Tatterdemalion

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

The really scary thing is that, at some level, the chemical hypnosis thing is sexy, in that primal monkey shudder sort of way. Imagine trusting someone enough to do that with them. Now stop and imagine federal governments having access to that. Yeah, that’s right, horny monkey. How do you like that ice cold shower of suits in sunglasses and disposable patsies? Brrrrr.

Focus. If he’s writing about something that illegal? Cops might have an excuse for questioning him about it. Domestic labor? Still a little risky. “The construction angle,” she says, smoothly. “That’s the project you’ve been working on. Makes for a good excuse for meandering all over the station and crashing here at odd hours.” She’s more speaking out loud to heart right now, but maybe it’s sinking in? No, it’s really more for her benefit, so she remembers it’s what they (she) decided on.

As for that ramble at the end— he’s right about the hand soap, probably. (Vague memories of hearing that it was four different companies trying to make basically the same thing, though.) Incredibly correct on the four day work week, ??? on the aglets (surely it’s just so it’s easier to thread them, right? right??), and as for home ownership…

Well. Is he right?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

“Do I look all right?” Dolly fusses with her outfit, her top’s tassels, her shoulder strap, her stud earrings, all nervous flustered energy. ”Of course, my bride. I wouldn’t let you out otherwise. You represent me, after all.” Dolly makes a high-pitched huff and squirms, tail swishing in flustered agitation. “Yes, but I want to—“

And then comes the omigosh, the kitten-like bounding, the invasion into Dolly’s personal space, and Jade’s hands on her back keeping her in place in case she thought about stepping back. But why would she? The smile is infectious, and Ksharta looks adorable in that loose, fern-laced top.

“That was incredible? Oh, don’t sell yourself short, Ksharta!” Dolly wraps her arms around Ksharta and squeezes her in a big, enthusiastic hug, gloved hand carefully closed. “You are so talented!!” She rubs their cheeks together and purrs enthusiasm, even as Ksharta continues to enthuse about her and— and—

“Smokeless Jade Fires didn’t let me see what she showed you,” Dolly says, unable to look at Ksharta as they prepare to board. Her gloved hand plays with a tassel like a braid. ”No asking her, either.” “It is my goddess’s choice how she chooses to… give me to you.” Ksharta’s grip tightens, and Dolly’s heart races, and she lets out a giddy little giggle. She can’t help it. ”Oh, what a good girl you are, Dolly.” Jade reaches around and cups her, thumbs working in circles. “Letting our little convert know that you are my gift to her tonight, and how happy you are about it. You’re already so firm, too. Should I check to see if you’re drooling for her, my eager little kitten?”

Dolly’s clamping down on noises by the time she takes a seat and gets buckled— ”No. Help Ksharta Talonna first.” —reaches over across Ksharta, takes her seat belt, and draws it across the cat’s body, burying her face in Ksharta’s shoulder in turn. People are staring, and Dolly is going to melt, Jade, right here in her seat.

”Now tell her, dearest Dolly. Use my words.” “The goddess is always with me,” Dolly says, eyes fluttering closed, voice low, as private as could be managed on a public shuttle. Ksharta smells warm and delicious; something of fresh bread lingers on her fur. “I wear her token and serve as her…” She rubs her thick thighs together, sucks in air through her teeth. “Vessel.” ”Good girl. Good vessel. You are that through which I choose to act.” “I am a good girl. A good vessel. I am that through which she chooses to act.”

Jade involuntarily colors for a moment, hiding her face and rueing that she forgot Dolly was repeating her words. Dolly does not notice; she is hanging in suspense as Ksharta muffles a squeak. Jade, listening through Dolly’s ears, considers whether this is the right moment to act more openly, but… no. The glove is her secret. It may be an open secret for the clever, but she is not going to show it off before the common folk. That would rob it of its power, its use.

“She will show you, too,” Dolly continues, after a moment. She opens her eyes and watches Ksharta’s lips, the excited breath in and out, the shifting underneath that fern-lace. “Not here. Not yet. But you’re going to be a good girl for our goddess, aren’t you? Do what Dol— do what I say, because I speak her words. And then, oh, Keoni’s Tower is dark, and is so private, and she wants to meet you in person, Ksharta Talonna. Now shush. Shush for Smokeless Jade Fires. Not. Another. Word. Imagine her hand over your mouth, firm, demanding, unstoppable. Obey, and you’ll be her good girl, too. And good girls get treatttsssssh.”

Dolly breathes through her nose, hard against Ksharta’s neck, shaking. Jade, mercilessly, keeps rubbing: up, down, up, down, flick. Good girls get treats. She turns Dolly’s head and Dolly obediently opens her eyes, and Jade drinks in the shocked and envious stares, the judgment, the embarrassment. Two horny catgirls all over each other, just like in the match, because their goddess demands it. Maybe Dolly will even get a reputation. Maybe Angela Victoria Miera Antonius will hear of this. Yes. YES. Let her. Let her be jealous. Let her imagine being part of the goddess’s HAREM. How pretty she would look as the centerpiece of…

…the centerpiece?

To assuage her guilt, she leans in and nips at Dolly’s throat, and her heart races at how hard Dolly clamps up and tries not to make a scandalous noise right there on the shuttle. Yes. Her Dolly. Her favorite. Her favorite. Her favorite.

It’s just that Angela Victoria Miera Antonius’s height. Yes. The height. That’s why she considered her as a centerpiece. Topless, too. Dolly and Ksharta Talonna on either side, pretty faces pressed up against either side of Angela Victoria Miera Antonius’s chest… yes. That’s why. Yes. Face glowing over her gag as the Hybrasilians do their cheek rubs and purr. And Jade, tilting her head back by her hair, welcoming her to the harem.

She’s even got an outfit in mind for you, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius. She prepared it from your people’s historical records. The veil will look perfect on you.

But Jade is a goddess of Hybrasil. And these good girls need her attention. And they’re such good girls, aren’t they? They don’t care about their dignity. Not when their goddess demands humiliation. The delight of it makes Jade’s tail the concept of a nebula stretching across entire solar miles.

Her girls. Good girls. Her girls.

Breathless Dead

Running.

It’s hard, because her mind is racing and trying to unpack what’s going on, because that was Mynx, but it shouldn’t have been, because Mynx… she hasn’t seen Mynx since Salib. She’d been so focused on Bella, saving Bella, worrying about Bella, that everything else had just been noise. And the worry is a servant gnawing on its own tail, a loop of stress that unspools the more she runs and becomes not a thought with words but a burning in the elements of her self, a raw chafing discomfort—

But she is running, see.

And running is one of the best things in the whole wide universe.

It is her whole body optimized for purpose. It is an explosion of intent and capability. It is a speed so reckless that the mind becomes a thing of sensations and reactions and words go away, thoughts are sublimated, and there is just the raw animal power of a human being who has pushed herself to this purpose, who has become a thing that runs, whose will is not befuddled and worrying and stymied but effortlessly expressed, and why couldn’t ruling an empire be the same way? Why did it have to be a cramped closet of a thing, shut up in the dark of the mind with so many books and reminders and scales?

It is like piloting the plover of the self.

And so Redana does not process what soothes that chafe. She does not understand why she is so happy that she laughs, a convulsion of muscles, even as she flings herself through her ship, her ship, alongside Bella. All she knows is that in this moment of stress, when she should be tearing herself apart, she instead feels powerful, light-headed, capable of finding Mynx no matter where she tries to hide.

And that, too, is a gift.

TSL: Sjakal

Birsi!

“And what do you make of Sjakal?” The warrior-woman— Jekkan— steps forward and runs her fingers through your hair. Powerful, commanding, but not unkindly. “You all are very far from home. Is this truly a better place than the plains for you, Fire Wheel?”

A lot hinges on your answer to this question, guardswoman. The more you add to whatever answer you give, the easier it might be for you to make a mistake, but the tall, intense woman really, really wants to know your answer. One finger runs along your jawline as you consider her question.

She’s got so much power. Why is she down here in the gutter?

---

Silsila!

“And where is Birsi, Silsila?”

Hai Lin is not exploding. She is intensely, furiously not exploding. Steamed, salted fish sizzles on her plate, but her eyes don’t leave you. You are still surrounded by her guards.

“It was such a simple thing I required of you, but it seems that only one of you came back. Why might that be? I am all ears.”

If you don’t give a good answer, you are going to be extremely arrested. And if you try anything funny, you might extremely end up in a duel.

---

Nahla!

Ruz’s private chamber is like the lair of a dragon. She is a collector of the strange, the unusual, and the gaudy. Her hoarded wealth is reflected in every golden tablet, every jade ornament, and the massive chandelier that casts dizzying shadows over the place. It’s… disorienting. And she moves almost silently on the plush carpets.

“Ah, the northerner girl,” her voice hisses, from deeper within the candle-speckled gloom. “Do come in. There’s a good girl.”

You are in danger if you do so. You are in terrible risk if you do not have a plan and a performance to match it. Not everything here is as it seems.

---

Soot!

“What?? You can’t be serious,” Rosethal sputters, furious. Her finger jabs you: here, here, here! “You are supposed to—“

Then she stops, runs one hand possessively over the sword. “Well,” she says. “Well, well, well. I mean, if you can provide the ante, I see no reason that you shouldn’t join in.”

And she sits down opposite you, her green eyes startling and hungry over her veil, ready to win the sword.

Prepare to Fight, Soot, or Entice, as pleases you— but this is a battle, even if it is done with cards and bluffing. You will win the first hand and scrape together enough of the pot to hold you in for a few more hands, and it’s up to you how you play them.

Do your best, and keep in mind that Rosethal can be goaded into some very reckless bets.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Through a jackal’s eyes, Jade sees the cables of the net snap away, one by one. Through the eyes of her heart, she sees Dolly taking deep breaths, her tail curling, about ready to explode. Through the eyes of her imagination, she pictures Ksharta Talonna writhing in her mesh, so similar to her Dolly, thighs pushed apart by the knee of a goddess, mouth open, eyes wide, ears down. Through her mech’s sensors, she sees Ksharta Talonna hide her face and hears her flustered, needy squeal.

“Good girl,” Jade purrs, running one of Dolly’s hands up the front of Ksharta Talonna’s chassis. Not a kitten. That would be demeaning, undercut the symbolism: that she is being initiated into a rite, into something holy. “You were so brave, fighting me.” Her fingers, strong enough to crush stone to rubble, slide into place on one side of Ksharta Talonna’s magnificent throat, her thumb applying precise pressures. Here, Dolly— and here, too. Make her feel conquered.

Dolly’s tail curls around Ksharta’s. In her eyes, Ksharta is wearing an archaic hunt-mask, rimmed with river stones. This is so much. She’s fooled around before, on Hybrasil, gone from meadow to meadow, but Jade has been her everything, intense, trained on everything Dolly wrote as a horny teenager, and it’s still wild, heart-hammeringly wild, that she’s going to be Jade’s vessel for…

It’s all confusing and hot and she wants this. She wants this, too. She wants Talon, but in a different way than she wants Angela (don’t think about that) (but what if) (Jade will take care of it) (and she sees, with Talon, and thinks she wasn’t good enough) (Jade will take care of it)

Jade’s two fingers, untaloned, show Dolly her appreciation for not just complying, but for eagerly participating, and thinkies leak out as Dolly’s eyes unfocus and everything is Jade’s hands and Ksharta gasping underneath her.

And, uncoaxed, she presses her gagged mouth to Ksharta’s.

White noise burns through Jade’s speakers, a hum to send shivers through Ksharta’s chassis. Then she lifts Dolly’s head as she frantically recalculates, incorporates Dolly’s unforeseen… enthusiasm. She took Dolly for granted, assumed her bride would blushily hide behind the excuse that she needed to serve the goddess, a way for Jade to indulge her through instruction.

“My bride, Seven Quetzal, shall guide you in my rites,” she promises, and feels Dolly buck, which grinds metal against metal. “She is beautiful beyond compare, a tear of the moon fallen to earth. And because you have impressed me, Ksharta Talonna, tonight you will be given her as a reward.”

Dolly’s noise is noise for the sake of noise, for the sake of hearing her attempts to speak dominated by her goddess, for knowing that Ksharta can’t hear any of it, not yet. And Dolly’s noise is because she’s going to explode like a firework if her Jade keeps praising her like she’s not even here, and is Angela listening, too? That big, confusing, strong-handed alien who smells so nice?

“You may thank me now, Ksharta Talonna,” Jade commands. “For stealing you from your lodge, for offering you my treasured Seven Quetzal, and for sending you— this.”

And Smokeless Jade Fires stabs Dolly Montage 9sz into the defenseless cloud of Pulsar Cat’s cognition, which flares open across Ksharta Talonna’s mindscape like the nine-headed spear of Kyu Kyu Kyullyn inside the body of her prey. Dolly, Dolly, Dolly: digitally generated by the goddess who worships her, the memorized body translated into pin-ups. A come-hither look as she coyly half-hides behind a tree; a soulful look in her full regalia, and all it reveals; a pleading look over her gag, Jade’s talons tangled in her hair. Dolly, as Jade sees her and wants her to be seen.

Look, Ksharta Talonna. Look and love her, as I do. Look and see what you are offered for your surrender. Look and compliment her profusely, or else. And thank me, who possesses her, and who rewards good girls— every sort.

Dolly feels her eyes hidden by Jade’s hands, a deliberate— ah, ah, ah, Dolly, you don’t get to see. She knows, roughly, what Ksharta has been sent, but Jade hasn’t let her look yet, and knowing that Ksharta gets to see but SHE doesn’t, that Jade decides who gets to see her art of Dolly, has her half-crush the Pulsar Cat’s pelvis with a desperate, needy whine, but she can’t help it, it’s just so, just SO…

…so HOT.

[Jade hits Ksharta Talonna with a 7, and also, the next time Dolly tries to Entice, she takes +1 forward as a result of Dolly Montage 9sz.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Smokeless Jade Fires is a spearhead. The conception of her self narrows until she is sharp, focused, a thrust. The feedback of the systems of the idol is tinder to her fires, until— as fast as thought— she is almost slavering, jaws flecked with digital spittle. Her claws/talons/knives do not cut Dolly, but they prick her as they swing her legs up and clench them around Ksharta Talonna’s midsection, tight, and Dolly’s squeal as she squeezes fills the cockpit, her head thrown back, the idol matching, grinding the back of its head against the muddy earth.

Then Jade flips Dolly over, and the idol flips with her, pivoting from the hips and shoulder, the fulcrum point perfectly known in the space of a breath. Jade lets out a wild yawp that rings through the forest, even as her drones begin a swirling targeting formation around the two, tangled together in the water, which makes that constricting net spark where water fountained up from the fall.

Dolly, eyes squeezed shut, still squealing as the lightning arcs around her torso, hissing and caught in rope, sending pulses of warmth and modulated stinging through her body, her fur floofing out like an army of speartips, teetering on the edge, trying to pant her goddess’s name through sealed lips, but she can’t think her way through the labyrinth of lightning to the next thought, and it’s getting tighter and tighter, and the compression is so intense, her nose flaring as she tries to breathe through what her mind tells her is covering her face, and Jade hasn’t had to push this hard before except for that one time and that was just training, Jade was in control of the pacing, but here, but here…

“Impressive,” Jade says, luxuriantly stretching her back, grinding against Ksharta Talonna’s front. “As expected from a huntress of Hybrasil. I see you came prepared to worship me.” Her talons spark where she tries to cut through the net, and she hopes the sparks make it seem like she’s succeeding. “What a good girl you are, Ksharta Talonna.”

The pack snaps fire, stinging little nips and pinches along Ksharta’s front, as Jade lets loose a husky laugh. Control. It’s all about control. Huntresses crave to know that someone else is in control, that the gods are guiding them, that they are not the arbiters of their own fate.

“But it’s over.” It is not over, if Ksharta remembers her cannon. “The only question is how long you want my jackals to bite.” A second strafe, a little rougher. “All you need to do is admit you are ready to be my trophy, Ksharta Talonna. I will honor you. Sign you, if you choose.” She leans in closer, taking a risk, hoping Ksharta Talonna is staring at her idol’s head and not the net she still strains against. “Bless you for entertaining me. Daughter of huntresses, daughter of Hybrasil.” Their faces are so close that were Ksharta to say anything, the backwash of their speakers would mingle.

Keep it up, Dolly. You’re being such a good girl. Hold it a little longer. Bend lower; I love your tummy when it folds like this, so much to love, good girl. You’ll be rewarded even more than Ksharta Talonna.

Smokeless Jade Fires, goddess, is a spearhead with a broken shaft, telling her quarry: ”see, I have already pierced you,” and expecting them to fall over as if dead. But will she? Is Ksharta Talonna the kind of silly girl who will let those honeyed words drive out thoughts, drive out a possible victory, drive out anything but the squirming need to be a good girl?

[Jade refunds the String and counterplays by pulling her own: take an XP, Ksharta Talonna, if you are reduced to verbal keysmashes and useless flailing. Notably, if she does not, she wins the match; this is all Jade’s got left, and silencing her renders the match won.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Giriel!

Cathak Agata’s attention is intense. Her delight drowns out anything else— questions of what the price might be, questions as to whether it is the right thing to do, questions of whether Giriel needs anything. “That’s my good girl,” she says, and holds you by the chin, and she is happy with you because you are doing what she needs you to do. And that means you are perfect, because Cathak Agata is delighted in you.

“And if they ask for too much,” she adds, suddenly, quietly, “keep in mind— isn’t it lucky we have those demons?” Naji stiffens, but does a halfway decent job hiding it. Agata didn’t give you an order. But it’s a suggestion. After all, demons are monsters from the prison of Hell, and you, Giriel, beautiful Giriel, are a person. More than that: you’re her person. Her witch who came into her life to help her, to adore her, to revere her.

If you agree with her, out loud, right now, just because you’re intoxicated by her presence, mark XP and Naji’s enmity. And if you disagree with her, out loud, right now, she will smoothly tell you that she meant the demon could protect you, silly girl. That’s all she meant. Right?

---

Kalaya!

“Being a knight means that I can knock heads together and it’s a good thing,” Petony snarls. And there it is, Kalaya. A flash of vulnerability.

Petony, the Tiger Knight, believes in her heart that she is a bad person. She’s crude and violent and needs the moral certainty that being a knight provides: that as long as she is pointed outwards at the enemies of the Flower Kingdoms and their people, she is— not a good person, but less bad. And she buries this beneath drinking and carousing and mentoring, until she almost forgets…

And then the princess she took under her wing went and stabbed one of the good guys. One of her own. Uusha, who might be scary but is still a knight. She thought you could be better than she is, and then you proved her wrong.

You want to convince her? Take a step forward. Hug her. Tell her that whatever happened, it’s not her fault. Thank her for trying. She’ll crack. She’ll start crying. She might even break out the drinks and tell you more about how her ex broke her heart by seducing the Red Wolf…

But while you do that, reveal to Petony exactly what your feelings are towards her. She’ll know, whether or not you tell her.

---

Fengye!

“Do you eat rocks?”

Her hair sticks to her muddy forehead. Her body is shaking as she drags you forward, one arm around your body, the other holding your wrist, her dainty little face right next to yours. The determination to not give up… that’s something that she kept from her old self. The General, refusing to admit the war was lost. The world swims in a film of rain and pain and exhaustion.

Eventually— very eventually— you wake up, not quite sure when you blacked out. Above you, the huge leaf of a turtleback fern. Beside you, an angry hiss of ”Gadzooks. Tarnation. Hecking hecking hecks.” The tap tap tap of rocks being hit together in a way that will never create a spark, even if the sticks she’d gathered weren’t wet. In the Flower Kingdoms, they have to use lanterns, and carefully dried tinder, and…

But you have firedust, don’t you?

”Rotten roots,” the Maid blurts out, on the verge of tears at a world that refuses to bend to her will.

---

Han!

“I am performing an important service to the Flower Kingdoms,” Sagacious Crane crows. Oh, great. Here it comes. She’s got a light in her eyes and you’re going to have to listen to what she’s got to say!!

“I am attempting to warn everyone I can about a duplicitous spirit named Zhaojun! Far from being a heavenly emissary, she is nothing more than a trickster and a disturber of the peace, and very soon, I am sure, the Sapphire Mother will have her declared anathema! She is pretending to be a lion-spirit, dressed in blue, with a brace of terrible firewands! She might speak the tongue of Heaven, but she is a deceiver and a scoundrel, even worse than you! Far, far worse! In fact, I would go so far as to say she’s even worse than the Vermillion Beast!!”

From the exhausted rumble around the inn’s common area, it sounds like she has already given a speech about this. At length.

“But helping one of my sisters takes priority,” she continues, tossing it in your face that she’d rank a fellow priestess over you in terms of who counts as a sister. “Now get out of my way and let me see her, Han!”

She doesn’t touch you, but she’s going to push her way past you if you don’t do something about that, and she will go find Lotus and badger her into being roommates, where she will put her under terrible dreadful big sister scrutiny, with two possible outcomes…

Either she’ll decide that Lotus is a fraud who needs to be punished, or she will tell Lotus all the embarrassing stories!

How do you stop her? Do you stop her? Can you stop her?

---

Piripiri!

Emli touches the back of your hand. “That sounds dreadful,” she says in her Service Voice. Her touch is unfairly soft. And she’s looking at you with that same attention that she gives all the guests that she falls a little bit in love with, and, well…

You know, you could let her just turn this around. Let her guide your head into her lap so she can brush her fingers through your hair. She’s so good at listening.

(So good, in fact, that it would count as an Emotional Support. And there’s no downside to breaking this Commandment, save what’s in your own heart.)

And the worst part of it is that she’s only capable of being so devious. Seducing you into being distracted is beyond her. There are slaves on board who would be capable of it, but Emli is simply, earnestly, just devoted to making sure that everyone around her who is hurting… hurts less.

Is that enough to make you make a mistake, Piripiri? Is everything you have been through too much weight for you to carry when she offers to let yourself unburden yourself? If not, please make a dramatic exit of some sort.

Breathless Dead

Is it in question that Redana dives into the engine room? No. No, it is not. As soon as she sees that vast and familiar hall filled with mist and flowers, an otherworld to match Elysium, the heart of that horrible jungle she thought she had defeated when she buried Sagakhan beneath the sands, she’s fumbling with her clothes. Out come the goggles from one pocket, pulled down over her eyes, even as her mother’s eye traces paths through the mist: her destination laid out as it is destined. Up comes her scarf, pulled over her face, making an airtight seal with a trace of her fingers along its edges.

But before she does, she stops, just for a moment, aware of who’s next to her. Bella. Bella, beautiful, questionably loyal, an enigma, but—

“You don’t have to follow me,” Dany says. “I’ll come back this time. I promise.” And then, her duty done, hoping desperately that Bella will wait this time, Dany opens her eye and jumps, for once in sync with her mother’s eye: it traces out the steps it knows she can take, highlights where she will need to vault over hissing cabling and duck beneath sickly-sweet orchids, allows her to immerse herself in the moment, this moment.

[Dany Overcomes with a 9, marking a narrative use of her Spacer’s Uniform to continue. This triggers her Survivor move, which she will use to get to Alexa quickly, avoiding any harm along the way, but not quietly.]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

3V doesn’t really “do” tea. She can drink it, sure. But if water tastes like anything, it should taste like ice; like cold, like relief in the heat, like snow packed down your throat. A faint flavor, as if experienced from another room, just makes her want to go for an actual flavor, the kind that would explode on her tongue and likely kill a sickly Victorian child. Fruit flavors should be bolded and underlined. But, y’know, she can drink it, if that’s what she’s got.

Which is why the tea she hands Junta’s good hand is green, cold, and canned. Like drinking water from the roots of a tree, cupped in your palms, kneeling at something old and wonderful. (That’s the metaphor that gets her through the taste.)

“You,” she says, bubbly irate iron, a ring of swords swirling in a halo about her (in an aura reading sense), “are going to sit down until you stop shaking, and then we’re going to talk about the research project you’ve been working on.” Deliberately vague. “Thesis statement” provokes follow-up questions about where he’s attending.

The couch already has a tactical blanket deployed, draped over the back five minutes ago. She carefully but firmly maneuvers him around the coffee table until she can squeeze him in, and then she takes a seat on her regular spot (on the armrest). The blanket is going to be wrapped around his shoulders, and he will drink from the roots of Yggdrasil until he starts spouting some oracular wisdom, in one form or another.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

They lean in and meet the spear. Its head strikes Jade’s breastplate, off-side, and the breastplate does not yield— but the momentum, the step forward, drags the head down to the hip, where it lodges. They reach out and seize the spear’s haft, and for a moment—

I will not sacrifice my pack. That was the thought that consumed Jade’s cognition. Too attached, bringing them a mistake, her responsibility; using them callously too terrible to bear. But now there is a spearhead in their hip and she is having to try and shield Dolly from the worst of the feedback and it was her fault, she failed to hold Dolly as the most important again, again, her Dolly, she should have let every drone smash to pieces before she let Ksharta Talonna land a blow on her Dolly. Under her hands, Dolly is panicking, eyes wide, heart racing, unable to speak. Failed her, failed her, failed her! Dolly’s grip is made to tighten on the haft, groaning under her fingers, as Jade’s fury at herself narrows into a vicious point.

Jade is agitated all around Dolly, who feels the spear like the bite of an ant, but one of the really big ones, throbbing and insistent, or like Jade’s talons when Dolly reassures her she wants them, and why did she lean into the movement? She just wanted— it’s just that Talon sounded so excited, and Jade was pushing her forward, and Dolly wasn’t thinking, she was just blushing and happy and now she’s let Smokeless Jade Fires down, she’s already cost them an advantage by not being good enough, by not doing exactly what Jade wanted her to do, by letting Talon’s little kitten enthusiasm get to her head, oh no, oh no no no, she bites down and slumps into Jade’s guiding hands and resolves to do what she’s told, and just what she’s told.

Dolly, in pain, slumps. Jade, screaming inside her thoughts, cups her firmly, her beautiful arms, her lolling head, her perfect curves, and pushes her to move as much as she can. She could twist the spear out of Ksharta Talonna’s hands, use her idol as a weapon of leverage, but she cannot put Dolly through that. Not her Dolly. She pushes forward, feels the resistance, panics, tugs back. Dolly loses her balance; Jade helps her down as gently as she can, cushions the fall, but they’re down.

Pain is an important part of life, Dolly thinks, ridiculously, laid out on her butt, half-dunked in a stream. The body tells you that you are at risk of causing damage to itself. It’s one reason why some degree of pain was a benefit in mech feedback; it tells you what you can’t put stress on. If she puts all her weight on this leg, it risks buckling, lines disconnecting, causing cascading structural damage. Pain also produces relief, and Dolly found herself wishing that Jade’s hands would… do something. Spank her a little. Squeeze. Make her feel like she’s been punished and then forgiven, not this constricting, swirling agitation.

Then the spearhead lifts her chin, like in The Two Cliffs, and her treacherous heart beats faster, her thick thighs squeezing together just a little more firmly as she’s forced to look up that spear at the enthusiastic Talon, and she is a kitten, isn’t she, just this big ball of energy and exhilaration, and oh no she’s been downed, whatever could happen next? Maybe… no… Jade would never stand for it… but…?

Oh, just imagine it, Dolly’s treacherous heart whispers. Listening to Jade with muffler code clamped over her output, wrapped up in cords together, humiliated in front of the audience as Talon’s over-eager paws accidentally undo Jade’s breastplate harness and it comes crashing to the arena floor, and in the divine world of the feedback, Dolly’s dress would come undone—

No, that’s why they can’t. Humiliation is for Dolly. Smokeless Jade Fires demands glory, on her terms.

”The first hit is free,” Jade says, clamping Dolly’s hand just behind the spearhead again. Divinity is presentation. The faithful need to see what they believe. “Come here and I’ll make you pay for the second.” She tugs, furiously, and the spear’s head rams into the riverbed, and Ksharta Talonna comes down, down, d—

Ah.

And before Jade can think to stop it, the obvious metaphor plays out in her world; Dolly finds herself pinned underneath the hot, panting, simulated young Talon, eyes looking up pleadingly as she blushily mumbles, ears low, aware of just how, how much this reminds her of treacherous thoughts she’d already had about Angela…

[Smokeless Jade Fires and Dolly Stagger together, giving Talon a critical opportunity to exploit. They also hit a Fight with Grace on a 7, choosing to take a String on the awestruck pilot and to remove Talon’s spear from immediate use. It’s the mech herself that’s the sword, after all…]