[b]Brown![/b]

See, all this stuff was worthless. If she took it, it was legally inadmissable. If she journalismed it, it could just be denied and purged before an investigation. A bunch of physical shit wasn't a pattern of behaviour. No, she'd get them on the coverup.

Brown's move here is to put a bug on the phone and hide a camera and microphone in the light fixture, angled with a perfect view of the chief's desk. Then she made the place look tossed - re-arranged a bunch of stuff, left a couple of files open like they'd been photographed, opened up the computer to expose the data crystal like she'd scanned it. The thing about paper files being easier to burn was that it didn't matter what was on them if there was video of them getting burned and audio of the captain ordering the burning. 

[Electronic Surveillance 0/1, Conceal 3/8 1+5 [b]6[/b]]

[b]Orange![/b]

"Pope," said Orange. "Let me demonstrate something for you." She picked up a pencil. "This pencil's name is Sarah. She has a family."

Orange snapped the pencil.

"Part of your soul just died when I did that," said Orange. "That's the main point. Human brains process information in a certain way, and part of that is assuming that other things think like them. I don't, I process information in an extremely alien way. A combination of clever software and physical design goes a long way to inviting you to assume my brain works like yours, but it doesn't. Why is this hard and other skills aren't? Because writing is about asking me to express an idea and that original clown car draft is what my ideas [i]look like[/i]. I think you'd understand if you saw me talking to my siblings; all our colours talking at once, and some of our nodes are on the brink of coming to blows even if we're overall agreeing. If I had a united mind that could express ideas without being in conflict I'd be like Goat, and my entire upbringing was about teaching me not to be like Goat."

She drummed her fingers on the table, mirroring his pattern. "I can churn out functional, basic writing if I have to. But writing from the heart? To make [i]my [/i]heart comprehensible to humans I think the path lies in, like, meditation, xenoanthropology and goetic sorcery more than a writing workshop."

"Speaking of," She looked down at the pencil. "Don't tell Pink about Sarah."

[b]Green![/b]

The channels of stars in the sky run faster, so fast that they seem unbroken blinding arcs of white light. They stretch all across the heavens, a constellation the size of the sky. And then that vast and vaunted heaven, that masterclass in dark blue and violet and glittering stars, fills.

Like, instantly. Like someone got the MS paint fill tool and clicked it into a black area, overwhelming the perfect night sky with a vast single block of a green-tinted white. The sensitivity on the fill tool is turned all the way down, too, making the points of stars and constellation lines surrounded by jagged pixelated auras of darkness. The effect is jarring and ugly in stillness - but then it moves. And in motion the poorly filled stars become a glittering network of scales, the fades around the eyes like eye shadow, the computerized motion more fluid than the sky itself could be. Claws and wings emerge from that undifferentiated silhouette of white, only the edges of cheap computer fill acting as the suggestion of life and motion.

Claws descend towards the cabin.

She moves one of the windows, dragging the hole across the surface of the wood like it's a decal. She changes the rooftop to tile, and then smothers it in moss, and grows wild flowers from the moss. A slash across the ground and drop of glittering seeds and a moment later half the house is covered in heavy ivy, thick red and purple leaves. She adds a chimney and twists a cloud into a smoke asset. 

Then she raises back up into the sky, lags for a second as an undo command is processed, and the fill of white clears away leaving the night sky and its rivers of stars again. 

"Well, you got her attention," said Pink. "Um, maybe not her respect yet."