Enter Demona

[angelofthenight]

Who: Demona & Open
What: Re-using some prompts from the TDM for her intro + roommate shenanigans
When: First few days of October
Where: Various places in starters
Warning: Violence, anger, lots of negative CR, Demona comes with a blanket warning of "genocidally racist against humans"
Note: Please set all threads after sunset unless you want to see her as a statue.


Daylight - Muster Drill
So, is Friday trying out a new technique with visual aids or...what? Among the other people here for their first muster drill, there is a stone statue of a loincloth-wearing woman with bat-like wings, long tail, talons, a wild mane of hair, and...one of the leis around her neck. She is completely immobile. No amount of poking, prodding, or talking will rouse her. For all anyone can tell, this is a completely inanimate, if very imposing, stone figure.


Sunset - Muster Station
That statue hasn't moved all day. Everyone else left the muster drill hours ago, but here she still stands with the lei around her neck. As the sun sets beyond that fake horizon, however, magic begins to stir. Cracks form in the stone, and from beneath, red light shines through the fissures around her eyes. Then, all at once, she lets out a screech and stretches out her limbs, the stone falling away in heavy flakes, revealing a flesh and blood creature below with blue skin and flaming red hair.


Dealer's Choice of Location - After midnight
Where is she? How did she get on a ship at sea? Who's done this?! She wants answers, but she has to be careful. She can't be seen like this. Can't allow the humans to get the better of her. So, here she is late in the night, skulking through corridors, sometimes climbing on the ceiling, talons crunching into the metal, to avoid being caught out in the center of the halls. Approach at your own risk. She isn't in a very charitable mood and those claws look awfully sharp.


Roommates? [Closed to Fever]
She's already staked her claim to a part of the Tommy Bahama, under the watchful eye of that werecougar, Siffleur. That's where she intends to be by sunrise. However, she was told her assigned cabin number, 118. Even if she's not going to live in there, she wants to see it for herself. If it's supposed to be hers. What she didn't think to ask, is if it's a private cabin or not. She really shouldn't have assumed anything. And yet, here she is walking into the cabin close to 3:00 a.m. to find that it is already occupied by someone else.

Her wings unfold from her shoulders, flared out behind her as she hisses, "What are you doing in here?"

Comments

[lightconductor]

Watson stares back at her evenly, no sign of flinching away. Of all the things he had expected her to say, though, this was not one of them.

"I did not realise," he says, deadpan, "that I had such a reputation. Very well, madam, I shall be on my best behaviour. You are quite safe from my attentions."

Because, you know, he's a goddamn gentleman.

[angelofthenight]

"According to the woman, Erin, you do."

Demona plants her hands on her hips. "Good. That is wise of you." Shame, she would have liked a reason to attack him despite Erin's warning.

"Not that I would expect you to give me any medical care, even if I did require it. Which, I won't."

[lightconductor]

"Well, I hope it isn't necessary," Watson says, vaguely baffled by. This. All of this. "Though things can be rather complicated here. What on Earth."

The last sentence is softer, faintly disbelieving that he is having this conversation at all. Still, he must make the best of it, and he's still all on edge, his weight on the balls of his feet and the hand holding his cane clenched tighter than normal. "Well, madam, I was about to have myself a hot drink. I'd say the hour is wrong for tea or coffee, but perhaps a hot chocolate. Perhaps you'd like to join me?"

Because, frankly, what else do you say to a large monster woman that you've encountered in a dark cruise ship in the night? Just because every nerve in his body is screaming for a fight doesn't mean he needs to be rude to someone who's probably fairly new to this ridiculous situation.

[angelofthenight]

"Why would I want to join a human like you for anything?" She's eying him suspiciously, that wasn't him propositioning her, was it? She just warned him.

"Why bother to ask?"

[lightconductor]

"Well," Watson says, carefully, "you seem rather upset at the moment, I suspect that you are likely rather new to the ship and are still getting your sealegs, so to speak, and frankly, being ready to fight everything and everyone at a moment's notice is exhausting and not sustainable. I thought that perhaps you'd like a moment to sit, enjoy a drink of your choice, and relax, before you carry on with your nighttime activities."

[angelofthenight]

"Oh no? Perhaps for a human it is too taxing. My vigilance has served me for a thousand years already." (Yeah, that's why she's so chill and happy, right?)

[lightconductor]

"You carry your years quite gracefully, in that case."

That's not flirting! That's just... a nice compliment. And it just came out, without thought. The days where he would have been sceptical about such a claim as her being a thousand years old, at least, are long behind him.

"Well, I don't insist," Watson says, "but one would think you would have earned a bit of relaxation all the more, in that case."

[angelofthenight]

She's squinting at him again. That sounds dangerously close to flattery.

"Have you... really no fear of me?"

[lightconductor]

Watson pauses, and sighs.

"You are clearly a dangerous and ferocious woman," he says, "and not one to be trifled with. There is part of me that finds you very frightening, indeed. But I have seen enough to know better than to judge by appearances, and I would rather form an alliance than start a war, particularly on this ship where all we have is each other. Besides," and he gives a small, humourless chuckle before sliding his hand into his pocket to retrieve the revolver his hand has been resting on, to show her without pointing it at her, "I am not entirely defenseless myself."

[angelofthenight]

Form an alliance? With her? She's about to tell him she'd rather slam her own tail in a door but then he brings out the gun for her to see and she catches herself laughing instead. Maybe there is something to this doctor after all.

"You are intelligent."

She crosses her arms over her chest and taps her talons against her arm thoughtfully. An alliance? This wouldn't be the first human doctor she had one with. Though, this one seems more beholden to ethics than the last.

"Very well. I will accompany you. Just this time."

[lightconductor]

Watson smiles, wanly. "There is benefit, sometimes, in being overlooked, or underestimated," he says. Demona does not seem the subtle type herself, but perhaps she can't afford to be. It depends very much on how normal her appearance is, where she is from.

He slips his gun back into his pocket, and turns to lead the way towards Sand Dollars -- though he's careful, in an automatic way, to never entirely turn his back on her. "Splendid. Personally, I'm thinking a bit of hot chocolate, if only because I intend to sleep," at the moment, Watson's nerves are so alert he thinks he might never sleep again, but that's fine, "but your habits are your own. Do you have a preference?"

[angelofthenight]

Subtle? She probably doesn't even know how to spell the word. There's no such thing for her. But she does admire cunning, even in a human package. This one knows how to guard himself. She can see it in the way he never quite turns his back.

"I have never had hot chocolate." All they ever served was coffee or juice at those board meetings. She never could quite get herself to enjoy such an astringent drink.

"I am strictly nocturnal."

[lightconductor]

"Never? Well, we can see about fixing that, then."

Well, at least she seems to be honest in her desire to go along with... whatever it is Watson thinks he's doing. He's not so sure, himself. Giving someone a chance, at the very least. "Well, the cocoa shouldn't keep you up come morning, in that case." Some of us don't have sleep magically imposed on us, after all.

Watson glances back at her. "They do it quite fancily here, if you want, with whipped cream on it."

[angelofthenight]

"I'm sure it won't be that impressive," she responds, because she is incapable of not being at least a little nasty even when it's not required.

But she follows. And doesn't decide to tell him that it couldn't keep her up if it wanted to. She's not sure she wants to expose a weakness to someone like him.

"However you order it, I will have the same."

[lightconductor]

When he has the cocoa -- nothing particularly fancy, but good, rich chocolate with a small dollop of cream -- he passes one to her, mindful of her claws. He has to wonder, idly, how dextrous she might be with them.

"There. Tell me what you think of that."

[angelofthenight]

She seems to have no trouble at all looping her index talon through the handle of the mug. Apparently, the heat of the cup doesn't bother her one bit. She's tough-skinned.

"Yes. Let's see." She's ready to be unimpressed, right up until she gets a good gulp of it.

Her eyebrow ridges disappear behind the tiara set atop them. Her eyes go wide with shock, but the good kind. It's...delicious. Even she can't argue with that. She's got a little bit of a whipped cream mustache when she pulls the cup away.

"This is... the best thing I have ever tasted..." Oh, how it wounds her to have to say that.

[lightconductor]

He hides a smile behind his mug and his moustache. She can't possibly be that bad if she likes chocolate, surely.

"It's certainly a treat," Watson says. He passes her a paper napkin. "Here, you have a little something on your lip."

[angelofthenight]

"I have had chocolate in solid form but this... I have never seen it served this way." She's still so awestruck she's forgotten to be a bitch to him. She actually just takes the napkin and wipes her lip without so much as a hiss.

"When was it invented?"

[lightconductor]

"Oh, a few hundred years ago? In this form, at least. I'm really not sure." Watson shrugs a little. "I think the native peoples of South America have been making a drink of chocolate for much longer, though what that was like, I'm not sure."

[angelofthenight]

South America, that explains why she wouldn't have encountered it. She stayed close to home for a long time. North America is the furthest she's gone.

"Where is it that you come from?" She lifts the mug back to her lip for another taste almost immediately after asking.

[lightconductor]

"London," Watson says, "more or less. I've travelled a good deal, in my life."

He sips his chocolate almost serenely, watching her closely. "Spent my boyhood in Australia, but I've been in London long enough to be from there, I think."

[angelofthenight]

"I could have guessed it from your accent." Speaking of accents, Demona's is... well, all over the place.

She sips her chocolate again, painfully aware that this is probably the part of the conversation where she should reciprocate with information about herself.

"I... was hatched in Scottland. More than a thousand years ago."

[lightconductor]

"Scotland? You know, 'Watson' is a Scottish name, so I likely have roots there myself, far enough back."

Physically restraining himself from saying how nice she looks for being a thousand years old. Because he said he wouldn't.

[angelofthenight]

"So long as your ancestors weren't Vikings."

Good job, Watson, you're doing so well at not pissing her off.

"I'll kill you where you stand if they are." And yet, she's still Like This.

[lightconductor]

He suppresses a smile. Badly.

"Not to my knowledge," Watson says. "If I am, unknowingly, descended from Viking stock, I beg your forgiveness. It wasn't my doing."