"Hey Shotty, what's good?" Hands met, shoulders bumped. Then Deion added, "Man, I'm taller than you." Silence lingered, followed by, "Nigga you can be so white sometimes. Real." Deion laughed, then gestured him into the office. While the much younger aspiring rapper walked in to the studio, Deion looked at his back and grumbled without sound. He hated when he dated himself. As the years were going by, he could feel himself getting more disconnected from the people who he relied on to keep him grounded.

Deion went through phases to reconnect himself. Invictus thought it was retarded. Dragons thought it was a bit counter-productive, reversing change and all. Acolytes disliked the jolting back to a previous being. Unaligned called it a mid-death crisis (har, har, get it? Mid-death? yeah, lame, Deion knew). But it was important to him.

He semi-regularly gave free studio time (one night) to locals trying to break into the business. This gave him a couple benefits. The first, is, usually people do not forget when you help them to try and overcome or "save their life". Lots of young men, women and others believe they can only save their life through being a star. That belief aside, being the man who kept it real to his roots earns you the ability to have favors. Favors to Kindred? Well, you already know the value of that.

Straddling the street and society is difficult, but rewarding. Zachary Pandolfi saw the benefit, that's why he embraced the kid in Los Angeles. It wasn't an easy beginning to Deion's Requiem, but he made it work. He didn't really have any interest in Zach's covenant work, and honestly, Zachary didn't even go out of his way to try and press Deion that way. Instead, Deion naturally fit with the Carthian Movement, who was extremely accepting of him, when others were... not.

Still his upbringing did manage to do some things. He saw some weird shit sometimes. It also probably desensitized him to a lot which he would later encounter with semi-regular frequency. That desensitization you can fight, but you can't really ever overcome it. It's not like you can unsee what has been seen, at least not without Dominate. And let's not even go there. Dominate is motherfucking evil, says Deion.

As time went on, Deion requested his release, which was subsequently granted by his sire and he formally joined in with the Carthian Movement there in Los Angeles. It was a small(ish) group, mostly due to the widespread vomiting of every Invictus worth his salt coming to brownnose the elders of their covenant in the Hold. Nothing against them if that's what they wanted to do, but yeah, not for the tastes of Deion. Deion mostly just liked the Invictus because they obviously had a rule about embracing hot pieces of ass. Everything else about them, ehhhhh...

The Carthian Movement, for Deion, was the first real time he'd had a chance to encounter "other beliefs" which stemmed from other upbringings and life lessons. It intrigued him a lot. Some beliefs he hated with the burning fire of a thousand suns. And it was acceptable, even congratulated for being so passionate. Stomping out like a retard was regular, as was when they came back ten minutes later to argue and cuss and throw a fit too. And it was regular for normal debate and conceptual pieces to be presented. It was like a hegemony of organized chaos and it was a damn fine thing.

Deion never pretended that he didn't like to shine. He liked to gleam. People called him a Daeva all of the time, like it was a descriptor. "He's Daeva" or "That's the Daeva talking". Deion didn't want to be just a Daeva though. He wanted something better, he wanted to be someone greater.

That's when he really started getting involved in politics. Now consider that you're walking into a court of well, a court. Not a court for traffic tickets, a court where thrones sit and swords adorn hips. Now consider that you're a product of South Central LA and have gold in your mouth.

Yep. That was a damn rough start to the political foray of Deion Sanders.

He was tenacious though, and didn't give up easily. He got knocked around a lot on English alone, which had the effect of putting him more towards educating himself better. To get an education, especially at night, before the age of technology meant basically that you needed a ton of money. Money was a major issue.

He took out some loans on favors from other Kindred here and there, and also started to branch out into what would become the very base for his later deep social and street connections. Mix tapes were getting big then, and getting in on the ground floor was difficult, but he still did it. Soon, he was pulling enough money off of dubbing and hunt victims to continue what the loans of Kindred had started for him.

At first, the period of education infuriated him. He viewed everything he was being taught through the old lenses, and it took him quite a long time to overcome that.

Still, his work to better deal within the system wasn't in vain, as as he got some years behind him and he kept up his hard and tireless work, he started to distinguish himself from others. Younger Kindred were embraced, some black, some just of any race, and they would come to him out of natural habit. He seemed approachable. Others who are sharp of eye never miss much of a chance to seize on someone building inroads unwittingly.

His Jesuspiece hadn't gone unnoticed, and it was his time to encounter the Sanctified. It wasn't a good starting process, but the Sanctified were more tenacious than most give them credit for being. While Deion didn't exactly throw down completely to their ideological values (he was a Carthian after all), more importantly, he didn't dismiss them out of hand for being too brutal.

Deion did think they were too brutal, but he'd learned an important lesson in the Danse Macabre: never say everything you're thinking.

The admission of polite interest opened up doors to him that had never been there before, without closing the doors behind him. He explained his views and debated and learned from the scholarly Sanctified and the passionate Carthian Movement. His heart was still in the Carthian Movement and what he wanted to be.

He wanted to be someone.

Still, the longer he played the game, the more he realized that it was less a game and more an utterly engulfing mass of webbing. You find one web's spider and back away into another one's. Sometimes, you have to bring some bug spray to the party, especially when you get known enough that someone starts nipping at your heels.

Kindred squabble, that's what they do, but Deion hadn't really encountered it until then. Apparently it was unacceptable to spend too much time in Elysium, and he was changing too much. Deion tried to address it at first, but then he realized it wasn't going to be something that was addressable. And then Deion learned about how large-scale collectivism isn't feasible. By criminalizing Deion within his own covenant, he made it difficult for Deion to work. Others still sided with Deion, of course, but it was straining relations with people he didn't want to strain relations with.

In the end, Deion decided to stay with the Carthians, but it wasn't after invoking the drama that pulled him into court. Not the good kind of pulled into court either. He had his group with him, but the eyes of the city were, for that moment, in that one court, terrifyingly, all on him.

He'd killed a Kindred.

The Sanctified were angry, half of the Carthians were outraged. The Invictus loved the show. Zachary wondered how this would affect his aims.

The question rung in his ears, "What do you have to say for yourself?" And the milliseconds became great expanses of time where men could debate cosmic evolutional theories and still have time for a football game. A giggle. A shhh there. "Well?"

And then Deion cleared his throat.

What came from him afterwards was no less than a remarkable set of occurences and ties in to everything that the poor-murdered-bastard had ever done which could have been construed as reasonable reasons to have, in fact, murdered the sonofabitch. The Sanctified frowned on the killing of a Kindred, it was illegal, and so dude'd always be the one to press the line to see how far it went. He'd be the one to ruin the Invictus parties. He'd harass the Dragons about their work. He'd shit on the idea of polytheism. Everything he'd unconsciously been learning through osmosis came out in Deion Sanders' shining moment.

There was silence.

"I see."

Deion was whipped after the court concluded, publicly and without mercy, but he was only whipped. This was some kind of amazing feat to everyone around Deion. Even the humanists, who were pissed as fuck, were shocked that he wasn't set on fire or even given a trial by ordeal or anything.

That new door opened.

A couple years later, his phone rang. It was a strange call, an Invictus ghoul to Hawke. Like the Hawke. She wanted to talk to him. She knew he existed! Did he fuck over someone in her House's employ? You never could figure out who all the damn cronies of House Hawke were, it changed like every damn year.

He went, was treated to some fine lacrima-laced blood which almost made him say too much from time to time, but he kept it in check. She inquired if he had mended the ties with his covenant. He said they'd never been broken. For whatever reason it seemed to have the affect of amusing the shit out of her. He didn't get it. Elders are fucking weird.

She asked him if he'd ever been to Vegas. Nope. Did he want to go? Nope. Would he go if she promised him Prince?

...Hmmm...

Deion asked about Joachim. She said she'd handle it. All he had to do was keep his end of the bargain she was about to offer...

Categories: Las Vegas Characters | Daeva | Lancea Sanctum | Sheriff