The Scarlet Spirit's Tribe

Participants:

eve_icon.gif isis_icon.gif

Scene Title The Scarlet Spirit's Tribe
Synopsis Isis is looking for a job. Eve is looking for answers.
Date April 8, 2019

Cat’s Cradle

The room is large, a mid sized stage with tattered curtains hanging around it and two spotlights that face it. There were a number of mismatched theatre seats arranged in a half circle facing the stage, a long dark purple rug running through the middle of them. A chandelier that is sometimes on and only lights up halfway hangs in the center of the room. Even when music is not being performed people congregate around the stage, drinking or smoking. A 420 Friendly sign hangs near a mirror hung up behind the bar.

The bar area has a few mismatched chairs and boxes for chairs. A lone armchair is placed near the bar, the owner usually occupies it when she is in. The bar is a bunch of wood and steel welded together and repurposed as a bar, there is a black glass that is fitted around the middle of often smear from people’s knees and boot heels. A really old television set with a VHS player sits behind the bar propped up on a stand. The bar is as well stocked as you can get nowadays, there’s even an exotic alcohol or two rumored to be under the bar. A modest grill stands in the corner right next to the bar, nothing fancy just greasy food.

In the corner of the room near the stage and it’s green room door is another door that is usually locked.


Hazel eyes turn from one area of the bar to the next, each new visual treasure adding a new layer of vibrancy to Isis intrigued smile. A glimmer of mischief light in her eyes, dark liner sylatize like dramat cat’s eyes only adding to the effect. A loose, white-and-black sweater hangs off one shoulder, hinting at a colorful tattoo embracing her right. Gnawed, gnarled holes at the end of the sleeves has her thumbs jutting through. Black leggings and knee-high combat boots finish the ensemble that is a flirty, electric contrast to the near-professional blown style of her lustrous, sanguine hair.

The slight redhead gives an assertive little nod to herself, fingers gripped on a little note that bears Cat’s Cradles address, and steps forward towards the bar with paces of clear intent and purpose, eyes searching for whomever looks like she or he might be the proprietor here.

"Eve wait-"

"Wheeeee!" The pale woman's voice rings out from up above. Eyes that tick upwards would catch the business owner hanging over the edge of the railing that holds the lighting controls for the stage.

Down below at the bar, Sassy otherwise known as his government name Mac stands with his hands on his hips shaking his head. The former seer must have been up there and getting ready to drop because as Isis enters the place the dark haired woman with blood red eyes leaps into the air. "Here we goooooooo!" Lightning crackles around her as red mist flows out from her body. As Eve reaches the floor her body shifts altogether into that of a crimson woman with a flailing nimbus of hair.

Eve falls right through the floor leaving white smoke wafting up to towards the ceiling as well as a humanoid shape imprinted in the floor.

There are marks like this all over Cat's Cradle.

Isis jumps back as the woman woman leaps into the air. “Don-” She does finish the exclamation as the woman not only plunges towards the ground, but evolves just before belly flopping onto it! “The Scarlet Spirit!?”

There’s a look that shows instant regret - that was her outside voice. Isis clears her throat and hurries over to the bar, bracing her hands on the counter as she turns her surprise on Sassy. “That’s Eve! She’s here!” She glance briefly towards the scarred flooring and the lingering spirals of smoke. “Er, was here.” The repeated marks of similar, strange, skydiving attempts makes it clear she’ll be returning. So, on to the next question: “Sorry, excuse me - I’m actually here to perhaps inquire with the owner about employment opportunities? But, I also need to speak to that woman…” Isis points at the floor where a lingering spark cracks and fizzles away.

"Scarlet Spirit, god damn it. Let me add that-" Mac tilts his head at Isis and looks her up and down. Completely ignoring the fact that Eve just plummeted to the ground and then passed through it. "Pretty face, nice hair. Can you sling drinks?" Mac's eyebrows arches as he taps a pen on the surface of the bar. The only other patron inside is a man slumped forward on the bar sleeping. "Don't mind Bucky here. Who you've got to get the seal of approve is none other than.. ahem." Patting his chest he looks at the spot that Eve just recently fell through.

"Eve Mas, The Pariah of Pariah, Farter of Chaos, The Weed, The Murdaimp, She Who Shoots and Tubas, Daughter of Destruction and All Things Boom, The Blood Mist, Former Oracle To The River, The Red Lady, The Scarlet Spirit!" Waving his hands as his fingers wiggle the spot where the smoke just wafted away begins to hum as the surface glows red and the flowing hair of the crimson lady rises in a swirl of crimson sparks and lightning.

The old man sleeps through it all but Eve's twists and twirls and bows before the red mist pooling out at her feet flows into her, replacing red and glowing flesh with pale skin, her raven hair the last thing to manifest the ends sparkling with lightning. Slowly the woman's bowed head lifts so that crimson glowing eyes find the redhead standing at the bar. "Why hello there fellow goddess." A glint of red down at her feet which are adorned in her now trademark silver sparkly roller skates.

"Ahem ahem." Mac clears his throat and Eve looks down. She's naked save for the skates. "Ah shit I lost the jacket." Rolling over to a nearby booth to grab at a loose black dress that she throws over her head. "Nothing Sassy Mac hasn't seen before!" To which the bartender winces, "Sadly."

"Can we drop the former Oracle??" Eve doesn't like to be reminded.

“Sling ‘em, mix ‘em, muddle ‘em, drink ‘em, and won’t put up with anyone’s shit.” Isis replies to Sassy. She pulls her braced hands across the bar to rest more casually in front of her. “It’s been a few years, but a love for being on that side of the counter doesn’t fade.”

From there, each new name has a pale brow curving higher and higher till it disappears behind a sweeping swoosh of garnet. “No pressure,” she says to Sassy after the string of titles and just before turning to take in the cinematic materialization of The Red Lady from the floorboards… nude. Isis’s gaze flits up and down and a soft, warming blush colors her pale cheeks despite her efforts to otherwise appear casual.

“Fellow goddess? I wish.” She comments a bit too vehemently. “But look at yo-…” She pauses, to wait until the dress is donned before finishing that particular statement with a sweep of one hand over Eve’s general form. “Ahem, you. A bit more stable than last I saw - no insult intended.” The left corner of her lips comes up in a playful, tilted smile.

"If you have the belief, then you got it all darling." Plucking a joint from the ashtray of a nearby table and lighting it with a cherry red lighter that she also places back on the table, carrying those things while Eve was how she was wasn't a good thing. The pale woman leans against the bar looking Isis over, "She wants work."

"Work!"

"Work. What do you think?"

Eve grows silent puffing on the spliff and smoke lifts and hangs around her face, red eyes peering out before she waves a finger towards a bottle behind the bar. Sassy grabs the bottle of the good tequila and slams it down on the surface of the bar and three glasses are laid out. The old man jolts away and grabs at his beer quickly downing it before shuffling to the door. "Got my yoga!" Wheezing coughing as he passes by Eve and goes out the door.

"Bye Lar Larry!"

Now that it's just the three of them. "Isis, the goddess, the traveler, she with the gold eyessss." Eve's voice is singsong and she hums a melody with a rumble of laughter in her chest. The glasses are pushed forward towards the pair by Sassy and Eve winks her thanks to her long time friend before turning those brilliant red eyes towards that flaming mane on Isis' head. "Tell us of your adventures! Give a story shall we?"

Hazel eyes flecked with gold flinch visibly as Eve comments about the power of belief. Isis rolls her shoulders but it doesn’t stem the tension settling in and twisting her muscles into coarse knots. “I used to believe,” (in something) “but then I lost it until…” (you showed up). “Now it’s all a knotted mess.” She taps her temple and then glances aside at Sassy, as if none-too-keen on the vouyer peeping in at this particular moment.

“Wait, I thought that was Bucky,” she says, leaning to look around Eve and watch the man slip outside, as much to change the subject as anything else. When she straightens, those brilliant, garnet eyes are boring into hers. “All my good stories are illegal,” she says dumbly, flat tone flitting away from her lips before she can catch it and shove it back in her mouth. Her glance shifts between Sassy and Eve and then smiles, there’s a notable shift with that canted little gesture.

“I spent the war up in Maine, shuffling evo kids over the border. I’ve borrowed the body of a government employee… on two different occasions. I’ve pretty much imagined every possible way I could die, and then an hour later my brain comes up with another. Aaannndddd, I really like pickles. Dill! Bread-and-Butter pickles are blasphemous.” Blink blink. “Anything before all that is a disinteresting mess. But the stuff that comes after…?” she wags a finger and points at Eve. “Well, that could be fun - if you’ll let me hang around?” The right side of her pale lips comes up in a quirky smile.

"Oh. You don't say." Eve says to Isis as the doors slam shut to Cat's Cradle and she drinks from her glass. "Seeing is believing!" Another crack of laughter and Eve leans in to Isis' space, red eyes glittering wildly. "You look good!!" Smiling as she skates in a circle behind the redhead in the open space that would be considered the dance floor of the place.

"We love illegal. I use to bomb government buildings!" Of course she did.

"Mmm Maine, nice crab there." Sassy stage whispers across the bar to Eve who blinks in surprise and nods, "Crab Island." Crab Island? Yes. Eve's limbs fold in on themselves with crackling energy wagging off and around her. "I think we have a new barmaid! No uniform allowed but we are not a topless bar! Oh that reminds me, Mac remind me to call Little Darlings, we should have an collaboration." Yes bring the strippers to Cat's Cradle.

"What of The Plague? Have you seen anything? I'm still looking… always looking but always learning. Learning about me. Learning about Three." Eve's expression grows troubled. Sassy seems to sigh, here she goes again.

Crimson hair and flecks of gold set in hazel eyes reflect The Red Lady’s vibrancy, garnet energies. Snap, crack, sizzle. It only seems to entice the curious, pale woman further. Her fingers twitch at her side but, to her credit, to manage to resist the urge to try and reach out and touch Eve when she scates round and round. Isis turns in place to keep a growing smile in Eve’s directions. At the compliment to her appearance, she combs back her tresses. “Thanks. Got myself a live in fashionista of a sort. It’s got it’s perks.” She chuckles.

And, just like that, she got a job. No, better still, the job. “Shit yeah!” Isis exclaims, turning a grin Sassy’s way. Little Darlings? That wasn’t on Sahara’s list. “Just a couple nights a week,” she elaborates. Before she can linger in the celebration of pinning down her top choice on list, Eve’s weight words and Sassy’s exasperated look grab her fast by the ankles and pull her heads back out of the clouds… er cloud?

“If you mean the Father and Mother - not a wink.” She sounds particularly disheartened. “As for our biblically named acquaintance…” She grimaces and shakes her head. “I haven’t seen him yet,” she admits with apologetic sincerity. Her gaze holds Eve’s electric, garnet eyes. She takes a deep breath, lips parting, but ultimately emits a long sigh and simply holds her hands out - empty. She mulls over several conversations that’ve been brewing since she first met The Scarlet Spirit, but ultimately lands on:

“What’re you going to do when you find them?”

"Well isn't that the question? Mmm?" Eve takes a hit of her spliff and leans her head back to blow the smoke out towards the ceiling in a rapid plume. "What. To. Do." Skating backwards the pale woman winks towards Isis as Sassy pours himself a drink with a look towards the redhead, "You had to ask—"

"People!" Shouting suddenly from the dancefloor and extending her long arm towards Isis and beckoning for the younger woman with her hand. The music on the speakers now a sparse ballad inspiring the impish woman to twist and twirl on the wooden floor. Swaying her arms now in the air, red lightning dancing off the tips of her fingers, the red mist that she was previously snakes and wraps around her limbs and vanishes beneath her skin in a cursive loop.

"Always think my first instinct is to boom, man the cannons, launch the rocket," Snapping her fingers with red flashes in time with the singer's voice. "I want to talk. To the man who saved my life and knew my parents.. to the Mother and Father that decided I was too wayward of a child to embrace." It's a depressing thought for the woman, just because the Entity was dangerous didn't mean that she didn't want to initially befriend It. "Too many questions to ask, too many pieces to meld to just shoot without asking! Adam is powerful but just as playful as ever," pouting to the sky before flicking her gaze back over towards Isis and Sassy. "I blow his money up! Brutalize his lieutenants with blessed music and blessed bullets. He leads me on a chase for years, a tango! It's a loop, running smack dab into each other." Her words becoming a ramble the more she speaks, she's had time to think on this.

"Have you ever felt like you've lived here before?" Tilting her head her tone shifts to just above a whisper and she looks towards the shuttered window allowing in traces of light from the street outside. Running her fingers in a circle in the air to indicate that here equals here, now, this world, this life.

A quick glance is shot Sassy's way. Clearly someone isn't giving Eve the attention she deserves - Oh powerful Scarlet Spirit that she is. Ahem.

Isis drifts on the dance floor, following at Eve's beckoning with her head tilted. She manages to look up through the shadow of thickly lined lashes and hair like fiery blood caught trapped in silk. She doesn't dance and sway like Eve, at least not in body. The way her emerald-gold gaze snaps from here to there, though, following the garnet firefly flickers and sparks of Eve's crackling ability, speak of an inner dance - of thoughts never knowing rest. The pale redhead chews her lower lip with her teeth. "Maybe that's the problem - " she starts. "Maybe ‘the Mother and Father’ lends itself to some idea that we were supposed to be embraced. What if that was never the intent? Whatif it's more like ‘the Egg Donor’ or ‘the Gene Donor’ or…" The intense stillness about her cracks and Isis lifts a hand, looking off and waving once in a flippant, angry gesture. "’The Great Baby Dumpster Dumper’."

Slender shoulders rise and a fall with a deep breath and a subsequent sigh. Isis gaze comes back around to Eve and she lifts her hands, combing both along her scalp and collecting her hair tightly and holding it at the crown of her head as she stares at Eve. Every time. Every damn time. "Yes," she responds pointed and suspiciously, as if the single word accuses Eve of having invaded her thoughts. "And every time I do, every time I think I've been here before, recognize something, it all turns to shit. Something bad always happens." She drops her hands with a huff and shakes her head, curls in disarray in a way that adds to the hint of mania in her words now. "I don't want to come back again. I don't want to leave, but I sure as fuck don't ever want to come back again." It's a simple statement wrapped up in the complexities of an angry and desperate plea. This world is Hell.

"Parents are often not who we want. They say there's no handbook for having children." She wouldn't know of course, of course. Eve's dancing and rolling to the music is nice but Isis' answer to her question has her stopping. "Spirits follow you hmm? Follow me too." Skating closer, close enough to brush a pale hand across her fiery mane. The former terrorist's eyes that match the body swapper's. Her hand darts out to offer the joint but Isis will need to be quick before Eve is rolling out of range again.

Twisting her hips and doing a spin she almost falls over with a, "Whoa!" And she's settling down on a nearby plush chair now facing Isis, that lightning continuing it's parade across her skin. She feels the pain but Sassy brings her the glass of tequila refilled and she takes another deep guzzle of it before slamming it down on the table the music so dim that the sound echoes off the floor absorbed by the drawn back black curtains. "Shit happens to us. It's balance, nature reminding us of our strength. Testing our old tired bones," chuckling Eve leans back into the open space behind her, legs splayed in front with one one of the wheels to get silver skates spins idly.

"We live these lives over to learn, sometimes it takes many to learn just one. Sometimes I think there's a joke I'm unaware of and the butt of." Sassy peels off to the back supply room, probably to conduct inventory.

Isis leans her head subtly, instinctually, towards the brush of curious fingers at her locks. She seems ready to even close her eyes, but the drive-by doobie offer has them widening instead and she reaches out, deftly plucking the little rollie and holding it up to her lips. She watches through the haze of cloying smoke, squinting at the spot were Eve lands with a great deal more grace than she herself would, as she holds a hearty lungful.

The redhead crosses the dance floor, nostrils releasing a wake of smoke to trail behind her. She takes a smaller puff when she arrives beside Eve before passing. She's a good 90's girl - puff-puff-pass. "I don't know what I'm scared of more-" The interlude to her statement is guttural, her chin tipped up, as she retains the smoke a beat longer before pushing the cloud out over their heads. "That there's nothing, or that I'm coming back with nothing." She leans a hip on the side of Eve's chair. "Either way, the result is the same - it was all for naught."

"Learning is a cumulative. If we were meant to learn we wouldn't be sent in blind over and over again. Definition of insanity and all that - this is definitely a joke to someone." Isis looks off in the direction of Sassy's retreat. After moment a shudder rakes up her spin and she blinks several times before looking back to Eve. "So, if you find the Great Dumper before me - tell 'em I said 'fuck you'?" It’s a statement that attempts at more bravado that she’s capable with this topic, ending up somewhere between sarcasm and question. She quirks a brow and finally gives a tilted smirk.

"What if it was meant to be a joke? The sayings of Fate being cruel and such have to have come from somewhere." If the Entity was any indication… "The best thing to do, grab those lemons make that delicious mouth watering lemonade. This ride is bumpy, potholes and hitchhikers ready to steal your bacon but, you just gotta find a way to enjoy it. Smoke a little, eat a little, find a tribe." Eve takes the joint back and puffs, smoke wafting off of her lips.

The inner clock that runs ticks louder the closer she gets to needing to 'disperse' as it were but for now Eve hears the faintest noise. She, and everyone else in Cat's Cradle is safe for now.

"Have you found your tribe?" Eve's tone curious as she exhales and passes the joint back over. "Everyone needs one."

“I’ll grab the lemons and down as many chocolate cake shots as I can,” Isis edits, reaching out to gently pinch the joint ,careful of any sporadic sparks that weave across Eve’s flesh. A few puffs buy her time to consider Eve’s question…

“Once upon a time, I thought I had. Maybe there’s on on the horizon for me, but… “ She squints and makes a failed attempt at smoke rings, ultimately just batting at the wispy tendrils like a oversized, lazy cat. “Not likely.” It’s ambiguous, but without concern or sadness - her mind is elsewhere. A point which becomes clear when her vibrant gaze swivels back down to Eve.

“What about you, Miss Scarlett?” She grins at the name. “Do you have a tribe? Not a fan base of customers, mind. A real tribe?” Isis tips her head to the side, a few streams of garnet bisecting her pale face and eyes - the effect of which is more unnerving as if it tries, and fails, to disguise some of the unrelenting, probing curiosity that seems to possess the redhead. Still, she holds out the joint kindly.

"Don't be so down and out you never know when kindred spirits will flint through your doors." Eve smiles and she takes the joint back doing her puffs and smiling up towards the ceiling as Isis asks of her tribe. "A girl has a tribe that runs along many paths, many crooks and many secret alleyways. I don't stay in one, we're in all. We're all connected. There is only one tribe." Is Eve's thought on it, one way for them in this world and that was together.

"I use to think that I was destined to be solo because I have always been so so.." there's no better word, "Eccentric. I was on the outskirts. By choice and not." Eve waves her hand in the air. "It took a long time for me to find it, my place. My space, my world."

She stops and looks back at Isis, it's just the two of them here now. "What kind of world do you believe in?"

One tribe - dark lashes shadow hazel eyes further when they narrow at Eve. Still, the short redhead listens intently. “Sometimes I think it was safer - staying on the outskirts.” But, she’s not there any more. She’s here. Now. With Eve Mas. Talking about… tribes and worlds and spirits. Isis smiles, an expression that is as much turned inward as out. The expression if fleeting, though, as Eve tugs left and drags her thoughts through something murkier - her own beliefs: what is and what //could be.

“Believing is seeing?” Isis echoes one of Eve’s earlier statements back on her in a dreamy, thoughtful way. She looks down and picks at her own cuticles around unpainted nails. “Then, I believe in a world divided, where hate and jealousy kill senselessly. Where no measure of bombing or strife was able to blow away greed and ugliness. Where death is always wasted.” She shrugs. “What I want to believe in?” She pauses, considering, and then snorts, as if at the sheer hopelessness of what her mind has formulated…

“A world where no one dies for the wrong reason.”

"Perhaps it's deeply ingrained in us as a people. But are we naturally predisposed to these things? These shades of living that lean in the dark." Eve runs a hand through her long hair, the red sparks crackling around her wrist. "Or is this learned behavior? Taught." By centuries of separation and war. "Greed is a tricky thing. You don't think it's that bad when you have more cookie than you should hmm? But the moment you start taking when you don't need… it's a sin. We are glutinous."

What she wants to believe in…

Eve has to think it exist.

"I'll tell you Goddess Isis," Sucking hard on the end of her joint a loud wet noise filling the air. "I rarely ever saw peachy keen shades of the future." Usually just dogged and damned. "Would you do anything to see that world?" There's something stirring in Eve, her gaze faraway. Her words meant for someone else but Isis is the one who they fall upon. It's easy for Eve to slip, in and out.

Her pale tongue passes across even paler lips, leaving a soft sheen in their wake. Still, Isis response does not come. She considers the question and its source a long, silent moment. The buzz of marijuana makes the seconds stretch and tingle. The back of her jaw tenses and she gives a nod that hustles a few strands of garnet across her cheeks in a tender caress. “Anything.” And despite all the tension leading up to her answer, the word cracks the grit and weight and lifts her brows up, the singular word lofted slightly in her alto ranges to something that nearly reflects hope. “I’d do anything.”


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