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[open] love is not enough
CHARACTERS: Ilde and Open
WHERE: "The Ballet Studio" - Bout It Out gaming parlor
WHEN: 037
SUMMARY: Another training montage, seriously? Bout it out fights among hosts...
WARNINGS: Likely to get gory and gross if Ilde is exercising her powers/her imagination.
The Ballet Studio is quiet this time of day. It is a sleek and high end parlor, meant for workaday professionals to unwind in at night more so than a place for the young and restless to while away their afternoons. It has large frosted windows with streams of natural light and just about every surface has been polished to a beautiful mirrored finished. The music from above is soothing and quiet. Aside from the workers themselves, who pay no attention as they go about polishing glasses and other prep work for the evening, there are only one or two day drinkers at the end of the bar, paying equally little attention as they read news article and flip through gossip vlogs.
Ilde prefers it vastly, and it is one of few moments of relative privacy she's had in the city since the bombing. She fits in neatly with the surroundings, tidy and cleanly, and even the way she approaches the Bout It Out ring, she remains serenely disinterested.
The invitation she sends out to the other hosts is not quite explicit, not so much in words, but it is a pull. She is curious to see who will follow her thread to meet her.
WHERE: "The Ballet Studio" - Bout It Out gaming parlor
WHEN: 037
SUMMARY: Another training montage, seriously? Bout it out fights among hosts...
WARNINGS: Likely to get gory and gross if Ilde is exercising her powers/her imagination.
The Ballet Studio is quiet this time of day. It is a sleek and high end parlor, meant for workaday professionals to unwind in at night more so than a place for the young and restless to while away their afternoons. It has large frosted windows with streams of natural light and just about every surface has been polished to a beautiful mirrored finished. The music from above is soothing and quiet. Aside from the workers themselves, who pay no attention as they go about polishing glasses and other prep work for the evening, there are only one or two day drinkers at the end of the bar, paying equally little attention as they read news article and flip through gossip vlogs.
Ilde prefers it vastly, and it is one of few moments of relative privacy she's had in the city since the bombing. She fits in neatly with the surroundings, tidy and cleanly, and even the way she approaches the Bout It Out ring, she remains serenely disinterested.
The invitation she sends out to the other hosts is not quite explicit, not so much in words, but it is a pull. She is curious to see who will follow her thread to meet her.
no subject
She'd rather be fighting.
She's surprised Ilde is in an environment as crass as a Bout It Out bar, but it's a good sign. Adaptability is key. She smiles, and taps the challenge bar next to Saffron's name on the official boards. Her name is listed, simply, as W. Frey, and her avatar is completely unmodified, but she's got an impressive score and an 80% victory average.
She waits to feel Ilde's eyes on her, before waving gently across the room.
no subject
But safety isn't enough. Pretty things aren't enough.
She steps up onto the little platform that will interface with her. Her avatar resembles her, in a way, feminine with long blonde hair, but it is pale like a doll and there is something not-quite human about its features. Subtle and just ever so discomfiting. It glows faintly, a miasma of stardust.
( This is my first time playing this game. )
Obvious enough from her lack of wins on the board, but it is just conversational.
( It seemed to be a good practice method, however, from the way it was described to me. )
One last pause in case her teacher has any notes to give on this format, but otherwise she is game to just give it a try.
no subject
( I'll test you on some simple maneuvers, then. )
It's the sort of warning she normally wouldn't give, if her spirits weren't high, surging with anticipation for combat. Even then, she has no intention of wasting this opportunity for Ilde.
Mara presses the button for the battle to start.
In normal fights, fights she cares about winning, Mara always tries to strike second. It's a tactic Mara has tried to pass on, to always let your opponent make the first move, show their hand. Winning is about decisive counteractions as much as it is glorious finishes. But Mara isn't trying to win; she's decided she's trying to teach. She wants to see if Ilde can find the weaknesses Mara has told her about, weaknesses Mara has been trained not to show, but to look for.
She shows them now, and strikes first, a silly, meaningless punch aimed toward Ilde's head.
no subject
One foot steps backwards, turning its form sideways to let the adversary's momentum carry it past. Remembrance for the lessons in momentum and blocking Mara had given on the rooftop.
But it is time to strike as well. The shove is merely to put the opponent off balance, it is not an act in and of itself. It requires followup, and the Ilde-form pursues with a rattling, hissing sound like a snake. The punch aimed low at the solar plexus is dedicated, but secondary, to the followup of a twisting strike from the elbow aimed across the chin.
no subject
It makes the enemy angry, makes bruises and broken noses, but it doesn't get the enemy down. The stomach is what you aim for, to knock the wind out of an opponent, to get them down and keep them there. The strike to the face is a followup, Mara assumes, to add insult to injury.
To reward Ilde, Mara has her avatar take the blow, and a penalty is docked from Mara's score. But Mara wants to give Ilde something more than easy wins; Mara pivots and her avatar grabs at Ilde's arm as the blow lands, grabbing at her and pulling her down.
no subject
More experienced, she might have chosen to roll up and away, but that is not a skill she's so practiced in, and so instead she lets herself go down, and lashes out with a foot as she goes. Although that leaves her down...
That sound like a rattlesnake again, the avatar's eyes taking on a more reptilian slant, a show of fang, her symbiote's power pulsing. If she can have even a moment's hesitation that will be enough to recover. Perhaps it will not work on Mara of all people, but she does not see it as an unworthy thought.
no subject
She should have expected this. Cheating, maybe, but every advantage is an advantage worth using. She regroups just as quickly, expression unpleasant, a strained grimace. Now they're both on the floor, a tangle of limbs.
Mara moves her avatar to jockey for position, attempting to move herself on top of Ilde, bear her strength down on the girl.
no subject
The snake-thing's jaw unhinges, fangs spreading and then sinking down viciously into the other avatar's shoulder, thrashing beneath it with all of its reptilian fury. With a rough kick of the hips, it manages to roll off to the side, scrambling back up to its feet for purpose and intent. It returns to its not-quite-Ilde form, pale and human-esque but now its mouth drips red with blood, splatters of it down its porcelain skin and white dress. The faint aura around it is a darker color, radiating heat.
On her pedestal, Ilde herself looks contemplative, lips pursed and brows pinched, thinking. Imagination is as much a part of this game as anything else, it allowed them to practice reacting quickly, to keeping their thoughts in order despite adversity.
So she increases the ringing of her power, a shrill static noise that pierces, makes breath go a little shallow with anxiety. She has not yet practiced doing both of these things at once, maintaining the low thrum of panic and simultaneously projecting other snapshots of fear.
The Ilde-avatar takes something glittering from nowhere, knives, but rather than repeat the visual of rushing in and slitting Mara's throat, this time the knives are thrown, precise, end over end.
no subject
Her throat slit. Dying in a second, before anyone noticed. Even afterward, they wouldn't care. Dying painfully, but worth, failing. Never getting back to Karrde. Never knowing what it meant to have a friendship in Skywalker. Never filling her debts, never getting revenge, never proving the Emperor wrong. Never finding out who Mara Jade is.
But this isn't death, or she wouldn't keep reliving it. Mara can't ignore the fear, so she uses it, opening up the link she knows she shares with Ilde, trying to send it back. Mara opens the link she shut tight since they met that first time, in the garden.
Fear floods through the link, looping round again, and against her will she sends an image of a withered old man, shrouded in a flowing black cloak. His eyes are bright yellow, and them seem to glow faintly in the darkness around him. He stands, reveling in the sickly fear his people feel for him, grinning madly. "And you know the price of failure, Mara Jade..."
Mara's eyes open. Her throat is unslit. Her avatar has barely been moving, taking hit after hit, and her score is almost depleted. She makes her avatar move, taking grudging steps forward, reaching out to grab the tongue hanging from the mouth of Ilde's avatar.
no subject
The long snakelike tongue is liability now, and for a moment the teeth gnash ineffectually... until the avatar takes one of its own glittering knives and slices the tongue free. Blood drips from its mouth, an utterly ghastly vision in Ilde's likeness.
On her pedestal behind it, she is not troubled by the gore, and her scorecard takes a self-inflicted reduction with equally little reaction.
The two avatars are in close range again, so the Ilde-thing abandons its throwing knives in exchange for repitilian claws which come screaming after the other avatar's eyes. Yes, they had discussed why a strike to the face would not be so useful... but what if you truly intended to claw their face to the bone? Did that count?
no subject
It's not real Force Lightening. Mara doesn't use the Force to access it. She never has, never wants to. But in the ring, it doesn't matter, right? Bolts of energy careen from her avatar's hands, striking at Ilde's double.
Mara doesn't know what effect it will have in the ring. All she has now is vicious instinct.
no subject
Blinking rapidly Ilde refocuses, doesn't even have the time to think about what an interesting visual was, and instead needs to find a way to recover. A pulse of excitement moves through her, this is the kind of thing she must prepare for. More than fists and feet, she needs to be ready for powers she cannot understand.
The Ilde-form's dainty bare feet touch the ring once more, the glow that had been so faint before exploding like a dying star, momentarily blinding to everyone, but even with her eyes closed Ilde imagines her doll's path to circle around behind Mara. You don't always need your eyes. Shouldn't always rely on what you see.
no subject
He's a newbie to this game too (even though he was the one collecting all the merchandise of it a while back) but it's worth a try. His avatar is a bit on the creepy side - it looks human and wears casual cloths like him, but it has an absolutely blank, flat grey slate for a face. The name reads W.Harcrow, with a NO DATA label. He shrugs again, glancing over at Ilde, and as he steps up to the platform, his voice ringing clear in her head.
(So...what's up? Needed some company?)
no subject
A quiet greeting and she smiles faintly from across the ring, not insincerely, but she never quite grins all the way.
( This game seemed to be good practice... for our telepathic abilities. )
There was mental fortitude and flexibility implied by the game that Ilde thinks is useful.
( And for my abilities, particularly. )
no subject
He can't help but wink over at her - to anyone looking, he might just seem overly flirtatious.
(Your abilities? Wait, you can use them in this game?) There's a pause, as he moves to fiddle with his music player. (You've got them under control?)
no subject
( I am a Rho, the root of my power is in my mind, my imagination. ) That's how she understands it anyway, and with the way she takes to her symbiote type, she has seen no reason to believe otherwise. ( My control has been very much improved since the incident. )
Overreaching her bounds so thoroughly at the tournament, and losing all sense of herself, had taught her a great deal about her limitations, how to sense how, how to stretch herself to her fullest with straining herself.
no subject
The Bout It Out ring is something of a novelty, sort of like Dejarik on a large holographic scale, and within moments she's setting up an avatar and profile as her fingers fly over the keys. The technology is different than what she's known, but similar enough for her to get the gist of it.
She'd spent enough time on Jakku wasting away the hours of her exile by working refurbished flight simulators, after all.
The word CHALLENGE flashes up onscreen between her name and Ilde's name, and she raises her avatar's fists in the ring, ready to fight.
no subject
They'll see, won't they.
Ilde's own avatar, dressed in white like herself, inclines its head in agreement of its readiness. It looks somewhat like her, except for a subtle eeriness in the features of its face, the deeper set of its eyes. It is doll-like, a puppet for Ilde to turn and twist but the slight discomfort one feels in gazing on it is not unintentional. Her power is fear, and that need not always be snake teeth and bloodied throats, every little prickle of anxiety serves to distract an opponent that little bit.
Mara has told Ilde her theory on always attacking second, that the counterattack when properly time had a better chance of both blocking and striking, she has not forgotten nor dismissed the lesson, but for this exercise she decides to simply get on with things. Each Bout It Out match begins simply with Ilde, attacking without weapons or other transformations, to feel out the other player's experience, and then exploit where they seem weak.