2022-05-20: Yuliana Dispersal's no good very bad day (Chapter 2)

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<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.


Alexis is upset. Oh, not that Alexis ever shows this, of course; he's always been singularly flat and unexpressive. He has every reason to be upset, at that; he's spent the better part of two years working on this project, now, and this woman has the nerve to start upending it.

Unfortunately, she seems to be in quite the densely-inhabited space. This is fine, of course, but it does mean he has to find somewhere unobserved to place himself, to flit between the frames and interpose himself in the narrative.

There is a dark spot, of course, somewhere not far from the intruder he's going to have to dissuade from her movements; he steps out, and steps in, and --

-- oh, this is more than passing strange. Sure, he translates through the world just as he intended, but... through a window, he can see that there are rather more people nearby than he anticipated. ... Such a dense mass of humanity, undetected? Is his tunnel vision that significant? Or --

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.


        The gardens behind the function hall are manicured, controlled, kept. The sort of place one might host their wedding photos -- assuming a particularly rich wedding. (The foibles of class reach communist countries as much as democratic ones; the details are just a little different, between them.) They are also still and dark, left unused compared to the excitement inside.

        A convenient spot to slip outside, for a moment.

        As it happens, the thing Yuliana had to handle -- was herself. Her grin tears riptide across her face, chest rising and falling with erratic breath as her teeth grind together.

        Get it together, she thinks. You're getting too into it. That one, Mass -- she's useful.

        But God, she remarks, to herself, in the privacy of her abyss, that was satisfying.

        Yuliana is not such an amateur as to say her evil monologues out loud, particularly when she has such a singularly effective defence against anyone hearing her thoughts. Even so, she can't be seen like this. She forces everyone to look at her physical behaviour to tell the merit of her words -- and right now, she's wearing entirely the wrong face for it.

        That's the problem with injections. The slow release deals so poorly with spikes of emotion, sudden, intense increases in her instability. Oh, it's still doing very well enough -- she's not even cluttering, which would really give the game away. But after that waif, that Arriety, insisted on making it personal --

        There are so many empty spaces in the air in there, places where connection ought to go. So many cut-out silhouettes around so many loathsome insects, and Yuliana wants to hurt someone, all blood in the water.

        As it happens, the universe is kind.

        Because if Yuliana were to really ruin someone's day in there, she'd run into problems, in her daily life.

        But there's someone out here, she realises, as a dark shape steps forward.

        Yuliana grins, and steps out to meet him. It is not warm, or kind, or inviting. It is all for -- "Alexis, darling!" She calls out, a sharp edge to her cheer, as she raises a hand towards him. The sheer drapery of her purple gown falls from it, like half a cloak all contained in something not quite a sleeve. "What a surprise to see you here!"

        She steps in, regardless of whether he takes her invitation to approach or not. Steps in rather much too close, in fact, to come up against his side -- which means he'll either have to move, or endure someone leaning on him. "... my, but I didn't see you on the guest list," she purrs, sly.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.


Ah. That would be so fully explanatory, Alexis reasons, as he hears that familiar voice call out to him. He can play along, however, to at least an extent. This woman is dangerous, after all, and maybe specifically dangerous to him and his happy little side projects. They are both creatures of the void -- and yet she is something altogether different from him, just the same.

He decides that he'll remain polite and affable, as always, in spite of himself; it's impossible to know how -- or if -- he emotes, behind that black-and-red mask.

"Ms. Dispersal," he says, greeting her like an old friend, irrespective of how he feels about her. "Yes, just so!" She enters his personal bubble; the effect is subtle -- were another observer watching, one could see the slim body upon which that normally amorphous cloak hangs. He loathes this... but allows it, for now. "I suppose that makes me a party-crasher! I thought I'd stop by and try to catch up with someone the young lady knows."

There's no reason to lie to Yuliana, after all. Even if he loathes her, they are creatures of a kind, yes? They both go a different way. "I'd been hoping to catch up with Dr. Mass... I'd thought her much lonelier than she was, at the moment. Your doing, no doubt!"

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.


        Yuliana is specifically dangerous to a great many things. Which ones? That would be telling!

        She certainly emotes -- has all the emotions, wrenching her locks, smashing her door-posts, forcing her doors. So much of nothing leaks from the seams of her, a constant wound ripping through the world.

        Yuliana Dispersal is an intrusion.

        And she intrudes -- leans flagrantly on Alexis Kerib, despite the distance he commands, looking up and up at him with a tilted smile which only becomes more smug at this angle. "My, my!" She gasps, fingers splayed about her lips. "Trying to catch her in a place she can't escape, are you?"

        She lifts her heel, and brings her weight forward, spinning away from Alexis to face him again. Some small mercy -- or perhaps she's made her point. "How strange that you can tell such a thing," she reflects, on the faux-loneliness of Sayla Mass. Her fingers come to rest on her bare cheek, and she tilts her head into them, with a vicious smile.

        "But as a matter of professional courtesy, I'd best warn you you're far too late," Yuliana adds, smile breaking to a grin. "I've already taken a bite from her -- you'll find her remarkably intractable, at present."

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.


Is it so strange that he can tell such a thing...?

Alexis is, after all, a creature of another slice of the story being told entirely. That he is not open to it in the way many humans are does not mean that he is blind to creatures who are open. Their bonds, incomprehensible as they are and impermissible to participate in, are information the same as any other information about the state of the board.

"Intractability would hardly be a concern," Alexis says, with a light, pleasant laugh. He's... slowly renormalizing, now that Yuliana's spun herself away. "But I suppose that would make things difficult in other ways as well. I'll take your warning as it is!"

He glances back to the venue, then to Yuliana herself. Pleasantly, he asks: "What is it that brings you to this place, then? I wouldn't have taken you for quite such a social butterfly, you know."

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.


        Yuliana can see the place where it ought to be -- the information which is cut away -- the empty spaces.

        Would she be quite as jealous, if she wasn't AWARE of what she was missing..?

        "Ohh..?" She asks, fingers fanning over her smile. "Are you in such a state that you're willing to apply force to the matter, then..?" Intractability isn't a concern, after all -- with sufficient motivation to obtain a result.

        Actions like those do tend to give the game away, in Yuliana's experience.

        She brushes her fingers along her bangs -- there's a whole second half of her face under there, a scar briefly glimpsed before the teal settles back down. "Perish the thought," she chides him, just as pleasantly. "I love a captive audience. Social functions are wonderful things -- so many people terrified of making a fuss. Such a thing would be extremely productive, to anyone who knew where to put the screws in... wouldn't you agree?"

        But even as her smile breaks back into that too-vicious grin, there's a certain edge to it -- or perhaps the word is 'double-edged'.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.


"It's a consideration, at least!" Alexis offers, downright pleasant about it. Even if Yuliana is always upsetting to speak with to put it lightly, there are few things he enjoys more than he enjoys causing pain.

... It is, admittedly, nice to be able to say these things without having to pretend like he's good-hearted. There's fun in theatre, but there's just as much fun in putting the words right on the page.

Speaking of which: "Ah! Of course, of course," at Yuliana's explanation of the social dynamics of a large social function. "I must confess I've been to few such things myself. It's only recently that I've started working with other people again, you know!"

As he looks at the grin, though... one teal panel blinks off and on as he thinks. Just who is this woman? He has a rare chance to learn much, much more. "But, hm. Interesting enough... for someone who knew where to put the screws in, indeed." He then asks:

"So! Are you the mechanic, or the screwdriver, Ms. Dispersal?"

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.


        Why, it's downright pleasant! How an upstanding officer of the Federation can get along so well with witches and supervillains may well be obvious, hearing her speak right now.

        Yuliana is playing. She's having fun. It's not very nice fun, nor is it very kind to Alexis -- but she's satisfied with hurting him in small ways, given how little she has to lie in this particular meeting.

        Well, that is to say -- she was having fun.

        Up until -- that one -- last -- instant.

        It takes just a fall of the lips for a grin to become a grimace, all teeth, flashing in that typical human threat-display.

        Her answer comes quite quickly, as she steps back up to get in his -- well, certainly not his face, he's a shade over two feet taller than her. She grabs a ball of that obscuring cape, and drags, downwards. "LISTEN," she snaps with tensile strength, entirely unnecessarily, at this point. "Just because I'm keeping our assets in line, don't go calling me a tool! I'm not being managed!" Note, here, that Elisa is inside, having made a last-minute appearance. "And I'm not some woeful lab rat who just needs someone to MEDDLE and KNOW I'M HURTING!"

        She's shouting, at this point; making a terrible scene. It's a good thing no one is out here to see the way her face jerks upwards, all rage at the drop of a hat.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.


What a suspiciously specific set of denials, every one!

This teaches Alexis much. Yuliana is an enigma, shrouded in something different, some wrong pointer that calls null after null. There is nothing in Yuliana that he can see, that he can consume.

Directly.

Playing around with this is dangerous, of course. Even if Alexis is immortal and unkillable, Yuliana can still curtail his options, can still wrap her fingers in that cape and pull and demand. Getting her wound up may have knock-on effects for both Alexis and others.

All that to say: Alexis gets pulled down with a startled "Ope --" and lets Yuliana scream at him. His cape drapes across his back, revealing the contour of his arms hanging limply as she continues to shout.

"Very well," Alexis says, with a nearly-imperceptible nod. "So be it! You could have simply answered 'mechanic,' you know." He knows she couldn't have, at least without breaking the veneer of honesty that tends to color interactions between voids. (This is, of course, why he says it.)

He doesn't withdraw from Yuliana at this point. Instead, he asks: "What screws have you been turning tonight?" Move it back to mutual business. "Besides Dr. Mass's, of course."

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.


        "Shove it in your grill and suck it," Yuliana lances back at Alexis, through grit teeth, as she shoves him back and takes a step back of her own. She knows she could have just said she was a mechanic. She should have just said she was a mechanic.

        Stupid. Frayed nerves.

        She takes laboured breath through a shuddering chest, a deliberate step to calm herself. She slips her fingers under her bangs, brushes them back briefly as she swipes at her forehead. She is quite human, for all her emptiness. "Hmph," she grumbles, arms folding over her chest. "Nominally, I'm seeing to the bridge brat -- but I scarcely need to say 'boo', frankly. But I happened to run into a Newtype I didn't quite finish off, the other day. It so happens she has a friend who's even more insufferable, if you can imagine such a thing! Then there's the Meltrandi runt -- she cracks if you so much as look at her -- and wouldn't you know it, I even managed to scare a child."

        Yuliana rolls her eyes, heading off at the path: "Oh, but don't be so boorish -- that last one was collateral damage. Really, what sort of paper tiger needs to menace children to get ahead in life?"

        ... apparently high-schoolers don't count by the same metric, in Yuliana's eyes. If they can enlist in the military, they're officially old enough to be targets.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.


Alexis's mask does him such favors. In this case, it prevents him from betraying any feeling at all when Yuliana recounts her run of successes. A Newtype she didn't finish off, an insufferable friend -- a Meltrandi runt, and a child.

Who, indeed. "I wouldn't have expected you to have any particular compunctions!" Alexis offers, sounding enthused... at first. "But I think you'll find there's a certain energy to childhood that can be used to cultivate the very strongest things in the world." It's impossible to keep himself from sounding just a touch sulky as he adds, "If you're not part of the story, why buy into its conceits?"

He manages to pick back up in short order, though. "Not to say you can't chase such things in adults too, mind you! But a creature that carried that energy into adulthood would be among the most threatening creatures of all, to those like..."

Alexis takes a step back from Yuliana, at this point. He cannot trace her bonds, but he can certainly use his eyes. He can see color, you know.

"My my! The story you're in is quite far along, actually. Chapter eighteen or so of twenty-five, I should think...? And you make it to the last episode!"

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.


        "Oh? Did I touch a nerve?" Yuliana asks, regaining something of her footing as her grin returns. "I shouldn't be so surprised -- you do have a certain stranger-danger energy about you."

        Yuliana didn't have any issue threatening a group of civilians which had plenty of children mixed in, of course, but her hypocrisy and her projection hardly needs to be stated at this point.

        "Like..?" She prompts, as he takes a step back. But, what he's saying --

        Yuliana's hand lifts, all shrouded in the mystery of that veil, to curl at her chin. "... and what, precisely, do you mean by that?" She asks, tone dropping to something more dangerous still. "If you're going to insult me by calling me some base fiction -- I should hope you can speak quickly, Kerib."

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.


The blinking lights of Alexis's face all blink off for a few moments, as he attempts to find the words to convey his precise displeasure with Yuliana's comparison in a way that won't make him look like the very pettiest person there is.

Unfortunately, there is no way to do this while remaining even remotely honest, so all he can do is silently take it and seethe. He'll remember this, when he's setting out plans to lend his kaiju out to BioNet; surely there must be some way to irritate Yuliana and her backers without meaningful exposure.

"Hoooh? I assure you -- this is a gift of knowledge, not an insult! I've seen a lot of these stories play out time and time again, you know. I happen to have had a lot of free time! After all," fully back to pleasant, now, "I go a different way. You go a different way!"

There is, perhaps, one advantage to being forced to -- exist, to inhabit. Alexis can clap his hands -- once, enthusiastically -- at Yuliana. "But there are others who go the same way."

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.


        Yuliana, who just tonight swore an eternal blood feud over a single line, wouldn't know anything about being the very pettiest person there is.

        Alexis claps, and Yuliana -- twitches, a little jerk of her lips back and down. She swiftly closes all the space he's claimed between them (three steps, not two; her legs are shorter, presumably), and grabs the wrist of one of those hands he carelessly exposed as capable of motion.

        Her grasp is tight.

        "I happen to know a thing or two about talking a lot and saying nothing at all," she hisses, low. "If you think you can get away with such a pedestrian trick with me, you're stupider than you look."

        Her grasp is even tighter, now.

        "You just said you don't see anything in me -- so what exactly are you seeing, now?"

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.


Being touched is... upsetting. Having to inhabit a body is always a little bit of an ask, for Alexis Kerib -- moving through the world like this, having to exist as something physical, then having that matter -- it's all a little overwhelming. When the world had changed for him, he'd thought that a closed path -- and having it reopened, by someone like Yuliana, is singularly unpleasant.

"Hmmm? Well." Yuliana could hurt him a lot, if only by applying that intellect and power to his script... he might well have to actually give her something. "If you think you're the universe's only only child, your definition of a universe must be very small." Alexis's other hand moves. Slowly.

He could kill her, of course. She's placed her tenderest parts in stabbing range. How cruel, though! To cut a serial off at its second episode -- unprecedented!

So instead, with another black-tinted hand, he produces: a book.

Jikuu Hakai -- Spacetime Destruction

"Oh, I would love to have a book club," Alexis offers. "It's unpublished in this universe, so I haven't been able to find any other readers."

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.


        Yuliana figured out how upsetting it was for him from the character of his handshake. She has zero compunctions using the knowledge to hurt him.

        There's blood in the water, and she's still a shark.

        It's a particular sort of script-reading which, perhaps, he picks up on. "And who said I was?" Yuliana asks, eyes narrowed. "I'd like to see you tell." That's not a trivial ask -- she doesn't go by her family name, any more, alias layered over alias. Verdiska; Minovsky's Woman; Dispersal. Quite a collection.

        Her gaze snaps down as he produces a book, though, sneer thinning to a frown. "... what a shame," she remarks, relenting to release Alexis's wrist to take the book instead. "Very well, very well! I'll have to take pity on you and give it a look, I suppose!"

        She flicks through to the end, naturally, which says quite a lot about her fiction habits. Her gaze scans over the text -- and then she looks back up to Alexis, quite serious.

        "Quite the accusation. But do you have any proof such a thing is relevant to me at all?" Give her credit -- it's not nearly as gauche as 'have you told anyone?' (It's still quite gauche.) "I shouldn't think my stated aims align so evidently with the consumption destruction of the universe entire. Unless you've something to say?"

        There it is; her tone's slipping. A little less mad operative, a little more mad oracle. A little something to push her over the edge of revelation.

        It's in the way her fingers clutch so tightly to the edges of that book, as much as the unspooling of her tongue.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.


"Hmmm... what was it you said, last time..?" Alexis is, at this point, back to his usual self. Yuliana has given him the space he craved, and he has given her --

"'Oh, my dear, I hunger for you.' 'Reality is an abyss.' 'I am an abyss which consumes emotional tenor, you see!' 'Is this not a beautiful thing, to see what the story would written?'" Snippets. Bits and pieces remembered. Alexis Kerib is a hungry void indeed, and taste and memory are so deeply deeply deeply intertwined.

"Something to say? Something to offer? Proof?"

Alexis -- now free of the black hole drawing around Minovsky's Woman -- begins to translate back away from her, through the gardens, like a snake among the trees and vines.

"I offer nothing!" Alexis declares, proudly, as he slips between two trees, neither quite enough to hide his form.

"Nothing at all," he affirms, again, standing among the very real flowers. He reaches down -- and even though he exposes a hand, as before, there's something different about it. There's no sense of physicality to it -- just the grasping surface of an empty void. He takes it, twirls it a moment, by the stem --

-- hurls it into the wall next to Yuliana --

"Will you take it, my dear?"

The mantle translates through those trees, again, at a slightly different angle.

It is no more.


<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.


        Alexis reflects the void back onto her, and --

        Shattering her chill anger --

        Yuliana laughs.

        "Haha... hahaha!" It's not quite joy, though it's seated by relief, the way her chin tosses up, hair bouncing on her head as she bares her fangs in the wake of Alexis's retreat.

        "That which isn't shall not -- of course! You, black hole, would suffice! Hahaha..! Take it?! I'll grasp and tear!" She leans over his book, a grin which exposes nothing but teeth, hands tight as claws. She doesn't flinch at all, as the flower passes by.

        "Haha... hahaha.... ahahahaha!"

        Cackling up to the moon, she turns back, silhouetted by the party beyond.

        "Offer me nothing and you give me everything I need," she says, and her manic energy is no less shaded by her lower tone. "Suspect me as you like, my dear -- the pact lies uncompromised."

        She stretches out an arm, holding the book open with a hand.

        "But this, I think... always am I right, this terrible curse."

        The 'Super-dimensional Eradication Bomb', they called it...

        "Very, very interesting."

        She keeps the flower.

        ... and she's a frightening presence, on the way home. Insufficiently contained. But really, what did anyone expect, sending her to mind a sensitive soul?

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