Newport Station, Sigma-13 System, 14th of August, 822 AS
Newport Station. Hidden inside a Gas Pocket of the Yanagi cloud, the former junker station had turned even more into a hellhole full of scum, pirates, smugglers... Basically all you would expect of a space station on the edge of civilised space. Newport didn't stink as much as Barrier Gate, but at least the central dock nearly did.
The large sealing hatch of the main dock opened, making way for a sleek little ship. Onuris Class, something seldomly seen aboard this station, but as long as the Order Agents paid their docking fees, nobody really cared. As the fighter landed on one of the more secluded pads, it automatically activated its red glimmering docking lights - a security system turning on, most likely.
The slim silhouette of the pilot left the ship, fastly making out one of the dock administrators and directly walking to him. After a short conversation, one of the cargo lifting vehicles was driven to her fighter, lifting an escape pod out of the cargo hold. It then proceeded to load it on to a small cart, which the agent then proceeded to leave the docking area with. The whole situation hadn't taken more than twenty minutes - but it was no less impressive.
Banshee opened the escape pod in one of the cabins she had rented from the station's administration. Having secured the unconscious Chrysanthemum with instant straps, she thrusted a Syringe into the womans throat vein - a push-up medication out of her own personal stash. Before it started to work, she activated the light on the maximum brightness, causing her cowl to overshadow her eyes, lighting the face cover with the painted on red jaw in a blinding light.
"Welcome to your personal Yomi, sister. We will have some talks now. Let's start with your name."
Nishi had always viewed the act of waking up as a kind of pre-rebirthing, a second conception – life germinated within you from the inside before spiralling out – the sole nuclei of your conscious expanding to fill the headspace of your skull before rushing at your neck, trailing electric arcs down your spinal column into the drains of your feet, prickling into your soles, causing you toes to circumflex around weary, rusted joints; shaking the leaden-ness loose as you start to earth yourself, grounded in reality anew, feeling vital and fully formed. As for control, flesh would come first, creeping and vital, the faint ruffle of fabric on shoulder, then the eyes – that lurch of perspective as you stagger from a blind world to one much, much bigger than what you in the hesitance of an irrepressible blink. The strange, alien sensitivity of your own tongue and teeth would follow, then your hearing; creeping up from the horizon of the unknown as fog on a spring morning. Returning to consciousness was meant to feel like love; your mind’s refreshing reward from the body for all the hours you have squandered at rest. As you blink the sleep-dust from your eyes, you are unconquerable –renewed beyond the clutches all lines, wrinkles and cankers, as if age was only a patina that could be polished away if you rub at your face.
Nishi couldn’t comprehend the social convention of a geriatric mortality, especially hers; old age to her was not a symptom of death, but proof of its evasion. Age dilation had been unusually forgiving to the Chrysanthemum, and had kept her features sprightly without the aid of cosmetics, if oddly bleached before soulless glow of chemical lights. Her mother had once, many decades past, rubbed at Nishi’s cheekbones with her slimline thumbs and told her she had the air of The Poetess. Her child self had skitted away from Mama’s eyes, embarrassed by her adult lie and fearful of having her idol’s appearance blurred before her dreams with any taint of herself. It seemed absurd, still seems absurd, is absurd. She wasn’t perfect, she knew it, and the thought of her imparting her imperfection on the divine ruptured her solace with faith. She didn’t want to be arrogant. She didn’t want to lie about who she was, so she screwed up her eyes and whispered herself to sleep at night praying that her mother would cease struggling to build a shrine out of her, and would awake one morning as a stranger. When her mother left, Nishi was sure Yuyu was smiling somewhere. She smiled back.
Yet one may see a glimmer of the ancient saint still in her octogenarian self. Experience, anguish and a steady corruption of empathy into apathy had sharpened her eyes with the cynical cut of a human predator. She was thin, but broad-shouldered, the slight squatness of her jaw drawing the eyes to her mouth, even in silence. Even in sleep. Her lips frowned at rest, as if the factory had forged her to be angry. You know that it’s unlikely that she can dream through the artificially induced hibernation of the escape pod, but it doesn’t stop her eyelashes from the infrequent, rustling twitch. Rapid eye movement; discomfort, perhaps? The still Chrysanthemum winces imperceptibly as you strap her into the restraints, tight enough to keep the circulation trickling, but firm enough to pin her down without hope of throwing them free. If she struggles, and you expect she will, they’ll tighten on her, enough to beat the breath from her lungs.
When Nishi wakes up from this sleep, however, the refreshment nature demands eludes her. Consciousness granted but conscience denied.
The rasp of metal against her neck.
She wakes, groggy, instinctively reaching up an arm to rub at her eyes only for her pupils to star with alarm as the gentle, expected pressure of the palm of her hands failed her, her limbs dangling loosely from her shoulders, strapped indefensibly to the back of the chair. A cough, loud and open mouthed as she hacks air, snorting herself back to lucidity with a rush of stale oxygen. For a second, her lidded pupils skitter around in their faintly sagging, fatigued sockets as life flushes between her teeth. Slowly, stoically, she curls the fingers on her manacled right hand flush against the base of her thumb, and checks her pulse, breathing it down into a slow, conscious rhythm. She stares around at the blackened space beyond before gently, hesitantly, raising her dilated, moonstone eyes into the oblivion beyond. She struggles once against her restraints, curving and arcing, before relaxing again. A wry, empty smile splays her cut lips, as if there was some joke only she could detect.
She fixes the Order agent with a neutral, statuesque hale stare of a leopard completely at rest. She looked like she could remain their all her life, all aims fulfilled, all boxes ticked.
“My name is ‘Screw You’; it’s short, and easy to remember”. The Chrysanthemum speaks, her voice dissonantly gentle, the rolling tones of her Cambridge dialect strangely complimentary to the blight-coloured bruise coating her left temple. “If you like, you can untie my hands..."she gestures, as far as the restraints will permit. "...and I’ll write it down for you. Then I’ll wring your neck.”
“…Do you have any more questions, Order, or should I just keep sitting here amusing myself in a puddle of my own pee? Not that I mind, of course: in comparison to this place, it practically smells of Cologne. More pee for me.”
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
Banshee showed no visible reaction on the snarky comment, just narrowed her eyes a bit - which was impossible for the sister to see because of the hard shadow hiding the Agent's eyes. It was a normal reaction of captured subjects to be on the defensive, especially when they had information. It was a game of dominance, and would she react on the comment in the wrong way, she would leave the control over the situation in the sister's hands - cuffs or no cuffs.
She started to walk slowly around the chair the sister was tied to, and began to check on the fixations in a slow, almost pedantic way. Her intent was to provoke a reaction from the Chrysanthemum that would cause more outrage - a person in rage always exposed information, if she wanted or not.
As the silence finally was broken, almost a minute had passed, and Banshee again stood right in front of the sister, the predator's jaw on the face cover again being the only feature she showed to Nishi.
"Want to start again, perhaps? What is your name?"
Nishi licked gently at her dry, dusted lips, savouring the brine. It was clotting. Good - even heaven could be hades when you had the gentle itch of your blood on your jaw. She breathed; lungs in, lungs out, with a conscious deliberation. She metred herself, the steady atrophy of her muscles into sluggishness irritating her. She yearned to move, and yet, couldn’t appear to have that yearning. Everything must be still. Every leaf must remain pristine. As the agent tightened her restraints, her gloved fingers pressing against her shoulders, her neck, her thighs, Nishi remained immutable. She was the ice-queen, the wicked witch, the prize pig, the prime b**ch; they could not make her melt. She gave her chin a nonchalant scratch on the coarse polymer of her shoulder strap, and felt better.
“…Names. Of course. We need something to affix to profanity, don’t we? Luisa Neumann, Chancellor of the Bundestag. Daimyo Nagahide, feudal liege-lord of the blood dragons. Chairman Cheng Cong, guild master of the Gas Mining Guild. Carina Regina, protector of the taus, blah blah something of the near omegas and a bunch of other highfaluting titles I don’t care for; queen of Bretonia by all the dubious authority pertaining to accident of birth. Please; didn’t your mother ever tell you not to get into strange ships with strange people with a kinda’, mhm, Screamesque, Friday the Thirteenth discount slasher movie vibe? Mine did.”Nishi locks her gaze onto the blank, seamless slopes of her accuser’s mask, searching for her eyes. She decides, and fixes on a point a fraction of a millimetre too high. It still cuts. “I feel like I should be yelling for a violation-whistle so I can play you a merry reel. I’m not going to take you seriously if you lock me up in some seriously funkily fragranced bondage bunker wearing what looks like Ronald Mc Donald’s mummified face. Goddess pity you; you look more incarcerated in that fetish gag locking over your jawbones that I do strapped to a chair. Next you’ll start lactating or paddling yourself or something. Cut it out. You’re meant to be interrogating me, not swanning around in circles gussied up as pint-sized transexual Jason in an unreadably exposition-bloated unsexy neural-net fanfiction. Call me back when Order sends some real interrogators, not their good-time girl on spring break.”She spat, open lipped, catching the rim of a barely visible boot with a bolus of bile and phlegm. Nishi twitched - she wondered if she’d wasted the moisture.
“Look, I get it. You’re really trying, girl, you truly are. The light, the stench, the chair, the ties - you’re trying to disorient me so you can rip bits out of my brain at your discretion. This Halloween get-up you’ve got for yourself, mhm - bit try-hard-esque, but at least you exerted yourself… yeah, it makes you look a bit more in-the-closet than Monster-in-the-closet. Hell, you you gave it a go, girl.”She shrugs. She gives little - she takes none at all.
Nishi grins, a slow, glacial line of a smile that crinkles her jaw. She’s mocking you. “Want… to start… again, perhaps?”
The Chrysanthemum winks: “Be a pal. Take the mask off.”
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
Banshee hid her surprise well, although if Nishi had seen her eyes, she would probably have guessed that her words about inexperience were at least partly true. Without eye contact, however, reading her face was hard, especially since the Agent kept breathing calmly.
Changing her strategy now would be giving the sister control, and she knew that, although it took a moment to realize that. She'd need to stay hard, and especially she'd need to continue asking the same question. Of course she already knew the name - her goal was merely to annoy the sister, make her waste her ressources, both mental and physical. A drained and exhausted human is easier to break, she kept telling herself - and at the same time wished she'd never come in such a situation.
For another ten seconds, she stayed silent, staring down on the Chrysanthemums face. Not moving an inch, she started to speak again.
“why don’t you tell me?” Nishi replies in quick-fire antiphony, her mind drifting on cruise control, her focus curled inwards. It took a conscious, sapping effort to keep her jaw up towards the provocateur.“…There’s nothing more tiring than a one-sided conversation.”
The back of her throat tickled; the gentle, playful, dancing irritation of a child. She tried to cough, but couldn’t ward the sensation away. As the idea germinated mind the first thorns of the bloom started to prickle against her neck, and she bit her dry lips shut.
Nishi wasn’t accustomed to being thirsty. God damn.
She was tempted to fiddle with the restraints. The strap behind her fell loose around her wrists - a millimetre of movement here, a stretch of torsion there - begging her to squander her time. She snorted, breathing gently through her nose, trapping vapour.
“I don’t like you, you don’t like me, and yet here we are, stuck in a room together like two wizened spouses because of our respective sense of duty. Look at me, here, doing the goddess’s work. Look at you, playing H.H.Holmes down to a tee, right up to the murder castle. Did you know this is the closest any member of the Sisterhood has come to an agent of the Order Overwatch, barring the godless whores in the sisterhood of Light. I’ve been tantalised by the thought of this day for months; getting to know my enemy. There’s something etherial, something otherworldly about staring down a machine. A flash of particle tracers, the odd bang of a missile smacking against your hull plates, and then nothing. You focus on destroying a machine, not a human being. This is the fundamental distinction between a freedom fighter and a cereal killer.”
“I am a human being, girl.”Nishi grins, leaning back against the spartan headrest, staring languidly into the light. “Ultimately, I fight against the machine for the sake of humanity, be that machine material, or geopolitical - I don’t care about the meat that flies the ship. People are never the enemy. People can be broken, and people can be rebuilt. People can be twisted, and people can be turned. They can burn and they can heal. They can murder and they can procreate. A machine is dangerous because it only knows what it’s programmed to do - humans? Humans are pliable. You can bend them into what ever shape you wish and they’ll call it ‘free will’. Humans are essentially virtuous. They have factory settings. Machines? It’s the machines you’ve got to watch for. Nobody stabs anybody without a knife. Nobody ties anybody to a chair without the chair to bind them to.”
“…Which are you? I look at you, and I see a machine. What kind of living do you render for yourself? What do you fight for? Essentially, I’m little more than a well-armed civil rights activist - yet I have freedom of will. Obviously, by the going logic, I’m a human. Yet, what are you? A tool of a faceless shadow organisation lacking a house or a cause. An organisation so obsessed with the metaphorical big picture you have the hubris to title yourselves the ‘saviours of humanity’, whilst merrily trampling over whoever you wish to suit these objectives. You’re clearly low-rung, else I’d be crushing my buttmuscles somewhere cleaner. You’re disposable, darling. A minutia of a facet on a cog in a machine that is infinitely larger than you are, and has all manner of built-in redundancies. Right now, you serve no purpose other than as an over-glorified lie detector, and since I’m obviously not going to volunteer anything compromising to you over my own volition other than my little missive from the escape pod, you can quit wasting both of our limited time in this mortal coil and shoot me. Preferably somewhere expedient, but whatever works.”
“Think about it. What do you have to threaten me with? My life? God-awfully rich of you if so; the law of probabilities dictate I should certainly be dead by now - I’m far more useful to my goddess as a corpse whilst I remain in your possession. Pain? Really - pain wouldn’t prevent me from lying to you, now, would it? I could seed you with whatever misinformation I wish, and you’d have nothing to verify its validity against. Be under no allusions that I won’t attempt to slit your carotid open the moment you release me from this chair - so what to do with me? As for releasing me; please refrain from doing so, the intel I’m gathering from you is truly killer. So that leaves you with an impossible choice, doesn’t it?”
“Please, continue to waste your time in the manner to which you are accustomed. Or, you could refrain from being a complete jackass and get me a canteen of water or something. Oh, and a change of clothes - this jumpsuit is getting as reesty as a neglected pork scratching. Hop hop.”
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
Behind her mask, Banshee smiled. Nishi had just exposed her first weakness - she was thirsty. Sure, that was to be expected, but she had asked herself what the woman would demand first, besides of he death, of course. Nishi's claim that she'd expose intel to her was ignored - why should she care about lies.
The Agent broke the fixation on Nishi's eyes and turned around, to a table that, at least from the perspective of the bound Chrysanthemum, was hidden in a shadow and forced her to look almost directly into the light. Banshee turned her back on the sister, grabbed a bottle of water from the dispenser and drank some of it.
The interruption was welcome. Although the captive's words hadn't insulted her, they made her think. Of course she was a cog in the workings of larger men and women. Golanski, the Witch... too many, to actually know who was influencing her actions currently. Yes, they were influencing her, but as long as she knew that they were, at least a bit of control would remain in her hands. Besides, who was she to question the workings of these machinations? A theoretical understanding of those works was completely sufficient to influence them, especially when those 'controllers' shared goals with her.
Before she turned around, she readjusted the mask - she wouldn't give the sister that victory - and emptied a small vial of liquid in the bottle.
As she turned around, the bottle was closed and rolled to Nishi's feet, directly in front of her but out of her reach. Banshee took her old position, and re-iniated the conversation.
"Philosophical. Let's start anew. Your name?"
She intentionally used almost the same wording as the last time. Provoking another outburst would probably give her more information about the weaknesses of the sister. As she thought about how she would drug the clueless woman in front of her, her conscience surfaced for the first time, but she fought it down. This woman would do the same to her, if not more.
Nishi glared into the searing light and the light glared coldly back at her, stars of darkness speckling her eyes. Amidst the noir greys and fuzzy, indistinct lines of the floor she traced the hard lines of the table legs, the curve of the water jacket, the metallic sheen of the dispenser, and glared at the floor plates before she could could see anything more, and listened to the faint sound of swallowing. In gentle vengeance she kicked back at the bloody bottle as it nudged against her bound toecaps, the plastic crunching against the tips of her boots as Nishi nudged the hateful thing out of sight, barely resisting the need to stretch and scrabble haplessly for it as it rolled forlornly away, tantalisingly close yet irrevocably far. A minute passed before she trusted herself. She laughed witheringly.
“…Well.” She blinked, wiping her mouth with the back of a knuckle, teeth locked at the molars behind a onomatopoeic smile. “At least I won’t need to worry about Stockholm syndrome. As if I had any doubt as to you being a passably decent person. You're a saint, girl. I'll be sure to canonize you, once you're dead, of course.”
“Besides, honey. Why would I drink from anything you hadn’t drunk from yourself? Think. I’m a freedom fighter, honey; human excrement. I’m a rat and you’re a pest control officer - if you didn’t find me a particularly fascinating specimen of filth we wouldn’t be here, would we? And all you’ve got is a hunch that I have something to offer you.”She laughs again, a silent, closed lipped exhalation that had little to do with humour. She holds her eyes high, tracing the corners of your mask, searching for the barely visible inferences of your ears amongst the shroud. She displays a touch of teeth - just a line, just an edge. She’s wondering what it’d feel like to rip that mask from your face, what she could prize it off with. What would it take to cut you down from the tower that you’ve built yourself. What would it take to look you in the eyes, and see the feral mortality of your gaze? You’re not invincible honey; your shield is paper and your dignity glass. But she can’t gouge what she can’t see.
“You know - well, you don’t know; nobody who could be viewed as a scientifically valid source tends to be available for testimony - what the Sisterhood does to prisoners?”The captive trails, propping her head against her shoulder, gazing at her captor sidelong, as if she could flank her with her eyes; press behind her barriers and excavate the humanity inside. “We don’t do - well, this, actually. I can provide you with innumerable ideological, socia-historical, religious and ethical reasons why we’re not enough of a moral bastard to squander our time torturing people. Interrogations are for those who think being good at chess makes you Napoleon. It’s egotistical; self-serving. It doesn’t unearth data of any validity, that’s what they’ll tell you, and they’ll be right, as well.”Nishi narrows her eyes. You think she’s going to wink at you but she refrains. You’re reminded of an inexperienced marksman, greenly blinkering his field of vision before the iron sights. The message was universal - if she had a gun and her liberty, she’d shoot you where you stand. Perhaps that’s what she wants you to feel.
“…It’s lies. They’re good reasons, but they’re not true reasons. Critical distinction. No; the Sisterhood doesn’t waste time on interrogations because it’s a waste of habitable volume and manpower to keep a prisoner conscious, guarded and sane. Black and white, light and dark, we deal in absolutes, not arbitrary toddler-play. Decision, final and irrevocable. We ask nicely and if you confide, first time, you pass the test; you get to live about your life burning time in whatever incinerator you choose to chuck it into. You go free - not a hair pulled, not a scar dug. If you fail to comply, ta-ta, out the airlock with you. You’re a problem and you’re removable - logic and the laws of physics dictate the rest - it’s the universe’s responsibility, not ours. You can live out your life or have a free hall pass to the Goddess - we send you direct. No sadomasochistic screwing about; when you’re dead, you're dead. You don’t live a living death. Which of us is more honourable? Deceivers who dabble in antagonism and pain, or those who actually do what we bloody say we're going to do, huh? Don't answer - I don't care. You clearly think I'm important or you would have started cutting me by now; which is wonderful for me because by the time I'm done with you, you're going to start cutting yourself. ”
“Since you’re not going to release me, likely ever, unless that release is in death, what possible motivation do I have to talk turkey, Order?”
“…Go on. Say it then; I’m interested to see how many different ways you can ask me what my name is before your vocabulary fails you and you have to move back to square one. It’s keeping me tolerably interested in what you have to say.”
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
ooRP Reminder: There has been some RP lost due to the forum rollback. This post is set after that roleplay, might therefore look somehow disconnected.
Worn out by at least three hours of psychological warfare on multiple fronts against this woman at least thrice her age, Banshee was relieved to have her facade maintained - but now she needed a break. Time to recover her mental reserves. To overthink the information she received, and time to get away from here, back into safe space. Newport was never intended to be a permanent solution for this prisoner problem, and even if command hadn't sent orders yet, logic dictated to head for home space.
What she could not afford was to give her captive that time. No recovering for the prisoner. Giving her only a few conscious moments until the next interrogation, ideally none, was mandatory to keep up the pace.
Almost regretfully, Banshee pulled up the syringe. A sedative, usually used to give Agents the final sleep - it was strong enough to kill an ordinary human. Maybe just enough to incapacitate a cardamine user. In theory. But desperate situations called for desperate measures.
She turned around to her captive, mustering her from her superior position. No doubt, this rebellious monster would have done the same to her. Blood was dripping from Nishis mouth, and she injected the drug as fast as she could, glad that her prisoner didn't look up to see the pity in her eyes. As Nishi's conscience faded away, the Agent was already starting to pack up the gear scattered around the table.
The whole endeavour hadn't taken long. As her fightercraft vanished into the blue glooming clouds of Sigma-13, Banshee, having secured her prisoner in the sealed cargohold, tore off her mask with a silent scream. This was torture, for both of them, and whoever won this battle of minds would have a serious impact on the fate of the other. And as her despair and pity made place for the conditioning and training of the Order yet again, a determination and calmness soothed her heart once again. She would not be losing this fight. She would not disappoint.
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