Viv was leaning over the side walk puking up blood. She looked like hell, possibly hung over. Viv however never drinks, smokes, heck she won't take aspirin or drink things with caffiene. Still here she is looking so aweful with those bloodshot, I'm going to murder you, green eyes of hers. If looks could kill Viv's would. The glances she gives to anyone who looks her way are formidably menacing. Her clothes, jeans, workboots and a T-shirt, look like she slept in them.

She used up all her magic doing too many things at once with it the night before, she needed more, and quickly. Pain, excruciating and horrible, pain would achieve that, of coarse pain also helped her keep the flow of magic within her managable.

Anyone observing closely would notice small jagged chips of metal coming up in her vomit and blood. She looked like she was indeed in agony the way she clutched her stomach. She'd eaten a handful of razor blades for the pain fix. The little jaggged pieces are what's left of the blades, if you must know she did chew before swallowing.

She simply felt all cut up inside, her life was pulling her in a million impossible directions. It was begining to take it's toll on her. It was increasingly difficult to fight off the madness that came with her magic.

She vomits some more blood and metal. In spite of just how aweful she looks, her mouth when she's not emptying it on the side walk is twisted into a saddistic smirk.

The soft strumming of a guitar or two and the mesmerizing, scratching voice of one Marylyn Manson’ speed of pain could be heard loud and clear by other people from the ear phone that hung limply at Jesse’s shoulder. The other earphone was plugged tightly into his ear, the volume up and effectively ruining his hearing on the left side.

Jesse is a tall, lanky figure that looks like he sulks too much and eats too little. His face is as thin as his body and just as pale. His eyes are blue and stand out against the paleness of his skin and darkness of his hair. His hair hangs at his chin, untied at the moment though usually pulled back while he works. It’s black and streaked naturally with thick thatches of premature white hair, thick and healthy compare to his body’s state. His fingers are unusually spidery and his nails cut back short. His fingers, in fact, the whole of both hands are scared with lines. He’s wearing black pants that look just a trifle faded, scuffed boots with broken laces, and the half-baked bean coffee shops white shirt and gold name tag pinned to the chest, he’s written his name in backwards so that it reads ‘NIKEAL ESSEJ.’ Against the actual work dress code, he’s wearing a long sleeved dark blue worn out shirt beneath the white tee shirt. He’s really quite cute, if he’d put on a few pounds and tan just a little darker.

His thin lips are mouthing the words to the song as he walks down the street but as he spots the woman puking out blood, it causes his lips to stop, for him to cease walking, to stand, his hands at his sides, his pale eyes watching her puke without a word. Without asking if she’s alright or if she needs help. Just watching as if it’s some morbid hobby.

"Pay the admission or move along kid." Viv says before finishing the process of spilling her guts. Her mouth should be much more cut up than it is after chewing the razor blades up but she'd already begun regenerating. Still she smirks.

She's rather annoyed this kid is staring at her just as she's begining to feel better. She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and her phone starts ringing. she turns it off and slings it into the truck. Her eyes are still blood shot and horrid looking with a hint of madness and apathy whiring in them. Enough magic is coarsing through her body right now to cause a slight quivering affect. Now to go find some actual damned food she thinks to herself. Magic alone will not suatain her, yet.

Jesse tipped his head to the side a little, the left side, as if to hear her better. The left ear is full of Marylin Manson's scratching vocal coming to an end and vibrating into Posthuman and a faster paced music. The other ear phone dangles uselessly against his neck, the music screaming from it.

He looked around, making a point that he was looking at their surroundinds, kicked the sidewalk with one scuffed boot. Then he returned his blue eyes to her bent form, the blood and glinting little things pooling at her feet. He opened his lips and his voice sounded youthful, healthy unlike he looked. But his tone was soft, 'I'm bored' monotone. That voice a teen uses when they're resigned from arguing with their parents and give in to saying 'I know' and 'whatever'.

"Why would I pay if the show seems to be free." Meaning your on a public sidewalk and it's a free country. He frowns, his black brows knitting into a 'v' between his eyes. "And don't call me kid."

"Fine squirt, shows over any way." she says and climbs into her truck. Don't call me kid eh.... Fine.....there are a multitude of other phrases she can lace with sarcasm and use librally afterall. "How bored are you anyway, it's time for breakfast."

"Bored enough to watch you spill your guts everywhere." He replied. As she climbed into the truck, Jesse bent down, looking as though her were trying to get a better look at her blood. He put a hand against his dangling ear phone and flatened it to his chest to keep it out of the way, and then squat down close to it.

He reached out with very thin, spidery hands and plucked something out of her blood, seeming unphased by either fact that it was a strangers blood or that there was a possibility of aids, with all those cuts on his fingertips, surrounding the white scars.

He looked at it closely, frowned, wiped it off on his pants and looked again. Now he's interested.

"Bored enough to follow you around and batter you with questions about self mutilation. Your twisted, lady. You know that?"

He got into the truck, basically, uninvited and slouched down. "Where you eating?" You. Not me.

"Fearless little bastard aren't you, climbing into a truck with an obviously sick person? How do you know I don't eat teenage boys?" she asked and then, "Buckle your seatbelt. You can play with the radio but don't touch any thing else. I'm going to Monroe's and don't pester me with questions till I have two steaks down." She then revs the engine and puts the truck into gear.

Jesse shrugged, stuffed his pale hands into his pockets.

because it doesn't matter if I die. Pesimestic Brat. "Because I would equal even your two steaks." He said this in a calm voice, put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes, listened to the truck rev. If only his car would even work properly for him. "And your a massochistic bitch aren't you? How do you know I don't spend my spare time eating bitches?" He held up the bit of razor he'd picked up and ignored her comment about not pestering her with questions. "What's this part of?"

"If you ate me I'd make you sick....they were razor blades. It works better than breaking my hands up busting down dry wall bare fisted. Now be quiet While I'm driving, you can be dazzling with your angst powers over breakfast." she tells him. notincing he hasn't put the seatbelt on she drives like a maniac and uses every opportunity she gets to slam him around the truck cab.

She stopped at a red light and said, "Now, put the fucking seat belt on, it's my truck, my rule."

"Fine."

He doesn't even try to stop himself from getting tossed around, like he just doesn't care. In fact, not once does he remove his hands from his pockets to stop himself from falling, hitting his head against the window. He kept his eyes closed and his head back the entire time. Then she stops and he peaks open one eye, then closes it.

my truck, my rule

"My life," he replied flatly, unphased. Doesn't his tone ever change? "I can throw it away how ever I want. Besides, I'm nineteen. You get pulled over and I'm not wearing a belt they ticket me not you. Green light," he said. He hadn't even opened his eyes, but it was indeed a greenlight. Really he'd opened the eye she couldn't see when he'd closed the other.

She drives onto the side walk unamused. "Out!! You wanna play twenty questions you know where I'm going you can walk.!" Which is really sort of screwed up, she can and should feed off of his pain, but she can't bring herself to do so. The ticket wouldn't bother her.

Jesse sat with his head back and his eyes closed. Mrylin changed his song again, next track, blaring in his left ear, the ear that's on her side. He can hear her just fine though. I want to disappear 'Look at me now. I'm so vaccant'...

He sat so still that he might have died when she drove up to the curb. He looked twisted in pain. But eerily still. Then he started to tap his foot, then nod his head to the music.

"Can't hear you." Almost sing-song. Still the same damned tone, just three different pitches.

"Well rides over." she gets out and locks her door. Monroe's is only a block down the street. And yes she leaves it parked on the side walk. Days like this she recalls why she hates people.

She walks to the diner and sits down and orders. Maybe she'll get lucky and he'll let her eat in peace. As If.....

Maybe she'll find out teenagers these days, yes even ones like Jesse, know how to hotwire cars in under a minute flat.

She'll find her car in the Monroe's parking lot when she leaves the building. Jesse sitting inside, in the passengers seat with his feet kicked up on the dashboard. With the seat belt on.

Maybe she'll see it before she even orders, through the window.

He's got his arms wrapped around his torso, his stomach shooting pain through him, his head tipped forward, eyes closed again.

Oh she knows, it was the last test question. For now she needs protein regeneration can take a lot out of you. He'll be sitting in her truck for a while, she's ordered a total of five steak plates, medium rare, and a pitcher of water. She eats at a deliberately leisurely pace, so the little man wants to die.....she's irritated enough to arrange it. She told him not touch anything but the radio.

Even Jesse isn't that stupid, stubborn, but not that stupid to sit in the car in the baking heat long enough for her to finish her one meal, let alone five. He's out of the truck, even locks her door for her, and inside in a leasurly pace. It seems while he has only one tone of voice, hes got two speeds of movment. Slow and slower.

He sits down in the chair across from her, slouches, hands in his pocket. The waitress comes. He sends her away. Nothing to eat.

"I hope you don't mind, I changed your radio station."

Idiot.

"Fuckwad."she replies before moving onto steak number two and pouring herself another glass of water. She sips at the water and says calmly. "You just voided most of the warantee on a truck that's less than a month old....although I can get around that with a police report. Try not to piss me off anymore this morning." She begins methodically cutting up the second steak.

"Shit head," he replies calmly, watching her cut into the steak. His stomach twists and pulls into a tight, painful knot. He doesn't flinch. "I don't give a damn what I did to that truck. It's here in one peice and still running. Be thankful." He toss the peice of the razor up onto the table in front of himself. "What's this shit about? Just a fucking massochist?"

"If I tell you I might have to kill you." she tells him.

Really it should be obvious to him that she shouldn't be eating five steakplates after all those razor blades. She is still eating the steak peices in a leisurely manner and sipping at the water. She should still be clutching her stomach. She isn't trembling now either. She seems normal looking at her, but for the somewhat crazy gleam in her eyes.

She cuts up the third steak, "Do you believe in magic?"

She shouldn't have been able to talk, to drive, to shout at him about a seatbelt, to swallow anything at all. Oh Jesse's noticed. He's just afraid to ask that question.

Shrug. "Then kill me. But tell me first. I don't want to die curious." He watched her take another bite, took his hands out of his pocket and crossed his arms over his so-thin body. He's not just thin and too sick to eat, this started from anorexia in the first place. "Shit do I." He answered. Only last night he had a knife turned into a rock, then back again. And he happens to be living with a real live angel. His gaurdian angel.

"Well it's blood magic, i have to do things to keep it I guess is the easiest way to explain it. At least it heals me though when I have to do things. One day It'll eat me though I won't be able to feel at all anymore....and then I think the magic will just burn me up. It sucks." she says and eats the third steak.

"thats freaky shit," he says after a moment of silence and watching her eat. "And you do shit like that just to draw attintion from little shitheads like me?" Engle would slap him silly if he heard him swearing like this. Or worse, force more food down his throat.

"If that were the case I'd have a shitload of little groupies wouldn't I? Though the idea has merit if I decide to take up human sacrifices to substitute for my own suffering." she tells him.

She'd done that shit to keep from letting her magic wane too long so that she couldn't keep track of things for Gattie, she'd been having more lapses lately which did not please her at all. Still she is fighting a war on three fronts besides the battle with her own magic. Sometimes it just catches up with her. Jesse doesn't get that explanation though.

Jesse might get that explination if she said it slowly enough for him to swallow as a whole. But she didn't try and he scowled, not at her comment, but at his stomach. "You do that I might just volenteer. Fuck being a groupie." He toyed with the razor bit, turned it over and over, cut his finger on it, frowned. He put the metal down, rubbed his fingers togather. "It's that satainic worship or soemthing? Human sacrifice?"

"Nope no worship just one of many ways to harness the energy of other beings....you don't have to kill to do so, and I actually try not to. Rather do what I'm doing and just create a feedback loop of energy with out having to hurt anyone else, but I'm not opposed to hurting people if the screw up and get in my way." she says. Tow steaks remain but she doesn't slide one over and start cutting it up yet.

Instead she grabs his hand. "You don't cut on yourself for magic. What do you need to hurt for?" she says absently, she probes him with her magic. Some people use pain for a focus she wonders if this kid does. Her probing detects lots of physical pain..... she sends a small trickle to ease the throbbing pains and aches in him, then she lets go of his hand.

She may encounter, just like with Thorn, a bit of his own magic trickling around beneath the surface. It isn't a lot like Thorn's or Dan's, or Viv and Gunn's. Just enough to detect. Not that he knows it's there.

But when she touched his hand he didn't pull it away, didn't flinch. But he did sit up just a little straighter, leaning forward just a little and his blue eyes flicking over her. The pain in his stomach eased suddenly, just a little, not very much, but noticably enough. He frowned at her.

"To over ride other pain, worse pain...that I think you just fucked with." He's perceptive. "What'd you do to me?"

"Healed a little bit, I'm not really good at it though, it's easier to take someone's pain from them....heal it inside me or I can feed my magic with it and let them suffer, just depends on what I'm trying to do with the magic."

She'd been right a focus of sorts, a distraction. "Why'd you let it get so bad? So bad you can hardly eat?" she asked. She's still ignoring two plates of food, watching his eyes.

His eyes didn't waver from her. "Because I was stupid." It seemed everything childish and brat-like he'd been doing, his angsty behavior and his bad ass comments just disappeared and he got serious. "I thought the world was coming to an end and I did stupid things."

He dropped his blue eyes to his hand that still rested on the table, slid his hand off the table and stuffed it into his pockets. "Turns out my world was not over and I ruined what little I had in the first place."

"So you realize this and still get into vehicles with strangers who could be sociopaths?" She shook her head, started the fourth steak. "You still don't want anything?" she asks gesturing around the place. She couldn't force him to eat any more than she could force him out of the truck. Well could force him in unpleasant ways, but she wasn't going to, he was just some mixed up kid, kids had always been off limits when she hurt people.

He looked at the plate and one side of his nose twitched up into half a sneer half a smirk. He shook his head, rubbing his stomach. "No." He couldn't eat. Even if it felt alright right now, he couldn't because the moment too much substance touched his stomach he'd throw it up. There just wasn't enough muscle and tissue left in his stomach to hold much down.

"I still do it because now that I've already lost everything that matters there really isn't a point." He paused there. "But...now someone seems like they care. So now I'm trying. As for sociopaths..." shrug. "Then I can have a shot at being like him." He means, not that viv would understand, he could have a shot at being an angel.

"I thought I had problems." she eats the last steak. "What else do you wanna know?" She asks him. She looks distracted and she is while she checks on her brother. The waitress brings more water and collects empty plates. Viv shoves a wad of cash in her hand. That's Viv language for" go away I paid my bill "and since this waitress has dealt with Viv before she gets the message.

Jesse watched the transaction in silence and stuffed one hand into the pants poket and switched off what had turned into New Model # 5 and then reached up and plucked the earphone from his left ear, shocking his head in attempt to regain his ruined hearing.

"I wanted to know what the silver in the blood was, why, and how. But you've answered all my questions." And he quieted, tipped his head back slightly. She could finish her food now and leave and Jesse would not follow her, would not harass her.

" You don't need a ride anyplace do you?" she asked she was now eating the frenchfries which had all been lumped onto one plate. She was thoughtful for a few minutes while she finished them. "Glad to know I answered all your questions then."

"Home," he replied, without seeming bother that he needed a ride or that this possible sociopath who spoke of Human sacrifice and swallowed razor blades knowing where he lived. "So your a total bitch to me and now your offering me food and a ride. Whats up? Bipolar?" He can't act too serious or un-angsty for too long. He is, after all, a teenager.

"You went twenty minutes with out irritating me." she says it blandly. The real reason, someone matters to this kid, enough that he wants to change. He isn't lost yet....in spite of what a dipshit he comes acrossed as.

She doesn't have anyone she wants to change for anymore. She loves Gatt but she doesn't want to change for him, she just wants to know he's happy. She wants to stay away from him, she knows she's a monster.

"And it's called partitioning, I'm not bipolar." she answers it still doesn't explain much.

"I take it not many people can go twenty minutes without bugging the hell out of you." Engle would probably slap him for that too. "Then it's amazing that I could make it so long."

Oh yes, he had someone he wanted to change for, because this other wanted so badly for him to change. This other was going as far as to follow him around. In fact, Jesse did not doubt that Engle was watching him in this moment. This thought caused him to look around.

"Let's get you where you belong before a worse variety of monster than me happens upon you." she says. She is serious, though he really has no idea who he's dealing with so it might even be humorous to him. "Put the belt on this time, please." she says as she shuts her door.

"And most people don't make it past two minutes of time before they bother me so that you know. It wasn't always that way." she grabs a pair of sunglasses off the dashboard and slides them on. "Now which way am I going?"

He followed her to the truck and seated himself, pulling the belt across his chest without being asked twice. For three reasons. One, because she did something to him that made some of the impossible pain go away. Two, because she'd let him know that he really did stay off her nerves longer then most...and he'd been a bitch a lot of that time, which meant she must hang around with some trashy people. And three, she said please this time.

"Left." He directed her to a very terrible end of town. An end I've taken to calling the bad end of the bad end of town.

Viv gives him a look when she takes him here, not a nice neighborhood, she's been here before to stalk things sane folks wouldn't stalk. "I'm going to assume you are familiar enough with the area to avoid it's less pleasant denziens." She tells him to take a cardout of her console." I fix things, cars, electrical wiring, paint things....Call me if you need something fixed. "there is more than one way one could interpret her words. She doesn't mention fees either, normally she'd write down rates. She doesn't bother if he lives here in this fallen down part of the city he can't afford her and she doesn't care.....To Viv money is just money.....such strange logic she has.

He took the card she told him to take, looked at it, slid it into his pocket with his CD player and unbuckled the seat belt. Then he gave her the first full smile she would have seen, and it was a sad, utterly hopelss smile. Unworthy to be called a smile but rather a pitiful grimace.

"Everything needs fixed," he replied. He got out of the truck, and moved up the front steps without sparing her another glance. He realized then that he hadn't actually given her his name through their entire exchange.