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.

"I don't... like this." says Madeleine, hand closing on empty space where a syringe used to be.

She stares at the disconcerting object now twirling in Machia's fingers. Even now that little smile hasn't quite left her lips, though her eyes look sharper. More aware of the potential for danger. She traces a finger around the lid of her sixth coffee cup (the one that is supposedly full of espresso shots) and the look of amusement changes over to a conflicted brow furrowing. She is clearly deep in thought.

Her eyes flick back and forth between the coffee and the syringe. Coffee. Syringe. Coffee. Syringe. Syringe. Coffee. Is she, is she, is Madeleine Cross afraid of having too much caffeine for a day? She snatches the cup off the table as she stands up to clear the plates. She takes a defiant sip as she fishes out Machia's keys and throws them at her. And she sighs.

"I don't like this," she says again, "I don't like this. I do not."

Walking down the street, she fights to match Machia's pace exactly. Do not let her spin around and talk while walking backwards. Do not let her surge ahead and force Madeleine to follow her. Do not allow her to slip far in the back and march Madeleine forward like an owner walking a pet.

Equals. Partners. Sports enthusiasts, maybe. That's what she wants people to see. She should have taken the time to put her earrings on after all - her ears flutter in bewilderment and it's ruining her attempts at straight-postured poise and shadowy grace.

"I'll tell you why. Because when you mentioned... Xoxic, I nodded. I nodded! I felt sympathy for your position, like you were right! What is... ha! Can you even imagine? As if your constant tinkering with my body was somehow meaningfully distinct from hers. Just at the beginning of this week I was ready to go and work with her. Now I'm nodding along, grateful to have dodged her attentions? I haven't trained with a single actual athlete even once yet! All I do is follow you around and try not to die! And that's the better option to... me?"

Madeleine drains her entire cup in a single motion and deposits the container in a recycling station without breaking stride. The problem with ordering so much at once is that getting to it while it was all still drinkably hot meant she couldn't afford to savor any of it. But she was still glad she did it. She needed it to be strong, after last night.

Her tail has started twitching behind her. Her left ear flicks in the opposite direction every time it moves, sort of a connected response. She squeezes her temple.

"Do you realize that before I met you, I was considered poised and controlled? People said I was mysterious. Or my mother did, at any rate. I don't... like people all that much. The point is, I was quiet. My life was... quiet. And now I'm walking down the street with a charlatan, actually looking forward to the prospect of fighting drones in a room full of delicate works of art that I cannot afford to replace, You are corrupting me somehow. Is it mind control? Something more sinister? Did you used to do this sort of thing to Miss Lios, when you worked with her?"

"Oh, believe me," said Titanomachia, leaning down so she could look up at your face from below. She wasn't fighting your stride at all; she oiled into whatever position left for her and turned it into the top. "I like you poised. I like you controlled. I like you shining with mysterious dignity. That's one of the things that drew me to you. I think that you have the potential to be the midnight princess of the Hexadrome, fearsome and dreadful and unapproachable."

The edge of the syringe rose up in her hands, gyroscopically stabilized, coming up to brush against the back of your neck just above your Cube without either of you breaking stride.

"And so the thought of you losing that dignity on the floor of the arena disgusts me," said Titanomachia. There was no playfulness at all. She was as serious as death. "You, flailing wildly as you struggle to control stims you haven't experienced before? You, losing your composure and screaming in pain from a bad hit? You, kneeling before fucking Taowu? I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. Everything that I pull out of you under controlled conditions is something that could have been pulled out of you publicly, on camera, for everyone to see. So that's my objective: to get ahead of that curve. To find all your weaknesses and burn them out in private so that nothing out there can shock you."

"Ah..."

The needle is pressing into her neck, the insistent prickle of danger like a dagger. The threat of violence. The threat of death. The sensation almost tickles, almost stings, definitely had her heart racing, racing, racing...

But she is still. Or... no, not still. Her legs carry her forward but the motion doesn't seem to reach above her hips. Her stride is so perfectly in sync with Machia's that from the needle's perspective she is in exactly the same spot at all times. She does not dare to bend or turn her neck, but her eyes swivel to bore holes in her partner.

There is something gnawing on the inside of her chest, and she has no idea if it's an evil spirit or a feeling that she has. Those words are echoing around inside her head, seeking purchase but only bouncing around and making themselves heard via reverberation. She wants to smile, wants to sneer, wants to surge forward so she can spin around and walk away.

"You have the strangest concept of privacy I have ever heard of."

She walks on without another word. Less a pet and more of a hostage, today. Another fun headline to have to pick through later. But she says nothing and looks only forward, relying on her ears to tell her when she needs to turn or when she needs to wait. The feeling in her chest is so painful she wants to claw at it, but she does not.

To training, then. To training. The dream will die the instant she steps into the Hex, but it'll die another day sooner if she doesn't make the effort. She promised, after all.

"It's like being a magical girl!" said Titanomachia brightly. "When you don't have the dress and tiara on, you're someone different. None of it counts."

The Sprocket Dakini drones were waiting at the Smash Room, baseball bats in hands and baseball caps on heads. Tall, lanky, sleek machines with empty black faceplates and brightly coloured handpainted stripes and flowers, Dakini Tacbots are the Single Intelligence's least beloved and most appreciated children. Most street corners have a sealed deployment pod holding a Dakini but they're not there just for emergencies - if you need help moving a piece of heavy furniture, someone to pitch a cricket ball for you on a rainy morning, or carry your grocery bags somewhere the local Dakini will deploy to help out.

But they're not slaves. Sprocket's actually pretty clear and firm about that. They're friends. Sprocket is your friend. They'll help out because Sprocket is nice and likes helping out, but they'll cheerfully decline requests they regard as unreasonable or selfish and they expect to be treated with respect. They'll do things together with you, not invisibly for you. Sometimes they'll want to engage in conversation, or suggest a different activity that they want to do instead, or ask for a favour in return just to establish that this thing goes both ways. Their overall vibe and accent is 'extremely chill surfer dudes', which is a slick dodge that gets Sprocket out of some common failure states:
- It means they can avoid dealing with anything they don't feel like; politics, abuse, confessions, by defaulting into various 'woahs' and 'boguses'
- It means that they're very tiresome to spend a lot of time around, which pushes people away from becoming fixated on them as replacements for human connection.
- It lets them come across as physically very powerful while also seeming harmless, lazy and kind of doofy, which makes people lower their expectations.

Some people still find them sinister. That's a natural part of being a person. The way they snap into organized mass formations during firefighting or other emergency operations can be genuinely unsettling. But it takes work to maintain suspicion of the Dakinis; the Single Intelligence learned a lot from the fall of the Slopbots and has determined not to repeat any of their mistakes.

"Heyyyy Ti-tan-OH-machiiiiiiiiyy!" said the first Dakini, painted in neon green tiger stripes, offering a hand for a high five. She hit it. "We got the brief. Sounds like fun!"
"Cross!" said the second Dakini. This one was a paint disaster, having served as a canvas for children. "What's happening dude?"

"Uh... yo," says Madeleine with a wave, "I am apparently a magical girl? I guess that is what's happening."

The thing that made the Dakini easier to deal with than people was that she was allowed to be awkward around them. People tended to find her pauses annoying, and with her voice being on the deeper side it often gave the impression she was perpetually out of breath, so even the sympathetic were annoying about it. The most common response to a greeting or a food order was 'uh, you ok?'

She hated it. Hated the back and forth, hated the tiresome routines, hated having to build herself up for the most basic interactions that they all navigated with such obvious ease. It was deeply unfortunate that the only person she could have a real conversation with was also the most annoying woman in the world. She wasn't sure what that said about Madeleine herself. But happily none of that was relevant here!

Dakini always rolled with it. With her, that is. Not exactly fulfilling conversation, these were not her friends (she didn't have those), but as far as interactions went, this was... pleasant? She tended to say more around them.

"I don't have any idea what that is. It feels like an insult? But I can't tell. There's a trap there. There's a trap here too. I have... no idea what's about to happen to me, so. Sorry in advance. Er. Oh. How much of this... am I allowed to break before I fail? And who is... paying for it?"

"That's the best part!" said Stripes. "All of it, dude! Everything in here is junk, whole room's paid for, smash all you like!"

"Speaking of who's paying!" said Mess. "Turns out? Telev Overmind!"

"Telev Overmind!?" said Stripes, striking a shocked pose. "The billionaire slop profiteer of the Red Decades? That guy's bogus!"

"That's right, he's bogus!" said Mess. "And word just came down that Cicero won his lawsuit against that bogus guy! Verdict: Full. Liquidation!"

"No way!" said Stripes.

This was not the first time you'd seen this particular patter play out from the Dakinis. One of Sprocket's many core functions is the ability to prosecute mind-bendingly difficult legal cases involving decades old financial crimes committed during the Red Decades. The lead Aspect on these cases, the recreation Cicero, had famously won the new and dreaded verdict of Full Liquidation several times. This was something the Dakinis were always very quick to propagandize, especially because it came with -

"That's right," said Mess. "That means that they're paying out fifteen thousand dollars to every single citizen! It's in their bank accounts already!"

"Gnarly!" said Stripes.

Some people found this kind of messaging ham-handed and annoying - though they rarely minded the fifteen thousand dollars. They had to sit through it anyway. The States of the early 21st century had promoted a doctrine of deliberate ineffectiveness that had helped erode the foundations of their support, but the new colossus of PanOceania and its intricate alliance with Sprocket very much wanted to be seen as doing good things.

"But anyway," said Mess. "The break room. Way Titanomachia put it, we're going to be doing normal A! stuff in there, but you're gonna be stimmed up. You're not trying to break stuff, it's just feedback to help you dial in your muscles if things get weird."

Titanomachia had been silent for a long time. She suddenly spoke up, if anything more intense than her earlier declaration: "You've never watched a magical girl anime?"

"Huh. How strangely responsible of her. It's... less that I am confused about the point of this training exercise and more that I'm assuming I will. Er... I'm sorry?"

Madeleine turns away from the Dakinis so she can stare at Machia for a moment in complete bewilderment. This is the part of the performance where she was supposed to hear some horrible new detail about what she was meant to be doing. Possibly a failure state so onerous it would have her on edge for the rest of the day, or else she'd learn that these two particular Dakini drones had consented to being modified with, who even knows really, acid spraying nozzles? The sort that dissolves clothing and leaves skin largely unblemished, naturally. That felt like the more typical pattern.

But instead of that, this. It's like having the needle pressed into the back of her neck again, except it's sticking out of a gun. And the gun is covered with colorful stickers of kittens. The intensity of it is so absurd it snaps right back around to being ridiculous, even if it's the most danger she's been in.

She raises an eyebrow.

"Machia, when would I have found time to watch an, uh... ani, ani...may? No wait I know I've heard that term before but... ah, oh! Animation. Sorry. Like I was... trying to explain, I don't watch, uh, anything. Honestly, not even a particularly large amount of Aristeia!, because it looks so unsatisfying on my phone. I'm surprised you think this is a problem. Shouldn't I be focused on training or resting? Music is for both of those things."

There's an unpleasant lurch in the pit of her stomach for some reason, but she just shrugs. She's helpless. Nothing can happen until the needle goes in, but it's sitting there. In that doofus' hand. She reaches for it, but only takes a hold of Machia's wrist.

"...Are you feeling unwell? I can take you back home if you need it."

"You are correct. You currently do not have time," said Titanomachia suddenly, voice tight. She evades the wrist-grab and pushes you forwards with a wide elbow. "Come on. We've got a lot to get through today."

Everything from there is bustle. Into the change room, on with the synskin, into the break room. It's only when your heartrate starts to accelerate do you realize that Machia had unceremoniously and painlessly jabbed you at some point. Now she had clambered up on a wall cabinet and was crouched there like a gargoyle, biting the back of her thumb and thinking hard enough to register as psionic activity. Whatever she had been planning before, her attention was now burning entirely onto the future.

The two Dakinis are doing warmup flexes. They looked fragile suddenly. Toy soldiers. Brittle superglue joints. "We're ready when you are!" Stripes called. "Bring all you got!"

Heartbeat, heartbeat.

The feeling of being sick. Misalignment. She lifts her arm to touch her cheek, and then she lifts her arm to touch her cheek, and then she lifts her arm to touch her cheek. And then the shadow of her arm reaches up and touches her cheek. Her skin feels rough. Slick. Smooth. Oily. She lifts her arm to touch her cheek. Her jaw hurts.

Heartbeat, heartbeat.

When did this even happen to her? How had she missed it? All that time being obsessed with the moment of injection, the lethal sharpness of the needle, and somehow it went into her skin and back again while... what? She was daydreaming? Titanomachia was a witch, she just didn't let on. There wasn't another explanation.

Heartbeat, heartbeat.

This is indistinguishable from being possessed. Something has crawled inside her body and it is fighting her for control of it. The brights are too bright. The darks are too dark. Everything, everything, everything all around her is exactly the same as glass. She is going to throw up. She had better not. But she needs it. She refuses. She--

Heartbeat, heartbeat.

Even now, she can't stop watching Machia. Perched up there, not even looking at her, eyes attempting to pierce the unknowable future. Madeleine clenches her teeth. She can hear the clack, but then a grind. It has to be her imagination that she can smell something like smoke, right? Something white hot lances through her cheek and she can hear a crack. She spits. Red and white. Foam. Every joint she moves is popping, every muscle in her body is twitching. Something is trying to burst out of her back, she is convinced.

Heartbreak, heartbreak.

The room is filled with the sound of shattering china. Most of a shelf is overturned and tumbling on top of Stripes, who is upside down and half a room away from her. Madeleine looks up at Machia again, and she is farther away as well. When did? How did? Her jaw is clenched tight again, and a tear is welling in her eye.

"Ghnnnn!"

Heartbreak, heartbreak.

Her feet dig into the floor. This time she means to feel herself running. She feels her head hit the ceiling, instead. Everything is wrong. All of it. What had she done?

"This kind of cubegel is more than just, like, instructions to your body, man," said Stripes cheerfully, plugging its arm back in. "It's fuel source as well. It's like -"

"Nanomachines, son!" said Mess.

"Yeah. Costly energy budget wise," said Stripes, flipping back onto his feet. "It's a whole thing. There's a mixture of -"

"Don't think of it as something you are," said Machia quietly from her perch. "Think of it as something you drive. Like a vehicle. Don't fight it, steer it."

The Dakinis have both produced long bo staves from somewhere, circling around cabinets in unison. There is a painted scoring zone behind them - you want it - and they're holding stance defensively. Their Placer pattern - all about hooks, sweeps and delays, not looking to get in a fight so much as a time consuming tangle and sweep that ends with everyone where they prefer. The model is the original Placer Star 8-Ball, though lacking all of the bounce and panache that made 8-Ball a fan favourite and dangerous opponent. The exemplars of Cs in everything.

"A vehicle? But... motorcycles don't make me need to puke."

Air iiiiinnnnnnn........

Oooouuuuuuuuuut.

Ok. Ok. Standing here this isn't so bad. The problem is -want want want want want want want want want want want wantwantwantwantwantwantwantwantwantwantGO!

Madeleine is off, and nothing matters anymore. If this is a vehicle then she's accidentally revved the throttle and now everything is about holding on. The rush is extreme, nothing but motion sickness, but if she just focuses on her legs she can at least move in a vaguely forward direction. This feels all kinds of wrong. So slow. Especially for how much energy her body is burning. Is she just plain running wrong?

Maybe a flatter footfall, with a shorter stride? One. Two. One. Two. One two one two one two. She bumps into a shelf and knocks off a plate with a faded blue flower pattern but she's falling into the rhythm and now it almost feels like she's hovering. The jolt of impact on the floor is absorbed entirely by her shoes and now she can be a bullet aimed at the (give it to me give it to me giveittomegivegivegive).

The. Uh. Scoring zone. Her head is full of lightning. Something is trying to claw its way out of her her skull. She narrows her eyes and squeezes her face tighter and it briefly ebbs into the flow of her feet and her arms before suddenly spiking out of her back, instead. The lights in the room flicker. Just once. Only briefly. It could be mistaken for a blink.

Synskin is such an annoying invention. Madeleine has never agreed with it about what would be a debilitating blow, and having it on feels less like protection and more like a handshake that she will respect the presence of weapons and not always just run right through them. But even though she's in the outer circle she's just so much faster than these two... helpful gentlemen and it's annoying it's annoying it's annoying needing to find an opening in their pattern.

So she doesn't.

Madeleine darts forward as directly as she can manage. She leans forward, putting her center of gravity as low to the ground as she can manage while still being able to run. Arms held tight together, no longer contributing to balance control, she flies through the room with a constant left-right-left pattern like some sort of particularly shadowy snake. Slipping under one staff and taking the other as a clip on the shoulder, she--

Feels her sneaker slide out from underneath her.

Tumbles forward head over feet over head.

Lands face first with her limbs bunched up behind her, butt and tail thrust into the air in the most undignified position possible.

A vase shatters on top of her. Her ears flinch at the noise.

In. Out.

Her face is inside the paint.

"I win." she mumbles into the floor.

"Upside down kind of day, is it?" mused Titanomachia. "Let me review."

You heard a quiet sound from her distant phone, that sounded a lot like a recording of the vase impacting your head. Visual calculus begins analyzing the angle her phone must have been pointed during that crash - answers not ideal.

"Gravitas aside, you're taking to this surprisingly well," Machia said. "It raises the question - I've been wondering about arena gear for you. You don't use weapons, you're not a multitasker, and you've got a kind of bloody-minded stubbornness that covers a lot of the same ground as armour. But a temporary supercharge..." she bit idly into a pocky stick. "Not scientific. I'm getting close to perfection and I am not going to carve out space in my designs to optimize for some hack goo. When I'm done I intend this to be baseline. No, I need something more," she made a sound like fizz-pop! "I need to do some research."

"Anyway!" she tossed her phone to the side. "Since my little hexchamp is winning on the first try it's time to up the stakes! Part of working with Xotic is that she's in control of the dose and when it hits you, so I," she flicked forwards onto the floor, "am going to be lurking around in that creepy little Igor shuffle she does. Then I'm going to try and hit you with some aresolized enhancements while you're moving. This stuff won't last long, so you've got to anticipate when it's coming and make the most of it for the seconds you have. Ready?"

"Does it matter?"

And the answer, of course, was yes. It mattered quite a lot. Because no: she was not ready at all. Call it beginner's luck, call it a difficulty ramp, call it unreasonable torture, but Madeleine does not so much as sniff the scoring zone in the next four attempts.

The first was also the most promising. She'd pushed her running form further, using the extra power she understood was on tap now to let her get away with a truly ridiculous form. Hunched forward lean and low, she moved by pulling her legs forward into her chest and then kicking back into the floor. It gave her back her arms and turned her entire body into a vehicle for raw speed and power until she transcended the form of the motorcycle into almost the pure perfection of the horse... but then she twitched. Machia hadn't even hit her with anything extra yet, it was a simple mistake and her form required perfection. A tangle of limbs slipped and hit the ground so hard she skipped. Three times, into a wall.

The second time she didn't trust herself like that again. That was a different kind of mistake. It was only the focus on running that was giving her so much control to begin with, so when she put her focus on going slower so she didn't hit herself again she flipped right back around to feeling sick and twitchy. She tried to walk around and slip into a clever dive, but what she did instead was lurch and stumble backwards as much as forwards, like one of those 'drunken fist' street performers you sometimes saw at malls next to the guy with the saxophone or guitar, except there was no secret grace to it. Her body convulsed as soon as Machia hit her with a fresh dose of gel and in the sudden spike of ferocity she got her nose smashed in by a staff. Mess had been very politely aiming for her shoulder, but her stupid face had other plans.

She needed a minute to stop dripping blood before attempt number three.

Wasn't a whole lot of point to that, though. The blood stayed with her anyway. Learning, learning, she was always trying to be learning. Holding it back was impossible, so what if she leaned back into it instead? Only this time instead of trying to be perfect she'd do the easier thing and attempt to disrupt the Placer pattern. She tracked Machia first and foremost, even managing a smile when she saw the way she insisted on walking. Anticipate it. Anticipate it. She wanted to at least use the power spike this time, so she planted her foot and wound up putting it right through the floor. She felt her vision go red, and for four impossible seconds she had no idea where she was. She came to on top of Stripes, with his arm in her mouth.

"Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry..."

She dipped her head between each beat. Dakinis are really weird about violence sometimes. Sometimes you could forget they were a machine intelligence with the constant bro routine. But then they'd do something like shrug off a moment of ultraviolence where all of their limbs came off because they still attached perfectly again and then Madeleine was forced to reckon with the fact that they had an entirely different set of priorities than she did. Creepy. She wanted to go home.

But she has another round to try. She'd made a bunch of different kinds of mistakes at this point, so if she's worth anything as an A! player then now is the time to put those together into something resembling the mysterious grace she's supposedly capable of. So back to basics; she'd do what she did best and focus on running. Aggressive form but controllable lines, and a single sharp boost forward to close. It really should be simplicity. Even though her nose aches and her mouth is radiating pain, if she can at least control this next burst to show promise, she...

She breathes.

Her back flickers. Like it's growing spikes. Like it's growing wings. She pushes off, she runs, perfect planning, perfect aggression, the very best she's capable of.

The lights start to flash.

Madeleine Cross has no face. There's a distorted black shroud where features should be, fluttering faintly in a nonexistent breeze.

Darkness swallows the room.

Then light.

The two fight, rapid bursts of blindness in two fun flavors.

She is... floating? Arms and legs bent at impossible, broken angles. Dangling as if from the ceiling like a doll on a string. She moans. Her hair pulses as though it were breathing.

And then the lights come back on, and Madeleine is simply writhing on the floor while she gasps for air. Her face normal, her body normal, everything reduced to a trick or the light. A strange power surge on the grid and nothing more. If she didn't look so pale it'd be like nothing was even the matter.

"I'm... fine..." she heaves, willing herself to flip over off of her back to try and push back onto her feet (she falls, and cracks her head), "I'm fine. Fine. Please... let me... try again. Everything is... I just, I just need... water. That's, that's, that's a-all."