Glinn Giria Palnin - A Question of Beauty
d.finch
((Senate Room, Council Building, Maingard District, Witherington, Indre III))
Outside of the Senate Room, in a corridor wide and almost as stately, Palnin had been met by two troopers with news of a devastating train crash in the underground subway system. The information had been vague, so vague that it had only added to a rage simmering steadily within the glinn’s poisonous psyche.
She had ordered them to go and come back only when they had a clearer understanding of what had happened, spitting an insult at them before returning to the Senate Room with the swiftness of a prowling Taipan, and the rattling teeth of a triggered Flayer. Reaching the back wall, elegant with its imposing woodwork and rigid lines, she flipped a switch on a board that had been fixed carefully against it.
Blinding and scorching lights covered the Betazoid, Rodulan and Hybrid, leaving them squirming and uncomfortable and mostly without their physical senses.
Palnin: You. ::she pointed to Nkai:: Tell me how many of your people are on the ground.
Nkai: I. Don’t. Know.
Sim: I make it two and a half on the ground.
Palnin: I’ll ask you again, ::her voice crackled,:: how many of your people are on the ground.
Sim: ::He squinted in Palnin’s vague direction.:: Enough.
Palnin: Enough what? ::she snapped in Sim’s direction::
Sim: Enough to disturb your normal activities to such an extent as to make you weak. So you take your best guess and halve it; we don’t need many people to make you all look like fools.
She stretched her neck in thought. On the way to the Maingard District, Palnin had had a conversation with one of her men—a younger, handsome prized possession, who had brown-nosed his way into her good books, and found himself a comfortable spot at her side during most of her professional activities, and an even more comfortable spot at her side during her more….provocative ones.
He had asked her what she had intended to do with the captives. What her motive was, what her questions would be, what tools she would use to syphon them with. She had caressed his cheek with her usual amused laughter, entertained by his morbid curiosity, and swayed a little by his mystifying beauty. Because beauty, after all, was a thing she valued highly. Beauty had the power to move mountains, to ignite or even put out stars, to bewitch and befuddle and enrapture any mind, no matter how complex it was.
Inflicting pain, torturing them, these were things she could have done at the beginning, wasting no time to assert herself, but rarely did she enjoy violence just for the sake of it. Anyone with a fleck of common sense knew it wasn’t clever to show all your power at once; in her experience, vast and bountiful as it was, most men tended to succumb to her hazel-eyed hypnosis within an hour, sometimes even within minutes, making pain simply an option and not a necessity. It was her gift, and her curse. An innate confidence that choked her victims before her perfume had the chance to. Her mother had had the gift of beauty too, though she had wasted hers on bleak marriages to cheating men, who had been disillusioned by her dullness, by her weakness.
But occasionally a little more effort was required than she liked.
Palnin: I don’t like guessing games. ::she shrugged lazily::
In her slender hands she held a small remote, able to be carried unlike the switch on the wall that controlled the blinding and searing lights. With one quick flick of a switch upon the remote, the metallic plates holding the three stooges hummed into life, raising their bodies higher off the ground, and spinning them into new positions within the room.
As they writhed, and squirmed, and swayed uncomfortably, the lights above them also moved, beaming down individually upon them, until they each came to a sudden and jolting stop, no longer in sight of each other, or Palnin, and instead facing their own walls, beads of sweat dripping down their faces and onto the floor below.
Palnin laughed mirthlessly behind them, circling the small and untouched space in-between, filling it with her thick perfume. She lingered closest to Nkai, careful not to stand in the hot light glaring down at him.
Nkai: I can’t—::he grunted, his shoulders screaming in protest.:: I can’t give you answers I don’t have.
Palnin: ::sighing:: You’re lying.
Sim: Response
Nkai: You know, they say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. ::He would have laughed, but his throat and chest didn’t comply.:: Or maybe it's desperation. I can’t tell; you’re starting to reek of both.
She exhaled another mirthless laugh, distracted for a moment by the Hybrid’s reddening wrists, watching as her struggling body dangled so awkwardly from her hook. Like a fish out of water. Then her gaze moved back to the ever-biting Betazoid, who despite facing the wall, and his scorching predicament, still had the gall to mouth off in the presence of a Glinn.
She paused and inhaled, looking at his back in thought. She pondered whether or not to punish him, or punish one of the other two instead. Her hope was that the lights, and disorientating movement and elevation of the plates would have been enough to deter any psychological or telepathic advantage that they had, but these prisoners had thus far proven… more of a challenge than she had anticipated.
Palnin: Repetition can be a healthy thing. It can give a person a sense of order, a sense of organisation, a sense of...military rigidity and regimen, that they often tend to lack. But of course, none of you see it that way because of where you come from. Especially you, ::she said, her tone pointed, as she lingered behind Nkai:: I suppose I should have expected such a…disturbed reaction from a Rodulan. Calling yourselves a peaceful people, while you pillage the private minds of anyone who wanders near you. ::her tone thinned:: at least the Betazoids are upfront about their mental incursions.
E.Reynolds/Sim/Nkai: Response
Palnin: How are you any different from us? I mean… if anything, I would say it’s more invasive, more sinister than any annexation pursued by the Union, to luxuriate in another persons emotions and thoughts.
E.Reynolds/Sim/Nkai: Response
Palnin: Quiet, vicious. ::to Sim:: Now let me ask you again. How many of your people are on the ground?
She sighed, looking off to the side with exasperation. A thought pierced through her mind with a searing intensity; it was time for her to resort to pain tactics.
E.Reynolds/Sim/Nkai: Response
Glinn Giria Palnin,
Obsidian Order Expeditionary Force
Cardassian Union
As simmed by,
Ensign Doz Finch
Engineering Officer
C239809SH3