Remixes [Lena mood posts]

[Samael]

Lights - (DJ Halcyon Father's Pride Remix)
June 16th, 2013

Stay with us. It is already inside you.

And that's how her day begins: coming into conscious sitting up in bed, heart racing and breath short. Even after she's cognizant it takes her a few seconds to actually gain control of her body and calm her breathing down. All the while Lil Wayne throws some of his always-irritating word salad rap from her nightstand:

"Throw dirt on me, and grow a wildflower/but it's 'Fuck the world,' get a child out her
Yeah my life a bitch, but you know nothin' bout her/been to hell and back, I can show you vouchers"

(She chose it, for the record, because she claims that ol' Weezy is the only thing that can annoy her into actually waking up.)

With a sigh, she runs her hands through her hair to get it out of her face, then reaches over and taps on the screen to make the alarm go away. It takes a couple taps, and she mutters something foul about unresponsive touch screens under her breath as she fumbles to get the damned thing turned off before it gets worse. Silence finally falls and the next thing you know she has her half-full Rockstar from the previous night in hand, swallowing down a couple of mouthfuls to banish the headache already creeping up. Lena is what you would call a caffeine junkie, and she would be the first to admit such. On the plus side, she doesn't sleep much. That's especially a blessing these days.

After that, her daily regimen begins. Her legs swing out from the bed so she can sit up comfortably. Early morning (which, for her, is 11 AM) is the Selzentry. It's a fusion inhibitor. Light blue, oval, three hundred milligrams. It's swallowed down with more energy drink. She grabs her cigarettes (bad habit, worse for her) and pads over to her computer. Getting showered and dressed; these are things for later. First, she has to check her email.

Lena's apartment is what could charitably be called "messy." There's a good reason she lives alone (you know, besides all the other reasons): if she had a roommate, they'd have an aneurysm. The New York girl isn't unsanitary necessarily, she just believes that life is way too short to spend all of it cleaning. She lives for the moment as much as possible and the moment isn't conducive to organizing her sock drawer, making sure her desk is free of cans or—you know—throwing out take-out boxes in an especially timely manner.

Besides, she doesn't have a particularly good history with roommates anyway.

Bare feet pad across the carpet and by the time she sits in front of her desk she's already exhaling a cloud of smoke. The burning cylinder is set in an ashtray as she opens her email. Most of them she ignores for now (sign my petition! Facebook page notifications! Do you need Cialis?) and others she does quick responses to. Some contain audio files from other DJs she knows from New York…new tracks for remixes. It's almost fifteen minutes and halfway through listening to the second track on the "Newly Added" list that the email comes in.

To: h4lcy0nfl0w@gmail.com
Subject: Tonight?

Hey Lena. Just a final confirmation that you're on tap for the Pride party at the club tonight. Please reply back, you didn't follow up yesterday and I want to be sure.

"Oh gods, that's tonight," she groans as realization of the day hits her. She has very little desire to go, but she already committed. To be fair, she'd been psyched for it when she got the booking because a) she loves to work and b) she loves Pride events. It's just that since then, she'd had a bit of a dreamscape journey and…well, that had kind of sucked her excitement out.

She'd also failed to notice what day it was. She normally didn't work a lot of Sundays, as they are a lot less busy than the other nights of the weekend. This Sunday in particular was even lower on her list. Father's Day was a day of reflection for the Ecstatic. By "reflection," we of course mean "staying home alone and shutting out the world amidst throwing new remixes together until she didn't have to pretend the way was over." Father's Day was an empty enough day for her for most of her life, but it had never bothered her all that much. Not as much as perhaps it should have, at least. Some people have a lot of trauma about growing up without a father, but not Lena. Rather, it was what that did to her brother that really bothered her. Adam always managed to find a way to get in trouble on that day. When she was six, he got in a fight that would be brutal for high schoolers, much less a ten year-old. When she was eleven, Adam ended up in a hospital after plowing the neighbor's sedan into a telephone pole with a blood alcohol level of .10. He left home as soon as he got there. And when she was twenty…

The cigarette is stubbed out in the ashtray after a last drag. Yeah, Pride and Father's Day is definitely too much for her to handle together. Still, she did make a commitment and in her line of work, you can't just blow those off. Especially last-minute and especially when you're still new in an area. She'd managed to get steady work because DJ Halcyon is a known name in the club scenes in New York and she managed to use that to some effect here, but all it would take is one bad incident for people to start shit-talking her, and that would torpedo things. So she sends out a quick reply saying she'll definitely be there, then slips her headphones on to pick out a rough setlist. Showering gets delayed just a little bit more.

Deciding on a setlist is a lot harder than you might think. It's one of those things that helped Lena get ahead in New York; she had an almost instinctual ability to bring songs together so that they not only fit musically, but thematically. She could give the songs the right ebb and flow; she knew when to slow things down and then speed them back up. She could evoke love, excitement, joy or even sadness in her music.

Of course, it was because of her connection (even when she was younger) to the Lakashim. It was her way to connect to others; to share her energy and know that no matter who you were or where you could be found, you were connected to everyone else. Through passion and joy, love and anger, hatred and fear. One person's emotion is everyone's. One person's life is shared by all.

She starts to feel that again as she lets ATB's euphoric, trance-heavy beats flow over her. It's "Humanity," a song that speaks like a personal mission statement for her. It's about surrender to a higher calling as opposed to a higher power. About finding that connection in each of them and living through it.

"You touched my soul, my very being/you made me whole; now life has new meaning
Got a second chance, you can see the change in me/and as we dance you wrap me in humanity."

To be fair, it takes her a couple run-throughs before it's fully sunk in. But she's got the lesson learned. She can't keep herself alone and isolated. The dance doesn't work if it’s a solo one. She needs people to belong to. Her community at Pride, the club scene in general. Maybe even a group to talk to for…the thing. It's been a while for that.

And, of course, her fellow Awakened. She stayed on the sidelines before that night. Part of that is circumstance (she hadn't met anyone else before Sid told her about the cabin) and part of that is choice (she didn't want to look like the outsider forcing her way in once she had arrived and no one had reason to trust her yet). Neither circumstance nor choice can stand now.

The beat is calling, Lena. Stop being a wallflower and get on the fucking dance floor already.

She smiles a little bit at her the little self-motivating voice in her head and saves her playlist. She yanks the headphone plug out, letting the computer revert back to speakers, and lets the first song kick off as she swallows down her Lexiva (protease inhibitor, pink, 700 mg) and heads to shower.

"And I'm not sleeping now, the dark is too hard to beat
And so I tell myself that I'll be strong and dreaming when they're gone…"

[Samael]

Kaiser Chiefs - "Take My Temperature" (DJ Halcyon Halloween Fever Remix)

To: rdevito@gmail.com
From: h4lcy0nfl0w@gmail.com
Subject: Cancelling This Weekend

Hey. I hate to do it but I have to cancel my gigs for this weekend. I woke up this morning and wasn't feeling well. I don't handle flus well so I may need extra time to recover. I hope you understand. Give Kayley a call; last I talked to her she was saying that she needed to pick up some extra gigs and she's good, if a bit unrefined.

Sorry, man. Can't be helped. I'll let you know when I can get back to work.

--L

-----------------------------

October 16th
6:17 am
Day 1

Lena stared at the computer screen for several moments after she sent the email. At that moment she wasn't thinking about the dull ache throbbing its way through her body, or the way that she was overheated and flushed even though she had the chills. She wasn't thinking about the events of the previous night or the tiny puncture wound on the back of her neck, how Grace was probably feeling the same way she did. She didn't even think (couldn't possibly think about) what this meant for her life expectancy.

At that moment, all she was thinking was, God dammit, I'm going to miss the Halloween party.

It was still early in the morning…early enough that the sun hadn't yet risen in the sky. Lena had tried to go to sleep early after being dropped off by Grace, so that she could get some rest and hope without hope, give her ravaged immune system the dormant time it needed to gather its strength, fight off the infection. But even that seemed pointless because her ever-present ability to subsist on just a few hours of sleep—usually a boon—became a curse. Four o' clock in the god damned morning and she was awake, trying to ignore the fact that she's left a damp spot of sweat on the mattress and that she had a mild headache that a full twenty-four ounce Rockstar couldn't banish away.

It was six now. She should contact people at the Chantry, but she doesn't. Grace said she'd get the word out and all Lena had to do is check her phone to know that it had been done. She'd been breathless for a moment when she did so, compensating for the moment with a sigh of relief when Grace had kept the information at just what she'd learned about the new virus. The phone hadn't moved from its position next to the bed since then.

For the first couple of hours, she'd tried to keep at business as usual. She'd taken her meds (as important as ever now), had a couple of cigarettes (worst idea ever, but what can you do?) and started working on the latest tracks she hadn't managed to quite nail. But it was fruitless; try as she might, she couldn't get past the pressure against the back of her eyes that she knew came as much from her own thoughts as it did whatever might be creeping its way through her body. She'd pushed ahead and her thoughts kept drifting, distracting and making her miss important beats, elements that she should be remembering.

Her laptop lay across the floor now where it had skidded to a stop after the frustrated woman shoved the contents of her desk away. She was worried that it might be seriously damaged, but she didn't bother to check. She had other things to worry about; her desktop worked fine anyway, as her email could attest to.

Still, it was a waste…both of energy and potentially the laptop. She frowned at the outburst, but it was brief and barely more than a half-thought. There are many things that Lena regrets in her life, but she's a Joybringer of the Cult of Ecstasy. She would never apologize for following her emotions wherever they might lead.

Even that one that she might have some issues with.

She leaned forward, rested her brow on the palms of her hands as she stared at the surface of her desk. The heat radiating between her head and her hands wouldn't be cause for worry in most people's case; it's only a slight fever, after all. But she's not most people.

What am I gonna do?

-----------------------------

Influenza is a disease, makes you weak all in your knees
’Tis a fever everybody sure does dread
Puts a pain in every bone, a few days and you are gone
To a place in the ground called the grave

Ace Johnson, "Influenza"

October 17th
3:17 am
Day 2

All she remembers is waking up. The first thing that she knows upon being conscious is sitting up where she'd lay, shivering and overheated at the same time. The apartment is dark and Lena's tendency toward keeping her own place in a state of disregard is exemplified with her aching body and other symptoms from yesterday. The laptop still lies on the floor. Freshly empty cans from her energy drinks litter the little studio apartment, particularly the nightstand next to her bed. Lena had spent most of yesterday there, wrapped in her blanket and staring at the television as she tried to forget about the sensation of invisible fingers pressing on the backs of her eyelids and the way she was both hot and cold.

In the end though, she'd fallen asleep on the futon where she'd been sitting late into the night. A half-burned joint from her rarely-used stash lay in the ashtray. She always kept some around because of its legitimate medicinal purposes and…well, sometimes music and meditation, even the racing pulse brought on by a caffeine infusion, weren't good enough to connect with the Lakashim. Sometimes you needed something more.

She aches still. And she's still flushed; her chemise is as damp as the surface she's spent a couple of hours sleeping on. There's a feeling of panic about her, slowly fading though she doesn't remember having any nightmares. She always remembers her nightmares, because they're usually just slight variations on events from her life.

She starts to get up, groaning a little as her joints rebel. The dull ache that goes with being sick…it's impossible to ignore. She knows it well…too well. But she's already up. Might as well start the meds early.

Lena doesn't notice it right away. That happens when you're sick…you miss things that would be obvious. Maybe it was the chill wind that blew in from the open window that made her not see as it soothed her flushed skin. Maybe she was just too absorbed in feeling like shit. But she doesn't notice it until she gets into the bathroom, gets the Selzentry and shuts the medicine cabinet. That's when she sees the red drops falling into the sink.

She looks up at the mirror and stares in shock as her nose drips blood. It's a slow, minor drip…but it's a drip. She looks down, and then out of the bathroom. It started halfway across the apartment.

She grabs a wad of toilet paper, shoves it against her nose. She's going to need to clean up the mess. She'll be both relieved and upset when she sees, later in the day, that Grace is experiencing the same via her phone. But for now, she just thinks:

Oh gods, what's happening? And what's next?

You know how hard it is for me
To shake the disease
That takes hold of my tongue
In situations like these

Depeche Mode, "Shake the Disease"

[Samael]

Garbage - "Medication" (DJ Halcyon Hydra Recovery Remix)

And I wanna take you down
But your soul cannot be found
It doesn't matter much you see
'cause your disease is killing me

Saliva, "Your Disease"

Wednesday

She doesn't say anything. She's still near death, to be honest, even if her friends have averted it and saved her (for now). As such, it might not be surprising that she doesn't speak. Lena sat there in the car of a dead woman next to Serafine as Sid and Grace took them away from the place where they had both spent—

Was it really only nine days? How is that possible?

Indeed, nine days…at least for Lena. She had never thought to ask how long Sera had been there. It doesn't matter anyway; Callum wouldn't have told her the truth. He would have told her anything she wanted to hear, and in her desperation she would have bought it.

These thoughts don't come through her head though, as she's driven off to a Verbena's private practice. In fact, as she sits there huddled in a bloody hoodie that will have to be discarded in short order, she's not really thinking anything at all. Nothing rational, anyway. The DJ leans her forehead against the car window, feeling the cool glass against her sweltering forehead and stares at the road.

It's not the road that she's seeing, though. Since that moment—that horrible moment that surges ahead on a full week of nightmares to dominate her mind—she has only seen, felt, heard one thing. Or one sequence of events.

The magic is gone, the paradox has already ripped into her pattern and slipped away. But her mind—that wonderful, fear-saturated-mind—has its own methods and madnesses. And thus, she relives Eric's death again.

And again.

And again.

And so she says nothing. She has nothing to say.

-----------------------------

Thursday

The hallucinations should have receded by Thursday. And they have. But still, she dreams. And when you're still as sick as Lena and Sera are and your body needs time to recover…is there that much of a difference?

Well yes, there is. She is awake for periods of time, after all. And she is lucid during that time, when this strange doctor who introduces himself as a Verbena and a friend of Sid's tends to her. She is suspicious at first. Paranoia has taken root deep in her brain and she doesn't trust anything yet. How does she know this isn't just a trick? Maybe they moved her because she'd become too defiant, they needed to trick her long enough for the disease to finish its course.

These are the accusations she shouts at the poor man while she's awake. But in truth, they don't have the full strength of conviction. She can feel the symptoms abating. She knows that she's getting better, and everything that Luke says rings through. So she submits to his care, silently and passionlessly. Her passion is all drained out of her.

And as soon as she can, she sleeps.

Friday

She's awake, and she is lucid, and her fever is beginning to lower. She has a little more energy back, and this is when she informs Luke, just in case she doesn't know, of her…additional condition. She apologizes as she says it for not saying anything further.

He tells her that it's okay, and that he knows. He's taking proper precautions. She nods a little, saying nothing. She doesn't know if that makes her feel better or worse.

She refuses to see visitors, should any come. She tells the doctor that it should be a precaution, because she's still coughing up blood. Cured or not, she's still capable of delivering a biologically-administered death with every convulsion of her lungs…and this one not even Sid can cure so quickly. It's better if they just stay away until she's back to a semblance of normality.

Luke points out that there is a window in the door that they can converse through, if they need be. Lena just shakes her head and rolls to one side, wraps the blanket she's been given over herself and shuts her eyes. She won't sleep, but she can try. Or perhaps pretend. Or try to pretend.

Saturday

She is up earlier than she expected. Before anyone comes around to check on her, she's seated on the floor. Somehow, despite the (admittedly lessened) slight aches and pains that dot her body, she's pulled herself into the lotus position and is focusing inward. She feels well enough to try and so she tries to use magic for the first time since inside the Hydra complex.

If someone asked her (and if she were being honest), she would say that she was terrified of this. Lena's felt paradox's sting before, felt her magic go awry. Never like that, though. It was the convergence of so many terrible things all at once. She would never admit it, but in her waking moments over the last few days since her rescue she's thought about what it would have been like if she'd never Awakened. She's done that before, but not like this.

However, as much as she is scared of it, she needs to be safe for others to be around before she can leave. And she needs to leave this place. She's been in a medical facility for far too long now.

So she focuses herself inward. She listens to her heartbeat, her own personal reflection of the Lakashim. And she lets her consciousness take her from her heart into her blood…diseased blood, but primarily only the disease she knows. The one she's lived with for years and the one that will kill her in the end, not the one that very nearly beat it to the punch. And as her thoughts travel through her veins, she finds all those nasty symptoms…the remnants of what Hydra is doing to her body. She has to let the cure do the work on the disease itself, but her symptoms…those she will get rid of. She's really tired of coughing up blood.

Sadly, she's not done spitting up stuff. But this last one, doozy as it might be, will be the one that grants her freedom. She leaps to her feet and nearly trips getting to the biohazard disposal container. What she spits out…it's not quite blood. Oh, it's blood…that is in there. But there's more. It's black and oily, interminably hot. All the symptoms, given physical form and forced out of her body through the safest exit. Lena retches over and over, expelling the remainder of the symptoms.

And when she's done she slams the lid shut, ignoring the new ache of Paradox racing through her bones. That will go away quickly enough. What's important is, she's no longer symptomatic. And she can leave.

She is good enough to tell Luke that she's leaving. She doesn't want her friends to worry about her, after all. They may come checking on her, and she can't handle that right now.

She slips on a pair of clothes that were brought for her. She doesn't know whose they are, and she doesn't know who brought them. She doesn't ask. After she asks after Sera's condition (for the umpteenth time since she's arrived here), she thanks the good doctor and walks out.

Her eyes wince at the bright sky. She hasn't seen it in almost two weeks. But the sky. The air. For one moment she almost (almost) smiles, eyes drifting shut as the sensation.

She's free.

-----------------------------

"Jesus."

Those are the first words when she sees the state of her apartment. It turns her stomach to see, objectively, what she was doing to herself. Curled up on plastic—on fucking plastic —next to her bed and leaving her deadly spatters of blood all over it like some kind of Typhoid Mary. She looks over the scene…the spots in the carpet, covered in bleach where she wearily worked under her fever to clean up (poorly) every spot of blood she spat up around the place. The non-functional laptop. The garbage can full of week-old pathogen-infested phlegm and plasma.

Her lip curls, her feet refuse to step in any further. She can't be here. This is too much. It's all just too much for her mind to handle. The smell of disease. That tang of death.

And now she's throwing up again. New stomach acids added to the old and the rest for a disgusting mix.

The emptying of her stomach, though, fills her resolve somehow. It's as if that last retch was the last thing she had to give in this world, and there's nothing more for her to lose.

Cleanup of a normal flu is disgusting. This is a thousand times worse. Covered as much as she can, she doesn't bother scrubbing. Anything in the apartment that has blood on it is piled into the garbage can. It's mostly clothes, some papers, a few personal items. Some of those personal items can never be replaced. But they have to go.

By the time she's done, the can is filled. Just one thing left to do. It's difficult to get it down the stairs without spilling anything, but she manages. She carries it to the alleyway outside her apartment and dumps the whole thing in a bigger, metal garbage can.

And then out comes the lighter fluid. She's remarkably calm as she takes what amounts to most of her possessions and douses it in accelerant. Her expression is blank when she lights a match and tosses it inside. And she stands there, watching it as it burns away, taking one disease with it and leaving another behind.

That night, she checks into a hotel. Her lease will be broken by the end of the week. She can't live there anymore.

A constellation of tears on your lashes
Burn everything you love, then burn the ashes
In the end everything collides, my childhood
Spat back out the monster that you see

Fall Out Boy, "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light 'Em Up)"

[Samael]

February 21st

Friday night is always a good night for going out on the town. Going to a bar and drinking your problems away or finding someone to hook up with for the night; catching a show if you're of a more "cultured" bent. Hitting up a nightclub and getting lost in EDM beats, house music atmosphere and the swaying pulse of humanity that comes to writhe and twist to one rhythm as one.

The latter is where Lena Reilly comes alive. She's a New Yorker by birth (and once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker), but she's found her home in Denver and the Denver nightlife is one that she's embraced as fully as she did her natural habitat of boroughs and subways. This is where the normally reserved (but friendly) woman that people know from her visits to the chantry and other such adventures fades away, and DJ Halcyon rises in its place. It's not quite as simple as all that, mind; she's not some sort of split personality a la Fight Club. But there is a distinct difference between the women that other Awakened individuals in the city have seen--quiet, guarded, even shy at times--and the woman who lives as one with the people on the dance floor and shares their joy, their breath, their heartbeat and their sheer, simple life.

At least, there used to be a difference.

Ever since "the incident," Lena hasn't been herself. Anyone who's seen her knows it. Her "co-workers" so to speak--bartenders, club owners, fellow deejays--they've seen the change in her that's perhaps more pronounced than has been seen by those who know she's more than just a talented spinner. She shows up and she's friendly and she does her job, and she's good at her job. She always has had a feel for the crowd and the way that it is leaning. Call it a sixth sense, call it a bit of Mind magic or just call it being thoroughly in tune with the music; living through the beat. But the person that works the booth isn't DJ Halcyon. It's Lena Reilly. And the least of the signs of the change is the fact that she doesn't go down into the crowd anymore, doesn't sneak down with a few extra tracks cued up in order to be part of humanity, even if for a few minutes.

It's just not her anymore.

And so she stands in the booth, while her remix of Kelly Clarkson's last (non-Christmas) single pulses and lights flash around her. She's a person in her own island. The music barely even registers to her. She's Sean with some red on her. Wesley Allen Gibson in Wanted. She's a Nine Inch Nails song, and as much as she smiles and acts like everything's fine, she knows it's not the case. Everyone--

EVERYONE

--knows it's not the case. But she's not close enough to any of them to be friends, and they have their own problems. So they let her be, and they talk behind her back.

And so it goes. For days. Days that turned into weeks. Weeks that turned into two months. Into now.

It's Friday night, and in a rare Friday night occurrence, she doesn't have a gig. This hasn't happened since the week that she vanished; she's worked every job she's been able to in order to rebuild her reputation for no-showing several dates (on Halloween, of all weeks). Tonight she's free, and normally she would be going to the Chantry to do what she can to help out there, or even just hanging out at the clubs. But she hasn't been back to the Chantry since the Hydra incident and her recent interactions with her friends (friends? Yes, friends) have, if anything, made her feel worse about the possibility. And hanging out at the clubs...

Well. You hang out at places where you live. Not at places you work.

So she finds herself, this night, walking through the back streets toward her hotel. She's wandering back here for a reason, and it's not because she's itching to get home. She wants to be with people, around them. That's something that one of those friends was right about, although perhaps it was taken too far in Lena's mind. Regardless, people are life and being alone is death. She can't be that close to death. But she can't be around people she loves. That's too dangerous for her, and she's already done enough damage. If she goes much further, she might just pass the point of no return with them, and then where would she be? So instead, she walks along the streets that most sane people wouldn't walk alone, her hands in the pockets of her jacket and her head down. She's not going anywhere specific, but she'll know where she is heading when she gets there.

The place that she finds herself, as it turns out, is a gathering. Denver may not be a place that most people think of when they consider rap and hip-hop music. New York, Detroit, Los Angeles...all of these places conjure up images. Notorious B.I.G. rhyming about slinging rock and the Beastie Boys bringing rock to the genre, or Jay Z delivering verses about growing up in Marcy Houses. Esham's acid rap and Eminem talking about 8 Mile. Death Row records, Compton, Kendrick Lamar. But one may be surprised to know that the Mile High city has quite the hip-hop scene itself. And like any city with a hip-hop community, there is an underground rap scene that includes the requisite battle rap gatherings.

Lena hears it before she sees it, and it draws her attention out of her own thoughts...a good thing, to be sure, considering where her thoughts go. The sound of the crowd can be heard as someone is making their way out of the club, and her senses zero in on it. Doldrumed or not, she's a musician and while rap isn't necessarily her genre of choice, she appreciates it as much as she does all music genres. She gives a quick, furtive look around (paranoia) and steps forward, opening the door and stepping inside.

The place isn't exactly a high-end establishment, but neither is it a trashy warehouse. This is a legitimate nightclub that caters to the community. The inside is well-lit, with a bar and a stage upon which two people stand with an MC between them, and a crowd filled with college students and more. All variety of people can be found here, from the fraternity dudebros and the sorority snots to the wannabe (and not-so-wannabe) gangstas, the musicians, the artists and even just people here to have a good night and watch some performance art. They cheer one of the two on as he delivers a freestyle slam on his opponent. It's verbal acrobatics, with the crowd reacting and feeding the energy that shoots through the rapper like lightning. Words roll out and hit the ground in rapid-fire format, tailor-made and personalized to his opponent. These are people who know each other, and Lena once again feels like an outsider.

But at least it's a comfortable feeling.

And then, just when she's about to turn and go--she sees the schedule written on the backboard next to the bar. Tonight is an Open Mic night. And as ridiculous as it might be to imagine of about this twenty-something EDM DJ who works with ambient and pop music and is the furthest thing you could think of from "hard"...she pauses there. Every muscle in her body just stops moving and she stares at it.

She's not a rapper. She's far from it. She's never done it in her life. She remixes, she doesn't make new stuff. Not that she hasn't done a few tracks of her own--she is an artist, no matter what those who sniff their noses at deejays might think--but that's a far sight from something like this. And if you asked her later she wouldn't be able to tell you why her feet started to move, taking her step by step up to the bartender and asking to be put on the list. The man looks at her askance, this pretty and quiet girl in a "Keep Calm and Listen to Armin Van Buren" t-shirt and a jean jacket over that, who curls her hair behind her ear and puts on a polite smile before she asks. But he nods a little, and he tells her she'll be up in a few.

"A few" is a long, long time to wait. The seconds turn into minutes in your mind, even when you're a Sleeper. When you're a mage whose Tradition specializes in the fluidness of time...well, seconds turn into hours. Every tick of the clock seems to stretch out, as she downs an Adios Motherfucker for liquid courage and waits for her turn. She used to me a much sturdier drinker, but that was whole other life ago.

The vodka, rum, tequila and gin combine in her stomach and send tingling warmth out to her extremities. It emboldens her...strips away those doubts by shredding inhibitions. They dissipate like vapor and vanish in the air, and in the meantime she studies those who hit the stage before her. She closes her eyes and listens to what they do, gets into the rhythm of it. She's not planning exactly what she's going to say; rather, she gets herself into the ebb and flow of the rhythm. The cadenced rise and fall permeates her mind and falls in synch with her heartbeat. Or does her heartbeat fall in sync with the beat? No…they were always the same, that world heartbeat from which music springs pure and transcendent. And in her mind, a seed begins to take form, to grow and expand into something more.

It's been said (usually with disdain) that members of the Cult of Ecstasy, for a Tradition that specializes in Time magic, let time get away from them with remarkable ease. That's not entirely true. They always know, but when Time is a fluid concept and entirely non-linear than what's two minutes, or twenty, or two hundred? They're all the same, really. Lena's eyes finally open finally, seconds before it's her turn. And she's rising to her feet as the loser in the battle before her is just finishing up. The last of her drink drains away and she steps forward, waiting for Halcyon to be called up.

Everyone else has had supporters in the crowd; people to cheer as they take the stage. This isn't something you do on a whim. When Lena steps up onto the stage, there are a few people who cheer—only because they're cheering for everyone. But it's remarkably silent otherwise. A few people who visit the clubs regularly recognize her name, but a contrary to popular opinion a DJ is not an MC. She doesn't pay it any mind, barely registers it when the host calls out the names. She doesn't look out at the crowd, doesn't grandstand. She's focused.

Her opponent, an experienced and fairly well-known competitor who goes by Arkane, starts it off. He knows of her, only vaguely. Her fame within the nightclub scene actually works to her disadvantage here, because it gives him just enough ammo to tailor something to her. He launches into an impressively intricate rhyme, playing on words to point out how she's soft and nothing but a rip-off artist who remixes other people's work. He spins a lyric about how she dropped off the earth for a couple of weeks, and that she's gonna need a month after she's embarrassed off this stage.

Normally in battle raps, the competitor being lyricized about—the recipient, let's say—reacts to keep the crowd going. They'll wave off the disses and look unimpressed, and basically try to turn the tide against their opponent. Lena does none of these things. She stands there, staring at Arkane with her hands in her pockets. She lets her head nod a little bit, keeping herself within the rhythm of the flow, and she smirks a bit here and there when a particularly good dig comes in.

And then it happens. There's no way he could have known that it would affect her that way, but the man drops a line that tenses her whole body up. Listen, when you're building a line around slamming someone else you don't think about being politically correct. And you certainly don't discount lines that dance around hot-button topics that might piss someone off. So when Arkane spits out that "I'm killing you slow, like I'm giving you AIDS"…well, it's a decent line. But he couldn't know that it would do to her.

He's surprised when she shoves him, this girl. She doesn't look like she would be the violent type. And she's not…but she is a woman of passions, like the rest of her Tradition. And she's rediscovering hers, because she went without them for too long. She buried them deep inside, because passion meant a loss of control. And she could never lose control, ever. What happened in the Hydra facility…that just made her even more sure because nothing she did had any effect. Her Passions were for shit. But in this moment…she's letting her Rage go. And she's about to unleash some serious Hate.

For the record, she's already lost from that moment. There are rules about not getting physical, and she just broke it. But the host still needs a performance, and there aren't many people left on the call list. And what's more…she has a look on her face that says it wouldn't be wise to cross her right now. So when she reaches for the mic, he hands it off.

There's no playing to the crowd. There's no humor, no witty repartee. The words flow from the Cultist toward the man and while they do, so does the emotion. She doesn't even really do it consciously; it's something that comes from a dark place inside of her. All her anger, her hatred—everything surrounding how she feels about her condition—it transfers from herself into her poor, unlucky opponent as she begins to rhyme.

I'm standing right here and my lips are a bomb
You're standing over there with some sweat on your palms
Yeah, you can say you're not scared and maybe that's true
Maybe you're just sweating 'cause you came down with the flu
But I'm worse than the flu, I'm worse than meningitis
Fuck your vaccine, 'cause I'm stronger than a virus
I'll leave your ears bloody and I'll make your head ache
You getting chills Arkane? I think I saw you shake
Now you know what it's like, you're gonna cough up blood for sure
You're the sickness on this stage and I'm the motherfucking cure

It's not a refined rap. It's not even incredibly witty. It's more of an extended metaphor than anything else, set to a beat and a cadence. It would be a complete loser in a real battle—and this isn't a real battle because she's already lost. But the terrified, even agonized look on Arkane's face tells a different story. The quiet crowd, unsure of what just happened, tells a different story. Lena shoves the microphone at the host and walks off stage, and right out of the place. She's still radiating those waves of hate—albeit residual now that she's done performing—and she gets a wide berth as she stalks out of the club.

You would think that after an incident like that, where she expelled so much hatred, Lena would be over the moon. That's not the case…at least, not at first. The floodgates have opened, and someone in a neighboring hotel room hears the muffled sounds of rage and sorrow that come forth. They knock and ask if she's okay, and she smiles a bit through puffy eyes and says that she'll be okay.

And that's the thing…for the first time in months, she suspects that maybe she will be. She still has so much wrong. And she's not made things better with the way she's reacted—keeping people at arm's length. Sometimes lashing out. But maybe—just maybe—there's a bit of hope.

The night ends with Lena's laptop open, her tablet next to it. The latter has real estate listings. She needs to stop living transiently. It's an excuse to run, and she needs to stop running. The former has her mixing programs up, headphones snaking out and coiling around her head as she works on that same Kelly Clarkson song that she finished up her set weeks (Days? Months? Whatever man, it's all time) before. No…not works. Music isn't work. For DJ Halcyon, music is life.

"Hey, this is not a funeral
It's a revolution, after all your tears have turned to rage
Just wait, everything will be okay
Even when you're feeling like it's going down to flames"

Samael:
[[Mind 1: Empower Mind for multi-tasking toward focus/firing creativity on multiple avenues. Diff 4, -1 for specialty focus, WP]]

Roll: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 4) ( success x 2 ) [WP] VALID

jamie @ 12:52PM
WITNESSED

Samael:
[[Mind 2: Empathic Projection - Feel My Hate. Diff 5, -1 for spec. focus, -1 for Quint, WP]]

Roll: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 5) ( success x 2 ) [WP] VALID

niko @ 1:39PM
Witness!