The Malkavian is not amused...or...a muse?

[stranger_to_the_rain]

I know what it means when you pretty up a character's journal like you have.

No.





No.

I won't have it. Just because you're bored, fishie, that doesn't mean that I am too. I'm a much bigger fish than you.

The answer is...

...

...

...no.

Comments

[gisella]

I thought I had spent enough time, by now, to be free of "toying." It turned out to be more of a temporary respite.

...So yes, I am inclined to agree with you, on the matter of fish and fishermen.

[ a pause, and she gives a slight, exasperated shake of her head ] —Even if I'm no longer quite sure what I'm talking about.

[stranger_to_the_rain]

That is the first step into a larger world.

[gisella]

You seem half-pleased at my confusion. However, I've more than had my fill of madness.
[ she narrows her eyes, suspicious ] What sort of larger world, pray tell?

[stranger_to_the_rain]

Madness is a larger world.

And I'm not half-pleased.

More like...all pleased.

[gisella]

[ There is the slightest hiss of air between her teeth, and for a moment her Beast stirs within her, at that. Her voice, were she capable of raising it, would be elevated; instead, the words come out sharper. ]

Charming. What, you think to welcome me into this world of yours? Even the man to blame for this...tedious infection...was hardly interested in portraying it as anything but exactly that: a disease.

And this disease has done enough damage —no, I have done enough damage already.

[stranger_to_the_rain]

It's rare you meet someone who would admit that.

It makes you warrant further investigation.

[gisella]

[ a brief flick of her eyes: deciding whether she wishes to spare the effort to be insulted at the notion that someone should investigate her, rather than the other way around ]

[ but no, this isn't the time for that. ] It is easier to see it, now: I can buy myself a few hours of clarity, at least.

And that is the worst of it: that I became so accustomed to the fog that I ceased to realize that it was there at all. I should have been above madness, and -- because I thought myself above it -- I let it overtake me.

[stranger_to_the_rain]

That is the Malkavian's ultimate secret. Knowing how to control madness, not transcend it.

Use it.

[A weapon. Dementation. But also a tool.]

[gisella]

So it's true, then. You are mad. [ "Like me," she almost adds, but that's still a step further than she wants to take this. ]

I might advise you to stay out of Chicago for a while, although the Underprince's witch hunt for... Kindred like us [ there it is -- the acknowledgment, or close enough ] is perhaps the least of that city's problems.

And I would be a poor scientist indeed if I had neglected to study how to wield this madness, curse though it may be.

[stranger_to_the_rain]

Oh, I'm hardly concerned with Chicago.

It's not real, anyway.

[Her eyebrows pucker in slight amusement.]

And as for science, I think that's the wrong word.

teehee

[gisella]

[ She's not sure what to make of that; more madness, she supposes. Though it might qualify as a highly oblique reference to whatever strange workings the Second accomplished with the city. ]

Perhaps to you it is incorrect. But science has proven sound to master the mysteries of the Beast, the blood, the soul or what passes for it... I see no reason why madness, too, should not be studied.

[stranger_to_the_rain]

And what if science is the madness?

[gisella]

[ She restrains herself from snapping, but her tone sharpens: somewhere between offense and simple exasperation. ]

It is the furthest thing from madness.

[stranger_to_the_rain]

That's what a madness would want you to think.

Like a self-propagating disease.

[gisella]

You seem to have gotten science confused with Malkavia, Ms.--?

Science... holds the way out. [ It has to. ]

(( I'm sorry her virtue is literally Faith [in Science] what do you want her to do here >_> ))

[stranger_to_the_rain]

There is no way out.

[gisella]

[ She grits her teeth: something stirring in her — fury or fear, but she has put up with centuries of this and she is better than that. ]

Maybe you just haven't looked hard enough.

[stranger_to_the_rain]

I haven't looked at all. But then, I am the product of thirteen generations of madness.

Don't think, for one second, that it hasn't been tried.

[gisella]

[ She...thinks she needs to sit down. Normaly this sort of revelation would elicit scientific curiosity in her — and it does, yes, but this is a little too intensely personal for her to react to with the neutrality she'd prefer. ]

[ a moment of steadying herself ]

What do you mean by...thirteen generations? And you still have not introduced yourself.

[stranger_to_the_rain]

Neither have you.

[gisella]

Fine, then.

Gisella Trovatelli. There are various titles, but I have come to the extremely irksome conclusion that it is not currently safe to employ them.

I am [ with a certain insistence ] a scientist.

[stranger_to_the_rain]

[Don't mind her as she auspexes you a little bit. She seems satisfied with what she's seeing, after a moment. And she nods.]

Artemis Seth. Primogen of Los Angeles, Founder of the Order of the Silver Crescent. Thorn in your side.

[gisella]

[ That last earns the slightest quirk of her lip. ]

At least you are honest about it.

I will admit myself unfamiliar with this Order of the Silver Crescent of yours, Ms. Seth, but for now I will leave that aside.

[ She retrieves a notebook and pen, but doesn't yet open it to start writing: holding it as much on priciple as anything else. ] Thirteen generations of madness, you said? Passed down like...some sort of bloodline?

[stranger_to_the_rain]

Ah. You're one of those Kindred.

[gisella]

And what is meant by that?