[b]Mirror, Jade, Dolly[/b]

“Can I have your autograph?” one of the bolder pirates asks as you make your way back to the hangar. She’s the only one to step forward, a mixed-breed with some lioness based on the splashes of tan fur that’s distinctive of the subspecies. 

Valynia offered no further resistance as she departed. She didn’t exactly look defeated though. Oh, physically she was, without a doubt, there were no hidden reserves there. But the look in her eyes was sparkling, star-struck. It’s an odd thing though. You didn’t get the sense, Mirror, that Valynia wanted to chase you. It was more like she was going to go over every detail of that fight in her mind over and over until she had lived it, absorbed it, made it a part of her forever. 

Dolly needed to worry though. Not now, not for a while yet, but it was clear that this branch of the Red Band meant to see her again. They’d approach it differently the next time, now that they’d seen the lengths Jade would go to in getting her back. But there would be another route they’d take. In fact, Dolly, from the way Valynia’s hand twitches and the face she’s making as you exit, you think she might already have a plan going. But there’s no way that she could get you without Jade reacting the same way. Which means…well, we’ll save that for the future.

Jade, the triumphant mercenary is bringing your priestess in the flesh squirming and bouncing into the small hangar. How do you receive them?

And for that matter how are you all getting back? Does Dolly get to see Jade piloted in Mirror’s style?

***

[b]Isabelle[/b]

There’s one more surprise for you today. Good and bad you might say. When you finally do get to the training area, there’s a delivery boy who looks very nervous. Probably because you weren’t where you were “supposed” to be and he’s been waiting for you. You don’t recognize him, he’s not on staff, but neither does he look out of place and you suspect this is the sort of thing that your mother wouldn’t remark on. Just people coming and going from the service industries. 

Which is why it’s a bit surprising when he bumps you as you come in and he runs out of the room. It’s only after you feel the little drive in your hand, concealing a small bit of memory weave, that you realize this was slipped to you secretly. 

You can touch it now and see, or wait a little, but here’s what this one says. Or feels, rather.

[i]Adriana Teresio is looking in a mirror, seeing herself. She runs a finger through her long black hair, the touch of it conjuring a fast flurry of memories of having it styled, washed, done it, the feel of it whipping in the wind all briefly passing as her attention ceases to focus on it. She’s just watched the match with Quar, the way you spared her and then carried her off the battlefield. The way you didn’t take her baited attack. She liked that. She almost smiles. She straightens her lips though, and applies the last layer of lipstick, bright red. She’s going to contact you, but secretly she thinks, not in a way to get your family’s hopes up. Yes, she thinks she wants to see the real Isabelle Lozano, no leaks~[/i]

The whole thing is a flurry of thoughts in barely five seconds. But there it is and now it’s in your head. Congratulations, Ms. Lozano. You got the attention you were looking for, but not at all how you thought you were going to get it. 

Close out your day for us, especially what happens to Quar while all this is going on. How do you calm down after everything, just everything?

***

[b]Solarel[/b]

You are dreaming within the mind of the Kathresis. Being aware of this does not make the experience any less real. The dream prevents you from seeing how you got into it, though if you care to, you can logically work your way back from the drone to when you reconnected to the Kathresis. You’ve been maintaining your link to it so much.

In the dream, the Kathresis does not like the Arena where it finds itself. It is back in the tundra, where you fought Angela. The tundra is full of ghosts, brought by the Zaldarians to animate their nanobots, to change the terrain, the buildings, the sky. The Kathresis does not like the energy ghosts. To it, they are all hungry, all waiting. If its armor is ever breached, they will manifest and they will devour its heart. The Kathresis comes from a place where one spirit was in charge and all geists were controlled, labeled, and properly arranged. It comes from a background that prefers the cold. So cold that even the atomic particles cannot move, that even hungry ghosts are frozen in place. This would be good. 

There are Trak’tho in the tundra in the dream. They look somewhat akin to a cross between Zaldarians and Terenians. They are not as tall as you are and this makes several of them instinctively shrink away from you as you approach them. One of them, a larger one whose size and wings make him appear similar to you in stature, approaches and asks, “servant, why have you not put down the ghosts that haunt us?”