10599/Ninjas and Fine Dining

Ninjas and Fine Dining
Date of Scene:	29 March 2022
Location:	The Strait Lace Steakhouse - Hellfire Club
Synopsis:	No description
Cast of Characters:	Emma Frost, Sandra Wu-San

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Emma Frost has posed:
Emma Frost is currently over in the steakhouse, where the blonde is skimming the menu of things while sipping distractedly at a goblet of wine. Over in front of her is a small tablet that she's looking over stock prices with the occasional glimmer of interest as things go up and down ever so minutely second by second. Apparently having had enough, she would go to order an appetizer after chatting with the waiter.
    Emma seems.. At her base.

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
"I will have the oyster platter," says the woman across from Emma.

It wasn't a dinner for two; there was no invitation.

No call ahead. No message.

Just calm, even tones and banal thoughts of lottery numbers and off-the-rack fashion.

"We'll share," Lady Shiva adds, folding her arms atop the table with a faint smile. "If you're disposed towards them, anyway. I am not a mind-reader."

Her hair's been fashioned into a crown of braids adorned by a crane hairpin with a gemstone eye. The dress is sleeveless and deep red, hugging tight until the high-slit skirt; simple, but comfortably in-code.

"Good evening, Ms. Frost."

Emma Frost has posed:
Emma Frost would glance at Shiva as she would come in, "Ah, very well. I wasn't expecting your company or I would have had a table for two setup. I hope that you're doing well, Shiva. And that you've found something to keep you entertained." Emma presumes that Shiva's looking about for something to catch her attention.

"Do try the wine here. I can't say for what your particulate favore is, but here has a great variety of rather lovely things you might enjoy." On her dime of course.

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
"As I told you last time, Emma: I cannot be kept; I can be beckoned, called, and awaited," Shiva recalls with a broadening smile. "Hoped for; but expectations must be kept measured."

Which is her version of a joke and an excusal in one-- casual forgiveness filtered through arcane amusement.

"I am as I ever am; and you?" She leans back as she asks, just in time for her place to be set. "What she has," she leaves in the waitperson's ear with a wave towards Emma's goblet. "For now."

Emma Frost has posed:
Emma Frost would twitch her lips upwards in a smile, "Yes, Shiva. You are a force of nature, mercurial and answerable only to wherever you feel that you shall go and leaving but confusion, mourning, and loss in your wake. And do enjoy>" She would tap at her side.

"Oh, I am fine. S ome things must be done to keep up appearances. I find them useful to maintain."

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
Shiva just cants her head, curious. A meticulously threaded brow rises.

"You've seemed the opposite of confused in the wake of my comings and goings, thus far, Emma... so is it loss, or mourning which I owe penance for?"

Another joke, this time clearly marked by a flash of pearl past dark red lips. It's rhetorical, at that; even as she brings knitted fingers up beneath her chin, she moves right on to asking-- agreeing?: "Appearances are everything in your world... aren't they? Do you ever find yourself exhausted with it? Maintaining the image of what others must imagine you to be, lest your presence make them nervous? Or worse?"

Emma Frost has posed:
Emma Frost would smile over at Shiva, "Oh, forgive me." She would shake her head. "Merely contemplating things." She would fold her hand together over and smile. "And thinking of some of those that I might wish to tender some job offers to." In the same vein as 'have you neutralize' might go. "Or at least get some ideas as to what they might want in return."

Emma would look quite happy at this particular progression. "There are some.. Associates here that I tend to not get along well with."

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
"You needn't apologize for being."

It might start to seem, the longer Shiva sits in silence contemplating her new associate, that she is well and truly absorbing and marinating in the information entrusted to her. And it is not entirely untrue, but mostly--

"Thank you," she softly says as a goblet's set before her. She doubles down on the sentiment with a generous, folded tip slipped into the waitperson's pocket as they bend near; her eyes and measured smile remain set on Emma all the while.

Mostly, she is the kind of woman who knows when a conversation begs for both parties to have goblets of their own.

"And you would have me negotiate with these candidates on your behalf, I take it," she posits, swirling carefully. "Or are these candidates and your thorny associates one and the same...?"

Emma Frost has posed:
Emma Frost would mm, "Unfortunately, more the second." She would go over. "There's a woman here that I historically have not gotten along with. However, she's a majortiy owner in quite a few things, so we're somewhat at loggerheads often. We don't particluarly get along,a nd one might say it's mutual."

Oh yes, the sadistic gleam in Emma's eyes is rising up. The first time likely that Selene has seen it in the blonde. "So sometimes one does hope that a way might come along to try and buy out her share of the business. If not have it go down in a fire sale."

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
Shiva greets that final sentiment with a slow sip followed by a long spell of letting the wine flow over every inch of her tongue. Less savoring, it's as if she's interrogating the wine-- turning the full range of her senses towards plumbing its mysteries as it finally trickles down her throat.

"And what does she do?" the World Warrior finally wonders once it's down.

Before taking another, less measured sip.

Emma Frost has posed:
Emma Frost would smile, "Selene. She's a.. Shall we say rather well to do and connected woman here at the club. Very prestigious, very high up.. I used to have a similar position here i nthe administration before I decided it was taking too much of my time. We never did manage to connect. While she didn't have much to do with my stepping down, she likes to think she did."

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
Shiva smiles right back, a small and patient thing.

"Emma."

Beneath the table, the leather tip of her shoe briefly touches the White Queen's shin. Shiva refolds her arms, leaning close enough for private whispers between friends:

<<"What does she DO?">> echoes between physical and astral spaces simultaneously.

Emma Frost has posed:
Emma Frost would just smile over then and go over t fold her fingers togehter <<Selene is an immortal vampiress, darling. That feeds on the life force of others. She's tried tomurder me a few times. I'd love litlte more than to return the favor.>> She would smile ever so sadistically.

<<One needs life goals, after all. She's at least ten thousand years old as near as anyone can tell, and is a sorceress>>

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
<<She is an immortal, vampire sorceress, Emma.>>

The smile doesn't budge one bit. Her eyebrow rises again, but the premise of confronting an ancient monster isn't enough to make her lose her smile.

<<Protecting you from her machinations; sabotaging her workings; negotiating, pressuring; all options.

<<But even I would be hard-pressed to kill that which cannot be.>>

The woman who boldly calls herself a goddess is a realist, at her core. It helps in moments like this.

<<Consider, however, the value of humbling that which cannot die,>> follows, and now the smile budges-- higher, wider.

Emma Frost has posed:
Emma Frost would just smile over at Shiva then. <<You're right. When all is done.. well.. I can give her but a few mometns knowing where she was bettered. With you.. I believe that she will get quite a few things>>

Emma is a realist as well. If only as she's -seen- Selene when she's angry and taking things seriously. And they terrify her.

wholeheartedly.

"enough on business. We're just here enjoying one another's company and relaxing some. Would you care for some more wine?"

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
Shiva's goblet is empty by the time she's asked. Shiva kept sipping, and sipping as they discussed the dynamics of immortal threat management.

So Shiva takes the invitation to the fullest, scooping Emma's goblet for a far smaller sip than any of her others that's not much faster all the same.

"I will have more wine," she then confirms, setting the goblet back in front of Emma. "Different wine," is every bit as even-toned but comes with a brief lifting of both brows-- and as if on cue, appetizers are brought around right afterwards. The order is repeated, verbatim: 'Different wine'; given who she's sitting with and WHERE they're sitting, she trusts them to serve to Emma's expectations-- or, at the least, is willing to learn how capable they are or aren't of that feat.

"I do enjoy your company so far, Emma... but I must admit:"

Cruelly, she lets the thought hang unfinished while meticulously spritzing and saucing one of several shelled oysters arranged on an ornate platter full of pebble ice, with condiments driven shallowly into the ice in their midst.

"I would much rather know the woman beyond the layers-- the one who has chosen to don a protective image, rather than the image herself." She shoots the oyster down with hardly a sound, then sets the shell aside so she can fold her hands behind the platter.

"Illusions can only entertain for so long, after all."

Emma Frost has posed:
Emma Frost would settle over tehn and go to think back, skimming the menu, "Very well.." Her going to move to gesture to the waiter over to get what Shiva wanted, whether it was purpoesful or random . Then Emma going over to casually put an extra hundred dollar bill down next to the empty glass as 'incentive'. She would glance over to Shiva.

"Very well then." She would sit back and think. <<It's a world out tehre where everyone is sharks. They eat, they feed, they frenzy. One can be teh chum, or one can be teh sharks feeding off the rest of them. That is the way the business world works. That is the way a family wroks.>>

She would go on. <<My family made me everything I am today. And I wish that I had other role models. But.. C'est la vie. Old money.>>

Emma would throw back the entire goblet.

Sandra Wu-San has posed:
<<But you are not a shark, Emma Frost.>>

Lady Shiva has met this woman two and a nebulous fraction times. She sounds just as confident, feels just as assured in the rightness of this assessment as she ever has anything Emma's experienced from her thus far-- which is to say 'wholly'.

'Completely'.

<<Sharks eat, feed, and frenzy; they are slaves to primal instincts. Shackled to their appetites, their singular natures. There is no shame in being a shark; a shark is a finely tuned instrument of killing intent, an apex predator adapted to the pressures of dominating the upper reaches of its food chain.>>

Another oyster's carefully prepared. Shiva's eyes stay glued to the woman whose thirst for wine seems to have grown exponentially.

<<But you are not a shark, because you're something much more dangerous: a woman of surpassing will and stubborn strength.>> Gently, she reaches across the table to set the prepped oyster in front of Emma, an unbidden offering for a true scourge of the seas. <<A Queen with a mind that allows her to share her fantasies of murdering immortal, sorcerous rivals in absolute safety,>> she adds with a hint of amusement.

<<So why reduce yourself to something so simple as a shark?>>

The question's a sincere one; it doesn't even feel judgmental-- not yet, anyway. She is utterly certain of her read of Emma, but that still leaves room for the White Queen's truth to inform the one Shiva herself sees, for better or worse.

"I am sorry," she lowly adds. "About your family."

Emma Frost has posed:
Emma Frost would just smile over at Shiva and.. As the thoughts would come through, she would blush. Taking it as a hard compliment and her cheeks would pinken a smidgen . It quickly passing as she would make sure to not have the glass of wine as the oyster would be brought out.

"I do think that's one of the nicest and most unique things anyone has ever said to me, Shiva. And the kindest. Thank you." Said with full sincerity and appreciation. <<And that's part of why I stay here. It reminds me to the depths of where I'm from and how I fell. And sometimes that if I ever think I'mf ree of it, I can again. It reminds me.>>

"My family was scum. Were scum. The world's better off without most of the Frosts. My brother.. Was the best of us."