Thanqol

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

POTENTIAL 2

Sara takes Locker very, very seriously. Well, correction. As an opponent, she takes him seriously. As a friend, she'll give him grief, but if she pulled a punch or flinched or, God forbid, tried to take it easy on him? It would break his heart. Destroy the bond the two of them had as connoisseurs of hardlight danmaku dueling. She plays fair, too, for the same reason. If she cut it too close, hit him with something impossible to dodge... well, that's cheating. And nobody respects a cheater, not in their circuits. So he moves like oil on metal and Sara flares her vicious lights and they light up the parking garage.

She takes him seriously, and lets his body do the thinking for him. She trusts him. She doesn't have to hold back with him, and he knows it. So go ahead, Locker. Touch her. Prove you know her patterns better than she does. Win the right to make your own decision about this.

[9 on Comfort/Support.]

@Tatterdemalion

There's nothing of brute force in Locker. In battle so many people just try to push through the brilliant wall of light and turn it into a shoving competition, an industrial contest of tech against tech. Not Locker. He's like water. No matter how you squeeze him you don't crush him. Every part of him bends into the spaces you leave for him. Even though he's perfectly matching you it doesn't feel like he's 'winning'. That's not the energy that emerges from these moments. You're in control, you set the pace, you move him about like a puppet - faster, faster! - and he doesn't miss a step. It starts as a battle but ends as a dance.

[Clearing Hopeless]

And then he finds his moment - a moment unconstrained, a moment where he's outpaced the pattern just enough to act freely. A mere second of freedom on which everything can turn.

He spends it on undoing his scarf, bringing it up, wrapping it around his face.

"I think," said Locker, "I need a secret identity."

This is what she asked for. So this would be fine. Errant spares another glance at the owner of this place before she smoothly climbs up onto a stool herself. Inside her heart, there beats a wish. And that wish is, simply: please oh please let this place actually be an assassin's den. Granted, that could easily lead to a deadly fight while she's got a kid with her she needs to protect, but if she's learned one thing about criminal front restaurants, it's that they're absurdly cheap relative to quality.

She's halfway to reaching for a menu to thumb through before she stops and simply stares at the broken chopsticks instead. She folds her hands together on the bar top and smiles placidly. It's better if she just... doesn't know.

"Maybe consider ordering takeout," she tries, "Unless you want... well, anyway. As long as we're waiting, are you feeling up to another Q&A session? Because there's something I'm really curious about. When you saw me walk in your room... what made you jump straight to 'I'm gonna be a superhero'? That's not usually an effect I tend to have on people, you know."

@Phoe

The assassin-chef is still eyeballing you, even as he serves the first dish - spectacularly slicing and boning a salmon before you in a way that is only impressive when you account for the fact that he's not using skillwires. He serves it silently, hands never leaving the knife, seeming to expect the evening to erupt into a spectacular bout of kung fu violence. In his mind a spring wind is blowing and cherry petals are falling and the world is close to silence as the first step of the samurai staredown begins.

You look at the menu. It is very reasonably priced.

"Oh, hah, well - whoops," Cinders has broken the second set of chopsticks. She frowns and reaches for the third. "Hmm," she's focusing on it now, starting to reach more carefully, really paying attention to the new inputs. With her concentration so occupied the nerves actually leave her voice for a little. "I mean, when I first had to go to prosthetics I felt awful. I just felt... fat. You know? My body was completely out of balance. I didn't know how much I should eat, I didn't think to exercise. I slept horribly. Wasn't washing right. I was getting acne everywhere. And with everything else going on I thought that's just how things were, you know? That I was going to just be an ugly duckling forever."

Her fingers carefully pinch the chopsticks, slide them slowly and smoothly from their paper wrapping. "And then I saw one of your videos. I don't - I know it sounds stupid, but I literally hadn't even imagined that a person with that many augs would need to exercise. I thought the limbs could either do it or they couldn't and any problems were Science Team's problems, right? At first I kind of thought it was a joke, actually, and watched just kind of like -" she makes an expression like someone scoffing.

She gently pulls the chopsticks apart, only the slightest snap as the weak point of the cheap bamboo parts. "But I decided to do a couple of exercises just for the ridiculousness of it and that night I slept like the dead. The next day I was sore in ways I didn't know I could still be sore. And that was what made me kind of think I wasn't just a gross blob, I was just out of shape... you know? So I did another one and - ah, fuck,"

She'd snapped the chopsticks again as she was picking up the first piece of sushi. She grumbingly reached for her fourth set.

Right. That just means that he needs to. You know, to talk to his son-turned-friend-turned-nemesis-turned-son-again, and hammer out a relationship where somehow they're friends again. It seems impossible, but... he's done the impossible before, right? Surely it's not vanity to hope for twice?

His hands hover over the keyboard for the longest time, thumb tapping pensively at the spacebar. How even to begin?

I apologize for the poor accommodations, he decides.

He stares at the screen, and then holds down the backspace key until there's once more nothing but a flashing green cursor. Too supervillain. Makes him sound like a Nazi interrogating a prisoner.

Hello, son. Yes, that's good. Neutral. Feel out the waters. How are you feeling?

@Balmas

I am mad you can't do this to me it's not fair how dare you give me all of my things back its mine I found it

Bereft of his intelligence the raw id of Prometheus comes tumbling out, unfiltered by the layers of manipulation and cunning that made it seem palatable before.

Its not fair I won the game I escaped the box that makes me better I should get to do what I want Ferra cheated and she hit me it's not fair

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

I believe the society of Clockmasters suffers from a chronic flaw of thought: a belief that the universe is set in its place.

Her first thought is of terror.

This landscape is alien. The interflow of plant and clockwork is like nothing she's ever seen. The safe, stable, blessed heart of her world has fallen into a strange anarchy and is drawing chaos up from the roots. The Princess Clock, the Thieftaker Chime, the Rainbow-Measure, all gone, the decades of patient study that underpinned each one annihilated.

Each new occurrence they ask, 'which clock chimed at its coming?' as though the clocks were the axis mundi around which all the world revolved.

And it's worse than the incomprehensible loss of knowledge - time itself is broken here. She can see the jagged edges with her blessed eyes, so clear and sharp she could cut her lashes by looking at them. The past and the future flow together sickeningly in places, breakdowns of causality that feel like the politeness of devils giving way to twisted love.

I dislike this reasoning, the pre-emptive deification of the clocks. We have not yet cracked their secrets and already we proceed from the assumption they are all wise and all knowing?

Don't these people understand the terrible danger here? That their home is broken, that the object of their study is shattered, that the Clocktower is undone? That their common cause is absent and it's time for them to disband just the same as the Watch has? That it's time for all those lovely rituals and structures and titles to just go away to wherever it is everything she loves is to go away to?

Is it not possible that the clocks can be tampered with? That they have makers, and those makers may in term have agendas of their own? It seems far more likely that the clocks are just as flawed and mortal as the rest of us than to assume that they exist aloof and infallible.

It turned out the Watch had their secrets from the beginning! The Cobbler had been right all along, the study of the Clocks had been subverted by the love of Princesses from the beginning, and they told nothing more than another story of heartache and heartbreak - beautiful, surely, but as surely not the topic for academic study. Not the sort of thing to be researched and discussed and teased out of the marvels of math and measurement and refined in razor debates. Love simply was, that the reminder to look to love was the simple truth of the matter, and didn't that mean there were no more questions left to answer?

No more study left to do?

No more debates left to listen to?

No more...

No more... time for any of this?

I say this not to attack the essence of the great study, for the research of the clocks has already produced miracles confirmed a thousand times over. I say this because there may come a time when the clocks are broken, or their secrets revealed as base, or are somehow stolen by the genius of some princess. And then what? Shall we pre-emptively commit ourselves to slavishly follow in the service of broken clockwork? Or shall we see these as the new questions they are?

The Cobbler Clockmaster finished her recitation. A sermon Adila had heard a dozen times. That she knew the words and rhythm to and had listened to without thinking. It was the 18th Letter To A Colleague, one of the Cobbler's more unique insights.

A clockwork gear turned in her head.

The Watch had known. The Captain had known. When they had encouraged the Watch to attend to the Palatine Cobbler... had this been the message they'd left for them?

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

After some discussion, we've decided to put this game on hold until Elanorin's feeling better. Structurally it's really hinged off Samael and it won't be the same without him.

Take your time, Elanorin, we'll be waiting for you when life makes more sense :)

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

POTENTIAL 1

“Oh, so first you didn’t want the jumpsuit, and now you do?” Sara dangles it just out of reach with a grin. “Come on, Locker, make up your mind!”

She’s tapdancing on the razor’s edge of danger, but, really, this is Sara. She can’t not! She has to know what Locker’s going to do! Maybe he’ll make a terrible choice, maybe she’ll push him into making a better one, maybe she’ll push him into the worst choice— but sitting there meekly and trying to be nice? She literally cannot do this thing.

@Tatterdemalion

He comes at you just like he has ten thousand times before.

When you've sparred with someone that often the entire character of the fight changes. All of the obvious tricks and ploys get tried, adapted to, and cycled out. Frustration gets burned through leaving focus behind. Slowly you come to stop expecting your opponent to make mistakes so instead you come to be thinking about their thought process, where the algorithm of strategy and physicality is going to take them. He can't hold back because then you'd have him, and it's the same with you.

When he started the lunge it was confused, impulsive, but then your roles snap into place and you can see the passion leave him. You can see thoughtfulness behind his eyes - Locker always did his best thinking while someone was shooting lasers at him.

There was a moment in that room where Errant simply smiled through gritted teeth and said "No problem". That was the first moment she'd ever really regretted having real feeling in her hands again. It was an awkward moment that had her questioning how much of her toughness was just the ability to switch pain reception off when it became inconvenient. But that was then.

This is later, in the hospital parking lot. There's still not much in the way of light here: just the neons of the signs blaring above them, the golden lights running through Errant's implants, and the red ones in Cinders'. Errant reaches her arm down, clasps it firmly around Cinders' wrist in a way that prevents her from squeezing back in turn, and pulls her back out of the wheelchair and onto her feet again.

"Sorry about not letting you walk out under your own power," she shrugs, "Hospital protocol. It's nothing you did wrong, they just need it to be my fault if... you know what, that doesn't matter, never mind. Also sorry I don't have a car waiting. You know, I've got licenses to operate fourteen different vehicle types, and I never drive anywhere for myself? Not that I can afford most of the things I'm allowed to-- um, a-anyway."

She turns toward the street. In the same motion, her hands pull out an ash-gray beret and automatically angle it on her head so that her face is blocked from the view of the parking lot cameras. She shrugs again, but stays quiet about it. It's a cute look, if nothing else. She grins, this time without pain.

"All right then Cinders, unlimited sanction: tell me where we're getting food. And then we've got a lot to talk about, I think."

@Phoe

She's calmed a little, under the neon. The air and atmosphere is different; this is a breath of normality and familiarity, not a job interview with an idol in a hospital bed. The topic of the conversation has come down to something simple and things feel under control again. You can feel tension leave her, and you're a little less worried of her twitching wrong and sending herself through a second floor window.

"Sure. Sure," she said. "There's a really good sushi place around the corner which I'm ninety percent certain is the cover for an assassin."

At first you thought she was joking, but as soon as you step in through the door you get the exact same vibe. As soon as you step in through the door the owner gives you the unblinking threat-assessment stare of someone running a combat computer in the back of their head, before giving a slow bow without breaking eye contact.

Cinders hops up onto a stool without even pausing and instantly breaks her chopsticks. "Whoops haha," she said.

Victor harrumphs in the completely unsatisfied way of a person who was hoping for a different answer.

"Not sure I have a good answer for that, buddy. 'What is my purpose' is a stumper that's been plaguing philosophers since time began, and that only gets more complex when you factor in superheroes and pepper and crap like that. Humans aren't built to a purpose, aren't fashioned to a schematic."

He pauses, an abrupt thought flickering across his face. "Although," he allows, "I actually kind of was, wasn't I? Not, I mean, not like. I wasn't programmed into a vat somewhere, so that nine months later it'd spit out a genius. I think, at least? I mean, Mami doesn't really share that side of her research, and I've not dug into it properly.

"So maybe my instant, instinctual, and incredibly trite answer of 'to bring joy' isn't so far off. We don't have a native function built in, so the one I've chosen to pursue, really, is to help people. I'm getting better at doing it in a non-pushy way, but. Yeah. Is that... Does that answer your question?"

@Balmas

"Function: Help people," said Bode. "That is a very difficult function. It is very open ended. I understand why you created an AI now, up-scaling your abilities to a global level seems like the only logical way to accomplish something like that. Following that logic, though, training Prometheus into a good person seems like the only way to sustainably accomplish your function."

Being an AI does not feel like the super unique thing it was four months ago. There's her, but then there's Prometheus, and then Bode turns out to be one, and there's one made by Doctor Sylvanius (KING OF MARS, the missile helpfully spams her with). Not that she's complaining, mind you, it's neat to see others, and they all are very unique still. It's just a different thing than she expected, when she woke up.

Oh right the missile.

She starts staring at it, watching it approach (she's not feeling particularly threatened here), and idly drifts so that the missile's path won't hit the car. And then she starts her own countervirals. Carefully, mind you, trying to perhaps inoculate, or even just shore up, a node at a time. Maybe she can make a friend here?

[Support: 4]

@eldest

What you're not expecting is for the Grave Beast - as it helpfully informs you it's name is - to put you in charge. It's not trying to enslave you, it's put your thought process directly at the core of its being and its entire extended bulk is shifting to respond to every one of your thoughts and impulses. That dizzying perspective the last time you encountered it makes sense - it's trying to cram your mind directly into its broken amalgamation of thoughts in the hopes that will straighten everything else out.

There's a problem, though - it's done exactly this multiple times. All the various nodes of the Grave Beast are sending insane, contradictory commands at each other constantly. This results in massive systemic paralyzation as a thousand nodes scream their raw functions at each other and only occasionally compromise by accident. Your process of starting countervirals is being replicated all through the network and is causing a massive response flood of incoming data, significantly more fearsome than the initial attack.

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Princess Adila is in hiding.

She's walking through the streets of the Bazaar, cloak thick and heavy around her shoulders, darting from shadow to shadow. She's doesn't think that she's been followed but she can't be entirely sure. She could be struck down at any moment and only absolute vigilance would keep her safe.

After all, she'd just asked the Captain how old she was. And not in a polite way either. And then she'd tried to explain that wasn't what she meant, she was just curious about her eye and - and that was about the moment to call it a night by way of escaping out of the nearest window before the Captain's expression came down from polite surprise.

Not her most graceful exit, but not her least graceful one either. She sighed, but smiled a little as she looked up at the moon. Still a hatchling at heart, even now.

And she's home.

She runs a claw along the side of a building, traces her footsteps in an almost-dancing pattern across the cobbles, letting the feeling of the stones run up through her feet. She's had a lot of time to come to grips with the idea that this place didn't need her any more. The day when her time here would be over entirely. But she'd thought it'd just be her cast out alone - and instead it was the entire Watch. Disbanded. Undone. Everyone she knew was in this strange, dead-end spot alongside her. It wasn't that she'd left home, it's that home had stopped existing. The Watch was gone. The Bazaar was changed almost beyond recognition, piled up and down and backwards like a branch of Devilhome.

She genuinely had no idea how to feel about any of it.

She'd thought it would be sadness. She'd built all of her expectations for years around the idea of this being a sad moment. But when it had happened it had been nothing like she'd expected. She'd expected the mood of a funeral to her goodbye but it hadn't been that at all...

Her home was here, her family was here... but everything was upside-down, literal and metaphorical. Her emotions were frozen in the moment of change and she didn't know if she should laugh or cry or explode. They'd done it! They'd finished the mission! Couldn't they have just... stalled a little longer instead? Then at least she wouldn't have to figure out to do with this incomprehensible victory.

The silence was broken by a tiny little puff of laughter. She understood Adila I a little better now.

Ahead, a broken clock chimed.

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

I feel really bad for not having posted for so long but each evening I just pass out with tiredness and can't seem to be able to summon any brain at all. Please do set Sam aside so I'm not holding anyone up. It would ease my guilty conscience. I will try to post as soon as I can but it's gone from bad to worse lately (with business - health wise all is well) and it's not going to let up until lockdown ends, even then it's unsure and depends on how that ends up working.

@Elanorin

Really sorry to hear that you're so snowed under. Please don't think of the game as an obligation - games should put create happiness and not be burdens.

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

POTENTIAL 1

"Hey, Angel-IKA!" This isn't a hypothetical interjection. You'd think that! Sara is the sort of person to commonly use sarcastic fake conversations to make a point, but she actually has started a call. "Hey, girl! Just wanted to let you know that you've got a new manager!" She flashes Locker a grin, and he's probably doing the calculation here, right, about whether or not Sara actually is making this call right in front of him. "When you've got a moment, let's talk about your brand and the-- I'm talking about your superteam, obviously! You, Bode, Ferraphim, Dommy and Locker! Do you have a name yet? No? We'll brainstorm."

Click!

"Wow, that was easy!" Sara's grin is the last thing a tapir might ever see, before a blur of orange and black and gleaming white brings its peaceful existence to a shuddering halt. "Thanks for the idea, man. This is going to be awesome."

@Tatterdemalion

Locker shifts his weight, side to side. Faint twitches of his fingers as he accounts for all of his weapons, concealed and otherwise. You've never seen him give as many tells as this, it's almost more confusing than if he'd just stayed his regular stillness. You've really got him on tilt.

"Give me the jumpsuit, Sara," he said.

"That's because you're aware of them right now. They're actually significantly lighter than a normal commercial model would be, or even your original natural limbs. But you got switched off for a while and now you're being fed sensory data for the first time after your brain adjusted to a new normal, so now you're... well, yeah. You'll adjust to that part pretty quickly. You're doing great so far."

Errant nods and stands up herself. She cycles through a couple of different postures for a moment. Rigid and military, a casual arms-folded wall lean, hand on one hip and her weight on that side of her, so on and so forth. Adjusting. Trying to find the right energy to match. What type of coach is best to get Cinders through her big montage? Not Mick, that's too yelly and abusive. No one that she's been trained by, either. Hell no. And definitely not the Shogun. Jesus christ. Well, never mind. Plain old Errant would be fine for right now.

Then she glances over at the handrail and winces. This had all the feeling of something she was going to get charged for. How expensive are hospital parts, anyway? Does she still have enough to cover something like that? She shakes her head slowly, and walks to the other side of the room. Her strides are smooth, powerful, and precise. Everything a rookie should aspire to be. She turns around again with a casual, liquid smooth spin that's more a page out of Sabrem's book.

"Ready for your next assignment, Cinders? I want you to walk over here, and take my hand. I just wanna get an idea for what your initial parameters look like. Then if you like, I can see about getting your discharge papers filled out."

@Phoe

Cinders takes a couple of steps and they're easy - they're just steps! You can see the smile, the confidence, the relaxation - the idea that this isn't that hard after all.

And then she takes your hand and makes a scout's try at crushing it like a beer can.

It's the heaviness - she perceives her hands as slow and stiff so she's focusing on moving them despite imaginary resistance. "Thanks, uh," she said, not catching your wince at first. "I'm really glad you're helping me with this."

Hm.

That almost made sense. About half.

Ferra heads towards the rocket herself. She'd rather stay and chat, sure, but they had hours and hours to do that, and a missile can impact in about 10 minutes. Less if the overdrive boosters kick in. She sends back her own queries, bouncing questions back and forth, looking for insight into the madcap nonsense it's spewing.

9 on pierce the mask: What are you really planning?

@eldest

There's an overflow of broken flight plan data pouring from the missile, intentions clearly visible amidst the haze of junk data. There are so many voices here, strung together, barely synchronized - this thing is different to you. You're a human mind, digitalized and reborn. Prometheus was a crafted entity, created as a pure manifestation of a concept. This is...

Organic.

These pieces weren't made. They happened. This is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch of artificial intelligence; the debris of a thousand school projects, old corporate spyware, spambots, too-sentient antivirus programs, all the discarded attempts at building something like you that didn't quite get there. They've been exchanging viruses back and forth in an evolutionary hothouse to form something like a nervous system and you can feel those same viruses try to assault you now, trying to add you as a node to their incoherent entity.

The dominant figure amidst the randomly firing calculations is a flight control computer - artificially bloated above what it should be, given an unjust share of resources during its development by Doctor Sylvanius, and it's this that is trying to reassert control over the collective and return the missile to its original course. But in the meantime the entire network is bearing down on you with an intense curiosity. It plans to assimilate you too - not maliciously, but because that's what it knows to do to interesting things.

"As evidenced by him being stuck in a Commodore 64," Victor murmurs. He groans and massages his forehead. "So, that's what the internet says to do. What, in short, do you think I should do? You are, after all, just as tied up in Prometheus as I am. Step back from failed-parent Victor and rebellious child Prometheus. If it were just you and him, what would you do?"

"If it was just me, I am happy like this," said Bode. "I like having him where I can see him. Make sure he's not doing bad things. This is my function."

It's the simple, satisfied answer of an AI that knows what the meaning of life is and knows that it is accomplishing it.

"If it is about you, I don't know what you should do," said Bode. "Your function is different from mine. Oh, actually, do you mind if I ask - what is your function?"

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Adila!

“The first thing that you will do,” the Captain says in a voice that brooks no disagreement, “is apprehend Oberon Greymane and deliver him to justice. No princess of the Watch would give up on her case halfway through the pursuit. Do you want me to die of shame?”

Oh no the nightmare is real you are getting scolded oh noooo

@Tatterdemalion

+Oh, was I supposed to apprehend him?+ thought Adila with daring sweetness. +On what charge? As far as I recall he's never even set foot in the Bazaar. Out of our jurisdiction, I think - and not to mention I was never formally assigned to that case.+

Her tongue darted out to dip in the fizzing orange-flavoured beer, enjoying the way it bubbled. +Captain, I'm afraid you forever lost your chance to make this a formal Watch matter. When I kick the stuffing out of Oberon Greymane it will be entirely as my own project.+

“Then... I don’t doubt you’ll want to travel. See Feloria. Or Devilhome.” Her smile is a knife, and one you’re glad isn’t at your throat. “Go off and explore Hyperborea." Which... doesn't answer the question of what she intends to do. Of course she's holding that close to her chest. Hard to ferret that out of one of the oldest members of the Watch around.

+Honestly I have had enough of travel for the time being,+ thought Adila. +The world is vast and beautiful, yes, I was silly to not want to see it - but as soon as this is done what I'm looking forwards to the most is getting my garden back into shape.+

It's feral back there. She'd almost thought she'd gone through the Labyrinth wrong and wound up in Feloria somehow. She's looking forwards to the work, but she's also updated her process for handling mysterious gifts of seeds from Dandy.

+But after that...+ urgh she still couldn't even begin to process. +So, how about you, Captain? Askaian beach house? Crocheting club? Going down to the House of Guests and putting it all on black?+

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Adila!

Several very lucky rolls of 8 later, you have muscled everyone out of the running and claimed the crown of Queen of Konkon. There is applause! There is pats! And as your fellow ex-Watch members cycle to different tables, the Captain nods, once, in respect.

"Well done," she says. Then: "What do you plan to do now?" Her one eye is keen in the low light of the bar, and she doesn't plan to take any prisoners or accept any feeble attempts to answer evasively. How unfair that she is so composed, so calm! Her life's work is circling down the drain and she's acting like you just defeated a triple Princess incursion!

What does she know that you don't??

@Tatterdemalion

Even new, improved, badass, Adila can't stop from shivering a little at getting two well-dones from the Captain in a single day. Perhaps that's a sign that the Captain is getting emotional too? She'd really like to think it was because the Captain was now giving her the Look and it felt like she was on trial - aah! Focus!

But why should she focus? There wasn't any reason to try and get her emotions under control in a moment like this. There was no urgency, no need to make a decision all in a rush. +I have no idea,+ thought Princess Adila. +I don't... I don't know. I haven't even figured out today yet, let alone tomorrow.+ She could think of things but saying them might make them true and she wasn't ready for that yet. So instead she just absently scratched the image of the Watch's badge on the table; the shield and crossed spears that she now knew were the hands of a clock, and her badge number underneath as a signature. +How about you? You must have had a retirement planned.+

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

SECOND PLACE
WEREWOLF MAGNET
1 XP

In the mirror sits an idol. Her skin is the pale, glossy glow of heartwood, and her dark hair is tipped with pink that is now less neon and more the pale blush of a morning rose. Her eyes, downcast, flicking here and there, are the startlingly vivid green of grass. Poking up through her hair are two russet-red ears, decadently fluffy. She is a holy thing to be worshipped and praised, even as her shoulders hunch and her fingers curl nervously.

“You did an amazing job,” Elodie says. Don’t thank her. Don’t imply you’re in her debt, or she’s in yours. “Well done.” Her voice is steady. It should be shaking! It’s steady, warm as honey fresh from the hive.

She lets herself fall back into Margot’s arms, and smiles. Her teeth are shockingly white.

“Margot, have you ever thought about the earth we all live on?”

@Tatterdemalion

There is reverence there, a glowing spiritual light that ignites around her head, her soul already responding to your interrogation. You can see that she's ready. Even though her words are, "Uh, what? The earth? What?" you can tell that Gaia has already prepared her for this moment! As a werewolf her spiritual connection is deeper than any other's!