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.

Watching Machia stumbling around her own space in this quiet stupid makes it very difficult not to worry she's been possessed after all. A lot of the halting and the clumsy way she cleaves to apparent routine just smacks of some type of petty evil ghost. Or it would, if she didn't know this woman so well. And if she had less than unshakeable confidence in Blanche. But she did and she does, so that made this more of a puzzle of logistics than anything.

Madeleine stares in silence. She has no idea how long this routine takes to complete, how much time she needs to wait. She is simply a passenger here, this is just another dream to walk in and watch because she is not allowed in, she is once again the sky and all the sky can do is--

She frowns and tucks her chin against her fist. Tap tap, tap tap, her finger against her cheek. She sighs and pulls out her phone, her free thumb dancing across the pad with the kind of speed only long familiarity can grant. For one single moment she hesitates and looks up again to watch Machia stand there with a toothbrush jammed stupidly in her mouth. Then she looks down again and rapid taps a single spot five times before finishing up and carrying the little screen into the kitchen.

...Eggs are very easy. Because they are like coffee. It is nothing but the manipulation of heat and water, simply turned toward emulsion instead of extraction. In fact this is how she learned to cook in the first place: heating water and pouring it into a pan in her room until turned her food into something like a thing she could eat (without risking the communal kitchen and its terrifying friendly faces) in the limited space she had. Once she understood the connection, mastering the forms was easy.

Beating mixes everything evenly. Salt breaks down the proteins early. Then it's about moisture. From vegetables, from fats, directly from a little cup she found in the sink... it doesn't matter. She just needs enough. Make the evaporation do the work, slow the cook so that it can't fry. Higher and higher. Fluffier and fluffier. Like a sunny little cloud. Running through with roughly chopped spinach, onion, peppers of every color and style she could find, mushrooms, olives. Carrot. All added at different intervals, all chopped with the kind of dexterity that implied she had hooves. This should be crunchy, this needs to be soft, this will force the omelette to cook longer before it...

She glances at her phone. Wheels around sharply to put her eye on Machia again. Heaves a relieved sigh. Watches her phone a minute longer and frowns.

Her flip is a thing of beauty. No one is around to see it. The dish she plates is huge and bouncy, soft like a sheep and laden with delicious vegetables and textures. She glances at her phone again and snap looks around for Machia a second time before refreshing her pan and pouring the remaining egg mixture in for a second cook.

With one arm, she guides Titanomachia to a seat. The other sets a plate down in front of her, then places a fork in her hand, wraps her fingers tight around it, and guides it into the omelette. It is... different than feeding her. Different than what Machia does for Madeleine. This is gentler. More halting. It is simply guiding the one in control to the proper course of action.

"I will not let... them see you. Until you are Titanomachia. This you, this... sleeping beauty. That is mine. My secret. Now, please. It is good, I promise."

She watches Machia eat for a moment before suddenly making a strange face and scrambling to grab salt she can sprinkle over the top to finish with. Suddenly her phone buzzes. Madeleine almost drops her own plate as she runs full burst toward the door. Her hands tremble as she opens the door. Just a crack. Her gleaming amber eye peeks out into the world.

The door opens wider. She bows, waves, bows again, and bends down to pick something up. With the nervous precision of a bomb disposal technician, she turns the Coffee Horse logo on the biodegradable neoplastic box away from the table. And she pulls out cup. After cup. After cup. After cup. Seven in all. She scrutinizes the labels but the scrawl is hasty and hard to read, so in the end she just sniffs them until she finds the one that makes her nose wrinkle.

And that's the cup she sets in front of Machia.

"I had them add honey. And vanilla. And cinnamon. And," she looks down at her phone, "Four extra servings of cream. This place uses a very light roast, producing the mildest base of any chain. But still, I needed to make it... beginner friendly. Do not turn your nose up. You need it."

She sits down, opposite. Grabs one of the other cups and takes a long, ear fluttering sip before she finally settles into her own breakfast. Wait. Wait. She is simply the sky. Hers is nothing more than to wait.

Spark. You can almost see the mental infrastructure slide into place, layer after layer of it, with more clarity and care than she dressed her body. Lenses flick and filter. Alternate ways of viewing the world. Put aside this part of her. Energize other parts. Personality aspects flicker to life one after another, surging into her body like a fork in the Sprocket.

The first that achieves clarity is one of puritan disgust. It eyes the cup suspiciously, takes off the lid, lifts a little of the liquid from the surface with a teaspoon. Spreads it on the empty plate, considering its colour and visciousity. Finally, a ginger little taste on the tip of the spoon. A second. Consideration. And then a click-flick as the second lens engages.

"You have ordered me a caffinated hot chocolate," it says.

A third factor engages. It takes a huge swig.

"I love hot chocolate," it said. "I understand the insult implicit, but this is the cup an emperor would drink from! Spices and honey and the finest of creams, collected from foreign lands and blended together by instructions issued through the astral! I could not refuse! Although -"

A neural monitor comes out. One patch on her neck, on her forehead, her wrist. Click-flick. "- I have not tested the application of caffine on my own metabolism. I've set the parameters of my recovery cycles extensively by hand. I can't even use your data as a model, I had to branch your cubeprint after it became clear that you weren't going to switch to decaf. When working at tolerances already extended - you see this scar?" she held up her left hand - a clean white line right across it. "Long dumb story, but I learned that energy drinks are hazardous when I am already tapping energy directly from the source."

Click-flick. "But I might need to adjust your cubeprint further if six cups is normal for your breakfast. That is... more than I calculated for."

"Do you know how they decaffeinate coffee beans? Paint thinner. I would sooner you inject me with actual poison than imply that switching to decaf was ever an option."

There is a tiny smile stuck on her face that no amount of coffee pretension can wipe away. Lift her nose in the air though she may, her traitor tail is flicking behind her and that queer look just will not leave her eyes. She picks up one of her cups and takes a long and happy sip.

"Besides which, you are making a huge deal out of nothing. Not only is six cups a perfectly safe amount, these aren't even all coffee."

She takes another long sip and sets the cup to the side with an empty clunk. It sits next to three of its fallen sisters. Without hesitation she picks up another, pulls off the lid, and takes a deep sniff of the black liquid inside.

"This one is americano!" she smiles brightly as she points at the cup, "And the final one is straight espresso. Completely different drinking experiences. So as you can see, there is nothing to be concerned about."

Her foot has started tapping on the floor. Faster, faster, faster. Her smile widens before her next sip.

"When we do go to my apartment, I can show you a more... proper technique. I've always thought this company offered fair value for what they charge, but it's no comparison to what love can accomplish."

"Speaking of injecting you with poison!" said Titanomachia, picking up a cartoonishly huge syringe full of bubbling green cubegel out of her workbench and putting it on the table. "We're still on Xoxic prep today! But this is the -" she made massive scare quotes, ""Good" version, where she's on your team and trying to power you up. If I know anything about combat stimulants, it's that they can be as disorienting as poisons if you're not ready for them. Yesterday was the weights, today it's the rocket boots."

She stopped and took another sip of her essence-of-coffee. "God, I hate her."

"Anyway," she said, pushing the cup to the side. "The thing to practice today is keeping your shit under control. To that end, I have procured a smash room. The walls will be lined with fine china and fragile glass. Your mission will be to fight and evade Dakinis while minimizing collateral damage - no don't take that now -" she said, snatching suddenly for the syringe. "- I need to get you to to the room without injuring dozens of pedestrians."

Dakinis - faceless training drones provided by Sprocket on request. Everyone's familiar with them, the Single Intelligence is an Aristeia! fan and is happy to provide unlimited drones to anyone trying to practice.