[closed] a little less conversation

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: Ilde & Petre; Kusuma Ming & Fahima Hanne
WHERE: Ming's penthouse
WHEN: Day :051
SUMMARY: Turning the screws on Kusuma Ming.
WARNINGS: Violent ideation, torture, cannibalism (GOD DAMMIT PETRE)

Kusuma Ming has a sure stride. It isn't long - no, her mother taught her better than that -, but she moves in a way that's impressively direct. Hesitation is for amateurs or people with time to waste and she is neither. Even here, at the end of what's been a long day with nothing ahead of her but some light last minute work and an evening home, there's no point in lingering. Ming, along with her small fleet of private security personnel, make their way across the building's lobby directly to the private elevator. It opens to her ID chip and three of her security detail slide in after her.

There's no conversation. She instead spends the exceptionally short ride up to the penthouse picking a straw fleck of grit out from under one of her fingernails. When they arrive at the top level foyer, two of the guards hang back wordlessly just at the landing. Only one follows her along to the penthouse proper. Suffice to say, no one works for Ming because she's a pleasant boss. At the very least, she doesn't ask much of them - she knows some people who treat their bodyguards like servants. That's nonsense. She takes off her own coat the moment she's inside. She hangs it up herself, takes her own earrings out and places them in the small bowl inside the door. Better to treat security as if they're not there at all. It makes the whole concept less obtrusive, doesn't it? Who wants to be aware they're being followed or watched? No one, she tells herself (--that's practice for tomorrow; she has a meeting with investors in the afternoon and none of those cheap suits would know what separates good security from the bad).

Kusuma takes her shoes off, then sweeps down the stairs to the penthouse's main level. It's all sleek dark wood, pale grey furniture. There's a broadcast playing quietly on the holoscreen; Fahima must have decided to stay for the evening. It's too late to expect dinner, but--

There are two people on the elegant sofa at the center of the room, the light off the holo feed flickering idly there. Kusuma pauses, one hand still on the steel stair railing. She'd recognize Fahima from the back of her head, but the other one?

Right. She'd been shopping with a friend.

"If I knew you were expecting to entertain, I would've brought a bottle of wine home." It's a little cutting. Fahima might have at least given her the courtesy of leaving a message to warn her she'd be coming home to a guest.

Comments

[erbier]

There is only a brief pause, but then Ilde understands.

"Good. Where is the meeting, when are they expecting you?"

[onemind]

She smiles. It's all teeth.

"Six hours from now. It'd probably be easier to draw you a map, my dear."

[erbier]

"Enough stalling," she brushes that off entirely. The sooner she hears the location, the sooner it can be transmitted to the others. "Speak, Kusuma, I grow weary of you."

[onemind]

"There's an old factory on the edge of Subspace that used to manufacture power shields. If you go the basement level, you'll find a tunnel leading into the undercity. It leads directly to the room where we meet." It's the easiest answer in the world to give her. She almost laughs with relief. How funny.

"It's hilarious that you think it'll matter. Give us four hours and there won't be anything left for you to salvage."

[erbier]

"Oh?" The nonchalance of a snake, Ilde reaches out and curls her hand around Fahima's neck. The electric shock of the gloves are turned off, but she squeezes and watches the unconscious woman begin to gag. Ilde is no Iota, but she knows very well that she is stronger than she was before the symbiote, that she could crush this woman's windpipe. That would be too quick... maybe she will dislocate one of her arms instead, but the gesture if it all is effective enough.

"Then perhaps you had best tell me about your bomb, as well."

[onemind]

Kusuma is bare foot, which is good because it might have far greater potential to hurt if she was still wearing her heels when she tries to kick Ilde in the side.

"Don't touch her--!"

[erbier]

She takes it. There's a time and place for simply allowing a strike, and she is not going to react too wildly to what Kusuma does. She has control of this situation, and that is the end of it. She lets go of Fahima's throat, turning instead to take hold of Kusuma's ankle as it recedes from her.

"I will kill her." The drum of her threats is utterly infernal, like a thousand furious hearts all struggling to function. "I will break every one of her bones, one by one, before I slit her open and remove her organs with the same meticulous care."

Her grip on the other woman's foot is very tight, a suggestion of what had begun to press down on Fahima's windpipe. She contemplates the merits of simply snapping that ankle now, just to make herself very clear.

"Or, you may continue to answer my questions."

[onemind]

A moment ago, she hadn't felt anything but certainty that she could make the girl regret. Now, the fear of the threat swallows her. It's choking. She stills, pulse hammering high in her throat.

"The Omega Memory Bank." She hears herself say it more that she knows that she does. That's her voice, shaping those sounds into words. "But if the bomb goes wrong, we'll go underground. You'll never find us again. I'll be the only person you ever see. Loke and everyone like him will disappear."

[erbier]

In a way, it is good she did not have to hurt either of them too severely. She knows Steve would have been disappointed in her... but she would have. She is glad Kusuma chose to care for her partner over keeping her secrets. That earns her back a little bit of the respect she had utterly lost from Ilde. But only a little.

She fiddles the electricity back on in her gloves without a word, holding on tight as the woman spasms from the shock. The problems as Ming has presented them can be solved.

( I have finished. Please come assist me in moving them... I think we will restrain them in the bedroom, and you will be needing Kusuma Ming's appearance as we leave. )

[howtoget]

Petre steps back into the room not long after that. He'd had the sense of what Ilde had been doing, how she was using all her cards, delighted with how the two women succumbed in the end. The one executing the torture might have done it for her own reasons, but Petre latched on to every inch of power greedily. He wants the same. He wants to do it next time.

Maybe if he just grabs Ilde's wrist and turns into her.

Right now, there's someone else in his grip. One of Kusuma's other guards, with the third lying down behind him. To surveillance, it will just look like they attacked the woman called Eelis, who in turn took care of everything. When they see her walk back in, and Kusuma walking back out, they will likely suspect that their boss was actually saved.

Petre drops the body heavily. A curious gaze drifts over to where the women lie, cat-like stillness to his moves.

His thoughts, if unintentionally, are transmitted to Ilde easily enough: he wants to eat them.

[erbier]

She inhales deeply. She is all iron right now, utter control, cold as ice. All emotion has been turned off, it is a comfortable, familiar state of being that she has almost missed since coming to the Hive. She has been inundated with so many new experiences, feelings, forced to process the ebb and flow of all those around her. To have it turned off, to feel in control again... It is empty, callous but glorious. She retains that in the face of Petre's hunger.

( The guards are unimportant. Ming must be preserved to answer for what she's done. )

It is not exactly permission, but if he is going to do it one way or another, her only real care is that Kusuma Ming survives to suffer for her choices.

[howtoget]

"... Yeah, whatever."

He says so to shed off the mental link, too bored with silence anymore. Petre simply walks over to take a good look at Kusuma, her features, shape and clothes blossoming from his previous disguise. It isn't a very gruesome process; it's like shedding a layer of liquid to reveal what's underneath.

He looks at Ilde with the same consideration Kusuma would have given a pretty face with no other interesting qualities.

"Can I eat the girlfriend."

[erbier]

She purses her lips. This is not something she wants to be a party to. She has already warped herself into a precarious position as it is, and the only thing holding her together is the utter chill in her heart. That chill wants nothing more than to shrug and tell Petre to do as he pleases. If not Fahima Hanne, then someone else. There is no controlling Petre's demon hunger, Ilde knows that much, there is only... guiding it. Will he think more sweetly on her if she tells him yes? Would he be easier to control later?

She peels off her taser gloves, tucking them back into her shopping bags. It will look best if she leaves with the things she came in with, so she gathers them by the door.

"Don't take long."

Not a yes, not a no.

[howtoget]

He watches Ilde with some expectation, though he's almost certain she will say no. For all the coldness she tries to emanate, there will always be a part of the demon who knows that emotions, and the sins that come attached to them, are a part of every human. With or without the symbiote's powers, that's all Ilde is.

Petre's surprise is concealed. He might even be a little impressed; he will be more so if she actually sticks around while he does it.

The boy reverts back to his original form, teeth growing out like a hundred jaws trying to fit inside one. Black eyes, wide mouth and claws, he rips Fahima's body apart. A young demon would never be careful, but he is particularly gruesome and hasty with how he devours his way through the woman's most tender parts. Once he's done, all the blood and gore are hidden underneath that sticky liquid that takes form and allows him to look like someone else.

Two fingers wipe at the corner of his mouth; his other hand runs through the facsimile of Kusuma's impeccable hair, and he places her heels back on. Her jacket, her bag. He's ready.

"Shall we, Miss Vilmaine."

[erbier]

She does not watch with any particular interest, but neither can she simply turn away from what she has allowed. She is complicit. Maybe it is not the first time she has watched someone die so that she may carry on in her goals. She has assuredly seen this ugly display before, the improbable teeth that defy all biology, the black eyes. The pop-crack of bones coming apart, the wet mushing sounds of human flesh being torn apart, consumed. She absorbs all of it, as she has so many times before, but she feels nothing. Stores it away in the polluted well that is her heart, where she carries her horrors, pumps them into her veins.

She meets Petre's eyes calmly as he turns back towards her. Should she be grateful, that this ugly little monster has helped to bring her back to this part of herself which is familiar? She is in control once more, or that is at least how it feels. With her emotions so carefully boxed away, it is hard to decide. Should she be disgusted with the both of them? Or did their ends justify their means. Why had she done it if it hadn't.

"Let's go," she agrees without another thought or glance at Fahima Hanne's remains.