[open] love is not enough

[erbier]

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.

Comments

[erbier]

Ilde does not move on her pedestal. This is a game for her mind today, and her physical form does not budge an inch. In the ring, however, her avatar moves fluidly, the back of its wrist coming up in a loose motion to block the punch, knock it aside while leaving the rest of her options open.

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.

[snaphiss]

Mara moves, but it's minutely, to better position herself in her avatar's sights. Her mind is strong from years of training, and it's easy to move the avatar around to do as she wishes. Mara smiles when she sees Ilde ignoring her avatar's face; Ilde has clearly learned and remembered that the face is a silly target for a fight.

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.

[erbier]

She flusters, dislikes being grabbed and held onto that way, a main reason why she avoided such close quarter fights. Her hands twist where she has them folded neatly in front of her. This is the game, however, and she must respond and quickly. She tries to relax her mind, the way she would try to relax her body. Tries to remember the lesson about momentum. If she is being pulled one way, she must make that direction work for her.

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.

[snaphiss]

Mara still feels that surge of fear, and it breaks her concentration for a moment. She twitches, and her avatar goes ragdoll limp, spilling awkwardly to the ground.

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.

[erbier]

It is not an advantageous position to be in, Ilde knows that all too well.

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.

[snaphiss]

A Jedi's mind must be strong. Certainly, Mara's isn't soft. She's practiced like this before with the Emperor, knows the tactics, but her mind reels from the feeling of this strange new energy. It isn't the Force, responds unlike it, and has the same needs and wants. Her mind reels, trying to block it off.

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.

[erbier]

Ilde does not take advantage of the particular vision of fear that builds in Mara. A weakness, perhaps, that she is not so willing to engage that and torment the woman with it further? They may need to discuss that weakness. For now, however, Ilde does not think further on it, merely allows Mara's own mind to do its own work until she pulls back from it and the avatar approaches again.

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?

[snaphiss]

It counted. Mara moves her avatar to the left, dodging quickly. The only thing that comes to her mind in defense, after all the pain and loss and confusion, is lightening.

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.

[erbier]

Startling, effective. Indulged too far in her imagination, Ilde thinks much too vividly about what it would feel like to be struck with such a blow. Her avatar twitches, its deep set eyes rolling back in its head for a moment. It doesn't entirely collapse, but instead floats backwards, like a marionette hanging in midair, glowing faintly.

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.