[b]Apostle:[/b]

“That makes sense,” they say. “I mean, if all you have in common with a guy is you write fetish-fic, I can see how it makes after-work drinks stuff harder.” They snort. “I’m uh, I’m a friend of H.J’s. I just wanted to check how you knew him, first, he hates it when I out stuff like that.” 

[b]Fiona:[/b]

Fiona considers Pink between clicking parts of a gabled roof, having decided the extra effort will be worth how much more satisfying kicking it will be. “Well,” she considers. “Is this one of those things where I should push you to try to see what happens, or is this one of those things where we do something else while watching kids make up legends about us to explain how we got this cool?” 

[b]Hazel:[/b]

She considers this, but differently to how she did with Yellow. Yellow was almost pure form, a few notes of function to embellish it. A vibe. This was…

Well, this was almost just plain engineering now. 

“So you want to be stronger, and faster, and more overwhelming, and have vestigial limbs that are as strong as main limbs, [i]and[/i] have endurance, and be better than anyone at their specialization?” She shakes her head at White. “I like vision, but you can’t be unwilling to compromise on anything.”

She taps the AM=FM tattoo. “This goes one way. I can use actual machines to make fucking magic, but I can’t use fucking magic to give you actual machines. It’s not even that it can’t be done, it’s just that if it could be done, then other people would be doing it, and then you lose your comparative advantage again.” 

“I can make you a knight on horseback,” she tilts her head, “but I can’t change the world so you’re only coming up against foot soldiers, and there’s nothing I can do to make you feel invincible against a gun, and you’re going to be disappointed if that’s what you think you want. Try again. This time, no external references, no opponents.” 

[b]Crystal:[/b]

Today she’s wearing a black tuxedo, and a red feathered black beret with funerary veil. The spray of red feathers deliberately evokes a gunshot in freeze frame, an exit wound. The tuxedo is lovely. She watches over Red’s shoulder as she types, on her way to the kitchen for more coffee.

“You know, they say the only one who gets rich in a goldrush is the one selling picks and shovels.” She reconsiders the coffee, just grabs some chocolate syrup from the fridge and squirts it on a spoonful of whole roasted beans and crunches it like breakfast cereal. “I imagine a lot more people are going to be wanting to invest in fire suppression systems than before. Not the most romantic of ideas, but it would give you a subtle access.” Her eyes gleam with mischief, her teeth brown with a second spoonful of coffee. “Would you be able to get firefighter’s master keys for it, do you think?” 

This is her idea for Red, crisis management - more inspired [i]by[/i] than [i]for[/i], though. The fight has been a wonderful way to get her mind off things, and encouraging stronger staked positions just gives her a better show.