Night's Omen

"Mmhmm," she agreed quietly with Capri's mention of Christian, wondering what exactly had gone on to prompt that comment.  Nothing HAD to have happened, but usually there was a reason for saying specific things.  She had a feeling Capri had argued something with Christian recently, and didn't like the outcome.  Considering how level Christian usually was, Audrey wasn't even going to ask, because she'd probably agree with him.

Her attention returned to the younger woman at the mention of her boyfriend potentially dropping the baby on her head, and she briefly wondered if that was really a concern.  No, it couldn't be, or why would Capri have left him with the little girl?  She wouldn't have, of course.  No reasonable mother would.  Of course, Audrey found it hard to believe that Capri could possibly get away with making Connor change ALL of the diapers, considering how often THAT task was necessary, and the things she'd heard running around the guilds.

"So, you're living together, then?" she asked, raising an eyebrow curiously.  "From the sound of things, he's adapting fairly well, at least.  You're lucky.  When I had my son, Matt didn't know what to do with himself, even after I taught him.  He was utterly useless at anything that involved diapers or feeding for the first month and a half of Aaron's life, and then I supervised him."

The sound of actual gunshots tore Mike away from his game of Call of Duty 4. He dropped the 360 controller and grabbed his Glock and ran to the door of his quarters and threw it open. He risked a quick glance down the hall and then stepped out with his pistol at the ready. Down at the other end of the hall, near the house common room he watched a bleeding vampire ,judging from his speed and the fact his wounds weren't really slowing him down, run out of a room and back toward the door as another man chased him out of the house firing at him and cursing in Spanish. What the heck was all that about? But then it clicked in his brain that the man chasing the vamp was the infamous Domingos Verde. Mike had heard plenty of stories about that guy, and he assumed that the vamp was an Onyx hunter as well.

But just to be sure he edged out down the hall and toward the common room where he thought he could hear women's voices over the TV set. He was still slightly uneasy in this particular Frost house because of the overwhelming number of female members. He had always been kinda shy around the ladies. But usually his sense of humor helped. But these women were kinda scary....they were tough...a couple of them were probably tougher than him when he thought about it. He edged around the corner and saw the two women sitting on the couch as if the little shoot fest hadn't happened, and he decided what the heck, maybe they would let him join them.

"Hey ladies, mind if I come hang out in here for a bit? The gunshots kinda distracted me from what I was doing...and is that a pretty common thing around here? That was some crazy shit!"

Mike flopped down on the couch and then blushed when he realized that he still had the Xbox headset stuck to his ear...whoa, smooth move fella.

"I..." Capricia opened her mouth to speak, but she shut it promptly and frowned. "Sort of. I've been here a lot, mostly because Christian told me to go home. She snorted a little. "Adapting. That's a good word for it." She paused as Audrey spoke, and returned her gaze with an almost blank one. That was a lot of Capricia's expressions lately though, as most of the painkillers and anti-depressants had robbed her of her normal vigor. She could still argue, it was just from a seated position with her head on an outstretched arm instead of in someone's face. That was all that really mattered, anyways.

"No, he's fine with her. He's better than I am," she said, her voice almost... lofty. There was something in her tone, but it was hard to determine what. It was almost as though she had put herself down, but at the same time, she was bragging. It was... hard to tell. It also could have been a twinge of bitterness there, too. Capricia was firmly convinced Connor only stuck around because of Anastasiya. She didn't dare voice it, though. She was sick of hearing how stupid the notion was. Capricia got tired of being called stupid. Her trigger finger usually got itchy when the 's' word came up.

Capricia still couldn't determine how she felt about Anastasiya. Some days she enjoyed her company in the briefest of interludes. She wasn't breastfeeding, thank god (the doctor called her 'broken' and she was glad for it) so her presence really wasn't required. She was beginning to think Connor was on to her, but she'd turned her phone off, and that had been that. She wanted to be alone, or just around people not them. She couldn't stand all the cooing and crying and other strange sounds associated with babies. It made her want to smash her head into a wall, which she was also told was normal, and then she was prescribed pretty purple pills to make the thoughts of homicide go away.

Normal for Capricia, sure.

She glanced up as Mike sat down on the couch, popping her up on the other side for a second at his weight.  He wasn't husky, but the cushions were old, and up she went, down she went. "It's only as common as everything else around here," she said cryptically. "Want to watch Mean Girls with us?"

Mean Girls? Well...it was pre-Coke Head Lohan, and she did have a nice rack in that movie. Plus he had to admit, it was pretty funny flick. And besides, he needed to mingle more with his fellow guild members and stop spending so much time holed up in his quarters playing video games and hacking random websites for fun. You never knew when you might need back up, and actually being friendly with people made them more likely to help.

"Mean Girls huh? Well that sounds fine with me, Pre train wreck Lindsay Lohan isn't that bad to look at. So I'm guessing thats the infamous Domingos Verde that just ran in here shooting, are all the stories I hear about that dude true? Does he really like shooting trainees?"

Mike glanced over at Capricia, he really didn't know her, but he knew that she had just had a kid with the Leader of Crimson. Her eyes looked kinda glazed over too, this might prove to be a more entertaining night than making 14 year old boys cry on Xbox Live.

Audrey was actually pretty shocked that Mike was willing to sit and watch such a girly movie with them.  Personally, it was a little too girly even for Audrey, but she couldn't quite help herself.  She was an action movie and horror flick freak, and always had been.  She used to have people call up when she worked for that radio station JUST to chat about horror flicks, and she somewhat missed it, though killing vampires for a living was definitely exciting.

"You know, she's supposed to be rather young in this movie," she pointed out, cocking an eyebrow up in Mike's direction.  "That's just a little disturbing."

Ahh, the mommy instincts.  Thank God she had a son, and not a daughter. 

Fortunately, Domingos Verde was a topic that Audrey was rather familiar with, Dom having been the one who got her into the guilds in the first place.  She laughed, finding the question fairly entertaining, and shook her head.  "Domingos Verde will shoot anything that so much as looks at him wrong.  He's shot at least five hunters, that I know of off the top of my head, and I'm sure he'll do it again," she explained.  Perhaps Mike would take that as the warning it should have been, and be careful around the Spaniard.

"So yes, that was him, and the rumors are true," she concluded brightly.  She rather liked him, to be honest.  He was interesting and psychotic.

Young? Mike knew how old that chick really was, and thats all that really mattered. And besides, he was just tired of sitting in his room, it would have to have been a godawful chick flick or Life Time movie to send him running back to his room.  And besides he was 15 years younger than Aubrey, even if his size and job made him seem as if he should be older.

"Heh, you forget where I'm from...17 is legal in Louisiana, as disturbing as that may sound. And in reality, I think she's my age anyway, so its not THAT creepy. So that was Verde huh? Thats pretty much what I expected from the rumors I heard about him. Over across the pond they said he was a loose cannon, and that for some reason he got bounced from Crimson to Onyx...you know anything about that?"

Of course, thats not all he had heard about Verde. There were rumors galore about that guy. Some were like heroic legends, while others made him look even more batshit crazy than what Mike had just seen. But he had shot 5 hunters? Holy Shit..Mike made a mental note to stay the hell away from Domnigos Verde if at all possible.

"Eh," she offered up noncommittally, waving her hand dismissively.  She wasn't getting into how wrong it seemed, regardless of ages or laws. 

"He told me that Batten thought his hunting style really suited Onyx better than Crimson, given how loud and in your face he is, and he pulled some stunt that made it painfully clear right before Batten had the chance to tell him about the transfer," she explained, preferring to just TELL the guy rather than have him spreading information that was wrong.  Of course, she liked the guy, so she was likely to disagree with common opinions.

"He's not a loose cannon.  He's just...different.  You have to know how to deal with him.  He's the one who introduced me to hunting," she offered, shrugging.  He obviously couldn't be THAT bad of a guy, considering the number of people he'd recruited for hunting.  If he was as crazy as everyone wanted to believe, new hunters wouldn't trust him enough to take his advice.  She'd certainly trusted him.

In fact, she still did.  She'd prefer to go on a hunt with him over most of the people she knew.  He was a bit unpredictable, but he got the job done.  He didn't take shit.  She respected that.

Capricia didn't have much to input at this point, so she watched them both in her drugged-up state, head moving back and fort an inch or so as the dialog changed possessor. She laughed a little as the basic idea of Domingos' transfer became clear. It sounded atypical of... everything, actually. The people in the guildhouses were chaotic, but it was an organized sort of chaos that, once you were there long enough, you became perfectly accustomed to.

"Before I even bother starting this, I'm hungry. Anyone want anything?" she asked, standing up. She was going to get a sammich and some soda, that was what. Peanut butter and jelly with some chips and a pickle and some Shasta she'd bogeyed from her apartment the day before. She kept buying it and hiding them all over the place. She was hurting for some rootbeer right now, too.

Good Job Mike! Now you look like a child molester in a majority female guild. He kinda chuckled a bit at her dismissive wave of the hand. It wasn't his fault that the chick looked so hot in that movie, they knew what they were doing when they made it! But Verdes was a much more interesting topic, especially considering the one bombshell Mike had gotten by hacking various Bruja e-mail servers. He decided to test the waters a bit, without really showing his hand.

"Well, he seems like a loose cannon to me...especially the whole shooting hunter's part. I guess I better pick up some Kevlar if I'm gonna be spending much time around here! But seriously...I heard some rumors about him that where kinda odd. They were about his transfer, seems something really sketchy went down in Crimson that almost forced Batten to transfer him, or at least that was some of the talk zipping back and forth across the Atlantic, I usually don't pay attention to that stuff, unless I get a hit on my name, but it was some interesting stuff..."

Mike let his voice trail off and acted like he was interested in the TV. He was truthfully only operating on a rumor, and was trying to see if she would confirm it for him. Of course, it really didn't matter to him whether this particular rumor was true or not, he was just curious to see if it was. Those damn French Bruja members gossiped worse than old women, and it got ten times worse when one was transfered to America and sent all the dirt back to France....thank God he had that little script lurking in the Bruja mail servers so he would be able to nuke any E-mail that was talking about HIM.