[ASH] Shadow Girls #10 - Museum Piece

[Drew Nilium]

On 1/18/23 5:02 PM, Dave Van Domelen wrote:
>       [cover shows Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss" but all the gold has
>        been replaced by Dodeca-Yellow's amber-tinted shadows, and
>        a metal snake slithers down the man's arm.]

ooooooh, pretty. :D

> 	  		    The Morning Stars
> 
>       Tetra-Red		 Xueli "Julie" Li - The Leader
>       Hexa-Blue		 Tamica "Tammy" Sullivan - The Brains
>       Octa-Green		 Dhriti "Tee" Singh - The Fighter
>       Dodeca-Yellow	 Jessica "Jess" Davies - The Scout
>       Icosa-Pink		 Olivia "Liv" Stuart - The Heart
>       Black Opal II    	 Madelyn "Maddie" Chin - The Mentor...under protest

heeheehee

> And, of course, there were always the occasional necromancers
> or mad scientists who wanted to reanimate dinosaur skeletons, even though
> most of the displays were resin copies.  Resin copies could be animated by
> particularly strong magic too, especially if the necromancer believed they
> were real bones.

Oh, that's a good point. X>

> Even purely artistic displays weren't immune to that, with
> Rodin's "The Thinker" going for a walk on at least three occasions.

omg. :D

>       The Godmarket just made things so much worse, though, particularly for
> museums of history and science, or any art museum with ancient works on
> display.  Suddenly, seemingly mundane talismen turned out to still be
> important to Zeus or Frigga or Mars Nodens or whoever, and they would flare
> to life with divine power.  Having someone turned into a godly avatar during
> a museum tour tended to void insurance policies, and by early 1998 most of
> the museums on Museum Mile had closed down for one reason or another, their
> exhibits either stolen or coming to life.

Oh no. @-@

>       Then came the sacking.
>       Oh, it wasn't immediate.  Most of the people who would have wanted to
> pay for stolen art vanished on July 6, having thrown their lot in with one of
> the gods in exchange for even greater wealth and power.  But it didn't take
> long for the vacuum at the top to get filled, and as usual it was the least
> scrupulous who were first to start picking over the corpses, both
> metaphorical and actual.

Oof, that makes sense. x.x

>       Ironically, it was the paragangs who started to restore Museum Mile.
> Most of the buildings became nightclubs with varying levels of tasteful or
> tasteless decor, but when the Jolly Molecules decided to donate some of their
> "prettier" inventions to restock the Guggenheim, others followed suit,
> generally with less explosive exhibits.  The Boys of Pain adopted the Africa
> Center and El Museo del Barrio, while it was rumored Bathory started
> restocking the Metropolitan Museum of Art so she could have some place to
> pretend to be high class.
>       It was all somewhat fitful and the results underwhelming by any
> professional curator's standards, but it was a start.

Honestly, that feels like a lot of historical museums. X>

>       All that said, the Neue Gallery was still a nightclub rather than a
> proper museum, even if it did still have what was probably a genuine Klimt
> hanging over the dance floor.

Niiiiice. :D Themes!

>       "It's pretty simple," Maddie explained.  "I want you to answer the
> questions on the smartboard while you're powered down.  Then, when you're all
> done, power up and I'll give you a second set of questions that cover the
> same basic ground, but require different specific answers."
>       "Did you just make these up?" Tammy asked, sitting across from Jess.
>       "No, they're actually part of a battery of questions I got from a
> contact at MetaPsych.  They've had to develop protocols for detecting
> possession and mind control and so forth."

Oooooh, makes sense.

>       "Did you just make a nerd joke?" Tee arched an eyebrow.  Jess glared at
> her.
>       "I'm having a positive influence on her," Liv retorted.
>       "That...is debatable," Tammy ventured.

:3

>       "This is personal, you don't need to share your results with each other,
> or even with me," Maddie pointed out.  "I'm not a trained diagnostician here,
> but I think it's worthwhile for you to see how you change, and it's okay to
> keep it to yourself."

Heck yeah. :>

>       Half an hour later, they were all back to "normal," whatever that
> counted for anymore, and were comparing their responses with each other
> anyway.

Teamwork makes the dream work

> Once they'd decided
> that the files from Professor Shade were safe, there was no longer any reason
> to keep using the ancient laptop computer, and Maddie had provided them with
> the modern equivalent to use in Plato's Cave.  (Liv kept playing games on
> hers.)

Heeheehee

>       "I'm not seeing a lot of difference," Liv frowned.
>       "I don't think you ever really 'power down,' Liv," Tee pointed out.

X>

>       "I think we all need to step back, for a week, let's say," Maddie
> suggested.  "Stop patrolling, keep training, but keep doing these journaling
> exercises and try to get a better grip on how your minds change.  I think
> you're all making good progress on how your bodies work when you're powered
> up, but your brains change too."

An extremely good idea. o3o

>       "You don't look 21," the bouncer eyed Jess skeptically, glancing between
> her face and her ID.  Her very good fake ID.
>       "Ugh, I know," she sighed.  "I keep having pervs after me cause I look
> like a kid."
>       The bouncer chuckled.  "Well, there's one less of those now, Ms. Tanner.

Nice play~

> He wasn't exactly shunned by paragang society, since they
> did let him into Neue Gallery, but no one was lining up to share his personal
> space either.  The skull makeup didn't help, and clashed with what little
> coherent theme the club had managed to scrape together.

Heeheehee. X>

>       "Oho, I don't 'memba seeing you in dis place before," Dr. Jacky leaned
> closer to be heard over the music.  It was hard to tell if his accent was
> entirely a put-on, or just a mix of Haitian and something else.

Hmmmmmm!

>       "Why don't we grab a booth so we don't have to shout?" she gestured at a
> row of what were clearly fast food restaurant booths that had been coated in
> peeling gold leaf in some doomed attempt to fit in with the painting over the
> entrance.

XD XD XD Amazing

>       Dr. Jacky chuckled.  "I can appreciate a good ulterior motive, cheri,"
> he placed his hands over Jess's.  "But I and I don' last long bein' that
> TRUSTIN'."
>       Jess recoiled at the sting of a needle on the back of her hand.  A
> needle attached to a kind of robotic worm or snake that was trying to coil
> around her arm.
>       "Mebbe I curious bout y'real motives?  But once the loa rides, what YOU
> want don' matta much no mo'."

Oh, Jess. ^^;;;;

>       Dr. Jacky was, in fact, nowhere to be seen, and in short order
> Dodeca-Yellow managed to stagger past the confused bouncer and vault shakily
> across the street into Central Park, repeatedly slamming her arm against the
> safety fence around the reservoir in an attempt to dislodge the technoloa.
>       "Stupid, stupid," she mumbled as her body fought with itself.  "Just
> because they work better on cyborgs doesn't mean they don't work on
> everyone."  She finally shattered the metal snake along with a section of the
> fence and maybe a bone or two in her arm, before diving into the reservoir
> itself and getting as far away from the crowd spilling out of the Neue
> Gallery as she could.

Sweetie. X>;;;

>       It is really hard to write a story focusing on a character without
> getting into their head at all, but I felt that was necessary here.
> Jessica's whole thing is being closed off from others, and that means the
> usually omniscient narrator too.

Oooooh, good point.

>       Dr. Jacky's real accent is fairly faint, but he plays up the bad horror
> movie stuff when he's "on stage."  This is at least a small part of why the
> New York Macoute got tired of him.  Fear of being turned into zombies was the
> main reason, though.

X3

Drew "ding-dang teens think they're immortal, and also, un-mind-controllable" Nilium