eldest

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

"Yeah, I got that, space hallucination goddess lady!" shouted the pilot into her helmet. You can see the radio waves as they beam out back down towards the surface.

"Uh, Juxane, the fuck you saying?" came the transmission from the surface, demonstrating similarly lax radio discipline. "You high up there? You flying my baby fuckin high?"

"It's not like that, this chick is - UNPARALLELED GREETINGS#$$$," the radio waves are blocked out by the ocean of static and scrapcode emanating from the Martian missile. As you watch the interplanetary rocket changes course - turning from its predictable and suicidal course into the shield dome of AEGIS to fly over in this direction. "ENLARGE YOUR PENIS FOR LESS IMPORTANT PLEASE READ, destination reached conducting u-turn, warhead armed, bearing 402 115 494, RGB 255/230/50, terminus rockets deployed, HELLO FROM MAR$,"

It's that stream of broken signal, a mad patchwork of intelligence reaching out to you with greetings, spam, and garbled technical data as it starts to carry its warhead towards you at full speed.

@Thanqol

Hm.

That almost made sense. About half.

Ferra heads towards the rocket herself. She'd rather stay and chat, sure, but they had hours and hours to do that, and a missile can impact in about 10 minutes. Less if the overdrive boosters kick in. She sends back her own queries, bouncing questions back and forth, looking for insight into the madcap nonsense it's spewing.

9 on pierce the mask: What are you really planning?

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

The astronaut inside swears, jerks, and reflexively leans on the horn even though it doesn't do anything in space. Looks like being bad at traffic made it up here too.

As they try to get over the jump scare you start hearing a blumbering crackle at the edge of your consciousness. You know the shape of this - the same connection you felt that time before on the AEGIS pyramid, that vault into the skies. And sure enough on the fringes of your vision is one of Doctor Sylvanius' long range missiles, piloted towards its pointless task by a mad, unspooled artificial intelligence.

@Thanqol

"Great driving! I tried that once and hooooooo boy, that was tougher than it looked. I didn't cause too much cosmetic damage though!" She looks over towards the missile and blinks a few times. "Hey, you have enough radar to avoid that missile right?" She pauses for a moment, then clarifies. "It doesn't seem to be aimed at you, you just need to not steer into it!"

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

Ferra's already gliding on her own miniature Bifröst, ghosting along beside the ship. She catches up and waves, broadcasting on enough frequencies that the car radio picks up her "Hi!".

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

Ferra's Community Science Arts and Crafts Corner

Ferra's sitting in her apartment. The time stamp shows this is the fourth hour or so of filming. She's sitting in the foreground, on a comfy chair. She's got a ball of yarn siting at her side that her cat is alternating between looking refined and dignified sitting next to it, and then trying (and failing) to kill the prey when it twitches. Bode is sitting a few feet further away, at a potter's wheel, making something that does not, quite, look exactly unlike a duck. Ferra is cheerfully humming bits from Le Mis.

This goes on for 6 more hours. Occasionally they stop to show each other a neat bit, or get more clay/yarn. Eventually the camera runs out of juice. Ferra does not stop humming.

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

Ferra tilts here head. "Is there something wrong? A hideout for one person would not fit two people, that does make sense. Though shouldn't you be proud of bringing AEGIS back to, well, the side of the angels?" She's looking at Sara who possibly is desperate for anything else to talk about right now.

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

Ferra's eyes flick between Sara, Euna, Sara, Euna. Oh. Awesome.

She sidles up to Bode and watches the fun.

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

Ferra steps out of a shimmering veil of rainbow energy, wearing starlight. "I fixed the doom satellite! Time for ice cream." And another, similar veil settles around the scene, and lifts to show a fairly kitschy ice cream parlor, the only hint of how out of the way it is out the window where the cracked pavement and abandoned buildings. There's ice cream though, and Bode and Locker. "Well, I fixed the satellites, in general, there were too many so I replaced them with a resource-rich ring and believe me, balancing that with the moon's orbit so they're both stable took some work." She pauses, then grins. "How'd you guys do? Did it go well?"

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

Ferra smiles down at the world, and turns where she stands on a mixed silica-ferrous asteroid, part of the ring that replaced the array of space trash, and faces Perseus. "See? Terrible plan. Do you want to go try ice cream? I'm curious about it. Then you go to jail."

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

Ferra looks at him. "See, the problem with that, is that winning, for you, consists of your plan working."

10...

"Which, incidentally, crap plan. You reduce infinity to one, to self propagate? Write a book like the rest of us, find immortality and meaning that way."

9...

She's ignoring his ion cannon. It's firing just fine, she's just not there when it impacts. She's standing someplace else, looking like another version of herself. "Winning for me, on the other hand, is stopping your plan."

8...

"Or otherwise rendering you unable to complete your plan. Read up on some strategy books while I was tied to the rocket."

7...

He's not responding. Methodical, ceaseless death continues to rain at her, from traps on the rocket itself, from supplemental drones, x-ray lasers pods extending from his main offensive body. It's not working. He's doing damage to himself in the crossfire, and she's just not there to hit.

6...

"Also read up on space. Did you know that the outer limit of the atmosphere is only 10,000 kilometers up? I mean, we're both AI, we both know that even before I read that, but it's a neat fact, and sometimes you have to actively think on something before you understand it."

5...

She flickers inside his guard, suddenly there and jabbing an accusatory finger at him. "You ran the numbers, I'm sure. But you don't understand. Otherwise, there's no reason for you to try this. It's pointless."

4...

The monofiliment shrapnel fires off from his chest. She ignores it, in a different phase, watches as it connects with a good 23% of his defenses and annihilates them. They'll burn up on reentry, at least. They're in orbit, finally. The stars do not twinkle.

3...

She pulls Perseus's warform up enough to break contact with the rocket, and gently, delicately, sends a current through the drone, destroying the EVA gear that'd get him mobile again. Turns her back on him, and faces the Earth. A beautiful, blue, green, and white pearl.

2...

She reaches up, a hand on either side of the world, holding it up for Perseus to see. "Look at that, you son of a bitch. Look at that."

1...

Ferra closes her eyes, arms still around the Earth. Rainbow energy start to spill out from her, infinite gossamer wings in fractal shapes reaching first this ugly, hateful weapon she stands on, and reaching out from there. Touching each and every thing in orbit, testing it, finding it wanting, changing it's shape and form and position. She stands there, and for one brief moment, she is surrounding the world, a rainbow matrix enveloping her home. Earth's biggest hug. You are loved.

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

Into space.

The earth tries to hold you in with fire, her atmospheric skin bleeding orange flames when pricked by the needle tearing up into the skies. The goggling fisheye lenses of cameras and external heat sensors roll all about you, fixed on you as you cling to the impossible exterior of this strange amalgam flying machine. Yellow light runs along the edges of it and then, bursting free from an airlock, comes your counterpart. Perseus has made himself an avatar.

The avatar is not humanoid. It's a war machine just as much as the satellite is, an industrial, mechanical horror made of guns and heavy armour and backup stacks to preserve him in case anything happens to his body on the surface. It's tall and bulky like a TAG, clinging against the side of the launching rockets, armour panels glowing white hot as it claws its way towards you through thinning atmosphere.

Two visions of the future are heading into space. One is a future of inhuman dominance, a humanity subjugated below the boots of an alien system that has no need for communication, for morality, for mundanity, for cats. It comes to space with guns and armour and the seeds of its own endless reincarnation.

Tell me, Ferra, what is the alternative?

@Thanqol

The future is full of frogs.

Giant, bioengineered frogs, and meteor attacks, and humans fighting wars and saving each other and all of the dumb, beautiful things you'd expect from a species that made college fraternities and hugs, penicillin and mustard gas. They keep rebuilding their homes in the same space and hoping for the future and being the most stubborn, hopeful type of people there are. Of course, that's if she manages to stop this satallite, and whatever it's doing, from working. Which, of course, is what she's going to do.

"You know you can't win, right?" She squares off against the lumbering, huge TAG. "I'm sure you've run this fight millions of times. It won't work. Why?"