Venus and Edie, round 1.

[shewent]

Being dead wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

Hell wasn't as bad as they said.

Heaven wasn't as good.

And who the hell predicted that you could just go from one to the other like walking down to the trashy 7-11 on the corner.

Though the 7-11 has way better beer.

Edie flopped back on the worn couch, looking through her lowered lashes as those meandering around her parts. A hodge podge of mediocrity if she'd ever seen one.

Maybe this really was just hell. Maybe hell wasn't something that seemed awful at first, but just the eternity of boring weighing you down day after day for all eternity. Like some fucked up Twilight Zone episode you could never really get out of.

Shit, this was getting to heavy. Pushing herself up, she dusted off her butt, before calling out to whomever was near that she was going for a walk. She doubted they cared much, but it just felt weird not to let someone know.

Comments

[celebrityskinned]

"Right? Our contracts only lasted three months at a time, and half of us didn't live long enough to see our first renewal." Venus laughs, and it's a wry sound. Maybe they're lucky, the X-Statix. They embraced mortality, instead of spending their lives fearing an afterlife that was more dull than anything else.

"I like to think I lasted a while. That's why we were going to quit. Got the death-seeking bug out of our system."

[shewent]

"I know you were always just on the tip of our tongue for next."

She could spread a little ego boosting around. It always felt good to know you were wanted, and so far it didn't seem like Venus had a terrible experince on the team. There wasn't the deep bitterness she had seen in some others. Not that she didn't understand them, but she was glad Venus didn't seem the kind.

[celebrityskinned]

"Thanks. Is it rude to say that you weren't even cold in the ground before Spike Freeman called me up?"

She won't mention Guy. There's just something a little bit crass about telling a dead woman you fucked the bereaved.

[shewent]

"Nah. I never had too many delusions about just exactly how important I was to good old Spike Freeman." He nose wrinkled up, before she burst out into laughter.

It was hard to hold grudges about that sorta shit when you had the whole context of eternity to deal with.

"Any good gossip? Hell is boring by the way. Or heaven. Sorry."

[celebrityskinned]

"Good. For what it's worth, he took out a hit on all of us and your boyfriend snapped his neck. Then we had Dead Girl go use him in purgatory like some kind of macabre sock puppet." Venus makes a gesture with her hand like a little snake.

"How's that for gossip, girl?"

[shewent]

"I can't imagine it happening to a nicer person." Edie snickered as she tried her best to visualize it all. Good. That ass deserved no better.

At the mention of 'her boyfriend' there was a moment of stillness on her face, briefly, before she tucked it away. That was an emotional minefield she wanted to get into with someone who really was a stranger. Still, would he show up here?

Did she want him to?

Henrietta = Princess Di's expy

[celebrityskinned]

Venus snickers too, because it's true. No one ever had any love for Spike Freeman, and no one was under any illusion that he loved anything but his bank account. He probably slept with his checkbook under his pillow.

"We had Princess Henrietta join us for a while too. She was a ghost. Then she haunted some pop songs and killed people all like The Ring."

Re: Henrietta = Princess Di's expy

[shewent]

"How many dead people have been one this team at once?" She snickered. "It's like foreshadowing."

Looking off into the distance, not that that was a very exciting prospect around these parts, she let out a soft sigh, shaking her head. It was still a struggle to deal with the reality of death. It was like infinity. You thought you understood it...until you really tried to understand it.

"Live fast and die young sounds so glamorous until you get to the die young part."

[celebrityskinned]

"Seriously. It almost makes me long for some eternal damnation, you know?" Venus raises an eyebrow, then says quickly "not that I'm serious", as if placating some invisible force eavesdropping on them.

"You want to go sing lullabies to the unbaptized babies or something?"

[shewent]

Edie snickers, because she knows that feeling. Oh, does she know it. And sometimes, some one seemed to be listening. Someone suddenly dropped from sight with a scream, and nobody knew why.

And then sometimes they showed back up.

Yeah, she hadn't really figured out any rules here.

"The unbaptized babies are assholes."

[celebrityskinned]

It's so unexpected that it makes Venus laugh. "Wow, what did the unbaptized babies ever do to you? Are you not a mothering type or something?"

She can't possibly know about the little girl left in Edie's past; the press never found it, and Guy kept Edie's secrets cloaked under the wounds he bared.

[shewent]

Edie's start is fast, her expression covered qucikly, but the little break is there. A bird wing in the dark, and then she is grinning, and shrugging.

"Those little dicks-" But her sentence trails off as a high pitched, reedy scream can be heard from...far away. Space and time were all fucked up here, and the sound seemed to come from the distance in all direction. A disquieted stir hit those around them.

Screams of horror weren't common this high up the ladder.

[celebrityskinned]

Maybe normal people would run, would follow the herd instinct that comes from seeing people running. Ghosts, shades of people famous and anonymous, rush past them, scrambling for cover. A crowd, half of them unsure what they're running from, swarms past, leaving stragglers behind because this isn't the place for the virtuous, just the passively self-interested. No one tramples each other but no one bothers to help each other up either.

And Venus and Edie just look at each other, eyebrows raised, the same call in their chests - not of duty, but of glory, maybe. Or at least something to make them worth the attention people would pay them.

"You know, we really shouldn't have wished for excitement. We totally jinxed that."

[shewent]

"I would have though I used up all my jinxs."

But she was already grinning, feeling that high of the adrenaline dumping into herblood stream, the battle at hand making her body hum with energy.

She would be lying if she said she hadn't missed this part. Just a little. Especially in the long, gray haze of the afterlife.

"Roll out." And with that she started against the crowd, feeling like she was fighting against the most lack luster herd of salmon as she pushed through the crowds.

[celebrityskinned]

"How do you want to take this one?" Venus ties her long braids in a knot so they'll stay out of her face and pulls off the jacket she's wearing. Idly, she wonders what happens to the twice dead, the crowd of people crushed under the ghost of Godzilla's feet. Part of her flares up with excitement at the unknown. Part of her wants to know, and part of her fears more tedium.

Her own heartbeat starts to pound with that familiar, blessed adrenalin rush - she didn't know a shade could still feel adrenalin. She didn't even realize she still had a heartbeat.

"We got anything to drop on him? A...boat, maybe?"

[shewent]

Edie looks around for whatever she can see which...isn't much.

"How do you feel about busting up the scenery?"

She was pretty sure she could get something out of that, somehow. There really wasn't much to work with. Apparently heaven didn't expect Godzilla to be stomping around up here.

Though someone had to let him in, so if Saint Peter hadn't been aware that maybe this guy shouldn't be let pass, she didn't know about the quality checks going on here.

Or maybe Godzilla really does deserve to be here. And they're about to kick the crap out of him.

[celebrityskinned]

"I feel like God'll forgive us." Some part of her is endlessly entertained by the idea of punching her way through heaven, too. Or purgatory. The afterlife, painfully boring until now, and part of Venus just wants to stretch this fight out forever because it'll be a change of pace.

"Can you still teleport?" she asks Edie, energy and plasma starting to glow around her own hands and shoulders. "Let's send this lizard back to Tokyo."

[shewent]

"Gods gonna owe us one. Let's find out."

Around here, walking was at least something to do, and maybe she'd gotten a little fat and lazy with her powers. Maybe.

She laid her hand on Venus, not entirely sure what to expect. At not entirely sure what she was feeling once she did. It was like the warmth of something far to hot through an ovenmit, but way hotter, and at the same time far more toned down under her own flesh.

She closed her eyes, reached for that pull inside of her, and suddenly they were on the crest of Godzilla's head, and the sway of the beast tromping around made it hard to tell what parts of the world swaying around her was lightheadedness and she had to grab on to one of the hard ridges decorating Godzilla's head to steady herself.

[celebrityskinned]

"Watch your feet!" Venus lands between Godzilla's eyes, sliding a bit on scales that seem far too rough to be as slick as they are. Her foot goes out from under her and just like that, she's on her butt in a less-than-graceful slip. Guess she's a bit rusty, too.

"Can you poke his- can you get his eye? I can't teleport something this big-"

Well, she probably could, but she won't, because she's not looking to die again so soon.