Rockette

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: Southern Plateau - Pacific Royal Campus}

Hope In Hell #2.0049: the offering.

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_{Interaction(s): &&}

Previously: a name unspoken.

She fell through smoke and ruin and blood and ash- her skin was marked in it, her veins were tainted through it, and her heart wailed and her soul splintered; tiny fragments of red and black that shattered; pieces of a conceptual design beholden to immortal intricacies. In vain did she try to fight, talons sunk deep into her flesh, purchased as vices, and through every weakening pulse of her heart she felt every lance, cut, gash, and sliver of pain on her body. She counted each of them once and then twice over, she relished in every mark that would awaken as a new scar, the fire that pulsed and throbbed as a symphony of life therein, for as she tumbled through Hell, Amma knew she was still alive. She marked this agony as the epicenter of her forsaken reality, the dregs of self and reasoning forever lost and nevermore, the threaded fate of a name unspoken that bloomed red and threaded to the quivering hand that held fast and true. To the hand that broke through the dark and asked her name, to the hand that fell before her and asked to take a walk, to the hand that yearned to show her what fun was, to the hand that clutched at her throat and speared nails against the name that burns away at her flesh. Slithering through each vein, every pore, every pump, and gasp of breath as heated lines of vermillion simmer away at her throat --

An 'I' slowly crawls there.

And she screams.

With a crash, she fell, finally, thrown against a wall already defiled by blood and quaking fissures of hate and denial. A gurney lay toppled over, erosion and rot pulled away at the metal bars, manacles lain open, vials strewn, and a single bulb of fluorescent light flickering in tandem to her sluggish heart. Her body quakes and trembles, muscles locked tight in fatigue, her flesh screaming furiously in protest as she struggles to stand. She falls once, arms giving out first. She falls once again, her legs refusing to obey. And then she falls a third time, a slick pool of red and black that is liken to cement that keeps her in place as Amma finally manages to sit upright.

And then wishes that she hadn't moved at all.

She was back in the first room she had entered, where that mask had slipped free of its bindings for just a moment to expose the raw denial of what she had endured. Here, the walls were lain with death, lines of red and silver, and oozing shadows of black that carved through the confinements of this once pristine hell. They formed letters and words, they formed sentences of her whispered confessions, they formed demented illustrations of a child and the cruel monarch of the christened beast within. They formed each name she commanded, each name that bore with it an incredible weight in each utterance, the letters cruelly weeping red as she too spared tears for the prices she had to pay.

Amma Cahors has not shed a tear in years, has not known to weep or cry, and has not been known to succumb to the woes of time and circumstance. Loneliness did not bedevil her life in shades of gray. She never cared, she didn't care. She bared her teeth and glared with all the furious defiance of a feral creature trapped and pinned to the corner and though her power was spent and raw and left her entire being aching, small, pulsating arcs of energy still bloomed and rose. The world would always tremble at her feet, the world would hold its breath just for her if she so commanded it even if she was to destroy it. She would end it. Amma could end it all. It was her role. Her purpose. Her intention.

The hospital bed beckoned as a reminder of the currency demanded, the power she had sought, and the power she had gained.

The walls shudder and tremble as she slowly pushes up, using the one at her back to hoist herself to her feet despite the agony that pulsates from her broken bones. Small victories lost to the hopeless situation lain before her as a door peeled open upon the familiar faces of The Foundation looming there, those that knew the secrets lost to the depths of the ocean, the screams and cries of many silenced, and the purring words of redemption. Too many faces and too many hands, and she glances down, expression stricken in silent fear as she recognizes the tools, the chains, that demented collar that fit so elegantly around her darling throat.

It is time to come home, Tiamat.

Amma roars and she screams, and she fights. She refuses to allow them victory even as she is beaten down, sliding through her blood -- is it hers, anymore? So much shed for naught -- and she just laughs. Every fist that connects with her jaw, her cheek, every grabbling hand curled inward as fiendish claws, the boots that connect with her stomach, ribs, and chest over and over and over again.

Over and over.
How much more is she to break, how much more is she to endure?
They conditioned her for this agony, she knew it as an eternal lover, a specter, a reasoning of self.
A hand wove through the mass of her hair and pulled, needles of pain through her scalp as she simply continued to laugh.

Remember the last promise you made.
The wish wasted away into the night.
Remember the life you spared.
Remember what happened then -

the punishment. The pain.

Remember the rewards given.
The lives you took.
The lives you take.

Amma wheezes through the agony and terror, her laughter spiraling high, every trill as demented as the first as she summons with a wounded cry:

"I am the advocate for the depraved and the unhinged.
I am rage, I am pain.
I am the unknown."

They lift her up and over, they secure those manacles around her wrists and ankles, they tear her augmented suit at her sleeves, surgical equipment harsh and cruel against the profiles inked into her skin, they cross scalpels over the alluring moths and snakes there, the skulls turned inward in fear of reproach as they bind Amma down further with cuffs secured over her arms and thighs. She bares fang and claws and snaps out with her teeth, lashes peeled wide and wild in abandon as dread makes itself known unto that beautiful face defiled with blood.

As she did then, she does so now, Amma begs and pleads for an end, as above and so below, her life suspended within and without. In exchange for the two lives she spared, even if it had been for naught, hopeless they were lost in this hell with no end in sight.

Forgive me, dove. They said you had to go; they said they could help you!

The voice of her mother, the haunting emote of Charlotte Cahors as she gave her over to them.
A letter - a letter with her name.

The world is never fair for the different, for the misunderstood. For simply being not-as-we-should.

Amma screams:
"I am Amma Fien Cahors,
"I am Tiamat
"I am Ammar --"

Leather is unceremoniously shoved bewtixt her teeth and she bites down, her brows sundered low over the glare of her eyes that froth and churn as the sea, the void within risen high on a cry of subjugation. The demand for penance and pain burns eternally blue in her eyes, a sickly cyan color that blazes like the hottest of flame known to man. And struggle as she might, bound and gagged, they also fixated that Inhibitor around her throat, tight enough to choke the cries smothered behind the barrier gnashed upon her full lips.

Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.
The world is never fair.

But no matter what, this world will never accept you. They won't forget. They haven't forgotten. I doubt they will ever forgive.

Amma's entire soul, though shattered and broken, stills and quiets as they begin their preparations. It is not unlike their intentions for when Haven was bound, but in place of gleaming bone saws and cages of hell, here they procured a row of vials - one after another, each capped in dried blood, each rusted shell boiling with that hated phosphorescent liquid that glowed - the same color as her eyes. Though she is silenced, there is no muffling the wailing cry of a beast that shatters through the room, the halls, and likely the very confines of the entire simulation. It is a bellow of defiance, fear, pain, and anger, it is the shattering howl of something lost, something a little girl gave herself over to without knowing what it meant. They hold her down, they each hoist those needles on high, and then they fall --

She only ever wanted to go home.

The thousandth upon a thousand injections come when she is twenty-three years old- too many to count, too many to place.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: Southern Plateau - Pacific Royal Campus}

Hope In Hell #2.0033: feathering the storm.

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_{Interaction(s): haven. - @Skai}

Previously: asunder & put through the winger.

Her whispered words of gratitude fell upon deaf ears as Amma regained her sense of self and what minuscule portions of reasoning she could bear. Her power continued to pulsate in tandem with the incredible pressure betwixt her ribs, her heart looped in red threads that cinched tight with every breath. Her fingers twitched, her palms burned, every scar laden there thrumming with whorls of scarlet as she carefully lifted her gestures and poised her nails to sink, reap, and claw through the space between them.

"I suppose," she began, wrist rotating, flesh burning, and bones cracking. "These trials have us facing against our would-be selves," Amma whispered, voice wreathed in a hoarse utterance as her glare of blue fixated upon Haven, every flicker of her lash raking her eyes over her wings, every feather, and every drip of sweat that beaded her skin. "So I'll ask: are you the real Haven Barnes?" Her inquiry speared through the operating room with a string of crimson power striking the ground at her feet where ashen remains stirred from the impact.

Gratitude began to wane into apprehension as Haven noted Amma’s movements. With her heart still fluttering in her chest like a frightened fledgling, she couldn’t help but begin to wonder the same thing about the Amma before her. The muscles in her back ached as they tensed. Her wings wanted to tuck in tightly to her back, and yet they merely twitched behind her. They’d been saved from being torn apart, and yet the damage had been done. She would need to rest the feathered appendages for a while until she could fly again. In the meantime they felt like dead weight on her back.

Eyes the color of a forest sunrise warily watched as Amma carved a glacial blue gaze across her body. Was it obvious that Haven was in no state to defend herself against those blood red arcs of power? Her skin was hot and clammy from fear. She hadn’t looked at her wings yet, but she had an inkling that they looked like she’d crashed into an oil rig. Her wings were in a slumped position on her back, missing feathers, with splotches of black grease… and now the ends of her plumage were dusted with the ashes of things that had been about to dismantle her piece by piece. The same type of ash that stirred at Amma’s feet as her power struck the ground in a show of force.

Haven’s body wanted to flinch in response. Her mind wanted to back away. Yet her heart challenged her to remain still. Amma’s body language expressed a threat, but her actions a moment ago proved that she wasn’t here to harm. Haven couldn’t allow her fear to claim her again and turn Amma against her in the process.

“Do we know each other well enough to tell the difference, anyways?” Haven began slowly. Her voice as raw as her throat felt, yet carrying the weight of her heart within its timbre. “It seems like if the Foundation had its way, you would have let me die on that table.” An obvious shiver ran down the length of Haven’s body as she said it aloud. Her voice was softer in pitch when she spoke again.

“Why did you save me, Amma?”

The question visibly marked her, a subtle flinch through her gestures as another lance of her power bloomed, coiling through ashes and blackened remains, stained with their eternal rest. Skeletal fissures broke through the ground, increasing their intent, seeking Haven's truth that was lain there in every word she spoke.

"If The Foundation truly had their way, you would have been dead before I got here." It is a simple fact that Amma speaks, refusing to relinquish her hold just yet, unable to quell the trembling through her fingers. As slight as it is, it is telling in the usual rigidity and grace beholden to her presence. Perhaps her earlier ordeal left more than just the laceration down her chest and those that ringed around her arms and legs.

"Why..." It's the gleaming tools, the broken restraints, those four walls, and that damned door that she sees, but it's not the brunette before her, it's not the tawny wings smothered in oil and tainted with dust. It's the child screaming a plethora of whys through her mind, shattering through her waking world with every breath.

"Does it matter?" Amma sighs, finally lowering her quivering palm, her power slowly slinking back, aloft, and snapping to her aching frame. A subtle crimson glow lined her gesture, softening to a silver lining that coiled up her arms. "Maybe it's because you're a Teammate," she snaps those words through her teeth. "Blackjack prides itself on that, does it not."

"Maybe it's because if I make it out of here without you, or anyone, they'll suspect me." Amma moves to leave, offering a final glance over her shoulder. "But, I've been there- on that table. And no one was there to save me." She leaves the horrid operating room, mindful of the bodies in the adjacent space, trying not to look at the body of the girl left mangled and gone, her wings drooped to either side, her feathers forever soiled.

"I made a promise, once," she muttered, bracing against the pain and anguish. "I promised I wouldn't leave anyone to suffer what I have, not again."

Haven didn’t hide the relief that passed through her as Amma’s power returned to her body. Her shoulders sagged, along with her wings dropping an inch lower behind her. She’d never seen Amma shaken this way… and she wasn’t happy to have seen it at all. She could feel it in her chest that there was more troubling her saviour than this one act of kindness.

Everything about the withdrawn woman became clear as a cloudless sky as Amma walked through that horrible door. The pain of empathy returned again. Haven looked over the empty metal table, the broken manacles, and imagined someone much younger than herself being put through the terror that it brought her. She shook her head, taking another step away from it, and turned to leave it behind for good.

The scene in the next room was even more horrifying. Haven clutched her mouth, a sob escaping between her fingers as she pressed her back against the wall next to the door. The woman’s wings… It could have been her wings. Broken. Sullied.

Destroyed.

Haven trembled as she turned her gaze away. Fresh tears escaped down her cheeks and onto her hand. She pushed down the panic that threatened to consume her again and pushed herself away from the wall. Her steps were faster this time as she continued into the hallway behind Amma. She swallowed down the bile that had been inching up her throat.

It felt like she’d left her stomach behind. A chasm filled with painful empathy taking its place instead. Haven felt it for the dead woman she left behind… for Amma, and for the others that Alyssa had mentioned had gone missing. It threatened to tear her soul apart, but Haven felt anger keeping it together. The same anger that she’d kept stored deep within herself for many, many years. It stopped the flow of tears and it kept her from falling into despondence. She followed behind Amma for a few silent moments as she allowed it to rebuild her composure.

“They named you Tiamat after they rebuilt you… didn’t they.” It wasn’t a question. The voices that echoed the name at the beginning of this, and now Amma’s revelation, confirmed it for her. “How come you haven’t turned them to ash, too?” Her anger fueled this question, whether it lacked any social grace or sympathetic tone. Something told Haven that Amma didn’t need pity, anyways.

"Yes," she doesn't hesitate to answer, the rejoinder quick and torn from her throat in a harsh, feral sound. "And no."

No one had ever asked her about her name, not this calling that whisked through her nightmares, not the slithering malice of whispers that sired through the corridors as soon as Haven spoke the words aloud. Over and over and over as they moved down the corridor, the pace set one at leisure with their particular injuries. Haven's abused wings; her broken ankle, and her body that droned with the tumultuous power that fought to maintain itself within her grasp, every panel of the wall she touched splintered with tendrils of her power that imbedded itself into the simulated construct.

And then she heard it, the boiling fury that withered away inside her dulcet tones, the sort of cadence one expected from a bird, but no, this was a furious hawk's cry that barely encroached the depths of her obvious hate. An emotion Amma knew well and harbored within the pit of her heart and soul.

"You ask a lot of questions, don't you?" Amma paused, deliberately, turning to face Haven completely where she leaned in close, her frigid glare penetrating through slivers of green and brown, peering into the reaches of her empathetic nature. "You want to know why they call me Tiamat? Why they gave me that name? Didn't Alyssa tell you enough?"

Upon her spine and tensed shoulders did those scarlet threads rise, twisting into coils of ill intent, reaching and seeking high above Haven's crown and nearly caressing over her battered and bruised wings.

"They'll get what's coming to them. They all will. Everyone." A small laugh falls from her lips, punctured by the smile that carves its way across her face. "It's all a matter of time, Haven. As part of the role I'm meant for."

"What about you, what is your role to play here?"

Haven stared back into Amma’s eyes with an intensity that almost matched. Yet the subtle tick of a muscle in her neck gave away the wariness that Haven felt at this distance. She wasn’t afraid of Amma, really, but the energy that hovered fractions away from the most precious parts of her body. Still, Amma’s words had Haven pressing her brows together.

“Why do I need a role to play?” Haven thought aloud, genuine frustration evident in her frown. “Have you ever thought that some of us are just trying to make a life for ourselves? That despite the pain we’ve endured and might endure again, we still have hope?”

Haven suddenly thought of the bonfire again. Of Amma’s pessimistic words. She glanced between those cold eyes and wondered if they held the power to freeze her heart.

“How dare you try to crush our souls too.”

"Hope is fleeting, hope is a lie." Amma's words churn with a hidden frustration, witnessing the defiance that blooms within those eyes of moss and timber, a forest of secrecy, a forest that bids itself to freedom. She opens her hands, palms up, fingers splayed and blackened and red, her scars aflame with her power and the remains of blood that is not her own. The phosphorescent liquid had dried to a sickly cyan that still burned away at her wrists.

"Where was hope when they started taking away students? Where was hope when I was left alone in the dark?" Her fingers quiver, her arms wreathed in scarlet as she looms closer to Haven, her lashes peeled wide and her power inching ever closer to her precious wings. "Where was hope when The Foundation came to this island and decided to try to make it their own?"

"Need I remind you too? She didn’t get it either." She whispered, "They won't let us go. They won't let you go." Delicate threads of crimson caress against the downy softness of her wings then, slick with oil that congeals some of them together, the ashes of their enemies slowly feeding into her power.

"That soul you speak so fondly of? They'll take that too. And once they do, you'll wish they had taken your life instead."

“Don’t touch me.” Haven hissed a warning. Her chest rising and falling faster now that she felt Amma’s threats. “You didn’t have anyone to help you then, but you could now.” Her voice remained tense as long as those red tendrils held themselves so close. Yet her voice didn’t waver. Her defiant gaze still held strong. “That’s what we do for each other- why we call each other teammates.”

“Don’t you want someone to have your back?”

Her pupils compress to an obsidian sliver banked within a turbulent sea of blue, something there in those eternal depths that writhes and coils, awakened by the challenge of Haven's words that lance against the fortress of black and bone within and without.

"You're right, I could." Those churning threads of her power encompass the entirety of Haven's wings then, spindles of crimson energy threaded through her feathers, from primary to secondary, through every construct of muscle and bone, and weave back to the delicate radius of every barb and shaft. The HZEs that complicate and compound the waking world that quakes at her feet suddenly seeking those lain within, a brief glimpse unwarranted to the energy that genetically endows her mortal frame with the beautiful talent of flight.

"But I don't -"

Teammates.

"I don't need anyone."

Just as soon as her power had latched onto her, ignorant of Haven's plights and sensitivity, they slowly slunk back; snapping, twisting, some as leisurely twirls of authority that settled over her lithesome shoulders. Sparks of silver and red dance on her lashes as she says:

"...You remind me of someone." Amma steps back, her favored leg causing a slight limp as she continues down the corridor, turning left after a slight pause, the hall to their right dimmed in flickering light, the edges of the floor suddenly awash in blood. Waves of ruby that lap down the panels shattered and vacant, something black and horrid churning through the gloom that bubbles, oozes, wed to the darkness that howls as if starved.

"We should hurry."

Muscles that had bunched together in preparation slackened as the intrusive arcs returned to their owner. Her feathers, on the other hand, remained subtly ruffled. Haven took a long breath through her nose and slowly released it through her teeth. Her heart still thumped in her chest even after her breathing calmed. Yet somehow Haven wasn’t left with a sick feeling in her stomach. It was a violation, there was no doubt about that, but it hadn’t felt malicious. It felt like gentle probing. A caress of Amma’s ions against her own, internalized within her blood, tissue, bone, and keratin. It left her grateful that she hadn’t swung on Amma the moment that her power had snuck its way between her feathers. And that left her feeling just as unsettled, because she always made it clear that they wouldn’t be able to do it again.

Haven didn’t probe Amma further as she once again followed in her wake. The longer they stayed here, the greater the threat of this place became. Her eyes traveled to Amma’s weakened ankle. Another spot she would have aimed for if things had turned violent moments ago. Now she wondered if she should offer help… The thought of being held onto again sent a shiver down her spine. Her arms would likely show bruising within a few hours from the vise-like holds that those gloves had.

She glanced to the right as she reached the corner. Then looked away from it quickly as she decided to trust Amma’s decision. The hair on the back of her neck stood straight as she turned her back to it. She exhaled softly as she brought herself up to Amma’s side.

“You may not need it… but I’ve got your back now.” Haven murmured while her eyes scanned the impossibly clean hallway in front of them. Open doors and crossroads loomed ahead. She didn’t dare to imagine what awaited them in the hidden parts of the Foundation’s maze. Otherwise the simulation might snatch it from her mind and make it reality. “Consider it a debt paid. Since you saved my life.”

She glanced Amma’s way, so that the woman saw the truth in her eyes, and then returned her gaze to the length of halls ahead of them. She waited for Amma to set the pace for them before her own feet began to move.

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Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: Southern Plateau - Pacific Royal Campus}

Hope In Hell #2.0027: asunder.

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_{Interaction(s): haven. - @Skai}

Previously: apparition.

How does one kill the likeness of a god?
How does one kill the multifaceted burden of their bitter heart?

How does one destroy the manifestation of love? Loss? Heartache?

Amma Cahors doesn't know the answer then, but she'll find it when destiny and fate collide and bring her to her knees; broken, spent, and alone. When the world grows weary of her malcontent - when a would-be almighty looks upon her and decides that she has had enough. When she no longer has the power to maim and all is for naught; the creature lain within finally lent to rest.

But now, the roaring betwixt her ears is a violent maelstrom that pillages through her lobe with the fury of a storm, the vibration of an unholy declaration sundered through the vessel known as the void that welcomes her into its embrace of nihility. She often dreamt of a netherworld where the forsaken and woeful found comfort in the caressing stillness, beasts of a prophesied hell cantering through her bones, marked in her blood, sluicing through her veins in phosphorescent fragments that shimmered and coiled. Wed to the HZEs that wracked through her, high-energy particles that were eternally tangible in whorls of scarlet liken to fated strings of life.

And through the darkness, they descended: the dragon of The Foundation and the could-have-been beloved of P.R.C.U. A princess now forsaken of her crown, her home, her will to be spent and lorn as she wept, screamed, and cinched crimson nails over the throat of the woeful creature that laughed and laughed.

And laughed.

Amma welcomed the prick of those damned nails to her skin, the loathed face that loomed over her, and the tears she spent as the eternal chasm of the deep seemed to stretch further and further. From where they had fallen vanished entirely, the lights guttered out in their wake as silver and red collided and wove together, their powers meshed to a singular unit of pain that wrecked through bones and flesh. She didn't know how long they fell through the ruin, but she knew the awaiting end would likely crush them both unless they managed to part. The sharp twinge of pain through her neck spoke otherwise of her likeness's agony and the unlikelihood she would allow her free and as the edges of her vision warped and faded, a roar split asunder the void and tore through her soul.

A hearkening bellow of something that never should have been, of something that should not have been part of this world. Amma remembers once the tales of another world, the christening of a god from the depths below, wreathed in death and life, a woeful creature bound in time and left to rot- an embodiment of vengeance and purpose for all the wrong done unto it.

For all the wrong done unto her.

"Why was it you that got to be true? Why did you get to live and not me?" A grin slid through the dark, a ridge of bone bathed in blood over the pout of her lip as she answered:

"Because I'm stronger."

The Foundation sought one end to the being that was Amma Cahors, the child they took, the weapon they created. The fabrication of the unknown that curled her arms around her opponent and switched their positions, the smile that foretold of hell, the smile that was Tiamat. She was stronger, for she was All, and she was Made. Her powers of decay spewed forth in plumes of black that shrouded the beloved in her grasp, snapping coils of obsidian wove to her body and slid through her hair, the putrid smell of rot permeating the air alive in red streaks of defiance and hate. From yonder the pit of despair, another cry sounded, a baying call that harmonized with the wails from those lips she had cursed with her kiss of death.

And there, she saw it. Fear. Reflected in her own eyes, a likeness of endless depths unburdened by rage but compounded by hate. Crimson swells of energy speared through her palms and visibly shuddered as they worked through her blood and flayed apart the wounds on her wrists and snaked over the split flesh at her chest, the fibers of her suit split down the middle, almost at her navel where the scythe of energy had cleaved down. Her fingers splayed, arched, claws against the skin slowly coming undone under her power of complete and total nihilism.

"No!" She screamed. "Not like this! Not after everything! The monsters are not supposed to win!" Red churned and sputtered and scoured over Amma's arms and impaled over her shoulders, it swept down the planes of her back and linked into her scars. She would not scream, she would not allow this weeping reaper the satisfaction of her anguish.

And with a sickening thud, they finally stopped.

What awaited them was an abyss that churned with thick remnants of that hated phosphorescence that clung to her pores, invaded her senses, and every lance and gaping wound and sliver of peeled skin that suddenly burned. Then Amma screamed. A lamented song of a siren not unlike her screech earlier when reality settled and she realized she was trapped, but lingering spools of pain wove through her throat and chest and another cry peeled from her full mouth. Something was broken by the hideous fire that quaked through her body, but it was the homage of misery that she knew, a remnant of her past where it was not only flesh that was marred but every link of marrow that had been snapped over and over. The threshold that most mortals adhered to, Amma had been spent beyond even that and once upon a time someone had muttered of hyper-psychosis: a term she recognized but knew nothing of its meaning.

Her likeness had taken the brunt of the impact and through the glow provided, she lay at an impossible angle, blood and tendrils of power churning through the liquid as everything broke and punctured within. Misery like she had known lay in her eyes unmoving and unwavering and Amma leaned over her, unable to shake the comparison.

"Maybe you should've been the one to be. That happiness?" A soft laugh eclipsed her words, a bitterness inflicting her confessions. "Maybe I should be the one trying to kill you in these trials." She tried to speak, blood that frothed black at her lips and nose choking her final whispers.

"I'm scared," she pleaded. "I don't want to lose them. Please. You don't deserve them! You don't deserve h-!"

"We never had them," Amma uttered, slid her fingers through her hair and touched her brow with her lips, a parting gift, a kiss of the final journey and her barriers- her walls of obsidian fell around her heart and soul, and she said:

"I'm sorry."

Life finally dimmed in those hated eyes and was swept away, her powers of destruction woven over her body until she was reduced to naught but ashen remains, her blood and bones and flesh lost to the leagues of black and red that slunk and snapped and warped over Amma's figure as she stood. Pain flared through her body but she bore the scorch of her wounds with cinched fists but as she turned, looking for a way out, she stalled at the rattling of chains in the gloom and what she saw that awaited her there.

Amma Cahors has known pain unlike anything in this world, she has known betrayal, she has known heartache and she has known death. But for the first time, she suddenly knows fear; the unknown, the in-between of this world, and something else that looms over her as the creature that also lurks within her soul. She is immobilized as it rises and with breath the color of the same red that warped the world at her feet, it exposes what lies within its massive claws. She is once again met with her likeness, but then not. Her eyes as pits of a forsaken hell snapped with wildfire in a sea of black; her skin alive with ink that roved and spun and moved; her hair bleached white at the ends and her entire frame wrapped in chains too thick for a mere woman. With a scar-riddled hand, she points over her shoulder, fingers extended into talons of black and stained in blood down her wrists and arms.

Be glad you did not stay, Tiamat.

A door she had not seen prior suddenly bursts open on a gust of unforeseen power and strength, tearing into the very walls that shudder under the massive strain. Amma doesn't hesitate and makes to leave, limping, but moving through the hated liquid pooled around her calves and clinging to her suit as if trying to prevent her from escaping. She does not look back, unable to witness she that is lost in the dark, chained to a beast and a void that they both knew as home. When she does leave that pit and all she has seen behind, the wall suddenly closes on screeches of metal, sealing shut as if it had never been. Harsh lights spear at her eyes and she glances down at her figure bloodied and stained, the yellow accents of her suit muddied in black and exposing her skin and the wounds she now bore. She caressed her scarred palms down, attempting to address herself into something proper, as another corridor loomed ahead and Amma didn't hesitate to move, eager to leave it all behind, to continue her search for a way out.

If there was one.

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In the distance she hears many screams, shouts, and voices that ping away at her ears, timbres she recognizes and names she now knows. Amma uses the wall as a crutch, stopping to address what she is positive is a broken ankle, the pain she can endure, but the progress she has made through the maze stalls nonetheless. Her wounded chest rises and falls on a quivering breath as she leans against the sterile wall now smeared in her blood, she wants to rest, weariness weighted through her limbs as she leans her head back and glares at the overhead lighting.

She would not be undone, no, Amma refused.

With gritted teeth, she continued on, up and up, left and right.
Right and up again.

And peculiarly enough, whorls of red, unbidden as always, suddenly sparked to life, these cords and whips of scarlet stirred into a frenzy as she was met with another section to continue forward, or to go left. Her powers bid left, the crimson sparks whisking away to silver at the edges and reaching, searching, seeking something that called to their manifest. Amma recognized the yearning that slid through her power, the undeniable magnetism that bore life in a clearing of just the two of them. A quiet trill of laughter spun from her bloodied lips, lashes fanned low on her cheeks as she twined her fingers through the cords of her potency, red flung away from her gestures as she stretched out her arm and through the ambient HZEs there, a banner of scarlet sundered away from her. Chaotic whips of energy speared down the corridor where many voices collided, where she felt herself drawn to.

But the terrifying screams that suddenly came from ahead stilled her intentions, screams she recognized of someone subjected to the helpless confinements of this hell. Amma flung another bought of her power after the first for good measure, not waiting to see if they reached their destination before she continued forward, those screams reaching deep and puncturing through her heart. A disembodied voice she recognized slid down her spine, bunched tight and tense as she pushed herself forward and with every panel her hand touched, a droning sound resonated, it vibrated through the halls as her abilities spun into a fever.

She saw the girl first, the wings next, the terrifying sobs that wrecked through her as bone and blood was shredded apart. Tawny feathers fell and a trembling hand reached out to her through the swarm of bodies bent over her, bloodied nails torn away to flesh as they cleaved through the wings stretched taught and bound. Amma stilled, recognizing the brunette hair, the manic eyes lined in red as sobs of pain tore away from her gaped lips.

She didn't hesitate.

Amma flung out her hand, fingers arched and bones aching, her nails raking through the air as spears of black and red came to be, the world trembling at her abilities as they dragged and impaled every masked figure. She bid them to be destroyed liken to the pain they inflicted. To be torn apart.

The girl on the operating table continued to wail and scream, her wings utterly destroyed and mangled, one nearly severed where downy feathers were matted and bloodied. She looked unto Amma with both fear and distorted hope, but there was no saving her, she knew. She begged for it stop, for everything to end and Amma granted her that single mercy with a flicked wrist, a cord a crimson snapped around her throat and looped down to her heart. She looked like Haven, but the color of her eyes told her it was not, but rather the former roommate of someone she knew that had been taken like so many others. At her feet, the masked figures wailed as they were rent asunder from within, but she spared little mercy for them as she finally looked up. A cage was suspended above but it was empty, the bars scuffed and familiar feathers spread across the linoleum below. Amma followed their trail to another room, a door at the back left ajar as more screams sounded.

There she found Haven much like the previous girl, bound and her wings stretched impossibly taught, masked figures prepping her for surgery in the impossibly sterile room, needles and tools and saws gleaming with promised malice. If this was the real Haven, she thought, her presence finally noted as one reached for a weapon, a gun hoisted forward and aimed at her chest.

Could she take that risk though? Even if she was a simulation, could she subjugate another to the same hell she had been put through as a child for so many years?

Amma lifted palms up, feigning compliance as the ground shook, tile broke and splintered as whips of silver and red rose up and up and bled black wherever they touched. She spared them a quick death as they fell, one by one, reduced to mere ashes that swept away into the void of nothingness before Amma limped to Haven's side.

"Be still." She commanded and made quick work of her bindings, slivers of her power breaking apart the manacles that held her down and making delicate attempts to unbind her wings next. She felt exhaustion loom just beyond the discharge of her usual breadth of energy, a first in many, many years that caused her breath to catch before she finally managed to free Haven.

"There," Amma breathed, stumbling back, her power refusing to abate as it pulsated down her frame as if poised and ready to strike should this Haven prove false.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: Southern Plateau - Pacific Royal Campus}

Hope In Hell #2.0015: apparition.

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_{Interaction(s):&&}

Previously: void.

Right, right, left.

A winding corridor lined in glass, a pitch that oozed, coiled, and slid against the silver panes, groaning under the considerable weight suddenly laden there. The ocean she thinks, or the void that lies in wait within. The beast hums away at her soul, a core of appetence that writhes against the figure lain and pressed against her bones, that crown of ash is all she sees and on her head, it is given. It thrummed and pulsated, it breathed and bore a sickening heartbeat that ascended with her own. A quivering tempo that galloped betwixt pained ribs, and at her breast did a churning whorl of red resonate, a thread of weakened contempt woven to her heart as the darkness loomed yonder, adorned in foreboding leagues of black.

Another hallway of rooms, each illustrated and possessed of a christening light; a stretcher; that sometimes laid broken and bent, misshapen by leagues of spiraling taint that infected the very walls, producing naught but revolting remains. Some rooms were rusted and worn down by time, blackened and smudged in soot and death, the edges of their domain bleeding red. Others were pristine and immaculate and hated all the more for their perfection.

Amma turns right, left, right.

Her name falls away into whispers, a voice that pings in familiarity but becomes lost with every pause of breath, her eyes spinning, lashes fluttering against the fixation of dread that weighted her limbs like stones. She could wade into the depths that squirmed and bayed and she would sink entirely into the awaiting embrace of oblivion. A nihilism that her struggling facade yet longed for, the mask that was no longer a mask, but the acceptance of her masochistic inclinations. The blood wash of anger over her teeth, tongue bathed in rubies that slid over her rouge-hued pout, lancing against the fragile barriers of the mundane. The harvester of greed, the one that sought power above all else, as her wanting will of life unbound and free compounded her in fragmented links of depravity.

Amma turns left.

There, a pointed ceiling rose, a spear into the awaiting darkness, the sky above devoid of stars. Not even the moon to mock her in all its resplendence cast from on high. She descended into that familiar conformance she had adhered to for so long, the product of her isolation to further nurture that manic complexion that dubbed her as pure chaos.

Here she remembers she had fallen, the child that wept, her body aflame in anguish, pocketed with black threads pinched tight, they always sewed her back up, stitched and glued and stapled. Sometimes a healer breathed over her mutilated pores, a whisper of warmth against her frigid skin, the flesh knitted with little to mark the cruelty done unto her. If it hadn't been for those fleeting moments of kindness, Amma was sure her entire body would've been marked in pale, silver lines, with little canvas left to commission the artwork purposely displayed over those that remained. Each beheld a story she refused to tell, to ward her trembling figure from the cruel whips of her betters, to ink the likeness of a netherworld onto her body to strike fear and promise of malcontent to those that did her wrong. Though she could not speak or act on her defiance then, she could at least show it, and with baited smiles of hideous desire Amma Cahors would stand alone.

Even against the world if she had to.

In the confines of her old dorm, Amma finally heard it then. The scraping of metal on metal, the sort of ringing and ping of ominous purpose slithering down her spine gone rigid. She panned her eyes over her hunched shoulder and saw --

herself.

A child, the one she once was, the one that knew only pain. The one she had sworn to protect, the one she had longed to redeem. To save.
The one she ultimately let die.

Was it worth it.
Did you find what you were looking for.
Do you remember me and the promises you made.
The vow you swore.
The oath you signed in blood.

She once dreamed of becoming important to someone. She once dreamed of love. To feed the void, to supply that ravenous chasm with just enough sustenance to soothe the eternal pain within and without. The air coiled, spun, the darkness thinned as the child lifted bleeding palms up and up, chains manifested, hoisting arms high above that tumble of black hair liken to her own. Laughter spun from those cherub bearings, the eerie trill reminiscent of her cruelty, when she had laughed at the dreams and hopes of others, as she laughed at their pain.

"This isn't real."

But it is.

Those chains warped, thinned, and bent around themselves till barbed wire hissed and grated and arose like demented serpents. They struck, one by one, and Amma allowed it. Sharp, burning pain tore through her wrists, and her arms, it coiled over her middle where she gasped, muscle taught and tensed and air ripped from her lungs as more slid over her thighs and legs and bunched tight. Metal bit and tore and reaped until she was forced to her knees, and there, a single wire looped around her throat and held fast; trapped and bound.

You like pain.
Don't you?
That's what you said
To him.
You said it made you feel alive.

Tell me.
Ammar -

"Don't."

The child slowly matured, her likeness spiraled and forced into adulthood, the visual evidence that Amma Cahors had been forced to grow up much too quickly. It was as Lorcán said, she had never used her powers for fun. She had never used any uniqueness of life for herself. And so before her stood a woman, a beauty of grace that smiled and clasped her hands behind her back, donned in silver, black, and red and her hair spun through with those striking hues, twinkling charms at her ears and braided through her tresses.

Do you ever wonder, what could have been?
Had Charlotte not given you to them?
Do you ever wonder, what you could be capable of?
If you had gone, stayed, if you had just been.

From her old dorm room to another classroom, this one elongated and warped, the only light offered to come from the multiple screens flickering before her prone position, bound in wire and scarcely able to breathe. She sat there, chin cradled in her hands, one leg crossed over the other at the knee, her heeled boot swinging to and fro, in tune with the delicate hum that spun from her mouth the color of bitten cherries. A gaze alighted in mocking warmth fell onto her, and she said:

"Do you ever wonder what it's like to be happy?"

The screens at her back buzzed and flickered alive, blackness oozed from their shells of bent and misshapen plastic with fissures of red spiraling away and impaled through the ceiling and floor, and there a hideous screech peeled through the air, causing Amma to flinch.

"Do you ever wonder what it's like to feel loved? To have someone want you? No? I do!"

What she saw next stole her breath, soul, her heart. It robbed her of everything.

She, as the one before her, was smiling in those projected films; laughing, swept into the arms of another, lost in love and warmth and kindness. Smiles traded with baited whispers and hushed cries, euphoric expressions across her face as she clung to broad shoulders. She was everything she was not, she was the completion of dreams and hopes and forsaken desires that Amma had long abandoned. Of what she had been denied from conception to damnation. Friends, she thinks, her teammates crowding around her with faceless smiles, her likeness cast a woman nurtured, desired, loved, and whole.

So that's what it was, that's what it looked like, to be known as beloved.

"Sadly, this too shall pass." Her voice dropped, a whisper of sorrow threaded through that voice like her own, a whispering of inflection, the slight husk she bore with a soft purr of her accent dropping off at the end of her words. "Because they, well -"

The scenes shifted, a kaleidoscope of color and imagery warped and malformed to sterile halls and hated rooms. Where she herself cried, where she clung desperately to another as her world was taken from her again. Again and again and again.

"They'll never let you go."

What came across next pillaged through her entire body, a shudder of emotion slithering across her spine where her back grew wet with blood, there a creature arose and stared on back from a myriad of glass with eyes liken to a storm wrought sea with endless depths and endless power.

"They still came for me, for you." She stands, her delicate fingers slowly working the sleeves of her augmented suit up, exposing pale scars so similar to her own, every cross and line a mutilated map to her past, but, where Amma had snakes and birds coiling over her arms, this woman had nothing to hide the anguish she must have felt.

"They always get what they want. Do you think, even now, you're free? Do you think they really gave you up? Why are you here, now. Why not then? Why not before."

"There never was a before -- " Amma whispered, mindful of the cord around her throat.

"Oh, you don't know! Do you? No, no you don't." She tapped carmine-hued nails against her temple, where the neural uplink would've been, where it was on Amma. "I know something you don't."

"Jonas knew about you, in fact, he sent a letter to Charlotte Cahors once upon a time, before The Alexandria Foundation."

"That's - "

"Impossible? No, nonono-ooo. Did you ever wonder why she gave you over to that awaiting hell? No? Maybe you should ask our father!"

The woman before her shifted, a hellacious wealth of power and energy surging forth, gales of black and scarlet churning through the air and striking against her, shoving her back and back where suddenly a pit peeled open on a shattering roar, and on that precipice of the void Amma balanced. Her figure was still bound, every pull of breath tightening the wires digging into her. Those tines sliced easily through her suit just as something - her power - suddenly lanced forward and cleaved down her front, a scythe of crimson and silver whorls penetrating through skin and poised over her heart.

"Though, I suppose you'll die before you even get the chance."

Was it cruel irony then or a demented form of redemption to be done under something she silently feared? The coils of crimson sunk into her breast, a thread of death loomed and spun and rose up and up, woven through the talons of her would be reaper that clutched them to her lips as if a sacred relic. Amma cannot contain the laugh that bubbles from her defiled chest, the warmth of life spread down, over her figure, her head arched over on the precipice of the void that awaited her. Her eyes aglow, she peered into that darkness, felt it call to her as the barbed wire slowly worked itself loose and free, her blood reminiscent of an oil slick that soiled the mane of her hair and pooled around her. Her laughter rose higher, a sound that shattered betwixt the waking world that held its breath on her whims, the same laugh that listed through eternity as the harbinger of rage; a woman that had nothing.

And therefore nothing to lose.

With that same spool of scarlet threaded to her chest, Amma pulled, she spun her own leagues of power, churned the HZEs to her command and yanked the other woman forward. Surprise flickered across the mirroring eyes of her likeness, their bodies suddenly flush, every expanse of flesh wed together with shackles of blood. Amma fisted her fingers through the damned mane of silver and red streaked hair, pulled that face she loathed close and slanted her mouth over her and inhaled deep. She stole breath, life, she tasted the fragile remains of hope and love, she tasted bitterness and she tasted fear. With her tongue she curled against bones and gums and every ridge of her mouth before she yanked back, her teeth dragging against her pout and muttered against the plushness of her lips and said:

"Show me what you got."

With a smile that bespoke of a promised hell, Amma held tight and hefted all of her weight back, pitching the both of them into that awaiting darkness below.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

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_{Location: Southern Plateau - Pacific Royal Campus}

Hope In Hell #2.004: void.

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_{Interaction(s):&&}

Previously: vore.

The first injections come when she is ten years old— too many to count, too many to place. On the third night, Amma Cahors realized she wasn't going home, she wasn't going anywhere but spiraling into a sterile hell, her trappings came in silver and steel and polished linoleum. Suspended in a place over open waters, calm surfaces, and salt-tinged winds that banked over the underbelly of her waking nightmares - down within the confines of the ocean, no one can hear you scream. The Alexandria Foundation possesses their new weapon, their beast, and their creation and they gild her in black and silver and red, don her in darling phrases and whispers and promises of redemption. They collar her betwixt the void of heart and soul, the reasonings of self utterly stripped bare from her very bones. The creature contained within the frame of a child, the eyes of her mother, the subtle structures of her father, and the pale skin of pearlescent innocence soon bathed in blood and hate and taint. They had the prize, and it was time to make it theirs.

They even took her name.

The second injections come when she is ten years old- too many to count, too many to place.

But she remembers them all.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

It was a scene sundered straight from her nightmares; the blood, the fog, the banked darkness edging into the distance; the buzzing drone of static, down to the very color of the straps she could feel pulled taught over her flesh. The liquid pooled into a hated glass, the empty syringes that she had felt many times over, again and again and again, the bright lights awash over her prone figure as she screamed and begged and pleaded. As she bartered for an end, as she dugs nails into her bleeding palms and reached for the heavens whose gates were closed to even she. If there was a God, He had long forsaken Amma, and instead, the Devil whispered in her ear and held her close to the pits of Hell. But there were no rumored flames or shambling dead, there had been naught but emptiness that welcomed her in coils of dread. In her waking world, he showed her the too-white halls and the sterile embellishments, the cold steel that bit in her skin many times over, the darkness that loomed and whispered and screamed.

She wished for someone, anyone, but above all, she wished for her mother.

Slow tremors still worked down her arms as she walked, her pace deliberate, seeking, and searching eyes peeled wide in manic sweeps as she looked left and right. Each classroom was much the same, desks aligned perfectly and facing forward, walls bare, the broken screens flashing every few seconds to an image she thought lost in memorium. It was her in various stages of her youth, from the child she had been, to the ascending monster that they longed for, the glowing reflection that stood before her one drenched in black and blood that was not her own. The voices still pinged away at her lobe, her heart hammering away betwixt her ribs aching with every harsh pull of breath that shakily swept from her lips. From the images, others flickered across the static, their faces smudged and blackened, disappearing as soon as they came and flickering back to her likeness, her eyes hollowed and cheeks flayed open wide in smiles lined with scarlet-drenched bone.

She walked past one room where a gurney lay in the middle, surrounded by four walls, a singular bulb shone over the pristine condition of the stretcher, wherein the floor beneath was riddled with black and red; the edges still pooling outward and spreading far and wide. Amma entered with glassy eyes lost to the torments of her past, not seeing or hearing if others followed her, not caring if they did. This was her home, where she belonged, yes. This was her reality, her meant-to-be beginning and her soon-to-be end, she reached forward, palmed over the manacles lax and open, fitted her grasp to the thick restraints, and tacked her nails against the cold steel.

Whispers of her name enveloped her, shrouding and eclipsing her, her entire self suspended upon the threads of this very room taken from her fears and regret.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

The third injections come when she is ten years old- too many to count, too many to place.
They uttered of temperance, they uttered things of blocking and shaping and enhancing. They uttered of potential and intention and held palms over her trembling arms as they flayed apart the skin at her back, along the ridges of her spine, and witnessed those coils of red that rose and struck like vipers, the black that oozed and billowed forth and ate away at masks and coats of white and metal. The screams --

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

Amma suddenly screeched, she pitched the gurney forward, nails against the bars meant to cage and withhold, she wailed her fury and hate and pain and launched herself upon the walls, clawing at the suppression containing her power in minuscule sparks of red that flew away at her arched and bleeding fists.

You wanted to be powerful. You wanted the power to find your mother. You wanted the power to find your father. You wanted the power to destroy them all.

And they gave it to you.

Her name blooms and roars over the symphony of rage in her head, over and over -- Tiamat, Tiamat, Tiamat.

"SHUT UP!"

Amma claws away at the name on her neck, hands bloodied, hands that still bore Katja's blood too. She was sure it was there still, she was sure her power continued to thrum and pulse with the essence of her pain and anguish and the broken heart that fed her malice.

She had left the tent last night without looking back at all, not hearing the words uttered there after, caring naught for it but felt the tremors of what was said all the same. She had walked to the edges of the cliffs, looked yonder to the storm that was approaching the campsite, picked her way down the rock, clung to the sediment, and worked her way down and down and down, piece by piece Amma climbed and descended to the frothing waves below that called and sung and tempted her to their darkness.

That morning was a haze of sleeplessness, she ate little, said nothing, dressed quickly and efficiently, and fitted the neural uplink to her temple as instructed. The Trials were new to her, but she cared little for them, cared for nothing as the dregs of her thoughts bled into incoherency.

Now she felt confined and trapped, her name still whispered over and over, welcoming her home, welcoming her back to this hell.

"I wanted it," Amma whispered, knelt before a wall marked by her pain, marked by the fury that still flitted away down to her mutilated core. "I wanted the power. I wanted it all." The soft breaths of her admission slip away into nothing, the creature that was she slowly rising up and up, hands on the wall with her head bowed.

"But I didn't know," she gasps. "I didn't know the price. I still don't know. I don't know what -- why --" She carves her fingers back, sliding through her mass of hair, black taint smudged over her temples and blood ran through the curls of her dark hair.

"They experimented on us, all of us. Some never came back. Those like," she paused, the name on her tongue. "Haven, Robert. Maybe they took Mei and Pallyx too."

"They take whatever they want, make you what you fear the most. All the power in the world and they use you for it until it turns to ash and death in your hands."

Amma moves back out into the hall, words lost upon herself, uncaring if they hear her, uncaring if she was the only one there. Eyes wild and lost, she continues down the corridor, penetrating gaze aglow in the haze of fog that reaches out to her, coiling over her arms and legs, spiraling away at where her scars lay and burn.

"There are many things I cannot remember, things I probably forced to be forgotten. Maybe they forced me to forget it. Or maybe... I don't know. I'm the monster they made, the dragon, the beast of Hell. Of the End. That's what they said."

She stops, left and right, the corridor splitting off into the unknown in either direction. The sterile wall at this juncture though is different than the rest, a line of black marring the otherwise pristine surface. She pauses, studies it, and reaches forward, but a lance of pain down her spine stops her, a wet gasp splintering from her mouth and coiling into a wince. Her name continues to sound in a chorus of whispers and wails, soft sounds that are barely there and then not, a droning resonation slowly working its way up her spine in ticking increments of pain liken to needles in her flesh.

Amma can feel them and coils her arms around herself, turns right, and continues forward.

She'll do it alone if she has to, she got away once before -

- right?

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

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_{Location: Southern Plateau - Dundas Island, Pacific Ocean}

Welcome Home #1.107: vore.

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_{Interaction(s): Katja - @Zoldyck.}

Previously: in-between.

Katja beheld Amma’s awesome display of her powers with both a sense of trepidation and genuine awe. To her the dancing coils of raw power were a mesmerizingly terrifying thing to behold. The thought of going toe-to-toe with Amma crossed her mind for a fraction of a second, and while the tall blonde was confident in her fighting skills, she was uncertain what the outcome would be if she tried to face this foe.

As Amma’s powers ebbed back, the arcs diminishing slowly in their intensity, Katja locked her gaze back on those special eyes brimming with power. She took a deep breath to regain some form of composure, though there was still a trace amount of anger that could be heard, lessened though it was.

“This is the first time I’m even hearing of this, but why should I care what you do with Lorcán? Or with whoever else you feel like?” In her impassioned state Katja didn’t think before she spoke. In fact, she might not have even fully realized what she was saying. She was just spilling her heart out at this point, unleashing the emotions that had been clawing at her mind for the entire day. “Would I have liked it to be me instead of him? Yes, of course I would! But that choice isn’t up to me, and whatever choice you make is the only thing that should matter to you!”

Katja stood up from her cot, rising to as much as her full height as she could without damaging the tent. Even in this hunched state she still towered over Amma. But it was not meant to intimidate. Her eyes had lost the sharpness from mere moments before. The dominant emotion within them wasn’t fury or indignation, but sadness. A sadness that could also be heard in her voice, as it cracked when she first continued speaking.

“From the moment we first met I desperately, desperately wanted to be your friend. It’s why I’ve never treated you any differently from any of the others of Blackjack.” She paused for a moment, clicking her tongue as a thought crossed her mind. “And no, I don’t mean that in the sense that I intentionally didn’t treat you differently despite you being some sort of monster. Yes, you have a power that inspires both dread and awe at the sight of it. That doesn't make you a monster, not here, not to me!” A dry, humorless chuckle escaped her lips. “I can rip a man in two by just jabbing my fingers in their chest and pulling them apart. If anything, that would make me more of a monster than you.

Katja slowly shook her head. “You are not a monster, Am. Mysterious? yes! Powerful? Certainly! And can you be a little creepy sometimes? Absolutely! But you are not an evil, soulless creature." For the first time since the start of their argument a soft smile tugged at the big South African’s lips. “You are Am, and you are my friend. Whether you like it or not, that’s how I will always see you.”

Katja leaned forward, bringing her face so close to Amma’s that their noses practically touched. She then attempted to lock her gaze with that of the raven-haired girl before she spoke next, her voice much softer than before, making her next phrase sound more like a plea than a demand.

“Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m lying.”

"Yes," Amma seethed, "We are monsters. Need I remind you," her pitch wavers, her penetrating gaze unflinching and without reserve as she locks onto the frigid determination drawn so close to her. Every sliver of color lain before her, like chips of a fragile heart desperately yearning and reaching out to her, a beseeching and pleading chasm that yawned before them. Whatever bridge had been seeded within the depths of her soul earlier in the forest slowly crumbled away to naught but fractured remains, instead an odious figure loomed, situated deep within and pierced talons deep and true, refusing to budge. A cage there was, one of bone and blood with weighted cracks and splinters, and there it churned and wrought -- biding its time.

"The world outside is dark and it is afraid." Amma reached out, fingers splayed, the red coils of her power sinking into the scarred flesh at her palm. "Afraid of you." She leaned forth, lashes fanned low on her cheeks and breathed. "Afraid of me."

And then she struck.

Her hands lanced against Katja's shoulders, crimson arcs lancing through the tent, scouring over the interior walls before sinking deep into the ground at her feet. She aimed to push her back wherein Amma stood from her cot, fingers arched and cracking, bones struggling against the confines of her skin as the ambient HZEs that toiled within and without bid themselves to her in shimmering capes of crimson lamplight. They wreathed through her hair, eclipsing the black strands as she hissed:

"You're not only lying, you're wrong."

Katja’s instincts rang all the alarm bells as the inevitable became obvious. Her hairs on the back of her neck rose as she saw Amma raise her hands towards her, coiled in that otherwise so mesmerizing scarlet energy. She only had a split second to react, which was all the time she needed to trigger her own HZEs reserve and fortify herself against the coming onslaught.

The shoulders of her shirt instantly disintegrated, exposing her hardened skin to the arcs of red energy conjured by the girl she loved so dearly. The pain was excruciating, as if she was being flayed and burned at the same time. Her skin slowly blackened as it began to form small splits. Yet she did not budge, she did not even make a sound. For the physical pain paled in comparison to the emotional torment Katja felt. It was as though Amma had not targeted her shoulders with her attack, but her heart. That was the thing that truly disintegrated at the moment of impact. And it was that feeling, that agony which left Katja stunned.

And thus, she did not budge.

She could feel Amma up the intensity of her attack. The splits became cracks, blood spilling forth from them, which itself was almost immediately consumed by the destructive power of the raven-haired one. She wanted to say something. Her instincts screamed at her to defend herself. But she couldn’t. Her spirit, so high mere seconds ago as she thought she’d finally break through Amma’s layers, was utterly broken. And to signify this, something happened to Katja that had not occurred since that fateful day in Bloemfontein.

Katja had kept staring into the eyes of Amma. Eyes filled with anger and hatred. Hatred towards her. Slowly the blonde girl’s vision became blurry. At first she thought it was the pain that caused it. That her brain had finally caught on to what her nerves were screaming at it. It had been so long ago that she had actually forgotten the sensation of what was truly happening.

For the first time in twelve years, tears welled up in the blue eyes of Katja Kruger.

A voice in the back of her mind told her to stand defiant. To not give in. But that voice grew ever softer the more she weathered Amma’s assault. Her heart had been crushed, and so had her will to fight. So she bowed her head in front of the girl to whom she had offered her unconditional love.

You are Am, and you are my friend. Whether you like it or not, that’s how I will always see you.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered meekly before finally stepping aside.

With the cruel red lightning no longer targeting her shoulders, the damage became evident for both to see. The hardened skin had completely disintegrated, exposing the muscle fibers to the open air for a mere second before blood started flowing through the nasty black wounds.

Katja stumbled backwards, disorientated by the whole ordeal. Bumping against her cot, she immediately proceeded to sit down on it. The poor camp bed didn’t stand a chance against the large girl’s increased weight and so it immediately snapped under the pressure. Though the fall was less than two feet, Katja’s impact still quaked the very ground they had been standing on.

But Katja didn’t notice. Head cast down, she ran her fingers deep through her long blonde locks of hair before gripping them tightly. Her flexing muscles showed that she was pulling at the strands of hair with incredible force. She sat like that for a few seconds before finally her muscles relaxed. And with that relaxation came a soft sob.

Letting go of her hair, she lowered her hands on her lap. Delicate streams of crimson ichor trickled down the contours of her powerful arms. But Katja did not heed them at all. It did not matter. None of it mattered.

Finally she looked up at Amma, the one who had hurt her so much.

The one she had wanted to love so much.

Tears flowed down Katja’s cheeks as she beheld the face of the girl who had been in her mind all day. The girl she had enjoyed spending time with. The girl she had wanted to love with all her heart.

The girl who had crushed her soul.

There was only one thought that crossed her mind. One that she spoke out in a soft, quivering voice.

“All I wanted was to be your friend.”

That meek voice imbedded itself betwixt her ribs where that harbinger of destruction reigned, where the ashen crown and the ivory manacles weighted themselves increasingly so. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, heavy is the heart that beholds the scepter, and heavy is the hand that reaps, pillages, and destroys.

Fissures liken to the voids in the sea quaked and peeled wide, pupils dilating to a sliver of recognition that is beholden to what she has done.

Again.

"I --"

But you did.
Just like you did then, just as you do now. Just like before and always will be. You did it. You did it.

You --

Cords of hate snap and pull and drag, posturing over her arms and slithering against the mural of skulls and painted moths, the gaping eyes that turned accusatory, the mouths cleaved wide in pleading wails and droning cries. Exoteric resonation splints through her entire being, whips of silver down the planes of her back and thighs that impaled deep to the cluster of scars that suddenly burn.

Destroy --

Nails slid against her palms in tandem to a tempo of renunciation pounding down to her core, a mutilated affair to the maelstrom that slid against her veins and pores, oozing forth as an obsidian wraith that spiraled over lithesome shoulders.

Everything.

She laughs.

It's a manic squeal that resonates with the encroaching storm, the Howling Cliffs wailing as a demented conductor to the siren heralding the reins of chaos. Who knew the formidable Katja would be so stricken! Who knew she would weep? Who knew that such power sluiced down into the thrumming underbelly of her fury and pain? The advocate for the deranged and the depraved. Those lost within and without. That harbinger that bore the mantle of she, the scion of death, the one they all feared.

Just as they had feared too, the name that she had inked into her neck, the letters unique, almost disfigured. The name that bespoke of irony and the cruelty of fate. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'msorryI'msorrysorry.

Amma snaps her lips shut, jaw flexed, grinding bone against bone, and says: "I don't need friends, Katja. That is not a part of my role to play here."

Even a few stolen moments in a forest, a sensation she had mourned the loss over, the warmth had faded away to naught. Though she longed for it, Amma knew she did not deserve it. Even if there was nothing that could stop her, even if there wasn't anything that could stand in her way. She was cold, lanced through with darkness, and tunneled into the frigid void.

And it was okay. She told herself, kneeling before Katja, something not quite there in her eyes, something that tilted her head and grinned.

"'Am' is not my name. My name is - " She pauses, words clipped in finality, she stirs, gaze fixated onto the damage she wrought.

And just as soon as she was there, she was then gone. Grabbing her jacket and fitting it over her shoulders, her sneakers next and laced tight. Simplistic and unhurried were her gestures as she fitted her ebony hair into a twist, looping it through her trembling fingers and sparing Katja one final glance. With a flicked wrist she gestured towards her cot, a silent offering as she stood within the entrance of their now-marred tent.

"Sleep. There's a storm coming."

And then she left.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

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_{Location: Southern Plateau - Dundas Island, Pacific Ocean}

Welcome Home #1.106: vore.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Interaction(s): Katja - @Zoldyck.}

Previously: in-between.

She had almost forgotten that she had agreed to share a tent for the night, the day's events replaying over and over, a jumbled mess of words, actions, power coiling betwixt her ears and siring a wealth of sensation that pricked her skin and inflated her ribs with every draw of breath — lost in the swath of fire that still sluiced through her body and writhed against the red that floated endlessly along her limbs. Amma noted the towels outside and allowed the symphony of the cliffs to still her thoughts before she found Katja already there, lost to music just as she had been, and oblivious to everything else around her. She said nothing to announce her arrival, rather she noted the belongings she had dropped off earlier that day -- it seemed so far away now -- and shed the outer layers of her clothing carefully, jacket discarded first, and worked her inked fingers through her mass of hair, disentangling the ebony pieces bit by bit, refusing to the break the silence that cast over them both. Soft hums slid through her throat, a similar melody she had conjured earlier, a haunting lyric heightened by the winds yonder that spiraled over water and rock.

Katja looked like she was in an oasis of peace and quiet. The only noise coming from her were her fingers, softly tapping in sync with the drum against her shins. Focussing on the high energy music that was blasting from her earphones helped her forget - or at least ignore - those tumultuous thoughts which had been brought up earlier by her peers. As the song built towards its crescendo, her head bobbing grew more vigorous, culminating in a satisfied smirk that graced her lips as the final notes of her favorite segment played out. But where there should’ve been silence, there was instead noise. There had been the cliffs in the background of course, only able to pierce through her earpieces on rare occasions. But this noise was different. Softer, yet in tune with the howling winds.

Curiosity of this strange new sound got Katja to finally open her eyes. When she did, she was greeted by the sight of someone she honestly should have expected, and the presence of Amma still surprised her. Taken aback by the sight of the tattooed girl, Katja let out a soft curse in Afrikaans under her breath as she tore out her earphones. “God se Jesus, Am! The least you could’ve done is tap me on the shoulder to let me know you were here!”

With the initial shock quickly wearing off, Katja realized how she must’ve looked, prompting her to release her legs before shifting into a more conventional seating position. Casting her eyes down on the ground, she let out a soft sigh before addressing the other girl. “Afterall, now I missed out on most of your performance.” Katja said with playful disappointment, that familiar grin spreading across her face.

Amma stilled in her ministrations after working a particular knot free from those chaotic strands of hair, her eyes sliding over her shoulder capped in mostly black ink of an abstract series of lines that formed an intricate knot. Those lilting notes tapered off quietly, followed by a wealth of silence as she gazed on, a series of flickering hues shimmering within her stare and a weighted depth igniting the impact to a singular thing: detachment. It sloped along every limb and cumbersome lift as she seemed lost within the toils of her mind, a previous conversation, a previous occurrence, another time looming yonder into the night.

"Performance..." She whispers, "Right." A panning glance down to her palms then, fingers arched and flexed, tremors coursing through flesh and bone, her rings painful against the scars lined through her gestures as she slowly plucked them off - one by one. Coils of red slid and sluggishly warped around her, muted flashes of silver through the strands of hair and lash.

"Performance," Amma mutters once more, a vicious smile reigning over her lax features. “If one could call it that.”

Katja directed her eyes up at the black haired woman as she silently took her rings off. She saw how the tiny red arcs seemed to project from her hand towards the rings, as if her body did not want to part with the metallic bands. But while she saw Amma, she did not truly register her. Not the details that should’ve been obvious to an observer. Instead, as the silence seemed deafening, Katja’s mind was racing. She could've sworn that Amma was ignoring her, if not for the richly decorated girl's soft echoing the last word Katja uttered. To the South African this implied that it wasn't out of malice or even annoyance that the former Foundation scion hadn't addressed her initially. Still hadn't directly addressed her, in fact. No, it seemed worse to her.

It signified indifference.

The tall blonde's smile faltered slightly as that stinging realization hit. Her mind immediately flashed back to the beach the day before and how she thought she had finally made a breakthrough with the French girl. To earlier in the day, when she accepted her offer to share a tent for the night. What had changed since then? Had she messed up somehow, like with Rory earlier?

With doubt creeping into her thoughts, Katja looked up at a pale face and beheld a wicked smirk. Any other time, any other day, she’d chalk that grin up to Amma being Amma. But somehow, it felt different this time.

Katja next spoke uncharacteristically softly to Amma, almost meekly so. Her icy blue eyes staring up in confusion at that flickering gaze. “Did I say something wrong?”

"What?" Amma snaps back suddenly, a vibrating timbre annunciated with her usual measure, eyes slicing through the cape of her lashes bidden down low, a slow, churning coil of scarlet rising up and up, flush and pulsating till it corded tight around her throat.

"Wrong? Hah, is that what it is? Wrong?" A laugh snakes like a whip snapped forth, short and quick. The sort of bite and breadth of sound that hissed over the pout of her lip as she turned, gave her back to her and began digging through her belongings. Black and yellow accents, mocking ochre tones that seemed hideous against the pallor of her skin, her ink-emblazoned canvas of scars entirely too loud and too much. "No, Katja." Amma finally acknowledges her, arms crossed, nails scraping over her ribs as she lifts her blouse up and over, scars aligned on the lower half of her spine rippling silver. Liken to skeletal figments sired over her flesh, digging ivory claws into every link of bone and nerve.

"Though, if you do have something to say, then speak. Everyone else has. What's one more speculated whisper for the night."

Amma fits a loose tee-shirt over her body and finally feels those dregs of exhaustion pulling away at her limbs, peculiar still the low resonation of HZEs compounded through her entire being. Almost as if banked, scalding coals lie just there, wreathed in red and silver. She turns, arms crossed, and settles down onto her cot, gaze cutting and finally landing on Katja completely.

Katja blinked at Amma’s unexpected snap. Her mind instantly came back to focus on the here and now. Her eyes slowly widened as she endured a sudden tirade against her. It wasn’t due to fear, mind you. No, it was a genuine case of disorientation on Katja’s part as to why Amma suddenly exploded at her like this.

And if that wasn’t enough to send Katja’s mind into a state of turmoil, then Amma exposing her back to her most certainly would. The blonde’s eyes slowly gazed up the spine of the other girl. Where she had initially expected to be greeted by more tattoos she was instead met by a plethora of scars and mutilations. So many that she didn’t even begin to count the marks on her back. And even if she wanted to, she didn’t get the chance as Amma put a shirt over her body before – finally – turning to face her, clearly expecting a reply from her.

“Speculated whisper…?” She repeated in an incredulous muttering. The meekness from mere moments ago had completely faded away. Instead, there was legitimate confusion spread on her features, with a slight hint of indignation starting to burn in those icy eyes of hers.

“What are you even talking about, Am?” There was a genuine look of bewilderment on her face as she spoke, her speech regaining more strength with every syllable she uttered. “I have no idea what you are talking about!”

Her nostrils flared as the implications and accusations finally started to register to her. She had genuinely no idea what Amma was going on about, but she could not tolerate being treated like this. Especially not from someone she considered a friend.

“I would never, ever, talk behind your back, Am. The volume of her voice increased as she became more aggravated by the implications laid out against her. “I swear, if I ever had a problem with you, I’d tell it straight to your face.”

“Only cowards whisper about someone when they think they’re outside of earshot.” Katja’s pupils narrowed as she looked directly into Amma’s eyes, a look of ferocity within them that only genuine outrage could produce. With her fists balled on her lap, she exhaled sharply through her nose before she spoke again in a low rumbling growl of barely concealed anger. “Tell me, Amma,” tilting her head slightly, Katja uttered the girl’s full name, something she had not done since after the first week they had met, “do I strike you as a coward?”

“Do you really think so little of me?”

"Does it matter? You're in Blackjack, they're all in Blackjack. Even Firebird whispers about it. Everyone spoke about it like a great sin, even he looked so distraught about it." Black nails spindle webs of hated carmine and silver, coiling betwixt the air rife with her words, her name -- it's not her name though, it never was -- brandished like a weapon to strike against her, poised to maim. Fury and rage simultaneously reach deep, it punctures and bleeds through; it is sopping wet pleas against a frigid wall of obsidian; it is the christening of a long, forsaken entity that dons a crown laden with ash. A burden of the monarch both wretched and cruel.

"Was it so wrong that Lorcán and I went into the forest together, is it so wrong that even for one second, I was a normal woman? I know they want the monster, the beast, this creature."

Amma Cahors pitched open that gate of her soul once more, the quake of her power bidden on high, a wave of tumultuous crimson cresting over each shoulder like a great offender of old. She is a symphony of nihilism that accompanies the pitched cries that roll away from the Howling Cliffs, her waking world defiled by nightmares that galloped through her embodiment, the flames she had entwined with prior caressing over the mane of black hair and down her splayed arms, hands clenched and bleeding slick smiles of malice.

"It's funny, he spoke like we were friends too. But we are not friends."

That admission reigns in the vortex of power slowly, carefully, sluggish gestures carving one hand through her hair to fasten her leagues of control. Amma draws in a shuddering breath, sparks and fissures lancing down her body and up across her expression, puncturing through her skin like rabid vipers.

&& a brief check.

^&

I want to write something with so much dread and angst that I need to seek therapy.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

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_{Location: Southern Plateau - Pacific Royal Campus}

Welcome Home #1.090: in-between.

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_{Interaction(s): gil. - @Roman lorcán. - @Lord Wraith}

Previously: shameless.

Once more, Amma Cahors is confronted with the mundane: it is simplicity compounded by tradition and the methods of heritage she does not know, something bleak and foreign to her all the same. She has always been considered an outsider, the unknown, the enemy - if she were to submit herself to the crude observations of her peers, they'd herald her as the devil and be done with it. The whispered speculations cloaked her in refinement, the tacking stares crowning her the sinner - Amma would be that creature of infamy if they so wished it - the one who bedeviled the man who looked at her even now with those eyes. Oh, but he was hardly innocent, her gaze of intensity foretold such an acclaim: a christening of what she now knew lurked within the depths of those vermillion glares narrowed in her direction. Potential. He was aware of her now, and she of him — the mouth of the wolf and the eyes of the lamb.

She recalls once, many years ago, the tale of a lord's favored creation that plummeted from on high, suspended in woe and hate and misunderstood inclinations. The one that was illuminated as a paragon of blasphemy and a netherworld of darkness and hate and death. Amma was the champion of such a narrative, sympathetic to a forsaken subject that sought only to love and to be loved in return. Rejected by fate and the corruption of destiny that compiled rage and depravity, the dregs of longing spent on desires unknown and unsought. She knows she is selfish, she knows she is vain and stricken with sins of wrath and greed and lust.

She knows and does not care.
So, why did she care that Lorcán looked like a crushed dog?

Eyes averted, head downcast, lashes fanned over those molten depths; everything about him projected a shameful boy. The man who had spirited her away into the forest was traded for this guilt-laden character who hid behind the mortification of his actions. And what, she brooded over, did it matter that he had done what he wanted rather than what was expected? A year was maybe all Amma had to glean from his impression, but she was an intellectual creature, and beneath the exterior of charm and ignorance was something far more compelling yet completely contained.

She wonders if she can get him to break.

When Jim O'Neil makes his appearance, Amma is peculiarly quiet, and observant, hearing all that he isn't saying in securing the remnants of a future for those gathered. She can't help but think, what did he barter with The Foundation, what was the currency demanded and who would be forced to pay that ultimate price? She knows what happens to those who cannot fulfill the demands of Nakamura Yoshi and all those beneath him. The many faces she has seen and all the faces that still canter through her nightmares unbound and unchecked. Her gaze finds another in the distance, familiarity alighted there, but little else. Yes, she thinks, you see it too.

Amma performs, as is often her want when the eyes of her peers and enemies fall upon her at the announcement. When they look and study and try to decipher her exploits all the while she ponders: I am the monster you all want, the answer to all the wrongs and all the things lost, I am the creature you fear and the one you envy - I am me. I am The Foundation. Amma knows, deep within, that freedom was an illusion when graced with power and the most powerful were the ones often wrapped in eternal chains lain thick and cumbersome. When one was bound by such restraint it created something of little qualms and reflection, yes, it bred and sired selfish indulgence and an insatiable want of life. Amma was such a being who wanted to live and did so unforgivingly.

If there had been a line before, a fissure now embedded itself with jagged edges and pockets shadowed with mistrust. While loneliness did not paint her world in a monochromatic blight, Amma still felt the leagues of avoidance from the entirety of Blackjack. It was a profound chasm with such fragile constructs that threaded her to the unknown rejoinder of why she was here, and why them. Was such a placement randomized when compared to other teams, much like the group that joined their ranks for the evening. Oh, if only they knew, she thinks. But they'd never ask, Lorcán came close. But even his inquires had fallen short.

Amma's thoughts crest and fall as she mindlessly cycles through the motions: piling her plate with food and fetching herself a beverage. She hesitates, briefly, for the last time she had joined her teammates around a fire she had spoken the truth and heralded their faults and fear carelessly. What's more, Lorcán refused to look at her again and within the pit of her belly previously toiling with warmth and need, something else began to fester.

Was it misplaced anger? Was it something far seedier and more manipulative? Was it her tumultuous power turning traitor in her blood and causing her eyes to gleam like floes in a frozen sea?

Who knew a simple foray into the forest could sire such disdain?

Amma reclines to her seat nearby, close yet far, refusing to flit to the edges, and dines with a sense of graceful detachment. Her eyes spear through the flame, watching the sparks and ribbons of scarlet through half-lidded measures as she considers the night to come. Sleep seems like a far-fetched concept, even with the use of her powers in such quantities, she does not feel fatigued in the slightest. She was tempted to retreat to the forest where everything had been far simpler, more primal and raw, but so distant and so far from the world, she knew she could destroy that clearing and feel more at peace for it. Chaos could take reign and swallow the world for all that it lacked.

Alas, Amma picks away at her meal, her appetite deserving of something far more filling.

With a scoff that eventually whispered into a sigh, she finished what she could before disposing of the remains where proper and downing the Hyper-Aid nearly in one go, her fingers grazing over the pout of her lip to wipe away any excess. Amma reaches into the pocket of her jacket next to pluck the clove smokes tucked away for such an occasion, wrapped in black and vaguely sweet, with an attractive incense that feathers away from her lips with every exhale. She balances one on her lower lip and finds her lighter easily enough, however --

She notices him chatting away, seemingly mollified by the validation of his peers. Amma smooths black tresses behind her pierced ears, raking through the mass, and intercepts Lorcán at that moment. A small breadth of her shoulder against his and a fanning lash that shadows over the frigid glance she spares him. A delicate smirk curls over the fullness of her mouth, parting just so, and she said:

"Do you feel better now?"

She doesn't wait for an answer there, she tells herself she doesn't care.
She tells herself that over and over and walks away.

While the Howling Cliffs serenade her name, and to them she will answer, Amma glances around and pauses, her head canted to one side, and hums thoughtfully away into her throat before approaching Gil next. She thinks they are similar: just flitting shadows in the gloom, there and then not and muttered as once-upon-a-times. He had joined Blackjack the year prior, just as she had, and rarely have they spoken but small exchanges in passing. However, as everyone else was engaged in their conversations, Amma offered little more than a dignified sigh and took the empty seat beside their reigning celebrity who was cloaked as an enigma just as she was. Everyone else could skirt the edges of her impression, sure, it was fine -- didn't mean she always had to either.

"Hey there. Got a light?"

Does anyone have any tips for an aspiring (small group) GM?

I will always preach communication and intention.

You can have the best narrative, the most thought-out cast, the most detailed setting and lore and characters.
It'll fall flat if you don't keep in touch with your players. People like to talk, people want to get to know their GM. If you're not engaged in the telling, then why should they be?

The hardest part of running a game, from my personal experience, is the intent of your setting and the plot. When do you drive it forward and when do you allow player influences? Too often will you intend for a linear story and it becomes lost to sandbox elements; suddenly you're stuck writing the same day and it drags on for far too long and now you ask - what else is there?

Players will be incredibly engaging in the beginning, they'll make the CS, they'll build relationships with other characters, and they'll hype it up endlessly.

Then they disappear. The first month is the most telling of who is in for the long haul and who is just there for the process of creating the character. Often all inspiration and thought goes into the CS and fizzles out too quickly.

Have the objective of your narrative already plotted out -- chapters, episodes, etc. It doesn't have to be written out from beginning to end, but I suggest having little blurbs or concepts written to yourself for reference.

You don't need the fanciest interest check or ooc, but players like looking at aesthetically pleasing things. Details matter.