"...fucking... stupid." Her voice is still strained and gravelly from underuse, but she drowns her throat in an angry swig of wine straight from the bottle to keep using it anyway. There are offenses in the world too sharp to lash out against with only your thoughts, even when you're all alone. She hisses at the ugly sound and wipes her lips dry with the back of her hand before gesturing vaguely toward the blank wall that had offended her so much. "Dumb fuck. Thing. Who wrote. This? Morons! Never seen such. Garbage costuming!" Her hands tear the pillow she'd been hugging to her chest into shreds and bits of fluff. She grunts when the words get too hard to form, and her tail lashes in furious assent. Her back aches after she'd been tensing it through the final half hour of the film. Her body is slick with sweat. She glances down, fumbling for more words to through at this clusterfuck of a masterpiece, and spots her wine bottle again. This is one of the poorer vintages she's found in her time here; the mulled spices drown the delicate flavors of the fruit and sting her tongue like hard spirits when she drinks it. But damn everything, she doesn't have anything else to do with her hands. She snatches it up with another hiss and a spit, and upends the bottle down her mouth with a sharp toss of her neck. She gulps down the warm, vaguely burning drink in huge and noisy gulps that feel like tiny claws marching their way across her mouth and down to her stomach, except for the thin trickles that run like dark-red waterfalls down her chin to splash across her collarbone and drip down her chest to meet the rest of her. She doesn't stop until the bottle runs empty. "Real life doesn't work like that!" she seethes, "Real stories understand that! You don't just... rrrrgh! There aren't real heroes out there! Just run out and save the girl with a swordfight, why don't you? That'll fix everything! Chan bara chan bara fucking chan. What the [i]fuck[/i] made me think this was worth my time?" But the wall doesn't have any answers for her, and the projector's fallen silent. And it's not like the smiling, jackass god is going to suddenly open his mouth and enlighten her either, that asshole. She glances around for another drink, but like a dumbass she's only brought the one vintage to her nest. She sighs and scratches at an ear before she laboriously rises to her feet with an enormous stretch. She glares death at the reel of film as she passes out of the room, not even realizing she's betraying her plan in the process. Her feet carry her to the showers before they find the wine cellar again. She bathes, despite the utter pointlessness of it beating her in the face even harder than the water. When she returns, she's carting an assortment of snacks she's cooked up after several hours of melting sugars along with the last create of flower wine that she could find. She respools the film and presses play before settling in again. It had just... felt so good to be angry at something again. She wanted that. Just one more time. She'd set it on fire after, Hera hear her prayer. *** The scent of metal shavings fills her room. Her foot shifts carelessly and knocks a pile of abandoned attempts at hand-made talons clattering all over the place. She grumbles and shakes her head, but leaves them lying there. The ones in the vice on her little table are more important. She carefully carves, then files, then sharpens, then files again, blowing across the silvery metal jewelry so she can watch her work take shape. They're crude efforts compared to the ones the temples had made for her work, but something about the etchings still makes her chest flare with pride. [i]Chan-barra-chan-barra![/i] She glances up in time to see Prion Paula's dramatic pose of surprise as she crosses the threshold into the maze of mirrors where the evil Djemento's most insidious trap is waiting for her. The door slams shut and swords are drawn before the noise is even finished reverberating across the reflective surfaces. [i]Chan-barra-chan![/i] She knows how every part of this battle plays out. She's seen it twenty times already. In another few hours, she'll have seen it twenty-one. It's an impressive technical achievement, actually. The mirrors capture swords clashing from something like 3 dozen angles almost all at once, a dizzying kaleidoscope of violence, and even when she turned the Auspex on the spectacle she hadn't been able to see the camera's reflection in any of them. That kind of care and precision was worth respect, if nothing else. She hesitates before she slips her fingers inside her latest work. She lets out a quiet sigh, and her ears twitch with mild delight atop her head. The metal is still a little warm and uncomfortable atop her skin, but they fit. She flexes her fingers, and the joints only click a little bit as they bend with every gesture. This, she can fix. She taps her claw tips against the table, and the talons match their height perfectly. She drags them across the surface of the table, and the sound of screeching as she carves her marks across it sends giddy shivers up her spine. She slips them off, and carefully threads them through a silver chain necklace. "I'm impressed you made it this far. But now you die, Prion Paula!" "You are mistaken! A blade as dull as your heart's could never cut me down! Prepare yourself! I'm taking the Priestess back with me!" She mouths the words along with the movie, not even glancing up at the screen. She rolls her eyes and goes hunting through a box to find another block of material good enough to carve into her second pair. She'd probably watch this stupid fucking thing another twenty times before she could replicate the first. Not that she cares. The excitement of the anger died down a long time ago, even the memory of it is barely a flicker of irritation. There's just... nothing else to put on. And she doesn't trust the music around here. So it's this or nothing. And working with nothing but the sound of grinding silver in her ears makes her fur stand all up on end in protest. So it's this. She huffs. Forever feels so much duller than she remembers it being last time. [i]Chan-barra-chan-barra-chan![/i] *** Prion Paula bleeds from a dozen claw wounds inflicted on her by the evil Daimyo, the last and most unexpected opponent. It must be hard to fight when the whole world is turned sideways. Tears run freely from Bella's eyes as she sprawls across the floor and looks up at the greatest hero of the rebellion bravely defying her destiny and her many bloody wounds to capture the happy ending that feels so inevitable now that she's here. Bella doesn't bother to wipe them clean as they run across her cheeks, even when they drip into her nose and make her sniffle and sneeze with hideous volume. She doesn't move at all, except for a slight thumping where the tip of her tail rises up and smacks against the floor. Her arms and legs are sprawled in front of her, and her ribs hurt from lying her on her side for so long, but she doesn't bother to move. It's so pointless, when she has so little. Behind her, amateur attempts at paintings and jewelry and aborted attempts at food, now filed down to mostly raw ingredients sit in great project piles alongside hundreds of sloppily piled up tablets full of incomprehensible wisdom. Her breath comes in a messy, snot-soaked snort. The credits are rolling. She doesn't move. Every beautiful thing makes her heart ache with longing, but her hands can't reach through the screen anymore than they could reach across space and grab anything worth having. That ache is a poison spreading across her body. Why had she missed these tears? Why did they seem so important to have again? The music comes to a stop, and the room slips into darkness. The flutter of the reel spinning down reaches her ears, and then nothing. Nothing but the sound of her disgusting breathing. Nothing but the feeling of her heart stomping in her chest despite all her prayers that it should stop. Nothing but the dull thwack of her tail on the ground in the dark. Nothing. They have everything, and she has nothing. And that's the way it would always be. *** [i]Chan-barra-chan-barra-chan-barra!![/i] Bella hums along, so far past needing to pay attention to feel every beat moving through her. The muscle memory of each piece of the choreography and stuntwork is burned into her muscles. She doesn't need to watch to know exactly what's happening. Her mouth moves silently to every line, but her lips capture the intonation perfectly. It's the first time she's watched in a little while, and she's not really paying attention at all. But it's soothing to have the pattern to fall back on. And this time she wants to finish that dress. Most of the work is already finished. Just a few more beads to tie in, and she'll be done. The plunging v-line neck and the delicate shoulder straps will mold to her bust perfectly, and even through the tassels the fit of it will hug her hips and show off the soft muscles in her tummy. The hem of the skirt should just fall short of her knees, not counting the tassels. But the tassels are the selling point. The whole dress is made of them, in fact. Swishing, swirling, flapping bits of motion that capture every little thing she does and turns it into dance, all strung through with beads in metals of so many colors that she could capture the raw power of the galaxy itself. The stars. The nebulae. The patterns that told the first stories of the universe, all captured as best she could remember them. It's a simple design, actually. Embarrassingly simple. All of the work is in the pattern instead of the stitching. But the skill of it makes her ears flutter almost as much as the sight of it makes her teeth clench. A doomsday dress, if ever there was one. Could anything be more perfect to have, if she ever got another chance. The movie rolls on behind her. Bella's hips shift and sway along with the motion on the screen as she finishes her work. The last project she can think of. The last thing worth doing on this stupid fucking graveyard of a space station. This is where Prion Paula strikes against the oppressors. This is where she bleeds for her hubris. And this is where the final showdown takes place, after hours of teasing the tension to its peak. The final duel has such different energy and intensity than the entire rest of the movie. Most of the other fights are carefully coordinated explosions of martial might that was no less evocative for how little sense it made. She'd long learned to stop questioning why there weren't any phalanxes fencing the heroine in, or how anyone could tell a story without invoking the gods even once. That's just what made it special. This silly little dream that someone had. But here at the end it was all different. None of the complexities and showiness that mark the first few hours of the movie. Instead the tension tugs at the air until it starts to tear. Instead the two last combatants stare at each other from across a field of grain. Why there should be a field of grain is besides the point. They are there, swords undrawn, glaring into each others' eyes to kill with their intent. The fight ends in a single, explosive motion. The world turns to black, and then to red while a burst of blood gushes everywhere into infinity. So much more than a body can even hold, but it's here because it sells the perfection of the strike. Good triumphs. Evil perishes. Nobody questions which is which. The credits roll. Bella sits there for a long moment, staring at the mannequin. Her muscles burn as she stands up to stretch for the first time in six hours. The sound of the projector winding down [i]again[/i] feels like the explosive slash of that strange, curved sword. Is she going to burst into an ocean of blood, too? "...Fuck me. I can't do this anymore. I want out. Let me out. Let me out!"