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"Eli. Hey, E. Eli."

It wasn't entirely unusual for Eli -- getting accosted by one of his coworkers the minute he set foot through the employees' entrance backstage of The Red Light. Usually it was something about needing to change the gels on the lights, or the sound system being on the fritz, or one of the boys wanting to do a fantasy football trade (not happening). Occasionally it was a request to get a shift covered, or to borrow a costume piece -- actual legitimate work-related requests -- but mostly it was just the usual, the boys jawing about s**t outside his actual job description.

Some people, other people came to because they looked up to them as authority figures. Other people, they went to because those people had a track record of smilingly dealing with whatever s**t you asked them to. Eli was in this latter group.

In this case, though, Eli had been running late in his commute, and now had to go from civvies to sequins in about the next twenty minutes. He threw his bag on a chair and started unlacing his boots from a standing position, one foot lifted at a time.

"What's up?" he asked, looking Jim in the eye while he started getting undressed. Jim was currently dressed as a.... sexy eskimo? A sexy snowman? It was hard to tell, sometimes, when most of the costume was currently in pieces on the stage floor. He decided to go with 'sexy Samoyed,' which was in fact such an unsexy notion that it hurt -- but he was tired and the idea was funny enough that it kept his brain going, a little.

"The bar's backed up about fifteen minutes on orders, Matt's ******** terrible," Jim explained. "People are complaining their drinks are wrong."

Eli sighed. "Well, Benny has pneumonia," he answered. "Nobody likes pneumonia."

"Nobody likes Matt. Can't you cover?"

Eli had been covering about half of Benny's shifts for the past week. The last thing he wanted was to give up another one of his own actual shifts and the tips he made from dancing to go cover the bar just because Al didn't hire enough good bartenders. "I'm on in, like, ten," he said, pulling his shirt up over his head. He still had a huge bruise on his shoulder from one of those monsters he'd had to fight lately -- he was going to have to slather some foundation and a ******** of glitter on that thing, pronto. "Let me do my number and then I'll take over the bar, okay?"

"No one remembered to order any of the foreigns this week either," Carlos called over from the couch. "We're almost out of beer. What should we tell people who come asking?"

"Tell them Benny has pneumonia," Eli said, distracted. He threw his shirt at his locker and started unzipping his duffel bag, pawing around in it. "What do you care, you're not a bartender. People complaining about domestic beer while they shove dollars in your g-string, are they?"

"Nah," Carlos said with a grin. "I just like to keep my ladies happy. You know me."

Eli laughed. "You piece of s**t."

"Told you you knew me."

Eli popped a few caffeine pills in his mouth and took a swig from his water bottle to knock them back. Sexy Samoyed Jim was vying for his attention again. "Hey, yo, Eli."

"Hey, yo, Jim?" Eli was already grabbing costume pieces from his locker and heading for the changing room.

"What should I -- "

"Just tell them Benny has pneumonia, Jim, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you."

" -- order you from Domino's?"

"Oh," Eli said, laughing a little at himself. "Uh. Just get me half a Meat Lover's, I guess. Whatever they call it. Sorry."

He disappeared into the changing room.

On his worst, latest, most hung over day, Eli had never once missed his cue. A little red light usually flickered over the doorway in the changing room, and another one out in their backstage sitting room -- they were hard to miss, and he was usually in his cowboy boots and tassels or whatever he was wearing on a given night by the time the light flickered on and the last dregs of the previous song faded out over the crackly PA system.

This time, something else was drowning out the final strains of Soul Man, distracting Eli from the flickering red lightbulb. Screaming.

Eli looked up from where he was leaned over the makeup table, slicking his abs with glitter body gel, alarm written all over his face. He could hear feet thundering past, but there'd been no telling report of a gunshot or anything like that: just people screaming and running through the backstage area.

Gut tightening with worry, he peeked out the changing room door. There were customers back here, startling not just Eli, but Jim as well. Carlos was ushering people out the rear door.

"She reached into his chest," a middle-aged brunette was saying to Jim, squeezing him by the shoulders. "And just -- ripped his heart out like Indiana Jones! She ripped it right out! I saw it!!! He's dead!!!"

In the chaos and confusion, that was as much as Eli could determine about what was happening. Some woman was going Temple of Doom on someone else, evidently. Beyond being racially offensive, Eli was pretty sure the whole Kali Ma Shakti de move was also physically impossible -- but clearly the woman had seen something, and someone was hurt, and someone else had gone crazy and was doing violence.

Eli disappeared back into the changing room and powered up into Dionysia's stronger form. Human enemy or not, being in his page state gave Eli an advantage -- he'd be faster, stronger, more agile. All good things if, as he suspected, the crazed maniac out front was a crazed, knife-wielding maniac.

As soon as he powered up, though, he felt something -- worrying. Worse than the ugly push of energy he'd felt the couple of times he'd powered up to face one of those weird monsters. This was different, and stronger. More oppressive. It was like standing fully clothed in a sauna. Whatever was out there was something worse than a knife-wielding maniac. A particularly nasty monster, maybe? Had the brunette only confused it for a woman? s**t.

The opening strains of his music -- an upbeat, trashy cover of Son of a Preacher Man he was pretty fond of -- started mindlessly blaring over the speaker system. Dionysia, moving in the opposite direction of the frightened customers pushing past him, stepped through the curtain and out onto the stage. He squinted out past the stage lights, his eyes finding the only moving silhouette out in the audience that wasn't shoving its way out the nearest door in a hurry to escape. It... looked human. It just didn't feel human.

"What the hell's going on here?" he called out, eyes alighting on Matt's very still body, collapsed over the bar counter.

The particular nature of sex work -- even legal sex work, of the kind Eli was paid to do -- meant that of all the things Dionysia was currently feeling appalled by, neither the verbal harassment nor the shady-looking scourge she was carrying numbered among them. No, there was Matt's dead body to worry about. A few bouncers slumped under a broken table on the floor. The fact that this -- this woman, he had to concede, because she showed no visible aspects of monstrousness, aside her behavior -- was taking the opportunity to objectify him was the least source of his discomfort.

It didn't make sense. She was -- like him, wasn't she? Magic powers, super strength, weird weapon? Had she just decided to use her superhero abilities to go on a crazy murder spree instead of fighting monsters? Had someone given superhero abilities to a crazy stalker that the bouncers should've screened at the door?

Dionysia walked to the edge of the stage, letting the lights beam just overhead so he could get a better look at the woman. He gestured around to the club, now effectively emptying itself out. It was mostly security left, wary and uncertain in the far doorways. "Sorry -- private dances cost extra," he said, voice calm with the professionalism of experience momentarily overriding fear. "Did you kill Matt? How?" he asked, then, because he wasn't really that calm, he replaced that question with, "Jesus, why?!"

He didn't bring his pinecone stick to bear in opposition to her weapon. It seemed outmatched enough as to be useless, if she decided to turn her murderous rampage on him. Instead, he left it tucked into -- uh, into nowhere, he guessed -- and decided he was better off without. Dionysia's concession to danger was, instead, a modified stance -- weight loosely balanced between front and rear foot, arms limber but not up to full guard. She was still a good distance away, after all, and showed no signs of having a weapon she could throw or fire at him. Surely he'd have warning of any violence she tried against him.

Dionysia stumbled back, his golden boots neatly finding the spaces between where his twin sashes trailed along the ground. Less graceful were his psychological reactions.

Pay me with his soul? What the... what the hell?

Is she, did she just -- no one can move that fast. No one can, but she did. Can I? What do I do?

What is all this? Why does she seem to know more about it than I do?

Why did she kill Matt?!

Am I totally ******** page put his fists up at full guard, one high enough to protect his head. The other he kept slightly lowered, slightly across his body where normally he would've held his fist about level with his nose. With most opponents, it made sense to lure strikes to your central body mass, where you could best take hits -- but if she really could shove her hand through a person's chest, he wanted a little more protection for his internal organs than usual.

It left the left side of his head open to attack, but he'd have to deal with that as it came, plan for the hit and try to dodge it. Either way, with how fast she could move (faster than sight, faster than thought -- don't think about it, it won't help you -- ), he was going to have to stay in motion too, not present a stationary target. Immediately he started sidestepping to his right, circling and backing up on the stage. He'd danced up here a hundred times -- he knew this stage like the back of his hands, and he knew the stage lights as well as anyone who'd ever replaced every gel. If he could get her to follow, he could turn them both until the woman was standing with the light in her eyes and he was fighting with it at his back.

He threw a quick jab between steps, aimed for the hand with the strange crystal in it that she'd been focused on. If it mattered to her, maybe it would be enough of a distraction to get her to give chase.

"How exactly is that thing a soul?" he asked, fishing for information on the fly. It was clear she knew more than he did, and that put him at a disadvantage that simple things like weight and muscle probably couldn't counter.

Ivynian

he will continue dancing around cutely trying to put up a fight until such time as schorl eventually decides to stop toying with him ofc <3

There were skills a person picked up because they had to use them, and then there were skills you picked up just to have them. Eli had never really had much use for streetfighting techniques (or any other kinds of combat techniques) -- except for a few hot seconds in college, barely-remembered -- so everything he'd ever learned from a few boxing lessons and a six-week kickboxing thing was practical and rudimentary.

He was a dancer and a bartender. He was not a bouncer. He was a father of two. His life expectations had never really figured in the need to be able to go toe to toe with someone who had extensive combat training. This woman moved with the certainty of, if not extensive combat training, at least extensive combat experience. Her face betrayed no fear, her eyes didn't signal her next moves. She simply waited and struck, like a cobra ever-poised.

Was this s**t fun for her?

Whatever had happened with the crystal in her hand, it came as an odd surprise to Dionysia. He'd thrown a legitimate strike, but certainly nothing he could've expected to shatter a real crystal; particularly not into powdery little dust particles. Either it had actually been hollow glass, or maybe spun sugar, or she'd somehow crushed it in a way that was more than just the passed-on impact pressure of his hand colliding with hers -- but he didn't understand how that was a soul, or how a human soul could be dispensed with with a single bare-handed jab. And he didn't believe he could've really brought Matt back to life with it. That was get-in-your-head mind-games bullshit, and he didn't need that from some serial murderer who'd been granted superhero powers in some cosmic oversight. A background check should've been done on this lady. She was obviously not okay.

The woman followed up with her own strike, impossibly fast and fluid. The long, hateful tendrils of her old-school scourge snaked around the meat of his forearm, metal studs ripping through his white sleeve to score at his skin. He hissed in sudden, very very unwelcome pain, and had to partly drop his stance just to disengage his arm, automatically falling back a few steps protectively.

"Most people direct their customer service complaints to the manager," he said, dancing a few more steps backward to buy time while he looked for anything he could use as a weapon. Nothing yet. Reaching up with his injured hand, Dionysia tugged down the heavy gold cuff encircling his right bicep. "Here's even a little freebie for you, on the house. Though I'm flattered by your attempts to literally tear my clothes off." The left cuff was at least somewhat attached to his shirt, but the right one was loose, attached only to one of the two long, trailing ribbons of his costume. It slid off easily. He drew the ribbon taut between his hands, letting the cuff spin in the air to the side. It was a thick gold bangle, hefty -- not the world's best weapon for someone who wasn't entirely experienced in the art of bolas, but definitely better than no weapon, particularly if he could get up some speed and hit her in the head with it.

"So, go on, I'm listening. What exactly was the problem?"

It was the same every time he asked her to explain herself -- she neatly pushed off the question over and over again. Evidently whatever had driven her to murder Matt, she was enjoying some kind of advantage by not telling him about it, even if it was just Dionysia's confusion. Unnecessary, he thought. I'd be confused about plenty of things even if you enlightened me on that one.

Everything she did, though, seemed designed to intimidate. She told him only thing she thought would confuse him further. She advanced with certainty and a lack of fear. She offered him advice on his makeshift weapon -- certainly nothing an enemy would bother doing if they viewed you as even slightly a threat. It was effective, too -- though he had no itention of just turning tail and running, he was very sure she had him psychologically outflanked. She knew more than he did and she had more experience.

In conclusion, he'd decided his best chances of survival were the police showing up.

She lashed out with her weapon, its snarly little cords looping upward to curl around the watery silk between his hands. He fell back a few paces, trying to disengage -- worried she'd dislodge his grip if he wasn't careful, giving the fabric a yank to see if he couldn't pull her weapon out of her hand instead. They were close in height, but she was lean as a tautly drawn string where he was carrying considerably more muscle. It seemed impossible for her to actually be stronger than he was.

She was so fast. She was so impossibly fast. It didn't even matter that she'd feinted a stumble to get in close -- her hand was on him before he could even process what had happened. The only thing that kept her from ripping the life from his chest just as a matter of course from his momentum carrying him backward was that he'd already braced his back foot to accept his weight; instead, he swayed in place, caught around her hand, like a bug that had been pinned through to cork still alive.

The pain was incredible. He should've screamed -- but all that came out of his mouth was a mute, choked-off gasp like she'd wrapped her fingers not around his heart but around both lungs to keep them from inflating. Nothing had ever hurt like this. It felt like someone had shoved a large hand mixer into his internal organs and gleefully pressed On.

He stared at her with a look of surprise and a funny little hint of betrayal: not at her, but at the world, which had failed to behave as expected. People were not supposed to be able to do what she'd just done -- was doing. It felt deeply, intrinsically wrong -- and in the wake of it, his body seemed to try to protect itself from further trauma by freezing almost numb.

The silk-tailed cuff slipped from his hands. It hit the ground with a heavy clunk before rolling to a quiet stop.

The word was moving, falling; but Dionysia felt weightless. This'll be how I end, he thought. Because Benny has pneumonia and Matt's dead and something -- something happened with this woman, and -- my girls, my baby girls, who's going to... ?

That was his last thought. The world went black.

It was surprising, then, to have it return.

He felt floaty, at first. Then heavy -- almost too heavy to move. He couldn't. Then his chest hurt. She was warm; she was carrying him; she -- his head was all muddled. His arms felt heavy, like they were... No, they were. They were tied back. His legs, too. She was taking him somewhere.

There were sirens. Was he her hostage? Was that why she was keeping him alive?

"I've got two kids," he said quietly, wriggling his hands, trying to get to the ties binding his arms. No good -- he'd never reach. "One and three years old. They're cute. Where are you taking me?"