for tahirire
Mwhahahahah. Because I can.
Title: drink that koolaid (pt 2 of 3)
Ficverse: LeveragePlus (crossovercrack!verse), Ke$ha's "Blow" music vid
Series: crack addiction
Rating: Gen / Crack-Horror, I guess? / PG-13
Length: 1300 ish / 6900 ish
Characters: Eliot, Winston
Teaser: A screech of car tyres outside the back entrance reached his ears, and for the first time since he received the text, a grin appeared on Eliot’s face.
Notes: the rest of the explanation is with PART ONE, here. I ain't explaining any more. I can't. I won't.
The music had extinguished when Ke$ha left, but only now did the room feel truly silent. After a fitting moment of pathos over the body of his friend, Eliot turned and surveyed his surroundings with an expert eye, pulling out his own phone. Thankfully, LA was crawling with fixers with something for this kind of situation, a few of whom he actually even half-way trusted. He entered a code and located the exact spectrum wavelength in a still-glowing rainbow, neatly threading his phone through the rays. The mode he needed thus unlocked, he scrolled down the contacts until he found the one he wanted.
“Hey - yeah, it’s me. Listen, I need - no, I’m not dead - where’d you hear that?. - Oh. - Huh. - Look, I got a situation here. One body, no head, pile of dead monohorns, club downtown, on the clock. - Yeah? Perfect. I can get the rest. - No, no disposal. I’ll handle the retrieval myself. I’ll need a crash zone, though. Preferably with a full kitchen, I might have a package to reheat, too. - Yeah, I know where that is. - What? Hell no, you still owe me from last time. - Hah. - A few hours, maybe. - Cool. See you in ten minutes.”
He texted the club’s address, then got to work. A wrought-iron lantern candelabra protruding from a wall was around the right size, and a snikt and a swipe had it dropping into his waiting hand, where he gutted the electric candle, leaving the iron cylinder empty. Setting it neatly on the body’s lap to hold, he then collected the last pieces of shredded jacket and moved through the room, assessing the horns.
Selecting a promising one, he raised his claw to it with some trepidation, then thought better of it. Plucking a long shard from a broken glass tabletop, he wrapped the material around one end and ignored the bite as he gripped it tight. Before the cascade of second thoughts could gain any more momentum and end with him just walking out the door, he angled his body away protectively, set his footing, and sliced it down in a hard overhand swing.
The deafening blaze of white color filled his skull a split second before the blinding boom wrapped its concussion around him; ultraviolet leaped every which way, earthing itself along the monohorn’s body, down the iron table leg, crackling over Eliot’s teeth enroute to his conduction-friendly skeleton. It was all he could do to drop the twisted, half-molten scrap of glass, curl downward, jam his UV-laced claws deep into the floor, brace, and hope.
Long after it seemed like the raw power leakage should have dried up - didn’t these guys know about coagulation? - Eliot realized he could open his eyes without feeling like he was being stabbed in both ears. Blinking blearily, he started to get to his feet, but his knees had something rude to say about that which amounted to him landing on his ass.
A heartfelt expletive seemed appropriate at this point, so he gave one. Then he patted himself down, exploring the damage he’d absorbed. It took a minute to regenerate enough to stand and despoil an intact pair of trousers from outside the blast radius.
“Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs ...” he groused, scowling to himself as he manhandled a pair off a monohorn who didn’t need them any more, then shrugged out of the shreds of his own clothes. His underwear wasn’t in the best of shape either, but it stayed on. That didn’t bear thinking about. Given that (no matter what the movies showed) no one had ever been able to develop clothes that were invincible around the netherregions, being a regen was not as fun as people assumed. He also gave up on the idea of finding a shirt that wasn’t shot up, but a formal jacket over a raggedy tank top was far from the weirdest thing that would be seen out on the streets of LA at night. It’d pass.
A screech of car tyres outside the back entrance reached his ears, and for the first time since he received the text, a grin appeared on Eliot’s face.
The man who came through the door was short even compared to Eliot, and impeccable in clothes that, had everyone else in the club not been dead, would have made him blend right in. His goatee and hair now had more silver than dark, and he sported a sleek pair of wire rims that Eliot had never seen him wear before, but his calculating gaze as he took in the situation was as sharp as ever.
“Eliot,” he greeted with an insouciance that didn’t quite disguise his pleasure at seeing him again. “I take it the bouncer outside is your work?”
“Winston.” Eliot gripped his hand gladly, the grin still playing around his mouth.
Winston took that as a yes. “But not all -” he gestured, “- this?”
Eliot shrugged dismissively. “No.”
“No,” Winston agreed, taking in the bullet holes everywhere. “Not your style any more, is it? Where’s the body?”
“Over here.” Eliot led the way.
“Did you get a power sou-” Winston stopped as he saw the scorch radius around the de-horned head. “Huh,” he said neutrally, a reaction on par with a string of four-letter words from any other man.
Using yet more scraps of clothing, Eliot gingerly picked the horn up and offered it to Winston.
Winston held his hands up drily, more than happy to let Eliot carry it. “It’ll do.”
Arriving at the body, Winston inspected it briefly, then took the lantern shell off the lap and stepped back, nodding at Eliot.
Juggling the horn awkwardly, trying to get a solid two-handed grip on it without actually touching it and ignoring all the little zaps he was getting through the material anyway, Eliot came around behind the chair. He pulled the bra away, exchanged a look with Winston, then spiked the horn tip-down into the trachea.
The body jerked wildly as the energy coursed through it, then fell back into the chair and continued to twitch uncontrollably. Eliot shook his buzzing hands out, ignoring the twinkle in Winston’s eye at his discomfort, and seized the shoulders in a lock, holding it as still as possible.
Hefting the lantern, Winston skirted the scrabbling legs and fitted the cylinder snugly onto the neck. Then he pulled a metallic strip from his pocket and made it a collar around the base of the new lantern-head, working with fast and expert fingers to adjust and integrate the whole apparatus on the neck, ignoring the tremors Eliot’s hold on the body couldn’t entirely suppress. Finally, he shooed Eliot over and found the little panel at the back of the collar, depressing the spike mounted on it into the body’s spine.
The body shuddered and settled immediately. A little shiver of returning motor function traveled through it, before he calmly stood and turned and nodded stiffly at the two men.
“How’s it feel?” Eliot asked.
“Tingly,” lantern-headed James answered. He flexed his hands. “Thank you.”
Eliot nodded, looking him over consideringly. “Does it do anything about the...?” he asked Winston, indicating the lantern sitting inscrutably in place of a head.
“Some would consider it an improvement,” Winston noted. “But yes. Turn around, kid.”
Lantern-headed James obeyed, and Winston did something to the panel. A few seconds later, some strange synthesis of substance and light knitted itself around the lantern frame in a perfect but frozen copy of James’s head.
“Best we can do with what we have,” Winston explained unapologetically.
Eliot nodded his approval. “It’s more than enough.” He retrieved James’s gun, checked it, and handed it to him. “We'll be at the crash zone in an hour or we won't be back at all. Come on, James. Let’s finish this thing.”
Part 3: now you're one of us
Since I'm here, here are the two songs along with "Blow" (to avoid total mental meltdown) that I've been listening to on infinite repeat to write this:
and:
crack addiction (LeveragePlus) series:
guys' night - "Come with me if you want to live," Hardison intoned happily in unison with the Governator.
girls' night - Deciding what to do for a girls’ night - because the boys had gone off to watch some stupid mutant movie completely lacking in emotional depth and resonance - turned out to be more difficult than anticipated.
get in for free (pt 1 of 3) - Eliot pulled out his earbud before replying. “It’s James. He says he’s got a bead on Ke$ha and he’s going in.” - “Alone?” Parker’s expression contrived to indicate that even she thought that was crazy. - “That’s what I said!” He showed her the message. “Can you get us there?”
drink that koolaid (pt 2 of 3) - A screech of car tyres outside the back entrance reached his ears, and for the first time since he received the text, a grin appeared on Eliot’s face.
now you're one of us (pt 3 of 3) - "Ke$ha’s virtually untraceable if she wants to be, and I never thought to put a tracking device in my head. What are we going to do?"
wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle - I keep saying I won't do more of these but now I know I'm lying. Originally posted in comments at tahirire's because it's ALL HER FAULT.
Title: drink that koolaid (pt 2 of 3)
Ficverse: LeveragePlus (crossovercrack!verse), Ke$ha's "Blow" music vid
Series: crack addiction
Rating: Gen / Crack-Horror, I guess? / PG-13
Length: 1300 ish / 6900 ish
Characters: Eliot, Winston
Teaser: A screech of car tyres outside the back entrance reached his ears, and for the first time since he received the text, a grin appeared on Eliot’s face.
Notes: the rest of the explanation is with PART ONE, here. I ain't explaining any more. I can't. I won't.
The music had extinguished when Ke$ha left, but only now did the room feel truly silent. After a fitting moment of pathos over the body of his friend, Eliot turned and surveyed his surroundings with an expert eye, pulling out his own phone. Thankfully, LA was crawling with fixers with something for this kind of situation, a few of whom he actually even half-way trusted. He entered a code and located the exact spectrum wavelength in a still-glowing rainbow, neatly threading his phone through the rays. The mode he needed thus unlocked, he scrolled down the contacts until he found the one he wanted.
“Hey - yeah, it’s me. Listen, I need - no, I’m not dead - where’d you hear that?. - Oh. - Huh. - Look, I got a situation here. One body, no head, pile of dead monohorns, club downtown, on the clock. - Yeah? Perfect. I can get the rest. - No, no disposal. I’ll handle the retrieval myself. I’ll need a crash zone, though. Preferably with a full kitchen, I might have a package to reheat, too. - Yeah, I know where that is. - What? Hell no, you still owe me from last time. - Hah. - A few hours, maybe. - Cool. See you in ten minutes.”
He texted the club’s address, then got to work. A wrought-iron lantern candelabra protruding from a wall was around the right size, and a snikt and a swipe had it dropping into his waiting hand, where he gutted the electric candle, leaving the iron cylinder empty. Setting it neatly on the body’s lap to hold, he then collected the last pieces of shredded jacket and moved through the room, assessing the horns.
Selecting a promising one, he raised his claw to it with some trepidation, then thought better of it. Plucking a long shard from a broken glass tabletop, he wrapped the material around one end and ignored the bite as he gripped it tight. Before the cascade of second thoughts could gain any more momentum and end with him just walking out the door, he angled his body away protectively, set his footing, and sliced it down in a hard overhand swing.
The deafening blaze of white color filled his skull a split second before the blinding boom wrapped its concussion around him; ultraviolet leaped every which way, earthing itself along the monohorn’s body, down the iron table leg, crackling over Eliot’s teeth enroute to his conduction-friendly skeleton. It was all he could do to drop the twisted, half-molten scrap of glass, curl downward, jam his UV-laced claws deep into the floor, brace, and hope.
Long after it seemed like the raw power leakage should have dried up - didn’t these guys know about coagulation? - Eliot realized he could open his eyes without feeling like he was being stabbed in both ears. Blinking blearily, he started to get to his feet, but his knees had something rude to say about that which amounted to him landing on his ass.
A heartfelt expletive seemed appropriate at this point, so he gave one. Then he patted himself down, exploring the damage he’d absorbed. It took a minute to regenerate enough to stand and despoil an intact pair of trousers from outside the blast radius.
“Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs ...” he groused, scowling to himself as he manhandled a pair off a monohorn who didn’t need them any more, then shrugged out of the shreds of his own clothes. His underwear wasn’t in the best of shape either, but it stayed on. That didn’t bear thinking about. Given that (no matter what the movies showed) no one had ever been able to develop clothes that were invincible around the netherregions, being a regen was not as fun as people assumed. He also gave up on the idea of finding a shirt that wasn’t shot up, but a formal jacket over a raggedy tank top was far from the weirdest thing that would be seen out on the streets of LA at night. It’d pass.
A screech of car tyres outside the back entrance reached his ears, and for the first time since he received the text, a grin appeared on Eliot’s face.
The man who came through the door was short even compared to Eliot, and impeccable in clothes that, had everyone else in the club not been dead, would have made him blend right in. His goatee and hair now had more silver than dark, and he sported a sleek pair of wire rims that Eliot had never seen him wear before, but his calculating gaze as he took in the situation was as sharp as ever.
“Eliot,” he greeted with an insouciance that didn’t quite disguise his pleasure at seeing him again. “I take it the bouncer outside is your work?”
“Winston.” Eliot gripped his hand gladly, the grin still playing around his mouth.
Winston took that as a yes. “But not all -” he gestured, “- this?”
Eliot shrugged dismissively. “No.”
“No,” Winston agreed, taking in the bullet holes everywhere. “Not your style any more, is it? Where’s the body?”
“Over here.” Eliot led the way.
“Did you get a power sou-” Winston stopped as he saw the scorch radius around the de-horned head. “Huh,” he said neutrally, a reaction on par with a string of four-letter words from any other man.
Using yet more scraps of clothing, Eliot gingerly picked the horn up and offered it to Winston.
Winston held his hands up drily, more than happy to let Eliot carry it. “It’ll do.”
Arriving at the body, Winston inspected it briefly, then took the lantern shell off the lap and stepped back, nodding at Eliot.
Juggling the horn awkwardly, trying to get a solid two-handed grip on it without actually touching it and ignoring all the little zaps he was getting through the material anyway, Eliot came around behind the chair. He pulled the bra away, exchanged a look with Winston, then spiked the horn tip-down into the trachea.
The body jerked wildly as the energy coursed through it, then fell back into the chair and continued to twitch uncontrollably. Eliot shook his buzzing hands out, ignoring the twinkle in Winston’s eye at his discomfort, and seized the shoulders in a lock, holding it as still as possible.
Hefting the lantern, Winston skirted the scrabbling legs and fitted the cylinder snugly onto the neck. Then he pulled a metallic strip from his pocket and made it a collar around the base of the new lantern-head, working with fast and expert fingers to adjust and integrate the whole apparatus on the neck, ignoring the tremors Eliot’s hold on the body couldn’t entirely suppress. Finally, he shooed Eliot over and found the little panel at the back of the collar, depressing the spike mounted on it into the body’s spine.
The body shuddered and settled immediately. A little shiver of returning motor function traveled through it, before he calmly stood and turned and nodded stiffly at the two men.
“How’s it feel?” Eliot asked.
“Tingly,” lantern-headed James answered. He flexed his hands. “Thank you.”
Eliot nodded, looking him over consideringly. “Does it do anything about the...?” he asked Winston, indicating the lantern sitting inscrutably in place of a head.
“Some would consider it an improvement,” Winston noted. “But yes. Turn around, kid.”
Lantern-headed James obeyed, and Winston did something to the panel. A few seconds later, some strange synthesis of substance and light knitted itself around the lantern frame in a perfect but frozen copy of James’s head.
“Best we can do with what we have,” Winston explained unapologetically.
Eliot nodded his approval. “It’s more than enough.” He retrieved James’s gun, checked it, and handed it to him. “We'll be at the crash zone in an hour or we won't be back at all. Come on, James. Let’s finish this thing.”
Part 3: now you're one of us
Since I'm here, here are the two songs along with "Blow" (to avoid total mental meltdown) that I've been listening to on infinite repeat to write this:
Click to viewand:
crack addiction (LeveragePlus) series:
guys' night - "Come with me if you want to live," Hardison intoned happily in unison with the Governator.
girls' night - Deciding what to do for a girls’ night - because the boys had gone off to watch some stupid mutant movie completely lacking in emotional depth and resonance - turned out to be more difficult than anticipated.
get in for free (pt 1 of 3) - Eliot pulled out his earbud before replying. “It’s James. He says he’s got a bead on Ke$ha and he’s going in.” - “Alone?” Parker’s expression contrived to indicate that even she thought that was crazy. - “That’s what I said!” He showed her the message. “Can you get us there?”
drink that koolaid (pt 2 of 3) - A screech of car tyres outside the back entrance reached his ears, and for the first time since he received the text, a grin appeared on Eliot’s face.
now you're one of us (pt 3 of 3) - "Ke$ha’s virtually untraceable if she wants to be, and I never thought to put a tracking device in my head. What are we going to do?"
wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle - I keep saying I won't do more of these but now I know I'm lying. Originally posted in comments at tahirire's because it's ALL HER FAULT.