Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

“We need to know their mon and lineage,” Ember of the Silver Divers says. Her tense air is surely just eagerness to fight. She is Ceronian, after all. Thus the restless tail, the bouncing on her heels, the ears at attention. “Then we can start planning where and how we’re going to fight.”

She’s trying so hard not to look at Mosaic, both because of the feeling prickling along her spine and because, well, look at her! She’d be useless to the Tyrant of Beri with Venus arresting her eyes. She needs to be alert. She needs to pay attention. She needs to figure out what is making her fingers itch and her mouth wet. Maybe the Synnefo?

(After all, the Synnefo are perfect targets for any daughter of Ceron. What better challenge than to turn the unflappable, aloof bureaucrats into bleating, flustered messes? What more comfortable trophy than sheared wool? Every one has their weak spot, and it’s a long, delightful game to find it~)

This one’s good, though. Hardly blinking in the face of half a dozen members of the clan, all eyes fixed on him: half-lidded, hungry, proud. Go ahead, little sheep. Be a good boy and give us our quarry.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

“She’s just about got it,” Dolly lies, encouragingly. Her smile shifts from a facade to genuine as the technician does her fumbling best to fix it. Then, because only the very best of girls would be able to resist, she turns her attention back to Sam. “And really, you think I look like D— Seven Quetzal? Is she your favorite~?”

Hmmm. No, this can work. All she has to do is get behind the guns. She drops like a cenote stone, into the narrowing spaces. All she has to do is do a light/shadow attack— something that any reasonable program would have defenses against, but not this, not with the holes in its conception.

“Because if she wasn’t up against Mirror, of all pilots, maybe it’d be her down there against that terrifying Zaldarian, right?” The shiver is, to her surprise, not feigned. She’s getting pieces of the fight over the tall one’s shoulder, and the raw fury, the way that the hulking mountain of a mech moves…

What you do is you make a poison out of your tooth, and when the time comes, you bite the defenses. Light is shadow, shadow is light, the sudden blindness of high hot summer. Legitimate attempts to interact with the system are locked out, treated as the enemy, and the viper at the heart has everything fall at her feet.

Pins prickle underneath her fur as she watches for a moment, tail brushing against Sam’s ankle. They never could have won this. Not against this demon. Mirror should be losing instantly, crushed under the weight of Hunger and Night. But she’s not. She’s not. She slips through those claws like she slipped through Jade’s defenses. She is something outside of the game of gods and demons, and that’s why—

But that’s a last resort, even as the venom throbs in her jaw. Better to weave all things from here, constantly plummeting in and out of the dark as conceptual gravity warps around her.

“We couldn’t have won,” Dolly murmurs, with the flustered Sam close enough to hear.

Breathless Dead

wag wag WAG wag wag goes Ember's tail, her ears perked up, her smile hidden but obvious. The energy is shared by her honor guard, who are leaning in as if to pounce, intent on the very idea of a rival pack to clash against.

"It all depends on their dynamics," Ember says, bringing her fingertips together like the archetypal "scheming Synnefo." "If we crush them, seize their pack treasures, prove our dominance, some clans would disintegrate under pressure like that, or at the very least would shed new recruits and wandering bands chased offworld. Others would harden like diamond under external pressure, fighting to the last, impossible to tame. We won't know unless we challenge them. A strike force, hitting at their base, demanding plunder and satisfaction, testing their mettle-- that is how we can know this pack."

Then, with the air of a hound that has suddenly realized she has been caught halfway to the cookies, and thinks that if she freezes up she will become invisible: "If you think that is necessary. It probably is, no matter who we side with. They're a thorn in everyone's boot, except for the Generous Knight, but we've already established, I think, that we won't side with her. And we shouldn't. If she wanted an entertaining fight, she should have looked to us."

Pride radiates from the elegantly-made knight, and her bannermaid drums her stave's butt against the floor once, twice, thrice in enthusiasm. But more than that, Ember keeps sneaking glances out the window at the world below. She yearns to see, to run, to challenge, and to meet the unknown. To greet the Argumentative Portuguese without hiding, to acknowledge that she is the Speaker for the Tyrant and that she has come to solve their Ceronian problem. To win veils for her belt and to win gifts from a populace eager to be saved and spared. And who can blame her?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The network is a labyrinth of stone slabs shifting, grinding, calling out to each other, the carvings writhing, the noise cacophonous. It extends into four dimensions, dizzying, hectic, and impossibly complex.

Smokeless Jade Fires has pistons and cords.

She falls through the labyrinth, never touching a surface. The pistons are driven through eyes to pin them into place, into mouths to silence them, and the shifting of the walls tangles the cords into constant new structures, and in her mind she rotates the shapes of the cords. Pluck here and a security system updates. Shiver there and a password falls neatly into place. Her gravity pivots and she is falling always, trailing cords, flinging them out with divine precision.

It is a shame that Dolly isn't here to see the catsuit, or the mask that leaves only her clever eyes shining. Perhaps Jade will have to model for her bride later. As a reward. As a victory lap. But right now, she slides through shifting corridors, cutting through air, weaving her victory.

---

The zipper. is. the zipper is. well. see. it is. definitely. it sure is.

stuck.

"I, uh, I'm getting, over the, set, earset, that it's stabilizing but let me just see about getting this, I mean, haha, I can't very well go out there and, like this, right?" Panic flutters inside her, but she can't let it win, or else the plan will spin out of control, and besides...

Jade's depending on her. To keep it together. To fulfill their debt to Mirror. To be a gosh darned high priestess. Would Velvet Tread fall apart like this, Dolly? Would Six Dappled Ferns? No!

"Like, the second worst thing that could happen would be me walking out there and running into the ~Red Band~ with my damn zipper down to here--" She tugs harder on it, and manages to not bounce out of the jumpsuit, but the engineer's definitely noticed the not bouncing out. "And the worst thing would be running into my manager, haha ha! Do you think you could...?"

The look she gives is innocently devastating. She has to brush a lock of hair up out of her face, and her nervousness comes off more as shyness, demureness; anyone who knew who she actually was, in this moment, might suddenly understand why Jade is so possessive of her.

Breathless Dead

The fireworks bruise the ribs of the ceiling in livid purples and greens, blues and pinks, until the whole of the world is the coral reef beyond Beri's shore. Her veil hangs askew, unnecessary here between them. Her breath comes in hitches, colors drowning her eyes, the scent of love blossoming around them. Fingers that could break stone brush over her skin, leaving giddy trembling in their wake. The surface of the breaking, shining waves swims far above them, and here they can linger in the sea forever.

"I will find them," Ember pants out, her chin wet, her heel digging into the blanket beneath them. Turquoise, teal, sapphire blooms. "Bella donna." Beautiful woman. It stings her lips like salt. "I will ask the biomancers, I will ask on every planet, I will seek them until, until, ah, aaa~ah..."

Her hips are the swell of broken ships' hulls. Her breasts, open to the air, are flowering coral. Her teeth, biting down on Mosaic's finger, are pearls. She can feel the tension in her lover's body, the flexing of those titan's fingers, the sting where Mosaic bites down on her ear with those teeth like sharks. But there is no fear in Ember of the Silver Divers, who melts into a string of incoherent groans, half-syllables, and particularly pathetic Pixesque yips. There is no place for fear at the bottom of the sea, only acceptance.

Breathless Dead

It takes Ember a moment to bring her thoughts back from the present, where she is wanted and helpful, a far cry from the runt of a scout who’d somehow won Mosaic’s heart on Beri with her infiltration and seduction training. Now she’s top of the pack, safe in Mosaic’s lap, so hot that she must be melting, that she must smell of adoration. She could be a creature of her body forever and ever.

“…nobody had my face, either,” she admits. It’s difficult to remember who she was, what she was, before the pack chose her. “Before I was Ceronian. Nobody knows what kind of weird creature I was back then, wandering the beach! And now I’m here.”

She nuzzles back into Mosaic, tries to quiet her nerves by molding herself into the hollows of the— of her lover. Her queen. Her mistress. Her prize and guardian. Her terrifying figure of myth. Her Mosaic.

“Home is with them. Wherever we go. With you. Wherever we go. And it’s here, too, isn’t it? On the Plousios, for as long as we can make it last?”

The question about the fireworks, conversely, will be answered with a small shrug, an admission that Sagetip did something to them, that it’s not something that Ember actually knows— but she can go find out! If you need her to. Not that she truly wants to. Because who would shift out of this lap, once in it? Who would walk away from Mosaic when a night of shared passion gestured invitingly?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Dolly hesitates for what might be a crucial moment, and Smokeless Jade Fires frowns. She makes herself an aspect of concern for just a moment, as her best and goodest girl flinches from what needs to be done. But after all, why shouldn't she? There was only one cloth capable of being the hub for this moment, one line of transfer that the goddess knew better than any other.

"You can do this," Jade says, and touches her wife's shoulder. She squats, half-covering the gorgeous girl's back, reaching in there along with her, their arms together as Dolly lays the fingers of her glove into place. "I am always with you. I am here, and in the streams of the universe, and in your heart, and by your side. The Red Band themselves, with all their goddesses, couldn't keep us apart. So heed my command, and--"

Dolly lets go. The goddess vanishes, a sudden absence of heat. But there's no time to think about that, or to do anything but what she needs to do. "Okay," she says, straightening, fiddling with her zipper in initially feigned self-consciousness. She doesn't have time to actually get flustered over how low it got in front of this stranger, who was definitely looking, and, and, she, gosh, she'll have to, talk to Jade about this later. Maybe Jade will fully unzip her in front of Angela and, and, focus, on point, Mirror! "That, I should go check and see if, the broadcast! Fixed! I think I've got it, just don't mess with that any further and we should be good!"

There is no reaction from Jade, no snicker or touch or snide comment. Her neck is very bare.

Breathless Dead

"This here? Tonight? This has got to be the greatest show in the galaxy."

Ember has no concept of personal space. Not with Mosaic. Not when they finally have time to themselves for the first time since they left Beri. Not with her hands, which are full, but with her shoulder, her thigh, her head, her breath. And perhaps Mosaic snapping at her is part of it. What Ceronian wouldn't want reassurance, to smother bad feelings in affection, to make sure that the outburst is forgotten and buried for at least a night?

(That's the problem with dating a demigoddess. Her displeasure, especially when pointed at you, is terrifying. A campfire must be put out completely, not allowed to catch again while no one is watching.)

"Because we are here. All of us. Well." Her ears droop. "Almost all of us. I wish Dolce- you remember him? I wish he was here for the cooking, at least. Amazing seasoning. He always made infiltrating Beri a delight. I wish he'd made it out." She rests her head on that statuesque shoulder, sinks into the safety of the most frightening and most beautiful woman she knows.

"Sorry. Sorry. I just... I wish the Azure Skies could see this and understand. Why we're not going to die. Why we're going to win in the end. All of this. All of us. Because we have you, and we have each other, and we have-- are you actually not going to touch the flatbread?" Begging eyes are tactically deployed. Not for her, but for Mosaic's sake. "If you don't eat something, I'll, I'll... I won't kiss you, so there!" (It would be impossible for her to hold to this. But it's the only card she can think to play.)

Her sword lies beside her in its sheath, close enough to hand to draw, but set aside all the same. Fireworks crack silently overhead. She nestles the small warmth of her body into Mosaic's own, trying to ignore the yipping in the back of her mind, the one that says there's still something wrong with this perfect moment.

After all, isn't it?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Dolly is a good girl. Isn't she just? Just such a good girl. In the middle of enemy territory, surrounded by danger on all sides, in the face of peril, she does just what she's supposed to.

"At ease," she says, putting one finger on the Terenian's lips, trying very hard not to melt straight into the floor. Next to her, Jade is grinning so widely that the top of her head might just fall off. "I got this, okay? You can put your hands on me after. For now, just sit tight." And here it is. The moment of truth. The moment where she has to be, briefly, not flustery over-her-head Seven Quetzal from the greenhouses but an actress pretending to be a smouldering-eyed goddess. Confident, in control of the situation, and using her body like a sword.

She looks the engineer dead in those dark Terenian eyes, so similar to Angela's, but younger, more like Dolly herself. She looks, and does not let go. "Do you think you can be a good girl and do that for me?"

"I am never going to forget this," Jade whispers, kicking her feet in delight as she sits on the control panel, absolutely giddy.

[9 on an Entice.]

Breathless Dead

Ember is silent for a little longer than usual, studying Mosaic. Some instinct itches in the back of her head, warning about the risk of losing a pack member to hidden injury or sickness. Because Mosaic is moving differently, even though underneath, she smells the same. The mismatch is disquieting.

"...we have some. I kept a bottle of something white. We don't have fresh seawater to add to it, but I think we'll be able to fill some vats when we arrive. Bucca!" The knight turns to the captive maid, a doe-eyed youth seized from the ranks of the Slitted's administrative corps, and tilts her chin up with one gauntleted hand. "Fetch~" (The rumble underlying her voice is playful, a warning that any impudence would be met with escalation, but done for Bucca's sake as much as for Mosaic's. It is necessary for the Alpha to be domineering and forceful, but the real Ember lies in the shallows underneath.)

"B-but I don't want to get into the details yet," she adds, turning her attention fully back to her lover. A gentle touch to the arm that holds the jacket together, a release of Affection, her purple-rimmed eyes looking into Mosaic's own. "I've got it. And you don't need to worry. You have earned this, sunlight. We're here, free and ready to fight, because you convinced us all to work together. You don't need to carry everyone's burdens tonight. Not tonight. Not here. I have everything under control, and once your new maid gets back with the wine, we can... go and watch the fireworks from somewhere private?"

She can't hide the wagging, or the hopeful note in her voice. It's been hectic ever since the Plousios launched, long nights alone, and details from before the fight against the Slitted are fuzzy and hard to hold onto, but they haven't had a night together, just for themselves. Not since the launch.