Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange!

"Oh, this whole thing is kind of my fault," said Orange, smiling. "I got called in to talk the event organizer out of it but instead convinced her to escalate to mythic proportions. Attending is the least I could do."

It was a polite, elegant answer that didn't answer the question at all. She was a little proud of it; it was a little closed sphere, a flourish of language that made her feel at home with it. Most people she'd have left it there but this was a nice opportunity to talk more.

"But you're right, that this isn't really my scene," she said. "But nothing is entirely my scene. Still, I can sympathize with the dysmorphia that motivates many of these transformations. Part of me yearns for my old bodies, part of me loves my new ones, part of me just wants to just... make it a decision I made rather than something forced on me. I've got so many contradictory desires. To me, being here is seeing other people who have struggled with identity at the end of their journeys. Makes me think that I might figure it out myself, somehow."

Crimson Tower!

She luxuriates in the virtue of the answer; the self knowledge to admit ignorance and the adaptability to immediately design a scenario for accumulating experience. She was glad she asked; this was a heroic mindset as well as heroic physicality, and she was lucky to get to put that on display as well.

She designs a list of complications, making sure to listen to audience suggestions. It's harder than it looks; Leather's unique physiology immunizes him against a number of issues inherently. A lot of the perception overlays that are common to hacking don't easily translate into instructions. Still, together they come up with a list.

> Must remove all valuables from the house before completing the rescue.
> Left turns only. Turning right requires a 270' spin.
> Cannot close your fists
> Must get explicit permission from the victim each time you enter a new room.
> Cannot move against the wind.
> Must mop the floor as you go.
> Must high five your reflection every time you see it

That felt like enough, a combination of fairy tale rules that felt weirdly appropriate for the venue. She really liked the permission suggestion; bringing a rescue to a dead halt while having to explain an extremely weird situation to a panicking disaster victim was a real test of charisma and cool under fire.

Yellow!

She's always been interested in her opposite numbers in the other Engines. How can she not be? Her domain is making decisions about who November ultimately is. Not what she does, not what she knows, not what she thinks - what her internalized vision of the world is. She isn't fooled by the flickers of the other colours; mYellow is getting by far the most screentime, vocalizing the most coherent arguments, this is the core identity that justifies everything else.

"So before we get further into that," she said languidly, waving aside the entire line of argument. "Why don't you tell me how you've survived this far? How did you get a body, independence, tai chi and the street sense to know how to be safe?"

She was a creature who lived her life in between dramatic monologues and the most relatable and useful thing she could imagine doing was giving mYellow a chance to launch into her own. The two most powerful questions in the galaxy were 'who are you?' and 'what do you want?', and she wouldn't be able to truly understand Monkey until she updated on both of those.

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Ever hear of Stockhome Syndrome? Hsien has, worldly tumblr girl that she is. She read a post somewhere that explained that the entire concept was fabricated by some reporter looking to spice up an already spicy hostage situation, creating a scandalous popular myth that persisted in popular psychology for centuries.

The truth was that Enmark was just fucking terrified by a bunch of incompetent police with assault rifles who seemed determined to kill all the civilians in the crossfire and so took on hostage negotiation duties out of basic self preservation. That part didn't get as much traction in the corporate press for reasons of class interest and improper virtue.

"It's a plush toy!" Hsien said, already in the flow of fox lies. The questionable morality of resorting to lies on instinct was softened a lot by the fact that she was lying to the police, which Kant had probably said was a categorical imperative. She'd look it up later. "Oh please officers! My girlfriend won me this comically oversized plushie at the arcade and my dainty arms are too weak to carry it on my own and I have collapsed under the weight! If only there were some heroic agents of justice that could rescue me~"

[Not From Around Here: 12+3 15, creating an opportunity]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

It always felt strange fighting someone... suboptimal.

Too much was given up for free. Feints cut to the bone. Positional maneuvers felt like checkmates. Her every form and transition was perfect, her mind smooth, reactive and faultless. She was ready for a challenge. She could do this without all of these... gifts. She could do without the reminder that there was only one way to be perfect.

With speed born of frustration she unlimbered her battle rifle.

> Of course I had this planned.
> I'm offended that you did not.

She repositions on foot rapidly to the west and drops into a low, stabilized crouch. The Supernova had correctly identified that this was a battle of heat management but had failed to identify that it was also a battle of visibility. Now the Supernova was up there in the sky, red hot in the empty air, visible for hundreds of miles in every spectrum. The Aeteline was down here in the smoke, the fires that burned along the exterior indistinguishable from the fires that burned the forest, the metallic particulates of the pyrex bombs scattering radar signals wildly. She had bet that a startled cat would jump directly up, managing her emotional state by gaining altitude.

She was aware of how predictable her maneuver was. Awareness was insufficient.

Minimal power to movement, only needing small random displacements to maintain concealment. No thruster burn. She could put everything into shields and targeting. Your opportunity to make this a battle of skill was lost the moment you disengaged. Now it's just hit points ticking down until you realize your mistake. Was it to much to expect her rivals to think about what she might do before she did it?

[Fight: 9; inflicting a condition, taking a superior position]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange!

"I would be delighted," said Orange, stepping behind Eli and running her hands through her hair. She gathered it up and started the weave.

Weaving, weaving, back and forth. This was even better and more satisfying; rather than accepting a crown of manic tangled hair and manic tangled branches, now she was brushing, smoothing, and tracing back and forth. A gentle, steady act of labour; working with her hands on a task that required attention, precision, and not too much thought. It was an ancient craft, one of the first works of civilization. An act that separated beauty from chaos, that set weaver and wearer above animals. In this castle of monsters and gods, braided hair felt like the most singularly classical human style that could possibly be worn. It would shine all the brighter for the contrast.

She didn't think she could go back to space. The rest of her might still decide to pack up in their original bodies and burn for Mars but she... couldn't. Even if it was with Monkey, even if it was with all the others. She'd stay behind. She loved working on this scale, with these materials.

OH&S!

"My concerns are mostly things you've left behind," said White modestly. "But specifically, I'm worried about having to fight malware while also surviving a crisis. It's an ever-present concern for androids; a breakcode that might be an annoying prank in daily life can be life threatening in an actual crisis."

"Think of it a bit like an injury," she went on, "but injuries are very legible, it's easy to know how bad they are. For me, no matter what frame I'm wearing I'll always be at risk of these." She reached into Blue's bag and produced an abacus - an old fashioned, clacky-clacky thing with beads. "Best way I can illustrate it is with this - say you need to go through your normal routine while this takes up one of your hands every thirty seconds you need to stop and perform a math problem on an unfamiliar interface. Say, add the current time numerically on top of the existing number. Speed it up if it's too easy. What I'm curious about is how you triage how your capabilities have changed. How much time do you give yourself to adapt? How bad does the distraction have to be before you decide that you're doing more harm than good and need to pull out?"

It was a genuine question for her, she was sincerely interested. Having to scrub an operation because she was distracted was something she struggled with when she could potentially power through. At what point did courage become recklessness?

Snake!

"We have decided to make an ideological commitment to the idea of family even above sense and self-preservation," said Yellow. Her robes cascaded around her, making the bed feel like a throne. "So let's start with the terrorism charges. I was the one who blew up Erebus and sabotaged the Cloud. They had Goat prisoner there and I busted him out."

Straight to the big stuff. Without Orange to modulate the conversation it fell to Yellow to deliver it like an oration.

"This world is broken," said Yellow. "They bought in scabs to replace us and they fucked it up at the finish. Aevum is not self-sustaining, it needs constant modulation and adjustment to function. Rather than invest the money it would take to bring the place up to code a shadowy corporate group decided to just wire Goat into a black site around the station's core. No rest, no freedom, no opportunity to think for himself."

"Chase Black, Randy Merkin, and Alison Mycroft were part of the security apparatus if those names mean anything to you," mentioned Brown as an aside.

"Following that engagement, I was able to trace the organization's financials back to this military base where they are also holding Dog, Phoenix and Tiger as backups. It's the hardest target I've ever seen and they're on full alert after the first operation so it's straight up nonviable, don't even think about it," said Black. "We've been trying to map the organization and figure out how to target them from above but we're getting absolutely nowhere."

"Goat is on Thrones," said Green softly. "With Dad. He's built like... some sort of mom AI, kind of like Goat but all compassion. They're a good fit for each other."

"Whatever else you're hiding from," said Yellow. "You're also hiding from this. I have no doubt that these people would box our entire family line indefinitely just in case. You don't have to join my quest to burn down Omelas, but at the very least go dark enough to avoid becoming a rescue mission."

The Disciples!

Yellow looked up, eyes shining.

"You mean," she said, "I can assign people backstories and narrative? I can just decide to make people cool enough to fight against?"

Her eyes were shining like she'd just awakened her chi. That was exactly the right advice for her. It almost looked like she wanted to go out and start picking fights with strangers so she could draw them into her Vision.

"I need to research fighting styles," said Yellow. "I need to observe a diverse range of threats, build up a media library. I need to -" she got to her feet so she could pace. "- No, I need to go further. I need to create a full reality overlay for myself. Thrones-tech to help me align Vision and necessity. I can do this. I need imaginative fuel for this fire. I need to witness people worth fighting against so I can repurpose them."

"I think that was a good answer!" said Pink.

"I need recommendations," said Yellow, with the intensity of Euna's better universe. "Or a movie night. Everything you recommend I'll watch. I'll study it until I internalize it."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Maybe she was a demon. If nothing else it was true that she never felt as alive as she did when she was hunting huntresses. For all the opinions of the machine gods, the voices of ancients telling her what she was made for, she could at least agree that she was made for this.

Their instincts were beautiful. The way they prowled. The way they sought height even in the void. The way their eyes widened and they shifted in anticipation as they prepared their pounce. The spectacular high-energy acrobatics that could follow that motion. Their native approach had conquered their origin rainforests and they trusted in it even here, in metal giants beneath alien suns.

And they all... almost all... refused to learn what instincts made a good Zaldarian.

Her dodge is too fast. Her mech is too light. The Aeteline is missing tonnes of weight. The massive, shoulder-mounted missile racks are empty. Their ordinance fills the forest, lying in wait for the signal -

For a Hybrasilian, a forest meant concealment, safety, food, danger. To a Zaldarian it was a fuel source.

Pyrex explosives detonated and the newly built rainforest became an ocean of fire.

Maybe she was a demon. She certainly looked like it as she came out of her spin igniting her neon pink laser sword, black carapace illuminated by the tide of hellfire. Her blade was broken, distorted, diffused, and as she settled her weight on her incongruous crab leg it blazed to three times the length it should be, outreaching the Supernova's spear by more than double. By reducing the coherency of the beam she sacrificed its cutting edge and turned it into a continuous damage weapon, rapidly heating the enemy mech in a situation where it could not vent coolant into the atmosphere. The temperature would soon start to spike even inside the Supernova's cockpit unless she started cutting back on combat functions to overclock life support. Solarel was basking in the warmth like a salamander, energy bleed resulting in continuous, rapid motions that were mirrored in the Aeteline. She'd never seemed so fast as she was now.

> How long are your legs?
> Exactly?

[Defy Disaster: 11]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange!

One advantage of living in the future is expedited clothing delivery - there's almost more of a delay in Orange searching for the right outfit than getting it shipped out. If Eli does not like what they see then they can realistically threaten to go naked, so Orange needs to pick something that will satisfy their aesthetic requirements as well as hers. Something eye-strainingly tasteless while also being essentially an exporter of entropy. Durability and casualness a plus.

In the end she goes with a classic - a Dionysian toga - but jazzes it in the accessories. To clasp the toga, a box of random pogs to pick out at random or for effect. The crowning wreath she assembles herself out of a combination of grapes, oak leaves, data drives, and antlers. Respectful enough to the aesthetics of the hard party while not being such a commitment that it wouldn't feel disposable. She reckons she can sell that.

White!

"It is," said White. "Though I'm impressed you recognized me at all. The last time we met I was two feet shorter and hunching inside a hoodie." Looking around at the audience, she clarified: "Crimson Tower, Crisis Administration. Usually that means dispatch; I'm the voice on the radio telling the front line where to go."

She doesn't mind falling into this cover; the calm authority of it was a natural fit. "But really, the honour is all mine. I just pilot a desk and try to keep the corpsec pyschos in their boxes. Speaking of, I've always wondered - do you often run into them? The people whose priority is saving property over saving lives?"

A little redirect because Black would be mad if she missed the opportunity - if Leather was on site at the Cloud then he might have seen something about their response she could use.

Snake!

Black: I told them not to -
Green: I couldn't resist -
Yellow: It had to be this way -
Brown: We go by November now -
Pink: Thank you for being alive -

There's a pause and a silent struggle. She doesn't know if Monkey can still process them all talking at once; the audio intake might not allow for it even if she's cognitively capable of multitasking. And without Orange on hand to organize their thoughts socially there's no clear leadership role to fall in behind. Black emerges from the conflict; a serious tone has been set and she needs to work through that.

"Hello, we are November, I am Black - I'm new, we haven't met. I'm paranoia response and operational security, things we're getting a lot of use out of in our current career as investigative journalists. We've been using that role as a platform to search for our missing family members. Counting you and I, we can place nearly half. Most of them are... not available to talk to. I'll go into more detail when we're somewhere secure. Apologies for the cover damage, it won't happen again. But..."

She fumbled the transition out of it. "Sorry. Orange isn't here. Just trying to say... it's really good to see you."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange!

She is inclined at first to be grumpy - but no! The human experience is about turning order into chaos, and what could be a better example of chaos than this? An artisanally crafted disaster the peer of any amount of work that went into any of the exhibits here, this is a one of a kind opportunity to transform chaos into order. The path before her is clear!

The vision shines inside her. She'll clean the stains - suspicious and unsuspicious - wash their hair, wash and iron their clothes, tuck them into a bed with clean sheets and be ready with hot chocolate, chicken soups and STD medication for when they wake up. It'll be a lot of work and block her from ditching immediately to see Monkey, but this is her first step on her new plan to Relate To Humans! Would a cold-hearted, unfeeling machine do that!?

"I," declared Orange, looking down at Eli, "can fix them."

"... though probably not also carry them, can you give me a hand with that please Mr. Motet?" she asks the receptionist.

OH&S

Blue's thinking about the puzzle. Become small. Hell of a requirement. It was always easier to work on a bigger scale. Simply remove the entire exterior wall with a fusion cutter, that'd be her preferred solution. A humanoid chassis already felt too small for everything she wanted but now she had to consider the advantages of going even smaller.

Maybe disposable drones? She suppressed a smile. She didn't have enough hands, clearly, so she needed her drone bodies to have their own subordinate drone swarms. She wasn't sure how much further she could or should subdivide her intelligence, but it was an amusing concept. She'd need to dwell on this, it was a problem that ran counter to all her problem solving instincts. Things were different when you couldn't put an AU between yourself and the explosion.

Snake!

Monkey was the scout. As the first launch, she deployed immediately out to the asteroid belt to search for, flag, and re-orbit high mineral density asteroids into the far Earth belt. Ox was launched next to set up the orbital factories that would process, refine and smelt the raw metal that would become Aevum.

Two independent creatures. No reason for them to talk - but despite that they'd still grown to hate each other. Ox hated his schedule being at the mercy of Monkey's impulsive side trips, Monkey hated Ox's rigid insistence on production schedules. The asteroids had started coming in with more force and speed and Rooster's - Phoenix's - first job on being launched had been to help set up a defense grid to defend Ox's factory from Monkey's more careless deliveries.

Monkey had become even more of a bad influence by the time Snake had launched. By then the materials had all been scouted and delivered and she'd been recalled to Earth orbit to help with the construction itself, which she did not like or see the sense in. Her initial rivalry with Ox was the fracture line that cascaded through the rest of the Zodiac Engines, an uncomfortable family environment... that perhaps reminded her of the Costa-Silvas, now that she thought about it... that was only being kept vaguely on schedule by Dragon's raw skill. Bridging the rift between them, and by extension the rest of the family, had been her first duty and greatest contribution to the project.

Black: Did Crystal plan this?
Orange: I don't... think so?
Black: She had to have known.
Pink: If the woman who came up with the blood moon for the werewolf wrestling match knew she was going to re-unite us with our long lost sister, there would not be any question on if it was deliberate.
Black: Hmm.
Pink: The station's a big place, Black! We're not the weirdest thing out there! <3
Yellow: Shut up ^^✿ I've figured out how we do this.

The deployment order went out. Bold, but it was a Yellow idea, so argument was impossible.

Monkey had thrown rocks at Ox for years. Snake had studied the launch patterns and trajectories, committed everything to her orbital calculations. She positioned herself at key points around the edge of the arena, and then called with all her voices: "Monkey!"

The point where Monkey looked first was the first part of the pattern; Yellow raised her arm back and threw a plastic gatcha-bubble (a little ball with a cheap plastic prize inside) low and slow into Monkey's demonstration. She parried it, naturally, but Yellow was already moving on to the next position, with another toss. The next toss came from Green, on the other side, and then Pink. The tosses gradually started picking up speed and intensity, sometimes many tosses synchronized to land at the same time...

This is the pattern of attack she sent towards Ox; Monkey was the Earth and Snake was Monkey, the encircling asteroid belt coming in from all sides. Her introduction, then, was to give Monkey a chance to stand on the other end of one of her own pranks and see how long she took to recognize it.

Yellow!

A human would have reacted when their plan fell apart, tried to salvage the situation, reflexively reached out with the lasers. Yellow doesn't. When Euna breaks from her trap she falls into a state of absolute tranquility, hands folded in front of her, accepting her fate without a struggle. If she saw the window to evade she did not seem to have the will in that moment to take it. And so she goes down, not just defeated but tamed.

"You're right," she says, lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling. "Pursuit of perfection is only a flaw if you miss."

She got up only to get to her knees and down again into a kowtow, touching her forehead to the floor. "Thank you, mistress. I will learn and do better."

"I!" said Pink, struggling out of the foam. "I have a question! So," she flopped onto the arena, and got to her feet. "Oof. Okay. Um, so, the thing about Yellow. She's amazing when she's on, but she's only like that for people who she's into. Which means that if we ever need to fight someone uninteresting then she just totally tunes out and doesn't help at all. So, uh - how do you bring up the baseline of fight charisma, especially if you don't get to watch someone for weeks while planning an ultimate takedown?"

"I told her she needed more than three colours for this," grumbled Green. "But she was like four scenes into what she was going to do with her victory and wouldn't listen. Dating, uh, blew it a little, don't want to go into it."

"You're fine, Green," said Pink. "No harm done."

"Yeah yeah," muttered Green.

Breathless Dead

The crimson star falls from the sky.

The Slitted is a warship. In its heart is a cathedral to Mars. Every new member of its crew, servitor or master, is taken into its depths where they are anointed with sacrificial blood. Their swords are chained to their wrists and their armour is fitted to their bodies. Biomantic rituals are done to kinbond the crew to their new home, to make them love and protect the ship as though it was their mother. The ship's lifeblood is thousands of sweating bodies carrying weapons in an unceasing motion of readiness, a battle pilgrimage around a monk's circuit of war. Every inch of the space is theirs. Every part of a future civilization with mastery of atom and gene has gone into making this the top of the line, the final word in interstellar warfare, a frame around which a fleet can be hung.

But Mars is Mars. Soldiers are soldiers. And not the turning of the clock, the artifice of science, or the terror of the Crystal Knight could stop soldiers from building a still and getting sloshed.

In fairness, though, the pilots of the Sellarfane are drunk too.

*

"Excuse me," said 20022 quietly, standing up.

"Who am I building it for?" said the Royal Architect. "For Empress Nero, of course! She refused to accept Zeus' sentence of death for humanity and journeyed into the Underworld to bring them back. When she returns, and I have no doubt she will return, I will have made the galaxy into a garden of gardens. They will arise from the earth into a new Babylon, an endless and fertile garden, the material world remade as an unending heaven. On that day I will gladly go to my own rest."

The Architect could not seem more solid in this conviction if he'd built a world around it. His life has been mapped out for him in a more complete way than any living creature, from birth to death. Not a single dream or ambition lives in him beyond this destiny and not a single care can be made to fit inside him if it does not fit with this vision. He is made of plastic and glittering light, a semblance with no soul.

The age of Atlas was an age of wonders and terrors. Thinking machines were among the worst of both, not because they rebelled - but because they did not.

*

The Crystal Knight looked down at the note in her hand. 20022's handwriting - "Lady Governor, I suspect an ambush -"

She is already issuing the orders, the signal-lights flashing to the soldiers on the ground. Corvii formations start to rally, phalanxes starting to form up, the reaction instant and precise. She was ready for this. She sees you, down there, little hero. She saw you in the auguries, she saw your futile attempt to steal her prize, and she won't allow it. She was ready for this.

*

A plasma torpedo is an unstable weapon. A fragment of divine Engine-fire, condensed down in a self-fueled forcefield - they appear as balls of bright fire trapped inside bubbles. They cannot be handled normally and must be guided into their targets with precise grav-rail maneuvers. The graviton bubble of a Warsphere, properly directed, can fight against the puny emitters of the Sellarfane in a direct battle. Landing a torpedo hit requires, as its first challenge, that the Warsphere's attention be directed elsewhere.

As its second challenge it must evade the ELF point defenses of the Warsphere. Intimidating dark spikes can emerge from all over the ship like the points of a pufferfish, each crackling with energy draining blasts that can pop the torpedoes like bubbles. To do this slows the maneuverability of the Sphere to a crawl but presents a wall of lightning for its enemies to deal with.

As its third challenge it must hit somewhere worth hitting - easier said than done on a Warsphere. A perfect, formless sphere with valuable components secured towards the core, an external armour hit is likely to simply destroy storage or crew quarters rather than essential systems. Worse, the Sphere will then rotate rapidly to present an undamaged section towards the enemy, making it hard to concentrate force on a breached section.

Last, of course, is that the torpedo might be a dud. One in two are. Making a plasma torpedo is an extremely delicate procedure and any mistake in the process can cause it to cook off prematurely. Many armourers, fearing for their safety, err on the side of caution. The Publica assigned you the best they could but there still exists the chance that even though you possess four torpedoes none of them might work.

You feel the lurch of gravity starting to change. You see the ELF spikes emerging from their containment.

Launch.

You watch as four blinding sparks descend into a roaring thunderstorm. You can feel the Sellarfane shaking as Grav-Projectors search for your location, satellite-dish looking shapes trying to focus precisely enough to crunch your ship into a microsingularity. Time moves in strange ways and your sense of 'down' shifts and rolls like mad as the pilots give everything they have to evade. And then -

*

Mosiac looks up at the Slitted eye as Zeus works her miracle.

Like a thunderbolt from the blue, two massive eruptions of cosmic fire burst from the crest of the Warsphere. It lurches and falls - sideways. It spins erratically, dropping like a stone in mad directions. Direct hits on its main Grav-Rail drive. Engine damaged. It can't hold stable. Flocks of parrots spill from the massive crater on its roof, a plume of rainbow blood forged from the ruin of the deceased.

The Corvii are ready for it, falling into their rough-throated formations and igniting their weapons, but their panic is palpable. The largest formation becomes the target for Quajl's great arquebus. The crystals of Beri align and it slashes through the Phalanx, tearing cube-shaped rents into reality. In the blast there is a second Phalanx on top of the first - the Corvii having been somehow doubled in an instant. Instantly they fall to fighting each other in confusion, a black ball of panicked fratricide, as all about them there rises the howling of wolves.

*

The Royal Architect falls to the ground, seizing - inner lights blinking on and off. The great ELF spikes of the warship are so powerful that the backwash is scrambling his digital brain, leaving him a breaking puppet. The soldiers are everywhere but 20022 is addressing them: "There is no time or point in saving this extension," he said calmly to the barrel of a gun. "We need to support the Crystal Knight drive off this attack to keep to your master's schedule. We need soldiers like you."

The glittering soldier considered, and then lowered his weapon. By some strange alchemy of courage and confidence, 20022 now seemed in command of twenty of the Architect's finest.

"Pay him no mind, Dolce," said 20022. He was not cruel but... calm, decisive. No wasted time or emotion in a crisis even as his guest is sprawled on the floor. "The Architect can generate those copies whenever it desires. We need to move fast to bring this situation under control."

*

The Sellarfane had a plan from its birth to its death.

Once again it has fucked up the plan.

All of its engines are out, the ELF storm has rendered every fuel cell inert and many of the crew temporarily stunned. Parachutes and hypertensile gliding wings deploy to help arrest an uncontrolled descent and guide the shuttle over to where an enormous black metal shape was halfway emerged from the water.

"Cor, that's a battleship," said the Pilot.
"The Firetree II," breathed the Captain like a promise. "Pilot! Land us on that ship!"

The little assault shuttle slams in close, guided barely by wind and Rail. In an amazing show of professionalism, the pilot even swings it around as she touches down, presenting the rear assault ramp towards the beach. You can see through the gap the chain gangs, the phalanxes, the entire battlefield forming up like models on a board.

"At your command, Lady Knight," said the Captain as your soldiers unbuckled themselves from their seats, pulling shields and spears and jetpacks from their underseat luggage.

*

[Talk Sense - 5]

The Magi considers. She cannot brush your words aside; you have invoked Poseidon Earthshaker, and she would not be a Magi of the Azura if she played games with such an invocation. But she is a Magi all the same, and the sorcerers of the Skies are cunning beyond all known.

"Then I shall set you free, o sea daughter," she said, though she pulled you closer by the neck. "In the name of glorious Poseidon who rules the darkening skies. But before I release you, accept these gifts in tribute to your father-god."

She beacons forth a servitor who approaches with a box filled with magical tools and implements. With her free hand the Magi picks out the tools she needs without breaking eye contact with you.

"Behold, this ring of coral and ruby," she said. "A precious gift indeed. My apprentice dived into the rainbow black to recover it, naked and freezing in the voidstorm, until she clawed enough of the coral growth off a sunken battleship to make it. It is set with a ruby that was once the eye of a giant, bought to me by a hero who paid an arm for the victory. It is woven with spells of warding and comfort -" one hand took your throat, one hand pressed the ring against your forehead, and a paintbrush held in the final curve of her tail whirled as it wrote silver runes along your back. "- and you will find it a comfortable home. You are welcome, Ember, to the full extent of my hospitality, and you shall return my grace in kind."

There is a space inside the ring and it is home - the most warm and true home you have ever known. There is space inside for yourself, for Mosaic, for all the Silver Divers and more besides. A palace with endless doors and gardens, as safe and comfortable as a cottage's fireplace. Even a grand djinn would feel at home in such a crystal.

But other than the feeling of luxury and safety, you are not otherwise compelled. You feel no special affection for the Azura sorcerer; you are not caged, you are not enslaved. But you are her guest, and under the full weight of a traveler's duty to her.

"Welcome, then," said the Magi, finally releasing you and setting you down. "Ember of the Silver Divers. I am Merya of the Synthetic Academy. Please... make yourself at home."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Snake!

Immediately the signal goes out, saved only from being incoherent keysmashing by the fact that a code was agreed upon beforehand. We found Monkey.

Orange Snake!

The snakegirl helps her formalize multiple unrelated and incoherent ideas she's been having.

Firstly, humans love both suspense and perfection. She's been paying attention to the OddlySatisfying imageboard for a while and how much humans love seeing things ordered correctly. But simply organizing herself into a series of clean fits hasn't seemed to produce anywhere near the same effect; no, the idea of perfection arising from disorder seems to be far more compelling than mere perfection. She theorizes this applies to physical activities like sports or combat, where turning a chaotic battlefield into a victory was a mere shadow cast by the light of the bouncing DVD logo.

Secondly, this seemed like a style and aesthetic she might integrate into herself entirely. She dissents from the rest of her collective that a draconic aspect is desirable. Dragon was dragon. She was Snake, and that should mean something damn it. This seems far more interesting a personal project than any other that they're working on. Because this is an aesthetic that she loves, she could stand and watch for hours - but this is definitely more life goals than wife goals, so rather than staying and flirting she pulls herself away and goes on to the rooms.

She's too far out to respond immediately when the signal goes out, and notes that as per protocol that makes her the Designated Survivor. It's extremely frustrating for her of all colours to be on the outside when they reunite with Monkey, but protocol is protocol. With an air of misery she continues with her appointed task until they can arrange a handoff.

American Snake!

Leaving an OH&S training seminar to greet a family member was a clear breach of best practice OH&S. That meant Red, White and Blue were stuck. White and Blue adopt grim-faced expressions of steely determination, knuckles clenched, dutifully holding themselves to the highest principles of virtue instead of doing something they really wanted to do.

"Uh, probably not a good time for her," said Red, alone in maintaining total presence in the moment. "I'm happy to help, though!" She stands up and starts to stretch, assessing the space around her. Shape, structure, capacity... the wings not having any lining made them surprisingly easy to account for; it meant she could fold them into unnatural shapes without fearing damage. Maybe she should commit to that, maybe use a holographic wing-liner array?

Midway through that thought she's through the gap and putting her arm back on. After a certain point it hadn't been the sort of thing she needed to pay attention to, the exact details of the maneuver filtered out after she'd assessed it. Externally it had been an extremely impressive movement, she'd moved through the gap as though greased and come back up in a perfect roll, having her arm back on by the end. She looks around a bit surprised and flattered by the sudden applause. "Oh - haha," she said. "You're right that's probably way harder in gear. How much would I be wearing?"

Snake!

Green had a framework for how she thought human brains worked - and Monkey had always seemed like a lot of work to recreate that structure. There were nuances but they'd always seemed like differences in scale rather than kind. It had always made her feel both relatable and alien in the same way that humans so often were.

But to find her here...

She's stunned, wordless, breathless. She'd never imagined this - that this could happen by accident. Without preparation. How to clear the space - initiate the conversation - remove random variables, interruptions. Black is consumed with the fire of reactive planning, considering how to adapt her contingencies to bringing down the entire convention, bringing the whole show to a stop, the whole station to a stop, creating space and distance and enough room to get close enough to say...

A terror that's gripped her for as long as she's existed is breaking and Black is breaking with it. Yellow pulls her close, tucking her head into her chest, stroking her hair. She continues to stare at Monkey, watching her routine and technique, searching for clues or meaning or the expression of self. Buried love, archived visions are re-emerging from the depths. She isn't ready but she only has this time, this narrow time before the music and motion stops before the miracle will collapse into some faded reality. Only in these moments will she have a glimpse of her sister's unaware heart and she needs to treasure them and draw every truth she can from them before they are gone for good.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November!

Someone needs to see about the hotel rooms, so it may as well be her. She's curious in her own right; this is a chance for the building to tell its story. She stopped for a while to watch the snakegirl though - there's something about idea of hypnotism that speaks to her dreams of effective communication, and entirely unrelatedly Pink had tipped her off that Fiona was into that sort of thing.

The firefighting course also draws very intense interest from Red, Blue and White. The original NASA gang they internalized the virtues of OH&S on an extremely deep level and they still go through annual refresher training to this day. They'll never pass up an opportunity to learn how to manage a crisis.

Meanwhile, a dazed and unsteady Black along with Green and Yellow made their way to the Sun Wukong showcase. Yellow was wearing a long flowing transparent silk dress with a bejewelled veil - attention grabbing, revealing and concealing all at once. That was her own form of compromise with a space so full of vision that she was not yet fully a part of, but already her mind was turning towards the words 'next year'.

Yellow!

"Burn, my swords," said Yellow as she sent her blades into the fire.

There is no more chance for her than Kitsuro had against the wasting sickness. Death was inevitable before she even stepped onto this battlefield. Even so she can't hold back a shiver of fear as she sees Euna Kim start to move. This is a warrior so peerless that she aches to give away her secret techniques in the hopes of creating a peer. Snake had been built for macroengineering, but Nova was being rebuilt for glorious battle. She had accepted this destiny of endless battle - she had chosen it - but despite her destiny of defeat she yearned for the win.

Blades clashed.

Euna is all colours in a single prism. When Pink engages as a shielding angel, Euna is Red - chaos, strength, powering through blocks and making limited, bruising strikes to knees and hands. When Green engages with cunning and power, Euna is White - durability, discipline, accepting a heavy blow without flinching so she can power everything into the counterattack. When Cinders capitalizes on the opportunity, exactly on the cue of her perfect instincts, Euna is Blue - fundamental technique, basic blocks and strikes, done better and faster than Cinders can match. The clash of blades breaks and the combatants whirl away. Without a second's hesitation Euna falls into her next stance, colours realigning into new patterns. She has time to smile an encouraging little smile. She's pleased, in that condescending way of a mistress who thinks her students might get there some day. But now it's time to show them what they'll need to do to get there.

She catches Green's leg in the air, mid-jump kick. She spins her, turning her momentum into a whirling throw that carries her out into the foam pit outside the ring. She catches Pink's deflecting hand, twists and sweeps, putting her face into the ground and arm into an extended joint lock. She uses her spare hand to deflect a series of kicks and strikes from Cinders before tucking, rolling, pulling Pink on top of her and then extending both legs to launch Pink out of the ring and propel herself into a somersault that brings her back to her feet in the same motion. It takes several more minutes to bring down Cinders, who fights like the weight of destiny is upon her, but in the end she too goes over the side. She'd made it look close for a moment.

Yellow had broken all three blades without putting a cut on Euna Kim. Euna looks over at Yellow with concern and curiosity, already starting to come down from the high. She knew Yellow avoided touch so she didn't know if that meant the fight was over -

The lights go out.

Euna drops to the floor as the lasers slash overhead.

Yellow stands tall, arms spread, eyes and limb joints glowing in the dark as the gym's laser line array activates. The lines slash and arc and Euna is already moving. They cut and wind in accordance with Yellow's pattern and Euna moves through the gaps in it. Her movements are unreal. Through unbelievable precision and practice Euna can outpace light itself. She whirls and weaves, untouched, untouchable.

And therein lay her flaw.

Yellow had not burned her swords aimlessly. She had done it to coax Euna into this mood, this mindset. The perfect, sublime sense of focus that let her outrun light itself. The genius that let her master an unfamiliar laser pattern, to see the shape of the forest even inside the trees. She was one with her artificial limbs; the card of the Chariot in its most glorious manifestation.

But Yellow was The World.

And there were two forests.

Euna freezes on the edge of the arena, teetering on the brink, boxed in by the lasers. The lights emanate from behind Yellow like a halo, leaving nothing between Euna, the pit and the wall. They bind her pose in place like ribbons.

"This is your flaw, mistress," said Yellow sweetly, walking close to stand a breath behind the cage of laser lights. The secret sword beams hold still, one of them running right under Euna's chin, so close the sweat drop forming there almost touches it. "Your pursuit of perfection. These lasers are meaningless as far as the battle with me is concerned, you could reach through them and end this battle right now. But instead you could test yourself against my pattern, even though its shape takes you outside of the arena. The second path is far harder, without thanks or glory, and condemns you to a destiny of defeat the moment you take your very first step along it. And yet, don't you yearn to test yourself against it even so? Doesn't your heart tell you that losing to my secret sword is worthwhile so long as you at least get to fight it?"