Fantasy DIFFERENT BODIES ⋮ SAME SOUL | ( *starboob && syntra )

[starboob]

☉ LIORA TRIHN ☉
​

If only relief had washed over her when Inna actually believes her (and by extension trusts her); instead, a riptide of guilt pulls her under and she doesn't think she can breath while looking at Inna. It's not even the lying that bothers her, because she's spent plenty of time lying, but it's that she's lying to her friend. Someone she cares about, possibly one of the only people that she really cares about. As new as that concept is for Liora, she knows that it is true and it feels deeper than just care too. She doesn't know the name for the feeling, but its flavor is sweet and makes her sick so she knows it's something significant if she is attaching it to to another person. God, that smile hurts to look at. So Liora looks away, despite wanting to get lost somewhere in it.

For once, she isn't annoyed that Inna has a penchant for drinking at any given time of the day. She's smart enough to know that the wine in her cup will happily drown out her guilt and maybe will help her think of things that are not related to the murderous bitch inside of soul. (She still cannot put together why Vie did it––especially after seeing how she sweet she had been with Ivy and likewise how sweet Ivy had been with Vie. They seemed so close; so what happened that caused Vie to drive a knife through her friend? Liora doesn't want to believe that it had happened in cold blood... She doesn't even want to believe that she has to take responsibility for this––but with all the magical bullshitters they've been running into, it's clear as day that somehow she is responsible. But just how is she even going to talk to Inna about this? She already lied about it and their relationship feels so fragile already it seems best to stick with it. Maybe the visions will stop happening if she ignores them hard enough? Isn't that the Inna Orlovskaya method? Perhaps she will give it a try.)

And if Inna isn't going to fear being trapped in a possibly evil villa with a weird Italian Mistress (okay, that sounds kind of hot, actually) then she'll join her! Besides those all knowing swords haven't come in to stop them, so she figures it should be fine. She sips on her wine and begins sampling all the different varieties of soup on display––pleased that so many of them are her favorites even if it is a little weird (i.e., stalkery) that this feast is so highly catered to their personal tastes. Though, for as vaguely mistrustful as she is, she also begins to make a mental list of all of the questions she has for the Mistress so that she can finally gain some clarity on why the fuck their lives have taken not just a complete fucking U-turn, but have been launched into fucking space!

Unfortunately, that process is interrupted when Inna grabs her attention; Liora immediately notes the flush in her cheeks and almost rolls her eye at her colleague, but decides against it. If she wants to deal with a hangover tomorrow, then that's on fucking her. Liora will be much more responsible and limit herself to two glasses. Three if things get stressful and if she is pushed to a fourth then people should definitely watch themselves. "I mean, no problem? I meant it when I said Chett would have to kill me before he could get to you," she says, a little too defensively––overcompensating for past actions and trying to rectify that tarnished reputation. (A reputation that shouldn't even be fucking hers!) "Wait what––?" Yeah, confusion is one word to describe the look on Liora's face when Inna suggests... something. She doesn't know what, exactly, would be awkward if Liora had hurt Inna (which, she still contests that Liora has done nothing wrong to Inna––aside from all those insults and harsh critiques over the years. But emotional damage isn't real, because physically you're still fine, so therefore it doesn't count! And she's pretty convinced everyone is on the same page as her regarding that).

Anyway, when Inna actually does explain? Liora had been mid-sip of her wine and almost, but not quite, spills it all over herself. Instead, she avoids that outcome by downing the glass much faster than anticipated. "Um, what?" she repeats, her eyes wide with surprise––because she hadn't expected this. This has completely thrown Liora off––like, if she is reading this situation correctly, then Inna Orlovskaya has just confessed... something. It makes her heart feel funny and, at the same time, she is pretty sure she is going to puke because something is tingly in her stomach as well. "I can be mean, again? But I thought you didn't like that and so. I don't know I stopped. And then you started being nice back and I sorta like that too, I think... so it, um, made sense to be nice? I can be nice. I just mostly choose not to be, because, like, people are fucking shitty so why should I let them in if they're just going to fucking waste my goddamn time?" Focusing on the wrong thing? Absolutely. It's hard to think about the other implications of what Inna is telling her. For several reasons, a large one being her guilt and another large piece being her own cluelessness about how she actually feels about the blonde. She has not had time to assess her feelings in a while and so all of these recent developments are currently uncategorized and thus unorganized and so she just doesn't know, okay! It's totally normal to be so disconnected with the Self that figuring out something as simple as: What do the butterflies in your stomach mean? What does it mean when you can't stop thinking about kissing your colleague? Why were you assigned to work with the prettiest person in the mafia and expected to not fall in lo–– 'Shut up!! Shut. Up. SHUT UP!!' She can't think with all of this swimming in her head and the second glass of wine that she quickly downs does not help.

"Y-you don't even know me, Inna. Like, what's my favorite color? When's my birthday? What are my career aspirations?" Oh god, oh god, oh god––what is she even saying? Earlier, when they were fighting Remus, hadn't she wanted to kiss Inna? She kind of remembers there being a moment after catching her where those lips looked particularly enticing. She even knows that she hasn't really stopped thinking about their first kiss where fucking fireworks flew over their head and how good it felt––like she had never even been kissed before (and she certainly had never been kissed like that before). (And what were all those hand grabs and reassuring squeezes? Liora doesn’t even want to go there.) So what is stopping her now? Well, other than guilt, Liora reasons that Inna maybe only wants one thing from her and while that thought doesn't really bother her... It doesn't make her feel all that special either. Does she want Inna to make her feel special? She isn't even sure about that! She doesn't know what she wants and hasn't had the time to examine that question since she was at least seven. (There's also the glaring fact that she can't want Inna. She can't be responsible for hurting Inna like that if she ever finds out the truth. Moreover, what would her mother think? Actually, she already knows exactly what her mother would think and if she intends to get back at her for all the bullshit she's put Liora through, Inna on her arm would be such an easy target for her mother to rip into. She can't subject Inna to that either.)

Why is this so fucking stressful! She's gripping the chalice in her hands so tightly, she ends up crushing it (thanks to her new magic powers). "Fuck... Inna," she starts, as she avoids eye contact with the blonde and wipes the mess from her dress (at least she is already in red). Her heart races the more frustrated she becomes, unsure of how she even got herself into this situation and wanting an immediate exit. "This––this really isn't a good time, I mean, we're saving the fucking world? I just—I just don't think this is a good idea." (Those words and this situation, actually, feel eerily familiar to Liora. Why does she feel like she’s rejected Inna before?)

 

[Syntra]

Inna stared at Liora, teetering somewhere between amusement and... what was it, dismay? Nooo, that couldn't be! Dismay was pretty fucking annoying, you see, and so the blonde had put it on her list of Forbidden EmotionsTM years ago. In her opinion, everyone should have done that-- like, had humanity just tried a little bit, all those useless fucking feelings could have been just an unpleasant memory by now, much like smallpox or, uh, feudalism. Instead of wallowing in them, they could have done something productive! Such as... such as... inventing a gum that chewed itself once you put it in your mouth. Just, didn't you ever get tired of having to chew consciously, up and down, up and down, up and down? Talk about living in stereotype, man. It fucking crushed her soul, knowing that she'd spend a ridiculous chunk of her lifespan on moving her goddamn jaws. There were so many other goals to pursue! Exploring the depths of the universe, or collecting pretty coins, or tasting every single chilli sauce that had ever been produced-- and yet, here she fucking was, forever bound to her flimsy mortal shell and its eternal, ceaseless chewing.

(...it wasn't that Inna was sad about other things, such as Liora's unspoken 'no'. It hadn't come yet, but it would, you know? Inna could fucking see the trajectory, could trace the dots. Vaguely, she remembered one of the English classes she miraculously hadn't slept through-- the teacher, almost as bored as her, had gone on and on about 'story structure' and 'inner logic' and shit. Inna had no fucking idea why that had gotten stuck in her mind of all things, but bear with her, okay? Okay. Well, suddenly, tidbits such as 'foreshadowing' and 'rising action, climax and falling action' were coming back to her, like ghosts of literary analyses past. And, what Liora was doing now? Even if the blonde fucking sucked at identifying the patterns, she could spot them now-- this, Inna thought, was rising action. Rising action that was building up to a climax she didn't want, didn't, didn't, didn't, and, fuck! Was there no way to stop this? No way to get this relationship back on the track, in the direction where it had been heading before she'd opened her big mouth?!)

"Umm. Colors? Career aspirations?" the blonde chuckled nervously, in the same way you chuckled when lunatic put a gun to your head, told you a knock knock joke and recommended you to 'laugh, bitch.' "Does that... does that fucking matter? Like, is it a big deal if you prefer black to white? What does that change about you? Besides, I'm pretty sure it's black-- you dress like fucking Morticia Addams. This shit isn't hard to guess. And as for your aspirations!" Inna continued, apparently determined to make a an even bigger fool out of herself. "I don't know what these are, but I bet they're... umm, hilariously overblown. Like, world-domination level of overblown. Is it fucking world domination?" she batted her eyelashes, all but begging her to say 'yes'. Stop this, you fucking idiot. Don't you know this is just a bunch of excuses? It's not like getting these right will make her change her mind! Because, newsflash-- Liora wasn't a goddamn Jeopardy! episode, and presenting her with correct answers wouldn't result in her getting a prize. Nah, mate. This was essentially an upgraded version of the usual 'it's me, not you' spiel, except that Inna knew it was her, so Liora could stop trying. (...it had always been her, from the very beginning. Patterns, remember? All of her relationships had blown up in her face, like a cigarette next to fucking gasoline, and... and denying that would change nothing. Still, bold of her to assume this would! 'Cause no matter what those stupid motivational quotes said, facing problems head-on also didn't work. Like, you could try facing a train as it approached you at full fucking speed, but what would remain of you? The same bloody bits you'd get if you ran instead, dammit!) "And regarding your birthday..." 365 to 1, huh? Not really great odds, Inna knew that perfectly well even while riding the alcohol buzz wave. So, okay, what now? Guess or not guess, that was the question.

"I don't fucking know," the blonde gave up, "but I wouldn't fucking forget it if you told me. And I'd like to find out? Plus, um, I give the best gifts." Oh wow, now she was fucking hitting the rock bottom! Dignity, pride and such? Apparently, Inna Orlovskaya would exchange all of those for a tiny, tiny chance of holding Liora's hand non-platonically. Just, what the fuck, man. What. the. fuck. (...why did this always happen to her? This wanting things you couldn't have? The cyberpunk reality couldn't come fast enough-- maybe someone would reprogram her dumbass brain, and remove these dumbass tendencies of hers. Then, finally, could Inna live in peace! Not feeling as if-- as if her heart had been ripped apart, and as if she had to stitch it together immediately to save whatever remained of... well, of herself, really.

"But," she chuckled once again and emptied another glass, "I guess I get it." Like, nobody had ever wanted her for more than a fling, so this shouldn't have come off as a surprise. (Stupid little Inna, too weird for anything but convos that equaled to verbal shitposting but pretty enough to turn heads. It really, really shouldn't have been surprising! ...somehow, it was.) "So," Inna looked at Liora, even if hiding her face in some fucking pillow was all she wanted at that moment, "what now? Is this the part where you laugh at me? Do we like, go back to hating each other because this is too fucking awkward? I don't wanna, but... I'd get that as well, I suppose. I mean, I am being pretty pathetic, so no guilt tripping here."

 

[starboob]

☉ LIORA TRIHN ☉
​

Liora looks down at her lap, at her hands, idly tracing over the lifelines on her palms––really doing anything to distract from the knots in her stomach, the knots in her back––the entire fucking rope she seems to be made out of. Her brows knit together, deep in concentration as she switches to examining her nail beds, picking at hangnails and again, trying to escape a feeling she is sitting in and that is sewn to her very soul. It hurts more and more each time Inna tries to convince her that she's being unreasonable, mostly because she knows that it's true. Or at least a small sliver of herself does and that small sliver seems to have a lot of fucking saying in how she responds to all of this––which is fucking annoying she would strangle that part of herself if it didn't also probably mean that she would have to die with it. Or maybe she's just blowing things out of proportion.

"Inna––you don't..." 'Understand,' is what she wants to say, but she doesn't. Explaining wouldn't help anything; she has sort of gained some self-awareness that each time she tries to explain she over does it and makes matters worse. She doesn't want to suspend Inna in hope. 'She doesn't deserve that,' a voice in her head whispers; a voice that both is and isn't her own.

Finally, she pinches the bridge of her nose and when her hand drops back into her lap she finally returns her gaze to Inna; beautiful, stunning Inna who is absolutely annoying and is filled with so much nonsense she wonders how the woman is even able to function on her own. And that's probably why she finds her endearing too––and maybe always had? She isn't really sure, because everything is so blurry––between figuring out where Vie's feelings end and hers begin, she just doesn't know. (The well-adjusted version of Liora might have been able to voice all of this and ask Inna to be patient with her, but that version of her is still in the works and thus she only acts with the tools she knows.) Unfortunately, one of those tools is a jackhammer. It comes out when Inna suggests they'll go back to hating each other––that statement actually hurts Liora. It hurts because Liora thought that maybe they were friends, or were on their way to becoming friends, but if Inna clearly only wants all of her or none of her, then fine! So be it. It's easy to let that bitch-sona take over if that's what––

Oh. She doesn't want that either. Okay. She's irritated, still, but at least the jackhammer gets put away (for the time being). In its place, a whip cracks to hide her hurt when she speaks, "No. There's nothing fucking funny about this––but if you think that's all that I am, then sure. I'll laugh. Haha, Inna Orlovskaya likes Liora. So hilarious." Her lips purse together as she brings up her walls and covers the window she had built for Inna at the bottom. As Inna finishes her, what? one trillionth glass, Liora actually does roll her eyes––annoyed, disappointed, exhausted––she just doesn't want to deal with this. "You're just drunk, okay? We can forget about this tomorrow."

She rises from her seat and turns to the Mistress, who has apparently been watching this entire exchange and for once Liora cannot get a read on her features beneath the mask. "I have questions, rest assured, but I need to collect my thoughts––if you'll excuse me, we can chat in the morning," she says and turns on her heel to leave––without even waiting for permission.

Now, if Liora hadn't dammed her tears up decades ago, she may have felt some sting at her eyes. Since she cannot cry, however, her chest just twists itself up and she can feel her head becoming full of so much stuff that she's getting a headache––it would be a lot easier to just allow herself the chance to cry, but she knows that once the dam breaks, she won't ever be able to stop again. And she has so much crying to catch up on––it's just not a good idea. Especially when she needs to be focused and hardened. 'Inna deserves better in this life and in this life, she can't want me... Not again.' She opens the door to their shared bedroom (yikes!) and slips into the bathroom. She doesn't immediately do anything to shed her clothes, instead taking several long minutes to study her features in the mirror before the image becomes too familiar and uncanny. Maybe today had been a colossal mistake. A mistake she cannot undo, unfortunately. Well, with that settled she finally does get ready for bed and curls herself into a ball under the covers. And, at some point, buries her face in one of those fancy fucking pillows and screams into it as loudly as she can––which does help relieve some of her tension. 'Whatever, just go to sleep and pretend this never fucking happened. It'll be fine. Just swell...'

Desperately, she also hopes she hasn't just lost a friend...

 

[Syntra]

Wait, wait, wait. Fucking what? Had she accidentally spoken in Russian, or something? Because Liora sorta seemed to hear a different message to the one she was trying to convey here! (And Inna would pay actual money to know what kind of garbage translator she was using to extract the meaning from her words, really, since it seemed to translate her semi-apology as a 'fuck you, you stupid fucking bitch, and don't forget to fuck off.' Like!!! How had that happened? Had some magical black hole sucked her sentences in, chewed them up and spat them out, making them look like an insult? An efficient fucking mechanism, Inna had to say! ...except that not when she was, you know, trying to be heard. For once in her in her miserable fucking life, the blonde wanted to be understood, dammit! Understood, and listened to, and all that stupid hippie bullshit she usually gave zero fucks about. ...too bad that Liora couldn't give that to her, apparently.)

(Nobody could, really. Sometimes, Inna felt as if there was a wall between her and other people-- a badass, thick wall of glass, translucent though firm. Everyone could see her, sure, and hear her too, if she shouted loud enough, but touch her? Yeah, dream on, bitch. For that, you'd fucking have to scale it, which required some actual effort. Eww, right? Why waste precious energy on that when they could just stand on the other side and throw rotten fruit occasionally? ...it protected her, that wall she had built. Kind of like prisons protected their inmates. Just... it was fucking there for her, okay? In a way nobody had ever been, or possibly would be.)

"What?" she asked, a pitiful thing halfway between a question and a sob. "Liora, what are you..." But the dark haired woman went on and on, drowning in her own venom, and Inna... shit, Inna suddenly felt so tired. (Because this always happened. Always, always, always! This nonsense where people filled in the blanks, usually with the least fucking flattering colors possible-- kind of like drawing horns on her portrait habitually since, hahaha, she was Inna and Inna could only ever want to hurt them. Inna Orlovskaya supped on her enemies' tears, you know? And, enemies were all she had-- enemies and false friends, because everything else was too real and thus also too terrifying. Take Liora, for example! Liora or Vie, or whoever the fuck she was. In some distant past, she had plunged a knife into her belly, and now she was doing it again, and it hurt no less-- maybe it hurt more, actually, because the old wound had barely closed. Why? Did she have a target painted there? You know, like one of those 'kick me' notes that bullies put on the backs of the unpopular kids? Wow, who would have guessed her adult life would be just another re-run of middle school? The worst fucking version of purgatory ever! ...which was kinda the point, she guessed, but still.)

'You're just drunk,' Liora said, and the only thing Inna managed to think in response was: Not nearly fucking enough. (Maybe a few more glasses would help. The whiskey would set her throat on fire, you see, so she wouldn't have to do the same with the rest of her body! A 10/10 lifehack, recommended by all the Innas she knew. Plus, the losing her consciousness bit? Yeah, that seemed really fucking appealing as well right now, given what the alternative option was. And what was she escaping from? Ah, just from all those what-ifs! 'What if I had serenaded her?' 'What if I'd asked her about her birthday?' 'What if I'd been someone else entirely, with a fancy degree and future and shit?' ...no, no point in chasing those. Inna would always be Inna, and loneliness had been written into her DNA. Better to conserve the remaining shreds of her dignity!)

...which she did by, uh, attempting to reach the sweet, sweet state of alcohol poisoning. Inna had had zero experience with that so far, but you always had to start somewhere, right? Besides, this was just her honoring her ancestors! Reconnecting with your culture was healthy and shit, so nobody could fucking criticize her for it.

Well, maybe aside from... "Lady Ivy," the Mistress smiled gently, "don't you think you've had quite enough?"

"Ummm... No?" Inna smiled her dumb smile. "I... hehe... still remember what happened, which is kinda what I'm trying to rectify here."

"Lady Ivy. Please, go to sleep. Trust me, when you wake up tomorrow, things will make much more sense. No great decision should be made after two am," the Mistress reasoned, and... huh. Why the fuck did her legs decide to walk towards her room? They did so on their own, seemingly without any input at all, and, and, and! It wasn't actually her room, which was the problem. No, it was their room-- so, in other words, Liora would be waiting for her there. Liora, along with their single fucking bed. (...had she really been looking forward to this? Inna remembered that giddy, excitable feeling, though now she could only taste dread.)

Walk, walk, walkity walk.

Mercilessly, her legs carried her forward, and then bam! Way sooner than she would have liked, Inna was standing in their bedroom. (The bed stood in the middle of the room, attracting her gaze like some fucking magnet. Shit, shit, shit! Why the hell hadn't she asked for another place to sleep at? There must have been at least one more free bedroom in this giant-ass mansion, surely, and Inna could have cried in peace there! ...plus, she also wouldn't have had to worry about her dumbass hugging tendencies. Her body did that shit on its own, you know? An automatic function, kinda like when your laptop downloaded all that spyware disguised as a legit operating system. Ugh, as if it hadn't been bad enough before! It was infinitely worse now, though, because with all that fucking ~context~, Liora could... well, she could easily interpret it as her being some kind of creep.)

That realization was the final straw. Without even bothering to undress herself, or do any of the shit you were supposed to do before going to bed, really, Inna just... plopped down next to the bed, with all the elegance of a sack of potatoes. (No, she wasn't sleeping there-- not with things being Like ThisTM, anyway.) She took her pillow and her blanket as well, and built a small, hopefully comfy nest on the floor. (Could she pretend to be a hamster? Being a cute, carefree hamster seemed like the fucking dream right now.) "I may be drunk," the blonde said, unsure of where she was going with this or even if Liora was awake, "but I'm still a person. In case you forgot." Hmmm, hmmm, should she take off her shoes or not? That depended on whether this still counted as a floor or a bed, Inna supposed, but she couldn't fucking figure that one out. Ah, fuck this shit. Off they go! "Inconvenient, right? With all of my person-y shit. I just... don't know. What do you want me to do, Liora? Because I don't fucking think I can forget this."

 

[starboob]

☉ LIORA TRIHN ☉​

Liora isn't sleeping when Inna returns to their bedroom. There's a lot on her mind that prevent her from sleeping and, also, Liora doesn't tend to sleep much anyway. It's a waste of time, mostly, and just makes her feel unproductive. Now, however, she does wish she could shut her eyes and go somewhere extremely far away. Maybe into the arms of Death herself, because honestly she really does want to die. Not because of Inna and her confession––while that had been a catalyst for the series of events following, she's mostly just disappointed in herself. It's not surprising to her that she reacted the way that she had, because she felt caged in and threatened like there was no way out unless she used her fucking bazooka. Instead of, you know, her words. The kind ones that she has––the ones she shared with Inna and only Inna. Sure, she bumbled through a lot of it, but she tried and she tried specifically for Inna. Seeing her turn into a complete puddle after her lesson with Haenel... effected Liora in ways she didn't know she could be effected––and it probably had something to do with her own raw state after her lesson with Declan.

Which only reminds her of all the things she thought she had changed about herself when she ditched Liora Rodriguez for Liora Trihn. Like, aside from needing a new name/identity she had somewhat wanted that change to mean something too. But apparently she never really changed. Liora is always Liora, unfortunately. (How does Sol make it look so easy to be unwaveringly kind? (Unless provoked.) They had grown up in the same fucking house with the same fucking mother and yet Sol somehow never lost her sweetness. It's possible that all along her mother had been right, and Sol is just intrinsically better than her, but that doesn't make sense when Sol thinks armadillos and vampires are comparable creatures. No, she doesn't know why her sister is like that and she usually wouldn't even be thinking of this––but she knows if she could be a little bit more like her then she could have handled that fiasco without knives.) Her eyes close tightly as she curls her entire body around one of the aggressively large throw-pillows, hugging it with such fierceness one might wonder if she's trying to asphyxiate the pillow.

When Inna's voice breaks the sound of silence, her eyes open. 'I'm sorry,' she thinks. She can even feel the words arounds at the edge of her lips; all she needs to do is open her mouth and let them fly free. And she tries. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. Something strangles around her throat and shoves them back inside herself. 'C'mon, c'mon! You stupid bitch––just fucking say it! It's not that fucking hard!' But despite her diplomacy with herself, nothing comes out. She does, however, roll over to the side of the bed where Inna is laying and peers at her from above. She wants to say something––even if pretending to be asleep would be a lot easier. "You're not an inconvenience," she whispers––those words, she can get out. And she means that too––Inna isn't an inconvenience. On top of her obvious usefulness saving her ass these last few days, she's... she does something else for Liora's morale. The way she went out of her way to be a clown so that she would fucking relax, made her a flower crown, and offered all those sweet little smiles. The hand squeezes too have meant a lot to the woman. She doesn't know how to say all that––or she does, but too much of herself thinks it's silly to tell someone all the ways you appreciate them. They should just know. (Backwards logic, sure, but it's hers so she trusts it more than anyone else's. Certainly hers is better than some bum ass therapist who probably collects the tears of their clients for sustenance.)

Liora doesn't know how to answer for any of this. Doesn't know how to make it better if she can't even say sorry. Doesn't know how to tell Inna she hadn't meant to be a fucking bitch shortly after rejecting her. And she certainly doesn't know how to answer Inna's question about forgetting all of this. She just doesn't know how to do a lot of things, it seems. She feels useless.

"You can take the bed," is what she ends up offering, already scooting out of it but she doesn't join Inna on the floor. She doesn't even find her own space on the floor (and there is so much of it in this excessively large guest suite). Instead, she decides that maybe she needs to remove herself from the situation. It feels too dangerous to her and she doesn't know how to control her venom. So she grabs a blanket from the bed, wraps it around her shoulders and exits. She probably won't sleep much. At least the frescos are pretty and the statues are nice and maybe she'll be able to find hidden balcony to watch the sunrise.

 

[Syntra]

'You are not an inconvenience,' Liora said, and you know what? Inna would have fucking loved to believe that, except that for that, she would have had to be completely stupid. Like, no brain cells at all! The kind of person who unironically thought the bullshit they spouted in commercials to make you buy pointless stuff was true, or who believed politicians when they said that, this year, the taxes would finally get lowered for realsies. Words, words, words. Words were pointless, you know? Reassurances cost you nothing, and Liora, always so awfully pragmatic, must have realized that by now. ('Blah, blah, blah,' the dark-haired woman probably thought, 'gotta placate the emotional idiot before she sets something on fire. Hmm, she seems to care about this respect bullshit, right? Okay, let's throw some entry level motivational quotes at her and see what sticks!' But, get this, Liora hadn't even bothered do do that. Nah, mate. Instead, she gave her... a single sentence, ladies and gentlemen. A single fucking sentence, not even anchored in any goddamn context! You know, stuff like 'you don't suck because X and Y', or maybe 'I lashed out for reason Z, didn't mean it that way.' This, though? This made it seem as if she had just said something because silence would have been too fucking awkward, and because... because Liora needed her, in the end. (No, not her. Nobody ever needed Inna for what she was, you see? Always, always it had been about the things she could do for people, like a little trained monkey, and thinking it could be different in this relationship was clearly a sign of impeding brainrot. Like, why would it? Inna was still Inna, after all. Inna was still Inna, in all of her Inna-y glory, and that meant the only friend she'd ever have was her. But, but, but, that wasn't a tragedy! No, it just meant that... that nobody else could fucking withstand the epicness, just like regular people couldn't survive in the space without a suit. The pressure would crush them, and Inna's awesomeness would, too. Ah, lonely was the fate of those who stood out above the faceless masses! Such was the burden kings had to bear, and Inna sure as fuck didn't mind wearing the crown-- it looked nice with her hair, you know? A grand fucking fashion statement, which... which...)

Normally, falling asleep after a whiskey-fueled adventure wasn't too hard. The buzz in her head was kinda like a lullaby, composed for her by her own body, and the warmth in her stomach made her feel safe-- as if she was wrapped in a blanket, but like, a spiritual blanket. This was a blanket nobody could steal from her, for it resided in her fucking heart! ...or so she had thought. (Apparently, however, a few words could pull that off just fine. A few words, and that cold glare, and the memory of cold steel ripping her apart. Wow, just wow! Who would have thought that alcohol couldn't heal all of her wounds? All this time, Inna's entire life had been a goddamn lie.)

And so, silently, the blonde stared at the ceiling. (Her eyelids were fucking heavy, but her thoughts? Her thoughts were heavier, and they kept her awake. Just, where did they go there? Would she have to live in this-- this perpetual awkwardness now, with Liora doing her best not to puncture her fragile ego and failing on a weekly basis? Would there be a new identity crisis every other day, on top of the regularly scheduled identity crises? And for all her trouble, she'd only get the chance to be eaten by more fucking mythological monsters! ...why? To save this world in which nobody had ever given a single flying fuck about her? Like, not that Inna clung to outdated concepts such as fairness, but... it wasn't fair. Wasn't, wasn't, wasn't! How come that pampered brats whose parents were like, CEOs, got to sit on their fat asses and do nothing while she got eaten by a fucking kraken, and burnt to a crisp, and yeeted into the past, and... and betrayed, over and over?)

Enough was enough, Inna decided. Shining armor had never fucking suited her anyway, because, newsflash! Inna wasn't a goddamn hero, and would never be one. This had been a colossal mistake from the very beginning-- one fueled by Liora's delusions of grandeur, too. 'Oooo, look at these neat magical powers we have, Inna! This means we have a DestinyTM now. Clearly, I know better than you, you dumbass, so just fall in line and do whatever I want you to do. We both know your opinions ain't worth shit!' ...yeah, if she never heard that annoying voice again, it would be too late. Like, what the fuck had the blonde turned into? Into a fucking doormat with Liora's fucking name on it, just begging to be used! (...which she'd do, happily, because duh, everyone loved themselves a pretty little doormat. A pretty little doormat to absorb all the filth so they could go inside and be a fucking person for other people. ...was that what 'not an inconvenience' meant? Because that sort of thing seemed pretty fucking convenient to Inna. Useful, even.)

Hours passed in a blink of the eye-- almost like during one of those cheesy training montages, really, except that instead of gaining muscles, Inna... kinda lost her delusions, really. You know how pretentious people described that a blindfold fell off their eyes, and they finally saw the world in its true colors? Well, the blonde did, too, and she decided those colors fucking sucked.

The sun hadn't risen yet, so now was the perfect time. Swiftly, Inna changed into clothes she could actually fucking move in, and tied a few dresses together to create an improvised rope. (Don't judge, okay? Silk was actually pretty sturdy, and thus the best choice here. Besides, the Mistress was probably rich enough to buy like ten of these every goddamn day, so excuse Inna for not crying about her ~loss~. The bitch could host a funeral for the clothes on one of the private islands she no doubt owned, and wipe her tears with handkerchiefs produced by fucking child labor. That was the capitalist way, wasn't it? To be as disgusting as humanly possible while wasting resources that could keep a whole damn country alive in a single afternoon!) The rope was long enough to reach the ground, thankfully, so Inna tied it to one of the poles on the balcony, took a deep breath and... slid down, just like that. So long, fuckers!

 

[starboob]

☉ LIORA TRIHN ☉
​

Wandering through the villa is not as distracting as Liora had hoped––she's hardly able to admire all of the pieces with her mind fixated on one event; replaying it over and over and over again––liking whipping herself as penance. ("Haha, Inna Orlovskaya likes Liora. So hilarious." Why did she have to say that? Well, she knows why she said it––she had been hurt that Inna thought they would just go back to hating each other. That they couldn't and can't be friends. (Had she realized that Inna was trying to save face by being self-deprecating, maybe she would have reacted different. Except that Liora only heard the words nestled in the context she provided. It's a complete misunderstanding. While Liora has lived her life convinced that she doesn't need other people––it's so fucking cold now that she realizes she's alone.) 'You're such a fucking bitch.') All this only drives her guilt deeper and deeper and she wishes it would just go the fuck away, because she's not really used to feeling like this and she does not know how to deal. She ends up chewing the inside of her bottom lip enough that it bleeds; there's so much energy caged up inside of her and she has not a single clue of what to do with it all. It just sits on her chest and crushes her.

At some point, Liora does end up finding an east-facing balcony where she huddles for the rest of the night. She wraps the blanket tightly around her shoulders while she watches the sky slowly change colors. The rays of sunshine start to lick the horizon and color it pink and that pink color turns into a vibrant orange––one that reminds her of Inna's flames which only makes her heavier. The birds begin to chirp and sing and Liora remains unmoving, unmoved by the sight (slightly impressive given this is the first sunrise she has ever intentionally watched). She hugs her body tightly under the blanket, fingertips digging into her ribs without her full awareness. 'Maybe Inna won't remember... She was fucking drunk...' she thinks, knowing that that it is the definition of wishful thinking. There's no fucking way that Inna won't remember and Liora needs to prepare for that, lost as she is. She rests her chin on her knee, hugging them tightly to her chest.

The sky continues to change colors, eventually settling on its signature daytime blue and Liora remains as still as the statues lining the halls. It's only when a hand falls on her shoulder that she breaks from that stillness. Startled, she jumps from her seat and raises a fist to smack whoever had the audacity to sneak up on her.

"Lady Vie, no need to get defensive, I'm no attacker––it's only me," the Mistress says, still in her fucking mask and stupid looking uniform. "I thought you and Lady Ivy might enjoy some coffee before joining me for breakfast. You should go wake her." Something about how she says that last sentence suggest that Liora is not going to pleased with what she finds, but the distraction of two espresso shots being placed in her hand dissolves whatever questions she might have about it. They're fresh, hot, and smell heavenly––waking up her fatigued senses in an instant. She knocks hers back, offers a mumbled thank you, and goes off to retrieve Inna.

When she arrives at the door, her chest tightens like it's trying to choke her and has to pause to take a breath before she can even touch the door. Without knocking, she pushes the door open and, as is the way with Liora, she immediately begins the conversation––not caring if the blonde would even be awake to process whatever she is about to say. "Look, Inna––" but whatever spiel she had saved disappears from her head when she realizes her companion isn't in the room. "What the fuck..." she mumbles, half wondering if she had already woken up, but she knows that's unlikely because, well, it's Inna. Liora's already made the educated guess that the other woman would rather sleep half the day than be productive. She scans the room to look for any clues to figure out just where the blonde went and the largest clue happens to be the rope made of dresses hanging off the balcony. Liora is beyond unimpressed; her lips form a tight line and her arms cross over her chest. It's not hard to put two and two together and while she cannot believe that Inna destroyed these dresses by tying them together––she's also wondering, "What the fuck, Inna?! Did she fucking ditch me?" Which is her primary concern. (Not the dresses.)

Turning back into the room, she pulls her device from her pocket and calls the stupid bitch while also drinking the second espresso before it gets cold. (Okay, so she actually should calm down before even saying anything to the blonde, but her angry concern is much too loud to be reasoned with; it's a combination of wanting to make sure Inna is fucking safe and her own hurt that she left in the first place.) Though, as fate would have it, Inna's phone is buzzing and Liora can fucking hear it on the floor where she had been sleeping. If she was a less reasonable person, she would have crushed the stupid mobile, but Liora is very fucking reasonable so she only picks it up and stuffs both into her back pocket. "I am going to fuckin––"

"Please don't say murder, Vie," Declan warns, appearing at her feet. "She ran away."

Liora's heart sinks––yes, she had known this, obviously, because she put two and two together but... The absolute confirmation bites and adds to her layers of guilt (especially at the mention of murder). None of this shows on her features or in her tone, which is razor sharp when she asks, "You didn't stop her?" She matches this with an incredulous look, that she mixes with a glare that might actually roast the owl. "You fucking knew? And you did fucking nothing? You useless fucking pigeon!"

"We sleep too, you know... It's hard being a sword," Declan complains stretching out her wings, seeming to not be hurt by her insult. "But you two," she looks pointedly at Haenel, "Really, uh, fudged up and to apologize to Ms. Inna. If you're nice, I might help you dunder-buckets out, but something tells me I will have today off."

"I didn't do anything fucking wrong!" Immediately, Liora whips her head around and gives Haenel an accusing look, "This is all your fucking fault you stupid fucking rat! Who the fuck thinks to light a bitch on fire and assume everything is going to turn out fucking peachy! I could have sworn you idiots were supposed to be smart, but it seems eons have taught you fucking nothing!"

 

[Syntra]

"Yes," Haenel rolled her eyes, materializing seemingly out of nowhere, "don't be so inconsiderate, Liora. Do you know how much energy it takes, maintaining this form? Which you should be thankful for, by the way, because without it, your fragile mind would shatter." The 'your' was a general your, of course-- Haenel didn't particularly think Liora was weak, or anything like that. No, her only fault was that she was human, and humans in general had all the resilience of a stick of butter on a red-hot frying pan. Such pathetic little apes! The fact that they'd managed to take over the planet in the first place must have been some giant cosmic joke, Haenel was sure. (Like, what a fucking downgrade, too. Ice giants had ruled it at one point, and elemental spirits as well, and then creatures so fearsome that even dragons had shat themselves in terror-- and, after all these years, who had ascended the metaphorical throne? These sad, hairless things suffering from anxiety. Clap, clap, Darwin! Not to point out the holes in your theory, but didn't the word 'evolution' imply that stuff was supposed to get better? You know, evolve instead of devolve?) "Besides, it's not like I'm not Inna's babysitter. The idiot can do whatever she wants. Had I been awake, I might have talked to her, but," Haenel shrugged, "you know how that girl's brain works. Or rather, that it doesn't. I'm pretty sure she's allergic to anything even slightly resembling logic!"

...yeah, Haenel was still salty about the ungrateful little bitch not appreciating her Fire TherapyTM. Like??? Could she not see the dramatic irony? The one who lived by fire died by fire, or something. English professors would have analysed that shit for years, but nooo, in stupid Inna's stupid head, this was some grand conspiracy against her majestic person. Pffft! As if someone of Haenel's importance felt the need to hatch such petty schemes. (The reality of the situation was that the girl should have been thankful. Yes, thankful! Like, Haenel didn't keep up with the human culture too diligently, but communing with gods wasn't a thing mortals did every day, right? The last time she had checked, most of them had never even met one, much less been bound to one. It should have been a Big Fucking Deal. So, common sense dictated that Inna Orlovskaya should have kissed her paws, didn't it? Kissed her paws and worshiped the ground she walked on, especially with all that kickass advice she had provided for free! Advice and power-ups and all the other things life debt entailed, really. ...but, of course, Inna's middle name just had to be Disappointment. Disappointment or Disrespect-- Haenel couldn't decide between the two, but she was pretty sure the dis- prefix definitely was involved. As in, willing-to-wager-one-of-her-tails level of sure!)

When Liora turned her anger against Haenel, though? The spirit bristled like an angry cat, and seemingly doubled in size. "What? I didn't invent the rules of magic, Liora. It isn't my fault the dumbass built so many walls around herself over the course of her life that I fucking had to burn them down. Like, what was I supposed to do? Waste years on therapy? Sure, sure, let's just put the whole world destruction thing on hold! If we explain it to Chett and his lackeys, they'll just choose a more convenient schedule." ...was that a hint of defensiveness in Haenel's voice? Well, maybe. Even the fox realized that setting someone on fire wasn't exactly the nicest thing to do, but hey, when you only had a hammer, all your problems looked like nails! Plus, plus, plus, it had worked, thank you very much. How did that earthly saying about ends and means go, again? 'Cause it seemed like a worthwhile excu-- ehm, ehm, explanation, of course.

"Besides," Haenel continued, deciding that offense was indeed the best defense, "if you stopped to think for two fucking seconds, you might realize that Inna didn't actually run away after what I did to her. Oh no, no, no. Deep inside, she knew it was necessary, you see? To help her unlock her true potential. What did you help her with, on the other hand? That she's better off on her own? Since the timing of that grand fucking escape sort of suggests that!"

 

[starboob]

☉ LIORA TRIHN ☉
​

Anger is a familiar friend. It's easy to confuse her hurt feelings for anger; it's easy to warp everything in its vibrant shade because it's the one security blanket that she has been allowed to have in her emotional repertoire. It's safe and warm (like Inna). And since it is all she has right now to cope with the loss of her companion, she continues her barrage against the incompetent pieces of morphed steel. "Hey! Inna is not a fucking idiot! She may not ever make any fucking sense, and that's annoying as hell, but she's not fucking stupid," she shouts, arms crossing over her chest as she glares at the million tailed fox. Is Liora about to go toe to toe with a literal god? Yes. Or she is absolutely willing to do it the second the moment presents itself. (Would she say she's defending Inna's honor? Who knows, but she does know that she doesn't appreciate it when people (who are not her) berate the blonde. Somehow she believes she earned that right over the years––after enduring all of Inna's stupid antagonistic remarks that made a permanent home under her skin.)

"The only fucking idiots here are you two," she spits, continuing down this line of fire. (At this, Declan rolls her eyes and quietly decides now is the time to retire via returning to her sword form. She's almost positive Haenel won't screw this up. Besides, it will be good for team building! How exciting!!) Anyway, back to Liora, "And this whole fucking magical prophecy that says we're supposed to finish whatever the fuck Vie and Ivy started! If the world is on such a fucking time crunch, why didn't we get pulled into this when we were like, I dunno, eleven since people seem to fucking think eleven year olds are competent enough to save the world and not worry about their middle school social status." Jesus fucking Christ, when did she start to ramble nonsensically like Inna? That woman is contagious (and she misses her).

Of course, when Haenel points out the giant fucking elephant in the room? That only heightens Liora's defenses and makes her want to double down on her hypothesis that it's actually the fire-starter's fault that Inna is gone and not her own. "Well," she starts, arms folding tighter around her chest as she figures out a way to dig her heels into her reality. But it's honestly hard to argue with that point––mostly because Inna has been with Liora since the beginning. Even before their magical journey together, she had been a constant (pain in Liora's ass) since she joined the mafia. While Liora did obsess over the blonde and kept a detailed record of her assignments––specifically to ensure that Inna got the longest fucking life sentence without parole––she supposes she also kept such close tabs on her because she always cared. That realization is a new one for her, but it does feel true all the same. Liora frowns. "You really fucking hurt her and she doesn't fucking trust you. And if you're supposed to be our guides through this there needs to be some fucking trust––especially for someone like Inna. She––she's fragile," she says, quietly, as she remembers their short conversation after she had been bucked off of Brutus. And how upset she was that Haenel had burned her and how she held her and soothed her.

The woman looks down at her feet as that memory resurfaces and she starts to see the truth she already knew but does not want to accept as her own. Inna did leave after Liora specifically hurt her. Before that, she had stuck around; even before they started to warm up to each other, even before Inna caught feelings, she had stuck around. Liora doesn't know why––it would have hurt a lot less had her companion abandoned her during the earlier days of this weird fuckery, but she didn't. Something tells Liora she might have been sticking around because of her. More so than a sense of responsibility for saving the world, because Inna never seemed all that interested in the endeavor. And she only left after she fucking opened up to Liora and admitted that she wanted her (who the fuck even wants Liora? Inna, apparently, and maybe it is because she is a dumbass, but Liora would like to believe that it's for other reasons too). She swallows hard, dropping her arms and clenching her fists at her side. "You're a stupid fucking fox for burning her––regardless of how effective your stupid lesson was, it wasn't nice. And, yeah, she fucking left after I smashed her heart," she admits, brow furrowed together as she plops herself down on the floor.

Maybe Haenel won't apologize to Inna, but Liora wants to. She tried to last night and it got stuck somewhere in her throat, but she wants to do this. Since she doesn't know how, she pulls out her device and begins searching is it normal that i can't say sorry, how to say sorry, etc. "Are you going to be a useless sword or are you going to help me?" Yeah, if Haenel ever expects Liora to be nice to her she may have to work as diligently as Inna and Inna had some magical handicaps added to her gameplay. And even then Revenge of the Bitch happened. "I'll work on the apology and I assume you know how to locate her?"

 

[Syntra]

Inna? Inna Orlovskaya, and fragile? Okay, now it was safe to say that Haenel had heard literally everything. What was next, Liora claiming that the sun was actually cold? Because, hahaha, this made just about the same amount of sense! Inna's problem was a thick fucking skull, not the very opposite of it-- if Haenel had been a little more villainous than she was, she would use her head for cracking walnuts. And the kicker? The blonde probably wouldn't have noticed, mostly because like eighty percent of her personality revolved around ignoring unpleasant stuff. Her coping mechanisms were so complex she likely would have convinced this was just a regular migraine! (...stupid fucking Inna. How the hell had she gotten stuck with her of all people? Liora, annoying as she was, at least had some sense of duty.) "Not making any sense is the definition of stupid," the fox spirit pointed out. "You're just biased because you like that dumbass. And, yes, I assume that she is likeable on some level, but that changes nothing about her stupid ways. Did you know the girl has no idea how to pay her taxes? Totally helpless, that's what she is!" (...aside from that whole fiery magic shtick, Haenel supposed, but like, that wouldn't exactly help her in her day-to-day life. You couldn't just murder all of your problems!) "It is a mystery that she even reached adulthood intact. Personally, I expected she'd lose at least one limb by the time we met."

(...was Haenel rambling? Maybe! Shutting up and actually thinking about what Liora said would have involved some serious self-reflection, and perhaps also admitting that forcing Inna to acknowledge her vulnerable side via burning down all of her defenses hadn't been, uh, the best move. That it had been a mistake, even. And like, if even Haenel could make mistakes, what shot did they have at saving the world? Their chances plummeted from the already measly 25% to 5%, which was beyond awful! ...wait, wait, wait. What was this? When examined closely, this thought process resembled Inna of all people, and... wow. Had the blonde infected her with her irresponsibility already? Haenel had known there was going to be a feedback loop, of course she had, but never had she expected for it to happen so quickly. Ugh, stupid Inna and the mind games she played with herself! ...mind games that were surprisingly sophisticated, actually. Was that where she invested all of her brainpower? That was so irresponsible and downright absurd that Haenel felt inclined to discard the conclusion-- except that this was the blonde they were talking about, so this probably only meant she had hit the nail on the head.)

"Well, it wasn't nice, but..." 'but I didn't know what else to do. I mean, have you seen the inside of her head? No, you haven't, so shut the fuck up! I swear, it's worse than the Augean Stables out there. Sometimes, trash just needs to be burned!' But, but, but-- a pretty seductive word for something this small and insignificant, right? Just three letters, and yet the power to flip the entire narrative rested there. No wonder Inna loved it so much! ...so, in an attempt to resist the Innaification, Haenel had to go in the opposite direction. (Well, that, and admittedly, she also did feel sorta bad about it. Not terribly, because a fledgeling obviously had to be pushed out of the nest in order to be able to fly, but it had been kinda shitty, now that she re-played certain sections of it in her mind. Especially with Inna crying and stuff.) "Alright, I admit, it was short-sighted. It could have been handled in a less destructive way," Haenel said, looking at... well, everything but Liora's face. (A mortal being right? That she could stomach, occasionally. Broken clocks and shit, you know? A mortal being right over her, though-- no, just no. That was some reality-breaking, natural laws-defying bullshit, and Haenel demanded her refund!)

"And, yes, I can sense her. Usually. She's been a bit... unreachable as of late, though," the fox continued, suddenly seeming all kinds of worried. "As in, she's there and yet she isn't. It feels scattered, moreso than normal. Like, Inna is always scattered, in that her energy footprint feels like a rollercoaster ride, but," she flicked one of her tails, "this isn't like that. This is like... I dunno, like her signal being disrupted by some other signal. And thanks to that, I can't really tell where is is. But," Haenel finally looked at Liora, piercing her with her star, "you've known her for a longer time than I have. If I send you the signal, you might just pull off opening the portal. Ready?"

Haenel sincerely hoped that she was, because ready or not, here she came. With surprising elegance, the fox launched into the air-- time itself seemed to stop in that moment, like in some cheesy action flick, and then, then she touched Liora's forehead with the tip of her tail. And what happened next? Oh, colors exploded behind the woman's eyelids-- mostly shades of red, accompanied by this drip, drip, dripping sound. Disconcerting, right? Not as much as the vision that followed, though.

A chest was heaving, up and down, up and down, up and down. The movements seemed irregular, though-- as if breathing alone was a struggle, and, uh... something else seemed to be moving under that person's skin, too? Because it was rippling, like the surface of a pond after it had been hit by a stone. Rippling, and twisting, and growing, larger and larger and larger, and one pained moan later, that thing fucking burst out and--

And yeah, that voice did belong to Inna. Unmistakably!

 

[starboob]

☉ LIORA TRIHN ☉
​

Actually, no, Liora had not been ready for Haenel to jump up into the air and force visions upon her––she had been in the middle of finishing her slide deck, but the fox seemed to not care for such matters like her well thought out apology (complete with an introductory statement, several examples backed with citations, and a strong concluding argument). The vision that fills her mind does not inspire any sense of peace for the woman, who is now perpetually worried about the blonde given everything that has happened to them over the course of these past few days (strange sailors attacking them, fighting a kraken, being teleported to the past, getting kidnapped, etc.). Especially as a free and fucking original horror film is now on display and the dread that she's filled with grips her heart so tightly she might explode.

Sweat begins breaks over her brow at the pained moan––'Inna!' she wants to call out, as if she could retrieve her companion and bring her back with a shout alone. No, shouting won't do her any good. Sitting around and worrying won't do her any good. Finishing her PowerPoint also will not do her any good. She has to take action. She reaches her hand out, remembering vaguely the three or so times she's opened portals before and concentrates on the vision, painful as it is. She concentrates, too, on Inna's specific energy and finding that rollercoaster Haenel had mentioned earlier (it's comforting to trace that energy); though she also feels another energy connected to it––probably the one that had been disrupting the fox when she'd trying to locate her––likely that's where those horrifying images are coming from. Liora hopes it's just some fucking cryptic warning and NOT reality, because... Because she needs to protect Inna, obviously. And she's already decided that Inna doesn't deserve to fucking suffer; like what's so hard to understand about that?

Anyway, she focuses her attention on Inna's signature, sifting through the one masking her presence. With her hands held out and eyes closed, she reaches for the other and, in the least graceful manner possible, tumbles through an opening that she has created––slipping from an Italian villa into... "Haenel... What the fuck is this place?" When she gets up off the ground and looks around, wherever she has landed is distinctly not of her world. Though it appears somewhat like her world, everything about it seems dead. The trees surrounding them appear burnt and somehow screaming. Like, literally the dead woods they're in are howling. The sky is a dark and ominous purple color (like Inna's favorite color, some part of her notes). And the sun in the sky appears more like an eclipse than anything else. The air is somehow suffocating, yet she is breathing just fine (like her lungs are switching from breathing oxygen to whatever this atmosphere is made of). It also sort of smells of fire––but not like the wildfires of her home state. There's an extra flavor she cannot place.

"Wh-where's Inna?" She looks around, worry starting to grip her tighter and tighter as she's reminded of the visions; something tells her whatever Inna is going through is not going to get better. "I thought this was supposed to fucking take us to Inna," she says, tone desperate and cracking. Her mind starts to go to the worst places imagining more horrors that Inna could be subject to. Though she does try to convince herself that Inna is really at some bar, drinking her pain away and that's what all that anguish and rippling had been about; intuition, of course, says otherwise but she doesn't want to distract herself with worry. "Did you fucking fuck up and find the wrong rollercoaster? Because this does not even look like planet fucking Earth!" Diplomacy has never been Liora's strong suit and somewhere she knows insulting Haenel might not be a great strategy but she's worried! She's even starting to pace as she tries to figure out (1) where the fuck she teleported and (2) why she had not been taken to Inna––she thought she had latched onto her signature; had even been certain about it. "Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit! Haenel what if she dies? What if she's being murdered? Blondes do not have a high rate of survival!" She is referring to horror movies––apparently, spiraling hard enough that she is forgetting movies are not real (though her life does currently feel like an extremely elaborate episode of Punk'd).

 

[Syntra]

Haenel had, of course, assumed that things could go wrong. (At this point, Liora was barely an apprentice, you know? A promising one, yes, but you didn't generally entrust the position of the CEO to the girl who had worked for the company for a day just because she brewed coffee reasonably well, and, uh, that was what Inna and Liora's situation was, kinda. With the sweet, sweet caveat that only they could pull this mission off, so they were simultaneously super qualified and tragically underqualified! The universe and its sense of humor, really. The next time Haenel met the Creator, she would kick her stupid ass into oblivion, and then she'd fucking take over because, clearly, she was the only one around here who had the faintest idea of what she was doing. Like??? Couldn't the two souls have been put into bodies whose futures hadn't been so obviously fucked from the very beginning? Just, great choice when it came to Parental Units, Creator. Clap, clap! Might as well have thrown the babies into an active volcano and they would have come out infinitely more well-adjusted than this, Haenel was sure.)

Anyway, yeah, the fox had expected some errors-- not an error of this magnitude, though. "Ah," she exhaled, her tone wrapped in something suspiciously close to panic. (Not actual panic, though! Haenel was a god, thank you very much, and thus she simply didn't indulge in such base impulses. Losing a battle with one's emotions was undignified, you see? Only good for idiots like Inna, Declan, and generally those who weren't as awesome as her. ...still, relatability was important for a god, wasn't it? Because only complete lunatics worshiped an unknowable mass of tentacles, and that wasn't exactly the sort of audience Haenel was shooting for. No, she had to at least simulate being capable of the feeling, for PR reasons! ...which was exactly what was happening here, by the way.) "Calm down," she recommended to Liora, with her usual brand of tact. ('Cause that was the one thing that worked one hundred percent of the time, right? To tell a panicking person that she should 'calm down'. Surely, the dark haired woman wouldn't have come up with that one by herself! Luckily, Haenel was there to bestow these precious, precious pearls of wisdom upon her.)

"First off, I didn't fuck up. You were supposed to take care of the navigation, and you seemed to have picked up on the wrong signal." (Not that Haenel blamed her, actually. There was a ReasonTM as to why Inna's energy was so similar to the energy of that demon, but like, no need to muddy waters with something as pointless as the truth, right? Liora, at least, didn't seem to be in the mindset for 'Luke, I am your father'-type revelations. Nah, mate. One day, they would learn, but when they did? Haenel would make sure to be reasonably far outside of their reach, possibly sipping coconut milk on a beach situated in that lovely Vacation Dimension. With a protege like the Queen of Dumbasses herself, she fucking deserved that!) "And no, Inna isn't dying. I'd fucking know that! I'm her spirit, and I can tell she's... okay, sort of. Depends on your point of view, really." Some might even call it 'an evolution,' but again, Haenel didn't feel like Liora would appreciate that touch. "And you don't need to know where you are," she flicked her tail dismissively. "A bad place, that's what it is. Some call it hell. Do you want to be in hell? Once you figure that philosophical quandary out, you can try to connect to Inna's energy again and, you know, save her instead of fucking crying about getting lost. No pressure, though!"

Except that that was easier said than done-- mostly because the ground itself opened under Liora's feet, and, uh, she landed into something that resembled lava? It couldn't have been lava, though! Mostly because it didn't hurt. No, it felt... tingly, like millions of tiny hands all over her body, or like that feeling you got when picturing your favorite memory. 'Welcome home, Vie,' a voice whispered, thunderous yet soft at the same time. 'Home, home, home! Where have you been? Oh, we missed you so! Will you stay? Stay, stay, stay?'

It was overwhelming, like a radio whose volume was way too loud, loud enough that you couldn't hear your own thoughts, and then--

"Yo, what the fuck? Have I officially gone off the deep end, or...?"

Yeah, sounded like Inna, alright. (Inna, whose voice was hoarse and tired, but still distinctly... well, Inna, with that 'I'm-gonna-kick-your-ass' cadence.)

 

[starboob]

☉ LIORA TRIHN ☉
​

What does the fox say? Nothing of importance. In fact, everything that comes out of Haenel's smug little mouth makes Liora want to strangle the stupid spirit, but she guesses that probably won't go over well. Not yet at least (a subtle motivator to listen to Declan's next lesson, because once she becomes more magically competent... Oh, it is OVER for those stupid, stupid swords). She clenches her fist together, holding onto her annoyance while her worry simmers under it. "Oh, wow, Haenel, did you get a useless degree in psychology like every other fucking idiot who can't do an actual science degree?" she compliments the question with an eye roll as she tries to figure out just how to un-fuck this situation. Inna needs her––or she thinks she does, so it's pretty much fact to the woman who is pacing as she tries to figure out where she went wrong. Haenel doesn't really offer any solid explanation and she doesn't have the mental space to come up with something snarky to say. (Ugh, she could really use Inna right now––the blonde surely would have taken care of that for her.)

Haenel also manages to heighten Liora's anxiety when she doesn't say that Inna isn't dying and also doesn't confirm that she's totally okay. And then the fox thinks it's an appropriate time to reveal that she teleported them to Hell? Like it's a real fucking place she should be scared of? Wow, this is not her day! (It's hardly been her week either... and her life hasn't necessarily been that great also.) She cannot wait to share this with Inna. (Well, after she apologizes... and hopefully Inna doesn't want her to fuck off forever. That thought makes her ache... Does she have time to add a few more slides to her PowerPoint?)

The Universe answers that question for her with a pretty obvious 'no,' because suddenly she's falling through a pit in the ground and landing in fucking lava, because of fucking course she is. At this point, she doesn't really question why it doesn't burn or eat her flesh, because she assumes it's one of those things are not as they seem level of stupid. Although, if she really is in Hell... isn't burning shit kind of their schtick? So it is weird to her that she is not being burned alive and is instead covered in that tingly sensation you get before your foot/leg can fully fall asleep. Like static noise, but a feeling. That's her comparison at least, because she doesn't know what it's like to have a tingly sensation when remembering something. She groans, clearly frustrated, and begins to pull herself out of the pit since Haenel has decided to be as useless as Declan (like, how is the responsible sword also fucking useless?). She mutters some swears under her breath as she shakes off the bright liquid––not even appreciating the fact that there are people, like her sister, who would absolutely risk an appendage to know what lava feels like.

And then a voice, loud like a thousand echoes, starts to invade her mind and drowns out the rest of her thoughts. "Shut up!" She screams, closing her eyes and clasping her hands around her ears––knowing that won't help, but the response is so automatic she isn't able to chastise herself for trying to block out something that is inside of her fucking head. "No, I'm not going to fucking stay, stay, stay––what are you? A fucking Taylor Swift song?" Don't ask why Liora knows one of the singer's lesser known songs. That's not important, because the voice won't shut the fuck up and it's probably going to drive her insane. In fact, the voice is now wailing over her less than polite rejection and immediately regrets saying anything at all (a recurring theme for her lately). 'But, Vie, you promised, promised, promised!' it whines and begins crawling up Liora's leg as she grasps onto a handhold and starts to climb. "Let go!" she commands, and the lava-spirit (or whatever) listens, backing away from the woman. Wow, she actually didn't think that would work, but at least she can actually think again now that the spirit has left her alone––thankfully taking the fucking hint. (Hopefully this won't bite her in the ass later.)

However, when Inna's voice enters her head––that's a surprisingly welcome sound; though it also fills her with concern as she notes that despite it's distinct Inna-ness, she doesn't exactly sound great. "Inna?" While she should probably be disturbed that an apparent back channel to her brain has opened up and Inna seems to have access to it, she's mostly grateful that she's found a way to connect with the blonde at all given her disastrous first attempt. "Inna! Where are you?" There's so much she wants to say, but she knows she needs to focus on actually getting her eyes on her companion and helping her out of whatever horror she's gotten herself into before she can right any of this."Let me help you..." she thinks, or says? She isn't really sure, but with the spirit no longer bothering her and having climbed out of the pit, she closes her eyes again and focuses on Inna. The sound of her voice. The strange vision she had seen. The feeling of her energy.

 

[Syntra]

Usually, Inna didn't really endorse alarmist thoughts-- because, yeah, shit sucked, but what else was fucking new? It had sucked yesterday, sucked today and would, indeed, suck tomorrow. The cycle of suckability, as the scientists called it! So, suck (heh) it up, buttercup, and get fucking used to it. Only idiots complained about the same fucking thing every fucking day! (Boo hoo, so you had to go to work on Monday. You know, just like you had gone the previous week, and the one before it? Not that Inna didn't think it was bullshit, mind you, but like, if these people had truly been the anticapitalist crusaders they clearly fashioned themselves to be, they would have done what all the decent people had done and joined organized crime. Which, by the way, was just a propagandistic fucking rebranding of the noble act of transferring the funds from the rich to those who were less than fortunate-- namely, her.)

In short, Inna Orlovskaya just wasn't a complainer. Now, the paragraph above? That could seem like a textbook example of complaining to the uninitiated, but nah, actually! That didn't count, as her grievances were perfectly fucking legitimate. In such a case, you couldn't really call it complaining-- nah, it was 'creating a new school of philosophy' and 'changing the world for the better.' Liora, with her silly interest in these things, would have been so fucking proud!

...Liora, who probably thought her to be a mildly fun diversion. Liora, to whom she was a convenient fucking accessory at best-- another thing she just had to get right, really, because Fate or whoever the fuck ruled this stupid universe had decided the two belonged together and Liora Trihn followed, followed and followed, even if it would kill her. Such a sad little bootlicker! ...not even the bootlicking her gotten her to restrain her bitchsona, though, which only really showed just how deep the disdain she had for her truly was. (What had she thought back in the café, when Inna had fallen for the delusion they could ever be friends? The blonde could imagine it, and in vivid colors, too. 'Oh wow, look at this fucking idiot have feelings! Doesn't she know she can't reach 100% productivity if she's distracted by her dumbass brain chemistry? Wait, I know, I know! The latest research showed that idiots learn mostly via personal experiences, so, hmmm. Maybe, if I put on my most elaborate human mask, I could teach her a lesson!' Stupid Liora. Stupid, heartless Liora, whom she didn't miss at all!)

"Wow," the shadowy figure next to her chuckled, "you really do take your grudges seriously. To think you still cannot get over her, even now! Don't you think it's more than just a little bit pathetic, hmmm? What do you say, Ivy?" With what seemed to be a parody of gentleness, she caressed her... what, even? The place where her arm normally would have been, Inna supposed, but here, wrapped in this fleshy cocoon, it was kinda hard to tell. (It pulsated, to this ancient rhythm. Thud, thud, thud, thud. The thing kept tightening its grasp around her, too, wanting more and more and more, and shit, Inna had no idea where it ended and where she began, and... did it even matter, really? 'Cause, on some level, she did want this. It felt right-- a logical conclusion to her story, sorta. ...it hurt, the way the organs in her belly coiled and twisted, like some fucking snake. Still, being Inna hurt as well, you know? So in that sense, it was comforting, almost. Akin to slipping into your favorite sweater.)

...umm, wait. Was that Liora? Fucking Liora, inside of her head? Panic fluttered in her chest, hot and visceral-- since, fuck, she couldn't let her see like this. Couldn't, couldn't, couldn't! (And, besides, what the fuck was this? Had her head turned into a popular destination for tourists, or something? The last time Inna had checked, it had still been private goddamn property, but nooo, literally everyone had to act as if the fence just wasn't there. You know, the fence that was formed by her fucking skull!)

"No," she yelped, "I'm f-fine. And I don't know where the fuck I am, anyway, a-and I don't need your fucking help," the blonde went on, crafting what must have been the most transparent lie of the century. "Leave me alone. I'll-- I'll get a restraining order. This has to be fucking illegal!"

"Oh, yes, do leave her alone," the shadowy entity cooed, so close to her ear Inna felt like throwing up. "She's mine now. These are the rules. Don't worry, though! I'm helping Ivy here become the best possible version of herself! When you see her next time, she won't be trapped in that hideous, hideous shell. Isn't it a beautiful thing, to reveal one's essence like this? It is a gift, Vie. A great gift, to be able to bring out the best in others!"

Suddenly, there was a disgusting, wet sound, full of so, so many possibilities, and Inna? Inna screamed.

 

[starboob]

☉ LIORA TRIHN ☉
​

It's not surprising that Inna's first response is to reject her––it makes sense. Even if their relationship wasn't currently on thin ice, she assumes that Inna still would have reacted in a similar manner. Something about being awesome and Inna Orlovskaya never needs to be saved, yadda yadda yadda, and some other crap that Liora does not have the time or energy to figure out. (Seriously, trying to figure out whatever mysteries are inside of the blonde's head would probably short-circuit the clear logic that exists in Liora's perfect brain. The blonde, on the other hand, seems to be full of loose associations that you have to think way too hard about in order to figure out how it makes sense. Usually that would annoy the woman, but right now she does miss it. Distance makes the heart grow less annoyed, she figures.) Anyway, the fact that Inna is even communicating with her not only fills her with a sense of hope, but it also strengthens the very energy signature that she has been trying to lockdown. So while she is talking, Liora does as she usually does and filters most of her words out––this time for a good cause and not because she thinks she's better than whatever Inna has to say.

"Don't be such a punk, Inna," she practically pleads. (No, she doesn't find it all that difficult to carrying a conversation, ignore the other participant, while also trying to find said participant. Really, it's just another day being Liora. Besides, she figures that in keeping the conversation open, she will be able to better maintain this newfound connection to help her locate her friend (status still pending).) "You're a shit liar right now and I'm not going to let you––" perish, die, succumb to some form of doom––whatever she was going to say next doesn't matter because a new voice is speaking to her and muddying Inna's signal. (Which, fuck, she’s almost certain that she had the fucking signal before this new bitch decided to fuck that up. Whoever this is, she is going to get strangled.)

However, despite her initial irritation, the new entity nearly causes her to choke as her concern morphs into sheer terror. Her body goes cold, completely freezing her in place. Something about the stranger’s cadence suggests there’s a literal change happening and with the context of the disturbing vision she had, this essentially confirms that her partner has gotten herself into some deep fucking shit. (This also somewhat proves, to her, that she had been right when she had told Haenel that Inna might be getting murdered and the stupid fucking fox had the audacity to just brush off her concern. What a shit fucking spirit guide.) ‘Okay, but fear isn't going to fucking help so bury that and find Inna. She needs you––whether she'll admit it or not.'

As this new mythical creature threatens Inna's safety, Liora does something entirely un-Liora like as her desperation exponentially rises––she tosses out rationale. She throws away her original plan. Instead of tracing Inna's scattered energy, she latches onto the being that is shrouded around the blonde. Though this could be incredibly foolish, and could possibly put Inna or herself at greater risk, she makes the wild assumption that teleporting herself to the entity will be just as effective as trying to teleport to her companion. There is no time to think this through or do things the correct way, because it doesn't sound like there is much time left. And that gets pretty much confirmed when the sound of something squelching fills her ears and a split second later it's followed by the sound of Inna screaming. In an instant, she lets go of Inna's signature and claws herself into that of the stranger's; fueled by a combination of panic, rage, and, most importantly, her desire to apologize, she literally tears open a new portal with her hands as if she is tearing fabric. (If Haenel wants to follow, she is more than welcome to, but Liora is not fucking waiting around for the fox. Not when Inna is clearly in danger.)

This time, when the portal opens from Hell to... wherever this new location is, her hand emerges first and grips the shadowy figure––which immediately sends a flood of cold through her hand that begins to travel up her arm, but against all judgment she ignores the warnings of pain. Possibly because, at least for right now, she feels more connected to her abilities than she ever has since beginning this new life as Liora. With this newfound connection to her old self, she hoists herself out of “Hell” and moves to wrap her fingers around the being's throat. Through gritted teeth, she hisses, "What the fuck is your deal, huh? Fucking––" She stops, as she looks at what she hopes is still Inna? Bewildered by the sight of her friend in that odd and completely grotesque cocoon made of ______ (she doesn't want to make any guesses), her eyes go wide and her lips pursing together. Other than that, however, she remains outwardly unmoved; she doesn't even gasp or scream. (Inwardly, she would like to throw-up, but she fights against that particular urge, guessing this is far worse for Inna than it is for her eyes.) She snaps her attention back to the shadow, eyes growing darker. "I am going to make you regret ever fucking messing with her, you piece of shit!" She starts to squeeze tighter, applying pressure right over her throat.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, she is interrupted by the demon before she can fully choke her. "Aht, aht, aht!" she chastises, wrapping her fingers around Liora's wrists. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, Vie––hurt me and see what happens to your precious Ivy," the shadow croons, smirking, as she then pries Liora's hand from her neck. "In fact, I shall demonstrate!" And with that, the figure pounds both of her fists into her stomach.

 

[Syntra]

Inna sorta liked to think of herself as an expert on pain. You know how pretentious fucks said you had to """train your taste buds""" via tasting as many wines as possible to be able to judge whether the pisswater you were drinking was any good? Well, she had kind of done the same, except that with her pain receptors. Since her childhood, the blonde had sampled many, many different kinds of pain, and her already impressive collection was growing by the second. Like, had they recognized Painology as a legit scientific branch, she would have been a fucking professor at this point! Alas, however, the world wasn't ready-- it wasn't ready both for the many hot takes this field would generate, and for the concentrated hotness of Inna in her professor glasses. But, anyway. Why was she mentioned all of this? Because, even in the context of all the agony Inna had ever experienced, this fucking hurt. (Stars were dancing in front of her eyes, or they would be, had she actually seen anything, but no-- she was sinking into the darkness, deeper and deeper, and weirdly, it... seemed to be a part of her, kinda. Not in the edgy Twilight 'hurrr durrr, I'm a dangerous monster way,' 'cause duh, the blonde knew she was dangerous and prided herself on it, but in the same way that day was connected to night, or something. A natural cycle.)

The naturalness, of course, would have been way nicer if her skin wasn't fucking melting. (She could feel it, the heat that pooled in her chest and seeped through, through, through, and, haha, wasn't it great she had washed that make-up earlier? Man oh man, being fused together with some cheap magical powder would surely have sucked. Every day, Inna would have had five different identity crises-- was she Inna, an anthropomorphization of the fucking Sephora, or something else entirely? What a gift, really, that she didn't have to burden her mind with such things! The issue of her organs threatening to burst out of her body was still there, sure, but like, at least those were hers, quite fucking unambiguously. ...or were they? Inna didn't remember buying them, though now that she thought of it, her memories were sorta melting as well, and losing their shape, and--)

"Liora?" she muttered, so, so weakly, when the other woman's voice reached her. "I... fucking told you... not to come. Is this... your definition... of not being here...?" Since yeah, that was one of the things whose contours were still clearly defined in Inna's mind! (That, and also her words from earlier-- the way she wouldn't explain anything and just fucking leave, which... uhh, might have looked hypocritical when you examined her actions, but Inna's actions weren't fucking meant to be examined. They just were, like gravity or bribes! You didn't argue with those. And, and, and besides, if you framed it as her giving Liora a taste of her own goddamn medicine, then her ghosting was actually righteous, thank you very much. Nope, no cowardice to be found here! Just Inna and psychological horror so well-crafted that Hitchcock would have fallen off his fucking chair, had he not been rotting in his grave instead.)

She wanted to open her eyes, open them and look at the woman who apparently thought crossing all kinds of her boundaries was such a fun fucking hobby, but they were sealed, with her own tears, maybe, and-- "Ah!" Inna moaned in pain as something hit her in the belly, with no prior warning at all. (Had her stomach travelled into her fucking throat? Because it sure as hell felt that way! ...then again, all of her organs seemed to be sorta misplaced, so maybe it wasn't because of that punch. It was still concerning, though.)

"Do you get it now?" the Shadow taunted. "We are connected now, Ivy and I. She mocked me, so I thought this would be an appropriate way of opening her eyes to what she truly is. Or, hmm, closing her eyes? Yes, that seems like the better expression here."

"Hey, bitch," Haenel piped up, bristling to the point of looking twice her size, "what the fuck did you do to my wielder? I swear, I will straight up--"

What was it that she was going to do? That was something the audience would never find out-- mostly because the demon smiled a pearly white smile before poking Haenel with her finger, and... uh, the fox shattered. (Pieces of her were lying on the ground, as if she'd been a crystal dropped from a great height. Smoke was rising from her remains, too, and there was a pool of orange liquid underneath, but other than that? Those parts may as well have belonged to a fucking statue, cold and lifeless.)

"That should get you to shut up," the shadowy bastard smirked. "So annoying. No wonder you were drawn to someone like Ivy! Since you're here, however," she turned to Liora, oh so casually, "we may negotiate. Such is the tradition among my people, and I can honor your... heritage, I suppose. So, your dear Ivy here acted like a brat. I'm sure you won't try to disprove that statement, will you? Since you should know better than anyone that she suffers from the chronic bitch disease. Well, my pride demanded for me to show her her place, of course, which is what I'm doing now. Perhaps, if you can offer me something sweeter than that, I can drop the grudge, though. Well?" The figure folded her arms on her chest and tilted her head aside. "I'm waiting, Vie."

 

[starboob]

☉ LIORA TRIHN ☉
​

Like, Liora never has been into the idea that her life has turned into a fantasy novel, but she misses when her life had only been that and did not also include an added element of horror. While she is not subject to whatever torture this shadow has provided, it is still nightmare fuel no less. There really isn't anything that Liora can compare this to, on account of having lived a relatively normal fucking life, and seeing something that should only exist in the minds of the depraved with her very real eyes? She'll have to process this later when Inna, hopefully, is not transformed into some fucking human centipede bullshit or whatever is happening. ...It actually seems more likely that Inna is going to simultaneously explode and melt like the Wicked Witch of the West––that thought is hardly comforting. And the entire situation becomes less comforting when she not only realizes that Inna can feel whatever harm is done to the entity, but that she also shatters Haenel? Well, now Liora doesn't feel so strong––in fact she feels powerless. Despite that, she manages to keep her features relatively stoic––an easy task when her life has historically required her to at least look unbothered.

While she does feel hopeful that the shadow is willing to negotiate with her, she is simultaneously confused about the remark honoring her heritage––as if Vietnamese culture has specific customs related to negotiation (which, maybe it does? It's not like she grew up in a Vietnamese household and she's only gleaned so much). Anyway, as the demon prattles on about Inna being a brat (true), Liora recalls when the blonde had said she was strong. Though maybe Inna had just said that because it's just what you're supposed to say when someone feels insecure about something, it still fills her with some semblance of confidence. Maybe she can do this? And, well, she has to. Inna is important to her and she needs to––oh yeah!

"Fine, sure, whatever––I'll negotiate," she says, holding a finger to the shadow to tell her to wait, "But first..." She turns to face Inna, pulls her device from her pocket, and flips the screen around so that it's projecting her PowerPoint into the air as a hologram. Honestly, she is absolutely ignoring the shadow figure. In the grand scheme of things, she isn't sure that she can really save Inna and when she considers that, she at least needs her to know that she's sorry. "Inna, look," she starts, trying to figure out where her face is and ultimately decides she doesn't want to know. She continues, swiping to a slide tilted I Was a Bitch. "I shouldn't have said what I said last night... I shouldn't have made fun of you––like ever––but especially when you were being so sincere. I suck at handling things off the cuff and I just," she swipes to the next slide titled, I Care About You, Dumbass. And while she is talking, she also looks around the cavern that they're in, determined to find a solution to this problem so that Inna doesn't actually succumb to some awful fate. (A fate worse than Death, it seems.)

She continues, "I guess I got scared when you asked if we'd just go back to hating each other... I sorta got used to having you around and, like, I mean, more than that, you really inspire me, okay?" She does say it like it's a threat to her ego, which it is, and admitting it still has to count for something, right? Liora shifts slightly and kicks up some dirt as she stares at her slides––which are a little too bright to look at in this dark as shit cave; she adjusts the brightness and slowly an idea begins to form. "I don't get you at all, but you're just so you and I'm just so me and, for some reason, you still like that. And I like how you are too; I was scared of losing a friend... I mean, I hope that's what we were becoming, because I like the idea," she admits softly as she swipes to another slide, You're Really Cool. "I just have never really cared about having friends before you and I really don't want to screw this up––and I just want you to know this in case I can't fucking negotiate with whatever entity you pissed off." She pauses her presentation, figuring that's enough for now, and turns back to the demon. (Besides, she hopes to save those real apology words for after this ordeal––assuming she does figure a way out of it.)

The demon, who feigns being moved, smiles and says, "Wow, Vie, how very touching––and an interesting, albeit awful, strategy of negotiating. I told you to offer me something sweet. Tick-tock, Vie. I wager my sweet, sweet Ivy's metamorphosis will be complete soon." She begins to tap her foot impatiently like some spoiled child.

"You're right, Inna is a fucking brat, but I'm patient zero when it comes to chronic bitch disease––so really, you shouldn't fucking take this out on her." Especially since Liora assumes she may have been acting out as a result of her harsh rejection. (However, she also can imagine the blonde getting herself into this situation on her own. The girl had fucking emailed her schedule to an assassin meant to kill her––that nearly made Liora choke when she found that out.) From behind her back, she begins to slyly gather energy into her hands using the dead spirits that may have perished because of this shadow or perhaps had a terrible accident while s'plunking.

"Are you saying you'll take her place, Vie?" the shadow asks, brow arching upwards and clearly intrigued by the prospect.

"Well," she starts, raising her arms above her head to reveal a growing ball of brilliant golden light, "No, I just think that you fucking picked the wrong bitch to mess with, because now you have to deal with me; when you fuck with Inna that offends me." She then splits the mass into two golden orbs, about the size of a basketball each, holding them both in her hand before she tosses one at the shadow. As the orb travels through the air and gets closer to the entity, it does not threaten to strike her. Instead, it stops just as its rays of light are about to touch the shadow––enough to be uncomfortable and impossible to ignore; like a minor headache or a sibling vying for your attention (but what's the difference really?). "Now, you can either free Inna or enjoy these fuckers chasing you around for the rest of your life!" And with that, she sends the second golden annoyance towards the demon––incredibly hopeful that her guess about the shadow's weakness is correct.

 

[Syntra]

This was totally cool. Like, it might have seemed as if Inna minded, but she didn't, actually! Turning into some kind of freaky monster had never really been her first career choice, but let's be honest-- it wasn't like the blonde had ever had any fucking career choices that couldn't be boiled down to 'steal whatever isn't chained to the ground,' and her new monster image didn't impede that. No, quite the contrary. If she looked like some Lovecraftian-ass nightmare, you see, people would fucking throw cash at her just to keep her away! So, all in all, there were no disadvantages to this kind of life. (Like, yeah, finding a gf could be an issue, but other female weebs had to exist, didn't they? And some of them, Inna was sure, would appreciate whatever number of tentacles she'd fucking grow. Unlike a certain Liora whom she wouldn't name, that weeb gf would love everything about her, not just what she could do for her, and, umm. Wait, what?)

'Wait, what' was fitting, really, because that was the moment where Liora whipped out a fucking PowerPoint and began apologizing to her. Like, to her! To Inna Fucking Orlovskaya, her (former?) nemesis and current nightmare, which... wow, wow, wow! (Nobody ever apologized to the blonde-- that seemed to be the unwritten fucking rule that everyone in this universe followed. In fact, judging by their level of enthusiasm? Inna was willing to wager there were prizes! Like, 'Make Inna See Red' award, 'Make the Bitch Cry' award, and a super special 'Carve This Trauma Into Her Bones' edition, for those who meant it seriously. Liora, ever the over-achiever, had once seemed to be shooting for the third category, so to see her doing this? It was ridiculous. Ridiculous and jarring, with these stupid little touches nobody in their right mind would go for! Like, what was her fucking damage? Apologizing with a goddamn PowerPoint was some alien shit for sure, so socially maladjusted that the average incel seemed like a shiny beacon of normalcy in comparison, and Inna-- Inna kinda loved it, honestly.)

'You're so you and I'm so me', Liora said, and yeah, she had a point. Only fucking Liora could invent a scheme so completely out of touch with reality-- and somehow make it work, despite what the laws of probability commanded. Like, she'd put so much effort into this! Look at, uh... all those little slides with the fancy titles, and everything. And, and, and, she called her cool! Completely unironically, too. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach, those the blonde had kinda thought to be dead, but hallelujah, bitches, miracles were apparently a thing. A beautiful, beautiful thing! (So, she hadn't been a bitch on purpose? ...did that mean Inna made her as nervous as Liora made her? Come to think of it, that sort of would fit the previous pattern, but she had worked with a different one in her mind-- the one everyone else used in their dealings with her, inevitably. Except that maybe, maybe Liora wasn't like everyone else. Mind blown!)

...and, as new energy surged through her veins? Something else got blown away, too. There was this suspicious whoosh sound, almost like a giant taking a breath, and then-- then the cocoon was suddenly on fire, along with Inna. Monothematic? Well, no, not really. This time, the flames belonged to her you know? So, instead of burning, they purified. (Purified and caressed her body, oh so gently, and every touch helped put everything in context. Inna's fucking skin? Not meant to be melted, thank you very much. Her legs? Only had two. Bat wings? Ehh, a cool idea, in theory at least, but no, Inna Orlovskaya didn't need to cosplay some corny superhero sucker to be badass as hell! So, off they went. Off they fucking went, along with all the other things the bitch had made her swallow, and--)

"Oh," the shadowy demon smirked. "So this is what you've been reduced to, Vie? Kindergarten tactics? You used to be much more formidable than that, sweetling. Do you know how we called you? Miss Zombie Apocalypse, since that's how far your powers reached. Seems like you need a new nickname, though. Hmm, hmm. Miss Kiddie Pool? That, I believe, describes your new depths. What do you-- aargh!" Because, the tiny detail the demon hadn't realized? That the connection went both ways! The fire reminded her, though, when it set her ablaze-- the shadowy tendrils may as well have been made of fucking oil, with how fast the fireworks exploded. (It was... actually fucking pretty, with really cool special effects-- even the screams sounded like music to Inna's ears! Serves you right, bastard.)

And so Inna emerged, like a phoenix out of her... cocoon... with, uh, only flames wrapped around her intimate parts. (It was hard to find fire-resistant clothes, okay? Well, that, and the blonde also hadn't thought her evening would end up like this, so like, she felt she was excused for not wearing the latest asbestos haute couture.) "Umm," Inna put her arm behind her head, a shy smile on her lips, "thanks for inspiring me, too. To do this, I mean. And for coming for me. And for, you know, all that stuff you do for me. That PowerPoint was, uhh, fucking impressive. Very memorable."

 

[starboob]

☉ LIORA TRIHN ☉
​

Well, Liora hadn't been incredibly hopeful that her trick would work perfectly, though she did hope for something more than a taunt. Mostly because she doesn't handle taunting well and when it happens to dig into one of her nonexistent insecurities, she does tend to freeze. This one is especially hard for her to cover-up since it's so glaringly obvious; and again, how is it even her fault that she's not like her former self, Vie? (As if living in the shadow of her idiot younger sister isn't enough, now she gets to live in the shadow of her actual dead self.) Her jaw clenches tightly as she swallows the stupid nickname that shouldn't even hurt her feelings, because it's not like she cares about magic anyway! (Except that, she cares a lot about being perceived as strong and being the best at everything––and confronted with reality? She's tearing herself up on the inside trying to figure out how to miraculously become twice as good as her former self just to show this shadow bitch exactly what she is made of.)

Though it looks like she won't have to do that, because soon after the bitch is up in familiar flames and when she turns around to see Inna emerging from that cocoon her heart skips, like, several beats. ‘Oh shit, she's practically naked.' Her cheeks immediately flush and it spreads to the rest of her face, making her look like a fucking stop sign. She covers her eyes with her hand and looks down. "Y-yeah, no problem!" her voice cracks and goes up several octaves, but she's pretty sure the cave is just making her sound that extra. There is no way she is shocked. Nope. Liora doesn't get shocked. (There is something humorous about how she can easily look at a monsterified Inna without flinching, but when the blonde is practically bare skin in front of her? That's when she decides it's too much? Make it make sense.) "Sorry about your clothes––I, uh, here," she says, shaking off the mid-thigh cardigan she had been wearing and handing it to Inna while still averting her gaze (not that the blonde seems to have any shame). (...Okay, not that she has spent any time on the topic, because that would be entirely weird, inappropriate, a huge HR violation, etc., she has always assumed that Inna would have an excellent physique––and it turns out she was right (duh). Had she stared a second longer, she might have discover what it's like to have a fantasy! Thankfully, prep school taught her something about being respectful.)

"I wasn't even half-way done," she mumbles, as she turns away to prevent herself from further temptations that she doesn't really understand. Her eyes settle on what is left of Haenel and she frowns. "But we should probably get Declan and head back to the villa––at least to steal some clothes and shit." Oh, and speak of the owl!

Declan emerges in a brilliant flash of light, worry clear on her features with her eyes swollen and watery. "Wh-where's Haenel? I felt something shatter her and it hurt!" She sobs, not even waiting for either woman to respond as she immediately flies over to her scattered half. "Oh my, oh dear––we're just not as resilient as we used to be," she mutters as she sweeps her wing over Haenel's remains, causing them to disappear into the Restoration Dimension. The owl still looks devastated when she turns back to the women, not even reacting to the fact that Inna is sporting the latest fire lingerie. "Ah, at least you two seem to have made-up. Good job on the PowerPoint, Liora, but you can just say things without providing visual evidence." Usually, the owl would sound more light-hearted, but now she seems more resigned. (Not that Liora minds...)

"Oh," she says, eyes wide because she's convinced that she did her apology wrong, but then she remembers how Inna had just told her that her presentation was impressive and memorable. She decides Inna's review is more important to her and shrugs off the comment. (Though she is still ruminating on what the shadow had told her and likely will for the rest of her life. Not in an unhealthy way, obviously. She's just going to turn this into fuel so that she can become the best and crush anyone else who dares speak ill of her.) "I don't care about your opinion," which is a pretty blatant lie given that Liora desires approval from all authority figures and Declan sort of counts since she is her teacher, even if she sucks. "You didn't happen to bring a spare change of clothes, did you?"

"No, but I can easily craft some for Ms. Inna," she says, kicking her little feet in the dirt as she mopes around the spot where Haenel had been.

Liora nods and turns back to Inna, keeping her eyes fixed on her face. "So," she says, swallowing hard. "Do you want to go back to the villa? Like, you weren't too keen on the Mistress and to be honest, I'm not impressed with her either. Like, sure, she could give us answers, but like maybe she wants to drown us in that blood fountain––I don't know. It's up to you," she shrugs like it's no big deal either way. What is a big deal, however, is that Liora even considerings the blonde's desires. That's a first.

 

[Syntra]

...hmmm, hmmm. Was Liora staring? Like, staring staring? And not in the 'I'm calling the police' way, but in the 'oh yeah, baby' way'? 'Cause Inna sort of had a hunch, and obviously, Inna Orlovskaya's hunches were never wrong. Nuh uh, 100% success rate, just like in everything else she had ever done! (Except that this made no fucking sense since Liora had rejected her, duh. Saying no to her ~proposition~ and then checking her out like this would be like, uh, claiming you didn't want that car your father had bought for you and then stealing it, or something. ...which was something Inna had done, actually, so like, maybe she should find a better fucking example, but you catch her drift. It was an action totally incompatible with Liora's mindset, which Inna imagined always revolved around 'meeting deadlines' and 'voter registration' and being an obedient fucking cog wheel in the machine of Capitalism in general. So, what was this? Another villainous, villainous scheme? A way of eroding her already fragile mental health so that she might... uhh, steal her clothes when they inevitably locked her in some asylum? Sliding deeper into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole seemed tempting, tempting and familiar, but-- no. No, the blonde wouldn't do that. Liora had just saved her, completely out of her own fucking volition, and at a great personal risk. And what did that mean? That Inna had to do something similarly unprecedented, of course! ...like trusting her, for example. Yes. Yes, maybe for the first time in her life, she'd just accept this narrative of someone else being a Good Guy without scanning every word of theirs for hidden meanings and traps. Who even needed comfort zones, anyway? Certainly not Inna Adventurous Orlovskaya!)

"You're sorry?" Inna raised her eyebrow. "I mean, it was me who burned them. If I'm going to do this human torch thing often, I'll need to look into fire-resistant clothes. Would you happen to know anything about that? Like, you don't need it, obviously, but you seem to know everything about everything." ...which was something the blonde would never have admitted to just a few weeks before this mess, but times changed! Quite drastically at that, too. (Like, since she had already confessed her fucking feelings to Liora, it seemed silly to worry about something like that. The cat was out of the bag, and the elephant in the room had been acknowledged. So what if it had only lead to her putting on her clown shoes? There was a freedom in clownship as well, which meant that now Inna could shitpost verbally with literally no filter! Now it really was over for the bitches-- the bitches being the rest of this shit world, of course.) "And thanks," Inna accepted the cardigan, with zero shame indeed. (There was nothing to be ashamed of, was there? Objectively speaking, the blonde was fucking hot, and anyone who got to see that much of her skin could consider themselves to be blessed. In fact, Inna almost rejected the clothes! Solely to watch the expression on Liora's face, of course, since that would have been hilarious as fuck. ...except that then, then she realized that Liora had been wearing it, and the complex mathematical equations that she solved in her brain showed her there was like, 3844% chance that it would smell like her. Which, wow, wow, wow! In that moment, Inna would sacrifice her goddamn soul just to obtain it.)

"Wait," the blonde looked at Declan and the pieces of what was apparently Haenel, "the flame bitch came to save me, too?" ...huh. Maybe she wasn't all bad! Like, yeah, setting her on fire had crossed so many of her boundaries it wasn't even funny, but now she got to suffer as well, and that was almost biblical in that 'eye for an eye' way. Hmmm. Forgiveness was definitely too much, especially since Haenel hadn't even apologized yet and Liora had set such high standards, but perhaps-- perhaps she could start considering it. You know, as a treat!

"And yeah, definitely not returning to the creepy villa and its creepily obsessed Mistress. Like, I don't want to wake up one day and find out she turned me into a fucking doll so that she could admire me forever, or something." And judging what they'd been through? That was one of the tamer scenarios, actually-- Inna could easily see her stealing her face, too, or maybe combining her DNA with Liora's and make her perfectly genetically engineered kid. (Which, nope, nope, and thousand times nope! Adoption was the way to go, and they weren't even ready yet, and... wait, what? What yet? Okay, Inna wasn't going to examine that line of thought. Let's just... shove it under a carpet, along with all those other scrapped ideas. There, it didn't exist anymore! Hahaha. Haha. Ha.) "Just get us out of here, Liora. I don't care where."

In the privacy of her mind, Inna believed that her companion would choose something suitable-- which was a trust that got shattered pretty fast, actually, when they emerged in what seemed to be... a fucking park? Right in front of some fucker in a police uniform, too. Shit, shit, shit!

The guy did a double take, probably wondering whether that line of cocaine he had undoubtedly done this morning to cope with his poor life choices had been the last straw, and then, inevitably, his eyes darted to Inna. "How did you... this is public indecency, miss! I'm afraid you'll have to go with me. You have much to explain."

 

[starboob]

☉ LIORA TRIHN ☉
​

For once, Liora is not concerned about their mission or the prophecy that they are supposed to fulfill. In her mind, the Mistress had been as much a part of that ordeal as going to get ice cream at that café––which is to say, that the woman believes she is entirely unrelated. Or that they already have what they need from her since she provided that vision that at least helps them understand how to close the rift sites. Had she also said she would give them a map to said sites? Or even hinted that she knows how many there are? Well, Liora might have made the executive decision to override Inna's request and would have teleported them back to the villa. As it is, however, she honors the blonde's request and tries to think of some place to take them. While she is still figuring out this ability of hers, it comes with more ease now that she's done it a few times and failed at least once.

And where did she mean to teleport them? Well, Inna had said she likes to ski––or that she thinks skiing is fun, so Liora had planned to take them to the Alps, because even she knows that's the best place to ski and she doesn't really have a desire to explore Tahoe, Mammoth, Big Bear, or anywhere too close to home. So staying on this half of the globe seems the best option! Ah, but that isn't quite where they end up, because nothing ever goes fucking to plan anymore. Though Liora cannot explain it, somewhere between grabbing Inna's hands, thinking of the Alps, and sucking them into a portal like a vacuum... they get pushed out a different exit. Liora had felt that, but with so little knowledge on magic she does assume she fucked up (again). Especially since they end up back in her college town––which immediately tells her she hadn't concentrated enough, like when she accidentally took her and Haenel to "Hell."

When they arrive at the park, she also finds that Declan, the sword, is comfortably settled on her hip. (Unfortunately, Liora can still feel and hear her crying inside of her head.) "What the fuck," she immediately turns to her companion and realizes just how many levels of fucked they are. Trouble with the law? Her worst nightmare, for so many reasons and at the bottom of the list is her affiliation with the mafia. At the top of the list? Authority figures and disappointing them.

She steps in front of the blonde and glares at the officer, "She's not going anywhere." Well, it turns out disappointing them is one thing and leaning into it? Maybe it's the Inna-effect, but she doesn't mind breaking some rules for her. For some inexplicable reason. Actually, no, she does have a reason and the reason is that neither of them have their passports! They'd get in bigger trouble if they were caught traveling without those. "Get off your high horse and bug someone else, pencil-pusher."

"Alright, Miss, you can join her too then––" the officer then spots the sword on her hip and raises a brow, "That weapon also violates––"

"Penal code 53a-217b," a class D felony, she knows this, and somehow manages to roll her eyes like it's the officer who is being ridiculous.

"Okay, sassing an officer––you wanna keep talking?" he asks, clearly excited that something is finally happening in this boring as shit town in New Haven, Connecticut. He reaches for Liora, which she knows is also a violation since their Miranda Rights have not even been read and, like, personal space is important, so she grabs him first.

When she does, she feels a familiar exchange of energy as she had when she took over those two sailors on the ship. 'God, why are the minds of men all the fucking same!' because yes, she finds herself sharing her precious brain-scape with yet another dirty locker room brain. She rubs her temples before speaking, "Alright, Officer Hypocrite, why don't you go home and snort the rest of that coke you have stashed in your glove box. I'm sure the strippers won't miss you at all."

"Okay, mistress," the officer mumbles and walks off back to his vehicle. Which means one fire has been put out! Now to figure out why they ended up near fucking Yale.

She turns back to Inna. "Okay, not where I thought we'd end up... I guess I'm still figuring out this teleporting shit. Um, but since Declan is still too busy crying to, uh, get you some clothes..." 'Look at her face, look at her face, look at her fucking face,' "I know someone who might have something you can borrow. Knowing her, she might have made them fireproof too," she says, suddenly becoming quite nervous as she thinks about where exactly she is going to take them. Actually, she feels pretty sick––it's been so long and the last time they spoke, it hadn't ended well. Not that any of their conversations ended well, but it's not like Sol ever got the explanation why she left. And Liora didn't make it easy for anyone to find her again. She doesn't know what Sol will think. "My sister goes here," she says, like this doesn't bother her at all. (The thought that they can just find a shop and buy something? Doesn't occur her, because now that she's thinking of Sol, the subject is hard to avoid. And she feels a weird responsibility to actually see her––like, because the world is ending and shit, and she's pretty sure her and Inna will fuck up trying to save it. So might as well just see that annoying personification of annoyance one last time, right?)

Luckily, being a college town, even if a pretentious one, no one really gives Inna much trouble. Most probably figure this is some weird sorority pledge hazing; so while there may be some whistling, that Liora stops with a glare each time, no one actually bothers them as they towards Greek row. They arrive at a house, well mansion, and Liora considers knocking and going through the ritual of the handshake (because yes there is one), but decides she doesn't want to be seen. Instead, she teleports them inside, right in front of Sol's door which looks like a kindergartner decorated it. It also smells heavily of marijuana so Liora at least knows that her sister is around. She rolls her eyes as she knocks. "Okay, before you meet her you just need to know––"

The door flies open, smoke escaping into the hallway, and the shorter sister who answers does not even seem to notice or care. Other than also being Asian, the two sisters look nothing alike. As if they aren't related at all (because they aren't and Liora had meant to explain that to Inna, but sort of forgot until two seconds ago). Sol has a button nose, freckles all over her cheeks, and where Liora has dark coal-colored eyes, Sol's appear more warm like chocolate. Her hair is also a bright shade of blue (that Liora thinks is tacky) and her dark roots are showing about an inch. And where Liora, as Inna once accurately described, dresses like Morticia Addams, Sol looks like a toddler who could not decide which of her favorite pieces to wear and decided to wear them all at once, regardless of if they go together, because why not? Anyway...

"––Liora?" she asks, stunned and wondering if she maybe smoked a little too much. Though, unsurprisingly, Sol adapts quickly to this unexpected visitor and peaks over Liora's shoulder to look at Inna. She does an obvious once over, too, and smirks, "Who's the naked babe? Weird Sol is the Best Sister in the World gift, but I won't complain. I will need to run this by my girlfriend but I'm sure it'll be chill. She's with her boyfriend and his girlfriend anyway."

 

[Syntra]

So, like, Inna had a question. Tons of questions, actually, but the most prevalent one was probably this: 'Shouldn't a fucking cop have better things to do?' Like, seriously. The whole goddamn country was falling apart, as per usual, and his contribution to the national security was harassing an, uhh... economically dressed girl? A girl as hot as Inna Orlovskaya, too? Because, really, no matter how you looked at it, her wearing basically nothing must have boosted the morale of everyone in the 5000 miles radius! A shot of fucking serotonin directly into the brain, and for free, too. In these trying times, he should have kissed her dainty feet while thanking her for the public service, but instead, what did he do? Attempt to arrest her. Her, for public indecency! (...shouldn't public indecency charges only apply to men? Like, Inna hadn't read the law because pffft, reading, right, but she kinda assumed everyone agreed only male exhibitionism should be punished. Basically, nobody wanted to see naked men while everybody wanted to see naked women, so this was just democracy, bitches. Democracy and the supply/demand law-- the cornerstones of capitalism, in other words! And since the guy's accent told her the sweet, sweet secret of where they were... heh.) "Are you violating my fucking freedoms, officer?" Inna tilted her head aside. "I reserve my right to be hot, and my mathematical models showed me that this is the optimal way for me to be hot. Like, have you never heard of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms? It's right fucking there. Under the paragraph titled as Self-expression!" ...it wasn't, naturally, but in order to know that, you'd have to be able to read, and everyone knew cops had to be functionally illiterate. If they actually understood the laws they were """protecting""", you see, they could realize it was all bullshit!)

...was Inna ready to get arrested over her passional defense of nudism? Well, yes. This wasn't how the blonde had imagined it to go down, mostly because she had always suspected she'd get arrested for, say, murder, though she wasn't really complaining. Murder was pedestrian stuff, you know? (Inna had turned it into an art form, just like everything she had ever touched, but the reality was that a staggering amount of people killed other people, and so you'd need to do something really depraved in order to stand out. Smearing walls in blood, pretending to serve some dark god, stuffing the victim's eyes into their mouth and claiming the fucking voices in your head had commanded you to do so-- the standard horror movie shit, really. And the kicker? Even then, you'd be forgotten the next week for a different, shinier massacre! The attention of the journalists was a fickle, fickle thing, and the competition was brutal in the murder industry. A crazy hot chick who fought for her right to stay fucking naked, though? Now that was a story everyone would remember for years! Original and wonderful and show-stopping-- a breath of fresh in these stale, stale waters. This was her way to stardom, so like, watch out, Hollywood!)

...or maybe not, because Liora solved everything with her trademark no nonsense approach. (That she fucking knew the exact code for their transgressions? Honestly, that didn't even surprise Inna anymore. Slowly, the blonde was becoming convinced that, if she were to crack her colleague's skull open, a whole goddamn galaxy would fall out-- a grey galaxy full of numbers and boring shit like that, but a galaxy nonetheless! ...and maybe, maybe residual traces of something colorful and cutesy as well. A spark that could grow into fire, if something were to feed it. Or someone, perhaps. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge!) "I could have had fun with that guy, you know," Inna whined as the fucker turned around to pursue his drug-fueled delusions. "Had you given me five more minutes, I bet there would have been fucking steam coming out of his ears. I've been wondering whether I could make a cop's brain explode, too, so I was hoping to confirm that hypothesis here-- which, I know, pretty goddamn brave considering the fact nobody has proved yet whether they even have brains in the first place, but still. This could have been big."

Despite bitching at the rate of 200 words per second, though? Inna followed Liora obediently, like a happy puppy. "Oh, your sister! I'm, um... fucking excited to meet her, I guess?" ...which didn't sound as enthusiastic as it could have sounded, mostly because the idea of two Lioras lowkey terrified her. Like, Inna had barely started appreciating one (1) Liora! Two of them would overwhelm her system, surely, and a Liora factor this high could only lead to a total collapse of the society as Inna knew it. Was it even legal for them to be in the same room? The atmosphere would get so stifling, and flowers would fucking die from the pressure, and biodiversity was an important thing, okay? The dinosaurs who had gone extinct because the stupid asteroid had destroyed their food supplies could give lessons on the topic, except that, no, they couldn't, actually. Mainly because they were fucking dead!)

...on the other hand, maybe she was wrong. The smell of weed was the first sign, and when the sister herself emerged from her dorm? Inna fucking stared, because the universe had apparently designed Sol to be her exact opposite. (Was this how it had tried to keep the fabric of reality from being torn apart? It made sense, the blonde guessed, though still. Wow, wow, wow! This chick was Liora's sis? Some genetic manipulation shit must have been involved, Inna was sure. That, or evil demonic rituals and soul-splitting experiments!)

"Hi!" Inna beamed at the other woman and waved, thoroughly unconcerned by the absence of clothes. "I don't know about being a gift, but like, I guess I can be," she winked. "You'll have to earn me first, though. This is just a preview, so that you know what you're buying. But! I'm Inna. Inna Orlovskaya, Liora's..." What, even? Not an enemy, but definitely not a lover like all those fucking fics she had read predicted, and-- "...friend, I guess. I think." It felt right, if nothing else-- an echo of something that had once been, only for it to resonate with greater intensity now. ...or some shit. Look, Inna wasn't an expert! (Two names did come to mind, though. Ivy and Vie, Vie and Ivy. Vie's smile, and the way her sword had felt in her chest-- like fucking teeth, biting so, so deeply into her flesh.) "Anyway," Inna shed the not-memory, "can you spare some clothes? 'Cause I could use them. And, like, cool style! I'm fucking digging these colors, dude. Wanna play my fashion advisor? You can dress me however you want!"

 

[starboob]

☉ LIORA TRIHN ☉
​

This is a mistake that Liora immediately regrets. Whatever had possessed her to introduce Inna to her sister, for clothes or not, is now immediately biting her in the ass because of course Sol would react the way she did. It embarrasses Liora to the nth degree and since she has lost all her shame within a week, she cannot even hide the blush on her cheeks. She's about to stammer out a NO, but then Inna starts talking and it just gets worse. Yes, this had been a huge oversight on her part––probably due to her lack of sleep last night––because she somehow conveniently forgot who Inna is, fundamentally as a person, and who Sol is, fundamentally as a person. Naturally, the two pair together like peanut butter and chocolate (a delicious and sticky combination). And Liora is like the unwanted addition of... worms in your peanut butter cup. (She refuses, for the time being, to investigate why she feels like such a third wheel.)

Liora resigns herself to covering her face as she steps into the sorority suite. The walls are covered, floor to ceiling, in different art prints that Sol has purchased over the years. They are all neatly taped to the walls and some have been turned on their sides––Liora guesses because Sol had to Tetris them all to get them to fit. There are also several plants in the room that seem entirely healthy and thriving with Sol's notorious green thumb (the girl can grow orchids! Orchids. Even Liora can admit that's impressive––though she does think it's a useless skill). The bed isn't made, dishes are piled on the nightstand, and the floor seems to be an extra shelf. Liora is disgusted and not surprised. Not in the slightest. "Jesus fucking Christ, Sol, how are you living in this fucking pigsty?"

Sol decides to ignore Liora's question––mostly because it would be a fruitless endeavor to explain to her sister the complex system of organization she has going on. (She also thinks it's interesting that Liora has suddenly become a potty-mouth, but she'll investigate that later.) Besides the naked babe/supposed friend of Liora's? Way more interesting. "Your accent is really hot. I'm sure you get that a lot," Sol smiles, bright as ever, not at all concerned that some people don't necessarily like their accents being pointed out. In her mind, it's a compliment and if taken the wrong way? Well, apologies are free! She takes Inna's hand and pulls her into her bedroom. "Honestly I didn't know that Liora had friends or friend––I mean, she kinda always gives off that," Sol pops her hip to the side, arms over her chest in classic Liora fashion, "'Y=mx+b so that means you can't hang out with me' vibes." She snickers and drops the act as she turns towards her closest.

"Okay, Ms. Orlovskaya, welcome to Project Runway: Sol Rodríguez edition! I usually just pick out the first thing that catches my eye and toss it on, but for you," she looks at Inna with the utmost gravity in her tone, hands pressed together and touching her fingers to her lips, "I will create my magnum opus of outfits!" And with that she starts to pluck out clothes from her wardrobe and tosses them to Inna, mostly to get them out the way and Inna happens to be in her line of fire. "Anyway, why are you naked? How did you even meet Liora? Wait––" She turns to her sister, who is snooping through her obviously untouched textbooks. "Liora, I highkey thought Helia you know..." she cuts her finger across her neck, "I went to therapy for it and everything!" If Sol is upset, she doesn't show it in any expected way––perhaps because she is stoned. "I mean after what happened with––"

So whatever coping Liora had been doing to disassociate from this situation and ignore whatever is happening between her sister and Inna, she is pulled right back to reality when Sol mentions their mother and goes down that line of thought. She immediately crosses the room in a few strides and covers Sol's mouth, which causes Sol to lick her hand, which then causes Liora to smear her palm across her sister's cheek. "Shut up––don't be fucking stupid, Sol. I didn't die. I just left." Which still leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but Liora is not just going to explain herself. She doesn't think that she has to and she doesn't really want to either. She wipes her hand on her shirt and screws her face in disgust. "Inna, don't listen to her––her brain is made of fucking Gushers and Poptarts."

"Oh! Speaking of which––so sorry about my poor hostess skills, I wasn't expecting anyone––especially not my totally Alive SisterTM. I've got like hella Yerbs, cold brew, and I think some juice boxes in my fridge," she points to it, "Help yourself. And you all must be hungry! I know I am," she giggles, "I actually have pizzas on the way and in the meantime you can probably find some Froot Roll-Ups on the ground from when I tore the box open and they scattered everywhere. It's kinda like a nice surprise every time I step on one. A gift from the past, if you will."

Sol, like Inna, apparently doesn't need to breathe either when she talks. Liora is beyond confused how Sol's mental processor works so fast and how it manages to only produce the stupidest thoughts ever. 'It's probably all the goddamn weed she smokes,' she thinks as she waves her hand through the hazy air and decides to open a fucking window, because at this rate her and Inna will end up stoned too. And Liora isn't looking to lose her wits. "Just pick out a goddamn outfit, Sol. We really shouldn't even be here right now," because they're supposed to be in the Alps! Not fucking Connecticut, the worst and most boring state to exist––so much so, she often forgets that it's real. "Anyway, if you have something fire-proof that would.. That would be helpful."

At that, Sol raises a brow. (She has a lot of questions for her sister and her sister's "friend." It's strange that her sister is here, after not hearing from her in literal years; after she disappeared. And, wow, Liora, ever the overachiever, really knows how to reenter someone's life––by showing up with a naked and undeniable Class-A hottie? That's impressive. Actually, no, it's very strange to her and her weirdness-radar is never off. In fact, Liora just seems different than when she last saw her. Sol may have felt resentful of all this, if she had a resentful bone in her body, but she does get a lot of her sister's behaviors. Not that she excuses it, but... Well, it's complicated. Where she wants to push Liora away, as her older sister has always done to her until it's convenient for Liora to acknowledge her existence, she can't help but to want some semblance of a connection to her sister. The ship has sailed for them to ever have a normal sisterly relationship, she thinks, just because of how Liora is, but she does watch out of her. Quite simply because she thinks Liora is the smartest dumbass there is––like, it had never been that hard for Sol to see how Helia had manipulated and used them both, but somehow it has always just been easier (she assumes) for Liora to play along than to resist. Anyway, enough of her inner thoughts.)

"Aw, c'mon Liora, don't be such a party-pooper-mcbossy-pants! I'm sure whatever... ""Business excursion"" you're on could use a little weed and 'za! Right, Inna? Hey, you wanna get high? Ugh, I'm just not on my hostess game! That should have been my first question, but you know, can I really be blamed? You're just soooo drop dead gorgeous I think all my thoughts got zapped," she winks. "Oh, and here you go! I made this shirt using some fire-proof materials when I got into making homemade fireworks. It's so hard to find Hawaiian shirt prints that are fire-proof so I had to get this fabric custom made. Helia was sooo pissed when she saw that credit charge. Anyway, the jeans are fireproof too, but I'm not sure if the paint is... but I did paint them myself," she beams, handing Inna a teal-based Hawaiian shirt with a yellow hibiscus print and some blue jeans that have various newspaper characters hand-painted all over. "Seriously, Lio," (Liora glares at the nickname), "just chillax for once. Inna has she ever chillaxed since you've known her? Wanna exchange embarrassing Liora stories?"

 

[Syntra]

One thing was becoming increasingly more certain, with each passing second-- Sol was a LotTM. Now, Liora was A Lot as well, though in a completely fucking different different way, you know? Kind of like a goddamn pandemic versus an abundance of ice cream, and you could probably guess which sister was which. Anyway, Inna's mind? Officially fucking blown! (Man oh man, genetics really, truly did some downright inexplicable shit. How come the same set of genes had produced the equivalent of, like, McDonald and KFC? Which was a bad example, actually, because the two chains were kinda similar in that they produced shitty fucking food for scandalous prices, but it was fitting in that they stood in eternal opposition-- much like South and North, good and evil, and, uhhh... murderers and people who didn't want to be murdered? Soviet Russia and dignity? Yeah, something like that.) Anyway, to Inna, this was basically second Christmas, and fuck, was she enjoying the gifts! "Pigsty?" she raised her eyebrow. "This room just has a personality, Liora. Don't make me pull out the receipts re: your old apartment. That torching I did was a mercy kill, because it had been fucking dead for years." And that to Sol, who knew as much about the circumstances as she probably did about the fucking Holodomor in 1933's Ukraine, this act must have sounded like an official declaration of war? Inna didn't really care about that, either. Like, did she look like a fucking encyclopedia? No? Then it wasn't her duty to provide footnotes to every goddamn statement that left her lips, either!

"Thank you," she once again beamed at Sol, revealing a row of perfectly white teeth. "I kinda like it myself, y'know? Like, I'm not going to cosplay being British. I know it's not too fashionable in this day and age, but I have fucking standards, thank you very much." ...although, considering the visible lack of deformations? Somehow, Inna doubted they would mistake her for one of those fuckers. Not without a severe visual impairment, anyway! "Ummm, yeah," she shrugged, her smile not faltering for a second, "I didn't know she had friends, either, but I guess that's what I am now. What can I say? Either you die a hero or see yourself become the villain. Oh, and something about staring into the fucking abyss." 'Cause, really, wasn't that how it had gone down? Fate had fucking grabbed her by the neck and forced her to stare into Liora's depths, kinda like when you rubbed a puppy's nose in its own piss, and... umm. Unlike that puppy, Inna found out she kinda liked it! (It must have been some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, the blonde was sure. Like, it just wasn't normal to start enjoying the presence of someone who unironically read Terms and Conditions in its entirety, was it? Then again, nothing about receiving superpowers was even remotely normal, so Inna guessed this was just following the fucking pattern.)

"It better fucking blow my mind!" Inna chuckled as she caught the clothes. (Hmm, hmm. A daring choice of colors, truly! The blonde wouldn't have gone for it herself, but like, perhaps that was her first mistake-- a peacock shouldn't be ashamed of its feathers, and like, Inna was at least as pretty as that. The boring masses obviously couldn't afford to wear things this vibrant, but her? Pffft! It wouldn't dull her shine, oh no, no, no. If anything, it would only accentuate her features! Speaking of accentuating stuff, though...) "Is this like, cold summer stuff? I heard cold summer stuff is totally my brand," Inna explained, not sure why Liora's advice seemed so important. Maybe because Liora knew her shit? "And we were colleagues. Now more like fucking partners in crime, I suppose! Which I like more, honestly, because working is so fucking pedestrian. Like, can you imagine? Baking a whole-ass bread just to get some crumbs off a filthy capitalist's table. Disgusting! The guillotines fucking can't come back in fashion fast enough," Inna prattled on happily, sensing on some level that she had met her match. Which, yay! "And as for the nakedness thing... well, I just popped out of my chrysalis, love," she winked. "Dramatic metamorphoses just don't do it for me without that, uhh, symbolic vulnerability. Besides, being reborn in fire kinda does that to you. The clothes removal stuff, I mean." Was she making any goddamn sense? Not to Sol, probably, which was for the best. Like, Liora's sis wanted to understand, she would have to connect the dots on her own!

The same was apparently true for her, though, because then they... started talking about some family drama nonsense? Drama that, if she understood it correctly, should have culminated in Liora being killed? Wow, wow, wow! So her parental units, it seemed, had also been nominated for the prestigious Worst Caregiver in the Universe award. (Comparing their trauma wounds, which by the way didn't exist, didn't seem like a suitable party activity to her, though, and so the blonde put it on her ever-growing 'To Do Later' list, right under 'do your fucking laundry, bitch'. Although... hmmm. That one didn't apply anymore, did it? Like, Chett had probably sacrificed her dirty clothes to Satan or some shit, so now they were his problem! Hahahaha. Take that, bastard. The socks she had been wearing for three weeks must have been classified as a bioweapon by now for sure!)

"Oh my god," Inna chuckled, her eyes sparkling with delight. "Can we stay, Liora? Can we, can we? Like, I can't recall the last fucking time I ate something without suspecting I'll be poisoned, or without expecting undead sailors to emerge from somewhere. I know, I know, productivity," she rolled her eyes, "but you gotta learn how to keep stuff in working order, you know? 'Cause if you don't, shit will fucking break, and then you'll spend more time on repairing it than you would have spent on basic upkeep. And, right now, my body demands to get high! Sorry, I don't make rules around here. I sit in the cockpit, but Inna Orlovskaya runs on autopilot."

...well, that, and apparently, it also demanded Embarrassing Liora Stories as its SustenanceTM! Just, you know that feeling when you saw a shiny new gun in a store and you realized in that moment that this thing had been the key to your emotional stability all along, except you had been blind to it before? That it was the yin to your yang, or the Cthulhu to your fucking Necronomicon? Yeah, that was the sensation Inna was having now! ...what a deeply, deeply spiritual experience.

"I guess," Inna began, her smile downright malicious, "that I should begin, since I'm the guest here. As an offering! So, when we still worked for the mafia, our boss held these stupid parties. For teambulding purposes, allegedly. And, one year, it was Liora's turn to take care of the Halloween party. 'It'll be fun,' Chett said. 'Liora has great organizational skills,' he said. And I really fucking thought it could be fun, you know? 'Cause, like, everyone knows that a Halloween party is just an excuse to put on a revealing dress and get drunk, which is incredibly valid. But nooo, that wasn't ambitious enough for Liora! She straight up had costumes made for us so that we'd fit the fucking theme," Inna made air quotes with her fingers, "and wouldn't embarrass her. Alcohol was forbidden, because it would impact our ability to take this seriously. To take what seriously, you ask? She fucking prepared like one hundred pop quizes on mythology and horror and serial killers, shit like that, and we had to earn our right to have fun first. Only those who passed with like 90% success rate could go get some fucking booze! Needless to say, she kinda misjudged the audience, because one of Chett's goons misjudged the instructions on one slide and thought he was supposed to fucking recreate the crime scene. So, uh, he killed a cop for real! We spent literal weeks on the run-- it was a complete fucking shitshow."

 

[starboob]

☉ LIORA TRIHN ☉​

As the seconds tick on and turn into minutes, Liora feels a little more of soul leaving her body. Not literally, unfortunately. Apparently, that gift only works as randomly as any of her other magical abilities (though some are becoming more familiar to her and the emotional malfunctions are becoming less and less of an occurrence). She would give anything to forcibly eject herself from this situation. In fact, she really wouldn't mind if undead sailors started to attack this sorority house or if Declan decided to wake up again and teleport them to some freak show temple with a million fucking eyes. It's just a lot for Liora, to see how well Sol is getting along with Inna. Not that she's necessarily surprised, in fact, it makes a lot of sense the more and more she thinks about it––and it's not even that they're getting along, but that they're both openly flirting with each other! Like, she's right there. Why can't they both have the decency to get a fucking room? Is that too much to fucking ask? Because it's just weird, okay, to flirt in front of another person. (Yes, that's why she's bothered. She's convinced this subtle display of PDA is what is making her feel so disgusted.) Liora remains quiet, propped up against the bed, as she grimaces at the floor. 'Hurry the fuck up, Sol––I want to get the fuck out of here already.'

"Cold summer?" Sol asks, scratching her head. "Yeah, I mean I guess I'd wear that on a cold summer day?" Because she definitely is not the sister that believes there is a right way to do fashion. To her, fashion is a feeling and an attitude. (Also... Sol notes that Liora's only friend is probably a communist. This just gets stranger and stranger.) Anyway, Sol definitely doesn't pick up on half of what Inna is saying and she isn't reading too deeply into it, either, because to her, they are just two kindred spirits who say whatever they please and hope it makes a lick of sense to the other person. "Lio, you really know how to make sure you get the best things––Ms. Orlovskaya is amazing. Not surprised you would choose an absolute gem as a friend," she flashes a flirty grin at Inna, even if she is making an attempt to include Liora in the conversation. "And you totally should stay! Inna is right!! There is research and everything that proves the forty hour work week is noodles and we should have more vacation time to increase productivity." Silently, Sol applauds Inna for realizing her sister's weakness for logic (now she wonders if she's figured out the reverse psychology thing). "I haven't seen or heard from you in years, Li!" Not that guilt trips, especially from Sol, have ever worked, but the younger sibling is determined to get Liora to stay and perhaps figure out just why she is even here in the first place.

Liora, doesn't acknowledge the comment. It only makes her glower, because this is so fucking irritating. Not that Sol is wrong––Inna is great, but again, why the fuck is she flirting when she already has a girlfriend? (Who apparently has a boyfriend... who apparently has a girlfriend. Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck is her sister even doing with her life?) Even so, as annoyed as she is, when Inna starts begging to stay and even uses surprisingly sound logic to convince her––and when Sol chimes ready to provide evidence to support the argument? Well, it's not Sol's argument that actually causes her resolve to crumble. After all, she does know exactly what Inna is talking about––this whole week has been such a shit show shit storm and while Liora detests wasting time and she wants to keep going––

Sol decides Liora is taking too long. She rolls her eyes with a grin, grabs Liora, and pushes her into her best beanbag. "Okay, cool, so you're staying," she says.

Liora becomes more concerned about what exactly is happening––especially as Sol suggests that they exchange embarrassing stories about her, she pretty much wants to die. But that's just the running theme of this experience. (She would leave, too, if it didn't also mean leaving Inna behind... And if Sol hadn't just pulled out the largest bong she has ever fucking seen and begins to pack it. 'Jesus fucking Christ, how am I letting these idiots decide what is happening?!') And since she is tossed into a beanbag, she just crosses her arms and tries to pretend she isn't bothered by whatever is happening or whatever stories they're going to share. She's actually surprised with the story Inna picks, mostly because she doesn't think it's all that embarrassing. Like, she's right that her Halloween party had been a complete disaster, but she's wrong about why. It's not Liora's fault that the mafia––oh shit, Inna dropped that. She looks over at Sol who's eyes are wider than saucers.

"Liora? In the mafia?" her younger sister's disbelief is clear in her tone––she does wonder if Inna is kidding or if this is some elaborate metaphor, but something about how Inna is talking makes her wonder... "Okay, now I've heard everything, but Liora, who would probably trust a cop, being in the mafia? That's a joke right?" She looks at Liora, who looks away with her arms folded over her chest––her classic I'm not going to say anything posture. Sol shakes her head, smiling. "I thought you wanted to be a governor to help Helia with her destruction of the world? Not exactly how you get there, 'Ora," she chuckles. This is such a strange visit. Maybe she shouldn't take another hit. Eh, c'est la vie/carpe diem or something. She rips the bong and then hands it Inna. "Alright, well," she blows the smoke in Liora's face, who waves it away––already starting to feel a bit out of herself just being in this hotboxed room. "That's a pretty good story, like Liora being way too controlling about a party... I definitely do believe that," she is not sold on the mafia bit. "Well, one time in sixth grade––"

"––Sol!"

"––this guy asked her to the sixth grade dance and," she chuckles, "It was this huge thing––like the dude went through the trouble of decorating her locker with flowers and making this whole trail of rose petals to him. And at the end of the trail, he was holding this sign, Liora Rodríguez will you go to the dance with me? and I guess Li was so shook, she froze and threw up on him; then she faked being sick for a whole week to avoid him. She even begged Helia to let her transfer schools––she, like, looked up the best middle schools in the nation and came up with this whole argument why hers wasn't going to prepare her to be the governor someday. Oh! Then there was this one time, also in sixth grade, where she tried to cut her own bangs––but the dummy didn't know you're not supposed to cut bangs wet so she ended up with bangs that were only like three centimeters long––" She stops herself, realizing how that incident had ended for Liora. She's not trying to re-traumatize her sister with how angry Helia had been and how she threatened to shave Liora's head. She shoots Liora an apologetic glance and decides to share a story that can make her sister sound... Well, classically Liora, but in a badass way. "But my favorite Liora story... Did you know she played lacrosse in high school? Well, she did, and this older chick on the team had been hazing her pretty bad, which as you can imagine, Liora took super well. So one day, Liora shows up like a minute late to practice, with a bloody nose, and the other girl doesn't show up at all. Come to find out, Liora got into a huge fist fight with her right before practice, but the girl never confirmed that it was Liora who beat her up, because I guess Lio had found some pretty juicy blackmail on the girl. So she got away with it even though everyone pretty much knew what happened."

Liora, the entire time Sol is talking, doesn't necessarily look upset but she does look far-off. The second story is particularly upsetting, because of how it ended. Plus, the first two ruin her veneer of perfection––but then she realizes, why does she care? Inna has seen her fuck up so many times since they gained magic powers that everything Sol shares seems... Not as bad as getting eaten by a tentacle beast. She does appreciate that Sol tries to save her reputation with that last story, which she had forgotten about. She looks at Inna, "Are you fucking happy now? Can we go?"