Slate did not have a foam sword, but he had an excellent slow look—tempered with the slightest hint of a smile—for anyone who did.

“The Asian?” He said, one hand tracing the triangle of his goatee as he tried to place... ah. She was talking about the restaurant. So they could make real events into a part of this game? “I did not much care for it. Ms. Susan, however...” A quirking of the lips was deemed to be appropriately villainous. “You have such good taste in friends, Arianna.” He raised an eyebrow at Katrina. “Does it run in the family?”

>> “You know Arianna too? I don't believe we've met. I'm Edward.”

“Edward.” Slate said, and the next word to pass through the sometimes-Sorcerer’s mind was too loud to ignore: “Cullen. I... see. From Washington, are you not? I have heard of you.”

The secretaries’ judo club had gone to see a certain movie on its opening night. Slate had left the theatre with less understanding of women than when he had gone in. Also, ten less dollars. At least it had not been in 3D.

“Welcome to our city.”

He took the offered hand, and shook it with practiced politeness. Warm or cold was a curious question.

Freshly feed, he decided upon, by way of answer. Yourself, Mr. Cullen?

An explicit phrase concerning an archer’s parentage went through Edward’s mind. It was inappropriate for slayers-in-training.

Lavi had ten seconds to act. Ten. If she didn't make a move to take down a vampire in ten Mississippi's then it would be up to Ari. She wasn't entirely sure about Cullen, but she was sure about the boy. He gave her some serious willies.

One Mississippi.

Even just him talking to the other potential vampire made her uneasy and something he had said triggered a slow building headache.

Two Mississippi.

Susan was a witch she had met once... well, not really a witch. But her knowing a vampire didn't quite fit in her current headspace. Susan. And a vampire. Weird.

Three Mississipi.

She tucked her sword under her arm casually and saw a curious mental picture. A witch and a vampire walk into an asian restaurant. It sounded like the beginning to a silly joke.

Four Mississippi.

When Arianna hit ten full Mississippi's then she would drive her foamy sword backward using her own armpit to guide the blade backward and into the vampire's heart. Err. Well. She would score a point? How did this test go again? Her headache was increasing. Maybe it was the music coming out of the speakers or the crowd. Ari touched her forehead as if that would make her head feel better.

Five Mississippi.

Arianna's friend had good taste? He knew the name Cullen?

Slate, or whatever he was called in this game, had just about admitted he was a vampire. And Edward was guilty by association, with the way they glared at each other like a pair of dogs sizing each other up over a juicy morsel of meat.

Katrina gulped, counted to five, and lifted her weapons. Her right hand jabbed a foam sword towards Edward's chest while her left pointed the pepper spray towards Slate and pressed the trigger.

Edward, sensing the movement of Katrina's hand just a split second before spun away from the sword so it merely grazed his arm. The movement left him facing Arianna with momentum to spare. He used it to try to push her away from what was quickly becoming a battle.

“This way,” he hissed at her. “Get to safety, I'll go back and make sure your sister is taken care of.”

Pepper spray. Frequently used in riot control, crowd control, and self-defense. Besides mere humans, it was also effective against dogs, bears, and vampires.

The physical effects were immediate and quite curious. Slate’s eyes involuntarily closed, already beginning to swell despite his conscientious efforts to blink the irritant out. It rather hurt. Also, as some had gotten into his lungs, he found himself doubled over and coughing. This ‘LARPing’ was more serious than he had originally given it credit. In game, had that been ‘garlic spray’...? It was super effective.

With a ninja-narrowing of eyes, Nigel aimed a stealthy bear hug of entrapment around LaviKat. If it succeeded, she would be comfortably obliged to give up her weapons and drown in black suit. Equip item: bite-sized hostage.

In this situation, what was a vampiric drug lord to do...?

The goatee raised itself, with utmost dignity. (Blinking its eyes painfully, with much excessive IC tearing.)

“Now is the point, I believe, when I am obliged to inform you,” the young immortal wheezed, with no change in his monotone, “that you are all going to die.”

She had been ready for a quick but calm heart shot. What happened was a much harder situation to control. Lavi did her proud by identifying both blood suckers for what they were and drawing down on the both. At the same time. She would have clapped had she not been occupied with bringing her sword around to fend of the vampire now bore down on her.

> “Get to safety, I'll go back and make sure your sister is taken care of.”

He shoved her away. That was... confusing. If he was really a vampire, he should have been pulling her toward him and trying for a snack. Unless it was a trick. "Taken care of" was not the same as "whisked to safety."

Whatever it was, his momentum transferred nicely into a classic hane goshi that would have made any Kabal secretary proud. Unfortunately in all the clothes grabbing and the momentum transference, her sword was lost to the ground between event chairs. The commotion made several people turn around and several more get up and decide the concert wasn't worth getting involved in a fight.

The music stopped. Arianna couldn't remember when the music had started, but silence made her turn toward her sister's plight seem to take eternity.

The little blonde was about to get grappled.

"Lavi! Watch out!" Screw the foam. Ari launched herself toward the man in the black suit. Anything to keep her sister from harm's way.

Katrina saw the Slate-vampire double over coughing and suddenly felt bad. She hadn't realized that the spray her 'older sister' had given her could do actual damage. At least, it looked like it did. Either that or Slate was a really good actor. She was about to apologize, but her words were muffled by a black suit coat and big bear arms attached to a ninja, who up until that point she hadn't really noticed was part of the game.

Percy's voice sounded from somewhere in the crowd, "Step!"

Both her weapons were gone, slipped from her grasp when Nigel had grabbed her. One of her arms was pinched to her side, but the other was stuck somewhere up by Nigel's face. LaviKat took the opportunity to pinch Nigel's nose. If he had been a real vampire, she would have tried to punch him, but she didn't want to hurt him like she'd accidentally hurt Slate.

She heard a sort of a whump sound behind her somewhere, and felt AriNoel's momentum through Nigel's body as she flung herself at him. Nigel had the option of letting AriNoel hit him or letting Katrina go. He loosened his grasp on the little teen in favor of not getting a black eye.

Percy, sounding flabbergasted, yelled at them again, "Step! Step, I tell you!"

LaviKat slid back to the ground, catching her first glimpse of the crowd's reaction to their performance. A small circle was forming around them, but if AriNoel was going to be throwing anyone else, the watchers probably should be a little father away. Also, civilian casualties would probably hurt her score in the test.

"There are vampires! Everyone run away," LaviKat shouted at the top of her lungs. She waved her arms at the closest group of goth looking teens to help them get the idea. "I swear, they're real! They are going to feed on us all if you don't escape!"

By this time Percy had stopped yelling and simply stood holding his clipboard. The look on his face was unreadable, though it may have had small amounts of both shock and horror mixed in.

Katrina hoped that wasn't because she was doing poorly on the test.

Kelliann Schmidt—not Kelli, and not Ann, thanks—was not an officer of the law. She was a reserve officer of the law. A sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly volunteer when the regular cops couldn’t be bothered to come out in force and deal with teenagers, brawling, vampires, et al.

“Vampires?”

“Vampires,” Clancy confirmed.

By the very definition of ‘volunteering,’ Kelliann was not getting paid enough to deal with this. None the less...

“We’re going to need backup at Central Park,” she spoke into her shoulder-radio. Reserve officers: they did get some cool gadgets, and they did get to wear the blues. Most people completely missed the little “reserve” patch sewed under her “Schmidt.”

“Yeah. You heard me. Vampires.”

This got just as warm a reaction from the folks on the other end as other such calls. Like ‘Stampeding Douglas Firs’, or ‘Giant Lovecraftian Monstrosity with Tentacles.’ Honestly? Kelliann would take the vampires. Maybe, if she was extra lucky, they weren’t even real. Or the real cops would deal with them, for her.

She waded towards the brawl and the screaming teen(s). And the tackling, and the pepper spray, and the yeah.

“POLICE!” She yelled, as Clancy went on crowd-herding duty.

“STEP!” Some other guy yelled, one last desperate time.

“All vampires, hands and fangs where I can see them!”

For a moment, some punk with watery blue eyes and a goatee raised his hands. Then a large blur of ninja black scooped him up, made a grab for the Girl Who’d Cried Vampire, and disappeared into the night. There might or might not have been a violent brown-haired women taken along for the ride.

The man she tackled was a brick house. Arianna supposed that she was hurt more than the man she'd tackled. Aside from a discrete sounding 'oof' and the brief release of Lavi and a slight rocking motion, nothing happened. No falling or flailing of limbs. Nothing. Not even a frown or a smile. She may as well have thrown a pillow at him. Ari grabbed the back band of his suit pants with one hand and grabbed on to Lavi's leg with her other.

His options were to resist and suffer the wedgie of the ages or attempt to flee while she held on to the man's waist. It was awkward going, he stopped to redistribute the weight, or so she thought before the were all trucking out into the forest. It was tricky, tangly walking and a firm grip that kept Arianna with the group.

The brunette was so confused. This man had the grace, stealth, speed an cunning of a vampire. Perhaps he was the Lord of Vampires. If that was the case, they were all in deep doo doo. Even the test proctors. Ari strained to see Lavi around the man's bulk. A headache was forming in her mid-brain.

All she could see was the cold boy. The obvious vampire seemed slung over the shoulder of this Vampire Lord. "Your eyes seem awfully irritated for a man with no blood of his own." So the obvious vampire wasn't even a vampire? Or did vampires still bleed and have blood pool in irritated eye capillaries? Their hearts didn't beat, she remembered that much so wouldn't that mean there was no pressure?

She heard a tear and it could only mean one thing: her grip was about to slip. The Ninja Lord Vampire would no doubt sacrifice his pants and his dignity without a second thought if it kept his people safe. "Stop this train, will you?" Another desperate move. She tried to stick her legs in between his fast movings ones in order to trip him up. What did she care for police men? She cared only for the drinkers of blood and the justice she sought.

They were almost to the edge of the forest. Nigel barreled onward, despite the ripping noises his pants were making. He would have continued all the way back to the black jeep if not for the very persistent vampire hunter foot thrust between his moving legs.

There was no way to avoid it, even for a ninja, he was going to fall. Quickly, he uncurled his arms, setting his small charges down on either side of himself as he dove towards the ground in a semi-swan dive turned to sommersault. He ended in a crouched position, glaring backwards over his shoulder at the brunette. Sometimes there was no way to avoid a fall, but if one was going to do it, one should do it in style.

“That was unwise,” he growled back at the vampire hunting brunette. “Are you trying to get someone killed?”

Percy and Edward caught up, panting and Artemis appeared out from behind a bush. “What are you doing standing around,” the oft-archer demanded. “They're coming this way!”

Nigel pointed to the youngest of the two, “Carry them, it will be quicker. I'll take her.” He stalked over to Noel, fully intending to throw her over his shoulder and continue his retreat deeper into the woods.

Right before Edward scooper her up, Katrina looked over at Slate and saw his eyes still watering. She whispered, unsure if they were still playing “Why aren't you healing your eyes?”

Slate landed almost-well. Decently, he rated. He caught the fall with his arm, rounded the force over shoulder and back, and flopped into a bush with no damage done. The judo secretaries would be proud of him: he had almost done it right. During a real world application, no less. He would have to tell Noin later.

Nigel’s team, unfamiliar with his efforts to earn his light blue belt, did not seem to view his progress with appropriate reverence.

Instead, he was rather unceremoniously slung over Percy’s shoulder. It was from this position which he answered Katrina.

“I was unsure as to whether it would constitute cheating.” He paused a moment, attempting to wiggle his liver off of the sometimes-Paladin’s shoulder bone. “This is a more serious game than I had initially thought.”

He would not underestimate LARPing again.

> “Are you trying to get someone killed?”

"Yes." Hadn't that been the point? To kill vampires? Oh wait, no... it was to test Lavi's skill at killing vampires. She was to do the killing today.

Ari's resolve wavered at the shouts of incoming assailants. Which was the greater priority? Human police or policing the human-eating?

Nigel, the Vampire Lord, cleared up any doubts she had when he demanded Lavi be taken away and that he, Master of all Vampires would take on Arianna Moonbeam. "I'll just bet you will." She was outmanned, outgunned, out-weaponed. She still still had one distinct advantage.

Her heart still beat.

Arianna crouched and prepared to defend herself.