Lemons

Amygdala Circuit

"You wanna ride down together, or do you need a bit more time?"

"Together!"

Quinn's voice came out just a little more vehement than she'd intended it to, and she took a moment to breathe deeply, heart pounding in her ears in the silence. She could feel the great bulk of Ablaze looming behind her, feel its malevolence only barely suppressed. Quinnlash was trying to cut the pressure before it reached Quinn's head, she could feel it. But there was only so much she could do for Quinn, standing so close to the restrained bulk of the Modir as she was. Her mind suddenly shot back to Hovvi, to the hunger she'd felt looking at the creature in the demolished store, and she shivered despite the dull warmth Quinnlash was enwrapping her in.

If Tillie left her all alone up her, she didn't know what she'd do.

"We'll ride down together," she repeated, voice more tempered, at least by a bit.

The ride down passed more subdued than the one up, as Quinn stared dazedly out into the distance. As they stepped off the corrugated metal to the hangar floor once again, farther from the brain and thus the pressure, Quinn had a sudden thought. "Ah... Pulling her phone out of her pocket once again, she tapped the screen a few times, pulling up the camera and turning to Tillie.
"I can take a picture of you, right?"

Met with an enthusiastic approval, Quinn snapped a quick full-body picture of Tillie, plain hangar wall in the background.

A moment passed, and she waved awkwardly. "Ah, uhm, I'll...see you later, Tillie, okay?

With that said, she retreated back towards the elevator to the dorms, eager to escape the ensnaring presence of Ablaze. As she went, she kept her phone out, tappa-tappa-tapping at the screen. Just before she entered the hallway, she tapped the send button. A moment later, an image would pop up on Besca and Dahlia's phones, followed by a brief caption:

this is my new technician tillie. you guys should meet her, she's super nice

To Become a Knight! ~ A Chivalric (Mis)Adventure

---

"Elidthianis Hawke will fight Lucien Navietas."

A soft exhalation as Luen heard her false name called, and a vague thrill of fear and anticipation ran through her. I guess there's no going back now. And, fittingly, she didn't look around, didn't look back. A few murmurs and stares went her way. Nothing horrible; just "who is that" and "Lord Asceron has a son?" and "why does he look like that?" Her paper-white skin prickled at the stares, and nerves began to dig fishhooks into her skin. She took a deep breath as she moved, then another, and another, arriving in short order at the quartermaster's table.

She barely gave the wooden weapons arrayed in front of her a second glance, instead shrugging up her sleeves and holding her slender, rune-scored bracers out for observation.

"I fight entirely with Incantations."

At the man's confused stare, she glanced around to make sure her opponent wasn't watching, then realized she didn't actually know what he looked like to begin with and flicked her dominant left hand. One of the lines of runes lit up with a sudden pale blue light, and with a sound like a rushing stream, the mist around her thinned as it rushed towards her palm. A bit less than a second later, a totally transparent knife--like glass--coalesced into her palm.

The quartermaster's eyebrows shot up for a moment as he looked on--it was a somewhat unusual Incantation, she reflected--but a moment later he was all business. "Is it safe?"

By way of answer, she flipped artfully it in her hand, then slapped the edge down on her right hand. Where it impacted, it bounced with a dull thunk, though she did wince a touch at the impact. Then she placed it upon an empty space on the table, sliding it gently over for him to check for himself. "Perfectly safe. Nobody's going to be hurt."

He tested the edge, tested the dulled point, and evidently found it to his satisfaction, as he gave a quick nod. As he dropped it back down to the table, he made eye contact, though it only lasted for a few seconds before his eyes awkwardly slid away from hers and the muscles of her face tensed.

"Passes muster. It's allowed." She gave him a small smile in an attempt to look completely un-threatening. There was no response, and she gave an infinitesimal sigh. Taking the knife, she tossed it unceremoniously to the ground, where, with no wrist-flick this time, she dispelled it and let it fall into a small puddle.

The nerves gnawed at her gut still as she walked deliberately up the steps to the arena, then headed to the designated segment, breathing deeply as she went. People fought around her, though everything seemed...a bit muted. This fight would decide everything. Would determine whether she became a knight, or retreated back to her home with her tail between her legs in humiliation and ignominy.

Still, she thought, I'm not bad at this. I think I have a fair shot.

At the very least, I'll put up a decent fight.

Amygdala Circuit

The skullport vanished, and Quinn immediately felt better.

That's not to say she felt good. Not in any way whatsoever. But with the immediate reminder gone, she found herself able to—with the support of the long table that ran alongside her—haul herself to her feet and give Tillie a genuine, if weak, smile again. "N-no, nothing. It all looks fine."

That's right, Quinn. It's fine. It's all fine. Stop worrying about it. Hangar staff would obviously catch any fluctuations or problems right as soon as they happened. There was no reason for her to come here like this, go through the torment of opening the port, diving into the cold, lonely, enclosed dark, and endure the Modir pressing in all around here, all alone.

Thank god for Tillie. Without her there, Quinn would've just had a breakdown, she just knew it. She swallowed heavily, wiping the remnants of the sweat off again. It wasn't usually this bad. She opened her mouth to thank her for being there so she didn't completely fall apart—

Before she stopped.

Did she really want to make Tillie feel responsible for her? To layer her with Quinn's problems when she had nothing to do with them and no obligation to help with them?

No.

Deelie was pushing herself to hell and back because she was afraid for Quinn. Besca was working nonstop—she was surprised she'd even gotten a response from her—day in and day out because of what Quinn had done. The population of the Aerie was still a fraction of what it used to be, it seemed like, because Quinn just had to be at Hovvi. So everyone else had more work.

She didn't want to be a burden on Tillie too.

So instead, she kept that lame smile pasted to her face as inside, she screamed.

"I'm...glad you enjoyed it. I'll tell head of hangar security that you can come up here any time you want." After all the trouble and pain she'd caused, making her new technician happy was the least she could do.

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn reclaimed her phone, pulling her shirt out from underneath the jacket and rubbing the chill away from the screen before flicking the light off and sliding it back into her pants pocket. She looked at Tilly with a shaky smile. The memory of the pressure on her head always messed her up a little bit whenever she got out of Ablaze. Another thing she was starting to get used to more as she spent more time in the hangar, but definitely unpleasant. She made a mental note to ask Dahlia if she felt something similar when she was in Dragon. If she ever caught her awake, at least, which was becoming increasingly harder to do as she pushed herself harder and harder.

"Uh huh," she replied, the tension still prevalent in her voice. "It's like being wrapped up in a—in a warm—a warm blanket." As her eye flicked to the skullport, she couldn't help but remember the last time she'd left it outside of the hangar—running—blazing heat, dry, cracked earth, the smell of ichor everywhere—Dragon lying in a pool of its own black blood as Blötklau dissolved with Roaki trapped and screaming on the hill above her—dizzy—desperate—screaming———

Her hands went to her arms again, digging in harder this time, and she trembled in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. A moment, and her eye—held wide now—went downcast. She shivered, and sat herself down on the metal floor, closing her eye tight. The tension was started to leak out of her voice, to be replaced with a sense of weariness that often came with the Savior, and an entirely different kind of stress: obvious fear. Instead of chattering with cold, it stuttered and halted in a way that she'd become very familiar with over the past few months.

"I'm—I'm sorry, could..." She swallowed heavily, running her hands down her face to wipe off the sudden cold sweat, "could you—could you c-close the skullport for me?"

Steal Away The Light

Location: Uhladein, Eastern Marches

---

"Who are you?"

Who are you?

Yeah, Quinnlash. Who are you?

Quinnlash clenched her teeth and held back a snarl, settling instead for a voice like a guttural growl as she whirled on Lexann. Her eye was full of fire, as the last of the fragments merged back into her and her soul sealed itself back together again. "I told you already, I'm QUINNLASH LOUGHVEIN. Yes, I'm a hunter, and yes, I'm a maker-damned pyromancer! I'm coming out of Midnos, the fuck'd you expect?"

She huffed in a long, harsh breath. "But who gives a fuck about that? I'm not one of the worthless fucking jokes that usually comes off the Hunter table in my country." She flicked the braid behind herself, resettling it against her back as she kept glaring and leaned against her colossal cannon again. "I don't fucking need pyromancy to take care of this shit."

Amygdala Circuit

Everything seemed okay with Ablaze. Obviously. What would've gone wrong, really? And Tillie was clearly enjoying herself. But...Quinn was started to get twitchy, and even the comforting company of Quinnlash within her head wasn't enough to stem the growing tide.

She'd gotten much better about being in enclosed spaces, partially because of her Savior. But she certainly wasn't good about them, and the oppressive sentient pressure of the Modir brain enclosing them—something that Tillie simply couldn't understand—certainly didn't help matters any. So when she spoke next, there was a tension in her voice that hadn't been there before. A tight, nervous tone, a bit like how she'd spoken when she'd first had her composure broken on Mona's interview. She tapped a fingertip on the big input, the one that went into the base of her skull.

"The, uh, the pilot suit has gaps in it so I can still plug in." Doing her best to clamp down on the steadily rising fear, she half-turned, flicked her braid aside, and lifted the light briefly to the few sockets visible on her neck above the jacket collar before she brought the light back down and continued, "but um...I n-never really thought about comfort. I b-barely f-feel it since the s-suit is thick and heated and I connect r-right-t-t after, and you don't feel anything once you're in." She clutched at her narrow frame, trying in vain to warm up some as the cold started to get to her more. Her breaths began to heave more, and the staccato gunshots of her chattering teeth were only halfway because of the cold.

"I'm sorry," she muttered quietly, gripping her upper arms in a very familiar way, "I-I'm g-gonna wait o-outside."

She handed Tillie her phone for the flashlight, then fled the cockpit, breathing deeply as she emerged again onto the broad platform and moving away some so the cold could slacken off a bit. After a moment's consideration, she pinged a message to Besca and Dahlia (for when they stopped being busy and asleep, respectively): I have a new technician. She's nice. You should meet her.

Amygdala Circuit

As they rode the elevator up, Tillie kept talking. About never having seen how big they were. Quinn had mostly gotten used to it at this point, but yeah...they were pretty huge.

A tiny thorn of sadness buried itself into Quinn's heart the same way it always did when people talked about their parents, but she ignored it as best she could and kept listening to this excitable new person in her life, occasionally throwing in a comment. "I don't know if it's really cool, but it's nice to be able to make a difference." She smiled an awkward smile; the smile of someone who hasn't smiled a lot, and is still trying to get used to the sensation.

As they finally reached the top—dear lord, the trip up always took forever—she slowly took the standard trio of long, deep breaths to offset the anxiety that always started bubbling inside her gut when she got up here, and the hangar floor that dropped a hundred feet away. It wasn't exactly a point of view she was unused to, but being outside of the Savior made it feel much more keenly dangerous. One more long, shuddering breath as Tillie walked over to a little console, and her mouth kept moving.

"I-I saw your fight in Casoban! You really surprised everyone, even me! Uhm! I mean, not that I didn’t think you wouldn’t—well, maybe I didn’t, a little. But I was rooting for you! Ever since they first started talking about you. Actually, it’s kinda why I signed up."

Quinn couldn't help it; a laugh burst from her, nervous and trembling and frayed around the edges. "Don't worry," she said when the laughter abated, "I didn't think I was going to win either."

She would've kept talking, but the chill rolled over her body again and she tensed up. It felt a little like when Quinnlash was giving her feelings, but there was something deeper and more alien to it. Something totally devoid of any semblance of humanity. She shivered.

Actually, on that note...

She turned to where Tillie stood next to her and shook her head. "No, it's fine, really." A moment went by that felt much longer than it really was.

"But, um...you've never seen inside a cockpit before, right?" At least she had a lab coat on. "It's really, really cold, I'm more used to it and even I can't stay in without my suit on for more than a few minutes." One last deep breath. "And...there's no walls or roof." She fished her phone from her pocket. "Or lights."

Then, as ready as she was ever going to be, she turned her phone flashlight on, pulled open the skullport, winced at the absolutely frigid air, and dove into the darkness.

By the time she even made it the few steps to the chair, she was already shivering. The air was filled with the scent of lemon and vanilla from the two small tablets taped to each side of the chair, and she was grateful for them; it made it a little less painful to breathe.

She checked the surface of the chair first, running her fingers along the padded grooves form-fit to her body and the suit plugs, and trying to ignore the brain of the Modir softly pulsing around her, coated with a glistening shell of ice. Nothing was wrong with the chair; all the plugs looked right, nothing was out of place. She was shivering hard enough to nearly drop her phone now as she knelt down to check the stem of the chair, where it had attached to the floor. Where Roaki's had broken off and—

She sucked in a calming breath, though the effect was lessened by the fact that the cold was like a knife to her throat.

"Welcome to my cockpit, Tillie."

Amygdala Circuit

Ah. So that's what Tillie was doing here. Volunteered-slash-assigned to be Quinn's technician. Not a bad idea, and the more she thought about it, the more she warmed up to it. Though she could do without the container of ichor in front of her, it was hard to understand Ablaze sometimes, and a modiologist would be a big help, she hoped.

...Not to mention, Quinn was starting to get lonely. It'd be nice to have someone to talk to when Deelie and Besca were busy.

"No, no no, don't worry about it." She tried her best to make her tremulous smile warmer as best she could, to be met with...debatable success. "I'm not...upset with you or anything." She sucked in a long, deep breath as she kept up calming herself down. "And I don't really think there's anything wrong. I'm just...stressed, is all, so I just want to make sure everything is okay. Being a pilot is..." she hesitated. "Well, it's nerve-wracking a lot. So I'm, um, sorry if I sound mad or anything."

A moment passed and she pitched her head slightly downward. "'Course, I might not be the best to talk about it. I'm still new at this." Another delay. She picked her words carefully, a little like she was talking to Roaki. There was an instinctive understanding in her that whatever she said was going to be picked apart and dissected to its finest pieces by Tillie just the same way. "What I'm trying to say is—" her smile grew warmer, but also somehow sadder as well. "—I have no idea what I'm doing, and I'm tired. I'm glad you're here."

A sudden idea popped into her brain, followed by a soft "oh!" as she peered between the Savior's massive legs to spot the platform that was indeed there. She cleared her throat, feeling intensely self-conscious as she awkwardly waved towards it. "I was about to go check the cockpit to make sure everything is okay." Pause, and she started slowly walking towards around the side of the Savior to the lift while she spoke over her shoulder, "You can come if you want."

Amygdala Circuit

The hangar had become a...strange place for Quinn in recent days. Until very recently, it had been a place of abject fear and pain for her. Her disastrous phase test, the traumatic drawing of her weapon, the horror of what had happened in Casoban; if she was in the hangar, it usually meant that things were going terribly wrong, and it was her job to make sure they went back right.

But the recent visits had slackened that off a bit. She'd started talking to the staff more, getting to know them on a deeper level than "the ones that manage my Savior." So when she walked through the open door into the cavernous interior of the hangar, she took a deep, calming breath.

...Before she was poleaxed by Ablaze standing and staring at her.e

A shudder ran up and down her spine, and a thrill of fear jabbed claws into her mind. It had been two months and change since Hovvi. Long enough, however long it exactly was, that the sharper edges of the memories were starting to wear themselves down a little. But no matter how often she saw Ablaze, a part of her was still lying on that street crying as Jubilee stood headless above the wreckage of a town she'd never known. She took long, deep breaths, bringing herself forward in time again and doing her best to calm herself down as she began the long walk across the hangar to her Savior.

It looked okay. Nothing was wrong with it, as far as she could tell. The searing eye was dead, staring unseeing out. At her, it almost felt like, and breathed away another shiver as she remembered the last time it had looked at her. The yellow metal plate was fine; all the scratches it had accrued had been buffed out and it looked like it had just been recolored.

It was as she was approaching—wondering whether or not Ablaze was equipped with a lift platform at the moment for her to look at the cockpit—that she noticed the figure crouching by the Savior. She walked over, curious what was going on, what this person was doing, when they—she—turned and nearly sprinted over. Quinn's eye went wide in something like alarm as she started spouting words like a broken spigot. A new hangar intern named Tillie, and, uh...from the way she was talking, she was probably...a fan? Though she was aware they were out there, Quinn had never actually interacted with any of her fans as yet.

It looked like that was about to change, as she stood there and suddenly realized she had no idea what to say. She stood there for a few more seconds, feeling like an absolute idiot as she tried to put together words of some kind. Somehow this person managed to be intimidating without any attempts to do so. Her throat had gone dry.

"I...um, can...can I call you Tillie?"

She paused for a moment as she collected herself, and a smile—pale and wan, but probably more genuine than anything Tillie had ever seen out of her—came to her face. "And, uh, just...Quinn is fine. If you want." She stole a curious glance at what Tillie was carrying, whatever device was now holding some shavings of her Savior and beeping aggressively. It set her teeth on edge. What if it meant there really was something wrong with Ablaze? A distant part of her knew that was absurd, but it still dug into her. "So, um," she motioned to the plate, hating how unsure she sounded, "is there something wrong with my—"

My Savior. It still felt wrong to say out loud.

"—with Ablaze?"

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn could still hear Safie's voice faintly in her head—trust me, Quinn, you're gonna do great things!—when her door was pushed open, and Dahlia nearly lurched in before coming to settle in next to Quinn and near-instantly passing into dreamland. For a few moments, Quinn was tempted to just lie there. To snuggle in with her sister, forget the rest of the world, fall asleep right next to Dahlia, and go back to the lake with Safie, where it was safe and cozy. But then the chill passed over her again—more insistently this time—and she acknowledged it was past time for her to get up. Shimmying gently out from under the covers, she picked her way to the foot of the bed and crawled over it, careful not to disturb Dahlia. The more rest she got the better.

She'd been pushing herself like mad for the past week, barely eating, hardly sleeping, and when she did it was in Quinn's room most of the time. It didn't take a genius to figure out why her sister was doing this, and that knowledge filled Quinn once again with a deep, cloying guilt. Just another one to add on to the pile.

Once she'd managed to extricate herself without waking her, Quinn walked quietly through the open doorway and gently closed it behind her, leaving it a few inches ajar, as was habit. She still hadn't gotten used to the commons being quiet when she awoke. Usually it was filled with the sound of Deelie cooking, and probably humming as she did. But she'd been spending so much time in the sim pods Quinn rarely even saw her anymore unless she crawled into Quinn's bed before or just after she woke, as with today. A sharp pang of loneliness bit her in the side. She missed her sister. She should be making more of an effort to get her out of the sims, or to make her food in the morning the same way she always had for Quinn. She still couldn't cook very well, but even just toast and jam and some fruit would be better than what she'd done so far, which was nothing.

Selfish girl.

Some minutes later, a silent breakfast of buttered toast and poorly-cooked eggs passed by as she forced herself to eat instead of just picking at them. A quick glance at the clock on the wall showed her that it was a quarter past six, and she suppressed a groan. She should be grateful that she'd managed to catch Dahlia awake, not lament the early hour.

Taking a few minutes to shower and roughly double that time if not longer amount to dry and braid her hair, she crept back into her room to pick out clothing for the day, donning it stealthily before taking the jacket that Besca had given her from the hook on her door and tossing it on to complete the look.

So then, she thought as she threw the door to the commons open and stepped out into the hall, what was the first thing she needed to do today?

She needed to have her eval with Docter Follen at some point in the next week, but maybe not today. Or if today, later, when she went to visit Roaki as usual.

She would've liked to spar for a bit, but Dahlia was obviously indisposed, and she didn't know how confident she felt sparring against members of security, or how comfortable they'd feel about sparring with a teenage girl, even if she was a pilot.

She needed to...yeah, that was probably the first order of business.

For the past few days, she'd been making nearly compulsive checks on Ablaze every day, just to make sure it was always ready just in case she needed to drop right away. She didn't know what she expected to find; it had always looked just the same, and it probably always would, but still, the hangar called her name. At the very least, she'd started to learn more about hangar staff. It couldn't hurt to say hi to them when she was there.

So, mind made up, she started off towards the elevator. No need to put on her pilot gear today, at least.