1738/The Cat Hunt

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The Cat Hunt
Date of Scene: 19 May 2020
Location: A penthouse apartment in NYC
Synopsis: Vampirella hunts Shen Kuei to one of his safe houses. Shen falls back on negotiations. A startling theory is devised. This was all a ploy for Shen's gruesome death. Previous adversaries become unsuspecting allies. Many questions remain answered. Who wants 'The Cat' dead? (That's actually a really long list.)
Cast of Characters: Shen Kuei, Ella Normandy




Shen Kuei has posed:
Shen bid a very hasty retreat from Gotham after his invasion into Miss Normandy's apartment went considerably less than planned. He did not take a direct route back home, but a scent trail can be a difficult thing to shake. It's also something that can be picked up again. In fact, the scent may have been lost once or trace, but ultimately, a familiar waft once more found supernaturally keen senses. Mr. Kuei had very recently walked into a certain high-rise.

About nine stories up, Shen enters through the door of a penthouse apartment and taps a command on a keypad. He is carrying a bag of groceries which he places on a kitchenette counter, a black tabbi brushes up against his leg. With a chuckle, he opens a can of food for her and dumps it onto a plate. The cat leaps onto the counter before he has a chance to lower the plate. He sighs, "So spoiled."

Shen's expression is one of concern as he retraces his steps. He fails very rarely, but each time is an opportunity for reflection. He puts away his groceries and then steps into his bedroom to change out of his night clothes into something considerably more comfortable.

Some of the counter-measures in the apartment have been disarmed, but others have not. Despite being so high in the building, each window does have a sensor which triggers a 'beep' when opened. Having one safe house already raided this month during an interview with a certain Felicity Felix, he's been on extra guard lately.

Ella Normandy has posed:
    It's not the security that confounds Vampirella. It would almost be funny if she knew about it to have to confront it. No, what confounds her is that his scent leads to an apartment building: a building occupied by witnesses who stand between her and the trail leading to whatever unit he stays in. Knowing the building should be enough to find him, if she doesn't mind the risk of letting people watch her scale surrounding buildings as she spies through each and every window to see which one the thief is in... assuming he's somewhere that can be seen from outside at all...

    Vampirella's teeth grind. There's no help for it. She needs a disguise and an accomplice.

    It takes a few hours to find someone leaving the building alone, who can be lured into an ambush with Vampirella's mesmerism and convinced to go fetch her an outfit that will throw security off her trail for a little bit. Removing and stowing her jewelry almost physically hurts; she doesn't feel herself without it, but it's too gaudy and noticeable. When her man comes back--she forgets his name almost immediately and decides to just call him Renfield--he bears winter clothing that should conceal her from a lot of camera angles, which is good. She stows the knife in her coat and acts natural as her Renfield leads her to the elevator; they get out at his floor, then cut to the fire stairs and he waits patiently while she sniffs every hallway for that scent.

    On the ninth floor, she finally has it. She peels off the clothes and leaves them in a heap in the stairwell, to be retrieved in case she has to Lizzie Borden her way out of here; her Renfield goes back to his apartment to sleep and forget. Vampirella, now dressed as herself, stalks down the deserted hallway quickly but quietly, no longer caring who sees her. She slides the knife between doorjamb and door, its strange occult metal driven by her inhuman strength cutting through the lock and probably tripping an alarm but it will all be over before that can matter. Her fury will not be denied.

Shen Kuei has posed:
Shen has just changed into a comfortable silk robe and boxers when he hears a very concerning sound from his front door. Vampirella will discover the door to be extra reinforced by both a steel peg driven into the floor and a drop bar across it. However, these only prove to provide a dozen or so seconds of resistance to her supernatural strength and the particularly potent dagger.

Shen decides not to panic. While Vampirella is busy utterly destroying his door, he fetches a bottle of liquor from a cabinet and a cigarette lighter from the counter top, stowing the later in his robe pocket. He pours himself a tumbler of bourbon and then sits down at his small dining table right as Vampirella coop de grace his door. He takes a brief sip and salutes her, "Good evening, Miss Normandy."

Ella Normandy has posed:
    "Oh, you're thinking of the wrong person," Vampirella says softly as she enters the room knees bent, back hunched, right hand clutching the dagger Shen wanted from the trolls, left hand by her waist with the palm facing him, fingers curled into a claw... but her teeth, her talons, her wings are all retracted. The only sign of her anger now is that her irises, once jade green, are deep red. "I came to give you the knife you want."

Shen Kuei has posed:
Shen offers a sigh and eyes Vampirella. Even for him, it's difficult to ignore the raw sexual attraction of the woman with ribbons for clothes and a body designed to ensnare the mind's of men. He didn't even have the thrill of an infiltration to distract him. However, the prospect of death is very sobering. He can only assume what she means by 'giving him the knife.'

He sets the glass down on the table and holds up both hands to indicate he is unarmed. "I imagine, you intend to deliver it to my chest. Though maybe I can convince you to set it on the table. In exchange, we could exchange information on my employer, who I believe, is the real person you should want. I am a humble..." Humble, yea right.".. contractor, who is very perturbed by certain critical details missing from your dossier. I believe if we talk civilly, we might come to some kind of agreement. What do you say?"

Ella Normandy has posed:
    Vampirella's eyes narrow. The intrusion into her home must be punished and an example made, but if killing the messenger would stop his master, it wouldn't stop his master's peers. They would care a whit about the death of an underling. The death of one of their own, though...

    Vampirella closes the door behind her without looking, drops to a knee, and stabs the knife viciously behind her, shoving the blade into the floor against the door, turning the dagger into the world's most religiously significant doorstop. "Talk. If I like it, you live."

    Never mind that Vampirella has literally no idea who could want a troll's knife from her, so she has no way of guessing whether the man is lying to her or not other than smelling his sweat. She rises to her feet and walks a few steps closer to Shen, silently. That's not easy in high-heeled leather boots, but she makes it look effortless.

Shen Kuei has posed:
"I'll be honest with you, even though it might gain more of your ire." He rises from his chair as she draws closer, so he is in somewhat of a ready position if he needs to defend himself. "My benefactor is anonymous. However, you just used the perfect bait to out him as a very... quaint doorstop."

He gestures toward the dagger, the grey silk robe sleeve dangling from an arm with rather impressive musculature. "You put that in my possession, and I will gladly help you spring a trap.. because now we have a mutual enemy. I take very serious offence to the exclusion of critical details. I can only assume your impressive strength and other abilities were known but omitted."

He tilts his head and sweeps his green gaze across her form, and while a variety of lovely assets are certainly on display, they focus upon her claws. "I still would have taken the job, but I would have better prepared myself for such a potent adversary." He pauses, "Assuming the other topics in your dossier are correct... about your predations."

Ella Normandy has posed:
    Vampirella's eyes are narrowed, focused, and unblinking on Shen. "Give me the dossier to show me your honesty," she demands. Her talons are still retracted, but her body is on high alert, and who knows how fast her fingernails can turn into blades? It took less than a second in her bedroom, when she was surprised...

Shen Kuei has posed:
Shen bows slightly toward her, the gesture causes his robe to open slightly revealing the silhouette of a cat tattoo'd to his chest. The toned nature of his arm is similarly reflected in his torso. The honed body of a martial arts of the highest caliber. He walks past her, within reach, his perfect posture an indication that he is very much on guard.

He disappears momentarily and returns with a laptop. He sets the laptop on the dinner table in front of Vampirella, uses his finger to unlock it, types in a very long password, and then navigates to an interface for secured messages. With another click, an image of her in her disguise as a teacher is displayed along with a variety of identifying stats.

The name on the dossier is Ella Normandy. Her age is completely wrong. She is described as an occultist who fancies herself a vampire. The dossier suggests this is not accurate because of her appearances during daylight hours. It describes a practice of her predation on students and as a master of hypnosis. It claims bizarre blood-drinking rituals, powered by a dagger which is also described in detail, though it's origin is incorrect.

The benefactor finely describes their intentions for the dagger to be that of a collector. The job is not truly benevolent, but it does have the nice karmic balancing that Shen typically looks for, so he can at least claim some nobility.

"Please take your time. It is a touch screen if you require easy navigation." He offers in a helpful tone.

Ella Normandy has posed:
    Vampirella scowls at the laptop. She's never had much use for screens: her vision is so sharp the lines seem far apart and distorted, making the reading a chore. As Shen unlocks it for her to read, he might hear the wet, gristly sound of her ears growing tall and thick, their points higher than the crown of her head and the cups nearly the size of her cheeks, batlike but for their size and hairlessness. Her earrings hang skewed as the studs warp and bend inside the heavy flesh growing around them. It's more than a little threatening, but if her eyesight is going to be ruined by a glaring screen, her ears are going to be their sharpest while she's distracted.

    When Shen steps aside, she scans laboriously through the disinformation provided. Her scowl becomes a sneer as she reads the depth of the wrong information, a chill running down her spine that sends a ripple of gooseflesh down her arms. Vampirella isn't tech-savvy, but neither is she stupid, and there is no way anyone who could know she had the dagger could be this wrong about her. Not even a cut-rate psychic relying on Tarot cards could be this incorrect, which means they were deliberately misleading Shen. But why leave him so badly unprepared for what he was facing?

    There are only three outcomes of doing that. Either Shen succeeds and gets the knife to his employer; Shen gets caught in Vampirella's apartment and dies; or Shen escapes without the dagger and Vampirella's apartment is left unguarded for the mastermind to mess with in some way. The last makes no sense; her apartment is unguarded for fifty hours a week while she's at work, so no one is setting up booby traps there now. The only reason to mislead Shen is because they want him dead, which means...

    Vampirella's head whips up. Her eyes are fully blood-red now and her speech is flat as her fangs begin to grow in her mouth, distorting her lower lip's ability to form vowels. "Get dressed," she snaps. "They're watching you now and they're probably coming!"

Shen Kuei has posed:
Shen raises an eyebrow at the metamorphosis that takes place in front of him. He turns to observe, just a little curious at how a body could distort in such a way. His exposure to the overtly supernatural has been somewhat limited. It's a little eerie to be this close. However, one of Shen's fine skills is maintaining a sense of composure during stressful situations. A skill that seems to be holding true.

Shen narrows his gaze as he considers her revelation than turns to his bedroom. With a sigh, he disrobes and begins to slip back into his night clothes. A pair of loose fitting trousers, boots, a trench coat, along with a dress shirt. "I have a variety of safe houses spread through out the area. I can be a hard man to find."

He walks to his closet door and retrieves a duffle-bag along with a cat carrier. He walks back into the main room and fetches his feline friend, who heavily protects the makeshift prison. "You have.. very impressive tracking skills. Your theory has merit. Either I die in your apartment, or you track me for revenge.. and they track you."

He walks to the door and retrieves the dagger with an impressive display of mortal strength. He drops it into his duffle-bag. "Are you leaving with me, or are we parting ways?" The question was straightforward and to the point.

Ella Normandy has posed:
    "We leave together if we can," Vampirella says, talking so rapidly her lower lip bleeds where her fangs cut it. She withdraws her fangs with an effort of will. "If they catch us, we can split up as necessary. I don't need to know where you're going, so don't tell me in case one of us gets caught." Her strides are so long they're practically stalking at this point, but even so she barely makes a sound as she reaches the door and removes the knife. She considers it for a moment, smiles unpleasantly, licks the beads of blood off her lips, and walks quickly over the kitchen sink. She turns the water on, grips the handle of the dagger in one hand and the blade in the other, and, holding the dagger over the sink, strains her muscles hard. Blood wells from her left hand and drops in thin streams into the vortex of water, rinsing it down the drain before it can do more than leave microscopic traces on the sink as the stubborn metal bends at the haft... bends further... and finally snaps unevenly, badly bent and probably ruined. With a pained, viciously victorious smile, Vampirella offers half the blade to Shen. Her hand is bloodstained but the cuts are already healing.

    "If they want the dagger, they'll have to catch both of us now."

Shen Kuei has posed:
The cat is held steady in the carrier as he observes Vampirella retrieve the knife. His gaze settles upon it as she goes through the gory process of snapping it with her bare hand. He sets his duffle bag down and accepts the ruined half of the dagger, drawing a cloth to wrap the article before slipping it into an inside trench coat pocket.

He reaches down and picks his duffle-bag up before exiting the apartment. He walks down the hallway expecting Vampirella to follow. "I have two cars in the garage, only one of them is registered to my name. The other is an escape vehicle. They are on different floors, with any luck, if they have planned for my departure, this fact will take them off guard."

He pushes the elevator call button, "I believe we have some advantage still. They would have needed to follow you, which means they wouldn't much time for preparation. They likely expect one of us to kill the other as well.. so a makeshift alliance will certainly take them off guard."