Smokeless Jade Fires is young. She does her very best to hide it behind her laughter and her pride and her love, but she is astonishingly young, even for an immortal hunt-goddess of rushing, cascading thought coursing through the systems of a mechanized idol. She is young enough that when the thought begins to run through her, it frightens her enough that she pounces on it and wraps it up and hides it until that thought is entirely unrecognizable, and she can sit back and smugly accept the thought that it has become, squirming in layers of defensive lying: [i]I think she would make Dolly a good rival.[/i]

Because stories are full of those! Dolly’s stories loved the figure of the brooding, dark-furred rival, exiled from their clan for unforgivable but perhaps understandable sins, dangerous and nimble and difficult to predict. Even if Angela Victoria Miera Antonius doesn’t have fur, perhaps she could be worked into shape. For Dolly’s sake. And if it so happened that the rival ended up repeatedly humiliated by a mighty and powerful goddess, well, that’s hardly without precedent!

And imagine the crossover. Imagine the two of them squirming together. The comparisons. The contrasts. Cupping Dolly’s face and lifting it up, seeing the blissful serenity of submerged space in her wide and placid eyes, and then forcing Angela Victoria Miera Antonius’s head up, her ears twitching, her eyes slitted and furious, because she might as well be Hybrasilian in this daydream, chewing uselessly on whatever Jade chooses to fill her mouth, squirming, struggling, uselessly, defeated, owned, tagged, and on the other side of her Dolly soft and inviting and moaning like she’s in heat as she pushes herself against Jade’s hands, and Angela refusing to stop trying to enunciate some petty defiance, and both of them showing Jade’s power and control and glory, Dolly through her eager surrender, Angela through her completely impotent indignation. And isn’t that beautiful?

The conception of Jade’s self shoves her knuckles into her mouths and swishes her tails giddily, imagining it. Girls. [i]Girls.[/i] For Dolly, of course. It’s important she have some brooding firebrand to antagonize for the glory of her patron goddess. That’s why she’s even considering this. Her High Priestess is irreplaceable.

Even if she’s a goddess, her whims are sacrosanct, and there is nothing Dolly could do to stop her except cry, if Smokeless Jade Fires wanted to take on new pilots, new concubines, to form a harem. That thought alone is why she must wrap even the possibility of doing something that might lead to Dolly crying up in lies to herself, so that she does not fall into the terrible passions of a goddess unshackled. Just imagine it! That soft, beautiful face falling, crinkling, all of her emotional defenses crumpling as she fails to hold it back; the gulping breaths as she sobs, trying to understand why she wasn’t good enough. Because, and this is the terrible truth that stops Jade from collecting every pilot she defeats and cackling wildly about it, if Dolly was replaced as Jade’s pilot and slave and lover and polestar, [i]she would blame herself.[/i] She wouldn’t rightfully call Jade out for being an insatiable demon tyrant; she wouldn’t even consider it.

Jade clings closer to Dolly, digs her nails in, drags tongues rough up her fur, nearly makes her drop the Barn Owl. Let the cameras speculate on the shakiness of the victorious mech, of its unsteady footing; she cares not. Her sweet, selfless, indulgent Dolly must be rewarded and reminded of her place in Jade’s heart.

…but the [i]prize.[/i] Angela Victoria Miera Antonius encouraged to fight her again, in a better body, to make it more of a fight. The tangle of limbs, the lock of pistons, the terrible destructive wrestling of these vast bodies. Angela Victoria Miera Antonius ambushed, caught in a net, outsmarted, raging, screaming in that staccato— ai, ai, ai! Tagged again, and again, and [i]again.[/i] And then Dolly ambushes her with a memory circuit blindfold, and Angela Victoria Miera Antonius finds herself in Jade’s clutches, dressed appropriately, and it would be worth the effort to allow Dolly and Angela to interact with each other in the simulated reality she constructs for Dolly, and then— oh— yes— [i]mmmmh[/i]— to the victor, the [i]spoils[/i]— the [i]best[/i] for her Dolly— teach her to dance, to sing praise, to grovel fuming before the High Priestess—

“We’re going to the fashion show tonight,” she declares, her excitement a rumbling purr all around Dolly. “I’ll pick out your costume. Your reward for being my good girl…”