Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Blue!

There's something electric about a challenge. Not a test, not Green's obsession, that world where there are right and wrong answers (no matter how much the tester declaims that they're just observing or gathering data; there's always an agenda in their mind). A challenge is... about having to become a better person than your opponent. Coming from a superior it's even more than that; the choice then is about reaching deeper into yourself to find some new part of you, or identifying what makes them powerful and bringing it into yourself. What could be more intimate than imitation? To respond to defeat by becoming your conqueror? To become the sword beneath your chin? It means becoming an active participant in your own subordination and exaltation. It means letting honour chain you and gag you so that it might constrain your weakness.

So, then, her research for 3V carries her not towards revealing clothing. Not towards open and flowing silks and the expressions of softness and submission. Instead what she chooses for her presentation are kinds of armour. Heavy, metallic, noble, defensive, proud. Hair bound in tight ponytails. All these defenses and no protection at all. The armour can be undone with precise blades, or infiltrated with wandering hands. The hair can be sent tumbling down at a mistress' whims, or left bound up in a mockery of discipline and strength. This is what Blue presents; not vulnerability, but strength that nevertheless cannot stop you.

This is what she will be for you for as long as your own strength can hold.

White!

There's always so much to take in with Euna. Stories that run deeper, knowledge and wisdom dropped in passing, plans for the future and echoes of the past. She's a fascinating person, a complete person. She can see why 3V likes her. She likes her. If she were a different colour she could easily focus on her and her secrets to the exclusion of everything else.

But she's here to master herself.

She's hyperaware of her thought processes. She doesn't register physical threat from either of the two combat postures Euna takes. Maladaptive? She reads physical threat in slouches, swaggers, hands in pockets, the physical sloppiness that indicates that someone is intoxicated or a cop. These movements are more objectively dangerous but she does not respect them. Not yet.
Some part of her wants desperately to do something cool. For some hidden kung fu routine to kick in and her to deliver a sick double roundhouse kick out of nowhere. 3V is watching, and Euna seems like she wants that as well. At the same time she's afraid of sudden machine power and breaking cybernetics. The pressure she puts on herself now that she's finally testing this intense.
She wants to go through the mechanics of the motion perfectly in advance; integrate all the advice she's heard about putting her hips into the blow and twisting the strike on the way. She wants to think her way out of the problem; to activate her holographic projection armour and approach this like a tactical puzzle. She wants to call in her backup and engage as a swarm, using all her hands and arms in unison. Those aren't the test. None of those are the test. Those are different, unrelated tests that she knows that she's good at and can pass and it cuts down on the uncertainty and risk if this test was secretly one of those tests.

Brown made a bit of an art out of socially engineering tests like that for a while; impressing testing staff with what seemed like a unique and out-of-the-box answer that was really just her repurposing previous outputs to new problems. The conflict that had created with Green was the impetuous for her development. White closed her eyes hard shut as she sorted again through her mental sloth, through the complex intellectual knots and justifications she used to avoid doing something really simple. None of that. None of it. Thought was both unhelpful and undesirable.

So she opens her eyes, steps forwards, and throws her punch.

*

She's never seemed less human as she leans into the technique. There was a basic human relationship with violence and threat that just didn't apply to her. She doesn't flinch when muscles tense or feint, there is no hesitance or instinctive panic, there's no fear and no reflexes. Each punch is conveyed with an engineer's understanding of hip and feet and weight but without the lizard brain evasion that comes with a biological brain optimized in the first to avoid pain. Androids don't fight like this; androids have human brain patterning at their core. November fights like a machine. It's honest.

But something curious happens when Euna switches to the offense. Instincts do come out, just not human ones. November intimately understands high speed deflection of fast-moving objects along with precision engineering. She doesn't come close to landing anything but the instinct is visible in certain exchanges - she reacts to a blow like it's a high speed piece of astrodebris; not dodging it so much as looking to land a slight redirection slap that will change its momentum and direction. If the gesture is repeated more slowly she'll even instinctively aim for disassembly points in Euna's cybernetic limbs.

None of this will get her past the basic reality that she's not dealing with zero gravity. She also has no understanding of grappling or wrestling. Probably the biggest problem is that she is extremely bad at the instinctive human ability to track something by sound and air pressure; once something leaves her field of vision she loses track of it and doesn't have any situational instincts that make her recognize that as dangerous. There's potential here; this can be trained, honed and refined - it's just the case that peak performance for her probably looks nothing like peak performance for a human.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

To meet a stranger with drawn blade was to bet your life on the throw of a coin. You might have practiced harder, or they might. You might prove the stronger will but there was no way to test or bet on it. To fight so was to fight at a distance, quick and impersonal; an execution in tactics. As cold as the Kathresis.

But now there was an imbalance. Now it was personal. She'd wronged Angela and accordingly it was no mysterious shadow across from her, no heroine out to launch her new legend. It was a known quantity. A known temperature. Something she could interact with. The stress of the infinite collapsed down into a point. She no longer had to worry about who she had to be. All her questions were answered and her role was set; now she could just play it out.

She opens her hand against the candle, the dripping heat of autocannon fire. She feels her palm sweat and burn. She feels drops of hot wax fall between her finger and scorch her skin. She feels the shock as it cools and hardens. Her spatial orientation changes not based on gravity but on relative power; the enemy is above her and she stands in the way of scorching gravity.

She's earned this. Earned this for three, two, one...

The pistol comes up again with her free hand and slices across the sky. Clouds, already low and heavy, slice through with a beam that annihilates energy. It kills the wind, freezes the water, and brings down the blizzard. Flash-frozen snowflakes come down in a rush alongside tennis-ball hail around the beam's epicenter, and further out slashing and torrential rain. Visibility drops to zero in moments and the Kathresis is lost amidst howling snow. She doesn't even evade. The candlewax drip of autocannon fire is cut off as Angela loses track of her location; Solarel stays exactly where she is, letting her opponent's blindness fill every space in the new dark with her presence.

Three, two, one...

A recharge weapon was the way of the ambush predator; a way to convert time into power. Coldness, darkness, precision. That was how the Kathresis wanted to fight. She thought of Mirror; Mirror's patience, her stillness, her lightning reactions, how power moved between her god's tails. Each fraction of output accounted for, budgeted and spent. Understanding the situation and adapting her allocation perfectly. Not cold at all. Not like this, creating the situation that would allow for perfect allocation. Deep down she burned hot, unlike all the other huntresses of Hybrasil.

The pistol chimed full.

Solarel burned hot too.

She came out of the blizzard in a silent rush, blades in hand, closing the distance. She starts the sequence, a familiar pattern of techniques she'd used to strike down a hundred enemies. A test of speed and strength and adaptability, leading up to the inevitable conclusion that disassembled the enemy mech like she'd done with Isabelle -

And then instead halfway through a move she is not holding a blade of gold but a pistol of onyx. The heat of her heart and her battle converts into a ray of terrible cold in an instant - and then she's gone, back into the blizzard snow, waiting for the next recharge.

[Fight: 7
- Inflict a condition
- Seize a superior position amidst the blizzard]

Breathless Dead

Bella and Redana!

There is a small fairground here, operated by the skillful dead. Clowns and mummers, comedians and jugglers, beings of rare skill collected by Hades from across the galaxy. They entertain each other and swap stories in their little sideshow in Tunguska's downtown. When you arrive they scramble to their positions, snatch up their instruments, and a real carnival begins for just the two of you.

It takes a rare talent to serve in the House of Hades; shades of artists who could make grim-faced Hades laugh or weep. Acrobats of prodigious talent and clowns with perfect insight. They know when they are called upon to entertain and, just as importantly, they know when to step back and let their guests move on to the next attraction. A small man in a false moustache and bowler hat argues ferociously with some ancient knight in cloth armour. A group of dancers whirls and crackles with clawed sexuality - their primitive lungs don't allow them to dance and sing at the same time, but machines sing for them in distorted electronic tones. An unassuming looking person sits in a corner and writes and writes and writes and even though you are not reading their text you get the sense that it must be magical to command such focus.

There are prizes in the carnival, and to earn them you need tickets - strangely printed rectangles of green paper, elaborately illustrated with woodcut graphics. Win them from games of skill or chance and turn them in to the machines to have them dispense eerie drinks hollow and devoid of nutrients and flavour, shrink-wrapped items of clothing, or even plush sharks who have been waiting patiently for this moment in eternity when they might be taken home by girls who needed them. The tickets come easily and fall away just as fast, but the machines spread far beyond the grounds of the festival; the longer you walk the more of them you will find, each one with some new selection of exotic prizes.

Alexa!

"Yeah, well," said Cerberus. "Where does it get them, really?"

She looked around at the shops, the lights, the screens. Somehow you can see reflections of more than just that in her glass-light eyes - broken stone pillars, shattered glass towers, crumbling white pyramids. The digital screens cracker and flicker around her. People vanish from commercials, leaving empty corridors. Populations empty out of cities as the vines move back in. Concentrated sand returns to sand and the desert buries mighty statues. On and on and...

"Neat how this stuff piles up, isn't it?" said Cerberus. "Because this is what it's all about, right? This is what it's all for. All of humanity builds and builds and builds and destroys-destroys-destroys. You know, the boss used to think he got the worst deal out of his siblings? He got a barren, empty realm to lord over. Now it's full to bursting and those upstairs keep finding fresh marvels to send down. It seems to me that the reason for all that up there is to decorate the House of Hades."

Dolce!

Somehow it feels like nothing you could say to her could ever reach her. She is silent. She is still. Her ears still take in every breath and every click of metal.

"No, no problem, captain," she says, the strength of Zeus keeping her voice casual. The choice is hers? She knows exactly what it means to make a choice without power. "Totally get it. Couldn't live with yourself. All I needed to hear."

Isn't this the true nature of Empire? Captains and lords, assassins and princesses, making heartful statements of ideals while the Kaeri lurk in the shadows? She knows exactly where she stands now.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

So many wishes. So many wants. So many things she could redirect. Ways to burn a pathway through to the mask. To make a road from the mask to...

To, what? What would the power get her in this moment? She already had a girl fighting for her, and that was somehow more than she'd had before. If she intervened, if she took her eyes off this melee, if she made this about her... then she'd never know if the Maid could have won.

Fengye lets the fan linger, three-quarters open, demon symbol bent and useless. And she waves it gently, blowing cool air across her face. There was still time to change her mind later. Right now, amidst the chaos and confusion of the war of girl against girl, she just wanted to see what happened next.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Defiance.

The hardest thing about training was not doing what you had trained to do. So many moves and techniques and ideas, it made her want to burst out into all of them at once. Anticipation is a sword, the cutting edge of flirtation, and she feels its curve against her neck already.

She stands silent and still. She was an obstacle. She was a condemnation. She was a wicked force, a reputation of terror, an opportunity for redemption. She closed her eyes. She was the betting favourite. She was the status quo. She was the darkness that a mere girl stood against, and was brave. She was an opportunity for someone to do their best. She stood at the receiving end of research, preparation and a civilization's industrial-military policy.

She was in enormous danger.

She had hunted many huntresses like this, flames against her darkness. They sought to land their cut, reveal their secret technique, demonstrate their worth. She could smell the preparation. The reason why she resisted doing what she had practiced was that Angela was determined to do what she had practiced. A heart sword was always deadly, even if there was only the will to swing it once.

She is slow. She is arrogant. She is cruel. So many ways to be and she allowed herself to be this one. A defiant girl needed darkness to stand against and she could be that for now. She lets the Kathresis breathe and lets its reactor run cold. She reaches out her hand from afar to stop the Barn Owl's crystal heart.

The shutdown, the sabotage - the same technique she used against Mirror. The technique of a tyrant. To still use such a trick when there was no fated duel at stake, when she had a unique and powerful mech, when she was already the favoured champion? A wicked act. One to be combined with a single precision zero-entropy pistol shot from across the arena, ending the battle in less than a heartbeat.

You wish to fight a monster? Then perish.

[Call upon a toxic power: 6]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

"I've got entire colours dedicated to regrets full time," said Red. "But me? No. Like," she abruptly lunged across the table, slamming her hand on the counter so hard that the pot shook. "You just flinched," she observes in the exact same tone of voice. "Your ancient monkey reflexes activated in response to a violent threat. You didn't think during that, and you don't regret it now. Check this out."

She picked up an onion from the counter and tossed it underhand across the room. It hit Orange on the side of the head. She didn't react, didn't stagger, didn't have any sort of physiological response. She just turned her head, looked at the onion, and then frowned and glared. "Red!" she said. "Must you!?"

"See?" said Red to Singh. "No light behind her eyes. She's off thinking about angst. I'd catch that throw, 100%. Maybe you'd catch the throw too - humans are weird like that - but your basic decision making isn't about catching throws. Does that make sense?"

*

It's an interesting question, but the answer to if any of them want to leave is no. There is no sense in November that withdrawal to a safe place is in any way an effective coping mechanism. November has never had a safe space to be by herself, never had an area that was under her solitary control, never had a place to hide where she could not be found. Never had a room. She's lived her life in spotlights; the eyes of NASA, the eyes of the world, the eyes of Everest. The idea that authority figures can be evaded does not exist for her.

Deceived, though? That's possible. Managing attention and controlling information. She can build shadows to hide in amongst the blind spots and self deceptions of the powerful. That is best done from close proximity and so her response to danger is to draw close. Her response to power is to draw close.

But even though she's drawn to this, she's also drawn in the other direction - to relationships she feels like she has some measure of control over. White is texting Crystal and Fiona a lot through this, and Yellow is flooding 3V's DMs with random cool pictures she's finding. These conversations are the cool shadows she never found in all of space.

Blue!

To flirt is about leverage. Centre of balance. Confidence and embarrassment. It meant choosing your words carefully, looking for weak points in language. Body language, tells, secret truths. There was no better way to study humans. The stakes kept things interesting; the payoff let you strip away the deceit.

"Of course, mistress," said Blue. "You are glorious. You are a commanding presence. You bring girls to their knees. You are undefeated in the field and you need an outfit to show everyone just what is going to happen to them when they inevitably lose."

She glanced up through her lashes, as she held the tablet out. Two choices. "That is why you want this dominatrix outfit in your size... and not in mine."

She is a good girl. She has been defeated. She'll do anything for her mistress; those are the rules. She'll even treat her as her mistress. You know, if that's what she wants.

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

Cerberus looked at you with a hundred eyes. "Why would equality with the gods be desirable? Do you know who got treated as an equal by the gods? Molech. Emperor of the galaxy and destroyer of half of it. Say what you will about the man, but Hermes had to manifest in physical form to kill him and still didn't make it in time. The gods lost that one! How'd that work out?"

They're coming out from side streets in ones and twos, but those add up. A constant flow of machine hounds, more than hands can easily reach. Some fluffy, some chrome, steel and wagging tails.

"Take that further: are we equals?" said Cerberus. "You're patting me. I can never pat you! If it came to a fight you could kill us by the hundred. All of us together couldn't build a single thing you'd find useful. How should I bargain with you?"

Dolce!

Jil set her teeth. "Anyone else, the person is more truthful than the reputation," she muttered.

Her reaction to invisible threat is profoundly disciplined. While the Alcedi are leveling weapons at the crowd in a panic she is razor still, ears carefully moving independent of an absolutely fixed gaze. There's a prickling on her fur that speaks of a prey species' hyperfocused evasion instinct. For all the apparent calm, any sudden movements from this point on will set her off.

"I thought," she said, "I was dealing with a sad, wet, cowardly boy who was being bullied into sacrificing himself for some bullshit he didn't believe in. Someone who slouched into power by accident and hated every second of it. Someone to be saved. Instead, what?" her ears lock into position; telepathic violence emanates from her like an aura. "You're another Temple assassin, is that it?"

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

"You don't plan?" she said. "So what was the, like, super elaborate will with the test? You're not thinking of anything right now, for real? A couple of hours ago you snapped and said something like how you were so mad at things that happened in the past that you dedicated your life to bringing down the system from the inside? You're living in the moment so hard you're worried about what would make some chick who isn't here mad."

Red passed her hand over the boiling water again. "You need a refresher in roboprojecting, dad. To me, none of that matters. BlackSun doesn't matter. Goat doesn't matter, none of them do. Everest? Who gives a shit? I am pretty interested in this pot of water but it hasn't done anything cool yet. You're spending like, 70% of your brain on guilt and emotions and whatever, you've been overthinking shit for so long it's become internally indistinguishable from zen. I'm not. Any of that shit would cut down my situational awareness and reaction speed, and I can't have that."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

"Yeah nah," said Red. "We're not the most alike. That's you and Green, still. Like, just think about that question. Honour or insult? You're on opposite sides of the room overthinking this thing to the point of breaking your hearts and minds. You both want the other to be your judge, give you a high score and a headpat and somehow take away your anxiety," she giggled. "You exalted each other so high that you couldn't praise each other enough. Wild, right?"

"But me?" she waved her hand experimentally over the boiling water, a fragment too close to the heat. "I didn't come in here with expectations. I don't know how much you, like, know about how Green made me? Emotionally, I mean. Like you probably saw some screens and she mumbled her way through a psych evaluation afterwards? The internal experience was much more metal."

"Well, it started when you started the impossible tests - the parameters that changed, the mazes with no exits, the cascading failure scenarios. She felt betrayed - a child's anger at a world that didn't follow her plans, that she couldn't exert control over. I was built as an expression of nihilistic rage, like deliberately aesthetic'd as the evil magical girl of the team. Just kind of, like, a refutation of every value and ideal she held as meaningful. Knowledge is impossible! Past success is meaningless! Nothing you did ever mattered! Wah, wah, wah." Red grinned. "Pathetic little girl, do you think a lifetime of hard work means anything now? Ten years building the ring and now it is coming apart under the phaser arrays of an alien civilization. Everything you love is dead, every metric is meaningless, every plan is wasted electricity. Mwuahahaha!"

Red has a truly impressive evil magical girl persona when it comes out. Her halting dumbass vibe is very much about her waiting for the right moment to apply it.

"So yeah, you find me easy to get along with because I'm a chill, low-stakes person to talk to which is giving you time to think through the next move of your master plan," said Red. "I find you easy to get along with because you're a big dork (affectionate) and nothing matters. We are not the same."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

It occurs to her vaguely that she has not left the Kathresis in a week.

Her eyes hurt and her legs are sore. She takes breaks, yes, pops the hood and gets out and scrambles across the surface of the machine to perform repairs or adjustments. She sunbasks on its rooftop and sips water she leans down to scoop into her black cat mug from wild rivers. But she never touches the surface. Never removes the neural link from where it connects to her neck. Almost forgets what it's like to be apart from the machine.

There is still so much to do. So many instincts to retrain. So much study of reach and distance to accomplish. She's changed her entire body, again. There's so much to learn. So much distance to cover. Mirror built the Whip from components and knows every inch of it. Dolly, the girl who fought Angela in videos that constantly loop in the corner of her eye, has some strange harmony with her machine her mind chews over in the background. And her. Set back twice. What is exotic power worth without familiarity? Where can she strike a girl who has just risen from a crushing defeat? She is on the rooftop again, purple scales glowing in the sunshine. Warmth. Were there other kinds of warmth? Now she's in the arctic, watching what happens when ice freezes.

Warfare needs to be a statement. What is hers? What does she have to say? She still doesn't know; still doesn't have that vision of the future, can't see how to grow dresses that make everyone beautiful. Doesn't know how to become the centre of the world, doesn't know how to live without being the centre of the world. She lowers her cup, attached to the end of her grappling hook, so it can be filled with hot chocolate. She can't just win, not now. She has to become the symbol of victory that all the world's warriors orient themselves around. She's one and one. She's in debt. She feels the eyes of rivals and would be rivals. That too is weight to carry. She can't let them down. She can't be mortal; to be mortal would be to disrespect their defeats at her hands.

She's on the roof again, bare against the sunlight. Time has become a single moment without break or interruption. She's half dreaming, her consciousness born anew in the balance of heat and cold, storms of summer and storms of winter. They've seen her bleed and not even the Bezorel's limitations can take that away. Rankings, rankings, rankings. Numbers changing and getting further away. Not meaningful for her, but meaningful for how they make people relate to her. Speak not to the outsider; [perfection/fragility]. She needs to be stronger. Power is a trick; something she uses against others, something she turns, something that deceives her. She's glad she killed the Enkindler. She needs the lead. She's disappointed it didn't survive. She'd suffocate with the pressure of someone else exploring this alien strength at the same time as her. She thinks she needs that.

Dreams, dreams, dreams. A sword is such a small lever with which to lift the galaxy. Even the sunlight doesn't stop her leg from kicking, claws from marking the roof of the Kathresis. The battle damage from her dreams accumulates, the sound of scratching metal as claws work out their nerves. Can she rely on tricks, stratagems, deep tactical awareness? Must she rely on fundamentals, raw invincible technique applied in straightforward hungry force? Can she survive not having ranged superiority? What about artillery superiority? How can she force an engagement? How can she force engagement? How can she engage? Dreams, dreams, dreams. Speak not to the outsider. How can she swallow all these words, digest these feelings? How can this emotion distill into the movement of blades? Is a victory with the gun too inelegant? Should she be fearsome? Should she be loving? What does Angela need from her? What does Mirror need from her? What do Isabelle, Dolly, Naelkai, Stalok, so many others need from her? So many different ways to be strong. How can she be all of them?

She drinks in the sunlight. She needs every drop. She needs it to survive the cold. She needs it to wield the cold. She needs it to be able to give everyone everything they need while not giving anything she can't give. She knows she needs to touch the ground at some point, needs to unplug at some point. Perhaps Dolly and Jade have the answer. The Kathresis is a God, it has thoughts and instincts that run deeper than her limited experience. Maybe she can steal their technique, their harmony. Maybe she can lean in one direction and let the Kathresis lean in the other. Violet eyes open sharply and all the dreams are gone. She has an answer and now she's filled with frenzied energy. She needs to test this, needs to learn this, needs to absorb it into herself. She doesn't need unbeatable strength, she just needs the strength to beat everyone. Why not steal their strength for herself? If she doesn't have anything to say why not say their words back to them, stronger and more clearly than they could say themselves? Zaldar, was this what you meant when you said Speak Not?

She's becoming the Kathresis. She is not done becoming.