Holiday Road

Prelude to a Road Trip

2031:

So now that the Emerald Kerfluffle has sorted, we need about a week to prep for this. Thankfully, Serenity has a decent cargo hold, so I've got clothes and a few other items. 3 sets of body armor, photographers' vests (80 billion pockets means I can carry damn near anything) and some cases that'll be marked as photography equipment.

Doing some heavy feeding and bloodwork for my latest ammo experiments. One of the drawbacks to a gun is that the ammunition does minimal damage to vampires. Solution, make the ammo more lethal. Experimenting with materials and ballistics gel to figure out shatter and penetration. Basically we're creating a jumped-up hollow-point bullet, so that's pretty well solved. Now the propulsion is going to be a fun part. I think I'm going to have to go with a compressed air bottle under the barrel. Bonus, I can create a series of acceleration vents allowing for constant acceleration out the barrel. End result, better penetration and pure unadulterated ouch for the target. The down side of this is that it's a cast-iron bitch when I run out of ammo. With that in mind, I've got a couple spares that'll chamber the classic ammo from NATO and the Soviet block. Of course if I break those out, we are deep in the shit.

Not to say that it's been all work. When Cass gave me a dumb look after I explained why the planes are thusly named, a night in was in order. She likes Zoe. Who knew. The question of ghouling Rebecca is over on the side right now, but I think we'll have an answer once we land back in Rio. Brushing up on my German and Arabic, I'm doing some translation for my software documentation. Because that's always how we spend fun nights. No, really. I know it might be weird from the outside, but the documentation is a good thing. And it helps me with language skills, which are tremendously important. God knows we might be negotiating something, and I'd rather we not get boned because of linguistical error.

Future looking statements. I think I've got things plotted out to be able to determine the next Giovanni moves - I mean, with a memory of disasters pending, I'm taking a chance on thinking they'll be there for the cleanup, if they're not already there to help make it happen. Hopefully, Dresden will have sufficient infrastructure that I can make friends and slowly work them against the Giovanni. At the very least I can make friends who can feed me information on the Italians. How Tina reacts to what we're doing is going to make for an interesting flight. Hopefully she won't think her pops has gone totally around the bend.