Description: The heat is on for S.I.N.'s Maya, who has done more than her share of dirty deeds for her employers in the Southtown war. Wisely, she's spending some time at Shadaloo's home base for her own safety. While there, she runs into another of the organization's female operatives, who is dealing with some... critical issues of her own.
The same video that was submitted to the Neo-League's judges for review is playing on the Dolls' television, depicting Cammy in a barely unsuccessful attempt to show up the Emperor and self-proclaimed God of Muay Thai, Adon on the third day of his nation-wide victory celebrations. The television's remote control is in Doll Zero's hand, and right now she seems to be studying a moment in which her nose was broken by a series of downward arcing heel kicks. Studying it over and over and over again through the power of rewind.
Now and again, she presses one of her hands gently to the band-aid stretched across the bridge of her nose as she watches, studious and impassive in her plastic pink chair. She is, of course, in uniform, because sensible clothes are verboten in Shadaloo.
Getting out of Southtown never felt so good as it did when S.I.N.'s 'Maya-san' helped pack up the Shadaloo spinoff's operations and get them the hell out of that warzone. Was Seth happy? Who even knows with that one. But unlike many of the other factions present during the great battle going on in that city, SIN wasn't there to claim territory, nor destroy enemies. The truth is that such conflicts scatter individuals, break communications, and give plenty of opportunities for researchers to perform some truly amazing human subjects experimentation without all that pesky law and order and civilization getting in the way. For Viper, whose REAL job is to figure out what is behind Seth's pet project, BLECE, the various tasks she undertook gave her plenty to start with... they also made SIN plenty of enemies. The people surrounding the YFCC, for one, and Heidern's Ikari Warriors, for two. What frustrates Viper the most, there, is that as "SIN's rising superstar", she's going to have to field all the vitriol from that.
It could really ruin your day.
Deciding that laying low for the time being is in her best interest, the red-haired agent followed the Shadaloo forces back to Point 48106 to regroup, read her notes, and plan her next moves. There's so much to do, after all. And she is literally wandering the halls when she walks by the chamber set aside for Vega's elite assassins, the Dolls... and hears the sounds of a fight. Intrigued, she turns and looks in, leaning against the doorway. For a moment, green eyes widen when she realizes who's watching the tape: Cammy, the Dollest of the Dolls. Deciding to take the opportunity to delve into the Doll project herself a little, she clears her throat, inclining her head at the TV. "So, you fought Captain One-Eye's former training dummy?"
"He proclaimed himself a god," Cammy says softly, her tone carrying a British lilt picked up from one of her many trainers. "Magnificent Lord Vega wished him humbled for being insolent." Beat. "To prove a point to Sagat, as well, I believe." Another beat, and then she tears her eyes from the screen to look sidelong to Maya-san.
"That is is name. 'Sagat'. We do not have any captains named 'One-Eye', Maya-san."
It's hard to keep the sarcastic smirk off her face as Viper continues to lean on the doorframe, one leg extended as a subtle way of discouraging people from entering (or leaving?) the room, arms crossed over her ample chest. The... *youth* of Cammy strikes her, all of a sudden, perhaps because Viper herself is a mother with a daughter who is, technically, older than Cammy, or the clones made by our friends at NESTS. Yet here is this little blonde girl who has the ability to take down and possibly kill some of the strongest fighters in the world. Certainly, even Maya herself would be hard pressed to handle Cammy and would need no small amount of luck to make it happen.
But beyond that is 'Magnificent Lord Vega', and Viper probably saves herself a lot of future trouble by keeping herself from raising an eyebrow at the obeisance. A particularly... irreverent... person herself, Cammy's behavior is beyond alien to the S.I.N. agent, and that information gets filed away for future reference. "Right, right... I forgot. Sarcasm tags required." Standing up straight, Viper enters the room properly and glances at the TV, where Cammy is almost certainly giving Adon a run for his money. She doesn't know the outcome, yet, and thus asks a perfectly innocent question: "So do you think the message was delivered?"
Even without her eyes on the screen, Cammy is still managing to hit rewind then play at just the right times to continue looping the visual of Adon's heel smashing repeatedly into her face and forcing her to the mat of the massive ring that had been set up as the stage for the Emperor of Muay Thai's debaucherous celebrations. In theory, there are /other/ parts of the tape where she's faring better - there are no small few bruises across Adon's upper back and neck visible for a brief moment or two, in fact - but this certainly isn't one of them.
"I don't know," she quite truthfully says, "He continued to talk at me always. To boast. But I nearly beat him all the same." A beat, and then another, and then she returns her eyes to the screen. "It's good that the team was ready to extract me."
For a moment, Viper doesn't say anything; she just turns and watches the TV. Of course, in her position she's got good dossiers on both Sagat and Adon; the former, while perhaps a little OCD, seems to be on the up and up. Why he ended up in an organization like Shadaloo instead of Adon -- by all accounts a sociopathic megalomaniac -- is up for debate, since it seems like the student would fit in with this crew of truly eccentric people considerably better. No matter her opinion of Cammy -- and indeed, Maya has yet to form one on approximately 2 minutes of acquaintance -- seeing someone get kicked in the face so hard is not fun, and the redhead does wince a little bit. More than that, though, is the Jack-at-the-typewriter rewind, play, rewind structure, which is just... unnerving. That, and the unflinching, unblinking gaze Cammy is giving the screen.
Summoning up her typical hauteur and sangfroid, Viper waves a hand dismissively, looking at the TV. "He doesn't strike me as the most complex personality in the universe. Fighting is a big dickwaving competition and so he's probably impossible to shut up in the ring.... especially if it looks like he's winning." A brief shrug, before she continues, giving a 'what can you do?' gesture with the hand she just waved. "I can't tell if it's a psyche out technique or he's just really that much of a loser."
Finally, /finally/ Cammy seems to have tired of her loop, because she allows the video to continue playing. At one point, she is flung bodily out of the ring and into the audience watching the match, which leads to her taking out quite a number of steel folding chairs before coming to a stop. Soon afterwards, though - after vaulting into the ring by smacking her boot into Adon's chin - she can be seen flickering in and out of visibility as she bounces at speeds too fast for the camera's glass eye to track in the course of assaulting the Emperor from every angle. Judging from his steadfastedly enduring the onslaught rather than falling, Viper might have something in the way of an answer as to how legitimate the self-proclaimed god's claims of supremacy are.
"Fighting is a means to an end, Maya-san," Doll Zero says with a slight cant of the head. "I'm not so sure that the waving of things I lack /must/ be involved." She watches in silence for a while with that before finally noting, voice softer and fingers momentarily tight around the remote, "He was not the loser."
Now *that* does make an eyebrow go up. Viper herself takes a utilitarian view toward fighting, one probably interestingly close to Cammy's own. There's a reason that the red-haired woman is using the experiment S.I.N. battlesuit; certainly, she has the talent to be a fighter without it, but she's not hampered by constructs like 'honor' or 'a fair fight' and CERTAINLY not 'practice' or 'training'. That stuff is for people who don't have a Blackberry full of business email to reply to when they get up every morning. The similarity, at least, suddenly strikes her, however. Viper is so rarely confronted with the dispassion of her job, that this external example takes her momentarily by surprise she can't keep hidden.
Recovering, she turns back toward the TV, drawn to it by the change in pattern in the motion as Cammy lets the tape play through to the end. The speed that Cammy displays in the video both astounds and distresses her. After all, the Dolls are Shadaloo's not-so-secret weapon and to see their chief acting at levels that are practically superhuman even by fighter standards does give one pause. But Maya doesn't turn from the TV as she replies to Cammy, either.
"That's because you're a professional," the redhead says evenly. "But it's the people who aren't that you have to watch out for, perhaps. People like Adon aren't exactly hampered by logic." Turning, Viper fixes a careful stare on Cammy, gauging her reaction to the statement that's to follow. "They do plenty of irrational things that can give them an edge. Nothing that can't be overcome, of course," the redhead adds, smirking a little. "But you have to watch for it."
Cammy's arctic-blue eyes are on Viper's as she speaks. She is far less interested in reviewing the other parts of the fight, seemingly, so it's quite a bit easier for her to actually give her attention to the woman speaking to her. Of course, when it's mentioned that people like Adon might have an edge for being who they are - that Adon might have had an edge over her, moreover - they narrow slightly. Not in anger, not even in curiosity, but in pensiveness. Her brow is furrowed, even, and slowly her gaze returns to the television screen.
"Yes," she quietly says after staring silently for a little while. Adelheid Bernstein, who she'd handily overcome, was far less self-absorbed than Adon, certainly, while Blue Mary and Mr. Big who both contributed to her failure in bringing the latter back to base from Geese Tower were not /entirely/ what she would refer to as 'logical'. "I should." Beat. "I must." Another beat, and then abruptly the television is shut off.
Shadaloo's Killer Bee rises from her seat and her boots clack along the floor of the room until she is near enough to Maya to take one of the SIN-operative's hands in her own.
"Skate with me," she softly says, still thoughtfully troubled to the bare extent that she is capable of visibly being such.
What.
To be clear: Viper faced down a rampaging Mike Bison, which is not for the faint of heart. She fought alongside a BLECE-crazed Leona Heidern who looked like she was out for blood. Her boss is a big white muscle man with a magic 8-ball for an abdomen and she doesn't even blink an eye. Her nickname in the business is "Miss Perfect" thanks to her crisp, never ruffled demeanor. Normal Shadaloo grunts are wary of her; SIN operatives live in a combination of fear and awe. She does it all with a wry smile and perfect poise.
Then she is asked, by one of the world's most powerful assassins and the personal retainer of one of Earth's strongest and most influential crime lords, if she would go rollerskating.
There is a moment of terrible silence while Viper just LOOKS at Cammy, unable to even take her hand back, face unreadably blank, before it all comes crashing down and she just starts laughing. Not exactly a cackle or anything; even Viper's wildest laughter is pretty reserved. But it is obvious that she finds the entire question pretty funny. It's only when she's had a second to work through it -- and the sound of her own laughter echoes back to her with the metallic ring that the base's walls add to it -- that she stops, and uses the hand Cammy is gripping to pat the Killer Bee on the shoulder. "I'll have to pass, but thank you for the invitation."
Even now, though, the analytic part of Viper's mind is going: skating. I bet Sennoh didn't code THAT into the matrix, did he?
"You go on ahead, though. Good cardio, skating."
It's really not all that often that Cammy hears laughter. Some have surely directed at her in mocking fashion in ill-advised attempts to unnerve or disorient her in the midst of combat, but it's pretty much meaningless to her. Sometimes - perhaps when plotting the brutal massacre of insolent drug lords' families or the ruin of a third world economy - Lord Vega laughs, and it is as if the skies themselves part to cast the sweet sounds of angelic music upon her unworthy ears. Certainly, almost none of her instructors ever laughed at or with her on pain of torturous death.
So Viper laughing now, in semi-sincere fashion in response to her invitation is... strange. She isn't particularly sure that she /likes/ it, even if her only outward response to it is a slight quirk in her right eyebrow. The actual refusal that follows is met by her brow just barely furrowing and a small nod.
She turns smoothly on her heels, possibly allowing her twin braids to make light contact with Crimson Viper as she walks towards a small chest in her section of the room. "Yes. It is very good exercise." She crouches to retrieve bulky-looking, metallic red skates from within, sits on the ground... and in mere seconds has undone her boots, replaced them with the skates that are the wheeled twins to her gloves/bracers, and fastened them. Her blurry finger-work done, she pushes herself upright on them and slowly skates towards Maya.
"Perhaps another time." Beat. "Perhaps we will spar at the same time."
Shadaloo-issue rollerblades. Who knew?
Feeling even a little bit ashamed of herself, Viper brings a hand to her mouth and clears her throat, watching Cammy lace up and get ready to go. Briefly, she tries to think if she's ever even BEEN skating in her life, and realizes the answer is probably 'no'. As the kid she was head of the household; as an adult, she's here behind enemy lines, trying to make things better for the daughter safe and sound elsewhere. She gets the image, for just a moment, of Cammy, face showing a very serious mien, skating alongside Lauren through the streets of Washington, DC. Despite herself, the thought makes her smile, and despite Cammy's origins and purpose, it makes the S.I.N. agent well disposed to her, against all logic.
It's going to make her eventual destruction a little harder.
Sparring? Someday these two women are going to have to clash. The question of when and why, certainly, is up for debate. As much as Cammy's job is to gather combat data for Shadaloo, Viper has her own reasons for wanting to see the capabilities of the Dolls -- particularly the Zero Doll -- firsthand. But what does it say about Viper's fundamental personality that she sees little use in a safe activity such as skating, but would walk willingly into a fight where she is quite likely to be beaten senseless?
It means she's a professional.
Backing out of the room, Viper turns and smiles at Cammy... but without meaning to, Viper's smile is just inherently a little... cynical, a little smug, a little wry. It's just built into the lines of her face. "My door's always open."
Perhaps, as she and Viper's daughter skate through Washington, the Zero Doll could even pick a few flowers to festoon the collar of a lost and forlorn puppy which can later be rescued and... brought back to Point 48106 to be kept in her quarters. And probably petted and played with in her oddly detached fashion, to boot.
Either way, Cammy's /current/ skating destination is 'past Maya-san, into the hallway', and it is there that she goes, braids bobbing slightly with each movement of her feet and legs. "Yes. I know how to pick all manner of locks if it happens to be otherwise, anyway," she says in passing. If she has any understanding at all of the meaning behind Maya's smile, it does not show in her tone or expression as she moves on to, more than likely, weird the rest of the base staff out.
Log created on 13:49:28 06/07/2009 by C.Viper, and last modified on 20:00:05 06/07/2009.