Pre-Prologue - KJ Meets Wilson

[09:47] <@banana> The back of the SUV has seats running down the sides, with a central aisle full of gear. Kindred slumped in the darkness, roaring outside - it's like a chopper extraction in a cliched war film.
[09:49] <@banana> One of them's actually got a stake through his heart, another's too mangled to speak right now - but there's a woman without a single scratch on her looking absolutely exhausted. Dead to the world but too keyed up to rest, bright-eyed in a way Wilson might recognise. She's got a short grey coat and something like a modern version of a bonnet in her lap.
[09:51] <@banana> Keeps looking up as if about to speak, doesn't see anyone to speak to...
[09:52] <VoxPVoxD> The little man who seems to appear out of nowhere on the opposite seat is similarly unharmed. KJ might never have noticed him if not for the distressing clatter of steel on steel. He is, like so many of the elder Unconquered on the field tonight, fully medieval, in what looks like a Spanish conquistador's breastplate over a quite nice dress shirt and slacks, flecked with someone else's blood. He's trying to stow an enormous sword in the central aisle but the bumps of the road keep confounding him until it finally slides into place.
[09:53] <VoxPVoxD> When KJ's eyes fix on him, his eyes snap back along the same trajectory, sweeping up and down briefly as if searching for some distinguishing mark... "I don't think I know you."
[09:54] <@banana> "Um-hey! Nice trick, that's my favourite too. Yeah I came in at the end there, I was on location - Seaworld - um, Baron Murray's business."
[09:56] <@banana> The apparently-young woman reveals a phone from beneath the hat in her lap, waving it around to illustrate some point. "Holy shit, right? Sir. Like, that was really.. definitive. I think we won."
[09:57] <@banana> The lack of introduction is mutual, but he's clearly one of the bosses..
[09:59] <VoxPVoxD> The little man's flat dark eyes convey some small surprise. She really is green, or an exceptionally gifted ingenue. "...yeah, yeah. Pretty good. You're one of Helena's people? Explains why I don't know you. Baron Frost. Call me Wilson, unless you want something from me."
[10:01] <@banana> KJ: "KJ, KJ Valentine. Nice to meet you Wilson, if a little.. it was very intense."
[10:02] <@banana> KJ: "Um, their van with the ghouls which tried to get out past the checkpoint, and we had a-" She waves the phone and hat, miming. Boom.  "That was me. I've never had to do something like it before."
[10:05] <VoxPVoxD> Wilson: "Ah, you never forget your first car bombing. I remember mine like it was yesterday. November '87, up in Enniskillen. Struck a blow for a united Ireland that day."
[10:07] <@banana> KJ: "What, really? You do a great accent, then. Have you thought about voice work, sir?"
[10:11] <VoxPVoxD> Wilson shakes his head. "Nah, not really. I haven't left California for more than a day trip in 50 years. Still, Catholics and car bombs go together like..." There's a bulge in his lower lip as he presses his tongue against it in thought. "See, if I haven't heard of you before now, even if you're Helena's, you can't be local... mind if I ask where you're from, Ms. Valentine?"
[10:14] <@banana> KJ's a little more relaxed now with someone to talk to. No matter who it is, she kind of has to decompress this stuff.. "Born in Santa Monica, but I came down from Palo Alto a few years ago. You know how they are with purges up there, right?"
[10:15] <@banana> "In my case, they didn't have enough cold bodies for the gulags and ended up bringing a few new people into the fold. Like, a cradle-to-purge state."
[10:16] <VoxPVoxD> Wilson: "Like Stalin, except you don't have to airbrush anybody out of the photographs. Murray took you in as a refugee?" Either this kid's got talent or Bailey was in one of his sentimental moods.
[10:20] <@banana> KJ: "Yeah, that was an education! What better way to find out how the world works than being like.. suddenly reduced to finding out whether people will let you exist? Not as tough as third-round interviews, though."
[10:21] <@banana> "I've been racking my brains-" She puts the bonnet back on, to illustrate. "Sorry, but I don't remember which part of the city you're responsible for."
[10:23] <VoxPVoxD> Wilson: "I've got the best title in the business, short of Bailey's. I'm the Baron Hollywood. Well, technically I'm also the Baron Studio City and the Baron Little Armenia, but those don't look as good on a business card."
[10:25] <@banana> KJ: "Glam. The only thing I'd take over Hollywood is Disneyland. Do you get to rub necks with the stars? Stop me if this is inappropriate." She really doesn't want to stop talking, and this guy is funny. He might be Nosferatu, though.. there's kind of an aura that comes through even the cracks in the metal. Easy to see with internal eyes (even if you don't want to).
[10:27] <VoxPVoxD> Wilson: "Oh, I get invites to all those parties." It's at this point that Wilson actually does produce a business card from some inner pocket, an act so deft KJ's not sure if it's borne of Obfuscate or simple stagecraft. It doesn't say anything about the Invictus, however. Instead it reads WILSON FROST, SENIOR VP FOR DEVELOPMENT, PARAMOUNT PICTURES A Viacom Company. "If you ever wanna dangle a career in showbusiness over somebody's head, I'm the guy to call."
[10:31] <@banana> KJ: "Yes, please!" She doesn't have a business card, of course, but she's already entering the stuff on Wilson's into her contacts.  "I'm @kindawellknown, same on pinterest. Telegram?"
[10:32] <VoxPVoxD> Wilson: "I'd need to call my office to get those for you, I don't handle my own social media. If you call my office and tell Nora you're an old friend from home, she'll set you up."
[10:34] <@banana> Actually, how old is this guy? Sometimes you have to clarify "Telegram the app, not Bell telegrams - it just uses your phone number. Try it out sometime, there's a backdoor in the encryption but we know who's running that."
[10:35] <VoxPVoxD> Wilson: "Can't anyone who has my phone number just text me?"
[10:36] <@banana> KJ: "Yes.. and anyone who knows anything can read it. We live in an age of wonders, right?"
[10:36] <@banana> "..it's a pity all those lines of communcation didn't help us talk San Diego down."
[10:37] <VoxPVoxD> Wilson: "We also live in a world where people can astrally project and follow you around without you ever knowing, or see your face in a pool of blood or a broken mirror, or whatever else those people get up to. Far as I'm concerned, infosec is an aesthetic."
[10:38] <VoxPVoxD> "You're right, though, about San Diego. There were a dozen ways to play this short of war, but Bailey had us going to bat for the schismatics anyway. What do you make of that?"
[10:39] <@banana> KJ: "That's true! However, we live next to a world that's still in the information age. We need to work with human people, right, or at least around them? All the time, every night. We've got dozens or hundreds of our people passing through those huge crowds and if they're in the wrong place at the wrong time, or seen by the wrong people in the wrong professions - interfacing with current technology is going to be a big part of our job, I think. I've been thinking about it."
[10:41] <@banana> She pauses- "Sorry, kind of talking over you. Um."
[10:41] <VoxPVoxD> Ah, yeah, she's sharp. It's not fair when they're pretty and smart. He just shrugs. "Fine by me. This is more than I talk, usually."
[10:42] <@banana> "I know a few people in the Heresy, if that's still what it is. They're more.. congenial, generally. I wouldn't have thought that would matter?"
[10:42] <VoxPVoxD> "You mean it wouldn't have occurred to you that anyone'd make a political decision motivated by how nice one side or the other is."
[10:43] <@banana> And it's interesting that the Baron of Hollywood doesn't know more about it. Then again, KJ's not heard his name around much.
[10:43] <@banana> "That's not a political decision."
[10:43] <VoxPVoxD> "You don't think?"
[10:45] <@banana> KJ: "Political is the sociotechnology of obtaining power. Using it... the Prince can do what he wants, but either he's uninterested in that sort of argument or he's a nice enough guy  that he wouldn't start a war."
[10:48] <VoxPVoxD> Wilson: "Think of it like this: by putting the weight of the Brilliant Court behind the schismatics, he's implicitly taking a stand as to their validity. On the surface all he's saying is, 'these people want a better life and they want it here'. But if you look at the next step - think about what's going to happen when we get back home and the dust settles. The Prince has endorsed this movement, given it refuge. We've put our own flesh and blood up as collateral."
[10:48] <VoxPVoxD> "So the question is... how easy is the Episcopate sleeping today? What are they thinking about their prospects?"
[10:49] <VoxPVoxD> "What are they imagining is going to happen if a proper holy war breaks out inside our borders, and Bailey has to take a side?"
[10:49] <@banana> KJ's stopped fidgeting. She's listening, trying to put herselves in the shoes of a Literal Bishop. It's not easy. "Something like.. 'we'd better not find out'?"
[10:50] <VoxPVoxD> "And Bailey's not stupid. He knows this too. So the decision is a message. The Church doesn't have the standing it used to. The assertion of power is a claim to it."
[10:52] <VoxPVoxD> "Look for the Bishops to start putting the screws to the schismatics. Starve them, impoverish them, isolate them - deny them as much as they can from whatever position of authority Bailey gives them."
[10:52] <@banana> "That's an interesting idea. There's a lot of religious feeling here, no offence" (this to the staked guy in torpor) "and it would once have been captured by the Sanctum. So the Prince could be saying, it's better for him and by extension all of us that they only lay claim to actual volunteers?"
[10:54] <VoxPVoxD> "He could be. I don't wanna speculate as to what's in his head. All I can say is from where I'm sitting, this whole thing looks like Bailey taking this as an opportunity to consolidate his power and pushing the Bishops a little further out in the cold."
[10:54] <VoxPVoxD> "And the genius of Prince Bailey is that he always looks like such a sweetheart while he does it."
[10:54] <@banana> "You mentioned being Catholic. No objections to the genius?"
[10:56] <VoxPVoxD> Wilson: "I'm not Catholic, and I'm certainly not whatever the hell the Bishops are. I've got no love for Widmark and Gorse. And hell, if I had a dog in this fight, you probably wouldn't have had to ask me what my barony was."
[10:56] <@banana> "It does sound pretty smart to me!" KJ shrugs, and when her shoulders come back down she's finally relaxed. This is much better territory than the virtues of killing. She wonders, how good is the facebook outreach of the two sects..?
[10:56] <VoxPVoxD> "Politics, to me, is a spectator sport. Other people play full contact."
[10:57] <@banana> KJ: "You know, I got your joke about the car bomb backwards."
[10:57] <VoxPVoxD> "That's fine. They do plenty of damage in the trunk too."
[10:57] <@banana> "Ha!"
[10:59] <@banana> "I feel like this is the kind of crack you can get away with more easily when you're dead too. Like reclaiming slurs."
[11:00] <VoxPVoxD> "As to his genius... eh. He's a little bit, ah, Prairie Home Companion for my tastes, but he's either so good at seeming decent that he has to act like it almost all the time to keep up appearances, or he's so decent you have to wonder how he got the job in the first place."
[11:01] <VoxPVoxD> "LA's a weird town, I'm given to understand. We had a New Yorker come in a couple of months back - a little green, like you. Ambitious, like you. And New York's its own special snakepit."
[11:01] <VoxPVoxD> "Gossip indicated he had a certain amount of trouble adapting."
[11:01] <VoxPVoxD> "What's the phrase they use up in the Bay?"
[11:01] <VoxPVoxD> "Not a good culture fit."
[11:02] <@banana> KJ: "I used to feel like it was above my paygrade to comment on those sort of people. Then I took a job in PR.. so many people just really, really need image managers."
[11:04] <VoxPVoxD> "I don't mean to say he's an asshole - I'm sure he is, just cause, statistically, it's safer to bet that any one of us is an asshole than not - but if you come up in an environment where everyone's got a knife aimed at your back and is waiting for an opening, the Brilliant Court's more, ah, pastoral inclinations are going to twig you all wrong."
[11:04] <@banana> "..it's funny."
[11:05] <VoxPVoxD> "You start seeing lions in the grass whether they're there or not." He's produced a flask with the same prestidigitative grace that summoned the business card.
[11:05] <@banana> "I only spent a week preparing to enter Carthian society before we were declared super illegal, but everything they told me about the Brilliant Court made it sound like this place was full of monsters and savagery. All I've found is excuses for acceptance."
[11:06] <@banana> "Leavened by some reasonable meritocracy and the brutality of, you know, the blood. But that's just a thing."
[11:06] <VoxPVoxD> Wilson: "If you hate yourself, acceptance is savagery."
[11:06] <VoxPVoxD> Takes a pull. "Or so I'd assume. Drink?"
[11:07] <@banana> KJ: "Here's to a positive self-image. I'm in." What's in the flask?
[11:07] <VoxPVoxD> Scotch, tastes like. Good scotch, too; special occasion type scotch.
[11:07] <@banana> Well. It is technically a special occasion.
[11:09] <VoxPVoxD> "God, listen to me. Such a chatterbox tonight. Violence has a way of making people expansive, I guess."
[11:11] <@banana> "It's fine, I wanted to talk. The first time I had to kill someone - actually hit him with our car, I don't know if he lived - we both went silent for an hour and then I had to burn blood to throw up."
[11:12] <@banana> "Having some sense of shared effort, a good reason to be fighting, that's a lot better."
[11:13] <VoxPVoxD> "It has a way of amortizing shame."
[11:13] <@banana> "Baron Murray explained something to me years ago - the Price."
[11:14] <VoxPVoxD> "Oh?"
[11:15] <@banana> KJ: "In order to look after people, create a society here instead of whatever hellscape you'd naturally-asterisk-unnaturally get- we're the ones who have to fight. Like how the police would work if murderers were one in a million but also Superman."
[11:17] <@banana> "Even if the conflicts are to take a Bishop down a hat, even if it is for the aesthetics of someone's religion, this controlled outlet at the top of the system keeps hundreds of others in a state where they, in turn, aren't a threat to millions. That's not quite how she put it."
[11:18] <@banana> "..given Baron Murray, the way she did put it was whatever I wanted to hear, and I'm sure I've internalised something unrelated to the actual effect she was going for. But it's still true."
[11:18] <VoxPVoxD> "Détresse oblige."
[11:19] <@banana> "Like noblesse, but instead..?"
[11:19] <VoxPVoxD> "Misery."
[11:20] <@banana> "Wilson, I spent Spanish classes exchanging notes about boys, and at college I had an engineering double major."
[11:20] <@banana> "So this is probably wrong:"
[11:21] <@banana> "Detresse amore la compagnie."
[11:22] <VoxPVoxD> "Close enough, I suspect."
[11:24] <@banana> It's decided. KJ is going to make friends with the Baron of Hollywood.