Phoe

Breathless Dead

Bella's neck cranes to take in the full effect of the skyscraper in front of her. Every gash of gleaming paint, Every trill of proud music, every twist in the precise knot of cables connecting the power of the Star Kings to this bland and unfortunate thing that passes for a city. Her face twists into a scowl that deepens with every new detail she takes in.

What pisses her off is that it's legitimately beautiful. Not a match for the great works of Tellus, but in terms of composition the backdrop was a work of artistic genius. The Portuguese understanding of materials was so underdeveloped that they didn't even have proper grays or beige tones. Walking around their civilization and eating their "food" gave off such an overwhelming sensation of fading that it was easy to lose oneself in it, until it... no.

It isn't that it felt more dead here than the palace of Hades. This is not a place of death. The problem was that too long here and Bella could easily imagine nothing ever feeling real again. Even the Anemoi's murk was at least intense. Here there's plenty of light and warmth to spare, but everything still felt like it'd been left to soak for a year or six in dingy water. Against that kind of backdrop even a tiny splash of proper red or a single note of real music exploded to life in a way that would make a master with fifty times the ability cry with envy.

That it sang with pride and the weight of history on top of that lifted this pilfered tower to a level Bella could not remember seeing in her lifetime. The idea of secret art and secret infrastructure placed out in the open for all to see, knowing that only a comparative handful could or ever would... it's romantic. Redana would have loved this. Not the perfect Princess that wound up here, but the silly girl who stayed up all night in the palace so she could pine after the stars her mother had cut off from the sky. She would be head over heels if she could see this for herself.

Bella's hands clench into fists that bite with claw against the palms of her hands. Yeah. She'd love it so much. If it wasn't a fucking indoctrination scheme. Clever, arrogant fucks. Plucking people from out of their drab little lives and giving them eyes for the first time. Revealing a layer that was "always" painted on top of their city, this first breath of real oxygen. Building lines of stratification, themselves above and these... Lifted below, climbed just high enough to detach themselves from the people they'd known their whole lives. A secret army like a secret clique that might form among a maid staff, nothing more than that but so high off their first taste of the universe that they'd suffer delusions of grandeur anyway.

These fucking plunderers. They're no better than the Azura biomancer. At least she could lie to herself about her arrogance being painted with altruism. The Star Kings were building a weapon. Nothing more. Worse than that, the name of that weapon was a concept so horrible she hadn't even known to hate it until she felt the tension in her spine.

"Sub-Servitors..." she hisses.

Her body burns hot enough that her feet have started melting grooves into the fragile "pavement" in the streets. Her muscles tense, and her tail lashes with enough force that it might crack the foundations of several major buildings in the area, if only she managed to touch them. The urge to scream, to rush forward, to tear down this entire absurd installation herself with her bare hands is almost more than she can handle. But she bites it back down. A hard swallow and a deep breath after. She wrenches her head away before it can surge back up her heart and into the city.

Fucking sucks relying on others. She's never trusted them in her life. But there are questions that dragged her down here. Questions she can't answer if she gets herself stuck in a fight.

"Ember," says Bella as she turns her back on the building, "Crush them. I don't care how you do it, but make it hurt. And tell the girls that Engine is our prize today. No matter how you settle this, we're not leaving here without it."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"For this?! For this you would--"

Red light glows against her skin. Tattoos burn their way through her armor, patterns of jagged compass markings suddenly making themselves known through the glow as Saber grits her teeth in obvious pain. The look in her eyes is absolute betrayal. A moment later, they grow dull.

Baleful light fades away, turning to smoke that rises from her body and sinks into her hair. Slowly at first, but then with increasing rapidity as it travels from the roots, her braid fades in color from striking straw to a dull, featureless gray. Not as a mark of age or veneration, but the kind of bland dust that all things turn to when their passion and vitality is forcibly pulled out of them and pointed somewhere it doesn't belong.

The molotov bottle falls from her fingers and rolls along the ground until it rests under the front wheel of the Kun shrine. A shadow falls across her face as she rises once more to her full, towering height. It does not clear, even when she turns to behold the shrine again, knuckles gripped so tight around the hilt of her sword that they begin to whiten.

"...Destroying this will bring her here?" she asks.

Her back is turned to Diaofei. A cloak of shadows unfurls across her back, disguising the motion of her drawn weapon. Something halfway between a chuckle and a snarl escapes her throat that doesn't even resemble the voice of the king from just minutes ago and more closely calls to mind a wounded animal.

Pain. Pain. Twisted pain and betrayal stacked high enough to climb the path between worlds.

"Then it burns."

She leaps into the air, leaving her Master behind to watch. No discussion, no planning, no strategy; her blade flashes like a torch against the queer lighting of Actia's hideout and then she falls as lightning, through the nest of cables, through the masks, and through the floor. Power crackles where she passes, sparks to start a fire. Her promise catches soon after, rising from the crater as she does.

Tiny, licking flames to start with. They'll build into an inferno before long, hot enough to melt even the outer plating of the steel giant watching over them. Saber stands and waits in the middle of it all, wrapped in gentle shadows that do not suffer a single wisp to touch her.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

There are limits to imagination, you know. Mira has been gifted a perfect position. Solarel has put a golden blade in her hands, as good a gift as her very own heart. Mm. Correction. That is more or less what she is holding, in actual fact. But still. But still? But still. What is she to do with these gifts? For all her bluster she is not and has never been a huntress. She has never stood astride one of the Great Beasts, and for all she has tried to imagine this moment that is not the same as being able to picture it.

The core is exposed. What does that mean? If she pierces it she will expose her arm to raw crystal fire. Possibly worse? She does not want to die. She does not want to lose and need to replace it. She does not want to lose it and find out it cannot be replaced because of the strange curse of a god. She wants to lose her partner because of her own hesitation even less. Nonetheless, for a moment she cannot picture it. So all she does is shift her feet and hold the sword.

"Solarel?"

The sound of her voice dies before it reaches her ears. But in this place of melting possibilities and confused air currents, it carries down below and all around her into a hundred different cameras. She is certain she is heard. She can see herself being heard. This is speech that is solely for other ears, other hearts to listen to. Just as well.

"Do you remember my words at the fashion show? I asked you to watch me. I told you. Told you I would show you. Show you my dreams. And I... have. But I spoke of something else, as well. In another voice, and to other people. I... only just understood my own riddle. I think."

It had not been her intention, when she conceived her final dress. The battle was meant to be over by now. But still. But still? But still. All of a sudden she sees it, as clearly as if she'd written it into the schematics herself. A Huntress? A Mercenary? A Knight? No. All of these, and more. Why did the Children of Hybrasil carry so many names, if not to use them all? This. This is how she hunts. This is how she walks the mountain.

"When! You are brave enough to put the body ahead of your own sense of cleverness? You can do... THIS."

Her dress was made to be the melding of the three great cultures. Part of that meant that it was composed of nanomachines. Mira had no claim to mastery of these mysteries. Irrelevant. She had two things to replace it. First: a desire to express love that overrode the need to maintain her own sense of aesthetic purity. And second: a device she has worn as a pendant ever since the moment she first became aware of it. Back when it had almost killed her. The container for the Geist that Solarel had infected the Gods-Smiting Whip with.

Her perfect dress is dissipating. Flowing up her body, lace turned to liquid silver that flows into the shining golden sword and fades into immaterial nothingness. Every thread that disappears from her body returns in the shape of the tip of a longer and longer blade. It does not gain mass, does not change shape into something more suited for wielding its new size. It simply becomes longer. Longer and longer and longer, thin and delicate and deadly. A needle worthy of a god. And flowing through it, poison.

There is nothing left of her dress except for the veil and the train, which drape across her body like the whispers of an old song. All of her spots, all of her beauty, and all of her imperfections are bared to the open sky and the scars of the Nine Drive System. But she has no name for this last technique. It would be laughable to call it a technique in the first place. All she does is drop her gift, and watch it pierce the core of a God.

It stabs all the way through to the ground beneath it, where its length unravels. A masterpiece fit for a bride pools at Solarel's feet.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"You know what I think?"

Saber does not release Diaofei. She doesn't even suggest the possibility. Her arm squeezes, and this is possession. Her fingers caress the top of the monk's head to feel the fine hairs that rise up in defiance of her vows, and this is adoration. Her free hand plucks the molotov off the dashboard and seemingly moves to drink it before simply turning it in the light instead, and this is tenderness.

She leans closer, and her heavy straw-and-iron braid falls carelessly down Diaofei's shoulder and into her lap.

"I think that you are a blade. That you have been sharpened, and sharpened, and sharpened until it has made you too brittle for use even as a kitchen utensil. I think you feel this in your soul, and you quiver because of it. You must plunge into something, else why should you have endured all that painful scraping and grinding? But you know that it will be your unmaking and you cannot find it in yourself to endure that final thrust and snap."

Saber's arm slinks around her Master some more. She takes Diaofei's chin in her hand and tilts her head up, up, up. Away from the shrine, away from the mad nest of cables and toward the steel colossus that shades and powers it. Above even that to the skies that stretch over everything, and the stars that twinkle beyond the scope of what is possible to grasp. Even in the sick glow of the shrine and the fierce headlights of the Kun Temple, they twinkle on.

Those fingers tilt Diaofei's head down again, gripping her cheeks firmly but without pain, to gaze upon another giant instead. Saber herself. She leans close, close enough for their breath to mingle. For their noses to touch. She smiles her shark's smile, but makes no motion to close the final gap and consummate the gesture. Perhaps that is beneath the dignity of a king? Or perhaps she simply refuses to be the board that snaps the knife in two.

"I suppose you believe this is fate. Destiny or, whatever. That is why you ignore me when I talk about making you well again. You do not believe it can happen. Pathetic. Unacceptable. Why accept it? You called to me! Your heart is filled with desires! What point in dreaming if you do not reach with your own hand to seize what is owed you? If you want destruction, have the courage to say so! If you want her back, say that too! If you want her dead..."

The closeness ends all at once. Saber kicks open the cab door behind her and slides outside. In the same, lazy motion she grabs for the top of the door and vaults up and over to the other side. Her feet touch the ground before she's seen to finish clearing it, and when she opens the driver's side door to stare at Diofei again, she drops smoothly to one knee, holding the molotov in a parody of one of the English knight's little sword ceremonies. But there is no smile on her face, only steel in her eyes.

"I will ask of you one last time: are you my Master? And what do you desire, Diaofei the brittle knife?"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The perfection of the moment doesn't last long enough for the quip to rise up all the way past her tongue. Improperly phrases, halted at the third gate. Access denied. Time stands still. Time shifts all the same. The energy of the moment changes, and the capstone to perfection falls broken beneath a pair of electrum colored wings.

Time. Has shifted. To a place beyond her vision. Time. has shifted. Past the far edges of her plans. A whole tournament. Countless lives gathered up and dangled on strings. All for. This?

Mira presses her cheek tight against Solarel's, and rubs it possessively against her. Her fingers dig in underneath the wings; if she did not keep her claws so fastidiously clipped she would be drawing blood right now. Instead there is only the application of pressure without release. Like being teased by an acupuncturist in some strange game of foreplay. Tighter, tighter, tighter, building and then... nothing. Her tail swats with performative heaviness against Solarel's thigh.

"This is what you sounded like by the way," Mira sighs and peppers that gorgeous neck with kisses, "Such a far cry from who you were when we met. Or the woman who brought the Bezorel to this tournament, for that matter. When I saw you, I..."

Hesitation. A war of conversations plays out in the waterfalls of her eyes. One where she says too much, and all at once. One where she says too little, and never at all. One where--

"No. I will not apologize. We wound up here. I am content. Nevertheless I. I regret. Regret that. That I could not. That I did not. See a path. Conceive a plan that asked less of you. That hurt you less. There are. Limitations to my power. How shameful."

Her whiskers twitch. Her eyes stare without quite piercing, much like her claws. Her ears pivot atop her head, but not to bend to the sounds of the mummified husk of a creature she'd sought to destroy rising up out of the dust in search of revenge, but solely to catch every creak of muscle and the sounds of wind through those perfect blade-wings, to hear truth in breath and heartbeat and the parting of lips before words begin. There is 'speak not to the outsider' and there is 'speak not'. And those are very different commandments indeed.

But what words gift her ears it does not change reality. It does not change tactics. Time has shifted. It has shifted, and the world demands recognition. To lose herself in the moment she'd tried to freeze meant dropping all the rest of them into the dirty piles of dead nanobots. A testament to her own foolishness mixed in with the folly of Empire.

How dare it. How dare it. That worthless trash heap! These insufferable ghosts! How dare it survive even as scrap when her Gods-Smiting Whip had not?! How dare they pick the memory of stupid, tasteless power over her beautiful Selin's masterpiece?!

"Darling," she chirps through sudden bared teeth, "Lover. Starlight. So. La. Rel~"

Finally, release. Her claws are sharp enough to pierce after all. Her teeth are sharper still. Lover's marks, lover's fury, lover's faith. Her tongue is rough, and sweeter than honey.

"Fly us closer, if you please. If it is not too much trouble. I. Desire. To walk the mountain. With you."

Breathless Dead

"What is this place?"

Bella's face has been tensed since landing, as if she were in a permanent state of readiness to wrinkle her nose at some indescribable foulness. But she's smelled foulness before, and this isn't it. She's seen horror in her time. She's felt sweltering heat and humidity crawl down her neck on the Eater of Worlds, she's listened to the desperate songs of the forever-dying machines of Baradissar, seen the fruits of passion and artistry hidden inside the Yakanov, tasted the impossible, obsessive mastery of the bakeries on Salib, smelled the siren song of blood wafting up through the torrential rains on Sahar. This is nothing like any of that.

It isn't even the proper muteness of the Anemoi, or the stifling aura of Death and Majesty that covered the Tunguska. Everything is at once too loud and too quiet. There are abundant smells in the air but none of them are full. Bella sniffs as deep as she dares without giving herself away but it's all like trying to pick flowers out of a dried bouquet in another room. The grave goods of ancient humanity were impossibly bright, almost gaudy (if such a thing were possible from such magnificent creatures), and though their foods were wispy and insubstantial from a point of nutrition they were astonishingly complex in flavor.

She is walking out of the fifth identical restaurant now, with a round sandwich stuffed with meats and vegetables that somehow all manage to smell like the same kind of grease and nothing else. Even the bread is made from the same material as the filling for all that her gods-gifted nose could make of it. She takes a bite and frowns. Water. She is eating water that somebody waved a cut of steak over at some point. The potato wedges at the previous place were the same. Somehow. And the little hand pie in the one before that, the exact same sensation and flavor. The shake in the one before that managed to be both lumpy and watery, but it also tasted like this same vague memory of flavor. Just. What the fuck? How?

Everywhere she looks is too much and too little at the same time. The bricks and stones are featureless, shoddy slabs with paint that's too bright to have been ancient but too dull to be interesting. There are no frescoes or crumbling monuments or acts of artistry and intention, at least that she can recognize for these things. Everything, every building and every road and every outfit on every person looks and smells and feels (though she is too afraid to do more than brush her fingers across the corner of one restaurant on her way out, for fear of shattering it) like it was spit out of the same factory that made the sandwich in her hands.

Omn was right about one thing, at least. She couldn't possibly pass as someone from this place for more than a minute or two. And even that only because of the exhausted malaise that seems to have settled on all the people walking down the streets. Dead eyes, listless faces, all turned in every direction except in front of them, looking past the day and into the doom or salvation they must imagine are lurking in the skies above. Or maybe just to the end of the day and collapsing into their equally tired square beds. Not that she can blame them if that's the case.

None of it is their fault. They're trying their best. But fuck. She thought at least the struggle to live a life free of the prison of Biomancy would have yielded some kind of beauty for her to marvel at. But it hasn't. This place is a shithole. Fuck, this place is the shithole. There's never been a bad thing she's had to say about any of the places beyond the wonders of Tellus that she'd even be comfortable applying here for fear of insulting all the deathtraps and trash heaps she's stepped over on the way here.

...You know, this would have been the ideal vacation spot to take Dany. Get that wanderlust out of her system in a nice, safe way. Then they'd have rushed home to watch movies and eat toast. Nothing could have worked its way up to being dangerous to her here. Suddenly Bella has to hide her face in the crook of her elbow, because a grin has taken over her visage and its wholly inappropriate to the moment. She chokes with laughter she refuses to let build enough momentum to break into a full giggle. But gods. Gods. Gods! If she'd only known!

"Think they've got a museum at least?" she asks with a helpless shrug toward Dyssia, "A theater? A garden? A... gift shop? I dunno. I'd settle for a factory tour. I've seen some weird shit but I don't even understand... this."

She waves the half-eaten sandwich in her hand. Her nose manages to wrinkle after all. Hera help her, why does she have to finish it?

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"There could not have been a Ragnarok without giants to fight a war. I see. What a fascinating world."

It takes Saber a very long time to pry her eyes from the colossus meditating under the waterfall and behold the shrine it guards with its massive, overgrown body. There is a kind of elven beauty to the construct that makes her mouth fall open. Which forges in the secret places of the world had been involved in its creation? Were they many in number or scant few? Whom had they fought for and how? No small wonder that the side that built these things had believed it possible to triumph over Twilight.

And in the end...

Her fingers caress her sword as she might a lover's neck. A sigh of longing and lament draws out her breath. If only. If only she'd been allowed to fight against this creature. In contest or in war, it didn't make a difference. To have been outmatched so utterly and still been given leave to test her sword and her mind against it. Hers had truly been a failed kingship. Odin would never have cursed her to wait this long in any other case.

She shrugs and lets it all go. Sleeping ruins hold little interest for long against the present realities of her renewed war with the English and the tangled nest of cables and the spiteful glow of her new Master's wife's home. She tilts her head with curiosity, all previous fatigue forgotten. At long last, she grins.

"Is that so? Then let me ask you this, Master: what does that make you want to do?"

Saber takes one long, rough finger and presses it against Diaofei's wrist. Slowly, with just enough pressure to tease and scrape, she pulls it up her arm and to her shoulder, before wrapping her entire arm around the monk's neck and pulling her closer across the cab of the shrine-truck. She chuckles at the familiar sound of a soft face creasing her chain shirt, but makes no other comment on the matter.

"Does this change your drive? You could still destroy it. Or you could clean it and return it to the state you found it in when you were in love. Perhaps this shrine reflects your wife's heart? She might return to you if she is healed. Or perhaps we should steal it for ourselves, huh? There is an energy about this place that is truly wicked, plucked from whatever dark depths that burned the world to ash before it grew anew.

"But still. There is power here, as well. Enough to fix our problems if we but understand how to use it. I find this very intriguing. Do you, my little treasure? I will ask again. What does seeing this place make you want to do? Depending on your answer, I might even change my mind about helping you do it."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Hm. Unexpected complication. The sacrifice of the Gods-Smiting Whip for the sake of final victory was always part of her plan. First consequence of the Nine Drive System. Necessary in the end, to drag the things she needed into the realm of the physical and create the only future in which she could be happy. There was simply no other way. She'd known it from the very beginning. Before the beginning, in fact. Within her first three months of captivity she'd known that another chance would end like this, or else in failure.

But then. Why? Mira turns her head to the sky and watches the last vestiges of her Nine-Tails disintegrate in the coruscating True Rainbow of destructive power she herself had unleashed upon the arena. Why? Why why why why why? Why do her eyes sting with tears? Why is this goodbye so painful when none of the rest have ever been? What made it so special?

Overcome.

Mira turns her attention back toward Solarel. She watches her through crystal patterns now, the blurry vision of her overtreated eyes when she does not bother to stem the flow of tears. She is even more beautiful than before. Another unexpected complication. This one pulls an unintended smile from her lips. Damn it. Damn it! Why does nothing ever go according to calculations when this woman is involved? What makes her so special?!

"I love you!"

The sound is forced out of her. By the fall. Or by the spirits hanging like cameras in the air about her. Something beautiful against the achingly gorgeous, haunting backdrop of death, rebirth, and death again painted across the ground beneath them. It's even more of a sight than she anticipated. More spectacular, more fantastic, more... ah. What is that word?

Awesome.

Her steel-silk dress flutters in the winds she makes by answering gravity's call. There are tears in her eyes and a smile on her face and I love you on her lips and a three section staff in her hands. Click! She pulls it together. Thhhhhrrrsh! She swings it as hard as she can. Clang! It impacts one of Solarel's blade hilts and forces her guard open. Clink! It separates and wraps around her back.

"There is no one else I would have done this for! No one else I could have done this for!"

She flies in close, but does not connect with a kiss. No, this moment is punctuated by a headbutt. Her vision briefly turns to stars but the training she's used to fake normal piloting credentials had a secret second purpose and it is exactly this moment: Mira is in excellent shape. She cannot pilot any mecha that now exists in the galaxy (thanks to her), but she can pilot her own body.

And that is how she fights. Even now. Elbow punishes elbow. Knee locks around knee. In the opening of a guard she throws both arms around Solarel's neck and buries her cheek against the kinetic transfer induced warmth of her collarbone. Her legs lock around her prey's waist and her fingers lock together like iron behind her around the sections of her staff.

"I love you," she mumbles it this time, "Always. Forever. My missing piece."

There is no parachute hidden in the trailing sleeves and skirts of her magnificent dress. There is only the whispering caress of the at once soft and rigid fabric against the most beautiful and perfect scales any Zaldarian could hope to have. There is only the warmth of fur and the tickling of whiskers against an iron neck as she nuzzles and purrs like a love-drunk kitten.

"So save me. My princess."

And she drags her tongue along your jaw, Solarel. No victory to be stolen here. Your love was priced into her stupid plan from the very beginning. Life would not have been worth living without it.

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."