XianaEvermor

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

"Don’t apologize," Yue answered after an awkwardly long pause, then looked up at D and smiled, genuinely this time. "I wouldn’t have gone. Too many unanswered questions. As angry as I am, something happened that was serious enough to spook my whole family into hiding, I’m coming to discover," she sniffled, pushing herself to her feet and wiping her nose on her arm… then grimacing because she just wiped snot into her open scrapes.

Smart.

She kept her eyes averted. As long as she didn’t look directly at D the vertigo was manageable, which was fine since eye contact was a thing that happened to other people.

"In a way, I’ve been running my whole life. Now that I know that there was something to run from, I want to stand my ground and punch it in the face… keep it from happening to anyone else." She extended a hand.

"If your sage advice will help me do that then you are, indeed, quite charming… after a fashion. It’s Yue. Nice to meet you while I’m awake?"

D didn’t take Yue’s hand, but rather extended one of her own, a piece of blank cardstock appearing between her first two fingers as she turned her palm up. ”Likewise,” D greeted in turn. My business card, so you can get in touch with me next time you’re in trouble.”

Yue’s eyes flicked down to the card as she took it and flipped it over in her hand… and flipped it again. What the hell? "It’s blank? H-how…," Yue trailed off, feeling like she was about to sound silly by asking how she was supposed to call a phone with no number. Were there even phones down here?

”It’s not blank, it’s empty,” D corrected.”Of course you wouldn’t be able to see something that isn’t there. You’re looking at it.”

"It’s-, This is-, But it’s-... Sure! Sure… Coolcoolcool," Yue nodded, slipping the card into the thin pocket of her leggings. She was beginning to appreciate Raudd’s disdain for all of this ‘magical bullshit.’ "Is this the part where you vanish into the aether after leaving a charming impression and imparting your sage knowledge?"

D blinked at Yue once, then looked away. ”Hmm. Sage knowledge, huh.”

The pocket of D’s long coat buzzed. Her hand withdrew briefly, reappearing with a small flat rectangle that lit up when she pressed a button on the side. A button, from the looks of it- and an old one. Her finger swiped and tapped across the front for a moment, eyes fixed on the illuminated screen. She sighed through her nose, stuffing the phone back in her coat.

”The only thing stupider than trusting a god is trusting a mage. That’s my sage knowledge.” Her eyes met Yue’s. ”You understand?”

That made her frown. Her whole world was gods and mages right now, and so far it seemed like they were all trying to be helpful… Ulterior motives and overprotective hovering aside, they'd been helpful after a fashion at least. Yue was growing increasingly disquieted with the number of ‘guardian angels' in her life that were hiding in the wings, truthfully enough. What was so goddamn important about her that warranted all this attention? Yue’s eyes flicked up at the woman, and she endured the vertigo for a long moment to make eye contact.

"I’m not to trust you then? Aren’t you one of those things?" And Archer? Wasn’t he both? "Seems I’m finding out just about everyone in my life is some kind of God or mage. Can I not trust anyone then?"

D gave her a conspiratorial grin. ”Didn’t I tell you already? I’m not either of those. I’m a devil.”

Her face sobered, and she looked away again. ”But yeah. You aren’t far from the right idea. Gods are narcissists, and mages are liars. And both of them have intentions for you, kiddo.” D extended out her arm, holding her finger mere inches from the center of Yue’s brow. ”If it seems like everyone around you is one or the other, it’s safe to assume there’s a reason for that.”

She let her arm fall. ”And that reason won’t care about you personally.”

"Sage knowledge from the Devil who creeps on me while I sleep, offered out of the goodness of her heart, then?" Yue smirked. "No intentions there, just being a good Samaritan?"

"That's right."

"Hmm," muttered Yue with a note of doubt. She broke eye contact to keep from falling over again. D felt like every suspicious quest-giver in Final Odyssey. "I’ll keep that in mind."

D gave Yue a long look, her mouth tightened into a thin line. ”You can think whatever you like, girl,” she declared, shifting on the ball of her foot. Her phone buzzed in her pocket again. ”I’m not your boss, after all. Just passing through.”

D looked away, studying a patch of wall. Her ears were red, despite the cool morning. She crossed her arms, hands gripping her biceps. The heel of her shoe tapped the ground as D bounced her leg, agitated about something unclear.

Finally she spun around, marching toward the opening of the alley. ”Well, this has been fun, but I gotta get going before the big guy catches on that I’m here,” she announced, waving a gloved hand up to her shoulder to wave goodbye without looking in Yue’s direction. ”Stay safe, remember what I told you about- Oh!”

She spun back around and pointed at Yue. ”This doesn’t really matter, but don’t go flashing my business card at people. Your eyes only.”

”Right…,” Yue mumbled, rolling the barrier medallion over in her palm. ”Of course.”

She felt like she was missing something. Like there was something she was supposed to say or ask, and it just wasn’t clicking. Instead, she shuffled awkwardly in place and tried to find somewhere productive to look that wasn’t directly at D.

”Good, good!” D cheered, whirling back around. ”I’m glad you understand.”

Her leg moved to take another step forward, but hesitated. D stood near the entrance to the alley for a long while, back to Yue. She fidgeted with her hands, raising and lowering them, clenching and unclenching into fists. It seemed she wanted to say something else, perhaps, and her shoulders were tense with resisting the urge to turn back around.

”I-” D began to speak, but cut herself off. She dug the toe of her shoe into the alley floor, replacing the polished leather sheen with dust and scuff marks. She huffed, eyes fixed on the ground, then clicked her tongue one last time and disappeared.

Yue stared at the the empty alley entrance where D had vanished for a long minute trying to process everything that had just happened. Her head tilted slowly, eyebrows raising as her expression went from alarm to regret to disappointment. She snapped her fingers rhythmically and blew out a disgruntled sigh as she turned in a slow circle to try and get her bearings.

She was still lost.

"Maybe I should've asked for directions... or, you know, a ride out of here?"

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

---

[Some Alley in ShieldTown]

[A Druidquest / XianaEvermore Collaboration]

---

”See what happens when we don’t listen?” Her voice was closer to the ground now. She had crouched down, blocking Yue’s attempts to crawl away. ”Go ahead and take a breath for me. Nice and slow. Try and keep your eyes closed. I won’t touch, but it should be easy enough. Like breathin’. Just try and remember the sensation from before.”

Yue froze, taking a few halting breaths. Right right right… a teleporting Mover she couldn’t look at. This was it! This was it. This was it… She did warn us… her breath steadied after a minute, though she couldn’t force herself to uncoil the tension in her body. Yue tried to squash the primal fear twisting in her gut. Too many questions were ripping through her head.

"Okay!?!" Was all that she managed to force out of her mouth.

”Well not yet, but you look like you’re gettin’ there,” the woman answered without missing a beat. ”How are your eyes feelin’?”

"Like I’ve been staring into the sun, but it wasn’t there," grunted Yue.

A breezy chuckle followed her comment. ”That’s nice. I should write that one down.” Gravel shifted in the alley as the woman made the stand. Yue felt a hand reach toward her, hesitate, and pull back. ”Think you can try closing your eyes yourself? It really is important.” The woman snorted. ”Shocked they didn’t teach you that first, honestly,” she muttered.

Was she talking about magic?? Goddammit what was it Archer was saying about how to tell… something about “blue moons” and being awake? All this cloak and dagger nonsense was making her head swim worse than it already was. Why wasn’t she paying attention for something so important?!

"I am… physically incapable of doing that," she ventured at a guess.

A click of a tongue. ”Is that a fact?” The woman scoffed, footsteps moving away and coming back, moving away and coming back. The woman was saying something to herself, just above a breath. ”This was s’posed to be a quick thing…”

”Y’know what, let’s start smaller then,” she said, addressing Yue once more. ”Try squinting for me. Like you’d do at the sun to keep it from burnin’ your baby burgundies.”

"How ‘bout we start with introductions and… you know, like what you want from me? Since this was supposed to be so quick and all," Yue grumbled as she forced herself up to her knees without uncovering her eyes. "You seem to know an awful lot for someone I’ve never met."

”We have met, this is just the first time you’re conscious for it,” the woman answered, apparently not concerned with what a terrifying comment that was. She paced away again, Scratching her head. ”Damn it, I had this whole thing planned out. It was- I was gonna be witty, and clever, and you were gonna find me just so, so charming. Ffffuck.”

"CONCERNING?!"

”Okay.” She clapped her hands together, spinning back on her heel. ”This- well, you’re gonna think this is bullshit now, but I’m your… let’s say guardian angel, alright? Fairy godmother. I’m- I was here to give you some sage wisdom, you know? Help you out and shit, before fucking off somewhere else until you got in trouble again.” She let out a long sigh.

”You can call me… Well, this just sounds stupid now, but it would’ve killed if things had gone to plan, alright? You can just call me Devil God D for now. Don’t comment on it,” she added hastily.

"I’m not-, this is-, you know what?" Yue flustered with a sigh, finally relaxing the coiled tension in her body. Nobody was this awkward before they kidnapped or murdered someone. "I’ll humor it? Bestow upon me your sage wisdom whilst I squint upon thee, oh ‘Devil God D,’" she said, with an air of defeat, tossing her hands up.

Yue let her palms down, careful not to look directly at ‘D’ and instead acted on an idea that had struck her- you know using her Aether threads to sew her astral eyes shut didn’t sound like a terrifying, creepy, awful idea until just then. She decided to try squinting instead, as suggested, and managed to block out the worst of it. She still felt ridiculous, as she was actually squinting at the woman.

A woman in a dark gray salary-man’s suit, tailored in places to keep it from being too baggy on her frame. Polished shoes, black leather gloves. Through squinted eyelids, burgundy hair and eyes met burgundy hair and eyes. D gazed at Yue for a long moment, a smile coming to her lips. When she spoke, Yue could hear it in her voice.

”You’re a good kid.”

D did not continue for another short while after that, shifting her gaze to look down the other end of the alleyway for a moment. She rubbed at her wrist, like she was adjusting a watch that wasn’t there.

”How are you feeling, by the way?” she asked, looking back in Yue’s direction. ”About the magic thing.”

"Angry that it was kept from me for so long. Relieved that I’m not sick. Overwhelmed with all this new information and sensory overload. Like everything is better. Like everything is worse. Like I don’t understand the world, how it’s supposed to work or where I fit in anymore," she found herself admitting. She’d held most of this back from Archer.

D nodded sympathetically. ”Well, everyone’s gonna have their opinions on that,” she stated simply. ”They’re all gonna have a favor, or an opinion, or a cause they want you to chime in on.” She clicked her tongue, studying the tip of her shoe.

”That’s the one thing you can accept with absolute certainty movin’ forward, sister. Now you’re part of the world and so long as you stay in it, no one’s gonna let you just mind your business.” She gave Yue an appraising look. ”Though I suppose that’ll be pretty familiar, yeah?”

”Beyond that… I mean really, your best bet would be to run while you can, but failing that, you’ll do fine so long as you keep a good grasp on who you are and who everyone else is.”

"Tried running. I hit my head… fell a long way," she replied, gesturing to the mean scrape on her shoulder and the flecked cuts along her temple and nose. She knew that wasn’t what D meant, and couldn’t help the half-hearted smirk that flicked across her face. "Don’t think I can run from this, D. It’s everywhere I look, and I can’t close my eyes." Yue sniffled and looked down into her lap, suddenly finding the dirt under her fingernails to be entirely transfixing.

”You’re in Titan’s Fall, kiddo,” D said gently. ”If you couldn’t close your eyes, they'd’ve burned outta your skull by now. More’n likely you used to do it without realizin’ and forgot how.” She shook her head, glancing back down the alley. ”You’ll jus’ have to relearn to do it manually. It’s a practice thing is all.”

”You’re right though,” she said after a moment, clicking her tongue. ”You won’t be able to run, not really. I was hopin’ I’d still be able to give you the option, but I guess I missed my window at some point.”

”I’m sorry about that.”

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

---

[Some Alley in ShieldTown]

[A Druidquest / XianaEvermore Collaboration]

---

Doll’s face flew from abject terror to seething contempt in the span of a second as a woman’s voice cheerfully chimed in behind Yue. She turned to see who had snuck up behind them, but a leather-gloved hand slipped over her eyes before she could catch sight of the new interloper.

”Ah ah ah!” the voice tutted, holding Yue’s eyes shut. The field of pitch blackness at the back of her eyelids gave her the sense that somehow that wasn’t the only [sight] being blocked. ”No peeking, sister. Gotta protect your eyes, you know?”

Yue flinched, sending a crack through the foundation of the adjacent building. She heard Doll click his tongue and curse something in a language she couldn’t understand. The woman behind her gave a comically beleaguered sigh. ”Always so quick to run off, that one.”

”And you,” the voice continued, grabbing Yue’s shoulder and gently turning her around, hand shifting to remain firmly over her eyes. ”Didn’t anyone ever warn you not to run off with strangers? Shameful, and at your age, too! You’re lucky I came to help!”

"I am?" She asked with a note of heavy doubt. Clearly she didn’t enjoy being blinded… though the darkness was oddly serene, she hadn’t realized how much she’d come to depend on her… Aethersight(?) for sensory input. Did she give in to the immediate impulse to defend herself and risk hurting a bystander? Would she be hurting one of Alex’s friends? Yue huffed and tried to uncoil the tension in her shoulders unsuccessfully.

"You have me at a disadvantage, it would seem."

”Oh you’ve got no idea,” the woman laughed. It wasn’t unkind. ”I mean honestly, you didn’t notice anything off about that kid at all? Not one bit? Here, let’s try a simple exercise to get you closer to my level, alright? First step in a million.”

She cleared her throat, slowly moving to stand behind Yue while keeping her hand over her eyes. ”Try and remember for me. Which direction did that kid turn you in last? Left or right? Or the walls on either side of you, what material were they made of? Stone, wood, metal? How ‘bout the ground? Was the area industrial, or residential? Oh, here’s a real easy one. How far away was the plate up top?”

The woman sighed again, coming back around to stand in front of Yue again. Her hand fell away until only a single finger rested over each eyelid. ”Come on now, girl. I know you just woke up ‘n’ all, but you gotta be more aware than that.” There was a brief pause. ”Well, not right now, but generally.”

Something about the way the stranger’s touch felt on Yue’s skin made her bristle, more than just her aversion to physical contact. Did this person have powers? Were they touch based? Could she react fast enough to catch this stranger off guard. The medallion wasn’t singing. She turned it off? When did that happen? Yue’s thoughts screamed, and she squeezed one of its sharp corners into her palm to help keep her in real-time.

"I don’t like being touched," she announced firmly, squashing her fight or flight reflex. If she took this person’s arm off and they turned out to be Dean or Alex’s friend she’d feel real bad later. Instead, her brow furrowed and the corners of her lips curled into a frown.

”Yeah, I know how that feels. I’m real sorry about that.” Something in the woman’s tone made Yue feel she could believe that, at least. ”Kinda have to right now, though. One of us has to keep your eyes shut, and somethin’ tells me you can’t, right?” A brief pause. A slight shift in her finger’s told Yue she had probably shrugged. ”At least it's not bare skin.”

Yue forced one of her hands to stay open in spite of the anxious urge to ball them up, though her hand clutching the medallion did flex. A drop of blood seeped out from between her fingers.

”Tell you what,” the woman proposed, sounding more firm. ”Take three steps to your left. There’s a wall there. Sit against it, and we’ll see how well we can do with the no-touching.” An audible grimace. ”But no promises.”

Would three inches be too much? Yue didn’t want to liquefy any organs. She couldn’t judge distance while blinded… maybe just the second knuckle? Open palm would be the safest. She reached forward with disarming slowness, searching for an abdomen or other soft tissue with her lips pressed into a thin line.

There was a soft thump as air rushed to fill suddenly empty space, the soft pressure against Yue’s eyelids vanishing in an instant.

”I told you to sit, girl. I’m tryin’ to help you out here, you know?” The voice reappeared several paces behind and above her, drifting from a low rooftop, accompanied by a quiet swishing of air as the woman kicked her legs lazily.

”Don’t turn around, by the way. I think this is as close as I can get without overwhelming you, and I dunno if that radius gets larger if you’re look- oh, stupid girl.”

Yue whirled around, her eyes burning luminous amber with aggressively thin slitted pupils. She swung an open palm behind her, creating a pressure wave that ripped down the alley, though she had to take a step to steady herself afterwards when the world continued to spin sickeningly. Her eyes darted back and forth, searching for the source of the voice… and then up, dreading that she would see a black and white theater mask.

What she saw was… the world upending as she lost all sense of balance. Yue crashed to the alley floor and pressed her palms to her eyes, rolling onto her stomach away from the woman and desperately trying to keep the shakshouka down. Something. [Nothing]. An overwhelming presence of [NOTHING].

"F-fuck!" Yue spat involuntarily as she tried to wriggle and crawl away without uncovering her eyes.

The woman’s polished loafers clicked across the floor of the alley as she approached from behind Yue, a half-pace to the side to give her some space. ”I warned you, kiddo,” she sighed, footsteps coming around Yue’s head while staying out of arm’s reach.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

---

[Castle on the Clouds]

---

Dawn rested her elbows on the table and rubbed her temples in silence for a long minute before taking a deep breath. Is this how she made other people feel? "Sit," Dawn instructed, with an air of frustration. She turned one of her fingers down and pressed it into the table with a gentle thump as she pinched her brow with her other hand. A barely perceptible iridescent force pushed down on Felix's shoulders and at the back of his knees until he fell back into his chair.

"Take a breath. Felix. I like you, but... you frustrate me. I'm going to impart on you some wisdom I never thought would come out of my mouth," she flicked her eyes towards the ceiling as she took another deep breath. Gods why am I the responsible one in this dynamic? "It's never going to be perfect," she said, locking eyes with him.

"If you run back to your lab every time you experience a glitch or a setback to fix something, you'll always be fixing it. And there will never be any meaningful progress if it can't leave the lab until its perfect. What about the other ten things you overlooked? How about those three situations where it might not perform the way you expect it to? How about... that one time it breaks when you really needed it to work? Where's your lab going to be? Not where you need it?" Dawn reached across the table like she was going to take his hands in hers and seemed to think better of it.

"My brother should be the one saying this to you, not me. I'm not qualified- I~~'m an impulsive, immature fuck up," she said, stabbing the table with a finger for emphasis. "Spirits alive, we're at a restaurant! Just order something! I'm not allowed in your lab, and that's a good thing! I'm here. Talk to me here!"

"Trouble in paradise, Nightlight?"

"Oh, fuck me," Dawn muttered, pressing her face into her hands. Ion rode down on a curtain of lightning, alighting on the glass and sliding a good ten feet towards them unsteadily on Felix's vomit. He squared his chest after regaining his balance and planted his fists on his hips dramatically. His helmet peeled back, retracting in segments into the suit's collar and revealing a roguishly handsome grin. It was clear from his unshaven stubble, and even the dark circles under the thin mask that only covered his eyes that he'd probably been out on patrol all night. Dawn peeked through her fingers and looked him up... and down... and then up again.

"The thing! Your Thing! It did the thing!!!" he gestured at Felix excitedly. "Holy smokes, you were in the Tower one second and then BAM! Wow! I think that beats Fang for the speed record, King!"

"We're not touching, and I didn't drag him off the net," said Dawn, holding her hands up defensively.

"Naw, Felix filled me in. You're on the okay list," Ion informed, snorting when Dawn exhaled in relief. "Hey, listen: I gotta scram. Big hubbub on the Sector 7 plate, some kind of explosion over in Justice Square?"

"Oh, fuck!" Dawn blurted out, covering her mouth. Her golden eyes flicked over to look at Felix... if she hadn't played hooky from the office this morning, there was a chance they'd have been caught up in all that.

"Yeah, bunch of people got hurt. It's an all-hands-on-deck sort of thing. Hey," he smirked, leveling an armored finger at Felix. "This kind of up-all-night chaos is what you have to look forward once you pass your Field Agent exam!" Ion waggled his eyebrows suggestively and clucked his tongue at Felix.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

---

[UnderCity - ShieldTown Region]

[A Druidquest / XianaEvermore Collaboration]

---

Yue checked over her arm and groped her face where prickles of numbness had cropped up to make sure everything was still there. Besides a scrape, a few nicks, and some road rash, she’d probably have (another) neat looking bruise from her collision with the cliff face. All things considered, it could have been worse.

She wondered if she’d done something to prevent herself from becoming a red smear on the wall in that instant where she hadn’t been protected by the medallion’s barrier. Something to meditate on later…

No doubt Archer was pulling his hair out, so rather than dwell on it, she brushed the dust off with a sigh and started back towards ShieldTown at a much more modest pace. After an uneventful run, she lazy-vaulted the North perimeter and slid down the interior wall. Alex’s place would be the obvious place to wait to be yelled at, and she knew it was vaguely located in the center of town.

Yue turned the medallion over and over in her hand as she walked, letting it sing in her ear while she mulled the events over in her head. If there had been one more foothold she probably would have had enough velocity to escape. Somehow she doubted the others would be amenable to her running loose without supervision around the perimeter of the crater and attempting to climb at all the plate gaps.

Didn’t mean she wasn’t going to suggest it, being a simple solution that didn’t need to inconvenience the lives of the others she’d been imposing on for… what felt like years now. It’d barely been a day, of course, but still. The thought that people were probably panicked over her disappearance weighed heavily on her. No doubt resources were being spent that didn’t need to be, and the Templar… well Sai, mainly, was probably turning the city upside down or concocting some ridiculous plan that involved far too many explosives.

Right. Focus on what we can control.

Yue blew out a sigh, coming out of her thoughts and pausing in an intersection. She squinted at all the buildings, turning in a slow circle and realizing she’d lost sight of the wall, and all these buildings kind of looked the same… to her at least.

"Fuck," she muttered. "I really do need adult supervision."

”Looking for somethin’, Miss?”

A young boy no older than twelve popped up by Yue’s elbow, gazing up with the backs of his hands resting on his hips. There was something… odd about him she couldn’t quite place. He looked like a normal enough kid, tan skin, dusty black hair, but something about looking at him made her eyes… sting. Like staring into a campfire. He tilted his head slightly, waiting for a response, before continuing on his own.

”I can help out if you need directions,” he commented, hopping out in front of her. ”I’m somethin’ of a guide, you see. People ‘round here call me Doll. You know the Rats? They’re good friends of mine.”

"Doll? Rats?" Was that some kind of gang? She squinted at the child for a long moment. "Um… Well…," she hesitated, not wanting to perpetuate the small-town stereotype that everyone knew everyone else. Since… surely that wasn’t the case, right?

"I’m meeting some friends? One of them is a huge…," she gestured vaguely, indicating someone extremely tall and wide.

”Oh, you’re looking for Aegis,” Doll interrupted before Yue could finish. ”Yeah, I know where he’s at.”

Because of course he does.

"O-oh," she stammered awkwardly. "Would you… be so kind?"

Doll stared at her for a moment, as though considering her request. A few seconds stretched toward the full minute mark, his silence lasting long enough to make Yue start feeling antsy. She was about to reconsider when he suddenly spun on his heel and started marching off. ”Sure thing!” he announced cheerfully. ”This way, Miss.” Yue exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

Doll led Yue confidently off the main thoroughfare, guiding her into the narrow twisting alleys of Shieldtown’s heart. He whistled as they walked, some silly jingle which sounded so familiar but Yue couldn’t quite place. It somehow resembled every commercial soundbite released in the last twenty years at once, but she couldn’t pick out any single riff that was quite like any of them. He occasionally cast his glance back over his shoulder, double checking that she hadn’t fallen out of step, but otherwise seemed to leave the woman to her own thoughts.

This was the part where normal people made small talk. ‘From around here? Lead people through sketchy, dark alleyways often?’ Though all she could really muster was a concerned "Hmmmmm," as they vanished into the labyrinth of poorly planned between-spaces that all looked alike.

Clearly… we’re about to be murdered.

Yue chased the suspicious thought with a pang of guilt. The kid couldn’t have breached double digits yet, and she’d faced down far more intimidating adversaries than a mischievous kid in an unfamiliar town… right? RIGHT?? Even still, she watched him as though he would disappear the moment she took her eyes off him.

Doll glanced back at her, as though sensing her eyes on him. He turned back forward for a moment, then after a beat spun on his heel to face her fully, never breaking pace as he continued walking backward. He studied her face for a long while, never bothering to check he wasn’t going to run into anything, turning corners and ducking under obstacles like he had a frame-perfect memory of where they all would be.

”You’re a lot prettier than I’d expect one of his friends to be,” he remarked, finally breaking his silence. ”Are you really friends?”

"Uh!" The things kids say. The question made her flinch, and though she fought against the urge her eyes flicked up and to the right for an instant as her cheeks flushed. "Well…? I suppose I haven’t really met him in person," she admitted. How did you explain online games to a kid who lives in a literal hole?

Doll blinked in a manner which could’ve been pity. ”Are you sure you aren’t being cat-fished?”

"Wh~!"

”Yeah, are you sure you aren’t being cat-fished?”

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Archer took a deep breath, forcing his shoulders to uncoil. It wasn't fair for him to snip at Zolya on account of Yue being difficult. He'd only just caught up with her and now she was running off again. It wasn't even that he thought she couldn't handle herself: it was about the unintentional chaos she might cause and the... other elements whose attention she might attract.

"Hey, I'm sorry. I-," 'shouldn't have lashed out like that,' was what he was going to say before Zolya interrupted by suddenly invading his personal space. Her fingers traced the surface of the expensive linen dress shirt he'd manhandled over his frame which was only slightly rumpled from the previous day's wear. His gaze first traced the path of her touch while his eyebrows crested his hairline, and then clear ocean blue's flicked up to meet her olive green eyes as she brushed past. He couldn't suppress the swirl of luminous emotion in them, nor the rather brilliant flush of his cheeks and the involuntary silly grin that curled at the corners of his mouth.

Deja-Vu.

"If she keeps talking to me like that, your wish to marry into the family might get realized sooner than you think," he grinned, clucking his tongue at Raudd. "East, towards Shieldtown. At least she's speed-limited without her suit, unless-," 'that barrier can protect her from some serious air-resistance,' was what he was going to say before the sharp *CLAP* of an over-pressure wave rolling over the building interrupted him. His eyes darted to meet Raudd's.

"Is that where the Aegis went? What the hell kind of artifact did you guys give her?" He muttered as he focused in on Yue's signature. "She's moving North now?" He informed, while trying to figure out what could be in that area that would have attracted her attention.

---

Yue blinked, eyes following the ravens and their display... or warning. For a moment her head swirled before she remembered that yes, indeed, magic was real, and that these creatures belonged to Zolya. She sighed heavily, gnawing the inside right corner of her lower lip in thought. They were probably right: vertical velocity was hard. She couldn't fly or generate the constant thrust required to fight against gravity.

There would have to be sturdy footholds for her to push off of. She didn't think she could develop acute enough control over the shape of the barrier in the handful of seconds it would take to reach the crater wall to glide for any sort of distance.

"So, what then? Give up?" She muttered, more to herself than the birds as her gaze traced the plate-gap to the crater wall some miles in the distance. Yue rolled the medallion in her palm over and over, pausing to squeeze its sharp corners against the inside fold of her knuckles after each flip.

That anxious vibration, the restless urge to move coiled around her neck, causing her to roll her roll her shoulders involuntarily. One of them cracked in protest. She could feel the individual muscle fibers behind her knees screaming as they twitched. An individual mote of dust that had been suspended in the light in front of her came into focus as a thread of luminous [Silver] waved lazily across her gaze.

"Don't think I can let this one go, friend," she informed as she stepped North with a purpose.

Threads of [Silver] peeled out of her chest wildly as she took a deep breath. She tried to recall Zolya's lesson on directing and allowing Aether to flow through her body, though... she found her [Silver] threads didn't wish to move that way. When she tried, they often got stuck part way, or tugged awkwardly against her skin.

Don't force it... what did it do naturally? Her head tilted as she remembered observing the threads crawling up the manor's cairn stone. Her Aether wasn't fluid like Zolya's or Archer's, and it only flowed when she was touching something. Yue turned the medallion up in her palm, watching her threads of Aether stitch themselves into the engravings, naturally laying in complementary support as it formed braids and lattices around what she guessed were the most important structures of the array. The occasional bolt of [Crimson] would arc down her forearm and thrum against the array, usually chasing a spike of frustration or irritation that this Aether thing just wouldn't do what she was asking it to.

She exhaled gently, rolling into a new breath. Keeping a lid on all that inner turmoil was gonna be a thing, wasn't it?

Yue closed her eyes as she walked, trusting the near imperceptible caramel glow from the Earth below her to keep her feet steady. She imagined thread twisting into twine, weaving into braided ropes against her skin and pulsing into the medallion. She didn't have to open her eyes to see the [Silver] complying slowly. Her eyes snapped open to that familiar tension in her irises. She was tuned in enough to feel her pupils stretching. Her hand closed tightly on the medallion at the top of her breath, and she found herself coiled to pounce.

Right. Clear my head. Don't think too hard about it. Just do what feels natural, the Aether will fill in the rest.

Her foot sank inches into the Earth before it started to push back, and her chest slammed into that familiar wall of pressure. She was ready for it this time, ducking her head into it. She imagined creating down-force like her suit would to counteract the strong lift, and the barrier seemed to comply as she angled her body into as flat of a profile as she could while retaining her balance. Clouds of vapor roared over the contours of her shoulders, roiling over her spine as the barrier formed a sharp spike just slightly ahead of her, reinforced with a lattice of [Silver] Aether.

Yue pushed, feeling her foot skip across the broken concrete before achieving friction. She lurched forward, punching through the pressure as a violent cone of white vapor roiled around her waist and thrashed against her thigh as she forced her knee up to her chest.

She streaked across the bleak empty outside of ShieldTown as a plume of curling dust ripping savagely across the landscape, punctuated by periodic explosions of dirt and debris as she skipped across the ground. Long trails of vapor streamed intermittently from her fingertips as she made minor attitude adjustments between steps.

The downforce eased only slightly as the slope of the crater began to increase sharply, and her steps became taller and taller leaps. Finally, for a fraction of a fraction of a second, she was perched on the peak of the sturdiest boulder she could pick out on her approach. It shattered beneath her as she rocketed upwards along the crater wall, her eyes flicking back and forth rapidly to pick out footholds and the barrier angled so that she was nearly crushed against the cliff face by the downforce.

The morning sky, which had just been a brilliant thread moments ago was rapidly expanding to fill her vision. If she could just stay super-sonic past the half way point she should have enough inertia to clear the surface... Yue braced herself for a final push, angling towards what looked like a shallow overhang she could get traction on, though her breath stuck in her throat when she reached it. A trick of the light against the weathering of the rock made it look like there was more to grasp than there was. A quick scan told her there wasn't any other anchor within reach that would allow her to keep her inertia, so she had to commit: there was no aborting at this stage.

Yue's foot slipped and she wobbled unsteadily for a moment, and the momentary lapse of concentration caused the braided lattice of [Silver] threads to buckle and unravel. The barrier lost its curated shape, and she skittered across the cliff face as she tried to re-shape it. Streaks of vapor shrieked over her wildly as the shock cone closed in over her shoulders and she was slammed into the cliff face by the shockwaves. The breath was knocked from her lungs and the medallion spun from her fingers.

She managed to protect her face with her arm, hot sparks dragging along her skin as the lattice of Aetheric threads rapidly unraveled. She pushed away from the wall before any serious injury was sustained. The sharp corners of the medallion dug into her palm as she reached out and grabbed it just before it spun out of reach. The damage was done: she was bleeding speed rapidly, and flailed awkwardly as she hit the apex of her ascent. Her fingertips only just brushed against the corner of the plate ceiling before she started falling.

Yue managed to control her descent by angling the barrier to keep herself pressed against the cliff face and sliding down. Towards the bottom where it became rockier she pushed away from the wall and skipped unsteadily across the rocks until she slammed hard into the dirt, sliding the rest of the way. She stared at the sky through the distant plate gap for a long minute before she pushed herself slowly to her feet and began walking at a normal pace towards ShieldTown... she needed a minute to catch her breath after that.

---

"Hey Dean... are there any Rogues on your roster that can go super-sonic?"

"No... Silver Fang is our guest, though. She could."

"Our surfacer is Silver Fang?? Fuck. She's making a run at the Plate Gap."

"Hah. It was never a question of 'IF' she would try, only 'WHEN.' Easy money."

"I'm flush from the Scarhide bet. 50 she makes it."

"Actually the minimum bet on that pool is-"

"Well, raise it 50!"

"Oooooh! That looked painful..."
"Oooooh! That looked painful..."

"... Fuck."

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

You ever get that feeling... long car ride. Waiting in a place you can't get up, stretch, move around. Scratch it 'til you bleed, that bone-deep itch to move just won't go away. Can't sleep. Get up. Shake your legs. Stretch. Beat bruises into your thighs... it just... starts up again as soon as you settle.

That feeling was creeping up Yue's spine; settling into her neck and clawing at her shoulders. She splashed water on her face and smoothed out her hair. It really didn't help that it felt like there were far too many hands pressing cloyingly against her skin at all times in the Stoneworks, especially with the spike in...

Fuck it, we're just calling it 'Aether' from now on. Never gonna get it straight, and now we can talk freely about it to other Final Odyssey nerds.

If only she could just... close her eyes. Shut it all out.

Yue stared at the Silverscale Grimoire laying on the bed she had recently made while listening to Zolya distantly through the door. She was right... stretch her legs. Get away from all this... fucking HOVERING and fretting like she was going to explode at any moment.

Well...

She glared at the overgrowth outside her room's window. Had she really become so damaged that everyone had to bend over backwards to take care of her? Yue thumped her fist against the door frame... maybe a little too hard: it resonated through the walls of the manor. Right. Deep breaths.

"I'm... I need to clear my head," she called through the door. "Some light exercise sounds like a good idea now that you mention it. I'm gonna stretch my legs a little," she informed, to the immediate panicked rustling from the adjacent room.

"Yue," Archer called curtly, sliding into the hallway unsteadily while trying to pull a shirt over his wiry, but chiseled torso. "Yue, wait! Ah fuck," he muttered, lightly distressed as his eyes tracked the rapid thump of footfalls over the roof.

The metallic chime of the Barrier medallion echoed through windows, and the whole manor shuddered with the force of her launch. The tall grass, flowers, and trees groaned and swayed as they were buffeted by her turbulent wake. Archer huffed with an annoyed expression.

"Going out to 'stretch her legs a little' has a much different definition to the Parahuman Super-Athlete who travels miles in seconds and doesn't feel fatigue," he snipped, before Zolya could even turn the I-don't-see-what-the-issue is, let-the-girl-run expression on him. "At least she's headed East," he muttered after a second as he finished tucking his shirt in. "Can you keep an eye on her with your birds?" He asked, taking a deep breath. "I don't think I have any prepared summons that can keep up with her."

---

It was strange. The barrier cut through the air with hardly any friction, almost like it were impossibly smooth and the wind just... had nothing to grab hold of. It had actually thrown her off balance and nearly caused her to stumble for her first several steps. Combined with the lack of ailerons, stabilizers, and other control surfaces that were hidden in the crevices of her armor kind of made her feel like she was constantly falling. No invisible fingers clawing at every hard contour or flapping uncomfortably at the backs of her arms and neck, just sliding through like a an egg off an oil-slicked griddle.

The shock from each step which normally rattled in her knees without the Exo-Frame and the impact absorbing gel layer seemed to get effortlessly reflected away from her body. Granted, she could feel a great deal more turbulence in her wake, but its not like she could be subtle at this speed to begin with.

Her foot sank into the grassy earth, and she felt the ripple of kinetic force slap the ground as she pushed off. It rippled out, reverberating back and ripping up the soil like splashed water. She took a breath, feeling threads of [Silver] peel out, slip along her arms and even drape gently across her shoulders, thrumming with power against her skin.

When was the last time it felt like this... gentle authority? Like she had cut through the tangle of strings holding her down. Like the forces of the world bent the knee instead of fighting to restrain her. Thorns and vines had clawed at her heart so long that it just... felt normal.

Yue turned sharply as she splashed through the Stoneworks' barrier and pushed hard on the firmest purchase her foot could find. A familiar ripple of compression pressed against her, nearly knocking her body upright. Yue flared her arms unsteadily to create some drag at the top of her breath, and the barrier seemed to respond to her desire for stability by shaping channels to redirect the air. Appropriate levels of lift and drag were suddenly at her fingertips, and Yue flailed for a moment as the ground fell beneath her just a little more than she was expecting. The normal crackling roar which would flay her unprotected skin clean off no more than a gentle flutter in her ears.

The walls of ShieldTown were rushing up on her far too soon for her liking. It felt like she was trapped in a little sauce pot. The looming darkness stabbed through with artificial light, metal ceiling and distant cliff walls pressed in on her. She just wanted to cut loose. Scream and run for everything she was worth. It burned in the back of her lungs, and nearly knocked the breath out of her as she slid to a halt some distance outside the walls. Yue huffed, staring up into the billowing pillar of dust she had disturbed. A narrow, knife's edge of morning sunlight was cutting through it from the plate-gap above.

How far was it?

How silly would she feel if she could have escaped all this time and just... never tried?

What if it was just as easy as stepping outside and she could save Alex and the others from all the chaos and disruption her mere presence wrought?

What if she could just... go?

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

---

[Undercity - No Man's Land]

---

Life in UnderCity was harsh. It was a fact, not a theory.

Even in the more fortified areas, your safety was purchased with contribution and sometimes the labor was harder than homelessness. Still... people of all walks found a way to thrive. The gangs in particular. JAHANNAM, and Halcyon Horde at least had rules you could follow; guidelines, really. You did your best not to borrow from JAHANNAM if you had a choice, and as long as you paid your taxes and didn't cause trouble, the Horde would mostly leave you alone.

The more esoteric groups like the Cult of Flesh seemed to operate without rhyme or reason; and then there were the Rippers. Psychotically obsessed Chrome junkies that would stop at nothing to get their next augment. They were feared for their unique brutality. Rippers were like cockroaches armed with rockets and lasers, that became aggressive when the lights came on instead of scattering. Where there was one, many were like to be nearby and disturbing them was trouble. They were prone to infectious bursts of psychotic rage that spread through the group at large and lingered long after the stone that struck their nest was thrown.

Like a peculiar hive-mind: stirring up the Rippers in one part of the UnderCity often set off a chain reaction that enraged all the Rippers in the region. Which is why (as a general rule of thumb) you just didn't fuck with Rippers. Like many things, however, there were... exceptions.

"Help... help me..."

The Heap. An enormous scrapyard some distance northwest of ShieldTown. Over the years it'd mostly been picked clean but you could sometimes find an odd spare part, and it was still a rich source of scrap-metal for patches and repairs. It was becoming a more common Ripper haunt as they filtered in to hunt for materials to maintain their cybernetics. Crude as it may be, not everyone had a fully kitted Chrome shop or cryptosleep surgery tank.

"Hey. Hear that?"

"Hear what? Cochlear implant's on the fritz again. Can't hear shit," muttered Grimm, as he hefted a piece of rusted steel. The electric servos in his shoulder and forearm whined as he flung it behind him to sift for the next piece of scrap. "Nothin' here but rust and garbage since those whores at The Den moved in."

"Someone... help me..."

"Hoohohoho, Grimm! That's a pristine Vox Encoder if I ever heard one! Bet me right eye," Slurm's wet, phlegm rattled chuckle scraped over the husks of skeletal cars and warped beams. Implant rejection had hit Slurm particularly hard. Grimm's steel digits snapped around Slurm's collar, pulling him roughly off the pile he was skittering over and throwing him to the dirt. "What gives??

"No fresh picks in the Heap, Slurm... or did ya forget? Den sluts scooped it all. It's a honey pot," Grimm warned as he returned to the up ended semi-tractor he was digging through. "Leave it alone," he ordered.

"Fine," Slurm spat, as he scrambled to his feet and moved back to his spot sullenly. "It'S a hOnEy PoT, he sneered quietly under his breath. "Old man's been a Ripper so long he don't know the taste of honey from that nutrient slop he guzzles down." Slurm continued to mutter as he picked sullenly through the refuse while the siren call of a premium Vox Encoder drifted tantalizingly over the Heap.

Eventually Slurm couldn't stand it any longer and scuttled away quietly while Grimm was occupied, trusting the man's damaged cochlear implants to hide his departure. Grimm had a singular focus when it came to sifting the Heap, and had a knack for consistently finding a good pick, scarce as they were nowadays. He'd be busy in that truck cab for a while and probably wouldn't notice if Slurm snuck away to have a peek.

A peek wouldn't hurt, would it?

"I'm stuck... is anyone there?"

There it was... Slurm peered cautiously from behind what probably used to be a diesel station overhang. Laying there, pinned beneath the the door of an old shipping container that had fallen open. Had to be careful around those: they could fall open at any time and they were heavy as fuck. Amateur.

"Hello?" She called, causing Slurm to flinch. One of the buttons on his worn denim Ripper cut had brushed against the overhang. Bitch had real sensitive hearing if she heard that. "Is someone there?" She called, struggling to look around. Something fluttered and chirped above him. A bat? Huge colonies of the pests weren't uncommon in certain parts of UnderCity, but they didn't usually wander out this far. Whatever.

"And what do we have here?" Rasped Slurm as he prowled out from behind his cover on all fours towards the container.

"This door fell on me, I think my leg is broken are you here to help?"

"Help? Yeah... help myself to that shiny voice of yours," he cackled as he loped over, letting his phlegm-slicked tongue loll out like a hungry dog. He'd only crossed half the distance when something weighty gently struck his back. Odd... though it wasn't nearly enough impact to even throw him off course, he crumpled listlessly and only just managed to keep his tongue intact as his chin painfully struck pavement.

The slither and chitter of shifting metal rose around him as the pinned figure shifted. Another thump: against his shoulder. This time it was accompanied by a searing heat and his scream was only muffled by the fact that he could no longer manipulate his jaw. The acrid stench of sizzling flesh and melted plasteel racked his lungs, and his arm slid foot by foot towards the container as her body bent and contorted unnaturally. Bladed digits with far too many articulations reached out from under the door far too smoothly; alloy plates and synthetic muscle slithered up the frame to her wrist as she twisted herself effortlessly out from under the weight and almost seemed to reconstruct back to her feet.

His arm slid towards her again, dragged by some kind of robotic drone or creature, grasped by far too long digits connected by some thin, leather-like membrane. It turned its singular, glowing red optical sensor towards him as it moved and the staccato shower of light and sparks from the arc-torch which made up what should have been the creature's mouth seared his retinas. A set of long, spindly digits reached into his vision over each eye and dragged his eyelids open, pinning his head back with surprising force.

"My... what shiny eyes you have," she noted, her vox encoded voice devoid of emotion as she reached down and picked up his arm. The limb jerked and shuddered as the drone that had been carrying it burrowed aggressively into the shoulder, and a worn out joint brace clattered to the ground from beneath her cloak. The metal and fiber slithered unnaturally, forming and optimizing new connections, repurposing wiring harnesses and synth-muscle. Threads of light weaved into the limb as she jammed it into her empty shoulder socket. Tactile plates and haptic feedback sensors re-oriented as the hand was forcibly converted from left to right.

She flexed her new hand and shook out the stiffness. Her neck and face were a perfect blend of synth and flesh with no signs of inflammation or rejection, though her mandible seemed to be missing, and her lipless maxilla curled into the simulacrum of a fanged skull.

"Should have listened to your friend. He gives good advice," she informed coolly, dead violet eyes spearing him with loathing and disdain. She twisted her new wrist in her hand as if trying to soothe the chafing of freshly removed handcuffs. Violet reached into her cloak, and withdrew her eyeless black and red kitsune mask. She brushed a few strands of straight black hair out of her face with her new appendage before pressing the mask to her face. A bat unfurled from her torso as she strode towards him and thumped to the ground, almost allowing him to look up into her exposed ribcage.

Slurm's muffled screams echoed quietly over the Heap as it charged him aggressively.

---

"It's Grimm... Slurm's dumb ass fell for a honey pot and he got nabbed. Need more bodies at the Heap: Chiroptera is out hunting..."

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Yue made her way to the table sheepishly, doing her best to fade into the background and disappear... or die of embarrassment, you know... as one does. She sat down at the table quietly with her hands in her lap and her face resembling a tomato as she watched everyone serve themselves. For a moment it seemed like she would skip breakfast before her body reminded her that she had not eaten a real meal since her MRE the previous morning.

"This experienced mage was in the kitchen, you can blame this all on Zolya," Archer teased as he began to serve himself. Yue ate quickly in silence until she was scraping the sides of her bowl for sauce fragments and eying the remaining latkes with a predatory air.

"I have a question...," she interjected slowly, looking about ready to pounce and maul the next person to steal from the plate of potato cakes. Archer slid it towards her with a grin.

"Shoot."

"Sword Song enhances magical properties... but most of the equipment I use is Tinker-made and most of it still sings. Does that mean they're magic too?"

"Tinker-Science is its own category of weirdness. It interacts with certain magics in weird ways when it shouldn't, and obstinately does nothing when it rightly should have an interaction. Don't even get me started on Tinker-science mantling legendary enchantments from lost or destroyed artifacts. Basically it's generally accepted within the magic community that Tinkers are bullshit, and nobody really understands why their shit does what it does. In other words... Yes! But also no."

Yue speared him with a glare that spoke to how clearly disappointed with his explanation she was, though all this did was make Archer laugh. She crunched a dry latke in contemplative silence, staring vacantly past everyone at the table. Yue was content to just not bring up the fact that she seemed to break things (both mundane and magical) wherever she went for the time being.

Why couldn't she have a nice, easy, safe, normal power like Luna Lightning? Hell, it felt like even the guy who generated soap bubbles had an easier time than her. And poor Felix was trying to replicate her speed with his cybernetics? Poor guy. She never told him that she basically had to become an expert in ballistics, aerodynamics, and physics in order to move the way she did.

Friction, gravity, inertia, compensating for the Coriolis Effect, kinetic energy transfer. How does she make a hard turn when traveling at 900 Miles Per Hour? Where is her foot going to land? If a 130 Kilogram object traveling at 403.2 Meters Per Second kicks off that curb to try and change her flight angle, will she be stepping on concrete or sinking into gravel? Will the suit absorb that impact or is she about to break her leg? How much did she have to slow down to grab that guy who fell off a ten story building without turning him into paste or ripping one of his arms off? We're not even gonna get in to what it took to normalize experiencing all these forces while time dilated without going into G-Lock, or becoming violently sick.

Vomiting in 1/120th time dilation was an experience she never wanted to repeat.

Now she had to worry about breaking magic wherever she went too? She was tailor made to destroy things, it would seem... Archer reached across the table and snapped his fingers loudly in front of her eyes, snapping her back into realtime with a hard flinch.

"Hey, hon. You've been staring off into space for like five minutes now. Listen, I've been a mage for hundreds of mortal lifetimes and I still don't know everything there is to know about magic. The more I learn about it, the more questions I have sometimes, so... don't think too hard about it: you'll drive yourself mad. If you're done eating maybe you should get cleaned up. I think the rest of us are about ready to shove off towards Shieldtown."

"Right, sorry...," replied Yue distantly, as she snaked another handful of potato cakes off the plate before standing.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

---

[The Abyss - Paracausal Research Facility: Muriel - Interior]

[A Fate001 / XianaEvermor Collaboration]

---

Näs Castle, Sweden, Winter. The ruins of some Swedish king’s fancy home from the 12th century, and home to the Nordic Federation’s Parahuman Special Forces black-site, “Valv Tre”… of course nobody would know that since it was buried deep beneath the island’s tourist trap.

Research.

Plasma?

Senja…

Every surface shuddered like crawling skin. The walls were bleeding? Covered in blood. The cloaked woman’s combat knife slid wetly between Captain Jamison’s vertebrae. She watched the light fade from his eyes before flicking the blade out through his jugular. All with that smile on her scarred face as his arterial blood sprayed across her skin.

There was a pause. A moment to drink every detail before her. Everything she constantly ran through her head every night manifested around MG. There was a part of her that wanted to lash out at this, to try in some vain attempt to change what had already transpired . . . MG gagged and shot that part of herself long ago.

Panic was an expected reaction when one’s trauma was staring them in the face. Nora only felt rage. A tempered hatred radiated from the woman before she finally spoke.

“Die Screaming.”

There was no squeeze of her shotgun's trigger. Instead, winter claimed everything before her. The only warning for what was about to happen was the sudden drop in temperature that could crack steel, with MG at its epicenter. Jagged ice surged outward from MG in a tide of biting and cutting cold. And it would not stop.

Wouldn’t stop.

Stop.

"Stop! Claymore! Ah fuck," ID muttered grumpily when the emergency countersign didn’t elicit a reaction. At least MG hadn’t pulled the trigger: she wasn’t sure she could dodge crystal infused enchanted buckshot from this range. A steel panel buckled next to her with a thunderous crack under the thermal shock.

Can’t stay here… They’d bring the whole place down, and if MG got into physical contact range… involuntary cryo-induced naptime wasn’t on ID’s itinerary today.

A flick of her wrist primed one of her fuel sprayers and she raked the air between her and the suited giant, snapping a spark from the flint skin of her fingertips to ignite her breath. A gout of orange flames slammed into the curtain of explosive droplets. They burst into hundreds of tiny, brilliant explosions in MG’s face like a box of fireworks gone awry: just enough to engage the suit’s flare and noise compensation and buy a moment of hesitation.

ID leapt through the entrance at an angle to generate transverse velocity, she trusted MG… but there was still a chance she’d shoot at whatever it was she was seeing. Fractal frost dogged her footsteps, freezing joints, hydraulics, and mechanisms in an instant.

Sorry, friend… can’t let you put me to sleep. We’ll both die. Gonna need you to sit down for a minute...

A click of her sprayer rewarded ID with a few droplets of explosive liquid, which she swirled into a compacted bubble of mana. She shot it back through the frozen blast doors, pausing only a moment to aim as crimson scales slithered across her temples and down her forehead. A brilliant ray of searing violet flames shrieked from her fingertips, thundering down the corridor as the intense heat slammed through the cold front and detonated the insulated fuel packet.

An explosion rocked the corridor, throwing MG to the ground. Charges detonated deep under the island. Men in black uniforms with that signature red A badge on their shoulders rained lead to buy that wretched woman cover. Senja was suddenly on top of her, and the intense pain of a knife buried in MG’s eye lanced her skull from front to back. Senja smiled down at her as the walls wept, fire crawled across the ceiling, and the corridor walls began to buckle. Her eyes were four pointed stars of golden-green-gray and pink with a sclera of black from which squirming ink bled down onto MG’s face.

How’s that leadership role treating you now? Enjoying it as much as you thought?

“Never even wanted it, you petulant brat.” The pain was real. Despite everything she tried she was forced to physically re-live this shit. The sudden flash bang and external heat had been irritating. Now she was here. There were white spots in what remained of MG’s vision. Her thermals had been turned off so that the cold could start to numb her nerves a bit. Wait, what the fuck was wrong with Senja’s face?

“The hell happened to your face?”

Things weren’t clicking. MG was one step away from putting herself in cryo to get out of this shit. But part of what ID had told her earlier came through the pain. Not to trust her eyes or ears.

. . . Fuck it. She better have been right on this. MG shut her good eye and made the mental command to turn on the thermal cyber eye hidden under her eyepatch, that should be run through with a knife. The noise dampeners and compensators in her helmet were driven up to the point that she was practically deaf from the white noise. Gonna have a nasty case of tinnitus after this on top of the splitting headache.

Complain later. You have a job to do.

The thermal vision kicked in. The world was all purples and blues with some reds and yellows. It took some time for the vision to sharpen into more detail. No Senja, just a frozen room with evidence of a thermal shock having happened.

Shit, she was being mind fucked. MG really hated psychic types.

Carefully, she got up off the floor and did a pat down to make sure she still had everything. She took up her shotgun and let out more of a growl then a sigh of irritation.

“ID! If you're anywhere nearby I won’t be able to hear you! I’ve had to deafen myself and switched to thermals! We’re gonna have to work with hand signs and you're gonna have to be my ears here.” There was a pause before a heavy book stomped the ice covered floor. “Dammit I really don’t want to be talking to myself here. Can’t even hear myself talk.” She then proceeded to curse rather colorfully in Finnish as she slowly made her way forward. If this gets fucked with somehow I’m freezing myself near death and letting ID figure it out.

A thumbs up poked out from an intersection farther in, and ID cautiously peered around the corner to check on MG. Sensory blindness wasn’t optimal, but it was better than whatever full-sensory hallucination that had driven her to flash-freeze the whole complex. ID reinforced her Domain bubble, pulling it tighter against her skin. If that’s what was in store for her should her concentration lapse, MG might yet have a much worse day.