- Shifting - Animalistic body - Animalistic Eyes - Mismatched clothing - No Costume
Now, look. Look. You need to understand this, because it’s important, right?
Shifu. Is. A. Shapeshifter.
What that means is, y’know, she shifts shapes? Changes. Changes shapes. Right verb. Goes batty. Note to self, catchphrase. Something she can shout when she transforms, because if there’s one thing she knows in her heart of hearts it’s that you should dramatically announce all of your attacks.
Aaaaaaanyway, what that means is that trying to pin her down with “big coat, teal, loves reds” is always gonna be a losing battle, right? Because tomorrow, it could be green hair and eight feet tall? Or cat? Or fox stealing your wallet?
Well, probably not that last one. Have you heard about Foxpearl? She’s the best at helping people free of the material things binding them to this existence. No stealing wallets, that's stepping on toes.
But the point is that she changes skins like less fortunate people change clothes! Or, actually, actually, more often, because people usually only change clothes like, what, maaaaybe three to five times? Pajamas, work clothes, maaaybe a change for going out, and then pajamas again?
Unless they’re superheroes, in which case they have a lot more costume changes. Thank heaven she doesn’t need to deal with all that–has to be hard to find a phone booth, and then you need to change back, and…
Does shapeshifting count as a costume change?
Anyway! Point is, she’s never the same look from day to day, or even minute to minute. But, if you’re looking for generals….
Orange. Amber, really, like the best mix of yellow and orange? Or occasionally teal. Blue and orange work so well together. Most of her shapes are orange, because it is the best color and it’s a crying shame not to be the best you can be at all times.
If you see an orange tabby-cat in the Terochimomo Net Cafe–or possibly an orange labrador, wandering between clients and collecting pets, or a brilliant cockatoo being taught dirty words when Joshua’s not looking, or a funky-looking cat-dog-thingy with a supremely pettable mane–that’s her. Don’t tell Joshua about the cockatoo, kay? You’re not a narc, right?
Orange eyes! Did I mention those? Technically, she doesn’t have to keep them in all her shapes, but she made them one day and liked them so much she decided to keep them? Oh, there was a fuss that day, but she won that friggin’ argument, see if she didn’t. Deep orange–like, almost a green-brown level of orange? Orange with green underneath, like cat-iris marbles.
Oh! And the two kids hanging around the cafe, but you never see both of them in the same place? Also her. Probably wearing orange and blue, which, again, best colors, and finding new ways to put them together.
She’s got a round, open face–except for when she doesn’t–but she likes the world and likes the people, and yeah she has a little bit of baby fat still hanging around, and so she’s the perfect shape for hugging.
Or petting.
Or giving brushies, come to think of it.
You should give her brushies.
Really, when you think about it, her abilities should be taken as evidence that celestial lion dogs aren’t supposed to be guardians, right? She can fly in all of her forms, which is not something you need when you’re standing on a plinth all day, and she can coax the five elements to her will, which is only tangentially related to standing on a plinth all day, and she can shapeshift, which, again, is not what you need when your job is to sit in one place all day, and be the same shape all day, and growl menacingly all day.
I mean, toughness, yeah, but that’s only really useful as a guard dog if you’re actually doing anything with it. You know, fighting, and saving people and such.
- Mostly based around different animal shapes, Beast Boy / Animorphs / Nimona style - Not limited to animals but animals are quickest to mind, easiest to do - Plant shapes might be theoretically possible, but off-theme and she has no interest in being a plant. Being a plant is boring. - Inanimate objects are a no-go. Needs to be something with a mind. - While she can transform to be shaped like somebody else, it's taboo and rude - Most of her shapes are amber, again, Beast Boy and Nimona style. Not mandatory, but she likes amber and teal and why wouldn't she be the best colors? - Shapeshifting is not instantaneous, but it's within the half-a-second to three second range. Shapeshifting is both audible and visible--burst of changeling fire style is what I'm thinking, but I can be persuaded otherwise. Shapeshifting should be non-destructive--she cannot use the burst of fire to actually set anything on fire - Shapeshifting is a full-body deal. While she can shapeshift to do small things, it's still a full-body change even if she's just like, changing hair color - Shapeshifting large is usually harder and takes longer than shapeshifting small. She also needs to have enough space to shift into something--can't just shift into a whale unless there's a whale shaped hole in the world for her to fit into - She hasn't quite mastered the art of talking around a mouthful of teeth if they aren't her own or human. I theory, she might be able to get that down, but she's still learning. - While she can modulate her weight to better match the animal form, she does not always remember to do so, which means that occasionally a house-cat weighing approximately one statue's worth of granite will crawl into someone's lap and stay there. - Cannot transform while collared, because mystic.
Emotionally: - Shifting is like fidgeting. It scratches an itch to be something new, to feel something different. Part of the reason she doesn't want to go back to heaven is it means that she has to assume her role as a guardian, which means sitting in one place in one shape and that's awful - She loves taking new shapes because it lets her be new things, experiment with new shapes, new ideas, new senses - She has a number of standby shapes for comfortable daily use--cat, labrador, squirrel, snake, teenager of both genders, her own lion dog shape--and tends to swap between them as the mood takes them does not like taking on adult human shape. While she can, it comes with Expectations and social pressure and gross gross gross - Different shapes represent different moods and requests for engagement
LABELS: Freak: +3 (Unleash Your Powers) Danger: -2 (Directly Engage a Threat) Savior: +1 (Defend Someone) Superior: +1 (Assess the Situation, Provoke Someone) Mundane: +0 (Comfort or Support, Pierce the Mask)
Conditions [ ]Afraid (-2 to directly engage) [ ]Angry (-2 to comfort or support or pierce the mask) [X]Guilty (-2 to provoke someone or assess the situation) [X]Insecure (-2 to defend someone or reject what others say) [ ]Hopeless (-2 to unleash your powers
Okay, peel your ears back and stick your head in a convenient bucket, because Shifu’s about to blow your mind. Shifu’s actually from heaven.
Or, you know, the heavenly court, which is much less interesting. Specifically, her guardians were assigned to protect the peaches of immortality? Which is nice for them, because the trees only give fruit once every three thousand years, which means they only need to be worried about once out of every three thousand years?
Which, on the other hand, means that for 2999, they don’t do anything but stand by the garden entrance and glare at people, right?
Boring. As. Hell. Apparently there was this one monkey, but he's busy somewhere else and has already eaten one of the peaches anyway, so he's probably not coming back?
Anyway, there they all are, year 2999–there’s actually a second type of peach that grows every 9000 years? Is it that year?--2999, give or take, and suddenly they’re in a tower, and Shifu’s got this thing round her neck, and everyone’s shouting? And this lady with foxtails is shouting at them, and Shifu gets put in a box!
Well, that’s not going to work very long! Not with Shifu on the case!
And that’s how she found Mr. Chan, right? On the street, wet, a funny little cat-dog alone in the world?
And he took the cat home, and couldn’t find any tags on the collar, and took it off to see if he couldn’t find any chips or notes or something?
And that’s the story of how Mr. Chan found a girl in his room. Which he was very nice about!
You’d like Mr. Chan. He lets her have coffee if she's been a good girl. Which mostly involves not getting into the coffee on her own, but still.
And she’d go back to heaven, but wouldn’t you know it, the next few days after all of that, there was this big ghost explosion, right? And the lady with the tails is gone? Kinda? But also not? She’s somewhere, hidden, like Shifu is hidden, and if she can just find the lady, she won’t need to go back to heaven, right?
It’s not like heaven was that great, after all. This place has squirrels, and coffee, and her friends, and Mr. Chan, and all these new sharpest o try on, and they don’t mind hardly at all when you go off and save people instead of guarding a tree, and she can be a master here, and–
Earth is great, right? Super great. And all her friends are here.
Oh! You’ve met her friends, right? Foxpearl is so smart–she knows everything about earth, and she’s so good at knowing what to do. And Rain is.
Rain is.
Look, you can’t tell anyone, right? You gotta promise!
Okay, you ready? You promise?
Uh, um. Rain is super pretty. And she’s so nice, and she helps people just because she can, and she’s figuring out how to do things so quickly and.
She's really cool, and. And she gives good brushies, and she just.
Shifu really likes her.
You can’t tell anyone. You pinkie-swore!
Relationships: Hsien’s been teaching me about earth. She’s one of my mutuals, and I love reading her discourseposts. I have a crush on Rain, but I keep it under wraps.
Influence: I have a cheerful demeanor, and therefore everyone has influence on me.
Moves: Elemental Powers: When you alter a human device with your magic, roll + Freak. On a hit, you create a device that can do something impossible once and then fizzle. When you roll a 10+, choose one: - it works exceptionally well - you get an additional use out of it On a miss, the device works, but it has a completely unintended side effect that the GM will reveal when you use it.
The Best of Them: When you comfort or support someone by telling them how they exemplify the best parts of Earth, roll + Freak instead of +Mundane.
Not So Different After All: When you talk about your home, roll + Freak. On a 10+, choose two. On a 7-9, choose one. During the conversation, you: - confess a flaw of your home; add 1 Team to the pool - mislead them about your home; take Influence over them - describe the glories of your home; clear a condition On a miss, you inadvertently reveal more about yourself than you planned; tell them a secret or vulnerability you haven’t shared with Earthlings before now.
Team Moves: When you share a triumphant celebration with someone, take Influence over them if you show them meaningful affection, physical or emotional. They decide if it’s meaningful. When you share a vulnerability or weakness with someone, they tell you what you should do to fitin more. Take +1 forward to do it, and mark potential if you do.
Potential: 0/0/0/0/0 Every time you roll a miss on a move, mark potential.
When you fill your potential track, you advance. Choose from the list below. ❑ Take another move from your playbook ❑ Take another move from your playbook ❑ Take a move from another playbook ❑ Someone permanently loses Influence over you; add +1 to a Label ❑ Rearrange your Labels as you choose, and add +1 to a Label ❑ Unlock your Moment of Truth ❑ Choose two new abilities from any playbook as you come into your own ❑ You adopt a human life; take Secret Identity and The Mask from the Janus playbook
When you’ve taken five advances from the top list, you can take advances from the list below. ❑ Unlock your Moment of Truth after you’ve used it once ❑ Change playbooks ❑ Take an adult move ❑ Take an adult move ❑ Lock a Label, and add +1 to a Label of your choice ❑ Retire from the life or become a paragon of the city.
She didn't mean to tell Aphrodite to stick it up his ass!
Or.
Well. She did. She absolutely did and wouldn't take the words back for all the crystal dragon treats in the galaxy, on reflection, but it still wasn't smart!
… Maybe for all the crystal dragon treats in the galaxy. Not for her, you understand, but because Brightberry deserves nice things, and she can be humble one (1) time if it means seeing Brightberry's face light up.
Airdrop a dragon onto a planet-sized ball of delimshus shinies. Oh, she'd get so fat so fast and it'd be glorious.
And it'd give her time to clean the house in the meantime, so she can do two nice things at once and--
And she just told a god to go fuck himself, didn't she? The energy keeping her going is draining away, and after this long in the lab there wasn't much to begin with.
But Zeus was onside? Maybe? How do you translate the thunder there--like, you can't touch her? Leave her alone? He left after so maybe so but also it's probably a bad idea to assume either of those things are true? There are worse ideas than assuming you're untouchable, but it's hard to think of one at the moment.
Hard to think, period. Sure as hell doesn't feel untouchable. Feels empty.
But…
She's felt the energy rising around her before. Like the electric, heart-palpitating feeling you get when you're riding the wave just before the crash. If you can just keep running, keep ahead of the darkness, you'll never find out about the crushing weight chasing you. It's a ride, but when the darkness catches up…
It's a bad idea. The last time she embraced this, Brightberry…
Well, it takes a lot to get Brightberry to yell.
She's super nice, you know? Too good. Too nice. Too forgiving. And even when she was yelling, it was. She was shouting about how Dyssia'd been gone for two weeks, and she didn't know what had happened, and she'd been worried, and have you eaten anything since I forced that food down your throat, and food, now, bed, now, talk…
And then she didn't talk to her for a month.
Her pulse pounds in her ears. Bom. Bum. Bom-bum-b-dum.
She's hollow. No food, no sleep, no thoughts, and the purple crawls in--fills her, fills the emptiness, crackles through her veins, fills her with promises.
She can practically see the energy--a pulsating purple sphere, at eye height, pressing against her consciousness. A promise, a threat. Somehow, it's the size of a pea, but also bigger than her head.
Behind it, the puppet slowly raises its head, and turns a fearful, hoping expression on her.
Thoughtfully--dreamily--Dyssia plucks the bean from the air, turns it this way and that. Brings it up to one eye, sees, as it were, herself, from outside, from above, sees the bean staring at her staring at the bean staring at.
Flicks it in the air with a thumb, catches it in her mouth--
Bom. Bum. Bom-bum-b-dum.
And it turns out, it's super easy to make sure a ship can't be used, when you think about it.
I mean, what was she thinking? Slowly convincing all the Pix to abandon a perfectly good ship, serving under a psychotic abuse golum, making an equally psychotic abused golem?
Nonsense. Slow. Useless. She's full of fire, full of lightning, and the images dance in front of her.
Bom. Bom. Bom-bum-b-dum. The drums push and thunder, urging her along. The chasm yawns behind her, but it's not important. It's behind her, and she's running, and all she needs is what's in front of her, and what she needs…
All she really needs is for the ship to stop being a ship. And there are so many ways for that to happen, right? There are all these systems dedicated to making sure that a vaguely ship-shaped blob of astral metals today will be a ship-shaped blob of astral metals tomorrow. And you just--you just reach out and turn them inside out, right? You've got a star that can go nova, which is less helpful than you might think, but not as not helpful as to be totally useless?
Engine room. She doesn't remember getting here, but she's here now. There's a badge on her chest. Is that real? Smells real. Smells purple.
The whole world smells purple, somehow there and not there more real than real. It's like the veil that held her down, kept her here--there?--has been lifted and she can see the world the way it is for the first time.
Except it's not the first time?
Unreal clarity. She can see the whole ship--see the coursing of the flame, see how it writhes in her hands, see where it flies and vents and roars. It's all so simple--vent here, and the ship turns this way, and vent there to turn that way, and she could just laugh!
Nudge the star. Bump it between her claws like a top. Spin it around, arcing fire and electric radiation into the engines until they flare red, white, purple--
But laughing takes energy, and she's running, and the darkness is following, and the roar of bom, bum, bom-bum-b-dum is chasing her through the ship, full of thunder and roaring and teeth and--
Ritual. Rituals. She's acquired the robes of the navigator, and the augury is before her. Pix stare at her, stare at her badge. Poseidon rumbles and points and she's full of light and laughing and grabs the augury and wrenches and--
The Pix are arranged before her now. They've realized what she's doing and they chase her, jetpacks trailing plumes and unreal formations and wild scents and the bridge is before her and the captain is shouting orders but she's lightning and violet and bom, bum, bom-bum-b-dum is behind her and around her and is her and she is it and the drums fill the universe with their--
You know, in the better class of play, this would be the moment where the heroine tells the villain exactly what they think of their monologue, and in which hole they can stick it.
I mean, you know it won't work, right? Hero doesn't know it, but it's only been twenty minutes since the play started. Nobody actually believes that the Comtesse de la Rue is going to give up on her web of manipulation and deceit--she's been, in her own mind, helping people find love and happiness for twenty years, and no jumped-up pipsqueak can give a speech that's gonna change her mind.
...Which does, now that she thinks of it, beg the question how much time has passed in her "play." A month, at least, since that day.
Possibly two. Time a little fuzzy at the moment, like it always is after emerging.
Brightberry will know. Note to self, once she's out of the lab and cleaned up, ask Brightberry what day it is.
Subtly. There's gotta be a way to subtly ask what day it is in a way that does not communicate you've been on an unspecified number of all-nighters? Ask how long it is until. No, no, that doesn't work, the servitors will just change the schedule because she asked for something.
Post script to note to self, with the neon glitter pen that stands out: do something nice for Brightberry. She puts up with a lot and it's been while.
Right. Time and plays and such. Twenty minutes into the play, nobody actually believes that the heroine can make a speech and convince the antagonist to turn over a new leaf. The plot couldn't happen that way.
Two hours in, after the Comtess has had a chance to see her web crash around her ears, and to see the effects of her actions, then maybe she'd accept an impassioned plea, have a plot-appropriate change of heart. But this early in the play, everyone knows that she's just going to scoff at Valerie's speech about how she will love her Ceronian, and she will help her become Shogun, and nothing will stand between her.
And damned if she actually knows what the monologue she needs to give right now is? Because he's not making any friggin' sense?
Fuck, please don't let this be one of those things where nothing makes sense until after a night's sleep. Or worse, one of those things that is perfect and absolutely makes sense until you have a night's sleep.
The Azura cling. He hates us for it. Wants us to. To be happy and die? To let go of those emotions so we can be content with what we have? To let go of the emotions that keep us unhappy?
But the emotions behind this are also his gift? They keep us here instead of being happy?
His endgame. He wants her to. Too broken to be happy. Could be happy if she let go? Let go of the Pix? Too broken to let go. Too set on trying to help. Help the Pix who are, you know, arguably also her enemies?
Endgame is filtering that out? Getting rid of the people who meddle? People who want empire, who aren't content to just be happy until they.
If this were a comic, there'd be a steam cloud forming above her head. And already, she can feel the effort of thought smoking neurons.
... You know, smoked neurons are probably pretty tasty. Like barbecue. Delicious, crispy grey matter, with a crackly skin you can scrape with a fork, but with a smoky, fatty center.
"I would like my puppet back, please."
Fuck. Already, she can imagine a playwright pacing back and forth in front of the stage, swearing at her star actor for forgetting her lines at the emotional climax.
Not prompting her what they are, though, the imaginary jerk.
"You see, I need to go overdose on being a good person before I get filtered out of the gene pool. If I'm gonna get filtered out, might as well do what I can first."
The two thoughts swim around her, like shadows in the deep, invisible except in the shadows they cast, inaudible except in the electric thrill that fills the entire sea. They push her from the shallows, hound her to the depths, give her limbs the death-delaying chest-heaving strength of adrenaline.
Body cries hollow in multiple ways. Her eyes sag as she lifts her head from the workbench. Her stomach claws at her back, gnawing and empty. Brain empty, thoughts slow, like wading through a river. She should have given this up when the creativity failed. Should have run when the thoughts failed to leap, had to be mustered and ordered and fought. Refused to work as they should, fled to greener fields, with saner--
But this is important. And she is afraid. She stares at the god like a butterfly at a pin. He is the first person to talk to her in.
Time is. She's pretty sure that time happened, at some point, here in the dark.
It must have. Couch wasn't here before, and she can't remember when it got here. Can't remember it arriving. Didn't order it? Doesn't think she ordered it.
Spies. Probably the spies, noticing her and doing it for her. Noticing and caring and not asking whether maybe she shouldn't be--
It's perfect. Simpering, beautiful. Aching to be abused.
A masterpiece, she notes with. It's not pride. It should be pride. She did it, finally did it, finally did something right.
It's sin incarnate. Hideous. Dangles from Aphrodite's threads like a mockery. Stares at her with exactly the right expression, the one she slaved over and crafted to purpose, mouth open and whispering and echoing in the silence that
You did this. You did this. You did this.
Because it was important, and you were afraid.
"Why?" she breathes.
She does not touch him. Some lessons are burned in early. But he is here, and he is the first to talk to her in too long, and the question cannot be bound, cannot be restrained, comes with its own movements. To beg, to plead, to let her go back, try it again, do something different.
She knows why.
"Why? What had we done, to so earn the hatred of love?"
It's like. On the one hand, Yaji isn't a person. Which is a terrible sentence and one that feels dirty in her mouth. It's a seven-syllable horror story that someone out there--someone on this ship went out of their way to create a walking, talking, laughing thing to--
They aren't friends, to be clear. Dyssia sees what Yaji does--what Yaji makes those around her do, what she does to keep herself in the good books of this automaton.
But at the same time, you can't spend any amount of time with someone without. Well, not liking. Definitely not liking. Nothing this side of loathing.
But it's like, the second it twigged to her what Yaji was, Dyssia also couldn't help but pity her?
Which is the weirdest feeling, by the by? Yaji was created to cause harm. She takes no joy in it. Joy does not exist. She was created for one purpose, and it was to control a population of pix through incredibly violent suppression.
You don't pity a broom for being dirty. But the idea of doing it with--
Not a person. Not a people. Easy to see, once you've asked the question and can instantly see the answer, but so hard to internalize.
Somone out there figured out the optimal way to cause harm. Somebody asked themselves how to police the pix, came to the conclusion that bullying was the answer, perfected bullying, and loaded it onto this chassis that would go out there and cut someone down with a well-placed word. Someone could have figured out the optimal way to do, you know, not that, to do the opposite of that, to build people up and do something constructive with a highly-customized drone chassis, because that's what Yaji is, and instead they made her--
She doesn't feel like not a person, is the thing. The illusion is so perfect that you only spot it once you're there, once you've been accepted, once she's. Decided is the wrong word. Once whatever process behind the eyes has optimized for you as an element of bullying, rather than a target.
The books never tell you what it's like to see someone as a target, incidentally. It's all well and good to tell herself that she's not a person. That she's a thing, and one designed with harm in mind. That if she doesn't get rid of Yaji, somehow, all of her efforts to save the Pix will be frustrated and come to naught.
Or possibly nought. What a fun word.
But none of that prepares you for holding the knife. Will she make noise? Will she even know it's happening? Slit the throat, or jam it between two important vertebrae?
How will the Pix react to her straight up murdering one of them? Can't tell them "whoops, you don't understand, she wasn't actually real."
But…
Ignore the reasons for and against, for a second. Is that something she can do, something she can bring herself to do? Can she stare at this not-a-friend-not-a-person-pitiful-thing and end it?
She's been seeing it in her dreams already. How much worse if she actually does it?
But!
But but but!
She's decided against it! Because there's a better way, and one she's actually really damn proud of figuring out!
See, there's this theory one of her teachers taught her about. About ethics, right? Some old bastard wrote about how the best thing was about maximizing goodness for the most people, right? If you have one option that benefits twenty people a lot and one that benefits thirty by the same amount, you maximize goodness and choose the thirty person option, right?
Not a very convincing theory of goodness, she admits, because, like, how do you quantify goodness, and who's picking the measures of goodness, and who's doing the measuring, and so on, but! But there's the idea--rather applicable in this case--of the monster, right?
Figure there's a monster, right, who derives infinite pleasure from somebody else's suffering. The good in the world is always higher if the monster gets to carry out their torture than if they don't, right, because the pleasure the torturer derives from it is greater than the pain it causes the torturee.
It's meant to be a big ol' gotcha to the theory, right, that the greatest good in this system could logically be to torture someone for a monster's satisfaction.
But hey, even if the theory is bogus, the exercise…
Because, and here's the genius thing, right? Yaji is a drone. Or something similar enough to it that it doesn't matter. A drone evolved not to need food, to take satisfaction--no, wrong word, no mind. Pleasure? Purpose? Instinct. Yaji acts on [/i]instinct[/i] to be cruel. There's some kind of prioritization there, which is why Yaji jumped on the malcontent pix first.
So, if she can reverse engineer Yaji, and figure her out, it should be possible, then, to engineer an equally built-to-purpose drone of her own. Something that can't think, can't feel, definitely can't feel hurt by the abuse golem pointed at it. Something absolutely irresistible to the arcane process inside that empty head. Three days base, but she's sure this one could last at least a week--maybe even two.
Which isn't a lot, and she's doing her best not to think that she's creating a life for the sole purpose of being attacked and degraded and eventually blessedly dying, and how different does that make her from whoever made Yaji, but.
But it's gotta be worth it, if the Pix live, right?
Have you ever worried which version of you is actually real?
Because you're never one hundred percent unfiltered around anyone, right? Pure you is raw, unfiltered, chaotic, dangerous. The kind of brain that spits out the wrong thought in the wrong way at the wrong time to the wrong person, and suddenly the entire room is staring.
Faces, that's the ticket. You put on different faces around different people, carefully crafting each mask to mirror those around you. Oh, these people don't get why anger is--
Well, not good, not really, but also not purely negative?
Anyway, that group can't handle Angry Dyssia, so you shave the anger off, tuck it away for when it's needed.
And it works in reverse! Yeah, Dyssia loves some close personal contact--hugging, squeezing, biting. And wow, this group is really accepting of that!
Bad example, really, hard to find people who like that, but follow the metaphor please.
And it's just such a relief to be able to express that bit of herself that Dyssia finds herself embodying that face even more than she normally would? Like, to the point that sometimes she finds it more exhausting to be true to herself than it would be suppressing it?
It's like.
All the time. Literally, all the time.
Every second, there's a little Dyssia sitting behind the eyes, watching the world. Assessing, watching, stressing, deciding which version of herself gets let out.
Do other people do this? Is there a little Merilt, watching out at the little Dyssia, and privately just as terrified of getting it wrong?
Do other people feel the relief when they get home and can take the mask off? When the door shuts, and they're alone--or as alone as you get when apparently your support staff numbers in the double digits and includes emotional support spies--do they also heave a mental sigh when they get to take off the weight of managing other peoples' emotions?
The point is, Dyssia is lying all the time. She is pathologically good at it.
Which would be less frustrating if she were confident in being deliberately good at it? It's nerve wracking, sends her heart into palpitations, like there's a voice screaming they know two inches from her ears.
But she's always best at doing something when she is afraid or when someone is in danger. When it's lie or suffer, oh, how the lies flow.
Like melted butter, or perhaps chocolate. Some liquid substance that tastes good.
Sweat?
Don't say sweat. People look at you weird if you say sweat tastes good. Could have said other stuff, but sweat's bad enough.
A-ny-hoo.
She's been smart about this, she hopes. Avoided proselytizing to the mimetic spies, which she really should have considered when she started propagating a mutiny. If nobody knows she's the source of the rumors, it's gonna be child's play to insert herself into Yaji's inner circle.
Well. Not.
Not child's play, not exactly.
Or maybe yes, child's play, but only for the right kind of child? The playground bully kind of child. The kind of child who can relish in emotional suffering, in bullying, in ensuring that she's on the top of her own private empire--you know, the kind that doesn't actually threaten the status quo, like a playground bully doesn't threaten the school, but lets the bully hold court over anybody smaller than her?
The point is, it's exactly the kind of child's play that is anathema to Dyssia. It's taking all the normal masks--how to notice emotions, how to care for others, how to avoid causing harm, how to celebrate and cultivate the weird--and decapitating them, inverting them, wearing their skin as a trophy.
Suck up to Yaji. Tell herself that the harm she's causing is less than the harm of genocide. Ignore the looks of confusion and pain--ignore them, damn you!
Cultivate that acquaintance. Yes-girl the shit out of her. Laugh at her jokes, goon for her. Ignore the creeping, gnawing panic of how long this is taking, how long it's taking for her to let her guard down in a species that does not let their guard down. Be the perfect mirror, plus one. Collapse in your bed at the end of every day emotionally drained and aching because tomorrow is gonna happen.
It'll all be worth it once you claim her crown, once you steal her badge, once you recruit her cronies and move against her at that big event.
Don't think about what happens next, once you sit atop the new power vacuum, become the new mean girl.
Whatever you do, don't think about which version of Dyssia is real.
Is it weird that she doesn't want to abandon the ship?
It's not that it's become home in a startlingly short amount of time, really. Not the friendships that she dares to think are maybe real, and not foxgirl machinations to manipulate her.
It's….
It's an imperial class.
Look, you probably don't get that, not if you haven't read all the books she has, but. Imperial era warships don't need the slipgates, right? They can go anywhere they want, anywhere they please, with naught but ritual to guide them and--
They're families, right? A crew, all united and pulling together. Shanties, echoing down the hall. Smiling faces, passed and waved at and embraced when the time is right. An Imperial ship is the face of freedom.
Well, not always. Occasionally it's the face of the abrupt surprise villain, but mostly, right? Mostly the face of spunky young heroes exploring the cosmos in an episodic go-anywhere strike-anywhere ship.
But after too long spent thinking, it's the only thing she can think of. A ship can be replaced, right?
Potentially, for someone else, because where else is she going to sign onto one of these, but the ship itself is available somewhere else.
And the Pix aren't.
Unless she succeeds, in which case she'll have unleashed a horde of backstabbing foxgirls on the galaxy, which seems like it should take mental pride of place, but that's not what we're doing right now. Right now, we're trying to convince the Pix that they could more efficiently bamboozle folks by showing up one at a time, right?
Which is also happening one at a time, mostly. Trust is a rare coin among the pix--did you know in their language it translates to someone you haven't stabbed today?--and so she's not sure which of her friends is actually a friend, and which views her as an easy mark, and which thinks they can manipulate her into acting on their behalf.
(Which, come on, all you have to do is ask, she is not exactly a closed book here. Get her excited about something and that's your in, you've got what you're implying already.)
But one at a time, a few at a time, she's doing all she can to make them realize that the ship is really an impediment. If you blow a hole in someone's atmosphere every time, rain fire down on a mountain, people come to expect you, right? You can't con them in that kind of environment.
Hell, is it actually a con at all? You're just demanding something under the threat of violence, like a brigand.
See, and here's the thing, if you go in one at a time, you can ingratiate yourself into the population, right? They don't know to expect the Pix, economic superstars and quasi-ceronians. Hell, they might actually see you as actual Ceronians, if it's been long enough since the last raid.
And talk about coverage! Right now, you're pretty much limited to one ship, right? Can only affect one planet at a time, can only rob one planet at a time. Think what you could achieve if you split off, twos and threes, and held up small settlements! You're still basically Ceronians, you can still band together and take over planets, the power is in you, not your ship!
Avoid the biomancers. Avoid the captain. Steal badges as needed and as possible to get away with.
She's hoping. She's hoping like hell that she can appeal to that base instinct, that base need to get away with it, to hoodwink someone, enough that they'll give up the power to just blow someone out of the sky, which is much less satisfying for everyone involved.
She's digging now, scattering papers to the wind, subtlety and spy shit forgotten in her desperation to find. To find something, anything, to show she's--
All of them? Just.
Well, no, clearly not all of them. In the biomancers' minds, that's the problem, innit, is that some of the Pix aren't doing their job, even though they've also decided that their job doesn't need to exist.
All of them? In cold blood? Wiped out, in one three-day purge, all because they don't have a purpose? For not fitting in?
She'd felt comfortable. Like it was cozy, knowing that somewhere, out there, there was somebody making sure that things went right, that were taking care of things, making sure everything happened smoothly. That there was someone with a plan and a handle on things.
Because she was always going to be part of that plan.
Like she'd been part of the plan for Merilt?
Inconvenient, but an Azura. Unable to simply be disposed of en masse simply for not fulfilling a purpose. Sacrificed in the most optimal way.
They kidnapped her, for cryin' out loud. All she has to do to get her life back is wait, and--
And go back to her old life, knowing that she'll never be challenged, and never have to fight, and can return to her workshop, and not striving, and--
And let them die. And not do anything to help them, when she has a chance to help, when she might be the only one who can help, when all the help the biomancers offer is increasingly incredulous attempts at finding a niche for the Pix because they can't see that they don't need a niche, can't see that not having a niche isn't a justification for genocide.
It's okay, she can--
Talking to Tidal isn't an option, though? Tidal's great, hot, fun, but she also doesn't listen? She knows what she knows, and what she knows is that biomancy is the greatest tool in allowing people to be happy maintaining empire? She'll get that look she always gets, and reassure Dyssia that things may not make sense right now, but in time she'll understand, and it's all for the good of everyone, and the empire is happy, and the people are happy, and--
How many drones can she request? Enough to make a difference? Not ten thousand, not for an Apprentice, even an Azura one.
What can she even modify them with?
Virus the lot of them, so they die in minutes instead of days? That just delays the project for however long it takes to whip up another ten thousand. Gives the Pix an extra few days. Maybe gets the Pix declared rogue, because who else could have the motivation to protect them? And if she gets caught, now she's being watched, now she's being protected--for her own good, of course, the poor dear is confused, doesn't understand what needs to happen--
And don't think it hasn't slipped her notice that her first thought in response to a genocide was to treat a bunch of--well, not people, but living things as disposable objects, as tools to be tweaked to purpose.
Aaaaaugh.
Unleash the drones on the biomancers. No. Pix fight to protect their biomancers, she's just attacked the ship.
How quickly can she whip up a protective instinct? In theory, it's established research, all the tools exist for it. But again, unless she can infect at least five thousand of the ten thousand, it's only a delay. And again, a three day delay at best.
So, develop a new fighting species in days, find a way to keep the drones alive, somehow apply it to all then thousand drones, and effectively hold the ship hostage with her new combat species which will outdo a group of three-quarter Ceronians? While not also running afoul of Zeus for creating people, who will now be fully people, and as such, their own.
She's not ready to be a mom.
She could turn the Pix into the best servitors? Find their best niche? But the thought sits in her throat like half-returned vomit, burning, acrid. It accepts the Biomancer's position, works within it, acknowledges that the best she can hope for is to prevent biomancers from biomancing near things she cares about.
Which is, itself, a startling realization.
She gathers the notes as best as she can, and puts them neatly back in their folders. Semi neatly. As best as she can remember, which admittedly is not very. Anything to buy time, prevent people from noticing what she knows.
She doesn't know how much time she has. Or rather, she knows how much time she has, and it's Not Much. But despite all logic, despite all sense, she is going to save her captors from themselves.
It takes Dyssia a week to realize that she's looking at this through the wrong lens.
Up to this point, it's been a standard adventure, right? The idyllic present, the inciting incident, the refusal of the call, the aged mentor--which isn't being fair to Tidal, really--but she thought this was all going to be a big space adventure.
No. Oohoho, no.
See, this is a spy thriller.
Granted, one where there's not an immediate love interest? Normally, there'd have been a femme fatale type, possibly an opposite number in the villain's ranks, to be a foil to the heroine. And Tidal could fill that role, maybe, if she weren't already being a mentor?
And one that's almost surprisingly mundane? Normally, finding out that one of your most trusted confidantes was an agent for a third party would be a stunning third act twist. Although, since it's this close to the inciting incident, it might also be considered to be setting the stage, determining the rules by which the world operates.
Everyone knows about this? Does everyone know this? It's never quite clear what's common knowledge and what isn't, and the thing about being common knowledge is that nobody tells you it is until you reveal that you don't know it, somehow.
Why do they have so many drones, though?
Probably, she should just ask Tidal. Everyone here seems so willing to bend over backwards to help her. Which is weird, but also somehow reassuring? Even if she doesn't know what the plan is entirely, there is someone out there who does, and who has good ideas.
But also… What if it just is common knowledge? It'd be awful to see the momentary hitch in their gaze, the brief retabulation of how capable she is, the readjustment of where to start?
Because they can't be military, right? The Pix already have a stronger fighting force in, would you believe it, the Pix.
But military is all they seem to be good for, too? Fight, kill, die.
Can't be civilian, she doesn't think. Or rather, there are so many better options for virtually every civilian use. You want the accumulation of skills that comes with life, a soul, a brain.
Fuck, they're creepy.
They could be, she supposes, a form of chaff. Throw them out into a battle, clog the field with them while your actual troops are occupied with something else.
More and more, she believes their true purpose is simply to accustom Apprentices to treating living beings as disposable, as programmable.
(She hasn't gone so far as to give them a brain or a digestive system. That seems like the next logical step, but it's a hell of a step to go from various effective combat augments to creating life. That seems a good way to get in trouble.)
But she still doesn't know, and she still can't ask. And she is on a Pix vessel, center of backstabbing and betrayal.
Which is why she's sneaking into Tidal's quarters. There's gotta be something there, some note, some textbook she can barrow. All she has to do is find it, and figure it out, and hey, here's a chance to scope out where she might keep her badge.
So, no skill transference. About what she expected, but still good to confirm. Which means that at any point, anybody has to be able to do all jobs. Or, no, wait, everyone has to. Everyone has to know how to do the jobs, including their own, and below in the chain, because logically, if someone is taking your badge, it's probably someone below you, which means there's now a gap for you to fit into if you can steal their badge from them in return.
Fuck, they really did a number on that mountain, too. She liked that mountain. The Azura would never built or move or arrange an imperfect mountain, but they occasionally might make an oversight, right? And so there's a tiny spot on the west end of the mountain, got a perfect little grove with, if you can imagine it, no line of sight for a crystal dragon to see the giant space mirrors? Shady, cool, has a nice little stream running down the center of--
Had. Had a stream. Probably has some glassy pebbles, now.
What jobs does she actually know how to do? She could probably maid inoffensively? It's a good job, but not one she really envisions for herself for the rest of her life?
(Ignore, for the sake of this argument, the coughs and fits of an imagined Brightberry, stalking from one pile of debris to the other and gesturing emphatically. She likes the state of chaos. It means she knows where everything is, thanks much.)
But that's kind of the point, isn't it, is that this isn't a permanent position? Learn enough to do well in a job, and then figure out who's next in the line, how to do their job, and how to steal their badge.
Unless… If they're not doing their job, their badge will be stripped by their superior. Who superiors for the captain? It's basically inconceivable that she could get in on that, because the captain is the one who's got the most to lose, the most protections in place, the most qualified to rule or at least the one most capable of maintaining their rule. A useful thought to keep in mind, but even then it doesn't guarantee that the captain themself does not have a superior. Hrm.
Gee, that ship is getting close. She should probably be trying to escape, shouldn't she?
But also…
"I'll admit that biomancy is one of my blind spots," she says, more to the ocean than to Tidal, talking aloud. "It's one of those things where, like. If you're mastering sculpting, you might make a thousand vases, right? Or bake a hundred loaves, or forge a hundred swords, or give a thousand speeches, all in search of that perfect one, right?
"But when your product is alive, it feels…"
And…
Well.
If, hypothetically, you don't get to that point, right?
If your house, for instance, is full of the discarded refuse work of past projects. Clay pots that have been left unattended until the clay goes hard and dry. Figurines, glued together, but sitting in front of jars of paint accidentally left open, crusting over with sludge. Architectural mockups, half-detailed, miniscule blades of grass glued across half the lawn before moving on to a different project and probably accidentally sat on..
They're not abandoned, right? She's put them down for now, let that field lay fallow. The clay can be rewetted, new paint can be acquired, the building can be rebuilt.
But if you do that to something alive, then you can't just shrug that off. Someone has to live with what you've done besides your longsuffering dragon bestie.
And yet. And yet, already, she can feel the questions welling up. What does she need? What does she know? How long did it take you to learn? How long did it take you to craft that persona? Hypothetically, if someone had a birthmark, how hard would it be to tell you'd done something grossly illegal? What were you before you were Tidal Specialization? Who were you?
And perhaps more importantly, who will you be once I take your badge?
She shivers, staring at Tidal like an awl at a particularly tempting bit of leather.
"It's something I want to learn, if you're willing to take me as a student."
Fetzen
Phoe
Lurking Krog