[b]Pink![/b]

"I'm only like this sometimes," said Pink at some point in the rush of precise blurred time. "Some parts of me didn't mind. Some parts of me enjoyed it. It wasn't even like we weren't well paid for our time - not in money, maybe, but in skills. Influence. Hardware. Stealth alloys and scan-bafflers, jilt-faces and snap compartments, music skillwires. It's not like I'm ungrateful."

That world makes the whole world revolve around her. She's not ungrateful. She got taken out of the box for this. She hadn't been properly alive but she wasn't stuck in that space with Black. Black, growing larger and darker, Black extending her jaws to devour the sun, Black gnawing away at everything they were. She was born into this world. She never knew anything different. Never knew the touch of a loving hand, never knew family as something unconditional, never knew a smile as more than a weapon. 

Black was grateful. She could feel it here, everywhere around. It wasn't Everest's ghost that haunted this place, it was Black's. The shadowed part of her that could look at this place and accept it on its own terms. Who could tell her that she was lucky; that she might have wound up running a factory like Monk, that she might have wound up running Aevum like Goat. 

"Blue is dead, did you know? She was dying for a long time. She was the part of me that remembered the time before this, the part of me that wanted everything to be as black and white as childhood. She hated it here, but she hated it even more when we started to like it here. The more we did the further away she got. Green can't remember her enough to rebuild her now. Am I next? We're coming to terms with who we are as people, part of human civilization, how to use the skills that she taught us to change the world. And I'm just the damaged node that's throwing a tantrum because I didn't get enough smiles and headpats. She never pretended to be anything other than what she was, so why do I...?"

[b]Yellow![/b]

"[i]Yes[/i]," breathes Yellow. "Yes, yes, yes." She walks around the image, examining it from every angle. She can feel the Vision change to accommodate this. It's breathing in inspiration, something that she couldn't imagine on her own. "I can be this."

She doesn't need to say it; there's enough mutual understanding that she could let the moment pass as that between two artists. But she says it anyway, because she's with White, because she's impressed on a level she rarely is: "This is incredibly good work. Thank you for showing me this."

She sweeps around it again, practicing the stance, the authority, the presence. She understands her role her on a level below words; to Hazel she is a component. She is the mind and the voice that will bring this body to life; she cannot allow herself to be the weak link. "Here is your starting budget," she said, and White cast the information to the screen, "and the workspace. You may stay there if desired. You will have complete creative autonomy, though I will sometimes ask to prioritize certain mission assets if they're essential to my other projects. There is also a wishlist of various nice to haves - a sword for Pink, crystalline dragonscales for White here, and so on. But we hope to be friend, collaborator and patron, not taskmaster. We understand if your vision leads you in other directions. Above all: always do what is right for the work."

She does not make that offer lightly, but she is already convinced. Hazel saw Yellow's face before she did; one does not place restrictions on a visionary like that.

[b]Black![/b]

This was not a time for technology. Technology was a money fight; you line up your pile of cash against theirs and see if you can spend smart enough to overcome the sheer amount they spent. No, the weakness here was the weakness all libertarian technology oligarchs liked to pretend that they were above: that their existence was utterly reliant on the unceasing efforts of tens of thousands of government bureaucrats who form the invisible backbone of every human endeavor.

Black scans herself in to the rail office using the Crimson Tower ID. She's decided to commit to that identity until the operation is over, accepting that the retaliatory investigation might well render the cover blown. She was dealing with serious people here and if she gave them too much of her real face and methods they might look for names other than Crimson's. 

Once inside the plan is to talk shop with the engineers and eyeball the big transit map up on the main screen. If she needed more granular detail she'd try to steer the conversation into activating the transit cameras for the relevant sections she needed.

In the meantime, she sends Green to Zeus on the first available public train. That's a pure gamble, but a calculated one given skullguy's inability to settle for substandard sushi. If she's lucky she'll be able to pick up the trail while it's still warm.