That's great and all... But seriously. This goddamned crystal seems to like eating our low rolls, doesn't it?
Yeah, no kidding.
Blackbody Mystery: 18 + 45 + 15 (Mender's Eye) = 78. Failure
This was our FIRST attempt. It was on Turn 19, Tinker, Mender, Weaver, Spy. Nearly five years ago.
Blackbody Mystery: 15 + 47 + 20 (Mender's Eye) = 82. Failure.
And this was our CURRENT attempt. You may note a +5 boost to Mender's Eye, a +2 boost to relevant personal traits, and an even worse roll result.

Still, I'm glad that the mystery rock that may well be a fancy indestructible paperweight was useful to someone.

On a slightly different note: @Snowfire, what is the status of Mandy's Artifacts? The character sheet isn't quite as informational as I'd like, so - I'd like to know how well are they integrated into Sidra, how comfortable and skilled is Mandy at using them, are there any amusing quirks or stories to share, are there any specific Tinker actions to take?

[X] [Plan] Curiosity

RESEARCH(3)
[M] Lightless Circuits (273/???)
[] A World of Secrets
-[M] Tasting Lightning (333/???)
[] Inheritor's Legacy
+ INTERLUDE #1

MINOR (4 - 1 TRANSFER TO PERSONAL)
[] TRANSFER TO PERSONAL
[] Valkyries + INTERLUDE #2
[] A Healers Fire (110/???)
[] Tinker: Void Crystal + INTERLUDE #3

BONUS MINOR(Turn 5 of 5)
[]Mother of Circles + INTERLUDE #2

PERSONAL (3 Personal Action + 1 TRANSFER FROM MINOR)
[] Of Words And Melody: [352/???]
[] Mentor[LOCKED] + INTERLUDE #3
[] Unison Training + INTERLUDE #2
[] Those Great Creations

HEROES
Vision: Lightless Circuits
Vega Cant: Inheritor's Legacy
Mary Alessandra D'reve: Tasting Lightning
And this is another minor and personal action covered. 1 Minor and 2 Personal Actions to cover, with 1 Answer and 1 Interlude.
 
On the bright side, that's eating our bad rolls, and not something that the fate of the solar system depends upon!
 
Great character piece @Snowfire :)

To be honest I don't particularly mind the low roll and failure here, there are much worse places for that 15 to land where it would not be posibile to just re-try or even cause damage.
 
The Start of Something Warm - 3
The Start of Something Warm - 3

Previously
In every little sister's life, there comes a time when she surpasses her big sister.
  • Sarah "Nepgear" Kaioh

"Iris?"

Iris smiled and nodded.

"Iris." Aya blinked. "Why are you here?"

"I came to throw snowballs at you!" She cheerfully replied. "But then I decided not to. It seemed redundant. Are these your friends? They seem…" She considered the group. Nei had neutralized Uni, and the trio were skillfully neutralizing each other. She was reminded of crabs in a bucket. "They seem argumentative."

"Yes, they're—" Nei said.

"No."

"Easily distracted, but—"

"Brats."

"She loves playing with them," Nei finished, giggling in the face of Aya's angry glare. "It gives her an excuse not to be so stiff, and— yikes!"

Aya threw a snowball at her, telegraphing the throw massively and missing by a mile. This left Uni to her own devices. The smaller girl, shivering and miserable, immediately took the chance to dig out the snow that had gone down her back, scrambling away from her.

"They're children."

"Yes, sis. That's the point. Now, are you gonna introduce us?" Nei's voice rose a little. "Or are you waiting until Neptune over there digs her way out so she can attack your new— nope, never mind then."

The warning had been too late, and pointless besides. Just because she'd focused on Aya was no reason to stop focusing on everyone else, and so she'd seen it coming practically hours ago. The bottom-most girl dug her way out from underneath the snow-fluffle, leaving the other two still fighting each other to get up. A sidelong glance showed her packing a snowball, a wicked, slightly mad grin on her face. Aya and Nei waded in her direction.

= = =

Soon, believing herself victorious, the dark woman strode forth to claim her prize. The three remaining goddesses lay there, panting in pain and bleeding from their wounds, and she paid them no heed. She should not have shown such hubris.

The purple-haired goddess raised her head with a grunt. She had taken the brunt of the arrows, yet she was still alive. She looked around, dazed and in pain. The dark woman had her back to her. Now was her chance. She raised her arm, taking aim at the woman's neck. Now was her sole chance for revenge.

She did not hesitate.

She fired, and the bolt of actinic light lanced towards the woman's neck.

And hit nothing but air.

She had moved faster than sight. By the time the bolt had left her fingertips, the woman was behind her. Now, she was staring down the goddess of magic, a blood-stained dagger in her hands.

She felt cold metal against her throat. She could feel her life ending, just like that. She heard the woman speak, in a dark, cold voice.

"Tell me, goddess. Do you feel fear?"

She did not answer.

The woman smiled.

Neptune threw herself at her. The woman took a stumbling step back, yet she was inhumanly strong. She held her ground, and stabbed.

She felt the blade slide into her chest. It scraped against her ribs, sending pain throughout her body. She wanted to scream. She couldn't.

She fell to the ground, the strange, dark woman using her as a throne. She couldn't breathe, the cold steel penetrating her body.

"Tell me," she said. "Do you feel fear?"

Her vision blurred, and she felt darkness creeping up on her. She didn't know. All she knew was pain.

And then, darkness took her.

She was dead before she even hit the ground.


= = =

Iris leaned slightly aside, letting the snowball fly past her. Then she dodged the second. Then she had to sidestep, as Neptune had given up on snowballs and just kicked at the snow, as hard as she could, sending a spray of it past her face, then jumped, and—

"Mikki, enough!"

—The snow under her feet gave way as she tried to throw herself out of the way. Thirty kilos of pouncing excitement hit her in the chest, bowling her over for the second time in two days. The world went white, and grey, and white again. She hadn't predicted the girl might throw herself at her.

The snow, of course, was cold, and wet.

. . .

Nothing that she cared to bother feeling, in short.

"I caught a brat," Iris happily reported, sitting on top of the girl. Not that the others were paying much attention.

"How? Good grief Noire, what do they— feed you— Not in the neck! Nei, help!"

She looked on with amusement, absently pinning Neptune down a little harder. Or was it 'Mikki'? A quick search told her she was holding down 'Michiru', twelve, local super-flyweight freestyle martial arts champion, proud of it, and if she hadn't had a solid grip she wouldn't be. The girl could squirm, and she had muscles in plenty, but she couldn't get anywhere now. Iris might be cheating. A little. Mostly not, the girl just had no leverage.

Aya gave a wordless cry as Sandra tripped her, but held on, dragging both of them down into a snowbank.

Her and Nei weren't doing so well. Looking at them, she wondered if their opponents might not be cheating too—but no, the younger girls were just much better at this. The snowball fight had degraded into a wrestling match, and while Nei had successfully pinned down Uni, as well as Sarah when the latter tried coming to the former's rescue, Aya was quickly losing her fight against Sandra.

Michiru quickly gave up the fight, twisting so she could at least look Iris in the face. Meanwhile the others continued fighting in the background.

"I'll help you if these two will just hold still! Running away isn't fair," Nei said.

"Stop joking and get this thing off me!"

"I don't want to be called a brat by someone my own age," said Michiru, calmly. "I'm Neptune. What's your name?"

"Cold!" Aya shrieked.

"Iris," said Iris, contradicting Aya. "Does this happen a lot?"

"Serves you right, you monster!" Sandra twisted like a snake around Aya, cleanly overpowering her and pinning her with all four limbs, the two of them quickly digging a deep hole in the snow. She was winning, but it was obviously a pyrrhic victory. "I've got snow all the way into my trousers! I'm not a thing! You're the thing!"

"You think I don't?! Every! Day! You never stop!" Aya yelled back. She'd given up on holding Sandra back, instead focusing on shoving as much snow as possible into every crack she could get while Sandra did the same. This could not possibly be a reasonable battle-plan.

"You owe me three cups of hot chocolate for this!"

"Boss fights are part of every good game," Michiru said, grinning up at her and tearing Iris' eyes away from the fascinating-yet-horrific scene taking place only meters away. "Kidding. But yes. You're not going to stuff snow down my neck, are you?"

"Not unless you jump at me again," she agreed.

"Let my sister go, you big meanies!" A younger voice—Uni, staggering to her feet. Nei had belatedly come to her sister's rescue, which left Uni and Sarah free to, apparently, just shout at them.

"There's a dark demon goddess of archery on top of me stopping me from doing that," Michiru said.

Iris gave her a quizzical look.

"Just joking. This was a lot of fun. We've got to play again sometime, but if we're talking about brats…" The twelve-year-old tilted her head sideways, 'nodding' towards where Nei and Aya were ganging up on a girl even younger than her, and still nearly losing. Uni yelled at them from behind a tree, Sarah standing nervously next to her.

"And what's wrong with playing, anyway? The heroes were just about to win, when their enemies called in a monster from beyond the sky. Then, having no choice, the four goddesses' little sisters escaped…"

Iris slowly blinked at her.

"Kidding! Usually it's too easy." Michiru strained, nearly lifting her off the ground, but mainly embedding herself deeper instead. It was still an impressive display of strength. Giving up, she yelled, "Uni, Nepgear, save yourself! Fetch Ram and Rom! Hire mercenaries! Avenge me! I was too beautiful for this world, too pure!"

"Oho, Sandra, I think your partner's given up," Nei said. Of the four of them she was the least stressed, and the only one who didn't seem like she was likely to freeze to death—she'd avoided most of the damage.

"I could really use your help here, dork!"

Much unlike Sandra.

"She says." Michiru strained again, arms shaking. After a few seconds she gave up. "It's not like I'm not trying— Are your arms made of iron?"

Iris thought, then smiled slightly. "Just carbon, like a normal girl."

"Uh huh, totally not a robot. How'd you get your eyes to do that neat thing with changing colors? It looks awesome." She squinted, eyeing the walls of snow to either side of her face with trepidation. "And I give up. You win, okay? I'm drowning, here. You should join the tournaments. Just let me up before I'm lying in a puddle! I promise I won't do anything." She continued under her breath, "Right now."

"I'll get you for thiiiis!" Aya screamed.

"Dunno. I came here for a snowball fight."

"You can't just walk up to random girls and throw snowballs at them. I'm delicate!" Michiru said, obviously lying. She let her head fall back into the snow for approximately one tenth of a second, then gasped, evidently regretting the decision. "—You have to plan it out. Then you can bring it. Not right now. Let me up. Please? I'm actually freezing."

"Oh, all right."

"I said leave my big sis alone! Aiiiyah!"

Uni had somehow acquired a 'sword' made from hard-packed snow, Iris couldn't even imagine why, and slashed it down at Nei even as she jumped back into the fight. Of course snow was really only snow, so it didn't survive long enough to hit anything. The fragments of it did leave Nei sputtering and blinking.

"Eeeeei!"

Sarah took the more practical approach of physically jumping on top of the siblings.

Iris watched all of this with sparkling eyes, feeling warm, and she massively regretted that she'd been so efficient in taking down the girl beneath her.

"Are you letting me up?" Michiru asked, a little weakly.

= = =

She helped Michiru to her feet. Truthfully, the fight was already dying down, victim of severe frostbite—otherwise she'd have still been highly tempted to join in. Instead, she chatted with the other girl for the few minutes until the other five gave up.

Was this small talk, she wondered? Unlike Aya the day before, Michiru's conversation stumbled from genre to genre with startling rapidity. It left her scrambling to keep up, but it was every bit as fun. Entirely like Aya, Michiru did most of the talking.

"—Because the forest kicked us out so we decided the winners have to provide cookies, but mom thought eggplant-flavored cookies would be funny." Michiru made a 'blech'-like sound, showing what she thought of Arfoire's cooking. "So nowadays we just get Aya's parents to make them. They never do weird stuff like that. How'd you meet her?"

"Um, yesterday. I was—"

"You're the girl she found half-frozen on her head in a snowbank!"

Iris mumbled something unintelligible and, truthfully, meaningless, her face going red.

"So you came here for revenge?" Michiru drew herself to her full, minuscule height. "You've got guts! But if you want to defeat Aya, you'll have to get past me first. I'm her only rival! Until you can defeat me, you have no business challenging her!"

"Did she not soundly defeat you mere minutes ago?" Sandra laconically commented. She was still technically fighting, but only barely. In fact the quintet were settling down to watch the entertainment.

"Technicalities! I wasn't prepared." She waved her hands dramatically.

"Aren't you the one who always goes on about love and war? And doesn't Aya lose every time anyway?" Sandra mercilessly went on. "Who'd arrange a game where the final boss is weaker?"

"I'm not weak, the two of you are just freaks," Aya complained.

"Are you… challenging me to a duel?" Iris asked, blinking rapidly. "What happens if I win?"

"You get to make me cookies!"

"—Place? Weapons?"

"Outdoors! All the snow you can get your hands on!"

As an idea occurred to her, she slowly grinned.

"As much as I can use? That might be a lot…"

"Bring it on!" Michiru said, matching it with a grin of her own. "This time I'll show you my true power. The power of a goddess!"

"Big sis…" Sarah palmed her face.

= = =

"There's such a thing as proportional response, Iris," Amanda said. "Using the car to drop her body weight in snow on her was definitely too much. You're grounded for a week." She sighed. "But I'm glad you made some friends."
 
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The above is a continuation of a canon omake chain, which charts Iris' first real experience with children her apparent age at that point, the events of which directly contributed to the way in which she has developed as a person. @Baughn receives one (1x) Omake Coupon for this contribution, to be used as they wish.
 
Cheat sheet, because it might be necessary:

Neptune — Michiru[1]
Nepgear — Sarah
Noire — Sandra
Uni — Uni[2]
Iris — Iris

1: Also 'Mikki', a nickname invented after she tried naming Aya 'Underling'. Michiru claims to hate it.
2: Actually Kaoru, but nobody except her teachers call her that.
 
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