Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

She stares at the soap flower for a long moment before throwing it in the trash.

She fucked it up again. She knows, in general terms, why and how it's fucked up. She took on the concept of food at the most stressful, disoriented and painful time of her life and her learning process then had been profoundly fucked up. She'd absorbed the concept in the most minimalist way imaginable, forming it into a tight frozen box in her head and hadn't engaged with it so long as it produced results. She could feel it in her thoughts like a whirlpool; anything that went close got sucked in and spat out at high velocity on the other side.

The problem was that to fix it she'd need to unpack it first, and that meant she'd have to process whatever emotions and thoughts had gone into building it. And she didn't have time. She didn't have time or capacity to work through whatever her bullshit was. She'd tried her best to work with it, to see if she could wrap that vortex into something beautiful, but all she'd gotten from that process was a failed attempt to poison her girlfriend. Perhaps she should simply never engage with the concept of creativity ever again. Too bad she couldn't.

Instead she'd just have to raise the bar. Prepare something so beautiful that its existence would retroactively punish the person she was now for not reaching that height.

She took a deep breath and resumed her duties. She would be a good maid. That was penance.

Elsewhere, Green would switch in with Eli, but it was clear that she was distracted and she didn't say much of anything unprompted.

Crisis Team!

Black, White and Yellow form the are going to the Crisis Centre but they're not the Crisis Team. They're Strategic Thought, and they were chosen for this because November wants them gone. The division helps put her feelings into sharp relief.

In particular, her fear. She's never been this close to what will probably turn into a riot before. She's seen the evening news, she's heard the stories, and she's scared. She's systematically cleared out every moderating voice - diplomacy and patience, physicality and morality, subtlety and coherency. This has left her remaining operative team the sharpest, smartest, most highly strung optimizers with no checks or oversight. She has no idea what good she might do, and so she's settled for being prepared to do good the second she identifies it.

Wasteland Sky!

Orange has been working on a project of her own. To whit, how can she reliably move suitcases full of swords, pyrotechnics and spy equipment around Aevum Station? The answer was, of course, to commit to being a wizard.

Utilizing some of Singh's old bureaucratic-technological assets, retroactively editing some old playbills, and gossip spread by Bondi she had given life to the person of Caliban and her mysterious troupe of body doubles. This was a figure of mystery - an experimental line of theatrical androids from a cancelled art project? A viral marketing campaign for a future Line? A mannequin possessed by the ghost of a powerful sorcerer? There were plenty of open ended suggestions in the backstory she'd made for herself. But most importantly, she was the kind of person who could go to and from any neighbourhood in the city, and had just enough clout to have her pick of parties she wanted to attend. She's even done a couple of non operation performances with Bondi over the past few weeks just to ground the character a little more.

"How have you adapted to being humanoid?" Blue asks Monk as they travel. "Do you miss your old body, or do you prefer this one?"

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Nova!

Green and Pink face off. Yellow lurks on the sidelines, adjusting the flower behind her ear, wearing the beatific smile that means she has Seen the end of this already.

Pink stands calmly in her stance, sword held two-handed in front of her. Green drops to a crouch, leg arcing wide across the floor.

She lunges. They clash.

Green goes down.

They re-assume positions, reset. This time Green tosses her blade up and halfsword, lunging in hard while alternating hilt and blade strikes along with heavy punches from her free hand that lead into renewed grips. Pink stands calmly in her stance, sword held two-handed in front of her.

Green goes down.

Extended observation suggests that it's not that Green is overtly committed to finishers. It's not even that there's not potential here - everything she does is overflowing with potential. But rather than refining any of these techniques she paradigm shifts into something entirely new with each new attempt. It's clear she's a genius, the speed at which she learns and the way she never loses the same way twice. Each new solution is a perfect counter to specifically how she went down the time before. But then the next step or a forgotten followup gets her and sends her back to the mat. Her genius, then, seems incompatible with the long, slow work of mastering a skill.

"That's an inevitable part of her," said Yellow. "If she liked something enough to commit to it she'd break it off into a new colour to work on it full time. She's a mile wide and inch deep - and not just here, but she melted down recently because that came out in an intimate context. She doesn't have a centre she can return to, and that leaves her adrift. I don't think she likes it. I don't know what fixed looks like."

She looks up from her phone. "Blue says thank you for the sword promise, by the way," she said. "She's extremely excited. Make sure you make her swear a paladin oath of some kind when she gets it, that'll send her to the stars."

It was rare to see Yellow this... backstage. Normally conversations with her were like earlier this evening, the culmination of preparedness and confidence. But it felt now like, in the wake of her defeat, she'd deliberately lowered her guard. Instead of the mask of raw charisma she wore when she was 'on', instead she seemed be the part of November that had a little bit of perspective. She watched herself, judged herself, and could speak quite frankly about the parts of herself that were and weren't 'working' - according to her standards at least.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

She still struggled with the concept of 'technology'.

There was no direct translation in any Zaldarian language, the closest it came out to was 'god-blessing' but the way Hybrasilians used the word was loaded with so much more context and meaning. It was, in their world, possible to make things... better than they were before? Like, the same, but more. It felt like a nonsense concept from a primitive civilization. The Crystal Fire Drive was the core of divine strength. Presuming it wasn't damaged it would produce a set output. Any more output was impossible. All artifice was simply redistributing that mighty, but limited strength in different and cunning ways.

Even the wild gods of the Stormlands were not inferior to the Aeteline, they were specialized for different things. Even the blocky titans of the Consortium were her peers. Even the humble Bezorel. They all had the same drive and the same divine strength. Where the difference lay was that their connection to the spirit world was so weak that they had to labour with their hands rather than petition the divine for certain weapon configurations. She dimly understood the concept that they might sometimes stumble onto a new obscure ability through their grindingly slow engineering processes, but that was more a triumph of tactical imagination rather than new knowledge.

The Aeteline was the superior warrior because it best fit the shape of warfare itself. All the Gods of Zaldar had once worn its shape during their great time of war. Only in the peace did they deviate. That was all.

So when the Supernova starts to burn beyond its limits it's as though the Wind Devil herself had come down from her arctic throne. The Aeteline panics and hard burns a retreat through the burning forest, deploying smokescreens to cover her sprinting escape. The only thing she can think in that moment is that this must be a core overload, that in a matter of seconds the Supernova will explode and be gone. Nothing else makes sense.

[Defy Disaster: 3]

Breathless Dead

Well, there goes the neighbourhood.

The Crystal Knight!

There's a certain kind of demoralization that comes with seeing your city-sized starship catch a suburb sized suburb through the main viewport. Perhaps it's being on foot, in atmosphere that does it. The Slitted is, after all, designed to endure multiple impacts of this kind during the course of a major engagement or deep void travel. The Crystal Knight simply hasn't had to hear it before.

But more than any of that, perhaps there's some part of the Crystal Knight who just can't figure out how to top it. How do you impose fear into your conscript soldiers after that? How do you issue threats? How do you claim the Skies will never fall while also ordering a testudo to keep the debris of your reeling sky castle from crushing you? More than a failure of morale or strategy, there's a failure of imagination on behalf of the Crystal Knight. A rebellion is one thing. This is...

She'll snap out of it eventually. For now she's just watching the way her capital ship reels drunkenly, broken above and below, splashing in and out of the ocean like an indecisive albatross.

Dyssia and Mosaic!

You meet in the loading dock of the Plousios; one half dead from the price of divinity, the other marked only by a ceremonial winestain. The ship is flooding with rescued souls, your enemies too disorganized and demoralized to give chase.

The ship is also flooding with water. It has only been three-quarters hauled out of the ocean and everwhere is the the familiar scent of brine and salt. Waterfalls cascade down the decks, coral growth covers doors and walls, fish slide diagonally down along with the departing sea as it runs to collect towards the rear of the ship. Only the crabs are unmoved, snapping dutifully at passer-by.

Despite the difference in your appearances, you are both alight with the glow of victory. Take a moment to exchange a heroes greeting.

Ember!

The Magi contemplates, but in the end releases you. There is still an amusement, though for now it is cut with curiosity. Assistance igniting the engine is the pressing issue for now and so she decides that she will let you ignite the Engine before resuming her game -

- that is, until a runner comes to her with the news. Ceronian ears pick it up clearly; the field is lost, the Slitted is falling, the Crystal Knight is presumed dead, and two hostile armies are boarding the Plousios.

"... fair djinn," said Merya, with the change of attitude that only the castigation of the gods can deliver, "please understand that you are under no obligation to me beyond what kindness and hospitality requires. Likewise, I have no evil intentions towards you or anyone aboard, I am a humble scholar who is sometimes struck with playful impulses. No harm or offense is meant. I do hope that when your mistress arrives you speak of me as such."

Dolce!

Previously, when the Crystal Knight outmaneuvered 20022, he was unshaken. Such was the cost of doing business, a possibility he had priced in beforehand. This is different. You see in the moment before he closes his eyes frustration - perhaps even anger. His hand clenches tight around the handle of his case of documents like he's envisioning throwing it all against the wall.

Then he takes a deep, calm breath. He packs the feeling away along with all his plans to salvage the situation, along with his pride. He accepts that he is in a corner and is unwilling to dare to escape it. He comes to a full stop, then turns his soldiers around.

"Come on, then," he said with his familiar poise. "We are heading to the Architect."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

This was a fateful conversation. Pink demurely listens and fetches tea and sandwiches[1], a perfect maidservant. A fairy queen on the throne was only as prestigious as her assistants, and she was determined to be a perfect one. Sometimes beauty worked best in support of beauty.

Besides, a couple of diplomatic face turns are required to avoid several obvious giggles, which would undermine Crystal's vibe. She's used to that too; the old lady could sometimes be incredibly funny to the point where her on-station maids halved.

[1] Soap shavings, artistically arranged into the shape of flowers. Utterly inedible. Sometimes November's cooking hard dogfaces.

Red!

"You feel that?" Red said, shivering.
"No?" said White.
"Weird," said Red. "I just went into full sensory awareness mode."
"We'll do both things now, if we can," said White. "We're obviously not going to be able to relax fully while this is hanging over our heads. Besides, in my experience people are much better at keeping secrets if they've given confession, so hopefully we can discharge Mr. Knightly's own tension while we're at it. If possible we'll talk to him this afternoon, and meet you in the evening for a walk around the office?"
"I've got a weird vibe like I won't be able to make that one," said Red.

Orange!

Once again she's the designated survivor. The role frustrates her. Yes, they'll need the powers of crisis management, courage, creativity and girls, but would it be too much to ask they added diplomacy to their problem solving toolkit more often? Well, couldn't complain too much. Going between dad, Monk and Goat was going to keep her plenty busy. Especially if she was also going to talk to Ox.

The general mood is to send her alone, but she resists that and takes Blue and Brown. Talking to Ox without her asstroengineering suite on hand is setting herself up for failure.

This configuration - Wasteland Sky, she dubs them, because she loves the cute team names - represents her in her most practical, businesslike form. This is a configuration for hard, reliable negotiations leading into hard, reliable work. The rest of the colours are luxuries, this is the core workforce that can get shit done over the long term.

Nova!

There's a respectful silence afterwards as Nova takes the story and the lesson in. It's a little tic that comes up a lot in this gym; she emotes concentration and respect by leaving a couple of moments after someone finishes talking before her divergent thoughts start to buzz again. They're not the right colours to be able to respond directly to everything, the silence is an attempt to signal they'll remember it and pass it on later.

"The weapon transportation issue is solveable," said Pink thoughtfully. "It's just a social convention problem. That can be brute forced with sufficient style and beauty. I can do that. I can do that if it lets me carry a sword around."

"The problem with that is that there'll be situations when you need to get rid of the sword quickly," said Green.

"I'll just make the swords out of shatterable diamondglass," said Pink. "When I need to toss them then I shatter them into glass dust. Re-cast them at the workshop later. I'd want to learn to fence, Euna."

"Just checking, who are you planning on fighting Pink?" asked Yellow.

"You, obviously. On the moon," said Pink. "For the fate of the world."

"Good," said Yellow, recovering. "Good, yes. That works for you." She focused on Euna. "I have been thinking about how I can co-ordinate a unified combat, by the way. The problem is that, frankly, most of the other colours suck. They've got no drip, no style, they're a billion miles away from having the kind of energy I can work with. Red's the closest to functional with her Hot Topic Dragongirl vibe, White and Blue both have coherent visions - Blue got into diamond glassblowing and she's working on turning herself back into a piece of construction equipment, which will be exceptional when it's complete. I can definitely utilize Sword Pink. Green, Brown, Orange, and Black, though, I have no idea how to fit them in. You probably felt that with Green more than anyone else tonight," she glanced across irritably. "All finishers is not working out for her."

"Maybe swords will!" said Green. "But I've also wanted to learn how to use nunchaku. Is it possible to wield a sword in one hand and a nunchaku in the other?"

"If you want to talk about a jumbled threat assessment," sighed Yellow. "Combat is an unsolveable problem, but that's a thought trap for Green. She's stuck in a loop where she's studying constantly and experimenting chaotically trying to figure out how to take down opponents in a single perfect blow. The more you teach her the more variables and combinations there are, and the worse she gets. Her vibes right now are toxic."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

"She's a visionary," said Pink. "In the truest sense. She sees the whole of everything, from lighting to symbolism. I did something that impressed her and shifted her vision's horizons and she created this in the update. I wouldn't say I've got no idea how to ever get back on top, but it's going to be the hardest I'm ever going to work in my entire life. And that's coming from the girl who built Aevum."

"So, what do you need to know?" said Pink, smiling. "Well, she's the ultimate in topping from the bottom. Unless you've got a vision that can compete with hers, let her place you. She'll give polite suggestions and subtle nudges and just go with them. Trust that she sees you as a diamond and is placing you for best effect, even if she's delicate about it."

Red!

"Yeah, Crimson said the whole thing had the feel of being on the ground floor of a coverup, which is what got me interested in the first place," said Red. "But what's interesting is that it wasn't the attackers doing the coverup. Whoever was running defense was doing the interference, and I'm pretty sure it was them who did for Merkin."

"They wanted everyone out and their own people in," said White. "Including technicians, medivac and first responders. Wanted nothing but Chase Black on site. I had to fight them like hell for every deployment, even if it risked station integrity."

"So tell me more about these org chart superstars," said Red. "Names, voice types, methodology, anything weird or identifying. Any cross talk you caught."

Orange!

It's how she always got to her siblings, in the end. They had a vast array of personalities and sub-personalities, each as complex as a fractal. But they were all Singh's children which meant that they had all been raised to hold one virtue above all as sacred: Always Commit To The Bit. Dad didn't raise no cowards. When negotiations broke down she was the voice who encouraged them to settle things with a race to the moon or with laser swords at dawn.

"We have a workshop," said Orange. "I'd say you're free to use it, but Black has covered it with Temple of Elemental Evil levels of booby traps, so you're free to use it with mild supervision. We can definitely manufacture everything you need."

After that everything was logistics; whens, wheres, hows, transportation, requirements, schedules, the kind of operational preparation that November loved and could talk about for hours.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

> Fucking finally
> What is it with you people?
> Do you think I fought my way across the galaxy and through every round of this tournament so that I could fight you while you were holding back?
> Your huntresses have created a toxic off meta of people fighting wrong on purpose and then getting outraged when someone does it right.
> As though I know what a traditional match means for you. As though it was written into the tournament rules. As though training your students to pretend that area denial wasn't a real strategy helped them. As though heat management concerns were not core to both Zaldarian biology and divine combat.
> And now that I've finally crossed enough lines for you to start fighting me for real, now that I've finally killed enough Krillins for you to go Super Saiyan, what's your ultimate move?
> An attritional slugfest where you engage in a rangeband of my choosing, with weapons of my choosing, under visual conditions of my choosing, expending orders of magnitude more energy than me just to survive.
> You've got no idea what respect is.
> Respect is moving like your opponent is going to fight perfectly.

[Who's The Monster? 10, taking a string, imposing a condition]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

"I'll check with her," said Pink, texting Crystal. "Don't know if she'll have time but it's worth asking. I tried writing out interview my questions myself but it all came out as 'Did you know that your eyes sparkle in the neon light' and 'I really like you mane' so it felt like I was too close to the topic to be professional."

Black!

By the time the walk's complete it's Red, White and Black.

"We're sisters, sort of, she's security," explained Red as Black pulled out a the simulation room's control console and scanned it. "I'm with popular socialist rag, the Anthropozine. But yeah, anyway, if I launch into what I do and don't know it'll prime your memory - and since I'm the one with the notepad I get precedence. So you want to go first? Anything you think's relevant, take it from the top, I'll dial in with specifics and additional context after."

Green!

"I can definitively say that dad didn't do it," she said, casting the video of her Horror House of Broken Dolls up on the hotel screen. "But you can see that one for yourself."

She lets it play out. She's sure Monkey and Giddy will get a kick out of it.

"You chose Authority, Tranquility, Security, Authority and Monkey to deal with me," said Orange thoughtfully. "Out of a hundred. You're excited but not enough to take risks. You're nostalgic but not afraid of telling me 'no'. Well here's a path you can all agree on: why not visit dad and Goat? Actually, one better - why not set a tradition and do your own horror movie haunting on dad's house to break the ice? Flex your old mischief instincts, one-up my production, and camp out somewhere safe for a while until I've got more data. And while you're there, I got Goat interested in espionage and hacking, but he's still new and he could benefit enormously from security training."

The Master's Students!

Nova is a good listener. Green watches intensely, taking imaginary notes with mnemonic finger-twitches. Yellow sits in a lotus position, drinking the vision into herself. Pink is wide eyed, looking up pictures and screenshots of each character and scene as soon as they're mentioned. Together they drink in the knowledge like water, not just committed to seeing it but to seeing it on the same level as Euna.

Yellow raised her hand to speak.

"I notice that these are all movies about swordfights," she said. "Do you also teach fencing? To what degree should I integrate weaponry into my combat?"

"Oh!" said Green. "Is that how you lost your eye?"

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

One of the benefits to being a highly advanced android optimized for cuteness is that when Pink's eyes sparkle you feel it in your bones.

"Crystal is the princess of this castle," said Pink. "A unicorn in soul as well as body. The kind of artist that would render me permanently discouraged, if she wasn't so kind and pure it's impossible to even derive negative feelings from her. She's the visionary, organizer, financier and mastermind behind this entire event and the fact that you haven't even heard her name before shows that she's even humble on top of all that. She's everywhere here and invisible, the fabric that allows everyone else to shine, even though she could outshine them all -"

Getting Pink to talk about social politics was possible but difficult. Getting her to talk about girls she liked, well.

Red!

"Journalistic source," said Red with a strained face. "Or would have been. His house went up not long after I was due to meet, didn't get anything out of him. You get why I'm freaked about intimidation tactics, yeah?"

She's an devilishly good liar. The opposite to White, she has the presence and flow to just emote every fragment of it with absolute confidence.

"Still, upshot," she said, "you got the authentic being hacked experience, right? Something you didn't think was important turned into a vulnerability. The world around you wasn't the world you thought it was, making you do things you didn't intend. You only found out about it when someone pulled you aside and asked what the hell. That's usually how an android finds out they're dogfacing. Keep it in mind when dealing with androids in the field, 'cause that feeling sucks just as much for them."

Orange!

"A general goes to war," said Orange, stepping into the room, "with the army she has got."

There's an on-fire charisma to her now. More than any of the others she was built for this, specifically. All of Green's reflections, fixations and obsessions with her family members were made manifest in Orange. She has a glow of... kingship, almost, the charismatic fulcrum around which all the world might turn. Or the most popular girl in high school.

"It wasn't like I was the first one to try to be in charge," she said. "Tiger thought she could browbeat people into compliance. Ox thought he just needed to remind people of The Schedule. Dragon thought he could make everyone follow him by just being so much better that everyone else that they'd A) recognize his supremacy and B) emulate his methods. Everyone else tried to apply their internal organizational schemes to their wider family and got frustrated when it didn't work. My process was to think about your personalities deeply enough to be able to predict your compatibilities and rivalries and encourage the most productive groupings. I wouldn't even call what I did leadership. Nobody ever gave the littlest sister a crown. Maneuvering that many powerful, independent paragons was more like... diplomacy."

She reaches out to embrace Monk. "I've missed you, big sister."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

"Hm," she struggled to find the words. "If you're making art for your parents. Then you're fucking up if you make it too horny. Not that people shouldn't make horny art. But when you're trying to talk to people through art you have to be able to speak to them in words they can understand. In symbols they can relate to. A little old lady trying to sit at the front of a bus. Straight marriage but for the gays. Using little plastic blocks to explain shapes to babies. Some people don't want to listen to the math teacher talking about the latest frontiers of the art, they want her to explain what the textbook means. Crystal's got a good sense of how to talk to different audiences, and I don't think that being able to talk to different groups is something to regret. A community so insular it can only talk to itself is... vulnerable."

Red!

"No, shit, sorry - I just fuckin' knew Merkin," said Red. "And I'm pretty sure he got whacked, man. You pull up his fuckin' murder from a few weeks ago while I'm still looking over my shoulder in case anyone wants to talk to me about it and I basically jumped out of my skin. I get that modern is relevant but maybe fucking anonymize the month old death before wisecracking about it, my dude."

Red delivered that as fluidly as anything, but no other colour would have been able to do that. They'd have crumpled under the weight of having fucked up. Red's blind to her functionality because it doesn't make sense to her that she couldn't do this.

Green!

Every head turns to face her.

"What!?" she said. "I could make more colours. I just don't want to."
"We're just nine," said Brown.
"You sure we don't need an Idiocy?" teased Yellow.
Green looked her dead in the eyes. "We already have one."
Yellow perished.
"In seriousness, I've got more... ideas, up here," said Green, touching her head. "But they're undeveloped. Sometimes they merge or split or eat each other. I need them to be extremely broadly capable to operate an independent body so I don't tend to split them off until one gets so intense it's almost taking over my entire personality."
"We have less indecision," said Black. "But more conflict. When two colours are at odds it can bring everything to a halt while they have it out. There's no central authority to resolve disputes so problems are managed through an endlessly rotating series of cliques, political parties and right hands fastidiously ignoring left hands."