Third part ...
Apr. 7th, 2004 08:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deannawolOkay, not as good as the rest, was tired and distracted and issues at work were clouding it ... but here goes...
Lex tuned out Vogue's bitching about how it was her idea to go, silently thinking to herself that Vogue could delude herself all she wanted, but the fact remained that she had wholeheartedly signed up to Lex's plan. Every member of the team was dressed totally in white. As they arrived outside, the media presence was already very visible. They walked thru the double doors of the building, looking around the whole time. It's not every day that you find yourself in the belly of the beast after all. Lex's shoulder ached acting as a reminder, as if she needed one, of the true reason that Lex was here, vengence.
A brainwashed Arasaka sycophant met them with a smile almost as wide as the building. He briefed them quickly and left them to get aquainted with the profiles that Arasaka wanted them to portray. Pix was sitting in a corner having a fit as stylists tried to get things like hairspray or makeup near her face and hair. Everyone else seemed to enjoy being primped, really getting into the corporate whore mindset.
Yuro walked in before the conference was supposed to start and had a single word to say about it, cute. How arrogant for him to think that noone other than Japanese can understand and use the symbols of the Japanese cultures.
The group files out and takes their positions. All the time Lex is debating whether or not to screw Yuro over because it would be so easy to not go along with the prewritten answers. The hush falling over the crowd broke Lex out of her ongoing internal monolog. Yuro starts talking, laying out everything that had happened in the last two weeks, Waxfire, Flatline, Orbis, everything. Following that, he gave us the credit... well that is to say, us as an Arasaka affiliate. For a second or two after Yuro finished his speech.
Then the bombardment started. And it started with Sansygh. They asked her about her affiliations to the Metahumans. Sansygh appeared to be holding back several curses in various languages and simply answered that it wasn't an issue for this press conference. Her entire stance changed, leaving no room for questioning. Yuro looked over and glared. Needless to say that it was not one of the prepared answers. Everyone got a question. Lex paid little attention to anyone else's questions.
That was until Sharkey. One of the journalists, vultures, asked him a very interesting question from Lex's point of view. She only picked up one word of the question but that word was quite enough... Triad. Lex's mind wandered back in time again to the staging of a mob war. The yakuza wanted an alliance with the italian mafia against the Russians and the Triads. The yakuza had been fighting on and off for years with the Triads. She shivered when she thought of how the yakuza would have reacted if we were found out to be associated with the Triads. Hell, they could still decide to release the stay on Arasaka's hand.
Were these the 'friends' that he had been going to see, even though they knew the situation with Arasaka? Was this the reason he was blowing her off constantly? Was this the reason that she didn't see him for weeks on end? She was going to kill him when the camera's were gone, if Arasaka didn't first!
To put the icing on the cake, after he had tried to both deny the allegations and say that he was only doing it out of duty to a sensai, Smoothwave stood up and asked what it was like to work for Arasaka. She was giving us an out, but it was an out we couldn't take anymore. The only answer we could give was that we loved it, that it was a wonderful experience. Lies and more lies. Lex was starting to believe that her whole life was wrapped up in a spiderweb of lies. And she may have been right...
Lex tuned out Vogue's bitching about how it was her idea to go, silently thinking to herself that Vogue could delude herself all she wanted, but the fact remained that she had wholeheartedly signed up to Lex's plan. Every member of the team was dressed totally in white. As they arrived outside, the media presence was already very visible. They walked thru the double doors of the building, looking around the whole time. It's not every day that you find yourself in the belly of the beast after all. Lex's shoulder ached acting as a reminder, as if she needed one, of the true reason that Lex was here, vengence.
A brainwashed Arasaka sycophant met them with a smile almost as wide as the building. He briefed them quickly and left them to get aquainted with the profiles that Arasaka wanted them to portray. Pix was sitting in a corner having a fit as stylists tried to get things like hairspray or makeup near her face and hair. Everyone else seemed to enjoy being primped, really getting into the corporate whore mindset.
Yuro walked in before the conference was supposed to start and had a single word to say about it, cute. How arrogant for him to think that noone other than Japanese can understand and use the symbols of the Japanese cultures.
The group files out and takes their positions. All the time Lex is debating whether or not to screw Yuro over because it would be so easy to not go along with the prewritten answers. The hush falling over the crowd broke Lex out of her ongoing internal monolog. Yuro starts talking, laying out everything that had happened in the last two weeks, Waxfire, Flatline, Orbis, everything. Following that, he gave us the credit... well that is to say, us as an Arasaka affiliate. For a second or two after Yuro finished his speech.
Then the bombardment started. And it started with Sansygh. They asked her about her affiliations to the Metahumans. Sansygh appeared to be holding back several curses in various languages and simply answered that it wasn't an issue for this press conference. Her entire stance changed, leaving no room for questioning. Yuro looked over and glared. Needless to say that it was not one of the prepared answers. Everyone got a question. Lex paid little attention to anyone else's questions.
That was until Sharkey. One of the journalists, vultures, asked him a very interesting question from Lex's point of view. She only picked up one word of the question but that word was quite enough... Triad. Lex's mind wandered back in time again to the staging of a mob war. The yakuza wanted an alliance with the italian mafia against the Russians and the Triads. The yakuza had been fighting on and off for years with the Triads. She shivered when she thought of how the yakuza would have reacted if we were found out to be associated with the Triads. Hell, they could still decide to release the stay on Arasaka's hand.
Were these the 'friends' that he had been going to see, even though they knew the situation with Arasaka? Was this the reason he was blowing her off constantly? Was this the reason that she didn't see him for weeks on end? She was going to kill him when the camera's were gone, if Arasaka didn't first!
To put the icing on the cake, after he had tried to both deny the allegations and say that he was only doing it out of duty to a sensai, Smoothwave stood up and asked what it was like to work for Arasaka. She was giving us an out, but it was an out we couldn't take anymore. The only answer we could give was that we loved it, that it was a wonderful experience. Lies and more lies. Lex was starting to believe that her whole life was wrapped up in a spiderweb of lies. And she may have been right...
*Hugs*
Date: 2004-04-07 02:23 am (UTC)Feel better soon.