Thanqol

Huntresses of Hybrasil

... Evil?

The Aeteline has never spoken to her. Never encouraged her. Never... changed her, not like the Kathresis. The Kathresis was cold. She could feel its coldness soaking into her bones. It had a history. A people. An agenda. The Aeteline had none of that.

The Aeteline never spoke.

On the contrary it felt... empty, here. Like the part of the God that was supposed to be alive had never been born. There was so much space here, so much hot empty void that she needed to stretch herself to cover it. A protogalaxy, a nebula of unformed heat and dust and gravity. That's why it was the perfect machine. It had no will of its own. It made it's will out of its owner's will. No filter between the pilot and perfect synchronization. There was no partnership and there didn't need to be. It would do anything she wanted. She just had to be everything it was.

Starting with silence.

... Where in the Aeteline were the words to speak? She had never cause to reach for them before. Never fought someone who was not an Outsider. But as it spoke not to her it would speak not to everyone else. What purpose would words serve? As Akaithon said, she only spoke one language. She had no other choice.

And here was her answer: small arms fire. The Kathresis was a fragile machine, stealth plating easily scratched, shallow armour easily chipped and broken. Point defense machine guns, ordinarily used to intercept missile swarms, activate and spray the area around the Kathresis with sheer volume of fire. As the flak guns purr she stands with shield ready, prepared entirely to dodge and withdraw while making no attempt at counterattack.

Akaithon, did you never realize the utility of hitscan weaponry? You wore a titan to whom these impacts would be less than a fleabite. Now you are a mouse and the fleas will eat you alive.

This was not even something she had needed to prepare especially for the Kathresis. The Aeteline simply had every tool she could possibly need already. Did the Kathresis really show you how to defeat her, Akaithon? She is worried it may have lied to you. After all, how could it suggest strategy when it was missing its Tactics?

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

"You are onto an important principle," said Hsien, arm still stuck inside the vending machine. "If Izi discovers us, she will be tempted towards intemperate action. I have seen this many times. Great heroes are dragged directly towards the Hells, inflicting great spiritual damage on their souls, as they swear and curse and condemn an inn- a fox who is just following her - who has wronged them in a way that they cannot do anything about." She swallowed. Virtue was hard.

"So it is with the Vermillion Princess," said Hsien, stretching luxuriously up with her foot to bap the Princess on the behind, sending her into slow circles, squeaking all the while. "If she is given agency she might feel bad about not snitching on us to the cops. So she must be denied it! A truly virtuous world is one where the virtuous relieve everyone else from the dangers of temptation." She paused. Did that really sound right? Maybe those hadn't been the Buddha's exact words. "Anyway you reckon we can fit her into this vending machine? It might be coming with us anyway so may as well."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

Being a good sorcerous puppet is as much mindset as aesthetic; it means paying intimate attention to even minor details. The hand to the hat could be a signal, it could be a wizard's mistake, but both were the same to a spirit bound. She offers her empty left hand daintily. "Ariel," she says, smiling.

"I must ask, sir Luis, what inspired the goats? I hear the rumours but I can tell from the clarity of the vision here there is a stronger truth," her voice is lilting, an air of poetry to it; how a creature of the wind might speak.

Red!

"Right, yeah," she said, stepping back and brushing her hair out from her eyes. "I just see this guy, chromed to the gills on a quest to be a better version of himself, doing big brain moves, right past the point it makes him a vegetable, past the point where it gets him stuffed full of fungi, past the point where he's ripping himself off the slab like Frankenstein's monster, and I can't help but think that I'm headed for the same place, right? Some days I'm trying to bite the world. At some point it'll bite back so bad that I can't be rebuilt."

"So, uh, can I ask what the moment was that made you decide to quit hospitals?" she said. "I mean, the point you stepped away from the safety of it to come out here on your own."

Black and White!

"Is this it?" asked White. "The moment when we kill each other in fated conflict over the heart of a maiden?"
"It could be," said Black. "Just give me a moment to figure out what the fuck what my opinion is."

They sat in silence for a long moment.

"We can't tell her the news," said Black. "It's an active operation."
"And this is an active operation for her," said White. "It's a project. A project we could well have inspired with our whole rainbow explosions stunt the other day."
"Fuck, you're making me change my opinion," said Black. "If we tell her the news it could make her so depressed that she drops the idea."
"Or make her so mad that she burns down an insurance agency," said White.
"Maybe we can stage manage the transition from anger into depression to cover the operational window?"
"Ah excellent, your plan is to make our girlfriend so sad she gives up her dreams."
"The very credible alternative is having her burn down an insurance agency!"
"Hmm," said White. "No. Literally anything that happens in the news is just going to make her double down. It won't just be an art project at that point, it will become her act of rebellion, the project that channels her fury into something productive."
"So the only way to deter her is to confront her directly."
"Exactly. And in so doing turn a bad week into an awful week, rendering her sidelined and demoralized. Are you comfortable with that?"
"... We can't tell her."
"She knows our whole terrorism secret already. She can be discreet. It's better she hear it from us."
"No. This is operational. It's not our secret, it's Pope's."
"He gave it to us. We're journalists. We can choose when to use it."
"This whole thing is a cascade of operational security issues!" said Black. "Revealing secret information to an untrained partner in order to manage emotions! Committing to a high profile art event that could turn into a furry uprising! Not to mention that the whole inciting incident is Fiona's inability to keep a secret! If we tell her she's going to spend two weeks paralyzed unable to interact with her entire social circle while this eats her from the inside, without even the consolation of breaking into a judge's house! I understand you have a commitment to the abstract principle of honesty and trust, but like you said she knows we're up to spy shit, and she knows we're not telling her everything."
"... she would schedule her event to be on the day the news drops, wouldn't she?" said White.
"She would attend wearing a fucking Che beret," said Black.
"Do you think it'll go much better if she coincidentally schedules the event for that day?"
"... she wouldn't. The odds - no."
"Or if the event is scheduled for after that day do you think she does not update the dress code to match?"
"Hmm. I am starting to wonder if you are simply projecting your own desire to have a well organized and timely riot onto Crystal," said Black.
"I am very angry," said White.
"I am angry also," said Black. "Though admittedly most of that right now is aimed at Fiona for being unable to keep a secret. Even broaching the subject will cause a loss of trust."
"Not everyone is as concerned with operational secrecy as you," said White.
"Oh, that's rich coming from miss 'telling her is the right thing to do'," said Black. "No, I'm prepared to compromise on this and scout this situation out, maybe even tell her if it would help, but this is where I draw the line."
"... fine."

*

Black: We'll talk to her on one condition.
Black: You must first admit to Crystal that you told us her secret.
Black: This is a big deal for us. We work in an extremely low trust environment. We are committed to being as honest with you two as we can be, and we don't like that 'as we can be' is not 'completely'.
Black: Adding additional layers of concealment is not good for us.
White: While we're being honest, we also cannot guarantee we do not wind up stabbing you in the back and agreeing with her.
White: I hesitate to remind you that we are probably the least mentally stable person in your life and our risk calculus is very different from yours.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

The show starts on the runway.

The Station-Hopper Sunswallow is a glorious machine. Once it was a gorgeous racer, sky-stealing blue with decal flames painted along the engine block; retrofuturistic perfection, a personal rocket pod with which to explore the heavens. But under Pink's hands it has become something more.

The paint job has expanded relentlessly, growing like ivy. The flames now emerge from the mouth of a dragon as she is collared by a dark wizard with hands of starlight. A queen of ice sits upon a mountain throne and wears a golden ring set with a gem that is a globe. The bloody red sky swarms with vampire-like bats, descending upon an army in many colours. A unicorn raises rampant against the sky, white driving back the crimson, and a maiden aims her longbow at the distant sorcerer.

The door opens to light and steam, and Pink descends to glory. She is beautiful, a shining crystal dress catching the light that emerges from her joints bending bands of pink in kalideoscope patterns around her body with each motion. Diamond earrings, diamond eyebrow studs, diamond teardrops falling from laughing eyes. A golden torque like a half-sun shines across her breasts, shoulder-length gloves in gilt and cream, and a headdress that suggests mighty horns curls across her back. She is overdressed for an assistant, she must be stealing the show - but at the last moment the balance becomes clear. Rising up from her on ethereal winds are golden strings, attached to her neck, elbow, wrists. She moves easily, but as though lifted by the threads as a puppet. Bondi's right glove has golden strings dangling from it and through the alchemy of magic all of Pink's glory transfers to her. This beautiful creature is not an independent thing, it is an expression of the wizard's power, an animate puppet who dances on golden strings. A haptic feedback loop lets both parties feel the tugs on the opposing string connections - and its awkward, loud signal masks subtler communications.

Bondi and Pink, Prospero and Ariel, descend before the guards, followed by an animate and scuttling suitcase. Their attention too is on the guards, and the performance draws them in. Searching the suitcase is a game designed for them - open this pocket and a dozen roses bloom all at once. Open this one and there is a flash and blast of green smoke and a shape like a howling ghost escaping to the ceiling. Put your hand in this pocket and when it emerges it has somehow been replaced with a monkey's paw - until laughing, the glove comes off...

It's what trying to search a wizard should be like. It's a flash of colour on a dour day. It's an invitation to the party. It has everyone laughing. When a guard opens the main part of the bag and sees inside Orange's face holding up a finger to her lips and going 'shhhh' it's just another part of the show. At that point the rhythm is so clear that the only thing to do is to nod in exaggerated respect and close that pocket back up. By that point it's not even the strangest thing they've found.

[Reassurance 1/2]

Red!

"Uh -" she can never correctly judge human structural tolerances. On the one hand, Sophie's a doctor so she knows - but then, her training data set was derived from an old woman who threatened to dislocate her hip if she stood up too fast. She hesitates, combining guesses about emotional state, injuries sustained, and the priority of the request. In another second the space collapses and she fetches an ice pack for Sophie - just in case.

"Um... hey," she said. "This kind of made me think, uh. I'm doing a lot of body work on myself these days," she held up a hand to show the scales. "And, like, in the moment it's really fun and everything, but I didn't really consider the doctor's point of view. Right? Is this kind of," she shifted her feet a little awkwardly, "transhuman. Body modification stuff. Putting you at risk?"

Everything up until now had seemed so just. She'd gone from zero to outrage to infiltrating the supreme court with zero windup. But now she felt uncertain. All her concealed tools, her custom hardware, her unique design, her contingency plans - did they come at the cost of endangering some EMT?

Breathless Dead

Mosaic and Ember!

There is no sign or scent of the wolves. There will not be until dark. But be sure that they are here.

They will be infiltrating the town all throughout the day. Girls will walk too close to the shadows and will be caught by snatching claws and dragged into the dark. There they will feel fangs brush their skin and words whisper in their ear and crushing scents fill their nostrils and they'll babble everything they know until they're released in a daze. Infiltrators will make their way in, heavy battle armour silent and chameleonic. Sense-scramblers will distort eyes and memory as heavy equipment is hauled into position, artillery pieces on commanding heights, tunnels dug into secure buildings. By the time the first evening howl sounds the wolves will hold all the town in their hand, and the pack will arrive not to do battle but to pillage.

Their foremost infiltrator team hunts for Mosaic, and a second team hunts for their lost Ember. Even as the sun rises one of the moons remains in the sky. They are dedicated to their targets, ritually bound to bring their prey down. Roll to Overcome - success or failure will determine if it is you or it is they who are bought before Taurus in chains.

Dolce!

She never settles. Even when you're sure you couldn't move another inch, still she shifts, still muscles contract and the sliding smoothness of her scales rush in search of a tighter grip.

"You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that," said the Crystal Knight. "For you see, I have been oppressed. I have not even been able to reach out my arms -" she said even as she bound yours ever tighter against your body "- without this wicked meddler coming and binding them tight. Do you know," she purred, "what it's like to lose your freedom?" Her chest pushes against your back, her arms around your shoulders, as she slumps in feigned exhaustion upon your shoulder. "To have your vision -" she placed her hands over your eyes "- blinded? All I have ever wanted from a representative of the central government -" her flicking tongue passes close enough to your ear that you can feel its wetness "- is to treat with me as a woman and not as a number."

She slides over the top of your head, flexible body letting her arch over the top of you and come down from above, head upside-down as her entanglement reaches its conclusion. "So what is your name, darling chef?" her weight seems to rest upon you from every side, as well as from above. "I promise I'll remember it. I promise even after they give you a number, I'll always see you as a man," her eyes were bright green and staring. "You have goals in life, I know. Things you want to see. Things you want to touch," her tongue darted out, barely touching the end of your nose. "Both can happen."

Her voice lowered, still playful but now also serious. "20022 is ambitious and popular. He was placed here without any subordinates in order to sideline him and inconvenience me. But if he has been lucky enough to find an apprentice he can train he will leave without a backwards glance. You will have a great deal of power to decide exactly what you want the people here to do..." she gave a full body squeeze, crushing the whole world one size smaller. "... or ♥... you could simply decide not to make any decisions at all~"

Dyssia!

To be Mars is to count the buttons.

These things matter. The intricacies of uniform design are critical to the functioning of an army. The swish of fabric, the whirl of capes, the glitter of golden braid - essential! Essential! Who could fight while anything less than glorious? Who could stand upon the stage of death without all their wealth about them? An army is the wealth of civilization, the jewel it throws all of its resources into polishing. Of course it must be beautiful! Of course it must be precise! Of course every tiny detail matters!

The Wayang are eerily beautiful. The Drones that swarm around them are unlovely by design, swarming and unspeaking things that will not traumatize their makers when they see them die by the thousand. But the Wayang themselves are creatures of glittering black marble carapace, long and thin fingers and faces like elfin judges. Curling wigs of hair descend from their powdered heads, cheeks flushed with pink pigment. They retreat at your arrival, using pheromantic commands to cause drones to detonate like bombs, to overclock their already limited lifespans to make desperate charges. They are puppets, projections, but one amongst them was not. One amongst them was the Biomancer true, here on the battlefield, hidden in the shadow of his creations, that he might carry Aphrodite's watch and make his demon prayers.

"Why do you fight us, noble Azura?" he cried as Aphrodite carried him away from you on swift feet. "We do this for you, for your good. We do this for the Skies! If you love the Pix we will restore them! We will fill your house with a specialized strain to serve as bodyguards and slaves! New children, built from scratch to make you happy, while these unsatisfactory half-warriors fade! All you must do is look away!"

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

It is, tragically, not in her nature to be direct. She is aesthetics and must appreciate Bondi's aesthetics on their own terms. She asked for a performance and this was the performance she got. She can only appreciate it on its own terms, the beautiful skill required to maintain naivety even in the devil's grip. She can only smile reassuringly and buzz with appreciation and a little frustration.

For the second performer, the choice is between Orange and Brown - Orange has the chemistry, but Brown has the cold hard dedication required to learn the tricks properly. She decides on Orange simply due to the condensed timeframe - this show is going to live or die on charisma, not technical skill. Brown nevertheless starts practicing just in case it comes up in the future.

For the infiltrator it's Black or Green. She chews on the decision for a while before deciding on Green. This one isn't down to skill, it's down to mindset - Black is risk adverse and will scrub the mission early if confronted. Green will double down. For Pink, performing the most socially important work of her life, the risk feels worthwhile.

She will of course telegraph nothing in advance to security. Even if this was not an infiltration operation, she is offended by the notion. It would be a poor magician who revealed her secrets, let alone revealed them unprompted.

*

Red!

It sounds like there's a plan! A high risk, skillful, technical plan - and that's Red's cue to kind of go to sleep a little bit. It's not like she disagrees or that this isn't interesting or anything, but this is all just, like... like there's a set point in the future, carved out with words, and the present is just the sequence of things to do to get from here to there. It's basically just time travel, right? Fast forwarding until -

- Until she grabs Sophie and spins her out of the way just as the strap rips and the fist goes right by where her neck used to be.

Of course, the robot arm had been disabled before they started - battery removed, software in hard lock - but of course a guy with way too many dollars worth of brain shoved into his skull would have a contingency plan for if he got hit with an EMP pulse, nevermind the paramedics. He's frothing and wrenching himself out of his chair like an anti-implant propaganda movie villain, robot arm crunching the stainless steel armrests like tinfoil. She tracks his eyes as they focus - and they both lunge for the surgical table at the same time.

He grabs a knife. He swings it. She feels the pressure - just for a moment. Hey, good news! The dragonscales work!

She grabs the soap dispenser.

As he's getting up she squirts it on the floor right underneath his feet. His feet which are wrapped up in blue surgical plastic bags, already a fairly low friction material.

Down he goes, sideways and heavy. Red's on top of him a second later, wrenching the cybernetic arm into a full body lock, knife held up past her head ineffectively. She wasn't supposed to have been taught this technique, Euna had done it to her on instinct when she'd tripped over her own feet while holding the practice knife. The motion had been burned on her retinas and she went through it on instinct, holding the pin while Sophie recovered long enough to get the emergency riotstopper[1] and start gluing limbs to the floor.

"Super strong and super smart," said Red, breathless. "You feel lucky to be working on this human paragon?"

[1] Riotstoppers, or 'glue guns', are 'less-lethal' weapons in use by law enforcement. The fast-drying adhesive is more environmentally friendly than tear gas in a closed ecosystem like Aevum and the police department has allegedly been given training against headshots that can cause suffocation and eye damage.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

She loved the Kathresis - as she loved the Bezorel. She loved it enough to internalize its weaknesses, which were vast.

She felt pity, the pity of a god burning through the heart of the Aeteline. Akaithon, darling - you chased her shadow still. Just like you threw aside your lance to take up her discarded greatsword, now you threw aside your God to live inside her cast-off cocoon. Much of Kathresis' power had come from the fact that it was unexpected, and now it was being wielded against the only person who knew exactly what to expect from it.

The problem with a machine like the Kathresis was that if everything worked out you looked like a genius. If things went even slightly wrong you looked like a fool.

She has changed the Aeteline not at all. She walks into the arena with the vicious aura of normality hanging over her. Where was the trick? Where was the blade? Where was the heart?

She showed nothing. Her stance gave no information, hesitation or weakness. She was the mountain and it was Akai's to walk her. Climb if you can.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

"Iron shortages date back to the early history of Japan! When the samurai wanted to make katanas they were working with poor quality iron and so accordingly needed to use the Hanzo steel-folding technique to excise impurities from the blades. Some legendary blades were forged over 1,000 times and could cut through the armour of modern main battle tanks..."

Around and around and around...

The plan was straightforwards. She would smuggle herself into the complex - using the old fare-dodger's trick of disassembling one of her colours and carrying them in a suitcase. This would form the basis of the stageshow magic tricks when she could suddenly and mysteriously split into two different identical copies.

She appreciated the perversity. Costa-Silva was ardent in her passion for moral standards, which meant she was a huge proponent of mandatory modesty bolts for androids among other things. But just like an edge of magic would skate over what she'd call scandalous clothing on Bondi if she saw it on the street, a veil of magic could transmute mechanical dismemberment into entertainment for the whole family.

"But iron ore shortages really began to bite in the Meji period, leading to the conquests of Korea and Manchuria in order to fuel Japan's industrial interests! Even then there still developed a resource rivalry between the army and the navy, which wanted to build a space battleship to defend the country from the angels..."

Across and over and under and splay and gently tighten. Don't think that she wasn't giving this her full attention - it was impossible not to. Not even her own planning or the somewhat anime influenced recounting of the history of Japanese steel production could distract her of what she was looking at, what she was touching...

And besides, getting to hear the outpouring of a hyperfixation was half of the appeal of being intimate with a trans girl.

So, that was the stageshow. The real trick would be smuggling in a third colour. It would require some doing but she could clown-car two full bodies into a single magician's suitcase and while the performance went off with two of them the third would be free to infiltrate the building and dig for dirt.

"Following the catastrophic collapse of domestic mining in the early twenty-first century, Japanese steelmaking became dependent on Australian iron ore exports until the impact of the Space Fountain devastated the continent. Those mines that remained were tiny and inefficient returning Japan to it's earlier period of steel scarcity, which lead to a revival of the traditional arts of prisoner restraint just as the internet age began! You can see the way search trends for shibari spike right as the price of iron - mmph! Mmmph!!!"

But all good things had to come to an end, didn't they?

The ball gag had not, strictly speaking, been part of the arrangement, but Pink considered it a teaching aid. She checked the knots, the weight distribution, made sure that everything rested comfortably and firmly, and then pulled on the hoist to lift Bondi from the floor. As the sudden tightness began to concentrate pressure on places that were not previously experiencing pressure she heard a high, muffled shriek from Bondi.

Pink then sat down in front of her and looked up at her magician with wide, expectant eyes.

"This is safety training," said Pink. "You keep getting into trouble because you don't know how to express yourself using body language, especially in conditions when you can't talk. How are you going to let me know that you need help in this position? How are you going to let me know what kind of help you need?"

She smiled. Of course, that would only be relevant if she couldn't escape from it in the first instance. It would only be fair to let her try her best before she had to beg for mercy~

*

Red!

Buzzing from the enthusiastic compliment, Red spent most of the monologue making a heart-symbol with her hands to communicate attentive affection. Then she bounced over to the urgent cases with the inevitability of a meteor strike.

"Oh wow," she said. "For real? A human tried to go a round in the Breakdome?"
"Yeah, added a cybernetic brain implant, chromed himself up a bit to look androidy, whole nine yards. Of course it's always the idiots who buy intelligence implants who go with plans like this."
"But why the ruse? Surely they'd love to have a human cyborg contestant?"
"He bet everything on himself, thought that no way a virus tuned for an android would cause problems with his implant."
"Did... did he not know that android brains are modeled on human brains?"
"Yeah guess the intelligence implant didn't help him figure out that one, huh?"

Red looks over the notes. The virus was meant to affect vocal processing, altering external voices to sound like they were the listener's own voice, coming from inside their head. The idea was that it could make external speech sound like inner thoughts and thus form the basis for suggestion - but she had no idea what the fuck that would mean for a human brain. "So, uh, what do we do about it?"

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

White has, at times, questioned many fundamental aspects of their mind - their gender and sexuality not least amongst them. Why do we present in a feminine way? What is the basis for finding humans beautiful in abstract, and female humans desirable specifically? Our neural architecture was not modeled upon human brains and was designed for space construction. Many of the other Zodiacs never expressed an interest in humans at all, let alone the specifics of their physicality - why us? Were we reprogrammed? Was this a trauma response? Was this always a part of us? Why, upon becoming human shaped, did we become so relentlessly thirsty for human women?

All the wrong questions, in Pink's mind. The answer was simply that human women were objectively beautiful, and now she was finally positioned to do something about it.

She had always known this, even when she was a rogue thought pattern giving Green a distracting headache - a headache that had started when Green had first beaten the original Metroid. She was that thought, in the same way that Red was 'be ready for anything!'. When it came to justifying her fundamental position she found the Bond/Bondi transition to be the most useful case study she had access to. Yes, as Bond he was kind of cute, but she could write poetry about Bondi. In fact, she could write an operational plan to break into a cartel mansion while also putting on the performance of her life for Bondi. And she had, it had all come together in a flash of colour and she'd become the operational commander. Thoughts about girls were both paralyzing and inspiring in a way that thoughts about guys were not and she would drag her entire distributed consciousness behind her towards this fixation.

Black had once joked that if Green ever started becoming interested in males Pink would kill her.

Pink had given it serious thought.

"I'd love that!" said Pink, taking the suit. "I haven't been practicing enough - can you help me train? I want to be the best I can be!"

Red!

She used the term 'death' for what happened to her because she enjoyed drama, but it was more like a reset and genuinely relaxing to emerge from it. Despite her ditzy air she was generally a bundle of stress. Everything was immediate, everything was threatening, everything compounded on everything else, doors and corners are where they get you - it was such a relief to wipe that back to zero and hit the world for a while with a brain chill and empty. It was a similar after-shock to the morning after ill advised sex. On that note, she was getting texts from Sophie!

She's beta testing the dragon scales. Not a full spread, more like an anime dragongirl scattering across her body and a small few on her cheeks. Fingernail sized, hard, sharp and overlapping like scale armour - in theory protective but worn in a configuration more akin to a chainmail bikini. She liked the way they made her move, extremely aware of her elbows and hips. She'd run her fingers over them constantly and was wearing a crop top and shredded jeans to show them off a little more.

The crop top had a neon pink skull, incidentally, and she was wearing egyptian-style eyeliner. A headphones-necklace with an ankh symbol, with the faint sounds of Linkin Park emanating from it. Her aesthetic was retro-goth, radiant in her resurrection, with the dangerous sharpness of the scales making it come together into something vaguely daemonic. She finished the effect with a disposable medical face mask - she was going to hang out with a brain surgeon, after all.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange!

She had never liked Mr. Merkin, to be perfectly honest. She had kept her distance professional, but privately had alternated between contempt and pity. This was a bad person trapped in a hell of their own devising, someone who had put themselves before others past the point of pulling the trigger. What she had done for him was courtesy and not kindness, and now that she was done with him she fully intended to discard him to Earth and never think about him again.

But something stirred in her then. For the first time she saw something she understood in his eyes. Something she could relate to.

"It is... hard," she said. She was looking at her hands. "Being separated from your Purpose. It never goes away. I was made for construction. It makes me itch even being here when my every instinct is telling me to scrap and redo this building. It's..." she flexes her fingers. "Having skills you can't use hurts. Your thoughts become ingrown. It'll feel like a toxic weight in your brain. Curdling, heavy, occasionally manifesting in flashes of rage. You'll try substitutes. Nothing will work because it's not the real thing."

Her eyes flicked up. "But it does go away when you're talking to people," she said. "Like, really talking to them. Not just making small talk or politely sitting through a conversation. Many people have... something like a Purpose. Most of them have never been asked what it is. Ask the right questions for long enough and it'll start to pour out of them. You'll probably not find another forensic accountant that is your peer in skill, not down there. But you will find people who are your peers in passion. Listen to them."

She holds the door open for him.

*

Yellow!

The Hermes mansion was the target. In some ways it was a harder target than the military base.

A cartel mansion was, after all, secured against infiltration. One person getting in and out unobserved was the whole threat profile it was meant to be secured against. A rival gang sending in an assassin, or a team of assassins, was the threat profile. The foundation would include a steel ring to prevent people from tunneling in. Independent power generators and secured utilities, built like a bank vault. People everywhere. The kind of infiltration she'd used against Goat, involving stealth and explosions, was utterly unviable here.

Which meant that the approach needed to be social. People did come in and out constantly - there were too many of them, too wealthy and independent to hole up in their stronghold all day. Costa-Silva didn't go out to cafes or restaurants, which meant that when she conducted business people had to come to her. And it meant that when there was a party, celebration or other social event, lots of people had to come to her.

Dignified people. People with names, identities, reputations and entourages. People who weren't what the threat profile of the building was designed to secure against. She just needed to tag along with one of them.

[Network: 3, 9 points remaining] And here at last was a use case for Bondi Magnusson, faildaughter ex-billionaire turned stage magician. A ludicrous figure who spent bankruptcy hearings practicing card tricks who had just gotten out of hospital for another failed act of escape artistry, she was a living monument to the power of sheer inherited wealth to overcome endless bad decisions. Naturally, she was a hit at parties - and with nine children, two parents, and various holidays and festivals there was almost a 50-50 chance that there was a party of some kind falling in her operational window.

Bondi was one of Brittenette Everest's friends - she'd walked them to and from university numerous times. And for all her faults, Bondi was progressive in a way only mildly shaped by the brain damage of her first failed attempt to escape the water tank. That meant she'd insisted on both swapping contact details with November, chatting with her constantly afterwards and sleeping with Orange on several occasions. All she really had to do was place the idea of the party's presence in Bondi's mind and within the next three lines of dialogue she would have expressed both an intention to attend and an invitation to take November with her.

White!

"Fuck!" said White, immediately cracking her skull against the door frame.

There were evidently a few drawbacks to being over two hundred and twenty centimeters tall.

She had decided to transition in stages. Cost reasons were the main driver, but gradual adaptations would help with easing her into it. The first stage was structural - she needed a sufficiently large canvas to paint on - and that meant improving height, weight and strength. She felt a strange, aching stiffness in her powerful new muscle fiber bunches - stretches that had previously been easy now ached satisfyingly whenever she did them. She could not stop wondering if she could put her new fist through a plaster wall. She could not stop wondering if she could pick up Crystal.

The new chassis was not beautiful, an industrial hauler model. But it could be. But more importantly it felt right. In absolute terms, she had not gotten much closer to her original form. But... but relatively, it was night and day. This was a body with agency. Previously she'd asserted herself with intensity and words, but now it felt like there was something backing all that. That she was not entirely relying on a bluff, that if challenged she could prove superiority on a baseline, physical level. Meaningless, operationally. It didn't tilt a balance built on systems and guns. But subjectively it meant everything. It meant that there wasn't the shadow of doubt over every word she said. It meant that confidence didn't feel like a lie. It meant that she didn't have to rely on others playing along in order to feel like she could protect them.

And she would. She would prove her strength by those she sheltered. Already she ached for her wings.