703/A Trip to Yin-Yang Spa

A Trip to Yin-Yang Spa
Date of Scene:	30 May 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	(Continuation of 670) Sibilance puts up with some snake-face prejudice but gets some long-overdue pampering for her troubles. Some people just don't mind.
Cast of Characters:	Feral, Sibilance

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Feral has posed:
The Yin and Yang spa itself is a place of blue office pile carpeting, the sort of place one expects to scent steam such as in a gym or fitness center, but also many other fragrances such as cremes and soaps. The walls of the lobby are done in a eggshell white drywall, clean and newly painted--indeed, the place looks practically brand new all around. Above the front desk is a circular glass yin and yang symbol hanging above a marquee with the establishment's name - in case anyone missed it outside.

The corridors off the lobby itself lead to rooms equipped with jacuzzis, tanning beds, massage tables - and finally an area set aside for hairdressing and other cosmetic chicanery such as beauty creme masks. Everything looks clean and newly installed, maybe a little too new and untarnished by use and time.

Standing around outside the front door, Vanya's nibbling on a bag of pretzels. She's showered and finally clean-smelling again, back in her 'danger noodle' shirt and jeans that aren't all there. Her hair has even been brushed and pulled back into a loose ponytail. She still clashes with the fresh and tidy storefront, but for the were-woman it's a big effort.

Sibilance has posed:
And then a snake woman shows up. The rattlesnake-colored girl comes to a stop outside of the spa to meet up with Vanya, since at some point they had agreed to meet at one and this is what was decided on. She looks up at the sign that's set up to attract customers, noting that it is subtler than a store or a strip club, recalling that such places prefer appointments. She puffs a short sigh, a hissy sound thanks to the way her face is built.

"Sorry I'm late," she says, even though she isn't that late, "Someone interrupted me on my way here, and I had to deal with it." There's the distant sound of sirens, and she adds, "I didn't hurt him or anything," quickly, because she doesn't want Vanya to get the wrong idea. The timing was just unfortunate.

"I've never been to one of these places," she admits, looking moderately uncomfortable with the idea of even trying. She rubs one of her forearms and frowns at the front door thoughtfully.

Feral has posed:
Vanya smiles when Sibil arrives and chuckles quietly at her explanation as she swallows a pretzel then tilts the bag towards the snake-woman to offer the last one. "I bet he deserved it."

A little mischief sneaks into her eyes as the were-woman glances between the two-tone sign and Sibil, falling down memory lane for a moment. "Then you've been missing out. This place just opened so they were giving away coupons."

Sibilance has posed:
"I bit him. He deserved it, he was trying to mug me because I looked like a snake and he had a lot of anger issues. I didn't really have time to talk to him about that," Sibil says, looking away and toward the sound of the sirens. She reaches out to grab a handful of pretzels without looking, and stuff some pretzels in her mouth. Crunch crunch.

"We'll have to see about that," she says, and then gestures for Vanya to lead the way inside with a wave of her scaly hand.

Feral has posed:
"If you have any extra muggers send them my way," Vanya smirks. "I haven't gotten tired of teaching them lessons yet." With her bag emptied, the were-woman balls it up and stuffs the remains into her pocket, then wraps an arm loosely against Sibil's back and guides her through the threshold. "Hahaha, trust me, they'll find stiff muscles you didn't even know you had."

The door opens with a tiny ding and a burst of crisp air that's lightly perfumed by scented oils. Inside, a woman in a red cheongsam looks up from her computer screen with a refined and practiced smile, soft and welcoming on her boldly-painted lips. It's still early in the morning and for now at least there's no one in the lobby's waiting area; they might be the first ones in.

"Hello! Welcome to Yin and Yang Spa. May I help you?" she asks in a voice like wind chimes, but faintly hitches as her eyes pass from Vanya to Sibil. She's still smiling but in her thoughts there's some surprise.

Sibilance has posed:
There's a moment of tension in Sibil the moment there's physical contact with her at all. Sibil isn't going to explain this to Vanya, ever, but physical contact means that the psychic link is much easier to establish and, therefore, very painful for her on a psychological level.

She calmly ignores this feeling as the arm remains blocked from full contact by a shirt, and follows along inside, even though her hands are now shyly pressing together in front of her, her shoulders hunched so that her body profile feels smaller.

"Uh..." This really demure side of her happens to boil up and she says, "My friend here says she has coupons, and I was hoping to get a full spa treatment... or as full as you could give to someone with my... skin qualities." She smiles at the woman who normally welcomes people in to make appointments, but can't really make full eye contact. She tries to ignore the surprise, but it's that reaction that makes Sibil afraid that this is going to go poorly.

Feral has posed:
Vanya glances to the young woman at her side and discretely sniffs the air as they enter, drawing in more than just the room's perfumes.

"What she said. I've got coupons for two full-service massages?" the were-woman adds, fishing a couple bits of paper from her pants and reading from them. "What's that?"

"The full massage package is a private bath in our infused hot tubs, followed by a total body massage with heated oil - front and back," the therapist answers dutifully in smooth, dulcet tones. "Showers are also provided and we ask that you wash before using the hot tubs to keep the water clean." That same soft smile never wavers as she looks politely to Sibil then back to the Russian beside her. Mentally, there's a little~ snag.

"But we do have a policy against certain... skin conditions," the red-dressed woman continues delicately. "For our water and the health of our therapists, you understand. We cannot have anything that sheds to much or is contagious."

As she speaks, Vanya's attention is momentarily pulled aside as she looks towards the hallway just before soft footfalls announce the arrival of another one of the spa workers. A black-haired young woman with twin braids and a squarer, sun-baked face peeks her head and green dress around the corner curiously.

Sibilance has posed:
The snake woman maintains the demure behavior for a few seconds, at least until Vanya gets distracted with one of the hallways. The snake woman slowly uncoils from this skittish posture and turns her head momentarily to note the other worker peering around a corner at them. Both scaly arms lower down to Sibil's sides as she mulls over how to approach this.

She isn't an activist, and she knows that people usually feel fear or disgust when they see her, at least those unused to the bizarre variety that exists in the world. So when she speaks up, it's with a gentle tone of voice, not an angry one. But it's somehow firm. She makes clear eye contact with the woman with the red dress.

"So what you're telling me, is that you think you're afraid you will catch some unknown snake disease, or turn /into/ a snake, if I shed in here or something?"

She puts special emphasis on 'snake disease' due to the absurdity of it. "Do you want customers or not? You're in Gotham, you're lucky we aren't here to rob your establishment with how weird we look. In fact, I'm almost tempted to start breaking things because you suggested I'm diseased because I look different. Trust me, you'll go out of business if I decide I want to wreck this place."

There's no mind control, but as she continues to speak it's with a growing ire. Uh oh. She starts to approach with a slow step as a more aggressive side of her comes out, a soft 'hssssss' puffing from her mouth. Considering what she ran into on the way here...

"I just wanted to go to a spa," she tells the woman, "I've never been. I bet you can imagine why, being one of the reasons I don't bother trying."

Leeeean in.

"So can you pencil us in today or what?"

Feral has posed:
The woman takes a half step back from her counter as Sibil approaches and emotions she'd been keeping professionally buried peek out - just a little. Her hands come up and wave the reptilian woman down gently as she chews on her tongue.

"I-I understand miss but I have a business to run. There are much smaller, real skin conditions that I have to refuse people for. It wouldn't be right to my other customers, or my staff," she tries to defend, hesitation and a small stutter falling into her voice. It doesn't help that the woman behind Sibil has started to growl.

"Hey, easy!" another voice calls out to the room. Stepping the rest of the way out, the second therapist comes into view and moves towards the counter. She's... tall is the first thing to notice, cresting six feet and looking that much taller in the slim green dress that hugs a well-developed and well cared-for figure. Her sun-darkened face is young, perhaps somewhere in her early twenties, and the same young brashness carries her swiftly across the floor on leather moccasins to stand protectively in view of both Sibil and her boss.

"You're not some kind of biohazard right?" she asks the scaled woman directly, not accusatory but very much blunt. It is, in her straight-forward mind, an honest question.

Sibilance has posed:
Sibil looks like she's about to reach over and snatch the woman's jugular out with her bare hands the way she starts leaning against the counter, her tail rattling and eyes widening as she continues to suggest she could be 'contagious' or something idiotic like that. Fury almost smothers all reason in Sibil, especially as she feels the anger in Vanya herself stoking it.

She gets distracted by a woman who approaches and takes the direct, honest approach. She straightens up her posture and stares at this spa worker for a second or two, brow furrowed, as if waiting for the punchline. "No!" she barks at the woman, and she lifts her arm to show, rubbing her other hand against it. No scales come off. "I'm probably cleaner than all of your customers combined!" she adds, "I don't even have skin oils! I shed, sometimes, /sure/, but everyone sheds skin all the time, I just do it in larger chunks every few months." She even runs her reptillian claws against her scales a few times with a harsh swish-swish, and none of the scales pop loose at all.

"Now am I getting my spa appointment or what!? This service is a damn nightmare!"

She slaps her hands on the counter -- THUD. The counter is lucky it survived, holy heck -- because she's getting severely pissed off that she even has to defend this to anyone. No one likes being called diseased or a biohazard, but this one's new to her.

Feral has posed:
The subordinate therapist flinches at the slap and glances aside, awkwardly scratching her cheek for a moment. "Okay, then there's no problem," she concludes, pre-empting whatever her boss was about to say. The poor woman in red has gone wide-eyed and slack-jawed, almost trembling at the angry serpent youth before her.

"Come on. Once you pay I'll take you back and you can use my room," the tall woman offers readily in clean, unaccented English. There's not nearly as much fear coming off of her - surprise sure, but just as much she's impressed, and even a little curious about her potential scaled customer.

"I'll clean everything afterwards, does that work?" she adds as an afterthought to her boss.

The red-dressed woman takes the cue to compose herself and straighten her cheongsam as she looks back at Sibil with some salvaged remains of professional scrutiny. She swallows before answering with a nod. "Yes, you can go." Her wind chime voice comes out tinny and timid.

"Good!" Vanya snaps firmly from behind as she steps up beside Sibil and fishes out a wad of bills to go with the coupons. A cold, disapproving glare is given to the woman opposite her before her eyes fall down to her spa partner and she gives her arm a nudge with her elbow. "Go on, I'll handle this part."

Sibilance has posed:
The fury abates as suddenly as it came. Sibil is about done with people like that ruling her life, especially now that she's got something approaching self-respect starting to grow in her personality. She only squints for a second in the brief pause it takes for the intimidated spa owner to respond to the employee.

Vanya's outburst reminds Sibil that she's even there, the startle she has and the little squeak showing she is still as skittish as ever. She laughs nervously when nudged, and turns to follow the spa employee along to the back. "Thank you," she says to Vanya, and then she looks to the tall woman herself, and says to her, "Thanks..."

Sibil will follow, of course, until she finds a spot to awkwardly stand around. She DID say that she was new to the whole spa experience earlier, and so she doesn't even know where to start.

Feral has posed:
The tall therapist gives Sibil a reassuring smile that seems to fit naturally on her face and make her dark blue eyes twinkle. Looking down at the serpent woman they seem almost purple. "Don't mention it. I'm Karen by the way."

Hiking her head down the hall before she turns, Karen takes Sibil on a short walk down the hallway, past rows of identical doors, each ajar to show glimpses of countertops full of oils, massage tables, and other soothing accoutrements. Except for the dress, the dark-haired masseuse hasn't quite fit her rather large body into the typical massage parlor mould. Her gait isn't short and swaying but square and looping, a comfortable thing that eats up frightful amounts of ground with each step, and the leather moccasins with patterned tops are at least unique fashion choices. In Karen's wake is the faint scent of pine needles, wood smoke, and... 'wood smoke'.

"We'll be in here," she explains, pausing before the last door in the row. "It's a massage first but we can talk beforehand if you've got any questions. There'll be more time to talk while I'm working on you too."

Sibilance has posed:
Sibilance adapts to the woman's attitude pretty quickly. The calm curiosity and professional attitude help unwind a lot of that aggression she was showing earlier. "Hi, Karen. I'm ..." she hesitates, because she's not sure which name to use. "I'm Ainsley," she tells Karen, deciding on the honest answer here. She then steps into the doorway and turns around, asking the woman one question...

"What... do I do?" she wonders, only knowing /of/ massages, having never actually seen one. She's a bit of a sheltered soul. "What does a massage entail?" She looks incredibly awkward asking this, because she feels like she should know if she was so excited to get a spa treatment, but that excitement is just another artifact of never getting to be a normal girl growing up and fantasizing about various decadent things.

Feral has posed:
Karen chuckles quietly at the question and uses her long arm to push the door open. "Well, normally I'd trust Maple to explain all of that but~..." the young woman shakes her head, clearly not agreeing with what happened at the front.

"What you do is undress as far as you're comfortable and lay on the massage table," she explains while sliding in behind the serpent youth to show her the room. Inside the air is warmer and just a little humid, flavoured by a small stick of incense burning in the corner and decorated with fine wood panels that give a nod to old world Asian styles. Above several cabinets are a sink and basket full of oils, along with bowls of varying sizes for mixing and dispensing. But the star of the room is a long, padded massage table, towards which Aisnley's massuese gestures.

"You can store your clothes in the closet and there are heated towels in there to cover your privates and anything else you don't want to show. There are techniques for working through clothing but glutes, hamstrings, and some of the other muscles don't work so well through a towel," Karen advises as she crosses her arms under her chest with a small laugh.

"Don't feel like you have to go naked though. It took me a long time to feel comfortable showing off all of... this," she admits with a glance downwards.

"Once you're ready, I'll work out whatever kinks and stiffness I can find - that's the massaging part, a lot of pushing and rubbing with warm oil. You just have to take a deep breath and let yourself relax for it. After you're all loosened up you can take a soak in the hot tub through the door in the back."

Sibilance has posed:
Sibil is, frankly, an odd creature, both personality-wise and physically. When told that she would have to undress to some degree, she goes a little red around her snake-like nose area, snout you could call it, and pulls her gloves off first as she steps over to the closet. And she simply...

Undresses.

If the masseuse was uncomfortable at all with the reptilian visage, this wouldn't happen quite the same way, but since it's an air of comfort and ease, Sibil doesn't even really think about it. She digs in the closet to think about the towel option, but decides it wouldn't really be worth bothering with. Going naked seems like the best option from a pragmatic standpoint. And with a moment of thought, Sibil believes the masseuse has probably seen worse than a snake person.

The scales are consistent from head to toe, though along her belly they seem to form snake-like stripes, like the underbelly of the creature she resembles. For whatever reason, she doesn't even have a belly button, almost like someone that hatched from an egg might not have one. She approaches the table and simply climbs onto it, finding an appropriate way to lay down based on how it's built. Belly-down. After a few attempts to work with the open part at the top of the table and her facial structure doesn't want to fit right, she just abuses her flexibility and lays her chin on the pillowed part.

"Like this?" It's probably fine.

"I'm sorry I yelled at the lady out there," she murmurs. "It's just..." She can't finish that, the awkwardness just overflows from her.

Feral has posed:
Karen slips out of the room quietly as Sibil moves to the closet to undress and leaves the door just ajar enough to hear. At the snake-woman's question her braids swing back into the room and looks to the naked scales on the table.

The masseuse smiles warmly and shuts the door behind her with a little click. She's definitely seen worse but more than that, at some point she just stopped seeing skin-deep. "Yes. Hold on and I can adjust the headpiece for you."

Padding over quietly, Karen moves to the head of the table and bends forward, opening the joints beneath its pads to spread them for Sibil. "How about now?"

Sibilance has posed:
Sibil, of course, settles in to set her snout into the adjusted head piece to the table, and she speaks up in that muffled way people do past the table, having to raise her voice a little to be heard.

"That's perfect," though she does fidget her head a little in the spot to get her comfort just right. "Thanks, Karen." Her gratitude is pretty sweet. She then decides to wonder, "You don't seem all that bothered. Is it normal for people like... me to come here? Have you seen a lot of weirdos?"

Feral has posed:
The masseuse beams, genuinely happy to see Sibil comfortable. Moving over to the basin and bottles, Karen pours an arrangement of oils and rubs some between her hands to warm it. Once she's satisfied with the heat and gets a little dab more, she slips behind the prone snake and gently presses her palms into the back of Sibil's shoulders, starting just with contact and light rubbing.

"If there's anything uncomfortable for you, just say so, okay?" she coaxes before answering the question. "Honestly I don't know. I just started working here recently, but you'd have to look a lot crazier than this for it to bother me."

Sibilance has posed:
Sibil is, frankly, stronger than any human being has any right to be, and it takes some serious effort to work on her shoulders alone. But it isn't impossible like it would be with some superheroes, especially with the snake woman relaxing the way she is. She closes her eyes to enjoy the contact, and tries her best to avoid focusing on the person that's performing the massage. "I will. Or my rattle will," she tells Karen, and the tip of her tail shakes a few times to demonstrate, showing off some active dexterity in the process.

"Why's that?" she asks, regarding her tolerances. "Gotham native...?"

Feral has posed:
The hands glide then work their way down through the surface with steadily increasing pressure as Karen eases Sibil into her first massage. The therapist's fingers are as lanky as her legs and cover broad swaths of scales without much difficulty, but as her posture shifts and she takes a good grip, the snake's coiled muscles begin to dance to the tune of her flute. Karen isn't super-human, she might not even be super-special, but she knows what she's doing and if raw force really is needed? Well, there's more strength hiding in her arms than might at first have been apparent.

"Hehe, wrong by two time zones. I'm fresh off the train from Mon-tana," the masseuse answers proudly. "But I know what it's like to look different and I guess one day I just stopped caring about people's skin colours." As she talks, Karen's hands work their way up to loosen Sibil's neck before they begin the long trip down the broad muscles of her back.

Sibilance has posed:
There's a grunt here, a hissy noise there, as tension slowly and steadly melts out of the snake woman, who fights the urge to fall asleep on the table from how amazingly relaxing it is for someone who has lived in self-imposed poverty and near-constant fear to finally get all of that ground out of her muscles.

"I'm from out in the mid-west," she admits, "Family's from south of the bo-ooohrder..." That's a spot that needed attention! "This is more intense than a skin color," she tells Karen, "I can feel when people get freaked out and you don't give that off at ah-- oh that's nice..."

Sibil makes a mental note to thank Vanya later. Yes. Definitely.