Re: The Vivacious Deadlock: S3G6: Round Three: The Sable Masque
08-25-2012, 08:17 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Akumu.
Bezio got the mystery woman to lie down on a chaise lounge, one of many in the fainting room between the Sapphire and Jade wings of the Palace. Feeling secure that she would stay there for the near future, swaddled in her hallucinations and therefore no longer bothering him, he turned to leave. Of course, she chose that moment to partially reconnect with reality, reaching out to grab the lacy cuffs of his sleeve.
“It’s all a solid piece, and we’re just one layer. Like mica, or, or graphite,” she told him desperately as he tried to disentangle her fingers from his cuff without damaging it. “The interaction is weak, but they’re right there, attometers away. She must have so much power, to resolve things at those length scales! Like a cosmic piece of scotch tape, peeling us off...”
The woman in green’s speech had the classic signs, mainly an over-reliance on pronouns, of someone who has forgotten that other people are actually other people and therefore have no idea what you’re talking about. But if there was one skill Bezio had cultivated over the years, it was sussing out important information from people who were smashed out of their minds, and this felt important.
“Who has so much power?”
“Her hair, her hair was like drowning and flying and burning, it skittered around but she was still and all her eyes were on the outside looking in. Looking in at us!”
She sat bolt upright in a panic and was only stopped by a firm hand on her shoulder.
“Honey, look, look, what’s your name?”
“Melissa,” she said, settling back down.
“Melissa, you need to get your head right. You are way too far gone to swim with the sharks. Look here.”
Bezio cupped his hands in front of her, blocking out stray air currents and willing the air to concentrate in some regions and rarify around them. Light scattered off the boundaries of the dense zones, and a crystalline shape of overlapped spheres formed, slowly spinning and throwing off glimmers of light.
“This is what you dosed yourself with. If you change it to this,” and as he said it, one cluster of spheres twisted around to point at a different angle, “you’ll sober right up. Go ahead, it’s a tiny change, shouldn’t take any effort.”
Melissa squinted at the display, then up at him, partially from suspicion and partially because the light was stabbing through her fully-dilated pupils.
“Drugs! Don’t! Work that way!” she exclaimed, jabbing a finger into the air for emphasis.
Bezio was confused at first, since de-intoxicating oneself was just about the first party trick any Talented socialite learned, right after intoxicating oneself in the first place. When the realization hit him, the pang of surprise broke his concentration and the glittering spheres whisped away.
“Sweet mercy, I knew you were uncultured, but you’re not even Talented?”
“I am extremely talented! I am at the top! Of my field!”
Bezio, working through the implications, concluded that he had probably hit a goldmine here. If she was Unpolished, and here, she must be very useful to someone very powerful. Maybe even one of the Princes; Luca in particular was one for finesse, and was known to keep a stable of pet researchers without regard to their Talent. Melissa, meanwhile, was trying to decide whether having her eyes open or closed was better for her nausea.
“What is your field? Atomics? Keravnonics? Automatonics?”
“Automatonics?” Melissa asked, looking suddenly lucid and keenly interested. “You have robots? Can I get one?”
Bezio laughed nervously. “Honey, around here, you don’t get robots, robots get you.”
Melissa muttered to herself and ticked off needed components on her fingers. “If I could just take one apart, it should have everything I need...”
“You really shouldn’t be talking like that, you don’t want to mess with the Tireless Men.”
Bezio glanced around, hoping that nobody had overheard her conspiring to attack an agent of the secret police. Thanks to that, he finally noticed that all the foot traffic outside the fainting room was streaming in one direction, towards the Jade wing that he had been in previously. A pair of feline-masked guests shuffled out of the flow and towards a couch, the man leaning on the woman and racked with coughs. As he was getting situated, Bezio strode over.
“Madam, what news?”
“There’s a fire in Sapphire! My poor husband tried to help put it out but it was growing too quickly, and if that wasn’t enough some fool was in there waving a sword around! If you’ll excuse me, I have to find a doctor for my husband.”
She hurried off, and Bezio turned back towards Melissa to find that she was tottering away towards the exit. “Swords and fire, he wouldn’t pussyfoot around some damn robots, split one right in half and then we can all get out of here,” she exclaimed to no one in particular. Bezio caught up with her, grabbing her by the shoulder.
“You should stay—”
That was as far as he got as she pivoted towards him. He had a brief impression of dead eyes looking dispassionately at him through the eye-holes of the black demon mask and of her arm whirling around to encircle his. His arm bent unnaturally in her grip; he tried to step forward to alleviate the sudden pain in his shoulder, and then he was falling. He hit the floor with a teeth-jangling crash and by the time he was back on his feet, Melissa was out the archway and out of sight, swimming upstream towards Sapphire.
Bezio got the mystery woman to lie down on a chaise lounge, one of many in the fainting room between the Sapphire and Jade wings of the Palace. Feeling secure that she would stay there for the near future, swaddled in her hallucinations and therefore no longer bothering him, he turned to leave. Of course, she chose that moment to partially reconnect with reality, reaching out to grab the lacy cuffs of his sleeve.
“It’s all a solid piece, and we’re just one layer. Like mica, or, or graphite,” she told him desperately as he tried to disentangle her fingers from his cuff without damaging it. “The interaction is weak, but they’re right there, attometers away. She must have so much power, to resolve things at those length scales! Like a cosmic piece of scotch tape, peeling us off...”
The woman in green’s speech had the classic signs, mainly an over-reliance on pronouns, of someone who has forgotten that other people are actually other people and therefore have no idea what you’re talking about. But if there was one skill Bezio had cultivated over the years, it was sussing out important information from people who were smashed out of their minds, and this felt important.
“Who has so much power?”
“Her hair, her hair was like drowning and flying and burning, it skittered around but she was still and all her eyes were on the outside looking in. Looking in at us!”
She sat bolt upright in a panic and was only stopped by a firm hand on her shoulder.
“Honey, look, look, what’s your name?”
“Melissa,” she said, settling back down.
“Melissa, you need to get your head right. You are way too far gone to swim with the sharks. Look here.”
Bezio cupped his hands in front of her, blocking out stray air currents and willing the air to concentrate in some regions and rarify around them. Light scattered off the boundaries of the dense zones, and a crystalline shape of overlapped spheres formed, slowly spinning and throwing off glimmers of light.
“This is what you dosed yourself with. If you change it to this,” and as he said it, one cluster of spheres twisted around to point at a different angle, “you’ll sober right up. Go ahead, it’s a tiny change, shouldn’t take any effort.”
Melissa squinted at the display, then up at him, partially from suspicion and partially because the light was stabbing through her fully-dilated pupils.
“Drugs! Don’t! Work that way!” she exclaimed, jabbing a finger into the air for emphasis.
Bezio was confused at first, since de-intoxicating oneself was just about the first party trick any Talented socialite learned, right after intoxicating oneself in the first place. When the realization hit him, the pang of surprise broke his concentration and the glittering spheres whisped away.
“Sweet mercy, I knew you were uncultured, but you’re not even Talented?”
“I am extremely talented! I am at the top! Of my field!”
Bezio, working through the implications, concluded that he had probably hit a goldmine here. If she was Unpolished, and here, she must be very useful to someone very powerful. Maybe even one of the Princes; Luca in particular was one for finesse, and was known to keep a stable of pet researchers without regard to their Talent. Melissa, meanwhile, was trying to decide whether having her eyes open or closed was better for her nausea.
“What is your field? Atomics? Keravnonics? Automatonics?”
“Automatonics?” Melissa asked, looking suddenly lucid and keenly interested. “You have robots? Can I get one?”
Bezio laughed nervously. “Honey, around here, you don’t get robots, robots get you.”
Melissa muttered to herself and ticked off needed components on her fingers. “If I could just take one apart, it should have everything I need...”
“You really shouldn’t be talking like that, you don’t want to mess with the Tireless Men.”
Bezio glanced around, hoping that nobody had overheard her conspiring to attack an agent of the secret police. Thanks to that, he finally noticed that all the foot traffic outside the fainting room was streaming in one direction, towards the Jade wing that he had been in previously. A pair of feline-masked guests shuffled out of the flow and towards a couch, the man leaning on the woman and racked with coughs. As he was getting situated, Bezio strode over.
“Madam, what news?”
“There’s a fire in Sapphire! My poor husband tried to help put it out but it was growing too quickly, and if that wasn’t enough some fool was in there waving a sword around! If you’ll excuse me, I have to find a doctor for my husband.”
She hurried off, and Bezio turned back towards Melissa to find that she was tottering away towards the exit. “Swords and fire, he wouldn’t pussyfoot around some damn robots, split one right in half and then we can all get out of here,” she exclaimed to no one in particular. Bezio caught up with her, grabbing her by the shoulder.
“You should stay—”
That was as far as he got as she pivoted towards him. He had a brief impression of dead eyes looking dispassionately at him through the eye-holes of the black demon mask and of her arm whirling around to encircle his. His arm bent unnaturally in her grip; he tried to step forward to alleviate the sudden pain in his shoulder, and then he was falling. He hit the floor with a teeth-jangling crash and by the time he was back on his feet, Melissa was out the archway and out of sight, swimming upstream towards Sapphire.