Description: Ayame returns from her most recent SNF fight much worse for wear, just in time to report on the match to her employer. And discovering she most seriously did not wish to know the circumstances of her latest victim, Stasya. What crucial information does Ayame tell the Devil? What information did she withhold? Can the brave Russian withstand the Devil's cruelty for much longer? What defiant words does the girl spit in Marise's face? ...And what does she pay for them? Find out as the Devil's experiments begin to come to a close..
Blackjack's youngest member had always known that there were lower levels to the Capital 7 Casino.
The Casino, itself, is structured not unlike Hell itself as described by Dante. A layer for every vice. Every sin against man has a place here. A strata for greed, a strata for lust.
Most assuredly a layer for violence. The Seventh Circle's name was not random. Ayame has become quite the rising starlet in this most bloody level.
But there are other places. Deeper places beneath even this already obscure and underground region. For most, there's hardly any reason to visit any lower than the fighting arena unless one was in janitorial services or maintenance.
There have been rumors, however. Rumors that the deep places of this massive establishment are haunted.
Strange noises. Half-heard whispers and feelings of dread..
Things which Ayame can feel right this moment as she stands at the end of a maintenance tunnel beneath the fighting pit. This cold, concrete-wrought corridor smells of mold and worse. The sound of liquid passing through the pipes lining the low-slung ceiling above creates a sense of standing inside of some artificial, living creature.
To say nothing of the breeze stirring the girl's locks gently, moaning throughout the labyrinthine maze that stretches into the darkness as far as the eye can see in either direction beyond this door.
The Devil called for her the moment the fallen Miko's boat returned to harbor, barely giving her time to rest and dress her wounds. Even more bizzare, the Devil had never given directions to anyone to come down to this particular level of the Casino. At least not in Ayame's recollection.
As the door to the room within slowly opens.. It becomes immediately evident why.
"Ah.." The Devil's lilting voice fills the darkened room. The concrete enshrined area looks for all the world like a medieval dungeon hastily converted into a former-century era examination room. The dark woman's back is currently turned towards the door, hunched over a long medical gurney currently occupied by one very familiar girl in a great deal of distress.
While Marise's own shadow obscures much of the scene before her, its clear the girl is strapped to the iron-wrought gurney in several places wearing little more than a torn hospital gown. The sounds of clicking metal and stench of blood leave far too much to the imagination as the Devil lifts a hand over her shoulder.
A pale hand splattered in crimson, "..Good good. We've been waiting for you, dear. Please.. do come in.."
As the hand lowers again to pick up another slender, steel sliver in a blood-splattered tray and return to her hidden business somewhere on Stasya's middle.
Several other such splinters have been artfully inserted into several dozen places along the Russian's body like some form of demented acupuncture as designed by Cenobites. Each insertion slightly purplish in the surrounding area, as the large needles have clearly been tipped in some manner of poison.. Making the process far less painless than it otherwise would be.
And it already looks uncomfortable.
The young street rogue turned mercenary pauses at the door for a long moment, brown eye taking everything in as best she can. Her other eye is still swollen shut, courtesy of a very bad beating about the head administered by a particular Gedo youth. Looking fairly miserable over all, her nose is bandaged up with supports, only adding to the discomfort she's feeling since her match. All she wants to do is collapse and sleep for a week in hopes that on the other end of such a long reprieve she won't feel like she's in hell.
The pleasant decor of Marise's deepest unholy sanctum is not helping things in the slightest. Ayame takes Marise in quickly, eye focusing on the raised hand, marred by the blood of another. Closing her eye and exhaling slowly, she steps into the chamber, approaching the back of the devil lady. She had told Tenma he would never want to know what it is Stasya was going through... and the fact is, /she/ doesn't want to know what Stasya is going through. She had her ideas, of course, after seeing Marise's experiments, albeit aborted early, on the Shadaloo male doll.
She coughs, the sound of an uncomfortable cough in her throat, clasping her hands behind her back. She keeps the woman between her and Stasya, not at all interested in getting a full view of the proceedure in progress. This... part of the opertaion she had no interest in being a participant in. Human anatomy was only something she was aware of to the degree that it helped her fight. She wasn't looking to start doing organ transplants any time soon or anything.
Outside of the rough cough, her mouth remains sealed shut. The bruised lip might have something to do with that though. Besides, if Marise wants her to say something, she'll make that abundantly clear. Until then, Ayame simply 'basks' in the ambience that is the bottom floor of the casino.
By this time, Stasya has long since entered into a vast effort to protect her mind from what is happening to her body. her movements have dimmed to a restless writhe... to an occasional twitch of convulsive motion. Her grey eyes shut, jaw drawn tight, her unresponsiveness arises as much from the concentration necessary for her own struggle to shut out the pain-- both hers, and that sunk into the room around her-- as it does from the pain itself. Preternatural connection to one's own mind is the gift of the psion, after all, and the mind is the source from which all perception of reality flows.
Some are more in tune with their mental happenings than others, even among psions. Some don't even recognize the command they possess over their own minds. But the girl on the table has long since learned her own mastery over feeling and emotion, coming to a clinical realization of her own talents in compartmentalizing and categorizing those quirks of the mind that give rise to human perception. Growing up in a house with parents who possessed any number of different masks has versed her in how to navigate the extremes of human mental complexity: how to protect herself from the doubts and fears what she felt from her parents engendered.
It's taking all of her focus just to endure what's happening to her now... much less to endure the place it's happening in.
For this room, all by itself, is torment enough to the girl's senses. Too much pain and despair have been felt here, and that miasma soaks the place. The fact that even normal people could feel that ambience means it is ten times as acute in Stasya's senses. She's long since become unable to distinguish the pain of the others from her own; and she struggles to pack it all up and somehow shut it all out. In the prison of her mind, she holds a barricade against the fear and pain and exhausting resignation that threatens to tide over conscious thought.
For the time being, she says nothing, all her concentration taken up with trying to retain her sanity. But as Marise pauses in her work, Stasya cracks a single eye open, a fluttering twitch of the brow accompanying the labored movement, and watches her surroundings with an unseeing and unearthly silence.
"Mmmn.." The Devil's head tilts just a fraction as she catches the sound of Ayame's uncomfortable cough. Marise's inhuman, gold eyes do not stray from her delicate and careful work, however. "My.." The creature muses to herself, "I was going to ask how your ...Ah.. 'Saturday Night Fight'-" Spoken with palpable derision, "-had gone. However, from the sound of things I presume it did not go well against Herr Bernstein.. Yes?" A soft, self-amused chuckle from the depths of her throat as she slowly inserts yet another poison needle at a point along Stasya's stomach.
Outwardly it may seem like simple torture, but there is a darkly clinical purpose at work here. The tainted poison swirls the girl's inner Chi, as dismally poor as it is, giving her insight into the delicate structures within. The Kinmagan perceives the eddies and whorls of energies beneath the surface, allowing the Devil to archive these things very carefully.
They will be useful later when she's ready to begin the experimental procedure upon this disposable specimen. While, at first, the Blonde was wonderfully resistant and filled with much delicious agonized squirming, Marise would reluctantly admit she is actually getting her work done much more quickly now that she's settled in and achieved a certain limbo. Typically, the Devil would try to snap the girl out of it and force reality back down her throat, but as much ire as the little psion managed to evoke in her.. This is business first. Pleasure.. perhaps later.
"You were teamed with a young buffoon named Kiryuu, yess?" The Devil calmly reaches forth a bloodied hand to cup Stasya's chin, twisting the girl's face over and force the young girl's cracked gaze to fix upon the youngest Blackjack behind the seated Ghost, "By all means. Tell us how well he performed at your side.. I am most, most curious. As I am sure this wretched thing would enjoy hearing what the German Heir did to her schoolyard friend as well, hrmm?"
"And .. If you would.. give us details, yes?" The Devil further muses as her other hand releases the needle to lift a simple fountain pen.
A pen which, disgustingly, the Devil actually dabbles in a small pool of the Russian's blood. Ever so casually using the freshened 'ink' to extend flowing Kanji script along a simple notebook page. Meticulously charting and enumerating every point location for future digestion. While the Devil seems distracted, she is most certainly paying attention.
She'd like to know what sort of warrior the thrice-cursed Kiryuu Clan has produced in this modern age...
Ayame nods, silently, even though Marise isn't facing her, her mouth still shut as the woman speaks. Her good eye glances toward Stasya as Marise manipulate's the girl's face like a doll before she averts her attention to the side, focused instead on the dark woman's strange hair. But a request has been made, one she must comply with. No waiting for seconds to pass is going to get her out of this one.
"Well," the girl finally speaks up since the first time since she arrived. And perhaps the cause for her laconic presence becomes more clear, her voice raspy, rough. A direct slam from a certain chi laced bokken to her windpipe is going to take some time to recover from, unfortunately.
"The fight broke down. I think," she continues, her voice forced, straining to speak against the uncomfortable ache in her throat, "I might have pushed his buttons too far - the Kiryuu boy, that is."
Hands become clasped behind her back as she continues, "I thought he was made of tougher stuff, that he could handle a little provoking just like any other fighter, but... well, he had a tantrum and the rest of the scheduled fight broke apart." She sighs softly, "Adelheid was well on his way to crushing that guy before he turned on me anyway. Maybe that's part of what caused him to do it - desperation after getting struck by a particularly powerful technique... I believe his father calls it the Genocide Cutter?"
She coughs again, struggling to clear her throat even though she knows a simple cough isn't going to improve things much. "His performance was unimpressive, to say the least... but for how things broke down it was quickly becoming clear that I was going to have to carry the fight. But his betrayal caught me off guard. I-... I should have seen it coming." One hand comes up from behind her back to rest over her swollen eye, Ayame bowing her head slightly.
"I guess some people just can't take the pressure... It's just some dumb fight, but..." She half shrugs, brown eye glancing back up toward Marise then straying, briefly, toward Stasya. What IS it the foul creature is trying to figure out, anyway? Ayame has had little to do with her research... she simply drops 'them' off, gets paid, and stays as far away from this hell hole as possible. Everything about her account matches perfectly with what one would have seen on the camera. The two less known fighters taking on the German tyrant's son only for Tenma to turn, screaming something, and attack Ayame instead. Perhaps after one of her 'oh so helpful' comments about how he could be doing better...
The rest of the tape would have shown the bokken weilding boy beating the girl down as Adelheid simply watched, culminating with a vicious strike for her throat after she was already clearly beaten. It's a miracle they aired it at all. No doubt they played it up as the pirates just acting like the backstabbing bastards pirates are...
All told, Stasya has been a disappointing specimen on which to work in terms of explosive dramatics. The child of cold, emotionally complex parents, Stasya grew up controlled and cold herself, her warmer emotions only a result of the girl clinically observing how other people acted. Resistance had been present in spades in the first stages before the needles went in, the girl exerting all her strength in attempts to break her bonds, or else kill her captor; but once the 'treatment' began... the girl seemed to shut down. Her agonized reactions were less than one would expect. The dramatic thrashings of pain which might have characterized a different victim were largely absent here, the girl convulsing a shudder with each needle... but essaying precious little response else, sinking soon afterwards into her present tensed and glazed lack of motion.
She has always been one to retreat into her own mind: to protect herself by withdrawing into hiding silences and frozen stillness. For the longest time, she thought she had to hide all she felt from her own parents, for fear of what they -were-; to repress all she feels is a familiar thing to her. Perhaps she intends to try and weather this 'session,' to save her strength-- to somehow deliberate, even in this place where all seems impossible and escape seems out of reach. Always a rational person, Stasya refuses to let herself sink into such an emotional panic she becomes too terrified to try to figure SOME way out.
No, that break will come later... if she is left here long enough.
The girl's head is turned without incident. Her grey eyes settle on Ayame without really seeing her. They keep watching Ayame even as the other girl wrenches her gaze aside. There is no accusing look there-- but only because there is not enough strength or focus in Stasya to spare for either that emotion, or the pity she also would feel for Ayame under better circumstances, to be expressed. But at the mention of Tenma, those grey eyes abruptly sharpen. Stasya's focus drops. A gasped cry tears her throat as her body convulses, her trancelike concentration shattering and letting all the pain flood in. Blood traces from the side of her mouth where she bites through her lip shutting her jaw on her sob of pain, a shuddering sound hissing out of her as all that sensation comes flooding back in an instant.
Through all that shuddering, twitching pain, Stasya finds enough cognitive power to actually form words. "Shut up..." Stasya hisses in a strangled sound, her wracked eyes now fixed with full, agonized anger on Ayame and Marise alike, "...about Tenma. Leave him alone..." And her voice dissolves. The concentration necessary to speak a non-native tongue gone, she trails away into a long and agonized string of foul language peculiar to the Russian criminal, the ugly euphemisms doubtless something she picked up from her parents' 'friends' over the years.
Hnnnn.
While the Devil never pays direct attention to the girl, the monster's silence implies how carefully she's listening and performing her surgical duties. The Ghost's hair shifts occasionally. Pale fingers returning to view only to acquire yet another poisonous needle.. Only to jot down another series of notes moments later.
Yes, hrm. Yes. This is as Marise figured. It sounds like everything she's heard of the Gedo children. Brawling idiots with deficiency of power matched only in their shortness of temper. Shrieking at provocations by Ayame makes sense to the Devil. After all, she has seen it herself many times in the arena.
Watching grown men breaking down in fits of rage at the girl's jeering, embracing their doom mere moments later when all strategy is thrown to the winds. The Thief has the method down to an art-form, that this 'Tenma' fell for it is no surprise.
"I see.." The Devil muses to herself. Hmph. And here she was, worried. If this is the best the Kiryuu can produce.. She has nothing to worry about from them.
Seemingly processing this information for several silent moments, only when the quiet begins to be uncomfortable does Marise add, "Very well then. Hmm.." A moment of consideration, tapping the tip of a needle on the metal bar of the gurney, "..The 'Genocide Cutter'.. is it? Keh! .. A lovely name. It had another name once.. Long ago."
Slow insertion of the steel sliver, just beneath the shoulder.
"Wonderful people, the Germans." The Devil adds in a conversational tone. It is most rare to ever hear this woman complementing a race other than her own, to say the least. "Very inventive, very practical. They understood the true ways of the world.. Once. The only Europeans I could stomach for long. For instance.."
The Devil's hand returns to Stasya's face. Cupping her cheeks forcefully enough to force the girl to painfully sneer, in the manner of an owner examining the teeth of some beast to be sold at market, "Russians. A pathetic people, really. Their entire concept of warfare was to burn down half of their own country in hopes the Germans would leave them alone!" A bemused snicker, striking enough to pause the creature's works.
"Cowards and fools, all of them. A fitting arch-enemy for a nation of braggarts and thugs." Her blood-speckled hand making a vague circular motion, indicating the very land this dungeon resides within.
"Our country crushed this whelp's on the inside of a few years when we clashed, long ago. Naturally, Americans were helpless against them for decades. Hmph." Bitterly mumbling under-breath as she taps her pen at Stasya's flank a few times before she's just about to return to writing her journal..
When the strangled cry finally manages to escape the Russian's lips, the Devil seems genuinely surprised. The creature had almost begun to despair that she would never have the pleasure of seeing a reaction from this girl. While she had resolved to extract a more.. vigorous response from the girl later, this sudden out burst forces the Devil to arch her eyebrow in mild astonishment. Especially as she spits out the object of her sudden pique of emotion.
"Soooo.. We miss our friends do we? Hmm? So.. The Russian mongrel has feelings for the Kiryuu Heir does she? Keh!" Marise grins with fanged glee as she tilts her head just enough to have Ayame share in the mirth, "..As if a real Japanese boy would care for a foreign sow like you. Besides, don't you worry your pretty golden head, pet."
The Devil looms a bit over Stasya's face, hellish eyes narrowing as she addresses the fellow Blackjack member, "Why don't you tell the Russian precisely how you intend to address that Kiryuu thug's betrayal in the very near future, Ayame dear?"
After all, if Ayame has learned anything from her dealings in the Circle and the Dancing Spider.. One never leaves a vendetta unfulfilled.
When Stasya breaks down, Ayame refuses to look her way, good eye closed as the girl tries to focus on the dull throbbing pain in her head rather than listen to the furiously frustrated captured girl. Leave Tenma alone? Ayame has no problem with that, no interest in ever seeking another annoying Gedo student ever again.
Marise's acount of nations and peoples is absorbed, recorded in the girl's nigh perfect memory even if she doesn't spare the mental bandwidth to discect it all properly let. That can come later, when she's out of this abominable chamber. Only one thought bubbles to the surface of her jumbled mind. 'She speaks as if she lived through those wars of the past...'
But Stasya's outburst brings the entire discourse in full circle as Marise brings things back to the matter of Tenma Kiryuu. Address the betrayal? Ayame's eye blinks back open, the girl staring at the back of The Devil. He had beaten her harshly, even after she had relented. He had called her all manner of foul things. He had threatened her life repeatedly...
But in the aftermath, the girl didn't feel a shread of anger toward the boy. He was furious that something... someone important to him was taken and lashed out accordingly. Even though his tirade was directed at her she couldn't fault him for it. Her right and comes up to rest at her throat, rubbing it gently, mind occupied for a moment by the blunt strike he aimed there when she was on her knees...
Yes, she does owe him something for that. Her mouth curls faintly into a scowl, brown eye focusing back on Stasya as Marise toys with the poor girl's face for her apparent amusement. "Well," the girl croaks, her voice still raspy as before, "I don't think I know enough about him yet to figure out the best way to strike back," she admits. "Gedo trash... most likely he lacks much in the way of things of value, but poverty often breeds a certain attachment to what little they /do/ have..." She exhales softly, sounding exhausted in the sound. "It's simply a matter of finding out what that might be."
She pauses for a moment, eye shifting back toward Marise, "But I'm too busy for that for now. There's still many more to bring you. Dealing with Tenma would just delay things or result in some of them moving outside of my surveillance and I would lose them for good." She dips her head slightly, a length of her long hair slipping down from behind her shoulder, "That is, if you still desire that I collect more for you." A gentle shift in the topic - back to business, less talk of macabre matters such as what Marise is doing to Stasya or what Ayame should be doing to some Gedo kid. Another forced, uncomfortable cough, her hand lowering from her throat as she lifts her bowed head to glance back toward Stasya.
She told Tenma she had no idea what Stasya's fate would be. But one look at the girl and the complete irreverance with which Marise treats her and Ayame no longer has to guess... it's as plain as day what the woman has in mind for her captive.
Stasya finds her tongue. And it's a harsh, severe one, only sharpened by Gedo rudeness. Stasya was rarely slapped on the wrist or restrained over her mouth-- her father had one just as bad, when the mind took him-- and it shows in the sudden virulence she spews as her temper finally, inevitably, suffers a massive breakdown. The trigger? Fear of what they might do to Tenma... fear of her own situation... hatred of the two women standing at her side now, a blind and unreasoning rage.
"Why don't you beat off to your Japanese heritage a little more, aljura, traxalka..." Stasya grits with a sneer, an unusual fluency seizing her words: she has had a lot of exposure to this kind of language in Gedo, after all. "Avtorucit! You remind me of every pathetic person I ever met who wore their palms raw jerking off to their own cultures... of every scrap of white trash I met in America who could not get enough of Oriental mystique. I will remind you what happen to -your- precious country when America fought for dominance of the world with mine; yours was leashed like a dog under American heels, and your plentiful whores serviced American men!"
Stasya coughs a laugh, seizing back against the table. Marise seizes her face and the girl snaps wildly at the contact, biting at the offending hand with a malicious viciousness. If the Russians are all cowards, then Stasya's current behavior must necessarily exclude her from the ethnicity. "I will laugh when your generalizations return to bite you in the shapeless ass..."
She doesn't bother trying to retort Marise's amusement over the fact she has feelings for Tenma. That much is a given, after all. She just snarls a violent note even as she falls back loosely in her restraints, letting her anger and malice out of the dark places she'd put them so they can cloud the overwhelming pain. "You and your stupid cackling..." Stasya eyerolls, blood wicking her bared teeth. "'Keh! Kyaheheh,'" she mocks shrilly, spitting blood on the tail end of her ridicule. She aims pointedly for Marise's clothing. "Japanese whore. Pull your sagging kimono up properly and listen good. I swear to you if you touch him, I will find a way to kill you both."
A soft chuckle disturbing the sickly sweet air, "..Well said." The Devil has to appreciate the girl's calculations. She lacks a certain passion, alas. She'll begrudgingly admit Ayame is more like Miss Elle than herself. But she does tend to.. over-think things. Its all part of her charm.
It wasn't quite the 'I'll flay him limb from limb' the Devil was hoping she'd declare that would get Stasya screeching even more.. However, Ayame commenting on further 'requisitions' does pour cold water on Marise's wicked reverie.
Yes, yes. Business is at hand. Though, there's all the time in the world now.
"Rest for now, Ayame dear." Marise adds then at the culmination of the hoarse girl's offer. The Ghost lifting yet another needle as she starts returning to business, "I believe I am very, very close to uncovering what I need. The samples you've brought should be enough. Between the Russian, that loud boy and Shurui.. This should be enough."
Only then does the Devil bother glancing over her shoulder. Looking upon the wounded girl's puffed and swollen face. With a click of her tongue, Marise slowly shakes her head at what's become of her little lethal lovely, "My my.. You look and sound terrible, dear. Do have the physicians look at you, yes? And be sure to go out and spend a good portion of the bounty you've justly earned once you're feeling better!"
"After all.." The Devil turns her wicked, serpentine gaze to the Russian directly, "..We all need time to 'play'.. Yes?"
And thats when Stasya begins her pain-induced tirade.%TAt first, The Devil's lips spread wider in a gleeful amusement at the girl's impotent rage. Violet-painted lips quirking as her sub-vocalized laughter brims beneath the surface.
....Until, suddenly, all mirth just vanishes from the Devil's expression as if it never existed.
Something in the girl's words touched something. Marise's lithe hand jerks away as Stasya snaps at her fingers like a feral beast unleashed, fingers hovering in the air out of reach as the girl continues with her scathing insults. The air itself drops a single degree in temperature, golden eyes burning as lips press in utter, silent rage.
At the apex of Stasya's defiant challenge, The Devil's hand moves faster than the eye can follow. One moment, her fingers trailed the table beside her.. in the next?
Her clenched fingers -ram- a needle straight into the Russian's prattling mouth. The slender steel piercing silencing the foreigner utterly.
Clawed hands grip either side of the Russian's face as Marise leans down. Her lips spreading apart to reveal row after row of shark-like razored teeth. Her long, black hair rising into the air behind her and slithering through the air like a nest of enraged serpents standing on end. The monstrous woman's eyes glare absolute murder as a wicked hiss that cannot even remotely be human slithers beyond those gleaming fangs, almost daring the youth to say another damn word if she -can-.
"You will not live another day, you motherless maggot. When you're dead I'll kill your friends. I'll kill their families. I WILL KILL YOU ALL."
Cracking voice echoing with unearthly cadence, her breath a visible miasma swirling at the edges of her spittle-flecked lips.
The singular reason why she did not just shove her thumbs through the girl's eyes and eat her throat...
...Is the plan. This girl cannot die here. Not yet.
SOON... But not yet.
Though, for a tense filled moment.. The Devil nearly kills her anyway.
As is, she releases the girl's face as she just begins to get control of herself. Fingers twitching in mad rage like spidery legs as her lips press back into a shape much more resembling the lovely woman she usually resembles. Her hair slowly slides back into place as she slowly takes up her pen once more.
..Now.. Where was she?
Stasya goes off on the two and Ayame falls quiet, looking a little bit indifferent to all the vituperative ranting coming from the girl. Fluent enough to know every Russian swear word that lips from the foreign girl's tongue, Ayame comes across unphased. Making people furious is one of her ways of dealing with others, after all. She's capable of taking it back without much concern as long as the situation is 'under control'. And this situation is VERY much under control. Oh yes, Stasya isn't going anywhere.
What she didn't expect was Marise's reaction, the movement to stab the captive girl's mouth with one of those needles so sudden that Ayame literally staggers backward, arms out at her sides, mouth agape with shock. Did she just... Cringing, Ayame turns her back to the spectacle, closing her eye, swallowing again. The sight of Marise's inhuman hair flaring to life, the dead chill in the room... all she wants is to be away from this entire sight.
Marise swears murder upon everyone Stasya has even so much as heard of, her voice reaching a painful screech that forces the girl to cover her ears until the horrific cadence dies down. Only then does Ayame lower her hands and glance over her shoulder, expecting to see the Russian girl dead - strangled, perhaps, or maybe her neck broken in a fit of the dark creature's rage. That she yet lives comes as a surprise to the girl and serves as an indication of just how close Marise must be getting to her triumph. If she managed to refrain from killing one pesky girl who crossed a line that shouldn't even be approached, she must be really close indeed...
"Then you don't need anymore of them? Should I cease tracking them?" Ayame asks, approaching the door, eager to escape the chamber. Even the deathly tunnels that lead to this room seem inviting in comparison by now. Another cough and clearing of her poor, damaged throat, then the girl looks away. "Very well. If you need me for anything else..." She stops then, eyes shifting back toward Staysa. None of Ayame's machinations had ever gotten someone killed before. She never thought it would bother her, but at the moment she is no longer convinced of that. Dumb girl, Ayame thinks to herself, antagonizing the beast taken human form that is Marise. Maybe it's a desperate attempt to goad her captor into killing her earlier and ending the horror right now. Ayame sighs softly.
"Do you want a list of her friends and relatives?" comes the question. Very clinical, very controlled, only the raspy voice sounding different from Ayame's norm. After all, if Marise is serious about her threats... and when isn't she? What is it exactly she's helping Marise accomplish, though? Ayame begins to wonder; how long before she is deemed no longer useful to The Devil of Koga?
They have Shurui also. For a moment, Stasya gives in to that cold despair all around her and just hangs loose in her bonds, her tensed frame slackening in its place. Was it her fault Shurui was taken? Did the fact she'd mentioned Ayame to her mean she was targeted in specific? A sick feeling wells up in her as she mulls over those doubts, her extant fear only sharpening the bite of those concerns.
But soon enough, she just uses that knowledge-- that they're likely doing the same to Shurui-- as fuel for her enraged attacks. Her temper surges to life as those threats are leveled against Tenma. And Marise's reaction? To put a needle through that eloquent little tongue of Stasya's.
Effectively silenced by that sudden lance, Stasya chokes blood and convulses so hard her shoulders crack audibly against the table. Unable to cry out conventionally, her psionic abilities substitute: a telepathic scream ripping across those mental channels. She isn't allowed to marinate in that added pain for long, however. Marise gets ahold of her, and for a few instants, Stasya gets to see, with her own eyes, the exact source of that disquiet she'd felt from that -thing-, ever since she met it.
She slams back against the table in a reflexive movement, a shudder involuntarily crawling across her skin as the initial shock of that sight sinks in. Her fixed expression twitches, eyes locked on Marise's true, profoundly ugly visage. She stares a few instants, the disgusting terror seeming finally to have gotten through to her... and then, with that violent will that characterizes the members of the Guardian Kings, she pushes past her fear. Her expression coils in a snarl even around that pinning lance.
Unable to make any further sound, her telepathic voice serves as a flawed stand-in: that mind-piercing ability that cannot be shut out or denied. Marise won't hear the furious, desperate words, but Ayame might. 'Hit a fucking nerve, didn't I?! You are not so in control NOW! All you ARE is hate in a withered, ugly shell, and it is rotting you. I FEEL it...' Yes, Stasya is far, far from done. And when Ayame asks the unthinkable, she just refreshes that terrified anger. The girl's attention swivels instantly to Ayame, her head jerking to one side with a splash of blood and a strangled sound of pain.
'Don't you DARE ask that question. Don't you DARE ACT on it,' she assaults in Ayame's general direction, her wide grey eyes swiveled and fixed on Ayame in a manner which unmistakably proves she's yet finding a way to communicate, even if that mouth of hers is pinioned from further venom. 'If you go near anyone I know I WILL KILL YOU. I will find a way to tear your -MIND- apart.' Her wrists strain against her bonds hard enough to grate blood from her abraded skin, her movements... ultimately futile, but made nonetheless.
There lies the difference between Ayame and Marise. A lesson that Ayame must learn about the truth of the world, especially in the company she keeps.
There are those who hurt other people simply because they can. They enjoy it for its own sake, not for fiscal gain or political leverage. Existence is only bearable, when others are made to suffer for the crime of being born. It is not enough for Marise to be in control of a situation.
She must make others hurt. She must make others suffer at all times. Emotionally or physically, sometimes both simultaneously.
As the Devil's outburst winds down, a silent calm takes hold of the room. The absence of that prior, hideous clamor is as intensely profound as its presence. The gentle clink of yet another needle being lifted from the tray holds a potent tension as.. Who knows where Marise may drive that instrument of pain next.
In a bid to keep a lid on the storm of rage surely lurking beneath Marise's skin, she does not mock or antagonize the Russian further. After all, her cards are shown for all to see now. She will kill the girl by tomorrow. And then, once she has spare time, proceed to do precisely what she said. Besides, the spawn of the Kiryuu and Suigetsu were fairly high on her list anyway even if they never even knew it.
As Ayame helpfully chimes in, the Devil somehow manages to refrain from smiling. Not looking back she calmly accepts in a very mild, reserved tone, "For now, cease tracking yes." Sparing her hand from her endeavors long enough to dismissively wave over her shoulder, shooing the girl away. The Devil is tired of talking now, and she does not wish to snap at the helpful girl for the crime of being a living human in her presence right now. At the offer of finding a list, however, the Devil adds, "Aaah. Yes. Yes dear. That would be lovely."
Inhuman eye drifting to the straps at Stasya's wrists, a motion so violent it threatens to tear the triple-threaded nylon restraints and metal clamps holding her firm. For an instant.. Just an instant, the Devil feels a tiny pang of ..concern.. Should the Psion get loose.
But as the now-silenced girl begins to settle once more, that moment of almost-fear brings with it a fresh wave of anger. Anger that reminds her, "...Actually.. Do continue tracking the other potential subjects.." The Devil's voice audibly strained to keep from flaying her precious specimen alive.
"..I'll deal with them all. In the fullness of time.."
Marise hears not a word coming from the freshly silenced girl, but Ayame does. Try as she might, she hasn't found a way to block the voices in her head from those she torments. Everything about psions she has figured out how to manipulate - fool them into seeing her aura differently, conceal her thoughts and intentions from the empathetic senses they commonly possess... but the voices... she can't do anything about those.
She hears Stasya's words for Marise and she just tries to tune them out, speaking calmly to the devilish creature about if she should keep tracking the psycho power users out there or if she should drop the task for now. It is hard, but she manages to ask if she should go track down anyone Stasya knew and provide the murderous fiend with all the information she would need to make good on her threat...
The voice gets louder, screaming now, no longer targetted at Marise but at her. Don't you dare... I will kill you... Ayame winces a little, the pain of the mental assault beginning to build on her. Tear her mind apart, hn? Someone already tried that. Last week. She collapsed intentionally before she would let them so much as harm a single synapse in her brain. But what if she were captured? Passing out deliberately can't always be the answer...
Pausing in the door, the girl glances over her shoulder toward the silently screaming girl. Marise asks her to find the list and the bruised girl nods her head slowly, observing the strength with which Stasya fights back. If she broke free, the fel woman from decades past would be helpless to stop her. Without Ayame there to protect her she would be defeated and no doubt slain, ridding the world of one of its secret horrors. Ayame almost pauses, asking if Marise wishes her to stay near, but in the end keeps her mouth shut.
The woman promises to deal with them all, asking that the strawberry-blonde keep tabs on the other psions she had found. Very well, she can do that... she's good at doing that as she's proven. Stasya's in her mind though, and it's giving her a headache. She tries blocking the Russian's fury but to no avail, single good eye wincing a little, one hand coming up to rest against the door frame for support as she pauses there for a moment longer. 'Don't make threats you won't be alive long enough to carry out.' the girl finally speaks back, answering the hysterical threats with calm, cool, detatched control.
She begins to walk away, her body aching and hurting, her head in agony, her throat sore, her eye throbbing... she needs to lay down. But just before rounding the corner she pauses, glancing back toward Stasya one last time. 'They're coming, you know. Probably to their dooms.' And then she's out of eyesight, disappearing down the hall. She can't get back UP to the Seventh Circle fast enough.
Log created on 22:24:38 03/17/2008 by Marise, and last modified on 15:47:25 03/18/2008.