Isabelle

“Sad attempt at a distraction. I’ll take the coffee, bring it with you.”

She kicks you out of her way. Not hard, actually, all things considered it’s more of a nudge and relatively gentle for the situation, then strides through the hallway. She snaps a “follow” at several staff, and then she and Marcina break into a sprint straight to the control center. Though right before she rounds the corner, she glances over her shoulder and shouts: “cream, no sugar, and make it snappy!”

And then she’s off.

***

Dolly

Tall girl stares at you with her mouth hanging open. Too much whiplash too fast. You were a cute tech fixing something and hitting on her extremely deserving co-worker and now you’re…blocking…the…door?

But, luckily for you, the bonds of adoring fangirl love and whispered secrets (a completely distinct category from whispered promises, which you would never mix up) conquer all. And so Sam is moving a server rack into place, helping you with the lifting, and in a moment the tall girl comes to help too because the immense social pressure of being out of the loop while two people cooperate is way more than she can bear.

You’ve got the door barred, the servers in place to hold it, and two people who are game to go along with you and ask questions later, or at least while helping to hold the door shut.

Nevertheless, this is going to hold for a lot less time than you expected. You know this because after two loud thumps on the door that make the server shudder, the next thing you see is a molecular edge ionized saber blade cut through the door around your barricade!

Jade

“Aye, I’ll get your cargo, goddess. But I get a trophy picture as a keepsake before you get her back.”

The transmission comes through a small part of you still in the hangar, while the rest of you is focused on controlling the systems. This wouldn’t be hard, normally. You were in the heart of the control center, completely connected. In fact, until Mirror fired her ultimate attack, you were in the process of setting everything up for more automated control to extract yourself.

It’s just that…now…there’s…um…ghosts? You’ve read a lot of mythology in Hybrasil, and from Terenian databases and what Zaldarian records are available. Furthermore, you are a goddess with the perfect recall capabilities of the most sophisticated technological systems ever created by any Hybrasilian. You would not describe yourself as limited in your galactic knowledge.

Nevertheless, what you’re working with here is that you’ve lost direct contact with every camera drone in a two mile radius vicinity of Mirror’s ultimate blast, but they are not shut down. They’re operating in the network, independently, while closing themselves off to you. So, uh, they’re haunted, you guess? They’re not currently broadcasting picture to your network though, which raises a question as to where they are broadcasting, exactly.

***

Matty

You’re locked out. The Nine Tails is systems down, the regular match feed is cut, and you’re not getting anything through Jade’s network. Mayze happily poses for the cameras of the rest of the world.

You sit back in your chair, and squeeze your legs and your eyes tight together and then just let out a long, long sigh and relax out into your chair. You’re not sure whether to be worried or satisfied, but you have done your part.

In a moment, you’ll get back on to seeing about the rest of the space and maybe extraction for the station team. But in a moment, you saw Jade had already called for Angela, so you need a second, then you’ll signal Ksharta and Kiriala to come support. Kiriala is already close by and was quietly disabling various aspects of the technical security of the building while Dolly and Isabelle handled the social work.

***

Mirror and Solarel

Within the heart of all things there is the infinite. Within every object lurks the whole rainbow and far, far beyond. Exotic energy that defies the nature of reality as you understand it.

The Nine Tails is consumed by its own attack and fades within corruscating energy. And the Aeteline disappears from view. Everything around you shimmers and the light narrows. You feel as though you’re viewing the whole world through a fencepost, a tiny, narrow slit through which to view things as they truly are. And yet above it, you fly, above it, there is still the sky, still the distant stars. And you are falling together, falling towards each other.

As the energy fades, the world below you is, and is not. If you only glance, nothing has changed. Trees and rivers and streams flow. But hold that glance, and everything has changed. Water flows backwards and forwards. Trees bow and rise, the wind cannot choose its direction. Slices of silent nanobots dot this landscape, giving shape to the lie of it. Segments that have ceased to function. But they are not still, the dead spots shift and move without any source of movement, without a clear line from place to place. Time, the axis on which the universe wheels, has broken here, and you are seeing creation and destruction swap with one another as easily as balls rolling about a field.

From beneath you, from all around you, the camera drones still move, rising and turning to gaze upon your fall. From them, there is a low moaning, a humming song, rising and falling as though a chorus, long asleep, struggles to come into harmony as it wakes from its eternal dream.

And yet, still, gravity remains, and you are always, always falling towards each other.

Hm. Unexpected complication. The sacrifice of the Gods-Smiting Whip for the sake of final victory was always part of her plan. First consequence of the Nine Drive System. Necessary in the end, to drag the things she needed into the realm of the physical and create the only future in which she could be happy. There was simply no other way. She'd known it from the very beginning. Before the beginning, in fact. Within her first three months of captivity she'd known that another chance would end like this, or else in failure.

But then. Why? Mira turns her head to the sky and watches the last vestiges of her Nine-Tails disintegrate in the coruscating True Rainbow of destructive power she herself had unleashed upon the arena. Why? Why why why why why? Why do her eyes sting with tears? Why is this goodbye so painful when none of the rest have ever been? What made it so special?

Overcome.

Mira turns her attention back toward Solarel. She watches her through crystal patterns now, the blurry vision of her overtreated eyes when she does not bother to stem the flow of tears. She is even more beautiful than before. Another unexpected complication. This one pulls an unintended smile from her lips. Damn it. Damn it! Why does nothing ever go according to calculations when this woman is involved? What makes her so special?!

"I love you!"

The sound is forced out of her. By the fall. Or by the spirits hanging like cameras in the air about her. Something beautiful against the achingly gorgeous, haunting backdrop of death, rebirth, and death again painted across the ground beneath them. It's even more of a sight than she anticipated. More spectacular, more fantastic, more... ah. What is that word?

Awesome.

Her steel-silk dress flutters in the winds she makes by answering gravity's call. There are tears in her eyes and a smile on her face and I love you on her lips and a three section staff in her hands. Click! She pulls it together. Thhhhhrrrsh! She swings it as hard as she can. Clang! It impacts one of Solarel's blade hilts and forces her guard open. Clink! It separates and wraps around her back.

"There is no one else I would have done this for! No one else I could have done this for!"

She flies in close, but does not connect with a kiss. No, this moment is punctuated by a headbutt. Her vision briefly turns to stars but the training she's used to fake normal piloting credentials had a secret second purpose and it is exactly this moment: Mira is in excellent shape. She cannot pilot any mecha that now exists in the galaxy (thanks to her), but she can pilot her own body.

And that is how she fights. Even now. Elbow punishes elbow. Knee locks around knee. In the opening of a guard she throws both arms around Solarel's neck and buries her cheek against the kinetic transfer induced warmth of her collarbone. Her legs lock around her prey's waist and her fingers lock together like iron behind her around the sections of her staff.

"I love you," she mumbles it this time, "Always. Forever. My missing piece."

There is no parachute hidden in the trailing sleeves and skirts of her magnificent dress. There is only the whispering caress of the at once soft and rigid fabric against the most beautiful and perfect scales any Zaldarian could hope to have. There is only the warmth of fur and the tickling of whiskers against an iron neck as she nuzzles and purrs like a love-drunk kitten.

"So save me. My princess."

And she drags her tongue along your jaw, Solarel. No victory to be stolen here. Your love was priced into her stupid plan from the very beginning. Life would not have been worth living without it.

There were two ways to be vulnerable. One was to be weak, to be defenseless, to be bound and gagged and rendered helpless, unable to act and so freed from the burden of action. The other, Solarel was learning, was to be hard read. No matter what thoughts existed in her head, whatever plans she had entered this battle with, whatever strength she natively possessed she was unable to wield it because her enemy had her downloaded on a level she couldn't comprehend. She struck directly into counters, she struggled directly into a lock, her tired and hungry body had spent so long in a stasis tank that it was utterly unprepared for direct battle.

... She'd been seen. She'd been so focused on what she was saying. If she'd be heard. On Speaking Not. Communication had been everything to her but that wasn't the only way to be known. Mirror had picked out parts of herself that she didn't even know she had. There was no defense. It would be easier to punch the ground.

"Thank you," she said.

Energy burns in her, the force of explosions, of high velocity staff strikes, of kisses. She's filled with the aching positive energy brimming in her power cores demanding release. She's never fallen from this height before, never fallen like this before, never would have written a battleplan which involved her surviving a fall like this. If it was her she'd have thought it was impossible - but someone she believed in thought she was better than that.

She called on the spirits of her swords. They had always been malleable things, in her hands as God and as mortal. Their nature was to be blades but there was more they could cut than steel. Silver flowed over her back. Gold ran through her veins. The molten power within her burned and crackled. Two blades extended from her back - then four, eight, sixteen, more. A radiant pair of angel's wings, one silver and one golden, spread out behind her, each plume a sword.

A sword does not see its potential. A weapon alone cannot live. This is her final surrender; not to wield her blade for her own will, but to become a sword in the hands of Whispered Promise. What else is there to do when the one who loves bids you to fly?

Isabelle sighs. Well, it had been worth a try.

"Might as well follow her and bring that coff- what the heck are you doing??!"

Asil freezes. Eyes wide, mouth open and above an empty coffee cup. A droplet of spit slowly works its way down her chin before she straightens, swallows the mouthful, and sheepishly wipes her mouth with a sleeve.

"Asillll." Isabelle groans, pinching her nose. "That is Adriana Teresio, CEO of the Consortium and the most powerful woman in a full third of known space. I know you don't care that much for authority, but you cannot just ... just hock a loogie into her coffee!!"

And now it's Asil's turn to be quiet, as she stares into the bottom of the cup with a pout.

"Look." Isabelle continues, voice softening. "I mean, I get it. It's sweet that you'd want to stand up for me like that. And I know that she just walked right past me ... shoved me aside really ... was rude to us both ... and treated us like her servants ... and ... and ... "

Isabelle trails off, no longer sure where she was going with this ...

"... Y'know what? Give me that cup."

A few moments later, she and her girlfriend hurried their way into the command centre in Adriana's wake. Carrying one take-away order of 'special' coffee.

The panic reaction is entirely instinctual and physiological.

The way that she tenses up, tail bushing, is meant to make her look bigger and more dangerous to a threat. The strangled yowl that escapes her throat is a similar warning: teeth bared, a fierce huntress ready to bite into this challenger. The way that she clings to Sam is a memory of safety in numbers, in the camaraderie of the hunt.

But because she is also a person, Dolly eventually manages to squeak out: "...I didn't think they'd do that."

---

What ARE you?

The goddess cannot let this challenge, this lacuna in her understanding, pass her by. She shifts her position in the swirl, tosses out pistons, attempts to crack open what is increasingly barred to her (and barring her way to extraction). What ARE you? What ARE you, you thing of ghostwhispers, you unquiet spirit, you thing that has entered this place?

Are you a kind of thing like me?

This thought excites her, haunts her.

Are you a kind of thing that is born of the place where the clever stone meets the embodied spirit? Are you some (obviously much more pathetic and not-divine) peer? Her teeth are bared in interest, her focus sudden and all-consuming. After all, Angela's coming with the extraction, and Dolly will be sure to scoop up the glove, so she can continue to issue her demand for an identity.

What ARE you?

Isabelle

You and Asil arrive to see Adriana using her sword to cut the door out of the wall, she’s almost done, half of it is off and the hinges are cut. Marcina is standing nearby, and she’s got a handful of workers. There’s a big server rack in front of the door though, so even with it being removed, she’s still got to cut her way through that as well.

Marcina gestures for one of the aids to take the coffees you bring, but Adriana and Marcina themselves have their hands full with the scene. This definitely didn’t go according to plan.

Though, thankfully, you do suddenly get some help. “Isabelle, Dolly?” Matty is on the comms now, after an extended silence. She sounds a little sheepish. “Um…it seems like Mirror actually invited Adriana to come stop her, based on the cockpit feed I have. But um…Jade also invited Angela to come help, and I’ve set Ksharta and Kiriala to come help you as well, Kiriala is actually above you right now. But I’m not really sure what Mirror wanted, so I’m asking everyone to wait I guess? Maybe she wants the broadcast to come back in at the end, now that her big attack is over? Or maybe not and she just thought this would be fun. I’m…not sure, but I don’t want anybody to get hurt, so we’ll try and get you out when the moment is right.”

***

Dolly

Sam gives you a hug back, with a little squeeze. She’s also blushing profusely!

You see one of the doors come off at its hinges, and from behind the server rack you’ve set up, you can see half the body of Adriana Teresio, the most powerful woman in the Terenius Consortium! You may also recall her intoxicating flower dress from the Crystal Gala. Behind her are more vague outlines of several people, and what looks somewhat like Isabelle arriving in a rush from around a corner.

You get the same message as Isabelle did from Matty. So help is on the way, some of it very close. But you need to create the right opportunity to set it up.

***

Matty

Mirror told you that you would need to “play soldiers” to get everyone out, but you’re not quite sure what that means. You think it means something like playing with dolls combined with Hybrasil super spies, which is why you’ve got Kiriala positioned in an air duct above the hallway. You’re waiting until Angela arrives, which will be a few minutes and will shake the whole building like Adriana’s arrival, which should probably create an opening.

You fidget impatiently though and sit up on your feet in your chair. Is that too long? She’s already got a door off, and you’re not sure if Isabelle can slow her down again with the whole crowd of people there too. And who knows what Dolly can do, you’ve only heard her squeaking so far and it sounds like she got really distractedly.

***

Jade

The camera drones whisper and chant. But they do not speak in response to you. Their spirits are too simple. Like jackals, but also unlike any jackals you have ever met. They feel old to you, old and heavy and not at all like Hybrasilians. They move like birds. You catch a few, tear them apart, and the spirits within are feathered, simple and ancient. They are feeding data to something else. Something full of animating force.

Within the depths, something stirs. An amalgamation of spirits. It looks at you with its burning heart and its burning eye that glows white and green like your own smokeless fires.

“We are Trak’tho. What was left. What will be. We have been given a vessel. You will clear the way for us.”

***

Mirror, Solarel

You fall together, you fly together. Beneath you, something stirs.

The world, free of time, nevertheless changes. The pattern shifts, concentrates, coalesces. A pile of dead nanobots rises, and as it does, the nanobots stream off of it in cascading waves.

What was left of the Aeteline is a skeletal mess of the original. The outer armor has been utterly disintegrated, the purple highlights entirely wiped out in the blast of pure energy at the heart of all matter. The remaining body, the interior exoskeleton, the core protections, and the internal systems turned to plasma and then cooled, leaving it malformed and broken. Joints that have run together in a mess of metal should not be able to articulate. Thin, narrow limbs that are barely a wisp of solid matter should not be able to support it. And yet, a single, baleful eye of green-white fire stares at you from a gaunt, skeletal frame formed around its unchecked core drive. Its blade of flame forms in its hand.

It hums in tune with the camera drones, but larger and deeper. Slowly, it forms words that reverberate so deeply you can barely hear them. “With…power…there is…no need…for tactics.”

The perfection of the moment doesn't last long enough for the quip to rise up all the way past her tongue. Improperly phrases, halted at the third gate. Access denied. Time stands still. Time shifts all the same. The energy of the moment changes, and the capstone to perfection falls broken beneath a pair of electrum colored wings.

Time. Has shifted. To a place beyond her vision. Time. has shifted. Past the far edges of her plans. A whole tournament. Countless lives gathered up and dangled on strings. All for. This?

Mira presses her cheek tight against Solarel's, and rubs it possessively against her. Her fingers dig in underneath the wings; if she did not keep her claws so fastidiously clipped she would be drawing blood right now. Instead there is only the application of pressure without release. Like being teased by an acupuncturist in some strange game of foreplay. Tighter, tighter, tighter, building and then... nothing. Her tail swats with performative heaviness against Solarel's thigh.

"This is what you sounded like by the way," Mira sighs and peppers that gorgeous neck with kisses, "Such a far cry from who you were when we met. Or the woman who brought the Bezorel to this tournament, for that matter. When I saw you, I..."

Hesitation. A war of conversations plays out in the waterfalls of her eyes. One where she says too much, and all at once. One where she says too little, and never at all. One where--

"No. I will not apologize. We wound up here. I am content. Nevertheless I. I regret. Regret that. That I could not. That I did not. See a path. Conceive a plan that asked less of you. That hurt you less. There are. Limitations to my power. How shameful."

Her whiskers twitch. Her eyes stare without quite piercing, much like her claws. Her ears pivot atop her head, but not to bend to the sounds of the mummified husk of a creature she'd sought to destroy rising up out of the dust in search of revenge, but solely to catch every creak of muscle and the sounds of wind through those perfect blade-wings, to hear truth in breath and heartbeat and the parting of lips before words begin. There is 'speak not to the outsider' and there is 'speak not'. And those are very different commandments indeed.

But what words gift her ears it does not change reality. It does not change tactics. Time has shifted. It has shifted, and the world demands recognition. To lose herself in the moment she'd tried to freeze meant dropping all the rest of them into the dirty piles of dead nanobots. A testament to her own foolishness mixed in with the folly of Empire.

How dare it. How dare it. That worthless trash heap! These insufferable ghosts! How dare it survive even as scrap when her Gods-Smiting Whip had not?! How dare they pick the memory of stupid, tasteless power over her beautiful Selin's masterpiece?!

"Darling," she chirps through sudden bared teeth, "Lover. Starlight. So. La. Rel~"

Finally, release. Her claws are sharp enough to pierce after all. Her teeth are sharper still. Lover's marks, lover's fury, lover's faith. Her tongue is rough, and sweeter than honey.

"Fly us closer, if you please. If it is not too much trouble. I. Desire. To walk the mountain. With you."

"I've always loved the Gods," she said. She couldn't help it; the words just had to be on the outside now. She felt like she'd explode if she kept them in.

She spoke even as she ducked under a slashing claw, wings wrapping around them both as they fell into a free dive. One snapped out, angling the flow, then a second, breaking momentum hard, legs swinging in front - and then extending straight behind her so that she could pass through the narrow gap of the Aeteline's legs. She hit the ground at a sprint, building momentum to hit the air again, passing the shockwave of her landing into the force of her next flying leap.

"Each of them is adapted to its landscape, to its context. They're specialized against each other, against the wilderness, against the damage and scarcity required to survive long term. Specialized against us. As time went on battle became less and less of their lives. From the ground it made them feel impossible. As the Aeteline it made them feel weak. And I hated that they felt weak, because they were so beautiful -"

She twists, turning her wings upwards, falling like a shot dove. The sword of flame crashes down, just missing her. She drinks in the heat and rides the thermal, exploding up out of her dive into a whirling corkscrew that takes them up behind the Aeteline. The wrong weapon for this battle.

"But!" she laughs wildly as her wing blades carve gashes along the Aeteline's back on her descent, "the specialization for peer combat came at the cost of being able to fight infantry! Against the Bezorel we would be targeted and destroyed in seconds but against this -" Solarel flipped out of her dive and landed again on the ground. Her wings glowed and flashed, breaking in half, returning to the form of swords. The physical silver sword she brought up into a fencing posture as she faced down the mad metal giant. The gold digital sword she left in Mirror's hands where she left her behind the Aeteline, with a clear view of the rents in the metal torso where the data core was exposed. "- against this," said Solarel with the serenity of the samurai she loved, standing alone on a windswept plain, "I can fight as an equal."

Isabelle hands the cup over, putting trust in the hastily scrawled "Adriana" on the lid to see it reach its ultimate destination.

And then just ... waits.

She stands there, rocking on her heels, fingers brushing the hilt of her sword. It seems so strange to have to do nothing whilst, in front of her, the two women hack away at the server racks that are protecting one of her allies. But Matty's words stop her from committing to anything more drastic.

Would we really do anything right now? I mean, we don't have Emberlight anymore. And Marcina does have a gun.

Still. Isabelle finds herself gritting her teeth. Considering, seriously considering, how a fight might transpire here. How she could, with the right precision, disable her opponents, or at least disarm them. Even knowing that she doesn't have the protection of several tonnes of superdense alloys. Or the power of a CFD behind her.

It's crazy. It's insane. It's stupid.

But something is wrong. She can feel it, like a tingle on the back of her neck. Something is coming.

What? Where did that idea come from?

She glances up and down the empty corridors behind them. And grips the hilt of her sword tighter.

Smokeless Jade Fires answers with laughter, and with her teeth. They are as sharp as thought, as intention, as domination. They are birds; she is the thing that cats do dream of. They are spirits; she is that which demands submission from the other side of the world. This was an inevitability, a weight that deepens with each passing flick of the wrist and gnashing of the jaw.

Yield! Bare your throat! Submit!

Do you not understand what you face, little birds? The predator heart of the hopes of all Hybrasil! The goddess in the five boxes which are opened, one by one, to bring about a happy ending! The power that Dolly puts her hope in day after day! The power that Whispered Promise entrusts with her worldweaving!

She burns and she burns with the name that is Smokeless Jade Fires, until she receives the submission that she craves.

---

"STOP THAT!"

It's shrill, angry, and more than half a yowl. It's a bluff from a small, well-rounded kitten. It's the flailing of a paw when you're trying to fend off a sibling intent on bowling you over. And it's the only card that Dolly has got in her hand.

"Were you raised in a nest? Just s-stop it with the cutting, and the hacking, and-- do you have any idea how expensive this equipment that you're going to just chop into is? The, the... back me up here, I, uh, I don't actually... it looks expensive? Right? Difficult to source? Do you want to try using your words, or, maybe? Asking? Put it down! Don't-- I said quit it!! Why are you like this?!"

She spreads her arms, looking from Sam to the Tall One to the figures in the background, the picture of an aggrieved High Priestess dismayed by a lack of decorum and appropriate behavior. The only thing she has left to be, because explaining ferns--

"I expected better from someone who wore that fantastic Syzerpaws dress!!"

Dolly

“Did you not watch your own broadcast that you worked so hard to hack, little kitten? Oh, or perhaps you were not fully told of your own plan. Mayze Serpaws herself invited me here to your little station right before she launched her broadcast. Why, I’m sure that an upstanding citizen and masterful pilot as herself didn’t want criminals to escape unscathed.”

Adriana laughs and punctuates it by slicing a piece of server equipment in half and then kicking over the bottom, forcing you all to scamper out of the way. Sam shrieks and the tall woman crosses her arms from a safe distance.

“Well, come on then. I’m sure she expects you to make a daring escape, or some imperious demands. You are the priestess are you not? I expected you to curse me with the fury of your goddess if I took one step further!”

This, though, is perhaps the wrong sort of fate to tempt. For as she finishes and strides into the room while Marcina covers her rear, the whole space shakes again, with yet another mecha landing.

Angela Victoria Miera Antonius has arrived.

***

Matty

“She’s here, go go go go go!”

You shout into the mic, and only after your enthusiasm, do you hear the sound of Slate groaning in the other room and quickly toss your coat over the door to help block sound. It’s fine, the room is hot anyway, you don’t need to be wearing anything on your top half. And you don’t want to wake Slate in your enthusiasm!

***

Isabelle

You are left with that uneasy feeling, which you can tell is linked to your nanobots. But it’s growing lighter, not heavier. And whatever you might have pursued on that matter is interrupted by Adriana’s speech. Which is followed by the station suddenly shaking from a mecha landing and then a moment later a hissing tornado bursts out of the ceiling and kicks the gun out of Marcina Villajero’s hands as Matty shouts “go go go” in your earpiece a little too loudly!

It goes flying down the hallway, and Marcina begins engaging with the catgirl that’s suddenly jumped her. Rather calmly to her credit, she doesn’t scream or fall over, and instead she’s got her arms up to protect her face and neck in a defensive posture as she backs herself up into a wall to try and stun Kiriala.

The other staff are not sure what to do, and one of them stupidly holds the coffee like it’s a sacred talisman that will protect him.

You’ve got a chance to try and take control of the situation.

***

Jade

You are playing a game of hunting. You are the hunter. You were always made to be a hunter. The drones scatter from your bite. And the malicious intent that you had touched is concentrated on something else. And so you become the hunter and the net all at once. That nothing will escape. That nothing will break free. You are to be served, and each bird, each foolish, idiot bird, must be taught to bow in turn.

***

Mirror and Solarel

The skeleton that was once the Aeteline roars as the metal is rent. It is not a loud roar, but a deep one, a roar of grinding metal mixed with the buzz of impossible energy. A crystal fire core exposed to a crystal fire explosion that defies the way that atoms and molecules are meant to work.

The brush of its flame blade creates strange winds, air currents that want to rise only to be pulled back down. The radiation of the drives is unhealthy, incompatible with the regular universe.

But that radiation, aids the skeletal beast. Energy flows through it fron the strange baleful core, stitching the metal back together as Solarel lands on the ground. But it is no more instant than the changing nature of time in this place is instant. It grows and flashes, the damage coming and going as things shift from creation to destruction.

To Solarel, it raises its flaming blade once again, and takes a step to bring it crashing down with all the thunder and fury that it can muster. If you are struck, you will die and be reborn and experience the blow a hundred thousand times until eventually the radiation of the drives fades over the years and the space becomes safe and sane once again.

But to Mirror, the back of the beast that was once a god is exposed. Its core is open and freely flowing to sustain what metal alone could not bear. While you, you hold a golden knife in your paws. You have but to walk the mountain.

There are limits to imagination, you know. Mira has been gifted a perfect position. Solarel has put a golden blade in her hands, as good a gift as her very own heart. Mm. Correction. That is more or less what she is holding, in actual fact. But still. But still? But still. What is she to do with these gifts? For all her bluster she is not and has never been a huntress. She has never stood astride one of the Great Beasts, and for all she has tried to imagine this moment that is not the same as being able to picture it.

The core is exposed. What does that mean? If she pierces it she will expose her arm to raw crystal fire. Possibly worse? She does not want to die. She does not want to lose and need to replace it. She does not want to lose it and find out it cannot be replaced because of the strange curse of a god. She wants to lose her partner because of her own hesitation even less. Nonetheless, for a moment she cannot picture it. So all she does is shift her feet and hold the sword.

"Solarel?"

The sound of her voice dies before it reaches her ears. But in this place of melting possibilities and confused air currents, it carries down below and all around her into a hundred different cameras. She is certain she is heard. She can see herself being heard. This is speech that is solely for other ears, other hearts to listen to. Just as well.

"Do you remember my words at the fashion show? I asked you to watch me. I told you. Told you I would show you. Show you my dreams. And I... have. But I spoke of something else, as well. In another voice, and to other people. I... only just understood my own riddle. I think."

It had not been her intention, when she conceived her final dress. The battle was meant to be over by now. But still. But still? But still. All of a sudden she sees it, as clearly as if she'd written it into the schematics herself. A Huntress? A Mercenary? A Knight? No. All of these, and more. Why did the Children of Hybrasil carry so many names, if not to use them all? This. This is how she hunts. This is how she walks the mountain.

"When! You are brave enough to put the body ahead of your own sense of cleverness? You can do... THIS."

Her dress was made to be the melding of the three great cultures. Part of that meant that it was composed of nanomachines. Mira had no claim to mastery of these mysteries. Irrelevant. She had two things to replace it. First: a desire to express love that overrode the need to maintain her own sense of aesthetic purity. And second: a device she has worn as a pendant ever since the moment she first became aware of it. Back when it had almost killed her. The container for the Geist that Solarel had infected the Gods-Smiting Whip with.

Her perfect dress is dissipating. Flowing up her body, lace turned to liquid silver that flows into the shining golden sword and fades into immaterial nothingness. Every thread that disappears from her body returns in the shape of the tip of a longer and longer blade. It does not gain mass, does not change shape into something more suited for wielding its new size. It simply becomes longer. Longer and longer and longer, thin and delicate and deadly. A needle worthy of a god. And flowing through it, poison.

There is nothing left of her dress except for the veil and the train, which drape across her body like the whispers of an old song. All of her spots, all of her beauty, and all of her imperfections are bared to the open sky and the scars of the Nine Drive System. But she has no name for this last technique. It would be laughable to call it a technique in the first place. All she does is drop her gift, and watch it pierce the core of a God.

It stabs all the way through to the ground beneath it, where its length unravels. A masterpiece fit for a bride pools at Solarel's feet.

This, at least, is no surprise. This is as natural to her as the beat of her heart - and that's what makes it special. On Roevg, every gift is returned. Every blow is answered. Mastery lies in transformation - to take what someone else has given you and make something new of it. Some part of her would always have been wondering if Mirror did not answer her sabotage, but to see it now returned even more beautiful than she had imagined... Zaldar herself could not have done better.

She had no choice but to answer in kind.

She steps forwards into the shimmering spike of Mirror's dress, her sword, where it pools in front of her. She draws the spirits to herself, and they come swiftly to their old mistress. As she steps forwards into the final duel against the Anemoi she wears Mirror's dress, shaped to her body, shining in bridal white. Her katana is in her hands as she faces down the sword-wielding giant, still deadly even as its crystal fires gutter and burn low.

The blade crashes down. She half runs, half scrambles away and for a moment it seems like the fire has caught her. Red races along her dress, up her body - but not fire, a reconfiguration of colour, so hot it burns into orange at where the light catches it. This, too, was a colour for brides. The sword of gold runs through the dress, merged into it, tracing from her heart outwards a network of golden thread in intricate, moving designs. As she crouches so does the golden thread curl into the shapes of a fierce tigress. As she leaps it snaps into the shape of a snake. A sprint takes her to the rising wrist of the Anemoi, dress trailing behind her in burning ribbons, golden thread unraveling into the air as she goes. Her silver sword raises high -

Too slow. The Anemoi is perfect. It was ready for this too, a sudden and violent backhand smashes into Solarel and in an instant she's gone in a burst of bloody rose petals, falling through the sky like teardrops.

There is an awful silence. Golden thread lingers in the air. As it falls it patterns into words, lying across the grass like an epitaph.

BEHOLD MY GLORY...

But those weren't the words that were said out loud. Those were "レグナムカエロラム エトジェヘナ……"

The Aeteline swings around, raising its blade. It does not understand. It never learned this language. It had no need to. But that's why Solarel uses it now - the Sage Zaldar said Speak Not To The Outsider.

It sees its target standing distant on the field.

Only golden thread wraps her now, surrounding her in falling, glittering spools. The crimson wedding dress is gone, falling on the white ash in a rain of petals. She is unhurt. She speaks again in her strange language, turning and pointing at the Aeteline with her extended blade, and as she does the golden words on the ground below her snap into a new configuration.

ONE WHO HAS BEEN GIVEN EVERYTHING
GIVES YOU HER ULTIMATE TECHNIQUE
TWO LAYERS OF DEFENSE
TWO POINTS IN HEALTH
TWO STRIKES FOR VICTORY

The Aeteline bought its sword up. It was ready. It would resume this fi-ht a-d --en -- --ou-

"Omae wa mou shindeiru," said Solarel, turning away, closing her eyes as the skeletal head of the Aeteline shifted, severed diagonally, and fell to the ground.

Isabelle watches as Kirala leaps down to attack. Listens as Adriana gloats as the server rack sparks with her strikes. Feels the ridges of her own sword as her hand grips it so tightly that her knuckles go to white.

And then she squeezes her eyes shut.

Why aren't we fighting? This is the moment, isn't it? Matty said so!

They're waiting on us. We can't let them down!

... can we?

She takes a shuddering breath.

This is scary. But look at Adriana. She's really just hamming it up. Even in danger she's finding what fun she can. Can't we do that? We did that in the arena with Solarel, that was the whole point of the fight! Why can't we do it now?

Isabelle grimaces.

This isn't like the arena. This is real life. It has real consequences. We used to treat everything as some sort of competition, never really took the other people seriously as people, and look at all the pain we caused - and that was just in the arena. We can't treat this stuff like a game.

Not to mention we could actually be hurt too. Pipes up one of the quieter Isabelles.

So, what, we do nothing then? Let everyone get caught?

It's our duty to do it.

Nobody said doing Good was going to be easy.

But ... we have to do it anyway. Don't we. Otherwise, it's only talk. This whole idea of trying to be better falls apart if we don't have the resolve to follow through ...

Eyes still shut, Isabelle frowns.

Remember ... it's just like dancing.

A memory. Her hand grips an epee. Smaller, younger. Looking up into the helmeted face of her instructor.

There's a rhythm to any fight. Be it with a single partner, or in a group. Like in dancing, you must anticipate your opponent's moves, flow to meet them where you need to be. Like in dancing, your footwork, grace and agility will be your tools.

Isabelle's eyes stay shut. But her thumb shifts, cracking her azure blade an inch out of its hilt.

Take the first position. Maintain balance into the pilé. Releve. Two demi, one grand. Cambré forward and back. Repeat.

A different class. A different teacher. The same lessons but from another angle. If you were to ask her, there weren't many things she actually enjoyed about her childhood. But dancing was one of them.

Her eyes stay shut. But the lights in the corridor go out.

Steps. One. Two. Three. Bring your energy forward! Sauté into the port de bras.

Blue light arcs in the dark as she opens her eyes at last. She ignores the panicked yells of those around her, people whose eyesight was only now adjusting to darkness. Filtering them out and remembering only the steps she needs to take - as if she'd done them a hundred times before.

The trail her sword leaves in the darkness is a whirling aurora, seeking out a golden counterpart. Cut through the gap. Step to the side. Feel the beat. Parry, twist and push.

Metal strikes metal, once, twice, three times - sparks of light making birthing stars out of nothing.

Shift your feet. Come inside the embrace. Bring your partner to their knees.

A sword clatters to the ground, joining the gun somewhere on the ground as the lights come back on.

Her blade is levelled at Marcina, who - hopefully - is not making any moves to continue the fight with Kirala.

"Fury is the wrong emotion here." she says, addressing a freshly disarmed Adriana. "But if you wish a daring escape, I am happy to provide one in lieu of a goddess. And in exchange for wrath, please accept my determination."

"In point: these people are under my protection. And we are leaving."

If a ping on a console could sound self-satisfied... well, it's not just a console. It's an entire symphony of little feedback noises, played in harmony to mimic the opening of White Panther, Green Dragon. Dolly spins around, dives at the machine, and snatches out the glove, hugging it close to her chest.

"Good girl," Smokeless Jade Fires says, and her smile is the smile of the huntress that has devoured a flock of birds. "Now, I believe... what have you been up to? Turn around, present." The priestess turns in the almost-dark, the lights of emergency panels and buttons flickering, enough to see the shapes of two panicking technicians and a sword flying out of the hand of her adversary. "Well, then. Here's your opening. Go, now, and don't stop until you see our Angela."

The glove Dolly sticks down her front, because she's going to need two hands to pry the ruins of the door open and then to run with both Sam and Tall. She'll hurtle down that almost-night corridor like a shot! And then, whatever happens next, it will happen with them under her cult's protection! Because that, that is the power of the high priestess of the goddess!!

Smokeless Jade Fires burps alien codesong, and licks her lips. She will have to figure out what this is, and whether to release it from the crucible of her star-stomach. Not with that insufferable trickster-engineer, though. With someone who knows how to treat a victorious goddess appropriately. And... well, now that matter is decided, she can focus her attention, her mind of blue razors, to exactly how she is going to reward her Dolly.

Gleaming, sharp and aching with love, she races along the walls as Dolly shoots out of the room like a spear, made of angles and lines, luxuriating in how she can show off. And if this sword-wielding maniac didn't want a shoulder to her hip, she shouldn't have been threatening people with the aforementioned swords!!

Jade

There was calm. Before you turned to your Dolly. The presence faded as quickly as it rose, and the spirits you have eaten are strange, but they are not deadly on their own. You can hold them, digest them, do with as you please. Perhaps that will be an adventure for another day.

Dolly

You burst out with your new crew in tow, Jade cheering you on. You have enough time to see Isabelle holding Marcina at swordpoint, and Kiriala trying to catch her breath as she rolls around to get off the floor. Other staff at the station are too stunned to do anything, all standing in shock after coming from a job that does not typically entail violence.

You skid over the servers, land on smooth floor, and the Terenians behind you start running out of sheer inertia. And then, then Ksharta pops up in the middle of the hallway and shouts “this way, Dolly!” and unlike the others she’s a little late in coming but this means that she’s not tied up or fighting or otherwise in the midst of chaos herself. That makes hearing her voice a wash of relief. There’s an exit route, there’s someone who knows where she’s going.

As you get further out and the crowd thins, a few employees try to stop you, at least to get in the way and ask what’s going on and where you’re running off to so fast, but Sam shouts something garbled at them that sounds like “fire drill!” and they get out of the way.

And finally, as you round a corner, you see Angela, who’s guarding the entrance with the tripcaster crossbow you once used to capture her.

“You’re lucky, little priestess, that I still think this is fun, ay. You wish for a gallant escort. So I will be forced to carry you out I think.”

She grins and, before you can quite realize what’s happening, she once again hefts you unceremoniously over her shoulder, right in front of your new Terenian friends!

“Hm, everyone here will not fit in the Barn Owl though, we’ll need to get some additional transport” she adds almost as an afterthought.

***

Isabelle

“You know, Isabelle” says Adriana. “One of the mistakes I think business leaders use is comparing their work to combat. I’ve done both so I think I have a good sense of the two.”

She grins, a grin that says she’s enjoying herself immensely. “Business works best when it’s handled methodically, and, for my taste, openly. Do you know, while I’m on this…” she steps a bit to the side and takes the coffee that one of the useless employees is holding up for her. “...one of the best ways to gain power in business is to give it out. Be the person that helps other people succeed and then they’ll be happy to help you when you need it. Doubly so if you’re earnest and actually do that out of friendship without telling them you expect the quid pro quo. It’s one of the grand ironies of these things.”

She takes a sip of the coffee, sniffs, wrinkles her nose. “Ugh, a cut rate distraction to boot. I’m shocked you lured so many people with treats this poor. Next time, tell the Fisher cat I expect a Murzon blend or I’m not coming.” She grins, takes another step around you. “At any rate, the things people think they need to do for business, all that cunning, deception, decisive action and sudden strikes to annihilate anyone who threatens you…”

She tosses the coffee, lid flying off, right at Kiriala, pulls out a rose from her outfit that was actually a knife and uses it to parry your sword out of the way, and begins sprinting down the hallway, calling behind her “...those are the things you need for a fight! Marcina, distract them!”

For her part, Marcina gives you an apologetic grin and simply stands in the way with the opening provided by your sword, ready to dodge or go for a body hold if you thrust inexpertly.

***

Mirror and Solarel

At first, there is uncertainty. Time dances tantalizingly before you, the strike is done and undone, the core pierced by the needle and then restored, pierced and then restored.

But even within a realm of ghosts and broken laws of matter, there is change. With every cycle, the energy of the remaining crystal fire drive leaks and wanes, merging with the surrounding radiation. With every cycle the animating force behind the Aeteline weakens. It moves less. The arms slump and cannot raise themselves. The legs collapse. And at last, that baleful green light fades to nothing amid the wind, the water, the leaves, and the nanobots.

It is right that ancient hate lay itself to rest in the face of unrestrained love.

Moreover, around you, the camera drones are stilling, falling to the earth and working inexorably to rest even as they fall up and down in ever smaller cycles. Was that truly all connected to the Aeteline, or was there help from Jade within the network?

The world is not normal. What has happened here will not easily be undone. The power of combined crystal fire drives will make this a place where physics becomes exceptionally exotic for years to come. There are rumors of crystal fire accidents that are still sealed centuries later, though they are usually small, shipwrecks and crashes and the like.

But the world is no longer filled with malevolent will. There is no place for it to rest, no center of power for it to congregate. Only a broken hulk and a strange, shifting world.

A pressure you did not know was present is released, and you can breathe normally for the first time. The wind is gentle, the hum of change calmer. It is not safe to linger long, but you should celebrate your victory.

***

Matty

You take the claw you had nervously been chewing on out of your mouth and let out a sigh as you let a big shudder take your whole body and then stretch.

You had to pull out the audio feed for a bit. The fighting was a bit too stressful to listen to, and there were too many people doing too much. But you can see Dolly rushed out while Isabelle still hasn’t moved. And, more importantly (you admit guiltily to yourself), the camera network is starting to come back. Everything in the blast region is dead still, completely gone in fact, but camera drones from other parts of the planet have been moving inward and most have reached the edge of the blast radius and are prepared to show some feed of the result, though nobody seems keen to move anything from outside the blast inside it.

Silence. For once, the same as peace. Tranquility as deep as the light of a distant nebula, visible for half a night and from a single planet if one happened to be sleepless and wise enough to tilt their head toward the stars, perchance to see something they might share with company they had not intended to keep.

...Khhh. Mira hisses softly, and clicks her tongue against her teeth. As a final gift it lacked, mmmmnnnn, finesse? She'd thought the result would have been more explosive. More color. Or less. Or. Well. Different. Simply... different. This was the problem in chasing too many fish at once. An ultimate attack is not usually an art project for a reason. Too many sub-goals increases the risk of tainting the final result.

Her train flutters delicately behind her as she descends from the top of the wreckage with the careless, hopping grace of a, well, of a cat. She is unhurried and unbothered in the moment, taking the lines that seem the most fun or that create the most beautiful motions in her mind, but always and without stopping bringing her closer to the ground. Closer to Solarel.

In terms of impact she could not say she was disappointed. They would fear this spot for years. They'd study it for years after that. Picking through the pieces, sorting through the implications, and (she hoped) simply marveling at its strange beauty. Art was always more her talent than science. What she'd learned was only ever to better chase a vision. What mattered was that this couldn't be forgotten. And though it might get covered up, it wouldn't be ignored.

The Kiss of the Comet. Her fangs against the throats of Empires. Secret and yet deep enough to bleed, she thinks. No, it's not bad at all. And watching the world decide to fall apart, and then to fall un-apart was not bad for visual impact. She'd done better with dresses in the main. But still. Good. It looked good. Felt good. It was only disappointing because she could not get her choice of monuments in place.

Hop hop hop, descent, descent, descent. Mira traipses down the arm of the Aeteline as a maiden cloaked in moonlight crosses a flight of stairs. Beneath her, her ballroom. Beneath her, her destiny. Beneath her, her reward. She is close enough now to see the look on her lover's face. Her liquid eyes alight at every little tick of wonder, of happiness, and of relief. Silence. Even now, silence. Her paws make no noise on the shattered metal as she crosses the smoldering mecha down to the site of the final moment of the final battle. It was silence, the same as peace.

...In the end, optimal. Optimal outcome. Absolute and inarguable. It would not be hard at all to guess at what went on here, but the Nine Drive System had detonated before its final secrets could be made public. Without even a shred of hard evidence, investigators would be forced to conclude that this could be the result of Tail Nine coming into contact with the Aeteline's own crystal fire drive, and the confluence of those energies would be marked as the cause of this bizarre moment. And as long as that stayed plausible it would be enough. Someone would eventually make the argument just to dodge more questions about how someone like Mira of the Fisher Clan managed to walk something as dangerous as the Ninetails straight through every check and regulation all the way to the finals of the galaxy's most important peacekeeping event.

But still. If she could have chosen. She would have preferred to leave something of her Gods-Smiting Whip behind. A quiet skeleton wrapped around its quaint controls, forever still. Proof that she had flown, and how. Proof of the love that had carried her through the stars. It was not to be. The price of channeling all of that power directly was that Slate's masterpiece have disintegrated where the terrifying God of the Imperial Court had merely died. And without even that much, the Whispered Promise was no longer even a pilot.

"Ha. Do you hear that, Slate? You're fired."

Her sarcastic laughter is the first music of the scene. The first act that dares to break the silence. But this is also peace. Mira's feet touch the ground at last. She stands side by side with Solarel. And then, front to front. Together they complete her final dress again. Arms at each others backs, the warmth of their bodies seeping into one another.

They kiss as anime teaches us that all princesses should kiss: in the soft light of the dawn that represents their triumph over evil. With grace and softness that pulls their lips into one another's, and then apart, but only to taste new flavors on new horizons across each other's softness. It is the kiss that sheathes swords at last, and dares to look for a place on the mantle to hang them up until one day adventure calls and they are needed again. It is the kiss that promises to stay. It is the kiss that carries the excitement of the word 'Tomorrow'.

"This." says Mira in a breathy voice that radiates contentment, "This is my victory. The first of this entire tournament."

"And what will you do with your victory, champion mine?" said Solarel, playful - and restrained. There was much that she could be doing with such an embrace but wasn't, but this time it was not awkward introversion that held her back. It was a virtuous surrender; a principled acknowledgement that her defeat would not teach her anything if she did not allow herself to be taught. The Code of Zaldar had expectations of the defeated as well as the victorious.

So defeat held her hands as still as any rope. But, as with hands bound by rope, that did not mean they were not there to be used.

"In defeating me you have defeated my people," said Solarel, tilting her head as though she craved another kiss - one that was not hers to take. "In defeating my people you have defeated the entire galaxy," she liked the rhythm of the words, the repetition and realignment. She liked the voice she could use in this moment, the only freedom left to her - no, demanded of her. She spoke because it had been the first command of her Whispered Promise. "In defeating me - did you know my wish?"

The playfulness flitted away from her. "It was to hold the tournament again, but each pilot would be assigned to a random god. Mechanics would have time to make modifications of course, time enough to adjust your controls... but... why I wanted it was because it was the only way I could imagine to really have fun fighting again. With the Aeteline, it felt like I was trapped in a solved equation and there was nothing I could do but improve until I broke. Even when I was piloting other mechs it felt like I was stealing victories using techniques that would never work against the bar I set for myself, and anything I did to have fun would come at the cost of risking losing and having to stop fighting entirely. Maybe for good. I envied all my opponents so much, being free to express themselves with their gods rather than obliterating themselves in service to their gods..."

She sighed. Even through all the toxicity that had gone into it, despite how wrong its premises had been shown to be, it still hurt to give voice to and give up on a dream. "That was my dream. Endless battle, freedom, experimentation, exploration, transformation. Please, tell me of the wish that defeated it."

"I wished for a planet."

Mira's eyes do not glitter, and her ears do not flex. There is no little twitch in her whiskers, and her tail remains elegantly straight, and uncurled. No mirth has seeped into her voice. She wraps her fingers around Solarel's wrists and guides her hands up her bare hips, to put them to work against her fur where it meets the train that is all that is left on her of her original outfit.

A kiss, once. Soft and quick. A kiss, twice. Gentle and only on the lips. A kiss, three times. Gentle and loving but without heat.

There is no humor in this moment. No playfulness. No joke. Her eyes flick away and find the ground. Guilt. Inadequacy. They lift again. Stubbornness. Determination.

"Newly constructed. At the edge of the known frontier. My demand was for all three great civilizations to take part in its creation. The labor is important. The effort. The... cost. I want it to hurt them. I want it to teach them. This," she raises Solarel's arm with her own to gesture to the warped space around them, "My monument to destruction. Death of the Tournament. That..."

She dual-gestures again, this time toward the sky where the stars watch down on them from their hiding places.

"My monument to creation. Birth of home. It will take a very, very long time to finish. But as soon as it is livable, I will be there. I will draw battle to myself, and I will rest, and I will build, and I will sew, and I will learn, and I will watch the stars. And I will leave. And I will return. Every time. At long last. There will be. A place. To find me."

A fourth kiss. Warmer, hotter, the absence of breath. The briefest scrape of a tongue. A deep, deafening purr that crawls up one throat and down another. And then, a parting.

"Until it is finished. Until it is perfect. Until it is my ultimate proof of what we all may do together, when our passions combine and the isolating forces that drive us to desperate, pointless yearning are as conquered as I can manage in the limits of my power. When my Home is finished growing, then I..."

A quiet smile. Eyes as deep as rivers, glittering with the scales of a thousand imagined fish.

"I will step away, one last time. When that day comes I will leave, and not be seen again by anyone who knows my name. I will step onto the hidden pathways and I will allow myself to return to stardust. On that day. I would bid you come with me."

That's it, then. Mira's wish is nothing more and nothing less than her entire life, lived as fully as she can make it. Not endless battle, but endless possibility. And at the end of possibility?

Peace.

Isabelle eyes up Marcina, her sword point steady as the other woman moves in her way. For all the fact her opponent is unarmed, this is a classic standoff.

On the one hand, any thrust Isabelle makes is going to be far from inexpert. On the other, it's because of this that Isabelle finds herself stuck - after all, what would be a winning blow, or even a disabling one, on a twenty meter mech could very well be fatal on a living being ... and come on - there's fun, and then there's just plain old dangerous.

"Look, Marcina - this is a good delaying job you're doing already. Adriana has a head start, enough for her to get some space, but there's no sense in drawing this out. After all, once Kiriala there recovers, it'll be two against- DISTRACTION SPELL!"

And with that, Isabelle flings a muffin into Marcina's face - before pushing past her and running after Adriana.