Maiden — Roleplayer Guild

I’m glad I slept on that post and made some edits this evening.

Xodus, I think you intended to make Lina mad, and you succeeded admirably. Her first impulse was to pack up and drive to the safehouse in Denver, and call her superior officer on the way. I talked her out of that. Her second impulse was to punch Angel in the face, or kick him in the shins, and I talked her out of that too. But try as I might, I couldn’t make her just sit there and take it while Reri called her trash and Angel taunted her. It was difficult to write because she is so much smarter, calmer and more gentle about it than I could ever be. I struggled to express everything the way she wanted me to.

Thank goodness Kai is the kind of character who’s capable of hating them quietly from now on… possibly finding a way to not save them in combat. XD

Sorry it’s such a long post again. To be fair, a lot of it is X’s copypasta’d dialogue.

If anyone’s interested, the song that I was listening to while writing and quoted in the post is Words As Weapons by Seether.

---xX--Xx---

Keep me locked up in your broken mind:
I keep searching, never been able
To find a light behind your dead eyes…
Not anything at all!

---xX--Xx---

As Kai and Lina munched in companionable silence, they were inevitably joined by the other Asylums. First was a teenaged team, male and female: the boy blonde and slouchy, the girl beautiful and clearly of Asian descent… Japanese, if Lina had to guess. Only the raven-haired woman responded to Lina’s ‘good morning’ with a smile and a nod. Her tall partner was making a beeline for the buffet table, and neither Kai or Lina could blame him.

Plates in hand, the two settled down with one chair between them and Dos Pistolas.

Kai had always sort of thought of himself as a savage eater, especially if he compared his own eating habits to Lina’s impeccable table manners. When the blonde kid sat down and started packing food in his face as if someone might take it from him, Kai and Lina both found themselves paused with forks halfway from plate to mouth… watching in something like awe.

Cameron, as if sensing this, paused to look at them uncomfortably. Through a mouthful of food, he said something that sounded like, ‘do you want some?’

“Thanks for the offer, but I’ve got plenty of my own,” Kai said with a small laugh, gesturing at his plate with his fork.

“Sorry about that, my partner can be too enthusiastic,” the young woman said, and possibly …probably… kicked the young man under the table. “I am Seira and he is Cameron. It is nice to meet you.”

Seira’s English sounded a little clipped, formal, as if it might not be her native language. It caught Lina’s interest a little.

“It’s nice to meet you, Seira,” she replied, giving the other female a warm smile. “I’m Lina, this is my partner, Kai.”

“Howdy,” Kai said, raising his right hand in a little wave, sort of showing off his tat.

Another team, this one both male, had entered the room and helped themselves to food while the other four had been talking. They certainly were interesting-looking: they were older, and while one was dressed for a business meeting, the other wore denim and boots. One was bald, bearded, and probably about Lina’s height, the other tall and lean. She heard the brunette call his bald partner Isaiah. They settled down with their plates and it was Not-Isaiah who spoke.

“So, you guys get your asses kicked too?”

Lina’s normally faint natural pout deepened into an actual one, and she stayed silent. She was not the sort of woman who liked being reminded of her defeats… especially not while trying to enjoy breakfast and being alive in general the next morning. She stabbed at her fruit more fiercely that was strictly necessary.

Kai had opened his mouth to reply when a voice from the doorway beat him to the punch.

“I. Do. Not. Sit. With. Trash.”

The owner of the incredibly rude monotone turned out to be a thirteen year-old girl with black, overlong Lolita-style pigtails. She was wearing a cutoff pink tee shirt, grey cammo cargo pants and heeled boots. As she and her partner approached, Dos Pistolas could make out that while one of her eyes was a normal sort of green, the other was bright red.

Lina’s first thought was that she looked more than a little creepy. Her second thought was, ‘did that creepy little bitch just call me trash?’

“I see your face is back on your… well, face.”

It was said to Not-Isaiah, the lean brunette, by an extremely tall man who’d entered the room beside the impolite girl. This man was wearing a full-length red trench coat despite the fact that it was a hundred and three degrees Fahrenheit outside, and he was wearing dark red sunglasses even though the light in the dining room was quite easily tolerable.

Kai frowned. That was an unnecessary thing to say to someone who had his face painfully mauled the day before. More upsetting was that this giant settled himself in the one vacant chair between Lina and Seira. The female member of Dos Pistolas scooted her chair over and shifted her plate. Something about this guy wasn’t right. Thankfully he turned to Seira and Cameron first, giving Kai and Lina more time to edge away from him.

They didn’t sit with trash either, but certainly weren’t ill-mannered enough to say it out loud.

---xX--Xx---

You keep living in your own lie;
Ever deceitful and ever unfaithful.
Keep me guessing, keep me terrified,
Take everything from my world!

---xX--Xx---

“You are welcome..for you know saving you after allowing you to get beaten up,” Sunglasses said to the other team. Of course it only took a moment to register with Kai and Lina: this was the Chrono and her partner, who hadn’t shown up until everyone else was beaten within inches of their lives… if they’d even bothered to make an appearance at all.

She wanted to ask him what had taken the two of them so long to get there, but the man she presumed to be Angel kept right on talking.

“Your partner is a strange one. He lacks motive to kill, he lacks the desire for blood and he is impaired, yet you protect him so ferociously. Your choice of suicide …is one befitting of a lemming.”

Kai and Lina exchanged a look that very distinctly said, what the fuck is wrong with this guy? They kept eating their breakfasts, quietly, not looking at the too-tall Asylum but listening carefully to what he said.

“I don’t see how this group is going to defeat the Circus; the only thing I see you guys competing in is who gets to be the greater clown. Well I suppose that would give you people an edge on the covert aspect. Do any of understand the gravity of this situation. After what you lot have witnessed your life expectancy is in the negative, you people are practically dead. With that said, do you understand how much paperwork I will have to do to account for your deaths?”

This time, the look that passed between Dos Pistolas said, you have got to be fucking kidding me.

Lina sort of caught (out of the corner of her eye) that Sunglasses had turned towards her.

“What am I supposed to write in your death report? Little girl tears up upon hearing a pity story and when she finally gets a room to release that pent up sexual frustration with her partner…she forgets…that…my partner…and I…were in the room…next…door.”

Neither member of the team had even really acknowledged Angel or Reri’s presence except to scoot away from Angel when he sat down. They didn’t acknowledge him now, either. Lina ate a mouthful of scrambled eggs and looked out the window thoughtfully. Kai had carried a newspaper in from the kitchen, and he studied it while dunking part of a doughnut in his cup of coffee. Of course, Angel kept right on talking.

Lina couldn’t really tell if he was still talking to her in particular, or to the group in general.

“However, right now it seems you are of important value. Your mind is weak, it is trying to make sense and as such your defense mechanisms are trying to cope and put the pieces together. But the fact that you have a missing piece and your mind is content with falsifying information makes you the Bishop in this game of chess.”

The female Asylum decided that Angel was still talking to her. But what he meant was anyone’s guess. The missing piece she got, he was referring to her amnesia about the battle. Bishops moved diagonally… but what the hell did that have to do with anything?

“The rest…are pawns.” That was the creepy-ass little girl again, speaking from somewhere behind Lina and Kai.

“The hunters, Sniffers and Hybrids….. are to…. devise the counter strategy. Observe what has…. happened, take it…. all into consideration and…. derive a solution. If it fails…to meet my expectation…A.M.R.O…will not be…the ones to dispose of you…… digits.”

The look on Lina’s face when Reri said that. It was only there for a second before it vanished, and probably no one caught it, but Lina looked like she was ready to throw a chair at the Chrono’s retreating back as she strode out.

Lina was normally a pretty calm person, but the last twenty four hours had pushed her to her breaking point. First, the nightmarish travel from Helsinki to London to New York to Las Vegas: riddled with delays and missed connections. Then the training exercise they almost missed… arriving just in time to watch everything go sideways. It was really making Marcelina angry that she couldn’t remember much about the later parts of the fight, that she didn’t know anymore how Gadrael had managed to defeat not just her… but all of them. Now the Chrono and her partner had shown up. The Chrono had insulted all the Asylums in the room with her first words to them, her ridiculously tall partner had teased them about getting so badly beaten, and he’d teased Lina in particular about her tears and her relationship with Kai. Then he’d said they were all as good as dead and the Chrono had threatened to murder them if they couldn’t come up with a satisfactory plan. That was the last straw.

“I am guessing we Silencers have the day off…anyone of you a fan of ice-cream?”

Oh hell to the motherfucking no.

It was a lucky thing that Lina had polished off the last bites of her breakfast while Angel was talking, because right now she was furious enough to be faintly nauseous. She set her fork down on her plate firmly, with an overloud clink. She plucked her napkin off her lap, dabbed the corners of her mouth with it delicately, then threw it down on her plate.

Kai had been watching his partner grow more and more perturbed throughout Angel’s tirade. He was a little pissed that the fourteen-year-old girl had called him trash -that was really uncalled for- but it only meant that he wouldn’t piss on her should she ever catch on fire. All their lives, Lina had been the one who snapped first, had to say something or throw a punch. He knew that once Lina finally got mad enough to speak up, there was nothing he could do to stop her. (And also, that he’d be the one to catch her fury instead should he try.) Kai just had to sit back and watch the show.

He shot a disapproving look at her anyway, and shook his head once. Lina shrugged, as if to say ‘I’m sorry but I just can’t.’ and then turned her face halfway towards Angel. She still didn’t look at him, as if she didn’t want to befoul her eyes and brain with the sight just yet. Her tone was calm, even, and just a touch condescending.

“Hello, you must be Angel. I’m Lina, and so far it hasn’t been a pleasure to meet you. Let me start by clearing something up: the sound you heard from my room earlier was crying. That only happens during sex if you’re trying to do it with a thirteen year old girl… so I can understand your confusion.”

She paused for half a heartbeat to let that sink in.

“You seem to be confused about something else as well: you didn’t save us from anything. You picked our shattered bodies up off the battlefield. That’s a job for medics, not Chrono teams. If you want our gratitude, maybe next time try fighting with us, instead of watching from a safe distance like a pair of cowards.

Now, you and your extremely rude partner seem to have a very high opinion of yourselves and a very low opinion of us. I wonder… if you two are so amazing, and we’re all stupid clown-pawns, why did the A.M.R.O. feel a need to send six other teams of Asylums to assist you in dealing with the Kings and the Circus?”

Again, a very small pause, not long enough to let Angel get a word in edgewise.

“It’s a rhetorical question: the A.M.R.O. sent us because you two can’t handle it on your own. It would be most unwise to continue your current strategy of standing back until we’re beaten within inches of our lives before you join the fray.”

Now she did turn to Angel, and looked where she thought his eyes would be behind the glasses. Her voice had not gained any volume, nor taken on any sort of angry tone. Still cool, unruffled, and vaguely superior.

“I believe you also wanted to know what you should write on my death summary. I suppose it should go something like this:”

She turned back to the table, having had all of Angel’s face that she could tolerate without making an attempt to break his glasses with her closed fist. Instead, she mimicked writing something on a piece of paper. Marcelina said aloud the words she pretended to write.

“I didn’t tell any of the Asylums what they were dealing with, I thought it would be cute to speak in riddles instead of giving my team actual intel, so Lina was unprepared when she walked into the Circus’ center ring. My partner and I are too good to fight with lowly regular Asylums, so we waited until they were done getting their asses handed to them before we started our own attacks. It was an hour before the medics arrived, and she was already dead.”

A faint ghost of a smile briefly passed across the woman’s lips, and then vanished.

“But I imagine you’ll find some way to blame the fact that I’m an emotional female.”

Marcelina set down her imaginary pen, and forced herself to look at Angel again. The expression on her face was rather relaxed with a small hint of displeasure… but maybe that was just her natural pout.

“You’re only right about one thing: I’ve got a piece missing. I suffered some pretty intense head trauma, so I can’t remember exactly how the battle ended. Since you merely observed the fight and didn’t take any serious damage, I’m sure you know exactly how Gadrael managed to defeat us. But instead of giving me the missing pieces and helping me see the whole picture, you’re teasing me about my amnesia.”

“Your teenage girlfriend threatened to murder me and most of the other Asylums if we don't come up with a strategy that ‘meets her expectations’,” Lina made air quotes with her fingers as she said this, “so perhaps you could fill in a few blanks before you take her out for ice cream. Let’s start with something simple: did the Gemellie manage to capture Gadrael… or did you guys let him get away?”

It wasn’t a perfect performance; Lina felt that she’d reduced herself by making a sexual insults, and a pedophilia-themed ones at that, but she wasn’t sorry. It was beyond her to let a taunt about Kai go unanswered and it wasn’t her fault that this was the material she had to work with. She hadn’t really called Angel any names or said any curses, both things she was proud of. All her words were meant to cut but unlike Sunglasses, Lina didn’t try to demean his value as a human being… just his capabilities as both an Asylum and as a leader. She also sincerely hoped that some of her wisdom would sink into his thick skull: they really would all have to work together if they were going to survive the Circus, Angel and his tiny bitch partner included.

Throughout Lina’s little speech, Kai had been sitting quietly with his arms crossed. Sometimes his partner’s mouth could get them into trouble… but this time she’d been pretty tame. She sounded more like a disappointed boss than a furious co-worker. Except the bit about only thirteen-year-olds crying during sex. That was definitely personal, and also hilarious. The best part was something only Kai knew: Lina wasn’t quite done. Kai really hoped that the Gemellie had managed to kill Gadrael, if only for the fact that Kai didn’t want to have to fight him a second time. There was a tiny part of him, however, that hoped Gadrael had gotten away so he could hear what Lina would have to say about that.

---xX--Xx---

You're not that saint that you externalize,
You're not anything at all.
It's all so playful when you demonize:
To spit out the hateful, you're willing and able.
Your words are weapons of the terrified,
You're nothing in my world!

---xX--Xx---

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