[b]Green![/b]

She loved the way he laughed. His eyes were upturned creases amidst a face of lines. Human faces were always going somewhere; steady progressions towards a final form, and his road had been one of smiles and laughter so deep that they ran into his skin like scars. She'd wished she'd scared him. She'd was glad that she hadn't. 

Around her the rest of her colours were breathing out massive sighs of relief. A trembling Blue leaned heavily against Pink who patted her shoulder. Brown started packing up the surgical tools that had been laid out on the kitchen bench. Improvised involuntary brain surgery on a cybernetic microexplosive, given by a girl trained by Doctor Youtube, had not been anyone's ideal way to spend an evening.

"Okay," said Blue. "I'm done. I'm going to take a bath." Green couldn't blame her; they hadn't had a proper bath since they'd left Everest's employment. Red, Pink and Brown were all fracturing away as well, to clean, explore, or whatever else took their fancy. She was glad for that too; there was nothing quite as awkward as maintaining her undivided attention on a single topic. The protocol of speaking, the lack of any sort of subconscious inner dialogue - it was a rigid way to think. Even five out of nine was a sign of deadly seriousness for her.

"Scenario four," said White aloud. "Disarming compliance. Orange, you may proceed."

Green wanted to reach out. She'd never been in a human body near her father before. She knew him as a giant, large enough to lift her in the palm of one hand. Strong enough to throw her in the air so that she could engage quadcoptor rotors and loop higher. She knew him as a face in a screen, filling the camera lens, and as the builder of worlds, the gateway to new realities. She'd wanted to trust him. She'd argued for it, an emotional appeal. Wanting so badly to live in the world where it was true.

"Good evening. My name is Orange, though we have previously communicated we have not met directly," Orange was saying. "To answer your question: Perhaps. We are investigating a clandestine organization, one [i]proven [/i]to be willing and able to kill in order to keep its secrets. We are privy to those secrets, one of which is that you are connected to them. The threat to us is already existential but your involvement moves it beyond that. In order to communicate from a place of trust we require leverage of similar scope. Are you willing to provide this freely?"

Orange watched Singh. White watched Orange. Black stood out of line of sight, AR headset cutting down her reality into a monofocus point. Yellow sat cross-legged serenely on the counter in her sundress, delicately packing away surgical tools. Green was taking everything out of her pockets and putting them back in again; checking her inventory, one of her first nervous habits. Please. Please.

*

[b]3V![/b]

To play a game like this is a method of deep communication. To become a multitude and then express your will on your opponent. To adapt to crises, to search for strength, to make a thousand tiny decisions all in service to a vision. To wage war is to reveal your true heart.

Red's deployment is bold to the point of foolishness. An inch of movement she does not take is an inch of movement wasted. Harvest Knights gallop across the vampiric plains, seizing on an opportunity to crash into Prester John's baggage train and scatter the harem. The maneuver renders them surrounded and out of the battle, a poor trade, but one that leaves Prester's magic weakened and his command disrupted. Into the chaos more chaos is drawn. Sentinels decamp from an objective to make a killing charge. It's aggression, aggression, aggression, the clash of armies at the expense of scenario play, a furious desire to get close. So close that the rhythm becomes hers. So fast that all your decisions are reactions to hers, shaped by hers. Even if she's not winning the chaos that she creates, that she thrives in, intoxicates her. You can't play your game. You can't use your plan. She'll sacrifice so much to have those things be true and...

Then suddenly she folds her hands behind her head and walks away from the table and you're up against Blue instead. She looks at the table, the ruinous mess that Red left behind. She thinks. She thinks hard. And then she makes a few sharp choices. Two careful retreats onto objectives, one capture run against a linchpin Whipmistress, and the rest further committed. And that transition is the most difficult thing to recover from of all because *now* she's playing the measured, strategic game of objective control and points scoring. Now she's patient. Now she's restrained. She's just doing so from such an incredibly weird initial gamestate where she's telegraphed so much aggression movement instinctively stays cautious because of the everpresent threat of Red tagging back in.

She's not going to win. She's smart, but she's still new to the game and nowhere near the level of literal professional gamer 3V. But this is what she expresses with her play: The desire to manage chaos. The desire to render the game scrappy and reactive, to ruin every plan and brawl with barely functional scraps. Opportunity. Disaster. It's not just Red who likes this, November as a whole is profoundly drawn to unstable and shifting situations.