From SuspireWiki

Visual Representation

Owning things that Own you

The Man

Deangelo, or "Imp" as he was called because of his slightly pointed ears and huge smile, was always familiar with showgirls even before he was old enough and became familiar with them. He was born in 1986 to a mother who wasn't exactly sure who the father was. She was a show girl working at a casino and had to stop when she began to show signs of pregnancy, which was when she found out she was pregnant to begin with.

Originally, Deangelo's future was bleak, but his grandmother convinced his mother to keep the baby and see it through, and she'd raise it. She carried through to term, not bothering to really particularly try to eat healthy, or stop smoking or drinking, or even doing lines of cocaine, so when he came out as a strong, healthy boy, people were shocked.

His mother named him Deangelo, after the man she hoped he was conceieved by. When he took the paternal test, it came up negative, though, and Deangelo was considered a bastard from a one-night stand. The story of his life, and death, as it turns out.

1986

Age: 2 minutes

"It's a boy! Momma! It's Deangelo's boy! I know it! I'm gunna name him Dee, Deangelo, like his daddy!"

Already set up for a disappointment, Deangelo was caretaken in the North Vista hospital and when he was strong enough to go home, his grandmother took him home. When he first learned to talk, his words were "Na-na" not "Ma-ma".

1996

Age: 10 years

Deangelo finally gets a taste of a world outside of the slummy, poor houses of South Las Vegas. Miss Emma, his grandmother, takes him to see the Olympic games in Atlanta. They get to see track and field and to the young boy, it's surreal how fast the men and women can move, and how far they can jump. The problem was that he couldn't see any use for it, outside of the negative.

His thoughts trailed to high jumping ("I bet Deshaun wouldn't have gotten caught by them boys if he could have hopped that fence...") and to sprinting ("I wish I could have run like that last week, Miss Emma wouldn't have picked me up from the principal's office and given me a whoopin'...") and nothing, not anything that his grandmother could do could shake his mindset from that which he was raised in. She wanted to show him that he could do things, be things outside of what his neighborhood creates. He didn't really understand.

1999

His first real taste of the streets came when he and some other hoppers saw the first person in their life get shot. He was stunned, but it was the first of many to come. Things were getting bad. The more people felt they were getting poorer, and the more people who were losing their jobs, the more the ranks of the street swelled. There was a lot of muscle without a boss, and a lot more hoppers than there were corners.

Deangelo watched the little misty spray in almost a slow motion ten feet from him, and right before he turned to run with the other boys, all he could think was, "So that's it? Too easy to die."

2002

Age: 16 years

"Boy, I done told you if I caught you with that mess you were done here. Get Out of My House!"

Deangelo picked up his pack, got his clothes, got his gun and left. He was running two corners now and had plenty of money coming in to finance himself a place, he just never got around to it. He more or less decided that the only family he knew was where he should be until he wasn't welcome anymore. He tried to kiss Miss Emma on the cheek before he left and she slapped him.

He walked out and got an apartment later that night. It wasn't too hard, people don't care about your age if you give them enough money to not care.

2003

Age: 17 years

Fall

He opened the fridge, nothing there. People always drinking his fucking shit and never giving it back. He was tired of roommates, he was tired of dealing with bullshit ghetto drama. Deangelo walks into the front room and kicks over his brand new flatscreen TV. The two girls in the room next to his two friends jump up and scream, and immediately run out of the room. It's a survival instinct, one picked up from the neighborhood. His two friends get up too.

"The fuck dude?"

"Get out."

Laughter. "Man you trippin' Imp. How you gunna bust up the TV like that, Blade is on man, that nigga be kickin' asses for like a minute. I ain't seen this in forever."

"Seriously man, get out. Take the girls home, or fuck 'em somewhere, I don't care. You gotta leave man. I ain't feelin' really social. Just leave."

"Man whatever, we up out."

Deangelo watched them gather up the girls, then leave and pile into their jeep. He closed the curtains, locked the door and set his forehead on the thin, hollow wood of the apartment door. "I gotta get the fuck outta this town."

Winter

Deangelo hopped out of his car and checked how things were going down. Never slow, coke sells itself in Vegas, it's just a matter of checking to make sure no other locals (or not locals) weren't slinging too close.

He got told that some boys from L.A. had opened up shop and run off a corner not too far from there. Asked if he could take on one more guy. Less profit for him, and hoppers are notorious for running off when shit goes down. He says he wants to meet the dude first.

Deangelo hops back into his car and heads up town. He stops along the way for some McDonalds and uses their bathroom to wash up. He slaps on some cologne and preens in the mirror for a minute before setting his hat and heading back to the door out, sipping his soda. He hops back in his car and heads down to the Strip.

"Imp's got a mind for this shit, you know what I'm saying? Since he took the reups we're pushing twenty more a week. I'm just saying, if he's saying that these L.A. boys are pushing in on our corners, it's probably happening."

"What do you wanna do with yourself, Imp?"

"I wanna work up here."

"The Strip?"

"Yeah."

Laughter. "Yeah young'n, don't we all. Look, you'll get some help with them L.A. boys, until then, make sure you young'ns talk with Scrap and pick up some tools. Oh, yeah, make sure yours works."

2004

Age: 18

Still Winter

Deangelo waited around the corner, he could feel his heart in his chest, and it felt like it was slamming against his sternum. But he was cool, like he were just waiting around corner to jump a friend and try to scare him. The L.A. boys had swelled ranks, picking up corner boys that Deangelo and others couldn't afford to add onto their team.

Deangelo wasn't muscle, but he wasn't going to get took, either. He'd seen the black SUV stop two streets back, and he knew that ride. The two hoppers next to him were all but ready to cut and run, and probably the steel in their hand was all that gave them the courage to stay.

Deangelo peeked around the corner, two of them, just meant to come shoot somebody in the head, scare off the rest. Three versus two, not exactly good odds, but Deangelo was going to make them good odds.

"When them niggas get to the cleaners down the way, we're going around the corner keyed up, got it?"

"Yeah."

"Wait for it."

Deangelo pulled up his hood, as if it would matter, everybody knew what corners were his and who ran them, and the police would certainly come and drag him in for questioning, but he did it anyway. The other two boys follow his lead. He slides back the top of his gun, it clicks. He exhales once, then dashes around the corner towards the postal mail box and the Las Vegas Sun news boxes. Immediately, he starts firing. The two boys behind him run out too and start firing as well. It isn't a split second later that there's return fire and the sound of feet hitting pavement. Behind him there's a little scream and body hitting asphalt. But up ahead there's the same, times two. He runs up and around the mailbox with his second and both of them empty two shots into the head of the boys.

"Fuck you nigga! This my shit here!"

"Fuck!"

The sound of Nikes hitting pavement follows them as they run off. Later that night, he and his new found accomplice in crime dump their guns off in Lake Mead and go see Scrap for some new heat.

Spring

Deangelo pulls up to the left of his flavor of the week and flops onto his back. She says something that gets lost in his brain, he laughs, it seems to amuse her that he laughs. A few minutes later he looks over at his phone on the box next to the bed in her apartment.

"Baby, I gotta go. I got some shit, you wanna head down to the club around 10 later?"

"Nah, I gotta be at work then, I got a show to put on you know!"

"Yeah, I know you do. If it's anything like this one just now, them niggas are fucked."

Summer

"What?!" It ain't me. No. No. No.

2005

Age: 19

Deangelo turned off his phone after it kept ringing over and over and ran his left hand over his head. Goddamnit...' was the reoccurring thought in his head. There wasn't a second that went by that he didn't wish he'd done something different. Apparently it's not okay to just leave money in an envelope in the mailbox, you're supposed to see your baby girl. What the fuck did he know about doing this father shit?

He shook the thoughts out of his head by splashing some water on his face. He couldn't let this get to him anyway, he had a meeting tonight that he was asked to be at. He was pretty sure this was his chance to get off the corner, he had a nice complexion, didn't look mean. They call folks like him "the hustle" in the game. He's the type they had handle the meetings with other crews, and bigger players, if they could prove they could do it. He was sure this was it.

He got in his car and left.

...He walked outside, looking at the neon and flashing bulbs. He looked at the next person to pass him and handed off his ticket to the valet. "What the fuck do I know about development? The fuck am I doing looking about the city for this shit? I'm not a fucking real estate agent!" went through his mind. He knew better than to say shit out loud though. "This is bullshit. I wanted to work the Strip, not work like I'm Re-fucking-Max."

2006

Age: 20

Winter

Deangelo pushed open the door to the side room of the buiness office. This place was niiiiice, and the window could view the whole city. A white man was sitting next to Juicy, "Rashid" today, and they were talking like they were cut from the same cloth or something. Deangelo resisted the urge to roll his eyes or do something that gave away his intense urge to call out fake when he saw it.

"Here he is, my little man, Deangelo. I want you to meet who we've been doing work for, for some time."

"Nice to meet you, Mister Reese."

"Rashid tells me you're who I have to thank for the finds down south, Deangelo." His voice set Deangelo on edge, it was too practiced, it made him feel like he should be at ease, which instantly made him want to resist that urge. He smiled cordially, his nice "the hustle" smile.

"I just try to do what feels right, make things work."

"Making things work is a good profession to be in, Mister Bell."

Who the fuck calls him Mister Bell besides anyone downtown in a precinct? It made his skin crawl, like it just felt absolutely unnatural to him. He didn't know what it was, but it just struck him so off. He couldn't shake that feeling all night until he left the meeting room.

2007

Age: 21

Oh god it hurt. It hurt so bad. Deangelo tried shoving the steering wheel of of his legs, but it felt like they were being chewed on by a steel shark with glass teeth. Blood dripped off of his forehead, onto the roof of the car. He was upside down, pinned between the steering wheel and his seat sideways. Should have worn that seatbelt. He was vaguely sure he could smell gasoline, or was that piss? There was sounds outside of the car. Right on the strip, outside of the office where he'd just met Damien and some asshole in a Ferrari creamed him. The funniest thought popped into his head, "Who the fuck drives a Ferrari on a Tuesday night anyway?"

The voices got closer, and he could vaguely make out that they weren't worried sounding, they were angry as hell sounding.

"What do you mean my fault? He's the one who pulled out without a fucking signal, I don't even care if he's yours."

"If he's dead I'm going to kill you."

"Because that's reasonable. Kill another Kindred over a fucking mortal? You owe me a new car!"

Deangelo wasn't sure, it could have been anything, after all he was upside down in a wreckage of his car, and blood was rushing to his head. But he was pretty sure that there was a snarl that sounded like it came from a dog or something right before scuffling and sounds of a fight and violence outside. Maybe only lasted a couple seconds though. Or maybe it was longer. Hell, maybe it wasn't even real. Deangelo couldn't tell. Things were getting hazy, blurry. The red interior leather of his dashboard was starting to look a little grey.

Suddenly the noises stopped outside, there was a moment of silence, that bad sort of silence, before the door next to his body started being ripped away from the car. It made a terrible shrieking noise as it was bent back. Thank god, the ambulance was he....holy shit it's a man!

"Let's get you out of here and mended."

Later, Deangelo would have wished he'd just left him in the car to either get patched up or bleed out before the ambulance got there. Instead, he wound up dying in a different sort of way.

2007

Age: 30 minutes, dead; (Reference Point in Violet Townsend's background)

Deangelo watched the woman who looked about as harmless as a local hooker ream into Damien. She barged in while he was in another room, and he didn't head back in initially. Instead, he watched through a cracked door. He felt scared, more scared than he'd ever felt in his life, like she'd slaughter him on the spot, and he didn't understand why. He just felt it. That feeling is probably what kept him from slinging open the door the first time she called him an "it". It wasn't until he heard "Get rid of it." that he mustered up his nerve again, and walked out into the room. His look said it all, better than he could, bitch, who are you calling an it?. He didn't even have to say anything.

Summer

Deangelo swerved his vehicle, a flashy new Escalade right off the side of the road and into the next lightpost. He grasped his chest and pulled himself out of the not-very-wrecked tank on wheels. He didn't even care about the vehicle, he thought he was shot. He ran his hands all over his body, trying to feel where that piercing pain felt came from, then there was another, on his chest, and another on his side. It felt like he was being scoured. He stripped off his jacket and shirt, then tugged up his undershirt to look at his chest. Nothing. He was just imagining it. Or was he? There was a very distinct feeling in his blood, he felt enraged and betrayed and sad and cold all at once. He didn't understand.

He swung down, on foot now, to the local gathering spot. As it turns out, Cha was there. He learned about Blood Sympathy then, and as soon as he did, he clammed up cold. As if just speaking about it was equated to snitching, he didn't go that route. In fact, Deangelo was very much like that when he was first embraced, for some time...

Fall

Deangelo leaned back in his seat, he was mad-dogging the security guard at the bar, and the security guard was staring him down in return. Deangelo shouldn't be here, but he didn't really care. He'd been questioned and interrogated by Michelle too many hours, for too many nights. He wasn't going to say anything, Sheriff's just another word for cop and he was no snitch. Even if he knew damn well that he all but told Cha that his sire got murdered, and he was 99.9999% sure he knew who was responsible (Violet, his grandsire), he was going to straight up lie to the vampire copper about it, to his face. "Fuck that shit..."

His thoughts wandered back to the security guard who grew bored with the staring contest when Deangelo seemed to drift somewhere else mentally. Maybe he thought Deangelo was looking at him to try and provoke something. Who knows? Deangelo was trying to decide, were he to get into a fight with that same guard, if it would it constitute a Masquerade Breach? Probably. "That's not even fair" he thought. "If I wasn't 'the little black boy', I bet it wouldn't be one." He found himself imagining beating the absolute shit out of the security guard for no apparent reason, and then licking the blood of the man's off of his hands, his fangs lengthened of their own accord and split his lip, causing him to jolt out of his day(night?) dreaming state and reach up to touch his broken lips. He sighed. He concentrated, like he were trying to will himself to take a shit while he was alive, and the fangs slid away.

"I suck at being a vampire." was the next thought that filtered into his thoughts.

Winter

"Oh shit, my nigga look, it's fucking Imp dude! Right over there!"

Deangelo verbalized, while standing next to Michelle Costillo, "Shiiiit". He ran his hand over his mouth and murmured, "Just a second, gotta handle this." With that said, he turned and started walking to the pair, standing outside the entrance to the show with their girls on hand. He looked warily at the security camera for a moment, then inclined his head for a moment to the four. "S'up? Hey ladies. What it doin'?"

Predictably, the response that came back was essentially, "same shit, different day, except, where the fuck you been?!". The group looked past him at Michelle then looked back. The guys raised their eyebrows at the woman, but Deangelo shrugged it off as best he could. Then, he tried to explain that he was out of the game. The two guys shooed the ladies off and said they'd see them later. That's when the pair got serious. Deangelo gave Michelle an apologetic look, then moved off with the pair to a nearby alleyway out of street (and camera) view.

"Nah, nigga, we serious. Where you been?"

"I'm out of the game now."

"You can't even just be like 'I'm out', Imp. You ain't hold no time for nobody, and there's three folks there now doin' time for you. It ain't how it works, nigga."

"It's how it works for me. Look you both sh--" His sentence was cut off by the flash of steel. Young folks are quick to flash the chrome, and before Deangelo could even try to Dominate the other man, he felt a seering pain right in his chest twice.

"No! You look! Fuck You! My cousin doing time for your punk ass!"

He staggered back, more afraid of the muzzle blast of fire in such close quarters. He made a noise of pain, clutched his chest. In his brain it was all red, all hate, all death, but he knew about the Masquerade. The two were already running off by the time Deangelo purposefully crumpled to the ground, clutching his chest. He oozed some of his vitae out of the wounds, then stared at it while no one had run up to him yet. He stared at it like he'd just given up his first born. Through the haze of anger and vicious desire to kill, a thought came to his head, "Fuck, it took me three nights to get that much blood. Fuck!" Deangelo could hear footsteps of a jog. It was Michelle.

"Wow. Nice. I'll call someone, play dead."

"Wait! No! Violet! She'll...argh." Fuck. He could hear Michelle leaving, and others rushing up. Time to play dead.

Deangelo realized that it's the weirdest thing in the world to attend your own funeral.

He was later heard saying, after being yanked out of the morgue and replaced by essentially a John Doe case (and promptly getting extorted, fucking vampires!): "Man, fuck 2007, seriously."

2008

Spring

Deangelo shoveled gravel into the yard for Violet, his grandsire - but Miss Emma she was not. In fact, he wasn't ever sure if she was just going to come up to him one day and say "I know you know." before stabbing him to death. But so far, everything had been okay. Except for when he got shot up next to Michelle. That earned him a racial slur plus idiot attached to the end. Like it was his fault that he got shot in an alleyway. He covered the base of the ugly cactus with some more of the white rocks, then muttered something about being Mexican. He found himself working off debt with manual labor a lot more than he was okay with. In fact, he felt like if he weren't trying to find blood, he was doing more debt handling. It was a vicious circle, he couldn't spend enough time hunting, or really even have the right to hunt, so he'd have to ask Violet for some blood, which led to more debt. It sucked.

He had the reoccurring thought again, "I suck at being a vampire."

Summer

Deangelo got out of his car outside of Elysium. He'd only started coming recently somewhat regularly. The place made him nervous. James Stuart looked at him for a moment and stopped him short of entering. Deangelo expected something snotty and must have had the look on his face when he greeted the other Kindred. Mister Stuart told him to relax, he just wanted to talk. Deangelo listened.

It was a pretty good pitch, but Deangelo was noncommittal. They almost had him at "lots of blood", but Deangelo stopped himself short. He shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not really into all that Mister, Miss, Madam, Blah Blah Blah, white people shit." That last part came out before he could stop it, which drew a look. Deangelo shrugged as if to say 'it happens' with the gesture. Deangelo took James' number, then turned to head back to the Elysium for the night.

He watched an argument about the state of wheat and mortals to feed from in safety of the city's security cameras for awhile, then piped up. "I could do something on the strip, y'know. I know people." The room went quiet for a moment, then a quip manifested from the room at large. "Yeah, we know you know people. And you're really amazing in your ability to make friends with people with guns. How'd that turn out last time? Oh right..." Deangelo winced. He didn't quite understand the statement "Kindred have long memories" but he figured it out after weeks and months and almost a full year's worth of harassment over the alley incident.

Winter

Deangelo slammed the door after him, he kicked the nearest thing outside of the Elysium. Another night of being raked through the coals. This shit wasn't even funny anymore. He was frustrated, and the Invictus offer had dried up months ago. Not that he was really considering it at the time, but still, being told that you're too much of a fuck-up and a bastard to be brought up to the covenant by the same Invictus who'd offered to get you in? That's a bitter pill to swallow.

Vasily Petrovich saw Deangelo's little fit as he was walking out of the Elysium and called to him, then jogged up. They chatted about the Carthians for awhile, and the offer was tentatively made to "come hang out with us sometime" in similar wording, except in his thick Russian accent. Deangelo shrugged again. He understood working together as a group, but he didn't like the idea that he might have to sacrifice anything for anyone else. Deangelo was still selfish, even if it was costing him in the long run.

2009

Age: 2 years dead

Summer

Deangelo watched Veles open up the underside of the dog and hold it down as it howled and spilled it's blood out onto the floor. This was some kind of a divination ritual or something that he was invited to, if only to show him what the Acolytes were all about. Stabbing dogs and reading signs from that? Not really his thing. He watched the blood more interestedly than the dog-death-divination reading. So much blood going to waste. God he was so hungry, all of the time. It didn't help that they literally didn't do anything except finger paint or something in the blood. God. So hungry.

That's when Deangelo decided to concoct his plan. He needed to get himself some turf, a place to call his in the city; he needed somewhere he could hunt without having to pay for a week of hunting or beg blood off of someone. He knew what he wanted, he wanted to be able to get a piece of the Strip. Not the whole strip, of course, that was Violet's turf, but maybe a piece of the whole. That'd be so awesome to be able to hunt and feed and not starve to death if he had to use some blood for a couple nights in a row.

Winter

"Dayam, that bitch is crazy..." Deangelo watched the stalking Daeva, Cha from the tinted windows of his stolen Escalade (okay, so it wasn't stolen, he just encouraged people to give him cars on occasion!). "Wonder if she knows she walkin' up on those topper boys, they gunna hate her brown love ass."

Sure enough, she tried to push Daeva swoon on the group and they weren't having any of it. He shook his head as the group started to advance on her. Probably thought she was going to be an easy take and ship back to the other side. He started to open the door of his Escalade when she slapped the piss out of one of them. That earned her a retaliatory strike, and Deangelo winced. Worse, they started grabbing and dragging her towards an alleyway.

"Motherfucker." Deangelo murmured to himself as he pushed out of the SUV. "Man... 'Ey niggas! Leave that scrawny ass bitch alone!"

It had the opposite effect of what he intended, they dropped the playing-mortal Cha to the ground and immediately started kicking the shit out of her as a group. Deangelo pulled out the steel of a gun and clicked the hammer back. He fired a shot at the group, just one, but the shot was enough to scare the hoppers off. He jogged over to the Carthian and helped her up, then got her over into his car.

"The fuck you doin'? These niggas here don't hear nobody they don't know."

Cha rambled about working over blocks in her heavily accented English-Spanish mix and he blinked a few times as he got into the driver's side of the Escalade. She asked him if his SUV was new, and he said "Yep." just like he always said every time he had a new car. He was about to pretend to brag about how he could afford a car a week if he wanted to, and try to shoot game when he was being bitten in the front seat. At first he tried to fight her off, thinking she was frenzied, but then he realized she was just after blood. Shiiiiit. That was almost a week's worth of blood before he could unpry her off of him.

"Motherfucker! What the fuck! What the fuck! I'mma freak out and kill somebody when I hunt tomorrow! Then I'mma get shit on by them again! Fuck!"

2010

Age: 3 years dead

Winter, a little over one week before game start

He'd had enough of this bullshit. Enough of the jokes, time to make it serious. Time to make his way.

Deangelo walked into Elysium and closed the door behind him. The first person he saw, Ephemeral Deville, he Dominated to Shut the Fuck Up. Then the second, Addison Whitfield (his Kindred relation!). Then the third, James Stuart. He was in the process of going to do it to the fourth when Cha grabbed him and drug him out of the Elysium.

2011

Winter, four nights before game start

"Well, I'm just saying that maybe you shouldn't act like a corner thug and you won't get treated like one." Deangelo watched "Tony" through increasingly slitted eyes. Deangelo felt like he was being hounded, being harassed, being cornered. His fangs started to sharpen and lengthen underneath his lips before he could really think about it. He snarled back at Anthony almost immediately, "What the fuck you tryin' to say? That folks like me are incapable of doin' shit to get noted?"

Anthony Lazarak just looked at Deangelo like he were stupid. "Well... yeah. You people tend to--" Deangelo snarled. "You people? The fuck's that mean you stupid bitch motherfucker?"

Deangelo didn't strike first, his natural inclination to puff up and look strong in the face of any threat was something second nature to him, survival instinct. But maybe not so much with the vampire world. Tony hauled off and punched him and Deangelo heard a crack of bone. That was it. Deangelo yanked out his gun and pointed it right in Anthony's face, hammer cocking back on the huge revolver in one swift motion. "Yeah what now bitch? This shit'll set you back a co--arghgah!" Deangelo's threat of handgun violence was squelched when Anthony decided to pummel the fledgling Kindred in the side lot of Gold Rush.

After fetal positioning for awhile during the brief pummelling, the aggression from the Gangrel stopped and a simple line was said before he walked off, "Stupido ragazzo. Idiota. Learn how Kindred fight."

Winter, two nights before game start

"Hmmm. 'Ey nigga, you Deangelo?" The one wearing the black shades and black hoodie piped up as Deangelo passed by him on his way down the street towards his favorite hunting spot. Deangelo knew not to pause, hesitate or anything, but he momentarily forgot his street smarts after a couple years of being away from it. He pauses and looked back at the group of three. "Yeah, that's that nigga! Get him!"

Deangelo took off on a full out sprint, but to no avail, holding up jeans in one hand slows down even the fastest runner. Deangelo hits the ground hard and then the beating commences. Somewhere between the pummeling of bats, pipes and chains is someone saying "don't fucking cause no more problems, bitch!" over and over again. After an eternity (or ten seconds or so) the group kicks him one or two more times before leaving his battered body on the ground.

Deangelo groaned in pain. More blood wasted. Point taken, assholes.