(Note: we allowed each other mutual control of our characters. There is no godmodding that isn't our intention in this thread. We're thinking of going down to Tibet to serve as monks for a few months. Like the covenant between Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, we're cooperating here - But Yana's gonna run off to my cop brother-in-law. I just feel it in my my crystal meth making fingerbones.)
3rd Ymiden 716
Two women on the docks of the southwood river that flows down into Foster’s Bay.
One is a brunette with the awkward lankiness of a girl still growing, the other a taller redhead who looked, stood, and shook as if she hadn’t slept in a dozen trials. One of them is dressed in the uniform of the Etzori army, the other opts for the kind of clothes that you wouldn’t look twice at; which was the point. One has a look on her face that could be described as intense annoyance, the other’s features are more complicated: a kind of forced calmness that did too little to mask the desperation, fatigue, annoyance, and fear in every inch of her body language.
One of them is a mage that can shatter everything outside of life, the other hides her form under the guise of flesh.
One has a bounty on her head, the other most emphatically does not.
They are twins, in a sense. No, they barely look alike. They share neither father nor mother. Their height and build is different. They didn’t grow up together nor have they known each other for more than an arc, but there is a familiarity nonetheless, a kinship if you would: they both share certain traits that make them, well, separated from all the other kids at the playground.
Firstly, they both thrived on information.
The redhead was born into deceit. A Yludih had dozens of shapes across their lives, and even the current form, this etzori archer she had dubbed Rayna, was but just one more face in the gallery of her life. She was spying before she knew what a spy was. She craved knowledge long before she knew how valuable it could be. The story of every person could be summed up by the things they were and the things they did, and Yana strove to complete the image of that narrative with everyone she met.
The Brunette… well, she didn’t have some of Yana’s physiological advantages or the built-in mental drive for pure subterfuge, but her thirst was the same nonetheless. The key thing that really got her down, on the other hand, was the unwillingness to perform her own dirty work, to get down into the trenches of intelligence and do what needed to be done. She had her own way of doing things, of course, but one might wonder why such an unsocial, sullen brat wanted to be at the centre of a web.
She would argue that she -or anybody with half a mind- didn’t have a choice, that this was the only way to truly know people: through hard, consistent fact. Not what they said or what they felt, but what they truly were.
Thankfully, her magic found quite a number of ways to compensate for her shortcomings.
Secondly, they both understand what it is to have nothing inside.
They both dissected their first tiny, cutsey animal before they were ten. Not to placate some sadistic pulse that begged for blood, or to affirm power over something smaller than you - though it would be disingenuous to suggest that they were completely void of it. No, it was a simple matter of understanding what they couldn’t see.
And when they saw it, they moved on.
Another thing they understood on the day they dipped in and carved into the dog or cat or pig or bird or frog or whatever animal came first - it was lost in a haze of trivia not worth sorting out- a bonus lesson: people have arbitrary notions on what deserved the knife less.
It was confusing. It was very confusing, and neither of them ever figured out why the life of dog was worth more than a pig or a toad.
And it is this shared empty familiarity that drives Zipper to hunt down Rayna for chum change. Because, for all the rapport they shared together, what was happening now was, a little bit of regret aside, ultimately nothing personal.
Just business then, just business now.
But it was never that simple, was it?
“Ray, help a girl out here, yeah?” Zipper said, one hand raised with the crackling energy of an ether missile aimed straight at the redhead. The little quip was the only mercy the woman she knew as Rayna would get. “200 dead, 400 a fuckin’ live. Which, oh which, would you pick?”
3rd Ymiden 716
Two women on the docks of the southwood river that flows down into Foster’s Bay.
One is a brunette with the awkward lankiness of a girl still growing, the other a taller redhead who looked, stood, and shook as if she hadn’t slept in a dozen trials. One of them is dressed in the uniform of the Etzori army, the other opts for the kind of clothes that you wouldn’t look twice at; which was the point. One has a look on her face that could be described as intense annoyance, the other’s features are more complicated: a kind of forced calmness that did too little to mask the desperation, fatigue, annoyance, and fear in every inch of her body language.
One of them is a mage that can shatter everything outside of life, the other hides her form under the guise of flesh.
One has a bounty on her head, the other most emphatically does not.
They are twins, in a sense. No, they barely look alike. They share neither father nor mother. Their height and build is different. They didn’t grow up together nor have they known each other for more than an arc, but there is a familiarity nonetheless, a kinship if you would: they both share certain traits that make them, well, separated from all the other kids at the playground.
Firstly, they both thrived on information.
The redhead was born into deceit. A Yludih had dozens of shapes across their lives, and even the current form, this etzori archer she had dubbed Rayna, was but just one more face in the gallery of her life. She was spying before she knew what a spy was. She craved knowledge long before she knew how valuable it could be. The story of every person could be summed up by the things they were and the things they did, and Yana strove to complete the image of that narrative with everyone she met.
The Brunette… well, she didn’t have some of Yana’s physiological advantages or the built-in mental drive for pure subterfuge, but her thirst was the same nonetheless. The key thing that really got her down, on the other hand, was the unwillingness to perform her own dirty work, to get down into the trenches of intelligence and do what needed to be done. She had her own way of doing things, of course, but one might wonder why such an unsocial, sullen brat wanted to be at the centre of a web.
She would argue that she -or anybody with half a mind- didn’t have a choice, that this was the only way to truly know people: through hard, consistent fact. Not what they said or what they felt, but what they truly were.
Thankfully, her magic found quite a number of ways to compensate for her shortcomings.
Secondly, they both understand what it is to have nothing inside.
They both dissected their first tiny, cutsey animal before they were ten. Not to placate some sadistic pulse that begged for blood, or to affirm power over something smaller than you - though it would be disingenuous to suggest that they were completely void of it. No, it was a simple matter of understanding what they couldn’t see.
And when they saw it, they moved on.
Another thing they understood on the day they dipped in and carved into the dog or cat or pig or bird or frog or whatever animal came first - it was lost in a haze of trivia not worth sorting out- a bonus lesson: people have arbitrary notions on what deserved the knife less.
It was confusing. It was very confusing, and neither of them ever figured out why the life of dog was worth more than a pig or a toad.
And it is this shared empty familiarity that drives Zipper to hunt down Rayna for chum change. Because, for all the rapport they shared together, what was happening now was, a little bit of regret aside, ultimately nothing personal.
Just business then, just business now.
But it was never that simple, was it?
“Ray, help a girl out here, yeah?” Zipper said, one hand raised with the crackling energy of an ether missile aimed straight at the redhead. The little quip was the only mercy the woman she knew as Rayna would get. “200 dead, 400 a fuckin’ live. Which, oh which, would you pick?”
