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Owner	Pose
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Fishing minigame!     Nope, that sucks. It's pet-the-dog cliche. It's *trite*. What are you, a survivalist fisherman? Are you someone who has either the academic interest, the culinary interest, or the caloric interest in fish necessary to make the catching of fish actually something you'd want to do? > Arthur: Not really     Well fuck off then. > Arthur: Stellar constellation-netting minigame!     There we are, that's better. They're on a clear stretch of things now, so nobody has to worry about helming or choppy travel. Arthur has set up a sort of elaborate net-casting structure on the rim of the deck, where folks can gather and peacefully chatter while engaging in a pastime of his: The restful, startlingly relaxing hobby of 'constellating', which involves casting a strange energy-net out when passing stars are aligning into shapes that coherently spark memory activations or provoke dense visual concepts, and then reeling these "catches" in to skin, debone, and fillet the mythopoetic content into a series of story beats -- real, fictional, or merely fictionalized -- through a weird little loom-like device he's got behind the deck-chairs.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell spends some time turning the crank at the loom on his latest catch -- six stars in a long rectangular arrangement that got netted as a castle shape -- to produce an elaborate tale of a sort of mythic struggle of competitive sandcastle-building.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell says, "Really glad I got to some BEACHSIDE STUFF before this trip. Otherwise the NON-OCEAN bit was gonna leave some GAPS on the YACHT CLUB ANGLE."
Angela	Angela is on the Angelapad again and Tiphereth is holding her. Angela used to ask Roland to hold the Angelapad but Roland is very haphazard about holding Angela properly and it doesn't seem to be correctable behavior. He insists that it's just him kind of 'forgetting' that he has to think of it as a camera that is showing Angela things and he is never sure where exactly the camera gets the proper view but in the end, since Tiphereth is here, Angela asked if Tiphereth could handle it. Angela is a little disappointed that everybody isn't playing a fishing minigame and if she could hear the metatext she'd get upset about it. The last time she went fishing, a giant monster attacked, and she feels like that shouldn't be normal and yet maybe it is? She hopes it isn't because she wants to give fishing another try sometime. Maybe not even a fishing minigame. Maybe just ''fishing''. Maybe Calvin will get the impulse. Calvin feels like a guy who minigames a good fish. She's not sure how she feels about star fishing. It feels a little scary, and yet alluring, to manipulate the positions of the stars via your will, to reach out and touch them, to make a wish and pull one down. To hold that spark in her own hands and feel what it means to be beloved by the universe for just one instant. But this feels a little goofy and so she's uneasy, like she's being made fun of. She wonders, aloud, "How does this even work?" the expressions of Tiphereth and Roland suggest that maybe they also don't really get it but aren't about to ask. Angela longs for the eggpack so she could mess with the loom herself but instead she says, "Tiphereth, would you like to give it a go?"
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell answers by stepping away from his machine and pushing himself into frame near Angela. "Try seeing SHAPES IN DOTS, and then seeing MEMORIES or IDEAS in SHAPES." He says. "Press the CAST button when you get a GOOD, STRONG MEMORY." [ ] Don't give me more hints for 3 days.
Tamamo	Tamamo isn't sure how Arthur's net-and-loom arrangement works, so she's decided to start with something easy -- an arrangement of stars that look like a fish, if a fish were like a long, wavy string with a couple of fin-points. At least, that all did look like a fish, but on approach to the net, it undergoes cognitive transformation into a long, bearded dragon with claw-points.     Once she gets up from her deck chair to turn the crank, out comes a series of discrete story beats about perseverance against adversity, seizing divine opportunity, and recreating oneself through personal efforts. She tries to see if the myth is edible, but-- "A very old taste, like something that has been passed about a bit too long, still with need for embellishment, or it cannot fit the local palate, no matter the locale. We should throw this one back, and see if it grows into something else."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell nods a few times, discarding the historical-literalism bones of his latest catch into a bucket. "Yeah, stuff that's a LIVING BEING, it's always gonna lack that SPECIAL SOMETHING 'cause not everywhere has any given ANIMAL, sure doesn't have every given GUY. With a TOOL, CLOTHING, some TERRAIN, stuff like that, you get into UNIVERSAL MYTH THEORIES an' all."
Petra Soroka	> Petra: Develop an academic, culinary, or caloric interest in fishing     Petra already did that! Well, really, it's closest to 'academic', but more properly it's a *dilettante* interest, in the physicality, atmosphere, and soothing narrative fulfillment of fishing, mostly on account of Nika. All of these desires, therefore, are not dependent on fish being present at all, so constellation-weaving actually seems perfectly up her alley. > Petra: Enjoy that, begrudgingly.     "Yeah, this is fine." Petra says out loud, with none of her previous thought process being broadcasted.     She'd been gently lulled into the fishing mindset for twenty minutes of sedate activity before abruptly announcing that out of nowhere, having settled into the pattern of cast and reel. She's very good at it too, better than fishing, which she also seemed to be a somewhat natural hand at, because drawing narratives out of stars is what she does on a daily basis already. The grisly processing is something she takes to a little less enthusiastically, but equally well, and she does try to get her grabby hands on the loom on occasion. "Really glad I got to some BEACHSIDE STUFF before this trip."     "Yeah...." Reflecting on that, Petra immediately spots a cluster of stars that reminds her of the goofy spaceship adventure she went on at the beach because of Arthur's bullshit, and tosses her net towards it. "I'm glad I got to see Chie again. And also that Nika met her?" "How does this even work?"     "Oh, it's just like..." Petra waggles her free hand while reeling in her new catch, then points at it once it's close enough. The arrangement of four stars doesn't look like a spaceship at all, and in fact it's difficult to even see where the skeleton of one would be. "That's a boat to me."
Xion	Xion, wearing flipflops and a one-piece swimsuit in white shorts with orange flowers and a green and black plaid shirt, had decided she was going to hang out - definitely, this time, it wasn't a party! sheesh, could she be normal? - and made point of heel-slap steps onto the deck, where Arthur was. . . Making a fool of himself again? Moseying up to the deck chairs and the device behind, she's pulled her mouth into a 'hmm.' that doesn't fire before she starts speaking. "Arthur are you de-boning *stars*?" She asks, not quite clear on what's going on. "This is a heck of a fishing spot, but does the constellating. . ." The noirette tilts her head, rocking chin off tapping finger. "Have any bunk prizes? Usually if I've got to cast a line into space it's mostly debris and munny and weird fish. Really high numbers in the fish trackers." The tale of sandcastle building gets a straightening of head and a more interested quirk of eyebrow. "Are you rolling the inspiration gacha? To get beach day stuff?" He couldn't be. Was he? It was mystifyingly possible. It'd be. . . . . . gamer.
Angela	Roland reaches for the 'Don't give me hints for 3 days' button and Tiphereth slaps it away. She damn well knows he still needs hints. Tiphereth says, "I think I understand. Do you want me to try and make a shape from your memory?" Angela is a little hesitant as she looks over to Petra to see if her Hints are superior to Arthur's hints and immediately decides they are because they are Petra's hints. She then looks towards the Petra Star Boat. Angela considers for a long moment. "Tiphereth. I don't want to prevent you from making your own, but... Could you perhaps make at least one fish?" "Got it." Tiphereth hums merrily as she works the loom, gradually pulling a small number of stars into a shape not unlike one of those goldfish crackers. It looks a little bit like that if you were to draw a line through the stars. "I see... Thank you Tiphereth. You should do something from your memories now." Angela is feeling better!
Petra Soroka	Petra's four stars are, on closer inspection once she hauls the constellation onto the ship, peppered with many more brown dwarves that fill in the outline of her Treasure Planet-type spaceship. What comes out when she gets her turn on the loom is sweet and salty like caramel, but airy-light and mostly good for comedy purposes. It's okay but only when combined with something else!     "Well, this isn't really space," Petra asides to Xion. "In space you can't really interact with the stars. That's why they're stars. This is space but with everything close together so humans can consume it, so there's probably way less debris."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell rambles at Petra, "Yeah, way BACK IN THE DAY these were put together, there was this sorta agreement that the LUMINOSITY would stay TUNED TO GOLDILOCKS-ZONE PLANETS so that NIGHTTIME would keep up VISUALIZATION. There was a VOID-ASPECT LADY I KNEW, was in real deep with that kind of TUNING." He looks closer, tilting his head. "Though you got a lot BETTER VISION than I thought, maybe."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell explains to Xion, "It's on the mind. Last thing I was messing with before I left." He gets back to the net-caster, looking to line up a new shot. "Dunno what 'gacha' is, is that like loot tables? Anyway, BUNK PRIZES is easy. Bunch'a STARS that MEAN NOTHING, I guess."
Tamamo	'Arthur are you de-boning *stars*?'     "That sounds less than possible." As if Tamamo didn't just try eating the result.     'Usually if I've got to cast a line into space it's mostly debris and munny and weird fish.'     "Is there munny in space, commonly?" She said it right, but that doesn't mean she's sure what it is.     'This is space but with everything close together so humans can consume it, so...'     "That race course felt a bit like this, even though it was very different." Tamamo has to wait for a while, imagining lines between stars, before she's able to get something close enough to a pair of circles, requiring plenty of imagination to produce such regular curves. "Oh, no, it is still not quite right... a motorbike should be more..." She'll throw that one back, and keep looking.
Angela	"Oh well gachas are when you download Lilian in a video game and pay like 200,000 ahn to play her." Roland explains to Arthur. "I'm guessing it's at least that much to guarantee the pull." Tiphereth is staring at the stars for a moment herself, trying to think what's in her memories that she would like to shape with the stars. She can imagine it clearly, constellation lines flickering between each dot of a star, but when she tries to imagine putting them together, all those little lines tumble out down and out of view forcing her to start over. "Hey Tiph, how long are you gonna--" Roland begins, obliviously. "I'm thinking!" Tiphereth growls as she starts working the loom herself once more, this time pulling in ... just a number of stars in a sort of squiggly line if you were to imagine it? "...I was thinking of Love so I just made a snake." Tiphereth says, rubbing at her neck. She looks over to Tamamo, "You mean the ones with the... 'shroobs'?"
Tamamo	"'Play Lilian'?" Tamamo's lips draw into a faint frown as she tries to process whether this is rude. 'To play' does mean 'to fool,' but isn't it something else...?     'You mean the ones with the... 'shroobs'?'     "Oh, did you hear about that time, Ms. Tiphereth? Yes, it was a race I attended. I have not attended many as a participant, I suppose, making it a unique experience."
Xion	"Huh?" Xion asks Petra, only a little confused. "No, I mean, common misconception, but actually you can just sort of... hold your breath for a while? And if you're enough Heartless you can even make wind somehow even though there really isn't any in space. It is how it is, though." The noirette shrugs. "Space is space." She fails to explain, once again a strange wanderer of the candy dimension. "Also, debris is just sort of on the space drop table." Xion snaps a finger as she points at Arthur when he gets it right. "It's like loot tables." She confirms, before eyeing towards him. "Arranging stars just right for night visualization is extremely rad, that is true. Thinking about deep stuff while peeling apart loose clusters, huh?" Sympatetic, she pats Arthur on the shoulder. "It's worse than loot tables, though. It's cracking packs." Tamamo, asking about Munny, gets Xion to draw out a keyblade - this one aquamarine and toothed in a head like a splash of blue water, with an array of extended 'droplets' hooking back. Appearing in a 'shwink!' of coalescing pale motes, she flick-casts the end of her water Key out off the edge of the boat and enters an idle animation while she waits. Tapping foot and waving head side to side, she carries on briefly. "It's a naturally occuring. . . Energy? Space sugar? It's hard to explain but doing just about anything interesting generates some. It's how the economy works, I think?" It's not. There's capitalism but she doesn't care to understand why there's paper Munny. Her candy clusters spend just fine with moogles, anyway.
Petra Soroka	"Though you got a lot BETTER VISION than I thought, maybe."     "That's 'cause I'm locked in. I'm seeing stars you can't even dream of." Petra rambles to herself while delicately taking apart her constellation. "If you saw the narratives I'm fishing for in space you'd hurl." "Oh, no, it is still not quite right... a motorbike should be more..."     Petra alerts towards Tamamo, momentarily pausing in her handiwork. She's hearing all her favorite words!!! "Race course? Motorbike? ...Shrooms?" No not that one! "Oh well gachas are when you download Lilian in a video game and pay like 200,000 ahn to play her."     "If Arthur existed in the era of gacha games, he'd be even more rotted out than he already is. He'd have the attention span of a six year old on speed. His speech thing would be scrolling Subway Surfers under the radio channels all the time."     On Angela's fish constellation, Petra comments, "I really didn't expect to like fishing as much as I do. That trip was a tiny bit evil, but, like, I hope you did like it too." "No, I mean, common misconception, but actually you can just sort of... hold your breath for a while?"     Petra settles down to begin the process of watching the stars scroll by until another shape catches her eye, facing off the deck. "That's not really the space I grew up with, but it does sound nice."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell chatters with Roland, somewhat belatedly, "SUPER SMASH AURICS got DLC? Shit, that's WILD."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell goes for another cast, and calls back to Tiphereth. "SNAKES got tons of MYTHIC BACKING, 'cause you can get 'em on the SHORE or WAY INLAND, I guess. Probably? How common are SNAKES, GLOBALLY?" Arthur scratches his cheek, thinking a lot as he reels in.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell accepts a shoulder pat from Xion but makes a short "pff" sound. "LEAST DEEP THING EVER." He says. "I never think about DEEP STUFF. Just thinking about OLD FRIENDS."
Lilian Rook	Unfortunately, this isn't a game that Nika and Sakura can really participate in! The two of them are, currently, engaged in discussing the particulars of launching a 'private server' that Nika had invited 'everyone' to, using Lilian's radio, like Elites are a Discord she can start playing Minecraft with.     According to the Rublecam, this involves many large sketchbooks that are being filled in with elaborately colour-coded marker, involving writing, maps, icons, and various creatures drawn from memory, next to complicated electrical diagrams and powerpoint style explanations of netcode from someone who knows nothing about netcode but can netcode reallly well. They are down so many packs of soda and gummybears that Nika is at the point of contemplating if she's gaining weight.     Lilian thinks this pastime is extremely romantic, and congratulates Arthur on findally doing something of 'refinement'. She has been fishing all of once, actually kind of enjoyed it, was party to it sparking Nika's interest, and 'stars', despite not technically being within her native theme, are something she has regarded very highly ever since actually going to space for touchy feeling gay reasons.     Ash has spent the last two hours reprocessing the concept of 'space' from a blank vista of sterile nothingness (which they have pontificated about for hours at a time, going on about how NASA spices up the images to look good, every since enduring some sort of crushing disappointment in their teenaged years they haven't brought up much) in a sort of alien wilderness that humans simply haven't learned how to perceive the trees and berries and jaguars in yet. They return to the deck with menacing intent, but pause to appreciate Lilian working on starstuff with a knife like she could be skinning a deer in the woods or whittling a jade carving for the emperor or both.
Lilian Rook	'Really glad I got to some BEACHSIDE STUFF before this trip.' "Ah shit. There was a pool. Right." "You don't have to use it." "Wait did you?" "I'm going to let you off easy this time." "What? No for real. How many pools do you think are in Pee-Oh-En-Vee?" "Nobody uses 'post-onslaught' next to a state abbreviation." "Yeah and using 'no-man's land' is for braindead dicklickers who got their first boner from reading All Quiet on the Western Front." "I can never get a grasp on your tone band." "Sick."     'I'm glad I got to see Chie again. And also that Nika met her? "I like her lots! She's invited to my server!" "Is that really what you'd prefer to call it, Nika? I remember that you were quite averse to the idea for a long time." "That's 'cause 'the future is in your hands now' is such a ¶tropey/lazy/shoot and scoot¶ way to do that. If it's people I like then it's cool. I wanna try out ¶world-seed modification¶! Fishing is only one thing!" "And here you are on your third, as I try to come to grips with my first, ha . . ." "Who the fuck is Chie? Friend of yours DD?" "Because her name sounds Japanese?" "Yea." ". . ." "No she's a wolf-girl." "Wolf-lady." "I guess but I'm talking about a specific ¶codified term¶ you know?" "Sadly, I do." "Well was she cool?" "Yeah! Her ¶boss/mom¶ is kinda touchy-feely but they have good ¶Words¶ and like running around a normal amount."
Angela	''Play Lilian?'' "Like in the..." Roland looks to Tiphereth for help who gives him a 'you dug your own grave here buster' look. Roland sighs and nods absently to Petra's analysis of Gacharthur. "I couldn't afford it until I was older, then I quit later." When he met Angelica actually! He wanted to have a family so he had a reason to not dump money into gachas. "I don't know what Super Smash Aurics is, dude." Roland actually really likes Arthur even if he's not going to defend his speech patterns. Partially this is because he is a man who he has had like more than two conversations with in the past year but he sort of sees him as a shaman. "Anyway, it's uh. Lke you can get a little Lilian avatar in the video game and use her in the game. It's not really her but it's designed to be her, even if they've changed some stuff around--" He's heard it mentioned on Banter a few times so he wasn't expecting to have to explain this. He's a little nervous. "Yeah, Roland talked about it a bunch." Tiphereth tells Tamamo. "I don't think anybody really goes out to space in our world so a 'space adventure' is kind of really mindblowing for us. Oh Roland, maybe you can make a shroob?" Roland grimaces, also thinking 'No not that one!' mentally. Angela's mood further improves when Petra asks her about the fishing trip. "I think at the moment I was rather upset it became this whole 'adventure', I allowed that moment to overshadow the positive in the moment, but now with hindsight--it was really just one bad moment out of many wonderful moments." She bobs her head to Petra, hoping to reassure her with a smile--she's getting better at those! "I had a wonderful time. I shouldn't let those moments linger, honestly. Instead of thinking 'this monster ruined my one time fishing', I should think instead 'I enjoyed this time fishing and I will enjoy the next time fishing.'" She looks back to Petra, "I'm glad you enjoy fishing too, maybe we can go again sometime?" ''SNAKES get tons of MYTHIC BACKING.'' "If you wanted to make Love, you could have added the wings and made it clearer." "Uh. yeah." Tiphereth wasn't actually thinking of Love but what Arthur says draws her attention. "Oh, tons? I mean, I know the whole 'Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil' story, but is there more?" ''Wolf-lady.'' Roland quietly thinks, from what it sounded like, that maybe it is just wolfgirl this time honestly, but he puts the thought out of mind before it can linger. Stop getting in trouble, Roland, he thinks.
Lilian Rook	'Have any bunk prizes? Usually if I've got to cast a line into space it's mostly debris and munny and weird fish.' "Huh? How is money a bunk prize?" "Wait how is fish a bunk prize?! You're fishing!" "Munny." "What?" "You said money." "Huh?" "Fishing is like cards. ¶Commons/repeats¶ are the junk." "Bunk." "I said what I said."     'Yeah, way BACK IN THE DAY these were put together, there was this sorta agreement that the LUMINOSITY would stay TUNED TO GOLDILOCKS-ZONE PLANETS so that NIGHTTIME would keep up VISUALIZATION. There was a VOID-ASPECT LADY I KNEW, was in real deep with that kind of TUNING.'     Ash, with zero interest and a perfect, immaculate sense for what will fire shots back at everyone who gave them grief over videogames, takes a menacingly deep breath, and says in a strange sort of stilted Interest Tone (mono-), "What does that mean? What is an aspect? Void? Please explain further." Lilian drops her work, rolls her head along with her eyes, and makes an exasperated sound out loud.     'Oh well gachas are when you download Lilian in a video game and pay like 200,000 ahn to play her.' "People should have to pay that much to speak to me. They should be charged that for every sentence and I'll waive the charge if I like what they have to say." "If only life were so simple and fair." "Right?" "Well we're talking about games. I think?" "Yeah. But it's 'gacha' so it's actually gambling too. The ¶taint of capital¶ makes it so you can't ¶close the magic circle¶." "Hey did anyone else hear the spirit speech translate as capi--" "Sakura can't you ¶save scum/monkeys and typewriters¶ pulling from those actually?" "I suppose? If I had the interest. Why is that? Do you want to play it?" "No I think downloading a game just so I can buy and own a little Lilian to fixate on is kind of consumptive and evil?" "Oh. I see? I see." "Okay well shit."     ''Play Lilian'?'     Lilian sighs. "The unlicensed reproduction business I had to deal with, from that game company in the City. The one that Petra has a macro to threaten mass mail-bombing with."
Petra Soroka	"SUPER SMASH AURICS got DLC? Shit, that's WILD."     To remind Tamamo and also keep Arthur from talking about whatever he's talking about, Petra explains, "No, it's Tridecim. The City game. It's got Lilian in it now." She swivels around to Ash when they deign to grace the deck with their appearance, immediately *so* excited. "Wait, Ash, do you know about Tridecim?" "I can never get a grasp on your tone band."     Petra nods, faux-lamenting. "Notoriously ungraspable person. It's easier to get grasped and then go with it," Which is both a serious commentary on social engagement with Ash, and also Petra being a freak.     "Pool time actually would be huge for the space yacht vibes, though. I mean, this is more like-- frankly, this is kind of all been houseboat vibes, right? It's all been pretty domestic. Not that that's bad or anything." Petra tosses out her net and snags a contellation in the shape of a gothically ornamented cross, which she very quickly cuts to release. "I do have that new swimsuit I got." "Wolf-lady."     "She's pretty young, though...?" Everyone Petra's age or younger is a girl, and everyone older is a lady, except when they're a girl still, like Lilian. "Also, she's super hyper and excitable. That's a wolf-girl."
Xion	"I think it's because my space is full of monsters and things that just straight up attacking you? The whole space emptiness thing... I mean, it sounds less stressful, but there's just so much stuff in space. But... I mean, I think they call my area of space 'Gummispace', so. . ." Helpless, Xion can't really give Petra a better answer. Candy dimension business. "There's really a critical lack of boost rings and stuff, for all the stars. I know we're ba-sically travelling *between* worlds but it's still a little shocking! No boosts, or flying guys, or anything." Deciding to get to getting Arthur some more for his macho cool gamerboy act, Xion wiggles her keyblade-wielding hand to move her cast fishing line, not looking while waggling her free finger towards him. "You think real deeply on the regular. You're practically a wise sage, if you didn't talk like an asshole. Which, I'd suppose, is your whole game." She playfully accuses, before her hand jerks and the Nobody goes fully into reeling in her own catch on pure armstrength. There's only one problem! It's not fish. One yellow-eyed blotch of shadow rolls onto the deck from its parabolic travel, plopping onto the deck and into Xion's extremely displeased 'get outta here' kick before it even finishes rolling on the deck. "Hey! No encounters!" She grouses, while several more start crawling over the railing. The Heartless are the least form of the threat when not massed, empty yellow gazes and faintly malevolent impish violence, but one or three isn't a change in the overall threat presented - effectively zero. It's just annoying Xion, really. "I said no!!" She levels her keyblade at one of the offenders and her fishing line bonks off the brow of the two-antenna imp. The one she's kicked back off the boat did leave a fist-sized orange and blue crystal that Xion picks up, holding it out to Tamamo while sword-warding the level one encounter away with a distracted blade. "This is Munny! It's pretty common, uh, from heartless? So Roxas and I don't really need another job, I just, like..." Fighting. "... helping people." Ash presses on how money is the bunk prize. "Well it could be good! Like strange keychains, or local collectables, or magic badges, or doggie statues that shoot lasers on your Gummiship. Sometimes things say they increase your 'max life' but we asked Zexion and most of those are just radioactive."
Lilian Rook	'It's a naturally occuring. . . Energy? Space sugar? It's hard to explain but doing just about anything interesting generates some. It's how the economy works, I think?' "Well now. I suppose I'm rich." "Lilian . . ." ". . . I--" "Yes, you are." "--Fuck!" "You've certainly become very relaxed as of late, haven't you~?" "You know what I meeeeaaaan!" "Nah I call your bet. I'm richer. I have way more interesting sugar bucks than you. Do something interesting." "Knock it off!" "I SHOWED YOU MINE!" "Stop referencing ironic bullshit!!" "RE-SPOND!!!"     'Race course? Motorbike? ...Shrooms?' "Like Mario or like doing drugs? Because I don't think you should do drugs and ride a motorbike." "Only in that combination?" "Idunno? I don't think doing mushrooms would really matter on its own to anyone here?" ". . ."     'Probably? How common are SNAKES, GLOBALLY?'     "Extremely." "Yeah shockingly you still kinda find them out there?" "--Really?" "Oh-ho, look at you! Miss Multiverse girl you are now!" "Mrs!" "Lady."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell talks to the Blooms a while, reeling his catch in. This one's a long string with one to each side of the line, sort of arranged as a cross. "MUNNY reminds me of BOONDOLLARS. Just kinda, NUMBER GO UP. I got HELLA STOCKPILES. But I DON'T LIVE where anyone's gonna TAKE 'EM. Bet you'd be HELLA RICH on THOSE TOO though."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell jabs a finger at Ash. "Although, NEVER STOP REFERENCING IRONIC BULLSHIT." It has an imperative command-tone to it, specifically to give them something to argue with. > Ash: Never stop referencing ironic bullshit.
Angela	''That's a wolf-girl.'' Roland is a little unnerved that his reasoning for why Chie is a wolf girl and not a wolf lady is almost exactly the same as Petra's. He convinces himself he dodged a bullet there. He's already getting along with people too much as it is without wolf-girl solidarity. ''Wait, Ash, do you know about Tridecim.'' "Uh oh." Roland jokes. "We are privileged to know the actual Dame Commander. Paying for a false idol seems uneccessary." Angela explains her own viewpoint without really considering the evilness of gacha at all. Roland, despite his best efforts, is pulling in a Mushroom Kingdom style mushroom constellation. All that talk about the shroobs messed him up!! ''Mrs!'' "Lady." Tiphereth considers. She's always been partial to 'Lady'. "Mrs. Lady Lilian and Mrs. Lady Tamamo." "Is that not too much?" Angela asks, more on the Mrs side of things. "Oh, though I feel strongly committed to Dame Commander. Perhaps I should say Mrs. Dame Commander."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell resumes some chatter with Xion. "I've got PUNKY STREET SMARTNESS, I dunno about WISE. WISE SAGES do a ton of READING BOOKS." He says, having built his own FTL drive. "Real long STRETCH, you could maybe make a case for the MEDITATION TYPE." He takes a break from the loom to help with some Heartless-kicking, because they just sort of gum up the crevices of human-friendly space-travel by nature.
Lilian Rook	'If you wanted to make Love,'     Lilian opens her mouth, then shuts her fucking mouth. Proverbially. She says "The Epic of Gilgamesh." to Tiphereth instead.     'Wait, Ash, do you know about Tridecim?'     "Well I know what it is now." Ash says, sizing Petra up with newfound skeptcism. "You think I have a credit card? Or, like, a phone? I stole all the old ones and they're locked out now, and most of them were fake passport-tier NAZCA shit anyways." They incomprehensibly spit the word "Craft." like it's a slur.     'I do have that new swimsuit I got.'     Ash leads with "Wh--" and then lands the jab after the feint on "--en? Not right before this right? That's indoors. That's an inside pool. And my houseboat is on the ocean. Fuck." This implicitly means that they approve of Petra's description in the first place; of their vibes and the vibes of the hideous space yacht. "Space is like grass. You run around in it and play fetch."     'Also, she's super hyper and excitable. That's a wolf-girl.'     Ash takes Petra's knife, hurls it into space, and says "Fetch!"
Tamamo	'It's a naturally occuring. . . Energy? Space sugar?'     'That's not really the space I grew up with, but it does sound nice.'     Tamamo accepts this explanation. "If it is accepted everywhere, then it must be useful for something." That's the assumption that makes the economy work.     'Lke you can get a little Lilian avatar in the video game and use her in the game.'     Tamamo did hear about the game, but was advised not to play it, so she put it out of mind so thoroughly that it takes a bit for any memory of the event to reach the surface. "Oh, as an avatar, I see. That sort of 'playing' is as 'being in a play,' then." It isn't really.     'Yeah, Roland talked about it a bunch.'     "Ah, of course. Well, it was very exciting. It would have been a memorable day even if Mr. Mario had not been kidnapped--er, disappeared? Removed from the timeline?" What was it that happened, again? After the timeline was put back together... "Even without the attempted invasion."     'Race course? Motorbike? ...Shrooms?'     "Oh, did I not speak of that? It was what is known as an 'exhibition match,' in the Mushroom Kingdom. I brought a motorbike, as I wished for something more agile than a car." This would be an insane statement even if she were a famously good driver, which Tamamo-no-mae certainly isn't. She's only storytelling-mode excited about it, of course, and otherwise calm. "The way things turned out, I used it to drive over the city during the invasion, rather than on the racetrack. It was a most fortunate decision, as I would have had far more trouble leaving the ground with four wheels."
Lilian Rook	'I think they call my area of space 'Gummispace', so. . .'     Lilian looks into Xion's eyes with the pitiable familiarity that only someone who was there for the 'candy world' moment could myster.     'I know we're ba-sically travelling *between* worlds but it's still a little shocking! No boosts, or flying guys, or anything.' "Well, you never know. It's the end of the world and all. Perhaps the bad guys got them all." "Nooo! We have to rebuild civilization! We have to teach the aliens about boost rings!"     'This is Munny! It's pretty common, uh, from heartless?' ". . ." "Nika?" "I didn't say anything." "No no, don't worry; I thought it too." "Oh thank god."
Angela	At the end of this adventure module, Angela will think back on this moment and realize what 'If you wanted to make Love' sounded like and be mortified but right now she's more accustomed to using Love as a name than talking about Love as a project. She has to say 'Love' as a name like ten times more than the alternative at least. ''The Epic of Gilgamesh.'' "The Delivery App guy?" Tiphereth asks. When Tamamo seems confused as to what actually happened, she looks to Roland who gives a shrug as if he can't exactly recall either. "I mean Mario WAS missing, and then he came back. Guy has the craziest mustache I've ever seen." Angela is now imagining fish flying across space and slowly gobbling up the stars until they're all gone. She feels a little sad upon thinking this and shakes her head to clear it from her mind.
Lilian Rook	'Oh, though I feel strongly committed to Dame Commander. Perhaps I should say Mrs. Dame Commander.'     "Don't add them together!" "I meant only to say what was being said anyways." "Girl you so weren't." "What? Yes she was." "Hehehehe . . . fuck . . ." "Sakura?" "I don't recall misspeaking."     'Although, NEVER STOP REFERENCING IRONIC BULLSHIT.'     Ash raises ther hand for either a dap, pound, or high-five. The result is 'any that Arthur chooses, immediately followed by being revectored at high-speed in three-dimensional face'. "Damn right!" Ash says, breakneck pivoting out of shoujo trash into gamer bro slop on a dime.     'The way things turned out, I used it to drive over the city during the invasion, rather than on the racetrack. It was a most fortunate decision, as I would have had far more trouble leaving the ground with four wheels.'     Lilian mutters unhappily. "I can't believe this bullshit. One day. I leave the Multiverse for one day and she's crown princess queen princess. For 'growth'. She lost her heirloom, her eye, her youth, her kingdom, and her familial attendant, got bailed out of all of them, and failed upwards anyways. I hate her." "Yeah?" "I should conquer her fucking kingdom." "Yeah??" "I should overthrow her facile line and water the native lands with their corrupt blood." "Yeah?!" "Lilian?" "I want to walk out of the burning ruins of her castle with her crown in my bloodied fist and hear the cheers of the mantis army I've rallied at the gates before I throw her to them." "Yo!" "Oh, my. Lilian, to think . . ." "It's not fair, I deserve it." "You've been so good." "Yeah--! Huh?" "She lives to spit in God's eye and prove that actions don't have any consequences I fucking swear." "Well don't go making her sound cool now." "Mm. Perhaps revisit the previous idea?" "You two are so ¶weird¶."
Petra Soroka	"Instead of thinking 'this monster ruined my one time fishing', I should think instead 'I enjoyed this time fishing and I will enjoy the next time fishing.'"     "Honestly, kinda ignored the monster myself. But it's just, like, tone. It's like a joke that dates the whole piece because it's so bad. Like, oooh, yeah, this game is so good, but you *do* have to watch out for the ten percent encounter rate for the goopy shitlicker in third dungeon. Even if it's fun, having to qualify it in retrospect is annoying, so we should do one where we don't have to qualify it." "If only life were so simple and fair."     Petra giggles at Sakura's increased boldness in simping. But, as Lilian's number one simp, Petra has to correct everyone and establish her place. "I mean, I spent twenty one million credits to talk to you once. That's... what, a hundred and fifty thousand times that much ahn? Do you think I've said a hundred fifty thousand sentences to you yet?" "The ¶taint of capital¶ makes it so you can't ¶close the magic circle¶."     "Oh my god!" Petra gasps in realization, sitting up on the side of the deck and rolling up onto her knees. "I've been complaining about gacha games *forever* about how they aren't games properly, but *finally* that's such a concise explanation for why." Really, it's not even different from what Petra's ranted about in the broadband before, but she can read a lot into those ¶words!     "Even worse than pay to win, it's because they're, like, ¶ratio/treadmill¶ between money and ¶dopamine/dailies/chores¶. So like any evil job the only correct way to engage with them is to totally disrespect the premise and get enjoyment out of it by turning the society it's in into a game space instead." Which Petra did not do at all with Lobotomy Corporation, but it's sort of how she treats the City as a whole now. "No I think downloading a game just so I can buy and own a little Lilian to fixate on is kind of consumptive and evil?"     Petra opens her mouth, then closes it. The jig is up!!! She dies today!! "... But you can get a little house for her and touch her on the head. Lilian officially endorsed it." "I don't think doing mushrooms would really matter on its own to anyone here?"     It would be ideal for Petra to say nothing about this, but she's compelled to anyways. She has to come to the defense of mushrooms. "W-well-- they're not really dangerous as long as you're, uh, safe with them." The silent 'but watch out' follows in the pause. "Really I feel like it's so weird how few drugs people do around Elites."
Tamamo	'I think it's because my space is full of monsters and things that just straight up attacking you?'     "Oh, dear. Do the monsters in space stay in space, as a rule? Those living on planets tend to worry over the monsters of the great dark even without a need."     'No boosts, or flying guys, or anything.'     "Hmm." Tamamo looks out over the edge of the ship, to see if any constellations bring to mind 'a boost.'     'Hey! No encounters!'     Tamamo startles, then has her attention wrested by an almost-perfect arrangement out the corner of her eye. She's wrested in a catch with two half-circles beneath a specifically angled line up and into the star-deboning station by the time Xion has reduced the practically-zero threat to actually-zero.     'This is Munny!'     Wiping her hands, Tamamo takes a closer look. "Oh? Is that..." she sniffs. "A bit sugary, after all?" No, it couldn't be related to honey. But, the candy dimension...     "And many are glad that you would rather help than rest." Tamamo smiles, just for a moment. "Ah, but I suppose I do tell a few people they should spend more time resting. Is that not rather inconsistent of me? Hmm, the balance that must be struck... rests well on the side of 'helping,' perhaps, but not entirely."     'I don't think doing mushrooms would really matter on its own to anyone here?'     "No, no, they were 'shroobs,' which are like mushrooms, but not." Tamamo takes another moment to clarify, "Mushroom people."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell turns that one from Ash into a pound, yeah. It was a little quicktime event, you can even see the circle closing around a fist icon above his hand.
Xion	"Well, it's not *worthless* it's, just, more like a magical currency? It's worth something to Moogles and at goblin markets, and some of the more transactional magic uses it, so it must do *something* economy." She's not a powerful all-knowing witch, and her Tech Guy would rather do his best impression of Uwos Labs with the Dark Light Darkness energies than answer questions about economy. The card sharp could tell her, but it was funnier for her not to know, and thus family was not a help. The Heartless, local to the interim space or just chasing Xion to enforce some pacing of struggle in her life, don't do a good job in attacking Xion from fore or side with flailing claws. Arthur does quite a bit better than lazy swats while explaining currency, booting the one behind Xion quite handily off the ship, causing a bowling to the edge, oof-bounce that squeezes out a collection of colored candy objects - little squares, yellow orbs, and orange-blue diamonds - which would be suspiciously like Grist if Kingdom Hearts didn't predate Sburb! The triskelion of hope at the center of magic was a precursor, and the media company predestinatedly slinging CD-ROMs of the apocalypse happened after the birth of time! Technically! Previous universes still use linear time!!! One might even believe that things flowed the other way! Perhaps Grist, truly, is an expression of space's true nature as a candy dimension. There was that cosmic sugars article that came out recently, and everything! The truth was out there, or, in Xion's case, the cosmic magic sugar econony. "I'll give you the kinds of sages who grow their hair out and speak at length on topics of astronomy and culture and their observations and ruminations on the nature of things lit by the cosmic torchpoints above. You could do one of those drape headpieces, is what I'm saying. You know?" Piercing the only remaining Heartless through with a stab that splits the dark being into a curling-restored Heart that mists away into wafting energy, Xion's flipflop ptok-snapping lunge ends with her breathing and with her own pileful of Munny. "Yeah. Basically works like that? You'd both be super rich, but if you don't know a good goblin market it's a little hard to *get* anything? I got a guy, though," Her phone comes out and there's a moogle keychain dangling from it, independent cloth-fuzzball red pom dangling besides. "Especially if you need a bulk discount on potions, he does ten for nines sometimes? Oh, uh, not today. Today is bangles? Do you bangle?"
Angela	''I don't recall misspeaking.'' "Mrs. Speaking." Roland corrects gently. "I will alternate between Dame Commander and Mrs. Lilian then." Angela decides. ''But it's just, like, tone.'' Angela nods her agreement. "Yeah," Angela uses instead of 'Yes'. "The goopy shitlicker as you call it," Well she's working on it. "It clashes with the vibes. Sometimes a fishing trip can just be a fishing trip. Not everything has to have a gimmick or twist." Angela's life dreams do still remain in the realm of 'have a sandwich' and 'catch a fish' rather than 'defeat Doctor Necrobeast, Dark Dean of Netherhell Academy.' ''But you can get a little house for her.'' Angela cups her chin, over the screen, considering this new information. "Well if she ''officially'' endorsed it." "Angela..." ''Lilian conquering Sarracenia's kingdom.'' "Well your campaign manager is here." Roland says before pausing. "Wait was Arthur Sarracenia's campaign manager or yours?"
Tamamo	'... But you can get a little house for her and touch her on the head.'     Any thoughts Tamamo has in regards to killing Petra for this are overshadowed by thoughts of putting a tiny Lilian in a tiny house and putting one finger on her head. Tamamo forgets anyone else exists for long enough that Petra is safe again.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell says, "Yeah, no I'm technically SARRACENIA'S CAMPAIGN MANAGER yeah. I'm kinda PRE-COMMITTED on that."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell pipes up further, "I'm still aiming for PARLIAMENTARY-PUGILIST MONARCHISM comin' outta that one."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell looms up his next catch. Long, with two stars crossing it... It wound up looking like a wide-based bottle of some kind! That's an odd thing to have on his mind. When it's done, he discards the boning and the chopped off "head" of it, shedding a variety of inky-black waste materials of literal history.
Petra Soroka	"Perhaps I should say Mrs. Dame Commander."     Petra points at Angela on the screen. "No, no, that's like, mocking. You can only combine titles if you're making fun of someone." "That sort of 'playing' is as 'being in a play,' then."     "More like, er, dolls." Is that the most apt way of explaining gacha jpegs to Tamamo? Every other way that pops into Petra's mind is eviler and also worse, so she has to settle with that. "Like dolls you can only rent and not own." "Removed from the timeline?"     "Oh my god! Now I remember hearing about that! Dr. Eggman said something about how, like, Bowser was complaining because he totally would've taken over the Mushroom Kingdom if he'd known, but they were all on some weird old man trip. Like, golfing, or something." "I brought a motorbike, as I wished for something more agile than a car."     Petra nods several times in eminent approval of motorbikes-- Tamamo's tone is pretty much the most reliable indicator for how to feel about basically everything ever, so if she's this calm, that means that it was all good! "I need to get a motorcycle. I've been so good. I deserve this. Natsuki was saying."     Lilian also brought up motorcycles in the radio, but if *Tamamo* can drive them, and *Petra* can drive them, and Lilian doesn't have the experience to do so safely, then... the relaxed atmosphere of constellation fishing among friends erodes away Petra's self-censoring mechanisms. "Lilian could ride on the back of either of ours." "I hate her."     As Lilian works her way up into a rant, Petra seamlessly slots into the group of three hypemen for her world domination. "I can't believe he came *back*! For once it seemed like she was experiencing, like, something! Literally anything! She's so spoiled! The Sundew people have grown fat and feeble in their conquest of the native lands! Like one hundred years ago, a powerful warrior should just walk in and take all the jungle back in fire and blood! Sundew lost a duel to your *incidental minion*! When she was in a wheelchair!" "You think I have a credit card?"     "What? God, no. No one should ever pay money to that trough of slop. I replaced my credit card with an autonomous stream of bomb threats anytime anything doesn't go my way." "That's indoors. That's an inside pool."     "I got it for the beach!! For the sandcastles! When Nika and I beat everyone! I'll have you know it was a *noble* purpose. And, look, if you're saying that we should swim in the ocean at the Garden, then, like, I'm not gonna say--"
Petra Soroka	"Fetch!"     "--Huh? Wha?" Petra looks down at her empty hands, then bounces up to her feet to watch her knife sail out into space. She glances over her shoulder at Ash, trying to look aggrieved but already halfway in a sprinter's stance. "You're so fucked up. You're literally gonna make fun of me for this either way! I know you are!"     She tears the mirror's cord off from her neck and spikes it into the ground, shattering it into a geyser of iridescent glass that envelops her in a comet streak off the deck. Jigsaw shards click together in motion, the four legs of the Beauty of Ash outstreached to leap through space and zip past the stars. Its legs, in the absence of ground or gravity, move more like a horse's than a dog's, but the knife is hooked on the tip of its crystalline snout and it circles around to bring it back.     <Obviously I know about ¶run and jump¶ in space. I'm ¶built/bred/sculpted¶ for it.>
Xion	Xion, released from her own fishing follies, shoulders blade while the munny of various denominations orbit her lazily. Having caught Lilian's eye in a moment of pity that stayed her most violent finisher hand for the moment of empathy and connection instead, the Nobody is left with her heroic lament: "Civilization thrived, I bet, when there were jump stars and Munny clusters just, freely scattered between the worlds. Well, also, the really close in asteroid clusters? I think space really is just emptier outside of Gummispace, it's really a shame. And Heartless spread out like generic enemies but boosts are regional! It's not fair." Lilian's rant about Sarra not being fair either gets her to go 'yeah!' before she realizes, and then, decides she's not running it back and simply pipes down. "Do you think she waited until you were gone? Or maybe it just... happened at the only time it could. Like, I bet there's a whole rush to fill the space since you're not there making everything work by threat and presence. And now, well, you have to come back with a bag." "Supervillain Sim her, maybe." Xion suggests.
Angela	''That's like, mocking. You can only combine titles if you're making fun of someone.'' "Mm..." Angela considers this, looking up. She imagines someone calling her like Lady Miss Pale Librarian. "I see. Yes, I understand. You're right. I'm sorry." Not my apologies?! ''Like dolls you can only rent and not own.'' "Oh that's evil" Roland and Tiphereth say simultaneously. ''I can't believe he came *back*!'' Angela honestly was a little surprised herself. She knows people CAN come back, thanks to Kukuru, but she supposes that the people who come back alive are only very rarely going to be the people she particularly wants to see again, if at all. And if she thinks it like that, it's very believable actually. "To be fair, Ceri has a career specialized in dueling. With an EGO weapon, I was very confident in her inevitable victory." "Ceri was in a wheelchair?" Roland, who once beat Ceri up during his rampage period, asks. "Oh, yes, she was very badly wounded in a battle against Leviathan Queen on Rita's world, taking the wound in an attempt to help pin the Queen down so that others would have less tow orry about." Angela explains. Roland's guilt meter is slowly rising. "Oh geeze, she uh--did all that? Did she get better?" "Yes, Lilian helped pay for her medical treatment and she's been loyal to Mrs. Lilian ever since." Angela explains. Roland's guilt meter is threatening to overflow. "oh..." Roland is sinking through the spaceship. He's going to clip through the floor of Arthur's spaceship and end up in the spacerooms. "...I did feel bad, when she lost Gregory. I think if most people recovered a loved one who was once thought lost, I would empathize and be grateful that things worked out in their favor, but with Sarracenia ... I suppose I feel my heart was a little toyed with."
Lilian Rook	'Do you think I've said a hundred fifty thousand sentences to you yet?'     "Oh my. What a conservative number." Sakura says, even gasping, convincingly fake, and faux-convincing. Her fingertips splay before her lips in place of a fan, eyes wide above. "How long have you known one another again? I believed it was longer, for some reason."     Nika smiles. She wiggles effusively. She glances up in the direction of Petra's voice, then corrects to look at Ruble's camera instead. "You kinda sound like you don't talk to many ¶smart/well-read/posessed of the mandate¶ people very often." A moment before disappointment, or worry, Nika nods solemnly. "The private server is going to be super funny."     '... But you can get a little house for her and touch her on the head. Lilian officially endorsed it.'     Nika stares so long that Sakura joins in staring too. It culminates in one of the six lethal blows known to kill a girl on the spot:     "Okay."     'W-well-- they're not really dangerous as long as you're, uh, safe with them.'     "Perhaps you should stop talking." "No no, let her cook."     'Really I feel like it's so weird how few drugs people do around Elites.'     "Yeah? Because it was like that back there too. Everyone's smoking or shooting up, paying hookers or going on cringe conservative e-dates, getting tickets and fucking up their car, putting up shitty posts on social, showing their whole ass about some shit that happened back in highschool, running secret court on how it's totally not a phobia or totally not a fetish or whatever; but they're all collectively entertaining the illusion they aren't, because their shit is as humiliating as everyone else's so nobody wants to turn that key and play nuclear chess to see who comes out on top. Those guys on the radio sound dumb as fuck but I bet they're all the same."     'Mushroom people.'     "Oh that makes sense." says Nika. She then lapses into debilitating giggles for eighteen seconds precisely, rolls under the table out of sight, and blearily titters out "Don't do mushroom people!" "Damn. Hard bigotry from Nika!" Unfortunately, Nika thinks this is even funnier, and bumps her head on the underside of the table laughing.     'Yeah. Basically works like that? You'd both be super rich, but if you don't know a good goblin market it's a little hard to *get* anything?'     Lilian drops what she's doing, and sits up bolt straight next to Tamamo. "Oh my god. Oh my god we never went to the goblin market. Oh my god, Xion!" "What? Wait-- fuck! Hold on! I wanna see a goblin market! What the fuck is a goblin market?! No-- who cares-- I bet it's rad!" "Xion we have to go to the goblin market!" "Yeah and then you have to SHOW ME YOURS!" "Stop!!"     'Today is bangles? Do you bangle?'     "Expert banger, never tried an L" Ash says. They find it funny very briefly, then shake their head, say "Miss." and then "For real though. I gotta get in there."     'Mrs. Speaking.'     Sakura laughs. Oh no.     'Wait was Arthur Sarracenia's campaign manager or yours?'
Tamamo	'She lost her heirloom, her eye, her youth, her kingdom, and her familial attendant, got bailed out of all of them, and failed upwards anyways.'     "All of them?" Tamamo would try to remember a timeline of Sarra's appearance, but they don't actually meet that often.     'Well don't go making her sound cool now.'     Hm. Hmmm. No, Tamamo doesn't need to jump in on that point.     She gives Lilian a quick kiss on the cheek, with her back to the cameras. "All your wishes, dearest one." A reminder.     'Like, golfing, or something.'     "Oh, well, I hear such things are good to keep a man active and healthy as years advance, as is keeping company." She still dislikes Eggman, but she can be positive about normal and healthy habits.
Lilian Rook	"Roland, you are on a completely different definition of the word 'campaign' now." says Lilian. "It's me. I'm managing the military campaign against the Sundew Kingdom." "Naturally`"     'Lilian could ride on the back of either of ours.'     "What? Do I have to? I'd get so bored just sitting there." "Nah you'd be kinda surprised. I had a bike for a while." "Really?" "Yeah. A ton of micro-towns and shit have gasoline but nothing to even use it on anymore." "A gas bike?" "Oh damn, did I never talk about this?" "No!"     'I can't believe he came *back*! For once it seemed like she was experiencing, like, something! Literally anything!'     "Literally anything!" Lilian yells, at this point roused to volume more by excitement than actual frustration. "A consequence! A lesson! An experience! An emotion! A change to her world in any meaningful way! She seemed like maybe she'd be a dynamic person for two seconds and then all her fucking hedging about him coming back to life was like--" "Wink-winking the narrator impatiently?" "--Yes! That!! Exactly that!!! Like God just groaned and gave it to her and she didn't even say thank you! Because she's entitled to it! It's insane!" "She has everything!" "She has everything!" "No one even seems to care enough to change her genre first." "Right?! If it's even possible! God! The whole 'queen of the north' thing was going to be exactly that in the sim!"     'I replaced my credit card with an autonomous stream of bomb threats anytime anything doesn't go my way.'     "Mmmm . . . Yeah, okay, I can respect that game."     'I got it for the beach!! For the sandcastles! When Nika and I beat everyone! I'll have you know it was a *noble* purpose.'     Ash smirks, because they've won by doing nothing. "You sound so desperate right now."     'You're so fucked up. You're literally gonna make fun of me for this either way! I know you are!'     "Too slow, Cyborg!" Ash laughs. "Must suck to suck!"
Lilian Rook	'Obviously I know about ¶run and jump¶ in space. I'm ¶built/bred/sculpted¶ for it.'     Ash has heard about the !mech(?) that Petra assures them only coincidentally uses a part of their name. They thought it was honestly kind of fascinating, decided it'd be lame to ask about it right then, filed it away for later, and then forgot about it. Seeing it makes them jump right out of their comfortable little spot, march right across the deck brisk-style, and keep going even when Petra takes off into the !stars(?), staring with a strange fervidity as Petra comes right back. They catch the knife as an absent-minded reflex. They walk up and grab the Beauty of Ash, around one leg, like its their mission.     "Built different." Ash first says, ostensibly going along with Petra, but sounding unusually distant, vague in their implication. Even more so when they say "Finally." and then "Finally.", pressing both hands to the fractal hardlight and angled psi-glass as if they were suddenly possessed by the ghost of a long-dead mad artist, being presented a brand new material by the king and commissioned to make whatever they please from it. "I knew it. I totally knew you all knew. You held out on me like I was speaking in tongues, but I knew you knew what I meant."     Short of an explanation, they throw the knife back into space again. Without spite, or curiosity, or any particular feeling outside the norm for 'this is what you just do in a situation like this', they put superhuman elbow grease and a bit of impossible spin behind it too.     'Do you think she waited until you were gone?'     Meanwhile, Lilian is fuming "Absolutely. She's been hissing at me to 'just take a vacation; we'll be fine without you' for years! Somebody has to do something about her!"     'Supervillain Sim her, maybe.'     "I did!!" Lilian whines. "And she was so lame she got manipulated by Proudpick into getting clowned on by the shopkeeper!"     'All of them?'     "All of them! She even lost an honour duel over the dumbest thing! And she's thirty and a virgin!!" Lilian tanty-yells. "What's wrong with this Sector?! Do you think her parents were mind controlled?! Coerced at gunpoint?! Assassinated and replaced?! How does everyone so useless always fail up and everyone who knows what they're talking about has to retroactively carry them there!" Lilian howls "I'm going to have a conniption!", in the midst of having a conniption.     'All your wishes, dearest one.'     A kiss on the cheek is a silver bullet. Lilian folds her arms and sits back down, only fuming internally now. "I'll think of something. Right now there's sort of the single most important uncertainty in the entire universe between right now and getting back there."
Angela	Roland is just happy he got a laugh. He dips his head a little to hide the smile. ''It's me. I'm managing the military campaign against the Sundew Kingdom.'' "Oh damn." Roland says. "Aren't you a little worried, like, she'll saw off the edge of a cliff and her piece will stay standing and the rest of the world will fall away with you on it?" "Lilian will still win." Angela says, arguing less against the cartoon physics and more against the idea that it could stop her. Angela tries to think fondly of fish instead of how Sarracenia gets everything she wants and barely appreciates it and then gets it back when she loses it and can be soothed over with about three sentences of work and no she's not mad. Instead of managing to think of the fish she imagines the girl of smoke and ash glaring at her for not facing the cosmic error of the multiverse that must somehow be corrected if she only knew how. ''She's thirty and a virgin!!'' "Oh shit." Roland says. "She's gonna be like so keen on finding someone to have an heir with now isn't she? Do you think the universe will just make that happen too? Maybe like a little baby priness just gets dropped off by a stork or something."
Petra Soroka	"...I did feel bad, when she lost Gregory."     "I mean, seriously! I'd rather Gregory lives! I don't, like, wish he was dead! but she's so fucking *entitled*!" "What a conservative number."     <I don't know how many sentences people say!!! Or how many I say because it's probably ¶more than average/double-texting¶! I might've burned through a hundred and fifty thousand sentences to Lilian in, like, a month! I don't know!>     Petra apparently sees no reason to get out of the Beauty of Ash once she's inside it. The mech hyperactively circles around the deck, bucking its weight from front to back in performative frustration as it floats through space. The broken crystal 'ears' fan out behind its head as its wedge-shaped face turns away from the Eggpack, snootily uptilted with the glow of the eye only visible through the glass.     <If we're comparing *lengths* now, you're suddenly gonna have a lot of ¶backpay/catching up to do¶> She says this knowing full well that Lilian would never possibly insist on such a thing, and therefore prompting her to say that out loud to Sakura's glee. "You kinda sound like you don't talk to many ¶smart/well-read/posessed of the mandate¶ people very often."     <They're basically all here.> The Beauty of Ash stretches out, front arms flattened level with the deck and back legs raised up, as a ripple of high pitched cracks rolls down its frame. "But I've got ¶books/berries of Earth¶ now so I'm working hard on becoming one in my own right.> "Because it was like that back there too."     <Wow.> The single telepathic word rolls like fiberglass, sticky and itchy and vibrantly sarcastic. The Beauty of Ash sits back upright, knees tucked up to its chest. <I thought it was a hyper macho badass grizzled secret military intelligence operation, not *highschool*. Why does everything turn into highschool?> "I knew it. I totally knew you all knew."     <!!!?>     The Beauty of Ash is careful not to move when its leg is grabbed, head twisting around to look down at Ash between its legs like a curious deer. The surface is almost semi-fluid to Ash's touch, while still feeling harder than anything; perfectly smooth and sharply angled, a little bit warmer than metal to touch, the pearlescent frost that pervades the three-dimensional structure ripples clearer at their touch and where their eyes rest on it, like blinking away tears-- the translucent orange inside it glows through brighter when it does.     When Ash speaks, the front legs of the Beauty of Ash tippy-tap excitedly against the deck, even without them specifying. <¶Yes!¶ I've been thinking about it since we ¶saw you¶! Tell me what you knew I know though because I've got ¶feelings/drafts/knowings¶ but whatever you're thinking I want to know.>
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell pipes up, "I think the only problem is that she gives too much of a shit what everyone thinks, you ask me." He hangs this new constellation-batch up on a rack. "Like, you hate her for being entitled, personally I think the problem is s'just she's brittle. She ought'a be real *stable-style* entitled, durable entitlement. Someone says, 'I think you're an asshole' to her, she's supposed to say, 'I don't believe you and it won't be long until you realize you're wrong', not 'what if you're right?' I think you'd like her the same way too, when she gets in that state."
Lilian Rook	'Aren't you a little worried, like, she'll saw off the edge of a cliff and her piece will stay standing and the rest of the world will fall away with you on it?'     "Don't say that!" Lilian huffs, only half-serious, but still 'half-serious'. "It's not like I could be beaten by anything like that. Or by Sundew, ever, at all. But it could totally happen, and it would make me so angry."     'She's gonna be like so keen on finding someone to have an heir with now isn't she?'     Lilian laughs until she starts coughing, which is about three seconds. "Oh my god. Oh my god you'd think. But, like, that was the whole point the entire time, right? You think it'll change? That's the one thing she can never, ever have. Even on backwards day. Even if the Multiverse turns inside out." "Yeah, thirty is kind of embarrassing." "You freaks gonna start talking about her withered up ovaries or something next? Gross." "No it's just obvious. I talked to her for like five minutes and it's ¶quoad erat demonstrandum¶ y'know?" "People find love under all circumstances, Nika. At any age." "Okay but nobody here kept theirs until they were thirty right? So that's just theories." "Well fuck she got me. Roland?" "In your dreams." "Fuuuuck."     'I think if most people recovered a loved one who was once thought lost, I would empathize and be grateful that things worked out in their favor, but with Sarracenia ...'     'I mean, seriously! I'd rather Gregory lives! I don't, like, wish he was dead!'     "She talked shit at me about how I didn't care enough that he was dead because I didn't show up to her revenge posse meeting and then after trying to weaponizing it he came back to life anyways!" Uncountable tantrum damage has been dealt. The cap has been reached. Lilian is going to be malding about this until hitting Kepler.     'I might've burned through a hundred and fifty thousand sentences to Lilian in, like, a month! I don't know!'     "Oh my, please forgive me." Sakura says, cupping her cheek in coyly disingenuous chagrin. "It is only my own failing memory, after all. When it comes to this sort of thing, there is so much to remember . . ." She may respect the bonds of marriage, but Petra will simply not be allowed to punch her simp ticket so freely.     'If we're comparing *lengths* now, you're suddenly gonna have a lot of ¶backpay/catching up to do¶' "Gay." "Ash? What?"
Lilian Rook	Lilian is now watching while Ash insists on absorbing every little detail of the Beauty Of's movement. Something comes over her at Ash's change in bearing, but it's even more opaque in her, visible only by the way it blanks out her expression, as the bigger flame devours all the oxygen in the room and snuffs out the smaller blaze.     'I've been thinking about it since we ¶saw you¶! Tell me what you knew I know though because I've got ¶feelings/drafts/knowings¶ but whatever you're thinking I want to know.'     "None of them could have hated you that much if you were just girls. 'Woman' is a thing they own. It's a word they wrote down and legally defined and drew on paper with a holotype and put it in a dictionary and a biology book and its theirs and they made it a good they can buy and property they can possess. They fucking hate you all because the end of the world is in our hands and not theirs and they wanted it so bad it made them sick in the head and got them killed, and they already have contingencies and backdoors to inherit whatever they want from 'woman'. I knew there was something else, because they knew it, and you knew they knew it."     "There had to be something that they don't even have a slur for. Nobody gets that insane if the tribe of Earth is behind them even a little. They have to be alone. It has to be something nobody else even knows is there to hate."
Angela	''I don't, like, wish he was dead! But she's so fucking *entitled*!'' Angela nods solemnly. Honestly, she thinks about the amount of times that she wished Sarracenia would suffer that consequence and when it happened it was kind of miserable anyway and then it wasn't even real so she was miserable for no reason. The idea that she should just accept that which cannot be changed is too sour for her to voice. She wishes it didn't linger in her head as much as it did, but she's decided to stop avoiding her feelings. "Well, it is a lesson learned. At least the Magical Girl of Love wasn't caught off guard by this." Even if, well, because Love is (also) a cartoon character. ''When she gets in that state.'' Angela isn't so sure this is true. Didn't this all start because Sarracenia STARTED like that? But maybe a reset to that position would be more stable? Or less stable? She has no idea. ''Don't say that!'' Roland starts to grin and then the grin fades as he notices the 'serious' part of 'half serious'. "Yeah," He sighs. "Well, at least it'd feel honest." ''Well fuck she got me. Roland?'' "Oh uh, I mean, I found love pretty late, but not thirty late." Roland admits. "But I can't say luck didn't play a part either. She wasn't afraid to be the 'forward' one, I just had the sense to not fumble it."