Anarion

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

Guess this wasn't a day for casual shopping trips. Well, much as she wanted to grind her way down the building after Gata, she thought a change of clothes was warranted, so she want down via the elevator and back into the mall. She was gonna be climbing, so the long skirt wasn't it, but she quickly slipped through and picked up some leafy colored leggings to go with a knee-length floral dress in light green with pink flowers. Looked sort of like she was on an island vacation, or a housewife from like a century ago. But it had short sleeves for free arm movement, and it was cute.

You might be wondering why she wasn't more worried about Creek. Two reasons. One, panicking and running in seemed real fucking stupid in response to this. If Kraken's game was a rescue, it meant she wanted to challenge Sammy trying to get to a point, which made enough sense for an Aristeia! scoring zone. The point wasn't gonna move and the advantage to varying her timing at all from "mad dash immediately in response to knowing where to go" was itself valuable.

Second, Creek was secretly one of the most put together people she knew. As long as Sammy got her out quick enough to keep her from being late for her shift at the daycare, she'd be all gratitude and her ire would be reserved for Kraken. Sammy really didn't envy Kraken on that one.

She decided to grab the sun hat on the way out. It would probably fall off while she was jumping around (though it did have a nice pink gauzy tie so you could keep it around the neck at least) but it would look nice in the meantime. Creek would appreciate it.

Now fully changed and out of the mall at ground level, she moves at a brisk walking pace towards Glebe park, keeping an eye out. The intel was that Kraken did shadow tentacles, so she wasn't sure how fast that would pop out or how many would already be in place, or for that matter how she was going to be acquiring her target. The new dress and the hat might help with that too, Sammy didn't exactly look like her previous profile and it was pretty tough to see her face at ground level with a wide-brimmed hat on.

Time to see where Creek was.

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

"More or less. I'll figure it out. ...Nyan."

Sammy accompanies this last by lifting a hand and doing a little wrist flick. For emphasis. Because it is cute. Shut up.

She shakes her head to clear it. And starts making her way down, flipping out her phone as well. "Alright, well I got my marching orders." She's already texting Kraken for a meetup. That night if possible, the match was coming too soon.

She turns back to Gata, phone in hand. "How should I reach you again? Or is this one of those mysterious you'll find me kinda things?" A nervous chuckle.

After this, well, she was already next to a major department store. She needed a new outfit. Something disarming. Maybe a long skirt for a change, with a shirt with puffy shoulders and a big hat so she looked like she was out for a stroll in the park instead of doing a workout. That was probably cute.

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

Sammy hesitates. Gata was so decisive. So much like she imagined in so many ways, and also offering such a different worldview from how she thought. Sammy was all in the details, the planning, each specific person and each combination of teams and skills. And Gata was over here talking about eyes and ears and telling her not to worry except about the one thing she had taken as...like window dressing, as deciding what the field would look like and how she'd have to play, but not her focus.

Well, it would be a dumbass move to beg for training and then get too embarrassed to ask for help. So nothing for it.

"She offered to train together. Kraken, I mean. Like, right after my match with Machia ended. Think I should take her up on it, or would she get more out of than me?"

She still flushes. Stupid dumb question for stupid idiots who can't think for themselves, nothing profound, nothing useful, no more analysis, she just didn't know what to do with what she had now. Dumb. She's looking at the cement where she's kneeling, seeing how much pressure she needs to put out before her motions cut a line of white into it. Little white circles, anything to hide her face.

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

“I dunno, it’s like. Being a cat and a brawler, I get to choose how I play. I know you know, that feeling when you’re moving like everybody else is in slow motion, is terrain for you to work with. I think a lot about teams because I get to decide whether I’m going to be the person moving for the scoring zone or the person moving to hit my opponents. Someone like Bit might be faster in a straight line with her mech suit, but if I’ve got a plan for how to reach her, I could take her out no problem and if I’m against her, I could match her in scoring ability and take her out when she commits. Most of the time, most of the time it’s like that, like I can see everybody and how they’re gonna move and just be better. But…”

Machia. This was a question about Machia. It was always going to come back to being a question about Machia. The whole practice session with Decima was her thinking about Machia while she had already lost to a trick too. “Did you see my last match? Where Machia just moved around me and Maxima and Musashi like she was made of water? And then when I try to think about that, when I try to think about how I should have moved, I tune out the rest of my instincts and open myself up to getting hit by stuff I should have noticed if I’d been paying attention.”

Sammy lifts up her head and sighs, breathing out her worries to the sky above Gata. “I don’t know what to do when most of the time trusting my instincts is the way to win but every once in a while there’s someone like Machia or…like whatever ghosts you’re talking about where something comes out of the blue that blows those instincts away, like I don’t even know what I’m seeing no matter how many times I play it back in my head.”

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

"No yeah, that's cool. I don't...I don't wanna be you. I wanna be what you inspired."

Sammy blushes, full on honest to god blush. "Ugh, that was so cringe, I'm sorry. I'm...just, look, you were, I was...I grew up really poor, I street fought. Like, a lot. I went to one of the matches you were in to laugh at you. Like, all of you, at all the fancy costumes and idiots prancing around up there for cash without knowing how to do anything real. And then I saw you move."

At this point, Sammy is considering jumping off the building, since no convenient holes have appeared to swallow her forever to prevent her from having to look at Gata. But since that is not forthcoming and she's still got survival instinct, she's forced to press on instead while staring at the most convenient air conditioning unit available in Gata's general direction so she can avoid eye contact.

"..."
"..."
"Look I didn't go down the cat route for nothing. I want to move like you, I want to make other people feel the way I felt when I saw you, and I also want to punch some fools in their goddamn faces. I may not have the raw strength of someone modded like Maxima, but I think this style is top tier for the arena, it's perfect for dealing with synthskin opponents, flexible for almost any team because I can mix speed and aggression to fight or score. I just, I need to get better and I need to have a little bit more, a little bit of something special so I don't get chumped by someone's cheap trick. I need to get better."

There's a lot of emotion flowing through her, a lot of processing, a lot of thoughts swirling and a struggle to say more. It's only after all that happens that one stray thought kicks all the others out of they way. "...and what did you mean about Cross???"

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

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

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

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

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

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

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

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

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

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

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

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

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

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

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

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

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

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

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

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

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

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

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

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