eldest

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

She nods, grabs the pass, and says "Okay."

She argued with her wife a lot about this when they were still married. Maddie called her a martyrdom enthusiast. She didn't really have the words to explain at the time, but that never sat right. She wasn't out to get hurt. A decade and change in jail gets you to run into one or two people who are actually chasing that moral high of absolute self-destruction, though, and she went and refined exactly what she thought about this real quick. Not that it'd saved things with Maddie at all, that was long gone, but she was the sort of person that hated to leave something half done.

And that's part of this, sure. There's a story that won't be done properly if she doesn't take the job. She can do it. So she will. But there's an arrogance there, that she'd try to cut down if it didn't have years of honing, refinement, and reinforcement with lived experience: she can take more than most. It used to be a lot more flowery, the way she thought of it, something about grit and determination, but no, it's just that she can take whatever's dished out.

So combine that with wanting to finish what's left undone, and the genuine observation that nine times out of ten, if she doesn't do the thing that she's good at, it won't get done? And she's doing stuff like this.

A careful hand on the shoulder, meant to be earnest and reassuring, maybe coming off a bit awkward. "Good luck. Hope Sarah turns out okay." And she heads out. Didn't even cross her mind to talk about the actual pay. Maddie'd argued about that too, and to be frank, on that one she had a point. No head for money here, too many morals.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

"Hm." She's peering at you as if you started talking about sprouting wings and flying to the sun to live in his palace. "I would define loyalty as doing one's duty without coercion in any form. The idea that you can chose your loyalty is... odd. In the event of a corrupt lord, his guards' duty to protect him still stands. They may remain loyal, or not, both are possible, but the responsibility to the lord stays. The guards also have a duty as citizens of the lord's lands to the lands and their fellow citizens. Finding a balance between these is difficult, but that's the journey of being a virtuous person."

She looks ahead, and puts on the mask in her hands. "We'll be there soon," muffled slightly by the mask, before a quiet few bars of song follow, barely audible. "We'll tend the gardens, when we're home, when we're home, we'll see our loves again, when we're home, when we're home..."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

She sighs, and looks down at the badge. Not touching it yet. If she touches it she's agreed. "How fucked are you if this doesn't get covered?" There's a range here. Financial penalties happen, but being blacklisted is on the table too.

"If you don't want to do it, I can just get paid to do nothing. It's not my neck if this doesn't get done." Bigsby leans back in his seat and looks out at nothing. "But someone isn't going to be smart about this. That's all."

"Right." A pause, long enough to get awkward. "I don't do puff pieces. Can't write them, terrible at them, come off as completely fake. So whatever I dig into and write about, somebody's gonna be pissed. Probably multiple somebodies. I'll take it. But I want you to know for sure what you're offering and what you're getting. Cuz I'd really rather nobody be stupid and get hurt. Producer's gonna end up okay, right?"

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Giriel gets a flat look at the pointed reminder of Lotus's secrets, with a scowl deepening as she goes on. "Witch. If I wanted to do this in the safest, most efficient, and most likely to succeed manner, I would have poisoned both their foods with something that'd cause a long, drowsy sleep. I would have sent off people who were disguised as them, and we would still have them. I am doing this roundabout and messy method because I want them to have a chance at happiness in spite of my orders."

She huffs out a breath, and looks down at her mask. "I'm going to guess you all don't have the plays this is from, do you? Hell, I'd be surprised if Azazuka knows it, and her family has trade connections far enough north to... well. She might have had the players visit."

A sigh, this time, and she holds up the mask, blue bird covering half her face, words tumbling out. "There are four siblings. The Heir, the Duelist, the Monk, and the Drunk. There's a girl. The siblings, doesn't matter if they're boys or girls, but the Swan is always a girl. And they all fall for her. Head over heels, absolutely smitten. And they start to quarrel. Because they all want the same girl, and they're all stupid, because it's a play. So you have miscommunications, and slights that weren't meant to be slights, and all the while, the backdrop, it's getting darker, and darker. And it all comes to a head, when the Monk gets called to service, they've spent too much time away from the monastery. He starts singing how he has a duty, but love calls to him, and he sets the stage on fire. Real surprise, first time you see it. It ends with them dead, the Drunk exiled for killing them, the Duelist maimed, and the Heir getting the girl in a political marriage."

"I don't get to chase this. I have a job, a duty, and oaths. So trust me when I say, I want other people to have it."

It's raining, but she doesn't care, her umbrella is a weapon and she doesn't want to hold it right now.

Opening up to fix Angry, leaving only the Guilt.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

She's got a rule. Don't use pharmaceuticals to get through a pharmaceutical crash. Pain management is it's own thing, not covered here, but the answer to the stimulant aftereffects is grunting and stumbling through the morning routine, not more drugs. It's an hour and a half, actually, till she feels human enough to check her phone over the remnants of yesterday's takeout, reheated for breakfast.

And she's real confused, after that nonsense. Not that Bigby seems off. He seems absolutely normal for interacting with somebody the second time, when it turns out they were actually famous for something really iffy. She's had a lot of experience with the reaction. She's got no idea why he's reaching out, or what The Log Inn is. Never been. But, honestly, right now she's playing the waiting game while she sees what's next, so she's got no reason not to go. Throw on a light jacket, a scarf, a nice silk wrap skirt that one of Sobha's nieces had given her, and don't deign to notice any reporters still out front as you walk to the train station.

She does call Skels back from the train, twice, before she texts Bigby a rough eta. Friends before leads, every time.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

How has she prepared? She's got her full traveling kit, for the first time since before being kidnapped by demons. One would have thought a street festival safe, but no. All sorts of clever alchemical ingredients and mixes, poisons and poultices, and all the knives she could want. A good rope, just one is all you need, a few spare nets, and some more surprises. She hasn't told her liege the full list, why would she tell you?

They stand now in a clearing on the bank of the canal, Piripiri staring out at the water and holding her chin, mask dangling from her free hand. Giriel's got her own leash in hand for now, and the golden hound is impatient to be off, but it's important to go into a plan with a calm head. A quiet moment by the water does wonders for that.

But assumptions must be checked as well before one begins a gambit. "Giriel. You've known Han for far longer than I have. She's in love with the demigod, correct?"

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

The reporter who ambushes her at the side door is very obviously somebody's coffee monkey sent out "until you get a quote, dammit" and looks just as miserable as her. Acne scars and badly greased hair. Still one more bad beat on the tail end of a shit day. And then he had to open his fucking mouth. "Uh, um, Mrs. deClair, what kind of statement were you making by, uh, stepping up to the police chief? Were you trying to prove how tough you are?"

She really shouldn't. "I want to go to sleep."

"W-what?"

She's on got so much fire in her and not near enough sleep to hold it back. "I want to go to sleep. I want to go up to my apartment and not have to worry about the police being mad I embarrassed them publicly. I want to wake up in the morning, make myself some tea, and not have to think about the world being run by shitheads and how best to use a single beam of light to show what they're doing. How to write to make people care. I want to make breakfast, and eat toast, and not cry when I open the news and see who's fucking who headlining and the article about the budget cuts meaning the periphery towns will get less regular train service so that somebody can fund the new horse racetrack. I want to be able to go down the street and not be a mom's teachable moment about how to interact with different people.

I want to live my fucking life and only need to care a regular bit, because everyone else cares. Everyone cares and everyone wants to do something to make the world better and you don't have reactionary assholes stepping on everyone to get some height above the shit, and you don't have centrists trying to keep everything stable just long enough to get out of politics and into a cushy retirement as a consultant for Mumbai Holdings. I want everyone to be just as pissed as me about that, and that means we can all hold their damn feet to the fire 'till they behave."

"Scram."

*

She brushes her teeth, and rubs some antiseptic on the bruises on her chest. She disconnects her prosthetics, because she's going to have bad dreams after today, and sometimes they react to the bad dreams, so it's better to have ten minutes of terrible in the morning than wake up to a broken bed.

Then her phone bleeps.

DancesWithMoths: hey
DancesWithMoths: Taabish and me are getting married
DancesWithMoths: finally
DancesWithMoths: please come? it's in a week.
DancesWithMoths: "only" gonna last two days

She doesn't dream after all. But maybe that's for the best, after that day.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri curls up in a pretty girl's lap and lets her hair get played with as she talks about her no good, very bad day. Nothing truly secret gets brought up, but then again, other than the plans for Lotus, nothing in particular happened that was secret. Just a whole lot of bad times, and frustration, and pain, and doing her job and having it cost her.

And then Emli helps her get presentable again. Hair is combed, makeup applied, outfit swapped for one without a large burn in the side, medicine applied. And she emerges from the cabin much better off than entering.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Did you know they just sell elevator keys?

There's only three companies that make elevators on the station. Get each of their generic maintenance keys, get the station standard one that fits 80% of the elevators (after all, the companies only do retrofitting and new construction, November made most of the station herself), and you have your start to a key ring of doom. Anybody can switch out their elevator's keys, but precious few think to.

Amazon didn't even bother with any retrofitting: the original station key worked just fine. Put a sign on the elevator saying it's undergoing maintenance, we're sorry for the inconvenience, lock it open on the third floor, and then go in on the second and down a ladder. Ladder was the hardest part, those are made for people that have legs. Once she's there, she starts sorting. Unzip the Roofdash Delivery Device (Large) that Roofdash had given her after her first delivery and put it on the ground. Terrible size for anything actually practical, too large for most small deliveries and too small for any real business delivery, so of course it's good to help the homeless move squats.

Sleeping bags a no-go, same for the insulation. Rice cooker's old, so he'll want that. Hotplate's new, so he'll want that. All the suits go in the bag, vest in the bag, spices in the bag. Laptop in the bag, camera bag into the bag, and we've gotten all we're getting but that's okay, it's most of the stuff, and she's got a sleeping bag to spare if he needs it. No luck on the minifridge but, well, they can figure that out.

...

Hotplate back out of the bag.

The store tag's the obvious tracker. But Amazon didn't live where Walmart died by being stupid. Dumb, but not stupid. She's heard about spraying items with resin that manages, through some science that she doesn't understand, to make a relay antenna loud enough to get detected a few feet away. Combine that with a narrow set of exits, all with scanners, and they can find the shoplifters and have a Friendly Amazon Security Coordinator come out to gently collect the goods and you. One of the people she was in jail with, before the trial, swore up and down that's how they found him. He'd gotten 60 days minimum security. She opens up the hotplate with those handy, quasilegal tools built into her prosthetics. Feel along the inside edges, eyes closed in concentration. Find the texture, find where the smooth metal becomes ever so slightly pebbly. And then take out a knife and scrape that spot good and clean. Not enough dots, no antenna, no alarms.

And one more Roofdash contractor leaves the building.

Boxcars on the clever roll, plus 1 from clever, 1 from criminal underworld, one from thief's tools, makes a crit and 15.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

"A rogue sorcerer placed a curse on the barge. The Red Wolf's quick action kept everyone alive, but in the confusion several of our guests may have gotten the wrong impression and have left. One hopes we are able to correct the misunderstanding and have them enjoy our hospitality once again." Is what she did not say.

Instead, she opened her mouth, and out came "It was a bloody mess, the kind we'll be unraveling for months. The knights appear to have fractured, the witch offended both sides in the process, and there's somebody new causing chaos and I don't know why. Honestly, I'm glad that Han and Lotus left before they could get mixed up in it."

In her defense, she's had a very bad night.