A Peculiar Arrangement

[realworldweirdo]

"You\'ll be far more testable if I don\'t heal you," Conner corrected. "No, we wait to heal him, love. Also, the chain is just enchanted, my own variation on something my old clan used to make. Handy, though."

He knelt on the floor and started to remove the human\'s jacket.

"Scott, I need his skin exposed from the waist up and the soles of his feet available. Would you lend me hand?"

[CowboyBlonde]

Scott almost began to feel sorry for Bryant.  Poor guy had to sit there in pain.  "Sure" Scott replied, growing more curious about what Conner was planning to do.  Scott quickly moved to the man\'s feet and removed his shoes, followed by his socks, which were wet from sweat.  Scott than timidly ripped the man\'s stained shirt up the middle, revealing his beer gut.  Scott jokingly thought about how this would be a lot easier if the man had been attractive and didn’t smell like a steaming pile of trash bags rotting away on a New York City sidewalk in 90 degree heat.  "Is this going to get exciting soon?" Scott said, holding his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

[Black Philip]

Bryant crossed his arms, and let out a pain filled sneer. His ribs were killing him.

"Yes, we\'re both eagerly awaiting your brilliance Mr. Vampire," Bryant said coldly.

If this guy wasn\'t even going to heal him, than what was the point of being nice?

[realworldweirdo]

Conner blinked in surprise. How had Bryant gotten around his command to not speak unless spoken to, but it appeared he had. Perhaps he thought he\'d been spoken to; perhaps the command had worn off, but he thought he\'d planted it deeper than that. He\'d never exactly mastered domination, to be honest. He was still sitting there, not leaving their presence; was that from the command remaining to work, or did he just assume he had no chance of escape even if he tried? As a stopgap measure to keep the human from doing something unpredictable, as humans tended to do, he reached out with his mind and blocked the pain from reaching the human\'s conscious mind.

"Better?" he asked caustically, still trying to figure out if the human had something different about him that made his mind work in an unusual way, or if he\'d failed to properly implant the command. Meanwhile, Scott efficiently stripped the relevant articles of clothing off the first test subject. Conner reached his hand out and pulled a large blob of water from a bucket located behind a shelf to bathe the subject. He was quite tired of the smell.

[CowboyBlonde]

"We might need some soap for this guy." Scott joked.  The water alone washed away some of the smell.  The human most likely couldn\'t smell him anymore but to a vampire\'s senses he still had a stench.  The blonde would much rather take in the scent of lavender rather than dried urine.

Scott figured that Conner had done something to help ease the pain in Bryant\'s mind.  Scott glided over to the couch again and sat down and decided to make small talk.  "So is anyone waiting for you back home? Like should we be expecting anyone to come rescue you?" Scott said with a small chuckle.

[Black Philip]

OOC: I\'m trying a direction here Alex. Let me know if you disagree. I\'m not saying Bryant is immune to mind control, or that Conner\'s powers are off. But I like the idea, and it\'s something we can explore in any direction at a latter date.

The pain hadn\'t subsided. Bryant didn\'t even know Conner had done anything. The only thing Scott could have perceived was that Bryant was growing more accustomed to the pain. When Scott sat next to him, Bryant sensed the vampire was attempting to be friendly. He decided to go with his original strategy, and win Scott over.  

"Well, I was supposed to meet a client at Risk," Bryant said. "But he\'ll probably blame my absence on the fact that I\'m human. Most vampires perceive humans as lab rats and happy meals."

[realworldweirdo]

{OOC: It works - I was making that opening for you. Glad you took it. Back to our conversation about how there should be something special about Bryant to get Conner\'s attention. How about we make it a side effect of his autism? Since his brain works slightly differently.}

"No time for the soap," Conner said to Scott, his tone of voice reflecting that he wished he\'d picked a cleaner subject too. Even though he was older and thus had keener senses than Scott, he was also more schooled at ignoring them. After all, he\'d spent decades living among cattle and even before that had spent his years as a fledgling in an age where open sewers in the street were commonplace. It didn\'t mean the smell was pleasant, but it was nothing more than a tiny nuisance.

Bryant\'s whining, on the other hand, was more than a nuisance and he\'d piqued Conner\'s curiosity when he had disobeyed an implanted command.

"You, noisy human. What\'s your name? Get over here. Take off your socks and shoes and your shirt. Lay on the floor and hold still. I\'ll get a baseline from you first, and then I\'ll heal you if you promise to stop being so whiny."

While Bryant complied, Conner busied himself with gathering a handful of the bone wands and a small set of brown metal disks from the tabletop.

[CowboyBlonde]

Risk.  Scott had never been but he knew it was some sort of exclusive Vampire club.  Scott pondered teh idea for a moment and suddenly started to get flashes of the first (and since then, last) club he had been too in the city.  Club Zero where he met his maker, Jonathon.  The memory of his death flashed through his mind as well, snapping him back to reality.  It all seemed so long ago now.  Scott remembered how painful it was to watch the execution of the one he loved.  But all was different now that he had been with Conner for a few years, there wasn\'t a sad thought or painful feeling in the world since Conner came into Scott\'s life.

The room was beginning to look like something out of Harry Potter.  Scott had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t realized what Conner demanded of Bryant.  Scott was sort of dumb when it came to this kind of thing, so it probably wouldn\'t be the only time Scott\'s mind wondered tonight.

[Black Philip]

Bryant did as Conner asked. He took off his shoes and socks first. That was the easy part. The shirt was another matter. The broken ribs got in the way. It was torn near the bottom. Bryant decided it would be easier to rip it off. Blue, blood filled bruises covered the human\'s normally light complected skin. He laid down per instruction, and coughed hardly. His breathing was becoming more labored.

"Can we do this please," Bryant asked. "I\'m in so much fucking pain!"

He hurt tremendously, but didn\'t shed a tear. Bryant was used to putting up with the pain.

[realworldweirdo]

Conner watched Bryant prepare himself for the procedure impassively, waiting until he was arranged properly before moving in with his set implements.

The cold metal disks were placed in a line at intervals down Bryant\'s face and torso, starting with his forehead and ending just below his belly button. The thinnest of the wands was placed underneath Bryant\'s bare heels, barely in contact with the skin of his feet.

"Your body will go numb and you\'ll probably feel a buzzing, like a small electrical current," he instructed. "Scott, will you stay by his feet and make sure that rod doesn\'t move? It needs to stay in contact with his feet."

Selecting the thickest of the four wands he still had in his hands, he moved to sit cross-legged behind Bryant\'s head and pointed it at the crown of his skull. Then, drawing up the power in his blood, he fed it into the wand as he made an extremely light mental connection with Bryant.

[CowboyBlonde]

Without a word, Scott rushed over to the human and crouched at his feet.  Scott wasn\'t sure if he should grab the rods or grab Bryant\'s ankles.  Looking down, he needed to make a decision fast.  Conner was taking this very seriously, Scott could both see and feel it.  The blonde decided to grab the rods, in fear of snapping Bryant’s ankles if he were to thrash around while Scott were holding on tight.  Scott wasn\'t sure what to expect to happen next.  Everything seemed to be in place.  It could go either way from here and Scott was anxiously awaiting the outcome.