[IC] Aristeia! Building a Champion

[Thanqol]

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.

[Phoe]

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..."

[Thanqol]

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.

[Phoe]

"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.

[Thanqol]

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?"

[Phoe]

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.

[Thanqol]

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?

[Phoe]

The timer ticks down to zero.

The scoring zone clicks off.

Two women wrestle in the grass and increasing amounts of mud, just outside the hex.

One of them is painfully aware of falling short. The other is snarling, so caught up in the fight and the scent of her opponent that she has no awareness of the time. Or the concept of scoring zones.

Madeleine opens her eyes. Then she starts to see. She takes a late foot to the chest, sprawls backwards onto the ground, and pushes herself up to sitting. She is covered in sweat and grass and dirt, and her breath is hot and heavy. She looks across, just across from her, and there is Titanomachia.

Without her coat. Without her ribbons. Just as hot, nearly as breathless, just as dirty and gross. Not invincible, but... ordinary. Like her. Madeleine wipes her lips with the back of her wrist.

"Ah," she says, curling inward, "S-s-sorry."

This is the part where she stands up. This is the part where she extends her hand to Machia to-- no, wait, this is the part where she takes her mark again before the next round starts! This is hardly the first point Titanomachia hasn't scored on, if Madeleine isn't ready she'll be behind and her mad, stupid scramble would just get her killed or worse, she has to go, she has to fight, she has to be a good practice partner, she--

Her cheek is wet. Why?

Madeleine looks up at the sky. No helpful drops of rain obligingly splash on her forehead or into her eyes, but her vision feels more blurry than it ought to for her level of fatigue. Something dribbles off her chin and strikes her collarbone. She looks back and Machia again and touches her cheek, and now her fingers can trace her tears all the way back to her pale golden eyes. Sh-she? Ah, ah, ahhhhh!

To say that the dam bursts would be laughable. It's not misrepresenting the situation but it's so far underneath the mark of reality that it may as well convey negative information. First the tears start streaming. These are the cracks spreading across her. And then there is no dam at all, there never was. Just a void that water temporarily forgot that it could rush into.

She falls forward onto her knees as her face twists into something ugly and utterly uncomposed. This is what it means to be vulnerable. Hormones are rushing through her system and all of her emotions are set to 13 and every breath only comes into her body so that it can hitch and squeak and come back out as a sob. The word 'sorry' repeated endlessly but mangled in new and exciting ways until it physically drags her forward and she is flopped, twitching wet and loud, into Machia's shoulder.

Because it shouldn't have been that close. Because she should have seen that beautiful juke coming and started moving to counteract it before it ever came to her useless animal maneuver. Because she wanted to do a better job than this. Because, because... because she wanted to see it work. She wanted to witness the perfection she used to watch that seemed so beautiful it was like watching art. Because she was worried. Because she needed to say something, and she couldn't. Because she should've noticed sooner. Because every time she 'won' it came from some obnoxious stupid technicality that proved nothing about herself. Because really, that last lunge should've beaten her anyway. She wanted it to. And it did not. Because it was selfish not to rehab Machia, selfish to take up her time when it should all be going into her instead, because it was monstrous to consider it, because outside of the flash of realization in that single instant...

She wasn't that impressed at all. And everything is wrong now. And everything is upside down. And everything is wet and sniffly and sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry

Madeleine stops. She takes the deepest, most centering breath that she can. She moves to push away and stand again. She falls apart instantly and collapses straight back into the storm. In this moment, all she knows is that she ruined everything. The world is ending, and this disgusting sticky mess is the proof.

[Thanqol]

The buzzer goes off again.

Titanomachia looks over from her position on Scoring Zone 4.

The second she got free from the grapple she'd been off at tearing speed, slicing through the air to dive onto the next active zone. Only now as the system updates to read HOME: 1 does she release her focus enough to realize what happened to her opponent. She hovers, jogging on the spot awkwardly, and when the bell rings again it takes visible, physical effort to stop her from screaming off at maximum speed to Scoring Zone 2.

Instead she walks over to her downed opponent. Jogs awkwardly in place for another moment. Then picks out her tablet and plugs the cable into the intake port on the back of Madeleine's neck. Still jogging, she looks through all your vitals directly. It was easier for her to do this than ask if anything was broken or injured.

Also, in this particular moment, more effective.

Her pace slowed a bit once she confirmed the Cube's report that all vitals were functioning correctly. She set the tablet down, ran over to the packs, and came back with the lunch box and drink bottles. She set them down in front of Madeleine, patting her head reassuringly - but then her ears twitched. She bit her lip.

She couldn't help herself.

She was off again, belting across the field at top speed, dropping into a turf-destroying slide to hit the edge of Zone 2 seconds before the round timer ended.

[Phoe]

The nice thing about Machia ignoring her is that Madeleine got to watch her run. For a moment not as an obstacle to be overcome, but as an art form to be chased. The other nice thing is that she got to stop saying sorry and just sit with her thoughts. And this sandwich. Lot of vegetables in this thing. Cooling. Very nice.

This is not, of course, the end of the storm. But even driving rain and thunder sometimes mellow out for a while into a more standard drizzle. There's time enough to feel the tingle on the top of her head where a hand had been some little while ago, and time enough to watch the scoreboard climb. And time enough to frown.

Madeleine takes her feet. She gathers herself and her power as she hunches low to the ground, and with an explosion of tearing turf behind her, she is sailing at reckless speed toward scoring zone five. Sandwich dangling half in her mouth, drink bottle clutched in her hand, tears still streaming down her cheeks, she flies and somehow manages to laugh at herself. She chews, she swallows, she doesn't even choke, and she runs runs runs runs.

This is euphoria. But make no mistake, she is here to commit a murder. That scoreboard is growing lopsided and the longer her wet eyes behold it the more irritation creeps into her perfect feelings. One point. Just one point. If not this pass then the next. But she will have one; the Away Team is not getting blanked today. She rips holes in the earth and paints the absolute edges of the obstacle facsimiles. She is an arrow all in black with only one target.

Bread still dancing in her half open mouth.

[Thanqol]

She's in her form now. Faster, faster - fast enough to know that this isn't the fastest she's gone. This is merely fast. It's not the frontier of a new possibility. Not like the shadow on her heels. Entirely scientifically uninteresting. All her excitement is in her opponent's performance and not in her own.

She glances back over her shoulder. She's smiling.

Well. That's not the same as being bored. That's not incompatible with pushing the horizon of science a step forwards. There's something here to test for after all.

She can see the point where she's going to be overtaken. Can see the angles to ensure they both get onto five, 8-1. Can see the unknown moment hovering like a void a few steps beyond. She commits past all the safe divergence points. She commits for the pride of a perfect victory. She commits because she wants to know if she can pull this off. She commits because she wants to know how deeply those golden eyes have been watching her.

She leaps for the zone. Momentum-destroying, she'll be overtaken for sure. Spins around in mid air. Heart in her mouth. Leg in her hands.

She swings with both hands, releases the throw of her detached leg at the apex of her jump. Aimed to kick Madeleine right in the toast.

Can you dodge this? At this speed? This stupid, worthless thing that I've been throwing for months - but never with a smile before? She doesn't know. She wants to know.

[Phoe]

This is the woman she has watched more than any other in her entire life. The various legends and current stars of the Hex she has only ever looked at through the lens of the official Aristeia! broadcast, which she can only sort of watch without getting twitchy and starting to pace her apartment. She has never studied footage, has never built a profile on an opponent, cannot even name half of her competitors without looking at her phone.

But Machia? That's been a matter of survival, hasn't it?

What does it mean when her fingers twitch? Why does she look down in certain circumstances when she's so unnervingly capable of driving her eyes right through Madeleine's in so many other cases? When does her little frown mean she's pensive, and when does it mean she's happy? When is it neither, and she's simply digesting a problem too big to describe? What is a trap, what are her vulnerabilities, when are those a trap? She shows too much teeth right after she drugs something, and too little when she hasn't and she's lying about having done it anyway. It's dangerous when her eyes flash too bright. She's up to something when they dull. She can recognize the moment when Machia has decided to take her leg off almost without looking at this point. The shift in the air from the temperature spike in her body is plenty.

Although, it's never looked like this before...

Madeleine is not a woman with much in the way of talent. She has no mystic sixth gear, there is no wizardry she can perform with her body to shift tempo the way that her opponent can. Now that she's moving this quickly, she doesn't even really have enough strength to stop herself in the hex without tearing something in half. The one and only thing she has going for her is a willingness to endure pain. She sees the 'kick' coming but all she does is open her eyes wider to lock onto the missile and, with a final gathering of strength, launches herself into the air.

There is no graceful twist around the leg. At most she manages to torque her neck and tuck in her shoulder so that when it smashes into her it cuts her over her right eyebrow instead of stopping her cold. She winces, gulping in a way that somehow swallows what's left of her sandwich as she leans even harder into her trajectory. She curls inward, snatching at the leg as it passes and cradling it against her chest with one arm and hurtles directly into Machia.

The two of them collide. Madeleine, laughing and still half crying, stretches her body at the moment of impact, just enough to put one foot under her to sort of kind of gracelessly "land" on the ground instead of just crashing. She kicks, leaps, snatches her drink bottle in her teeth where a sandwich used to be, and streeeeeeeeeeeeetches for the very corner of the hex.

Two fingertips. That's all that sticks. She lies there on her back, arm still desperately reached into the scoring zone, heaving and sweating and giggling like a deranged lunatic.

[Thanqol]

The clouds roll on overhead, silver and crimson in the setting sunlight. A straight jetstream line bisects the heavens, leading towards the distant sunset like the road to heaven. The blue withdraws its cloak, drenching the heavens in the bloody golds of the earth's star. The rising dark is clean; the satellite clutter of earlier eras long done away with.

In terrestrial concerns, a pair of groundskeepers and an assistant droid are moving across the grass, patching the broken turf and repainting the hexlines. The scoreboard hovers at an unrepresentative 44-68. Machia couldn't figure out how to reset it while she was reattaching her leg, and neither had you when you were out of breath and it was her turn to run up the score again. And then it had kept ticking up as the two of you lay here in central, round after round

The first breath of cold ocean wind stirs the long reverie.

"You really don't know how to do anything but run, do you?" said Titanomachia. "Not one step to the left, not one step to the right. No tricks. No weapons. Just a straight line to the finish..." she laughed as if she was any different. "Hopeless. Muda. Muda. Muda. This isn't a race. It's a circus. So why..."

She sighed, and shifted to get out of the way of the robot nudging her foot with its paint nozzle. Her groan made it clear she had at least considered letting it just paint over her.

[Phoe]

"What would... be the point?"

Madeleine groans as she sits up. Willingness to endure pain is not the same as ability, and she has been running for hours. Her whole body is a very happy, contented kind of heavy, the struggle to make her limbs obey her that makes her smile a little before her face settles into deep thought. She looks up at the sky and watches it transform while the groundskeepers grumble to either side of her. They'd really done a number on this place.

"A weapon wouldn't make me faster. And I don't know how to use any. And to have a trick, I'd need to think of one first. I wouldn't know where to begin. And as soon as one person figured it out, I'd be..."

She stretches her arms toward the sky, joining her fingers together over her head and reaching out towards the remnants of the sun, and then above it to the encroaching darkness. She turns her head away from the heavens, and just watches Machia as she too struggles to turn herself back into a functioning, mobile person.

This had been the best training session she could ever remember having. The pair of them glisten in the city's glow.

"When I run... it's quiet. All the voices that whisper in my ear, those miserable ghosts can't keep up, and then it's me. Only me. Of course I care about the game, I want to score, but... I only think about other players in the sense that I enjoy the game. What they do doesn't matter to me. I just... want to run. Faster and faster. Faster than sound, faster than light. So fast that everything else falls away, and all that's left is me."

It takes everything she has to push herself back to standing. Her legs are wobbly and even at rest for this long her breathing can't quite seem to get in rhythm, but she extends her arm toward Machia in offer to pull her up as well.

"But I didn't pick this game by accident. I want to win. If you say I need to have a second skill to do that, then I guess... I can try. Thank you for today. But it's time for the evening session. I'd like to grab coffee on the way back, would you like to make that part of my challenge?"

She smiles: a sure sign of an unusual mood. Could she be feeling playful?

[Thanqol]

"What you need isn't a trick, it's a counter," Machia said. She peeled herself off the ground with your arm as support. She stretched, then started moving, fatigue forgotten as her mind took over. "Gata, classic example, the girl by which we are all measured. Her secondary weapon wasn't her contender pistol, though she found use for that - it was the glitterdust. Sticky, multisensory baffle, eclipse compounds - she throws a handful of it in the face of a ranged fighter like Lunah or Bill and they couldn't see anything for the rest of the round. So she could outrun anyone who tried to chase her and disable anyone who tried to shoot her from a distance. Two moves, between them they encompassed the whole world."

She noticed her limp and frowned. She was trying to rest her organic leg, leaning more heavily on the cybernetic - and it was clear that bothered her. She stomped a couple of times like trying to shake it off, then forced herself into a more even gait.

"But I haven't fully worked out what you need to counter yet. It's not ranged fire, like Gata - you are much bigger and tougher than her and you're capable of wearing hits she couldn't. I don't know if I'll really know until I see you against more varied opponents. Friday is going to be very important..."

She trailed off, then abruptly exited the conversation by putting her headphones in and resuming work on her soundscape. She only took them out when it came time to order the coffee. She paid the extra nine dollars for two reusable thermal cups that'd maintain the coffee's temperature at scalding heat for prolonged periods of time. Then she gave neither of them to you - just continued to walk back to the apartment in silence, one cup in each hand, wireless headphones glittering white up in her equine ears.