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[b][i]Time: Shortly after the attack in Las Vegas
Location: Hoover Dam, Black Canyon, NV[/i][/b]

	The portal ejected the group forcefully onto a concrete structure the likes of which Katarina had never seen before in all her years of life. The violence with which the portal threw them through was unwelcome, to be sure - Kat fell awkwardly on her injured leg, grimacing as she stumbled back to her feet. The Frenchwoman - may God forever curse her for this! - was saying something about how she expected Marie to be in one piece and unmolested by the time she returned. Kat sideswiped a glance at her, a venomous glint to her eye, but said nothing, even when the damnable woman called her 'vampire girl'. Girl? She was hundreds of years older than all of these mortal scum combined, how [i]dare[/i] this insolent whelp refer to her so? Why, were she at her full strength, she could wipe this foolish young woman from the face of this planet, or condemn her for an eternity of undead slavery with but a look! Did she have any idea whom she was dealing with? 

	No, of course not... This was not 1600. This was the 21st century... people had long forgotten her Red Reign and all it stood for. And she was not the Katarina of that time. And more pressingly, she was wounded. For all her indignation and fury, Katarina knew that she wasn't in any great shape to fight, and simply held her tongue - albeit with great difficulty. The frog would win this little battle... lull her into a false sense of security, make her think she was in control of the situation and she could order everyone about with impunity. Whatever wary appeasement there was between the frog and Marie, Katarina would have none of it. Kat would work with this odious little carbuncle for as long as it suited her, and then, when she had regained her power, she would excise the frog from the skin of humanity, and it's little golem construct with it. Ambassador title be damned. As the Frenchwoman opened her own little portal to... wherever, Kat returned her attention to the stricken Ben. His condition had not improved, and it seemed that the group, at the moment, was unable to counteract the doubtless-horrific effects the silver was no doubt wracking upon Ben's system. Kat herself was too injured to contemplate what she would normally do, otherwise she would attempt to at least concentrate the silver in one area and draw as much of it out as she could with her teeth, but she could not afford such a high concentration of silver in her weakened body... for now, anyway. It seemed that once again, the Red Countess was powerless in the face of adversity, just as she had been 400 years ago. She sighed and slammed her fist onto the fence atop the dam's walkway, crushing the steel framework with ease. She didn't care for the damage. Only that she was incapable of protecting those she felt obligated to do so. And the one person she [i]desperately[/i] did. 

	Kat couldn't quite explain her infatuation with the werewolf. Deep inside her, emotions that she had never really been able to show were finally making their presence known - feelings such as compassion, and selflessness; perhaps even love. During her initial sojourn amongst the living, Katarina had never seen mortals such as Ben and his comrades as anything other than tools, or playthings - items to be used until broken, and then thrown away, left to decay and rot amongst the rest of the detritus of human civilisations. Yet here was a man whom she had saved from assault, who had then taken her in (although with some difficulty), given her a bed, a place to stay... normally, she would have exploited this ruthlessly. More fool the man who shows mercy to the Countess, and all that, yet Kat felt no desire, no longing to do so. Perhaps she had learned from the Fall. The cattle were still powerful, in sufficient numbers - the Crusade had put paid to any thoughts of inherent vampiric superiority over any and all opposition. No. Perhaps this time would be different. She put this to the back of her mind - Kat would have plenty of time to ruminate on her predicament and internal emotional turmoil later.

	Instead, she turned her attentions, albeit reluctantly, to her surroundings. And [i]what[/i] a landscape she found herself in. She had never known the existence of construction of this scale. The Hoover Dam, it was called by the mortals - a sheer face of concrete, impounding the terrifying force of nature in the Colorado River. Kat gazed at the cascading tumult of released floodwaters cannoning down from the slipways and jet-releases further down the dam, a terrifying two hundred and twenty metres (though Kat had no real way of determining the height of the dam) below her. It was... hauntingly beautiful. To watch what was once an unstoppable force which had carved out this massive canyon, impounded by physics, engineering and sheer human determination. Humanity had advanced far since the days of the 1500s. No longer did the peasants live in wooden and mud hovels, thatched with straw from offshoots of wheat farming. Instead, humanity had progressed to damming even the most powerful rivers, to housing thousands, if not millions, in urban agglomerations formed of glass, steel and concrete. It had seemingly not yet occurred to Katarina just how far humanity had advanced since her defeat, and now, looking at the white cascade of river water that gushed forth from the dam, it almost struck her in one blow. The aforementioned cattle were cattle no more. No vampire had ever been able to construct such massive feats of engineering - nay, even the Tower and Schloss Neuhausen paled in comparison with the Dam. And it didn't stop there, not with the Hoover Dam. Nuclear power. Nuclear [i]weaponry[/i]. Aircraft carriers larger than some buildings. Supertankers even larger still. It didn't [i]matter[/i] that Kat had also been exposed to humanity's fractious and oft-tribalistic nature. There were always bound to be those who opposed the marching of progress. Doubtless there were those advocating for a return to the 'old ways', before the days of mass mechanisation, globalisation and massive feats of engineering.

	Maybe it was worth giving these humans another shot.

	Alas, for all this, it was time to leave. The White Witch had deigned that they needed to move elsewhere to receive treatment for Ben and her own wounds - some place known to those of Fae origin. It was with a slightly heavy heart that Katarina acquiesced. She would have loved to stay at the Dam until sunrise... but needs must.