Participants:
| Scene Title | Hit Me With Your Best Shot |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | A joyous reunion, of a sort. Don't mind the tears. |
| Date | November 12 2011 |
The setting sun now touches only the higher parts of the castle and the tops of the trees, but it paints them and the scattered clouds overhead in brilliant shades of pink and gold, while the shadows move into a a depth-filled blue.
Taking a rather direct route down from the battlements, Ygraine arcs across an expanse of open wall - avoiding bottlenecks and crowded stairs in favour of strolling along, perpendicular to the world. The custom-tailored leathers that were glossily pristine less than a week ago are now covered in dirt and signs of hard use, though the neat bullet-hole in the back of the jacket does go unnoticed by most observers. Her gait is tired, her demeanour a mixture of weariness and determination - a slight smile playing on her lips as her gaze runs over the sheer number of people who have made it here, to at least a modicum of safety and comfort.
Among them a relatively new figure clad in a dark dress leans against the wall. Literally directly beneath Ygraine’s line of descent. Smoke wafts up to meet Ygraine the closer she gets to the ground a light laugh can be heard from the figure as she rocks back and forth eyes closed. Hair wild as she shakes her head back and forth. A pair of earbuds can be seen inside of Eve’s ears and whatever is blasting out of the bu-, “HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT! WHY DON’T YOU HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOTTT.”
The oracle is rocking out and nobody can stop her. A barefoot kicks up in the air toes wiggling along to the music. She wags a finger in the air as she sings to her tune. Not a care in the world at the moment. Finally getting home after the insane events at the Arc Eve has been waiting for people to return, namely Gillian.
“HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT!”
It would be traditional for a shadow to fall across Eve as something descends from on high - and to a limited extent, that’s true now. But amidst the gathering gloom, Ygraine feels confident that the fractional deepening of the shouting seer’s personal murk is unlikely to be noticed. Thus, she descends to stand only a couple of feet above Eve’s bobbing head… before reaching down and swinging a hand to and fro in front of her eyes.
“Boo.”
“Boo AHHH!”
Eve throws her pale hands up in the air as she shrieks in fear. Doing so shoots her arms right into Ygraine landing on her shoulder before she uses the momentum to swing herself around and she's facing the gravity manipulator. An earbud dangling out of her ear. “Do not scare a crazy bird like me, we peck eyes out lady!” She looks confused for a second before she recognizes the woman.
“Ygraine..!”
She leaps forward to throw her arms around the other crazy woman. “You're alive!” She grins and closes her eyes as she squeezes Ygraine to her. “I'm so happy my Wallcrawler.”
For a moment, Ygraine is tempted to bring Eve up to join her on the wall… but instead she decides to be at least marginally responsible, and - grinning like a loon - steps down to resume a conventional orientation to the world. And in the process make receiving and delivering a warm hug a great deal easier to manage.
“It’s me,” the Briton affirms quietly. “And I’m glad to see that you made it, too. Fortunately, I only got shot where I had armour, this time. You look as if you made it out in one piece as well…?”
“Well I died!” The news being delivered with a bounce as she leans back to take Ygraine in properly. Though a sad expression crosses the Oracle’s face. “An old friend brought me back to life.” Her brow furrows, she's confused again. Before that confusion can lead to any reckless behavior Eve takes a toke of her joint and nods at Ygraine.
“We are both lucky then.”
“You… died?” Ygraine studies Eve rather intently. “Seriously? Wow. Ummmm. I’m glad that old friend was there for you….” A slight shake of her head, then she glances around. “I’m afraid that I’m only here briefly, myself. I’ve got a little group of sick and wounded stashed up in Massachussetts. I came down to see if any survivors had made it to New York, and how things were inside the military perimeter. I’ve stopped off here on my way back up North. So… unfortunately I need to be setting off again soon.”
“It was.. a different experience.” Eve nods before she is looking up in the air as if someone is calling out to her. With a light shrug Eve takes a puff of her smoke. “I'm going to find him and ask him the questions. All the whispers surrounding us. Blissful chaos.”
As Ygraine talks of her wounded friends in Massachusetts she nods again and looks out at the water surrounding the island. “I haven't seen Lizzie. My dreams are back but..”
Ygraine blinks, pauses, and cocks her head. “I… well.” She swallows, somewhat unsuccessfully clearing her throat, her voice hoarse as she continues - and her gaze flitting away to the vividly illumnated clouds visible above the castle’s walls. “I spoke to Brian. He’s… answering questions, about what happened in all the places he was, but isn’t volunteering anything. People need to… enquire. But… if you wanted, I could give you the outline of what happened in Alaska.”
Ygraine’s tone of voice and hesitation make Eve stop mid smoke and peer at the woman. She shrugs a shoulder and leans back against the wall. Smoking and allowing the tendrils of thick smoke float around her with no waving it away. She ponders what the woman is saying. “Brian.. Gilly must be so worried.” She says softly and then looks over to her new friend.
“Yes please.”
Ygraine sighs, wearily and long. She leans back against the wall, sighs again, and lifts her feet up to rest on it - knees drawn up as if lying down, but parallel with the conventionally-upright Eve.
“The… good news is that most of our guys got out. Some of them still in one piece. I have the impression that a great many Brians probably died - but no one seems to count them any more.” She does not sound entirely happy about that. “But… I’ll try to remember the roll call….”
The Briton closes her eyes for a moment, brow furrowing slghtly. “Lashirah… no. Let’s start with the good news. Colette and someone called Elle have been rescued, though they’re in really bad shape. And the mission very thoroughly shut down the Mount Natazhat base. And Ezekiel’s reported to be dead.
“The bad…. Lashirah is shot to Hell, but somehow still going. Huruma - I don’t know her, but I’m aware of the name - has a gut injury, I think it was, but is still mobile. Jaiden got electrocuted, badly, and might have overdone it with his power - but he was shorting out the enemy’s big Device of Doom, so he probably thinks that was a good exchange….”
Gaze lifting to the sky again, Ygraine takes a breath, then continues the list. “Ryans lost a hand. Monica lost a whole arm. Cardinal got hammered so hard that his powered armour fell apart. Also had his ability ripped out of him. But he somehow walked out of the rubble. Someone called Howard had something happen to him that I can’t claim to have understood properly. Mary-Anne, the teleporter they were relying on as their best way to get inside… she died, right at the start. It turned into a frontal assault after that.”
Another sigh, and Ygraine peeks around, managing a wan smile for Eve… though her eyes are shimmeringly bright with moisture in the dim light. “Something… the… Ezekiel: he, ahh, triggered something in Varlane. Sent his ability wild. He was apparently forming a black hole, literally ripping the whole structure apart. Liz… stopped him. But didn’t… she’s gone. Entirely gone. Not even a body.”
The Briton’s voice cracks at the end, the news still clearly more than a little raw - and the information on Elisabeth clearly by far the most significant, to her.
As Ygraine recounts the events of Alaska to Eve she puffs on her joint in silence. A perplexed expression on her face. She isn’t really use to having to go to someone for information. One of the few people she has ever sought out for real information was Elisabeth. As Brian and his many deaths are told Eve shakes her head. “I worry for Multiman. He's coming so close to a million deaths.” Maybe not that much. The news sends a shiver down her spine.
The news of Eve’s friend Monica losing her arm makes the oracle balk and she coughs out smoke and looks to Ygraine with a bit of a crazed expression. “But her ninja…” all of the news, Huruma.. Cardinal.. Elle.. it rocks the already unstable woman and she rocks back and forth her head tilted to the side. Smoke seeps from her mouth as she absently puffs the smoke billowing towards the shore in front of them.
Then she starts to speak of black holes and Magnes being hurt? And then she utters that Liz is just gone. A moan escapes the pale woman and she sags against the wall slowly sliding to the dirt ground. Weeds fold over her ankles as she hangs her head eyes wide. Her breathing is shallow. Her eyes screw up in concentration and she shakes her head to and fro. “No.. no..” She rocks back and forth slamming her back into the castle stone wall with an audible smack. “No.. no.. I didn't see.”
The shock of it sends her barreling back to the time she didn't know that Cameron was going to be killed. Even though she had seen it. The oracle shakes violently as her joint drops to the ground forgotten and she hurriedly shoves herself Forward. Clawing at the dirt to push her forward She grits her teeth as tears well up and begin to descend down her cheeks. “But Queenie..” a ragged sob escapes Eve as she crawls away from the wall, away from Ygraine, away from the news. “No.. no no no no no no no no no no.” Eve is a broken record.
With a blood curdling scream Eve collapses on a nearby tree holding on for dear life. Her vision spins and her head rocks as she tries to make sense of it all. Not Elisabeth. Not her Queenie. Not her slightly reluctant blonde partner in crime. Liz is the closest woman to Eve besides Gillian. The news shocks her cold and stiff as she continues to sob uncontrollably against the tree trunk. “Twinkle.. twinkle..” comes the woman’s voice in a rasp. Her shoulders bunch up.
Ygraine sighs… then allows herself a few moments to clear at least some of the tears from her own vision, before dragging in a juddering breath and returning her feet to the ground (and her gravity to its customary orientation) so that she can walk over to join Eve.
Once there, she tries lightly resting a hand upon the seer’s back. “I didn’t realise you were close,” she confesses, sounding guiltily apologetic. “I’m… believe me. I’m truly, truly sorry she’s gone.”
“You lose.. so.. many people in this fight.” Eve whispers as her sobs subside and she looks over her shoulder at Ygraine. There is no way this is true. “Liz was.. one of the few people who was really my friend. The old days. Haha we caused so much trouble. We repaired so many leaks too.” Eve looks frantic as she stares at the woman that has just delivered that devastating news.
“Poor Richie.” She sighs and sits looking straight ahead. Her body feels numb. Her mind is racing though. A black hole? Maybe.. they were transported. She doesn't say this to her friend. It might seem rude.
The British sci-fi nerd has already entertained and consoled herself with thoughts of Elisabeth Harrison, Space Buccaneer of the Tenth Dimension! and the like - but right now, she settles for lightly rubbing at Eve’s back, not at all sure if she should initiate a hug. “It’s… yeah. He’s not back in touch yet,” she says softly. “He knows, of course. But no one on this end of the country has been able to talk to him. It’s….”
She shakes her head, then finds a faint smile. “Leak repairs, huh? That sounds… intriguing.”
“We fixed futures.” Not all the time, “We also has girltalk.” Eve sniff and turns around to throw herself at Ygraine for a hug. “Do you think she's in space? A space.. angel.. Lizzie always seemed like an angel seeking justice. Righteous, super blonde but never a dummy. Liz was never a dummy..” the oracle weeps softly into Ygraine’s shoulder. Overcome with emotion.
“I couldn't dream about that day. Nothing. I couldn't see her. I should have been able to stop it. To save her. What's the use of all these gears being LOOSE IF I CAN’T STOP MY FRIENDS FROM DYING!!” Eve screams and throws her arms tighter around Ygraine.
Ygraine leans into Eve… then pulls the other woman closer, strong arms delivering a firm squeeze, even as her ears ring from that scream. “I… could almost certainly have saved her, had I made it that far into Mount Natazhat,” she says softly. “I don’t generate or negate gravity - I redirect it. Nothing else. I could almost certainly have… just made sure it didn’t affect anyone else, and there’d have been no need for any suicidal heroics to stop the black hole forming.”
Still another sigh, as she pushes away thoughts of quite how she’d have had to redirect Magnes’s excess gravity - then she shrugs and hugs once more. “But… if I’d been there, then there’s a good chance that other people would have died in the Ark. Tamara, most likely. I stopped a bullet for her. Carried her out when she collapsed. It’s… not that we didn’t try. It’s that we can’t do everything. And Liz… Liz chose to do what she could. To stop something that would have killed everyone there, from the sound of it. Maybe got a lot worse than that, too.”
Eve doesn't know Tamara but she nods as the woman talks and offers her comfort. “You're a hero my friend.” A sniff as she draws back to look at the woman. “Liz is a hero too.” Is? Eve might be having a hard time adjusting. “The most heroic of us all.”
Eve takes a moment to wipe the tears away from her puffy red eyes. “We were all where we needed to be. The wheels must turn. Some stop forever.” Eve knows too many people whose clocks have stopped working.
Ygraine lets slip a short, startled burst of half-bitter laughter. “Me? Thank you. I wish. Every now and then, I blunder into doing something right, when people let me sign up for it. I’ve… given Lynette a way of contacting me, as an aside. And agreed to lay in another one. Just in case there’s need for me, or anyone I wind up with where I’m heading, out West….
“But yeah. I… kind of hero-worshipped Liz a bit already, I admit. Was rather in awe of some of what she’d done. This… doing that, it was just her. Jumping in to remove a threat to others….”
“Sometimes my brain wants me to go high and I want to go low,” Eve nods at her friend and looks up at the sky, “but sometimes we work opposite and it works perfect..” gray eyes study the gravity woman.
“Liz leapt on faith. Queen..”
Though her sobs have stopped for now. Her heart has begun that aching. “We were lucky to have her.”
Ygraine moves in again, trying for another hug - intending to make it quite fiercely close, though without risking employing her full strength. “Yeah. We were,” she says hoarsely. “And… well.” She takes a deep, if unsteady, breath. “She’s… still reaching out, in a fashion.”
Leaning back a touch, she cracks a slightly teary grin. “Not in the sense of ‘zombie attack’. Undead hordes are one thing I’ve not yet seen in this crazy-ass world. But….” A slight sigh accompanies a nod. “She knew that she was going into danger. As did we all. So… she prepared gifts. Left behind things for peope, in case she didn’t come back. It… if it’d help, I could give you a thumb drive. Some of her music. I… got her into a recording studio, a few weeks back. She chose some songs, to share with people.”
One hand is withdrawn from Eve, to pat-pat at the Briton’s dirty leathers. “I could give you one now, if you have access to anything to play it on. And want it, that is. It’s… painful, I know. So whatever you choose, I’ll understand.”
The oracle allows herself to be drawn into the fierce hug, returning the squeeze. Memories of her times with Elisabeth run across her mind. That blonde hair, that serious but never too serious for Eve demeanor. There are few people in this world that would protect and be there for Eve. She's lost one.
“She sang.. like an old hymn..” Eve closes her eyes and nods. She reaches into her pocket to withdraw the media player she was using earlier to extend it towards the other woman. “Would this work?”
The prospect of hearing her voice again..
Ygraine carefully takes the player in one hand, peering at its miniature ports. “I… think I have something that will connect to this, yes. I tried to make sure I had options.” Pulling back, she unzips her jacket, delving inside to come up with a padded parcel envelope; some rummaging in that lets her bring up something that does indeed look suitable.
“There you go. I can either take it back, once you’ve copied it… or you can hang onto it, if you want to pass it on to others. Your choice,” she says gently.
As the music files load onto Eve’s player she smiles a small smile at Ygraine. Once it is done she removes the drive and places it in her hands, clasping them in hers. “You have taken up a noble cause.”
Eve’s voice thick with emotion. “You have others to tell. Others to share with. You are a star.” A tear falls from the Oracle's eyes and she shoves the player in her coat pocket. She'll play it another time. Not now, she's barely holding on.
“You will sing with me? One day soon, we must gather around the fire and share our stories. Share her favorite drinks.. eat her favorite foods.. i loved getting her pizza.”
“Sing…? Hah.” Ygraine blushes a little, then moves to deliver a one-armed hug to Eve, the other hand finishing tucking away the precious parcel. “What is it with people wanting me to sing?”, she asks bashfully. “Sable even insisted on a duet, for Heaven’s sake. And on recording it.”
The Briton both looks and sounds disbelieving, shaking her head before venturing a wry smile “But if you’re sure, then yes. I can provide you with a little back-up some time. Try not to let you down too badly, anyway. The eating, I can probably manage with more confidence. Especially of pizza. There’re a few advantages to washing out of any hope of competing again, after all.”
That name rings a bell and brings a smile to the woman's face. Eve lays her head on Ygraine’s shoulder. “I haven't seen young Sable in forever.” Her eyes twinkle at the meeting of the young and she nods her head ethusically at Ygraine. “Great I'll bring you a triangle to ding, you’ll be great!”
The singer hums softly as she walks with the woman. Her mind elsewhere then the tragic death of her friend if only for a moment.
“Sometime you might receive a message from me.” Eve turns her head to look Ygraine in the eyes. This decision a recent one, an idea that Eve had just only begun to have a few days ago on her way back into the city.
“Look for the butterflies.” Eve taking that moment to unlatch herself from Ygraine and flap her arms at her sides as she slips away from the woman. A sad smile crosses her lips, “The butterfly is a sign of change. A cry for help! If you crush its wings, do they still fly?” A finger is pointed in Ygraine’s direction before she wags it. “Maybe not here.” And a dark grin crosses the Oracle's lips. It would seem Eve will be dealing with the death of Liz like she does with everything, insanely.
“Butterflies, huh?” Ygraine’s smiling, but paying close attention as Eve pulls away. Seemingly-crazy utterances, she appears to accept without hesitation. “I’ll keep an eye out for them. And… I’ll note that I’d hope to be able to manage a little more than a triangle, but perhaps it’d be wise to play it safe, when dealing with a professional songstress. But I’d be honoured to provide an accompaniment for you.”
“That’s all people are looking for anyway.” A light shrug from Eve with a smile to match, settles against a tree to stare at the woman. “Triangle and your voice will do just perfecty my walky friend.” Eve stretches her arms out and looks sad off to the side. “She would have played the hell out of that triangle.” There’s a moment and then Eve is dipping her head towards Ygraine. “Thank you for the news, I apprecaite it Ygraine.” her voice soft
Ygraine closes the distance again… but settles for just reaching out and delivering a one-handed squeeze to Eve’s shoulder. “You’re welcome,” she quietly assures her fellow Opheliac. “Honestly. I… wish there was more that I could do. But… singing with you - even playing the triangle - I can certainly promise to. And I’ll do my best to watch out for butterflies, I promise.”
A pale hand goes to squeeze Ygraine’s and she looks over to the woman. “Be sure you do.” And with a snicker and a wink she backs away slowly from the other woman. She presses her wine colored lips together a piercing whistle emits from them.
Eve’s grey eyes stay on Ygraine never looking back. Stepping over fallen logs and other obstacles in her path.
“Remember to be happy! She would want us happy.”
Laughing even as her eyes shimmer wetly, Ygraine inclines her head and raises a hand in farewell. “That she would. I’ll try to get my hands on a triangle whenever I next see you - take care of yourself till then. And be happy!”
