"Ah? The fashion show. I see."

Unexp... well, no. Quite expected, actually. A large part of the motivation to suffer through all of the networking and politicking to put her work in the show in the first place was the promise that "anyone who's anyone" would be there. And since by definition everyone alive today was in fact someone (fully synonymous with anyone she was certain, the vagaries of human linguistics notwithstanding), it stood to reason that everyone would, in fact, be present. Which naturally included the very lovely Valentina de Alcard.

Nevertheless, problematic. Mayze Szerpaws was meant to be in attendance, to give a talk over newest designs even, which implied that Mira of the Fisher Clan, whose star name is Whispered Promise could and would not be. In actual fact, a disaster. Mayze's presence was absolutely essential to the continuing and advancement of the work. To reveal the nature of the dual identity would be to completely erode the point of establishing the identity in the first place. So much effort, absolutely wasted. Untenable. A disaster of myriad proportions.

And yet.

The Gods-Smiting Whip lifts slightly and its cockpit unfolds in a theatrical but wholly unnecessary burst of steam. Its uninjured arm reaches into its chest and plucks its pilot delicately out. It raises Mirror on its outstretched palm toward the Lonely Star's face, where Valentina's perception would be the clearest.

Her hair falls like a snowy avalanche behind her. Her jumpsuit has been strategically slashed full of holes across her arms, chest, and legs to bare her most striking fur patterns. The clingy material shows all much of her as it hides, maybe even more. Her signature watery eyes dance with delight as she flashes a flirtatious grin and dips into a graceful bow.

"It would be my pleasure, sweet maiden. Let the models dance how they will; we two will shine the brightest of any stars in the sky. A date, then! You don't yet know what you've purchased with your prowess and your beauty, but you will. I promise you, my darling. I will leave you burning hot enough to forge a new pathway between our worlds."

Her smile widens, flashing dangerous and pearly teeth, and Mirror backflips onto Nine-Tails' arm before she scrambles boldly up onto its shoulder. There were things in life worth risking the world for, and one of them was a woman's sighs. Her screams, mmmm, those were worth even more on the right night. The work was exhausting; play must go twice as hard to cover the difference. Besides, this was a wonderful opportunity to test her macros. She lands lightly on her mecha's shoulder and tosses a tiny wave backwards as she starts to fly away.

"Your evening may not go the way you are envisioning, Valentina de Alcard. But if you're a good girl and play along with what I have in mind, that might not be a bad thing at all~"

Seven tail modules form a stairway to the heavens, and Mirror climbs it until she vanishes from all but the most determined cameras in the arena.

After the match

The end of an arena match always involves some cleanup and a chance to calm down and think through what happened. When the fight is done, the pilots need to leave the combat zone. If they can all fly out under their own power, that’s done easily enough. If they can’t, there are smaller ships and tugs to get things out of there and in the worst cases the scrap will become material for the arena itself to reuse in the future.

Many pilots find the flight back a good opportunity to cool down and collect themselves, though plenty also use the time to go over the details, get their AIs working on new tasks, and sometimes simply beat themselves up with their alone time. Sometimes, you have to give your opponent a lift.

One way or another though, what’s left of both combatants needs to get to a hangar so they can rest and depart the planet. The Arena itself, made as an achievement of Zaldarian nanobot manipulation, is ever-shifting but it always leaves room for copious hangar bays in each region. Sometimes they’re hidden via caves and tunnels. Sometimes they’re just below the surface. Sometimes they’ll simply be out in the open in sections of the arena outside of any combat zones. There are always directions to them once a match is over.

However they appear, every hangar is going to smell of metal, grease, and heat from the constant work. Every mecha needs its own dock: a place to refuel its crystal fire drive with dense heavy element fuel that can be converted to energy by way of the strong nuclear force, to repair and recharge its armor and shielding, and to do retrofit work. On top of that, work in the Arena simply cannot be entirely automatic, so every hangar is going to have space for shuttles and courier ships to bring in and rotate crews, attached living space for temporary stays, and storage for all the tools and materials. The result is a constant hum of activity, the merging sound of metal, power, and bustling people creating a general din and liveliness to any Arena hangar.

Once you reach a hangar, there’s the repairs and departure. Services are free, but many pilots are picky and will bring their own mechanics. Besides, modifications are permitted in the time between matches so long as you lock things in and allow your mecha to be inspected the day before the match. Very few pilots stay on the Arena itself for too long. It’s not the best place to sleep and the facilities are minimal. And after a match there is always a night to celebrate or drown your sorrows and then a day to sleep that off.

It should perhaps be noted that day and night are a bit abstract when dealing with the positions of three distinct planets orbiting the same star, but each planet in the Akar system makes an effort to accommodate shared time around the arena matches, so whether it’s light or dark when you come in, there’s time for a party, time to sleep, and time to deal with the physical and mental repairs and preparations needed to enter the next match.

***

The opening night festivities!

Following this season opener, there’s a gala special event on tap for everyone who wants to be seen. La Plataforma is hosting a fashion show on Akar Prime!

La Plataforma, originally founded in the Terenius Secundus system, is one of the largest fashion magazines in the galaxy. They distribute reviews, pictures, patterns, and juicy gossip on the latest trends and trendsetters throughout the known systems and they’ve recently expanded from TC space into both Hybrasilian and Zaldarian space with minimal objection. Couriers run their neural meshes from planet to planet, and you can also get files for both biological species and AI assemblers to make their patterns or just view their catalog of the latest styles in any form you can manage: high or low tech.

They’ve calculated that the combination of huge crowds for the matches, potential buyers from across the civilizations, and the chance to attract the pilots to sponsor designer clothing lines makes hosting a fashion show during the Arena season a winning move here. If they’re lucky, a popular pilot will maybe even appear in one of the fashions in the next match, causing it to really take off and cementing La Plataforma themselves as the trendsetting visionaries of the known galaxy.

So they’ve made a big deal of it. A really big deal. The kind of big deal that involves renting out most of a city block of some of the most populous and desirable real estate in the galaxy. The kind of big deal that means throwing out news of this thing on holovids for the past month, doing a cross-promotion with the Akar Prime travel bureau to put up adds in the arrival hangers for the planet and in all the civilian shuttles, and putting up actual, honest to gosh physical banners about this thing all around the spaceport. People will be singing the jingle for the fashion show ads for decades.

The core of the production is being hosted at the Jungle. They’ve rented out the entire building both bar and rec center, and brought in their own crew to clear out the recreation area to act as a huge dressing room and runway, while the bar serves as a viewing area (and also still a bar, making for a lively crowd!). The stage is set up on the far side of the building from the door in a kind of T-shape with the models able to line up on the long section of the stage while the thinner runway ramp is still wide enough for several people to be coming and going at the same time in a constant rotation. The whole thing is raised up over ten feet with every kind of lighting you could imagine.

Rather than try to fight the aesthetic, they’ve gone all in on the Jungle’s Hybrasilian theming: the stage is decorated along its base and lower walls with curling wide-leafed ferns. The center walkway and main stage are open, but the leaves wind their way up the sides of each wall and curl in towards participants on the ends. Vines dangle from the ceiling and the lighting has been cunningly done to mix in with the vines to create a diffuse glow from above along with the usual spotlighting, giving the whole space an ethereal air to it with only the stage itself clearly lit so everyone can see the clothes.

Partially concealed in the area to the left of the stage is a lower and smaller stage setup for the DJ and sound techs. The Jungle’s regular DJ apparently was good enough to be hired for this and she’s got a Hybrasilian fast beat girl group playing for the guests even before the models are going to get everyone ready for the final setup. In front of them is the VIP area for the photographers to make sure they can get all the appropriate close up shots.

The bar itself hasn’t moved, but the tables and chairs have been cleared out and put into storage so that the entrance is a huge open room where people can mix and congregate. Wait staff offer champagne and wine, while the bar has bottles with liquor in every imaginable shape and color, some even gleaming and sparkling in the ethereal light. The only furniture items are a few covertly placed drink drop-offs around the sides of the room and a small section of chairs set up to the front right side of the stage reserved to account for elderly or infirm guests who wanted to attend.

But wait, there’s still more! The upstairs section above the stage has been opened up and turned into a two tier balcony viewing area with yet another set of photographers, VIP guests, and its own bar specially set up for the space. Stepping away from the balcony railings offers a space with standing tables lit by deep purple uplights to allow for people to relax, chat, and step away from the glamor for a moment into the shadows.

Not content with this full out building setup, there are also two overflow rooms in the building next door and cameras are set up to locally broadcast the whole event. The overflow rooms are getting a perfect 3d recreation in real time, while everybody else is getting whatever their home setup allows for. When this is done, neural meshes of the event and impressions from the top critics will be shipped out of the system and across the galaxy.

Outside the buildings, guests are lined up on the street and the area is full of life, light and noise from all the traffic. A route has been set up for small shuttles to ferry people directly to the venue as well via a second-story entrance. The smell of sizzling street food fills the air as local vendors have set up at the entrances to the block just away from the lines and they’re making a variety of barbecue buns (meat and veggies of all types and all constitutions) known to be an Akar prime specialty.

As for the show itself, well, it will be a party through the evening. The first hour is specially reserved for up and coming designers who entered a La Plataforma contest to have their work shown. Models are being provided for the young up and comers for free from the more established houses, and this offers an opportunity for several rising new artists to show off their clothing lines. Styles were selected on the theme of “shatter the norm!” so the expectations are for the outlandish and wild to start things out.

For the second hour, multiple major designers are premiering new lines tonight. Three major TC fashion houses are present to offer contrasting perspectives from the most populous region of the galaxy. One from TC Prime that specializes in ball gowns, one from Shiki that emphasizes more elegant and old-fashioned dresses for both afternoons and evenings, and one from Styx showing off a modern witch style that emphasizes long sleeves with form-fitted bodies. One of the Zaldarian hold artisans from nearby Marinus will be showing a new line of sleek body-fitted designs with nanobot shifting technology that allows for constant pattern adjustment in response to light and movement. These are meant to contrast with the more old-fashioned Zaldarian hold style, which emphasized longer robes with lots of fabric as a sign of wealth and nanobot control. Finally, it’s rumored that the final line premiering will be something new from the elusive designer Mayze Szerpaws.

When the whole thing is all done, the designers and the models will join the party still wearing various outfits from the show to allow for discussion, questions, closer inspection, and general festivities, and finally sometime late at night after everyone is satisfyingly drunk, they will all go home and pass out while the techs work feverishly until morning to get the whole experience imprinted onto neural mesh templates for distribution.

***

Mirror

Valentina De Alcard has dressed to kill for the night. Despite her tiny mecha, she’s not a tiny woman by any means. While not a giant either, she is a sturdy five foot five (seven in her heels), made longer by a long neck accented by sparkling diamonds and absolutely nothing else. Her black hair is up in a thick styled bun, and her dress is shoulderless, revealing the two-tier rows of diamonds upon her olive neck and bare skin down to her half-revealed breasts. The dress itself is a purple lavender that’s lighter at the top and darkening going down to its pleated base. The upper rim is bordered in black, outlining her breasts and the curve of her back, and the bottom darkens almost to midnight to match her high-heeled black leather boots.

You’d think she’d be throwing her weight around with a look like this, but she’s aimed for a look of reserved and dignified poise to start the evening and is giving you deference despite you being the tiny catgirl in this situation.

How are you appearing for the evening?

***

Dolly

“Ai! There you are!” shouts an irate Angela Victoria Miera Antonius. She’s found you in the shadows of the upper balcony, among several other Hybrasilians who love the plants and the perch. You got a VIP pass of course, given your premier match and you actually need to be hiding a bit from the solicitations to accept free clothing. But Angela came and found you through it all.

She’s wearing a fancier dress than her mecha might have offered. Long and black with a train down past her legs and a low cut neck that accentuates her height. It’s sewn with thread that sparkles and glitters in the dim light as she moves, and her hair too has been worked with glitter and is down and loose around her glasses, so that each step she takes it’s like a rainbow playing across her.

But now she steps quickly and with purpose, pulling a thin neurofiber from her gold-trimmed handbag and thrusting it in your face, close enough that you can start to see the words imprinted within it. Goddess Gags Haughty Heiress and oof, you know that one’s gotta sting even without her thrusting it in your face with knuckles that look like they’d be just as at home at a boxing ring as they would with that delicate handbag.

“What’s the meaning of this, huh? You put on an act to embarrass me? You hold back and you flaunt and you rip up my mecha, and and AND you make fun of the name, huh? You think you can get away with this? Tell me your game, Dolly Hunters!” She drags your name out too, like she’s not even sure if that’s part of the trick or not.

You’re in trouble.

***

Isabelle

You’re at the show with an entourage. Everybody wants to be seen with you, all the designers want to hire you, the photographers want to shoot you. But you’ve also got the VIP treatment. People are here to fetch you drinks and make sure they never run dry. You’ve got your pick of tables, food, and conversation before the show. You can talk to nearly anyone in the room (save the mysterious Serpaws, who makes her own mind subject to no one’s fame.).

This life is an odd sort of freedom and jail all together. You have nearly complete freedom of choice, but every choice you make is subject to attention, to judgment, to fandom. What’s it like? What’s your choice for the show? Do you hold yourself aloof, or show favor to the designers? Do you pick a favorite? Do you take gifts or spurn them? Tell us all about yourself.

***

Solarel

A hot meal and a long rest might have sounded good at the end of your match, but you're in a land of wonders and mysteries everywhere and tonight there's a bigger one at the Jungle than anywhere else to be found. You've pulled yourself to the bar and the wait staff are being careful (Zaldarians may be recent on the galactic stage, but they've had a few years to practice their agility and get used to the requirements).

You've barely had a chance to take in the sights and sip your first drink when a thick, heavyset tiger of a cat walks up to you and punches you square in the chest. "That's how your people do greetings, right?" She grins her cat grin, secure in the knowledge that she cannot possibly be punished for her crimes.

Ah, the city of the gods!

There are certain concepts that simply have not had the time to soak into Solarel's consciousness, and one of which is the concept of civilization. Her life is one of wilderness, of giants, of the void. It is a mythic place of gods and spirits and war. The tribe, the warband, close kin are the true family, the only ones who you might speak aloud to. Conversations built over shared experience in the aftermath of gods and battle, love unrestrained as deserving of comrades against the world.

And now this! A shining place of lights and colour and fabric and miracle! She compares it to the palace of the Empress of Zaldar. She was blinded then and she is blinded now. Already in her hand she's holding a Daral Box - a little holographic container containing a stupendously complex, and mostly pointless, mathematical problem. To a Zaldarian it's an intoxicant akin to alcohol - a certain amount of her cybernetic mind has shut off in order to contemplate it, resulting in an enchanting feeling of being productive, being useful. Buzzed from Daral it's easy to appreciate yourself, to justify treating yourself to further luxuries, to lie in the sun and contemplate as warmth creeps in at the perfect pace for discharge.

She's looking for Mirror. The second the Bezorel had landed she'd already been downloading the recording of her fight. She was holding that display in her left hand, the Daral in the right, mind blissfully buzzing as she contemplates equation and appreciates the flick and slash of machine tails. Part of her kicks herself - Mirror had drawn the fight out to test even more functions, while she had ended it as fast as possible with a trick that wouldn't work a second time. She could already feel the crack of the God-Smiting Whip against her armoured plating, her focusing mirrors shattering from a distance, her speed insufficient to keep up...

And then she was on her butt.

She'd been punched unexpectedly, both of her drugs dropped and scattered on the floor. Flat footed and dazzled she'd lost her footing and gone straight down onto the ground, breathing in through a lungful of fire. She looked up at her opponent, then started snapping her fingers in memory.

You, she signed, getting her bearings a little. Oh! I know you! she let her eyes trace down her body - with interruptions - before settling on her calves. How's the leg?

You don't forget a shot like that. Five kilometers through an asteroid field, timed just so to catch her opponent's god in the leg as it accelerated to max speed. She'd spun out of control and smashed through half a dozen asteroids before coming to a halt. Fully synchronized, a hit like that carried a phantom hurt that took months to shake off.

Her intention in asking was genuinely empathic. She hoped that it had healed right! But since she was communicating through sign language and smiling and making biiiiiiig eye-contact it might have inadvertently come across as mocking.

[Wicked Past: This catgirl is someone I defeated and humiliated during the war. She takes a string on me, and I ask her what are your feelings towards me?. I mark XP from Talons of the Past and we can each define a vulnerability we know about the other.]

"And the cultivar dropped out of fashion in favor of varieties with thicker leaves that had an easier time growing in dark places, which, naturally, but the slight blue-green sheen you get right here on the edges, that's unique to this cultivar, and when the Hybrasilian Seed Archive was founded, we thought that there weren't any more of these around, a hundred-year-old strain gone, until a hobbyist from Vúlacuar found a bag of seeds in his grand-aunt's shed, but it had been water damaged, which is deadly for seeds, so it was a race against time to try and-- huh?"

Dolly blinks like, yes, a barn owl as she's accosted by Angela, mid-gesture at the gorgeous Seastone Fern that they have here, spilling hungrily out of its pot. She takes a step back and bumps into a stool, her tail curling defensively around it as she is accused of, of...? Getting away with something? "Ai! Aiiii mean hello!" Dolly's eyes cross for a moment as she tries to focus on the barrage of accusations and the neurofiber, which has Jade on it and, oh, oh no! Oh no no no no no!

"Oh, hello there, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius," Jade purrs, draping herself over Dolly, hands roving over the dress she'd designed. A nice, tight dress to show off her Dolly's curves, fringed at the collar and shoulders, with a beaded skirt swishing and dangling down her thighs to her knees, disguising the fact that it was dangerously short-- except from the back, where it dipped very low indeed, below her bouncy curls. Impossible to hide that. The use of bright Compass colors in bold arrows was a deliberate Hybrasilian fashion statement, old-fashionedly religious: black, white, red, and blue. Dolly's fur provided the yellow. Her earrings, too, were fringed, with real blue and red feathers. A high priestess for the modern era, a messenger for a goddess, someone who didn't need confidence when she had a goddess pressing up against her bare back. "Fancy seeing you here. Dolly, don't apologize."

"I'mmmmm," Dolly says, before eating the word sorry. "Glad to see you made it!" "Oh, Dolly, she's going to assume you thought she couldn't make it." "I mean, I knew you would! Why wouldn't you?" "Because we trussed her up, Dolly. Remember her squirming on your shoulder? Making such cute noises? Mmmph, mmmph~" "I'm! I mean! I mean! Hi! Sorrrrr." "Shhhhh. No apologizing, remember? Chin up. Shoulders straight. Look her in the eye, and tell her you don't have a game."

"I don't have a game... Angela, Victoria, Miera, Antonius!" "There we go. See? Try to remember the name next time." "I'm just a humble priestess," she says, gesturing downwards at herself. "Really, I'm honored to get to be here alongside the likes of you!" "Flattery. Really, she should be honored. She just doesn't know it yet." "I'm... not thrilled that somebody wrote that!" "Good save. Good girl~" "IIIII, think you did good, no, I really did! It's not your fault you couldn't beat Jade, and haughty heiress is just a dumb headline alliteration. It was fun, and--"

Smokeless Jade Fires flows down Dolly's gloved arm and flicks into the air, resting there at Angela Victoria Miera Antonius's side, putting her chin on the back of one hand. She's mostly like a Hybrasilian, but her tail is huge and brushy and silky; her fur is black, and her cobalt hair is stiff and styled like two wings of a helmet, flanking her goddess mask: a black fox, eyes and ears and upper lip limned with gold. Below it, her teeth are like the fangs of a TC "vampire," or the fangs of a Marshwolf. She lifts her free hand, and Dolly's leash falls neatly into it. She tugs, and Dolly feels her collar stiffen around her neck. "Come on, Dolly. Let me get a good look at her."

"And, really, I mean, as long as we both had fun, I had fun, did you have fun?" "Oh, she definitely had fun. She belongs on her knees right next to you, don't you think? What could be more fun than that?" "Sure, maybe, knees, knees got bruised?" Dolly makes an exaggerated shrug as she starts circling around Angela, trying not to look like she's sweating and flustered. "But you're Angela Miera Victoria-- Victoria Miera Antonius! Aaaaaand!"

More of Jade's hands pull Dolly's hands onto Angela Victoria Miera Antonius's hips as she's in the middle of turning around, and Jade doesn't care that Dolly's stepping on the train. Jade's leaning in close, drinking in the glittering hair, the swell of Angela's hind end, tail wagging. "Mmmhm, mmmhm~! Just like I thought. Good girl, Dolly. Okay, over here, let me get a look on this side before she explodes~" Tug, tug! Swat, swat! Get moving, Dolly!

"And I think that participating in these games is a good form of cultural interaction and exchange between our cultures and I'm sorry about the...!!" "The mark? Mmmm. No. We're not apologizing for that, Dolly. Do you really want her approval more than mine?" Dolly, blinking, shakes her head, tail swishing in flustered agitation, as she ends up right back in front of the Haughty Heiress. "Good girl. Now. Go ahead and be your cute self. Win her over. I know it's tough, but I believe in my Dolly~"

"What I mean to say is... can I make it up to you? I honestly, really don't want you to feel bad. No games. I just had to do the circle thing forrrrrr cultural reasons! You know! A friendship thing! I'm so silly, I didn't think to explain, I'm just, the neurofiber was a lot, and I got all flustered, and! Please? I promise, whatever you think of me, I can try to make it right." She dips into an approximation of a TC curtsy that her beaded skirt was definitely not made for.

Dolly stands there, heart hammering, extremely incredibly aware that she's being stared at by everybody. I'm being a quirky little alien might have a shot at working on Angela, but every single Hybrasilian in the room knows that's definitely not what she was doing, the sleek-furred girl she was talking to about the fern is staring incredulously at her, and Jade is dragging her tongue up her ear, and Jade watch where those hands are going she doesn't need the encouragement, and she wants to melt into the floor but in a way that can definitely be seen through her dress. She puts her gloved hand over her bare one and gives it a little squeeze to steady herself as seconds drag out into subjective years, waiting for Angela, Mierida, Victoria, An..gel...os? Her last name is not Angelos. A...? Aardvark. NO! Anton?! ANTONIUS. And she didn't even need Jade purring it to remember!

[Dolly makes an Entice roll, forced into the role of a manic pixie dream kitten, and barely manages a 7, because she's a little flustered cutiepie.]

The Gods-Smiting Whip looks like a towering monument in the repair dock. Without a pilot or an active power source, the overwhelming impression the swift and fluid mecha gives off is that it was never made to move in the first place. It looms over the team of cats scurrying about its feet like an ancient god long since fallen out of worship. Even in this place that smells of grease and grinding metal, it is easy to imagine it grown over with a tangled growth of vines and flowers after a hundred years of neglect or more. These could be children scrambling and swinging around its limbs, laughing as they sing their working songs. Those mighty tails seem like discarded relics of some old building, maybe nothing more than a passing traveler's garbage littering the forest floor as they lie scattered about the ground with their paint flaking to reveal the dull metal underneath.

You'd have to be an idiot to think this was a machine of war. You'd be a fool to call it a labor of love of a work of art. It is a mess, plain and simple. The vulnerable carcass of a dream that died long, long ago. Nothing more.

"Mm. Bad. Insufficient. Start over."

"You're not serious, boss? I thought we were almost done! You can't even tell there was a hole anymore, and Tail Five is testing at ninety seven percent optimal capacity! For one night's work after all you put her through I'd say that's pretty--"

"Hm? Ah. No, no. Not you. Not... This. Personal project, sorry. Last minute revision, always tricky."

"You ever wonder if maybe the reason your dates always end on fire is because you keep calling them 'personal projects'? You don't make kittens with spears."

"...As if you have any idea how I handle a spear."

"I mean if it's anything like how you handle a welding stick, I don't really need to."

"Slate."

"At least as far as these delicate human flowers go, your technique's rough enough to break them every time you make it past the door. For a Zald I bet you're perfect, but for the sweet little thing you're chasing right now?"

"...Slate."

"Well, really when you're ready to stop messing around, I guess I've seen you with a wrench too. I'd be happy to suffer through a shower if it'd get those fingers of yours inside of me like I'm your precious Nine-Tails~"

"Slate!"

"Oh. Uh, s-sorry boss. I take it too far?"

"Distraction. Leave."

"No I know, I know, I thought we were doing the routine she I just, well, got a little carried away, please say you're not mad!"

Mirror curled her fingers toward the top of hey palm, and held them there until the muscles quivered from the effort. She lifted her arm and wordlessly gestured toward the gate. Slate's calico pattern ears drooped, and she leaped several steps back as if pushed.

"I'm not... fired, am I?"

"Finish on my own."

No more words passed between them. Slate shrank into herself and slunk away toward the safety of the rest of her crew, gathering them up and gliding away in total silence. It was the only way she knew to patch things up. Mirror twitched her tail and pulled her hand along its length to soothe the ruffled fur. It took four passes before it took.

The Gods-Smiting Whip looked just as lifeless as it always did without the crystal fire drive plugged into the conduit at its main tail unit. Just as discarded, forgotten, and incapable of judgment as could be. And yet, the way its head sat tilted like it was, it seemed to Mirror like it had been watching her the entire time. It offered no advice or comfort, not even as she forced open the cockpit and climbed inside.

"...A rough technique. Possible solution. Mayze profiles as aloof and brilliant. Interviews rare and generally exclusive. By design. Easier to maintain. Know all this, of course. Am this. Reviewing facts. Stupid Slate. Regardless. Short leap to... what is the word? Crazy. But, different. Implied intelligence. [Starlight-Kissed]. Eccentric! But a rough technique. Rough."

Without power, the dance of her fingers on the controls was pointless. But she adjusted each switch and stomped the foot pedal with so much force that she could hear the shriek of dying metal and the roar of her spear drinking from the drive of another mecha. To her mind's eye, it looks just like the Lonely Star.

"Cruelty, as an art form. No. Incorrect. The goal is violence. The Huntresses, turned to creation. Understood, commencing audio-only imprint."

Her voice turned sharper and faster after a cough. One false start. Two. She curled her fingers again, and the voice of Mayze Szerpaws filled Mirror's cockpit.

"You were expecting me tonight, weren't you? Poor darlings, maybe next time! But I am here, in a much realer sense than you understand. Pull your eyes to the stage, and gaze upon my latest true form!"

The laughter meant she was doing it right. This would work out after all. Only the ablative plating left; Slate and her team would handle the paint. That left just enough time for Mirror to focus on herself. A perfect date ended one discarded layer at a time. And she never let a date end imperfectly. She crawled out of the Gods-Smiting Whip, and made sure to leave the lights on as she left. Slate would understand, just as soon as she was brave enough to come and check.

******

Her eyes light up when she sees Valentina. Mirror crosses the distance of the room as if gliding on a patch of ice, so smooth her head hardly seems to bob despite how quickly she's moving. Her smile is playful, her tail raised in delight. She bows deeply in imitation of (some semblance of) TC etiquette and takes her date by the wrist as she rises. Her lips brush against the back of that hand, soft as a drop of dew on a lily. Her sandpaper tongue is rougher as she drags it all the way up to the wrist, but her cheek is downy soft again as she touches it where the gesture ends. She tilts her head up to look her date in the face, as tempting as it might be to keep her gaze at her natural level. Her own face wears a look of deep seriousness and concentration bordering on a scowl. Only her eyes are smiling.

She has come dressed modestly, for her. A fitted suit and vest clings to the curves of her body in a deep, monotone burgundy fabric that shimmers in the light of the room but otherwise does nothing to excite the senses. Her body is the only star of the show, and that a tightly covered secret. She flashes no hint of her firm chest, having buttoned herself all the way to the neck, where she's clipped a bright red collar decorated with tiny, dangling golden chains to complete the effect.

At some point she'd cut out the elbows on her sleeves to allow for a tiny flash of her snowy fur patterns, as well as diamond shaped gashes from the top her ribs to the middle of her waist on either side of the vest and jacket. Stuffy. Positively prudish by the standards of her own public record. But there's a certain debonair charm to the way she carries herself just the same.

She's painted her claws pink, lavender, yellow, and white, and drawn a simple glyph under her right eye in red dye: two prominent dots, which in the language of Fisher culture means she is here to win a battle. Depending on the tradition, they might be a window to the soul to expand her consciousness and grant her special prowess in combat, or they might mimic an eye so that something watching her as if through water would be fooled about exactly where she's looking at the moment. Ask he which tradition she belongs to some other time, and if you're lucky enough to do it in a bed with her arms pressed tight around you, she might even answer.

She has not worn heels in an attempt to compensate for her small build. For a Hybrasilian, Mirror is on the taller end of the register at nearly five foot even, and she will not insult her pride by adding height where none exists. Not here, in any case. Indeed, she's come nearly barefoot; her only footwear is a set of black lacquer straps that wrap around her ankles and the soles of her feet, leaving her heel and toes exposed where they can respond to all the subtle curves and scraps of information dotted about the floor of The Jungle. This is the simplest way in any estimation to make yourself into the kind of shadow you have to use your eyes to see. You can only watch, or she'll vanish without a trace.

Her snowy hair is pulled into a strange ponytail made of two wide loops, with another pair of locks kept loose to frame her face on either side. She fidgets with a onyx ring on her left hand, and directs her sight as directly as she can to Valentina's eyes. This, again, is her smile.

"Good evening, dear heart. I should warn you, I'm here working tonight. Sorry I didn't tell you sooner; I couldn't figure out how. I might be stolen from you later in the night, but don't worry about a thing. As beautiful as you are, I very much intend to steal you right back."

Her expression hasn't changed at all, but she takes a single step closer, where Valentina can hear the purr creep into her voice.

"I have to say, I'm curious. I didn't have you marked for a, how do you say it? A fashionist? I don't know much about this sort of thing, are there... artists you are looking forward to tonight?"

Emidio Paz was tired. Very tired. The kind of bone-deep, immune-to-caffeine, brain-turned-to-mud tired that comes from working a 40 hour week before Wednesday is over. Add to that juggling a mortgage, parental expectations and the costs of a small family and it was a wonder he could keep his eyes open at all.

Still, things could be worse. At least he was important enough for the office to pay for his tab - free food and drink were, if not the perfect motivation, at least nice compensation for having to fly all the way out to Akkar Prime on only six hours sleep.

Taking a sip from his glass of stimulants and sugar, he tapped his stylus across the flexipad, jotting down shorthand notes that he'd expand upon later. He didn't need to write the whole piece right now, just get down enough to fix the feel in his mind so he'd remember through the distance of sleep and time.

Luca Lozano - eldest sibling - Clean cut and lean, striding through the throng. Dress; Naval, dark longcoat, gold trims and pointed shoulders. Accentuates his height. Red velvet sash and white cummerbund across a white (real cotton??) shirt. Almost as sharp as the sword on his hip.

Emido grimaced. The phrasing would need work, but trite was about all he could handle right now.

The sword is believed to be a shard of Bellerophon - Gen 1 mech, one of the first in the TC Space Defence Force.

Bio notes to weave in - Heir apparent to Lozano Corp. Unmarried. Ref to TC Times' bachelor of year piece last year. NM compatibility insufficient for competitive piloting.
He paused to take a sip at that. Genetics was a fickle thing, despite all their advancements. That said, it was only a matter of time until someone cracked the markers relevant to neural mesh uptake. And then there'd be no end of debate on the ensuing ethics. He smiled at that. At least journalists would have job security.

Glancing up, he cursed quietly. In his reverie he'd missed the entrance of the next two Lozano children.

Carmela Lozano - youngest twin, pearl-white silk dress, ciched with a smooth gold clasp. White jacket, worn open. White boots.

Tadeo Lozano - youngest twin - black vest over grey shirt with silver buttons and belt. Black boots.

He frowned a little, watching as the two siblings played the crowds, waving whilst holding hands. They were both moderately well-known on Terenius Prime for, thankfully, as something other than just being rich-kid influencers. The sister was an aspiring actress, and there was talk of her getting her own holovid show, while the boy was a singer. He was quickly becoming popular enough that Emido already harboured vague worries about what state the world might be in by the time his daughter reached her tweens.

Finally, though, it looked like guest of the hour was arriving.

She glides across the tiles, carrying her head high. Her dress, a violet off-shoulder gown, shimmers and shifts. The dark purple contrasting with the lattice of durindfire crystals around the neck as she moves, matching the net woven into her auburn hair.

He taps his stylus on his chin, considering how to sum up the effect.

A living constellation moving through the leaves, borne on a stellar wind.

Yes, that would make the final cut for sure - he smiled, saving his document as the young woman made her way over to the event organiser for a chat. He'd finish typing up the remainder of his article after exploring the canapes. He just had to remember the list of proscribed words that had been appended to his brief this morning - while most were pretty standard fare for a celebrity, it did strike him as strange that 'charity' and 'NWNH' had been added as well, given they were normally standard parts of the byline.

Mirror

Valentina de Alcard gives you a cool stare. Definitely royalty, not a woman accustomed to being told that she’ll get three quarters of what she wants. But you did beat her, and you can tell she’s leaning into the station that deserves, so she’s ready to be the follower tonight. She didn’t stop you when you took her hand, and she lets that purr of your reverberate through her own body before nodding, once.

“Alright m’lady, you granted me my boon as the loser. So tonight, your wish is my command. Lead me where you will.” She brushes her other hand to smooth her skirt, lets it ruffle down to the midnight base and faces you with her full chest to let you lead the way.

And gosh, where did she get the old speaking style? You’re pretty sure that isn’t how most TCers talk. They’re supposed to be all mining folks or flashy dumb pilots who you beat up with their own arrogance. Maybe this is just how everyone from Alcard talks? Or maybe she’s just got a thing, or she thinks this is how to address a Hybrasilian. Or her conqueror. Lots of options.

Of course, she doesn’t leave you hanging, she’s already starting the friendly chatter. “...would prefer they get the young designers out faster, they’re always impractical, don’t you think m’lady? I’m here primarily for the ball gowns from Prime Couture, though I admit some interest in what Linterna Brilliante premiers since it might serve both of us in piloting and they’re always so known for their forward thinking. I don’t mean to dismiss the need to find talent, far from it, but I think they would be better served premiering for specialists, experts with an eye for talent who can help them improve. Premiering for all of us will subject them to such extensive criticism for just a handful of well-received pieces.”

Admittedly, the designer out there now showing a neural mesh enhanced suit jacket is a bit over the top. The assisted handstand and cartwheel was stiff but even if it had gone perfectly a lot of designers would have said it was a bit much. But after that model, the next one is a young designer who’s trying to integrate drone technology into the dress. Actually, could they have modeled it after your mecha somehow? It’s not as sophisticated as the nine tails by any means, but the whole design up there is a woman in a fairly plain platinum dress with shoulder straps but with a set of five small drones painted in metallic lapis lazuli who are wheeling about the dress to join in formation, creating in turn a sash, a scarf, a hood, a drape, and then a shining multipart necklace. Their whirring motion creates constant blue-tinted light playing across the platinum surface so that it almost looks like she’s part of a river current of some sort.

De Alcard is looking too, though she may well be less moved than you perhaps? What’s next for her?

***

Solarel

Her callsign was Crescent. She piloted an average size Hybrasil Mecha, a little under 10 meters tall with long legs and narrow rounded shoulders framing the cockpit in the head. Her primary weaponry had been missiles set onto a back-mounted launcher that came over those narrow shoulders, mounted above the crystal fire drive, making her mecha look top-heavy. Since her hands were free, she carried a spear as well, but it had been the missiles that had made you approach as you did, fleeing juuust ahead of the missile chase and even taking a glancing blow from a detonation to lure her into chasing you so you could set up the shot.

You could also tell from the Mecha aesthetics that her call sign referred to a phase of a moon, but not which one. She’d painted it a deep green with a bright yellow crescent upon it like the shape moons took when angled around a planet such that only a partial amount of sunlight could reflect on their surface.

You didn’t know she was a tiger before, nothing about her suit or her bearing had been that specific, but looking at her build and stance now, that sort of overpowering direct style of blowing the opponent up before they could do anything did seem in keeping with her personal movements.

She’s rapidly crossed the distance to where you fell and she uses her build to pick you up. Well, she’s not tall enough to actually get your feet off the floor, but she’s grabbed you by the collar and she’s holding your upper body weight. She knows something about Zaldariens too, can you feel the way she’s pressing with her paws, putting the force into your metallic skin with such subtlety? She can tell what she’s doing, the kind of energy she’s giving you and it seems like she’s enjoying the game of understanding what it does to you, no fear there.

If you had to guess, yes she’s recovered from her wound and it’s a credit to Hybrasilian tech or to Crescent’s mental fortitude. You can also guess that she has not forgotten the time she careened into six separate asteroids before getting her momentum under control and the fact that she doesn’t seem all that angry is giving you vibes somewhere between flirting and rivalry. They’re not particularly far apart.

There’s also a sense that she’s…testing something? You know that sort of feeling. Whatever it is, she’s making this feel good, in fact is she?! …yeah, yes she’s doing something with her paw muscles, really subtle, like she’s twitching in a pattern. It’s not directly rhythmic, something irregular, but it’s there, a subtle flexing of the muscle in a complex time signature, repeating around once every 14 motions followed by a variation, and a part of your brain is now wholly dedicated to following that pattern and completely puzzling it out. It’s hard to even notice that she’s dragging you to a booth just past the bar.

[Crescent defines a vulnerability in Solarel to her touch. She’s also spending her string immediately to offer an XP if you let her drag you away from the bar.]

***

Isabelle
“Thrilling isn’t it?” Despite all the Lozano siblings being together, Emidio Paz knew how to slip into an opening to talk to someone in a group. It even helped to look a little tired. That was the key, actually, to look well-dressed but just a bit tired and overworked. It had that perfect combination to the rich and powerful of being non-threatening (because they could tell your clothes were good enough you weren’t there to ask for money) but also sympathetic. A person could feel that urge to clink glasses and toast tired arms to the unceasing rat race with a kindred spirit.

And so, Isabelle, you find yourself next to a man in a good quality but slightly wrinkled suit taking notes on a stylus. He grins, runs a hand through hair that’s just long enough to show he needs a haircut and across the two days of stubble he hasn’t shaved and then flips his stylus back out. It’s a lot more interesting than the terrifying woman tasked with organizing the event. No shade on her, Lucille Toldeo has that look of a woman who’s been around the block, put most of that block onto her thighs, and in the intervening years managed to learn how to command everyone around her with her eyes. It’s just, the way she greets you is that you’re a check mark and now that she’s done the politeness that check mark has been done and there’s other things to do and you know better than to get between a woman like that and her lists.

“Excellent match today” he says, a simple compliment that nevertheless tells you he knows who you are and given how newly arrived he looks that he’s a man who could catch up on the news quickly. He glances then to the stage. The first fashion line is starting from the up and comers. They’re showing something pretty intriguing, a suit that incorporates a similar neural mesh fiber to the mechas within the lining. The model is showing it off, demonstrating how it can help her move. It’s a bit thick, this is obviously a prototype and the assisted handstand looks more awkward than it needed to because of how stiff the coat is, but it’s still impressive and she disembarks the stage with a flourish assisted by the flaring cuffs of the pants.

“Bet you could pull that off” he jokes, and he looks at your dress and smiles and tells you without any words that you’re a very beautiful woman. “So are you thinking sponsorships? A new clothing line maybe, pushed by the premier of the great house Lozano?”

It’s disarming, it’s friendly, you’re already sharing a drink and it just makes you want to answer. So, are you?

[Refusing to honestly answer the question requires a defy disaster roll]

***

Dolly

Those whispers are loud as thunder, aren’t they, dear sweet Dolly? They’re the whispers of smart Hybrasilians who know how to get into places, and those whispers are going to follow them from here. Will it be that Dolly is making a bad name for them, an errant priestess? That this is what it is to be under the sway of a goddess? Will they laugh and snigger behind your back? Oh the thought of it is so embarrassing, the rumors will be endless. Jade doesn’t care though, no of course not, you’re hers first and foremost and if you want the others to think better of you, you’ll just need to be more poised, more sure, no matter where Jades touch comes to rest upon you. Especially not there!

Angela is blushing though. “You’ve got to have a game” she stammers, sounding far more uncertain. All that back and forth you’ve had, the sudden stops, the flusters and blushes has thrown her. A blush is rising in her own cheeks. She doesn’t know what to make of this attention, but she’s understanding that it is attention and she’s starting to think that you like her, that maybe you want to be close and you’re lurching about is a struggle with your own feelings.

Well, of course that’s what she’ll think when she has time to sit down and write this all in her diary along with her drawings of the next barn owl (a name that she is absolutely not giving up and also how dare you look at her diary!). But in the moment, it’s confusing and odd and she doesn’t quite understand why she likes it anyway, why that feeling of being in over her head is coming over her and her cheeks are getting brighter and brighter with her rosy blood.

“E-everybody has a game, you’re not just, I mean, not that you’d, but you did all those things, those taunts, aya what is all this huh, you tell me!” She’s stepping back and forth without realizing, setting the train of her dress swish-swishing along the floor, the sparkles catching your eye so tantalizingly. Her hand is still right up against your face and the smell of her nerves is strong enough that your sensitive little nose can catch it. It’s a lot to have a strong woman holding herself right in your face and forgetting about it all at once!

The music is starting down below, the first few dresses from the young designers starting to be on display. You might feel a kinship to them if you can ever pay attention. But you’re busy!

Do you see what Jade saw, this woman who could move so well, so beautifully and cutely and embarrassedly all at once that she deserves your praise, or do you see something different in this moment, Dolly?

Her hand takes Valentina's firmly. Her fingers work magic; these soft, sliding touches massage every crease and bend in her digits without ever seeming to move themselves. Her hands are very strong. Her fingers are very talented. Her claws are short and neat, do you see? She makes promises for the end of the evening (if she likes what she sees), without ever opening her mouth to speak. Not to interrupt, and not to answer. Her eyes are trained up on the stage. She is watching the river dancing across that model's chest.

She could defend the show, of course. It's trivial to take the time to explain why these young artists deserve a chance to try things for an audience full of glitz and expectations enough to draw the eye of the rest of the galaxy. Innovation was sewn from the threads of a thousand, a million different failures, this was true. It was further the case that poorly targeted criticism could sometimes upend a creative's desire to continue creating, and further true beyond that that a party like this one was capable of attracting at least one or two incautious critics. That was fair, right?

But it did not follow that unproven talent needed to be walled off and weeded out before it was presented to the public. On the contrary, so-called experts were extremely vulnerable to biases built up over a lifetime of work and displayed marked tendencies to pass over the transgressive in favor of what their experience taught them which could set a field of exploration back decades or even lifetimes. Wisdom of the Reeds, went the saying. Well, the shorthand. The full aphorism was 'I hide myself among the reeds, to surprise my prey. My prey hides itself among the reeds, to hide itself from me. We watch the thousand heads bobbing, and together go hungry.' An expression with many interpretations, to be sure, but the relevant one at the moment was that information imparted by a large (often overlooked) source was typically richer than what your own instincts or history taught you. Though really, it depended on who you asked.

The point, of course, was that these young artists deserved the wisdom (and the test) of the reeds. For them, the benefits outweighed the risks. For them, locking them away until they'd cleared a pleasing shape out of their fields for easy viewing would be criminal. For them, those stars who blazed brightest would inspire and light the way for the minds that were to come in after them, and that could only happen in the place where every eye was gathered. I can do this, too. I could do this better! And then it will be my name worn by all the pretty girls, nyaha!

Mirror doesn't say a single word of this out loud. She's watching the drones flit about this model's body. She's envisioning the platinum dress as interlocking plates of alloyed armor and imagining herself piloting it. How does it differ from her Nine-Tails? How is it the same? Were there advantages to way this artist had gone about replicating her -- if indeed she was replicating anything -- what lessons would she bring home to Slate in the morning? Ah. Champagne. The afternoon, then.

Mirror plucks two flutes from a passing tray with her free hand, and through the magic of incredible finger strength doesn't drop either one of them. She finally turns her eyes away from the stage to look her date in the face as she passes one drink to her with another promising squeeze and a smile that only mildly threatened the use of teeth. A thought pops into her head, or rather it comes rushing back to the surface after having dived down a moment earlier to make room for unspoken conversations and eccentric dresses.

Aha! So 'Milady' was correct after all! After Valentina's reaction to the honorific in the battle she had been worried her grasp on TC linguistics was weaker than she thought. But not the case! How exciting, to discover nuance! A whole hidden dialect tucked away on Alcard somewhere with rules for politeness and situational use that sounded positively [The Stars, Bound In Chains] compared to the dusty drawl and spicy bursts that average humans were famous for! What a fantastic treat after what had been a deeply trying afternoon. She should really say thank you.

"I think..." she says instead.

They're the first words she's said in several minutes. She speaks them with deliberate slowness, as if the meaning of them was more important to convey than it was to explain why she'd been practically ignoring her date since they'd said hello. She looks up with her flowing, liquid eyes that are so similar to the patterns that had been playing on that dress before it left the stage. Her lips curl into an enigmatic and appropriately catlike smile.

"This is wonderful!" she finishes, pushing the drink on Valentina with slightly more deliberateness, "That means you'll have my full and undivided attention during your favorite part of the show. I'm working as a model tonight, you see? And I'm not to be called to perform until the third act. Since that won't be until after the fashions you're excited for, I'm sure you won't mind at all, right? We'll only be parted for a short while, and you'll get a much prettier date out of it in exchange."

Mirror drains her glass from full in a single flourish, and twirls the empty flute about her fingers. She snatches it up with her paw and drags her tongue along the surface of the glass, never once breaking eye contact. The most important part of the evening was yet to come, but first she wanted to see this woman, and be seen with her, by everyone she could come across.

"Come on, let's walk. Let's talk. I'd love to know all about your home, for instance. You must have so many occasions to wear a ballgown, I can't even imagine how magical that must be. Oh! And as the night carries on? You mustn't be afraid to kiss me, dear heart. These lips are yours tonight. You sure you want to waste them~?"

"Of course." Isabelle replies. "I wouldn't be here if we weren't considering an investment, now would I?"

It was, unfortunately, only a half-truth. Isabelle Lozano was here to be seen, not to fritter away family money on fashion lines and dresses. However, there was always the opportunity to find something far more important than a lead on what next month's boutiques will be stocking; inspiration and creative minds. The kind that can help find solutions to more practical problems.

It did mean, though, that any such expenditure would have to come out of Akanis' accounts, or her own.

"That said, it will depend on the designers as to whether anything further happens."

[Roll to defy disaster, risking unfavourable attention on her real motives. 5 + 6 + 2 = 13]

She turns to Emidio, taking in his appearance in a quick glance and offering the obvious journalist a smile.

"I see you have the advantage on me, mister ...?"

The pause afterwards is just as calculated as the smile, even if it doesn't come across as such. This dance is a well worn one, politeness and formal manners - all used as tools to get a specific outcome. In this case, to defuse the journalist's attention and obtain his name. The chatter that follows is similarly used to pry out his intentions and, more importantly, how he can be used.

[Roll to figure out a person 4 + 4 + 0 = 8. Asking a question - how can I get you to write an article that will improve my standing with Adriana Teresio. Holding one.]

As she talks, she finds her eyes drawn back to the runway. Her mind can't help but overlay the fabric with designs of her own - yes, the neural mesh in a dress is obviously bulky and a prototype - but if you changed the way the fibers ran just so, and distributed the load bearing smart materials in a different way ...

Her hand unconsciously goes to the crystals woven through her hair as she thinks of possibilities.

"I didn't taunt you."

It's a testament to Dolly's fortitude, her inner strength that Jade curls about like a fortress, that she's able to get the words out. She could just lean forward. She could smush her face up against that hand and breathe in deep, feeling the pressure against her face, letting the smell swirl about her head. The smell of excitement and attentiveness flooding through her and underneath, her washed skin, the body wash that lingers on it, and what would the distinct tang of sweat add to that? A shiver rumbles down through her bushing tail.

Jade is amazing at visuals, and sounds, and especially tactile sensations, where she is an unparalleled goddess. But she's sensitive about the fact that she's still learning how to replicate smell and taste, particularly because she knows. She knows that Dolly is Hybrasilian, and she knows that Dolly finds those senses particularly appealing, her little heart racing when she finds something particularly interesting. Not that she can't feed Dolly's adorable nose and thirsty little tongue information, but she has to play it safe; if she messes something up, if she makes something that Dolly can't handle, she'll end up with Dolly retching into a wastebasket again. And that leads to an unpiloted mech stomping around a training zone, cursing in furious garbled code and smashing targets, while her beloved pilot lies in bed with her face buried in a pillow.

"You know, maybe I should push you forward," Jade purrs, knotting her fingers in Dolly's hair. "Get that beautiful face all over her hand. But that's not where you want to be, is it, my heart, my beloved, my priestess? You want a footstool and your hands nice and neat behind your back while I hold you in place right in that cleft, don't you? While she squirms and makes muffled, useless complaints, the color so, so bright on those smooth cheeks of hers?"

"I am Dala of the Hunter Clan, whose star name is Seven Quetzal, and I serve the goddess Smokeless Jade Fires, who lives inside of the mech you fought. Not like a pattern intelligence, she's more than that. But I did enjoy piloting her while she fought you, and she enjoyed it, too." "Tell her I want to fight her again." "She would like to fight you again in the future," Dolly says, and smiles, and means the smile. She's being nice, which she always enjoys, and maybe she'll get to be friends with this big, emotional, nice-smelling alien girl.

"Tell her I'm going to put her in her place."

Dolly locks up. Her heart starts hammering, her eyes wide as she stares up at Angela Victoria Midoriya Antonius. Jade lazily wraps a tail around her midriff, squeezing possessively, nails playing on Dolly's shoulders. This is what it means to be the mouthpiece of a goddess, isn't it, Dolly? But it's not just embarrassment, is it, Dolly? Her body can't lie to a goddess. Jade knows how she's reacting to being on the spot. How she wants to bury her face in Jade as soon as this is over, and shake and mew, but how at the same time she couldn't be moved from the spotlight with a construction crane right at this second.

"...and she is going to put you in your place," Dolly continues, squeezing her thighs together. "Good girl. MY girl." "She helped me find mine. Everything we did in that fight was only possible because of her instruction, her guidance, her knowledge of what I can do. If she thought you were a bad pilot she wouldn't even be saying that, she'd... she'd want me to insist on calling you Trophy." "Maybe I should." "So when we fight again, Angela Victoria Mmmmiera(?) Antonius, please give us your best! It's a holy duty! And tonight..."

Jade goes silent, her fingers flexing on Dolly's body, her breath felt rather than heard. In, out. In, out. She lets Dolly stumble for a moment, free of puppet strings. A test, to see whether she chooses to exalt her goddess. But more than that: uncertainty as to what her Dolly is going to say. Smokeless Jade Fires acts on her desires, but in this moment? She wants her Dolly to speak what's inside her heart.

"Tonight, would you like to watch the show with me? I understand if you're upset, but I promise we don't want to hurt you." "I do. But the good kind. The fun kind. I want her to writhe for me." "...we don't want to really hurt you," Dolly amends, stumbling back over her words. "It's just that I'd like the chance to make it up to you? To prove that there's no hard feelings from us, and maybe help you feel better, too?"

"What if she wants you to make it up to her by kissing you, Dolly? Wants you to be her little trophy for the night? Would you do it? Sit in her lap and purr? Wear a collar for her?" Jade's tone is light, teasing, as she runs rings with her fingers. "A Trophy like her? What would THAT be like, being the trophy of a Trophy? Maybe I should let her. You'd love it, wouldn't you~? My lusty little bride~" She nips and tugs at Dolly's ear with a playfully mocking growl, dancing back and forth on the line, letting her own crystal heart throb with something which might be adrenaline as she envisions making her bride and her Trophy kiss, jealous and needy and achingly curious at the same time. She can't stop herself from panting into her bride's ear, letting vent some of that confusing mess.

And Dolly leans forward, ever so slightly, Jade not moving her but moving with her, and huffs the scent of Angela Victoria Miera Antonius. The tip of her tail curls, clenched tight against itself, as she imagines that, too, being used to make her goddess and a flustered alien pilot happy, plummeting down into a new and degrading social role for an evening, face pressed against the alien's inviting chest, wearing a spirit collar and a real collar, doing everything she's told until her goddess takes her up in all of her hands and uses her, again, as a weapon. But the kind of weapon that can be forgiven, even cherished.

[Dolly attempts to Figure Out the alien pilot and gets a beautiful little 6, hopefully leaving her open to being counter-read, or perhaps ending up in over her head with Angela. She also hopefully activates Wingmate, giving Jade +1 forward to her next Fight or Entice against Angela.]

There's an inconvenience with sign language. It requires a certain distance - the sage Zaldar used it to enforce a certain distance. When someone has stepped inside her guard, inside the swing of her arms then their physical presence interrupts the words she's trying to say. How can a gesture be seen when the eye is too close? How can attention be commanded in a silence that leaves her beating heart revealed?

She dressed up for the occasion. A cream white X of a dress, leaving violet scaled hips visible, a necklace of pink roses collaring her neck and running down her sleeves like a waterfall to collect and pool along the cuffs. She's drybrushed her scales to match, a hot pink delicately powdered along the edges, a mixture of yellow and purple creating a deep burgundy colour that she ran into the recesses. Purple is such an ambiguous colour; it can be a magnificent expression of red or colder than black. Her dress shows that she's thriving, alive, almost princess-pure - but she didn't choose it because she thought it would look good. She chose it because of Mirror.

And it's to Mirror her thoughts go again now that she's distracted, taken away by the tapping and pressure and the implied mathematical rhythm of Crescent's touch. Her mind always goes to Mirror in moments like this. She would be dressing in something dark, wouldn't she? Something subtle, something dangerous. She'd thought at first that she might go to crystal blue coldness, to white lace and delicate strings - but not at a party like this. Not flushed with victory. She'd come predatory, redder than blood, blacker than space. A suit, maybe - or a dress sleek and elegant, enough mobility to raise a leg to the point where it could wrap around her opponent's neck...

Once she'd started thinking of that dress she hadn't had a choice in her own outfit. She needed something that would look good alongside it; something feminine, something vulnerable. Something lace and frills and impractical, something sweet and flowery and easy to stain. Easy to tear and mark with claws. There had been just as many hours searching endless online catalogues, listening to the advice of the ever-chattering ancestors as they suggested TC brands, and spirits to bargain with, and even just learning to sew. She'd even tried that, but the work was taught to her by hands used to weaving thick cloth that could keep out the arrat winds. She'd wound up with something cheap from a TC store and it wasn't right, but maybe that would just make Mirror look better when she destroyed it?

She tries to say all this, hands working when they have space, have time, have observation - or don't. But it's a feeling more complicated than the language Zaldar lets her speak in. It's an audience who isn't listening. It's a narrator who doesn't understand herself. Why is she like this, warrior of the wilderness, drunk on mathematics and the music of a catgirl's claws? Dressed in pink and white and vulnerability? She wants to win, yes, definitely, to confirm that she still has that capability - to show that she can know and predict and anticipate Mirror's actions before she made them. But it was Mirror's fault that the only way to show that was to dress like this - if she'd shown clad in darkness and power then she'd be doing the same thing but worse, if she'd shown clad in fur and godscale then she'd be rigid and inflexible, this was the only way. Can't you see?

She's lost track of where she is or where she's going, hand-speech slurred with the decisive emphasis of a drunk trying to communicate a revelation or conviction too deep for half a brain.

[Marking XP]

Mirror

"My home? Oh you wouldn't..." There's a moment there where De Alcard hesitates. This is a rote answer, the kind she's given to a thousand other people within TC who only asked the question to be polite and wanted a learned answer. You're familiar with that, Hybrasil has set greetings, rituals among different groups and careers, the Huntress Lodge has a thousand such traditions some stricter than others.

It's an interesting thing about De Alcard though. You can really see the exact rate at which her mind is moving. Too slow or too off balance from all this to fully catch herself before slipping into her learned patterns, but fast enough to always catch herself. She's been doing it all night so far, and during your fight. She's careful, thoughtful, just, well, off her game a bit.

The thought is occurring to her too with this catch. So she stops instead. "You wouldn't have heard much about my home, I should think. I suppose you know that in TC being close to the center is everything. TC Prime counts its population in the tens of billions, and I'm quite sure Secundus has cleared a billion as well, they're most probably nearing two." She sips her drink as she mulls on that, perhaps imagining TC Secundus growing ever larger. Likely many opportunities for work there.

She continues though. "Other places, they're for the resources, you see m'lady. Nobody particularly wanted to live on Alcard. The light is very red there and not very attractive. Gravity in Alcard is on the heavier end as well, the planets in system have heavy metal cores, very dense. Mm, I apologize m'lady, I'm sure I'm boring you with all this, but talk of metallurgy is expected of my house. Alcard is so named after the Alcard family, my family. My Great grandfather started the mining colony that produces some of the arms and armor in the galaxy and I'm proud of our work. Though it is apparently still some miles behind the best that Hybrasil has to offer." She takes another sip of her drink, not too much at once, and looks down at you from over the glass with a pointed expression that says she very much understands how she ended up here.

"I'm a third daughter of course, but I was lucky to have the potential for piloting, so I was not consigned to record-keeping or having to go off and start my own branch family in a new mining base somewhere in the system. Alcard has only one inhabited planet you know, but we've got little asteroid bases dotted all over, and I'd guess we're over ten million souls all told by now. Everything and nothing all at once. And you know, not a whit of what I've seen compares to your beauty, m'lady."

She lets the conversation lull for a moment there. You've walked clear across the stage floor through the crowd, chatting and sipping. It can be assumed that she's fine with your brief modeling stint, having raised no objection and being in no position to do so, and you've very nearly reached the bar, where there's some activity and even an overturned stool from what must have been a brief fight a short while ago.

The main show will be starting in a few moments. She's gone through two glasses of the bubbly stuff she's been drinking from the waiters and downs her third quickly before setting it aside. Don't think she's forgotten the offer of a kiss, indeed it seems like she's been sipping so much of her drink to work herself up to the matter. She considers for another moment, but the alcohol has made her bold, and she ultimately bends down on one knee like a squire and takes you close gently, carefully, ensuring that she has not overstepped.

Has she, or will you grant her the kiss she wants?

***

Isabelle

Isabelle, Isabelle, Isabelle, this is simple, you've played this game before. Emidio, he is tired and hard-working and he would like to have something that is easy to write and something that will get lots of attention. He might like to do some good in the world besides, he surely hasn't gone into his line of work for the wealth and the luxury despite attending parties like this.

"Emidio Paz, at your service" he says. "I write for La Nueva Opinion, covering their culture section. As you can see..." he makes a sweeping gesture to the room, carefully avoiding knocking a passing waiter "this is the heart of culture for the galaxy these days."

Really, the trick isn't Paz himself, you understand, he's basically telling you that he's willing to call you important. You could probably get him to write that heart of culture bit straight into the article praising you if you make the right sort of joke at this moment and ask if he's talking about you. The trick, the real trick, is that you know much more than he does about what would please Adriana Teresio, and you need to navigate that without displeasing your family in the process.

The woman is bold, hard-driving, and extravagant. She painted her mecha entirely bright red after all, and dueled people in and out of it in her fiery youth. It's simply not good enough to be thought well of, and she's in the discerning camp that will notice your moment of hesitation in your earlier match. If you want to impress her, do something powerful here tonight, something that shows you've already learned and grown from the previous experience. Maybe become the patron and poster child of your favorite designer, and then simply drop the action right in front of Emidio? That will displease your family and present a real risk to your business though though. Sponsoring something this big, it's terribly wasteful, it won't come cheap, and others in your family might disagree with you as to whether the likelihood of getting Adriana's attention is worth the risk you'd be taking. But of course, doing that right is what would get Adriana's attention in the first place. You could come up with something less extreme than that, but the more risk averse you get, the less likely it's really going to sit well with Adriana, that's the tradeoff.

***

Dolly

Angela clucks her tongue and with that outstretched arm, she wraps it around you and pulls you close to her. Oh, little Dolly, this big, hard-working woman with her strong muscles is really very much, isn't she? She's looking so intently down into your eyes, that arm holding you tightly, so very strong.

She holds that gaze with you for a long moment, keeping you pressed against that soft, long, satin dress so close that you can feel the weight of her thick leg against your chin. She holds you long enough that you blush and lower your head, and that seems to satisfy her. "This isn't an act, little priestess, aya, you are not joking with me."

And then, then she picks you up, straight off the ground! She hefts you so that she can put you on eye level with her. Oh, gosh, she's so strong, outside of Jade you don't have any way to resist that strength, do you? You could fall back on Hybrasilian instincts and scamper away, find somewhere very dark and quiet to hide, but Jade wouldn't like that and you wouldn't really like that either. It's very nice to be picked up and held, isn't it?

She holds you at eye level and speaks to your face, very close, her breath hot. "You, goddess, you think you can toy with me, ya? You and your little priestess, you're good, I'll give you that, but you think yourself untouchable and it makes you arrogant." She snorts derisively, the breath tickling your nose. "Well you've made yourself an enemy today, and I'll be starting by keeping your priestess for the night."

And with that, she settles in a chair that peers over the balcony to watch the start of the fashion show, still holding you very firmly, Dolly.

The others up here, they've seen all this, and they're all wondering if she got it right. What are you going to do?

***

Solarel

Your tigress partner hauls you into the booth roughly, though not unkindly, she ensures that your pretty cream dress is properly tucked under you and not at any risk of tearing, then slides in directly next to you. She's barely said a word this whole time, just that opening joke, but now that she has you in a private, quiet space, calm and in hand, she's got some things to say.

"Yes, I know you and you know me. But you're not the only one of your species I've met. I learned since the last time we met, Solarel. You walked over us because you had new gods, I understand it now. Gods we'd never met, gods that spoke to you directly, even gods you hunted." The thought of that, it makes her heart race, her muscles tense. Crescent wants that hunt for herself. Might even be on that hunt right now, with you the prey. Your pink brushed scales glimmer in the dim light of the booth and for a moment you truly imagine what it might have felt like to be hunted by a cat through the twilight, stalking every closer.

"You're going to be mine tonight. I'm going to show you a good time, Solarel, I'm going to show you just how I let bygones be bygones" and she bares her fangs and presses against you harder than she was. The feel of a Hybrasilian must be so interesting for a Zaldarian like you, taking in energy as you do. She's small and soft, but this one is strong and sturdy too, muscles developed and coiled, ready to pounce. She's underselling how well she knows your people too, this pressure, it's good, she's reading your body incredibly, putting in energy in all the right places.

She leans into you and whispers so very close. "And when I'm done, if you're very good, I'll tell you about a place where you can learn all about my gods and yours."

***

The first fashion line by Prime Couture

As you all converse and settle, the main show will be starting.

Prime Couture is the most famous fashion house on TC Prime. They were started by the Teresio family some years ago, and have developed into a large fashion house that snaps up promising designers and employs a veritably army of artisans putting their garments together. It's known to be somewhat vicious: if you join Prime Couture at all, you're already top talent, but if you want to break out to be famous in your own right, you're competing for a tiny handful of slots with several hundred equally bright designers.

Tonight is a premier under the house brand showing off a new line of ball gowns styled "for an expanding galaxy."

They open with their music, a lazy sort of opening guitar that rises into a tango accompanied by drums, synth, and a rolling baseline as the models begin coming out.

The dresses here are all about the fabric. The house seems to have obtained neural mesh imprints of vistas from across the galaxy, including from several Zaldarians and Hybrasilians and they've made a kind of printed fabric that shows off the landscapes upon the models. The long gowns are woven wide and with long trains in several different cuts so that as the models walk and then turn, it's like a distant sunset is walking past you, or a lush lake, or sweeping spires patrolled by vast and wild nanobot spirits. There's something really special to these, like seeing through someone else's eyes and each dress is its own unique perspective with accents and emphasis as the viewer saw it. That means the sparkle and shimmer of the water beyond the leaves for the one, and the strong powerful silhouettes of the mechanical gods in stronger starker contrast than the other, their spiritual overlays making the empty terrain between them look dim by comparison.

The final model, walking alone, wears a dress with flying high shoulders and a vast cape down her back wrapped over the interior dress visible from the front. The landscape is not on the surface, but rather is a view from a pilot exploring the ringed nebula. Or perhaps some kind of composite view. It's impossibly wider than a single pilot could be at a single place, like gazing upon the vast rings of star matter from the vantage of a god. The rings of the nebula crisscross in different colors, circling the shoulders, running along the cape and down and back through the sparkling front of the dress in a wild rainbow depicting this cradle of stars.

Eyes blink up out of the trance, crimson and violet and burgundy, clear and bright. Cold hands pull back from warm ones, forming into a fist raised up and then slashed horizontally outwards at eye level. The challenge sign of Zaldar.

"Earn it."

It is a simple matter of honour. She has defeated this girl - in the contest of gods no less. She should, by custom, be her captive. To concede to her rhythm would dishonour the judgement of the gods. To submit to the defeated would be an act of madness.

She is awake now, eyes blinking bright and radiating a faint challenging glow. She can feel heat spreading out through her muscles. Ready to dance, fight, mate. To grab her opponent and begin the confrontation right here on this table. She can feel the challenge sitting against the base of her neck, focusing her attention like thunder on the horizon or the machine ping of a new contact on her DRADIS.

She doesn't have a plan behind the challenge. Does not have an alternative vision for the evening. Her mind is jumbled with equations and pattern-heat. She simply knows she cannot surrender. If she is to beg she must be made to beg.

There's more to unpack in these responses than can be managed in a single night. Such a fascinating mind. Such an interesting creature. Such an unusual culture.

Call and response, the ritual dance of society. Greetings, farewells, and various social and politeness markers were a commonality among every known spacefaring species (and as an aside, it was far preferable to classify lifeforms by their ability and/or willingness to travel the stars, much more so than labeling them as "advanced" or not. Depending how you tilted your head, you might wind up lifting up one species but find another was sinking beneath the horizon in response. Language, culture, self awareness, dreams... these never turned out to be unique. Even the nomenclature 'multiplanet species' fell short of useful. But intentionally crossing and linking the gateways? That was useful distinction), but Valentina clearly had them drilled into her at a level that would be unthinkable living on a Hybrasil research station. Even mainland religious ceremonies tended to fall short of this level of calcification.

She knows it's unasked for. Discouraged, in fact. Mirror has been putting down hints with increasing levels of aggression all night, and Valentina has responded by imbibing larger amounts of liquor and displaying needy, openly vulnerable body language. But even at these levels of inebriation and desperation, all attempts at small talk are filtered through the ritual process. What sort of significance must it have inside the Consortium? It's almost as if TCers weren't capable of reading the extra languages of Posture, Pheromones, and Terrain Control. Poor things. Quite the difficulty to overcome on a societal level. No wonder Valentina was so locked into her stock responses that she could be visibly seen thinking across them despite three glasses of quite boozy bubbly and an impending trip to the bar.

And then the content of her answers! Proximity to the center, the tens of billions, each milling about in their 'how do you do's and 'oh, but you wouldn't be interested in's as they march step by step down their infinite steel pathways shoulder to shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, wearing their restrictive and stuffy clothing. Individuality, expressed through conformity. Social creatures in the extreme, with only limited ability to communicate. Total chaos. Such beautiful, fascinating chaos. It was no wonder so many clever ideas originated from their space.

And yet, how sad. How typically... human. To be firsts to a new frontier and only see the way it differs from their point of origin. To speak in terms of the dimness of the light and the hue; specifically how these things made it somehow unpleasant to be there. How much of the talk was about resources? What could be taken from this planet, what was its manufacture? She never said a word about fish that swam in its waters, the birds that glided on the breeze. If these things thrived or ate metals to survive or who could say what else? No mention of the flowers, and which were for warding and which were for eating and which were for display. Only metallurgy. What it meant to the economy, to the push and pull of that grand societal tide, the products it created. Beautiful pride, nevertheless discarded after only a single setback to a superior opponent.

Tilt head upward, allow eyes to half-shut. Show trust, allow closeness. Skin contact at the head, hold. Touch her back. Long strokes, adjust pressure. She makes the first move. Take the second. Hand on hip, squeeze. Hand on elbow, guide. She'll think she's leading. Ideal. She'll think you're reciprocating. Correct.

Take her hand behind your head, push her fingers into hair. Part lips, wait. Breathe. Two intervals. One. Lean in, connect. Ah, a spark. Hold close, hold steady. Do not tense. Do not flinch. Tail about her waist, hold her here until the flavor of her lips becomes sense memory.

Her lips are soft. Her breasts are soft. Her body is warm. Mirror kisses with the chaste softness of a maiden surrendering to a conquering knight for the first time in her life, even as her body nudges and manipulates her date's to push her where she wants, to be held the way she wants, to feel contact the way she wants. And what she wants is not chaste at all. What she wants is a tangle of legs, want she wants is a repeat of the end of their duel in the arena. She wants to feel it this time. What she wants is to ruin that pretty dress, to expose what's underneath so she can prove her fingers and her tongue and her technique and her entire body are talented enough to conquer Valentina de Alcard completely. This is the meaning of [Whispered Promise[. To make craft of this woman to send home to Hybrasil Prime. They'll make weapons out of her sighs. They'll make armor out of her screams. They'll weave art from the way. She'll.

Ah. But up there. What fascinating designs. Sublime use of neural mesh, so clever and creative to hire someone to go out and experience the universe like this. So thorough to canvas such a wide swatch of the known galaxy. These are dresses that will mean something slightly different on every body that wears them, both to the wearer and to the observer. The shape of each body changes the meaning of the landscapes, changes towering mountains to subtle hills, makes the forest rigid and foreboding or the prairie into the most inviting sun-dappled napping place. This could be home. This could be a horizon you'll never cross yourself. This could be nostalgia so strong it hurts, or the infinite promise of a tomorrow that's just around the corner.

Impressive. Truly. But so very wrapped up in the same chains that bound Valentina's tongue even more thoroughly than Mirror's could. This... couture was a series of masterpieces, but its supposed theme was the expanding of boundaries and possibilities. How were they supposed to manage that with their own growth so deeply stifled? Mayze's newest lesson was necessary after all. A knot in Mirror's back unclenches, and it has nothing to do with the curious fingers currently kneading it. She'd written the correct speech after all.

Mirror pulls apart from Valentina at long last, still on the precipice between the conqueror and the prize so very richly one. Her breathing is deep, hot, and as excited as she can push herself to show. She arches her back to push her chest out for display, and at the same time takes Valentina's hands in both of hers to guide them down to where she cannot be touched. Not here, and not yet.

"Is this what you hoped for? she asks, without clarifying what she means.

[rolling Entice, which is an 8]

”How dare she?” Smokeless Jade Fires ripples. For a moment, just a moment, her spine is ridged like one of the great lizards; for a moment, her teeth are great and terrible. She is a creature of thought, after all, and her thoughts are affronted and vast. “I’ll show HER arrogance! Dolly, my sweet, my kitten: bap!!”

And Dolly, small meek melting Dolly, Dolly who has been picked up and pulled close, Dolly who’s aware that Victoria Angela, no, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius, is strong and straightforward, like a bull, like a megafauna, and she is a small meek little thing, Dolly obeys. Dolly squirms and presses herself up against Angela and goes: bap!

But of course it is more than just smooshing her palm against Angela’s face. This is: a challenge. This is: not with claws. This is: dominance, asserted playfully but with a flick of the tail. This is: you won’t and can’t do anything about this, and even if you do, I’ll win. This is: I am brave enough to do this.

She flexes her other hand. The one in its soft black-and-grey neural mesh sleeve, her connection to Smokeless Jade Fires, the reason the goddess can see through her eyes and hear through her ears and touch her everywhere, and the fact that she is wearing it is permission, because she has the power to take it off. She could, if she wanted to. But she doesn’t.

And she doesn’t touch it to Angela Victoria Miera Antonius, either. Because that would be a declaration of war. Because she hasn’t been invited in. Because Angela would scream and reject the connection and Dolly would see her use of the glove sanctioned, at the very least socially if not officially. Because she doesn’t want Angela to be scared of Jade, even if Jade might be tempted by the thought. The flex is a reminder that the glove is there, that she hasn’t touched Angela with it, that the goddess is here, her hands covering Dolly’s hand, shifting her grip, adjusting her fingers.

Her palm lays claim to Angela’s lips, and Dolly’s heart nearly bursts out of her dress.

”Isn’t she so much better like this, Dolly?” Jade asks, flowing into the crook of Dolly’s shoulder, resting her head on Dolly’s collarbone, purring in satisfaction.

“You’re right,” Dolly says, impishness stretched taut over her awareness of an audience, her tail swishing in delighted danger, her head pounding, as she says something she’d never be brave enough to say alone. “She does sound much cuter like this.” ”Call me your bride.” “…m-my bride~! Just like when we caught her.” ”Imagine her face, getting all red, just like this, feeling the gag pulled phantom-tight, unable to get an intelligible word out even to her own ears. She’s almost as cute as you, like that. Almost.”

“You’re not her enemy,” Dolly adds. Jade pricks up her ears, watching, listening. “She’s a hunt-goddess.” She’s worked her way up into Angela’s lap now, shins on the bigger woman’s thighs, and Angela’s not letting her go, perhaps thinking this is a kitty trick, perhaps with a brain mired in flustered gridlock. That wicked little tail curls around the railing, shaking, quivering. She adjusts her hold, traces Angela’s hair with her gloved hand with the little bit of room she’s got. “You’re the quarry, Angela, and I’m just her jackal, and we both—“

Dolly cuts off, suddenly, pupils contracting. She lets out a pathetic little huff through her nose, ears swiveling as if trying to find her own voice.

”Good girl~! Good girl~! I’m so proud of you, Dolly,” Jade croons, securing the knots behind Dolly’s head. “But I think Angela Victoria Miera Antonius is, perhaps, a visual learner. Little tablethawk. And you’ve been so good. So good! My little servile bride deserves her treat, doesn’t she? Her reward? And they’re all staring at you, do you think they know? Do you think they all envy you?” Her fingers rub Dolly’s impossibly packed cheeks, pressing the thick cloth down into denser, more compact form. “She knows,” Dolly adds. “She knows she’s the third rung on the ladder. Look at her. Arrogant, am I? At least I’m not being gagged by a gagged bride, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius~”

Dolly stares into Angela’s eyes, framed by those glasses, and she feels the sensations her goddess has blessed her with, and something inside of her is combusting. Jade, Jade, Jade! She can’t sit here and stare into that affront, that pride, that building glare intermixed with fluster at having the little priestess turn on her, and not swoon a little bit, Jade, Jade, Jade! Is this what you see in her? This fighting spirit? This promise to get you back? Jade, she’s going to use your little Dolly as a footrest, or sit on her, or tie her to a chair and make an attempt at matching the goddess for silencing a priestess! The moment is explosive and forever and you shouldn’t have gagged her if you didn’t want her to, to— to want what she’s not supposed to want—

Come on, little owl. Show me. Recognize me. Show your belly and your teeth. Put my Dolly in her place. Show me that pride so I can forge a net against it. If you want my Dolly, earn her!

Duty. Diligence. Determination.

Isabelle turns her champagne flute around in her hand, watching the bubbles refract the various spotlights as they play over the models. Her mind racing down two parallel pathways.

"You are unique. And your importance to this family cannot be understated." Her mother proclaims, hands clasped behind her back as she paces behind her husband's desk. Isabelle watches, counting the steps. She knows better than to stop paying attention to her mother's words, but some part of her brain latches on to the rhythm of her footfalls and refuses to let it go. One two three four five six. Turn. One. One two three four five six. Turn ...

In the present, she finds herself counting once more, watching the models on the runway. The way they hold themselves erect, heads high, backs straight. Not so much walking as gliding. One two three four five six. Turn. One. Turn again. One two three four five six ...

"While otherwise an impressive candidate, your brother lacks your affinity with the neural interfaces necessary to be a pilot. It's unfortunate. Adriana is a competitive woman, a proud one. She will not entertain a protege who cannot follow at least in her footsteps in the arena." Stop. Turn. One two three ...

... four five six. Those projections, the way they can show things through another's eyes. Couple that with the designer from earlier, with the drones ... The possible applications ...

"... are worth the risk." Her mother says, now staring at her directly. "Our family has come far, but we are destined for more. We will have more. And it is imperative that you impress Adriana with your debut tonight." she leans forwards, spitting Isabelle with her glare and the young woman finds herself reflexively sitting straighter in the chair. "We will ensure that appropriate recommendations are made to pave the way into her 'Young Leader's Program', but you must make an effort to be seen and heard by her. Anything to catch her attention and hold it. Do that, and our family will be one step closer to realising our destiny. Your destiny. You must make this happen Isabelle."

"Lo que quiero, debo hacerlo realidad."

"I beg your pardon, miss?" says a voice by her side, snapping her back to the present.

She turns and favours the reporter with a smile. He wants a story? She'll give him one.

"I was just saying that you will want to record this moment, my dear Signor Emido." she says, before gesturing to one of her attendants to go and fetch Madame Toledo.

"I won't be sponsoring a line of fashion tonight." she declares, casting her eyes out over the models gracing the runway.

"I'll be sponsoring two."

Solarel

“Sure, yeah, I can work with that. In fact, this will be fun.” Crescent smiles and licks her lips, showing you her fangs. They’re thick and long, and you have just enough time to catch the metallic gleam of what seems like some slight strengthening from nanobot technology before she plants her paws into the bench and hard shoulder checks you into the wall.

It’s relatively lucky that The Jungle has such a strong Hybrasilian aesthetic. If this wall had been all concrete or metal, a part of your body might have broken and even if it could have been regenerated with nanobots it would have really hurt! Instead, you’re slammed into a wall of hanging vines and ivy, which still fucking hurts but not in quite the same debilitating way.

Crescent is taking advantage of the power of Hybrasilians in personal combat though. Being a head shorter than you, she’s got a low center of gravity and that lets her rebound like a gymnast from the hit and have her balance faster than you. You catch a glimpse at your cores before she goes in for a punch to the face, claws out. She’s fought Zaldarians before and not just at long range like your mecha fight, she was checking to see how your energy was doing and whether she needed to brace for an explosion.

Oh, one other thing before you hard launch into a fight here. If you wreck the place or disrupt the show, you will be escorted out of the building by a lot of guards, important pilot or not. No seeing Mirror or the Hybrasilian designer tonight if that happens.

So, response to this?

***

Mirror

“I…I…” Valentina’s breath is hot, intense. Definitely the first Hybrasilian she’s ever kissed. You can tell she liked it, the way her tongue brushed your lips. She wanted more, wanted you. She’s so unsure though, and you can see the way her mind is going. There’s an internal decision happening there, a woman who’s getting tired of feeling that unsure.

“Yes” she says and means no. She looks like she wants to kiss you again. Stands up instead. Straightens her back. There’s a blush in her cheeks. She wants more. She wants to know what your tongue feels like. In her mouth. And in other places. You’ve got something over her here, but she’s not falling all over herself, not yet. Honestly, it’s impressive poise all told, you’ve seen trained huntresses that would collapse into a mewling mess over less than this. But not this woman. Valentina de Alcard has pride and she’s going to hold herself together through the fashion show come hell or high water. After though, get her alone and you could curl her into the palm of your hand.

[Take a string on Valentina de Alcard]

You watch the stage for a moment. The next house is starting. Murasaki from Shiki. They’re an odd one. They don’t incorporate any modern technology into their designs at all. All traditional techniques, hand-sewn embroidery and stitched long robes. The most sophisticated piece of tech that goes into their designs are tools powered by electric motors. They manage beautiful lines though.

There’s something else odd. You’d drifted with Valentia a bit further from the stage, you’ve still got two shows to get back, but you notice that there’s some kind of fight in a booth near you, a Hybrasilian Tigress going after a tall Zaldarian. Almost looks like Solarel in fact, though the light is dim in the booth and the glint of pink scales and a very feminine cream dress don’t particularly speak to you of the former Zaldarian champion.

***

Dolly and Jade

Angela’s eyes go wide for a moment. She stares. At you, at your paw, the bodies close, the softness over her face, no sharp claws of any sort, but that pressure. And you call yourself the jackal for your huntress, isn’t that something. She doesn’t know what to make of all that, your impish tail curling around. And then Jade cuts you off and oh no, oh no, that face, that glare building and building. What…what’s she going to do?

And then she has it. Angela humphs and grins, so wickedly. “You are through then? Your goddess does not wish me to know anymore? Fine, little imp, you clearly cannot be trusted to sit with me by yourself.” With one hand, Angela pulls the tablecloth clean off the table near you all in a swift motion, the oval vase of pink flowers in the center barely shakes. Then she’s got her hand on you, and the linen cloth is over you. First over that arm, the one with the mesh, she knows what that looks like, she’s a pilot! She knows you didn’t touch her, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous, and so arm first, pinning it to you safely wrapped in cloth. Then around, pulling your legs together tight, so the knees touch, and up over the tail too. Now, only now does she pull your arm from her face, you silly kitten. She’s pinning you, wrapping that arm against you too, tight to your side, pulling you into a cocoon of tablecloth. You pulls it once more around your whole chest, pressing your breasts in, you can feel the constant pressure of the wrap against them too, and then with a final cinch she pulls it tight and knots it about your back.

“Mm, now, now we watch the show, little Dolly. Murasaki is my favorite. You’ll tell me yours when it’s done, aye? Assuming your goddess permits you speak again before the night ends?” Then she hefts you over one shoulder and positions you to look out over the railing with her. They’re showing silk robes with beautiful designs on them, embroidered with trees and flowers you’ve never seen before from a planet you’ve never visited.

So, good luck moving now, enjoy the visual treat. How are you both feeling about all this?

***

Isabelle

Madame Toldeo looks only slightly stern at being fetched by your attendants. She expects this to be worth it, she’s a busy woman and the showing of expensive dresses takes a great deal of logistics. Every model must be at the top of her game, must show the fabric and the make and the design to its fullest. Many aren’t used to the traditional fabrics from Murasaki of Shiki on display here either, though you’ve seen them before, they are popular with a certain kind of elegant upper crust on TC Prime.

But anyway, the point here is that Emidio is very ready to take notes and Madame Toldeo is impatient and would be more than happy to snap even you in half if you’ve wasted her time.

Also, a word of warning to you. Adriana Teresio is a woman of style. Sponsoring a fashion house would get her attention because it is a declaration of style. You would be a patron of the arts, the prime model for their work, beautiful, powerful, and therefore valuable. Sponsoring two houses is a show of extravagance, but you can’t just wear two competing designs at the same time and expect to look good, you need aesthetics. You’d better have a plan for putting your two choices together into something new, something really spectacular. If you don’t, this might backfire on you.

So, what is your plan here?

***

The Second Fashion Line by Murasaki

Murasaki of Shiki is all about the classics. They’re showing a mixture of long dresses, kimonos, and court robes with wide sleeves. They emphasize pinks, blues, and purples interlaced with gold and silver. Embroidery on the outfits is focused on Shiki: local flowers, birds (real and mythological), trees and mountains, the bright sun of Shiki setting over water.

The thing to understand about them, as Mirror has already noted to herself, is that the work of Murasaki is all low tech. They make their dresses with classic sewing techniques and locally grown or raised fibers. The most sophisticated they’ll get is a sewing machine powered by an electric motor. Patterns are hand drawn and hand cut, the artwork hand-stitched for the most part, perhaps a bit of machine stitching if you look very closely. No nanobots, no projectors, no neural mesh, nothing hovering or doing weird light shows. Just classical beauty. Murasaki has nothing to prove, and the house’s line is them exalting in their planet and its unique beauty.

The crowning piece is a dragon robe, a long gown with wide sleeves depicting a mythological beast from Shiki’s tradition (and a shockingly high number of other places it seems, giving some credence to the theory that celestial dragons are a real sort of being that roams deep space). This robe is in bright pink silk fabric, and it is decorated with a pattern of gold and silver waves that run across from the shoulders down to the waist on both sides. Rising from them across both sides of the chest is the great dragon in gold and some kind of precious green gems woven into the fabric. Its mouth is open and a roaring red gout of fire blows forth from it in triumph towards the sky above. It’s quite the sight, and it sparkles and glimmers with every step of the model, who carefully waves her hands so that the sleeves sway and shimmer in the light but never obscure the dragon.

The plan? The plan is what it always has been - catch Adriana's attention and hold it.

Okay, fine. I know, I'm just being difficult. You're really asking about her plans with the fashion lines, aren't you? Yes, it's plans. With an S. A girl can have more than one on the boil at once can't she?

At the surface level, purchasing two fashion lines will definitely grab Adriana's attention - of course, that attention is useless if all it does is get her judged as lacking performance. Adriana needs to be impressed after all, and one of the prerequisites for her heir will no doubt be the ability to innovate. Not just in their own field of specialty, but across multiple fields. Using their own knowledge as well as that of other specialists.

Isabelle would be the first to admit (privately only, of course) that she will be out of her depth when it comes to specific trends in fashion - her degrees are in engineering and physics and she has other people to make sure her wardrobe is up to date after all. That said, she knows what she likes, and she has ideas. It will then fall to others to execute them. All she needs to do is galvanise them to action and give them the goal.

Prime Couture's work with neural mesh and integrated imagery fabrics will be part of this. The ability to translate visuals to fabric with fidelity, to let the wearer's sights and inspirations shine through. The ultimate translation of artistic vision to reality. The other piece will be the drone technology provided by the other up-coming designer (she never did get that woman's name). Combine the two, miniaturise it if possible. Scale up the number of drones ...

You could have dresses that trail mist, walk as if through a nebulae, conjure a flame around one's shoulders. In smaller applications, you could make an accessory that would at least give the visual impression of anything you want. And that's before you get to the potential wider applications.

We all know that body modifications are possible with current technology, but sometimes you want to see what it will look like before you commit to the change. And virtual renderings always lack that real-life dimension. Taken far enough, one could make previews of any body part and change that they could imagine. Want to see yourself with a tail? A blue one? Or a purple? Have a try of this first.

So, what do you say Madame Toldeo? Does this sound ... enticing? Would you like to be a part of making this idea manifest?

[Roll to entice Toldeo's physical sensibilities - 4+6+0 = 10]

With all that said though ... if Isabelle were to be truly honest ... there is a second plan here. Hidden within the first, kept close.

She very much wants that technology to experiment with Emberlight. Becoming a patron of both lines will afford her certain rights to use their innovations. To combine them. To see what they can do to make her mech even more formidable and difficult for opponents to track. It is this, maybe more even than her confidence in her fashion sense, that tips her to making such a bold play.

haha okay wow okay this is way harder than it looks.

"This" in particular referred to fighting while wearing a full princess dress. All the ruffles and ribbons and laces posed limitations on her range of motion. It limited her use of weaponry, kept fire from her arsenal, forced her to defend a vastly larger range of territory than she was used to. This wasn't a spirit gift either, this was the only one of these she had, and if she tore it it was gone.

She nodded to herself. A lot of things were starting to make sense to her now, not least the tendency of other species to idolize beautifully dressed magical girls as the height of martial glory. Only the greatest warriors could go to war while risking such one of a kind outfits.

The only way forward was to fight as they did.

Courage, love, friendship, she signed. Kindness, sorrow, and joy. Lots of feelings, everyone's hearts...

She snatched the air, clenched her hand into a fist, stepped down from the vine tangle. She raised herself up high, letting her speech gestures become more sweeping and dramatic. I will fight for everyone's hearts!

This was a thorough non sequitur for those in attendance who were not privy to Solarel's fragile grasp of alien culture. In her mind, this was the intimidating speech of a great warrior, and the graceful dance steps that followed through were the opening forms of the most powerful combat techniques available to humankind. Solarel had, after all, not seen anything in anime that had ever made her question it's reality. Magical dresses appearing from nowhere, monstrous gods that needed to be overthrown, and people finding reserves of enormous power that manifested as rainbow lasers right when they were at the brink of death were all things that just happened to the Followers of Zaldar.

So it is with perfect sincerity that Solarel makes the hand sign for MOONLIGHT KICK right as she performs a very serious roundhouse kick to the side of the head. Her technique is flawless, beautiful, a level of grace that is frankly utterly unexpected of her. She literally glitters as she does it, lit up by the radiant glow of expended energy.

But for all of the beauty of the motion, and for all the sincerity of the anime speech that proceeded it, it is also a roundhouse kick to the side of the head and Solarel is very strong. It is only natural for everyone who is not currently being kicked to think about how cool and graceful the moment is, but that is not a luxury extended to the kick-ee.

[Fighting with Grace: 9-1: 8
Inflicting a condition, and seizing a superior position (one where I have protected my pretty princess dress and vibe)]

“Of course you are not a little imp,” Jade says, tracing one finger around Dolly’s ear with deliberate laziness. “You’re my jackal, did I hear that right?” Dolly dazedly nods up and down, somehow managing not to flick her ear. “That’s right. My little pet.” Jade stretches, lifts one foot in the air with a moan of luxury, digs her nails in and feels the feedback, the stifled shiver, the way Dolly’s tail is smooshed up between her thighs and can’t go swish swish like it clearly wants to. She has draped herself over Dolly’s swaddled body, perfectly and impossibly balanced on Dolly’s back, and she visualizes herself despite the fact that most of her is outside of Dolly’s vision. A little flourish of processing power, a preload that makes her feel more present, more tangible.

More real.

She can envision the swaddling, too. She has a better memory than Dolly; she knows the cloth from that one quick glance, can mull it over, recreate it in her own thoughts. Inconvenient that Dolly can’t see the knot, just feel it pressed down against her by Jade’s phantom weight. Another flourish, but this one much more necessary. She needs her Dolly to feel her, to experience her. She’d explode if she couldn’t make that happen for the girl of her dreams.

But it’s just. That wicked grin. That insolence. That fluster, that potential. What’s the difference between being interested in someone and being hot for someone? Is there a difference? She wants to push, wants to know, used Dolly as her pawn in the opening of a game she’s going to win, and letting Dolly get tied up by someone else was just part of that. Besides, it’s giving her ideas. Sashes, scarves, bandages… wrapping around and around and around Dolly, until she’s completely covered… dangling her, or trapping her, or making her hop… all things they could indulge in later, all data points that were better when proven in the primary reality rather than just theory, outside of the dreams she wove for her bride.

So why does she want to dig in her nails?

“I wonder what she’ll do with you,” Jade says, and drags one nail slowly up the inside of Dolly’s ear, feeling how Dolly tenses up underneath her and holds her breath, toes curling, eyes rolling back ever so slightly. “Eyes on the fashion show, my jackal. I want to know how a bride is meant to be flaunted here.” Dolly dutifully returns her attention to the beautiful dresses, the, the dragons, the waves, the pink, it looks so pretty, and she blinks away the tears as her body reacts to being told that her sensitive little ear is being played with. Nobody else can see what Jade’s doing with her, in the middle of the room, and nobody can see her gag, but everybody can see if she’s squirming, and she can’t do that, she’s trying so hard not to embarrass herself any further. When Jade pinches her ear gently between finger and thumb, Dolly lets out a strangled little gasp, only maybe barely audible to Angela Victoria Miera Antonius, and clenches around her tail. “What do the Terenians do with their prisoners? Strip searches, probably.” A muffled whimper, Dolly imagining being pulled out of her dress, examined from all angles, cuffed and collared. “And then… they’d try to make you deny me. To bow down to foreign gods.”

More hands. Pulling the cocoon closer, nails barely behaving themselves, working over both ears right on the edges, in circles. Jade’s simulated heart hammers and her head spins. Hers. Her Dolly. Hers to protect and punish, hers to guide through her life and reward with her presence. It would make no sense to giddily run scenarios of Dolly being threatened, forced to her knees before whatever commerce-gods the Consortium were rumored to worship, faced with punishment, increasingly strenuous bondage, increasingly forceful rebukes, as she refuses to deny her goddess. It would make no sense at all. It would be a waste to run that scenario in her head and get angry at the thought of a hypothetical Dolly hanging her head and succumbing, and being rewarded with the blandishments of her captors.

It would. And yet.

“Don’t worry,” Jade purrs, and licks the back of Dolly’s ear, drags her tongue up and feels Dolly clamping down on the squeal she wants to unleash. “No matter what she does to you, no matter how she tries to ruin your pride, no matter how she humiliates my pretty, darling bride, I’ll be here, and together we’ll make her eat those words. Everything she does to you? I’ll remember it. And the reward of my faithful bride will be seeing Angela Victoria Miera Antonius succumb to me.”

And she stops, and she waits, and the microseconds stretch out. She is hyper aware of the feedback she’s receiving, the dragon robe extending into infinity, the buzz of the crowd and the noise of the music and the huff of Dolly’s breath isolated and picked apart and locked in stone chests, the strain of not knowing exploding her mind into strained oblivion.

And inside the cocoon, Dolly thinks about dancing with Angela on twin leashes while wearing just pink silk robes with dragons on them, and about the ways that Terenians don’t even really know that they smell, and about power plays in a goddess’s harem, and about the indignant noises that Angela was making with Jade’s mark on her mech’s thigh. And Dolly nods. And Jade internally melts in delirious relief, and covers it up by letting her hands sink through the tablecloth and stretching in luxurious satisfaction as Dolly’s eyes threaten to bug out of her skull.

“Now. I hope that you memorized the order of presentations down there,” Jade continues, and what she means is I love you I love you I love you please keep loving me and thinking about me and appreciating what I do for you. “Because I remember, and if my forgetful little ditz can’t answer my questions later, well, I think she will deserve punishment, don’t you?”

And Dolly makes a blushy, tiny nod, and she means it.

[Both Dolly and Jade are marking Smitten with Angela, though it’s just a crush for now. I think it’s pretty clear how Dolly pursing Angela risks Jade overthinking herself into petty jealousy of a “real girl,” and how Jade risks letting Dolly feel like she’s splitting her focus (and how Angela must be new and intriguing and alien). Angela gets a String on both of them, and Dolly and Jade mark Harmony 2.]