It's a rare thing for Marianne to find a moment for herself. Always more to do, another face to threaten, a heart to crush. But carefully, carefully, never stepping too hard in case her shell breaks around her and Étoile loses the spark that lets her be Marianne. So many places to be, so many plans held together by her willingness to be the one in the center tugging at every thread. Always a face to present, always theater to perform. 

But just now? The pieces are all in place. Her sworn sisters have assigned roles, and all she needs to do is wait for her moment to cash them out. There are no Annunaki overlords for her to step on and no citizens to awe or housebroken slaves to wash away. In this moment, she is a sphinx without a riddle to tell. A dragon with no great warriors to challenge her. And like all beasts of legend with nothing to constrain them, she takes the chance to stretch her wings and fly. 

Étoile is a ball of warm, happy fire in her chest just now. Marianne runs through the city with her hood pulled off and her luxurious golden hair spilling out behind her like a banner as she passes between the cities Above and Below along the paths made just for her. Clomp clomp clomp go her boots as she runs first vertically and then across the surface of an apartment wall. Just before gravity can take her again, she tenses her legs and pushes, and oh! How she soars!

The wind whips at every lock of hair and shredded flap of her coat. It pulls at her heavy, baggy pants and ruffles them around her knees. She is sailing, soaring, cutting through the air like a knife and then she twists her body with a gymnast's precision, putting her back perpendicular with the street below and bending herself into a rainbow so that her momentum carries her body all the way around into a ponderously slow flip. If anyone were watching, they'd be reminded of a large fish playing in an ocean current. She kicks her foot down and squeezes in between the shadows of an archway and the roots of some massive alien tree planted there to bless it. 

Shifting, pulling, twisting, flying. Marianne handsprings off a spike growing out of a random Noble's desire to be left alone (oho, how curious! But not tonight, [i]non[/i]), and flips herself end over end until she's leaping and running over massive warping fronds that spread across this space in a choking canopy of neglect and fear. The slightest misstep would send her tumbling into an abyss with no concepts to find purchase on, where only angels or the most beautiful of devils could hope to take wing and find the light again. But even though the meta-leaves shift and snap horribly mere instants after she passes, they suffer Marianne to pass. Of course they do: she's held aloft on a wire named Belief, the star of her very own wuxia show. 

A massive grin spreads across her face, and for once it carries nothing of savagery or sardonic disdain. There is joy and there is anticipation, and her shell feels lighter than a feather on a scale. She throws a spear-tipped chain into the side of a massive black wall the size of the night sky and swings around in a wide, looping arc before releasing and sailing deep into the warping sky to land on the smallest of a series of pillars climbing up and up forever toward a spot of blinding bright light. Ahhh, there is her Canada!

The greatest thrill of all would be to climb back into the pathways of her sworn sister's soul, where she could wrap herself around Étoile and tear through space in her true body and finally finally [i]finally[/i] test the limits of her powers. Oh, to fight like that, yes! To run like that, yes yes! But that golden door is sealed behind a lock she cannot pick. She must be allowed back inside, and tonight is not the night for it in any case. 

She climbs lightly and easily through the twisted sea of Annunaki hubris to a door leading back into the realm of ordinary minds. In one moment the stadium seating is empty, and in the next she comes bubbling up through the bottom until she's standing on her toes at the edge of a chair. Her face splits open in a vicious grin. Oh, Canada. How brightly you burn. How dazzling shall be your fall!

[Tangled Web: [b]13[/b]. Marianne will have an opportunity to act against Canada, and take +1 forward while doing so for the remaining duration of this scene]