fighting_mad | [OOM] Simulator Room

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[OOM] Simulator Room

Juke left, juke right, juke left, juke right; lure your opponent into a false sense of security, make him think he knows exactly what you're going to do.

Lasers flash by on the screen.

One last juke to the right, and there's the light-up of a targeting lock; she yanks the stick back and to the left, throwing the sim fighter into a tight roll that should press her back against the seat with its force. Of course, this machine isn't nearly complex enough for that.

She's got to find some way to throw the Priamsta off guard like that. To catch the rebels--the ones who say they're lead by Harran but they're not they can't be--off guard and--

The flash of an explosion and the screen goes dark.

"Sithspit!" Plourr slams an open palm against the overhead frame of the simulator, then lets her hand rest there, hooked on the frame.

She runs her other hand over her head in an unconscious motion; auburn stubble still foreign to the touch, too rough and scratchy. Hell, her whole body feels foreign; her tunic is smooth and skintight, eggshell-colored with deep purple, allowing every cord of muscle to show. She's not used to anything so fine, and she's definitely not used to the matching skirt, to seeing her legs bare in anything but athletic shorts. High heels. She'd drawn whistles from the Rogues that afternoon; joking whistles, yes, and ones that had earned several of them glares and thwappings, but she had caught admiring looks from not a few men at court, too. From the nobles at dinner.

Dinner.

"The tyranny of the nobles is at an end, Laabann. I will see to that. If you wish a place in the future of Eiattu, either stand with the throne-- or fall."

The crash of a breaking wineglass.

"The choice is yours."

Plourr hits the top of the simulator again.

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Her mouth quirked upwards; tugged by invisible strings.

"Do I?"

She grins in return. "I'll bet you're a hopeless romantic under all that sarcasm, Sun. Pink starblooms, heart-shaped chocolate, singing obnoxious love songs under people's windows." She trails off and her good humor fades a little as she reaches the end. She goes quiet.

"Oh yes. That's exactly how I ended up here. I'd advise against romance in general and falling in love, certainly."

Jokes. They helped hide the pain. The problem was, it always came back.

"You don't have a window." She pointed out at the look on Plourr's face.

"--A window?"

"For someone to sing obnoxious love songs under."

"Lots of windows in the palace," she says darkly. She wouldn't put it past one Count McGirly.

Aeryn' eyes narrowed. Her teeth indented her lower lip ever so slightly when she asked:

"Are you being courted? By a Prince?"

She sighs, leans back against the simulator. "Technically," she holds up a n annoyed finger, "technically, I'm betrothed. To a count."

.......Blink. Blink.

"What?"

"Eiattu royal tradition. I was three, he was twelve, our parents and the royal matchmakers set it up." The tension that has crept into her posture speaks loud and clear about how she feels about the matter.

"I see."

Her voice has become surprisingly cold. She most definitely didn't look at Plourr.

She's about to say there's no vaping way she's marrying the guy, but then there's pure ice coming at her. She crosses her arms tighter, tenser.

"What the kriff, Aeryn."

"Nothing, Plourr."

Aeryn walked directly past her and took a seat in the earlier vacated simulator, intending to be too busy to talk.

"I'm happy for you."

Deliriously happy.

Her jaw sets. "Well," she snarls, unmoving, "that's fantastic. Hate to disappoint all that happy coming from your side of the room, but I'm not fucking marrying him."

"Of course you are." She strained the words through clenched lips, tapping several buttons on the console in front of her.

"You're a Princess. You do what you have to do for your planet."

"I don't understand why everyone thinks I have to get married. I've done everything alone my whole kriffing life; it's not like I've returned home and am magically helpless and need a man to take care of me," she says, jaw clenched and eyes flashing. "I didn't expect you to take the nobles' side."

"I'm not taking any side. I'm stating a fact."

She slammed her fist down on the console, perhaps a tad harder than she meant to.

"I've seen it happen before, alright? Princesses get married, they have children. They frelling live happily ever after."

"Children?" There is an angry, horrified look thrown at Aeryn. One of the 'Oh hell no!' variety. "I'm not even going to start on that, but never going to happen.

"As for the happily ever after." She starts to laugh. "There is no happily ever after, you get it? It's state dinners and bureaucracy and being proper and doing the right thing for the rest of my kriffing life!"

She laughs with no amusement, then. "The rest of my life. Like that'll be long." Her head snaps back toward the sim that Aeryn is sitting in. " 'Ever after' on my planet only lasts until the the royal family gets fucking tortured and murdered."

Aeryn took a breath, placing her shaking hands on her knees.

"Is that what happened to yours?" Is that why you cry?

Fury vanishes just as fast as it appeared, leaving a face and voice devoid of expression. "That was only three of them," she says matter-of-factly, standing ramrod straight, arms still crossed over her chest. "One was murdered without the torture, and I killed the fifth."

"I'm sorry."

Her skin felt clammy, her throat thick. She couldn't even begin to imagine how Plourr felt.

Except...she could, a little.

"Did the fifth betray you?"

"My brother. He was six." Still flat, "I bashed his head in with a rock."

And she's seen her bloody hands in her dreams every night since.

Aeryn didn't know how to help, was never much good with emotions; her own or other people's. But she stood beside Plourr. Shoulder to shoulder, lending strength.

"My mother killed my father. So I know."

"No, you don't." There's no rancor, no anger, just statement of fact. Aeryn didn't do the killing. She doesn't know.

"My mother was shot outside of our quarters when she tried to attack the nobles' men." Said speculatively. "My father-- he screamed for two hours." She shakes her head, loses a tiny bit of that rock-solid front. "Not nearly as long as my sisters."

Aeryn had killed Velorek. Or as good as. Responsible for so many deaths. Let her own mother fall right out of her arms.

All of it; entirely her fault. She named them every night before she slept and let them go.

"There's nothing I can do to change that." Her own composure was shaky. Why had she said those things? Why were they both so frelled up?

Why did Plourr have to make her feel this way?

"I'm sorry I called you a mistake."

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