ArchivedLogs:Tear Down the Sky

Tear Down the Sky
Dramatis Personae Kay, Violet	2014-07-04 '
Location <NYC> Harbor Commons - Courtyard - Lower East Side
This courtyard is the lush central hub of the surrounding Harbor Commons, bound in on three sides by rows of duplexes and triplexes, cutting upward at the sky with the sharp thrift of a minimalist's style, neat lines and bountiful windows, boldened with accents in wood towards the upper stories, stone towards the base, the whole of the compound sealed in by a low stoneworked wall that opens entrance gates to the streets beyond at its two far corners, smaller gates at building back doors. The fourth side of the courtyard is open to the East River, the ground forming a slight decline, controlled on one side by micro-retaining walls to form wide steps where picnic tables sit beneath the nominative shelter of a trio of dogwood trees, accessible by ramp. The other side is allowed to slope at its natural angle, a wide open yard space, until its cut off at the river's edge, where a massive pair of oak trees stand, a staircase leading away up one of their thick trunks. The yard itself is carpeted in an organic flow of emerald grass swirled through with wending channels of smooth-paved cement walkways, flowing naturally away from the building's front entrances, where some are arced by trellis, some flanked by hosta plants, fern and lilies, a few laid in gentle switch-backing ramps for wheelchair access, before forking off at matching angles to sites of small garden installments. Bird feeders and baths suspended from the necks of small lamp posts, a rock-lined koi pond, a sleek gazebo tucked to one side in simplistic varnished wood, its southern side overgrown with a mass of thriving grapevine and a caged-in barbecue pit under its sheltering roof. A play area and proper garden are within sight off another branch, until finally all paths spiral in like wheel spokes to a shared common house at the center of all traffic flow. It's like some dystopian party town around the Commons, small groups of diverse ages and ethnicities roaming to and from the Common house and the outter orbiting houses all wearing... well, clothes that scream 'donation drive', solid color bulk-buy t-shirts, sweat pants cut off into shorts, random bar logos and wolves howling at moons, often in small huddled groups or furtive solo darting. There are a few that aren't creeping from place to place, though - two young men that could easily be brothers (one has found a NY baseball cap!) are seated in the grass with a middle-aged woman who's arms drift to a progressively darker shade of blue-black, ending in massive, muscular claw-hands, soaking in the sun and the smell of the water drifting in off the shore. Sitting over them in a chair like he's about to tell them all a story is /Kay/ - One of his legs is propped out in a full cast, and some clean bandages are visible here and there and he honestly isn't dressed much better in a black t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, his hair shaved down bald on one side exposing a long scar tracing the side of his head. He's currently leaning over and letting the brothers look at it, his strident-scratchy voice lively, "-they'll get yours out too, yo. /Fuck/ that shit, you don't want it in there anyway." Some hours ago, Violet passed this way bearing a bag full of "borrowed" fish and a couple of lobsters. Waylayed by a skinny gentleman in a scooter, she vanished into one of the houses. And now, now she is back and she comes bearing gifts /again/. Or at least one gift and it's a big ol' stew pot of gumbo with postcard perfect curls of fragrant stream drifting back. No bowls, no spoons, no flat of cornbead--not everyone was gifted with multiple arms or a prehensile tail--but surely the smell of that gumbo will be enough to enlist helpers. That's her hope, at least. Why else veer towards the largest concentration of refugees? Now that the rain has stopped and she's spent a few hours over a hot stove, she's dried off. Of course, it's left her fur mussed and a-poof, lying every which way against sleek, strong limbs. Clad in cut off khakis and a couple of tank tops, she's a match for the present company's fashion sense. And guess what? She's barefoot and coming from a kitchen. Cue a drawl of, "Hey folks, ya'll got any spare hands y'could lend me? Got some grub," and she's a walking, talking, Southern Tortie Stereotype. The boy in the baseball cap glances up /spooked/, and hunkers down faintly behind Kay's seat where the woman puts her arm around him... but the hatless fellow, while ducking his head a little, soon smiles shyly and and begins to trace a small circle in the air, coaxing a pale blue light into existence. Around Violet's burden, the same glow begins to manifest, gradually the weight of it begins to fade, growing lighter, lighter, until it rises up like a wilting helium balloon and begins to float forward on its own. "/Ga-TEE-ta/!" Kay crows, one eye squinching up and pressing a hand against the side of his ribcage - right. Yelling hurts. He forgets this about every hours or so. And apparently intends to again, bouncing his eyebrows lasciviously, "What you been doing with yourself, kitten?" He's tryyying to lean forward to knuckle tap her. "Well, ain't that handy." Violet shows due appreciation for the floating trick by pacing forward, quickstepping smoothly forward to /circle/ the pot. "Someone's still gonna need t'fetch bowls 'n stuff though, yeah? Bit too hot, that, t'be eatin' with your hands." Hands have better things to do as well, such as--after giving Kay's offered knuckles a study, complete with headtilt--reaching out to complete the knuckle tap gesture. Though, with the fur covering her hands, it's less a tap and more a pff. "/I've/ been cookin'. Brought some stuff by, got enlisted I guess. Had /no/ idea what I was walkin' into," she answers, orange eyes flicking down to the cast on display. Hnnf. Still, she is not one to baby a person just because of a broken /leg/. So she goes on to say, "And that's Violet to you, fella...hey, there's some cornbread in there too, if ya'll move quick, yeah? Goes good with th'gumbo." There's more shrinking and shuffling amongst the labrats while the gumbo gradually drifts to rest alongside Kay's chair, until Kay makes little 'fsk! fsk!' sounds at them, snapping his fingers, "C'mon, kiddies. Gonna have to learn not to wait on food comin' again. Help the girl out. Get some fucking cornbread." It takes the woman with them standing first to coax them to stand, and she leans down to place a kiss on Kay's cheek, whispering a few words to him with a squeeze on his shoulder before helping to usher off the brothers, hat-ed and otherwise, towards the common house. "It's /Kay/ t'you, then," is fired back with a crooked grin, the pyrokinetic slouching deeper into his seat and losing what only in its loss could be pinpointed as guardful and alert. "It's a /circus/ right?" He sounds like this is a GREAT thing, leaning over to try and fish out a bit of gumbo from the pot with his long long fingers. A very fresh pink scar crazing the side of his neck ripples over wiry-bastard tendons to accommodate the reach, "You'll see a lot of it, you hang around these folks." Fish-fish-fish! It is probably deliberate, the way that Violet softens her shoulders and widens her eyes as the weary little trio climb to their feet. Look, she's pulling a Puss In Boots, lookin' all cute and harmless. "S'good stuff," she promises before they shuffle off. Then, without ceremony, she pours herself onto the ground. She starts out cross-legged, and proceeds to finger-combing fur that's dried spiky-sharp back into something resembling smoothness. "Kay, yeah. I remember you. You 'n th'Spanish kid, yeah? Makin' like twelve year olds, breakin' into people's houses. Tch. Looks like y'went through a blender since then." But he's eating--she makes sure of it with a glance, a very /satisfied/ glance--and that means she's content to play casual. Once the fur on her head is settled against her skull, she pulls what she can of her tail across her lap and begins anew. "I'm kinda startin' t'see that. Connectin' th'dots. Ya'll are a bunch've big damn heroes." Oh, of all the skittish and scrawny people around the Commons, and all the many malnourished and plagued with limited appetites, Kay is NOT such a person. He's heating lustily, his long limbs might be deceptive somewhat, but healthy weight is clearly visible. Oh god SEAFOOD SCARF SCARF. Eatin' like a heathen. "Man, /life's/ a blender, kiddo. This was just a fucken Thursday afternoon." That /was/ the day of the week, after all, "Dunno about heroes - family, more like. Even you, hermana. /This/," he shakes his current pilfered snackpiece, dripping juice on the grass, "above 'n beyond." He gestures around at those few lab rats moving just in the distance, "...y'heard where these guys're from?" "Violet," she corrects, but there's a twist to her tone that makes it more amusement than reprimand. Humor bleeds away quickly enough though, replaced with something calm and quiet. Grooming is soothing and helps with maintaining that even temperament. Her tail's looking /much/ better, though the pristine lawn has picked up small poofs of greyish fur, clumps and puffs of it tumbling away in the evening breeze. "Hive maybe told me, yeah. Guess I kinda figured it was somethin' probably happenin'. People, right? They're not so great at bein' family." The catgirl lifts her head from her work to spare Kay a look. "You'd best leave some for those kids, fella. If you're playin' big brother to 'em." "Y'only accept 'Violet'?" This isn't actually Kay teasing, his eyebrows are raised like this is an interested feature to the girl's character. Caught guilty and red-handed, he has a wide grin formed around the teeth clamped down on his thumb, bein' /bad/... But he licks clean his fingers and leaves the rest of the food. For /now/. "Eh, not a lotta people, nah. But the people that say you can't choose your family are /dead/ wrong, yo." He reaches out a hand offeringly? Like, want help with that grooming? "What's your story?" Violet lets the tail slither away through her fingers--it flicks behind her /decisively/, as if glad to be free--and leans back on her hands. "Oh sure, once I get t'know you." Kay might not be teasing but she certainly is, her own teeth flashing bright white in the dark of her face. "'til then, be a gentleman and maybe y'can get away with kitten. Compared t'all this, I'm pretty borin'. Went for th'choose t'be out 'n about on my own road, y'know? Was a pretty good plan 'til all th'zombies started happenin'." As for the offered hand, she's not /quite/ sure what to make of it. So, because it's there, she tilts forward and just...bats at his fingers? No? That not what he was looking for? "Haha, boy, the /zombies/." Kay rolls up his eyes towards the sky, eye whites stained a yellow cast, and with upper lip pulled faintly back, his own teeth aren't nearly as white as Violet's. One /does/ wink /gold/, however! Ding! "Fuck of an escalation /there/, huh?" The batted hand is absurdly warm to the touch, and drops to his side like it's DEAD. He lets out a breath of air. "Hard times t'be out on your own." "One thing after another, yeah? Th'hits keep on comin'. Next week it'll be rains of blood, I figure. Firstborns goin' belly up, maybe." Kay's arm goes dead and Violet herself keels over. Flop! Onto her side she goes, an arm curled beneath her head. Her other hand flattens and skims over the grass, though it's questionable how much she can feel the soft green against her palm. Nothing gets through the fuzz. "There ever an easy time t'be out on your own?" she wonders, sounding genuinely curious. "I mean...don't get me wrong. What ya'll have set up here, this is good stuff. But like I was tellin' Hive, you've got a big ol' bullseye here, starin' at the sky. One hit and so much for family, I don't care how much squawkin' people might do." "Pestilence of toads," Kay's grin never looked so serene, "Speaking in tongues." He shakes his head, "No. Well I mean - alone's easy, in a /way/. The way /dying/ is easy. Hell, dying's a /synch/ not a man on this planet that can do it /wrong/. But fuck easy." He raises a lazy middle finger, bounces it towards the heavens, "I'm gonna tear down the sky, raise hell on Earth til it drowns out the stars like the fucking /end/ times. And if my family's with me, I'm gonna guess they'll take it hard, too. Til they're done. Then I guess," he shrugs, dropping his hand, eyes smiling and /fond/, laughing with bright amber twinkles and utterly hard, "It'll get easier." Violet's lips twitch to hear this description of the future roll so easily--so bright and animated!--from Kay's tongue. "That your plan? Just...tear it all down 'n start over? Guess that's one way of doin' it. Hell sounds like an awful lot've /work/ t'me. But..." Orange eyes cut away from the man in the chair to sweep the courtyard and its milling assembly of the walking wounded. "I suppose there's work and then there's work. Mama always said y'gotta have goals," she says, a little quieter. Quiet leads to a stretch and stretching leads to stretching /out/. She has nothing to prop her feet--foot!--on as Kay does, so she opts to use /him/. That stretched out leg, above the knee, serves as a rest for crossed ankles. Her toes curl, white claws peeping out from tufts at their tips. "Your li'l hermano okay? Didn't see him around." The side of Kay's mouth twitches, glancing for a moment back at Violet, then up at the sky again, "Who, Ion? Pff, yeah, guess you could say things haven't gotten easy for /him/ yet, either. You stick around, you'll see his illegal brown ass again soon enough." Hopefully Violet is propping her feet on his non-cast leg! And this is just fine by him, though even through her fur she'll eventually feel the low baking heat of his proximity. It's not burningly hot, but it's tangible, spreading into her pelt like sitting by a fireplace. "It'll be work. It'll be a fuck-ton of work, that's just life. Why not?" He grins down at Violet, "I got nothing else I'm doing." Guess who loves sitting by fireplaces? That's right, cats do. And naturally she has chosen the good leg, though even on that one she's light in her placement--prepared, at any moment, to snatch those fuzzy feet back if need calls for it. "Didn't say I wanted t'see /that/ part of him," Violet points out in her best I'm being reasonable tone. "But you two seemed tight, and with this goin' down, figured I'd ask. Make sure I'm not givin' a grievin' guy a hard time, yeah?" She slips her hands behind her head to cushion it and joins Kay in observing the sky. "I never did put much thought to what life's gonna look like, five, six years from now. Not sure I'd go with burnin' it all down. Y'ever smell fur that's been singed? S'pretty nasty. But it'd be nice, not worryin' about...stuff like bottles comin' through your front window. Or worse." "I've smelled just about anything you could singe," Kay assures Violet with - /kind/ of a chuckle but it also sounds kind of like ho-ho-ho-holy shit have I ever. Staring out at the water, he adds, "And I can tell you this much - this world's gonna catch fire whether one of us lights it or not." He pat-pats a hand down on Violet's leg, leaving it resting there out of casual convenience than any other particular meaningfulness. "But the way I figure it is?" He bares his teeth, eyes still closed, "If you're the one that light it first, you get to decide what /burns/."