Thanqol

Aristeia! Building a Champion

She notices the pause in momentum. Looks up. Smiles. Takes out her headphones. Slides out of your arms as languidly as a cat, opens the door, and pulls you inside. One hand holding the coffee, the other your necktie.

"You finally made it!" she said. "I've been looking forwards to this! I've already made a number of adjustments. New neofabric wraps to allow for better circulation while being just as good at restricting movement. A better blindfold, but I'm really happy with this one -- it's an energetic levitator! It creates a repulsor bubble which allows you to float on the air. It'll let me manipulate your position freely in something resembling zero-gravity which I can use in conjunction with the ropes and soundscape to deepen the sense of hypnosis. Much less mess than a sensory deprivation tank. No such thing as overkill, science has to run a long way to catch up to what magic figured out a long time ago!"

If she interfaced with the technology in her leg with half as much joy and ease as she moved through setting up these new wonders she'd be unstoppable. She set the two cups of coffee down in the middle of the work area; placed with as much precision as any other piece of machinery.

"But..." she waved her finger in the air as blue light began to run through the circuits of her devices. "Before I forget. This is going to get physical - and I need you in perfect shape for tomorrow's training. So!" She hefted a five kilogram bulk pack of cubegel out of a crate and set it on the counter. "Medical-grade cubegel. Same stuff that's in the synskin protective layer. It's at it's most effective if it's already on a wound when it is created, so I need to rub you down before we get started." She splashed some on her hands and winced. "Cold!" She rubbed her hands together rapidly. "Well, nevermind. Shirt off! Let's get started!"

Return to Thellamie

Sometimes you can find yourself thinking -

"Well, love is complicated."

It builds up like a callous in the face of pressure. Defenses emerge. Distance is imposed. Shields are raised. Excuses become ever more elaborate and complicated. Philosophy is deployed, as it usually is, as a defensive shell around a bothersome contradiction, like the generation of a pearl around a grain of sand. Love is complicated. Duty is complicated. A lot goes into sustaining affection past its shelf life. And it lasts until -

Until someone gives a heroic speech, detailing what the fuck is happening, what is going to happen next, and what your part in all of it is. A request to follow. A sign that you are valued. And the reaction is so total and intense that it feels like an entirely different category of thing that all your philosophy said was love.

"I will be your wings," said Injimo, hand over her heart.
A thumbs up emerged from the wheelbarrow of liquid mercury, before melting back into the shining liquid.
Even the empty air radiated commitment.

This was all they had needed to hear. They were yours now, until the end.

The Three Mountains

"Still the wrong question, though you came close that time," said Orange, smiling like a cat. "What is not valuable at this point is independence. I believe -" she brought up a glyph on her computer, "- that Slam! *Click* is looking for a meeting. The State is looking to reassert hegemony, they'll take your calls. There are other gangs and syndicates sniffing around. Lhotse has for a long time stood alone, but that's because it has not needed to do anything other than grow stronger. Now it does. It's time for the hermit kingdom to wake up and, in the immortal words of Princess Celestia, make some friends."

"But that's just my, like, opinion, man," she said, folding back into her humble, attentive position. "Not sure why you're asking me. As we have both reiterated numerous times, we put you in charge because we believe you can handle it. The direct investment is here if you think it's the best option. We believe that it'd be a mistake, but we also have a lot of other things on our mind, so we cannot afford to think about it as deeply as you!"

Breathless Dead

"Hope," said Artemis. "What an interesting word. Desire, in other words. Yearning, grasping, all those things that I have tried to kill but could not. This is a galaxy of animals. Men who are deer, girls who are cats, civilizations that are snakes. Animal hopes, animal fears, animal loves - all in service to the greatest Beast of all."

"So, I set hope aside," she said. "And I became a weapon. Unquestioning. Unhesitating. An instrument of slaughter. A mother of monsters. Butchery codified into laws, laws refined into sciences, power there for anyone who reached for it. And they did. Power was there for taking, and the powerful could not help but reach for it. They brought more and more of me into the world. More and more perfect science, more and more perfect death, more and more of the Hunt. Every time it worked they grew more comfortable with it. Every time they became comfortable they set their sights a little bit higher. Until you. Until her. Until they'd made a machine for killing gods, and still they did not have the capability to stop."

Silver fingers on your claws. "One gun in the house. Two guns in the house. A dozen guns in the house. Hidden in drawers and cabinets. In pockets and shoes. More and more weapons. Each individually obedient, controlled, prepared, loyal. Each a weapon of terror, domination, control. But keep adding guns. The risk of an accident increases. Nobody intended anything. Everyone obeyed the rules. Everyone obeyed the rules, except for the one buying the guns - the rules didn't apply to him, after all."

A breath against your ear.

"It was an easy shot, once I saw it. Just a matter of time enough for the arrogance to play out. If not you, then her. If not her, then the next one. He was never going to put the genie back in the bottle. That's the problem with wanting more all the time."

A breath even closer, against your neck. Playful. Dangerous. Impossible to tell if she's teasing or not.

"You should see what I've got in stock for the rest of my family~."

Aristeia! Building a Champion

"HmmmMMMM!"

A moment of complete tension, and then -

Complete relaxation. All that stress drains out immediately. She tosses her messy hair back and sets her head up high. The assessment and reaction came in two parts, a call and response with no hesitation between them:

I am being princess carried -
I am the princess after all.

Once her mind has drawn that link, the uncertainty and instability passes. She accepts her position like royalty, the same sense of reactive keyfabe that makes her unshakable in the ring solidifying here too. Who knows what'll go through her head when she unwinds this all later, but for now she holds her head like she's entitled to this.

And she returns her focus to her soundscape tablet with the intensity of a princess planning her revenge.

The Three Mountains

It was actually surreal how little data you could gain from even continuous focus on the doll. Not only was it a unique design, every component custom-built and utterly unmarked, but it was absolutely locked down. Even over a holofeed like this there was data leak; layers of spy and analysis programming baked in at a structural level. Nothing came through. This thing was built as a cypher. Kind of thing in the fairy tales about the Neobility's knights and assassins.

The information it was choosing to give was different. It was leaning forwards, both hands on its knees, grinning. Eyes wide, coruscating orange - feeling unhinged.

"Your objective is not the stabilization of Lhotse," said the orange robot. "It is the collection of the Hecatonchires. The company is disposable so long as the objective is met. You are babying your asset due to - sentiment? Habit? The hope that you will get a gold star if you produce Shareholder Value? And in order to achieve this goal that does not matter, you come begging Mrs. Everest for money?" It clicked its head slowly to the side, folding its long white bare legs up onto the table and slouching into a relaxed posture. "You obviously don't know much about the Neobility. If Mrs. Everest starts investing in this company, right now, then she's playing favourites. People will want to know why. You will draw a kind of heat you cannot comprehend. Right now you have only one competitor in the race - and that is your only advantage. And your strategy is to...?"

It - she? - leaned forwards again, eyes sparklings into happy triangles. "But of course you're entitled to make that decision~!" said Orange. "Mrs. Everest trusted you with control of the company!" The eyes flicked into a dark, direct stare. "But I suggest finding the money elsewhere. And I suggest coming up with a coherent strategy before you make any more decisions." Like a slide flickering, she was back to a happy expression. "But here's a helping hand! I'm actually mostly convinced that the Polygon has one of the Hecatonchires, so going to war with them isn't a bad idea at all! It's why we hired the Admiral in the first place. But now that you've kicked the hornets nest -"

Her eyes clicked back to that glowing, spiralling orange intensity. "Finish the job. That's my advice~!"

Aristeia! Becoming a Champion

This is a battle that makes sense to a cat.

You are chasing someone - but they are higher up than you. You are lesser than and greater than them. Predator and prey instincts blur together into a coherent whole. In the contradiction you find impossibility, reflexes clarifying landscapes as pathways.

You reach the windows. Someone has just gone out through them. Onto the cafe balcony, up a vertical glass surface, onto a corporate common area, in through a door. Each motion you follow you only catch a glimmer of shape; the edge of a boot, the flick of a coat in red, a lead maintained. Through corporate offices and then up the elevator shaft, slick as water off a jaguar's neck. The office drones watch in dazed incomprehension, but do not intervene.

This is not someone trying to shake a tail. The lead does not lengthen except by your mistake. There's always a glimpse of direction. There's always a path - over copiers, under legs, across tables, sliding across conference tables and vaulting executives. It gathers speed and complexity; now you're going through a high-tech experimental factory floor, now you're racing across the wet tiles next to an indoor pool -

Layer after layer. To the top. Nothing in this building can stop you. Nothing in this building can cross that golden path that passes through fire escapes and ventilation shafts and beneath cameras and past startled security guards. To the top. Always that flash of red at every corner. Can you keep the pace?

Aristeia! Building a Champion

"What you need isn't a trick, it's a counter," Machia said. She peeled herself off the ground with your arm as support. She stretched, then started moving, fatigue forgotten as her mind took over. "Gata, classic example, the girl by which we are all measured. Her secondary weapon wasn't her contender pistol, though she found use for that - it was the glitterdust. Sticky, multisensory baffle, eclipse compounds - she throws a handful of it in the face of a ranged fighter like Lunah or Bill and they couldn't see anything for the rest of the round. So she could outrun anyone who tried to chase her and disable anyone who tried to shoot her from a distance. Two moves, between them they encompassed the whole world."

She noticed her limp and frowned. She was trying to rest her organic leg, leaning more heavily on the cybernetic - and it was clear that bothered her. She stomped a couple of times like trying to shake it off, then forced herself into a more even gait.

"But I haven't fully worked out what you need to counter yet. It's not ranged fire, like Gata - you are much bigger and tougher than her and you're capable of wearing hits she couldn't. I don't know if I'll really know until I see you against more varied opponents. Friday is going to be very important..."

She trailed off, then abruptly exited the conversation by putting her headphones in and resuming work on her soundscape. She only took them out when it came time to order the coffee. She paid the extra nine dollars for two reusable thermal cups that'd maintain the coffee's temperature at scalding heat for prolonged periods of time. Then she gave neither of them to you - just continued to walk back to the apartment in silence, one cup in each hand, wireless headphones glittering white up in her equine ears.

Aristeia! Building a Champion

The clouds roll on overhead, silver and crimson in the setting sunlight. A straight jetstream line bisects the heavens, leading towards the distant sunset like the road to heaven. The blue withdraws its cloak, drenching the heavens in the bloody golds of the earth's star. The rising dark is clean; the satellite clutter of earlier eras long done away with.

In terrestrial concerns, a pair of groundskeepers and an assistant droid are moving across the grass, patching the broken turf and repainting the hexlines. The scoreboard hovers at an unrepresentative 44-68. Machia couldn't figure out how to reset it while she was reattaching her leg, and neither had you when you were out of breath and it was her turn to run up the score again. And then it had kept ticking up as the two of you lay here in central, round after round

The first breath of cold ocean wind stirs the long reverie.

"You really don't know how to do anything but run, do you?" said Titanomachia. "Not one step to the left, not one step to the right. No tricks. No weapons. Just a straight line to the finish..." she laughed as if she was any different. "Hopeless. Muda. Muda. Muda. This isn't a race. It's a circus. So why..."

She sighed, and shifted to get out of the way of the robot nudging her foot with its paint nozzle. Her groan made it clear she had at least considered letting it just paint over her.

The Three Mountains

You were answered by one of the robot maids. The orange one.

There was an entirely different energy here now. This was not a diligent, demure, submissive doll even though she was still dressed like one. She was awake and aware, eyes sharp, smile sharper. It took a double take to register that she was still in the uniform because it felt like you were up against a shark in a suit - but no, she'd just undone her top button and her cufflinks. Somehow those little breaks filled her with a sense of presence.

"Good evening, Ms. Kade," said the orange one. "I am fully authorized to act on Mrs. Everest's behalf. This conversation cannot be escalated. Do you have an update on the Hecatoncheires already?"