[Vampire: The Requiem] The Neonate - 5: "Neighborhood Etiquette"

((In Character (IC) Document:

Venue: Chronicles of Darkness - Vampire: The Requiem (The Strix Chronicle)

Character: Christopher "\/00|>00" Langer
Post by Jerad Sayler & Raen Schadden))

12 November 2009

Tonight, as I searched the underbelly of the internet a dozen sites frequented by pirates, hackers, and deviant programmers, someone actually tried to get into my computer remotely.  Cute, and doesn't happen very often.  An IP address and an open port (vista has so many, I really need to browse more on my Linux virtual machines) is really all that’s necessary.  However, I have accumulated a lot of tools.   I must applaud him for getting through 3 layers of virtualization (my passive protections) as well as a few other IDS/IPS tools creating a layer system that brings to my lips the words “honeypot” though this is not a correct term for the redundancies.  But my network monitoring software (a modded bastardization of SNORT and Wireshark) picked him up relatively quickly.  I made piped him into another virtual machine without his knowledge, a simple image of vista with random files to waste his time.  Meanwhile, I followed his trail right back into his computer.  I downloaded his activity, logs, used a keylogger to get his passwords when he uses them, put in a nice rootkit for later and also planted a nasty bug to go off if I don’t get back in to look around later.  Then, rather than simply closing the port and kicking him out, I decided to have some fun…

I have my own botnet, hundreds of computers used by the ignorant masses carry in their outdated and unpatched computers.  When there idle there mine to perform denial of service & brute force attacks.  Everyone lives their computer on, and connected to the internet, while they sleep or do other things (I don’t) and so they are begging to be utilized.  I love the thought of all those unused CPU cycles bending to my will.  So I DDoS the living shit out of him, and the switch his coming through too.  It brings his connection to its knees.  I let them run, he won’t be using the internet for the rest of the night and he won’t really know why.

I run through the log files I collected, noting all the interesting goodies I can get into later.  He expands my database of hacker tools and sites, capabilities, information, modifications… his bank account information.  I’ll catch him later… take everything valuable like an all-consuming computer ameba. Punk.

It’s been a few nights, time to be a parasite in my truest nature.  It’s three and the hunger is getting to me again.  I need an easy target that’s accessible this time of night.  This possesses a serious problem on a weeknight, I should have planned more carefully.  I could always “go out for Chinese.”  That’s what I call it when I plan to eat someone’s dog.  Dogs… the idea hits me.  With that fat lady living right below me without her neglected guardian angels, she’s begging for another lesson in neighborhood etiquette. One good turn deserves another.

I climb back down on the poop stained balcony, of course, the door isn’t locked. We're on the second floor in a good neighborhood after all!  I know the layout because it’s identical to mine.  The place is dark and quiet (for a change) filled with clutter and junk.  What a disgusting person, maybe she manages a JCpenny or something…  just a cog in the consumer machine.  I don’t spend too much time looking around.  If I take something I might not be able to do this again, let me be a bad dream that comes up every few months.

I cloak myself in shadows and enter the bedroom, trying not to trip on any of this I love Lucy paraphernalia and XL clothing laying around.  Looks like it is a she after all. She’s a heaving mass in a four post king.  She wakes up and rolls over, my heightened senses let me hear her breathing change, the eyelids flutter in the dark.  As she falls back asleep I stalk forward and chomp onto that third chin. 

Oh yes! There it is!  She moans in the pleasure of a dream, lost in the Kiss.  And I am consumed by her as I take her lifeblood.  She eats because she hates her life,  she eats because she loves eating, I drink in her gluttony, her sternness she takes to work.  That fake work ethic…  But the coppery ambrosia drowns out my disdain.  A consumer, a user.  She uses and eats the world and I eat her.  This woman is so much more than an open vein in those precious seconds before I heal the wound and head out.  She wakes again and doesn’t notice me in the dark of course, she looks around because something woke her.  No doubt the pleasure of the Kiss stirred her.  She falls into an easy sleep of the afterglow and I slowly slide open in sliding door and drop to the ground as it’s a little too hard to climb back up.  That was too easy and fun, I’ll be doing this again.

Unfortunately I left my door locked… didn’t think of that.  I’m forced to climb onto the nearby parking garage structure then hop to the roof of another building and then get on to my roof before I can drop down back to my balcony.  That was careless, and I fell a few times (without significant injury, Master taught me how to take a fall…) before I get back to home sweet home.  I simply refuse to waste the blood by burning it all to get back inside, stupid. And isn't there a rule that you shouldn't shit where you eat?  Or in this case, live where you feed?

On the positive side I can spend some of this blood to heal a bit more of my left hand.  It’s still a bit frail from that final fight with my sire.  Fire got involved, most likely the only reason I took him to his knees as surely as he dropped me.  We fled each other in the resulting late summer brushfire, terribly wounded and mad with the beast crying out for blood and recoiling at the same time in terror.  I have been wearing the black leather glove I didn’t lose in the fight to cover it up.  More than a few Kindred asked me about it at court, but I made sarcastic remarks instead of explaining.

It’s looking better as I focus on it, I thought it would never heal and the scarring would never go away.  After many feedings and careful use of my preciously slim blood supply it’s gone from the blacked twig to a veiny flayed thing and now to a red mass of scar tissues but they too are fading away…

13 November 2009

Took care of some minor errands today, got me thinking about Ghouls.  Walking through Walmart and the Citadel Mall in order to get some new clothing (mine predates college… just part of the unchanging kindred condition or lack of time, money, caring, you decide) I begin to understand why vampires maintain one of two ghouls.  Kine who can manage your daytime and other affairs you don’t want to mess with, someone to guard you during the day.  As I walked I thought maybe it would be nothing more than a part-time job and something I could make very rewarding.  But without the blood addiction you can’t trust any kine with anything.  I flat-out refuse to enslave a perfectly normal, average, and somewhat innocent person, guess I’m still attached to people even as I walk under the harsh light and smell the “food” all around.  I also refuse to torture a wicked man with this extension of my curse… take his shit, kill him even, but I won’t torture someone, what am I a demon? 

It’s these morals that made me run away in the first place getting... away from Cailyph.  I’m reminded of all those kindred at court having a circle-jerk about engineering their ghoul families like their fucking dog breeders… unforgivable.

On the way back to the car with a few meager clothing purchases and tid-bits I see someone walking into a nearby door that someone seems familiar and very very uncomfortable.  I can tell by the way she moves she’s kindred and the second I realize it I feel that same tightening through my body I felt at court.  I’m on edge and every muscle is taut and ready to fight or run.  She doesn’t notice me and goes inside as I crouch down near a car and watch, ready to sprint if she even turns her head in my direction.  She must have stronger blood than I.  I’ve met other neonates, usually with weaker blood, and they make me want to smack them around by default.  I’m still a foreigner here and that makes me smell even more like trouble to anyone I come across, glad I dodged a confrontation.  I’m near Knob hill, Lancea et Sanctium territory, I should be getting back… don’t want to piss off my possible allies.

Traveling to a new city is terrifying, there is no guidebook for Kindred territories, rules, behaviors, and where the things that really go bump in the night are hiding.  The only sense of safety you get is when you’re near your haven, at least that’s how I feel.  If I were Prince I imagine I would worry a whole hell of a lot less about crossing paths with some serious trouble.  It really bothers me how paranoid I feel sometimes, like it will spiral out of control.  As soon as I leave my apartment complex I feel like I’m being watched constantly...like I’m being hunted by every other monster in the city, and their toying with me… Predator’s aura was so much easier to deal with when there weren’t any other vampires around and I was on my own turf.