Anarion

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Solarel

You’ve won the match. Tactical superiority carried the day. The Barn Owl cannot move. It has no ammo, it cannot strike you. Angela concedes and screens come on declaring you the victor. The Boatman of Styx have a congratulatory message waiting for you if or when you care to give them the time of day.

Can you say that Angela has won your understanding? You did not draw your blade upon her, never gave her the satisfaction. To the very end she was denied and her loss was impetuousness in the face of denial. It’s a mistake she won’t repeat twice.

Angela cannot stand, the legs of the Barn Owl are ruined beyond repair, they’ll need to be completely replaced before her next match. She signals to you for a tow to the hangar now that the match is over.

She’s broadcasting out loud as well, a message for you and everyone watching. She’s laughing. “Two losses because I was a fool chasing my last phantom. A hidden weapon like this would have easily caught an over-arrogant goddess. But for you, Solarel, I needed precautions, defenses, and unending vigilance. Ay ay me, I am stupid. I challenged your honor and you dropped a mine at my feet. Ha! Haha! This is no less than I deserve. I know not if we shall meet again, I think you less engaged in the antics of our strange lifestyle between fights than the cats. But I shall watch your fights with interest. And the fights of your former comrades in arms.”

You hear the brief sound of her perusing the match channels from her cockpit, a short electronic beep as she passes through each set. “Hmm, appears that one of your knights surrendered honorably to a Terenian. Isabelle Maria Lozano de la Estrella. Do you know her?”

She knows you won’t answer, but she asks anyway. Terenians are a strange sort.

***

Dolly

Erys Bander loves to pose and show off. There’s a moment, you’re on the ground and not moving, but the match hasn’t ended yet. She has to do her finisher. She has come in and put a foot on you and then make her mark upon Jade. You know it well, Jade’s got the same instinct and the Red Band are famous for this. It’s their calling card to mark their conquests and Erys is, if anything, the stereotype of these pirates. Strong, brash, proud and full of life.

You kick, there’s a muffled clang of metal upon metal. She staggers and you’re upon her. In your hands are the binding chords, Jade’s last weapon. You wrap them about the neck of the [Grip of Dishai] and you pull as tight as you can, the whole of your weight hanging upon her.

Here, in this moment, you can think for just a second that you could win the match. If you could but hold, if Jade had all her strength, this would be a victory, a surprise reversal of a reversal to clinch the victory and remain undefeated.

But Jade is not there. She departs like a firefly. The lights within the cockpit flicker and dim. The eyes of the idol dim too and the screens all go out. You disconnect from your neural interface. Within the cockpit, you rest in darkness. No torches burn, no visions show you dancing and whirling in the starlight and no hands lift you up or press upon you to reward you for your victory.

But neither does the fist of Dishai crush you to oblivion. Even without any direction for the motivating force of your drive, you’ve locked arms tight holding the chords in place and Erys cannot move without tearing her own head from her neck. She growls over the comms. She rages in perfect stillness, and at last she disconnects her own neural interface.

The match is a draw, both pilots were rendered incapable of combat at the same time.

You can both withdraw from the field after, though it’s a tangled affair. Erys can’t move until you can, and without any sort of assistive piloting interface, you need to open your cockpit for vision and manually control the idol in a very slow and awkward process that requires you to put each movement into a physical backup interface that can operate without any sort of AI assistance (you can’t imagine anyone choosing to pilot their mecha this way normally, they would have to be some kind of savant).

You’ll need to slowly release the arms and undo the chords before you can let yourself down and let her power back up. Erys will, of course, offer taunts the whole time. After all, you just can’t let her go, can you?

Jade

Do goddesses dream?

***

Mirror

He’s laughing. Still laughing. Not just laughing, he’s shouting, whooping. You can hear the absolute joy he’s feeling.

“Ahahaha, I’ve never felt anything like that. Incredible, incredible!!!”

From out of the smoke, he comes. Shield discarded, armor melted off, shield generators overloaded and discarded. He’s faster than he’s ever been. Of course he is, it’s basic science. The same power source moving half the weight will accelerate twice as quickly. It’s the most fundamental fact of interstellar travel, the basis for every technological leap that made possible a galactic civilization of catgirls.

But he’s not faster than your reaction time, Mirror. You might have thought the fight over, and that attack was surely spectacular. Your new energy algorithm agrees. The display is making a low but pleasant humming sound like something that might come from a stringed instrument, the bar’s sitting at full, and tail nine is lit up and ready to go.

You have to choose. You’ll win the fight no matter what, but with the speed he’s given himself, your other tails won’t be able to stop him from impacting you. Only an overwhelming attack will arrest his momentum in time. Are you prepared to unleash the power you’ve been saving?

***

Isabelle

“Dios mio!” the shout greets you as you disembark from the hangar. You’ve brought the Lightning Chaser as well as your own novasurge all the way to your berth. What else were you going to do with it at that point? You could hardly unceremoniously dump it halfway there once you’d started carrying it like you were in Star Raiders 2, the news would have been all over it if Isabelle Lozano were that much of an ass. And she was your prisoner, so if you’d tried to drop her at her berth instead, that would have been weird and confused Quar completely.

So now you’re back, you’re still in your mecha carrying another pretty beat up mecha and right there on the walkway at cockpit level is your mother with her staff and the entire cadre of siblings following along as she exclaims.

“Isabelle Maria Lozano de la Estrella, what in the stars were you thinking? Have you seen these fiends fight? The one in the other match dropped a mine on her unsuspecting opponent and you accept a wordless surrender?! You drag her here?! The news will think you mean to ravish her, and it’s a miracle she didn’t shoot you in the back the second you lowered her guard! What a hopeless daughter. You execute on everything perfectly and then only blind luck brings you to the finish.”

How do you even start with her? How do you tell her that when you touched the mecha and shared those nanites that you felt a connection, that you knew you could trust her? How do you tell her that you’ve inherited a strange power from a long-dead precursor civilization? How do you tell her that she’s right and this all relied on your own sense of honor and luck before you got any of those mystical insights?

[Mark Heir to a Mystic Power for your next dealings with or about Quar.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Jade

A goddess can experience the rush of a fight, can’t she? The thrill of pleasure when you cut the chords of the wrap and reveal the full chestplate of the [Grip of Dishai]. You know what it’s supposed to feel like, too. The Hybrasilian myths are full of thrill. The pounding heart, the rush of the wind past your ears, the feeling of strength as your feet touch the earth and press and the whole world moves as you command it. You can feel those things. Vines snap like so much detritus where your feet tread. Each thrust of your lance parts the air and crackles with its snap forward. And before you, an effigy of your Dolly in your size. It is magical.

For a few moments, you dominate the fight. The [Grip of Dishai] is not a fast mecha, and you have an advantage in range. This is a classic winning combination. You have the jump on her too, all that boasting, the way she was showing you her chest, it certainly made it easy to cut the shift fully loose from it.

Then it was a matter of precision, of avoiding the decisive strike through the heart (because that’s just…no, you can’t). With the shift flying loose, you moved to the bangles and charms, dancing against the outer limbs as Erys fell back, crashing backwards straight through a low building that her fist reduced to rubble. As she turned to gain distance, that gave you a chance to cut the bracelets loose from the arm that passed closest to you. Then it was a short chase, and a light dance as you quickstep around the fist. So tantalizing, goddess, but always out of reach of her grip, your lance acting as your only touch, its point your caress and your bite.

Then it’s the necklace and that’s a tricky one. You have to shift on her, come around from the side to avoid piercing the heart. You have to take your Dolly unawares, come in close, touch her, slip your lance through what remains of her skirt and up and pull the necklace from her. The protection of her goddess Dishai, skewered upon your lance as you lean in close enough to kiss her.

It’s only then, with your triumph in hand, with Erys Bander seething with shame and anger, her mecha stripped almost naked, that you realize your mistake. You had to come in close for that final charm, and now you’re in reach of that great and powerful fist. Free of charms, free of protections, but the fist itself untouched, unharmed by your lance. Do you feel that grip on your arm? That strength? What does that feel like, as she crushes even your metal skin in the power of that grip?

Dolly

You’ve just watched Jade summarily strip you naked, remove each piece of your jewelry and finally come in close for a caress. And now, within Jade, linked to her as your mecha, you can feel Erys Bander’s touch too, a strong grip on your arm as well, pressing down just enough to make it uncomfortable through your neural mesh.

And over the comms, comes her voice, full of her pride and her thrill, “Got you~”
[Erys loses all her charms and her mecha is undressed, she takes Angry, you have a string on her. In exchange, she seizes a superior position, crushing the part of Jade’s arm just above where she was holding the lance.]

***

Solarel

She has almost forgotten.

There is a moment where you can see into her heart. The clouds clear, and there stands the Barn Owl, visibly shuddering with its pilot, ion cannon at the ready, quite nearly pointed at you, already adjusting but too far away. Her arm waivers. She is cold. She would like nothing more than to sag and let you catch her, though it means her loss. To let you hold her and take her, exhausted, and then to rail against your triumph and swear that she will have retribution. She did that for Dolly and Jade when they had her at their mercy and she loved every second of it.

But, you don’t quite have her at your mercy. Close, so tantalizingly close. But it’s still her choice, her decision. Her arms hurts with the pain of holding that canon at the ready for so long. It burns and begs for release but she has to choose to lower it. Angela Victoria Miera Antonius is many things, but above all she has her pride. Too proud to choose surrender. It would burn her forever to give up when she can still fight.

She comes through the comms, teeth chattering. “Your new mecha is quite something. Is this how the knights of Z-zaldar fight? In deception and stealth? Wearing me out like you are hunting a buffalo? Hm? Hm?! W-well, I will not roll over and die for you. The clouds clear now, and I have your measure, villain. I w-will yet have the d-day!”

Then, ion canon aimed, she rushes you to try for the decisive shot.

[Angela will give you a string on her, rather than give herself up.]

***

Mirror

“It’s already a battle for the ages, little knight.” He nods to himself. Even as you press him, even as the tails scream and the blast takes his spear, no energy shields to lessen the blow. He lets it go like it’s nothing, you incinerate it with no difficulty.

Because now, now is the time for the missiles. With systems overheating, with all the energy poured into the attack, he is an old warrior and he knows how to recognize when his opponent needs a moment of recovery.

He fires them in quick succession, four missiles, each one with its own little roar, and then he unstraps the mechanism from his mecha and lets it fall. It has lost its worth entirely for him.

“Hmm, you have a lot to say.” He speaks as the missiles race at you. It’s not exactly Solarel’s information poisoning. For him it’s the opposite, his mind is most clear in battle, his thoughts focused in the intensity of the action. It’s still a lot of inputs being offered to you all at once though. “And to it I say this. Revel in the moment. Live! Love! Value is for later, for when you have time to sit and count. For me, I count lives. Saved, little knight, not taken. Each blast that comes to me is one that never touches my raiders. Each ship of goods is lives that my hold can take. And now I am old and my people thrive, and I can stand here and feel the heat as you burn my spear from my hands. It’s grand!”

He is not still, he has taken to the air as he speaks, following your movement, tailing his own missiles, looking to stay close for the opportunity to strike, a fifth missile far greater in its danger than the first four.

“If tomorrow I am dead, then so be it! If I live, then I will eat and drink and then I will prepare. And if I am lucky, my people will write me songs when I am gone and that will be good!” And then he laughs again, after he had not through his whole speech. He cannot help but laugh because all of this to him is a joy, no matter what happens from here.

***

Isabelle

The slump of the shoulders when the plan fails is all you need to see. A knight of Zaldar defeated, humbled, her chance to go out with honor discarded.

Do you see now what Solarel did to you? Did for you? Though you were left to wander in despair, by giving you everything she had, she burned herself into your soul, cut the shape of your life, and drove you, burning with cold, to a new end.

But for Quar, you offer her defeat, surrender, humiliation. And… perhaps more. Perhaps, there is another way than Solarel’s way, that’s what you’re saying to her here. A way different than giving everything, a way towards understanding. It’s a bold offer for a knight of Zaldar. If you hadn’t utterly defeated her, she wouldn’t have taken it.

There is something in defeat, in knowing that you cannot win that can change a person. When you hold power, you can either be driven by want or by fear. If it is want, then you seek, you demand, you wield your power recklessly and selflessly until the whole world changes for you. But if it’s fear, then it is fear of loss, of change and you are begging the universe for an infinite and everlasting now. Quar wielded her power from fear, and with it gone, she has let go a great burden.

She does not speak, but her hands let her gun go and she kneels and signs in the language of Zaldar. You don’t know it yourself, but your mecha AI puts on a screen for you that it says something to the effect of “take me, you have earned me.”

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Now there are two fights in full focus. The maid against her N'yari captors, and Giri against Hanaha. Giri, fully engaged, safe from any demonic magic for the moment, goes into a spin. Hanaha's tail flies out behind her and she barely holds on as Giri picks up momentum, grabbing the N'yari as she spins and pulling her from her grip on Giri's head sending her flying!

She doesn't let up from the press though. She leaps on Hanaha as she lands, slamming an elbow into her and trying to pin the N'yari with Giri's raw strength. She presses her arms against Hanaha's to hold her down and sits her butt right on top of Hanaha's legs. She does her best to ignore the claws and the attempts to squirm out from the hold once Hanaha recovers her breath.

[Giri is attempting to defy disaster with daring to decisively pin Hanaha. She is risking having her position reversed on her. 5+3+0=8. She can do it with a cost or a hard choice.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Solarel

The blizzard howls. The autocannons don’t cut off entirely, Angela prefers to fire blindly, trying to track which way you might have gone. She’s never willing to give ground, not now, not after her humiliation. But she guesses wrong, her shots fly wide, the idea that you’d simply not move at all doesn’t occur to her.

Your shot makes no noise. It hits her like a vampire’s kiss, quietly draining the life from her mecha. You hear the shudder run through the whole frame before you withdraw into the storm. The guns fall silent then, the only noise is the snow and the wind that rushes to fill the vortex of emptiness you created.

The comms crackle then, buzzing with static in the sudden storm. “You fiend. You you you! Nothing but trickery. Nothing but deception. You cannot fight an opponent face to face!” Her teeth chatter with the cold over the comms for a second. “D-do you care nothing for the shame you bring your species?”

You can hear the fear in her voice though, it’s not just the chattering of the cold. But she rallies her best efforts. “Fine then. Fine. Do not think me done. I will show you that such tricks are worthless. Come at me again if you dare!”

You hear, faintly within the storm, a specific whine, the sound of an ion cannon powering on. Such weapons only have a very short range, but the blast could take out a mecha as small as the Kathresis in a single shot. She must have made quite the customization to the Barn Owl for this, it requires a lot of power. Pirates sometimes pack single shot ion cannons with their own slow-recharging power source for surprise attacks, but you shouldn’t count on this being one and done. This is an offer, and it is a demand. If you want to be the unstoppable villain, you need to be perfect. To dance with her without a single mistake. Can you do it?

[Angela will take the Frightened condition, responding by revealing and charging her ion cannon. She will also take a string on Solarel with her part of the fight. She’ll spend it immediately to subtract 1 on your next roll if it’s relevant to do so.]

***

Isabelle

Of course she’ll stay. Anger loves being directed. The intensity of the fight, that turns her anger into sustaining energy. Each missile, each bullet, each energy blast is her fury pulsing outwards and your intensity pressing right back. She doesn’t have to speak a word to make the thrill pulsing through her obvious to everyone watching.
And then, you pull away when she doesn’t expect it. It’s like learning the tango and forgetting a step in the routine. She gasps, she stiffens and her stance stiffens visibly in the mecha. She knows the blow is coming, but not from where. And so it’s a blow into her heart, the blade passing through the center of the mecha, passing dangerously close to the pilot herself. A mess of wires sparks and sizzles where they’re cut and loose electricity and heat leak out enough that you can sense them through novasurge.

You can see the hopelessness in her movements, the sudden realization that she’s not going to win this fight. What you don’t see immediately is the way she slips the cartridge out of her main gun and clasps it in one hand, ready to burst it with her metallic fingers.

How could you notice? Not when you’re so caught up in the moment, in the rush of the push and pull, of having your blade sunk deep into her.

[Quar will take a string on you and spend it immediately. If you let yourself get lost in the moment and fall into her trap, there’s an XP in it for you. The trap will end the fight in your favor, but with a big hit on you in the process.]

***

Mirror

When you finish with the shield, your console lights up. Bar’s full, and it flashes that you can access tail 2 or tail 5, your pick. For his part, Heim’s defenses flicker and fail, your last laser blast creates crackling sparks in the air and the brush of the laser ever so gently heats the metal skin of the Blast Wall.

Heim laughs again. He is reveling in this fight. “Use me as you wish, warrior! Use me however you like! But tell them after that true Zaldarians fight with honor! With pride! Being a raider, an outcast, an exile doesn’t mean that you have no honor!”

He maintains his balance through your blows, rounds on you with his shield first, slamming it full body into the Nine Tails as you finish with the shield, making your ears ring with the clang of metal. The spear follows with surprising fluidity, shearing a line off the side of the nine-tails leg with the low thrust under the raised shield.

[Take Insecure in response to your fight, Heim will take Guilty]

“And Hybrasilian, don’t think that just because someone follows the code of Zaldar that they’re worth something. I’m old, child, I’ve seen our knights rise and fall under three empresses. The meaning of the code changes like the winds. Your girl’s worth something because she’s got steel in her heart and she stood up and took the mantle of traitor for what she believed was right. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t still a traitor. Would you do the same in her place?”

He pulls the spear back, rebalances his shield. He knows you’re positioned for another attack and that if you get around him now, you could make it much more decisive, so he didn’t try to follow up his successful strike with another that might leave him open. Instead it’s restoration of the defense he has and careful probing for another opening. His balance is by far his most impressive trait, he’s hard to throw off his movements and his mecha is so heavy that he can carry through even during a very powerful attack. He must have nerves of steel (or entirely deadened nerves) not to flinch in such a moment given the strong neural link most Zaldarians have. Maybe the thick armor acts sort of like a thick skin for him as well, dulling the blows?

***

Jade

Were you ready for this? You flush out the [Grip of Dishai], you take Erys Bander by surprise. You pull that powerful fist out of position, you slam upon her head and tumble into the rubble, and you can imagine all the watching Red Banders laughing in delight at the show. Stories will be told of this fight, stories of the goddess who embarrasses her opponents.

But were you ready for this? Her cloak drops and you finally see what you’re up against. Far from the previous matches with its camo patterns, you find yourself facing a great mecha version of Dolly! It’s wearing her ceremonial skirt, fashioned in giant size. Her priestess wrap circles the shoulders, gods know how they got that much cloth worked together that quickly and integrated with the mecha’s cloaking system. And festooned upon the neck and about the arms are charms and wards invoking the protection of the goddesses of Hybrasil. There on her wrist is the symbol of Irtana the binder of goddesses. And there about the neck is the blessing of Dishai herself, a great stone ward upon a chain that will not let you seize her soul.

And Erys Bander, she’s loving this. She’s loving a rival, a challenge. She stands from the crash, her arm free, her chest out. She’s baring herself, her cloak, her charms. You want this? It asks. It’s all yours, just come and take it! She flexes, she poses for you. This giant effigy of your Dolly, chest out and strong like Dolly herself never quite seems to manage without a great deal of “coaxing” on your part.

[Take your string as well]

Dolly

What’s Jade showing you of all this? Are you getting the unadulterated view, or is there a fantasy she’s offering you right now?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Isabelle

You feel, rather than see a break in the shots. It’s not as clean as you’d like. A few days with Novasurge isn’t enough to really get the subtleties that a neural mesh link can offer. But even so, the obvious change in the movement of light debris and dust colliding with your mecha when the shots simply stop altogether is simply impossible to miss.

There’s nothing over the comms, no words at all. This is the danger of breaking visual contact, and the reason these crevices in the station are such high risk. The Lighting Chaser is above you almost before you realize it, and you just barely manage to get out of the way from a shot from the primary rifle. She fired at closer range than it ought to be for that gun, the directed blast coming out of the crevice sends you flying and it sends her flying the other way.

Reckless. That’s the only word for it. You can feel the simmering anger. Without a word being said, you know that she feels it intensely, that anger courses through her. But she’s barely met Solarel. This is an anger of reputation. It’s an anger of being told that someone is the villain, but having your flight instructors still tell you that you don’t measure up to them anyway. The anger of not being good enough and the anger that someone undeserving is better than you. You might have felt it yourself once or twice, Isabelle.

At this moment though, the real question is whether you can pick up the pace. Quar is mad. She’s coming at you hard, like stupid hard. You barely dodge a homing missile that circles back towards you, forcing you onto the defensive, and she’s just starting up the barrage in earnest. The strategy that your mother recommended remains sound if you stick to it, but you can’t do this and be emotionally checked out. It’s too intense, too fast, it’s like trying to be checked out of sprinting. It demands one hundred percent of your attention. It’s intense, it’s exhausting, and you’re going to be breathing hard by the end of it. But if you can keep up and move elusively through that pace, you’ll have her.

[If you keep up here, take the XP or clear a condition for acting on your mom’s advice]

***

Jolly

There’s the ripple of the cloaking field. It was just to the side of your explosion, she dove out of the way. A building side caves in where she bodied it, and you can guess pretty well where she’ll come out.

She’s trying very hard to hide. Might just be that she doesn’t want to drop this advantage without a fight. Maybe she’s got a big reveal that she’s really holding onto. Maybe you caught her off guard zeroing in this well and she’s simply scrambling to get a moment’s respite.

Either way, you’ve got the edge on her, but you’ll need to commit to this. Block her exit with another missile, then shift your position sideways and bomb precision strike her through the building opening with as much intensity as you’ve got. You’ll bring down her cloak without losing your aerial advantage. But, you’ll exhaust your full supply of missiles in the process, leaving you without your long-range option. If you don’t take the shots now, she’ll slip out the sides and get cover in the alleys between the fabricated buildings, obscuring your sight in your current position and forcing you to fly closer overhead where she probably went to scout her properly, making your position more vulnerable.

She’s keeping coms silence too. You can take this as a form of triumph. Erys is taking you seriously. No gloating, no taunting. At least not yet, not in this first part of the exchange while she’s cloaked and trying to get one over on you. If she gets you in a headlock, you can expect a lot of taunts to happen, but she’s not risking her position with even a short burst of comms traffic. This does leave you free to imagine the chatter though, which probably would have been something like “what the fuck?!” as she dove out of the way of the first missile so close to her position. Perhaps you’d like to taunt her? Send it out on a wide band for all the cameras too. Tell her what a coward she is as you try to force her out. She’ll probably like it if you banter like you’re part of the Red Band yourself.

***

Mirror

Heim laughs, long and hearty, though his shield never waivers. You get to see the next layers of defense as you flip up and over. Though he positions the shield to bear the brunt of the blow, you’re more than agile enough in your flip to bypass it before he can fully turn, but what you encounter are energy shields that crackle against your beams for a brief instant and then you’re past. Layers and layers of defense to crack on this one.

He laughs again as you finish the move. “I do know, Hybrasilian. The one-day defender, but it’s the year after that matters! You lived with one of our finest knights for nearly a year! Ha! You’re no more an outsider than the capital knights themselves and I give them the time of day, though honestly I think Zaldar would have told me to ignore the whole lot if she were here. Solarel was better than any of the current crop. She was raw, that one. They didn’t just hand her power, she took it, rode it like it was on fire, burned it to the edges of what it could take. Nobody can fly the Aeteline now, have you heard? She broke it for them, hahahahaha!”

He’s not stationary. His mecha isn’t fast, but he’s making his way to you where you landed and he knows how to fight at his speed. It’s difficult to read the exact timing of his thrusts, when he’s going to actually put the force behind the spear, and he moves inexorably, never overcommitting his weight and always holding his balance. You could jump away and get clear anytime you please, but then you’ll be back to dealing with that ironclad defense.

“Maybe I’m wrong though. I thought you were a true warrior and spoke to you as such. I saw your fight with the sniper. You took her shot head on, even though it blew clean through you! That’s what I want, girl! I want that strength! Give me a good fight! A fight for the ages!”

You can hear in his voice that he means it. There’s a rasp to it, a gruffness that wasn’t present for Solarel. He’s worried he won’t get a good fight. He’s not stupid, he’s reserving his missiles because he knows that if he exhausts them completely you probably have the technique to pick at his defenses without him ever engaging you. It will be long, slow and boring, a thousand arrows plinking at an armored knight before he collapses from exhaustion, but he knows full well you could do it. It doesn’t scare him that he might lose, but it scares him to lose this chance, to walk away from this without getting anything from it. He wants you to fight him head on, to be a fury and a madwoman and to meet his strength with strength. He respects you enough to think you’ll do it.

Your new display is filled up about 75% by the by. That backflip trident maneuver seems to have gone over well with it, and it’s almost ready to light up another tail for you.

***

Solarel

A day ago, in a small and unremarkable office on Akar Prime
“Did you reach the mecha?” A seated dark-colored Terenian woman in a white suit asks the Zaldarian who just came into the room.

“Yes,” the Zaldarian signed, smoothly, evenly, neutrally.

“Good” says the Terenian woman, pushing her hair back. “That will be all for now then. We’ll let you know when you’re needed for the next match.”

The Zaldarian departed, breathing a sigh of relief at how the question had been asked. She had reached the mecha, started to make modifications even. It would have some difficulty. But Trosta had been visiting the Hangar, and several cats had seemed unusually alert for her. Even being in a different section, she had bailed out part way through. If they’d seen her, if they’d heard her, she’d be ruined. The Empress would disavow her involvement, claim she was a rogue operative. She’d agree of course, to save face for the Zaldarian empire. And that would be that. An exile. She didn’t understand why the Empress was willing to help like this in the first place, and the layers between them meant that Solarel didn’t even know.

But she was out and none the wiser, at least until the match. She’d make herself scarce that day.

In the arena
There’s a moment where the Barn Owl freezes up. You can tell from the juddering motion and the sudden halting of the arms tracking you. You line up the shot, but as you do there’s a wrenching sound and the Barn Owl pulls away. The shot goes wide, leaving a frozen patch against the edge of the stony mountain just to the side of Angela’s mecha.

“You dare!” she shouts, voice full of righteous outrage. “You dare?! I saw your last match and the great strange mecha you fought against shut down. I had my engineers go over every inch of the Barn Owl today before the match and still you dare! Aye, you will rue the day you crossed me!”

She’s not slow. The Barn Owl’s crystal fire drive has flared to life and Angela is racing across the arena. She’s not firing stationary like she did in her fight against Dolly either. She’s rushing at you as she shoots, adding to the speed of the bullets, creating a tighter field of fire. The Kathresis is many things, but it is not sturdy. Bullets are ricocheting from your shields and you need to move ahead of her because you can’t actually withstand that barrage for any sustained length of time.

It hurts, seeing a girl fight her heart out like this and knowing that you almost denied her the chance. It hurts proving to her that she was right to see you as the villain, even knowing that’s the role you need to play.

[Mark Guilty]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Hard to point fingers on the matter of forbidden sorcery. Oh, this was probably a terrible idea. Part of Giriel immediately wanted to shout No, stop or abandon her fight and try to tackle the scribe before she did something utterly stupid. But only part of Giri wanted this. Her second thought was to remember back to the firewands, the Rakshasa's curse, the pain she had seen for just a brief moment in this girl. She didn't want to pile on top of that, and she definitely didn't want to throw herself at something that was cursed to just explode and explode and explode.

In that moment of thinking, Hanaha gets her in a headlock, and she can't see what's happening. A N'yari wrestling match really does demand full attention. Though Giri's head may be locked, she plants her feet and heaves with a grunt that huffs straight through Hanaha's fluffy arm. Her face red, she lifts the N'yari completely off her feet. Though Hanaha may still holding Giri's head, she's now dangling half off the witch's broad back and her grip has to switch from a tight headlock to scrabbling for purchase lest she fall unceremoniously on her ass.

Giri gains her stance and her vision back as Hanaha scrabbles just in time to turn and see what the scribe has in store for them.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Solarel

It’s very cold.

The air here is thin, and above you is thick cloud cover. Before you, the terrain is nearly flat, covered with low green grasses that to the footsteps of the Kathresis might as well be carpet. A black, mournful wind swirls within the mountain bowl. It kicks up loose leaves and dust and carries the hint of snow upon it.

You enter the arena from one end of the mountain ring. Across from you at the other end of your arena stands the Barn Owl. It’s unassuming. Angela did not change the color since her previous match, it’s the same utilitarian brown as before, a simple human form mecha. It seems Angela changed very little on the surface in fact. It’s hard to tell at this distance, but the mark that Jade made upon the mecha seems to have been entirely preserved, with only a few repairs made to fix the dents and tears from the combat. Blocky shoulders steady the autocannons, the wrist blades are already drawn, and if she’s got a new trick, she’s not showing it.

She might as well have commissioned a neon sign with defiance emblazoned on it over the arena. She defies you to outdo Dolly and Jade, she defies you to force her to reveal something she has not already shown, she defies you to approach her.

The comms light up with her voice, thick and almost shouting a challenge. “Zaldarian. Do not think that I will go down as I did in my previous match. Do not dare think your new mecha will mean I am unprepared for you. I have heard your stories and I am unimpressed. Show me something worth remembering this fight!”

***

Mirror

The space feels cramped, even compared to the statistics. It’s multi-story, but you’re so used to speed, knowing that any straight flight would slam you into a wall or ceiling in scant seconds must feel confining. The floor is a sandy stone, the stands are white marble. They gleam in the bright lights, and from a bit of sunlight from the small skylight in the center of the ceiling. Too small for a mecha to fit through, unless one blew it open and collapsed the roof.

Somewhere a planet away, Matty is sitting with Trosta to observe the match, though she glances slyly over to Slate when she has the chance and perhaps Slate knows that Matty would prefer a lap seat if she had the choice.

Tails one, three, and seven are operational. All the others have no energy flow going to them. Energy efficiency in the active tails is high. 99.97%, which is the best you’ve ever seen it be. Trosta, whatever else she might be, appears to be a magician when it comes to wiring and capacitors. Your new internal display shows your current stance, with the active tails highlighted in green. There’s an unfilled rectangular meter in an outline at the top.

Heim enters the arena opposite you. There’s no hiding here. The Blast Wall lives up to its name, hefting a massive rectangular shield painted black along its outer surface. It’s taller than the head of Heim’s mecha and protects all but the very edge of his right arm, from which he hefts a short and maneuverable ionic spear. Everything about his mecha feels thick and sturdy. The legs are planted and you can see from the right side past the shield that they have extra armor plating, perhaps also housing a shield generator. The shoulders are thick, and there is a harness just visible on the chest behind the shield holding the missile launching system in place. His decorations upon the metallic Zaldarian shell are teal highlights along the borders of his armor and his helm, contrasting with the painted dark metal of most of it. Teal is part of the banner of his hold, called Heimdall, the best translation of a god who is always vigilant. The base of the helm forms a slight metallic beard, a sign of age and some protection for the neck of the mecha.

Despite his sturdy defense, you can see that he stands at ease as he enters, the spear held point up, not immediately in an attack stance. He could set his weight at any moment, he simply hasn’t done it to start things off.

“I hear you fought Solarel twice” comes his voice as the cameras circle the two of you, staying carefully distant in the stands. “Even won the second one. You won’t find me like her. Whatever she is now, she was an imperial knight, a servant of the Empress. Me, I’m a raider.”

He chuckles. Seems in no rush to do much. You might wonder if this will make for good TV or if he’s just overly confident. “If I win this fight, I’ll capture for my glory what I could never manage to hold in combat. Raiders have to manage on our own, any way we can. I’ve only ever been to Zaldaria once, an honor to hunt for my god there. But before and since it’s been about scraping together what we could from where we could. I’ve wanted to see this place, our gift to peace, to doing things differently. Every nanobot shaper in my hold contributed to it. Sent Marna the last time though and she only got second place. So I said to myself I’d better come on my own this time around!”

He laughs, long and hearty, though his eyes never stop tracking you.

***

Dolly and Jade

Erys has not deigned to join you in the sky. She’s somewhere in the city below, prowling, lurking. She has one of the better cloaking devices as well, but you can feel her out there, stalking around you, looking for an angle. Sharp eyes in a shadowed jungle.

The mark of the true huntress is said to be patience above all else. Prey needs to move, to lower its guard to eat and drink, to sleep, offering the chance to strike for a patient huntress. They had mentioned the goddess of the hunt, or at least the Leopard had, hadn’t they? Perhaps Erys is emulating the style of the goddess for protection. Perhaps she simply doesn’t want to tip her hand yet.

With Ksharta, you tried to flush her out with drones. What then this time? Will you go down to her and seek her, knowing her danger? Or will you try to lure her into a foolish strike that you can turn against her? Which of you is the more patient huntress?

***

Isabelle

The lightning chaser is a mess of purple and chrome. Parts of it look nearly like exposed wires, waist and elbow joints exposed down to their moving rotators in pure metal, and around them swirls of purple paints criss-crossing the chest, the arms, the legs, as though a river of purple went mad and chose to flow all across the machine. It’s small and thin like Solarel’s mecha, but sporting a massive rifle held in both hands, with smaller shoulder AND wrist guns as well. It seems well designed to put out a hail of bullets of various types, strong and weak. When you watched Quar’s previous matches, you saw that there wasn’t a single route to victory.

She lost her first match to Ada Smith, your last opponent, a surprise decisive beating from stealth that she wasn’t prepared for. In her other matches, different weapons proved decision for victory, some fast, some slower. One opponent went down in a hail of fire, the death of a thousand cuts. The other made a foolish mistake and took a main rifle blast straight to the head from above, completely disabling the mecha and knocking the pilot unconscious.

Of course, it’s honestly a little hard to focus on any of that with everything swirling in your head. Your mother went ballistic when you were alone.

What the hell was wrong with you, Isabelle? You went off alone, you let yourself be taken by surprise, you broadcast a distress signal. Did you think Tadeo’s line so secure that nobody else would know? Did you think your absence would be unremarked, or that of your brother rushing off to save you? Everyone knows you had to limp back. Everyone knows you have no mecha of your own now. Your last loss was a disgrace to the family, and it would be a miracle if Adriana paid you any attention now.

She considered striking you in the tirade, but didn’t because explaining the mark would simply be too much effort. She had no hesitation telling you exactly that.

Almira went over every second of the previous video with you. Pointing out the movement, calculating the speed and reaction time of the pilot herself. See how Quar fades backwards in her victories, maintaining an ideal field of fire? She’s relying on her opponents desperation, chasing harder and faster so which she responds with equal speed, always maintaining her perfect firing range until she gets an opening or they wear out.

See the way people play into her expectations? A Lozano is better than that! Almira freezes the frames on several screens in each fight, where you see the Lightning Chaser shift its movement. She goes frame by frame. See it takes one fifth of a second for it to change direction consistently. You can gain ground on that small change if you can catch her unaware. Don’t follow, break her spacing. Chase, then fade, then chase again, then fade, then chase. Switch three to five times inconsistently to throw off her rhythm, then close decisively. Create a planned pattern in advance, the brain is untrustworthy and can’t be expected to manage actual randomness in a fight, so you plan your randomness. If you don’t win in the first exchange, do only a single fake in the second and then rush her, she will be bracing herself for you to equivocate after the first time and decisive action will take her unaware. If you need a third, go back to faking her out, and then repeat on a fourth she won’t expect you to break the pattern. If you need a fifth exchange, you’re a failure as a daughter.

Once, briefly, you hear soft footsteps approach while you’re working with your mother, but they turn and leave and she snaps her fingers by the side of your head for your momentary distraction.

You never saw Asil in all the other days. Not in the maintenance crews, not anywhere. Your equipment and technology deliveries are still listed properly, all crew accounted for, she hasn’t fled. But she’s avoiding you and your mother has no interest in giving you the time or space to seek to mend things. It wouldn't’ be shocking if Almira had ordered her to stay away from you, if she caught even the slightest inkling that you cared about her based on how you blew up at the crew earlier. Strong emotion runs both ways and Almira Castra Lozano was not born yesterday.

As for the fight, well, she’s already taking aim at you as she comes around the platform, orienting herself to match your most likely dodge angle away from the platform. No words from her either, just cold efficiency to start.

So how are you feeling?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Isabelle

You arrive back, riding second in Tad’s ship, to the sight of your mother, Almira Castra Lozano, standing in the hangar of Akar Prime with a small gray datapad in one hand. Somehow, despite the gritty browns and grays of the setting, she is wearing a purple dress that goes down to her ankles, her only accommodations to the space being that she’s wearing black flats instead of heels and she’s got a darker shawl wrapped above her back and shoulders to keep off the dust. Somehow, this does nothing to hide her perfectly shaped neckline and the gleaming amethyst necklace she’s wearing.

Tad gives your hand a squeeze of reassurance as you get off the small shuttle’s boarding ramp, the two mecha behind it piloted by two of the corporate staff for escort duty setting down at a respectful distance out of earshot. It’s been a long four days since you were left alone in that lab on Roius and probably nothing now would be better than a meal and a long bath. But that isn’t to be.

“Isabelle Maria Lozano de la Estrella” she says, in perfect cadence as you step out. “You have worried us all to death!” She hugs you, firmly and quickly, then holds you with both hands on her shoulders. Her platinum wedding band glints in the hangar light. “I came as soon as I heard the news of your last match. The Emberlight in shambles, oh my daughter, and then we receive your distress call that you’ve been kidnapped by pirates! What a life you’ve been living, hm. Going out without a party, a staff, or anyone to accompany you? To think when I learned that my precious daughter was such a fool, your poor mother’s heart cannot take it.”

Her hands are firm and pressing. “The hopes of this whole house are riding on you, my child. This simply won’t do at all. Your next match…” she holds up the datapad, which was actually addressed to you but she seems not to have had any concern taking deliveries on your behalf in your absence, “...will be against one of the representatives of the Zaldarian empire, some minor pilot named Quar Dilara, who I’d normally expect you to defeat easily. As it is, we’re going to have to have you piloting one of the extra mechas we’ve brought in while yours is undergoing repairs, and I’ve freed up your calendar of any standing appointments for the next several days so that you can train in triple shifts to get used to it. You’ve already missed over half your training time for the match, so you’ll need to put in the extra work now.”

She finally takes her hands off your shoulders, stepping back to look you over. “Luckily, it seems you weren’t seriously injured in your ill-fated escapade, and there wasn’t a trace of any pirates when we arrived, so you’ve at least saved the family a ransom payment just to be on time for the next match. Now come, daughter, we’re already late.”

She beckons and all the attendant staff fall into step. You don’t have much choice either if you don’t want to get pushed to keep up by deeply apologetic but unrelenting house admin staff.

When you get a free moment and eventually see the datapad, you’ll have this information

Opponent: Quar Dilara
Mecha: Lightning Chaser

Known statistics:
Power: ***
Speed: *****
Defense: *

Pilot profile:
Quar Dilara is one of the more junior Zaldarian knights competing in the tournament. Relatively little is known of her technique. Early matches involved mostly the use of high speed and high-firepower long-range laser weaponry, proving evasive for her opponents. Further defensive measures have not been identified. Her mecha is relatively small for Zaldarian standards and likely has lighter defensive shielding given the amount of power dedicated to engines and active offensive weaponry.

Terrain information:
Your battlefield will be fought below an orbital platform in zero G.
The platform itself will have several shafts and ravines, offering high risk cover
Drones will be on-hand to arrest the descent of any mecha that enters freefall. If this intervention is necessary, it will be counted as a loss.

***

Solarel

The flight back was quick, it barely felt like an hour to you, and to the rest of the system of Akar it was not even two full days for the return trip. The Kathresis offers nearly unparalleled rong-range speed in addition to its immediate space. It was barely enough time to even process everything, barely enough time to grow comfortable in your new skin.

The rush was there. Isabelle could be something. If there’s anything to remember from this fight, it was how she came in at first. The way she controlled the nanobots outside the mecha, how for a brief moment it felt like you would have to fight the arena and the mecha together. The seed of potential could grow from that, even though she was too inexperienced today to keep your blades from closing upon her chest and your hand from her throat.

When you get back, there will be many things due to you. You owe a debt to the Boatmen of Styx, you’ve attracted the interest of the Ebon Claw, and of course there is Mirror, surely already busy at work preparing for her next match, never standing still.

You can, perhaps, take pleasure that now that you have a new god to inhabit, the fights will come furiously. You’ll be against a Terenian, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius. She previously fought and lost to a newly debuted Hybrasilian whose mecha claims godhood in a manner distinct from the Zaldarian gods. But she has since upgraded her Terenian gen 2 mecha with some new tricks and will be a fierce opponent, just as you surely will be despite your prior loss in the rankings.

You receive the following:
Opponent: Angela Victoria Miera Antonius
Mecha: Barn Owl (modified)

Known statistics:
Power: **
Speed: ***
Defense: ****

Pilot profile:
Angela learned on an older mecha and has kept to the model, upgrading the internals several times while maintaining the same chassis. Her previous loadout involved the use of multiple autocannons and a paired set of wrist blades. This proved unequal to the task of defeating a strong melee Hybrasilian mecha wielding an ionic spear. She has recently made several repairs to her mecha, which likely include weapon upgrades some of which may not be immediately apparent.

Terrain information:
Your battlefield will be fought in a mountainous bowl region. The interior is fairly flat and will provide an arena with few impediments for a direct fight. The borders stretch high and will present obstacles including potential low visibility weather to any mecha that attempts a mid-combat flight through them.

***

Dolly (and Jade)

You get to see the sunrise on Akar Prime. It’s beautiful, sitting on the balcony of one of the tall buildings. You may spend a lot of time in the Hangar with Jade, but one of the perks of being a competition pilot for both of you is the option for nice short-term rooms. Atop a tall tower, with a balcony, even various stimulant drinks in the room for you (the staff have learned enough not to poison a Hybrasilian with the standard Terenian fare, even if they’re still a little mystified).
So you get to wake up to the sunrise, the slight reddish light of Akar’s sun cresting over the stark brown cliffs that form the horizon. Though the city extends for miles and miles, it doesn’t reach the skyline, so you get to see the rich rock that brought anyone to settle here in the first place as the reddish light creeps along it, slowly painting over the swirling purples of night.

It’s a time to catch your breath and to plan. Or perhaps to thrill in secret with nobody to watch you. The Red Banders weren’t lying after all. You’re up against Erys Bander in the next match. From all appearances, she’s a brute and a bully who loves throwing her bulk around against her opponents. But you can read her profile for yourself. Of course, nothing in the profile is going to have anything in it about what the Banders might do to ward themselves against Jade’s curses. You’ll have to puzzle that one out yourself.

Opponent: Erys Bander
Mecha: Hybrasilian script: [The unrelenting grip of the stone goddess Dishai], shorthanded to Crushing Grasp.

Known statistics:
Power: *****
Speed: **
Defense: ***

Pilot profile:
Erys is currently undefeated in matches. Her combat style is close range although her mecha is not particularly fast. In her matches to date, she has used a combination of cloaking and terrain advantages to maneuver to short range with her opponents, then deploying extensive capture nets, a powered ionic fist, and a heavy Falchion for her combat. She has thus far eschewed long-ranged weaponry in favor of heavier defensive armor and shields, making her nearly unstoppable if trapped up close.

Terrain information:
Overgrown Cityscape. Buildings have been constructed to be covered with heavy vines and roots. The largest structure will be a multi-level garage with interior space adequate to house most mecha. Open but grassy avenues will be available between buildings, or a pilot can choose to fly above the terrain for better visibility in exchange for exposing themselves from below.

***

Mirror

For a moment, Matty doesn’t get it. She sits, being polite as she’s fed, reveling in the experience. Then it hits her and there’s a muffled gasp that she quickly snaps short. Her blush, if anything, grows even stronger in your arms. She’s still being fed and she tries to focus on that, but she’s progressively more squirmy in your lap. Slate has to give her a little tap on the head to get her to focus on finishing her food, before going back to your conversation like she’s the most expert parent in the world.

She can feel Matty fidgeting in your lap. First it’s slow, slight adjustments on your leg, trying to balance while she’s being fed but not sticking to any one position. These are the sort of little bits of pressure that you can address with a slight shift of your arm or your leg to keep her balanced without breaking any of the conversation.

As Slate finishes feeding her, she bites her lip, then has to unbite it as Slate continues to clean her off without stopping in stride, using a gentle nudge to get her to reveal the parts of her mouth she’s hiding for cleaning. She can feel her legs wiggle underneath you as it happens Mirror, but she’s a good girl who’s too little to say anything and lets herself just be handled by Slate as you talk over her.

When you get to the talk about having to replace parts on the tail because of its burnout, she lowers her head and leans forward, trying not to say anything, trying not to break the spell. But she’s so wiggly Mirror! She’s leaning forward and back, she’s rocking, she’s squirming, she’s kicking her legs, and there’s a slow whine building inside her!

Then, only then when she’s can’t hold it in anymore does it burst out of her. “Aaaaah, we can fix it!” Then she looks up guiltily and runs the hand that isn’t being held down by your armor through her hair.

“Um…I…” she wiggles her legs, hesitates, decides she just has to go for it, even sitting in your lap. You might imagine that she had something like a presentation planned, maybe some notecards in her bag somewhere, a question and answer period. Instead she’s just been fed dumplings and she starts going while looking back and forth between Slate and craning her neck up to look at you, Mirror.

“Um, the proposal that Trosta and I came up with is to install new power regulators on all the tails. They would be…um…tied to a central control unit that’s linked to your control station, but that you wouldn’t be able to directly manipulate. I mean, um, of course you could have the engineering team pull it open and change it, but this was your request for um…for limitations so so Trosta said you wouldn’t. And um…right so the way it has a simple AI that measures your actions and looks for variety. And it won’t activate all the tails at once, it will randomize three that you get at the start and the rest won’t get any power. And then as you do different um…moves it will let you know when a new tail is ready to be activated, and then you’ll need to use that to activate more. So um…s-so over a fight you’ll start with very few options and it might be really hard against a tough opponent, but Trosta thought you wouldn’t mind that, and then as you do stuff you’ll get stronger and stronger until you can do a whole big finishing move and um…aaaaaah!”

She gestures as she starts getting into it, ending with a wild lift of her arms that almost unbalances her, causing her to tilt over and suddenly grab onto Mirror tightly with a two handed bear hug around the chest so she doesn’t fall over. She blushes, but also grins from getting through it all, big and wide and happy at her cool reveal!

***

Much later, when you’ve saved the extra dumplings, washed the dishes, and Matty has drifted off to sleep, you’ll get your match details.

Opponent: Heim Stockar
Mecha: Blast Wall

Known statistics:
Power: ****
Speed: *
Defense: *****

Pilot profile:
Heim Stockar was previously a feared Zaldarian raider before the building of the Arena. He has somewhat avoided arena combat to date, sending various younger lieutenants from his hold to compete, but has personally entered this year’s tournament. Thus far, his matches have involved defensively enduring his opponent’s onslaught with a combination of armor, force fields, and a shield. He then either retaliates with missiles when they leave themselves open at a distance, or with his spear if they attempt to close and fight up close.

Terrain information:
Colosseum. Your match will take place in a constructed and enclosed arena space built above the forest.
It will form a large multi-story dome allowing for flight but limiting overall maneuvering space
The sides will have uneven stands, while the center is flat, encouraging direct combat.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

"Hanaha!" Giri shouts, throwing the catgirl into a strong-armed headlock. "It's been so long!"

What is dignity in all this? In the face of even the slight risk of a greater demon being freed and rampaging about the camp? What is dignity in the face of this spirit who has already humiliated Giri in every encounter? Dignity finds itself stood next to responsibility and utterly dwarfed, as the tree at the foot of a mountain.

And beyond that, this responsibility is also freeing. The true virtue of the N'yari, that proper relations to them are to let yourself go, to wrestle wildly, let them tear your clothes and roll in the mud and damn who might be watching. If she'd only learned all this earlier, much grief could have been saved. And if she could manage things now, there was much grief still to save. The Flower Kingdoms deserved to have their wildness preserved!

As for the scribe, she deserved to see this too. She especially. She deserved to see Giri's muscles heave and watch the witch sweat as she wrestled a proper N'yari. The scribe deserved to watch Giri roll in the mud, her hair loose, her clothes ragged, her breath coming hot and fast, even as the other combat matched it. Fengye ought to have the opportunity to look closely as cat and girl strained against each other for her, pressed and fought and tumbled because of her machinations and machinations of Heaven on her behalf. Is this something that could fill the hole that Giri saw in her heart, the boundless craving?

[Rolling to Entice Fengye. 6+1+2=9. She can decide to offer the string or react.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Dolly and Jade

The Red Banders listen carefully, closely. Erys smiles, really actually smiles at the special note offered to her. It’s the only time she’s smiled the whole time she’s been there in fact. She’s been the big boss, dour, almost a little glum. She hadn’t expected Valynia to steal the show from her, hadn’t been mad either, but it had taken attention off of her and her swagger. Now she was the one being taunted, dared to come hard, and she was extremely into it.

When Dolly is done speaking, they do as they’re told. They move as a group and cleanse themselves in the nearby basin offered for Jade’s worship. The crew watches them closely, some of them at least beginning to relax and return to their work. Jade has handled things, Dolly has handled things, everyone is moving according to the script they’re supposed to, so they can relax a little. Nine Forests keeps watch though, just in case.

When they’re done, the Banders bring their offerings. They noticed Dolly’s slip, but still do as instructed for the moment. They deposit them before Jade’s feet one after another. Each of them brought a different offering for a goddess, all traditional. They are Hybrasilians above their factional loyalties after all. Jade is left with several sticks of incense, a bolt of cloth in maroon with bright yellow diamonds set in two lines along its top and bottom, an offering of some kind of meat with the bone still in, and (most precious) a necklace of several pieces of lapis lazuli on a short gold chain offered by the Leopard, Valynia. This, she had not originally intended to offer, but she took it off and added it to the pile when they parted, knowing the crew would remark on it.

***

Mirror

You can feel Matty relaxing as things are explained, sitting in your lap as she is, head pressed against your chest. It’s a lot. She nods a few times. When Slate explains how her heart being on her sleeve is helpful, she makes an “rrrr” noise that’s a purr of agreement.

When Mirror speaks, Matty turns her head up, just a little, to look at her, wrinkling the robe in the process, but not enough to pull it off, she stops her head before there’s too much feeling of tug, meaning that she’s looking at you out of the corner of her eye, and at Slate out of the other, both in peripheral vision, neither centered.

“I…mmm, I like this.” She brushes her head lightly against Mirror’s chest. “And I’m glad you’re not going to try and push me out” that’s more to Slate, acknowledging that they’re not fighting over this. “I um…yeah the rest is a lot, but I’m happy to…to be here like this. And um…I’d like some…um…some dumplings and…and…”

Well she almost got through it all. Poor thing’s blushing beneath her fur, she’s warm enough to feel it the embarrassment, Mirror. She absolutely wants to be fed those dumplings by Slate before getting to the technical stuff, but in the face of actually directly asking for that she’s struggling to get the words out. She never dreamed she’d just be here and able to ask for what she wants. Utterly ridiculous!

***

Isabelle

You’re starting to get a picture of things. The facility guardian being defeated and it dropping into low power made it more sluggish to respond to you. But now you’re fighting, commanding the local nanobots, activating emergency power, activating the need for future repairs, so systems are at least in motion.

You understand Tate within the mecha somewhat more clearly than without, like it designed to enhance this kind of interface. The facility AI is relatively simple. It does not know what the Trak’tho hoped to get, it doesn’t understand intentions as such. The question is interpreted as re-showing you some information you already saw. The facility is for scientific experimentation, with sections divided into weapons testing, the mecha bays, other science facilities, and the biology and chemistry experiments being run within the caves. This is what the Trak’tho designated it for, this is what the facility systems are built to support. New races do not have relevance to this except insofar as an experiment concerns them, which none actively currently do. Perhaps if a Trak’tho returned and updated it, that would change.

As for being the facility guardian, the position is now vacant, but that doesn’t give you any special access. You could get it though. Just…not in the heat of battle. You’d need to sit down, review the designations and powers held by the guardian, see which ones you could assign, possibly move around the facility and add manually certain authorization geists to your mecha, then use those to assign additional rights to yourself until you’ve reconstructed the full role of facility guardian. It would take some time, might wreck some equipment, but the facility would be yours afterwards and other visitors your guests.

However, there’s something more pressing right in front of you. Solarel’s blades, her prowess. Can you handle her? If you are defeated, even gently, you will not have the tools at your disposal to become facility guardian, nor the time to see it done. You must be the sole master of this place. Is that a reason worth risking this dangerous fight? For that matter, do you even believe you can do it, or are you still too novice in this new form to withstand her?

***

Solarel

The next move is Isabelle’s. You are poised to strike, but how you strike, where you strike, when you strike will depend on her. You will soon see whether you face the fledgling or the falcon, and what sort of dance you’ll have as a result.

You may perhaps remark in this moment of waiting that Crescent and Annika are at last leaving. A welcome relief?