[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
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.