There’s a moment where Vesna nearly bolts. It’s a messy, squishy moment, body language going haywire, eyes dilated. Prey, but not afraid of Black.

“I haven’t ever had this work out,” she blurts, beneath the strobing lights. “And the last breakup was… messy. Shit. I’m not supposed to bring that up, am I? I just… right. Music.”

She takes a step back, and then a step forward. Back, and forward. Caught between the desire to be close and the fear she doesn’t deserve it, even after what Yellow showed her.

“Have you ever thought about the fact that music was never supposed to be an industry? The first people, the ones in the Indus River valley,” she says, ahistorically, because she’s not thinking too hard about it, and even if she was called out she’d just autocorrect to the Nile, and it would take her a moment of actually considering the point to admit that if the Garden of Eden existed, it was somewhere in the heart of Africa, “they didn’t sing because they were looking for a contract with an industry label. They sang because singing is a stupid wonderful human thing to do. Like making weird little noises for no reason when you’re alone, or going [i]big stretch[/i] when you see a cat doing a stretch.”

(Would Yellow have uploaded 3VNoises.mp3 to the cloud, listening to her make meaningless little mrrps while microwaving breakfast, thinking herself unobserved?)

“That’s why [i]selling out[/i] is such, as an accusation it stings, you know? Because with things as they exist, we need compensation for our work, whether that’s spending the time practicing an instrument or livestreaming battle royale matches, but this wasn’t meant to be compensated. It’s just a way that we react to the world. We have vocal cords, we sing. We have strings, we tune them and make a song. And if you make the music because you think it’ll be more popular, because it will get you paid, you’re perverting this natural thing that your heart does just to make it fit, to pay the bills.”

She lets herself place one hand on Black’s hip, pull her closer, heart as quick and fleet as the hart (a metaphor that might be coming to mind because of the actual hart on the dance floor). “Do you have any idea how long it took me to enjoy video games again? To stop reflexively looking for ways I could break it, for combos and tricks, for things I could show off? Back after I lost the sponsorship, I stopped playing anything multiplayer for a [i]year.[/i] If I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have been able to even touch them now. And the shop— I’m just trying to find new ways to find the things I fell in love with in the first place, before the streams, before I got the hands, before I grew up, you know? I mean, if I did. That’s arguable. An actual grown-up would be focusing on the piece she’s going to write about this place, right?”

The armor flashes white on her chest, the sheepish smile her stun animation. Left trigger or right trigger: Paragon or Renegade, Black?