Tatterdemalion

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

On Gensoukyo

Cygnus is 3V’s favorite employee, but star is still a student, and thus can only work part-time, and still in the sort of apprentice stage where star is learning the ropes. Star leans masc, dresses in hand-sequined vests, and has Opinions about collectible card games and running star’s own diceless roleplaying games. 3V doesn’t actually fully understand star’s gender, but she’s down to support wherever star finds starself happy. Plus, star has good taste in music, and gets control of the streaming while star works.

The person in charge while she’s out is Luisa, who only became a tangential 3V fan after she got the gig, has just the curliest hair, and sometimes brings in tamales. Luisa does Monday, Wednesday and the weekends; Oscar handles Tuesday and Friday, and the downtime on Thursday is just part of small business ownership that’s only trying to pay for itself.

Four employees, then; the owner who lives upstairs and flits in and out, the heart of the community who handles the store more than 3V does, the guy who’s extremely divorced and spends his spare time painting minifigs and battling insomnia, and the queer student who’s soaking up everything the above three have to offer.

***

Heple

The right move. The kind move. The explosive move. The Renegade move. All one and the same.

She’s a tree-princess, she’s Red Riding Hood with glowing hands, she’s Ceres getting ganked by three Fenrirs at the Jade Phoenix spawn. She’s breathless and glowing and off-balance already, so when she gets hip-checked she giggles like she’s drunk and gives it right back.

She smiles. She glows. She radiates a smile, even as she gasps, even as she backs into fur and muscles and a wordless invitation to be lifted off the floor. It’s a show, and she’s free to put one on. No expectations of intimacy except for that of the body, an audience drinking in what she’s offering and she’s listening to what they have to say in turn.

No wonder she used to be a star in her own little corner of the world. Sure, she was good, but look at her gasp, her silent request to touch what her dance partners clearly want her to admire. Her brain’s off and her persona’s on and she’s not trying with them, she’s not doing fake-dating-with-benefits, she’s just trying to do what Black told her to do: listen. No, more than that: she’s trying to reflect, to take the energy being flung at her and send it back converted into what other people need, without breaking her stride.

Even when she’s hoisted up by her hips and spreads her arms like she’s on the prow of the Titanic by the she-wolf, she’s doing it because it’s what Black wanted her to do. Because that’s how she tries to show people that she hears them, that they mean something, that they matter.

Her blush is real, though. Wolves were obviously the right choice. Deliberate contrast to her persona’s own strengths: cleverness, skill, personability. It’s obvious what kind of basic bitch fursona she’d naturally fit like a glove. Put her on a leash and she’d trot; shut her up and her brain would melt into lo-fi beats to study to until she got words back and she’d try to use all of them at the same time. Probably wouldn’t last longer than a scene, but in the scene…

But that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? She’s always in a scene. She’s doing her best to play the part of a good person, as best as she knows how. Caught between desire and suspicion of desire, caught between chasing her bliss and worrying she’s the grasshopper and not the ant, caught between opening up and then overthinking opening up, caught between performance and performance.

Do you think she’s pretty, Black? Will you share this with the rest of yourself or try to save this, keep it for your portion of yourself, for fear of Blue commissioning fanart and Yellow making suggestions and Pink being, well, Pink?

What’s it like, being this close to the princess of Anthropozine and being the reason she’s shining?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The wristblades were a mistake, actually. If this were a more brutal hunt, there is little that they could hope to do to fend off the spear’s hungry head, and now that it is close, intimate, the wrestling of kittens, they are an irresistible target.

The mechs crash to earth heavily; torches shake and threaten to fall, trees groan out their wounds, and Angela Victoria Miera Antonius finds herself pinned down beneath the weight of a Hybrasilian huntress, tail lashing in delight, breastplate specked and dented from autocannon fire. Her wrists are forced against the ground, and one knee keeps her from rising.

Inside, Dolly holds a pose, tail raised, back arched. Without, Smokeless Jade Fire chuckles. “You chose the wrong name, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius,” she says, using the full name very intentionally, mockery dripping from her self-satisfied voice. “A [Barn Owl] is a quiet creature. It comes in close and quiet, even silent.”

“You know all about silence,” she stops to purr in Dolly’s ear, the hands rougher now in the delight of victory, her Dolly being such a good girl, holding the pose, letting her gloat. The shivers of delight as Jade’s hundred hands work her tail over!

“A [Barn Owl] is motion. Grace. It moves as the wind and with it. You sat and hoped that your little gnat-stings would stop me. Me! Smokeless Jade Fires, the goddess hatched from the stone egg, who watches over the hunt and deems it good. But perhaps it’s not all your fault, is it? After all… who wouldn’t stop to watch my pilot’s form?”

The Cords wrap tightly around the mech’s wrists, pulsing, coursing energy through the mech, locking them in place. Inside, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius will find herself helpless to lower her own arms. Smokeless Jade Fires lazily rolls her over, pulls her legs up against themselves.

“But you still need to give this engine of battle a fitting name, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius. One worthy of your prowess together. Perhaps… Trophy?”

With one nail, she traces it, lightly; there is no need to gouge, to cause Angela Victoria Miera Antonius to scream and thrash and disconnect. Let her feel the relentless tickle, let it make her try to stand up on the arches of her feet, let her be aware that she is being marked. “Good girl,” Smokeless Jade Fires purrs, patting the glyph etched on the mech’s flank. “See? Am I not a merciful goddess? Am I not— Angela Victoria Miera Antonius~! That is language hardly becoming of a noble representative of the Consortium, now, isn’t it?”

Smokeless Jade Fires luxuriantly pulls the mesh over The Barn Owl’s speakers, seals either end shut behind the mech’s head, runs her fingers over it just to feel the charge, the slight numbness it causes her. It’s not the sort of fine work that she can do with her Dolly, but the feedback on the pilot, that thick and stifling pressure, will keep her quiet as much as the actual speaker interference.

Those fingers find the mech’s strong chin, tilt it upwards, and Jade purrs as she hears the stifled, crackling audio being forced out of the speakers anyway. Inside herself, she clenches Dolly tighter, nips at her, grinds against her, pants with half-delirious excitement.

“I look forward to seeing you earn the name, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius. To move like one of my worshippers should. To strike with those wicked little gnat-stings from a dozen different directions, one after another. To strike from ambush, from the silence of the owl. She means death to us, did you know? She cries for the dying, but is silent on the wing. And then I will beat you again, but I will enjoy the game, and I will give you my respect, Trophy.” One final cord links the wrists forced behind the head to the ankles, and with a very satisfied purr, Smokeless Jade Fires hoists the Trophy onto her shoulder, then retrieves her spear.

This will be the shot that is remembered: Smokeless Jade Fires, with an insouciant glance over her free shoulder at the cameras, the very image of an ancient Hybrasilian warrior-huntress. On the outside, her fingers work on Trophy’s thick armor, the small of, yes, Angela’s back, a glorying in victory. On the inside, she takes Dolly by the chin and kisses her hard, the gag dissipating as her goddess wills, leaves her breathless, even as she holds Dolly still in her victory pose for the cameras.

“I love you,” Jade growls in ecstasy, and starts using her teeth.

[Smokeless Jade Fires hits an 11 on a Fight. She seizes a dominant position, takes a String, and inflicts a Condition on the poor, emotionally confused thing. She’s not going to like the headlines: Bagged, Gagged and Tagged!!]

Breathless Dead

“Bella!”

Her throat is raw, and it shouldn’t be. It’s raw and trying to close up and her body is shaking and it’s small again, the Shepherdess receding from her in bright ribbons shining in the sunlight. There are a hundred reasons why, and all she can do is trust the last squeeze against her skin as reassurance that this isn’t a retreat from a moment too painful to relive. But she’s still afraid. And why shouldn’t she be?

Her Bella is sprawled limp in her arms, bloodied and surprisingly heavy now that her muscles are no longer supporting her, keeping her up, keeping her moving, and Redana knows enough about how a body is shaped to see Bella’s body for what it is.

A fellow Olympian.

“Bella, you can’t,” she says, and her eyes are hot, and her legs itch where she’s kneeling in the grass, and she’s pulling Bella close but Bella’s not resisting, Bella’s not opening her eyes, Bella is barely breathing. “No, no no, I won’t let you, it’s not fair!” She gulps down air, and hiccups, small and dumb and useless. “Stop! You can’t! After this whole thing! I stopped the Assassins, I got you out of that awful— and you haven’t even apologized to Vasilly!”

The tears land hot on Bella’s bare skin, her matted fur. She doesn’t move.

Redana lifts Bella onto her shoulders. One hand on her thigh (and she doesn’t even flinch) and the other on her wrist, and Redana deadlifts from kneeling. She is small, and tired, and her face is wet, and Bella is very still. So Redana takes a step forward. And then another step. Then another. All that matters is taking another step, because there will be triage set up by the Lanterns now that they’ve won. It was in the meeting. She was listening. She knows where they are. So all she has to do is carry Bella, and then there’s a chance. Maybe everything will be okay. Masters don’t abandon their pets. Her face is red and she feels like she’s running the last lap of the marathon, but she can’t see the finish line.

There’s so much, she doesn’t say, because she’s focusing on breathing: in, out, in, out, hiccup. There’s so many apologies. Apologies to Dolce and Vasilia and the film! Bella doesn’t even know that Dany saw them! Bella can’t die without knowing that Dany knows about the holos and the Lanterns and they still need to talk about how Batrachomyomachia is good, actually, Bella! And she needs to apologize to you, and you need to apologize to her, and you need to talk about what happened with Skotia, and so she’s going to! She’s going to get you there!

…and she would have, too, if she hadn’t heard the long, slow round, a twisted braid of voices rising and falling, singing—

And when I fall, don’t lay me
under earth or lonesome sky;
and when I’m gone, don’t mourn me
just send me out and watch me fly.

Lay me down among the stars,
let me soar through veil of night;
send me out on one last jaunt,
see me shining far and bright.

The strength leaves her. She could be strong enough to carry Bella. She could be strong enough when she was just thinking about the things they couldn’t lose, all the reasons that Bella can’t die here, not yet.

But here they come, Coherents in all their beautiful glory, their incredible bodies, bearing one body from the field: her four arms limp, her arms and armor laid out on the stretcher, missing her head. And Dany breaks. Her legs crumple beneath her and her knees hit the earth hard, and her body convulses as she’s reminded that she’s lost Alexa, brave Alexa who was fighting so hard against her creator, Alexa who kept her safe and came with her all this way, Alexa who ended up here (like Bella) because of Redana, because she insisted, because she escaped, all of this hers.

All of it.

The dead. The dying. Bella, Alexa, Lanterns, Alcedi, even the horrible Kaeri. Her fault. Her fault.

And she’s lost. She failed. Alexa’s never going to know what it means to be free. Bella is never going to get to make anything right. All because she was selfish. Because she had to ruin everything. If she’d just stayed home, none of this would have happened at all.

It’s the Coherents who stop to help her, who take pity on the little princess who dirtied her hands and put her shoulders to the work without complaint, no matter the task. It’s the Coherents who change their song, who help Dany find the last of her strength, who make a work-song of it.

Dany can do that. She can do the work. Even if she’s sputtering and snot’s on her lips and chin and she can’t see what’s in front of her for grief, even if her chest’s torn open and all her love’s spilling out on the ground, useless useless useless, she knows what to do when there’s a Coherent on either side of her and the round is changed, because it’s what Alexa would have wanted.

Bella lies on Alexa’s body, bloody cheek against her chest, and Dany puts her shoulder to the work, in her place, bearing the two beautiful women she ruined back to the world that will be less without them, a thought she does not have to think because there is only the work, and the song, and the knowledge that everyone around her is lifting, too.

She can play a part. And when they finally reach the triage, when they finally find themselves among the Lanterns, that’s when she’ll fall apart completely. When she’s got nothing else to do, that’s when she’ll crumple in on herself and break so completely that she’ll be really, for real useless, and not even a song will work to get her moving.

Only a miracle, then.

Only eucatastrophe.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

For Dolly, the world is full of fireflies, a storm of them, roiling and humming and streaking through the night. Her heart races as she realizes that her goddess is going to hold, is going to make her wait for the very last second, and only then will she let her Dolly move, show her the right moves to make. A thought flashes through Dolly's head as the fireflies streak fearfully close, and she strains slightly, offering a suggestion. Smokeless Jade Fires' attention alights upon her like a halo, like the sun that cuts through the treetops, and then she is pushed, tumbling into the motion she offered.

Dolly does the splits: heels out, palms on the earth, fireflies streaking through her headdress, back low, head up. She brings her heels back behind her, toes digging into the stone, and lunges forward on all fours. The storm tracks her movements, descends to meet her, but Jade already knows what they need to do. Dolly does a headstand on one hand, lets the momentum flip her over and carry her back onto her feet, and now she's up on her arches at the very edge of the water, heels up, as much hopping as running, and Jade's laughing for her, and now the fireflies are setting the very ground beneath her feet alight.

Dolly drives her dancer's stave, hung with feathers and bangles, onto the stone and vaults up into the air. There's a moment where her stomach lurches, even though the hundred hands are holding her tight, pulling her up into the sky, as if Jade means to make her a constellation, or as if she's going to be one of the bird dancers, soaring down to earth with the rest of her flock, making the thirteen circuits around the heart of the world. And there, hung in furs, her rival: one of the Dead Wolves, the tzitzi, her ribs all lit up with fireflies. Dolly knows better than to compare Jade's enemy designs to Starless Skies bosses again unless she really wants to get it good, but she can still think it: the baroque and over-the-top arms and armor, the skeleton iconography straight out of late-Kaliko temple art, the reverb on their laughter as they point up higher than Jade thought they could and--

Oh.

The fireflies are like hot embers washing over her bare fur (and, more to the point, her bare chest) and she lets out a muffled, mortified squeal as she tumbles backwards, but Jade's hundred hands have her, cradling her spine and head, slowing her tumble as much as Jade can without breaking their connection. Dolly lets those hands spin her around, loosening her grip on the pole, and then snatching it back out of the air as she hits the ground on one knee. Her front throbs with the feedback, and Jade's fingers are rubbing her in soothing circles, almost shyly, almost apologetically. Almost.

Not that her Jade would show weakness when she knows her Dolly needs her to be strong, needs encouragement and bravado.

"Is that all you have?" Jade roars, cackling. "I barely felt it!" One open palm cracks on Dolly's rear to get her moving again, and Jade excitedly guides her through flinging the pole straight at one of the tzitzi's arms. Her choice whether to let it get hit or to twist out of the way, buying Jade the time she needs to close. Sure, Jade's down one weapon, but that's why she has two. Dolly looses the thongs at her hip, the cords of a huntress, and spins them to life, taking deep heaving breaths from her exertion (which are translated into the fluid, organic shudders of Jade's body, just as any other mech interface would). "You must want to pay homage to a true goddess." The hundred hands tighten their grip. "Well, I already have a bride, but I might accept your pathetic prayers..."

[Dolly and Jade, working together, manage a desperate 7 on Defying Disaster, and are willing to give up their electrolance and any hope of winning without wrapping up the foe. Or, you know, it could turn out that Jade's once again underestimating Angela Victoria Miera Antonius.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri!

Tomorrow, the guests are leaving: Kalaya to go and begin her mission, and the highlander and the demigod to continue their pilgrimage. Which, of course, is why you are up this late, preparing for the order you have been given: to make sure that the highlander and the demigod are seen leaving, and they are not seen returning. Even if something unexpected were to happen (say, if they were to escape tonight), those would still be your orders: to ensure that their trail obviously leads away from the Dominion. You need to give the Red Wolf the plausible deniability she needs to carry out her own negotiations.

How are you preparing? Walk us through it. Have you brought Azazuka (who has been busy with being pampered by Agata, and being obviously conflictedly jealous of Giriel, the poor dear) in on this, or is this the sort of work that a student shouldn’t be trusted with?

And then, by the by, tell us your reaction when Agata’s grand barge runs aground, a terrible tremor that can be felt all throughout the ship.

***

Giriel!

Everything is falling into place: Agata’s interest in Han and Lotus, the heavenly spirit you met at Turtlehead, Ven’s attempt to offer Lotus to the powers of Hell. The most terrible burden of the witch is knowledge that brings responsibility. Is your responsibility to help Agata as a loyal slave in, most likely, keeping Lotus as a bargaining chip? Or is your responsibility to the Flower Kingdoms and making sure Lotus is free?

Either way, Three Gleaming Petals has fallen asleep on you, her shining blue robe lying forgotten on the floor, completely relaxed. It’s to her credit that she doesn’t even wake up when Agata’s barge runs aground.

***

Kalaya!

Ven says: Crunch. Snapping timbers, the groan of wood, disaster.

That’s not—

You wake up, and the cabin is tilted in a way it shouldn’t be. The barge is huge enough that your cabin hasn’t been directly breached, but something is obviously very wrong.

But if you want to get out and help (of course you do, you’re a knight, after all) you’ll have to get past the hardened guards waiting outside your door, who likely would need a push to even think about leaving, let alone let you leave.

So, Kalaya: how does a knight of the Flower Kingdoms approach a challenge like this?

***

Zhaojun!

The pink fire sparks and surges in your blood. The little foxes leave their paw prints up and down your spine as they run, run, run with their tails burning like brands.

The steering system for the barge is remarkably simple: a wheel connected to a rudder, little more. Really, if any part of this was hard, convincing the door that it was unlocked and then convincing the sailors that they were unconscious was much more difficult than convincing the barge to turn.

Which you did, because it’s what was destined. Laid out. Of course it was, because it’s what you’re doing. Everything you are doing is sanctioned. Everything you are doing is justified. Watch the fields burn.

What three things did you do before you caused the Beneficence of the Hearth to run aground? What lovely chaos prescribed action have you undertaken tonight?

***

Han!

This is before all this. Don’t worry. Not too much before, but you don’t have to worry about the ship running aground, just the fact that Emli just walked into Lotus’s cabin.

Which is a problem, because you are also in Lotus’s cabin, in the middle of packing a bag for her and explaining why you are leaving tonight, and you have no idea how much of the conversation she might have heard.

”I care because you’re our guest,” she’d said. “And because helping our guests makes me happier than I ever was back home. And also because you’re in love, and you don’t even know it.”

And Emli— Emli who’s supposed to be taking care of you, Emli who (you are belatedly realizing) will be punished for letting you escape, Emli who told you you were in love with Lotus and then let you stew in those thoughts, Emli who has been nothing but kind and sweet and wears the Dominion’s collar— she offers you the bag that she packed for you.

“Good luck,” she says, and that’s the moment you know you cannot, cannot just leave her here to be punished for letting you escape. That’s the moment you realize, Han of the Mountains, that Emli’s a little bit in love with you and Lotus, and this is what her love looks like: food stolen from the kitchens and extra raincoats and two pilfered umbrellas.

Show her (and Lotus) what a dragon’s love looks like in return. And before you get all flustered and complain, consider it a String pulled.

Breathless Dead

Who lights the way to the grave? Who walks with you when no one else will? Who knows the path and will lead you to the final rest? Who loves you in the dark, who sees you for who you are and knows you?

Who but Hermes?

The Shepherdess is not Hermes, but there’s no one else here to do the work. She can’t slip away yet. Not while Bella’s still in danger; not while everyone she loves is at the mercy of this hydra’s poisoned tongue, her wicked deconstructing talons. For a moment she stands there, neither in the grave nor wholly outside it, and the universe expands all around her— that universe torn in half by the wound, by Molech’s roar, by the sin of hubris. She stands on the lip of the grave, and in the depths of one far vaster.

A cigarette butt smoulders in the grave. It is going to burn through, right to the other side of the reel. Say, turn this record over, you ain’t heard nothing yet. The only thing in the cold and the dark that could possibly do it. The connection’s on the tip of her tongue and it burns as if Aphrodite snuffed it out there, as if Bella was drawing out the venom again (sobbing and cursing and shaking the hero), and all she can say is that it burns like gold, see how it shines, the golden joinery racing from planet to planet, broken and beautiful, beautiful because it was broken, reaching out for an answer she just can’t see yet from this side of the door, but her fingers are on the lintel, and she’s almost there, the whole wide whirling burn of it, the clatter of the empty reel, and Bella is digging her fingers (the ones with no claws, oh, Bella, the ones without claws) into her arm, because oh, here comes the dragon at the end of it all, here comes the monster who will make a desolation of this place once more, here comes death by venom and fire and snapping jaws.

She scoops Bella up into her arms, holds her close: one set of legs instead of two, one body instead of two, less chance of something or someone being left behind. She’s heavy. Not like that, like— there’s so much of her. Dany could never hope to do this. But the Shepherdess can, and she knows to squeeze Bella close, to reassure her that she’s not at risk of falling, that she can trust. That her princess isn’t going to leave her behind again, no matter how bad this breaks, no matter what she did while the gods set whips at her heels, no matter what she did wrapped in bones, for the sake of a dance with a hound. For the sake of a kiss.

Masters don’t abandon their pets. Don’t you dare!

And at the very last moment, the Shepherdess, who trusts in that cigarette butt but not blindly, who knows too many people have walked the last road with regrets sour on their lips, who is so terribly aware of the awesome power of the many-headed death barreling towards them, kisses Bella, and the kiss tastes like their blood intermingling, heat on heat, and everything unspools before and behind, the rattle of the empty reel, the sizzle of the burning film, surrounded by death before and behind and below and above, and not even the Shepherdess can see right now what she’s put into motion, but she’d have died regretful if she hadn’t taken the chance—

“For luck,” she pants in giddy explanation, and jumps.

[Redana, hoping to outsmart Sagakhan like a rabbit waving a red cape in front of an empty grave, rolls an 8.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

On the outside: Smokeless Jade Fires emerges from the night like the ghost of an unfulfilled rival on the road, here to make one final challenge. Her colors are sepulchral in the torchlight, black and cobalt blue; the golden tributes on her breastplate and braids gleam like the fires of the Hot House, now that she has let her cloak fall. It is a statement: I do not even need the advantage of striking out of the many-periled night for the likes of you, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius!

“Greetings and defiance, champion of the Consortium,” she declaims, bowing with a flourish of her long electrolance; the water ripples at the force of her speakers, despite the hiss of her sibilants. “I will not insult your people by insisting on a surrender you will not offer. Indeed, I will take mercy upon you. Take your shot; hit me if you may; show your mettle. Even a captive may earn glory from the word of a fine strike.”

It’s grandstanding for three audiences at once: Angela herself, the watching audience, and Dolly safe within her chest. For the first, she presents herself as full of confidence, self-assured, deliberately ceding advantages to rattle her. For the second, almost but not quite an afterthought, the feeling of awe, of seeing the self-aware mech in its very stone. For the third, of course, the archaism; she would appreciate the cadence of the ancient warriors who vied for control of the city-states.

Naturally, she does not intend for allowing the shot to strike home. Perhaps a deflection with the lance, perhaps ducking low to the causeway and loping close, perhaps simply allowing her armor to take brunt of the blow if it is too swift.

---

On the inside: Dolly slowly surfaces from submerged space, feeling the chill of water roll down her spine as she blinks slowly. Behind her, hundred-handed Jade cups her arms, her thighs, her chest, her cheeks, and guides her into position.

Inside of Jade is an entire world, which is the gyroscopically balanced pilot’s capsule, from which a pilot may see the world and act upon it, in which their every move controls their perfect warrior body, constructed to move as they move, act as they act; tlacpac, nehuintlani.

But Dolly does not decide what Jade does. She is the medium, not the message; she is what is acted upon, not what acts. Her hundred-handed goddess pushes and she yields, pulls and she follows, squeezes and she melts. She is a dancer on a grand stage, a puppet on a hundred strings, a beloved doll who must trust the command of her owner.

The hand between her shoulderblades pushes, and Dolly bows low, one hand swept out; typical of Jade to grandstand. One ear twitches, and in response, Jade’s fingers curl inside and begin to massage the sensitive inside of her triangle. And that’s far from the only part of her being given attention; Jade’s hands on her chest rub in circles before firmly clenching, then releasing and continuing to rub, just as they have been all night. An invitation to submerge again.

As if she would, when Jade went to the trouble of lining the streets!

In Jade’s world, Dolly stands as tall as the trees, but she’s not wearing her bodysuit. Her limbs are heavy with tribute, feathers wreathe her hair, and her skirt is knotted at one hip. The streets of the village are thronged with worshippers of the goddess, the roll of drums and the tremor of bells and the chant of prayers. Dolly is the temple dancer, her collar engraved with the icon of the goddess, her fur painted in dreamy swirls of paint writhing about her rosettes, and her mouth filled past what she could ever really manage, her burning cheeks covered, her face held tightly beneath bead-fringed scarves, knotted firmly behind her head by a hundred hands.

While her goddess fights, Dolly will not be fighting; she will be proving her skill as a dancer, blessed with silence, guided by the demands of her goddess, rewarded for every lunge that becomes a graceful blow and every nimble step that moves them out of danger, every way in which she shamelessly moves her body for the glory of Smokeless Jade Fires. Everyone is watching her. Everyone can see her. Her heart races.

Well, Jade? She can feel your hands tightening, possessive, ready to show her what she needs to do. She doesn’t need to awaken her heart, not for a fight like this. Let her be your temple dancer, your bride of the gods, beheld by everyone, marked as yours, in the waking dream you unfold before her.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

There’s a moment where Vesna nearly bolts. It’s a messy, squishy moment, body language going haywire, eyes dilated. Prey, but not afraid of Black.

“I haven’t ever had this work out,” she blurts, beneath the strobing lights. “And the last breakup was… messy. Shit. I’m not supposed to bring that up, am I? I just… right. Music.”

She takes a step back, and then a step forward. Back, and forward. Caught between the desire to be close and the fear she doesn’t deserve it, even after what Yellow showed her.

“Have you ever thought about the fact that music was never supposed to be an industry? The first people, the ones in the Indus River valley,” she says, ahistorically, because she’s not thinking too hard about it, and even if she was called out she’d just autocorrect to the Nile, and it would take her a moment of actually considering the point to admit that if the Garden of Eden existed, it was somewhere in the heart of Africa, “they didn’t sing because they were looking for a contract with an industry label. They sang because singing is a stupid wonderful human thing to do. Like making weird little noises for no reason when you’re alone, or going big stretch when you see a cat doing a stretch.”

(Would Yellow have uploaded 3VNoises.mp3 to the cloud, listening to her make meaningless little mrrps while microwaving breakfast, thinking herself unobserved?)

“That’s why selling out is such, as an accusation it stings, you know? Because with things as they exist, we need compensation for our work, whether that’s spending the time practicing an instrument or livestreaming battle royale matches, but this wasn’t meant to be compensated. It’s just a way that we react to the world. We have vocal cords, we sing. We have strings, we tune them and make a song. And if you make the music because you think it’ll be more popular, because it will get you paid, you’re perverting this natural thing that your heart does just to make it fit, to pay the bills.”

She lets herself place one hand on Black’s hip, pull her closer, heart as quick and fleet as the hart (a metaphor that might be coming to mind because of the actual hart on the dance floor). “Do you have any idea how long it took me to enjoy video games again? To stop reflexively looking for ways I could break it, for combos and tricks, for things I could show off? Back after I lost the sponsorship, I stopped playing anything multiplayer for a year. If I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have been able to even touch them now. And the shop— I’m just trying to find new ways to find the things I fell in love with in the first place, before the streams, before I got the hands, before I grew up, you know? I mean, if I did. That’s arguable. An actual grown-up would be focusing on the piece she’s going to write about this place, right?”

The armor flashes white on her chest, the sheepish smile her stun animation. Left trigger or right trigger: Paragon or Renegade, Black?

Breathless Dead

She’s the only one who could keep up. Fleet-footed Redana, daughter of the gods, racing after that tumbling thunderbolt. Where it falls, rents and gouges tear into the roiling flesh of the monstrous mother of serpents. And where it falls, it does so without thought of itself.

Bella would have burned herself out in that awful armor, would have melted from the inside out. But that heart is still furious within her, burning, searing, as she dances with Hades on the edge of death. And Redana will not let that happen, will not let Bella tumble into the dark with a mocking, hopeless laugh on her lips. So she turns aside claw and jaw, the enemy from all sides; she uses the shield to crush, swinging it as if it was her answer to the awful assertion of this monster against the world, which is…

Something. There are things going on here that even the Shepherdess doesn’t understand, signifiers meaningless without their context. Mothers and monsters, killers and defenders. What is real in this moment is the frantic fight, the constant shift of attention, and even if she were Hera’s hundred-eyed guard she still wouldn’t be thinking fast enough to cover all the angles, to find the empty space between the many deaths of Sagakhan, no matter how hard she tries.

Then she catches sight of him between the writhing flesh, the necks and the teeth, with a shovel over one shoulder and a cigarette smouldering between his lips. He catches her eye, nods his head, gestures vaguely towards—

“Bella!” She vaults over a falling head, comes as close to the raging, roiling thunderbolt as she dares. “Follow me!”

She reaches out and takes her Bella by the wrist.

“Trust me,” she says, and for a moment they’re back on Tellus. I know what I’m doing, Bella. Follow me. Be with me. Trust me.

Because there’s no way to kill a monster like this, save for the intervention of the gods. And there’s no way to force a monster like this to give ground, only to give chase. She gave up her cunning, thinking it a weapon worth discarding; now she’ll be outwitted by Redana, of all people.

If Bella comes with her.

If.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

3V’s grin is real. She accepts the physicality of Black, those dangerous dance moves, with less fluster than she otherwise would, accepting that she doesn’t know how to match or beat it because her thinkies brain is excited and hopping up and down.

“—so this is a direct challenge to bulletcore,” she’s gushing, even as she leans into the violence resampled as dancing, her heart racing. “Because the original song’s context pitted SuA against a figure who, especially after the band’s shift towards corporate, stood for artistic sellout, for betrayal of one’s own old values, and sampling in Emma is, gosh.”

Then Black pulls her in close, one hand on her hip, the other with its side pressed flat against her neck, and she’s pulled back to this, a moment of vulnerability from both sides, in both attack and defense, laid bare.

“…am I talking too much?” she asks, and half wishes she had a tail to curl meekly between her legs.