Take every moment; you know that you own them

[sageprincess]

Characters: Zelda, a box, her trusted friends and allies, and you!
Setting: One of the ladies' bathrooms, the cafeteria, the workshop, and somewhere else...
Format: Starting action, but can do prose!
Summary: A new month, a new plot point in Zelda's mailbox. In less resistance related news, stopping to smell the roses (or the rose flavored tea) is good for the soul, and the Princess is terrible at sewing.
Warnings: DEAR GOD THE TL;DR None as of yet.

Mailroom -> Bathroom; closed

[Ever since Dax's death, it's become routine. Wake up, get ready for the day, check the mail. Most of the time, there's nothing, and Zelda moves on with her day without a second thought. Sometimes, she receives letters - requests, offers of assistance, statements of solidarity, all varying in urgency, and she spends some time thinking of what to do regarding them. Sometimes she receives gifts, most often in the form of food, and she is quick to share the bounty with her descendant. Once, she received a particularly cruel package - a snowglobe of her castle, but without the snow to imply it is anything but underwater - and she can't imagine the workers in the mailroom enjoyed cleaning up the shattered, wet pieces of glass after she threw it against the wall (April was not a good month).

Regardless, the routine of checking the mail has given her some sense of normalcy, and on average, has brought her more hope than despair.

That fact continues to hold true on the first of May, as she opens door number 0001 to see a very familiar box (how could she forget it when she carried the thing out of Dax's room, when Ruler died seeing them to it?) simply sitting there, as though it wasn't touted as the key to removing the "obstacles" keeping the Tower populace from making their own choices.

She can't help a sharp inhale when she sees it and reads the short note attached, and she finds her eyes sliding to the side, to where the retrieval unit watching her stands silently. Do they know? Guy didn't mention anything about it when he spoke of what she told him while brainwashed into obedience, but... the others...? They haven't been able to talk about it since, and... could it be a trick? Could Jason have somehow taken the image from her mind and mimicked it in one cruel twist of the knife?

If he did... she couldn't bear if the others were exposed to any more danger because of her.

With equal parts hope and fear, Zelda takes the box from the cubby, tucks the note into a pocket, and starts up the stairs. Twenty or so flights isn't so bad with Farore's Wind, and soon she's even lost the unit trailing her. Which was the idea. She makes quick work of stealing away into the ladies' restroom, and as she hides away in one of the stalls (just... for good measure), she finds herself thinking of things over a year in the past, now. When Gandalf first approached her, when he said it was her destiny (and, oh, how she's grown to hate that word) to lead the people of this place out of here to somewhere better. When she said she was inexperienced, and she feared failure in such a monumental duty more than anything else.

How things have changed.

She breathes in, deeply, steeling herself for the worst and praying desperately for the best, and slowly, she opens the lid...]

Cafeteria; open

[And now for something completely different.

With a new month comes a new menu in the cafeteria, and while you can usually count Ruana to make meals thematic to some holiday and Jason to give nothing bunch water and nutribars, Riki has always been harder to pin down. But whatever she was expecting, it certainly wasn't this! The fragrant smell of flowers wafts over the cafeteria like a spring breeze, and for a moment, she isn't in the cafeteria at all, but rather her flower-filled courtyard from so long ago. Perhaps it's only a fleeting moment of pleasure at best in this place, but she feels like indulging, just this once.

In a rare display of contentment, Zelda can be found off to the side of the cafeteria, merrily nibbling at her breakfast and breathing in the sweet smell of her tea.]

Workshop; open

[Let it never be said Zelda is one to lose herself in indulgence, however! There is always work to be done, and not all of it id directly resistance related. Towers of monsters, horror, and death are not exactly kind to clothing, and after nearly sixteen months trapped within one, the Princess is beginning to run out of clothes. Her lessons back in Hyrule never got to the point of complex sewing, but it cannot be that hard, right? She has been hard at work the past few days, measuring and cutting and measuring again, and she thinks she's got the fabric at a point where it's ready to start sewing together.

... And then she actually tries sewing it together.

After the twentieth time of seeing the whole thing fall apart and the thirtieth time the thread's gotten tangled, the determined Princess of Hyrule drops her head to the workbench in defeat, sighing in frustration.

Sewing actually is kind of hard.]

Bathrooms, May 3rd; closed

[After sending out as many letters as she could to people she believes she can trust, Zelda now waits to reap what she's sown. She cannot possibly do this alone - the tower is far too large for her to take on herself. Especially if only a few of these 'microchips' can be on someone's person at a time.

Sure, it might seem a bit strange for someone to just... hang out in the bathroom, but if anyone asks, she simply tells them she's trying to get some peace away from her stalker unit.

And as for the men she contacted... well, they will find a rather androgynous Sheikah waiting in her place.]

Comments

[notayoungkitten]

Even if she holds no loyalty to Ganon, she's not about to admit working with him, even for the one time. She is Ganon's enemy, and Ocelot has no desire to make an enemy out of another person who has sided themselves against the administrators. Though she wouldn't deny working with Ganon if asked. "I see we have something in common," she said coolly, though there was definitely an edge of trying to be friendly to her voice, motioning at the retrial unit that was some distance behind Zelda.

[sageprincess]

There's the slightest quirk of her lip as her gaze follows Ocelot's gesture, knowing precisely what she was referring to. Fortunately (?), Zelda does not know the extent to which the older woman might be involved with her immortal rival, and she certainly lacks the grandiose posturing Ganondorf is so fond of.

"Ah, yes. I do not suppose Zero is any more of a conversationalist than the Lady Scarlet, hm?"

... She is terrible at coming up with clever names, though.

[notayoungkitten]

Ocelot smirked at the name. It was only a matter of time before the administrators got wind of them and made their lives more miserable, but for now it was a way for her to amuse herself privately. "Unfortunately not," she said, glancing back at her own retrieval unit. Were the units created, or were they brainwashed like she had been?

She didn't want to think about that too much. "You were involved in an incident, then?" It wasn't like she could deny being in one herself, what with the retrieval unit standing so close by. She wouldn't ask what exactly happened, naturally. At the moment, they were on two different sides.

[sageprincess]

Zelda happens to know the answer to that particular question, but, of course, she cannot say anything. In a way, it's fortunate that she had been a part of previous infiltrations and break ins in the past - it made covering up her most recent and arguably most important endeavor simpler.

"I have made a point of being a thorn in their sides for nearly a year now. It seems they have finally decided to take me seriously."

[notayoungkitten]

Ocelot wasn't the sort to ask what had happened. Ganondorf had never asked her to spy on his enemies, and she wouldn't even if he had asked. Ganondorf clearly had his own selfish desires in mind. Ocelot herself was much more interested in making sure that the administrators paid for what they had done.

Especially to Dax, who she had been suspicious of even as he had striven to right the wrongs that had happened. "Somehow I feel it won't be enough," she said, but she still smirked at the idea. "Not nearly enough to stop whatever they're up to."

[sageprincess]

Zelda simply smiles, knowingly almost, as she begins working with a needle and a spool of thread.

"Not right now, perhaps, but if left untreated thorns will fester and become infected, and before you know it, you are rotting from the inside out." Maybe a bit grim for a princess who looks so young, but sixteen months in a tower of torture and despair will turn anyone to the sardonic. She gestures briefly with the needle towards her red-collared stalker. "This may as well be a bandage. Covers up the problem, certainly - out of sight, out of mind - but it does not go about treating it very well."

[notayoungkitten]

She smirked a bit. The grim words didn't phase her in the least. It was clear to Ocelot that Zelda didn't have decades of experience with combat, but a warrior was a warrior. "Perhaps it will fester in time. What happens if there isn't a cure for the destruction of our worlds?" Everything she had learned in the months since arriving had told her that the worlds still existed to some capacity, but what was the point of returning to a dead world, even if they could save others?

It was a depressing prospect. But she wanted to see Zelda's strength.

[sageprincess]

At that particular question, the Princess falls silent for a moment. It certainly is a depressing idea - one she does not like to think too deeply on. She has already accepted the prospect of the Golden Goddesses falling to some unknown power and Hyrule being left unprotected, thinking that there is no hope in reversing that is another thing entirely. What is she fighting for, if not to see the green fields of her kingdom again?

She hears R-037's words in her mind.

The goal of--well, all of this--is to let you decide what you want. Not you specifically, but the Tower's residents. If you want to stay here you can, or if you want to go home, you can do that, or if you want to use the Tower's resources to try and fix your worlds so they're not ruined anymore, you can do that, too! That's the goal. It involves removing obstructions, which in this case are most of the current administrators, so here we are.

"... Then at least we will no longer have to suffer the indignity of being a cannibal's playthings."

It's not the ultimate goal she wants, but if that is all the world will give her, she will have to be satisfied.

[notayoungkitten]

She snorted darkly. Yes, being under the watchful eye of a woman that would eat her own kind was not something that she wanted. Dax had called the administrators human, but it was clearly a very different type of human than she was used to.

"Let's hope that we are successful, mm?" she said, smirking slightly. They were on different sides, but Ocelot didn't want to be under Ganondorf's thumb and risk being a prisoner after the administrators were all dead. She didn't care if this got back to Ruana. She needed to be killed, and Ocelot only hoped that she could be the one to end her.

[sageprincess]

She glances over her shoulder and nods, a light smile playing at her lips. It's not a happy smile, however, or even much of a confident one. It is the achingly tired smile of someone who has done far too much hoping for success with very little achievement in the end. Even if she has an ace up her sleeve this time around, who's to say it won't all be ruined by forces beyond her control, like during that wretched "game show" last year.

Of course, these are all thoughts she keeps to herself. "Indeed," she agrees. "After all, it is not as though death can stop us."

Which, in a way, she thinks, could be a statement that applies to Dax as well.

[notayoungkitten]

No matter what, she wants there to be a successful attack on the administrators. One that will permanently cripple them. Ganondorf could certainly help with that, she was certain. They may have failed to find anything at all in the storming of the administrator levels, but the man did have a large amount of ego that she didn't trust.

"No. It should only make us stronger," she replied. Revenge was a strong emotion. Stronger than the administrators might realize.

[sageprincess]

And there's a point where they differ, as Zelda has seen enough of the madness that lurks within the Gerudo King's heart to know he lacks the ability to deal with any situation that cannot be brute forced through. Should he be denied, he will simply try to amass more power and try again.

No, that won't do for this situation. Taking the administrators down requires more subtlety than Ganondorf is capable of.

"I fear how strong we might be by the time this is over." Revenge is a strong emotion. But it is only useful when the will to resist losing oneself to it is stronger.

[notayoungkitten]

Ultimately, taking down the administrators would probably require nearly everyone in the tower working together to some capacity. As a lifelong spy, Ocelot was used to working every side, but she still couldn't bring herself to only allying with a single goal.

"Let's hope it doesn't ruin us," she said darkly.