fandomtownies | A corner of the Park, extremely early Monday morning

Gorgon rolled his shoulders and gave Allie a grin, watching her from behind the mirrored goggles that he'd had put together for his stints of crime fighting. Yeah, he could take them off right now. It wasn't like he could hurt her with that stupid eye thing, and he might even get a bit of an added kick from the squirrels that were inevitably watching them. But they were part of the whole ensemble.

... The rest of the ensemble involving a long leather duster, like a gunslinger might have worn in the wild west, and some body armor. It didn't scream 'superhero,' no, but he liked a certain level of 'flashy' without resorting to brightly colored tights, thanks.

"I suppose that's really the best I can ask for, hm? Something with some cushion to throw you into?"

Yeah, even on tier three, he didn't actually think he was going to do much against a vampire who had been fighting her whole life. But bravado was a thing he had in spades.

Allie understood the fondness for leather. It held up and cleaned up well. Throw in an all black ensemble and she actually looked sort of intimidating. As long as you ignored the fact that she was five foot nothing and barely a hundred pounds soaking wet.

But anyway, a vampire and a superhero walked into a park...

"You think you're going to throw me into something. You have to catch me first."

She put a little burst of speed on and was suddenly twenty feet away.

Oh, that was how it was going to be? Gorgon laughed and gave his head a shake, falling easily into a gunslinger pose to match the ensemble.

"So, are we sparring, or playing tag, then?" Two steps and a leap, and he was landing in the snow just a few feet away from her himself. "Because really, I'm up for either, Allie. If we're just running around, I might even stand a chance."

At least, so long as the kick he'd gotten from those muggers back there actually held up.

"Bit of both, I guess," Allie grinned. "Kanin and I sparred some but we mostly focused on sword work. A good punch, while useful, isn't going to keep a rabid or another vampire down. You needed something more permanent."

Which didn't stop her from reaching out to try and grab his arm.

And ha, like Nikolai had ever been up against an opponent who stood a chance at actually grabbing his arm while he was up a few tiers, yet. His reaction time was fantastic, but up against another superhuman, it barely occurred to him that maybe if they were initiating a spar, be probably didn't want her to be holding on to him.

Being that beat too slow meant that grabbing his arm was probably not the most difficult thing Allie had ever done, by a long shot.

"... Shit."

Yeah. It was probably a good thing that there was a cushion of snow, after all.

Definitely a good thing, because Allie used her grip on is arm and a little of her strength to show Nick just what happened when you let the 'bad' guy get too close.

"That's one," she teased.

"That's one," Nick grudgingly agreed, re-claiming his arm and making a face. "I wasn't ready for it."

Obviously.

"Any tips for how the hell to get out of that?"

Because it would be easy enough to throw off a normal human at this tier, but he wasn't always superpowered when he was out on the streets, either. And he wasn't big on the idea of dying, really.

No, dying was not allowed. It would make Allie a very unhappy vampire.

"You have to always be ready," Allie warned, zipping in close again. "Because you never know who, or what, is going to come after you."

She tried for the same grab again. "Let me show you."

Nick jerked back a little instinctively this time, because he really wasn't in the mood to repeat the experience, but relented a moment later to let her grab his arm.

"Right. Always be ready," he echoed, actually taking that warning to heart. When it was coming from a vampire who had grown up in some kind of evil zombie dystopia, he really wasn't going to pretend for an instant that she didn't know what she was talking about. "Never know when you're going to get your shoulder locked up by a tiny vampire."

... Said the larger, somewhat different sort of vampire.

The thing is, Allie had stayed alive by being sneaky and staying unnoticed. Until the night she decided to be heroic and wound up sacrificing herself so that her friend had a chance at surviving.

"Tiny is good. People make assumptions about what I can do," she pointed out. "They're usually wrong."

"So what you want to do is this." Moving slowly, Allie demonstrated a way to reverse the hold she had on Nick's arm so that he was the one in control.

And Nick paid close attention, committing the steps involved, the way his other arm came up to grab hers, the roll of his shoulder all to memory as she showed him.

"I won't get the benefit of people assuming I'm tiny," he noted, grinning a little as he held her arm in place for a moment. "Guess I'm going to have to learn to do this the hard way."

By actually asking for help. Shit, he hated doing that.

"No, you won't. But they might assume you're helpless if they're better armed. You can work with that if you have to."

She tugged at her arm, trying to pull free. "Want to try it again? This time you can put some force into it."

"Yeah, let's do this until I get it down," Nick agreed, letting go of her arm and giving his own a stretch. "I mean, if you don't mind."

Seriously. Manners. The heck, Allie, see what you had him doing, here?

"Anyway, they're usually better armed. They could be carrying a pointy stick and they'd be better armed. They just have to look. There's their trouble."

"I don't," Allie said as she reached to grab him once more. "It's for your own good and I can take it." This time she used a little more force, and a little more speed.

Gorgon grunted a little as she twisted his arm around, and if the added strength and speed weren't a good incentive for him to use a bit more force himself, there was no such thing. He followed the steps that she'd taught him, reach, grab, turn, and so on, falling easily into the rhythm of it.

It was almost like a dance, if dancing generally involved pain.

"I might actually be getting the hang of this one," he mused. "So that's one... out of how many ways for you to lay me flat?"

Pain or not, it was enough to fall into a comfortable rhythm, shifting back and forth between offense and defense. It was probably a sad commentary on Allie's life that this was as much fun as she'd had in a while.

"A couple, although only a few more of them have any sort of style or technique to it," she admitted. "Mostly it's hit first, and hit hard."

"Which isn't a problem, just so long as I'm not sitting back at baseline," Nick sighed, letting go of her arm and stepping back again, dusting his hands against each other. "Shit, it's hard not to run out and just look around in the middle of a busy intersection sometimes, though."

When he knew just how powerful he could get, and had to spend most of his waking hours as a normal guy with an eye condition.

"That last time the island was invaded, that thing with the crazies, that was easy. They liked to play with their food, and they were all alive. Just... you know. Fucked up. They never caught on that it was eye-contact that did 'em in."

"Then I'd have to kick your ass for real," Allie said seriously. "You're right. It's easier when the bad guys are obvious. You can take from them and tell yourself they deserve it. But can you live with yourself if you start crossing the line? Just for the sake of the power?"

"There's a reason I wear the shades," Nick pointed out, shrugging. "I could take them off, go for a walk, and be one of the most powerful people on the island in an afternoon. For as long as that lasts. But it's just a cheap high unless I need it."

He pulled in a breath, squared his shoulders, and then raised his fists, pulling himself into a fighting stance. There was the faintest hint of a smile on his face. Even he wasn't sure just how much he was feeling it, though.

"It's a thrill, what we did last night in Baltimore. Run around kicking ass, going from rooftop to rooftop like I don't give a shit if the ground is going to be there when I jump? It's damn near like flying. But I've got a line drawn in the sand. I'm not going to cross it just because it's tempting to feel that way all the time."

Allie had settled into a loose, but ready stance as she listened. She moved suddenly, reaching out and grabbing Nick vampire swift. He might have had the height advantage, but Allie had strength working for her. It meant Nick ended up with one arm pinned and pulled down so his neck was a little closer to Allie's height.

"You think I don't get that?" she asked. "Do you know what it's like to settle for a bottle when the scent of real living blood is all around me? How hard it is to ignore thatt when I know what it's like to taste it?"

And Nick didn't have a chance to see that one coming, either. Jesus, And now Nikolai was learning that Allie was really something else when she wanted to be. Or when she had a point to prove.

He swallowed, attempted uselessly for a moment to muscle his way free, and then just settled for eyeing her through his goggles, heart pounding in his ears and breath caught somewhere in his bared throat.

"Yeah? So why don't you do it?"

She'd warned him not to underestimate her.

"Because I make a choice. Every single day. That I'm not going to be a monster." Allie had been lucky so far. Most days it was an easy choice. "The Hunger's there, no matter how much I'd like to pretend it's not."

She loosened her hold and stepped back. "But so far I've been stronger then it. No matter how tempting it is sometimes."

"Then you're doing good," Nick replied, lifting his hand up to rub at his shoulder. He was durable, but he clearly wasn't vampire-proof. Good to know. "Satisfaction is too fucking easy. Of course it is. People like you and me wouldn't become monsters if it wasn't."

It made sense, to a degree. Why starve, why deny yourself everything you could just reach out and take when it was all right there for the taking? It wasn't like ordinary humans could do anything to stop them, if they so chose.

Except, for all that Nikolai was an asshole, he still cared. Something had fucked with his blood, something had turned his eyes into lethal weapons, and he went out to stop muggings when he could just as easily set out to rob banks. He figured that on its own had to say something.

Maybe just that he was a greedy fuck who liked to pretend he had morals. He wasn't even sure himself, sometimes.

That was the thing. No matter how strong you were, there was always something bigger, stronger, or faster. You had to be prepared.

"I never did like to do things the easy way," she admitted, raising a shoulder in a halfhearted shrug.

It would have been easier Allie knew. If she'd registered when she'd been human. If she'd traded her blood for food and supplies that would have kept her warm and better fed. But call it pride, call it stubbornness, she hadn't been willing to sell out to the vampires.

"Easy's never any fun anyway," Nick replied with a shrug of his own. "So we want. I want plenty of things I don't just reach out and take. We know the difference between 'want' and 'need.' Last I checked, that's one of the things that separated the grown-ups from the little brats."

Nikolai had a lot more experience with brats than monsters. He worked with celebrities back home, after all.

He got it, that much was clear and it made Allie relax more. They'd talked about the temptation of power before but it was easy to see as they'd made there way through the streets of Baltimore how tempting it could be.

"And you're one of the grown-ups." It was part statement of fact, part lightly teasing taunt. Allie felt she'd made a point, but she wondered at what cost.

"Well, I want to hope I'm not one of the brats." Nick gave her a little grin, somewhere between teasing and a bit shaken. "Last thing I need is to be taken over someone's knee at this point in my life."

Unless it was in the fun way, but that was something completely different.

"Maybe just a little bratty?" Allie smiled back, holding up her hand with her thumb and index finger a short distance apart. "But in a good way."

"Which way is the good way, again? I might need my memory refreshed on that one," Nick countered, his grin growing just a little more casual. The teasing was decidedly better for the nerves than the armlock had been, yes.

"Snarky but fun," she answered. "You make me laugh. I think that counts as the good way doesn't it?"

[Long day was long. Zzzzzz......]

Okay, now Nick was feeling better again.

"I suppose that depends on whether you're laughing with me or at me," he decided. "I'm not unwittingly playing court jester here, am I?"

Well, with goggles like those, Nikolai...

"If I've got the reference right, I think you need more bells. Or maybe a funny hat."

Allie bit her lip, weighing what she wanted to say against disturbing the fragile mood of easy banter. "I'm sorry, you know. For getting all intense like that. I try so hard to just be quiet Allie, that sometimes I wonder if people really realize what I could be capable of. If I let myself be. Does that make sense?"

"Makes sense enough," Nikolai replied, after a moment of his own spent mulling over that apology. "You put on the same show everyone else does. Not many people really show their real face, and it's too fucking easy to take for granted that what you see is what's there."

He shrugged.

"You're not harmless. You're not even close to docile. Look, Allie, I might be new at this, but I want to think I can at least start to understand just how hard it is every day to fight those urges. Like... I wonder if half the reason I started doing this is so I can find a justification for giving in to mine."

He frowned a little. That phrase left a bitter taste in his mouth that he didn't much care for.

"So, you've got teeth. I've got killer eyes. We get hungry. It's gonna take a lot more than pinning my arm and baring my throat to scare me off, if that's what you were going for."

"Kind of. Although I suppose if you spend enough time on the island, especially when the scary weird stuff happens, you find out that a lot of the people around here are a whole lot more then they seem."

After a look to the east and a quick mental check of how close the sunrise was, Allie perched on the back of the park bench. There was still some time before the rising sun would chase her indoors even if it was hidden behind the clouds.

"I wasn't trying to scare you off. I'd hate myself if I did," she admitted. "It was more, I guess, trying to prove that I'm not just saying the words. That I do understand that hunger."

"Fortunately, I'm not easy to intimidate," Nick replied with a little grin, leaning back against a nearby tree with his arms crossed over his chest. "It's good to know there's someone else here who gets it, though. And... someone who not only can stop me if I go crazy with it or something, but someone who will."

"It's Fandom. The island of heroes. You go power mad, there'll probably be a line of people after you." Seriously, had he met Batman? Or any of the other do-gooder types that tended to lurk around at night in the shadows?

"That being said, I'd hate it. But I'd do it. If you promise to do the same."

He hadn't met Batman, personally, but he did watch the guy make off with one of the service carts at the hotel, once.

"Yeah, I'd do it," Nick agreed with a little nod. "Fewer people running around the island eating people or sucking their life out or whatever, the better. Anyway, one person doing it gives the rest of us a bad name."

She got a faint smile from him as he said that one. It wasn't a pleasant conversation, really, but he could only wear a 'doom and gloom' expression for so long.

"We'll leave that to the bad guys that turn up twice a year on a semi-regular basis," Allie said with a wry smile of her own. "We can just take the opportunity to play heroes."

"Twice a year and whenever sharks fall from the sky," Nikolai chuckled. "Place is definitely keeping us from getting too bored, at least. That said, I'll spar you anytime. Maybe one of these days, I'll manage to grab you first."

Yeah, it was going to take a lot more hits than he'd gotten last night in order to manage that one.

"You can try," she challenged. "You might get lucky one day. But in the meantime, we can go round anytime you want."

A corner of the Park, extremely early Monday morning

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