Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

Ember tosses her head back and howls in elation and treachery. In the back of her head, she knows that she is drawing attention, that Mosaic may very well chase her and then the hunt will be on, that she has almost certainly been followed by packmates, but it bubbles out of her happy and wild and joyous, joyous, awe-struck and delighted and tail-wagging and Celebration in the wind, all goldensatin fireworks.

She howls for the moon and she howls for the little moon; she howls for the death of the crab and she howls for the life of the huntress, the grand lion who would toss the whole pack into the sea with one hand if she wanted to. She howls because her girlfriend has just killed a giant enemy crab and made it look like an act of worship. She howls in defiance of the Corvii, of Taurus's foolish plan, of stealth and secrecy and silence, of everything except the things that she gets to feel, here, right now, in the presence of Mosaic the Huntress.

When she finally lowers her head, she isn't breathless, but the smile on her face is the same as someone who has just had the air pushed from their lungs with a kiss. She hops down onto the sand, tail furious, dancing from foot to foot, all her desires jumbled up and all focused on her, her, her; on what it would be like to run from her; what it would be like to kiss her bloody mouth; what it would be like to be praised for impossibly catching her; what it would be like to swim into the depths with her and watch her catch fish bare-handed.

Fight me, kiss me, race me, catch me, whatever you like, Mosaic, Mosaic, Mosaic, only let me be as important to you as the crab and the moon...!

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Picture Dolly. So small, so vulnerable, eyes still wet with tears, and the way she hesitates to speak, trapped between a rock and a hard place, says almost everything.

Almost.

"...when you kidnapped me, after causing so much damage to our mecha that I was cut off from my goddess, my, my goddess," and the word is emphasized to mean so many other things, "I was scared, and I was angry, and I thought you were an audacious handsy brute, and... and I wanted Jade to come and save me. But."

The "but" is small and feathered and flutters around the room.

"...by the end. I was excited for her to come save me, but I wasn't afraid anymore. No, I was... I was afraid that you'd try to keep us apart. But I wasn't scared of you. Just like Jade, you know how to make me feel small, and pretty, and... and someone that people want." She reaches up, brushes curls behind her ear, and looks up at Valynia. She is the smallest person in the room, and her body language is a bared stomach and throat. The pain of this room is something she will brave if it means that she can stop anyone from being hurt.

"When I made the offer, I thought that I was in agreement with Smokeless Jade Fires," she continues. "And I thought that... I don't want anyone to actually fight over me, but... I like being. In the middle. The prize. As long as I know I'm coming back to her in the end. And..."

She glances about. The room is still private. She straightens up, brings her fists to her side, scrunches up her face, eyes furiously shut. "I. Seven Quetzal. Have asked. My goddess. Smokeless Jade Fires. Many times. To indulge me in fantasies about being kidnapped. Often by pirates. And you are, you're the pirate. So when I asked, I thought... I thought everyone was getting what they wanted. Everyone was getting what they wanted. You are ambitious, Valynia Bander. You are ambitious and brave and sexy and... and I still remember the way you treated me. The things you..."

She runs one hand along the place where the fur is almost grown back in, and she briefly lets her tongue part between her lips.

"...but you have the Red Band. And Smokeless Jade Fires has me. And... since I have to choose, I choose her."

I choose her. I choose her. I choose her. Jade grins, and it's victorious and preening and papering over the moment of awful gross vulnerability in front of the Bander. She meets Valynia's gaze and puffs up, almost frantic. She didn't lose, after all! She is never punished! Dolly's still hers! And all it took was...

All it took was making her cry, because she'd tried so hard to please her goddess.

Her face twists despite herself. This isn't fair! She's not supposed to feel guilty! She's not the one who started any of this!

Perhaps she should go and see. If Ksharta--

Ksharta Talonna, who she'd just admitted wasn't as important to her as Dolly. Ksharta Talonna, who she'd seduced. Ksharta Talonna, hiding underneath a table in a half-empty ballroom. Why is she still feeling guilt? She is a goddess!

(Because goddesses keep their promises, because goddesses look after those who believe in them, and because goddesses are supposed to be more than anyone else, in all ways, in all things.)

Smokeless Jade Fires does not apologize. But she does say, "I... Ksharta Talonna is calling for me." Not over the gloves, she's not, and Dolly knows that. "You had better not. You had. When I come back, I expect my high priestess to still be here."

And then she pulls herself away, and she vanishes from where she was floating in the midst of the party, and she withdraws her attention from Angela Victoria Miera Antonius. She leaves her most precious bride with her rival (who she rejected, for a goddess, who was starting to feel smaller and smaller). And projects herself next to Ksharta Talonna.

"Hi," she says, lamely, ears drooping. She pulls her knees up to her chest, one phantasmal hand rubbing Ksharta Talonna's chin. "I hope... I hope I helped. Make this party better, I mean."

Dolly doesn't take the glove off. But she leans back into Valynia. "I'm sorry," she says, in a tiny voice. And then she stops talking and listens, ears up, her ungloved hand on the back of Valynia's own. She makes no move to break away. She is still, herself, Seven Quetzal, the prize of the goddess, the kidnapped high priestess. And her heart is so big that there's room for everyone inside, even Valynia Bander, even if it won't work out, and that's why she stays there, waiting, listening, feeling Valynia's heartbeat against her back.

Trusting that there's something she can do.

[9 on Emotional Support means that if Valynia opens up, she sheds a Condition, and if she does not, Dolly takes a Condition.]

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Foxpearl!

The net shoots past you with maybe an inch to spare and proceeds to smash through the window of a lawyer's office, where it whirls around a chair violently, constricts so tightly that it knocks it over on its side, and then shoots an electric pulse through the chair, which is really unfair, given how the chair already stopped resisting.

The cop who fired it yanks the reload lever on the side, makes a small adjustment in his aim, and then has to deal with Shifu being between you and him, and she's way too big right now to get netted. But that's overkill, right? For an innocent little foxgirl like you? Whatever happened to just being tackled and handcuffed while somebody reads you your rights?

Also, Shifu is totally mugging at you, and Vermillion is trying to collect her thoughts because she's absolutely flabbergasted that someone would?! shoot a net at you?! what is with these people, she's Empress's protege for crying out loud?!

---

Shifu!

Now would be the time to transform into a wolf! Or maybe a horse! Or a moose!

Except that you've pulled a conceptual muscle. You know, like when you stretch too hard? It happens every now and then, and it's like you stretched really hard into orca, which is awesome, but now your soul's suddenly stiff and wincing and asking if maybe someone can give it a massage with one of those guardian balls maybe?

Which is to say, you are now orca until these cops are dealt with.

Also, this is not a particularly deep pool and the cops are not standing in the pool anyway, which means that your method of locomotion is largely inspired by seals right now, except with a less convenient tail.

Have you gotten stuck like this before?

---

Rain!

You're the one in position to see the cop with the net-gun start circling around Shifu one way, while another goes the other way, and the third is yelling at the orca-puppy to stand down before he has to figure out how to use disproportionate force on a killer whale. But the good news is that if you get involved, they'll be outnumbered, and between the four of you, you can probably figure out some way of dealing with these jackasses before anybody really gets hurt (and before more reinforcements arrive).

Which one are you going to dive down on? Net-guy, flanker, or man-threatening-a-killer-whale?

Breathless Dead

The huntress in Ember, the one that has been slowly trained to be part of the pack, knows that the turning of the wind will be her ally. Not all hunts are carried out by stealth. She can almost hear Taurus in her ear, telling her that she needs to be ready to run just fast enough to keep Mosaic at her heels, which is to say, as fast as she can run. You run to the pack, you pull the apex predator into the net, you have to just look like you're incompetent, do you think you can do that, Ember?

But that's an almost. Her treachery is in her instincts, and it will betray Mosaic, because her thought is on a silver leash of moonlight. Her chin sinks into her palms as she watches from the nearby outcropping, her tail wagging uselessly behind her, as she drinks in the moon and the night intermingled on Mosaic's back. Her own strength's all lean and quick; she's the wiry runt, but she's got a rabbit's own feet. But Mosaic reminds her of a statue. (Maybe one with four arms?) Her decadent softness, her curves, swallow up the moonlight and beg for more. Sweat shines on her marble skin, each bead as precious as ambergris.

When the demigod lunges, cracks open a leg, exposes the scent of the soft white meat within, Ember rolls over, yanked on that silver leash. Upside-down, she watches the constellation of the Huntress do battle with Iolaus's Bane, a titan striding across the star-choked beach. Her toes curl on the rough-textured rock, and her breath hitches as her lover strives underneath the gaze of the gods. She can look. She's allowed to look. Why is that thought so breathtaking? That she is free to look, and lust, and to admire the perfection of the finest artwork that the gods ever shaped, the daughter of a mountain and a moonbeam?

Whatever did she do, little runt of the pack, to deserve the bedroom laughter and the gentle fingers of this apex predator, this slayer of crabs, this vision in shifting white and black?

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Foxpearl!

Vermillion slowly lowers you down into the pool. Well, technically speaking, it's the Sash that does that, slowly unspooling and finally unknotting itself from up above so that it can fall down around you in showy spirals. A bit of a showboat, that divine weapon. But Vermillion barely notices; she's wrapped up in gingerly unknotting that gag, which, you might notice, requires her to put her arms around you, press up against you, and balance herself on one foot. "There we go," she says, as it loosens and falls about your collarbone. "Whoever this armored agitator is, they should have known better than to think they could keep you down, 'pearl."

She does that precious little smile and lowers herself back down onto both feet, even as the Sash wraps around Xingtian. Dragging them out will probably be the real challenge of the night

HAHA JUST KIDDING this is when HOUND operatives come crashing in through windows, tactical rifles bouncing against their body armor, looking like a bunch of Americans. What are guns supposed to do against ghosts, anyway? For that matter, what were guns supposed to do against Xingtian themself?

Guns, however, would do terrible things to the soft squishy bits of you (if you didn't come up with some cool idea like turning back into fire) and Vermillion (if she didn't have the Sash covering her in time) and The Amazing Ghostygirl (real name pending) and the Puppy over at Terochichimomo (and where's she been, anyway?). And Flower Mountain members (assuming they didn't know the secret of iron skin, or how to deflect bullets off things in the environment, or the secret of flowing like water). And civilians (who don't have any of the above advantages).

In fact, they'd mostly really be useful against the very people they're claiming to protect.

"GET DOWN," one of them yells, shining an underslung flashlight right in your faces. "STEP AWAY FROM THE CRIMINAL," yells another. "EMPRESS UNDERSTUDY AND TAMAMO ONE IDENTIFIED ON SITE," a third yells into a radio, "REQUESTING PROTOCOL."

(They aren't the tower's security service. They're a recently empowered task force designed to "protect the city in the absence of Empress," and they're a throwback to a style of policing that hasn't been seen in the Republic since before you were born - not that that's hard - and most people haven't missed at all. Again, they're very self-consciously American.)

---

Rain!

Rewind.

Your eye's dragged out to the canals below. Technically far below, but the megatowers of SGC have a way of making distance seem smaller than it is. Some residents of the tower have been evacuated at ground level, and the canals are full of boats coming and going. Mostly going. Like any city worth the name, there are first responders, but most of them are coming from higher up or along the same bridges that also helped the immediate evacuation from this floor.

But there's a boat peeling off, heading out towards the Sunrise Dockside rather than towards Victory Tower, where a lot of the boats are ferrying evacuated residents of Providence. (Even if Providence collapsed, which isn't going to happen now that Xingtian's been stopped, Victory would be outside of the splash zone. At this angle, it's probably Fortitude that would get the worst of it, and while it'd cause an incredible amount of damage, Fortitude would still be standing at the end. SGC architecture and civic planning is some of the most advanced in the world, after all.)

But there's a boat that definitely left the Providence moorings and is headed out that way. Not a major commercial boat, they'd go around instead of ending up in the canal system. That's likely where Branch's ward is headed, and...

And that's when you hear the smashed glass and the yelling from down below. Say hello to the Mayor's worst idea: bringing back an archaic policing force in order to keep Law and Order in the face of the ghost crisis. Social media's raking him over the coals, and the flame wars between people who are scared of the ghosts and gang warfare and the people who are more scared of HOUND are ending up as huge reblog threads, the kind that used to push the OP off the page back in the days of the old UI.

Your own parents were quick to reassure you that it's because of all the chaos in the Big Peach and the Mayor will get them to stand down once the mess is sorted out and just don't give them any reason to get aggressive and you'll get through it fine, but what are your own thoughts on the matter, Rain?

---

Shifu!

A little boy buries his face in your floof, little hands tugging on your fur.

Vermillion helped with the evacuation to Tranquility, but she asked you to help keep calm. And what’s better for helping humans remain calm than… well, what you are right now. What are you right now?

In the sky above, one of the mortal sky chariots aims its lantern lower, hovering just level with the bridge between towers. The sound of whistling ropes and breaking glass suggests that it’s doing something that’s not helpful. Might even be bad!

“I hope they catch that villain,” the boy’s father mutters, folding his arms. “Who would do something so selfish while Empress is gone? Lock them up, at least until she gets back— and don’t bother to let her know immediately, either.”

“But what about the Princess and her friends? They were here to help, too—“

“But can they actually stop a wrongdoer like that? They got us to safety, but it takes more than that to bring someone like that to justice!”

[Shift your Savior up and your Danger down!]

Breathless Dead

Ember splashes water in her face, gasps at the sharp shock of the cold water on her skin, feels the shiver run from the tips of her ears to her tail. Her heart is still racing.

"Pin her!" "Under the knee!" Excitement, bursting like exploding flowers, goldwet! "You can do it, pup!" "Smother her!" Support, slate-gray star-speckled, buttressing her bones. "Teeth!" "Oh, little Ember~"

The moment of throwing Taurus was a blur of exertion and howling. But then she'd flinched, she'd looked down at her alpha and she'd felt unworthy of supplanting her in the pack, of the crown, crushing her skull, mistress of Ceronians, hiding behind the curtain, and all around her Disappointment had bloomed, sulfur-rotten, jeering at her, and she'd run, she'd run, and she'd run so far and so hard, and she's still shivering, her tail tucked between her legs.

She'd let them all down. She shouldn't have challenged the alpha. She scrubs at her face, her shoulders, trying to make the water kill the stink of the pack's Disappointment clinging to her body. What kind of wolf can't take charge when she's right? What kind of failure is more comfortable being disciplined and punished than standing up for herself and telling the pack what they'll do? Part of her yearns to go back and throw herself at Gemini's feet and beg for more attention, more correction, more opportunities to prove that she won't break again, not when it's important.

But the girl looking back at her, with the low ears and the tragic expression on her face, can't go back and do that. She's committed. She challenged the alpha. And she won. So now she has to go and solve the problem of Mosaic herself, and she can do it her way, once she figures out her way, and just because the pack would approve of her seducing Mosaic into defeat doesn't mean she has to do it. There's another way. She'll figure one out. She doesn't need them to howl for her and forgive her when she brings them Mosaic. She doesn't need the whole pack to come and call her a good girl again, and give her headpats, and get her right behind the ears, and... and...

Maybe Mosaic would understand?

[Overcome: 8. A temporary, unstable solution.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Of course she's had the glove off before. Of course. For personal hygiene reasons, mostly. But she feels naked without it. Her arm, suddenly bare, suddenly cut off from her goddess, her...

"I'm sorry," she says, hands folded, looking down at the floor, the picture of shame. "I really thought you wanted me to... to..." She reaches up, rubs a cheek, sniffles loudly. Was it her? Was she making up the feeling in her heart all along? Giving her an excuse to have someone else, someone who was more dangerous and physical than Jade, jealousy from seeing Jade claim whoever she wanted? Was she a bad girl?

She doesn't deserve to have her goddess save her this time.

She can't touch Dolly. When she advances, Valynia drags her a step back, and without the glove, without the memory weave, she can't TOUCH Dolly, she can't hold her, she can't try to reassure her, she can't do anything. "Let her go!" She can't touch Valynia, either. Not without her priestess to be her hands and her eyes and her ears. (She can't see herself through Dolly's eyes. Her only eye is a security camera. A distant sense, an impersonal view of the room. Her only body here is thin light, a reflection of a reflection.)

"You are the one who doesn't deserve her! You don't even know her! You-- Dolly," she says, hyperaware of the pirate. If she begs, the whole universe will know. If she crumbles, falls to her knees, that will be all that she is. Everything is collapsing underneath her feet. Is the entire station shaking? "Dolly. Take the glove back."

Was Jade wrong about her the whole time? She'd tried her best, she really had, and now she's here, so useless that she's being kidnapped again, fighting the urge to melt into Valynia's arms, her goddess staring at her, and...

And the feeling of waking up and knowing that Jade's already awake, watching her sleep like she's a bird on the other side of a window. Of being able to fall and know, know that Jade's going to catch her. Of being pushed to her limits in the mech, making her heart sing. Valynia never tried to give her the universe. But did she deserve the universe?

One finger traces the outside of the glove's wrist. Worry throbs through her, turmoil, anger, and the intensity of Jade's roiling heart, and she jerks her hand away, as if she had been bitten. It's overwhelming. It's like drowning.

Dolly jerks her hand away from the glove. A moment of aching, of worry, of heartache, and then nothing more. A moment of pain, real pain, not just the activation of nerves to make her bride squeal. Pain she'd caused, again, by not being good enough. By not being like Whispered Promise, that effortless confidence and careful touch, that frustrating power in those deliberate hands. Her surprise just made Dolly cry earlier, her attempt to give Dolly a gift just led to this, and now she's hurting her bride.

Her greatest fear, right in front of her.

"You can't take her! Not again! She's not yours, Dish-- pirate! She's mine! She promised!"

She'd promised. And she was failing that promise. And that should give her the strength to stand up and lift her head and be better. But she's frozen like a bird before a snake. If she opens herself up before her goddess, Jade will bury her, and Jade will see right through her, and their cuddles and basking and deliberate teasing before fighting Ada seem so far away. Like there's a window between her then and her now, and all she can do is press her face against it and yearn. Yearn to be worthy of Jade's love. To be the focus of that overwhelming attention, to not want anything else.

Valynia pulls her towards the door, and she leans back into the pirate's grasp despite herself.

Jade falls to her knees. Her palms rest on the floor, feeling nothing. "Please!" She sobs. Her eyes are focused on Dolly's face like it's that first morning, listening to her Dolly sing alone in the kitchen. "Dolly, don't leave me!"

"You'd have Ksharta," Dolly says, her mouth dry, trying not to look at Jade doing something which she'd never done before. She's embarrassed for her goddess, aware that she wouldn't want anyone to see this, crushed under the realization that it's her fault that pushed Jade this far. "And Angela. And the cult. And you could pick someone better. Someone who deserves you."

"I don't want them! Not like I want you!"

Her hands curl around the glove, and she squeezes it as hard as she can. "How do you want me, Jade?" She asks with her mouth and with her heart.

"I want you like this," Jade says, and envelops her in need, throwing herself around Dolly, so aware of Valynia pressing against Dolly's back that it's like they're entwined together. "I want to make your dreams come true and I want you to want me too. I want to touch you like she can, to give you more miracles, to be your goddess, to make you happy, I want to make you feel safe, I want to make you feel beautiful, I want... I want Seven Quetzal. I want you to think I'm strong. I want to shine for you."

Then she lets go. She steps back. She forces herself to pull back her essence. "But I lost. Now you know." That she's not strong. That she's not shining. That she's half-a-goddess. That she's still stuck on that tree in the underworld. And now Valynia is going to make everyone know. She's lost anyway. She's lost everything. Angela Victoria Miera Antonius will wrench herself free. Ksharta Talonna will turn up her nose and trot away. The cult will abandon her idol. Nobody will bother to worship a weak, pathetic goddess unable to be strong and smite her enemies. And each loss will hurt, will hurt terribly, but she'd flay herself of everything if Dolly would just step forward.

"You're already strong," Dolly says. "And you deserve so much better than me. But..."

She struggles against Valynia's grip. If what Jade needs right now is to be held, then she's going to hold her goddess in her arms and hold her tight. It's the least she can do to deserve being loved by a goddess.

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Foxpearl!

Your plummet does make Xingtian desperately grab at your scarf and dig in their heels, putting all of their strength into halting you as you tumble down. Sky Gate City is so swank that this kind of multi-story waterfall is a common sight in community spaces in the skyscrapers. It's not just part of the agricultural systems, it's vital to balance the elemental harmony of the entire tower. This one drops down multiple floors, and even though the pool at the bottom is lovely, it's just a little too shallow for a safe landing. How lucky that you end up dangling from that scarf, with the armored menace starting to slowly pull you up.

Then the Vermillion Princess delivers a flying kick to the back of their armor, where she'd hit them before, and the momentum she'd built up on the way there sends Xingtian tumbling out into open air. Their attempt to activate their armor's thrusters just sends them cartwheeling down to the bottom faster, past you, yanking you down with them--

And the Vermillion Princess dives down after you, trailing her Sash, and grabs you by the wrists, your name on her lips.

---

Rain!

Boom!

That is, as you find out by sprinting around a corner, the sound of Xingtian slamming into the bottom of a pool hard enough to crack the foundation. A heavenly cord leads up from the ruin of this villain's fall (like the fall of Lucifer from Heaven in that one American TV show) to the face of Foxpearl, who is suspended between floors by the Vermillion Princess's hold on her wrists. Not exactly the kind of heroic finish that Empress would have done.

In fact, Empress would probably pry the armor off, crush it between her palms, and then deliver the soggy mystery arsonist inside to the tower's security team, but she'd hang around to make sure that she could give a speech about how arson put everyone at risk, how the residents of this tower would be impacted by months of reconstruction, how damaging the tower's supports would have risked an inconceivable civic disaster, and how disappointed she was. And then she'd do the Glare. And then she'd pitch in with the reconstruction, stop to take selfies with residents with her silver hair up in a neat bun, and generally be the example that everyone in SGC is supposed to live up to.

But Empress isn't here right now. She's trying to keep the gates of the underworld shut to give the entire city time to fix the problem of the rampant ghosts. And so there's just you, stepping up to be a good neighbor like Empress knows everybody can be, and there's the fox (who you just found out is one of Lady Foxfire's tails, just like she now knows how you came into your powers), and there's her.

The real superheroine-in-training, stopping Hsien from slamming into the bottom of the pool while you were interrogating a hunky Triad member.

Thoughts on the Vermillion Princess, Rain? And, for that matter, thoughts on what you're supposed to do with Xingtian?

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Foxpearl!

You are bravely staring down a tummy laser. See, in legend, Xing Tian was the warrior who survived being decapitated, and his chest became his new face, and it's a little weird that Xingtian (the armored supervillain) has a helmet when the myth was very famous for missing the helmet (because of the decapitation), but that snarling face in the breastplate is crackling with evil ghost power.

Well, morally neutral ghost power being used for wicked ends.

"Damnation! You Allowed The Bloodstained Thug To Escape Her Just Reward For Longer Than She Deserves... And You Will Be Punished For Your Interference, Willing Tool Of The "Deep State"! But First..." Xingtian holds out their gauntleted hand to you, burning foxgirl with your scarf more thickly padded than before. "Return To Me, Be One With Me, Join Me In Our Holy Quest And Together, We Will Overthrow The False Mayor And Restore True Harmony To The City!"

Behind you, Vermillion Princess pushes herself back onto her knees. It'll take her a minute to get back up onto those heelies, even with the sash providing her with some lift. A minute she might not have if you don't distract the raving fire-spewing villain.

---

Rain!

"Oh... hell," Branch says, slowly. "That was it, then. That bitch hit me too hard. Damn it. I thought... so that was it. Twenty years on this bitch of a planet and I get my neck snapped by Horse. Well, I get points for loyalty, right? I died in the line of duty. I didn't let Stone Monkey down. That gets me points with King Yama, right? I looked after my grandma after work. I tried not to be vulgar. I only let my charge get kidnapped the one time, and that's the time that killed me, so it doesn't count. Am I going to be stuck here because of the idiots who did the ghost explosion?"

Those sure are some names! Names that you can follow up on. How much do you know about the jianghu, the underground world of martial artists and criminals, River? Do you know anything beyond the word on the street about their boss getting assassinated?

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Foxpearl!

Vermillion Princess switches strategies. If she can’t pull Xingtian off their feet by standing firm, she’s going to flow like water. Which, in this case, means activating the heelies.

(The heelies are odd. She’s embarrassed about them, but at the same time, she’s stood up to Empress about them because they make her better as a hero. She’s pivoted to avoid the subject when you asked; you haven’t seen any other people using them yet, but you’re aware that roller rinks exist near the ground floors of certain buildings. Any theories, Detective Hsien?)

She uses her sash to skate circles around Xingtian, hugging the ground low, as the sash itself wraps around and around Xingtian’s arms, pulling those gouts of furious fire up and away from Princess’s fluttering ponytail. (The sash is, if you were being uncharitable, pulling a lot of Princess’s weight as a hero. Supposedly an epic weapon of antiquity, if it has a maximum length, she hasn’t found it yet.)

The sensors are struggling with the impossible thickness of the sash, which is increasingly effective at blocking out light and sound, even the vibrations all around slowly dying as the sash traps Xingtian’s senses with shocking effectiveness. Which is why neither you or Xingtian hear Princess’s prayer to the Gods of the Four Directions to guide her fist, wrapped in the sash’s other end. No, the only warning is when she punches the armor right above Xingtian’s ass, sending alarms rippling through the armor, and before the repair subprograms (uh-oh) can reroute the rest of your power to reshaping the metal into place, you burst forth into the air along with a gushing of howling ghosts, buoyed up by them as if you’d… well, you don’t have the right analogy to hand. (Geysers, like at Yellowstone, you’ll figure out one day.)

Then you fall, twisting and mmmphing, diaphanous silks and all, into the Vermillion Princess’s arms. And she doesn’t do a cool smirk and one-liner about how she’s owed three wishes now, right? She stares down at you, stock-still in her heeleys, through the lenses of her half-mask. (If you put yours together, or fused together after doing a dance number that revealed your inner character motifs, you’d have one full-face mask between the two of you. That’s how you can see her tongue dart out and run along her lower lip, which makes sense, because it’s really dry in here.)

[She’s pushing Mundane up, Savior down— the opposite of what Xingtian just asserted about you.]

Xingtian’s stomach unfolds into their heavy cannon, a roiling furnace of ghostfire, and Princess squeaks, yanks on her sash, and goes zipping along. If the two of you get blasted with that, it’s game over. Which makes it a wonderful time for Princess’s center of balance to throw her off as she tries to carry you and skate at the same time, sending both of you tumbling onto scorched tiles. And by wonderful, I mean terrible.

---

Rain!

Branch’s breathing shifts. He’s waking up. But he doesn’t groan. He does his best to fake that he’s still unconscious while he tries to adjust to his surroundings. This is somebody who knows how to fight, and is prepared for ending up somewhere tied up on the floor with the lights out.

Finally, he speaks. It’s smoother than you might have expected. Silkier. “The boss is going to destroy you,” he says, matter-of-factly. “You can give Mei back and beg for mercy, right now, and you’ll survive. That’s your only way out of this that’s not sinking to the bottom of the bay or just getting your soul punched out of your body. You ever had your soul punched out of your body before?”

You are, hopefully, one of the only people in Sky Gate City who knows exactly what that feels like, minus the actual punch.

Do you try to put him at ease? Or do you fake him out and try to get more info out of him?