[b]Orange![/b]

"A... social weld is an internal term that I used by mistake, I'm an idiot so I want to think of human society as something I can engineer so I use a lot of space construction terms for things," said Orange. "But... I think they'll know how bad she was. A child knows, even if they don't know how to articulate it. At least, that's my experience."

She hugs Bondi back. "Thank you. You're important. Even with all of this..."

[b]Red![/b]

"Oh shit," said Red. "Like, I keep adjusting my expectations of you upwards and I keep disrespecting you anyway I legit don't know how to deal with it. Uh. Okay, so, original plan was to get everyone together and do a big day of protest marches and then everyone disperses naturally goes home. Maybe some tear gas and mass arrests but we had enough public support to wear that. But now we're bottled up in here and there's going to be way more counterprotesters on the street than we expected. Basically we've gone from offensive campaign to siege and we need an exit strategy, right?"

She looked out the window, judging the streets and flows. "I don't know how tomorrow ends, is the thing. What's the mechanism by which we get everyone home safely?" she snorts. "I kind of wish we were going to get counterprotested by leftist groups so that the police response would be confused..." she trailed off. "Actually, wait a second, I need to make a phone call."

She pulls out her phone. "Hey, York? Yeah, Red. Look. Tomorrow's going to be a shitshow and the cops are going to have their favourites. Well, you know how the right's always talking about false flags? Why don't we give them some? Smash up some corporate fronts, start some street violence. Make it hard for the cops to look the other way. Hopefully that way the streets will wind up clean enough for people to get home. You know some normie-looking leftist protest groups, right?"

[b]Pink![/b]

"<I can speak Russian if you prefer,>" said Pink. She was fluent in English, Russian and Chinese - the languages of space. "<I am a little rusty. Forgive me.>"

She curtseyed and sat down, putting the sandwiches on the counter. "<Before I begin, I would like to request you don't call the bank. If you do I'll have to jam it, if I have to jam it then I'll get twitchy, and if I get twitchy then we'll be having this conversation while you're unconscious. See! Already I am having to make threats! I do not want to do this!>" Pink laughed. 

She spoke Russian mostly to Tiger. Tiger liked the aesthetics of it, liked the slur and drip of the words, liked the air of menace that she could draw out of cultural memory. The way she spoke it made it a language for casually threatening Hungarians. When Pink spoke it she recalled that flash of teeth, that slight hunch, that air of physicality that clearly did not respect personal space even if she wasn't currently violating it.

"<No, no, I am here because you are a professional, yes?>" said Pink, letting an edge of simmering, repressed resentment boil up, another key part of this performance. "<I treat you as a professional, I treat you with respect. I knock on your door. I come into your house as a guest. I bring you sandwiches*. These are things I do because you are a professional and a professional knows when he is, how to say, checkmated? A professional does not wriggle and make phone calls when checkmated, these are for lesser men. You are a professional, yes?>"