nineteen

[esoteric_rose]

[video]

[Grell is outside, and she looks more serious than usual. Those who know her well might note how she's dressed down with her hair tied back.]

I know some of you are fighters. And I've shamefully let myself go in terms of keeping myself in top condition. I ask, therefore, that anyone who would like a spar come see me, at this place close to Beaumont.

No weapons, as we shouldn't be killing anyone today. Just hand to hand combat. And don't expect me to hold back, nor should you restrain yourself. Too much tension gives your face lines. [Just teasing on that point, but she means what she said about not holding back.]

[action]

[She's been bored, is the reason she asked for this. Gossip only went so far, and the tension built and built and she knew if she didn't find a way to get it out, someone would die. Oh, how she wants someone to die by her hand, how she wants to hear the screams, see the blood and pain, create thaat work of art. But she's been behaving, as annoying as that is, and so far her reputation's been secure.

Thus, the request. If she can't kill someone, at least she can do her best to fight them, and hopefully some of that bloodlust would be siphoned off. Who would show up? She had no clue.]

Comments

[jemerite]

I have not met... the doctors.

[She sounds more thoughtful than concerned.]

[esoteric_rose]

One is named Black Jack. She has an assistant named Pinoko. They run a clinic, apparently.

[jemerite]

Oh. Pinoko's doctor.

[She glances off with a frown.]

[esoteric_rose]

What about her?

[jemerite]

[Zinc shrugs. It's not her secret to tell.]

Very good, Pinoko says.

[esoteric_rose]

She fixed my hand when I broke it. It healed much better than it would have.

[jemerite]

How did you break it?

[esoteric_rose]

Breaking apart my house. I was angry, I'd lost someone I cared about.

[jemerite]

[Oh Grell. She sounds a little exasperated with you,]

That was silly.

[esoteric_rose]

True, but it felt good. I ended up rebuilding the place to be much prettier, much more open and less smothering.

[jemerite]

It's good, to be busy.

[There is still a bemused quirk to her lips. Now you've come to break apart some women?]

[esoteric_rose]

[What can she say, she's violent.]

If I can't do something, I'll lose my mind.

[jemerite]

[She looks away idly, agreeing blandly,]

Idleness is madness.

[esoteric_rose]

And this garden is ironically edging some of us closer to madness than it is assisting.

[jemerite]

Sometimes... I think I imagine it.

[Her voice has dipped low, like it's something she isn't quite sure she should say. That has more to do with Barbet, however, than it does with the Garden. He never believed her. Even before the Garden, he never believed her when she tried to tell him how it felt being trapped inside her own corpse.]

A long daydream. The virus taking me.

[esoteric_rose]

We could be abstract and say all life is a dream, so you're right...but to be a little more literal, who knows? Maybe everything is dreams, maybe it's all reality-we're simply living it.

[jemerite]

[Zinc is not quite that fanciful. Life was very biological to her, something of flesh and blood, food and sex. It wasn't a dream, it was an organism, and it did not end, it died and rotted.]

How silly.

[esoteric_rose]

They were written hundreds of years ago.

[jemerite]

What does that prove?

[esoteric_rose]

That words outlast time.

[jemerite]

[Ffft. Zinc gives her a dry look.]

They fade without use.

[A pragmatist at heart. The words are meaningless without use.]

[esoteric_rose]

Shakespeare never dies, Zinc.

[jemerite]

[She considers this for a moment before sticking her tongue out playfully.]