Balmas

Breathless Dead

Her teachers would be furious. Idiotic, foolish, silly girl, to spend so much time and effort on someone who… Was she real? Did she exist? Does she exist, still, somewhere else, scrambling and recovering and checking for tigers? Silly, to work so hard and risk so much for someone who--

It's like, she doesn't even know that Composite actually is a Dyssia? If the philosophers are right?

But she can't bring herself to feel silly for it. Can't, won't, internalize that she should stop fighting, even if it's just to save herself.

(And isn't that a telling phrasing, her inner thought-checker remarks. So much easier to keep going to save someone else than it is to rest for your own good.)

Composite is out there, her gut insists. Alive because of her.

And it's like--the philosophers can't be right, right? Because she's pretty damn sure that this would be a firm memory in her own mind. Unless it's been a super-long lifetime, which, you know, could in theory happen? Not exactly likely, given the trajectory her life is taking--criminals and traitors tend to either win or have much, much shorter lives than normal--which could be a good sign? If she has a lifespan long enough to forget about this encounter, either it means that the rest of her life is so much worse than this that it wipes this encounter out of her mind, or it means that they win.

Um. Derailed train of thought. Right the cars, reassemble the rails.

Philosophers are wrong, she's almost sure of it. Can't be certain, not 100%, not without asking Mosaic to--do you think she'd--no, no, she's busy, can't grab the sword, she'd--

She starts to shoo away the shieldbearer. Can't you see she's busy, she's occuppied, she needs to help, needs a spear, give her your spear, needs to help, and--

Carefully, Dyssia fishes the knot of ribbon out of the corner of her cheek, and does her best to unfold it, wring the moisture out of it, irons out the wrinkles between her palms.

She made a promise.

Oh, she knows what the promise meant. Knows that returning the ribbon doesn't mean she didn't break her promise. Knows she deliberately broke her word and, yeah, maybe turned the right, but still.

Wants to fight. Wants to advance on the spotlight, paint her regret, paint her apology over the scene, write how much she wants to help in the sky.

But the actual apology--more than helping, more than words, more than giving back a ribbon here and now--has to start with action. She broke her word. Mosaic, she's going to start by keeping it now, making sure she gets home safe, and trusting you to come back to her so she can give you her ribbon back.

And, she thinks as she ducks under the shield, maybe things might be alright in the end.

Breathless Dead

How would she cook an Azura?

It's a terrible thought to have at a moment like this, says the little bit behind the eyes that watches the other thoughts, that thinks about how she thinks, that banks the anger for later, saves it up.

Probably slow cooking. Big animal, tons of fat. Roast, spit over a fire. Break down the meat, melt the fat into flavor.

Idle thoughts. Pointless. A distraction. Shouldn't be thinking of eating, being eaten. Wouldn't want someone thinking of how to cook her. Hopes her other self isn't thinking the same thing. Hopes her other self is better than her.

Honestly, yeah, that is the hope. Because she knows that if it came down to her or herself, she--god, this terminology is confusing--if the only way she, Dyssia Prime, could survive was by shoving Dyssia Composite into a meatgrinder of teeth then… Well, she's hoping that Dyssia Composite is as good or better than she is, because Dyssia Prime would rather keep her clone alive.

Dumb. She knows it's dumb. It's gonna get her called naïve. There's no guaranteed that Dyssia Composite would even stick around, or help her friends. Shoving her to her death means she survives, means she gets to make it back to her friends, means she can help so many more people. One person, in exchange for all of that.

Is that what her clone is thinking too? The twitch in the back, that clench of muscles--are they bunched in preparation for the shove?

A ribbon drifts into the pit.

It's a false dichotomy. Kill or be killed. Feed or be fed on. A false choice. It's there, she acknowledges what it says about her, can admit what she would have done had she had to make it, but it's not the only option.

It's not her ribbon, though. She can still feel it clenched into the corner of her mouth, a knot of torn, burnt scrap, solid like an anchor between her teeth.

A second. A third, drifting through the smoke and darkness like a piece of meandering dawn. Like a messager bearing news to a besieged castle.

It's a gamble, is what it is. Is her clone thinking what she's thinking?

There's no time to verify.

She's big, is the thing. The tigers are bigger, yes. More powerful, yes. Faster? She's fat by Azura standards, yes, but that's plush wrapped around a twenty-foot core of whipcord muscle. Bunch the tail, whip it around, and the tip might as well be a hammer in its own right.

She grabs her clone by the wrist, and slithers over the stunned body of one tiger, rushes to the wall.

There's no way for one person to get out of this pit. You could boost someone else out, yes, lift and stand.

But then you'd be at their mercy, and at the mercy of however many tigers are left. You'd need to hope they turn around, offer a rope or an arm or a tail, something to lift you out as well. Hope they don't do the calculus and come to a more sensible conclusion.

Wordlessly, she points to the lip, and offers a step up to her Composite. She'll take that bet, no matter how her heart jumps in her chest, or how it takes a second to restart when her Composite bends to pull her out.

[Get Away, 5, 3, +2. Get there quickly and without harm, while bringing Dyssia Composite with her.]

Breathless Dead

The stories never talk about this, you know?

Or, you know, they do, but they never actually get across get across just how much solid projectile weapons suck. Never go into the blinding, the choking,

Otherwise, wow, right? Topless, with your own clone, in a pit which in ideal circumstances would be full of mud? Exactly the kind of situation that would make you consider how pro-clone-fucking exactly you are if you weren't, for instance, flat on your face and glad that the arena isn't[ full of mud?

Missed trick there, Tilly, very sloppy.

Growling. At least two. Four? Hard to tell with the tears choking her eyes, the smoke choking her lungs. Stripes through the fog, which shouldn't blend in but also mean she can't accurately latch onto a shape?

She locks eyes with her ghost-clone, communication through expression and flicked eyes. Or, you know, tries, inasmuch as both are pretty much face-down in the not-mud, exhausted. There are benefits to self-knowledge, you know? No need to talk to each other, because if she's thinking it, then she's also thinking it.

Either one of them would be toast right now on their own. Weak, tired, choked, easy prey. But two together can support each other--back to back, as much to cover blindspots as it is to hold each other up, occasionally wobbling as one or the other lashes out with a tail against an encroaching set of teeth and claw.

See that, Tilly? See how stupid your sword is? See what trust does? Eat shit.

And maybe one of the two of her will figure out a lasting solution in time to keep them from being eaten by tigers.

Breathless Dead

Kumquat. It's the safeword, chosen primarily for the fun way it sounds, but also because she's never actually used that fruit. Shout it out loud, and--

Well, she likes to think that would work for her. The other her is panicking, unsure, and the safeword cuts through the insecurity and replaces it with "someone is in trouble, go help them."

But there's no guarantee that one word, out of hundreds of thousands, is gonna be their safeword. Could be they like a different fruit, or use kumquat for BDSM somehow.

"You know, they only make these solid projectile rounds in one facility nearby?"

But any version of her the underworld can produce--any version of her that's enough her to be considered as truly her--is going to be distractible.

Or, you know, that's unkind. If you come at her with a weird enough fact, it's gonna derail any mental train of thought. Like, for instance, the fuck, what, where am I. Catch her interest, promise something interesting, keep talking, keep her attention focused on the new thing.

Come, friend, don't you want to listen to an infodump, and maybe be listened to in return?

Breathless Dead

Hmm. Hrm. Well, shit.

D'you know, it's a terrible thing to learn that you've wasted your childhood? She grew up in what she realizes now was the lap of privilege--of, if not spectacular wealth, then at least the ability to pursue whatever passions she liked, enabled by the labor of dozens of deliberately unseen servitors.

And not once--not once!--did she think to build a doom arena.

Did Tilly build that specially for her, d'you think, or is she the kind of Azura who just keeps a doom arena on standby in the throne room? She wants to think it's the first so bad, but…

Okay, so, obviously, this is bad. Not as bad as it would be if, you know, hemhm, Tilly got a taste of her own medicine, and that's going to happen if she has anything to say about it, but…

Underworld ghosts, huh?

At least, according to philosophers. Who aren't scientists, but also are scientists really the ones to tell what a thing are, or how they work or--

I mean, it'd be great to hear what the scientists have to say about it, because she's not exactly thrilled at the implications of summoning your future ghost?

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the philosophers are right, and that they're summoning the ghost of who you become in the underworld. So, how does that work? How does the underworld know what you become? Is there just some ideal proto--posto? Posthumo?--Dyssia that lives forever in the underworld? If so, it's gonna get pretty boring to summon the same her forever, especially since either they know the outcome the first time, or they just keep summoning her until time and exhaustion change it for them.

But on the other hand, how fine is the resolution on when the change happens? Does it change second to second? If she's thinking something different, does it change the outcome?

The good news is, it seems she's gonna get a chance to actually study the outcome of multiple exposures.

Shit. And also yay!

Does she get a sword? Come on, give her a sword.

No?

Fuckin' assholes, the lot of you.

Breathless Dead

Fuck, Tilly is Droning.

Which is not, you know, a commentary on delivery? It's not that she's monotone or dull or whatever. She's got passion, she's animated.

It's just that Droning, capital D, isn't actually about communication?

It's about posturing, performing, being seen to speak, while not actually delivering anything worth listening to. It's something you do for the benefit of someone other than the person you're talking with?

It's like Berating, which can be done in a kind, calm level voice, in that the goal isn't for two people to accurately convey what went wrong where and how to keep it from happening again. It's about making the berater feel powerful and the beratee feel small. You done fucked up, Dyssia, and now whoever's doing the berating is going to go in circles about how.

Honestly, she'd feel worse about getting good at pretending to listen if it wasn't all the same horseshit, over and over. Nod appreciatively/contritely/scornfully as appropriate--which in this case is, you know, not at all, she's a prisoner, not a sap--put a tiny portion of brain towards flagging anything different enough to be important, and wow, would you look at that, suddenly you have a skull empty and ready to pore over something actually important.

Like, for instance, would her doppleganger be better than her?

No, no, of course not. More boring, in any of a hundred ways, first off, which is ultimately the single worst thing you can be. And there's no way she'd be able to wander in here and stare down her nose at an entire court if she didn't honestly believe she was the best for the job. Suck it, all y'all, you're wrong, and there's no version of her that could do it like her.

Do it differently, though…

She has to know how it works, right? Before she can figure out other uses, she needs to know how to works. Tilly's using it as a weapon, because she's an asshole with no vision. Summon--duplicate? No, no, can't be duplicate, or else everyone there would know who's who, right? Summon? Where from? Who from? For how long? Do they stay summoned? What's the cost to stay summoned?

How many times can you summon dopplegangers? What's the limit? Is it only living--no, no, the entire point of mining beri was to get more crystals, right? One planet is known to have the crystals needed. Mine it infinitely, infinite crystals, suddenly you can duplicate more planets.

More importantly, you can duplicate people. Empty cities fill up. Empty armies fill up. Ceronians replicate by cloning, right? How many times can they clone? Enough times to overcome infinity? Is that the plan? It can't be, right? Ceronians are the top, you don’t overcome that by just--

Infinite, neverending duplicates. Neverending waves of not just biomantic beetles, but Azura warriors. Maybe? No, no, that doesn’t square.

What would happen if you struck a god with it? No matter who won--and there's no guarantee that you wouldn't just get one, incredibly pissed god in front of you--you'd lose.

…What would happen if she summoned another of herself? It immediately strikes her as a terrible idea--last time she engaged with the tools of the oppressor, she wound up verbally flipping off a god--and more than that, she doesn't actually know how it works. Or how to turn it on. Or how it's powered. It's an esoteric, it can't be as simple as, you know, flipping a switch on the handle, right?

… How had Tilly activated it, again?

[Look Closely: 1, 6, +2. [9]
Tell me about the crystal technology. How could it hurt me? How could it help me?
What will happen if Dyssia duplicates herself?
What's Tilly up to? What are they doing? What will they do next?

Breathless Dead

See that? See that right there?

Drawing a sword is supposed to mean something. It's supposed to be intimate, personal, a sign of who you are. This is the point where the heroine and the villain have their closest heart to heart, separated by the merest thinness of a blade.

And, well…

Well. Dyssia's having difficulty expressing her disappointment. It's the confidence, right? That confidence, that self-assurance, that certainty that the world is exactly as you see it, is just missing? Or, or, or warped or something?

"And then, of course, the Azure Skies will rise again. If everyone pitches in and hauls together now and gives up everything that's worth a damn, this will be the solution that biomancy never could be. You know, just like how biomancy was the solution that electric intelligences never could be!"

She should be--well, not dead, not actually dead as such. But she should be on the floor, being dogpiled by whoever, not able to wander up to the throne, heap some coils on the armrest and stare into the Knight's eyes.

"And of course, it means that you can genocide the slaves at your convenience. What's the point in keeping them around, right? We have crystal technology now! This is the solution to all of our problems, get rid of them!

"And, bonus, it means you never have to face them for what you did!"

Pressing herself to the sword tip is also suicidal, frankly. Madness, to press yourself against that tip, as if to invite the blow. A pinprick, just barely enough to draw blood, a fraction of an inch from harm. One madman, staring into the eyes of another, and daring them to be the first to press back.

"But it never works out like that, does it, Tilly? Infinite materials, infinite wealth, infinite dragons, and all you've done is change the shape of the hands holding it. Who's going to mine it? Why, slaves! Who's going to care for the Azura while they wield the infinite wealth? Slaves! Who's going to fight the battles? Would you credit it, it's gonna be slaves!

"Congratulations. You've uncovered a new technology that can never make slavery obsolete, because it's baked into the Azure Skies at bone level. Slavery for Azura and servitor alike, Tilly. You'll never get away from it."

Breathless Dead

"You just don't get it, do you?"

And her dom game is weak as shit, d'you see that? Rattled. Frustrated. No use of the harness to physically impose presence, responding to the barbs. Any basic brat could see what buttons to push to play her like a piano.

Honestly, a little frustrating? Like, you never meet a person, but you hear stories about them, build up this mental image, and then they turn out to be just some asshole. No style at all.

"The Skies are over. We lost. We were glorious and powerful and vain and so, so proud that we could not see the gods abandoning us until it was too late.

"We live in a desiccated corpse, surrounded by the evidence of what we were, and tell ourselves that this is just a temporary setback. We can recover from this--build back up, reclaim the galaxy, end the Ceronian threat, make the Azura Skies great again."

Also frustrating? Hands being tied means no gesticulation means half the message isn't being sent. How do you expect her to talk without her hands? She's doing her best with voice alone, right? Letting scorn and--oh, this'll piss her off no end--pity drip from every syllable.

"Happiness is cheap, Tilly." And oh, the flash of annoyance at the nickname is too sweet. "So's dopamine. I wanted that, I coulda had them without leaving home."

Or, you know, more accurately: coulda let them decommission the Pix and come home. Or could have turned back at any point before this. Kind of getting past the point of no return, frankly, and also kind of past the point where some Publica members would back her? But that's… probably okay, she thinks.

"Don't you get it? The gods abandoned us because we kept servitors as slaves. We fell because we made thinking, breathing people--people that the gods recognize as equals to us!--and robbed them of the choice of what makes them happy. Act as if us telling them, making them, molding them to be happy in a specific way, making them happy when they're useful to use, somehow makes them less our slaves for that.

"Happiness? Happiness? The fuck is happiness worth when your entire race can be wiped out of existence for being inconvenient? What does happiness even mean when it's programmed in at bone level? We can make them as happy as clams, set them adrift on a planet somewhere to be deliriously happy, and we'll still have robbed them of that choice as thoroughly as if we'd stuck to whips and collars."

Note to self: no matter her taste in rope, never try to find out what kind of whips Tilly keeps in the nightstand. Barbed, probably.

"You idiots look at an empire shattered by the gods for keeping slaves, an empire defeated at its prime, and say, 'well what we really need, see, is to be better at the cruelty and slavery. That'll fix things.' Fucking ridiculous."

Breathless Dead

Did they really have to take her gravrail?

Well. Yeah, okay, yeah, they did. Deadly weapon, utility. They'd have to be idiots to see a space wizard bending time and reality to her whim, fight another Knight to a standstill with it, and then not take it off her. She'd have done the same, if positions were reversed.

But it means that she's stuck. On the ground. On her own power, instead of slipping gently wherever she wants to go.

Honestly, the ropes are just adding… Well, the saying is insult to injury, except she's not even that badly hurt? And it's not insulting? And let's be honest, they're nice ropes! Ropes like you don't actually expect a person like the Crystal Knight to have? Silken to the touch, but somehow with the exact right level of grab to make the knots inescapable?

Like, if this whole situation weren't awful, it'd kind of be hot? A scene out of one of the better class of stories. The defiant heroine, clothes in tatters, top hanging out, bound in ropes, presented before the vile villain, for--

Hmm. Vile villain. Satisfying mouthfeel, good alliteration. Defiant heroine doesn't work as well. Hard headed? Headstrong? Insubordinate? No, no, implies subordinate in the first place, which isn't true, and--aha!

The Dissident Dyssia, versus the Vile Villain, the Nasty Knight!

In the books, it'd be a scene of sexual tension, a will-they-won't-they, an enemies-to-possibly-lovers, a place for a villain to saunter over and raise the heroine's chin with a swordblade.

But in real life, that would require the heroine to be kneeling with a bowed chin, instead of staring at the Crystal Knight with undisguised loathing.

"Love what you've done with the place. The holes in the ship have really given it a pleasant open air feel, and the bits of town bring it back to earth. A+, five stars."

Breathless Dead

Pause a second to mourn the death of the engine's electric-guitar whine. Sit with Dyssia in the cockpit as the world spins lazily outside it like the thoughts in her head.

Intellectually, the plover isn't dead, just not powered, and it's been less than half an hour since she clapped eyes on it, but Dyssia is--

Well, she bonds fast, doesn't she? You did good, little plover, and you're gonna get a name after this. Something cat-themed. Would that be offensive to the kitties on board? Not a lion or whatever kind of cat Mosaic is. Something sleek and prowling, all underbrush and treetops and sudden teeth in your throat.

So, not captured. Pretty cool outcome, all things considered. And in an unpowered plover--what's a good cat name? she can't just call it Tiger, can she? Adjective-noun? Noun-possessive? Tiger's Roar? Do tigers roar? Tigerclaw?--she's basically anonymous. A bit of space debris, to be ignored and swept up after the battle or, more likely, abandoned if inconvenient.

That means she can, if needed, figure out the new rules of the puzzle. She has time, that most blessed resource, to think and plan.

It also means that, the second she sheds the Tiger's Fang,--mmm, no, not right, too aggressive, too typical, something florid? Descriptive?--the second she sheds the plover, she's the center of attention. A Knight, surrounded, bereft of legions? A feather in someone's cap, to be sure. And let's be honest, a threat too large to be ignored.

So that just means she needs to jump out at the best time to--

She scrambles, presses her face against the cockpit glass, confirms what she'd barely glimpsed as the cockpit spun past. Hits the emergency explosives on the cockpit, pushes the plate of glass out, bellows a warcry from the top of the Electric Tiger, draws all attention to herself.

Here she is! A knight of the Publica, a beacon of sparking red against the rainbow of the night, grav-rail spinning up to whip a dead plover through a clump of enemy like skittles. Hear her! Fight her!

Pay no attention to the dead plover, spinning its way towards your reactor!

[Keep Them Busy: 2,3,+1. [6]]