Participants:
| Scene Title | All Fun and Games Until |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. |
| Date | January 12, 2020 |
Miller Residence, Providence
This particular early afternoon finds the basement in Zachery's house looking the exact same way it has for the last two weeks, give or take. A small laboratory installed into the gouged out cellar that was once the place a butcher drained and divided his wares. Narrow walkways between countertops, pristinely kept, with a smattering of equipment on their tops still humming idle tunes that only just manage not to be silence.
It's almost comforting. Less comforting is the ch-clink of metal catching on metal and the creak of old springs as someone shifts on the bed near the solid store staircase leading down into the basement. Zachery lies on the mattress, on his side, staring at a fixed point on the wall and wearing slacks and a dress shirt that both look like they haven't been apart from him for far too long. The amount of scruff to his face implies maybe he just hasn't cared to change that in a while. At the foot of the bed, next to the bundle of blankets that he's kicked his legs into, there's a tray with an empty coffee mug and a largely untouched egg sandwich.
Above, beyond the door that's been left open just a crack, the scritchy-scratchy sounds of a magpie hopskittering over hardwood floor can be heard. The tiniest patrol. Or maybe just looking for lunch scraps to thieve.
Either way, the sound hardens Zachery's stare into the wall. Hoarsely, he tells the wall, "I'm going to strangle that thing."
She could not find him through any of the windows on the upper levels. She could not see him in the surrounding area around the home. She could not see him at all.
Perhaps there was one more place.
Wafting slowly over to the wall towards the back of the house. The crimson cloud of energy known as Eve Mas presses against the structure, grinning inside as she passes through.
What if he's not home?
We could leave a note!
Burn it down…?
Hahahah that's horrible!
But fun maybe right?
As Eve passes through the stone, leaving white smoke rising up and scorch marks in her wake. The light within her begins to brighten the room and the sound of lightning crackling fills it. She floats downwards from the ceiling, collecting in a mass in the center of the room.
The cloud begins to contract and shudder.
Zachery's seen this before.
Usually it sounds like a scream, in reverse and elongated reverberating but now it weirdly sounds like some sort of hiccuping laugh. Echoing through the room as the cloud shrinks and shifts, forming a woman's body with long wild hair.
That familiar pale skin slaps over the feminine form and that devilish, Cheshire Cat grin spreads on dark purple lips. "What a wonderful home you have here Pearly,"
Take his right hand!
Cut it off! Maybe his tongue!
We need that-
EW
TO GET SOME ANSWERS!
"ANSWERS!"
Eve shouts aloud and looks behind her with a startled expression, ah it's just her. The woman leaps aiming to land on Zachery on the bed, "Oof!" Oh no she's out of air, the pale woman squirms on the Doctor putting her hands on his face to push herself upwards while coughing, "Sorry Pearly, no drugs today." Eve snickers and rolls her eyes.
"But I've got oodles of ideas for other fun things mmm?" Her bloodred eyes buzz as she leans in, touching his nose with hers. "The real question is, have you been a good boy who deserves a game? Or have you been a naughty boy who… deserves a game." She had noticed some tools in the room, beautiful, wonderful, tools.
It is not necessarily rational thought that has Zachery stay quiet - as evidenced by the look of wide-eyed, perplexed fucking bafflement at Eve materialising in his fucking basement. He fails to do very much of anything before she's on top of him. He sneers at the hands on his face and poorly suppresses a wince when he's pushed down.
His own hands lift in slowed reflex, instinct having him reach for purchase on Eve's arms. A kick of his legs lets the blanket and the tray both slip off of the bed with a crACK of breaking ceramics - revealing, at the same time, Zachery's still grossly swollen and purple-blotted foot, painfully bloated.
When all goes quiet, he's still staring back at her eyes with the one he has to offer in return, clearly still catching up on what the fuck is going on. Pale, a little lighter on meat than the last time she saw him.
"Hello, Eve," he finally manages, exhaling in a shudder that almost sounds like a chuckle. "I think- I've had enough games for a lifetime."
Lightning rains down on Zachery leaving singe marks in his clothing as Eve roars with laughter. "You? Had enough of games? Nonsense Pearly I won't hear another word of it." She rolls over and off of the man landing on the floor in a crouch and coming face to face with his…
Eve shrieks and claps a hand over her mouth, "You should really get that looked at!" The former seer leans closer and sniffs, wrinkling her nose before she gingerly pokes the bloated flesh an appraising eye taking over now.
Take the foot, it's practically a goner already.
Could probably fetch a good price for it on the Black Market.
Say it's bewitched.
More like cursed.
Pushing up to a standing position Eve tiptoes in a loose circle barefeet sweeping across the floor. "You've been playing games with me this whole time Pearly," Sucking her teeth while shaking her head. "I ran into a friend, she's got fiery red hair. Passion and conviction, steals the body of another if she so wishes."
"She told me the most interesting- Do you know what's so frustrating mmm?" Eve claps her hands together and leans foward to Zachery's injured foot.
"They always say, Eve you're so murderous! Eve you talk too much! You always meddle! Eve you're crazy!!" The woman yells and slams a hand down right by the foot. She chuckles in a high pitched tone, almost whistling, "I don't feel like I've even shown the world what a real crazy Eve Mas can be," There's that feeling you get when you're about to do something incredibly rash. The woman standing there has learned to ignore that sensation almost like its not even there.
Eve grips the man's foot with nails digging in and lifts it into the air before letting go to let it drop to the bed again. "Whee!" Excitement bubbling forth, there's something else there too but she just can't stop grinning.
"Tell me whyyyy you're running around with Adam juice injecting it into people. Tell me howwww you even," The grin deepens, "You even care across such sacred juice" Heh.
There is no immediate cry in pain from Zachery when his foot is grabbed, even if him grabbing two fistfuls of mattress as he pulls his whole body away from the offender with a look of breath-catching agony might say enough.
"Eve! EVE!"
He tumbles off of the mattress with a grimace and a strangled whine as his body hits the bare cement. The chain that runs from a shackle around his uninjured ankle to the bed frame scrapes over the floor when he scrambles to try and get into a standing position and manages just barely to, holding tightly onto the back of a metal folding chair for support and putting absolutely no weight on the swollen monstrosity of a foot.
Finally, he looks to Eve again, teeth gritted and expression a nauseated shock while little wisps of smoke rise from tiny scorch marks on wrinkled dress shirt. "Y-you do not - want to set this place on fire, Eve. Calm down." His voice is strained with effort. This is not an answer, but it is urgent. One of his hands rises from the chair, leaving him standing unsteadily and lopsided as he turns a palm to Eve to motion for her to stop just a damn second. "Please. I- fuck, the - it wasn't even - Adam's."
Probably.
Meanwhile, upstairs, an alarm sounds. No. Not an alarm. The magpie, out of sight beyond the staircase, screeching harsh ascending notes into the living space above.
But an alarm it may as well be, for all the time it takes for the nearly-unearthly din of the magpie to summon forth its intended target. Even beyond the backdrop of prattling shrieks and madly fluttering wings from somewhere upstairs, a set of light footsteps can be heard bustling across the floorboards above their heads, and then straight down the basement steps towards them.
"Eve?" comes Yi-Min's familiar voice, currently filled to the brim with incredulousness, midway through that swift descent to the bottom of the staircase. Even from here, it is obvious to both of them that she had made a straight line into here from somewhere just outside— aside from the silk square of a scarf tucked into her slender overcoat, she is still in low-heeled suede boots and gloves, both items of clothing she ordinarily would have doffed at Zachery's front door.
"What in the world?"
"What in the ever loving fucking gumdrop dropping fuck!?" Eve looks up towards Yi-Min and does the only logical thing. She hops over to Zachery's and proceeds to try to hold him by the throat from behind him with her arm.
Her eyes are wild as she looks from Yi-Min to the walls, to Zachery, to her fingers. To…
"Nobody move!"
Eve shouts and tightens her grip on Zachery's neck, "Or Pearly here gets a sunburn down the throat and I think he needs that! For you know, eating!"
Nudging Zachery with her knee, "You said it wasn't Adam's. Whose was it!" Eve's tone is frantic and she gives Yi-Min a look: not you too. Traitors all around her, snakes.
You're a snake!
Hey!! Doing IMPORTANT BUSINESS HERE SHUSH UP!
Maybe she just came over for tea!
Maybe she's a international spy from Interpol!
That makes no sense!
YOU make no sense!
"What is this! Some kind of lab fo-for," The dreaded word is spat from Eve's throat like she can't get rid of it fast enough. "Science."
Lightning pops and cracks Eve's arms, nearing Zachery's face. "Shut that bird up!! Is that you Bird!?" This is not going well.
She doesn't realize. She's choking him.
Which, coincidentally, makes it really hard for Zachery to get an answer out.
At least, verbally.
On the plus side, her being within arm's reach makes it easier to communicate in other ways. Maybe it's poor decision making skills, maybe it's adrenaline and fear - maybe it's all of the above, but with his neck grabbed and head leaned back he can only just see one of his fists flying toward Eve's head with all the power he's got left in him.
"Alf, quiet," Yi-Min turns her head to the side just long enough to enjoin the fist-sized whirl of feathers that had begun to follow her down the stairs, and probably to everybody's relief, the raucous screeching does drop off. The magpie doesn't go totally quiet, but it seems content enough to go flittering down to the lip of the nearest step. Here it continues muttering to itself in rapid, obscene-sounding spasms, beady eyes transfixed on everything that is happening below it.
In the meantime, Yi-Min has obligingly come to a halt with both her small hands partially raised in the air by her sides, if with a faintness that suggests all she wants to do is pinch the bridge of her nose in exasperation.
"Yes, this lab is for science," Yi-Min confirms with clear dismissiveness. There is also worry in her expression, but it soon becomes apparent that it isn't for Zachery. Not when she flicks her gaze to the equipment nearest to the pair of them, where it lingers for a moment before traveling back.
"I make medicine, Eve. Despite his… unfathomably long list of faults," yes Eve, Dr. Yeh is on the same page as you at least there, "Zachery helps me with what I do. People will die if this equipment becomes damaged. So for god's sake, be careful while in here. Those in this town out here do not have elsewhere to turn."
Mmm saving people. Medicine. Yes. That's okay. That nice. Don't hurt the merchandise, that was doable.
BUT WHAT ABOUT BIG PHARMA YO!
Honestly just throw some witch hazel on what ails you, why must we do the medicine.
Side Effects. Nasty Side Effects.
Do you think she can make some Vicodin?
Leave the medicine beeeee-
Of all the things to do, Zachery does the most logical. "GRUAFF," His punch lands on her nose and the woman howls in pain, head rocketing backwards as she releases him from the choke hold, blood flying from her face to drip down on Zachery.
Eve stomps her feet up and down and hops as well. "Mother-" The woman doesn't finish what she started to say because her body just poofs, instead now a roiling cloud of blood red mist and metal filaments twisting in the center hangs there, enveloping the doctor. Lightning crackles and pops the ground next to Zachery's feet.
Zachery only just has enough time to realise his punch has landed, sending Yi-Min a split second look of panicked confusion before his vision goes cloudy.
With— the actual cloud that is Eve.
He doesn't quite make it to the chair he reaches toward for support, before an actual fucking microwave cloud blankets his whole form. He stumbles forward and halfway out of it in reflex but sinks to the ground almost immediately, onto his knees, his skin having turned an angrier shade of pinkish red and smoke rising from brightly outlined spots of singed clothes.
"EVE!" He tries one more time, at the top of his lungs, voice raw, struggling to stay upright, one hand pressed into the floor and the other pressed to his face by way of instinct. "STOP!"
Whatever sins Zachery might still have been guilty of, this was not the way to deal with them.
A dark look of cool, dismayed alarm flashes across Yi-Min's face, and in the next moment she is there on the outskirts of the fracas, gloves removed and tucked as a pair beneath her upper arm. Zachery is too much larger and heavier than she is for her to haul him forward with her own strength alone, but she takes advantage of some of the momentum already present inside of his pained staggers to grasp the closer of his hands and attempt to yank him forth. Out of the worst of the miasma's deadly reach, at the very least.
"Are you insane? Stop this before you cause something you regret—" The directive from her to Eve, riding on the cusp of Zachery's cries, just illustrates the breadth of this one distinction between the two women. The harm Yi-Min that causes, she causes with care.
Eve can't answer any of the things being screamed at her but the cloud does burp and shudder, metal filaments twisting as they snap into a humanoid form, that ghost pale complexion slaps itself over the red mist and lightning and Eve's face is there, shocked. Her hands fly up to her face. "Oh my Goddess, I'm so sorry! It's reflex! Take a sneeze, CLOUD. Take a punch, CLOUD."
Is she really sorry though?
In the chaos that is this meeting it might seem easy to get distracted but Eve thrives on chaos if nothing else and her original goal remains. "Nobody make any sudden movements, I'm holding it." Like a fart. Holding it in. The former seer fans at her face, whew. "Are you gonna tell me whose juice you poked Isis with or what?"
Her nose wrinkles in that moment and Eve looks around, "Did anyone open a window? What a draft," She's standing there with just half of her dress on.
The top half.
Eve turns around, looking for said open window and effectively moons the pair with her pale, shiny ass. "Oh no!! The breeze has changed directions! Are you friends with an air mimic!?" Eve looks around bewildered.
Zachery lies on the floor, on his back, an arm still over his face, and his other hand limply in Yi-Min's.
It takes him several breaths to gather his wits, but the moment one lends itself to speech, he yells, "It was just some kid's!" Compared to him, anyway. "Some fucking- shit, she thought he might- function like Adam's blood but it didn't, it just almost killed her! I almost gambled away a human liaAaAAEve JEsUS CHRIST."
Peering out past the Extreme Sunburn on his arm (and his everywhere else), his sentence stops mid-word to be replaced by another: "Eve! What-" Except he stops, again, throat still raw when a chuckle interrupts it, then a near breathless but utterly stupefied laugh that's choked down with no small amount of effort. He does not look amused, but there it is. "Just what-" He exhales sharply as he lets his head thunk down against the concrete, eyelids fluttering halfway closed. "-… in the fuck."
There are no windows in this basement. The only draft of anything Yi-Min perceives is the foulness of burnt acrylic. Of — burnt Zachery.
With the faintest note of half-concerned disgust deep in her throat, Yi-Min opens her fingers slightly and lets Zachery's hand drop out of hers like a stone. As unwelcome as the sight of Eve's exposed hindquarters is, it at least means that the immediate danger of Zachery sizzling to death in front of her like a Chongqing hotpot has been put on hold, and she releases her arm back to her side.
As she calmly tucks her gloves away into her coat pockets, Yi-Min trains her gaze firmly down on Zachery's crumpled form underneath her, which has the added benefit of meaning she doesn't have to look directly at the other thing. Her colder, momentary silence indicates that the object of her concern has shifted. "What is this?" she asks softly, flitting a look at Eve, then back down. "Who is Isis?"
Some kid's.
Some kid with Adam's blood running through their veins.
Devon or Squeaks.
Eve tilts her head and studies the doctor, no… not the little girl. He would have had a hard time with that but with the Wolfhound operative's disappearance and reappearance…. maybe there was a seeking of answers.
Are you sniffing out clues? You don't have visions to lean on… all you have are assumptions
Eve ignores the voice. "Details honey snake, the devil is in them." Snapping her fingers as she turns around and grabs at a blanket, wrapping it around her bottom. She otherwise makes no note of her appearance. "Were you gonna say liar?" A dark laugh and devilish grin.
"Liarrrrr. Yes that's your nickname now Pearly. Pearly The Liarman. I don't believe you. Makes me twitch, we know what happens when I'm twitchy heh." Her body crackles with energy. "You've lied to me all this time…. secrets. I've been so open to you my good Pearly Liarman." Shaking her head Eve leans back against the wall and stares ahead. "Speak the truth, all of it. Do you actually know Adam? This whole time?"
Eve's body shudders and she shakes. "Tick tock, rocky rock, if it doesn't feel real… bye bye glass tubey." She poofs again, this time her pale skin peeling away like something from within was burning it off. There floating off the ground is a shape that looks like Eve but she glows with that infernal red light. Her head tilts towards Zachery, the implications are real: speak little honeybadger.
"I know of him!" Zachery is all too quick to admit, now, struggling to get back to his feet (or foot, mostly), and largely failing to. The chain rattles as he clamps a hand onto the bedframe and drags himself back on the mattress, but only just coming to sit on the edge, pain clear across his expression and in the way he holds himself. "I've never fucking met him, I don't know if I know anyone who's met him except for Isis, nobody fucking tells me anything and I don't fucking know anything. Yeh!"
He whips a look over to Yi-Min, desperation in his expression behind the wall of panic- and pain-induced mania, reaching past a singed pant leg to grasp thoughtlessly at the shackle on his ankle. But with the one eye only permitting him so much peropheral vision, he looks back to Eve before he can even plea, "Tell her I'm not- fffh - having fucking tea parties with this lunatic!"
If Yi-Min had been inclined towards a semblance of protectiveness on Zachery's behalf before, at least in the face of Eve's destructive volatility, the impulse seems to be on the wane. Though she has not moved from the way she has been standing over him, the distance between them feels already as though it has lengthened into an insurmountable gulf.
She folds her arms over her chest. A small motion.
"You didn't tell me about any of this," she notes to Zachery as she stoically oversees his struggles to get to his feet, even more quietly than before. If possible, there is a greater sense of danger curled deceptively somewhere inside the stillness of her voice than in the much more overt threat being posed by Eve on his other side. "Sure. You may not have met Adam yourself, but it seems you still have… things you can explain. Speak, now, about Isis. Who she is. Who this 'kid' is, and what you did to him."
Eve poofs again because, she's just like that. Screaming in reverse she comes too and thankfully her top half of her dress is still intact although there are far more singe holes now. Going back and forth a lot like this is taking its toll and it's probably not long before she can't hold it any longer.
"Yea! What the kind lady said, speak now Pearly!" Her hearing was weird in that state but she had gotten enough to know that Yi-Min's interest was now piqued.
Lifting her hands in a show of surrender she flops down on the unoccupied chair. "I'm calm and collected and ready for story time." This Eve promises. Scouts honor, she was never a scot but that wasn't the point. "Details details Pearly,"
There's a jangle of chains as Zachery kicks his shackled leg back down into the ground to shove his burned self further onto the bed and away from Eve, but this only serves to awkwardly topple him sideways into crumpled sheets, landing on an elbow with a strangled noise of pain and shock both. Fuck.
"It wasn't-" He starts, the instinct to catch his breath fighting the inclination to get the fuck out of here - before remembering that even if he wanted to, he can't do either. His muscles lock where he lies, neither fully upright nor down, like an injured animal waiting for the second gunshot.
"It wasn't relevant to bring up before." His words come rushed, and he does not take his eye off of Eve, expression one of keen and panicked observation. "I had the blood, Devon's blood, because he left it at Raytech. I was- trying to figure out what was wrong with him. Or…. or right. He should have been dead, and he wasn't. One theory was that maybe he'd… gotten some of Adam's blood in him, and Isis latched onto this idea, so we— we thought. It might. Help her. She wants to live forever and it was never going to work, and I knew. I knew." To the best of his knowledge. Or he assumed. Regret slips into his voice to join the fear already present, there. "But we did it anyway."
"Devon." From the way Yi-Min receives the name, it's clear it's one that she knows, or at least recognizes.
And from the grade of coldness that forms in her body language, it's clear that the recognition isn't a good thing.
"Crazy, all of you," she whispers in an outright articulation of the iciness that had been contained to her expression up until now, loudly enough for Eve to hear. "Madmen. Wanting, what— eternal life, while others around you die?" She breathes in an inhalation that is more a shimmer of ill-defined tension than it is actual sound, and though she does not take a step forward, her gaze follows him as he clambers further into the recesses of his bed as though he were some kind of dead, writhing thing.
"Isis," she repeats in a tone that is growing more delicate by the second. It is unlikely she'll ask this way a third time. "Who is she. Does she work for Adam, as well?" This is something that certainly had been relevant to bring up before, and Zachery knows it.
"Fools," Eve snaps her fingers and sighs in disgust, "Diluted blood not from the source. Tricky tricky, foolish," It's a harsher take on the situation than she gave to Isis. "But your foolish mad science, has led to a possible advantage. She's now linked to him, Adam through his blood."
Eve's eyes widen and narrow in the span of two seconds. As Well. Nostrils flare and she leans her elbows on her knees. "So you do and so did Isis," Eve cackles and leans back, "Jezebels in my own circle of fun, my sister wouldn't like me using that name." Yi-Min might know the Devon boy, this was all coming together too much for Eve but she breathes deeply and closes her eyes.
"Yes Pearly," Voice eerily calm with hands folded in her lap. "Who is she, does she work for Adam as well?"
"I worked for Antonio Garza." Zachery says, quieter still, words slowing but steady, as though rehearsed. No less the truth for it. The adrenaline in his system failing to keep him upright any longer, he sinks down into the blanket beneath, shackled leg still hanging partially off the side of the bed while the other gets pulled closer. "I have no… real loyalty to him. And I have no loyalty to Adam Monroe. I told you already." The world now sideways and with the ever-present pain of microwaved skin and flesh a clearly distracting factor, there remains the matter of Isis.
Finally, his focus shifts elsewhere, then nowhere in particular. Inward, perhaps, to the half a dozen sources of pain currently pulling at his attention span. With a genuine note of apology on his voice, he answers, "I'm sorry, I don't… think so, I don't— know." He slowly shakes his head, before his shoulders come forward and he lifts his arms up to be loosely draped in front of his face as if the world is just a little too bright right now, repeating one more time, somewhat meekly, "I don't know."
This might be something that Zachery had told Yi-Min already, but something Yi-Min had told Zachery already is that to her, that wasn't a distinction that mattered. Not really. Not so long as the goals of the two seemed so irrevocably intertwined.
Yi-Min lets her eyes rest on Zachery for a few moments longer, though they've narrowed somewhat as she pauses to appraise how physically fit he may or may not be to continue this line of interrogation. "Fine," she says crisply, without betraying what conclusion she'd come to.
Fine. She knew him well enough to play this particular game. "Does she work for Garza?"
Come to think of it, "And how is it that you know her?" This question is one that's directed over at Eve. It doesn't sound judgmental as much as very highly curious, both her eyebrows raised at their half-naked guest.
GarzaGarzaGarzaGarzaGarza
"What did you work on for this Antonio Garza?" Eve squints, must be a Adam lackey. No loyalty, "You're only loyal to yourself Pearly, we've seen." He probably doesn't need to tell both women that tidbit, it's overtly obvious. Eve is good at being evasive, she recognizes it in others and asking her very direct questions with limited wiggle room was the best way for people to handle her, maybe it will work on Zachery. "Have you ever been in the same room as Isis and this Garza?"
How can you trust him?
Stick a hot nail under his skin!
Get under, get under that skin. Oh yea!
As for how she knows Isis, "I use to see remember my dear? I've met many that way," Though the reality of her first meeting with Isis, "She works at Cat's. Met at a ruined Lighthouse." That's the fair honest truth. "How did you two meet?" That question is rocket launched in Yi-Min's direction as she looks between the pair of doctors.
White coats, sink boats silly rabbit.
For a moment, it seems like Zachery's energy has waned to nothing already - staring blankly out beyond damaged skin suggests little else. But an answer does come to Eve's first question eventually, in what is not technically a lie. "Failed spying. SESA."
As for Garza. "She was the… last name. The last I hadn't…" His words trail off, the first breath out after a dry swallow resulting in a weak chuckle at seemingly nothing in particular, bitter. "I owed her… that."
With that, his arms gradually go slack over his face, leaving him shoved uncomfortably against the sheets and, now, unconscious.
As Zachery wilts away on the bed and finally passes out of consciousness altogether, Yi-Min is silent, taking in this inevitability without needing to really avert her eyes from Eve. She seems somehow resigned, though the cast of dark, warning wintriness beneath her mood does not lessen.
"Chance," she responds shortly and simply enough. "Back when I moved here, this town was much more in need of a dependable source of medical supplies. And back then, all I knew of him was that he ran a dingy little medical center in the back of a pub in Sheepshead Bay."
Perfect for her needs.
How times have changed.
"Please. Keep an eye on her," she expresses on the topic of Isis at working at Cat's, a note of somber insistence in her voice. The last name, Zachery had said. "You of all people must be aware of how deeply Adam's web spreads. Those clinging to it must eventually all be cleaned up— but, well. I am but one person." One single pair of eyes.
"If you're going to do shitty and weird things Pearly you can't clam up when it's time to fess up!" A helpful hint from a woman who does weird things that often make people angry. "Blubbering, blubbering. Where's the coke, make you sing in five minutes."
Eve grins and seems to enjoy Zachery's recoil, "You haven't done anything that would seem a success to these people? Why would they keep you around then?" Once Eve is on a trail it's damn near impossible to shove her off. You hm quite literally have to kill her. "Oh do not worry, Miss Isis and I will have a nice long chat."
Looking between the two, my how things change indeed. Eve just rubs the back of her head and closes her eyes, "What am I going to do with you Pearly, my former cocaine partner in crime. How the universe spits on me and our relationship." There will be a time where Eve comes to term with Zachery's treachery but for now, they had other matters to discuss.
"And what do you aim to do, besides keeping an eye, on the Immortal. That has been the course of action for too long now." Eve was ready to act and was getting to the point where she would leave everyone behind if she needs too. See this through to the end.
"Oh for Goddess sake!!!"
Eve jumps to her feet and stomps over to where Zachery lays, knocked out. There's no concern in her eyes, she's fucking pissed. "What a weasel. A cowardly swine birthed from the bowels of an ailing mother, an imp of the worst kind! A swarmy one." It's an insult to all liars and tricksters. Be about your shit. Pale hands grip the man and pull his face forward and pinches his nostrils shut. That's not all, she raises her other hand and begins to SLAPSLAPSLAPSLAPSLAPSLAP one exposed FACE cheek at a time. "**WAKE. THE. FUCK. UP. OR. I. WILL. BURN. YOUR. FUCKING. PETER. PECKER. OFF!!" Eve screams into his ear as she pinches his nose harder.
SLAPSLAPSLAPSLAP
"YOU'VE BEEN A BAD BAD BOY OKAY, VERY BAD! Oh where the hell is my belt!?" Eve's hand is stinging but she continues to SLAPSLAPSLAPSLAP.
"I'm counting thirty and then the pecker's off, get it? Like glove!"
It seems doubtful that any of Eve's words actually reach Zachery.
The pinch of his nostrils yields no initial result, but the fourth slap finds his mouth falling open with a rattling breath and a somewhat vacant expression of confusion.
At least, at first. A mixture of panic and anger overtakes in the pinch of his brow and widening of eye(s) before he reaches thoughtlessly up for the hand holding his face, and to grab onto Eve's wrist as tightly as he can before he even so much as attempts to get back up. "Stop!" He urges in a violently expelled exhale, which then morphs halfway into bitter and stupefied laugh that couldn't sound less amused if he tried, persisting even through to a following question- "What the FUCK else do YOU WANT?!"
Yi-Min had not known Eve for long, but she had been under the impression that she'd become thoroughly inured to all the volatility the former seer had to offer. As it turns out, she had been mistaken.
She does not stop the other woman from carrying out her verbal and physical attack on Zachery's prone form, but she does lean out ever so subtly, as though just to be sure that she will not be caught up in any of this. The very small, sharp inhalation she sucks in through her nose is, needless to say, completely drowned out by the noise of everything else. The bite of her dark-eyed gaze grows sharper by several alarmed degrees, but otherwise she only waits and watches— transfixed.
Eve is undeterred by any of Zachery's flailings except she does, "OW OW OW," from the stinging of slapping the shit out of the doctor a few times and the grab of her wrist results in her leaning forward to bite at his fingers. "YUMMY ARE FINGERS ON THE MENU?!" She doesn't connect but chomp in the air the way a rabid dog might. This happens the same thing that Zachery's unhinged laughter sounds.
A choir of insanity for Yi-Min's ears.
"I'm a stoner so I have the munchies, I WANT IT FUCKING ALL PEARLY!" Eve stomps her foot and looks at him, she does feel betrayed. This was supposed to be her friend, she tries to convey this in the look in her eyes. "What did you do with this Garza pants! I don't care about failed spying! What were you spying ON! How many were there with Garza, a dozen or above? Below?!" The pale woman rips herself away from Zachery's grip. "I trusted you! And if we aren't really friends then…"
Eve rolls her eyes and looks up to the ceiling obviously so annoyed. She truly would love to just do drugs with her ya know drug buddy, "Speak the truth, concrete. You're already sinking…" But that's not what she's getting at, some high moral ground, no.
"Tell me it and I'll grab the rest of the coke from outside from when we hung out last time at the Crack Tree. Remember it was more than a eight ball." This is pretty pricey, pretttttty good shit.
Only once Eve retreats does Zachery let go of her wrist, the relenting hand balling into a fist as he wheezes out a noise of simultaneous pain and bitter amusement.
This is madness. Or if it isn't, it's the edge of it. Okay. Focus. "I don't care about the coke, Eve," he scrapes the words out of his throat, rolling over onto his back. "Okay — maybe I do, a little, but, not right this second — Jesus."
He whips his attention back to Eve, shoulders bunching up as he pulls himself partially upright, reddened hands shoved down into the mattress and breath forced in and out as if with deliberate intent. As if should he fail to focus on that, he'll just pass out again. "More than a dozen, Eve. I was supposed to be finding things out about SESA. I was supposed to be— working on…" His eye darts momentarily out into Yi-Min's direction, before snapping back to Eve. "Science fairy things." Should his other partner in crime want to fill Eve in on the details, he does not look like he has the energy to object.
But. "It's complicated," he admits, a genuine note of apology mixing in with the exhaustion in his voice, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. But I — I can't trust anyone. I thought this would be cleaner. I was wrong."
When Zachery's eye snaps onto Yi-Min for that fraction of a second, he can see that she looks mildly taken aback, her mind already working to come to terms with the new information that he’d revealed. But she suddenly seems amused more than troubled, even if she keeps this relatively low-key beneath her overall studious expression.
"That is always the question, isn't it," she opines. "Who to trust. Zachery is wrong about quite a lot of things, a lot of the time, but I think his hesitation about confiding in you could be classed as understandable."
As though to confirm her point, she cants her chin downwards very slightly at the whole of Eve's form: a gesture clearly saying 'look at you.' The tattered shreds of the dress the ex-seer had come in wearing. The fire blanket swathed around her lower half.
And, of course, that casual pointer to the pair’s history of sharing coke.
None of this exactly paints a picture of dependability, and definitely not where such sensitive information is concerned.
"MMMM,"
Is Eve's only response to all of that. She begins to walk in a slow circle with her head down. Snorting occasionally, especially at Zachery's first refusal and then acceptance of the drugs they do together.
A dozen or so members. Science fairy things-
Hold up.
Her path takes her a little closer to the table of medical supplies and vials and the like, whatever liquid Zachery was brewing. "This is your house, I followed you here remember." Eve smiles and tilts her head up towards the ceiling again, "Your basement…. your lab of science fairy SHIT. Of which you will not exactly relay because it's complicated!" Eyes wide as she does a spin and comes to at the head of the table, placing both hands at the end with a devilish grin. "I have money, friends that are docs. They could replace all of this surely, it's just… medicine. Right? I have these urges sometimes… just to break shit. Ya know?" Zachery has earned much of Eve's… attention this visit but the pale woman's eyes snap over to Yi-Min as her head tilts back down.
"You know more than you say, little by little you give me tiny morsels but I am… ravenous. I've been starved for too long. Heh. You know of Adam and Pearly's indirect dealings. Minnie, Minnie, Minnie." Eve places both hands on the either side of the table and leans in, her blood red glow washes over the medical materials on the table. That also means the fire blanket drops to the ground but thankfully the table and beakers blow her womanhood from the duo.
"Why are you really here?" Grin grin grin, "Have you been…" A faux look of shock falls over Eve's face and one hand goes to her lips, "Just as naughty as Pearly here?"
"'Just medicine.'" Zachery repeats in a scoff, sinking his back down onto the bed again and letting out a laugh that implies this whole conversation has done very little to conserve what's left of his sanity.
Maybe an answer is best left to his partner in crime, then. "Why are we here, Minnie?"
For her part, Yi-Min appears completely unimpressed by this verbal threat of further theatrics, and uncowed by the posture the larger woman adopts. The flux of faint crimson luminosity out of Eve's form does succeed in accomplishing one thing, and that is to visually highlight the glitter of warning in Yi-Min's own dark eyes.
Her arms remain folded, just as they have been. But her lips curl into a thin groove that is part reservation, part simple sigh.
"I know more than I have told you, yes, and yet far less than what I would still like to know. I am— what would you call it, in English? A mole? Adam Monroe has tasked me with working on something incredibly dangerous. Tasked us."
All of the 'medical equipment' around them.
"Adam believes me to be loyal. If God is kind, then he will not realize the truth until it is too late for him."
Level and stony as ever, Yi-Min's gaze migrates to the chain linked around one of Zachery's legs, ensuring that he cannot stray far from the bedpost it is attached to. "I have had to take certain precautions to make sure that Zachery cannot endanger everything. Hence, why your friend 'Pearly' is chained up in his own basement." And why one of his feet seems— as wretchedly disfigured as it does, though she doesn't actually bring up that particular detail. "If word gets out of what I have been doing, it is likely I will die. If this project is sabotaged before the proper time for it, it is probable there will be many more deaths."
"Is this enough for you?"
"Next time you decide to work with terrorists, be a better liar," Eve chucking a empty beaker near Zachery's head before she regards Yi-Min with a toothy grin and a nod, "What a twist. You wouldn't be the first woman to betray his trust. Mmmm Minnie Minnie, it's very hard to surprise him. I hope you have an actual ace up your sleeve, you're going to need it."
Pushing off the surface of the table Eve looks between the two and sighs and shakes her head, "Thanks for making it like pulling teeth! Really appreciate it, I'll be sure to pay you back in kind Pearly," as if she hadn't done enough to her drug buddy. Just as quickly as Eve roared in, she grins and wiggles her fingers.
"Don't make me come round here again!" Winkwink.
POOF And she's out.
The former artist known as Eve explodes into the dazzling crimson cloud of energy and slams herself into the wall until she passes through and upwards, the walls cracks a little.
Whoops.