Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

The arrows are almost white, if you look at them from the right angle. They’re not Thunderbolts, not terrible explosive impositions of wrath. They’re tight-packed shapes, compressed harder than the flickering thing in the Shepherdess’s hands. Holos always like to talk up the impossible shapes of chthonic monsters and the wrongness they inherently possess, all slimy and mind-breaking and gross, but the shapes comprising the darts of Hermes’ daughter are impossible in a way that makes them more right. As if the shapes of man are simply attempts to replicate the idea of a shape, perfected.

She’s darting here and there, always a step ahead of Liu Ban, more intense than graceful, and where she digs her heels in to a halt, she draws back the string of the bow and the shapes interlock behind her, the wind kicking up and setting her skirt to wild fluttering, and the shapes are a language inexpressible, writhing as a halo about her. When she lets the finger slip from what might be a string, the aura roars, the shapes lance out, and something that is like an arrow hits true. After all, archery is an Olympic sport, too.

Sometimes they are whistling clean-cutting things that slice away skin, braids, neatly digging furrows in his body where they pass. Other times they hit his limbs with sudden force, knocking blows askew, cracking his jaw, and they shiver out into writhing sigils and fading signs. It’s hard to tell which one they will be until they strike him.

One, two, three. Darts slam into Liu Ban’s chest with such vehemence that even he is forced to stumble a step back, as they roar out anthems of almost-comprehensible defiance in their dissipation. Redana Epimelios spins her wand between her fingers, makes it something small and sharp where it was a well-curved bow a moment before. She looks Alexa in the eyes, smiling, as she stabs it through the back of her hand.

The Command Seal smokes and whines underneath the wand of the Shepherdess, the concentrated meaning cutting through coils of tightly-wound compulsion and will, until— with a snap, with a roar— it shatters and tears out from beneath her skin. The noise released from it, a thousand commandments and strictures, is a cacophony that swells suddenly and then collapses into nothing.

Redana barely hisses as the wand slides back out of her skin, leaving in its wake only the quality of Injury. She taps it twice, then, on her hand, and silently commands the quality of Injury to be otherwise. Her hand, stiff with the knowledge that it should be suffering Injury, relaxes in relief. She flexes her fingers with a satisfied grin, and turns back to Alexa, beaming.

“How about—“

Liu Ban’s backhand should have sent her flying halfway across the battlefield. Instead, she does a complicated mid-air twist and lands on her feet some distance away, skidding but controlled, like a cat tossed down a hallway. She coils her muscles beneath her and then launches back towards the tyrant, her wand a thin and wicked sword that slices through the dead in her path, its reach impossibly long and its keening song the sound of Redana’s heart, her mother’s heart, her aching and her yearning.

I have failed, that song says to the spine, to the nerves. Watch me try again, and again, until I have done it right!

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri!

“…she’s a witch,” Uusha finally croaks. Her tone of voice is hard to read at first; it’s cracked, dry, thin with pain, but unbroken. “They don’t tend to ask when they’re dealing with… that. Could have been worse, even. This one witch I know, she wouldn’t have even told you, just cut your hand and let the results— wilt— speak for themselves. Was it acceptable? It got us out. That’s what matters.”

Her head lolls back. Despite the dried drool on her chin, her smile is impudent, almost patronizing. “But you don’t want to hear that. You don’t want to hear that I’d order anyone in my retinue to bleed, there, because I’d rather you be bleeding than at the mercy of them. And if you admit it was necessary, you can’t let yourself stay angry at us, and that anger feels good. Trust me. I know.”

Her shoulders stiffen; she puts the last of her strength into lifting her chin, adding a deeper growl to her voice. “But you are right that she was under my authority. So go ahead. Punish me.”

She can barely keep herself upright, but that growl… it’s a challenge, and not a mocking one. For her sake? For yours? Who’s to say?

***

Han!

It’s a weird sensation. It feels like your thoughts suddenly cut through… let’s call it smoke. And behind them, well, it’s obvious. It’s always been obvious. What does the Red Wolf want to get from Lotus?

She wants to steal her. One dragon’s child to another, you recognize this. She wants to tumble Lotus into bed, use her for fun, and then add her to a collection. Take some token of hers as a prize, proof that she had her way with the little priestess. And she wants Lotus to think she’s hot, to stay, to decide not to leave with you, for…

Well, the reasons are big and depend on something you don’t know yet. You don’t know that the Red Wolf intends to blackmail the Sapphire Mother by holding her daughter prisoner. All you know is that Cathak Agata wants to use Melody, or Lotus, or whoever this little priestess is; wants to make her squeak and squeal and make noises you can barely imagine; and then she wants to keep her, not even out of love but because she wants a trophy.

Even Machi’s better than that. At least she’s honest. If you’d gotten here a moment later, the Red Wolf would have been kissing Lotus, without permission, to try to make her head spin and her legs open, and she would have told you Lotus started it. It’s obvious. It’s achingly obvious.

Lotus inches towards you as much as she can, and both of you notice. The corridor is cramped. Painfully cramped. And hot. The heat is rolling off Agata’s skin now, in waves. But it’s still not hotter than what’s boiling inside of you.

“It’d be a shame to hide her face,” Agata says, pleasantly. She wants you to die. She wants you to keel over dead on the spot. “It’s such a… parochial custom, isn’t it?” Whatever that word means, she’s using it to make fun of you, hiding behind it like it’s a shield. “The only ones I might have to hand are from Chiaroscuro, but— well, do you think she deserves one of those?” Laying out a trap: wherever that is, she wants you to say yes so she can turn to Lotus all scandalized and tell her they’re worn by, like, dead grandmothers or something.

Because this is her ship and she wants Lotus to be hers and you interrupted her and the thing she wants is yours. Lotus picked you. Lotus picked you.

And that means you’re no longer a possible peer or a curiosity or someone for her to add to her collection. You’re a rival. The ancient dragons all killed themselves in wars, feeling this way. And her ancestor was the one that won all those wars, in the end.

Lotus’s fingers touch your pinkie, half-curl around it. “Actually, Han, I wanted to talk to you,” she squeaks. It takes literally all of her courage to do, but… not because she’s scared? She won’t look at you. She’s ashamed. “If that’s okay…?”

Sunshards

The thing to understand about the monks of the Nine Kingdoms is that there is no centralized authority, and as such, there are many authorities: as many as can be followed. Monks move like water: some, like Rose from the River, are quick-moving streams, pilgrims who move where the Way directs them, impositions on what it means to be a monk on the rest of the world, while others congregate in the pools of monasteries, under the insight and spiritual leadership of a monk with an Idea. There is no church, there is no Arch-Abbot, there is only the transcendent search for what is right and good.

Which means, in practical terms, that one of the old monks got wind of Chen’s plan to release the foxes and disliked it. Foxes are impious creatures who cause mischief and tempt people away from austerity, towards possessions, and above all, towards desire. Desire is a trap, a beautiful golden trap, and Rosepetal is so deep in it that she doesn’t want to come out.

And so this monk went to the groupchat with her old friends, and her old rivals, and informed them that the young heiress to the twin shards, you know the one, she’s going to break all of the foxes out of cutie jail, where they’re quarantined for everyone’s good. I’m going to see about correcting her error as kindly as she lets me. And enough of them nodded and got their good traveling clothes on and told the gods to come and join them if they liked, but they’re going anyway.

(Again, there is no central authority: the fashion of the monks is austere but diverse. Some wear the traditional saffron robes, but others, like Rose from the River once did, wear simple black workout clothes, all tank tops and sensible pants and staves. Some drape themselves in dark shrouds to drown out the world’s temptations all around them, so they can hear the Way’s quiet urgings all the better, and carry canes to tap along their path. Yin’s former cult wear unitards with heavy glass plates sewn on, to reflect the world back at itself, and carry swords in honor of the one they thought the Bodhisattva. There’s Mina the Computer in her heavy jacket, each stud an old plastic key, carrying a club wrapped in cables, counting her way to eudaemonia. And, yes, there’s Aoi the Pilgrim Mendicant, wearing a thriftstore babydoll tee and worn-out Burrows sneakers, thoughtfully hefting what was once an umbrella.)

And most of them have come here to pass judgment. They’re here because they think what Chen is doing is wrong. Not all of them; some are here because they’re friends with someone who does, or because they owe someone a favor. Lalisa of the Black Wind might be here just because she wants a rematch with Rose from the River, actually. But the wall of judgment she’s getting from them is still difficult to bear.

Rose from the River could have managed it. She could have air-jumped into the midst of them and told them that she’s honor-bound to see the foxes reach shore safely, and while they can hunt foxes as much as they like once they arrive, anyone who wanted to stop Chen would have to fight their way through her. She would have been a figure of terrible strength, beating down people she looked up to as clever thinkers, kind aunties, or just annoyingly persistent duelists, inspiring sullen envy in everyone she beat down.

Assuming, of course, that she was not leading the pack. Dueling Chen, disarming her and getting her in a headlock with affected casualness, letting her fellow monks sweep through the decks and shut up the foxes in their cabins, turning the ship around and taking them all back to cutie jail where they belonged. And maybe she’d leave Chen with them, too, to learn a lesson about trusting foxes. The thought makes her palms sweaty and her body off-kilter, like it’s not fitting into the space apportioned to it correctly.

She takes one more look back up at those cliffs. Then she turns, walks back into the ship. The deck is cleared. The ship is a ghost, for a moment, cutting smoothly through the water.

She comes back out with a mop, a bucket with a prickly yellow rope tied to its handle, and a custodial apron, her braids tied up in a bun. She sits in the lotus position, mop across her lap, bucket by her side, apron old and stained. She drapes herself in a different sort of humility and waits. She will not go out and challenge them, bombastic and grinning, but she will not let them stop her Chen. So come, then. Try, if you dare.

The Princess’s maid is waiting to see if you are worthy to even face her.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

The Park.

“It won’t be. It isn’t.”

Vesna puts everything she has into those words. Not defensive. Sincere. Of course it won’t be. It never would have been. There’s real worth here, something to share with the world, a digital gold mine.

It won’t be. It isn’t.

She does take the out, after a moment. It’s a long way back home, after all. A long and lonesome way. But it’s important to say that, first. To reassure. To offer that kindness.

Of course it won’t be. It never would have been.

***

Aevum!

3V listens, and gives Sympathy Nods. By this time, it’s just the two of them, the door blinds are shuttered, and the only light’s the one right above the shop counter. The booths have had their screens pulled shut, and the game shelves at the far end of the room are dark, looming things. Outside, very occasionally, lights go past, limning the shutters in neon orange and washed-out yellow.

“Money goes in, money goes out.” She shares a rueful smile. “I was lucky enough to have some money squirreled away, but moving up here, buying the place, renovations… this is really my eccentric retirement, not a way to make money. All this breaks even, if I’m in a good month.”

She gestures out at the booths, where (when it’s not this early in the morning) regulars sit on mats, chug tea and slurp down cheap ramen, run campaigns and yell at each other over meeples and fill up what would otherwise have been an empty house. It’s here. It’s hers. She’s keeping it above water, barely.

She stops and gives Yellow a curious look. “That’s eight different opinions on aesthetics I counted. C’mon, what’s your aesthetic?”

Sunshards

“She must be punished,” Vanimasé howls, digging her nails into Rosepetal’s biceps as she scrambles back onto the deck. “That was deliberate! Meibelle acted with malice aforethought! I have witnesses! You saw it! If not for my quick wit and indefatigable spirit, that brazen assassination attempt would have succeeded! Oh! Oh!! Jail! Jail for Meibelle! Jail for Meibelle for one thousand years!”

“Mmmhm,” Rosepetal replies, wrapping the thick emergency towel around Vanimasé, ostensibly to help dry off her fluffy tails and avoid the risk of serious illness from Wet Tail Shock Syndrome. Pinning her grabby nails to her sides is certainly just a side effect. There, cinch it all just above her fluffy tails with a thick knot.

Then she notices Chen giving her a Look, and all of Vanimasé’s complaints turn into white noise and static from a dead Burrower channel.

It gets her every time. She’s not used to being looked at like that when she’s not trying. Don’t get her wrong: she’s a knockout. Chen’s not a helpless, blushing innocent, effortlessly disarmed, but her Rosepetal still knows how to make her want to melt. But she’s just over here, handling a fussy fox, and Chen’s making a face like her Rosepetal’s over on the sidelines shaking pompoms and more than pompoms. Like she’s about to point, and someone’s going to swing a spotlight, and then she’ll go: and I’m dedicating all of this to my girlfriend!

Blossoms snap open all up and down Rosepetal’s hair, soft and delicate pink against her thick curls, and then one lets out a burst of pollen.

“Now let’s get you back over to somewhere comfortable where you can sit and get all eaten off—— dried out,” Rose says, squishing Vanimasé to her chest, cutting her off mid-war declaration, while simultaneously trying to pat down her treacherous hair and wave away the pollen, succeeding at neither. “How’s the poolside sound that’s great glad you like it too!!”

Breathless Dead

“Re… da… na…”

She’s in agony. That’s a bad sign. That’s a very, very bad sign. Because her body is supposed to release painkillers naturally, when it’s this close to death, but it does so through her circulatory system. And now it’s been destroyed. There’s nothing moving her blood; it grows stagnant in her limbs, her head. She can’t breathe.

It’s as if a black cat is curled up on her chest, crushing her beneath its weight, stealing the breath from her lips, making her heavy and eating her thoughts. Except it also has its claws out, gouging out the hole in her chest, nipping and tearing, making itself a nest. And the next time that Hades sends heroes all the way to Ancient Gaia, gifting them a ship and promises of aid, they’ll find a tree growing here, its branches heavy with pink blossoms, speared through her body. Another failure in a long line of failures.

Redana!

Hades is the only vivid thing in the world. Everything else is being swept away as her senses fade away, the sound of the battle and the storm and her own strangled choking fading away, the sky becoming one huge undifferentiated bruise, and Hades alone, standing there in his black and white. This time he will not offer to pick her up. He will have to leave her here, forever, until she rises again as the shell of something terrible, green and growing quick.

All he can do is stand here as she fades out, her wonderful and genetically-refined body’s functions collapsing, panic running circles around what remains of her thoughts. All Hades can do is stand there, uselessly, and remember her, just as he remembers everyone, every single one of them, every would-be hero and explorer and savior, everyone who jumped at the quest or the prize or the hope or the adventure itself.

Redana!

Goodbye, Hades. Goodbye, Bella. Goodbye sun and goodbye stars. Goodbye, Alexa. Goodbye, Vasilia and Dolce. Goodbye swords and goodbye ships. Goodbye, good night, good night.

She’s so very sorry.

and of all these wonders
of which you have been part;
of all these shining things,
count you first thy mother’s—

She can’t tell whose voice it is. She doesn’t even know if this is just the dying gasp of the Auspex, garbage data unspooling into the long dark. But she still recognizes the figure leaning over her, though the name’s not on her lips. Her face shines like morning forever and ever. She’s gold and diamond and a shining sapphire, and she’s reaching into Dany’s head and dredging up the very oldest storytimes, the chest in the wood, the lonely November and the lonely god, the lullaby and the sword, the sword everyone’s mother leaves secret and special and safe just for them, and, and, and.

Redana has trained for the Olympic Games. She has pushed herself to extremes that even ascended humanity finds daunting. She has learned the ways to push past pain and daunting thoughts. And lifting her arm, the blood in it congealing, the muscles as difficult to command as a pack of cats, is still the most difficult thing she has ever had to do. The face above her is still so, so familiar, and she believes that Redana can do it. The Heart almost slips from her numb fingers. Almost.

Someone’s hand closes over hers, and she can’t tell whose. Is it her, shining, immanent? Or is it Hades, intervening just to show a brave little girl a kindness in the middle of a nightmare?

The Heart settles in her chest, and then everything is light and pain and tears, so many tears, everything her fault, how can she live with herself after failing every one of them, not fast enough, not fast enough, a frozen scream, the weight of every one of them gone, erased, undone. And a hand reaches back and takes her by the hand, and that is the miracle of Ridenki come around again, Hermes who goes back and forth between the living and the dead, between one moment and the next.

Who is here to save you, Redana?

It was always you.

And the Shepherdess embraces herself, and whispers: “I still remember how brave we were.”

***

Redana Epimelios stands up, and keeps standing up. She’s leaner than the Nemean, a coiled bowstring, long-limbed and long-haired. The lionskin tossed over one shoulder of her red breastplate is not particularly subtle. She holds in her hand the shape of a sword. And despite it all, she’s smiling.

“Not a good idea to take her on directly,” the Shepherdess says, half to herself. “Only so many miracles we can fit in one day, right, uncle?” She turns on the husks of the dead, approaching someone who should have been dead and refuses to be, and she makes a cut. The shape of her sword, her wand, flickers in her hand.

Bodies fall to the earth, tumbled among neatly-severed plants. And the Shepherdess, the daughter of Hermes, darts forth on glittering sandals, back into the fray. Alone, even she cannot stand against the Master of Assassins.

How wonderful, then, that she did not come here alone!

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri!

The blush and the stammer and the meandering attempts to explain herself further just dig the little demigod into a deeper hole, and make it painfully clear: she wants Han to be her hero, but part of her wants Machi to be her villain. When she saw the N’yari kissing Han, she was jealous of Han, whatever her growing feelings towards the highlander. And while she knows it’s a terrible thing to think, she still thought: what if Machi gets me alone, carries me off, torments and embarrasses me while I wait for Han to come save me again? Or what if she takes both of us?

But she wants Han. She wants Han’s company. She wants to be around Han more than she wants the flutterings of a maiden’s heart; she wants safety that doesn’t feel safe and she wants more kisses that feel wonderful and she wants to make that surly ruffian smile.

She asked you one question, though, so sincere that it slipped through your defenses like a knife: what are you and the Red Wolf? And she caught a glimpse, however you might try to hide it, of your true feelings towards Cathak Agata— which may make her dangerous.

However you answered, here you find your feet bringing you deeper below. There’s one more person who you must attend to tonight, after all…

***

Fengye!

The little thing in front of you seems like a sullenly blushing chambermaid, a creature doomed to service and helplessness in either world she might find herself in. She is also one of the soul-fragments of the Broken King, and thus, horrifically dangerous. If there is some way that she could return to what she once was, it would be devastating. She could kill all of you before she was cast back out into Hell. It’s just that she can’t, as far as you know, not without returning to Hell and waging war for her title.

She’s also mumbling and furiously blushing as the seamstress-demon tightens her coils and rubs against her, using some of her loveliest features to smother the little chambermaid’s face. She’s fallen very, very far. How does that make you feel, knowing that she’s ended up in such a pathetic state?

Beside you, in this rather secure cabin, is the Hymairean agent, who took control of the contracts that allow the demons to remain in the world. She’s… prodding. Prying. She’s still suspicious enough not to fully trust your word. And if she finds out the truth, well, that would be very bad, wouldn’t it?

***

Giriel!

It was a chance meeting. Agata kissed your cheek and smacked your rump and told you to run along, she needed to have a private meeting with an advisor. So here you are, collared and wearing one of those bright, soft Dominion robes, taking the time in the garden on the deck— and there Kalaya was, going through a ritual of Bright Rose Aching, a further plea for a sign.

You should offer your service as a witch, even one so obviously… owned. After all, Kalaya is Agata’s guest, and your duties as a witch are sacred, in their own way. Ask her what she needs. Give her advice. Try not to blush as she stares at the collar and hears the tinkling of the bells.

***

Han!

You heard the quiet voices around the corner, but that didn’t quite prepare you for what you saw, all the same.

The Red Wolf, forearm braced against the wall as she leaned forward, hair half-loose. Her hand, cupping Lotus’s chin, tilting it upwards. Their faces, closer than maybe they need to be for conversation. Lotus’s bare cheeks, flushed, her shoulder blades flush with the door to her cabin.

Lotus jolts when she sees you. “Han!!” Now she’s even more flustered, and it’s hard to tell whether she’s guilty or relieved. The Red Wolf, however, doesn’t show any sign of guilt at all. She lets Lotus’s chin slump back down and catches your eye, her smile completely devoid of self-consciousness.

“Let’s get another opinion, then,” she says, as smooth as ice, as if nothing were wrong at all. “How are you finding my hospitality, Han?”

(It’s been pretty great. Emli’s been spoiling you rotten, and you’re clean, fresh, well-fed— and yet you’ve stumbled across… something? Is it something? The Red Wolf is very handsy. But she doesn’t seem like you caught her doing anything, but Lotus seems like she was just… maybe Lotus was…? No, surely not. Right? But then why would she look so…? Is she trying to move up in the world?)

Breathless Dead

The sword is Redana’s herald. It announces her arrival with the hiss of a torn veil, lashing out like a torn hawser— and it kisses Sagakhan on the throat. Say what you will about Redana Claudius, her sword hand is careful and controlled.

The blade stops there, wet against her skin, and Redana steps in closer. Her knuckle presses firmly against Sagakhan’s chest as she tries to utilize leverage against the larger, much more ruthless woman.

“It’s over,” she says, reaching across her guard and pulling her mother’s heart from Sagakhan’s keeping. Her voice is firm, giddy triumph threatening to bubble up from underneath. “Order the Kaeri to stand down, and you can walk away from this. This blasphemy will be destroyed, Bella will be released from your custody, and the only choice I am giving you is whether you keep your life or whether your final legacy is making sure that more people die senseless deaths down there.”

Historically speaking, that’s not an argument that would work on many generals, particularly not when servitors are being used as soldiers on either side. But she has to try. Maybe the terrifying ghost owls can just go home and sulk. Maybe without them standing in the way of the Starsong Privateers, it will be simple enough to push through that deathless horde below and destroy the pyramid. Maybe more people won’t die. Maybe she won’t even have to kill the Master of Assassins.

Because that doesn’t fix anything! It’s terrible and vicious and stupid! War isn’t supposed to be about life and death, it’s supposed to be about convictions, and courage, and the challenge! It’s about sword duels and cunning stratagems and the pulse pounding through her body! It’s about Athena’s glory and Ares’s provocation! Everything down below is stupid and terrible and blasphemous and she hates that she can’t trust this woman without a blade set to her throat.

“Well? Well?” Hurry up! Every moment you stand there smirking is a moment where someone’s dying down there, clawed by owls, dragged down by the dead, or being battered by that hideous champion! Every moment you lean against that blade is a moment of hideous fear and panic down below, and each one is a moment too many. “Surrender! Or I’ll— I’ll—“

[Redana Claudius rolls a 6 on her Get Away. However, she always gets to choose an option, and so she chooses to Get Away with the Heart in her possession.]

Sunshards

Sun's out, guns out.

Rosepetal may have emphasized her muscle definition in a way that would be very difficult for someone without a body under their full control, just to show off for her girlfriend(!!). Her choice of outfit was designed for obliterating cute princesses, too: a one-piece swimsuit with a back that's not so much plunging as toppling down a waterfall locked in combat with a nemesis, just to show off her impressive back, and a sarong with a Foxcatcher Knot tied snugly at her hip, for the devastating glimpses of thigh.

She isn't carrying a sword anymore, but don't get it twisted, she's still acting as Chen's bodyguard. The sarong's a deliberate trap: the Foxcatcher holding it together is so overcomplicated and showy that they keep trying to tug it apart smugly to reveal Rosepetal's tightly-clinging swimsuit, only for it to not budge, and then they're easily scooped up into arms or over shoulders or tossed into the ballpit. (There is a war going on in the ballpit. The ballpit, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide.) The real release is-- shhh, you think she's going to tell you? With all these foxes around?

Also, she's the one who has to keep in mind that if they let the ship be sunk, they're going to lose the deposit. Making a cruise ship isn't a trivial thing in this day and age, after all! It represents entire weeks of work from Princess Kikill, and if it were to run aground, it would be a terrible thing for sealife and the purity of the sea, not to mention wasting all of that time and effort on the Princess's behalf. If it got out that Chen let the cruise ship run aground on purpose, well, they just ended one Princess War, and letting Chen start another one is completely unacceptable.

So Rosepetal takes a quick break in between casting off lines for sea-dunked foxes to shimmy and scamper back up, as much of one as she dares to take, and stops to rub her girlfriend's shoulders. She knows all about pressure points, you know. The places to push, the firmness to exert. One of Rose's greatest passions is the body, and her control over hers allows her to exert some very precise control over her girlfriend's. As she's repeatedly, happily demonstrated. At length.

"You're that eager to be tied up?" Rosepetal purrs, kneading, obliterating any hint of soreness or stiffness under practiced fingers. "Am I not doing a good enough job of satisfying your insatiable need for being bound, gagged and pampered, my Lady?" One of her braids twitches like a fox's tail in irritation, just at the thought of that maybe being true, that maybe she's been too needy and desperate and taking too much without giving in return enough, but she doesn't let it seep into her voice. "After all, that's the only reason why you'd give up. A clever, imaginative girl like my Chen could figure this out if she really wanted to. Just like you figured out how to stop Hyra, save Ys, and save me."

She stoops and kisses Chen right between those two fluffy triangles, and whispers: "Love you." Then a splash, a howl of outrage, and Rosepetal's already on the move again, moving like an unstoppable object. Woe betide the fox that tries getting underfoot or in her way, because they will be scooped and tossed without remorse. Woe betide the fox that tries to tempt her with her heart's desire, for daring to imply that Chen's not sufficient! Rosepetal got her happy ending and as long as she never takes Chen for granted, everything will be fine, and if she talked Chen into letting the foxes sink the ship just because it makes her heart thrill imagining being kidnapped with her once again, she wouldn't be able to forgive herself!

She's going to make sure that Chen fulfills her promise, gets all the foxes to freedom despite themselves, and prove, once again, that she deserves the love of the Threeshard Princess. After all, she's been spoiled so much, she's been so lucky, she doesn't deserve all this happiness, so she won't take Chen for granted, not a bit!

But Rosepetal's so busy, she doesn't even have time to ask Chen what she wants out of this trip.

[Rosepetal offers a very mechanically loaded Emotional Support with a 12, burning a Chen string to get over her GUILTY condition's -1 penalty. If Chen opens up to her Rosepetal's reassurance, she gets to pick two options out of the list and Rosepetal will clear her Guilty condition, and if she doesn't, Rosepetal eats another Condition. Furthermore, if she accepts Rosepetal's faith in her, she marks XP; if she doubts herself, she gives Rosepetal that string back.]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

The Park.

3V has never ever ever been good at this ever. She's a good enough person to know that her visceral spike of "there is something wrong with this person" isn't something she should let anyone see, but she's not good enough to know what else to do with it but let it spin inside her like a blender. She shouldn't stare. She shouldn't pointedly look away. She's an asshole for staring off into the middle distance and pretending she doesn't notice. She should know what to say.

Instead she gets up and puts on her Streamer Smile and says: "No problem, let me help." Her blood is roaring in her ears just as loudly as it is in Ferris's own head, one stuck in the mortification of vulnerability, the other stuck knowing that she's not doing the right thing, whatever the right thing might be. The silence is incredibly awkward, but she's not going to try and crack a joke. She knows that much, at least.

Orange juice has to be mopped up. She doesn't know the right thing to say, so all she can do is show sympathy with a dishcloth. She's young, she's got better ankles than either one of them, don't you dare tell her not to help. And maybe she could figure out how to show sympathy in a way that Ferris could understand, could parse, could accept, if her stomach wasn't treacherously clenching up, and it always does this. She had to be out cold for both her hand upgrades because the sensation of not having a hand would have killed her, it would have rotted her open from the inside out, and she's always like this with people in wheelchairs and folks with cerebral palsy and anything, anything that makes their bodies and their minds out of sync, and she's lucky enough that Elodie doesn't trigger that response in her, because her prosthetics are interesting, fluid, transhuman, it's more acceptable to stare, to flatter, to ask questions.

It isn't until the end that she manages to pin down a lie that feels right. That gives Ferris an out. "Sorry for keeping you up last night," she says, wringing the orange juice out into the sink. "I'm used to screwing up my sleep schedule, but I didn't think about how it would affect yours." It's a lie, but a kind one. Makes her a heat sink, lets Ferris possibly assume she stayed up late talking, lets her know that Vesna isn't going to get soppy and "how long has it been like this" and pushing her, pushing her, making her focus on that growing lacunae.

How long before it stops being awkward for her to leave?

***

Aevum!

Is it narcissistic to be attracted to that sort of echoing? Because on the one hand, weird. On the other hand, weirdly flattering? My own clone! Now neither of us will be virgins! Like, like attracts like, right? To be seen, to be read, and to have that integrated into the life of the collective-- that's a hell of a thing.

"You mentioned living expenses," 3V points out, locking up the door. "What are your living arrangements like right now, if you don't mind me asking? You're always busy, busy, on the go, but you've got to have somewhere to put your feet up and charge the battery packs, right?" She gives the sunflower-yellow girl a meaningful look. "Do you have an apartment? Which one of you, sorry, which part of you gets really domestic?"