[table][tr][td][/td][td][/td][/tr][/table]

symposia.

[x]flippant, lethargic, egotistic, distant, sadistically incapable of everything conceivable
[x]artistically inclined
[x]selectively polite; adheres to authority, unless that authority is marko
[x]likes compliments. a lot
[x]receptive, impulsive, analytical, devoted, on more than one count startlingly naïve
[x]blue eyes, short ponytail, 5'9, asshat smile
[x]physically 19 years - vampire of 80+ yrs
[x]an actor who plays to win

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© MADI

• (au) has an etsy most people in the town know about; markets custom-made, unique and intricately styled phone accessories, that no one buys. hardly makes money from it
  
• but after contributing to the formation of the first phone case some decades ago has been rolling in big blocks of benjamins from the royalties for a neat decade. something basically no one knows about.
  
• uses his $$$ on only the best uselessly elaborate details and obscure materials for his phone charms
  
• loudly and frequently advertises these phone accessories throughout town; gets so painfully flattered whenever someone gives them a single compliment. backhanded or otherwise.
  
• so unmotivated to do anything else sometimes he has to be dragged by the leg
  
• chaotic neutral; not an enforcer of goodness, but lashes out at shameful, selfish depravity - r we surprised that an 80 y.o vampire is cynical
  
• carries a large number of knives on his person, strapped wherever is hidden
  
• fails at gaining muscle. severely distressed by this
  
• tall, but never straightens enough to show it
  
• born vampiric in 1940
  
• had that asshole mentor who raised and taught him, only physically 2 years older but with a longer streak as vampire; one that taught him in deception, persuasion. all the fun stuf
  
• (had been) rather unhealthily attached to that mentor; now would stab on sight. has little to no reaction when anything implicating this shitty mentor is said, but goes thru 1843 war flashbacks in 2 seconds and thinks of 48 ways of escaping even quicker
  
• light voice, practised in pleasantries, perfectly measured even when a knife's at his throat, except when he should be pretending he's scared
  
• takes residence in a ferris wheel carriage near the bottom; packed chock-full of his phone accessory materials
  
• not quite familiar with common decency
  
• also genuinely doesn't know what to do with money; spends it on people, supplies, fabrics, gadgets, company, will never buy a new pair of pants ever b/c he's not gonna wear it
  
• by proxy won't lend it to cat because she runs a diner, thanks, and it's his money
  
• doesn't live on a lot. which people can also tell bc he's so grubby. dont sniff him. seems to survive only on his creative juices.
  
• current living conditions: MESSY. materials everywhere. basically has room for a single cat, which is where he sits
  
• not excessively conscious of platonic physical actions save for ones that require trust, i.e. sleeping beside someone; in other words he'd feel up ezra's biceps without hesitation but he'll balk at an innocent sleepover
  
• athletic. likes 2 spin
  
• generally very pleasant to people if sometimes with a mean streak that would make a pacifist's fingers twitch for his Throat (the latter is reserved for vamp gang gang bc THEY CAN TAKE IT)
  
• lives on people pitying him and feeding him
  
• surprisingly, on the other hand, has his own form of pride
  

• scarf
  
• shoes
  
• umbrella (various)
  
• toolbox
  
• prosthetic legs
  
• headphones
  
• poncho - THANKS DREM x2
  parachute
  life jacket
  
• tea stirrer
  

• battle armour
  
• snorkels
  
• ringbox
  
• cane
  
• monocle
  
• storage unit
  
• swiss army knife (THANKS DREM)
  
• tracker
  
• slingshot
  
  

snake.

if betrayal had at any point been off-limits, reserved for people with even less morals than he had - which was about how much it took to fill a teacup, ceramic painted by his very own hand - it stopped being off-limits the moment he woke up alone for the first time in half a century, both legs deliberately broken in order to stop his escape and other limbs wound immobile in the same bandages his mentor had first given him to protect him from the sun. and in one fell swoop the dear entity he'd called brother stomped the metaphorical teacup into many fragments under one thigh-length boot.

unfurling his list of crimes, santa claus would be so unbelievably disappointed he'd be lugging a mountain of coal to rialto's humble ferris wheel carriage by the bulldozer. rialto stole. he lied, bluffed, provoked, swindled, misled, exploited. not anymore, or at least not nearly as often - san creado was in itself not the highway of backstabbing activity cat and alex would have you think, and days toppled by where nothing need happen at all, but rialto lolling like a cat in sunlight over the wooden boardwalk at midnight had (not even long ago, it seemed) once not lived in san creado.

once he'd fought nobly for his own share of the dregs, small fangs poking out from the lips of a veritably mummified child, grabbing for rats and snarling at the larger vampires, all at the very bottom of the pack they'd crawled to for protection; he'd gotten punches, kicks, at some point a blob of spit splattering over the back of his hand, when his mentor was too weak from his own share of the torment to get up, and facing this every day in the shelterless slums they'd been so painfully alive. they knew they were alive, because they were hungry, and they hurt. but they were above the kind of scum that roughed up fledgelings for their own sense of superiority. battered, sharing one measly plastic cup of blood between the two of them, they'd been brighter and fiercer than lion cubs.

even then he hadn't been on the nice list. every day that they were alive, every day there was another way the blurs of huge blistered hands and grotesque faces before his eyes became bloodied, crushed, warped with fear, repentance. he saw the backs of their feet sliced when they walked off with the biggest servings, he saw their sunburnt carcasses smoking as in his mind he got a sharpened block of wood and jammed it right between the ribs - rialto hadn't stolen because the moment he stood there was an elbow lodging itself into his neck, forcing him back down. because he was weak. he was powerless. if he would have stolen - an vampiric infant with his eyes still red, fangs barely passing the lip, tiny face screwed up with the fearsome, empty look of absolute hate - or killed, was there any excuse? would there be acceptance, given his conditions, the hopelessness? would he have killed, given no instrument but his bare hands and teeth?

it was counterfactual thinking, but he would have. five years old, ten years old, sixteen years old, he would have. born vampires developed slowly. their physical age, at least for the first fifty years, was approximately half of their actual age. had any adult and fully-functioning vampire stood still long enough for a two year old child to toddle up to their side, scale up their clothes, and bite while aiming for the eye, rialto wouldn't have ever waited. frightful imagination.

his brother was a charmer. it took years for him to plant the seeds before anything began to shift, but he knew from the start not to beg for food; he took a bite and grinned in the face of chastisement, and had imparted how to control your face, to read what people wanted in the manner in which they clenched their hands, the direction of their gaze. cheat didn't have a physical form until it met rialto's brother, their hair grown long, eyes green with unassuming amusement, lean figure sprawled over a table - he nourished people with the wickedest lies and no one thought them true but they couldn't stop their hands, passing over whatever he wanted, touching his hair because they'd never seen the likes of anything resembling him at the bottom of the food chain. somewhere he could be touched. he was a charmer, and anyone thinking rialto's brother would stay there didn't deserve blood.

still until this point, they hadn't thieved; his brother had only taken, and he was allowed. it was suggestion at most. persuasion. the only reason they hadn't called it manipulation was because rialto's brother had grinned, all fangs, at the idea that the people he played with had any substantial thoughts to begin with.

once they had power, rialto did steal. the two of them stole others' eyes, their attention, once his brother unhooked all the bandages he'd wrapped around rialto's face and arms - they could've stolen anything and there, in that place, at that time, in that depraved world of perpetual sunlight and even the big fish cooking under the sun, lifeless people and a haze of death, the two of them grew from cubs to lions. their strength and influence, gradual but definite, propagated, like the white queen their breakfast became six white lies. their living was a bluff. rialto's brother was more for temptation - he fed rialto his lines, engineered his resting expression, started cobbling together the wider workings of a genius mind once they could get their hands on the resources; technology, far beyond their time, machinery, weaponry.

rialto calls his brother, if not an asshole, his mentor. (not to anyone. no one would ask. they wouldn't know.) the sole being who'd ever come close enough to format his whole existence.

thirst doesn't last. ascension is finite. at some point, you hit the top of the container and spill over the sides; in that nasty godforsaken town where vampires roamed and swapped blood for leisure, you couldn't get far. some people grew complacent. most people wanted more.

rialto had blood on his tongue almost every day for a hundred years, he wasn't unfamiliar to the feel of it crusting over his knuckles, streaking over his face, spilling it whether it be with throwing knives or up close, shoving one right between someone's ribs. the day he'd woken up, pain like a flare through his body when he'd tried to roll over and failed, rialto forgot the meaning of backstabbing that wasn't the literal kind. should his mentor appear before him in the flesh, now, decades later, back turned, would rialto hesitate to knife him without warning? no.

maybe.

hesitation is weakness. he knows it. feet stepping on your hands, a foot hooking yours, dirt in your mouth. he's been trained into the want for instant gratification; getting results by grabbing them himself. he was meant to be cunning. powerful enough to accomplish whatever he wanted. ruthless enough to want to do it without pause. fib. smile. entice. it's what he had to do to go anywhere, is what he'd learned. he had to.

alone, broken away from the town, blood smeared over his mouth, someone found him standing blankly in the alley. rialto had opened his mouth, tried to come up with something, failed, and ended up somewhere years down the line in san creado.

it didn't make him good; he wasn't good. he'd stolen. he'd lied, bluffed, provoked, swindled, misled, exploited. now, though, he lies in stasis; lazy, supine, indifferent, ready with a lovely shit-eating smile whenever something blew up in someone's face and a towel to pat down that blown-up something. he keeps his head down, paints his accessories, sometimes stays motionless for long enough that days pass before he gets up again. there is no need for lies here. no need to measure others and their thoughts, to evaluate and snap into action. here, he chooses to do absolutely nothing, and he can.

everything it overshadows is a need for control and autonomy so pervasive that having anything less than one foot of flesh unconstricted by fabric makes spit bubble in his mouth. or maybe that's exhibitionism.

[span style="background-color: #525252; padding: 1px; color: #B3B3B3;"]ONE DON'T PICK UP THE PHONE[/span]

name rialto

age 79

bde considerable

snapshot externally a blue-eyed youth with black hair tied past his collarbones, flashing fangs when he smiles, charming and amiable until you meet him for 15< seconds.

substantial relationships
- friends?
- respected
- people who owe him (not a lot)
- people he owes (many)
- people that regret meeting him

appearance + + + Without any focus his face turns vacant, a touch less bored than blank - almost empty, a dainty face lifted to the roof of his carriage with his gaze boring past the metal for the hours before sundown. He takes only half a moment to shift gears when there are others to attend to; adopting an immediate little smile, eyes flashing any degree between sly and perfectly chivalrous and, despite an air of disparaging lethargy, wholly alert. He wastes no attention on his appearance; clothes going unwashed for long periods, grime accumulating under his nails, even smudges of dirt on his face unchecked. They can peer into modern mirrors, but Rialto hardly brings himself to do it. And if he does, sometimes he'll add another smear.

His black hair falls straight, albeit unruly, below the base of his neck just over his shoulder blades, cleaved at the bottom in a clean but roughly diagonal line and tied at the base just as roughly. The windswept hair that falls into his face isn't maintained, only pushed aside, and his loose ponytail rests over his collarbone without any other decoration. He scarcely cleans it, or himself, beyond dunking it in water and letting it air-dry; it itches, frequently, and having his hair grow longer than halfway to the elbow makes Rialto's fingers twitch for a knife. It's long enough as it is, and already a little too long - there are no barbers in San Creado, and the little knives he has don't do for good hacking jobs. He'd ask Cat if he didn't fear decapitation.

It is a disenchanted sort of ugly glaze he has plastered over all his movements. Rialto's regular stance leaves nothing to the imagination. He sprawls, drapes himself over others as though he can't bear to stand up unsupported, takes up the whole surface of any horizontal plane the moment he lies down, like the amount of surface area one occupies is directly proportionate to how much of a big deal they are; Rialto slumps, scowls, scratches his stomach under his shirt in plain sight and hardly even shies from doing worse things, like jamming a whole finger into his ear if he can't be assed to listen. He smiles just as much as he gives charmingly disgusted looks, but he piles so much grease and damned insincerity in it that it all means the same thing; he gives the worst of smirks, eyes lidding and expression nothing less than spitefully amused, by which the definition shifts to them being the best in stimulating others to start swinging.

What he puts on takes equally as little effort. Anything loose, open, and able to be worn in any remotely incorrect way; he's lazy to button, and doesn't find it necessary to iron out wrinkles. The things he wears have folds beyond folds, and he has approximately two sets of clothing that are for remotely formal occasions but even when these occasions roll around he never deigns to put them on - or maybe he does, while no one's looking, dressing up in the dead of night and peering with a weak semblance of nonchalance in his tiny round mirror, but he takes them off just as fast. His form of narcissism regarding his own features is a strange one; it's utterly assured, yet - more than he would admit freely - abashed. There isn't any reason to dress up in this town.

The bottom line is, Rialto's conventionally pretty - blue eyes clear like San Creado's neighbouring ocean isn't, features pleasant like how not thinking too much about Rialto's sad failures in marketing and self-expression makes you feel, tall and leggy and whatever else - but after coming to meet him you're sure he isn't, or after you speak to him for the first time, you'll go home, throwing off your shoes, rubbing your temples, and struggle to remember what his face even looked like, because his personality (and the grime) tends to be the biggest distractor.

All in his master plan, you know.

- build
- everything else............... eee..... expressions, height
- wax poetic abt his pretty eyeballs
- way he walks?
- externally 19 yo
- ooooo comparison to cat!

personality

bc im never going to finish this, dotpointès
- LAZY ASSHOLE
- not good like poster child, but good like he'll laugh behind his hand at ur unrealistic hopes and dreams instead of bolstering u with fake compliments, so good meaning bad but at least u Know. u know?
- actually not a good person. lies and embellishes and frustrates, and for the most part Doesn't Care about people, esp. not about pleasing them w/o needing to, but he's easily shaken by the simplest demonstrations of good intent
- big mean streak. his casual statements that translate as unblinking insults? u don't wanna hear them.
- cuts the crap when he needs to, but likes tiptoeing dramatically around just 2 be a shit
- headstrong, though he Will grovel if it means getting spoonfed.
- strong world view. been through enough to scorn those that think they're above others.
- healthily sceptical, though it looks like he plays along with everything
- charismatic somehow
- not v honest with himself
- quick on the uptake; slowed down because he doesn't take anything seriously
- super sloppy; Big Mess ™. doesn't mind his appearance/image, at all. he's hard to take seriously. most people kind of end up feeling sorry for him.

You wouldn't call him a gentleman, and it's a good thing, too. You couldn't say it without seeing only the top surface of his behaviour on the days he strolled through town, his arms packed full of glittering rustling works that caught the light, the lift of his voice, maybe a second's nod if your eyes lock. Maybe he's polite when he tries to sell his things, and he carries on the smiling complimentary affair just enough to get the common layperson interested for about ten seconds.

Then Cat, or Alex, or both, shuts it down, and - well, anyway, you could probably liken his sales pitches to a Venus flytrap. As in, when he actually makes them sound appealing.

For all that there's a world of difference between his reclining indifference and the smiles he sends prospective customers, the latter is not what one would strictly classify as a farce. That's what people will call it when they see the dichotomy, namely people bearing no qualms with giving him a chop to the neck and asking if he's ashamed of swindling people, but strangely, it scarcely feels like a lie. He pours his earnest attention into people that chatter, drinking in their stories, leading them through the warehouse he has folded up in his Ferris wheel carriage; the rapture breaks when one of the gang pokes their head in and interrupts, but he'll simply play innocent. The casual, affable pleasantries he slips into around strangers don't come at any expense, and his aim isn't to hide, nor even particularly to sell - it's an unconscious search for variation, a personable leak of a life not being a nasty vampire, a homeless vagrant. To some extent, maybe it's because Rialto likes to talk, and not only in jibes.

His liquid shifts between distinguished and unsalvageable are just like him slipping in and out of his Ferris wheel. At some point one has to realise that both sides of him are one and the same.

He's easier to read than he'd like to admit. A vanilla want for attention, poorly stifled gratification gained from even backhanded validation, his face unabashedly cycling outright through disgust and pity even in normal conversation. His penchant for calm is less seeking to be alone (though, simultaneously, it is; there is only so much trouble one can get into with no human interaction) and more taking time to bask in the total lack of immediate conflict, stretching his limbs out as far as they'll go just to take up space, never dressing up just because he doesn't have to.

Rialto had once been a hair-trigger gun. He went off instinct, and to some extent still does; animal. Watching people's eyes, hands, lips. Before, his notion of self control was little to none; stop biting, stop barking, sit still. It hadn't barred feral aggression, pent up rage building up until his infant vessel shook, and tiny Rialto would have certainly tried to brutalise every single person that spat on his name (in itself, though, a greater focus on wanting to defend - pay back as much as he owed, but anchored). Today was thankfully different. Like all the hate was squeezed from his body after a long period of experiencing nothing but, his current persona oozes lackadaisical, unconcerned. He couldn't care less whatever was said about him - Rialto's defining characteristic is how it seems he'd be perched on a lawn chair at world's end, sipping a bloody margarita.

For the record, if there was nothing he could do about it, then that image was valid. On the other hand, in other situations he'd claim not to involve himself if he loses more than he benefits, but while Rialto is not selfless nor benevolent, somehow he's righteous. He'd claw to the top on someone's behalf if they're unable to do it themselves, if for a moment he meets their eyes and sees desperation but determination - he'd never claim to be empathetic, either, but he adopts people's lives like putting on new clothes; works backwards, laying their perspectives and motivations that he can see before him flat like a newspaper. In a strange way, he understands people. What drives them at the basest level: desire, greed, jealousy, hope, love. He knows what hurts them, as we all do. A cold, omniscient pariah he might try to be, Rialto gets invested (in swirling emotion, the tangles of mortal pettiness, their struggles) - and, in reality, he's much more emotional than he'd ever independently realise.

It has its limits. He wouldn't claim to be better than anyone else, and in many parts he couldn't - he didn't push if the victim dug their heels in, didn't persist if they let go. He scorned certain people, however much he said he wasn't an inch above the rest of them; people that gave up. People that never tried, and never wanted to. Rialto didn't spare much thoughts for lost causes - one of the bitterer known facets of being an immortal with too much experience and too little sway. If someone didn't want to, you couldn't make them. The verbal cruelty he's capable of spilling, the nasty statements that bubble up at the peak of his nonchalance

- mention PTSD. maybe complex machinery - doesnt react well to guns. sleeping difficulties. doesn't talk about anri.
- still possesses a fear of death, a subtle one he doesn't realise until it's right in front of him; he's young
- another surprise (or maybe it isn't): totally easy to catch him off-guard. in theory

[span style="background-color: #525252; padding: 1px; color: #B3B3B3;"]TWO DON'T LET HIM IN[/span]

[table][tr][td][div style="width: 70px; height:70px; background-image:url(https://i.imgbox.com/4XVwGFUK.png); background-size: cover; background-position: top;"][/td][td][div style="width: 100px; text-align: center; font-family: arial; font-size: 7pt; color: #8A8A8A; line-height: 100%; padding-top: 10px; padding-left: 10px; opacity: 0.75; text-transform: lowercase;"]these are probably going to be hand clap lyrics beacuse zuka knows 2 songs and hand clap is one of them

yea then you'll know. he don't knw what he's doing. no one does. he likes to pretend that he's a cold city guy. no one tell rialto that he's big ass loser. it'll hurt his feelings.

[table][tr][td][/td][td][/td][/tr]

[tr][td]
i. he's an artist, and he likes to create. visually stunning things, elaborate things, things with so many details you'll never even notice the sliver of metal in the embroidery.
[/td][td]
i. there are many reasons for why he's wont to do things with his hands, and most of it has to do with taking the backseat; opting for camouflage, forming beautiful distractors. at the same time, it's his turning over a new leaf - spreading beauty in an ugly world.
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]ii. the times he wears things properly (clean, tucked in, ironed, colour coordinated) ticks down to an approximate two times, one of which was when something happened to marko and he and the gang had to haul ass, in a classy and legal way, to fetch him out.[/td]
[td]ii. rialto knows propriety, knows attractiveness and scoring a hundred little brownie points using wide eyes and attentive facial expressions alone, and he hates it. what his brother had called harnessing their strengths brought situations wholly unwanted by the dozen, and so now rialto makes his disregard for these games of seduction and manipulation absolutely clear. he doesn't wholly register physical attraction anymore, and when he does it's wan, dismissive. [/td][/tr]
[tr][td]iii. his constant front is languid, appallingly lazy, lacking of any vigilance whatsoever. he'll splay across people and let people lean on him, scratching his head and yawning as though he doesn't see an issue.[/td]
[td]iii. he hasn't gotten any rem sleep in a long, long while. he lies in his carriage for hours but doesn't doze off, only his eyes closed and everything filtered just out of his consciousness - a well of blankness folding over a body so motionless one would swear he wasn't breathing anymore, but the moment one reaches to tap him on the shoulder he has a knife drawn out of a harness around his thigh, another from around his chest beneath the bathrobe. he can't let down his guard, fully, anymore.[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]more edgy rialto things yet to come!![/td][td][/td][/tr][/table]