She tilted her head slightly as Brian said the voices were not his friends, face adopting an expression like confusion, then one like sympathy. She reached up and touched his chin, stroking it fondly.

“Aw,” she said. “That's so sad.” There was a greedy, wistful look in her eyes. “I would take them away from you,” she said. “I would suck them away and pull them ooooouttttt...” She ended the word with a kind of croon, then stopped, smiled, and went back to walking inside. It was too bad that Brian didn't like his voices. She would enjoy having people in her head always telling her how great she was. Well, she could always tell herself. That would have to do.

When Brian mentioned looking at the stars she glanced at him and then nodded rapidly, a wide smile breaking out on her face. “Yes! Show me the stars!” She laughed. It seemed very funny just then. “Stars are made of fire,” she said. “Big nuclear fire. Enough to burn up the whoooollllleeee worrrlllddd.” She snickered. She was imagining the streets full of people screaming as the fire consumed them. How much fun would that be? Too bad she'd go to jail if they caught her setting anything on fire again. Stupid people. She hated judges and police. She wanted to kill all of them. Hurt them and burn them and laugh as they screamed and burned and burned...

She looked up at Brian again, admiring his tall, strong form. She imagined him shirtless, holding a hammer. Standing over someone tied up. Imagined him bringing the hammer up, up, then down, down. Imagined his muscles rippling as he hit, hit, made the blood come out until the tied up person stopped moving. In her imagination it was beautiful. Slowly she licked her upper lip.

She spoke almost without realizing it, voice so soft it took her a moment to realize she had. “Have you ever killed anyone, Brian?” Her tone was inviting. Seductive, almost. Her eyes were wide, gleeful, her smile showing all her teeth. She imagined him naked and swinging the hammer and it was a glorious thought. If they ever killed together, they'd have so much fun.

Brian Harris

The Atomic Lounge was a bar with a Fallout aesthetic. Well, it wasn't explicitly Fallout, they probably hadn't paid any licensing fees, but that was clearly the look they were going for. They succeeded, too. The aesthetic was one of the things Adri appreciated about the bar and a major reason why she had picked it for the beginning of the night’s business.
Though Adri didn’t think about it, the choice of location was fitting. In a place renowned for its aesthetics, a matter of aesthetics would be resolved. The issue was one Sybil Massara, con artist and grifter who had made the itsy bitsy mistake of going around dressed as a Spade without permission. This was big deal to the Princess of Spades. Your brand was everything in the gang business. You needed reputation in order to get respect and you needed respect in order to get anything done. The use of gang colors and symbolism had to be enforced for the same reason that trademark claims had to be enforced: letting someone else have them threatened to let your reputation get out of your control, and who knew what would happen if someone else thought they could do anything they wanted with the Spade name. No, no, the only thing to do was to see that the inappropriate trademark use was stopped immediately, and, if necessary, painfully.

Adri wasn’t the type to think in terms of patents and trademarks, however. To her, the issue was that the Spade mark was THEIRS and that nobody else could have it. It was that simple. Also, having the opportunity to do something that might help her sister out excited her. She didn’t want to simply be a load on her sister, yet her instability made it hard to help much. This was one task she could succeed at, though. Making someone just a little bit scared.

Sybil had been approached with a job offer. Just a bit of freelance work, well-paid. She was to get the details at the Atomic Lounge tonight, only she would be getting something else instead. There was one other reason Adri had chosen this bar for the meeting. The bartender was the sort who could be persuaded to slip Sybil a bit of Ambien when she ordered something. If Sybil understood her situation, that wouldn’t be necessary, but if she showed any resistance, she might get more than she bargained for.

Adri rather hoped she resisted.

There was Sybil at the agreed upon table. There were the hired help covered the doors. And there was Adri, walking up to the table where Sybil was sitting. Adri wore black, knee-high boots and a black dress. The dress was high at the bottom and low at the top and lower still on the back. Adri had picked it because it looked nice and because it showed off several Spade tattoos. Her hair was in two bunches and her smile was wide and gleeful beneath dead eyes.

She slid into the seat across from Sybil with the grace of a dancer. “Hi Sybil Massara!” she said. “You’ve been going around wearing spades when you’re not a Spade! That’s not allowed and you need to apologize!”

Sybil Massara

Adri had a lot of clothes.

With all the clothes that were on her floor, you might not have thought there would be many left to put in a closet. You would be wrong. She had designer outfits, preset and hanging on hangers together, dresses, blouses, sweaters, and an entangling undergrowth of shoes of all kinds. She had form-fitting clubware and ratty shirts that should have been thrown away long ago, formal dresses, graphic tees, tie-dyed slacks and jeans with holes in the knees. Then there were hats and scarves and bracelets and necklaces hanging from a rack on the wall, and a shelf with several purses on it beneath. She seemed to strongly favor silver jewelry. Colors were all over the place, with black taking up more then its fair share, but no lack of pink and and some “normal” colors presumably intended for dealing with muggles. There was a surprising amount of organization, given that the rest of her room was a wreck, or at least enough that Adri seemed to find everything she wanted without trouble.

She stared at Taliah for a moment, lips twisting in an expression of contemplation as she looked the other girl up and down. “Hmm...” Then inspiration struck her and she dove back into the closet. She pulled out a shirt, held it in front of Taliah, then shook her head and tossed it onto the bed. It took her a few tries but she finally emerged with a look of triumph.

“Try these!” she exclaimed. “You'll look great!”

Taliah Dawson

This time she waited to make sure the person in the cab was really Brian. When she saw him, the first thing she thought was how good he looked. The shirt looked nice on him, and she could see muscles underneath it. Dang, she wanted to do more than just look! But her attention was distracted by the next thing she saw.

“Hi Brian!” She exclaimed happily as she got into the cab. “OH MY GOSH YOU HAVE A DOG SHE'S SO CUTE! I'm gonna hug her.” She, did, and as she did she accidentally burped in the dog's ear. “Sorry!” She giggled.

She was a little less drunk now that she'd had to wait a few minutes for Brian to arrive, but it still would have been a bad idea to put her behind the wheel of a vehicle. The alcohol made her lively and upbeat, the life of the party. She was humming to herself and singing slightly incoherent songs that were half-remembered, half-made up on the spot.

“So glad you came to pick me up,” said Adri. “If not for you, I-” She stopped, glanced around as if to check that nobody was watching, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “I would have had to ask my sister for help.”


Brian Harris

Adri was drunk. This was not an uncommon occurrence, especially on weekends. Adri liked being drunk. She liked the fuzz it put on the world, the way it made some things dull and some things sharp. It made the loud music played at the dance fall to a comfortable background buzz. It made her giggle, and when she was at the bar, it made her lean on the men and the woman and made her hands wonder to places they weren't always welcome. It also made her a bit of a nuisance for the other patrons, which was why she was currently being escorted outside by two large men.


“I like you,” she slurred. “You got big muscles. Too much of a belly but the muscles are good.” She tried to poke the belly in question with her finger, but as her arms were currently being held she failed to do so. For some reason she found this extremely funny and burst out laughing.


“Uh-huh,” said the escort to whose belly she been referring. The other one pushed the door open and the first pushed Adri out of it, letting go abruptly. She stumbled and fell in a heap of limbs, still laughing. “You sure know how to show a lady a good time! Heh heh heh BRAP!” The last sound was a burp.

“And stay out,” said the man who had held the door. “We don't want you. Okay? You come in here again and we'll call the cops. We don't care what you do or where you go. It just has to be somewhere else. Is that clear enough for you?”

“Bleeeeaaaaaaaaagh,” said Adri, sticking out her tongue. “I could show you,” she said. “Wanna see me tie a knot with my tongue?”

“No,” said the first man. “I'm married, and you're disgusting. Go lay in the gutter if you want, that's about where you belong.”

The door slammed shut.

“Huh.” Slowly, using the wall of the bar for support, Adri made her way to her feet. She looked around, squinting at the slowly moving sidewalk. Three bars in one night! Was that a new record? Nope, wait, record was five. Darn. She laughed. “Can't get two more now!” She couldn't get much of anywhere, actually. Leaning along the wall, she found a bench a short distance away and flopped down on it, draping herself across it and shaking her head back and forth. She was dressed for clubbing, showing off her share of skin, and she got some looks which she returned with pbbbbbbts and by yelling racial slurs and with catcalls towards both men and women. This last backfired on her when a man spun around and marched towards her with clenched fists. “Listen, you creepy lesbo b*tch, my daughter's sixteen and if you don't shut your f***ing mouth I'm about ready to call-”

Mention of the police scared her. She knew full well she had two strikes on her record and couldn't afford a third. At the man's words she jumped up with a eep and ran at random as fast she could.

She didn't know how long she ran. All she knew is that eventually she looked up, failed to recognize where she was, and decided she should head home. This proved to be a problem. She was banned from both Lyft and Uber and the walk would have taken far longer then she wanted. It was quite late now. She could call Yennifer, but she hated calling Yennifer for things like that. It made Yennifer think she was retarded, and Adri hated that feeling.

She opened her phone, not sure what to do when she saw his name. They hadn't talked in a while. Oh, but they'd had so much fun together! He'd be perfect!

She dialed. “Hi Adri, it's Brian, wanna pick me up?! No, wait, uh...”

You could tell from her voice she was still somewhat drunk.

Brian Harris

Always mercurial, Adri's attitude changed the instant Taliah said she had a surprise. Her eyes widened, and she said, "Ooooh." It was a childlike reaction, and in many ways treating her like a child was the best way to deal with her.

"I love surprises!" She was on her feet in an instant and made it to her room in a few short hops. "Come help me get dressed!"

Dressing Adri was quite an affair. She sent Taliah back and forth, digging through the mess to find things ("No, the other black one!"), sometimes deciding that, "Nah, I'll wear the other after all!" after two or three others had been tried.

Eventually, though, she got on a shiny black dress, a pair of black heels, a black choker, a silver necklace with a crescent pendant, dangling earrings with skulls on them, black, fingerless gloves, two silver rings, a leather anklet, rings in her nose and lip and left eyebrow, purple eyeliner and purple lipstick that she seemed pleased with. A brush run quickly through her hair and sime hairspray completed her preparations and she grabbed her pink purse and turned to face Taliah. "What do you think?" she demanded, giving a little twirl. Her eyes were sparkling with excitement. Then a thought struck her.

"Hey, you wanna dress up? You can try any of my clothes!"

@taliah