station72 | [open] ability testing

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[open] ability testing

CHARACTERS: Lakshmi Bai & YOU
WHERE: Hyrypia - Anywhere you feel like.
WHEN: DAY :016 - DAY :0
SUMMARY: Lakshmi is testing out her symbiotic abilities on some suspecting/willing test subjects/unknowing ppl. Also, backdated to hell.
WARNINGS/OTHER: Nothingness. Also Lakshmi's extra everything? Didn't talk to her the first time and still want to join in? No problems. Come get some sweet, sweet extra emotions. If there is a particular emotion you would like to have your character go through, please let me know.

I. I NEED NOISE.

Her testing isn't direct on anyone to begin with - simply she wants to try it without comment. To that she takes anyone who said they might wish to be part of it and see it for themselves, measuring it for herself. She cannot be sure with a host exactly, the way they all bleed through each other's bandages. So she instead looks to mix it between them. Not to engage directly with oh, a group of gossiping staff, a set of seconds drinking and talking about the results of the hunting races, whoever seems a good and unknowing target, as she sets herself near to them with a Host to accompany her, she gets to sit next to her.

Knows that what she'll need in particular is a host to limit any conversation she has with another, when she slips to the deep waters of that cool dark nothingness.

( Ready? )

II. I NEED THE CRACK OF A WHIP.

Once she can be sure of it, sure it's weight, it's flex, how it feels in her own skin to take all that is outside of her and push it out - it's then that she finds another host to know the exactness of how it feels. How it flows, of how it might react on those nearest to her. To peel away those bandages and let it drip, drip, drip.

So in the privacy of a tent, she settles herself in a the set of her skirts and the push back of her veil

"You're quite sure you want to... feel this?"

Last chance, jump from the ship, that way she can be sure she is ever a summer fire racing across empty grass fields, consumptive, she never leaves much else behind her but ash. Even animals knew to flee that.

III. I NEED BLOOD IN THE CUT.

After a few tries, she no longer is half so unsure, she turns it out to what it is, a tool. She steps out, she finds oh, groups of Seconds, whispering servants, drunk off duty guards, she fills herself with easy laughter and like a spiked drink, she finds them to give it to them a laughing word to build a picture of herself of someone, removed, perhaps, not inclined to touch, not liking to discuss herself or her group, but well - she is clever, isn't she? Always likely to make others laugh.

Now she knows her timing, though, now she knows to step herself out of any conversation before it wears off, to put herself back to the confines of the tents. It's there she sits, like this - where she so normally fire, now she sits a empty wine dark sea. Cool, removed, it takes and gives nothing back.

To find her then however, she is not idle, she is only a process of movements. A series of calculations that come without merit. Instead: she has taken out her knives. Lays them out by length, a stair case set of longest to shortest. Of their ceremonial blade, hers - Sir Bors, what remained of her husband's shamsher melded together as one - a shorter woman's knife for cutting thread and snapping away unwanted snags.

It's there, she begins to sharpen them. Because they must be sharp, is the only burgeoning thought of soon to be her own emotion again. But for now: it is only that they must be sharp. Tools have only purpose, after all.

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"No, I'm not."

Shiro had told her he'd volunteer. Told her he would do what she needed. It's the least he can do. The least he can offer her, in return for what happened between them before. What he caused. A rift he didn't want, in exchange for defending someone who needed it. He still respects Lakshmi. Tremendously. Maybe this is some way of proving it.

So here he is. Sitting cross-legged before her, honest, open. Ready. For the moment, his head is bowed in concentration. To focus on keeping himself steady -- despite that, there's no fear. After all, what could she do that's worse than what already exists in his head? Worse than the supernova lurking at the back of his mind.

"But I said I'd do this. And I keep my word."

He lifts his chin, slightly, to look at her.

"What do you want me to do?"

Edited (rewrites entire tag nbd) 2017-10-13 05:31 (UTC)

Rust makes a soft noise in the affirmative. More of an answer than the question deserves. He takes a seat across from her, his posture scrupulously correct and pitched slightly forward.

He turns his hand over, uncurls his fingers. It's something like a watch, the face set in polished black stone that's cool on his tongue. The markings, naturally, are alien. "Remember—you were wanting to keep track."

He hesitates, hopeful where he shouldn't be—maybe it's true—emotion wrenched out of place. In four precise clicks of the watch, it lives and dies.

Rust meets her gaze with a stare that won't falter. As though checking for a fever, he presses his mind to hers. ( May I? )

Set in her skirts, she goes about readying herself to a place that is comfortable. Setting her veils from crown to shoulders in a way that when she comes to the state when this is done, she will not find anything in her way in the state of void. Practicality even to this strangeness.

To that task - she does not notice immediately, until he speaks that she looks, to him, first, then to his words, and yes, perhaps, a moment later than he intended but:

The smile that lights up her face is immediate. Bright, full, slow to its broadness, but set so utterly towards him like - for that, and that alone, there was nothing else that she saw, her attention: for all that it was and was not, set entirely on him and in joy of him, if but in this superficial way. Because she had gifts, as Queen, that was nothing new. Thousands, as was the custom of giving and be given too. But to this, for the words she had utter and he had kept them?

"I did." and then, her hands settle to her lap, waiting in one smoothed, settling gesture - : ( Of course, Master Cohle. )

A face that turns up to let him, the gates that swing open. Not that the walls lower, the high imperious white stone. But that the stone stays standing, it is the wooden gates that swing open. Heavy set, they roll back, and the heat that she keeps in of herself, this skin that holds it all in, finds the new air to feed it. Though for now it stays, the warmth of a fireplace, cooking at the heart of a kitchen, the oil lamps that light the steps. It is ordered, neat, that fire contained in the tiered oil lamps, lighting steps. Every road to a room, every room to a great chamber. Even before the hive, she had been thus. Ordered, to her last.

Her hands smooth over her skirts, measuring him the last time over in her calm and her quiet of now. It might not always be anything else. "Be calm. Centre yourself however you wish. This is first and foremost a processing of learning."

To know the differences, and she remember how Tesla stressed the methods for a good experiment. Start with a clean subject, and then -

"Tell me when you are ready, and we will begin."

He nods. Find a calm, centering place is easier than it had been when he'd first arrived. Now he knows it. Now it comes as easily as working with the team had been, back home. A slow inhale. The mental image of a desert skimming along below the cockpit.

The sense of belonging. Of right. And he doesn't, for that moment, need the walls of stars to have nothing but calm in his mind.

"All right."

Hold onto the image, the memory, of that fateful flight. Long as he can.

"The plan is very simple - " around them the desert stretches out, and Lakshmi's hands curl loose and tight to loose again as she addresses Damon and then Shepard in turns, evenly spoke. Not so much orders as a simple set of stipulations about how this should happen to all their best chance of survival.

A mutual enough goal to all their purposes. "Shepard will summon her other self - and you, Salvatore," not creature, let it be said she can keep a civil in her head when she's really, truly, desperately trying. The tension in her over it is - so thick it could be cut, "will compel her before she can cause havoc. I will then attempt to use my ability on her. Are we all agreed to it?"

Some part of her just wants them all to say no, and throw down over it - but dreamer she is, and oh, they were such lofty dreams.

This is a shitty idea. Shepard knows the idiocy of this in all her bones, especially in the ones she's broken before. There are about a million and ten ways this could backfire, assuming that everything goes well.

"You ready for this?" This to Damon, eyebrow raised in challenge. Shepard ought to feel more of the trepidation that she knows this rightly deserves, but the rush of an oncoming fight is keying up her nerves. It's a 50/50 chance, after all, "Let's do it."

Who is "you," when you are two?

There is a gaping cavity shaped in the outline of Lakshmi. This void is appreciable, whether its the senses or the symbiote that leads him to her. As he nears, she triggers a horrible-wonderful wave of inanition. As he sees, he boggles (without boggling - taking her and her knives in with attentive and examining eyes, is all), and admires the visibility of character and history in the woman. This was a burning inferno without its heat. Without its light. A dark fire, powerful like a blackhole dilates in an empty vacuum.

The steady motions of her knives against the sharpening tool, a second and third, grind, file, taper, edge re-orient him and serve as reminders to the reason she's laboring under the handicap to begin with. She finds no pleasure in this, of course.

"Bai Saheba." Lowering himself down in front of her, tentatively, "So, this is it."

This is definitely a shitty idea, not least of all because —

"Thought I was going to be compelling a native," Damon says, eyebrow raised. That Lakshmi called him by his name is not lost on him, but he's hardly going to bring attention to it when they have more pressing matters to attend to. Later, maybe, when they don't all have to be at the top of their game. "I can do this, but I don't know if it will stick. I haven't compelled anyone's clone before."

Which is not to say that he won't try — he's here, after all, he'll do it — but if it doesn't go as intended, he's not liable, alright?

"The plan changed, somewhat, in the interim." Is the curt sigh to go along with it. The press and need, the hum of something dangerous that is to be done.

"If it comes to nothing, we stop it before it goes any further." However that comes about - Damon, no doubt, could handle all else. The speed she could not deny as being particularly useful would see to that. Even if the first time she ever had its pleasure was seconds before the teeth in her neck.

She slides her eyes off him back to the Commander. "We are all agreed in that?"

Whatever her want to kill Damon even now, or his wants of her - the hive had to be protected first.

The blade in her hand is her own - from home. A lion's head that roars out from her palm, the silver rolled curve of the edge, neither completely English nor Indian, it seems a place between. Held not in concern, nor admiration, but that is how a blade is to be held. Up against the light. She checks it over for blemishes, imperfections before she again puts the whetstone to it and slides it from base to tip.

It's only once the motion is finished, that her eyes are lifted to him. Steady below her brows, thick under lashes, a gaze that holds and finds neither beauty nor ugliness in him, just him, a mouth, eyes, hair about his face, the dip of his throat that tells her: there is where to strike him. The curve of ears, below a temple that would drop him if she were to strike him with that big cat's head. Not with purpose, as the list presents itself to both their minds.

Just that it is what she knows.

"Kaji."

The whetstone slides over the weapon again.

Her first, and indeed only reaction to the ongoing conversation is a burst of annoyance at Lakshmi. Why lie? The plan had been this from the start, as Shepard had seen it. Why mislead Damon? Spite? Spite?

Probably spite. For fuck's sake, this was business.

"Well then, you might want to start trying to do whatever it is right now, before I do this. I'm a pretty quick draw," She tells Damon, to serve as an answer to Lakshmi, "It's fine to kill it, if you have to. And, don't talk to me about speed, dammit."

She doesn't even know how to explain the risk assessment on biotics, the one truly deadly thing that can't be erased from this equation. Shepard has deliberately placed herself well out of reach from weaponry of any kind, at least. So there's that.

"Are you ready or not?"

Edited 2017-10-19 17:50 (UTC)

That she bothers to look at him, not unlike a wolf stalking a herd of sheep, certainly doesn't cushion the surprise. He's not sure which to react to first: his name, simple enough and without fancy qualifers, or the beheading, a vision that comes and goes faster than he can discern its source. Only when she returns to her knives does realization attain. But he's hardly afraid, can't seem to be.

So, she thought about killing him. This is not as terrifying, or worse yet, surprising, as it maybe ought. The question that remains is why: Is it just his recklessness, or is there something about her power that prevents him from feeling fear, foreboding, anything at all?

"The one and only." If curiosity counts as an emotion, Kaji has reason to push just yet. A hand quests, finds the shortest of the knives and circles his fingers around it, for no reason except to test her. It pays to be an idiot, sometimes. "Don't tell me these blades are for me."

She sharpens, sharpens, sharpens. It becomes a rhythmic sound in his ears, and Gildor finds himself plucking and strumming an improvised song to the steady tempo of it. Not on his violin, but the little Carabauchian zinther he's borrowing from Collector. He's gotten quite good with it in the last few days. Convincing enough for the other musicians, though not enough to break the spell of nothingness that hangs heavily over Lakshmi.

Not even his violin can help her there.

That his music cannot make her regain her sense of self bothers him. He's used to garnering reaction from music, and usually she's so brimming with emotion. So much that's it's almost overwhelming when it's the two of them, passionate as they are in their own ways. It's frustrating to feel her like this again, and again and again as she practices her newfound power more and more. Frustrating and a bit frightening. Especially around all the knives.

"Would you like to hear a story, Rani?"

Something to take the edge off - metaphorically and literally. It's something he hasn't yet tried when bringing her back to herself, and if music doesn't work, well. What's the harm in trying a story?

"I can almost guarantee I'm quicker," Damon says, and there's no braggadocio in that statement, just fact — he's magic, shepard, he's going to be faster than you or your clone no matter what you do. granted, shepard has her own skills that could pose a problem, there's no denying that, but if it comes down to "who moves more quickly" — damon's going to bet on himself, every time.

Still, he moves closer to Shepard, close enough that he can blur forward in less than a second, if he has to — and just the slightest bit in front of Lakshmi, as well.

If Shepclone attacks, he can take it better than she can, and he's not the one connected to Elena.

"Do it."

There's a difference in what she's been feeling from Lakshmi lately, not in how she feels about Elena personally, but just in general how she feels. There are moments that crop up where there's no emotion at all, just a blissful nothing that Elena can't help put pick up on, because as much as she might want to ignore Lakshmi and forget all about their connection, that's really not an option.

So finally she decides to investigate, check up on her broodmate, as it were. Slipping into the tent, she freezes at the sight of those blades - even though she knows not that Lakshmi can't kill her, the memory of their first meeting still haunts her. She can't just stay standing there in front of the opening though, so she steps over to the nearest cot and carefully sits down before removing the scarves that cover her face.

"Are you okay?" The question slips out before she can even think to stop it, before she tries to convince herself that she doesn't care. It's in Elena's nature to care, even more so when it's someone in her brood, she just... wishes she didn't care about Lakshmi.

If she's being completely honest with herself, no. She isn't. Having seen how engaging the symbiote and its power had run course through the likes of Murphy and Bellamy, Clarke is beginning to have doubts. For science or otherwise, what good would it do anyone if she were to be laid up sick, or dissociate for hours on end in the wake of this experiment? The side effects seem varied but all crippling, even if only temporarily.

But at the end of the day, Clarke is wholly and selfishly curious. Whatever little addition the brain bug has gifted her with hasn't manifested yet, and a part of her is hoping to learn from this encounter with Lakshmi, so as to better harness her own abilities. Who knew, perhaps they'd prove useful too. And logically speaking, the tests seemed harmless. The other woman had spoken of rampant emotions, all dialed up to ten, followed by a sense of nothingness — and really, when has Clarke ever not had her emotions on full blast.

So despite any misgivings, she nods.

"Whenever you are."

She nods, and lets her eyes close, her hands settle into her lap in front of her, fingers curled loosely in. She is new to the ways of the nest, to having her mind be watched by others in such a way, to be shared, but not to the act of this: of knowing her own corners. Such had Vishnubhatt taught a young queen who was powerless in the face of so much to hold fast to what was the only sure thing given to her in life.

A tool she uses now to know if not exactly what she's doing, then the difference in herself, were she draws in on a long low note that is carried in her chest. A memory of a statue, and a state of calm. Absolute and formed as part of each other. Shiva the destroyer, comes the knowledge with the memory, and to her, she finds that same place within herself.

Not perhaps that the fires ever goes out, but simply that it can be easy in its own light. Once she has, her eyes open again and her smile is for once, not edged, not sharp, but calm. A flat glass to catch that light by. "Well then, tell me when you begin to feel it."

And into the flame she reaches, warm and safe, into the memory of sitting at the foot of that statue, the benevolent smile looking down her, the mouth that forms names, one after another and she reaches further, into a pleasant calm. A feeling of more than anything else, safety. Of faith in that fact. She feels, in that moment and rolling out of her as she forms the feeling of the symbiote around her then rolling out to give to him, glad and at peace.

She squares her feet - her own sign that she's ready for whatever might happen. Even if perhaps, her real concern, past this all going horribly wrong, is drawing up an emotion strong enough to evoke the sensation again in others. But that could come secondary to everything else, once they had this experiment begun safely.

Even so, she draws a deeper breath, a calmer moment, that she wills into her limps, an exhilaration with the reckless that doesn't speed her up, but slow her down. An in between space that she can be sure of herself if nothing else. It is once she has that, that she nods to the Commander: go on then.

Her pauses might be more ominous if they were not in each other's thoughts like a shared lungful of air. But they are only the process of coming to exactly what she means, and meaning it exactly, wholly.

"No." But there is no alarm when he goes to reach for the blade, nor worry of his threat. The black sea stretches and stretches and this too, a matter of fact and a click of a learned pattern, from someone long before this: "but if you draw one, they expect to be bled upon."

As ever, her gaze does not falter, does not break, but instead of a reserved judgment she holds the rights too by the nature of breathing - here she waits, windows to souls but in this, they fall to empty observation. She does not more than seeing him as he is exactly now. Neither trusted nor distrusted. Just a man, just a man in front of her, just a man holding the shortest blade: a heart blade. It had no purpose in open combat, it was the slide of personal affection.

Shepard nods, sharp, stern. There is a pause, like an in-drawn breath, and Shepard's mind turns towards itself, seeking out some pattern of thought, some unknown electromagnetic mnemonic that might make it easier to--

Like a figure emerging from smoke, the second Shepard appears. It seems unnatural that it should be so easy, so silent, quieter even than the sunrise. The effect is less as if this new Shepard had come into being, than that she'd been there all along, and only just now had the other two in the tent noticed her. That she should be sitting there at all seems perfectly natural, and yet the precise, horrible similarity between the two of them is subtly grotesque.

Every fold of clothing, every hair, every freckle and blemish is identical, in every way. Even her expression is similar, vaguely annoyed, considering as each Shepard sees at a glane her position in the room. Who is the copy? Who is the original?

They both lunge at the same moment. One to grasp the other's arms, seeking to restrain her, and the other glowing a virulent blue-white, seeking to instigate a violent reversal of gravity-- though perhaps not fast enough to prevent Damon from stopping her.

She keeps the motions smooth, they do not falter, nor slow, to the tune of his voice, like strings to puppets - he speaks, she moves. His fullness will have to be enough for her emptiness. To let him pour into her as she turns her face up to him - for as she is, she wants nor likes anything. But nor does she dislike or loathe it.

"As you wish."

It's hardly a yes, but then, it's not a no either, and it can't hurt to try. So he leans back and strums the zinther lightly to start.

"There was once a poor farmer. He had a hovel and potato farm that turned up dead spuds more often than naught, but he also had a wife and three sons, and a prized milk cow. A beautiful cow that gave them plentiful milk, and they turned it to cream and butter and cheese to eat and sell. If not for that cow, the family would've starved many winters over.

But one morning, the farmer woke up and left the hovel to find the milk cow dead in the barn. He knew he'd never afford another, and overcome with fear, he hanged himself.

Later that morning, the wife woke up and left the hovel. She too found the milk cow dead, and her husband hanged in the barn. And overcome with grief, she threw herself in the river."

A lovely start.

Her eyes flick up from where she is posed, fingers around the hilt of the blade, the flat of it to the light that makes Elena no more than a silhouette. A shape of a being, as Lakshmi knows her than a being herself.

Rakshasa, her father had told her as a child of the flesh-devouring demons. She knows other words for them now. Vampire. Lycan. The United India Company. Elena and Damon. It looks her and knows without inflection the simple truths of her life: Elena is a threat.

One that, for once, Lakshmi assesses her without a follow-through of that. "I am." Not okay, not unwell, either. Just herself.

It's hard not to feel a little apprehensive when you start something like this. When you're warned there could be a reaction, a side effect. Being at the mercy of whatever emotion she decided to lay on him. But at the same time, he feels he owes her. Feels he should at least make the attempt to bridge the gap he created here.

A deep breath. As she speaks. Focusing on her, on that steadying, centering feeling of intangible controls under his hands.

"Yes, ma'am."

He's always been held at the ready. At attention. Watching for trouble, watching for people to pull out of the fire, or ready to plan. Changing those plans in a heartbeat, or clinging to a standard practically impossible for him to meet. It's a constant state of tension in the back of his mind. Smoothed over in the constant tilt and turn of the stars he holds between himself and everyone else.

He lets them part, here. Curtains made of endless sparks. Half-formed hands drifting to accept this thing of hers. He half expects the emotional intrusion to rouse the monster lurking back there, caged and defensive. But it does no such thing.

If anything, it feels... quieter, now. Than it ever has before.

"I think... it's coming."

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[open] ability testing

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CLOSED | DAMON + SHEPARD

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three

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III

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>> iii

ii — 10 years late

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