B-Side

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn steps into a pair of sneakers, pulling the velcro straps tight.
She adjusts the black hairband keeping her hair swept back.
Finally she clips a bulky Walkman to her belt and puts on a flimsy set of headphones.
With music blasting in her ears she pretends to stretch her legs and explodes into a run, silently dashing across the rooftop. The city is never truly asleep or dark, but she still knows how to blend into the shadows, become the movement in the corner of the eye that’s gone by the time heads are turned.
Sometimes someone catches her silhouette sail across the gap between buildings but no longer are they caught in a cloud of inexplicable dread in her wake. Technically she’s still on the hunt, her teeth remain sharp, her heart a furnace, but a lot of the time she just runs for the sheer joy of it. Wind whipping around her, the sounds of the city blending with the music in her ears, worn-out sneakers hammering out a beat on rooftops and fire escapes.

There’s a burn slowly building in her muscles and it’s a weirdly thrilling feeling to the creature who’d been so old and set in her ways, even the change of exhaustion and pain had become a passing shadow at best; failure just a speedbump to her inevitability. But everything that had once been certain lies behind her now, shattered, and in it’s place the need to try. To struggle. To miss a step if she doesn’t pay attention. To live.

The first couple days after everything she’d spot the occasional agent, always keeping their distance and always disappearing around a corner when she curled her upper lip into a hiss. She’s been breaking entrances to the Paths, knowing it was kind of a futile effort, but it serves as a pruning and to mark her territory. She can only assume the Agency begrudgingly accepts this as long as she keeps the city clean. Or cleaner at least.

She cuts her run back short by intermittently catching a ride on top of railway trains, catching her breath and letting herself get carried against the headwind. Soon she reaches a familiar building and scales down the wall inside an alley. She prefers the challenge of slipping down the front of the building and into an open window but she’d had to admit that would probably be a bit too conspicuous to do regularly, so she shimmies in through the narrow bathroom window. And after a quick shower to rinse off the sweat and the smell of the city she quietly makes her way to the dark bedroom where she curls back up next to Katarina. She may still not sleep as much as a human but that doesn’t mean Katarina has to wake up by herself. And she enjoys spending the time until sunrise nestled up against the siren, listening to her breath and feel her shift in her sleep.

[Katarina Kane]

Katarina's scales glistened.

The glistened in the sunlight, when she smiled and waved at fans on her way into the recording studio, or a meeting with the record executives discussing promo work for her upcoming suite of singles. They glistened in the moonlight, when she walked with Ryn down Ventura Boulevard. They glistened in the spotlight, talking with Martha Quinn or Nina Blackwood. Most of all, they glistened when wet -- coming out of the ocean, or the pool at a fancy party, or stepping out of the shower, for Ryn's eyes only.

The scales could mostly be hidden from view, but not entirely -- they still framed Katarina's face, and could be seen when the right parts of her skin flashed through. But as far as the world was concerned, this was part of Kata Kane -- excuse them, KATARINA Kane's new look. She had vanished for months because she had flown to Europe for experimental cosmetic surgery, after all, the best to fit her new look and new sound. And if anyone found that a little hard to believe, well, they didn't after a word or two from the starlet herself.

And if some nights, when the sky was clear, someone reported seeing a winged figure soaring from the top of Katarina's apartment building out towards the sea, well, that's just the City of Angels, baby.


While Ryn had been chasing away Agents and destroying Paths, Katarina had been handling agents and fallout from her absence from the scene. Her connections with the Soviet propaganda wing were obviously broken -- and there were repercussions coming from that, she was sure, anyday now -- she had needed to shmooze her way back up the proverbial totem pole. It's amazing how much the balance of power of the casting coach swings when a young starlet has a hypnotic voice. For the first time in her life, Katarina was calling the shots -- both of her career and her life. Yes, returning home to Eastern Europe was not possible at the moment; that was just asking the entire house of cards to collapse in on them once more. But her home here in Los Angeles? That she could run.

Their home here in Los Angeles. Rumors had spread about Katarina Kane's new assistant; the short, humorless lady with the dark sunglasses. A trained Mossad agent, some whispered. A discipline of the Far East, others claimed. A cheap actress there to enhance Kane's new image, yet others scoffed. But it seemed true that whenever Katarina was spotted in public, her gal pal wasn't too far away. People would talk!

Katarina stirred in bed, her sleep broken by the unwelcome intrusion of the sun. "Mmrplh."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"Not a real word." Ryn teases but makes no motion to act on being wide awake by doing something silly as getting up.

[Katarina Kane]

"It is underwater. The language of m'people," she grumbled into the pillow.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"I don't think that is accurate. How are you supposed to lure men of weak minds to their doom if they don't understand you?" she grins, disentangling herself from Katarina and the covers only to straggle the small of Katarina's back and lean down to where the red-head is burrowing her face. "Just be glad you don't feel the urge to sing at the rising sun with the birds."

[Katarina Kane]

"Mebbe I did and I'm already back. We sirens move in mysterious ways," she mumbled into the pillow.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"You must be very sneaky." she says quietly on account of leaning down close to where Katarina's ears are. And then she grabs the pillow and rudely yanks it out from underneath the siren.

[Katarina Kane]

"Nnnnnnuuuu," Katarina moaned.

"Go make the coffee," she added.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Now it's Ryn's turn to huff as she rolls off of Katarina, though she's taking the covers with her in a haphazard and bulky toga, traipsing off into the kitchen on bare feet.

[Katarina Kane]

Katarina groused more as Ryn stole the blankets, slipping on some pyjamas and slippers and shuffling her way after Ryn. "I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be pampered, and stealing the blankets doesn't help with that," she whined.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"I am 'keeping it real'." she grins, turning on the coffee machine and moving on to pulling bacon and eggs from the fridge. Despite being essentially swaddled in a blanket she mages to get zero amount of egg or grease on any of it somehow. She does devour a whole strip of raw bacon though.

"But I can return the princess to her bedchambers for breakfast if she wants." she adds, letting the food cook and hefting the covers up and off herself and onto Katarina, not quite scooping her up but keeping her wrapped up for a moment as she goes on her tip-toes to give Katarina a kiss.

[Katarina Kane]

Katarina reached around to pull Ryn in, and sighed.

"I wish. I think it's another full day today, though..."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"I could probably make them reschedule. I'd only scare them a bit and a lot of them do kind of deserve it a little."

[Katarina Kane]

"A lot of them kind of do deserve it a lot," Katarina laughed. "Which is why we're taking it slower and more subtly."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"Fiiiine. But if they touch you I'll see to it they lose the hand. Subtly. I'll wear a mask and everything." she jokes. Kind of. Not really.

[Katarina Kane]

"I'm sure if any give us any trouble we'll find a more suitable position for them, won't we?" Katarina grinned. "Taking power back from the decadent West and all that."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn thinks 'splayed open and hung on a telephone pole in front of the studio' would be just that, but they're supposed to be trying a more subtle approach. Gruesome murder always remains an option later, she figures.

"If their fingers touch the wrong thing they will pull them back broken." she says, thinking more of Katarina than herself though she certainly wouldn't tolerate the later either.

[Katarina Kane]

"Their fingers are in plenty of pots," Katarina agreed. "But if you remove them, they're just replaced by someone just as bad, yes? Better to work with what you have, find leverage where you can."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"No metaphor. They touch you the wrong way against your will, they lose the hand. But I'll... wait for a signal from you."

[Katarina Kane]

"That's very sweet," Katarina deadpanned. "My knight in shining armor.

But you know I have a trick or two up my sleeve as well."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"I know." she says, before adding a quiet, huffed "And I'm more of a Dark Knight."

[Katarina Kane]

"And if we don't want our dark knight stuck in the lobby, we have to play the game a little, don't we?" Katarina smiled.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"No mortal, not even a secretary, can stop me. And front doors are stupid anyway..." she trails off, which is her way of ceding the point.

[Katarina Kane]

"But you do like standing next to me at the meetings and in the studio and at the parties, yes? And it's so much easier when my personal security chief is allowed in," she smiled.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Unfortunately it appears to be true that a hint of diplomacy and subterfuge opens doors that her hands can't. Stupid invisible doors that may as well be real the way everybody acts when she attempts to kick them in.

"They already don't like me." she says, wearing the statement like a badge of pride. "Fine. No hospitalizations."

[Katarina Kane]

"They don't," Katarina agreed. "But I bet they treat you nicer when they realize I won't work with them without you," she grinned.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"Most of them do." she admits. "Some just think I can't tell they're angry. I'm fine either way. Oh, that reminds me, one of them asked if I'm an ocean embankment? I don't know if it was metaphor-words about being able to tell you're a siren."

[Katarina Kane]

"Oh, they think they can tell something, alright. You'll have to point them out to me so I can have a word or two with them."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

She nods. "I told him I didn't know what he was talking about. Most of them ignore me anyway." And really, she likes it that way. Some people would probably get upset about almost pointedly being ignored and only getting dismissive looks about hovering close to Katarina, but these are people with whom she has less than nothing in common. And not having to come up with responses means she can completely focus on listening and piecing together how this world of 'celebrity' works. So far she's concluded it's a lot of promises and deals and introducing one person to another over and over. She has a feeling there's at least one of two Fae hiding among the mortals. It's the kind of thing they like.

"Is this a fancy-pants thing or can I wear something I can move in?" she asks. She's so far avoided being put in a dress and damn near hissed and scurried away from high-heels, no matter how much emphasis the world seemed to put on taller being better. Or 'shapely' legs, whatever that meant.

[Katarina Kane]

"During the day, you can wear something you're comfortable in," Katarina paused. "From the list of things that business people wear, that is. I have to go into the studio and plan some things out; very informal."

"But tonight, it's a party."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn groans. Parties were by far the worst. Clothes meant for show rather than freedom of movement, inebriated humans making inebriated human decisions, Ryn not being allowed to enact entirely-appropriate levels of violence in what can only be called prime hunting grounds. On the upside, Katarina always looked incredible, making her almost understand the whole fashion thing. "Will there be dancing?"

[Katarina Kane]

"Some," Katarina smiled. "We can always make time for that."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"Then it will be worth it." she smiles

[Katarina Kane]

"I'll have Doug bring the car around in 30 minutes. Gives us just enough time to get ready, yes?"

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn nods and unwinds the blanket from around herself, wrapping it around Katarina in the same motion.

"Go get ready, I finish making breakfast."

[Katarina Kane]

Katarina grinned and dropped the blanket to the floor, giving Ryn the few view of her shimmering scales as she headed back towards the bathroom. "You know how I like it," she called back, teasingly.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn prides herself on being unflappable; after all, it's at least adjacent to the literally unstoppable thing she is. Or used to be, seeing how Katarina's exit leaves her blushing furiously until the sizzling bacon pulls her thoughts back to the fore when a droplet of fat sizzles on her hand. She's above exclamations of pain over something so minor but it does make her hand jerk. So stupid. Katarina was just stating facts one way or the other, that much they'd figured out. She transfers the bacon to a plate and puts it in the oven to stay warm. It would be a kind of challenge to see if she could get the job done quick enough for them to leave on time...

She transfers the bacon to a plate and the plate into the warm oven before following Katarina on silent footsteps...

((Fade to later in the day?))

[Katarina Kane]

Even the power of a Siren wasn't enough to get Studio A at Westlake. Well, maybe it would, if Katarina really applied herself, but there's mythological power and then there's having recorded Thriller, and it was difficult to say which carried more weight in the recording industry.

Studio B wasn't bad, though! Heck, some people seemed to prefer Studio B -- a bit smaller, but that just made the sound a bit tighter and punchier. It may not have the private lounge that some of the other studios had, but it's not like Katarina flocked with a massive entourage that couldn't fit into the control room. It was usually just Ryn -- Doug being sent off to run errands. Anyway, Toni liked Studio B, and since that who Katarina was meeting with later today to discuss a collab, that worked for her.

For now, though, the control room was more or less empty. Producer Rob was there -- he was generally nice enough, if a little impatient if things started to drag. Andrew, the synth guy, was warming up on the keys, and the next time he said three consecutive words to Ryn would set a new record for their longest conversation. There was a reason Ryn liked Andrew. The other session guys were less familiar to Ryn -- Katarina didn't have a regular band or anything; she just had a synth player she normally used. What could be more important for music than a synthesizer, anyway?

There were also two suits from the studio there -- mid-level execs. Katarina called them the Twins, though they weren't actually related; just always attached at the hip. Lucie Brooks and Piper Woodward from Chrysalis Records, who was handling Katarina's releases in the US. At least for now -- there was a reason Katarina had talked herself into meetings with other execs, and one of those was actual legitimate business purposes. But for now, Chrysalis was her official label, and the Twins, in matching suits, were nearly always in the background, smiling and talking out of both sides of their mouths.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Andrew might in fact be Ryn's second favorite mortal after Katarina. A very distant second but the first time they'd met they'd looked at each other, given each other a brief nod and come to some kind of agreement. He didn't complain when things went long or took too many takes, she didn't offer unsolicited opinions or interrupt just for the sake of drawing Katarina's attention to herself. Plus he made weird, almost ethereal music happen with his electronic-board. As far as body-guarding goes most people would probably be concerned about watching the doors at this point, but Ryn is watching out for different kinds of threats. Not even necessarily ones coming after Katarina either, though as she told her, she'd certainly intervene, even if the siren is more than capable of defending herself. In this case she's mostly eyeing the Twins as if she could extract information out of them by staring them down.

She's caught on to the fact that the rot in this city tends to concentrate 'up' according to human social-power and along the invisible web of 'connections'. She even made a wall of pinned images connected with strings to try and keep track of what Katarina tells her about the rulers of the City of Angels. She refuses to accept that elected-officials hold any real power in comparison unless they're also linked to the mover-shakers. Her conspiracy-wall would probably be more accurate if she was willing to wrap her head around paper-money or the even more confusing imaginary paper-money but she refuses to give that acknowledgement to something so stupid. Anyway, Ryn isn't entirely sure what to make of the Twins. There's no obvious stench of rot on them but they're not exactly innocent either, she's sure. They know how to use words and by the fact that Ryn can rarely follow what they talk about she knows there's something off about them. One would think that having worked for a clandestine government agency Ryn would have picked up on how to investigate people but she's always been more of a bloodhound in agent's clothing.

[Narrator]

The twins did, indeed, know how to use words, and they started plying them on Ryn almost as soon as she entered the lounge.

"Ah, you're here, too, Ryn," Lucie started.

"Always so glad to see you," Piper continued.

"Any friend of Kata's..."

"...is a friend of ours."

"Working hard?"

"Or hardly working?"