[eight hours before incident.] 

most days, if anyone asked her how free she felt in flight, she’d offer up an embarrassed laugh and a nonanswer. today, it really did feel like freedom. escape, or at least reprieve.

it was the way that handler looked at her, the way—you know the look, right? when they stop seeing a person and start seeing a new toy in a people-shape?

she tries not to think about it. even a flight over the Forest’s better than *that.*

maybe it’s a kindness that she doesn’t notice the target lock until it’s too late.

[six hours before incident.]

you never feel good about these things, but don’t they always need doing?

if you don’t answer every flyover with a rocket, every incursion with a video of your supposed victims, they’ll think the forest is safe to enter, and if they think the forest is safe to enter, they’ll burn through the land like a plague of clearcutters.

you fumble through the wreckage — just good practice, even if you never expect to find anything — and soon enough you stumble upon a hard case untouched by the flames. “thiopental gamma.” “ketrasine.” “wolf serum.” “theta blocker.” vials and steel syringes.

you don’t know what the stuff is, not exactly, but you know—you know what it’s for. you know what it probably does to someone, you imagine it looming behind a needle’s walls and you see a handler’s smile and you know that you Fucking hate it here.

[four hours before incident.]

But, Princess—

You know you’re not her. 

They know you’re not her. 

You know all of this is empty kayfabe and the only reason you went along with it was so you could maybe have a chance at something that at least superficially resembles freedom and you want to yell yourself hoarse telling them to leave you alone but all you can say is—

“Please!”

You stamp a dainty foot and your eyes well with tears and none of this, none of this is what you meant to do but even if it’s a conditioned reflex you still feel it and it’s so easy for all those little maybe-i’m-too-weak-shaped doubts to creep in and,

and you ride the wave.

Please let me honor my mother’s memory, you say. (Not your mother. Not even your memory.)

Please let me fulfill my duty, as a daughter of the Everlasting Principality of Sacre-Coeur. (not your duty, you remind yourself, but it gnaws at you anyway.)

My pure heart will protect me. (you almost believe it. or maybe you don’t believe it, but you so dearly want to.)

Please.

A....bystander? in a black leather shroud simply nods, and it seems that’s enough.

(Of course, you don’t feel at ease. In this place, giving someone what they want is the cruelest thing you can do.)

[+10m]

three of them.

their mechs are spindly things, gleaming and glasslike. sharp, you know, but—well, glass breaks, doesn’t it?

it almost feels like cruelty when you rise from a little fairy-circle of debris and tackle the first of them, shattering it under the weight of your shitbox-shaped monstrosity.

(as much as EPSC propaganda likes to accuse forest folk of witchery, your tastes in mechanized warfare are far less elegant than that might imply. uparmored industrial equipment, blocky gruel-hued things, detritus given instinct and greater form.)

two left.

(you’re up faster than expected. so’s she. a hard-light fencing foil finds its way into your mech’s right arm.)

(oh, god.)

(this is how it ends, isn’t it? they take out one arm, then a leg, then drag you back to—)

she leaves the sword in, turns on a heel, performs some strange flourish as if playing to an audience.

turns back to you.

won’t you be good, little hound?

(her voice hitches and cracks and carries a hint of nerves, as if she’s deep in the throes of stage fright.)

you go still. still as the grave. still as can be.

(are you a hound?)

you hate this place. you hate it. you hate it. you hate living next to a bunch of chaotic-horny cosplayers who got swallowed up by their catholicsonas. worst fucking place in the world.

(but you hate the promise of a leash more.)

you grab your arm at the socket, tugging and yanking until you tear it free. huck it at the third with the sword still lodged in, the end of the foil just barely connecting with its neck. you turn to the last one, so confident she’d make a puppy of you ‘cos aren’t pilots just pets-in-waiting?

you close in, one step at a time,

and you make her pay the forest’s price.

[2 hours after incident.]

it's easy enough to lug her back to the nearest cottage-bunker, pry a badly concussed princess out of her cockpit, shackle her to a canopy-bed. the hard part comes when everything catches up to you and you ask,

"....what the fuck do I do now?"

"Well," Juniper chimes in, awkwardly prying off a smashed segment of ablative bark with a trowel,

"There is a reward." 

the green bleeds into her eyes when she smiles.

"You know, for princesses."

you make a face.

"ugh, come onnnnn. they're all fake, aren't they? all brainscrambled body doubles or--or, I don't know, mall santas with extra steps, before they disappeared all the mall santas for clashing with the aesthetic."

a thought bubbles up.

(what kind of reward would you get for that case, you think?)

no. whatever it is, nobody should have–

nobody should–

y–okay. okay. you're just—you’re just going to keep it to yourself. just for a little while. figure out what to do. maybe burn it. if you tell someone about it, you can’t burn it. (they’ll make you promise.) so really the only responsible thing to do is to keep it under wraps. right? right.

you try not to throw up.

[6 hours after incident.]

you set the case down on your bed, stare at it.

what if–

your hands shake as you undo the clasps.

(thiopental gamma. ketrasine. wolf serum. theta blockers. rat’s blood. a sickly rainbow of strange serums, there for the taking.)

you think about--

(there for the using.)

haven’t you ever been curious?

(you say, i haven’t. i haven’t. i need you to understand that i haven’t. even if we set aside the horror of doing that to another human being it’s–)

just for a moment, you imagine one of the love-interests in 17776-3: lightning returns: goty (game of the yearner) edition turning their icy metal nose up in disapproval and hissing, 𝘠𝘌𝘈𝘏 𝘋𝘖𝘎 𝘛𝘏𝘌 𝘗𝘙𝘖𝘉𝘓𝘌𝘔 𝘞𝘐𝘛𝘏 𝘉𝘙𝘈𝘐𝘕𝘞𝘈𝘚𝘏𝘐𝘕𝘎 𝘐𝘚𝘕’𝘛 𝘛𝘏𝘌 𝘛𝘖𝘛𝘈𝘓 𝘝𝘐𝘖𝘓𝘈𝘛𝘐𝘖𝘕 𝘖𝘍 𝘈𝘕𝘖𝘛𝘏𝘌𝘙’𝘚 𝘚𝘌𝘓𝘍 𝘛𝘏𝘈𝘛 𝘕𝘌𝘊𝘌𝘚𝘚𝘈𝘙𝘐𝘓𝘠 𝘐𝘔𝘗𝘓𝘐𝘌𝘚 𝘐𝘛’𝘚 𝘜𝘏𝘏𝘏𝘏 𝘎𝘌𝘛𝘛𝘐𝘕𝘎 𝘛𝘖𝘖 𝘊𝘖𝘔𝘔𝘐𝘛𝘛𝘌𝘋 𝘛𝘖 𝘛𝘏𝘌 𝘉𝘐𝘛

but that scares you most of all, doesn’t it? it’s like they forget how to be--

sometimes, a handler’s less a whole person than the villain of a play. 

(isn’t that the great tragedy of sacre-coeur? everyone swallowed up by their roles, and the world pays the price.)

you scramble to shove the case under your bed. you breathe. you laugh the laughter of the near-missed, near-dead, near-doomed. you try not to think about it. you try not to throw up.

you fail.

[audio recording submitted to the GALATEA inquiry as exhibit b-09, dated 48 hours after incident.]

the clasps of a case snap open, then closed, then open again.

a fingernail taps against glass.

slow-piercing pressure and the squeak of thick rubber.

distantly, something shatters.

“okay.”

recording ends.