Phoe

Breathless Dead

"Explain to me again why we don't want to pose as students?"

Bella stares with longing at the photograph of the Portuguese university students. Their robes looked wispy and insubstantial, but the way they hung off of these people's awkward bodies was alluring to her. Ethereal. That was the word she wanted to use. What was wrong with wanting to finally wear something pretty? Omn spins its outer ring in response. The orange glow gave off the impression of a delighted chuckle.

"As a reminder, your primary interest in this species is anthropological?"

"If that's what you wanna call it. I'm just trying to figure out what they're like from someone that isn't one of the three wise assholes floating up above them."

"And I applaud your curiosity, Lady Mosaic. The foundation of any great administration is a firm grasp of the facts!"

Bella winces and squeezes her arm, but says nothing. The folio of reconnaissance photos drops onto the table in front of her as she watches the pulsing light at the core of her former (and current) advisor. Just how the fuck did it get here to begin with? It hadn't made the crossing with anybody.

But then... no. Maybe that was the wrong way to think about the Underworld to begin with. She scowls in thought as Omn continues its lecture.

"Since focused study is your intention, my recommendation is to look for a solution that will allow for the longest possible period of untainted observation time."

"Untainted? The fuck does that mean?"

"You needn't worry yourself Lady, it is a very simple principle to follow. To begin with while there is little we can definitively say for ourselves about this new society, we do know with absolute certainty they are a civilization in crisis after contact with multiple Imperial-grade factions. Their society is grappling with questions of biomantic ascension while under explicit threat from a Knight of the Endless Azure Skies and attempted assimilation into a Ceronian squadron. If you do not take steps to hide your own nature as a being on par with these threats, their only logical conclusion will be that you are a third, equal threat."

Bella yawns and fusses with her hair for a moment before answering. She briefly opens the folder to look at all of NBX's example pictures again, but slams it shut after only half a glance.

"You're saying that even if I convince them I don't have an agenda it still won't give me what I want?"

Omn briefly contracts its rings so tightly that its core becomes obscured by the thrumming metal, and then expands to almost the entire room so that Bella's nose is only a centimeter or two away from the outermost portion.

"Correct," it hums with pride, "That is the issue you wish to avoid! Remember, high level portions of this civilization have already come to the conclusion that their 'visitors' are deities or reincarnations of their important historical figures. You might be able to make them friendly, but you will never gain access to unfettered truth that way. It will become their mission to leave you with a favorable impression, and will block your access to the working citizenry."

"Sure, whatever. And what the fuck does this have to do with not posing as students again?"

"Oh that is simply a question of sustainability, Lady Mosaic. While I do not doubt the Service's information gathering acumen, they have offered you a 'bird's eye' view of the situation. You can reasonably assume that some of your conclusions about your observation targets will be incorrect ahead of time."

"So what, you doubt my acting skills? Fuck you, I fooled Dany for years. I can pull this off!"

"I am merely suggesting," says Omn through a curious rotation, shifting from a cardinal axis to an ordinal one, "That playing the role of an outsider will allow you to ask more impertinent questions for longer without arousing suspicion than a role that requires you to have insider knowledge of a society you have only just discovered. And besides that."

"...What?" Bella sniffs the air in suspicion.

"While no one could argue that you are not in the flower of your youth I question the ability of a woman of your, ah, pedigree to pass for a student. I fear you are more likely to come across as an erotic holonovel interpretation of the role and though I for one--"

"What." Bella's eyes are slits. Her claws quiver as they lift into the air, "The fuck. Is this? You piece of shit, if this is your idea of a joke I'm gonna carve you into pieces right fucking now and use you as a wine rack. You want that? How's that for funny, you misshapen eyeball wannabe fuck?"

But Omn is not built to respond to threats. It merely changes its oscillation patterns again in the mechanical equivalent of a proud parent ruffling a child's hair.

"Voice inflection recognition confirmed. Welcome back, Praetor Bella. It is an honor to serve you once again. Shall I prepare a list of mission appropriate disguises for your perusal?"

It feels like being punched in the stomach. There is no air inside her lungs. Anger and embarrassment lay forgotten at her feet as Bella folds down into her seat again, sitting there with her elbows pressed into her knees and her head thrust into her hands. She stares at the floor, but the shadows pulsate there in wild dances lit by a soft orange glow.

"...Yeah,"she breathes, "Go ahead and. Yeah."

********

Even now, Bella could not explain why she felt compelled to travel among the Portuguese and learn anything at all. It made no sense, when the most important goal of all was to keep the Plousios' visible involvement to a minimum. Anything that made their course more traceable was a potential disaster, and it was supposed to be her job to stay focused on that.

But here she was, pulling a hood stitched together by her Hermetic team over her head and arranging a truly gaudy amount of jewelry across her person. Her outfit was really more gold and non-precious but still eye catching stones than it was fabric, both by volume and by coverage. Tight fitting pants helped restrict her movement a little while the baggy top obscured her form and its potential power, at least where it wasn't pinched back around her arms or neck or waist by band after band after band of gold or strapped together by obnoxious leather belts.

The whole point was to look tacky. She hated how much sense Omn made when it explained it. From out of town but still in system; enough to excuse most culture clashes she or Dyssia or Taurus would become a part of but still on the level of the Portuguese so that nobody would connect them to the Skies or to the Daughters of Ceron or to... well. Nobody was going to connect her to the place she was actually from even if she shouted it in their faces. But still. And even so.

Stupid. That's what this was. Just stupid. This is the kind of idle curiosity she was always screaming at Dany about, and now she'd proven she was never any better about it in the first place. What did she hope to get out of this?

The actual name of these people, for one thing. But maybe she had no real reason at all. The place she came from had been dead before she was even born. It might've been stupid and selfish, but was it wrong of her to want to go and see somewhere in the middle of dying, too?

Breathless Dead

Bella has eyes only for paperwork. The arrangement of every letter, and then the words they spell, and the sentences they form after that. The spacing of NBX-462's signature, how it flows, the smell of the ink and the pressure on the paper, how evenly it's replicated across multiple forms. She barely bothers smelling the air beyond the pages; these things tell her more about the situation than any scents of lies or deception she could look for. His body language is similarly useless, the eyes, the smile, his posture and the tone of his voice. None of it told her a fucking thing she wouldn't find here in the forest of Artemis.

"Oh yes. Totally agree," she drones, not looking up, "Backwards as it gets. Wrong way to live and so on. Someone really ought to do something."

Her pen hesitates over top of the contract. Her lips purse and her tail twitches in apparent irritation. Fucking sheep has her over a barrel. She'd invoked this contract as a way of saving everybody's ass from a trap but now he's gone and signed the fucking thing and it's turned into a trap instead. The question of whether or not she can trust the fluffball or not...

Unmistakable heat rises up to her cheeks. She leans farther over the paper. In clean, sharp lines she writes a name. The only name she can write if this is gonna mean anything, consequence be damned.

Bella. Hostilius. Meowmeow.

Her fingers grip the pen so tight that it cracks clean in half. Snarling, she lets it fall to the ground and rushes to fold the contract in half and then in half again before she hands it back. Her claws tear into the table when she tries to settle back down; she stands instead, and makes a show of smoothing out her dress. With a very calculated breath and a violent toss of her hair, she bows.

"I... appreciate your helpfulness with all of this. Sir. Rest assured, we have enough information to handle everything. We'll be in touch once we've settled your problem."

She does not wait for a response. With the Auspex pouring its baleful power all over the room in murderous waves, it is no problem at all to sweep Dyssia, Ember, and her entourage from the room along with her.

Silver Divers for Silver Kings. Obvious enough. Ember can take her wolves and handle things however she feels like it, as long as it gets handled she's got no reason to care how. Whatever problems crop up she can't handle them until later anyway.

That leaves herself and Dyssia, with Taurus as an honor guard, alone in a shuttle heading for the surface of the planet. She's calmer here, at least. Though she sits in a dangerous hunch, her claws curling inward and her eyes smoldering in the direction of the floor.

"You can't trust a fucking thing the little diplomat says," she muses, "That's why we're going down there ourselves. I want to see what these people look like with my own eyes. Don't get it twisted, though. Whatever we find down there, we're leaving behind. I just... need to know."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"And Actia is? Hrm. I see."

Saber's head lolls against the window as she watches a field of mighty golden flowers get sliced and crushed for the crime of not getting out of the way of a plastered monk's revenge. Seeds spray everywhere, which will in time rise up and become fields of beautiful golden petals in their own right and whisper the story of the Death Temple to one another in the wind and in the song of plants. Perhaps they will plot their own revenge one day. One supposes this too is war.

And this is indeed war, for Diaofei is a warrior. There is very little else she could be called, honestly. She slept through the mysterious Servant's offer to have her killed of course, but every moment thereafter had not phased her in the slightest. Even after being carried through a bombardment and thrown up (and back down) a wall and through several tense minutes of combat and negotiation in which her own body was used as collateral, she asks zero questions. Shows no curiosity or concern. The only possible conclusion was that warfare at this level was commonplace for someone like her. Did it really mean so little to her that she'd slipped right past it back to her original promised vengeance? Perhaps this world and its verdant abundance was actually built off the back of endless, unceasing battle and bloodshed.

That both did and didn't track with the information filtering through her mind as she considered the place around her. Saber shrugs and yawns. Oh well. For her at least this was its own kind of rest.

"Wake me up when we get there, ok? I'm not supposed to need sleep, but in terms of maintaining my own existence you're about as useful to me as a tomato. Speaking of which..."

There's still a little left of the feast she'd prepared back at the fire and the offerings from the shrines she'd looted. It had been intended for her Master, but desperate times and all that. Saber pops the bright red fruit in her mouth whole, and swallows without chewing. The severed stalk of another proud sunflower goes spinning past her window as her eyes drift lazily shut.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Solarel! Ever since we parted. I have thought of only one thing. All my projects bend here. To this. Every glance I stole toward the horizon! Was only to defeat you! This is my love! This is my anger! And it is my sorrow! Nine Drive System, Final Configuration! The Second Form: The Kiss of the Comet!"

And then she ejects. And then she falls, swords in her hands and a staff on her back.

Above her the Gods-Smiting Whip executes the very first macro she'd ever programmed into the controls. Nine cores of nine Crystal Fire Drives burn at maximum intensity, guided by the Control Tail. A finger pulls a trigger. And then everything is silence. Mira, Mirror. You ridiculous creature. With a blast that huge you could never have missed in the first place.

The beam is not a simple rainbow. Seven colors are not enough to express this much pure, reality warping energy. It is more accurate to say that the beam is every color. Every expressible shade and concept all packed together in a spiraling kaleidoscope of glittering, silent power. Speak Not.

The air itself is erased. Buildings vanish into nothing. The arena shudders in primal terror. Trees, rivers, grass, a mirror-sheen lake, ruins and temples and shining glass towers all twist into a single spire at the tip of a spear, and more besides. It's an attack beyond description. It's an attack that cannot be parried or out thought. It's an attack that will forever alter the destinies of everything it hits. The Gods-Smiting Whip is no exception. Its head tilts down to watch Mira as she falls, armor plates shearing off of its body from all angles from the sheer force of the reaction standing behind the beam. She did not program any such reaction.

No wind whips her hair or her constantly shifting battle dress as she plummets toward the uncertain ground. Mira simply falls as if through a vacuum tube, with her eyes turned directly toward the multi-spectral destruction she's unleashed above her. There, Solarel. Was that obvious enough. Was it worth all the hints? Was it worth giving the game away to get you to follow? The nature of the Second Form is that it leaves exactly one way out of everything it does. In this case...

Mira hooks her sword behind her and grabs at the center of it with the deepest part of the blade's curve. She twists her hips, as her dress shifts from glittering diamond fullplate to a long trailing wedding dress made entirely of intricate and interweaving lace patterns that resemble ripples around flower blossoms sitting in the water. Her fangs peek out from underneath her lips as she watches the staff fly up and away from her, across the path of the most likely trajectory a second pilot would have to take to keep herself safe.

The staff separates as it flies, connected in three parts by lengths of sturdy black chain. Mirror's eyes flash with delight, and she slashes the non-air a dozen times in a circle of scything blade work that serves no purpose other than intense, delighted laughter. At last, at last, at last! Let the Gods above sing their song of change together!

Above, the streaming weapon starts to dissipate. Clouds form concentric circles above the arena, though they glitter like diamonds and dance like a flock of birds. The shape of two mecha is lost to haze and mists and the underworld. Cameras flicker back to life over the waste and the beauty and the mysteries that Mira is no longer bothering to pay attention to. Whatever audience there is will see two women falling toward each other and the ground so very, very far away. There is nothing else to see. Nothing but

You and I! You and I, Solarel! Speak Not! And yet! Speak Always! Speak loudest and together, speak with me forever! Share with me your secrets and your heart and take mine into the empty space you leave behind with everything that you are! Come and see the true shape of your power! And let me finally, finally, finally, finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally FINALLY feel it with my own body!

Come to me, my nemesis! My rival! My one and only heart!

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"It's nice to be noticed. Even if it's only now, before the end."

Mira lifts her eyes away from the rapidly encroaching Solarel for just long enough to make eye contact with a side camera in her cockpit. For these two seconds, all of her attention is on Matty, watching her. She lifts a hand up and makes a fist, back two fingers pulled out to be held level with the ground: the Hybrasillian gesture for 'ok'. The countdown has begun.

There is a secret to Mira's Rain of Starlight technique, of course. Why wouldn't there be? It's not a thing anyone should feel bad about not thinking about, there's been plenty enough to deal with just dodging the increasingly tight rings of lasers in their beautiful curtains. But now that it's come to it, what way did she have to get those rings so tight at the end?

Tail One slips into the circle, unscathed, and locks into position at the tip of the spear. Tail Two attaches just behind it, then Tail Three to the other side. In the end, this was the sum total of her scheming. Nothing more and nothing less than exactly what Solarel predicted. An idiot will always be an idiot. She can be as convoluted as she likes but at the cutting moment her creativity is just a really big gun.

Four, Five, Six, click click click. One thing she'll give herself credit for, even in this moment, is that she has bought herself one hell of a shot. She literally cannot miss. The Aeteline is rushing straight on through the final curtain and already the blinding polychromatic beam is charging at the tip of what is increasingly obviously an oversized sniper rifle. Seven, eight. The arrangement is clockwork precise.

Tail Nine reaches up and plugs into the butt of the rifle. Mira opens her mouth to say something before the end, and --

*************

"Oh. I'm sorry. Were you watching that~?"

Pounding drumbeats in the dark, tinny synthwaves with the treble turned up way too godsdamn high and hardly any bass to speak of, the insistent hum of a very artificial trumpet? That's! That's Mayze Szerpaws' music!!

One, two, three, spotlights click on in the studio from center left and right. Click click click the echo of her high heels on the marble floor. The pinstripes on her pants are visible first. She has chosen an exceedingly plain (though well tailored) Terenian style "power" business suit with no alterations whatsoever. The same pattern on the pants, vest, and blazer: midnight blue with powdery white vertical stripes. A black button up shirt, a blood red pocket square, and the heavy black and white mask she always wears over her face.

Of course. Mayze never puts herself in her own creations, nor anyone else's. Fashion is for others' sake, she wears cheap off the rack ensembles to save on mental energy. That's what the lore says about her anyway. Today she stands alone in her lights, no models or mannequins or even canvas on an easel. Just one woman standing in the confluence of three lights, contrasted against the darkness.

"I do apologize," she says in the middle of an amused tail flick, "But after observing your behavior post the Akar fashion show..."

There is a subtle arch to her back. Her gloved hands visibly strain at the fingertips from pressing claws. Her left ear flutters without control, and she chirps several times through pursed lips. The language of frustration, screamed into absolute silence.

"Flower dresses. Order after order after order, and nearly all I see is flower dresses. Was that the point I was making? Was that what you were told? I spoke words at that show you lackwits! You saw none of the beauty. You saw nothing of my soul. You saw that I could grow flashy dresses out of plants, and you skipped past my star charts and transformations and bid me turn myself into a horticulturist. After the three hundred and twelfth order, I knew. Knew I could not trust you impoverished dreamers with the finale of your little, nnnnnn, 'tournament'."

Mayze sniffs the air with as much raw contempt as that kind of gesture can allow. She takes a moment to compose herself, smoothing out the layers of her suit and adjusting the links of a simple chain necklace so that it drapes perfectly centered down her chest.

"You would have misunderstood. You would have watched and seen the weapon. You would have wanted more flower dresses, and missed the message behind it. I do not know whether it would be worse to see you panic and destroy that work in your fear, or to watch your eyes grow wide with hunger and demand this work for yourselves. It is of no consequence now. I will leave the truth of this battle for those who have proven to me they have ears. The rest of you get the kittens' version."

"You are. Wondering. No doubt you are wondering why a fashion designer should care so much about the outcome of our lovely little empires' beloved proxy war. Do I have some new line to unveil? Do I want you all to see it so much I do not mind going to prison to do it? Hardly. Mayze Szerpaws will never make another dress again. Her time has come. Her time has gone, in fact. Though she, that is I, has had more of a hand in this tournament than your realize."

Normally the moment of a Big Mazye Reveal would be accompanied by a dramatic change of lighting and a fresh surge of somehow even more tasteless music than her introduction. Today there is nothing. She isn't bothering, because she's arranged it already that she'll be the only thing that anyone even can watch. What point in showmanship when it's not possible to lose your audience?

She simply smirks in the dark, barely visible through the facial opening in her heavy, absurd mask.

"I designed the Nine Drive System used by the finalist mecha, the Gods-Smiting Whip. Designed. I did not, of course, build it, nor can I claim credit for it working so well. For that I leaned heavily on my accomplice, but nevertheless Nine Drive is my child. And in order to facilitate its birth, I created a persona that would attempt to excite the world of fashion and draw the interest of the rich and powerful to her. I learned to create dresses, spread rumors, and lied my way onto the publication la Plataforma to give myself opportunities to steal numerous resources until an outcast nutjob like myself could build a technological edge I could win a war with. I poisoned diplomats and politicians, accrued fame and favors, and continued apace with my work both alongside and against some of the most notorious pirate groups in the galaxy."

"Have you guessed my secret yet? Must I explain it, even at this final juncture? You idiots. There never was a Mayze Szerpaws. I made her up! I have only ever been..."

Without fanfare, Mayze grabs her mask and pulls it away. She tosses it across the floor from her with a loud clatter, and looks into the camera with her flowing, liquid eyes. Her whiskers twitch, anticipating a kill.

"Mira of the Fisher Clan, whose star name is Whispered Promise. Or Mirror, in the modern alphabet. I am a finalist here in this tournament and I am the pilot of the most unique mecha anywhere in the galaxy. Much has been speculated about the nature of my 'impossible' movement so far. I will explain now. This is the moment I wish to be seen for who I am. I was born with a neurological disease that makes feedback from the standard synthweave input system potentially lethal to me. I was cursed with a brain that saw mechas and dresses were the same thing, and dreamed of wearing both anyway."

"I pilot with a system of levers, pedals, joysticks, and buttons that control each of the individual servos and thrusters in the Gods-Smiting Whip. This implementation is the brilliant work of my partner, Selin of the Makers Clan, whose star name is Laughing Stone. She requests that you refer to her as 'Slate' for the remainder of our conversation. Testing of this system had only just been completed when contact between the Zaldarian and Hybrasilian empires resulted in war. It was the shock of seeing someone who did not, who could not pilot the way a mecha should move that enabled me to become the One-Day Defender."

Mirror's eyes flicker over the camera, never staying still long enough to meet even an imagined gaze. Her hands clench into fists now. Her neck tilts up with pride. She stares the camera down at last, so intensely and for so long that the recording device itself must be blushing.

"It is important for you to understand. That is why I tell you. I am not to be emulated. I am. In every way. A fraud. My reaction times are slower than the most novice pilot's you could name. My tactics are absurd and it is an insult to your honor that they have worked this well. My movements are inefficient. I lie. I deceive. Constantly. If I do not I am crushed outright. What I have is a crutch that allows me to pretend that I have wings. If I ever design another outfit, it will only be to give myself the same feeling when I am not sitting in the seat of that absurd machine."

"Nevertheless. I am a schemer. And if you can hear my voice, then all of my strategies have paid out to this moment. From here my victory in the tournament is inevitable. I have left no evidence. No proof. Of how I have settled things with Solarel. I will allow you to witness the result only. Thus, my final trick. My ultimate. Distraction. I will tell you why. I have dedicated so many years. Of. My life. To winning a war I do not approve of for a civilization that does not like me."

Mirror's expression softens, and her posture relaxes. She is smiling now. Her eyes squeeze shut as she imagines the payoff of relentless, exhausting effort.

"The winner of this tournament is granted one wish, to be paid out by no less than all three governing authorities of this galaxy. Well. My wish is for the creation of a planet. It is to be built on what is currently the frontier of the known galaxy. It will not be part of any current government, and its sovereignty is to be guaranteed by an alliance of the [Three Great Mothers]. I will build this planet as I wish, as sanctuary for every outcast who can't find somewhere else to go. There we will create. And there we will fight. And there we will love. I will prove to you the pointlessness of your childish shadow wars. True. Coexistence. Of all three peoples. You will bear witness, and you will hang your heads in shame."

"I do not whisper this promise. I scream it to the stars. You. Will. See. Me. And you. Will. Understand. Solarel. I. Love. You. We will. See each other. Soon."

Feed end. Gray screen. Static. Returning control in Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven...

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Saber's fighting style, once it came down to a one on one fight, can best be described as lazy. Not that there's a lot for her to do just now with Kat struggling so valiantly to keep there from being a fight, but even so. A Berserker cannot be denied forever. With one hand gripping her sword, Saber turns her body to present a narrower profile and never seems to do much beyond a vague turning of her wrist or, at most, her forearm. She puts the blade where the threat is and jams it. No fancy tricks, no obvious exertion, just deny, deny, deny.

Even on offense there is nothing special to what she does. The glittering sword is all that speaks to her being a figure of legend or a terrifying ancient spirit brought back to life by a dread ritual: her form is... perfunctory. She simply rises up on her legs to gain height and swings her weapon down on Berserker's head. It's not a heavy looking blow; her arm barely seems to move.

But it drops Berserker to her knees anyway. It requires two hands to block and causes both Masters to scream as if someone had just pinched them from behind in a dark room. And when she grins, none of that laziness matters at all.

"Very well then, Lady Fluffymountains!" she even manages to say it with a voice full of respect, "I thank you for your kindness and generosity. Until we meet again! All I ask is that you do not allow yourself to be defeated. Not by..."

But who she means to warn again is lost in Berserker's loud cry and counterattack. The true purpose of Saber's strike is revealed instead of the nature of her warning, if it is indeed a warning in the first place. This is a launch pad. When she is thrown into the air she twists her spine seemingly in half and arcs over the edge of the rampart, which she runs down the side of in only five strides.

On the ground again, she is water. She is lightning. She is shameless in retreat, laughing and loping and seeking shadows or the river without delay. Whatever makes her more dangerous to follow. But the second she is out of sight and easy following distance, she collapses to her knees. Her gigantic body trembles up and down it's entire length. She cranes her neck to look to the stars, unfamiliar all.

"Master," she grunts, "We need to hide ourselves. Somewhere safe to recover and plan. Your palace is not an option, where else do you know that we can go? Be our guide, if not our legs."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Nnnnnnnnngh, hfffffffffft! You. You! You absolute!!"

Mira is trembling. Her painted lips are quivering and her eyes are so shrunken that her irises are vibrating like they're being bounced around in a snow globe. Her fur bristles and darkens as the flesh under it flushes with pure embarrassment. Her hand lifts several times to smash a hole in her console only to stop abruptly and fly toward her face instead. It doesn't make it there either; she has absolutely no idea what to do with herself in this unexpected moment of being Seen before she's ready for it.

But then she laughs. Strained at first but then rising higher and higher, trills of mirth so absolute it borders on insanity. Her fingers find her face after all, and she squeezes her skull like one of those evil (read: stylish and cool) Animes to keep from toppling over out of her chair as her Goddess braids bounce and tumble over her shoulders and her face. It builds so high that laughing starts to take the place of breathing and desperate gasps for oxygen start to steal her voice from her.

While that happens, several skyscrapers topple over into rubble. Concrete, steel, and glass fall in avalanches and make a lethal mess of the battlefield. The ruin of nations, set to giddy, girlish laughter. Bright bursts of light flare up in the smoke, and then another building screams and falls on its sword, as though it had sinned and only crushing Solarel with its dying body could absolve it and buy it a place in the Skyscraper Afterlife.

"Priced into your battle plans! Aha! Ahahaha! Priced into!! Gffffawhahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa! You idiot! I've missed you so much. My heart aches! Aha! Ahaha! Hahaha, ahahahahahahaha! How! How is that the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me?! I can't accept this! I do not! I won't! Lose! Like! This!"

She can't stop her laughter. But she can force it into dark chuckling. And as the tone shifts, so too does the battlefield. No longer does the Gods-Smiting Whip hide in the chaos and the ruin. Now it hunts. Now flickers of motion inside the smoke turn out to be rogue Tails that fire off like shotguns and then zip back into the darkness. Sometimes it's half a rooftop instead, launched upwards by who-even-knows what mechanism. The sounds of her thrusters and the feet of the Gods-Smiting Whip crushing the debris it creates echo around the battlefield.

Everything is a weapon. Her field is spread wide, impossibly wide and enormous in the manner of the stars, until even the Aeteline must stop and feel small in response. Sometimes she lunges from the smoke and dust herself, claw blade shining on her forearm as she slashes wildly before she disappears in a sudden explosion and a shower of blinding sparks she creates by striking her spear. The First Form: The Claws that Steal the Sky given new power by this mysterious weapon in her hands. Not that she is uncatchable in these moments. In fact these exchanges turn into increasingly severe damage trades the more she attempts them, and it gets harder and harder for her to disappear the more the tactic grows stale. But she does it anyway, because in this moment the aesthetic of the hunter is more important than absolute victory.

Or because One Layer of Defense means that getting her leg blown off is a small price to pay if it proves her genius. If it contributes to her sense of inevitability.

> if it's that easy then prove it.
> prove you are worthy of my blade.
> come and kiss me before the end.
> let me feel your touch.
> your God is worthless trash.
> i only want to feel you.
> so i will only permit you to join me in the sky.

"Nine Drive System, Partial Configuration."

The Gods-Smiting Whip roars to life, lifting out of the dense cloud of dust that used to be a cityscape and up into the sky. Up, and up, and up, and up, on wings of fire. Her Tails are nowhere to be seen; all eight of her free floating ones are hidden somewhere away from the obvious target of her physical body.

"The Second Form."

Wait. The what? Think through the tournament for a moment. The First Form: claws and fangs and weapons worthy of a knight. The Third Form: shields and chains and traps worthy of a trickster. The Second Form... the second? Has she ever used anything like that? Have her tactics even implied she was holding it in reserve?

From eight different angles, light and heat burst from the scarred earth. The shots are not precise, but there are so many of them that they create danmaku fans of sparkling death arcing around herself as the center of the universe she is creating. They spiral and pulse to music that nobody can hear.

"The Rain of Starlight."

The curtain of lasers streaks through the skies in distinct waves. But the promise of a bullet hell isn't an impossible to dodge super attack: it's a puzzle that's meant to be solved. Raw skill checks aren't enough to clear the space to the pocket of freedom where she waits with only her fullerene spear and the Control Tail to protect her. Though those are important, it takes a sharp and above all playful mind to see the shape of the openings in the curtains that are meant to be dodged through.

The ones that can only be slipped through imperfectly, so that light will kiss the mecha with every wave successfully dodged. Painting a brief flash of heat and a nip of teeth across the inside of a thigh. On the stomach. Against one breast, and then the other. A shoulder. A hip. The neck.

Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, and excitement rising higher into the infinite skies, where gravity is nothing but a suggestion and the sharpest of claws are mere foreplay. A place where perfection is impossible, actually, and messy emotions are the only guides worth following.

But while she waits for this almost-final embrace, her audio feed cuts out entirely. She smiles in total silence, and reaches for a headset to make an outgoing call in her bubble of secrecy.

"Hello?" she chirps into a special line gifted to her for her audacity, "Have I reached Adriana Teresio, Queen of the Consortium? Delightful. I wish to inform you of a theft. I am, as you say, about to steal your show. Would you mind terribly dispatching such skilled pilots as you trust to your broadcast station? I'm afraid you have a limited window to deploy before I and my accomplices enjoy a dreadfully boring escape.

And we musn't have that, don't you agree~?"

Breathless Dead

Even with all this extra time to sort through it, Mosaic's wardrobe remained a horrifying clusterfuck of bad decisions. Everything read like the decisions of some drunk-off-her-ass pillaging mercenary or someone cursed to only be able to wear things gifted to them on different days by different people. Everything that woman was was defined by her name, and worse than that by pride in that name. Contrasts in colors and fabrics and lengths and styles and just... herself, reflected endlessly, intentionally highlighting all her worst features as if they were her best.

Like she wasn't afraid of the scars or the fur or the skin. Like she was proud of her muscles and her fat at the same time. Like the ignorant rube whose only accomplishment was crawling out of the Lethe and passing out on a beach had somehow transcended the woman she'd replaced without even knowing who she was. It made Bella sick just looking at it. All of it was hideous and ill-fitting and tripping over itself fawning over Artemis, which was a hell of a thing to stick to yourself when you couldn't even hunt right you idiot.

But she was stuck with all of it. Bella couldn't tear every last scrap of clothing apart trying to stitch it into something workable without it arousing even more suspicion in the crew of this new Plosious than she did just by existing. Never mind disappointing them, she didn't want to think about what some of them would do to her when they realized their great hero had been replaced by a broken servant of an empire that had apparently died before living memory. So all she could do was root around in the pile until she could find something that at least didn't make her feel hideous to walk around in.

Besides, it's not like she needed another reason to feel inferior to her shell after that debacle of a "strategy meeting" with the allies she couldn't stop yelling at. That's what brought her here to this meeting in the most feminine thing Mosaic owned: a glittering coral colored gown on spaghetti straps with a plunging neckline to kill a god. The high slit on the right thigh exposed the form fitting black leather pants that went with it for some inexplicable reason, along with the crossing golden chains that helixed their way down her legs all the way to her ankles and the flat, soft shoes that covered her feet. At least the elbow-length gloves, for all that the gaudy teal color ran against her fur, covered up the healing her arm was still undergoing.

Bella glares at the sheep with a practiced haughtiness that somehow conveys the title 'Praetor' in a land where the word had no meaning. Odd. She thought the Synnefo favored soft and bottom-heavy, unassuming builds. The sort of thing that hid what they were capable of, like Dolce. This one looks like he gets in fistfights for the fun of it. Can't trust that. But can't pivot. Stuck. She runs her tongue over a tooth to keep from frowning too obviously.

"It's not a bad deal for either of us. You mind if we get all this in writing? My sister believes it makes for better hunting. Actually on that note, I'll lend her to you while we handle your wolf problem if you can promise me there'll be some decent food and clothing in our supply drop. We're desperate."

She plucks at her dress with a grimace. Very, very desperate.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Oho!"

Saber vaults back up the wall in contrast to all useful advice for a person who would like to live beyond the next thirty-five seconds. She rises up to her full height and steps within a whisper of the struggling foxgirl/servant combo. She'll be safe from Berserker's attacks like this, but only for as long as Kat stays willing to fight her little tails off to keep her that way. They did not have tiger baiting in Saber's day, but she's a natural at it anyway.

"Your knight is wise to fear me. And you are as wise as you are kind to consider her feelings. When a Master and a Servant can trust one another completely... mm. It is a shame you did not manage to call to me. Very well! Since it is you, little fox, I will allow this boon. I shall lose a single fight at your behest, and only yours. Attempt to pass this off to someone else and I will ignore it completely."

She stoops low to the ground, putting her sharp angled but still regal face nose-to-nose with Kat's and smiles so the wriggling fox can see with her own eyes how many rows of teeth are sitting inside her (slightly bloody) mouth. She presses one finger to the Fluffybiscuit's nose and then leaps out of range of a sudden crushing hammer blow by the screaming Berserker.

Diaofei is in her arm once more, and she briefly take's Kat's hand in her own for long enough to shake it. Up and down three times and then she's got her sword drawn to parry a whirlwind of furious blows from an Englishman who would clearly rather die than give the quarter her Master is offering.

"You will! Ha! Of course! Grant me one indulgence in exchange for such a heavy boon. Allow me a warrior's courtesy to choose the manner of my own defeat. You would not deny me honor as well as victory, would you kind fox, sweet fox, wise fox? Where I am from your kind are honored legends so I know that I can trust you. One fight lost on your knight's behalf, howsoever feels best to me when you ask it. One fight won on your behalf by my sword whenever you have need of it. These together buy my freedom today to go and heal my Master. I thank you, child. Though I do not know your name, I honor your above all other Masters called to war on this new green earth."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The damage she takes is far from superficial. Coolant lines, sensors, armor plating, power conduits, all of these sustain significant damage. Another combo like that and she will not only lose, it might actually kill her. There is no actual defense against the Aeteline's twin swapping swords, so Mira simply doesn't. She protects her core systems by predicting the optimal angles of the blade coming toward her and shifting her thrusters to push herself just barely off target.

The temperature in her cockpit soars. The lights around her dim. A variable input delay between 8 and 120 milliseconds is introduced, which requires numerous adjustments on her part to not slip out of the acceptable range of reaction times. Predictive power spikes in importance as a result. But she can fight. In the moment this is all that matters.

Her counterattack finally comes: the space creating bottom-to-top vertical swing from her sword, and then a rapid pivot horizontal slash that takes advantage of the stored momentum and the super-large nature of the weapon to deliver maximum kinetic force to the Aeteline's head. The crack is audible over every camera. Mira's lips lift into their first true smile before they settle into their first true frown as she watches her opponent bounce across the river like a skipping stone toward an urban section of the environment. She rockets after Solarel a tongue click later.

Her sword has taken by far the worst damage in the exchange. Massive sections of the hastily assembled, ultra heavy blade crumble off the sides and the tip as she flies, and the ones that don't shatter simply drop off when the pieces holding them on do. What's left is... beautiful. A glittering, unblemished fullerene tube the size of a spear growing out of her sword hilt. Mira hefts it onto the Gods-Smiting Whip's shoulder and follows up with a hard knee, instead. Evidently she does not intend to use it as a weapon.

But this is. Well. Perhaps calling it 'expensive' is a bit of a non-sequitur to a duo like Solarel and the Aeteline. But this tube was grown in a Hybrasil mineral system. It is a complicated structure, extremely difficult to produce and agonizingly slow to complete. For a culture like hers that places so much emphasis on individual (allegedly) irreplaceable constructs, the resources required for this shimmering rainbow tube are far beyond what she should be capable of.

That is correct. Mira of the Fisher Clan did not fashion this 'weapon'. Neither did Selin of the Makers clan, though both had their paws in its design. No, this required outside agents. A top engineering clan on a planet in full standing in the empire of Hybrasil. The sheer number of chain favors she must owe to fashion this is staggering; the cost of keeping it this secret even moreso. Someone with Mira's resources could only make this happen through the deliberate grinding of mercenary contracts, pressing her skills into use across the galaxy. Services delivered exactly as requested, payments taken exactly as demanded. Until she had this.

"Nine Drive System, Partial Configuration. The Third Form: Threads of Fate!"

She refuses to use her glittering superweapon. Two new Tails join the free-flying ones from earlier in the fight, and together they spiral around the Aeteline. The Third Form: another binding technique. Connective barriers of force similar to her earlier nunchuck technique extend between pairs of Tails and spiral around the Aeteline. They are vulnerable to the anti-tails like this, but for the moment the main body of her opponent is paralyzed at the shoulders, elbows, and knees.

The Gods-Smiting Whip does not close for a melee strike. It flies away and knocks over a building instead, hiding in the smoke that plumes up all across the streets.

> i do not intend for this to be the stage of your defeat.
> i am simply buying time.
> have you guessed my trick yet?
> if not, keep watching~