Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

No mind and all mind are two sides of the same coin. In this moment, she is everyone, and as a result, she is (again?) no one.

She is strong. Being the Silver Divers allows her to understand that just because Ember is one of the smallest of the pack does not mean that she is weak. All of the pack is strong— and the one still groveling at Gemini’s feet is surprisingly strong for her size, is a wound-up spring waiting to go off in bursts of speed. But the pack’s strength is wrapped up in chains and their own scarves and all the flexing muscles of her other bodies can’t break them free.

She is… embarrassed. Not just because so many of her are naked, as if giving an eyeful to some peasants isn’t something they’d do anyway— but only on their terms, and without surrendering their trophies, their veils and their scarves. All of them are aware that they’re not in control, a sea they swam through on instinct that has suddenly receded. They are used to this, yes, but only as part of the pack’s games of dominance and submission, the ebb and flow of control amongst themselves, and to have that power pass into the hands of these little creatures has made most of them either blushingly meek or impotently fuming and struggling.

All of her will eventually come to the same conclusion that Ember has: that Mosaic must be at the top of that struggle for power, and she will not step down from that vaunted position; power is hers, and will be shared only as she pleases. By tomorrow, Mosaic will be revered by the Silver Divers, and Ember will become something like a Speaker for the Tyrant, a messenger mediating between the demigoddess and her hounds. Little Ember will be surrounded by the veils of her new self-proclaimed allies, each one attempting to curry favor with Mosaic’s Toy. By tomorrow, collars with moon designs worked into them will proliferate among the ranks of the Silver Divers, and her keys will pass from hand to hand within the pack, entrusted with unknown others until such a day as the object of her collective worship changes.

She is also rendered completely unable to communicate in a way that adds to the meekness of many of her. It is one thing to have a mouthful of cloth and drool— a very familiar thing, at that. But to have their scents bathed away? The air is full of helpless grunts and moans as the Silver Divers find themselves alone together, unable to plan or plot or reassure each other right beneath their captors’ noses. All they can do is trust in their emotion, their eyes and their struggles and their incoherent noises, and hope that their sisters-in-arms will understand roughly what is meant.

The only bond that little Ember can trust, truly, is the one that connects her to Mosaic. Without it, red and thin and shining, she would be lost in the pack’s sensations; she would be trapped in sensation and convinced that her adventure was over. But Mosaic loves her little adventures, and Mosaic loves to watch her run. That is enough for Ember to trust in as all of her bodies squirm and flush and squeak and shiver and huff and hop and sulk and flutter and struggle, learning a new lesson in power and control.

A tiny, muffled whimper rises up from the figure of the punished knight, but she does not rise. How can she? She bears the chains of an entire pack, and her face upon the ground hides the absolute mortification she bears for them. She flexes, strains, but it is impossible for her to move or to open her mouth. Even her scent is silent.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Jade is screaming. The bindings are pulled taut. She is suddenly stiff, frantic. Her models of the universes are collapsing, leaving behind only hunger and the darkness of the underworld. There is no path to victory. The roads are gone. The roads are gone. How could they have thought they could win this? With, what, with a hunting lodge's worth of weaponry, with a few clever tricks, with a girl who barely understands piloting? Now, competitive gardening, if they'd done that, haha, if they'd...

Jade wraps her arms around Dolly and yanks. They tumble to one side, helpless, her claws in Dolly's fur, holding her tight. Unwilling to let go. The world is ending and if she cannot stop the apocalypse she will bury herself in Dolly until the world stops existing.

The void swings down, and Dolly and Jade both jerk, roll, pathetic little meowmeows, trying to buy themselves another second together. Just another. Dolly buries her face in Jade's hand, flails with the other, undignified, defeated, undone. Desperate not to be ripped out of the idol's heart and paraded before Valynia, who'd tease her, who'd punish her, who'd make her regret turning her down. Or, worse, kept as Jacinta's trophy, an even worse end (because at least she'd guiltily enjoy Valynia's attention and hot-mouthed affections, but Jacinta is overwhelming).

"Dolly, I promise, I love--"

[Dolly and Jade burn another level of Harmony to attempt to Defy Disaster with Daring. 2.]

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Hsien!

The cameras swing towards you and flash: white, green, silver. Above you, the towers of Sky Gate City are impossibly tall: white, green, silver. Mist curls around your feet and the tip of your tail: white, green, silver, black at the tips.

"I'm here live with Tail Seven," a reporter says, her teeth white, green, silver. She thrusts a-- a microphone. It's a microphone. White microphone. Gnawed on. "She's here giving her first interview after her crime spree! Somehow, despite the property damage, the theft, the trespassing, the cyberbullying, and the actual kidnapping of a virgin, nobody seems to have caught on to her real motive. So, Tail Seven, I've got to ask: how do you do it? This is your first time lying, deceiving, bamboozling, and otherwise hoodwinking mortals independently, but you're already taking to it like a pro! Is the trick that you have to convince yourself that you're telling the truth first? Is it true that the vending machine proposed already? What do you have in store for your captive princess now? Have you figured out the joke yet?"

The cameras are flashing, flickering, white, green, silver. The snaps are deafening. Everything you say can and will be used against you in court. The reporter is wearing sunglasses at night, like an anon message. If you do not defend yourself, someone's going to make a callout post.

[Shift: -Superior, +Danger.]

---

Shifu!

"Do. Not. Move." Joshua says, sounding like he's just seen you press a button that's going to make everything explode like in the martial arts movies he watches on the weekends. He's backed up onto a desk, glasses askew, shooting extremely worried glances at the floor underneath your hooves.

"What the fuck," Izi says, clinging to her unplugged mouse with both hands, in the middle of a floor kabedon between said hooves. They are hooves, right? There's vestigial toenails but they're still part of the same column. She looks like she can't make up her mind between being pissed at you and being terrified and is settling for staring at you with the biggest eyed expression she's ever managed.

Behind you, desks have overturned, monitors have crashed to the ground, towers have come catastrophically unplugged, but it's hard to really get a good look behind you because of the big orange floppy ears. The ear-to-head ratio is amazing, isn't it? That and having a trunk. Trunks are cool. You could probably help pick things up with a trunk.

Izi's hand slowly reaches down towards the purse where she has her phone.

[Shift: reject influence or mark a condition.]

Breathless Dead

"Gemini."

It's not so much a greeting as it's a statement of fact, breathlessly muttered by a bleary-eyed puppy. That is Gemini. Gemini is who is speaking. You are Gemini; I am not Gemini. That is the level that, for a moment, Ember's brain is working on. But she is a daughter of Ceron, and a particularly healthy one at that. She took very well to the genemods, bears incredible stamina, and has never broken a bone in all her time among the pack. So it is hardly a surprise that she is able, once Gemini moves her foot, to shift Sagetip's heavy body onto the street beside her.

She sits up onto her knees, and then dives back down to the pavement, pressing her aching head against the cool stone. It is damp with the breath of dawn.

"Honored scentmistress! I have acted as honor and love demand, but I know I deserve no mercy for my crimes!" No mercy. Gemini's love is merciless, a scythe with which she could defeat entire armies, were it necessary. Her love is a net, a gag, the smoke from a fire. "I only ask that you be mindful of Peril, which is present, which I tried to warn our pack away from!"

Peril, whose name is Mosaic. Peril, who even now defeats Taurus (that there could be any other outcome is alien to Ember's mind). Peril, who would kick Gemini into the ocean tied to a crab if she doesn't think that Ember's punishment isn't amusing or cute enough.

Ember does not rise. She remains prostrate, tail drooped, ears low, willing to remain her all day if that is what her honor demands. After all, she's been trained very well.

In the distance, the low moans of the Silver Divers, the clink of chains, the cheers of the people of Beri.

Breathless Dead

Ember tumbles out into empty air.

Her eyes are trailing tears as she cartwheels. Her nose is full of not-scent, burnt and acrid and hideous. The starchoked sky spins overhead, blurred with pain. She clutches Sagetip to her chest as tightly as she held Mosaic.

She's used to losing, see. It's just that Mosaic is important enough that she needs to make sure they both lose, her and her clever battle-sister. It's just that she's used to being punished and having to power through torment to make her stronger. It's just that she's not the smart one, and all she can do is go forward.

Or, in this case, forwards, to the side, and then down at increasing velocity.

Above, a retort. The sharp kind (are there soft retorts?). A flash that is just another streaking star across her vision. If she could make a sound without wanting to throw up because there's SP smoke choking up her lungs, she'd make some sort of victorious squeak and--

The ground hits her like Waverunner tossing her off a cliff and into the sea, but it doesn't part for her. It's just the ground. She hugs Sagetip to her chest, limbs locked painfully tight, a smoking barrel still pressed between them, and hopes that eventually the sky will stop wildly spinning like one of the tops that the kids here like to play with, wobbling, that's the word, wobbling in looser and looser circles around the tip.

[Ember marks damage to her Sense in a senseless action.]

Breathless Dead

Ember teleports onto the roof.

Well, no, she doesn't do that. She just knows, in the Apollonian flow of no-thought, where she needs to go, where she needs to grab. Her handholds might as well be slathered in yellow paint. Her nails dig into windowsills and she flings herself across the little roofs of Beri. There is only one place where this can happen, after all, only one tower jutting up into the sky: the belltower.

From here, the people of Beri call out the hours of their lives. From here, time is stretched out, measured, and cut into strips. From here, a sniper (an ally of Mosaic, or else Sagetip wouldn't be ambushing her) could take down the chariot. And from here, Sagetip can instead unravel the entire defense with her pistols.

A shot goes off; it stings. Ember rolls into it. She is so good at running. Every obstacle course, every punishment for not being good enough on the obstacle course, has pushed her into this moment, into this jump across rooftops. Another shot, and this knocks her into the alleyway between the tailor's shop and the chandler's den, but she bounces between the two walls and uses it to approach the belltower from below. The third shot catches her on her arms, raised above her head. Each one is a blossoming flower of pain with tentacles for petals.

But she's inside, and climbing. She grabs a plate left here by a bellringer; a shield, a discus, an unexpected advantage. She pulls off her focale and, as she bursts through the door, tosses it as a distraction, a moment of uncertainty, a way to hide the way she scrambles, all the better for diving at her from an unexpected angle, knife out and ready to cut away her battle-sister's bandoliers.

[Keep Them Busy of 8.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Memories bleed through, or dreams, or phantoms. Shapes that Dolly never dreamed up. Faces that are half-familiar from cartoons and cultural landmarks. The terror of Night and Hunger looming over the ball court. Other kittens might be thrown into distraction and doubt by the images that Smokeless Jade Fires imposes on the enemy, on the dizzying weight of myth-as-memory.

Here's a truth: Dolly has almost always known that her older sister was working on a pattern for drones, and that was the seed that became Jade. Here's another: Dolly believes.

She believes that her goddess is more than what she was. She believes that there is holiness in her, and that the part of her that is real and true descended into the pattern to be born. She believes that she is in the hands of something that is inexplicable and wonderful. It is startling, sometimes, to be reminded that Jade is still young, that she is still flawed, but the Hybrasilians have never expected perfection from their gods. They have simply expected them to be beyond the ordinary world, to be attuned with the universe, to demand sacrifice and adulation and adoration from a position of power. And in return, Jade gives her everything.

She gives Dolly this: the experience of fighting with a pirate. Of being the heroine, despite the transformation of her jumpsuit into something befitting the slave-bride of a goddess. Of being guided through a dangerous dance, the margin for error still incredibly tight. The kind of thrill that an ordinary Gardens would never have tasted. Of kissing Jacinta with her claws over and over, still untouched, still inviolate, helpless and not helpless, exposed and hidden, silenced and heard, fighting for herself and for her goddess, flickering between augmented reality and remembered myth--

And then Jade guides her into the jump, the push of magic at her back as the thrusters flare, and a thrill runs through her at how Jacinta can't see the way her skirt hikes up and how there's nothing underneath, even as she brings her leg in and delivers a punishing kick to the side of Jacinta's head, even as the jackal strikes from behind, a second Dolly (is that really how Jade sees her, that pretty?) raking her claws down Jacinta's back with small arms fire.

"Disappointing! At least Valynia knew the real prize! Twice now your band has failed to steal the heart of a bride more beautiful than Caloa! I am invincible, insatiable, irresistible, and-- I admit it-- my service would be nothing if you did not have the love of Seven Quetzal alongside me! But it is mine, she is mine, and I will see you and your little space dogs groveling at her perfect feet to adore them and beg her forgiveness for your lewd and disgraceful courting!"

And Jade manages to turn the hands flying up to her face into a stroke along her skull, chest out, hips cocked, allowing the camera to stare at her pose in the middle of a battle and imagine the priestess within, and once that is imagined, it's only another step to imagining her peeling out of her jumpsuit, is it not? A prize, dangled before entire worlds. Her wife's heart, racing as she imagines everyone's eyes on her, exposed and helpless and still above a pack of pirates kissing her feet, and Jade can't help but give her a kiss.

[10 - inflict a Condition, take a String, open an opportunity for the jackal.]

---

Stubbornness has always been her virtue. A refusal to admit when she's been beaten, to admit that anyone could beat her down hard enough that she won't bring it back around. What good is an adversary who throws in the towel and gives up? What's the good of a whetstone that cracks in half?

The noise that comes out of her mouth when she sees the opening is inhuman. It's half-Hybrasilian, a wild yowl of gambling it all on one shot, of a body that's throbbing with feedback, fingers so stiff that she almost can't pull the trigger. (An old, vestigial gesture, but one that has remained, one tied to the intent to fire.)

But she does. The roar, the splashback, is almost overwhelming, and the Barn Owl barely stands against the firing of its own weapon. But she digs her heels in and lets her howl out and, for a moment, she is almost like the brat of a goddess chasing a battle almost impossible for her to win.

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Foxpearl!

There's a TV in the room with you, too. Surprise! This is because Joshua Chan, like many people, does not have the spiritual fortitude to handle the sound of his own thoughts inside of his head. If he does not have a TV to distract him while he eats his takeout, he might start grappling with the sort of advanced questions of virtue, vice and enlightenment that you do all the time.

Concept: you should steal Joshua's TV for his own good.

Usually he watches YouTube videos on there, and he'd left a dance choreo on, but the autoplay's sent him straight to the Emergency News Broadcast with Director Li (probably a citywide push in the algorithm).

"Greetings, citizens of Sky Gate City," he says, with his stupid shaved-sides haircut and his tacticool jacket, as he stands in a plaza hastily commandeered for a broadcast. "Earlier tonight, HOUND's rapid response team stopped the rampage of the supervillain Xingtian and stopped the collapse of Providence Tower. However, in the process, we were unable to stop one of Lady Foxpearl's minions from kidnapping the Vermillion Princess, who was providing us with assistance on the scene. In order to locate one of our city's most beloved young women, I am authorizing neighborhood sweeps. I am aware that this may prove controversial, but--"

The microphone is smoothly taken from him. The woman next to him is perfect. Tasteful lipstick, tasteful single-breasted jacket over her dress, tasteful bobbed haircut. She gives a demure smile and then continues: "But locating the Vermillion Princess and delivering her to the safety of the authorities is our duty as citizens of Sky Gate City. When Empress returns, how could any of us look her in the eye if we failed to do everything we could to save her successor from the wicked grasp of Lady Foxfire? As your humble servants, we beg you to join us in our service to our city. My husband and I are worried sick about the debauched torments that our favorite heroine must be suffering in that... that awful fox's grasp. Please. Invite our teams inside, let them search for clues as to her whereabouts, and together we will make Empress proud."

She pauses to lift Li's hand and kiss one knuckle, demure and adoring and patriotic, before turning back to the cameras. "And our message to Foxfire is: there is nowhere you can hide. We will find you, and even if Empress isn't here to stop you, my husband has trained the elite forces of HOUND for just this eventuality. No tricks of your tails will be able to stop us, the citizens of Sky Gate City, working together to deliver you into custody, you and anyone who tries to hide you."

And her smile is just a little too cruel, a little too self-satisfied, before she returns the microphone to her darling husband. It's a flash of the fangs underneath, too fast for anyone else to notice. But how could you not recognize your mother, no matter what face she's wearing?

---

Shifu!

Izi rolls her chair forward and focuses harder on the game, which, haha, it doesn't seem like she's noticed that she's sort of pinning you between her and the desk, emphasis on the her, which you'd think she'd notice, because she's got her thighs pinning you in place and you've seen those videos of people popping watermelons between their thighs, right? Because hopefully your ribs are made of sterner stuff than watermelons.

Tap tap tapatap tap tap. "In position-- pop Aegis-- Black, rotate now-- triangle him-- Blue, rotate-- pop Sanctification--" Sharp tap. "Shifu, if you want to be under my desk, I charge." Sharp tap 2. "Zetaburst on my mark. Now."

Joshua looms from behind Izi, but when he clears his throat she shoots him a Look and shakes her head before turning back to whisperyelling her arcane formulas. Tap tap taptaptaptaptap TAP tap. So now he's hovering and giving you the Look while your cheeks mold into the shape of Izi's corset.

This, uh. Didn't go quite the way you planned.

"Virtue now."

Wait. That was definitely an invitation to bring virtue to the wicked! Probably! Certainly! You'd just need to. You know. Slither out of the way, in a way that Joshua has definitely told you that you shouldn't do. And you wouldn't be smothered and pinned by a very intense girl whose mind is extremely focused on her hermit magic while her body is extremely focused on trapping you in place.

---

Rain!

Bai gives you a sideglance. Weighing you up. "Why?" she finally asks. "Has someone been giving you trouble? They shouldn't. You live way too high up for that, and as long as you're thoughtful about where you go into basements, you shouldn't... unless someone's been telling you about the Flower War? Look, that's... a mess. They're fighting over who gets to fill the role of the big boss down there, who gets to have tense tea ceremonies with Empress and occasionally fight her for the honor of everybody involved with all that, and it's going to get messy, and you should try to stay out of it, okay? It'll blow over, or Empress will sort it out once she gets back."

She definitely knows more about this than she's telling you, but she's concerned about you. Like you might break a nail, or get yourself kidnapped, or something like that. She thinks you are the rich girl damsel in distress here.

[Shift: -Savior, +Mundane]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"AI?"

Mesh sizzles, crushed in Jacinta's hand. The jackals weren't able to disengage quite fast enough; one's limping, erratic, of limited utility now. Two of her left. Two of her, circling Jacinta, daring the occasional jab, the slow unraveling of her titanic defenses. But there's fire in Jade's mouth.

"And what does that make you? Should I pretend to be amazed that something which used to be a fetus is piloting a mech? It would make as much sense!"

She ducks in closer, rakes at Jacinta Niares' thigh, is out before those incredible weapons can be brought to bear. She is motion, Dolly is her motion, together they are flowing like the water shining all around them. That's her victory, every time. To be untouched. To be inviolate. To show the world how Dolly can move when she's encouraged.

"If I accept, you will think to yourself, look at this smart computer! Isn't she a beautiful trophy, a thing of program loops and hyperreactive generation tables, a funny little pet! You would look at a bird and declare it an eggshell! How many times must I fan my plumage, Jacinta Niares?"

Charge thrums inside of her. The universe is vast and it is so difficult to be the center of it all. To carve her status into the stars over and over again. This will be her myth cycle. When the name of her is immortal, she will be remembered for overcoming her many rivals and taming them, proving her divinity through battle and seduction.

"I am Smokeless Jade Fires, born of a jackal's companion pattern, and I have descended into the womb of Hybrasil. I have contested with Dishai in the ball court named Patience and Yearning. Four its corners, four its sides, four its rings. I have been unraveled and I have been reassembled. Only once have I allowed one not already my bride into my four-cornered star heart, and that for the sake of Dala Hunters, whose star name is Seven Quetzal, who is without equal among the queens of Hybrasil. Nothing you can offer me is worth more than the glory I will heap upon her head. I am the knife that cuts itself into the world. Insult me again and I will pull you free from your mecha-heart like a seed from a papaya."

The inside of Dolly's burning head is one prolonged shriek of flustered delighted embarrassment. The only thing she can offer in return is the same thing she has always offered her goddess: all of her, obedient and graceful and daring not to be touched, lifted up to impossible heights, never making a mistake, never stepping on the wrong beat. She shines like the star in Jade's heart, doing something absolutely fucking impossible for a little botanist from the Gardens, aware that there's no way they should be able to win this, or, another way: that winning this is a miracle.

---

"Do-- fuck-- do you think-- do you think I don't have my pride?"

Arms in. Protect the cockpit. Shaking with the feedback telling her that her body is being pummeled. One shot.

"Or do you think me the loser? The country girl? I had to stand alone to make it to here! And everyone thinks--"

Thinks of her as a punchline for a magazine cover. Tricked, bamboozled, her beloved mech without the strengths and surprises that are needed to win a contest like this. Every time, fighting the wrong battle. A disgrace on the family name. The arm candy of an alien pretending to be a real challenger.

"Everyone, they think I am just this! Always fighting the wrong battle, but at least I fight them! And when I win, Smith, you can tell your whole crew to come after me, I'll take you all on any day of the week, any planet in the system!"

Victory is being able to stand up enough to fire the cannon at the right moment. But every moment risks damage to the cannon and its systems. All she can do is keep standing up, to refuse to get out of Smith's space, to take it like she can take the mockery and the attention hand in hand. To endure. To make everyone remember.

Breathless Dead

It is ridiculous to try to defend a demigoddess. She is invincible, unstoppable, a roll of thunder that makes armies bow like grass before her. The weapon that could stop her cannot be found on this planet, and it is only her heart that stops her from ruling Bitemark as a god-queen, crowned in gold and draped in silver. She could do battle against an Azura and win, and there is no hope for the Silver Divers to wrestle her down and use her heart as her weakness, not now.

But Ember is still there, her scimitar flickering, dancing through her stances. There will be no attempt to grab Mosaic from behind, to pull a bag over her head, to jam a spearhaft against her throat. There will be no envelopment, no sneak attack, no cunning ploy so beloved of the Wolves of Ceron. Not tonight. She hums the hymn of Mosaic and lets it reverberate in her bones: chan! chan! chan-barra-chan-barra-chan!

Her mind is serene, her nose full of Mosaic, her swordplay is done with the same breathless air of certainty and gap-finding that marks a true swordmaster, and she restrains it to simply defend the undefendable, to be there beside the raging daughter of Heaven, to always and forever be a step and a grasp away from her hand.

This is not treason, her spine shivers. This is submission to a higher power. What else is the ultimate end of knighthood? Power for its own sake is nothing if love cannot take the hilt, if honor and submission do not recognize their intended aim. And after the battle--

After the battle she will surrender, too. If all the Silver Divers fall into the hands of Mosaic tonight, then it will be all.

No hesitation. No flinching. Nothing but the sword-dance, the haze of her lover's scent, and victory over her clan-mates as she betrays them in the honor of the highest name. chan! chan! chan-barra-chan-barra-chan!