[b]Check In:[/b] 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? [b]OSHA crew:[/b] 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. [b]Check out:[/b] 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 [i]Monkey[/i], 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.