[b]Green and Eli:[/b]

Throw a brick up. Let’s assume gonzo’s been happening in the background and come back to them as noodle incidents at a better time. 

[b]Crystal:[/b]

She waits until the elevator door shuts behind Eli before, in a tired and curious voice, she admits; “I suppose if all journalists were the kind to be generous in sharing their ketamine in a nightclub bathroom, Aevum might be a better place for it. Perhaps, at least, a more interesting one.” 

For the first night she’s picked out a wedding dress for herself - a simple, understated, almost deconstructed version of one, but that’s still clearly what it is. A few ribbons in place of decorative lace, something a bit more form-accentuating around the legs than is traditional, but such things are necessary to make it clear this is a deliberate choice and not simply the wrong outfit from the wardrobe for the event. 

“Would you like to do my makeup?” Crystal sits in front of an entirely ivory dressing room mirror and offers a luggage bag to Pink. “I don’t usually dare it. Even when you buy the right pigments, getting it to look right on fur is… well, needless to say I wouldn’t stress yourself overly with it.” 

No, the soap sandwich incident has not dissuaded her from asking.

“I’m not spoiling tonight’s reveal, by the by.” She teases. “I will say, I did find a way to spend all that money after all, and Fiona wasn’t even mad that I did- “ She started off sounding proud saying it, but the bottom entirely fell out of it at the mention of Fiona. She looks at Pink, the perfect handmaiden, through her reflection in the ivory mirror. “You know we’re open for different reasons. She doesn’t get jealous, not even a little bit. Me, though. I get… possessive.” She reaches for a hairbrush just to press her thumb down on the bristles. “It’s a rush knowing that, as much as I share her, I’m the one she’ll always come back to. It’s why her seeing that snake girl right now excites me more than it bothers me.”

“[i]You[/i] had to be different, though, wonderful and fascinating creature that you are.” This is where she offers one last reassuring look to Pink before she’s unable to meet her face entirely, even in reflection. “Now Fiona’s robbing banks and acting like she needs to step out from under my shadow, when the truth is that she’s capable of so much more than I am. You, as well. And I’m worried that… Well. I’m suddenly afraid instead of us sharing you, it’ll be you both sharing me.” Her smile is brittle and fragile as she drives her thumb into the bristle of the brush. “Isn’t that silly?” 

[b]Strategic Thought:[/b]

Something to understand about baroque architecture is that it was pushed to the very limits of what stone could withstand. Architects would design cathedrals upside down, with weighted string, to see what shapes it naturally fell into. It looked like this:

[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/217203015738720256/1162681566426828931/DQTsbkSVoAA4W7D.jpg?ex=653cd297&is=652a5d97&hm=e5c200bdf832cd23ecd947e7fe698583d4c10bc4165f5b9c5a86e1659213d1d9&[/img]

The spirit of baroque is best kept alive not in churches and cathedrals, but in architects finding new ways to do complete and utter bullshit with massive load-bearing structures. This is why baroque architecture went absolutely insane at the invention of plaster, which let them work even lighter and thinner than ever before. In the 2060s architects had access to much better models than weighted string, and much better materials than plaster.

SES headquarters is officially called The SES Operations and Services Headquarters Campus, but it’s colloquially known as ‘The Marrow’. This is because the street access to the building takes you through the Femur, a tall, twisting building made of manufactured stone.

See, you can’t quarry marble from asteroids, but you can absolutely take the raw materials of it and make a bunch of synthetic stone materials that look like marble, but pour into a form like you can with cement. They were already doing this for expensive countertops in the 2020s. 

Architect Mohammed Iqbal Qasim made a mix of Italian marble that looked deliberately, uncomfortably like bone. Then he built the Femur once as a form. Electricals and plumbing suspended in a thin fibrous matrix in the shape of the building that would come next. Then, slowly, carefully, the mold was filled into a single contiguous piece of building. 

The form was modelled extensively to be as fibrous, as thin, as flimsy and as weak looking as possible. The edges of the front entrance narrow to a razor thinness, to emphasize that. Ceilings are a little too high, to make the building feel hollower. The walls look solid from a distance, but close up are clearly pocked and pitted like a golf ball. 

The end result is a large building resembling no specific bone - Femur was chosen more for its connotations of strength than a genuine resemblance - but with the impression of being inside something distinctly organic. 

It’s beautiful, and it’s creepy, and it’s unsettling. It’s marble worked finer than was ever possible to human hands, full of whirling arches in curves and curls like the hems of wedding dresses catching the wind, frozen in time - those beautiful shapes created by natural forces, inverted to resist them. 

Every minute spent in the Femur is spent with the vague sense that it could collapse. That it’s a miracle that it’s standing at all. That for all its beauty, it’s something deeply fragile and terrifying. It is a building that emphasizes that just because something is standing, and has stood for a very long time, does not give anyone inside it any reassurances that it will stay that way. 

There is a reason that this is a campus, and the huge arch - a frame too thin for any door or gate to be hinged within it - is mandatory for everyone to walk through to access any of the buildings they’re actually going to. The Femur is the tallest building on the campus, and narrow, and it’s only meant to be a visitors center. Meet people upstairs and look out the many (circular, trypophobia-triggering) windows to see the entire rest of the campus below, unobstructed views of the much more secure bunker-looking buildings low to the ground, scattered along the grass lawn within its fenced-in borders. It’s scenic, it’s striking, and it means that when you see how disaster-proof the rest of the campus looks, it no longer invokes a sense of paranoia, but [i]envy[/i] in the view from the Femur.

The first thing they want everyone to feel when they get here, though, is an appreciation for what this job actually is. What the feeling of this organization instills in the people who work here.

This is where the team will arrive, and start. If they called ahead, Knightly can meet them here - but he’s late. Whether they have or not, they can find someone to ask for directions to his office on the campus from one of the visitor center guides here - Crimson Tower will get priority service. 

They can also just start getting maps, looking around. But tell me - What is their method of infiltration? How are they dressed, disguised, uniformed? What does Strategic Team look like when they pass through the Femur and into the Marrow. 

[b]Wasteland Sky:[/b]

The train down, a mostly empty carriage at this time of day. Monk’s huge body crouches low across two of the disability seats near the doors as she addresses Blue across from her. 

“Depends on who you ask.” Monk answers with Tranquility. While Tranquility remains a constant, they’ve chosen a different set of faces for the travel; When you stop talking to her, she prefers a beige, smooth plaster with the faintest impression of closed eyes and pursed lips on it - Apathy, equipped for being bored for long periods of time.

Monkey, the void-stars face, comes out again. “I would prefer the old body, because it’s when [i]I[/i] felt most myself. But I’m also the least of myself now.”

Tranquility again. “I had a big say in the final product, but most of us see ourselves as ultimately a performer.”

The mask for Ribaldry smiles entirely with one side of her mouth, with a slightly raised eyebrow. It’s the face of someone who’s trying, but failing, to keep a straight face. Like they’re trying not to give away they put the whoopie cushion there, like they know that they shouldn’t laugh at the joke you just told but they can’t help themselves. Ribaldry is the face chosen to think about the prank, but surprisingly it’s the face that comes out here, too. 

“We’re the ultimate method actors who completely fall into our roles. We truly do become what we pretend to be.” Ribaldry declares with a Thespian’s trill. “So we chose a body that most looked like performance.” 

Tranquility continues. “People understand us just by looking at us. Six arms is enough to still feel capable, even without the wings.”

Ribaldry adds, “I don’t miss them as much as I thought. Space was very empty, wasn’t it?” 

Monkey finishes; “We don’t know why we like our accent, we don’t know why we like the feminine form. We don’t know why it’s so important to be as big as we are - and we do, even though it’s clearly inconvenient.” She gestures at the two seats she’s taking up before pressing against the anti-homeless plastic siderail on her seat. “No, even though this isn’t the shape [i]I’d [/i]choose for myself,” emphasis on the singular of the pronoun there, “It’s the body that causes others to treat how I see myself, and that seems more important. Does that make sense?”