[b]Orange and Black![/b]

She wants to push for more. She [i]needs[/i] to push for more. Her eyes are shining and her smile is steady but inside she's just howling. Names, connections, key positions filled in for the org chart of the cosmos. Freedom isn't money, isn't power, it's [i]people[/i]. That's where she fucked up in the past, thought that just because she was a nuclear armed space dragon that she was free. Idiot! These names, these cards, were more freedom than had ever waited in the heart of an atom. 

Even this came with danger. This man was close enough to Everest to have her card but not close enough to derive the connection with her - she was Icarus beneath an eclipse. She wanted Mr. Merkin's rolodex in its entirety, every connection and every introduction, wanted to know -

Black was moving somewhere behind Mr. Merkin. She was giving a cut-off gesture. Orange felt a flash of anger, of rage. How dare she!? How dare she interrupt her when she was finally doing the first useful thing that any of them had done since they'd Fucked Around and Found Out? She was probably worried about some inconsequential shit like blowing their cover, or blowing Mr. Merkin's brain, as though the information derived wouldn't be worth the price! It wasn't [i]her[/i] department to figure out how to hide a body, it was -

She looked at herself in the reflection of Mr. Merkin's necklace. Ah, she looked so pretty, didn't she? The two needles in her hair in that Chinese style. Absolutely no sign that she was werewolfing right now. She was dimly aware that was a terrifying thought. It was not much better realizing what had snapped her out of the process, looking over the decision tree in her brain. If she burned out Merkin here then it would cause an alteration in the organization structure and thereby throw off her perfect model. Oh yes. And killing people was wrong. And all that. 

She looked at Black again. Orange had never been in a situation where she'd held life and death power over a human before and she was shocked at how few safeguards there seemed to be. And Black had a gun. She was running that calculation all the time! Maybe... she'd been a bit too hard on White. Maybe she owed her a full bug report - oh, but how to explain all of this without blowing Black's cover!? 

"I appreciate this, thank you," said Orange, collecting the cards and tucking them away. "I will repay with one of my own." She used a pencil for this - an archaic formulation of graphite upon a high quality piece of paper. Little artistic symbols of the old world, markers of sophistication and class she'd never gotten the chance to use before. The pencil flowed through the majestic lines of a copperplate font.

[i]November - Operations
v8j@hdajp{[241njsdnf01%-01495Jljs#1934@spicemail.com[/i]

The perfect handwriting had nothing to do with being a machine. That was just practice - being able to perform neat handwriting was the oldest of old world flexes and it had been a skill that Orange simply [i]had[/i] to master. The, ah, content of the relevant email address indicated that she was an android. Humans had a [i]weird[/i] relationship with data. They could remember thousands of complex faces but couldn't store trivial character sequences.

"There is a trick to this, however," said Orange. "You do not email this address. Instead, you simply set your spam filter to whitelist this address and then you will receive an automated email with a malicious hyperlink. Clicking that will allow me to send communications that are [i]mostly[/i] secure - nothing is ever [i]totally[/i] safe, but that will do against most non-state actors.. You may share this card around, but it comes with no guarantees. I am not looking for work but I am open to having my head turned. You may consider this the carrot."

She'd had a tail once. An enormous prehensile limb tipped with a Blu-class space excavation laser that would burn through an industrial diamond focusing lens within four minutes thirty seconds of continuous use. If she still had it, it would be wagging at the thought of critical members of Aevum's social infrastructure revealing themselves to her in a format where she could learn about them and their troubles and pressures. 

"And unless there was anything else, I believe that concludes our evening," said Orange, catching another folded-armed stare from Black in the background. 

She smiled sweetly at her, and finished her tea.

*

[b]Pink:[/b]

She doesn't approve of the idea of Marco staying. How could she? You fight the gods and you'll lose. 

Pink thinks in terms of gods. Certain entities or forces are so enormous that they pass beyond the practical and into the symbolic. It doesn't matter how many officers are in the Zeus Segment Police Department, it doesn't matter their equipment, training or competencies. They are the Police, the raw manifestation of finance and politics and self-serving legend. Not an individual but a tribe, and a tribe with its own bloody-handed god: the shepherd whose breath stinks of mutton. Dare not the gods.

To fight a god you need your own tribe. She knows this but can't articulate it to the others and their paranoid isolationism. You need your own tribe and your own god, because while mortals fight it is the gods who decide. In Pink's mind the only god she's met worth fighting for is the god of the Anthropozine. It was a curious and fearsome Beast that found Justice lying mauled and dying on a filthy city street, abandoned by all. It ate her, tearing apart the beaten and diseased ruin of her flesh. It took her into itself, as it was the only thing desperate enough to find her appetizing, in so doing the Beast became furious. 

Now it hunts, and stalks, and is ready to kill those who crippled its greatest meal.

That is a god Pink can believe in.

Black doesn't trust anyone. Orange wants to play the game of thrones. Pink just wants to see the bloody animal that ate Justice finish its hunt. That means conducting the ritual. That means the unity of the entire tribe because the gods are more powerful than any mere mortals, no matter how independent they might think themselves. 

She opens up the Anthropozine Group Chat.

Pink: Hey @Neon Czolgoz! 
Pink: *A photograph of the contents of Elodie's kitchen, converted entirely into baked goods*
Pink: Can I bring some over?

Humans are terrible liars. They have body language that makes them flinch and blink and bristle when they lie, or even when they're just keeping secrets. Pink knows why. It's because they can hear the deep, low growl of the Beast. They can sense its hungry gaze turn upon them. And just because she has eight other bodies at varying levels of self-absorbed intellectualization doesn't mean that she can't hear the growl too.

*

[b]Yellow![/b]

"Oh!" said Yellow, blinking. "Um," is she blushing? "I - I don't know. I don't want to say no aesthetic but..."

She trails off, thinking furiously. You genuinely caught her off guard with that question. It's cut to the core of some long hidden thought process, the kind of internal discussion that you never truly expect to find yourself invited to share with another person.

"It's... all of them? None of them? Something else?" she struggles with the words. "I like seeing other people's aesthetics. I love [i]this[/i] place," she said, gesturing around. "How those posters just perfectly frame that wall and make it like there are windows there even when there's not? The potential of being in a place designed to hold more people than just you, feeling like you could move around to all the different parts and be a different person in each? The little scuffs in the carpet where the chairs roll and you can see the ghosts of friendships in where they cluster? It's..."

She trails off a bit. "It's not nothing. It's not other people's. I've got something to say too, I'm sure I do, I'm not just observing. But... I just somehow don't feel like I'm [i]complete[/i] enough to answer that question. I don't know how it all fits together yet, how [i]I[/i] fit together yet."