[center][img]https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/1295e4e86fcc.gif[/img][/center] [sup][h1][b][center][color=black] E M M A F R O S T[/color] [color=#98c0b7]E M M A F R O S T[/color][/center] [/b][/h1][/sup] [hr] [color=silver][indent] The light of the room was dust-choked and waiting on the baited breath of a judgement; today it had come and it wore a woman’s shape and was cut from the world’s most beautiful stone. Emma pressed down upon the man lying in the middle of the room with a relentless diamond weight and the face of a Horseman. A polished and muscular pillar; immutable against his ribs. His breath shuddered out of him in a series of small and pitiful gasps in his state of dread and she watched over him with an expression that had no softness left in it. H She had entered his mind with haste and without mercy. He had felt her arrival before he could form a word to stop her and by then his thoughts were already being torn loose one by one. Another. And another. Again and again she snatched them from him and held them to her own scrutiny, assessing every aspect from the prison of his mind for clues and traces of [i]her.[/i] She flayed every happy memory from him and stripped them to their bones as his screams bent strangely in the narrow room. They belonged to her now and he would not get them back. Emma did not look away even as the strain of prying apart a mind that fought back hurt her too. It was nothing, and all he had as a weapon against her was his own useless pleading. When she felt his resistance clawing against the inside of her own temples she pushed harder. Further she drove past all of his surface thoughts and into deeper places. She journeyed to the locked chambers where a man keeps the worst of what he is by sweeping away the things he pretends never happened. She broke every seal one by one. Wrested the images out of him as he begged her to stop. Begged for God. Begged for anyone. God was not listening today. [hr] It was early still on Krakoa as the living island hummed contentedly and with a softness that made Emma feel restless and her thoughts lapped at her mind not unlike the waves did on the beach beyond the cliff. The great heart of Krakoa beating slow in the cradle of the sea; old and patient and entirely indifferent to the anxieties that kept Emma from sleeping. Many things were turning all at once. Diplomacy. Unity. Image; the mutants needed all of them if Krakoa would continue to survive. There was a divinity in the pale and pearled light of Krakoa and with it was a shift in the air that came as a warning before a voice ever did; a tightening of pressure above as the wind curled and Ororo Munroe stepped into Emma’s path. The morning light caught the silver of her hair and Storm did not need an introduction. “Emma,” she greeted in the voice that bore its usual quiet regality. A tone that never needed to raise itself.. “You’re awake early. [i]Again.[/i]” “Sleep is for people who have no responsibilities, Ororo,” Emma replied lightly though she did not stop her walking. Storm fell in step beside her, her own bare feet silent on the living ground. The island seemed to breathe differently when Storm moved. Emma hated that, and hated more that she could feel it. “To what do I owe this… [i]Surprising pleasure?[/i]” “You’re plotting something,” Storm answered plainly as she folded her arms over her chest and the air itself darkened half a shade. “The island knows.” Emma’s smile sharpened like a blade. “Ah. So Krakoa sends you as an inquisitor? Or are you just [i]genuinely[/i] curious?” “I’m not checking up on you, Emma,” Storm corrected with a flicker of thunder in her low voice. “But you are anticipating something.” “And just what,” Emma began asking with a feigned innocence to her words, “do you think I’m anticipating?” Storm gave a slow and deliberate turn of her head and the gold of her eyes were impossible to read. “You want to build something,” she said. “Something bold. Dangerous. I can feel it. The island feels it rising in you.” “Oh Darling,” Emma laughed humourlessly. “I am always building something dangerous.” Storm countered. “Yes, but this time it's something different.” “Ororo,” Emma began carefully, lifting a hand as if to shape something in the air “Mutant culture has thrived in spite of the world and its every cruelty. Imagine what we could do if we stopped merely enduring that, and instead celebrated it. Brazenly.” Storm's gaze flickered. “Celebration is not a priority of the Quiet Council right now.” “Then let me reframe this.” Emma’s voice turned sharper. “Visibility is as important as our continued stability.” They both reached the cliff’s edge and Emma let the wind from the sea tug at her hair as below them the ocean surged. “We need something that [i]announces[/i] us. A show of unity and not fragility. A gathering of our beauty, intellect, art, and mutant culture–” Storm cut in. “You want to throw a party.” Her tone was flat; unimpressed. She didn’t get it. Emma laughed almost a little too ruthlessly. “Oh no. I want to throw [i]the[/i] party. The kind that… announces us. Just a little bit of course.” Her smile softened, but somehow that made it all the more dangerous. Storm moved to stand beside her with her arms loose at her sides as she scanned the horizon thoughtfully. “A spectacle then. And what would you call this?” “A gala,” Emma said. “The Hellfire Gala.” The sky rumbled and heaved with Storm’s immediate reaction and the island felt it too and shivered under their feet. “[b][i]Hellfire?[/i][/b]” she asked. “You would tie our nation to [b]that[/b] legacy?” “I would reclaim it, actually,” Emma said simply. “A night where the world sees the future. Our future, and they realise they cannot ignore it. Or [i]us[/i].” Storm did not approve, not entirely, and Emma could feel that like static on her skin, but beneath it something else stirred. Respect, reluctant, but real. “You would need the blessing of the Quiet Council.” “And I will get it.” Emma answered plainly. “Because our nation deserves this night where we are not defending ourselves. We deserve this.” [i]To be envied.[/i] The winds curled and softened around them and Ororo turned her face toward the shore, expression unreadable. “Emma, is this sudden anticipation and project anything to do with-” “No.” Emma answered quickly. Storm knew to leave it then, but flashed a rare expression of concern Emma’s way all the same. “If you do this, do it with intention. Not indulgence.” “Oh Ororo,” Emma smiled. “Indulgence is [i]precisely[/i] my intention, always.” Storm huffed out a breath of forming up the acceptance before she could stop herself. Emma was going to do what she was going to do, and perhaps she [i]was[/i] right. It would be in the Council's hands. “It’s very you.” “I know," Emma said with a slight smile. [/indent][/color]