Bertie Bakarrik Session 4

= We Party Hard =

4 May 2021

The crowd in the Church of Creation arena is going wild! Screaming and hollering, calling out their love for their favorite player. “EUPHOOOOOORIAAAAAA!”,  “Liss-En, Liss-En!”, “PEACH-PEACH-PEACH!”, “Di-a-MOND, Di-a-MOND”. Some people really liked that new girl, too, but they didn’t really know her name, ya know? From backstage, David, the Church head, looks on approvingly. Crowds like this will help to push the (false) idea of the Church as younger, cool, not-racists.

Walking, literally walking, on people’s upturned palms, an incredibly pale-skinned elf-tiefling glides her way to the stage. Bertie Bakarrik, still in the mosh pit that Euphoria had pushed her into, but no longer getting beaten, thank the gods, has to struggle her way back to the stage. No fan rides for the new girl.

Bertie’s entire body feels like, well, like she just got her ass beat to within one point of unconsciousness by an unruly mob of assholes in a church, egged on by her “friend”,  Asylum’s lead singer, Euphoria. And lucky little tiefling that she is, Bertie still has more songs to play. The concert isn’t over, and the show must go on, even with an aching head, probably broken ribs, and a murderous lead singer. Despite her battered body, Bakarrik plays her electric violin in the last three songs like someone possessed by a god of music.

When the band takes their bows, Euphoria smiles  at her with her mouth, but her eyes are daggers. Bertie has no damn idea what happened, why Euphoria went from a cheerful,supportive friendly lady, into a mean-girl who’s kind of trying to kill her, maybe? What did Bertie do, what could she even do, to Euphoria anyway?

Once off and to the side of the stage, Lissen comes and congratulates a limping, bruised Bertie on playing a great show, especially after the mosh pit. “What the fuck was that about? Is that how you haze people?”, she angrily asks the earth genasi. Lissen looks visibly uncomfortable, and tells Bertie, “yeah she only does that to the girls she....likes”. Lissen seems a big apologetic, and as though they don’t support that kind of behavior. Bertie can hear the truth behind the words, that Euphoria doesn’t particularly like her. Which, thanks to recent events, she had already figured out for herself.

Euphoria glides past them, an excited fan chattering away at her, with a beautiful and indulgent smile on her perfect face. Looking at the cheerful young person following their idol, Bertie feels...off. Uncomfortable, uneasy, wary, foreboding. Something just doesn’t feel right to her. Maybe it’s knowing the jerk behind the dazzle.

Peach Cobbler and Diamond Swift swish up to her with a rustle of feathers and fine fabrics, looking all kinds of dolled up. “Hey, you ready to get hazed by US?”, Diamond hollers as they are walking up. “LETS GET DRUNK!!!!”, Peach Cobbler mimics, a deep manly voice coming out of her beaked kenku mouth. “Come on, we’re going out, go get dressed!”, Diamond orders cheerfully. Bertie points out that she doesn’t have many clothes, since she kind of wasn’t exactly planning to run away and join the band when she went to a concert. “Eh fine good enough”, Diamond hand waves the issue away.

Lissen, Peach Cobbler, and Diamond Swift wait while Bertie goes back to her Magic School Bus bedroom. She quickly heals herself and tidies her green and black hair, and checks for clothing rips that aren’t there on purpose. Rejoining the rest of the Asylum, minus Euphoria, they all exit out the back of the arena, pumped to hit the town and see what fun Austin’s got for them. A few dozen fans waiting behind the arena all start talking and yelling, begging for autographs. Bertie hangs back and watches, not wanting to get in the wat of the others. “Hey, c’mon, you’re a part of this too!”, Lissen motions her over. Mentally shrugging, Bertie joins the autograph session, soon finding herself  signing paper, a cast, an arm...a boob... Bertie laughs and enjoys the happy mini-mob. This is the kind of crowd she can enjoy.

Autograph duty discharged, the group walks out into the Austin streets. The arena’s downtown location making it an easy walk to the nightlife of Austin. They walk and talk, chattering about this and that, before a slight  noise catches her attention. Bertie swivels her and is the only one who sees, down an alley, a large person hitting and pulling a bag off the back of a smaller person. The bigger person runs towards the street, towards the group. It all happened so fast, nobody else has seen it. Acting on instinct, Bertie casts Vicious Mockery, commanding“Drop that bag you dirty motherfucker!”. “What did you say?!”, Diamond’s head snaps towards Bertie, not yet knowing there’s another person around.

The backpack thief slows to a stop in front of her. Most of his face is hidden from view by a hoodie. His jeans and shoes are really nice, they look like good quality. But his face! The part of his face that Bertie can see is bloody, cracked, scarred lips, slashes going every which way. To her great surprise, he actually drops the bag. The small bag lands with a heavy thud, sounding louder and heavier than a backpack that small ought to. “I really don’t need this shit”, the hooded figure spits out through his cracked and ruined lips. Behind them in the alley, the smaller figure he took the backpack from then stands up, but remains where they are.

Diamond and Lissen both gracefully sink down right there, sitting on the sidewalk cross-legged. “Do you think she’s gonna beat him?”,  “of course she is!”, “Well yeah I mean, how fast?”’, “10 seconds, max.”,  “Hundred gold?”, “Yeah, hundred gold”. The two banter, choosing to sit back and enjoy the show rather than help. Bertie watches them in disbelief. In fact, she’s kind of mad, because who the hell just watches their friend, instead of helping them?

Bertie’s not able to hold on to her mad for long. The hoodied figure quickly reclaims her attention with a burst of fire shooting out of his hand. They stand there, facing each other. He with his rough ruined skin and palpable air of danger, she a fairly small tiefling with no desire to get beaten up tonight. Again. With no real plan, she casts Charm Person, telling him to leave the bag, then turn around and walk away, without stopping until she says so. Standing there facing him, she kind of holds her breath, wondering what would happen.

The figure removes his hoodie from his face slowly. His face is a crosshatching of scars and fresh blood from older scabs. His nose is twisted and mushed, like it’s been bashed in and only sort of repaired. But his eyes, though... Instead of eyes, skin grows over the sockets where the eyes should be. This person, whoever they are, looks like they’ve been through a windshield and a fire, and then punched a few times for good measure.

She stands there bracing herself for whatever would come at her next. Without saying a word, the guy turns around, leaves the bag on the ground, and starts walking away. And walking, and walking, not stopping, just like Bertie commanded. “Huh”, she says, “I didn’t actually think that would work”.

Diamond and Lissen seem very disappointed that it was over so soon. While they go back and forth about who owe’s who 100 gold, Bertie checks out the backpack. Leaving it on the ground, she unzips it carefully and peers inside. Wondering what was so important that the scar faced guy was looking for. Gently pushing open the zippered main pouch she looks in and It’s completely full to the brim with empty space. “Whaaaat...?”, they were fighting over an empty backpack?

Shrugging, she reaches for the bag, intending to return it to the person it came from. When she looks up, she sees that the smaller figure is gone. Shaking her head at the weirdness of the evening so far, she grabs the small backpack by the loop on top. Bertie is completely unprepared for the weight of the empty, small, backpack. It feels like it weighs close to 15 pounds! With nobody left to give it to, Bertie shrugs on the weirdly heavy empty backpack, and she and Peach Cobbler trail after Diamond and Lissen, who had wandered away after the fight ended, and were now about a block ahead.

A fizzing, blinking neon sign over the door proclaims that they have arrived at “The Elephant Room”. Expecting a large space with a tropical theme, Bertie follows her bandmates inside. The long narrow room with a swing-dance vibe, wood walls and accessories, and of course a banjo player -because doesn’t’ every bar have a freaking banjo player? - greet her when the group walks in Disappointed, visions of exclusive VIP rooms at fancy nightclubs dashed, Bertie asks Diamond, “This is your version of hazing? Not the kind of place I’d imagine you’d hang out”. “Hey, hey, look, real musicians come to these kinds of places”, Diamond tells her, “Real musicians don’t hang out in bullshit nightclubs, they come to where real music is played”, she says with a raised eyebrow. She clearly senses that Bertie anticipated a more ‘rock star’ evening.

A server leads them over to a booth table with a great view of the tiny stage. Bertie reaches up to take the backpack off so she can lean back, and then thinks better of it. It’s super cute, looks tres fetch, and makes her outfit look fancier than it is.

Eleven shot glasses of clear liquid appear on a tray in front of Bertie, to her delight and pleasure. Quick like a bunny, she reaches out and in one gulp, the shot has been shooted. “LETS GET DRUNK!”, Peach shouts out in that booming male voice. “Hey, slow down”, laughs Lissen, and they explain the rules of the evening - Every shot requires a toast, the toasts must be good, and, most importantly, Bertie has far more to drink than they do, as all eleven of those shots are hers.

“Hell yeah!”, Bertie exclaims. Before anyone can react, she picks up another shot and says, “Here’s to good friends, good bandmates, a great night, and not fucking dying from snorting gems. Let’s get smashed!”. They all clink glasses, and down the hatch, the shot glasses are empty.

Shot after shot, toast after toast, they steadily work their way through their drinks. “Better on the way in than the way out! I love you all. Provost! Hai, dozo.”, pops out Peach Cobbler in an assortment of voices. “Here’s to awesome friends”, from Lissen. Weak, but whatever, take a shot!

After who knows how many drinks, Bertie is feeling goooood. She’s got a little bit of a seat-wobble going on, but that’s fine, it’s great. Without any warning, she wraps her arms around the two closest bandmates, Lissen and Peach. “I love you. I love you all sooooooo mush. “, she sways a little, spilling a big of her drink on Lissen, who wipes it off with a slight grimace. “No but f’real. F’real, y’all are the best people I’ve met, such great people. Well, Euphoira’s kinda bish, but you are all so great, I love you!”. Releasing her friends, she finishes her shot. A small voice in her head asks her ‘what about Phoebe, your best friend?’, but she brushes that thought and the attendant guilt aside. That’s different. That’s from, uh...before!

The banjo guy gets back up on the small stage after a quick break. He calls out to the table, “hey, Asylum! Woo HI! Who’s the new girl? Whatchu play, new girl?”. They smile and wave at him, and upon learning New Girl plays the fiddle, invites her up to play with him.

Drunk and cheerful, Bertie tells him suuuuuuure, she’ll come up and play. When she stands up, she really feels the booze. After taking a moment to steady herself, Bertie closes one eye and takes a careful measurement of the best route to the stage. Certain she has the best “I’m not drunk” path mapped out, she walks in a straight, graceful line to the stage, and walks up the two stairs with equal aplomb. The audience members watch her weave her way across open floor, bump into the edges of chairs, almost knock over a table, and cause people to move or get ran into. Her method of climbing two small stairs put some people in mind of their kids as toddlers.

“HI!”, she chirps at the banjo player. “Whatchu play?”. He looks like he’s trying to restrain a laugh. “Uh the banjo. You knew that... “.  Bertie smiles big and bright, “Oh riiiight hahaha, I did know that!”. A server brings her out a fiddle to play and quickly whispers “I’m a huge fan, I’m coming to see you in two days!”, and hurries away. “I’m Ben, pleased to meet you. Do you know ‘Cottoneye Joe’, it came out about 2 years ago.”, the banjo man asks her. Lying through her  pretty teeth, she promises him ,”oh yeahhhhhhh”. She’s never heard of it. Not a single note, not even the title. Ben kicks off the song, and when she joins in, Bertie completely and totally fakes 100% of what she’s doing. It sounds great with the song, and the audience is really getting in to it, but Ben knows that she has no idea what song this is. But hey, it sounds good and people are happy, so whatever.

The back entrance opens and a hooded figure with nice jeans and nice tennis shoes walks in the door. Bertie sees him from the stage, but drunk, just slurs “Ppppppppft That guy!”. Focusing on the very important task of playing her fiddle, she  dismisses ol’ scarface. She is filled with the wonder and majesty that IS Miss Bertie Bakarrik, player of fiddle and violin extraordinaire!

That was not a good decision on her part. Once again, he reclaims her attention with a firebolt to the face. She immediately doubles over and screams into the microphone “AERRGH HOLLY SHIT”. The patrons will understand, getting firebolted to the face tends to cause that kind of reaction. Ben whispers at her “should we stop?”, and she kind of snaps back “UH YES!”. She looks around frantically for a backstage area to run into, but all she sees is a bathroom and a kitchen door.

Another firebolt wallops her right in her very drunk head. She howls in pain again. LIssen, Diamond, and Peach Cobbler all stand up and seem to be ready to actually help, instead of just watching this time.

She drunkenly hops off the three foot stage as though it’s a 10 foot drop, staggers, and makes a fast Olympic-style gymnast arms-in-the-air move. Even drunk, Bertie’s got style. Another firebolt shoots past her head, missing her this time, though she can feel it’s heat singeing her. It smashes into an Asylum poster on the wall next to her, completely obliterating Euphoria from the group picture. Bertie does that soft point-and-laugh drunk giggle, and then books it through the kitchen door.

Trying her best to weave around the pots and pans and stoves and all the people who seem to be aiming to get in her way, Bertie makes for the only door she can see, far faaaar on the northeast side of the kitchen area. She’s shoving people, trash cans, the empty air, to try to move forward. Another damn firebolt slams into her. Her body just can’t take anymore, and she falls down in a heap unconscious, right on the dirty rubber circle kitchen mats. Her cheek lands on piece of limp lettuce.

The hoodie-wearing man has followed her into the kitchen, and has far less difficulty navigating it. He grabs Bertie’s hair and pulls up her head. His ruined, eyeless face seems to study her intently. Dropping her head back on the lettuce, he mumbles “pitiful”. He easily pulls the bag off Bertie’s back, and walks towards the door on the northeast side. He doesn’t appear to be in any particular hurry. For a man with no eyes, he seems to see really well.

Peach Cobbler, Lissen, and Diamond Swift run into the kitchen. They gasp when they see Bertie on the dirty mats, knocked out cold, and the hoodie man walking towards the back. “Pull yourself together!”,Peach Cobbler snaps. She whips out a small keyboard with what looks like a chainsaw attached to the handle. Peach plays a soft lullaby, something that mothers would sing to their children. In moments, the hoodie goes down, fast asleep.

Bertie is also still down, but unconscious, not sleeping. The three musicians start playing an oldie but a goodie, “Get Up”, by James Brown. The music is catchy, energetic, and motivating. Some of the kitchen staff start shaking their booty while they work. Health flowing back into her, Bertie’s head starts bobbing to the music while still on the floor. She grabs the side of a stainless steel kitchen table and pulls herself to her feet, slowly and awkwardly.

“Hey, that’s the guy, the bag. Him. He’s the backpack. Yeah, them”. Bertie kind of babbles at her friends and points with her free hand. The other hand is braced on the table. “Yeah we know”, Lissen dryly replies. The backpack is beckoning her, calling at her, “you want it, you know you want it, you have to have it”. This is completely reasonable, and a fine idea.

Bertie staggers over to the downed figure and reaches for the backpack. She reaches for it about 3 feet too soon, however. The immense weight of her upper half bending over is just too much for her to counteract. As she’s leaning and reaching, Bertie face plants right into the backpack, currently on the back of the sleeping man. Using her face as an alarm clock seems to work, because it wakes him up instantly.

Bertie grabs the bag and scrambles to her feet, kicking the mean ugly bag-napper right in the crotch. She runs for the exit, again. Scarface fire bolts her, knocking her down, again. She stumbles as she falls, ending face up on the floor, backpack strap clutched in her hand. The man literally leaps on her, wrapping his hands around her throat. Perhaps he’s run out of firebolts. He squeezes so hard.....harder....to breathe..so....tight.... Pinpricks of light dance across her vision.

Abruptly, his cracked and scarred face falls on her face, like a grotesque parody of a kiss. She can feel his entire face sliding across her own soft skin, stabbing into her with the dry, hard cracks of parched skin, so hard they feel like little spikes, small smears of blood from the fresher wounds staining her face. “EUUUGH!” Bertie hollers, and pushes the paralyzed man off of her. Lissen had come through in the clutch with a nice strong paralyze spell.

She jumps to her feet and does the heebie-jeebie dance. Stamping her feet and shaking out both of her hands like that will fling the memory of some strange man’s stabby face sliding against her own, Bertie tries to shake it off.

She looks at her bandmates, and slightly panting from her gyrations, breathes  “Wha’should we do”? Peach shares that she  is firmly in favor of “Off With Her HEAD!”, while the other two seem somewhat unsure.

Bertie just wants to go back to bus, she has had her fill of the evening and she is all funn’ed out. They point out that the scarred man found her at the bar, and he had no way to even know where they had gone. With a gasp, Bertie has a flash of insight, “I think it’s the BAG. I think he wants this”, she points at the pack that she’s already put back on.

Thinking it over, Bertie decides that she doesn’t really care, it’s just a small heavy bag, he can have it if that means he’ll leave her alone. It wasn’t even hers to begin with. She tries to take off the backpack, and something in her just....won’t let her... She shouldn’t take it off, it looks so pretty, it’s so damn fetch. But on further reflection, nah, she’s going to take it off, the creepy guy wants it and he won’t leave it alone, and Bertie doesn’t really need it. But wait,screw that guy, he’s tried to kill her several times, after mugging someone for the beautiful sleek little backpack in the first place! He doesn’t deserve it, and besides, it looks better on her than it would on his ugly ass. The tug of war continues in her mind, each side putting forth valid reasons for their argument.

Her bandmates stare at her while she seems to...go away. Bertie’s face goes slack, her eyes sort of lose focus, and her lips move a little but make no sounds. “Uh, Bakarrik?”, Diamond says. “Mmm? Huh? Oh, yeah!”, she says, snapping back into the world outside her mind. “Yeah, less go back, I wanna go back. Fuck this guy, I’ma keep the backpack”. The others look kind of doubtful, and Lissen voices what they’re thinking, “But won’t he follow that bag?”. Bertie sets her jaw and says stubbornly, “I don’ give a shit, he tried to kill me! He’s not gonna get it.”

Peach Cobbler heaves a sigh, as though the weight of the world is hers to carry. She pulls out a ruby shard from her bag, and with a muttered word, crushes it into powder. Peach holds the ruby powder in her hands and bends over the paralyzed man. “It takes two to tango. The calm before the storm. It never rains but it pours. There’s no place like home. When you’re right, you’re right.”, she keeps chanting common sayings in the borrowed voices of strangers, and gently blows the ruby powder at his face.

The powder softly flies out of her cupped hands and stops about a centimeter over the ruined face, like a  perfect mask. At the end of Peach’s phrase recitation, the fine ruby dust swirls and eddies as though in water. The dust seems to gather into two streams that then funnel into his smashed nose, leaving not one red mote behind.

Apparently no longer paralyzed, the man calmly gets up. He proffers a perfect gentlemanly bow to the four of them, three of whose are gaping at him. He straightens up and says pleasantly, “Have a wonderful evening”, and then...simply walks away. He doesn’t look back, he doesn’t seem upset, and he doesn’t shoot any more firebolts. Not only is it baffling, it’s also kind of creepy. Bertie slurs at Peach Cobbler, eyes wide, “Wow, what’dja DO?!”, but Peach just shrugs. Not that she’d be able to explain it very well with her borrowed words.

Asylum-minus-one leave the bar for the Magic School Bus, much to Bertie’s enormous relief. Her mind is picking at her, she has this nagging uncomfortable feeling inside, kind of like she felt seeing Euphoria go backstage with that fan. What Peach did was like nothing she’d ever seen, or even heard of. And how did Peach do whatever it was she did, with only common phrases? But the farther they walk from the bar, the less tense they all seem to feel, and the less Bertie dwells on her odd feeling. After a bit, they were all laughing and joking normally again.

“Hey”, Bakarrik abruptly says to Diamond Swift, “Whatsh the deal with Euphoria? Why dinnint she come out tonight? Whatsa deal withat? Dosh she think she’s better’n us?”. Without even a pause, a trio of voices say “YES.”  Diamond explains that back when they started, Euphoria came out with them, treated them as equals. But after the solo magazine covers, the gossip - Bertie dimly remembers there was a rumor going around that she was dating Lissen at one point, but that was never confirmed - the excessive ‘lead singer’ attention, and a few solo albums, she changed. Euphoria no longer really spends much free time with the rest of the group, because she does indeed feel that she’s better than the rest of them.

Bertie listens intently as Diamond and Lissen, and occasionally Peach, explain the convoluted history of the long-running music group. She is fascinated by stories of behind the scenes power struggles, petty squabbles, and even some confirmation of ancient gossip - not about Lissen, of course. She is laughing and enjoying the banter, and then all of a sudden, she claps both hands over her mouth. Her eyes start darting around looking for a trash can, a bush, anything. “I feel sick”, Peach says softly, in a little girl’s voice. Bertie leans against a pole, heaving and heaving, until she gets all the evil out. “Ewwww”, Lissen says. Bertie wipes her mouth off and laughs weakly, “Yeah, very ewww”.

The rest of the short walk back to the bus passes without incident. They all climb into the bus, but instead of being exhausted, Bertie seems to have gotten her second wind. For reasons of her own, Bertie decides that she MUST find the bus driver, and right away, tonight, right now. She starts rummaging through all the public places on the bus. He’s not in his seat, which seems unusual, why wouldn’t he be in his bus driver seat at 3am when they have nowhere to drive to for two more days? Bertie is very confused by that.

She looks in the kitchen dimension, the living room dimension, under the bus, in the luggage compartments under the bus, everywhere she can think of. She even grabs a hammer to try to pry up some of the floor and see if he’s hiding in there. Peach gently removes the hammer from Bertie’s hand, but otherwise, the rest of the band just lets her look and enjoys the silly show.

Finally giving up her fruitless search, with her drunk second-wind wearing off, Bertie calls it quits and goes to her room. She kicks off her shoes, peels off her socks, and then reaches for the backpack. She hesitates, wondering if she can stand to take it off. If she wants to take it off. She slowly puts her hand on the shoulder strap, and starts to pull it off. To her relief, she doesn’t end up with a mental argument about it. As long as she’s not trying to disown the backpack, it seems emotionally acceptable for her to remove it.

Bertie puts the backpack on the bed to inspect it. She carefully goes through all of the side pockets, the main pocket, the little zipper pocket that makes no sense. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. She tries to squish the bag down, but it won’t change it’s shape. This damn bag, she thinks. It feels like it’s carrying bricks, it keeps it’s shape like it’s full of bricks, but it’s completely empty. Frustrated, she kicks at the bag, which only hurts her toes.

Bertie limps over  to the sink to wash up for bed. She glances up at the mirror and is shocked to see a HUGE bloody gash on her mouth. She’s not sure when it happened, but she never felt it. She doesn’t even really feel it now. Maybe when she fell on the kitchen floor? Examining it, she sees that the wound starts inside her mouth, at the gums, and goes all the way around her lip. While she is in the process of looking it over, the wound starts healing before her eyes. In a matter of moments, all that remains on Bertie’s face is a thin scar on her lower left lip, with flaky chapped skin around the scar.

A flash of something catches her attention, and Bertie whips her head around. In front of her bathroom a being has appeared. Looking up, she sees bare feet, hairy calves, the bottom edge of a very nice white and green towel, a hairy bellybutton, and crossed hairy arms. An olive skinned face decorated with a beautifully kept full beard. “AH! Oh, Shit!”, the being yelps and scurries out of her bedroom door.

Bertie wrinkles her brow, and then starts laughing. She finally found the bus driver