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If there's one thing KALEIDOSCOPE does not expect that night he's called to the Fogged Mirror to go over the plan and meet his new crew, then it's for CASCADE to crawl into his lap right there in the private booth upstairs, before he even has time to greet her. Her pink skirt is so short that it barely peeks out from under the oversized black jacket she's wearing, and KALEIDOSCOPE catches a glimpse of pale, naked thighs and the shadows between them before she's fully settled on him and that's when it dawns on him what is about to happen.
He feels her murmur something in to the side of his neck, just before she licks the skin there and then bites him, just a little, just enough to have him shiver under the threat of her so close to his most exposed body part. He knows she's armed. She carries a gun, certainly. One she's shot at him before. But what else? That close to his jugular, there's many tools that would do the job--a knife, a screwdriver, even that Einzeltone XR that she's always carrying around would do it, if she were willing to sacrifice Ultra Violeta's masterpiece on it. And he knows that she would be. Willing, that is. If she wanted to cut his throat, not even the most sacred of music would stay her hand.
He must have made a sound there, maybe a whimper, maybe a groan of despair at the thought of losing this artifact of his own goddesses' greatness, for she pulls back and frowns at him. Her eyes are bloodshot and a little baggy. The irregular hours have taken a toll on her otherwise quite striking face. Too many sleepless nights, too much stress. KALEIDOSCOPE can relate. Before he'd struck his bargain with her, he'd felt similarly ragged. Nothing else had mattered to him but his mission. He's found peace since then though, peace in the knowledge the Violetta is home, and that she is safe, and that there will be another album and then one after that and then maybe even more, if the world was lucky. Peace the likes of which CASCADE has never known, and likely never will know.
"Do you mind?" She asks. Her lips carefully form the words so he can read them based on her movements, no need for him to leave the roaring, deafening quiet that his headphones cloak him in.
It's clear to both of them, KALEIDOSCOPE thinks, that the question is rhetorical. She knows he won't push her away; knows that he gets it, gets the need to ground oneself before a mission, to press flesh against flesh and to suck hungry kisses along a pale flesh. They have both been here before, or as close to here as one can be. The theatre of spy craft leaves little time for dalliances. Spies often take what little comfort they can get with each other in moments just like this. Before a mission. Especially one cloaked in such grimness as this one.
When the nerves need calming and anxiety rears its ugly, yellow head, there's little else to do but embrace this kind of insanity and just ride it all out. She's gathered all the information she could and she's made her decisions based on them already. No doubt about that. She is vibrating from it, vibrating or shaking or going to pieces. The lives of her chosen weigh heavy on her soul.
Or maybe that's the drugs, KALEIDOSCOPE muses. There's a certain smell that hangs around her like a cloud and wafts over him when she moves. She first goes back to sucking kisses into his throat and then his chest and then even lower down, and the cloud follows her closely. A slight chemical tint, plus the smoke from her ghastly cigarette habit, plus whatever funky weed her old friend downstairs had plied her with earlier. But most of all, she smells like a SPY. Like dark alley ways and photo copied documents, like mind-breaking torture and ever uncertain tomorrows. Like secrets.
Her gloved hands are rough when she pulls his cock out of his pants and spits on it. Rougher still when she has to put in more work than she'd probably expected to coax him into semi-hardness. KALEIDOSCOPE throws back his head with a moan and bucks into it, tries to focus on how it feels to be held by hands so deceptively delicate and yet so bloodied by theatre blood, tries to focus on the visual of her face and not the rounder, paler one that has been creeping into all of his fantasies for longer now than he really wants to admit. He shivers, and even though it's impossible, even though his headphones are securely covering his ears and no sound at all should be able to reach him, Violeta's voice tugs on his brain. Déjà vu? Après vu? Who can say?
A faint keyboard note wanders down his spine and all at once all his blood follows it down as well and suddenly KALEIDOSCOPE's cock is achingly, despairingly hard.
It's a split-second decision to confess his innermost struggle to CASCADE. "All I can think of is her. I hear her every hour of every day. And if I don't, then I miss her voice, and I miss the notes she plays and I even miss the way that her eyes pass judgement on me from every poster on every street corner in freed territories and even beyond." It matter less for this moment right now than it does for what is to come. KALEIDOSCOPE knows CASCADE won't mind it, knows that she probably isn't thinking of him either, he's just easier than anyone else who is on hand. But if he is to be her cup bearer, then she should know the truth. He owes her that much, considering what she has given him.
CASCADE barely acknowledges KALEIDOSCOPE's confession. There's a half-grin on her face, though, and he reads from that the only answer he can: She already knew that he was fucked in the head, just like she is, just like they all are, all of whom she has gathered here in this rundown place at the end of time. She grins wider at whatever she sees on his face, almost manic, sparkling eyes and mirth and sadism, and then resolutely she puts her hand over KALEIDOSCOPE's mouth. To shut him up maybe. To say that no words are needed between them, not here, not now, not ever. They are two sides of the same coin, except that where CASCADE still holds the OPERA in her heart, KALEIDOSCOPE's fervent belief in his old employer has been copied over by the sweet soft power assault of pop music.
Finally, CASCADE positions herself upright over his cock and that's what pulls KALEIDOSCOPE's attention right back at her. CASCADE's ass is lifted, her legs spread. She is fully in control here--up, down, it's all her decision to make and make it she does. She slides down on KALEIDOSCOPE's cock in a single smooth motion. Once bottomed out, her face twitches and her shoulders come down a little. Relief, perhaps. A hunger finally sated.
At least this KALEIDOSCOPE can offer her, he thinks, and grits his teeth, trying once again to stay in the moment, no matter how difficult it is. "Is it good?" he asks through clenched teeth. Does she like it? He thinks she does, the way she's speeding up is certainly a sign that she's enjoying herself. Every up-down stroke of her hips is followed by a sensuous full-body shiver. Her lips are parted in what he thinks might be a pleasured moan, even if he cannot hear it.
KALEIDOSCOPE thinks back to other people he'd fucked in the past; lovers, enemies, partners, assets, operants. No matter the profession or affiliation or gender, almost none of them had been able to get off from just fucking alone. Most of them had needed more. Question is, Kaleidoscope ponders, what does CASCADE like? Does she even know herself? In the game of masks they all play on the daily, it's not unheard of to lose sight of preferences, to discard kinks and pick up new ones on the daily if only the mission called for it. So, there's not much to do but ask. And so KALEIDOSCOPE does so, not with words but rather actions and gestures. He proffers up his hands, palms up, not taking and not touching, just letting her take if she wants to take or ignore them if she wants that instead.
CASCADE shudders on top of him. Shakes her head like a wild animal bucking off a fly. Sweat-drenched blond her falls into her eyes and even though he wants to push it back, KALEIDOSCOPE doesn't. He just watches the sweat-droplets fall from the strands to her skin and then drip down to where both their bodies are connected, tight, hot, and just as wet.
It's unbearable, this connection. But it's worth it for the next moment that comes, when CASCADE slows down and grinds in soft little circles down on him, and then, when he thinks it might just be over or at least almost so, she opens her black jacket, its silver chain decorations probably clinking if KALEIDOSCOPE could hear them, and then she takes KALEIDOSCOPE's hands and pushes them inside the cloth, to her shirt-covered tits, moving his palms over her nipples until they are hard enough to poke through the cloth. It is only then that KALEIDOSCOPE recognizes what she's wearing, this horrid, awe-inspiring and awe-ful woman that he's thrown his lot in with.
Ultra Violeta's face stares up at him, half-disfigured by the way the shirt folds over itself. CASCADE'S right tit makes one of Ultra Violeta's eyes bulge out, almost threateningly. Even like this, her gaze is all-knowing and all-seeing and her judgement is absolute. KALEIDOSCOPE hunches over, gives himself over to the desire to put his mouth on the screen-printed plastic paint effigy of his idol. He licks over it, over those judgemental eyes and then further to the side until the plastic-y taste is waylaid by a fuzzy fabric feeling. There is CASCADE'S nipple, right there, under the dark fabric. What else is KALEIDOSCOPE to do but to suck it into his mouth.
It feels blasphemous to do this with CASCADE dressed like this. Kinky in a way it shouldn't be considering it's just a mass-produced shirt and that Ultra Violeta will never know. Chances are Ultra Violeta will never see his face again anyway. Even if she knew, it would have no further bearing on her life. KALEIDOSCOPE has a bad feeling about this task that lies in front of them, and he thinks the likelihood is high that he will be dead day-after-tomorrow. But it doesn't matter, does it? It is what it is. Like one of Ultra Violeta's most popular lyrics says: Whatever happens has already happened.
This feels good to acknowledge, even if just for himself. And for a moment, he feels the pressure fade from his mind, he feels his world zero down on CASCADE, everything and everyone else gone from his head. Yes. Some things are inevitable. Like his coming across Violeta's music was inevitable, like his bullet missing CASCADE was inevitable, like his defection from EMTERR was inevitable.
The relief turns euphoric turns into a roaring fire in his loins and he can't help himself--where he's been still before, he now moves. His hips fuck up into CASCADE's motions and they drive each other towards another inevitable thing: their shared orgasm and that cool umbral darkness that follows.
By the time KALEIDOSCOPE's mental facilities have come back online, CASCADE has redressed herself. The Ultra Violeta shirt has been covered up again, her tiny pink skirt pulled down until she's almost decent. A good spy could still find tells all about her person, proof of what has just happened here. But spies on their level are far and in-between and KALEIDOSCOPE doubts any of the misfits down at the bar will notice that stain on her gloves or her more-messy than usual hair and come up with the theory that the weird stoic new guy and their boss had just fucked each others brains out for no particular reason than pre-mission nerves.
And even if they did, KALEIDOSCOPE doesn't owe these people anything. He's just here for CASCADE. And for what she has given him. So when CASCADE asks him if he is with her, if he is gäng, KALEIDOSCOPE nods very seriously and gets himself ready to go to his doom with her.
The next day, when everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong, KALEIDOSCOPE tightens the strings of his pink hoodie and approaches the aerotram's stereo. He plays dumb, fully ignorant to the tension in the room and asks, "Anyone up for some music?"
CASCADE looks at him, one of her strange, grim smiles on her face. She is in the mood for something red, she says. Her eyes bore into KALEIDOSCOPE's very soul, and he can just tell that she knows he will do what must be done. This is why she took him along with her. This is why the universe threw them together.
KALEIDOSCOPE nods. He takes off his headphones and then presses play.
What follows is this:
Every living being in the aerotram becomes an unwilling victim trapped in Ultra Violetas soon-deathly genius.
Except for KALEIDOSCOPE, of course. He is fully willing. Not a victim at all, in fact. No. What he is, is something grander, something much more important. A sacrifice. Like the smokes he'd seen dotted around the shrines of the world, shiny foil packages with their deadly contents. He is the one whose fingers brought death to this aerotram and he is the one who can now give life at least to the one person in it who should get out alive. With a soft nod saying, yes, I'm sure, KALEIDOSCOPE passes over his headphones to CASCADE, and then he offers his body and his soul up to the violently dulcet techno-magical tones that ring out from the Einzeltone XR.
Even the less-then-ideal speaker set-up doesn't do anything to taint her voice once it starts singing. KALEIDOSCOPE shivers. He struggles to make out the words. All he gets are droning synths and vocal intonations.
A piano comes in. Then... "YOU BUT FROM A DREAM."
Are his ears bleeding?
They must be.
Or maybe they are crying, for this is certainly Ultra Violeta's most beautiful work and who wouldn't weep at this kind of auditory beauty?
The second time the chorus comes around, KALEIDOSCOPE tunes in. Mind, body and soul.
Then everything goes white. Moonglow white.