kit, along with anything else that says 'keep away from fire'. Coal dust. Iron shavings.

And the flames die down, and in their place the car's engine is roaring. ]

It better be happier, I'm running out of shit that seems like it might work!

You're a good demon, aren't you?

[Sypha is singsonging to the covered engine of a car fueled by a demon while the newly-returned king of vampires attempts breaking and entering his own house in a bid to rescue his son-regent from the claws of a usurper while a Belmont attempts to reverse-engineer demon hunting into demon healing.

This is the life she has chosen for herself. This is the fate she began walking toward, when she leapt off of the westbound train and returned to her Alucard's arms instead.

It's awesome.]

And by good I mean bad. The worst demon. A wretched, wretched demon.

[That she's baby-talking. Lord help us all.]

Trevor, what about Dracula?!

Still got all his hair, probably still liable to murder me, and-

[ As if on cue, there's a terrible crack. Trevor only knows that the castle's moving is like from centuries-old accounts of it, how it occupies a space and forces what was there before out of it. He doesn't really have that to complain it to. The building cracks, then parts of it begin to break off loudly and violently, sending stone and wood and metalwork smashing into the ground around them and missing the two of them and the car by chance alone, revealing-

-the same building, underneath it, somehow occupying the exact same space and forcing the old one out of it. The house of justice. ]

-and shit, get the gun.

[...Oh.

Okay, so it's a very good thing that they've got the car back up and running at this point, because this is some Fall of the House of Usher bullshit, right now.]

What is —

[Guess who is having a wild first introduction to the Torture House of Justice.]

Was that inside the other one?!

Asking questions is not getting the gun!

[ He's grabbing everything he can think of that might come in useful. Grave dirt. The vampire killer. The first aid kit. The literal ice-box (it's a box, it's lined with magical ice) they've been using to transport blood. Sypha's wrist. And then he's marching toward that building. ]

But yes. They were in different places, now they're not. Vampire bullshit.

I have the gun! I would not be without it, at a time like this.

[It's true; she's got it strapped to her thigh in such a way that the tails of her robes fall just neatly over it, helping to conceal its presence from view while still being relatively easy to reach for, just by shoving the loose fabric out of the way.]

I have it, I'm ready.

[Probably.]

[ Dracula is all but ignoring the two of them - he only needed Sypha to wrangle the demon car, never needed the Belmont at all, and needs neither of them now. He strides into the house, and his shadow in the streetlights seems to fall into the building and be devoured by it. ]

We need to stop Carmilla and get Adrian to safety. Whichever of those he does, we do the other. [ Trevor says, giving chase. Because he has no clue what Dracula means to do here, and it's hard to do so much as trust that it'll be in Alucard's interests. ] If we're separated and you think he's a danger to Adrian or yourself, shoot once in the body to buy yourself a second to aim properly, then once in the heart proper. If it doesn't kill him, I'll at least hear the shots and know where you are.

[ Sometimes you gotta have a plan to off your father-in-law, just in case. ]

Edited 2019-02-21 22:31 (UTC)

I always think he is a danger to Adrian.

[Guess whose memory of Dracula's sins against his son is even longer than Trevor's. Guess who remembers a grotesque wound and a forest path, and tears and claws and an awful pallor above too-brief letters that arrived in envelopes with postmarks from far and far away. Sypha's had a long time to think about what she would do to Dracula if she ever were able to get her hands on him, and right now she has the opportunity and a gun and if it weren't for the fact that this situation is fraught with risk and too many moving parts already, that would create a dangerous combination to see unfold.

As it is, she's running along with Trevor, heading for the doorway that waits like the maw of a beast ready to devour anyone that draws too close. There are too many vampires in this situation, she thinks grimly, and hopes that their combined efforts will prove to be enough.]

Are you going after Carmilla?

Not unless Dracula doesn't. And not if it jeopardizes our chances of getting Adrian out.

[ Alucard is the priority. Has to be. None of this fucking matters anymore if they can't bring him out of this alive. He can hunt down Carmilla even if Dracula doesn't, and she's powerful in a fair fight but Belmonts have never been in a position to fight vampires fairly.

Grimly, making sure to keep himself between Dracula and Sypha, he enters the house. ]

[There is still light on the first floor. The single door that remains open, the one that leads to the basement, that is now shrouded in pitch black darkness, and as Trevor and Sypha approach, the entire building begins to shake. Earthquakes are felt from the ground up. This movement is from the inside out, an expression of the magic wrapped around the entire building resonating with it's architect's absolute rage.

In the basement, there are several things happening at once. Alucard, bugfuck terrified and aware that he is probably about to die if not as a usurper then for just being in a place where his father wouldn't want him, is scrambling to Agatha so she can get out. Wrapped in protective spells as she is, this is Dracula. Whatever she has, it can be undone in a moment. Carmilla, keenly aware that she is about to be on the receiving end of Dracula's rage, has decided that if she cannot have the fight then she will at least land a final wound on Alucard, and that means her morningstar wraps around Alucard's mid-thigh. He's pulled back just as the presence of Dracula fills the room, and there's something piercing him as he watches Agatha get out of the door at the very last second.

Dracula has always had presence. Gravity. The literal ability to suck the air out of the room if he decides to do so. But in this moment he is a figure who takes up the entire room, whose face nearly stretches from floor to ceiling, whose single declaration of ENOUGH brings everything to a standstill. Carmilla's frozen in place in front of great, glowing red eyes, and from the shadows there is a pair of hands with long, spider-like fingers that wrap around her entirely.

Alucard passes out at the first blood curdling scream, a combination of shock, exhaustion, and wanting no knowledge of what horrors Carmilla is about to have visited upon her. He's happier in ignorance. He knows that much.]

[Running for the basement feels like leaping from the train all over again. Determination and a descent, and the knowledge that at the end of wherever she's running will be Adrian, waiting for her, and — this time she's far more conscious of it than she was the last — probably in a state of absolute disarray. There's no waiting, no holding back. She knows the priorities as well as Trevor does. Adrian first, and then everything else.

She's halfway down the stairs when they run into Agatha, who is on her way up less because she intends to quit the figurative field and more just because it's impossible to be downstairs at this point, between Dracula's ire raging and the force of his presence rocking the foundations from below. It would be madness to try and get down there before the shockwaves have abated.

Sypha's damn well prepared to try anyway.]

[ Agatha grumbles as she makes her way up the stairs. That dramatic man, can't show up anywhere without making a scene, can he? She makes no effort to slow Trevor and Sypha's descent.

He grabs Sypha's wrist again at the end of the stairs, racing in and tossing both her and the medical kit toward Alucard, putting himself between Dracula and the both of them as those hands coil around Carmilla, squeezing her until she can't be seen from outside of them. And then the shaking stops. The darkness is gone, and with it both Dracula and Carmilla.

More than that, though Sypha wouldn't recognise it, the old building is gone. There are no silver shackles in this basement. No blood on the floor. The rooms upstairs, if investigated, would be tastefully decorated bedrooms and not torture chambers. The only clue as to what's happened is that Agatha's chair has gone missing. Because Dracula didn't take Carmilla anywhere. Dracula recreated the building's glamour and moved the rest of them into it, leaving himself and Carmilla in the house of death.

From above, there's a sound of a key in a door. The house of death is locked. Rendered inaccessible. ]

[Tossing is an accurate verb for it; she's hurtling faster than she would be running otherwise, thanks to the benefit of Trevor's added force, and as she gets to their vampire's side she has to actively remind herself that no matter how contrary to her natural instincts it might be, what she needs to focus on right now isn't the chaos all around them, but Alucard. Trevor will already be moving to protect her, she knows. Trevor will never let anything hurt them.

Which means that she has to put notions of fear out of her head, and focus on what matters instead. Alucard, in the basement of a monstrosity the same way she once was. Alucard, who needs her now like she'd needed him then.

He's a mess, and the wound to his thigh is an immediate problem from how close it's gotten to the artery. Carmilla's morningstar has left his trousers in tatters, which is actually almost a blessing because it makes it that much easier for her to assess the state of the wound.

(He wouldn't want her to touch his blood, she remembers grimly. They may not have that luxury, this time.)

He's a mess, he's unconscious and concussed and torn all to shreds, but he's still breathing. He's still breathing, and her own breath escapes her all in a rush, relief and horror and fright all mixed into one.]

Trevor, I don't know if we should move him...

[It's a question that's really meant to ask several different ones. Where is he, are they safe, what's happened. Do they even have the chance to bother trying to treat him here, or is the grim reality of the situation that they need to go whether they like it or not.]

Don't move him.

[ If this place is safe, then it's better to do what needs to be done here than to go outside where there will be witnesses. If it isn't safe, then it's less safe to move through than it is to stay still in. Unless the ceiling falls down on them from all of the strain on the building, which- he doesn't have much of a plan for that. Best to just hope nothing like that happens. He strides over to the stairs to check them. Nothing coming down there. No creaking or moaning of the building. Nothing.

He returns to Alucard and Sypha calmly, crouching by the both of them. ]

Anything happens, I'll deal with it. In the meantime, tell me what I need to do to help.

He's not healing.

[She's doing her best to keep her voice steady, but the worry is seeping into it anyway. She remembers this, remembers what it was like before. Only Dracula is supposed to be able to do this, and then it was only the one scar he would have to carry, not these many ones.]

The — the leg is, I think, the most urgent. The others are bad, but not as poorly situated.

[She's already cracking open the medical kit, finding the multiple pairs of gloves that every medical kit in their house inevitably includes for exactly this reason.]

The last time, he cauterized it while I stitched it closed, but...

[She hesitates, biting her lip, aware of how much Adrian would hate what she's about to say if he could hear it, but unwilling to shy away from it, anyway.]

Trevor, I think we're going to have to feed him.

We have-

[ They don't, in fact, have blood. The bags are empty. ]

-fucking car ate the fucking blood. Shit. Cauterize the leg, first. No sense in putting blood into him while he's losing the stuff. Then-

[ ...they'll need to get him out of here and up the stairs to the car. They don't know if Dracula's going to come back for him. They can't trust Dracula to lift a fucking finger for his son. Sypha can't lift him. He can, but if anything goes wrong he can't lift him and keep them safe, both with less blood than he ought to have.

But he doesn't want to ask this of Sypha. ]

-shit. Just get the cut closed, I'll figure something out.

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