Participants:
| Scene Title | Fourteen |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | "You killed Elaine, and now I'm going to throw you into the fucking sun!" |
| Date | March 16, 2019 |
The moon was half full and the thick clouds overhead blocked most of its light from shining down on the Ruins of Queens but still there was light in this place. A chill wind stirs through the place, animals mostly sleeping the nocturnal creatures in their nightly routines, the coo of something echoes through the ruined buildings and down the cracked streets.
A trash bin fire rages in the middle of a side street, long abandoned by whatever poor unfortunate soul lived out here, a backpack with clothes and supplies lays out nearby. A gun nestled underneath, whoever it was left in a hurry.
Atop of a nearby building a blinding crimson light flashes and strobes creating shadows across the surrounding area and down below to the street. A crackling nimbus of energy hovers in the air stuttering along as it pulsates and red lightning strikes at the rooftop, smoke and scorch marks left behind and the smell of burning slowly filling the air, choking the air with it. The cloud twists and the metal filings within with it. Eve had been living in the ruins for weeks now, not daring to stay too long in the Safe Zone. Her supply of negation medicine was still almost full, she didn't want to not be who she was. It was just like with her dreams, she embraced them for better or for worse, it seemed to get worse for the former seer lately.
The roof was a place Eve could think, she used to smoke but now she's the thing smoking. Not for long though as she drags the molecules of herself that float and flint around inside that cloud together, effort but with practice cane skill and Eve had nothing but time to practice. The cloud bulges and pulsates, twisting in on itself and with a crackle and hollow scream played in reverse the pale woman slams to the ground on her hands and knees, dark hair covering her face as shoulders heave up and down from the effort. Lightning sprinkles out around her as she rises to her bare feet and tilts her head staring across, warm crimson eyes taking in the view.
Magnes just happened to be flying around, when he sees the very thing Joe warned him about. The possibility of the thing that killed Elaine still being alive.
He follows it rather silently, getting better and better at flying the more he practices, improving at using the various nuances to control his speed and the potential debris and insects in the air from just constantly pelting him.
While he's by no means as fast or as tightly controlled as someone with properly powered flight, he can at least keep up with a cloud without being immediately noticed.
It's when she lands that he acts. When he realizes that it is her, that it's Eve's body…
That's when he swoops down, practically falling, and yanks her up into his gravitational field. Not even physically touching her, he just tethers her to him and ascends right back into the air, far above the buildings. "You killed Elaine, and now I'm going to throw you into the fucking sun!"
The feeling of being pulled has Eve's eyes growing wide as she's yanked into the sky and way up above the buildings, her mouth opening wide to not scream but howl with laughter, "Oh Pizza Boy what game is this?!" Cackling wildly her eyes blaze that inferno red and lightning of the same shade leaps around in the air around them. "I've never been to the sun, is it fun?" Hooting as her body is wrecked with pain from her own unstable physical manifestation it ends in a groan. "Killed Elaine?! She's a Sunflower, I would never!"
The former seer cries out as her arm begins to dissolve into a fine red mist but before a chain reaction comes bringing with it an explosion Eve pulls the energy back into herself, piecing her arm back together molecule by molecule.
Red particles swirls around her and she looks closely at Magnes face, he believes this. Maybe having this conversation racing towards the sun wasn't that great of an idea. "Threethreethree. Four won't do. Four won't," The energy inside of her rumbling and cracking. A sigh of pain escapes her as she throws her head back, "Do."
And she explodes.
The noise is chaos, the woman is chaos. The cloud crackles with crimson lightning that strikes around and at Magnes at random intervals. Light gleaming off metal filings that twist and contract.
Eve suddenly turning into a cloud is jarring. The sudden change in his gravitational field causes him to spin out of control for quite a few feet. Unlike someone who can fly in a more natural way, Magnes has to actually think and focus. Lightning zaps him a few times as he's spiraling out of control, which makes it even harder to get oriented.
He abruptly reaches out to grab space, causing it to stretch a bit before he stops himself.
It's cold, but he's had to learn to endure. Endurance was the primary thing that Kimiko taught him about fighting, and he can't risk whatever this thing is setting his coat on fire and catching him off guard with that energy. So he unbuttons his coat, then his paisley shirt under it, and suspends both in the air, allowing the cold air to cause a bit of steam to rise from his heavily scarred body. "I can last about twenty minutes before hypothermia sets in. I can't risk my clothes getting set on fire while I'm trying to kill you."
He's full of resolve. The cold is nothing compared to the eeriely calm rage simmering inside him.
The only coat he needs in this moment is a coating of Eve's blood weaved within a tapestry of vengeance.
Diving down, he doesn't go after he immediately, he needs to test things, to see how to hurt her. So he rips a small antenna from an abandoned building, before flying back up at her. He swings it out at her as if casting a lure with a fishing rod, trying to see what happens when it impacts with her cloud.
Magnes' undressing is noted by Eve and if she could work her mouth in this form there would be plenty of hooting and hollering, scars. All she sees is scars through her filtered and slightly dimmed vision. Eve crackles there as Magnes ascends once again and goes to strike her with the metal switch. It passes through with no resistance coming out of the other side singed and smoking faintly.
No. No. Pizza Boy. She wishes she could say in this moment.
More lightning screams out towards the sky, the clouds above illuminated by that deep crimson light. Floating in a circle around Magnes the electric buzz of her light bringing to mind a taser sounding off. The crackle and pop echoes to the street down below. Slowly Eve bobs up and down, drifting to the wall of a nearby building, leaving a trail of red in her wake, tendrils of that energy wrap around a broken, hollowed out window and the eccentric woman mentally pulls at herself spread so thin picturing her human body in her mind.
Slowly the pale woman takes shape and she gasps and cracks a laugh, clinging to the windowsill barely hanging on really. Bright crimson eyes find Magnes and she rises her head, "When did I kill The Fae Elaine? Are you sure you didn't just lose her? Her brain is too large to fall for any of my trickery." Eve's body shivers with the pain from holding her current form. "I've been framed! Honest mister!" Eyes growing wide in (mock) terror.
Magnes allows himself to fall like a freaking brick, causing the ground to crack under his weight. He starts to very slowly approach her, any impending hypothermia be damned. The closer he gets, the closer his gravitational field gets. A trashcan smashes, a fire escape is yanked and bent, though it doesn't quite break. "You possessed Eve…"
He grips his fists tight, because there is someone to blame, someone to punish. When he yells, it's with tears in his eyes, bending the fire escape even more. "How do I even know that you're Eve?! How can you prove you aren't that thing that killed Elaine?!"
The sheer weight of his anger can be felt and that's without the added actual weight of his gravitational field and as he edges closer Eve dances back, leaping to the side and down the street a little bare feet skidding her smile falters and she senses it then with the words you possessed Eve.
Slowly the nude woman starts to shake her head, "No no, no that's fake news." Eve states this firmly in that moment she feels something that she hasn't felt recently, grounded. "Magnes…" Raising her hand in the air red lightning sparking off and harmless directions. "That was not me, it was Mother and Father. The First of us, burrowed deep within me, ripped me into all the pieces. So many pieces. Three. Three. Three." Her back arches and she yelps in pain. Grounded or not the pain does as it will and she responds in kind.
Veins bulge in her arms and the woman stands as near as she dares, "I would never hurt Elaine. Red Robyn would destroy me." Much in the way that Magnes is trying too now though Eve wonders if Robyn wouldn't just kill her over dinner and a drink instead. "I am sorry for your loss. I have lost as well. It's familiar." Facing the building that stands to the left of them studying the cracked walls that reflect the brokenness inside herself of even Magnes. "I can help you get revenge." The slow burn of an idea just bursting aflame overtakes Eve and it grins a fraction of that devilish nature. "I have stakes. Huge stakes. Tale as old as time sort of stakes."
Tapping her fingers on her neck as the ensuing chaos is amplified by the man's moods she cries out louder, "If either of us is going to kill Mother and Father then it's best to work together then tear each other apart!"
"Magnes!" Her hand outstretched with eyes glowing blood red. "Whooo whooo! Listen to me!"
Magnes' gravitational field suddenly lets up, stray pieces of trash still flattened against the ground, a clear ring of crushed things surrounding his area of effect, and foot-shaped cracks in the ground from where he took steps.
"I…" He breathes, staring at her. "I can't look at you."
That's all he says before he launches himself back into the air, back in the direction of his coat and shirt. He seems very intent on leaving her behind, his emotions full of chaos and confusion.
Magnes' departure is almost expected and Eve is leaping into the air after him her body rippling with red lightning and energy. She explodes again with a howl of pain that echoes off of the ruined landscape around them. Her body lit with ruby light, her eyes blazing brightly as her face twists into an expression of anguish. It will always hurt. This was her price, the price of being made anew and of cheating death for a third time. The cloud left in the howl's wake surges forward and up towards the man. A deep crimson hue awash over the ground below them.
Shrieking foward she comes on his tail, she had to get through to him. Eve sensed an ally that was almost there, something was stolen from him. Something was stolen from her, or did she steal something? The topic was one she often debated.
Lightning sparks in the corner of Magnes' vision as Eve draws near and the cloud spins before rumbling and shuddering. Snowflakes gently begin to falls towards the pair racing upwards, meeting them in the middle. The condensation that meets Eve's mass sizzles and pops. Steam rising off and wafting away from her.
Once he's back to his floating clothes, Magnes puts his shirt on, then his long coat, beginning to carefully button both. When Eve begins to approach, he stares down at the cloud, then begins to descend again, this time to a rooftop. "Don't follow me." he says before landing again, but he doesn't run away. If he does run away, he's not entirely sure what this cloud could accidentally do. It's clearly unstable, this clearly isn't her normal ability.
Naturally whatever state Eve is in, she cannot follow those directions and she flutters after him where he lands, humming loudly with power as she circles him lazily. It takes a minute before she settles at an even height hovering above the ground. Her lightning scorching the ground beneath her. Slowly this time she reforms into her old form. Limbs push out from the center of the cloud the metal filings extending into a skeleton that gains more definition as the cloud warps and wraps around it. A howl reversed sounds again and Eve is whole again, pale skin sweating as her whole body shudders with pain. "Magnes."
"There is a common enemy. A mess of threads and desires all wrapped up into one pinnacle point. It's like the end of a popsicle have you ever had one of thos-" the explosion that rips through the woman is halted as she slams onto the ground in an effort to the ground herself. "There is so much going in this world. Our friends. Our families are in trouble. Not from me," Eve stops and amends, "From me but I'm not the danger I'm not the Bomb. There's another." She strains to make sense of it all.
"It's a metaphor."
"I don't want to hear all that, I'm tired!" Magnes suddenly shouts, aggressively walking over to her. But then he just stops, sighing. "Just… stop. I don't want to hear that right now. I can't, okay? I… I can't." He reaches out to gently take her wrist, staring down at her hand. "What's wrong with your body?" As he asks this, he's reaching all through her with his gravitational field, trying to make sense of this.
"We are all tired!" Eve doesn't usually speak so clearly, so direct. So honest. "No slippery slopes!" Eve tries to plead with Magnes but they can't go any further into what he doesn't want to know because Magnes is reaching for her wrist and grabbing hold with his ability also.
A soft gasp hisses from her lips and her eyes flash bright before dimming to a calm, cool burning of a red shade. Her body shivers and she bends forward as she feels her molecules shift and nudge into place. "Pizza Boy! Magnes!" The pale woman takes a step back and looks down upon herself. The pain of her constant transitions is a dull ache, bearable. It's a new.
The next moment Eve is clinging to Magnes and rubbing his head, "You wonderful Pepperoni! Your gift, it mingles with mine. Grains of sand lay together." Nodding her head, "Fine, Okay. We won't talk about it. The story of why I'm me is in there but I like to skirt around. It's fun." Standing on her tiptoes she wiggles her fingers and circles Magnes not ashamed of her body. What of it, men his age had seen all manner of nudity. Usually. "What do you plan to do? Are you baking any pizzas anytime soon?"
Magnes has calmed down a bit, kind of shook from his mood by the sudden realization that he's dealing with a naked woman. It was all so… unprocessed, in the back of his mind, buried in anger. But now she's clinging, and then she's walking, and he raises his hand to cover his eyes. "We have to find you some kind of special clothes."
"I plan to get a job, and get a place. Right now I'm sleeping on people's couches, and I am baking pizza sometimes." He talks blindly, not wanting to actually look to see where she is. "You can't just wander around alone like this. Where can we go? Do you have a hideout or something? A hideout with clothes?" There's guilt that he can't help, that there's a naked woman and it's kind of burned into his skull now. He's not supposed to pay attention to other women, that life is over, it's wrong.
"And I'm not doing anything with my ability that I don't normally do. I don't know what I'm doing to you!" he says this almost defensively. Then starts taking off his coat, holding it out for her to take. "Put this on. Please don't destroy my coat, I can't replace it."
"A super suit, maybe I need a new name." Stroking her chin. Magnes' protest at her being alone and such make her laugh, "Oh my dear Pizza Boy." Patting his arm, "I was bombing government buildings and fighting in back alleys when you were still a wee one! You know my Gilly? Gillian. She's my sister, my truest friend. My heart." Touching the space in between her breasts, "Tied together. She, Chicken, Peter.." she stops and looks away.
Taking his coat, she shrugs it on. "If it gets blown to smithereens." Thinking better of it she tosses the coat back. "Give it to me when we land."
Taking a running leap Eve leaves Magnes' field of gravity and allows her molecules to vibrate and agitate until she reforms into that red cloud of mist that flies up to the sky and off into the distance hoping for Magnes to follow. Through the ruined landscape and over people huddled over trash cans with fires roaring in them. The pair fly until they reach Staten Island. The curl of the brownish tall grass swaying as Eve settles on the top floor of a structure.
——
The Lighthouse
The cloud pops and sizzles with heat as Eve warps in on herself and comes too again a pale and shivering shape waiting for Magnes to arrive.
When Magnes lands, he reaches over to wrap an arm around her shoulders, clearly recognizing that she's freezing. Then he starts to head to the Lighthouse, a very familiar place that he hasn't seen in some time. "You know, Gillian is one of my best friends. We used to talk online… well, some version of me did, in the past. Probably before I was born. But I have his memories of it."
"I'm sorry if I'm weird, it's just… when Elaine died, I vowed I was done with things like love, I would never move on or anything. I vowed to be alone forever, and live for my daughter." He pushes the door open with gravity, sighing. "So obviously seeing a ridiculously attractive naked woman makes me feel at least a little guilty for not entirely hating it."
Her shudders are of pain but that's beside the point when he draws himself in so does his field of gravity and Eve sighs in a gentle relief as the strain on herself is lifted. What an odd statement to say… "Whose memories?" Looking over at Magnes with red glowing eyes. "I saw him. Was it not you? He spoke so strangely," Even for Eve that is.
There's a tilt of her head at her declaration that he's bound to live out his days alone. "Your child needs you. The memory of Elaine doesn't want you alone." Eve blinks, "Are you saying my boobs are big?" Patting her chest down to check herself. "Ahh I don't think they've grown."
"Well, not to go into great detail, but I'm a clone and I've always been a clone. I was released in 2006, and there were many clones before me. I'm the only one who has never died. But, the original version of me was born in the sixties. I have the memories of whatever clone I came from. So, I remember my home, my mother, all of that." Magnes suddenly reaches over to close his coat around her as they head inside, pulling the door shut with his gravity.
"You lead the way. You can hold the coat closed. Are the couches and stuff still here?" he asks, unsure, since it's been so long, and war and such. "I'm not looking at your boobs. I mean, I did look but not on purpose. I'm trying to stay, like… I don't know."
"A clone? One whose been pieced together by the blocks of yesterday, yesteryear, no yeast infections though. Yeast yest, it gets confusing." Eve leans in close to peer into Magnes' ear, "Are you sure you're not the original and you just don't remember?" Clones, clones, clones. Boomer. "You should go into great detail sometime, I have a friend." That's a clone, who would try to blow Eve up if the woman outed her. She would never!!
Taking his coat with a small smile of thanks she closes it around herself, she'll protect her modesty to protect Magnes from his shame. "Couches, Beds. I have no use for those. My mortal coil," looking down at her hands that sizzle with red sparks. "Is a strange one now. The pieces of me, they are never happy. You help," patting Magnes' cheek while whistling that becomes a snort. "In a way." Up the stairs they go, the signs of life here are many. Empty bottles of booze, beer cans, needles, empty condom boxes. Everything you would expect from an abandoned old haunt that now houses an actual spectre.
"They like to play here, they like to discover themselves here. They must know, the young ones. That many lived here before." Her nieces and nephews, "So Big now, not yet grown. I worry for them." As her family worries about her. But there's talk of her boobs and she looks down. "They're perky! How could anyone resist, Ghost loves them." The top room, where Eve usually sits, eats and sleeps. "Welcome to my home." There's a bright smile on her face as she spins around in a circle. "Not my real home, that's in Midtown. Ruined, my other home? The Safe Zone, I have a room at Gilly's too! Many homes, none that are safe enough. None they can withstand the boom of my farts."
"Boobs, how many have you seen?"
"If I was the original, I'd be in my fifties. But I still don't know everything, so anything could be true." Magnes says as he doesn't entirely dismiss her theory, because he doesn't know.
When they make it up to her room, he looks around, mostly scoping out places to sit. He listens, not commenting on a lot, and then he's stopped in his track by boobs again. He practically chokes at her question. "Uh, I guess if I count each boob… ten? Twelve if I count you."
"Why are we talking about your boobs, again?" he asks, seeming awkward as he continues to look for an adequate place to sit. "No, wait, fourteen. I forgot about… yeah."
"Boobs are everywhere. Good hearts." Eve slams her hand against the wall, "Almost impossible. Gray hearts, toeing the line down the middle. That's the stuff, that's the stuff you don't even know you got."
"We're only talking about my boobs because your eyes were interested," casually Eve pats the jacket down curiously, "You don't have any Mary Jane? Ganja? The Ol Pot?" Finding morning the former seer marvels again at her skin that isn't cracking under pressure, a cool whip of crimson lightning lances out of her neck hitting the wall next to her.
"Fourteen plus three three. How many times have you died?"
"Me and my clones are different people. Though technically I died once, I was put back together. I exploded, Arthur Petrelli put me back together." Magnes walks up to her, reaching out to take the sides of his coat around her. He starts to button but stops short, staring. Up to her eyes, then down at her chest, his hands holding the edges of the coat as he seems to just freeze. "I should go. And I don't have pot."
His eyes start to linger on her lips, and he very audibly swallows. "Okay I'm leaving now."
"Explosions! Those are rad. Funnier than reciting a Hail Mary while on a ten day bender!" A snort and Eve is slapping her hands on Magnes' shoulders to make them sway from side to side, "Wheee." In her singsong tone. The way he watches her body so close up might not have the usual effect, Eve is alike and different from other women that Magnes has met. She leans in and touches his nose with hers as a tiny spark of that crimson lighting leaps from her to him, leaving a light circular sunburn on his collarbone. "Hallo,"
Blinking crimson eyes and then grinning wildly she nods enthusiastically and backs away on tip toes. "You've been marked by the Beast." A string of laughter thrown into the air and Eve clutches the edges of the jacket to her chest. "This will be ruined if I take it. Don't worry I have things to cover myself. Dying by the cold isn't fun. Dying by fire hurts." Not as fun either. Nearing the edge of the floor with the back of her barefoot she seems to be just on the edges of Magnes' field currently being laid out around them. Removing the jacket Eve tosses it towards Magnes, "Fly Safe Pizza Boy."
"I'll find ya sometime! YEEEHAWWW!"
Before he can move to stop her the particular woman spreads her arms outward with raven hair flying in the wind as she falls backward with bright crimson light erupting from deep within her and the pale human form disappears as a rumble shakes the foundation of the Lighthouse. Buzzing fills the air as Eve seems to dance on the air in that cloud form. A moment before she's drifting off towards the water not far away.
Magnes stands three, a confused ball of emotions as he rubs his collarbone.
His desire for revenge against someone who wasn't who he thought they were, his self-imposed repression tested, his skin marked.
All he can really do is stand there, evaluating his life, feeling guilty.
