[PRP] Take Me to... Church? (Sunday & Preacher)

[shibrogane]

"You'll want Cycle 4, then," said Sunday. She took a seat, Mink in her arms. "Use the index to find what you want, and check images."

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

"Cycle 4?" She frowned at the books around them. "The ******** is th'index?" Preacher literally had no idea. She had thought indexes were inside books, but this was... 'the index'? Preacher glanced back at Sunday, kind of lost.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Sunday gestured to the shelf at the front of the room. There on the spines were numbers. "You want the one with four on it," she said, "And in the back of hte book, there's a list of topics. You can turn to the back and find your name, and turn to that page in the book."

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

"Oh," she said, feeling kind of dumb. "Thanks." Preacher scooted over to the shelf, peering at the number before plucking the appropriate book out. For a moment, she kind of wondered why the table of contents wasn't in the front of the book but, hey, not her library, not her problem.

She flipped around in the book, thumb stuck in the index at the back, searching for the correct page for one Preacher Maria.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

There was a picture of Preacher Maria about midway through. It was set towards the edge of the page, easily visible, the first thing seen. This Preacher Maria was neatly dressed: a collared shirt, a loose ribbon tied beneath the wings. No bags under her eyes. Her hair pulled back into a tight bun.

It described her: A new cop at the Ashdown PD, Jeremiah Mercer's protege. She had been one of the spirit-bound. Her bond was a mink, and she had been part of a group specifically investigating the attacks attributed to the spirit-bound. There was a photograph of Preacher's thumbprint on the charter. It glimmered slightly.

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

"Wow, she looks like a ********' nerd." One of the spirit-bound, so before the whole shebang what separated then, Preacher thought. Mercer's protege. She wondered how different things could have been. Was this a Preacher who didn't have a minor criminal background? A different home life? Well, it sure as ******** wasn't her. Huffing out a breath, she pressed her thumb to the print in the book.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

The room shifted. Preacher stood now in what looked like one of the bare interrogation rooms at the Ashdown police station, though it was a hazy holographic overlay. Even as she looked at the double-sided mirror that reflected Nerd Preacher, she could see Sunday and Mink, the shelves of books. But bracketing that hazy double-vision was a girl Preacher didn't recognize and Jeremiah, looking older, more careworn.

"The attacks have to be stopped," said the girl. Even her voice was unfamiliar. "It's only a matter of time before someone important enough to attract national attention dies. Whoever's doing this is getting away with it because it's drifters, but we can't run the risk that some pretty schoolgirl's next."

The Preacher in the mirror scoffed. "So we're gonna turn a pretty schoolgirl into a ********' Tupperware? That's your solution?"

Jeremiah looked grim. "Life as a Tupperware is likely better than dying," he said.

"So do you consent?" The girl leaned onto the table. Between Nerd Preacher and Jeremiah and the girl, a sheet of heavy parchment lay on the table. The Court Sigil stared balefully up at the ceiling, an eye inscribed in ink. There were nine thumbprints already.

Preacher-in-the-mirror reached down and picked up an unfamiliar mink, one that real-Preacher didn't recognize, and held it close to her chest for a moment. "Yeah," she said. "I do."

The mink bit into the meat of Preacher's thumb, and she pressed it into one of the junctures of the lines. Ten of them, now.

The memory faded, the odd double-vision of interrogation room-comfortable library fading away.

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

"Who's that b***h," she muttered. Tupperware or death... But tupperware implied that Melany housed something more than just a set of rules. She wondered if Melany had ever consented, if they'd even told her. Probably not. This showed her the moment of consent, sure, but there wasn't enough context.

Why was Melany in danger of dying? Death or Tupperware. She poked the page before turning back to the index, looking for 'spirit-bound attacks' or 'Melany Dubhslaine'.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Melany had a page as well. Preacher flipped to it, and there she was: a well-dressed girl with two red highlights in her dark hair. She'd been a dancer in that world, too. A promotional photograph of her in costume was juxtaposed with a shimmering photograph of her back flayed open, the Charter carved into her bones.

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

This was like the weirdest yearbook ever. Without hesitation, Preacher smacked her hand on the photo of Melany's back.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

That overlay again. This time, it didn't begin quietly. Like turning on the sound on a television, Preacher could immediately hear wrenching breaths, someone gasping for air. And she could see the source, too: before her, the pretty girl from the photos was on her knees, curled up over herself, her back flayed open. The bone of her shoulder blade was too white against the red meat of her, the stringy fat of the lower layers of skin, blood bubbling up from severed veins. White nerve-threads lay smoothed aside. They'd peeled her back like an orange from a long, thin scalpel cut. It ran from her cervical spine down to the waistband of her blood-soaked skirt. There was the pungent smell of vomit and blood in the air, and something bitter.

She was crying, but not moving. Carved into the exposed bone was the Court sigil.

If Preacher was quick about it, she could take a census of the room. There was a smallish dark girl with thick hair and Jeremiah Mercer's blue-green eyes that Preacher didn't recognize. Silk, not as pretty and full-fleshed but still recognizable, strained against Michael Mitchell's pale arms, tears in her pretty brown eyes. "Melany," she was saying. Over and over and over. "Melany, Melany, you ******** monsters, you awful--Melany? Melany, Melany--" Adoelle, dark hair absorbing the light and reflecting nothing back, was removing the cap from a jar full of something disgusting and blue-purple and clotted.

Melany's arms were bruised, ringed around her biceps with recognizable handprints. They'd held her down.

"I'm so sorry," said the girl with Jeremiah's eyes. She sounded like she was going to cry. "God, I'm so sorry."

Adoelle shook her head. "No time for apologies. We have to finish this quickly, before she bleeds out."

Then it snapped away. There was nothing overlaying the room now, only Sunday and Mink and the no-longer-glimmering book before Preacher.

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

Preacher tilted her head. She wasn't particularly squeamish, especially when everything was so easy to turn off. This was, of course, sort of what she expected to see - the blood, the bone, the subcutaneous fat peeking out almost coyly, the skin sloughed forward, swaying slightly like a half discarded sweater. It was gruesome and not ver like anything she'd seem before, but she'd seen a lot of things. Why hadn't Melany passed out? Or bled out yet? There was magic here, and it had probably kept her alive during - alive and conscious. How cruel. How messy. She likely knelt in a pool of her own vomit, blood, piss maybe. Shock did things to a person.

But why did Melany have to be conscious while they pulled the muscle from bone? She thought and imagined the sound of tearing - flesh ripping like a rare steak, only far wetter. A grapefruit of blood and muscle and bone. The cycles repeated, so would there still be blood stained into the wood there? The pressure of the scraping knife, like running a bow over a violin's strings... It didn't matter. She grimaced, eyes flicking towards Silk. This seemed designed especially to be cruel for no reason, and what was that liquid? The one girl was probably Mercer's weirdass relative... remorseful too late. The calm girl was too calm - the orchestrator, perhaps. She needed to remember the things Pride had told her...

Then the vision faded, talking with it in the smell of iron. She could still feel it in her nose, heavy and hot. Preacher blinked, shook her head and tried to flip around in the book. That hadn't really given her any answers, except a vague sense of the fact that her other counterpart had thought Melany would die anyway. Had Melany been at risk for an attack - how did anyone know? Her mind spun, but her eyes narrowed.

shibrogane

are the unrecognized girls in each photo the same girl or different girls?

 

[shibrogane]

As Preacher flipped through the book, it was clear there was little information about the mysterious girl from both memories. She had a page with a picture and a name--Minerva Tailor--but everything else was just... gone. As if the page had never been filled in.

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

"Sunday," she said, frowning and looking over at the librarian. "Has someone been tamperin' wit ya books? There's s**t missin'."

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Sunday blinked. "If one of the principals or the deer triplets wanted the information to be kept from the archives, they could certainly erase it," she said. "It would still be there, just not accessible by the casual examiner."

The Semblance of Unity