tampered | Log; Ongoing

When; February 23; evening
Rating; Probably nothing too bad, but it's Rip, so let's say PG-13.
Characters;

spiritofsorrow.
Summary; What fun would a trip to the Shadowlands of the City be without company? Especially when it's as strange a duo as those two.
Log;

Waiting at the Fountain, Rip van Winkle hummed a melody that was stuck in her head for a few days now. She couldn't quite place it, probably something she had heard somewhere in the City and it was a little annoying to not even have lyrics to go with it.

A slight breeze of the evening blew through her long hair. She had been here quickly after they had agreed on a meeting; after all, Road's apartement was close by and Rip didn't need to spend any time on preparation. Herself and her warhead was all she really needed anyway. Which was the reason the musket leaned once again on its rightful place, Rip's shoulder.

What would await them in the City's parallel world? Difficult to say, curious to await-- besides, travelling with Sorrow could prove interesting. The man had yet to make up his mind if they were enemies or not, which was annoying sometimes, but mostly a source of amusing irony.

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Sorrow appeared in his usual garb, footsteps silent and one hand rising to brush the holster on his chest. It wasn't a motion he usually made -- the weapon was small and tight against his ribs, so that he didn't notice it most of the time -- but today he felt like he could have to use it at some point.

Rip wasn't a comrade; she never had been. But now, it was impossible to even call her an an acquaintance, a fellow soldier. She wasn't human; her lust for blood wasn't something known to man; even if she had been in a human form, he couldn't at this point call her worthy of living among innocent men.

Like Volgin. Sorrow had killed Volgin by his own hand, a statement about the man's character that few had ever received. Volgin slaughtered for play. So did Rip.

One day, he would force her into eternal capture, since he could not kill her. In his world, she would have already died.

Still...he wished so much for the war to be gone, to have passed by, to be water under the bridge, as the Americans often said. To be done. And so he kept contact with her, both to maintain diplomatic relations and to try to salvage what could have been, and to put an end to his useless pseudo-war.

"Zdravstvuitye, Lieutenant." He wasn't so sure she would recognize the deliberately Russian greeting, so he translated. "Hello." The wind chilled his glasses, and the breath from his nose blew against them and flared into fog that vanished as it appeared.

A gun, hm? She remained unconcerned, her as so often heavily lidded eyes even giving her face a slightly bored, sleepy expression. It was probably meant for eventual monsters, since he surely didn't expect a simple gun, handled by a human, to harm her. Even if he did load it with silver bullets, which she doubted.

Rip didn't understand the words, although she recognised it to be Russian. She hadn't ever been in Russia herself, not even during the war as she had served at Millennium's headquarters at that time. Only after the war... she would not have liked to be a human during that.

Two could play this game, though, and if that's how he wanted it, then why not. "Guten Abend, Sorrow," Rip said therefore. She didn't translate. Even if he didn't understand the exact 'Good evening', that she had returned the greeting was obvious enough. "Now, let's go, shall we? The City's mysteries won't explore themselves."

Sorrow's smile widened at the reply, but it still didn't look very enthusiastic, just tense. Once he crossed over, he would be indestructible -- incapable of much more as well, but still safe.

Why was he so worried? If he died here, wasn't he still dead? And what could she really do to him, that would be such a tragedy at this point? Maybe it was just because it was her...

"No, they won't." He glanced at the musket, decided to ignore it, and realized that this would be his first chance in a long, long time...he took off his right glove and held out a chalk-white hand.

(ooc: hey, is it okay if Sorrow does his "look at the spirits of those the person has killed" trick here? It many times accompanies this sort of transport in his canon.)

She wondered about the tensed expression. It had been him after all, who had insisted for her to accompany him. She had only intended to tease him a little with the possibility-- but then, maybe he was one to punish himself with it. She wouldn't be surprised to hear that, after all.

Looking at his hand, she raised her eyebrows in confusion. What did he want of her? To shake his hand? Or to take her gloves off as well? How puzzling.
"What is this supposed to mean? I can assure you, I am old enough to walk by myself."

The tension declined, shifting a little into a restrained smile. "I can't transport you remotely, nor can I open a portal. I take you through myself, and I must make physical contact to do so."

"Oh. Really." How wunderful was that. Rip suppressed a sigh, of course there had to be some sort of catch. After taking one of her own gloves off, she hesitated.

"You're not trying any form of psychic attack again, are you?" Perhaps the annoyance in her voice was now a little more noticeable; she remembered that and it had been rather unpleasant.

"From what I can tell, that strike didn't affect you for more than a moment." He closed his eyes for a moment -- it had the effect of a shrug -- and then returned to looking at her again. She wasn't a very large person at all; she was tall, yes, and thus her hands were long, but she wasn't huge and burly. Someone of such stature, with such power...it was deceptive, but not altogether surprising these days.

True. Still unpleasant, though at least now she was warned.

"I'm of the undead and part of Millennium's elite." It was on her to shrug. "What did you expect?" Hardly a question at all and she didn't wait for an answer either-- "Oh, very well." And with these words she took his offered hand.

The arm extended, and in the brief second of time that it did, he thought to himself, Not so different, then. The moment her hand touched his, the world blinked out around them.

It wasn't so different from falling asleep, this crossing over; the act of entering the spirit world was something almost like dreaming. Though here the body came with it -- such strange City dynamics -- there was still the sense of leaving the mortal world behind, having the eyes close and then another set reopen, the flickers of spirit energy across him as he faded from existence and took on the incorporeal form that replaced his physical self here in the Shadowlands.

As the fog seeped into the darkness, filling out the world in familiar monochrome tones, so with it came whispers and murmurs and shaded forms circling the perimeter of what they could see.

Rip's hand fell through his fingers, the white edges rippling and dissolving into blue-white light until their path was clear again. He lowered the arm, hovering a few inches off what would become the ground around the new Fountain, staring past Rip and into what he expected altogether too much.

Death. Some had more of it, some less, some none at all, but he didn't at all expect Rip's record to be clean. And so it wasn't. Uniforms, mostly -- victims of the war. His own looked like this -- soldiers with varying degrees of havoc wreaked upon them, mostly gunshots. Some of them cried out in distant voices, demanding their return to life, that they had come here too soon, that there had been no need...others bowed their heads and silently accepted what they knew would come perhaps now, perhaps later.

But then there were the faces that drew his attention most: Luke Valentine and Willow Rosenberg. Mere images though they were here, their souls still lay upon the vampire's, and so here they were also.

Only one out of the three Millennium murders. That didn't only dispel any possible doubt about accomplices; it confirmed that she hadn't even had a hand in the others' physical killings. Hm. He nodded to himself...God, had he become this jaded about the sight after so long? No. No, probably not. It was likely that he had just expected this from Rip; by now, seeing this sort of result just wasn't a surprise. It still weighed on him, still made his heart sink, but especially here there was nothing he could do.

He didn't take them away so soon, though -- let her see them. See how she reacts. See what she thinks, of them confronting her.

Probably nothing. He closed his eyes for a moment; a single hairline crack traced through his left lens in slow motion.

The new sensations were curious; the change a sight to behold.

Rip remained silent, watching the scenery. More than fifty years as a vampire and even more so as part of Millennium had desensitised her, letting her keep an emotionless face. Easy to mistake for boredom. She knew what she was, she knew what she had done. She knew it all, and had had a lot of time to think about it. There was no way back. ...even if she wanted to and sometimes, in rare moments when she thought back to a certain incident, she did want to.

However, it hardly matterd. It was impossible. That was all there was to it.

The only one she had to carefully guard her face in order to not show any emotion to Sorrow was Luke Valentine. They had agreed beforehand on making it seem like he was murdered for being a traitor. Rip had killed him off, yes, as gently a death as her musket could provide and then it had fallen to Grell's chainsaw to mutilate the body. Oh, it had been such a mess! But convincing, she believed.

This was another of Sorrow's mind games, wasn't it?

"Are we quite done?"

Log; Ongoing

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