Phoe

Breathless Dead

Too loud. Too bright. Her head droops and her eyes find the floor so they don't have to watch anything more complicated than her feet. Her ears sink lower, and lower, and lower, until they are squashed flat against her skull. It doesn't help. A lifetime's worth of context floods her mind, and the more she realizes how much of her life was spent in a washed out muted hellhole the harsher and more overwhelming her reality becomes.

Put her back. Put her back, please. Mosaic was a dumbfuck peasant girl but at least she didn't have to be so aware of what the air tasted like. At least she didn't find these lights so glaring that the pain made her nauseous. Put her back. Please, please put her back. Stupid fucking Lethe. Stupid gods damn--

Bella breaks into a coughing fit. Her ribs feel like they are turning into dust from the stress of it.

Her left foot rises, but her toes drag across the floor. It stomps back down as if she'd dropped it off a shelf anyway. The right foot follows but all it does is scrape along behind. Her tail is so limp that it's dragging across the ground, over sharp rocks and pungent grasses and too cold water without the strength to keep itself from staining and catching on literally everything.

Her arms aren't working. One of them is so useless that all she can do with it is flop it over the shoulder of the beautiful woman carrying her and watch it dangle there like a mutilated lure trying to catch a particularly ugly fish. She can't feel it at all. Never mind what's happened to her claws, she's not sure it even has fingers anymore. Her useful arm isn't much better. All it can do is ache and cling to a better woman.

Bella forces her head to rise. She forces exhausted, half blind eyes to look at the painful radiance she's propped up on. She forces herself to smell again, and not just breathe. Though the air is thick with the herbaceous notes still clinging to her tail, with the sting and half peppery aftertaste of spent SP materials, through the protest of earth and the loud cry of sap dripping like blood over everything and the pungent, disgusting musk of wolf sweat that's just sitting over everything in front of and around her right now, there is still a note she can't quite place. Enough to be wrong. But not wrong enough to be right.

Someone is missing. Someone is here. Her vision blurs with salt and tears on top of simple weariness.

"I really f--" Bella rasps her way into a coughing fit. Her legs go so limp she has to cling to the person around her through the cloak that's muting the world just enough to make it bearable. Hot guilt and embarrassment rushes through her to see how eagerly her one good hand feels for every little curve and tries to push her fingers through that cascade of golden hair, "Fff, Gods. I, I fucked up again. Didn't I?"

Tears turn to crying. The pain can't make her stop. Bella trembles and twitches so hard that it forces the pair of them to stop. Which is better than moving. Which is worse. Waves of ice and needles ripple out from her chest but all she wants to do is be here and feel it happen. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. She needs to say things. Needs to ask.

"I wanted to... look for you. I know I did. But I didn't... remember how. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I! Are you?"

She sniffs. She stiffens. She tries to push away and stand under her own proud power for just a moment but it only sends her to her knees. She looks up at the golden princess, the last symbol of the Empire she was raised to serve, and her lips tremble.

"Please. Are you real? Please stay. Please don't go. Whatever you, where you're going, I'll! I've lost you so many times. I can't...

"I can't do it again."

Breathless Dead

"Re..."

The sound is pulled from her unwilling lips. Her hand reaches out for the mysterious, beautiful princess of its own accord. Fingers stretch and when they cannot reach, her claws harden and grow in the span of seconds. Longer, toward the girl. Toward the battle. And inwards, upwards, taking the blood her body is soaked with and turning it into a twisted, ruby-tinted gauntlet climbing its way up her forearm.

"Da..."

The second sound is lightning in her heart. She writhes on the ground as power twists inside of her and pulls all of her muscles in different directions. Her spin locks, her tail snaps rigid. She rises to her feet at an unnatural angle, as if pulled there by invisible threads. Immediately, she slumps forward. Mangled clumps of hair fall in front of her eyes as they finally snap open without immediately blinking shut again. One in gold. The other in Imperial crimson.

"Nnnnnnnngh!"

There's another sound she's meant to make, but it slips off her tongue and her memory at the same time. She's not. That isn't! Something is pounding inside her skull, trying to crack it open and spill secrets all over this cathedral. The name won't form. She can't find the smell. The sounds pouring from her mouth now are not invocations to a hero, but animal hisses and snarls and wet, rasping breaths. She is a creature of pure desperation.

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. Pounding cracking burning stinging grinding freezing stabbing lancing tearing squeezing pain pain pain pain! It hurts, make it stop, it hurts, help her please, someone someone someone show her the scent tell her the sound look at her look at her look at her stop fighting and look at her and tell her! What does it mean? Why won't it stop?

Why does?

A maid?

Need to know?

How to?

Fight?!

She sighs, and the sound is resentment. The sound is resignation. The sound is sweet, terrible longing. There are no ribbons in her hair. There is no weight to tie her down. There is nothing of Mosaic, nothing of a hero in her awkward lunge. She sees the Armatii drop from above and hurls herself at it with the force of a comet seeking nothing but relief. She is, she is, she is!

Talons kiss her face. They tear scars into her cheeks, across her jaw, and along her forehead, but she smashes her skull forward to break the perfect warrior's weapon before they can cut her head off. The pair of them collide in mid-air and go twisting and spiraling away from the Princess and the Knight in a tangle of hissing and limbs. The champion's bladed skirt grinds into the twisted glove around her hand. The air fills with the sounds of crunching bone and whining steel, thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk crunch splatter. Blood and hastily grown bone spill and shatter.

She looks at her mangled, useless fingers and the hand that's been twisted into an unrecognizable shape by the carnage, even after she wrenches the blades out with a savage twist of her arm. The Armatii weapon has fared no better. The maid, the hero, the... girl, twists her face into a horrible smirk, and begins to laugh. An awful noise like a hacking cough.

She is the first to rise, of the pair of them. Her shoulder sags, her arm hangs useless from the socket, but she stands straight and with impossible pride as though that could lift her above the giant who would be towering over her again in just another moment. She spits a tooth down into the champion's face.

"Only one name on my list you stupid bitch. Fuck off if you know what's good for you."

One ear bends to hear a rush of air, and she knows the Princess is in trouble. A moment too long spent worrying for her sake and now the deathblow is on the winds. Her other ear bends to catch the air in front of her again. She ducks. The Armatii sword keens as it slices through the air, notching her ear and tearing out a piercing instead of splitting her skull in half. She snarls and leaps into the air, hissing when she feels the rush that means her opponent has jumped higher and faster than she could and is about to take the space behind her.

"Hey Princess!" her face contorts from the pain of using the wrong word //smell. Where is the smell? "Switch with me!"

Her claws wrench together as if tearing at the air itself. A sword passes through her body without resistance. She is already long gone; across the Crystal Knight's cathedral in the same instant she'd finished her gesture. Her hips wheel about and she kicks her hero and her savior hard in the back, sending her bouncing and skidding to clash sword on sword with the monstrous Armatii. She knows without needing to watch that the blond-haired goddess is more than a match for the latest perfected warfare of the Skies.

Her eyes turn and behold the Crystal Knight. Already, the shadows are swallowing her whole so that the Azura noble can glimmer all the more gloriously. Pointless. Pointless. Pointless! All it does is disguise the motion of her arm. Her claws spring from the darkness with the ferocity of a pouncing tiger and smash against the flat of the strange, dimensional blade. There is one, thin wisp of silver floating across the brilliant prism of that incredible weapon. Her claws find it. Shred it.

It screams as it shatters into beautiful glass junk. Bereft of her shining toy the Crystal Knight's expression turns so dark that even her technicians can't make her shine. Her massive tail slams into the grinning Servitor's ribs a moment later. She howls as she rolls away, and howls louder when she's stuck in a sudden gravity spike. Just like before, the Crystal Knight turns to her mastery of the Rail. And Mosaic hurtles to her doom.

No.

This time it is gentle. This time it is simple. This time her monstrous glowing eye opens wide and shows her paths to walk and places to place her feet. This time she twists about in the constantly shifting center of gravity as easily and as gracefully as if she and the Knight were dancing. Now they clash, fist to fist or foot to tail and claw to scale and pass each other by in the manner of ships banking round to shell one another again.

Again. Again. Again. They smash into each other. The fight devolves from grace to savagery. They trade a thumb in the eye for sharp fangs down to the bone. A knee dropped into the throat for a hidden dagger between the ribs. The dagger trades hands. The dagger stabs a hand. Blood from two species, of two colors, starts to pool and swirl on the floor beneath them, spiraling in the wake shared dance of space they weave above.

Again. Again. Again. The battle speeds up when by rights it should be slowing. The Crystal Knight almost exclusively targets the Servitor's ruined right side, the one with the powdered ribs and the mutilated arm. She snatches up pieces of the home she's made walls of and the sword she'd had turned to pebbles and fires them like shrapnel from a cannon. The Servitor makes a shield of her already useless arm and otherwise slips into the well of shifting gravity according to the guidance of the silver path that only she can see. She grasps for the Knight's throne and, taking it in one good hand, crushes it to pieces against the Azura's powerful back.

As a pair they drop to the floor. Alone, the Crystal Knight rises. She is seething. She is beyond the power of speech. Her hissing is ugly even to the ears of a monster, and no light can make her beautiful in this moment of violence. Her tail wraps 'round the Servitor and squeezes. And squeezes. And squeezes. She stills her breathing to hear the musical chimes of screams turned into whimpers by a lack of air, and even those whimpers giving way to desperate gasps and the crunching and popping of a body that was never, that was never, that was never a match for Hers.

She doesn't notice the cat's arm escaped her until it's already plunging into her breast. The miracles of biomancy and several millennia of Empire had done nothing to change one of the most basic facts of nature: it was cats who hunted snakes. Who were the faster and more feared predators. That was why she had a tiger pit, and not a den for some enormous serpent. Claws tear deeper inside of her, and deeper. They pierce the heart and crush it flat.

It is. In the end. The will of the Gods. The Crystal Knight laughs, disbelieving, and all her coils and her great mass fall limp. She splays across floor, still glimmering in the light of her perfected cathedral, and goes still. No animals spring from her corpse. No plants. She rests amidst the garden she'd spilled from Mosaic, unmoving and beautiful forever. The name burning against the Servitor's breast grows dull and cool.

She loses her balance the moment she is not supported by the Crystal Knight. There is a smell. A smell in the air that's pulling memories from her head no matter how hard she squeezes it. A name, the need to be clean, a name, the need to be clean, to be clean, oh gods, she has to! She's covered in! GgghhhhK!

The smell of blood is so thick in the air that it's choking off almost everything else. And in her desperation to find the Princess, to find Redana, she's inhaled so much it's coating the back of her throat. There is a name in the stench of blood. Artemis plucks it free and places it on her assassin's tongue before she leaves on crisply clicking heels.

Bella retches, just like she always has in the presence of blood.

[Finish with Iron: 4, 1, 4 +2 = 10]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

She does not hesitate. She waits. Confirmation of approach vector, calculation of speed. Selecting the angle of attack not to cover the possibility of counterattack but ensure a killing blow.

This is the ultimate difference between her and Solarel. It wasn't ever a question of philosophy. They did not disagree, the two of them. It was a matter of capability and the approach and mentality that unfolded from that one cruel truth. Mirror cannot pilot a Mecha using the traditional synthweave feedback system; the overload to her nervous system made her feverish, dizzy, nauseous, and could even cause nerve spasms that without proper care might kill her.

But she didn't have the mind of an engineer like Slate. She's didn't have the capacity for pure science like her mothers. She didn't even have an eye for fashion, unless one counted the sporadic fits of creative madness that overtook her from time to time. Her heart yearned to be useful, and to be loved. From kittenhood she'd known that could only happen as the heart of an amor like the Gods-Smiting Whip.

Everything was about making it work. Everything was about making it possible. A thousand books and research papers read obsessively over and over and over until she had the language to express her dream. And only one other cat had not laughed at it, but picked up a wrench and a control spike with a toothy grin on her face, and promised to make it put the dreamer in her debt forever. And once the miracle was finished, what she had was proof of her own stupidity. Her own insanity. The madness of an uncharted path across the stars. It was practice, practice, practice, failure, failure, failure, then practice again that molded her into the enigma and the legend people thought they saw now.

Mirror does not check for tricks. She doesn't run a scan for the Geist attack that took out The Fang That Devours the Sun the last time she attempted to unleash it. She doesn't wait to make sure she understands the totality of Marcina Villajero's brave charge. This is not naivete. This is not arrogance. This is not a disagreement with the woman she loved more then any other. It was simply battle philosophy born out of practicality. Out of necessity.

Buttons and levers did not move as fast as pilot-level reflexes. Decisions must be made ahead of the moment of actual action. That encouraged aggression. It encouraged reckless hyper aggression in point of actual fact. Stay ahead. Stay above. Stay beyond. Mutually assured destruction was preferable to a destined failure over waiting for the perfect blow and missing. She did not have the luxury of assuming priority in the lategame.

"This is not your failure. I simply have somewhere I am climbing. Besides..."

The heat from the Fang has boiled most of the water in the nearer parts of the arena away. More liquid rushes in to fill the void, boiling waves of froth and violence. Rock and metal melt next. Even Nine-Tails' own paint job is a bubbling, melty mess in the face of Mirror's attack. The energy blade is jagged and unstable and large enough that it seems designed for living up to its own name rather than for practical combat.

But when it swings it is quiet. The roar of the void lies outside the pair of them. When it connects it is painless: legs and hands and parts of arms and torso slice away in nanoseconds from contact and weld instantly shut after. It's too quick for feedback, even stunned shock. Inside the Jormungar, Marcina Villajero only feels... weightlessness. Calm. Freedom. She is clean, if also helpless. This is a blade of purity, and of kisses. All of its terrible violence is contained within itself.

However. Always one layer of defense. The Gods-Smiting Whip does not move except to direct the Fang That Devours the Sun with Tail Nine. It shows the cost of the move and the limitations of Crystal Fire. Sorry kids, you'll have to tune in next time to see her real secret.

In the absence of violence, there is peace. In the absence of void there is sound. Building remnants groan and topple into useless slags of scrap while stones tumble over top of them in the arms of the waterfalls Mirror had created. Eight tails float meekly back into place along the frame of the still smoldering Gods-Smiting Whip, seemingly no more power left to let them float. It touches down amidst the pooling waves and with its one functioning arm lifts the remains of the Jormungar out and to safety.

Macro programmed, walk cycle. Initiate. Open cockpit. Mirror stands at the edge of her heart and her safety with her mesh suit still dangerously unzipped and pulled open.

"Besides," she repeats, "I promised to eat you. And the pilot known as Mirror has never once broken a contract. Come. You have lost but are not defeated, are you? Come. Exit your cocoon and come to me. Rest in my arms, proud warrior, star sister, and witness with your own eyes the truth of the pilot you could not grasp in time."

There is no smile on her face. No twitch of her whiskers or even the barest flick of a tail to betray her. Her watery eyes are as frustratingly unreadable as ever. She simply stands there, victorious, offering her hand out and watching. Not hesitating, but waiting.

Breathless Dead

...Why ____ a ____ ____ __ _____ how __ _____?

This should not be beyond her. There is familiarity to this moment, in smoke and shadow and the softest kiss of moonlight. The roar of the microsingularity is little more than soft music in her ears. With every passing second her body feels lighter, and where fatigue and soreness pass they leave power in their place. Her gods-eye watched the Crystal Knight bend perfectly. And yet when Mosaic slashes her claws in a wide arc in front of her, they kiss only the air.

The Crystal Knight is behind her. To her left. Above her. Below? Mosaic pivots wildly. She tears gashes in the ground and stomps holes in the throne but she is never where she needs to be. The only thing she crushes is scenery. The only blood that spills is hers. She feels the bite of a blade, used here as mere tooth against a worthless interloper, and everything it gnaws is blinding white pain.

___ does _ ____ need to _____ ___ to _____?

Mosaic is painting her home with a garden. Blood pours from an arm, beneath her ribs, down her eye, and splashes against the ground where it leaps back up again. Here it is a mass of colorful wildflowers. There it is a clutch of birds. Now butterflies, now grass, now a swarm of buzzing bees. Beauty pours like a waterfall from every wound. The air is filled with the smell of pollen and nectar, though the heat radiating off of everything is quickly spoiling it all. Her body feels lighter now, as though she were carrying all of this life inside of her and now without the burden it has gotten easier to move.

The only thing that still weighs her down is her hair. The ribbons in her braid each grown in size until they weigh as much as Beri itself. Mosaic wheels about and throws a kick that crushes a crystal into powder. But the Knight it was named for knows nothing of shame or of pain. She glides untouched, mastery of the Rail beyond anything a servitor like Mosaic could conceive.

Why does a ____ need __ learn how __ _____?

She's done this before. //alongside a hero, and a pet
Fought with an Azura master she could not contend with //and you were neither, you were neither
But she lived //against all odds
But she won //to the detriment of all plans
Because the Azura master did not heed the Gods //because someone else did

Mosaic's tail lifts of its own accord. It is not even instinct or even divine providence that wraps it around the Crystal Knight's wrist before the blow that would have severed her head could be struck. All around her there is life, but all along her there is death. Red, sickly, nauseating death. Her tail crushes the mighty Regional Governor's wrist and pulls the blade until it buries itself in the garden and is swallowed by a spray of fresh blood from her back.

The name tucked into her armor burns against her breast. But the ribbons are so heavy she cannot move. Gravity shifts underneath her feet, and she slams against a wall. The ceiling becomes the floor and she falls against that. The Crystal Knight is the center of the universe, and the Slitted whirls about her so that this lesser creature can only bounce against and smash into the architecture she'd dared to call her home.

She promised. She promised, she promised, she promised! But the impacts slam her head against something sharp and jagged. Her hair catches and sheers from the left side of her face and all the way down her braid, which spirals open as if commanded by divine word. Ribbons flutter free, down into a pit where a tiger will not even sniff at them. Away into the hands of startled servitors who know better than to look up from their work to watch something like this. A river of blue-black hair floats around a fixed point in space.

Mosaic flops onto the floor with a wet crunch, sprawled beneath the bemused, twitching tail of the Crystal Knight. Her hand struggles vainly toward the target she could never reach, but even light as it is, gravity drags it back down. It's so... familiar. There's something, there's something, it's just on the edge of her mind! If she could just figure it out!

Why does a maid need to learn how to fight?

Artemis clicks her tongue in disgust. She clicks a pen open soon after. Mosaic's eyes, the gold and the purple, flutter shut as silver light falls across her like a blanket.

[an attempt to Finish with Grace: 6. Tenacity Incarnate activates.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Exactly according to her calculations.

There was nothing more predictable than the speed of this charge. The angle of it, the nature of it, the setup for it, every last little detail was an idea she had... not planted in Marcina Villajero's head, but spoken directly to her face all the same. The sword was her naked preference, and therefore the ammunition existed to serve its ends. There was no value in the Triple Hellzone Grenade other than the restriction of the Gods-Smiting Whip.

She had merely needed three times the ammunition to make up for the improvement in Mirror's tactics. Natural that she would be prepared. And natural that she would prefer this position of physical vulnerability to a simple depletion of shield integrity. For Solarel, resources were resources. Spend hers to spend yours, and then beat you with whatever was left. For Marcina Villajero it was all a plan. The box she wanted to create could not allow for wings. The power of the Nine Drive System was something she would attempt to defeat with positioning.

To this point, the fight had been perfect. Every attempt at aggression accounted for on both sides. Blocked. Redirected. Transitioned into something new. Misdirection, honesty. She had taken to the skies, hoping to burn down the missiles. She had dodged them all at the cost of this vulnerable stance with the understanding that it would invite this charge. There had been other options, other reads she might have made, but in the spaces that fit between her decisions, this is where all her thoughts bent. This was the highest chance of victory possible.

She spoke as if her victory is inevitable. It is not. The thought track in her brain spun on as though prediction is the same thing as dodging. And it is also not. The Gods-Smiting Whip is pushing off its sword to rise into a standing position. The Jormungandr has almost finished its charge in that time.

There are. Moments. Of consequence. Follow through. Reaction lag. Frame commit. Mecha exist in physical space. They move like bodies do. Or. They do not. But even then. The advantage only existed. In the air. In space. Most especially. That was. What she. Was born for. This? This. This put her on the same. Plane. As everyone else. And there? She was simply. Not good enough.

At the risk of overheat, the Gods-Smiting Whip burns its thrusters one more time. Up. Straight up. No aim other than lifting itself high enough and fast enough to swing its own sword in an answering arc to the Jormungar's. There is no time to dodge; all she can do is try to be lifting out of the water before she gets smashed down into it forever. The left arm of the Nine-Tails is cleaved off above the elbow. Mirror is already frantically shifting levers and joysticks to rotate herself along the point of kinetic impact. It costs her a bite into the opposite shoulder as Marcina Villajero's swing completes. Only then can she engage her Tails.

Exactly according to her calculations.

There is no feedback to account for in her piloting system. No pain to absorb. The loss of a limb is a math problem she had already been running ahead of time. It is not an act of grit or defiance when she activates Tails One, Five, and Eight. Brief shield burst, one point six seconds. Force the Jormungar's blade away, bounce back. Now it is Marcina Villajero's turn to be animation committed. In this moment, the Gods-Smiting Whip strikes. Right foot, lifted to the Jormungar's face plate. Thruster burn, three seconds. It blackens and cracks if only slightly as the Terenian mecha heats up to a level almost comparable to the sweltering feedback of the Whip itself. Goal: disorientation.

Eight Tails, engage. They are a whirlwind, spinning round and round the pair of them and firing reckless bursts of energy the instant they read a target lock. Fury without technique. Aggression without a name. If she is a leaf then she must create her own storm to rise up inside of. Goal: confusion. Goal: cosmetic damage. Goal: destruction of shielding drones that had thwarted previous attempt at close quarters finisher.

Goal: regain the skies. Mirror lifts away again, not enough to truly clear the Jormungar's cqc threat range, which is massive particularly given its recently reduced weight and power draw requirements. Just enough that her constant twitches are moving her once more. Just enough that her "impossible" movement only commits the parts of her armor that she requires for the movement. Just enough to lift her back off of a level playing field where victory is a distant dream.

She glances down. Goal: activation of Tail Nine.

"And I say to you that fighting you is like Walking the Mountain. Do you know this phrase? It is Zaldarian. It is the act of taming one of their Gods and rendering it to God-Armor by climbing and fighting it with nothing but your own body. Even in this custom built machine I find you a task equal to the thing that brought Solarel to the attention of her empire."

Her Tails fly up and rain one more burst of laser fire all around the Jormungar before they zip back across the battlefield to their owner, hovering in a slowly rotating circle around the destroyed left arm. Mirror glances down at her display and smiles serenely. Her hair is sodden. She is obliged to pull the zipper on her mesh suit as far down as it will go, and pull the shoulder open to vent more heat from her overloaded body.

"I would love," she says as if half in a dream, "To fight you as the One Day Defender. But I am afraid that in only another minute's time, you will understand fully the nature of how I pilot. And less than a second minute until you fully grasp how that knowledge would defeat me. I am sorry. I made you a promise, when we met."

Energy is coalescing at the tips of her Tails. It is gathering into the form of a blade that boils water into steam and melts the remains of buildings with nothing but the heat of its own existence. She does not hold this blade in her hands. She does not need to.

"My name is Mirror. And this is the first blossom of our love. Nine Drive System. Full. Configuration," her face splits in half into the wickedest and toothiest of cat grins, "The First Form: The Fang That Devours the Sun."

[Fight: 5+6+3 = 14. Mirror seizes a superior position, creates an opportunity for Tail Nine, and plucks another String from the blushing heart of Marcina Villajero]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

"Hey. Uh. Hold on. Wait uh, yeah. Hi. Hello? Did you guys hear a word of what I said?"

Ok then. See this is why the flowchart is important, Eunie. None of these are going to be quick. None of them are going to be simple. Simple would have been trying to sniff out a riot before it broke out and just kind of vibing inside the chaos. Throw some fists, get shot, stand over someone who's fallen over so they don't get trampled by a mob while bleeding out onto the street. Good times, no need to think it any further.

But that's barely helping. And the burning desire in Euna Kim's heart is to take what she knows and make it help people tonight. Sucks to see herself reflected by a six pack of weirdos donning the Hockey Masks of Chivalry but what is she supposed to do? Get ashamed? Back down? If she knew how to do that she'd already be on a couch with her wife eating popcorn, thanks.

One step back. No, not even. Just half a foot length's worth of slide, and then she pulls her arm across her chest and pulls until she feels the muscles still attached to the attachment socket start to go taut. She leans on her hips, first left and then right to stretch out her abs. Switches arms and repeats. Now she's hopping up and down on the balls of her feet and letting her arms swing at her sides.

This is not good lecture form. Obviously. You don't spend this much time teaching classes without understanding what does and does not command respectful focus. She's just annoyed. She's annoyed at how much thinking's been going into everything since she decided to commit because she knows that if she'd just committed earlier she would have had time to organize her information, tap an old contact to get access to radio chatter, and then cut a line through her sector walking the righteous path of justice.

Instead she's arguing with slobs. And they are slobs, however they're dressed and built. They're here looking for trouble? But look at their posture! Look at their weapons! This isn't worth being called the amateur hour! It's annoying, knowing that they're looking at her and thinking the opposite. It's even more annoying not knowing why they're really here even though she knows exactly what they think they're doing.

"In the first place don't just mill about like a bunch of assholes. You're scaring people and it's doing more harm than good even if your intentions are noble. In the second place why are you a gang? This doesn't do anything but egg the rest of you on if one you gets a stupid idea. I told you, no matter what, tonight doesn't end with you guys being proud of yourselves. And you knew that when you robbed a construction site for weapons to make yourselves feel tougher.

"And in the third and final place, just, you know what? How about you come out and say which bad people you're looking for trouble from, if it's not me? The girl who shot that judge. You worried for the people who look like and care for her? Or are you worried about them?"

The most annoying god damn thing of all is that everything's already on fire. Being in a permanent time crunch is the actual worst. The rush makes it too hard to avoid mistakes, but all she can do is cut to the chase. At least this one is easy in the sense that it almost doesn't matter if they're on "her side" or not. One way or the other she needs to send them home. Just, if she gets the how wrong she might set an even bigger fire in the process.

God. Ok fine, she is also burning like an industrial flare about the walking home question. Stupid god damn giants, take her seriously.

Breathless Dead

The first thing Mosaic does is bow. Her spine curls downward while her neck lifts up to maintain her posture as she dips, lower and lower until the ribbons in her hair sweep across the floor. Her left arm reaches across her chest while her right stretches off into the air. The shadows and the broken lighting are more than enough to change the tint of her fur, transforming the pristine white into something mottled and almost like sea foam. Too bright in places and too dark in others, and the overall effect shifted from warm heat to something much too cool.

She holds the pose to avoid having to say anything for another moment. She hides the rising and falling of her chest, and does not risk speaking while she sounds like she ran through a ship she mostly stalked across, instead. She holds the pose for the sake of respect. Because she must admire what she sees.

The ache and hidden shiver of her body is weakness. The curl of her tail above her back is strength. Her deference to the hissing knight before her is weakness. Her respect for Power is strength. Her home, her walls, her favorite chair are trickling down into the throne of the woman she means to depose. This too is strength. This too is weakness.

She rises again, and the smile on her face has nothing of cockiness or derision inside of it. She is in the presence of the Invincible. The shadow that splits the Crystal Knight's face is not a scar. Scars are things worn by those who bleed. This is acknowledgment. The might of the blow struck against her has been turned into paint. Already the blotch of darkness is melting away as the crew frantically works the materials of her home better into walls where it converts into more and more perfect lighting. This is Art. This is a transient monument to an act that had shattered Mosaic's body and meant nothing more than the stroke of a brush to the mighty Crystal Knight.

An idiot might say that vanity allowed Mosaic to walk into a throne room and posture after meeting little more than token resistance. But she knows better. This is Power. This is the raw, impossible might of the Skies. Of course aesthetics are more important than defenses. Defense is something you build if you think you might get hurt. The Endless Azure Skies are above all of that. They stretch over every petty, mortal concern so that only Beauty is left to them to tend to.

It pulls her breath short, in a way that has nothing to do with the fatigue in her body that wages war with the spikes of adrenaline currently surging through her bloodstream. It pulls her lips apart in awe. It also sets her eyes ablaze with starlight and puts strength back into her limbs. For all that this is the domain of godhood, it is also an immovable fact that if Mosaic had to fight her way into this chamber, she would not be standing now. Her hunt has been acknowledged, and the riddle of Zeus is all around her. What could be better for answering the question she yearns to know more than anything?

She rises. Her tail cracks like thunder. Her fingers dance across her braid, to feel the flutter of each of her promises to walk away from this against her fingtertips. Her teeth glint in the relative darkness while mismatched eyes shine like lanterns up at the throne. Up at prey.

"Greetings, Fair Lady Crystal Knight," she laughs, though it hurts her ribs, "Welcome to my home! In the spirit of hospitality, I have come to ask you to return my teacher to me. As her Captain it's my responsibility to punish her for breaking a promise, see. I couldn't possibly ask an honored guest to do it for me~"

Mosaic's lips are painted crimson. As she finishes speaking, they pull up into a devil's smirk.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Well. That's kinda just how it is, isn't it? Limitations of a single person and all that. Still though. Still. Euna watches all the pins that should be 'beyond' her with rapt attention. If somebody's ever stuck in this sea, like Mew was but in even more immediate danger, if it's a problem she can solve with a fireman's carry and a willingness to breath tear gas and get threatened with various forms of grievous bodily harm... she's just gotta know, ok?

But right now? Sigh. Right now. This stings. Not necessarily her inability to fight as a one woman army against a literal sea of people and magically knock a whole freaking race riot out on the street (yeah but), because, like (still though?)... again. Limitations of a single person (sigh again). But this assessment. Her targets of opportunity, based on relative location and her own ability to swoop in and fix them are. Are.

...Property. And Prevention. It's hard for Euna not to doubt herself. It's hard for her not to worry that she hadn't gotten out of the police force in time to save herself from the brain rot. Is she just seeking out safe, low value crime as an excuse to punch some people in the face?

"Not the time, Eunie. Examine your soul in the shower, after people stop asking for help."

She taps herself on the cheek, and then adjusts her mask to make sure it hasn't come loose. Well then, property or prevention? There's not a lot of time to make the choice. One's a threat happening now, one's something that might not turn into anything more than a few scary slogans shouted under torchlight. There's still arguments that could be made for each.

Gut level, though. Instinct read. Looters are less likely to escalate. As long as they're stealing crap they probably want to keep it, and that means they need to stay quiet. Meanwhile down the street, five or six people have put on masks. They've anonymized, so possibly bolder. Numbers enough to feel safe, and enough to attract a larger crowd if they get going. The danger's higher over there. She can make it, and that's where she should go.

Sorry, store owners. One person. Please try not to blame anyone who doesn't deserve it?

The nice thing about a small gang in hockey masks is that they never really see the point in hiding themselves or otherwise make it hard to figure out where they are. In fact they're usually hoping someone will find them, so they don't have to work up the courage to go and hunt anybody down or have to deal with the mental work of deciding to swing the weapons they've already armed themselves with. Good news, buddies! Euna Kim is here!

She comes skidding to a halt on the edges of her shoes, right up against what she tells her students is the Danger Zone. That magical spot where the wrong word gets a baseball bat upside your jaw with no real window to react to it. She straightens up and realizes with a small click of disappointment that she doesn't have a height advantage on a one of them. Not that it, look, 170cm isn't so short that it's a major disadvantage in street fighting in particular, but it's an immovable fact that people shorter than you are more likely to listen to you if you shout at them to knock something off.

So that's a bummer. But she shrugs it off and cracks her neck, seeing as how her knuckles stopped being able to do that years and years ago.

"Hey. You fellas want to maybe rethink this? I feel 'construction thug' is a bad look these days. Just go home, ok? It's dangerous out, and nothing you do out here's gonna make you feel very good about yourselves tomorrow."

Not the most authoritative, but she's at least given them an out. Six to one means that if a fight's their endgame she's not going to intimidate them out of it. They'll need bruises to convince them of the virtues of a nice, quiet movie night. In that case she wants to duck under the swing of the one with the hammer, block it the forearm before momentum builds up. Torque the wrist, kick to ribs, wrench free. She can break the rest with that in the hesitation that follows when they realize she knows what she's doing better than they do.

But until then, fully neutral stance. Readiness to react without the implication that she's about to. They really can still walk away. Or talk. Maybe someone just pointing out an alternative is all they really needed?

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

"Yeah Mew, it's all right. I promise I'll be safe."

And because she means it when she says it Euna makes a heart shape with both her hands and places it over her chest where her actual heart is beating. Middle fingers and thumbs only, with the rest of her fingers touching together above the shape to form almost a sort of roof over her formation. It's a very delicate shape, the kind you only think to make if you spend way too much time thinking about these sorts of gestures and which would be the coolest ones in any given situation. Training. Planning. Dedication. That's what it takes to be the best at what you do.

She breaks it apart so she can wave.

"See you on Friday, then! I'm looking forward to it!"

There's no lies in any of this, ok? Prob, uh, prob-probably. If she goes home before the night runs out completely and manages to not get picked off in the meantime, it'll be completely true! Unless you count lies of omission, which is probably why there's a guilty prickle in her gut right now.

It's just, you know, again, she needs to help people if she's ever going to be able to sleep again. It needs to be her and it needs to be now. And if she's lucky they'll all turn out like Mew and she'll feel ridiculous later for all the hype and doom saying. But she doesn't believe that any more than she thinks a camera feed's gonna save either of them if it comes to pressing charges.

She can at least do Mew the kindness of walking, casually, until she's around the corner. See? This isn't someone with anywhere to go in a hurry. A last little white lie to keep her home with stories instead of running back out to try and change her mind. But the second she's clear she's checking the map for pins. And that's all the proof she needs that she's not done yet. It has to be her. It has to be now.

If there was time, she'd build a spreadsheet to try and track these requests by some extra metrics to help her be as objective as possible in case she can't make it everywhere she needs to be in time. But now that'd take more time than it saved, so all she can do is focus on the requests that make a path to the highest density, unless she finds a message anywhere creating urgency.

You know, there's probably a trolley problem in here somewhere if you look hard enough? But who's got time for that when there's sprinting that needs doing? Besides, a trolley can't run over anyone if you just suplex it at the switching station.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"It is not a question of disappointment, it is--"

Warning! Warning! Warning! The missile lock alerts blare too loudly and too numerously for the thought to stay inside her brain. Words become alarms faster than she can think them, and there is only enough space left inside her to control the fight. The rest of her is too occupied with remembering not to vocalize the noise she's hearing as conversation. Mirror grits her teeth and gives up on conversation for the time being.

Assessment: Solarel's Hellzone Grenade. A 360 degree missile barrage designed to surround and crush a flying opponent. Avenues of retreat? None found. Avenues of attack? Impractical. Avenues of Defense? Inadvisable. Impossible. When the Bezorel had done it, Mirror panicked and unveiled the Full Configuration technique of her Third Form: the philosophy of the shield. She had survived, but the Nine Drive System had suffered a capacity reduction of roughly 60% in the process. A second attack of the same technique would have destroyed her Tails entirely. A third? Death.

Assessment, Assessment. Moonlight Immemorial Vanguard deemed unsuitable defense. Additionally, Full Configuration techniques have been locked by the Chains. Second tier response, Moonlight Nightmare Cage, philosophy of the net, likewise sealed. Four out of Five required Tails presently available.

Assessment: Shit. Fuck. No time. No time. No time!

"Philosophy. Of," Mirror groans, "The. Comet."

She continues bombarding the ground, only with wide arcing bursts instead of controlled mortar style attacks. Already her fingers are angling down on joysticks and adjusting dials. Her feet twist on pedals and the Gods-Smiting Whip hurtles downward in the wake of her barrage on an apparent suicide course. As she falls, her Tails cease their assault to the main body of her mecha, along her back where they are safest, except for Tail One, which connects to her left forearm. She holds it up with the briefest flicker of shielding as she dives through the heat of the explosions.

Yes. Correct. Techniques were a trap. Her secrets were of no use here. The entire Nine Drive System was nothing but an elaborate net for her to tangle herself inside of. Unhelpful. Meaningless. How had she become so blind? The One Day Defender had no need of this toy. She bursts through. Her thrusters roar to life, hotter than ever now that her Tails have been suspended. Behind her, missile clusters bend their arcs through the air and give chase.

She falls. She twists. She holds Tail One against the hip of her armor and shoots tiny bursts of lasers to clear paths through the sky that she cannot dodge through. The alarms still scream at her, Warning, Warning, Warning! Missile Lock confirmed! Detonation immanent. The force of gravity in her cockpit crushes her against her chair at all sorts of horrible angles. Her vision starts to turn black around the corners of her eyes.

And still, she flies. The Gods-Smiting Whip dead stop hovers over the surface of the water, spraying mist everywhere before she reduces that to steam and hurtles herself back into the sky while another dozen missiles ruin themselves against the arena floor. Great geysers of superheated water join with crumbling blocks of already ruined buildings and chunks of moss and other plant matter to turn the pristine pools into a hellscape of wartime imagery. Mirror does not see it. The results of her repainting the arenas intentions are a mystery to her.

She is too busy planting the Whip's feet on the body of a missile. She cannot ride it, that is the domain of the Animes alone, but there is enough time to kick its fin in and send it wobbling off course until it detonates and opens another tiny window she can zip through to another moment of safety. Up, up, up, up, toward the arena ceiling where the still dense cluster of missiles will have less room to give chase, target lock or no. She flies as the sun does, on the back of a mighty hunting beast that must cross the whole of Hybrasil in a single day, without ever resting.

She has a moment only to hover there, twitching in the sky as even now her fingers work the controls unsatisfied with the apm of her absurd acrobatics. Her cockpit is sweltering. Her breath is ragged and there is blood oozing from her right ear. Her arms are twitching from the effort of holding her hands steady. But there is not an input out of place. She drops, with her sword held above her head as though she meant to fight through the remaining ordinance with only this.

...Predicting the path of predictive guidance systems should be simple. Particularly after being chased by them for over a minute. But it is the farthest thing from true. All flight path adjustments need to be made at the last second, even being the more maneuverable individual combatant, because early shifts offered the cluster an advantage and an opportunity to remove dodging avenues from her repertoire after she would already have had to select them.

Chunks of arena "sky" rain down upon her as she dives. Her tails spring back to life and vaporize them one by one. The Gods-Smiting Whip crashes into the hissing, murky water and drops to one knee, leaning on its sword to enable a faster rise once its pilot is capable of commanding it to.

But Mirror is slumped forward against her console. Her shimmering blue eye and a tiny bit of her fur are the only things visible on her broadcast to Marcina Villajero. The sound of her wet, overheated breathing takes up comms space for several more seconds before she is able to drag herself into an upright seated position.

"I do... admire. Your. Work. Ethic. But you... are. Frustrated. So I will. Change. My. My question. For a. For a. For a. Moment." Mirror manages a lopsided as she lifts her mecha into a battle ready position again, Tails popping off her back and returning to life, "How? Does it feel? Fighting me?"

[Defy Disaster: 2+4+3 = 9]