The Streets of Sidra, Morning, Thursday (Fandom Time)

[glacial_queen]

They rode into Sidra proper around noon, Karla's silver and blue banner flying. The night before, they had debated heading in early, just before the sun rose, but Karla had refused. She was not going to skulk into her city like a thief. No, she was going to march in there, head high and shoulders back, and demand what was hers by right.

The last thing she could afford right now is the appearance of weakness. Let them judge her on her brazenness if they must, but they would never see her cower.

Of course, the time they had spent waiting and preparing had given the city a chance to prepare for their arrival, too. And they were hell-bent on showing Karla that she was not wanted.

Their parade was met with jeers and taunts, Blood lining up on either side of the street to heckle and toss garbage their way. Shields protected their entourage, but it was a sober reminder that they were in the heart of Hobart's own territory. Some people called her an impostor and tried to spit. Others hissed at the Hourglass she wore openly. Others just called her a liar, a bitch, a whore. Karla did not respond and only spoke to keep her Court in line. As much as their words and anger hurt, they were not her focus today. She had a meeting at the estate to get to.

Worse than the catcalls and the filth were the posters. Some enterprising people with a the ability to hold a pen and access to a printer had printed up hundreds, perhaps thousands of rude, salacious broadsides. Karla was, as to be expected, featured prominently in most of them, though if the Fandomites cared to look around, they'd see themselves represented, too--just not kindly or accurately.

By the third time they had passed a picture of Karla riding a chicken (no, not in a way that required a saddle or bridle), Julian had had enough. "Remove those," he snapped. "They are an affront to our Queen."

"Really?" Karla said, letting her voice be heard. "Well, I'll grant you the composition is trite and the merit slim, but I don't know if I'd consider myself affronted. More disappointed that with was the best they could offer. I had my hopes set on something a little grander to show their contempt."

[NFB, for those who are here with her.]

Comments

[wwiii]

Warren was riding beside Karla, doing his damnedest to not let his rising ire show. He managed to keep it off of his face, even managed to bite down on the feelings simmering under the surface, trying to control the effect it would have on his psychic scent. But there was no hiding the way his feathers prickled around his shoulders.

"They got my nose all wrong," he offered, shaking his head a little. "I think the first thing you ought to do once you re-claim Glacia is negotiate proper art lessons with Dujae. He'd lose his mind, to see proportions like those."

Just play it cool. Talk blithely about their contempt. Stay calm.

Breathe.

[glacial_queen]

"What did Dujae ever do you you?" Karla asked, forcing herself to laugh. "Though when we do balance the budget, an increase for the arts programs is indeed going to be on the agenda. This is disgraceful. The perspective is all off, too. And don't even get me started on the composition."

[wwiii]

"Dujae did nothing," Warren laughed. "I was just thinking about what he'd do to whoever drew these posters if he ever caught sight of them. He'd have them sketching apples in bowls for months."

Warren was speculating, here. He could barely hold a pencil in his claws, never mind sketch with one. He was a lot of things. An artist was not one.

[glacial_queen]

"At least he won't try to make them draw itsy bitsy vases," Karla said, wrinkling her nose. "Maybe I should go find that stuffed shirt that Uncle Saetan hired first and make him teach them. He was talented, just a complete and total knob."

She was quiet as she looked out into the faces of the jeering crowd.

"How are you holding up?" she asked softly.

[furnaceface]

Jonothon had seen less flattering representations of himself before, in tabloid papers back home. They had stung, at the time. They'd rubbed in that notoriety was something that he never wanted to attain again, had essentially turned him into the poster boy for misanthropic freakishness clear across the United Kingdom. They'd been hurtful in a lot of ways. They pegged him openly as a horror, as something to be hated and feared. They spat in the face of Xavier's dream, in the face of everything that he had learned in his years at the Massachusetts Academy. And they'd been proof that Bobby and Kurt hadn't been lying when they'd barged into his room and tore it apart, demanding that he stop letting himself be represented this way. Telling him that he had a responsibility to his own kind to do some good with himself, instead.

In comparison, these posters were nothing. Hell, he actually strayed from the group at one point, having chosen to come into the city on foot today, in order to take one poster down to have a better look.

"I feel like I've strayed into some sort of perverted re-telling of a Yank folktale," he noted, actually sounding vaguely amused. "Julian, you'll never believe what they think you and I get up to during our training sessions."

He held up the poster for him to see for himself. It was a safe bet that the large blue ox was meant to be Jono. The jackass that the ox had mounted from behind, meanwhile, managed to bear a striking resemblance to Julian.

"Really, I have to applaud their dedication to the barnyard animal theme they've chosen, here."

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

Dinah's snort next to him didn't really cover up how red her cheeks were, or how mad she looked. "I guess it's better than saying we have sex with our weapons?" Oh look. A pun. Give her something else to focus on, Jono, please, than how much she wants to punch someone.

[furnaceface]

"It's a mob," Jono replied easily, shrugging his shoulders and pocketing this poster for later. It was going into his keepsakes box, along with all of the media blitz from his time spent with Sugar. "Bear in mind that these people have almost certainly been lied to by Hobart and his pet Queen, luv. To them, we're not the saviours. We bring a threat of war, and of change. The first his horrible and the second is terrifying. If all we get are naughty posters, jeers, and thrown garbage between here and where we're headed, we can count ourselves lucky."

He shrugged again.

"On top of that, luv, you and Warren might be able to pass as Kaeleeran, at least in colouring, but do bear in mind that Momoko, Raven and myself are quite obviously outsiders. We have no place here. Not in their eyes."

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

That got a stab of-- not guilt, exactly, but more worry, and awareness, that let Dinah get her temper under control. "I keep forgetting how isolated this place is. How isolated all the territories are, if you're not Blood, and rich enough or have reason enough to go traveling." She took a breath, let it out, forced herself to keep her eyes forward. "And I could say something nasty about country bumpkins. But. Not their fault their world is small." She ground her teeth. "It really, really makes me hate Hobart even more, though. Bastard."

[glacial-court.livejournal.com]

"Please," Julian snorted. "If they'd bothered to watch, they'd know which one of us was liable to take it up the rear."

[glacial-warlord.livejournal.com]

"Exactly," Morton agreed from Jono's other side. "Everyone knows that Julian has a stick wedged so far up there that there's no room for anything else."

Laughing, he ducked out of the way of Julian's half-hearted swing for his head. "Now, now. I'm a delicate flower. None of that rough stuff you gentlemen prefer."

[furnaceface]

Well, if that was where the conversation was going to veer, Jono was just going to give Julian a thoughtful once-over, and then shake his head.

"You're right enough, Morton," he allowed, finally. "I'd be likely to split the poor bloke at the seams, at any rate. Probably for the best we switch the order up, provided he can reach."

He was probably cruising to lose a hand, but that wasn't going to stop him from reaching out to give Julian a pat on the head. Poor tiny Julian.

[trigons_child]

Raven didn't want to admit she was struggling. She had her shields up high to blunt the emotions around them, but there were a lot of people, and their passions where strong.

She couldn't afford to let it inflame her own anger. At one point she caught her thoughts turning that way. How dare they treat Karla this way? It wasn't right. But she could change that. She could make them all love Karla.

She buried that impulse, trying to just focus on keeping an empathic ear out for anyone who might try to do more than taunt or throw garbage, and ignoring everything else.

[glacial_queen]

"Steady," Karla murmured, next to Raven. "Steady. These things don't matter. We can change them, with patience and time. Just relax and be steady."

Granted, she was saying this through gritted teeth under a mask of serenity, but the important thing was that she was saying them. Right?

[trigons_child]

"It is not right," Raven said stiffly, the tightness of her hand on her reins the outward sign of the effort it was taking to hold herself back.

[glacial_queen]

"It isn't," Karla agreed. "It's wrong and it hurts. I half want to throw up and the other half wants to start burning things and screaming at people. But neither of those is going to help."

Well, except in the short term. Both of those things would work really well in the short term.

[furnaceface]

"Hate and fear," Jono noted, stepping up beside Raven, keeping his eyes ahead of himself. "I don't even need my old powers to know that they're swimming in it."

He glanced sidelong at Raven, offering her a tentative smile.

"This is crude," he offered, gently, "but ultimately, harmless. They want to bait us into proving their fears right, luv."

[trigons_child]

"They are wrong, and they will not succeed with their provocation," Raven said, but the tightness of her voice didn't make her words sound entirely convincing. She'd caught sight of some of the posters, and they were making her even more upset.

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

Dinah's temper was starting to be uncertain, and anyone who'd wanted the satisfaction of a reaction.... well, they were getting it. Face tight, hands clenched on Swift's reins, she sent, Why the hell do they have to go to the perverted sex insults? They couldn't have one poster about Karla being incompetent instead, just to give it a break?

*They would never dare this in Scelt*, Swift was agreeing, mind-voice both hurt and furious. *Not to any woman. Certainly not to a Queen.*

In a weird way, that gave Dinah a little perspective back. Aliens, aliens, try to remember that this culture is alien, the biology is different, the values are different... It didn't entirely work, but it did just enough for her to take a mental step back and send, They're not the real enemy. Gotta remember that.

...also, some of these people are getting tomatoes on themselves from bouncing off the shields. Bets on when they'll figure that out?

That got her a horsey mental snicker, and enough amusement to stop grinding her teeth.

[glacial-court.livejournal.com]

"It's actually brilliant, in a way," Julian said, voice cold and distant. The reigns in his hand showed a tracery of frost where he clenched them in white-knuckled hands. "Hobart and the Ruling Council has been saying for years that the only reasons that Queens and Black Widows wanted the power to control males was because they were sexually and emotionally incapable of being real women."

Julian wasn't riding a kindred horse, so his mount balked a moment as he unconsciously tightened his hands on the reins. He was quiet while he soothed his horse, relinquishing his grip slightly.

"So these posters," he continued, striving to sound like a tutor explaining the significance of an artifact instead of a male face-to-face with an insult to his Queen, "showcase that unnatural sexual desire while undermining the idea that we're real males. Because we subordinate ourselves to an unnatural female, rather than taking our place as the dominant gender through our physical strength."

And when he found the person responsible for these posters, he was going to flay their skin off and fashion a pair of slippers for Karla to wear on cold winter nights.

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

Dinah got jolted enough by this to gape at Julian. "Seriously? " She'd kind of known Hobart and his guys were playing up the monster angle for Black Widows, but she'd had no idea they'd resorted to these kinds of lies as an every-day thing. "Do they actually--" She interrupted herself, and petted Swift's mane. "No, no. Of course they don't believe their own horseshit."

*Excuse me!*

"Sorry, Swift." She looked over at Julian, taking in his mount's reaction and the ice on his hands. She swallowed, and looked back up to his face. "There's theories like that back home. They're pretty much discredited now. At least in my country." So. Things could get better, Julian. Really.

Striving to keep her tone even, Dinah muttered, "It's a good way to get us defensive, though. Damnit."

[heromaniac]

Momoko was not doing very well. She was used to being celebrated, not cursed at! And definitely not... not... She wasn't even sure what she (that was her, right?) was supposed to be doing in most of these posters.

How could people be this... crude? Horrible

And then for the third time, someone rushed the group from her side. This time it was just to get close enough to hurl a dead bloody rat, but since these people obviously didn't want them there, and no one knew who was innocently misinformed and who was actually out to kill them, Momoko was starting to build up some irritation. Add to this the fact that her yo-yo was currently in her thigh holster under her long skirts and she was under orders to keep it there, and one could understand the twitching Momoko was doing.

The rat carcass struck the shield and Momoko let her hand relax. She lifted herself a bit off the ground to float along with the procession; maybe that would make her relax?

[furnaceface]

"It's easier if you think of them as people who genuinely don't know better," Jono offered, stepping up to walk beside Momoko, his own feet still firmly planted on the ground. He was rationing power in earnest again, since the attack had left him down a few packs. "They see us, and they see war on the horizon. They have their right to their anger, every bit as much as we do."

[heromaniac]

Jono, please say that Karla has asked that Momoko take you flying ahead or something?

"The lack of basic respect..." Momoko tried to breathe out some of her anger.

[glacial-warlord.livejournal.com]

"Lady Momoko, are you all right?" Morton asked quietly. "I mean, okay, you're likely not all right, but is there something I can do to help?"

His shoulders slumped a little. "I wish I could tell you not to look, but you'll still know they're there."

[heromaniac]

"I'll be fine, Lord Morton. Thank you." Momoko gathered herself enough to smile at him. "I'm... Well, I'm used to being a hero; being treated like a villain is totally a change for me. Especially when I know it's lies."

"And I'm totally not looking, if I can help it..." Watch her face turn absolutely red, Morton. "I don't think it's possible to do to beets what the last one showed me doing." Let alone how her 'partner' had been 'helping'.