Scene #8763: The Eye

Owner	Pose
Angela	Angela has invited Xion to Lobotomy Corp. She really doesn't want anybody to meet Binah as a general rule but she figure Xion is the sort of person who can probably handle talking to Binah without getting weird about it or trying to murder her. She will meet Xion at the Warpgate and bow her head in a clinically practiced form of greeting. "Thank you for coming." The Warpgate will close behind Xion and Angela will immediately start making her way to the Elevator. She seems ... well, Xion will notice that Angela does in fact have legs and an actual physical body that can move. Xion will also likely notice that her body is significantly less 'chibi' than what appears on the viewscreens. She MAY notice the faint stench of blood and disinfectant that always seems to permeate the facility. "..." She stops suddenly, looking back. "This is actually our first proper meeting, is it not? I have grown so accustomed to hearing from you, it just occured to me we usually spoke through video conference." She quirks her head. "...I should likely warn you as well that Binah is an unpleasant individual. If oyu'd rather avoid speaking to someone like her, I'd understand, but..." She trails off, hesitating over finishing that thought. "Binah is what we call an Arbiter--essentially an Enforcer of The City's Law, to describe her in the fastest posisble terms. She was captured by Lobotomy Corp and placed in the lowest level... It was before my time so the details I know are a touch limited but she nearly eradicated the whole facility."
Xion	Xion gets a very official invitation on her phone to come to Lobotomy Corporation! The first thing that Xion searches is 'do they actually do lobotomies at lobotomy corporation'. Not finding anything conclusive, but losing ten minutes on Quora, Xion decides to accept the invite, get dressed and go. Appearing through the warpgate dressed in an open black hooded coat, a magenta t-shirt with a thick black middleband starting at mid-chest and ending around the navel dotted with neon pink and reflective purple dots of irregular size, a pair of black shorts, and checkered white-and-black sneakers with one black lace and one white lace with grey socks bunched up around her ankles. The ends of her open coat sway with her hands in the pockets, casually walking in, looking confusedly at Real!Angela, and not getting it. Until Angela speaks. Then, startled like a cat seeing an object placed carefully behind it for the first time, she bounces at the heel, almost staggering back through the Gate behind. Stopping short, one hand lifts out of her coatsleeve to point. "Angela?" Xion asks quietly, and then the woman - with real legs! And real proportions!! And not rendered on a screen!!! - explains quickly and in short order everything Xion needs to know. Dropping quickly back to a comfortable posture and walking back up to a comfortable few steps away from Angela, the noirette takes being explained to directly extremely easily. She is used to these kinds of 'briefings'. "Well, you're welcome for coming, Angela, and--" Xion leans forward to take up Angela's left hand in hers, shaking. "--it really is nice to see you without a chat filter. Huh! I thought you were like Wendy in my phone, really." Letting go - or backing off, as necessary - Xion tilts her head at the idea of rather-not. "It's fine? If you wanted to call me here to meet them, and you thought it'd be a good idea, I don't mind. I'm plenty good at leaving if I want, so I'll use a light touch if you think it'll be better." The noirette smirks pointedly, looking around the arrivals area and trying to place the chased-around scent of blood. "It is my first time, so I'll take any tips you've got."
Angela	Angela looks at Xion's confused expression. She has plenty of time to see Xion being confused. She doesn't understand, at first, before realizing that ... maybe she thought she and the Angela on the screen were not actually the same person? That's a new one, even for her. ''I thought you were like Wendy in my phone, really.'' Angela thinks the idea of being trapped in a phone to be horrifying, though ... the world wide web is pretty large? Maybe it wouldn't be so bad? It's ultimately not relevant to Angela, who is decidedly a very physical being that exists in the real world. ''I'm plenty good at leaving if I want'' "...Understood. Yes, you are good at that, aren't you?" She truthfully cannot predict how Binah will react to Xion until she pays a visit. Most Agents are accustomed to visitors by now but Xion is new! She gets a few glances! Tenant takes a longer look at her before scurrying off to deal with a problem in Control. For right now, most Abnormalities are safely stuck in their Rooms, though a very small bird with a red belly hop on over to Xion and chirps at her. Angela continues making her way to the elevator. "...I've never been particularly good at talking with Binah," Angela admits. "She's very ... inquisitive. She takes interest in the lives of others, but she has sadistic tendencies. But you have some similarities--particularly with your abilities--so I am hoping you are able to push her out of her comfort zone, which is horrible, into something new." Binah too has to go through some sort of change, even if she never figured out what sort. "Ah--" She sees the Bird. "Be careful of your feet. That bird is very sensitive to pain and reacts quite violently to even the slightest bit of harm, however accidental."
Xion	Returning looks with smiles and stares with waves, Xion carries on at a player two trot with Angela, all her surprise insufficient for her to not fall in line qickly with the labcoated administrator. "I am good at that. When I was in the Watch, the head doctor said I was para-zonal. I liked the way it sounded, even if she didn't really explain it fully. I can make holes - Corridors - which duck between places and beneath, in the Darkness." She hits it like a proper noun, meaningful and not judgemental. If anything, she's very comfortable. "Is she like that? Portals and betweensies and beneath? Not just a big key?" The sensitive little bird waddles up and chirps towards Xion, pausing the noirette mid-step. "Well hey there!" Xion begins, and then tweetle-whistles a greeting and salutation in Bird just for good measure. Carefully swinging her feet away from knocking any underfoot birds and lifting her coat with her fists in the pockets, Xion makes her way after the still-going Angela in an exaggerated set of steps to make up the distance. Maneuvering around to follow Angela into the elevator on the left side, eager to inspect the buttonry among everything, Xion only takes a single indulgent moment to ogle the operation before standing up and pulling her hands out of her coat to cross them. "Well, I'll try my best, Angela. And if it sucks, I'll just leave!" The noirette offers a slightly-grinning thumbs up from a fist still couched in elbow. "Did you tell her I'm coming? Or is this a surprise visit?" Xion wonders.
Angela	"Yes." Angela says, without Ansi because like heck she'll try that during a blackout. "Parazonal." Angela murmurs. "The sound of it approximates its meaning." The little bird tweets up at Xion. The bird can't speak human but for those familiar in bird tongue, The Punishing Bird is clearly inquiring if Xion is guilty of birdharm because if so....he shall be the beak of justice! But he does seem to approve of Xion not squishing him with her foot. "Chrp!" He says. Angela steps into the Elevator and will wait for Xion to do the same. "She doesn't have a key at all but she does seem to have the power to lock and unlock structures, wounds, memories. I believe she has access to numerous Singularities from the City that empower her. All such tech is carefully monitored by the Wings but the Head controls the patent office." The elevator is simplistic as far as controls go. An up button and a down button and a card scanner. Angela doesn't have to use the latter. She just pushes the down button twice. "I did not. It is a surprise." Angela says. "But if you are comfortable in the Darkness...." The doors open into pitch blackness. "Then that is something you have in common." It is not entirely dark, however. In thr distance there are thick black pillars covered with faintly glowing golden yellow runes. "Another new Visitor..." Binah murmurs, deep in the dark. "Just as I was finding the radio access you graciously allowed me to have growing dull."
Xion	In passing, Xion chirps that she has not engaged in harm to birdkind, and is a champion against tornados, a prosocial bird activity. However, she is a weird human-shaped creature who chirps like a bird, so, who's to say if she's telling the truth? "Singularities that empower her? That's interesting. I didn't think about remoting to powers like that. Usually I take a direct imprint, or at least grab hold of a strong bond from fairly close. You said they were an arbiter of the city, though, right? So it makes sense the city would send them something." The elevator transitions the pair of Angela and Xion, white coat and black, down into the depths of the black, where Xion blinks her eyes a few times. Stepping out with some confidence into he dark, she lifts curled foreknuckles to rub some of the light out of her eyes in bright-glinting tears. Then a bit more settled in, the noirette blinks dimmed blues and smiles up into the empty dark and towards the pillars. "Well I'm glad you're getting visitors, being one myself. I'm Xion!" Greeting with a waved hand, Xion continues to approach the pillars curiously, shooting Angela a look over her shoulder (presuming Angela hadn't escaped with her back turned!) if that's okay abut not especially concerned unless she's sharply stopped. "What do you find dulling about it?" Xion wonders, not having followed the drama too closely.
Angela	Punishing Bird isn't Judgement Bird. It seems to take Xion's word for it sincd she hasn't commited bird crime in its presence. It chirps a farewell as it troddles off in search of an actual enemy of bird kind. But down the elevator....Binah steps forward. Binah looks like a robot. More robotic than Angela, even. She is roughly box shaped and her frame is colored black with a honeycomb golden pattern down the lower side of her frame. Her name js emblazoned as Binah across her chest and she looks at Xion with one eye. And...Is that a cape? It looks like it should be a coat but she's wearing it lake a cape. "Do you like tea, Xion? My name is Binah and I am happy to prepare you some." Behind Binah, farther into the distance is The Well, a fluorescent green pool of Enkephalin and deep within that... A Presence. Angela hasn't fled but she isn't talking either. She nods to Xion but has otherwise gone quiet. The pillars also contain presences. Not all of them. Some. They read as...more incomplete, like ideas that failed to materialize. "It is always the same people arguing, sniping one another, the same arguments. Even misery gets repetitive if it is the same misery day in and out. Isn't that right, Angela?" Angela stares and says nothing. "How may I help you Xion?" Binah shifts as she starts pouring a bitter tea for herself--and a bitter tea for Xion too.
Xion	Unlike Angela, who Xion expected to be a funny phone demon trapped in the left and and right side panels of the internet's battle zones, Xion had no preconceved notions about Binah. The noirette had dimly even been ready to speak to stones and presences -- so Binah herself is taken as-is. The splash of honeycomb gold across capey-black is even aesthetic! It's very nice, and Xion spends a moment in appreciation before realizing with an 'oh! right!' shake of her head to sort herself and then a bobbing, engaged nod: "I'd like tea, thank you for asking." "There's some decent questions you can toss your best answers at sometimes, to see how they sound today. That can be fun.' 'How my I help you Xion?' The noirette shifts, her weight transitioning from sneakered foot to foot, and then she shrugs. "Would you like to answer a question of mine? As an arbiter of the city, do you represent the city? Could you speak for it, or do you have some other power? Have you listened to the city, can you? Is it alive that way? Or just alive in the usual way cities are?" She asks, insistent and interested, before reaching to take her bitter tea, favoring a sniff - aromatic! - then a sip - bitter! - and a smoothed balking grimace. Placing the cup down she appears a sugarcube from a curl of dark voxels and drops it into her steaming cup.
Angela	Binah keeps distance as a matter of habit. She uses a singular digit on an accentuator hand to slide Xion's cup towards her and her eye watches her quietly as she takes a sip. There is a faint metallic whiff within the tea, almost imperceptible. Binah quirks her body (she doesn't really have a 'head' anymore). She herself smells like rot--not unlike the other Sephirah but it's new to Xion. "I would love to answer a question of yours." ''As an arbiter of the city, do you represent the city?'' "I used to. Not anymore. I was destroyed and disassembled, placed in this form and tied to the fate of this place against my will--though I am hardly the only one. I am cut off from Te Head and forced to see this ill conceived altruism through by those who tink they can change the world but the world does not change. Even broken Wings will stretch anew once more. A broken cycle will start anew in time." ''Have you listened to the city, can you? Is it alive that way?'' Mm.... I have an idea of the City's movements, but it is less that I can speak to it and more because the City made me, the City's workings have been clear to me since I came to be. I was made to live through this time, this City and so I have an intuitive understanding of its workings. Though I will have to decline about answering questions about The Head." "As usual," Angela is dry on that matter. Binah drinks (somehow) her own tea, pouring it down a chute in her body. "Adding sugar will not overpower the bitterness of this world but for those that can enjoy the taste, it is an exquisite existence. She sets down the cup. "You are the first to actually accept my offer of tea. Perhaps you were made for the Dark as well... A sweeter dark, perhaps...?"
Xion	Not carrying any peconceived notions in of what to expect Binah as - is probably for the best. Even if Xion could guess 'some sort of synthetic' from considering Angela, seeing Binah reminds Xion of several other people. That the tea she offers is slightly metallic might just be a side-effect of the necessary life of having metal hands. The smell of rot - sweet-yet-ill - is assuaged by bittersweet tea. "Destroyed and disassembled, placed into a form and tied into a place and a fate against your will." Xion repeats, somber-select, drawn down and quiet. They are hard words. "Do you want to live, then? Are you forced to, does the City make you continue even now? Or... Is it gentler than that?" Xion has a preference, and a hope. That it is gentler, that the bitterness of the world has a touch of sweetness. "What's your preference for tea, then?" The noirette wonders, looking down as Binah disappears tea into a chute. "Do you think this is bitter, or exquisite? Or... Do you not get sugar cubes down here?" A blinking smile breaks across Xion's seeking face and dimmed eyes. "Made for the dark. Well, I was made nowhere at all, found myself there. But I don't know if that's just where I started, or where I belong. Do you think we're destined to stay the same, forever and ever? In the dark, we can be anything. When we're nowhere, we can be anything. Do you have a nowhere-dream? Or is the city where you want to be?"
Angela	''Do you want to live, then?'' "Mm... I would say this is more limbo than 'life'. I am content here. I get to look into the well--indeed, I must as part of my duties, you see and it is decidedly unpleasant but this is the most intereting room in The City, even if their desires are damning and doomed besides--i cannot deny some interest in their EGO Technology and the path their little schemes lead them to, even if it is all hopeless and pointless." She sips her tea. "As far as the City is concerned, I am dead. No, having never existed. I am nobody and Noone. It would be foolhardy for even the Head to think of my Fate now. My secrets have been dug out of my head--those that they could reach before they were scoured from me." ''Do you think this is bitter, or exquisite?'' "It is bitter AND exquisite. As I said, I enjoy my tea in this way, you enjoy adding the sweetener. I prefer to be the eye facing the fear, you seek to transform it. Do you find meaning in this? In battling the tornados rather than letting them run their course?" ''Do you have a nowhere-dream?'' "A nowhere-dream... I favor the sound of that combination." This isn't exactly an answer but she gives one anyway. "No, I am not a Dreamer. Have you not heard? I am a cop obssessed with my last fumbled job." She has no lips but the little sadistic smile comes through the voice all the same. "Dreamers are ill suited for life here, but I was made for this world." ''Is it the city hwere you want to be?'' "I enjoyed the ruins. The little moment where I could enjoy a cup of tea off the site of recently ocmpleted work. It is not so different down here in this space." She pauses a moment and then asks Xion, "Do you believe that the dream of this place will come to fruition? ... Mmm....Or perhaps ''her'' dream?" She leaves it vague if she means Angela, Carmen, or some unknown third party. Or some known third party.
Xion	In the depths of the darkness, among shapes and blackness, lit by the colors of single microlights and the light of honeygold optics, Xion sips from a bittersweet cup of tea and sets it down on the black plane it had been slid across earlier. A table in suggestion, vantablack on rich dark absence, solid in the shadow. Xion sits in a skeleton of a chair herself, settled atop and leaning across the vantablack plane before her. Framed by the spread of (chair) ribs or (clock) hand while dim blue eyes dip to the rim of chinabright teacup, the noirette exhales softly and looks up towards Binah. A mix of concern and empathy lingers on Xion's expression, following optics as she struggles with the taste of tea. "I think, Binah, you answered something else." A knowing smile, the I've-been-guilty-too admittance in a motion, follows after across Xion's lips. "I asked if you 'wanted to live', and you answered something else. But that's okay. I get it - you didn't have the same sort of choice. So, you're content. In that, I'm happy for you." Xion's eyes find a point on Binah's mechanical frame, lower than the eyes - center of mass, perceptive center - and her lips repeat in silent mouthing. 'nobody'. 'no-one'. Sitting back, arms crossing over her front while her spine finds the arch of her chairback, Xion closes her eyes. "Tornados will do what they will do. And the things that form tornados will spin as they spin. There's a kind of an inevitability to disaster, a grind towards the ruin after a tornado, or a flood, or a fire, or just taking too long to clean up. And if you're in the middle of something, especially the crummy part of the middle - of the unwinding of the clockwork someone set to working before you knew anything - it can feel like the natural and even beautiful state of things is that ruinous moment." A breath in. Held for a second. A breath out. "Even if we lurk outside, no thing to no one," A sugarcube dream. "It feels like we should add a little tension in the spring if we can, help the clock of the world rather than delight on it playing out and bounce on the unwinding arm. If I can swing my key and deflect a tornado, that means I can choose. It means I'm not just no thing to no one." Xion opens her eyes, faintly smiling in at least the interest of expectation to Binah. "I couldn't tell you the dream of this place. But I can tell you what I feel, the energy brought here, the taste of the desire... I think at least one or two dreams could come true. So do you want a tornado to rage through? Or do you have a key that can turn aside spinning raging wind?"
Angela	"Answering a question in a different way than expected does not, necessarily, mean an admission--or that the answer is wrong." Binah says though-- --she stops suddenly, seeing something in the noirette's expression that seems to genuinely perplex her. Someting in Xion's expression she doesn't recognize. She pours some more of her tea into the chute. Xion mouths the words 'nobody' and 'no-one'. It's the center mass where the brain has been placed. Brains don't have a smell but there was still flesh deposited in as well. It's an easy to miss smell if you don't focus, but impossible to miss if you do. "Mm.... When you say it like that--tornados do not have eyes the way hurricanes do, that center of calm. Instead there's extra sub vortices within. There is no safety within, no calm." "So I would say this is more a hurricane, a calm place within the chaotic winds swirling about and around--within this facility, within the City itself." But this isn't really about tornados and hurricanes. It's about identity. "Well, perhaps that is a difference between you and I. You are a Someboday, and I have likely already been replaced by someone who will, ideally, handle her duties better than I would--but I doubt it." She scootches forward her chair and studies Xion carefully. "Mm. Though you have been nobody to no one at one point, haven't you? I suppose deflecting tornados is a way to declare to actual conditions from the heavens that you exist." Her eye stares into Xion's. "Mm... What do I want? You say this, hypothetically? If I believed it was possible, which I do not? To change the City. If it was possible, wouldn't we have managed it in the numerous loops before reaching the Multiverse? Before Gebura has been triumphed over?" She is quiet for a long moment and then sips her tea. "This isn't the sort of City where it is a good idea to answer such questions if you don't believe it is possible. After all, one's own feelings is the one thing this City allows us to keep." There's a feeling of a wicked smile despite the lack of lips. "...But it would be interesting, wouldn't it? If a City known for never changing--started to? It would be a new sight, at least, wouldn't it? If I believed it was possible, the natural reaction even from someone such as myself--would be evident, wouldn't it?" The singular eye winks? It seems more wink than blink, anyway.
Xion	"Deflecting disasters becomes a choice." Xion agrees, extending, nodding. With her cup placed on the vantablack table surface, Xion's right wrist rises. Wrapped about her upturned arm is a silver watch chain, leading to a dangling charm. Swaying left and then right in the barest fallen-taut momentum, the empty golden star connects to the chain on a shooting tail and gives off a light that shines like a reflective metal even in the dark. Starlight, spilling and washing down from the charm-sized invocation of its namesake, brightens the area about the bench to a picnic-at-nighttime ambience, the pillars branchless trees to left and right. A teatime for a hunched-over girl and a monocular robot. "When you do it enough, it-" Xion smirks, realizing she's circled changing the path of disasters and shaping the world as a single syllable. "-when you find out how much you can affect things if all you do is spin up the hands of clocks, it can become a responsibility." Binah scores a hit, the widening of eyes and intake of breath marking a strong feeling. "Yes. If you do it to declare your own self, it's a need. When you do it to test your edge and sharpen yourself, it can become a habit, even, so much that all you do is take swings at tornados, and it's--" Xion's empty hands close. Starlight at her wrist in keychain form continues to cast its washed-out light just bright enough to lantern through the dark. "--I've come back around, actually. Maybe you should take a swing. Maybe not. But if what you do is sit and wait--" Lifting, sorting, shrugging out and arm-uncurling as her lanternlight keychain shifts and slinks back in gentle chain jingle, Xion holds there. "You were an agent of the city, shaped by it, weren't you? So if you can imagine it changing - imagine it getting just a little better, then maybe it's not about taking a swing every time, or if you swing at all, but... How do you want to take a swing at this tornado, Binah?" Right hand returning to a loosely curled fist, and both hands returning before her, Xion sits forward and leans on her elbows, left hand curled over right fist. Beneath her templed arms, Starlight shines its light on over Xion's own core. "I think you're right. If you believe it's possible, it's possible. So what direction are you swinging towards? It matters, and... I'm curious."
Angela	It was a bit of a guessed swing but someone who mouths the words 'nobody' and 'no one' after hearing them has likely been struck by those words before. Binah is a professional emotional sadist. She doesn't miss cues like that and 'professional' isn't a figure of speech. She isn't a cop only in the sense that the City doesn't have cops, but she is the highest level of enforcement within the City--or was before she did what an Arbiter is never allowed to do--and lost and when you work for the State it's best to have a sadism that is thin like a needle rather than a bludgeoning hammer. Binah has sharpened hers into an infinitely sharp needle. But Xion presses on regardless. Binah can't help but admire those who can handle a prick here and there. Can she imagine it changing? She can imagine plenty of impossible things but Xion seems to be seeking to open up on of Binah's closest guardest secrets. What Binah actually desires. The light from Starlight faintly illuminates Binah even in the dark. Behind her, the Well is still and unmoving. There's something there, deep within, but it's more keen on seeing what happens than influencing its course through participation. Binah finishes her tea with another 'sip' and she sets the cup down. "Well you've been reasonably brave and insistent, and you haven't stormed off in a huff even when I said something aggravating towards you so I'll answer you." Her gaze flits towards Angela. "Would you mind stepping out, Angela?" Angela exhales and says, "I'll be at my tree. Let me know when you are done." The Secretary spins on her heel heads out of the dark and into an area of growing light--the Records Department. The darkness blocks the sight of her in an instant. Binah lets it rest a moment before turning back to Xion. "These people triumphed over me--almost. Specifically, Gebura and I had a 'draw' but as an Arbiter a 'draw' is as akin to a loss as anything. But since then the Red Mist has rusted and I felt that this hellish existence would be eternal." The eye closes. The Starlight shows a bit of a different Binah in this moment, someone who is letting down the malicious shawl so she can speak candidly. The fashion is as much her as it is adornment but like with anyone she can go for a different look. "There are three issues that prevent me from believing in the plan and not believing in the plan is preventing my key from opening any doors. If there is no keyhole, no door--no door, what can I open? ... Take it as metaphor I know some of you are quite impressive in creating entrances." "The first issue, is that Gebura has lost her shine. There is no future for the people in this facility if someone like me can eradicate them--no future for your friend Angela either. Until she can stand on her own too feet, she'll need Gebura's Strength." She holds up the second digit on her actuator hand, along with the first. "Second, the facility and its allies must be able to defeat me without losing everyhting in the process. There is no point if Gebura gets another ''draw'' after all. I made a promise with the Dame Commander and I intend to keep it--and I do not intend to gift my services for free after such a delightful gamble." Her third digit. "And perhaps the most trickiest of all... Ayin needs to change. Ayin is like me, someone transformed by the dire nature of our world. If he does not change, he will simply repeat the experiment for eternity--even my 'key' stop this--he developed this facility specifically to resist the City sending another ''me''." She lets her hand drop. "If these three conditions are satisfied, I will happily believe and in happily believing, this witch will deflect away the tornados from this group of souls."
Xion	Enduring the pressure of needles to nerves and withstanding the withering attention of people hungering for something essential within is the minimum of surviving in the world, and only more emphatically for a Nobody. Xion is familiar with Binah's sort. The stimulation sadist type was her closest sister-of-kind, and Larxene would never let her go with just an interesting scrap. She had to be satisfied, even if she was as soft in her satisfactions as a sister was. In this, Binah was being sisterly. And Xion retained a hint of empathy, concern for Binah. Saying nothing while Starlight alights them both, Binah's front and her back, to the dismissed Angela, the Nobody waits for the dark to close all around without a sliver of golden light but from the optics and glow opposite. "If Lilian has already made plans for it. . . Then I believe in the strength Angela has to call on. But it's about responsibility. Will Lilian bear it forever? She could. Would she want to?" Hollowed out. Destroyed and disassembled. More limbo than life. "... She's already turned away from that path. She could follow it again, but it would be a diminishment, and so even that means that for your first and second conditions, something more miraculous than the sword arm of Lilian Rook and all her friends is required." Smiling a little, underlit from the wandering hollow-gold star dangling from her wrist, Xion tilts her head. "It sounds like what needs to happen is that someone needs to take a swing at the world and turn it to better. But the most important condition is settled already, isn't it? You've said so out loud... unless you're lying. But - it'd hurt too much, I think, for it to be a lie that believeable. So I'll have faith in your honest answer, Binah. Even hollowed out, and left as just a will and a key that might turn the wind." Xion reaches out over the table with her hand, palm up, fingers out, keychain dangling in soft sussuration from her wrist as she beckons... something? "That you'll happily believe in a better world, if it is made to be believed in." Dark-dimmed blue eyes look across vantablack table. "And that's the most important thing. Everything else is the fight to reach. And I've got a rule about it."
Angela	''If Lilian has already made plans for it. . . Then I believe in the strength Angela has to call on.'' "Does Lilian want her to grow? Or would she prefer a servant. She can be an excellent servant. She has more practice in serving than anyone and she has a strong incentive to do her very very best for someone who will actually grace her with a look from time to time, and extend a treat from time to time." She runs one of her digits across the rim of her teacup. "I imagine she wouldn't want to be a burden on her but she hasn't lived in the outside world one day--would she even notice if she had?" ''Something more miraculous than the sword arm of Lilian Rook'' Binah's eye opens again, slowly. Her gaze settles on that keychain again. It drawls over to te star. Them back to the keychain again. She wants to clash with this woman almost as much as she wants to fight with Gebura once more. "I am good at finding ways to be happy." Binah says. "There is a lot to be happy about. A cup of bitter tea. A Well to be filled with Light." That Light is a Capital Light. "In a world run by capital, every inch you take back is a dire threatening relay where threat after threat invested in the way things are steps in your path, eventually even with the powers that be. But there is power in being insignificant, it lets you sneak under the Beholder's Eyes. Even if you have to bury yourself in a deep, dark hole to be beneath such an encompassing sight. I would like to keep my gaze focused on the Fear so that the Cycle breaks. It may not always be a kind path, but kindness is a luxury even the Strongest struggles to afford here. It would still be worth it, no?" Another sense of a smile, this one more... "What is your rule? Perhaps you would like to take some burden off of your friend and be the one who faces me?"
Xion	Binah asks several questions of Lilian's intention, towards Xion. This causes the extended hand of the Nobody over the table to curl in, fingers touching back to palm while Xion really meditates on her answer. How to represent Lilian Rook, the one within her, the beautiful image, a reality shaped carefully from stone. "Lilian would want Angela to grow. But I won't speak to her preference - that's hers to express. If all Angela's conditions were a little attention and a treat now and then, I think..." Xion's eyes cross, and then she grins and her attention dribbles warmly across the plane of dividing-black they sit acros, skipping over teacups to fall off the side and find a pillar in the middle-distance to feel out with dimmed eyes. "You're right. If Angela's never lived a day outside, she wouldn't notice, and Lilian is too unfailing to let it out before it's far too late. She might go on and shoulder the whole world because one more wouldn't change the weight she felt, but it would change the weight she actually carried. No, I think the only solution that completes the quest is to make the world better." Eyes on again, meeting Binah's gold with dimmed blue, she follows the optic down to Starlight's keychain about her wrist. When her eyes come back up, they've regained a bit of their shine - bright against the surrounding dark. "You're content here, beneath notice, because what you want you think you won't get. So you've chosen. . ." Xions hands break from their arch, and the hanging lamp of the wandering star on a keychain lifts. Palm closing around the totem, pale light spills between the noirette's clenched fingers. The world is dark, dark and vantablack and lit by golds and blues and leaking light. "Loss of function as comfort. To settle in the center of the tornado and form it into a hurricane, and wait out the change. Because you did change, didn't you, Binah? You've changed so much. You swung into something that left an imprint, and the journey was already long from the first swing you took, and the first imprint that caused you to compromise." Xion tilts her head the other way, half-standing across the table as dark knuckles and light-leaking ones set to the edge of the table in brace. "The city that never changes... But the cycle might. And then, after, there might be a new city after. Wound to a different hour and minute on the hand." The empathy-filled unspooling of a smile slips between the two points of the Nobody's mouth. "Kindness is just the direction you divert the tornado, Binah. You know. You've been grappling with this one for a while, haven't you?" The hanging hollow honeycomb asks Xion about her own past, and the chosen loss of functions that she did by another path. Lifting her hands from the table, Xion shrugs. As she opens her hand to gesture, Starlight is gone - keychain and all. "I used to have a few rules. When I was the 'hero of everyone's Hearts'. I can't-" She won't. "Follow all of them any more, but the one I was remembering was about... Not forgetting to reach. If facing you is a burden that Lilian would have taken from her, though..." Xion pivots on her foot, resting a hand on the back of her clockhands and ribs chair, and resting her back towards Binah. "... if she asked me, I would take it from her and see it done. If you're looking for extra 'this' for 'that', well, maybe we can work something out."
Angela	Binah does have some insightful people to talk to, though they aren't usually insightful towards her. She finds Xion's aggressive approach refreshing and curious but it also means that she hasn't had much opportunity to digest accusations such as this before. Usually people call her a sadist, which isn't inaccurate, and a cop, which is mostly only inaccurate by technicalities and the lack of the word 'ex' suffix. And Binah doesn't help. She sees herself as someone who flourishes in The City-- --but flourishing in the City, and even enjoying the work--doesn't mean that you can't be curious about other states of existence. That's how she saw it, but Xion seems to have a simultaneously more optimistic and more incisive outlook. "There is no rush," Binah says. "Let's take time and consider how we'd like to 'work someting out'. It was my pleasure to meet you." She sends a message to Angela indicating tha she's done. She doesn't say much about what Xion had to say in of itself, just yet, and that says a great deal but she has something to think about. Kindness is just the direction you divert the tornado, Binah. But kindness definitely wouldn't come naturally to someone like her. "I do have plenty of time to think." She admits. "So I will have plenty of time to think about this conversation." She says. She naturally shares nothing of the conversation with Angela--but the Secretary is used to that.