The status quo favours you. The longer you move the higher your score. But Decima takes her time to appreciate the show.

You feel the serpent's gaze lock into place. You hear the soft crunch of leaves and earth under her feet as she walks on the edge of your vision. She can see you and you can't see her. She's not being stealthy, you can hear the clink and shift of her toying with her weapon, her scratching her feet against dirt and stones, her rustling her cape - all sounds faintly blending in beneath the pulse of the music.

"You're going to need to move like that if you want to fight Lios," whispered Decima into the communicator. "Have you heard? First she was training with Titanomachia, and now she's signed up with Taowu. People are saying that she's a favourite for the finals all of a sudden. She's definitely the only person who might move like the person you're imagining..."

The sensation of danger begins to grow. A little at first, but increasingly severe. The way she shifts and winds with the flow of your head and neck, the way those neon aquamarine eyes glint out at the edge of your consciousness, the flash of silver, the almost hypnotic refusal to be stealthy even as she refuses to be clearly seen. Hers is the aspect of a snake and something inside you rebels at this game: you need to stop playing and give her your full attention right now. She's doing something.

"... but it's the wrong stance to take if you're not fighting her. Have you ever fought a monster before?"

But she hasn't done anything yet. Not that you can tell.

"I hadn't heard yet, damn" Sammy says. Her ears perk up, and her dance grows just a bit tighter, arms up closer to her head, her movements shorter, smaller, and faster. "I thought Machia was only training that new girl, Madeleine. Didn't know she worked with Taowu either. Fucking scary thinking about those two working together."

The tension is palpable, and Sammy is leaning into it. "mrrrr" she says, thinking aloud as Decima asks about monsters, without skipping a beat in her dance. She twirls, her eyes passing over the whole space as she keeps her arms tight to chest, then steps out to hit a far spot before pulling back again. "Dunno what the fuck counts as a monster. Haven't fought Kraken before, kinda thought of it more like a field problem than a fight problem. What's your point, should we add random obstacles to the DDR board?" She grins, flexes, kicks like there's a tentacle coming out of her DDR pad that she needs to sever before she can step on it. Right roundhouse hook into stomp and then push back off again.

Decima is close now, in every sense. Close in distance, close in action, close in tune. But, here's a fun fact about cats. Did you know that cats have faster reflexes than snakes have striking speed? It's true! Cats have evolved in such a way that if a snake is coming at them and they react to the strike, they'll hit the snake first. There's a lot of factors at play, and Sammy's eyes are wide open, every muscle tensed, but she doesn't pick a direction. She steps and she dances and she imagines a field full of obstacles and thrown objects as she does, until the strike begins.

You make eye contact with Decima. Colder than blood.

She knows all about cats and snakes too.

Your Synskin locks up, all at once. Hits in multiple locations. No pain, just the flexing of neomusculature fiber strong enough to override your native strength. "Don't forget," she said, "I am your opponent today."

She crouches down next to you. "That's my trick for this round," she said, silver hair cascading to the left as she tilts her head. "I was not sure it would work. Now that you know I'll need to go for a full alternate loadout if you wind up on the other team. But knowing if it worked on someone with your instincts was important. Look -"

She pointed to a series of small silver needles embedded into your armour. They had not penetrated, they were lodged in the plating far from your synskin. She touches the tip of one with a finger and a crackle of lightning passed between the network, jumping between the different spikes. "Electroneedles. My own design, new. Subtle, invisible, quiet. No muzzle flash like you'd expect from this big sniper rifle - which as I showed you, is just a case and not where I'm spending my energy budget. What looked and sounded like me just walking and maneuvering my gun around was me firing eight shots. Individually the charge in these things is too weak to do damage, but with enough of them built up I can create a current that the synskin will register as a full body blow. My answer to heavily armoured opponents with low situational awareness, especially Lios, Bit, Astra and Argeltia."

"Knowing this, how does it change your approach?" she asked. "If you can be shot without any sort of sensory feedback, what is your counter?"

"ffffffuck!" says Sammy, and with an intense rippling muscle flex that shudders through her armor, she puts a hand around Decima's throat. Her synskin is locked up, but her armor enhancing her strength and running her muscles against every spot means that even through that she can manage a move particularly near the edges where the needles don't fully reach, giving her some range of motion with the wrists and ankles even though the majority of her body is locked up. It's not that meaningful, surely Decima wouldn't crouch down next to her defeated opponent. But she should remember that if she has to get this close this long to commit, it means that even a heavily disabled opponent might pull out a sidearm and get a shot on her in turn as their parting gift.

She relaxes then, waiting for her equipment to all reset. Her eyes are calm, no swagger, calmer than Decima would have seen up to this point. The contemplation of someone who just got punched and is done with stupid shows for the moment. "I think what surprised me isn't that I didn't notice getting hit, it's that I didn't notice you firing. No trigger pull, no muscle twitch in the corner of my eye, didn't see your fingers move or the gun shift at all. Guess there's no kickback, like no shit, tiny needles need like zero force to fire. Makes sense. But where's the choice to fire happening? If I see that next time, I won't get hit. If you're got some bullshit neuro link to that thing, then I'm just punching you first if we're not on the same team. If we are, well, depends I guess. Shadow me or whoever's fastest on the team. Dunno if this'll work on Argeltia though, she's fuckin huge. Even if you get like a million needles in there, you got the energy budget to electricity something that big?"

Decima had no reaction whatsoever to your act of heroic strength, did not flinch at all to the hand on her throat. Her reptillian eyes held a fatalistic fearlessness that was the exact opposite of your act of defiance. You know instinctively this goes all the way; if inevitable death came for her she would not die tired.

"None of that. Spend power budget on a neural uplink? No, it fires whenever I move the thing like this," she made a vague little wave with the gun. "There's a little metal maze that I shake the needle out of, it fires automatically when loaded. Might get the odd misfire but odds are nobody notices. Like I said, the gun is just a case, but it's a case that people project a lot of assumptions onto."

"Argeltia," said Decima, changing tack. "Never going to stop her. Point is to tilt her. She's used to everyone playing around her. Not used to pain, not used to being the target. I woouldn't be shooting her hands. I'd be shooting at her main body through the portals. If I land enough hits to lock her neck I think she'd panic and lose her cool. How do you plan to deal with her?"

There's a moment where Sammy is just crestfallen. Not head in hands, but her ears droop and her face droops with it as she watches the gun motion. Stupid, repetitive. Should have seen it by the third time at worst. The snake aesthetic was actually doing all the work there, making it seem like Decima was moving around to size up her shot when she was actually taking her shots. Obvious and stupid. Never going to beat Machia with that level of vision.

She's not squeezing any further, she lets her synthskin reset, loosens her hand, stands. The point was made, they'd both shown off their capabilities. Sort of, at least. There were still a few wildcards, she suspected. If she had to guess, in Decima's case it was that she had a desperation movement of some kind. Some way to unload or overload the thing if she had to. If they weren't on the same team, the question was going to be what the consequences would be of immediately punching the girl.

As for Sammy, flexibility was queen really. Good odds that she might not even be in the same role as she was here when they got to the arena. And if she had the budget for it, maybe she'd pack something a little different. Just had to stop beating herself up long enough to consider it.

"I suppose it's smart, thinking about the mental game, even if it makes you a fucking asshole every time. Aristeia's a budget. Power is power. If you need speed, you invest in speed. If you need strength, you invest in strength. Easy shit. Every watt spent elsewhere makes what you're good at weaker. Like no shit, if you can get someone to suck at spending what they're got, you're gonna beat them. Same time, if you're constantly investing your resources in debuffs, then you're not much of an ace yourself. Somebody has to be the ace, has to have the skills to score or take out the other team or something. And since Machia's apparently out for the fucking count, that's gonna be me. Maybe that means I run up her arm and punch her in the eyes so she can't aim. Maybe it means I just jump around her."

With her synthskin reset, Sammy rolls her shoulders, lifts her arms and stretches, lifts each leg a few times, then pulls out the rest of her coffee and drinks it till she has to tilt it up to get the last drop out. "Goddamn that's good. Okay, different question, Deci. You see yourself as focusing a couple key targets right? But this is a team game. My answer to Argeltia's gonna depend on whether she's punching through tentacles or tied up trying to push out Astra, or if she actually gives a shit about me, personally. But what about you? Who're you gunning for? You rattled off Lios, Bit, Astra and Argeltia. You're guaranteed at least one won't be on your team. How you gonna pick who's most important? Who's your top priority?"

"You are my top priority," said Decima, eyes as frozen as ice. "That's why I invited you here. That's why I'm showing my hand. You are the only one fast enough to take me out and still get back in time to score. The only thing worse than that happening would be you doing it without realizing that you were doing it."

She leaned forwards. Each motion was so small, the repositioning of an inanimate object, that it felt like a miracle in and of itself.

"The reason Lunah never became a champion was because of Gata," said Decima. "Do you know what it's like? Rooting for someone who never figures it out? Who loses every time? I see you and I see Gata come again, and all I can think is that this curse will not repeat. I have a Gata-shaped target on the inside of my eyelids. If you dare to reach for that potential I will be the one to put you down."

She blinked, slowly and deliberately, then leaned back, looking away. "So, take your own advice and find a different path. Only defeat awaits the quick."

"Damn." Sammy lets out a long sigh. runs her hands through her hair, stands, paces, sits on a rock. "damn."

It's not...she's not sure what she's thinking. Like, that Decima exists for real? That Maxima was right? That Maxima was dead wrong? That she got the better of this one actually? Part of her wanted to call Decima an idiot, and if she'd taken this call last night, before she'd gone a round with Maxima, she would have and been worse off for it.

"I didn't...fucking Christ, Decima, I didn't come in here thinking we're friends. But I did kind of hope we'd be on the same team. If we are and it's not one of the absurdly fucking weird comps where it's us vs. every placer, we can probably take out two opponents before anyone even knows what the hell happened and then we win the match. If we know that in advance, like, even a rough idea who we each go for, then the whole thing is smooth. I came to you and not anybody else because your style matters."

She shakes her head. "So like, don't expect me to apologize, bitch. I guess I know you care now, but we're not fighting Gata and Lunah's battle, and whatever you think, neither one of us is the prodigy of our generation. Not fucking yet. We haven't won anything yet. I'm just sitting here in Titanomachia's fucking shadow!"

She shouts that last, head back, pointed up to the heavens. Then she stretches her neck, her arms again, and brings her body back down into relaxed shoulders and a casual stance, but with a stare that could burn right back through Decima and eat her.

"I'm gonna kit out to win the game. If that means beating you first, that's how it's gonna be. If you're on my team and Bit isn't, take out Bit first, I'll handle the other heavies, nobody else will be able to score. If it's you, me, Bit, then we just split up pummeling shit. Done. If you're not on my team, make sure going for me doesn't lead to you getting punked by a placer. I'd rather duel you again in a situation where I wasn't waiting to see what happened."

She slings her pack over her shoulder then and heads back into town. It was time for a trip to the mall. She wanted a haircut and maybe a new skirt.

You are being followed.

Nothing coherent tells you this. You are in NeoSydney, the economic capital of PanOceania, a place both intensely populated and working incredibly hard to make it seem like it wasn't. Huge boulevards and parks, massive open spaces filled with natural light, groves of native banksia to break up sight lines - the atmosphere was designed to make it feel like you weren't in a city at all. Everywhere you're surrounded by old brick and carved sandstone buildings - but glance up and the dizzying skyscrapers arise in all directions. The skyscrapers wear the hollowed-out facades of the old buildings for the first few stories, and then erupt up into the sky once they're out of the field of view. The only reason it feels dissonant at all is because you're just back from the real country. That - and you're being followed.

This is a cat instinct. Advanced side effect, prey instinct - but not a dread. You're not being threatened with death. But - there is another cat. Another cat at a higher altitude than you. Looking down on you. An uncomfortable sensation, a constant reminder that you are not the most cat that you could be. It's been following you for a while. How do you cope?

Twice in the same day. Well she's not going to make the same mistake twice. Unless she should? No, no don't get inside your own head Sammy. You ignored that prickly feeling while Decima was firing, now you've got the vibe that another cat is above you and every hair is standing on end. No, no more ignoring it.

She considers parkouring up a brick facade. She could do it. Wouldn't be half bad training. Too conspicuous though, don't need the news stories about a star Aristeia! player getting caught climbing random building walls like a freak. She wants a safe place to get up high and survey things. Someplace snug and dark with very few approach routes so she can see and have cover on her back.

Better idea to duck into the nearest commercial building then. Slip in past the sandstone cover to an interior that screams chic shopping center from the heyday of malls and dash up the escalators. First floor, bedding; second floor men's formal wear; third floor women's formal wear; fourth floor women's summer wear, and the end of the facade giving way to big glass windows staring out over the fields of native plant life in varying shades of reds and golds.

She's got her head a little bit lowered and she's not sprinting but she's moving past other customers like she's a stone skipping over water as she makes her way towards the windows. There, past a wrack of pastel sundresses she wouldn't be caught dead in and she's in the corner of the 4th floor by the window to look out. Is the feeling following her the way she came? Still higher up? Has she shaken it?

This is a battle that makes sense to a cat.

You are chasing someone - but they are higher up than you. You are lesser than and greater than them. Predator and prey instincts blur together into a coherent whole. In the contradiction you find impossibility, reflexes clarifying landscapes as pathways.

You reach the windows. Someone has just gone out through them. Onto the cafe balcony, up a vertical glass surface, onto a corporate common area, in through a door. Each motion you follow you only catch a glimmer of shape; the edge of a boot, the flick of a coat in red, a lead maintained. Through corporate offices and then up the elevator shaft, slick as water off a jaguar's neck. The office drones watch in dazed incomprehension, but do not intervene.

This is not someone trying to shake a tail. The lead does not lengthen except by your mistake. There's always a glimpse of direction. There's always a path - over copiers, under legs, across tables, sliding across conference tables and vaulting executives. It gathers speed and complexity; now you're going through a high-tech experimental factory floor, now you're racing across the wet tiles next to an indoor pool -

Layer after layer. To the top. Nothing in this building can stop you. Nothing in this building can cross that golden path that passes through fire escapes and ventilation shafts and beneath cameras and past startled security guards. To the top. Always that flash of red at every corner. Can you keep the pace?

A challenge. A daring challenge. Absolo-fucking-lutely amazing. Sammy's breathing is deep, and she's here but she's a million miles away at the same time.

Decima's fault really, bringing up Luna and Gata. How do you think Sammy got into the field and out of street fights? Watching Gata wind her way through the arena, bullets flying past her like she was made of water. Running circles around Maxima to touch the scoring zone like nobody else was in the arena. It was beautiful, it was magical, it had inspired her to mod herself along Gata's path, even if her own style wasn't quite the same. A successor in spirit.

So in her minds eye, she's back there watching the first match where she saw Gata, and she's imagining how she would move, and meanwhile her body is running in the zone, that fleeting mark of red constantly pulling her forward. No inhibitions, no questions, no second guesses. Not right now, not in the face of this type of challenge, the perfect sort of challenge that demands her full attention yet constantly feels achievable, the kind that pulls you into the zone.

There's gonna be a big crash later. Whoever she meets isn't going to live up to the vision that inspired her, and then she's going to start a bunch of comparisons and thoughts and Machia is going to come back and run away with her without ever showing up on the scene at all. But for now, there is a wordless rhythm that she could live in forever, right up until she runs out of ground.

To the top.

The penthouse suite gives way. Doors open, cypher-locks break, automated defenses disable. A vision of the heavens passes by unnoticed and unremarked.

To the top.

The last flight of stairs. Hard concrete industrial fire escape, the core of the building from which there can be no escape.

To the top.

The industry of the rooftop. Antennae, satellite dishes, air conditioning machinery. The link between the heavens and earth was not royal paradise, it was the grinding of these celestial gears.

The top.

Only the old are here. Old machines, paint peeling with rust. Old stains, vape canisters, beer cans, champions. Sitting on a roaring serpent in a patina of seafoam green and orange rust, screwdriver in hand and tongue extended as she tightened something on her bright pink slippers. A mane of savage hair in brown and white, the ferocity of a time before the catgirl was domesticated.

Gata looks up. Looks over the city. Looks at you. Pulls a six pack of beer from her bag and puts it out next to her. Invitation, wordless.

Reverence wars with the desire not to completely and utterly embarrass herself with the sound of a squee emitting from her lips. Sammy settles for pursing them instead. She breathes out through her nose. She's not winded, only her hair shivers in the light breeze that covers the rooftops, but she is recentering, recovering herself from the run, from her excitement, from the desire to jump and run and shout in the face of the woman who inspired her to her current life.

Then the weirder thoughts. Why here, why now? Had something happened? Was this because of her meeting with Maxima, even though Maxima had said she and Gata didn't stay in touch? Was she being rude?

Taking too long. Sammy sits and pulls a beer can out from the six pack, dropping her pack at her feet. She takes a sip, a slow one, small and light, then a larger one after confirming that the taste is refreshing.

She should say something, she's the junior one here. "I...uh...thanks for the um, invitation. I'm...I'm honored" she manages, looking for all the world like she's considering a formal bow to go with it.

"You kept up, right?" said Gata. "That's all you need."

She took a long sip, looking out over the city. Put the empty can on the edge, finger toying with it as feline instincts compelled her to push it off. She didn't so much resist as ride the temptation, letting her hand sway ominously back and forth across the can, never letting go.

"That's all I needed to know too," she said, slitted eyes locking onto some distant person - one amongst millions picked out for predatory scrutiny. "But it would be rude of me to leave without saying anything." A learned sentence. An artificial social ritual she is emulating using incorrect hardware. Her attention is locked up in her stare, her swaying tail, the thought of the pounce. She kept those instincts under control too. Everything like her was like those fingernails drumming restlessly on that can on the edge of the abyss. Always tempted - never falling. Cat to the bones.

Ah she’s so cool! Sammy could tell the social line was as forced as her own had been. And that just made her cooler! Like the Gata from the arena wasn’t just a show. Or like, she was a show, but the show was real. Sammy hadn’t gone this deep yet, but she could feel it scratching at her. The desire to finish her own can and start wobbling it was so overwhelming that by the time she’d consciously thought about it, she was already mirroring it.

“I…” what did she want out of this? Gata was right, she already got it. Would be rude to question whether Gata had gone all out or not. A lot of things felt rude, like shouting I’m your biggest fan, you inspired me. Gata probably got that from every third girl she passed in the street…if she ever walked in the street.

Sammy’s eyes flick out over the city. Wishing Aristeia offered a perch like this to be ready to score from. “…what would you take into the arena for my group?” she finally asks. A real question, technical. “If you were still playing, and looking at everyone, what would you bring?”

Her finger hovers on the rim of her can, and her other hand runs nervously through her hair as she waits.

"Argeltia, eyes," said Gata. "Lios, ears. Bit, eyes. Decima, eyes. Pash, eyes. Kraken, movement. Astra, eyes. Don't rate any of them except Kraken. Watch out for her. Maybe Lios."

She ran her finger over her lip, adjusting her legs under her. Patience and immanent violence in the same posture.

"Optical disruptors are shit at the speeds you want to move at," she said. "Smoke, same. Discoballer'll fuck everyone except Lios and Kraken, no brainer if they're both on your team. Eclipse, glitterdust, good enough all rounder. Albedo for Argeltia, Astra, Bit."

Optical Disruption Devices: Technical invisibility, a thirty year old technology at this point, now diffused to the point where it's in reach of regional police departments. Discoballers: wide-spectrum optical light displays like those perfected by Prysm. Glitterdust: Gata's signature technique, a faceful of clinging eclipse-particallate rainbow dust that rendered a target blind. Albedo: The inverse to ODDs, complex and ever-shifting blends of anti-camera technology. It's in a constant back-and-forth arms race with common visor types and settings so the exact composition will change month to month, but the overall trend has been against the visors.

"Taowu will make it seem unfair," said Gata, her tail wiggling as the pounce built its inner momentum. "It's not. Don't fall for it. She's down in nationals for a reason."

She's got a little piece of paper and a pen from her pack and she's scribbling just a few words. Just the initials really, something mostly meaningless if it were lost, but that will remind her as the day gets closer. Funny thing about paper, still one of the hardest things in the world to hack, requires getting close. Great place for personal notes. Maybe not as good as perfect memory, but the point was just to offer that external jog to it, a single keystone to make everything else click into place.

When Gata gets to Taowu, Sammy lets out a clipped laugh, one that shows some teeth. "I'm just...honestly, after I saw that interview with Lios I just assumed she wouldn't be on my team. I could be wrong I guess, but I dunno, if Taowu wanted to work with me, I feel like I'd have heard about it by now. I can't write it off entirely, but at the same time if I'm paired with Taowu's handpicked champ, it feels like that would be the smoothest possible sailing, so I might as well plan for the opposite, right?"

The question was rhetorical, she's not waiting for an answer. She is rolling her can around in her fingers, pressing on one side, then the other, pushing out a dent with a new dent as she slowly crushes it round and round. "Trickiest thing for me is that I might not be doing speed if I'm paired with Bit and Pashadiah. Might have to be me punching out Lios, or at least keeping her busy the whole time."

Her sit is feigned calm, but she's also never taking her eyes off the building pounce, watching Gata wind herself up as the wind blows her hair. Majestic, she's so beautiful. Sammy's trying to steady her own breathing unconsciously, her foot is twitching, ready to move in turn. She may be talking shop with her idol, but she's also considering whether one or both of them is about to do the equivalent of flying unexpectedly out of a bush from fifty stories up.

"You're overthinking," Gata said, pupils widening into deadly circles. "Taowu is eyes. That's it. Listen to me. Do not give a shit about Taowu unless she flips Cross. If she does, then you're fucked."

Tension rippled through her. She focused. The adjoining skyscraper. An impossible jump. Every part of her body vibrated with readiness; a tension blinding, claws tearing apart the alumnium of the empty can. She was going to do it, she was going to -

She stood up, crushed the can, put it back in her bag. Walked like a human over to the service elevator.

"Don't do speed for speed. Not a race, not a horse. Know when to leave. Know when to wait. You don't have to do stuff. Don't be an eye guy. Later."

Sammy could see the jump, the absurd airtime. Probably...probably best that nobody did it. Human enhancement didn't mean human flight, and there was nothing about catgirls that did that...wait hold on, hold on, her hero and mentor was taking the service elevator and leaving and she was still busy overthinking!

"G-good advice, thanks! And uh...l-later or, no, wait, can we do this again? I mean, not like THIS this, but like, not just later but like another session? In a few days? Whenever you're free? This was good. This is...what I want to be. What I want to be doing."

That wasn't just the shared catgirl talking either. Or maybe it was? Chicken and egg question. Did becoming a catgirl make you love the things cats loved, or did you become a catgirl because you loved those things? But it was Sammy talking, the Sammy who had sparkles in her eyes the first time she ever saw Gata move, when cube modding was a flight of fancy, and whose eyes still sparkled now at the top of the world.