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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e223ADJAJE - Some listening material for the read! Feel free to comment
)
The cool touch of the microphone to her forehead was soothing. She preferred the thing even though it was so very analog. So very dated and so very, very imperfect. Tech had made voice projection and even voice correction an everyday reality in the sixth world and the music industry as a whole had grown reliant on it. It could have made her perfect. Could have made her seem flawless. That was until you started to see the cracks. The cracks were everywhere.
The cracks were why she was here.
The sound of microphone feedback, intentionally brought on for a moment by a subtle turn of microphone to speaker forced her audience to an uncomfortable attention as she softly ran the microphone down her face and intimately across her lips. Her soft voice was impossibly melodic and an effective and startling contrast to the noise that had just attacked their ears. She had them. Every single one of them and she knew it. Vendetta Violent was their entire world. She was both lover and abuser to each and every now silently stricken person who stood in The Skeleton. At least for the moment.
Sliding her ringed fingers through her platinum blonde dreadlocks she continued to grow the mood. To build it. Her soft voice constructing the melody sweetly with the promise of more. To tantalize and tease. The mood was thick even to her, the audience even more attentive than usual. She loved these moments… these moments where everything seemed to work and everyone was meant to be standing right where they were, experiencing the same slottin’ thing together. Spiritual is what it was and she couldn't help but think to herself, far in the back of her mind that this was going to be a great show.
The words continued to trickle out of her as her hand slid down her neck slowly to lay across her chest before suddenly growing more tense. A quick glamour imparted the perception that illusionary props began to shakily levitate to the power of her voice. The room was swaying in awe to the cascade of the music as the tempo picked up and finally unleashed, shattering the phantom objects and spilling light in every direction. Her voice was a wail rather than a scream, holding a classy and justified anger.
Unrestrained. Volatile. Willfully reckless. All of these things she’d been called and all of these things were true. Vendetta couldn't help but hazard a smirk before she willed the lights to became soft and blue, her hands relaxing and her voice softly re-seduced the microphone again. Only in this medium were people so happy to be so emotionally confused, so pleased to release the very same tension that ran rampant in their lives. The restrained frustration universally shared by each and every one of the sinless castaways and corporate slaves alike. Hell, if you’d ever loved you knew it. Knew the feeling. All of us, every single living body in the world was simultaneously in love and in misery with the world. It was both whore-some and beloved.
Life was a slitch; and like lightning striking twice it electrified the crowd all the more a second time as the tempo began to pick up again, this time more violently. Illusionary bullets sprayed from invisible guns to smash into the stage equipment and the walls shattering equipment and barely missing the siren herself as she swayed and thrashed to the music. Lights and explosions lent silhouette to the girl as her controlled tantrum continued to the roar and applause of the crowd, her wild dreadlocks thrashing and seeming to take a life of their own. Finally her hands clasped the microphone stand as she flung herself into the finale of her song with abandon, levitating off the stage and into the air before it her voice became soft again and the destruction on stage began to subside.
As quickly as it all had escalated it was over and the girl was descending back to the stage in a soft spin. The bullets that had destroyed the stage seemed to reverse through time itself to repair the damage they had inflicted. Back into the invisible guns they’d been born from. Vendetta let herself feel the drain as the magic subsided and the illusion ended, adding an extra hint of exhaustion to the end of the song as her feet touched ground again. She suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable. As the last words of the song tumbled from her lips she rested her forehead again on the cool surface of the very real, very solid microphone.
It might have been analog but she liked it that way. There was power in the past, power in yesterday. Yesterday was where magic had come from and it had been where she had gone through the things that lent power to her lyrics today. The roar of the crowd was nearly deafening in the small club but she was somewhere else. She was right back where she’d started. Right back home.
“Thank you.” She breathed before closing her eyes and stepping back from the microphone with a bit of a laugh. Sweeping her dreadlocks again out of her face she took a swig of a water bottled tossed her way and shook her head. “That was intense. I feel like I just made love to every last one of you.” A couple lewd hoots and more cheers caused the singer to laugh a bit.
“I know, right? Who says ‘made love’ anymore? Who’s got time for it? I mean look at the world out there. Lets just frag and be done with it. With all the pretense.” The applause got louder as she expected it would.
“That was Ironspy. I’m Vendetta Violent and this is my solo act, Mana Burns. Now that I’ve got your attention let’s get you your nuyens worth. Strap on in and dose on up, chummers… it’s going to be a hell of a ride.”
