Phoe

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

"Three! Two! One! Go, show me what you've got Cinders!"

Her name is Cinthea, actually. Cinthea Mayweather. But Euna Kim has a nickname for everybody (except her wife for... some reason), and they tend to stick. Before she figured out the whole colors thing properly, yours was Nova. Now it's harder, and she's been workshopping. Every time you're here. What are your favorites?

Well, regardless of what anyone is or isn't called in here, Cinders is the only person actually using the gym right now. Most of the lights are off and the equipment is mostly folded up and tucked away in somehow even more space-efficient arrangements than it normally is. A few weight racks are scattered about the main floor, forming makeshift walls that corral someone trying to walk through the room toward the spaces where the mats have been pulled back, revealing actual pits only half filled with pillowy foam spray that makes falling into one very inconvenient but undeniably safe. The cargo nets have all been pulled up and stretched across the ceiling, but there's no immediately obvious way to access them even if horizontal climbing is Euna's intent.

It makes more sense watching Cinders run... whatever this is. With a very loud and somewhat unnecessary war cry she vaults the table of leg weights at a very precise height that sees her just skim under a sudden blue laser that streaks across the room. Her form was excellent: full buy-in from her torso to give her cyborg legs the range of motion they needed to propel her up but mostly forward, and her heel only clips the edge of the pit before she tucks into a shoulder roll and springs up safe on the other side. She weaves around three more lasers (these ones violet, red, and yellow) before making a mad scramble around a second pit to reach the preposterous and antiquated piece of stunt training equipment known as the salmon ladder.

"There you go, there you go! Let's go Cinders, let's goooo!"

Hup and two and three, Cinders flips the bar over her head two rungs at a time. This turns out to be necessary, because there's a rope waiting above her and her arms aren't long enough to grab it without a jumping headstart. So over she goes, only flailing her arms a little before she grips it like she's in a death match with a cobra and goes careening toward the wall. She briefly seems out of places to go before she plants her feet and starts running sideways along the edge of the gym. It's a perfect launch and release: up she goes over a startling pink laser and then she's latched onto the nets where she's swinging hand over hand like a natural. This must be her favorite part.

The end of the climb is another seeming dead end that sees Cinders carefully aim a drop to avoid falling in the third and final pit. She takes the full brunt of impact with her leg augments, earning her a disapproving tongue click from her boss, and then she's running at top speed toward the arcade in the back.

That's where she meets her doom. Fully half the gym lights up in a dizzying display of intricate laser patterns. They are, of course, nothing more than focused beams of light but Cinders flips and dances her way into them like she's afraid they'll burn her. The pattern is beautiful. These beams are all silver and blue and dance the way that snowflakes do in movies. At first they look like a solid curtain of lights, but to an observant eye there are actually maneuverable gaps that open up along spaces that only serve to enhance the pattern's beauty. They don't help. Beam after beam after beam strike Cinders, and where they do little patches on her cyberlimbs start glowing. Oh, inhibitors. She slows down, just a little at first, but then more and more as she gets blasted into a metaphorical crater and can only stare up at the ceiling with a defiant pout etched across her face.

"Gosh... damn it Euna I told you this was impossible!"

"Cinders I've put up four times on this course, it's not that hard. Erm... i-isn't it?"

"Yes. It. Is. If you don't cheat and fuuuuuu, I mean marry the person who makes your gauntlet patterns. I guess if someone played the stupid games you keep back here, but no one does! Nobody, Euna! They're useless! They're for dumb stupid dorks like 3V who aren't actually here to exercise, nobody with the training to actually do the course even knows they're th-- oh hold on. Lemme up, I gotta go yell off some more gatecrashers."

"Oh." Euna sounds like her soul's been crushed into a cube, "Oh, uh. Yeah. Sure."

The main lights come back on, and Cinders pops back up. She waves her arms as she hops her way across the deactivated but still dangerous obstacle course, like a mirror of your first night here if you swapped out the impossibly buff Korean cyborg for a woman who is somehow short and gangly at the same time and roughly three times madder for it.

"Hey! Hey hey hey hey! Do none of you people know how to read? We are closed, ok? Cuh-losed! Eunie's testing a new gauntlet and she-- oh. Oh god darn it it's you. Hold on. Euna? Nevermind, I need you. Your project is here."

Cinders makes disgusted bunny rabbit ears with her fingers around the word, and folds her arms across her chest as Euna turns her attention away from her apparently impossible death trap of an obstacle course and toward the entrance of her gym. Two things are immediately different about her than usual. For one she's got her hair tied back in a bun, which is practical but she never ever does this because it prevents her from flipping through it when she's nervous or otherwise overloaded. And for two, she's got a black eyepatch tied over her right eye. Very pirate-chic if you discount the aforementioned hair bun and the skin tight workout ensemble.

She smiles a little as she waves, but it doesn't quite eclipse the melancholy she's got wrapped around her like the world's worst blanket.

"Oh hey," she calls, "Didn't expect you here tonight. What's up? You got news or are you here for, uh, you know?"

Cinders, Euna's number one assistant and don't you forget it, huffs.

"This sucks. I miss when I was your project. I can't compete with nine robots in a trench coat."

"Cinders!!"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Mirror sighs, and sighs, and keeps sighing. The sound she makes is not something a cat should be able to produce, unless she was filled with air that was just now leaking out of her through a puncture hole. As she sighs, her body grows limper and more slack, further accentuating the accuracy of the metaphor until, forced to breathe in again at last, she simply stares up at the ceiling with her spine bent at an impossible and painful angle around her variously stained and soaked chair.

"Impossible," she mutters, "This is impossible."

But the look on her face says Contentment. Relaxation. Peace. With the fight over there is no more struggle inherent to just existing. Her fingers don't twitch or tense, but just smoothly massage her cheeks. Her arms do not strain, but contentedly roll in circles as she goes. Her spine is bent at this unnatural angle, yes, but she makes no signs of moving nor does she show any signs of discomfort. Her body has simply transmuted into liquid in the absence of any tension that had compressed her into a living being. Her tail drips across the floor behind her.

With one last hiss of effort she kicks herself back up onto her feet. She marches straight to the commentator's snack bar and raids several bottles from the cooler before she starts moving toward the door. Water and juice and fizzy drinks, she seems to have grabbed them all at random. She fumbles with a cap while trying to hold the rest in her arms, and sips with gleeful abandon.

"It is just..." she falters, physically looking around the room for the word she wants, "Difficult. More than anticipated. To watch a fight I was not part of. I cannot tolerate it. The mistakes they both made. How they were different from my mistakes. Finding words for it all. Without your voice for a beacon I would not have been able to speak. In that sense I agree we are a compatible team. Here."

Mirror nudges a bottle of cream and fruit nectar out from under her elbow toward Maelia. She is unbothered if the other cat does not accept it, and less bothered than that if she instead picks something else from inside the bundle she is carrying away from the room now. She glides down the hallway with the practiced ease of someone who's crossed through it a hundred times already, even turning backwards to face her co-commentator with a smile.

"Curious that Dala Hunters would throw a party. More curious that she would invite us. It is intriguing. I am going to follow this mystery and see where it leads. I have words I would like to trade with her in any case. You are likely not aware, but I have piloted her mecha. Her Goddess. Prior to today. Briefly. At any rate. So I do feel a sense of connection. I hope my bias was not apparent?"

Breathless Dead

It burns without heat. It crushes without weight. It carves her into pieces without claws, without even moving. Mosaic watches it hanging over her, for as long as she dares. Her eyes, both of them, dip from the sky and the horizon to the ground about her feet. Of course she blinked first. Of course she did. For all her power, what is she? For all her dreaming, what is she?

Below. Beneath. The genetic material used to weave her tapestry is filled with instructions that predate every known civilization; the cat on the high ground was untouchable. The superior predator does the watching. To be seen and exposed makes one weak.

The order came down from on high, to pull, pull, pull. But they put a horn in her hand and not a rope. They expected her to yell instructions and fix the lines, and to always stay moving. Even though her arms are the strongest. Her hands clench into fists. She turns now and watches the sea. Watches crews from Beri and Rosedam and a dozen other towns hauling on chains that stretch down endlessly into the water.

On the beach, scores of other Servitors lie across the sands catching their breaths. Her best swimmers. She'd sent them down to attach the hooks that would pull up the Crystal Knight's prize. She'd sent them down because it meant the job got done before anyone else got the brilliant idea to send the Lyrii, or anyone else who could have gotten hurt.

Even so, the waters down there are dangerous. It was a tough swim; she should have done it herself. But if she had...

"Oi! You lot! Breathin' ain't pullin' Get your sorry asses off the ground 'fore I tear 'em offa ya!"

The thrum and the crack of a Razorwhip snaps across the air. Mosaic's legs are already moving. The sounds of loose rock and dust precedes her feet as she slides down the cliff side to land in front of the Corvi taskmaster leering at her diving team. Her shoulders are squared. Her back straight. She towers over the other woman, for one fleeting second the picture of the Hero of Beri again. She glances down at her fists, and sees they are still balled tight.

"Enough."

"Shut it lady. The sheep said 'supervisor'. That don't put you in charge."

Mosaic's teeth flash in anger. She glances up, and feels the weight of the Eye on her back. Her heart pounds inside of her, but she wrenches her hands open again. Forces her face back to calm. She says nothing, but tilts her head toward the ocean. The Corvi rolls her eyes and wrenches her shoulder back for another lash. Mosaic's hand is on her in an instant.

"Enough. They cannot work at all if you tear their skin off, you dipshit."

"Izzat violence? D'I hear a threat? You heard it, right boys? I think the supervisor's comin' on to me!"

A chorus of wet chuckles washes over her back. Corvi smiles are ugly things, and one flashes right in her face. A twisted thing with no happiness inside of it, only jagged teeth and breath left to rot as fashion statements, with a lopsided twist to the mouth that makes the whole thing look broken. The razorwhip hums in her hands, purring like a favored pet.

"You're right though. This lot can't pull none after I work 'em. Nice of ya to volunteer - you ain't done shit today. You know, I hate those fucking eyes of yours. Mismatched little fuckers. Always lookin' down at me. You think you're hot shit, supervisor lady? Think you're better than me? Lessee who's bigger than who after a good twenty lashes!"

Her suit tears open with whispers of complaint. Her skin screams white hot pain straight into her spine. Mosaic's golden eye explodes in stars and darkness, only for a moment, but enough to make her think she's gone blind. It rushes through her body, like wildfire, consuming every nerve in a symphony of different pains. Impalement, laceration, burning, freezing, gnawing and itching and numb, whimpering nothing. Her knee twitches involuntarily as the ELF weapon finally breaks contact with her skin.

She does not flinch. No spark of anger, no cry of pain. No retaliation, no slumping of her shoulders or droop of her tail. Mosaic brushes a finger along the gash, finding no blood but feeling the roughness of a burn scar across her abdomen. She glances once more at the sky, and turns around.

"If it makes you feel better," she shrugs, "Nineteen to go. But do it as we walk, I've got more teams to manage than I can count, and we're not going to meet the Crystal Knight's deadline standing around here. So if you don't mind..."

She catches another lash across her back. Her shoulders tense. Her ears bend around to the source of the noise, but nothing more. She waits a moment and then walks across the beach, listening for the sound of following footsteps, of buzzing electro weaponry, of angry shouting and signs of aggression pivoting back to the people she needs to protect.

Two more shocks through her body. Like being asked to hold Zeus' thunder and the sky up at the same time. Her muscles scream. Her body begs for deliverance. Mosaic does not. She passes from camp to camp. She gives breaks to overworked citizens by way of chewing them out for poor form and taking the rope from them to demonstrate proper technique. She rotates crews and sets up a lunch line to create jobs for the most fragile Servitor species that don't involve heavy labor, and buy spare moments for others where their hands get to hold something less weighty than a starship that will never deliver any of them to a new world, or a new hope, or a new idea, or to anything other than the ever-shifting whims of a tyrant who happens to be too high to reach.

She's taken far more than twenty lashes to reach this point. Her beautiful suit is clinging to her in tatters now. But even still, even with her legs slowly turning to jelly underneath her, she does not react. She doesn't grunt, and with practice she's trained even the involuntary twitching out of her. Her ribs are starting to crack under the strain her body puts on her bones, but what does that matter? She has one job allotted to her, and it doesn't allow for pain.

"You're fucked in the head, lady! What a piece of shit! Crystal Knight's gonna mount your skull on her wall when this' over, you just wait!"

One more bite from the razorwhip, and her tormentor screams frustration at everything. But she's tired, she's bored, she's hungry, and there's all this excellent food tormenting her nose that she hasn't been eating because she's been too busy trying to break in a demigod. Worthless fucking waste of time. She stomps away, and finally all is quiet.

Alone at last. Alone, if only for a moment. Mosaic's body betrays her at last. She drops to one knee faster than breathing. She slumps forward, and lets her arms droop to either side of her. All her nose can smell anymore is burning skin and fur. Acrid, stinging, disconcertingly like a meal. She spits, and turns her head as best she's able in the name of looking anywhere that is not the Eye, and not the Ship she thought had meant salvation.

Not the thing that would abandon her here. What was the question she was meant to be asking? What could she even do against a moment like this? What language, what knowledge, what skill fixed the immovable order of the universe and the Endless Azure Skies? There's nothing left on Bitemark that can tell her what she doesn't already know. Her voice turns to the gods, instead.

"Is this... all you wanted from me? A-am I not, nnnngh! Am I weak or am I strong? At least tell me that!"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"...No."

She has not moved. Does not move. Barely breathes. Mirror continues to watch through one eye, half hunched in her chair, face crushed into her palm. She squeezes. Her eye shudders under the pressure she's putting on her own skull.

Do not. Do not. Do not. Do. Not. Join. The. Fight.

"We do not bury what may yet burn, Maelia Dala. It is not our way. This fight. This fight is..."

She fights for a breath, for a long draw against her palm that makes too much noise for her microphone. It's even louder coming back out of her nose. Her grip releases. Her fingers tug at the sheets of snowy hair atop her head, instead. She winces, but holds her eyes open. Always watching the space just to the right of the singularity.

"Are you? Familiar? With the Terenian word, 'technology'? It is my favorite word. In their language. One of few I find. As dense as our own. Smokeless Jade Fires has... Revealed to us the technology of Jacinta Niares. Now she will. Show us her own. Not something built into her frame but. An idea.

What good is deciphering this weapon if we do not observe how it can be defeated? This is not finished. There is. One more move left to make. If she sees it. If Dala Hunters trusts her own strength. It will cost her. Tremendous damage. Cockpit risk. But..."

She can't help it any longer. Something has to release. She crunches down on a second claw. Winces. Spits fiercely.

"[The Fortress Built in the Serpent's Jaw]. Show me. Smokeless Jade Fires. Show me. Dala Hunters. Show me the power of love."

Breathless Dead

There is an awkwardness to the silence after a fight. When the sword slides out of the body and the thundering hearts and heady breaths of battle reduce to quiet huffs and then to nothing. When the crushing headbutt she'd been winding up for (whether as rebuttal or in countermeasure she could not say) turns into a simple dip of her head. When the mountain and the monster fades and there is only Beri again. When false bravado shatters before she can even punch it properly, and there are no more warriors left to prove herself against.

How is a person supposed to battle against shivering confusion? The sword feels at once too heavy and too light in her hand. Mosaic lifts it and watches the pristine edge for a long moment before letting it rest on her shoulder. Again. She stands alone again.

Her knees bend, as if to pick up the now fragile wolf maiden off the floor and hold her close while she works through the confusion. She turns the motion into a simple stretch of her legs, and returns to simply standing there looming over the defeated. One hand on a blade that she called Love. The other empty, held aloft, and uncertain what to do with itself.

"Don't look at me," she shrugs, "I'm as stupid as you are when it comes to this stuff. What's good enough? What's missing? Fuck me, I don't know."

Her hand lowers again, and hangs in the air over the Princess of the Silver Divers. Or at least, that's how she seems in the moment as she slowly uncurls on the ground. Mosaic makes no effort to pick her up this time or even reach lower. She'll have to sit up if she wants the help. The winds shift around them; salt and sand and all the promised wonders that the Sea makes to the brave.

"So come with me. I've got no answers, but we can look for them together. Help me pull that ship up, and let's leave all this behind. Even if the answer we find is terrible, or dumb... at least it'll be ours. Right?"

She smiles, and the light catches her face as it bounces off her sword. She is as radiant as the rainbow, and for once the silence of the moment she had to share with someone else wasn't awkward at all.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Hm." Mirror squeezes one hand with her other to keep both of them away from her teeth, "Black hole generation. I see. Net and Spear in the same hand; I see why she had so much faith in her Roar."

Her eyes dart around the room, only sneaking sidelong glances at the screen now. Her entire body is twitching and shaking like mad. Fingers writhe like serpents caught in each others' vice, neck pivots, shoulders roll, hips swing in her chair. It is not a question of trying not to fight the battle she is watching: she is already fighting it. The problem is that she must do battle from both positions at once. The problem is that she is not in her Gods-Smiting Whip. The problem is that she must not be. Even if she could. Not in front of a witness.

Her chest squeezes as tight as if Jacinta Niares had caught it in her claws. She rests her head in her hand, and watches the match with one eye through the space between her fingers.

"Stable technique," she notes, and her voice is utterly detached and clinical in contrast to the wild stresses of her body, "Indefinite pressure. Most would consider this impossible. The calculations required to manifest this weapon... Whatever else she may be. Jacinta Niares is a mathematical prodigy."

Breathless Dead

No god may undo what another has done. Mosaic gazes upon the mountain, the colossus named Desire with the eyes of a divinity, and the words form in her mind unbidden. She understands now, seeing it. Why Zeus does nothing. Why Hera does nothing. The shadow of the Dream of Ceron looms over her, it slavers and drools and soaks her beautiful suit as she tumbles down toward an abyss she cannot see out of, and every part of it is whole. Complete. There are no loose threads to be pulled that might unravel it, no lines that could be cut that would slay it. This is not the mountain that she promised to steal. That feat is beyond her, moreso than ever.

But.

She falls. She feels the scrabbling of claws against her shoulder and she tightens her grip. She feels the pull of gravity and the kiss of the wind and she suffers their touch with grace and beauty. Sharp and ugly voices bite into her like the fangs of some apocalyptic beast, and they sap her strength. She endures it all without flinching. She listens. She watches. She tightens her grip on her sword.

But.

"Strong?! What good is strength? What's that even mean?!"

The words are a shield around her arm. She swings it as one might a hammer, battering aside words and whispers, stings and barbs. She slams it against Taurus face as they fall, again and again and again as 'bored' echoes across the land and drifts past the clouds to sigh among the stars.

"You are nothing. A beggar. An idiot pushing a stone around in a circle because you can't figure out what to do with it! What do you do? What do you make happen? Movement in no direction is the same thing as sitting still, moron!"

Mosaic's sword arm is strong. She crashes down onto something hard and firm, but the shock of the impact doesn't wrench the blade from her hands. She holds it steady, even manages to twist it just enough to open a notch in Taurus' heart. Not a large one, but space enough for a girl who might be called something else to answer back.

"You can't change the world just by being strong. Look at you. Look around. What have you done? Why does everyone look down on you? Because you dug a hole, and now they're all above you. Stop this. Say something new. I'm bored."

Breathless Dead

"No."

The sword is warm in her hand, and lighter than air. As if she held her sisters' hands all joined around this single hilt. As if the promise they had made on it was strength enough to lift it toward the sky all by itself. But for all the ease with which she wields it, Mosaic makes no move to thrust, or slash, or to parry. Simply having the weapon in hand makes her head squeeze with pain; a memory or a thought that won't fit inside her skull pressing down on her insistently.

Asking her to wait. Asking her to listen. Asking her to watch.

"This is just a game. A stupid game for children to play. What could be less serious, and us not even fit to be the children playing? If this is all there is, then we are toys. And if the gods are watching at all, they must be weeping. Or laughing, maybe. Bored. But I'm Mosaic. I'm nobody's plaything, and there is no god that I can name that I need the favor of to crush this farce. You were warned. We are out of time."

All that she can hear is the thrashing of a wild heart. All that she can see is the writhing of night-dark chains around it. These tendrils called Purpose, rattling and squeezing until everything that could be beautiful about the life struggling inside of its cage turns limp and lifeless. It makes her teeth grind. It makes her hand squeeze the hilt of her sword until she can feel her bones crunching against it.

There is a sound. Louder than any rifle or cannon a Silver Diver or a citizen of Beri could conceive of, and yet purer than the crack of a whip. There is a vision. Brighter than a lantern's light and startlingly white, until it splits into a prism of the deepest hues in every color of the rainbow. There is a feeling. A lance of cold air cutting between the heat of two women whose bodies had been burning themselves in the name of war. A sting, a kiss of winter wind and then after... nothing.

The world returns. The ELF buzzsaw splits and crumbles into pieces. The chariot rumbles and tips as its wheels collapse under the shock of the impact. Harnesses snap clean off and panicked bulls scream as they scramble away only to fall howling into the ravines dug for the Ceronian phalanx just hours earlier. This is the power of Quajl's brilliant diamond arquebus: no toy of war could stand against the culmination of this much passion, this much effort, this much desire for something so much realer than the chains of some invented purpose.

Taurus does not falter. The instincts of a perfect warrior see her legs tense before her war machine can toss her off of it, and she turns what might have been a helpless fall into a picturesque leap and pounce. Her whip arm flicks back and she lashes at Mosaic, who catches the barb around her wrist and holds it taut. Even this is nothing to a daughter born for war. Born so strongly to the song and smell and lust of battle that she would drag herself out of paradise just to taste it. She rides the momentum higher into the air and swings on her whip like a grappling hook to carry herself toward Mosaic's back. Her scythe whistles through the air as it sings its way toward Mosaic's neck.

"YOU!"

Mosaic ducks at less than the last second. Her body sinks so low that the decorative chains on her vest clink and drag across the stony street, and her shoes groan from the strain of spinning so intensely with her feet. She pops up in a tenth of an eyeblink, only to vanish from sight entirely for a moment.

"WILL!"

She is above the haft of the scythe. Her foot crushes down on top of it and and drags the weapon to the floor. The blade bites deep into the ground with eerily little sound as she plants her foot and pulls her weight back onto her hip for a strike. Her free arm pulls at the whip. Momentum is Taurus' enemy now, but even still she rolls into it intending to turn these twin setbacks into the form of a deadly wheeling kick. The knife blade hidden in her boot clicks as it pops out from under her toes.

"WAKE!"

It is too late. The muscles along Mosaic's back crackle with power that no ELF could match, however hot it burned. Her arm is already uncoiling with the might that only a demigod could wield. Her thrust is more perfect than perfect. The sound of splitting skin, then tearing muscle, cracking bone, and the cry of a heart all mingle in the air of the town in a chorus of pain and shock.

"UP!!"

Blood trickles from Taurus' wound onto the edge of this blade borrowed from a person Mosaic had never met. Blood trickles down the length, catches the crossguard, and splashes against the ground. The stone turns red, and nothing more. Black miasma hisses from her wound, but no flowers spring forth. There is no chattering of new animal life, and no microbes grow from the wound. This is no hunt of Artemis, and yet. And yet.

The wound is only a wound. Because it is more than a wound. Because it is not a wound at all. Mosaic's strike pulls her forward. Up the length of the blade. Forward. Forward. Forward. There is a promise to be kept. The promise she made to her sister. The promise she made to... No One. She feels Taurus' weight slump against her shoulder, but then.

Forward. Forward. Forward. Her claws itch at the sight of chains.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"...Really? Have you not? That is. Interesting."

A long, silent glance at Maelia. The flicker of a frown, the swish of a tail. An uncovered yawn, and a tiny shrug. Not worth the comment, in the end. Mirror released her thumb from her fist and looks down at her claw. The blood is seeped into everything now. She sighs and leaves her seat, swishing over to a table filled with bottled drinks so she can start pouring water over her wound and her fur.

"I have been thinking," she calls across the room, "About the nature of Jacinta Niares' secret spear."

Half a bottle of water has been spilled out onto the floor, but at least her fur is clean again. She puts her thumb in front of her mouth again and sniffs it tentatively before dragging her tongue across it one more time. She does not taste blood. She sighs and drinks the rest, returning to her seat.

"Before this broadcast started, you indulged in speculation with me about the possibility of the Roar containing thus far unseen technology. At this point in the fight I am forced to conclude that is, in fact, the case. [The Dawn Rises, And I Shall Feast]. Consider Jacinta Niares and her previous fights. She enlisted, I believe, a full dozen of her crew in this tournament under her name, each favoring different techniques to confuse the tournament as to her own capabilities. But the matches that bore out to be hers, truly, all featured a single hallmark: overwhelming long range firepower.

This should have been her key to victory. Smokeless Jade Fires is an inferior combatant at distance. Dala Hunters Seven Quetzal specifically employed Jackals as a counter strategy to hide this weak point. Jacinta Niares should have burned several opportunities by now to reattain a zone from which she could control the fight. But she did not. She did not panic when Smokeless Jade Fires took her distance from her. She did not wince when she was made to feel pain. On the contrary, she jettisoned her weaponry and engaged at melee spaces."

Mira shares a long look with Maelia that sees neither of them speak. Their eyes are enigmas to one another, but their faces scream out about the depths of their thoughts. Two minds occupied by a single puzzle.

"Smokeless Jade Fires is a goddess who prefers to cast herself as an underdog. She tries to win through the power of her aura, her mythos, rather than the raw might an older deity would most likely favor. But today, she and Dala Hunters have been fearless. Flawless. Beautiful dancers, we may not see their like anywhere else in this entire tournament. And the Roar has remained poised the entire time."

Mirror looks at her empty water bottle and throws it at the table still covered in full ones. Her lips part in a brief smirk when it lands upside down on top of a row of other bottles.

"Unrivaled poise. She has abandoned her advantage, been unrattled by a goddess' sudden skill at arms or the synchronicity of her new aggression. Again and again, she allows a goddess to close within point blank ranges of her. Again and again, she sheds power hungry systems in the aftermath of the clash. Thrusters, weapons, shielding, armor. And a lack of regard for control of her zones. A weapon, therefore, that is difficult to control at range. One with enormous power requirements: enough to shed an entire mecha's worth of dead weight just to maximize the output of her Crystal Fire Drive. The metaphysical certainty of a kill shot.

Maelia Dala, whose star name is Three Quetzal. I ask of you: what is the true shape of Jacinta Niares' blade? What fulfills all of these conditions that must nevertheless be an absolute surprise. In other words, what danger have we not made a weapon of until now?"

She clicks her tongue against her teeth, and waits. And watches. Be careful, Smokeless Jade Fires. You will not keep your Bride safe just by the magic of staying untouched. Not today. Can you shoulder the pain it will require to keep that soft, gentle heart gleaming?

Breathless Dead

The air is rich with the scent of ozone and ionizing metals. The clatter of hooves and the crash of wheels and the crackle of constant lightning rise above the tide of battle that has spread ever further outward from her wall and her trap. The world is hot in front of her, but cold behind her; where Taurus' challenge does not reach, the breeze pulling at her hair is positively chilly. All around her, walls collapse, streets groan and crumble, wolves yowl and the townsfolk of Beri stomp and sing.

Mosaic is unmoving, save a single raised eyebrow. Her arms remain relaxed at her sides, her posture proud but unbothered. Her shoulders are squared and her breathing is steady and unflustered. Her head is tilted toward the top of the chariot but only slightly: she lets her eyes close the distance instead of bothering to make the effort herself, glaring with an intense disapproval that would whither a lesser creature into dust if they held her gaze too long. A frown darkens her face, but only just. Disappointment. Not concern.

"You're still dreaming, kid."

Her voice is quiet, but she speaks with a spark of the divine. She has no trouble making herself heard over the clashes of conflict or the cacophony of Taurus' war chariot. The air around her seems to warp in her presence, and the gleaming of claw tips more deadly than any weapon yet invented in the Skies pull the attention of every set of eyes and ears around to her. Only to her. Quickly, if only for a moment, the sounds of fighting fall silent. There is Mosaic, and there is Taurus, and there is an audience to hear the words that are spoken next.

"Silly toys and playground threats," she clicks her tongue, "Is that how you're going to repay the efforts of your army? That's what makes you my better? Quit wasting my time. I know it's hard for someone who's put horns where here brain should be to understand, but there's a lot of hard work left to be done and I don't have the time or the inclination to indulge this crap."

Finally she moves. But she does not take a step. She does not settle into a stance for battle. She does not even flick her tail in signal of a pounce. Mosaic's grand gesture of combat is merely to fold her arms across her chest and snort her annoyance.

"Climb down from there before you get hurt, little girl. Apologize to Lord Mars before he gets tired of you. We can fight when you're ready to take this seriously. Until then you get nothing from me. If I have to climb up there just to take what should already have been offered to me by now, I promise you I will not be gentle. When we're done you will never be able to look at yourself and see strength ever again."

She does not swear this on any god. She does not need to. She does not move to cut the ELF Buzzsaw down. She does not need to. Mosaic puts her faith in Quajl, in Ember, and in Beri itself. They each deserved that much for the faith they'd put in her. If they fell it would be her own failure. And she would break Taurus and all of her glittery toys on her teeth in penance.