Participants:
| Scene Title | Untrue |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | He slaps the hood of the panel van. "This baby can hold so much goddamn trouble." |
| Date | July 8, 2021 |
I lost my heart
A closed fist meets a jaw, snapping teeth out of their sockets.
Under the bridge
Greasy hands grab a length of iron rebar, swinging it like a club.
To that little girl
She ducks under the swing, landing an uppercut into the workman’s side.
So much to me
Ribs crack under the impact.
And now I moan
But she doesn’t let him fall away.
And now I holler
Calloused fingers grip his overalls by the straps, lever his body around like a shield
She’ll never know
into the oncoming path of his friend’s fist.
Just what I found
Later
Salvage Bay
New Chicago
Ruins of Indiana
July 8th
6:13 am
«That blue eyed girl (That blue eyed girl)»
An old radio crackles, playing a song off of PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love. It’s barely audible over the sound of torque wrenches and hammers. Rows and rows of automobile wrecks are being scrapped across this vast concrete bay off of New Chicago’s southernmost coast, in clear view of the disassembled satellite arrays across the water.
«She said "no more" (She said "no more")»
In rainy dawn hours, a small group of Convoy passengers make their way through “Salvage Bay” the heart of mechanical scrapping and trade in New Chicago’s industrial district. Spare parts for the Convoy have been easy to come by, but the Wildcat is a finicky, European vehicle that doesn’t fit many of the parts that the others have found so far.
«That blue eyed girl (That blue eyed girl)»
Which led to Bay 7, an independent salvage operation that specializes in hard-to-find mechanical components. A chain-link fence dividing the garage of Bay 7 from Bay 8 is decorated with the hood ornaments from hundreds of European cars, like mounted trophies from big game hunters. More impressive is the nearly mint condition jet black 1967 Jaguar sitting in the garage. Bay 7’s pride and joy.
«Became blue eyed whore (Big blue eyed whore)»
“A Pinzgauer?” An impressed mechanic standing outside of Bay 7 looks with wide-eyed wonder at Rue Lancaster. The sharpie-marker nametag written on his overalls reads Sal. “And it’s running?” He whistles sharply. “I mean, I don’t know if we’ve got any parts for it…” he hedges, “but if you’re looking to get it off your hands, we might have some trade options that’ll interest you.”
“Trade, huh?” Gracie tips her head to one side. “We kind of want to keep it up and running.” Her head tips to the other side. “Buuut… I don’t see any problem with entertaining the notion.” She grins broadly. “What do you have in mind?” She slants a glance toward her companions, a little spark in her eye. Maybe they’ll find something cool.
"Trade?" Robyn sounds somewhat incredulous as she looks over where she leans, arms crossed and eyes baggy from lack of sleep. Sleep hadn't been much of a problem over the course of this multiversal excursion, but it had largely eluded her the night before, leaving her looking a bit worse for wear than she has lately.
"Better be a good fuckin' trade," she remarks with a dismissive wave of her hand. She's distracted, that much is clear, though it's hard to tell if it's the lack of sleep of the many things weighing on her mind as of late.
In contrast to Robyn, Silas seems to be well-rested; the hospitality of New Chicago seems to have agreed with him, and his gaze is sharp and clear as he glances around Bay 7 before his gaze settles on the mechanic. The fact that Sal's heard of a Pinzgauer is a point in his favor; Silas sure hadn't, before all of this. The mechanic's hedging prompts a raised eyebrow. Yeah, buddy, I'm sure you'd love to put another trophy on the wall, a voice snickers at the back of his mind.
Nothing wrong with that, either… but Robyn's got the right of it. It had better be a good trade. We can't afford to make a bad one. "We've got a pretty long trip ahead of us, and some rough roads along the way," Silas says mildly. "If you think you've got something that can do the job better than what we've got…" He pauses and affects a shrug. "I'm all ears."
“Well I mean—” Sal glances at Gracie, furrowing his brows, then looks at Robyn and Silas. “Yeah, we can talk.” He gravitates more toward Silas and Robyn now, occasionally shooting Gracie a side-long look.
“It all depends on what you two want.” Sal says of Silas and Robyn. “I know you two must’ve come through with that fuck-off Convoy, so I’m figuring you’ll want to stay on the road at least. I’ve got a panel van that seats eight with two fold-out cots. New tires!” He says with a broad smile. “And ‘cause you’re on the road I can throw in a couple boxes of re-cased nine-mil.”
Then he slants a look at Gracie. “Do you have a finder’s fee with them?”
Gracie’s own brows furrow at the slight she’s perceiving. If not for the fact that he’s also dealing with Robyn, she’d suspect misogyny. So this is a curious thing. She does a quick and surreptitious glance down at herself. Is it something she’s wearing? Does she have red on her? None of that seems to be the case, so her gaze comes back up and to center just as Sal addresses her directly.
Her smile is an easy thing. “Ah, you know how it goes.” Someone must, right?
The idea of trading for a van, even one with new tires, rankles Robyn in a way she can't articulate, least of all it being not at all their decision. At least, until the addition of ammunition is made. That catches her attention, leading her to glance up at Silas, and then back to Sal. "Not really our call, but we can look over things," is a bit of a grumble as she pushes off the wall.
"Silas, you mind looking at the van? I'll check out the ammo." Because that's something she actually knows something about, if nothing else. Another glance over to Sal, and then over to Gracie. "If she does have a finders fee, I hope she splits it. She's as much part of the convoy as the rest of us."
There's a low, unintelligible grumble as she tries to shake herself more awake, smacking her palm at the side of her cheek.
Silas's lips crease into a frown, his eyes falling on Sal again. He's not particularly enamored of the idea of trading for a van, anymore than Robyn is… and neither did he miss the implication about Gracie not being part of the Convoy. Robyn's corrected him on that point, at least, so Silas takes a moment to scrutinize the mechanic. "Yeah. Let's take a look. I'm looking forward to seeing what kinda vehicles New Chicago's got."
Sal starts to turn toward the garage, but side-eyes Robyn. “Wait—” then his attention darts to Gracie. “You’re—”
“—That bitch!”
The cry interrupts Sal, coming from the busy street across from the salvage bay garages. Shoving their way through the crowd, six men in patchwork clothes partially padded in body armor salvaged from riot gear point in Gracie’s direction. One of the six has a lump the size of a clementine on his left jaw, and both eyes are black and blue. He hangs back, looking away from Gracie.
“Fuck.” Sal mutters, shooting an accusatory look at Gracie. “Clean up your fucking mess,” he instructs, pointing at her and then the six very angry men. Two of whom unholster handguns and make a march across the street, shouting.
“Red!” one of them yells. “Got any smart fuckin’ shit t’say now ‘fore I put a fucking hole in your gut!?”
Gracie’s expression scrunches up with confusion. She’s who? Her attention snaps to when she hears the shouting.
Ah. That bitch.
Her incredulity is turned back to Sal quickly. “My mess? I don’t even know who those assholes are!” She turns and backs away a step. Usually quick with a quip, she hesitates in the face of drawn guns. Stammering, without taking her eyes away from the advancing gang, she seeks backup from the others. Taking another step back, she reaches out behind her, ready to clutch to someone for some sense of security. “I have no idea what’s going on here.”
But she’s starting to have suspicions.
"Oh for fuck's sake." Looking towards the men, Robyn closes her eyes and balls on hand up in a fist. "One day, one morning without a gun being drawn shouldn't be so hard to ask for." Turning to full face them, Robyn paces in Gracie's direction, only stopping when she stands almost shoulder to shoulder with the taller woman, who is quick to dart behind her, a hand curled around her shoulder like she might use her as a shield.
"I don't care whose mess it is," she offers out to the open air, to Gracie, to the gaggle of idiotic man children across from her, to Sal, to whomever the fuck else might be listening. "It's too early for this shit. I don't know what went down here, and I don't care. She's one of ours, we'll sort her out on our own, and trust me that there's sortin' to do."
Holding a hand down and out to her side, she lets her fingers flex out, and she smirks. "So, how about this. You put those guns away, and we talk this out like we're not twelve and having a tantrum, or-"
Fingers curl back in and she snatchers her hand up like she's pulling at something, making an effort to blanket the immediate area in darkness. "People that don't need to get hurt do."
Silas's scrutiny remains on the mechanic, eyes narrowing as the man seemingly recognizes Gracie… but his gaze is swiftly drawn away when the yelling starts.
Immediately Silas's expression grows cold. His eyes flicker around, taking things in, and when Sal tells them to clean up their fucking mess…
"Alright, pal," he says to Sal, his voice a low purr, eyes flickering to the six assholes coming their way, now two of them with guns drawn. As Robyn speaks, helpfully drawing attention, Silas moves. One hand reaches out and rests briefly on Gracie's other shoulder in a momentary gesture of reassurance… and then his hand slides away, his eyes sweeping over the area to familiarize himself with what's onhand. From what he knows of Robyn, it's about to get a lot darker in here; if these assholes decide they want to pull something here even with Robyn's discouragement in play, he wants to be ready to try to make a play of his own.
In that instant, as shadows shift and the parking lot outside of Bay 7 dips into dusk, Sal hurries back into the garage and slams the button to lower the garage door, shouting for his crew to get down. At the same time, all eyes are on Robyn, because the very angry crew that rolled up on the salvage yard has lost sight of Silas in the gloom. That disappearing act and the conjured darkness has two of the gang members backpedaling; one of them the guy who already looks like he got fed punches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The other a thin teenager armed with a nail-spiked hockey stick.
One of the men with guns lowers his, turning a side-long glance to—
BLAM!
His friend who shoots Robyn. It’s a reflexive move, too jittery, too quick on the trigger. The handgun round enter’s Robyn’s right hip and impacts her pelvis, fracturing bone and sending blinding pain up and down her body. The round is too small to fragment and stays embedded in the bone. The impact shock is enough to drop her on the spot. A few inches higher or lower and it could’ve been fatal.
In the moment, however, the distinction amid blinding pain is negligible.
Emboldened by the gunshot, two others move to engage, pulling out a mix of knives and screw-studded wooden clubs.
Gracie shrieks at the sound of the gunfire. She takes a step back from Robyn and waits for pain to register, pats herself down. The veil of darkness drops along with the photokinetic and the target of ire is left standing out in the open with wide eyes and a racing rabbit heart.
“Fuck!” Gracie looks for something to dart behind. She could — should — try to aid Robyn, but she can’t help her if she’s incapacitated herself. “I’m sorry,” she whispers under her breath, drowned out by the sound of her shoes slapping against the concrete. She drops low and slides across the ground behind a dumpster like tagging first base in a game of softball.
“Shit shit shit.” Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she makes a choice.
It's certainly not the first time Robyn's been shot, but somehow this happens faster than she could even begin to imagine. One moment, she's bearing a cocky smile, the next it's wiped from her face as she ragdolls across the ground, eyes wide as pain fills every reasonable, functioning fiber of her being. Light spills out on to the ground from her wound, phosphorous and wet in a manner almost like blood, but not quite.
While able to keep from immediately passing out, she is far from able to keep from howling in pain, eyes bright with unnatural light and adrenaline coursing light almost visibly through her veins as she screams. For a brief moment, the light in the room seems to fade just a bit.
Around her, points of light connect, bringing with them a sudden, glistening light that coalesces and lances out - lasers streaming through the air in a prism, heat audibly snapping and a the smell of ozone filling the air around her mingling with a kaleidoscope of burning, focused light that fills the space around her even as Robyn wrenches her eyes shut and tries to grit her teeth and not succumb to the pain.
It's been awhile since Silas Mackenzie has had to fight; normally he's pretty damn good at talking people down. Normally he's pretty damn good at talking himself down, if it comes to that. But these assholes are out for blood and by God they are going to find it.
Robyn's darkness stunt, short-lived as it had been, had given Silas an opportunity to make his move, lunging to the side to scoop up a piece of pipe that'll make a serviceable club — even as furious as he is, he doesn't want to use knives. They're guests here, after all… but hopefully the Administrator won't fault him too much for some judicious blunt force trauma administered in self-defense. Right? Right.
Robyn's howl of pain spurs him to move faster… which is good since she apparently picks that moment to fucking detonate behind him. He smells a faint acrid smell, feels a sting on the back of his legs but ignores it for the moment in favor of continuing his motion, moving around to the back of the group. He zeroes in on the one furthest back and strikes, laying into him with a vicious kick to the side of a knee and a followup pipe blow to the nose… and the noise and violence all neatly smothered by his little trick so that his buddies won't notice a thing. They get their lumps next.
Gracie shuffles back on her hands and soles as the laser show begins. She takes in a sharp breath and—
Nobody sees Gracie pop out from around the other side of the dumpster. Nobody sees the way she practically grand jetés out of the way of one of Robyn's wayward beams. Quinnie, who’s down on the ground, losing control of her power because of a bullet that was meant for her. She has to make sure the same doesn’t happen to Silas. Or herself.
Everyone’s vision goes dark as Robyn’s power suddenly re-engages, the light pulled from the area and held in the palm of her hand.
A gunshot rings out in tandem with a cry of surprise, cut off quickly by the gurgling sounds of someone choking.
The man who shot Robyn is down on the ground, clutching his throat, blood pouring between his fingers when the light returns.
All of which Robyn can feel. She feels photokinesis use like a spider feels something touch their web. And she just felt a fly come down and grand jeté on her fucking web. Gracie just used photokinesis.
In the periphery of that revelation Silas moved sight-unseen within the crowd until he dismantled one of the club-wielding gang members. He dismantles the man the way the workers here dismantle cars; piece by piece. It’s no surprise that, being in the back of the group, Silas is the first to hear the hollow metal whunk of someone else joining the fray.
It’s a hollow, metal whonk sound, accompanied by a scream. Then another and a grunt. Someone moves through the back of the gang like a shark through water. This time Gracie, Robyn, and Silas can see a small figure strike one of the gang members in the side of the head with an aluminum baseball bat.
Whonk.
She's short, blonde, dressed in overalls with rolled cuffs, black boots, smudges of grease under each eye. Her hands are covered in oversized motorcycle gloves, the kind with carbon-fiber knuckleguards. She is tiny, she is grace, she will break every fucking bone in your face.
She's Liza Messer.
There's hardly a chance for the small blonde to be registered by much of anyone before she's moving again, bat at the ready as if she were ready to really drive one out to left field. She doesn't go for a clean shot to the head, bringing the bat in line with the final gunman's arm with a sickening crack. It's an attempt to end it with a sense of finality–Liza's not fucking around. Her eyes focus on the combatants, double-checking to make sure there's no one she needs to 'gently discourage' with the stick of metal.
Liza.
Gracie is suddenly glued in place. It’s as if a spotlight has come down to illuminate the blonde, all else cast into darkness. (Metaphorically speaking. There’s no photokinesis at play in the mental slo-mo of this moment.) She draws in a breath, blinks twice, then—
The second report of the gun feels deafening. There’s a red spray as the bullet pierces the second gunman’s skull and leaves the contents to splatter from the exit wound.
Gracie suddenly becomes perceptible again, breathing hard and shell shocked. She can scarcely comprehend what she’s done. That she’s done it. She’s not a killer.
She’s not a killer.
Tears well up in her eyes. The gun is in her hand. Her hands are shaking.
But she can’t lose Liza again.
A choked sob punctuates the moment of silence (maybe it was only silence in her own ears) just before Gracie flings her arms around the blonde. “Oh my god! Oh my god oh my god!” She clutches her wife to her as if she might like to merge them both together, so they may never be parted again.
The lasers filling the air around Robyn contract, bend, dissipate but don't quite fade as she fights to find the focus to both process what's happening in front of her and reconcile the Pink Floyd show emanating from the space she occupies, all through a prism of pain only comparable to the last time she managed to condense light into a radiant beam of straight up fucking kill you.
Moving is a no go. She can barely even think as she tries to suppress her resurgent ability, though at least she seems to keep them from impeding Gracie and Liza's reunion.
Hi Liza!, she wants to shout but finds herself unable, instead clenching her-
Wait.
Robyn groans, pretty certain at this point she's lost enough blood to be hallucinating, because that can't be right, not from what she's heard from Zee and others. It's only a matter of time before she passes out, if nothing else.
Liza?
Silas doesn't drop his shroud of invisibility at the sudden arrival of Liza Messer, but his rage is neatly dissipated by the mix of shock and disbelief he feels at Gracie's other half suddenly appearing out of nowhere. He's also more than a little unsettled at the goon Liza mangled suddenly coming down with a spontaneous (and quite terminal) case of cranial explosionitis and then Gracie fucking materializing with a smoking gun in hand sweet Jesus Christ.
It'd be a touching reunion except for all the blood.
Also his legs are still hurting a bit; looking down, he sees it's because the calves of his pants appear to have been flayed and are still smoldering, apparently from Robyn's… whatever the fuck it was. Speaking of which… Robyn.
He starts to toss his club aside, then, reconsidering, drops it amidst the carnage instead — the noise veiled, so as not to disturb the lovebirds, because he doesn't want to interrupt the touching reunion and also because he doesn't want anyone to do something he might regret from being startled. Instead he moves back towards Robyn… but stops well outside the edge of the dimmed lasers still flickering out of her, looking at the pool of… phosphorus?… that she's lying in. Then he drops his veil. "Robyn, oh shit… we need to get you to —" Natalie, he almost says, and cuts off at the sudden surge of pain he feels. "A doctor. Someone. Maybe Chess could help." Shit.
The last of the gang members writhes around on the ground clutching his broken arm, screaming in pain. But that noise is merely punctuation in the jumbled sentence that is the crowd noise around the entire bay. This was a gunfight in the middle of a busy market, but it also abided by Gideon’s Rules.
“Fuck around and find out, huh?” Quips Rue as she jogs out of the crowd. “Liza, I told you not to go looking for those ass—”
Yesterday
Rain plinks softly on the corrugated metal overhang Hart and Robyn huddle under together. There’s tension visible in her shoulders, in her eyes. She looks past Robyn, up to the street where Elliot and the others are, then back into Robyn’s eyes. Her expression is imploring, pleading.
“My ability is… it’s—I touch technology and it just works.” Hart says, furtively glancing down the other end of the street. “When I touched Gracie’s iPod I—there was something on it. Something I couldn’t explain.”
That was why she wanted to talk to the others.
“It was a song.” Hart says, sleepless eyes locked on Robyn’s again. “A song from 2011.”
Two years after the flood.
Now
“—holes?”
Liza's arms are supportive around Gracie, even as the blonde seems a bit confused by the desperation in the embrace. She squeezes her wife tightly, only to look up beyond the moment to see… her wife? She looks from one woman to the other, then she glances in the direction of Silas to see if he's just as confused. Her gaze shifts to Robyn last, where it lingers because of both the injury and the fact that something just isn't right.
"Holy fuck," she breathes out, very much looking like she wants to say more but the words won't come.
Gracie feels Liza start to disengage and she lifts her head from where it had been resting against the blonde’s crown. “Wha—”
The other redhead slows to a stop, her head tilted and brows furrowed in confusion. She squints and it feels a little bit like trying to find the schooner. Maybe if she crosses her eyes, it’ll come together and paint a picture.
Turning, the two face each other, near perfect mirrors save for attire. Gracie in her patchwork skirt and light knit red sweater and the other Rue in her smart black vest and torn skinny jeans. They speak in unison.
“What the fuck?”