[b]Brown![/b]

"Ah, well," Brown said, sinking back into her fog. "Yeah let's do that."

Not only did that register as another failure, it was another revealed failure, and if she wasn't very careful it was a failure in herself that would make other people feel bad about themselves. Even as her energy dissolved back into an ambient, sharp-edged fog she needed to maintain a certain tired, easy posture so that her disappointment didn't bring down the room. The effort to do that cost any further attempt at contributing.

[b]Blue![/b]

Blue: Remind me, is bulletproof armour made out of diamonds something we want?
Pink: aahshfjjajahaajajajh
Blue: I could also do diamond swords
Pink: I am already going to the gym I don't need more incentive

Another key fabrication technology, though if anything even more of a commitment than the carbon loom. Building something with this would involve enormous amounts of practice and wasted materials. It would require an approach of building specialized pieces, there wouldn't be the option for uniform equipment. But the aesthetic of it. She could make [i]scales [/i]out of diamond-silicon glass.

"Last question," she asked. "What's new with plumbing? Broken water pipes, working through the rainy season, vent-ice? I see the ice mining freighters and they're so much smaller than my envelope math says they should be, and the Cloud got stuck over Hermes for like three months without flooding or limiting flow."

[b]Green![/b]

She could angst over being dangerous all she wanted, but what that meant in practice is that she had no way to de-escalate when Challenged.

There's nothing but the tension in the air now, the micro-shifts of vision and posture. It's a state of utter, serene calm for Green. A clear contest with clear rules lets her dispense with all the infrastructure that keeps her from this state. She needs to make a move but as soon as she commits to an idea she's condensing infinite possibility into something knowable. How to communicate perfectly while giving nothing away?

She opens her wings and becomes the ocean. 

Crashing waves upon a storm-tossed sea. Slate-grey and sand green, blue skies and steel clouds. Air that invigorates, sensationalizes, makes the mouth water. A riptide that snatches from below and drags Fiona along by the legs. A sargassum forest that whips and tangles, fast water and tangling kelp vines and the muscular threat of leviathans moving beneath the surface. The inherent eroticism of the ocean is often commented on but rarely manifested, and with wind and wave and the crackle of ball lightning across the surface, Green [i]grips[/i]. 

[b]Nova![/b]

Their favourite is "Nova". 

The reaction to Euna using that name is - well, there's the sense that's the name they [i]really [/i]wanted for themselves, but didn't want just anyone to figure it out and use it. November was reverse-engineered from Nova as something to put on paperwork and to stop themselves from vibrating with delight/embarrassment whenever it came up in casual conversation. The only way that name would work for her is if someone organically came up with it independently and there was genuine delight when Euna did. The response to it is almost the most co-ordinated she's ever been.

Beyond that, nicknames that involve alternate colours - Gold for Yellow, for example - don't work, they don't realize that they're being spoken to at all. Questioned, they'd mention uncertainty if Green had already blocked out concept space for those colours or was working on them in the background. They're happy with things evocative of the colours - Daisy for Yellow - but nothing registers quite like Nova for addressing a group of them.

"You can't even compete with us?" said Yellow, smiling, surrounded by her posse - Green and Pink. "How [i]cute[/i]~"

There's something about the way that the three of them can move in unison that is extremely unbalancing. They've learned a trick where they maneuver so that one of them is right on the periphery of vision both left and right. Turn your head and they move their position so they're still there on the edge. It's worse than them being completely out of vision, it feels like being stalked by velociraptors. 

"Perhaps we can take you on as [i]our [/i]project!" said Yellow. Her aesthetic today was knots - intricate hair braids, knotted red neck kerchief, a crimson sash around her waist tied up in a bow, all over a silky white gi. Half shrine maiden, half sailor sentai, all smiles. "Take you under my trench coat, shape you with our eighteen hands, bring you up to speed~"

Yellow was easily the weirdest of November's colours to teach. She refused to touch anything directly, and often refused exercises if they didn't meet her weird hidden criteria, and her showing up at all was uncommon. But when she did appear, she could somehow coax the best possible performance out of every other colour.