The Naked City Chronicles: Picnic by the Roadside IC [MsBloom & Sheena-Tiger]

[MsBloom]

It was the twentieth anniversary of the extra terrestrial visit that had laid waste a number of remote locations around the Earth and without having made any attempts at making contact with the Human civilisation, left again leaving behind them zones where the laws of physics had been altered by either their technology or by biological remains the same way Humans might leave remains behind after a picnic by the roadside. The event as it was commonly known. The visit and the debris left behind had made The Zones (as the affected areas are called) mostly uninhabitable by humans. It was also Jamie's twentieth birthday. She'd been born at a free clinic run by nuns from the cloister attached to the Cathedral of St Dymphna.

For the most part it had been a life of misery and abuse that might have broken anyone, and Jamie was broken for sure but she was also a survivor. After her mother had died of an overdose she had bounced around the foster care system and suffered verbal, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of so many foster parents she had lost count before ending up in an orphanage run by the very same nuns that had delivered her into this bleak molested world. It was after having run away from the orphanage she had begun to exhibit special powers, the ability to camouflage herself against any surface being the first but she had also developed a telepathic ability and a level of agility that would make an Olympic gymnast look like a blind, clumsy child wrapped in pillows on rollerskates. She also had a heightened intuition and often dreamt of things that later happened just as she had dreamt them.

It was also after having run away from the orphanage that she met Red Schuhart who saw a talent for travelling into The Zone that surrounded the city that had once known it's name but abandoned and for all intents and purposes forgotten it after the event. She was twelve at the time and unlike all other men she had met Red did not abuse her in any way, physically, verbally or sexually, all he wanted from her was her talent for getting past gravitational anomalies, flesh-eating brawn and other such dangers that made The Zone a place most sane people stayed clear of to get to the treasures it held, like for instance the needles that began to spin if you put the tip against a magnetic surface, and they didn't stop spinning until you physically removed the tip from the magnetic surface making them a source of infinite energy, a solution to the age old problem of the Perpetuum Mobile. Trained and guided by her mentor Jamie made a fortune for Red and he paid her quite well for it.

When Red was presumed dead three years later after failing to return from a solo raid into The Zone just North of the city, in search of the mythical Golden Orb that was rumoured to be able to grant wishes, Jamie continued taking missions into The Zone for a while but eventually she stopped because after Red everyone was simply taking advantage of her abilities and talents without paying her nearly enough for her to make a living from it. She began drinking more and more to keep away the nightmares that didn't have the decency to remain nightmares and to numb the memories of the abuse she had been put through, both in her childhood and in the years after Red's presumed death. She also got into other drugs. She began smoking Marijuana and taking a wide variety of pills regularly. Having spent all the money Red had paid her in less than two months she was basically back to living on the streets, had it not been for the manager of the Tabula Rasa Hotel letting her stay in one of the smaller rooms in the attic in exchange for certain favours a few times every month.

The sun had only just risen above the horizon and the pinks and yellows had faded into a greyish blue. Jamie took one last drag on her cigarette and crushed it against the concrete floor of the roof and headed back down to barely habitable room to start the celebration with whatever alcohol or drugs she still had left when her phone indicated the arrival of a new message. It was from Monkey, Red's, mutated daughter one of the first children born to a Stalker, as those who made a living by retrieving objects from The Zone were called. She said she had new information about treasure in the deeper parts of The Zone that was for the most part unexplored. The first message was shortly followed by a second message containing a birthday greeting from Monkey who was almost like a sister to Jamie, or at least as close as could be.

Monkey still lived with what was left of her mother Guta in a rather less than posh flat, not far from the Tabula Rasa, just a few blocks from the entrance to The Shallows, a part of the city where, even before the event, people who didn't want to be found went to disappear. It was a labyrinth into which most of the people living in the city hesitated to venture and even fewer came back from. It was also through The Shallows that the safest entrance to the Northern Zone could be reached. Safest that was once you actually reached it but Jamie had been through the labyrinth enough times with Red to know the way in her sleep but that still didn't mean it was safe trying to reach it. There were creatures living in The Shallows that most people wouldn't be able to conjure up in their worst nightmares. Luckily though that was not where she had agreed to meet with Monkey but rather at a small juice bar called The Orchard.

Monkey was fifteen and one of the most beautiful creatures Jamie had ever laid eyes on, despite, or perhaps because of, the short but silky smooth fur that covered her entire body and was the reason for her nickname. Jamie couldn't remember Red or Guta ever having called their daughter anything but Monkey so maybe it was her actual name. Born five years after the event and one of the first children to have been mutated due to a parent's exposure to the radiation in the zones. She had been born at home and there were no official records or birth certificate since Red had been rightfully paranoid about The Institute kidnapping her to experiment on her. Many children born after Monkey had suffered that fate and none of them had ever been seen again.

The meeting was brief. Jamie bought them a pitcher of strawberry and lime juice which they shared while avoiding the topic of Red Schuhart as carefully as they could until Monkey took out a small black, severely water-damaged notebook and placed it on the table in front of Jamie.
"Three pages from the back," she said in a rather throaty, only just barely human, if that was what she really was, voice.
Jamie nodded and turned to the third page from the back and there was a drawing of an orb surrounded by what looked like spiderweb and underneath the drawing was Red's distinctive handwriting: Like a queen she sits on her invisible throne to judge those who come seeking her grace and grant the deepest wishes and desires of those she deems worthy. It was rather cryptic and even though Jamie had worked long enough with Red to decipher most of his riddles this one had her drawing nothing but blanks. She then flipped through the rest of the notebook which seemed to be a step by step map on how to reach the third page from the back.
"I'll be in touch Monkey," she promised and tucked the notebook into the inside pocket of her leather jacket.
"Tell your mother hello from me," she added and left with a casual wave goodbye.
By the time she got back to the Tabula Rasa she had been gone about two hours and before doing anything else she went up onto the roof and hid the notebook in the blast proof strong box she kept hidden inside a disused vent up there. One could not be too careful with certain things, especially not things relating to The Zone.

She then went down to O'Malley's half a block from the Tabula Rasa and ordered a quart of whiskey, on the tab. She needed to focus on deciphering the notebook and its cryptic message but first she needed to numb the pain of the memories meeting Monkey had brought up. Half an hour, and five cigarettes, later the whisky was gone and she got up to use the bathroom.

 

[Sheena-Tiger]

Twenty years ago, the world had changed and everyone old enough would grasp the changes and have an understanding of the impact on their world, as much as that is possible without being able to see the future. Others grew up, not knowing it any other way and some were caught in between, not old enough to grasp the change happening, not young enough to not remember anything else. Malvina Blair was of the last kind. She had started to experience the world around her at an age of five, could remember at the very least bits and pieces from that time and there was not much that had changed during the following roughly two years. The Event had created these Zones full of strange things and everything together had an impact on people. Old structures changed or even collapsed, others started to take shape and among them was the impact on working people.

Malvina's parents might have been around for quite some time at the time of The Event, being elves, but it did not change the fact that they had only limited abilities and knowledge and with the changing times they fell on hard times. First it was only Malvina's father, going into the zone close by but when his findings brought in good money, his wive followed him as well. Being grown ups though, they found there were limits to where they could go and shortly after, their beloved daughter had to go with them into the zone, Malvina barely seven years old. The next couple of years were filled with ups and downs. Prices for the artifacts brought back fluctuated and not every run into the zone was a great success, sometimes they were disasters and one of them came back wounded, needing to rest so the other two had to go without the recovering member of the family.

Around her twelfth year, seven years after the Event, things seemed to take a slow turn to the better for the Blair family. Young Malvina showed incredible feats, being faster and stronger than other elves or humans her age and her youth seemed to fill her with boundless energy. Once more it was possible to recover more or simply more expensive artifacts from within the zone, a zone which had seemingly been picked mostly clean after so many years, at the very least everything decently easy to retrieve and more than enough artifacts seemed to be more plenty than others and thus hardly worth anything. Slowly but surely it became evident though, Malvina's feats were far above anything normal. She was lifting weights a professional would be able to push and hold for a few seconds, she was not even breaking a sweat after a minute and no one was able to catch her as she was sprinting more like a Gepard than a humanoid. It all seemed to come with a cost though, as the young woman was eating at least enough to feed two people, more often than not she did need an additional meal or simply ate more. At one time, her father even had to carry his unconscious daughter home, she had simply collapsed after going for to long without food.

By then, the young redhead had hit the age of sixteen a few months ago and decided, it was time to leave her loving parents behind to ease at the very least their financial burden. With her accumulated skills as a so-called Stalker, and her extraordinary abilities, she managed to survive, learning better how her abilities worked as well. To her it became evident that, if she held herself back, her body was not burning through that much more food than a normal person her age and species would and everything with sugar was helping to keep the need in check as well. Naturally, people took notice of her as she was getting close to the age of nineteen years, and not just for her looks. People with extraordinary powers were nothing unknown and sometimes certain skills were required to get to especially tricky places. And some people had gathered information but not the skills themselves and employed young people like Malvina, often abusing their power of knowledge and connections, leaving Malvina and others in a position where they simply were exploited.

Lucky Malvina never gave up and at some point she met a man going by the name Burbridge, for some people going by the name of Vulture, who was not only working fair, he even took her under his wing. They worked together for the biggest part of four years, sometimes teaming up with a friend of his going by the name Red, until Burbridge was severely wounded on an expedition he did on his own, Malvina visiting her parents for a change. The man did survive but he was unable to go on any expedition ever again as it seemed and with a heavy heart, they parted ways. Every now and then, during the last two to three years, Malvina got back into contact with her mentor, checking in on him as she did with her parents which lead her into the same old regions every now and then.

Today she had just came back into town, looking out for someone maybe needing her skills, by now able to negotiate far better prices and conditions than in her teens. Chewing on a chocolate bar, she was getting low on supplies in terms of sweet things, she entered O'Malley's. It surely was not the best place you could visit but it was in the range of her finances and by experience, the chances were not bad to find someone looking for someone like her. At the bar she ordered and grabbed two large glasses of juice, pretty sure they would not be her last, and sat down at an empty table, pushing an empty glass which smelled like whisky away. Sipping at her first glass, she finally started to look around, mostly into the direction of the entrance, every now and then playing with one of the piercings decorating the outline of her right ear, pushing the long red mass of hair back while doing so.

 

[MsBloom]

With the door locked to the stall at the back of the rather filthy bathroom at O'Malley's Jamie sat down on the toilet and as she voided her bladder she also let tears flow. She never let anyone see her cry, ever, but she was not entirely dead inside and the memories of Red and his tragic death almost always brought her to tears.
"The fuck did you have to go in alone for you dumb fuck," she muttered to herself but at the same time it was quite obvious to her after having browsed through what must be his last notes.
He had gone after that which everyone had always talked about but always agreed was an impossible mission, the Golden Orb. Its existence had first been recorded only months after the event by an official team from the institute in terms of shining like a piece of sun fallen from the sky caught in a web of diamond threads, quite poetic really but then many of the reports regarding The Zone, the objects and phenomena found there were prone to such descriptions. There had since been countless reports of the unique object and every Stalker Jamie had ever talked to had their own theory on how it might be reached. Few were confident enough in their theory to actually attempt it. Most who did always found their way blocked, either by fly swatters, Greenies, Jolly Ghosts or some other lethal or debilitating phenomena or object. Some never came back and now it seemed that Red was to be counted among them.

Jamie had of course always suspected that Red had died trying to accomplish something impossible. There were few Stalkers that had been to the deep places of The Zone like he had. His former partner The Vulture was perhaps the one who could match Red in that respect but he had also lost the use of his legs to Witches Jelly. As she eventually pulled her jeans back up without wiping, there was rarely any toilet paper in the bathroom at O'Malley's, Jamie couldn't help but wonder what it was that had eventually got the better of Red. The reports from the stalkers that had found him and carried his body out were inconclusive. One talked about a seemingly sentient shimmer hovering over his body, or even emanating from it, another spoke of a shadow so dense that once inside it you were in complete darkness even though the sun had shone brightly before you stepped into it. The institute refused to release the autopsy report which only led to speculations and rumours. Perhaps with the notebook Jamie might have a chance at finding out for herself and possibly, using Red's notes, solving the mystery of the Golden Orb at the same time. Going into The Zone alone was dangerous business though and she would need a partner, preferably one that wouldn't shit themselves at the first sign of a real challenge.

She ran her hands through her hair as she stood in front of the cracked mirror and wiped the residual tears from her face before lighting a cigarette. It was a night made for drinking if ever there was one, for celebrating the completion of twenty laps around the sun. Twenty years. It seemed like an eternity when she considered her life.

"Another quart," she told O'Malley, the old geezer behind the bar and once he had placed it on the counter she grabbed it and returned to her table only to find it occupied.
At first Jamie didn't recognise the Elven girl sitting there but then she noticed the choice of beverage and there was only one she knew of who would come to a place like O'Malley's and order Juice.
"Mal?" she asked and sat down opposite the redhead.
"Now I usually don't subscribe to the idea of coincidences but this sure looks like a lucky one."

 

[Sheena-Tiger]

The young elven woman was having her nose stuck in a small and thin booklet, not the kind you call notebook but a novel, a paperback novel to be exact. By the looks of it, she either had found it somewhere or had read it much more often than once, the truth was somewhere in between. Every now and then she was sipping on one of her glasses, turning pages while she was waiting for nothing specific.

Her pointy ears picked up the movements around her, not that many people were walking around, few were coming or going but one pair of feet stopped close to her table. She could not only hear them but see them past her novel and slowly sat the novel down to look up. It was the moment when she heard her name said by a voice which was familiar, well a short form of her name at the very least. Malvina blinked her light brown eyes, looking at the young woman sitting opposite of her.

"Jamie? Is that really you?" she put her novel back into the bag she has with herself, sitting next to her chair. "I do not know about coincidences but with the way how the two of us make a living, this is a place we are likely to visit. And honestly right now I am looking for some way to make some extra money, if possible with some upfront payment since..." the young elf gave her bag a gentle touch, showing how empty it was. "My supplies are kinda running low, if you know what I mean. But, what brings you here, Jam?"

 

[MsBloom]

"While you might be right about coincidences and this place it certainly is a coincidence that I would find you here today," Jamie said and took a swig from her bottle.
"Y'see I was kind of looking for someone to partner up with myself on this, the 20th anniversary of the event."
She looked at Malvina and remembered how Red had once said that The Vulture had had the second best apprentice in The Naked City. Malvina was legendary for her speed and strength but there were many who hesitated to bring her into The Zone because of the high cost of keeping her energised, especially after the prices of artefacts had dwindled.

Jamie nodded and confirmed that she understood that a stalker like Malvina would barely earn enough on her own to keep herself supplied with carbohydrates.
"Monkey gave me a real kicker of a birthday present earlier today but I don't want to talk about it here though," she added and smiled.
"Far too ... valuable ... to speak of in front of so many curious ears," she added and took another swig.
"So for now you'll just have to help me celebrate the end of my second decade orbiting the sun. Cheers."
She took a big gulp of the whisky this time, draining about half the bottle before waving her arm at the young woman behind the bar that she wanted another and also pointed at Malvina's glasses, signalling that she too would need a refill.
"Tonight we drink and get high and tomorrow we talk business," Jamie concluded.