[b]Crystal:[/b]

“I don’t, actually. It must be before my time.” Crystal says in that way where someone addresses the easiest part of what you’ve said to buy time for them to absorb the rest of it. The song’s the least important part of what she’s heard but it’s also the part she connected with immediately. “No. We both know how important this all is. To remove the terrible people who’d prevent beautiful things, and to create beautiful things in spite of the terrible people who’d prevent it… both are in service to the same ends. I’m not jealous of that, I find the world is left a better place from its art than its espionage - of course I do.” She twists her hands, levels her head, sets her jaw and gives a steel look to her handmaiden through the dressing mirror. The passion in her eyes is only one step back from fury, but there’s no violence in it - it’s that feeling of someone trying to force a change upon the world, and this is that borderline difference between ‘will of force’ and ‘force of will’. 

Crystal instructs in a clear, even voice. “You are going to make something for me. Which is to say, you’re going to make something for yourself, and I find that is the thing we need the clearest permission of all to do. I want you to make something that represents beauty that has been denied to you, or taken from you. Make it so that beauty is no longer denied to the world.” There’s no crack in the confident, commanding facade. She’s performing, sure, but the desire to perform it is so powerfully sincere that it’s irrelevant. She could be commanding Pink to storm the gates of Hell like this, and the fierceness of her energy says that might as well be what she’s doing. “If you can do that just because I asked? Then I might very well be forced to believe everything you’ve said about me. Let none say there are better uses of your time right now, lest they go through me to say it.” 

She lets that ring out for Pink’s benefit before she adds a final spanner.

“You should sing, too. That song about bread and roses, I think that would be lovely.”

[b]Knightly:[/b]

He makes a face like a laughter hiccup. Just an intense soundless chuckle that has him doubling over and biting down on a fist to keep silent and then, in that same moment, he’s standing straight and composed and looking bored. He puts the note in one jacket pocket and throws White what looks like a scorched contact lens - a sticky bug someone pressed down too hard when they applied it, shorting it. 

Paranoia has a similar but different profile to tiredness. A paranoiac has to have a whole spiel in their head justifying why they’re not crazy and you need to listen to them, except with other paranoiacs who’ll instead just offer to take second watch. 

From the manic hiccup, it seems like Knightly is a new inductee to the paranoiac club forced to be a fast learner. 

“Back this way, then.” He looks to the receptionist. “Gabby, I know you’re not my secretary, but if you’ve still got my calendar up, could you clear it for the rest of the afternoon? I don’t think Ms Tower will take that long, but I don’t want to be interrupted.” He winces. “I owe you a sandalwood candle. I know you burn through them.” 

She laughs way too hard for how lame the joke is. “Of course, Mr Knightly.” 

“Just Aaron’s fine.”

“I know, Mr Knightly.” 

He shakes his head and leads you through to the courtyard through the swipecard door he came in through. “I’m in that pillbox over there, 2A. It’s bigger than it looks from here, just, the dimensions are weird. You know, I tried to look into you, after. Volunteer, nearly got kicked out, managed to rally support keeping you there, never heard from after you got the publicity. Didn’t blame you one bit, definitely made me respect you more if you’d drop out from something like that. Anything you can say about it?” 

He’s jovial, with a fast stride that’s hard to keep pace with, but he narrows his eyes when he emphasizes the last phrase. What he’s really saying is; Say what you [i]want [/i]to be overheard. 

[b]Monk:[/b]

She holds a hand over her face and changes mask, but it flickers and shimmers and cycles through maybe a dozen colours and shapes. The one she comes out with is black and sooty, with the eyes of the Thousand Yard Stare portrait of a Vietnam soldier, and a crooked smile. “I think I need Intensity for this.” She explains, and in her voice is that dark humour of morbid empathy, the camaraderie of a shared understanding of a situation that nobody should have to understand. 

“Sometimes when a Face finds someone, or something, or some way of doing their purpose better than they can simply adapt to. Like, imagine a heavyweight boxer wanting to move into taekwondo. It’s not just a different approach, it’s that their old approach has made them a… a shape that is incompatible with it. That’s ridiculously oversimplifed, but,” she spreads four hands and leaves two clasped together over her knees, “you get why it needs to be, right?” 

“If you’re so dependant on your body for this, and that’s become a critical problem, then you might need to tell Green to try a new shape for you. Otherwise you’re compromising Snake.” 

She switches back to Tranqulity, not Monkey. The calm, blue face unclasps her hands and rests all six on her knees casually. “I would instead suggest that you are already lost. A family passes an axe down through ten generations - it’s the same axe, although the head has been replaced twice, and the handle three times.” She raises one hand in an ‘I know, I know’ sort of way to wave off interruption. “Please, don’t take it the wrong way, that it means you would obviously be different and others would be in denial of it. It means that the idea of the axe persists through the changes.”

Intensity shifts, even though it looks like Tranquility resists it. That’s new, it seems like Monk can outvote themselves. “If the axe was too attached to the blade and the handle, couldn’t change like it needed to, then it would needed to be replaced wholesale. Otherwise the family had a useless axe taking the place of something that worked.” 

Sorry, Blue. Sometimes finding someone who’s experienced trauma like you have means mutual triggering. [i]Monkey[/i] would have [i]just [/i]hoarded the heavyweight boxer and the taekwondo fighters and had them discuss options - a little slower, worse reaction speeds when picking best options to stick with, but it shows in her still having like, a hundred of the damn Faces. What Intensity’s describing is something post Crown-and-Slate. 

Tranquility reasserts control, looking slightly embarrassed. “It is hard to make peace with change, especially when it’s change brought by loss. It is harder to live with change without peace, though.”