Quinn had been right—the normalcy didn’t last. As soon as her back was turned she could have felt the eyes return to her, and without much strain she could hear the whispering. Indistinct and worrisome, anxieties she might very well have felt herself, manifesting around her on the lips of people who were meant to be cheering her on. 

A screen overhead played the daily news. The volume was low, but the anchors spoke Casobani, so no one was listening so much as they were watching and reading the subtitles. A pair of minor singularities were set to open this morning, and Casoban’s remaining pilots were split to tackle them one-a-piece. That at least explained why most of the Casoban crew were gone now—shipped out in the middle of the night, most likely. Toussaint remained, which was odd, considering he was allegedly the commander. Perhaps he wasn’t anymore. He didn’t look particularly happy. 

To be fair Besca didn’t appear to be doing much better. She looked utterly exhausted, which, she was. She hadn’t slept a wink, had spent all night online, searching desperately for anything that might help them. 

By the grin that split her face when she saw Quinn, she must have been successful. 

“[color=gray]Hey, hun![/color]” she said, voice scratchy but her enthusiasm didn’t suffer for it. “[color=gray]Listen, hey. I’ve been reading all night on this—on Tormont. Not a lot of publicly available information on the Great Houses, even less is translated, but some of the folks here—never mind, not important. [i]Look[/i].[/color]”

She slapped her tablet down onto the table between them. On it were dueling records. The first two Quinn had seen; they were Roaki’s official duels as [i]Blotklau[/i]’s pilot. Besca pointed to some lines beside the word [i]Synchronir[/i]. They’d been highlighted manually. 

“[color=gray]Know what that says? Sorry, dumb question, neither of us read Helburkan. It says, ‘[i]Subject was not observed phasing.[/i]’ Remember how our info listed Roaki’s phasing time as ‘[i]unknown[/i]’? I assumed that was just cause she was too new, and because neither of her duels reached the average phasing thresholds, so, you know, I figured she just phased average. But then I found [i]these[/i].[/color]”

Following the two duels were…more duels. Five. They were unregistered, unofficial in the sense that they hadn’t involved a dispute with another nation. In fact, they weren’t even duels with another Great House. 

Roaki had fought five duels against her own family. 

Besca’s hands flew to the same word. [i]Synchronir[/i]. “[color=gray][i]These[/i] duels were all over the place. One was minutes long. Two reached the average threshold. Another went [i]way[/i] past the average, slower than Ghaust’s. Way slower. And the last one…god, I’ve never seen anything like it before. She was connected for [i]thirty minutes.[/i] And what does this say? ‘[i]Subject was not observed phasing.[/i]’”[/color]

Besca’s grin grew teeth, she tapped the screen manically. “[color=gray]Quinn, I don’t think this is flubbed. I don’t think she’s slow, either. I don’t think she can phase [i]at all[/i]. That’s why her duels are so fast. That’s why she’s so aggressive. She has to win before the other pilots phase because she can’t just stall ‘til she does too.[/color]” Her voice dropped low, conspiratorial. “[color=gray]Hun—I’ve seen how you’ve been practicing. I think, seriously, I think if you can just get yourself phased, you can do this. You can actually beat her.[/color]”

Something in Quinn’s chest thrummed excitedly.