Phoe

Breathless Dead

It's a momentary thing. A fleeting flicker, nothing more. Bella's eye catches the box, and her pupil opens at the sight. There's a slight pause before her nose twitches and air fills her lungs again, and a tiny... not a frown, but a brief pressing of her lips flashes across her face. For a moment, she is in another world.

It's a good thing she still has so many sharks to hold. Without them, she might have crushed her claws into her skin and ruined the entire carnival with her blood. She might have torn down the booth completely, and then there would have been a great many questions to answer. Just like old times, right Redana? The secrets and the lies.

But her hands are full of softness, so she doesn't do anything more than brush her fingers along the velvety surface of a hammerhead. A shadow clouds her eye, but she blinks it away. She is rooted in place. When she sighs, it might be nothing more important than a plan to procure the box her Princess wants so badly. This one, at least, she'll actually use. This one won't haunt her sleep.

Finally, she smiles. Hers is not a loud grin, full of laughter or bright expressions, but neither is it the serenity of Lord Apollo. Hers is a ghost's smile; a glimmer of moonlight peeking through clouds before it's swallowed up by something much brighter than she is. Guilt washing away with the tides, kept at bay until the next sight or smell that pulls it back toward her again. A smile like a scythe that is constantly contemplating violence as the fastest possible solution to any problem. That is constantly thinking its way around violence. If she comes across as clever, then this is the true reason for it. They are hard won, are her ideas.

Her arms are full of sharks. It would be nice to have a chest to carry all this treasure inside of.

"Well," she says in a voice that sounds half a universe away, "I suppose if it's got wheels. Then there's really no choice."

The look of concentration on her face is also a thing of moon-and-starlight. She is on board the Anemoi again, preparing for a raid. Quiet orders hissed into the darkness where every sense is a strain just to catch it, but with the lethal edge of absolute confidence that her voice will carry where it needs to.

She points toward a strange table: a smooth and elongated surface that curves upward at the far end, where it houses a series of strange and increasingly smaller ringed barriers with holes to nowhere carved into the middle of them. Each ring is labelled with a larger number that for some inscrutable reason is connected with the smallness of the ring it's attached to.

"We'll use that. That's the last of these rituals we haven't completed, at least as far as I can find. We'll take what we win there and bring it over to the betting hall. Hades is a gambler himself, isn't he? It makes sense that if you want to win the nicest prizes you'll have to earn it the same way he did. And if that doesn't work... don't worry, Dany. It'll work. Trust me. Come on."

Her smile may be a shard of moonlight against the blackness of night, but when she grins? When those wickedly sharp fangs come out, all confidence and no malice? That's more like a lantern, blazing fierce enough to make anyone want to follow it.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"I do not have a contract with you, Heim Stockar. I will them nothing."

Again and again, her trident clashes with the massive tower shield. She bludgeons it without caring whether or not she connects with power or form, opportunistically trying to throw him off balance for however short a window, but mostly just trading these jabs for her earlier typing. It had grown pointless, since he showed no capacity or interest to respond. Something new needed to take its place, keep her hands warm and active, and she had chosen this dance of polearms.

Dance. Not war but dance. Each blow drums out percussive beats that become her rhythm to pull away before the Gods-Smiting Whip can settle into a position where a decisive blow might be struck against her. Every few strokes she clashes with the spear instead, or otherwise needs to leap on or over it, but the rhythm belongs to her. These strikes do such little damage that the Blast Wall could repair them with nothing but paint.

Irrelevant. Overhead stroke, two, three, four. Pivot, thrust, two, three, leap. Evasive maneuver, snap leg forward. Burn right leg thruster for two seconds, cease. Target: center mass, spear haft. Irrelevant, irrelevant. Weapon nothing more than distraction. Weapon nothing more than convenience. Little point to it in this god's construction beyond creating an extra layer of defense. Psychological warfare: creation of an obvious threat point to shape opponent psychology. Respect for weapons, inherent. Respect for shielding, not. Existence of weapon deemed primarily as amplification for effectiveness of shield.

His bulk, the real threat. His zero-response, the real threat. His shield, heavy enough to destroy most armor frames by itself. Her Nine-Tails no exception. A threat. A threat. A contender for the title of Strongest.

Irrelevant.

"There are no true Zaldarians, Heim Stockar. There are no true Hybrasilians. Terenians... I am unclear on. But doubtful. Highly doubtful. Do not speak to me of honor and worth, old man. Solarel is worth nothing. You are worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I told you this could not be a battle for the ages. An outlands raider fights a fraud over the right to claim the legacy of a traitor. What does it matter? What does it prove? She will not smile. She will not speak. Your belief is worth scattered words with Whispered Promise, it will not fetch a higher price."

The tail selection screen pings her insistently. She ignores it. The choice of which tail to activate is hers. The timing is also hers. Hers alone. The entire Nine Drive System is valueless in this moment; no tails of equal combat potential with nine. Distractions, each of them unnecessary. Irrelevant, irrelevant. No death blow to be struck, no grand scheme to be unveiled, not until the dance concludes.

And it may not. Conclusion: Heim Stockar falls short of the objective standards of honor. A blade honed for one single brand of combat, thrust into the air in the vane hopes that someone might fall in love with the form enough to fall on it. A cruel style, that punishes lapses of judgment in alternate forms of engagement. That seeks specifically a form of fighting where it has overwhelming advantage, leverages that to a victory, and calls the result exciting.

The Blast Wall seeks to destroy the Nine-Tails where the former is strongest and the latter is weakest. It fears a barrage from the middle ranges. It was not born and is not guided with an interest in testing itself against the best versions of the ones it faces. What is 'worth' something? Only the foolish. Only the willing to make sacrifice after pointless sacrifice in the name of paltry, unwatched victory.

Data acquisition complete. Assessment: victory impossible under present restrictions. It is too difficult to be Her, in the end. To be the most beautiful thing in the universe, and constantly seek to become the center of everything she meets. She cannot be the ideal opponent of everyone at once.

Assessment update: cheating required. Honorless victory, or none.

"Tail Five, activation confirmed. Cutting free in three, two, one, confirmed. Additional resource requirement, minimal one more activation. Understood. Earn it. Dance with me one more time, my dearest devouring beast, though it may clip your wings forever. Though it shatter your fangs and blunt your claws, though we bleed together for beauty's sake... we go. Once more, the dance continues."

The Gods-Smiting Whip lifts off the ground with a roar of rapidly overheating thruster fire. Stone melts beneath as she climbs. One by one her active tails drop away from her as if discarded, dropping in pockets of disintegrated buildings as she forces the Blast Wall first backwards, now to the side, battering it with purpose now and adding the additional threat of her flight system to force respect out of Heim Stockar where the qualities of his god would normally not require this of him.

As she flies above him, the Whip moves in impossible ways. Each of her limbs, moving independently of one another; a sky dance that no body anywhere in the universe could replicate if it had ten thousand years to practice. She calculates vectors for attack and defense for each of them, kicking up molten rocks and flinging them about to create the tiniest of openings in an impregnable defense.

Her target is not the mecha, but the spear in its hands. Her trident screams through the air as she spins and hurls it like a missile in his face. The angle is such that it should not be possible to block it with the shield. It will be necessary to sacrifice one polearm for the other.

Systems confirmed overheating. Warning sirens blare at her from every corner of her cockpit and force her ears to her skull while she lets her armor drop like a stone onto the ground again. It shudders as it stands. Maneuverability at 33% of normal potential. Her eyes flicker down toward the monitors on her chains.

"It does not fall to us to give the things we love value, Heim Stockar. Consensus does not require consent. A traitor has no honor. The One-Day Defender is not defined by the year that follows. My love... is irrelevant. Meaningless. The universe forgets my song the instant I am finished singing it. Speak Not to the Outsider. I do not. Only those who hear my voice belong to me. Together, we do not make truth.

"...Your blade is softer than hers. It cannot reach me. I will not allow it. For her. For them. Come and end me, Heim Stockar, if you can. I have already cut you down."

[Mirror attempts to Defy Disaster with Daring but only hits a 6, sacrificing her trident and flight system with the intent of turning his shield into his active weapon. She activates Center of the Web to take 1 String on him]

Breathless Dead

Bella did not, in fact, have any idea what she was going to do with all of these sharks. Already they had overtaken the bag she'd won, and now her arms were filling up with the things. She had no room to put them in. She hadn't even gotten around to taking her cup back from that sheep just yet for that very same reason. But she can't seem to stop herself. Every time she turns her head there's a new game waiting for her and Redana to play. And every prize booth has a new shark she hasn't seen before.

All she understands is that whenever her eyes pass across a new stitched together toothy smile or meets a pair of shiny bead-eyes, she is filled with an overwhelming sense that it has been waiting here, possibly for hundreds of years, for her to come and rescue it. Only for her. It's a weaker impulse version of the lurching in her stomach that happened whenever Dany would wander too far off when they were children, or when she'd noticed her temple sisters (and especially Mynx) getting into trouble. Her genetically engineered guardian programming must have been overtuned at some point. That's all it was.

It was the vendor's fault in the first place for suggesting a plush shark could need rescuing in the first place. And now she'd found one locked behind a 'firing range', soft and blue and guileless, the practically as long as the Princess was tall, and she feels her heart tweak fresh all over again. She is doomed, for perhaps the fifth dozenth time since they'd wandered into the carnival.

The games, she'd noticed, were all patterned after various arts of ritual and warcraft. Many had been rendered down to be so easy it was almost insulting, but Bella was certain there was a test involved to this, as well. To obey each priest or priestess commanded to the letter was a trap: you could only show your alignment with the god each temple game prayed to by figuring out how to exceed every expectation. The limiting nature of the equipment they provided for each task only proved she had the right of it.

"...Redana, hold these."

Off go the sharks, to the only other person they... that is, that she trusts. These are sacred treasures of the God of the Dead, after all. They can't be allowed to touch the floor, even clean as it is.

She steps toward the crude booth and picks up the rickety SP rifle. This was as an obvious a temple of Artemis as she could ever hope to come across. Good. She owed the goddess an apology, and had yet to figure out a proper way to pray ever since she'd learned about what their relationship with each other actually was. There were myths, fragments really, buried in Redana's old textbooks and lessons that talked about "Archery" as a concept relating to the Goddess of the Hunt, and this probably had something to do with that.

It was hardly more than 20 meters to the targets. She could spit farther than that (if she thought nobody was looking). What was the trick, then? She eyed the rifle with apprehension, and raised it to her shoulder. It must make the most dreadful noises. Her ears were sure to be bleeding after. But for this largest and therefore kingliest of the sharks, it was worth it. In the end she was just no good at leaving anybody behind. That was what got her in this whole fucking mess to begin with. She winces as she squeezes the trigger, turning her head away and squeezing her eyes shut to mitigate some of the noise and the inevitable blowback of smoke.

There's a soft click, and a dull whoosh of air from the rifle. A tiny pellet flits out at speeds slow enough to watch and pops a balloon on the far end of the range with similarly little fanfare. Bella lifts the gun up to eye level and stares at it with amazement.

Aha! So it's a form of self restriction! They must have used these to hide their numbers while the phalanx advanced on the enemy, carrying balloons like these ones filled with all kinds of chemicals. Right? And with the smoke pouring over everyone you could invoke Artemis even in the middle of a war!

"I get it now, I see! Ha! Watch me, Dany!"

Her fear is gone in an instant, replaced with swaggering confidence. Bella lifts the ancient tool of this brilliant-yet-vanished civilization (...they must have done something truly terrible, at the end of things) and empties row after row of pellets into the range with the swiftness and surety of a creature that can finish aiming before she's begun. Almost all at once she strikes an entire wall of balloons, several round discs with painted concentric circles, and a stack of bottles that fall over with a loud clatter.

And there at last spew the tickets. HA! There at last had been the secret SP target she was meant to find! She passed the test, O Goddess! Were you watching? She has not forsaken you, do you see? If only she'd put the pieces together sooner, she bets she would've won at least twice this many. As it was she'd barely gotten enough to rescue a second King Shark for Redana's sake.

But even still, there's a spark in her heart that doesn't seem to want to go out. A smile flashes across her face and she twirls with girlish glee toward the woman she loves more than anyone in the universe, happy to be here, happy to dance forever, happy to do whatever so long as it's...

She stops, catching her reflection. And Redana's reflection. And at last, the absurdity of the size of her collection sinks in. Instantly, her posture changes. Her back straightens to perfect rigidity. She turns her head and coughs. Smooths out her dress as best she can holding such large animals in each arm. And she blushes, beautiful as the stars themselves.

"...This did not happen, ok?" she snarls, but in a voice that could only belong to the fussy Bella who used to inhabit the Imperial Palace, "You begged me for these. Fucking begged! They were gifts! We never got them! If anyone asks, we tell them about the paintings and the performers! We found these at our picnic and brought them back as... as... damn it Redana stop laughing! I'm a Praetor now, I've got a reputation!"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Hm. Linguistic complexities. Fascinating in most any context. Here, frustrating. Religious scripture, code of conduct. Not dense, not multilayered, but shallow and somehow nuanced. Open to interpretations? An entire ocean of them. Not. The one day. But... the year after? Cultural Assimilation, then. That was the argument.

An Outsider's interpretation of outsiders. This conception would never survive prolonged contact with either of them. Solarel and herself, consummate outsiders both. Even to each other. Which is why... why they didn't speak, not hardly ever. A year was not enough. A lifetime would not be enough.

And yet.

> a beautiful dream.
> that one might belong anywhere.
> the challenge of roses, demanding a battle.
> the whisper of prison-silks, crying friendship.
> red and white and pink and yellow.
> but I reject it.

"Power transfer holding at 97%. Battlefield conditions deemed appropriate, initiating Phase 3 testing of the Nine-Drive System. Close quarters adaptability and evasiveness training. Answer. The question. What is a warrior?"

He does not understand. Difficult to put into words how disappointing that is. For all that he thinks highly of Solarel he demonstrates not one whit of comprehension about what fighting her is like. He fears to expend his long range threat, so as not to be denied a fight where he has made himself strongest. A climb onto narrower and narrower peaks, more and more closed-minded definitions of power, a blade honed so sharp that it splits the river where it rests. But forging such a deadly blade, he renders it brittle.

Solarel would think nothing of vanishing from his range. If she slipped in close at all it would only be to detonate his payload. No dishonor in fighting dishonest, and no shame in preying upon a weakness. If she sank down to his level it would only be with some scheme or trick up her sleeves, and she would assuredly be lowering herself to meet his standards regardless. Changing her face in the name of love.

But in an arena where the victory was more important than love? The greatest Imperial Knight would render his entire dream meaningless. She would tear him into pieces over the course of hours, Speaking Not but flirting with her thrusters and hoping he would change to meet her in the name of love. If he could not, he would be forgotten as quickly as the contents of last night's dinner.

Thank the Goddesses for that last blessing. The year after, huh? All that time to practice, and Mirror never figured out how to cook properly.

But she does advance forward. Into his zone and not away from it. Her tails rattle menacingly in the air above her shoulders as she twirls her trident and steps in to match it in a test of power against his spear. They clash and catch in lethal showers of plasma sparks and burning metal. His frame has the advantage in raw torque; hers in joint adjustment speed. It's the difference between speed that would be surprising to a less prepared mind that points primarily in a single direction, and power that only unlocks when it rolls off of and away from that strike.

They spar over several long minutes. His shield, her tails. His blows, where they land, stagger her stance and set her stumbling back. Her fingers dance across her keys and turn that stumble into a dancer's grace. She does not drop the Gods-Smiting Whip to a knee except to roll through the momentum of a thrust and scorch fresh burn marks into the bulwark of his towering shield. She does not lets its arms shudder or nearly give out from their connectors except to draw the kinetic energy up into her legs and vault again for an angle on his backup systems.

"Ours will not be a battle for the ages, Heim Stockar. I am using you. Devouring you. I will turn you into new strength and then discard your memory. But. I... appreciate. Your hospitality. So I will burn with you, for a time. Harm me however you may."

A droplet of water, when struck, will scatter into many stronger droplets. In time these will find the river, and eventually thereafter the sea. Or, failing that, a puddle where they will wait with their brothers and sisters to be pulled up into the sky and crash back down as part of a mighty storm. It is never defeated. Pain converts to pain converts to pain, converts to pain. Converts to beauty, in the end. They mighty, savage roar of the water gives way to the peace of the reflecting pool. It gives a thousand creatures a home, it slakes the Fisher's thirst and provides for her her bounty. Love, Life, and Death all wear the same shimmering dress, net, veil.

The Gods-Smiting Whip lifts its trident up at a high angle across its body and plants both feet, waiting for a blow. Its featureless face seems almost at peace, as if Mirror's face could be imposed atop of it, her eyes closed and a small smile waiting to exchange power for power. When the death thrust comes, she will take it full on in payment for his voice.

Yes, she accepts his reasoning. The implications of it. That she belongs, even if she will not travel to this place called 'home'.

This time, she lets the blow stagger her completely. His spear is fast. She needs it stopped so she can control it long enough to create her opening. She grabs at the shaft, and wrenches it free of her frame. Three tails: just enough. One zips toward the wound and embeds itself in the shredded armor to recomplete the power circuits and maintain full fluidity. It will function as a minor shield from here, and little more.

One tail opens fire, full burst in the Blast Wall's face. The beam scatters harmlessly off the brightly sparkling energy shield, but the point of the shot is not to cause direct damage. It blinds his sights and disorients the Zaldarian warrior enough to let Mirror lift his spear and bury the shaft halfway into the wall of a nearby structure. She kicks her mecha up into the air and stomps down on his weapon, ripping the wall away and sending whole sections of the building tumbling down around them.

And in the middle of that storm, her final tail attaches to her left arm like a gauntlet. She twists into the ground, disappears behind a falling slab of stone, and leaps across the other side to a ferocious punch across the Blast Wall's backside, opposite to where her beam landed. The fist connects, the shield ripples. The tail fires a shotgun like burst into the forcefield at the point of impact.

Layers upon layers? She need only strip them away. As a token... not of love, Heim Stockar, but respect, she will teach you the most sacred of her ways.

Always a layer of defense. Never more than one. She will take, and take, and take, until your great shield is all that's left to fight with.

[Fight: 8. Mirror will inflict a condition and take away his inner layer of shielding]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

White, 3V!

"Oh! Oh, that's so cool actually! I haven't seen anything like that since at least, I mean I could've sworn that those were I mean damn. Damn, that really works? I mean I guess it, yeah. Wow! I would not have... wow! I don't suppose you know what the theoretical output limit or duration is on those things? Nah I guess not, with the lifestyle you described. Sorry, I just, professional curiosity you know? Semi-professional. I'm a specs gal, not a techs gal, if you know what I mean."

It should be illegal for someone who looks like Euna Kim to have such a stupid laugh. Or, for that matter, for the sorts of things that set her off to do so. Did you think Vesna was a dumb nerd? She's more than met her match. If you met her wife (the definitely-more-famous-than-you-are Sara Jimenez) you could lose sleep wondering how in the fuck this absolute loser got a ring on the hottest girl in space.

Though then again, as you watch her rip the cap off the unaccepted drink and start sipping at it herself, and in particular the way those waves of muscles ripple across her body without any specific effort or flex, that might be mystery solved.

"Can you buy those things retail? If not, I'd like contact info for your supplier. If you don't mind, I mean. Now that I know about this system I'd like to keep a supply in stock. Even if you decide you'd rather not waste any more of your time here after the mess I've made of you. Well, mm. It's just good to be prepared. You know, I used to..."

Euna trails off into nothing, staring at her hand with a curious expression. She stretches it out into the air in front of her, and the golden lights flare brightly as she clenches her artificial fingers into a tight, metal fist. She looks over her shoulder and grins.

"Let's save that story, actually. The Field Guide for Optimal Social Interactions, Rule Six: 'conserve the secrets of your backstory until at least the third date'. Hahahahaheeeeee," snort, "Hey Threevee! You look like you're about to fall over dead, but do you have enough juice left in you to referee? Your girlfriend doesn't know what it feels like to throw a punch! Well! No better way to learn than to try, is there? Come on then Miss November, I'll give you five minutes to try and tag me. Last lesson I promise, and then I'll take any questions you both have. Hey, don't look so worried! I'm a lot tougher than I look."

Honey-brown eyes glint with maybe a little too much delight as Euna hops away and settles into a combat stance. Her smile is somehow grim and radiant at the same time, window into a world she longs to occupy but for whatever reason... she's here, instead. It takes her several seconds to remember which end of sparring she's meant to be on, and she relaxes from her power stance into a light and dancing fluid form that sees both hands clamp behind her back.

"Come on then, come on! There's no better test of your full range of motion than combat training! You can't hurt me and I won't let you hurt you, so cut loose, cutie! Let me give you a lesson to remember me by~"

Breathless Dead

Once upon a time, two girls went on an adventure. Being young girls, what they'd meant by 'adventure' turned out to be nothing grander than a trip to the outer markets. But as was the way with these things each step of the way had felt thrilling, impossibly grand, astonishing, appalling, terrible, and terrifying in its turn until it finally overwhelmed them and sent the two heroes scrambling back to the safety of their home.

There had been the climb over the palace wall, facilitated by a rope spun from weeks' worth of carefully 'misplaced' bedsheets. The weave through the shadows to avoid the eyes of the perimeter guards. The breathless, excited giggling as they donned pre-tattered cloaks: a perfect and impenetrable disguise. And running, running, running until the glittering alloys gave way to dingy streets and streets crammed so full of people there could be no word to describe it other than misery.

The market stank to hell. Filth wafted everywhere, just pervasive enough to overwhelm the advanced filtration systems and fight with sickly sweet wines and other desperate street fare that was in no way appropriate for the palate of an Imperial Princess. Moans. Sniffles. A few brave but hollow cries for help. Barter offers shouted atop the other voices (one even offering a pair of diseased Servitors for just one of their cloaks), the general din even more oppressive than the massive wall of bodies and the stale air that had warned them even then: this was a place of death. No less in fact than the Palace of the Dead. Nothing living could be kept inside this prison.

They had been far, far less careful coming home. And home had turned out to be far, far less safe than they had left it. And the rest was history.

Now those girls were grown up. Less naïve. And at the end of a vastly grander and yet far less magical journey, they find themselves once again at the farthest markets, in the Palace of the Dead.

But these halls are cavernous, and empty. These shouts are muted and polite, lifting themselves into full focus only when they've already caught someone's eye. The streets are glittering with wealth, even if they seem so flimsy compared to the adamant power of Tellus that it boggles the mind that ambient solar winds or even a stray sneeze haven't torn this wonderful place to shreds.

Everything is a marvel. No breath of air smells or tastes quite the same as the one before it, and none are natural. Wispy attempts at floral scents dance with freshly baked bread, though there are even fewer souls here to make it or eat it than there were among the ghosts of the Azura. Incomprehensible messages bounce back and forth across the halls in an endless chorus, dancing in time to strange images that call to mind the magic of movies without ever quite seeming to fit that word.

Bella's ears strain every which way. She turns her head, eyes darting this way and that to catch the soft beams of light that must surely be trapped in the air above her. But she is thwarted at every turn. There is no telltale flutter of a projector, however faint. No beacon streaming from a cleverly hidden backroom to paint these motion pictures against these walls. They loop, occasionally break, then reform without any help or source at all. Like magic.

"The arts must have thrived in the ancient Empire. Don't you think so, Redana? Just look at the styles they worked in! It's all so vibrant and yet... it almost hurts my eye to watch it too directly. I think their explorations of Love must have consumed the entire society. They called it an 'Investment', right? I don't know that word. Love is... a return on Investment. They were so wise. They must have been."

There is wonder in her voice, and it paints its way across her face. Slight headache or no, every bit of motion on every screen captures her attention. There is no need for her to pull Redana to heel; she rushes about just as much to capture and gawk at every little thing, all the while feeling an intense longing build up inside her head. The pressure is overwhelming. Impossible to ignore. And what law could stop her now?

Trembling, her fingers reach for a screen in the midst of depicting a cloud of hyper-stylized falling leaves, just before it shifts to an equally stylized depiction of a man and a woman in dark tuxedos dancing on some golden, unrecognizable moon. Her fingers press on the smooth, glassy surface of the screen and she gaps.

"Redana, look! Look! It's..."

Everywhere her fingers touch the image bursts into a cloud of rainbow light. It follows her touch this way and that, blurring only where she passes and reforming the original image as quickly as it broke behind her experimental probing. She strikes it again and again, hardly daring to breath, when a slightly too excited flick cracks the entire thing in an enormous spiderweb pattern. Liquid oozes from several of the larger gaps, paradoxically containing none of the colors they had just been watching. All around them, images play on as if nothing had happened, but in this one spot there is nothing beyond splintered black and white.

"I understand now!" she smiles to herself as they pass around the bend to a new set of wonders that await them, "How they managed to create their films without using projectors. These are paintings, Redana! They must have spent months on each individual one of these! Can you imagine? Hundreds, no, thousands! Maybe even millions of master craftsmen bent over their workbenches painting every motion blur into existence with their brushes. All to create a hallway filled with treatises on their musings about love, worship, and society! Though I'm still not certain what message they intended by drawing all of their characters so... scrawny. Still, though. Beautiful."

And as she says the word, she glances at the Princess. Her fingers are still coated in bits of mystic paint as they entwine around Redana's. Two girls went on an adventure, to find a marketplace. Only this time, their feet carry them further on without thought for safety or home.

At the end of it all... would be the two of them. If not together, then at least not apart. But at least for now, there was the promise of a picnic under the stars, and even deeper wonders and puzzles left behind by the great Foremothers of civilization. To say nothing of the promise of another night. There was, after all, still so much to see.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Even here, even now. The battle being fought requires sight beyond the opponent in front of her. These restrictive spaces make flight an extremely suboptimal and unappealing prospect, but nevertheless. Having only three active tails cuts her dynamic defensive solutions down to near zero, but nevertheless. She was carrying greater than usual risks, chasing greater than usual goals, against an opponent far more capable of punishing a stock opening. But nevertheless.

"Thrusters active, full burn. Cut short three-point-eight-six seconds early, accounting for limited skies. Tail One, detach. Tail Two... no, damn it. Tail Three, trident mount. Tail Seven, point defense. This is my dance. The music is for me, but I am helpless to follow where it leads. Therefore, here I go! Catch me if you can! Punish me if you dare!"

But even as she lifts to the skies, already peppering the Blast Wall with high-focus energy beams that rise up with her like a wave, she is reeling. And more than reeling, seething. Impossible, impossible, impossible, impossible! She hadn't miscalculated to this astonishing degree, she had not! She did not have his measure, that was entirely the point of this maneuver, but she could not possibly have read the profiles so backwards!

> i have a puzzle on my mind. heim stockar.
> i will struggle to give you my full attention until it is cleared.
> if you'd like to help.
> hexadecimal color code #ed2939.
> a heart in the darkness.
> reaches for this single shade of light.
> can they find gold?

With so few tails in motion it is easier than ever to mix in bursts of text while maintaining rhythm. It's even to some degree necessary, in order to keep her actions per minute where she needs them. Risky to leave clues to her other life like this, particularly right after being hacked, but the simple fact of the matter was that sending nonsense data was even more dangerous than that. Typing without purpose trained her fingers not to respect position. Speaking without purpose invited splinters into her mind that would destroy her focus. Ad lib invited vastly worse and more damaging questioning than this.

The thoughts need to be genuine. The vulnerability needs to be revealed. The actions, specific. The response, or lack thereof, will be revealing in its own right. These words, the second barrage of missiles hidden cleverly amidst her laser fire. She strikes at the shield from various angles, across the top, reflective shots into the back, angles that seem to be probing for weak spots near the joints, and everything else that is not directly targeting the harness structure stabilizing the missile platform.

The shots are riddles, too. Likewise the admission of split focus was a probe. An experiment dreaming of becoming a kill shot. Where are you weak, Heim Stockar? Where are you strong? What do you protect and what do you trust to your inherent being? What had she misread? What had she misread? What had she misread???

"Indeed, I find you in all ways lesser than she, Heim Stockar. Speak Not To The Outsider. Is that not your way? You talk to me, talk to me! Of glory and victory while you stain your heart bandying words with me. Who am I, Heim Stockar? If you knew, you would not dare. Are you some sort of fallen heretic? Or just a shimmering little morsel, waiting to be skewered? If you are neither, show me!"

Further flight impossible. Angling descent, target lock acquired: left shoulder plating. Three steps short of a secret technique. Strike. The Gods-Smiting Whip falls like a comet from the stars. Its tails spin rapidly about the front, shattering stones with raining light and chaotic flashes that make make immediate retaliation difficult, though not impossible. Missile lock, at any rate, slowed beneath the capabilities of hand-aimed point defense.

> angry red. prideful red.
> the fallen star.
> crashing into the waves.
> sinking.
> perhaps cyan defeats gold.
> think the terenians call it seafoam.
> i like that word.

The beam trident lashes out just before impact, combining the strike with a vaulting motion that carries Mirror and her mecha up, over, and beyond the retaliatory range of cqc. Too near for missile combat without the risk of damage to one or more crystal fire drives. In short, the maddening middle zone where her speed controls supremacy.

Mirror stalks back and forth like the great hunting cats that sing their songs into her soul. She hefts the trident to the Whip's shoulder, caught between defense and offense. Probing, even now. All to learn. All to take the measure of this impossible creature, and return him to the sum of a reference sheet again.

Not knowing Him is the same as not knowing Her. And if that's true, she'll die.

(Figure Out a Person: 11.
# What are your feelings toward Solarel?
# What are you most afraid of right now?
# bonus combat question: Who do you want me to be?)

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Heim Stockar. Unideal opponent."

War heroes. Interesting the way they were almost exclusively Zaldarian. Wars of conquest, more glamorous than wars of defense. Though 'conquest' was the incorrect word for it, of course. In the end no territory was claimed. Resources, cats, trophies. These stolen in abundance. Herself included. Fisher colonies and fringe planets bore the brunt of the losses. Mother Hybrasil sent her huntresses roaming, but never took a blow herself. There were entire swaths of Worlders out there who knew nothing at all of the conflict except from rumors and dramatizations.

...Anyway. Even among the mighty Huntresses there were few heroes. Most were held back in reserve, or ritual, or... repose. Total lack of interest, higher priorities, an absolute certainty of eventual superiority. Eventually, arguably, that last one was even proven true. Certainly the increasingly stalled raiding lines were a critical importance in opening the negotiations between the two cultures that settled into an uneasy peace. But the damage was done. So to speak. Fisher cats came home by the netful with stories of life as a raid prisoner to rebuild their lives and their colonies, only to find their old communities had built around them in their absence, and that the empty rooms left open in hopes of their return were the only spaces that had been left for them at all.

War heroes. What a ridiculous concept. There was no beauty in war. Conflict. The duel. A thousand knives burning with the passion of a single heart set against the lance and whip of a lover. In war the lines became messy, the intimacy was lost. Even for Mirror with her roaming interests the entire scene became impossibly muddled and boring. No one to love. No one to lover her back.

No one, except...

"Priority shift. Reducing emphasis on research and information gathering to naturally occurring results. I am. Grateful. For the Chains. Trosta, Mattara. This might be impossible otherwise."

What a miserable draw. Another war hero, this one not disgraced. A perfectly prominent citizen of the Empire. A defensive specialist, a waiter. A planner. Schemer. A (sigh) male. A boring opponent, were he not so intimidating. She would almost be tempted to forfeit the match immediately to preserve what few of her secrets she could and deny him the honor. But she can't. Not against Heim Stockar. Not against a hero.

There are many reasons. The most obvious of which is her new limiter system, which needed adjusting to if she was ever going to be able to Carve the Waterfall, the way she planned. But this was also the least important. Many ways to overcome that particular deficit. Simply trying harder in the match after this one was an option. Lab testing was another. Better than both was using the normal recovery time to jump to another nearby system and perform active combat field testing, away from prying eyes to the maximum degree possible. This would, in fact, be ideal. But. But.

But Matty would be watching. For the first time, she would be paying special attention to Mirror's match and hoping with that obnoxiously adorable wishing heart of hers for Mommy to win. Even just imagining the look on her face after being dragged out of the wreckage of the Gods-Smiting Whip was enough to break Mirror's resolve in an instant. Tch. Kids. She told Slate over and over again that she never wanted any. Damn it.

But even that obstacle could be overcome, overpowered, crushed down and conquered for the sake of practicality and planning. If only the opponent was not Heim Stockar. Because she had just defeated Solarel. Because...

Because nothing was worth staining that victory. Staining the ultimate warrior's reputation with some petty transitive property bone-shard nonsense. Mirror might play off a tactical retreat here as part of her moves and countermoves, just one more feint as part of a deeper play in the great game.

But an opponent that history holds as on a level with Solarel must be destroyed. Must, in fact, be crushed outright, until history held only one such name for the rest of time. Only her. Only Solarel. The mark of the One-Day Defender burns across Mirror's soul: when it came to the champions of Zaldar, there could be no quarter.

By now, she will have recovered from the loss of the Bezorel. How, exactly, was a matter of impossible speculation. One could only hope she'd at least done better than scraping together more mafia debts to purchase another rusted Teranian trash bucket. It had been the plan to defeat her soundly. To erase her broken body thoroughly and easily before disappearing into the stars with a wink and a kiss.

It. Had been. The plan. To secure Solarel's next armor herself. To hunt down an appropriately beautiful body for the most beautiful warrior ever written into the story of the stars, and deliver it to her in dramatic last second timing. She'd had no leads on any, but at the time her confidence in her ability to pull it off without compromise in the allotted time had been supreme.

And then she'd gone and nearly lost. And then she'd gone and retreated inside herself. Selfishly. Disgustingly. Unacceptably. There had been no gift. There had been no flowers and no anime. There had been no night of ecstasy and final culmination of their beautiful dance. Instead she had retreated into the shadows to lick her matted fur and wrap new defenses around herself to prevent a hurt that even in the moment turned her on just to remember the sensation. All her plans shattered in the name of simple self improvement.

But because of that, she'd met. No. No. Fuck that, no.

"Final diagnostics, all systems green. I am bound by chains of love, and love shall set me free. Slate, call out my activations as you see them. Goal: reach a level where I notice a shift before you can. Victory or death. Victory... or death."

She could only make it all mean something if she defended the title of Strongest, while she held it. There would be times and places where she might do that while still recording what would officially be called a 'loss', but not here. Not against this man. For her sake. She would rise as high as the battle demanded.

Breathless Dead

The wall shudders under the impact of Redana's back. A still sticky plate teeters on the edge of the table, kicked once, twice, too many times. It tumbles to the floor and shatters with a porcelain scream.

Bella's arms are strong. She only needs one, held under Redana's butt, to keep the Princess pinned helplessly aloft. The other is free to clamp her jaw shut, to permit no more than muffled squeaks and other such sounds as can be made without moving one's mouth. Her face is close, forehead to forehead, eye to mismatched eye. Gold peering into blue, green peering into red. Her breath steams against the back of her hand, to wash over Redana's face and neck. Her lips tremble.

"It. Will. Never be enough, Redana. We will never be even. Not tomorrow, and not in three hundred years."

Her hand slides down just under the jawline, revealing now-smeared painted lips. These, she silences again with her tongue. Redana's mouth yields eagerly into hers, but she asserts her will anyway, kissing and biting and mauling that royal mouth with her insatiable tongue. She kisses to kill, as though to steal the breath from out of her lungs even as she feels the frantic drumming heartbeat pound against the outside of her chest as strongly as she feels the kicking of those feet against her back and butt.

She pulls away. The hand rises again to hold Redana's mouth shut against protest. Against argument. Against questioning.

"It can't be fair between us. Even if you lower yourself from princess down to maid, or beneath even that until you're nothing more than my useless, mewling pet," she snarls, and her face betrays how much the image playing in her brain excites her, "...You would still be you. And I would still be me. You don't have enough wishes in you to change what that means. And neither do I."

She kisses her way down the jaw now, and across the neck, marking each new inch of her territory with teeth and a slow, greedy drag of her tongue. Tiny bits of blood and red sores follow wherever she goes. Jingle-jingle goes the bell, singing joy and dancing delight as it's tossed about.

Bella is covetous. One hand gropes Redana's butt as if a lifetime's worth of yearning could be kneaded out of it in an afternoon, and at the very least she means to try. Her other hand loosens on Redana's mouth, but only so that her fingertips can probe Redana's lips and, when they part before her, slip inside and silence her in entirely new ways.

"You can't fix this, Redana. You're, nnnffff, not the one who made me."

A wall's as good as a bed, when you need it to be. Bella grabs her 'maid' by the back of the head, but even now she's careful not to pull hard, not to hurt her or mess up the pretty braids her hair's just been twisted into, but only enough to turn her head and make it easier to kiss her again, kiss her again, kiss her again, kiss her and taste the remains of her fingers on the Princess' tongue. Kiss her and know that she is in control. Kiss her and know that everything is just the way she hadn't dared to dream it could be. Kiss her and know that she can have this without giving up the power that let her catch up in the first place.

Claws slide down the satiny top, all the way down to the waist. Where they pass, the fabric sighs and splits, revealing Imperial glory and more territory for Bella to hungrily devour. She lifts her prey higher, higher, high enough to kiss the tops of peaks long denied to her. To feel with her tongue the softest part of Redana's body that no amount of pedigree or training could quite turn to iron. To hear the squeals and gasps and claim them as her prize.

Lower. Lower. Her thigh is steel and she traps Redana on top of it. Unyielding to any amount of desperate, tangled squirming. She pulls the tattered remnants of the maid's top backwards, pinning her arms at the elbows in the fabric, devouring her face, and leaving her with nothing to speak with except her hips. She presses her body forward and pins Redana against the wall, swallowing her strength in pearls and folds of fabric and the flesh that wears the Sea.

And then, and then, and then...? She lets Redana tumble to the floor. They stare at each other, lungs burning, hearts stammering, eyes glimmering with the beauty of life and promise beyond the reaches of the Underworld.

"Nothing is even between us, Redana," Bella's voice is dripping with the pride of an Empress between her hungry gasps, "So when I take you... when I fuck you... it's because I want to. No debt. No crown. Just you, and me. Body and heart. Until..."

Until you both forget. Until this adventure carries you past the edge of the universe and washes you both clean. Until she is not a monster, and you are not a princess. Or if these things are stronger than memory, then beyond even that. Until the limits of the gods have at last been found. Until Hades keeps his word, and at long last there will be nothing left except the journey home. And from there, the end of everything.

But for all the time between you and that she will have you, Redana. And she will take you, Redana. And she will show you, Redana. That the girl you thought you loved and the girl you do love are one and the same. That there were never masks and lies between you, but only duty. Jealousy. Anger. And fear. But those? Those you may wash away. And a good maid must always clean where she is needed.

Bella lifts the hem of her dress, and watches with eyes shining in the colors of the throne. Her command is unspoken. But crawl into the ocean and speak without speaking, Redana. While your tongue is singing, you will understand. And it will be some time indeed before there will be an opportunity go anywhere, or to see anything, or to bask in each other's company more softly and somewhere others might be permitted to witness.

But that's just fine, isn't it? There are scales to balance and wrongs to be righted. And wounds will heal whether the path can be seen or not.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

It would be entirely fair if you're finding it a little bit difficult to stand Euna Kim right this second.

It's not that her breathing hasn't gotten heavier, because it has. Exertion is exertion even when you don't max out your performance, and she's been in here all day teaching classes. It's the way she breathes that's galling, because even that smacks of training and overachievement. Each breath is measured, precise, controlled. She seems more energized by every little thing, to the point where she can't quite stop herself from bouncing back and forth on the balls of her feet. She smiles like a dork, sure, but a very effortless one.

She is the psychopath who marvels at the world while she runs, Vesna. She's pretty much glowing. How are you friends with this person? It's not because she frequents your store, lots of people do that and you're not that into all of them. Is it really just that she helped you out with your hands? Or, well, what? She seems a lot like your evil opposite. What makes you get along so crush-level well with the cyber fitness dweeb?

"Very well answered back there, Threevee!" she chirps with casual ignorance of burning lungs or drained batteries, "You're exactly correct about the safety of it, not to mention how important it is to make this fun! But there's a physical component to this, as well. Were you aware that running at different speeds works different muscle groups? There's a difference in form for each pace you're capable of that stretch different parts of your legs and require different signals from your brain.

"And that's really the key, isn't it? You have to practice for each shift. Every individual form of energy expenditure, if you're going to learn what you're capable of. So it's, you know, again, important even for those of us without muscles in our legs. So to speak. But we're not so different how we move, the three of us. The challenge of the mind stays the same. If you go too hard for too long you just burn out and cause injury, but if all you do is pace yourself you create limits to what you even know how to do. You'll be running wrong for your entire life. And it will always stay as awful as it felt the first time. Plus there's... oh. Oh, huh."

Euna frowns, watching November. As quick as anything, she's got her by the arm and leads her quietly to a chair before shoving her to a seated position with the absolute gentlest of touches.

"Looks like you were burning a little inefficiently there, friend. I might have improperly calibrated your challenge level here; you're a, please don't be offended, but you're a very unusual model and I haven't gotten your type in here before. Very difficult to tell what your weight to torque ratio is and... ah shoot, I'm making excuses. Never mind about that, were you pushing yourself just now? Heat regulation's an important part of the efficacy of the workout, ok? Take a minute, please. And when your body's screaming at you, listen. Movies are full of moments about the beauty of smashing all your limits, but you don't get to that part before you learn what all they look like."

She smiles kindly, while waving with a sharp motion over to her assistant, pointing toward the back and then her guests while pantomiming a drinking motion. Cinders is maybe a little too eager to show how fast she can run while she zips over to and from a mini fridge with several bottles of brightly colored, vaguely fruit flavored, highly sugared drinks that are nevertheless filled with quick-recharge nutrients. There's a bunch of these things on market and most of them are crap but if you know what you're looking for it's an important part of recovery and workout extension.

"There you go Eunie! You want me to put it on their tab? Or are you playing favorites with your girlfriend again?"

"CINDE-- for the love of god will you knock that off? I. Am. Married!"

"And that's stopped you for having the hots for a bunch of cuties how?"

"Fuck off, Cinders. You're on solo cleanup for a week."

"A week?! But I've got--"

"It's about to be a month if you don't shut your mouth and get back to teaching."

"Slave driver."

"Excuse me?"

"I said yes sir, Ma'am Sir Ma'am!" Cinders snaps to attention and salutes before darting off in a zigzag pattern to dodge the heavy object she's certain is about to be thrown at her.

Euna sighs, and tosses 3V a bottle of neon-blue "don't die" juice. She holds the purple one toward November.

"How about you?" she asks, and her voice is warm again, "Does your manufacture allow for energy intake via consumption? I've got two different models of charging station if not. I'm not going to forgive myself if I let anything happen to you your first time in here. Or any other time, for that matter."