Scene #9634: Tender is the Night

Owner	Pose
Schneider Greco	"Never have I spoken a word untrue, child. ... We have been abandoned by the principles of this world." 'This', and not 'the'. The strands of ooze around Lilian's limbs gulp in a rolling pulse towards her core; a mother's soothing embrace. "As if we were meant to be so eccentric, and marginalized. Thine eyes are not blinded, Lady Vertin." Smiling as serenely as she ever has, Arcana raises a dripping hand towards Vertin across the table, palm-up. "Bonvenon hejmon." - - - - Time slithered by, in its viscous drip-drippy way. A strange collection of appetizers are laid out; mussels of the 1920s, poached quail eggs of who-knows-when. The Lady Arcana takes of none of them, but nudges Vertin and Lilian both to eat; along with Druvis, if her lack of appetite becomes conspicuous. The human rabble are herded to the margins of the room, making way for polite conversation. Schneider breathes measuredly, still, slumped back against the inside of Druvis's open cage. At no cue but everyone's emotional turmoil settling just enough, the Lady Arcana suddenly declares while raising a mussel to Lilian's lips: "Lady Vertin. The time has come for your first duty to the Manus. Should your heart be steadied, it would please me that you do it." Her other hand holds out-- when did she pick that up? It's one of Schneider's guns, now re-loaded. As ever, the safety is off. "How do thine eyes find this pistol? It was crafted by our finest wandmaker, the Lady Druvis." It is no idle question. The tendrils of ooze in the cage regurgitate Schneider onto the floor some fifteen feet from the table, twisting her ankle with the sudden impact. The matched pistol clatters next to her. Schneider heaves a shuddery breath, and then slowly begins to push herself up- favoring the un-broken arm and un-broken leg. The implication is terribly clear. "Hh-hahhh... is mine really loaded? They are bold. Mhmhm, I've never, nev-er lost, you know..." Schneider murmurs, barely audible.
Timekeeper	"Bonvenon hejmon." As unnerving as it is for Lilian to feel it in herself, it must be far more alien to see the same feeling reflected in Vertin. Because what else could that full body shudder, eyes averted and clattering then sagging like a doll lifted off the ground, mean, besides giving in to a similar kind of looming comfort as the one Lilian feels when Arcana squeezes her hand? The blurry syllables that slide right off of Lilian's ears register perfectly clearly in Vertin's, and for a moment, she looks younger than she's ever been. "Vi estas tro afabla." "I really thought if I could just keep grinning and bearing it a little longer, there'd be someone at the end of it." In the aftermath of those words that she should neither have said or heard, Vertin stays as still as Lilian without the bindings as time flows sluggishly around them. Her hat is jostled, drooping to hang lower over her face than she usually wears it, and she has to lift her head up to see Lilian at all. Her bleak tone hasn't shifted since Arcana's question. "Sometimes there is. I'm sorry I didn't talk to you about it." She does not really have an appetite at all, despite it being nearly a full twenty four hours since her last meal. Still, she's loosely carried along in the current: the table is set and plated by an indistinct tide of masked or helmeted minions, possibly with the latter being inducted into the former over time. It's set for just the five of them, but Forget Me Not fusses around as a loyal attendant rather than an equal at the table, though he gives Vertin a dubious stink eye from time to time even with Arcana's blessing. Lilian's glass is poured for her, an alcoholic potion with cosmic swirls and sparkles of color like top shelf cocktail compared to the simple drinks served across the bar. Entirely contrary to the supposed purpose of the potions in hiding the speakeasy, it's had alchemical aromatics added to it to make it more palatable; and as she requested, very, very strong. Vertin refuses alcohol, and it seems like she'd refuse anything, but she's eventually haggled into slowly sipping at a bitter red fruit juice while staring at the appetizers arrayed for them, or at Arcana's feeding of Lilian. "How do thine eyes find this pistol?" Vertin presses her lips together as soon as Arcana addresses her, mutely bracing herself through the soft invitation. Taller than Schneider, the pistol is still comically oversized for Vertin, large even in Arcana's hand. "... A work of art. Miss Druvis is clearly quite skilled." More comments she could have, but Arcana's question doesn't really invite that kind of answer at all. She twitches reflexively to look at Schneider when she's released from her cage, eyes roaming to the broken limbs and blood, the state of her hair, her face, and her breathing, and sharply inhales. On the table, where her silverware hasn't budged from either side of her plate, Vertin's hands curl into fists. "... Why? I've already joined you. What reason could there be to shoot her?"
Timekeeper	Meanwhile, Forget Me Not flutters around Druvis, Arcana, and Lilian like nothing but an extra set of arms. For Druvis's peace and Arcana's attention, he corrals the humans into their designated corners, surely very busy with however many dozens or hundreds of new recruits fall to him to manage alone, but always coming back to the table. He pours drinks, suggests tastings, and for Lilian who's held to her chair by Arcana, acts as exactly the pillar of mental support she needs. "God made rules against what I do." "All that which is under Heaven does not fall solely under His purview, my lady," He murmurs, dotting away the beading blood from her burns before folding up his handkerchief. "Those of us beyond His design will have our day. Until such wrongs are righted, would you like a healing salve?" The salve he brings is one that Lilian can verify the use of without even looking at it. Among other bitter and cooling agents, the smell of pulped elderberry and comfrey wafts off of it, easily identified by a fellow alchemist. He dabs it onto her burns, and true to his word, even the heat from the alien causal friction that he can't possibly know about is soothed. "You mentioned your wife. Mrs. Tamamo-no-Mae, isn't it? Do you believe that she's safe as she is, with the St. Pavlov Foundation?"
Lilian Rook	'Never have I spoken a word untrue, child. ... We have been abandoned by the principles of this world.' Lilian thinks that 'Lady Arcana' must have said the same thing a thousand times before, to a thousand different 'lost children' like her. The tone is impossible to ignore. The ceremonial, even religious connotation to the words, delivered in rapturous-lazy triumph, could not plausibly be anything but a formal induction. But with everything that's happened already, 'plausible' isn't what she is stuck on. Implausibly, the words could all mean so much that it would drive her mad to accept it. ". . . I know." Lilian says, and hangs her head. For a short, guilty while, luxuriate's in the bliss of no one else knowing what she means by the truth. "It can't stay this way forever. Every star in the sky is a victim." 'As if we were meant to be so eccentric, and marginalized.' It's the word 'meant' that makes Lilian shudder like that. She tries to curl in on herself, as if to ward against a suddenly overbearing cold. All that she can accomplish is to be even closer to Arcana, and that woman is more than warm enough. The clearly mouths the words 'twenty-eight times', shuts her eyes, and lapses into the dazing labour of catching her breath. . . . . . . . . The dizziness stays gone. The burning in Lilian's nervous system subsides by half, save for her hands where it has doubled. Her body feels like lead. Her thoughts move strangely slowly. She wonders, for a minute, if this is a little glimpse of how Sakura feels every time, or if her weakness is blessedly crude and physiological in design. Her bad habit is out in force, by then. Once she has accepted the drying and cleaning of her face, there's no barrier at all to the rest. Even with her wrists bound to the chair, Lilian responds to everything presented to her as naturally as a surgeon handed a scalpel in the operating room, or a fine lady offered her coat by the maid at the door. The restraints are barely notable after the initial shock; it only proves that the Manus Vindictae are smarter than the Elites she usually deals with, and somehow gentler besides; their manner of treating her is so homey-familiar that, despite her injury, the balance tips decisively towards comfort instead. So much that she would be drowsy if she weren't hungry. As much as sitting under Arcana is like having the eye of an unfathomable storm laid comfortably across her lap, Lilian is touched and held, comforted and soothed, praised and doted on, and the power that has over her is so utterly naked in the moment that she would find it disgusting to see any other time. The way she eats is more than just 'comfortable' as well; even if the leader of Manus Vindictae insists on feeding it to her, Lilian acts someone familiar with going hungry who just finds table manners only slightly less important than not starving to death. Strong drink plenty of work, too; especially on an empty stomach. Ten minutes is long enough to start warming up again, and apparently enough for Lilian's perverse attachment to start flowering. "I knew you had to be a man of taste." is delivered as gallows humour. "It's gorgeous in here compared to Chicago." feels a bit more randomly aimed. "A shame about the stock ticker." is unhappily precise. "It's funny. Ever since popping my head in the first time, I've thought about sneaking back in here practically every day." possibly shouldn't have been said. "I apologize for that time. It wasn't right."
Lilian Rook	'How do thine eyes find this pistol?' '... A work of art. Miss Druvis is clearly quite skilled.' That's a good reason to look at Druvis and not Schneider. Despite her gut-churning fear for Schneider's life before, the horrific injuries that she ostensibly intends to walk off elicit more of Lilian's silent respect rather than wincing sympathy. She spares only a glance, flushed and tired, and for a moment, it looks a little like 'I'm proud of you' in its own guilty way. '... Why? I've already joined you. What reason could there be to shoot her?' 'They are bold. Mhmhm, I've never, nev-er lost, you know...' She's too slow to grasp it. Or too reluctant to want to. "You know they cut a finger off in the mobs overseas." Lilian says, nervous-drowsy, not quite able to force a laugh. "A bullet isn't so frightening after you survive your first one." She finds something about that unbearable in its black humour. "No one here is a virgin, right?" 'All that which is under Heaven does not fall solely under His purview, my lady,' "Oh he'd like that, wouldn't he." Lilian sighs. It feels like 'a long story' sort of sigh, but her mood remains drearily neutral. Her fingers twitch in evident pain from the blood being dabbed away, but her face won't show it. "It's not as gruesome as it looks, but I'd appreciate that, thank you." she says. "Otherwise, Tamamo will fuss at me." Of course that only primes her to think about home while the pain blissfully subsides. She should be embarrassed. 'You mentioned your wife. Mrs. Tamamo-no-Mae, isn't it? Do you believe that she's safe as she is, with the St. Pavlov Foundation?' That's what jolts Lilian out of the lukewarm semi-comfort of very little happening. She glances first to Vertin, parts her lips slightly, and then looks at Forget Me Not instead. A chill creeps back into her voice. "I . . ." The mistake is made the moment she thinks about it.
Ein	There is a moment, confronted by the masses, that Druvis ratchets tighter on sheer momentum, tension enough to touch and feel the vibration in her body. Her vision narrows, ears ceasing to hear but the dull throb of heartbeat and the sound of her own thoughts, attention narrowing as pupils do to the rabble before, laughing, jeering, wondering if this heaven they were going to would obviously be the same as the world that was before. The abused floor beneath Druvis twists as a pit of snakes might near the planting of her heels, roots both headless and eyeless yet guided by the caller's stress to attend, platforming, separating her from the world and arming her simultaneously. 'Or is it an open offer?' The words make the visible corner of Druvis' mouth turn, a tense tremble into an ill curl of something cousin to smile. Her eyes close, knuckle dropping to wand's wing. "Is that what you see, Chicago?" "Something on offer?" The taut-voiced druid asks, and-- 'Stop. That's enough out of you!' In this, blessedly this, Druvis knows that Forget Me Not is not calling her to heel, and so instead of snapping, halts to see if the situation will change. Vexingly for engaging in her own vengeance on the spot, 'Mr. Me-Not' was also spoken for and of. When he casts the maskless jeering into the crowd and sends the humans away, Druvis' finger slowly curls back into otherwised closed fist, and she steps half-out of her circle. The masking happens, screaming, and Druvis turns to face Forget Me Not, mask to table, open cheek to violence that moves her not at all - relieves her, by single degrees after three-digit rotations. "Did you hear? They thought themselves chosen, still." She asides, and returns to the table without lifting a finger to help the humans, dull to their pain and content to return the favor of watching passively and returning to 'her' table as if nothing was the matter. Set back into sullen drape of chair, the aloof grace returns to Druvis when she resumes the table, detaching from the moment to stare at nothing but middle-distance for several moments. 'so unless it's about that, then you'll sit there and do nothing and say nothing as Vertin takes Schneider out of those doors, and then you'll stay that way for the next ten minutes.' She does not dissociate long. Wand-cane, rested against thigh in chair isn't even lifted. Lilian is up, shouting, armed and crying black-running tears and demanding things. Realizing that the noise was words, Druvis' eyes instead lock on the tears that Lilian sheds, mingled in the ash on her cheeks, and swallows in a dry sympathy, passive to the threat. Certainly, another gunshot might kill her, face exposed and all. All she looks at is the run of tears, and then blinks eyes closed. 'Lady Druvis, are you unhurt? Is there anything I could fetch for you to relax?' Vertin swears to join the Manus Vindictae, and what Arcana wants simply happens with a force like the waves of the ocean, crashing into shape everything it touched upon. Forget Me Not at Druvis' side settles into a spot as her hearing adjusts, and Druvis opens her eyes again, sliding them across to look at the bow-in of the barman. ". . . Our guest looks to need a cloth as well," She opines, after Arcana bears down Lilian back to her chair, and trying to find anything to offer in return to the care but 'no. go away.', and reach a little bit. Everything had come to a climax of volume tonight and she was maddened by it.
Schneider Greco	Schneider's clammy-faced bangs-smeared smile, back at Lilian, is heartbreakingly thin. She gets it, of all people. You play to your outs. On all fours, she has to support herself on her uninjured hand; bend the broken one back into partial use; pick her gun up with the numb-crooked fingers; and finally sway to her feet. BANG Before saying a single word, of course, she had to try it. The silver bullet is stopped by a floor-to-ceiling instant strand of ooze about three feet from Forget Me Not's head. Another strand slams Schneider back to the floor- wham- without Arcana even lifting her eyes from the mussel she's trying to feed Lilian; a punishment more casual than blinking. "Hahh... ghh... che peccata. Lord Cavendish... remains a virgin." She takes a moment to gasp, struggling to orient herself again. "My dear lord, you can't imagine they--" "For that she must die, Lady Vertin," Arcana smoothly speaks over her, as if Schneider weren't talking at all. "For that it pleaseth me that the old should usher out the new. And for that, belongen to me as you are, a token of thy loyalty is expected and relished." "Does this gift of mine not fit your hands?" The gun, once more, is offered from Arcana's open palm. Her other arm, across Lilian's shoulders, now casually taps the distaff's pointed tip against Lilian's far temple, as if teasing the idea that it might go in. But there is only gentleness and softness in the Guiding One's touch. It scratches no more than an idle fingernail. Forget Me Not makes Lilian hesitate, about Tamamo. Arcana spares for him a serenely honeyed smile, as if to say 'well done', before directing to her that full tension-melting sickly-sticky warmth again. "Should we extend to her an invitation to our circle, Lady Lilian? She would be cherished by us, as thou art. Little have I beheld her, and yet, already it ill-pleaseth me that she might be filtered-out..."
Timekeeper	Forget Me Not is genuinely over the moon about Lilian's eagerness to eat. He doesn't say it out loud, but there's an almost tongue-tutting fondness to it, like an aunt piling on seconds and thirds while muttering 'are they starving you over there?' to himself. There's never a moment where Arcana's hand reaches for a plate and finds it empty, so Lilian can gorge herself as much as she pleases. This whole display, of the owner of the Walden shoveling food onto the table for the leader of the Manus to adoringly tap into Lilian's mouth, comes across as stomach-churningly animalistic to Vertin. She can't miss the way Lilian revels in the pampering, like an empress who hardly notices when the grapes she's fed change to an apple placed between her jaws. Her stomach growls, but if she swallows a single bite, she thinks she might throw up. "A shame about the stock ticker." "A sacrifice, but a necessary one." Forget Me Not commiserates, drinking in the praise of his Walden, appealing to the naturally superior taste of regal arcanist blood. "It shall be removed soon, of course, but until that time, I find myself rather liking the state it's ended up in." Goodness, he pulls a hand mirror out without hesitating. Lilian's chair faces away from the bar, and she can't and shouldn't remove herself from Arcana's bindings, so Forget Me Not holds the mirror up in front of her face at an angle to view the tickerboard behind her. The sand flows lazily upwards even though the number stay deadly still, DOW numbers and stock prices withered with their negative percentages pinned beside them like mounted trophies. "A fitting fate, isn't it, that the animals who so desperately dependended on it will be the ones to haul it outside so it can disappear along with the rest of this wretched era. And then, once cleansed, my Walden will be built anew. I hope that you'll be just as pleased with it then." "Ever since popping my head in the first time, I've thought about sneaking back in here practically every day." "Of course," He croons softly, like self-evident fact. He doesn't even need to add the implied 'you belong here'. "I apologize for that time. It wasn't right." Vertin really doesn't want to agree with this. She feels the sting of being close to tears in the back of her throat, so sharp and foreign that it makes her heart rate spike in the panic of making sure it stays down. But she remembers saying just about the same thing to Lilian, about this same shared discomfort, after that exact mission. "... It's a rather lazy method of operation. The St. Pavlov Foundation engineers its fights on the terms of humanity, even when we do their work. Only in times like these is it any different." The 'time like this' is displayed in vivid red on her wrist still. The foremost bulb now shows an unchanging 0, and the minutes tick down one by one. The way their seating is arranged, Lilian can always see it in the corner of her vision, just past Arcana's tits.
Timekeeper	"No one here is a virgin, right?" And if she's able to focus on the former rather than the latter, she might also spot Vertin's lips tightening in a brief expression that must be disgust. They close their eyes, chest rising and falling to smooth out the emotion before Lilian can be alienated further by it. "Did you hear? They thought themselves chosen, still." "Embarrassing, isn't it?" It may as well be a sleepover. Forget Me Not paints Lilian's knuckles in healing salve with the same dedication that he might do her nails, trading hushed words with Druvis to gossip and sneer. "Maybe the wisest among them know in reality. Dedicating the last hours of the world to scrape and serve their betters is the most greatness they could ever be chosen for." But, Druvis is often a ghost in the corners of his parties, and Forget Me Not is very familiar with the flicks of the cat's tail. His Walden is a prison for her now, where she has to wait to be called upon and shelter within solid walls for safety, and it's somewhat of a fixation of his to cater it to her liking. It'd be a blight on his honor as a host to back away and let her discomfort simmer. "A drink, Lady Druvis?" "Lord Cavendish... remains a virgin." It's then that the gunfire roars through the bar and drowns out the instruments that now play on their own in the corner. Forget Me Not's face twists in anger, and Vertin's winces in fear, inversely of how they should be. "You little--!" "I don't-!" "For that she must die, Lady Vertin," Vertin's wide eyes are locked on Schneider. What was the point of giving her a gun at all? She's already so wounded, and helpless surrounded by all of these enemies. Nothing but her execution will be allowed, no matter where Schneider points the gun. The only reason to have Vertin do it is to force her loyalty, which she's already promised. Her hand unsteadily reaches out to the offered gun, then withdraws. "... I don't want to kill her. She's already been defeated and captured. Do the Manus Vindictae often assign their newest members to do chores?"
Lilian Rook	'Did you hear? They thought themselves chosen, still.' "Men always do." Lilian seethes. Embittered to the self-same words long before she had ever heard of an arcanist, she breathes a desolate sigh that tried to be a laugh, and says, staring blankly aghast at the table, "Oh my god. That's what it was." just for herself. She remembers a time Schneider looked at her in confusion, and replied to something very similar, 'Men?' 'Embarrassing, isn't it?' "If it's not one thing, then it's the other." she says. Her shoulders rise, tense, and then slump back down, bereft of the fire and salt needed to posture in confrontation. She speaks to Forget Me Not instead, saying "Please excuse my lapse in intersectionality." It's not quite a joe. Listless, perhaps, but not-insincere. 'A sacrifice, but a necessary one.' Forget Me Not is so very easy to think of as a comrade in arms that Lilian simply didn't know she had. The obvious contradiction of the sentiment to the situation makes her pause attentively to listen. 'And then, once cleansed, my Walden will be built anew. I hope that you'll be just as pleased with it then.' Her neutrality only lasts so long. Lilian utters a depleted sigh of relief, and says "Is it ridiculous of me that I was beginning to feel melancholy about knowing I'd never really see it for myself? It's not as if thought I was going to before." She sullenly looks up at the shattered balcony, or at least what's replaced it, and says, "I remember being shocked that in the den of the infamous Manus Vindictae, I couldn't find an arcanist anywhere on the floor." '... It's a rather lazy method of operation. The St. Pavlov Foundation engineers its fights on the terms of humanity, even when we do their work.' Lilian looks so deeply relieved at Vertin agreeing with her that the drop in her ambient tension automatically reveals just how much of it was still due to worrying about her, rather than Manus Vindictae. She glances anxiously at Vertin's watch exactly once, and then never bothers to check it again after. "More than lazy, doesn't it feel 'off' for the global organization promoting equality between humans and arcanists to knowingly weaponize the former's disdain for the latter?" she says. The sound of her trying to carry a normal conversation with Vertin is painfully hopeful. "It's sat with me all this time like finding out your friend will use all the slurs they please once you've made it clear you dislike someone they apply to." She's paying far too much attention to Vertin to miss her grimace. That alone jumps Lilian's pulse up by ten points. She isn't quite so drunk as to not feel pathetic about the fact. She checks on Schneider's reaction next, out of a predictable, disappointing impulse, whose smile twists up her stomach to see, and makes her chest clench around the sticky thudding of her heart. There's no comfort to be taken in seeing a common understanding now; not here of all places. Outside, in the vast and chaotic world of humanity, she could buoy herself with pleasant delusions of how they might not be so different if they each had the luxury of ever lowering their guard. In here, where pain and recompense were the first two bottles brought to the table, and have already filled every glass, the clarity with which she can read Schneider is only a wrenching reminder that Manus Vindictae never really was her shelter away from it. 'I don't-!' BANG The gunshot startles her 'awake'. Like it would for anyone halfway normal. Lilian yells "Don't--!" on adrenal reflex, wrung dry of anything more; but in the end, she doesn't know who she meant it for. Schneider being slammed into the floor makes her wince and stiffen. Forget Me Not coming out fine makes her feel queasily relieved. The little joke makes her laugh, short and stiff, in the way of someone too deeply uneasy to keep quiet.
Ein	BANG Druvis' eyes seek, snap around as a fourth peal of thunder rings out near her and the sound sloshes around the shell of her mask, and she knows it is not her that is shot. Schneider -- somehow Schneider was the one firing again, and rolling gaze across crowd, she thinks it is Arcana. Somehow, she is surprised when it is Forget Me Not and finds herself briefly offended on his behalf, as a friend, before remembering why, as Schneider's. Then, afterwards, she was stomach-sick, twisted. Something that she knew was wrong, something she couldn't expel by retching. 'For that she must die, Lady Vertin,' The first thought that jumps into mind is a detached 'oh, she shouldn't have done that' and then, Guilt. In her cage, stopped by her roots in escape, shooting with her wands, wasn't this her fault? Every piece of it, constructed in neat rows and rings? For a long second stroke, Druvis stares at Vertin, zoned out entirely from the place of honor besides the fawning Arcana over Lilian, haunted-eyed and wondering-asking with just half-masked expression- 'can you save her//us?' She watches Vertin, who looks near-solely to Schneider in horror. The fall of a hatbrim, perhaps, stops a connection. When she peels off, Druvis is there, having been watching for sign, and it is then Forget Me Not slides in around on his pride and unblighted honor to tend to her instead. 'A drink, Lady Druvis?' A man alive despite Schneider's best efforts, Druvis blinks a full beat after his question and turns her head off Vertin, exposed eye meeting his eyes at a long glance and again shuttering. 'no. go away.' but she had decided to not lie down and die about it. Was it always this hard? Did she forget? Had she never noticed? Lifting wand from lap, Druvis lightly taps Forget Me Not with the side of it to shoulder, sympathetic at least for peals of thunder summoned from wands and their effects even glancing. "If you are. . . not rattled, then," She doesn't know drinks and had often refused service. What was there to ask? "Whatever you would offer." She demurs frayedly, knowing that allowing a personal touch pleased Forget Me Not.
Lilian Rook	'My dear lord, you can't imagine they--' 'For that she must die, Lady Vertin' "What?!" The last runner crosses the line at an unbelievable delay. It could be the alcohol that's responsible. It could be absolute faith in Vertin's ability to plan, or Schneider's to wriggle free of the hook. Or it could be the hazy sense of unspoken trust that Lilian has started inexplicably feeling for men and women who'd all but executed someone thirty feet from her not long ago. Anything is a possibility, with such a damning look of of anxious noncomprehension on her face. She scans nervously around the room as if she expects to see a camera, then stares at Vertin with the silent desperation of hoping to be told that everyone is joking. "I-I know she attempted to run away with the Foundation, but . . ." Lilian opens her mouth in haste, and feels her head spin from trying to piece together anything to say. "I know that isn't something you can just forgive, but surely there has to be something!" In this way, Lilian is the one far behind Vertin. The only crime she can think of is the obvious one. The idea that Schneider's execution had been decided for a while now doesn't seem possible. "Aren't you going to find out what she may have disclosed? Interrogate her for who was assisting her escape? Can't you-- Do you know what she was promised? If there are others like her? I know I haven't precisely introduced myself, but I actually work in military intelligence. There's an ID in my bag!" 'Should we extend to her an invitation to our circle, Lady Lilian? She would be cherished by us, as thou art. Little have I beheld her, and yet, already it ill-pleaseth me that she might be filtered-out...' It doesn't matter if she figures it out anyways. The flicker in Lilian's eyes, sparked by the gunshot, gutters nearly out from knowing it. The gun gently touched to her back is the same one she had named earlier; Schneider would only ever be a martyr for her family, and Lilian would only ever be one for her spouse. That, too, was an understanding. "She doesn't have a teleportation disc." Lilian says. The words are too light for the stress oozing into her voice. The edge is too fragile and too grave. "Vertin gave hers to save a group of arcanists from the Storm. I was supposed to get her home myself." It's clear that Lilian hopes to buy points for Vertin with that creative truthtelling. It's clear that she suddenly blames her a little as well. And that she still feels disgusted at herself for doing so. But she swallows that particular disgust far more quickly than before. The math is so much easier when it's Tamamo's life instead of her own. The expression hardly lasts a second. "Is the Walden somewhere safe from the Storm?" Lilian asks, too cautiously to be believable. The question is a damning admission by itself. "Even if anyone tries to help her, she won't go back to London if she believes I might be in danger. But she won't trust you after this either. She doesn't know." In her urgency, Lilian sees no reason to bother defining what that is. "Please. If you'd at least deliver a message. I'm afraid she'll get desperate."
Schneider Greco	"Shhhh. You are with me, Lady Lilian," Arcana croons after the gunshot, squeezing their bodies together a little tighter until Lilian's heartrate subsides (or until it doesn't). "What need have you to care for unnecessary persons? That abominable worm is far beneath a member of the Manus. I shall be glad to spare a messenger to collect your wife, only as soon as you and the Lady Vertin have been welcomed proper." That is, as soon as Schneider is dead. What was the point of allowing Schneider a gun? Certainly the Manus don't intend to let Vertin die. Maybe to ease Vertin's conscience with the thought of it being self-defense, or frighten her with the idea of being maimed. Or maybe as a dismissive little irony, as a means of throwing away their duelist. Schneider finds her feet (well, mostly just one foot) one more time. Her eyes are still bright, and her lips almost make a smile at Forget Me Not. She is keeping up certain pretenses. She is abandoning other ones. At the juncture of those two- that there is no more point in appeasing, but that she can't look eager for a feignable death- she finds a false bravado. "And what will be my re-ward for winning, hmmh? My Lord Ca-ven-dish, don't you ad-mire the Lady Arcana...?" She mimes putting her gun to the temple of someone taller than her, and makes a 'pop' noise with her lips, as if to make her bullet his distaff. Her eyes are watering with the pain, though, when she meets Vertin's eyes. She's putting as little weight as possible on her twisted foot. When Druvis looks at her, Schneider looks down and slightly shakes her head; an apology for startling her, if nothing else. Tap. The Lady Arcana demands Vertin's attention, away from the broken-limbed waif, with a touch of her dripping black wand against the dinner table. "The Foundation has never bade you toss away their garbage? ... Ah, but you are of a higher station here. If the Lady Vertin says nay, then nay it shall be." "Here. Have an orange." Everyone but Vertin, of course, sees Arcana still holding out the gun. Her hand has not moved a millimeter. But for Vertin, the world peacefully begins to fall away... doesn't the orange smell nice? Comforting. It almost reminds her of someone.
Timekeeper	"Please excuse my lapse in intersectionality." No one in this whole room has any idea what that word means besides Vertin. Forget Me Not doesn't really need to, though, to be able to excuse whatever it is. Lilian can only mean it as something positive, after all. "Naturally." "More than lazy, doesn't it feel 'off' for the global organization promoting equality between humans and arcanists to knowingly weaponize the former's disdain for the latter?" "I say 'lazy', because the ultimate enemy at hand is the Storm. Whatever means are used to that end...." Lilian's need for normalcy strains Vertin more and more every time her topic of choice for 'normal' is a Manus Vindictae talking point. They're acutely aware that Lilian is taking everything that's happening at face value-- she may not be aware that the Manus's customs will demand Schneider's murder, but for the rest outside, Lilian's comfort in joining the Manus Vindictae is equal willingness to let everyone but her wife die. This is the most honest she's ever been. PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "Don't take me wrong. Nobody ever seems to realize it, but I wear my allegiances on my sleeve. I'm committed to the Foundation." Then, with that dubious disclaimer, "It just doesn't feel right. I don't even know their names." PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Vertin says, in that same dubiously ambiguous way, "I wouldn't doubt you for a moment." But to an extent, Vertin has to remind herself that this is at least partially her own fault. Schneider, too, was forced into accepting the Manus Vindictae due to a lack of options anywhere else. 'Community' is such a gaping wound among arcanists that Vertin is aware of its gravity in her own self, and the alluring promise of the Manus to fill it. If this is 'honesty' from Lilian, it's only cumulative with what she's said before, not all-encompassing. Their expression struggles to maintain its usual passivity, settles with more of an open downwards tilt. "... But still. The belief at the heart of the Foundation is that the society made by humans reigns supreme, and only that arcanists may choose to fit within it. What methods they choose to employ speak for themselves." "I-I know she attempted to run away with the Foundation, but . . ." "But?" Forget Me Not's eyebrows raise, coiling around Lilian's side like a snake to interpose his head in front of Schneider. He looks at her with sincere-seeming confusion, where she, fed and praised and loved with the Guiding One in her lap, might still have any reason at all to look at the limping thing outside the cage. "She is a traitor, and an infiltrator beside. She perverts the sanctity of our destined future-past. She has no place among the unsifted." He straightens up and walks around the table to Vertin's side, crossing opposite Schneider rather than passing close to her. ""And Miss Vertin's heart seems far muddier than yours, my lady~ To be a part of our Manus, she must cast aside those clinging falsities of her past." Vertin's jaw is clenched as Forget Me Not talks right over her head. "... She wouldn't have had a reason to betray you if the Manus didn't discard her to die. If the Foundation shut its doors on its followers just before the Storm arrived, they would have none left." Somehow, some twitch of her eye or hesitation in her voice makes it feel like that's the first genuine lie she's said today.
Timekeeper	"Now, get up," Forget Me Not orders the injured girl as if she isn't already struggling to her feet. With condescending fondness, like he's speaking to the audience, "You are still our reigning champion, after all. Won't you make your last duel an entertaining one?" "If you are. . . not rattled, then," "Not at all, Lady Druvis." He almost seems eager to reassure her of that fact, like a test of faith. "Within the Guiding One's embrace, nothing shall befall us outside Her will. Allow me," He bows and withdraws, to bring her a drink. "If the Lady Vertin says nay, then nay it shall be." With Lilian and Druvis watching Vertin closely-- maybe everyone at the table besides Forget Me Not is-- there's no way to miss how her bony shoulders under her coat start to rise and fall with faster breaths. She suffocates on the shallow hope that her word might be valued enough to change the outcome for once. Her eyes watch a droplet of black roll off of the distaff, before dazedly meeting Arcana's eyes when she makes her offer. "Here. Have an orange." Vertin's hyperventilation starts to slow gradually. She searches for something in Arcana's face, before returning her attention to the gun, and this time her hand doesn't tremble when reaching for it. "... Okay." Up from the table, Vertin tugs off the long jacket over her vest and shirt, folding it and placing it over the back of her chair. With the gun in hand, she makes her away to stand across from Schneider, and checks that it's loaded. The humans of the crowd begin to murmur, first primed by Forget Me Not's declaration, then eagerly anticipating the completion of the bloodsports they were promised. This is what the Walden has always been about, for them. When Vertin raises her gun, the cheers grow in volume, and then they explode in excitement to drown out when she pulls the trigger.
Ein	'And what will be my re-ward for winning, hmmh?' Of the duel about to commence, settled with the wands she made, the pistols inspired by Schneider herself, Druvis can only idly hang her head. "Perhaps, if a goddess' power is bargained for, to wake up from an ill dream." She wishes, as staked against Schneider's performance, and can say that she desires it. To be whole of arm, and leg, pride before the crowd. Unblemished, everwinning as the champion ought to be. Druvis had liked things better then, when Schneider could bid half the wand for her away and come back twice as rich and invincible for it. 'Here. Have an orange.' Druvis didn't see an orange. She felt, humming, the resting of the wand in Vertin's hand. The peal of man's powdered thunder behind every bullet. It was something bridging, modern, daring and nakedly metallic. Weighty, Druvis' eyes plunked at the weapon, and then the faint '. . . Okay.' out of Vertin. Was it that easy? Was it a construction of Arcana? Something like a joke? Vertin sheds her coat, and Druvis half stands, knuckles pushing against the table. She's up when Vertin aims. "Vertin?" She asks, loud enough to be heard, deeply questioning, but it's far short of the BANG that rings out almost casually. Druvis III sits down again like a cut string, suddenly no longer having the power to care about the duel. Something was happening, and she wanted out. Delicacies from this era and others spread out and she just wanted a window or a door. She didn't want anyone to win this duel, and didn't like the terms that had changed the showmatch to something miserable. She had thought of her drink order after she had sent away Forget Me Not and now wished for ginger for her stomach and something strong for her humors. "May I never be new again." Druvis III exhales, half-meaning in the way situations drew oaths from the affected.
Schneider Greco	"Mmmh. The things I have done on that stage, Lawrence... not e-ven you had eyes to appreciate them, it seems. What a pit-y." That she says those last words in English might be backhanded, itself. Druvis lightens her from that bitterness, if only by a bit. "Ahhh... you are right. Mhmhm, I should have wished for that. But some things... are too big to wish for, right?" Schneider holds her gun up, playfully-daintily, in her unbroken hand. On her face is a sad smile. She locks eyes with Vertin, or tries to. Schneider's red eyes slide off to the gun in Vertin's hands; pointed too-low for their plan, at her stomach rather than her chest. "My-lord, what are you...?!" she starts; then turns her wild-eyed stare first to Druvis for explanation, and then Arcana, who still smiles serenely. "What did you do with her?! Druvis--" krr-- Finger against trigger. Schneider's eyes widen further. click Hammer against bullet. She is lurching to the side-- BANG --on a broken leg, not far enough. Schneider staggers back against the wall; blood runs from the bullet-hole in her side, trickling down the red-feather dress. "My lord?! Listen to me! Come to your senses!!" This wasn't the plan. She can't say 'this wasn't the plan'. There is only a needle-thin path through this present now; one infintesimal golden thread by which 'Schneider Greco' can remain tethered to the future, however much future is left. She can't afford to kill Vertin. She can't afford to be killed. She can't afford to be seen going easy. Between all of those, she aims her gun at Vertin's shoulder, pretending to miss her chest, and-- - - - - And Sicily is beautiful, isn't it? Schneider was cute when she was younger, even when she had just started to know herself by that name. 'Are you the friend from downtown, mia sorella said would help us pick oranges?' says the angelic little girl. 'Oh, I am glad you are-here... since my uncles left, it is lone-ly with the trees. Here, help me climb...' Juice gets on Vertin's shirt, oozing through warm. But that's alright, isn't it? - - - - The Lady Arcana slides her distaff back into her skull with a gruesomely wet noise, and breathes to Lilian's ear: "The worm is being obstinate... it will not be quick. May I cover your eyes?" Her hands come up to Lilian's cheeks, an approximation of the mask, but no further.
Lilian Rook	'I say 'lazy', because the ultimate enemy at hand is the Storm. Whatever means are used to that end....' Lilian's face falls at Vertin's answer, but not by much. She would have preferred something more effusively supportive, but if it were only slightly more so, she would feel worse. A layer of nervously forced humour burns away off the top of her expression, then posture, then off the way she breathes in. The sobering reminder that has nothing at all to do with humans or arcanists, the Foundation or Manus Vindictae, is so fundamentally 'Vertin' that Lilian is unintuitively eased by her honesty. "You're right, of course." Lilian says. Her slight hesitation comes from the awareness that she and Vertin are, at that time, two captives of the same enemy, in open communication. Her eyes wander away from the Walden's decore and find the space beside Vertin's head. "The Saint Pavlov Foundation has been around for a century, after all. Even sincerely facing the Storm as the 'threat to mankind', a hundred years of bad habits and old feuds won't go away just like that." Her lips twitch at the corners. Tiny saccades around the vague shape of Vertin's face betray a moment of serious thought, though she doesn't seem to be in a rush to share it. '... But still. The belief at the heart of the Foundation is that the society made by humans reigns supreme, and only that arcanists may choose to fit within it.' Lilian breathes out slowly. Disappointed, she says to Vertin "I'm sorry." more than a little like consoling her over the death of a beloved family dag. "I wish I knew what hopeful thing I could share with you. You deserve to have someone tell you that things will get better, and mean it. I've been thinking about that every day since the Storm of sixty six." she says. For a moment, even in her absurd position of being drenched in the love and status of Manus Vindictae's finest, Lilian uncomfortably shifts her weight from a moment of vicarious regret. "But the most I can bring myself to tell you is that it won't keep hurting forever; and you've never struck me as the type who cares if it does anyways." she says, and then she fully looks away. "I've been arrogant." 'Shhhh. You are with me, Lady Lilian' The gunshot makes the moment of lucidity that preceded it feel like a dream. Once again, Arcana's voice soothes her where not long ago it had made her hairs stand on end. Her body has trespassed into her space for so long that she now only notices its softness and its warmth. Lilian jolts awake as if from a nightmare, but the crooning reassurance of Manus Vindictae irresistably settles her not long after; more than her mother ever could have if she'd deigned to try. But there must be some live coal of will still warm somewhere beneath the heaped ashes of her facade, because Lilian averts her gaze from Schneider with grit teeth, and clenched fingers, and not quite the girlish fear of before. 'What need have you to care for unnecessary persons?' Lilian flinches lightly. Sonetto always said 'irrelevant'. She knows better than to assume Arcana's wording merely incidental. Wondering how much Manus Vindictae might have known, for how long, makes her feel lightheaded.
Lilian Rook	'That abominable worm is far beneath a member of the Manus. I shall be glad to spare a messenger to collect your wife, only as soon as you and the Lady Vertin have been welcomed proper.' Insisting that she hadn't formally joined like Vertin had, at this point, would be absurd. One reluctant glance around the table tells Lilian that everyone already knows that she has. If she felt she had even the slightest bit of leverage, she might bargain for longer, but the split-second way she meets Vertin's eyes on purpose is soberly sorry; neither guilty nor ashamed. It is the one way she can knowingly and intentionally fall short of Vertin's moral standards, because just like the Codes she has already spoken of twice now, Tamamo is a line she told all the world she wouldn't cross before she even began. "Tell them to ask for Mizukume Rook." Lilian says, swallowing and holding her breath. "That's the name she had before the court gave her a new one. It's 'ours'. If you use it then she'll know that I'm really here." She has to pace her blinking out again. The sudden sense of homesickness is overwhelming. Her face starts to turn red. "Some of the people she's with are very stupid. They might try to use her to get in without her knowing. But I won't accept any excuse for her coming to harm. Okay?" The last, quavering dregs of her neutrality are spent to try and include one more soul under this umbrella. Two if she can be greedy. If she can't have Schneider, at least she might still have Sonetto. "The redhead is her favourite, but she can listen to reason. If your people can't separate her from from the Foundation's people without shooting, then I have no faith in Manus Vindictae at all." 'But?' She hates the question. She hates it because she has no answer. The military would court martial and excute Schneider all the same in this position. A government agency might leniently give her life in prison for treason. Since the moment Vertin had fled the stage, she has fought and bit and kicked her former employers at every single turn. The man asking her had nearly been shot barely a minute ago. It makes her want to cry from sheer frustration. 'Miss Vertin's heart seems far muddier than yours, my lady~ To be a part of our Manus, she must cast aside those clinging falsities of her past.' Lilian squeezes her eyes shut, holds back the urge, and then opens them again with the battered look of a captive princess. "The rest of them might have the Foundation, but Tamamo knows better than to think she has anyone but me." Lilian stops to breathe, deep and shaky, as fierce on the verge of tiers as she's managed to be by far. "I swore by my blood on our wedding day that I would be her shelter against all the storms that may come. If joining Manus Vindictae is what it takes to uphold that vow, then I do so gladly. If your people make me a liar, then I'll burn that array you keep staring at right off my back and walk backwards into Hell so I can watch." 'Perhaps, if a goddess' power is bargained for, to wake up from an ill dream.' With nothing left that Lilian can do to help Vertin or Schneider anymore, her attention drifts to the source of Druvis' desolate, backhanded prayer. She fixes her with eyes filled with excruciating guilt-- of being the stray cat who is fed and brushed while another from the same doorstep is taken away to be put down. "I wonder if she would still be 'Schneider'." she says, and quietly chokes on her own briar-tangled meaning. 'But some things... are too big to wish for, right?' Lilian near-whispers "You can wish for anything. Nobody grants them, so nobody can disqualify you."
Lilian Rook	'... Okay.' "--Vertin?" It's the way the Timekeeper says it that rouses Lilian back to worry again. Once she sees her moving, the recognition that catches light and sears itself into her mind makes the sound of the gunshots themselves a mere formality. Of course it would. It's by the book. Veteran instructors have taught her to recognize this situation, so that when it happens, she can shoot the one in Vertin's place first. Lilian lunges forward in her seat, and is stopped by her bindings before she moves an inch. The chair rattles under her. "Vertin! Can you hear me?!" she cries out, sharp and urgent. "Deep breath! Any number! Now!" She knows better than to try and solicit lucid self-description. A near-autonomic response is a better diagnosis of the subconscious. "Fuck--! Vertin! Timekeeper! Timekeeper, what is your ETA on the Storm?!" Sonetto, the closest person she has, always refers to her with that name. Professional jargon is an attempt on the same part of the brain that wakes someone up because they dream they're late for work. "Where's the Suitcase?!" The abrupt, urgent appeal to the single thing Vertin is never, ever, without, comes from the girl who noticed Night Mist was gone before she was even conscious. "Oh god." Lilian glances rapidly at Druvis and back. "This is--" She starts to look at Arcana, but flinches instead. "Why? This doesn't prove anything any more. Why does it have to be her?" 'My lord?! Listen to me! Come to your senses!!' Lilian grits her teeth and stifles down her panic. This shouldn't matter to Schneider, should it? She was already going to be shot; better it be Vertin than someone who means it. So is something even worse going to happen? 'The worm is being obstinate... it will not be quick. May I cover your eyes?' Lilian opens her mouth to object; to boldly and rebelliously insist on watching it to the bitter end. Seeing Vertin-- the mild and gentle girl whose compassion ran to such an absurd fault that it burned her to look upon at times-- callously pick up a weapon and fire shot after cruel and bloody shot into the woman she nearly died for, already too broken and bloodied to fight back, makes her stomach turn so violently that she gags. She shakes her head to tell Arcana no, but her lips say "I can't watch this." as if she could pray to any god watching to cancel the show.
Timekeeper	"Vertin gave hers to save a group of arcanists from the Storm." "Mmmm..." Forget Me Not makes a sympathetically worried hum as he comes back with Druvis's drink, poured potion, adoringly handpicked. "I see. And the Foundation's equipment makes no exception to save lives for love, only for property and politics. Then there will be no help forthcoming from them." "Tell them to ask for Mizukume Rook." "Then it will be done." Forget Me Not's fingers splay against his heart, black roses rasping at the touch of his nails. "As a top priority. In a matter of hours, your beloved will be by your side again, untouched and welcomed with open arms. I swear this on my life, and on my Walden. And then she will see for herself how we have welcomed you, and that there is no threat to be wary of." "The redhead is her favourite, but she can listen to reason." "The Foundation's mutt?" Sonetto in particular had gotten on Forget Me Not's nerves on the balcony, and he saw firsthand what motivations drive her. "Lady Tamamo-no-Mae I can promise, but as for the rest... they have not been offered the Guiding One's love, my lady." "I swore by my blood on our wedding day that I would be her shelter against all the storms that may come." But still, the touched fondness that spreads on Forget Me Not's face feels so impossibly sincere that Lilian must exist on a different plane of existence from those contemptible others like Sonetto and Schneider, that elicit such bitter expressions on his face. "To make a liar of you would make a liar of myself. There will be no mistakes. This place is a haven for those who only have each other." "The things I have done on that stage, Lawrence... not e-ven you had eyes to appreciate them, it seems." "It seems not. But that's only natural, isn't it?" Forget Me Not settles to watch the duel just behind Arcana and Lilian, smiling with a veneer of patience and an undercurrent of vindictive contempt. He folds his hands in front of his stomach, derisively continuing the conversation long past the point he needs to, while Schneider's designated executor checks her gun. The hooting of the crowd swells in anticipation, hardly any different even with the masks on. And Forget Me Not's eyes roam around to them, while his focus stays on Schneider. "Like the stocks and the DOW and the petty bureaucracies we lowered ourselves to engage in, your appeal was always to them. Whatever appreciation the rabble may hold for you... I suppose I'm just not that torn up by not understanding what you share. Goodbye now, Miss Schneider. Sing well for your people."
Timekeeper	"My lord?! Listen to me! Come to your senses!!" But Vertin doesn't respond to Forget Me Not's taunts, or Schneider's pleas. What she sees instead, while shifting the gun to track the motion of Schneider's vitals, is.... - - - - '... Downtown? Am I?' She can't quite place the source of her confusion. The orchard is beautiful, but it swims around her like vertigo. She's here because...? Well, because Schneider is lonely. What other cause could there be? 'Oh, of course. Yes, let me hold your ankles.' - - - - The bullet tears through her shirt and red immediately leaches into the white. She doesn't so much as blink at the wound, as red runs down her back and spots through the cloth, and it doesn't slow her pursuit in firing back either. Where the fabric peels away, the sliver of bare skin exposed from her collar to shoulderblade is patterned with densely intricate lines and and stars, drawn in nothing but red scar tissue. - - - - 'Huh? I've made a mess of myself.' Juice soaks her shirt, drips off of her palms and down her fingers. She looks up at the girl and sees her similarly soiled, and can't place why, but for the basket full of oranges in Schneider's arms. Despite being sticky and fatigued from the hard work, in the warm breeze and sweet air, she can't help but giggle to herself about it. 'Oh dear. Well, we've finished up quickly together, haven't we? Come down and sit.' - - - - "Timekeeper, what is your ETA on the Storm?!" Nothing, still. The next shot hits Schneider's still-functional arm, like picking petals off of a flower. For a duel, the spectacle is dull and nonexistent, a clumsy execution performed by an untrained gunman. The sheer excitement erupting from the crowd with each new burst of red can only be in part because it's Schneider. When Schneider next stumbles, Vertin's smooth movements stutter distantly, lingering with the gun outstretched towards her. Then she steps, and collapses towards Schneider, lunging in between a tackle and an embrace. The cold muzzle of her own gun can be felt through the thin feathers of her dress, pressed to the right of her chest before Vertin pulls the trigger.
Ein	This was not the plan. Worse, Druvis couldn't raise her voice to object. Why did it have to be Schneider? Yes, she wanted revenge! Yes, she wanted to revenge and get away with it, and was that so greedy? She had been harmed, and whomever did it got away with it, so why shouldn't she?! What was the purpose if she just had to sit and watch? Should she get up? She is. Standing, as her eyes look down. Her knuckles rest on tabletop, besides plate that she had placed an egg upon and sliced in half and then set aside implements without taking a bite. Forget Me Not had brought her a drink, and the only impression of her having taken a sip of it were the faint impression of lipstick on the rim. Just enough to answer, to be present, and so she was present for this! "Is this-" Druvis begins, and knows the answer to '-really necessary' without finishing her sentence. She begins again, bared eye flicking to Lilian, and pulling taut her grimace. "Was this all necessary?" She daren't ask Arcana. But Forget Me Not had been so direct and twisting towards Schneider the whole time. Druvis had never understood the derision, had seen in Schneider the full shape of a bold wand-shape, and that was enough for her, but... "Who is this show for?" She asks, and doesn't look at the rest of the table but to Lilian -- Forget Me Not -- and Arcana, all in a gathering. Lilian's confessional is one that is deeply understood as much as it is begging for a conclusion that Druvis is sympathetic to. "What have you done with her?" She repeats, concerned for Vertin and Vertin by proxy. As the begging plays out, the bark of distant thunderstorm as 'oranges' play out on stage, Druvis continues to ask her question to the trio of most important people. The grasped, the hand grasping, and the arm commanding. Druvis is witness to Arcana sliding about Lilian with her hands about cheeks, looking at the narrowing window to the other woman's eyes, and the one-and-partial of hers to be seen is not lost on the imagery, and begins to ask: "Would it matter?" To still being 'Schneider', to wishing for anything, for anyone granting them. "Would--" BANG And then her eyes go wide and narrow down to dull, and Druvis again slumps as if another string is cut. It would be the plan or it wouldn't be, now wouldn't it? And it didn't matter at all 'why'.
Schneider Greco	"Do you not think it just, though it may be hard to bear?" says Arcana- maybe to Lilian, but mainly to Druvis, as her hands lace over the former's eyes just like a drippy mask. "For someone else to do the necessary deed, might burden the Lady Vertin's heart with an unhealthy resentment against them. Better not to give such resentment a home. It is in this way that she is best washed clean. The 'show' is for her." Lilian can feel the purr of Arcana's voice, so close. She cannot feel a heartbeat. - - - - 'Okay, Miss Vertin. But you must tell me about the city, when we eat! I want to hear the stories of where you're from,' says the angelic Sicilian child, with her smiling red eyes. The light in them has not yet gone so cold. "Wake up! Don't you feel pain?!" 'The mess, it is-not so bad. You wash your hands in the stream when you're done. Is everyone from the city afraid to get sticky...?' she murmurs. '... I had a fussy aunt, too. But she has gone to America with my uncles. Maybe someday...' "The arm... why... don't I deserve a quick death...?" '... You speak so strange, Miss Vertin. Are you from America? Is it true, it's different there?' the precocious little child says, while peeling an orange by Vertin's side. 'I have heard so much. The lords there, they are kind. The god there loves the world...' "Or did god forgive me, and give me one last chance...!!" - - - - Their bodies press together. They fall to the floor together in a crumple of limbs; half mangled, half whole. Schneider, on top, rests her meager weight on her gun, digging its barrel into Vertin's shoulder-wound in a last attempt to rouse her with pain. Her other hand's broken fingers are trying to block the gun's hammer. If she, or if Vertin, can wrench the barrel just a few inches to the left before they slip-- "...to li--" BANG. Red feathers drift back down from a shot through the heart. Schneider collapses off of Vertin and hits the stage, the thump impact like a limp echo of the gunshot. Arcana breathes out, with some nameless and unwholesome feeling. Her fingers part from Lilian's face. "Those scars upon the Lady Vertin's back... an eye, a sun, a moon... are they not beautiful, even marked in red?" "Well done, my child. Stand."
Lilian Rook	'I see. And the Foundation's equipment makes no exception to save lives for love, only for property and politics.' For a moment, Lilian is not so easily played by Forget Me Not's words, perfectly targeted as they may be. She replies with "The world never makes exceptions for love. It's considered a luxury good.", and holds the sneer in her voice down to a glowering look. Because it doesn't count as being manipulated and radicalized if she already agreed with him anyways. 'I swear this on my life, and on my Walden. And then she will see for herself how we have welcomed you, and that there is no threat to be wary of.' She would love to glower at him with a little more suspicion, though, if possible. Lilian can't ignore the fact that Forget Me Not is, and has been since first laying eyes on him, a theatrical ringleader and self-styled karmic devil of human vice, and that he enjoys his vengeful deceptions too. She can ignore it even less than the fact that the man has never said an unkind word nor raised a hand to her since their introduction, and not once has she felt he could be lying. When he says it like that, she can't help but rest a little easier. 'Lady Tamamo-no-Mae I can promise, but as for the rest...' "I don't expect you to convince them or recruit them." Lilian says, somehow managing to be imperious even while ameliorating someone else's concerns. It's not dissimilar to the same way she does with a girl she knows much better. "I'm clearly conveying, so that there are no surprises, that I won't accept 'they made a move on us!' as an excuse. I know who they are and how they act, and I expect it to be done." 'There will be no mistakes. This place is a haven for those who only have each other.' Lilian exhales uneasily, then lets her gaze drift away with only a little regret. "I trust that you'll see it so." she says, and despite the needlessly royal way of saying it, she believes it. "We'll have all the time in the world to talk later." She hopes Tamamo comes alone and the rest go back to London. Anything else would force her to choose, and then she would be blamed for choosing as she always said she would. Being forced to be any less greedy feels as if it might kill her. . . . . . . . . '... Downtown? Am I?' "Down-- Vertin no! Come on! Listen to me!" Lilian cries out loudly enough to hurt her throat, and bereft of the bitter-sobbing edge that would betray enough hope to feel it. If any diagnostic she could perform from a chair would help, Vertin would have shown it by now. Like she is now, Lilian can't even try to physically restrain her until the magic wears off. The best she could do from her position would assuredly fail, Arcana would assuredly notice, and she would gain nothing and risk everything by doing so. She has to cry out just to clear the burning in the back of her throat. To pretend that she's doing anything at all. "What the point of all this?! If this were all it took, then why did you even put me through it?! Her and all the others; you're supposed to be the way out for them!"
Lilian Rook	'Like the stocks and the DOW and the petty bureaucracies we lowered ourselves to engage in, your appeal was always to them. Whatever appreciation the rabble may hold for you... I suppose I'm just not that torn up by not understanding what you share.' When the black and fitter misery must step aside for the need of lungs crying out for air and a throat burning for rest, Lilian finds Forget Me Not's steady and faithful words come trickling back into her ear. Poisoned them in degrees, she ceases to blink, then speak, and then she tears her eyes away from the sight of Vertin pulling each of the limbs from the solitary butterfly that she had hoped to shelter from the rain under her coat, and upon meeting his stare at her sidelong angle, comprehension bleeds to the surface of her face from a wound freshly opened in her psyche. "How?" Lilian asks. The dam is broken now. There are a million things she needs to know and can no longer stand being ignorant of. This one burns unbearably bright atop all of them. "I've seen her do it. I've seen--" And then she ceases to be see anything at all. Arcana's hands fall over her eyes before the final gunshot. She needs no reminder of the Manus Vindictae's masks; the gesture itself is terrifying in a way both too visceral and too abstract for Lilian to articulate. The sense of powerlessness that had overwhelmed her earlier, intensified once again by Vertin having left her all on her own, finds a new and terrible peak, higher than before, when she can only listen to all of it in darkness. But in its own way, the blindness is just another moment of relief, too. The crooning darkness spares her the self-hating urge to at least watch Schneider's final moments, if nothing else. It is mother night that saves her from herself; she allows Lilian to never know what expression that Schneider wore in the midst of her last words, when Vertin pulled the trigger on the cusp of hope. Just the sound of it makes Lilian choke on her own breath and tense up every single muscle in her body; a stillness she holds like a vigil, as if Schneider might not be dead so long as she doesn't make a sound, until long, long after she is already certain. When Lilian finally breathes out again, the shuddering gasp sends waves of pins and needles through her entire body crashing into one another and becoming a churning mass of numbness and electric pain. Then those, too, fade, and the tears that should come are replaced only with the black touch of Lady Arcana down her cheeks. 'Would it matter?' "Nothing else does." Lilian whispers, like she barely dares. She doesn't know where Druvis is, and doesn't know where Schneider was, and now it doesn't matter. "God doesn't give us second chances. He doesn't even give us a chance at all."