miraclewhip | Inbox

That's the big fuckoff problem with things like the cuffs. If you have a vampire you need to use them on, they're a threat. And if they're a threat and you're close enough to put cuffs on them, you're either liable to die soon or far better off staking them.

Which narrows it down to someone who'd know about a tool like that in the first place, someone who'd either have access to it or be able to make one, and yet someone who wouldn't know that it wasn't the best tool for the job. Who managed to use it without any fuss, then apparently removed it and wandered off.

There's medicine. It's just got some - fuck - ingredients. Bring a shovel and don't say the word 'witch'.

...Or the vampire didn't know it was coming.

[There is an awful, dawning horror to that particular notion, and as much as he doesn't want to play it out to its logical end, he's got to.]

Cuffs would be small. Easier to hide than a stake. Not something you'd use in a fight, but something you'd use...

[On someone who didn't know what you were about to do. On someone who trusted you. Someone who wouldn't see what was happening until it was too late.]

...Wait, what about a shovel?

-they've been used that way in the past, but only on vampires who- ugh. Not him. Vampires who weren't him.

[ Something nasty slips into his tone there. His voice gets tighter, and the noise he makes at the end sounds like he's forcing something horrible-tasting out of his mouth. Graverobbing. Graverobbing is a better topic. ]

-shit, right. the crystal thing. Going to be a pain to get hold of a skull here. Probably a hammer rather than a shovel, and we see if ground-up crystal head works the same as ground-up skull.

Fuck does that even mean, "vampires who weren't him"? Only on vampires who what?

[Are you sure you're quite okay there, Trevor, what was that horrible thing that just happened to your voice.

Because the automatic way that Jotaro's mind finished that sentence was vampires who deserved it, and he really wants to be wrong about that right now.]

You want to feed him a ground-up skull. Like a person's skull.

Is this weird Dark Ages medicine or just weird vampire medicine?

Nothing he could have been mistaken for. Some vampires use compulsion for fucked-up shit. You use tools like that to stop them without having them put one of their victims in your way.

[ So yes, that's kind of a long way of saying vampires who deserved it. ]

It's a topical medicine. He's not meant to eat it. [ BECAUSE THAT WAS THE PROBLEM THERE. ] Traditionally it's the skull of an executed thief, but unless they happen to execute people here by taking their skulls out before they turn to rocks, ground-up crystal is what we have to work with.

So what does that add up to? An amateur vampire hunter...? Did they think he'd be an easier target because he's half-human, or...

[He hisses, still frustrated. It doesn't make sense. And it would probably help if he weren't so utterly blinded by affection for his vampire, but who could possibly have a motive to hurt Alucard? He's perfect. He's Alucard.]

I'm pretty sure he's going to notice if we try to rub ground-up skull cream onto his hands. It's not exactly inconspicuous.

An amateur is all I can think of, but I can’t see how they’d think they had something to gain. And I can’t see why he’d have kept quiet about it. He’s hardly the only person here who’s in danger if someone starts getting jumpy about things with teeth, and he could have sent a message out anonymously if he needed to. I’ve not seen anything to that effect.

[ He’s moving about now, and the audio reflects it. Footsteps and clatters as he moves around and gathers things. ]

The fuck are you trying to be sneaky about giving him medicine for?

Hell do you think we're going to do instead, just hand it to him and say "Oh, by the way, figured you might need this dead thief skull hand cream for those burns you're hiding"?

[Oh, boy, we may be gearing up for an ADVENTURE.]

So either somebody thought he was a threat, or some amateur thought they could — fuck, I don't know, practice on him.

[He can't quite restrain the snarl that escapes him at that; he's been doing well at hiding his feelings, but that one gets away from him.]

How long does it take to make a Belmont contraption like those cuffs?

Yes, obviously. Anything else would be weird.

[ Because the alternative? Totally normal. Here, have this skull paste. He catches the snarl, but doesn’t bring it up. There’s no sense in it. He doesn’t know the details, but he knows that Alucard and Jotaro are fond of each other. Of course he’s pissed. ]

I don’t know for sure. I don’t know how half the parts work. There’s a magic component that you’d need a specialist for. Then there’s the oil itself, and getting together the ingredients for that. Then getting that blessed. And you need a properly trained silversmith for the cuffs themselves- there’s a lot of parts, and unless you have a magical-smith-merchant-priest you need more than one person to prepare all of them.

Someone would've had to plan a long time to make something like that, in other words.

[And Trevor is right, it doesn't make sense that Alucard wouldn't have said something if that were the case. If the threat were still present, he'd act, wouldn't he? He's not the type to hide and isolate himself. That's more like how he was acting when he first —

...When he first showed up. Right after he'd killed Dracula. Right after he'd had to kill his father to save Wallachia.

Maybe that's not just from hurt, the weeping and the isolation. Maybe it's...grief? Something happened, something that's over, and this is the aftermath? Someone hurt him, and he doesn't want to talk about it — he doesn't want to talk about it, he wants to bottle it up and shove it away and go to sleep.

He'd seemed exhausted, too. Low on chroma. After just five days, he shouldn't have been that depleted, and he'd assumed it was just from trying to heal, but maybe...]

Where would those cuffs have been? The ones your family had.

Right. Anywhere between weeks and months, depending on how hard it was to come by all the parts.

[ He pauses when Jotaro does. There’s a quality to the short silence that he can recognise, a thoughtfulness. He doesn’t know what’s clicked into place, but he can tell that something has. ]

If any sets survived, they’d be in the hold under my old house.

[Yeah. Yeah, that's the answer he was afraid of hearing, and also the one he was halfway expecting.]

The hold you gave him, right? To...protect or whatever. Where he would've been, the last time you saw him in Wallachia?

[...]

Where he would've been alone?

...shit.

[ It’s his turn to pause. More clattering. Something scraping against the ground. A huff. ]

I’m headed to- whatever the fuck they call a boneyard around here. A rockyard. That Solemn place.

Fine. I'll meet you there.

[He falters a second, falling silent safe for the scuffing of shoes on carpet, and the faint creak of a hinge.]

...Yeah. I'll meet you there.

[ It’s difficult.

Because the solemn grounds aren’t all that close to the city, and while there probably are forms of transport available nobody is willing to offer it to someone who is clearly going there intending to smash things up. He knows better than to ask. Getting arrested is going to help exactly nobody. Which means going by foot.

Which means a couple-hours walk across a chroma-draining landscape.

Which isn’t ideal.

He makes it about a half hour out of the city before he needs to stop to rest, and then that just a second to catch his breath becomes full-on sitting on the floor huffing with exertion. Almost like he didn’t think this through and just tried to take action, any action, as immediately as possible to avoid thinking about that last exchange too much.

Pretty much exactly like that, really. ]

[It's lucky, maybe, that there's really only one way out of the city toward the Solemn Grounds, and yeah, it's a long way to travel, but hell, so was Egypt. At least he's got his motorcycle, even if riding it swamps him with memories of that time he'd been out for a drive and time had begun to slow, and he'd skidded out and fucked up his leg and Alucard had to come for him —

No, he's not thinking about that right now. Fuck.

He stays focused on the road instead, which is a good thing, because it means he spots Trevor taking a breather on the curb fairly easily, and brings his motorcycle to a halt near where he's sitting. The road is all but deserted; nobody comes this way in the off-season, so they're relatively alone. That's a good thing, too.]

...Were you really going to walk there?

[Who needs "hello".]

The alternative would be trying to get a lift to the 'no smashing things please' place with a hammer. So yes.

[ Pride is a powerful thing. He shoves himself to his feet with significantly more ease than he might have had about 2.3 seconds ago, huffing. So maybe he thought that chroma deprivation was like being long-day-trudging-around and instead it's no-food-for-a-week-no-safe-place-to-sleep tired. Quickly becoming turns-out-fighting-mermaids-underwater-was-a-bad-move tired.

Doesn't matter. He fucked up, he knows he fucked up, and so he has to fix is. Especially now that there's an audience who knows that he fucked up. ]

No fucking clue how to get in there. The locks here don't place nice with picks. I'll figure it out once we're there.

Well, c'mon, then. We're going to the same place. If you can stay on a horse, you can stay on one of these. I'm driving, anyway.

[He's also not wearing a helmet but like. Who needs helmets? If he falls, Star will protect him. A helmet would just get in the way, anyway.]

You can stay on a horse, right?

Of course I can stay on a fucking horse. Probably.

[ Look he's not ridden in actual years. Horses are expensive.

But you know what? Don't look a gift horse (or motorbike ride) in the mouth. He looks the bike over quickly, trying to figure out how one goes about riding one. It doesn't take long and- fuck, his limbs are heavy- he manages to climb on behind Jotaro without too much difficulty. ]

Just don't lean too far one way or another and throw the balance off. And hang on, I guess.

[It'll be like carting Polnareff, he tells himself. Fuck, he misses Polnareff.]

It's going to go fast. And be loud.

[And once Trevor is sufficiently holding on, they'll be off.]

[ It- fuck. It helps, if he's being honest. The chroma drain is still unpleasant, but it helps. Holding on like this.

And, blessedly, he does manage to keep his balance. ]

It was- shit, I think it was that road?

[Moonlacing lately is always...complicated. Of course it's going to happen whether he likes it or not, just by virtue of interacting with people like this. The problem is that it feels good, like it always does, and he doesn't really want to feel good right now. He wants to be angry, he wants to feel that drive and aggression that come with tumultuous emotions. Moonlacing puts a soft damper on all of that, blurring the sharp edges of rage down into something comfortable.

But it feels good, nevertheless. It smooths down his raised hackles, and loosens the tightness in his chest.]

What — that one?

[Fuck. All right, let him just get this bike turned around and heading back toward the road that leads to the bus park where the tourism ferries had let off their passengers back last fall, just a short distance from the gates to the Solemn Grounds.]

[ For a little while, it's calming. Calming is good. Keeps his mind from racing too much. Keeps him focused on solutions, rather than how he probably fucked up.

He'll consider the implications of moonlacing being so similar to being intoxicated later. And by later I mean never because fuck if that doesn't sound uncomfortable to think about. The bike slows to a stop, just out of the way enough to avoid arousing suspicion.

Because unfortunately, they're not the first ones here.

It'd be a pretty shitty cemetery if they were, but also the people who've been here lately have been- well. First there were people up to mischief a month ago, when everything went dark. Then more recently, when everyone started listening to the bad idea king. The point is, people have been doing stupid shit here recently, as opposed to the very okay and sensible and normal shit that they're planning.

Which means that there are a frankly unreasonable and disproportionate number of people patrolling to keep random moonblessed from causing trouble. ]

Fuck. Just how badly do they want to keep their skulls?

I figure probably about as much as anybody else.

[Like, what the fuck, did people in the West in the Dark Ages just go around stealing skulls all the time? They don't teach shit like this in schools!!

He drops a leg to the ground, keeping the motorcycle balanced while they scope out the gates of the cemetery from a distance. It's not like they're technically doing anything wrong right now, which is good, but it would definitely put a damper on their future efforts if they were to be spotted doing recon and then later apprehended.

Also, it's a shame there's no way he could retrieve a skull in five seconds or less. Maybe Star could fetch one, but — what the fuck, how is he even considering this.]

...Wait. What if they don't execute thieves here, to begin with.

[HMM MAYBE SOMEONE SHOULD'VE CHECKED WITH THEIR LOCAL LEGAL COUNSEL OH NO]

...then that would be a problem. Shit.

[ He pauses, taking a moment to poke at the weird moon-bracelet. Then huffs and, after thinking for maybe four seconds, and then climbs off the bike. ]

Fuck it. Not like dying around here sticks. I go try to steal bodies until they have to get stabby to stop me, you grab the skull when they do.

[ 'So you should rip my head off and make it into medicine for your boyfriend' is a perfectly normal and reasonable thing to suggest because Trevor Belmont is a perfectly normal person. ]

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GUESS WHAT DUDES IT’S ACTION NOW

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