2014.01.05 - Manipulation Tango

A day like any other in the New York Metropolitan area - people down below, dark-haired beings in primary colors soaring overhead...

Well, Matrix isn't so much soaring as hovering. She could PROBABLY be considered 'on patrol' because she's got her eyes on the ground and looks like she's paying all kinds of attention to SOMETHING... but she's basically hanging upside-down in mid air. And not moving, except as necessary to maintain her position over the location. Which is... probably more Bat- or Spider-like than Super-.

The city that never sleeps, apparently still does a good impersonation of hibernation. It isn't quiet, unless you live in Metropolis the rest of the year. Everything is in white, or greasy gray and black and brown. Still all is not still. A figure zooms down the road and pulls up to a stop at one of the red lights. She is just hovering there a second like the traffic signal applies to her. Then not there. Her body jerking left and from an upper angle right into a building side. She appears back in the street and alarms go off in a long second later. Oh, also, now added black fur Russian hat and matching fur coat.

Whatever Matrix *was* paying attention to, the super-fast figure in black has her attention now. Dropping down suddenly from her perch, Matrix doesn't so much as hit the ground as hover on tip-toe about half an inch above it a few paces away from Nadira. Her big blue eyes narrow a touch as she studies.

"You took those from a store without paying," Matrix announces - almost a question, but not quite. At least not by her tone. Though she DOES look a bit confused. "Why?"

Nadira was busy looking herself over in another still intact frosty glass. When the other form slips down, she looks up and over. That just doesn't happen every day. "I.." Nadira says, not really having an answer in the first couple of seconds, she is busy making it up though. "Who are you?" The woman facing her, well, Nadira can tell, but she has dark hair. All the El women have blonde hair, don't they? "I was cold, besides, there is a local group who opposes the unfair treatment of animals for profit. This way I got a coat, and I did not support inhumane treatment of fur baring indigenous creatures." She looks back at the store front and the sounds of sirens can be heard in the distance. "Want one?"

"I don't need one, I'm not cold," Matrix asserts, almost appreciatively though. "And theft is illegal, anyway. I appreciate the point you're trying to make, but maybe you should really put them back and maybe buy something less ethically questionable in the first place if that concerns you?"

A brunette that cares about the human laws? Well, a blonde that doesn't really seem to, and so the exceptions prove the rules, or well, something like that. The blonde takes a long stare at the dark haired one and then she shrugs. To everyone else observing there is a blur back into the building. The lovely, really nice looking fur is returned to the manikin and Nadira returns. "Happy?" she inquires and points upwards. "They are doing to come shoot us if we stick around. They don't shoot their own for breaking glass, but they always shoot someone who can fly for it." she says and rises up slowly, making sure to watch if the woman follows or stays to test the statement.

Matrix, having not moved from her hover-point from original 'landing', notes with a point: "What about the hat? Bullets don't bother me, or you either I suspect. C'mon..." From the point, she wags her finger.

Nadira removes the really nice hat, that wasn't as nice without the coat anyway and tosses it inside. "Do you like getting shot? It still hurts my feelings." She checks the range on the sirens again and sighs. "I am moving out of their targeting range now." she says as she starts again to float on up, still not rushing, more like riding an invisible elevator.

There's a moment where Matrix actually contemplates that - then actually starts to follow. "I don't like getting shot at either, but it's really just more annoying because other people tend to get hurt when the bullets bounce away." Keeping an eye on Nadira, she asks a follow-up; "So, if you can do all this - why are you engaging in criminal activity rather than stopping it when it happens? Why make me shake my nanny-finger at you at all?"

A turn and almost step like gesture to the roof of the building across the street from the one she almost robbed. Her brow furrows a bit, "What .. are.. you?" Nadira asks in now obvious frustration. "If they shoot at you, and it hits them. Maybe, just maybe they will stop shooting at you. How are they ever going to advance if you think for them? When they shoot at you for breaking a window and stealing something without violence, they are breaking their own rules of excessive force." she comments and actually settles with a gentle crunch onto the snow covered roof. "And, you'll excuse me; but, you hardly look old enough to have a nanny finger."

Matrix shakes her pointed finger again, but just for illustrative purposes, "Well it *worked*, didn't it?" But that's besides the point. "I'm not thinking for them, I'm using my own powers of common sense to maybe not want to get shot at in the first place - not by *law enforcement,* anyway." Actually landing up on the roof as well, she rests her hands on the small of her back while studying the other woman - a little more carefully this time; perhaps some sort of super-vision at work. "I find your attitude upsettingly familiar. Are you Kryptonian? Did someone let you out of the Phantom Zone and live only long enough to regret it?"

"If I had been in the phantom zone, and that is hardly a polite thing to suggest about a woman, nor an admission or denial.. Why would I hurt someone who got me out? Did you see me down there hurling snow plows at those aggressive humans?" she shakes her head, "What about you, why aren't you blonde? You must be that stuffy little Kara one." She takes a calm step forward and offers her hand in greeting. "I am Nadira of the House of Am... Not Zod."

"I'm not *actually* Kryptonian," Matrix admits - a little deflated but not exactly unhappy that there's no 'bwahaha'ing or 'foolish hero!' shouting or suchlike. "My name's Matrix, not Kara." She shakes Nadira's offered hand, because politeness! "Sorry if I was rude. Criminals from the Phantom Zone destroyed my homeworld."

First, it is not really the modern human gesture, but a wrist clasp that Nadira actually goes for, but there is no grasp, it was very likely just what she was offering all along. "Matrix?" the eyes intensify, the words that follow might be in complete jibberish, or they might say, "Are you Daxamite?" But only to one versed in that language. "And UI destroyed no world. My task is to understand this one. And with time, aid them in reaching the inevitable state of revering our kind as the gods we are here."

Those were Daxamite words. "God bless you," as though to a sneeze, is the answer to *that* question. "Yeeeaaaah, I don't think much reverence or worship is gonna happen. I think people are mostly over the whole 'angry gods' thing. Also there are, you know, heroes who aren't likely to just roll over and let that happen." Matrix shrugs, and it's not so much a threatening tone as a 'Fair warning that you're probably tilting at windmills there' one.

There is a brief smile and a subtle relaxation as the Daxamite words end up completely alien to the woman. "You say you are not Kryptonian, yet you seem to be... You are not Daxamite. If you are you don't speak your own language. How did you come into being Matrix?" she asks and looks away, seeming not to mind giving the cheap shot opening to one she doubts would take it. "Do they not worship this so called Superman? Do they not scream to the heavens Superman, 'save us?' I think you mistake them.. They do want gods."

"My language is English. I was created by someone who was trying to save our world. I wasn't quite enough, so he sent me to find Superman. I did, and he brought me home with him afterwards." Is more or less the whole story anyway. Matrix contemplates that. "Maybe so, but Superman doesn't encourage it. He does what he does to follow his own conscious, he doesn't grant wishes and he can't be everywhere at once."

"No, I suppose he cannot be every where at once can he? That would be my point after all." Nadira says a bit smuggly as she twists the words like a surgeon with a scalpel. "This world needs more than 'Superman.' Earth has been lucky so far. The house of El has been lucky so far. What happens when Kal-El gets unlucky versus Brainiac, or Darkseid attacks on the same day? the law of averages mandates it will eventually happen by mistake. How much worse if orchestrated by Apokolips and Black Adam? Do yuou think they will learn to chant our names Matrix. When it is all over and the desolation remains, will you deny them the wishes of food?"

"If there were nothing but desolation, there wouldn't be any food to offer. Desolation is a pretty poor state to rule over, too." Matrix shakes her head, "There isn't just Superman here, though. There's all kinds of other heroes. Everybody striving to make things the best they can - it's what makes Earth special, there's no singular guiding force telling everyone they have to do things a certain way."

-

"Our technology can offer them food, our strength can offer them security. Their own leaders certainly take a greater than equal share. And what makes you think I care to tell them how to live? Do you think pushing petty laws on them serves me any benefit?" she tilts her head, smiling and seeming to size the other woman up a little less wholesomely. "Money tells them what to do, it is their single guiding force. Do you think I could be a worse influence than that? Could you be a better one than money? What if you saw one of them attack another.. Would you hold from interfering? If you don't are you not pressing your morality on the situation?"

Matrix opens her mouth to answer, raising her finger to illustrate yet another point, but the response dies on her lips before it comes. Sucking her teeth briefly, she takes a breath to start again... then just kind of shakes her head. "I'm pretty sure you're wrong about something, but I can't put my finger on what exactly." Not a happy camper here. "At the very least, all that does is keep the status quo and it's at the very least the most cynical thing I've ever heard."

"Really, didn't I offer to help them? If they call, I may respond. Is it unfair to expect my name to be called when I do though? If something tries to destroy this planet, I will defend it. They pay their military in this country a third of the national wealth. And you begrudge me a fur coat, many of them believe should not profit its maker?" Nadira turns her full posture back towards the woman before her. She takes a step, testing the more personal space invasion, almost like a big kid on the playground, maybe exactly like that. "We can make this a better place, Matrix. A safer place. the pay their own people for doing that. Should I not expect the right to such? And Kryptonian born or not, don't you want the whole story?I am as I said, of the House of Am. I favor the House of Zod, but I do not hate the House of El. I just think both sides should talk and learn. We can make the planet better. We can stop them from aiming horrific weapons that ruin cities at each other, we can provide them safe power. Do you insist that we be so magnanimous as to not even expect a little comfort for what they spend the majority of their wealth on?"

"But that's selfish, you should help because you want to. We don't *need* any of those things," Matrix is just shaking her head again and again now. She raises a hand like all the thinking is starting to *hurt*, and *backs up several steps* when Nadira gets too close - she takes so many steps backwards she's standing on nothing just off the rooftop. "General Zod is one of the men who destroyed my home, and if you 'favor' him in any way *you're* the one who's misguided!"

"Where is he now, Matrix, what city burns in the name of Zod on Earth? Why does the House of Zod not fight the House of El?" Nadira says, lifting up without closing, just making a tiny point of lifting a little higher a second. "What voice whispers in his ear that did not before? Mine.. When Brainiac returns, we shall fight him. When Darkseid returns, we shall fight. When all the other enemies of Earth come, we will defend it. It is too late for Krypton.. We failed on Krypton, but here, with the powers we possess. We will make a better world. And we will not destroy this one, if the House of Zod should try to make Krypton on Earth again as it has in the past.. I shall fight with the House El. Until then, enjoy the quiet my whispers create, Matrix.. And be4 sure you judge me on my actions, not my associations to enemies you once possessed."

Matrix frowns, raising up the other hand - both now clapped over her ears. She even squinches her eyes shut! "Stop *talking*, Nadira!" It's all a bit much. Maybe Matrix *does* prefer the moustache-twirlers to the smooth talkers. At any rate, wether she's actually *left* or not... Matrix disappears. There's a brief shimmer of light around her as it bends away from her, but she's as good as gone.

Nadira watches the woman, seeming to become a little disappointed as she covers her ears. the posture shift s a tiny bit, expecting a sudden charge, it would not be the first time a hero decided to 'punish' her for confusing their sweet good vs evil world. Then it doesn't happen, neither does she see the signs of a hyper acceration or hear the sonic boom that would be created at that speed. Matrix did something else, something not Kryptonian, or at least a power they have not discovered. Teleportation? Her eyes scan the many spectrums. Will she return with that fisty cleavage weilder 'Power Girl?' Nadira is not ready to face another Krytonian in battle over nothing, and really really not ready to face two or more. What ever Matrix did, Nadira reacts with the second of the two most primal, and sensible, reactions. Flight. Straight up to a safe distance in the clouds, and then the boom can be heard as she blasts away from the area. Maybe there is a nice winter fashion in the Swiss Alps?

END