[color=gray] [indent][indent][indent][i][justify]She likes to tell herself, in her disillusioned mind, that the weight on her hands is paint; heavy, thick, hot. Pungent, aromatic, decayed. She knows she can shed it like a worm does its cocoon, but there is something about the baptizing of humanity worn on her skin that she likes. It reminds her, it holds her accountable. Sanctioned murder, some call it, when diplomacy failed and negotiations floundered, when plying words and cooling thoughts eddied out in hazed particles and energies undone by solar phenomenon. She likes to tell herself, in her disillusioned mind, that she is an artist; embodied with cynical detachment, downcast, downtrodden, warped hideously through a slick membrane that writhes and pulsates as a tempered coil. That she is mania in all deluded colors worn a shade too bright and too deep, ridiculous splashes and thick clumps of acrylic paint worn onto water color basins – all sorts of pinging and ringing thoughts that drown, drag and deflate; maybe it’s pink, perhaps it’s grey, her insides wrought black and blue, her skin hued pearlescent. The color on her delicate fingers, though, is a rusted stain and edged shadows, greyish-green splotches that are sickly and wet, congealed and embedded underneath her fingernails, which are painted electric pink at their tips. Prickling touches, whispering prints, ghostly tendrils whisking away before inching ever closer, forming as talons, claws, sickles that puppet and mime against heaving ribs and webbed veins. The human body is a myriad of delicate tissues that ripple beneath her touch, a medley of life so coveted and depraved, studied carefully and expertly. Blackened lungs and fatty deposits, bones pocketed with disease, brittle and dead, and organs bruised. She feels and knows it all as molecules that conform, split, and peel apart at the seams as she plunges through their pores to push and pull. It’s nearly the same every time, with consistent performance and success in the numbers, the darling face preened prettily and perfectly, pale eyes misty and silvered, and petaled lips surrounding gleaming teeth. The face of the sun and all life therein sent with blinding warmth, the doll, the face, the voice that soothes and curls around her ‘R’s and sluices across her ‘L’s, her vowels drown out long and hard. Evelyn likes to tell herself, in her disillusioned mind, that she does what she does because someone has to. Because she must. Because she can. And if it’s her face they see in their last moments, and her touch they sense in the finality of pain, the funeral tolls traded for her delightful laugh, then was dying such a bad thing?[/justify][/i][/indent][/indent][/indent] [center][sup][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#928b85]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#9b948d]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#928b85]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][/sup][/center] [CENTER][img]https://i.imgur.com/AZsm8lN.gif[/img][/CENTER][indent][sub][COLOR=71645f][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [I]... somewhere in America.[/I][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=#71645f][b]Time of Trouble #1.008:[/b][/COLOR] [I]girl next door.[/I][/right][/sup][/indent][center][sup][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#928b85]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#9b948d]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#928b85]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][/sup][/center][INDENT][sub][color=#71645f][B]Interaction(s):[/B][/COLOR]&[/sub] [indent][INDENT]She has denied the call three times, tossed her pager into a storm drain (she later claims she lost it), and has stepped [i]out[/i] of her motel room on different occasions. Through the adjacent wall, dropped down through the floor (into the pool, no less), and finally, through the stairwell and up to the roof, where Evelyn Deveraux shimmied down the fire escape earlier that morning. It’s done, again; she’s completed the assignment, sent the body in, arteries plucked and pinched, invoking spasms, reminiscent of a heart attack. A common thing, really, for a mortal creature. It’s not often she’s pinned to the mundane, but [i]it happens[/i]. Too loud and abrasive, ventured too close, and couldn’t keep their mouth shut. [i]It happens. [/i]Problem solved. Fixed. When she’s assigned to Hyperhumans, it’s messier, more intense, phasing through HZEs like wet cement, or thick humid air stuck to her lungs and skin. Like weilding through a storm, when everything draws a shade of yellow, and the rain strikes your skin, drowning and heavy. Some are more [i]electric[/i], where she braids their ions together, atoms surging and molecules colliding, her fingers warped over their souls before she forms a fist, clutches their hearts, or sinks an inhibiting poison into their very core. She once [i]pushed[/i] their face into the wall, suffocated, and fused to the stone, her palms cradling against their skull as she felt their life violently end in wetted, crunching screams. [i]It happens.[/i] She carries pennies in her pockets sometimes, flicks them over her thumbs, she’s seen someone place them over their eyelids, some forlorn token for a ferryman, but Evelyn never does and carries the weight in her pockets and tosses them into fountains instead. She knows what this is, though, it’s a call back to Base, her missions completed, one life traded for another, glossy dossiers shuffled and handed over. Some are dead drops, and when you can slip your fingers unknowingly into a sealed compartment, what better method to relay targets? Some are long, drawn out over months, as she hunts and seeks. Always slipping through homes and offices, peering into high-security establishments like banks or political offices. Laboratories or factories where Hyperhuman-endowed weaponry struggles to find purchase in its newly forged concept. (But she’s not here to talk about that, not when they told her to look the other way, for now.) Some are short, quick, simple executions that require little to no finesse, just a job, just a name, just a face. [i]It happens.[/i] The Bureau is ringing her line constantly, well, the motel’s landline, and it doesn’t come as much of a surprise when Evelyn has been playing this cat-and-mouse game for years. It never lasts, not for long. She waltzes through the crowd, waiting beside sidewalks, traffic signals, and simply allows herself to be part of the mundane. Blonde hair coiled back into a braid, the asphalt warmed from the day, smooth beneath scuffed combat boots, she counts out the minutes that toil into hours until they come to retrieve her. They’re not far, she knows this, as she makes a rotation of right turns, skirting to the left at random intervals, and makes repeated passes around an unassuming park with its scattered benches of wood and iron. It’s not that she doesn’t [i]want[/i] to go back; she doesn’t have much of a choice either way. Sometimes it’s just seeing how far they’ll go, again, to bring her in. And in those moments, she’ll stall, think she can slip away, meld away into shadow and brick, but a vice collars her every time, manacled with unseen irons, and she’ll always [i]walk[/i] through those doors and into the bull pen. Sometimes it’s a room, the ward, the interrogators, series and phrases and numbers sputtered through lips, seeing if she can keep up, testing her mental fortitude. It’s another game, and Evelyn never plays to lose. But, for now… [color=ffffff]“Evelyn.”[/color] [color=#a9a19c]“Rats. You caught me.”[/color] It’s admitted in a whisper, surrounded by idle pedestrians, the crosswalk symbol flashing from an orange palm to white, a person in motion, and everyone parts around them. Evelyn curls her tongue against her teeth and tucks a cherry candy piece into her cheek, an Agent at her back, silent and wreathed in black. [color=ffffff]“You should’ve reported back three days ago.”[/color] Chastising and exasperated, a hand swiftly curled around her bicep, steering her elsewhere, their arms linked almost casually as they finally crossed, and turned left. She hissed, spat, snapping her teeth close before she turned her grip lethal and held fast, nails scraping against their arm. An interesting pair silently entered the crowded sidewalks, pressed close, their conversation hushed and careful. Tensed. [color=#a9a19c]“I know.”[/color] [color=ffffff]“So, why haven’t you? There’s only so many times you can get away with this before you’re detained or penalized for desertion.”[/color] [color=#a9a19c]“So you keep saying,[/color]” she drawled, the sweet nestled against her lips, hued red, now captured by her teeth before she bit down, splitting it into two. [color=a9a19c]“But nothing comes of it, and I’ll keep being moved from one side of the country to the next.”[/color] [color=#a9a19c]“So what’s it this time?”[/color] Evelyn gleefully questioned, cheek cushioned against a cotton sleeve. [color=ffffff]“You’re not going anywhere, you’re going back to Base.”[/color] [color=#a9a19c]“Huh, knew it. Usually I’m left alone for at least a week, but three days? Something is going on.”[/color] They were silent, which confirmed it, and Evelyn sighed dramatically. [color=#a9a19c]“Lemme guess, a restructure in the chain of command, someone got promoted, they’re moving people. Shuffling. Someone pissed someone off, you know, the typical-[/color][i][color=#a9a19c]ness[/color][/i][color=#a9a19c] of power.” [/color]She roasted her wrist, gesturing broadly, drawing attention to her current wardrobe. [color=ffffff]“... What are you wearing?”[/color] They paused, Evelyn creating distance to tug at the crop blouse and red flannel tied around her waist, her legs clad in ripped jeans that were acid-washed. [color=#a9a19c]“What’s wrong with it? It’s [/color][color=#a9a19c][i]grunge[/i][/color][color=#a9a19c]. In fashion, I’ll have you know. I have to blend in. Not all of us can just change our faces like.. What’s their face.” [/color]She giggled.[color=#a9a19c] “Literally, I mean -”[/color] [color=ffffff]“Evelyn.”[/color] [color=#a9a19c]“I know, I know. [/color][color=#a9a19c][i]Hush[/i][/color][color=#a9a19c]. But seriously, what’s going on, or is one of those ask questions later kind of things where I’m given another -”[/color] [color=ffffff]“You’re exhausting, I don’t know why Church-”[/color] [color=#a9a19c]“Because no one can do what I can, dollface.”[/color] Evelyn pushed, just a smidge, pink nails prickling through their arm, linking into sinew and ligaments, pluckling against the tendon bunched there. They had stopped walking entirely, and the pale blue of her eyes immediately lightened to silver, pressed coin surrounded by lashes that crinkled with the slicing pressure of her grin. [color=#a9a19c]“Feel that?”[/color] [color=ffffff]“You know that’s not-”[/color] [color=#a9a19c]“Allowed. I know. Just messin’.”[/color] Just as quickly as she had invaded their space, she pulled back, shaking out the hazy smoke curling around her delicate gestures, everything snapping into place with the tension betwixt them shimmering in curiously hued golds. The world continued, ignorant of what lingered there on the sidewalk as bodies pushed around them, mundane and simplistic despite what befell them. Evelyn breathed through her nose, crossed her arms at her bust and rolled her weight to one side to defuse the situation whilst the Agent, whose name she did not care to remember, made a peculiar motion that summoned more from the sides, crowding around her subtly, but still there, pushing in closer. It was a culmination of their game, the constant shift, where Evelyn Deveraux would either run or play along. She could feel the surging HZEs that crawled beneath her skin, tingling through marrow and blood. It wouldn’t take much, she knew that, but there was the curiosity she couldn’t deny at what was happening and why she was being sought out with such an entourage attached. [color=#a9a19c]“Something really is happening,”[/color] she muttered. [color=ffffff]“Specter.”[/color] Someone murmured, a warning, a calling, a mask that carefully and expertly slid into place and held there, pooling silver that shuddered and snapped, drowning beneath blue as Evelyn smiled, held out her arms, shards of candy against her lips and bleeding cherry against her teeth. They wouldn’t touch her, not without a signal, a cue; they knew what would happen if they did, what had happened before. [i]It happens.[/i] [color=#a9a19c]“All right then.”[/color] She giggled. [color=#a9a19c]“Take me home.”[/color] [/INDENT][/INDENT][/indent][/color]