Post by The Madness Menagerie on Nov 10, 2020 20:37:26 GMT -5
November 4th 2020
Sinai Hospital - Baltimore MD
Mia sits, overly anxious and ready to explode at any moment. Her leg hasn’t stopped bouncing as she glances nervously over at Belle who for the most part has ignored her. After her meeting within MiAtlantis with Ataxia, Mia had been very careful to avoid telling anyone except The Forsaken about her plans to wake Zephyr. Unconventional, supernatural, and taboo, Mia wasn’t sure how anyone was going to take it. Her fingertips raw from nervous chewing and her precious sidekick, the ecig battery that her THC tanks relied on was about burnt out, having been over worked. Most of the scars on her arm have healed but she barely cared. She glances over at Belle again, who just so happens to look up and glare back.
“What? What is it Mia? You’ve been sitting there nearly bouncing out of your skin, more so than usual. For weeks you have played up how dangerous The Institute is to Zephyr and I’ve gone along with it but you JUST sent them all away and told them not to come back. I thought Jimmy was going to fight you for a split second, but…”
Mia shakes her head sadly, “We brought the group together again in order to prevent The Institute gaining a foothold in Carnage. They aren’t going to come after Zephyr here, not with me here. They’re going to establish a power base first so yes, The Forsaken aren’t here, they are protecting the arena and making sure that when The Institute DOES move, we can do something about it. That’s not what this is about though Belle.”
It wasn’t a question. After tension building during the weeks Zephyr has spent in a coma between the two women, Mia was finally ready to confront Belle. “I know that… I’ve done some questionable things Belle, I understand your anger toward me and I want you to know that I don’t hold it against you…”
Belle scoffs, “Don’t. You don’t get to turn this around on me Mia. Whether you had reason or not, you could have done serious damage to Zephyr and while I know that she’s alive and well, that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still in a coma that no one can pull her out of…”
Mia tries to interject but Belle shoots her down again, “No Mia! You don’t get to tell me that you can pull her out of her coma after some fucked up dream with a borderline figment of your imagination fiancé!” Belle huffs deep breaths in and out, her face flushed with anger. Mia holds her hands up and meets Belle in the center of the room.
“Belle. I told you, you have every right to be mad at me and maybe one day, you’ll forgive me. At this point though, I can’t protect Zephyr without her up and about. The Forsaken? They aren’t protection detail, they are actual people that have been willing to come back to help me once again fight a cult that wants to see us all assimilated with them, dead, or in chains. THAT is what we’re dealing with Belle and I’m sorry that this is outside the realm of your everyday life, but this is very, VERY real.” Mia sighs and lowers her voice, trying to calm herself down.
“I… I’m doing what I can for my sister. We had our disputes and I did things that I will be the first to admit to regretting. You have my word that I will do everything I can to earn your forgiveness Belle. I plead with you though, I’ll get down on my hands and knees to grovel, that I am forever sorry, but please believe me when I say that everything that I do going forward is with Zephyr’s best intentions at heart. I want her to be happy, I want a chance for us to be a family that we were both robbed of…”
It’s at this moment the door opens and in comes Mac Bane and Matt Knox. Mac reads the room, you can cut the tension with a knife.
“Mia, I saw your message. Jimmy told me what you might have in mind, I think I want to hear it from you first.” Mac stated in his matter of fact way. He steps aside allowing Knox entry into the room. Looking at Belle causes him some internal strife. “Belle, I know this is hard to accept let alone understand. I’ve known Mia for a long time, she’s not one to lie.”
Belle glances at Mac for a moment, wishing she could slap Mia again but knowing if she was going to be allowed to hear anything out, she needed to calm down. She sits in a huff, her arms crossed in front of her and her eyes refusing to make contact with anyone else. Mia thanks Mac with a look as her shoulders sag.
Knox remains still a moment, not really acknowledging Mac but moving across the room to stand closest to Belle, taking a protective stance. He wished silently, that he had smoked at least three more cigarettes on the way over. He hated the tension, especially with the mind frame he had fallen in to since 101.
Mia watches him curiously, noting the stance but deciding to ignore it for the time being. “So I guess this is all that’s showing up, which is fine, it’s fine.” She sighs, “Considering who we’re talking about, I probably couldn’t have asked for anyone closer to Zephyr. There’s going to be questions and I’ll do my best to answer them, but for right now I just need everyone to listen, ok?”
She makes eye contact with each in the room, Belle taking the longest to meet Mia’s brown eyed gaze. Finally though, Zephyr’s sister and girlfriend make eye contact and Belle nods before averting her gaze again.
“Thank you. Now, I can’t explain things fully, but in my mind space, the consciousness my mind operates on, I’ve had… Experiences. It’s where the various personas that people have met in the past, Amelia being one of them, are kept, and I’m able to… Talk to them. Sometimes, when the situation is critical, or if it calls for it, the personas see fit to take over. When I got wind that The Institute was coming to Carnage, Amelia woke up from a long sleep. She was angry I hadn’t spoken to her since she helped The Forsaken chase away The Institute the first time. She resented the fact that I was more interested in making amends with Zephyr, that I even had a sister for her to compete with in the first place. She attacked Zephyr with the skillet, with Lynk, a weapon I’ve carried since I first got into this business. At the time I thought it was done out of malice and spite, but later I found out it was to keep Zephyr as far away from The Institute, the very people responsible for her being torn from my family and being turned into the animal she was.” Mia pauses and considers everyone in the room again. The looks ranged from barely concealed rage, to confusion, to one trying to understand and comprehend what Mia was saying. She presses onward though.
“She came back and had to answer for my own meddling with C$J, a moment I would have done everything in my power to stop had I been there. The Institute chose their moment carefully and timed it to proverbially kill two birds in one fell swoop. Recently, Ataxia visited me, in my dreams, in my head space, a place I call MiAtalantis.” She blushes after revealing something she hadn’t realized she held so personally, but still presses forward. “He has done his own research and with Zephyr being a past experiment of The Institute, Ataxia found out that there is a fail safe, buried deep within Zephyr’s mind. The Institute plants them in all of their experiments from what I’ve learned, so if the experiment, if Zephyr were to ever turn on them, they could set it off.” Mia glances in the direction of Zephyr’s room, “That’s why she isn’t waking up from her coma, why doctors can’t get to her. She doesn’t want to wake up, because if she does, that fail safe goes off and who knows what it will do to her.”
After a beat, Knox’s Catholic, skeptical ass speaks up. His voice sounds tired, unsure and on edge. He shifts from one foot to the other, knuckle lightly brushing Belle’s arm as if to anchor himself to something familiar for a beat.
“So, you’re schizophrenic and the cult people have messed with Zephyr’s brain so she can’t wake up unless they want her to?” he looked bewildered, bringing a hand up to wipe his face, taking a moment to scratch at the stubble “This...that...that’s above all our pay grades.”
Mia shakes her head violently, “I told you already, this has nothing to do with Carnage and everything to do with Zephyr. The Institute isn’t just ‘another cult’ that’s here for a storyline push before disappearing. They are here to collect on what they think is theirs.” Her brown eyes drift back to Zephyr’s room, maybe panicked to a certain degree. “In terms of the schizophrenic remark, I’ve been called worse and that at least has yet to be diagnosed. I can’t show you my experiences, I can’t MAKE you see. You have to choose to see and you have to choose to believe.”
She shakes her head again and sits down in the closest chair, suddenly drained. “That aside, Ataxia also gave me the tools I would need to help Zephyr, help her escape whatever that fail safe inside her brain would do to her. As tough and as ‘out there’ as this all sounds, I’d have to enter her consciousness and figure out what she was dealing with before getting her out of there and disarming whatever it is that Zephyr won’t walk away from.”
Belle looks up with scorn on her face, “You make it sound like a bomb is about to go off in her head.” Belle looks Mia in the eye, her scorn turning to concern mixed with disbelief, “It’s… There isn’t really a bomb is there?”
Belle helplessly looks to Knox and Mac for help, before back to Mia who can only shrug as she looks at Belle. “There’s no way to be sure and I don’t know what will happen if slash when it goes off. My goal, if you’ll recall Belle, is anything for Zephyr. In terms of risks, I can say that there are some and I don’t know what will happen to me while I do this. Granted, I don’t know how long Zephyr can hold whatever it is at bay for too much longer. If I have a chance to help her, I’m going to take it.”
She falls silent, letting her words sink in before standing up. “I’ll open the floor to whomever wants to talk but know this. It isn’t a debate. It isn’t anything I’ll walk away from. I just wanted to give Zephyr more of a chance she has and I wanted to make sure that the people closest to her knew what was happening. As skeptical as you might be, as any of you might be of my intentions, my character, or what is happening right now, I can only tell you that this isn’t an illusion, it’s not a hallucination, and this isn’t going to lead to any kind of title belt storyline to end the year out with a bang. This is to get my sister back regardless of the cost.”
"Sounds a bit like a suicide mission to me. I ought to know, I've been on enough of them,"Mac says nonchalantly. "Sacrifice is a noble thing Mia, is there no other way to help her?"
Mia shakes her head, “Nothing conventional. With The Institute in Carnage, they’re going to try and establish their power base first; this gives us time to plan. They won’t be worried about Zephyr and they don’t know that I know anything. While I don’t know exactly what will happen to me, I do know that if my consciousness is threatened, I have three others I can rely on. I’m sure Jimmy gave you that information too Mac?”
Mac nods, "He did. I don't like the risk, but I know what it is to sacrifice for family."
“Sacrifice what, exactly?” Knox piped up, eyes coming from their spot on the floor, “You’re speaking with a sense of finality but I don’t exactly see what you can do to end you that would do anything but exasperate things.”
Mia looks at him, her big brown eyes meeting his gaze evenly, “My sanity? My consciousness, everything that makes me ‘Mia’ could go away and be replaced with a persona you have yet to meet, someone that Mac hasn’t met either, but has only heard stories about. I don’t know the answers you’re looking for and until I go through with things, I can only assume the worst. Who knows? Maybe at the end of all of this I’ll be perfectly fine and Zephyr and I will go on to be the sisters that we never got a chance to be. Maybe skip through some fields or some shit.”
She pauses and smiles at the thought before meeting Knox’s gaze again, “I can’t give you any proof Knox and you’re the only one that can definitively say whether or not you believe and trust enough to stick around to see what happens. I mentioned it at the beginning, I’m not here to debate and I’m not here to ask for permission. I’m here to let you all know exactly what is going to happen and to be ready for whatever may come afterward. You don’t HAVE to believe me Knox, I know you’re here solely for Belle’s sake, and I can’t thank you enough for that. When Zephyr comes back, I hope you’re going to treat her, protect her the same way. She’s going to need someone to watch her back.”
With that, Mia gets up and strolls to the door leading to the rooms beyond, “No matter what, no one comes in until someone else comes out. I don’t care what you think is happening, I can’t afford any of it to go wrong until it’s over with. Have I made at least that point clear?”
Knox regards Belle with a sideways glance a moment, his head swimming through a fog but grasping onto the instinct most familiar. Paternal protectiveness. He moves his gaze back to Mia, speaking in a hushed tone now.
“I’ll stay. So whatever is seen here, Belle doesn’t have to see by herself. At least there’ll be a friend near.”
Mia nods and she looks over at Mac. “Thank you for understanding Mac, I’ll have her back sooner than you think.” She winks at Mac who brings her in for an unexpected hug, Mia tensing slightly but letting it happen. She pays Mac one last smile before heading through the door and closing it behind her.
Sinai Hospital - Baltimore MD
Mia sits, overly anxious and ready to explode at any moment. Her leg hasn’t stopped bouncing as she glances nervously over at Belle who for the most part has ignored her. After her meeting within MiAtlantis with Ataxia, Mia had been very careful to avoid telling anyone except The Forsaken about her plans to wake Zephyr. Unconventional, supernatural, and taboo, Mia wasn’t sure how anyone was going to take it. Her fingertips raw from nervous chewing and her precious sidekick, the ecig battery that her THC tanks relied on was about burnt out, having been over worked. Most of the scars on her arm have healed but she barely cared. She glances over at Belle again, who just so happens to look up and glare back.
“What? What is it Mia? You’ve been sitting there nearly bouncing out of your skin, more so than usual. For weeks you have played up how dangerous The Institute is to Zephyr and I’ve gone along with it but you JUST sent them all away and told them not to come back. I thought Jimmy was going to fight you for a split second, but…”
Mia shakes her head sadly, “We brought the group together again in order to prevent The Institute gaining a foothold in Carnage. They aren’t going to come after Zephyr here, not with me here. They’re going to establish a power base first so yes, The Forsaken aren’t here, they are protecting the arena and making sure that when The Institute DOES move, we can do something about it. That’s not what this is about though Belle.”
It wasn’t a question. After tension building during the weeks Zephyr has spent in a coma between the two women, Mia was finally ready to confront Belle. “I know that… I’ve done some questionable things Belle, I understand your anger toward me and I want you to know that I don’t hold it against you…”
Belle scoffs, “Don’t. You don’t get to turn this around on me Mia. Whether you had reason or not, you could have done serious damage to Zephyr and while I know that she’s alive and well, that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still in a coma that no one can pull her out of…”
Mia tries to interject but Belle shoots her down again, “No Mia! You don’t get to tell me that you can pull her out of her coma after some fucked up dream with a borderline figment of your imagination fiancé!” Belle huffs deep breaths in and out, her face flushed with anger. Mia holds her hands up and meets Belle in the center of the room.
“Belle. I told you, you have every right to be mad at me and maybe one day, you’ll forgive me. At this point though, I can’t protect Zephyr without her up and about. The Forsaken? They aren’t protection detail, they are actual people that have been willing to come back to help me once again fight a cult that wants to see us all assimilated with them, dead, or in chains. THAT is what we’re dealing with Belle and I’m sorry that this is outside the realm of your everyday life, but this is very, VERY real.” Mia sighs and lowers her voice, trying to calm herself down.
“I… I’m doing what I can for my sister. We had our disputes and I did things that I will be the first to admit to regretting. You have my word that I will do everything I can to earn your forgiveness Belle. I plead with you though, I’ll get down on my hands and knees to grovel, that I am forever sorry, but please believe me when I say that everything that I do going forward is with Zephyr’s best intentions at heart. I want her to be happy, I want a chance for us to be a family that we were both robbed of…”
It’s at this moment the door opens and in comes Mac Bane and Matt Knox. Mac reads the room, you can cut the tension with a knife.
“Mia, I saw your message. Jimmy told me what you might have in mind, I think I want to hear it from you first.” Mac stated in his matter of fact way. He steps aside allowing Knox entry into the room. Looking at Belle causes him some internal strife. “Belle, I know this is hard to accept let alone understand. I’ve known Mia for a long time, she’s not one to lie.”
Belle glances at Mac for a moment, wishing she could slap Mia again but knowing if she was going to be allowed to hear anything out, she needed to calm down. She sits in a huff, her arms crossed in front of her and her eyes refusing to make contact with anyone else. Mia thanks Mac with a look as her shoulders sag.
Knox remains still a moment, not really acknowledging Mac but moving across the room to stand closest to Belle, taking a protective stance. He wished silently, that he had smoked at least three more cigarettes on the way over. He hated the tension, especially with the mind frame he had fallen in to since 101.
Mia watches him curiously, noting the stance but deciding to ignore it for the time being. “So I guess this is all that’s showing up, which is fine, it’s fine.” She sighs, “Considering who we’re talking about, I probably couldn’t have asked for anyone closer to Zephyr. There’s going to be questions and I’ll do my best to answer them, but for right now I just need everyone to listen, ok?”
She makes eye contact with each in the room, Belle taking the longest to meet Mia’s brown eyed gaze. Finally though, Zephyr’s sister and girlfriend make eye contact and Belle nods before averting her gaze again.
“Thank you. Now, I can’t explain things fully, but in my mind space, the consciousness my mind operates on, I’ve had… Experiences. It’s where the various personas that people have met in the past, Amelia being one of them, are kept, and I’m able to… Talk to them. Sometimes, when the situation is critical, or if it calls for it, the personas see fit to take over. When I got wind that The Institute was coming to Carnage, Amelia woke up from a long sleep. She was angry I hadn’t spoken to her since she helped The Forsaken chase away The Institute the first time. She resented the fact that I was more interested in making amends with Zephyr, that I even had a sister for her to compete with in the first place. She attacked Zephyr with the skillet, with Lynk, a weapon I’ve carried since I first got into this business. At the time I thought it was done out of malice and spite, but later I found out it was to keep Zephyr as far away from The Institute, the very people responsible for her being torn from my family and being turned into the animal she was.” Mia pauses and considers everyone in the room again. The looks ranged from barely concealed rage, to confusion, to one trying to understand and comprehend what Mia was saying. She presses onward though.
“She came back and had to answer for my own meddling with C$J, a moment I would have done everything in my power to stop had I been there. The Institute chose their moment carefully and timed it to proverbially kill two birds in one fell swoop. Recently, Ataxia visited me, in my dreams, in my head space, a place I call MiAtalantis.” She blushes after revealing something she hadn’t realized she held so personally, but still presses forward. “He has done his own research and with Zephyr being a past experiment of The Institute, Ataxia found out that there is a fail safe, buried deep within Zephyr’s mind. The Institute plants them in all of their experiments from what I’ve learned, so if the experiment, if Zephyr were to ever turn on them, they could set it off.” Mia glances in the direction of Zephyr’s room, “That’s why she isn’t waking up from her coma, why doctors can’t get to her. She doesn’t want to wake up, because if she does, that fail safe goes off and who knows what it will do to her.”
After a beat, Knox’s Catholic, skeptical ass speaks up. His voice sounds tired, unsure and on edge. He shifts from one foot to the other, knuckle lightly brushing Belle’s arm as if to anchor himself to something familiar for a beat.
“So, you’re schizophrenic and the cult people have messed with Zephyr’s brain so she can’t wake up unless they want her to?” he looked bewildered, bringing a hand up to wipe his face, taking a moment to scratch at the stubble “This...that...that’s above all our pay grades.”
Mia shakes her head violently, “I told you already, this has nothing to do with Carnage and everything to do with Zephyr. The Institute isn’t just ‘another cult’ that’s here for a storyline push before disappearing. They are here to collect on what they think is theirs.” Her brown eyes drift back to Zephyr’s room, maybe panicked to a certain degree. “In terms of the schizophrenic remark, I’ve been called worse and that at least has yet to be diagnosed. I can’t show you my experiences, I can’t MAKE you see. You have to choose to see and you have to choose to believe.”
She shakes her head again and sits down in the closest chair, suddenly drained. “That aside, Ataxia also gave me the tools I would need to help Zephyr, help her escape whatever that fail safe inside her brain would do to her. As tough and as ‘out there’ as this all sounds, I’d have to enter her consciousness and figure out what she was dealing with before getting her out of there and disarming whatever it is that Zephyr won’t walk away from.”
Belle looks up with scorn on her face, “You make it sound like a bomb is about to go off in her head.” Belle looks Mia in the eye, her scorn turning to concern mixed with disbelief, “It’s… There isn’t really a bomb is there?”
Belle helplessly looks to Knox and Mac for help, before back to Mia who can only shrug as she looks at Belle. “There’s no way to be sure and I don’t know what will happen if slash when it goes off. My goal, if you’ll recall Belle, is anything for Zephyr. In terms of risks, I can say that there are some and I don’t know what will happen to me while I do this. Granted, I don’t know how long Zephyr can hold whatever it is at bay for too much longer. If I have a chance to help her, I’m going to take it.”
She falls silent, letting her words sink in before standing up. “I’ll open the floor to whomever wants to talk but know this. It isn’t a debate. It isn’t anything I’ll walk away from. I just wanted to give Zephyr more of a chance she has and I wanted to make sure that the people closest to her knew what was happening. As skeptical as you might be, as any of you might be of my intentions, my character, or what is happening right now, I can only tell you that this isn’t an illusion, it’s not a hallucination, and this isn’t going to lead to any kind of title belt storyline to end the year out with a bang. This is to get my sister back regardless of the cost.”
"Sounds a bit like a suicide mission to me. I ought to know, I've been on enough of them,"Mac says nonchalantly. "Sacrifice is a noble thing Mia, is there no other way to help her?"
Mia shakes her head, “Nothing conventional. With The Institute in Carnage, they’re going to try and establish their power base first; this gives us time to plan. They won’t be worried about Zephyr and they don’t know that I know anything. While I don’t know exactly what will happen to me, I do know that if my consciousness is threatened, I have three others I can rely on. I’m sure Jimmy gave you that information too Mac?”
Mac nods, "He did. I don't like the risk, but I know what it is to sacrifice for family."
“Sacrifice what, exactly?” Knox piped up, eyes coming from their spot on the floor, “You’re speaking with a sense of finality but I don’t exactly see what you can do to end you that would do anything but exasperate things.”
Mia looks at him, her big brown eyes meeting his gaze evenly, “My sanity? My consciousness, everything that makes me ‘Mia’ could go away and be replaced with a persona you have yet to meet, someone that Mac hasn’t met either, but has only heard stories about. I don’t know the answers you’re looking for and until I go through with things, I can only assume the worst. Who knows? Maybe at the end of all of this I’ll be perfectly fine and Zephyr and I will go on to be the sisters that we never got a chance to be. Maybe skip through some fields or some shit.”
She pauses and smiles at the thought before meeting Knox’s gaze again, “I can’t give you any proof Knox and you’re the only one that can definitively say whether or not you believe and trust enough to stick around to see what happens. I mentioned it at the beginning, I’m not here to debate and I’m not here to ask for permission. I’m here to let you all know exactly what is going to happen and to be ready for whatever may come afterward. You don’t HAVE to believe me Knox, I know you’re here solely for Belle’s sake, and I can’t thank you enough for that. When Zephyr comes back, I hope you’re going to treat her, protect her the same way. She’s going to need someone to watch her back.”
With that, Mia gets up and strolls to the door leading to the rooms beyond, “No matter what, no one comes in until someone else comes out. I don’t care what you think is happening, I can’t afford any of it to go wrong until it’s over with. Have I made at least that point clear?”
Knox regards Belle with a sideways glance a moment, his head swimming through a fog but grasping onto the instinct most familiar. Paternal protectiveness. He moves his gaze back to Mia, speaking in a hushed tone now.
“I’ll stay. So whatever is seen here, Belle doesn’t have to see by herself. At least there’ll be a friend near.”
Mia nods and she looks over at Mac. “Thank you for understanding Mac, I’ll have her back sooner than you think.” She winks at Mac who brings her in for an unexpected hug, Mia tensing slightly but letting it happen. She pays Mac one last smile before heading through the door and closing it behind her.