Welcome to Gaia! ::

If ever more significant was a sky as red as the apple that stopped the white maiden's breath, then tonight, a simple Wednesday, would serve as a reminder of such significance. But as it were, a night in which fate itself would take a spin on loaded probability, would stand alone, unabated, waiting to taste and to bathe in such a sky as this.

Tapered fingers explore soft dark curls of hair, twisting one lock and pressing into it with ease a pin soon made invisible by another such lock. This process continues, labouring slowly, as perfection takes as long as it damn wants to get ready for the evening.

Her tongue glides over the edge of a pin that is held between her lips, which she no sooner tastes than she plucks from her mouth and slips expertly into her hair to hold in place another flawless loop. For a woman in her power, she could have commanded someone else do this chore for her, or, much less strenuous, magicked it so. But, in truth, Pandora savours the ridiculous amount of time it takes to prepare herself, indulging in herself and only her; and it's very likely that she believes it to be truly the only time in which she can do so, though more truly told, the woman's life is the sun in which all things revolve.

As she twists the last curl into place. Pandora straightens up and admires herself in the wall mounted mirror. As it would be a sin not mention it - granted, the woman herself is no stranger to sin, but I digress - she dons the most stunning piece of material - er, clothing in the deepest of reds, barely covering the bits that mattered but emphasizing them all the same. She is of Indian descent, her skin a delicious shade of brown, her nose slightly hooked, and her hair an enticing, dimensional black. Her teeth are just sharp enough on the edges that one might think her vampiric if not the best hooker money could buy. A human tooth dangles across her collarbone, wound and held in place with a thin but strong black thread. And though Pandora is mostly average in height, she is never without at least two inches of heel to boost her height and confidence.

She slides her hand across her dresser, drinking in the touch of delicate, stained cedar wood, before her fingertips practically pulse atop the ornate lid of a certain little box. A secret smile crosses her lips, and she turns in her place, leaving her quarters furthermore untouched, by means of disintegrating in her place.

No, not disintegrating. A Time Ranger's teleportation is no such mere trick as this, but it is in the breaking down of particles that wisp and mimic the sands of an hourglass; so it is also fitting, too, that those who are innately blessed with the whims of time can also pass on its breath in a measure of counting it. In a blink, in a moment, they are gone with it, and elsewhere with another.

The volume immediately increases as Pandora opens her dark eyes to a setting very unlike the one she just left. Just another Wednesday night, partying with the High Council.. of Hell, that is. The woman is one of twelve members of the leaders of her own race (ironically also named the High Council) so it also fitting, too, that she wishes to feast with the kings and queens of the underworld, as well. All the while, hungry for power, she continues to reign a people who naively fail to acknowledge her corruption and deceptions.

Two men rush at her to take her coat, the only piece of decency she dons, their Slavic faces greedily and blatantly exploring her flawless bust. She tosses her head back, curls sliding across her smooth shoulders haughtily as she passes them.. but not after slipping out of said jacket with naught but the curve of her back visible to the dirty Hell servants. When the jacket hits the ground, one leaps forward, sniveling and groping it perversely.

"Fine tiding, gentlemen," Pandora croons in entrance, her heels clicking with every saucy swing of her hip.

Their meeting place is very much a miniature gambling hall, employing the most obedient of servants to take the place of what activities the guests would partake in on this particular Wednesday. It seems, from the colossal wheel with red and black pockets, that the game of choice would be roulette.

Pandora snatches up a cocktail from the plate of a wall-eyed waiter, downing it less than daintily. She regards a few comrades, making small talk into the later hours of twilight, catching up on the week's activities like a good socialite. It was in the middle of a particularly dreadful recounting of an attempted rebellion from within the interspecie-correction facility that the party finds itself on its first upsidedown twist of the metaphorical roller coaster.

"Friends!" A man interrupts in a shout, stepping up onto the leveled platform prepared for the honoured participants of the Games, calling everyone's attention toward him. He continues to shout, even though most of the noise has now died down. "We gather together again!"

He swivels in his place, clearly charismatic in the manner in which he holds himself. A malicious grin slips easily across his dark face. "I trust we've all now had the chance to mix and mingle appropriately by now."

An expected and almost scripted pulse of laughter erupts from the guests, who range somewhere from differently raced people to those of hellish influence and inhuman traits. They are the most respected of anyone who matters, as deemed by themselves - and, more importantly, Pandora is regarded as one of the top of these demented elitists. She claps politely, saving her laughter for something more worth the effort. Ever defiant is she, even in the smallest of matters.

The man, presumably the host, is of the hellish influence, blessed with sizable horns, a delightful crimson tail, and pointed and oversized ears. Pandora makes note of his pleasing appearance, letting her eyes drift over his defined arms and slim torso. As her eyes find their way a little more south of the border, the man is already into another stanza of his charismatic speech.

"Dolls and demons," he croons, leaping up onto a pool table and consequently ending the game with a twist of the wrist that sends the cues up in flames. "Let's turn up the heat."

Pandora rolls her eyes at the cheap trick, turning back around to lean on a poker table, tipping back her drink and downing it, the liquid almost missing her tongue entirely. The host continues to ramble off about the fun of torture and wouldn't it be great if they were timed to have an execution, ramblings that the High Council Ranger completely ignores. She'd seen enough to know that she'd need to knock back another dozen stiff ones - alcohol or otherwise - to find herself any enjoyment tonight. She can already forecast this one, and, as attractive and well endowed a host it might have, the party reeks of failure to this power hungry princess.

So it is with genuine surprise that she feels cold fingers slide across her bare shoulders. She sucks in her breath with a hiss, whipping around immediately and withdrawing from beneath the touch of the one who invited himself in. She raises her hand defensively to give the b*****d a good smack, finding, instead, the host not inches from her face, and, displaying most unnatural speed, a hand crushing her raised wrist.

"Now, now, none of that, glitter-bug, I only made a misstep," he breathes down on her flirtatiously, bringing her arm down forcibly to press between her accentuated breast.

She hides a snarl as he leans over her to snatch up a drink from a server, twisting it into an entirely fake smile through which she purposely overacts in her responded banter.

"Gracious, no, Ioann, I understand how difficult it is for someone of your affliction to adjust to average gravity, when you're so used to your ego emitting its own!" Pandora jerks her hand suddenly, reclaiming it only to massage away the pain caused by the host to whom she can, she thinks, feel she's getting right where she wants him.

But for the second time that night, and surely making some sort of record for the temptress, he surprises her. He backs up just enough to provide space, should she wish to slip away, and in fact looking as if he's expecting her to. "My apologies, again. I wasn't aware that peaches with their own castles in the sky knew a thing about the ways of the so called 'everyone else'. My mistake."

Pandora feels heat rise to her cheeks, her shoulders stiffening in seething anger. Not one to easily turn down a challenge, never mind one she feels she can easily beat down into the mud.. and then maybe have her way with.. before feeding to piranhas, the Ranger woman flexes her fingers at her hips and chews down on her plump lower lip in preparation to unleash fury she's confident will knock this demon back to the grave.

She opens her mouth, ready with a feisty retort on her tongue, but Ioann speaks louder, reclaiming his announcement voice, and talks over what she might have said.

"What's that, apricot? You think a little friendly competition's in order, to put a twist in our party?" He tosses up his toned arms and turns to the attentive crowd in a gesture that welcomes their response, to Pandora's horror. "I don't know, we seem t' be having a grand ol' time over here! What say you, comrades?"

As expected, the other guests roar in support of the challenge, some shouting out suggestions of maimings and pawn fights and even one encouraging a pistol fight at dawn. Most others chant for a gambling duel. Ioann raises his hands to silence the rowdy guests, commanding the authority of the room with ease that causes the pampered Pandora a pang of jealousy to witness.

"And you, sugar? You up for a little.. tango?" Ioann slips a hand around her waist, his fingers lingering at the line of her hip, barely separated by a very flimsy fabric from touching bare skin.

Pandora, exhibiting the best possible degree of self control known to man [or demon, for that matter], only returns his advance with a smile, her pointed canines slipping into view over glossed lips. "Certainly," she hisses in response, loud enough for the other guests to hear. "A lady of prestige never turns down a good challenge."

The crowd roars with support; jolly good, jolly good, that is the answer they are hoping for!

Ioann, as if expecting such a response, waves a hand to his servants on the raised platform, signaling a sort of chain reaction of events. First, the obscenely oversized roulette wheel collapses into itself under the assistance of two strong men. Next, the table is lengthened, and as a woman brushes her hand over the symbols on it, they switch and change themselves into symbols of torture, death, and sin. The platform raises, air hissing out from the cracks followed by dry, dusty plumes of smoke.

And as the roulette wheel is in the process of shifting and changing under its own weight, Ioann walks Pandora to the smokey platform with a very satisfied grin upon his lips. Pandora doesn't share his enthusiasm, but keeps her head high, and suspicion higher.

The wheel unfolds into a more majestic version of itself, most superfluous and lavish with beautiful black and red satin pockets and exquisite polished wood of a very dark stain.

Ioann leads his challenger, his prey of the party, up the impromptu stone stairs to take their places at the head of the platform. But not, of course, without one more speech from the party's grand host.

"Comrades! Tonight, for your entertainment, Ranger High Council delegate Pandora, and myself, your humble host of Hell," the man smiles, giving the appropriate cue for himself before pressing on, "Ioann, have for you tonight a very special game of roulette."

He rubs his fingers against the subsequent palm of his hand a half dozen times before pulling a ball out of thin air. It appears to be made of polished bone.

Pandora sidesteps to avoid Ioann's next action, which involves him slamming a hand down on the edge of the grossly oversized wheel. He doesn't damage it, as it seems he knows exactly what he's doing, and probably, to Pandora's disgust, rehearsed this entire thing.

Which means he predicted her not turning down his challenge. Annoying.

Instead, the wheel tips so that the audience can see how it is numbered. For it is not numbered at all; the numbers are all replaced with symbols, meant to represent methods of torture. Tiny drawings, etched in white paint onto the squares, are very involved and probably cost its artist - and commissioner - a pretty penny. Pandora's gasp is lost amongst the dozens of others as the room leans in to admire the craftsmanship. Ioann seems to have scripted in enough time to allow for a few moments of such admiration before pushing the giant wheel effortlessly upright.

Pandora is silently grateful that the game won't be of physical strength.

Ioann, ever charismatic, engages the crowd once more. "Our game will involve nine rounds, if that many are required to .. obtain the objective." He glances over his shoulder at his company, savouring her attention more than that of the whole crowd. "A back and forth sort of game, where a spin of the wheel will decide the delicious theme of the round."

He moves again to the wheel, his back to the crowd, but still aware of maintaining every eye in his direction. He smiles, running a large hand on the symbols affectionately. "That is where the real fun will be, sugar," he says in Pandora's direction, lowering his voice just for her to hear. She scowls as another pet name passes his lips, only feeding his enjoyment.

He whips around the balls of his feet and tosses open his arms. "She and I will conduct an illusion based on the theme that the wheel decides for us! The winner will be decided when the subjects.. are broken." He slowly brings his arms back to his sides. "As I said, if it takes nine full rounds to break them, then the ninth round will be a tournament of her and I, head to head. A race, of sorts."

He gestures dismissively with a hand. "But I highly doubt anyone will possess the strength and sanity to last the full tournament."

The crowd chuckles knowingly, a few men elbowing one another and nodding their agreement. They are, after all, in the company of beings from Hell.

"And the prize, if I win?"

Ioann grabs Pandora's hand between both of his, giving it a pat with the topmost one. "Darling, the keys to my kingdom."

Pandora is stonefaced, almost unimpressed. So he really doesn't expect her to win this. "And if you win?"

A menacing smile upturns the corners of Ioann's dark face. "Sweetpea, don't worry your pretty head about that."

She tugs her hand from his, reclaiming it with a narrow-eyed stare. Trust is something to be earned, and, certainly, there is a severe lack of it floating throughout the room itself, between the cursed and the accursed party-goers, never mind the clashing forces now, through the veil of a polite smiles of proprietors.

"An' who'll be the lucky sod on the chopping block?" a voice pipes up.

Ioann flashes an irresistible grin. He'd thought of this already, too. "We'll leave that up to chance, too," he replies with venom on his tone, and he pulls Pandora into him with an arm around her dainty neck, his free arm holding up the shiny ball.

"Pandora and I have our favourites. And by favourites, I most certainly mean the ones that get away, that constantly grind our nerves to ash and we can't do a ******** thing to get back at them the same way." He clenches the ball in a way that startles Pandora; she doesn't know if it's because she's worried he'll crush the expensive looking thing to pieces, or if she's shocked that Ioann felt so passionately about something that shouldn't easily get to him. She files this tidbit away for later exploitation.

He loosens his grip on the ball, turning it over and considering it in his hand. "Our favourite toys," he murmurs in a scratchy, strange voice, and Pandora can feel the muscle at her neck loosen a flex she wasn't aware of earlier. "Like little plastic action figures, they'll be, and we'll finally, finally get to control everything."

Pandora idly wonders who could possibly slip through Ioann's fingers. Her mind searches, raking through her endless list of enemies for someone who's actually evaded her wrath and her little soul-shredding box. Not many, that's for certain.

And then a face arises, boiling her blood and making her hot around her neck and slightly pointed ears. A Ranger who had ******** over her carefully orchestrated and meticulously webbed system, her world of people. Hers, belonging to her, and uprooted, to her absolute horror, by him. Only temporarily, of course, but still.. those moments of lost control were absolutely horrifying to the woman who has spent eternity living every spoiled b***h's fantasy.

Ioann takes her face in his hand, letting a finger slide across the strong of her jaw. "Precious, let's decide whose toys we get to play with. Yours, or mine." He speaks in such a soothing tone that, to Pandora's better judgment, she relaxes beneath his touch and complies with a lick of her lip and a nod.

She reaches up and takes the ball from him, her perfectly painted nails clicking on the surface. "To decide this, then," she quips, moving around Ioann with a luscious, purposeful swing of the hips, designed and executed flawlessly to steal the attention to her enhanced frame. With her free hand, she clasps a side of the massive roulette wheel. "We'll let the wheel do the choosing."

Ioann joins her at her side, grabbing, too, the wheel. "I call black."

Pandora turns her head slightly to look up at him. "Then that leaves me with red," she confirms.

She feels the wheel tug back a little as Ioann prepares to throw it forward, and follows his lead, just a little after him, so that, when the wheel is released, her throwing arm recoils a little more than his. She offers the ball to him, as the massive wheel spins with resounding clickclickclicks, but he just curls his fingers around hers, cupping her entire hand in his much larger one.

And this time it is she who pushes first, and him following her lead, the way she finds more suitable. A woman, especially one with power such as herself, should always have men right where they want them, not play to their whims.

The ball thumps and skips across the pockets, teasingly hitting every few pockets with a promise of slowing down. The entire room, even the party's servants, seem to have stopped and wait with baited breath, to witness the first of what they hope to be many tense, back and forth challenges between the pair..

Pandora's thoughts swirl. Does she want the ball to land in a red square? To share her toys would mean allowing the other the pleasure of playing with them, and in a flare of childish selfishness, she decides she wants her toys all for herself. She'll be the one to break them, and only she. Her fingers idly push the tooth on her necklace as she tracks the slowing ball.

The wheel clicks to its final stop. The ball spins within a pocket scribed with a symbol resembling some sort of acidic substance, a bucket, and four fingers.

The pocket is red.

Whispers instantly ripple across the party hall. Pandora clenches her teeth, driving her nails into her palms to hold back a frustrated scream. She is certain this whole scheme has been concocted from the start to set her up, but under no circumstance can she risk her prestige by firing out such an accusation, especially not in mixed company. It'd be her own death sentence to do so.

Hot breath on her left ear doesn't help. Ioann whispers to her, "Don't worry, sweets, I'll at least let you have a turn before I claim victory."

It's thankful for him, and for Pandora's sanity, that he turns away immediately after to address the crowd, for one more second of his smirking face and she'd be forced to remove it. She, unlike him, remains with her back to the audience, staring at the ball in disbelief. Rigged, for certain.

"Comrades, I invite you to hear whom will be entertaining us this fine evening!" Ioann roars, absolutely giddy with anticipation. He throws back an arm at Pandora. "C'mon, angel, share with us the names of your favourite toys!"

Pandora closes her eyes and purses her lips as she collects herself. She whirls around on her incredibly elevated heels with a trained smile gracing her plump lips. "Long has this certain individual grated upon my last nerve," she begins coolly, starting into the necessary pretense. "He is one of my own kind, sadly, but has recently chosen to defy the ancient laws of our people."

"Why didn'tcha jus' tear'm a new one?" a sloshed party-goer pipes up.

Pandora glares in his general direction for the interruption. "Because, dolt, he is of my own kind! And it is by the hands of a murderer, his own murderer, that he was given the balls to revolt in the first place!" she snarls, heat rising into her face once again.

No more further interruptions, drunken or otherwise, will cross her, not after that tone.

She smooths her demeanor to her previous facade in an instant, straightening up where she stands just to reclaim her dignity. "As I was saying, he defied the laws of our people. He became the first of our kind to be killed in action, and through his irresponsibility, returned to us changed, defiant, and revoltingly more powerful." She gives a side glance through her lashes at Ioann. "So, as proven to me many times over, he will not be easy to break."

Pandora stretches her arms a little, pressing her shoulder blades together by bringing her wrists back beyond her hips. "Fortunately, one of his unRangerlike qualities has been exposed to us, in the form of a girl, whom he illegally endowed with time magic in his rebirthed youth." She emphasizes a sigh to make it audible. "We'll just have to bring both here, and teach them their place in the order of things."

Though not at all charismatic as Ioann, the High Council Ranger can command a room with both her body and with fear. Taking advantage of the silence following her final words, with no one wanting to speak, less she not actually be finished and thus earn their own terrifying scream from the fanged woman, Pandora reaches into the wheel and picks up the ball. She slips it into Ioann's hand, sliding past him, ensuring she touch him as much as possible, under her own terms, as she moves out of the way to give her blessing for him to take the first spin.

It is Ioann's turn to act shocked. As it seems, Pandora is making sure to take her own misstep to each of his preplanned ones, forcing him to adjust on the spot. Intriguing.

"Allow me to introduce them to you." Pandora reaches a hand into the air, grasping at something invisible, but pulling through the air with fingers entwined with blackened smoke. The air slides down under her will, outlined by a swirling border of corrupted black air, and within the center is a small visual.

She guides the mess to the centre of the raised platform. With a clean motion that an orchestral conductor would be envious of, the woman gestures by opening up her arms and flicking both wrists rapidly. The visual extends subsequently into something resembling a screen for the guests to watch the play-by-plays. She does the same, only horizontally, across the roulette table, creating a sort of playing board for their little game. While the visual on their table is currently blank, having not a scene set within it, the one made for the courtesy of those spectating is now alive with real time feed..

"Take this coin, fer example."

Sitting on the edge of the a bascule bridge in Chicago, a young man with crimson hair and a very outlandish style of dress sits with a middle aged woman, each dangling their legs freely over the water. He rubs a silver quarter between his fingers, pushing it to the tips, and leans over to show the woman, as if she's never seen a regular quarter before.

She looks up at him and the coin. Her face is tear stained, and she carries a little more weight around her neck and thighs than she probably did years ago. Skeptical, but willing to give anything a chance by this point, the woman makes a little noise in the back of her clenched throat to indicate that she's listening.

Dare takes this as a good sign, and begins into his spiel. He waves his free hand over the coin as if about to perform a magic trick. "There're two sides t' this coin, am I right? A head, and a tails?"

She thumps her head forward into folded hands against the rail, the only thing keeping the woman, currently, from tossing herself over the side. She was very, very discouraged to realize she wasn't immediately able to maneuver herself through the twisted sheets of metal to fulfill her suicidal urges. And now she's been stopped by an idiot with a coin, who'd spent the last half hour trying to talk to her, probably, she supposes, buying time before emergency personnel come to take her away.

Seeing that he's losing his audience, Dare skips ahead in his coin speech and explains that life is all flip flop, sometimes giving you head and sometimes tails, but all together it's a part of something much bigger and worth its weight in silver.

He idly wonders, watching the woman slowly and politely nod, how he'd gotten so bad at this s**t. No, he doesn't go seeking out suicidals and try to get all preachy because he enjoys it, or he's some new age cult recruiter, or something. Far less voluntary.

Dare is a Time Ranger: a race of people who are affiliated with time magic, who are ruled by twelve self-important idiots who suppress the freedom of their people and regulate everything from their magic, to their diets, to their breathing. Well, none of this is proven, but Dare really wouldn't be surprised if that were true, too. He was taken at age eleven, though in fact he didn't really belong to his parents to begin with. The lackeys of the High Council hand picked a "vessel" who would raise him until he could be reclaimed and shaped, molded, and formed to do their bidding.

Which included dirty work like trying to talk a jumper off a bridge. Real guardian angel type stuff, only without the halo, and with a less frilly and preachy vocation. Usually. You still get the nutjobs, the ones who think the Council is admirable and mighty and just. Hah.

"See, ma'am, you jus' gotta pull through. Fer yer kids, and stuff. They need you."

Really convincing. How ******** lame a sweet-talker he's gotten in his time off!

The woman sighs, leaning forward onto her chubby fingers, her fleshy elbows pressing into her thighs. "I know," she whispers meekly, eyes clouding over. Dare lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding, relieved that even though he's recycling old television cliches, his words are still getting through to the woman.

"Good. So, no swim for us today, right?"

The woman smiles at him, though Dare can tell from her heavily lidded eyes and distant gaze that it wasn't the thought of her kids that made her all misty-eyed. He lurches forward, thrusting out a hand to stop the woman from slumping forward on herself. He catches sight of a pill bottle and a few remaining pills fall off the side of the bridge and into the water.

"C'mere, c'mere, precious," he coaxes the woman as he pulls her away from the edge, in fear that she, too, would make that trip into the water. Her breathing is shallower, but her smile remains.

Dare scrambles with his phone, thumbing in the emergency number. A hand touches his cheek, causing him to jump in his skittishness. He gives the hand a reassuring pat, and answers the "Please state your emergency" with a quick low-down on the situation.

"Sir, can I have your name?" the anonymous emergency response personnel inquires, just as Dare clicks the phone shut, and tosses that in after the pills.

He gets onto his knees, one of them shocked at how cool the metal of the bridge is. He hadn't noticed the sun going down, but now, the natural light is dimmer, and he's straining between the extremely low sun on the horizon and the impending darkness to find a neutral for his eyes to adjust to. The woman coughs a little, causing him to stroke her face as she did his.

"Lemme tell you a story, pretty," he says hoarsely, fingers now stroking her hair, instead. She groans a little, and he leans over her so she can see him crack a smile. "It'll be better than th' last, promise!"

He holds up two fingers in a mock Scout's Honour, making the dying woman's strained face loosen into a relaxed smile again.

He concentrates on the metal above the woman's eyeline, part of the bridge's support system, and pretty much the only thing he figures the woman can stand to concentrate her eyes on without rolling of into a place he doesn't want her to go, not on his watch. Deaths involve a shitload of paperwork. Do not want.

The metal swirls, not all together too different from what the woman is already witnessing sans magic. From this nonsensical motion forms a solid image, compact to fit the surface, like a little movie screen with crackling sound.

"Mama!" the soul clip says in the voice of one of the woman's sons, five years previous. "Look, Mama, look what Santa got me! Spiderman feetie pajamas!!"

Dare strokes the woman's hair, gently untangling a lock near her ear, as his charge begins to cry in silence at the images in front of her eyes. In her head? In front of her face? She can't tell the difference. Her life is flashing before her eyes, and she realizes.. two sides of a coin, and she's just recently been stuck on the flip, waiting for the flop.

Sirens wail in the distance. Dare slips, very carefully, away from his dying charge, leaving her to her own memories, assisting only in bringing them back to her through the file of her life. He sighs heavily, hoping to the pizza god that those sirens get here in thirty seconds or less, or this gal's free.

He waves his fingers in the air a little, half-waving, simultaneously vexing the spot to continue to play for the woman for another twenty seconds longer. He glances over his shoulder, spotting flashing lights not far off.

He relaxes his shoulders, shaking his head into the wind that picks up around him. His hair flies every which way, currently at the inconvenient in-between stage of length that is neither long nor short, but all together an annoyance. Beginning at his fingertips and shoulders, Dare starts to disintegrate, and closes his eyes to this scene, hoping, as always, that he's done the right thing.

He waits for the process of teleportation, the familiar mode of transportation that he, like all Rangers, has become so dependent on.

But an all too different sequence of events interrupts the relaxation that is supposed to come next, and he shoots his eyes open as pain replaces the parts of his body that have begun to disappear. To his horror, these areas are blood sodden, weakened. Hesitating as the sirens surround him, Dare furiously tries again to teleport, managing only to keel over as worse pain strikes him in his weakened joints and muscles.

"Hands where I can see them!" shouts a faceless police officer.

Dare's vision is hazy. He writhes on the pavement, a sudden panic gripping its dirty skinny fingers around him; is this death? What is happening..? Could he have been attacked and not realized..?

Cold metal touches his wrists. Handcuffs? But why? Dare can barely see; blood has trickled over his brow and into his eye, never mind what he can see is clouded over. He's tasted death before, but it was quicker than this, a sweeter release. This.. this is just agony. And on top of that, from what his fading consciousness can derive from the sounds and blurred sights, is that he's being arrested.

How absurd. He called it in as a suicide attempt, not a homicide. Granted, the blood on him must look suspicious, next to the body of a middle aged woman. Oh, his charge..! He struggles against his eyelids to force his eyes open to look over at the woman, whose name escapes him but whose file details he poured over daily and whose life he monitored for weeks, to see only that she is relaxed, her eyes closed, head flopped over as if she intended to be sniffing her armpit.. for an extended period of time.

Wonderful. He'll lose a case, and his life, all in one fell swoop. Certainly, there can be none at his occupation more talented at failing than he.

"Unngh," he groans, struggling in his current position to gain control over his breathing. He's face to the pavement, within arms length of two uniforms, hands cuffed behind him, and losing ridiculous amounts of blood. The ******** irony is that this does not at all concern the city's finest law enforcers, as they work heavily on reviving the woman who looked to be long at peace, who died, at least, with a smile on her face.

Well if I'm dying, Dare reasons, there's no further harm in trying once more to escape. He closes his eyes, concentrating on a nice hospital bed in Rome, and feels his limbs begin to seize up. He howls involuntarily as the gouge of his right leg deepens, and breaks apart at the knee, separating as if eaten away by a fast acting acidic compound, blackened straight through.

A cracked scream erupts from his chest as his leg breaks in two pieces. With newly renewed strength, he flips himself over onto his side, his naturally half-lidded eyes wide with horror.

And the best part? The officers give the situation a once over, and continue to try and resuscitate the long deceased woman by any means possible.

"My ******** leg, you bastards, ********' get me to a hospital a'fore I BREAK TO BLOODY PIECES!" He thrashes, his arms still bound, but with enough momentum to move just a little bit. The nauseating sound of sloshing liquid is cause for Dare to painfully aim his eyes down, and he really, really wishes he hadn't just noticed the amount of blood he's swimming in.

He turns his torso, considering the edge of the bridge for a solid dozen seconds. He can feel, in the tiny hourglass pendant at his chest, beneath his shirt, the little granules of sand leaking from a crack at a very rapid pace.

Once more. Once more is the chance I have, even if it kills me. ********, it seems I'm dying anyway, so whatever p***k did it, let me have my just desserts in my next life.

Dare mentally tugs at the release mechanism in his subconscious, the little "abort" button, as he pictures it right now to be. His little mental self slams down his hand, trying to steer his vessel out of further harm's way, like a spaceship avoiding a meteor shower with all its sirens wailing as if the pilot hadn't already noticed that he's completely ********.

He doesn't even notice anymore, after pulling away in disconnect from reality and withdrawing into his subconscious as a sort of fetal position for his bruised little Ranger soul, that he is very slowly dissolving, peacefully, properly, and lifted up onto the wind, leaving behind only a set of locked handcuffs.

April awakens with her cheek squished against cold concrete. She's grateful for this coolness, almost willing to rest here longer if not for the fuzziness in her head that scares her into forcing herself upright. No sooner does she do this, though, than a searing pain strikes the base of her neck and into her ear, causing her to recoil with a scream.

She tucks her knees to her chest, unable to move her arms, or she'd be hugging them. Her arms are limp behind her, bound at the wrists, middle fingers, and underside of her elbows with globule modules on wires. They look sort of medicinal in nature, which should be comforting to her, as it would mean she's in some sort of emergency care after the accident. But the concrete floor and absolute solitude speak differently of the situation.

Curio, I'm sca- she begins to say. The pain returns to her, on the opposite side this time, and she chokes back a cry. Her heart aches in her chest in a way she's never felt before, and she closes her eyes, her chin dropping to her clavicle. To anyone watching, she looks to have passed out.

In truth, she is listening for a heartbeat, one so close to her own, just on a smaller scale, that she can find it anywhere she goes.

At first she cannot find it, and she panics, her breathing shortening, chest and shoulders heaving. But it rises from the darkness in tiny, faint thumps to her right. She turns quickly, stifling the pain she feels with every movement by biting down into her lip.

The task of finding him is very difficult without the use of her hands. She becomes aware of the device on her head, to which her arms seem to be attached, but from which even more wires - and with them, questions - lead off into the darkness of the room. She feels the little pulses ripple against her skin now that her head isn't so clouded. Whether that's a good thing is yet to be seen, for she cannot tell, still, if this.. device is healing or hindering her.

"Curiosity," she calls to him hoarsely, wiggling her torso to propel herself in his general direction as determined by the sound of his little heartbeat. She speaks to him aloud, something she rarely does in general, never mind to him, with whom audible speech is, under normal circumstances, not at all necessary. Still, the reminder of the pain that flared up as she tried to talk to him mentally the first time is enough to change her mind about a second try, related or not.

She rolls a little to relieve the pressure of the dead weight of her body on her right thigh, shifting it and her legs to try and pull into a crawl. Without her arms, this proves foolish, as she goes straight forward with her jaw contacting the floor first. Tears spill down her cheeks. She gives up for the moment, lying there, partly paralyzed, and all together very alone.

Not completely. Never completely alone, she reasons with herself. She replaces her other half's mental voice with her own reassurance. Tilting her head back, the wires tickling her cheeks, April squints through the blanketed darkness for anything, a shape or a movement, to give her any idea of what's going on.

However, the room is engulfed in an unnatural blackness, devoid of anything but shadow. She can barely see her own hand lying limp at her side. She lets out a muffled whimper and gives up on holding her head up, resting her cheek down on the concrete floor once again, finding solace in its cold.

Do you really need me around to tell you to keep your head up?

The voice is so startling that the girl jolts quite visibly, if one were able to see it.

Honestly, I'm no spider spinnin' messages in her web, but do you really need my voice nagging you, chin up, chin up? the daemon's voice quips mentally with a very faint snort aloud.

April smiles into the darkness in the general direction of his noise and heartbeat. No, I guess not, she responds with a mental sigh, But it's nice to hear it sometimes.

Yeah, well.. grumbles the irritable turtle daemon, followed by an indistinguishable rustle in the same direction. I think that it's the part of the book where Wilbur learns that Charlotte can't always be there for him.

Her heart leaps into her throat, and its pounding is deafening in her ears. Wh-what are you saying, Curio? Where are you?

Nothing, April. I can't see a thing. He sounds slightly strange as he says this to reassure her, as if his words are hollowed by a lie. But to lie to the one person who has always known every truth about the other.. April brushes off this line of thinking before the daemon can have the chance to read her thoughts.

Can you come find me? I.. I can't use my arms, Curio. She closes her eyes, swallowing at her dry throat. I have something attached to me, and I don't know what it's doing to me.

Me too. It hurts something awful..

She chokes back empathy, trying not to remember the last time they were in such a similar situation. The details are all etched into her memory despite being an infant at the time, all thanks to a little device and a very cruel Council of adults whom time doesn't touch. She had been "on trial" for something she was born with, as far as she knows, but these Council people did not want to believe this.

Dare had taken the brunt of the blame, having been accused of giving her said ability. He himself had been not older than twelve, and yet had to represent himself against pretty much everyone of his race in a very unfair trial only fronted with the name of "trial" to make everything these monsters did seem legal.

What they did was far from it.

They had attached a crude device with a monitor on it to both her and Curiosity, fusing their spirits temporarily in order to interrogate their joined soul for the answers they hoped to receive. It had been an ordeal that completely violated the pair in ways one of their condition should never have to suffer through, and was so incredibly painful and degenerate that they had never spoken of it, thus never coming to terms with the experience.

Realizing that she's been listening to her own breathing for an extended period of time, panic flares up in April once more, and she shoots up into an upright position. "Curio? Curio, say something," she whines, pushing off with her toes and scraping her thigh across the ground in a direction she thinks he's in, though she's all twisted around now and everything looks the same in the dark.

There's a damp noise, like something slapping a thin pool of water. She twists, seeking it out, finding it more to her right than she'd originally thought. "Curio?"

I'm here, the rough, rumbly voice responds, sounding rather deflated.

Keep talking to me.

Too tired to talk.

April furrows her brow, her lower lip pushing out at her black surroundings. Don't be stupid, this isn't the time for a nap. We need to get out of here!

And where's here, exactly? he retorts, accompanied by another snort out loud. We can't very well leave when there's nothing to damn well tell us where we are.

She knows he's right, but is regardless put off by his lack of enthusiasm for their own well being. He is practical, where she is led by intuition, and right now, she wants out of this dungeon. Swaying where she sits, she suddenly feels the fatigue that hit her daemon moments earlier, and fights against the unconsciousness that pulls her down. Her useless arms act as nothing more than dead weight at her sides.

She's at a loss of what to say. Certainly, her voice of reason is in need of a pep talk of his own, but the precog can find nothing that she can say that she would believe, herself. being that the other is an extension of her, it is more than likely that, like her, he would rather truth than fabricated comforts.

If only I was stronger, she complains privately, bitterly evaluating how useless a person with magical talent such as herself is when lacking the will or control to wield them. I could have seen this coming, and done something to prevent it.

Maybe. she adds gloomily. But, probably not. These time people are much smarter than that.

Her heart begins to ache as her rapidly processing mind inadvertently makes the natural leap from thinking about her possible captors (their identities soley based on them being the only people in her short life span to ever wish her harm) to the unrequited item of her affections. Although it is through him that all pain her life can be blamed, all is forgiven tenfold for the love and affection he's shown her, even if he's only ever protected and cared for her in a way one might do for a younger sibling.

For all this, she forgives him.

Still, the young girl can't help herself in wondering why these people continue to plague her life with horrors and scandals. Mentally sorting through reasonable possibilities - the questionable circumstances of her birth, her relationship with one of their own, her own albeit differing affinity for time magic - April is too distracted at first to notice the very slight and very gradual adjustment of light in the room. in her blindness, she may as well be closing her eyes, but now, gradually, she can see more of herself - and with it, the horrors ravaging her body.

She studies them, and her naturally pladic face hardens over with grim realizations. She can see now why her arms remain paralyzed; at her shoulders are clamps she can barely feel save for a slight ache in the depth of the joint. More importantly, there are dual intravenous needles planted into the base of her wrists, and another, thicker one in the soft underside of each elbow. She cries silently, letting her head succumb to teh overbearing weight of the cranial device and rest against her shoulder in an overall defeated stance.

Her bangs tickle across her nose. She sighs, and the idle, fleeting thought of, what if I died in that crash..? whomps her in the gut as the final blow. April continues to cry silently, her exhaustion getting the best of her.

She is silenced by her eyelashes fluttering involuntarily at the pulsing of light. Sight has become so unnatural for the girl that she is startled at being able to see clearer. And with this new pulsing light, she forces her puffy eyes wide open to adjust faster in a renewed desperation to be able to see anything that will provide her answers.

The light originates from a machine. She sees this first, as it's right at her eyeline and is the source of most of the little pulsing lights. She squints and follows it up with her eyes, shuffling forward for a closer look.

She immediately wishes she hadn't.

Atop the machine sits a sort of aquarium like enclosure. The bottom has two spouts out which water slowly flows. And suspending above it by a strap around his middle is her daemon, her other half, barely conscious. His limbs, similarly to her, are monitored and stuck with needles, but worse still is the contraption around his neck and head. His throat is clamped just tight enough that breathing is still possible, but not much more than that. A wire runs through it and out from under his chin, above his head, and back into the thing through the base of his neck. Above him are a dozen live wires, sparking and wiggling with life of their own.

A death trap.

Collapsing in a heap of limbs and managing to land square on his tailbone, Dare groans and rubs his brow with his palm. Never ever in as far back as he can remember had his teleportation ever hurt. When he'd learned, he was very reluctant in case a part of him were to be left behind or something, a natural fear to be sure, but it had done nothing more than relax him completely, and maybe tickle once or twice.

Remembering the aforementioned fear, he quickly remembers the ordeal with his leg so recently falling off, and scrambles frantically to find it. He pats his calf to reassure himself of its renewal. He sighs a deeply wrought breath of relief; he can't imagine hobbling around with a nub and a cane for the rest of his life in this body. He pats the leg and then extends it to test its use, finding it more or less the same as before the ordeal.

Good. Now he can forget the whole thing ever happened, and-

He looks up. It's a pretty natural reaction that, when someone is staring at you, you eventually find yourself feeling their eyes on you, and are then compelled to stare back.

Granted, he isn't expecting to see her looking down on him.

Dare looks left to right and realizes he's sitting on the ground of an almost featureless ten by ten room, in the company of his least favourite person and essentially the evil overlord of his people, Pandora, who has chosen to sit on top of the table as opposed to at it.

"Uhm." He looks back up at her, his naturally half-lidded eyes squinted in perplexity. And that's exactly all that comes to mind to say in this situation. Because either he teleported himself in on her presumably solitary situation, or his transport was somehow intercepted. And, really, does he want to know the answer, when Pandora is involved? Most likely not.

"Nice of you to drop in on me, sugar." The temptress leans on her elbows, her thinly veiled dress dipping very low across her cleavage. She is a stark contrast in this very white room, her dark skin and black hair creating quite the opposite impression of an angelic apparition above the dazed Ranger. She giggles at his dumbfounderment, leaning further to touch her fingertips to the underside of his chin.

"How are you feeling, gorgeous? You look a little pale 'round the edges," she muses in a dancing tone of voice, light and joyous and, precisely because of this, very dangerous. In his experience, this woman has two modes - self-serving indulgence, and destruction of anything that comes in the way of the previous.

Dare turns away abruptly, refusing to look directly into the sun, so to speak; no matter how bright and tempting it may be, he knows the consequences of being blinded. "I was doing much better a'fore m' leg fell off, but I betche already knew that," he snaps, pushing her hand away unceremoniously.

Pandora straightens up into a kneel atop the table, giving her practiced innocent pout. "Why, Dare, darling," she responds incredulously, "You look perfectly whole to me! A delicious little specimen of male aesthetic, even."

--

"This has to be against the rules!" spits Pandora, the real one, in interruption, pounding her palms down on the game table.

The party goers flip their attention between the jumbo screen made for their convenience, and the live version; some are all too excited at Ioann's portrayal of the woman, while others with more self control (or who, perhaps, already have similar experiences with their self in Dare's place) are more curious as to how the woman will dispute this exaggerated portrayal of herself.

Ioann finds this all too amusing. His fingers are poised over the swirling game viewfinder like someone mid-pluck of a harp. "Rules?" he echos in a mockingly similar tone to the one his Pandora puppet had just used. "When did I ever mention those?"

--

Dare looks at her with disgust emphasized by a wince. "Jus' stoppit, Pandora Yer embarrassing yerself."

He's surprised to hear the woman meet that with a laugh. Still, stubborn as he is, he keeps his eyes on the featureless white floor and clenches his teeth. He doesn't know what he's done this time, or if even the woman is just bored and decided to corner him with the intention of having some fun, nor does he want to find out.

Dare gets to his feet and wobbles slightly with the onset of vertigo. He blinks furiously to rid his eyes of white fuzziness that accompanies his lightheadedness, unfortunately leaving himself momentarily vulnerable.

Being the little predator she is, Pandora takes the bait, and attacks. Long fingers wrap around his tie and tug, inviting themselves to walk up further with every advance. "Darling," the woman croons up at him, her eyes half lidded; Dare idly wonders when the seductress had started using pet names. "You should come and let yourself get comfy. I plan on keeping you here a while."

She tilts her head back, and loose locks of hair dance around her shoulders. Her clavicle leads the eye to - no! Dare pointedly looks away again, angry with himself for letting himself get taken in by her trap.

But she's caught him, and smirks wickedly because of it, her pointed canines slipping into view across her lower lip. She jerks the tie roughly so as to force his face, and his attention, on her.

Dare has no choice now but to look into the eyes of a woman who has stopped at nothing, ever, to get what she wants. These are the eyes that have lured decent, honest men to bed with her, that have with but a glare churned stomachs, chilled bones, and stopped hearts dead. He looks, despite himself, into the face of ill-fate herself, whom he has miraculously escaped the clutches of countless times in this lifetime and last, only to come full circle to the inevitable.

Luck, as it seems, no longer smiles in his direction.

She keeps him within her clutches with a tight grip around his tie, held there with one hand. The other she brings to his chin, where she thumbs his facial hair with a thoughtful smile.

So it's to her surprise that he jerks backward and manages to free himself, the tie slipping out from between her fingers. Being not the most agile of men, he stumbles backward and barely catching his footing before falling back to where he started off.

He works at loosening the choking tie, pointedly keeping his eyes anywhere but up. Very quietly, he mutters, "I've been more than compliant in up keeping my side of t' 'bargain', miss. So I dinnae understand why you insist on keeping me punished." He sounds absolutely miserable, and tugs on the cuff of his sleeve to have something to look at and to keep him occupied.

The Pandora controlled by Ioann takes an appropriate pause as he, back at the party, raises his eyebrow at the real Pandora at the mention of such a bargain. His thoughts leap to the most scandalous of things behind such a bargain as this, and quickly sets things in motion, acting upon these assumptions.

"You're right, you have," Pandora says thoughtfully with a finger to her lip and a tilt to her head, though the latter might just be to get a better view of his lower half. "But that's not at all why you're here."

Dare throws up his arms with a roll of his eyes. “Fine, I’ll bite. Why am I here?”

Her wicked smile returns to her at winning him over. She swings her smooth legs across the tabletop and over the edge of the table, pushing off in a smooth motion and landing perfectly on her ridiculously masochistic heels.

She approaches him with the determination of a starved bear. He back-pedals to avoid her path, but instead, being that he’s trapped in a small enclosure, he backs himself up against a wall, making her pursuit all the easier. She grabs hold of the back of his neck and pulls up against him, making the Ranger even more uncomfortable with her advances by eliminating all proximity between them in one fell swoop. The woman has lost all decency and control that one of her superiority should be able to maintain, though the man has known this of her for quite some time.

She brings her free hand to his cheek and traces down, slowly, while maintaining eye contact with her source of enjoyment. Batting heavily shadowed eyes at him, she continues to help herself to his body by letting her fingers explore down his neck and collar. He stiffens his back and sprawls up further against the wall. She takes advantage of this by letting her finger trail down his front, zigzagging between buttons, to land on his belt.

Dare’s wide eyes rapidly move between her face and hand incredulously.

She brings herself closer to his ear, performing a balancing act on the front ridge of her heeled shoe to pull this off. “Compensation,” she hisses tauntingly, her fingers sliding in past the buckle and moving lower south. “.. for good behaviour.”

In an unusual display of antagonism, Dare thrashes against Pandora, throwing her careening backwards at the violation to his self-control. “******** you,” he breathes in a heavy pant, giving a visible shudder.

Pandora, though initially surprised, catches herself with her magic, cushioning her fall with little sonic blasts that push her upright again. Undeterred from her goal, and having known many men who are into this sort of thing, she is on him within another heartbeat.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" comes her reply in a deep tone. Dare gives her another shove, albeit less of a provoked one, at that. This time she stumbles back a step, but this dual rejection is enough to flip her mood like a switch.

She stomps a foot and locks her hands at her sides in a claw-like position. "How many times were you dropped on your head when you were small?!" she snaps, temper flaring. She grabs her own breasts and storms forward a full stride. "Because there has to be something royally ******** up in that head of yours to turn this down!"

--

Pandora is halfway across the game table with her hands out in attack mode. Self restraint kicks in as far as her getting one leg up and her leaning forward, ready to throttle Ioann for his portrayal of her. "You sick b*****d!" she screams, silencing the rowdy, thoroughly entertained guests. "Don't touch me like that, pervert!!"

She breathes heavily in her anger, her shaped brow furrowing. Ioann gives her a laugh and touches the underside of his opponent's chin with a single finger, aiming to piss her off even more by enacting the same sort of scene setup they just witnessed.

"Petal," he can barely contain himself from laughing, "Thousands of others have done the same. And they're your own hands; I can't feel a thing."

--

Pandora holds him against the wall with an unseen force of magic. He chokes a little at the impact, his fingers clawing behind him at the white wall.

"Our bargain is hereby suspended, for disobeying direct instruction from a superior," the royally pissed temptress booms, "And under suspicion of foul play."

The Ranger struggles against her magical claws, knowing the fight is futile, but doing it for show, anyhow. He isn't half of the violent or threatening person his brother is, but that doesn't stop him from trying to at least appear like he can fend for himself if need be.

"The only foul thing here," he snarls at her, "is yer entire entity."

To his disappointment, Pandora is hardly phased by his comeback. She merely waves a hand near her ear, gesturing behind her at the blank wall. An area across, like the viewing window of an interrogation room, melts away in the same manner as grease eats through thin surfaces; it's semi-transparent around the edges, fuzzy as its opaqueness is destroyed, but is clearer in the centre while still being a solid wall. Dare's disappointment twist into horror at what he can see through this makeshift window.

"I'd thought you'd get grouchy over this," she explains coyly, strengthening her magic grip on him, satisfied with the sound of another choke. "So I brought along our little bargaining chip, my little casanova."

Dare squints a little at the dimly lit window, through which the light in their room doesn't appear to spill over in to the next room. He can barely make out the shape of someone on the ground, and the speck in a weird machine.

"I don't believe you," he barks, trying to pull at one of his wrists. She could easily be bluffing, but just as easily not be. From the shoddy lighting job and the bad Saw-like situation, he feels better thinking the woman's just seen too many movies, or that the window is not a window at all, and is instead a screen or a magical projection.

Anything but believe that something is happening to little innocent April.

Pandora rolls her eyes exaggeratedly. "Seriously, are you always this annoyingly defiant, or am I just lucky?" she says oddly, almost out of character. Ioann slips too much of his own influence into the doll, which he quickly corrects with one sassy movement of her hips. That doesn't erase Dare's "what the ********?" face, however.

She scowls and drops her hand and with it the magical hold. Dare collapses forward, catching himself with a very attractive flailing of limbs. Before he can recover to counter, a wave of emotion chills him to his core, washing over him with pure grief and sorrow in a way that makes him gasp only once it passes. A sense of dread accompanies this strange emptiness, in realizing the truth of the matter is that, to his knowledge, the only one capable of such an ability is, actually, his beloved little friend. Bitterly, he makes a note that Pandora is completely unaffected by the miniature blast, and chocks this up to the woman's soullessness and lack of compassion for anyone but herself.

"Lemme see her!" the Ranger demands, charging forward toward the makeshift window.

Exhibiting rapid reflexes, Pandora catches Dare's wrist in her clutches and holds him back by it. He swings in his place, stumbling enough to turn him at an angle that faces her. "Won't you reconsider?" she suggests with a single remaining shred of politeness, which only reflects the oddity of character that Ioann doesn't seem to be able to wrap his head around completely.

Dare turns his captured hand into a fist and pulls away roughly, continuing the motion to storm toward the window like he'd intended. He presses his nose to what would be the glass, if it was made from any sort of Earthly substance, and shades his eyes with both his hands at his brows. He can make out the slightness of her body, her loosened pigtails, and a flash of her little skull hair clip catching a pulse of light from a machine at his left side.

The machine is where his eyes logically examine next. What he sees makes him sick to his stomach. The taste of emotion he received is absolutely nothing in comparison to the horrors of the next room over.

Dare hastily uses his magic to activate the melting of a door into the wall, his impatience making the process seem unreasonable drawn out. Once the door is big enough for the six foot one Ranger to duck into, he bolts forward and looks left and right in the dim room.

He starts forward at the sight of her, his sneakers skidding on the floor as he makes an abrupt, last minute turn for the death machine first. Shaking his arm out of one of his sleeves, he tears off his jacket and throws it on top of the aquarium containing the dead daemon. The separation is done.

April is collapsed, slumped against the base of the machine, sobbing so hard that her body convulses with each hard intake of breath. He falls to his knees beside her, pulling her away from the machine and instead into his lap and hushing her in a choked voice. The man drags his calloused fingers through her hair, petting her, holding her, squeezing her to his chest. He's desperate to continue to maintain this proximity as long as possible, knowing that their future is far too fleeting and more uncertain than ever. Selfishly, in her time of sorrow, he wants her dependent on him just as she has been one long year ago.

Dare leans into her and kisses the top of her head, murmuring reassurances to her in a strained tone while rocking her gently. He tries not to break down, himself, through a mixture of her unsteady emotive projection and his own sympathy for what she's going through. He has no conception of what she has lost, and for that, he's even more heartbroken for her.

"It's gonna be a'right, Turtle-baby, I'll getche through this," he coaxes, rocking her against his chest. He winces at the nickname, something he's been calling her since she was handheld, and now he's unsure if it's at all appropriate, in light of the situation.

April is unresponsive, drained of the ability to sob and cry and make any sound. Just tired. It's as if she's lost a limb, one that wasn't under her control to flex or hold objects or stand on, but all the same causes a horrible sense of disorientation that it sickens her to even remain conscious right now. She sighs a little, falling limp into Dare's chest, succumbing to sleep.

He feels her body relax beneath his arms, and his heart skips a beat in his panic. His first instinct screamed fears that she just joined her other half's fate. He turns her over, fumbling to find a pulse or to see her breathe. To his relief, he finds both.

She looks very peaceful in his arms, like a worn out little ragdoll. He idly notices that, in his absence, she's grown up a fair bit. She's longer than he can recall, and her face has lost some of its childlike roundness in favour of still curvy, but more adult traits. He smooths her bangs from her closed eyes, admiring her sleeping form in an innocent way. In his incessant petting of her hair, his fingers eventually find the smooth surface of her skull hair clip. Previously pure white, the clip is now stony, textured, and cracked. The expression of the charmed skull is stoic.

Willing himself to not think about the implications of this, or any other side effects, he instead pulls April back against his chest and rests his chin atop her head. He hums to her a tune he invents as he goes along.

--

Ioann slips the polished bone roulette ball into the woman's fingers. Pandora, the real one, whips around incredulously, looking as if she's forgotten about the game and her role in it. She opens her mouth to say something, but thinks better of it, closing it just as fast.

Rolling the ball between her palms, Pandora takes one more look at the empathetic scene she'd gotten caught up in, before kicking a handle on the roulette wheel to get it spinning. The grand thing takes off, clicking ferociously. Licking her lips with a suddenly wicked smile, she thrusts her hands forward and releases the ball.

5


"There h-has to be something ..else that you want from me," Dare stammers, his wide eyes darting side to side. He rests back on his palms, though his mind spells the opposite of relaxation, doubling up on itself in desperate attempts to find anything, anything at all to prevent the inevitable.

A slender finger drags on his bottom lip. Pandora slinks forward on her haunches, moving in a feral twist with great emphasis provided to her hips. Pointed canines slip past her own bottom lip and become visible just as she crawls over and begins to straddle him.

She pulls her lips forward in place of her finger. "Shh," she urges in a hissed voice, becoming more and more like a snake with every passing moment. "Darling, this is all I want."

Despite himself, Dare feels the crotch of his pants tighten, causing an creepy smirk to slide across the faces of both Pandoras in unison, puppet mimicking its master in a celebration of a long sought triumph. The mousetrap version of the Council member slides her hand over this tenting of pants, eyes flickering wickedly at the involuntary reaction this causes her prey to experience. Continuing to massage the area, she slides up against his chest and purses her full lips just an inch away from his. Black curls cascade down from her disheveled hairstyle, looking all the while purposefully tussled.

Dare twitches a little in his shoulder at the advance, biting back his better judgment to throw her off of him and just make a break for it. But the sweet little face of April, a younger version untouched by hardship, nags his self-preserving senses into submission. His body relaxes, and he just gives in.

Pandora recognizes this immediately, and chuckles softly in her triumph. The puppeteer spares a glance up through tussled hair that mirrors her puppet self at her opponent, Ioann, and continues twitching her fingers expertly over the game table, producing tiny sparks from the tips of her evenly manicured nails.

The next few moments are quick. Clothes are shed, and tension rises (amonst other things). Pandora bites down on the flesh right around Dare's collarbone, and he arches his back with an intake of breath in response to the sensation. His previously racing thoughts melt from stereo surround sound into a dulled white noise, allowing him to respond only in sensation and instinct. The temptress moves down his torso and provides him with even more reason to forget resisting this delicious act.

April.

The one thought sparks like a deep guitar chord across his elevator music state of mind, breaking the comfortable rhythm and jolting the man up where he lies. His guilt drives his breathing out of whack and suddenly he's nearly hyperventilating, and not because of any sort of pleasure from the currently scandalous situation he's trapped in with his race's leader.

"What is it?" Pandora can't hide her annoyance, perched on all hours over his midsection, left in only silk-and-fishnet garters. "We've only just started!"

"I can't," Dare splutters hoarsely, his own voice turning on him. He furrows his brows into deep creases and he stares blankly at one of his knees, seeing it only as a mass of colour as his eyes glaze over and defocus.

Pandora glares up at him and drums her fingers on his inner thigh. "They make pills for that now, you know," she growls sardonically.

11


Dare dangles his very hairy legs over the edge of the bed, his heels thudding mutedly against the wooden frame. He slumps forward, his elbows catching on his knees and he drops his head into his hands most helplessly. Crimson hair cascades between his fingers. He closes his eyes and allows himself to be washed over in desolation; he barely feels the strain between his shoulder blades in maintaining this defeated position.

A hand slides up his back, finding exactly where it hurts most and worsening the dulled sensation like water stinging an open wound. He pulls away from the manipulative feminine touch, having it to blame for his suffering.

"Dun ********' touch me," he growls into his rough palms, flinching just enough to jerk the hand from his back.

The Pandora puppet grins maliciously, though Dare isn't in a position to catch this flash of victory teeth. She pulls up into a seated position, her breasts bare of the sheet's veil. "What?" she questions with malice dancing on her voice. "Was I that bad?"

The vicious look this receives causes the real Pandora, the omnipresent puppeteer, to momentarily drop control of her puppet. So out of character for the man - or is it that she's never really seen his rare temper? - is the pure hatred his face reveals, that she actually jumps back from the game table back at the party. The puppet, to her advantage, is just frozen in place with a look of satisfaction maintained across her exterior.

Dare is positively fuming. A temper, that which is rarely brought to the surface of this normally casual and laid back man, erupts only when precisely horrendous amount of misfortune falls upon him. And Pandora has managed to find the delicate balance of circumstances to spark the bonfire.

"Sweetie," the puppet coos, batting thick eyelashes in a voice laced with venom. "It's only sex. No need to get all emotional on my a**."

The Ranger hunches forward even further, his temper simmering quickly, as one with such rare violent outbursts might suffer from. His anger is instead turned inward, against himself, the one has for so long resisted the evil temptress, cheated death itself by escaping her clutches, only to be reduced to ashes beneath her sex-fiendish eyes. How pathetic to be blackmailed; even with a life he values as equal to his own as an equalizer, his sense of pride in himself suffers a blow he's not used to feeling.

A bead of red liquid trails off of his hair, matching the shade exactly, and drips to the floor unnoticed.