Description: Metallica (1984). Following capture, Hotaru has a few questions for her abductors. After learning a little bit about the people she's dealing with, she ends up wishing she hadn't asked. A poignant non-combat scene.
By the time the van gets back to wherever Elle has set up shop, Hotaru is out cold. This makes it quite easy to get her inside and wrapped up in however many cords or ropes Elle thinks are necessary to keep her from even fidgeting.
Coming to in a room without lights is a disorienting experience - one only made worse when finding her ability to move is inhibited in every way imagineable. Her head hurts too, and for several seconds, she can't figure out why. It takes rewinding the events leading up to this situation to finally put the pieces together. Oh yes, rampant guitar bashings. And two brutal strikes by Dr. Tran. She was vaguely conscious when Elle bound her hands and tossed her into the van... And while she doesn't remember anything after that, it doesn't take a great leap of logic to figure out what's happened.
The first reaction is panic. She's never been put in a situation like this. Eyes wide in the darkness, she begins to test every muscle in her body to try and wriggle in the slightest, looking for the tiniest amount of give in her constraints. Not that she ends up being able to move much at all, but it would become apparent to anyone nearby that the girl is most definitely awake once more.
The door's lock clicks, and then swings open with an audible creak. For someone that spends her free time making as much noise as possible, Elle has rather acute hearing. Whet she doesn't tell people is that she uses her control of sonic chi to buffer her hearing, effectively giving her a set of earplugs. Otherwise? She'd probaby be half deaf by now. The woman stands there, the bright lights of the warehouse providing a backlight that leaves the rest of her in shadows, making her appear to be little more than a silhouette.
"You're up," she says, stating the obvious. "Don't bother trying to get out. I've even tied your thumbs down. I've been through this enough times to not take any stupid chances." Perople that consider themselves heroes are the absolute worst in Elle's mind. Completely hypocritical in a myriad of ways. At least what Elle does is honest to her nature, if not honest in the eyes of authorities.
"My partner should be awake soon. She'll deal with you then. Until she gets up, I can gag you and then beat you unconcious again, or you can just keep your yap shut and save yourself another headache. If you think I was bad before, I can hit a hell of a lot harder when the target's not moving."
All the attempts to move stop when the sound of the door click is heard as Hotaru freezes. When the door finally opens, she closes her eyes, then opens them just a crack, looking at the black outline of the taller woman in the doorway. She doesn't bother yelling or carrying on. If that would do any good, Elle wouldn't be giving her the chance.
She does open her mouth to speak though, just before Elle starts explaining how that's not really a good idea. The girl closes her mouth at first, perhaps weighing the two choices she was given. She has a pretty good feeling for why /Marise/ would want to deal with her. But what's Elle's angle? She was clearly the one in charge out there. And she felt it necessary to drag Hotaru along while leaving the young man they were attacking in the first place to lie on the sidewalk and bleed. In fact, the rockster is pretty much right up there with Tran in terms of being an enigma to the young fighter.
One thing she /does/ know though is that she doesn't want any time alone with the kimono clad devil woman. If Marise had it in for her before, she's certainly not going ot be in any /better/ mood after this latest fight. Thus it is that the girl takes her chances with Elle, in spite the warning, "I don't know what you want to get out of me being here. If you want money, I can get you money. Lots of it. Just let me go. Don't let HER near me." The fear in her voice is palpable. Elle might as well have said that Hotaru is about to be handed over to Freddy Krueger, or any other number of terrifying horror film creatures or monsters. She tried appealing to mercy last night, and that didn't go too good. How about an appeal to greed?
Now, if Elle suffers from any one great vice, it's avarice. It's almost a side effect of her otherwise dry, coldhearted personality. Money is always there. It never lets you down. When all your so called friends are gone and you have nothing left to turn to, money can always pull you out of a jam. The offer of a bribe meets Elle's ears and she halts if only for a moment. She can appreciate the offer. After all, it's always interesting to see that even the staunchest of heroes are willing to put a value on their own heads as far as dollars and cents are concerned.
"Under any other circumstances, I'd consider the offer," Elle says, her voice cold and dry as ever, with an underlying rasp of what could be contempt despite her unemotional demeanor. "But I haven't done enough homework on you to verify how much money you have, much less how easy it would be to gain access to all of it or how trustworth you are." She stands over Hotaru, her face partially illuminated in the light. Pupils as wide as bullet holes stare down at Hotaru with an unflinching gaze.
"You don't mean anything to me. In my eyes? You're just another annoying, squeaky little pissant that leaps about with a shitload of self importance and the delusion that, if it weren't for people like me, you'd be content to spend the rest of your life skipping through feilds of flowers licking ice cream cones in some kind of sick Disney-esque fantasyland. And you're entitled to it, to an extent." The woman produces a rag and pulls it taut in her hand, making no further motions. "I'm not a hypocrite. Did you have a right to jump in at kick half my team's ass when I wasn't paying attention? Damn straight. Retribution is human nature. I don't hate you for that. Not at all. So I don't harbor any petty feelings of revenge."
"But when it comes down to it, you're not here for me. Not directly, anyhow. I don't need your money right now, although I can't say with any level of honesty that I don't want it. But my needs are directly connected to the needs of someone else in that I can't have you being a distraction. Try as you might to bargain your way out of the situation, but I'm palming off your fate to someone else tonight," she continues in the brutal honesty that she's infamous for.
"I do sympathize with you, though, if it's any consolation. I'm not immune to fear, so I can pretty much imagine hat you're going through to be completely nerve wracking. I'd hate to be you right now."
The thing is that Hotaru doesn't fancy herself a heroine. Right now, she's just a kid that really wants to see another sunrise, and if promising this cold woman a chunk of the Futaba estate will let that happen, then that's a small price to pay in her mind. Whether or not she could actually get her hands on the money out from under the family accountants and the estate executor is another matter altogether, admittedly, but she isn't worried about that detail right now.
Her eyes, now more accustomed to the change in lighting, blink slowly, fixated on Elle as she speaks. The faint glimmer of hope she had with the offer fades quickly though as she searches the tall woman's face as it becomes visible in the light. She sees no ground for negotiations there. No deal to strike, her mind is clearly made up.
Hotaru's face pales further as Elle speaks of Marise again and she swallows nervously, shaking her head, "Please... no. Anything but /her/. S-she'll kill me, I know!" She squints her eyes and tears roll down her cheeks, "She's a monster. How can you tolerate her? Something like that can't be trusted. She'll take what she wants, then she'll betray you in the end. Please... just... whatever you want. Anything but h-her." The rest of her words are less coherent, rambling, pleading, begging, stifled by the crying unfortunately. Facing death in a fight has been a fear she's endured before, and even conquored at times. But dying like this? In some unknown place where no even knows where she's at? Without a chance to fight? To live or die by the one thing she's poured so much of her life into? This is a whole new level of fear and it's one nothing she's been through has prepared her for.
Elle's hand is like steel, wrapping around Hotaru's bindings to lift the young girl off the ground with disturbing ease. Elle doesn't really play up her unusual level of strength for her size, but today it seems warranted. Elle stares Hotaru in the eyes, her own narrowing as if she could read the younger girl's mind. "I know," Elle says flatly. "But we all use each other. Some are just more honest about it than others," she says, setting Hotaru into a chair at the back of the room, dumping the rag into the little girl's lap.
"There's a deep, fundamental difference between my world and your world," Elle explains. "In your world, you can smile without it meaning anything. If you make a mistake? You can laugh it off, and chalk it up to experience. I have a theory that it's that kind of warmth and friendship that makes you and your kind so obnoxiously strong." She shuffles off across the room to the door, leaving for a moment only to return a second later with two plastic bottles. "When you live the kind of life that I do? You get punished constantly. For mistakes. For success. Sometimes you just get punished for being /alive/. My point is, once you've been down the road a bit, you stop being particularly picky about who you hang out with. Vamp might be a horrible monster that sucks out kid's brains in their sleep, but she's left me alone so far and that's good enough for me. If she messes up? Well... she's in the same line of business. Life will end up punishing her for anything she does wrong."
"But think really hard here," Elle says, cracking open the plastic seal on one of the bottles and dropping a straw in it. "She /looks/ like a monster, /acts/ like a monster. She does crap that makes people sick in the pit of their stomach. It's true." She places the bottle and straw near Hotaru's face. "But how do you know that I'm not the real monster here?"
"Drink. It's water. You'll get dehydrated if you keep crying."
Hotaru quiets down when she finds herself being pulled up off the ground with disturbing ease. There's nothing she can do but stare back into Elle's eyes as the woman speaks to her, her own cheeks smudged by the tears streaking through the dirt that was already present. And then she is deposited in the chair and she just sits there, her breaths coming raggedly at first, a typical symptom of getting over a crying fit.
She remains quiet as Elle speaks of two completely different worlds. She would be correct in identifying Hotaru as having a fairly sheltered life, as things go. Wealthy parents, a big home, nannies, butlers, waitstaff, the whole package. Even having everything in the world wasn't enough to keep her family from shattering, making her the orphan she is now. But compared to the life Elle describes, they might as well be from two different planets.
Her eyes gradually move away from the guildleader to stare despondently at the floor of the room. She can't understand the working relationship these people have, as no parallel exists in her world for her to relate it to. But her eyes are back on Elle as she questions Hotaru's accuracy in identifying the real horror here. "I-... I don't," she admits. She thought she would fare better with Elle than Marise, but clearly hasn't in the sense of trying to get out of this situation, but that didn't work out either. Nothing seemed to phase her. Nothing Hotaru said about Marise seemed like a new idea. She already knows these things about their alliance, and it doesn't bother her.
The girl is quiet now, staring at the bottle placed within drinking distance. Oh yes, definitely don't want to get parched before the brain-sucking begins. In the end though? She goes and drinks from the offered straw. At least it's /doing/ something. When you lack the freedom to so much as fidget your thumb, the prospect of doing anything at all is more tempting than something like stubborn pride or desperate obstinance can provide.
"I used to be you, you know," Elle says to Hotaru as she drinks. "But somewhere along the line, something died." She taps her chest. "I don't feel anything anymore. Just... basic hints of what I'm supposed to be feeling. You might call Vamp a monster, but even she feels joy and hate. Me? Sometimes I get a little frustrated or annoyed. Every so often, something makes me amused enough to smile."
"But you know what? I can't recall the last time I really enjoyed a steak. I couldn't tell you what it feels like to be so excited my heart skips a beat. I don't laugh anymore. Blue skies and sun mean exactly the same thing to me as gray skies and rain," she intones, voice never wavering as she sets the drink into Hotaru's lap whle retreiving the rag, and cracking open the other bottle.
"I'm not telling you this because I want pity," explains the white-haired woman. "I'm telling you this because I want you to know that you don't know what a monster is. If, for some reason, someone told me with complete accuracy that you had the key to eternal wealth inside of you, I'd be prying your heart out with a steak knife right now and this face wouldn't look any different." She points to her own expressionless countenance. "Also, you should take comfort in the fact that you still feel things."
"Even if you die tonight? You'll have died a whole person. People will miss you. You'll leave a void people will never be able to fill. When I die, it'll be alone and my body will be in a ditch somewhere or unceremoniously cremated." Obviously, the woman harbors no illusions about her own self importance. "I'm fine with that, but in the end, I'll have exacted so much pain and misery on other people, that my passing away won't even begin to bring justice to the things I've done."
"Whatever happens, I don't have a grudge against you. I want you to remember that. As for whatever you feel? Well, frankly, babydoll, I don't give a shit." She souses the rag with the contents of the second bottle. "Any last words before I put you back under for a bit? The next face you see will be Vamp's, and I can't make any promises past that."
Having her feel of water, Hotaru is left to listen quietly, her attention fixated on Elle, the range of emotions that wash over her too varied to keep track of. Horror, pity, regret, fear, resignation. Elle may not want, or even deserve her sympathy, but the tears that come now are different from the desperate, pleading tears from a moment ago. "You're already dead..." she finally whispers quietly, "And no one cared. Why do you want to drag everyone else down with you? It isn't revenge... I don't know what it is..."
She falls silent then, eyes focused on the rag briefly, then back up at Elle, her mouth clamped shut. She has nothing else to say. No pleading, no bargaining, nothing is going to phase this woman. She knows this now. She thinks about the people that will miss her. Friends, some more than friends... teachers, instructors, she can vainly hope that her absent father and brother will.
She exhales slowly, closing her eyes and bowing her head, surrendering herself to the voice of apathy that Elle speaks to her with. There is the slightest shake of her head. She has nothing left to say, no last words to the woman who is beyond caring anyway. If her next sight is to be the visage of the devil woman, then for now, she will keep her eyes closed, and picture the faces of those she cares about, trying not to think about how they will be affected when she never comes home.
"That's right, kid. So take it from me," Elle says as she presses the cholroform against the young girl's face. "Being dead's not all that bad." It should be enough to knock out the young woman. Marise will be by soon, and by that time, Hotaru will be just waking up. If anything, it'll keep Hotaru from suffering unecessarily before she meets her fate. Elle may indeed be a monster, but she doesn't have to be unreasonably cruel to do it. After all, she can only hope that someone will show her professional courtesy before she checks out.
In any other case, in any other world, this would be where Elle would have a tinge of regret or some hope of redemption. In reality, that chance died a long time ago. Somewhere between the endless bouts of furious battle trying to prove to herself that she was indeed still alive, she pushed to hard, and it merely evaporated away.
What's left is a severely broken individual. But if her words are any indication, there's nothing left to save and Elle would frankly resist any attempt to 'repair' what she's left from dead a long time ago. She checks her watch as she applies the cap back onto the bottle of chloroform. Schedules to keep, and time tables to make as she leaves to poor girl to her unfortunate fate, shutting the door behind her.
Log created on 20:29:42 05/28/2007 by Elle, and last modified on 00:13:58 05/29/2007.