Jillian and Ajax come stumbling in her door laughing. Jillian's cloths were in shambles and her lip was bleeding thanks to her blush. "I can't believe you threw that guy through a window. What the fuck Ajax." Jillian said planting herself hard on the couch. "And why that girl? Cranked out hooker. We could have stopped at the Gamestop and got us something real thick and juicy." Jillian said, and then laughed at a past memory, "Did I ever tell you bout how I found Charlie hanging out of a dumpster, torpered off his ass."

"Hey I told that guy that if he made one more comment about your ass I'd throw him out a window, nobody calls my best friend's ass fat. Besides did you see the girl he was there with, she had a bunch of bruises on her arms, that dickhead was nothing but a piece of shit bully." He attempts to sit on the battered couch but really it's more of a graceless flop, thank goodness nothing less than a nuke could do anymore damage to the couch. "As for the hooker, what are you complaining about, you said she looked good in those hot pants and hell we went to Gamestop two nights ago, remember I had to play wingman and ended up with the fat chick who wouldn't shut up about her Night Elf Princess." He shakes his head and begins laughing out loud at the memory of the girl touch his muscles, actually drooling while doing so, and calling him hotter than Mr. T. "A Dumpster? What the Fuck happened to him?"

"It was a Sorceress, and as far as the Hooker's hotpaints, I said I would look good in those hot pants." Jillian said with another smile. "As far as what happened to Chuckie I don't know man, got his dick sucked to hard or something."

"Maybe you should take off your shiney armor once in a while there Sir T." Jillian said with a smack in the arm.

"Yeah Sorceress, that's what it was, she kept saying 'I'm going to put a spell on you', that's some Gitmo level torture right there." Ajax laughs again but something changes in his face, it seems to suddenly become more serious. "I'd never thought I'd see the day when somebody said I resembled a knight in shinning armor, I'll have to remember this one."

Jillian heard his tone change and looked to Ajax, "Whats eating you man? You were all smiles until a minute ago?"

"I helped Katrina move in the other day, we talked. Had what do you call it? a moment?" He rubs his forehead as the buzz on the evening's meal was beginning to wear off. "She pretty much said I was a good man, I tried to tell her she was wrong but she wouldn't hear about it. She told me what happened to her, back in Russia, confided in me and .... and looked at me like I was a rock. It scared the fucking shit out of me, I am terrified that if she learned about me, things I've done, she'll hate me." He pauses for a second. "And hate herself for trusting me."

"Dude, we have all done some bad shit." Jillian says looking at her friend with a worried look in her eyes, "Whatever ever happened happened man. Kat ain't gonna think any less of you, she is a Kindred too you know." Jillian placed her hand on his shoulder.If that girl got into his head some how and messed with his mind I am gonna tear out her pretty brown locks

"I need to tell you about me. You're probably the best friend I've ever had and you deserve to know what I am."

"Aight Jax, what are ya?" Jillian said with a look in her eyes that said, Impress me...

"I was born back in '55, had an older brother and a younger sister, a father that drank himself to sleep every night and a mother beaten down by the demands on a Brooklyn apartment wife and the old man's fists when he was drunk enough. My big brother looked out for me growing up until he got a draft notice and ended up with the Marines in 'Nam, I was 13 when he went over and while he was gone I started hanging out with the wrong crowd."

"I was a big kid and I took to fighting easy so I found a place in the local street gang, stealing from stores when I wanted something or stealing from Bodega's just for fun. My big brother made it back in one piece and tried to get me out but he was pretty messed up himself from what happened over there and by that time I was hooked. Whole Country and NYC was a shithole back then, the economy sucked, Nixon was President and gas station lines were a mile long, so even if I'd wanted to be normal there wasn't much chance of being a success."

Jillian just made a motion with her hand like come on, come on. knowing there was more coming.

"I was feared in Brooklyn by the time I was 18, second in command of the toughest gang in the borough. That same year my big brother met a girl and they got married, had a kid and even named it after me. Little Eric, even trusted me to look after him sometimes. Still I was a full on street tough and I spent my nights taking what I wanted, destroying what I couldn't have or chasing Punk Princesses at CBGBs."

"One night in '79 some assholes tried to pull an extortion racket on our turf, we went to confront them and their leader pulled a gun in one hand and knife in the other. I'd become the head of my local gang by then and stepped up to the challenge, broke both of the guy's arms in two places, his jaw and kneed him so hard in the groin they probably had to cut off his balls. That was my last night alive. The whole thing had been watched by a vampire and his Gangrel bodyguard. I got knocked out that night and well never woke up again alive."

"So you beat a guy's ass... big fucking deal" Jillian said simply, "You know how many peoples bones I've broken and shit. It was sanctioned in a ring too. I kicked all kinds of ass."

"The vampire was an Invictus, but even they hated him since he was a grade A slimeball even in vampire politics. His favorite trick was setting up neonates and gaining boons against them to have them do his dirty work for him. He wanted another bodyguard, I fit the bill and his bodyguard became my sire. Dumbass Invictus asshole fucked up with the Life Boon he wanted over me and I ended up owing it to my sire and not him.

Jack was a good guy and the toughest son of a bitch I've ever seen, just too damn honorable to ever think about trying to get out from under that fucking Life Boon he owed the asshole and it was made clear to me that I would be assisting him in protecting the asshole and doing some other jobs as well. Over the next decade or so I lost count of the number of things I killed. Vampires, hunters, everything under the night's sky wanted The Asshole even deader and Jack and I kept him around."

"Like that song Boy Named Sue, somebody would try something and we'd end them and wait for the next idiot to commit suicide by Gangrel Claws. I didn't really give it much thought until one night back in '94 I was at some kindred art event being put on by another Invictus Daeva who was also nice to me, she was showing off her new childe who was a hotshot young artist. Well that childe was the hit of the party and everything went just like it always did until he saw me and called me Uncle Eric."

"What the Fuck?" Jillian said, "He was your nephew? really? Your kidding me?" Jillian already knew the answer though, he wasn't kidding. She could see that

"My nephew had become an artist in his teens and wowed the New York scene, only to get diagnosed with cancer when he was 19. His sire thought ghouling him would destroy his free will and embraced him instead to have his talent last forever. After that night whenever he was allowed the kid and I would hang out and I did my best to teach him how to survive in the Kindred world, his sire was a great lady but far more of a social warrior so I taught him how to be a man. About a year later I had to go out of the city to do a job for my "boss" and while my sire and I were away something happened. Some self styled Van Helsing learned that Daeva lady was a vampire and burned down her haven. She wasn't home. My nephew Eric was." Ajax's right hand begins to shake and his left moves calmly over to hold it in place.

"So you tracked down that Hellsing wanna be and ganked that mother fucker right?" Jillian said missing the ticks of his hands. "You okay man? Come on keep spill'an, Mama's here to listen."

"It would be easy to lie and say it was just the fury of the moment, that I let the beast take over and that I wasn't in control of what I did next. But I can't lie to you or Katrina if I ever tell her this. When you care for someone I don't think you should lie to them." His eyes seem to almost go blank for a second before returning to normal. "I started by finding out who he was and learning everything about him. It was pretty easy, he wasn't really good at covering his tracks. Then I looked at his life and who was around him. I gutted his best friend first, in a back alley off the Bowery. Used the claws to send a message. Next was his boss at his day job. Hit him with a car on lower 3rd avenue and then rolled over him in second gear as he tried to crawl away. His brother was next. Easy one, the guy liked to jog at night in Central Park and one night a mugging went bad."

"Wow you went for Blood didn't you man. Holy shit." She says "It was like a one man war. Wait what year was this?" Jillian turned in her seat to look at her Friend, engrossed in his story.

"The parents were hard, they were just so pleasant and friendly, the mom and dad I'd always wanted but never had. In the end I think it was misplaced rage at my own parents that allowed me to drain them dry and then burn down their house, the place where the hunter had grown up." A look of pure shame crosses his face and his voice becomes low. "His wife was last. I left a few false signs out while I was doing this to make sure Van Helsing was still hunting me and not protecting her. He got home one night and found her tied up and gagged in the living room. I told him I'd let her live, all he had to do was to write down on a piece of paper how he had murdered everyone he ever loved. That if he took the blame for it all and killed himself I'd let her go. The guy had all sorts of weapons and stuff in his house so the cops would believe it. He wrote his confession, word for word as I told him to write it and then stuck a knife into his gut like I told him too."

"And you killed her too right?" Jillian asked leaning back on the couch quietly wondering how the end of this story was going to play out.

"And while he was bleeding out on the ground watching his wife while he was dying, I slit her throat and licked her blood as he watched her die moments before he did. Something inside me broke right then. I left the house. My sire and my late Nephew's sire found me in a Brooklyn Alley about twenty minutes before the sun came out. I'd poured a can of gasoline over myself but ... but... it was raining and I couldn't get a spark. They had to stake me to save my unlife."

"That was '95. My sire finally bought it in '99 about two weeks before Invictus superasshole got his when A Prince tossed a book of matches on his undead ass. Ever since then I've been existing with that over my head."

"Wow yo, that is a hell of a story to tell. You feel better now that you got that off your chest?" Jillian asked

"Yes. But if ... if you hate me I'll understand."

"Dude, he killed your fucking nephew. Your Name sake. That is some cruel ass shit. Blood for Blood man. Blood for blood." Jillian said. "You know what I did when my sire got offed?"

"What?" He asks, looking at Jillian with interest.

"I killed every single vampire responsible." Jillian said, "Hunted em down and slaughtered em like cattle. All of em but one. Only one got away. You know what I did to that one?" Jillian had a serious look in her eyes now. One that paralleled the look that Ajax had in his.

"Swore to kill him?"

"I'm hunting him down. Traveled across the god damn country on foot. Clearing out Brood den after brood den looking for this ass hole. Worked with the kindred in each city to do it too. Once I found out my guy was gone I moved on. Part of me thinks this guy was playing with me. Part of me wonders if he actually exist. Or if I made him up to give my Requiem some purpose. "

"I don't think you're crazy and even if you were there is nothing wrong with cleaning out Brood dens. Even if you're fighting a lost cause, it's something worth fight for."

"Well your a fucking optimist aren't you." Jillian said with a smack in the arm. "If I find him, I am going to kill him." Jillian says with lethality in her voice.

"Well I believe that was implied." The Big Gangrel fired back with a smile. A weak one, very weak in fact but still the first he'd had since he begun to tell her his story.

"Look dude, I know that your Ghosts haunt the shit outta you. Mine does too." She pauses for a minute, "Dude, I don't believe in a higher power, or god or whatever. But what I do believe in is this. We are all chaos. and some times Chaos makes sense, us two running into each other. That makes sense."

"You're beginning to sound like Katrina, different supreme being or lack of one, but the principals are the same. Still I kinda like what I am hearing." He then looks at her with a half serious look on his face. "I'm glad that God, Gods, The Flying Pasta Monster or whatever the fuck it's call, chaos or hell even Cthulhu put us together."

Jillian just nods, "Totally," She pauses, "Tell you what, I'll help you with your demons, you help me with mine. And until we get sick of each other we roll together as family."

"Yeah I would like that a lot."

"Awesome." Jillian said. "Aight Daylights coming I am gonna hit it. Crash in the bathroom or in my room. both are light tight. Just don't get any ideas." she said obviously being playful

"Hey now stealing you from the women of the world would probably be too great a sin for even me to deal with." The voice was playful, like the tone any normal guy would use when teasing his best friend.

"Your God damned right it would." Jillian said with a laugh as she turned in for the day.

End Scene