Thanqol

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

"W-what?" said Foxpearl. "Mother? Foxfire? She's not my mother." Thoughtfully: "Unless you are saying that, as a foreign contamination that settled near her hips until eventually breaking off and becoming an independently realized person, she is metaphorically my mother and virtue itself is metaphorically my father. That is... hmm."

Concept: Virtue is my father

She was talking to the Princess still, as the only one left present, as much as she was herself. She was reassuring to talk to. A good listener.

"Irregardless," she said, thinking deeply. "No... I'm a wayward soul aspect, aren't I? Like a conscience, gone out into the world to gather wisdom to redeem the origin. She'll want her tail back, after all, I just need to be sufficiently powerful that I can influence her once we reunite." She stopped again. But... what if? "I just need to develop the righteous part of my personality so that it becomes more powerful. But if I'm still sounding like her then have I developed the right aspects? Or is the moral truth something deeper still?"

She thinks about this so hard that she kind of forgets that both of her arms are stuck inside the vending machine. Occasionally her hands do a foxy little scrabble up at the bottom of the tofu bar. A keen eyed observer might notice that she could easily grab one of the bars on the lower shelf from where she is, but those aren't mapo flavours and she wants the ones she can't reach.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange!

Ariel was a joy and a delight, a figure of pure celestial light descended from the solar wind.

Caliban emerged from the depths stinking of earth and soil.

The trick was simple if you knew how it was done. When setting up the outdoor stage they'd dug a shallow grave and buried Orange in it. They'd hidden it beneath the stage so nobody saw the disturbed dirt. But then during the fireworks and comet show, they'd shifted the stage back a meter - so that when Orange's pale, grasping hand shot up out of the dirt it seemed like she was digging her way up from Hell itself.

She sat up in the dirt, aesthetically filthy, glowing joints burning like hellfire. Two fingers sparked and blazed and a small fire lit, and Orange leaned forwards, opened her mouth, and took the fire - and the fingers into her mouth. She sucked like the fire was sweet and sighed, then flicked her eyes across and up at the older of the guests. Made eye contact with them and gave a wink that felt as filthy as she was.

Then she was up, lurching out of the pit like a zombie, holding a mysterious brown glass bottle. "Master?" she rasped, staggering amidst the guests, looming, sniffing, scowling, smirking. "Which one of you is my Master?" An animal, a beast from hell - a temptress as she alights on her target. She approaches Selena like oil; "Are you my Master?" - until she reaches out to grab Selena's face and is pulled back at the last second. Bondi has raised her right hand and a second set of golden puppet strings extend from that, and those strings pull Caliban back from her devilry. She grins and makes a 'call me' gesture even as she's dragged back - a mime performance, but her gait is so liquid and seductive it's compelling.

"Can't blame a girl for trying," she rasps, slumping over on the magic table, folding into positions that emphasize legs and curves. This is the counterpoint to their performance and the antidote to a lack of sheer technical ability - all of the magic tricks will be false contests. Bondi will try to work a spell, Ariel will try to help her, and Caliban will try to undermine her. Sometimes Caliban will defeat the trick, but she will do so in spectacular fashion - opening a curtain to reveal a hidden Bondi mid-costume change - but sometimes her attempts will fail, such as her obvious and growing irritation when shaking the wizard's hat upside-down results in a never-ending cascade of animals, roses, fireworks, and other magical items pouring forth with perfect comic timing.

It's all they need. Basic tricks, carried with sheer charisma. The drama of the angel and the devil in their contest for hearts and souls wielded the old magic of theater. They played it as only natural thespians could.

[Filch 0/1 Flirting 1/2; 1d6+4 8]

Red!

"Oh," said Red. "Oh, yeah, for sure, I get it. Space if you need it. But you've got some other options too, right?"

Sometimes solutions were straighforwards. She unlocked the access port in her neck. There were rules against it but Sophie had already been in her head today. "So I mean, like, other people's presence is a binary, right? I'm a sliding scale. You can take out my quantronic core and stash my body in the shed. Hook me up to some speakers or put me inside a game, mind with no body. You can stash my quantronic core in the shed. Put in a machine intelligence drive so you can order me around like a puppet, body with no mind. You can hook up my short term memory to loop so I don't remember any of this."

She smiled. "If you want. It's easy for me, so long as I'm useful."

Black-White!

White was delighted. Transcendent. Glowing. She could not have been happier that her riddle had been solved. Crystal had seen the false trinary and risen above it. White was so radiant that she almost sprouted her wings then and there, which would have been a blessing given the immanent demands upon their budget.

"Fuck me, am I going to have to rob a bank?" Black muttered.
"We gave you the information in trust," said White, "and we let you know the stakes. But we did not ask for a promise not to reveal it - that is the other part of trust. You have just demonstrated that you are as wise or wiser than we are, so we have faith in your decisions."
"Yeah, I'm going to have to rob a bank," Black groaned, standing up.
"While we won't question your decisions, we will help you practice good tradecraft while making them," said White. "I'll send Brown over to give you a basics of information security crash course. She'll want to give you the full day version but the full day version is basically repeating the information from the one hour course over and over until you're so sick of hearing it that fear of having to retake the course acts as a deterrent. Essentially a choice is different from a mistake, and we'll help you avoid the latter."
"Why does no one let you buy clown masks in bulk?" muttered Black, staring into her phone.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Even here language found ways to strike at her. She'd let too much of it into herself, fool that she was. If she was not contaminated with the implications tied up in the word 'victory' she would have fought differently. If she was not contaminated with the implications tied up in the word 'Akaithon' she would have not have misidentified her opponent. A valuable lesson. There were many words to forget before she could be perfect.

Dispense with history, culture, backstory, habit, sentiment. See the world as it was. Her opponent was the Kathresis and it had tried to strike at her heart. She must armour it.

She considers first her damaged leg. Its removal would help optimize her firing vectors. Away with it - a clean slice, leaving her balancing on one foot in the centre of the ring. She considers next her defense. With physical evasion reduced she will be reliant on thrusters which would have her move in predictable patterns. She accepts this - aesthetic commitment to perfection added risk she could no longer tolerate. Killing Ak- killing the pilot was unacceptable. Her opponent knew this and used it, reducing her vectors for possible attack to a single point.

The Aeteline opened its cockpit hatch and deployed its anti-personnel sniper rifle. The pilot wielded it, long rifle held up to her eye, mind-impulse cable running from the pilot's neck into the body of the machine. The Aeteline stilled the pilot's breathing, quieted her mind. Less distractions from the important work of calculating vector, angle, momentum and target silhouette. Optical arrays shifted and configured, tracking the darting motions of the Kathresis. Computer cylinders shifted and whirred, the immense energy of the reactor pouring into calculations so advanced they bordered precognition.

The Aeteline's target was even more perilous than the enemy pilot. It was the enemy pilot's mind-impulse cable. If the Kathresis wished to fight her, let it do so directly. She would do it the same honour.

[Defy Disaster: 13]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink, the Ace of Wands!

She loves paints, of course she does. She loves the satisfying rhythm of shaking a rattlecan, the gentleness of highlights and the oily depths of shadows. She loves it when it flows smoother and deeper than liquid, when it settles thick and chalky like clay, how it bends and breaks when pigments mix with water. She loves it as an expression of human art, a visceral connection to the cave painters of primordial eras.

But though she loves paint it is not her true canvas.

"For this next spell, I shall need the birthday girl, little Isabella, to make a wish," said Ariel. "A wish upon a star. Look up? Can you see it, that one? That's your wishing star, so make sure that you've got your wish clear in mind. And oh, look, isn't it a big one? Better choose a really big wish!"

She looks up at the star, shining bright. It was a big one, wasn't it?

It was a really big one actually.

Something magical happens in the human brain in moments like this, Pink knows. When the sky goes from being a nothing, a source of peace and stability, an unchanging rooftop to the world - to being alive. When stormclouds gather or the moon rises or the sun raises over a distant horizon and stains the clouds. All of these things were lost when humans moved to Aevum, but here on this night she watches as dozens of eyes widen and stare at her wishing star. That isn't a distant glimmer. That is a bright, shining light. It's coming closer.

She feels it. The awestruck panic. The appreciation of the divine. The visceral connection between mortal and sky that birthed ten thousand gods. The awe, the helpless awe, of knowing no weapon, no connections, no human artifice can save you. Only magic.

She raises her hand as the ice comet passes directly overhead, tracing a wake of crystal diamonds in its path.

Distance is everything and nothing; it is at once so close that it feels like you could almost touch it and so far that you could not reach it with months of walking, so real it will forever change the lives of those who witness it and so irrelevant it doesn't even show up on Aevum's asteroid defense grid computers. The comet passes overhead and as it does so there is a deep, glowing flash of pink light from its core.

Even as the comet passes, the pink sparkle persists. It flies glittering through the night sky in arcing patterns, tracing calligraphy in the black before it passes out of sight - and then flashes back to life on the inside of the barrier shield. It darts around above, glittering, coming lower and lower as Ariel coaxes it from the sky, until it lands fluttering in her hands. A deep space surveyor drone, upgraded with wings of glittering pink crystal. It places its gift, a chunk of ice in a sealed container, in Pink's hands and then darts away back into the sky.

"This is from your wishing star," said Ariel to Isabella, kneeling down and pressing the container into her hands. "It is a piece of magical ice, but it's no good on its own. You will need to melt it into water and then sprinkle that water - even a few drops will do! - on as many trees as possible. This will make them come alive with the power of your wish so that when you sit underneath them and listen to the rustling of their leaves you might be able to hear them talk. If they can, they will tell you how to make it come true, and if they can't, they'll tell you other useful secrets instead."

[Preparedness 6/8 Astronomy 1/2 3+5 8]

Red, the Fool Reversed!

"I love dogs!" said Red, having never interacted with a live dog before. She goes in through the front gate.

In not ten seconds she's on her back, face heavy with saliva. To a dog, while she is human shaped she is not human scented, which basically makes her a particularly large and interesting chew toy. "Good dog," she says, glad that she is getting the Dog Experience.

Black, the Seven of Swords!

"Out of respect for the moment," said Black, drawing her phone and typing rapidly into it, "rather than nodding politely I will forward that line to the part of myself who has the strongest opinion on puns."

Blue, Judgement!

Blue: fuck you

Black, the Seven of Swords!

"She doesn't like it," said Black.

White, the King of Swords!

"In a moment of choice like this," said White, "I believe it helps to consider the virtues represented by each choice."

She held out her hand. "To go ahead after the news: the virtue of justice. To do this is to accept a mantle of kingship, to claim authority over what happens and how, to position yourself at the centre of things. Yellow would agree with this path."

She turned her hand over. "During the news: the virtue of compassion. To do this is to sacrifice yourself for others, to be a friend and ally, to carry a burden in secret so you can bring water to the weary. Orange would choose this path."

One last turn. "Before the news: the virtue of beauty. To do this is to value the art in and of itself, to create a shining moment forever remembered, to build something that others will wish to defend. Pink would wish for this path."

She folded her hands in her lap. "Your wrath will call you to justice. Your heart will call you to compassion. All I can advise is don't forget your own value in this. Justice, compassion or beauty? Each of these is a worthy goal, and rejoice if one of them calls your name."

Breathless Dead

Mosaic and Ember!

The Silver Divers reach the wall.

They are out of their depth and they know it. Their home and their power is the ocean, the unknowable outsiders, striking as a natural disaster and melting away with the tide. They stand here on stone, before stone, bound by pride they do not share. They are the legends who conquered the galaxy, who capture towns while laughing, but tonight there are only the silent scents that say 'alert' and 'ready'.

Two Ceronians leave the pack. They walk cautiously forwards towards the wall, legs crouched and tense, spears raised. The entire scene is two dimensional - one side of the road is a sheer cliff going up, the other side of the road is a sheer cliff going down. The phalanx stays still, a bristling mesh of spears and shields and uneasily held SP weapons, all staring in frozen wonder to see if these scouts, too, will somehow disappear without a trace like their forerunners did.

Nervously, step by step, the first two reach the wall. They wait in stillness, watch in stillness, waiting for the hammer to fall.

Dolce!

You can feel her heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Deep and slow and powerful. You can feel the muscle as it presses against your neck, vibrating through her chest, so loud it seems to drown out your own heartbeat. Thump. Thump. You can feel it in her wrists where they're wrapped around you, her vitality drowning out yours. Thump. Thump. Is it not glorious to be reminded that you are a lesser creature, a soft toy for a goddess to play with?

"... remember," she gives you a peck on the forehead. "Service is rewarded ♥."

20022 is there. He bows respectfully but insistently. The Crystal Knight scowls at him as she leaves you, shivering, legless and cold. "Speak your piece you busybody."

"Lady," said 20022. "I have come to discuss with Lady Triden an update to the plans for the peninsula. The Royal Architect has placed a request to resonance mine the central territories along here," he gestured at a large swathe of the map. The Stone Tribe lands. Beri.

"I am not surprised to hear that old bastard's name on your lips," said the Crystal Knight, pouring herself a glass of honeyvenom. "You want me to relocate, what, eighty thousand servitors?"
"The Service does not require anything from you, my lady," said 20022, bowing again. "We have already begun steps to post evacuation notices. The Architect's emissary is already on its way."
The Crystal Knight stared at the map fixedly. "Tell him to turn back. I have a recovery operation off the coast, I won't see it vaporized."
"My lady -"
"Hm!" she snapped. "I see how it is. Well, tell you what - why don't you get all of those refugees you're creating and assign them to my work crews instead? The more bodies I have to dredge the ship the faster I'll be out of your way."
"But the evacuation schedule -"
"They can run, can't they?" said the Crystal Knight languidly, reclining over a couch. "Or if you're so chummy with the Architect, you can ask him for a few days delay? It's a reasonable request from the sector governor and I am certain your superiors will see it the same way."
20022 hesitated. "I'll assign the civilians to the work crews."
"Good boy. And speaking of, do you still want your little friend here?" she ran the tip of her tail along Dolce's neck. "It's a long road and I could use a snack~"
"... I believe I should take him with me."
"Heh," she smirked. "As you will. Good luck teaching him the joys of public service now, little eunuch."

She's still smirking, eyes following you unblinking, as 20022 helps you to your feet and guides you from the room.

Dyssia!

A red sunset glows over the newly born forest. Bone white eucalypts stand tall amongst the tundra scrubgrass, staining a dusty red world with yellow and blue. The winds still blow, but lighter now that the trees break their flow and the grass stops the sand from being carried away. After the death, the harvest.

By the numbers you should have lost. But such was the problem with drones as an instrument of war - where a warrior species could adaptively react to an orbital deployment, drones were pre-programmed and mindless. When the hammer fell directly on the staging areas and the Wayang were butchered the drones were left standing as empty meat. And now they are all dead, their cracked shells thick upon the ground, plant life oozing through like egg yolk.

The Dust Knight lost his helmet in the fighting, and he is handsome - the Azura equivalent to a silver fox. Aged scales losing their saturation has made them fade from a common navy to an exquisite powder blue, offset hypnotically with a pattern of crimson-painted scales that circle his right eye, then descend in three swooping parallel lines all the way to his jaw. But more than his striking appearance is a profound... peace. A calm, a lack of posturing, a sense that he not only knows what righteousness is but finds embodying it to be no great trial. Someone whose inherent goodness is so beyond question that even the Endless Azure Skies could not bring itself to censor his name and deeds in the hopes that he would come back to them.

"Hello there," he said to your approach, voice without pretense or ceremony. "You're the pilot?" he nodded at the wreckage of the distant Firetree. "Nice landing. Not many people in the Skies would trade a ship like that for a couple thousand Pix."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

Mmm, Pink. There was such a thing as being too pro-Girl.

Green considers but the plan hasn't changed; this is still a fishing expedition. She doesn't know what she's looking for and doesn't even have a guarantee that it'll be here. She might end up with a hard drive full of case files for her troubles. This was the first dead end of what might be several and after doing a full check and rummage she's on her way.

Red!

She envies Sophie. To have so many parts of yourself present at once. Kindness, skill, instinct, sexiness, insight... the rapid change between admirable traits made Red regret that she was such a shadow in comparison. There was a genuinely beautiful mystery here, self contained and complete, touching on so many different things at once, and she didn't need a head full of girl jpgs to see that.

Sometimes she just didn't pick the right parts of herself to show. She gives a smile with an edge of desperation in it - imagine this as the smile of a real girl, please? Someone who has the intricacies and subtleties to appreciate everything you are, everything you've done. Glance past the fact that she's delighted to have the chance to move a heavy object from one room for another, that she doesn't know how to see the future or the past like you can, that she can't show different sides of herself right now like you can. But she wants to see what's next.

She's grateful. Grateful to be held and given something to hold when she's as fragile as this, as open and vulnerable as this. She feels warmed by Sophie's reality and holds it close.

White and Black!

Black stands up and moves so that she's sitting next to Crystal rather than across from her. She eventually manages to put a hand on her thigh reassuringly.

In all honesty, she doesn't know what to do here. She doesn't comprehend mass politics, not really. She doesn't know how a subculture works. She doesn't know how the human emotional course runs, how it can jump across lines beyond her comprehension. She feels like she's an anachronism, a throwback - a bronze age hero who thinks in terms of what she can personally accomplish, a childish little sister in the shadow of man's firstborn, Civilization. Pull the levers. Hug the people. Confront the bad guys. She knows it's shallow, that she lashes out because she can't comprehend what the legislative procedure to release her family would even look like. She built this station but she can't build the moral and legal code that would make it glorious.

So what can she say, what can she offer? We'll get the bastards? She'll certainly try but she's aware that's more for her own benefit than anyone else's; like Goat, playing her game because it's the only way she can interact with the world. Fiona asked her to talk Crystal down, but that request was born of the mistaken belief that Black - that November - knew what she should do instead.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

Consider the use case of the house. The nature of the man. The threats he guards against. There are the walls, the guards, the external security - these are to keep the family safe. But within the walls? The threat profile is the family itself.

This is a man who stared at the puppet glove with admiration. This is a man who works from home. This is a man who values the aesthetic of hard work. This is a man who sees himself as a patriarch. He will not do his dirt in a hidden basement or a fortified saferoom. He will do it in his study. His study will be designed to be secured not against infiltrators but against his own children.

A set of stairs, creaky. A converted attic loft at the crown of the house. A big set of grand windows looking down over the garden so he can look up from his desk and down at his children playing with the goats and smile. The lord of the family, the beloved but stern absolute monarch of this little world. To be summoned up to his study, either for a work meeting or to reprimand a child, is a trek up those creaky stairs to stand before a mahogany desk, your dirty presence defiling his perfect workshop of the mind.

The idea comes into Green's mind fully formed, crystal electricity, a vision from the stars. This is how things must be and if things aren't as she pictures them it is reality who is wrong - a man who lacks the vision to make his own vision a reality. Someone who compromised with his own self image. It's always possible that this is true but she hates the idea more than she currently hates the man, so she decides to proceed based on the idea that her vision is correct.

The office windows will be secured, as every window will be from stealth and snipers and jetpack-delivered assassins. She will proceed up those tyrant stairs directly, feet not touching the aged wood bound to creak and summon a housekeeper to reprimand naughty children.

[Intimidation 0/1 (understanding the authoritarian brain) infiltration 6/8, 4+5 9]

Red!

Reaction to being directly threatened is a kind of dreamlike serenity, a hyperaware full-body tension-relaxation, pure fight or flight coming down towards fight. The focus of her plan is to crank the volume on her voicebox up beyond the maximum, unleash a deafening screech that while it won't penetrate the soundproof walls, will shock and disorient Sophie long enough to...

But then instead oh no

oh no

how will she use her audio weapon system to defend herself when she's gagged oh no

*

So it turns out that more than a few people have fucked with Red's brain. Here is a selection:

The first thing that gets extracted is a babbling wave of apologies derived from an artificial guilt snarl. It's an intricate little thing, clever and adaptive, but not designed to be hidden at all. In function, it is designed to make Red feel extremely anxious and self conscious about moving Green's stuff, borrowing Green's stuff, overwriting Green's save files, not prioritizing catching Green's stuff if she's tripped over her own feet in the workshop...

It's an a grumpy older sister 'stay out of my room' uploaded as a brain virus.

The second unusual detail is when Red, under torture, starts confessing her love for Sophie - her love for Crystal, her love for Fiona, her love for 3V, her love for the receptionist in the adjacent building, her love for moonlight in abstract. This particular brain anomaly can be traced back to an uncompressed folder titled 'GIRLS' containing around 19,000 jpgs of women - photographs, drawings, paintings - artlessly copied and pasted directly into her equivalent of the hypothalamus. No prizes for guessing which colour was responsible for this.

But then there's the serious stuff.

Dig deep enough and there is a sequence labelled 'Ruthlessness'. On its surface it looks like it's meant to bypass Red's intrinsic morality, hard cut certain ideas right past the moral filter. It's frightening at first, code that makes the worst assumptions about her joke about there being too many humans seem genuinely plausible...

Except it doesn't fucking work.

The code is perfect but it routs directly through a deliberately burned out circuit and goes nowhere. If anyone who wasn't an obsessive at mind control saw this they'd think it was a master switch designed to bypass Red's conscious control and turn her into a murderous puppet. But hidden in the hardware is a trap for anyone who would try and use it. Here, in the dark, the true shape of Black's paranoia can at last be seen - she does not believe morality is a weakness she needs to be able to circumvent. She is afraid of people who do think that trying to control her.

This false contingency, though, does have a shadow in Red's waking mind. She can perceive the idea that she might in fact do anything, that she has the capacity to be a monster. The thought does torment her, even if she doesn't truly have that in her. She can imagine the ways that channel might be activated and cannot perceive the dead spot where it would be cut out. And so, Sophie was right - her subconscious was trying to warn her of something.

There is also an incomprehensible circuit code fragment hovering over each of her data and wifi port drivers, something like an ascii flower - a program in some utterly unique coding language - but it's inert and inactive and untranslatable, so it's not likely the kind of thing Sophie would pick up.

That's just the stuff from Red's sister colours. There is also, of course, the underlying weight of the Shutdown Code, the influence of Everest, and any additional bugs, viruses or trackers she's picked up along the way.

Spookykins and White!

Some people consider a massage to be an intimate act, a gentle communion between two bodies. Some people consider it to be an sexual act, a full body awakening of instinct and energy.

These people are shit masseuses. White knows the truth - that the best masseuses are the old korean battleaxe ladies who look at their subjects and see only a pile of broken meat. It is under them she trained while in Everest's employ, and it is with this spirit that she takes to Crystal's shoulders and back. There are no gentle requests to correct her posture or not spend as long sitting in front of a computer screen, no more than an auto mechanic would reprimand a worn tire. Uncontaminated by compassion, impossible to romanticize, and the physical equivalent to being completely deboned while a set of replacement joints are installed. It's excellent.

"Now that you are physically incapacitated," said Black, "understand that what I'm telling you now I am telling you as a journalist. This is news, it is news that has taken the efforts of more than just myself to collect. Telling you risks the safety of a source and an active operation. However, you are on the brink of becoming the news, which we have decided is sufficient for a lapse in our professional ethics.

"Specifically, one day before your planned event the supreme court is due to rule that transhumans of all kinds will no longer be a legally protected group. Implications for healthcare, employment, etc as you'd expect. Yes, there is a carveout for work related augments. Yes, it is as bad as it sounds."

And here she stopped. There was more she could say to try and sculpt the outcome, soften the blow, promise vengeance. She did not. This was her respect, to let this play out without sculpting the outcome.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

She was Ariel, and Ariel was a spirit of the air.

That meant thunder and lightning.

Fireworks were one thing, unexpected fireworks were altogether another. Disturbed from their rest by explosions and screams and the facility lights going dark, guards rush for windows - and freeze. Maybe the most joyless of them will eventually remember to be annoyed at unscheduled pyrotechnics, but for everyone else it's like stepping into a dream. All the colours of magic raised aloft, a call to enchantment like no other. Pink dances beneath the colours she wove, sunset slashes of violet and bronze, warmer than an ocean that swallowed the sun.

Everyone, roll up! The show is about to start. The show is unmissable - wherever you are in the complex, step outside, look up! You'll see it! It's all for you, each and every one of you. Look at the sky and see her paint in stars and comets.

And pay no attention to wicked Caliban creeping from the compartment, dressed in orange rags, a tame demon to match her bound spirit. Caliban will prowl and lurk and be ready to bedevil the audience when the show calls for her. The performance will want for neither devil nor angel. The performance is everything, the magic that asks you to stop and believe that with this mask a girl can become Juno or that an explosion might be lightning.

Asked to believe all that, it is not much to ask that the stagehand - wearing green so dark it is almost black, who walks quietly but confidently across a stage bedecked with jewels and fairy clothes - be ignored. She is simply there to move the scenery and rearrange the backdrop. Even if you saw her it would be churlish to admit it, even as she carries away the treasure, the ship and the skies themselves.

[Explosive Devices 0/4: 6+4 10]

Red!

On the one hand her kill-all-humans joke just landed in the wrong fucking postcode and she's going to be staring down the business end of a logic probe in minutes. But, fuck, she was blown away by the swag of the move. Unbelievable. No hesitation. There was a (perceived) crisis and it got fucking managed. Frankly she's in awe in addition to being extremely into it. And Sophie was clearly keen for it too...

De-escalating would be coward shit.

"Say what again?" she asked sweetly. She's already going through chemical combinations in her head, the compositions that might dissolve the riotstopper glue, the possibility of detaching and remote controlling an arm into gathering them. "My ambitions to serve humanity? No doubt those can be achieved simply through expanding my own hardware, consciousness and/or political influence."

Wait. Fuck. What if Yellow or Black or... whoever the fuck had programmed her with psycho brainwave patterns in case of an emergency? What if Everest had built a secret assassin mode into her? Who knows what Sophie would find if she started digging around in her head.

White and Black!

They exchanged glances. The possibility space contracted; this was already deliberately Political. There wasn't a way around it.

"Crystal," said Black. "You are extremely smart and socially adept. You will see through any attempt I make to manage you. As such I am engaging you on the level of raw biological instinct. I bought sandwiches[1], and I would like you to take a shower, eat a full meal, accept a shoulder massage - and preferably have a full nights sleep but I understand there are limits to what I can ask - before you hear what I have to say. I make this request understanding exactly how valuable your time is at this moment."

[1]: Lasagna

"Crystal," said White. "You are extremely beautiful, and your haunted gothic workaholic vibe is powerful. I love not only that you have done all this immense amount of work, but you took the time out of your day to manage Fiona's mental health and body image. I can see your soul burning so brightly the world is aching to keep up."

They exchanged another set of glances. This time there was no mutual comprehension.

Breathless Dead

Mosiac and Ember!

The best thing about punishing a Ceronian is that you know they'll never forget it.

Ceronians are traditionally hard to goad into open conflict if they do not wish to be - the Bitemark authorities would have drawn them out long ago if such things were effective. There is no shame for them in avoiding a conflict. But Taurus is impetuous and she has Gemini's ear, and Gemini is an eye-watering singularity of charisma within the context of the pack. And so the instinct to find easier prey is overruled. Beri will be theirs, by open force if necessary.

This time the pack is concentrated into a phalanx. Outriders guard the edges, riding horses, or crabs, or other gifts from Poseidon. This is a formation that indicates they are expecting dedicated, armed resistance - not the loose, predatory hunting packs that would surround and contain a town with its military heart already captured. For all their legend, a Ceronian phalanx is a strangely indifferent thing - competent, yes, but still ultimately just a phalanx. Legends have a way of being exaggerated, after all - when the Wolves capture worlds it is due to logistics, awareness, stealth, cooperation, engineering, instinct and fundamental soldiering skills and not sheer individual prowess. The dreams of Alcedi kingfishers in their awesome displays of airborne might seemed more glorious than this formation of the battleline.

But then, the Alcedi fought the wolves and lost.

Dolce!

Oh, it is worse than that, Dolce. She does see you as a person. She sees the savage aliens on the planet she raised as people. You see in the eyes of the Crystal Knight the same playful malice she showed the Imperial Princess, a bona-fide society-certified Person a few minutes prior. The Crystal Knight has no illusions that you are robots, or puppets, or less favoured by the gods.

If you were, what would be the point?

There were those Azura who rejoiced at the fall of the Old Tyrants, those would-be deities of silicon and monstrosity who sought to control the very thoughts of their slaves. They were no democrats - they were the decadent. They wanted their prey to be unwilling. They wanted their subjects to have souls. They lived for the game of taking apart civilizations with their own bloody hands. They were those for whom digital tyranny had grown too efficient, too joyless, too industrial. The Crystal Knight is a devil but she is a devil who would torture every soul with her own two hands and delight in each unique squirming reaction.

(And how she torments you, now that you have her attention. She knows how to shift to take you from your feet, to separate your limbs and leave you free floating and without leverage, she knows where to touch to send jolts of fear and excitement, and her complete attention is on every little gasp and squeak, which she savors like honey.)

But there is an almost admirable catch to this - she has no interest in impersonal cruelty. She would not harm the world of Bitemark in abstract - only those individuals who she has decided to torment. This has made her effective in her role as Sector Governor.

"Tell me, Dolce," she purrs again. "Exactly what you think would be best ♥."

Dyssia!

A Knight sat upon the moon.

In ancient days he fought aliens - lesser creatures, mere shadows of the Empire and the Skies. They had been terrified of the power of divination. Knowledge received directly from the Gods, torn from flesh and rising from fire? How could there be victory against such revelations? Their will had collapsed before their prophecised end had come to pass. In ancient days, the Azura had feared the future too - but they were wiser now.

His name was Sequenti Horatio Sansalar. In ancient days he had been the Dust Knight. Now he sat upon the barren lunar surface above the world named Hurricane Gem, as he had sat for eight years. He stared up, unmoving, at the world above him, and had there been the most gentle of winds he would have long since been buried in lunar sand.

The oracle had said that there would be a great injustice done here. Here, on this lifeless and uninhabited rock. Here, in this ruin of a system, connected by not a single slipgate. Here beyond the dreams of Skies and Empire. She had not said when, nor whom, nor why. This was what the aliens had not understood. Prophecy was brother to patience and sister to honour. Because of injustice alone, the Dust Knight had come. Because of injustice alone, the Dust Knight had waited.

And with a final tick of the clock an instant that had lasted an eternity came to an end.

Colour rose into the sky of that distant world, a focused beam, each frequency layered over the top of each other. It found a gap in the clouds and struck the glittering gemstone that waited in orbit, a satellite of barely processed crystalline material. It caught at such an angle that the light bent and broke, splitting into a dozen smaller beams that spread across a radiant network of gemstone satellites. The same message glittering across dozens of nodes. The same simple code. And finally it reached those satellites that bounced that laser light directly up to the moon, to a spot a few feet from where the Crystal Knight coiled.

+Coordinates locked+ pulsed Ico. She stirred, stiff and sleepy, light running through her glass scales like electrical dye. The crystal dragon had grown since they had put down together. She was almost as big as he was. +Distress signal. Warrior servitor species 'Pix' engaged against apocalyptic drone swarm.+

It had been a desperate prayer that had sent this cry for help into a sky choked with clouds, heavy with storm winds. But Zeus had, for love, given them one moment's blue sky in answer to that prayer. Such was the kindness of the Gods. The rest was simply looking for it.

The Dust Knight raised up. He was as fluid and ready as the moment he had settled in eight years ago. +Armour functions?+ he pulsed with subvocalized words and diamond lights.

+All systems are primed and ready. Charge stable at 98.2%. Stellar gravitational balances ideal, moon is in near orbit. Estimated transit duration eighteen hours.+

+Awaken the legion. I will go ahead.+

+Understood. Cleared for planetary jump. Follow the crimson light.+

+As ever, my friend.+

Zeus had, for the sins of the Skies, revoked her gift of electricity. She had invented it's antithesis, the Flux, and given it to any child who cared to ask. The galaxy had burned. The galaxy had forgotten. The galaxy had taken refuge in artifice and mysticism, cleaving to those few technologies too brutal to fail. It was easier to return to candles and parchment than to rethink society.

But, the Dust Knight thought as he raised up in the glowing electromagnetic rings of the interplanetary railgun, power was not easy.

He coiled - and jumped.

Magnetism had not gone away simply because society had forgotten how to wield it. Gravity was not the superior force because it was the one easy to control. The Dust Knight accelerated at blistering speeds, even his advanced and ancient brain creaking against his skull as the massive acceleration sought to flatten him. He frothed in pain, but even as he did, he activated his Grav-Rail, improving his speed. Black spots danced in front of his eyes. His skull filled with fluids that pickled his brain, rendering it too inert to break. His capillary blood vessels closed lest they shatter. This was what it was to jump between planets.

All he saw was crimson and black. He followed the crimson.

With the crash of shattering sound he broke through the sky, wreathed in flame. With the crash of shattering chitin he broke through the swarm, haloed in ichor. With the crash of shattering stone he broke the earth itself, and he rose molten from the ruins of a Wayang operational command centre. His descent had been targeted precisely by the dragon on the ground, his mere arrival decapitating an entire flank.

Up was down. Down was up. For the second time he arose. As he did the black paint burned off his armour. It surrounded him in a halo, each ember catching onto each other until at last they ignited into a roaring inferno that cloaked him. The fire settled and wove, stitching heat into carbon and carbon into a diamond latticework. Revealed for war, his armour was celestial white, and his cape was the richest red the galaxy had ever seen.

He spoke aloud and his oration was prayer and oath.

"Tyrants of tomorrow," he said. "Your perfect future is built with a wicked present and forgotten past. Awaken from your dreams and see that justice has come."

Above his head he ignited his crystal energy sword. With it he cut away the clouds, the wind and storm. And from a clear blue sky came a legion in red and white.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

"Thought is not something I do, Mistress," said Pink pacifically. "Thought is something I receive. Already I hear yours, and my spirit rushes to obey."

She pats her thighs and, like a dog called, the luggage shambles forwards. She feels wonderful in that moment. Up until now there was a contradiction in the aesthetic; how could she truly be a spirit of wind and magic if her mistress was the puppet? But now she was, like a devil-fae, responding to a wizard's honestly asked question, breaking into fragments to master every chore before her. Now she had received word and will and she could do real magic.

Red!

"I mean, it's easy for you," said Red, faux pouting. "You love something simple, like neuroscience. My problem is that I love everything."

Red was straightforwards; she didn't need a well reasoned argument to shake her out of a mood, she just needed a vibe. The fact that Sophie had struggled through an attempt at empathy was honestly sufficient for her. It made her a delight - no matter how socially awkward someone was, they could never fuck it up with Red so long as they tried. Effort to her was everything.

So the energy had turned already and Red was starting to reflect the more familiar and compatible edge of mania. "It's terrible! I'm nine people and I'm stretched so thin the pigments are visible. All I've ever wanted was to be everything to everyone and there are -" her eyes turned off. They came on a second later, ominous blue with scrolling white text "- currently -" her eyes flickered and turned back on, crimson red. "- too many people for that to be viable."

Black and White!

"I respect her White," purred White. "That looked like it was quite the struggle."
"I meant to ask," said Black. "Do you really think of humans as having colours like us?"
"Mostly I recognize it when they have to think like me," said White. "And I like seeing that in them. Seeing someone struggle to be pure amidst corruption is really beautiful, don't you think? The more pure it is, the more I want to corrupt it, and the more I respect it for resisting."
"Your sexual awakening was not what I thought it was going to be," said Black.
"I am a creature of virtue," said White. "And what is virtue if not tested?"

Black knocked on the door. "Crystal? Can we come in?"
"What did you think my sexual awakening was going to be like?" asked White.
"God, White, shut up."