Style Study: A Thirsty Sword Lesbians Quest

Texas Red said:

[X] Defer to the QM's judgement

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You abhorred having to go on dead drops yourself, but you really didn't like to ask people to do things you could physically do yourself. You stared up at the abandoned pipe you were clued would be where you got your prize. About eight feet off the ground. You barely broke 5'6", so it was just out of your reach. Even jumping with as much force as you could muster with help from your cane, you could only graze it. You let the pain in your joints wash over you for a moment, before beginning to assemble a step stool out of some spare scraps, stacking debris high enough to just flip open the lid of the pipe and pull the little black box with the Extraterrestrial Mining logo on it out of it's hiding place. You looked down the alley in either direction, seeing nothing but quiet fog and falling snow, before opening it up. There was a little note inside, with an odd creature's face drawn on it. Two eyes, black and white stripes over its head, a sharp snout, and round little ears. You flipped the note.

-I
From your fellow witch, enjoy. I already jailbroke it. ;3
-H

You grinned at the little drawing they'd made next to the writing of a net-surfer bug and that weird mammalian thing she drew on the front. You took the data cartridge from the tiny box, a saturated brown plastic chip with the XTM logo. Hopefully this would be the missing piece. Something metal fell over. While tearing the sword from your cane's shaft you slipped from the tower you'd built and fell onto the snowy ground. After stifling a whimper at the agony shooting through you, you opened your eyes at the danger. A fluffy white cat staring at you through the snow. You sighed, laid your head on the snow, and took a moment to catch your breath.

---

Gilgamesh was founded on community, historians would say. There was a reason communism took off as the dominant political and economic system of the planet, with heavily community based systems. It was simply not optimal to be individualistic on a planet where the only place you could breathe freely, indefinitely, was the equator. A world so cold it snowed oxygen on the poles at the farthest distance of its elliptical obit. It was harsh, the growing season was short, and the life ranged from unsettlingly earthlike to horrifying, but it was home, and you'd rather live here than anywhere else. The equator was beautiful in the summer, and warm enough to go outside without a jacket.

But it was deep winter, so you made your walk between the buildings in Aldrin City fittingly brisk. Your trusty parka was fine here, but not insulative enough for a leisurely walk. You were in a hurry anyway, you needed to make sure your scrambler program was working correctly. You shouldered your favorite public library's front door open, bad choice, ow, and made a beeline for the bathroom. Being inconspicuous wasn't incredibly difficult for you, minus the cane, but it was that or chancing being traced to your room. Into the boy's room with you, and to the handicapped stall that for some reason had a hardline port. You sat down, pulled your modem from your satchel, connected your AR sunglasses' plug to the display port, plugged the modem into the wall, and slid your new toy into one of the ports. You were running out of space, you were going to have to expand the data card ports again soon. Your vision warped to the startup screen of your OS, and to the web that represented your programs and downloaded data. You had a gentle magenta color you were trying out, it kept with your theme of net-surfer bugs. You pulled the keyboard and cursor roller from the modem, clicked into your XTM Compound Backdoor port, and simply pressed the Run Program button for the new brown data card when the passcode screen popped up.

You weren't sure whose operating system you'd parasitically linked into, but it didn't seem very high echelon. Just some security officer, probably. You ran a facial recognition query, running you, your bestie, and the other one's face's against the database. No results. Good! They haven't figured out who you were yet, that meant your scrambler software worked. Hilarious, you literally uploading your faces into their database and forcing their system to edit you out was keeping them from knowing your faces. You primed the code to delete itself and post a code about it on a message board if it was ever found though, so you knew it would be safe. You ticked over to your favorite messenger site and send a quick DM to BG.

>///: NS: Thank youuuuuu :3
>///: BG: np!
>///: BG: worked as needed?
>///: NS: Like a charm, owe you one!
>///: BG: i will hold you to that iou :3
>///: NS: I know you will.

---

After packing up, you quickly made your way home to the manor. No reason to give your parents a scare. You hated carrying around the PDA they got for you, more XTM bullshit to subjugate and track you. Maybe you could rip it apart and add it to your modem? You'd probably had that idea before and forgot. Goddesses you hated being tired all the time. You patted and doffed your outdoor gear, quietly, as not to alert your parents. It wasn't like you hated them, they were just a lot, far too optimistic, and you had a hard time reconciling the fact your entire family had directly benefited from the XTM occupation. The Baroness, as you couldn't help but call her internally, did in fact catch you as you moved for the stairs.

"There you are... what did you get up to today, Ivan?" She asked, grinning in a way you hated. She made a big deal about using your name.

"I just went to the library, I'm gonna go lay down," no lies in that sentence!

"I wish you'd let me drive you around," she offered, again.

"I like to keep moving myself, I've told you it makes everything hurt a little less," no lies in that sentence either, it was just a lie that you hurt less when you're active. You started to walk away, trying to keep your cane from rattling the weapon inside too much.

"Well... dinner's almost done, I'll bring it up soon," she attempted, and you turned back to force a smile at her.

"Thanks Mom," you emptily responded, you weren't sure what you wanted but making and bringing you dinner felt weird considering you were nearly twenty. You ascended the stairs slowly, the way you needed to, keeping your hands on your cane and the rail. Then you walked into your best friend's open room, flopped onto their bed facedown, right next to them, and deeply exhaled.

"Did what you needed to?" They sighed.

"Mgghhhhfff," you replied into the comforter with a thumbs up.

[ ] Your best friend (The Devoted) is on this quest of liberation along with you. Specifically, they're here to make sure you don't get killed. What do they look like? What do you find appealing about them? What do you find overbearing about them? Something happened in their own home life a few years back, and they've been living in the guest room ever since. What happened? What weapon (or something defensive like a shield) do they use, and what is your most recent memory of them using it to protect you? Do you hold any confusing feelings toward them? If so, what kinds, and what do you think of them? (Sexualization is fine, it's beyond natural for two 19 year olds.)
[ ] Defer to the QM's judgement.

Clarification on something you said in your vote. It's possible I didn't make it entirely clear, Kukku is the name of the strike team Natalia commands. The broader military industrial force from earth is the Extraterrestrial Mining Company, or the XTM Corp. Doesn't change anything, just wanted to clarify!

Texas Red said:

[X] Catching the eyes of one of the Kukku's officers can be a terrible thing, and it was only the start of your friend's nightmares to learn that her family would gladly go along with it. The practice of arranged marriage had all but died out on Gilgamesh after the colonies population's stabilized, but on Earth it appears to have endured, even strengthened, with reproductive and marriage limits defined by corporate target. With financial and political pressure pouring in, there was but one way you could save her. Your own proposal, a better deal, the hand of an important family better than that of lowly officer. That it gave her an excuse to leave her house behind was an added benefit. Appearance wise, you are an odd couple. You are well, you, she the most beautiful lady in all the world. Her easy confidence and dogged determination, your caution and concern. The only friction is her guilt, and her perpetual assumption that you're getting in trouble for her, not because you want to do these things. Even if she did have to bail you out a few times with that nasty looking electric stun rod of hers.
Your feelings on her are not confusing at all. You like her, would certainly love her. But you know that acting upon those feelings, giving even the slightest hint, would put you in the very same position the Kuku's officer was in. She would go along with it, not even because she has no choice, but just for your sake. You never want to be that vile, so you say nothing, and will never say nothing.

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You are Smitten with your bestie. She gets a string on you, and you have already given an answer to a question about it I'd ask you. Why do you feel a relationship between you would never work? You feel any romantic relationship between you two would be based on pity or protecting you rather than mutual love.

"I really wish you'd let me drive you," Vi added. You sighed. Stop thinking about how good her comforter smells.

"The motorcycle is too loud. I needed to be quiet," you mumbled, rolling over to be audible. You managed to keep your streak of avoidant yet completely true statements going. You liked being independent despite the flare ups the day after a walk around the city.

"I just hate seeing you like this," Vi laid back against her bed along with your splayed, agonized form.

"What, miffed and independent?"

"No, exhausted and in pain, dumbass."

"Unimportant, I'm fine, don't worry," you laughed it off and reached for your satchel. "Come take a look, it worked!" You pulled your modem out, booted it, extended the screen from it's internal space, and flipped to the saved images you had of you, Vi, and Charlie, who should be arriving soon. Faces obscured and the identifying markers on Vi's raid suit prototype helpfully scrubbed clean from the footage. Vi sighed, loudly.

"Fuck. That's a load off my mind."

"What, you didn't trust my program?" You grinned, collapsing the screen and tucking your modem back into your satchel.

"Anxiety isn't the same as distrust, Ivan," Vi said, rolling from the bed and stretching out.

"When's Charlie getting here?"

"What, had enough of our lavender marriage for the day?" She giggled. You laughed.

"I'm barely bi, shut up," at least something you agreed on was the jovial nature with which you both purely legal marriage you used to get her out of her parents' house and make sure she wouldn't be married off to that scummy XTM officer. The one time your mother listened to you, and the one time you'd made a decision without even thinking of the ramifications down the line. As your punishment, you'd spend the last two years in a state of not exactly regretting your essentially irreversible decision, but wondering how you could have handled the situation differently if you'd planned things out.

"I think Charlie is getting here..." she glanced at the clock. "Around now, actually, you got home at the perfect time."

"Great, perfect, I'm ready to wrap this day up," you said, laying back again and rubbing your eyes. You were always tired, but you were starting to feel a crash coming on.

---

Perspective swap! Charlie. I have decided to change from my original plan of having some older fighter trying to wake up Gilgamesh to what's really happening, as I think it would be really weird to have some random older person commanding these two 19 year olds. So to round out the trio, we have Charlie the Investigator. As an investigator, you have a Burning Question about one of the Toxic Powers, which in this case is the XTM force.

Tbh, I don't like how I wrote this next section and the questions, give me a bit and I'll make some new ones and send out a new end of threadmark, which I will make a separate threadmark.

You had the hard drive Ivan managed to decrypt tucked into your pocket, and you were grinning like an idiot. You had something here, that was for sure, but you'd need to hear what the Happy Couple thought about it. Ah, midwinter at the equator. When the sun was a pin's head at arm's length and Aldrin City's port froze over completely. Your electric parka kept you toasty though, even if only for two hours. Wasn't like you spent
that much time outside anyway. Excitement helped with the chill as well, as did taking different routes to the Baroness's manor to see as much of the city as possible. You knew your old city top to bottom, and you hoped you'd figure out this one just like that, considering you were probably staying here the rest of your life. One way or another at least. Aldrin City was much more brick heavy, a lot of soft reds and slanted metal roofs to keep them from collapsing under the snow's weight. You thought it was a lot prettier.

[ ] People call you Charlie. Is it your nickname for Charles, Charlotte, or are you just Charlie? (Roundabout presentation pick) Bashing and stunning folk in your way is more Octavia's thing than yours, you prefer talking things out, but you have combat training as well. What's your weapon of choice? What was the reason you moved to Aldrin City? You have one big thing you're after, one big question for XTM. What is it? Are you trying to find out which higher up would be the easiest to make defect, or be your man on the inside? Are you wondering how you could reveal evidence to the public the end of the world will commence if XTM removes the topsoil and mineral deposits they plan to? Or are you searching for something else in the shorter term? Finally, why did you become friends with Ivan and Octavia, and what radicalized the three of you to save the world yourselves?
[ ] Defer to the QM's judgement.

Perspective swap! Vi.

Well, that didn't take long. Ivan had a habit of passing out on your bed, but this had to be a record. You'd long since stopped asking how he slept as the answer was always "Shit, you?". So to manage his insomnia he usually fell asleep in your presence, for some reason, rarely on his own in his own bed, and rarely actually meaning to. You didn't really mind, you were happy he was that comfortable around you, but it sometimes cut conversations short when he started to lose coherency and drift off without realizing. Okay Vi, stop watching him while he slept, it's weird. Ding dong! Perfect timing! You gently stood up from your bed, closed Ivan's satchel as not to show that monstrosity to his mother or father if they by chance walked by, and made for the door. Down the stairs of your ostentatious home you and Ivan would inherit one day as hilariously well off housemates, past the kitchen where Mrs. Castillo was cooking with headphones on, and to the front door to welcome Charlie.

[ ] You call them Charlie. Is it a nickname for Charles, Charlotte, or are they just Charlie? You use your inertia and powered armor to defend the other two, but Charlie, like Ivan, is able to punch above their weight class. What weapon do they use? You hate to admit it, but if it came down to it, you'd choose Ivan over Charlie in a heartbeat, no question. Is there lingering guilt about that fact, or is that just the way things are in your mind? How did they convince Ivan to help them investigate XTM? What exactly did they convince him to help with? What is the overarching question Charlie is says they are searching for the answer to about XTM?

Texas Red said:

[X] Charlie is short for Charlotte, exactly the kind of name you'd expect a fencer would have, a elegant moniker earned with her rapier. If push comes to shove, however, you've little issue leaving the detective for dead if it meant saving Ivan. Even if Charlotte's information was vital for Ivan's successful proposal, it came at too steep a price, and you fear that Ivan will find himself diving too deep into an MTX database one day and won't be able to surface from its depths. For all that Charlotte's goal is noble, you are fairly sure she's lying about her identity and that the over-the-top detective get-up she wore was simply a red-herring to throw people off. Still, there's no denying that you're also interested in the secrets of the one specter that's haunted Gilgamesh ever since the Earthers came, of the face-stealing immortal and how to kill it.

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You swung the door open to reveal the third wheel of the imbalanced tricycle that was your investigative squad. Charlie, the bubbly redhead you had a meager amount of trust for. Not for her competence, she was probably as good a fighter as you were, and she was scarily deductive in social settings, you'd gotten the clue that led you to the XTM hydroponics island in the equatorial ocean from her speaking to your suitor who had been stationed there years ago. In addition to where you should look for information on the immortal assassin, somehow she'd absorbed enough dispirit information about the security systems and patrol regiments for Ivan to craft an entrance and exit plan so clean you only had to punch one security guard who so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Octavia, how are you?" She responded in the cheery voice you weren't sure of the authenticity of, before leaning forward to squeeze you. You returned the hug out of mainly obligation, but even if you'd choose Ivan over her in a heartbeat and wouldn't feel had about it, she was still your friend.

"I'm doing great, Charlotte, Ivan got the back door he was looking for," you whispered, even if Mrs. Callisto was still listening to a podcast you didn't want to chance her hearing.

"And?"

"The program worked perfectly," you grinned.

"I have a lot to discuss too, I organized the info we got, though I can't make heads or tails of technical data. Where is our resident breacher?" She asked, flashing the hard drive you'd pulled from a server from the hydroponic island.

"He passed out on my bed again," you giggled, letting go of her.

"Poor baby, do we wake him?"

"He was up worrying last night, I say we let him sleep it off."

---

Ivan

You opened your eyes in the dark. Well, not super dark, just Gilgamesh winter-with-clouds dark. Vi had left. You must have fallen asleep again. You blinked away the smudge obscuring your vision and looked for the clock. Half past eighteen. The sun had probably just set. You made sure no one had touched your modem and wandered out toward the sound of Vi and Charlie's voices. How fitting, they were sitting and talking in your room now. As soon as you entered the room, Charlie grabbed you for a hug. It was always appreciated how gentle she was with it.

"Feeling better? Octavia told me you were up worrying last night!" Charlie said in her usual nearly comical enthusiasm you found adorable.

"She did, did she?" You glared at Vi, who rolled her eyes. "I'm fine, Charlie, you said you had something for me?" You closed the door behind you to have this meeting in peace.

"The hard drive is on your desk. I sorted the folders, made a little web for you, since I know you aren't a fan of desktop OS formatting, and left all the technical shit in a folder for you since you know I'm useless on that," you snagged the hard drive from your electronics tools and took a look over it. It didn't fit your modem, and you'd long since cannibalized your PC for parts to upgrade your ever growing computing amalgam. Goddamn XTM with their different plugs for internal electronics.

"I'm gonna need a minute with this. Can you give me an idea of what's on it?" You began gathering the tools you use to modify fiber optic cables.

"It's always pretty difficult to confirm it's you-know-who on the security cameras, but there's only one redacted name on the registry~" Charlie grinned. "They appear to be on a team now. With two other folk, though they never take off their helmets."
"A new team?" You asked, pausing and raising an eyebrow.

"The Kukku strike team," Charlie explained.

"Oh fuck off!" You exclaimed.

"What?" Vi asked.

"Kukku is one of the names used for the underworld in ancient Mesopotamia," you explained. She blinked. "Gilgamesh is a hero from that same mythology."

"Pretty on the nose," Charlie mumbled.

"Earthers are nothing if not ostentatious," you lightly jeered.

End of Prelude

Alright! Well, that was a fun week! However, this whole thing has not caught on as much as I was hoping it would. The TTRPG itself is pretty niche, and the name on it's own might give the wrong idea to the extent in which I will be writing these goobers making out sloppy style. So, because of that, I have a proposal to begin another thread in User Fiction and essentially write this on my own, upload each installment like a short story as an individual episode, but use the characters and world established here. Mainly I want the permission from @LucidProp and @10ebbor10 as you two came up with the characters I'll be using for this. If one of you'd much rather they stay in a quest as a choice of format as it will give you influence on the characters you two in fact designed for this, then I'll just stick to it. Otherwise, if I get your permission, I'll upload a Pilot Episode sometime in the future and tag you two.

Oh also, I'm naming the moons of Gilgamesh Luci and Ebbor (It's a nature reserve so it fits) as thanks for your consistent input.

I did in fact do that.