'cause i'm just holding on for tonight

[coppelganger]

WHO: Sarah + you!
WHERE: Various Porter cities
WHEN: Throughout June
WHAT: Sarah is going through a thing
WARNINGS: Violence, drug use, language

starters in comments!

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barfight # 2 - closed to sarissa and felix

[coppelganger]

[ It starts innocently enough, the way it always does. She stops at a bar and has one drink. But one isn't enough to make the cringing, crawling sensation in her body go away, and one isn't enough to make her stop bloody thinking, so she has another. And another. And soon enough she's drunk and not thinking, just reacting.

The bartender recognizes her and starts giving her free drinks, which is stupid, ridiculous—she's got more money than any of these people, probably—and a guy nearby must have the same idea, because he says so, loudly. Why give imPorts free drinks? Why give imPorts free anything, when they already get so much? When they live here free and easy and screw things up for the natives?

And before Sarah knows it, something—snaps. She's on the guy before he's finished talking, her fists flying, each punch and kick revenge for Kira, for her sisters, for all the bullshit. ]

Shut up, shut up, shut the hell up—

[ And then someone punches her in the head, hard enough to send her reeling, to make her vision black out. She lashes out blindly, connects with somebody, something, but it's all just… noise. ]

[magnitudes]

( And behold the Sarissa, in her natural habitat. She's actually managed to not cause a problem tonight, or even since she lost a match with a bit of sand. The weirdness of the situation had her wind down for a bit, though whether it was for her own sake or purely an offshoot of seeing Cosima and Sarah after... well. That's a bit more complicated to figure.

She swings at the sound of a fight in a bar, sees someone smaller than someone else take a punch, and she's already walking over with her hand in a fist when she realises it was Sarah that took a hit.

Sarissa might not be some fancy fighter like some of the people here, but she's refined a devastating right hook and a half-decent aim that sledgehammers into the guy's jaw. )

Come on then, you mongrels.

[coppelganger]

[ Maybe it's the sight of another one of the "quints" suddenly in the middle of the fight, or maaaybe it's the sight of the bartender approaching with a baseball bat, but the guy Sarah was battling seems to be rethinking his life choices.

Sarah, on the other hand, isn't rethinking anything, and she comes pushing past Sarissa, still half-blind and way too drunk to be doing this. ]

Piss off! I'm handling this!

[magnitudes]

Yeah, you're handling it heaps good.

( There's a difficult sort of balance she's trying to hold, here, because the arm that hooks around Sarah's gut is meant to be gentle. It's meant to tug her back rather than haul, in the same step as she's trying to hook about to kick some dickhead in the shin.

She gets his knee, and the sound is disgusting and lost in the scrape of chairlegs and yelling. ) Come on, Sarah. Get out the door, I'll handle this.

( And there goes a chair being thrown through the window. Fucking A. )

[coppelganger]

[ Sarah's gaze flicks from Sarissa to the growing crowd to the bartender who's still approaching, and then all the fight seems to run out of her at once. She can't get arrested again. Shit. She'll end up on probation and someone will find out about the drugs and then she'll be fucked.

So she turns and leaves without another word to Sarissa, just heads for the door and out into the humid night air. She makes it to the curb before she crumples into a sitting position, boots in the road, head in her hands, sniffing angrily and hating herself for pulling shit shit again. She thought she was done being this person. ]

Fuck.

[magnitudes]

( Good. That's that. Well, it's not that, it's not like it's done, but Sarah's out of harms way. As she stands side on to block her from the yelling dickhead and his friends as Sarah exits, Sarissa takes a bottle to her back, twists the second Sarah's out the door and shatter's a man's jaw. And then in a rapid-fire that escalated quickly she takes a punch to her jaw, falls on one knee, rises in the same motion as she knees some dickhead in the balls, and about a minute after Sarah's exit she follows - through the window, rather than the door.

After a couple seconds she pulls her hands from around her head and crawls over to Sarah, sitting back on her haunches like some kinda well-meaning labrador, and not some dickhead that just brawled a bunch of guys in a bar that are still pretty pissed. )

Hey. You okay?

( Like they have all the time in the world, and Sarissa hasn't just pissed off a whole lot of people. Like this is fine. )

[coppelganger]

'M fine. [ She says, voice muffled, because her face is still in her hands. ] You oughta take off before someone calls the cops.

[ Because if there's one thing she wants even less than ending up in jail herself, for the second time in a week, it's getting one of her sisters arrested for some bullshit fight she started. ]

[newwaver]

[All Felix wants is a nice, quiet drink. But when does Felix ever get what he wants? When he walks into the bar in the middle of a brawl he nearly walks right back out again. Except there's a familiar voice in among all that yelling. A voice that nearly has him walking right back out again.

Of course it's Sarah ruining his plans of a nice night out, maybe finding a good looking boy to take home with him. Of course he finds himself pushing through the brawlers to find his sister instead of doing the smart thing and leaving.]

Oi. [He grabs her arm, but quickly finds himself letting go as some guy's fist connects with his cheek. Now that's infuriating. He'd looked amazing when he'd left his home. Now he's probably going to have a giant bruise marring his looks.] Oi!

[He doesn't make use of his powers often, but he does now. Trying to calm the crowd, or at least get them to drop the violence long enough for him to drag Sarah out.]

[coppelganger]

[ Sarah turns when she hears Felix's voice, her eyes (well, the one that isn't swelling shut, anyway) comically wide. ]

The hell are you doing here?

[ She kicks at the guy closest to her, but it's without any real force behind it. Felix's powers are doing their work, calming her down, and all she can do is stare at him like an idiot, wondering when he showed up. ]

[newwaver]

[He frowns at her, grabbing her arm again and yanking it forcibly.]

Saving your sorry arse apparently. What the hell are you doing?

[coppelganger]

[ She allows herself to be yanked along beside him, stumbling a bit. ]

I was just having a drink.

[ Okay, multiple drinks. ]

[newwaver]

Yes, and then I'm sure they all piled on you for no bloody reason.

any porter city - OTA

[coppelganger]

[ This is what Sarah does when she's lost, emotionally: she leaves. Because if she's lost, emotionally, then she might as well be lost, physically, too. So she doesn't show up for work—she doesn't need that bloody job, anyway, see if she cares if they try and fire her—and she walks. Walking is better than driving. It takes longer, and she's got nowhere to go, really.

Still, she can't walk forever. There are limits to how lost she lets herself get, at least right now. And a girl has to eat, so as the afternoon winds down into evening, she starts looking for a place to eat. It's after finally stopping in front of a restaurant that has big band music playing loudly through some speakers that she turns and says to the nearest passerby (maybe you!): ]

An alternate universe without a decent punk scene's not an alternate universe I think I wanna live in.

[ Not that she has a lot of choice there. ]

the apartment - george

[coppelganger]

[ This is happening too much now. Late nights out drinking that turn into fights with strangers. She's not too far gone to see that this is heading in a bad direction, that she needs to get back in control. She knows George has noticed. George is good. He's kind, and she shouldn't be putting him through this shit, not after all the other things they've gone through.

So. She needs to take care of it. Do something. ]

Babe?

[ She pushes through the front door and turns on the overhead light, flips off her hood. ]

You in?

[puppydoctor]

[He peeks around the bathroom door, a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. The sight of Sarah always brings relief, but there's also worry clouding his eyes, just like every other night. Something's different, and he can feel it in every inch of her.

If only he knew how to help.]

Hey.

[coppelganger]

Hi.

[ Sarah walks to him and kisses his cheek, hoping he can't tell, or at least is able to ignore, that she smells like alcohol and that there's a fresh bruise on one cheek. ]

How's things? [ At work, she means, but once the words are out, she realizes how far removed she sounds from his life, and winces. ]

[puppydoctor]

[He definitely notices, and it puts another knot in his stomach - but he doesn't say anything. He reaches up and touches her hair.]

Things are fine. [There are no things. There's working, there's sleeping, and there's worrying about Sarah.] I just got home from De Chima.

[coppelganger]

Are they?

[ She can tell that he's lying, but she keeps her voice light. ]

Will you still be up if I take a shower?

[puppydoctor]

Yeah, go right ahead.

[A few months ago, he would have offered to join her. He doesn't pause to question what's changed. Instead, he finishes up at the sink and steps into the hall.]

de chima - kavinsky

[coppelganger]

[ Sarah's always been prone to moving, but lately it's gotten to somewhat ridiculous levels. Job? What job? Why go to work when you can hang out in a different city every day, getting up to nothing good? Correction—why go to your official job? Because she's still very much doing her second one.

In fact, right now she's in the process of leaving the scene of one of her deals, money safely in her bag and her hood up, rendering her invisible. Cops can't see you entering and then leaving a place a few minutes later, cops don't get suspicious. This new power's better than the camo was, even.

She pops back into view, though, when she runs into Kavinsky as she rounds the corner. She doesn't recognize him, of course, since she's never seen his face before and only spoken to him over text, so she only gives him a once over and then starts to walk again, saying ] Sorry, mate, [ as she does. ]

[pillz]

Sarah?

[yes this is that kavinsky. the one who remembers her face from the video, in part because it bore such striking resemblence to sarissa's. same eyes, same nose, same heart-shaped chin. more makeup, though, ringed around her stare, and more britain than australia in her accent. kavinsky doesn't know a lot, but he can recognize that.]

Hey, Lady Di.

[he should know better than to grab hold of angry imports uninvited, but it's almost reflex, with how quick she is turning away. a hand goes out, snares her elbow, but it's light. no real aggression in it.]

[coppelganger]

[ Sarah jerks her elbow out of Kavinsky's grip, ready to run if she has to, but then she realizes where she's heard that voice before and stops herself from moving. "Homegirl can fly. Yo." This is her first time seeing his face, and he's younger than she expected. Still a kid, really. ]

You're... [ Yeah, she doesn't know his name, either. ] That guy, eh. The one who films my sister.

[pillz]

[still a kid. but one with the smile of a piranha. you know, if piranhas could smile rather than having their faces fixed permanently in a toothy D-8. he cedes her space quite easily, letting his arms fall beside him.]

Filmed, [he says.] One time, man. [he flips a finger. just his forefinger.] For glory and the greatest cause of all. Hey.

[his eyes glitter. he juts his chin at the bag.]

[coppelganger]

[ Sarah doesn't particularly care whether he filmed Sarissa once or one hundred times. It's all the same.

She follows his gaze to her bag and frowns. ]

What?

[ She could be doing many things in this part of town, Kavinsky. ]

[pillz]

[indeed. backpacks are often favored by college students, couriers, hikers, hackers who target open wifi at starbucks, hipsters, and the list does go on. kavinsky smiles at her, serrated.

and lands on the wrong idea entirely, but maybe it's better than the right idea, technically?]

Got any x? Or acid? [he looks at her expectantly. hopefully.] I got some blow if you wanna trade. Or you can stay nipple-sore about whatever with Sarissa. But she doesn't give a fuck. [mild exaggeration. she might give half a fuck. slightly less. she might have at least preferred to conduct her experiments in private.] Not like she was gonna tell you about it if I didn't put that shit up on the Internet either. Check it. 'Pros' column getting longer.

[sarah no.]