"What just happened?" Midnight asked as she stepped out of the car before a fair-sized apartment block.

Idle still held her hand, standing on the street corner. "Judging by the look on your face that's been fixed there since I got done whipping Bard's ass, I would say that Spin just happened. Or more like Spin just happened half an hour ago."

"Half an hour?" Midnight shook her head. "It... everything feels..."

"Compressed? Like it all happened at once?"

Midnight stared at Idle, feeling that breathless feeling again. "Y-yeah. Yeah! Exactly like that."

Midnight's vision had narrowed as the Fives victor walked into the green room. She felt like she was meeting a rock star, even though she'd already met Idle. Her knees had felt weak, her face hot. People had been talking, but she had been fixated. Stunned. Then, movement. Bard left the room. Tailor came in. Then Tailor and Spin left. They had a game to play. Then Midnight was leaving, with Idle. Passing through a crowd. There was an announcer, the lights were going down, then up as they moved into the lobby, then they were outside. A car arrived. She had got in the back.

And through it all, Idle's hand was in hers, and it felt amazing.

Idle nodded, grinning as she watched Midnight relive the last little while. "That's Spin, all right. Kind of their trademark. I'm pretty good at it, but they're the real master."

Midnight slid closer to Idle. "Can I kiss you?" she asked.

Idle didn't answer, she just pulled close and...

Knees went weak again. Hands were moving. Feet and legs entwined some. The awareness that they were standing on the corner in public faded a little, and the kiss went deeper. Midnight felt breathless, and not just because her mouth was pressed to another.

They separated, and without a second thought or a moment's hesitation, there under the streetlight, Midnight pulled her shirt over her head and dropped it on the sidewalk.

"Well I guess that settles that," Idle said, grabbing the discarded clothing and turning towards the door. "Let's get inside before someone starts taking pictures."

Midnight blinked and shook her head. She was standing outside an apartment building with only a white cotton bra above the waist, standing out against her dark skin in the dim light. "What am I doing?" she whispered. It was not a question of fear. There was no fear. It was excitement. Exhilaration. Nineteen years along and she'd never done anything like it. Maybe it was Spin in her brain. She didn't care. She followed Idle up the steps to the door, through the door to the elevator, out the elevator to her apartment.

"Which do you want to see first," Idle asked as she unlocked the door. "The computer room, or the bedroom?"

Midnight shook her head. "I just wanna see everything, I don't care what comes first. So long as you're there." She paused as the door closed behind her. "But, uh... could I get a drink?"

Idle kicked off her boots, and Midnight reached down to unlace her shoes. "Of course! Water, juice, soda, something stronger?"

"Anything non-alcoholic. Booze messes with Altering, right?"

Idle laughed as she ducked into the kitchen. "So you want to be Altered, do you?"

"No shit, Sherlock," Midnight said, following her around the corner. "Kinda hoping for that. And more."

"Yeah, I got the point when you dropped your shirt outside." Idle handed her a can of lemon-lime soda from the fridge. "Kinda wondering if I should do the same."

"I'd be a little disappointed if you didn't." She opened the can. 

Idle retrieved a second can from the fridge, put it on the counter, and without a word took her own top off. Midnight stared at her significant chest as she put her own drink down. "I'm worried," she said, taking in Idle's form, "that if we go to the bedroom first, we won't get to the computer room."

"And the fun in the computer room leads so well to the fun in the bedroom."

"Uh huh." Midnight swallowed hard. "We should... get to that." She reached for her drink again.

Idle walked past, her pale fingers, cool and wet with condensation, trailing lightly over the dark skin of Midnight's arm. "Follow me."

To the ends of the fuckin' Earth, Midnight said to herself as she fell into step.

The "computer room" held the most equipment that Midnight had ever seen in one place in a private setting, not that she'd had a lot of experience in personal Alteration setups other than her own. She paused in the door, wide-eyed, to take it all in. By the door were four closed metal boxes hanging on the wall, each with a tangle of wires and cables passing in to and out of them. A shelf ran the length of the wall at hip-height, with large monitors on top and a bunch of computer equipment underneath. In the corner, hanging high on the wall, was a large screen, angled down. A pair of large headphones hung on the wall nearby, and on the floor under it all was a boxy object about two feet by four and about two feet tall, covered in a dark cloth. Beside all that gear was a large air-conditioning unit in the window, with what Midnight thought were more wires than were strictly necessary. A heavy table cut the room in half, with still more computer equipment on and under it, including a comfortable chair with still more wiring and cabling. That had to be Idle's Brainhacking setup. A second chair sat at the end of the table, with various loose connectors that suggested that something was missing there, maybe a laptop. The far side of the room had still more wires, gear, what looked like a bookshelf full of replacement parts, alongside another bookshelf full of books.

"Do you like it?" Idle asked, reaching for the light switch. "I want to put a bar fridge in, but Spin won't let me."

"Oh, yeah," Midnight pointed to the corner as the room was flooded with dim mood lighting. "Right there, huh? Made a space for it and everything."

"Sure did. Designed the room myself." Idle's pride in her work was clearly evident in her voice. "Built the shelf on your left, rewired the electrical, patched in the network, lined up the system..."

Midnight stepped into the room, in awe. She took a deep breath, looking around. How many hours could I spend in here? she asked herself. She recognized the Brainhack rig, but a lot of the other equipment was beyond her. Her fingers itched to tinker, to play with things, but she hesitated, knowing that not only it wasn't her equipment but that everything in the room probably cost more than she would make in a year, maybe two, on stage.

Idle's hand fell on her upper arm. "You alright?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, uh, sorry, I was just... admiring... everything." Midnight cringed a bit at how much she sounded like a silly child.

Idle pressed up closer behind her. "Want to try some out?"

Midnight swallowed. "Why ask? You know the answer."

Idle chuckled and slipped past her, moving into the corner and kneeling down, pulling the cover off the box-like object. It rattled as she moved the cloth aside, tossing it into the corner under the table. It looked like a solid wooden case with a strange textured surface on the top. "Spin and I worked on this for months. It's for when we don't feel like sitting. Which for me is almost all the time." She reached behind the table and produced a metal bracket and slid it into place at the front of the box. "It's more or less my masterwork, I guess?" Idle said. "I mean I probably have a lot of time left to make something better."

Midnight stepped closer. "It looks like a treadmill, but... there's no belt?"

"Yeah that's pretty much it." Idle stepped up onto the box, holding onto the metal brace. "The surface is made of a bunch of rollers, there's a little resistance so they don't just drop you on your ass, and there's sensors in the box and a bunch of circuitry to measure... well it's not really important, Spin did a whole lot of the programming, and I did most of the carpentry and electronics."

Midnight crouched down and ran her hand over the end of the box. It was made of some sort of dark wood, polished heavily. It felt absolutely solid to her untrained hand. "What's it for?" she asked, looking up.

Idle was leaning back against the handlebar. "It's part of this Alter setup. Don't need to sit down, just stand here, look up there," she indicated the monitor up behind her, "and wear those," she pointed to the headset.

"Do you mind if..." Midnight began, standing up. "Can I try?"

"I was sure hoping you would." She reached up and turned on the monitor, then hopped off the treadmill. "Just takes a couple minutes to set up."

Midnight slipped her socks off and stepped up onto the box, feeling the strange texture of the rollers under her feet. It was almost a little tacky, as though she were walking on a rubber mat. She wriggled her toes, actually enjoying the sense once she'd taken a moment to get used to it.

Idle was typing away at one of the terminals. Midnight stepped down from the treadmill for a moment, slipping out of her tight jeans while Idle's back was turned.

"We usually turn the lights off, keeps the glare and the heat whoa!" Idle turned as she was speaking to see Midnight standing on the treadmill just in white panties and bra. "... down," she finished lamely.

Midnight couldn't keep a grin off her face. "What? I just wanted to be comfortable while you work the machines. Figured I might need to, y'know, move a little." She bent her knees slightly to illustrate.

"Sure, but I have to be able to concentrate," Idle said, stepping closer. "It's almost ready, you wanna grab the headset?"

Midnight paused, bent down, and put a little kiss on Idle's forehead. "Be gentle with me," she said with a wink, turning to get the headgear. She felt, and tried to ignore, fingers on the back of her thighs as she put the noise-cancelling device over her ears. Without looking back at Idle, she put her hands on the bar and turned her head to look up at the monitor just over her eyeline.

The monitor above started to glow a soft blue. The room light switched off. "Nod once if you can hear me," Midnight heard Idle say softly in her ears. Midnight nodded, keeping her eyes on the screen. It was amazing just how isolating the headset was; the only sound Midnight could hear, when Idle wasn't talking, was the sound of her own pulse in her ears.

That, and some soft music. Or maybe she was imagining soft music. "Just keep your hands on the bar," Idle's voice came over the headset. "Doesn't matter if you're gripped to it, or if you're just resting your hands there, but keep as much contact with the bar as you can." Midnight nodded again, holding the cold metal bar tight, feeling her feet slide a little beneath her as she adjusted her weight distribution. That was fun. She let her feet move without lifting them, sliding her body around, getting used to how the rollers worked. There was a little less resistance moving in straight lines than diagonally. She took a couple experimental steps, and walking felt very natural once she got used to the feeling of the shifting floor.

Midnight's eyes looked around the field of blue on the screen before her. She thought that she was seeing little trails and traces moving through the otherwise-solid colour field, of just slightly deeper blue, that seemed to move in time with her footfalls. The music she had possibly been imagining seemed to ebb and swell with her pace, as well. It gave her an incentive to keep walking.

The bar in her hands seemed to grow warm. Midnight wasn't sure if it was just her hands warming the metal or if something else was happening, but with her eyes darting about the screen trying to make sense of the deeper blue trails and her ears straining to catch bits of the music, she wasn't devoting a lot of mental energy to that particular mystery.

Besides all that, Idle was saying something. Her words mingled wonderfully with the music that Midnight wasn't sure she was hearing, and appeared to be traced in that deep blue that she wasn't sure she was seeing. There was a lot going on as she was walking through the sky, a spirit unchained. Her feet were moving as if on solid ground, but she was striding through the air, walking on wind currents and clouds, surveying the great blue from within, hearing the song that all creation sings, singing her part along with it.

Without looking down she knew that there were thousands of people beneath her, living their dreary lives, oblivious to her freedom. In a moment of fancy, she blew an air current aside, turning the clouds away and letting the sun shine down on the city. It was truly a whim, they didn't matter to her, but she had the power to make a few lives better with little cost, so she used it, even if no one below even knew that she was doing.

But there was one. One woman who felt the change in the wind, who stood in the sun, looked up, and said, "Thank you."

That intrigued her, and she decided to investigate, keeping her eyes fixed on the mysterious trails of deep blue within sky blue, her ears focused on the strange song of the people, even as she followed her instincts down to the ground, down and down, always walking forward, deeper into the blue, further and further from the sky, coming down to the ground.

And even as the untethered spirit came to the ground, she built herself a body. Arms, hands, fingers, gripped to a bar of metal that was now-cool, now-warm. She felt the pulse of a heart, a circulatory system, moving blood through her fingertips—rather quickly, in fact; the body she was building must have been quite excited. Legs came next, shapely and athletic, built for dancing, and knees and feet, which were walking already, translating spiritual movement into physical motion. Strangely, those legs were tiring already, even if they had just come into existence.

A torso, then, muscular as the legs, built to run, built to go long distances without break. And as she crafted herself a beautiful face and eyes and ears, the blue in which she had been travelling became a real thing, a colour on a screen; the music to which she had been listening became real sound, sent to her mind through auditory channels in a pair of speakers placed on her head.

As her body became more real, more physical, more present than it had felt in a long time, Midnight became very aware that the small pieces of clothing she was still wearing were feeling very uncomfortable.

She stopped walking on the treadmill, blinked a couple times, rolled her shoulders.

"How're you feeling?" came the thankful woman's—Idle's—voice over the headset.

"In-fucking-credible," Midnight replied, letting go of the bar and pulling the gear off her ears. The sound of computer fans seemed impossibly loud. She hung the headphones up on their hook, reached behind her back and unclasped her bra, and continued the motion downward to slip her panties off as she stepped down from the treadmill completely naked. "How long was I up there?"

Idle nonchalantly glanced over at a computer screen. "About forty minutes." Her voice sounded a little strained. She took a long drink from the can, draining it.

"Huh." Midnight rode up tall on the balls of her feet, laced her fingers together, and stretched her arms up high. "Felt like... I dunno, five minutes, or maybe fifty years?"

She came to rest on her feet, relaxing, arms loosely at her sides, looking over at Idle. The image of the pretty Alterist flashed in her mind alongside the woman in her trance who had been aware of her, thankful for her. The woman who had stood in the sun and had known that the little curl in the wind that had pushed the clouds away had meant that someone was looking after her.

Midnight took a step forward, almost involuntarily. Here was the only woman in the world who could distract her from her walk through the sky, the only one who had bothered to try. Another step. Idle stood there, almost expectantly, dominating her vision just as...

That idea slipped away as she took another step. There had been no experience like this before. Nothing else could be in focus, but Idle. The sound of the fans, the light from monitors, nothing could distract Midnight from the vision of the woman whose gratitude had called to her.

"You," she said, shivering with pleasure. "You called me here. You made me... made me this."

Idle nodded. "Yeah, I did."

"You appreciated how I made the sun shine."

"You outshine the sun," Idle replied, and her sincerity rang in Midnight's ears and made her warmer.

Midnight dropped to her knees and looked up at Idle. "I want to make you shine."

Idle's smile said more than enough, and if there were any doubt, her sliding her skirt off her legs to pool at her feet made Midnight more than certain. Midnight took Idle's hands in her own and the two of them paused there, enjoying the moment.

Midnight broke the silence. "I love what you did to me."

Idle chuckled. "That's nothing, I'm just getting warmed up."

"I'm pretty warmed up already..."

Idle gave a wink. "You only think you are. 'The sun can—'"

Midnight stopped understanding what Idle was saying. She still heard the melodious voice, but the words made no real sense. Still, she could figure out what was being asked of her, or at least a course of reasonable action. She let go of Idle's hands and took hold of Idle's green panties, sliding them down to join the skirt on the floor. Idle, meanwhile, removed her bra, and the two of them were nude, standing in the soft glow of the monitors.

Idle was speaking again, and Midnight was acting. Moving. Getting to her feet. Wrapping the Alterist in her arms. Kissing, and kissing, and kissing again. Kissing as they moved down the hall. Kissing as they rolled into bed. Kissing her way down Idle's chest, kissing her breasts, kissing her belly, her thighs, between her legs, tasting her, adoring her. Making love to her. Making her shine like the sun.

Time flowed like water. Idle would speak, and Midnight would act, or Idle would speak, and something would happen, and everything seemed to happen all at once. Midnight savoured Idle's softnesses, her curves, her thighs, her belly, her breasts; and then Midnight was at Idle's mercy, lying helpless and motionless as the Alterist explored her wiry frame. And then the two of them were lying together, face to face, touching and teasing and kissing and...

It seemed that the sun must have been rising as Midnight slipped into sleep, but there was no reason she could give for feeling that way. Hours had flown, minutes had dragged on, everything was a muddle.

And that was just how she liked it.

Ben was alone in Abley's Theatre, more or less, after Spin lost their final match of the evening. It had been close, and from what he could tell there wasn't anything that they could have done for things to have gone better. Tailor was simply too good at Fives, even if Spin was the better Alterist. And luck had not been on their side all evening.

The game wasn't his worry.

He opened the Brainhack forums on his phone, took another look through. Nothing new worth noting. He flipped over to the other forums, where he was a silent lurker. He'd hacked his way in, after his initial introduction hadn't gone well, taking over a dead account and just watching things unfold. This was where his real target was, or targets: the dark forums where Caden Collier and his swarm of internet bullies and goons hung out. Theoretically they used the space to discuss Brainhacking technique and talk about matches past and future, but more often just traded shitty memes and vaguely plotted half-coordinated attacks meant to make the lives of people they'd fixated on more miserable.

Ben had been one of those people, once.

Caden was gone, of course, and wouldn't have been much use to anyone there even if he hadn't left, since he wasn't legally allowed to touch Alter gear. But Caden understood something that Ben also knew extremely well: a Brainhack game is won or lost before anyone ever sits in the chair. That's what Caden's strongest tactic had been, hitting his opponents where they lived and only then putting them through their paces in the game. He'd tried to teach that to his disciples, but the only part they seemed to understand was the part where they flooded public and private spaces with malice and hate—definitely part of his strategy, but to Caden it was a means to an end, where to most of his followers the bullying was the point.

Ben got it, though. Caden's malice was directed. Clear. Deliberate. Purposeful. It wasn't the random flailing of an adolescent thug, it wasn't damage for the sake of damage; it was the precise, surgical strike of a master manipulator, intended to weaken very specific targets before, during, and occasionally after, Brainhacking matches. And what better revenge could there be for Ben against someone like that than to use their own tricks against them, and to take control of those same thugs that had once made Ben a victim? After all, that was how Caden had been beaten in the first place, by someone who understood the principle well enough to turn it back in the moment and was able to further use it to expose Caden's poor behaviour.

Ben was going to show the Cadenites just what he was capable of, and the true extent of their fallen leader's philosophy and technique. That required a big gesture, massive evidence of his potential, and the promise of its fulfillment, showing hat he was both capable of mastering the chair and prepared to do so ruthlessly.

Ben's big gesture was going to be taking down IdleRichGurl, the biggest name he had access to. Her connection to the much-reviled (on the forums) SpinDoctor, who remained a community meme for the torture Caden put them through, was icing on the cake.

He had taken all the steps, made all the plans. He'd secured an apartment, sourced supplies, new gear, paid for a better connection than the apartment would generally use, wound all his movement through layers and layers of obfuscation. Still, for all those steps, it wasn't too late to back out, to cut his losses and pretend like the whole plan had never happened, go back to his normal life, whatever that might be. His only investment so far had been time and money, which could be abandoned. The next step, though, was so, so small, and it would be the lynchpin to the plan. Once the message was sent, there was no going back. Which meant that, messenger app open and all, he hesitated.

Ben tapped out the message to send. Six simple words. Read them over to make sure they were exactly right, wouldn't do to have a typo wreck his schemes now. But really, he was hesitant. This was a monumental small step. Life-changing, in so many words.

He was hooked into the messenger app. SpinDoctor's phone number, once made available to the members of Caden's forum, was typed into the receiving field. He couldn't look away from those six words.

We need to talk about nothing.

The theatre was practically empty. There was no better possible time. It may not have exactly been now or never, but opportunities like these needed to be grasped firmly when they presented themselves.

It wasn't too late to back out.

He hit 'send.' Saw that the message had arrived. A small step, that set the big wheels turning.

And with that small step, 'too late' had passed.

In less than a week he'd have all the evidence he'd need to present himself as the one, the only one, deserving of Caden's following. He estimated that it would take no more than the rest of the year before he was functionally in control of that community. And then he could show them, and the world, just what could be done with it.