3809/Spiral Productions : the Great Escape

Spiral Productions : the Great Escape
Date of Scene:	14 October 2020
Location:	Belle Reve Penitentiary
Synopsis:	Slips finds herself stuck in a prison. But is it just a movie? Either way, she escapes, and the ratings were good.
Cast of Characters:	Spiral, Slips

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Spiral has posed:
So there's a flash of light, and suddenly they are no longer in that basement in New York. There's a brief moment when Arya sees a dark room and bars but only brief, as the next particularly painful spell knocks her the hell out.

Time passes - Spiral does horrendous things in that time - and eventually consciousness returns. Turns out you're lying on the hard formerly white and now stained floor of a communal shower of some sort. There are waist high stalls, so privacy is clearly pretty much nominal (and this is even the women's wing), but it's not actually shower time it seems, and it's merely damp, and empty, and Arya still has all her clothes on.

Slips has posed:
This isn't Slips' first time at torture, but it sucks every time.  However, it is Arya's.  This would be a little easier to endure if she shifted into someone with training, though she knows that lie isn't true.  There's a point where pain exceeds what the body can suffer.

"Yep.  Every damn time.  At least this time I'm not naked and without a spleen."  It's quite literally, a slip, soft and said only to herself, at least so she thinks.  Just in case, she checks for incisions, not knowing how long she's been out, and whether they've got to the point in the dance when her captors find out that she can heal much more rapidly than the average human.  It's usually pretty early on.

Slips just stays there, feeling the cold and hardness of the tile.  She turns her head to look at the stalls and then pushes up to her feet.  No people yet.  She glances about for cameras, and when satisfied, she shifts ever so slowly into a female guard somewhere in the facility.  It's a huge gamble situationally as well as other dangers, but she's in prison.  "Time to get the fuck out."  Her voice has shifted an octave lower, her accent a little fainter than the real person, but she quickly shifts it into place, as if knowing how much she needs to lean into the echos of muscle memory she inherits.

Time to shower.  She strips down and tosses Arya's clothing aside.  She's only a size smaller and two inches shorter than Arya was/is?

Spiral has posed:
It's not exactly torture that's planned. Spiral is merely in My Little Playthings mode. Not that Slips is probably that aware but Spiral is actuallt standing in one of the other shower stalls, invisible, though dancing lightly on tiptoe as she does so.

While Slips was out she actually replaced her eyes (and that's a very bland and euphemistic way to describe it) with her cybernetic replacements, the ones she was carrying around before. At first the change is unnoticeable, but when Slips slowly starts changing suddenly she realises her eye sockers start aching and her vision starts messing up, as the eyes-to-brain connection goes haywire as nerves and eye socket change around the cybereye.

Just about then one of the female prisoners walks in, a 5'6" heavily tattooed bundle of meth fuelled anger. Someone who caught her boyfriend in flagrante delecto and took it particularly badly, badly enough to end up in here. A disguised Spiral promised her a big box of cigarettes if she would go and cut up someone in the shower at a specific time - probably stretching Wallers patience to breaking point if she's actually found out - but said prisoner balks a bit, eyes widening, when she sees someone she recognises as one of the prison wardens, as she wanders in, out of hours, dagger in hand. Talk about busted. "What the /fuck/.".

Suddenly this deal sounds a lot worse.

Spiral for her part is bemused by her script promptly going off the rails right away. She's tempted to yell Cut! and start over with more magic. But... maybe this will be even more interesting.

Slips has posed:
At first this facsimile of a prison warden slams her eyes shut with the pain.  Instinct.  Poor instinct because it doesn't do anything to relieve whatever's going on.  "What-fuck?"  Her power forces her through the transformation, as if it never really stopped.  Real eyes start to push in from the back after about 30 seconds of experiencing fully detached retinas.  She clutches at her eye sockets from the pressure of the new eyes starting to push out the cybernetics until suddenly-PLOP PLOP!  Her vision is still quite blurry and static from the pressure.

"What the fuck?"  Two eyes, one in each hand stare back up at what is clearly not Slips when they roll into her palms.  Has it occurred to her that she just blew Arya's identity and exposed her own power?  "Best find this year!"  She tucks them into her pocket just as she looks over to notice the prisoner, the grin at her lips a growing a little wider.

The warden reaches behind her and pulls a wooden mop from behind her that was not leaning up against the wall and was not there a moment ago.  Then she lifts her leg to drive her foot down, snapping the shaft of the broom into a conveniently jagged point.  "You can be intact when I leave."  The alternative is left up to the imagination.

Spiral has posed:
The what the fuck is echoed, with gusto, by the prisoner. AAAAAA her eyes popped out of her fucking head!! And... she still has eyes! This is a supervillain prison too. Maybe one of them got out or something. Someone who has sea cucumber body party throwing gross out powers, maybe.

Either way the prisoner is backing away, quickly, back around the corner, past the toilets, to where the cell block is. This is that brief window where they aren't all locked in their cells, so there's some milling around, some prison guards watching the proceedings. Our daring orange coated methhead promptly tries to vanish into the crowd, as the last thing she wants is the surprise shower warden getting her in trouble. Unfortunately that scream, even if brief, was noticed in this most controlled of environments, and some guards out there are already looking in the direction of the showers. Probably not to get involved unless blood was spilt though, prisons are dog eat dog like that

Invisible Spiral merely watches what's going on, somewhat mystified, but intrigued.

Slips has posed:
Slips-warden takes off in a sprint at the last second, but she doesn't have any powers to warrant her catching up.  It was a calculated gamble.  Play.  This isn't Arya.  Her normal method acting has melted away with the temptation.f

"That could have gone better."  Slips warden-shrugs, still half in character of the role she's chosen.  "Another roll of the die."  This time she goes for a male, someone borrowing familiar features from the men there.  The eyes of a delusional prisoner, a mentalist with a heavy dose of misguided altruism.  It's not uncommon.  And so on and so forth.  She departs from the showers to try and get to a junction point before anyone can see her exiting.  The way she makes her way in the world, there's always risk, but she strolls comfortably, not even really knowing yet what consequences she'll have to deal with in her amalgamated throw-away guard persona.

Doo dee doo.  Time to take a tour!  Without hesitation, she looks to the guards when they round the corner.  "Good, backup."  Which basically means the new guard trying to fade into their blindspots before walking on...well, assuming no one thinks of their suddenly new colleague they've never seen before.  "Over here!"

Spiral has posed:
Spiral finds it quite hard to follow her! Magic has to be used - she was Mojo's tracker after - to chase her target down. Unfortunately a crowd of prisoners is hard to navigate through as an invisible person, probably harder than it is for Slips-warden, with prisoners actively getting out of the way, so Invisible Spiral is being a bit left behind, as she fumbles with more eyes from a pocket to record the Great Escape. She needs to get a motorbike ready outside or something! Ah yes... a plan is hatched.

The guards here are quite well trained given what this place is like, though these particular ones are not working on the super wing, and any guard would probably find it difficult to stop someone subtle like Slips without even being warned. Though Amanda Waller's cameras are probably having a field day, when someone actually bothers to check them.

There's a guard post that leads out of here ultimately but there's a passcard coded door and a couple of female guards in a cubicle chatting to each another by it.

Spiral at least can always find those eyes - there's always a tracker in Body Shoppe technology - so she actually takes a moment to pop off and hopefully prepare things for Slips' exit, though who knows given she doesn't play by the rules.

Slips has posed:
To keep one's head down isn't always the answer to blending in.  Each atmosphere has its own kind of language to learn, things to pick up on.  Like an unpowered spy might pick up little things from their surroundings, props, Slips has them already formed.  She scavenges for behaviors, tics, culture.

There's a brusque dip of the Slips-Guard's head to a passing guard.  It's in the guy's peripheral.  Hardly something outside of the daily rituals.  Eyes should generally keep to the prisoners.  She heads to the break room for the guards after stealing the identity of a guard she passed in the corridor earlier.  "Hey Chuck.  You're looking a little-horrible.  Maybe you should go home," one of the staff says when they cross Slips in the hall.

"Yeah.  Just need to get my lunch."  This only seems more unsettling and urgent to Slips' persona.  She rides her age old instinct and rushes toward the staff break room off of which their bathroom is situated.  Once inside, it's a brisk walk to the fridge where the Slips-Guard grabs two sack lunches and abruptly walks out, through the corridors to where she thinks the architecture is leading her to some kind of loading bay or employee parking.

Spiral has posed:
Everything is going pretty swimmingly. There's an admin block but it's well signed, a staff canteen, staff toilets, vending machines, break room. And a sign saying EXIT.

As Slips draws near it's evident that the prison, like most prisons, is surrounded by a wall - and the wall is surrounded by a fence. And there's a pretty large courtyard with loading entrances to the kitchens and the like, and the main entrance, but if there's a back way out it's not this way, it's not so well signposted.

Anyway things are looking good! Not too many guards, and just one corridor to go perhaps before outside air. Except then Spiral suddenly appears in the corridor in front of Slips, dancing. One hand holds out a pair of eyes, which look veeeery familiar now, two other hands clutch swords, one clutches a baseball bat - and the other two are apparently casting a spell.

She seems quite happy though. "This is a much better tale than the one in New York. But it needs a dramatic ending.". And then she holds up a hand, a magical blast of power emanating from it in all directions - the depowering sort of power, though maybe it won't quite have the effect Spiral wanted.

Slips has posed:
There's always downtime for actors and more important parts of the set to get to, so to speak.  She weaves in and out on her search without panic, heartbeat steady and perfect.  She even skips a little after passing someone without incident.

Spiral's appearance, Slips comes to a stop, shifting her weight to the side.  There's a little jolt of tension in her body at the sudden appearance.  "I'm impressed," she gestures to the multi-tasking, briefly wondering what Spiral's brain structure might be like, what alien rules govern its byways to multi-task, truly multi-task.  "How many brains do you have?"  What would that feel like.  With such control she begins to sh-wait.

Slips feels it instantly.  It's dead.  What about her bullshitting powers?  "I like pickles.  OH FUCK!  I HAVE TO STAY IN THIS BIG FUCKING OAF?"  This will be...new, and she can only imagine more painful or debilitating as time ticks on.  She takes out her truncheon.  Why did she forget the taser?  Even all of her training in the East.  Then she spots the eyes.  "Oh fuck.  Fuck, FUCK," as she realizes Arya's cover is blown.  "I really fucking liked Arya.  So would you prefer I kill you or that we just agree to never see each other again?" as if these were the only two ways this could go.

Spiral has posed:
Spiral smiles widely at Slips' words. This is someone who truly gets her, even more perhaps than Harley Quinn does. "Spiral was born dancing through minds, as she dances through space, and through souls..." she says dreamily. "I'm sorry at the sacrifice you have made for a show. I have my secrets too... I will edit it out of the final product." she promises. "My spell will wear off soon enough... and I will pretend none of this ever happened.". It would be better with Waller too, in truth. She's taken liberties with Belle Reve Penitentiary before but not quite on this scale.

She casts another spell, a quicker spell, and cloaks Slips in the illusion of a prisoner's orange uniform - though it's only illusory, one of her more simple disguises- and then she simply steps out of the way, all three arms on one side indicating the exit.

She's not exactly made it easy, but she's not getting in the way herself, either.

Slips has posed:
"That doesn't leave like...some kind of residue or something?"  Slips' rather less inventive mind now, inquires.  "Eww."  She's lost her zingers.  Maybe she never had them.  Maybe they only /sounded/ better and more convincing with her powers.

"Oh, co-gaslighting?  I'm down, but a part of me feels like I just shouldn't take the chance.  I mean I've been through this song and dance so many times.  Someone finds out about my powerset, it somehow gets back to people, I lose business and have to build up my contacts again, there's a bunch of assassination attempts.  It's so...messy," Slips' blathers with that deeper voice while rubbing the scruffy ginger beard she's now stuck with.

Slips squints.  It's at least clear that Slips has every incentive to want to keep this quiet.  Suddenly, she looks down at the new guise.  It's a strange experience, like wearing a suit made of spiderwebs she keeps walking through, sliding over her skin.  Like some phantom organ she's been stuffed into, skin that is not hers, whoever she is then.  "Okay let's get this over with.  This feels weird."  It's just new.

"How kind," Slips says with an smirk as she lumbers past Spiral in her bulky frame, dropping immediately into character like she's stepping into it.  "Excuse me."  Nope.  "Just."  He twists his hands up at the wrists as if he's offended her somehow with his proximity.  He sucks in his belly.  "That's not really, gotta twist to get past right here, just," woo.

Then he steps through the exit, making it burst wide open as he opens his hands up, stretching out with a deep breath like he's hugging the sun, "WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY!"

Spiral has posed:
Spiral shrugs. "I appreciate someone else who works in show business." she tells her. That and she'll probably forget by tomorrow, or at least de prioritise it, as it's fair to say that Spiral operates on a different plane than most people. She smiles, and then weaves her invisibility spell over herself once more. "The show must go on." comes a disembodied voice.

There's no alarm or anythin in the prison. And so sheer surprise causes paralysis from the guards on the door. How on earth did a prisoner end up there of all places? Just.... walking down the corridor which goes through the part of the jail where all the guards are? That makes no sense at all.

The two on the front desk stare mutely for a few moments - and then they begin to rise, one pressing the alarm button, which flashes red under the desk.

Beyond them is an open door, sunlight streaming in from the courtyard beyond. There is a van there unloading food, a couple of prison staff helping. The prison gate is open - nice timing.

There's also a gleaming motorbike just sitting there on its kickstand, keys quite obviously in the ignition. It's actually partly in the way, but that was invisible too, until about a second ago, and fortunately the guards on the desk are both looking at Slips rather than where the bike was.

Slips has posed:
"I don't work for show business."  Oh how Slips wants to say this isn't a game to her but that's not even in character for her.  "My abilities keep me alive," in more ways than she considers, "...but it is wicked fun."  There's that flicker of appreciation.  But enough about conversations in the recent past.

When Slips rounds the corner to witness the sea of guards, there's only one thing to do.  A tagline.  "Time for a little rough and tumble."   He cracks his knuckles.  There's some excellent Foley laid down.  Nothing Slips' contributes herself.  Full speed ahead, Slips takes off running toward the closest guard and launches himself at them, going for the vulnerable spots.  Those eyes.  The guard drops fast from the power of questing thumbs.  Wild screams as they careen into another two guards.  One has his truncheon out already.  The newly blind man succumbs to the pain and passes out.

As that bulky frame rises like some mountain standing up, one truncheon makes contact with his back as he catches the second one, rips it from the first guard's hands and takes two big swings to the thing bruising and cracking at least one rib.  He elbows the next, kind of plowing through some of the guards with all his sharp edges and hammery body parts, tossing one head first into a wall before being overcome by the last group.

Slips can see the motorcycle.  Taunting.  "That's freedom."  Sounds more like a compliment to the motorbike than anything else.  "RAAAAAAA!" He bursts up from his hands and knees, plowing out of the ring of abuse that's formed.  Right before Slips gets to the bike, he turns around and knocks out guard on hot pursuit.

With a kick, the motor roars up and there's no wasting time for anything but that cavalier demeanor.  Aways he goes.

Spiral has posed:
Spiral is meanwhile holding up her eyes, and nodding, while standing on the front desk invisibly. Probably safer than in the middle of the brawl, though that guy who got eye-gouged, well, he's probably going to need a stay in the infirmary. She makes a mental note to use some of Wilson Fisks money to procure what she needs to make more eyes.

Some of the guards are annoyed enough to draw guns, but that sort of thing is against prison regulations, and this is a particularly well trained prison after all.

There's a fence outside the wall, and one final guard there hurriedly closing the outermost gate to freedom. Well, sort of freedom, there's no doubt a guard in a tower barking reports and helicopters and/or dogs being warmed up.

Invisible Spiral hurriedly rushes out to make sure nothing is missed.

Slips has posed:
Slips tries not to break character with another whiny complaint.  She needs Spiral to /want/ to keep her word.  She's not even sure what Spirals code is, if she has one.  It'd be so much easier to understand, Slips thinks, if she just got to shift-

It was an easy though to accelerate, looking for something to ramp off of just in case.  Suddenly, coming out of that reverie, Slips comes to a side...no not a side stop.  It looks like it until the meaty prisoner lets motorcycle slide out from underneath him, aiming the sparking bike at the guard.

Spiral has posed:
"Oh shit...". The guy on the gate values his life more than keeping Slips within the prison. After all, they'll catch him... her... pretty quickly afterwards, once they work out which prisoner is missing, and get the helicopter warmed up.

So the bike manages to slip between what tiny gap remained in the closing fence gate and around the barrier, and then out into the open road. No doubt the prison is in full alert by now. But Spiral wasn't lying, and her spells suppressing Slips' powers and the prison uniform illusion are already wearing off.

And... nobody is actually missing, oddly enough. Weirdest prison break ever.

Slips has posed:
Is it technically a crime to escape a prison one isn't sentenced to?  All those guards!  It was just self defense your Honor.  With some control over her power, a cell phone is vastly less complex to shift than the processes of the human body, DNA, the mind.  "Siri, find me the nearest Starbucks."  They're everywhere and most likely to be the closest way to disappear, vanish into a crowd like a proper spy that enjoys a latte.

Siri's either dead or.  "Fuck!"  Slips throws the phone and 'makes' a new one, this time with a working SIM card!  "Siri, find me-"  it suddenly dawns on her that Spiral may not have the product placement deal in place.  "Alana, find me the nearest Starbucks."  BING!

Spiral has posed:
And thus ends an odd day for the guards at Belle Reve. It was probably worse for the prisoners - lots of roll calls and cell searches for the rest of the day. But, in the end, everybody accounted for.

How odd.

That night Spiral is sitting in her alternative lair in her Body Shoppe, far away from the prison, on her own, and finishes editing Arya out, before she holds up her eyes, turning them on herself with a happy smile.

"Hello, Screwloose. I'm sure His Holiness doesn't mind a little competition for once? They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after all.". Then she turns the eyes off, starts the broadcast, and settles back in her chair, imagining hordes of fans on Mojoworld all clamouring for the next production - from Spiral, for a change.