Phoe

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

"Hahahahaha! Tu te fous de moi? J'aime cela!"

Marianne covers her face with one gloved hand to smother her chuckling. It does very little good; her sharp teeth flash around her arm as though it wasn't there at all. Her shoulders roll with mirth as her fingers spread wider. In the gap that forms between them, she fixes one burning eye directly onto Celestine's two blue ones. She burns her gaze directly through the little sister's heart, watching and waiting for her to flinch.

She doesn't. Marianne dips into a low, sweeping bow instead. She holds it for une, deux, trois... and snap, she's gone. Une, deux, trois again...

CRUNCH!

Her boot catches the Thornback in the back of the head. Marianne snaps dramatically, and several blackened chains rise up from the floor like angry vipers and lash the broken little housepet into a more pleasing shape. They wrap and bind the limbs together, winding through all of the twisting spikes and twice around the joint of each finger, and then yank painfully until it's dragged partway into the wall in the pose of a stereotypical cactus like you'd see on tv. She grins wolfishly, and turns to the students.

"Welcome, my darling little future sycophants! Are you working hard to become the best slaves you can be? Be sure to tell your masters everything you see here tonight, don't miss a detail! This is an important night, yes! The most important night of your lives, yes yes! Tonight, Professor Marianne is here to teach you lessons your school is too lazy and too frightened to let slip. Watch and learn, my darlings! You will soon see the difference between a thief and a hero. Learn well the difference! Recapture your sparks, mes chéries, both roles are needed for a revolution."

Marianne wraps herself into a corner of the room and comes crawling out of a chair near Celestine with a low purr rumbling up in her throat. She squeezes this littlest star on both her shoulders and then lifts her bodily into a princess carry so she can march the pair of them across the box to press Celestine's face against the window.

Below, the arena crawls with shadows that give this place, already neglected and spooky, the kind of aura you'd normally associate with horror stories. Every door looks bent and broken, every bit of equipment is rusted over or dripping with some unmentionable slickness, and the ground... well, it's not normally supposed to move like that, is it? It's subtle, though, and where the eye watches it too long the shadows melt away to cover some other corner, crevice, or device. The faint howling of the wind, like a trapped animal, is just present enough to send shivers up the spine even all the way up here. But still, it's slight enough as to be mistakable for the stamping of feet, the fluttering of banners, the fervor of the crowd. It's only when you really look that you notice how many loose bits of chain are strewn about, literally everywhere.

Marianne smiles, and cups her hand under Celestine's chin.

"There, you see, little one? I have stolen the Great God's arena. Next, I shall steal his kill. Ah, ah! Not a peep, chérie. Canada Taliv will die tonight, and Marianne will kill her. Nothing shall bring her back except the hope in your heart that begs for heroes. Keep her safe, yes? That is your assignment tonight! This is how I shall steal the Great God's eyes. Do you want that, little one? Would you beg to see him blinded? Would you pray to crack the walls of this perfect city?"

Marianne dumps Celestine on the ground before she can give an answer. She barks with laughter at the indignant glare getting shot at her, then harder still as Celestine's attempt at an answer turns into an awkward yelp as a chain yanks her up by the foot to dangle her upside down from the ceiling. The hurt on her face is real, isn't it Little Star? But she won't miss the pressure those chains put on her hand as they slip the piece of paper with the note you wrote for her. Worry not, Marianne loves you both, yes.

Breathless Dead

Even Bella hesitates before she walks into the light. Her posture stiffens and her smooth gait turns awkward for a step or two, just enough to get her to slosh some of her wine on the ground. She bends down automatically as if to clean it, but only winds up stretching her back for a moment before taking another long sip from her glass. She sniffs. That is not her job anymore.

Her hand lifts dreamily, as if in a daze, and she brushes her fingers against a spot on the back of her head. Under most circumstances, her hand would drop back down and that would be that. If she hadn't stumbled forward, if the light had been slightly different, if her hair was not tied back the way it is, if eyes less attentive than Mynx's were watching her right now, if, if, if.

But the gods have willed it so, and the traces of a wide scar shine through. It's an enormous, ugly thing: not a mark of punishment meant to prove the Empress' love, but a souvenir from a battle that left no other marks on history. Redana and assassinations are very old friends, after all, even if she's too stupid to know that. It must be an old scar, a partially raised starburst where a trick knife had caught her before it burst into pieces, but against the rich darkness of her hair it seems starkly white and fresh. Almost as if she'd spent several years digging at it herself. Wouldn't that be just like her?

Her hand drops again, but it's too late. Her hair never quite settles back over it, and that mark of imperfection lingers in sight, impossible not to stare at. And that's the thing about perfection: once it's gone, you can never have it back. If the eye wanders from the blemish on her head, it won't be able to help but notice her talon jewelry in new light. Or the way the tip of her tail doesn't quite match the shape and color of the rest, or the spot at the back of her knee where the fur doesn't come together quite right and the needle shaped puncture mark that counts for some other fight or training exercise. They're all over her, but only in the places you wouldn't think to look. Of course they are. A servitor like Bella is meant to be looked at and admired, so naturally they wipe away blemishes on the most visible parts of her almost faster than she can acquire them. But who would waste time and resources tending to tending to the wounds of a maid where they're so easily covered up? You'll never find them if you don't go looking.

Bella sucks a breath in through her teeth. Her glass is empty again, and there's nothing here to fill it. She's squeezing it so hard it's a miracle it hasn't shattered in her claws already. Her golden eyes are sharp and piercing, and they seem to slide right over the Diodekoi. She turns her head and stares through Mynx, instead. Her yawn is full of teeth.

"Hmph. Well this one's simple enough, I don't see a need to waste my time asking more questions about it. Come on, let's keep going. Whatever... all this is, it's giving me a headache."

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

It's a rare thing for Marianne to find a moment for herself. Always more to do, another face to threaten, a heart to crush. But carefully, carefully, never stepping too hard in case her shell breaks around her and Étoile loses the spark that lets her be Marianne. So many places to be, so many plans held together by her willingness to be the one in the center tugging at every thread. Always a face to present, always theater to perform.

But just now? The pieces are all in place. Her sworn sisters have assigned roles, and all she needs to do is wait for her moment to cash them out. There are no Annunaki overlords for her to step on and no citizens to awe or housebroken slaves to wash away. In this moment, she is a sphinx without a riddle to tell. A dragon with no great warriors to challenge her. And like all beasts of legend with nothing to constrain them, she takes the chance to stretch her wings and fly.

Étoile is a ball of warm, happy fire in her chest just now. Marianne runs through the city with her hood pulled off and her luxurious golden hair spilling out behind her like a banner as she passes between the cities Above and Below along the paths made just for her. Clomp clomp clomp go her boots as she runs first vertically and then across the surface of an apartment wall. Just before gravity can take her again, she tenses her legs and pushes, and oh! How she soars!

The wind whips at every lock of hair and shredded flap of her coat. It pulls at her heavy, baggy pants and ruffles them around her knees. She is sailing, soaring, cutting through the air like a knife and then she twists her body with a gymnast's precision, putting her back perpendicular with the street below and bending herself into a rainbow so that her momentum carries her body all the way around into a ponderously slow flip. If anyone were watching, they'd be reminded of a large fish playing in an ocean current. She kicks her foot down and squeezes in between the shadows of an archway and the roots of some massive alien tree planted there to bless it.

Shifting, pulling, twisting, flying. Marianne handsprings off a spike growing out of a random Noble's desire to be left alone (oho, how curious! But not tonight, non), and flips herself end over end until she's leaping and running over massive warping fronds that spread across this space in a choking canopy of neglect and fear. The slightest misstep would send her tumbling into an abyss with no concepts to find purchase on, where only angels or the most beautiful of devils could hope to take wing and find the light again. But even though the meta-leaves shift and snap horribly mere instants after she passes, they suffer Marianne to pass. Of course they do: she's held aloft on a wire named Belief, the star of her very own wuxia show.

A massive grin spreads across her face, and for once it carries nothing of savagery or sardonic disdain. There is joy and there is anticipation, and her shell feels lighter than a feather on a scale. She throws a spear-tipped chain into the side of a massive black wall the size of the night sky and swings around in a wide, looping arc before releasing and sailing deep into the warping sky to land on the smallest of a series of pillars climbing up and up forever toward a spot of blinding bright light. Ahhh, there is her Canada!

The greatest thrill of all would be to climb back into the pathways of her sworn sister's soul, where she could wrap herself around Étoile and tear through space in her true body and finally finally finally test the limits of her powers. Oh, to fight like that, yes! To run like that, yes yes! But that golden door is sealed behind a lock she cannot pick. She must be allowed back inside, and tonight is not the night for it in any case.

She climbs lightly and easily through the twisted sea of Annunaki hubris to a door leading back into the realm of ordinary minds. In one moment the stadium seating is empty, and in the next she comes bubbling up through the bottom until she's standing on her toes at the edge of a chair. Her face splits open in a vicious grin. Oh, Canada. How brightly you burn. How dazzling shall be your fall!

[Tangled Web: 13. Marianne will have an opportunity to act against Canada, and take +1 forward while doing so for the remaining duration of this scene]

Breathless Dead

It's written that prior to the reign of Her Imperial Majesty Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Tellurian, most servitors had never known the taste of wine. Vast quantities of land were required to grow the grapes and age the juice into something fit for consumption. Wine was the drink of warriors and was reserved as such. In any case the servitor population was far too massive relative to True Humanity to support letting it pass their lips except perhaps by the grace of a particularly kind master or on especially bountiful or backwater planets where resource management was either so trivial or so pointless as to be ignorable.

But when Nero claimed the throne at the end of her grand adventures and war to end wars, she looked around at her empire and frowned. "I will not suffer my citizens to wither under the labor of those who know neither the pleasures of song or fine drink." Many insisted it was impossible, to say nothing of being pointless. But the Empress is very much not the kind of person who is dissuaded by doubters and lesser men.

Treasuries were emptied. Trellises were built, winding around all manner of available farmland on Tellus deep within the impossibly vast heating shafts that shot through the planet like arteries. The Empress herself devised a method by which the resulting liquids could be rapidly aged to a point of 'acceptable quality' using large amounts of heat and pressurized casks made from an aluminum alloy to prevent its manufacture from eating up the valuable space on her precious and desperately cramped planet.

And thereafter the lowest serving girls and even kennel trainees were given wine with their daily meals. Morale is said to have improved by an amount the Empress personally quantified as being 23.87429%. It is written that she smiled before promptly turning her mind to grander matters and never visiting the issue again.

Bella takes a long draft from her cup, letting the thin and oily liquid slide across her tongue and down her throat. The taste is watery and metallic, just barely not bitter or dry by way of how thoroughly boiled out whatever the originally intended flavor had become. And then, just underneath the surface come the comforting notes that truly make the Tellurian vintage so distinct and memorable: a daring slash of chemically extracted orange, a few drops of pure acid like rain, and then bringing up the rear is a scent almost more than a taste that can only be described as a furnace. The taste is heat. Let it linger in your mouth long enough and it will warm you, truly. It cannot be drunk without calling to mind an infinite field of concrete and a maze of glass, steel, and chipping gold filigree. A city so cramped and dominating that even the vast and open halls of the Imperial Palace feel confined by it. Desperate. Comforting. Home.

Bella snaps her fingers and then snatches the bottle out of the hands of a tiny and particularly frightened servant girl. She ignores the squeaking apology and refills her glass herself before taking a much slower and more deliberate sip. She ignores the tear that comes rolling down her cheek, and watches those violet eyes contemplate the infinite mystery of nothing whatso-fucking-ever.

She bites her lip in between sips, tilts her head to one side. Her ears twitch, seeking information where there is no more to find. Behind her, her tail curls with pleasure before flicking the feet of her chair. Not those eyes, she decides at last. Not that power. She is not jealous. She is a Praetor. Empress Nero's own praetor. The grandest servant of the absolute ruler who has never made a single mistake.

"You do not..." she begins, and then trails off.

Bella swirls the reddish liquid around in her cup, pinching the unsatisfying vessel between her fingers. Like everything else on the Anemoi it feels purposefully made to attract as little attention as possible. Matte black and slick to the touch, even the sloshing of the wine inside it sounds muted. Impossible not to hate it here. She swirls it again, more forcefully this time, just to the edge of spilling it all over. Her ears perk up as a pair of droplets splash against the table in front of her, just missing her clump of tablets and documents she brought with the intention of taking copious and detailed notes. She has not touched them, except to hold her pen in the exact way a certain princess used to before her tests. The final word of her thought, 'approve', fades into the hum of the dampers.

"I will use her however I see fit. But... I don't have any use for shattered planets. What's the point in smashing those dumps, anyway? You make better use of a weapon when you can act like you don't need it, so that's what we'll do here. Have a report sent to my room before this evening with the details of the place we're supposed to be travelling to. We're going to cut the princess off from all the little voices that keep, hffff, distracting her. Then it won't matter what Zeus does to protect her. No blood this time. Clean and proper, just the way she likes it."

Bella allows herself a smirk before she drains her glass for the second time. Her hand is already moving to fill it up again.

"...Now show me the next one. Don't you dare leave anything out."

Breathless Dead

It's the eyes that draw her in.

So vibrant! Bella has always prided herself on her powers of perception, but those eyes are violet windows into the invisible truth of the universe. Her tongue laps at the back of her teeth again and again as she stares. She swallows painfully; her throat is suddenly drier than Redana's textbooks. And the color... Bella has her mother's eyes. These are unique across the galaxy. Not just how they glint like brooches fit for the Empress' neck, but the sharp spark, that flash just underneath the surface that seems to devour the entire ship even despite being turned toward absolute nothingness.

Bella is dimly aware of the sound of her claws tapping on the table in front of her. Power. Absolute power. Power to know all, power to see all, the power to draw lines between each and every thing that could be. The power to never be taken by surprise. With that much power, a person would be invincible. With that much power, a person could never be betrayed.

"...Mynx," her voice sounds rough and unpleasant in her ears, without the husk or the melody she associates with speaking, "Call for wine."

Her fingers move to softly brush against her collar. The leather sinks beneath her probing fingertips with a pleasing suppleness that threatens to pull a low purr from her parched throat. She bites down hard until the feeling passes. Her hand pulls back to the hard, cold steel of the links that still dangle from the hook looped into the collar. Her leash. She closes her eyes, and there's no stopping that throaty rumble of pleasure this time.

Down, down, down. Link by link, until she finds the broken piece at the end. Her eyes open, and she watches the Ikarani sitting in perfect stillness again. No leash on that one. No control. But still, those eyes... yes. Eyes were always the path to strength. You could see it in every person. Just look at Redana. Just look at Her Majesty. With eyes like that, Bella could, could, could.

No. She swallows again, and turns her head to watch Mynx for a long moment. The straightness of her spine, the expression on her face, the particular notes of citrus she's chosen to hide her natural scent under today. Even now. For the briefest of instants, Bella smiles.

"She sounds more like a bomb than a person. The princess only has her little band of misfits, this would be such a waste of... hrn. No. If they can escape the Armada then we should treat them like a credible threat. Still, Re-- the... princess would be at unacceptable risk. Tell me how to control this. How do I make use of an Ikarani before she burns?"

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

It might have been possible to go your entire life without ever knowing Marianne had emotions other than "amused" and "angry". And yet, here she is with her burning eyes and dangerously glinting teeth, with her fluttering, shredded coat and the thin wisps of smoke curling off of her body, with those golden chains glinting inside the shadows of her face. And the word to describe her is... surprised. Stunned, really.

Nothing changes about her posture or expression, but her aura feels almost unrecognizable. It's like she took a sip of water and swallowed it wrong, and in the act of choking forgot for a moment how to be a demon. There's a human under all of that mystic theatricality. Somewhere.

And then she tosses her head back to laugh, and the moment shatters to pieces. The crushing weight of her presence comes rushing back into the room all at once, and she springs lightly forward to pat Set on her head and ruffle her hair.

"Is that how it is? Is that how it is, ma belle petite chose? Ah, to be young, to be a dreamer chasing stardust! This is why I do not let you reform the tyrants with literature, little bunny. But come, come! If you are so lost, Marianne will help you with your homework, yes!"

She smiles with surprising sweetness, right before she flicks Set lightly on the nose. In another breath she's slipped into the floor and comes sliding out of a corner holding a scrap of paper and an incredibly beat up looking pen. With a series of unnecessarily aggressive strokes, she quickly scrabbles out a list of names. They're nonsense, mainly: minor celebrities from before the world fell, and a few other noteworthy names like Veronica Peters, one time assistant secretary to the Mayor of Halcyon City. All pointless. Stupid. At the bottom she jots down the names of a handful of doctors, and then underlines one so fiercely it tears a hole in the page: Antoine Ravenelle. She flicks the paper with contempt at Set and crushes her pen to bits, which may well have been a mercy for the poor thing.

"You will memorize this list. These are your demands. You will steal the listed names from the petty overlord by any means necessary, and you will not fail. It is imperative that you do not. Your golden ticket expires at midnight, and this is the price it will fetch. You will do this by telling the truth. You will tell him that I am out tonight, that I am seeking Shamash, and that with the slightest motion of my lips I will spill his deepest secrets before the god themself, and all the revelers drawn into their wake. You will tell him that the price of a silent evening and a clean bill of health for his name will be these names, lifted up and freed into the care of a safe place of your choosing. You will not drop names from this list. Memorize it and destroy it. Take in every detail. Wield them like swords, Set."

Marianne unfolds her arms and steps into the shadows, more literally than most. Her presence fades from the room for one moment. Two. Three. Her head comes creeping out of the wall again, and she flashes a wide and wolfish grin.

"I have faith in you, mon petite lapin. I would not lay this at your feet if I did not. Let that faith be your voice, yes! We are invincible. Uncatchable. We are legion. And by the time they realize the truth of our great cause, it will already be too late. Bonne chase!"

She cracks her neck, which rings disturbingly through the walls, and disappears for real.

Breathless Dead

Bella's hand hits the wall so hard that it reverberates through the hallway, even despite its sound swallowing padding. Her muscles ripple across her arm, and her claws tear into the wall as though it were made of paper. She towers over Mynx to the point where she needs to hunch her back to push her face close against the shapeshifter's. Her breath burns inside her chest, her throat, her mouth. It gushes from her in steamy waves that wash over Mynx's face. She feels her lips curl upward, showing teeth. Her golden eyes are stinging, and she doesn't know the cause. No amount of twitching, flinching, shivering, not a squeak or a yelp or anything draws a single note of pleasure into her body. She snorts.

"Let's get one thing perfectly clear," she snarls, "I am not your toy. I am..."

Her tail thrashes furiously behind her as she drags her hand across the wall to grab a fistful of Mynx's shirt. She lifts her bodily into the air, but there's nothing for her to do with all her strength. No surge of pleasure runs down her spine. No wet relief bursts from her heart. Her fingers tremble around the folds of fabric, and she throws Mynx to the ground. She looms like a colossus in the hall, but her shadow is shaking. It doesn't feel right. Nothing feels right.

"I'm not some weak little pet you can just... I'm! I'M! I'm a fucking Praetor, you stupid bitch! So don't think for a second you can fuck with me ever again! You don't know shit. You don't... you're never there when it matters, so just... no. No. Don't you dare. Don't you tell me you're sorry. Don't you look at me like that. Where were you when Redana ran away, huh? Where were you when the Empress was punishing me for it? Where were you when I was training for the Games, where were you when they carved me open just for winning them? Where were you, huh?! Nowhere! Useless! You're useless, Mynx!"

Bella heaves with the effort of her vulnerability. Don't fall apart. Don't fall apart. Not here. Not again. The Princess needs a calm servant. She needs control. Poise. Perfection. Bella draws a deep breath through her nose, full of the smells of fear and unease, and pushes it through her teeth. She dusts herself off, setting her skirts, sleeves, and hair into a beautiful dance that seems entirely out of place on her body.

The moment passes. She turns her head away to hide the sudden blush, and offers out her hand without saying another word.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

"You think that I am kidding? Is that what you think of me, mon petite lapin? Do I seem like the kidding type?"

Marianne's smile is as lewd as her hands are grabby. Every little flinch, every spark of guilt, every flicker of the eyes only draws her in closer. Her fingers possessively trace the lines of Set's collarbones as she presses her face deep into the crook of the smaller girl's neck. Her breath is steamy, smoky hot, and the golden links of her mask are icy cold in contrast. She nibbles her way up to the ear; every nip cuts like stone knives.

"Do I," she leers, with her fingers lifting Set's chin to pull them eye to smoldering eye, "like to tease you? To make you squirm? I should very much like to play with you until all the little secrets you keep tucked away from me come tumbling out onto the floor, yes~"

She darts in like a snake, but her lips touch only Set's forehead this time. She smiles, with genuine mirth, and in another moment has slipped down into the floor so she can pop back up from the ceiling.

"Alas, we have no time, the night is in its adolescence. Be calm, my sister, calm. You are not needed elsewhere. Canada will die tonight. There is no other future for her apart from death; not since she went and challenged Shamash to single combat. Be calm! Calm. All is as it should be. All is as it must be. Your wonderful plan cannot be paid for except by her corpse. Ha! She thought to seize her dreams by punching a madman in the face! You belong together, she and you: the dreamers and the damned."

Marianne rolls with laughter like a thunderstorm as she falls down to the floor. She flips effortlessly on the ride down and lands with a dramatic thud on the soles of her boots. As she rises to her full height she tosses her tattered coat behind her like a cloak and cracks her neck with several sickening crunches. And she smiles. Tenderly, this time.

"I have already laid the traps, do not concern yourself with Ca-Na-Da. I will see to it that she dies the death that best serves the Cause. It will be a better lesson for her than our long talk could manage. You must put her from your mind. There are riches only you can steal from the Seneschal, and your window is closing. Steel your heart, Set. Draw from him a treasure he will mourn the loss of, and don't give anything back in exchange. D'accord?"

[Anathet, Marianne is telling you how the world works. Shift your Savior down and Danger up, or reject her influence]

Breathless Dead

Bella is nearly as adept at hiding her reactions to things as Lorventi. Just ask Redana; she's like a sphinx! There are only a couple of subtle tells that give her away. Like the violent twitching of her eyebrow just now. Or the way her eyes open so wide in incredulous shock. There's the way her lips curl back into an even sharper sneer, of course. And if you watch very carefully you can see her reach out with both hands as if to strangle something, then clench at nothing. She moves them up to her head but there's nothing for her do with them there, either. She winds up folding them across her chest in a gesture that is not the slightest bit defensive, no not at all, and taps one claw into the crook of her elbow.

"You," she snarls, "Unbelievable as-- hhhrrrngh! How am I only hearing about this now?! Are you telling me they've been here the entire time? You let me march straight into... I could have just... I had to... son of a bitch!"

Bella's tail lashes behind her as she sways unevenly on her legs, evidently not knowing whether she wants to plant her feet or pace with them. The motion sends ripples up and down her skirts that give off the impression of a black burning candle in the wind. She squeezes her arms tight and takes a deep breath. And then another one when that doesn't work.

"You're gonna cite some sort of dumbassed bureaucracy thing at me, I just know it. Don't even bother. I don't want to hear it. Just stand there and nod, or I swear to Hera I'm going to throw you out an airlock right... hhhhffffff... no. No. It's fine. It's fine that this happened. I learned more by going there myself. It's fine. Fine!"

Slowly, she lets herself uncoil. She has to pinch her nose between her thumb and a talon, but she even forced her breathing into a calm, normal pattern. Unbidden, the image of Redana flashes into her head: smiling and laughing, all sweaty and covered with dirt from wrestling all day, taking her Bella's words at face value without having to be asked to. Bella's ears start to flatten, and she violently shakes her head to clear it.

"Just... yes. I would like to inspect them for myself. Now. Right now. And bring me Mynx. The... Toxicrene adept to you. I have... things I need to discuss with her."

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

"Hush my darling, hush. You will never fix their hearts with such tiny, timid hands, non! You must be bold, yes! You must be fierce, yes yes!"

Marianne licks her lips suggestively and caresses Daisy's cheek with a gentleness that can only be described as sisterly. When she grabs the paddle, she takes the smaller girl by the wrist and squeezes the fingers until her grip is just so. Her other arm slinks around the waist and braces Daisy'e leg.

"There, you see? When you strike..." she draws Daisy's arm back, "You take away their anger~"

They swat together, against the thigh of the Annunaki who'd been trying to scare Daisy into submission. Whatever her name was. Whack! Whack whack! Marianne guides the wrist and gives the blows the proper force, the kind that cows and shushes. The kind that leaves marks, but does not shatter or maim. It's the line where Daisy can feel the fight go out of her 'Mistress' without being made to take her place?

Marianne barks with laughter as she watches the aggressive leering turn to whimpers, and then begging.

"They will not be mad, little flower. My Accomplice. They will not make a peep after this, non, non! They understand. They know there will be much worse for them than these gentle love taps if they displease me, yes. They are afraid of Ma-Ri-Ann. You are not theirs anymore, chérie. You are mine. Say it. Feel it. And then play with these toys properly, yes?"

***

It's a favorite game of Marianne's to startle her companions as much as possible when she comes to see them. Today that means bursting out of the dark corner of a wall that Set has been resting against and wrapping her arms possessively around her partner while flashing that red soaked grin of hers right into Set's pretty face.

"Ça va?" she asks before she grabs her fellow thief behind the head and kisses each cheek in greeting.

She slides out of the wall like she's a thing melting out of the surface of it, snaking her way through the air with a playful jingle and draping herself all over the diminutive phantom thief. Ah, to play! To know before she looks that her sworn sister will show her nothing but resolve in her eyes. Faith, this is called. Or love, perhaps. Je taime, Set.

"We gather this day to mourn our darling Canada," she says with casual disinterest, "Whose heart is so twisted up inside she cannot see the shape of the world she lives in. She is doomed, yes. Doomed to die. I have seen it. C'est le guerre, n'est-ce pas?"

She chuckles, and the grip around Set's shoulders tightens.