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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The sarcasm is lost on the vigilante, although at least he finds the statement absurd enough that he ignores it completely, regarding it as little more than fatigue-induced ramblings without purpose behind it. Whistling past the graveyard. The information is of more interest, and he focuses in on this instead, ink shifting without any clear direction as he processes.

Smecker's description matches what Rorschach saw himself, and he makes a "hurm" of agreement. It doesn't occur to him to think there might be more than one; one is bad enough, and while that in itself isn't enough to indicate there is only one in existence, it's all the information he has so far. "Inhuman countenance, more than human capabilities. Will remember."

The warning catches him off-guard, however. "Don't put much stock in superstition. Forgive if doubt effectiveness of blind faith." Another pause. "Suspect more than one?"

This makes Paul jerk into an upright sitting position, teeth bared-- oops, mistake, pain, ow. He grimaces at the screen.

"It isn't blind goddamn faith. I am about as far from being a man of faith as you can get-- you want empirical fucking evidence, I just saw her skin boil and blister when I dumped the holy water on it.

"Christ's sake, they're not human, get with it. Believe me, I fucking get the impulse to dismiss the magic shit and the warnings of 'carry a cross', I wouldn't believe in it either if the evidence didn't fucking support it."

His frustrated speech delivered, Paul grunts and leans back against the table again, eyes closed briefly.

"Counting Dawn there's at least... three? Angel. Godric. Eric, but he left...." Paul's half-speaking to himself, trying to index the ones he knows about.

If Smecker had expected his outburst to get a rise out of the vigilante, he will be sorely disappointed, as Rorschach merely continues to look at him, expression unreadable. He's unwilling to accept the explanation at face value, but there is just enough fear in the man's words to hold truth enough to file the suggestion of holy water away. Not that he knows how he could get ahold of any. "Will keep in mind," he comments, and despite the blankness of the words he's serious. Not that he's ever anything else. "Don't make habit of keeping stocked." It's a question, a request for additional information that he can't bring himself to put to words because it just seems so ridiculous, more suited to cheap comics and Hollywood than reality, although he finds his concept of reality quickly shifting beyond his control; he shouldn't be here to begin with and yet he is, after all. It's difficult to argue against impossibilities when confronted with them daily.

At least three. The uncertainty makes Rorschach uneasy, a fact only evident by the sudden shift in patterns, a pooling over where eyebrows should be that slowly drips over the shadows where a nose would lie to meet the rest. "Second female, or only one?" The intentness, his consuming need to know, is almost palpable through the screen, although he's still as motionless as he was when the conversation began. He ticks the names off, memorizes them for later, repeats them over and over in his mind to commit them so he won't forget, tries to put a name to the face but it doesn't seem right. The one he saw isn't a 'Dawn,' she speaks too much to older times to warrant such a hippie name, a word instead of a name.

"You can hatch it," Paul rasps (the rasp due to habitual cigarettes more than his actual injury). He rummages on the floor for the largest piece of the glass bottle, the neck and an inch of the body still intact, and holds it up vaguely into the screen's view. "That's where I got mine."

Oh this is all taking way too much energy. He drops the glass, takes a deep breath, wonders if he can pull away his makeshift bandage yet. Better safe than sorry.

"Angel's a guy," he says after a moment of having to think about it, because Tara had said he if he recalls correctly. "Godric's a guy."

"Hatch." He doesn't sound impressed by the concept; it sounds improbable, the idea of hatching things like some kind of bird, but he imagines it's probably fitting for the place. "Like eggs?" He hasn't gotten anything from Taxon directly yet, after all, perfectly content to continue living off of Daniel when it's feasible and the discarded refuse of everyone else when it isn't. He's bought something here and there, of course, but never anything significant, and the hatches themselves had been written off as too strange to be used.

Smecker's discomfort and encroaching exhaustion go unnoticed, or if not Rorschach just doesn't care. He needs information first, and he's not about to be finished before he's satisfied he's gathered as much as he can. "Only three. Confident in knowledge?" With an implication behind the words that Bad Things await if he's untruthful.

The guy doesn't know hatching. Fucking fabulous. Paul lets his fingers close on the bottle's neck again and hurls it at the far wall because he does not have the energy for this, this fucking city, nobody has any idea what the hell is going on and there's nobody in charge, there's no rules, it's going to drive him goddamn insane.

"How fucking new are you?" he rasps at the guy, then grimaces. "Hatching-- using the machines to make basic supplies. Nobody's explained that to you yet? Goddammit. Goddammit, I hate this place...."

The question as to how confident he is makes him growl, pointlessly. "I said at least, Psych-Test. No, I'm not confident in that fucking knowledge that there's only three, because nobody goddamn well shares information in this goddamn city and I don't know how the hell many there are. Tell you what, go cut your hand and walk past everyone in the city and see who drools, how about you go find out for us?"

Rorschach's never been much for technology, at least not anything he can't easily identify the purpose of. The tablet frustrates him even on a good day, the fact that he avoids the Hatches, when taken in context, really isn't that surprising. "Never had need. Supplies bought or manufactured, not hatched."

The growl goes just as unnoticed as the discomfort was, as if he were dealing with a child having a tantrum rather than a justifiably testy adult. The sarcasm only merits a disapproving grunt and an inscrutable expanse of ink; Rorschach assumes he's not serious, but you can never tell. At least, he can't always. He dislikes the uncertainty of the answer, however, the fact that it leaves gaps. There may be three, there may be more, and how can he not be certain? Fairy Tale monsters should be obvious to everyone, there's no reason for the lapse that he can see. Obviously suffering from side-effects of blood loss, it's commonly known to alter memory. "Better methods. Will ask someone with more knowledge and less obvious hostilities," he adds, almost as if he's adding something to a list out loud. A pause, then "Shouldn't exert yourself. Need time to clot first." But it's related in such a dry tone that it's hard to tell if he's legitimately concerned or just trying to irritate further.

"Fine. Fine. Go tangle with a superhuman creature without proper supplies, see what the fuck I care," Paul grumps at the tablet and the psychedelic mess of black and white on the other side of it.

"Someone with-- oh for the love of-- yeah, you go do that, Keirsey."

The 'advice', well, Paul can't tell whether it's genuine or not. At the moment he doesn't care, he just wants the headache to stop-- whether by that he means the pain from the injury or from this conversation, he doesn't know.

"Thanks," he answers in turn, tone flat. "Don't get bit."

The new nickname goes unrecognized, although where he outright ignored the first one this one gains a response, even if it's little more than a murmur. "Keirsey?" It's a name he's unfamiliar with; Myers-Briggs he knows, was all too familiar with in his youth. He preferred that one to the others; while he finds a strange calm from the one he took his name from now, he disliked it then, disconcerted by its fluidities and uncertainties. There was no right answer, only shades of grey selected at random and then interpreted as something bigger, more meaningful. Very unsettling. Now he understands it and can see the poetry, but not so then. Keirsey, though. He assumes it's a test, but he doesn't know it; he doesn't make a point to keep up on the latest developments.

No matter. He's not particularly interested anyway. He has things to do, places to be. Vampires to find. "Will try," he replies dryly, humorlessly, then ends the transmission, having nothing else to add or seek.

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

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