[quote=@Tatterdemalion]POTENTIAL 0

“Better watch out, Maria~!” Hardlight blasts the kiosk, fired at an angle. @SARAHPHIM has always had trouble with curving bullets, but she can shoot from a controlled position no problem, rattling Maria’s nerves as she jauntily keeps up a barrage. “I’ve got backup, you know! A whole [i]army[/i] of stuffed animals! The bunny rabbit should be more than a match for you, given how badly you got wrecked by a [i]teddy bear.[/i]” If there’s another thing Best Tiger is good at, it’s a dismissive sneer.

“Man, I’m glad I don’t work for AEGIS any more. Those post-incident reviews were always a pain, you know? Blah, blah, collateral damage.” The barrage continues. It’s the hot whine that needs to keep up. She needs Maria’s nerves as frayed as possible. “I don’t even want to imagine trying to explain how I got taken down by [i]Mister Teddybottoms.[/i] Does that go under Room For Improvement or Media Apology, do you think? Because I can promise you that @BlackSunOfficial is being spammed with the teddy bear emoji right [i]now.[/i]” Did Sara join in with a well-timed retweet? Yes. “By the way,” she adds, crossing her fingers that she’s not going to have an awkward conversation with the kid later, “I really hope you, like, [i]actually pulverize the bear,[/i] because it’ll be absolutely [i]hilarious[/i] to have proof you’re finally punching at your weight class!”

And then the piece de resistance: Maria’s headset chirps with DUMBASS.MOV. It’s from @SARAHPHIM’s stream feed, showing her flailing one-armed at a stuffed bear.

Sara grins, puts her hands behind her head, and counts down from three.

[[b]10[/b] on Provoke into making a stupid berserker charge, with a side of “doesn’t lash out against the teddy bear because that would prove Sara right”][/quote]

In a way, @Sarahphim, this is a little example of what rising above your reputation feels like. It's your reputation that pinned her in place and filled her heart with fear. Your takedown of her knights earlier. Your string of real victories against peer opponents without a small army of backup. The fact that you are [i]legit as hell[/i], someone who has a [i]reason [/i]for battle and victory other than the monthly paycheck. It's that that put Maria in a corner and there's no reason she should ever get out of it - but then she [i]does[/i]. You demonstrate in that moment with the right verbal stabs that you're not like her. You're so sharp that you can overcome in that moment everything you're known for, all the reasons she has to not listen to you. You were trapped in a corner by the consequences of your reputation and then you walked out of that corner on your own damn strength. It obeys you. Not the other way around.

And so she comes, forgetting everything that she knows about you, and what a bad idea this is. She comes at you forgetting that you're @Sarahphim. She comes at you, and as she does, she passes out of range of the teddy bear and you can finally relax because now the hostage is no longer in danger.

[quote=@Phoe]She forces herself to take a cautious step forward. And then another one. She's acting like she's approaching a wounded predator, which in all honesty, she is. Ok, ok, ok. Come on, just one more step. Fuck's sake, cyberlimbs don't tremble like this, how does she [i]do[/i] that?

Finally, she manages to kneel down. Her breathing's so shallow and panicked that it's starting to blur her vision. And in the end she has to flip to skillwires to get her hand to get close enough to work the ball gag out. She comes closer to failing than she should, given how wildly the Shogun is thrashing about.

"No--" WOAH WOAH WOAH NO NO DANGER ABORT EUNA KIM ABORT, "D'yuuuuhhhhhh, um, Y-Your Excellency? Are, are you ok?"

She helps the Shogun into a sitting position and stares very fixedly at that glorious shoulder. Her hand hovers over the rest of the ropes, hesitating before she risks [s]unleashing[/s] freeing her personal hero.[/quote]

"Hello, Agent Errant," said the Shogun. "Hello, JuneBird," oh jeez the air conditioner really came on for that one huh. "I see that you are no longer pretending to be me. That is an interesting change of circumstance."

A different person would have waited until she was fully untied, or at least finished working out the soreness from the gag, before confronting the person who had tied her up and stuffed her in a closet. The Shogun had no time for such things. JuneBird was in a full on flopsweat and was stammering worse than you were as she tried to explain that it was a misunderstanding and that she's good now.

[quote=@Balmas]That's... Is that a bad thing or not?

"But I don't want to try to force you to do something you don't want to do. I've done enough of that for one lifetime. Done enough bossing and controlling and manipulating, and you know what I haven't been doing? Is nearly enough asking."

He chuckles, and there's less mirth than... self deprecation? Despair?

"Bode, what do [i]you[/i] want to do? If you're willing, I'd love your help. If you're not, I'm entirely at your disposal. You, right now, are the most important thing in the world to me.

"You should have been that long ago."

What do you do?[/quote]

That trio of glowing eye lenses stare at you silently. Incomprehensibly. 

"I want to make pottery," said Bode. "It is... I am very curious about it. It used to be such an important human form of art. Now nobody does it. That makes me uncomfortable. You taught me to preserve and disseminate data but it seems like such an important human communications medium has almost faded away entirely. I want to recover it."

He was silent for a long moment.

"But the world must be saved as a precondition. So I will help you with that first."

He reached out his hand to shake.

[quote=@eldest]She reaches up, a hand on either side of the world, holding it up for Perseus to see. "Look at that, you son of a bitch. Look at that."

1...

Ferra closes her eyes, arms still around the Earth. Rainbow energy start to spill out from her, infinite gossamer wings in fractal shapes reaching first this ugly, hateful weapon she stands on, and reaching out from there. Touching each and every thing in orbit, testing it, finding it wanting, changing it's shape and form and position. She stands there, and for one brief moment, she is surrounding the world, a rainbow matrix enveloping her home. Earth's biggest hug. [i]You are loved.[/i][/quote]

All around planet Earth, people look up.

People these days think of the sky as a big, leaky rooftop when they think about it at all. Stars are something you need to go into Antarctica or the Sahara to see. The eternal glow of electricity and neon forms a cage from seeing distant worlds just as towers like mountains render sunsets as a commodity enjoyed only by actors in NeoBaywatch. The idea that the sky could change colours into anything other than a different shade of polluted brown-grey is as fanciful as the idea of cleaning the incomprehensible stains off the ceiling of the 24 hour motel.

So there's no context for people to respond to it.

Workers down tools and step outside. People on the street stop and stare, even embrace each other. Children ask fathers who are themselves crying for reasons they don't quite know what is happening. Megacorporate goon squads cease in their firefights with street samurai over the plans to a new flavour of air freshener to stop and just look at the sky and ask themselves for the first time in their life: [i]What is up there?[/i]

All around the world people go still as they hear the message of love. That someone doesn't think all they deserve is to live within the garbage of their own planet. And not one of them doesn't want to reach back out, however it is that they're capable of doing.

And meanwhile, you, Ferra, float above amidst the diamond heavens, seeing it all, and seeing all that is beyond.