Mirror, Mirror On the Wall (Day 11)

[glaxcin]

For once the Warden doesn't bother to gas or shock anyone into unconsciousness before he teleports them. One moment the prisoners are in the infirmary, another moment they are in a room filled with monitors. The monitors line the walls, surrounding you from every angle. The only light in the room is coming from the monitors themselves, although it

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Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[mostlysinful]

Boring. Bored. There was also the fact that he was back in that God (haha) awful uniform, not that he worried about how he looked. As much as Balthazar liked to preen, he was very much aware that no matter what he did he was ultimately the best-looking thing around, and that no wonder of the world could best the glory of his own reflection. No, what bothered him was that his preferred choice of clothing felt much better on the skin than the drab grey cotton that Glaxcin offered him. He enjoyed small, sensual pleasures like that.

There were monitors, though. That was a bit interesting. Unfortunately there were no really exciting scenes - no snuff footage, no child pornography, not even anything nice and rollicking like an explosion. No; just footage. Then again, after awhile he noticed that some of the footage had him in them and, like a moth to flame, Balthazar allowed himself to draw closer, inspecting the slim, sleek image of himself onscreen. Damn, he looked good on camera. He didn't feel all that bored anymore. A demon's vanity

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[romancenovelist]

The best thing about teleporting, Yayoi decided, was that the warden had forgotten to teleport her stupid hat. She would wear the guard uniform until she got her own clothes back, but that had just really got on her nerves! It looked silly perched on her head, and it was what really marked the uniform as being a guard uniform to Yayoi. It was like a policeman's hat, or a soldier's. Without it, it was just a nice warm wool coat over a shirt and pants.

The room she had teleported to was also fairly interesting, but also weird. It was a room full of monitors, which was familiar after the whole thing where everyone blew up except River and Grell, but the scenes taking place on the monitor were clearly not happening now, since they showed people in their cells who were actually here. Since everyone was here. Why show them old footage? There was a man who looked really interested in one of the screens. She went up to him and hoped she didn't seem as threatening as a guard without her hat.

"What are you looking at?"

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[mostlysinful]

Balthazar glanced at the girl that had approached him, eyes roving over her briefly, taking in the uniform and the general look of innocent that seemed to settle over her figure. Hm. He wasn’t sure whether he was going to welcome the interruption or not, but he was going to give her a chance. She could be entertaining.

“Myself, of course,” he said, as if it were obvious. And well, it should be. What else would he be looking at? Unless Gabriel was getting the shit beaten out of him or Castiel was being ambushed by a flock of succubi, there really wasn’t anything to hold his attention besides his own image.

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[romancenovelist]

Yayoi studied the screen the man was looking at. He was just sort of walking around. Yayoi didn't think it was that exciting. "Oh. Are you doing something interesting? Did that actually happen?" Yayoi had her doubts that whatever was on those monitors was even real in the first place.

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[mostlysinful]

“Does it matter?” Balthazar responded, looking at the girl with some amusement. Her questioning was blunt, childishly naïve - grown adults were so fond of tiptoeing around things more often than not, he had found. “It looks like me, and that’s enough. What we do or don’t do in this place really isn’t an issue.”

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[romancenovelist]

Yayoi considered that for a moment. "It does, I think," she replied, "Because the warden's been making me do things I didn't want to. And whether the things happened or not could give us a clue to why we're here! In this room, I mean. It's not scary or bad, really, and that's not like the warden at all."

Of course, the man seemed like he probably didn't care that much about the warden's plan. Yayoi did, though, and not just because she was nervous about what was going to happen to her and her friends. If they could figure out the mystery, they could figure out how to escape. And that was a good goal to have.

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[mostlysinful]

Very suddenly, Balthazar decided to be charming, which he could do easily with barely a thought. His chosen, favored persona of a businessman meant that he had cultivated an underestimated ability of getting people to like him. It was a very important skill in a salesman peddling souls.

“He made you do things?” he asked, tipping his head slightly to the side, just enough to cause a lock of hair to dangle, momentarily and innocently, over one eye. “Now how on earth could the Warden manage that? You don’t seem the type.” The tone of his voice, rather than the words, held the full weight of flattery, suggesting that she was too impressive a young woman to allow such leverage over her actions.

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[romancenovelist]

This man seemed really nice. It was weird, how almost everyone in this prison was nice. That didn't seem very much like what prison was supposed to be like.

"I don't know, it was weird. I was just really mad and I said mean things to a boy and signed up to be a guard! I don't want to be a guard! I think I also said I wanted to end the world, which is stupid. And then I thought I was a zombie and Mr. Wash and I tried to eat River. That was just weird."

The nice man must have experienced something similar. The way he was talking about this place, he didn't seem new. Yayoi bet that he knew enough to be a big help in this. He knew a lot and seemed to think that she was smart. Yayoi couldn't help smiling.

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[mostlysinful]

“Don’t worry about it, darling,” Balthazar said, easily. He said darling properly, naturally, as if it were another word rather than a sickly, purposeful endearment. “I’ve been feeling at odds myself.” Balthazar could have gone on to say a variety of consoling things, possibly that the Warden simply wanted to cause emotional instability in the prisoners in order to gain more control and that worrying about it was simply aiding that. But he had a rather unkind opinion that she wouldn’t follow him. At all.

“Oh, and I’m sorry,” he added, affecting a preoccupied manner; as if filled with a vague consternation at how rude he had been. “My name is Balthazar.”

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[romancenovelist]

Balthazar was kind of a funny name, but at least it wasn't 'Horrible.' Yayoi liked Dr. Horrible a lot, but his name was really awkward.

"Balthazar, nice to meet you." Yayoi bowed. "I'm Yayoi!"

Yayoi couldn't believe she'd forgotten her manners like that, but she'd been interested in the monitors. Maybe it came from being a guard. At least Balthazar didn't seem to be mad.

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[mostlysinful]

Balthazar smiled at her, faintly. It was a good smile. “Well,” he said. “I’m sure you were a very estimable guard, no matter what the Warden attempted, Yayoi.”

All humans were capable of the most terrible things, so long as the right buttons were pushed. Balthazar was very good at finding them. Even this soft, innocent slice of humanity could be brought so low, though it would take an inordinate amount of work. A challenge, or simply too much to bother with at the moment? Hm.

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[romancenovelist]

Yayoi sighed a little at that. "Not really. Everyone got away." Though it was nice that he thought she'd be a good guard, wasn't it? If she'd been a better one, everyone would have been able to write home to their families. Yayoi just wasn't very good at this sort of thing at all. The whole looking big and scary and keeping the people in line thing. This was probably a bad sign for her future in the company.

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[mostlysinful]

“Well maybe that was how it was supposed to pan out,” Balthazar said, idly. He was growing vaguely bored of the conversation, though he was careful not to show it. He rather missed Ellie, actually. Where was she, anyway? Probably underneath someone. He was somewhat distracted by the change in the screens as they flicked to rather… different scenes, in a setting he didn’t recognize. Now that was interesting.

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[romancenovelist]

Yayoi was going to explain why she thought that wasn't the case at all when all the screens changed. Even the words under them changed. Ohh, this could be very bad. Especially with what the robot voice had said about reconstruction.

"Uh-oh," she said aloud.

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[mostlysinful]

Forgetting Ellie almost immediately once the screens had changed (it was very easy to forget Ellie), Balthazar inspected them with some alertness. While Yayoi appeared rather worried, Balthazar was unfazed. There were prisons besides this one? Well, that was interesting. He wondered if Mammon or Lucifer knew about this. Lu probably did - Balthazar would never presume to think the Devil was ignorant about something, unless it came to what the Devil’s son wanted him to do. But Mammon could be very persuasive. Exceedingly so. “Hm?” he responded.

Re: Who's the fairest of them all? [open]

[romancenovelist]

"The warden said something about reconstruction. Is he going to make Glaxcin more like . . . that?" Some of those pictures had guards. Yayoi couldn't be a real guard! She couldn't even be a pretend guard in a prison game. Though it might be better than being in one of those force-field cells.