[b]Pink:[/b]

Luis laughs in relief. That breaks the tension for him. “You have no problems keeping a servant of your own, I see?”

Bondi furrows her brow at that and looks askance to Luis, then back to Pink. A complicated mental struggle occurs; Bondi wants to ask Luis if it’s okay if she has a servant as part of the act, and that’s not going to be a problem. But [i]Bondi[/i] wouldn’t acknowledge the act. 

The breaking point is that Pink has already gone into her role, and Bondi doesn’t want to contradict that. She puts on her face - she thinks of it like putting on makeup instead of putting on a mask. A mask is for someone who has a clean separation of their character and their persona, an off-and-on. Hers is who she already is but with a little more effort and attention applied to the presentation. 

“A magical assistant.” Bondi says, and her tone makes it clear to Luis that Pink is a special [i]kind[/i] of servant, she’s not contradicting him. “Bound to my service until she’s filled with enough children’s hopes and dreams that she can become a real girl.” 

Luis takes this completely seriously. “Well, I wish you both the very best of-” 

From the back of the house, a teenage girl cries out; [i]“Daddy, where are you?”[/i] and Luis looks in the direction, then apologetically back. 

“Thank you, thank you, I’m sure you can sort yourselves out, I’m sure you can find me later if you have any questions-.” He says this while already breaking into a jog towards the corner of the house. “Coming! Coming.” 

When you are ready to find it:

The hacienda’s inner courtyard is open to the sky, with broad pavestones filling the central space that will make up your stage. Covered stairs at the back of the courtyard connect up to the balcony walkway that overlooks the courtyard, and to the 12 doors that line the upstairs perimeter with the neat repetition of a hotel. Probably the children’s bedrooms, with spares. Checking out your dressing room might give you an idea of the layout, from extrapolation. 

The ground floor courtyard has the door that leads to the rest of the mansion complex. The studies, the living rooms, the kitchens, whatever security has taken for itself. 


[b]Sophie:[/b]

Sophie squints at Red. Then she turns and snaps at the dollar-store Terminator glued to the floor and levels the riot gun at him. "Hey! Fucker, do you mind? Having a moment here."

In the moment Red's attention snaps back to the threat, Sophie fires a full salvo pump - at Red. It's way more than necessary, but she's working point blank and she knows what Red's reactions are like. She's doing the best she can down a leg, and both of them resting against the cabinet. The gun drops to the tiles and she has both her hands on Red's cheeks, turning her head this way and that and looking into her eyes.

"Thank fuck," she sighs in rapturous relief, "[i]this[/i] I'm actually good at. Hey, Red, you feel anything when you just said that? You said uh, you said something like there were too many of you right now. Did you notice anything? I'm going to make you say the whole thing again, and I'm going to see if it happens again."

She hid her play so well that a psychiatrist could use the last five seconds for a personality disorder diagnosis, and she already had the weapon at hand. It's dropped now, and she's mostly glued you to the cabinet she's already kicked in, and you're in a surgery you're now familiar with filled with solvents. You've got more options and plays to break out than the other guy does.

It's worth noticing Sophie hasn't apologized yet. She thinks she’s done nothing wrong..

[b]Crystal:[/b]

Crystal’s fur is bestial when she opens the door, natural as opposed to the carefully supernatural quality she keeps it in. Sweat and worry tangle it to something tangible, bunched beneath the loosely-tied red-and-black kimono she’s wearing. Her pupils are dilated, but her eyes are half-lidded, the look of someone who’s been awake too long on stimulants but doesn’t plan on stopping yet. Still, exhausted as she is, she smiles for you.

“You’re looking more yourself than ever.” She says to White. Then, to Black, she sighs. “I hope you don’t mistake having less enthusiasm for seeing you as something other than what it is. It’s just that being sent for [i]risk management…[/i]” Crystal gives a hand a roll of the wrist. “Come in.”

The study is the same mess it always is. Crystal’s workspace is always utter chaos, a complete bombshell. Different phones for different purposes scatter the room wherever she picks them up and puts them down, swatches for printouts and paints and scale models of venues. This is the tip of the iceberg, though, beneath the surface is the majority of the work being done digitally on desktop in the corner. 

“This is a bitch to pull off.” She murmurs. “It needs to be célèbre if it is to become [i]cause[/i] célèbre. I need to attract a lot of people, and a lot of the [i]right[/i] people. The stars need to be provocative enough to be recognizably [i]art[/i], but not so outré that when this ends up on NBN the moderates understand the backlash.” She growls at that. “That has been the hardest needle to thread of all, I’m sure you can imagine. It is a challenge to engineer a controversy that guarantees public sympathy.”