Madeleine says nothing, but stands there with the bottle upturned onto her lips and refuses to move until the entire bottle has been drained. She licks her lips rather than wiping them, and shivers. Suddenly she is bouncing around on the balls of her feet and shaking her head, which sends her dark hair billowing first this way and then that in waves. 

Yes, yes, yes yes yes! She gets to do the course like a normal person! Sure, she suddenly has to compete with (in her opinion) the best to ever do it, but who cares? Normal person! Yes, yes, yes yes yes! She's going to be more horse! As far as appreciable aesthetics go she's been like 90% of the way there for some time now but there's a hundred different things left to be improved, and this is a journey with no defined end where every step she takes is more exciting than the one that came before it. Yes, yes, yes yes yes! She's going to bite Machia!

...Wait. What?

She takes her position. Raises her left hand to call ready. She takes a single deep breath, in and out through her mouth and all in the chest. And then she is running, bounding, climbing, and scrambling toward the center of the course for the very first time since she became Machia's project without locks or weights or five competing drugs trying to drag her down. It's difficult to know quite what the difference is. She might just be excited. She might be thinking too much about a compound her body hasn't actually absorbed yet, might just be so giddy at the thought that it's making her form look better, her body (and even her heart) feel stronger than it has in months or maybe ever. All she knows for sure is...

No, don't do it. Don't become a parody of yourself, Madeleine. It is perfectly normal for even two Scorers who run into each other in Aristeia! to get into a bit of a tussle but there's no need to lean into any ramping feelings of aggression right now. It would be the dumbest thing she could do. But god, she can't stop thinking about it! Don't do it, don't do it, just please please please don't do it, just slip into the center hex and take the point the way you always practice to. 

Doesn't she deserve it, though? Madeleine squeezes her eyes shut as she jumps through a chute in the middle of her path that's intended as a training aid for mid-air dodging through either enemy attacks or random Hexadrome obstacles, and all that she can see behind her eyelids while she's flying is an image of ridiculous violence that she absolutely cannot, must not make reality. Because the answer is no, Titanomachia does not deserve a biting. Even though it's possible the 'bite toy' she's lined up is just Madeleine. Even though she's annoying. A shadow. That's the playstyle Madeleine desires to perfect. Not a raging beast. 

She slides heavily on her knees as she stumbles out the other side and has to slap her palm down on the ground to keep from bouncing and skinning her knees in spectacular fashion. She hurries back to her feet and continues running, lungs burning but nowhere near fatigued. Ok no, she's still nothing special, but this is definitely getting easier. That alone is proof that she shouldn't

[i]Don't bite her. Don't bite her, Madeleine Cross. Use your fists and your feet like a proper Lady. Do NOT bite her.[/i]

It's there, in her mind, this white hot desire and barely controllable aggression that has her on the verge of tears even as she's the happiest she has ever been in her entire life. And that tangled mess of adrenaline comes crashing into the center hex, half wanting just to win a pure race against a rival, half wanting to stand and fight for better practice, and half just wanting to curl up into a ball and hold herself until the storm passes. 

Inside her are three wolves. Against chaos like that, against a woman literally giving it 150%, even Machia might not know what to do. Madeleine is, for better or worse, in what could be described as The Zone. What happens next is not hers to guess. But at the end of all three paths, there is a stammered apology.