Summary:Eve arranges time to speak to Keiko Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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After their last meeting, Eve had asked Keiko about the potential to meet. She has questions and what not, apparently, that she'd like answered and no doubt Keiko might have the same after comments like 'elder spawn' getting thrown around about Eve in front of her.
They're probably good questions.
Either way, she invited Keiko to meet with her at a particular food cart.
"They have the best burritos," she said, towards the early evening.
Keiko had a lot of work to catch up. The previous few days had been hell on her schedule. The dusky skinned woman arrives at the food cart on her bike, looking sweat with dust and grime streaked down her face.
"The best burritos were in Mexico when I came through there…" says the woman with the accent that isn't to place.
Still she buys a couple and wolfs down one. She's been working all day! Give her a break.
"You wanted to talk?"
Eve, of course, has her own burrito already by the time Keiko has gotten her's. She was here first, after all. There's some benches none too far away that they can find a seat on. Which Eve does.
"Yeah. I had questions. Guessing you've a few of your own. And I meant in the city. I mean, you might find technically better burritos, but I like these ones."
If Keiko has questions she doesn't voice them yet. It's possible she doesn't know where to start. "Did you hear on the news that we found a few of the kids?" There's a look of relief that colours her face as she licks her fingers.
"These might be the best burritos in the city. I'll give you that. Did you see the news of the fight this morning down on the Pier?"
It would be a bit hard not to. It was on social media and the news channels had played it several times.
Hell, Eve doesn't know where to start with all of that half the time.
"Yeah! I saw that on the news. I wasn't sure it was connected at first but, you know, that became clear enough when the reports got up to speed. I was really relieved to hear it. Wish I could have helped, though I'm not exactly sure what I could have done. I'd try, at least." She flickers a quick smile across her face.
"They found children in a nearby warehouse. It was related. Those creatures they showed, coming through the portal? They were The Mindless. Only the highest level magi can call them."
The tattooed woman shakes her head and looks out over the park. "Agent Turner said that Plokta was mentioned and that two of his highest powered followers appeared."
That has to be something to do with the Nightfall, right?
"Oh, good," mutters Eve. "More extra-dimensional nonsense." A sour expression crosses her face — the kind that indicates that some rather unpleasent memories ar3e being called on as well. "So, tell me about this Cult? YOu must get tired of being asked all these questions. That's why the burritos. Nightfall sounds kinda ominosu, but then, they always do, right?" She gets a wan smile.
"I don't get asked nearly as often as you seem to think." Keiko mutters, still a little sore after the conversation with Koa and Illyana the other night.
"I don't know what to tell you. I was taken as a young child, six or seven I think. Given my first spirit to master not long after and trained right up to when I ran away, about three years ago."
"As you heard, we worship Lord Plokta…" beat "I mean … they. They worship Lord Plokta."
"I guess you hear similar about being an Elderspawn. But you can't help who your parents are, can you?"
"I mean, I get regular visits from people making sure they know that they're watching me and that if I step out of line, they'll end my existence in a fiery inferno if fieryness more than 'hey I was curious about the whole thing. It's why I wish Certain Agents And Spirits were a little more circumspect about dropping hints about that kinda thing when pulling me over for Driving While Black Magic." She is frankly a little cross about that sort of thing! It happens all the time!
"We both have fun cult-experiences it seems."
"I suppose we do…" Keiko finishes off a second burrito and starts on a third. "But just about everyone does if you think of it. Look around you, get married, get a job, have kids that you send to daycare and then school. All so you can be cogs in the wheel. Some are just … nicer than others."
And don't steal children to become magical batteries for a dark dimension god.
"Tell me your story …"
"Mmn," says Eve.
There's a moment where shde's just sitting there, thinking of where she wants to start on this matter, putting some thoughts into it. "I suppose it's fair. I was made by one. Sort of. You know how it is. You form a cult, decide your way is the way, and if a few billions have to die to make the earth clean again, well… them's the breaks, right? Sooo.." Her gaze goes down to the burrito. She unwraps it casually. "They called something. Save the world, make it a new." She turns her hand over, palm up, a rose budding up from her fingertips. She plucks it casually and slides it across the bench towards her. "Regerate the world. They took people from all over. They needed vessels to channel it through."
"Not really … I was … a soldier. Not one of their fighters, I was more behind the lines type work …" Keiko murmurs.
She gets the story, though. "Kind of like Ghostbusters and the Stay Puft Marshmallow, yes?" The tattooed woman has an eclectic set of knowledge. "How did you get away?" Or has she?
"Who got away?" asks Eve, bitterly.
"Everything they did worked. They succeeded. They brought it into the world, only there were some people who opposed them, you know, like you're doing now with the latest group trying to bring their idea of God into reality, so as to shape it for themselves, right?" She loks down at the tburrito again.
"I can't tell you what it was like. I wasn't there. I was… gone. What came through annihilated me, annihilated who I was. The next thing I personally knew, I was being born again. Ravelled back into a sort of existence. They tell me that I wasn't really dead. Just… broken and distributed throughout the bit of it they'd pulled in. They put me back together around it."
"And you're here …" Keiko barely understands the concepts Eve is relating. She wasn't educated very well. Hell, she can barely read and write.
"Does your cult exist still? Are you worried they'll try again?" Keiko hadn't thought about what she was doing in that light. She was just trying to save children.
"…I'm pretty sure none of the people who were there got away," says Eve, though it's evident in her expression that she's not completely sure on that front and it's something she's definitely avoiding dwelling on. "If they were to try again, I don't think it'd go any better for them than the last time. What they tried to call is already here. Is still here. Because I'm here, you know? I don't know if it works like that, but hell, none of this really ought to work. I'm sorta the burrito around the meat, you know?" She refolds her burrito, neatly, with a practiced hand.
"I try not to think about it. I've hawd thirty long years of not thinking about it or who I was before. I just try to be Eve now. I hope you get a chance to be Keiko, whoever that is going to be, once this is over."
"Not … really. But maybe?" Keiko answers honestly. "I just hope someone doesn't try to hurt you again."
The asiatic looking woman, finishes her third burrito a lot more slowly. "I've spent the last three years on the run, keeping my head down. Until now, I've been just fine. Now … the Nightfall know where I am and they want me back. I should leave. Find another city, another country and disappear again." She shakes her head though, taking her phone out as it buzzes.
It might be painful to watch, her trying to unlock and then read the message that just came in. "I have to go. Someone's counter just collapsed and they need help."
"I won't run though, Eve. I can't let more kids end up like me …"
"No problem," says Eve. Another bite of her burrito.
"Be in touch. Call on me if you need help with something," she offers, apparently having some abounding sympathy for Keiko.
It might seem strange, Keiko doesn't register the sympathy. It was noted, recently, that her empathy seemed lacking. Why is that?
"I will, soon. We'll need with the rest of the kids. If Master Darque and Eclipse were really here this morning, things are worse than I thought and we're running out of time."
With a wave, Keiko makes her way to her bike and will be soon gone.