Phoe

Return to Thellamie

"So typical of a tree to sneer at the thought of an axe. Utterly pathetic. I would encourage you to put the Rot Star's words out of your mind, Yuki Edogawa. Difficult as that may seem. Her frightened yelps might creak with menace, but it does not do to confuse which one of you properly fears the other."

Ten steady steps forward. The distance could be cleared in fewer, but the gentleness of the motion in important. She reaches out with her finger and touches the tear that refuses to fall.

She brushes it away. But that is not true. Eclair pulls at it, instead. And in the motion, in the space, as her hand pulls away from Yuki's face, she comes away not with a fleck of salt water but with a thin opaline sword. An épée, to be more precise about it. Eclair lifts it high before she kisses it to her own forehead, and watches her friend with a smile.

"I am a Maid-Knight of the Aurora. The Morning, Noon, and Evening may be far from infallible, but in matters of the heart they are never incorrect. You may therefore trust my words are the truth. You know love and you know family, Yuki Edogawa, even if you cannot explain either. And you are greater than what you seem. Certainly you are greater than what comes most naturally to you, though that is not to imply that what comes naturally is not great."

With a wave of her free hand, she bids the blade to evaporate into light once more. Now she offers a curtsy, with her fingers placed perfectly about where her skirts should be, though she is still wearing the uniform of the Mystery Builder.

"Be at ease. What I have shown you today is the result of years of training and struggle. Continue practicing, and do not be afraid to take breaks. In time you will perceive the door that you are trying to open, and when you finally see it you will understand it all. If you ever feel lost in the dark, remember this:

"Starlight and destiny are burdens as certainly as they are blessings. If you lack for either it only means that your feet do not have to carry as much weight. You are not attempting to become more than you are: your heartblade is not a sign of your inadequacy. Therefore do not be afraid of failure, and do not be ashamed of what you know you can be. You are merely teaching your heart that it can be held with more than one grip. Once it comes to you, you will see at last how vast and brilliant Radiance truly is. More than could ever be matched by mere stars."

She yawns and walks over to a nearby chair to flop over and stretch herself out in an extreme display of both fatigue and impropriety. She is nearer to Mayzie now, almost near enough to note the purring, even if she doesn't dare approach that light out of sheer delighted nervousness that she might get burned.

"...If there is one thing that I despise, it is the way a lack of work allows the fatigue to catch up to my body. I shall need to eat soon if I am to ask you any questions. Is it not the stupidest thing imaginable? It should be against the law."

Breathless Dead

"What..." Bella's voice is barely more than a whisper, "...Was that?"

It has been an eventful afternoon.

The very moment the dropship opened up, Bella's mouth had fallen open in wonder. Only one other time in her life had she beheld a field of grasses and flowers this vibrant or fragrant, and it had fallen utterly short of the magnificence of this day. To call it perfumed would be a lie, to call it a portrait would be an insult. The myriad dotted reds and purples and yellows popping out of the green-brown-orange grasses had no discernible pattern to them, because nobody had arranged them. It could not be called a garden because it served no master to begin with. And when she'd seen the first butterfly, Bella had thrown herself on the ground with delight and refused to move from the spot until she was certain she'd counted every kind in the field.

When they found a waterfall it was another moment where everything had fallen still to appreciate the rush of the current more. Watching fish breach the surface at the bottom where the foam gave way to clearer waters, Bella's tail twitched with ancient instincts she did not know she possessed. It took every part of her willpower not to pounce on them from a hundred meters up. The last time she had seen anything like this she'd only been able to view it in comparison to Nero's Tellus, but the presence of life here shook even her oldest memories free from her thoughts. It could no longer be looked at through the lens of what was 'allowed'. As if existence were a question of legality or political influence.

She could hardly move through the forest for all of her twirling and leaping. To the top of what seemed like every tree; to peer at the leaves in their hundred patterns with wonder and curiosity and to laugh at the top of her lungs every time she startled another bird. To sniff at the many kinds of bark and learn the scents of sap and how it compared to the nectar of a flower, and to bend her ears to catch every paw and talon as it stalked them through the foliage. This, she told Redana, was a world she had dreamed of. In her worst moments it would come to her, this place of a trillion noises that still felt like silence, and when it filled her mind it was the only time she could steal real rest from the Palace. She spoke of it without even grimacing or glaring at anything.

But now, her finger points at empty space ahead of a plain of chest high grasses. There not moments ago was a creature she had never seen. A magnificent beast and proud, covered from tip to tail in soft, spotted fur and walking on four legs. Its head had sported a pair of sensitive, triangle shaped ears that had lifted to comical height when it sensed the pair of them. She had stared into its slitted, jewel-green eyes, watched its back hunch and its long tail lower as it dug its claws into the earth. At once predator and prey. At once majestic and delightful. Equally ready to spring forward or backward, equally likely in its demeanor to welcome or repel. It felt so far above the pair of them in its attitude, and then it had vanished without a sound as if it too could will itself across distances without the need for motion.

"What was that?" she says again, "Do you think it has a name?"

Bella looks at Redana, her eyes full of awe.

"They could try for a thousand years to engineer a Servitor that would rival that... creature and never come close to it. Dany, I can't - what was - can you even - without..."

Words fail her, and she takes the woman next to her into her arms and starts to cry. Redana feels both warmer and cooler, softer and firmer, but above all more real to her than she ever has before. She squeezes, teases out the shape of muscles with her fingers and takes deep breaths of that rich golden hair, more soothing than its ever been even with the scent of roses washed out of it forever. She feels hands against her back, and releases a purr from deep inside her throat.

She has never felt more Human in her life.

Return to Thellamie

Eclair is leaning against a wall by the window with her arms folded across her chest, watching Yuki with a quiet little smile on her face. This? This is soothing. To train, to teach someone a skill that she possesses and they do not, this is worth a hundred VIP passes as far as relaxation is concerned. What could make her let her guard down, even for a moment? What could get her mind off of her mission? What could make her 'loosen up', so to speak? It is not riches, or luxury, or even flights of entirely too much sake. What else could it be?

A friend. Simple. Obvious. Nothing of lesser value could be worth setting a case aside for.

"Not a broken heart, Yuki Edogawa. That is a very different sensation, and you must not confuse what you are seeking for what you have said. A broken heart produces a broken heartblade. Naturally. I will not pretend there are not... applications for such a thing, but I cannot recommend it. The strength of will required to shatter yourself intentionally is already intimidating, but to put yourself back together afterwards? Without assistance? That would be the stuff of legend."

She pushes off the wall and walks toward her friend. This is important. The lesson is valuable, but what matters more is that at some uncertain time in the future she will receive a notification of a new missive on her tablet. And in that missive, Yuki Edogawa will be excitedly gushing that she'd figured this out, and would be thanking Eclair profusely for her efforts on this particular day in Vespergift. The praise itself is utterly immaterial, but the measurement of the Hero of Crevas' success against her own initial efforts will be worth more than all the treasures in Heron's vault. To have played a role in someone precious understanding something... what more could she even dare to dream of?

Without fanfare, with indeed hardly any motion at all she flicks her own heartblade out from her palm: the double-bladed polearm/twin-sword she had wielded when the pair first met. She twirls it like a baton for a moment before letting it settle on her shoulders.

"It is curious that it should take the shape of a weapon in the first place, is it not? One can think of Radiance as the heart's desire to exist. To protect itself, in other words, from forces that desire its cessation. From that perspective there really is no reason it should need be anything other than a mass of raw light. And yet that is clearly not the case."

Her smile is brighter than the light reflecting off the snow outside. Her notebook is tucked into a pocket of her jacket, currently folded and resting neatly on the back of an armchair on the far side of the room. Both are unneeded for this moment. She takes hold of her weapon in both hands at the middle, and pulls it apart until it separates into a pair of identical curved swords. An attempt at demonstration. She whirls these again in a dizzying display of agility before thrusting each of them into the floor at her feet. Position zero. She gestures with a now open hand.

"Then, let us examine them in more useful light. If you'll forgive the accidental pun. Ahem. So then, these are our hearts' will to remain inviolate, and as we know they take a highly specific state. The most useful compression of this data would therefore be to say that a Heartblade is the heart's conception of itself. Our identity, in other words, or to put it even more crassly than that our 'fighting spirit'. So to speak. And you can see intuitively that this is the case in the case of a duel: where once your heart has accepted the concept of its own submission to another's, the heartblade ceases to manifest. There is no competitive streak deep enough or mind stubborn enough to resume the dance once the heart has lost. I think that these are rather simple conclusions, but the implications of them are in fact quite difficult to consider or comprehend on a meaningful level."

She plucks a sword out of the floor and thrusts it hilt first into her hand, where it vanishes into her body until it is the size of a short sword, and then a dagger. She rolls the new weapon in her hand to show that despite the way in which she 'created' this weapon it is still whole, possessing a finished handle and grip. She plucks the second sword up and closes her eyes. The blade lengthens, as if accepting the edge of the sword she sacrificed, and now her weapons have taken the form of a short guard blade and a sword so long and slender it resembles more of a pole.

She flicks both arms and the swords return to their original length. She sticks them back together at the middle, and then repeats her summoning gesture with her now empty right hand, bringing forth an identical copy of her original heartblade. These, she does not showboat with. Holding them is enough.

"You asked me what it was like for me when I first comprehended this technique. The answer to that is simple to say and impossible to explain. I was training in the Manor, and through my lessons became frustrated at always being on the losing end of trades. Were they meant as simple training exercises, with no intended 'loser' in the first place? Quite naturally. But I could not see it that way. I became convinced there was more potential, more material, more... identity than my instinctive grasp could claim. Does that not seem obvious? We are born with all manner of defense mechanisms that increase in potency when we train them. If you stretch, do you not become more flexible? If you lift weight, do you not become stronger? And these become part of our identity, but surely they do not invalidate it?"

Eclair slams the two poleblades together, side to side. There is a flash of opalescent light, and she is holding a single weapon again. Slightly longer on each end, but essentially the same weapon in the end. Only, from each end of the grip there are two blades in parallel with one another. Space between them enough to trap and crush an enemy weapon, but close enough together that when they cut it comes with the sensation of a single, wide wound.

"This haunted me for years. Knowing I had more of myself to give did nothing to unlock it. Practice felt useless. Even changing who I thought I was turned out to be inadequate. You are, in the simplest terms, attempting to envision your heart in two or more distinct parts. This is what I told you to begin with, and I stand by these words. That is the crux of the technique.

"I also told you I believed you would be naturally inclined toward this. Did I not? That is because you are like me. I saw it when we were little more than children, and I see it now still. Yuki Edogawa, your heart is filled with different loves. 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. What did it feel like?"

Eclair lets her tail flick behind her. Her ears lift high on her head, and she flashes the tiniest, improper hint of fang when she turns her head to watch Mayzie absorbed in drawing everything in front of them.

"Like falling in love. Again, and again, and again. Not, I should clarify, in a romantic sense. That, I have only... ahem. But nevertheless, I have fallen in love. And every time, I become aware that my heart is larger than I thought it was. It takes more hands to hold it all."

She snaps her fingers, and her weapon dissipates into pearly motes of glitter. She offers Yuki a grin.

"Yuki Edogawa. Would you find it useful to see what blade you became?"

Breathless Dead

She has never seen anything more beautiful in her life.

It is not the colors of this place, which are muted and unremarkable next to the glittering perfection of the galaxy she has passed through. It is not the kindness of this place, or even the fact that there are people here of some sort and signs of a wider civilization when all that she'd expected to see was barren rock and ancient ruins.

It is the quiet. When she bends her ears toward Jupiter, she cannot hear anything over the hum and bustle of the Plousios no matter how hard she focuses on it. She can tell, less as a matter of instinct and more the simple singing of her heart, that even if she were to go outside and return the scripts to those beacons she would still hear little besides her own ship. All of this in spite of the motion and violence she can plainly see washing like the tides back and forth across the surface of the planet. The pointlessness of the violence is not something is equipped to understand, but the intimacy and silence of it is a message just for her.

Bella fills her mind with flashes of darkness, merciless prowling owls, and mice scurrying about without the luxury of making a sound. She feels the touch of gentle hands tapping deep and connective messages against her wrist, and the reassuring squeeze of a subordinate she had never had the courage to call her friend. Jil's name is on her lips before she chokes it back with a wet sob.

It is the cold. How could she have gone so long and so far and not realized how hot it had been? Had she simply grown so used to sweating that she forgot it hadn't been normal? Even the extreme heat of XIII only felt so because of the general coolness of the realm of Hades. The difference between a fire and a star. But in this place there is Death. In this place there is shade. Which means that in this place there is a place for her and for her sisters, and for the goddess who could not love any of them the way they wanted her to. She feels it on her fur and it soothes her. She presses her palm against the window as she drifts past and it almost hurts to keep it there. When she laughs, when she gasps, when she shivers it all fogs the pane with the heat of her own breath and the contrast is more magical, more wondrous, more beautiful than the entire edifice of the Endless Azure Skies at the peak of its splendor.

Bella drifts into the sea of memories again: empty palace halls and the claustrophobic city streets that lay beyond them. Cloudcuckooland playing in a (nearly) empty theater and the little snores of a sleepy friend who couldn't quite make it to the climax. A glass of wine filled to the brim with sweet majesties enjoyed from her perch on an old emperor's throne, watching the mad dance of machines that could not be told to stop their war. An empty kitchen, devoid of order yet filled to bursting with fields of the sweetest grains and seeds her imagination had yet learned to tantalize her with. And then, another film reel, clattering as it strikes the floor, rolling in smaller and smaller and smaller circles until someone--

Her tears sting as sweetly as crying is meant to. The soothing tones of remorse, felt fully at last, and the hiccups of breath that means she is alive and capable of love. She has never felt like this before, and so until this moment had no language or sense to be able to describe what it was that she was missing. But now the warm drips sting against cold cheeks. Now she presses her hand close against her mouth to hide the sounds of her wails from this sacred place, and she sees the truth of her emotions mist outwards from between her fingers.

"I," she chokes, "I! I've..."

Silence. It presses against her body like a dagger in the night sky. A sight she loves. A sight she misses. And yet a sight she feels no call to return to now that they have forever passed beyond one another's reach.

"I've come so far. I've done so much. And I, I'm," her fingers tremble and tap staccato against her jaw with the fear of even saying it, "I'm still alive."

A miracle. It is a miracle. She is a miracle. For the first time in this long journey, she understands the impossibility of herself from every angle and across every line of thought. For the first time she can see how impossibly long the journey really was; these years and years of single-minded pursuit of a goal she did not quite understand. And yet, for all the miracles of first Imperial and then Azura engineering, for all the work that had been trivialized it had still been a journey she could measure most of her life against. Every moment that had threatened to cut her path short. Every scrap of luck that had seen her slip just past it, instead. Every cry in her heart to give up and accept that she had failed which she had somehow in spite of all the weakness inside of her never once quite committed to. The blessing of every kiss she'd stolen from destiny's ugly jaws and the white hot lance of every betrayal and hurt she'd turned on all the people that she loved.

And then, like lightning from Olympus, the full weight of the lesson strikes her.

What was it she'd said? That nobody could possibly need more than a planet? A planet?! What the fuck was she thinking? Mosaic had never had a planet! Beri was not Bitemark, and Bitemark was certainly not Beri! A village! The beach! And a mountain nearby which had belonged to an entirely different people! More beyond she'd never even taken the time to see! What was... how could she have been this blind? In crossing a galaxy, had she really not noticed just how stupendously gigantic everything she passed by really was? It was just like the heat and the cold. It was just like breathing, and pretending to. It was just like...

"Fuck." she concludes.

No more trembling. No more tears. She wipes the signs of her struggles and revelations off her face with the back of her hand and vanishes from the room in an eye blink in search of something she can write this idea down on. It has to be perfect, so she can pass it on. The wish that Dyssia had danced around, but hadn't quite been able to express. Wasn't this the answer? How could Empire stand to be, how could knights stand to work at their ridiculous and opulent bullshit little projects if they could only feel the weight of what Bella understood just now?

There was one other thing she'd said, once. That things could never be even between her and Redana. And she'd had that completely backwards, too. The stars! The stars! How in the fuck could Bella ever be worthy of a gift like that?! All at once she starts to laugh, and the sounds of her delighted cackling echo through the entire ship.

Return to Thellamie

Analyzing: words, posture, facial expression, heat level, eye contact.

Assessment: absolute embarrassment. Within expected rejection parameters. Unsurprising. Disappointing. But Unsurprising. Confession should be studied by scholars as one of the most severe crashes of all time. Nothing went correctly. Everything was awful. Everything has been awful ever since.

There, she has gone and said it. She does not wish to travel with me. Even a partnership is more than she can tolerate. As originally expected, my presence is an unwanted intrusion into her no doubt perfectly planned life. Naturally, after reconstruction efforts there would be considerable need for her talents to assist in restructuring and reorganizing Vespergift. It is clearer than quartz that she should want to remain in this place as long as she can. It is both selfish and unbecoming of my station to expect her to abandon that just for me.

...Why is she blushing like that? Doesn't that specific tone indicate personal embarrassment? Is she attracted to Yuki Edogawa? Very well. Then I should take this chance to organize the closet while she confesses the truth of her heart. A Maid's first duty is to--

"What did you... say?"

Eclair is agape. For the first time in a very long time she is utterly unable to contain herself (and it is a positive thing). Her hand lifts, half as if to ward off a blow and half as if she needs to grasp something to make it real. Her fingers stretch toward a promise and she realizes that they are trembling.

"...Mayzie! Yes! Together, yes! Thank you! Yes!"

Those trembling fingers have found what they wanted to grasp, and it's Mayzie's hand. She pulls it closer, so caught up in this moment that the impropriety is lost on her. Friends! She wants to be friends! Partners, even! That's so far beyond the realm of her analysis and calculations that it doesn't even occur to her to be disappointed she's been romantically rejected. A thousand thoughts come rushing into her mind all in a tumble, and she holds on to precisely none of them. What does it matter? She has a partner now!

She is smiling. Eclair is smiling. Oh, Aurorae. She is smiling. Not smirking or quietly reflecting or vaguely twisting her lips in a quiet, dignified way that renders her into an enigma, but full on grin-level smiling! She could almost hop, if that wasn't a level of shattered decorum too far for even this moment. Her eyes are similarly alight, to a degree that even through her mask it is possible to see them shining. Half with delight, half through tears that don't quite fall. Shimmering. Resplendent.

Overjoyed.

"You and I together, there is no challenge we cannot overcome! There are so many notes I need to show you! I've kept them color coded, just like we--"

She stops as though she'd run into a wall. She releases Mayzie's hand, and then clears her throat into her own fist. Now her posture is straight and her feet are planted as though to hold up the world. For now, just for now, she must show her strength. When there is time, when they are alone, she can see if this radiance can be pulled out of her a second time. But Mayzie asked to be friends and partners. She must show her professionalism.

"But that is, erm, f-for another time. I have promised Yuki Edogawa a lesson on swordsmanship, and I, ah. Did I neglect to mention she and I are acquaintances? She was of great assistance to me and I rendered what small aid I could in exchange. And we... ah."

She turns and offers Yuki a bow.

"I am forgetting myself. Milady, may I request we allow Mayzie access to the room you plan to use? Pleasantly scented though it may be, these mists are a sign of trouble and it is unbecoming of a knight to allow any lady to... that is, I would deeply prefer it if I knew that she was-- i-it is not a problem, is it?"

Eclair redoubles her efforts at standing as tall as possible. Her tail may be flicking at an uncontrollable pace, but that does not mean she is blushing. Understand? It would be impossible to tell anyway, so there.

Breathless Dead

At any other moment of her journey, Bella would have called this place a twisted nightmare shitheap. It would be easy to look at a primitive and abandoned scrapyard like this and see exactly what she just tried to frame it as.

But instead, her hand presses up against the window. Her face follows soon after. Her eyes dance to follow every pipe to the end of its chaotic pathway and guess where it might pop out from a tangle of the other ones. Her ears twitch with delight when she thinks about the design of this place, this incredibly ancient monument to forgotten dreams and how it might have accidentally lent itself just so to welcoming her ship here today and the idea of it makes her want to double over with laughter.

"This!" she cries out to Dyssia as if to answer her, "This is what I saw on the Tunguska! These are the toils of people who painted their movies in flowing crystals! The same hands that built this gate must have danced across their festival halls in search of shark effigies to please the gods! Oh, Dyssia! Wonders like you've never known! I didn't think I'd see them here on the other side! I can't believe how... beautiful everything they made was!"

She has to pry herself away from the view. It is surely one of Artemis' impossible labors for her that she must focus her attention now on this diagram of the Plousios and a conversation about Empires. She stretches out her gauntleted hand and watches the claws curl like daggers from her fingertips.

"You know I... spent a lot of my life thinking I was meant to be a slave. Though I didn't use that word. It was always 'pet'. Imperial Pet. I was proud of that, until Redana left when I couldn't bring myself to follow. I didn't know whose orders to obey. And then I got kicked out anyway and learned about all sorts of shit that made the idea of being that thing I was disgusting.

"Do you know what it's like? To not know who you are? I thought I was following instincts hard coded into me like everyone else, but then my situation shifted just a little and I had to accept the fact that I wasn't following shit."

She smiles, and sticks her talons into the couch. The sound of tearing fabric is soothing in the same way that all the wounds she used to inflict on her own hands had been. She flexes her fingers, in and out, in and out, and watches small chunks of cushion fall away.

"So then I poured over my memories for a while, and I thought about some conversations I'd had with the Empress. I didn't realize we were talking at the time, but with all this new knowledge I had suddenly it clicked that she'd been looking right at me the whole time. That Her Majesty Nero had hopes for me! And after that I thought I was meant to be in charge. Destined for a crown. Tch. Gods damned moron."

Bella lifts her hand up and turns her gaze away to watch Pluto some more. The expression in her eyes softens once again, and she turns those pools of liquid gold onto the woman caught in permanent existential crisis in front of her. Hello there, kindred spirit.

"Every time I reach a new point in my life, I look back over what I've done. What I've been. What I've said and thought. And those are exactly the words that come to mind. Gods damned moron, shit for brains, fucking idiot. I'll tell you this Dyssia, if you go on to try and found a new civilization after the collapse of the one we've got, I'm not going to be a part of running it. Because I..."

She lifts her head and looks around. Looks at the depths of space outside, at the thing the Plousios has become, and then back down at the memory of what it had been before a flock of birds had come along and delivered orders that clearly knew better. She sighs.

"I've been thinking about it. This isn't an answer or anything, but I've been wondering if it's necessary to build anything at all. Do you know what I mean? Just look at this ship. We could put it back the way it was, or we could make it better, or we could... not. Eventually, all of the stuff in here that annoys people is gonna get pulled apart and put back together in some way they like better. Does that scale? Fuck no! But who gives a shit? What do any of us need with more than one planet?"

She steps away to press her face against the window again. She wants to watch. Wants to see. Wants to wonder. It's so peaceful, it's a promise like nothing she's ever felt.

"I want to see Gaia. I want to see what got left behind, even more than I want to be done with all of this. I know that something horrible is waiting for me there. Maybe it's what finally kills me. But even so, I want the answer. If hands like mine are meant to build things. And if there's something more to life that could make me look at the person talking to you here and think, 'oh you fucking idiot'. I think I can live with any new world. If I can just have that."

Return to Thellamie

What sort of tea is that?

This is going to bother her forever. She should know. It should be blindingly obvious. Is it new to her? Is that the problem? But then why does it feel so obnoxiously familiar? It could just as easily be a plain and uninteresting assam as it could be some mystic wonder of the ancient world that even the Aurorae would struggle to remember. It's annoying! It's stupid!

It's... delicious. Eclair cannot help herself but take an extra deep sniff of the hallway with every step further forward into the mist. Were such a thing not unbecoming of a maid-knight (or a mysterious masked hero) she might be salivating. As it happens it is utterly unbecoming and she is walking in accordance with strict decorum, but she does feel her first pang of regret at spending her entire requisition budget in one place.

"Yuki Edogawa. The technique you seek is simple in theory: I can teach it to you within the span of a single evening."

Yes, this is good. Technical talk. Distracting, soothing. Better almost than the tea. Better by three times or more, in fact, because the tea itself is silly. To the point where it nearly staggers her. If she contemplates what has happened in her absence at all she will stumble into a wall and lose herself to either laughter or crying, or else both in rapid succession and regularly trading turns.

It is the very sort of phenomenon that, if she contemplates it for too long, if she even considers writing any of this down in her journal, she will shatter on the spot. Because it is proof that had she not intervened, the world might have thwarted Timtam by itself. That far from being a hero or even a useful knight, she is and will remain utterly irrelevant. That she is not outside the flow of whatever concerns the world considers its 'main events' because she chooses to seek other truths, but because nothing in her mind matters at all. Every case might solve itself without a detective. Ridiculous. Cruel. Possible.

This must never occur to her.

"But I shall be very surprised if I see even you manage it even once before we part ways. To understand and to achieve are separated by monumental levels of effort. But do not be discouraged; I will explain when we have arrived in the quiet and then you will understand. This is a crass observation, but I believe that in your current state you in particular are quite well suited to my variant of this--"

Her head is turned to the side, in an attempt at eye contact. Unusual for her, to not be watching her surroundings anyway. Unusual even in a mist of tea and the turmoil filling the hallways to not see someone coming. More unusual still for her reflexes to not kick in and pivot her flawlessly outside the realm of a collision she should not have known to dodge. But she did not look. And she did not see. And she did not get out of the way.

Which only leaves the impossible truth: that she has walked chest-first into another person without realizing it. Even after the moment of contact it takes several long seconds for the mistake to register. She begins to dip into a curtsy automatically and, with a wince, kicks herself out of the habit before she can ruin anything else. She dips her head into the tiniest of bows, instead.

"Apologies. I was... not... look...ing..."

Her throat is dry. Her knees have locked together and fused into immovable rods. No. No no no no, not here! Not now! Tomorrow! Or better yet, never! After the disaster from earlier how is she supposed to redeem herself without even a chance at preparation? Is there even a degree of preparation that could undo the disaster of her confession? It is antithetical to the role of a detective to believe so, but the evidence does not lie! And it concludes in no uncertain terms that she, Eclair Espoir, is an awkward in between specter caught somewhere between loser dork and complete monster. Which one she feels seems to change almost by the second.

The truth is inevitable. She cannot ignore the reality of whom she has uncharacteristically run into any more than she can force two and two to equal something other than four. And the woman here in front of her has the power to change everything, and must (must!!) be incensed beyond belief. The unsolvable puzzle. Her only clear superior. Here at the least opportune moment to deliver a deathblow she will not recover from.

At least she cannot think of tea anymore.

"M-Mayzie? I, I did not..."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Y'know for what it's worth I agree. Kat'd make an incredible villain, because she knows how to have fun. Plus she's got experience being an evil army so it's not like it'd be entirely uncharted territory, right? Unfortunately it's just not meant to be. It's not even a question of contemplation, or choosing a path in the first place.

Kat is exhausted. Really that's putting it too lightly. Between all of its various phases she put more than everything she had into this fight. She ran deep enough into debt that even Actia and Cyanis can't pay it back for her, not that they would (being foxgirls and all). When anger seeps away into the quiet release of victory and a body who's been pushing and pushing and pushing gets to the spot where they're allowed to just look at the dawn breaking across the top of their very beautiful planet?

They do say the most difficult moment in any adventure is when you're finally allowed to rest. And so it is here. Kat's grip loosens on her sword. Just a teeny bit at first, only enough to make it shift down slightly. Then more, as her head nods once. Then more again, until it's trying to float free. She makes to grab for it and that's when she notices that her arm's not moving right. That's when she notices how much everything hurts despite all of the magical power she'd built up to make it not. That's when her view of the gorgeously lit up earth gets cloudy. And then dark.

And then all she can see are the backs of her eyelids. After that, one quick flash of something more precious than an unguarded can of tuna. And then nothing at all. The winds around her body die down to nothing, and she drifts limp and dangling just on the edge of outer space. Not even really seeming to breath, just drifting helplessly wherever gravity decides to take her.

"It's ok sweetie, I've got you. You did such an amazing job, you know that?"

She doesn't shrink in my arms, just like she didn't grow before. But she does diminish as I'm looking at her, all of those fancy tails dissolving off her form in a green and blue glitter to go back where they came from. I hold my brave warrior close to me and float quietly while balanced on the flat of my sword back to the one place we've got up here for standing. The space elevator. Space Elevator? I dunno. Another tail leaves her for its rightful owner, and that hard edged maturity falls back off her face. Sleeping like she is, she looks so innocent I'm reminded of the day I first found her alone in the woods not far from my little cottage.

I hop down off of my sword and whistle once. And then one more time because I screwed up. This is hard, ok? The third go around I hit the note right and the blade obeys me and floats back into its sheath as I plant my feet on solid ground. I guess Actia really schemes on another level. She got pushed into this whole thing and she pushed herself right back out of it, with an extra tail to...

I stop, and tilt my head to watch Kat a little more closely. She's not glowing anymore, and her body is flopped so awkwardly in my grip that if we were anywhere other than where we are she'd be worse to hold than a sack of potatoes. And I can tell right away that something happened. At first it seems awful, because she looks so much worse for wear with her fox magic so depleted and sent away. But I can feel them brushing up against my legs, just well enough to count them. One, two. But then three? And a fourth tail, too.

"Hmph. Is that all I managed? I must be going soft."

"Saber?!"

I turn on the spot and find her lying there in a pool of blood. That gorgeous wreck of a shark-toothed giant. She flashes me a grin and tosses her head back to laugh, though it pains her. Already her body is breaking down into Spiritron particles, just motes of golden light that mean that the ritual binding her is past over, and all her grudges and oaths that were keeping her pinned down have finally let her go. It'd be lovely if it weren't so sad. I really hate goodbyes, y'know?

"Hold on! Hold on hold on hold on, what'd you do? What have you done to my Kat?"

"I simply, nnnf, gave a reward to my vassal. Though I meant... for it to be bigger. Fox magic is known to me. It is a thing of raw Want. In this moment where their pact came to a close, it is a matter of, mm. Would you say it 'splitting the check?'"

"Uh, no, can't say I'm familiar with the expression. Is that a Viking thing?"

"No, it's... never mind. The three of them, their magic, it is a contest in the final moment to see who wants what the most. That is the power they use to grant wishes to themselves, after all. Little Fluffybiscuits is not good at wanting things. She is not good at being hungry. Left alone, those two useless rats would have tried to take even her original tails."

Yeah. I believe that. Actually maybe I don't believe that about Actia, because I think she's better about avoiding trouble where it's bigger than the gain. She'd only go for the greedy play if she thought she could get all ten of those tails to herself. But Cy? I can see Cy reaching just 'cause she can.

"And you, what, punished them for that?"

Saber grins at me, barely visible through the haze of golden light consuming her body.

"I am a King, demon swordswoman Yue. No one in this world seems to understand what that means anymore, but I can lust for things with far greater zeal than any silly foxgirl. And I do wish to punish them both, but not for being what they are."

"What, then?" I say it before I can stop myself, but it hits me before the words are even forming on my lips. Oh, I think, Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.

"My grudge may have been artificial to start, but I will not suffer to be used like that. My last unfulfilled oath. The pledge to harm Actia. When the pair of them come to you screeching about unfairness and vengeance, tell them. Tell them Ivar the Boneless took her price."

I laugh, in spite of everything. Because what else can I do? That's the single most fox-pilled argument I've ever heard! I'm gonna start calling sharks the foxes of the sea. They're not gonna get the joke, but so what? I will!

"Sure," I giggle, "I'll let 'em know. I owe you at least that much. For listening. And for keeping my Kat safe."

She turns her head, and brushes off the compliment. Her left arm has completely vanished by now, as have most of her legs and parts of her torso. There's little left to her beyond a face and a long, feminine braid.

"Hmph. Promise me this, demon swordswoman. If there is ever another time where we heroic spirits are needed... be sure to summon me yourself. I would... very much like... to try my hand at conquering your Princesses. And you are... the furthest thing I have met. From a monk."

With a laugh and a burst of light, she's gone, and I'm left with goodbye still unsaid. Ah, darn it. Darn it! It's always like this, isn't it? This adventure wasn't even mine, why does it sting so much to see it end?!

I have to control my breathing. I have to keep steady, 'cause if I start crying I'm going to wake up Kat and I'd rather not go answering her questions about what I'm doing here in the first place. I walk carefully to the controls, and fumble less carefully around with them until I feel the descent begin. I turn my head to take one last look at Berserker's mad fortress and the remains of what had been a factory of horrors and see it, too, fade into golden mist.

The doors close, and it's just me and my girl. Just like it was before any of this started. Tears fall down my cheeks, in spite of everything I told myself about how important it was not to feel this. But don't worry. I'm very steady. And I look down at Kat, still sleeping in my arms, and I flash a very wet, very small, and very grateful smile.

I shift my fingers so I can stroke her minty green hair off of her forehead.

"Next time, sillyhead? Let's go on an adventure together."

...I think, if I make it that far, I'd like to brew a pot of tea before she wakes up. Some Xue Yue, maybe. I think that'd be a funny way to say hi. And welcome home, my brave, wonderful little hero.

Breathless Dead

Once before in her life, she had reached what she thought had been the edge of the galaxy. At the time she'd been filled with many emotions, but the strongest among them was relief. One way or another, she'd been certain the ordeal was over. Maybe that's why she had responded to the Rift by throwing a party.

This time all she feels is tired. And all she wants to do is stand somewhere quiet and watch the stars as she passes them by. She's out of wine to hand out anyway, and the stuff she does have is pure swill. She can call herself a Praetor all she wants, but that crown stopped buying much a long time ago.

And when even was the last time she'd stopped? Done proper repairs, rested at all, or even just did anything that wasn't administration, paperwork, or nearly killing herself in a fight she had no business winning? Fuck, what a stupid thought. She's not even there, doesn't even know if what she's looking for is there, and even when they finally reach Gaia how stupid would she have to be to think the worst was behind her this time?

No, she's got this one moment in a sea of constant turmoil and terror and all she can do with it is try to catch her breath. Naturally, she's wasted that moment baking croissants.

The room is filled with warmth and the smells of melting butter and rising pastry. She's been at it for hours, to the point where even after washing her hands clean they feel caked in flour and every other sticky fucking nightmare ingredient. They're all that she can taste in the air despite having not eaten any of them herself, or they would be if she hadn't just put on a pot of coffee. It's not like she'd made any mistakes; every attempt was as perfect as she knew how to make it, now that she did. It's just that she needed something better than perfect for what she wanted.

Bella sniffs the air around her coffee beans. She snatches up a large handful and grinds them to powder in her palm, setting them in a filter before deftly pouring the just-boiling water through the brown-black mass of them. Also a taught skill, which annoyed her to no end. But then, at least Dolce was interested in teaching. She'd send the rest of this to him, by way of thanks. Everything that's left after what she needed was finished.

She pours the coffee into a plain white cup. Then she sets a small bowl of sugar and a saucer of cream at exact forty-five degree angles behind it. She runs her palm across her various attempts at baking and lifts the one with the flakiest surface up to inspect it. Did she get it sufficiently crescent shaped? She frowns and sets it aside, picking through the lot four more times until one satisfies her. Onto the plate it goes. She adjusts the knife and the fork until they are perfectly aligned with the empty seat, and steps back with a sigh.

A final touch: she places a handwritten form requesting an audience with a goddess carefully to one side of the place setting, and then sits down opposite the whole arrangement.

"I cooked for your brother once before. And for Hera, when I wound up on Olympus. It just... didn't feel right, leaving you out. And I don't know how many more impossible tasks I have left before one gets me. I'm stronger now, so what's left must be harder than the whole rest of the trip put together.

"That's why I... wanted to know if you knew anything about me. Or... no, never mind. More, whatever it was I'm supposed to be, I wanted to apologize again for being such a fuckup instead. I, uh, realize now why you had no faith in me. I won't ask if anything's changed. You should just... take a moment here. That's all."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"What th-OOUUGF!"

"How, GYAAAH!"

"Would y-ERGH!"

"I j-AAAAAAAAAAAAAH"

It's a war of attrition: not between Katherine and the goddess, but between the damage she is taking and the stubborn refusal of Fox Magic to suffer a wound. But I'm sorry to say that even with Kat's divine winds blunting the impact of that hammer, and with her parrying skills, and even when she catches an attack well enough to start rolling out of it, these are still the attacks of a very old-timey God. And what I mean is that they hurt.

This is fighting like you don't tend to see in Princess duels. Those are very dangerous, but they are in the main a consensual affair between two (or more!) skilled opponents who each agree to a set of expectations and are basically working toward the same sort of outcome. This is... not that. This ticks the 'skilled opponents' box but leaves every other assumption blank. That means that bones break. It means that joints get dislocated. It means a host of other nasty stuff I don't want to imagine, and then it means magic rushing into the wound to kiss it better, but Kat has to feel it going both ways.

She takes a shot in the back that bounces her off the surface of the moon; as she twists and tries to recover in mid-air another swing has already gone straight for her ribs that sends her spiraling between the rings of former suns. She's chased down and knocked around the bodies of those glittering rings like a ball through the fanciest miniature golf course of all time. Around and over and through that loop, smashed first up and then down, to the left and then down again, to the right and now diagonally to smack into a bit of old satellite, and when she opens her mouth to protest all of the words are driven out of her by a hammer right to the stomach, which also costs her any desire to indulge in a cup of tea when she gets home.

It costs her a great many things, being honest with you. In the first place it costs her a whole heaping help of mana. Foxgirls are first and foremost pampered little sweeties, remember? They're not made to suffer the pain of battle so especially with so many of these tails not even properly belonging to her there's no way to shut off the magic that's constantly healing her. Call it a passive effect I guess, those tails simply will not let her grit her teeth and struggle through. And every bit that goes into healing is something she can't use to turn the tables.

But it costs her a lot of other things too. Little things, mostly desires. Wishes, you might call them. The wish to have all of her friends see her like she is right now. The wish for me to take her out for celebratory ice cream. And bigger ones, like the wish for somebody to call her a hero, or the wish to please NOT get sent to Cutie Fox Island as a response to almost destroying the world. One by one they vanish as the costs for keeping her spotless until all that's left is the biggest wish she's got: to make it home again at all.

And then that gets knocked out of her, too. No more, then. This really is it, isn't it? She's going to get juggled forever until she runs out of meter, and then until she runs out of hp. She doesn't get another turn. She offered up her favorite kind of fun, her favorite kind of story, to someone who should be her worst enemy and what that monster did was spit right in her dream. She's being made fun of, all the way to death. Her home and everyone who believes in the kinds of things that she does, they're all being mocked and hurt right along with her. Chen, Rose, Hyra, Qiu, Jessic, Xiu, and... y'know, me. Yue. All of us gone. Not gone from her heart, but dead from her perspective, in all the ways that matter. Because she's never going to see us ever again.

What an incredibly stupid thing to have gone and done. Honestly, you'd think a goddess who's so concerned about ecosystems and natural orders would know better. When you think of a fox, what comes to mind? A sweet little flooferdoodle? Granted. A sillyhead, perhaps. Or a con artist. All fair and valid, but at the end of the day, a fox is a creature with teeth and claws. I was just saying this, wasn't I? If she'd just let up a little, just given Kat the tiniest bit of room to breathe and try out her own attacks in the middle of all of this, we might never have gotten here. This really could have gone on forever and it would have ended with the hammer-jerk's inevitable victory. But she didn't do that. She put an animal in a corner and kept beating her until there was no choice left.

You are, like, stupid stupid, lady. You really went in like this because you thought you couldn't get bit? Have you never had a pet before? Honestly. I'd be embarrassed for you, but you deserve this.

The most forceful swing of the hammer comes. The one meant to be the deathblow, to render Katherine into her constituent parts so the goddess could weave them into some new shape that fit her purposes, or whatever it is that goes on in the mind of a god. But it doesn't land. Kat grips the head of the weapon in her bare palm and snarls, so angry that she's almost spitting. Her whole body trembles. And more than that, it glows. If there's no going home, there's no need to save power for the trip back, you see.

"That's," she hisses (and I do mean hisses), "It."

After that she's too angry to say anymore. All attempts at language just come out as awful growling and snarling. Servants come to the people who call to them, you see. And whether you or they or anyone likes to admit it that means they tend to be very similar to their Masters at the end of the day. Kat wrenches the hammer toward her and spins around at the same time so she can kick the goddess full on in the face. She holds the hammer in a deathgrip and pulls it free from her opponent's grip, rushing after her so she can smash the horrible woman over the head with it again and again and again.

Then she throws it, not caring that it might get used against her again. As long as it hurts that woman first, she doesn't care. Her tails unfurl behind her once again in a glorious halo of fine fur and radiant light. The aura extends down into her blade. Sure its wood, but do you know what else that blade is? An S-tier spirit medium. Blue light and power thrums around it, creating a very real and very terrible edge. The kind that cuts more than just your dress or even your skin.

She doesn't return with an infinite combo of her own. There's plenty of opportunities for a riposte or a giant, slugging hit that knocks her into a new celestial body, and it happens with fair frequency as she goes on the assault. She just doesn't care anymore. All of the energy that had been going into trying to block or get out of the way instead get channeled into making sure that she gets hers, too. When her knee gets shattered it's only because she leaned so hard into her charge that it left her so open you could drive a truck through her stance. The trailing, blue slash she leaves behind as payment burns far worse than anything her fox magic is so stubbornly continuing to heal, anyway.

And the longer she goes the more vicious she gets. The less she trades and the more she overwhelms. And the more she overwhelms, even in her anger, the more beautiful her attack becomes. That's the response carved into her heart at the end of the day, y'know? So the bright, trailing energy in her slashes spills out more and more and more fox magic until the very void itself is full of wishing magic, so strong and so fierce and so furious that just to be near it crushes and burns and batters anything that's not fit to touch it. Colors follow her like paint, and like a painter she weaves them into a story.

And that story is home. She connects with a rising thrust under the goddess' chin and she flies up right after her with cut after cut after cut, lifting the pair of them higher on a gorgeous scene of raging waters and the rocks and the trees and the sky that call that water home. Since Kat can't do it, I'll even name every slash for you. That's how you'll know that this is a secret sword.

The Golden Falls. The Dragon's Breath. The Silver Mirror. The Devil's Finger. Lover's Lookout. Old Misty. Black Beauty. The Tomb of the Demon Swordswoman. This is nothing more or less than home, the cry of her heart for something that's being taken away from her. The desire to make it hurt this divinity as much as it hurts her to let it go. It's so beautiful that I think I'm going to cry whenever I remember this, for the rest of my life. I never knew how much any of it meant to her, but now that love is painted in the sky, and anyone who's looking up right now and wondering what's going to happen (even in Australia), can see it for themselves.

This is the first and final secret sword of the Crying Foxgirl style: A Tour of Waterfalls in the Terraced Lake.

If this is not the end, then it's at the beginning of it. From here there will not be another blade held under a chin. You can flee into the far dark corners of the galaxy, you stupid silly god, or you can drown in the waters we call home. At the end of the day, the only real way to deal with bullies is to beat them so senseless that nobody will ever think that maybe they had a point after all. And there are so, so many waterfalls left to paint, aren't there? Do you have time to watch them all?