far_beyond | Don't Get too Close, It's Dark Inside

Entry tags:

Don't Get too Close, It's Dark Inside

Who: Valdis
What:Various things around DS9
When: First months on the station
Where: Various
Warnings: On each post

A week wasn't much time to get to know an entire space station, or even to learn what was going on. Q hadn't been very helpful and Valdis refused to play his game any longer than was necessary, so she set about memorizing the station, finding anything she could get her hands on to learn more about what had happened and what to do next. Her growing frustration could perhaps be felt in the shadows as she passed.

[OOC: There are starters below and I will add more open and closed ones as the month goes on. This one may last into March as well :) ]

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So, security, huh.

Guillermo had laughed when he'd seen his assignment. Absolutely on-brand for a vampire's bodyguard. What else was he going to be? Command? Science? There wasn't much that seemed to call for the skills of a familiar.

He'd dithered about putting on the uniform before splitting the difference and putting a cardigan over it. The yellow security identifier could still be seen, but he felt a little more like himself. The cardigans had been his own sort of uniform for the past decade-plus. After taking a look at the station map on his padd, he went to the Security Office to familiarize himself with the local security situation. He considered himself a bit of an expert on that, at least.

"Oh," he said when he saw the woman in the office. "Hi. You're, uh. Security, too?"

The stench of blood, rancid, sharp and recent flooded her senses. A flash of scarlet raced through her normally deep green eyes and if she had been a Hound, her hackles would have risen. The man who stood before her, so unassuming and harmless in appearance seemed as close to death as any murderer on death row. The people she hunted at home without mercy, using cleverness to catch and convict.

She shook her head, smiling brightly, no sign of anything wrong in her stature or on her face. "I suppose so. And you are?"

Her uniform turned into a yellow blouse under a dark brown vest, with her normal breeches and brown knee height boots. Far more comfortable than that one piece suit thing.

The scarlet flash was quick enough to escape his notice. If he'd noticed it, he'd have been much more alert, much more on edge, but he was putting on a bright, smiling face, too. One tinged with anxiety, at least. Which was totally normal for anyone in such a new and strange environment.

"Guillermo de la Cruz. Uh, Ensign, I guess, but we all are, so I don't really. Know if that matters." He laughed awkwardly. "You?"

Despite the bloody nature of this kid's soul, there was a weird lightness to it, the kind that accompanied the barely sane, the ones who didn't recognize the wrong they had done. A sociopath perhaps, but no murderous vibes emanated from the odd man, Guillermo, at the moment.

"Ah, yes, we don't really ascribe to Q's rules much when it comes to rank," she replied, folding her hands on the desk and giving him her full attention. "My name is Valdis."

She had given everyone her real name so far, so anything different now would be suspicious.

"What experience do you have with security?"

Edited 2022-03-20 00:49 (UTC)

The mononym didn't faze him one bit. Lots of vampires only went by one name. Also lots of people did. Like Cher.

"I'm a bodyguard back where I come from," he said. "I guess this was kind of the only logical place to put me. I've never been, like, a security guard or anything, but I can do surveillance, I can do, um, bodyguarding stuff...you know."

He looked rather too soft to be capable of guarding anyone, but darkness came in all forms, from ugly and unassuming to beautiful and delicate. Not that this kid was ugly, but he was definitely not someone a normal person would look twice at.

"I see, well, I'm sure we can work together just fine. With some luck, there won't be a lot of need for other skills."

Though Q might get bored now that the voles were under control and decide to throw something more at them.

"Tell me, Guillermo, have you ever killed someone?"

Guillermo swallowed hard. "I've killed vampires. O-only in self-defense, though," he said quickly, trying not to think of the accidents. "And to protect people." Okay, maybe he has gone a little overboard with the slaughtering in the past, but to be fair to him...

...yeah, he's got nothing.

"It's not like I make it a habit, though. Just, you know. Part of the job."

Vampires. Well, that explained part of it, though vampires and their particular functions and...status of their souls was under debate in her world. That they existed in another world, she took a breath.

"Well, that's understandable. I suspect Vampires are quite...dangerous."

Though it didn't explain everything, this kid carried ghosts, it explained enough for her to relax ever so slightly. The danger lingered, but he didn't look nearly fit enough to keep up with vampires. But, the vampires she read about weren't necessarily the ones Guillermo had experience with.

"So you have combat skills? If the Cardassians show up, we may need to actually fight."

"Yeah, I've got combat skills. I can hold my own in a fight." Against a vampire. "I've never used one of these phaser things though. Closest I've used before is a crossbow, and that's not really close at all. I'm more used to close-quarters stuff." Granted, a lot of that took advantage of vampire weaknesses, but even without garlic and crucifixes and holy water, you stab anything hard enough with a stake or a silver blade, and it's going to die.

"I see, well, Guillermo, nice to have you aboard. I've been doing this all on my own so far, so to have another set of eyes around here will be helpful."

She'd be watching her back though, just out of respect for the taint in his soul and the scent of blood on the air. Valdis stood, walking around the desk.

"Have you been able to familiarize yourself with the station yet?"

"I wish I could say it's good to be aboard, but...yeah." He shrugged, because hey-what-can-you-do-we're-all-stuck-here-maybe-we-can-go-kill-a-god-later. "But it's going to be nice to work with someone else for once." Guillermo gave her a small smile.

"I've done a little bit of wandering around and checking out the map, but this place is pretty big. At least it all seems pretty symmetrical. And the voles are getting me pretty well acquainted with the vents."

His attitude regarding being on the station matched most. Of all the people here, only Clarissa seemed happy about it. The rest of them were simply coping.

"I understand that. I'm not a huge fan of being kidnapped, I had people back home who count on me."

Though, they believed her to be dead...but such things were really minor details compared to the bigger picture that contained her history. And here, none of it mattered.

"Well, I'd tread carefully around those vents, there are...other things in there too."

She had definitely seen a tail that didn't belong to a vole slip into one while they were hunting the rodents.

"Yeah. I do, too." Nandor needed him. "I don't know what...that person...is going to do without me." Or what I'm going to do without him.

He's not unhealthily, toxically codependent. Shut up.

When she mentioned things in the vents, he nodded. "I think I saw a cat?" He wasn't about to question it. Hell, Sam could do an entire professional charcuterie spread. Whatever the vent-cat was on about, he was pretty sure that it knew what it was doing.

Valdis caught a sense of longing in his words, a sick sort of longing, an obsession. Unlike Guillermo, the people she left behind were perfectly capable of going on without her. Humans were resilient in that way.

"There aren't many of us here, but we are competent enough to keep this place running so far. I certainly hope you can add to that."

The outward appearance didn't match anything else she could sense. That saying 'don't judge a book by its cover' definitely applied here.

"Have you seen the...bar yet?"

Humans were resilient. Vampires - at least the ones Guillermo knew - were incompetent morons who couldn't keep a house running for a week without him around.

He laughed a little bit. "I'm pretty good at keeping a place running day-to-day. By myself. Obviously not a whole space station, but eh..."

When she mentioned the bar, though, he nodded. "I've been, yeah. Not spent a whole lot of time...it's not really my kind of scene. Even though it's just the few of us, I'm not really a going-to-bars kind of guy."

His cardigan certainly wouldn't fit in at a bar.

She smiled when he mentioned running a place by himself. "I suppose it's impressive that you've done so much as a bodyguard and an attendant to a facility."

She walked past him, the door sliding open to let her pass. Keeping an eye on him should be relatively simple since they were in the same division. He seemed like a bit of as pushover, but a slayer would be anything except that. Though, the quality of those he had killed may differ greatly from her own kills. No way of really knowing and no reason to find out.

"Well, it's not much of a bar, but there's food and drink. Plus the holosuites."

"You just pick up some skills along the way over a decade, I guess." Really, the best way to describe what his job was, to a normal person, would be 'caretaker for the elderly'. Which was strictly true. He did do that. And the vampires were very, very elderly. Even Colin Robinson, who could actually take care of himself, was a hundred years old.

Yeah.

Most caretakers didn't dismember corpses as part of the job, though.

"I haven't actually tried the holosuites yet, actually. The food's pretty good, though."

A decade. Enough time to pick up any number of skills, but not master the. Though perhaps if the focus settled on one particular area, it might be achievable.

"I have used them for simulations regarding the vole infestation, but I general believe that putting yourself in a dream is nothing more than a delusion."

Delusions are dangerous.

"But, yes, the food is decent enough."

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Don't Get too Close, It's Dark Inside

/fortnite dances into this thread

Re: /fortnite dances into this thread

valdis looks at this lil fella like The Vibes Are Off

Because his Vibes ARE off

no he is just a sweet boy, a marshmallow, a perfect little man

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Unless those things don't STAY dead

Well then you just stab it again!

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