1651/Special Delivery

Special Delivery
Date of Scene:	15 June 2024
Location:	Obsidian Tower - Board Room
Synopsis:	Catra's lousy day gets worse when she gets special orders from the Obsidian Board of Directors, and it's the Joker who comes to see how those orders are received.
Cast of Characters:	Catra, 21

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Catra has posed:
It's been several days since--

No.

Catra doesn't want to talk about it. She doesn't want to hear about it. She doesn't even want to think about it. Just thinking about it sets off the alarms in her head, the panic attacks, the turmoil over abandonment, the absolute terror of not being good enough. So instead she's working herself into exhaustion, practicing her swordsmanship on some automated drones in someone's lab somewhere -- not Takashi's, and she's definitely not here with permission but ask her if she cares -- all while trying to strengthen her magic and use it and her blade at the same time.

All the negative emotions in the last few days, all the intensity of it, has finally brought her magic out to the forefront. And it's illusions.

Because of course. Adora gets real power, and she gets pretend.

That only serves to fuel her ever descending spiral of bad feelings and self-hatred. She smashes a drone to pieces; one of them scores a hit on her, and with the safeties removed it actually hurts, but she hardly notices it and just keeps going, levelling a shadowy blast of energy into it, and then another into the next drone, and then--

And then, the realization that there aren't any more drones. She's quite literally destroyed them all. She pants heavily, looking around herself at the multitude of scrapped would've been attack drones, and the rather abused state of the workshop. Some Obsidian scientist, Catra forgot her name already, isn't going to be happy.

Who. Cares.

What're they possibly going to do to her that hasn't been done already? Hinoiri left. Just like Adora did.

And she wasn't good enough.

Macaron (21) has posed:
And it was so that the door to the lab opened...

And a kindabad walked in. With a letter. Ohhhhh. And it had the seal of the directors on it. The kindabad ran over, holding the envelop up to her. Giving a little sound that was... probably... speach of some kind.

Before running out. Well, that was... amusing? Ish? Likely nothing to worry about until--

"My my, someone seems to be having fun," a voice said from behind her. When, and if, she turned around she'd see... a clown. No, a jester. Joker, as he was more well known.

"I do hope these weren't important to anyone~" he says, suddenly across the room, kneeling and stacking an arm on top of the remains of a leg. They then toppled over. "There's so much fun to be had with a bit of destruction, yes?"

And then he was across the room, putting a slashed off panel into a hole that had been cleaved into another bot. "Despair like this could be harnessed, indeed. Like any other horse, it could go into quite the gallop, I imagine."

And then, he was doing a little flip, landing in front of her, a rather cruel grin on his lips, his empty void where his eyes should be staring at her. Not at the letter. At her. "A message from the directors? Personally? It is not very often that such a thing is given. Oh, no no. One has to have made quite the impression... or angered them quite a bit... to warrant such notice. Or maybe one of them just has an eye for the little kitty cat~" he said in a cheerful tone, rocking his head to the side...

If she opened it, the contents were... less than good. Interfering in the affairs of a director, especially to PROTECT a threat to the organization? The dispatch made it clear.

Bring back the Unicorn's head... or her own would likely be mounted on the wall in Hinoiri's place.

"So, which is it?" he asked, having reverted to standing on his hands on one of the remains of the robots she'd broken to pieces.

Catra has posed:
Catra takes the letter. It's a strange moment of calm, after all the rage-fueled destruction wrought as an exercise to cover other, more deeply held feelings that she doesn't wish to acknowledge. And for a moment she just stands there, looking at the envelope and trying to divine the significance of it without opening it.

And then someone else is here.

Catra's ears flatten and her tail lashes behind her, as she rounds on the intruder, peeling her lips back and showing her teeth, exagerated canines and all. "Get," she snarls, "OUT." As if she had some kind of right to this workshop that's... entirely not hers, and not even her team's. Her fingers curl around the handle of her sword, and it glows with a faint wreath of purple energy. Of course, it doesn't take long to become apparent that this person isn't going to be dismissed so easily.

"Who the hell are you?" she snarls. "Can't you see I'm busy? Don't you think maybe, it's dangerous," she continues, her tone shifting to poisoned honey, "To sneak up on a cat? We bite, you know."

And indeed, her claws are out, even gripping the sword. Except, it's all an illusion. Now that she's got that worked out, it's just an intangible simulacrum that's busy threatening the Joker. The real Catra has retreated to the other side of a pillar, where quietly breaks the seal and takes out the letter to read it.

What.

The hell.

The dark despair in Catra's brain overflows. Seriously? For real. They try to 'retire' Hinoiri, fail, and somehow it's her fault? She wasn't even there! She didn't even know they were doing it!

The... realism of Catra's illusion falters a little; her features get a bit fuzzy around the edges, and to anyone paying a modicum of attention it's fairly obvious that it's not really her. Well, anyone who knows what to look for, at least.

"None of your business," Catra snaps, keeping up the phantasm for now. "Seriously. Go. Away. I don't want to talk and I want to be left *alone*. I especially don't want to be bothered by multicolored weirdos who think they're smart, and I'm out of drones, and I'm angry," She's only using the anger to cover her abject despair that's multiplying rapidly now in the wake of the letter, "So kindly go... Go bother somebody else! Pick someone from Sunbreaker's old department. How about that?!"

Macaron (21) has posed:
Joker let out a startled gasp, pulling away and falling off his standing position (even if on his hands), toppling over to roll and land on his face in a comical faceplant. "Oh no! Me? I am just Joker, a loyal servant of the great Lord Pierot and bringer of despair! His fool, his lackey, his clown as it were~"

His grin only grew, however, as the illusion flickered and he rolled back to a sitting position, arms crossed. "Although, the despair filling this room may even put my own to shame. You kitties do tend to bite, don't you? And such *disloyal* creatures, aren't you? After all, one kitty cat just left not that long ago. And then Easter went and lost their unicorn, too."

And then he was over her. On the pillar. Standing on it, vertically, as easily as she was on the ground. Grinning down at her. "My. Oh. my. Sunbreaker was such a *fun* little bit of chaos, wasn't she? A shame she went and turned on all of us. You wouldn't be planning something so *nasty*, would you? Majorina always has such a fondness for cats, says they go where they please. Me?"

"I always preferred them after they were turned into violins." The way he said that would make most people shudder.

"I do hope you would know *better* than to go against the *will of the directors*. Why, the last person to even annoy them... well... last I heard she was lost... alone... helpless in the hospital. With the directors deciding just *what* they'd do with her. Say, that letter from the Directors. Does it have to do with that, hmmmm?" And that smile on his face... only growing.

Catra has posed:
Catra promptly incinerates the letter with a burst of dark energy.

Or, did she just make it look like she did, while hurriedly crumpling it up and stuffing it in a pocket of her jacket? It's hard to say. Well, hard for most people to say, for sure. Who knows how much Joker is managing to take in.

"What do you care?!" she snaps back, her anger increasing in lockstep with all her other emotions, both fear and despair being the most prominent, and the most deeply burried and ignored. She raises whirls around on her feet, backing away from the pillar and lifting her sword, pointing Powersend straight up at the top. "Great, Pierot likes you. I'm supposed to be impressed? I've gone toe to toe with *heroes*."

Saying it out loud just makes it all the worse. She's on the wrong side. She knows it perfectly well, but it's the only path that's ever been open to her, and at least the villains keep her around. As long as she performs. And, as the letter stated quiet clearly, it was time to perform.

"I'll keep the directors happy," she snarls, taking a step back from the pillar and keeping her sword raised. As the smile on Joker's face grows, the enraged look on Catra's face deepens, as she retreats slowly from the pillar, like an animal back into a corner and preparing to fight her way out of it.

"Directors want me to go deal with a threat? I'll go deal with a threat. And I don't think *My* loyalty is something you need to question. *I* am not the one who abandoned her friends and switched sides. I know what side I'm on." She pauses, narrowing her eyes and willing her heart to slow down, just a little, as she flexes her fingers aroudn the sword nd curls her other hand into a fist. "So what do you care?"

Macaron (21) has posed:
"Oh, I'm just an enjoyer of fine drama, little Etherian~" Joker said with a chuckle, before disappearing and... reappearing on one of the piles, balancing on one foot while juggling the remains of one of the bodies.

"You've fought heroes? Oh, wow, you must be very strong, I can't wait to see what you'll do~"

Then he tossed them up... and then he was gone again, sitting on the wall nearby, legs crossed, as the pieces crashed to the ground. "Or will the great witch lose another member of her team? That Beryl really *does* go through her lackeys so quickly, doesn't she?" and then he was juggling again... while sitting... at an impossible angle. And she might notice he was juggling little... tiny... runestones...

"You know what happened to the unicorn when she upset Beryl? She spent days on ice, hee hee. It truly was *chilling*," and then he snapped his hands together, the runestones juggling themselves as they were gone...

And she'd bump into him, when she moved back. "Just remember who's side you are on, kitty cat... Make sure you don't make the directors angry, or we'll be able to see exactly what kind of violin you'd make~"

The scary thing wasn't that he kept disappearing. It was that when she bumped into him and turned around? He wasn't there. But his words still echoed in her ear as if he was right. There. Next to him. As did his laughter after...

But he was gone. And finally the runestones stopped juggling themselves to land on the ground...

Not runestones at all. Just pieces of broken bots.

Catra has posed:
"STAY AWAY FROM ME!"

Catra whirls around and lashes out at Joker with her sword, leaving an arc of purple flame in the air where it passes. But of course, it doesn't connect. He's gone. So she swings the sword again, lopping off the pillar at the base, and then clutching a fistful of dark energy and throwing it into the room as the severe pillar lands with a thunderous crash; the energy is not even aimed, just... randomly destroying a bank of computers. Important? Maybe. Who cares.

She stands there panting, willing her hands to stop shaking, willing her heart to stop racing, willing her mind to stop churning, and none of it listening, none of it stopping as the wheels turn and the spiral spins and it's all just completely overwhelming, as the world shrinks to a single point, and she is the point, and what is the point.

Someone else betrayed her.

Again.

And she has to pay the price for it.

"Fine," she snarls, while somewhere burried deep in her psyche a little five year old Catra is begging her to stop, to slow down, to be nice. But she can't stop it. She's the villain. She has to do the villain things. This is what the villains do.

"They want a unicorn's head? I'll get them a unicorn's head." She sucks in a deep breath, and lets it out slowly, deliberately, as she turns and walks out of the room, her pace deliberate like a cloudy day building into a summer storm. "Question me," she growls to herself. "Don't trust me? Am I never good enough? Well *FINE* I'll..." she trails off, grabbing the first door handle she can find, and availing herself of that trick, that one neat trick Majorina taught her, where you can go places.

Anywhere but Obsidian Tower. Somehow, she finds her way to the abandoned dojo, where she's seen both Adora and Bow, on different occasions. But, they're not here now.

But it is a good place to cry.