taxonomites | [Visual] EVERYONE I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT TO MAKE [also location: birdhouse]

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[Visual] EVERYONE I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT TO MAKE [also location: birdhouse]

For a moment the screen is at a crazy angle, and fingers smeared with blood scrabble over the glass, leaving red messy trails on the broadcast.

Paul Smecker rights the tablet, gives Taxon a visual of his face, paler than normal, dotted with sweat. The hand not holding the tablet is clutching at his neck, and blood is visibly welling out from between his white-knuckled fingers. His shirt collar is damp too, but the astute-eyed may see that it's mostly water, and not quite as bad as it looks.

He's sitting on the floor, leaned back against an overturned table-- a shambles behind him, signs of a struggle however brief. Paul sags against the table, tries to focus. Blood loss, his mind tells him, it's blood loss making him weak, shaky-- (not shock, not panic, not shameful fear over someone he trusted turning on him-- no, not weakness like that), but he has to focus, has to tell people.

"Dawn--" His voice is a croak, he clears his throat, tries again. "Anyone who's watching-- Dawn Summers's... a vampire. Attacked-- bit me..."

Yeah. Yeah, bit him, and the mere thought of that makes him start wanting to hyperventilate. Keep it together, Smecker-- but all he's seeing is an innocent face twisting into a smile out of hell, fangs gleaming. The strength, the speed-- how the fuck do you fight that? All his planning, and... he'd trusted her. Trusted-- stupid, fucking stupid.

"...hey.... Buffy?" Paul rasps. "So's you know-- holy water... works pretty goddamn well."

And then he closes his eyes, leans back against the table and tries to think. The tablet's heavy; he lets that hand lower it to his lap. His other hand is still keeping the pressure on the punctures on his throat; he tries to think, figure if he'd be better lying down or not. Elevates the wound, yeah, but doesn't let blood get to his brain either, hell. Handkerchief-- he's still got one somewhere, right? Pocket-- yes-- he folds the cloth, gets it over the holes in his throat, then lies down on the floor, taking deep breaths.

[OOC: So, I MADE A BOO-BOO, some miscommunication on my part. Paul's not as seriously injured as the initial tags would have suggested-- he won't be unconscious, and will be able to update people as to the situation. Anyone needing to alter their tags in light of that, I will offer you chocolate. Sorry!]

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Right now, Paul would agree with that like hell.

Despite himself, he half-coughs a laugh at her cut-off statement. "I trust that wasn't going to end with 'their dick'."

(Ohhh yeah. Self-censoring is way, way off right now.)

The offer to help-- to actually help-- gets him to open his eyes again, try and focus on the screen. "...have we met?" he asks cautiously. "I mean-- I mean, I appreciate the offer. I really do-- we have to... we have to find some way to work with each other, help each other, but... at the moment I just got blindsided by someone I-- trusted-- sort of-- and I'm not..."

Paul trails off, so tired. He wants to sleep. Has to keep that handkerchief there though, for now.

"...no offense, but how would you do the protecting? --let me guess, you're a superhero or got magical powers or..."

Willow hates the hamsters. That's all there is to it.

She chokes at his continuation of her sentence and it's a full minute before she can stammer out a coherent reply through the sudden redness of her face. "N-no! I-I mean, you have to suck their blood. I-it's a whole sucking thing, but not that kind of sucking!"

God her face is so red.

"I-I don't think so? I'm sorry. My name is Willow. I'm a witch, yeah, so I can do some vampire-be-gone mojo-y stuff, but only if you want!"

She shrugs helplessly.

"But if it's a glitch, it'll be back to normal soon. We just have to... find a way around it for now." And that means helping each other out.

"Sorry," Paul says to the embarrassment he'd just engendered, closing his eyes. "I'm currently completely sans filter. If you want to talk to someone who'd do a better job knowing what's appropriate and not to say, can't blame you. Paul Smecker, by the way.

"I didn't suck anyone's anything, thank Christ." Mental images he didn't want. There might be those who'd get off fantasizing about teenage girls, but Paul, avowed flaming queer, isn't one of them. Ugh.

"Witch. Right. Jesus H. Christ, how many of you are there?" he asks weakly, then half-sits up. "...wait, wait, this anti-vampire mojo.... could you do something like that permanently on a building?"

"It's okay." Just a tad bit embarrassing, but Willow will get over that. "Willow Rosenberg."

She's just going to duck her head and pretend to be interested in a book. Because this is just too much. "Uh... Not as many of us as there were." And now she is wary. If this guy's going to end up like Mayland Long, she's just going to call it quits.

"Yeah, a-as long as it's not a public building, I can make it so a specific vampire can't get in again." Beat. "Unless someone invites them again. It kinda resets the locks."

"Hi, Willow." Paul takes a breath. He tries to focus on her words, even though he still wants to freak out over what just happened-- plan, plan, plan. There's information here, he just has to stay focused in order to keep dealing with it.

"What's... how does one define that public building aspect?" he asks, face contorted in a grimace of discomfort at the moment. "I've heard the whole you-have-to-live-there thing. Does that negate it being a public building?

"...and sorry if I'm knee-jerky about the whole witch thing. This time last year I didn't know magic was real. Still a hell of an adjustment."

"Yeah, it's the whole living in it place. You know how invites work? Where a vampire can't enter a building - not counting hotels - unless the resident invites them in? My spell can kinda make an invited vamp uninvited. Hotels are a little different. A vamp can come in a hotel, but not an occupied room. It's the whole 'resident living there' thing."

Willow offers him an apologetic smile in return. She understands. It's a lot to take in.

"I-it's okay. I know it's hard to work with sometimes, especially since you don't know me and I don't really know you."

"Good to know," Paul grunts. "I'm not living here yet, so I guess she didn't need an invite. God. Goddamnit, I feel so fucking stupid--" Trusting, trusting, stupid-- he shakes his head, tries to get back to the conversation instead of just venting to some stranger.

"Yeah," he says. "Alright. Thanks for... the concern. I take it you know Dawn... normally? Same world?" he hazards.

"Hey, it's okay," Willow responds, trying to reassure the guy. He's obviously upset about this and she can't blame him at all. "Glitches can make even the best people do really bad things." She knows that one firsthand.

A slow nod accompanies his next question. "Yeah. She's... like my little sister. She's not like this at all normally. It's just... part of a glitch, I guess. It has to be."

Paul Smecker is not at all sure when he went from being a bitch-tastic FBI agent professional to needing reassurances from (and being assaulted by) teenage girls*, but he doesn't like this change in the universe. No.

"Glitch. Great. Great," he says, and rubs at his face. "I'm not even sure whether that makes it better or worse."

"I'd say better, because at least this way we know it'll end soon," Willow offers. It's probably not the most comforting thing ever to hear, but at least it's something.

"Also means this can happen to any one of us. I can make plans for... for a few people occasionally turning hostile. Can't when... could be the whole city."

He sounds exhausted in a way that goes beyond mere blood loss. Taxon's maybe starting to get the better of him and all his planning.

"Well... it's not. So far it seems to be mostly one at a time. At least there's that."

Poor dude. Willow looks at him sympathetically. "You really look like you need some rest a-and probably a good meal."

Blood loss is a bitch.

"Could be anyone in the city," Paul clarifies. "I'm FBI-- well, I was. I know-- I know how to try and find the bad people, the ones who will hurt other people. Protect people.

"But this is like being in a crowd looking for your suspect and at any moment anybody else in the crowd can suffer a psychotic break and try and stab me in the back. Can't trust anyone."

He's rambling a bit, and later he'll be frustrated and embarrassed about that, but at the moment you're catching a bunch of blithering thoughts, Willow.

"Hell, you could wake up tomorrow deciding to come find me after our chat and light me on fire," Paul says a little dazedly. "Or I could, and decide to do it to you.

"I don't need a rest and a meal as much as I need a gun with one bullet."

"Yeah, but... most of them aren't going to do something like this," Willow points out, trying to comfort him as much as she can. "They aren't gonna jeopardize their own safety just for this. Most of the vampires I know would rather go for the clean kill if they're up for it." Except Drusilla, but she was a special kind of cookie. The kind that bit back after it was eaten.

"I'm not going to hurt you." And he'd be stupid to try to hurt her. "We all need to stick together. It's hard enough living in Taxon without worrying that everyone around you is trying to kill you."

"Unless you're glitched to be insane," Paul counters doggedly.

A little eye roll for the tablet. "The bullet and the gun would be for me. Not you. I try to avoid shooting people until they do suffer those psychotic breaks and come after me. And I'd love to not worry about people trying to kill me here, if it hadn't just fucking happened.

"I mean, you get the absurdity of that, right? Telling me most vampires won't attack me, I shouldn't worry about people trying to kill me, when someone just bit my fucking neck?"

Willow's friendly expression turns to a bit of a glare at that and she huffs. "Hey, I'm just trying to help here! Telling you the normal circumstances is supposed to be reassuring."

Willow... stop and think about what you just said.

"Whoever it was is probably just glitched. They aren't stupid."

"Speaking as someone who used to have reassure civilians after disasters, emergencies, and homicides-- you're doing it way the hell wrong," Paul gravels back in answer.

"And again, not reassuring, because we still have to worry about them-- about everybody-- when they are glitched."

Willow glares in return. "So what am I supposed to do? Say everything's gonna be sunshine and daisies o-or that we're all going to die? Well, it's not and we're not. Things are just different, okay? If you don't want the truth and would rather just hear how everything's fine, don't come running to me when it all backfires."

And with that, she just cuts the feed. She does not have the patience for this and she's not the person to go to for reassurance, not these days. Not after her glitch, not after everything else.

Paul simply furrows his brows at first, a look of disbelief at what she's saying.

"Excuse me--"

The transmission cuts out. She's hung up on him. Paul stares down at the tablet for several seconds, then shakes his head. Fucking city. Fucking crazy goddamn citizens he's stuck in here with, and it's not just the vampires, apparently.

"Fucking lovely," Paul says to the empty room, and slams his tablet down hard on the concrete floor for lack of something better to do. He shifts, grimacing, as he tries to keep the pressure on his bleeding neck. "Fanfuckingtastic. Welcome to the citizen's fucking aid brigade."

There's no one to answer-- nothing to do but wait for Cain, for Jenny, for the others on their way.

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[Visual] EVERYONE I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT TO MAKE [also location: birdhouse]

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[visual] - I don;t think they have, either. /runs with it

Re: [visual] - I don;t think they have, either. /runs with it

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