Post by Nightmare on Jun 2, 2017 1:18:10 GMT -5
Swim shares details on the origins of his character Alex (also known as Swim) as well as one of his adventures, in which he met a young girl named Leila.
<Nightmare> Swim you wanna take this slot?
<Swim> Sure.
<Nightmare> What kinda stuff you got for us today?
<Swim> My plan for this evening was to share a little bit about Swim, who was his own seperate character even though the main story belongs to Jet.
<Nightmare> You know I'd always wondered about Swim. Wasn't he in your old fanfic? Or am I crazy?
<Swim> He might have been. I know I created a crappy blue recolor in a cape for him once when I was trying my hand at spriting.
<Swim> I don't think I ever wrote about him though.
<Nightmare> I remember him from the Card Game at least.
<Nightmare> This should be interesting.
<Swim> So in my story he's called Alex, because Swim isn't a very good name.
<Swim> Seriously, I can't even switch the letters around because four letters and one vowel doesn't leave me enough to work with when I was doing IZV.
<Swim> Anyway, like most of us 12 years ago I was another angsty youth that needed a character to express the 'darkness' I felt inside.
<Swim> But instead of manifesting in some demonic force taking posession of Jet's body, Swim is his own seperate character.
<Swim> Sort of an altered clone.
<Nightmare> So like his Shadow the Hedgehog.
<Swim> Yeah. Kinda.
<Swim> Not the most original concept, but again, most of us had our own varied 'oh no my main character is out of control' arc.
<Swim> And rather than within, I decided mine would be external.
<Swim> So Alex gets created by Faustus and Dagmor after they get sick of Jet screwing up their plans all the time, they collect some of his DNA and clone him with some alterations.
<Swim> He quickly realizes he's smarter and stronger than the guys who created him so he goes ahead and kicks them out of their own organization and takes over all of their resources.
<Swim> The main difference between Jet and Alex is their outlook on life. Jet has people that he can rely upon and thinks people are generally good and worth defending. Alex has no one to rely on, thinks people are scum and that they should help themselves.
<Swim> And so Alex had the freedom to be ruthlessly efficient, he could make fast decisions without ever consulting anyone, he dedicated every moment to honing his body and crafting plans within plans down to ridiculous detail.
<Swim> And being such a long term planner, smart tactician and generally slippery m-fer they never could pin him down.
<Swim> He was only ousted through random chance, another one of those 'evil energy' meteors from MM8 falling to Earth, Faustus getting ahold of it and kicking his ass. Not the kind of battlefield condition he could have forseen.
<Swim> So after that he went crawling to Jet for help, sees that maybe Jet had the right of things and then becomes sort of an anti-hero.
<Swim> Which is when the story gets a little better.
<Swim> The reason he never appears in Jet's story after that, at least until much, much later is that he kind of fudges off around the world having various adventures, not really caring about the over arching war and the machinations behind it anymore.
<Swim> He'd had his shot to change the world, decided maybe he shouldn't play chess with people's lives and try to make small but meaningful changes on a personal level.
<Swim> Plus it was kind of awkward being around Jet's allies after being enemies for so long.
<XeroBloodline> That's actually very mature for an evil clone. Good on Alex.
<Swim> He was born out of teenage angst, I grew up a bit and decided to try and make something cool out of him.
<Swim> So in his first solo adventure he's cruising along this dirt road in Eastern Europe, it's dark, and he finds this little villiage to spend the night.
<Swim> This town's not on any maps. Rolls in at night, everything is boarded up but he can hear people at the inn and the light's on.
<Swim> He pounds on the door and shouts a bit but no one comes, so Alex turns and heads down the street to try elsewhere.
<Swim> Suddenly he gets jumped by some goons off the rooftops, one of them kicks him in the back and lays him out in the street.
<Swim> So Alex gets back up and punches him right back, and something isn't quite right, these guys are a little hardy for tavern brawlers.
<Swim> One of them tries to bite him, so at this point Alex smashes his head into a fence post and the guy disintegrates.
<Swim> Not knowing what the heck is going on, he draws his sword and uses it to kind of ward away the other assailants.
<Swim> At that point the door to the inn flies open and out come all the townsfolk with shotguns and candlesticks and bar stools and the goons book it.
<Swim> So with Jet's story I tried to stick to the Megaman timeline and influence important events and fill in blanks, but most of his story was wrapped in technology.
<Swim> Alex's story has a more supernatural twist to it.
<Swim> Because I think that somewhere in writing it I, like Rick, played Castlevania, and decided I wanted Alex to fight Dracula.
<Swim> So the townspeople take him inside the inn and break things down for Alex.
<Swim> Yes, those goons were vampires. No, they're not mythical creatures. They're just so rarely seen after being hunted to near extinction, not being able to adapt to modern technology and whatnot.
<Swim> At which point Alex wonders why that isn't the case here? Why is this town stuck in the Dark Ages almost, and why doesn't anybody else know this place exists?
<Swim> And why doesn't anybody leave, like flee in the daytime when it's safe?
<Swim> So the reason this villiage doesn't appear on any maps is that no one knows that it exists. No one has been able to leave either.
<Swim> There is some sort of one way force field projected from atop the clock tower in the center of town. Part mystical, part technological and rigged so that people can pass into town like Alex did, but nobody can leave.
<Swim> The vampires that weren't hunted down set up this little bastion where they could farm people, and people could stumble in, but no warning or cry for help could ever reach the outside.
<Swim> Naturally the people have been unable to effectively fight back but now that Alex is there they think maybe he can help.
<Swim> So Alex spends a few nights killing vampires, gathering knowledge and forming a plan with the mayor, a guy named Jameson.
<Swim> They're hard to kill though, Alex refused to carry energy weapons and his sword just isn't cutting it.
<Swim> That's one thing about Alex actually that I didn't explain earlier, he's extremely proficient with swords.
<Swim> And gets really pissed if anyone tries to pull a gun on him.
<Swim> Considers it cheating, even though no one else in that universe follows those rules.
<Swim> So he's got this metal sword which has always worked for him until now, but when he stabs these vampires in the chest they're not going down. He's got to decapitate them to make sure they're really dead, or else use a wooden stake.
<Swim> Which is making things much harder than it needs to be.
<Swim> Anyway after a couple of nights of killing there seems to be no end in sight, so the plan shifts to helping the villiagers escape.
<Swim> Which means dismanteling that force field somehow.
<Nightmare> Yay attacking the clocktower.
<Tony> Blow that sh*t up!
<Swim> Yep, I've got this amazing scene in mind with Alex charging up flights of stairs fighting off hordes of vampires with Jameson and a small group of volunteers at his back.
<Swim>
<Swim> With that music playing.
<Swim> So they get to the top and they fight Dracula's right hand guy, and Alex cuts his heart out and starts burning it with a candle to get info out of him before killing him.
<Swim> And it's a good thing that they stop for some light torture because there's a small snag in their plan to blow the generator and let everyone escape.
<Swim> Remember when I said the generator was partially mechanical and part mystical?
<Swim> There's a spell in place so that the barrier only truely comes down when Dracula is dead.
<Swim> At best, they can blow the clocktower and the barrier -might- glitch out long enough for someone to run through.
<Swim> So it's decided that Jameson and his men will blow the tower once Alex is close enough to the edge of town to get out, with an understanding that he will return to free them someday.
<Swim> Jameson and Alex shake hands, and the mayor quietly asks Alex to take his daughter Leila with him when he goes.
<Swim> The explosives are planted, Jameson and his men hold position and Alex makes a run for the edge of town.
<Swim> But night has fallen and vampire reinforcements arrive, Jameson and his men are overrun and the explosion goes off prematurely.
<Swim> Alex doesn't have time to grab the girl and barely makes it over the barrier before it reactivates.
<XeroBloodline> Good job. Don't trust nobody named Leila...
<Swim> She's actually a bit of a rogueish type as you'll see later, so you're not wrong to say that.
<Swim> Pretty good with a dagger, all those years with a wooden stake in hand.
<Swim> But we'll meet her later.
<Swim> For now Alex has escaped and vows to come back and set everyone free. Just as soon as he upgrades his arsenal.
<Swim> Metal blade wasn't cutting it.
<Swim> So now that he knows that the supernatural isn't superstition he scours the globe for a fitting weapon. And eventually hears tales of a legendary blade, the Blood Carver.
<Swim> Supposably extra effective on creatures that gorge themselves on blood..
<Swim> So he spends the next 2 years following up on every lead he can and eventually tracking it down.
<Swim> He eventually finds it in an underwater cave, only accessable every 10 years when the tide is at a very precise level.
<Nightmare> Damn.
<Nightmare> Two years is a long time to leave a handful of people trapped in Vampire City.
<XeroBloodline> I'm sure they're fine...
<Swim> Yeah, and Leila isn't exactly happy about that later. But the people there have lasted for decades, and the vampires aren't stupid enough to kill everyone there. Then what'll they eat?
<Swim> So yeah, Jameson and his boys all died in that clocktower explosion but the vampires want to farm their humans and aren't going to kill them all at once.
<Swim> So most of them are still alive.
<Swim> Alex heads back alone, briefly considers calling Jet for backup but knows he's probably off saving the world and does he really have that right to ask after all he's done?
<Swim> So Alex re-enters Vampire City armed with the Blood Carver and driven for vengence for Jameson.
<Swim> Everyone there is surprised to see him after so long, they thought he'd just gone and abandoned them to their fate.
<Swim> He meets Leila who is 15 and really pissed at him at first, considering him responsible for her father's death.
<Swim> But they get all of their weapons together and go storm Dracula's Castle.
<Swim> The Blood Carver is fantastically effective at slicing through vamps like butter.
<Swim> They all just explode in a shower of blood and guts. Don't even get dusted like a stake will do.
<Swim> After fighting his way to Dracula's chamber Alex finds the coffin empty and the head guy waiting for him and they have a lengthy fight that goes up to the castle ramparts.
<Swim> The Blood Carver isn't splattering Drac like all his minions downstairs though.
<Swim> It's explained that Drac knew of the blade's existance, not that Alex would ever find it, but just in case it ever turned up one day he'd kept to the old ways.
<Swim> That is to say, ritual feeding only one night per year, and not gorging himself like the rest of his minions.
<Swim> Got to find the perfect subject, someone innocent, got to have the light of the full moon for ambience.
<Swim> And it turns out, one of Drac's minions grabbed Leila outside, even though Alex forbade her to join them in the castle crashing.
<Swim> So Dracula's got her tied up in front of an alter, all set to feed but Alex inturrupted dinner.
<Swim> During the fight Alex manages to slice the rope holding one of her arms though and she gradually works herself free.
<Swim> Alex and Dracula are at a bit of a stalemate so the vampire flies over to Leila, lifts her in the air and threatens to drop her over the side of the castle or else just sink his fangs into her neck.
<Swim> Alex is hesitant, he's already let this girl's dad die, he really doesn't want her blood on the conscience he's only recently developed.
<Swim> So while they're staring each other down Leila uses her free hand, grabs the stake she had hidden in her clothes and stabs Dracula in the fudgeing heart.
<Swim> Drac starts turning to dust, Leila falls off the side and Alex jumps off the roof and pulls a Batman to save her.
<XeroBloodline> As long as he didn't pull a Spiderman...
<Swim> Heh
<Swim> And that's about it for that arc. The town is freed, the remaining vampires are hunted down and Alex heads off for his next adventure.
<Swim> But with a plus one. Leila's an orphan so Alex takes her as sort of his adoptive daughter.
<Swim> And she's a clever kid, makes a wonderful sidekick. No one suspects this little girl of being so damn nefarious.
<Nightmare> Not the sorta relationship I invisioned or them, but I guess she is like 15.
<Swim> Yeah, there could never be anything romantic there.
<XeroBloodline> Give it a year or three. Unless they're running on Japan time, in which case, give it an hour.
<Swim> It's kinda like Logan and X-23. Or Kuma and whatever his little girl was called.
<Swim> Anyway, I've got more to tell but that seems like an ok stopping point. Any questions?
<Nightmare> Yes.
<Nightmare> Uhhh.
<Nightmare> So Jet's a reploid, right? So Alex is too isn't he?
<Swim> Yes on Jet, Alex is mostly.
<Nightmare> So he's a cyborg...? Or...?
<Swim> Some parts were robotic, others synthetically grown.
<Nightmare> I guess I was wondering if he was a reploid, what could a vampire realistically do to him other than punch him a lot.
<Swim> Well in my headcannon vampires and reploids are both stronger than humans and on roughly even level with each other.
<Swim> All of that demonic strength is pretty equal with technology.
<Nightmare> But they wouldn't be able to bite him or anything like that right?
<Swim> They could bite him and it might have a similar effect to stabbing him in the neck but they couldn't convert him into a vampire, no.
<Nightmare> Okay.
<Swim> And Dracula himself has magic, can conjure fireballs, mild telekinesis.
<Nightmare> Can you describe what Alex and Leila look like...?
<Swim> Physically Alex is pretty similar to Jet, a little darker hair to tell them apart. He's worn it long, like halfway down his back and cut it pretty conservatively during the initial phase of his redemption arc. Now it's medium length, kinda shaggy.
<Swim> Used to wear blue body armor, I've got him now in more of a robe, kind of similar to what Gunvolt wears.
<Swim> Also blue in color. The Blood Carver is one of those dark red blades so it stands out.
<Swim> Leila's color pallet is kind of similar, she wears a blue tunic, kind of similar to what the kokiri wear, and she's got long red hair.
<Nightmare> Sharp contrast to my own Leila.
<Swim> She gets herself a big brown cloak once she starts traveling with Alex and has a dozens of knives, lockpicks and trinkets in there.
<Nightmare> That's less of a contrast to my own Leila.
<Swim> Her disposition is pretty bright, sunny, cheerful, but it's a disarming tactic. She'll make you think she's innocent and pull a fast one on you.
<Nightmare> Much less of a contrast.
<Nightmare> XD
<Swim> I don't know much about your Leila, and I had the name chosen long before we started doing RPs here.
<Swim> But once again, we do tend to see a lot of similarities in our stories.
<Nightmare> Not implying there's any connection, just think it's kinda funny.
<Swim> Same.
<Swim> What else would you like to know about this side of things?
<Swim> I've talked about Jet for years, don't think I've ever shared about Alex/Swim.
<Nightmare> Well uhh, did it take Alex two years to find the Blood Carver cause he was waiting for the tide, or did it just take him that long to locate it?
<Swim> Both. Guy literally had to run all over the world for that, one clue led him to the Amazon, the next to the Arctic, the next to a small villiage in Africa.
<Swim> The African lead is a story in its own right, came across another town that was being terrorized by a little 7 year old white boy named Walter Verde who was basically child Poison Ivy.
<Swim> And they'd only give him the next clue after he sorted out that for them.
<Nightmare> That might be worth covering in a future storytime...
<Swim> Tide just happened to be in the right spot at the time he found the Blood Carver. Because plot.
<Nightmare> Well if he's a reploid or even just mostly, couldn't he just jump in the water and not give a fudge?
<Nightmare> Even if it wasn't?
<Swim> Breathers and such, yeah.
<Swim> It's a pretty narrow cave, can get smashed against the rocks if the timing isn't right. And then there are certain platforms he'd need to take that are only at the correct height at the right tide.
<Swim> A reploid probably could do it any time, but it'd be too dangerous for a human. And I just really wanted to create a unique location that was only accessable at a specific time.
<Swim> Make it feel like he'd earned the weapon, can't leave it sitting in a field somewhere can I?
<Nightmare> It's neat, yeah.
<Swim> Think that's all unless anyone besides Nightmare has a question.
<Swim> Otherwise I think Renegade was next.
<Nightmare> Swim you wanna take this slot?
<Swim> Sure.
<Nightmare> What kinda stuff you got for us today?
<Swim> My plan for this evening was to share a little bit about Swim, who was his own seperate character even though the main story belongs to Jet.
<Nightmare> You know I'd always wondered about Swim. Wasn't he in your old fanfic? Or am I crazy?
<Swim> He might have been. I know I created a crappy blue recolor in a cape for him once when I was trying my hand at spriting.
<Swim> I don't think I ever wrote about him though.
<Nightmare> I remember him from the Card Game at least.
<Nightmare> This should be interesting.
<Swim> So in my story he's called Alex, because Swim isn't a very good name.
<Swim> Seriously, I can't even switch the letters around because four letters and one vowel doesn't leave me enough to work with when I was doing IZV.
<Swim> Anyway, like most of us 12 years ago I was another angsty youth that needed a character to express the 'darkness' I felt inside.
<Swim> But instead of manifesting in some demonic force taking posession of Jet's body, Swim is his own seperate character.
<Swim> Sort of an altered clone.
<Nightmare> So like his Shadow the Hedgehog.
<Swim> Yeah. Kinda.
<Swim> Not the most original concept, but again, most of us had our own varied 'oh no my main character is out of control' arc.
<Swim> And rather than within, I decided mine would be external.
<Swim> So Alex gets created by Faustus and Dagmor after they get sick of Jet screwing up their plans all the time, they collect some of his DNA and clone him with some alterations.
<Swim> He quickly realizes he's smarter and stronger than the guys who created him so he goes ahead and kicks them out of their own organization and takes over all of their resources.
<Swim> The main difference between Jet and Alex is their outlook on life. Jet has people that he can rely upon and thinks people are generally good and worth defending. Alex has no one to rely on, thinks people are scum and that they should help themselves.
<Swim> And so Alex had the freedom to be ruthlessly efficient, he could make fast decisions without ever consulting anyone, he dedicated every moment to honing his body and crafting plans within plans down to ridiculous detail.
<Swim> And being such a long term planner, smart tactician and generally slippery m-fer they never could pin him down.
<Swim> He was only ousted through random chance, another one of those 'evil energy' meteors from MM8 falling to Earth, Faustus getting ahold of it and kicking his ass. Not the kind of battlefield condition he could have forseen.
<Swim> So after that he went crawling to Jet for help, sees that maybe Jet had the right of things and then becomes sort of an anti-hero.
<Swim> Which is when the story gets a little better.
<Swim> The reason he never appears in Jet's story after that, at least until much, much later is that he kind of fudges off around the world having various adventures, not really caring about the over arching war and the machinations behind it anymore.
<Swim> He'd had his shot to change the world, decided maybe he shouldn't play chess with people's lives and try to make small but meaningful changes on a personal level.
<Swim> Plus it was kind of awkward being around Jet's allies after being enemies for so long.
<XeroBloodline> That's actually very mature for an evil clone. Good on Alex.
<Swim> He was born out of teenage angst, I grew up a bit and decided to try and make something cool out of him.
<Swim> So in his first solo adventure he's cruising along this dirt road in Eastern Europe, it's dark, and he finds this little villiage to spend the night.
<Swim> This town's not on any maps. Rolls in at night, everything is boarded up but he can hear people at the inn and the light's on.
<Swim> He pounds on the door and shouts a bit but no one comes, so Alex turns and heads down the street to try elsewhere.
<Swim> Suddenly he gets jumped by some goons off the rooftops, one of them kicks him in the back and lays him out in the street.
<Swim> So Alex gets back up and punches him right back, and something isn't quite right, these guys are a little hardy for tavern brawlers.
<Swim> One of them tries to bite him, so at this point Alex smashes his head into a fence post and the guy disintegrates.
<Swim> Not knowing what the heck is going on, he draws his sword and uses it to kind of ward away the other assailants.
<Swim> At that point the door to the inn flies open and out come all the townsfolk with shotguns and candlesticks and bar stools and the goons book it.
<Swim> So with Jet's story I tried to stick to the Megaman timeline and influence important events and fill in blanks, but most of his story was wrapped in technology.
<Swim> Alex's story has a more supernatural twist to it.
<Swim> Because I think that somewhere in writing it I, like Rick, played Castlevania, and decided I wanted Alex to fight Dracula.
<Swim> So the townspeople take him inside the inn and break things down for Alex.
<Swim> Yes, those goons were vampires. No, they're not mythical creatures. They're just so rarely seen after being hunted to near extinction, not being able to adapt to modern technology and whatnot.
<Swim> At which point Alex wonders why that isn't the case here? Why is this town stuck in the Dark Ages almost, and why doesn't anybody else know this place exists?
<Swim> And why doesn't anybody leave, like flee in the daytime when it's safe?
<Swim> So the reason this villiage doesn't appear on any maps is that no one knows that it exists. No one has been able to leave either.
<Swim> There is some sort of one way force field projected from atop the clock tower in the center of town. Part mystical, part technological and rigged so that people can pass into town like Alex did, but nobody can leave.
<Swim> The vampires that weren't hunted down set up this little bastion where they could farm people, and people could stumble in, but no warning or cry for help could ever reach the outside.
<Swim> Naturally the people have been unable to effectively fight back but now that Alex is there they think maybe he can help.
<Swim> So Alex spends a few nights killing vampires, gathering knowledge and forming a plan with the mayor, a guy named Jameson.
<Swim> They're hard to kill though, Alex refused to carry energy weapons and his sword just isn't cutting it.
<Swim> That's one thing about Alex actually that I didn't explain earlier, he's extremely proficient with swords.
<Swim> And gets really pissed if anyone tries to pull a gun on him.
<Swim> Considers it cheating, even though no one else in that universe follows those rules.
<Swim> So he's got this metal sword which has always worked for him until now, but when he stabs these vampires in the chest they're not going down. He's got to decapitate them to make sure they're really dead, or else use a wooden stake.
<Swim> Which is making things much harder than it needs to be.
<Swim> Anyway after a couple of nights of killing there seems to be no end in sight, so the plan shifts to helping the villiagers escape.
<Swim> Which means dismanteling that force field somehow.
<Nightmare> Yay attacking the clocktower.
<Tony> Blow that sh*t up!
<Swim> Yep, I've got this amazing scene in mind with Alex charging up flights of stairs fighting off hordes of vampires with Jameson and a small group of volunteers at his back.
<Swim>
<Swim> With that music playing.
<Swim> So they get to the top and they fight Dracula's right hand guy, and Alex cuts his heart out and starts burning it with a candle to get info out of him before killing him.
<Swim> And it's a good thing that they stop for some light torture because there's a small snag in their plan to blow the generator and let everyone escape.
<Swim> Remember when I said the generator was partially mechanical and part mystical?
<Swim> There's a spell in place so that the barrier only truely comes down when Dracula is dead.
<Swim> At best, they can blow the clocktower and the barrier -might- glitch out long enough for someone to run through.
<Swim> So it's decided that Jameson and his men will blow the tower once Alex is close enough to the edge of town to get out, with an understanding that he will return to free them someday.
<Swim> Jameson and Alex shake hands, and the mayor quietly asks Alex to take his daughter Leila with him when he goes.
<Swim> The explosives are planted, Jameson and his men hold position and Alex makes a run for the edge of town.
<Swim> But night has fallen and vampire reinforcements arrive, Jameson and his men are overrun and the explosion goes off prematurely.
<Swim> Alex doesn't have time to grab the girl and barely makes it over the barrier before it reactivates.
<XeroBloodline> Good job. Don't trust nobody named Leila...
<Swim> She's actually a bit of a rogueish type as you'll see later, so you're not wrong to say that.
<Swim> Pretty good with a dagger, all those years with a wooden stake in hand.
<Swim> But we'll meet her later.
<Swim> For now Alex has escaped and vows to come back and set everyone free. Just as soon as he upgrades his arsenal.
<Swim> Metal blade wasn't cutting it.
<Swim> So now that he knows that the supernatural isn't superstition he scours the globe for a fitting weapon. And eventually hears tales of a legendary blade, the Blood Carver.
<Swim> Supposably extra effective on creatures that gorge themselves on blood..
<Swim> So he spends the next 2 years following up on every lead he can and eventually tracking it down.
<Swim> He eventually finds it in an underwater cave, only accessable every 10 years when the tide is at a very precise level.
<Nightmare> Damn.
<Nightmare> Two years is a long time to leave a handful of people trapped in Vampire City.
<XeroBloodline> I'm sure they're fine...
<Swim> Yeah, and Leila isn't exactly happy about that later. But the people there have lasted for decades, and the vampires aren't stupid enough to kill everyone there. Then what'll they eat?
<Swim> So yeah, Jameson and his boys all died in that clocktower explosion but the vampires want to farm their humans and aren't going to kill them all at once.
<Swim> So most of them are still alive.
<Swim> Alex heads back alone, briefly considers calling Jet for backup but knows he's probably off saving the world and does he really have that right to ask after all he's done?
<Swim> So Alex re-enters Vampire City armed with the Blood Carver and driven for vengence for Jameson.
<Swim> Everyone there is surprised to see him after so long, they thought he'd just gone and abandoned them to their fate.
<Swim> He meets Leila who is 15 and really pissed at him at first, considering him responsible for her father's death.
<Swim> But they get all of their weapons together and go storm Dracula's Castle.
<Swim> The Blood Carver is fantastically effective at slicing through vamps like butter.
<Swim> They all just explode in a shower of blood and guts. Don't even get dusted like a stake will do.
<Swim> After fighting his way to Dracula's chamber Alex finds the coffin empty and the head guy waiting for him and they have a lengthy fight that goes up to the castle ramparts.
<Swim> The Blood Carver isn't splattering Drac like all his minions downstairs though.
<Swim> It's explained that Drac knew of the blade's existance, not that Alex would ever find it, but just in case it ever turned up one day he'd kept to the old ways.
<Swim> That is to say, ritual feeding only one night per year, and not gorging himself like the rest of his minions.
<Swim> Got to find the perfect subject, someone innocent, got to have the light of the full moon for ambience.
<Swim> And it turns out, one of Drac's minions grabbed Leila outside, even though Alex forbade her to join them in the castle crashing.
<Swim> So Dracula's got her tied up in front of an alter, all set to feed but Alex inturrupted dinner.
<Swim> During the fight Alex manages to slice the rope holding one of her arms though and she gradually works herself free.
<Swim> Alex and Dracula are at a bit of a stalemate so the vampire flies over to Leila, lifts her in the air and threatens to drop her over the side of the castle or else just sink his fangs into her neck.
<Swim> Alex is hesitant, he's already let this girl's dad die, he really doesn't want her blood on the conscience he's only recently developed.
<Swim> So while they're staring each other down Leila uses her free hand, grabs the stake she had hidden in her clothes and stabs Dracula in the fudgeing heart.
<Swim> Drac starts turning to dust, Leila falls off the side and Alex jumps off the roof and pulls a Batman to save her.
<XeroBloodline> As long as he didn't pull a Spiderman...
<Swim> Heh
<Swim> And that's about it for that arc. The town is freed, the remaining vampires are hunted down and Alex heads off for his next adventure.
<Swim> But with a plus one. Leila's an orphan so Alex takes her as sort of his adoptive daughter.
<Swim> And she's a clever kid, makes a wonderful sidekick. No one suspects this little girl of being so damn nefarious.
<Nightmare> Not the sorta relationship I invisioned or them, but I guess she is like 15.
<Swim> Yeah, there could never be anything romantic there.
<XeroBloodline> Give it a year or three. Unless they're running on Japan time, in which case, give it an hour.
<Swim> It's kinda like Logan and X-23. Or Kuma and whatever his little girl was called.
<Swim> Anyway, I've got more to tell but that seems like an ok stopping point. Any questions?
<Nightmare> Yes.
<Nightmare> Uhhh.
<Nightmare> So Jet's a reploid, right? So Alex is too isn't he?
<Swim> Yes on Jet, Alex is mostly.
<Nightmare> So he's a cyborg...? Or...?
<Swim> Some parts were robotic, others synthetically grown.
<Nightmare> I guess I was wondering if he was a reploid, what could a vampire realistically do to him other than punch him a lot.
<Swim> Well in my headcannon vampires and reploids are both stronger than humans and on roughly even level with each other.
<Swim> All of that demonic strength is pretty equal with technology.
<Nightmare> But they wouldn't be able to bite him or anything like that right?
<Swim> They could bite him and it might have a similar effect to stabbing him in the neck but they couldn't convert him into a vampire, no.
<Nightmare> Okay.
<Swim> And Dracula himself has magic, can conjure fireballs, mild telekinesis.
<Nightmare> Can you describe what Alex and Leila look like...?
<Swim> Physically Alex is pretty similar to Jet, a little darker hair to tell them apart. He's worn it long, like halfway down his back and cut it pretty conservatively during the initial phase of his redemption arc. Now it's medium length, kinda shaggy.
<Swim> Used to wear blue body armor, I've got him now in more of a robe, kind of similar to what Gunvolt wears.
<Swim> Also blue in color. The Blood Carver is one of those dark red blades so it stands out.
<Swim> Leila's color pallet is kind of similar, she wears a blue tunic, kind of similar to what the kokiri wear, and she's got long red hair.
<Nightmare> Sharp contrast to my own Leila.
<Swim> She gets herself a big brown cloak once she starts traveling with Alex and has a dozens of knives, lockpicks and trinkets in there.
<Nightmare> That's less of a contrast to my own Leila.
<Swim> Her disposition is pretty bright, sunny, cheerful, but it's a disarming tactic. She'll make you think she's innocent and pull a fast one on you.
<Nightmare> Much less of a contrast.
<Nightmare> XD
<Swim> I don't know much about your Leila, and I had the name chosen long before we started doing RPs here.
<Swim> But once again, we do tend to see a lot of similarities in our stories.
<Nightmare> Not implying there's any connection, just think it's kinda funny.
<Swim> Same.
<Swim> What else would you like to know about this side of things?
<Swim> I've talked about Jet for years, don't think I've ever shared about Alex/Swim.
<Nightmare> Well uhh, did it take Alex two years to find the Blood Carver cause he was waiting for the tide, or did it just take him that long to locate it?
<Swim> Both. Guy literally had to run all over the world for that, one clue led him to the Amazon, the next to the Arctic, the next to a small villiage in Africa.
<Swim> The African lead is a story in its own right, came across another town that was being terrorized by a little 7 year old white boy named Walter Verde who was basically child Poison Ivy.
<Swim> And they'd only give him the next clue after he sorted out that for them.
<Nightmare> That might be worth covering in a future storytime...
<Swim> Tide just happened to be in the right spot at the time he found the Blood Carver. Because plot.
<Nightmare> Well if he's a reploid or even just mostly, couldn't he just jump in the water and not give a fudge?
<Nightmare> Even if it wasn't?
<Swim> Breathers and such, yeah.
<Swim> It's a pretty narrow cave, can get smashed against the rocks if the timing isn't right. And then there are certain platforms he'd need to take that are only at the correct height at the right tide.
<Swim> A reploid probably could do it any time, but it'd be too dangerous for a human. And I just really wanted to create a unique location that was only accessable at a specific time.
<Swim> Make it feel like he'd earned the weapon, can't leave it sitting in a field somewhere can I?
<Nightmare> It's neat, yeah.
<Swim> Think that's all unless anyone besides Nightmare has a question.
<Swim> Otherwise I think Renegade was next.