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Something has the guards excited. They can be heard coming long before they arrive, and the attention they offer a victorious Toad is scant, a blessing indeed. Two separate from the herd to return the bound and gagged warty one to his cell, the other holding a squirming handful of something. "OH! The bitch /bit/ me!"
Ellen stirs in her cage, head tilting toward the returned arrivals. She is quiescent. Dormant. Her eyes are cool and her face bland. There is no sign of the mad rage that ripped through her last night; no sign of the beatings of her captors, no bruises or broken ribs or singed flesh. She is hale and whole, if haggard.
The sound rouses Ewen too and he eases himself upright with a slow, tense exhalation through clenched teeth. He lets his head settle back against the bars of his cage, then a moment later pulls himself forwards so as not to give himself a concussion when violent coughs shake his body.
The handful is a shrunken Lillianne, who spits out the mouthful she'd managed to take out of her captors hand. He shakes his hand violently, making her flop around like a rag doll, then looks up and calls out to his companions. "I'm sick o' this one playin' shrink-a-dink. Won'er if she's like them toys ya put in water an' they grow." His smile turns a little more twisted, and he adds, "Heh. Wanna find out? Fin' a jar or somethin'."
"You guys never had 'Stretch Armstrong' dolls, hmm?" Keiko offers the lazy suggestion without lifting her eyes from Ewen at which the control is pointed- it /would/ be fun...
Ellen rolls a look along the bars of the cages towards Ewen's at the sound of his coughing, kneeling low. Her hands curl into fists on either side of her knees. She looks back towards the guard holding Lillianne and lets her lips curl back away from her teeth in a visible snarl, though she stays, for the moment, silent.
One of the goons barks a laugh and peels off to disappear down the hallway. A few minutes later he returns with a large glass jar containing pickles bobbing in green juice.
In the silent well of her own cage, Yuriko opens her eyes out of zen -- cross-legged, dignified, blank-faced placidity -- to watch the noise of passage. Brows twitch together, digging a small furrow that bleeds shadow into eyes. Tsk. Noise.
Ewen pushes himself back against the bars once again, trying to keep himself in the shadows and out of sight of the sadistic guards, trying not to cough and draw attention to himself. He presses his eyelids close together to try and remove the sleep that's gathered at the corners of his eyes, then opens them again to watch the goings-on.
Ellen draws to her feet with a slow fluidity of motion, deliberate grace pulled into the shift of her body as she steps forward, one pace, two, to stand before her cage and wrap her hands around the bars. She stares at the man and his pickles with deep, chilled loathing reflecting in blue-grey eyes.
"Where the hell you find that?" "The conc'ssion stand. Sell em fer a buck." "Yeah? Gimme one." "What're ya gonna do with 'em?" "Dunno." Jar man scratches his head for a minute at this new logistical problem. Then he shrugs and drops the jar heavily on a chair and unscrews the top before tipping the whole thing over and dumping the mess out onto the floor. Rivers of pickle juice run toward the cells. Lilli quiets in wide-eyed tension as she watches the proceeding. "Please... I won't... Please," she whispers, the sound hardly audible.
Almond-dark eyes blink. Yuriko unravels to stand, a thin shadow puddled at her feet from the glare beyond the bars. Warty pickles, jar, brine, Lilli; the Japanese woman's brow furrows. "Curious," she says, and then puzzles, "What are you doing?"
"Oh come /on/ if you're dipping her in something that'll smell foul at least use acid." Keiko rolls her eyes but doesn't object to their rather inventive seeking of entertainment, instead grinning ever so slightly as she stands and chucks the control on the chair next to Jar man's jar. "Going to get a dart for you." Keiko replies bluntly before stepping out of sight.
Audibly, Ellen growls. Her fingers tighten on the bars. Otherwise, she remains still.
Ewen's gaze flickers across to Yuriko, brows lowered slightly in bewilderment at her naive statement. His attention is caught by Ellen's growl and he hides a smile with his hair, admiring her daring in continuing to provoke the guards after what happened last night.
Yuriko's question is acknowledged with a roll of an eye, and nothing else. Lilli's pleading gets even less. With absolutely no ceremony, she is stuffed into the jar. Or rather, what ceremony might have been inherent is lost in the struggle to get her, her legs, her arms, her head, her le-- Essentially, she's making it difficult, clinging to the lip of the jar in mindless panic. "Hey. We'll need water." Jar man grunts and volunteers, "Saw some pitchers." He doesn't move though, his attention fixated on the squirming doll who is finally forced past the neck of the jar and dropped to the slick, glass bottom.
As containment, it leaves something to be desired. Yuriko's forehead creases deeper, mild perplexity stitching across her face. She says nothing.
Fearless and foolish as an immortal, Ellen barks out words in a sharp whip-crack of her voice: "That is not a /toy/, you mindless child molestor."
With difficulty, Ewen bites back a cheer at Ellen's protest. Oh, to be able to heal and to be impervious to the guards' methods of control...
"Yeah. No kiddin'. Real toys'd have somethin' ta play with," Bitten Guy grumbles, glancing sourly at Ellen. "You rather we 'lest /you/?" is sneered before he turns back and stares at Jar Guy. "Hey. Go /get/ some then." "Gonna take more'n one trip." Bitten Guy rolls his eyes and growls and reaches for the lid. "Fuck. Fine."
Yuriko stirs abruptly, head tipping against cold metal. "She is more fragile in this condition," alto observes, cool and sedate through the foreign accent. "If she cannot heal as others do, you will kill her. Let her be."
"Yes," hisses Ellen, stretching the sibilant with serpentine sweetness, her mouth curving into a slow smile while her eyes flash venom. "Do molest me, human scum." Her teeth show in a white, fierce flash. "Touch my skin." She presses close against the bars, staring at the guards with the air of something starving and carnivorous. "Would you like me to undress?"
Ewen gives a slow blink. Then another. He's feeling seriously out-done here. Cautiously, he eases himself to his feet and steps forwards in the cage, chains clinking behind him, to see what's going on, and to get a better shot should the guards go too far.
Jar guy's attention is diverted and he actually takes a step toward the woman before a meaty (bitten!) hand is planted on his chest. "Are you fuckin' insane? She's a toucher." A pause, and then, "Though there's nothing saying we can't have a show..." The lid is screwed on, oh so tightly, and picked up by the lid, cutting off an attempt to crawl out by Lilli and her subsequent screams and pounding inside the jar. He waves the end toward the cell with Ellen and taunts, "You wanna hold her, honey? You behave pretty for us, we'll let you have yer dolly." Lilli rolls around the inside of the jar, trying uselessly to brace herself.
Ellen has no answer to these taunts. She snarls wordlessly -- "Eeangh!" -- and rattles uselessly at the bars of her cage.
"She will suffocate," Yuriko says, alto thinning over quickening breath. She does not follow Ellen's example, but there is a yearning twitch of shoulders against the drag of manacles. "You will damage her."
Bitten Guy lifts the jar to peer at the bedraggled pixie for a second before shaking his head and dropping the jar to his side again. "Looks fine. C'mon." He leans over and puts the jar down on the floor outside Ellen's cage and kicking a forgotten pickle within reach of Ewin. The pair scuffle back in the direction Jar Guy had returned from earlier.
Ellen drops to her knees before the bars with a strangled cry. She plasters herself up against them, pressing blue-piped black leather against cylindrical metal as she thrusts both arms through to reach for the pickle jar. "Lillianne--" The name comes on a grunted breath as she strains, pulling the large jar into her hands.
Ewen eyes the pickle dubiously. He is not a fan of pickles, especially not pickles that have rolled across a floor like this and collected a coating of filthy sawdust, but he is hungry. Is he that hungry? There's a pause for a while as he decides. Not yet. He hooks the pickle with his foot and kicks it back to the corner of his cage, hiding in the shadows. He hopes he isn't here long enough for it to look appealing.
Yuriko makes a small, restless motion as the guards pass by, a jerk that drags her bound arms askew. Their passage and departure does nothing to appease that new anxiety: Ellen's madness is catching. The woman prowls, pacing the short span allotted to her with a stride aborted by space.
Inside the jar, Lillianne's whisperings are cut short as her breath starts to escape her before she can get it in. She falls backwards as Ellen bumps and drags the jar close, but Lilli's attention is slowly diverted by her own attempts to breath.
The palm of Ellen's hand slides over the smooth surface of the jar's glass side. "She cannot breathe," she says aloud. Her own breath quickens, coming short and frantic as she lifts the jar. She tries to angle her hand to remove the lid, but it is stuck fast and she can't get leverage. "She cannot /breathe/."
Metal crashes against metal, Yuriko's turn swinging chains against the ranked bars. The woman pauses in foreshortened step, head tilted towards that distant voice, beyond her sight. Oyama makes another sound -- frustration is a new thing for the long days of captivity -- and says with breathless displeasure, "Inconsiderate. Foolish. /Barbarians./"
She /cannot/ breathe, and where Ellen's movements fail to rattle her sufficiently, her flailing increases dramatically. She slips in pickle juice and pounds against the side of the glass, imploring Ellen for help in a mockery of a mime.
Ellen braces her hands on either side of the jar and lifts it, but there is no way it will fit through the bars. She can't possibly angle her arm properly to put enough force to the lid of the jar to open it, not even when she tips it sideways. Keening in frustration, she yanks it back against the bars in hopes of smashing it open, or at least cracking it.
Ewen hurries back to the front of his cage and cranes his head to try and see what is going on. A terse breath forces its way between his teeth as he cannot see clearly the events to the side of him.
Lillianne tumbles forward with the force of attempt, face and hand and shoulder hitting the glass, and then she falls back again, collapsing in a huddle at the bottom of the jar. A huddle that gasps and gapes uselessly.
Ellen tries again, voicing a "Come /on/," on a panicked breath. /Slam/, goes the pickle jar against the bars. "/Break/!"
Shrieking shrill panic, Ellen slams the jar against the bars with an increasing amount of force, the force of lean muscle propelled by madness and adrenaline. Again. And again. There is no thought but freeing the child: the safety of the tiny figure tumbling around inside the glass is not even thought of. The glass must be broken. The glass /must/ break.
Finally, it breaks: there is a rain of glass. And blood: Ellen's, from the pierced flesh of her hands amidst the shards of the broken jar-prison. Lillianne's ...
Lillianne's coat the sides of the shards, along with questionable smears of other internal liquids and perhaps organs. Her now oddly shaped head lolls lifelessly and limbs dangle at awkward angles over bits of glass.
Ellen whispers, "No ..." Hands slick with a mixture of her own blood and the girl's, her skin cells seal over the wounds as though they never were, brushing away foreign objects. She pulls Lillianne into the cage with her, dragging her by the foot through the bars, and sends her consciousness running through the living cells to find and fix the damage. The brain is smushed, the skull smashed; there is too much, there is death everywhere, the cells are dying as she watches, and even as she commands them to replace, replenish, more die. The scream that rips from Ellen's throat gurgles on the way out, caught with the anguished moisture of her own spittle; she chokes into an enraged sob. This regrown, that healed, that fixed, but too many dead now, too many to effect, and the brain-- "Child -- Lillianne -- live, sister, curse you--!"
Jar and Bitten guy come at a run, drawn by the scream an sloshing water over the sides of the pitchers. Both skid to a stop at the scene. "Oh, shit..." is Bitten Guy's eloquent observation.
Ellen's eyes are scrunched tight shut, her hands pressed to Lillianne's skin. The surface wounds have all but healed, though the blood remains everywhere. There are still too many cells dying, dying, dead -- they are sluggish to respond, and many of them cannot answer her commands at all. It is as though her mind is walking in darkness, the lights fading one by one. Shrill and whining, she cries: "/Live/!"
Bitten Guy tosses his pitcher to the side and leaps for the remote tossed onto the chair earlier. "Get that mess outta there!" Jar guy leaps forward to respond, squatting next to the pile of shards and blood. He goes pale. "Hey--"
Ellen's eyes snap open, wet and wild and full of rage. She screams again and lunges at the bars, thrusting her hands through to find Jar Guy's skin with blood-slicked fingers.
The shatter and splinter of glass stilled Yuriko in her cage; her head lifted to attend. Like the others in the basement she listened in silence, breath caught, senses stretched to the struggle in the distant pen -- and the passage of the guards pushes her away from notice no more or less than the rest. Ominous calculation hisses and stirs behind the pale, blank face, showing its fangs in speculation. Dark eyes attend on the retrieval of the controller. Haste makes waste.
Contact: the instant is enough, seconds all she needs to close off all his airways. As the guard drops to the floor amidst the detritus of bloody sawdust and glass, Ellen withdraws into herself, curling into a tight ball with her arms wrapped around herself. She weeps, her hunched body racked with sobs, tears rolling down her cheeks to drop and skitter over dark leather.
Unwary, made foolish by shock and self-interested alarm -- Keiko's reputation has made its mark on the other guards -- Bitten lurches heavy-footed and stumbling back down the aisles as his companion thrashes in silence, a controller rolling through suddenly thick fingers. "Goddammit!" he curses, frantically searching for buttons. "/FUCKIN'/--"
Opportunity at last. Yuriko slants, kicking at the bars. Through the bars. Toes connect with the passing larynx, adamantium-driven and -driving; the guard flails, controller skidding out of his grasp as he slams down to earth. Two down. Oyama smiles.
In her cage, Ellen rocks back and forth and weeps, silence broken only with the jagged breath of strangled sobs.
Matched set. Both men thrash, neither able to help the other. Of the pair, it is Bitten who is capable of making noise: ugly, spasming, choking sounds, writhed across the floor to collide with Jar's slow, agonizing dying. At a distance a door slams, the sound of running footsteps battering at echoes. Reinforcements. Yuriko scrapes her leg out of the grating to drop to one knee, joined with her neighbor in a nearby cage in groping for the struggling guards' keys.
The window of escape is small. Too small. Electricity precedes the arrival of the new guards, still out of sight as they storm through the entrance. They are more wary, and react to sounds of excitement with hasty trigger fingers. First random bodies fall, spasming or crying out to the bite of shock. Then, more targeted, Yuriko screams, legs stiffening as muscles contract and burn through current.
It is Harold who leads the way, whose heavy thumb presses vindictively on the controllers to collars. He skids to a halt at the bloody mess, mouth falling agape: one dead, one rapidly dying. "Jesus Christ," he breathes. Behind him, fists tighten around cattle prods in vindictive fear. "Jesus FUCKING CHRIST. GODDAMMIT. Teach these /fucks/ a /lesson/!"