Reach Beyond the Heavens

[Ryn]

Ryn opens her mouth but her knee-jerky 'Nothing has to happen' dies in her throat when her thoughts catch up with her. Katarina blames herself for this. "You didn't make me fall." she says instead. But is that really true? In all her life she has never slipped and it only happened because she'd been thinking about... No. No, she'd explicitly only made her try to catch her. Maybe she somehow knew something about what would happen if Ryn had reached her? She seems to know a lot of things that seem incomprehensible to Ryn.

She hesitates to lean on Katarina but ultimately she doesn't want to walk on a broken ankle. She would for any number of reasons. Out of spite, pride, not having anybody offering help in the first place. She puts her arm around Katarina's shoulder and lets her help her along. It's not entirely awful. She gets to smell her shampoo and it's light enough that the tinge of chemicals barely bothers her at all. "I heal fast. You can take me to my room." Then for good measure she adds, "I'm not being stubborn. Promise." she says and holds up two fingers to show she's making an oath.

[Katarina Kane]

"Well..." Katarina said with a frown. "I suppose I can't blame you for not spending time with our good Doctor. If you're sure you'll be fine...I'll trust you," Katarina said, helping Ryn slowly walk her way towards her room.

[Ryn]

Ryn's room is spartan. There's a handful of dirty clothes on top of a dresser next to a neat stack of clean ones. Somehow one might correctly surmise that the actual drawers are empty. Here and there the remains of paper torn away from adhesives are still on the walls. A large rolled up piece of paper is shoved into the little open compartment of her nightstand and on top of it sit a whooping two books. One on history that seems mostly untouched and 'The Count of Monte Cristo' propped open somewhere two thirds through. Her bed has a black bedsheet tucked into the foot of the bed and affixed to the wall a couple feet above the headboard as an impromptu tent.

Ryn lets Katarina help her all the way to her bed before slipping off of her and letting herself fall backwards onto the bed with an audible huff.

[Katarina Kane]

"It's....simple. Uncluttered," Katarina said, trying to not insult Ryn's sense of decor or taste.

"Are you going to be alright in here?" she asked, looking around.

[Ryn]

"Why wouldn't I be?" Sure, she'd rather sleep underneath the stars, but as far as human domiciles go this one sure is one of them. The ceilings are unusually high, which Ryn likes.

She pulls her legs into her make-shift cave and just like in the night in the woods, Ryn seems to almost blend into the shadows of her 'canopy bed', only her glasses reflecting the light of the room like a lion in it's den. A lion with her knees pulled up against her chest and her injured leg across the other to keep it in the air a little bit.

[Katarina Kane]

"Alright. If you need anything, you call me. Rest up, and Have pleasant dreams, Ryn," Katarina said, as she went to leave Ryn alone.

[Ryn]

After a while of just sitting there Ryn grabs the book from her nightstand and tries to read. It's when she finds herself rereading the same paragraph over and over that she gives up on it the the book comes flying out of her cave and lands back on her nightstand. She keeps turning the events of the day over in her head, but they make as little sense as they did in the moment. All she knows is that she's made Katarina blame herself and that there must be something horribly wrong with her to be able to loose her footing like this. And she can't ask Katarina to help her explain because she doesn't understand the importance.

Eventually she finds herself growing sleepy and before she knows it she's slumped to her side, curled in a ball and lulled to sleep by Katarina's parting command. In her dreams she's back in the steppe, running beneath the stars with the cold wind whipping her face. She finds herself chasing Katarina again but this time she catches her and it's not distressing at all. The dream dissolves into warmth and sudden bursts of fervor that grip her blood before melting back into soft crimson. When she wakes with a start it's not with the alertness of adrenaline but a kind of gasping for air upon breaching the surface of an unfamiliar sea that all the while beckons her to sink beneath the waves again.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Mix rice vinegar, sugar and salt in a small bowl. Gently stir into cooked rice in the pot. Center one nori sheet on a bamboo mat. With wet hands, spread a thin layer of rice on top, and then arrange your fish, avocado and pickled ginger in a line down the center. Lift one end of the mat, and roll it tightly over the filling to make a complete roll. That sounds pretty nice, don't you think?"

Lying next to Ryn, on her bed (in her room!) was Wyll Wyldclay, reading outloud from a book, and seemingly without a care for Ryn's gasping for breath.

[Ryn]

Ryn might have simply sunk back into the unclear but pleasant dream, but instead she's wide awake immediately. With no idea why the Wyldclay is reading a recipe for seafood to her. What she does know is that they've invaded not just her room - again - but sat next to her while she slept. She raises her good foot and with a determined kick sends them flying hard enough to hit the wall opposite her bed. Only then does she pull herself into a three-point crouch on her bed.

"How dare you!" she barks. There's almost no chance they have a satisfactory answer and Ryn looks forward to tearing them limb from limb.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

The kick is solid, and Wyll slams into the wall with a wet *splat* before reforming, unharmed and unphased.

"You prefer tempura? Perhaps something salt-grilled?," he said, tilting his head at a bizarre angle and grinning.

"Why, why don't you ask how my day went?"

[Ryn]

"I don't care! Why are you in my bed? Tell me!" There's fury in her eyes, even through the glasses. Perhaps more than is warranted, but she's had kind of a day.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"I believe you'll find I'm on the floor across from the bed. Did you hurt your head along with your ankle? So atypical, wasn't it? Falling down like that, in front of the public? Having to be helped back to safety? I think that's a first for you, Agent Ryn," Wyll said, shaking his head and tksing judgmentally.

[Ryn]

Ryn launches herself off the bed and comes down on top of Will with her fist clenched tightly. She slams it straight down through his chest with with a blow that cracks the concrete underneath the thin carpet.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

The wind is briefly knocked out of Wyll's lungs, before the lungs themselves dissipate into wet, squelching clay, the force of Ryn's blow causing her to smash through the chest-of-least-resistance and into the concrete below. That left a gaping hole in the center of Wyll's torso; one that was closing up around Ryn's arm if she didn't pull it back.

"Temper, temper," Wyll said, coughing. "You're in no shape to fight," he added, wrapping his legs around Ryn's waist.

[Ryn]

"You and I both know that's wrong." she growl and tears her arm free after waiting long enough it'll rip some of the closing clay out with it. She staggers to her feet despite the additional weight of Wyll, gritting her teeth when she briefly has to use her injured foot to do so. Her right arm jerks up over her left shoulder, hand flattening as it snaps back down into the top of his shoulder and smashing his collar-bone into pieces clay over and over to try and dislodge him.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

There is a satisfying crack at the first blow; the sound of fist splintering bone. The second, third, and so forth end up with a wet, dull splat as she chops into and through Wyll's shoulder, the fae's arm dangling off of it's torso by a just a few strands.

Wyll bent back away from the chops...and kept bending. With his legs still wrapped around Ryn's waist, Wyll bent over backwards, spine twisting in an unnatural way as he curled back, back, back, his head and torso slipping between Ryn's legs and rising up her back, twisting around to keep the fae's attention on the deva.

His arms slipped beneath hers, attempting to lock in a full nelson. "I see you're handling things with your usual level of calm, collected thought."

[Ryn]

"You!" She snaps her head backwards to headbutt Wyll in the face. "Crawled!" Her arms are caught but she jerks one shoulder forwards to rip Wyll's injured shoulder free entirely. "Into!" With some balance regained from her freed arm she spins the both of them around. "My bed!" she finishes and throws herself backwards to ram Wyll into the wall as hard as she can. Her ankle, partially healed as it might already be, screams at her in protest with white-hot pain. Her free hand tears gouges into Wyll's legs to free herself while she pins him against the wall.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

Wyll's arm flops onto the floor; flesh transmorphing to clay at the severed joint. Ryn slams him into the wall, pressing him further into it than strictly biologically possible; she could actually feel the coolness of the concrete wall through Wyll as she pressed him against it. Her fingers sink into Wyll's legs, tearing and gouging away. Ryn clearly had the upper hand here.

"Oh, were you expecting someone else in your bed then?"

The voice was Katarina's. The face, when she turned around, was Katarina's, too, as Wyll had shifted in Ryn's grip into a copy of the siren.

[Ryn]

Not for the first time Ryn wished she hadn't been stripped of her razor-wings as she tries to dislodge Wyll. Her hand finds his intact shoulder and tears him forward in a kind of judo-throw that snaps his weakened legs free and sends him slamming into the ground. Only for Katarina's face and voice to stare up at her.

Not much would stop Ryn in her tracks - one of her ancient names is The Implacable Anger after all - but this does. Her fist raised she freezes looming above KatarinaWyll. It's a cheap trick but oh so effective. It's not Katarina. Her oath not to harm her is not binding her but the sight of her face does somehow.

"No one. I expected no one!" she growls.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"And I didn't expect to spend my afternoon playing the brainless pop star covering for a mess on the beach, but here we are," Wyll said, her lips thinning in annoyance. If she was bothered too much by Ryn's hand at her throat, she didn't show it.

'Oh, no Murr, I was nowhere near the beach. Honest to god, Murph, I've been in the studio all day. Oh, you didn't get the masters? I'll get on them about that, surely. Hey, any publicity in a storm, yeah?," she said, taking on a sing-song, airheaded voice that sounded like Katarina but certainly wasn't like the Katarina Ryn knew. "People see ghouls and goblins everywhere, Murr; things that go bump in the night. Luv ya, toodles, mwah."

[Ryn]

"Keep this mockery away from me!" she says and lets go of Wyll like he's a hot stove. She doesn't understand why the Wyldclay is made to keep up this charade anyway, to live out what was taken from Katarina. "Does she even know you took the life she lost?"

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"I'm just keeping it warm for her. You think I enjoy it? Her dreams are piddling, human tripe," Wyll said, with a barking laugh. "And she buys unflavored yogurt, which is a sin."

"But if she is to ever return to it, it is best if Katy Kane does not vanish from the surface of the Earth. There is, theoretically, a path where the Siren gains control and can be trusted to leave. But that doesn't seem to be happening now, is it? She certainly made a scene of things today, did she not?

Your pet Siren is sliding down a slippery path, Deva. Caring for one is a great responsibility, and I'm questioning if you're up to the task."

[Ryn]

"Not one command was sung that she didn't mean to." At least Ryn is fairly certain of that. If there had been it was trivial in Ryn's eyes. "You're convincing her to fail through doubt. They want her to fall and ask to be shackled so she never realizes her strength!" she realizes. Ryn might not understand complex social structures, power hierarchy or trying to maintain law and order, but she knows what is in her bones. Why a deva of vengeance and fury that will not be denied was born as a woman.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Ryn. When they people were crowding you. When they were surrounding you. Where did Katarina tell them to go?" Wyll said, looking Ryn straight in the eyes glasses.

[Ryn]

"Away." she says and when that obviously doesn't suffice she thinks a moment and adds "To the sea."

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"To the sea," Wyll agreed. "The siren sent men into the sea," she said, looking down her nose significantly.

"You once told me that she wasn't a monster yet. Well, she seems to be well on her way, isn't she? How willing; how eager she was. I bet she didn't even think anything of it, did she? There's more ways to slip up than just having your gifts on the fritz."


Will propped herself up on her one remaining elbow. "I'm not trying to convince anyone to fail. But there are three paths before her, and without proper guidance, she's sliding down the one that ends up with her in a cage, on an operating table, or in your stomach. Shall I prepare the rice vinegar for you?"

[Ryn]

Ryn huffs, unconvinced but clearly backing away from 'righteous fury'.

"To the sea away from her. I swore to her I would not let her voice harm anyone." Of course, she'd also sworn not to harm her which ran the real risk of putting Ryn in an impossible situation should the Wyldclay's scenario come to pass. "Don't question my methods." Because I don't have any. But then Ryn has never been one to plan too far ahead and this too would be worked out somehow. In the moment if need be.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"And your ankle is 'unharmed' then? And you've used the shock collar how many times to correct her?" Wyll asked, cocking his head to the side.

"I would never question your methods, Agent Ryn. Only your results. You want her to be one of us? Then whip her into shape."

[Ryn]

"There was nothing to correct." she mutters. If 'one of us' means Katarina cowed by pain then Ryn would not rest until she's torn the head off of whoever decided that. But unfortunately her banishment from civilized lands has only been stayed by being made subject to mankind's rule. If the Agency decides that Ryn has fallen out of line, all it would take is a stroke of a pen and her powers would soon be reduced to naught.

"She won't turn monstrous. I won't let her." she restates as if that makes it true. And to be fair, historically her word has been truth. At least when it comes to promises of death and obliteration. Protecting someone from things she can't devour is rather new to her.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"If it helps, we could set up a little tank in here for her. Sprinkle some food in from time to time; much easier to keep an eye on her," Wyll grinned, returning to his own form.

Having gotten the warning across, he now returned to his other primary function -- being a little shit-stirrer.

[Ryn]

"She doesn't need that much supervision..." she says, but she does sound at least a little uncertain. It certainly wouldn't hurt. Not like the Wyldclay suggested, of course, but she could shadow the siren easily enough. They clearly seem to think she's failing in her task, so maybe that would help. "Does she?"

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Well, you had a handler when you first came to us, didn't you? Last I heard, they almost were OK going outside after dark again," Wyll grinned. "Almost."

"Most pop stars need a manager to know how to wipe their butts. Your siren seems a bit more put together than that, at least. But if she doesn't even realize she's slipping, well..."

[Ryn]

Ryn had convinced herself that Katarina had meant every command she'd given at the beach, but that's not certain, is it? Maybe it happens more often than she thinks. The Wyldclay is a trickster and they are not to be trusted, as a general rule. But that doesn't mean they're always lieing. In fact it usually meant the opposite, just in a way that was turned inside out somehow. She'd shadow Katarina and find out for herself. In a day or or so when her ankle is mended.

As for the handler who'd been assigned to Ryn upon her arrival... "What happened to Agent Carter was the fault of the ones who thought I would need help with things other than paper-words and the little picture-squares." she says, miming holding up a microfiche to her eye with her fingers, which is definitely not how they're supposed to be used.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Well, your Siren seems to have those down pat. It's other things she might need guidance on. The things which come naturally to you.

Although maybe she's more like you than I give her credit for. After all, she did shoot one of the agents who brought her in. You're both dangerous," Wyll said, with a grin.

[Ryn]

Ryn she knows the Wyldclay must be talking in the way where one thing means something differently because what comes to her naturally is not what anybody wants for Katarina at all. Only monsters spill that much blood.

But she does approve of Katarina's reaction to being brought in and she can't help but grin a little. Wider than she normally allows herself because the Wyldclay isn't going to freak out at the sight of her inhuman teeth. "Maybe that's why I like her." she says, unaware this is probably just going to be fuel to the flames of Wyll's continued allusions that fly right over Ryn's head yet annoy her all the same.

[Wyll Wyldclay]

"Well, if you can get her as well-adjusted as you are, then we won't have a problem, will we?

Just try to use your head next time you decide to take your Siren out for a walk, yes? The next time I have to clean up your mess, I'm rubbing your nose in it."

[Ryn]

"You can try." she says smugly. "Now get out of my room."

[Wyll Wyldclay]

Wyll stood up, robotically, and headed for the door. "Remember, I'm watching the two of you!" he called out, as he was forced to leave.