[right]A collab with [@Ruby] and [@Fiber][/right]

[center][b][i]Somewhere in Downtown L.A.[/i][/b]
[img]https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/illuminated-basketball-playground-with-red-pavement-modern-new-net-picture-id1065843824?k=6&m=1065843824&s=612x612&w=0&h=gQFhJ1Y7v0J_RFtsVKytxEimH_gqwa0MA5mshkiDsZs=[/img][/center]


[i]Swish.[/i]

Another basket, this time from the three-point line. Since the incident a few days ago, Mihail felt as though he could not miss. No matter the ridiculousness of the shot he attempted, he managed to find the bottom of the net every single time. Surrounded by the metal fences of the public courts, he was in his element. On the court, Mihail felt safe, and he was able to keep his worries about vampire retaliation at bay. There had been no direct witnesses to the attack as far as Mihail was aware, and nothing to trace the slaying back to him...

... Right?

Mateo spent hours outside the park before Julie was to arrive. The thaumaturge had flipped through a few leather bound tome's in the secure library on the island before solidifying his backup plan. There were a few defensive tricks, but the real effort was put into the safety not. The thaumaturgy based one, at least. The rest of the safety steps weren't his doing, all things being on the up and up, nor was the discovery. It had been a tip from a Houston based friend, in exchange for information on Eva, that there was a cell of Tremere from the East Coast in the Free State. Likely they were hiding in Palm Springs, going in and out of Los Angeles as needed. They were Eastern European in source, but had tried to put down roots on the New England coast before the Sabbat rampaged through the eastern seaboard of the United States. 

Why they were in the Free State was anyone's best guess, the pal had told him, and it seemed unlikely they had showed up just to take out a human. He took the information to the scene and dug around, found the corpse. That led to calling Bronson, California State Police, and one of Rachel's go-to contacts when something that could use an investigative touch came up. Rachel had seen that Bronson's children attended very good schools. The cover story was he was on the take from organized crime, but no one could prove it, because in truth he knew more than most kine about Rachel. He knew there was a someone above Rachel, he just didn't know who or what they were, and while he guessed somehow street gangs were under the same network--he only had guesses and conspiracies. 

Once Baltimore had green-lit a program of drones constantly flying over the city, it wasn't hard to get Los Angeles County to try a "pilot program with limited scope." It was no pilot program, and the scope was county wide. Between that and the network of cameras all over the city, there were typically eyes around the city. The drone feed was funneled through the cloud computing company Rachel had started over a decade ago, the one that handled most the public and private requests in the state. It took Bronson less than a hour to get back to Mateo and hand over the footage of the attack and the tracking of the "suspect." 

Mateo forwarded the e-mail to Grace, who had forwarded it to Julie. Rachel was too busy, so she asked Mateo to deal with it, not to mention the Tremere angle. Grace was too busy, so she asked Julie to deal with. Mateo could relate. That the man was a low-key celebrity complicated things; Mateo had given Yanci a courtesy call. She was involved in some incident involving a message to Eva, but made enough time to connect Mateo with a contact within the Los Angeles Lakers basketball organization. That, too, had been part of the plan. The rest was Bronson and local LAPD he trusted; six in all. Each covering a park exit.

Mateo was putting away material from the safety net ritual he performed in the back of the black SUV next to the park when Julie was walking up. The sun hadn't been down long enough for Mateo's comfort, but he had pushed through just the same. If nothing else he knew it would matter to Eva that they helped out Julie, and by extension Grace. Eva always had soft spots for kine. It was admirable, he had always thought. 

When she arrived Mateo was dressed simply in a wine colored linen and cotton mix button up, the shirt a size too large for his slender shouldered frame, skinny black jeans and big black boots, his hair pulled back and tight into a pony tail. His energy was anxious, field work wasn't something he did a large amount of. There was so cold-faced cool of Eva, no easy swagger of Yanci, nor the hard earned bravado of Dre. He was just him, and he hoped it would be enough. 

"Hey...um, Agent? Are you an agent, technically, like Grace? I know she's...FBI agent. But, um...anyway. Target is in the park. Our read is a hunter who is just starting, maybe reluctantly since he's a high paid athlete with a road to fame. We have police around the park, I have a safety net should he try to escape. We also have an assistant GM with the basketball team that will call in if requested and try to comfort the target, if, well, if we can't calmly explain to him what's going on. I do have to tell you that Yanci would like to talk to him, after we get him somewhere safer."

He was forgetting something. He stood there, slightly blank faced, racking his mind because he couldn't--oh, "Yes, and, I looked into the Kindred cell that the attacker was from. It's unlikely to be their last attack, and what's worse for this human is they might be allying with another, much nastier, type of Kindred clan in the area who also has a greivance with the target's bloodline. I don't know if you know what a Tzimisce is, but they've been in the Free State almost as long as we have, and some of them are no fans of this human's bloodline. So..double jeapardy, yay..."

Julie arrived and recognized Mateo from what Grace had shared with her. She raised her hand to waved but then put it down, remembering it wasn’t time to draw attention. She was dressed casually, in work out clothes, better to blend in. She carried a duffle bag with her, full of things that might come in handy. She was anxious but also full of energy, which spilled out in the speed with which she spoke. She said to Mateo 

“Oh, I’m so glad to meet you Mr. Mateo, uhhmm, do you use last names? You can call me Agent Julia or just Julie, I’m fine with whatever you want. I don’t know much about the varieties of vampires, so I’ll have to rely on you. I have a lot of other things to study, super deep into quantum chemistry right now. I heard you’ve done a lot of work with blood based primal utility and modern technology, not that different from the heremtic stuff, right? I hope some day you’ll get to read some of our research in the area, it’s sooooo much better than anything of that last century stuff. I’m just getting started and I’ve learned so much, but you look at what they have and I swear, the other day I saw some ones who thought they were tech savvy still saying that Information Theoretic Security was unbreakable, I mean hello, have they ever talked with a Virtual Adept? Do they think we haven’t found anything in the 60 years since Shannon’s masterpiece? By the way, if you haven’t read it, A Mathematical Theory of Communication is incredible, like enlightment in a scientific paper, when she was giving me my first study list, Grace put that at the very top, and I can see why. Oh…. uh I guess I should talk about this basketball guy, right? I brought a dossier, most of it is files we have on his mother. How do you want to approach him?”

Minutes turned into hours as Mihail continued his practice, which he felt was the best one he'd had since the Lakers' elimination from the Playoffs. Although the setting sun was normally his cue to begin packing his things and start heading home, the athlete had been locked in a trance, living in a world which only contained him and the net. When at last he was satisfactorily exhausted and drenched in sweat, so much so that his shirt clung to his body and he stank like a gym on New Year's, he finally decided to call it quits. A few spectators had gathered at the exits. [i]They are wanting autographs... not today, I am too tired.[/i] As he wiped the sweat from his eyes, the forms of the spectators became more clear. Among them were six uniformed LAPD officers. Just as his heartrate was beginning to slow down, fear caused it to spike again. "Shit," he muttered to himself, "Shit, shit, shit shit."

Mihail did his best to act natural, opening up his gym bag and toweling off his face. He removed his sweaty shirt and grabbed a fresh one, put away his ball, and took a drink of water, which, perhaps due to his nerves, went down the wrong way, leading to a brief but vigorous fit of coughing. Between the exertion and the prospect of being arrested for murder, Mihail felt like he was going to pass out. His bicycle was chained to the inside of the fence. When he went to unlock it, he glanced over at one of the officers, then immediately looked back down at the bike lock to avoid meeting his gaze. [i]Nice work, Mihail, now they're even MORE SUSPICIOUS. YOU'RE GOING TO JAIL, MIHAIL, YOU IDIOT![/i] He wheeled his bike towards the southwestern exit, trying (and failing) to look as casual as possible. [i]They're probably here for someone else, right? Someone else who killed someone in an alleyway... shit, shit, shit, shit![/i]

Mateo...blinked. "I mean...right. Virtual Adept, duh."  In truth, some of what she said had made sense to him. Eva was deeper into the human and mage circles than anyone knew, than even he was supposed to know. That the secretive mystery woman had even deeper secrets than most thought, well. After a little nervous laughter Mateo took the dossier, tossed it in the back of the SUV, and stuck his foot out so the sensor would trip and automatically close the trunk door. "To put it bluntly, this young man has some real monsters after him. My friend, Eva, doesn't like that kind of thing. She thought she had an understanding with this group, but apparently they had forgotten themselves. Not my field, but, well...anyway. You probably want to approach him and talk to him. I'll be there with you, but...he doesn't hunt your kind, so. He may know I'm Kindred, if so we may want to have the human do the talking, at least at first."

He saw her. Past Julie, across the street, through a Starbucks front window. When he returned his eyes to Julie, a literal beat of the woman's heart, and back again...she was already gone. But at least, if nothing else, she had been there. That almost made him smile. "Anyway, shall we?" He was looking past Julie again, to the court, hearing the chatter in his ear from Bronson:

[i]Target has spotted uniformed units. Acting alarmed."[/i]

"I think he knows someone is here for him. I'll leave introductions to you."

Julie nodded at Mateo and put on her act. She walked up to Mihail with her duffle bag, looking excited, with a bounce in her step. She intentionally avoided looking at any of the cars around, as if she was oblivious. His height might be the first thing anyone noticed about Mihail, but it was definitely impressive in person. Julie herself was on the taller side, but he just towered over her. She stayed at a distance, but the usual rule of thumb of staying several strides was harder to follow when dealing with someone with limbs that long. She approached him while he was busy with his bike lock, and said
“Hi, I’m sure you’re sick of people asking you this, but you play for the Lakers, right? I was walking around the neighborhood when I saw you, and I have friend back in Utah who is huge basketball fan. I just happened to have my camera with me, and it would be great if I could record a short message for him. I don’t want to pressure you, if you want I can just leave you alone and find a different portion of the court.”
The conversation would occupy him for long enough for Mateo to decide if they were going to go forceful or not. While they talked, she started to look at his bike, studying the materials, running their chemical structures through her head

Mihail jumped a bit as the mystery-woman came up behind him. He looked over at the police, then back to her. [i]Just a fan. Thank goodness.[/i] The cops didn't seem to be taking any sort of aggressive action, at least not immediately. [i]Fuck it, might as well make her day before I go to jail.[/i] Smiling, he turned to face her.

“No no, I am not a big enough star to get tired of it,” Mihail joked uneasily, “I like being recognized, it is a reminder of how far I came to get here.” Mihail took his ball back out from his bag, along with a sharpie he kept on his person for autographs. Looking this woman up and down (mostly down), Mihail mused that she was taller than some of the people he played against. [i]Good-looking, too... though she looks familiar.[/i] “You will record on your phone, yes? What should I say?”

"You could tell them whether you knew what you were doing the other day, bringing Final Death to the Kindred you folded into the waste bin. You see, we're curious. We represent people that know the city, who watch after the bumps in the Los Angeles night. Are you a serious hunter? Would you try to stake me here and now? Maybe fight magic with my friend, the mage here?" He smiled, fangs flashed casually, out of amusement, not malice before he nodded to Julie in regards to the 'mage' line. "Or is my boss correct, and you don't know what the hell you were doing yesterday? You're just riding the blood of your father and the magic of your mother, wishing it would go away so you could become the basketball star in a town that loves them some basketball stars?"

Mihail was paralyzed as the vampire (who had managed to peg Mihail's current situation with near-100% accuracy) beared his fangs. A thousand thoughts ran through his head at once, most of them containing curse words, as he began to breathe heavily. Acting on instinct with all of his adrenal glands activating at once, Mihail threw his ball at the vampire's face as hard as he could, and bolted. The ball flew forth with supernatural force, wisps of flame rising off of it. The sheer power behind the throw surprised Mihail almost as much as the vampire himself did. The Messenger in Mihail's head cut through the river of incomprehensible panic: [b][i]You are stronger than you think.[/i][/b]

Julie was standing back when they had their confrontation, a fake look of confusion on her face. Mateo was getting right to the chase. She didn't want tip her hand just yet as she held her smartphone and took a photo of what was happening, angled too low for a conventional portrait. The flash went off, and then she spoke "Oh no, I'm sorry. Not many people know this, but the chemical compounds used in modern basketball shoes can react when exposed to certain light spectrums. It looks like my camera flash triggered that, and now the reaction has bonded the shoes to the surface of the court. Quite the predicament. Maybe I'll make a video about this soon, I'm sure my channel viewers would like it." She was getting further away as she said this, not wanting to be caught in whatever was unfolding.

"SON OF A BITCH," Mihail swore as his shoes stuck to the ashfault. He took a moment to wrench himself free, removing his feet from his shoes without even undoing the laces. The shoes he had worn when he recorded his first double-double were completely ruined; no point in trying to save them. Rather than trying to escape by climbing the fence, however, Mihail stopped running after a few steps. No matter how hard he tried, he knew he would never be able to outrun a vampire. "ALL I WANT TO DO IS GET AWAY FROM THIS MAGIC BULLSHIT!" Reaching into his gym bag, Mihail pulled out his lighter and spray deodorant once again and prepared to use it as a makeshift flamethrower. "DO NOT TAKE ANOTHER STEP CLOSER, BLOODSUCKER!" The panic in Mihail's voice made it clear: he feared for his life. "IF YOU TRY TO KILL ME I WILL TAKE YOU DOWN WITH ME, I SWEAR TO GOD! I DID IT ONCE AND I WILL DO IT AGAIN!"

The fizzle and flash of light was immediate the moment the flaming ball tried to hit him. It got close, but it didn't quite make it before one of the defensive rituals triggered, half a hundred dazzling balls of light spiraled and flared in hues of white and orange and red, before fizzling out into ever-diminishing sparks, each smaller than the one before, until nothing was visible to the mortal eye. 

Mateo stayed frozen. Not as if by magic, but instead by shame. Slowly, very slowly, his right hand came up to the side of his face the ball had been aimed at. Enough of an imprint had made it through, it seemed, as his eyes winced at the burn--the two inch by two inch area of skin that was suddenly far more red than any other part of him. Except for the little shape within that red area, the little shape that was an even darker, angrier, shade of red. The tip of his middle finger grazed it, and his body seemed to deflate in a heavy sigh.

"That's, uh...yeah that's on me." When his head finally moved, he didn't look at Julie, he didn't look at the mortal. He looked across the court, through the fence, past the trees framing the park, past the sidewalk and the street beyond, to the front window of the Starbucks across that street. 

[i]Crap.[/i] She was gone. Nothing else was said, at least by him. There were various options available to him, but the most reliable was the Paths he knew by heart. The same hand that was raised to his face now rose just slightly higher into the air with a flick of his wrist that, notably, appeared more irritated than anything else. The flight of Mihail's lighter was immediate, and far stronger than Mateo intended. It was only a half blink that would let the observant have any hint that while prehaps Maty meant to do that, he hadn't meant for the light to fly into the sky so fast, with such velocity, that it...disappeared. Mihail's attempts to fire the impromptu flamethrower were in vain. His reflexes, apparently not quick enough, simply launched forward a puff of bodyspray. 

The Tremere, to his credit, barely missed a beat. His hand finally dropped back to his side, and his eyes once more fell on the mortal before them. "I admit I hate the stench of Axe, but I don't think it's enough to 'take me down`, whatever that means."

This time he saw her in the corner of his eyesight standing at the fence near an entrance; a vintage Ramones black teeshirt with band name bold and purplish-pink, black skinny jeans, the grey leather All-Stars, and a heathered grey Armani blazer over it, black rimmed purple lensed aviators hiding the majority of her face, her impossibly straight and shiny hair falling like a shadow upon her shoulders.

She didn't say anything. She didn't have to...he could see the smirk she hid.

"Suppose an Axe body spray scented threat answers my question, all the same. You're going to get a call from an assistant General Manager from your club." He saw, again from the corner of his vision, her head shake...just so. Just enough. "Team, whatever. He'll explain your options; pretend this didn't happen, embrace your new state and life as a hunter. Either way you'll be watched until such a time that the world and society begins to break down...then, frankly, we'll have more important things to do. Anything else for our no shoes, no service burdened friend, Agent?"

Prehaps the Mages had parting words of wisdom or a card to give out. Sometimes Maty wished they had cards to give out, but Eva had stopped giving them out after meeting Grace for the first time. Look how that turned out, she had argued, albeit he believed sarcastically. 

Julie didn't have much to say, not even looking up from her phone. Paperwork had to be done, and getting an early start would make it easier. The operation was under contol, she still wasn't sure what the exact plan, or how the lady in the Ramones shirt factored in. She thought she had seen her face before in dossier, but didn't remember, all she knew was that she looked cool. Very cool. Like she knew about how to be cool, and what someone could do to be cooler. Like she could tell Julie all of the things that  17 years growing up in a family obsessed with wind patterns after ICBM strikes and ammunition shortages would never teach her. If Julie could write down a personal (in a vague, abstract format wholly unapproved by the Technocracy), she would want to know as much about science as Grace and as much about coolness as this woman. With that, she could find a way to make science (which was already cooler than the masses thought) even cooler. Then she remembered she was supposed to say something, even after she had only halfway caught the conversation. She forced a chuckle at the joke, then said "Uhhhh, we did it. Mihail, you, uh, should expect an email from me. Well, if you're going somewhere where you can get email, anyway."

For a moment, he froze like an elk in headlights, unsure of what to make of the situation. When he realized that killing Mihail was [i]not[/i] in fact part of these bloodsuckers' mission, he calmed down... sort of. "Vampires are such bullshit..." Mihail muttered, reaching into his gym bag to get a pair of comfortable walking shoes. As he crouched down to put them on, he continued his frustrated rant: "I work out for two hours every day, sometimes more. I eat a regimented diet, sometimes four thousand calories a day, [i]and[/i] I quit smoking, only to be outclassed by a little mosquito who consumes only blood for sustinence." He stood up straight, brushed himself off, and looked around trying to figure out where his lighter was. That was when his eyes settled on Mateo, more notably the NBA logo branded onto his face, forcing the towering basketball player to stifle a laugh. "You have a bit of Jerry West on your face."

"Nice shoes."

Mihail could've [i]sworn[/i] he heard the vampire say... "Wait, you WANT me to be a hunter?" The athlete was stunned. "A vampire hunter. Who kills vampires. You, the vampire, want me to... be a vampire hunter. And what's this about society breaking down? ... Wait, who even are you people?! Why is... yes, I recognize you now, you are the YouTube chemistry lady, why are you here? And if you are not going to kill me, what [i]are[/i] you going to do with me?"

Julie decided to try out one of those ideas for how to be cooler right now after hearing Mihail's question. "You might say that to unlock the many layered mysteries of the universe, one must be mysterious themselves. Never confuse appearences for reality." She said. She let he silence hang, for no other reason than that's what they did in movies.

"I am a college dropout and non-native English speaker," Mihail replied frankly, his accent creeping in to break the silence, "I do not know what any of this means. Please tell me what is going on, I am still worried I am going to die."

"You're human--of course you're going to die." Mateo had never sounded more matter of fact, completely removed from emotion and purely in the realm of the logical. However as his mind turned to possible explanations...his pale lips smiled a thin smile, a frail, delicate thing born of passing, mild, amusement. Mateo stepped forward once more, his hands spreading out as his head went this way and that, motioning to the world all around them.

"This...is a strange fucking place." The thin smile grew wider, though only briefly, as a seriousness crept onto the Kindred's sharp facial features. "From San Fransisco in the north, to the US border in the south, to the California state border to the east...this is what is known in Kindred society as the Free State. We are outside the traditions and cruel games of the two other dominant Kindred societies. We have pretended to be like them, to some extent, in order to survive. However in more recent history we have shed even pretense--we are the Free State. All are welcome here." His arms spread wide, his smile fully faded as his arms dropped down to his sides, his gaze squarely on the human. 

"I am no more than the representative of the Barony of the Free State. The Baron helped create every major city in California, like an immortal Bob Ross subtely using events, trends, and people as colors to create, among others, Los Angeles. They do it for people, for humans, for you, even more than they ever did it for Kindred, for us vampires. Then they decided to embrace and explore humanity like no other Kindred ever had before, or since, and they harnessed the raw potential of the new 'moving pictures' technology to establish, and over time create what the world now knows as...Hollywood. Now that the Baron has focused all their efforts on trying to save reality, let alone simply the fall of human society in the face of monsters that make elder vampires look like kittens, they have left others in charge of overseeing Hollywood, and Los Angeles, and the insanely complex network of agents and assets at their disposal."

By the time he was done speaking, he wasn't even looking at Mihail. He was looking at Yanci, and had to return his eyes to the human as his mind returned to the task of the current, the hunter's question. "We allow hunters. We allow mages. All are welcome in the Free State. Quite frankly, the Kindred you end have it coming, and you're doing us favors killin these Beasts that forgot what humanity even it is, let alone that it's worth risking everything to save. So good luck. I'd start practicing at something more than basketball, if I was you." 

His hands shoved into pockets, and his head dipped in acknowledgment to Julie as he turned on his booted heel and marched towards the exist of the court, police officers all over the park slowly walking back to their cars, now, and simply riding off. 

For a moment, Mihail stood there, stunned. "What? How can we stop this? Who is going to train me!?" These and other questions he had no answers to, nor did he think he would get them from the disinterested Kindered with the burned face. [i]Doomsday. An apocalypse. Unspeakable horrors unleashed upon the world. Deaths of countless millions, vampires succumbing to the beast the world-over, going on murderous rampages as wraiths and thralls obliterate civilization was we know it. All your friends in Romania, your old teammates highschool and college, dead. Aside from a tiny strip of land in Southern California, saved by the fickle whims of some elder vampire.[/i] He thought back to the old texts which his mother had brought with them from the Old Country, and the various family legends and histories he'd learned growing up. He called after Maty and the other Kindered waiting nearby: "Gehenna. You are talking about Gehenna, yes?"

"He is," The woman's voice that sounded almost girlish came from behind and off to the side of Mihail, near a court exit, on the other side of the fence. The umsmiling latina Kindred standing barely five foot five in the Armani blazer and leather All-Stars now stared directly at the human, "tell everyone you can, sound every alarm, and keep your eyes on India in the week to come. That will simply be the beginning. As for the end...welcome to L.A."