Interlude: Two Slaytons

Work.

That's all there is to do on Cairo. Dawn until dusk. Gruel in the morning, gruel in the evening, and grueling labor every hour in between. In the jungles. In the mines. In the infirmary. It doesn't matter. All one has to look forward to is work.

Work, and dream of home. Some of the miners are talking. The soot-covered woman with the scarred and calloused hands isn't, though. As a quintet of Nall look on, she and several others heave loads of rock and dirt and raw ore onto the carts at the mouth of the tunnel.

Work. WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK! That's all there is, and maybe that's all there ever was. Could she even remember what it was like, to not be a slave? Oh, woe. Woe to thee, of blonde hair and high heels. How we have fallen so low, so... very... low. If she had a hoodie, she'd be wearing it right now. And not just to be emo, but to hide the dulled blonde hair and streaks of tree sap that refuse to come out of the once blonde bombshell's pristine and envied locks. Now... now it's a rat's nest. Her face is streaked with dirt and dust, makeup long worn off; no more nail polish; no more heels; even the bronzing tan of hers has faded a shade since the many months spent on Cairo. Sighing, Harmony Slayton, former Blackjack Trading legal liasion and recognizable Sivadian socialite, hefts a bundle of bagged rocks over her shoulder like it was nothing more than an afterthought. "My trust fund for Vernelli's stylish yet dazzling summer collection..."

"Shhhh," the scrawnier woman hisses from the corner of her mouth, opting to voice nothing but the occasional grunt until the next sack is hauled up and over and tossed into the waiting mule. Unlike her voluptuous cousin, such a job requires another set of arms, and even between two people, bringing up the day's dig is a hell of a task indeed.

As a Demarian-and-Qua pair climb up onto the hovercraft to secure the load, Mika Tachyon takes a step backward, massaging the back of her sore neck and planting her shovel's nose in the earth at her feet. "Keep thinkin' 'bout't, y'll only feel worse," she eventually notes to Harm in hushed tones.

Dump. Her load of rocks and ore is deposited into the mule with a dainty hand held away from her body, like a mother who was holding an oversized diaper and didn't want to smell it. At its core, Harm's genetically-altered strength and love of exercise tipped the scales in her favor. She could strive onward to prove whomever wrong that she /could/ cut it, and that seemed to sustain her for the first-- well, month. However, she was a Slayton, just as Mika was under the greasy scalp, and that meant that they had a drive deep down inside -- a fire -- that refused to be snuffed out. Determination. She became a lawyer, when everyone laughed at her. She proved she could hold a job, when everyone laughed at her. And now, she wouldn't die in some camp like-- "Mik, you totally need a bath. I mean, seriously; it's rank." But beneath the veneer, her smile is an empty one that can't hold. In shushed tones, she says, "I don't know how much longer I can work like this... I'm so not cut out for this bloody life. I'm not some blue-collar rockhopper; I'm a diva."

That fire-red blood, and that drive to rise from the social cellar like a blazing Phoenix -- it's in Mika, too. It's in every nut and screw that holds the IND Jackal together, every pulse blast fired in the Birthright War, every shady handshake in the back alleys of Tomin Kora.

The rogue rests her shovel across her shoulders and turns on legs even more spindly than before, to plod as she's instructed back down the cold, black tunnels. There isn't a light. Slaytons don't need a light; they've been through the darkness enough to navigate it with sure and steady steps. Nevertheless, she pauses for a second, reaching her hand back for the diva's. "I know," she agrees in a whisper. "Jus' 'old tight, alright? Don't go all crazy on me, bollocks. Y'let 'em break ya, y'let 'em beat ya."

Holding her shovel like her missed pink rifle of aeons past, Harm trods after her cousin into the depths of the darkness. Like clockword, and countless days before it, she latches blistered and callused hands with the scrawnier woman and starts to slither behind the path that's tested. It may be dark and it may be dank, but there was little in the 'verse that could stifle such blinding personalities like these two. Especially when they were teamed up, and taking their passive-aggressive tendencies out on a third party rather than each other. And if this were Peewee's Playhouse, then Mika would have said the key phrase of the day. "No one breaks, Harmony Slayton." She responds with a swirl of her hand in flamboyant gesture, finger waggling like the movie star diva she's wont to be. "Not crazy Aunt Millie, not some fat-arsed mafia-wannabe chick with bad hair, and certainly not some--" Glancing those bluefire eyes sidelong, as if expecting a Nall to jump out in the dark, the pink fashionista puts her tone in check again. "And certainly not some overgrown liazards that so get off on making hot girls like me work for their paychecks, okay." Cue the self-satisfied pause, followed by a head thumping against low ceiling. "...bloody hell."

"I liked't better when *we* were givin' *them* 'ell, yeah," Mika agrees with a sniff, and while it's true to a point, the uncharacteristically subdued nature of the remark is a red flag: she's letting Harmony rant. It keeps you sane. And God knows she's been doing enough of it herself, in those few stolen moments where dialogue is possible. Lady Jackal keeps moving, side pressed against the tunnel wall, feeling her way through the mines until her eyes can adjust to the low light again. She only stops at the sound of Harm's head cracking against the ceiling, half-turning, the platelike surface of her shovel swinging right for the taller blonde's chin in her unchecked alarm.

Whiing-PANG. Shovel connects with chin and it sends the blonde bombshell in rags spilling against the side of the wall to regain her balance. One might expect that if she didn't lose consciousness, then Harmony would be throwing a tirade in pink fury for being hit. But in this situation, after so many months of being locked and barred and smacked around like a prostitue that owed her pimp backdues, the legal aid doesn't even muffle a sound of pain. What's heard is a muffled sniffle, and the faintest noise of stifled tears. It was that one act, that one tiny infraction, that pushed the snowball down the hill of bleakness. "...We gotta get out of here, Mik. I don't want to die here."

The yelp that immediately springs from Mika's throat to her lips would most certainly alert anyone and everyone *anywhere* in these mines, with how far sound travels. So Mika bites it back; instead, she sucks air in through her teeth and reduces it all to a whimper. And she holds it, one hand pressed to her mouth, as if willing Harmony not to scream and simultaneously willing everyone else to be stricken suddenly and spontaneously deaf. But no scream comes, and when all she hears are the muted sobs, the captain-cum-slave is at a loss for a good long while.

"We're not gonna die," Mika promises, completely uncertain of what to do with those tears. She averts her eyes, but it's not like she can see anything beyond a dim silhouette, anyway. "Calm down. Stop all'a that, bollocks, what's wrong with ya? C'mon."

Harmony sustains the muffled noise, stiffling it with a clearing of her throat and a re-shouldering of her shovel. She was dehydrated enough that no tears were willing to spill down her dirty cheeks, anyway. They lived in soot, dirt, grime and filth. Her cynical side reared its head for her to know that this chaotic, never-ending tale of toil-til-you-die would stop only when they were tossed out into the corpse trenches. She was entirely numb and desensthitized; even the throbbing knot on her chin was nothing but a bump to add to the collection. Scrapes, cuts and bruises physically and emotionally that would never fade away. "Then what are we gonna do?" Harm questions once her composure has been somewhat reclaimed. "For once in my life, I'd be happy to hear one of your nutjob ideas to get us out of here."

Mika rakes a hand through her hair and lets that question hang for a minute. "I don't 'ave any ideas," she finally admits, fingers fidgeting about the shovel's worn-smooth grip. "Even I'm not loopy 'nough t'take on a pack'a Nall armed with nothin' but a shovel an' me cousin's contraband lipgloss." Trying for a joke, here.

So that was it. Nothing. Nada. Zip. No game plans, no hidden ace up the sleeve, nothing. Grim as it was, Harm had no true hope left to crush-- so it wasn't a significant blow. What she focuses on instead, while edging through the dark tunnel, is the day's quota. "Hey, my cherrybalm lipgloss stopped men of all species dead in their tracks." She lowers her shovel to the digging site and starts to knock on the ground with it, to loosen the earth. "You know, I traded my compact for Terra's lipstick? I totally did. And my god, does that girl like to talk. Cluck, cluck, cluck. God." If it isn't obvious enough, she's trying for something more default. If death would claim them, then she'd do it in superdiva style. "Joke's on her that the mirror was shattered."

"See?" Mika chuckles mirthlessly, picking up the cue to keep on truckin' further into the ore mine, deeper into the darkness, guided by nothing but familiarity with the footing. "That's th' 'armony I know, wot? Got nothin' but rags an' a shovel..." Her hand snakes out to poke the legal aide in the ribs. "... an' she's still a blinkin' rockstar."