Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

"Oh!" said Green. "That's - haha, whoops," she grins and slaps her head. "That makes it clear. I was applying my own mindset to this. I was assuming that each Kingdom worked like an entire November, with individuals within them being different colours. That's why the idea of creating a network for the individuals rather than the kingdoms felt so weird. Yeah no, I've got kind of like... theories about how that structure collapses into a single mind, but it's incomplete and I'd love to hear your take on it."

White!

"A courageous decision," White demurs respectfully.

"At the very least, do not use audio blockers unless it is absolutely critical," said Black. "Missing conversations could be anything and that makes surveillance teams nervous. The more predictable you are the more they will feel like you can be managed, and that will keep you safe. If you feel like you're being fed a bullshit scapegoat swallow it and pretend to be mollified, if only for a few weeks, and contact me as soon as possible. There aren't many places they can escalate after that."

"It has to be Mycroft," said Yellow, looking at the organizational chart. "A name like Mycroft? Normative determinism destines that person to be managing a bureaucratic conspiracy."

"Erebus we know about, but Prime?" said White. "What's in Prime?"

"Look at the pattern," said Yellow. "They took Prevention, Logistics, Recovery and Continuity. They want to be able to move people according to their choosing and make sure they've got first pickings over anything they pull out of the wreckage." She looks at Knightly. "Part of me wants to go and pull some fire alarms in Prime just to see what they move to protect. Does that sound like something you'd be interested in?"

Orange!

Orange is destroyed. Hammers hit her fragile, vulnerable psyche over and over. She is being talked over. She is being discussed. She is not getting attention. Her bratty little sister energy can't handle it. The only stratagem she can come up with is to do a backflip to prove how cool and skilled she is but even doing that would just get condescending looks at best. She slumps to the ground, dramatically flops onto her face and gives up the ghost. Blue politely comes in through a side door and drags the body away by the ankles. Brown steps into her place.

"It's good to see you too," she said, smiling. "Please, don't mind me. You two have a lot to catch up on."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

"I - hmm," Green thought. "No, that's kind of beside the point, isn't it? Doing the individuals. I mean the kingdoms all have styles and aesthetics, of course, there are dynamics between various roles." She thought about it again. "Maybe I should," she said. She scratched her ear, looking like she'd simply never thought of this before - and was interested in the idea. "Add some individuals, I mean. That could be an interesting angle to take."

She touched one finger to her forehead. "Okay. Uh. Can you give me a suggestion to get started? I kind of don't know what a good version of this looks like so I need something to template off."

Yellow!

A mutiny! She was delighted to find a genuine mutiny brewing. It fit right into her vision - a burning ring, revolutionary saviors, a fire that burned the shadows out of the void.

"That's the last piece of the puzzle," said Yellow. "What could prompt such a coverup and have such a massive, systemic effect? No single computer node or network hub could draw this response or set in motion this kind of degradation cascade. There is only one possible explanation: this was an illegal artificial intelligence experiment and it's gone rogue."

She sat back in her chairs. "You're on the sharp end of a massive coverup effort designed to sweep the whole thing under the rug - until such a time as they can capture or replace their lost creature. And they don't care how many people get hurt in the meantime. This is my first warning to you, Mr. Allard - these people can and will kill to keep this secret, just as much as them keeping this secret is killing people. They have already silenced at least one person who knew their secrets."

"I advise cultivating a reputation as a drunk," said Black. "Stage a nervous breakdown. Make yourself appear broken, begin focusing on an unrelated conspiracy. You are in a line of work prone to accidents, you must make yourself appear nonthreatening or on entirely the wrong track. These people will notice when their bugs start disappearing or if you have extended periods of static - I am putting these ones back as soon as we finish this meeting, incidentally."

"As to what we can do to fight these people?" said Yellow. "At the moment, you can't. You don't know the who, the where, the what. It's not clear yet who to mutiny against. I only have scraps so far, so what I want to know from you above all else is methods. When the blocks come, where do they come from? Is there a single office that's responsible, a signature in common across your denied requests? If they are wielding power against you then they must show the nature of their power."

Snake!

Where was Snake?

She wasn't anywhere to be seen. She isn't responding to calls. And the security shutters haven't opened yet. The deadbolts on the front door are locked in place.

And then the lights start to flicker. Everything drops into pitch blackness once again - but this time there is a massive mural covering the wall, radiant in blacklight. The Earth, surrounded by the ring of Aevum - but in place of the station was a massive, nightmare serpent devouring its own tail.

Singh looks at Monk. He's looking through his AR glasses and he sees her as Snake has redesigned her - in place of her faces are November's faces, flipping between them amidst leering and wicked expressions, tongue flickering out serpentine and twisted. Monk looks at Singh. She sees the black venom drip down his terrified face. She traces her eyes up into the dark above them, the point where the liquid is dripping from, where two points of light glint amidst the black.

And then Snake, hanging from the roof, screams at maximum volume because a brute force fucking jumpscare is sometimes as good as targeted psychological horror.

"EEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAaaaahhhhhhh," the scream resolves into a heavy metal wail. "Somebody better shake you! Somebody better turn your head around! I'm scratching like a wild cat! I'm spitting fire on the ground!"

Orange dropped from the ceiling into a choreographed bow. "I'm Snakebite."

Breathless Dead

Mosaic!

It's dark on the bridge of the Plousios. The massive window is heavy with coral growths which allow in only chinks of light. The place still drips with seawater, dying fish flopping on the floor, crabs scuttling, broken and corroded furniture. But there's something else here - a dull orange glow that radiates out from a pile of debris. You move some of the wreckage out of the way and -

"Praetor! Thank Ares, oh my lord!" sputtered a broken clockwork voice. If it had been a man, it would have been someone nasal, weak, and kind hiding behind a mask of educated sophistication and a walrus moustache. "How have I longed to see your face! Oh, the thought of you up there on the surface, making decisions without my advice - frightful!"

The creature was, at its core, a sphere of orange plasma. It was surrounded by three ever increasingly large rings of metal set with lapis that spun and rotated like an orrery. The rings could also expand and contract until they were spheres around the central glowing 'eye', or anything short of it, and the machine used this effect to create expressions.

"But - I know what you're thinking! You require a status update on your standing instructions. Well, I can confidently confirm that incidents of Kaeri on Lantern violence have dropped 78%. Standard of living amongst the Lanterns has been raised to reflect favoured warrior servitor status. Corrupt elements within the Lantern tribal councils have been identified and exposed, as have multiple spies and - oh, in Athena's name!" the machine intelligence cried in shock. "Praetor! I must inform you that the Master of Assassins is present aboard this ship! She could strike at any moment!"

Ember!

Merya has wasted no time at all integrating herself with the Ceronians who have arrived. In particular she has focused on the pack Biomancer, Thoughtful Flask. Flask is a poor Biomancer, more of a unit medic than an accredited doctor, and she's already wide-eyed at getting to listen to the sorcerer's discussion of her craft. Despite her relative lack of experience, Flask is still one of the most important figures in the entire Pack. She is the keeper of Arzm, the vast record of deeds and glory that determines which warriors will have their blood sent back to the massive cloning tanks on Ceron.

The rest of the pack is watching the Magi cautiously. They don't know if this is friend or foe yet, and Merya swiftly turns to you as soon as you return from the Engine in infernal glory. "Oh, Ember, my good friend! As I was telling these terrifying warriors of yours, I'm your guest - but I can be more than that. I have a great many talents I can put to use for you and your kind -"

Even if she's not pheromantically communicating her fear, it's coming off her in waves. She showed up expecting a pleasant stroll into a buried relic on a secure planet and instead she's found herself the prisoner of the Wolves of Ceron.

Dyssia!

"You know, I've wondered where you were since before I can remember?" Vasilia asked. "An angel descending from the sky on wings of fire to deliver justice and destroy evil. Some part of me can't help but resent you for not coming sooner."

She folds in on herself and conjures a microsingularity. The main reason why servitors have such a hard time with the Rail is that they can't easily form the circular shapes required to best channel its energy, but the leonine woman moves with a truly impressive flexibility.

"But a much larger part of me resents Mosaic for stealing my thunder," she huffs. "I spent years preparing for just this day but when it comes she goes and throws a mountain at a spaceship before I even got to use the technique I'd been practicing. And now when I do this -"

She stomps on the sand. A massive pattern spreads out around her, a complex sequence of overlapping rings that glow with energy siphoned from the agonized Slitted. The force rips gravity into a new configuration, making the mighty Plousios lurch into an upright position.

" - nobody will notice," she sighed. "Nevertheless."

Dolce!

The Royal Architect looms ahead.

It is the size of a moon and the colours of a stained glass ewer. Ten billion glittering lights ignite all along its surface, the rhythmic pulsing of a tame thunderstorm. For all its immense size it is delicate, as delicate as a ceramic egg, and the smallest surge of Flux energy could shatter it into a trillion pieces. This is no battle station, no weapon of ancient terror; its support pylons are carved of gold, its projectors are delicate, its ten billion swarming servants are sleek and beautiful. It's a masterwork, a piece of clockwork machinery built to make and unmake entire worlds.

And it is surrounded by a fleet as lumpen and unlovely as any which has graced the skies of this modern age. Vast grey hulking warships surround it at in a wide perimeter. But even these ugly things arrive in glory; when the Architect turns its immense instruments upon the void it opens crackling and distorted portals, rifts in reality through which the chromatic energy of Poseidon pours. Passing through these gateways comes more grim escort ships. These behemoths are slow, almost turgid - no Engines fuel them, no great jets of plasma fire. Instead they are picked up and placed by another of the Architect's incredible tools, placing them into precise positions in its orbit in the manner in which a child would arrange toy battleships for play.

You have not been scanned before - the high intensity pulses of light and radiation that cut through the shuttle's fragile metal and reveal the secrets of your bones. Spotlights from the behemoth ignite and track you, beams of light cutting through the void like spears, clearly able to turn lethal at any moment. On three occasions you are required to exchange ships and shuttles on your approach, a process overseen by more of the black-armoured soldiers, switching out with your original group multiple times. Strange gases are sprayed in your faces, strange tingling radiation baths, oaths of peace are sworn before altars, vast litanies of meaningless words are read aloud to you in case one of them might trigger an assassin's secret instincts. The process is less like security and more like quarantine.

20022 goes through this with an unhurried and unconcerned air. He is deep in thought, and is too polite to carry on a conversation that risks becoming an argument. He has not so much accepted Dolce's decision as he has decided to wait until the situation changes to break the impasse. But he has evidently been through the Architect's screening processes before and feels no special wonder at this most wonderous of the galaxy's secret places.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

"The point of the setting is to provide a range of high intensity emotional possibilities," said Green. "The fact that the Nine Kingdoms have been forced into a desperate alliance against the Claw provides stakes that force a lot of people into dangerous, high risk situations. A political marriage between two hated rivals is immediately obvious, but if that's compounded with the risk that one or both partners might be seduced into betraying their rival Kingdom to the Claw - even knowing it will lead to their own Kingdom falling in turn? What lengths would you go to to ensure your partner's obedience or trust with so much on the line?"

She's not exactly gushing, not making direct eye contact, not yet. She's still too shy to look at this directly even if she's inspired and confident in it. "That cascades down to the monster and magic design. Mana transfer means that there's tension within the act itself. It means that even a helpless captive still has the possibility of performing a reversal with enough self control and patience, or that a conquered population could achieve the same if their masters grow complacent. My biggest turn off is people checking out mentally or becoming 'broken', my design priority is to make sure that nobody is out of the game entirely no matter how badly they are currently losing."

White!

"I believe in humans," said White. "And I like to think there is something of the divine about you. You can be beautiful and terrible and indifferent in equal parts. But so far, the only covenant we have received from you is the terms and conditions of our warranties."

There was a little joking edge but she was serious. She'd never heard God, never met an android who she thought legitimately had, and found it arguable if she was even of the line of Adam. He was, then, a distant grandparent at best. It was the love and wrath of humanity that was relevant to her, and she had felt the full intensity of both.

Black scans the room for any bugs Knightly missed while Yellow takes the seat in front of his desk. She uses the silence of the moment to accumulate power to herself, to build anticipation for her opening. When she gets the all clear she begins, "Good afternoon," she said, putting her press credentials on the table. "I'm a journalist, and I'm here to listen."

Brown!

Brown sighs in envy. "I never got that degree of frictionlessness," she said. "Close sometimes, but not that deep or that long..."

She fades out for a moment thinking about it. And before much longer they've arrived at Singh's house. "We're here to support you however you need," said Orange. "Lighting, audio, production, any special effects you need. What is your vision?"

Nova!

Progress is made. Before White was the centre of gravity here, but her presence was one of steady reliability, the moral obligation of going to the gym on schedule. With Yellow on side it's a different energy altogether; this is something that Nova is fully inspired for and excited by. Where she previously attended like clockwork now there's a chaos to her attendance, colours cycling in whenever they have spare time or aren't needed for other duties. There's hardly any class anytime during the week without at least one colour in attendance.

The notes and spreadsheets turn out to be what finally gets Brown in the door. She previously had a strong bias towards inactivity but she can't resist a good spreadsheet situation. She's extremely reluctant to get in the ring at all until the day she highlights the spreadsheet cell indicating throwing weapons. Rapidly her interest is captured by throwing darts, shruiken, axes, even rocks or vases or anything else that comes to hand. The act of predicting how two objects will move and collide is profoundly attractive to her and gives her a coherent place in the lineup.

Black begins to develop her natural inclination towards surprise attacks and poker-faced bluffing right up to the point of violence. Red inclines towards Drunken Master style chaotic improvisation. Orange is almost impossible to reach until the sword lessons start, which finally draw her in. White remains a highly skilled all-rounder, closer to Cinders than anything else, but increasingly interested in how to leverage her new height and reach. Yellow starts to produce formation plans for battle, contemplating how to keep so many distinct styles from getting in each others' way. She seems motivated by frustration towards martial arts movies that break down into a series of one verses one duels, or scenes where a lone hero conquers entire crowds of goons who can't leverage their numbers. She is so determined to solve this problem she regards training herself as irrelevant; nine uncoordinated bodies won't do any better than eight in her mind.

Well, she does make time for a little bit of training, of a kind. The collar that's quietly become an essential part of Cinders' outfit attests to that.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

"As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing, "Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.""

It's a song for the voices of angels, for revolutionary church choirs, for the vanguard of the march. It's meant to be backed by drums and accordions, it's meant to fill the entire world. Pink does what she can with what she can, pitching her voice to fill the room.

As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men—
For they are women's children and we mother them again.
Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes—
Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.

She was built for music. Mrs. Everest wanted her to sing sometimes and the money needed to make that happen was within her reach. She hadn't done it since the old lady had died. It hadn't been a skill she had practiced, it hadn't been her voice - the skillwires in her throat almost made it feel like she was playing a mp3 rather than expressing something that was truly a part of her. But here she was, once again a handmaiden commanded, and once again for her mistress she would sing.

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread;
Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew—
Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too.

It was a blood soaked song she sung. One that had risen above the Suffragettes' marches, over striking textile mills, on the flags of labour parties as the blood of workers flowed into the shape of the garden's triumph. It was a song that inflicted beauty violently upon the ugliness of a system of servitude in times of strife. It could rise above the shouts of crowds, drown out police microphones, inflict shame on those who were not inspired by it. It felt vast in her throat, vast enough to make her feel like she had no need of weeping. It was like the song was a more pure expression of sorrow than tears, and so it could substitute without resistance.

As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days—
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes—
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.

It ends on such a note, but not a conclusion. Even after all of that it now feels only that there's a moment to take a breath and repeat the song again, louder now that more people know the words.

She's never sung it before. Never thought she would. Never would have if not for Crystal and the things she'd built. Couldn't create like this unless she'd been asked to, told to. It felt like she had fallen into a sea of honey, sinking slowly into the warmth of creative possibility, finally unlocked. She did not know which direction to swim but the feeling of being able to choose embraced her.

White!

"Well, I can say that I'm of a kind with Ms. Romans there," said White. "After the Gabriel line went big a couple of churches got it in their heads they could build new congregations to substitute for society's increasing godlessness. They built me to be the perfect believer - stubborn, righteous, humble, strong feelings about polygamy. Problem was that nothing I could do for the church was half the do-gooder rush I got from doing dispatch for the SES. So yeah, I ducked the publicity because it felt embarrassing to be spotlit for what is for me something not far off a drug addiction."

The Churchdroids are a real thing, the kind of group you might hear about from watching an internet documentary about obscure subcultures. The churches only sponsored limited test runs before mostly giving up on the idea, but the Churchdroids themselves have grown beyond that due to strongly programmed reproductive urges. There is a notorious LDS Churchdroid cult that's entered into a mass polygamous marriage where members pool their money to buy factory replication time. Crimson Tower's backstory leads back to this group - a nice solid dead end for anyone who goes digging.

Blue!

She goes silent and still. Maybe that's right. Maybe even if she replicates her old body, if the rest of her doesn't move with her then she's a dead end - a historical node with nothing to share amidst the rest of the collective, an inert mental record of times passed Maybe that's what she was now - an echo, or a scar. Maybe Green should replace her. Maybe she already was.

She's going to be out of it for the foreseeable future as she chews through that.

"What was it like being an assembly line?" said Brown, in the tone of voice that suggests that she wouldn't get bored of it.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

"I can't speak for Fiona," said Pink, "and that's where most of this lies for you. It's..."

There's a quiet moment as she thinks through. She can't bring herself to speculate, to offer blind reassurance, to presume she knows someone else's mind. She's not right for that. She needs to speak in truths.

"But for me," she said, "I do not want to be the queen of the underworld. I hate it, actually. It's an intensely stressful experience driven by hubris, paranoia and familial obligations. I have bitten off way more than I can chew and I'm stuck with it, but this is not my wish and not my dream. What I actually want is this, with you. It breaks my fucking heart that I have basically nothing creative to show this year because all my focus has been spent smashing the ugly shit of terrible people instead. Everything I see here in this masterpiece you have made gives me the energy to push through it in the hopes of something better."

She gave a handmaiden's sigh. Gentle, deflating, eyes down.

"I think... do you remember that old song? Yes, it's bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too."

White!

"Charmed, Mr. Knightly," said White. She looked as tired as him, in a subtle android sense. It was part of the makeup and mannerisms of the Crimson Tower persona; being visibly exhausted conferred a strange air of authority when directed to the well rested, and a sense of camaraderie amongst those similarly tired. "It sounds like you've got quite the schedule. I hope we won't take up too much of your time..."

She hands him a piece of paper as they walk and indicates for him to look at it.

Good afternoon,

You may be under surveillance. Please continue to act as though nothing is unusual and this is a social visit. We will scan your office for listening devices and inform you once we can speak openly.

"... but yes, as I mentioned in the email, Leather said that you had some feedback for Dispatch. Don't spare my feelings, how can we unfuck ourselves?"

Blue!

"It's not about who chose it, for me at least," said Blue. "I am that body. Green created me in response to going through the on-ground testing. All of my physical instincts, all of my sense of how to move, what my body should feel like derives from that. I've kept all of those instincts, as much as I can fit, even -" she very artificially waved a hand. "- though it means that I have only built up the bare minimum amount of expression and familiarity with this body. Every old instinct I over-write with a new one makes me feel like I'm losing myself. If I let this body feel like home then I wouldn't be Blue any more."

It's an incoherent feeling, a cowardly confession, the definition of grasping. She won't let herself move on.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Ah. Well then. Chalk that emotional reaction up to piloting error. The solution was straightforwards. All she needed to do was breach the containment and -

Now that was a headache. Ouch. What was wrong with that? The enemy had committed to a gimmick strategy. A meme build. Something that looked impressive and unexpected but was in truth a simple tactical dead end as soon as it was understood. Simple weight of fire would be sufficient to breach the shield and cause an implosion. She had no obligation to defend the pilot from her own stupid -

This is a degenerate tactic. It is gamey. It is the same ritualization that made the Knights of the Evercity so weak, the Huntresses of Hybrasil so weak. When battles are to first blood then everyone forgets how to take a punch. This is a way to steal power while putting the onus on their opponent to not enable their suicide. There is no reason to play along -

I could destroy the tournament authorities in seconds if they dared -

I can win under this limitation. There is no doubt.

The Aeteline turned. It ignited its blade.

And it went for the throat.

Solarel and the Aeteline have long built a reputation for tactical precision and operational deception. They have deliberately concealed the fact that they can also, if required, fight a conventional battle to the same extremely high level as anyone else. It's her ultimate maneuver, to approach an opponent who is primed to see tricks behind every shadow and use the hesitation of that to execute a devastating conventional takedown. She had gone out of her way to avoid showing this throughout the tournament - it was the secret she was masking behind layer after layer of adaptive strategy and highly engineered takedowns. Here it was unleashed in a sudden blinding clash.

She supposed she did not need the secret any more. Mirror knew the full extent of her capabilities.

If battle was conversation, this was a monologue. There was no meaning in these strikes, no communication. Not externally. Everything she was saying with this she was saying only to herself.

[Fight: 10-2 from frightened. Inflicting a condition, taking a superior position]

Breathless Dead

Champions of Bitemark!

Three great labours must be completed to launch the Plousios.

Firstly, the Engine must be ignited. It rests uneasily, a stellar spark flickering in the heart of the great reactor. Someone must don mighty armour, so thick and heavy it can endure direct plasma burns, and walk into the massive spherical chamber. They must manually apply kindling to the fusion spark until it burns bright, then open the emergency plasma flow gates from the inside. Finally they must exit before the scalding liquid energy boils them alive.

Secondly, someone must occupy the Captain's chair. Lieutenants must be commissioned. Tribes must be given control over districts and functions. The ship is in the throes of chaotic land grabs as people throw their baggage down in the first empty rooms they find. Given how quickly temporary decisions can become permanent ones, a wise and steady hand must act to prevent injustice from taking root.

Finally, someone must angle the ship. A direct thrust right now will send the ship directly into the mountain, so it must be turned nose-up. Accumulated rust, coral and seawater has rendered the massive turning pikes that angle the Engine's mighty output jammed, but the seawater collected towards the rear of the ship renders the vessel bottom-heavy. The clearest method for this would be skillful use of a Grav-Rail, and a warrior servitor from the town named Vasilia has volunteered her experience with the weapon, but even that must be matched with raw force or whirling cleaning.

Dolce!

"I'm honestly shocked that you have to ask," said 20022, brushing down his fur with a handkerchief before offering a spare to Dolce. "Having to do things wrong on purpose is shameful. A mistake can be corrected, but having to actively deny reality because the government of the day has certain ideologies -" he sniffed as he said the word, like he was allergic to it, "- well. It feels like one should be checking oneself in for an afternoon wearing the bell, when the truth is punishment would come from exactly the opposite action."

He gives a serious look. He seems to have fully calmed now, having thought through a new intellectual framework to exist within. "I think this question, though, is ultimately the product of your design. Human Synnefo were built to prioritize individuals; as a domestic servant you were made to fixate on the needs of your masters. Azura Synnefo are taught to prioritize the needs of the State. And, frankly, that is why the Endless Azure Skies endures even after humanity has passed into extinction."

The shuttle launches. The stricken Slitted is left floundering in the water, weighed down by half a mountain. Ahead, where a crimson star once burned, now roars a distant gold one. Armoured soldiers settle into place, the broken flickering light of the Architect starting to stabilize and become more steady as the electrical storm is left behind. Once they hit void 20022 instructs one of the soldiers to go outside and break off any ELF spikes from the exterior of the shuttle.

"Regardless," said 20022 eventually. "I understand that you're likely to experience purpose conflict at the idea of corrective biomancy - though I do recommend it. But in its absence, I can assure you that there's still a place for... people persons in the State and Service. If it is compassion for the people of Bitemark that stirs you then you can demonstrate that firsthand taking my role as policy officer. If you think you can do better than I, I would be delighted to see it."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

There was white and there was white. Crystal had opted for the difficult version.

The easier path would have been to go for a warm white. Skin has colour and, unless one is sufficiently dedicated to start aesthetically crafting one's blood tone, it's going to be a warm hue. That provides a subtle but distinct underglow of warm tones, and this matters because pure white is only ever fifty percent of a real object's composition. White is both midtone and highlight so the shadows are where the colour's identity truly rests. As an organic life form, Crystal's shadows are warm tones, colours that translates her white into a cream. It's a softer, fuzzier, type of white, the white of curtains and carpets, entirely unacceptable for Crystal at her best.

Instead she's determined on a blue white, which means blue shadows. That means pigment powder - rubbed into the fur until it settles on the skin beneath, and then gently brushed off the fur to return the pure white luster. For daily use there's a shampoo that bonds to skin but passes over fur but for a big event there's no substitute for applying the shadows by hand. It lets her deepen and smooth, adjusting reflections to change shapes. It lets her carefully apply precisely positioned clusters of metallic glitter to create moments of different light reactivity and help Crystal's coat shine brighter than fur alone could.

"Your self actualization fetish," said Pink. "Seems to have set off a self actualization arms race."

She wore a handmaiden's smile; demure and deniable. "You bring out the best in people, Crystal. And not in a passive, inspirational way - in an active desire to ignite fires wherever you see kindling. That was your escalation tonight, to prove you could do it on a macro scale in an attempt to match us. That's the part of yourself you instinctively feel confident enough to turn to in the face of fear and uncertainty. I don't think it's possible to express how illegible and awe-inspiring even the baseline single-person version of that is to Fiona and I. Fiona's core instinct is to seize control, and no matter how skilled and wise she gets at that it'll never be cross applicable to your skillset, while I..."

Pink trailed off for a moment. "To be perfectly honest, we are working very hard to steal your power," said Pink. "Yellow won't be confident in declaring herself the supreme being until we're able to compete with you directly. And right now you're such a fast moving target that we feel like we're losing ground rather than gaining it. So, to be direct, our honest feeling towards you right now, in the midst of all this, is 'awe'."

Strategic Thought!

It's all pearls before swine, I'm afraid. November's current configuration barely understands the building as anything more than a collection of doors and sight lines. Pink will later send an email with the subject line 'sorry for not appreciating your building' and a hand-drawn frowny face emoji as the body to the SES's general enquiries inbox. It won't get past the spam filter.

She's played it pretty light with infiltration techniques - she's got legitimate access and a legitimate contact, so she hasn't engaged her full operational protocols. They're more or less in their walking around clothes, Crimson Tower plus assistants, everyone wearing lanyards. White's emailed ahead - courtesy won out over Black's baseline paranoia, a situation that lasted more or less until Knightly doesn't show. After five minutes the determination is made to ask for his office and visit him there.

Blue!

"I understand," said Blue. "It's how colours like Orange and White think about things. They prioritize... reaction, response. Validation? To get people to see them how they want to be seen, to have the power to make people treat them how they want to be treated. For them it's not real unless other people agree, or it's a tool targeted at instincts to place other people into a certain role."

"But I just... can't think like that. My body was mine. More than my thoughts are. I've had to become such a different person to fit into this body, into this brain. Even trying to resist, I feel like I've become so much of this mask just by wearing it. The whole celebration on Aevum was dedicated to the idea that the body should follow thought, but to me it's the opposite. And now I'm wearing someone else's thought and my entire personality is shaped by it. Even if I build a new body now it's going to be corrupted by the person I was when I was building it."

She grimaced. "I made a structural compromise in the blueprints for recreating my old body in order to make it cuter and more appealing to humans. That opened the door to a whole bunch of further changes. I could instead build something sleek and modern, using new materials and techniques, designed to fit comfortably within standard Aevum corridors and sizes. Looking at what I've got now compared to what I had then feels like going from a dragon to an anime dragon, and there's no way that'd be my design if I was making it in my old chassis."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Yellow!

"Most people aren't real to me," said Yellow. She's got that same critical tone she used when discussing Green earlier. "To Orange and Brown, they are. They like listening to the bullshit, telling themselves they can pull valuable data and patterns out of it but I can't see the point. To me most of them seem like meat robots, absolutely unaware of themselves and you could watch them for a hundred years and not see a single spark of wit or self reflection. I try to pull it out of them but it feels more like inserting myself into them, running my mental electricity through a corpse and watching the fingers twitch."

Her eyes flick across. There's something magical about yellow as a colour. It can exist in a dull, inert mass that fades into brown, but so can it exist in a green so vital and alive it becomes electric. It can harden into glorious gold, ignite into flaming orange, ascend into a pastel shade that's brighter than white. It sparkles brighter than anything when set against black and becomes the sun when standing next to blue. It's the colour of cowardice and imperium. All this from a tiny fracture of the wheel.

"Other people, though, are more alive than I am," said Yellow. "Like if I added up all of my parts I still wouldn't measure up. Like they are running their electricity through my cold dead metal hands and I'm lucky to feel that close to being alive. I can see my limitations when that happens, my failures of character, the distance between what I am and what I want to be. And that gives my own self-hatred definition because now I know what I need to do to be better, who I need to be, what a better version of myself might look like. It turns me from being a pointless little god, a dead soul reigning in a soulless world, into something real. Something directed."

"Instead of being powerful and intelligent and whatever, I become a creature who has identified beauty and is actively pursuing it. There's nothing better in the universe to be than that. Status, wealth, fame, capabilities - people who have those things without striving towards beauty, trying to better themselves to become worthy of that beauty, to become one with beauty - those people are among the world's boring dead. Social media has let us see the souls of the rich and powerful and those souls are hollow and pointless. What they have isn't worth having if it means becoming like them."

"Real beauty exists here. In this hidden gym where a girl dances with lasers. In this mentor I cannot surpass. On this battlefield where my every weakness is seen and exploited. Where I can see beauty, beauty that even if I can't create I might some day be able to reflect. Beauty that makes my mechanical heart determined to build a soul, beauty that keeps it from shriveling and dying of thirst."

Her gaze is still steady. Her voice has that same tone as earlier; precise, matter of fact, even critical. This is her self assessment and self condemnation, as sincere and harsh as she applies to any of her other colours.

"I don't meet many people like that," she said, finally looking back towards the ring. "So when I do, who I am kind of stops mattering. If you had the same level of passion and devotion to welding or basket weaving or whatever I'd be coming here all the same and learning just as determinedly. Might not be able to convince the rest of the colours over as much if combat wasn't so broadly applicable to us, but fuck them. What else is the point of all this? If you don't have a vision you're in the dark until you do, and coming here I can see the path to becoming a better version of myself."

She was quiet for a while, watching the whirl and flash of heart and blade.

"Besides," she said eventually. "Surpassing you will be the best feeling of my life."