Participants:
| Scene Title | Burned |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Wanting to find out more about her ability, Eve Mas seeks out someone with the power to know. |
| Date | October 13, 2019 |
The shadows that arrive with the approaching sunset settle over Elmhurst like a lace blanket. The winter chill drawing white breath from pale lips, eyes that glow crimson are hidden behind a pair of large dark sunglasses and the woman formerly known as Eve Mas lies in wait in the alley for a certain blonde woman who didn't really like her much but much like most things with Eve.. she needed to know. That need to know has drawn her here as it has in the past and while Eve hides behind the dumpster in her overly large coat and floppy hat that barely contains the unruly mess that is her midnight mane of hair and she wonders back on the sequence of events that have led her here.
"So I missed something in this fried brainpan, big deal." Rolling her eyes up to the darkening sky as she whispers, Eve winces and grabs her middle as a fresh blossom of pain envelopes her in its grasp and by now it's like an old friend that she just can't get rid of. The pain grounds her though, let's her know she's real and well… alive. Twitching and straining her neck to the side the pale woman eventually stops with the frantic movements and catches her breath, staring down at a shaking hand that sparks with crimson energy and Eve hides it under her coat. She's still in one piece.
For now.
The days are in constant motion. Sometimes they weren't as bad. This wasn't one of the good ones. Maybe it had been a bad idea to come in this state, or maybe it would help.
Maybe not.
Ferrymen’s Bay
November 27th
8:13 pm
“Jiage shangzhang,” echoes a woman’s voice down the alley. It isn't directed at Eve, but rather to another person just out of sight. “You understand how it is, Jia li dun.” It's a Chinese woman in her thirties, short hair shaved on one side, puffy winter coat bundling her up against the cold.
“Don't call me that,” is a more familiar voice, and from her position behind the dumpster, Eve recognizes it as the person she was waiting for. Julie Fournier-Raith is just slightly obscured by the metal of the dumpster, her white pea coat buttoned all the way up, wool-trimmed collar upturned to the back of her neck. Even with her face partially tucked into her cream-colored scarf, Eve recognizes her.
“Whatever you say,” the Chinese woman says with a flick of her brows up. She reaches inside of her coat and produces a metal cigarette case, offering it out between two fingers. “$320,” she says, which causes Julie to pause as she reaches into her pocket. Blue eyes snap up to the older woman.
“I'm sorry, what did you say?” The indignance In Julie's voice is crisp.
“I told you, the price has gone up.” Palming the cigarette case, the older woman shrugs. “Take it or leave it, but we’re the only pure source.” Julie’s nostrils flare, her posture stiffens, and she angrily pulls her wallet out of her coat and starts counting out twenty-dollar bills.
Click
That was a photo being taken from a phone. Now the women in front of her didn't know that it was highly likely her ability would destroy this phone before she could even do anything with it.
"That seems like a steep price doesn't it? Mmm not nice. No. No." Sucking her teeth, Eve uses the dumpster as leverage to slide around to face the two women. A wide grin on her face only made the more demented with how she grits her teeth against the pain she feels within.
"Are you sure," ripping the sunglasses off of her face to reveal blood red gleaming eyes. "It's a pure source. People always say they have the good shit. Pure. Mmm unsure." The rhyme tickles Eve but not like that tickle of pain in her lower back that makes her want to lean against the wall. "I have a fair few buddies in SESA… NYPD. You should give her a better deal, before your mug is sent to every single justice seeking muscle head in the Zone."
Mad grin.
Julie lets out a yelp of fright, staggering back and away from the dumpster before freezing in her tracks as though a large dog had come out into view. The Chinese woman flicks a glare at Julie, then over to Eve and curls her lip up into a snarl.
“You’re burned,” she says with a sharp look to Julie. “Permanently,” then turns to level a look at Eve and tucks her hands into her jacket and turns for the street beyond the alley. Julie, exasperatedly, looks wide-eyed at Eve and then wheels around and chases after the woman.
“Wait!” Julie shouts. “Qing shao hou!” The woman neither turns back, nor waits, looking up and down the street before moving out through the middling traffic. Frozen again, Julie sucks in a sharp breath and turns around, wild eyed.
“What the fuck!?” Julie shouts, storming back over to where Eve had ambushed her and her dealer. She's moving too fast to intend to stop, face flushed with anger, and shoves Eve with both hands. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Eve!?”
"Oops-oof!" Eve is shoved and in that moment she shifts form rapidly from the one that Julie is familiar with to the one that is new and less familiar. Crackling energy in the shape of a woman. Eve gathers herself hurriedly and comes back to form hopefully without sunburning the woman she was here to ask for help from.
"Wait Goddess me!" Springing back and away with a wave of her hands, "She was ripping you off! I can surely get you what you're looking for Miss Julie!" Heh heh. She chuckles softly, shoulders shaking and yowls in pain as a trail of lighting rips up to her shoulder.
"Would be happy to do itttt." Singsong voice, "I am sorry but fuck those types m'lady."
“You— you don't know what the fuck you're— ” Julie sucks in a sharp breath and then exhales a strangled scream and throws her arms down to her side. “God fucking damnit!” Her voice cracks she shouts so loud, wheeling around and kicking an empty bottle into a larger heap of garbage.
“Fuck!” Julie splutters again, then just storms off down the sidewalk as she takes her hands through her hair.
That— didn't quite go as planned.
It's not going as planned but good thing for Eve she knows how to improvise.
With Julie beginning to storm off the former seer does the only thing she knows to do. Disperse. Her whole body explodes into a roiling red mist, lightning crackling on the pavement.
Not wasting time, Eve flies around Julie and stops in front of her. With some difficulty the woman pulls her body back together and she's panting. "God damn it Julie, stop!"
The older woman almost bowls over with pain, she can barely keep herself together. The next time she explodes apart, she might not be able to corporealize for a while. She needs Julie to read her. "I fucked up your deal! Just trying to help but I can grab it for yo-!" Her form flickers in and out of phase rapidly and Eve grunts a distorted sound.
Julie lets out a strangled shout and whips around, staring wide-eyes at Eve’s partially discororated form. Bystanders on the street ahead and behind them immediately give the scene more space. Someone who was crossing the street hurriedly jogs back across. A few people pull out phones, turning them sideways and recording the fantastical display of power.
Illuminated by red light, Julie stared vacantly into Eve’s incorporeal form, brows furrowed and lips parted in a wordless expression of abject confusion. “What— the fuck?” Her question has a whole different tone and context when not bowled out in anger. Flicking a look up and down the street, Julie takes a step forward toward the mass of energy.
“Jesus— fuck— stop. Whatever this is— what the fuck is this?” Julie blurts out all at once. “Pull yourself together. Something. Jesus.”
Eve tries.
Yanking at the invisible strands that coil together to make the familiar pale form that Julie knows. A sound reminiscent of a vacuum echoes outward and Eve comes back together in a crouch on her knees in front of the blonde. Breathing heavily, the hat she was wearing is utterly destroyed nowhere in sight. Her already tattered and burned coat is almost in shreds. "I don't know what it is Julie. I- ooh!"
Stopping herself from talking Eve gathers the rest of her strength to shakily climb to her feet. "It's easier to just not.. be… this. Myself, being the cloud doesn't hurt. I'm sorry, I need your help. I'm sorry, I'm, I'm," Whispering feverishly, teeth clicking together. She's not even cold.
Shaking her head and gripping at the wild strands of midnight hair, "Can… ca-can you read me- what…" Eve looks down at her hands that become wreathed in crimson lightning while most the same color wafts off of her body, oblivious to the onlookers, "What am I?" Glowing eyes bulging wide.
“You're a fucking mess!” Is Julie’s immediate answer, but for all the frustration she has right now the presence of a puzzle to solve elicits some small measure of patience. “Just— shut up.” Grabbing Eve by the sleeve, Julie drags her down the sidewalk and into another alley between two buildings.
Steam issues up from a manhole cover nearby, carrying with it the acrid stink of urine in aerosol form. Rankling her nose, Julie pushes Eve back against the brick wall of the alley and stares at her with wide eyes. Her stare is stationary and lingering, pupils widening and then contracting to pinpoints. When Eve fusses and fidgets, Julie grabs her wrist and tries to hold her steady. Ultimately, she looks mystified.
“I… I don't know.” Is the best answer Julie can give at first. The more she thinks on it, though, the more the anger over what Eve did comes boiling back. “You're dead. Dead. That's what I'm seeing, because you shouldn't be alive. You're some sort of… I don't know, backwards phaser. They're material and can turn immaterial by dispersing their molecular makeup, held together by quantum forces until they reconnect. You're… the exact opposite.”
Julie snatches Eve’s jaw in one hand, turns her head so they're making eye contact at each other. “Stop. Fidgeting.” Julie’s brows furrowed, eyes track from side to side and then all at once she lets Eve go. “Keeping your corporeal state is hard,” Julie says, “because your ability is always on. The only way to become solid is to will yourself to suppress it, and that's like flexing a muscle.”
“Eve, whoever or whatever the fuck you got into that caused this? It's— there's nothing I can do. Your default state is like… its like some sort of energized gas, like plasma but different. Every time you reform into a solid your Suresh Linkage Complex tells your body to immediately separate again.” Julie threads an errant lock of blonde hair behind one ear. “Negation drugs might help, I can get you a scrip for Zodytrin, it's safe. But I don't know if your ability will have adverse effects on performance time for the drug.”
Shaking her head and liking absolutely bewildered, Julie scrubs the heel of her palm into her forehead. “Eve, if I didn't know any better I'd say someone did this to you as a fucking punishment. But I can't imagine anything that could do this to someone, let alone strip you of your original ability.”
"Hot Fucking Mess ye- Okay!" Eve is dragged into the alley and inspected much to her dismay even though this is what she came for. She can't help but squirm under Julie's wide, pointed gaze. "Ha ha! Easy on the merchandise, what- wh-" Shutting the hell up as Julie starts to diagnose the issue or ability at hand.
Red irises bore into Julie's blue ones, drinking in every word. "Flexing a muscle yes… when I move through things. They break apart," Brow furrowing but nodding to the answer that is given to her. Eve can work with that. "I would like an official batch of meds!" Wincing and slapping at her neck that spasms and lights up, she gives a sheepish look over to the nurse.
"Well, y-you see." Pausing, weighing if she will just out with it or not, she was pretty sure she remembered something about the government wanting to keep a lid on this, Adam too… but.. "Start smoking another cigarette you're gonna need it." Eve presses her back against the wall and looks up to the sky. "You know I'm into some weird shit. You remember me in-" Julie might know more of her time she spent in the Institute. That… is tucked into the back of her head for later. "This, wasn't a result of some science fairy fiasco gone wrong. This was done by a gift but not like the Tyler Cases of the world… almost." Her hair away from dark mane to shining, cracking mass of red and back again.
This is the part Eve perpetually loses people at, she just hasn't learned how to stick the landing on this. "Just like with Adam Monroe, Kazimir Volken, Francois. All different shades of immortals th-that have been reported and that I've encountered in my life, there is another.. force." Rubbing the back of her arms and finally looking back down from the sky, "It's older than the Black and White Conduits. The Institute's science fairies did experiments on them, at the Ark." The unasked question of did you know hangs in the air, "This force.. it started it all. Gave Adam Monroe his immortality. Somehow.. created the entities that we know of through the Shadow Volken and Abby. It changes us.. even itself down to its very core… genetic manipulation."
"Don't look at me like that!" Coughing but steadying herself before she falls over, "When I could still have visions, see the echoes of the future I encountered this.. thing. Spirit. I sniffed where I shouldn't and it began to haunt me in return. I didn't know at the time that it was something the Company worked tirelessly to erase and seal away. How could I?! Earlier this year! There was an event! It's supposed to be classified by the government but I never signed their NDA silence making clause!" Snort, heh. She also hadn't reregistered.
"It broke-it broke free. So angry, so powerful. Next thing I know, I feel something in me. Everything went dark then everything hurt oh man did it hurt. Like being pulled apart into a million flaming pieces." Eve shivers at the thought though she isn't cold in this moment, it's still chilling. "I slammed back together not… where it all happened. And I've been liv-owwww." Clenching her teeth but that grimace turns into a strained grin. "Living with this, exploding when I need. Lots of smoke rising from my furniture. When I sleep I turn into a cloud!" Is that all?
"So you see! This just might have been a punishment!" That's not to say Eve isn't enjoying herself, pain or not. She was almost getting use to it this was just one of her supremely bad days.
“Eve,” Julie takes a hold of her by the face again, “literally none of that made any fucking sense.” Her blue eyes track side to side following Eve’s darker ones that flicker with red. “You’re absolutely wrong,” comes after a moment with a few more leering inspections. “About this not being like Tyler Case. This is— exactly like Tyler Case. The color of the energy you’re emitting, the way it’s making my hair stand on end, it feels just like it. But that doesn’t make any sense.”
It’s clear Julie doesn’t believe her about everything, even clearer when she moves her hands off of Eve’s face and takes a step back. “Eve, you need help. You’re not eating right, those dark circles around your eyes aren’t from fun. You’re… hiding in fucking dumpsters to, what, stalk me instead of making an appointment?” Her brows go up, and Julie looks around with her arms at her side.
“Eve, you were better once. I was there, I saw. You were healthy.” Julie sighs, scrubbing a hand at her mouth. “There wasn’t some sort of magic going on there. It was prescription anti-psychotics. It didn’t inhibit your ability, or your art, or your music. Do you remember your music?” Her brows rise again. “Eve,” her voice cracks a little. “Even if every insane fucking thing you said to me is true, it doesn’t change the fact that you can’t keep this up. You need to see someone, before it’s too late. Before you hurt yourself or, fuck, someone else.”
"I'm sorry."
For not making sense, for not being able to make it so everything in the world made sense. Eve has a lot to be sorry for. She falls silent, another person who doesn't believe. That's not all that surprising. Eve didn't know how to deliver it right, why would anyone believe her.
It's not like Julie is making more sense then Eve when it comes to stating how she feels similar to Tyler, red eyes widen a fraction and she tilts her head. "I-I- Miss Julie that makes no sense I can't swap the gifts of others! I explode! I cloud." The pale woman looks nervous and tries to back up more but the wall is still behind her. If anything makes Eve uncomfortable it's when someone hones in on her instability, when it's reason being thrown out at her.
Eve lived in an unreasonable world inside of her head.
When Julie brings up that time, the time she was at her best self with the Institute. Her music? "Did I sing for you…?" It catches her off guard, she's never around people who were in the Institute when she was. Nobody that can tell her anything of note. "I remember my room… the walls always changed. I remember Grandpa Broome-" Choking back a sob, Eve does her best to dry her soon to be wet eyes.
"Medicine. Therapy but nobody believes. Miss Julie- I." Eve is stammering and tries to find her center. "I remember my paintings, all lost. Stolen by Grandpa Broome and Ezekiel." That doesn't do much to attend to what Julie is saying though. Before she hurts herself.
"You might not believe me, I know it all sounds crazy but Julie look at me. Please." It's not as if the blonde has taken her eyes off of the raven haired woman. Eve is pleading and it might be reminiscent of how Eve pleaded at times in the Institute.
Do I need the meds?
I'll behave I promise!
It's all around me! Can't you feel it? Can't you see it?!
"I've died three times already. Brought back-" Eve stops and hangs her head. "It's a lot… but I can't stop. Peoples lives depend on me seeing it through, round and round I go. I just-" It's as if Eve is having a hard time staying here in the present. Internally, Eve is having a malfunction. 'Short Circuiting.' Is what she called it.
Whenever her mind couldn't handle what was going on, she had a retreat. A safe space but that place was just in her mind. On the outside though, it always seemed like Eve was having a panic attack.
“Jesus Christ” Julie exhales breathlessly, her face the perfect picture of abject frustration. “You don’t get my sympathy, Eve.” There’s a bitterness in Julie’s voice as she backpedals from the sparking former seer. “All those things you talked about? You destroyed them!” Her voice rings clear in the cold night.
“You killed all those people in the Ark, you let Simon die, you brought all those people to my home!” Tiny hands balled up like fists, Julie’s eyes glass over with tears. “Fuck your songs! Fuck your paintings! Fuck your— your manic episodes! You took away everything from me!” Her voice cracks; heavy with anger, betrayal, grief.
Julie takes another step back, waving her arms around. “You don’t get to be sorry! If— if you hadn’t left us my sister wouldn’t be dead!”
It’s like a gunshot, that accusation. Untrue as it is, misdirected as it is, Julie still fires. The cruelest of cuts, the sharpest of knives. Straight to the heart.
Eve pushes herself forward, hurt. Challenged. The pain she feels physically makes it all worse. This is not the first time someone has came up against Eve's actions. Justified or not. Julie's pain is clear and though Eve doesn't want to hurt her more.
Her tongue has a mind of its own at times.
"Me?"
"Me."
Her body glows a little brighter, fists balled up. "And just what of the people who lost everything because of that place! Experiments, kidnapping, murder. Huh! Did you care that they were ripping people's lives apart!! DID YOU? Does it only matter when you lose something?!" Eve thinks of all the things she witnessed happening in the Ark.
"Did you think you and the others were helping?" Eve laughs a loud and cold laugh, shoulders shaking as she wrestles with her own emotions, wrestles with the physical pain she feels. "Were you too young? Yes! Was your sister? Yes!!" She screams at the blonde. "My cousin is Odessa Price and nobody gave two chicken shits that she was a girl raised in a box! She's IN PRISON!"
As should you!!! Eve wants to say.
"Bringing Else back but only for her to be murdered as she escapes!!! Cloning us! STEALING OUR GIFTS! What of the girl?! Testing her! Hurting her! What about Leroux! What about their families! What about their lives!"
"You were on the wrong side! I didn't put you there! Oh no no no! Your goddamn family did! You think you're carrying everything while having lost everything. I'll be punished for my sins for the rest of my life. Ripped from the seams. Tore down the middle. Already died three times because of it! My whole life is a fucking lie Julie! And you will be punished for the rest of your days for the sins of your family." Pushing past the girl Eve comes to the end of the alley, not the entrance out to the street.
Julie was already punished, she had lost nearly all of her family. Eve was as well. Her body spasms and she bowls over, holding herself. "Go score your fucking fun dust!" Cracks begin to spider along Eve's pale skin.
“Maybe next time you should stay dead!” Julie screams as she walks backwards out of the alley, arms straight down at her side and hands balled into fists. Her strangled scream draws even more looks from passers by on the opposite side of the street, though no one stops for long.
As Julie continues to back away, she hiccups back a sob and mumbles incoherently under her breath, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve as she darts across the street, away.
To each their own personal hell.