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Quinn smiled and Besca felt like the Aerie’s gravity had lapsed. Seeing her, seeing that she was okay brought more relief than a full night’s sleep and breakfast in bed. It had only been a few hours but to her Quinn looked…different. Not better but, not worse either. Tired, absolutely, but surprisingly clear.

It still hurt that she was gone, and that she was obviously struggling. Casoban and Runa had been allies for so long now, their identities were similar in so many ways, but there was no avoiding the lethal combination of homesickness and culture shock. It wouldn’t go away any time soon, Besca knew that much first-hand. Every morning would be weird, and every moment could turn alien without warning. This was only the start, and it would only get tougher.

But, she was smiling.

That was good enough for now.

With a rattled laugh, she leaned back in her chair. “Happy to see you too, hun’. So happy. How are you? How was…well, everything? Are you okay? Did you eat? Did anyone give you trouble?

God, she should have written a list. She had things to run by Toussaint but for some reason, she hadn’t prepared for the calls that she herself had requested. Oh well, all that really mattered was that she could see her, hear her, and talk to her. At least for a little while.
It had been one hell of a week. Or day. By the time she finally found a moment to sit down, Besca could hardly tell. For the past few days she’d survived off of a combination of coffee and micro-naps, and while that had done a number on her blood pressure and mental acuity, it had at least kept her going. Today though, the worry had kept her eyes open and her stomach paradoxically empty and without an appetite.

She had been saying Quinn’s name all day to people who only cared about how it looked on a document. No one had asked what she was doing, how she was doing—beyond one asshole prodding about why they didn’t have her client-side medical update yet, and indignantly huffing when Besca explained they couldn’t shove her into the doctor’s office first thing.

Talking with her own Board about pilots was always a grating exercise in retaining her humanity, but hearing this conference call of diplomats and think-tank’s discuss them like spare parts for a car was infuriating. What worked, what didn’t, what needed tuning, what needed replacing. More than once she heard nameless, faceless accountants and lawyers and theorymen bemoan a pilot’s poor performance, and suggest in the most abstract and legalese way that they be replaced as soon as possible.

Toussaint, for his part, vehemently shut down any suggestions towards pruning his own team. Eyes turned instead to the lesser cogs in the Savior Corps machine, the technicians, the low-ranking officials. People who could be removed without fuss. Besca was disheartened by how little she cared by then.

Now it was midnight, and she had another call in…soon. She didn’t know—someone would alert her. Her dinner, a microwaved bowl of pasta, was now cold and mostly untouched as she sat at her desk, head in her hands, and prayed that a vessel in her brain would suddenly pop and bring the nightmare to an end.

Then, her phone rang.

It had been a while since she’d had to quick-draw, she wasn’t sure how good her reflexes still were. But she had that phone up to her ear before the first ring had finished.

Quinn?” she said, or would have, but there was sobbing in her ears immediately, and the word withered in her throat. She didn’t understand what Quinn meant, but she rarely did in times like this. When she was upset, sometimes she didn’t make much sense, and it was more a task of dissecting the feeling in her words than the words themselves.

Not a particularly difficult task, to be fair. Besca figured Quinn was feeling thereabouts exactly what she was, with an extra dash of homesickness, and a different kind of loneliness.

I’m here, hun’,” she said, winding the frayed nerves up tight. “Breathe, okay? Breathe for me. Just like we practiced.” she took a deep, exaggerated breath to demonstrate. “You’re okay. Everything’s okay. Toussaint tells me the day’s over—you did it. You made it.
Under the fluorescent lights and drumming of the overhead fans, time passed quickly. She was free of the crowds, of all company in fact. Neither the twins nor her nebulous third squad mate joined her, and so she was left to train alone, in the quiet. The gym was rather spacious for a single person, with a wide array of machines and free weights, with a wall of accessories ranging from exercise balls to jump ropes and elastic pulls. Whatever routine she had organized over her time on the Aerie could be readily mimicked and perhaps even improved here.

Getting herself acquainted took time, and when all was said and done, the clock read close to midnight. There wasn’t much of a way to tell, otherwise. It was much the same on the Aerie, but here, the massive windows lining the hall, letting in the light-touched void, could be disorienting. Illun floated below, half sunned and half shadowed, but up here time was almost entirely artificial.

A soft ding sounded from speakers in the ceiling. An automated woman’s voice followed.

Curfew is now in effect. Non-pilot personnel please exit the floor.

Though, there were no other personnel on the floor. Were there? Perhaps the message was simply automated. Then, behind her, the door to the auto-walkway opened and out walked Sybil, along with two or three crew members carrying what seemed to be empty boxes of art supplies. Maybe the system did know.

Either way, she made it back to her room without incident, and as the door sealed shut behind her, Quinn stood once more in the vastness of her own living space. She had, officially, finished her first day as Quinnlash Loughvein, pilot of the Casobani Savior Corps.

Twenty more to go. For now.
“Miss Loughvein,” Madam Dague said, handing Quinn a bag from behind the counter. “I would be insulted if you didn’t.”

It didn’t take long for her to get everything packed up, finished by the time the clerk was finished ringing up her dress. It was that easy. A simple swipe and now, the beautiful thing was her beautiful thing. Of course, that simplicity crumbled under more than a moment’s scrutiny; she had plenty of money, yes, but why?

From a certain perspective it had come rather easily. Pilots didn’t often work tirelessly throughout the day, collapsing sore and thankless in the early hours of the morning only to wake up exhausted to do it all over again. There were hordes of people in Illun who likely assumed this was Quinn’s life. Strolling through the most exclusive places in and out of the world, spending exorbitant amounts of cash on a spontaneous shopping sprees and skipping year-long waitlists on a whim for food she wouldn’t finish. Some would deride the lifestyle as detached and wasteful, others would envy it. A few might even envy the parts that afforded her these privileges.

The truth was, plenty of pilots never got to spend the money they made. How much capital did RISC make funneling Safie and Ghaust’s accounts back into their coffers? What had the CSC done with the windfall of Chateau’s demise? Or the pilots Roaki had killed?

Was Quinn’s bank account really a boon? Or was it a grim reminder, a taunt: ‘Even if you never make another cent, you’ll probably be dead before you dent it.

She left the boutique behind, dress donned, bag in hand, and made a quick turn back for the lift. This time there was no inconspicuous shuffling or ducking of the head or stuffing of the braid to hide behind, and a crowd formed quickly behind her. As before, no one came up close, but several people called out, cheered, some waved small posters of Ablaze. One woman wore a shirt with a cartoonish rendition of Quinn herself on it, braid flowing, with a miniature of her Savior’s cannon hefted onto her shoulder. There were likely a few gift shops scattered throughout the district that would soon sell similar merchandise.

When the lift doors shut, the quiet returned. In the dim metal, Quinn could see a hazy reflection of herself. The silhouette was…unfamiliar, to be sure, even without the details. Who was this shape with her name? Would the girl who had ventured so apprehensively from that room in Hovvi recognize her now? Perhaps she could simply ask.

Before she could though, that reflection split as the doors opened once again, and she returned to the beige silence of the dorms.
It had been a fraught morning on the Aerie since Quinn had left. Besca had spent just about every minute on the bridge, juggling seven conference calls, a dozen email chains, an IM thread with the marketing department, and a handful of unread texts from Toussaint that didn’t have the word “Quinn” in their preview. It had been suggested to her by the Board that she have a cot moved into her office, because she was at no time to be more than a room away from absolute availability.

So, Dahlia had done all of her worrying alone. As small as the RISC team had become since Hovvi, with Quinn here, she’d never actually felt lonely. Stressed, exhausted, anxious, and almost every other flavor of misery, but never lonely. Early into their friendship, she’d come to feel the same sort of constancy with Safie, and to a lesser extent, Ghaust and Lucis, who, even if they weren’t exactly friends, were still always around.

Now all Dahlia could do was lay on the couch in the dorms, too worried to force herself into a sim pod, or cook lunch, or watch TV out of fear that the news might suddenly alert her that the Ange had exploded, or seven-hundred singularities were opening up in Casoban and they were chucking Ablaze down alone.

The reality was less extreme, but that didn’t settle her any. Quinn was probably a wreck, she thought. Utterly lost in a strange place, without a single friendly face for thousands of miles in any direction. What if she had another episode? Who would she turn to? It wouldn’t matter to the CSC how loud she screamed or how hard she cried, they’d perched their whole treaty on her back and she was theirs for two weeks, six days, and however many hours. Too many. What if they made her duel? They had to know it wouldn’t work. Would they care? Wild conspiracies flooded her head, of plots to ruin Quinn’s reputation, and RISC’s image, to drive Casoban back into Eusero’s arms. People thought so much of pilots, but the truth was, sometimes, they really were nothing more than political pawns.

Her doom spiral was interrupted by a ding; a special ding—the one assigned to Quinn. She blinked, looked at the screen, and sure enough she saw Quinn’s name on the message. She stared. For many moments she just stared.

Then she was vertical on the couch, then on her stomach again to snatch her phone off the ground, then vertical again with a loud shriek of disbelief. The message was in all capitals, and her fears worked ahead of her eyes, warning her that something had gone wrong. She was hurt. She was scared. She was being attacked by something. Something awful something horrifying something—

Expensive.

Dahlia paused, and finally took a second to read. How much did she make? 6500 dollars? Confusing—more than confusing, baffling. Thankfully, there was a picture attached to give her the context she needed.

She screamed.

A door flung open and out flopped the irascible form of Roaki. “God what the fuck are you screaming about!

Dahlia was reminded that she only wished she was alone. “Shut up!” she snapped. “Shut up Quinn texted me!

Nuh-uh!” the girl spat, hopping over to the foot of the couch, and clambering onto the cushions. “What’d she say? Is she crying? I bet she’s already crying a bunch.

She’s buying a dress shut up!

Roaki face twisted with contempt and confusion. “A dress? Lemme see!

Dahlia ignored her, typing furiously. A smile, both of relief and pure, unbridled elation, began to spread across her face. Quinn wasn’t hurt. She wasn’t in danger—at least not yet. She was…she was shopping. Besca wasn’t going to believe it.

Her reply was sent: You make plenty PLEASE buy the dress you look gorgeous!

For a while she just stood there, staring down at the picture of her sister, looking anxious in a dress that, frankly, seemed worth every cent of the price. But it could have been made out of burlap and rat fur and she’d still have urged her to buy it. Dahlia couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so light. Like a feather, or a balloon.

Or like she was falling.

She was falling. Roaki had knocked her over and sent her tumbling onto the carpet, snatching the phone from the air as she fell. A devilish giggle filled the air, followed promptly by Dahlia’s own furious shouting.

Shortly, a second text followed the first.

DERSS NOT GOOD HOW U GONA FIHGT IN A BLANKET BUY SUM KNIFES INSTEAD DUMB DEADGIRL

Panic welled within her as Dom’s cry cut short. Ionna zeroed in, dashing low across tabletops as she watched two armored assailants close in on her Scion. Alas, even at a hopping sprint she was too slow—but someone else was much quicker. Shadows fell upon one of the assailants, and shortly after, the second fell to a similar assault. Quick, gruesome work. The umbral figures of His Holiness Mirandola and Sir Chaudoir drew in close to Dom.

A smile flicked through her. She’d had a good feeling about those two, it was nice to see it proven right. That relief was short-lived however as a loud, almost mechanical whine nearly sent her tumbling to the ground. Her prosthetic arm went slack for a moment, and it took a conscious effort to wend her mana back through it, like slipping a hand back into a glove. She squeezed the metal fingers, flexed the elbow; everything seemed in order again, but…

No time. She came to a sliding crouch on the table beside the trio, head on a swivel for more attackers.

Glad you guys are okay!” she said. On the other end of the ballroom, reinforcements finally arrived, headed by the lady of the hour herself, Dame Irina. Ionna had almost forgotten what it felt like to be glad to see her.

Civilians were channeled out, and in her ear their mentor’s voice gave them clear commands. Get the Scions out, meet at Stern Hill. She scanned the crowd, mental tally ticking, and an anxious pit formed in her stomach. She chewed her lip, looking down at Kasper and Zacharie.

Incepta, this was gonna get her in trouble.

Dom, go with them,” she said, taking the other gently woman by the shoulders. “Stay together and get to Stern Hill, I’ll meet you there.” Her attention turned then to the Scion of Shadow and his Templar. “We still don’t have eyes on Nadine or Ulysse. I’m gonna track them down and bring them to the rendezvous point. Stay low, stay safe, stick to the…uh…well, you know.

With a final pat of assurance, Ionna left the trio behind and dove back into the ballroom. With the light pouring in from the main hall, things were much clearer. The assailants tangled with Irina’s reinforcements, and though Ionna would have loved to stop and lend a hand, her duty right now was to find the Lightning duo. Templars protect Scions. In all likelihood Nadine was evacuated already, and she and sir Jacinth were drinking tea at Stern Hill while the royal forces prepared to eradicate everyone that looked like a gaming laptop. But that feeling in her gut, looking out at the crowd. Every head accounted for but two.

No. One.

She came across the prince and his Templar, both in one piece, but the relief was short lived. At Lucas' feet she saw him splayed out on the ground in a pool of blood. Ulysse. Her throat clenched, she knew immediately it was too late to do anything for him but choke out a quiet apology. The mourning would have to wait. Ulysse was dead and Nadine was nowhere to be found—they had her. Ionna looked back towards the doors, brows furrowed. Irina would have stopped them if they’d taken her that way, which meant…

There wasn't time to stop. The prince looked rough, but Tyler was with him, which was more than could be said for the Scion of Lightning. She found the broken window closest to Ulysse’s body and vaulted through it, shaking off glass and dust as her feet hit the ground. Her eyes scanned the dirt, searching for footprints, or blood, any kind of trail the moonlight might reveal.

Lady Lucienne!” she shouted into the night, starting off away from the manor. Even if the Scion couldn’t respond, if she could only hear that someone was looking for her, it might be enough. “Nadine!
@Scribe of Thoth@Olive Fontaine@Abstract Proxy
Dague was waiting outside, hand on her hip, foot tapping with anticipation. When Quinn emerged, however, she did not explode with screams of wonder or applause, nor did she bounce with delight or faint from joy. Instead, her tight-lipped smile widened just a bit, her eyebrows raised ever so slightly, and she let out a satisfied breath through her nose.

“Hm,” she said simply, and for a moment left it at that. Her eyes scanned Quinn’s form, traced the designs and how they wrapped around her, how the hem was high enough not to drag on the ground. She came over and adjusted her braid, then stepped back and appraised her again.

Only, it wasn’t just her she was judging. It was the dress, too. The craftsmanship. If it didn’t look good, who was that more of an indictment on? For someone of Madam Dague’s history, there could only ever be one to blame: herself.

Thankfully, however.

“Yes,” she finally said, and her smile grew just a bit more. “Yes, I believe you look quite wonderful. I would frame this moment, but I think you’ll do quite enough marketing for me, looking like that.”

She snapped her fingers, and the clerk poked her head out from the front. “Madam?”

“Ring it up. I don’t think there’s a force on Illun that could stop either of us from ensuring she leaves with that dress.”
As Quinn made her choice, Dague smiled self-assuredly, like she’d predicted the decision. It was the right size and everything, and whether that was a matter of professional preparation, or inexplicable precognition would likely remain unknown forever.

“Well someone should,” she answered. “And black isn’t my color. This way.”

She led Quinn to the back with the same gentle yet insistent hand. The clerk came back out, still wide-eyed and fidgety.

“Madam, should I bring those in?”

“No. Switch them out with the mauve and aquamarine. I have a feeling tastes will be shifting soon.”

The back of the shop was not much bigger than the front, with a door leading into what might have been the workshop shut tightly, and another leading to dressing room with a long, heavy curtain for a door. Dague slid it open to reveal a there was a full-mirror and a dressing hooks on the walls.

“There’s a single zip in the back, designed for you to be able to do up yourself. In you go!”
Dague didn’t seem surprised when Quinn said she’d never owned a formal dress. In fact, the only thing she seemed to hear at all was the note about her eye, at which point her demeanor changed entirely. She swiveled in front of Quinn, hunched, and stared deeply into that eye for what might have been the world’s longest moment.

“Gold,” she said, then she straightened and shuffled over to the front desk. “Methods change with the clients. Before I moved to Vienci, everything I made was by the mold—ah, there we are…” Producing a small glass wheel, she gave it a shake, and a screen on its front face blinked to life, upon which were slivers of just about every color Quinn could imagine, all arranged in a gradient order. She came back over and held the wheel up next to Quinn’s eye, where it spun until the selector came to rest on the exact matching hue.

“Simple, but cheap, and dreadfully boring. I didn’t even know if I’d enjoy dressmaking until someone asked me for something ridiculous. Nowadays I tend to find a client’s fame is inversely proportional to their sense of fashion.” She paused, looked Quinn up and down, and giggled. “Not meant as an insult, of course. I prefer it, honestly. If everyone who walked in here knew exactly what they wanted, I might as well be back to using a mold.”

Twirling the wheel on her finger, she b-lined for the rack of last-season’s dresses and began to rifle through them. Odd. One would have thought the goal would have been to throw the highest-priced product at her and call it a day, but Dague pulled at least three dresses off the rack, held them up to the wheel, and then looked back at Quinn. They were all stunning, at least to an inexperienced eye, but in the end she settled for nothing.

“Old for a reason,” she muttered, as she made for the other wall. “Gold is good. Yes. But not too much. Too much, and you’ll look like a butterscotch popsicle, or a honey statue, or a bumblebee—oh! Oh, yes, that could work.”

On the move again, she disappeared into the back, where there was more muted conversation, some rummaging, and at last she returned with three dresses in hand. One was white with embroidered gold vines climbing in a spiral up from the hem, all the way to the raised neck. The other two were black. One had a kaleidoscopic gold patterning along the ankle-height bottom and about the chest, where it cut off just below the collarbone. The last one had a close collar that went all the way up to the chin, like a pilot suit, and had no sleeves either, but the gold patterning rose up from the base like inverted rain, leaving haphazard trails of golden droplets leading all the way up.

“These were going to go up in a few weeks. They’re current-season, but pastel is in vogue right now—imagine why—so I was going to hold off on the darker selections. But…” She set the dresses on hooks in the wall and stepped back so she could see them and Quinn together. “Yes, much stronger this way. Tell me, do any of these catch your eye?”
The Miséricorde was a smaller boutique compared to some of the other stores on the Ange, but up here, real estate was at a premium. For a clothing store to secure a spot, it would need fame equal to its quality. Though Quinn might not have had the experience to know better, from the price tags to the décor, to say nothing of the dresses themselves, it would have been a safe assumption to say this place had both.

The aisles she navigated were narrow and relegated to the corner of the left side. These prices were less egregious, but the clothes themselves hardly seemed any cheaper in make. They were, however, denoted as last-season. The dresses adorning mannequins or hung behind glass displays were marked as current, and some were easily triple the price of those on the rack.

The clerk didn’t notice Quinn at first, being so consumed in her tidying. She was younger, dressed fashionably but not in a recent piece. She didn’t react at first, so focused on adjusting the dress that her tongue stuck out of her mouth. When that was done, she stood upright.

“Consultations need to be booked in advance,” she began, only just prying her eyes away to look at her. “But we offer a surcharge on all—uhhhhhhhhhh…”

She stared at Quinn like that, slack jawed and droning, for more than a few moments, before finding the mental wherewithal to close her mouth and swallow her shock. She made to speak once, stopped, then tried again, stopped, and finally said; “One moment, miss,” before breaking into a sprint behind the counter, vanishing into the backrooms of the store.

There was barely-muted and urgent whispering, followed by a full on shout of “WHAT?” before, moments later, a new figure emerged into the front.

She was an older woman, whose hair was fluffed up and styled high, a tide of gray rising on oaken shores. She herself wore a dress that might have been plucked right off the display, an absolutely radioactive pink number melded with highlights of cream and navy blue. It bulbed at the shoulders, beneath which she wore white arm covers bearing a golden floral filigree pattern that wound down all the way around her fingers. Sharp green eyes beneath long lashes, over a pointed nose and cherry-lipstick pulled into a petite smile. She studied Quinn like one of the dresses on the wall.

“I wouldn’t have believed it,” she said, the Casobani formality in her voice strained with excitement. “The Runan hero, in my shop.”

She approached with a gait so perfect her head stayed level, then bowed in a perfect curtsy before offering out her hand. “Madam Dague. I’m told, Miss Loughvein, that you would like a dress.”

Dague gave a proud flourish towards her wall, and with a gentle but unyielding hand, brought Quinn with her. “Then let us not waste time. We must start with taste, oui? Be broad, if you must. What designs, what colors, what styles—what strikes the eye of a pilot?”
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