"What's up guys? Welcome to New York City," the host of the show my twin and I had somehow made it onto said. We listened as he did his intro for the cameras. "Let's meet our judges. Up first, he travels all around the world tattooing and specializes in american traditional. He owns 2 shops. Elm Street Tattoo in Dallas, Texas and True Tattoos in Hollywood, California. The legendary Oliver Peck." My sister and I grinned at each other here. "Next up, best known for being the owner of Love Hate Tattoo, Miami raised and world traveled, he's been tattooing for twenty years. Specializing in Japanese, Mr. Chris Nunez." The crowd collectively clapped here as I saw my sister staring the man up and down. "And of course I'll be your third judge. I'm not a tattoo artist, but I have been getting tattooed for over a quarter of a century. I'll be speaking for the client's perspective."
This time my twin, Raz, laughed as I practically drooled at the man who was talking. What could I say? He's tall, has long hair, tatted up and plays guitar. That's pretty much all I look for. I had a hard time focusing on what he was saying until he mentioned that we would be getting judged via the internet by America. Great. Then he began explaining about how beginners would break into morgues to practice on dead bodies.
"Guess that explains why we are at a morgue," Raz whispered to me. At this point we looked around the group of artists.
"Ten bucks says blondie blows chunks," I whispered back as we both noticed the visibly grossed out artist behind us.
"Twenty says it takes less than ten," Raz replied as she held out a hand.
"You're on," I smiled and we shook on it.
"Let's head in and meet your canvas's," Navarro said as we all headed into the large building.
Within a few minutes it was a little mad between the artists as we found out we would only be tattooing dummies and not actual bodies. So Blondie didn't vomit after all. Needles started humming as people started our challenge, which turned out to be a snake and a dagger so...that's boring.
The judges were making their rounds and looking through our designs as we were about halfway into the challenge.
"So what are you doing here?" I heard Dave ask my sister as they approached her station right next to mine.
"I am doing an evil snake wrapped around a samurai sword," I heard her say. My head shot up almost immediately.
"Bitch!" I said at her.
"Woah wo-wait," Nunez said as he started to get between us before he actually realized that we looked almost the same, with the exception of our piercings being on opposite sides, and I had purple in my hair where she had blue.
Raz and I laughed as the three judges did a double take.
"Second season and we have twins? Is that allowed?" Dave asked as he looked at the other two.
"I mean...we're here," I said as I stood to look at my sisters design. "Did you cheat?" I asked as I grabbed my sketch from my spot.
"How did you get this done so fast?" Oliver asked, trying not to give away weather or not it was a good design in his opinion.
"We have speed contests at our shop," she said. "Also, I didn't cheat."
Our designs were almost identical. Well damn.
"Ugh, you have your snake almost done so I'll change mine because I did the sword first," I said as I sat back down.
"You tattooed the sword first?" Oliver asked as he followed me back to my station.
"Yup," I smiled as I started changing up the look of my snake with a sharpie before I started with the gun again. I didn't listen to my sister talking to Dave and Chris.
"Why?"
"I find it easier to line up the snakes body if I already have the sword done. This way I don't have to worry about the lines not being straight on the sword and I can still change the body angles of the snake to fit without losing any detail or fucking it up basically," i explained.
"So, if she's Raz, you're Jesse, right?" Dave asked as he approached.
"Yes darling," I said with a quick wink before I turned back to my snake.
My sister's snake was more of the Japanese style, no doubt trying to impress Nunez, so I decided to change mine up. I kept my Samurai sword, but I added a few small embellishments to make it blend in a little better with the new design of my snake, which I changed to being a little more detailed and a more ghostlike figure instead of solid, which was striking forward.
"Are you going to have time to finish that?" Chris asked as Dave announced that we had fifteen minutes left.
"Oh yeah," I answered as they walked off to the next person, saying their good lucks to me as they went.
A few minutes later they called time as my sister and I shot each other a look of relief.