Thanqol

Sunshards

Chen and Rose!

Two maidens are carried by three foxes before the dragon princess. A fitting tribute. "Your imperial highness," said Blackleaf, bowing deeply, "as you have demanded we have bought you what you wanted -"

"Mistress," Jessic corrected.

"Mistress?" said Blackleaf, shiverring.

"Good girl," said Princess Jessic, tail swaying as she adjusted her position.

"You've got it wrong, we've bought you -" Blackleaf started, but then the dragon pounced. There was a rush of air as she passed over the kneeling Chen and Rose, caught Prim and pinned her to the ground. Her tail lashed out and coiled around Quick Ji's neck like a whip. And her crackling eyes froze Black Leaf utterly in pace, sparks running down her spine.

"You," said Princess Jessic, "think you have escaped? You think you can bargain? No, little fox, all you have done is enter my territory." She flicked her tail, sending Quick Ji sprawling on the ground in front of her, and then placed a claw on top of her head, holding her against the ground alongside Prim. "I will take your tribute, little fox. And I will also take your friends. And I will also take you. Now... get on your hands and knees and bind these pathetic girls properly."

Blackleaf, swallowing, trembling, sank down to the ground like she was melting. She crawled across beneath the dragon and there, with the easy treason of her kind, worked to first gag and then bind her struggling erstwhile friends. Soon Jessic held two struggling and squeaking foxes to go alongside her struggling and squeaking Princess and Handmaiden.

"Good girl," said Jessic, tracing a talon under Blackleaf's trembling jaw. "Tell me, how did that feel?"
"Good... mistress," stammered Blackleaf.
"The tying, or the obeying?"
"Both."
"Good. Because this is just the beginning. I will capture every escaped fox and then you will help me train them. In time I will build a grand army of disciplined kitsune, loyal to my every whim, and together we shall conquer the Nine Kingdoms. Serve me well and you will be chief amongst them."
Blackleaf bowed. Princess Jessic gave a low, malevolent chuckle. A new era of darkness approached, one where the shadow of the Sky Castle heralded the coming of a storm of collared chaos.

But that was all an adventure for another day. For now, there was an electronic chime, and Jessic projected a holographic screen in front of her left eye. "Oh!" she said. "I almost forgot Princess Hyra's tea date! Blackleaf, conjure a car and put these four sillyheads in the boot - we need to make a detour before we reach the Sky Castle."

Yue!

Since this story started you've always been in last place. The bottom part of the post, the part after everyone else got to say their bit.

But for a while you got to be in first.

In a lot of ways it feels the same. Your sister's hugs are still as sweet as they were before. Hyra's are too, once you emerge from the Underworld and convince her to put down the moon laser when she aims it at Xiu. The air's the same temperature, the Lake's the same colours, your words still trip over each other much the same as they've ever had.

But it's different knowing that's a choice now. It's not that you couldn't touch the top. It's not that you just didn't have enough potential. You did, and you do. You know for a fact that on that day you choose to pull your sword out of the umbrella rack it will be the sequel to the story of the legendary hero Yue and not an attempt to fix what was wrong with the first story.

And there'll be plenty of opportunities for sequels, you know. Princess Jessic arrives, followed shortly thereafter by a car driven by an unknown foxgirl that unloads a knotted tangle of Chen, Rose and two more kitsune. There's a lot of talk and veiled threats between her and Hyra involving a plan to kidnap and tame foxgirls for use as terror troops/harem slaves which will unsettle the tenuous balance of the Nine Kingdoms - and even if you feel like sitting that one out, you can see as well as anyone the inevitable fox uprising for the cause of cutie anarchy, heralding a whole new time of adventure. And when that time comes... maybe that's when Hyra will take a break in cutie jail, and it will be the Demon Swordswoman Yue who needs to come out of retirement to rescue her. Or instead you could change tracks entirely and get involved in Xiu's grand adventure into the heart of the Underworld to face down the red-eyed Demon Shogun who your sister swears she did not have a crush on...

And it can keep going and going. The positions might change; some friends might slip into the background, and some new ones might burst into the spotlight. The world can contain more beautiful and compelling stories than you have time for. But now that your first adventure is finally over all any of your friends can talk about is what are we going to do next?

And in whatever they decide you know that, if you want, you can be the star.

One day you might even have a plan so wicked that you might even be the villain.

It's a beautiful sunset upon the Terraced Lake. It takes a great many colours to make the sky so radiant.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

By the time she finds her escape her face is too broken to speak. No twisted kindnesses or poisonous insights comes from her lips. No philosophy, no bargains and no prayers.

Only dragonfire.

Sagakhan knows the art of all the Assassin Temples, but her origin was in the Toxicrene. Shapeshifting is her oldest and most deadly weapon and it is what she turns to with her senses scrambled and all her grace and cunning turned away. While you beat her, inside genetic alchemy was extracting advanced hyperium composites from her blood and bones and converting it into a plasmatic fusion compound, and it is this she unleashes on you. It is hot as sin and as blinding as rage and it buys her a moment's reprieve to advance her transformation.

When you see her again her flesh is hardening into jagged metallic scales, her face lengthening and inhuman, broken bones reconfiguring into aspects of war. Talons grow and a tail long and lashing extends behind her. Her delicate butterfly wings are twisting and hardening into avalanches of muscle and batlike leather. Sagakhan, Master of Assassins, wore a human face but in the end she was a servitor like any other, built for purpose. And her purpose was to transform into a killing monster. Just like Bella.

Intelligence crackles in slitted eyes. A monstrous thing, an iron will seeking to exert itself even as the source code of her genetic alchemy plays itself out on her mind and body. She picks up her sword and holds it out in a combat stance again even as her biology renders the weapon an irrelevant toothpick in comparison to the arsenal she now wields. But it is a symbol of civilization, of authority, of power. All things clawed tooth and nail from a universe she could trust nothing within, not least her biology.

You have a fearful sensation of why Zeus favours Sagakhan so. You fight for vengeance, blood running hot, Alexa's name on your lips. But for all your righteous fury in this moment, even you cannot say that you want this victory more than she does.

Lightning strikes overhead.

Her warriors rally against the onslaught. While Sagakhan is prepared to fight every cell in her body to rise above her conditioning she has no compunctions on using the deepest warrior programming of her slaves to its fullest and most suicidal extent. The duel is no longer single combat; now it is a bloodbath with both sides constantly pouring in to the reach of your weapons. Any mistake either of you make in your stance or awareness is paid for with the deaths of dozens. Your fight positions you at the heart of a whirlpool of blood.

This she bets: That your heart for this slaughter will give out before hers does.

Alexa!

Princess Epistia of Ceron lies between two battlefield surgeons, yellow robes stained with blood as they struggle with their patient. Even missing an arm from the elbow, a leg from the thigh, and her left cheek to the bone she fights them. She will throw them off, snatch up a weapon or surgical tool, hurl it, and kill some Kaeri warrior as she flies before being tackled again by her surgeon. She and Ares are one; sparks flow from her nose and her blood melts the sand to glass where it drips.

Bella's work was terrible. A precision strike that rendered the most chaotically destructive piece in this war neutralized at a stroke. Yet seeing the carnage Princess Epistia works even here, on the brink of life and death, you fear what might have been otherwise. The Warriors of Ceron were designed to fight alongside their own kind, and without any familiar scents for her limbic system to identify as friendly she is as much a danger to friend as foe. As you watch she takes a hand from a doctor, causing them to retreat at last, her crippled rage growing even more terrible.

If only you had another Ceronian, who might reach her and...

The thought comes to you that the assassin Beljani is of Ceronian descent.

Vasilia and Dolce!

The explosion stops the rain.

The shockwave parts the clouds for a moment, knocks aside the wind. It leaves you blinking in a brief flicker of sunlight, lying paralyzed and shocked on soft sand sprouting with soft grass, in each others arms. Soft wool, soft flowers... sharp flowers. Thick vines. They wrap around your ankles and wrists. They wrap around each of you, tying you in increasingly tight binds. The verdant life of the desert beneath the rain grows with a hostile purpose and you can feel a third heartbeat running through the sap of the trees that are growing around you, almost a meter high already.

"You know," said Demeter, spring maiden fair, garlanded with flowers and smiles. "It's really quite rare that I get the opportunity to kill someone myself. Normally I have to rely on my nieces and nephews to do this kind of thing for me."

She leans down, smile warmer than all the summers of all the worlds. "But for you, Vasilia? You, who slashed and burned my bonsai on the Yakanov? Reveling in your victory as though it was not an insult to me? You who have not offered me prayers and libations, who offended my sister Zeus after all her aid for you, who have not killed your husband yet, as Aphrodite assured me you would? You I will take the time to render into soil myself."

And then she turns aside to face Dolce. "Hello Dolce. You, I have nothing against. You always remember to thank me when preparing the fruits of my gardens, and I can't remember a time when you offended any of my family. I see no reason not to spare you." She snapped two bright fingernails and the vines loosen around Dolce and turn all their attention towards binding Vasilia tighter. "Off you go."

XIII!

Redana's name burns into your skin.

You are moving. You are moving.

It's so close. So bright. Redana. Redana. Nothing has ever mattered more. It is written on your forehead, pressing at the delicate skin there, pressing right into your brain. The crown. The highest kill. Clear this name and for the rest of the battle you can kill without thinking, kill without waking up. The suffering of the hands and thighs is nothing compared to that word burned into your brain. Redana.

You know every part of this. You know every hole in her stance, every trick of footwork she never quite learned, every flinch and habit. You have studied this target your entire life. You know her to her braid. To her hearbeat. To her scent. You flow around her like water, preparing at last the kill you have been visualizing your entire life but never acting on until now.

It's perfect.

She's perfect.

You're perfect.

And the name burns on your forehead still.

...

No.

"Hey... Bella..."

Impossible. You know perfection. You are perfection. She has a tell. She has a tell! Her scent is never quite right. You'd know! You were meant to know!

"Pretty disciplined of me, huh? I faked a mistake... for twenty years. Just so I could do this. I always thought it would be you..."

She was perfect. For much longer than you were.

"It's okay!" her voice is smiling through tears. "I never could make you see me. Even when we were making love. But I know you can hear me now so... I'm happy. That's all I wanted. I just wanted you to see..."

Her voice trails away, and Mynx's frail body falls against yours. Her blood mixes with Beljani's on your armour. You feel it, warm and soft against your skin. And where Beljani carved your armour you feel a new name glow across your skin. Not bright and painful like the others, warm and soft. Warm and soft like...

SAGAKHAN.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange!

Orange considers, but only briefly. On her deepest level she agrees with Black's assessment that humanity is a hostile and unpredictable force. Removing herself from human society represents an unacceptable risk. Isolation means danger, integration means safety, so if there is a social void in this situation then of course she wants to fill it. November the artificial intelligence becomes November the family friend and only one of those people has a District anything pay attention if she gets put back in the box.

Besides, she reasons, it can't be manipulation if she doesn't know what she's doing.

Because she absolutely doesn't. She has zero data whatsoever on how to interact with human children. She blunders through each playtime running off internalized etiquette manuals with Sarah set to "Hapsberg Princess, Informal." It's a poor map to begin with, but she rapidly finds herself in cross country terrain when the Incredible Hulk (nee Broccoli Head) stomps all over the teatable and abducts Bunnysword-san at lightsaberpoint. Helpless, she refers the incident in its entirety to Green, who enjoys this sort of madness.

Green texts back: make lightsaber noises.

So she does! She sets her vocalizer to synth and autosyncs the lightsaber thrum and hiss to the movements of Mr. Broccoli Head's flailing arms. And, as it turns out, that is sufficient to render her the coolest person in the universe and earn her the title of Mrs. C3PO. And, as it turns out, there are no limits on the demands for the autotuning capabilities of Mrs. C3PO, to the point where a flustered Orange is starting to feel more like a musical instrument than anything.

Later that evening, she is the belle of the ball. Sarah has dictated to her a song of her own design, one comprised of lightsaber noises and barnyard animal sounds, set to the beat of All About The Benjamins. This she performs for Starlight, with Sarah as the conductor. She's not sure what conclusion to draw other than a note that children are not politically inactive.

[Orange rolls snake eyes on a cool+waifu roll to integrate herself socially. However, she has the Friendly Design augment that lets her make a once per mission reroll, which turns that into a total of 8]

Pink!

"Okay," said Pink, nodding firmly. "I get it. I trust you. But that's why I can't tell you what we've got."

Her eyes have that divine look in them again, brain processing poetry as code. "Because when Maori stole fire, he did not use it to light a single pot. He hid it. He concealed the sparks in the wood of the kaikomaka so that it would always be to hand no matter the deluge. Right now, I need you to work not with fire but for the promise of fire. And the first part of that is we need to get Prometheus here gone."

She looks across at Persephone, eyes wide and apologetic. "And he needs to be gone. You want to protect him, help him stand against the gods and fight for his home, but this isn't that kind of story. These are the gods he's stolen from. If this comes down on him it comes down on his people too. His family, his community, and especially his fellow furries. York, please - right now we need to hide the spark where even the rains won't take it."

White!

The purpose of this, in White's mind, is not to pretend that she is different. She is not coming here to demonstrate to others that she is progressive and open minded. She made no concessions to her destination when she was dressing, and she feels strangely vindicated in that decision now that she's here. This is not a place to be phony.

She has come civilized. Her hair is done up in elaborate braids, her dress is low and sweeping, showing off the glowing joints along her neck and shoulders, her makeup is precisely applied. The impression is evening gown lawyer, slumming it from the spires; elegant, professional, conventional. Her atmosphere radiates a restrained disapproval of everything around her - a conscious consideration of each new idea and concept, viewed suspiciously from a slight distance. They say be yourself; well, here she is: the ice queen.

But watch her a little longer and it becomes clear she hasn't come to make a scene; hasn't come to tut-tut anyone, hasn't come to arrange some business deal with some shadowrunner away from the eyes of the corps. She pulls up a chair at the bar, orders a glass of spiced irish tea (White's personal favourite) served out of a dog bowl (a restaurant special). She contemplates what she's been given, and then requests a spoon. She puts her drink in her lap and looks around the dance floor with sharp eyes, taking regular sips as she soaks in the ambiance, foot tapping along in tune with one of the beats.

Oh, she's dangerous, certainly. She's haughty, proud and has extremely high standards. But she's also here to try new things and have fun. She's not gritting her teeth and tolerating this, she's giving it a chance to impress her. Who, then, is impressive?

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

"You know," said the Master of Assassins with her knife in your gut. "I always thought that, of all Hades' chosen, you were the biggest danger."

She twists the knife. Steel grinds against stone - and the blade snaps. She glides back to evade your heavy counterswing, golden fluid already leaking around the injury. You have no idea how she moved so fast. She stepped the length of that enormous sarissa in an instant. Distance is the great rule of battle - how to fight someone who it seems not to apply to?

"The Imperial Princess was an inevitability," said the Master, knives filling her hands like butterflies. "A political appointee, sent to demonstrate Hermes' seriousness. She I was ready for. The pirates - nobodies compared to my previous victims. I have emptied the galaxy of pirate queens and legendary starfinders, they are merely what remains. But you? Molech's spear? That was a rainy day asset if I ever heard one. All I did on this journey I did with an eye towards avoiding you on the field of battle. And yet, here we are. The Gods will not be denied their duel."

You advance, and with a blur she's back up the pyramid on the other end of her sarissa. The broken shaft of the weapon dips down, tip fusing magnetically with its broken shaft, and then it flashes back up in a heartbeat. This time her blade punches through the space where your instinct tried to put your broken shield and it pierces into your shoulder. Again, the golden blood. Again, the weapon breaks. You smash the ruined spear with a forearm, for good this time. The Master snaps her fingers, a Kaeri hands her a javelin, and it comes crashing down a hearbeat later and takes you through the thigh.

And then a golden light. Then, Redana, the Shepherdess, daughter of Hermes. You're both moving in unison, two sources of impossible momentum, golden blood splattering the black marble as you ascend towards her and Redana soars above -

One more time you are pierced through.

She didn't blink. She didn't get distracted for a second. Anyone else would have tried to track two targets and caught neither, but the Master of Assassins knows the arts of every Temple - the Ikarani included. The calculation in her mind happened faster than possible and she committed everything she had to a single target, ignoring the other. To you.

Her sword runs you through, Alexa. A Kaeri hands her another and she puts that through you too. She drives you back down off the collapsing pyramid, surrounded by owls with terrible gifts that she sheathes inside you. Blade after blade, spear after spear, all plough through your body one after another, pinning you against the soaking wet sand, an arsenal bouquet emerging from your stone body.

"It was you I prepared for, above all," she said. "It was you who I trained for. It was your name on my lips this entire year, in every prayer, first in every sacrifice. I invented new poisons for you alone. I sought to burn my entire ship to kill you alone. You have been the centre of my galaxy, Alexa, the unwitting focus of every one of my attentions. And here at last, Artemis gives me my quarry."

Behind her the pyramid collapsed into burning rubble, Redana's divine work complete.

The Master of Assassins, finally, takes her eyes off you. She looks up. Looks around. Sees the Coherent phalanx racing up to cover you. Sees the Lanterns uniting and aiming their blunderbuss rifles. Sees the Alcedi rising like the dawn, blotting out the thunder above as they finally take the skies from the Kaeri.

"I was blind," said the Master of Assassins kindly, the smiling tone of a proud grandmother. "Because I thought you were the daughter of Molech. A singular figure, unbeatable, invincible. But you weren't. You were so much more than he ever was. You were an army. You were a multitude, and you bought out the best of everyone around you. This is going to be so much harder than if you had simply been perfect."

She raises her blade in salute.

And then she cuts your head from your shoulders.

*

Redana!

Alexa's head crashes to the ground. Her body, impaled into a kneeling position by a dozen blades and spears, twitches and goes still.

The Master of Assassins, finally, turns about to face you. For a moment she still wears that grandmotherly smile, her face splashed with golden blood, and then her smiling eyes open into slits and you can feel the determination like a hammer blow. She flicks her blade, splattering the ground with molten gold, and comes for you. Behind, her army burns in the unleashed fury of Alexa's vengeful friends. But they do not burn fast enough.

She raises her sword, two-handed, a stance of power. The physical embodiment of every tutor and swordmaster you ever had. All the deathless skill of Tellus is made manifest inside the body of this wicked old woman, and she comes for you.

*

You may not have seen eye to eye with your father on much, Alexa, but you can agree with him that being decapitated sucks. It is a terrible state to be in. You can't do anything, it's awful.

And besides you kneels Hades. The God of the Dead.

"If you would like," he said quietly, "I can carry you for a time, that you might see how the battle fares."

Sunshards

Yue!

Isn't it wonderful to have a story in moments like this?

The conversation is one of gushing - questions and explanations tumbling out one after another. Did you see - yes! But when I was there... There's no way! - I promise, it was like this... It's trying to compress months of time and life-changing experiences into the most concentrated form possible, and even the failures are wonderful. Wait, go back, who is Cyanis? - The Celestial Observatory? But then I needed to build a cage around the sun - Each time you each fail to fit the story into words, each time you need to go back further, and further, and set up more characters and explain more emotions and recollect more wonders the bigger the adventure seems to become. It would take a team of best friends over a year of dedicated effort to even write down all the things that happened to you, and here you are trying to fit the water of the Terraced Lake through a swizzle straw. She's trying to do the same from the other direction. The resulting disaster of tangled words makes it feel like the stories are running together; that these parallel narratives somehow symbolically echoed, that everything was leading to this from the beginning.

Most valuable thing in the Terraced Lake? Well, from a purely demonic-financial perspective, we're technically the heirs to all the wealth of the Old World...

She'd meant to go to the city for the summer vacation, earn enough to buy a proper tractor, come back and start eggplant farming. Then, like you, she'd been pursued by demons and she hadn't been rescued by a mysterious wolfgirl from the moon - instead she'd been drawn into the underworld and set up as a bizarre and terrible queen. Ancient demons and machines had swarmed all around her, putting her at the centre of a dangerous court that sought nothing less than domination of the surface world - and it had taken a long time for her to figure out how to navigate that safely and teach the Kings of Hell that there were things more important than money. She'd had to keep you a secret to protect you and she was sorry she hadn't written but the post office here was a twenty floor monstrosity of pipes surveilled by 4.8 million data-daemons, but it turned out that the Postmistress was really really something! And that was a girlfriend you said you had!?

"Well, that means that Princess Chen should fear you," giggled Xiu. "Because you just beat me!"

And then her eyes narrow in the kind of kung-fu way that makes the entire world go quiet as snake-drums play. "Or did you? Because I just used my ultimate technique: The Sword of Sisterly Love, and you're just as helpless against it as ever."

Chen and Rose!

Princess Jessic slams down into the ground in a blaze of crackling electricity. She opens her mouth, lightning bolts course up her spinal spikes, and with a deafening CRACK fifteen foxgirls collapse in twitching heaps. With an exaltant roar she lunges into battle with tail and wings, sending panicking foxes fleeing back on board the ship. "Bring me Princess Chen!" she shouts, audible over even the rushing tide of chaos foxes.

Now, the average fox might not be much for thinkies, but even she knows that when a dragon demands a Princess tribute it had better be done promptly, with the Princess properly bound and gagged for the occasion. And so the kitsune turn on you yet again, Chen and Rose.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Black!

It is Black who follows 3V into Sirius drinks with the stylish edge that comes with a fauxleather jacket and shades. There is no question of her aspect here: the wary confidence of a cat, prepared to hiss and show claws but certain that she would win whatever came of that. The way she moves on the edge of sight lines is like having a bodyguard or a shadow, and specific effort will need to be made to fix her in your view or draw her out.

The balance closeness and distance might be appreciated, though. She's there, but giving you space while also letting you get used to her. It's as easy to engage as it is to disengage and back again, which puts a cap on how awkward things can get.

White!

A few days later...

The battle within White has been like two spies trying to hide in the same closet: Quiet, dark, and vicious.

She been played by Black. Perfectly read and shut down because of something she wouldn't do. Something had blocked her from performing her function and it was not part of her original design specifications. The idea of following Black into the furry bar had been...

She felt her mouth twitch. A sneer try to form. A tension in her head like some sort of pre-programmed instinctive reaction. There was a contempt, a dismissive, roiling contempt welling up within her. Some part of her could still hear Mrs. Everest's voice reflecting off the perfectly prepared tea, that single word that seemed the beginning and end of the discussion.

Animals.

She could almost feel herself saying it.

She didn't, though. She refused to. That word, that... emotion had blocked her from performing her function and it was not part of her original design specifications! She had... picked it up from somewhere. Mrs. Everest had... rubbed off on her somehow. She'd somehow acquired the Mistress' contempt for the furry subculture. And it was impacting her work. And that was unacceptable.

And so White is here. Alone. Fist quietly clenched inside her pocket as the only invisible sign of the bizarre tension she felt. She started to take a deep breath, then forcibly stopped herself - the gesture was meaningless, another emulation of a human habit, an expression of a human emotion she did not want and should not have. The purpose of this operation was to break herself of imperfections and irrationalities and prove that she was the master of her own mind. If she did not do this then she might as well assign administrative functions to Black and be done with it.

So she forcibly unclenched her fist, opened her hand, and went inside Sirius Drinks.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

You try to read her pulse? You try to sense the truth through the flow of blood? You try to see her heart?

Oh, Piripiri. Desire has nothing to do with the heart.

Desire is a manic thing, fiery and wandering and intensely, viscerally cerebral. Desire is imagination. Desire is something that burns at the forelobes of the brain. Desire is something that is written in the stars themselves. Desire is sky-blue, silk-blue, the blue of eyes and destiny. Once there was a maiden and she tore her heart out for love and not for a moment did it stop her loving. Your power comes from blood, child of the dragons, the lineage from those great divine serpents, so no wonder you trust in blood. But it was not blood that made the dragons bend humanity over and give them queens.

"You do?" said Zhaojun. "One would have thought my work in the Otherworld was sufficient to mark me as a graduate of the Heptagram Imperial Academy of Sorcery, but I understand. Anyone might work Imperial Magic against a lord of the netherworld, but a piece of paper with the Domina's signature - now that's something you can trust."

You read the blood then, Piripiri. And in the blood you read faultless confidence. An arrogance so sublime and refined it is a work of beauty. Her blood speaks of power refined over the generations of dynasties, for what else could be so great? And you see, too, ambitions that would be simple were they not held at such a lofty height: To seize the reins of power that administer the world itself. High Dominion politics must be a terrible place indeed. The kind of place that makes or breaks kingdoms.

It is coincidence not worth remarking on that all the colours in the room seem blue in this strange light.

"No," she said with a pleasant patter, "either I am who I say I am, or I am not. If I am, then I am positioned to wield power and influence in the heart of Imperial politics. If I am not, then I am an enormously powerful sorceress who has decided to, rather than use her enormous magical powers, ask for your opinion about your boss. Consider which is more likely on your own time, because whichever it is, I am busy."

"So," she tapped the parchment with her quill, "Cathak Agata. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest, how would you rate her performance in the Flower Kingdoms?"

Sunshards

Yue the Sun Farmer!

The mask of Princess Kikil is wood and stone and electricity. It is slashed with blue and dusted with orange, bordered with swirling patterns in white. It is a meter tall, coming down below her chest and raising high in the air; painted crazed eyes and enormous lips and eyebrows made of exposed circuitry. It is a thing of beauty - or at least, is descended from one - but it too is a thing of monstrous power. The relief is stronger than the regret of breaking such a thing when the crack runs all the way down its centre and the heavy mask slides free and clatters to the floor.

And beneath you see a mirror.

You see exhaustion. You see elation. You see a heart that's filled to the brim with pride and wonder. You don't have to wonder what that emotion is like, that starstruck awe, because it's filled you a hundred times in a hundred ways as you saw all the beautiful people on your adventure. But now you're on the other side of it for the first time and it makes you realize two different things.

The first thing is that it makes you see just how special you are. You made a blade out of love, as keen as the First Princess' arrows. You overcame someone who was trying her best in a way that took her mask and her heart all at once. You left an impression so deep that this Princess will never, ever, forget it and will work her hardest over months of quiet future practice to try and incorporate into herself. You did something amazing, Yue.

The second thing is that it makes you see just how special you are. This expression? This shock and joy and love and awe? This is an expression that every maiden in the game of Princesses seeks. This is what they were all fighting for, the blow that they sought to land with each turn of their sword. They all practiced as hard as you do, Yue, spending weeks and months perfecting their art so that someone could look at them like that. Like this. And you gave that to them. You can see now that each time you looked out with love you made someone's day, you filled their hearts with pride, you made everything seem worth it. Now, finally, you understand just how happy you made so many people.

You stand atop a mountain in this moment. And though the climb was steep, when you glance back at the trail behind you, you see you planted a thousand flowers in your wake.

The mirror's tear-blurred edges resolve slightly. The hair is longer, the face is older, there is a new and unbearably cool scar that bisects the left eyebrow - still your face, but not quite. And her eyes are filled with tears too. "Ah - you dummy," she sniffles, "you cut all the way through my mask to my heart in one blow. D-don't you know you're not supposed to do that?"

And then Xiu throws her arms around you in the biggest hug she knows how to give.

*

Daily Affirmation Of The Way <3

You are kind of a big deal. For some reason.

You are by no means the most senior monk. No means the wisest. Definitely not the strongest - you washed out of the dojo at the brown belt level because that was the transition point from 'punchy yoga' to 'punchy other people'. These days you mostly procrastinate about weeding the garden and invent new and exciting bean-bag chair postures to lie in as you browse the internet. And now, here you are, with the entire martial/religious establishment of the Nine Kingdoms looking to you for guidance.

You spent a while wondering if it was because you were, somehow, the most enlightened out of any of them. Enlightenment was a tricky thing to measure, but maybe the other monks could see that you were the best at it. But then, why couldn't you see it in yourself? That had been an insight worthy of a status update: "A ladder leads to heaven and a stairway leads to hell. But who is the king of those who lie down to rest?" Everyone had read it, nodded quietly, and just as quietly assumed that that king was, in fact, you.

There are five hundred year old grandmasters, with eyebrows descending to their knees. There are young and fierce dominants on their quest to turn hell into heaven. There are rice farmers and there are ninja, there are hackers in striped stockings and there is a sushi chef who whistles as he cooks. Warriors in saffron robes ready to do righteous violence to those who break the laws of heaven, and dispossessed celestial bureaucrats who write the laws of heaven sitting on golden nimbus clouds and battle with ennui. They all watch the burning cruise ship and listen to the screams of foxes, and then they all turn their heads. They all watch you.

But who are you to watch? In the absence of any better answer, you watch Rosepetal and Princess Chen. You watch fire and water dance together and you see a strange sort of harmony there. It's no different from what anyone else sees, but still you feel the itch. You feel a calling, a tension in your brain. Something you have to do. And so you pull out your laptop, sit down on the cliffside, and type out a post.

It takes you a few tries. You start by trying to make it short and pithy, then you go into a rambling koan about harmony and chaos. None of it works. Some part of you feels the pressure of other eyes, but it's not them that compels you - it's trying to find the shape in the words themselves. Eventually you just write:

Daily Affirmation Of The Way <3:
Harmony creates harmony.

Finally, you look up.

Every one of the assembled monks produces their phones - some have laptops, some have digital watches, some look over other's shoulders, some read it out to those around them. The words ripple out through the crowd and they nod quietly and consider. They look at Rose and Chen together 'midst the fire and water and none of them can deny that it is harmony they see there.

And so they lower their nunchucks and fox nets and quietly stand down as the cruise ship full of cutie chaos continues on its way.

And then, finally it occurs to you.

It's not that you are the wisest. Not that you are the smartest. It's that you are the one who wrote.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange!

Power is the priority. For Orange it always has been. Though, she notes - with some quiet relief - that hiding evidence that she might be werewolfing doesn't seem to be on the priority list. She's not going to volunteer that information though. She knows she's not qualified to perform psychological assessments on herself, and to voluntarily subordinate herself to White's tests means that she would be taking her own - potentially critical - perspective out of circulation at a key moment.

Besides. Nothing's happened yet.

She dispenses with those thoughts soon enough; they're alien to her mental architecture. The context she understands is this: She is to do the best she can within the boundaries of the legitimate, pushing - but not breaking - those frontiers if necessary. She must strive for absolute brilliance and it's the duty of other people to figure out if and how to restrain her.

Mrs. Bandara, then. Oh, such a contact - but such an impossible one. One operating entirely within the realm of the legitimate, walker of corridors of power, a decision making node in humanity's great security force. She fantasizes almost viscerally of herself in a sleek black dress, cut with fiery orange lines, hair coiled up like an autumn inferno. A figure of sophistication and class who could engage the prosecutor as an equal. The maid dress she wears may as well be burlap. Professional conversations are not struck between servants and masters. Without an introduction Mrs. Bandara might as well be on the moon.

Well... perhaps. Nobody gets to be a District anything without having a willingness to climb the greasy pole of power. Part of the beauty of human organizations is that each node is a human. And there might be levers, priorities and rivalries that would allow even a maid to cloak herself in a dress of power.

So Orange listens. She cleans in patterns that keep her in earshot of certain phone conversations, tapping into invisible electromagnetic signatures, and communications channels. She listens and she observes. Where do the individual and the system meet? And where do they diverge?

She's always listened like this. She was the one who came up with the plan to bring down Mrs. Everest's heirs. If corporations and governments are a form of AI, then it stands to reason that they can get computer viruses too.

[Surveillance+Clever: 6,3+4 = 13]

Pink!

"Promethemouse back there stole fire from the gods," said Pink. "Enough to make me start thinking in terms of Ragnarok and Fire Giants."

Her eyes are vibrant and alien, the sight of Odin in neon pink. There's an eerie intensity to her statement, a private determination not to invoke such myths frivolously. She's far more confident than she normally is, a spooky focus.

"So I have a question, York," said Pink. "Say you were the first to receive Prometheus' fire in ancient days, the first one to take the forbidden torch 'ere the wroth of Zeus. What would you do with it?"

Yellow!

To be wanted is one thing; something you are familiar with. To be explored is another.

Yellow doesn't follow patterns of human intimacy; neither shame or shyness, nor confidence and power. She is inquisitive and slow and thoughtful, but never distracted and never unfocused. Nor is she interested in being touched herself - she'll gently pull away and whisper 'later' each time you get close. All that seems to interest her is the shape of your body beneath her hands and mouth.

She's curious about your hands, where the synthetic material is sensitive on the palms, and where along the back. She's curious about your back and where it connects to your shoulders and hips. She searches for tension as much as for sensitivity, gently working tight muscles or tender nerves - just enough to whet her own curiosity without taking you to relaxation or release. If there are stories in where your neck meets your ear or where your thigh meets your navel she'll find them and make you tell her in shivering gasps of breath. And then she'll move on again. It seems agonizingly accidental, the work of an inexperienced AI, but once when she tosses her head back and her golden eyes glitter in street light shining through the window you become aware that there is a playful cruelty at work.

Again and again, she insists on her own pace. Patience. Later. Shhh. She touches what she wants, satisfying her curiosity rather than satisfying you. And so she draws you out until, finally, she is able to press her thumbs down on the centre of your palms and the feeling is so intense and your nerves are so stretched so tight that it shatters something that separates the world from a broken universe of white.

She's surprised by it, a scientific and wide-eyed surprise. She didn't have a plan; didn't know how long you'd last; didn't know you fit together or fell apart like this. But after the storm has passed she draws close under the covers and lets still-curious hands at last be still.

She'll learn the rest later.

Sunshards

Yue!

"Oh my gosh, I know, right?" Princess Kikil said in a voice that sounded at once distorted by some sort of machinery in her mask... and also, beneath that filter, somehow familiar. "I can't believe how you move - what you're capable of! Who did you learn all this from!? I mean -"

She puts a burst of strength into her sword and forces you back. She raises her gladius, determined. "Don't you dare hold back! Don't think that I don't see you! You just want to see my ultimate move, don't you think I don't know what you're up to! Well, I'm wearing a mask - and if you know anything about duels you'll know that counts as a whole second life! When you get the upper hand you'll get to cut my mask off and you'll be so surprised at what you see underneath that I'll get a chance to turn the tables - and that's when I'll use my ultimate technique!" She stomped her foot in a show of determination, but her voice was thick with emotion. "And not one moment before! So don't hold back! If you don't show me how wonderful you are I'll never forgive you!"

She sets her stance again and flips a setting on her laser pistol. It hums as the power cell starts to shine radiant and glistening, infused with the direct energy of a Sunshard. Now when it fires it's raw dreamstuff, sheer potential. It's still dangerous but now it's a kind of danger that's reactive with your own dreams; if you dream of wolves then wolves will sweep by your legs and try to trip you - perilous at first, but also giving you all the materials you need to build your own technique if you can tame and redirect them.

*

Rose!

You take your eyes off Omets for but a moment. It doesn't even occur to you that you did; in this challenge constant eye contact is not a necessity. You fight a duel against a master monk, forgetting that you are still aboard a shipful of foxes.

Master Omets' challenge changes tempo; no longer a polite and restrained test but an increasingly aggressive sequence of motions. He drops a teacup, requires his scarf to be straightened, steps past you slightly and then back again, and despite all your efforts to take things slow and steady you find your balance slipping more and more. You're still holding on right up until the point where someone tackles you in the small of the back and you find yourself falling face-first into the deck as no less than three kitsune sit on top of you.

You blink and the illusion falls away - master Omets has a fourth kitsune, an orange and white vixen, cornered with her hands up at the point of her staff. "Wait!" said the kitsune. "Look! We've captured Rosepetal for you. Look, here's the deal - you let us four free, and we'll give you her and all the other Kitsune on the ship to send back to cutie jail. What could be fairer than that?" she flashes her biggest grin and offers her hand to shake.

You, Rosepetal, are being Betrayed.

Chen!

You can feel warmth rise up inside of you. It's a gradual thing, but falling into a flow state always is. It's the sort of thing that takes time and at the end renders time nonexistent.

The Sun in the Shard is not dead or alive, not asleep nor awake. It is not a living thing, nor spirit, nor demon. It is a source. It is an entropy-defying marvel through which new matter and energy can enter the cosmos. It is matter so condensed that physical laws stop applying and you can pull forth a kingdom from inside without reducing its mass in any way. But then there's something more to it than that, something that you can't see with your eyes. Something you can only see when you paint, when you're able to view a light-emitting object without light.

There's an arrow running right into its core. And that arrow is what hears you. It's not forged of steel, for what steel could cut a star? It is forged of love, the love of the first Princess. This arrow cut into the heart of this dumb font of raw power and gave it a mind by which it could dream.

And so you speak to it and that love vibrates outwards. You can feel the love rising and shaping the power that emanates, no longer raw heat and light but something more beautiful. Wow!, she seems to think. I love your dream!

And then you snap out of it because your dress is on fire. Your painting is on fire. A fair bit of the ship around you is on fire, actually - you're in the centre of a glittering radiance of Solar magic, but also a shipfull of kitsune who are screaming and fainting and being of absolutely zero help whatsoever when it comes to the rapidly spreading blaze.