[b]Sophie:[/b] Her shirt’s already off. When did it come off? She lies back on the couch with Red growling over her, completely aware she might actually be in danger here, but adrenaline’s just another hormone in the cocktail. She doesn’t care that she’s lost total control over the situation. Even if the tether comes loose right now, this was mem-hacking - The conflict that led to the dragon cascade is going to eventually fix itself, unstable changes lead to error correction. Stable changes don’t, though, that will have to be changed back directly. More important to Sophie, though, this wasn’t about being in control in the first place. She’s burning with [i]jealousy[/i]. She wishes she could do this to herself, but biology is so non-responsive, has such high latency. To get close to this, she needs to use the imprecise, broad-spectrum medium of pharmaceuticals. It’s like trying to hammer a nail by driving a car into it. What’s happened with Red here is fixable - if she tried to do the address-forget trick to her own brain she’d need to use a gamma knife to physically burn that portion of her brain out permanently. Sophie grabs Red’s wrist, and drags it down to where she’s unbuttoned her jeans to make space for Red’s hand. It’s probably a good thing she didn’t bother packing panties for the walk home, it’s clear they’d just need to be thrown out by now. “Tell me how it feels,” she breathes, “if you can still talk.” [b]Costa-Silva (Heist):[/b] Perfect. The real Hacienda on Earth didn’t have basement levels and this one does. It’s cooler down there, and that’s the reason for the double system to an extent - the basement layers can’t ventilate out. This would have been hard to find. There are no obvious stairs down, nothing from your exploration that would show that it existed, and it doesn’t exist on the floorplans. But now that you know there[i] shouldn’t[/i] be a place for a ground floor airduct to be going down to, you can be suspicious that it obviously does. Unscrew the grate, pocket the screws, cover it with sealant strong enough to hold it in place but weak enough you can kick it out later if you need an escape route, and leave no trace behind you when you go. It’s a tight squeeze, but within your competencies. Here, underground, the part of the house as opposite to the attic as possible. Paper files. Shelves of boxes, but row upon row of stacks of them. A room about the size of an indoor public swimming pool in length and width, but claustrophobic in height - the dozens of rows of shelves almost touch the ceiling. It’s dark here. Not pitch black, but like emergency lighting brightness. Bright enough that, to human eyes, you’re only meant to be able to see clearly enough down here to be able to get somewhere if you already know where you’re meant to be going. Open the closest box and find case files. Confidential, privileged, stuff that’s not meant to have left courtrooms or secure buildings in Zeus. Already this is a legitimate scandal, this is incredibly illegal for her to have, but it’s not much of one on its own. “Supreme Justice took her work home with her”. Stealing it would make it a scandal, maybe. Arson is tempting, but it would just be destroying something she wasn’t supposed to have here. There are adjoining rooms down here, and the basement must be larger because there’s no connection to the ground floor from this room. Just a small answer is needed; What’s your first priority? Cover what you have here, or check the surrounding rooms? This is just a declaration of intent, because how difficult this is going to be is defined by: [b]Bondi’s Show:[/b] It’s a brilliant start. It starts with the box that everyone knows, even kids who’ve never seen a magic show. The magician gets in, the door closed, and then the box falls apart revealing it was completely empty, only for the magician to appear somewhere totally unexpected. Behind the audience, maybe. Pablo sits up straighter, recognizing it. “Oh, snap.” His sister, who is about to snap, glares at him. “Yes, even you can do this one. I know.” “No I can’t.” He points. “Look, they’re on dirt. No backing curtain either.” Selena looks. “So what do you think they’re doing?” “No idea.” Sir Barrera makes a movement that just looks like he’s getting more comfortable, so natural that nobody notices his hand is resting on his holster under his jacket at the end of it. “Either of you see Juan?” “He said he was going to the bathroom, didn’t he?” Pablo asks. Selena notices the edge in his voice. “He’s probably trying to find their backstage props so he can figure out how the tricks are done, while they’re distracted.” Selena says softly. “You know what he’s like.” Jordan the skater boy is sitting in the row in front of the adults taking photos with his phone. He switches it back to portrait orientation for the moment. “I’ll message him, yeah? Chill out, psycho.” He says it affectionately. Luis is the disciplinarian, Barrera is just someone with an immense capacity for violence looking out for him, and that’s respectably metal. Luis, meanwhile, is the one that’s confiscated Jordan’s phone after he started getting very creative with the zoom lens function, and only gave it back when Jordan promised to take normal pictures. Up until now, he’s been good to his word on that, but the escape act is about to begin. Bondi is every bit her role, she has the manic, invincible energy of someone who’s been granted a genie’s wish. And like any good oddly-leftist, all she wants to do with this power is share it. She doesn’t have to fake she’s giving the audience something really special here, she feels it so much herself that it bleeds into her every word. “You know, most magicians do a disappearing act right now, but I wasn’t planning on one” Bondi taps the box with a glittery wand as she walks around it with an apologetic smile, “because I haven’t wanted to leave any of you for even a single second! You’ve all been too lovely!” She says that while looking at Isabella especially. “But.” Pablo mutters under his breath, so quietly only Selena sitting next to him can hear it. “But!” Bondi puts her fists on her hips. “I’m thinking Caliban really needs to go home. So I think I need to go and tell her mother [i]exactly[/i] what she’s been doing. And I don’t think the Underworld is a very safe place to see, so if you just wait right here, I promise I’ll be right back.” The magic box opens. The door closes, and a purple pentagram projects on the ground around it in green and purple light, and ambient smoke makes the beams of light stretch up into the air around the box. “Sycorax? Hiiii~! How’s the island? Oh! Lovely! Oh they’re all absolutely wonderful, it’s been lots of fun. I was so worried, but Isabella is just the biggest sweetheart, and all her brothers and sisters have just been so - No, Luca hasn’t been any trouble, just very quiet. Herman’s been very brave helping his sister! Jordan? No, definitely not cut out for magic, the eye can see what the hand is doing there.” Jordan doesn’t turn around in his seat, he already feels his Dad’s glare boring a hole in the back of his neck. “Actually that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, ma’am! Caliban, she- Mmf!” The gag goes in last. Bondi manages to give the entire ab-lib’d banter, simple as it is, completely naturally while Orange ties her up, and the name is the cue. Instead of disappearing from the box, when the four walls fall from the frame, Orange is standing on Bondi’s trussed back, absolutely victorious. Gwen almost goes into cardiac arrest. She’s biting down on a finger hard enough to really hurt. It is increasingly likely that the field of robotics will have a new, gayer Alan Turing in ten years from now. Ariel! Caliban! Array your forces. The balloons have been cleared by security. Gwen, Pablo, Isabella and Herman are guaranteed to do what you want here. Jordan needs to be taking rather than throwing the water balloons, but he’ll need to be pushed into it - Bondi just roasted him, so it should be an easy sell. A Negotiation spend solves that without a roll. Selena needs to be pushed to participate at all, which is a harder sell, but worth it. Oscar and Luca are going to want to sit on the sidelines with their Dad, Luis. Barrera’s a harder sell. What keeps him more interested in the fight than going off to find Juan? Knowing he doesn’t know who was in the attic makes this harder. [b]Fiona and Crystal:[/b] Crystal immediately adopts the pose of the damsel in distress. She sees the game you’re playing and she writhes like the live bait trying to draw the biggest bite she can. Fiona goes the other way at first. There’s relief that this is handled, that someone else has this, that she doesn’t have to - but then that’s the problem, isn’t it? She’s practicing right now, and we learn through play. “No, she’s got work to finish for the day, she’s not done until 5pm.” Fiona says instead, pulling fibre tether from her right wrist absently. “Can’t let her think pushing my buttons is a way to get out of work. Black, you’re on guard duty. You can give her a treat every time she finishes a task, but if I find out she came before 5pm, then I’m taking off your arms and legs and giving you a [i]proper[/i] lesson in denial.” She tests out the amount of tether she’s looped and gives it a testing swing. She swings it, and it’s like that throat-grab from before. The first part of the gesture looks lazy again, but then the throw snaps it over White’s head, loops it around the back of her neck, and Fiona [i]pulls, [/i]firm, until they’re almost eye level again. “We’re going to make it harder for them.” She kisses the tip of White’s nose. “The gag’s going in, so you’re going to have to make me scream twice as loud to make up for it. Get started.” Divide and conquer is an ambitious play here, especially in front of both of you. There’s a reason it’s usually involving splitting people up and giving the ultimatum one at a time. If either breaks, then both will, and she’s immediately overpowered and destroyed. But there’s a method here. She’s clearly worried about this gala, and this is a playful way to have Black supervise how Crystal actually handles the change in scope of the project right now, without Crystal realizing that’s what she’s there for. It’s a way for Black to make sure things really are okay right now, in the pretense of playing a game. A way to defuse the tension of the bomb that just dropped here. And White can see this in Fiona’s eyes, as the fibre holds them close. She wants uncontested control here, now, in front of Crystal. In a minute, though? She wears this persona like a cape made from her own shed skin. She wants the chance to fit it again and make it something beautiful and monarchic. She wants the creepy thing ripped off of her. White’s power play against Fiona at the doorway gives a sweeter victory in its revenge, or a painless loss for the fulfillment of its promise. This isn’t what Fiona’s conscious of thinking. These explanations are closer to what she might say if time was frozen on her, and she could write down why she twitched she did in the heat of the moment. Her conscious thoughts were that the pain in her wrists were worth it for the surprise pull against White’s neck, the image of a limbless Black with a wand taped to her, and something she’s trying to bury. [i](Crystals thoughts, meanwhile, can be summarized that she wished she had double checked what the game was playing before she made herself a prize token.)[/i]