Character fiction from a troupe Vampire: The Masquerade LARP...
The Aftermath
by Simon W.
Nyx didn't know why the truck was slowing down. They hadn't thought that far ahead. They'd jumped in, disabled the driver and then immediately jumped into the trailer, by going through it. This was their chance to stop what Pentex was doing before it got too big to really hurt anyone.
Nyx still wasn't sure what to make of Pentex. The more they'd worked for them and the more they'd spied on them, the worse it had felt. Nyx was a pragmatist; they knew that even anything as simple as doing data analysis for such an organization was doing harm but sometimes you have got to break a few eggs to destroy a corrupt chicken farm. Or some analogy like that. But the fact of the matter is that, as far as they could tell, Pentex hadn't hurt them personally. If the Anarchs didn't have this strange alliance with this one group of Werewolves, Nyx would probably had tried to keep working for Pentex in order to keep spying on them. But that wasn't going to work and so Nyx had gathered every last bit of information they could on the Abomination project and given it to the Anarchs. And tonight they were here to help definitively end the project, along with some other former Cammies, Judge Stone, and the weird Werewolves. Tonight was effectively going to be Nyx turning in their resignation.
Tails, what a name, was the guy running the group of Werewolves. He'd given a mission briefing and combined with his packs' intelligence and Nyx's they had figured out that the project involved something called Get of Fenris kinfolk and Brujah. Pentex was making shock troops, or attempting to anyway. The process was notoriously difficulty and most test subjects would die. But Nyx knew that there were two successes who were on this convoy, along with all of the necessary ingredients to make more subjects once the truck got to the Pentex facility. It was Nyx's job to make sure that everything inside this truck was destroyed. It seemed a straightforward enough task; breaking things was something Nyx was naturally good at.
The truck Nyx was inside right now was the middle of the convoy. They suspected, since it was the most defended position, that the equipment would be in there. And as their eyes adjusted to the dim lighting it was obvious that had been a good supposition. Vials of blood in suspension, lots of computer equipment, and very breakable looking scientific equipment met their eyes. Nyx started casually destroying the crates nearest them. A strange sound made them look up and stare at the other end of the trailer. Two figures were there. Two enormous figures, easily seven feet tall and they were built like tree trunks. It was difficult to describe their enormity since they also looked vaguely like people, just really large, really angry, really unhinged people. Nyx locked eyes with them and recognized something in them, a familiar hint of fanaticism tinged with suppressed rage. Maybe, Nyx thought, they were more Brujah than Get of Fenris, whatever that was, and there was a way to get out of this situation in a rational way.
"I don't suppose you boys want to discuss philosophy, do you?" Nyx asked.
Their answer was to raise glowing red fists and run at Nyx roaring gutturally. And thus the fighting began. It wasn't anything close to a fair fight. They were easily as fast and as strong as Nyx was, and they had something else... some way to making Nyx's punches on them hit Nyx instead. Sheer stubbornness kept Nyx in the fight for as long as possible. At the very least it was doing a good job of destroying everything else in the trailer.
Just as Nyx was well and truly losing the fight and pondering what a crap deal it was to die in a tractor trailer fighting against monsters created by the literal personification of a late-stage capitalist hellscape, the back doors were wrenched open from the outside by Judge Stone. He was the Anarch that was here to essentially watch the former Cammies to see if they were pulling their weight. As he opened the door, Arctos flew into the truck and started spitting out some sort of acrid smelling liquid. It was ignited somehow, Nyx couldn't see, and the interior of the trailer just erupted into a firestorm. All of the remained equipment and the two Abominations caught fire. They didn't die quietly or gracefully. And in that moment, Nyx felt something, some connection between themselves and the dying men. There was some visceral, familial feeling that they were feeling now that it was being severed.
Nyx didn't even notice that Judge Stone had interposed himself between them and the fire. They were suddenly lost in a series of memories that hadn't made any sense before. Digging themselves out of the ground to be met by a bunch of people in suits who seemed to expect them there. Those first six months when Pentex was teaching them how to be a vampire and how some nights when they woke up they were nearly entirely drained of blood and starving. The glee that the Pentex operatives had shown the first time Nyx had realized that when they got into a fight their fists would glow burning red and their hits were able to even hurt Werewolves. The fact that Nyx had been shipped out to California right around the same time the decision was made to move the Abomination project facilities out there. Things which had been disjointed and unconnected before suddenly came into sharp and horrifying relief.
The drive back to the gathering passed by in a blur as Nyx was lost in their own thoughts. When they got back, Vincent and Arctos tried to be cagey about what had happened until Dahlia sharply reminded them that they were still probationary and there were no secrets among the Anarchs the way there were in the Camarilla. That was when Nyx told everyone assembled that they had found Abominations, and that they were... family.
"You mean...they were your broodmates?," Genie asked concernedly.
"No," said Nyx, "they were my children."
Nyx had never seen the Malkavian look so unsettled in the 18 months since they had met. And the look on Genie's face was echoed on Vincent's and eventually as the implications rippled out into the rest of the room everyone looked vaguely horrified.
Later that night Nyx approached Judge Stone. "You're good at genealogy, yeah? I need to find the vampire who made me. I need to know why he did it. And maybe.... we'll talk about philosophy."
