Description: Objective: Revenge. Obstacle: Prudent advice. Alias: None. Summary: Ayame has a lot on her mind, and none of it is good. Taking steps to prevent a vicious cycle, Elle makes an appeal to the girl's rational side in trying to teach her that there's a time and place for everything, including vengeance.
The Seventh Circle. For most it's a place of entertainment that can't be found anywhere else. An evening of amoral fun in watching the brutal matches play out in whatever strange stage has been created for any given event. They show up, watch, bet, cheer, boo, collect, and go home.
For one teenaged girl, however, it seems to rapidly be becoming her home. Having participated in or factored in many of the Circle's events since it's inception, there's a fair amount of her own blood to be found on the walls. More than once she's had be scraped off the floor, and one of those times included having to unpin her hands from a platform, her face covered with her own blood-matted, severed hair.
It's a cruel stage at night, but the girl hasn't seemed to become averse to spending time within the pit. She's never complained about the fights she's been asked to participate in and has even taken to creating a particularly sassy demeanor that seems to amuse the crowds to a fair degree. Elle has aptly realized that Ayame doesn't fight for 'fun'. Nor does she seek out the challenge of combat for combat's sake. But when she steps into the arena no one would be the wiser. She plays up to the role of pint-sized gladiator almost too well, to the point that even when she isn't one of the participants she tends to still draw fire...
A stage to the seedy underworld at night, a quiet place to be left alone during the earlier hours of the day. The evening is a long ways off. The noisy crowds won't be around for hours and even the work crews that get everything ready for a night's match aren't expected for a good long while. But one person can still be found in the pit.
The sound of rubber balls bouncing off the sturdy wall of the arena echos throughout the enclosure. Blue, simple racquetballs. Ayame has a bucket of them next to her. The routine is simple in concept but more challenging in execution... Throw a ball at the wall with one hand. When it rebounds, strike it right back with a second ball thrown from the other hand. Hand/eye coordination combined with trajectory prediction. It's a key component to her 'style', if her 'make do' manner of fighting could even be called a style.
Most of the times she's spot on, but sometimes... when throwing the second one with her right, the intersection isn't quite as she intends, at times just glancing the other ball or missing it all together. "Che," the girl growls, annoyed, pausing after another miss to rub the palm of her right hand with her left thumb. It's still numb from the skewering it took. It's getting better, but it's not quite there yet.
She rests a moment, hand coming up to brush back her hair. Most of it's tied into a pony tail; it better hides the butchering the self-proclaimed Venemous Spider did to it that night, but some of it still drops down against her cheeks and sticks against her skin from perspiration.
For Elle, the arena is like most everything else. It's a tool. There's a lot of uses for it. It draws in the attention of potential investors, makes money, and it's a place where Elle's employees can hone their skills against like minded fighters. If members of her cadre can face off against the nastiest fighters the world has to offer, then the rest of them will fall into place accordingly. Start with the hardest, and work your way up. Elle isn't very merciful. Not to others, not to her own.
Nevertheless, Elle does have a trait that redeems her seemingly galacial indifference: fairness. Elle gives credit when it's earned, distributes kudos when necessary, and rewards successes. Similarly, she seems to be quite lenient when it comes to failure. Her realist attitude may be the only saving grace to her otherwise less than charming personality. Those that recognize that quickly tend to find Elle a fairly easy and simple person tod eal with. Those that can't figure that out find her to be incredibly difficult to understand.
Ayame, to her credit, has figured it out faster than most. Elle has placed her repatedly in the arena for several reasons. Unlike many of the members of Blackjack, the girl technically has the least combat experience. She's the second youngest, just over Aislinn. However, Aislinn was created for the sole purpose of war; Ayame, in contrast, spent most of her time attacking the weak and helpless for scraps. That being the case, exposing Ayame to what she'll be eventually facing on a more important level in a controlled enviornment is definitely one of the reasons Ayame has been the Seventh Circle's star attraction.
The others are simple economics. Ayame fits the demographical appeal of the audience. Young men with too much money and not enough common sense wasting several thousand dollars to see an eighteen year old girl cause a riot in a bloody arena is a no-brainer. Between that and the disporportionately high female presence in Blackjack, Elle has a fighter to fit every man's taste. This is not entirely by accident.
But the wherewithalls and other reasons that Elle does what she does are all things that take time and study. The quiet, unemotional mercenary leader doesn't talk about many of the things she does, and keeps most things to herself. That being said, she's always looking at everyone else, gatheringinformation and making certain that everything is level.
So her appearanc ein the arena, despite it's empty status, is not that uncommon. She speaks to the engineering crew often, makes sure they're working fine, and develops relationships with them. Though marginally worrisome, her presence seems to cause more releif than panic. Elle's presence is welcome despite her lack of charisma because she seems to /know/ everyone. She takes the time to memorize names, dates, family details, and touches bases with everyone before being pointed out to the young girl who's busy practicing, and is the sole reason the crews can't finish their technical checks. However, they've all been instructed to leave members of the inner circle alone.
So they have.
It's a simple matter of just dismissing them to go home. No major damage was done to the arena. It's illegal; safety checks aren't too high on the list. More importantly, Elle needs to do more checking. And so she does.
She takes the scaffolding up to the catwalks, and lowers herself into the arena, the whir of motors announcing her approach long before her boots ever touch ground. As one of the racquetballs ricochets off the side of the glass walls, Elle catches it with her left hand before bouncing it once experimentally.
"Don't you spend enough time here as it is?' She asks, completely inflectionless and calm as ever.
Ah, the visit from the boss. A most normal day jobs, the last thing anyone wants is a chat with their employer. No news is good news tends to be the mantra, as cubical workers around the world are accustomed to only being talked to when there's a problem while their successes go largely unrewarded and rarely recognized.
This is no normal day job. And Elle is no normal boss. Ayame's last employers left her alone. She had a lab all to herself. A chance to invent, to tinker, and to pass her creations on up the chain. They wanted her brain, nothing more. She wasn't a person. Just a very smart computer for all they cared. She was okay with that arrangement. Her work with Blackjack is different.
"Or maybe not enough," she remarks, catching the next rebounding ball in the palm of her hand, turning around to face Elle, having not stopped the regimen until the left had lowered the faction leader down to the arena floor. There stands one of the only people the free spirited bandit has ever come to respect. She doesn't patronize her and she doesn't talk down to her. She says what's on her mind, gives the assignments, and moves on. Usually.
The ball is dropped back into the bucket at her side. There's a number of them scattered around the floor. She'll pick them up when she's done of course. "Need me to fill in tonight?" she asks, left hand coming to rest at her hip. She wasn't scheduled for anything for the night to the best of her knowledge. But plans change, people back out, or sometimes Elle or Marise deem that a touch more chaos needs to be added to the event. And that's where Ayame steps in.
"Just practicing," she remarks, glancing back toward the wall where she had been bouncing the balls. Her arms ache now though and her muscles groan for a break. Being gifted only gets one so far in life. There's countless useless geniuses in the world. After a certain point there's no replacement for practice.
"That soldier boy was fast." she remarks, looking toward Elle once more. "Faster than me." In her mind she plays back the blindingly fast exchange of airborn blades between the two. She came out unscathed by his two flying knives, but Nassir was able to knock hers out of the air right after she had knocked one of his down... the timing to accomplish that is no where near shy of miraculous. She beat him. But she surprised him a lot. Faced with the same match again, she suspects things wouldn't quite go so easily for her. But that isn't REALLY who's on her mind as she practices. There's another that she's training for. A certain ex burglar himself. But she isn't going to mention her personal vendetta to Elle. The rational-minded woman might consider it bad for business to have employees seeking revenge against fighters on the side after all...
"So how's business? This big production been worth it?" she asks easily enough with an upward nod to indicate the casino in general.
Elle shrugs, pulling out a stick of gum from one of the pouches on her belt before proffering one to Ayame. If she takes one or not, she pops the candy coated chewing gum into her mouth, biting down on it with a crunch to get rid of the onion taste still in her mouth from lunch. "Too early to tell," is her response after mulling over the gum for a moment.
"We've only been up and running for a couple of months. I haven't seen all the numbers yet. The outlook is good. The operations in general are a no-brainer. People come in, lose money, leave. If you mean the arena? That's different. Depends on Marise. So far, she's shown a lot of interest. But she's not entirely reliable. Tends to disappear for long periods of time every so often. So we'll see."
And that's in in a nutshell. The minor details aren't anything even vaguely fascinating to anyone but her, and Elle's not obnoxious enough to bombard anyone with terms like 'reallocation of capital investment' and 'portfolio diversification'.
She does, however, have a few choice words to say about her previous opponent. "Nassir's not normal," Elle says matter-of-factly. "He's one of the few loyal USPL soldiers still left. Sure, he's smart and fast, but what powers him is his fanatical devotion to Rolento and his terrorist army." She chews thoughtfully, dredging up the information she has on the boy. "The fact that he was here last night and still flying the colors of USPL, coupled with the group's organization at the tail end of Jinchuu suggests that Rolento might be makign a comeback. it's hard to say; USPL has always been one of the fringe groups. Needless to say, if you ever deal with Nassir, you're dealing with someone that beleives that Rolento, a man who armed a nuke in the middle of Metro City, is an emissary of peace and prosperity."
And with that, Elle turns an index finger by her temple too indicate the universal sign of someone that's not exacly operating with all his gears turning properly. Elle may be largely ambivelant about everything around her, but even she knows a crackpot shen she sees it.
"Don't sweat it, though. Nassir's got some tricks up his sleeve and military training, but he's about as creative as a paint-by-numbers set. A hammer's good for pounding nails. Don't expect it to tighten any bolts or fasten any scres, you know what I mean?" Elle tosses the racquetball from one hand to anothe as she speaks.
"You can't dwell ont he people you fight. Obsession is the fastest way to getting canned. Make no mistake: there's a few people I'd be greasing right now if I thought that it'd be a good idea to do so. Revenge just isn't ever a good reason. If you're going to make someone feel pain, make sure you turn a profit out of it at the same time, right?"
The stick of gum is accepted readily. In the back of her mind she ponders how chewing gum in a fight might affect the reaction she gets from her opponents. There's a certain disrespectful apathy associated with the practice. It might push a button with an uptight foe. Hmn. The thought is tucked aside as she begins to chew away, listening to Elle with just the right level of interest to make it clear that she's not bored and that she's definitely listening.
The Casino is working. It's a nice, steady generator of income for the guild of mercenaries. Something to help bankroll things between missions from the big spenders in the world. Ayame is just glad to know that she'll keep getting paid for doing the things she does. Elle'se remarks on Marise are pondered. The creepy woman is an enigma to the girl. She knows nothing of her but she hasn't sought to solve that gap in her knowledge either. In fact, all in all, she interacts very little with the people of Blackjack outside of missions. She's not a people person.
More interesting are the details Elle provides about Nassir. USPL, Jinchuu, the Metro City incident a few years back... All of those events are noted, the dots connected, facts filed away in that hard disk of a brain of hers. She's never demonstrated the accuracy of her memory to Elle. It's a little thing she keeps to herself. A history of paranoia has her keep the extent of her talents somewhat left unknown to others.
"Nn," she nods at the summary of Nassir's talents, loyalties, fanaticisms. But then Elle switches oh so smoothly to another topic of greater importance. The transition is smooth enough that Ayame has no reason to think that it's just a coincidence at first. Elle isn't a mind-reader, right? How could she know of the vengeance the girl had been nursing in her heart since the night the spider left his mark in her stomach?
The circles and eight leg cuts healed with time and medical care, but the memory of them never will. That's the other side of having perfect recollection. She never forgets. Never forgives. Time will /not/ dull the feelings she experienced the night he pinned her hands to the floor. The way her eyes narrow just a fraction might imply a bit of suspicion at what Elle is getting at.
Obsession... there's definitely that going on in the confines of her mind. Revenge. The desire to make him hurt like he made her. To cut him deeper than any knife could. Her mouth tightens a little until Ayame focuses on the last of Elle's words. "I-" she starts, about to say she isn't really sure what the woman is getting at. To try and brush aside the topic. To keep hidden the harbored schemes of revenge.
But she cuts herself off, looking a bit put out in the process. Not falling back on the easy road of lying and deception doesn't come naturally to the girl. It takes effort. More effort than a lot of what she can do. But when speaking to Elle? She has no idea what Elle is capable of. Maybe she really is a mind reader. "...I want to get back at that Aranha boy..." comes the admission. "I shouldn't have lost. But he shouldn't have..." Her right hand tightens, slowly healing nerves tingling, a constant reminder of a moment she'll never forget. "...Well, he just shouldn't have." She leaves it at that.
"No, he shouldn't," is Elle's iron-hearted reply. They're not words of sympathy or empathy. Elle has very little of that to give. They're stone cold, matter-of-fact assertions of a truth. "There's ruthlessness. There's heartlessness. There's even viciousness. In short, you can be focused, indifferent, or just plain cruel. All three attitudes are valid attitudes to take in getting a job done."
Then there's a pause as Elle shifts the gum from one side of her mouth to the other. "But... what there's no room for is obsession."
"I don't know what you did to him. You clearly did /something/. I don't care what, mind you, so you don't have to tell me if you raped his grandmother with a plumber's snake or whatever. But he was clearly gunning for you. Obsessing about you. That poor bitch thought about you so much, he decided to carve you up like a ham and chop off some of your hair," she says just before spitting the gum into the wrapper and crinkling it up. "That's not the sign of a healthy mind."
She sniffs, looking around for a place to toss her trash. "But tit for tat, right? You want to get him back? Make him suffer? That's fine. Your perogative. But let me give you some advice. I used to think about revenge a lot. What ended up happening was a lot of broken bones and tears. Even if you think you outclass that little dickhole in skill and talent, doing nothing but thinking about what he did to you is going to screw your judgment up. Count on it."
But that's not all. Tossing the gum into one of the drainage gutters, Elle does append her statement. "That being said, if you go gunning for an opponent like that, you can't make any mistakes. For example, let's take you. He got stupid and decided to write hin name on you with a pointy object. What happened then? You got pissed at him. You're stronger, smarter, and probably faster than him. So, overall," Elle says, shrugging, "He made a stupendously dumb decision. Probably the worst one he could have ever made."
"Now, before you go grinning ear to ear," comes the disclaimer, "there's a caveat to all that. Aranha made a bad choice. He got lucky against a superior opponent, i.e. you, and now you plan to rip him a new asshole. Fine. But there's the matter of establishing a pattern. You beat him up because he hurt you, and then what? The next guy that trashes ou might not exactly be a misrable mess like Aranha. Then what are you going to do? Keep hunting him down until you finally manage to eke out a win, and then start the cycle all over?"
The mercenary waves a hand dismissively. "Let me simplify this. Revenge is always bad. If you want to do it, make sure that what you do is definative. Don't leave loose ends hanging. And learn when to exact it and when not to. Pick and choose who you whack carefully. The last thing you need is a mob of people bent on tossing shit back a you."
She recalls the words he spoke when he had her pinned down at last, legs bound, unable to fight back. He said himself he had thought about their previous enouncter over and over. Thought long and hard what he would do when he got his chance at revenge. Obsession. Elle calls it on the mark.
And in the back of Ayame's mind the same pattern was repeating. How to get back. How to hurt him worse than he hurt her. How to ruin him, break whatever he has for a soul, and kick him to the curb a shattered man. She nods as Elle speaks of getting back at him. Of making him suffer. But then comes the advice about revenge from someone who's been there and Ayame remains perfectly still.
Elle has been crossed before, she realizes. Of course she has. No one gets to where she has in life without having experienced it. Not in the layer of the world the young woman has carved out her place, piece by painful piece. Beware the impact it has on judgement.
Elle speaks from experience. Ayame's mind rebels with its inexperience... If the advice were coming from anyone else... /anyone/ else, she would be smiling and nodding, waiting for the lecture to end so she could get this over with, giving the lecturer whatever perfectly amicable expression she had deemed would be best to get rid of them the fastest.
Coming from Elle though? She's annoyed, because she isn't hearing what she wants to hear. She wants to be told to go for it and don't sweat the small stuff. That's how she's always lived, after all. Not fretting about the unimportant details, making things up as she goes, even in the way she fights, no concern for the future beyond the next minute. But that's not what Elle's telling her. Instead she's pointing out how Ayame is acting very much like Aranha did before their fated duel. It drove him to fight well. Of that she's certain. But it also made him take a step over a line that she intends to make him pay for. That part was the mistake. One born of obsessing with revenge. The point is made, even if Ayame isn't entirely convinced yet.
"What about you?" comes the question in return, right arm trembling, her fist clenched white-knuckle tight. "How do you keep someone from doing that to you? If you don't make an example out of the first, what's to stop the next from doing the same thing again?" She lifts her fist, holding it in front of her, gritting her teeth, jaw clenched, a rare display of anger surfacing. Real anger. Not the fake emotions she tosses around to manipulate or fool.
"I want to make it perfectly clear that /No One/ will get away with humiliating me like that again," the girl growls. "If I do nothing..." Her tone softens, her arm lowering, the trembling in the limb subsiding a little. Her eyebrow quivers as she bows her head, seething in silence for a moment.
Elle pauses for a moment, and then suddenly looks very tired. Without fanfare, she removes the armor she wears, the leather inlaid with thin sheets of durable plastic and metal rivets slid down one arm to give Ayame a peek at precicely what stupid decision sin life gets you.
Elle is elaborately tattooed down her left arm and shoulder, an asiatic dragon emerging from clouds that start at the scapula and twists around the arm, hit's mouth open at her wrist, as if 'exhaling' her hand. That's the most eye catching thing. But that's not the half of it.
By her collarbone is a nasty, jagged discoloration. "Zero." A mark marring the skin along her ribcage. "Tony Styles." A burn mark just above it. "Igniz." Her hand moves her hair away from her forehead, making a series of spiderwebbing blood vessels beneath the snow white hair. "Vega." Puncture wounds that are slowly healing by her other shoulder. "Katana." Scoring along the other side of her body. "Some guy hit me with a god damn harpoon." Darkened skin by the base of her neck. "Clark Steel." The glasses are removed to reveal the terrible scarring across her face. "Vice."
The jacket is slid back along her shoulders and the glasses replaced. "And that's just without getting indecent," is the wry comment. "The point is, you're going to get humiliated. Over and over and over again. There's always going to be someone out there that's going to kick your ass and laugh about it. that's just how life is."
She takes a ddep bretah, and rolls her shoulders, adjusting her outfit by brushing it out. "If you make an example of the first guy, you prove to the world that you're willing to explode at the slightest provocation. Let him sit. Sweat. Stew. He didn't kill you. Aranha's entire existance revolves around being paranoid, worried that someone he's wronged is going to jump out and eat him. So much, perhaps, that maybe someone that doesn't even care about him is going to be the one to whack him."
"Making things clear to others is a fine way to get around in life. But not like this," she says, her hands falling to her sides. "I get angry, too. But acting out on that is always when I make my worst decisions. Granted, I have about ten backups in place when I screw up. Failing for me doesn't have me falling too far. You, on the other hand, don't have the same options I do. But, you have me as an option."
"The point is, no. Taking shit from people isn't fun. I don't do it if I don't have to. I'm not even saying that you shouldn't make the miserable asshole pay for what he did someday. But obsessing about it isn't the way to do it. Not by a long shot. If you want to take him down, you do it on your terms. How you want hit, when you want it, for as long as it takes. Not because you're angry and want to punish him now. The more time you spend thinking about how he needs to suffer, the less time you're worried about other things."
A pause. "Like keeping yourself from sufering."
Wordlessly the armor jacket is removed and Ayame lifts her head, eyes focusing on Elle. The tattoo draws her attention at first, brown eyes focusing on the details with what may seem like a cursory inspection to those but is more than enough for her to commit the image to memory. So fixated on the intricate artwork, she is slow to notice what Elle really wants her to see. Evidence of past encounters.
One by one Elle points and Ayame looks. A saga of injury written out in Elle's flesh tells a story few would ever know. So that's life, huh? Life sucks. But some reason... it's so very hard to give up on all the same. It's true, he didn't kill her. The nerve damage will recover in time. Hair will grow back. But the feeling of helplessness... that won't fade. The thought of going through that again at the whim of whoever else is capable of besting her... It makes her question the point of it all.
Let him stew. Worry. Go on obsessing? It's almost a passive revenge through inaction. A mind game. At last Elle is getting through in a way Ayame can understand. She's no stranger to mental manipulation. "Nn," comes the neutral acknowledgement, her lips still pursed tightly as she tries to digest everything.
Her terms. Her time. Patience. Someday. The future. Her mind wrestles with the foreign concept of lying in wait, not acting on the spur of the moment. Her mouth trembles but in the end she nods ever so slightly. She isn't a stupid girl. Not the wisest tool in the shed, but Elle makes a very convincing case on an intellectual level, calling out to that detached, material, profit-centric side that normally dominates Ayame's actions.
Her right hand unclenches, shoulders slouching slightly as she finally nods just slightly. Her eyes focus on Elle, mentally overlaying the series of reminders from past fights she was just shown. The road to success is a bumpy one. Traversing it without picking up some bruises is a task for superman perhaps, but for the rest of folks, it seems the only choice is to mitigate the suffering inherent with that so called game of life.
"All right." Her voice is subdued. She isn't a girl easily convinced, and she's not all together sane. But in the face of everything Elle has taught her it seems she can be swayed. She glances to the side, the two sides of her mind wrestling for dominance. It isn't an easy fight. But in the end, "You're right." She stares back up at the taller woman, eyes unusually expressive for the girl many might think has never had a legitimate expression on her face in years. "You're right." she repeats.
Elle doesn't respond immediately. It's not so much her being right as it is forcing the correct circumstances necessary to not make mistakes. In effect, she's not so much 'right' as she is a person that make certain she she just isn't wrong. However it's looked at, she's more interested in keeping Ayame from committing egregious errors. After all, valuable people are hard to come by. Letting them commit suicide by jumping without looking is usually unfavorable
"Right, wrong. I'm not /dead/. That's the important thing," Elle says, "and I'm not very excited about the prospect of having to replace you. I've told everyone that works for me at least once that I don't like losing people because finding new ones is a pain in the ass and takes too long."
Her hands fix her mussed hair. "Now, as far as that kid goes, he's a theif, although I've never heard of him pulling off a heist worth mentioning. So that means he's still a petty thug. He's been pretty active lately. He might have someone he works with regularly. I have no idea if he's getting paid, or if he's still hustling or just flat out robbing folks. What I do know is that his little 'Human Spider' act or whatever that he pulled on you doesn't really pass muster when he's put under real pressure. I went and had a chat with him a few days ago. Turns out he talks a big game when he's winning. Not so much when he gets a hole punched clean through his body."
The mercenary continues, "But I don't like to make too many assumptions off one fight. I figure I'd give him a second shot. I think maybe the Itsy Bitsy Spider comes out when he feels scared, threatened, or in danger. So I took the liberty of jacking his sister and bringing her here so you can have another crack at the son of a bitch. I want to see if he pulls the same stunt, or if he just folds like a wet paper towel this time around now that I have his sister hanging upside down over a spike pit or whatever nonsense Marise has cooked up for next week."
Ayame smiles just ever so faintly. Well, it's nice to be useful. Recognized for her utility at least. It's better than she's gotten most of her life when everyone wanted to make her into something she wasn't. But then comes information about Aranha Ayame didn't know. That he was a thief of some kind she had figured out when she invaded his home and saw his tools. Small timer though, perhaps. He seemed too young to be 'retired', as much as anyone can retire from that particular profession.
Then Elle mentions the friendly visit she had with him and Ayame's eyes widen slightly. That's an interesting revelation with interesting implications. But it keeps getting more interesting from there. Elle seems invested in seeing what layers exist to the human spider, going so far as to set up a second fight with rather severe implications!
Ayame is quiet, more time to digest all of this. Another crack at Aranha in the arena, hmn? It's a gamble. She knows the risks anyone takes by stepping foot in there. He didn't kill her last time. What about next time? Especially with his sister dangling over something unpleasant? On the other hand, it's another crack at the young man.
"He'll have a hard time pulling the same stunt when I'm finished with him," the girl states with a dismissive shrug. Nervous about being in the pit with the young man who carved her up? Not much at all, it would seem. Her hand comes up to rest against her lip, fingers rubbing thoughtfully as she looks at Elle again, brow furrowed a bit.
"What for?" She means all of it. The visit. The kidnapping. The rematch. The grueling test. Is it simply the profit that marketing up a good old fashioned grudge match will bring in? Let the audience wager on which of the two reprobates comes out of it alive? Probably make a killing that night, admittedly, but...
"Aranha's a desperate person," is the reply as Elle turns to keep moving. "And I don't know what he's doing, and I don't know why he's still doing it. He didn't learn his lesson the first time I beat the hell out of him and told him to get out of the business. I guess what I told him didn't get driven home hard enough."
She starts to step towards the lift, her boots claning onto the metal structure as she finds the button to send it back upwards again. "If he really, really wants to be in the same pool as the rest of us, he'd better learn how to tread water. Pulling the stunt he pulled with you is a very, very fast way to die and odds are if it wasn't for the chat we just had? He'd probably be dead tomorrow. Call it altruism. I just want him to learn how to be a professional for everyone's sake before he gets someone killed unecessarily. At best, it scares him straight and he goes and focuses one something else. At worst? Well, he dies. Good for me. Good for you."
The lift starts to ascend, and she considers Aranha's fate one last time before moving on with her thoughts. "Or maybe it's because I really don't want to see another person who's basically a decent human being go down the same path I did. There's already one of me. The world doesn't need two, eh? Just killing the competition before it starts. Don't practice too hard." She states as she heads towards the rafters, leaving Ayame with her thoughts.
Ayame is quiet as Elle moves toward the lift. Absorbing her statements with rapt attention. There's a lot to consider in everything the woman says. She doesn't fling words idly. To Elle, her reasoning may be simple and clear, but Ayame finds that she moves in mysterious ways. But one thing she is sure of though - When Elle acts it's because she has a damn good reason to. And that's not an idle point to consider.
"Hn," Ayame replies. Altruism is practically a bad word in her vocabulary. That it exists at all in Elle's comes as a bit of a surprise. "We'll see," she remarks, her tone very neutral. Her /own/ interests in Aranha are not altruistic by any stretch of the imagination...
The lift begins to rise and Elle offers her final thoughts, Ayame left to ponder the meaning behind it all. Don't practice too hard, she advised. "Almost done for today," she replies back, her smile thin.
Bending down, she lazily pulls up another rubber ball and flings it toward the wall. That one doesn't get to rebound though, as it's trajectory comes to an abrupt end as a kunai thrown right after it skewers it in place on the wall.
"We'll see."
Log created on 00:01:20 12/03/2007 by Ayame, and last modified on 13:07:26 12/03/2007.