Too much. There's too much happening all at once. Pay attention to the fabric being used on stage. Unusual material, very fine stitching. The attention to detail speaks to a mindset completely separate from the attitude displayed by Prime Couture. The embroidery, the glorification of culture and mythology, even the cut of the robe is such that the thick, covering garment manages to glorify the body underneath it more than it obfuscates it, somehow. She'll need to buy several pieces from this line, wear them around for a while. She doesn't understand it. She doesn't

What is Valentina doing what is she doing what is she doing what is she doing how many different ways does one person need to turn conversation into ritual was the whole Consortium like this it's exhausting it's obnoxious just give in already just push her away already just let this stop being work just let her rest just let her have her night just let her give you yours just, just, just, just, just

Gold and pink, the coral colors of the dragon. Silver the foam washing over the tides they rest under. The sash tied tight around the waist gives the model the kind of sharp silhouette that draws attention to the curves of her body as much or more as nudity could manage. It is possible through the mind's eye to see the blemishes on her skin, hiding under the breath of the dragon. It is alluring to imagine where her body is soft and where it is strong. It makes the palms itch with want to touch the shimmering fabric and cinch it tighter around her and feel her bones and her muscles and the rustling, stimulating material all at once. Every step another shift, every shift a mesmerizing shimmer. There's more here than

Anime. Solarel. What does a brute need to train in heart magic for, anyway? Isn't the obnoxious power of her God more than enough to make her invincible? As if every advantage in the world wasn't enough already, now she needs to take the greatest secrets of human martial arts into herself?

[Stars Blotting Out the Moon], that dress fits her well. She fights like she's worried about it breaking. It fights like it wants her to shine. She could be a Priestess. But she would look better in a swimsuit, undoubtedly. And even better in nothing at

"Annoying," she says, with unintended venom and a voice loud enough for the entire bar, "Distraction. Distasteful. Annoying."

Mirror blinks. Her eyes flicker all across the (coral) room and the many faces that are now (coral, coral) watching her. She licks her own wrist and (coral) rubs the cool fur across her (coral, resting under waves) forehead before she (coral, coral, coral) clears her throat and sticks her hands in her pockets. It's possible (coral, coral) to hide the curling of her fingers from the safety of the suit. No one can see her center herself. No one can figure out how off balance she is. No one will realize how much is happening. How too much is happening.

Nobody except the one who should be wearing coral. Sink her teeth into those scales. Grind her fangs into those muscles. Her teeth are sharper, her technique is better than some Tigress'. Doing it wrong you moron, weren't you watching her hand? She called out the name of her Heart Technique! Idiot girl, she handed you every advantage, are you too hopped on on the smell of that cream to see the opening? Disgrace disgrace disgrace, you're an embarrassment to cat kind! Step back and let a professional handle it!

She breathes in slowly through her nose. Holds it, one, two (coral, coral, coral), three. Lets it out in sharp puffs, two, three. One hand comes free from her pocket and wraps itself possessively around Valentina. She pulls the other woman close, as close as she's allowed to without having to use force. Threading the needle, finer than embroidery. Strength without force. Strength applied with consent. Let Ms. de Alcard keep her dignity, if it's that important to her. She'll take it later, in privacy and darkness. Her breath feels hotter in her chest when she thinks about it.

"I don't appreciate these kinds of displays," she says with the same loud voice she'd snapped out before, though every word feels careful now. Thoughts pushed through mesh. Filter them till they're 'normal', "Don't you think so, Milady? If these are the forms she chooses for courtship, she should choose her battlegrounds better. She's making a mockery of these sacred arts. I'm sorry you have to watch this, I would much rather be paying attention to the walkway. I didn't think I'd enjoy it, but I--

"What are you doing, you idiot?! The base of the neck! Are you really going to let her beat you without a fight!?!"

In her pocket, Mirror's knuckles squeeze together. That should be her. But she has so many other things to do tonight already. Her tail is bushed out to maximum floof, but if she notices it she doesn't show any sign. Too much. There's too much. Coral, coral. Everything is coral. Something please, break the pattern. Someone please, understand her.

Isabelle

“You wave that sort of money in front of me like that, I’ll think you’re trying to stuff it down my breasts, girl.” But Madame Toldeo is smiling wide, and it’s not actually the money that got her. You really got her with the weather effects, you could tell from the way her eyes lit up. The tails not so much, seems like she’s already seen plenty of Hybrasilians and Zaldarians and doesn’t think much of you trying to imitate them, but that first idea of a dress that trails mist and light, that gives you your own environment as you move through a room and can still adjust for everyone close to you and far from you, that has her feeling inspired. And a woman like that, she hasn’t felt inspired in a long time because so many things are rote to her, business that she’s done a thousand times. But this, setting it up, supporting it, taking these technologies and doing something new with them, new even to the people who have come from across the galaxy, that she is excited about.

Isabelle, Madame Toldeo really shows off those strong thighs as she picks you up into a strong and affectionate hug. You can feel her press you tight, and no this isn’t just something for everyone as a personal affectation, this is what you get for pulling her in and making her see the stars again. She wants this, she wants to be with you, now, wants to be a part of what you’re making.

Emidio can see this is something special and he’s got all his notes happening as well as getting carefully out of the way as Toldeo closes in on you so he’s not blocking anybody’s movement. When she finally lets you go, she’s still beaming. “Teresita Bioluminescence, that’s the young designer’s brand. Too long if you ask me, but it’s memorable to say out loud, less so in writing since nobody ever gets it right, you ask me. But no mind that. Sit here, watch the show and I’ll introduce you. Teresita I can get out for you now, the others you’ll need to get after the show if you can catch them. If not, I’ll be sure they get your offer and that it’s received very favorably!”

Then she walks away to grab the mind behind Teresita Bioluminescence, though not before giving you a kiss on the cheek as she departs.

[Take a string on Madame Toldeo.]

Teresita Bioluminescence is represented (headed? You’re not sure and Madame Toldeo didn’t make it clear) by a thin, somewhat scrawny woman with short hair in a pixie cut who joins you at your table. She’s wearing white tuxedo pants, a white shirt, and a teal blue double button vest for the evening, not currently displaying any of the tech she was showing off, though she’s got quite a number of monitors with neural mesh links on her left glove for various things, probably controls for some of the drones, or at least status screens. She introduces herself as Asil Marina, lead designer. Hands you a card. Paz is still here, he’s eating up this exclusive (too much?). This girl though, she’s not sure what to do. Folds her hands awkwardly. Looks at you, opens her mouth, closes it. You’re too important, she doesn’t know what to say. It’s on you to make the first move here.

***

Dolly

You’re being held by two goddesses. Or…of course you’re being held by one goddess and one very strong woman, how ridiculous that even your blissed out mind would equate the two. Just watch the show, no more thoughts.

Jade

The vastness of the hangar must be something, even for a deity like you. The scale of being within Akar the Arena really is something. The pilots may be gone, but that leaves the engineers to bustle like hive insects as ships great and small move things in and out of the space.

You are, of course, very focused on your priestess and your new prey. But, you’re also having some work done. Angela Victoria Miera Antonius may not have been able to really hurt you, not with Dolly’s lovely dancing, but you were bitten by quite a large number of gnats. Each one, though it has no effect upon core systems, leaves a little part of your body feeling not quite perfect. Internal diagnostics indicate that this will only affect your overall performance by 0.01% (your scenario planning module has come up with a very small number of scenarios where modification to aerodynamics at that level of precision affects the outcome of combat, mostly involving long range ordinance with unexpected payloads at precision distances), which is to say that it’s not important, but on the other hand, a goddess deserves no less than perfection. So, it must feel nice to have engineers working over your body and fixing all those little gnat bites, smoothing your great metal skin and ensuring that you look pristine as a goddess ought.

Your team of Hybrasilian engineers is, of course, well-trained in work on you. They are also well-trained in ensuring that someone unknown does not approach you without making appropriate supplications. In Dolly’s absence and in an unfamiliar hangar, that at least includes a hangar ID card with authority to outrank the engineering team. The mysterious visitor here, however, has no such card, and your attention is first drawn to them as they start gesturing vociferously and signing to the outermost of your engineers on the edge of your docking bay a story below you.

The visitor is Zaldarian. You do not know them. You’ve never actually met a Zaldarian before (having been incarnated too recently to have fought in the war) but the programmers whose work attracted your essence provided data on them. Thus, what you recognize is that this Zaldarian is in the traditional form: they appear as a bipedal bird-like creature with dark dull-iron skin, and wearing a set of loose robes that leave only the face, neck, and lower arms exposed in what the Hybrasilians understand to be traditional Zaldarian dress. This particular Zaldarian is wearing black with gold highlights around the neck and edging of the cloak down the sleeves and along the back. Your data does not indicate whether the colors and dress have any specific association with a Zaldarian community or sub-group.

Your engineers probably will not let this visitor approach you. Sensors do not indicate any weaponry, however. They are simply an unexpected guest with a strong desire to meet you. Do you intervene?

***

Solarel (and Mirror)

Crescent is taken aback by the attack. She specialized in fighting Zaldarians and came into this encounter extremely prepared for that. She obviously did not brush up on TC anime culture to the same extent and the called attack confused her, so that rather than going for an opening, she went defensive and didn’t expect the hard roundhouse kick, which shook her.

[Crescent marks Frightened, one of two conditions before she would be taken out]

Left on her own, she’d probably have stayed defensive, tried to get back on top of the situation and moved it back into her rhythm. She’d have enjoyed that in her way. Even in the dim light of the booth, Solarel, you can see the way she adjusts, her lithe motions, the strength behind her swaying body. Hybrasilians are attractive in a fight and seeing one start to take it seriously, knowing what those paws of hers are capable of, it’s hot.

[Crescent responds to the Fight by taking a new string on you.]

But then, you hear an old voice, and it’s calling out a command. Crescent hears it too, and she’s a catgirl who understands the tone of command and is used to following it. She changes tactics instantly: she drops out of her defensive stance, leaps against the booth wall using all four paws for balance, and then pushes off before her momentum even settles, shooting herself behind you. There’s an instant of pain, the feeling of claws tearing into the neck right where Mirror said to hit you, and then you slump in place and you can’t move your lower body, the connection’s been severed.

This is temporary. Your nanobots, directed by your body’s needs and any local spirits you’re carrying with you, will repair the damage if you’re left alone. From how fast the pain was, it probably wasn’t even that deep a hit, you’ll be fine in a few minutes (well, you’ll still hurt, but you’ll be functional). You can still speak and gesture, can look out and see Crescent standing in front of you, and behind her, Mirror holding a Consortium woman possessively.

Also, be reassured that your dress was not touched. This was a single clean blow at the open neck and your clothing and all your scale decoration remain untouched. You look rather like a broken doll at the moment, beautiful and pristine, legs simply unworkable.

This fight wasn’t ever about really hurting you though. Crescent stopped immediately after this, leaping out of arm’s reach and balancing herself on the edge of the booth seat. She’s looking at Mirror with respect, back at you with desire, back at Mirror with uncertainty.

Mirror

Mirror, you probably don’t know this Tigress. She never served on any science stations where you were, and she obviously didn’t know TC space. It’s possible Solarel mentioned her once, but their fight was brief and more meaningful for Crescent than it was for Solarel herself, so no guarantees you have that connection to make.

She knows who you are though. Well, no, she knows who you are now, you were just on a lot of very large TVs a short time ago embarrassing your current date.

She addresses you by your star name. “Whispered Promise, my star name is Waxing Crescent Moon. I was…speaking with this Zaldarian just before you passed by. I wished to make her an offer, but she insisted on a contest of dominance first and I granted it. I hope I have done you credit. How can I assist you?”

She’s giving off a mixed scent of fear and heat. She was enjoying herself, got thrown, not hard to see. She’s nervous about why you intervened, some of the fear is that she’s done something to offend you, and her body language is respectful in the self-introduction: fur down, back straight rather than arched, facing you directly with her stomach open. She offered only her star name though and didn’t offer a clan. Might be a pirate. Hardly surprising in this area, but worth consideration. Also, isn’t it nice speaking with another Hybrasilian? Much clearer than everybody else.

***

The Third Fashion Line by Linterna Brilliante

Mirror, this is the one that Valentina said she liked, useful pilot tech in addition to the fashion.

There’s a brief pause after Murasaki finishes, as the stage is reconfigured. A new platform is laid atop the existing one with a set of stairs and open underneath it, creating two tiers for the models to walk simultaneously, one directly above the other. The supports are spread out, so a model could reach down and touch the model below her through the sides at most points.

The line is interesting. Stylistically, they did focus on pilot garb: flight suits with pants and vests, a few matching three piece suits that look comfortable to move in for more formal occasions. Modern and extremely well-made (close inspection shows the quality of the cut, seams, and styling are just absolutely top tier). But what really makes Linterna Brilliante stand out, and why they needed the multiple levels of walkway, are the gadgets. The first pair have a set of high heeled boots that are obviously designed for improved mobility and wrist cuffs that offer leveraged strength. The lower model, with the boots, repeatedly leaps into the air, and the upper model catches, swings, and tosses her, then the lower model comes down on the other side to be caught again and swung back into her walkway. They continue to advance while doing this, performing three stunts through each open section of the walkway platform.

The next performers have boots that can either stick to a surface with high strength or do some local gravity alteration, you’d have to get really close to tell which. Their paired walk is both of them rotating themselves around the upper platform one behind the other, and using just their feet.

Several models after them do variations of this. Linterna is still a fashion house, after all, and they want to show off their suits for cold climates (fur lined, with accents at the cuffs and the neck and big fluffy hoods) and their suits for hot weather which mix a more revealing look including the models’ very pretty open bellies and a bit of high tech environmental regulation and liquid monitoring software.

Their big finisher is a set of paired models. These two are in formal dress, both in tuxedos with gloves and tails, tight cut, revealing their curves under the jackets. And they’re putting on a magic show for the audience. They’ve got setup with watch style gadgets and something worked into the suits that’s giving them a light show and some limited conjuring. This isn’t anything as complex as on the spot fabrication (though rumors are that the Zaldarian showing next will be pulling that out), this is more about lasers, holograms, big shows of animals running about with them, one of them pulls a rabbit out of an actual top hat (that was definitely in there but the suit let them obfuscate the trick and offered some pretty neat visual distortion), they the two models do another round of acrobatics near the end, this to flashing lights and soundless fireworks. The whole thing is showing off a kind of glamorous and formal utility. Look how well these clothes move, how they hold up through a performance, how you can be stronger, faster, more mobile!

It’s an interesting take for haute couture, less flashy than either of the previous ones, but better executed than the amateur designers. It’s a little hard to tell where Linterna Brilliante is coming from on this though. The show would have looked like this from designers who failed to read the room on regular expectations or from designers who had nothing to prove and wanted to just revel in their own work. Most people will give them the benefit of the doubt given how well their clothing sells, but it’s hard to be sure.

A tilt of her head. Three flicks of her ears, a single swish of her tail. Mirror stretches her back and lifts her arms as slow and languidly as her body is capable of. She makes a show of lazy blinking, too. There is no need to walk away and find a step, tree, or couch to lounge on. She is already the taller cat. She frowns, which in her language means she's pleased or intrigued by some puzzle, but of everybody around her only Solarel is likely to know how to read her.

She's wearing several perfumes tonight, and while they don't completely obliterate the mood pheromones Hybrasilians give off they do make watching her a confusing mess. Her posture is a mix of curiosity, comfort, and aggression, and her scent is... excitement? Agitation? She is either very mad or very turned on, or maybe both? Or maybe she's just wearing lily-scent even though it's toxic. Which is its own kind of riddle. She takes a step forward, and doesn't seem the least bit surprised to see Waxing Crescent Moon take a similar step back.

"Oh? Is that right? An offer, is it? How wonderful. I have only the deepest respect for enterprising kittens. Truly, I do. Though perhaps? If you don't mind a word of advice from an outsider, that is. Perhaps... do not grant The Varangian a contest of dominance if you're not prepared to fight above your normal level. She thinks about fighting more than you do. If you do what feels intuitive, she's already read you. That's free advice, by the way. It's difficult in the extreme to make profitable... offers from a losing position. Unless that was your plan? Aha. Well then I apologize."

Mirror tilts her head in the other direction. Her liquid eyes fall on the most beautiful doll she's ever seen. The scale painting is something new. She's not seen this before. It reminds her of girls dyeing their fur to create expressions beyond the natural representations made possible by their original patterns. But like most things from the Followers of Zaldar, this idea is new. It's different. There's a grace and even femininity to it that she hadn't thought to apply to the greatest pilot in the known universe. The thought surprises her. Why? Why hadn't she seen this dress, this pattern, this internalization of sacred Consortium arts coming.

Because Solarel hadn't worn them before. Hadn't really shown an interest in fashion. Hadn't shown herself to be the type to think about it beyond the mood of the hour. But this? This was a deliberate choice. This was a great dolt taking even greater care to think through every aspect of her appearance for a night, and then waiting for random passers-by in a crowded bar to approach her. To see what may? No. Look again. The crossing of the dress, the cream color. The importance of it. Machine stitched, from the look of things. But stitched. She fought like she cared more about what happened to her outfit than to her. That's what made Crescent's victory possible to engineer in the first place.

What did that mean? Looking again, this doll was dressed for purpose. She'd turned herself into one of those Princesses, the kind that hid behind the gambits of her guards and waited for a brave Prince to sweep her off her feet... or send her tumbling into depravity. Look again, look again. Who does she compliment? Who had she been thinking of, all this time? Mirror plucks at the fabric of her suit. Her tail lifts high behind her, and cracks down like a whip.

"...You asked me a question. Yes, you can assist me. Yes, I'll tell you how. Do you see this pretty doll? Look what you've done to her; she begs with her eyes to be posed. As it happens, I am working tonight. I am acting as a model for the final line of fashions being debuted tonight. When my turn comes up, judging by your strike, her legs should just be beginning to regain their function. Unless she does something stupid, but let's trust her judgment. When I take the stage, she will need someone to point her in the right direction. She will need strong, skilled hands to lift her head and point it where it belongs. Make sure she watches. Make sure she sees everything. And then, when that is done? Please. Make your offer. Enjoy your, mmmmmm, snack. Show this lovely woman your best night, with Whispered Promise's blessing."

Mirror brushes the sleeves of her jacket smooth with the same deliberateness and lack of haste she's been moving with since she stumbled across this farce. Every wrinkle carefully pressed flat. She blinks one last time, and turns to take Valentina by the hand again. She can't resist leaning in for a kiss, this time on the neck. A kiss of lips, a kiss of fangs.

"I am sorry for the interruption," she says with a slick smile, "Life of a traveler, you know. A... in your language, a Knight? I believe? Work follows me everywhere. Come along, if you wouldn't mind. You said these current lines were your favorite, didn't you? We shouldn't miss this. Personally I would love to see you in that suit there almost as much as I enjoy your dress tonight. Are you more for those boots, or do the cuffs agree with you better?"

Her ear bends back as she walks, attentive to her date's answers. But her eyes are locked entirely onto the stage. Linterna Brilliante. The offering makes her scowl. It's not a question of craftsmanship or artistry, not at all. Even the light shows feel appropriately playful, and the silent nature of the thing has a beauty in its own right. It's all the flashes of war stripped of their horrors and turned solely to the art of beautification, and encouragement for the brave or... perhaps the rich among them to make better versions of themselves, if they could simply reach out and take hold of these dreams.

Except. It echoes the work of the amateur lines so strongly that it feels pre-planned. A loose thread pulled tight and held low to trip the first poor fool that came rushing out. Then the second. Then the third. She will not take back her words about the importance of giving the new minds of the field a chance to stand on the same stage. But to take their ideas and display them with the benefit of a more practiced hand and larger store of materials? This is what they call bullying. It would take a miracle for these poor artists to feel the rising tides, now. Someone would have to have been so starstruck by the promise of those drones, or the aesthetic potential of neural mesh (which was, in fact, worth considering!) that they dumped an absurd amount of money on the prototypes before waiting till the end of the night to see the finished product.

She'd like to meet the kind of idiot who'd do that sort of thing. Maybe to kiss? Maybe to punch? Maybe, both. In any case it's an impossibility. The list of people in attendance is elite among the elite. You have to walk the length of an entire research station back to find the throngs filled with hearts that much faster than the minds they pump blood for, and those poor dears lack the voice, the reach, or the resources to make anything happen about it.

She puts it out of her mind. Her fingers sneak up Valentina's arm, soft and teasing brush strokes. They tickle, they excite, they incite a shiver. And if her date should lose her balance? She'll be there to catch her. So swiftly and strongly only the pair of them will even know a stumble happened in the first place. A private moment in the middle of the vortex.

Irritating, the split; she relegates herself for a moment to a pre-determined pattern, fingers running through fur, a hum just on the edge of sneering, except she'd never be that mean to her precious Dolly. But she hates it. It's... dishonest. Pretending that Dolly has all of her attention while she is forced to attend to matters in her body, when Dolly deserves so much, all of her, particularly while she's toying with a possible member of a harem, and her thoughts are like thunderbolts that shake the trees, the wind that whirls their leaves, the black pit of the sky.

There she stands, a doll surrounded by ants. Most mecha are at rest, slack, empty, but Jade insists on her stance: one foot forward, one arm outstretched, her lance resting one tip on the ground with such precision that the immense weight isn't even going to leave a mark on the floor (though the lack of charge running through it plays a part in keeping the floor unmarred, too). This is the Guard Who Keeps The Gate, a stance of vigilance, of strength, of refusal to scamper. Under the circumstances, it is the proper position for an idol, rather than cross-legged and sitting in meditation, or back arched and preparing to leap. She will not have anyone question her legitimacy here, under strange stars.

Scaffolding surrounds her, particularly around her breastplate, where the scuffing is strongest. Were she to move, it would be... disruptive. How brave her engineers must be, knowing that they serve her at her sufferance; that where other mecha are silent and only contain danger in their inert elements, their fuel tanks and their electric nervous systems, Smokeless Jade Fires contains within her at all times the power to take a step forward and send them plummeting about her feet. Thus, when her head shifts, a sudden hush falls over the gaggle of engineers surrounding the Zaldarian, radiating outwards from Silver Ripples, who happened to catch the motion out of the corner of one eye, and the pair still working on filling in the pockmarks on her chest immediately drop tools and make for the stairs, just in case.

"Nine Forests," Jade projects, her voice inescapable, echoing and repeating off the floor, drowning out the frequencies of the larger hangar all around. "Who dares approach the goddess?" Her fingers, one by one, drum on the lance's haft, never letting it escape her control but bringing attention to how she holds it. Her head slowly tilts to one side as she eyes both her Head Engineer (a mountain-cat, thick-furred, colors of fiery smoke drawing the eye down to her torso) and the impudent Zaldarian. "This disturbance is unwelcome." And that is all she needs to move to convey that she inhabits this body, this vast idol made unknowingly for her inhabitance, that she is immanent.

She will have the answer. And if it is not interesting, more interesting than pampering her precious Dolly, then the Zaldarian will be expelled. And if it comes to that, she will drum the lance on the ground, the once. The damage to the floor will be as much part of the point as the sound, the shockwave of air, and the reminder that she is still in control. And what will the authorities do, anyway? Reprimand a goddess? It will be the fault of this Zaldarian, their insistence on disturbing Jade while she is busy.

The fashion show is a blur of motion, recorded through Dolly's fluttering eyes. Her hands grope Dolly's curves blindly, and she cannot fine-tune their force; are they too weak, mere fluttering wingtips, or too strong, making her arch her back on Angela Victoria Miera Antonius's shoulders? A rumbling growl vents through her speakers as she awaits the insight of Nine Forests, and do not think her mood will be improved if the Zaldarian thinks themselves worthy to speak directly to her.

It is her right to make the first move, but that doesn't mean she must be rushed in doing it. After all, there is a benefit to waiting in the negotiation, rushing in makes you seem eager. Puts you at a disadvantage. There is strength in patience, and in the ability to school your features to a careful blankness.

The young woman sitting across from her is anything but composed. And who can blame her? She's a neophyte designer, probably lucked into her first big show and now she's seated across from the Isabelle Losano. The woman whose face has been on six of the last year's productions for Terenius Now and People of Power. The woman who is one of the youngest Managing Executives a major TC exploratory mining company has ever had - a woman whose family controls enough wealth to purchase a small moon, run it into a bigger moon, and still have plenty left over to cover the lawsuits.

[Roll to entice. 5 + 6 + 0 = 11]

Not to mention, she's pretty good looking. Even, or especially, when she's not trying to be.

Marina shifts in her seat, eyes glancing at Isabelle, the ground, the displays on her wrist. She smiles, uncertainly, before looking away again and - is that a hint of a blush? Embarassment, probably, more than anything else. Either way it's cute somewhat endearing.

Anyway.

She watches her closely - from a purely professional view, of course - to understand her new client. It's always good to get the transactional objectives out of the way when starting a new relationship.

A business relationship.

I swear, Isabelle, what is it with you and the nerdy ones?

She ignores how much that voice sounds like her little sister.

Allowing a small smile to take its place on her face, she leans forward and starts to talk.

[Roll to read a person 4 + 3 + 0 = 7 - What do you hope to get from me? What are your feelings towards me? Marina can ask one in return]

"She thinks about fighting more than you do. If you do what feels intuitive, she's already read you..."

Does she know?

She doesn't struggle against her injury. Doesn't react to her bonds. She's hardly aware of them. All she can think about is Mirror, Mirror, Mirror. How much does she know? How much has she given away in this attempt to impress her? How much will that take away from her next attempt to impress her?

The dress. Paid for with money - TC money. She understands the concept now, Mirror. She understands, too, the concept of debt. She's taken out all she can. Reputable banks and criminal underworld, placed bets on her victory and borrowed against the future winnings. The Bezorel, an ancient TC gen one piece of garbage, was at this very moment being crammed with advanced missiles. The ineffective laser array she made such a point of demonstrating is being hollowed out and replaced with even more missile racks. Isn't it intuitive for you to study me, Mirror? To look over my fight, as I look over yours? Do you see that all the data I have given you is false?

Do you know that it goes deeper, Mirror? Do you know that I haven't just filled my own mecha with hidden weapons - but I've filled yours with hidden flaws? See, the thing about getting in so deep with organized crime is that after a point your victory becomes their problem. If she loses there will be an awful lot of debt that she'll in no position to repay, and so even now their agents are working over the Gods-Smiting Whip. Breaking it. Breaking this thing that Mirror has worked so hard to perfect.

Because it's not your perfection I love, Mirror. Perfection is your shield, and one that you're too confident in. All those hours calibrating the Whip, adjusting the sensitivity on your controls until they're more fluid and responsive than a direct spinal tap - what if they were all wasted? How quickly can you adapt? In the moment, will you panic? Or will the vision of me here, in this dress, in these colours, waiting for you - will that have tipped you off? Do you know already how far I'm reaching outside myself just to match you?

Or is this a step too far? Do I want to defeat you, or do I just want to see you on your knees? Do I want victory or do I just want to steal a kiss? You almost beat me when I rode the Aeteline, and she outmatched the Whip. Is my honour, my skill, a contingent thing, dependent on having the superior hardware? Can I beat you without it? Have I sinned against our war? Will you forgive me if I did?

No matter how Solarel thinks about it this is the only way. But she still does not know if it is a way at all.

Please, Waxing Crescent Moon. Lift my head. I need to see what she does next.

[Solarel is Smitten with Mirror. Take a String, question answered above.]

Mirror (and Solarel)

Crescent gives you a relieved nod. Yes, she’ll do exactly as she was asked. She’s quite the obedient pirate, really. She must care a great deal about the offer she wanted to make Solarel, but the what and the why of it aren’t there with the information you have.

She’s a different sort of mystery for another time though, no time for it now, not when you’ve got to make your way across the room again, right? Though Valentina does indeed stumble. The shiver as you touch her arm runs through her whole body and she moans. Oh yes, she bites her lip, and with all the ambient noise and music it’s doubtful that anybody else can hear it, but you can feel the moan run through her, that beautiful “mmmm” and of course you hold her tight so that nobody sees her stumble as it takes her.

It’s a busy night for you though, there’s just so much happening. The Zaldarian show is starting, and that means Mayze is up next. And the way Solarel is looking at you, she dressed that way for you, didn’t she? It’s just a lot to take in, so much history and so much happening all at once. How are you handling it?

Solarel

That look you gave Mirror, she saw it. Crescent has already agreed with her instructions, and she’ll position you for the big show, and for the Zaldarien show that’s starting now. But, something is about to happen, you know Mirror well enough to tell. Just watch for another moment.

***

Dolly

Jade seems a little distracted. A question for you. How well does your neural mesh go the other way normally? Do you get any of what Jade is dealing with, or are you in the dark?

Of course, now that Angela is comfortable, she has started to chat with you again between shows. “...loved the strength there. You seem like you’d love those boots hm, do you think your goddess could jump further if you wore them piloting her? It would be a sight, even I admit that, maybe you can buy them if you advance far enough in the match for a proper reward. Or offer to model them, hm? That seems more your style. Maybe I get you in just the boots and nothing else sometime.” She’s grinning and enjoying teasing you, she even gives your bundled up body a little jostle.

Jade

The Zaldarian, whatever else they may be doing, does appear to take a hint. You see a rapid exchange of information with Nine Forests, both spoken and hand gestures simultaneously. Given your displeasure, they are doing it intentionally quietly so that you won’t be bothered until there is a presentation ready for you.

Presently, Nine Forests steps forward with a deep bow. “The Zaldarian says that his name is Marik Ka’Stockar and pays his obeisance to the goddess Smokeless Jade Fires. He wishes to make an offering...” Nine Forests gestures to the Zaldarian, who holds up a small data stick. This sort of data stick can hold a variety of data, up to a simple AI system. It could be dangerous, you’d want it scanned carefully first or read out to you via an external system. Nine Forests continues, “Marik claims that it contains information on your…um [fellow gods] whom you do not yet know. He asks only for your promise that we do not destroy it and then he will offer it to you freely and take his leave.”

The term “fellow gods” is a Hybrasilian term relating to spirits of a certain overall rank and power. Nine Forests is using it with some uncertainty. In the mythological sense, she seems to be interpreting the Zaldarian’s offer as something like a meeting of equals, spirits somewhere lower on the metaphorical pecking order than great creator deities, but higher than small or minor spirits. These would be spirits somewhat like Jade herself, or similarly spirits of very old trees, large rivers, or lakes, hence the choice of term.

How could he have known all this? Did he hear about you? Extrapolate from what you said in your match earlier? What do you do with this offer, Jade?

***

Isabelle

For sure you’ve unsettled her, she’s flustered. She wanted you to lead so she could follow, and instead she’s fidgeting, can’t sit still with your attention on her like this. She shakes one of her legs rapidly up and down in excitement and doesn’t even seem to realize she’s doing it. She’s blushing, you can see it even in the dim light. Her eyes are on you, but they’re on you, she can’t keep them to your face, she’s thinking about all of you, your breasts, your body, your butt. She’s not very good at hiding it, way too flustered, but way too deep to be self-aware, at least so far.

See, you gotta be careful of the nerdy ones, you never know what they’ve got going on. Because of course she wants your money and your patronage, she wants you to springboard her to power and glory, and of course she’s turned on by you. But look at the hunger in those eyes, the way her whole body is agitated. This one, Asil Marina, she wants to own you! She’s imagining what it would feel like if she had you tied down, helpless, the ropes pushing out your breasts, your belly. She’s imagining running a finger along your side, pressing in with the nail, drawing a thin line of red upon the skin until you can’t help but let out a yelp and then teasing you for it until you blush crimson.

[Take a string on her for your entice, you’ve got her dead to rights if you feel like it, even if you may not have expected what that was.]

If you think about it, specifics aside, this shouldn’t be that much of a surprise though. Asil isn’t just a random nerd. She’s the nerd that put her stuff on display for one of the top crowds in the known galaxy. The nerd who wanted it badly enough to push through layers of applications and contests, to sell herself, and to put herself out there even knowing that the most likely reception is a footnote mentioning that she did something similar to Linterna Brilliante with less polish (and gosh, weren’t they jerks for not coordinating better with the amateurs? They had all the time and money, and they just ignored the first part of the show and didn’t care).

Now, here’s the thing in all this. You’re setting the pace, absolutely. Asil is flustered and you’re holding the cards. But that intensity she’s got, it’s making you let something slip. So tell us, if not her in so many words. How could Asil Marina get you willingly alone and tied up for her to play with as she pleases?

***

The Fourth Fashion Line by Guildmaster Marinius Trilaka

We won’t bore you with the extended history lesson, but it is a big coup for a Zaldarien to be participating in this show. They don’t have fashion houses in the same way as TC does, but they do have crafting guilds and Marinius Trilaka is renowned as a master craftswoman among the Zaldariens. Her hold (Trilaka, the fact she shares the name is an honorific) is not far from TC space and they’ve been relatively friendly to trade since the Arena games started and the active conflict broke off, though most people are still hesitant.

All that is to say, Marinius brought several of her artisans with her to the show, and they appear to be working furiously to the last second to ensure everything works properly with the models. They fuss a bit with each one even as they walk out onto the stage.

This Zaldarian line is showing off a more modern look. Traditional Zaldarian formal clothing is made up of long, flowing robes, and more casual clothing tends to loose shirts, tunics, blouses, and tailored pants. Marinius has gone for tighter clothing designed to move with the model’s bodies. Most of the models are TC (as that’s what was provided with the show) but two of the artisan attendants are, somewhat awkwardly in their movement, also participating in the show, showing off the cut of the clothes that reveal copper and bronze midriffs and long loose arms.

As the models make their way out onto the carpet, though, the true effect of these clothes is shown off. The clothing that Marinius has worked is infused with nanobots to an extent normally only seen on core Zaldarian planets, and each piece of clothing is granted its own small spirit in tune with the model showing it off. As they walk the nanobots reshape the clothes themselves. This isn’t like the holograms or the neural mesh from earlier. This is real-time materials refabrication (with a bonus for modesty that the nanobots can create an opaque fabric cloud as they work to hide the body while the garment is being reshaped). The first model goes from a tight curve-showing short shirt to a one-shoulder longer blouse that grows loose at the waist and flutters, and then as she reaches the end and turns, the garment reworks into a backless shirt combined with a trailing scarf that flutters up behind her with the motion of her twirl.

The others are doing similar things. You see garments switch from short skirts to long dresses and back, legs revealing and then hidden and then revealed again. The fabric can change texture, rough and textured into smooth and silken for different stylings.

The two artisans, though they move awkwardly, show off the look on a Zaldarian body. One is avian, the other somewhat canine, and they go through a series of different changes to show off their features. Their garments almost seem to flow along their bodies, perhaps due to their greater comfort interacting with Zaldarian spirits than the normal models, so that the canine one can leap to all fours as she reaches the end of the runway and the dress she was wearing moves fluidly to a collar and a cape that runs down the shoulders while leaving her elbows and knees free to pivot as she turns and races back. Those who recognize Zaldariens will see that she had an intense blush, but carried it off with aplomb despite her embarrassment.

Marinius herself stands at the head of the stage and gives her each model and her students a hug at the end. This is a big deal for her and the way everyone is appreciating her work seems to have moved her deeply.

Arousal. Nerves. Embarrassment. Excitement. Passion. Joy. Curiosity. Disdain. She smells them all in the air. Posture. Head position. Arm movement. Leg stiffness. Tail gestures. Eye contact. Finger tension. Touch. She watches everything with eyes that dart so fast they seem like a waterfall. Her whiskers brush Valentina's neck. Her tail curls.

She is missing the show. Her head turns. The smells pull her attention back around. Her eyes shift. She sees only present company. The chorus of voices that organize her thoughts have splintered into messy spirals. Begin, begin, begin, begin, begin, begin. Cue, cue, cue, cue, cue, cue. Time, time, time. Heart. Heart.

Pain.

The one day defender, they call her. Because of Solarel. She defended her home for an entire day/night cycle before she fell. She defended her home for just one single day, and was removed from the board forever after. She returned, eventually, a prisoner released into the keeping of her mother and the waiting plate of fish. One day. Maybe one day, she'd actually defend something.

...Language is such a complicated thing, after all. Nobody speaks it properly. Nobody says what they mean. Precision, wasted. Nobody listens. Nobody understands. Nobody listens. Every carefully crafted façade is a pointless and meaningless vanity project doomed to crumble in the face of another perspective, another mind, another unassailable collection of calcified biases. She's spent her entire life trying to have one single conversation. Just one. What can she do? What can she do?

The secret vortex yawns wide. So wide it opens up to the public again. That moan reverberates in her chest until she regurgitates it: half growl and half purr. Her hands make none of their calming, centering gestures. They wander through Valentina's dress, instead. She pulls down and, meeting no resistance, begins to push instead. Face to face. Eye to eye. Mirror does not smile. Smiles are a fabrication. Illegitimate and unnatural gesture; haughty from one angle and judgmental for another. She has other, better uses for her mouth than lying.

She sweeps her date so low to the ground that both their hair pools and mingles on the the floor. She drinks deep of the air through her nose, sweat and pheromones and perfumes and smoke and even light whisps of nanites. She blows it back in Valentina's face through her mouth. Hot. Wet. Needy. And she punctuates the thought with her tongue. That rough and rasping pink glides across the human's soft skin, wetting her cheek. Tracing the line of her jaw again and again and again, teasing her neck and darting lower, lower, lower.

But never kissing. Not on the lips. Where her own meet the skin she ends each touch with a soft, sharp nip of her teeth. She leaves Valentina's mouth open to speak to her with. No more lies and affectations and layers of ritual exulting in the sacred arts of Polite Indifference. Tell her what you think of her. Tell us all. You will not need your words. Her fingers probe and knead, seeking weaknesses, seeking places to reward, seeking solace, seeking just one fleeting moment of connection that matches the sensation of Nine-Tails' body grinding across the Lonely Star's.

The rest of her is not idle, either. This is the talent of someone who trains five hours every day controlling tails guided only by free-flowing power in the air and a single iron will. Her long, soft, and fluffy tail snakes out behind her and wraps itself around Crescent's wrist. Stupid girl, you were given instructions. Can't you even follow them? She squeezes. Pulls. Teases. And drags that hand by the wrist until Crescent's fingers are caught clumsily in the crossing frills of Solarel's beautiful dress.

She pushes that hand down. She pulls it up. She touches without touching, ending where she began with a pirate for a proxy and only the gambits of war to stand in for the words that can't be said. You speak with your hands, as a rule. Then, listen. Listen to the fingers playing at your throat, listen to the bristling fur of a tail that curls and flinches so carefully, not just to guide a Tigress' hand over your jaw, your mouth, your nose, but to pull away at the last possible instant so that no part of her touches any part of you.

The kiss she finally plants on Valentina's lips is... soft. Tiny. Chaste enough to befit the image of a human knight. She lifts her date back into her feet with deliberate slowness that borders on fear. Her breathing is hot. Heavy. Excited. Her suit is perfect. She straightens Valentina's dress until it is, too.

"Eyes. Wait. Soon. Reward. Obey. Misjudge."

It's not the fault of the translators that they can't keep pace with the frantic bursts of chirping pouring from Mirror's mouth. The strangeness of her accent and the sheer speed she's speaking with might leave even Waxing Crescent Moon struggling to follow along. Every thought is a glyph that unfurls like a flower, meaning after deeper meaning trapped inside its petals until the light kisses it open. The density of her vocabulary choices are so impenetrable they might only be appropriate for a priestess' dialog with a High Goddess, or to coax the first trees into growing what would become the homes that kept Hybrasil a paradise even beyond the age of space travel. This is speaking for someone who has given up on being understood. This is someone trying to drink a crystal fire drive through a straw.

Mirror finally manages to pull her eyes to the stage. She stiffens as her shoulders roll back behind her. Her fingers curl and uncurl stiffly into the palms of her hands.

"Dreams." she says, and walks away from everyone.

Whether it's for a moment or forever is not up to her. It's a question of language, and if she spoke it well enough to open the next door. The hallway is always full of more of them. Endless.

[Mirror hits her Feelings 4 explosion and lets the mask fall away: she is lonely and desperate. She takes one string on each of Valentina, Crescent, and Solarel, and gives one to each in exchange]

Dolly!

So the thing is that Jade is a goddess. Dolly could, with quite a bit of focus, follow the cord back, see through the eyes of Jade’s idol, make sense of the feedback coming through her sensors— but she doesn’t, because she’s not allowed unless Jade gives her permission (or, unspoken, if there’s an emergency).

So when something like this happens, when Dolly can tell that Jade’s preoccupied, there’s a little bit of temptation that grows out of worry. What’s going on? Could she help? And entwined within that, the natural curiosity: what is happening while she’s here and Jade is there? It’s always the things we’re denied seeing that distract us the most.

But Jade has told her that she is not to disturb her goddess’s privacy, and that she is to obey and prove her loyalty, and also Dolly is not particularly good at it anyway, and Jade would definitely notice, and sating her curiosity isn’t worth breaking her Jade’s trust. It’s not! But knowing that the key and the door and the lock are all mental is stressful in its own way, too, and it’s really easy to stumble from thinking about not opening the door to inversely, accidentally, opening the door and stumbling inside, and—

Meep!!

She tunes back in to Angela Angela Angela Antonius just a little bit before she’s jostled and squirms desperately inside the tablecloth because her body’s telling her that she needs to be in control of whether or not she falls, but she’s not in control, that’s all Angela. A stray curl flips into her face and all she can do is bounce and tilt her head to try to— wait, wait, what did she say? About the boots? About— is she— why would she— does she???

Dolly looks away and pretends to get really interested in the ferns, hoping that Angela can’t read what flusterment looks like on a Hybrasilian. Just the boots. Just the boots! As if they’d be all that special outside of the outfit! It would just be a contrast to her fur, the gold and the black, and her—

In the tablecloth, she twitches her tail back into place, foiling its pitiful attempt at flagging. She bites down on more flirtatious purrs rising in her throat. She’s not going to shamelessly flirt with an alien who can’t even recognize what she’d be doing, in public, in front of other Hybrasilians, and Jade isn’t even paying attention, and come to think of it, if she wants to do that (she wants to do that), she really, really wants to do it when Jade is watching and ordering and appreciating the show, and…

A flustered, helpless hum escapes her sealed lips as she instinctively bites down on the stuffing that isn’t really there, and she turns her head again to— oh! Oh, incredible! A silly, hapless girl stares wide-eyed at the future of clothing and drinks it in; even if she can’t come up with the fun applications herself right now, she knows that she will— and that, more importantly, Jade will.

And she doesn’t doubt that for a moment.

(And perhaps she should be paying attention to the scuffle down at the bar, but she’s been trying to keep her focus on the dresses for Jade, and besides, she’s engrossed in what the Zaldarians have to offer, and she’s going to perk up and grunt so excitedly when the next designer gets revealed, because she’s a huge fan!!)

---

Jade!

Jade’s voice is a irritable rasp that echoes harshly out of the speakers. (Dolly is horny and writhing and very interested in things! She could be playing with her bride right now! What is she so excited about??) “Who is this that thinks they can negotiate offerings? Either he offers me something he treasures and thinks I will treat it carelessly, or he offers me something awful to try and trap me in words! He comes to give offerings with conditions?”

(This is backwards, besides. You offer a goddess something that pleases her if she will take action to benefit you. When the hunt is successful, the gods and the ancestors are given thanks; but your role, o creature of the waking world, is to petition and promise. Not to make demands. This is the wrong script, do you think her ignorant? Do you think she is small? Do you think there is no blessing she may give you beyond committing to a research project?)

She raises her head again, but switches to secondary sensors; all the gesture of being ignored, but none of the impracticality. “If he wishes my attention upon his offering, he gives it freely. He may petition, he may give context, he may await its return, but it is not his place to make demands of the gods. I have spoken.” Her speakers switch off and she returns to seeming dormancy— but inside of herself, she curls up and watches, fuming, not sure whether she will be angrier if he walks away (and proves that he was wasting her time) or if he argues (and wastes even more of her time with Dolly) or hands it over (which proves he didn’t even need to make this useless scene). Go ahead! It’s your move, dipshit! Dolly is squealing in delight(?) and she can’t focus on her until she knows why she’s going to be angry!!

Ba-dump

Yes, you have to watch out for the nerdy ones - you really really do.

Isabelle smiles, somewhat awkwardly, at the barely concealed want in the other woman's glances. Taking a reflexive gulp of her champagne to moisten a suddenly dry mouth, she tries not to let her imagination run away with exactly what it might be like to be tied at Asil's mercy.

Would there be a blindfold? Or a gag? It would be nice at first, or for part of it ...

Did I mention that Isabelle has two masters degrees in engineering and physics? For all the fact that she's here at a fashion show, making political plays and rubbing elbows with journalists, she'd much rather be surrounded by technical documentation and schematics, planning the next upgrades or adjustments to Emberlight. Or at home with a cup of tea and a nice book.

Ropes chafe though, silk bindings would be nicer. And the feel of the sheets, that's important ...

Not that there's much time for that. After all, once she's done here she has to return to the Compound for her daily hour of fencing training, and then she needs to review the quarterly financials for Akanis before the Board meeting on Monday. And after that, it's time to meet with her social media advisors to debrief on the initial feedback from tonight's articles.

Giving herself a mental shake, Isabelle resolves to limit this diversion to a ... circumspect entry in the allotted fifteen minutes she has to journal her thoughts.

Maybe once I've got to know her a bit better.

It's always nice to leave a little bit of hope out there. After all, for Isabelle to put herself entirely at her mercy, it'd only be once she trusted Asil. Trusted her to value her as more than as Isabelle Lozano the prize. To value her as Isabelle the woman.

Still, there's plenty of room to play with between here and there. And cute engineers are worth investigating further, if only to figure out where those boundaries should be set. She can take a little bit of time with this - particularly when she's setting the pace.

"So, tell me." she continues, reclining back in the seat. "What made you risk coming here? Why put yourself out in front of the likes of Linterna as opposed to a more regional event?"

On the surface, Solarel doesn't understand. She knows what loneliness is: It's the wilds. The mechanized harmony of the world, the susurrus of ancestors and spirits, the natural compliment of girl and rocket propelled grenade. Loneliness is not palaces, not dances, not an emotion to feel with a girl on your arm and your claws in another's brain. She doesn't get it - this is terminal levels of sociability. How can someone feel lonely in the midst of all this?

But as the Sage wrote: Speak not to the outsider. A sentence she had thought of as Zaldar's most straightforwards commandment had been transformed by Mirror into her most wise and complex thought. The inadequacy of speech, the impossibility of communication - each word, each gesture, a slash at an impossible problem. Mirror was touching her without touching, adjacent and miles apart at once. Just like how a mile of void could feel closer than a kiss when they sat astride their gods.

Her mind rushes ahead, having half worked through the thought and moving onto her reply. Speak not - if speaking was enough then the problem wouldn't exist. She needed to figure out... something. She wasn't sure she understood but she knew she had to reply. Even if she said the wrong thing it'd show she was still trying to communicate. They were First Contact, after all - the electric shock of two alien cultures coming into contact for the first time. The first fight. The first love. The first attempt to bridge an impossible gap. Not knowing what to say. Not knowing how to reply. What do we want? What can we accept? Is this okay?

There wasn't a way to exit this thought. She'd been in it since they met.

Mirror

To Valentina

Valentina de Alcard has never felt anything like this before. She stiffens when she’s pulled down, all surprise and wide eyes. She almost resists, there’s a moment of tension in her muscles. She’s not a woman used to be treated this way, the whole evening has held that sense that she’d rather be the one in charge, but then that’s also why she was so intrigued in the first place. She had not expected to lose her match.

So she lets the tension go out of her and lets you work. Mostly. She can’t quite relax all the way. The sense of eyes on her is too strong, she cares too much, even as you work across her body, to completely relax. A part of her mind is on everyone else, everything else, trying to predict the future and the consequences of this moment.

It’s only a small part though. She wants this very much. Her body wants this. Each nip of your teeth sends a shudder running through her. Her back arches, her shoulders pull together as the waves of ecstasy run through her and she can’t stop herself from leaning into them.

When the kiss comes, it’s too much and not enough all at once. She doesn’t understand, she wants to be devoured. She doesn’t understand, she wants to recover and pose for someone else. She doesn’t understand, so she doesn’t move. She allows the chaste kiss, and for a brief moment her confusion is so intense, so complete, that she really does forget everything else. She’s just there, she’s feeling every touch of your lips, her tongue, curious, carefully touches those lips but does not press further. Just far enough to taste a bit of her own blood, and the softness of it leaves her in ecstasy.

She stands because you help her. She moves because you move her. Your words, too fast for translation, snap out and pass into her and she’s there but she’s behind reality. She’s working on a lag. Later, maybe. There will be more later. But you’ve already walked off.

To Crescent

Crescent never tries to resist. She realizes what’s happening and she is impressed all the way into awe. You’re showing her something here, about how your attention works, about how much control you have, how much space there is in your mind, and how skilled and delicately you can move your tail without even having to look at what you’re doing.

Crescent brings herself close to Solarel, never touching, precisely as guided. From the frills of the dress, up the neck, and over the face oh so carefully. Close enough to create the feeling of phantom touch, but never ever breaking that perfect line.

She breathes hard, her eyes are intense, focused. She’s concentrating, never blinks, not even once so long as that tail is holding her. She’s taking in every bit of this, trying to sear it into her memory. She wants this for…herself? No, for someone else. The hunger isn’t there for her, but the desire, the value is.

When the words come out, Crescent mouths each one. “"Eyes. Wait. Soon. Reward. Obey. Misjudge…Dreams.” She’s going to hang on them. She’s going to puzzle over each one, almost as much as Solarel might.

When the tail finally releases, she brushes a paw on it lightly but longingly, leaving just a bit of her scent on the fur at the tip. But she says not a word, and then you walk away.

Solarel

There’s a little movement to do once Mirror walks away. Crescent checks you over delicately and carefully, ensuring that you have a clear, straight, and unobstructed view of the stage.

She’s working efficiently now. No coyness, no toying, just obeying Mirror’s instructions. Her touch is careful, delicate, and skilled. She considers smalltalk. Decides against it. Gets the job done instead, settles herself into a seat across from you now, instead of beside. When your legs recover, she won’t stop you from leaving, won’t even be in the way.

When she’s all settled, she does finally speak. “I guess we don’t have much compared to that” she says, letting out a long breath and relaxing a little. “I still have an offer for you. Here.” She slides a tiny piece of neural mesh across the table to you, enough to hold a short memory impression, little more than a still image and perhaps some location data. “If you ever decide that you need Zaldarian technology and you don’t want to deal with your new empress, take a look at this.”

Content, she leaves it on the table by your hands and turns her attention to the show. She’s not even looking at where you might put it.

***

Isabel

“Linterna?” Asil chuckles, nervously though. “What the fuck am I supposed to do about them, huh? It’s not like they reveal their lines in advance, not unless you work for them.” She tries to shrug, doesn’t quite carry it off, she’s too nervous and cares too much to really manage nonchalance. “I hope you didn’t call me over just to tell me you’ve had buyer’s remorse.”

She sighs, puts an elbow on the table, leans a hand into it, and doesn’t wait for you to answer, just launches into it leaning forward like that. “I’m being a dumbass. You want me to pitch you, right? This is a sales thing. Alright, sure. I came here to show my stuff to the best people, like you. I think it’s good enough. More than good enough! What I’m doing with the drones, Linterna doesn’t have that, they’re just doing cheap neural tech and enhancers. My tech might not have their polish, but it’s got more potential than they could dream of in their fancy high rises. And I did it with just me and a small team of techies. We don’t have four hundred people to polish it off and do all the seams, just me, one seamstress, one patterner, and two techs. You give me the kind of backing that lets me actually do polish and I’ll you show something really special.”

She turns her head then, glances at the Zaldarian designs, riveted. “Or, just think what I could do with a little of that. How about a few hundred micro-drones, mix the best of new and old. Oh yes, I could do some amazing stuff with that.”

That last one’s probably a better pitch than the actual pitch because she’s really dreaming. There’s a head full of ideas there. Creative in everything she does. Everything~

***

Dolly
Angela’s chatting now, a little with every dress. She’s impressed by the Zaldarians, especially the canine outfit. “Wonder how you’d like to be on all fours?” she asks. And “wonder how that might affect piloting, what if the neural interface could be reactive differently, shifting over the body, changing how it delivers feedback as the pilot needs it, maybe with a more complex AI directing it?” She’s a smart one, not just piloting a simple mecha with nothing going on.

She’s also getting comfortable with this arrangement. You’re stuck, she gets to hold you close in your wrap, tell you what she’s thinking, and you squirm and moan a little and have rapt attention for the show.

This would be perfect if not for the fact that Jade is still distracted somehow. And for the fact that several of the Hybrasilians at nearby tables continue to stare and hide their grins. They seem to have settled on the explanation that you’re just into this and were hitting on Angela and got what you wanted. They’re just smirking about it, you can feel it even from the ones behind you.

Mayze’s show is about to start though, and that’s going to be an exciting one for sure. Pity Jade’s still distracted, hopefully she set this up to record for her later review at least.

Jade

There’s a flurry of quick chats and hand signs again. The Zaldarian, Marik, doesn’t seem to think that he’s allowed to address you, and instead he’s trying to correct things with the engineer.

After a short burst, Nine Forests speaks again. “Marik wishes to apologize. He indicates that he was concerned that we would destroy his offering because of its suspicious nature and wished for your [blessing of protection]. He also tried to explain that Zaldarians have a different relationship to their gods, one in which they more clearly negotiate terms before making an offering. He begs forgiveness for his misstep and makes his offering freely. He says that he will remain and receive any blessing you would now willingly give.”

So there it is then. He wants to be well-received, did the best he could, followed your directions now. At least mostly. He’s waiting on your blessing, but then again he’s also waiting to watch what the engineers do with the data stick he handed them. Perhaps if they tried to destroy it, he would leap up, seize it, and flee. Awaiting your blessing is a good excuse for that, as well as perhaps sincere. Not that you necessarily know how to read a Zaldarian, but it makes some sense that when one can speak directly to a goddess, one wouldn’t assume their blessing was received until they stated it was so.

[If you want more of a read on him than this, you’ll need to roll]

***

The Fifth Fashion Line by Mayze Serpaws

Take it away, Mayze.

One by one, screens start to flicker. A bold but strangely quiet drum and bass line picks up across The Jungle as the screens lose picture entirely. Each of them, entirely black. Angry red lettering bursts across them all at once, reading "Audio Only" in the inefficient yet beautiful script of the human language.

Mirror closes her eyes and takes a breath. Good. Everything is proceeding as directed. This will be an important test of not only her developing fashion skills, but her planning as well. She opens her eyes as wide as they'll go, sniffs the air as deeply as her nose will let her, strains her ears until they start to hurt, and makes a series of strange facial expressions to move her whiskers through the air. There are countless eyes on that stage. She doesn't want to miss a single one.

"You were expecting me tonight, weren't you? Poor darlings, maybe next time! But I am here, in a much realer sense than you understand. Pull your eyes to the stage, and gaze upon my latest true form!"

Mayze Szerpaws has a quality to her voice that reminds a person of a diamond cutting glass. Sharp, dangerous, you can't help but want to wince. But for some reason you also know that everything that goes into it is beautiful. Mayze chuckles, seemingly in real time, as a few screens burst back to life to display the stage again. Mirror stays where she is in the crowd, and reaches behind her head to undo her hair loops. Her entrance requires four loops, not two. And more feathers. But the suit looked nicer with her hair the way she came. She works quickly, plucking dark blue, bright red, and sharp turquoise feathers out of a pocket and working them into the twists joining her hair loops together, and at the bottoms of each, where she secures them with a jade bead. She draws a knife next, and takes it to her pants. Too hard to slip them off in the choreographed time; easier to just destroy them. She ignores the looks she's starting to get. Her attention is only for the stage.

Up where eyes are supposed to be, a human woman walks shyly onto the stage. She is beautiful with her golden hair and honey eyes, with proportions fit to be a runway model from her toes all the way to the top of her head. But she walks with the confidence of someone who's never seen more than eleven people in a room once in her entire life, and as the lights catch her it's easy to see the splotches of scaled skin and discoloration that marks her rare skin condition. Treatable, of course. Little more than an inconvenience to her health at best. But it makes her feel undesirable and ugly. It has her entire life. And here she is, the tip of the spear for the most elusive, eccentric, and exclusive designer in the known galaxy.

"I took the liberty of peeking ahead at my esteemed colleagues' offerings before tonight's show. Suffice it to say they are the reason I have chosen not to show my face here tonight. Do not mistake me! I am not afraid in the slightest. I cannot be cowed with fabrics, darlings, any more than I can by drones. No. I am unimpressed. This show does not deserve my face."

The model has finished her turn up to the front of the walkway, posing stiffly in a series of clearly pre-established stances. She fights the urge to grab her arms and hide them the whole time. She is dressed in a leotard with a corset sewn in the colors of the sea. Deep, rich blues growing clearer and brighter as they approach her breasts, where the fabric halts in a burst of white foam ornamentation that slips through the middle of her cleavage and wraps around the top of her otherwise bear chest. Her neck is adorned with a sapphire-blue collar made from a single lace ribbon tied into a neat bow behind her. Her hips and thighs are bare, but around her left leg from the knee to halfway point of her calf is tied several bands of thick, shining golden jewelry binding a particularly rough patch of skin in translucent seafoam silk. The fabric is adorned with gold filigreed star charts, that tell the story of the first goddesses of Hybrasil and the founding of the star names. A more crass observer would call it a calendar.

Her right arm is similarly adorned, creating a line from one side of her body to the other that one cannot help but follow no matter where or how she moves. The delicate silver chain wrapped around her waist and the moon charm dangling at the base of it are the center of the line; the eye is pulled first up and then diagonally down across all of her as easily as if Mayze had taken her audience's heads and turned them herself. And it's easy to notice that these silk sleeves are covering the most notable patches of her scales, but it would be a mistake to say she's hidden them. Indeed, the patterns of her star story can only stand out because they have this unique canvas to shine against. The individual ridges and textures of the girl's skin are accounted for in the display of the constellations, displaying history, mythology, and beauty all at once where there had been nothing but a black pit of self esteem. Deep blue cuffs adorn her wrists, with fishnet gloves across both hands. She waves to the crowd once, twice, apparently unsure of her cue. Then she darts away with a squeak, but she can't keep the smile on her face from showing for the cameras before she vanishes.

"Not that I don't have the utmost respect for my fellow designers, of course. And there are some true gems among you, may your starlight never blink out. If you know to let my words wash over you, then good news! I'm probably not talking about you! If you're turning to your companions right and and saying some silly thing about how 'you'd never', then bad news! I probably am~"

The next model's theme is wings. Her pristine white robe is cut entirely with this single shape in mind. It hangs from her in gossamer layers connected by a single length of diamond chains fashioned into the shapes of starbursts and shark fangs draped across her shoulders. Wide swaths of fabric are simply... missing from the dress, exposing her pale albino skin and the deep purple markings painted across it, always in the pattern of falling feathers and wings. Her prominent ribs pin the fabric into place where her tiny chest and flat hips would fail to flatter it, until it gathers at her waist and flares open into a massive trailing gown made entirely of different shades of black, silver, and white feathers gathered off the ground from an aviary where Mirror happens to know a gal.

Open at the front and darkest at the back, where her thin and surely unattractive legs are the stars of the show, and yet... the way those feathers kiss her. The way those wings envelope her. The way they move behind her as she walks and turn her into a swan? She's become some manner of goddess, the kind those star stories were written to warn you about (and, in fact, they were. someone will have to review the footage to notice). Her silvery high heels would be obscene on a girl this tall in any other context, but they are necessary to force her walk into a style that makes her train properly flap. Every step is a ripple of motion that makes her seem about to take flight. The illusion is possible because of her delicate build and divine height. A more traditionally beautiful girl would move in it differently, would seem more like she's hopping rather than preparing to soar across the stars, would hide the painted patterns in her darker skin. This dress was made for her to wear it, and only her. Just like the last one.

"So much time and effort, spent worrying about the how, and the what! So much talent wasted fussing over materials. Materials! Ha! As if you could find a mesh woven well enough to cover for the tiny brains trapped inside those pretty skulls of yours. Good ideas, certainly. But you think that you are pushing the envelope? Ahaha! Idiots. You drape your concepts, your toys across the most bare and basic forms you know. Is this a fashion show or a tech demo? There is nothing wrong with seeking new frontiers, but there is not a single one of you here brave enough to think beyond the basic cuts and ideas you've kept close to you for hundreds of years. What do we wear, and why do we wear it? These are not solved equations, you dolts! There are so very many places we can go, if we can just think about the bodies were are beautifying with the same reverence we use to select our methods of achieving that. Your... cut cookie designs bore me."

The screens have all gone back to normal, except one small one near the bar. The music is fading back into the normal fare for the venue. Mayze is very nearly done making her speech. Mirror hastily unbuttons her suit jacket.

"And, when you are brave enough to put the body ahead of your own sense of cleverness? You can do this."

Mirror breaks into a run and leaps high into the air, tossing the last scraps of her suit across the trail of her flip behind her. She lands center stage, and stands there lit up in the flood of three different spotlights, arms spread, fur patterns exposed for all to see.

She is adorned in flowers. Only in flowers. Great, five-petaled blossoms spread open across her stomach and over her chest with a delicate grip as if they were her lovers. Each petal is so soft and so delicate that the eye can almost see through it without straining, painting her fur in soft purples and pinks, yellows and greens. They follow the specific contours of her body perfectly along the crossing white ribbons that hold them together like vines.

The petals spread across her body with only the barest concessions to modesty. Each of her most distinctive spot markings have been accounted for in the growth. Her breasts, her hips, her legs, and her butt are all displayed prominently, kissed around the edges by flower petals instead of being covered by them, with her ribbon-vines instead slipping just enough to keep her from needing to be thrown out of the show. Sweet perfumes waft from her with each and every swaying step she takes.

This dress has taken into account not just one body, but two. It is a piece meant to enhance her own attraction, but also lift the beauty of the natural world to this house called Fashion. Hybrasillians and especially well read aliens will instantly realize, if they can turn their brains on long enough to think, that she (that Mayze) would have needed to coax these flowers along the guiding ribbons and her models' body over the course of many dedicated months or even years. Each dress made, if you sold it, would be grown to the person wearing it. It would be subject to the whims of the individual flowers chosen for the task. It would be subject to if the person had prominent stripes or spots, if they had freckles on their skin, if they were light or dark or what manners of luster their scales were burnished with, and where that shone the brightest. No two would ever be the same.

She is wearing Home. Delicate petals flutter across her fur, seeming so delicate but never breaking no matter how she moves. Mirror flips across the stage in a cartwheel into backflip to prove the point. She lands on her black sandals and the petals all fold closed into bud, baring whole new sections of her body to the crowd to be admired. She swishes her tail behind her with amusement. Her eyes devour the crowd and its reaction. And then, with the briefest of shudders, the flowers bloom again in a new set of colors. Now they are gold and crimson, fuchsia, orange, and each one draped across a different pattern in her fur. It's not fashion for the feint of heart. Only the confident and pure hearted need apply.

But if you are bold? Then it doesn't matter the shape of your body. No matter your lumps or scars, if you are carrying too much weight or two little, short, tall, or some awkward middle, the flowers can be taught to accommodate you. All they need is time. If you are brave and beautiful inside, Mayze Szerpaws will raise your outside to match. She promises.

Mirror takes a bow, stepping into the gesture with a sweep of her bare leg. The show is ending, but the night is young. Did they see? Did they? Did they understand? The eyes looking at her. The mouths, flapping words into the air. What are they saying?

Jade!

Fuck this.

Dolly is so excited. Her heart races, she's trying to make sounds, her eyes are so wide. Something at the fashion show. Something she should be there for. Why did he have to come now? Why did he have to ask? Why does he think he's entitled to...? But he is. That's the flipside; if she is divine, then there is a reciprocation, a responsibility to the community. She's skimmed through the uploaded, transcribed, annotated arguments that the Hybrasilians have had about theology and the afterlife and faith, and she's had to find her own answers to what that means.

On the one hand, Dolly. Her Dolly. On the other hand, her responsibility. Her self-image. Her reputation. Hard to say which one is more important, because they're load-bearing, they're intertwined. If she's not a goddess, she's just something spun up out of code and clever stone by her bride's big sister. If she's regarded as unworthy of propitiation, then she's broken her commitments to the community and to the larger society that she was born to protect, serve, nurture, guide, and represent. Dolly wiggles and lets out an excited gasp, eyes shining, heart shining.

Jade raises her free hand, careful not to knock over scaffolding, still not lowering her head again. "Your offering is accepted. I will work a blessing over you, and greater still if what you have brought pleases the goddess. Now go. I am in consideration of such things as do not concern you." And almost spitefully, she takes the time to do as she said, so that she will deserve to go back and play with her high priestess without guilt, and

she drops. she unfolds her mind into itself and it is a descent. early paleolithic tribal rituals suggested by archeology and folklore; the descent into the cave, which is the yonic womb of Hybrasil. she is the handprints on the walls and she is the division of the walls and she drops. three rivers, three points where she makes the decision to continue: the first one full of writhing scorpion-glyphs with cognitovenom on their stingers and she walks through and is not touched because her will is a falling star, and the second one which is full of glittering crystalsharp thoughtpatterns and she walks through and is not touched because her will is naked and unburdened by doubt or confusion, and the third one which is the dark underneath the stage and the quiet that waits outside the sky and she walks through and is not touched because her will is the only light that matters. so now she is here where the eight roads cross and each of the colors has its meaning, and she turns to the blue road and lifts one hand and says: it will be so. he will be protected. let this be set against the intentions which mean him harm, for a breath, for a time, for only for my Seven Quetzal are you bid to keep for as long as she is mine.

and who are you, the roads ask, and shift around her. and who are you? by what authority?

I am Smokeless Jade Fires, I walk the road into the dark to the place where the roads meet, and I am the fallen star that cleaves the earth, and I am the bright teeth that blind with fear, and I speak with our mother's authority. I am her child, I am her spear, I am that which burns and is not consumed. obey me. now, as you have then, as you will again.

and then the ascent, through the cloying dark, through the glittering stream, through the concepts of scorpions, past the markings of the first shamans who walked this road by tearing open their hearts who are with her in spirit in this recreation of the journey, to the mouth of the cave where she dresses herself in herself again, and then lets the descent fold in on itself and outside itself so that she can

be herself again.

Hybrasil didn't explain anything to her. Everything about being a goddess is something she has learned by reading what the Hybrasilians have to say about each other and about their understanding of what she is. So this is how she does it. This is what it means to be a goddess. Even if she has to fake being certain, even if she has to trust in others to interpret her effect on the world, even if she created the entirety of the experience and runs it for herself inside herself, she is still acting upon the world.

She is still a magician.

She drops back and flows down the tether that connects her with Dolly, envisioning her idol-body receding and with it the working that she has placed over Marik, and she lifts one hand to make an obscene gesture at him for interrupting her evening with Dolly, and maybe that blessing won't last long at all and he'll still end up getting his stockings wet by stepping into a puddle which would serve him right. And she twists and plummets and settles down nigh-instantaneously on top of Dolly, and she wraps several sets of arms around her and nuzzles into her hair and runs back the feedback to discover--

---

Dolly!

"Oh my stars it's Mayze Szerpaws!! And of course she's not here, it would have been nice, but she's so reclusive, she's really playing up the air of intentional mystery, like the mysterious rival huntress whose fate is intertwined with yours, you know? Every time she pulls off a mask there's another mask or a veil or an extra layer of mystery, but at the same time, she's trying to say something with her fashion! Like it's in conversation, and fashion isn't strictly my thing, I mostly wore practical things with lots of pockets and big colorful moondresses before I met Smokeless Jade Fires, but her work's something I've been a fan of since her First Casting special, all that Fishers aesthetic turned into something that was so timely?

"I've only got the one piece that I brought with me, one of her limited edition charms from the Highperch line, but it's lovely and I'm dying to see-- oh! Oh!! Oh, I think she's making this about personalization? Yeah! See, that human, she's got a unique pattern, I haven't seen one like it before! And, wow, the, the way it makes you pay attention to the dress which brings your attention to her patterns to bring attention to the dress again, that's us, that's what, um, Neo-[Fire-from-Mother] style, from a generation back, but of course that's from older stuff, we've always been at least flirting with it, and she's made it work for you, and--

"Oh, see, see? That's her making a bird out of another very unique, um... do you have genetic runting problems? In your biology? Because that's what she seems like but I don't know. I don't want to be rude. But it'd only work for her, and of course that means it's very expensive, but isn't all of this? It's just instead of charging for the materials or charging for the vision Mayze is paying for the attention she's giving you, and don't you think that's just the wildest thing? I mean, we're, you know, we pilot mecha, we're almost close enough to be able to do that, but that's different, because she's making something beautiful out of it, and--"

And Jade slips the gag from her mouth and makes a low rumble deep inside of herself, the kind that's hard to read, but she says: "Keep talking." She doesn't say please. She doesn't have to. And she wouldn't, besides. She's a goddess. If it means the world to her that Dolly catch her up, explode into happiness, gush and squeak and show joy at something that isn't her, because she's here with her, because she gets to come back and be with her, because Dolly was the first thing in the world that she ever looked at and wanted to experience, then Dolly can figure that out. She's a smart girl. Smarter than she thinks.

Dolly screams, and wiggles, and the scream tumbles down into giddy laughter, and she's about to tumble right off of Angela's shoulder.

"Look at that!! She's actually followed up on, there's this aesthetics school that was, is really important to us, I mean, we're not, I mean I'm not Gardens anymore, but we used to do a lot of work with making flowers grow to fit things, it takes so much time and effort but there's this arch over the Bioengineering and Agricultural Plaza at Riverden that's entirely set with flowers like jewels blooming at different times all over the year, and she's made it into clothes??? And she's using it to talk about the other two that she just did!! Angela are you seeing that? Wooooooo!! Angela, Angela, clap for me, please!! You tied me up like this so now you've got to do it, pleaaase? She's got to know how much we love it, this is-- okay, maybe the silk dragons Jade will like more, but that's for wearing, this is art! What do you think, Jade? Do you--" "I want to see you kneeling for me in only that dragon robe and lots and lots of black velvet rope." "Jade!!" "But the flowers are nice, too. You're so cute when you talk about them. Not that they deserve you more than I do, but... it pleases me to see you be such a little kitten over them."

Dolly purrs, back to being flustered, and lets Jade scritch her right under the chin as she turns her attention back to the Hybrasilian modeling Szerpaws' work so, so perfectly. Imagine getting to be her! Modeling something made just for you in front of a cheering crowd. Jade might do something like that, but Jade would do it differently, either making it a reflection of herself or trying to make her show off something from her old fanfiction, and the effect would be to draw everyone's attention either back to Jade or to the clothes that Dolly would be straining to fit into, not the time and effort that went into making something like that fit just right. Months! No, wait, not with those varietals, that's at least two years that went into making that!

Dolly screams again out of sheer, unabashed delight at seeing one of the best fashion designers on Hybrasil take her old life's passions and spend literal years on making them into tonight's performance. And--

Wait.

That meant she's been working with that woman for at least two years.

Dolly's ears perk up in interest, and she notes to herself that if she happens to see that woman again, she's got to ask, or at the very least introduce herself and offer some compliments, because that has to be one incredible secret to be carrying around for so long! Just think about it! Wow!!

She wants it to be about her. Wants it to be for her. But of course it isn't.

She understands why it isn't. She gets it - she knew it. This is Mirror's vision. This is about more than how she relates to any person. This is about how she relates to the entire world. This is the razor sharp unraveling of the laws of beauty, as defined by lords and ladies in Capital spires. This is not charting a path through the wilds, this is the first launch into the black. No wonder she is so disconnected from the world - her reason for being here is to show it how it might reach her. How can a heart that exists in that perfect place reach back here to turn girls into stars and angels?

She wants it to be for her. Not because she wants Mirror's undivided attention, not because she wants to steal the wings from angels. She wants it to be for her because then she could comprehend it, measure herself by it - one day match it. It would be a battle she could fight while still being herself. Because in her case it was all for Mirror. She couldn't see that brighter world. She didn't have a heaven to embody or fight for. She was a girl from the steppe and her idea of glory for a long time had been a roof that would not blow away in the godswind. And then, when she had at last discovered something worth fighting for, it had been the act of fighting. It had been riding a screaming divine machine at the edge of thought and consciousness - no, that wasn't right. It hadn't been that she was fighting, she'd been fighting for most of her life in one form or another. It had been...

It was impossible! The feeling was impossible! She wanted to drag Mirror down to her level, to engage her so intensely that there was no room for the dream of a brighter world - but it was that very dream that transfixed her, made her wish that it was her who was going to be made beautiful in that way. She wants to have a dream of her own that she could fight Mirror's with, a motivation that would make their battle a true clash of ideals. She wants Mirror's dream to be for her because she can't think of anything better. Doesn't want anything different. Can't compete with it. Wants to steal it. Lacks imagination. Mrrgh.

She can't beat her. She has to beat her. She's impossible. You defeated her before. How do I show her that I'm better? How do I show her that I'm listening?

Ever since their first battle, Solarel had felt the curious sensation that she was Mirror's reflection. Her shadow. Her lesser. A perfect copy who lacked something essential. This entire fucking thought process was sign enough of that. Mirror was dreaming of a perfect world and all Solarel could dream of was Mirror, Mirror, Mirror!

It was all so frustrating that she just wanted to put a shell the size of a tank through a mech the size of a building. She'd figure it out if it killed her.

For reasons that she would struggle to articulate for some time, Isabelle found herself leaning forward to place a hand over Asil's.

"I have no doubt you could." she says, meaning every word. "Zaldarian nanotech is a great frontier yet to be cracked, and it can do much more than just fashion. You could be the one to make that happen."

After a moment, her brain catches up with her and she withdraws the hand, sitting back into the chair. Raising the champaigne flute between them like a shield.

"And don't worry about buyers remorse." she continues, casting a glance to where the next fashion lines are being displayed and taking the time to compose her next words.

"The galaxy needs more visionaries. People who can not only come up with new ideas, but see them through. Take a look at these dresses, for example. Ms Serpaws is an artist and her line is a statement - no, an assertion - of individuality, of respect for people being who they are - helping them to stand proud when others would try to hide them away. And while I don't know about the practicality of dresses that take years to make, Linterna doesn't have a manifesto anything like that."

"Linterna also doesn't have a parallel NM-integrated command array. And while I can't claim to be an artist, I can tell the difference between good engineering and a basic interface with special effects. I agree with you: One idea has potential, the other is a gimmick."

"I asked about what brought you here because I want to know more about the woman I will be sponsoring and how best to employ you. And I will be sponsoring you, to be clear. The only question in my mind is whether you want to focus solely on the fashion side of things with Madame Toldeo, combining your tech with the neural imaging of Prime Couture's, or if you would be open to work on the engineering and Zaldarian angle with me and my mech staff."

"So tell me - what would you rather do with those ideas of yours?"

When the show is done, drinks are finished, the guests departed, there is then a time for rest and perhaps a little preparation. The information about the next match is released at the same time for everyone. The brackets are revealed publicly (usually in a live show for the interested at home) and each pilot receives a transmission with a new dossier for their fight. With the battlefield revealed now, there is also some information about the expected terrain to give each pilot a chance to think through their preparations.

***

Solarel

Where are you staying for the evening, when the party is done and it’s time to take your things off and prepare? Are you keeping a small room in the hangar near your mecha as the modifications are finished, or do your new connections offer you a more comfortable room at a price?

There’s also the question of what you do with Crescent’s information. You can keep it for later, she didn’t say it would go stale and you may not want to create even more potential debt for yourself. At least not at the moment.

Regardless, you are informed that you will be facing Mirror in your next match. You know a great deal more about her than any dossier can offer, but here’s what’s sent to you.

Opponent: Mira “Mirror” Fisher
Mecha: Gods-Smiting Whip (they left out her other titles, though you’ve heard some of them)

Known statistics:
Power: *****
Speed: ****
Defense: **

Pilot profile:
Mirror has served on mercenary duty on several missions across a large area of space. She is known to deliver results exactly as promised consistently and to remain calm under pressure. Recent match data indicates that she was experimenting and may have extended her fight to obtain data about her opponent and her mecha. Statistical ratings should be considered unreliable.

Terrain information:
Your battlefield expects rainy weather and cloud cover, reducing visibility.
Light underbrush and open waterways should allow maneuverability
One section will have hilly and uneven terrain

***

Mirror

What a show! People were cheering wildly. Will you find Valentina after that? What kind of night will you offer her? What’s the comedown like after a show like that?

Oh, also there are bids being sent into Mayze’s accounts. People are interested in custom work like you showed off. Lavishly so, though how they will use their new clothing may be a point of question for them. As might be whether they’ll really understand what they’re buying.

You receive the following briefing
Opponent: Solarel
Mecha: The Bezorel

Known statistics:
Power: *
Speed: *
Defense: ***

Pilot profile:
Solarel was previously known as a fearsome pilot during the Zaldarian war. Her previous mecha had world-class statistics in all categories and was a pinnacle of Zaldarian technology. Her previous fight was unorthodox in method, and her mecha demonstrated only low power weaponry as well as being an old model with low maneuverability and an outdated crystal fire drive. Analysts believe her method, while flashy, likely indicates the weakness of her equipment.

Terrain information:
Your battlefield expects rainy weather and cloud cover, reducing visibility.
Light underbrush and open waterways should allow maneuverability
One section will have hilly and uneven terrain

***

Dolly

Angela isn’t a jerk, so once the show ends if you feel like departing, she’ll let you. But then again, if you wanted to be carried back to her room, wanted to be paraded through the streets like a trophy, and were willing to let Jade be by herself for the evening, you could. Angela would take you, have her way with you and enjoy it, perhaps have words for Jade too. She’s gotten the gist of what’s going on here after all and isn’t afraid to experiment a little. She’s going to make it very clear she’s in charge though and there will be some rumors. She might get some leverage over you out of this.

Whatever you do there, tell us how you spend the night.

During it, you receive the following dossier

Opponent: Ksharta “Talon” Talonna
Mecha: Pulsar Cat

Known statistics:
Power: ***
Speed: *****
Defense: ***

Pilot profile:
Talon is a new pilot, her previous match was the first recorded appearance of the Pulsar Cat in intergalactic combat. Profiles indicate that Talon is an uncertain pilot and easily intimidated, but has above average reflexes, even for recorded Hybrasilians. Her first match relied on high speed movement to maintain careful spacing to take best advantage of her weaponry. Her autocannon was used primarily for defense.

Terrain information:
Your battlefield will be in dense forest with high trees
There will be a small number of more maneuverable lanes, which may present opportunities for ambush
Weather is expected to be clear, permitting high altitude flight

Jade

Your night depends in large part on Dolly of course. But we do need to ask about that data drive from Marik. Are you willing to risk looking right away? Plan to have your engineers review it? Do you want to wait for Dolly on something like this?

***

Isabel

Asil grins. It’s meant to be a reassuring grin for you. She’s relieved and happy, your vote of confidence is a good one. And it is that. But is also reminds you that she’s young and her team is small and she’s not always going to know how to present professionally the way that you do. She’s got ambitions and desires that outpace her experience so far. Set her up for success or she’s going to crash and burn, possibly as a horrific blackhole for your resources if you’re not careful.

Now your performance is at an end though (if performance is the right word). The News has everything they need to write you up, and Adriana will hear of it with at least some interest (though be careful with the woman, a grand gesture like this is a risk too, she’s going to want to know what kind of game you’re playing before long and she’s not above pulling strings in the matchups).

How are you planning to spend the night? Do you pass it with family? In meditation? Do you have plans to work on, mechanical or tactical? Probably too much for Asil to hope she can come with you. Either way, you’ll be getting your pilot info during the night. By the way congrats, you’re the first of the rookie pilot crew to get matched up against one of the elites.
Opponent: Ada Smith
Mecha: Unseen Goose

Known statistics:
Power: *****
Speed: ***
Defense: ****

Pilot profile:
Smith is a veteran pilot leading the Mercenary Company known as the Snow Geese, headquarters unknown. Smith competed in Arena seasons 1 and 2, but has been absent since then and is returning to competition now unseeded. Her previous combat style was aggressive, using a heavily armored, high-power mecha with stealth systems to allow her to close effectively. The weight means that if her location is known, she can be avoided, but that is the only known weakness of her approach.

Terrain information:
Your battlefield will be in urban terrain amidst an abandoned settlement with overgrowth
Mobility will be high, but sightlines will be limited
Weather is expected to be wet and humid, with dense vertically high clouds making flight somewhat risky for both participants

Solarel lies flat on the canopy of the Bezorel, looking up at the night sky. She watches the stars and the ships and the flashing lines of gods and spirits. To her eyes the world is always partially digital. There are rainbows in the stars, dogs falling off chairs in the horizon, the digital bonfires of distant gods. The wind is visible in lines of silver pixels and holographic leaves. Distant mountains she has not yet climbed have glittering diamonds rotating above their summits. Text streams past her eyes, old news and new history. Ancestors talking about the policies of distant Empresses and sightings of new gods. Layers and layers of meaning.

> How was your evening?

She doesn't know who speaks. An ancestor, a god, an anonymous Zaldarian casting her thoughts into a digital void? Doesn't matter. Sometimes you're just talking, right?

< had a gay meltdown
< which merged with an existential/moral thing
< i didn't say shit but i feel overexposed. like i said and did way too much and now i'm not cool and mysterious any more
< and cool and mysterious is all that holds my persona together
> You don't seem cool and mysterious IMO.
> More like a dog contemplating how to un-chew a slipper.
< haha angy%Glyph
> I simply would like to suggest that you consider internalizing fuckup into your presentation. You might find it relieving.
< but i'm not! so much of the time i'm so fucking cool
< like
< did you see how i blew up that robot today
< i'm incredible. if i met me i'd want me to sign my tits
> That seems like a lot of pressure.
< yeah i mean, should i sign them normally so other people can read it, or should i write it backwards so that i can read it when i look in the mirror?
> I get the feeling you've thought about this a lot.
< i think the real limiting factor is that my handwriting is messy when i do it in reverse
> But constant success surely builds up a self image that is hard for you to get out of, and any failure from perfection scans as a failure of identity.
< mm. no that's not it
< like... i know that i don't win all the time. its not constant success that i'm living up to
< its like i want to be relevant
< important?
< and most of the time i am but then i see her and she's everything to me that i want to be to everybody and i don't know how to handle it
> *Nod nod*
< and i want to just blow up her dumb robot and kiss her dumb face so hard that she's the same nonfunctioning gay wreck that i am
> Wow, that's certainly an emotion. She must really have done a number on you.
< thats the fucked part i'm currently 1-0 against her
> Wow.
< i'm 1-0 against everyone i'm not 2-0 against.
> So what makes her so special?
< she uses a joystick
> ...?
< and shes a literal space alien
< like, conceptually.
< also literally
> And does she have feelings towards you?
< yes. sort of. different
> Have you tried asking her out?
< yeah and we did and it was incredible
< and then she was dating someone else
< and then she wanted me to date someone else
< and that part was hot and i was into it
< but i also just hyperfixated for like 30 minutes and forgot what i was doing and then she ditched me
< and so i not only failed to hook up with her i failed to hook up with the girl she told me to hook up with and like
< does that make me a bad sub
< is that even the operative word
< am i the asshole?
> Nothing you've said makes you sound like an asshole, but you're also awful at explaining whatever the fuck this is.
< i know right?
< is hooking up even a motive here?
< would it not follow that i simply want to blow up her robot?
< i mean if i don't blow up her robot i'm probably going to be exiled and hunted forever
< oh yeah that's also happening
< i've been exiled. and hunted. probably forever.
> This sounds like a more coherent problem.
< yeah i'm the personal enemy of two different galactic empresses
< three if theres a cat empress
< but at least i only slept with one of them
> And... she wants you back?
< uh i dont know
< maybe???
< although i might have been contacted by one of them
> And are you going to check it out?
< idk eventually
< right now i have to overcome four decades of technological advancement
< using the power of organized crime
< and anime
> Are... you talking about a mecha battle?
< yeah
< i think i've upgraded my plan from 'impossible' to 'unethical'
< do you think its ok to use organized crime to cheat on my crush?
> Like, romantically?
< yes
< i mean no
< militarily
> Even setting the ethics and... romantic issues aside, getting involved in organized crime seems like a complication your life does not stand to benefit from right now.
< ok do you know how to calibrate a hybrasilian god's gyroscopic network?
> I can't say that I do.
< fuck

Solarel's eyes strayed from the chat window to look out towards the horizon again. It was a warm night. Her scales buzzed with the a faint static electricity of charge. Automappers drew silver traces between patterns of stars, putting the hypothetical constellations to votes amidst the ancestors. The digital breeze held the golden streamers of a coming dawnlight. The spirit world's filters painted its coming in silver and white gold, clearing away visual clutter and starting the faint music that would set the tone for the rising sun.

> Look, you've basically spent this evening spewing out an incoherent rush of lesbian drama at me.
> Just, like, the pure mess of a profoundly mismanaged life
> That you are nevertheless seemingly determined to add more bad decisions to
> While also committing in the hardest possible terms to a relationship that you neither understand nor have any conscious influence over.
> You are either going to wind up in jail, possibly the jail of the ex who wields political power on the galactic stage, or you are going to transform into a magical girl and destroy a giant robot that symbolically represents the evil of the universe.
> Given that your options are full time commitment to the anime lifestyle or (bondage?) prison, I suggest that you go as deep into the weeaboo shit as you can.
> That is my answer to your original question: What to do about the fact that your cringy gay meltdown might have made people think that you are not as cool as previously.
> Cringe is the only thing keeping you from prison.
> So lean into it.
> Maybe the galaxy is cringe too.

Dear diary

Today was ... interesting.

"Interesting". I hate that word sometimes. It's such a filler. People always use it when they can't contribute anything useful to a conversation (The number of times alone that I've heard some white-haired exec use it in response to a presentation ...). Just a way to show they're paying attention, while subtly reminding about their no-doubt deep and extensive experience. A blank space where they can't think of something better to say.

Maybe it would be better to say that today was Eventful, and that I am hoping I wasn't too aggressive (again) in my approach. An opportunity came up at the fashion show to do something that would impress Adriana, so I took it up like a good Lozano should. While it carries some risk, pretty much everything does lately. Getting her attention requires bold plays - playing it safe only guarantees failure.

Still, the idea of combining the fashion lines identified has potential, if Mdme Toldeo's reaction was anything to go by. Hopefully she can turn the concept into something tangible in short order, particularly when combined with Asil's technology. I mean, I thought I was imagining it when I watched the drones' flight patterns, but she confirmed it afterwards - the NM interfacing between them is genuine - oh what I'd give to be able to understand the coding (I've technically answered that since I bought the things). She must have found some way to streamline the mechanical/neural feedback from a distributed array. I can't wait to review it in more detail! It was really impressive, particularly for someone as young as me she is. I'm glad we can spend more time together that she agreed to sign on with the engineering team. I mean, she clearly also has a flare for fashion, if her outfit today was anything to go by. It was really cute.

I'd love to see more of

I'd bet she'd look even better without

I'm sure that the direction of this patronage will be ... interesting.

Isabelle clicked the entry shut, cheeks vaguely pink and glad that nobody was present in her office to watch her momentary indulgence of her "rebellious side".

Sighing, she locked the diary and spun up the encryption. Her fifteen minutes was up now and there was alot of other paperwork to cover before her first reminder for bedtime would sound. Starting up her playlist, she moved her chair across the long table to the first pile of papers - financial and management reports for Akkanis. She needed to clear at least three tonight, most pressing of which were the files on Ada Smith and the Unseen Goose, collected by her family's network of information sources that were, while still legal, at least morally questionable at times.

Biographical notes, psychological profiles, mechanical readouts and technical after action reports. Anything and everything that might become relevant for her next match. Anything to get her that edge.

She started her first coffee for the night and settled down for work.

When the show is ending, Mirror takes a bow. She pauses. On the second wave of applause, she dips down in a bobbing motion that means 'thank you' among her own people. She waves awkwardly when it's over. She does not know what to do with her hands. Where to put her feet. Whether to stand straight or curl into herself. To walk forward, backward, or stay exactly where she is?

She finds herself arm in arm with her fellow models, fingers clutching tightly around each other. Her fellow... ah. Aha. That was the mystery, then. She flashes the same sort of awkward, embarrassed, and wonderfully happy grin the others had been unable to keep off their faces. She pivots just the smallest bit to flash more of her spots underneath the petals. Yes, this was the source of everything.

Mayze's sun had set on the night. It was time to put her away. Mirror's approach, her identity and ideology, were unnecessary until later. Asleep, the pair of them. One to dream and one to wake.

What, then, was Mira Fishers to do with the handful of hours given to her?

All at once a dozen different drinks from across the evening come rushing down her throat to plant themselves in her legs. She tastes the memory of each one, the promises long deferred. When she hops down from the walkway she stumbles so hard it takes 3 people (2 Humans and a Zaldarian, she notes with curiosity) to keep her from smashing her face into the floor. She leans on them with the odd ferocity of a gelatin dessert and titters out a series of giggling apologies. She's nervous, you see. This was her first show. She's never been asked to model before and when she got the call it was Maaaayyyyzzeeeeeee~

Somebody remembers seeing her with Valentina before her turn. She thanks them each with shy kisses when they return her. It's time for good girls to get rewards, see? That's why they're, heeeee, going to a special apartment! There were promises, and she always, always aaaalllllwaaaayyyys keeps her promises! Every. Single. One.

Mira Fishers' apartment turns out to be a tiny thing, indeed. Completely devoid of furnishings or personalization. Off white walls. White tile floors without so much as a rug to make it nicer to walk on. A tiny, plain desk in the corner with a single unpadded chair and a pair of presently de-powered datapads left at the precise opposite corners of the surface. A bed with plenty of space for one person, but small enough that two people could only share it by holding each other tightly through the entire night. The pillow looks untouched. The white folded sheets are so crisp and perfect that nobody appears to have even sat on it.

She doesn't speak. Her arms sweep across her body, and the floor is decorated in flowers. She doesn't speak. Her eyes swim with mesmerizing patterns as she takes in the whole of Valentina. Her surprise, her embarrassment, the regret that almost carries her out the door right then and there, and the curiosity that makes her stay. Her excitement, her undisguised desire. The press of her thighs against each other that her dress can't quite hide. Mira slides one stub-clawed finger across the top of her chest, and smiles.

She doesn't speak. Her mouth is needed for more important things. Like dragging her tongue across that long and stately neck, and following the trail of slick wet skin back down again with little kisses punctuated by sharp fangs. Like putting her teeth to work on each clasp, zipper, and button that holds that silly dress together. Every fresh piece of Valentina she uncovers, Mira immediately plants a kiss on. This belongs to her. And this. And this. And this too. This traditional dress from the depths of the Consortium joins the most aggressive statement of Mayze Szerpaws as another decoration on the floor, piece by piece, until there is nothing left between the pair of them.

She pushes her partner onto the bed. Still sitting, slightly hunched, where her body gathers together in awkward folds that no amount of athleticism can ever quite clear away. These are the places she kisses the most. Her tongue delights across the places a model would have to pose around, each bit of softness that a photographer would carefully brush out on their machine before printing her onto the cover image of a new story they'd push across the networks. An impulse that makes no sense. What was a breast besides a pleasant lump of fat and tissue? Why should the fold of a tummy deserve any less worship? Or the inside of a thigh still imprinted with the markings of a too-tight stocking?

She is surprisingly docile, now that the moment is here. She asks questions with her tongue. Do you want me here? Or here? How do you enjoy this? What excites you? Tell me what sorts of noises you make when I lick you... aha, here. She asks these questions with her hands. She asks these questions with her soft, warm body when she slides it against Valentina's. And in every moment if the question becomes 'not here', she immediately yields. Her attentions turn elsewhere, she makes no sign of forcing anything. Valentina may push, direct, pull, or order her anywhere at all if she can manage the words for anything like that. Hours spent entirely in devotion to her pleasure, her way, at her pace.

But at the end of the night, it will all have been for Valentina. Mira controls their dance from the shadows: no part of her is touched except in the brief moments she puts those hands somewhere that she wants them, only to dance away in search of more noises to tease out of her date. No reciprocation, no moment of reversal where she allows her body to be the one that's worshipped. No kisses except directly on her mouth. No exploration of her most private, vulnerable places. None. Valentina takes her mark and waits, just like a sniper. And all that this is good for is letting the river wash her clean.

When the dawn comes and an exhausted, glowing Valentina de Alcard finally stirs, she will find her arms wrapped around nothing but empty air. All alone in that small room with nothing for company but a glass of water and a handwritten note with directions to a place with Hybrasilian breakfast options. If she's curious. Mira's attempts at human handwriting are neat in a childish sort of way. The kind of effort where it becomes obvious that the spacing and shaping of every letter is the result of enormous amounts of conscious effort to make them anything other than scribbles, that immediately renders her cleanliness into vulnerability.

But nevertheless, that's all that's left of her. Didn't you read her profile? A promise kept, to the letter. Exactly as it was made, no more and no less.

Mirror is still nude as she climbs away across the body of the Gods-Smiting Whip. Pointless to bother with clothing; there's still hours before anybody will be here to see her, and at least another hour beyond that before it's anybody she'd be especially bothered to show herself to. The neural mesh suit she wears to battle out of obligation and habit is uncomfortable and annoying; she might as well be comfortable while she works.

Every screen in her hangar is paused on some different part of Solarel's last fight. Mirror's eyes flicker between each of them and her work, clambering silently across her mecha. Her hands clench every time she looks. Should not have spent her shot like that last night. Should not. What a mistake. Rookie error.

Her jaw clenches, looking at the Bezorel. Her body tenses, thinking about the fight. Her hands busy themselves with unnecessary calibration work. Her Nine Drive System was operating at less than peak capacity. Tail Five was still at 97% functionality. Unacceptably low. She had two hours to find a missing 3 percent. No. More than that. Today, Tail Five would operate above its theoretical peak performance. It would burn out and blow up shortly thereafter, but she didn't care. Replacing it would be less difficult than losing.

"You. Moron." she hisses, voice full of venom, "Sit there. Watch me. I. Will. Catch. Up. I. Will. Free. You."