Guilty Gear fic - The Gratuitous Vampire AU
Oh don't look at me like that, I know I've even covered this one already, but I have a good excuse, honest!
The degree to which this one is velithya's fault is slightly debatable - she's responsible for putting the idea in my head (it did originate from what was probably an innocent case of mishearing, but she is completely guilty of egging me on well after the mistake was cleared up), but I have no-one but myself to blame for the horrible realisation later that the parallels between Gears and Vampires work just a little too well for comfort. I mean, not only are both particularly nasty monsters that can generally pass for humans when not out hunting them (though they may also be capable of sprouting some various assortment of fangs/claws/maybe even batwings when the opportunity arises), both have their own convoluted way of converting humans into their own kind, not to mention a solid history of producing a member or two willing and capable of controlling the animalistic bloodlust within well enough to want to side with the humans. And what's that organisation dedicated to eradicating the Gears called again? Oh yeah, the Holy Order. They probably hand all their soldiers their own crucifix along with the uniform - they're all set for hunting vampires and I haven't even had to change more than a couple of nouns on the charter.
(I would start constructing elaborate conspiracy theories about whether Ishiwatari really meant to create a race of evil vampires rather than Gears in his very first draft, but that would be me getting way too carried away.)
Anyway, having given in to the inevitable, I resigned myself to turning out at least a smutty little one-parter based on the above, mixed with every vampire-related cliche I could think of in a hurry (look, if you're going to write fic based on an idea as cliched as a vampire!AU, you have to do it properly). Naturally, this turned into two scenes plus a morning-after-bit, and then the intro wasn't working so well so that turned into an extra bit as well, bringing the total up to a full four parter when I wasn't looking. I'm not even surprised when this happens anymore.
FTR, the added irony of writing a vampire AU when one of the playable characters in the source material was a vampire already is not lost on me. And if you think you've caught a whole lot of gratuitous references to every piece of popular vampire-related fiction to emerge in recent years in the writing to follow, it's probably not just you.
Title: Sign of the Cross (a.k.a. the Completely Gratuitous Guilty Gear Vampire AU)
Summary: Gears or vampires, it's all just another day's work for the Holy Order. But they never do quite manage to screen some of their more unusual recruits as carefully as they ought to either.
Characters/Pairing: Sol/Ky
Chapter: 1 of 4
Rating: Eventually NC-17, but only PG for this part
Word Count: 2760
It’s barely an hour after sunset when they arrive, Ky knocking smartly on a door that would probably put the entrances to some cathedrals to shame. The last strains of daylight are still dragging themselves over the edge of the sky, and the way they glint off the white marble steps is just bright enough to make the back of Sol’s neck prickle. As irritants go it’s barely around the level of a particularly bloody-minded blowfly, and the only reason he’s letting it bother him at all is because their shift wasn’t even supposed to start until an hour from now, and there’s no goddamn point in them being here, let alone this early.
He’d said as much an hour ago when Ky had woken him up by throwing his uniform at his bed and making it very clear that the only way he was going to get any more rest that evening was if he could sleep through being kicked in the head. Sol had been counting on having the time to sleep in and maybe even go find something to eat before anyone missed him, but all his protests were brushed off with declarations about a call from an important government official and the necessity of maintaining the image of the Holy Order and blahblahblah something-pretentious-and-loud. Whatever the details were he’d been in no mood to take any notice, because having Ky show up in his room like that when Sol was half-asleep and hungry made him want to do all sorts of things that could get him thrown out of the Order, and punching Ky was only the least of them.
One way or the other, that's all he’s gathered to explain why Ky, endlessly commended prodigy Captain of the Paris division and one of maybe four people in their ranks in the city regularly known to take down multiple targets in a night and come home without a scratch (and still have all his paperwork done by morning), is making early evening courtesy house calls to paranoid paper-pushers who wouldn’t know real danger if it bit them on the neck.
The door is opened by a prim looking man in a suit who couldn’t have projected ‘butler’ any louder if he’d had it tattooed to his forehead. He frowns at them like their presence is a blight against his nice, clean steps, but he probably looks at everyone that way.
“Captain Kiske of the Holy Order,” says Ky, all business, holding up his official medallion. “We’re here about an urgent call from your employer.”
As if there’s any danger they’ll be mistaken for making random house calls. Ky doesn’t introduce Sol by name, which is the case a lot lately. Sol’s developing the cynical theory it’s because that way it’s a lot harder for people to file official complaints about him afterwards.
The butler is just opening his mouth for some suitably prim and proper response when a voice from inside shrieks, “Is that the Order? At last? Show them in, man, show them in!” and Sol is forced to come to the uncomfortable conclusion that the owner of the voice is, in all probability, male.
The butler gives them the long-suffering eyebrow raise of I-just-work-here, it’s-all-part-of-the-job, waves them inside, and promptly vanishes in that inexplicable way they must spend months learning at butlers' college.
The entrance hall looks like it was designed for no other purpose than to demonstrate exactly how much space the owner of the house could afford to waste, but the man standing in the middle of it nevertheless looks like he lives in constant and paralysing fear that dress and grooming are the only things keeping him from being mistaken for ordinary gutter scum. With a face like his this might be a real concern but he’s also labouring under the mistaken belief that extra layers will distract attention away from it, or that lacy trim makes him look fashionable and dignified rather than like he’s been dressed by an excited five-year-old girl with a juvenile frill fetish. Sol instantly hates him even more than he’d expected.
“You’re the men from the Holy Order?” he snaps. “What the devil took so long? It’s been nearly an hour! What good is it for you to show up at all when the trail is this long cold?”
Sol imagines he sees Ky twitch slightly.
“Monsieur Ballard, I presume,” Ky replies with impressive composure. “I guarantee you that the Order is treating this matter with the utmost seriousness, although regretfully, any possibility of catching the culprit red-handed would have been lost well before we received your call. However, descriptions of the incident have already been distributed to all of our active agents, and myself and my associate were dispatched at the first opportunity. Given your position, the Order understood you would prefer this matter dealt with discreetly, and also considering that we have few personnel on duty at this hour, I hope you will appreciate that this was the soonest any ranking officer was available to deal with this matter. Now, if you could show us to the scene, we can begin the investigation without further delay.”
If Ky had hoped this eminently reasonable speech might mollify the man, he was disappointed. “No staff on duty at this hour? This is an outrage! The very lives of the people of this city are in your hands! The council - on which I hold a distinguished position! - is responsible for your very funding!”
“Sir, I would ask you to consider that the reason we have fewer personnel on duty at this hour is solely because it is all but unheard of for us to receive any sightings or reports so early - I would hope you can appreciate why. We are short staffed even keeping the streets adequately defended during those hours of darkness.”
That’s about as far as your council’s funding goes, Sol finishes silently in his head.
“Well you’ve had a complaint at this hour now, and I expect it to be dealt with a bit more professionalism! This way, at once! We’ve wasted more than enough time!” The man turns and all but runs for the long spiral staircase that arcs up to the next storey.
It’s only by luck that he’s gone before he can see Sol roll his eyes. Stupid civilians thinking they can tell the Order how to do their job, what does the man expect the Order is going to make of a call that comes when they known damn well calls don’t come in? But loathe as he is to admit it, Ky had probably had a point - a twit like this would probably complain just as loudly about a couple of ‘ordinary’ soldiers showing up right away as about a personal visit from Captain Kiske.
The room he leads them to looks like it might be owned by the five-year-old with the frill fetish - or more likely, by a teenaged girl who’s firmly decided she’s too old for pink but has gone through a great deal of anguish in the process of giving it up. The window is wide open, leaving the (inevitably lacy) curtains billowing around in a manner Sol finds needlessly dramatic. Other than that there’s nothing remotely remarkable about the place - no bloodstains, no overturned furniture, not so much as a discarded dinner plate, unless you count the fact the experience is probably going to have Sol twitching at the mere thought of a frill for weeks.
Ky examines the room with the thoroughness of someone who hasn’t found what he was looking for originally and isn’t sure what he should do instead. Sol goes to stand by the window, about the only feature he can stand to look at very long.
“Perhaps you could take us through the exact circumstances...” Ky suggests uncertainly.
“It was the maid who found it like this!” Ballard wails. “My poor, dear Isabelle! All day she was feeling faint, and in the late afternoon she asked to be excused from supper and retired to her room. When the maid came to check on her, this is what she found, the window thrown open and my daughter vanished! Spirited away under our very noses!”
“While I appreciate how distressing this must be for you,” Ky says in his best tone of professional condolences, “I don’t think I follow why the Holy Order was the first authority you thought to contact.”
“Are you insane, man? And you call yourself a professional?” Ballard yells at him, with the sort of dramatics that wouldn’t be out of place at the theatre. “It could only have been a vampire that made off with her! There’s a drop outside that window of thirty feet. My sweet, innocent daughter abducted without so much as time for a scream?”
Sol can’t help but notice the window faces due west. He can only imagine what the glare in here must be like in the late afternoon - those lacy curtains would be next to useless against it. Thirty feet down looks like about right, but he’s not at all surprised to see that not even two feet away there’s a nice, thick branch growing right along the window sill, attached to a nice, sturdy looking tree almost in arm’s reach. The branch has friends at nicely spaced intervals going all the way down the trunk too. No prizes for guessing the truth about this one.
“Hasn’t been a vampire within a mile of here.” Sol grouches. “We’re wasting our time.”
“What was that?!” Ballard shrieks.
“I must ask you to excuse the manners of my associate,” Ky says quickly, shooting Sol a look, “but I find his instincts on these matters are rarely wrong.”
Ballard is clearly about to protest further, but Ky presses on. “Sir, if, as you describe, your maid discovered the room empty right on the moment of sunset, wouldn’t it therefore follow that at the time your daughter was abducted, the sun was still in the sky?”
Ballard looks momentarily flummoxed. “Well…” he offers unhelpfully.
“Given the degree to which vampires are weakened by sunlight, it is exceptionally rare for them to venture out before darkness has fallen. It’s particularly unlikely one would attempt the sort of athletics required to make it up to this window.”
Ballard makes a spluttering noise of a rather undignified nature. “You must think me a complete fool, Mister Kiske, wasn’t it? Even if that’s true of ordinary vampires, I’m not so uninformed on this subject that I don’t know there are extraordinary ones among their numbers that can withstand a little sunlight quite well. Why, it’s been hardly two months since the papers got hold of that story about that Perne woman - hiding in plain sight in society for years before anyone discovered what she was!”
Sol twitches and forces himself to make a list of reasons why setting the place on fire isn’t a good way of escaping this idiocy.
“I think the accounts you refer to be may have been guilty of sensationalising the matter slightly,” says Ky with the greatest of patience. “The reality is that even the eldest vampires find exposure to direct sunlight very unpleasant. Vampires of that age are extremely rare, and in any case accustomed to a rather better level of discretion than abduction in daylight.”
“Then what would you tell me happened here?” Ballard snaps. “How would you explain how my daughter vanished so completely?”
Ky takes a deep breath and looks toward the window. “Have you considered the possibility that someone might leave this room by scaling the tree outside?”
“What, while carrying my daughter on his back?”
“If your daughter was rendered unconscious, and the perpetrator a particularly skilled climber or acting with assistance, that may be a possibility. But… before we start constructing such scenarios, have you considered the possibility your daughter left of her own means?”
Ballard positively bristles. “Are you now suggesting that a sick girl climbed thirty feet down out of her bedroom window?”
“Actually,” says Ky, “with regards to her ‘illness’… might I be right in guessing that retiring to her room in this manner would be something of a common habit of hers?”
“Well… she has done the same a few times in the last weeks, small wonder the maid was growing so anxious for her…” Ballard admits.
“Might I also be right in supposing she asked specifically that she not be disturbed?”
“She did say something of the sort, but I hardly see how…You there, did you say something?” He shoots a sudden look at Sol, and narrows his eyes.
“Monsieur,” Ky interjects quickly, “forgive my indiscretion, but is there, perhaps, a young man who holds her particular favour?”
Ballard turns a bright shade of red. “I should say not! My daughter, courting young men at her tender age? There was a minor matter of foolishness over that errand-boy back in June, but I made it quite clear to her I would not tolerate any such nonsense - especially with a commoner so far below her station, and that was the end of it.”
“Do I understand then, sir,” Ky says very slowly, “that your daughter was in the habit of retiring to her room with instructions that she not be disturbed, and also that she has... a certain affection for a particular young man with whom she would only be able to meet in secret?”
Ballard’s colour is now getting very close to purple.
They aren’t precisely thrown out of the house after that, but a casual observer might have trouble telling the difference. Sol doesn’t care. As far as he’s concerned, the faster they get out of there the better.
“Could’ve told you that was going to be a waste of time,” he grumbles to Ky on the way back. It fits the theme of the week. The most interesting thing they’ve had to deal with in days was a crazy girl they caught chasing drugged out vampire-wannabes in stupid masks around the city with a stake, and even then only because she managed to elbow Ky in the groin in the middle of his slightly-too-gentle attempts to disable her without doing anything unchivalrous.
“We still need to be seen to take these things seriously,” Ky mutters back, more by habit than with any real feeling. He gives a tired sigh. “It wouldn’t hurt you to be a little more diplomatic. That poor man was genuinely scared for his daughter's safety when he called us, you know.”
“Genuinely in denial that his brat’s grown up into a teenager, you mean,” says Sol, “Same as the rest of those rich sods who think attracting a vampire is some sort of status symbol.”
“You would think any sensible man would have been a bit more relieved to hear his daughter hadn’t been abducted by a blood-sucking monster, wouldn’t you?” Ky admits grudgingly.
Sol lets himself grin. “Still worried about all that crap about our image?”
Ky looks back over his shoulder, eyes sparkling in one of those rare expressions that Sol’s pretty sure most of the rest of his Order don't even know he's capable of. “Well, that all depends on the odds that he's going be sharing the story with all his friends and associates.”
“You mean, 'the odds he'll ever dare breathe a word of it to anyone'?”
“I think we're fairly safe, don't you?”
Sol still thinks a Holy Order that has to worry about the likes of Ballard is a pretty sorry excuse for a Holy anything, but the grin lasts him most of the way back to base. In a job like theirs it's not like there's any guarantee the rest of the evening will be any improvement on this, but solo work was never much better, so why waste the moment.
What the hell, maybe he'll put off getting himself thrown out a little longer.
The degree to which this one is velithya's fault is slightly debatable - she's responsible for putting the idea in my head (it did originate from what was probably an innocent case of mishearing, but she is completely guilty of egging me on well after the mistake was cleared up), but I have no-one but myself to blame for the horrible realisation later that the parallels between Gears and Vampires work just a little too well for comfort. I mean, not only are both particularly nasty monsters that can generally pass for humans when not out hunting them (though they may also be capable of sprouting some various assortment of fangs/claws/maybe even batwings when the opportunity arises), both have their own convoluted way of converting humans into their own kind, not to mention a solid history of producing a member or two willing and capable of controlling the animalistic bloodlust within well enough to want to side with the humans. And what's that organisation dedicated to eradicating the Gears called again? Oh yeah, the Holy Order. They probably hand all their soldiers their own crucifix along with the uniform - they're all set for hunting vampires and I haven't even had to change more than a couple of nouns on the charter.
(I would start constructing elaborate conspiracy theories about whether Ishiwatari really meant to create a race of evil vampires rather than Gears in his very first draft, but that would be me getting way too carried away.)
Anyway, having given in to the inevitable, I resigned myself to turning out at least a smutty little one-parter based on the above, mixed with every vampire-related cliche I could think of in a hurry (look, if you're going to write fic based on an idea as cliched as a vampire!AU, you have to do it properly). Naturally, this turned into two scenes plus a morning-after-bit, and then the intro wasn't working so well so that turned into an extra bit as well, bringing the total up to a full four parter when I wasn't looking. I'm not even surprised when this happens anymore.
FTR, the added irony of writing a vampire AU when one of the playable characters in the source material was a vampire already is not lost on me. And if you think you've caught a whole lot of gratuitous references to every piece of popular vampire-related fiction to emerge in recent years in the writing to follow, it's probably not just you.
Title: Sign of the Cross (a.k.a. the Completely Gratuitous Guilty Gear Vampire AU)
Summary: Gears or vampires, it's all just another day's work for the Holy Order. But they never do quite manage to screen some of their more unusual recruits as carefully as they ought to either.
Characters/Pairing: Sol/Ky
Chapter: 1 of 4
Rating: Eventually NC-17, but only PG for this part
Word Count: 2760
It’s barely an hour after sunset when they arrive, Ky knocking smartly on a door that would probably put the entrances to some cathedrals to shame. The last strains of daylight are still dragging themselves over the edge of the sky, and the way they glint off the white marble steps is just bright enough to make the back of Sol’s neck prickle. As irritants go it’s barely around the level of a particularly bloody-minded blowfly, and the only reason he’s letting it bother him at all is because their shift wasn’t even supposed to start until an hour from now, and there’s no goddamn point in them being here, let alone this early.
He’d said as much an hour ago when Ky had woken him up by throwing his uniform at his bed and making it very clear that the only way he was going to get any more rest that evening was if he could sleep through being kicked in the head. Sol had been counting on having the time to sleep in and maybe even go find something to eat before anyone missed him, but all his protests were brushed off with declarations about a call from an important government official and the necessity of maintaining the image of the Holy Order and blahblahblah something-pretentious-and-loud. Whatever the details were he’d been in no mood to take any notice, because having Ky show up in his room like that when Sol was half-asleep and hungry made him want to do all sorts of things that could get him thrown out of the Order, and punching Ky was only the least of them.
One way or the other, that's all he’s gathered to explain why Ky, endlessly commended prodigy Captain of the Paris division and one of maybe four people in their ranks in the city regularly known to take down multiple targets in a night and come home without a scratch (and still have all his paperwork done by morning), is making early evening courtesy house calls to paranoid paper-pushers who wouldn’t know real danger if it bit them on the neck.
The door is opened by a prim looking man in a suit who couldn’t have projected ‘butler’ any louder if he’d had it tattooed to his forehead. He frowns at them like their presence is a blight against his nice, clean steps, but he probably looks at everyone that way.
“Captain Kiske of the Holy Order,” says Ky, all business, holding up his official medallion. “We’re here about an urgent call from your employer.”
As if there’s any danger they’ll be mistaken for making random house calls. Ky doesn’t introduce Sol by name, which is the case a lot lately. Sol’s developing the cynical theory it’s because that way it’s a lot harder for people to file official complaints about him afterwards.
The butler is just opening his mouth for some suitably prim and proper response when a voice from inside shrieks, “Is that the Order? At last? Show them in, man, show them in!” and Sol is forced to come to the uncomfortable conclusion that the owner of the voice is, in all probability, male.
The butler gives them the long-suffering eyebrow raise of I-just-work-here, it’s-all-part-of-the-job, waves them inside, and promptly vanishes in that inexplicable way they must spend months learning at butlers' college.
The entrance hall looks like it was designed for no other purpose than to demonstrate exactly how much space the owner of the house could afford to waste, but the man standing in the middle of it nevertheless looks like he lives in constant and paralysing fear that dress and grooming are the only things keeping him from being mistaken for ordinary gutter scum. With a face like his this might be a real concern but he’s also labouring under the mistaken belief that extra layers will distract attention away from it, or that lacy trim makes him look fashionable and dignified rather than like he’s been dressed by an excited five-year-old girl with a juvenile frill fetish. Sol instantly hates him even more than he’d expected.
“You’re the men from the Holy Order?” he snaps. “What the devil took so long? It’s been nearly an hour! What good is it for you to show up at all when the trail is this long cold?”
Sol imagines he sees Ky twitch slightly.
“Monsieur Ballard, I presume,” Ky replies with impressive composure. “I guarantee you that the Order is treating this matter with the utmost seriousness, although regretfully, any possibility of catching the culprit red-handed would have been lost well before we received your call. However, descriptions of the incident have already been distributed to all of our active agents, and myself and my associate were dispatched at the first opportunity. Given your position, the Order understood you would prefer this matter dealt with discreetly, and also considering that we have few personnel on duty at this hour, I hope you will appreciate that this was the soonest any ranking officer was available to deal with this matter. Now, if you could show us to the scene, we can begin the investigation without further delay.”
If Ky had hoped this eminently reasonable speech might mollify the man, he was disappointed. “No staff on duty at this hour? This is an outrage! The very lives of the people of this city are in your hands! The council - on which I hold a distinguished position! - is responsible for your very funding!”
“Sir, I would ask you to consider that the reason we have fewer personnel on duty at this hour is solely because it is all but unheard of for us to receive any sightings or reports so early - I would hope you can appreciate why. We are short staffed even keeping the streets adequately defended during those hours of darkness.”
That’s about as far as your council’s funding goes, Sol finishes silently in his head.
“Well you’ve had a complaint at this hour now, and I expect it to be dealt with a bit more professionalism! This way, at once! We’ve wasted more than enough time!” The man turns and all but runs for the long spiral staircase that arcs up to the next storey.
It’s only by luck that he’s gone before he can see Sol roll his eyes. Stupid civilians thinking they can tell the Order how to do their job, what does the man expect the Order is going to make of a call that comes when they known damn well calls don’t come in? But loathe as he is to admit it, Ky had probably had a point - a twit like this would probably complain just as loudly about a couple of ‘ordinary’ soldiers showing up right away as about a personal visit from Captain Kiske.
The room he leads them to looks like it might be owned by the five-year-old with the frill fetish - or more likely, by a teenaged girl who’s firmly decided she’s too old for pink but has gone through a great deal of anguish in the process of giving it up. The window is wide open, leaving the (inevitably lacy) curtains billowing around in a manner Sol finds needlessly dramatic. Other than that there’s nothing remotely remarkable about the place - no bloodstains, no overturned furniture, not so much as a discarded dinner plate, unless you count the fact the experience is probably going to have Sol twitching at the mere thought of a frill for weeks.
Ky examines the room with the thoroughness of someone who hasn’t found what he was looking for originally and isn’t sure what he should do instead. Sol goes to stand by the window, about the only feature he can stand to look at very long.
“Perhaps you could take us through the exact circumstances...” Ky suggests uncertainly.
“It was the maid who found it like this!” Ballard wails. “My poor, dear Isabelle! All day she was feeling faint, and in the late afternoon she asked to be excused from supper and retired to her room. When the maid came to check on her, this is what she found, the window thrown open and my daughter vanished! Spirited away under our very noses!”
“While I appreciate how distressing this must be for you,” Ky says in his best tone of professional condolences, “I don’t think I follow why the Holy Order was the first authority you thought to contact.”
“Are you insane, man? And you call yourself a professional?” Ballard yells at him, with the sort of dramatics that wouldn’t be out of place at the theatre. “It could only have been a vampire that made off with her! There’s a drop outside that window of thirty feet. My sweet, innocent daughter abducted without so much as time for a scream?”
Sol can’t help but notice the window faces due west. He can only imagine what the glare in here must be like in the late afternoon - those lacy curtains would be next to useless against it. Thirty feet down looks like about right, but he’s not at all surprised to see that not even two feet away there’s a nice, thick branch growing right along the window sill, attached to a nice, sturdy looking tree almost in arm’s reach. The branch has friends at nicely spaced intervals going all the way down the trunk too. No prizes for guessing the truth about this one.
“Hasn’t been a vampire within a mile of here.” Sol grouches. “We’re wasting our time.”
“What was that?!” Ballard shrieks.
“I must ask you to excuse the manners of my associate,” Ky says quickly, shooting Sol a look, “but I find his instincts on these matters are rarely wrong.”
Ballard is clearly about to protest further, but Ky presses on. “Sir, if, as you describe, your maid discovered the room empty right on the moment of sunset, wouldn’t it therefore follow that at the time your daughter was abducted, the sun was still in the sky?”
Ballard looks momentarily flummoxed. “Well…” he offers unhelpfully.
“Given the degree to which vampires are weakened by sunlight, it is exceptionally rare for them to venture out before darkness has fallen. It’s particularly unlikely one would attempt the sort of athletics required to make it up to this window.”
Ballard makes a spluttering noise of a rather undignified nature. “You must think me a complete fool, Mister Kiske, wasn’t it? Even if that’s true of ordinary vampires, I’m not so uninformed on this subject that I don’t know there are extraordinary ones among their numbers that can withstand a little sunlight quite well. Why, it’s been hardly two months since the papers got hold of that story about that Perne woman - hiding in plain sight in society for years before anyone discovered what she was!”
Sol twitches and forces himself to make a list of reasons why setting the place on fire isn’t a good way of escaping this idiocy.
“I think the accounts you refer to be may have been guilty of sensationalising the matter slightly,” says Ky with the greatest of patience. “The reality is that even the eldest vampires find exposure to direct sunlight very unpleasant. Vampires of that age are extremely rare, and in any case accustomed to a rather better level of discretion than abduction in daylight.”
“Then what would you tell me happened here?” Ballard snaps. “How would you explain how my daughter vanished so completely?”
Ky takes a deep breath and looks toward the window. “Have you considered the possibility that someone might leave this room by scaling the tree outside?”
“What, while carrying my daughter on his back?”
“If your daughter was rendered unconscious, and the perpetrator a particularly skilled climber or acting with assistance, that may be a possibility. But… before we start constructing such scenarios, have you considered the possibility your daughter left of her own means?”
Ballard positively bristles. “Are you now suggesting that a sick girl climbed thirty feet down out of her bedroom window?”
“Actually,” says Ky, “with regards to her ‘illness’… might I be right in guessing that retiring to her room in this manner would be something of a common habit of hers?”
“Well… she has done the same a few times in the last weeks, small wonder the maid was growing so anxious for her…” Ballard admits.
“Might I also be right in supposing she asked specifically that she not be disturbed?”
“She did say something of the sort, but I hardly see how…You there, did you say something?” He shoots a sudden look at Sol, and narrows his eyes.
“Monsieur,” Ky interjects quickly, “forgive my indiscretion, but is there, perhaps, a young man who holds her particular favour?”
Ballard turns a bright shade of red. “I should say not! My daughter, courting young men at her tender age? There was a minor matter of foolishness over that errand-boy back in June, but I made it quite clear to her I would not tolerate any such nonsense - especially with a commoner so far below her station, and that was the end of it.”
“Do I understand then, sir,” Ky says very slowly, “that your daughter was in the habit of retiring to her room with instructions that she not be disturbed, and also that she has... a certain affection for a particular young man with whom she would only be able to meet in secret?”
Ballard’s colour is now getting very close to purple.
They aren’t precisely thrown out of the house after that, but a casual observer might have trouble telling the difference. Sol doesn’t care. As far as he’s concerned, the faster they get out of there the better.
“Could’ve told you that was going to be a waste of time,” he grumbles to Ky on the way back. It fits the theme of the week. The most interesting thing they’ve had to deal with in days was a crazy girl they caught chasing drugged out vampire-wannabes in stupid masks around the city with a stake, and even then only because she managed to elbow Ky in the groin in the middle of his slightly-too-gentle attempts to disable her without doing anything unchivalrous.
“We still need to be seen to take these things seriously,” Ky mutters back, more by habit than with any real feeling. He gives a tired sigh. “It wouldn’t hurt you to be a little more diplomatic. That poor man was genuinely scared for his daughter's safety when he called us, you know.”
“Genuinely in denial that his brat’s grown up into a teenager, you mean,” says Sol, “Same as the rest of those rich sods who think attracting a vampire is some sort of status symbol.”
“You would think any sensible man would have been a bit more relieved to hear his daughter hadn’t been abducted by a blood-sucking monster, wouldn’t you?” Ky admits grudgingly.
Sol lets himself grin. “Still worried about all that crap about our image?”
Ky looks back over his shoulder, eyes sparkling in one of those rare expressions that Sol’s pretty sure most of the rest of his Order don't even know he's capable of. “Well, that all depends on the odds that he's going be sharing the story with all his friends and associates.”
“You mean, 'the odds he'll ever dare breathe a word of it to anyone'?”
“I think we're fairly safe, don't you?”
Sol still thinks a Holy Order that has to worry about the likes of Ballard is a pretty sorry excuse for a Holy anything, but the grin lasts him most of the way back to base. In a job like theirs it's not like there's any guarantee the rest of the evening will be any improvement on this, but solo work was never much better, so why waste the moment.
What the hell, maybe he'll put off getting himself thrown out a little longer.