[b]Mosaic![/b]

The camouflage cloak comes off in a whirl. 

It was hiding a gun of comical length and thinness. Four meters long, held up with supports, while being scarcely more than five centimeters wide, comprised entirely out of red wood. Along the top, running between raised wooden spikes like electrical cables between power lines, is a thin coiled copper wire. The trigger and details is in old-fashioned, hand crafted bronze and is inset with an intricate crystal device. You can see it gleaming for a moment before it fires.

Rainbow light arcs along the string, pausing for a second on each of the connecting spikes and building in intensity. By the time it reaches the end it's surging in power until there's a crack like a thunderbolt and all of that energy arcs down into the gleaming head of a crossbow bolt that bends light around it as though it was being launched by a microsingularity.

It doesn't hit you. It embeds in the mask of one of the Stone Tribe champions. For a moment you think you've found an ally.

But then the turtlegirl breaks into two and hits you from both sides at once. 

The impact is hard to parse given how crystal clear it is; cube-shaped holes, three-dimensional pixel distortions, fragments of two worlds overlaid at once, like the universe is running two different graphics settings at the same time. The Stone Tribe champion emerging from this chaos is clearly an exact copy of the same person, and from the way it bleeds off fragments that are absorbed back into the rift it pulled itself out of, sealing it again, you know it's not long for this world. But this is also the best of your opponents and now there's two of them. Worse than that, with their identical instincts they're working at a level of harmony and co-ordination even the Ceronians can't match.

You get a glimpse of the girl behind the weapon before you're fighting hard on the defensive. You only knew her in passing. Yellow robes. Yellow thoughts. Walking behind you into forever because she wanted to see what came next. You didn't forget her name because you never knew it, but it was the same path.

But you also see that she isn't reloading. She's staring at you too, the way you move filling her head with memories. That's a blessing - if she started multiplying your opponent even further then you'd be in serious trouble.

[b]Ember![/b]

Someone breathes a grid at you.

It's - it's a weird, inexplicable moment. You weren't trained for this. No one was trained for this. This is a completely new tactical experience, and you can feel a prickling hyperawareness. Your senses sharpen and glands release sharpening chemicals, every moment of what happens here embedding crystal-perfectly on your memory. Adaption Instinct - when encountering a new threat, Ceronian biology pushes a hyperaware state so that you can record every detail and communicate it to your Pack later.

There is a dragon (silicate, transparent, predatory) overhead, a fifty meters up. Five meters long nose to tail. Unnatural flight - its wings have long fingers but there is no matter in between them, instead glittering hologram light, filled with colour. Secondary defenses (claws, fangs, tail). Primary weapon: the light grid. In its open mouth is a glittering crystal array that projects patterned light on a variety of wavelengths specialized for cutting through water. Where it directs this cone of grid-light it creates a topological map of the undersea surface. Where the light falls across your back it picks you out as clearly as it picks out the fish around you. 

The crystal dragon turns its head and focuses its crystal laser into a connecting beam of light. It sweeps this across the beach. The alert goes up instantly.

Previously this was just an opportunity for action on a slow day for the Corvii. The second that laser goes off they get serious. Depth charges start hitting the surface - sludgewater bombs, underwater solid projectile munitions that turn swathes of ocean into horrible walls of poison. The warsphere blares a siren in the distance and starts drifting eerily towards this area. Shuttles carrying teams of commandos start sliding down from above. It's a full response. 

Unfortunately to be expected. On the land this could have been just an idle incident. In the water means that they've assumed that this is a Silver Diver incursion and are responding in force. But more important than your test is now reporting on that dragon - the capability to spot submerged warriors represents a threat and it's your genetic duty to assist in the Adaption process.

[b]Dolce![/b]

"Don't mind that," said 20022. "Attitude is far more important than experience. I'd have to train anyone who I took on board anyway, and our kind have a tendency to... imprint. We work for a master who likes things to be done a certain way and it's very easy to internalize those facts as just The Way Things Should Be. It's pleasant to speak to someone who focuses on the fundamentals: service, diligence, anticipation, invisibility. Those are far more transferable skills even if you don't know the details of graviton climatology economics or what have you."

He finished his coffee, smiled politely, revealing nothing, and stood up. "Of course, I won't rush you. I'll have an ID tag delivered tomorrow. If you decide to wear it approach me at any time and we'll find work for you."

[b]Dyssia![/b]

The first problem you experience is that the system is designed to be impossible for any one person to disrupt. There's always at least one check for deployments or changes - a formality, but a velvet wall. Various guardians, like the ones who maintain the id-wards that keep the Pix from the hidden decks, are weaponized obsessive-compulsive disorders who have panic attacks if they don't check every ID pass every time. There is an routine of regular blood and saliva samples in mass public gatherings to identify shapeshifters - so practiced that it is quick, habitual and ironclad. Biomancers shape societies just as they shape flesh and their own society has optimized for the frontier of security and convenience. 

In the end, though, there is only one weakness you're able to identify: the ship itself.

The biomancers have the ability to project a lot of force an extremely limited distance. For three days in a close environment they could utterly overwhelm the thousands-strong crew of the [i]Firetree[/i], but in a protracted campaign on the ground the limitations of drone swarms become crippling. A campaign of extermination would have to be waged by a warrior species, which is not simple to arrange. If you can convince the Pix to commit to abandoning ship entirely then the timeframe for purging them goes from days to decades.

The problem, then, is that the [i]Firetree [/i]is a hell of a ship. It's a spectacular, gleaming Imperial era warship with room for ten thousand crew and enough firepower to go toe to toe with Shogunate warbands. How to convince a pack of scheming foxgirls that there's something even more important out there?