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Its evening in Chinatown- the majority of the people here in Wing Sing are local to the neighborhood- although there are a few outsiders. Among those outsiders is Zed- sitting at the bar, slurping noodles with the other patrons. He speaks quietly to some older chinese man- in Chinese, no less. The noodle shop isn't particularly full- there's more than enough room for everyone to enjoy the ambiance of this slice of foreign land within New York City's metropolitan borders.
*
Noodles. Noodles are important: and Josh might be dirt poor but he can afford some noodles in Chinatown. He stands out from the regular crowd, being all All American looking: he's something of a golden boy, sans the actual gold he sometimes has. Today his skin is just skin. Still, he's got a Yankees jacket on and has his hands tucked into his pocket as he looks around: his eyes naturally fall upon Zed, as he stands out too. Just differently.
*
Maximus is looking a little paler than usual. He really doesn't look /well/, all in all. Though, despite that, he does emanate a certain…fabulousness, since he is wearing one hell of a fur coat when he walks in. He spotted Josh from the street, and was headed here anyway. "Have you been /avoiding/ me, like that traitor, Creel, has been?" He challenges, just straight out of the gate, but with a lilt in his voice that suggests some teasing. Steel eyes then find Zed and he arches his left, dark, brow in a silent 'oh my'.
*
Zed looks over to the two others who seem rather out of place as his companion finishing his noodles- Zed speaks again in Chinese as the man heads out, before he looks back to his own bowl of broth and noodles. "I'm tellin' you, Tea. Its just not the same. You'd figure with the menu being almost identical that the noodles would come out the same. Not bad, don't get me wrong… maybe its just country cooking versus what you can get in the city. Guess that's the same the world over." He's speaking to someone- head tilting as if he's hearing someone respond. "Fuck me, no. Better pork, noodles and broth not as flavorful."
*
"Not specifically." remarks Josh with an easy smile to Maximus, even as he heads over to take a seat, which happens to be near to Zed. This will be the Foreigners section of the China shop. "But I was keeping a low profile for awhile there. Remind me to give you my phone number so you can ring me sometime… next time I go quiet." But his attention is drawn to Zed and his conversation with… someone? Whooo is not there? Crazy? He leans over and offers his hand to Zed, "Sorry to interrupt you, friend, my name is Josh, can you reccommend what's good?" The hand is offered to shake, ostensibly. In truth its to do a health check. Josh can't cure all crazy, but he can fix *some* if they are strictly biological and not psychological issues…
*
Maximus is a whole heap of crazy, so Zed talking to someone not there doesn't bother him in the least. He sits right next to Josh and orders by tapping on the counter a few times and then pointing at the menu before turning his attention back to Josh and Zed. "Yessss, you should. I am currently living in the Baxter Building." He squints his eyes at Zed. "You seem familiar. Did I see you the other day?"
*
Zed gives Josh a quiet look, before he takes the other man's hand. A health scan would show an extreme number of oddities. For one- Zed's blood is poison. His breath is poison. He doesn't even scan as human- there's just something about him that screams one word: Wrong. Everything, infact, screams wrong. However, apart from that wrongness he's in perfect physical health. Mentally? He's solid. Solid as a rock.
" Call me Zed. Depends on what you like to eat." Zed says, "I'd suggest the pork noodle soup." he says after a quiet moment. He looks to Maximus. "Maybe. I do a lot of walking around the city. Harlem, in particular."
*
"Nice digs." comments Josh to Maximus for a moment, then there is a Josh pulls his hand back away as if it burned to touch Zed, giving the man a wide eyed look, his brow furrowing and staring. He can't help but stare. He's aware down to the cellular level that this guy is… off. And he's never felt anything like it. "What in the name of all that is holy are you and how can you survive it?" he blurts out, though he has the presence of mind to lower his voice. He looks alarmed: perhaps even a little afraid, which is rather rare for him.
*
Maximus picks up on Josh's fear immediately, and the comment helps. He looks between them and lowers his voice, "What is it? What do you sense? He is a vampire? I imagine that you and vampires would not mix so well." Forgetting to talk about himself for a moment, too.
*
Zed chuckles quietly- it comes across dark. "I'm surprised you don't know. Like should know like." he comments to Josh, as he turns to look towards Maximus next- Zed's eyes are black. Like night. Like the pitch black before creation. "I suppose you could call me a vampire, sure." he says then to Maximus. "I'm not, strictly speaking, a vampire." he notes. "But, I'm… well." he smiles quietly. "I'm a monster, friend. The Mother of Monsters lives within me."
*
Maximus has partially disconnected.
*
"Don't let him breath on you or his blood get near you." warns Josh to Maximus, sitting back heavily and staring at Zed like he sprouted a pair of heads, "I've never scanned a vampire so don't have a reference point, he's *alive* but he's *wrong*. I wouldn't even know where to start trying to heal what's wrong with him. There's nothing there that isn't superficial that's even human…" His eyes settle upon Zed for a long moment, "I'm not sure what that means. I don't know what 'monster' means: the baselines call me a freak and a monster all the time, when my gift is healing." Then again it is *so* much easier to damage a body then it is to repair it. "But I'm still… human. More or less." This is probably not a discussion for a chinese restaurant, but Josh was startled.
*
Maximus knows it isnt the right place for this talk, and he reaches out to touch Josh on the shoulder. "It could be unsettling to the monster if you talk about knowing all this before you tell him /how/ you do." he smiles overbroadly to Zed. "Monsters do not order Pork Noodles, so, you must be something else." he chuckles at his own joke and then says, sing song, "Tra-la-la." and cocks his head. Unlike Josh, he isnt afraid, even if logic says he should be.
*
"Oh, don't need to worry so much about the breathing thing. I'm not currently in the mood to blanket this place in gas." Zed explains, "Honestly, not really much for unrequired violence of any kind. I've seen enough death for a dozen life-times." Zed says, "The blood though, yeah. That you'd better watch out for. Almost corrosive." he mentions, as he goes back to his noodles. "What's that, Tea?" he wonders- listening to something. Hearing something.
"Tea calls you a monster." Zed says over to Josh. "You're human, sure. But you're also not human. I don't know why, exactly- but I know Monsters and I know Heroes." he taps his head. "I can sense them." he explains, "And I don't mean just like a hero or a villain… I mean metaphysically." Zed offers, as he pulls a cigarette pack out from his jacket. He lights up. "There's a cast to your soul, friend, and that mould screams monster. Or maybe it will, one day. Tea knows her children." he explains. "As for what's wrong with me? I've got no soul. It was eaten, and something else lives where it used to be."
Zed, for his part, doesn't seem to care who hears his story. He seems perfectly fine- but then again, he's got that crazy vet look to him down pretty perfectly.
*
Lowering his voice, Josh nods to Maximus: good point. He takes a moment to regain his composure, "I'm a healer. I heard you talking to someone not there, thought that you might have a structural problem— some insanity is purely biological and if it is I can correct it— so took a scan. Saw… everything you are." he explains mildly, "Besides, *I'm* not worried about anything. There doesn't exist a poison that can affect me: poison must biologically react to have an effect and I have *absolute* conscious control over my biology." He can't help but frown at this whole monster thing, and he shrugs, glancing away, "I do what I have to do for my people. If that makes me a monster, so be it. We didn't start the war. I could lay hands and heal, but sometimes I have to do other things in the name of justice." A somewhat warped sense of justice, really, buuuut. He blinks at Zed a moment and scoffs openly, "There's no such thing as a soul. You're a complex network of biology: your consciousness an emergent property of synapses and neurons and chemicals." Josh is *totally* an athiest.
*
Zed laughs again, shaking his head. "Oh, you're wrong at that, my friend. You are wrong on levels you can't imagine regarding the nature of the soul." he smiles quietly, looking over to Josh. "Take it from someone who's soul has been eaten completely. Who's eaten souls." he offers over to Josh quietly. "There is a soul, and it is the most valuable thing you possess. Without it you are nothing. Less than nothing." he says softly.
"As for Justice, that's my lesson to teach, as well. I spend days, weeks sometimes, hunting and studying my prey. I hunt them like I did vietcong in Vietnam. Like I did the Chinese in Korea. Only now I don't murder them. I don't kill them." he looks over to Josh quietly, "As a matter of fact, I'm waiting for someone now. The Chinese man who was here before? The one I was talking to? A butcher. Torched villages in Korea- men, women, children. It didn't matter to him." Zed pays for his meal, looking to the other two as he snuffs his cigarette out.
"Today is the day he pays the piper. He won't end up dead- but I'm going to tear away a piece of his soul. He'll never feel the same. He'll remember the pain. He'll remember his guilt. He'll know, for all time, that he's been punished for crimes he thought he'd gotten away with. Selling information to the US Government for a free ride away from the South Koreans and away from Justice." Zed puts his hands into his pockets, smiling quietly. "If you don't believe me, come to 127 Canal Street, Apartment C in half an hour. He's going to need a healer anyways." With that, Zed begins towards the door.
*
The look Josh has for Zed is quite clearly disbelieving: this soul nonsense is metaphysical superstition. Athiesm isn't something you admit openly in the 60's, but Josh doesn't have anything else the establishment can take from him. "I wouldn't heal such a man if he begged for it." admits Elixir, playing god and choosing who lives and who dies, "So, no. But you won't convince me there's anything like a soul. If that superstition matters to you, I won't disuade you from it, but people are meat. We're highly evolved animals who have learned and taught ourselves over generations. There's nothing else *to* us."
*
"I think I just figured it out. Why Tea likens you to one of her children." Zed says as he pauses at the door. "That's not a bad thing. But it is, a thing."
*
Zed heads on his way.. out the door.