Anarion

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

Twice in the same day. Well she's not going to make the same mistake twice. Unless she should? No, no don't get inside your own head Sammy. You ignored that prickly feeling while Decima was firing, now you've got the vibe that another cat is above you and every hair is standing on end. No, no more ignoring it.

She considers parkouring up a brick facade. She could do it. Wouldn't be half bad training. Too conspicuous though, don't need the news stories about a star Aristeia! player getting caught climbing random building walls like a freak. She wants a safe place to get up high and survey things. Someplace snug and dark with very few approach routes so she can see and have cover on her back.

Better idea to duck into the nearest commercial building then. Slip in past the sandstone cover to an interior that screams chic shopping center from the heyday of malls and dash up the escalators. First floor, bedding; second floor men's formal wear; third floor women's formal wear; fourth floor women's summer wear, and the end of the facade giving way to big glass windows staring out over the fields of native plant life in varying shades of reds and golds.

She's got her head a little bit lowered and she's not sprinting but she's moving past other customers like she's a stone skipping over water as she makes her way towards the windows. There, past a wrack of pastel sundresses she wouldn't be caught dead in and she's in the corner of the 4th floor by the window to look out. Is the feeling following her the way she came? Still higher up? Has she shaken it?

Return to Thellamie

>Home-away-from-home
>[.snowkitten]
>And that's all I know about Hazel after this trip. He's changed. Or maybe he's not changed, but like, he's let himself come out. So don't be afraid to low key take over for him, but don't hurt him either. You gotta run things and be gentle and let him know that everything is okay for him to just, like, be with you. That's the best I've got. Rooting for you, Suli.

Yuki quietly closes out her tablet as the Lyxnogrif drifts towards the back of the pack. It's small and without extra urging, it's not going to keep up with the Khan here, and that's fine. She wants some space to chat and practice anyway. Drawing a heartaxe can be slow, and she has to leave space for it. Easier to draw straight into something smaller, a shortsword pulled from the haft. She can see it. She can see Eclair drawing it.

What had her friend said to her?

You are pulled in as many directions as there are points to a rose, and for as long as you attempt to hold the center all you will receive in reward are these sparks

Mm, well, maybe she was done with that. It's not that Suli had to win, but she had picked a side. A side for Sulochana. A side she thought was right. A side that she thought would make Hazel happy too. What did that mean for her heart? What did Yuki Edogawa want? Mmm, she still wasn't quite sure. To be a knight and carry out her duty. And to...be free maybe? To be able to lay down her burden and lie down safely, with all her friends. Was that not a knight's reward? To be able to take off your heavy armor and be blessed with warmth and good company? And perhaps a little more? A blush rises to her cheeks, lit in the warmth of a small heart's dagger flickering uncertainly in her palm before it vanishes into starlight with nary a sign it was there.

They will arrive soon in Aestival, with Yuki guarding the convoy's rear.

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

"Damn." Sammy lets out a long sigh. runs her hands through her hair, stands, paces, sits on a rock. "damn."

It's not...she's not sure what she's thinking. Like, that Decima exists for real? That Maxima was right? That Maxima was dead wrong? That she got the better of this one actually? Part of her wanted to call Decima an idiot, and if she'd taken this call last night, before she'd gone a round with Maxima, she would have and been worse off for it.

"I didn't...fucking Christ, Decima, I didn't come in here thinking we're friends. But I did kind of hope we'd be on the same team. If we are and it's not one of the absurdly fucking weird comps where it's us vs. every placer, we can probably take out two opponents before anyone even knows what the hell happened and then we win the match. If we know that in advance, like, even a rough idea who we each go for, then the whole thing is smooth. I came to you and not anybody else because your style matters."

She shakes her head. "So like, don't expect me to apologize, bitch. I guess I know you care now, but we're not fighting Gata and Lunah's battle, and whatever you think, neither one of us is the prodigy of our generation. Not fucking yet. We haven't won anything yet. I'm just sitting here in Titanomachia's fucking shadow!"

She shouts that last, head back, pointed up to the heavens. Then she stretches her neck, her arms again, and brings her body back down into relaxed shoulders and a casual stance, but with a stare that could burn right back through Decima and eat her.

"I'm gonna kit out to win the game. If that means beating you first, that's how it's gonna be. If you're on my team and Bit isn't, take out Bit first, I'll handle the other heavies, nobody else will be able to score. If it's you, me, Bit, then we just split up pummeling shit. Done. If you're not on my team, make sure going for me doesn't lead to you getting punked by a placer. I'd rather duel you again in a situation where I wasn't waiting to see what happened."

She slings her pack over her shoulder then and heads back into town. It was time for a trip to the mall. She wanted a haircut and maybe a new skirt.

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

There's a moment where Sammy is just crestfallen. Not head in hands, but her ears droop and her face droops with it as she watches the gun motion. Stupid, repetitive. Should have seen it by the third time at worst. The snake aesthetic was actually doing all the work there, making it seem like Decima was moving around to size up her shot when she was actually taking her shots. Obvious and stupid. Never going to beat Machia with that level of vision.

She's not squeezing any further, she lets her synthskin reset, loosens her hand, stands. The point was made, they'd both shown off their capabilities. Sort of, at least. There were still a few wildcards, she suspected. If she had to guess, in Decima's case it was that she had a desperation movement of some kind. Some way to unload or overload the thing if she had to. If they weren't on the same team, the question was going to be what the consequences would be of immediately punching the girl.

As for Sammy, flexibility was queen really. Good odds that she might not even be in the same role as she was here when they got to the arena. And if she had the budget for it, maybe she'd pack something a little different. Just had to stop beating herself up long enough to consider it.

"I suppose it's smart, thinking about the mental game, even if it makes you a fucking asshole every time. Aristeia's a budget. Power is power. If you need speed, you invest in speed. If you need strength, you invest in strength. Easy shit. Every watt spent elsewhere makes what you're good at weaker. Like no shit, if you can get someone to suck at spending what they're got, you're gonna beat them. Same time, if you're constantly investing your resources in debuffs, then you're not much of an ace yourself. Somebody has to be the ace, has to have the skills to score or take out the other team or something. And since Machia's apparently out for the fucking count, that's gonna be me. Maybe that means I run up her arm and punch her in the eyes so she can't aim. Maybe it means I just jump around her."

With her synthskin reset, Sammy rolls her shoulders, lifts her arms and stretches, lifts each leg a few times, then pulls out the rest of her coffee and drinks it till she has to tilt it up to get the last drop out. "Goddamn that's good. Okay, different question, Deci. You see yourself as focusing a couple key targets right? But this is a team game. My answer to Argeltia's gonna depend on whether she's punching through tentacles or tied up trying to push out Astra, or if she actually gives a shit about me, personally. But what about you? Who're you gunning for? You rattled off Lios, Bit, Astra and Argeltia. You're guaranteed at least one won't be on your team. How you gonna pick who's most important? Who's your top priority?"

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

"ffffffuck!" says Sammy, and with an intense rippling muscle flex that shudders through her armor, she puts a hand around Decima's throat. Her synskin is locked up, but her armor enhancing her strength and running her muscles against every spot means that even through that she can manage a move particularly near the edges where the needles don't fully reach, giving her some range of motion with the wrists and ankles even though the majority of her body is locked up. It's not that meaningful, surely Decima wouldn't crouch down next to her defeated opponent. But she should remember that if she has to get this close this long to commit, it means that even a heavily disabled opponent might pull out a sidearm and get a shot on her in turn as their parting gift.

She relaxes then, waiting for her equipment to all reset. Her eyes are calm, no swagger, calmer than Decima would have seen up to this point. The contemplation of someone who just got punched and is done with stupid shows for the moment. "I think what surprised me isn't that I didn't notice getting hit, it's that I didn't notice you firing. No trigger pull, no muscle twitch in the corner of my eye, didn't see your fingers move or the gun shift at all. Guess there's no kickback, like no shit, tiny needles need like zero force to fire. Makes sense. But where's the choice to fire happening? If I see that next time, I won't get hit. If you're got some bullshit neuro link to that thing, then I'm just punching you first if we're not on the same team. If we are, well, depends I guess. Shadow me or whoever's fastest on the team. Dunno if this'll work on Argeltia though, she's fuckin huge. Even if you get like a million needles in there, you got the energy budget to electricity something that big?"

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

"I hadn't heard yet, damn" Sammy says. Her ears perk up, and her dance grows just a bit tighter, arms up closer to her head, her movements shorter, smaller, and faster. "I thought Machia was only training that new girl, Madeleine. Didn't know she worked with Taowu either. Fucking scary thinking about those two working together."

The tension is palpable, and Sammy is leaning into it. "mrrrr" she says, thinking aloud as Decima asks about monsters, without skipping a beat in her dance. She twirls, her eyes passing over the whole space as she keeps her arms tight to chest, then steps out to hit a far spot before pulling back again. "Dunno what the fuck counts as a monster. Haven't fought Kraken before, kinda thought of it more like a field problem than a fight problem. What's your point, should we add random obstacles to the DDR board?" She grins, flexes, kicks like there's a tentacle coming out of her DDR pad that she needs to sever before she can step on it. Right roundhouse hook into stomp and then push back off again.

Decima is close now, in every sense. Close in distance, close in action, close in tune. But, here's a fun fact about cats. Did you know that cats have faster reflexes than snakes have striking speed? It's true! Cats have evolved in such a way that if a snake is coming at them and they react to the strike, they'll hit the snake first. There's a lot of factors at play, and Sammy's eyes are wide open, every muscle tensed, but she doesn't pick a direction. She steps and she dances and she imagines a field full of obstacles and thrown objects as she does, until the strike begins.

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

"Yeah, okay." Sammy finishes her coffee and starts putting on her armor. Part of her wanted something different. Was still picturing Machia vaulting past her, and what good was DDR going to do to simulate that? She should be vaulting between trees, jumping across rivers, the floor is lava and she has to move faster than the wind. But...that wasn't the thing here. Decima was right, she was going to get locked in with somebody or other if she was going for the scoring zones. And she wanted to see what this not-bullet gun looked like in action. Or felt like, if she took a bad shot.

Even if...even if she'd be picturing Machia the whole time she was playing DDR, imagining every way she could have moved differently, imagining the flow of her opponent like a river around every step she took.

She let out a breath through her nose, the smell of coffee still strong, her body full of energy and jitter. Decima's got keen eyes, she's not going to take Sammy's nonchalance as not caring, and Sammy's only going to go with the flow for as long as this feels useful. It all depends on the first couple shots as to whether she takes it slow or bounds off her mat without missing a step to punch Decima in the face.

And in the meantime, there's an audible crack as she pops her shoulders and flexes her armor into place and flows into something with fast guitar riffs as she throws up a hand to start the song. She waves as she steps, throwing her head and upper body into the moves as fast as her feet, weaving and flowing up and down like water. Like a river to match the flow of an invisible Machia racing past her.

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

Sammy walks up the to the bridge carrying a thermos of coffee in one hand. She's managed a change of clothes somewhere in transition from night to day, and she's now dressed light for warm weather, wearing just a pair of tight forest green shorts, a tan t-shirt, and a teal neck scarf over her own synskin. She looks a bit like she's on a camping trip, though her bag's too light for a proper one. No tent, no bedroll, just some arena gear.

She stares at the weird tangle of wires on a toaster. You can tell she wants to pick it up, but she doesn't ask yet. "Yeah, arena's fucking weird. Not sure what to make of this though. Like, shit, you've done a bunch of homebrew to save on your energy budget and then you make it look good. But like, it's still a gun, right? Bullets're fucking fast, too fast to dodge if you're standing where the bullet's going when the trigger's pulled. Isn't that the whole point?"

She looks from the gun to a gaze at Decima's serpentine eyes, takes a loud sip of coffee, and slings her bag down so the top opens and Decima can see a whole mixture of different light but durable armor shells in a few weights along with some strength enhancers for arms and legs. "I got options, what do you want to test today?"

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

"Hmm, I dunno. Hell of a way to split hairs? She said the people in the hexadome aren't my friends, kinda can't tell fuck all whether she was counting herself or not. It's a good question though, thanks Creek."

Sammy pulls her phone out and looks at her group bracket again. "Yeah, all good questions. I guess the real lesson tonight was that insane prep is normal prep."

She pulls out one of those floaty graph apps and starts sorting her group into different piles for Creek. "So like, there's two utterly fucked versions of this group, and then one weirdly balanced one that comes into twenty flavors of ice cream. Fucked ones are where Argeltia and the Kraken end up on the same team. They're both just, like, terrain, you know? Like you're not fighting one bitch in a suit, you're fighting like a billion tentacles or teleporting giant hands or whatever. So if they're on the same side, the arena is just a hellzone full of crap. If I'm on that team, that means I'm playing a scorer and it's like me and whoever using the terrain to score and avoiding getting ganged up on. Honestly, probably my easiest match, just ride a teleporting giant hand to victory while everybody else is playing hentai simulator."

She smiles a toothy smile at that one, and polishes the meat off a chicken bone. "If I'm against that team, well, depends a bit on comp, but I'm probably a fighter except in the one comp where it's Kraken, Argeltia, Bit and Kiss, and Pashadiah, where I kinda gotta do the scoring because nobody else can manage it. I can't tell if that's the worst match or the best match, depends on speed." She tosses that one specific comp into its own corner of her holomap with a big circle and question mark drawn around it. "But yeah, other than that one, if I'm against the field control side, I'm just punching as many girls as possible so that the scorers on my team can navigate the obstacles and punch a bunch of fucking tentacles in their tentacle faces."

She puts the entire terrain set off to the side in her diagram and starts a new section, finishing off her mug of beer in the process.

"If Argeltia and Kraken aren't on the same team, then we get the ice cream menu variety show. Every side gets some weird surprise terrain thing, and there's probably some combo fighter and scorer on each team, I guess except for the one other weird comp where Pashadiah and Bit and Kiss are on the same side in that situation and they have Astra, so if I'm against that I'm the scorer again while the rest of my team rips into them. But otherwise everybody gets a mixed comp in some flavor of fucking punch your face in while navigating surprise the floor exploded and trying to hit the scoring zone."

Sammy looks over the list again, and lets out a belch and a sigh. "Damn Creek, you know what. There's a clear starting point here. Thanks for being cool. Like, now that I look at it, the obvious practice partner is Decima. She's the only long-range fighter. If I'm on her team, figuring out how I can set her up for shots in weird terrain will crush most of these comps. If I'm not, figuring out how she aims will give me an edge. She was even nice enough to ask. Maybe we'll be friends."

Sammy laughs a sharp laugh and sends Decima a scheduling note in reply to Decima's message.

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

"Yeah, later bitch."

There's no particular malice in it, just a kind of apathy, matching the tone and vibe of the farewell. Okay, we're not friends, got it, guess you're just the delivery girl then, see you whenever.

By the time she's dragged herself out of the sluice, she's shrugging back into her jacket and pants, now mostly dry, and she's crunched down on peanut butter and it's way too late to sleep. So instead she pulls out her phone. No none of the Aristeia! players, she's got something more relaxed in mind. She sends a quick message to a few folks: "Yo, Creek, Lime, Tammy, come join me for beers and karaoke, I know you're up for it, my treat."

She may have lost, but there are some perks to being in the circuit, and being able to go to a cheap hole karaoke place and book a private room that serves light beer is one of them. Venting is another. "Can you believe the nerve?" She asks Creek while Tammy is belting one out from across the room with a voice that belies her small frame. "She gets her ass handed to her on the same team as me, and then shows up with a care package to tell me to remember that we're not friends, and also that she didn't have to work too hard to kick my ass. Jesus fuck, what is that even about, right?"

Creek's a tall, buff, caring type of girl and offers a good listening ear, so Sammy continues after taking a big gulp of her beer. "And like, what's even in it for her then? No that's a stupid question, she's probably just psyching me out. More like, who the fuck gets to know Gata and everybody like her on a casual basis and is just like 'nah, whatever, I never spoke to her again.' Like, she meant something to me, you know? Ah well, least I have friends and not just thirty 'colleagues.'"

She puts in another song to line up for after Lime finishes her quiet ballad, and also an order of chicken wings for good measure.