iris and delilah

[roboqueen]

It was supposed to be the dawn of a new age. The age of robotics, the era of steel and circuitry and her infinite, eminent authority. Granted, she wasn’t going to be imposing her will over the planet quite yet - even Iris knew that was still years off - but it was a start. She needed to make a splash, to have a showcase of her brilliance and her robots.

True, robbing a bank was a little bit pedestrian. But a target like the First National Bank was too good to resist. It was public, famous, the perfect debut for the woman who’d soon rule the world. And the multi-million dollar payout certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Everything had gone to hell within five minutes. It’d started out well enough: Iris sauntered into the bank in a men’s suit (tailored to her petite frame), flanked by six towering robots. People had stared and gasped and screamed, especially when one of the robots fired a few warning shots into the air. Iris had grinned and ordered everybody to kneel, hamming it up for the cameras. But the robot she’d programmed to crack the safe was thrown by a logic loop she hadn’t forseen. And she wouldn’t lie, she’d cut some corners with the construction of her guards, skimped on protection and ammunition capacities. Iris had figured that the sheer shock and novelty of being robbed by actual robots would dissuade the police from interfering, but nooooo, they had to block her exits, and the snipers had to get a couple of lucky shots to disable two of her boys. The others ran out of ammo in about a minute, and her safecracker got stuck in that stupid loop until Iris disabled him.

The CIA swooped in - from what she could pick up, they thought she was a spy. Hah, as if she’d ever associate with a bunch of Stalin-worshipping morons like the Soviets. They’d taken her boys to her labs. Let them; it’d take them a decade to understand her work, and she’d already be five models down the road.

They’d also taken her into custody. That was more troubling. Especially since, against her protests, she’d been stripped of her hearing aids, forcing her to try and lip-read a bunch of balding bureaucrats in ill-fitted suits. They yelled, they demanded answers and information, talked to each other like Iris wasn't sitting right there.. Then again, they faced each other while doing it, so she may well have been on another continent.

Iris flexed her fingers, rattling the handcuffs binding her to the chair. Her cheek ached, the dull burn from where an interrogator had slapped her. Her jacket was gone - hell if she knew where that went, probably with the spare tech she had on her. Her hearing aids were on the table in front of her, but the rest had been confiscated. Tech gone, heist foiled, fingerprints and photograph in the CIA’s archives. Not ideal.

The door to the interrogation room opened (finally) and Iris’ head snapped up. She was ready to argue, to yell at whatever bastard the G-Men wanted to throw at her next, and -

“Well,” she drawled. “Aren’t you a sight.”

Comments

[velvetier]

Delilah wasn't the sort of agent who was sent out to crime scenes, at least not for the initial runaround, but she'd chanced to pick up the first call that made it into the bullpen, passed the information along to her superiors quick as could be, and sat back to keep tabs on the case from the so-called safety of her desk.

It was an interesting one, the woman leading robots like something out of a science-fiction serial. Not the kind of thing that happened every day or even every year, although with modern technology on the rise some of the men seemed to think things like this were inevitable.

(Modern technology and modern women -- they knew better than to say that outright, where modern women might be listening, but Delilah knew what they meant.)

She hadn't expected to get pulled in, though. Usually her involvement in the running of daytime cases (cases where she couldn't be called upon to act as some coworker's dame of the night) was minimal, clerical if anything. But she hadn't taken into account the possibilities opened up by a female criminal: namely, that the men weren't sure how to talk to her.

(Pity their wives and girlfriends.)

So Delilah stood up, smoothed down her skirt, and made her way to the interrogation room. Where she was somehow thoroughly not surprised to hear that kind of remark. That, that was the sort of thing she heard from criminals all the time.

"You're not the first one to lead with that," she remarked, wry and somehow tired all at once.

[roboqueen]

Iris might have scoffed at the notion of being a modern woman. Please, she was so much more than that; her particular breed of devil-may-care femininity had its eye fixed on tomorrow, not on yesterday or today. She was a futurist through and through, but it really should have occurred to her that the CIA employed women. Especially women who worked as agents, not as secretaries or receptionists.

And especially especially women who wore last decade’s fashions. Normally, Iris would be all ready with a speech about burning skirts in favor of slacks, embracing the current fashions, and all of that - but it was hard to conjure the words when her captor wore it so well. She normally wasn’t much of a fan of the retro look, but Agent Skirt could make her a believer yet.

“You took my by surprise, I couldn’t come up with anything better,” Iris said, voice a touch too loud, enunciation a touch too precise. “Give a girl some warning next time.”

[velvetier]

Really, it was a lapse in knowledge that Iris couldn't be held accountable for, given that some days it seemed like the CIA itself didn't know it employed women who worked as agents. Getting to poke her nose in like this was rare enough, though, she wasn't going to waste it on some nonsense assumption that they'd be able to pal around just because they were gals.

(As might have been obvious from her somewhat outmoded dress sense, or even just from the fact that here she was working as a secret agent, she wasn't really the palling around type. This was something of a joke, although it was one she could play out for a while.)

She tilted her head at Iris, then glanced from her down to the equipment on the table. Details nobody had forgotten to mention. "What am I warning you about, exactly?" she asked, keeping her tone light.

[roboqueen]

Perhaps Iris had misjudged the CIA. She’d always seen them as a bunch of incompetent middle-aged dullards, jumping at shadows and chasing down phantom communists. Beneath her notice, certainly, and not anything she had to worry about. Already, they’d proved part of that wrong by throwing her into the interrogation cell, and the mere existence of the woman in front of her proved that not every agent had a stick up their ass.

Well, maybe not quite. Just because she wore that dress well (very well) didn’t mean that it wasn’t out of style.

The agent ducked her face, and Iris missed most of what she said. She picked out warn, and her expression was inquisitive. It was probably a question, then, and Iris had enough context clues to take a stab at answering it. But no, that was boring. “You have to look at me when you’re talking,” Iris said. “I can’t read your lips if I can’t see your mouth.”

And she got the bonus of staring at the agent’s face. Win-win.

[velvetier]

It was a funny contradiction, in that Delilah would be the first to defend the institution's temperament as being more pleasant than people would believe but she also wouldn't hesitate to roll her eyes at some of the individuals she worked with. Stodgy was a kind way of describing them.

That made Delilah raise an eyebrow. All right. That was an easy compromise.

"Is this better?" she asked carefully, enunciating but trying not to patronize.

[roboqueen]

Her response prompted a grin, somewhere between the manic glee of a successful manipulation and honest delight that they were forging some sort of agreement. "Much," Iris proclaimed, giving her hair a satisfied toss, sending braids astray.

She nodded towards the empty chair on the other side of the table. "Have a seat, darling," Iris said, as if they were meeting up for tea, instead of - well, instead of this. "Did you like my robots?"

[velvetier]

This was an easy enough concession, especially considering her fellow agents' apparent lack of tact in initially taking what Delilah could only assume were hearing aids away. She wasn't going to jump into replacing them, on the off-chance there was a more serious reason for their removal, but she could be reasonable.

Darling, though, made her want to be anything but. She was professional, though, and just shrugged casually. "I haven't actually seen your robots," she declared.

[roboqueen]

"Really?" She raised an eyebrow, a note of genuine surprise in her voice. Not for the first time, Iris wished that her damn wrists weren't cuffed behind her, if only to fake checking her nails. Really get that devil-may-care attitude down.

"Well, you should, once you're done here. They're great. And speaking of which, I seem to be asking all the questions in this interrogation." She grinned again, briefly flicking her gaze from Delilah's lips to her jawline. "Do you spooks know anything about me?"

[velvetier]

"You might have noticed that I wasn't present at the crime scene," Delilah remarked, wry as anything. Maybe she could use her fellow agents' perceiving her as weak to her advantage, or maybe she just didn't care about holding back right now.

She had to think about that one, though. Not because she didn't know the answer (that they really didn't) but because she wasn't sure how to phrase it that didn't put them at a severe disadvantage. "We're certainly learning," she finally declared. "You're not subtle."

[roboqueen]

"I probably would've remembered." Woman walking around dressed like she's from a Humphrey Bogart movie, it certainly would've made an impression in Iris' memory. "Ask to go out some time. Crime scenes are where all the good stuff is, or so I understand."

Iris shrugged, a quick up-and-down of one shoulder. "Sublety's boring. It's for people who don't think they have what it takes to get what they want. Too scared to just go for it."

[velvetier]

"You know, I keep asking, but it has yet to be in the cards," she deadpanned. "I'm more of a behind the scenes sort, anyway."

Take that as you will.

That declaration of Iris' was actually very telling, although it wasn't exactly an unheard-of mentality in criminals. "That simple, huh?"

[roboqueen]

"Earlier today, I made history by staging the first robotic bank heist in the world," Iris said. "Don't tell me you're surprised by my philosophies, darling." If she had free range of her arms, if her wrists weren't (quite painfully, to be honest) bound behind her, she'd gesture to prove her point. As it was, she just enunciated, letting the consonants bite: "Want. Take. Have."

She let that sink in for a moment before barreling onward. "What's your name?"

[velvetier]

"Not surprised," Delilah clarified, watching with interest. She could sense a physical urge coming off the other woman, but she wasn't so dumb as to allow her free range of motion. "Just piecing things together for myself."

She cleared her throat before continuing with that answer, given tersely. "Agent Kaye will do."

[roboqueen]

"Don't take too long now," Iris said, "or I'll wind up leaving you in the dust." It wasn't a threat or a boast (well, maybe it was a little boast), just a statement. "Plus, they'll take any opportunity to bench ya." She jerked her head in the vague direction of the door. Iris was a criminal, Delilah a CIA agent, but they were both fighting uphill battles.

"Agent Kaye," she said, testing the words in her mouth. "Kaye. Alright. Hi, Kaye. Call me Iris."

[velvetier]

She scoffed at that, not because she doesn't know it's true (she does) but because she can hear the attempt to buddy up. She wasn't that easy.

"Agent Kaye," she corrected archly. It was important to keep that authority.

[roboqueen]

"Oh, Agent Kaye, my mistake." It was punctuated by an expressive, if over-exaggerated, eyeroll and sigh. Fine, if she wanted to play the hardass agent, all cool and collected, Iris could oblige. For now.

"Fine, let's get this started."

[velvetier]

There wasn't any other way to play it, in Delilah's opinion. She had a very limited authority, she wasn't about to surrender it without a fight.

"So you build these killer robots," she began. "Why a bank? Seems a little small-time."

[roboqueen]

"I can see you weren't hired for the big picture," Iris said. At least she was asking about motivation. The older men, from what Iris could decipher, were demanding to know if she was a communist, who she was working with, where she'd gotten that technology. Psh. As if she needed anybody's help.

"The First National Bank. It's not some tiny corner bank that helps Midwesterners with their loans and mortgages. Moviestars keep their assets there. Businessmen. Transport and shipping tycoons. Hell, I'm sure I'd have found the President's safety deposit box, if your men hadn't shown up."

[velvetier]

As far as Delilah was concerned, if this woman is a Communist she'll give it away eventually. The assessment wasn't actually a horrible one: she was more of a details person, ultimately, better at figuring things out like puzzles, one piece at a time. But she was doing the best she could to stay -- cool.

"Alright," she shrugged. "So it's a status grab more than a money thing."

[roboqueen]

Iris grinned, the pride joy of a professor watching one of their other students work out a complex problem. It wasn't that she wanted Agent Kaye to figure out her plans - far from it, they were secret for a reason. But there was no use in doing something as audacious as robbing a bank with robots if she didn't get a bit of credit and admiration for it.

"It's a statement of purpose," she agreed. "But money doesn't help. Materials aren't cheap."

[velvetier]

The likelihood that Delilah would figure the plans out completely was pretty slim, but she wasn't a dull girl, she could get some of it sorted out pretty easily. Statements of purpose help.

"You do know you don't get to keep what you tried to take," she remarked, kind of joking.

*money doesn't hurt. wow, self.

[roboqueen]

“Fine by me,” Iris said brightly. “But then you don’t get to keep your ill-gotten gains either. I’ve already returned the money I stole” - willingly returned, lost during the arrest, same thing - “so if you give me my robots back, we’ll call it even.”

She shifted her position, moving to cross her legs underneath the table: ankle on her knee, as opposed to the more ladylike, graceful way.

<3 figured.

[velvetier]

Delilah raised an eyebrow. Now we were getting somewhere.

"I guess maybe you don't understand the concept of confiscation," she mused, leaning forward on one elbow. "Typically both the stolen loot and the materials used to steal it stay in custody."

[roboqueen]

Iris leaned forwards as far as she could, uncoiling like a snake, until her arms burned and ached from the stress of being cuffed behind her. For just a moment, she flicked her gaze from Delilah's mouth up to her eyes.

"Typically." Not this time. Not any time. She was Iris Huntington, she played by different rules.

"What do you think your pencil pushers and wannabe programmers will be able to find, anyway?"

[velvetier]

Oh, fun. Attempts to posture and -- well, in this case "pulling rank" didn't exactly apply, but whatever this was involved the same demeanor. The "I know better than you" demeanor.

She knew that well.

"I think no matter what we do find, it's important to keep those things off the streets," she remarked, pointedly casual.