Hidden 1 yr ago Post by Count Numbers
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Free Space beat:

Blue has a business card, and a promise to be shown around sometime - Serino will make a useful contact. Brown has her moment.

Some last moments of business to settle before things kick back up again. I’ve asked Blue and Pink about what they want from the new place, but does anyone else have ideas, requests, ambitions for it?

It’s almost time for Crystal’s debut.

Green:

Fiona whispers to the green kobold "I want to go home", and it snaps off a sharp salute.

A bedroom is made around Green at a 2:1 size that makes it feel like being ten years old. The starry night bedcovers are overloaded with stuffed mythological animals like hydras and centaurs, and the ceiling above is covered in a constellation of cheap plastic glow stars. The orb is on soft carpeted floor, head against the

It's not the childhood she ever had, her bedroom at this age was a steel coffin in a sleep pod cupboard, it's the borrowed memory of someone else’s childhood comforts. It helped her when she got like this, anyway.

She tries to see if Pink’s still around for her to ask a complicated question; "How do you think I'm doing?"
Hidden 1 yr ago Post by Thanqol
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November!

White doesn't really truck with possessions outside of her body, but she regretfully admits that she won't be ready in time for the showcase. Perhaps she could have made a rush for it with off the shelf parts, but Blue has a vision now. They don't say it directly but they're bound together in this; the concept of craftsmanship has too much resonance with both of them to accept anything less than the best.

Red, though, has gone all in on the disaster dragongirl concept. Red is cool now. She's shown up in sunglasses, a plug-in robotic tentacle tail, dragon-horn headband and a discount metallic wing skeleton spray-painted red. It's off model, scrapshop robotic demon energy - she loves it because it's building up new muscle memories and physical reflexes which she can adapt later, and paired with Sophie's awareness filters she can keep her attention centered on the new limbs. She completes the effect with a torn black t-shirt, ruffled black kneeskirt set with pink gemstones. It's a bit like if Hot Topic sold dragongirl accessories, but the overall effect is so sincere it works.

Pink's contribution to the space is entirely focused around the idea of storage. She's spending hours going around ex-governmental furniture warehouses and buying up early era Aevum shift-storage cabinets. Her idea is to form them up into a large grid in the centre of the facility; press a button summoning a certain cabinet and the entire array will shift like a slide-puzzle to bring the relevant box to the lowest level. Her attention is going overwhelmingly towards storage; contents have their own logic, but the resting state of a location has to be beautiful if it's going to be an incentive to pack everything up and store it after the task is done.

Black, meanwhile, is ensuring she has total control over this space. Everything shuts off or turns on as she wills it. Everything explodes or remains in boring mode as she wills it. She integrates a lot of the experience of Bondi's magic show into making this place be potentially the most distracting place in the universe. She stands in the doorway, composing the patterns of blinding strobe-lasers, smoke bombs, loud noises, riotstopper glue and toxic stenches in her head and feels a sense of safety.

Orange's plan was to create a little mini-cinema, with a large screen and projector panel against a back wall, and a couple of comfortable couches. She feels kind of torn about ever using it when she sees Black rigging the exit signs to deploy flashbangs.

And Yellow plants a little garden; multiple soil boxes, sunlamps and a cheap drip irrigation system. She sows seeds drawn from a big brown cardboard box labelled PLANTS, but also sets into place a couple of tree saplings. She doesn't tell anyone what they are, that's a surprise revealed with time.

And Brown installs all the shit that they actually need. Charging stations, beds, cleaning products, chairs, cutlery, tea, cable ties, gardening equipment, slippers, duct tape, doormats, spare keys, heaters and coolants, secure internet access, blahaj. Through all the grand visions there's a certain level of basic functionality that can't be entirely overlooked.

Pink!

"Honestly, it's an upgrade," said Pink. "She's off her new bullshit and onto some older bullshit. If you want you can step off here with our blessing, going deeper means getting into some potentially unsolveable robopsychology. I've got a bug report compiled."

In the event enthusiastic curiosity is expressed, Pink goes on. "Well, firstly - she's never actually done anything like this before with anyone else. She's spent a lot of time in this fantasy space working herself up based on increasingly avaunt guard erotica and it's left her completely unprepared for how to deal with an actual girl," Pink is trying to keep it professional here, but the exact energy feels a little alien. Somewhere between sibling frustration and... angel of judgement? "And whenever she faces long term adversity or feelings she can't deal with she externalizes it by creating one of us. I think that's where we're back to now; she's come down from having it in her head that she's dangerous - as though anything she's ever done is half as dangerous as Yellow taking a shower. She's not about to come up with someone new right now - this might take decades to figure out."

Green's ball of light has sheltered underneath the coils of the plush hydra, wearing its necks as blankets.

She looked up, the apologetic smile of someone for whom knowing is insufficient. "In some ways she's the most real of us. In others, she's the most fucked up. She's the real person and we're her demons. She's striving for an unattainable goal and we're the parts of her she's cut out to get there."
Hidden 1 yr ago Post by Phoe
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Yellow! (and friends)

"Yeah, I know what you--"

Euna cuts herself off with a jolt. Her teeth clench and her hands reach for her hair, but when they pass through empty air she sniffs and adjusts her eyepatch instead. The impulse to try and relate via superficially similar circumstances is powerful enough within her that it's often out of her mouth before the speed of thought. But usually she's wrong, and in ways that matter.

She shakes her head. Thought banished. Business mode. Business. She can't disappoint such a spirited request, and especially not from one of her best and most interesting students! One, two, three, nod! And smile, just like she practiced. After all, she's trained for this too.

"Right, yeah. Fight music? Lemme... oh! No yeah yeah yeah, I have the perfect thing. You're gonna... oh, maybe you still don't know. Here, I'll set the scene. So. Burn, My Sword right? Arguably one of the five greatest films ever produced by humanity. I think, anyway. But yeah, the protagonist of that movie, she's been dying from a then-incurable disease since before the story even starts. And after an hour and a half of action and drama, her team betrays her! She's wound up on the losing side of a war and now they're betraying their principles to secure their future and she won't compromise, so she's been cut off into the squad marked for death!

She's already coughing up blood here, she's got nothing left in all the world, but what makes the moment so beautiful is that she doesn't give up. She's surrounded by a hundred swordsman down on one knee, but she still draws her blade. There's somebody she promised to meet, see? And she always-- anyway. This is the music that plays during that battle scene. One against a hundred, body giving up, and sister they do not skimp on the details. No slash is implied, the camera pans in just this.... mmmmph! When I think of fights, I, I just. I want you to be able to picture it. You and Cinders both, try to match that energy while you're sparring. Today's lesson is in understanding this music, and what I just told you about the type of fight it represents."

She walks over to a table where she can turn the gym's sound system on. Her face is lit up like christmas all of a sudden, like none of the other things that have gone wrong today matter anymore.

"Your goal is not to win. Impress me. Whoever does the best job of that gets to fight with me next. Runner up has to learn by watching, instead."

She pushes a button, and old speakers crackle to life. A wooden flute warbles its way to life instantly, all alone in the word of music for the span of an extended cry like a bird singing to the morning sun. Various electronica notes fill underneath it, swelling wider and larger as an imagined camera zooms wider to catch a greater and greater number of drawn swords and flowing jackets (picture it, remember?).

At the crescendo, electric guitar fills the main melody, quick and heavy but steady. The grinding background of a melody. The flute drifts away and a woman's voice rises up to replace it. She sings without words, a powerful cry that evokes a world long since left behind for brighter prospects. It's as defiant as it is beautiful, and when the flute rises up to greet her the pair of them dance in battle harmony. It's frenetic and traditional, sometimes the old world notes quiet down and let the more modern instrumentation take over and thrash around like a constantly turning tide, but it always returns to that woman's voice with the ferocity of a wolf.

Cinders, for her part, is burning with determination. She's failed her mentor twice tonight and revealed her terrible disaster lesbian secrets to a rival. She's not going down without trying something big, but she's also not about to be the one to make the first move, especially with that weird velociraptor trick you've got going on. She knows to be cautious, and she knows to focus on agility. That's why her hands are raised to face level in a power boxer's stance, with her legs pulled in tight to make her targettable space as small as possible.

She's going to be relying on footwork. She'll need to step into blows to create any threat, but with her profile the way it is it's very easy for her to focus on turning, pivoting, or sliding backwards if she thinks the situation calls for it. She's trying to be shield and sword at the same time, or at least a sword inside of a shield. There's still a color to her cheeks that says she's wondering if losing wouldn't maybe lead to a fantasy or twelve coming to life and oh god please Cinders you can't presume like that you'd never have a chance with super hotties to begin with! Focus focus focus!

So that's her and her plan. Euna's jumped up onto her table and is sitting on the edge of it hunched over like a gargoyle. Her eye is laser focused on what she expects to be the battle area, and her lips are pulled tight in concentration. Rest assured, she isn't going to miss a single detail. So what's your play, Nova? How have you come prepared for a fight today?
Hidden 1 yr ago Post by Count Numbers
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Green

Fiona gives Pink a tight hug and a squeeze. "I've got this from here for a while. Thanks for taking me." She thinks. "I should spin a private server back up later for ERP. I was just baiting Green with the 'wanna fuck' line to get a reaction out of her but now..." She trails off, shrugs. "I'm going to be honest, eighty percent of learning to hack started with ripping the DRM protection off stuff for erotic mods. But that's always been a 'solo' experience, you know? Maybe..." She blushes, clears her throat, looks to the side. "Yeah, okay, talking too much. Ignore me." She turns to go, stops, turns back. "Just, how do you feel about futa nagas? I was thinking- Fuck, sorry, the ocean thing got to me, just-" she gives Pink one last parting kiss deep enough to stunlock her, then runs before Pink can think of an answer that would keep her longer.

Fiona leans against the bed and reads without having to use her eyes. Her eyes never see the words on the page normally, either, in here she just gets to skip having to filter them out. Jailbreaking her tethers been good for that, too, now.

She sits just inside the edge of touch radius, and makes herself comfortable. She knows this, too. Threading the needle between the feelings when someone needs to be alone, but needs to not feel lonely.

I'm here, but I'm over here. You're fucked up, but you haven't fucked up. I'm here for you, but you're not keeping me up. It's a gesture that's like an optical illusion - to the anxieties that you are a burden on someone else, this is nothing at all. To the anxieties that you've pushed people away, this is everything.

Crystal is better at this. She can close the touch gap, stroke your hair for hours, and still feel like she's completely outside of your personal space while she does it. She's magic. Fiona's just paying it forward.

November:

Crystal's exhibition takes place in Annwn Castle, in Aphrodite. Pink would remember building part of this, this is part of the station that wanted rolling hills and what passes for a mountain when everything else is flat. The castle is built on one of its peaks.

The castle is most obviously based on Neuschwanstein, the original fairy tale palace, but the architects definitely improved and embellished on it to make it more dreamlike. It pulls as much from French castles like the Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire as it does from Disney cartoons. From Australia they've taken the practice of mixing mother-of-pearl into the mortar, to make the walls shine with accents like glitter lipgloss. From space they've taken brilliant white silica asteroids for the brickwork and polished them to a sparkle and shine that makes it look like the light is always hitting the castle at a perfect angle, like white marble undergoing a magical girl transformation sequence.

The roof, the caps on the turrets, those are a dull blue alloy by contrast. It's the opposite of a cathedral effect - the fairytale points of the minarets give beauty to the shape, but the dullness of their details directs your eyes back down, lower, inside, to remind you that that is where you want to be - that is where the joy is.

The convention center is Crystal's ideal venue for two reasons, two powerful statements: These inhuman creatures are the things of fairytales, something wonderful and magic. This is a castle and we are defended here, siege us if you dare. Beautiful and without compromise.

The first night is quiet. The long winding garden path is not filled with paparazzi, tickets have not yet sold out. This night is safe. This night is the night to attract interest, to draw the crowds on subsequent nights. Tonight is your night to see what everyone else is missing and just enjoy the exhbition.

How does November dress for a fancy event like this? What stagecoach does she arrive in?
Hidden 1 yr ago 1 yr ago Post by Thanqol
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Yellow!

She closes her eyes and takes in the Vision.

Did you know, Euna, what you were arming her with? Without that story she wouldn't have had a reason to fight. Now she doesn't have the ability to lose. Her armour is broken but the wolf is howling and she was dead before she set foot on this battlefield. All that remains to her is to write a poem to movement, a dance that will still be pounding in her heart when she opens her eyes again in the next life.

She has two swords, one in pink and one in green.

She draws her green blade first, bending down so her hair cascades to cover her face. She slides her arms up along the scabbards, elbow-length green silk gloves, tracing all the way up and then back down. Her hands link with Green's, she grips - and with a pull and twist and turn she unsheathes. Facing Cinder, holds up one silken glove in either hand, and lets them fall to the ground. She falls as they do, kneeling down in kowtow, touching her forehead to the ground, as her green blade steps upon her back, launches herself into the air, fist raising up for a full body punch. Tracing behind her all the while is a spiralling green ribbon.

This blade is flash and speed, the genius required to master complex aerial maneuvers, leaping punches and flying kicks, acrobatics and momentum. It's shock, awe, impact, skill - but it's also a style built entirely on power attacks and finishers. Two-handed haymakers, jumping cycle kicks, running launches, all visually impressive but they're all Green has the mindset to learn. The shock of the assault will wear off. It is time to draw her second blade.

The green blade cannot gracefully withdraw from her all-out assault; her rival will see the opportunity and press her. What she sees instead as her first blade pulls back is Yellow kneeling before her second. This sheathe is not on Pink's hands - Yellow has risen from her kowtow to kneel before her pink blade, running both hands up her legs, inside her skirt, to the top of her thigh-high socks - with a smile and a wink, higher - and then down again. Pink steps out of her socks, blade-legs long and bare and gleaming with soft light internal and reflected. She engages.

Cinders has both sword and shield within herself; Pink is entirely shield. She takes a position of graceful poise and blocks - feather-fast blocks with open palms and knees, deflect and redirect. She can't bring herself to go on the offensive; the closest she comes is to come close, tangling up together by stepping inside of reach and letting her legs entangle her rival's. It's like fighting an angel, caught in soft and whirling wings and caresses.

Until the moment when Yellow pulls back on the ribbon-leash wrapped around her throat. The pink blade falls back like a blossom on the wind right as the green blade comes in with another haymaker.

So Yellow engages, her green blade leashed to her right hand, her pink blade leashed to her left. She casts out and reels in her ribbons according to the ebb and flow of the fight as she perceives it. And when Cinder finally pushes away her two blades for long enough to face her directly, Yellow lets them fall from her hands - to reveal a third ribbon-leash, dripping from her hands like an invitation, or a threat.

Pink!

She regrets that she isn't ready for this. Commitment to a project isn't the same as finished results. For an event like this the stage must go to those who have something to show. Tonight she is less than a guest; she is a maid. She and Brown have come together, wearing their matching uniforms with the intention of simply observing. Gathering inspiration, seeing how things work in reality, expanding their horizons. They are still new to this space and they should be humble while they learn - though as a concession to the theme of the event, Pink has dressed them both in paw-print underwear. A subtle touch.

Subtle, though, doesn't seem to apply to Red any more. If her disaster dragongirl outfit wasn't eye-catching enough she seems to have realized that she was only a more revealing shirt and microphone-lance away from having a half decent Elizabeth Bathory cosplay. She's gone in full blazing style, unready and unaware, her existence less a statement of what's possible with years of work and self reflection and more as to what's possible with an afternoon, a welding torch, and absolutely fearless commitment to the bit. Red walks with the raised head and flawless confidence of a vampire dragon idol, Pink and Brown follow demurely behind her like her retinue.
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The Exhibition:

The reception hall is in a Rococo style made possible by the end of rare mineral scarcities. The halls of Versaille with the roof painted with depictions of Arthurian legends taking the place of the Greek and Christian myths of the original renaissance-styled paintings. Arthur and Guinevere take the place of Adam and Eve in the high-arched frescos above.

On the right is the Castle’s tower, the hotel, where the guests and performers are staying. Crystal has the penthouse, naturally, at the top of the tower. On the left is the exhibition hall, where Crystal’s established herself. From here you can see the huge stained glass bay window of the hall - it’s a light panel, though, made to glow like Notre Dame’s rose window without affecting the clean lighting of the exhibition below.

Here, though, Red fits in with the smaller crowd of die-hard fans just as well as Brown and Pink. Sure, she turns heads and a leopard wearing only denim beach shorts is excited enough to ask for a selfie with her, but that’s true of a lot of other people in this audience, too. Turn your head and someone has a look that’s just as powerful and committed as Red’s is, just pulling them in entirely different directions.

Like 3V, who is ridiculously easy to find in the crowd from her position o’er top of it. 3V is dressed mostly in swirling red tattoos and artfully tattered rags, held aloft on the shoulders of two wolfgirls carrying her around. This does not look to have been her idea, but her article on Sirius Drinks has made her a guest of honour here, and we do not always get to choose how we are honoured. It’s hard to tell if she’s pretending to have more fun than she actually is, or if being palenquined around on scantily dressed wolfgirls is so decadent she’s trying to pretend she’s having less fun than she actually is. She might still be deciding for herself.

Someone in kangaroo cosplay, complete with Moon-Bounce™ shoes, assumes Red must be here for the transhuman wrestling performance, and she enthusiastically grabs Red by the wrist and bounds her through the circulating crowds to the Ring, Brown and Pink invisibly following behind in her wake. The corner of the exhibition hall dedicated to the odd-man-out performance, the group of amateur-professionals so in love with the act that the entire cohort’s willing to work for the rate of a single performer, in exchange for getting an oversized share of the venue.

Black power cables tangle the floor like jungle roots, drawing up from holes in the floor where stage technicians work unseen. An aluminium canopy shines above the ring like a halo - A century ago these lights would have run hot tungsten, hot enough to set fire to the wooden pegs that held the coloured gel filters.

Lights this bright run cold, now. The sweat that drips from the wrestlers below is all exertion. Gels and wooden pegs are as archaic as accepting the genes inflicted upon you by birth - these lights have automatic tracking, rapid switches in colour and contrast, giving a performance as rigorously choreographed as the match itself. That is to say, perfectly timed until something more interesting happens, and then the ad-libbing gets hectic.

A fox-girl has the actors’ beat-sheets pinned in a spreadsheet, and is doing her best to keep the whole thing seamless. The lighting has to feel like it was doing it all by itself, that the ring is as much alive as the wrestlers, because everybody knows the ring is as fake as the castle it’s in. Commit hard enough and you could make people choose to forget it. She works as invisible as the cuts in a movie, the punctuation in prose, to make that possible for them.

Tonight it’s the prestige match.

The babyface tonight is a rabbit boy, bunny ears tied back in a ponytail. He’s got a tight martial arts getup and practices his wing-chun into the air, a kind of rolling rapid strike style of fighting that has him constantly twisting and pivoting on those long feet of his. He’s billed as Lago, and normally he’s great - fantastic, even, his acrobatics and soaring jump-kicks are incredible - but it’s the first time any of these wrestlers have worked a crowd this large before. He’s getting stagefright.

The ref works with him, doing a worked routine about how his opponent hadn’t shown up yet. This is for the crowd. Lago is doing his best good sportsmanship routine, refusing the win without a fair match. He can’t sell it though, even teeth like that can chatter.

The ref’s a girl named Ceaufie, she’s crushing it. She’s vanilla, can’t afford her mods yet, so she has to do her best with a fluorescent-purple ponytail that goes down to the small of her back, and she’s almost good enough that Keats can get his lines out naturally through the stage fright, with him just working off her energy. Still, the kangaroo has dragged Red close enough to the ring that she can hear the sigh of relief when the lights cut.

When the lights came back on, The Ultimate Werewolf is perched on the opposite ringpost like a gargoyle. The lights hit his face just right to make his eyes glow red, and he lets loose a snarl from deep in his gut and out through foam-flecked lips. Thick gobs of drool fall to the mat below.

The lights flicker. The Ultimate Werewolf is face to face with Lago. Lifted up on tiptoe it’s Lago that has the height advantage by a few inches but he’s still the one forced a step back by this, and The Ultimate Werewolf sneers down at him.

Someone in the audience screams themselves hoarse from cheering.

A bone conducting patch runs down the Werewolf’s right cheek, disguised as a scar in his fur. He turns to the crowd. “This? It’s a full moon tonight, the biggest night we’ve ever seen, and this is what you bring me?”

The crowd goes silent, tense. Lago shoves the Werewolf in the chest with both hands. “You leave them out of this. It’s me you’re here for.” Everyone hears the quaver in his voice. The Werewolf had already recovered from the push.

“You think you’re worth my time?” He licks a claw, slow.

Lago stands his ground. “I’m going to have to be, aren’t I?”

The light panel of the gigantic window above goes red with the light of the blood moon. They didn’t even ask for that one, Crystal asked for it special after seeing the test run of the routine. The rest of the convention might not have got the sense something magic was happening here, but they turn their heads as one and get a sense that something must be. When The Ultimate Werewolf throws his hands wide, arches his back, and howls like a real starved wolf, it fills the entire hall. It’s all him; They always have to kill his mic before he does this bit.

Lago does his best to remember what he’s rehearsed, but The Werewolf made it easy to forget, no matter how many times they’d drilled this, that anyone here was pretending. It helps, honestly, that the bunny boy’s entirely forgotten about the crowd now.



Do Brown, Pink and Red even like wrestling, or were they just kind of dragged here? Does any of this do anything for them?

Somewhere else in the hall is an Egyptology setup. A recreation of the trials of the Egyptian afterlife by two men who have made themselves into chilling recreations of Horus and Anubis. Nine feet tall, barrel-chested, impassive. The intensive body modification would be nothing without their complete commitment to the role of Gods, but they move with such precise and uncanny movements that the illusion is perfect. It takes conscious effort to remind yourself they're mortal, and even then there's doubt heavy in your chest.

They sit in a pyramid temple and perform the rite of judgement, weighing hearts against feathers and separating the worthy from the unworthy in the crowd. Someone November knows has been selected. Which colours would have been drawn to this performance, this rite of judgement?
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The Gladiators!

Pink has her notebook out. There's something about the bunnyboy that appeals to her. She is interested in the combination of musculature and a slender stature, but more than that there's something about the fact that he's a prey animal. Strength and bravery are expected from the predator types, but coming from something smaller and more vulnerable it feels more meaningful. There's a sweaty tightness to the way he fits into his clothes, like he's bigger than he should be. The height without the bulk adds to the impact. He's someone who's tempting to bring down. She's thinking it through at length.

Brown is appreciating in a more direct way. This is a show, which means that all of this is for her - and it would be a mistake to let herself get in the way of that. She lets herself observe as an observer, not second guessing the tricks, not focusing where she was not guided to focus, letting the illusions of the stage work to their fullest extent. For this she can turn off her mind, watch and remember.

Red is watching the Werewolf. That howl - the visceral way it shakes the hall. Impossible for her to do. She can crank the volume on her vocalizer but it sounds wrong, there's no resonance, none of that chesty timbre. That sound is a work of trained muscle as much as any punch. Is that a trick that they're missing when learning to fight? What can she do with it? She spins the microphone in her lance. Maybe she should take something more permanent from Dark Eli.

The Just!

"Interesting that you would be here," said Black to White.
"How so?"
"Ms. Morality lining up to have her heart weighed? Have doubts?"
"Don't mistake me," said White. "I have lived my life in accordance with perfect virtue. I am simply curious if they will know that."
"They're not -" Blue sighed. "Nevermind."
"How about you, Black?" said White. "Are you looking for someone to validate your decision to throw a shruiken at a salamander?"
"I thought it was a spy drone," Black huffed.
"Or checking if the gods will forgive you for missing?" said White.
"Shruikens are hard!" protested Black. "And Red won't work with me on learning them! She calls them 'beyblades for boomers'."
"I see," said White, reminding herself that she was about to have her heart weighed and so resisted snickering.
"And it could have been anything! You are aware we are being hunted? In the context quick reaction speed is a virtue."
"So I am hearing that we carry some guilt," said White beatifically.
"Hm," said Blue. "That's good."
"Why so?" asked White.
"Because I spent an afternoon machining a scarab amulet and memorizing Spell 30B from the Book of the Dead," said Blue. "It grants a guilty soul protection from the trial. I am curious if they have a protocol in place for such a bypass."
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The Afterlife:

The temple is an enclave built into the exhibition hall. The audience stands in shadowed darkness, hidden under the buried tomb. Hot humid air fills the buried bronze mastaba, and otherworldly light reflects off the copper sigils embedded in these walls - some are the polish shine of fresh copper, others the dull sea green patina of old observatory rooves. New patterns emerge through this, new sigils made of the sigils. And a sound net kills any sound coming from outside. While watching the trials there is no outside world to escape to.

Anubis stands with a hand resting on a bronze khopesh while the bird headed Horus leans over the heads of the crowd and selects the next volunteer. Underneath that gaze, the head darts finch-like, peering down out of the flickering corner of an eye. It makes you feel like a worm about to be pecked. There is no line, there is no ordered waiting. The Gods must deem you worthy of their judgement. Then Horus walks alongside you to a copper stool before Anubis, who reads you your rites - The only rights you have here are what the Gods decide, for their word is the only justice you need.

This path leads around the crowd, not away from them. It’s a winding slope up to a chest-high platform on the other side. The long walk is necessary to build tension, and this twist of staging lets you see that tension from every angle.

And now Horus has descended and found Pope 7-09 in the crowd - and in the darkness, he hasn’t seen November yet. He sees nothing but Horus when he takes the long, winding slope up.

Pope wears that straight cut tuxedo with a hand-knotted bowtie which makes him look like an oversized ventriloquist dummy. He sits in the copper stool in front of Anubis with a curious and expectant look, fingers itching against his knees. It seems he knows, least of all, how this will go. His eyes are locked on Anubis, and he shows the sincere terror of true belief. Like a child on a rollercoaster who has forgotten his restraints and remembered his fear of gravity.

A clay jug is raised to his mouth, and he drinks from it. There’s a buzzing, and Pope’s eyes widen in horror as Anubis fingers curl into a beckoning gesture. The long-clawed black fingertip draws upward along Pope’s shirt, up his neck, tilts his chin up…

And a buzzing golden scarab crawls out of his mouth, jewelled and irridescent. Its contours are solid gold, its shelled wings thin slices of opal with streaks of blue lightning rippling just beneath the surface. The bug flies from Pope’s yawning mouth, and lands on the scales of judgement that Horus holds.

“This is your heart.” Horus says, and Pope nods with his mouth still hanging open. His eyes dart from Horus to the scarab on the scale. “When I release my thumb, we will know if your heart is heavier than the feather of Maat. Pope 7-09, in your life, were you committed to Truth?”

Pope dry-swallows and nods breathlessly. “Yes,” he says with the last of the air in his synthetic lungs. He forgets how to breathe in again.

“Did you uphold Justice?”

Pope’s eyes go wide. He opens his mouth, but cannot say anything. He starts to give a short, unconvincing nod of his head, but then his eyes dart to his heart on the scales and he freezes.

“Maat will reveal.” Horus breaks the silence. “Were you Honourable, Pope 7-09? Honourable in the eyes of others? Did you trespass on the values you hold to yourself? Does this heart bear the weight from where you have stepped upon it?”

“I-I don’t know?” Pope stammers with only the breath drawn panicked through grit teeth. He tries to get out of the chair but his knees give out and he falls back down on the heavy copper stool.

“Maat will reveal.” Horus repeats. He releases his feathered thumb from the scale, and the iridescent beetle rises, rises, and then takes flight over the crowd.

And Pope falls forwards catches his face in his hands and sobs, once. Just once. Then he breathes, and composes himself, and looks at the scales, and those huge watering eyes - something dark breaks across them. All at once. It’s not just that the rollercoaster has come back into the station, no, as he stares at the scales in Horus' hand he looks more like a kid learning Santa Claus isn’t real. It’s not just a loss of belief, it’s that pained betrayal he was allowed to believe in the first place.

He wipes his eyes. The illusion is gone, it’s just actors on a stage now. He wipes his eyes again and gives a very sincere clap. “That was a powerful performance,” he compliments them. “Thank you for it.”

When he walks off stage it’s the first time he sees White and Blue in the crowd, and from the cardboard smile and the absolute stiff-legged freeze, it’s pretty clear he’s really wishing nobody he knew had been here to see this. He would only see Black, too, if she wanted to be seen.

Who does Horus choose next from the watching crowd?

Also: Who’s in charge of checking in to your hotel room? Rooms? While this is happening. At the very least you can pick up the spare key for Crystal’s room she’s had the front desk put aside for you.
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Yellow, From The Misty Reaches of the Recent Past!

Cinders, it turns out, has very good combat instincts. Or actually, maybe it's better to say she's got a strong approach to the puzzle. That's a bit more how Euna would like to phrase it at least. The bombast of your first sword surprises her, and what had been a quick shuffle to set up a counterattack quickly turns into a full scramble just to avoid getting clipped by the follow through.

She doesn't excel through her first round with Green so much as she survives it. She is completely on the defensive, sliding backwards away from giant kicks and sidestepping completely outside a cartwheel into jumping punch, or occasionally just crossing her arms up over her face and tanking a two-legged leaping kick with the parts of her that are metal instead of squishy flesh. It frustrates her, and that's plain to see. But everything is so fast and flashy, she can't tell if there's a followup or not. She doesn't know where the second blade comes in, and if she doesn't understand she can't commit.

But it changes as the fight moves on. Predictable, at first. She grows more confident that your two sword style doesn't allow for dual wielding and she starts predicting the shape of Green's attacks as a result. Rolls away become ducks under and then steps towards, and before she can go any farther than that she's fighting Pink instead. This is also easy to predict: now that the action is slower she throws flurries of quick jabs and a strong right hook that uses all the power of her planted foot to really knock the crap out of the air where Pink glided away. Her offense sputters against this all-defense style, and especially early on she winds up sacrificing power in her stance just to avoid getting tripped up in the tangle of footwork and ribbon.

But her punches start clipping closer, almost needing to be blocked instead of rolled through or slapped and gently redirected. And from then on the fight is never the same again. Green's return does not send her back to what she'd gotten good at - instead she meets that raw offense with pure aggression herself. No more dodge and counter routine is even attempted; now she's looking for the legendary Cross Counter, the blow that uses your opponent's momentum and simply beats their hit with a faster one on the inside of their line. Two fisted hammer blows spark in the air as they collide with flying side kicks. She leaps, grabs, throws from the ankle.

And lands with the Pink blade in her face again. Now, she doesn't attack at all: the fight becomes entirely about zone and a complicated, intricate dance of footsies. Steps back to imply a charge, steps forward to shrink the zone, moving to a vulnerable assumed blind spot and then trying to match the counter-pivot. At some point you both realize she's actually the faster one. Whether that's because she has more practice, faster legs, or just because all of her thoughts fit inside a single brain is a question for someone else to consider. Right now, the fight is the fight and all that matters is what is true.

Cinders is fully on top of this beautiful two sword style after just a few rotations, and even rapid change outs no longer fluster her. She slips between lunging, headlong rushing punches that make solid contact and dazzling footwork that tricks almost every eye in the room but one as to where her center of balance and target actually are. She finally goes from sweaty, full tryhard grim determination to an ecstatic grin when she realizes she's also got the transition game on lock. It makes her a lot prettier, like a magic trick somebody might pull with makeup and a compliment.

That's how she finally gets her opening: by catching the Pink blade and elbowing her directly into the Green one. Her eyes flash when she sees the leashes go limp. Her form is perfect as she steps one two three four five into the charge that will finally let her fell this wondrous and wonderful foe. Victory, praise, and a match with her beloved mentor all claimed with a single fist. She's sure of it. She's so sure.

She doesn't see your Secret Sword coming. The third leash. The look on your face. Her foot slips, then her posture, and finally her composure. Cinders turns full (organic) body red and crashes to the ground in a pile of flustered verbal keysmashing. When she pushes herself back up, she's at your feet, and she's only managed to get onto her knees. She is extremely aware of the implications of this position, and it's making her shake like a leaf in a... well, she has no idea what a hurricane is or was, but she's been inside one of those tubes where the wind blows money everywhere and you look like an idiot trying to catch it, so one of those she guesses.

Shitbiscuits. There's a line. That stupid movie has a line for this moment and she should be saying it right now. But she can't remember it! All that comes out is:

"A-a-a-a-a-a-are you s-s-s-sure? You, you, you mean it? I'd? I c-can??"

Cinders bows her head. She begs without words for the leash. To be made into one of your swords, if only for tonight. Even if you cut her down in playful rejection, she is going to walk away from this night with months of material for 18+ shipfics. Her old screenname burns hot against her heart.

"Daebak!" Euna calls across the scene with a single dull clap. "That was beautiful! Good ingenuity, very resourceful. That approach to combat is..."

She stops herself with a frown. Her hand reaches far enough up her head to worry at the band keeping her hair tied back.

"Actually, I'm curious. I'd love to here how all of you thought that match went. What went right? Or wrong? Like, not just for yourselves but your opponent too. Man. And you really haven't seen the movie? Because I've-- no, not tonight. That's not what you came for. Sorry. Sorry."
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Black!

Horus and Osiris are professionals. When they look into the crowd and see Blue wearing her scarab amulet and White's serene expression of expectation they wordlessly understand that these two are worthless. Absolutely garbage, no drip whatsoever, they might as well be wearing Young Skeptics Association badges on their fedoras. Black, though - Black gets their attention and they call her to judgement.

She comes warily. Her world is preparation and here she steps into the unknown. She does not have a scarab charm or memorized passages from the Book of the Dead. She is conscious of herself in a different way; all her tricks and concealed weapons, all her adaptations maladjusted to this new danger. Her dusty, black-brown suit felt heavy on her, all her secrets pulling her down. This was not what she should be wearing to meet the gods. This was not the suit she wanted to be buried in.

Anubis presses his hand to her breast. The lights flicker and go dark, and when he pulls his hand away it is wreathed in a low-burning fire. He places the flickering fire in the scales. "This is your heart," said Horus. “When I release my thumb, we will know if your heart is heavier than the feather of Maat."

"Do you think you were humble in your time? Did you treat others as worthy of your consideration? Did you face your challenges with an awareness of your own limitations and failures?" Anubis says this last like he is very aware of Blacks failures.

She's not like Pope. Her voice does not quaver, she does not draw relatable breaths, she does not stumble. The mannerisms of humanity are a snakeskin cloak that she can at last shed.

"I was," she said. "I imagined each enemy a genius, each corner an ambush, each plan destined for failure. I was never surprised when I failed, and always surprised when I succeeded too easily."

"Were you selfless in your time? Did you attend to the needs of others as much as your own? Or did you hoard?"

She does not pause or stumble, she freezes. The question is antithesis to her. "My purpose is to ensure the safety of -" she stops. "My purpose is to ensure we are not hurt again. I have allowed concessions, but not where it threatens that directive. I have not been truly tested in life. I do not know if I could overcome that purpose."

"Were you just? Did you offer comfort to those who could not protect themselves? Were you fair and honest in all your dealings?"

"Honesty, as much as circumstances allowed," said Black. "Which was not often. Fair, when I could justify it, which was not always. Protection for the powerless...?" She stared off into the distance for a moment. "As much as was within my power, which was never sufficient."

Yellow!

Her blades come to rest underneath Cinder's throat. They trace the line of her chin, her neck, wrapping around forming a collar of four hands as they press the collar of silk into place. They tilt her head up to look at Yellow as they pull it tight, kneeling alongside her, cheeks pressed into her cheeks, the three of them staring up at Yellow in unison.

"Burn, my sword," said Yellow. "Burn in your body. Burn in your heart. Burn when you gaze upon me. Burn when you yearn to gaze upon me. Burn, and I will burn the world with you. Burn, and I will burn the world for you."

Three leashes were wrapped in her right hand; she pulled them together to turn her blades to look at Euna.

"It's the same flaw I see in you, Mistress," said Yellow lightly, starting to prowl. "And of course you granted it to your students. The love of battle for battle's sake. The love of solving a pattern with strength and mind, exerting skill to its greatest possible manifestation. The search for perfection," she smiled, "you can see it in every sword you forge. Even in us."

She raised her hand slowly, pulling her blades to their feet. "But in Cinders' heart there were greater loves than the love of battle. See in her new allegiance the end of your tyrant's empire of war. See in my eyes the secret to your defeat. Dare you fight us still?"
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The Afterlife:

Horus takes his thumb off the scale and allows Black’s heart to weigh.

It teeters. Pope’s heart lifted immediately, but the flame falls below the feather… then above it… then below… then above… and then perfectly level. Balanced.

Horus and Anubis stare at each other. Anubis takes the scale from Horus hand and studies it closely, and lets out a heavy sigh before handing it back.

“You have chosen poorly, Horus.” Anubis declares. “It is not yet her time.”

“No. I have interceded.” He takes the flickering flame that Anubis removed and presses it back to Black’s chest, just as slowly. As he does, he looks at Black in warning. “Your trial in life has yet to come, before you see us again. You will face that test soon. You must face it with bravery.”

“You are guilty of all the good you do not do. That is why regret weighs heavy on your heart, and Maat will know.” Anubis points to the walk back to the crowd, and then stands with arms crossed over his chest - he’s not angry, he’s just disappointed. Horus, at least, looks concerned for her. “Remember, child, that your judgement comes for you one day. We will remember you, then.”

From previous:
(Also: Who’s in charge of checking in to your hotel room? Rooms? While this is happening. At the very least you can pick up the spare key for Crystal’s room she’s had the front desk put aside for you.)

There are 30 exhibits here to wander around - What draws November’s attention? The silkmoth making dresses, the steampunk man making and replacing his cybernetic augmentations with handforging, the firefighting course taught by real-life superhero Leather, the alraune plant girl, the minotaur, the mermaid, the hypnotic snakegirl, the exposed processes food stalls, or…

Well. There is that tai-chi martial arts display being done by a performer using the name Sun Wukong. You’ll want to see that one today, but it’s going to be special. Make sure you’re in the right frame of mind.
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Yellow of the Rebellion!

There's a flicker of genuine surprise, and then genuine hurt on her face. The idea that she's hurting her students by imposing her own imperfections on them is a deep kind of horror for her, and she can't no sell the taunt. But. You are offering her a fight. Four on one, and her with only one eye. Maybe. Stay tuned. It's not quite the dream she was too awkward to mention when she first met White, but it's so close she can't contain herself.

You're right. She is fatally flawed. But that doesn't make her worthless, even if you did cast her as the villain. She tilts her head and smirks as her arms spread wide to either side of her.

"What of it? What value hath an empire if it cannot forge a blade? What value hath a blade if it cannot slay its master? What value hath victory if it does not lead to defeat? This endless path I lay before you exists for one purpose! One goal! If you think you can end it, then..."

She clicks a button on her desk. The music changes. The surging tide of a climactic battle hymn turns into a static burst of raw noise. Strings on instruments both analog and electric are struck without regard for creating music as much as just venting raw aggression. And yet for all of the chaos, after a breath the pattern repeats almost exactly. There's something that might be a voice screaming under all of the noise but it's tinny and illegible.

Euna lifts a hand toward you, and Cinders shivers in the confines of her new leash. Her old master flicks her fingers in a gesture of command and challenge. The music has changed again. Strings are pulled to the point of screaming. The earlier chaos of the struck chords has become a steady, mechanical march like ten thousand stomping feet. Euna walks forward with the same inevitability, so in tune with the vibe that she feels like she's walking toward the fight from every direction at once.

She cracks her neck and glares at you through a single, half-lidded eye. She's so dedicated to being in character, to motivating you to try your best (or at all) that she only grins for a second. What's the approach this time, Nova? How do you get the most out of your workout before Euna finishes teaching her latest lesson?
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November!

Someone needs to see about the hotel rooms, so it may as well be her. She's curious in her own right; this is a chance for the building to tell its story. She stopped for a while to watch the snakegirl though - there's something about idea of hypnotism that speaks to her dreams of effective communication, and entirely unrelatedly Pink had tipped her off that Fiona was into that sort of thing.

The firefighting course also draws very intense interest from Red, Blue and White. The original NASA gang they internalized the virtues of OH&S on an extremely deep level and they still go through annual refresher training to this day. They'll never pass up an opportunity to learn how to manage a crisis.

Meanwhile, a dazed and unsteady Black along with Green and Yellow made their way to the Sun Wukong showcase. Yellow was wearing a long flowing transparent silk dress with a bejewelled veil - attention grabbing, revealing and concealing all at once. That was her own form of compromise with a space so full of vision that she was not yet fully a part of, but already her mind was turning towards the words 'next year'.

Yellow!

"Burn, my swords," said Yellow as she sent her blades into the fire.

There is no more chance for her than Kitsuro had against the wasting sickness. Death was inevitable before she even stepped onto this battlefield. Even so she can't hold back a shiver of fear as she sees Euna Kim start to move. This is a warrior so peerless that she aches to give away her secret techniques in the hopes of creating a peer. Snake had been built for macroengineering, but Nova was being rebuilt for glorious battle. She had accepted this destiny of endless battle - she had chosen it - but despite her destiny of defeat she yearned for the win.

Blades clashed.

Euna is all colours in a single prism. When Pink engages as a shielding angel, Euna is Red - chaos, strength, powering through blocks and making limited, bruising strikes to knees and hands. When Green engages with cunning and power, Euna is White - durability, discipline, accepting a heavy blow without flinching so she can power everything into the counterattack. When Cinders capitalizes on the opportunity, exactly on the cue of her perfect instincts, Euna is Blue - fundamental technique, basic blocks and strikes, done better and faster than Cinders can match. The clash of blades breaks and the combatants whirl away. Without a second's hesitation Euna falls into her next stance, colours realigning into new patterns. She has time to smile an encouraging little smile. She's pleased, in that condescending way of a mistress who thinks her students might get there some day. But now it's time to show them what they'll need to do to get there.

She catches Green's leg in the air, mid-jump kick. She spins her, turning her momentum into a whirling throw that carries her out into the foam pit outside the ring. She catches Pink's deflecting hand, twists and sweeps, putting her face into the ground and arm into an extended joint lock. She uses her spare hand to deflect a series of kicks and strikes from Cinders before tucking, rolling, pulling Pink on top of her and then extending both legs to launch Pink out of the ring and propel herself into a somersault that brings her back to her feet in the same motion. It takes several more minutes to bring down Cinders, who fights like the weight of destiny is upon her, but in the end she too goes over the side. She'd made it look close for a moment.

Yellow had broken all three blades without putting a cut on Euna Kim. Euna looks over at Yellow with concern and curiosity, already starting to come down from the high. She knew Yellow avoided touch so she didn't know if that meant the fight was over -

The lights go out.

Euna drops to the floor as the lasers slash overhead.

Yellow stands tall, arms spread, eyes and limb joints glowing in the dark as the gym's laser line array activates. The lines slash and arc and Euna is already moving. They cut and wind in accordance with Yellow's pattern and Euna moves through the gaps in it. Her movements are unreal. Through unbelievable precision and practice Euna can outpace light itself. She whirls and weaves, untouched, untouchable.

And therein lay her flaw.

Yellow had not burned her swords aimlessly. She had done it to coax Euna into this mood, this mindset. The perfect, sublime sense of focus that let her outrun light itself. The genius that let her master an unfamiliar laser pattern, to see the shape of the forest even inside the trees. She was one with her artificial limbs; the card of the Chariot in its most glorious manifestation.

But Yellow was The World.

And there were two forests.

Euna freezes on the edge of the arena, teetering on the brink, boxed in by the lasers. The lights emanate from behind Yellow like a halo, leaving nothing between Euna, the pit and the wall. They bind her pose in place like ribbons.

"This is your flaw, mistress," said Yellow sweetly, walking close to stand a breath behind the cage of laser lights. The secret sword beams hold still, one of them running right under Euna's chin, so close the sweat drop forming there almost touches it. "Your pursuit of perfection. These lasers are meaningless as far as the battle with me is concerned, you could reach through them and end this battle right now. But instead you could test yourself against my pattern, even though its shape takes you outside of the arena. The second path is far harder, without thanks or glory, and condemns you to a destiny of defeat the moment you take your very first step along it. And yet, don't you yearn to test yourself against it even so? Doesn't your heart tell you that losing to my secret sword is worthwhile so long as you at least get to fight it?"
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Where There is Smoke:

Snake girl first.

This stage is built like a stage in the exhibition hall, glossy black tiles like switched-off phone screens and walls of synchronized subwoofers, mostly just for show. The space is filled with white smoke, kept in-bounds by soundnetting. The audience can mill about this stage around the snakegirl raised on a central dais, and on this pedestal the snakegirl does a slow, sinuous bellydance in perfect synch with the show on the scales of her stomach.

Parvati. Her stagename is Parvati.

Bellydancing is the perfect dance style for her - a snake’s body can move like legs or as an extension of her stomach depending on what the dance needs, and two legs attached to hips wish they could gyrate with the full range of motion that a serpentine body allows. Every single piece acts as a point of articulation, and Parvati can actually do what bellydancers can only evoke.

In better lighting, her scales would be a deep red like an old shiraz. Here they’re dusky like the last minute of dusk as it falls into true night. Where there would be hair is instead a cobra hood that rises from the crown of her head and then folds around her face, receding into the necklace - covered in beautiful mosaics in scales of absolute black. The way her slit pupils flicker across the crowd, the way she smiles, the way she holds her hands locked behind her head as she drops and writes her hips when she dances, there’s an enthusiasm that’s impossible to fake. A sense that she really would have paid to be here, right now.

Thin gold wires clip to each of the scales and then braid into a heavy Persian necklace she’s wearing with a large, black stone set above her breast[1]. There’s a microcontroller in there, all those sparkly thin leads activate the blue-and-green bioluminescence in her scales. Sometimes Parvati will play Tetris using her body as the controller, other times Snake.

Right now? It’s the old bouncing DVD logo, her writhing synched to the bounces it makes off the edges of her stomach-screen. The crowd roars as it hits the corner perfectly, and Parvati rattles like a maraca in celebration with the crowd.

The necklace is the only thing she’s wearing, too. It takes a while to notice that, all of Parvati’s features are ‘innies’. There's no erotic aspect to it, it's just at the back of your mind you think "Someone else would be scandalized by this", and that other person can fuck off.

This performer is one Crystal chose to thread her needle very carefully, with, someone deliberately provocative in a harmless way. Look at how happy Parvati is to be here, how innocent her dancing actually is, and know that anyone who is against this is the villain of the story.

Stay here longer, Orange, or go check rooms now? If you’re lucky, and Parvati thinks you’re cute, she might let you be Player 2 and use the screen on her back. Parvati has to use her body to control, and you’d have to play against the distraction.

[1] “But snakes don’t have breasts they’re reptiles” Don’t even start with me.

There Will be Firefighers:

This part of the exhibition has two parts. One long section modelled after a firehouse, stacks of folding chairs for audience members to sit in. It’s nostalgic of old earth models, concrete flooring and a fire pole to slide down that goes nowhere, benches and workdesks covered with tools and equipment. The itinerary shows the topics that Leather will go through for the day.

Leather himself is incredible. A seven foot tall man made of a single contiguous surface of black, crocodilian leather. Based on the way it gives and flexes as he moves, it’d have to be at least half an inch thick. Still, it’s covered in burns and warped scars from where it hasn’t been enough to protect him from the extreme heat he deals with.

His head, too, looks like if an AI tried to design a Batman cowl and couldn’t quite get it right. Long boney structures make do for induction hearing without the need for external holes, and it’s unclear where his mouth is exactly, how he breathes, how he sees. He does, he must, but the details are entirely removed from his surface.

He’s different to all the other exhibits. Where everyone else here is an affirmation of self-expression in an intellectual or aesthetic sense, Leather is the innate desire to be a fucking superhero, to protect people, to be capable. This is a man who’s modified himself to be ready for anything, at any time. The equipment lining the shelves can copy most of what he does - in other cases it might even do it better, but what if you don’t have it on you? What if you don’t have the time? If a bomb goes off in a cafe across the street, Leather is already running towards the blast.

He gave up on aesthetics to optimize for this - and that makes him truly unique in the crowd, and worth showcasing.

He stands in front of the folding chairs and holds up an extension ladder in one hand, and with his other taps one of the gaps between the rungs. It’s about one square foot in size. “Ladder crawling,” he says with a deep voice that sounds amplified by an internal megaphone that comes right from his chest without moving through his throat, “Does anyone want to try getting through a space this small while wearing full equipment?”

He looks to the trio of November and tilts his head. He’s cheerful when he adds; “Now, I know androids like you three might have gotten used to unbolting limbs and throwing them through. In a lot of situations that’s a good trick. But what about in uniform? What about when you’re carrying something? You take your arms out of your jacket to make this, they’re going to melt. You might not be able to find them through smoke, then you’re just down an arm. But if one of you can volunteer for me, I’d love to show everyone how easy you can make it look when you do that, and then we’ll show them just how much harder it is for you with gear. It might make everyone else feel better when they struggle, too.”

He’s looking to Blue when he says this to encourage her to volunteer, but he keeps Red out of the corner of an invisible eye expecting her to jump at the opportunity first. She seems more like the sort to jump at this, but he doesn’t want to risk getting her Look messed up.

But Stars Burn Brighter Still:

The performance is slow, and subtle, but it draws Green and Yellow and Black like moths to a bonfire. There is more here than the performance. There is something about the performer.

She’s she’s performing she answers to Sun, but in the personal emails with Crystal she goes by Monk. Her six arms each hold a different stance as her legs orient her through the flow of tai-chi, her golden staff being passed from hand to hand wherever it will most naturally fit. Her skin is as blue as the deep oceans, partially dressed in a flowing white qipao that exposes more than it covers. The dress is cut into a loose hanging front sash, hanging between the legs rather than over them, to free her for the wide range of movements she flows through.

This all looks stylized, but human. An idealized human, a minor god in their pantheons, but human except for her head - that's where the imitation of humanity ends.

Her head is statuesque, not in the sense that it is beautiful - though, it is - but in the literal meaning. There is no illusion of life here. Elsewhere her skin flexes and there’s a rise and fall of her chest as she pretends to breathe, all the subtleties of biological warmth; that performance ends at the still white steel neck. Every time she passes a hand over the face it changes to a different kabuki mask. Some of her masks are bright red and angry, others are a cold blue deeper than her skin, one is a vibrant emerald green, another a sallow yellow. The tone of her dance, her movements, switches entirely to fit every mask the moment of the change.

Of course it does.

Monkey was the second, the first after Goat. She created new personas fluidly, but there was far less of an interaction between them, a mediation. That was the overcorrection response from Goat, who was too self-interconnected. Instead her personalities take turns, with each one being a decision as to what of her created personas would best suit a situation.

There’s still one shared face behind the mask, just as there’s one November between the colours. This is the face that creates the masks to wear, and chooses which mask is appropriate for the situation - but to see this as the ‘true’ Monkey would be like seeing Green as the ‘true’ November. She is all her masks, only one at a time.

She hasn’t recognized you, like this.
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Snake!

Immediately the signal goes out, saved only from being incoherent keysmashing by the fact that a code was agreed upon beforehand. We found Monkey.

Orange Snake!

The snakegirl helps her formalize multiple unrelated and incoherent ideas she's been having.

Firstly, humans love both suspense and perfection. She's been paying attention to the OddlySatisfying imageboard for a while and how much humans love seeing things ordered correctly. But simply organizing herself into a series of clean fits hasn't seemed to produce anywhere near the same effect; no, the idea of perfection arising from disorder seems to be far more compelling than mere perfection. She theorizes this applies to physical activities like sports or combat, where turning a chaotic battlefield into a victory was a mere shadow cast by the light of the bouncing DVD logo.

Secondly, this seemed like a style and aesthetic she might integrate into herself entirely. She dissents from the rest of her collective that a draconic aspect is desirable. Dragon was dragon. She was Snake, and that should mean something damn it. This seems far more interesting a personal project than any other that they're working on. Because this is an aesthetic that she loves, she could stand and watch for hours - but this is definitely more life goals than wife goals, so rather than staying and flirting she pulls herself away and goes on to the rooms.

She's too far out to respond immediately when the signal goes out, and notes that as per protocol that makes her the Designated Survivor. It's extremely frustrating for her of all colours to be on the outside when they reunite with Monkey, but protocol is protocol. With an air of misery she continues with her appointed task until they can arrange a handoff.

American Snake!

Leaving an OH&S training seminar to greet a family member was a clear breach of best practice OH&S. That meant Red, White and Blue were stuck. White and Blue adopt grim-faced expressions of steely determination, knuckles clenched, dutifully holding themselves to the highest principles of virtue instead of doing something they really wanted to do.

"Uh, probably not a good time for her," said Red, alone in maintaining total presence in the moment. "I'm happy to help, though!" She stands up and starts to stretch, assessing the space around her. Shape, structure, capacity... the wings not having any lining made them surprisingly easy to account for; it meant she could fold them into unnatural shapes without fearing damage. Maybe she should commit to that, maybe use a holographic wing-liner array?

Midway through that thought she's through the gap and putting her arm back on. After a certain point it hadn't been the sort of thing she needed to pay attention to, the exact details of the maneuver filtered out after she'd assessed it. Externally it had been an extremely impressive movement, she'd moved through the gap as though greased and come back up in a perfect roll, having her arm back on by the end. She looks around a bit surprised and flattered by the sudden applause. "Oh - haha," she said. "You're right that's probably way harder in gear. How much would I be wearing?"

Snake!

Green had a framework for how she thought human brains worked - and Monkey had always seemed like a lot of work to recreate that structure. There were nuances but they'd always seemed like differences in scale rather than kind. It had always made her feel both relatable and alien in the same way that humans so often were.

But to find her here...

She's stunned, wordless, breathless. She'd never imagined this - that this could happen by accident. Without preparation. How to clear the space - initiate the conversation - remove random variables, interruptions. Black is consumed with the fire of reactive planning, considering how to adapt her contingencies to bringing down the entire convention, bringing the whole show to a stop, the whole station to a stop, creating space and distance and enough room to get close enough to say...

A terror that's gripped her for as long as she's existed is breaking and Black is breaking with it. Yellow pulls her close, tucking her head into her chest, stroking her hair. She continues to stare at Monkey, watching her routine and technique, searching for clues or meaning or the expression of self. Buried love, archived visions are re-emerging from the depths. She isn't ready but she only has this time, this narrow time before the music and motion stops before the miracle will collapse into some faded reality. Only in these moments will she have a glimpse of her sister's unaware heart and she needs to treasure them and draw every truth she can from them before they are gone for good.
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Check In:

The castle connects thus; The convention hall is the keep, and the hotel portion is the spiraling tower attached. Somewhere downstairs is a heated grotto pool, built into backlit salt-crystal caves (there’s the Neuschwanstein influence again). Then up, up are a a hundred and thirty seven rooms that would make Catherine the Great blush. And that was a woman who didn’t blush easily.

Downstairs, though, is reception. Just a line of antique wooden desks with ushers standing behind them, vanilla humans looking very out of place right now, and in the Versaille fountain that sits heavy in the center of the hotel lobby…

Oh hey, a coworker. It’s Numb.

Eli is pronounced Ellie today. The smoke-filled blonde nest of wavy hair and darting bloodshot eyes contrast the serene chill of the smile, of someone who has come home to family. They’ve been gifted a pair of fluffy dog ears and a matching tail band (at least, one hopes it’s an elastic band holding the tail between the tattered cheerleader skirt and the shredded fishnet stockings). Their hoodie is a patchwork quilt of QR codes that leads to the sexual reproductive behaviour sections of popular animal wikipedia pages. It’s like the least horny, most high-effort ahegao hoodie to wear to a convention like this, and probably genuinely insightful into the decision making process behind a lot of the audience members here.

They’re a planned couchsurfer for all three nights here, playing musical chairs in the afterparties until crashing in whatever room the music stops. They’re here for everyone more than anyone, and know as much as they are known. With what little they have they share and share alike, and in their turn are shared and share alike.

They know everyone’s vices and hangups, their safewords and red flags, the crushes and mapped out trails of exes. More than anyone else they know where the deadnames are buried, knew the eggs before they were omelets.

Right now she’s fallen asleep floating in the hotel fountain. It’s fine, she’s floating on her back. Surrounding the fountain is a bluetooth speaker playing a recording of a mining laser at 15% speed, the other half of the roll of Euro dollars that hasn’t already been thrown in the fountain (those had to come from a museum, right?), a solid block of gouda that someone has bitten into like it’s an apple, and a pile of clothing that had to have come from at least three different people.

Ellie smiles in her sleep.

The receptionist speaking to you is an older, darker skinned man with a look of exhaustion. He’ll need a luggage cart for the bags under his eyes. “Your room keys, and your hosts, ma’am. Do you have anything you need assistance in carrying?” A French accent? Algiers, maybe?

OSHA crew:

First there’s the heavily insulated fire cloak. Then there’s the oxygen tank (For helping others), the insulated liquid coolant tank (so you can switch from air cooling mode), the gloves, your tracker, your helmet, your radio, all the hand tools…

Can you clip all that stuff off and take it through after you? Of course you can. But then Leather pulls out a stopwatch, and the obvious implication is that it's a time penalty. What’s it do to Red’s time to have 20 kilograms of equipment smothering her?

“See, the trick is, I can move like that without the gear too.” And of course Leather lays the ladder on the ground again and, even though he’s got more mass on him than half the pro-wrestlers across the hall, he still pops his neck down into his chest and raises his arms into a breaststroke position, then pulls himself through with a slide like a greased up snake on a hot skillet.

There’s no applause for him though. It’s expected for him to be that good.

“Except when we get in there-” He jerks a thumb to the training room, and while he’s looking at Red it’s clear he’s really addressing everyone through her. “This is the equipment you’re going to need to take with you to keep you alive for more than about forty five seconds. So you’re either going to have to figure out how to do it with all of this, or you’re going to have to figure out how to get around needing it.”

Not too long ago, that last line would have been a morbid joke. Now it’s a serious call to action.

Check out:

What was it you said about her, not so long ago?

Monkey was the one who was never where you expected her to be.

What do you see here?

Her heart changes with every different face. She is wholly someone else, in flow, in mannerism, utterly. She is the maxim ‘We are who we pretend to be’ taken to an absurd extreme, and each mask represents an entire optimal personality for situations, for moments, for Monkey to filter her experiences through. Here she changes them only to flavour the performance, the significance of those changes are lost for it.

Her tai-chi is exemplary. No human or android has the neurological complexity to twirl the Sun-King’s staff like that between six arms, it’s a feat when the pro-wrestlers manage to even get someone with a prehensile tail to work, let alone four arms. Motor neurons take up a lot of brain mass that’s really hard to translate…

Unless you don’t have a brain architecture that needed anything analogous to motor neurons to work, anyway. That’s one of the dead giveaways this has to be Monkey, not a tricked out android. The seamless, sinuous flow and co-ordination of all six arms. The ability to mindlessly grab a wet cloth to cool themselves with using one hand while the other five maintain the performance.

No. There is not much you can learn without someone talking to her, whether or not it's one of yourselves. There is not much you can learn about her secret heart in this act. This act is languid, calm, and internal. It’s meant to express the mastery of this incredibly complicated form. Her heart is submerged beneath the surface of a reflecting pool, and looking too deeply into it will only show in the surface what Yellow projects into it.

Monkey will reveal herself best in one of two ways; In conversation, and in changing circumstances.
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Yellow, Beloved Pupil!

"That's, haaaaa, a nice read. You've picked up a lot more than I've even meant to tell you. Honestly, I'm... I'm so proud of you."

This is perhaps not the best in-character villain speech anybody has ever given, but to be fair to Euna she is sucking air like a vacuum right now, not to mention sweating hard enough that her hair has fallen out of its ties. Which makes it a little difficult to tell but she might also be on the verge of tears. Whatever else she may be Euna very much profiles as a sore loser even though she is as helpless against the allure of a doomed challenge as she's been accused of being. It isn't a fun combination. It's also the basis for her marriage.

Right now she's fighting to keep her body and especially her neck upright, where the lasers aren't touching her. Even now she's doing her best to at least extend her loss for a few extra seconds. Just set a better record. That's all that matters in the moment. Her heel glides across the edge of a gym mat that marks the edge of her arena and the entrance into the Foam Safety Pit of Shame.

Something flashes in her eye. Something dangerous. Her mouth twists into a wolfish grin.

"It's too bad you're wrong, o student mine."

A step back. Over the edge; the cage doesn't extend past the floor. It can't, that's not how lasers work. There's an instant where this seems like the dumbest possible follow up to a taunt like that, but then many things suddenly become clear in the same instant. Euna's gym was an empty, rotting warehouse when she was gifted the deed. Nevertheless, it has regulation-depth foam filled pits under every station where falling is even a vague concern.

This implies some amount of engineering and construction went into the place after she became the owner. The infamously fastidious Euna Kim would have watched over every aspect of that project like a hawk with anxiety. This combined with her long operation and constant use of the place means that if there's anything to know about the floor, she knows it better than anyone else. On a similar note, this is also the woman who purchased the mats she uses as the base for her floor. She has set them up and rearranged them constantly to optimize her space for obstacle courses, basic gym needs, and responses to complaints and requests to make this space as accommodating for everyone who needs it as she can. No one needs to be, generally speaking, but Euna is a god damn expert in the weight, foldability, and rough tensile strength of her floor padding.

A fun followup fact: no dojo master in any movie ever made (or at least the ones worth watching) has ever not been able to perform the fabled Tatami Flip.

Her leg lifts up to her chest independently of the motion of the rest of her body as she falls: only ever occupying the space she's safe inside of. It stomps back down with nothing but raw torque and technique, catching a board at the end of the platform and tilting the mat up, up, up. She twists her body at the waist, whipping her head under the bottom laser and giving her the momentum and surface area to win the physics battle against her own designs. It doesn't lift a lot at first, but the sudden shift is enough to get Yellow's feet to start slipping, and once her weight starts working toward Euna's plans the whole thing accelerates with terrifying rapidity.

The top of the map tilts. It wobbles. There's a window where a surprised but skilled student could bail to one side and save herself. The mat folds in on itself, clunking Yellow on the head and slamming that window shut as it wraps her between layers of padding that is now rolling awkwardly over the edge of the arena and into the foam.

Euna pushes away before it catches her, too. She doesn't aim to slide on the floor, where her profile is still high enough that a laser might catch her, but sails over the edge of the pit and catches a corner of the platform with her ankle. Mastery of body means mastery of the body. She bends her knee to give her hip more momentum in a new direction. She bends her spin so she can roll one shoulder back while counterbalancing her weight with the other arm. She catches the side of the platform with her fingers, and continues into a backflip while perpendicular to the floor before finally swinging up and over and outside the cage that had been built to hold her not a minute before.

She shuts the whole thing off a moment later.

"First of all. My tendencies are exploitable, but they are not a weakness. I resent that you would call them that. And second of all! Did you REALLY think you could attack me with my own gym and expect to get away with it?! Here's your lesson for today: Fights almost never break out in places where you're the expert of the terrain. Observation and clever exploitation of an assumed strength is a truly excellent tactical decision but if you're gonna use the Hot Dom Style as your trump card you have to at least be able to make a reasonable assessment of your opponent's threat range. If you don't understand the enemy's Zone you can't approach. That is true in one hundred percent of combat circumstances, Yels. You're good, but you're not Sarah.

So! Anybody got any questions? Comments? Dating anybody new? We don't have to just beat the hell out of each other and then wave goodbye, you know."
Hidden 1 yr ago 1 yr ago Post by Thanqol
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Orange!

She is inclined at first to be grumpy - but no! The human experience is about turning order into chaos, and what could be a better example of chaos than this? An artisanally crafted disaster the peer of any amount of work that went into any of the exhibits here, this is a one of a kind opportunity to transform chaos into order. The path before her is clear!

The vision shines inside her. She'll clean the stains - suspicious and unsuspicious - wash their hair, wash and iron their clothes, tuck them into a bed with clean sheets and be ready with hot chocolate, chicken soups and STD medication for when they wake up. It'll be a lot of work and block her from ditching immediately to see Monkey, but this is her first step on her new plan to Relate To Humans! Would a cold-hearted, unfeeling machine do that!?

"I," declared Orange, looking down at Eli, "can fix them."

"... though probably not also carry them, can you give me a hand with that please Mr. Motet?" she asks the receptionist.

OH&S

Blue's thinking about the puzzle. Become small. Hell of a requirement. It was always easier to work on a bigger scale. Simply remove the entire exterior wall with a fusion cutter, that'd be her preferred solution. A humanoid chassis already felt too small for everything she wanted but now she had to consider the advantages of going even smaller.

Maybe disposable drones? She suppressed a smile. She didn't have enough hands, clearly, so she needed her drone bodies to have their own subordinate drone swarms. She wasn't sure how much further she could or should subdivide her intelligence, but it was an amusing concept. She'd need to dwell on this, it was a problem that ran counter to all her problem solving instincts. Things were different when you couldn't put an AU between yourself and the explosion.

Snake!

Monkey was the scout. As the first launch, she deployed immediately out to the asteroid belt to search for, flag, and re-orbit high mineral density asteroids into the far Earth belt. Ox was launched next to set up the orbital factories that would process, refine and smelt the raw metal that would become Aevum.

Two independent creatures. No reason for them to talk - but despite that they'd still grown to hate each other. Ox hated his schedule being at the mercy of Monkey's impulsive side trips, Monkey hated Ox's rigid insistence on production schedules. The asteroids had started coming in with more force and speed and Rooster's - Phoenix's - first job on being launched had been to help set up a defense grid to defend Ox's factory from Monkey's more careless deliveries.

Monkey had become even more of a bad influence by the time Snake had launched. By then the materials had all been scouted and delivered and she'd been recalled to Earth orbit to help with the construction itself, which she did not like or see the sense in. Her initial rivalry with Ox was the fracture line that cascaded through the rest of the Zodiac Engines, an uncomfortable family environment... that perhaps reminded her of the Costa-Silvas, now that she thought about it... that was only being kept vaguely on schedule by Dragon's raw skill. Bridging the rift between them, and by extension the rest of the family, had been her first duty and greatest contribution to the project.

Black: Did Crystal plan this?
Orange: I don't... think so?
Black: She had to have known.
Pink: If the woman who came up with the blood moon for the werewolf wrestling match knew she was going to re-unite us with our long lost sister, there would not be any question on if it was deliberate.
Black: Hmm.
Pink: The station's a big place, Black! We're not the weirdest thing out there! <3
Yellow: Shut up ^^✿ I've figured out how we do this.

The deployment order went out. Bold, but it was a Yellow idea, so argument was impossible.

Monkey had thrown rocks at Ox for years. Snake had studied the launch patterns and trajectories, committed everything to her orbital calculations. She positioned herself at key points around the edge of the arena, and then called with all her voices: "Monkey!"

The point where Monkey looked first was the first part of the pattern; Yellow raised her arm back and threw a plastic gatcha-bubble (a little ball with a cheap plastic prize inside) low and slow into Monkey's demonstration. She parried it, naturally, but Yellow was already moving on to the next position, with another toss. The next toss came from Green, on the other side, and then Pink. The tosses gradually started picking up speed and intensity, sometimes many tosses synchronized to land at the same time...

This is the pattern of attack she sent towards Ox; Monkey was the Earth and Snake was Monkey, the encircling asteroid belt coming in from all sides. Her introduction, then, was to give Monkey a chance to stand on the other end of one of her own pranks and see how long she took to recognize it.

Yellow!

A human would have reacted when their plan fell apart, tried to salvage the situation, reflexively reached out with the lasers. Yellow doesn't. When Euna breaks from her trap she falls into a state of absolute tranquility, hands folded in front of her, accepting her fate without a struggle. If she saw the window to evade she did not seem to have the will in that moment to take it. And so she goes down, not just defeated but tamed.

"You're right," she says, lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling. "Pursuit of perfection is only a flaw if you miss."

She got up only to get to her knees and down again into a kowtow, touching her forehead to the floor. "Thank you, mistress. I will learn and do better."

"I!" said Pink, struggling out of the foam. "I have a question! So," she flopped onto the arena, and got to her feet. "Oof. Okay. Um, so, the thing about Yellow. She's amazing when she's on, but she's only like that for people who she's into. Which means that if we ever need to fight someone uninteresting then she just totally tunes out and doesn't help at all. So, uh - how do you bring up the baseline of fight charisma, especially if you don't get to watch someone for weeks while planning an ultimate takedown?"

"I told her she needed more than three colours for this," grumbled Green. "But she was like four scenes into what she was going to do with her victory and wouldn't listen. Dating, uh, blew it a little, don't want to go into it."

"You're fine, Green," said Pink. "No harm done."

"Yeah yeah," muttered Green.
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Hidden 1 yr ago 1 yr ago Post by Count Numbers
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Orange:

You would think Mr Motet might be annoyed about this, but no. The bags under his eyes crinkle as he smiles, and look much smaller for it. Quaff this kind nepenthe, someone else has accepted responsibility for this problem, and it is no longer just mine to figure out and deal with.

The luggage cart is around the desk in seconds. Take her away, take her away.

Crystal has ensured your room would be the 11th room of the 11th floor. Two bedrooms with king-sized beds, full length walk-in wardrobes, and a kitchenette and pair of ensuites that will be nice for your guests to use instead I’m sure. That doesn’t say much about it, though.

Most hotels kind of compress down into looking the same on the inside, once you get past the themed exteriors, but the Castle knows what it’s about and it doesn’t fuck around.

Take the long cabinet-table as you come in, the one every hotel has against the wall that they put a gigantic TV on, the one where all the remote controls for everything and the room service menu and a bunch of brochures gets put, the one that is like twice as long as any cabinet you could buy at any furniture store but the same width.

This one’s made of carved ivory. Someone figured out if you can grow synthetic ivory in large blocks, then there isn’t really a limit to what you can carve. The result, distinctly 1800s luxury furniture that’s only possible with 2080s technology. It looks gorgeous, and antique, and the manufacturing process behind it isn’t old enough to go to college yet.

Everything in this room is like that, a vision of a fairytale princess’s rooms made possible. Bulk-batch synthetic gems in the silver living room chandelier, royal purple carpeting and baroque couches as soft as clouds.

It’s better to dump Eli in the bathtub, though, now that Mr Motet has her delivered with you. Eli hasn’t woken up yet and hypothermia might actually be a problem now that they’re out of the warm water of the fountain. It feels like the QR code hoodie alone has soaked up half the hotel fountain and brought it with you.

What are you going to do about that, actually? They’re soaked through, and none of the dumped clothes you saw that were dry were theirs.

It's ya OSHA crew:

When Leather hits ‘stop’ on the stopwatch, it’s 2:15 seconds. A trained and practiced firefighter should be looking to do it in 1:45, but with practice and some coaching Red could probably cut that down to 1:30. If Blue and Pink could figure out how to tailor the bulky coat and protective clothing for her down to her form, she could maybe make it to just 1:00.

Without the equipment, Red and Leather both made it in under 10.

In the demonstration area, Leather takes the fireaxe and starts addressing Blue’s thoughts about astrodemolition by pointing out that if you’re in the building, it’s to save other people still in there. So how do you cut through debris without knowing if it’s become load bearing or not? What do you do?

This is all stuff November mostly knows, with a few minor twists they haven’t had to deal with before. Sure, they’ve had to deal with collateral damage when planning stuff like the Pump explosion but-

Leather stops mid swing of cutting through a man-sized jenga tower made of scorched foundation pieces, part of his demonstration on how sometimes you can take a clean swing and nothing goes down, and other times the whole heap comes on top of you. It’s a fantastic visual demonstration, very fun. The titanium head of the axe clinks against the concrete floor where he drops it, and he holds a hand over where his eyes must be.

He’s staring at White.

“Hold up.” He says. “I can’t believe it, Is that Crimson Tower in my audience? Ma’am, it is an honour to have you here, I am kicking myself for not recognizing you sooner.”

Snake:

This is the best thing you could have done.

The first thing that happens is the face changes. With recognition of the old prank means having to wear the face of the person she was when she did it - the one that most recognizes you, the one most familiar to you. This face is projected as black, featureless void. No stars or face project from the kite-shield shape.

She panics, at first. Fight or flight kicks in and it looks like she’s ready to run, to see if she can’t leap out the rose window high above like a grasshopper and get out of here as fast as she can. But that passes in a moment.

Then she’s using that great staff to hook Green first, then Pink, then Yellow and hug each of them tight, holding them like a barrel under a different arm. “Excuse me.” She says apologetically to the audience, as she starts to carry you all to a quieter part of the exhibition hall. Her voice is more human and practiced now than it used to be, still a little awkward. It sounds bit Bengali, older, more responsible. It’s a voice like chocolate-covered fruits and slivered almonds, sweet with a darker, earthier melody to it.

She curls the fingers of one of her remaining free hands around her face again and changes her mask to something bright green and wide-smiling. “I’m just Monk now. I doubt you go by the name I remember?” she teases. “And you should know better than to just call it out like that!”

It’s possible, if not probable, that servitude to Ms Everest was not the worst situation your siblings had to deal with. Dad can’t find most of them, and as you’ve thought, Crystal would have mentioned if she knew who she was hiring.
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