Phoe

Breathless Dead

Even like this, it's still home. That rooftop, though warped and silent, is definitely her favorite perch to listen to a Lyrii concert. Over there, the warehouse and the workshop still reeking of ten thousand crab shells. That crunched tunnel is what's left of the alley where Daisy Sunswimmer tried to kiss her only to lose her courage at the last moment when she couldn't reach Mosaic's lips without lifting onto her toes.

The crystals that had serenaded her in war are quiet now. And yet they thrive more than her Beri does, still crackling with latent power that begged to be turned into more and cleverer esoterica than had ever been seen, while all around it the true town wept. Mosaic's foot crunches through a waterlogged chair and too late notices it's the same one she'd sat in every week to drink tea on her rest day.

This corridor, too, is home. This bottleneck was her fortress almost yesterday. Even this had been twisted. Even this was claimed. Now it funneled her back together with Ember and her Divers and threw strange new warriors in her face. Their smell is literally indescribable: the feathers are so soft and slick, so resistant to being coated or tainted by the world around them that they don't seem to have a scent at all. But it's not the same as the scent of a void or even the inversion of the sense. They are... cleaner than that. Only not properly clean, there's nothing soothing or calm about these Armatii. They are more like smelling... the concept a mirror. Such a determined attempt at reflection that they only thing that could be said about them is that they are there at all.

Discomfiting. Even she had difficulty predicting what any of them were about to do. She can hardly blame the wolves for being flustered.

Mosaic is standing at the center of a phalanx. She stands above it, in actual fact, her proud posture lifting her above the shield wall as if she expected to tower over these people who were half again her height. Nevertheless, she rises up and refuses to move. Her ears perk to full extension atop her head and radiate aggressive intent. Her teeth are bared, neither in smile or in scowl but in simple naked challenge. Her tail rises above her head only to crash down like a thunderbolt, over and over and over again. Her arms fold over her chest while one lethal claw taps a half remembered beat out on her elbow.

She can tell. A few quick steps beyond the main thoroughfare and the Slitted would open itself back up to her. Beri would wave her a melancholy farewell and her skin would finally stop burning with the twin senses of regret and failure. The Silver Divers would spread and conquer as she'd originally bid them. The Crystal Knight's scent and sound patterns would float above all this noise and there would be nothing to this other than to stroll to her and hunt for her skull. Wasn't she the one who collected skulls? Or was it the other Azura, the one who actually lived on Bitemark and only asked for quality wrestlers once or twice a year? Does it even matter, when she's locked behind a vault with no opening?

The irritation in Mosaic's body becomes tension. The tension is good. The tension keeps her foolishly erect and full of murderous intent. They lift her above the battle. Above the Slitted Above even Beri. They rob the twitch from her muscles and the fire from her joints. She has power, here. She is power, here. The Hero of Beri has prepared her town for one final battle, and she stands again on the ramparts. In control.

"This stone is where your phalanx fell apart," she tells the Silver Divers with a devil's smile, "Just there, where that left one is standing is where I sent you tumbling into the nets of my people. To your right we built traps into the warehouse we never even wound up needing. That was the heart of your defeat. Beri swallowed you, and now you stand in its throat.

"If you are Daughters of Ceron... no. If you are mine, then howl! Take your spears and stab your way out of this place that devoured you. Last time you were conquerors turned pets, but today I welcome you home. Wolves of Beri, taste no second defeat. These dipshits? They're tourists. Con artists. Gimmick mongers. Eat their legs! Make them kiss these stones that still remember your scent! If you can't out think them, surely you can out stupid them instead. Let our home do the rest."

Her voice washes over them as a river's would. She makes no move to join them, but she shines on each of them as the ribbons flutter in her hair. She is moonlight. She is inevitability. She is the promise of redemption. See how she gestures, and leaves the fight to trusted allies? Her strength is your reserve. Do not think for a moment that it is already spent.

...She dares to stretch her neck and let it pop. Relief almost undoes the hard work of her posture. Soon she'll scream, or she'll collapse into the water. Soon she'll clutch at limbs and squeeze them until the shaking stops. But not now. Not now. Not. now.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

The thing about map apps is that... well, no, it's a good point actually. Eventually Cinders is gonna get bored and frustrated enough to drop a marker in the gym and if you look at the total number of lives helped today by staff members, she'll crush Euna easy. Easy. It's just that? For people like this poor girl right here? Setting the rally point is about as helpful as a high five for a drowning man.

She feels twitchy as she approaches the store. Well no, that's the wrong word for it. Runner's high? The sense of giddy euphoria permeates every part of her being that still has nerve endings, and phantom limb pushes that through to the rest of her. The need to bounce up and down as she walks, and then the need to jog instead of walking. The hum that builds in her throat until she's full on singing the leitmotif of Burn, My Sword. It feels good, it feels good, it feels good! Letting her target points request themselves solved the rule-breaking guilt issue in seconds. Adding data collection and organization twigged that dork ass part of her brain that wasted half of her resting hours on spreadsheet management.

Actually, she should -- well. No time now. The only downside here is that the barricade she's breaking down first is only manned by three people. She bends her back as she moves forward. Pulls her arm against her shoulder and rotates on her hips, and then repeats on the other side. Taps her toes on the ground and then bends over to touch them once she's standing upright again.

This might just be a warmup but that doesn't negate the importance of stretching, ok? Loose and limber is a mentality as much as anything; even for cybernetic systems the benefits of letting all the individual motors and synthetic ligaments and joints build up to full combat speed is noteworthy. If this were Euna getting ambushed it'd be one thing, but she's got a marathon to run here. It's not a sprint at all. Whether she should expect to win any fights she gets in or not, the way she makes this all turn south in an instant is by refusing to take it seriously.

So when she reached flying spin kick range, she's good to go. Optimal condition! But she passes up the flashy instant kill. Ex-cop vision, you know? The attack vector is too likely to send one of these jackasses through a window, and if she breaks property that's where the real trouble starts. Best to hold off on the flashy stuff for in case she winds up cornered at any point today. Wow. It's... not a great look how much she's already thinking about more violence, is it? This is work, Euna. Try to be less happy about it please.

But she's still smiling. She's still humming. When her palm strikes the back of a skull, it is the sound of Justice. She employs rapid, disorienting strikes that don't commit her stance to begin with. That way she's able to bounce between opponents with a minimum of downtime in between: all of the interim is spent building momentum and transferring from one space to the other. She boxes an ear, crushes a solar plexus, and rises up the body again to deliver a flat palm strike to the throat as if it were a single step in a dance.

A man a fair step larger than her throws a punch, but his heart's not in it the way that hers is. He's too startled by the need, not ready to escalate all the way to street brawling with someone who doesn't look enough like the girl he's actually here to bully. And even if she did, maybe not even then. She steps under and into the cross up, plants her feet, and shoulder checks him into a trash can. Half breath, recover form, and leap! She drops a knee into his stomach, flips over him into the Mount, and smashes her fist through the pavement next to his ear. Even through the mask, even through the blindfold, the smile on her face reaches her eyes and it is giddy. She slides her elbow into his neck, squeezes her ribs between her steel thighs until she feels the air leave his system, and rolls off with a kick to the chin. That's two, out.

Last one! Up she goes back onto her feet, careful to roll on the shoulder that will not spill the contents of her backpack all over the street and rises into a dojo-perfect side kick. Pop, roll, retract, follow up stomp to shatter the toes. Cover scream with hand, headbutt, slip behind in the moment where their vision is made of fuzzy stars, deliver elbow to the back of the neck. Total disorientation, temporary loss of consciousness with minimal risk of concussion.

Hero of justice, ok? Hero of justice. If they're not gonna bring enough metaphorical firepower to stretch her limits, she owes even these dickwads the decency of letting them wake up in their own beds tomorrow morning. But god. But god! This feels so good! She pumps a fist and slashes her arm through the air in victory before remembering what she's really here for. Violent intent sheds off her like snakeskin in an instant, and she waves through the window of the convenience store.

"Hey! Heya! Are you ok? Can you talk? You need any help getting out of there? Think you can make it home, or do you need help getting somewhere safe?"

She pulls her hood down for a moment so she can straighten her hair. In this moment, it feels better than sex.

"Oh! Um. N-no, I mean, like, take your time yeah? Everything's gonna be fine now, I promise."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Well reasoned," Mirror yawns, "But not an answer."

Her thrusters flare to life. The Gods-Smiting Whip lifts slightly before it rushes around the Jormungar in a circle to try and take its back. Ultimately fruitless. Small pivots and slight hip turns do for the pilot with the inside circle; the faster, more mobile mecha has too much ground to cover, and the maneuver is too obvious by half. Regardless. Mirror twists her armor in half at the waist and switches the direction of her circle on the head of a pin. The opening is tiny. She does not take it. She flies up and over the head of Marcina Villajero instead, tracking the response of her drones the entire time.

Immediate overhead swing with her blade. Deflected: adjust momentum, swing weapon behind back. Rising slash, left hip to right shoulder. Redirected: adjust vector. Thrust. Combination slash, ten to four, six to twelve, one to eight. Her tails have ceased shielding and likewise ceased enhancing, mimicking, or doubling the sword strikes. Instead, Mirror twists individual points of articulation to redirect dissuading fire to various different armor panels where the damage will remain negligible and cosmetic. Instead, the tails rotate around the sword in an intricate dance: always out of the way at the moment of contact, but beneath, above, and to the sides, where they punctuate the slash by firing recklessly powerful bursts that, if they connect, will melt plates of the Jormungar or scrap entire weapon systems, if not detonate missile systems outright. At this range, it's as dangerous to each of them as the other.

She tests for adaptability. She tests for flexibility. She tests for reaction speed, particularly in the drones. She tests multitasking. She tests endurance. She separates, and rockets high into the air at the end of a horizontal slash.

"Liar? Trickster. Fool. Acknowledge the difference. Are my questions unanswerable? [A creature with one head wears but a single face], Marcina Villajero. I expect much deeper rhetoric from a warrior of your stature. I expect much sharper teeth from my sister under another star."

Maintain distance, high altitude hover pattern. Auto-cannon range neutralized: within firing capability but damage capabilities functionally negated. Heavier ordinance required, but in prime range. Heavy commit, the full sky to dodge in. Another test, another tiny scratch in the war of attrition. There is only one moment she need wait for.

The rest is dancing. Play. Flirtation. Respect. A duel of this caliber should be decided by a single exchange. One strike only, pitted against the other. This is not the same. Not the same as Solarel. Her fingers twitch with anticipation. Her ears flutter with guilt. Her tail curls with shame. Her tongue trails out of her mouth with desire.

"Let us know one another, Marcina Villajero. Let us bathe together. Let us explore one another. Become acquainted with my teeth. Allow me to know your tongue. I am Mira of the Fisher Clan, whose star name is Whispered Promise. What is my name? And what is the secret of this armor?"

Her tails rain destruction from the heavens, aimed only at the water. Great plumes of mist and spray and steam erupt all around the Jormungar, caressing it like a series of teasing kisses. Foreplay.

Breathless Dead

The first howl and the loudest belongs to Mosaic.

She has come riding the boarpedoes with the Silver Divers. She has come dressed in their colors: in the diving suit and armored jacket of Ember's people, though she also wears a glittering crown atop her head and a plethora of promise-ribbons tied all through her hair, descending her oversized braid like a ladder or a helix.

She is with them, but not of them. She comes in front of them, but does not radiate the pheromones of Command. She does not insist on the role of Alpha, only integration. She does not snap orders, but simply gestures with both hands through the water, spreading them wide in invitation.

Ceron. Ceron. Ceron.

The ship is your plaything. Its warriors your prey. Its prizes your glory. She, Mosaic, is here only to hunt a single name. Go and raise whatever hell you like, so long as you return to her in the end. Just as she promises to return to you. She floats, waiting. She watches, smiling. All around her, wolves cut like missiles through the water with the blessings of Preparation and Familiarity. Her soldiers knew to expect the attack, and the Corvii had not. The Silver Divers knew what it meant to live in the water, and not merely survive in it. With them in front of her, there is really nothing she need do to take the ship.

So she swims as a shadow, swift and quiet and inevitable. The water is familiar to her, too, swallowed as it was from her old hunting grounds. Now she hunts here again, muscles hardly straining as she glides forward, taking huge sniffs through the brine to listen to the rumors of the tides. Where does the scent of blood run faintest? Where does the salt give way to fresh air. What passages mark the copper tang and tired musk that means her Knight Dys. Si. A. is near?

She feels the currents pulling at her fur and knows the battle is not something she must concern herself with. Her back burns with the ghost memory of old wounds she did not realized belonged to her. Her legs turn hollow as she kicks through the waves, though her form does not falter. Her fingers beg to be stretched, her lungs beg for rest.

She must. She must save her strength. She glances around to see if anyone is watching, and quickly clutches at her head while nobody will see. The ride had been an ordeal. The howl had been a mistake. Against her breast a secret prayer clings to her in the shape of paper with a single invocation written on it. And a single name. Her tail swishes behind her and the currents abate. The path eases. She sighs and swims on, ignoring the smell of blood in the water as it seeps from her thigh.

Mosaic's head breaches the surface of the water, and she lifts her hands to check her hair. She smooths the sopping braid with gentle fingers, and does not take a single step until every ribbon is tied into exacting place.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

If you think about it, she'd made the choice before the day had even started. Like, nobody bought it when she decided to go out for a run today, right? Not even her! Like, even if you swallowed the line about the weather being good for it (what?), the second she started preparing the jig just had to be up. Right?

A light jog never saw her pack a full bag of snacks to maintain peak operational efficiency immediately post-exercise. She'd bring water, or at most a protein shake, so she could go home and cook herself better instead. And setting that argument aside, she'd never so much as glanced at her swords before a run until now. Today she'd actually packed one. But you could still chalk those up to paranoia. Or preparedness, to be nicer about it. You'd be an idiot not to feel the tension in the air, what if you got stuck outside? What if... uh, well it was an edgeless weapon right? What if she'd decided to practice her forms in the park? Stupid, but not impossible.

Fine. Fine. Grant her that. But she put a mask on before stepping out. She'd put on a blindfold instead of her sunglasses (note to self: see doctor later about re-calibrating these new eyes). Her top today was a hooded crop jacket and full leggings. All identifying markings covered up, but in the dumbest sort of punk aesthetic sort of way. And she'd left her phone at home. And neither Cinders or Sara had been allowed to come with her today, or know her route. She'd broken all the basic safety rules and she'd shown up looking like the alternative costume on a blind ninja fighting game character on a day where the safest thing she could try to be is "normal".

No. She'd made the decision already. If there were going to be fights she was going to find them, and she'd be the one to end them. As many as she could. In as many places as she could reach. She had plenty of students down in those crowds, if she needed the extra motivation. So if she'd made the choice, then why? Why was she just standing there? What was the point of doing this much prep just to watch?

...Because it was against the rules. Fuck, that still meant so much to her. This wasn't like other times where she'd been able to tell herself the fight was isolated or anonymous. And she definitely couldn't wait to be the one to throw the second punch. Also she'd be punching this time instead of just sweeping a leg and awing some jackass into submission. This was illegal. Very, very illegal. And that had her wound tight enough to snap. Her hands seek out her hair, but the hood's in the way. She groans in frustration, instead.

There'd be consequences for this. Big consequences. Her gym might burn down before she even got to see it again. And if it stayed standing they'd be waiting with lawyers to pluck the deed from her safe in any case. To go down there meant jail time. It also meant throwing her dream away. It. She was. Could it really be that she's a?

Stop it, Euna. It's not cowardly to put the battle ahead of the fight. There were vanishingly few people are good as she was at rehabilitating people with cybernetic augs. Even fewer with experience and enthusiasm for people with aesthetic mods that needed help learning how to move in completely different ways. But then, there was nobody, and she'd die on this hill god damn nobody in all of Aevum who could fight as well as she could. Yet.

Well. Then teach. Right? She didn't need the glory. She needed to stay stable, keep her head above the water for as long as she could so hers could be the hand that pulled others' up out of the waves. Police protocol would have the train lines locked down by now and she hadn't exactly left herself close to home, but that just meant a night camping. Go buy a big bowl of katsudon or something and chill inside a restaurant. Let it blow over.

Or, no, she could set up a rally point, couldn't she? A safe place for people to rest that would -- that would bring the aggression over here, instead. Neutral ground in a riot, really Euna? Coward. Dumbass. Stick in the mud, prissy little paladin wannabe. Her gym was [i]already/i] forfeit, even November hadn't unearthed any particularly useful information she could use to fight the realignment. It was over on that front. And Sara? Sara wasn't gonna leave her. Actually, the only way she lost her wife to this is if she didn't break anybody's jaw. Maybe. Probably, anyway. It sounded like her. But more importantly, she. It. Wait. More importantly? Yes. More important than any of that.

She grins underneath her mask.

"I mean. I did always wanna be a superhero. Was there ever a point to all the training if it wasn't for right now?"

She laughs, in spite of all the horror spilling everywhere around her. Her body feels lighter than it has all day. She's sharper, faster, inhuman and fluid. Down toward the loudest shouting, down into a melee already in progress, squeezing against a wall of riot shields. Her first target doesn't even see her coming.

But like, it's his fault for going to war wearing khakis isn't it?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Perhaps this is Marcina Villajero’s way of admitting that she had actually been expecting Smokeless Jade Fires here, after measuring their matches against each other. Or perhaps it was more that, now that she was staring down the barrels of the Nine-Tails in person -- no. Not that. Phrase the thought with less arrogance. Less self centered. Remember the immanent possibility of your own defeat. This is a superior opponent. With a superior loadoat.

So. What, then? Ascertain nature of confession. An all powerful generalist with omnipotent fundamentals, now matched against a technique specialist using piloting prowess as a cloak to cover a frankly atrocious battle form. A realization about the nature of the match up, then? A taunt from someone who had seen through her vaunted "one layer of defense" mantra? Unlikely. Acknowledgment of the difficulty of the dance that had been woven, then. A declaration of lust. If not outright love.

That, she could respond to. That matched her hopes. That made this a meal worth savoring, and not just a chore she had to swallow to keep Slate or someone like her from yelling. Acknowledgment. Recognition. Desire. She'd scoffed at the Priestess and her Goddess when they'd told her as much but in truth Mirror's hunger for these things was even more voracious than theirs. Nothing this close to Solarel should feel fun or exciting. Certainly not tantalizing.

But here she is, licking her lips in view of the camera she had broadcasting herself to her opponent. And not performatively, either. She feels her heartbeat accelerate and her fur ripple with such obvious desire she almost chokes on it. That's another fact about herself she'd have to learn to live with, eventually.

"Assessment: index on ballistic weaponry considered ideal for current terrain conditions. High concentrations of water make diffusion of beam weaponry likely; range reductions a fact of life. Missiles, cannons, rifles subject to none of this. Addendum: observable design philosophy present in the Jormungar prior to current engagement. Tactical application likely not related."

She grins, knowing Marcina Villajero is listening directly. Knowing she is watching. Knowing that she is getting this as a response to admitting her passions, and her dazzling display of the results of her research into the culture of Hybrasil. It is a wicked sort of teasing, to test her like this. Did your books have anything to say outside of mainland culture? Did your personal research turn up nothing, or merely enough to frustrate you?

"Destructive potential of kinetic firearms places minimal strain on Crystal Fire Drive. Primary power draws from firing mechanism and targeting systems, plus movement considerations for excessive weight. Observation: design philosophy of enemy mecha compatible with emphasis on physical capabilities over power of armaments. Shadow of the blade: if worn down at range and ammunition depleted, opponent will become more powerful. Preference for cqc obvious. Therefore, tactically advisable solution is to finish fight prior to expenditure. Here. I. Come~"

At the start of every fight save one, Mirror's God-Smiting Whip has entered into a crouch and shot off into the sky to rain beam weaponry down on the opponent as cover for a charge with a melee weapon. She is armed with a knight's sword now instead of her traditional trident, but her stance is unchanged. Her thrusters flare and her attack vector becomes obvious as soon as she lifts up from the water.

Immediately, she deviates from her flight pattern. No sooner has she lifted off toward the sky than does her thrust vector shift suddenly and violently forward instead of upward. The Whip's shoulder rolls forward into a charge while both hands grip her comparatively smaller and lighter blade. Three tails fly up and cover the pointed shoulder with a triangle shield formation that covers the front of her mecha's body from the counter-offensive as she closes distance.

The strain of the sudden shift on her body is brutal. The speed of her charge is not only faster than the strength of her shield suggests, it is borderline suicidal to begin with. She is in this moment less the pilot of a machine or a warrior than she is a comet, and one with dreams of becoming an extinction-level event at that. Hers is the smaller, lighter, and generally faster armor and she has chosen to treat it as the largest for the sake of her attack plan. The water warps underneath her as she passes, as if pooling around gravity.

The impact rattles bone, even through the finest dampening hardware and software in the galaxy. It sends both mecha threatening to topple over in the water from the outset of the fight, and it buries the arena in a shower of sparks and steam that buy the duelists a moment of privacy. The Gods-Smiting Whip slashes with its sword as it careens forward, aiming for center of mass where Mirror has the highest chance of causing generic systems damage without needing to guess where the precise best target will be.

It is also the most likely vector along which she will be parried. And when she is, her tails seamlessly flick over from defense to offense. They envelop the sword and burn with a painfully bright blue cutting edge that slices and then dissipates like a burst of lightning. Her thrusters roar to life again having pivoted in the opposite direction, and her Whip manages to hover injuriously over the surface of the water inside the zone where ballistic retaliation is only possible (or at least safe for either of them) if Marcina Villajero reveals some of her new hidden attack vectors here and now.

"Nine Drive System, Partial Configuration. The First and Third Forms: Moonlight's Plunging Fang. Marcina Villajero. I acknowledge your desire. I return it, even. If you truly believe that knowing me is the path to defeating me, I ask you two questions: What is my name? And what is the secret of the Gods-Smiting Whip?"

[Fight: 6+3+3 = 12. Mirror takes a string, a superior position, and an opening for her tails to exploit later. Until she fights Solarel at the very least, she will never inflict a Condition in battle again]

Breathless Dead

It had to work. It had to work. It had to work. It had to.

Mosaic grinds her teeth as she stares out the porthole at nothing. This part of travel sucked, she had no tolerance for it. Relying on auguries and prayers to tell what's going on, her own senses completely useless in the face of the sheer scale of the thing she's attempting to do. In fact there's nothing to do even though she's the one who decided to do it. The speed of her legs means nothing. The strength of her arms means nothing. The sharpness of her claws is worthless. For the dozenth time she asks the navigators if the Slitted is still in pursuit. For the dozenth time she tenses up tighter than a coil slipped under a collapsed building while she waits to hear that, yes, it is.

They're beginning to get annoyed with her. She shrugs. Can't really blame them.

The Plousios was a museum relic disguised as a coral reef. Its maximum speed, its high end maneuverability, its weaponry and debatably even its armor paled in comparison to the Slitted. Mosaic knew (and Omn was not yet tired of telling her) that it was a miracle they'd made it this far away from Bitemark without being overrun. That miracle was too much to ask for another; it had already bought her the one advantage her ship had over the Crystal Knight's. Namely, its engine.

Who the fuck knew how it worked? Frankly, who the fuck cared? It did, and it made this Imperial-era warship the true power of, of... the middle of fucking nowhere. Ha! Still the queen of the stick, huh Mosaic? She stomps her foot, as if that could bring this crumbling leviathan to heel.

"All hands!" she bellows into the tubes where he words will carry to those who need to hear them, "Burn the engine! Let it roar, let us fly! But turn as we go! One of our own has been taken prisoner, and we will not forsake her!"

The glistening of saliva over fangs is not audible through the Plousios. And yet. Every single denizen shivers in unison as the image pops into their heads unbidden. Even the Pix do not make a play on her in this moment, content to bide their time as they scramble for the wheels and levers that will bring Mosaic's plans to fruition.

"Take us all the way around! And I said speed up! When we see the bitch, jam our fist right up her throat! Rescue missions require boarding, don't they!"

She laughs, and the ship grumbles at the sound of it. She laughs, and the head of every person who'd made their life in Beri perks up. She laughs, even though the sensation of the sharp turn is so slight under her feet she can only tell it's happening by the muffled impacts of random debris shattering on the suddenly lurching bulkheads. It feels nothing like running, and yet. And yet. And yet.

Her heartbeat quickens just the same.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Mira watches Selin with a curious smile on her face. Her sigh is contentment and resignation both at once.

"If terror is our future in victory, in defeat, and in flight then I suppose victory is the only viable path forward is it not? We may as well extract our toll from the great machine they have built to play at war for them. Let's prove our worth, Selin. Won't it be fun to see what kind of new terrible name they think up for me after this?"

She purrs through laughter, and wraps herself around Selin like a shield and a ribbon all in one.

"Do you know my favorite interpretation of the One-Day Defender? That I have yet to truly defend anything. 'Perhaps one day she shall'. It is delightful. And correct. Soon the galaxy will understand what it looks like when I have something precious to protect. Maybe they won't be brave enough to call me anything other than what I am. Well. Either way.

Are you ready to go home?"

Breathless Dead

This is not a time for punishment.

There is no twitch of irritation or even a flicker of disappointment across Mosaic's face. She does not flick her tail or twitch an ear, she does not glower or yawn to bare her fangs without angling for a fight, she does not flash her claws, and she is hardly so rude as to begin slouching. She smiles, warmly, and though it reaches her eyes it does so only for a moment. The moment is too serious to get lost inside of it.

"You blew up a sphere?" she asks, laughing, "You cut how many cables? Idiot, what are you flinching for? You kicked ass! Everything I asked for, and with style! And then you came back! And you're whole. You were perfect, Ember. It isn't your fault our knight did not return alongside you."

Mosaic leans forward and plants the softest, sweetest kiss on Ember's forehead. A mote of sunshine or a splash of warm rain. A replacement for a charred ribbon that was only ever a symbol of what she really wanted. Her beloved being here again only proves its power.

She steps away, and sighs as she glances out into space for the hundredth time today.

"No. Nothing is your fault," she says, "It's mine. I sent her out. I did not go with you. I did not arm you with a plan or a prayer to ensure your victory. All I did was bind you with an oath. Strong enough for you and your pack, whom I love, but nothing at all to the comet who brings miracles wherever she falls. I'll kick her ass as soon as I've got her safe again, but I'll apologize after. It's my fault. My fault only."

Mosaic walks across the hangar herself, to Ember's plover. She wrenches the lance from its grip with her bare hands; her muscles scream in protest, but she is able to hide the quiver and the strain for long enough to flip it and impale it in the hangar floor, and maintain her posture of invincibility after.

"Which is why I will fix this myself. Those of you who managed to bring their ribbons home, please give them to me now. Every ribbon you return, I give to you as a gift. It is now my duty to return them safely. And I swear by Queen Hera that with these as my armor I will not fail to come back to you. Now hurry. I've got a lot to prepare for and fuck all for time to do it in before I squander the window you brave, beautiful ladies just won for me."

Now she does flash her teeth. Her grin is dazzling. Her swagger could crush a sun into powder. She is Mosaic. She is inevitable. Healing instantly from debilitating injuries in a time of crisis is just one more verse in her legend, right?

Breathless Dead

The inside of Ember's mouth is hot, and tastes of copper and smoke. Her teeth are sharp and smooth and perfect, perfect rows of cool smoothness within the spice where Mosaic's tongue can lap and find respite, a chance to play with textures instead of flavors and revel in the intensity of the inside of those cheeks all the more for having the contrast. They kiss like two women who have been starving in the desert for so long that the idea of savoring their meal no longer occurs to them.

Her hair is soft and wet, and smells of flowers. Pollen and nectar and the delicate caress of petals all dancing with the crisp burst of raw electricity that permeates Ember's entire being just now. The rich bouquet sets her heart racing and calms it again before the breath can finish. Enticing and soothing, all at once.

The weight of her is intense and densely packed: when it launches at Mosaic like a bullet it takes her a concerted effort to keep from tumbling over and proving how weak her legs have become in payment for her great feat. But Ember is solid. When she is held, all of her presses back without compressing, without sinking or becoming insubstantial for even a brief touch. She is stable and steady enough to be leaned on without needing to do anything more significant than embracing her. A rock lifting out from the sea. A muscle to clench when hers cannot.

It is in this moment, with their lips finally parted and Mosaic's nose buried in the top of Ember's hair, that she watches Hera depart. The goddess offers her a single nod: Mosaic sweeps Ember off her feet until the tangles of both of their hair sweep against the hangar bay by way of a bow in return. She lifts slowly. She breathes steadily. She entwines her tail with her lover's, and feels the ground beneath her feet.

This is possible. Yes. This is something she can manage, perhaps even without the twin swords of pride and spite. At least... right now, she can. She chuckles, and flicks Ember across her nose.

"Have you been remembering a past life, too? Little idiot, we dragged this thing out of the ocean. It's a wonder we even have a ship and not just a void-bound pile of crabs. Don't worry, we'll get to work making it pretty just as soon as we manage to get it to stop breaking as soon as anybody says a mean word."

Mosaic's chuckle builds into a laugh that seems to shake the ship. As if on cue a crack in the marble of a nearby fixture widens into a proper fissure. The Plosious can laugh too. In the groan of metal that follows, Mosaic lets her smile fall. Her eyes do not flash anger, but they are sharp. And they are grim.

"But never mind that, where is Dyssia? Where is our knight and my instructor? And for that matter, what have you all done with the ribbons I lent to you?"