Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Black!

"I only have one rule for you tonight," whispered Black in 3V's ear as she leaves the bar, an arm around each of her girls. "No matter what happens to you, what gets done to you, you look only at me. Your eyes are mine. If you can't keep them on me you keep them closed. Disobedience," her hand is where it shouldn't be, where it belongs, "will be punished. No - don't speak. I'll know soon enough if you understand or not."

Then she turns the other way to whisper some secret instructions to Amie in turn. Then the two of them turn to look at you in unison, eyes gleaming. What was the phrase? Something about two wolves inside you?

~

Blue!

"There is nothing I agree with more," said Blue, sitting down and picking up a red bean bun with chopsticks, "than the idea of illegal surveillance being creepy. It is terrifying. Imagine the threat posed by criminal individuals, shielded by their status, wielding an army of loyal spies. Imagine a business that operated like the yakuza but due to their position and power they were outside the reach of the justice system. Resistant to prosecution. Even from criticism. Imagine the ability to break the legal system through calculated pressure applied to certain individuals..."

She lets it sink in for a bit. Her eyes glitter. It has all finally come back around.

"I might..." she said delicately, "... happen... to have access to certain documents relating to similar situations. Highly sensitive," she runs a finger along her wine glass. "And due to the nature of how they apply to the justice system specifically, they leave me with no clear path towards releasing them. If the wrong person connects them back to me I could be shot. Again." Her tone makes it clear that she is not joking here. "Naturally I don't want to put anyone else in danger," she glances at Starlight. "So I have left a contact card under each of your plates. I would appreciate it if you only used it if you consider yourself incorruptible and able to take on risk, and if not, only passed it on to people who you consider to have both of those qualities."

White!

White gravitates towards the shower instinctively. Washing up was not, in her mind, a solo activity.

"This is the sort of thing I need to know about," she said, warm hands moving through soap and fur and mane. She wasn't asking questions like should I, can I - nothing existential. At the moment she just wanted data. "How do you decide things like fur length, texture, growth rate? How sensitive should the fur be? How do you test the feeling before committing to it?"

It's at about this point that Pink walks in through the front door of the apartment. "Morning, everyone!" she called brightly. "I bought sandwiches[1]~!"

[1]: Deep fried pineapple fritters.

Without skipping a beat she's tossing her clothes onto the floor walking right into the shower alongside White and Crystal. White had previously discussed her nature as a hivemind, but Pink doesn't exactly ease Crystal into the dynamic. "Hey, White," she said, stepping right on in. "Oh, wow. She's hot. You chose this without me? I'm impressed!"
"We're discussing aesthetics, I need your help," said White.
"I'm on it!" said Pink, taking White by the hair and pushing her down to her knees firmly. "Tell me everything, or I'll make her stop~."

Brown!

There is the internet (smiling, nodding) and the internet (frowning, shaking head). A hack like this involves going into the internet.

The Megaverse was originally pitched as the long awaited union between hell, work and the mall, and was bought into being through the concerted efforts of humanity's worst billionaires. All the lesser 2D chat programs and phone maps and useful aspects of the internet drift across its surface like icebergs above the acid shark volcano. The Megaverse is the full, deep, immersive VR deep internet environment. Its infrastructure underpins everything else. It is a cathedral of virtual space, the sprawl and the grid, the parallel cosmos and spiritual realm that serves as the mirror to the physical.

And like all good cathedrals, it is crumbling and ruined.

The Megaverse was dead on arrival but it lurched on for a couple of decades regardless, sustained by a vast inferno of venture capital money. It briefly flared up to incorporate all of human life and activity, all social interaction dragged onto the platform. People designed their virtual avatars and lead virtual lives, working, marrying and getting paid on the blockchain. But the whole thing frankly sucked, and as the money dried up the executives started looking for ways to monetize the thing. This was at the same time as hackers and governments had turned virtual space into a battleground. The Megaverse quickly developed a toxic reputation leading to the reinvention of the 2D internet. VR headsets became the province of remote workers, video gamers, advertising agencies, criminals and hackers. The Megaverse was a combination of hell, work, and the mall. Like hell, it was buried underground. Like work, the employees unionized or quit. Like the mall, it crumbled to ruins, a cathedral to the excesses of capitalism.

But burying hell didn't make it less relevant, and there are always urban explorers or property developers with an eye towards abandoned malls. Occultists, digital workers, and advertising agencies all have a vested interest in the Megaverse still. You can reach the 'regular' internet from there, manipulate algorithms and hack computers from below. You can follow traces, destroy firewalls and analyze software, you can see connections that would otherwise be the work of vast spreadsheets. You just need to dodge wolfpacks of marketing bots, spearphishers seeking to steal your identity and poorly maintained features causing entire network segments to crumble under your feet.

Into these depths Brown has descended, wearing cool black mirrored wraparound shades, slashed shoulder stripes, and carrying a neon blue zweihander. It's an outfit that says: You better watch out, I have done a reasonable amount of grinding for free content and I am slightly above average in either free time or ability!

Descending with her is the full digital manifestation of the computer components she has been asked to install. Their MegaIncarnations alone will tell a lot about them. Off the shelf Begone, Brand level smiles? The poorly concealed bulletproof vest of a cop program trying not to look like a cop program? Who, exactly, is lazy enough to outsource their covert op to a maid agency?

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

"It is the nature of the Dragon's blood to desire control," said Zhaojun dreamily, raising up to her full height amidst a storm of sapphire wind. "They order the world according to their patterns, driving chaos to the periphery, bringing princesses under their Dominion, and their nations with them. And just like them, here you come noble warrior! Just as the Dominion seeks to yoke the Flower Kingdoms so you take from me my mistress, my slave and my prey."

She twirls the firewand in her fingers. A one shot weapon; it would take over a minute to reload. The mask is blank as ever yet its eyes contain a furnace. And with a flick, she opens her outer robe, revealing the secrets tucked inside her concealing garments.

Firewands.

Dozens of them.

She laughs as she fires, a massive and spectacular gout of fire blasting out across the deck of the ship, catching fast into the timber. The powder ignites matter and magic both, filling the sky with billowing bluegreen sparks. As soon as the weapon runs dry she tosses it aside, and in the same gesture snatches the next one from its pocket. Even dragons must pause to inhale; not her! With this arsenal she can burn brighter than even they!

Aiming is a distant secondary concern. Everything is to be fire. The ship, the mast, the forest, her foes. This is what she wants. This is what she wants, deep down. To burn hotter and brighter than this shipload of false dragons and insufficiently impressed princesses might ever dare.

"Once, there was a maiden," Zhaojun trilled.
"Who walked amongst lords and ladies.
Gods and demons.
Spies and sorceresses.
Dragons and princesses.
None of them could see her, even as she lit the match.
"Love blinds," she said."

[Inflicting a condition on Piripiri in return.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

haha okay wow okay this is way harder than it looks.

"This" in particular referred to fighting while wearing a full princess dress. All the ruffles and ribbons and laces posed limitations on her range of motion. It limited her use of weaponry, kept fire from her arsenal, forced her to defend a vastly larger range of territory than she was used to. This wasn't a spirit gift either, this was the only one of these she had, and if she tore it it was gone.

She nodded to herself. A lot of things were starting to make sense to her now, not least the tendency of other species to idolize beautifully dressed magical girls as the height of martial glory. Only the greatest warriors could go to war while risking such one of a kind outfits.

The only way forward was to fight as they did.

Courage, love, friendship, she signed. Kindness, sorrow, and joy. Lots of feelings, everyone's hearts...

She snatched the air, clenched her hand into a fist, stepped down from the vine tangle. She raised herself up high, letting her speech gestures become more sweeping and dramatic. I will fight for everyone's hearts!

This was a thorough non sequitur for those in attendance who were not privy to Solarel's fragile grasp of alien culture. In her mind, this was the intimidating speech of a great warrior, and the graceful dance steps that followed through were the opening forms of the most powerful combat techniques available to humankind. Solarel had, after all, not seen anything in anime that had ever made her question it's reality. Magical dresses appearing from nowhere, monstrous gods that needed to be overthrown, and people finding reserves of enormous power that manifested as rainbow lasers right when they were at the brink of death were all things that just happened to the Followers of Zaldar.

So it is with perfect sincerity that Solarel makes the hand sign for MOONLIGHT KICK right as she performs a very serious roundhouse kick to the side of the head. Her technique is flawless, beautiful, a level of grace that is frankly utterly unexpected of her. She literally glitters as she does it, lit up by the radiant glow of expended energy.

But for all of the beauty of the motion, and for all the sincerity of the anime speech that proceeded it, it is also a roundhouse kick to the side of the head and Solarel is very strong. It is only natural for everyone who is not currently being kicked to think about how cool and graceful the moment is, but that is not a luxury extended to the kick-ee.

[Fighting with Grace: 9-1: 8
Inflicting a condition, and seizing a superior position (one where I have protected my pretty princess dress and vibe)]

The Red Furnace: First Contact

The Furnace Knight's belt glows and gravity ceases to have a hold upon him. With a flick of his tail he ascends into the air in a movement so fluid it suggests his species originated below the waves. He raises up into the air, ascending to a position above Lord Death Despoil. There is no wasted motion here, no elaborate forms, not blinking or lowering his guard for a moment. Serpent eyes stare as he raises his sword and -

It's not an attack. It's a command.

The wolves, howling, close in on all sides.

These are berserkers, unarmoured and unprotected. Jagged glass cannons, only protected by a single enchantment: a divine chronomancy spell that defers all injuries minutes into the future. They will fight at maximum strength right up until their blessing expires and then all their accumulated injuries will hit them at once and they will drop dead instantly. The wave is uncoordinated, but there's a pack instinct at work that keeps them from getting in each others way, even through their blindfolds.

The Furnace Knight hovers above the battlefield, silent and unflinching, gaze reptilian as he observes. In this attack it's clear that he doesn't have any ideological commitment to honourable battle - quite the contrary. He observes the forms because of the rewards they grant and once his obligations are met, he discards them. His earlier headstrong rush was a rational attempt to maximize an advantage and now that it has passed his approach is far more defensive and cautious.

And that gives you an important clue: He has no idea what you're capable of. Even on the most basic level his wolves attack with teeth and talon, seeking to rend flesh you do not have. He is sending a wave of expendable troops to soften up a necromancer, seemingly unaware that their corpses might be turned against him. Despite his superiority in hand to hand conflict he seeks to accumulate data because he simply does not know that you are not an expert martial artist. This is a warrior who knows himself, but not his enemy. Despite his advantage in positioning he is still in the same boat as you.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

"Am I?" said Beautiful. "Severed from a world that still cared for me?" fighting her is maddening. She's weaker. She's slower. But somehow she's always going in exactly the wrong direction. "Awoken to a world that still has grudges against me?" The possibility space has closed. She is losing her ability to target specific locations, now she just has to take whatever blows are available. Cold comfort as she steps just past a jab and works your ribcage in passing. "Needing a thousand chanting priestesses to lay a foundation for each step and getting one mad princess instead?"

She has so many opportunities, so many places for needles or pistols or daggers to slip in under guards. Her instincts carry her into opening after opening. And opening after opening she has nothing better to exploit the flaw than a punch. When she tries tangling your legs in hers to send you stumbling she almost trips herself instead as there is less give in your muscles than she expects.

"It is," she steps up her tempo, looking to lay you out, end the fight, even if it means making it a fight rather than a dissection. "A poor craftswoman. Who blames her tools. A loose gear? Why don't you give me a name, then? Why don't you tell me who to kill? Do you want it done fast or slow, loud or quiet? Do you want me to make it look like an accident? Killed by her best friend while the cameras are rolling? Who is the target, you fucking bitch!?"

Alexa!

You step into the rooms of Galnius' praetorian guard, the last known location of the missing Kaeri.

There's a stink in the air. The smell of booze, sick, sweat and SP smoke. The smell of soldiers gone wrong. The door is marked with the scorch marks of SP rounds, black corrosion that eats right through the white paint and half an inch of the steel underneath. Jars of weapon oil are spilled and mix with a sludge made of kidney beans and the cream-sweet smell of monkfruit. A spear is run into a wall and every inch of it from blade to haft is covered in blood.

You can trace the violence in the patterns of blood, just as Athena always taught you. The heavy oak table was overturned, used as cover. Soldiers sheltered behind it until a Thunderbolt hit it and blasted it in half. And then... claw marks? Something terrible leaped upon the wreck of wood before pouncing onwards. There is a vortex of twisted metal on the walls and on the floor - steel flowed and twisted like a whirlpool, the jagged corkscrew wreckage of an improperly aimed Esoteric. So much of the fight is crystal clear.

And so much of it is not. There is no fire concentrated at the doorway. No clear point of breach or nexus of defense - it is as though the attacker teleported in from nowhere. The attacker left the claw marks of a great lion, wielded a Thunderbolt with a marksman's precision and discipline, and there is no sign that they spilled a drop of blood - or spilled any of their own. You spot the place where the spilled stew boils a toxic black and slide it away with the end of a stick. Sure enough, SP scorch marks on the floor.

A battle occurred here but it does not feel like any sort of war you've met before.

Evocati Khaesh could not be more on edge. She stands in a corner, a long rifle trained on the door held one handed, while her other hand holds a pistol she rhythmically scans the area with. "This was the Captain's work," she hisses. "Can you smell that? The stew was poisoned. The weapon of a chef."

You may need to Look Closely.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

"Oh! You want to fight for Bella's hand in marriage!" said Beautiful, snapping her fingers in understanding. "She must be a very special girl indeed!"

She then shoots you in the forehead, in the exact point where she landed her kick. Then as you charge it's directly into a second kick, aimed again at that exact spot. She's too slight to fully check the charge, though, and the momentum sends her reeling back a couple of steps before she recovers her poise.

"Well, even if I don't remember her," said Beautiful, "There is no way I'm not going to fight for the girl who might possibly be mine. Hypothetical love demands no less!"

There's a bit of a catch in that voice, Redana. Pain, perhaps? There's no doubt a lot of frustration that comes with being told that you are possibly in a relationship that you can't remember the importance of. A lot of frustration that Beautiful has evidently decided to vent onto you. There's still that dangerous, brilliant playfulness as she widens her stance, ready to catch, redirect, and throw. But you're not the only one with a headfull of complicated emotions that are best expressed with fisticuffs.

Alexa!

You're just finishing your routine when - Ares' spit! There's a Kaeri warrior standing over you. Fuck they're quiet!

"Lady Regicide," she said, voice clipped. As you recover from the shock you see the Oath of Surrender pinned to her breast armour - a long, winding scroll where she pledges her surrender and obedience in the sight of Zeus. It's a chain more binding than adamantine, and the remnants of the Kaeri who did not fight to death all signed them and wear them constantly. It is not an oath of slavery - theirs was a honourable military surrender, and the conditions are closer to that of a guest. Still, it was considered for the best if they were kept on the other ship to the Lanterns.

The title they use for you could do with some work though.

"I am Evocati Khaesh," she said. "Five of my soldiers are missing, under subcommander Meuven Ra. We cannot find any sign of them. Did you order them executed?"

The Kaeri's eyes are cold. She's ready to resume hostilities over this. But you've served with Kaeri before and you can see beyond the frosty belligerence - she's terrified. The Kaeri are creatures of pride, and to admit weakness, ignorance and helplessness in the same breath is not something they do if they feel like they have any alternative.

Dolce!

"Yeah, uh," said Ramses awkwardly. "Listen, mate. We're professionals. We're on this ship because we get paid. By the Magi. What we want is the time, surgery and components to make our ideal bodies manifest."

She coughed. "Though if you wanted to help us out you could lean on the magi to give us better terms in the next round of enterprise agreement negotiations. The union negotiates a new one with them every year and the discussions get heated. These go on for the months - tell you what, uh, first lady Vasilia, ma'am, why don't you come along and sit in on one? There's a meeting happening now."

A flash cut to the union negotiations with the Magi. A Hermetic shrieks discordant blaring rhythms to drown out the voices of hard nosed negotiators, brandishing esoteric weapons in all directions. It blasts a hole in a wall and retreats into the ventilation shafts, laying down a carpet of covering fire. It is pursued by a cautious but determined team carrying arc welders to cut it out of the hidden burrow it retreats into.

"Maybe it'll give you an idea of what we're working with here," said Ramses.

Bella!

As you walk there is an eerie stillness in the corridors of the Plousios' lower decks. The crabs are still there, still in their tens of thousands, but now they are still. They sit, claws raised up to the sky, unblinking eyes staring blankly forwards. The eerie industry of the Tides is halted as every node in its network takes a moment at long last to breathe deeply and actually pay attention to the world around it.

The breath rises and falls in a calming rhythm, waves crashing against the shore. It wasn't until the noise stopped that you realized how frenzied it had been.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Black!

Black returns the fistbump gesture. She's glad for it, it breaks the touch barrier, lets her focus, lets her get her hand around to the back of Amie's neck to the sensitive cluster of nerves at the base of the spine. It lets her show claws and limits, as her other hand comes up to cover 3V's throat and mouth, holding her silent as 3V's eyes roll and her hands tap frantic patterns on the back of Black's fingers. There is both chemistry and it's lack; Black is not for him, but she will supply him with girls who are.

"She's not going anywhere without me," said Black. "3V is very precious to me. I need to make sure that she is treated as she deserves to be treated. I need to make sure she can't walk in a straight line tomorrow." She pulls Amie in closer, pressing herself up against the girl's side. "You're not going to let me down, are you?"

Blue!

"Oh please, please, sit down!" said Blue with a smile so glitteringly innocent she can only have been engineered for it specifically. It's almost like she's waving off a compliment in humble embarrassment. "You don't have to worry! Of course I don't do that kind of thing any more! Have you looked at the requirements to become a private detective? You need 2,500 hours of work experience with an accredited security firm and they only hire people with law enforcement, military or intelligence backgrounds. That's two years, presuming you get full time and don't get the '24th-hour pink slip', and I haven't even been a person for one."

As she's speaking she's standing up herself, sweeping around the table elegantly, and politely putting her hands on shoulders to guide people back into their chairs. "I do hospitality these days - so sit! You simply cannot go without tasting my Dou Sha Bao and caramelized orange sorbet."

As part of the same extended motion she is laying out fresh plates, sparkling with sugar, across the table. What human could possibly argue with an appeal to eat dessert?

White!

She steps out onto the balcony in a silver bathrobe. The dawnlight is just visible over the horizon of Earth above and it catches her wet hair. She takes a sip from a bottle of strawberry cider and leans over the railing, looking up at the sky, an ethereal creature in the four am notdark.

The girls are asleep at last. Finally there is time to work through some of these thoughts.

She quickly sorts through some of the ideas she can't process on her own, sorting them into categories to hand off later. They are cute when they sleep (Yellow) and insatiable when awake (Black). A contact (Orange) in the art market might be interesting (Pink). She'll need a treatment for bruises on her synthmuscles (Blue). She wants to do this again (???).

The decisions come quickly and easily. Previously it felt like the clutter in her mind was also on fire, too hot to handle, too bright to perceive. Now the stack has cooled enough for her to work through it. An undifferentiated mass of Problem now can be approached in parts.

The first thing she decides to think about, what she wants to think about, was how this felt. What it showed. She hadn't been born with a sense of sexuality but one had been included in the bundle of anime cliches she had been given during her reprogramming. Until now it hadn't really been hers. She had always kind of thought of it more like cosplay more than anything - performing a role for the benefit of herself, getting to act out elaborate fantasies. The original suggestion of having her take the role of a fearsome dragon taking advantage of a defenseless maiden was kind of what she'd thought that sex was all the time. That it was primary a cerebral thing, with a physical component almost as a side. She doesn't think that any more. There was a lot of the process that wasn't sexy, it was just... intimate. The confusion of legs and hips, the struggles of tongue and teeth, sweat and saliva, the impossibility of communicating 'if I climax one more time I will be able to perceive every individual atom that comprises my body'. She looked at her hands, turning them over. She hadn't thought of them as particularly sensitive organs in their own right, but the things they had felt...

Get wrecked, Black.

Underlying it all was a sense of possessiveness that surprised her. It wasn't that she wanted to control them, reorder their lives, make them do anything different... she just wanted them to be hers. It was an inarticulate thought, but a powerful one. She needed to talk to Yellow and see how that feeling compared to the feeling of being with 3V.

That lead into the next question. Was she a furry?

She took a long sip of cider. That was a fucking question, wasn't it? She could see where the thought terminated in questions of practicality and expense (Brown) and whole of network complexity (Green). But did she, White, now that she had faced and/hyphen fucked her demons, like the idea of becoming an actual dragongirl? Was her initial aversion just the rejection of something that felt too true to be real? Had her egg, so to speak, been cracked?

The cider bubbles in her throat, up into her nose. She sets it down and takes a deep breath. Well, girl, you came here looking for guidance with the dysmorphia that came from integrating a previous existence as a deep space macroengineering construct with a current existence as a cute anime girl. You've sure as shit now got some kind of conceptual answer as to how you might integrate those identities.

What if she was the only colour who felt that way? What would that mean for her sense of self coherence? They'd already upgraded Red so she was visually more beautiful than the rest of them, but what if they all started going in different directions...?

She shook her head. Hard answers, no evading into theory and concepts. Yes, the idea was interesting. She'd work through the concept. Hard thing to dip a toe into, but she'd give it an attempt.

The next thing that she needed to think about was something related to understanding how humans related to her past as a public figure, but by this time the sun had come up. A shadow loomed behind her, a set of beautiful arms wrapped around her, and she was pulled decisively back inside. Even if the appointments hadn't been important, Crystal was determined to ensure that she was extremely properly compensated for missing them.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Eyes blink up out of the trance, crimson and violet and burgundy, clear and bright. Cold hands pull back from warm ones, forming into a fist raised up and then slashed horizontally outwards at eye level. The challenge sign of Zaldar.

"Earn it."

It is a simple matter of honour. She has defeated this girl - in the contest of gods no less. She should, by custom, be her captive. To concede to her rhythm would dishonour the judgement of the gods. To submit to the defeated would be an act of madness.

She is awake now, eyes blinking bright and radiating a faint challenging glow. She can feel heat spreading out through her muscles. Ready to dance, fight, mate. To grab her opponent and begin the confrontation right here on this table. She can feel the challenge sitting against the base of her neck, focusing her attention like thunder on the horizon or the machine ping of a new contact on her DRADIS.

She doesn't have a plan behind the challenge. Does not have an alternative vision for the evening. Her mind is jumbled with equations and pattern-heat. She simply knows she cannot surrender. If she is to beg she must be made to beg.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

That radiant blue glow blinks, out of sync with the eye behind it.

"I am doing this because I want..."

What?

"I am the shift of desire. I am the flash of craving. I am the storm of yearning," she said. "I am change. I am creation. I am a heart filled with want. I want the thrones of the Incarnae. I want the thrones of the Yozi. I want the love of every maiden, every fox, every princess. I want everything. I want everyone to want me. I want to know how it feels to crave something. I want to know how it feels to want something so badly that you'll take action to get it. I want to have desire strong enough to drag me out of bed in the morning, I want to be able to enjoy food, I want to be able to make a plan and execute it, I want to be able to feel something when I look at pretty girls, I want to be able to touch myself and not feel empty, I want to have the ferocity to protect my family, I want to have the romance to make a family, I want to have a life that is more alive than 'I guess the fexin leaf is strong enough that I won't kill myself today'."

She hissed, divine strength increasing, stone-strong, pushing the barrel of the firewand against your forehead so hard it leaves a mark. The gun might not even fire with its barrel sealed like this; it might burst backwards, she doesn't care.

"When Venus was handing out motivations she overlooked me," she hissed. "And so I stole some. Now I'm finally alive."

Breathless Dead

Redana!

"Two questions," said Beautiful. Then she punched a hand clean through a loose panel in the ship's wall next to her, pulled out a solid projectile pistol concealed within, and fired it at your feet.

(The last time she'd been active, she'd instructed a priestess to conceal a weapon near her chamber, marked with a glyph of her own design. Her mind had decoded the glyph as instructions on the basic operation and effects of a SP pistol.

Under normal circumstances, Sagakhan or Mynx would have checked for exactly this.)

There is a flash and a bang, an overwhelming, awful explosion into every sense at once. While you're coughing and spluttering, vision hazy and deafened, you get a kick in the forehead that sends you careening backwards.

"One," said Beautiful, "what's a Tellus? Is it important? Normally people chant all that stuff at me while I'm waking up, there's meant to be this huge ritual and everything which is basically a couple hundred people reading different encyclopedia chapters at me all at once, so I'm kind of running on DNA right now."

She snap-reloads the pistol and aims it at you in a perfect firing position. Taking a SP round to the forehead never killed anyone but holy shit does it suck.

"Two," she said, voice ice cold. "Who is Bella? Why do I remember that name?"

Alexa!

Lacedo cannot speak. She is silent. She is still.

It took three hundred years to develop that thought. It took a minute to speak it. Who knows how long it will take for it to unpack in the Alcedi's mind?

But for now there's nothing but the thought. Every so often she makes a breath like she's going to speak, to argue or to agree or say anything, but each time the scale of the thinking she hasn't done yet tapers it off into silence. By tomorrow she still won't be ready. Maybe when a week passes, or two...

But she does stop trying to rally the Alcedi. And without her leadership in this moment the Fleets and all their glory pass into history.

Dolce!

"Oh, uh, Zeus' tits, little guy," said Ramses. "Listen, have you ever met an Order of Hermes Magos? We live and work on their ships most of the time. One of them literally built a corridor of ever burning flame just to reduce the rate we knocked on his door asking for cybersurgery. So we mostly take care of ourselves until the orders come down from above. So, like, the way I figure it, if I waste your time with unimportant stuff you'll get mad at us and cut us off entirely."

She coughed. "I actually was hoping these designs would build up some favour, but it seems like they're having the opposite effect so... uh, I should go?"

Bella!

"The crabs are like animals," came a voice as smooth and strong as a riptide. A beautiful merman steps out of a tidal pool, fish tail seamlessly parting and shifting into two human legs. His face has the cruel beauty of an elf, a shock of deep violet hair woven with kelp, onyx and amethyst. He smiles and gestures and a pair of crabs come forward to wrap a spectacular robe of cream and red silk around his shoulders, patterned with elaborate whorls and waves. He doesn't bother to do it up.

He turns to a massive battlecrab that approaches him. He smiles affectionately, letting his hand run across the front of its shell, affectionately scratching the eyestalks. It clacks its claws in what might be happiness. "It is not a perfect metaphor. Really, the crabs are more like our hands. They can think, but they cannot want. They can act but they cannot know. They are part of us, and yet separate. We must treat them with kindness as we must treat ourselves with kindness."

He turns back to face you and then smoothly bows. He shows respect without any understanding of courtly manners, instead showing genuflection while watching your eyes through the water's reflection for the twitch that indicates he has given the proper amount. "When humanity sought to leave distant Earth, it was the Lord Poseidon's will that the ocean would not be left behind. So he drank it all and spat it out in the shape of a man, and they lay together until they conceived twelve children. Those children, the Tides, were as the hecatonchires once were - the hundred handed children of Gaia. But one mind could not control all those many hands, so the Tides split themselves like starfish. Some parts of them grew into swords, some grew into hearts. Some are creatures for appreciating all the finest things the galaxy has to offer, some are to deliver the cups to their lips, but all are the same creature. But as the Tides grew larger and more complex, their aspects became more specialized. It is only here, in the aftermath of the trauma of death, reduced to barely ten thousand nodes and less than a hundred minds, do we again call upon the most ancient names of power. It is only now that it is worth creating more... generalist incarnations."

He smiled, and at last looked up and made eye contact. His eyes were orange; pink and yellow and salmon and...

"I am Eyes of Coral," said the merman. "One of several who claim that title in this region. To claim a Name is to claim a throne, and one must defeat and subordinate the pretenders before one can come into the fullness of its power. Right now we are entrapped in a hell of our own creation; we are of the lineage of a trauma incarnation. Too scared to leave the defensive crouch, too angry to let the knife slip from our hands, too broken to trust. Do not think Fear and Doubt a cruel or poor leader; he is the ghost of a starship through our brain pan. With him we are craven and obedient, without him... who knows how we might lash out?"

Eyes of Coral looked warily up at the crab. It had no fear in its eyes as it clacked its claws.

"As to what we are capable of, within a timeframe practical to you, we could build an entire million-soul battleship from scratch," he said. "Or take one apart. As to what we want? To be healthy and whole, to reckon with our trauma and learn to grow again. This eternal inquisition of the self is no way to live."