8FOLD: Victory #3

[Drew Perron]

On 5/6/2019 12:52 AM, Jeanne Morningstar wrote:
<snop>
> Kate spoke the Word once more and she was Victory. "Damn," she said, ogling her 
> own muscles as she flexed them.

Hell yeah >:D

> Moving without movement, in a way she could never fully understand or explain 
> with her unenchanted mind, Kate followed him once more and stood in the Starlit 
> Temple. There was a statue now where Mr. Victory had been--or was that still yet 
> him?

I can feel the powerful implications flowing thru this~

> "First we should establish a few ground rules. Because of the sheer power you 
> wield and the limitations of your own mortal body, you should remain in your 
> Victory form no more than two hours at a time, and take at least an hour before 
> assuming that form again, preferably no more than twice a day. You will be able 
> to extend that as you grow more used to your form, but you need to be careful 
> not to push yourself too far in the early stage of learning your powers. If you 
> had taken on the power as a child, as its past wielders had, it would have been 
> easier for your body to adjust to it, but as an adult it will take longer. "

Makes a lot of sense, good worldbuilding and good limits for story purposes.

> It was a large statue with a broad, hostile face, and four muscular arms.
> 
> Kate smiled. She was in familiar conceptual territory now. This was a classic 
> tutorial enemy if there ever was one.

Heeheehee~ Familiar tho

> The Quintain charged her, struck out quicker than she could see and its punch 
> slammed her back into the wall.
> 
> Maybe she wasn't ready.

X3

> Kate needed to move as quickly as it 
> did. She needed to keep her fight brain and her programmer brain on at the same 
> time. That shouldn't be too hard. She spent so much time playing games, talking 
> about games, designing games in part because she was so used to feeling herself 
> abstracted from reality, because she felt like she was piloting around someone 
> else's body, someone who was supposed to be neurotypical and male, and so it 
> felt like a character she was playing. Now she was in a body that really felt 
> like her own. Her sensations, reactions, needs were more immediate and she 
> wasn't used to that.

Ooooooh, what a good description of a mental state.

> "Yeah, yeah, yeah." She pulled herself up, took a deep breath and brushed the 
> dust off her costume. "How long did it take Mr. Victory to fight that thing?"
> 
> "On the first try? It went about the same as it did for you.

Very good. :>

> I was a 
> little surprised you were chosen as an adult. Normally it is easier for children 
> to take on that kind of magic, because they have more untapped potential. But 
> then again, you are still coming into your current self."

Indeed. <3

> Kate nodded. The name she knew, and the origin she knew. The origin was similar 
> to the one she'd read in the old comics growing up--though it had left out the 
> long training--and the name was the one that was given for him in the 
> information released under FOIA after his seeming death. But that had claimed 
> his parents had survived well into his adulthood.

Fascinating.

> "Well, I suppose that's true. But it'll take you that much longer to be ready to 
> protect that friend of yours, who I can quite obviously tell you're in love 
> with.

Heeheehee

> Perhaps--" His teddy-bear face was unperturbed, but the wind-currents of 
> his elemental form swirled around him.

oooooh, yes, lovely fantastic

> "You read about that history, you see. I 
> lived it. Perhaps I am still trying to figure out the right way to tell it."

Well-put.

> She returned, transformed herself back, and pulling out her thoroughly beat-up 
> phone, found that no time had passed at all. She flopped onto the bed and 
> sighed, feeling relief as she slipped back into her own, crappy body. Then she 
> remembered the work she still had to do. Maybe she should have stayed in the 
> Temple after all.

Actually, I'm a little confused - she seemed to have been worried about how much 
time she would spend there, training, but if no time passed at all...

> But, after several hours of mind-numbing techno-busywork and 
> desperate procrastination, Elinor came home from work and they sat down together 
> in the couch and cuddled and watched MST3K, and all her regrets slipped away.

awwwwwww <3 <3 <3 Lovely.

> BACKUP FEATURE: THE SCIENCE-BLADES OF TERRA ALTER

Yaaaaaay! :D

> After this, Elaine is taken to see a complex allegorical masque, and goes to a 
> ball afterwards. There, she meets a mysterious, intriguing dark haired 
> woman--who is in fact Azella Alraune...
> 
> CHAPTER IX: THE LAST DANCE

Dun dun dun...

> [CW: mention of necrophilia]

Wow.

> It had not been hard for Azella to find her target once she'd set about it. She 
> had consulted the greatest dream interpreters and fortune tellers in the Empire 
> to find the woman who'd haunted her father's dreams. She'd killed them 
> afterwards, of course.

Sheesh, how wasteful, don't know how you expect to maintain an eternal empire 
that way~

> Antinea had loosened that, believing that was better to allow openness to new 
> perspectives and ideas and put oneself in danger than shut out people who really 
> needed it. This was foolish, of course.

Oh shoosh you fascist.

> Azella did not have to work hard to fake attraction to her target. She couldn't 
> help but find this woman intriguing, even delightful. Of course, that was 
> ordinary for someone of her order. One often developed a fixation on one's 
> target, who became the center of an assassin's life and occupied all their 
> thoughts while they carried out their mission. Some even consummated their union 
> with their target's corpse when the deed was done. Azella found this inelegant 
> and overliteral. The act of killing someone was intimate enough for her. The 
> feeling of destroying your enemy was like nothing else in the world, a cataclysm 
> of joy and grief.

God, what a waste of passion, joy and art.

> The great assassins were said to have written poems for their targets. Azella 
> had had none who were truly worthy of it, until now.

That's a great statement.

> She drew the flower from her secret pocket and placed it in her target's hair, a 
> red flower impregnated with a powerful poison.
> 
> At once, the target's dark brown eyes opened wide. She flung the rose aside and 
> swiftly drew her sword.

ooooooh interesting.

> With a subtle motion of her wrist, she plucked the sash from around her waist 
> and it shifted and hardened into a crimson sword.

ooooooh yes :D

Drew "dancing mad" Perron