It's Grande (Miss Valentine)

A grand time chimed from an oversized clock dominating the central wall of the antechamber. A low echo bounced between the hollow hallways opening up the second floor from the stairs slinking around the circular walls encapsulating the opening chamber. The second strike bellowed like a low reminder of Bliss' empty stomach. A rattle came from the locked doors behind the velvet rope segmenting the backstage dressing rooms from the public audience. The third chime bounced between Bliss' eyes. "I get it. Fifteen minutes til whatever."

Bliss lowered the domino mask from her eyes, letting her take a more open look at the entryway. Her sleeveless green dress hugged her torso tightly before ending just halfway down her thigh. A pair of black boots ran up to just below her knee. No one looked suspicious, but exactly what suspicious would look like did not readily make itself to Bliss. A man bumped into the back of Bliss, giving Bliss an 'I ain't a killer, but don't push me' look. She kept it cool. "Hey jerk!" Her words moved faster than her finger, but the finger pulled attention more quickly.

No motion signaled the man would be turning around.

"Motherfu-"

Another woman brushed by Bliss, continuing on without taking any consideration or awareness.

Unable to keep her composure, Bliss moved up to grab the woman by the shoulder, pulling her around. A grey face starred back to Bliss with no life in the eyes. With her hand gently releasing her initial kung-fu grip, Bliss watched as the woman turned away from her. Bliss looked down to her hand. It looked grey. And glowed. "What the what?"

Back within the hallowed chambers of concealed vanity, the hurried voices of calamity ricocheted from brick to mortar until finally reaching the ear of the prized star of the show.

"WE DEMAND QUIET!" A blonde man with a slight pompadour called out from the private dressing room. "I swear, these people are too caught up in their own problems and never think of yours."

"That's alright, really." Annabelle Garland looked at her the purple shimmer on her nails, her gaze finally lifting to gaze upon the fiery gleam of her red hair in the mirror. The waves of flame fell down around her shoulders with a perfect bounce to the middle roll, perfectly framing her slender face. "I don't know what I would do with absolute silence to be completely honest."

"Oh." The man chuckled as her pulled the last roller from her hair. "Well, that's too bad. Because, I do love the silence."

As the glow around Bliss' hand faded, an adverse effect positioned itself in the suspicions within Bliss' mind. "This is-" A slow throbbing rang in her ear. "Um?"

A woman with more than enough physical beauty to cast a shadow on Bliss, cast a shadow on the much shorter Bliss. The line of questions robbed Bliss of her attention to the odd pair as they traversed to the backstage area.

"My hand?" Bliss thought about covering it with her off hand, but then thought about the potential cross contamination. "I guess."

While the hand showed no direct signs of problem, the mutation did begin to seep into Bliss. While it appeared as though the flow of blood merely became sedated, in reality, the blood began to change viscosity. At first the veins remained unseen beneath Bliss' skin, but slowly grey lines began to push the veins closer to the under surface of the epidermis.

"I'm sure you have more of an expert opinion on this, but that looks bad." Bliss squeezed her hand into a fist to try and tense her muscles. Another pump and another contraction of tension. When she tried for the third time, her hand would not close.

Bliss looked to the blond woman. Then, to the backstage door as it closed behind the woman whom touched her.

In Bliss' history, very rarely did you trust a woman carrying a large needle enough to let her use it before she spoke her name. History changes a lot from encounter to encounter, and even though Bliss would most likely stick to the pre-Miss Valentine means of operating, she could not help but feel slightly better. At the very least her hand could form a fist. The squeeze relieved some tension from Bliss, but the feeling of her face hitting the ground failed to make her overall disposition better.

"Did you see that?!" A woman reached down to help Bliss up. "That woman stabbed her with a needle then shoved her to the ground. Are you okay? Should we call the-"

"Oh no, don't worry. Friend from college." Bliss brushed her dress off as she stood up. "It's an old sorority joke. You inject someone with a placebo and then- aw screw it, trust me, that is not the weirdest thing you are going to see to tonight."

The removal of the door from the hinges sent a signal to Bliss as to where exactly this mystery woman disappeared. "She just beat that door like it owed her money. I guess stealth goes out the door when you're so good looking everyone pays attention to you." Bliss hurried her way towards the door, still feeling a little lightheadedness come over her from time to time, as well as feeling in her arm stay less than consistent.

Each room in the backstage area listed the thespian occupying the dressing room. Annabelle's sat closest to the stage itself, giving the actress more time to prepare and a quicker egress from the show once it finished. The kick to the door dislodged it quite easily. Even though the rooms held amenities for good taste, the designer did not expect anyone to deliver a kick with the full force of an elite kickboxer.

From the look on her face, Annabelle did not care in the slightest about the impressive skill Rachel just showed. Her eyes kept her face locked on the image of herself in the mirror as she stroked her hair mechanically from root to end in perfect repetition. Her fingers ran through the curves of her hair, letting the silver strands etch between her strokes.

In the corner of the room a full length mirror slowly opened. Once concealed and shut, the force from Rachel's kick dislodged the hidden path- and the echoes of hammering ringing up from the stairs behind the door.

A pair of boots followed down the hallway as Bliss burst into the room behind Rachel. The numbness in her shoulder causing her tension to be more shown. "Hey! What was that thing you stuck me with and did it have any side effects?" Bliss looked over to Annabelle in her trance. "I'm pretty sure the playbill had her down as a redhead. We should probably be a little more closed."

A telekinetic lift took the door off the ground and back into place. Putting the hinges back on took a little precision, but the door- for better or worse- now continued to fulfill it's initial purpose. "I'm Bliss."

"Well." Bliss felt her eyes grow a bit as Rachel told her the power of the serum flowing through her veins. "I'm probably a little immune to serums. At least I got the good stuff from it. I think." The lines from her veins were still touched with a hint of gray, but a quick balling up a fist contracted every muscle associated with the act. A brow above Bliss' eye furrowed before as a bump sat between the insertion point of her bicep and the origin of her forearm. A slight hiccup broke, lowering the bump. But, not Bliss' suspicions.

The next time Bliss looked up, Rachel was pulling her super suit up over her shoulder. "I never give up an opportunity to tell villains to get off my shine." Turning around, Bliss dropped her dress. Beneath it laid the short black skirt with the upper portion of the white leotard pulled down around it. Slipping an arm through the side of the leotard, Bliss hoisted up her sailor suit, brushing off the bow around her chest and adjusting her collar. She reached down into her boots and pulled out a rolled up pair of gloves. Once her fingers entered, she slid the rest of the glove seamlessly up her forearm. "Not exactly what it showed in the anime, but I'm getting better at getting into action quickly. I think I'll try the domino mask."

Bliss tossed the dress into the corner of the room and fluffed out the bow on her posterior. "She looks like I feel." A breeze from the adjacent mirror rustled Bliss' hair. "So, she's going to be out for a while? I hope the understudy is ready to go- and her unemployment papers are ready to go." While the dosage going into Annabelle was smaller, Bliss really could not gauge anything of the sort from her vantage point. She just watched as Annabelle dropped the brush and slouched back in the dressing chair.

"Are you going first? I saw what you did to that door, so what I'm saying is, how bout you first?" Both of Bliss' arms ushered towards the door, waiting for Rachel to take the more dangerous part of the descent. "I'll be right behind you, and I haven't even shown you half of what I can do. A third if you count what I can do with a computer as a super ability. You know what? I do count that. A third. Wait, fourth. We'll talk about that later though."

Stairs curved into a cylindrical descent towards a light two stories down. Each step came with a leap of faith in the light devoid staircase, but each step did exist in the exact proximity it should. The metal make up of the stairs clanged with each step no matter how soft Bliss tried to make her landing. The enclosure of the stairwell only exacerbated the ringing into the room below.

The light at the bottom of the tunnel opened into a long, brick room. While a light fixated above the door gave a beacon to follow, most of the room remained still and clouded in shadows, painting the crevices and deadends in the same light. A slow drip of water echoed along several corners. Underneath the drip hummed a low buzz of a machine, but it reverberated through the unknown, hidden in the shadows. An illumination pulled Bliss like a moth to flame. The lit screen flanked by a tower and a strange device called.

"I see a computer." Bliss whispered as they entered.

Once they entered further, motion detectors running through the first twenty feet of the room would trigger the flood lights to shine at the entrance to the room. A figure moved behind the lights at the farside of the room, stopping by the desk to pick up a device.

Tired of the blinding light, Bliss summoned up a wall of ice to give Rachel and her a little break from the tanning session. "This should give us a little-"

The ice shattered. A high pitched, but seemingly localized siren began to fill the subtle whisper filled room. Once the sound cannon began to focus on ridding Bliss and Rachel of a stress free moment, the sounds of hurried steps began filling the sides around them. A slew of people, gray in the face, began to move towards Bliss and Rachel's location- all the while a glint shined off a pair of glasses hovering above the sound cannon at the far end of the room.

The very noise began to penetrate Bliss deep within her core. It felt like a nail being dragged down a chalkboard. And the chalkboard was her brain. Putting her fingers inside of her ears would only lessen the pain; Bliss needed to find a way to solve the entire problem in as few moves as possible. None of the fog lights broke from the piercing sound, nor did any of the mutants look to be affected by the sound. Between the screeching sound and the wave of mutants descending upon them, no moments of clarity presented themselves.

A few mutants moved ahead of the pack, bearing down on Bliss and Rachel in a pincer move. As savage hands gripped for Bliss' neck, a telekinetic push vaulted it over Rachel's head, colliding with the mutants assaulting Miss Valentine. The shriek complicated Rachel's voice in Bliss' ear, but it gave her enough of a warning to know what she should do. Should do.

Both vials smashed on the ground around them. Smoke rose while the mutants continued their assault. If Bliss covered her mouth, she knew the mutants would be able to mount enough of an attack before being sedated to overwhelm both Rachel and herself. "I know hindsight is 20/20, but I feel like one of us should have brought a mask." Telekinetic force through a mutant to the ground at Bliss' feet. She could no longer shoot them away from the duo as she typically conditioned herself to do in the first place.

Two mutants got in Bliss' blindspot, tackling her to the ground and pulling her hand away from her mouth. The gas still fixated itself high enough above the ground to avoid a full sedation of Bliss, but as the man and woman pinning Bliss began to give way to the inoculation, Bliss could feel it seep inside of her senses.

Bliss rolled over on her side, catching a glimpse of the scientist as she made her way towards the duo, still in possession of the noise cannon blasting Bliss' migraines into overdrive. Getting to her feet ranked high on her list of necessary movements, but a man with around eighty pounds on her fell on her back, trapping Bliss. Her hand covered most of the fumes seeping into her senses, but she could continue to feel her senses deadening. Finding a gap between two mutants, Bliss forced her mouth into the gap and took a deep breath. Fumes still occupied the space, but not as much as the rest of the battlefield. A quick blast of telekinesis removed the man from her back, allowing her to stand up as the fumes began to evaporate.

"Good...idea..." Little life remained in Bliss' knees and both of her eyes looked to be wanting to head in different directions, but Bliss remained upright. "That stupid siren...stopped..."

"Those are clever concoctions you have there." The woman entered from the shadows. Her hair pulled back tightly with a pair goggles over her eyes and a mask around her mouth. "I too dabble in the creation of formulas. I see you have found my latest. It's not quite done yet as you see, but I think you might stand to aid me in finishing it." The noise cannon rested between her hands and the thick reinforced lab coat covering her lanky form.

Bliss fell to her knees, no longer able to maintain the balance of her legs. She looked to Rachel. Then, to the noise cannon. "One of us might be able to escape..."

Bliss rolled over on her side. It did not make her head feel any better.She rubbed her ears until she forced enough of a vacuum to make her ears pop. It did not make her head feel any better. She gave up on ideas for making her head feel better. It did not make her head feel any better.

Once her head lent her enough bearing to know what direction up was, she sat up, facing the door. With a blur now encompassing her general direction, Bliss spoke to the stairwell she could have sworn was Rachel. "Don't worry... We're playing the long game. Super long game."

With her finger on the button of the cannon, the chemist kept a slight distance from any sudden movement. She knew her trump card rested just beneath her finger and would never want to get rid of it. "That's an interesting way of looking at it. Wrong. But, interesting. You are correct however when you say I am in the preliminary stages. I do plan on moving forward once I analyze however you neutralized the serum in your counterpart and the minions around me." No motion came to her legs the entirety of her speech, matching the emotion coming from her voice. "I will need the vials that you created. Once I analyze it, I can get back to my original plan of transmitting the graft from one host to the next. If they act on primal instinct it is fine. I do not care how they act, as long as they are active and mobile."

"Your plan is- well, I don't actually know, but it sounds like you have a virus and not a plan." Bliss followed the voices and spun herself around to face the chemist and sit aside Rachel. With her vision blurred, Bliss focused on what she thought was the noise cannon. "You're not going to get a lot of work done just holding that dumb boombox either."

"My plan for the virus is fine. It turns people into living power plants for me. Then, once they have stored enough energy, I use a matter displacer to transition the stored energy through a quantum transitive state."

"You made half those words up and the other half don't work the way you think they do." Bliss turned her head towards Rachel to get a quick word in. "That gas mask is a new addition to her arsenal. This lady has been breathing chemicals for years. And, I don't think she was sane before that."

"If the transistor does not work. It is fine. People will just release the required amount of energy to power my lab the normal way- by exploding." The woman rested her hand on her noise cannon. "And as for needing to watch over the two of you while I work, that is what handcuffs and duct tape are for."

"Nope. Not doing any of that." Bliss rolled forward, latching a telekinetic pull onto the noise cannon in an attempt to disarm the woman. Unfortunately, in her blurred state she grabbed the woman's work goggles and gas mask, throwing them across the room into a wall. "You better be glad I can't readily turn around or this would be a much better situation for me."

A high pitched shriek came from he noise cannon for a split second. The scientist released the button, ushering back the ringing silence. "Was your attempt at tough talk saying if you knew which direction the exit was, you would run away?"

"Pretty much."

The plan burst into action. Shards of fragmentation and fire burst forth in front of the scientist. She placed her noise cannon inside of her lab jacket and flipped on the switch. The noise began again, only to be outdone by the loud burst of flame throwing itself into the scientist's coat. The anesthetic deployed by Miss Valentine began to cloud around her, hiding her form.

The cannon still acted as the violent harbinger.

Slowly a form staggered through the gas cloud. Each vibration from the noise cannon seeping deeper into Miss Valentine. "An interesting concoction indeed." A large graft of skin hung from the scientist's face, exposing the muscle layer underneath her cheek and nose. "I will need your assistance working with it, so do try to get some rest."

Blood seeped down the scientist's face as she kept the noise cannon fixated on Miss Valentine. A red crimson streaked across both cheek lines and where skin used to hang on her face. The glimmering pearls of her teeth slowly soaked into the blood stained deluge pouring down her face. Keeping her stance what she believed a safe distance from Miss Valentine, the scientist waited for the sheer shock to finally incapacitate her foe.

The loud ringing from the noise machine continued to bounce around the chamber, forcing Bliss to regain her unwanted, undesired consciousness. "AAAGGGHHHHHH!" Whether it be dumb luck or a highly specific area of focus, Bliss managed to grab hold of the noise machine with her telekinesis. She did not hold on for long as she sent it flying into the wall. Bliss wanted to hop to her feet and help, but her good intentions could not get over the paralyzing migraine coursing through her head.

The scientist watched as Bliss assisted in the removal of the fog. But, only Bliss remained. "Clever girl." Her face took the blow directly to the side of her head. A glob of spit shot from her mouth, landing on the ground. "Hold this." Both of the scientist's arms ducked inside of her jacket, letting her throw it back towards Rachel.

Holding two bombs in her hands, the scientist hopped forward. The first bomb dropped behind her while the other flew over towards Bliss and the pile of have-been zombies. "Enjoy the show." Tossing a saucer to the ground, the scientist planted her feet and began to dissipate. "Clever, clever girls."

"This is an idea!" Bliss leaned forward throwing her hand towards the bomb in front of Rachel. With a telekinetic toss, Bliss would throw the bomb towards the scientist as she disappeared. Bliss looked over to the bomb rolling towards her. "Maybe not the best..."