[hr][hr]Dahlia had not kept her promise, she had not stayed with Quinn up to the last moment. It ate at her, but only a bit—she didn’t have a choice, after all. The elevator was making its last trip up to the Aerie before the duel began, and so she broke one promise to keep another. She would wait in the hangar, and watch from the screens, and if things turned ugly she would connect. 

And she would save her sister. 

It was a good thing a bulk of the station’s engineers and hangar staff were at the pavilion. If there’d been actual security here, she might not have been able to make it to [i]Dragon[/i] unquestioned. She got a few odd looks on her way up, and made a show of leaving to go to the dorms. By the time she’d circled back to the hangar, no one even noticed her. 

So she sat in the open cockpit, tablet in her lap. Between the heating units in her suit and her intense focus on the screen, she hardly felt the cold. The back of her mind was field of worry, sown with the waiting seeds of guilt. If this went wrong, if she did go down there, she would be breaking the Illun Accord. In the best case she would hang. In the worst, there’d be war. 

Besca had seemed renewed with confidence that Quinn could do it, that she could beat Roaki. But when Dahlia had said she was returning to the Aerie, there’d been a knowing look shared between them. 

Besca knew what she meant to do, and she hadn’t stopped her. 

Among those guilty buds in her brain was a sprout of regret for how harsh she’d been. How she’d doubted Besca’s dedication. She’d never apologized for that, but she would. She just hoped they wouldn’t be her last words. 

On her screen, the Saviors moved. [i]Blotklau[/i] shook to life behind Helburke’s camp, rolling her shoulders and wiping the black slaver from her mouth. She stomped out over the mountainous wall and into the dueling plains and hills. 

On Runa’s side it took a bit longer. She watched Quinn ride the lift up, suit donned and looking down at the camp below. With a sudden sting, Dahlia realized she’d never asked Quinn if she was afraid of heights. She didn’t know why that thought had come to her, but it was suddenly the most important thing in the world that she didn’t know, and she had to physically stop herself from logging over to the comms channel to ask her. Now wasn’t the time, and besides, she’d just broken a promise to her. Maybe hers wasn’t the voice Quinn needed to hear right now. 

Minutes later, RS4 shuddered and her posture straightened. Dahlia watched as its giant chest heaved in a deep breath, then another, and a third, and couldn’t keep herself from smiling just a bit. Sometimes it was easy to view the Saviors like…cars. Like [i]things[/i] that she technically knew had people inside them, but it never felt that way in the moment. Now and then though, the personality bled through. It already had the eyepatch, she wondered what it might look like with a giant braid slapped to the back of its head. 

Quietly, shiveringly, Dahlia giggled to herself in the dark. 

Then, as Quinn began her own march out onto the field, she noticed something odd on the register. At first she thought it was a glitch, or a typo, but on a second glance she noticed it was intentional. Changed. Her name had changed. 

And just like that, the giggling stopped. 

[hr][hr]
Quinn sat on her Savior’s shoulder, the sun to her side. The day was calm, and even up here the breezes were gentle and soothing. 

Some distance away [i]Blotklau[/i] stood, facing her. They’d both walked out onto the hills, far away from the camp, and as per the rules that had been explained to her more or less on her way up to the cockpit, they’d both disconnect and wait another ten or so minutes, in order to negate any phasing advantages from the travel. An odd specification to make, but then, if she thought about Dahlia’s speeds, it made a little more sense. 

So there she sat, waiting to hear the green light from Besca. Across from her, if she squinted, she could see Roaki standing on [i]Blotklau[/i]’s shoulder as well. A candleflick of white hair blowing in the wind. 

Her comms squeaked to life. Was this it? Was it time? It certainly couldn’t have been ten minutes already—

“[color=ec008c]Oi, deadgirl.[/color]” Roaki’s voice was rough in her ears. If she checked, Quinn would see that she was connected to an open comms channel labeled: [i]Pilots[/i]. Most of the time it was abandoned—what purpose was there in communicating with someone you were about to fight to the death with? Given it was her first time though, she must have been connected to it automatically. 

“[color=ec008c]The fuck is [i]Ablaze[/i] supposed to mean?[/color]”