Constellations 15.1
Monday, September 5
Somehow, when Dragon and Kayleigh cooked up the plan to introduce you and your team to the world as a whole, you expected it to be followed by an immediate and massive shift in everything you knew and thought. Much like the way finding Perfect Storm and then discovering the truth about the TSAB had. Instead, the following afternoon you are sitting in the break room of Dragon's Vancouver plant working on your homework as if it were any other day.
Thankfully you are not the only person there, which just confirms that so much of life is no different than it was before. Missy sits in a chair at the small table, pencil in her hand as she works on homework that requires actual paper rather than a computer screen. Her attention is mostly on her work, the only exceptions being when the yellow gerbil sitting on her shoulder shifts around in a way that puts him at risk of falling off. Kayleigh lies on the other couch, supposedly reading a book for English class, but the times you glance over without her noticing you can not help but see that she is switching back and forth from the book she is meant to read and several browser windows open to various shopping websites. Like right now.
«
Somehow I doubt Mrs. Richards will accept your new purse as a good excuse for not reading The Grapes of Wrath.»
Your comment startles her, and you give her a knowing look when she looks at you with surprise that quickly turns into a flushed embarrassment. A flick of her fingers and she goes back to her assignment with obvious reluctance.
You shake your head and return to your own business, doing your best to ignore the clangs and crashes coming from the next room where most of the open space is. Sarah might not be in school any longer, but even she has homework. In her case, that involves several hours of sparring against Samantha both to get used to her sword and to learn how to counter other weapons that might come at her. There will likely be little that can actually pierce through her Knight Armor, but every little bit of protection helps.
A quiet muttering reaches your ears in time to spot Cassiel drifting into the room and heading for the small nests in the corner of the room. Her words are too quiet for you to understand, but the sharp and almost violent manner in which the towels that make up her and Dragon's nests are pulled away and into the air is a clear enough demonstration of her emotional state. She has been like this since before any of you showed up after class today, although she refuses to say why.
When you asked Dragon earlier, all the older fairy would say was that Cassiel knew what she did and why she is being punished.
The towels and Cassiel drift through the doorway again, all the dangling cloth narrowly missing Nostromo's head of red feathers. He shoots her a short glare before continuing inside, a metal cart in front of him with a white cloth over the top. This is not the first time he or his sister have done this; in fact, if you think about it you suspect that setting up their projects and revealing them as a surprise might be something they picked up from their creator. The Guardian Beast pushes the cart to a stop next to Missy. "Present for the little witch."
"Present for…?" She looks down at the crooked shape beneath the cover, and her eyes widen. "Oh! It's done?!"
"What's done?"
Missy ignores Kayleigh's question and brings her closed left fist to her chest and grabs her wrist with her right hand. Her muscles spasm for just a moment before you hear a soft click, and then her entire arm falls off. Had you not seen her switch out her prosthetics before, it would have caught you off guard – it certainly surprises Kayleigh if her sudden squawk is any indication – but instead what you focus on is how the arm was attached to her shoulder. Before her most recent surgery, there was a plate with a few glowing dots at the end of her stump, but now you see a larger circular plate set basically parallel to her side and recessed compared to the skin around it. It means that with her normal civilian prosthetic in place, there is not even a seam to show where flesh ends and machine begins. The other major difference is that instead of dots, the plate now possesses a large number of rings within rings within rings, like a cross-section of a tree.
«
Has… has she always had that?» asks Kayleigh.
«
The whole time you've known her, she has.»
With Missy obviously ready and willing, Nostromo pulls away the sheet to reveal her revamped armored limb. The top half is more or less the same as before, still plated with horizontal strips of shiny metal, although you cannot help but think that the contour looks a little smother than before. A little more lifelike. The only other difference is an insignia or something painted onto the shoulder: a red crescent with the tips pointed upwards, a dot in the middle of the curve and seven short pointed lines coming down from the bottom. What it means, you have no clue, but clearly it is intentional.
It is the bottom half that has the greatest difference. Before today, the back of the forearm and the palm and back of the hand were green, the fingers still silvery. Now it is the forearm as a whole is made of bands of metal just like the upper arm, although now starting from the mid-forearm those bands get progressively darker than the one higher up above it. The hand of the prosthetic is jet black, light catching and reflecting back in a rainbow of colors almost like looking at an oil slick.
He lifts it up and holds it out to her, and with no hesitation she turns so he can press the end of the robotic shoulder against her torso. Another click followed by a spasm, and she starts rolling her shoulder and swinging her arm this way and that. "Have to say, I like the new sync-up sequence Tim's using now. Much quicker than before."
"More efficient. That is the main benefit."
You clear your throat, getting the two tech aficionados' attention. Pointing at the new arm, you ask, "What's up with your hand?"
"Just a redesign," Missy says in a hasty voice. "Nothing to worry about."
Your disbelief is clear on your face, and with a put-upon sigh she reaches out and puts her hand in yours. Sure enough, there is definitely something strange worth catching the eye. The fingers of her real birth hand, as well as her civilian and previous armored prosthetic, were round. These fingers, however, are triangular, one corner running along the back of her fingers. Instead of nails, the fingers end in sharp points that look almost… glassy.
"What are they?" you ask when it becomes clear you will not figure it out on your own.
Missy may look sheepish, but her voice tells a different story. "I wanted to make sure it was obvious why fighting was a bad idea, so I asked for diamond-tipped claws."
"Lonsdaleite, actually," Nostromo chimes in before you can say anything. "Approximately 58% harder than cubic-structure diamonds."
A chime comes from the next room while you shake your head. "Let me guess.
Diamond claws are just something else the Protectorate wouldn't let you have—"
«
Taylor?» You cut yourself off as Samantha's voice enters your head. «
Can you come out here for a moment?»
"What does Cassie want?" asks Kayleigh with a frown.
"I don't know, but maybe it's the same thing Samantha noticed."
The three of you leave the break room, followed closely by Nostromo, to find Samantha, Sarah, and Cat Sith watching Cassiel flying around and around Laura in her Scathach outfit. The reason they want you to come is immediately apparent. Laura normally wears a pure white chainmail shirt, and that in turn makes the grey scorch mark just below her left shoulder stand out like a sore thumb.
"Run into some trouble?" Missy asks, going straight for the heart of the matter.
Laura follows Missy's gaze down to her armor, and the next second it crumbles away in a flurry of glowing blue flakes. "Nothing I can't handle."
"Clearly," you tell her in a dry voice. As you had thought to yourself earlier, there is little that can visibly deform or damage a Barrier Jacket, but what
can do so is bad news, and that is even more true for the Knight Armor you and Laura share. "So is the problem handled, or will it come back at you again?"
"You were patrolling Winter Hill's territory, weren't you?" Kayleigh asks instead.
You flick the gunslinger a quick glance at her uncharacteristically grim voice, but before you can say anything you notice Laura's head turning away from her. "Mighta been. What of it?"
"Who?"
The silence hung thick between your two school friends before Laura finally sighs. "Solaire. Pounce too, towards the end. They didn't like seeing 'fresh meat' on their turf and wanted me to know it."
"I'm going to echo Taylor's question." All of you turn to look at Sarah, who has now dismissed her sword and her own armor. "Was it a fight you won, or did you need to withdraw?"
"I don't think either of us won, exactly," she admitted. "This was more a feeling each other out thing. Both of us backed off after that."
Is it strange that the idea of heroes and villains feeling each other out seems strange to you? All the times you have fought villains, you did so with the intent of actually defeating them in order to have them arrested. The kind of back and forth Laura is implying sounds like too much of a stalemate waiting to happen.
Then again, you have not forgotten that before giving up her powers, Laura was solidly in the ranks of Winter Hill. It is not too much of a surprise that she would hesitate to unleash frozen hell on her former teammates, even if she has said before that they were not exactly friends.
"Are you planning to go back to that area?" Laura nods, earning a resigned sigh from Sarah. "Then be careful. You all know these gangs better than I do, but at least in my experience,
'feeling each other out things' only last until they know your limits. After that? All bets are off."
It's FINALLY time for a new arc! And a social arc to boot. Let's get things started and thing about what 3 social events you want to see this week.
- Hang out with another character(s). This is by definition a non-combat activity.
- Go on patrol. You can bring other characters with you if you want.
- Make yourself available to help Operation Pentagram.
- Explore somewhere on Earth Bet. A location must be included. You may bring other characters with you.
- Explore another world. You may bring other characters with you.
- Pick a world Taylor already knows about
- Find a brand new world
- Train, either in the real world or in Perfect Storm's simulator. SPECIFY which spell or skill to work on.
- Write-in (subject to my approval)
I know it's been a while, so if you forgot how moratoria work here, take the next 24 HOURS to discuss your options. DON'T vote yet. I'll tell you when.