Tales of the Ice Harpy from Glacia

Whether they'd unlocked the way by reliving the emotional echoes or the plan to force the count to expend more energy making henchment loosened his hole on the magic backstage, or some crazy combination of the two, Karla and Warren were able to make their way to the wings with no pauses for dead ends, blank walls, or masked assailants. Good show.

( Now to just find the prima ballerina and make her see sense, right? )

[Follows many posts, the most recent being this one. Preplayed with wesleynotponcy and not_a_parakeet! Many, many thanks to Michelle for letting us play in her canon and liven up Angel S03E13, "Waiting in the Wings." Apologies to Tracy and the f-list, but this is the last post! NFI, NFB, OOC is love forever]

"All right," he said, vastly uninterested in their teenage romantic drama. "Get in there. We got a kid to save."

"Take my hand," Kitty said. "I can get us--"

Still blushing, Karla gave her a grin. "Thanks, but," she said, and passed through the outer wall of the facility, "I got it."

"Is there anything you can't do?" Kitty asked, looking a little skeptical.

Karla just offered her a grin. "You should see my friend Jaenelle," she replied. "The other answer is 'be diplomatic.' Speaking of--" she cocked her head to the side and listened to the noise of Magneto's flunky slamming through walls. He sounded like he was getting closer. ( Weren't you supposed to deal with him? )

[NFI, NFB, OOC IS LOVE. Follows this and happening concurrently with this. Events and dialogue largely stolen from X-3, which I've now had to watch multiple times in a day. THAT IS LOVE, YO. And many apologies to throughaphase for any character assassination. I swear, BLAME THE MOVIE.]

Karla ran out of the hole in the ground and stopped, almost dead in her tracks. "Azarath..." she breathed. And then her eyes were dragged to the scene unfolding in front of here.

Mother Night, it was a scene from out of a nightmare. Raven, on the ground, limp in a way only the unconscious could be. Or the dead. Beyond her, running towards the entrance to the tunnels, a snatch of light and dark: Rook and Dinah, trying to keep out of sight.

( And above them all, hovering like the carrion bird that was her name. Raven. )

[Immediately follows this.]

Karla took a few seconds to compose herself, wiping her tears away with impatient hands. "There really does need to be a bloody phone-tree for this," she muttered, indulging in a bit of pointless sarcasm to bring her emotions back under control. She slipped the rings Raven left behind onto her finger. She wasn't sure why then had remained when Raven vanished, but they had to be important, right?

Not to mention, she just felt better wearing them. They were a connection, like a promise they'd get her back.

She made a mental list of people she had to call--and then did so, speaking directly into their minds. If they had shields, she banged on them with the equivalent of telepathic fists. If they didn't, she just swanned in and began talking.

*Wake up!* she demanded. *Raven's gone, Trigon's involved, and you lucky people get to come help me get her back.* She thought for a minute and added, *Meet me in the lobby of the dorm in twenty minutes.* Raven's room was handy, but she was calling in faculty and thought it might be weird having them here. Especially considering which faculty she was calling. *Let's go, people! I wasn't kidding about Trigon, dammit!*

( Enjoy your wake-up call, darlings. )

[Preplayed with blondecanary, brat_intraining, furious_maximus, furnaceface, icecoldfrost, justwantsquiet, life_inshadow, longislandiceme, not_a_parakeet, and sith_happened. NFI and NFB as it's after radio, but OOC, as always, is welcome.]

Karla hunkered down in the corner of the shower and cried. She'd managed to keep up her facade of 'no, no, I'm fine' up through the portal trip and back to the dorms. She'd begun shaking in her room, kicking the blood-soaked gown into a corner with a cry of horror. By the time she'd gotten into a shower, she'd been sobbing.

It wasn't just the whole being stabbed thing, though that was ranking pretty highly. There had just been blackness for awhile--a deep, all-consuming darkness (Darkness?) that had held her tightly and refused to let go until Raven came and forced it away. Karla couldn't dwell on how close she'd come to death because if she did, she might just never stop crying.

But it really hadn't just been being sacrificed on a meat-tree that was getting to her. It was the smell in the air as she'd walked through the orgy, the scent of anticipation and lust and sweat and sex. Had she closed her eyes, she never would have known she was in this world and not in Glacia, at one of Hobart's parties. It was the stress of this weekend and not knowing where her friends were and if she would ever see them again. Of feeling the land dying by inches as she walked. Of being stabbed and poisoned and getting up to hold off a friend who was also a vampire...

Of having her Sapphire wrenched for her and profaned by the maenad. She thought she could still feel the grubby residue of that bitch's touch on her Jewel, like fingerprints on her soul. Some of her tears were pure relief at having it back, having it safe. Karla had seen the revulsion in the eyes of her friends when she'd ripped the maenad's heart out, but she'd meant it when she'd promised agony for agony. The maenad had just been more metaphorical about it.

And so she held her knees and cried big gulping sobs until she felt hollowed out inside and the water had long since run cold.

[For one please! NFB, as this happens after radio]

While the action went on inside, ( a different discussion went on just outside the compound. )

[Preplayed with the awesome endsthegame. NFB, but continued in the comments!]

The elevator they had ridden up into the building had dropped them off in, of all things, a garden, lush like a jungle. The courtyard was glassed over, keeping it moist, preventing anything from being given up to the dry desert air.

Sitting quietly on a stone chair in the middle of the garden was a tall, slender man, his skin the deep cacao brown of the upper Niger where he had been born. He had long legs, clad not in the business suit that had been the uniform of westerners for centuries now, but in the robes of a sheik. His head was not covered, however And there was no beard on his chin. Still young, and yet also now a man.

"Alai," Petra murmured, softly.

He chose that moment to turn and look at them. His brooding expression softened into a smile. But it was not the boyish grin that she had known when he bounded along the low-gravity inner corridors of Battle School. This smile had weariness in it, and old fears long mastered but still present.

( In which Petra meets an old friend, and Karla and Ben are left suspicious. )

[NFI, NFB, OOC makes the snow melt--trufax! Preplayed with the ever-amazing endsthegame and the always-enchanting momslilassassin]