Participants:
| Scene Title | You Owe Me |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | "Let's make duck bombs!" |
| Date | January 9, 2019 |
New Mexico
The sun had begun setting in the desert of New Mexico just a short while ago. Various Raytech and Redbird employees at work readying the preparations for the next day. A day that a certain precog had been pushing forward towards all year. That woman in question hadn't yet arrived to the Sunspot facility but boy some people say… she's hell on wheels…
Skkkrrttttt
Just outside the gates the roar of an engine can be heard and a black and red 1972 Mustang turns around the corner and makes a beeline towards the facility. Guards at the entrance tense up and call out, "Incoming! Somebody call Bellamy!" Lifting their weapons to prepare as the car spins out in a cloud of dust and stops just short of the facility. Silence as the car's engine is turned off and the car creaks and pops, settling back into stillness. A few bullet holes decorate the side and the license plate reads: HBICH1.
The door pops open but the figure is only a dark shadow among the spinning cloud of dust still in the air, there's the smell of something earthy… cannabis. "Whew. Thought I was late to the show." A pale woman wrapped in a long, flowy black dress stands there. Long raven mane a mess and a joint held in her fingers the smoke wafting out to the sky above. The guards tense up, "Miss Mas." Unsure if they should tighten the grip on their weapons or let her pass.
"Eve," she says with a grin too wide, showing teeth. "If ya nasty."
He might be here, but few people are aware of why Warren is here yet. Carefully avoiding Richard and not yet in any power armor. He's in a simple tanktop, blue jeans and some black biker boots, with his right arm being a shiny golden robot arm.
When Eve arrives, he creeps up behind her soon after, staring at her over her own shoulder with chromium eyes. "It took me a moment to recognize you. You're the temporal druid."
Shifting around to stand in front of her now, he holds out a hand, eyes returning to their more natural blue. "Are you also aware of the time loop?"
Eve's heart skips a beat as Warren peers over her shoulder and she raises a hand to grab his neck from behind and slowly tilts her head back to stare up at the man until she's almost bending backwards completely. Her eyes are black and she tilts her head at something hovering above Warren's head before whatever it is no longer draws her attention and she zeroes in on Warren's face still close. Her eyes widen a fraction as she recognizes him and then the gleam of the golden arm in the corner of her black irises which slowly become smaller until their normal shade of brown are back. "I'm no temporal druid Jackotierren. I'm a… woman who likes to look beneath the surface of the River." Obviously.
"You.." she sniffs the air faintly leaning her head back again. "Smell different." As he comes to stand in front of her Eve looks down at his arm and tilts her head before reaching for his with pale, long fingers.
"Time Loop, Time Loop…" tapping her chipped black fingernail on her chin. "Ahhh the Loop." nodding her head and taking another puff of her joint and blowing the smoke in the direction of the befuddled guards with a wink. "Same actions, different souls. Over and over. You see?" Squinting her eyes, he's no seer. There's a moment of confusion for the woman.
"I saw into my own mind! Infinite brain loops, all causing more and more brain loops, over and over again, across all time and space!" Warren taps his head with a golden finger, then wraps his arms out. "I saw the tentacles, and then I saw the tentacles again, and saw them as a child, and knew what I meant as an adult, because I saw them as a child too! We always see them, and always will see them, over and over, because I have a brain loop!"
He reaches out to take her face in between his hands now, his eyes intense. "My father was right! But he couldn't say exactly why, because bad things have to happen, things have to fail, people will die! But the stable time loop, it's fate, inevitability, because the universe is a broken gear, and some parts are stuck repeating, never moving!"
Crouching down, he knocks on the ground a few times with the metallic hand. "This universe, specifically! It's the broken gear between all universes, and now we're all here, as one, where we belong, to finally stop dying to build this stupid machine!"
Standing up straight, his gaze changes for a moment, as a different kind of recognition enters his mind, "Wait a minute, you're Eve Mas, the famous singer!" he says, excitedly, and then shakes his head. "Sorry, I think that's a different Eve, maybe. All the memories are all criss crossed! But it's still better than being multiple people."
"Did you strap in before it started? Loopy loops can leave your brain pan very scrambled. Without cheese though thanks!" The mention of tentacles and seeing things you shouldn't as a child half resonates with the tall woman, "Tentacles.. oh no. Did Eddie leave his hentai on?" Eve looks mortified, "Hard to scrub from the brainpan ah.. don't worry they can't get you." The tentacles that is.
Mentioning his father more has Eve looking away, "I found your papa bear to be a stiffy. If he just would have smoked with me…" puffing away on her own cannabis stick with abandon as Warren goes into detail on universes and broken gears." Looking over her shoulder, "The only person I know who can fix a gear good as new is Jazzhands, he's not here is he? Brooding face, fabulous eyebrows?" Shifty eyes as Eve then goes on her tiptoes to peer around but then Warren knows her and there's a snort and tilt of her head as she leans forward. "Famous! In another life I went triple platinum.." Quite literally.
"My memories are applesauced too, having memories of not me, me and the other me down the road- oh you're a science fairy." As if she could forget. "You remember alright, it's in there." thumping Warren's head with a point and leaning even closer, "You left my garage a mess you owe me toys."
"I'm married now, I think, I can't do that again!" Warren protests, and then quickly shakes his head. "No wait, that was another one again."
"Oh, The Clock King! I tried to kill him once, andthen we all teamed up with my brother and fought my gang! No… yeah, yeah that one happened!" he excitedly realizes.
"I don't know much science, I just build things." He holds up his golden arm, opening and closing it a few times. "But Alia is good at helping with the hard science programming parts!"
The difference between the things Warren makes on his own and what he makes with Alia can be rather stark. His solo projects tend to look much scarier.
"Criss cross applesauce, that's how it is." he agrees. "What do you want? A Stab Opener? I recently invented it but I don't think Richard will let me sell it."
"Married?!" Either the concept of marriage is over Eve's head or the concept of Warren married but whose to say really because she's onto the next rather quickly, "Oh he's marvelous in a fight, sometimes he's fog!" She gets a real kick out of that because she starts cackling and then coughing from the weed smoke. Not much science. "I can make things! Not that great of things," no golden robot arms but, "I worked on this baby, she purrs. Did you hear?" Patting the hood of her noble steed. They had ridden into many a battle together blaring Staying Alive.
"Oh Richard's no fun," drawing the 'un' out longer than necessary. "Stab Opener, hm. Explai- no no. I have—" Eve pats her chest and finds no slip of paper, the one in question has been lost years ago maybe but she slips into the before instead of the now before she shakes her head to clear it while stopping frisking herself.
"My lips are tired of blowing darts. I need bullets, bangbang," fingerguns lift and she pokes Warren in the chest. Pewpewpew. "Filled with the best acid I've scored since high school," she snorts thinking back to those days of "opening her mind", her father lost it when he found her shrooms. Way too young he said but Eve had always been curious. "I've been filling my rubber duckies up with gunpowder to boom," digging into her bag to show Warren one of the duckies, a battered and dirty yellow thing with a light fuse sticking out from the end. "But something nicer, I've got some big missions planned. I've got to banish a plague from this world and he can grow back his spleen!" This has had Eve thinking hard, negation gas maybe but she has to trap him.. waving a hand in front of her face, more on those plans later.
"I think we're married! There's tons of sex and I have to go buy milk. That's marriage right?" Warren shrugs his shoulders, and immediately heads over to her car. His eyes take on that chromium look as he levels a swift, calculated kick at the front bumper, which pops the hood of the car open. Then he just starts looking it over, touching things.
"Acid won't stop someone who can grow their spleen!" he retorts, likely trying to wave her off if she protests him looking under the hood of her car. "You need…" he thinks, as if he's about to reach an epiphany. "Drill hook bullets! To dig into their skin and keep digging even while they heal!"
Though, something occurs to him as he looks over at her again. "We should make more duck bombs!"
It's unclear if that has anything to do with anything else.
"Ah yes, the getting of the milk. That is very important. Very marriage like." She doesn't remember her dad always getting the milk. "No it won't stop them! But it'll take em on a trip while I figure out how best to cut him into tiny pieces and hide him across the world. Below the scene, in a volcano," Eve has had this brewing in her head for awhile. The mention of drill hook bullets has her eyebrows raising and she nods excitedly, "Yes yes like that." Bingo!
Then Warren is touching her baby, "Roxanne!" But he's not hurting her, he can check over. Eve is more than confident in her work but… improvements are always welcomed.
"Duck bombs are a go!" Eve claps her hands and jumps up and down with a manic laugh but she's struck by a thought and she crouches and looks under the hood at him. "If you could help someone, like really help them across a great divide, but the cost was everything potentially.. but you had a plan (sort of) to fix it all so everyone would be happy!!" Eyes shift to the left and the right, "Would you do it Jackotierren? I so lost, I can dip my head beneath the waves as much as I want…"
"This is unique." Warren says, as if admiring art. He doesn't actually modify the car at all, he instead, leans in and places his cheek against the engine, basically hugging it as he spreads his arms out.
Without actually getting up, he opens his now-blue eyes to look up at her. "If it was my family I would, if not I don't really care that much. I burned a bunch of people alive to save Elle, it was pretty awesome."
"Me and the dead me's are all together, life is tragedy if you keep risking things for other people." He lifts himself up slightly, then sticks out to tip of his tongue to gently touch it to the engine. "You have to love what you save. If you don't love it, let it burn."
"My papa taught me how, everything he knows," a faint smile at the memory of her father and of Warren's compliments of her car. His words strike something in her, she only has the family she's made for herself now. All her blood was gone. "I suppose that's a good point, blood calls for blood… Cosa farò?" Naming Elle as his wife has Eve going down memory lane, "The Electric Bunny… she wasn't happy when we let that Plague loose.. or Huruma the Huntress or Jessica The Giant (she was brutal I always thought she was way taller)," the last bit whispered as she comes to lay her head against the engine as well it's still a bit hot but she stays.
"I have a dead me, she died delivering a message.. to me. Message in a bottle whoa," a sad smile at the thought of the Sister from the Virus. "It was to your sister Miss Mind who has all the power in the world and doesn't see, did you know? It's why she's here." Why she had to be here. "Blood always knows it's own. Even when the other isn't noticing. Weeeeeki."
Warren's advice wraps around Eve's choices and shakes them all around, faintly nodding she knows this to be true. "And what of the price? If there was one to pay and you loved what you had to save? Would you pay it?"
"The price, the price is never too high for love. I had my brain fixed by people for Elle. My brain is a little unfixed right now! But it's like being unlocked… just a bit confused!" Warren stands up, walking up to place his regular hand onto Eve's head. "Also, you have to do things without regrets! Are you living life to the fullest when you pay the price?"
He holds up his golden arm, wiggling the mechanical fingers. "I pay the price a lot. Life doesn't mean anything if you don't live how you want! Not paying the price is a bigger price than paying the price."
Stepping back from her, he twirls a few times as he continues to regale her with stories. "Living my best life, an old man, maybe it was Satan, he stole my ability and then went crazy! Can you believe that my ability would drive someone crazy?" he asks, shaking his head in disbelief.
"So I met Doctor Bella, and I paid the price! We did experiments, painful experiments, and then I got my ability back!" Tapping the sides of his head, he browns. "It did mess my brain up more, but it's okay. I know who I am, I know what reality is! But people don't understand, they don't listen."
He walks up to Eve, placing both hands against her cheeks, gazing deeply into her eyes as he inhales deeply. "Thank you for listening." he says, before very quickly releasing her and twirling with his arms out again. "Let's make duck bombs!"
"Paying the price, I've paid it!"
Scrolling through the events in her memory, "I jumped through the river right to ancient japan! I met our parents there, the ones who started the Gifted. I was beheaded! But they put me back together again. Like a Picasso painting," Eve's brow furrows. "I thought I had purpose but my purpose was to spread the good word of their return," sadly, "I succeeded." And while the seer could sit and wallow in her choices in her blind pursuit of the truth, of the answers to questions she's carried for nearly a decade she's stopped short. "Nobody listens." She echoes, except when they did. And then you're fucked.
"We've lived a thousand lives in a thousand different ways," commenting softly as she closes her eyes and snickers at the twirling in the air kicking her legs out and throwing her arms to the side, "Wheeeee!" Maybe there would be time to reflect on these things later. For now though,
"I've got a few extra ducks in the back."
"Being a messiah is a tough job! No one listens." Warren shrugs, heading to the back of the car. "But that's what ducks are for."