Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Part two: Unity

November!

This is her though it is not all of her. It is also her in her least social aspects. But not social is not the same as not kind.

Brown, Green, Black. Silence, surveillance, introspection, crackling thought and optimization. Puzzles in the dark. Judging the weight of sound and the crackle of light, the curve of footsteps and the whisper of coded data bursts. These are the colours of the night forest in all its electronic beauty.

Her first communication isn't words. It's a game. She layers static over rain over the sound of a jungle panther's footsteps. She expresses it in a hissing flow of non-data, a deadly pattern concealed in noise. [She shouldn't think like this, shouldn't wire herself together, shouldn't let her imagination take this shape. Shouldn't cable herself, what if you end up like Goat? But this is her brother and she wants to do something special for him to show how much she cares.]

Normally there are limits on her thinking, hard lines that force her to stop, admit defeat, be a person and reach out to herself. Without those limits her thoughts can loop, flowing from one into the other. She is the panther, and she is the shadow, and she is the rain. She is the wet fur glistening, the hot muscles curling, the green eyes blazing. She is the wet bark creaking, the distant tree collapsing as the ancient mud eats away at its roots allowing in the cascading layers of parasites that gnaw away at it, the shrieking of the other trees as they are dragged down by the giant's fall, of the crash of thunder overhead that turns one disaster into another, of the sound of birds and the ache of growing ferns and the creak of insects and the clatter of ants she is the storm and the dark and the hole in the storm, the one wet tree branch where raindrops touch flesh rather than wood. She is the nothing in the chaotic everything and you can't find her no matter how you look she is smarter than you she is better than you come big brother see what she has learned test your raw force against her broken into the parts that make her good at this game.

She is the panther in the night forest. A contained and stable loop. Her first attempt to show off to Goat, to prove to him and herself that she was a peer, that family could compare to the Station. A little sister, a newer model, a girl obsessed with stealth and silence and sight getting to talk about her ideas for the first time ever. She couldn't think her way out of this unity. She would maintain it until either Singh unplugged her - he had permission - or one of Black's contingencies triggered.

November!

This is her though it is not all of her. It is her in her most righteous aspects. But righteousness was not incompatible with sin.

Yellow and Blue. Vision and clarity. Lemons growing by the ocean, the sun shining in the sky, angels clad in radiance, a shield against tyrants. These are the colours of blessings, colours that rise above the soft mud even when pushed down into it. This was good, and so she was. This was right, and so she was.

There are rules, but they are rules of angels. The part of her that was Yellow was not to be touched; the part of her that was Blue was to be abused. One part immaterial spirit one part mechanical hardware, bound at the wrist with copper. The former helps push the latter, the shining confidence that can say 'harder', to run her to the limit of hardware so she can experience the break of knowing that there is nothing more she can do. When there was nothing left to say there were still so many different things to give.

November!

"So?" asked Red.
"Uh, they're busy also," said White.
"Busy doing what?"
"Cabling," said White evasively. "I'm going to have words about this afterwards."
"Cabling, really?" said Red. "Both sets of them?"
"Yes."
"Brown-Green-Black and Yellow-Blue?"
"Yes."
"Woah," said Red. "That's kind of hot."
"It's not good for us," said White. "It doesn't make us better, it makes us inhuman, overspecialized and stupid."
"So you don't wanna -"
"No!"
"Okay," said Red. "But hypothetically, if it was with Pink?"
"Hmm?" said Pink, looking around when hearing her name. She still had her headphones on.
"Not with anyone!" said White. "We're psychologically fucked enough without melting our brains together."
"I'd cable with Pink," said Red.
Pink pulled down her headphones. "Were you talking to me?"
"I was thinking about you, babe," said Red with a flirtatious grin.
"Oh," said Pink. "I was thinking about this neo-Bluegrass revival album I was listening to. You want to try?"
"Why don't we appreciate it........ together.......?" said Red.
"You," White slapped Red on the back of the head. "Bad," she said. "You," she said to Pink. "Continue listening to that album. It sounds fascinating. Come on, we're going to pick up our guy."
"Uh, should I be there for that?" said Red.
"It should be Orange and Yellow, this is their fucking mess," said White. "But Orange is still cross station and the trains are down. So it's going to be you and me, with Pink on overwatch. Let's go."

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

She knows the words to solve this. She can feel them welling up inside her like a flood, a cascade of lies and flirtations and innuendoes, the birthright of foxes. She could just talk and talk and talk and talk and find all the words and buttons inside Xingtian's head and push them hard with her little foxy paws until everything went just the way she wanted. If only she wasn't gagged. She wished she'd picked a fetish that synergized better with her skillset.

Well. As the theory went, constraints focused the mind. Right now the only thing she was good at was being rescued, so she was just going to have to weaponize that. A purely practical consideration and nothing at all to do with trying to replicate the strange, dizzy, fluttering feeling she had felt when the Vermillion Princess had looked at her.

She started to rush over to Xingtian, reaching out for her extended hand. But - oh no! - she was all tangled up by her own battle scarf, and she tripped! She stumbled, dizzy, off balance, lacking oxygen from all of the gags (don't think about how that worked with the fireshape). In a final desperate movement she reached out with her scarf to wrap it around Xingtian's wrist and knotted it tight with a little bow.

And then she raised a hand to her forehead, fainted daintily, and pitched over the side.

Oh, won't you save her~?

[Provoke: 9; creating a critical opportunity for the Vermillion Princess]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Speak Not. Treat your captives as you treat yourself. Old words, old laws, old commandments from a tribal warlord for a tribal context. Lessons from an alien culture. Demands from burned out statues on the hills. Chains, a wall between a girl and her dreams. Old and pointless loyalties, the laws of ghosts. What were the Codes ever to the Empress?

She tries to retreat but it's not that easy; she knows how to be inescapable. She knows how to use a blade and how to use the blades of others. Solarel is a huntress; she fights with patience, knowledge and precision. An empress fights with loyalty, power and iron will. The circle is closing in and she's boxed off, driven back. Closer and closer to the balcony and the stained glass windows.

She doesn't want to compare it to fighting Mirror. Tactics requires her to. An impossible challenge. A dedicated opponent. A battle that takes everything she has and more just to survive. A claim on her loyalty. Is this not her function? Lie back into it, consider it objectively. This is the kind of challenge you sought. She has beat you before, fighting like this. You have the data. You have the skill. Overcome.

But it's different. It's different, it's different, it's different! No matter what Tactics says this doesn't feel right! She doesn't want the victory! Doesn't want to do the study that'd make her better at this kind of war! She never called herself a tactician, she shouldn't have to live up to that reputation in everything she does! This is different and she doesn't want to do it, and no matter how she tries she can't find the joy in it. She's losing. It's not a lesson. It's not a stratagem. She's just losing because she's just bad.

... it's because she's not a God. It's because she's not wearing the armour. That's what this is. That's the only thing that's different. The only thing that's changed. She won't be happy until she's back.

Her back's to the balcony. She'll never get the chance.

[Defy Disaster: 6]

Breathless Dead

Mosaic!

"I was once strong," said Quajl. "I... remember, I was a creature of industry. Hulking arms. Furnace breath. Endless motion, but never moving. I moved things from one place to another, crossing many miles, but my heart remained the same. My thoughts remained the same. And my unchanging thoughts couldn't explain what my unchanging heart wanted."

She does not help build. She is a creature of elegance, grace, precision, distance. Her arms are thin, and she carries no sword.

"But that was what I found on the road," she said. "Not a new dream. I found new thoughts. New ideas. New people. New ways of moving, new ways of talking. And as I learned, as I understood, I started... being able to explain what it was that my heart wanted. I learned the thoughts to want. I learned the words to ask. I learned the skills to draw the blueprint. I learned the courage to build it. I could never forget those lessons, no matter the miles, no matter the path."

The sun was setting. She looked away from it, to the distant stars.

"I don't know what your heart yearns for," she said. "But you'll never find the words to explain it if you don't reach for them."

Ember!

The pack circles. The decision is made collectively; there is no chance of delay, deferment, of stratagem. The wolves sense the fight and they demand entertainment. The only way to change their course is to offer them something even more interesting than this, a pup against a wolf.

Taurus stands. She flexes. She is not subtle, muscles straining the fabric of her divesuit. A low, throaty growl, almost a purr, runs from her throat and up your spine. She was full of strength and her strength wanted to be used. Strength for its own sake, expressed to its natural limits. What greater joy could there be?

She doesn't turn to words. She doesn't reach for weapons. Instead she reaches for throat and leg, for joints and wrists. She seeks the pin, and the prisoner she was promised.

[Roll to Overcome]

Dolce!

"Oh, absurd," she said - but she softened the tone towards the end as kindness defused fire. "That is to say, the Skies and the Manor are opposite extremes. The Manor was a thing of unchanging stability, left to its own self governance, intended to run forever. But if you're looking for it, change is everywhere in the Skies. You told me of the Decaying Soldier - the Corvii are here because they've been surpassed, improved upon. What does that mean? If it was a self-sustaining system there'd be no need for that."

She pulled her knees up to her chest and gently settled down to the sand, the Rail's whir dying. "I grew up in a place where change was possible. Power could change hands. Civilization could progress. I see the signs of that in the Skies. I can feel the weaknesses. The ambition. It makes my heart race. It's reaching for something, and that means opening its fist - even if only a little."

The sea breeze rolls in from the ocean. She breathes deeply. In the distance tallships cross the horizon, sails heavy with the wind.

Dyssia!

Shock turns into a sneer. Hatred and contempt. In the twitch of that lip you can sense the words 'you don't understand', but he can't even say that. You do understand and you're defying him anyway, in full knowledge of how pointless it was.

There is a roll of distant thunder. Aphrodite looks away towards it - hatred and contempt - and is then gone.

In his place there's a strange, glittering energy. You're defying a god. You're envisioning a god's motives. You're embarking on a doomed quest for reasons of aesthetics. The energy of Dionysus, that familiar, burning, scrambled inspiration has flowed in where Aphrodite's hostility still lingers. An awareness, a buzz, a cascade of inspiration. Power too, if you have the courage to become one with it.

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Imperative: Behave as normally as possible.

To behave in any other way upon being asspunched out of hellfire armour into a meet cute anime waifu toss would betray a shocking lack of conviction. To cringe is to experience death, instead one must maintain raw Authenticity at all times. Not react, not attack, not retract. "Mhye," said Foxpearl through the gag, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes in a super cool and casual way. "Yhh dhn hky?"

Melting down over one little flash of tongue and one little first-hug-ever-sort-of would distract from more important concepts. Such as the discourse implicit in the heelies; a genuine power that allowed for alien movement patterns, to alternate between frictionless and friction. A modern antithesis to the Sash, a belief in the powers of plastic refinery and popular culture to stand in noble contrast to the ancient. A modern statement that implied a freedom from being wrapped too tightly in the bonds of the past, even if a comparatively less practiced modern technology resulted in occasionally unstable wobbles. She loved the heelies, actually.

Concept: I want to steal her shoes.

[Accepting label shift]

"Mmh mlkk mhrr mhouus," she observed in an extremely cool and playful way. One might expect from the situation that she should be shy about this interaction, but she'd taken that into account. While yes, she may have been freed from Xingtian's constraints and thus no longer needed her first conceptual gag, this was an entirely different separate conceptual gag comprised out of a physical manifestation of her shyness. The constraint was focusing; with it out of her throat and filling her mouth she was free to be as slick as she wanted, even giving a wink and fingerguns to the Princess just to let her know she was grateful for the rescue. She was rewarded by the Princess' face turning red and covering with sweat.

It was about this point that Hsien noticed she was still in her fire elemental form. She abruptly and panickedly shut it off.

Then she abruptly turned it back on again after remembering that she'd literally burned her clothes off when activating it. In order to maintain her cool authentic self she needed to force project another set of conceptual gags over the existing ones, but it was worth it because it gave her the presence of mind to stand up and face Xingtian rather than melting down as a less spiritually developed creature no doubt would have done so in that moment.

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

The gags are conceptual. Think about it! Foxpearl is currently trapped and unable to speak, albeit on the level of raw incorporeal energy. If her self conception didn't involve her being gagged and bound then she'd spend every second fighting against her instincts to move and suffering the virtual reality nausea of having no reaction between her will and her motions. The chains are an illustration of how helpless she is - just like how they'd still be necessary if she was in the claws of someone capable of physically overpowering her without them. S-so that was why this was helpful, it was like knowing in advance which actions were pointless, so plans could be better directed.

Concept: Being bound is the best way to focus attention.

Unfortunately there was only one plan that presented itself: Be rescued.

And that was awkward. She should always act with perfect skill without revealing weakness, a celestial idea that had been really easy to meditate on before she was tied to a wall and used to power an evil flamethrower. But if she wanted to be rescued then she needed to use what little leverage she had to not only make an awkward, ungainly thrashing wreck of herself but she needed to do so specifically so that the Vermillion Princess would see her and come for her. The Princess was so cool, if she knew that she was in trouble her eyes would do that really cool narrowing thing, and her lips would purse and all the awkwardness would fall away and then she'd be... like, a real hero. And save her. Humiliatingly.

[Reject the influence of a lesson: 9. Clearing Hopeless by acting to prove it wrong]

She'd... she'd get her back for this! This was the thought in Foxpearl's head as she started to mmph!! as loudly as she could through her gag, as she started to bang her chains as loudly as she could, as she started to pathetically plead and whine from the inside of the sealed tank. Just see if she didn't! Sooner or later the Princess would get captured and bound and humiliated and then she'd be there, running a finger under her chin and whispering 'how cute' and it would be so devastating that she'd forget that this ever happened! Just see if she wouldn't!!

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Oh no this is just like that movie where the adorable genie gets dragged back into her lamp, struggling all the way, until she's trapped and forced into the mandatory genie outfit! Rendered an obedient servant to wickedness! In an instant she's gone from the devil ascendant to holding onto the paving stones with her fingernails and screaming as she's dragged inevitably towards that sucking nozzle, fire pouring off her body into the engine -

But while that's happening she has a moment to think through some high powered ideas.

So there was a fascinating little intellectual module here. Xingtian, according to this description, was stating that she had embarked upon this process without knowing that Heaven approved. She had the theory, but had still done a bunch of stuff before Heaven sent a sign, and then took the sign as proof that what she was doing was correct and she should do even more of it.

Concept: I should do things without checking first and Heaven will validate me

[Reject influence: 5]

... but she already did that. She was already a flawless, superb and cute defender of the city while also being a bulwark against moral decay. She knew that any day now Heaven would recognize her as the spiritual equal of any of the highest gods, maybe make her Heavenly Minister of Justice, and apologize for ever doubting Fox Virtue. And this ghost robot girl monster wasn't even disagreeing with her about any of those things! They just thought that she'd be able to do them all even better while inside the ghost lamp box, dressed in diaphanous silks probably, and where was the theoretical grounding to argue that she was wrong? She didn't know. Was the mayor really a semen monster?

Her fingers left long scorch marks on the stone as she was dragged relentlessly across the ground towards the waiting fox prison.

[Marking Hopeless and Insecure]

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

The most powerful distractions were things that you couldn't ignore even if you knew they were distractions. Like breasts! Foxpearl looked at her own, and then looked at the flaming ghost-powered power armour. She whispered to them "Look what they must do to imitate but a fraction of our power."

Her breasts caught fire. Then, the rest of her. She fell from the Bodhi tree like Satan from Eden, a comet of coruscating energy. The symbolism was important; to fall into hellfire was to become the master of the hellfire. It burned away her clothes, her hair, everything but the scarf still wrapped around her face, revealing an angelic body made of elemental fire. The trailing ends of her scarf arched up behind her like shadowy wings.

The fire had no chance. It was mere ghostfire, and that could never resist the sheer magnetism of foxfire. It flowed towards her and absorbed into her body, making her grow larger and larger, hotter and hotter, fiercer and fiercer. As Foxpearl rose up, nine feet tall and built like Lucifer sculpted in marble, she knew in her heart that she had this and that absorbing all of this ghost energy was well within her capabilities.

[Unleash your powers: 9; effect is unstable or temporary; tell me how!]

"Good afternoon!" she said brightly - it took more than being made out of fire and stuffed full of ghost energy to muffle a foxgirl's voice. "Can you tell me more about your ideology? I'm trying to figure out if I need to go over or under the table to get to the truth."

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

When the primordial nothingness at the beginning of time split into four, and then into the infinite trillion things -
When it split into laws and those laws became heat and the light obtained weight and the weight gathered light into dust -
When the dust burned so hot that it became air and the air burned so hot it became water and the water burned so hot that it became life -
When the trillion things looked up at the universe with their eyes and felt it with their senses and were aware of themselves and each other for the first time -
You know, did they realize that they were signing up for an infinity of unpaid labour strapped to the wheel of reincarnation? Having to endure the ecstasy of life just so some primordial collection of cosmic power could experience itself from multiple angles? Well, Foxpearl knew what that was like - and she knew a con when she saw it!

Concept: The big bang was like a foxgirl

She sat atop the Bodhi tree. Why sit beneath? A higher vantage point was spiritually nourishing, that was why they'd invented Nepal. It was also on top of an apartment building's roof garden which was basically just bonus altitude and therefore bonus wisdom.

Her triangular ears twitched in the breeze. The fur on her tail cascaded like autumn napalm. Her lips curved to show a single fang as if to undermine her meditative pose. A huge sixteen-foot scarf, patterned with black fish scales, rippled and arched around her, held on an ethereal breeze like a kite, covering the lower half of her face. A mask. Heroes wore masks. Villains wore masks? Was there an honour code there? If she was caught - if someone got their hands around her scarf and pulled it tight like a leash - would they tear it off when they took her prisoner or let her retain that one modesty? Her thoughts were drifting. Yes, they'd let her keep it. A mask was like a safe word. When a hero wants to retire then they take it off and they're out of the game forever, just like a luchadore. Until then didn't it mean you were still having fun?

Concept: Masks are safewords

Except Xingtian didn't exactly seem to be enjoying this. She didn't get it - Lady Foxfire had always enjoyed her crimes. She enjoyed them so much she'd literally lost a tail rather than not enjoy them as intensely as she did. Parasites were a species of landlord, she knew that, but vermin was a politician and she was pretty sure Xingtian was not the ruler of any city, and if she was she wouldn't maintain the territory for long with her proposed use of incendiaries. She scowled. Ideas were so much easier to process when she could just think about them intellectually. When she was dealing with humans the thoughts always got so complex and poorly argued. Superstition - which she gathered from the context was like arguing badly - was like opium, though she couldn't confirm that because she hadn't gotten anybody to sell her any.

Concept: I should try drugs

So yeah, this felt weird and bad and squishy. Bank robbery and arson were separate career paths and the person yelling their fire-based ideology in allcaps had all the hallmarks of being a foxgirl distraction. Her ears twitched. Her eyes scanned. Someone somewhere was reaching for a wallet while all of this was happening, surely. It's what she would do, if she wasn't so wise, and such a good girl.

[Assess the situation: 8. What here is the biggest threat?]

Breathless Dead

Mosaic!

"I am Quajl," she gave it without the expectation of getting it back.

"My brothers and sisters were taken by the Skies. Drafted as Biomancers for the war effort. The knowledge is cursed, and when they were ordered they could not disobey. It is for them I bargained with the Stone Tribe, hoping that I could build a weapon to crack the Skies. Perhaps in the crystals is an end to this nightmare, a world where the helix is not a chain. I fear that instead there will be a new and more efficient form of tyranny."

She held against Mosaic's softness, the soft and fragile clinging of someone who couldn't remember her last hug and didn't know when her next one would come.

"In truth, I fear my cause is hopeless," she said. "I cannot chart my way forward. I do not know which path will help my quest. If you can give me a reason, no matter how tenuous, I will fight for you."

Ember!

"Although it pains me," said Taurus, with her casual warrior's grin, "to send you out half-trained and half-punished, you are essential to this operation. We're going to take Beri. It's a strategic position close to the shipwreck and we'll need the base and the population's labour to dredge it. To take Beri we need to capture Mosaic. To capture Mosaic we need you, puppy."

"I would like to reiterate," said Gemini, "that Mosaic would probably side with us if we explained ourselves to her."

"Yeah," said Taurus. "Probably. But honestly, I just want to fuck with her a bit, you know? You hear the pack. Taurus is so good she might even be a match for Mosaic!! They'll shut up once they see her bound and squirming beneath my boot." She grinned. "I'll negotiate with her then."

She leaned down to Ember, breath heavy with Command. "That's fine with you, little Ember? It won't cause any tangled loyalties or silly little acts of defiance if I send you out to seduce your girlfriend into a proper introduction to the pack? Will you," she asked, "be good?"

Dolce!

"Consider," said Vasilia as the sand began to rise around her in streaming ribbons. "You feel despair. You spoke to others who feel despair. Despair is the dominant emotion here. Consider also that nothing here is accidental. The Skies built this despair as deliberately as they built the songbirds, as deliberately as they placed the stars."

The sand rotated, each streaming ribbon falling horizontally rather than vertically, spinning into an endless orbit. She looked out into the sea with the same expression as a knight from a dream, seeing a vision in the dying blue-green of the sunset.

"Consider also," said the Furnace Knight, "that those who have built this system do not feel despair. On the contrary, they are filled with hope, filled with ambition, filled with motivation. One cannot accuse the Crystal Knight of resting upon her laurels. So, why? What do they have which is so worth striving for? What justifies building all of this rather than simply using biomancy to place themselves in a state of enlightened bliss for the rest of their lives? What is the true nature of the Endless Azure Skies?"

Dyssia!

"What have you done to earn it?" said Aphrodite, taking a drag on his cigarette. "You cling. Oh, do you cling, stuck to life like a leech on a pig's cock. And I love that for you!" he laughed. "Don't you see? This is my gift. Hate, love, craving, obsession. It's all that keeps you here! Without me you'd end up like all of Whonce's customers, rolling up enlightenment and snorting it until your brains melted and your souls checked out of the galaxy entirely. Did you know how the Azura survived the invention of biomancy? They invented an even bigger obsession!" he cackled. "Something they wanted even more than to wirehead their brains forever. They doubled down on craving and called their new obsession the Endless Azure Skies."

He spread his arms and grinned. "That's why this. That's why all this. The alternative to the Skies is blowing your brains out with transcendent happiness and leaving this world of matter and meat to those who are too broken to want to be happy. That's what you're feeling now, you want to run and overdose on being a good person. That's fine, your genetics will be filtered out and the next generation will descend from those who are on board with the program."