Temptation: check out. Roll over and let the yowling goddess wash over her like the rain. Wrap herself in chains, hide her face, hide her talents, and simply let Smokeless Jade Fires conduct her body to whatever end she was headed toward. Sloth exchanged for hubris. Withdrawal from the absolute terms of her contract as a reprimand for these gaudy and counterproductive power struggles.

Temptation: leave altogether. Tear off this synthweave sleeve she's only fashioned for herself out of courtesy. Not to avoid the imparted sting of Smokeless Jade Fires' attacks. Those, she takes freely. She does not bleed from any of her cuts; they are not real, and the sensory input cannot make them so. This is merely another impact of cognition. But the shared sense data itself is brutally painful to endure. For the sake of such an uncooperative client, why suffer so? Leave. Tear it off, or simply dig the control spike into the console and establish manual (if clumsy) control directly. 

Except. If she yields, then she cannot Climb the Mountain. Except. Her competence is being challenged, and this excites her more than annoys. Except. The idol is not Smokeless Jade Fires, is not Mirror, is not even Little Sister Fire (The Ever Born, The Last-First). The idol is the idol, which is to say the mecha itself. The sudden surging of the crystal fire drive and the frenzied pulsing of the power conduits that's creating these butterfly-like manifestations. The machine itself was begging to be flown out. Recognition of a superior pilot. 

Impossible to ignore. Thus, she sinks into the third and most insidious temptation: fight to win.

But Mirror is not a goddess. She is not a Pattern, and does not possess powers comparable to either within a virtual space. She is a titan only in the eyes of Smokeless Jade Fires, who will not cast aside her own pride or aesthetics to defeat Mirror's recognition of reality and reestablish her mastery of the assumed space. There are no more tricks for her to pull here. She cannot become water and surge across the battlefield like a wave. She cannot even bend her limbs in ways that are unintuitive to her physical body, since awareness of her own form and its dimensions and limitations is her inviolate shield against the spear of virtual reality. She can no more summon the Tails of her Gods-Smiting Whip to this mindscape than can she pick up a rock and throw it. 

Creation is an act of impossibility. Everything must be accomplished in the negative. That is the only way to fight a god. Negation as a principle of combat is achieved through varyingly simple or complex techniques. In the first place, treating the spear and cords of Smokeless Jade Fires as real enough to dodge means that she can avoid the pain signal simply by ducking out of the way and dodging the (perceived) physical contact. The young goddess is a creature of insatiable physicality; though it is doubtless within her capability to simply cripple Mirror with a series of disconnected 'wounds' until the pain was so overwhelming she became pliant, doing so would also be admitting her created world was less than real. It would mean her connections to the mortal world were fleeting, transitory, and false. 

Dodging her is therefore an act of love. As much as refusing to bleed is an act of defiance. Every strike builds the world she lives in, and every strike builds Whispered Promise more and more into a creature on par with the divine. See how she calls this world sacred. See how she will not submit to it, regardless. Negation, achieved in the negative. So to speak. Their bodies kiss in passing motions. Accepting one another. Flesh yielding to flesh. Hips brush and fabric rustles. They split apart. Mirror chases the butterflies deeper into the forest of chains. 

Smokeless Jade Fires, it would have benefitted you to do your research. By her record, Mira of the Fisher Clan is the most skilled mercenary you could have hired for the job you need doing. And this is certainly true, but perhaps if you'd read and understood her background properly then you, a Goddess, would not have dared call on her. Especially not in the exact way that you did. The Whispered Promise is not properly what the Terenians refer to as an 'athiest', though that [i]is[/i] the word they use in their written profiles of her. 

The word in Hybrasilian speech is [Cosmos Denier/Cartographer]. It is virtually unheard of for a child of Hybrasil to reach the conclusion that the sky and the planets are not filled with the essence of the divine, even if they disagree (loudly) about the exact manifestations. Every word and concept in the culture can be expressed in at least two ways, but one word that does not exist in the language at all is Nothing. Why would it need to? Nothing is Nothing. Even the void is defined by existence. So it would be a very sad and unfortunate cat who could look up at the sky and around at her home and see no pathways up there and no spark anywhere around her. Certainly Mirror is not such a broken creature.

But there [i]is[/i] a theological tradition, mostly championed by Hybrasilians living off-world (and even then only a fraction of them) that hold that the pathways and the stories written in the stars are always changing. That they must be constantly plotted and replotted to maintain the necessary levels of accuracy to be guided by them. There is a space for Goddesses in this tradition, and little trouble accepting a new one no matter how she may or may not manifest. But to these unusual cats, these... Pioneers, living divinities are not to be worshipped by submitting to them. They are instead loved by owning them. 

This is the manner of Hybrasilian that Mira the Whispered Promise is. And you, creature of divine fire, have told her to come here as a pilot. Does the ship fly the crew, O Goddess? She acknowledges you. She loves you, in her way. That is the shape of your doom. 

She weaves her way around the cockpit, painfully limited by her diseased and improper body, and for a while it seems as though you almost have her. Breathing heavily, worn down by the constant, morphing assault of a tireless warrior, she tangles herself in the forest of chains the idol and Little Sister Fire manifest to crown both winner and loser in this contest that is a prelude toward adventure. Your bodies join and separate many times, and each time you feel a spark of electric ecstasy. And each time she seems to become more tangled and trapped. 

If you had at least watched how she fought, you might have seen the trap swing shut. But, Smokeless Jade Fires, you are too beautiful for that. You are in love, and Lovers rarely think with their heads. You are blameless. You are also defeated. Mirror leans into the chains one last time, willing them to have a physical presence, demonstrating their ability to you to hold someone of even her colossal stature aloft. She rolls up and over them, just avoiding her pounce, and as gravity inverts from her perspective for that briefest of moments she aims a kick at you. Her first attack. And as it turns out she can create weapons just fine. The idol provided them to her, just to see what she could do.

Her attack comes from a dozen different angles at once. Chains uncoil from her limbs and lash about like hungry serpents. Clenching around your ankle, your knee, your waist. Your arms are pulled up and apart for you to dangle by. She wraps herself around you a moment later. The weight of her is... pleasant. The heat, the softness of her body, the textural contrast of her fur and her rough-patterned dress. Her breath steams against your neck. Her teeth nip into your ear, and her laughter follows a moment later. 

"I choose this confinement of my own free will. Is that not correct, Little Goddess? A creature of your infinite power could no doubt free herself in an instant. But you will not. You will not. You will not, because you chose to fight me as an equal. And you see now that I am your superior. It is consuming you, is it not? My fire. I have buried it right... here."

And as she speaks, her fingers splay across your tummy. Her caress leaves a sensation like the still-fluttering butterflies inside of you, and a spreading warmth just after. Her other hand is behind your ear, massaging so expertly to drive all the thoughts from your mind. You gave yourself this shape, Little Goddess. Now let yourself be defined by it.

"You want to see what I can do. You want to know what it feels like. You, who have refused to set the terms of our contract, will now accept [i]my[/i] demands. This is not my payment, Little Goddess. This is our code of conduct, which I shall deliver exactly as I promise. We will travel out among the stars, you and I. We will retrieve your missing pilot and return her here to your temple. You will allow me to do this as I see fit. You will facilitate my every need. You will dial down the senses fed into my body by this cockpit link. You will take them into yourself, instead. And you will construct inside of this space a console, a dais of switches and buttons in the [i]exact[/i] layout I describe for you. Through this I will teach you the secrets of the Whispered Promise. You will keep these secrets, and through them you will learn what it means to be [i]piloted[/i]."

And with that final emphatic purr, she brandishes the control spike against you at last. It slashes across your divine dress just as it had disrobed your idol, and with a loud and lewd rip it does much the same to you. She cuts strips from your outfit, and wraps them neatly into a ball. She exposes more of you to her wandering, watery eyes, and uses this to fashion a cord. She prises your jaw apart and forces it inside, tying it behind your head and giving you a smile as she wipes away the drool already forming at your godly lips in response to the sudden intrusion. 

"I asked you over and over again to be a good girl. You have thus far chosen to... disappoint me. So I have decided, furthermore, it will be unnecessary for you to speak. At least, intelligibly. Feel free to garble at me as much as it pleases you, Little Goddess. But you have made it clear enough that I must first teach you how bad girls are treated, and so I shall. And so. I shall."

Her stubbed claws drag across your thighs, and with a slash she deprives you of your skirts. And in this same motion, you feel the crystal fire drive in your idol thrum with a deep power that clears the exhaustion from your being and anchors you to reality with far greater insistence than you had been. Your outline solidifies, the pain that missing arm should be causing is nowhere to be found. You have drunk enough power from your hangar that you are made whole even in this state of disrepair. 

If this was her plan all along, or simply a lucky effect of how you're feeling right now, is a mystery left only for you to unravel. Much like your sacred garb.

[Mirror gives Jade a String and rolls an Entice of her own: [b]7[/b]. Through the power of a secret loving act, she reduces her Feelings back down from the String just given]