Welcome to Gaia! ::

"You were different then, that is true, but not I. You were an evil being. I was mearly possessed by one."

"In that sense, I suppose you are right. A vile spirit used my body and my powers to comit vile deeds. It isn't something I want to associate with my life as it is now."

"Oh, the spirit of Paimon is anything but destroyed. Heather expelled him from my body and put him to the brink inihilation, that is true, but that ghost still haunts the earth."

"Indeed." he replied, turning back to the bar, "Though unless he has by now gained a body and powers of his own, I doubt he would be much of a threat."

*Maximillions listens to the two as they chat about their pasts, but he shows no sign of it. He records the conversation in his mind, in case it might be important later, though he doubts it will. As the hours pass, his ice water becomes merely cold water, and then room temperature water. He doesn't sleep in all that time, or move, or even blink. The room is very still during the day. New York City was a busy, bustling place at all hours, but the population of the damned came to a pause from dawn to dusk. For vampires, the reason for this inactivity was obvious; unless they were underground, the daylight hours were simply not safe for roaming about. The other races seemed to keep quiet during the day to avoid running into too many mortals. There were mortals at night too, of course, but a great many of them were prostitutes, junkies, and the homeless... people who would not be missed by the general population of mortals. What's more, any witnesses would be thought of as crazy, high, or drunk. No one ever took someone seriously when he is wearing tattered clothes, has a ragged beard, smells of booze, and swears on the Holy Mother that he saw a guy get carried off by a werewolf. Some things stayed the same, in all worlds.

What would happen if all the mortals were forced to believe in the damned? They already did believe, on one level. In the back of their minds they knew when they saw something that seemed unreal. They told themselves that they were only fallible humans, that they must have imagined it, but in their hearts they knew. It was bad enough that the few hunters and intelligence organizations knew, but if they were forced to accept it in their conscious minds... well, they'd all attack, of course. All of them. And therein lurked the insane truth: they would win. They would take heavy casualties, yes, but there were 6 billion mortal humans in this world, and even if each of the damned killed a thousand puny humans before being crushed by their bodies, they would still be wiped out. It was a hopeless existence, really. Humans continued to advance, to build, to make progress. Lycans, demons, and vampires did not. They stagnated in holes and alleys, waiting. They clung to existence, collectively waiting for the day when they would finally be discovered and wiped out. The human race was doomed to destroy itself eventually, but it would undoubtingly destroy these poor nightwalkers first.

It was now the afternoon, and soon the mortals who clocked out at five would go home to their apartments. They would have dinner, or they would go hungry, then they would go out on the town or they would stay home. And then they would go to sleep or they would stay awake. Then the day would truly begin for the nightwalkers. They would mingle amongst each other, always suspicious, always on the brink of outright war. Perhaps they would hunt the creatures they called razorteeth. Perhaps the creatures called razorteeth would hunt them. They both came out to the same thing in the end.

Such were the thoughts of Maximillion Mardrate, the outsider, as he sat at long rest.

So he waited.*

*For the first time in hours, Max moved. He turned to Neko, still silent for a moment more... then gave her a wry, sheepish smile.* ...Sorry... habit.

"Later." She said, waving a hand as she kept her head down. She needed to drop the Illusion, but she was afraid of scaring everyone. She hated paradoxes like this.