#deadasadisco

“If you’re being a gentleman, I may die of shock.”

  He fucking hates this place. Hands crammed in his pockets, shades high over his eyes and darker than damnation, flatter face that an idiot who couldn't steer a bike right, he's got every wall up. Blanker than blank. Nothing to read, nothing to see but nothing on him in here. The way it always is when he has to step through their door. Not the kind of place he could pretend not to be who he is, and not somewhere he wants to be, it's easiest to slam through like bullet through glass. Someone else's mess to sweep up.

“I like the element of surprise.”

  Jack's expression is cold, closed off, as he looks over who he takes to be one of the establishment's workers. Barely in the door, unchecked and unscreened. There's eyes on him from more than one angle - at least three sets, in fact. More, if there's a hidden sightline. All those eyes no doubt have guns, but in this space none would have the chance to stop him if he had come through the door with ill intent. This one -he looks at her again. A child. Their youngest? Unaccompanied. Down. Along with the next nearest at least, and perhaps one more. He shakes his head.

  “You'll get it, with the place set up like this.” Not today, not from him, but someday if nothing changes. From what he sees and what he's gathered from Mazie and Tech, they've got one man doing the work of at least three people. As if to further the point, he's not even on the ground level now. Even in an establishment this small, and assuming at least one of those working the floor is willing to get rough, it's not enough. Three on nothing but security, at minimum, another one or two with more than one job like they've got. And, separate from that, someone out front for eyes if nothing else. The idea that he could -and that the bastard Tech put in the ground had walked right up without anyone the wiser...

  He mutters something unintelligible, frown pulling. She's never coming here without someone to watch her back again. Neither of them. He'd expected more from the brother she described to him as protective, and former unit.

@deadasadisco //> plotting-starter.

  Trilling insect song returns in a strange creep, one, then two, then ten. The air returns to life after the eerie silence of after-battle.

  Battle that shouldn't have been. Given how far out she is, past Tess's, and firmly in there's-nothing-here kind of spot. One she's been looking at after getting some input and the old scraps of a map through a contact, hoping for ... she's not sure what. Well, she was sure, and now..

  Now there's plenty enough moonlight to see the shapes by, but they're still just shapes. Shuffling around each other at an annoyingly indistinct distance. Sure enough they piled in against the masks, but that doesn't make them friendlies necessarily. She is supposed to be meeting some amount of Miss Toothpaste's rabble, but not until the day after next. And only if this pans out at all. Behind her cover, she hisses softly, annoyed. Then she makes a choice.

“I aim to misbehave.”

  “No other way to aim, baby!” and, with ceremony, she unloads all that she'd brought out of her bag and overstuffed pockets. Makeup and paint and makeshift stains, inks, dyes. All the makings of customization. Hair, clothes, skin.

  Sunny's well prepared for exactly this kind of thing.

“This place gives me an uncomfortableness.”

  He nods along before she's quite done speaking. “Should do.” He parts from their little flicker-flame fire and steps aside a bit, looking out. He glances back, then points. Long gesture out, drawing attention to a shape faintly visible in the gloom. It won't quite resolve until the sun shows out again, just a darker shadow in a dark night. “That's what's left of the Charlatans' Hammer. We're on her Drive.”

  Bedlam chews on a silence, staring at the not-so-distant shape.

@deadasadisco ( Cosmic ) //> Can You Keep the Beat?

♫ Up to the Roof — Blue Man Group ft. Tracy Bonham

  The Tavern is a difficult place to find a piece of personal space that isn't either up for sale or already occupied by someone else. Tech had tried a couple corners, but none seemed... and she thought. Felt. .. She'd done enough disrupting, here, recently enough. The need for escape drives her, as it so often does, up. Up up up, up and out. Unsure what she expects to find at the top of the place, but hoping it's nobody else.

  The tops of most buildings are more or less the same, she's found. Rusted vents and sand-shredded blocks of equipment. Rain-worn, in the city, the way that never seems to stick to the fronts of the buildings. Sometimes they hid interesting secrets, but most of it is usually useless. Air control components with no coolant or power to propel them, water intakes attached to dry tanks. This roof, at a glance, is no different. A bunch of nothing and no one, plenty of space for her to find the edges of the earth, trace the ragged line of the distant desert with her fingertips. Space to prance endless circles with her eyes fixed on the dizzy blue, a frantic murmur running around her like stars around a cartoon concussion.

@deadasadisco ( Synth ) //> Shiny!

“I’ll get better. I’ll get better.”

  “Mi vida,” she sighs, hands out in a relax style gesture, and shakes her head a bit. “Not by beatin' yourself up you won't.”

@deadasadisco ( Aqua ) //> Shiny!

“How come you didn’t turn on me?”

  Tech levels Aqua with a look that starts furiously dumbfounded and only gets worse as the question tumbles on and over itself. Dumb fucking Aquafresh know-it-all know-nothing. Who even asks something like that?

  “Get th'fuck out of your shutaway more'n once a decade,” she snaps, “Why the fuck would I?” She manages to hold the look a second longer, but her ears are still ringing and her ribs are buzzing, the rush of their narrow escape still flashing, hot and cold, all the way down her arms. Tech turns away, shaking her arms out and parting ways with a few steadying swears.