Participants:
| Scene Title | Opheliac |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | A seer and an outrider meet; mutual reassurance, encouragement, and even blushing ensue |
| Date | November 6, 2011 |
Somewhere in New England, en route to Cambridge
An oracle and a certified lunatic meet on their way to attack the Ark….
It might sound as if it should be the start of an overly-contrived joke, but right now it seems about to come true.
Clad in midnight blue and black leathers - clearly professional-grade and tailored to fit - a pallid woman with dyed-red hair is relaxing in a patch of late-afternoon sun, her face turned up to the warm light, eyes closed and a slight smile lifting the corners of her mouth. In contrast to the expense of her attire, however, her steed is a battered old second- or third-hand motorcycle; while her chosen perch is decidedly outlandish.
Settled into a comfortable-looking crouch, with forearms resting lightly upon her thighs, the biker is managing to relax with both feet somehow supported by the top strand of a wire fence. Other members of the Ferry/Endgame convoy have taken up much more conventional positions during this rest-break, but nowhere else seems to have been judged - at least by this particular eccentric - to be both sufficiently out of the way and a good enough spot in which to enjoy unrestricted sunshine.
Providing a little extra privacy (or perhaps just company), one earbud is in place - a slender cable snaking down to disappear somewhere inside her jacket.
The rest break is appreciated by the oracle en route with the team. While Gillian and Lene may not mind Eve’s occasional smoke it's much nicer to enjoy it outside in the fresh air. Wading her way through the people she leaves behind her smoke accompanied by the smell of cannabis and Cinnabon's. (She's saved a few for Gilly and Lene).
Humming softly to herself, eyes sometimes closed and other times not. It's a wonder she doesn't trip or fall on her face. Her dress today is one of a deep scarlet color. The leggings a earthy brown and her boots are laced tight. Her coat drags in the ground just a little. At times the raven haired woman's face is obscured by smoke especially if she stands still for a moment. Which she does a few times before beginning to cross by the last perching on her motorcycle.
Eyes snap open wider and she peeks at the lady and her bike. “You've got the balance of a Olympic gymnast lady. Super impressed.” She stands there with one hip cocked out. Smoke trailing around her hands where she holds the joint and her face. Light gray eyes studying.
The perched woman starts slightly, looking around sharply… before offering a sheepish little laugh, shrug, and finger-wave. A brief fumble at her jacket, then she tugs free the earbud. “Sorry. Hah. And, ahh, well. I did aim for the Olympics, but the Bomb and… everything afterwards saw to that.” Her accent is British; educated but not aristocratic.
Glancing down, she shrugs again. “No, this is me cheating. The best term I’ve come up with for my ability is ‘gravitic bonding’, though I’m Registered with ‘object adhesion’. Basically, I’ve set gravity to pull me to the wire… and nothing else. There’s nothing to make me overbalance, so it takes no effort to hold myself up….”
Her voice trails off, and she looks sheepish again. “Ahh, hi. Sorry. I’m Ygraine. Outrider, wall-crawler - solo and with groups - and babbling Briton.”
“Babblers have more fun”, is the quick reply from the Italian. She cants her head. “You can walk on walls and ceilings?” She remembers vaguely a similar scary man in Midtown that she encountered with Teo a very long time ago. He seemed to be glued to the walls.
“I'm Eve. Painter, dreamer of the future, a house with missing some bolts..” She lifts a brow as well as her gaze to the sky thinking on that before deciding it's an accurate description. Taking a deep pull from her joint she extends it with no fanfare with the Brit. “Makes the voices and such chill out sometimes.” Other times she gets so paranoid she ends up not talking to anyone for an hour or so. She grins widely hands still extended to the former Olympic lady.
Ygraine belatedly registers the offer of the joint, blinking before laughing and slightly shaking her head. “No thanks. You probably don’t want your outrider stoned atop a speeding bike. At the least, it might make any warnings I offer a bit on the slow side.
But, ahh, yeah. I can do a bit more than wall-crawling, but people’s eyes tend to glaze over any time I try explaining it. The simple version’s that I can let myself and a few others go pretty much anywhere, so long as we can reach whatever we want to walk on. The hope is that I might be some additional use in getting people out of the Ark, when the time comes. Might also be able to bypass some security, if need be.
Still… it can’t exactly compare with painting the future for sheer coolness. That… must be a real headache to deal with, even if it only comes when you call it. You have my sympathy. Finding that the whole world was turning into something out of Inception was enough of a head-fuck. Glimpses of the future….” She shakes her head again. “I’m right there with you on being a bit whimsical in the brainpan, even without that.”
Stoned people have more fun. Is thought but not said as Eve smiles and withdraws her hand perfectly content with cheifing it herself. “I gues that would be a bad thing.” She chuckles.
As Ygraine explains her ability, Eve’s eyes light up and she leans forward through the smoke a few wafts of it coming towards the Brit. “I get that,” not about the ability but, “People don't always seem to to care super much how you do something as long as you do it.” She smiles sadly and pats her arm comfortingly. “Dreaming the future.. it's just full of messages.. inconsistencies, certainties, it's enough to make your brainpan fry!” She runs a pale hand through raven mane.
“You manage though, for the ones you love.” And that list is short for Eve. (It's not.) “I was in there before.. the Ark.” She sighs as her brow furrows. It's been the most difficult remembering much about her time there. “Simon made me sane.. helped me get there but now I'm here.” The whimsical look evaporates though as her true purpose for going along is unveiled for the other woman. “They stole something of mine. So I have to get it back. I told Simon.” She shakes her head.
Ygraine blinks… then nods slowly, her expression one of sympathetic concern as she reaches out to touch Eve’s arm in turn. “This… must be difficult for you,” she says softly. “Which make your being here all the more admirable. And we certainly have need of brave people, let alone ones with some inside knowledge of the place and its personnel.”
She opens her mouth to say something more, pauses, then closes it again and flashes a sheepish smile. “Sorry. You certainly don’t need a crazy stranger to ramble on at you about things you know all too well. Just… I’m impressed, and glad, that you’re here.”
Someone impressed.. with Eve?
Though the oracle has been the messenger of multiple tragic futures and had a hand in averting many she rarely feels that someone is impressed with her. Weirded out is most likely. Gilly, Elisabeth and maybe Peter aside. Possibly Cardinal. The list isn't very long is what she's getting at in her head.
Her eyes widen at the touch on her arm by Ygraine and she breaks out into a bark of joyous laughter. A deep red blush creeps up her cheeks. How flattering! “It's nothing I see these things in my head all day and night really,” She mocks throws her hair behind her shoulder waving a hand. It's reminiscent of a proper woman intoning something to the like of what this old thing? Blowing a puff of air out of her mouth.
“If I don't show up. Who will? All the lines crossing and crissing, melting and exploding. It's all in here.” She slams a fingertip into her temple.
Ygraine winces, shaking her head… but she continues to look sympathetic rather than weirded out - though that blush does prompt another bashful smile, accompanying a meek little duck of her head. “I’m sorry. Once I learned how to control mine, the world at least stood a chance of feeling like it made some kind of consistent sense. If I could get my brain into a state where it could parse any of it, at any rate….
But yeah… I’m glad that so many people have followed the ‘if I don’t show up’ line of reasoning. I doubt that many of us could make much of a difference on our own. But together…? We really seem to stand a good chance.”
“It's like the sweetest injection. Me plus you might not do too much. Me plus a telepath injected with some of a ability augmentor and boy do we have fireworks.” This is said from experience. Eve’s hand hangs idle in the air as she speaks the joint all by forgotten.
“We are stronger as a unit. A family. We squabble and we make fun but we stand together.” The seer hops up and down on both feet with a teeth gleaming grin. “You must be very nervous to be rushing into the abyss. It will be hard.. but it will be right.” For Eve mainly because she has a deep desire to find out what happened to her artwork.
“I… was at ConEd, among other things,” Ygraine says cautiously, seemingly skirting around the edges of a painful old memory. “That was only the first place I came face-to-barrel with a hostile tank, but it’s still the only excursion that saw me leap off a building to catch someone in mid-air… or get hit on the head by a hunk of collapsing power plant.. I’m actually daring to hope, given how many people we have, and the intelligence we have access to, and the number of heavy-hitters on our side, that this won’t actually be as terrifyingly scary as some of the crazy shit I’ve done before.
Heck, I once saved someone’s life by pretending a tin of boot polish was a grenade. I’d brought it along in case I need to smarten up at some point.” The Briton rolls her eyes, then flashes a rueful grin.
“But…yeah. Even as someone who used to be an official paranoiac, I’ve been able to find family among all the chaos. There’re people involved in this whole grand continent-spanning madness that I’d do pretty much anything for. And I’ve kept coming back here, because it feels as if this is the one place in the world where I stand most chance of making a difference for the better.
Which is probably just undiagnosed megalomania, or something… but I want to try to help. And it’s amazing, and wonderful, and heart-warming to see so many others giving it everything.”
Listening to the woman talk Eve allows her to tell the story. Puffing from the near gone joint she clutches to the roach still. Eyes wide at the mention of tanks and shoe polish grenades. “Oh oh that's fun! I got Brian a early Christmas gift and he used it to blow up a building it was loud.”
The oracle throws the joint off to the side, keeping her gaze that way for a moment longer than she maybe should have. “You find your place amongst the chaos.” A simple statement as a gentle breeze sweeps across her face and she tips her head back and closes her eyes.
“You are helping. And we will give everything.” Some of them would give it all indeed, including their lives.
“You know Brian?” Ygraine sounds both surprised, and pleased… then laughs. “Of course, of everyone involved in the Evolved underground, he’s the one I should be least surprised to hear that people know. But he did tend to seem to be worth knowing. He’s the one I jumped off a roof to catch, as it happens. The lucky guy assigned to join me in a run up the side of a building, to take out an enemy mortar-team. Oh, how I miss crazy shit like that. What a pity that we simply don’t get the chance to take group vacations and have fun excursions like we used to, eh?”
Shaking her head, she offers Eve a wry smile… though there’s a distinct tinge of sadness in it. “When first I met him, he was busking in a park,” she says wistfully. “Now… I dread to think how many crazy missions he’s been involved in, and it makes perfect sense to give him Christmas presents that go boom. I’m glad you got him one. But however much help we wind up having to give, I hope that we can hang onto things like guitar-playing under trees on a sunny day.”
“Brian joined a group I was in years ago.. one of the first members to be honest.” If not the first member.. “PARIAH. He's a nice man.. my best friend is his sister so he's like my not brother I guess.” Eve twirls a hand in her hair and chuckles at the woman. “You have heart. Most people would take in account that he can just make another him
And wouldn't risk themselves.” A pause and Eve leans in studying the woman’s face. “You seem like the type that would sacrifice themselves for a friend.” Another pause and Eve is leaning back. “Don't do any dying. We have to have drinks with Brian after this of course.” She wiggles her eyebrows and hops to her feet.
A weak smile is thrown the Brit's way, “That's what we’re all fighting for right?” As the oracle starts to turn her back she hums a little tune, Ygraine might notice it. One of Else’s songs.. stopping she looks over her shoulder at the woman and nods her head. “To guitar-playing and sunny days. May we stay alive and.. our brains.” She lifts her joint hand in a toast before beginning to move off still humming the song.
It’s Ygraine’s turn to blush, her whole demeanour turning sheepish as she responds with a bashful shrug and smile. “Thank you,” she says softly, sounding quite genuinely touched, before raising her voice a little, to be sure that her words carry to the departing seeress. “I really hope that we can all meet up after this. And sing in the sunshine.”
One hand comes up to sketch a playful salute to Eve, before it delves into her jacket and snares the earbud.
A moment later, the lyrics resume their flow into one ear - a wry, hopeful little smile curling her lips in counterpoint to the tenor of the song.
You know how hard it can be
To keep believing in me
When everything and everyone
Becomes my enemy and when
There's nothing more you can do