<div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/sTBpBUf.jpg)</div><strong>NAME:</strong>Alexander Greyhallow (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=347468.msg16379290#msg16379290)<br/>(Optional)<strong>WEARING:</strong>Black boots, black trousers, black shirt<br/><strong>LOCATION:</strong>DARKEST Vancouver Institute Kitchen<br/><strong>TIME:</strong>Thursday July 6th, 2023 | Just before 5 PM<br/><strong>CONTENT:</strong>Food uneaten? Not on Alexander's watch!<br/><strong>TAGGING:</strong>Open; Kaspian Herondale, Kiara Skye<br/><hr/><br/>Alexander played around, digging the tip of his spoon at the bottom of his bowl. He shifted his weight this way and that, then looked off to the side and pressed his tongue onto the inside of his mouth. "Uh, so, I was gonna spare you both . . . but you forced my hands here." The Shadowhunter said after a weighty pause. "Demon took a piece out of my ass, and after spending a few hours on it on the hard, unyielding surface of the Infirmary bed . . . I'm not gonna be about that for a while." He made a face and motioned with a finger at the chairs. He obligingly turned, and sure enough there was a large, blood-stained hole in his trousers over his left buttock. The edges were frayed and absolutely the result of a demon biting Alexander on his cute patootie. Bandages covered the wound so he was not just flapping in the wind. The Shadowhunter turned his front back to the pair and gave them both a wink.<br/><br/>"Should've given you a chance to draw one of the vision enhancing Runes." He said with a chuckle and took a cob of corn. Alexander was not especially fond of corn in any of its forms, but true to what he said about eating what was put out there, he ate.<br/><br/>Although the answers that Kaspian and Kiara gave him about their childhoods deflated the Shadowhunter and he blew a raspberry when they were both done. His disappointment was immeasurable and his way was ruined. The dark blond male's eyes looked over both of them and he shook his head slowly. "You know, you had -<em>have</em>-  a choice. If they didn't tell you that . . . that's fucked up." He told Kiara solemnly. "Your dad's a piece of shit for putting you through that stuff if he meant to you get into this life without living it himself. It's a terrible burden and responsibility. One I choose glady. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's days I wish I could've had a super soft birthday party with a pizza party, ice cream cake, and a bouncy castle. And I'm not like my buddy Dima, who is probably even now cloistered up somewhere praising the Angel for yet another day where he got to smash some demon with his hammer. There's a reason we do this and it's so mundie kids get to be . . . kids. One of them, anyway." Whether or not this statement was completely truthful for the Nephilim at large, it was true for Alexander and fairly important to the male for how emotional he was about it.<br/><br/>He sniffed, and then looked embarrassed. And he was, for getting so hecked up about the honestly rather poor childhoods that Kaspian and Kiara had. He was ready to smirk and chuckle about them doing stupid kid's stuff like . . . catching fireflies or pulling a girl's hair to let her know you liked her or picking up frogs and whatever else mundie kids did. But here he was getting all emotional about it. Alexander took a breath.<br/><br/>His eyes fell on Kaspian and he gave the brown-haired male a nod. At least the K-man had some good to say. He got maple syrup and there was a certain iota of justice in the world, perhaps. Perhaps his day was not completely ruined as Kaspian shared the memory of the petting zoo. Then Alexander did smirk and give a light hearted chuckle.<br/><br/>It was a bit of a surprise when he had to divulge his 12th birthday. Alexander was tempted to downplay the events or to beg off, but he supposed it was only fair. And Kiara wanted to know what Vancouver was like.<br/><br/>"Alright, I'll dish too. My 12th birthday . . . I got up like 4 a.m. like any other day. Did a bunch of physical training, ate gruel for breakfast, did some Rune classes, had something really sad for lunch - but, y'know, I had a lunch so I can't complain - then did sparring in the afternoon, followed by a practice hunt. They're awesome." Alexander said with an unfeigned and completely genuine endorsement and enthusiasm. "So like the idea that they set up a training ground that's totally warded so mundies can't get in, and demons can't get out. Then they let out a kind of lesser demon in the area, let it get settled, and then lil' Shadowhunters go in and hunt 'em down. It's so cool. You can probably relate - like when you finally stopped using a rubber or wood knife and got to handle live steel for the first time, only like, times a thousand.<br/><br/>"Of course there's veteran Shadowhunters along to step in if things go sideways, but it's the closest thing to a real hunt they can give you. I got to hunting down some Raum demons. I banished a few but one of them got me. Spent the evening in the Infirmary battling the venom." Alexander's enthusiasm dampened and he shook his head. It was an ignominious end to an otherwise triumphant day.<br/><br/>"Like I said, never been anywhere else so I can't compare, but I've hard the old timers talk about it and Vancouver's kind of in the middle. Not too soft, not too hard. I've heard there's some Institutes in South America where things're just super chill and the Shadowhunters there are constantly partying, not just with themselves but actually with Downworlders." Alexander betrayed his prejudices as he related that, conveying the factoid as if it were something both scandalous and distasteful. "But it's not like Chechnya or Russia where they're warzones against demons and vampires."<br/><br/>He went for a second cob, disposing of his first in the compost. "Warlocks are the number one threat here. Their High Warlock does nothing to keep them in line and hold them to the Accords. 'Rogue,'" Alexander paused to make air quotes with his fingers as best he could while holding a corn cob, " Warlocks come in through the docks all the time with contraband, summon demons they can't control or just don't want to, do all kinds of messed up shit to mundies . . ." Alexander paused to work a bit of corn stuck between his back teeth. "After that it's Werewolves. There was an Alpha that was just strong enough to keep all of the Werewolves under his thumb for a while, but not good enough at keeping his affairs in order. A pack completely feral Werewolves came up across the line a few years ago . . . normally that's Werewolf housekeeping, but Francis had to sent a team out to handle it. Only one Shadowhunter came back, but the job got done." He sniffed and ate some more corn.<br/><br/>"I'm biased, since Francis practically raised me like his own, but I think we got it good here. He's super, super focused on getting paperwork and reports done on time and properly but it pays off when you can look up info on a demon with a thirty second search on a terminal in the war room, rather than having to go hit up a Silent Brother and spend days in the stacks reading books that were ancient when they came across the ocean from the Old World in wooden ships. Michael told me when he was over in Spain that he just had to go into situations blind because it was a choice between researching what he was up against or letting the target get away." Alexander shrugged his shoulders. "On the other hand, sometimes I feel like we get buried in information. There's so much of it right at our fingertips we get oversaturated in it. Just because we can look up some 12th century Shadowhunter's account doesn't mean we need to."<br/><br/>He paused to clear his throat.<br/><br/>"So, when's that cake done?" Alexander asked, turning back to asking the<em>real</em>questions.