Anarion

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Mirror

You bring the God-Smiting Whip out from a small cave where you were deployed and take in your surroundings, nine tails searching for any threats. Heavy rainforest. You’re in the wettest part of the biome. Huge leaves and vines hang from the trees over multiple layers. Perfect cover, but the ground is a wet slog to move through and a careless flight will snag your tails and give away your position. There’s a river system nearby with an open canopy and bright sunlight reflecting off it, but you’ll be exposed if you venture into it. No sign of your opponent. She could be right next to you or miles away and you wouldn’t know it.

Here’s what you do know. Pilot matchups are announced a day in advance to offer some time for mental preparation and planning. Your opponent Valentina De Alcard pilots the Lonely Star. She’s a new pilot, not known in the scene, but you know she’s an independent originally from a consortium planet called Alcard (you don’t know all that much about TC naming, but being the same name as a planet you’re from probably means that you were one of the first people there, so maybe she’s from an important family or something?).

You might have been to Alcard before if you’ve been doing fashion work in the Consortium for a while, since it’s a stopover to reach both the Outlast and Nadir systems, but you may have just flown past it. It’s not a very big planet and it has a dim sun, but it’s rich in rare earths and manufactures good munitions.

All you know about the Lonely Star from the new pilot info you received is that it’s relatively small even for a gen 3 mecha and that it favors ranged weaponry. You can guess that being so small probably means that it gave up hull space that could have been used for a variety of weaponry and defenses in exchange for being able to put the maximum possible energy from its crystal fire drive into one gun (and possibly into speed now that you think of it).

So, how are you starting off your match?

***

Solarel
Today has been a rough day.

First off, you woke up late and immediately saw that your opponent is another Zaldarian. You’re going against Nierka Stalok, who pilots the Sea Spike. You met her once before leaving while she was a pilot in training. She seemed enthusiastic and high energy back then. Now, she’s a hardcore loyalist for the new Zaldarian Empress Naelkai II, and all she’s really got on you is that you’re the villain and she’s the righteous hero.

So that sounded like waking up to a fight where you’re going to get yelled at a lot for being a traitor without much listening. Then to make matters worse, one of the mechanics bumped into you in the prep hanger and you ended up blowing a hole in the wall next to him that didn’t repair itself so that probably left you a bit spooked and feeling drained before you even got in the cockpit.

Also, your current mecha is also a hunk of junk (does it even have a name?) and syncing yourself with its body makes you feel slow. Not exactly slower than normal, but you’ve experienced the top of the galaxy in Aeteline, cursed though it was, and it’s really hard for “normal” to compare to that sort of high.

When you come out, you’re on the sunset side of the planet, casting everything in deep reds and oranges. The rust tone actually reminds you a little of home too, as many a Zaldarian is naturally this color. Nierka isn’t trying to hide herself at all either. She’s come out of her spot near a small lakebed and is moving herself about ten meters in the air to stand clear and lit by the sunset, her own rust-red god seeming to meld with the light as she shouts a challenge over the comms.

What in the Empress’s name are you going to do?

***

Isabelle

Well, this is awkward. Your matchup is with the famed pirate queen Jacinta Niares, leader of the Red Band Pirates. Except, only kind of maybe. You see, Jacinta is very very wanted. So wanted that even with the protection and diplomatic immunity extended to participants in the arena, she would need to worry about idiots taking a shot at her anywhere she went if her location were publicly known.

It seems, however, that she really wanted to enter this tournament and so she got a lot of people to enter the rookie round under her name. So you’re up against Jacinta Niares number six. Which could be the real pirate queen. You don’t know! It’s also possible that Jacinta herself hasn’t entered at all and plans to take the spot of any of her proxies who advance. Or that statistics just aren’t with you and she’s off elsewhere being Jacinta Niares number eleven or something. But you have to consider that you may be facing off against the famed pirate queen and her berserker gatling style, so you need to be on the edge of your toes here.

Just think about the jokes that the girls back home would make if you get wiped out in your first match. It wouldn’t even disqualify you, but it sure will set the tone. Even if you advance later, it will be “oh Isabelle, I heard your nerves got the best of you,” “Oh Isabelle, try not to trip coming in,” “Isabelle, everybody says you’re slow out the gate, but don’t worry big sister’s got your back!” Before you got in the cockpit though, Luca, Tadeo and Carmella Lozano all gave you a big hug and hopefully that support is carrying you forward as you go in here.

Speaking of going in, you’ve got a dual puzzle to figure out for your match, both identity and terrain. If you really are against Jacinta and her mecha Roar, you need to figure out how to engage without getting blitzed, but you also have to consider that this might not be her and it might have a different loadout (Roar is extremely custom, you’ll know once you engage seriously if you got the real one or not unless she intentionally holds back and throws the match). The second part of the puzzle is how to work this complexity through the terrain. You’ve come into the arena already up high through an elevator that dropped you into the middle of the second canopy layer seven meters in the air. The upper trees are light enough here that you can see the daylight sky partially obscured, but no sign of Jacinta number six yet, and no way to know if she’s above or below you.

She does, however, come over the comms with a voice that sounds like it comes from someone very muscular: “come and get me little mink!”

What do you do?

***

Dolly

Jade absolutely set you up for this arena. There is no way, absolutely no way that this is a coincidence. You cannot come up with any other explanation for why your combat zone would be a stone village cleared out of the forest, in the middle of the night zone, lined with ritual torches along an open if mossy causeway almost ten meters wide that leads to a stone dais set above a reservoir. Almost exactly like a scene in a Hybrasilian pulp novel, in fact. You may or may not even have written a story that used a setting like this for religious rituals…or sacrifices.

At least the stars are beautiful here. You can see both Akar Prime and Akar Secundus high in the sky above you, Akar Prime looking like a gray shadow sprinkled with lights, and Akar Secundus with a slightly red tint to it as it reflects the light of Akar’s older sun. Beside them is a vast sea of stars sprinkling the sky. You’re near the Cerulean Belt here, nearer than you’ve ever been before, and you can see how it got the name as it offers a blue tint like water filled with diamonds to the night sky in a long wide slash of the horizon. It makes you think of old stories about hidden treasures on planets deep in nebulae and signs of the distant gods from ages long past.

But there’s no time for thinking, you’re exposed out in the open like this and you can see your opponent! The Barn Owl, piloted by Angela Victoria Miera Antonius deployed on the opposite side of the causeway. This is actually a really advantageous range for her, not too far away for her guns, but not so close that you can instantly close. The torches paint a clear target too.

You know, if you had time to think, this might make you even more suspicious of Jade. She had expressed disappointment yesterday when you drew an opponent who was piloting a modified gen 2.5 TC mecha instead of the newer gen 3s. The Barn Owl is blockier and less pretty than many others, and someone craving the greatest challenge the Arena has to offer probably wouldn’t look here to start. Though if you underestimate Angela, she’ll surprise you!

So, how do you start your match?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Welcome to the universe of Hybrasil! Named after its civilization of what turned out to be cat people because the idea of huntresses in space-faring suits of armor was the first thing that inspired me to the setting.

Main setting doc

Hybrasil is a sci-fi setting in which various alien civilizations explore the universe, vie with each other, and find love through the medium of small high tech mecha suits outfitted with outrageously high energy generation, hyperdrives, and top class weapons and armor. There are three major factions: the Hybrasilians, a group of cat-like humanoids who hail from a tradition of sacred hunts and advanced biological sciences; the Terenius Consortium, a large faction of loosely allied human-like aliens who focus on interstellar mining and increasingly on technological innovation and entertainment media; and the Zaldarians, rapidly expanding tribes of techno-organic beings who live in the shadow of more sophisticated precursor technology.

This particular game (run using the Thirsty Sword Lesbians system) is focusing on a group of ace pilots competing in an intergalactic arena setting representing their factions against a myriad of others. The winning faction and the winning pilot gain fame, fortune, and have their desires granted (in the faction's cases usually in lieu of having a war over things).

The setting imagines that people in mechas and other spaceships can travel freely from star system to star system, but not necessarily all that quickly, so that exploration from one side of the galaxy to the other is time consuming and risky, but traveling to one or two neighboring systems is a normal trip of a few days each way, most of it spent safely in hyperspace.

Here's a crudely drawn map of the galaxy

This game focuses primarily on the Akar system, which has become the site of the Arena and, being the closest and most real time viewing opportunity, also an interstellar melting pot of the civilizations.

Why mechas?
Well first off, they're cool. But second off, people pilot humanoid-shaped armor suits in this setting because of two things. One, the super cool sci-fi energy generation doesn't scale up without doing weird and exotic things to nearby matter that nobody really wants to tangle with so small ships have the best combat potential because of all the spare energy not used for moving a bunch of heavy stuff around. Two, the piloting tech for the vast majority of pilots is a direct neural interface and so they get better results out of piloting something shaped like them than by trying to pilot a big floating regular geometric shape.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Giri smiles when she reads the prayer strips as she slips into her bunk. Ah, what do these petitioners imagine? Do they think that she'll simply say a few words, perhaps burn a prayer strip and magically everything will be better? Without even being present with the witch whose help they need? The dominion must have some quite odd ideas about magic working for this to be the norm.

But still she smiles because these are sweet petitions from people who are unhappy and after all isn't that what Giriel Bruinstead had dedicated her life to addressing? Now, granted, neither petition seemed obviously remedied by magic (where were all the people who just needed a potion to ease sore feet when you actually wanted the work, hm?). No love potion ever advertised actually worked after all, and Giri suspected that the discontent writer needed something more than her body changed by magic to address her problems.

Besides which, she had some suspicions as to the identity of her petitioners, especially the second one (on a barge like this, with the Red Wolf on the prowl, finding someone hopelessly love wasn't so much a needle in a haystack as it was hay in a haystack, which did complicate that matter).

But it was also late and the petitions were in her nightrobe after all, so discretion was being requested. More discretion than, say, walking across the prow of the deck wearing a jingly jangly collar and asking after who might, perhaps be frustrated with unrequited love and need a witch's aid. No, the thing to do here was to ask the local gods about the matter and go from there. Perhaps, if she were lucky, she might even get some insight from Venus herself. Well, some kind of lucky, when it came to the goddess of love, it was often hard to say if her attention was good luck or bad.

Well, Giri supposed she was opening by burning a prayer strip, but that didn't mean things worked how people thought they did. It just meant it was a good first step and that the gods liked incense. It smelled nice, and consisted of a clear offering, so that was hardly surprising.

Giri's bells jingle as she bobs her head and her nightrobe flutters loosely in the humid air of the river. But she focuses, and perhaps it is her calm amid these things that brings the gods to her door, calm themselves. She will smile when they arrive and offer the prayer strips and ask what news she ought to know about of these matters.

[Giri communes with the unseen, offering a string to the local gods however they may use it. She rolls a 6+2+2=10. She would like to learn the recent history of the prayer strips she found in her nightrobe and also learn something important from the gods, which can surely be merged together into a general explanation as to what's going on.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

All furnish’d, all in arms;
All plumed like estridges that with the wind
Baited like eagles having lately bathed;
Glittering in golden coats, like images;
As full of spirit as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
-Shakespeare, History of Henry IV, Part I

Among all the stars in heaven, there is nothing quite like the feeling of sitting in the pilot’s chair as you start a mecha. The power of the crystal fire races through the machine, causing the metal to thrum deeply with it. The feeling rises up through a pilot, starting in the legs and the thighs and surging through their chest, until the heart wants to beat in time with it. The systems come to life and the pilot receives a rush of data. It feels like growing, or perhaps like the world shrinks. It feels as though nothing could really offer a threat. Not through iron skin and thrusters of blinding white light powered by the crystal fire.

In private, the temptation is equal parts desire to do nothing and to race. To bask in the power, to sit and experience it all, yet to sprint, to set the thrusters to max and fly as hard and as fast as possible to feel no less than the full thrill that the experience offers.

Now stack on the desire to pose for a cheering public, the thought of loved ones back home, and some pre-match jitters to get a slight taste of the feelings of each pilot at the start of an arena season.

The Arena is bejeweled for the beginning of its fifth season. The nanobots have been in constant buzz working upon Hybrasilian bio-engineered seedlings and the result is that the oft-sandblasted arena planet of Akar finds itself covered with the emeralds and sapphires of a lush forest dotted with rivers and lakes. The trees are massive, easily ten stories tall with layers of thick canopy that would allow an enterprising mech to set an ambush without even using a stealth generator. Travel is slow and limited with such low visibility though, causing command of the heights and the waterways to offer a pilot clear lines of sight for combat.

This is how things are arranged for the start of the season. A thousand hidden cameras with mobile AI are placed strategically throughout the forest and accompany every pilot to capture the action. With all new combatants, a hundred small fights will soon by breaking out across the planet. Word has spread not only in TC space so near to Akar, but all the way to the homeworlds of Hybrasil and Zaldaria that the season is starting!

The luckiest, wealthiest, and most cunning patrons of all species are here in Akar, packing the bars and the hotels of Akar Prime and Akar II so that they can watch the live feed ahead of the recordings being sent out by couriers and container ships across the jumps lanes. Word is also spreading that upon Akar Prime, a high fashion house is recruiting pilots to sponsor their clothes and that the competition has brought more than a few illicit interests out from hiding to participate.

Welcome, one and all, to the Arena!

Sunshards

There's something about the way Chen is bundled out of the car. She squeaks, but she's wearing an immaculate black suit cut curvy and busty to accent her breasts and her butt and she knows it. She stands in her little self with confidence and poise, not letting the ropes throw her balance despite having been bundled tightly into the car trunk with Rose.

She gives the foxes a look and they scurry, being careful as they're handling her not to stain or wrinkle her suit as they extract her. One fox offers a delicate hand to help Chen balance, another works her legs so that despite being extracted from the back of a kidnapping car, Chen looks for all the world like she's being assisted out of a carriage by her servants.

She's red and blushing too, but there's something about it that makes it seem like her fluster doesn't reach her core. Instead, she attempts a dainty step around her bonds, then nods at one of the foxes (Blackleaf by the markings, Chen seemed to like that one) and begins leaning on her as a walking aid while the other two start their extraction of Rose. Perhaps it's the serene smile on Chen's face despite her blush that makes her seem so confident as she carefully steps forward to survey the picnic and turns to gaze over her Rosepetal's extraction as well.

Her gaze for Petal is longing, and anyone looking can see that there will be more time alone for them after the picnic is done. Chen quite enjoyed by squeezed into a car trunk with her much larger girlfriend, pressed in tight against her as the ride bumped and bounced them to be even more entwined. There was going to be more time being all wrapped up with Petal to come. She would start slow there, she thought, first have Petal stroke her ears with a soft hand and tell her she's a good girl. But that was fun for later.

Bigger things were fun for even later than that. A smile crosses Chen's face at the thought of a new adventure fighting an army of foxes. In fact, for a moment she simply can't stop grinning about Jessic's mad plan (because think about it, that means Keron is going to have to add handling hundreds of foxes to her sky castle duties and the image of that timebomb eventually going off is just too good not to be worth dwelling on).

And past that, there's the matter of Chen establishing her own little kingdom with her shard's warm glow letting people shift and change themselves to their fancy and all learning to live together that way. Qiu had certainly done something quite special by shaking things up as much as she had, all the princesses were going to be shifting who was doing what (and thank the suns Yin was formally retiring, she was not up to the pressure). Chen would have a front row seat at the table for that, tail swishing all the while.

But right now, there's a moment to live in here. There's a whole picnic laid out with Yue, Hyra, and Kat (who is certainly helping with the setup and has not stolen herself a slice of baloney, stop looking at her mouth that could have been anything, foxes lick their lips for no reason all the time!). There's someone new too, someone who looks like she might be an older, slightly thicker version of Yue, and at that Chen lets out a little squeal of delight! She taps Blackleaf, who nods once and undoes Chen's ropes so she can run over and give Yue a hug, dragging along Petal (whose ropes are distinctly not undone, forcing her into a rapid hop to keep up). "Is...is this? Is this her?!" she cries, wrapping up the taller girl suddenly and tightly.

Only then does she see the huge burrower mask leaning against the wall and do a double take, her ears going up and her tail shooting out. But she doesn't let Yue out of the hug, and her eyes are questioning but sincere. Because right now she's got her Rosepetal, and her friends, and this is going to be the perfect picnic. It might even be a place to make new friends!

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Giri finishes relaying the meaning of the viewing (though Kayala might well have gotten the gist already, the meaning was not exactly subtle). She does smile when she's done. "All those divinings and you had the gods lining up to give you signs, you just had to look up from the teacup." She puts an arm over Kalaya's shoulders then, her collar jingling again but forgotten for the moment. "I'm sorry though. I wouldn't wish my worst enemy to be at the center of Mars' fate and yet here you stand at the center of the signs. The war goddess of the Dominion has placed you in the heart of things and you've got few options left to you. Ven even fewer. The funny thing about fates though is that reading them also changes them. Perhaps you'll do something much more random now because of this information. Or perhaps we've fixed it into being with all the gods lined up so."

Giri pauses for a moment, her arm about Kalaya as the boat swirls over the water and the rains return to their strength. "Know this, when the time comes. I place my friendship above my service. If you call me, I will come if I can. Even if I disapprove of your girlfriend's choices in magic."

As for Red Wolf, she gets the abridged version. They can hardly ignore the whole thing with all the scrying implements out and the extremely conspicuous break in the storm for no other reason. But what Red Wolf hears is much simpler. She and Uusha and Ven will all be vying, Uusha will defeat Ven, Kalaya will side with Red Wolf, and Mars has blessed the whole matter. None of that is false, and of course Red Wolf will draw her own conclusions, conclusions that she almost certainly had drawn already anyway. It will please her to hear that Mars has weighed in on the matter. She doesn't need to worry about Venus, or about how the Rakshasa might influence matters, or about wedding decorations just yet. Those are personal details for the recipient of the signs.

Sunshards

"Jessic!" Chen manages to shout, leaping up with her empty teacup and sprinting out of the cabin to see what's happening. She considers pulling out her phone and texting in righteous outrage, or leaping over the bannister and flying right in Jessic's face perhaps. But then the lightning breath shoots out with a loud crack and the smell of ozone as a whole line of foxes finds themselves grounded and twitching. Chen's heart goes out to them as their poor fluffy tails fly all out of sorts with massive static, poofing up sharply without the regular lustrous sheen of a fully fluffed fox tail. Truly a dire fate.

Moreover, there's Prim, Quick Ji and Blackleaf already carrying darling Rosepetal partially bound on the deck. Gosh and they're working overtime to double up the ropes and make it believable that they've really got her contained. Oh and there's an army of foxes advancing on the both of them, half of them somehow dressed in old-fashioned gangster suits and ties that had been in one of Jessic's animes Chen had briefly watched. Everybody in that one had been really well-dressed but they also drank a lot of alchohol, like a lot, yet never seemed to be bothered by it, and they all had a weird accent and acted all tough. Which is probably why the fox conspiracy had gone for the aesthetic, come to think of it. But the point was, the trio already had Rose and a gang of fox mafia were advancing on Chen.

"We surrender!" she shouted, sheathing her sword and putting her hands down by her side. It was the only thing to do really. The one sure way to minimize electrocuted fox devastation, ensure that Jessic calmed down enough to talk, and get to dress up Rosepetal as a bonus.

Chen flung herself into Blackleaf's arms (she thought it was blackleaf at any rate. She hadn't actually gotten which one was which from Petal, but she figured that Blackleaf was the one with little black tufts on her ears and a black streak down one side of her fiery hair and at any rate she was cute enough to be flung into to preempt the advancing mob). She curled her tail around the fox's leg and gave her a smile that only looked a tiny bit predatory.

"We surrender!" she said again, louder. "Hurry, get us dressed as gifts for Princess Jessic as quickly as possible, before she breathes lightning again. You'll want a palanquin, or at least a platform so you can hold us up over you and she won't attack you first. Oh yes, and you'll need to dress us up. I have it on very good, extremely reliable authority that proper offerings to a dragon have to be dressed up properly. Now last time, my sweet petal was a dainty little shrine maiden and I was dressed up in the poofiest princess dress, but that really doesn't fit the theme you've all got going on. Hm, no what I think Petal needs is a...um...what was it called in the anime, a 'flapper' dress. Made of silk, of course. I see you're already working on gagging her, that's good." Chen leans down from Blackleaf's arms and gives her Petal a gentle pat.

"Don't bother unbinding her, she can hop into any dress you've got for her. Don't make it too long either, stop right at the waist with just some thin silver tassel to really highlight her legs." Now Chen is touching those wonderful, strong legs for demonstration purposes, pulling Blackleaf with her because she's still in a state of surrender of course. "and what color for the main dress, hmm? We could do all silver, but I think it needs a little something more. How about Rose gold for your namesake, my sweet handmaiden? Rose gold with silver tassel, Jessic won't be able to resist a treasure like that. And I know you foxes do wish granting, so be sure that Petal gets all the fanciest embroidery and lace on her body, and I know she'll want it thin and diaphanous hanging on her. Give her a shawl too, but one that doesn't really cover anything, just more thin silk that adds to the mystique. And a headband with a silk veil to cover her face above the gag."

Chen ponders, putting a finger to her chin and twitching her ears as foxes are already scrambling to fetch materials from below decks. "I'll take a suit. I think it's the right thing for this sort of offering, my vacation shirt is too casual. Black please, cut it thin at the waist and wide at the breasts and the butt. One button, no vest, but high collar shirt that's tight and shows off my curves. And don't make the pants legs too long, everybody always makes the pants legs too long for me! Also, get me a tie the same color as the twilight sky, you can manage that right? You'll need to bind me over all that of course, but it's important that I look formal for our dragon princess."

Chen settles herself into her surrender, tail still wrapped around Blackleaf's leg. "Alright, there we go girls, come on, come on, you've got a dragon waiting on you!"

Sunshards

A warm glow suffuses outward from Chen as she reaches out a hand and slowly curls it around the handle of the teacup, smiling at her Rosepetal. She takes her time, lifting the cup daintily, blowing on the steam and letting the warmth of the tea flow into the warmth coming off her face, and only then taking a delicate little sip. Her excited wiggling ears give the game away though, and it's obvious to all involved that she simply wants to stretch out the time that her Petal is held before her like this so that she can take her all in. The way that he skin shimmers under the light of the shard is something special, and not the sort of thing that Chen can get anytime she wants. She grins as she imagines ordering Petal to pose for her the entire time they're entertaining until she can salvage the rest of her paints. But of course she wouldn't deny her or Prim, Quick Ji and Blackleaf from their promised fun.

So, instead she finishes her sip of tea, sighs in contentment, and smiles again. "Of course Petal, take your time, I'll come get you later. But not for a while."

As for the light of that shard. Well, originally she had imagined that she'd do some kind of big shardsplosion. Like, the boat would pull up near the shore, and a thousand monks would all double backflip three sixty on the deck like Master Omets had done initially, and there'd be all this chaos as the foxes tried to throw each other in harms way to make their escape, and then Chen would do a pose and there'd be a big light explosion and suddenly, well she didn't know what exactly, but she thought maybe some of the monks would grow ears and a tail like her, or some of them would suddenly find themselves in different clothes or slightly different bodies maybe. Maybe some of them would just have something new suddenly in their hands, or they'd decide that they had better things to do. While meanwhile all the foxes would go chasing after their thousand and one beautiful dreams and be too busy doing that to hurt each other as they raced off the boat. It wasn't a perfect plan, she was sure some of the monks really wanted to be monks and some of the foxes really wanted to be maniacal fox girls, but she had figured that it would shake things up so much that the ship could dock and they'd get everybody off and running for the hills.

But instead it hadn't gone like that. Chen was still rather fuzzy on the details actually, but she and Rose had raced about the ship putting out fires and addressing cackling foxes and somehow the monks had just all checked their phones and decided that actually this was fine. Chen hadn't seen Master Omet's phone like Rose had, but she got that something had been shared among them all and they were in agreement.

So, that left Chen with all this built up sunshard energy and instead of being a sunsplosion, it had become something more like a suffusion. Gentle rays of golden light were pouring off the tiara on her brow, casting everything in an angelic glow. It was most intense right with her, but even there it wasn't burningly bright. It was a happy, gentle yellow-orange that gave off a friendly pulse every few seconds and warmed everything nearby. It had started with just the ship, but had spread all across it, below decks, and even to the surface. It didn't really seem to be doing anything drastic either. The best Chen could say is that the shrieking, screaming, scampering foxes seem to have managed a more effective departure from the ship than might have been expected despite all the scampering and screaming in the process. But, it did make the tea taste good. Spicy, like she was drinking chai with cinnamon, cardamom, and a little brown sugar, even though there hadn't been time to properly boil those sorts of ingredients.

So, that leaves her sipping her inexplicable chai across from Master Omets, simultaneously completely certain about the place she's made for herself in the world and entirely uncertain about what comes next. "So..." she manages, then fidgets into a different position. "So, it's done then. I um, kept my promise to Cyanis and it was a lot of fun. And I, um, kind of expected thousands of monks to assault the ship, but you didn't, which was really nice. So, Master um, Omets. What now?"

Sunshards

Stop, drop, and roll! Chen clutches the painting to her chest and flings herself on the ship deck around her, landing hard on her shoulder and rolling about like a big cylinder with her prize clutched against her protected by her tightly wrapped arms. In a momen when she's done putting out the fire and protecting what she can of the painting, she breathes again and tries to let her brain catch up to her intinct.

Chen begins taking a look around, the sun on her head still blazing brightly. Okay, half the ship is an inferno. Well, she did take her eyes off all the monks and foxes for who knows how long so she can't really say this result was unexpected. Did she help start it as part of waking her sun up, or was the fox conspiracy as ready with arson as they were with kidnapping? Not that it mattered all that much, as the shrieking of foxes and the crackling roar of the blaze merge together into a general bedlam.

One would be forgiven for thinking that Chen might be panicking at this point. Her very large on-loan cruise ship is significantly more on fire than a few moments ago and everything is in chaos. But no. Chen's grinning. This is, well, it's a problem she can try and tackle by racing about like the wind, and working with Rose. She might not fix it all, sure, but it's just so absolutely physical in nature that she can just go at it the best she can and if that's not enough then that's okay too, they'll pull the foxes out of the water in life rafts for the last leg, just you watch her!

As she takes in the scene, Chen also sees Rose coming around the ship deck, gesturing for the old monk who had landed with her to go indoors. And mmm, she looks so good with her scarf and her bare muscles doing that maid's polite gesture for him to go ahead. Chen wants to linger there and just take in the sight, and gosh wouldn't it be nice to let Rose handle everything? But she figures Rose is imagining the same thing and besides she can't just pull up a beach chair by the pool full of foxes, pull her sunglasses down, and tan to the roaring fire, now can she?

All of that took only a few seconds once she was off the ground, and then a few more for the admiring gaze of Rose. Then, Chen's off like a bolt, blasting across the ship deck at top speed as she flings herself to the main building wall of the ship where there's emergency fire suppression equipment. She slows enough to rest the painting against a wall that's not on fire. She doesn't want it to burn down, but it's fine if the foxes or the monks steal it, so as long as it's not destroyed she's good. Then she lowers her sunglasses (eye protection always important, even in a pinch!), grabs her sword hilt and smashes the glass open, pulling out a huge hose and cranking on the water. The big thing is nearly as big as she is, and as she hefts it over her shoulder, she looks rather like a scaled up version of a little girl trying to heft a garden hose to water some flowers. But this is the whole ship deck and Chen's got magic on her side. She hefts the hose more firmly over her shoulder and takes off into the air riding atop her sword as the water starts rushing through the hose. Surfing on the sword blade, Chen begins spraying across the deck, dousing wood and foxes alike as though a geyser has sprung into being in midair ten feet above the ship deck. She starts working across the deck systemically, first putting out the small fires to contain it, and then working her way towards the core of the blaze.

All the while she's not speaking, but there's a grin on her face and as she goes, she starts laughing and giggling like a madwoman as she hose scours the surface of the ship! All the while, the shard upon her head is glowing and pulsing, gaining strength.

[Chen will defy disaster. She was putting the ship at risk if she didn't do a good enough job, but with showing off her legendary skill as the chosen, the result is a 10 (6+1+2+1).]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Giri breathes out through her nose, smiling. Almost laughing. It's not that Kalaya said anything funny exactly, but she just really nailed what Giri was worried about, saw right through her in fact. So she had to feel kind of rueful about it. That yeah you got me emotion just written on her face for the world to see in this moment.

"Ha you're right." And she finishes breathing out and says it again, really meaning it. "You're right, really right. I worry so much about what people think of me, of my career of my choices, of all the things that others do and have done who share my path that forget I'm just me sometimes. But, you're absolutely right. I don't need to be anybody's curse or their prize, I get to choose for myself what's right."

[clearing Insecure]

Giri walks over to the tea set then, her stance finally a little more relaxed, her collar jingling in time with her natural movements but her attention firmly on Kalaya's tea set. "You know, I don't think the gods abandoned you at all. You called for them and they brought us together, and in a moment of quiet, in a garden even amid a Dominion ship. That's the sign of the flower kingdoms being behind us if I've ever seen it. In fact if what you just said about the Rakshasa is exactly accurate, you've set my mind quite at ease. I was still afraid it might be on the ship, under our noses, but if it's wreaking havoc out there gestures with an expansive hand then it's made a terrible mistake. Because that means we're safe, this crew is safe, and we can figure out a way to hunt it."

Giri looks back at the tea cups again. "Tea reading is one of my specialties, but the trick with divination is that the signs are everywhere. The world is full of gods and spirits, and the heavens above always look down on us. Even if oddly at times" she adds, thinking of Fengye. "So, let's take one more look, shall we?" And Giri takes Kalaya's hand then with her own larger one, bringing the girl to the table as she picks up the little teacup and flings its contents overboard, collar jingle jangling madly with the motion even after she stops. She looks up and she looks out. At the wind, the clouds, the stars, the flight of birds, the sound of her own merry tinkling and she looks for all the signs of Kalaya's fate.

[Divination: 4+3+2=9. Giri learns a truth about Kalaya's fate that Kalaya doesn't know. Kalaya also learns the truth and may clear another condition.]