Titanomachia pulled out her phone, typed rapidly, then held it up. She looked from the phone to Madeleine.

"Hmm!"

She set it down.

"Not surprising," she said. "Underground matches are mobbed up. It's all about personal connections, and feeds in and out of mercenary work. Cyber Punks, you know? It'd take too much training time and risk to put you on a job to get you in the ecosystem, so..." she made a face. "I'll just have to go in with you. Leg and all."

She leaned back in her chair, a grumpy mood having come over her. "Four days of normal training. Psych training in the evening. I reach out to old contacts. Ideally get an underground match on Friday. Light exercise before, complete rest day afterwards. Then your tournament match. Listen, it's never going to be clear if an underground match is going to be fixed. Mostly no - they're a chance for professionals to blow off steam, make contacts and chase glory, their real money comes from mercenary work and they do this for fun. If it happens, it'll be a girl named Fingers arranging it. She'll sound you out like she's your friend and pitch suggestions - but they're not suggestions, just do what she says."

The way she talks about her makes you think that this is why she went pro in the first place.

Are you sure? she does not ask, because that would be stupid and insulting and only make things worse.

But you could get hurt! she does not say, because it's so obvious that letting it out would make both of them dumber for having to hear it.

There must be another way. she does not suggest, because if there is she doesn't know one. And if there was, it probably wasn't faster.

Still though, she had quit. And if that'd been to participate in mob-rigged death matches with mercenary runners, she would never have been interested in training Madeleine in the first place. Unless it... well, no. Even then it amounted to something deeply unpleasant. Special and important in a way that she couldn't really process.

Madeleine places her feet underneath her. Carefully. Pressing one palm on the table, she rises into a standing position which through the magic of Eating and Drinking Properly she is able to keep. Quietly, she gathers the dishes of her meal and walks them into the kitchen to wash with the nervous care of a tightrope artist. When she disappears behind the corner, only then in the moment when she cannot be observed, she allows herself to blossom into the quiet smile she can neither explain or understand.

But she comes back with a storm in her eyes. And also the spoon, washed and dried. An intrusive thought in the back of her head tells her to lick it, but she kicks that into the abyss and plunges the utensil back into the poor neglected cake. Once more she lifts, and once more she offers the bite to Machia. Though less... intensely than she had at the cafe.

"I appreciate this," she says, "All of it. I will not waste any part of the training we have left. I promise..."

Machia sat in a reverie for a moment, looking off out through the broken window, a faint frown on her face. Then her eyes flicked down, contemplated exactly as deeply - and took a bite.

*

'Normal' training was how she had phrased it. Another sign of her wicked mind.

Titanomachia's idea of normal started from several presumptions. One was that her biological engineering was entirely sufficient for strength and speed, and so regular exercise was only on the rotation for reasons of testing, calibration and familiarity. The main thing she was interested in teaching was training under various types of debuff. For all her earlier dismissal of Xoxic as a hack, she was very determined that her trainee not be upstaged by a hack - and that meant running and dodging while under the effects of numbing agents, choking gas and frenzying spikes.

Forunately these would mostly be the real thing. Xoxic was a dealer in poisons and chemicals, but the referees tended to frown on the use of bioweapons in the arena. This meant that these weren't 'real' poisons - they were Cubegel, a catchall phrase for compounds that essentially biohacked the Cube interface. This could produce various biological surges, most commonly used in emergency situations - like an emergency override for bleeding or cardiac arrest carried by paramedics, or breathing filter vials that were packed as little cells on the sides of fire extinguishers which could let people walk out of smoke-filled buildings. The important part was that Cubegel was extremely reversible - by operating entirely through the Cube's interface, it could be reversed just as easily by that interface.

Machia didn't like the stuff herself. It was the difference between building an airplane and building a missile - even if they used the same architecture, only one was concerned about the return trip. But if Xoxic was going to spend her energy budget loading up on weird compounds then weird compounds were going to be present in the arena, and Machia needed to know what her design would be capable of in those conditions.

"Monster. Fiend. Charlatan. You aren't human..."

Madeleine is running out of invectives. Really she's already run out, but the stream out of her endlessly whenever her breath allows for it. Hating Machia makes her heart beat. Hating Machia means the world is correct and normal. Hating Machia means it's possible to stand up again so she can walk over there and kick her right in her stupid artificial shin. You know, where it'll hurt.

But being fair, this isn't her fault. Madeleine should have known better after she'd suggested a local obstacle course and Machia had agreed so enthusiastically. That should have been her clue to call it off, or at least set a more reasonable expectation for the event. But now she was running through it, again and again, under the influence of any one of a dozen bizarre compounds.

The most recent run had been testing one that caused random muscle spasms. To hear Machia tell it, someone like Musashi would shrug this off and deliver a perfect sword stroke even through the worst fit of twitching it could dish out. Madeleine had been scrambling up the rope ladder when hers happened. Then she was falling, getting caught around her ankle, twisting, dropping, and...

Landing perfectly on one knee. Just before her leg shot out from under her and smashed her face into the ground. And if that wasn't enough she had to do this whole thing while Machia randomly fired beanbags out of a t-shirt cannon she'd... acquired? Modified? Did she want to know, or alternately tried to douse her in some other kind of cubegel to add swelling or sneezing or total adrenal burnout to the current challenge.

She turns her neck and stares ruefully at the unused weight sets over in the corner. What she wouldn't give for another round of calibrations. A chance to feel her body working for once, instead of finding out all the million ways it was possible to break it. God, she'd give anything to just... run in a circle for a while. Even if she had a madwoman shooting at her the whole time, it sounded like bliss.

"You know what worries me? That you act like building a missile is more virtuous than an airplane. Especially because I'm the missile! No I do not want the changes reverted that is... not the point!"

Madeleine struggles to her feet and walks over to a line of slowly diminishing bottles of sports drink. This one is yellow flavored. Not 'lemon', not really, these things were way too nutrient dense to taste like real things anymore, but somehow the color always gave it a sense of a different type of sweet than all the others. Or maybe salty, or... what was in this, anyway?

"...I've been thinking. Psych training tonight, and more of this in the morning. Right? Doesn't it feel silly sending me home at the end of these sessions? I should be staying over. At least until the night of the match. You have a real shower, so I... no, forget it. Next compound, please. What is my PB again? I'm going to crush it this time."

Madeleine settles in at the start of the course again. She did promise, after all. Nothing wasted.

Machia looked up from her biomonitor program, finally following the line of her ears. "Legally I'm more human than you," she said. "Structurally, about 20% less. Biologically -" she tapped a button on her screen. "- after the compounds your drink are digested you're going to be slightly more horse than I am. I'm having to limit my own fusion rate this week so I don't throw off my leg calibration, so you're ahead of the curve. This phase involves a fairly major hormone surge to co-ordinate various muscle integrations, so if you feel the urge to bite anyone try to keep it under control."

She smiled brightly. "That won't be a problem for me! I'm getting my dose tomorrow, and I've already got a bite toy lined up. Wonderful how that works out!"

She picked up her headphones. Any moment when she wasn't directly monitoring your training she was doing preparation work for her soundscape. She held it for a moment, toying with the cord, and then set it down.

"No, I'm going to be your opponent this round. My presence is uninteresting scientifically, but I'd prefer not to embarass myself on Friday. Usual scoring practice, I'm on hex 1, you're on Hex 6, center is live first, then random hexes after that." She stretched languidly, and then slapped her cybernetic leg violently. "No gel this run, this is for me. Are you ready?"

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

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

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.

Narrative: Titanomachia is out of practice. The nature of rust is that a gradual easing back in is preferable to a high-speed impact with someone operating at peak performance. The underlying skills have atrophied.
Narrative: Titanomachia has been observing Madeleine's physiological movements and capabilities for an extended period; she has fixated on this opponent above all others. There is nothing here that can come as a surprise.
Narrative: Titanomachia is just as fucking feral as Madeleine.

Synthesis: Violence

She sees it coming - the acceleration over the soft, wet grass of the community Aristeia! oval. She is not wearing her armoured lab coat, not wearing her ribbons, not wearing the badges of beauty and championship that made her such an icon in the hex. Her fabrics are light, tight, sweat-stained, yinlike against the oncoming wall of shadow.

She performs three calculations - target, intensity, options - and gets two of them correct.

You hit the center hex before she does. She's slow - you can get ahead into a blocking position. Another second at full speed before you have to break - but just as you commit to that extra moment of speed, Titanomachia is speeding up. Suddenly all the trajectories are wrong, suddenly she's performing that supernatural dodge that took her past Musashi, Maxima and Sammy, you can see the glint of a smile as her face travels out of your field of vision -

- but it's not a dodge - it's a passing tackle. A perfectly calculated impact at forty five degrees, intended to intercept the moment where you start to brake. It means that your leg extended to slow you on the edge of the hex misses the grass entirely and so there's nothing to stop you from falling forwards at maximum speed, leaving her with uncontested control of the hex -

- but maybe she's right that her leg is slowing her down. Maybe it's a coincidence and you're just faster than she calculated. Maybe she didn't take into account the possibility that you'd fight back, or fight back this hard, because your arms have grabbed her metal leg as she lunges past, your teeth have found the soft, elastic synthmuscle bundles of her calf - and then you're tumbling over each other in a whirl of torn grass. All the world has condensed into a frenzy of muscle. You're on top, gripping her leg, but facing the wrong way. Machia is struggling free, hands clawing in the dirt as she reaches for the edge of the hex. The timer is counting down its last few seconds. Her eyes are still on the prize, a total bloodthirsty commitment to victory. Her greatest chance in this moment is your self-awareness: is that apology coming now, or after you stop her from winning?