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Canon Hub » Cool War 2: Ruiz From Your Grave » wowwee go enlighten ursefl
With apologies to the French.
Midday Friday
BackDoor SoHo
Squared Circle Square, West End
A Way squelches another traveller through an effervescent exit field, spouting disgusting sounds like that of a box of fruit getting its shit pulverized by an evil trash compacter. Lissiefang, a young photoclairvoyant, is thrown headlong through an alleyway and skids a few meters to an abrupt stop.
She pauses at the mouth of the alley, breathless, to give the local housecatgirl a headpat. But first she allows herself a good 30 seconds to catch her breath and waits there, bent like a boomerang, hands on haunches, heaving like a Giant Firebreathing Crab that just realized it lives in the fucking ocean.
Finally:
"Hello, kitten."
The local housecatgirl stutters and slumps in anticipation of speaking to another person, unprompted. The words that had been frantically tip-toeing inside her head all afternoon gush forth. "I have debiwitating sociaw anxiety."
"Same."
"How d'you cope?"
Shrug. "With just enough alcohol to tame the voices."
"Oh." Housecatgirl wags her Anderson Robotics-crafted double-mecha-tail in a slightly perked-up solidarity.
Not about to have a housecatgirl follow her around all day, nor to make smalltalk, Lissie flips her a magickal token, redeemable for pretty much whatever she wants from the Dream Wellspring somewhere in the throng and muck and paint at the center of the city, where the magic is most powerful, and the people most unbathed. "Have yourself some catnip, or whatever. That'll help the anxiety." Then she turns and trails a throng of people into the thoroughfare.
Each week, wage-workers and starving-artists file en masse from their workstations to the BackDoor with electricity for the week's end. Everyone and their eccentric wine aunt hits up downtown with no real plans for where to go or what to do.
Today's usually when the city's arteries pump with lifeblood. When impromptu agitprop-overloaded anart exhibits get unveiled; thaumaturgists immerse hundreds in shared psychedelic spectacle; fae ruffians cast weekend-spanning indigestion hexes on embarrassed UIU agents; Cogwork and Maxwellist preachers both proselytize and advertise their latest body mods; the occasional paradrug is dealt; and hundreds of paranatural objects and artifacts change hands. And there's of course the more conventional sights, of modest buskers playing to crowds at every street corner, and food stands spurring hungry square-goers to scarf down their delicious wienerdogs.
Lissie joins a pedestrian scramble entering the Square but gets pulled in the other direction by some rowdy interlopers.
Someone's just stepped on her foot.
Hiss. "Watch it!"
She follows closely to catch where they're going in such a rush. Not unexpectedly, it's mainly a bunch of college students with black clothing and neon-colored hair. They pass someone wrestling a human-sized, blood-red, legally distinct Care Bear with laser eyes and skull-shaped belly badge.
That'd make a good photo to show 'Pyrie.
A crowd amasses at the park across from the Square, but she can't quite make out the focal point — if there is any.
People manning sidetables shout into the crowd.
"DEBATE ME! DEBATE ME, BRO! FUCKING DEBATE ME, BRO! DEBATE ME! COME ON, DEBATE ME!!!"
She shoots a venomous scowl.
Fingers point right back.
"You — chickie avec les cheveaux roux. Debate him! Or, peut-être, you are too scared you will be PUBLICLY OWNED?"
Sigh. She looks the drunk Francophone up and down, then clutches her nose. "My brother in Rakmou-leusan, you have literally already pissed yourself."
"Ah, you going to back down so easily like zat, huh, DU POISSON?" He mimics a bottom-feeder, gasping for air and making hand and mouth gestures at face-level.
"I haven't agreed to anything, dude. I don't even know who you are." She notices the symbols displayed across some of their shirts around him: Isometric renderings of diamonds, some dark blue, some silver. One guy sports a fedora — or was that a trilby? — and the Guinnes World Records' longest neckbeard. Full stacks of pamphlets line the tables, seemingly untouched by literally anyone else in the universe. "What the fuck is this?"
"We are from zee ICSUT student lodge pour 'La Société Athée Pour la Halte de l'Idéologie Religieuse', madam." He nearly bows, then nearly falls over.
Lissie crooks her head an entire 45 degrees, her voice suddenly hoarse. "Oh man, not you guys again… Wait. You said ICSUT? I thought y'all didn't believe in magic."
The man who was previously shouting pushes his cohort aside. "The globalist bourgeois-liberal establishment is an institution we are more skeptical of than that of magic." His accent, in contrast, is very American. "'Besides: We don't disbelieve in magic. But we do have different perspectives as to its source."
French guy butts in again. "We are pas de monolithe—"
The American breathes a seething, bullish sigh. "Dude. Go change your pants. I'm not gonna let you moderate jack with stains like that."
French guy heads promptly for the men's room.
"My bad about Émile, girlie. Name's Sith, by the way, but online, everyone knows me as The Sith Skeptic. Now, I know what you're thinking, and you've probably heard my debate podcast, because I'm kind of—"
"Desperately compensating—"
"What's up?"
"I said, 'Don't worry, I'm Canadian.' You should keep up. And please, call me Liss."
"Well, Liss, our countries are a lot more alike than you'd think."
"Believe you me; I know."
"So, you're gonna debate me, huh?"
Liss lets her arms fall, palms walloping her sides. "Guess I've got no choice now!"
Meanwhile
Tibetan Plateau
Tibet, Southwest China
Foundation Psionics Specialist Samara Maclear breaks sprint and travels a touch more slowly — but reasonably quick still — in a hunched-over gait. Reliable cover diminishes by the minute. The pockmarked battlefield provides less and less purchase as the onslaught slashes through the hours.
But it won't matter much longer for her.
The ground explodes and kicks dust tens of meters into the air. Charred and steaming hot concrete, metal rods, and sparks pelt down onto the dirt she just strode.
Men shout in broken French. Propaganda from the higher-ups blares out of crackling speakers. Front-line RUBIES man sound cannons, casting wave after sonic wave with the strength of a jet engine.
A large congregation of shouting civilians gather in a courtyard and lob chunks of broken concrete and rebar over a fence towards their SAPPHIRE attackers. The cannons swivel towards the crowd, battering their damaged eardrums and serving healthy helpings of vertigo and whiplash at intended targets and collateral alike. Then of course come shrieking screams, repeatedly accenting the amplified, scriptural refutations.
French fucking bastards ruining my chance to see the fucking Tibetan fucking Plateau. Her ranting and raving remains confined within her skull: She has to keep her jaw slackened and mouth open, lest a shockwave blows out her teeth, which'd leave her dazed long enough to put her mangled in a trench not much later. Oh, no, Samara, why would we need to set up the intercontinental psychic remote-viewing sucking-and-fucking apparatus?
Behind the bloody skirmish, a narrow pagoda sees its damaged steeple teeter ever so slightly, then fall in slow-motion. It crushes the fragile rooves beneath it. The entire structure threatens to crumple.
"Murderers," she whispers. She jogs, catlike, along a third-story rooftop parapet wall and perches atop the edge. Wind batters her tight-fitting Spectra-fiber body armour.
Samara feels it on her skin. Then she feels it envelop her.
She outstretches her arms, offering open palms.
Momentary silence descends on the battlefield. At a distance, the nearby pagoda is saved when a single moment of hang-time appears to steady the damaged steeple in a temporal truss. Gravity is no longer a term in the equation. The Buddhist worshippers inside won't be flattened tonight, but will instead find a relatively speedy evacuation and retreat into the highlands three clicks from the village. Many of them will reunite with their families by the morrow's first light.
With the levitating steeple her foci, she flips her awareness 180 degrees, head swivelling as she does.
Samara now faces the opposite direction.
And jumps.
In a fit of midair psychokinetic vigour, she pulls the LRAD-wielding truck high into the air and hammers it back down to Earth, along with its passengers. For good measure, she swipes at the clouds obscuring the dour sky, and from its open maw, strikes down a stray fucking lightningbolt.
"ARE WE ENLIGHTENED YET, YOU STODGY FUCKING BASTARDS?"
A Tibetan fox sits atop a hill just at the outskirts of the village.
It turns its head and watches, placidly.
Friday Evening
BackDoor SoHo
"— And, you see, that is why organized religion is the single greatest threat to the human species." The Sith Skeptic crosses his arms and boasts a shit-eating smile, garnering support from his hype-men.
"Uh… Huh." Lissiefang betrays the convinced. "And do you believe in climate change?"
"Some SAPPHIRE members do; but again, we are no orthodoxy. Personally, I believe the climate is always changing."
Suddenly, Lissiefang's eye beings twitching, having accrued a mother-lode of psychic data. It turns into a full-bodied glower as she lunges the man before her, having become a predator accustomed to the Savanna.
[todo: put the rest of the debate here. it's a magic fight because fuck yeah.]
Later
"So, are you fuwwee this weekend?"
Lissie raises an eyebrow. "Housecatgirl, I'm impressed! You're asking me on a date?"
"I mean, it's not…" It is a very long time before she continues. "I guess so. You wannya see Shen Yun?"
"… Are you for real? That's put on by a fascist cult, you know."
"I meant like, iwonically. I know a fuwwiend in the mundane SoHo who can sneak us in. I hear there's a pawt where they conjure up a magickal tsunyami with the face of Karl Marx, and it thweatens to destwoy evewything. UwU"
"Okay, that sounds pretty hilarious. Hey, let's have that catnip."
This draft taken over by the Prime Collective via charisma and force of will. Nya!
Prime Notes:
So, gotta think what to add between the end for Liss and the bit where Liss is debating and Samara is fighting.
Character notes:
Liss is Serpent's Hand. former Foundation from the same project as Samara tho. She can't talk about being Foundation.
Have it flip flop between the perspectives of Samara and Lisa, insufferable debate and unspeakable violence. Finishes with Liss punching the guy out.
use the fact Liss can't talk about the Foundation as a crumb to drop for lore while she's debating.
SAPPHIRE guy insists they're not a monolith so obviously he has to be tied to the violence in some way.
Is the assault on the Children of the Torch/Huǒjù zhi Zi as mentioned in 4519 rather than just Buddhism? Could mention stuff about SAPPHIRE affecting the sun, people, etc, rather than straightforward attacks that Samara is seeing/fighting.
Philosophical fallout, a wheel wobbles on its axis
Housecatgirl does something again before the end.
Be sure to use a lot of flowery language like flippy
-R