There was no way Titanomachia was going to sleep tonight. There was no w.ay

AWKKE

breathing heavily. Serpentine coils, hotter than hell. The screaming feline eyes. Dragons were cats, cats were failures, but there was no way out of this. Structure. Structure, the structure of the spiral - the nature of the Hexadrome was broken. Broken in a way that opened possibilities. Operational - run. Faster, from the twist and the fire, teeth snapping at her ankles. She didn't move like a horse. Enough to look like it from the outside but it was different. The tail was wrong. The hooves were wrong. The neck was - none of this was wrong. It was better than wrong.

It was impossible.

The blue astral path opened up in front of her.

She shattered through it. Light shattered too - but not in her eyes. In her hair. In her mane. The rainbow pulled behind her like a physical thing. She was above. Above the negative coils of Zanai-anai as they filled the Hexadrome like a hex. From above she could see the beehive tessilation of the hexes, how the dragon snaked through at hundred-and-twenty degree angles. She ran her hands up through her rainbow mane, up along her horn - sharp enough to pierce the stars - and she descended like Saint George.

The neck twisted, teeth rising to swallow her. Still she fell -

But those weren't the eyes of the Spiced Sin.

Those eyes were black. Hard. Plastic.

So she fell into those instead

AWKAE

Awake!

Awake

Staring into the eyes of Blanche.

Protection. But no answers either.

She felt shattered. That part was normal, waking into the feeling of being broken anew. It was a good feeling, the sense of all her mental bonds broken, mind as soft clay. But she'd never remembered what it was that did the shattering before.

"Rainbow is... a good look for you. You should consider dye."

Madeleine's arms pull Machia tight against and then - suddenly - release. She sits up and rolls off of the couch bed with a jerky sort of heaving motion and then bends down to examine her partner's face. The circles under her own eyes are sharper and darker than ever: she is plainly exhausted. But all of her attention is on checking Machia's eyes, her hair, the elasticity of her skin. She steps away with a small nod.

"Well. For a first attempt that wasn't terrible, at least. I wonder, did you notice me at all? I would be impressed if you did."

Her smile is coy, quiet. She sighs as she shrugs her shoulders and slips out of the white and black lab coat, tossing it at Machia and leaving herself once again in next to nothing. She lingers for a moment on the boundary of too close and too far. She is almost like a painting - the illusion of depth brought about by clever oils and color, receding where the eye wandered and encroaching where it focused. Her little smile vanishes, and she slinks away to her own neatly folded clothes. She puts her own outfit on again piece by piece. Everything she wore the previous day, frowning more with each addition.

She does not put the earrings on. Those sit in her palm as she crosses the room one more time and sits down on the still unfolded couch. And she yawns.

"The night... is passed. The morning... bright and young. So I return to being Madeleine Cross, the legal property of Titanomachia. And I would ask of you, O Master mine, to please bring me to a cafe for breakfast. Laugh at me all you want, but I am weak. You know that I, I need..."

Madeleine hangs her head. She pinches the dragon design on her earring, rubbing up and down the length of it between her thumb and forefinger.

"Or I could just, just, go without. I could... cook. Vegetable omelettes are actually my specialty."

You are still inside her loop. It's like the course of her mind is interrupted; no words, no resistance, not because she's not capable of it but because she can't do it elegantly. Without costume, rhythm, momentum, control - power wasn't something to debase yourself seeking. If someone else was doing it better there was nothing to do but let it play out.

That's what it was. You are backstage.

She steps up onto her robotic leg wrong and would immediately faceplant if you didn't steady her. She is still dressed in the clothes of the previous day, so she wordlessly goes through her ritual oblations; shower, teeth, passionlessly but diligently cleaning the network input ports where her leg joins. Stretches, calibrations, ten seconds balance left and right, star jumps. She was moving but she wasn't awake, but the pattern was a machine for delivering a functional person to the midday. Any words said at this interval disappeared into the thunderhead of her consciousness to return when the conditions were right for lightning.

The path was leading to a stumbling non-decision regarding breakfast. Give her enough time and she'd fumble her way to clothing and keys to go out to the requested cafe - unless she was intercepted with omlettes beforehand.