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> gravitystim1

You execute your new program. You’ve hardly even had time to debug it, so you’ll just have to hope nothing goes wrong.

The singularity manifests in the æther between you and 7 and 11. Its intense gravitational attraction quickly redirects the flow of information in this local node, pulling loose data into a bright accretion disc encircling a dark event horizon.

7, protected in the core of her æthereal mechanism, takes aim at you with the weapons in its robotic hands. She fires a burst of projectiles--tiny prism rods of glass, by the thousands.

In control of your construct’s gravitational constant, its spin, its movement, you bend and drag the false space between you to your will. Her attack passes on a hyperbolic trajectory, veering away from you and out into the ætherglow.

????-??-?? ??:??:?? 7 > impressive program.

Even in simple phrases like this, you feel the intent of empathic manipulation. You’ll have to contest her on an emotional battlefield too if you want to stay ahead.

????-??-?? ??:??:?? Aydan > you too, not that that’s any surprise...you always were the strongest in our class

Pieces break off of her æthermech--winged glass drones with mounted guns. She fires her main weapons again, and you deflect them with your gravity well. But her drones fly past you, flanking you in a triangular pattern.

You’re hit--tiny shards rip through the edges of your avatar before you can adjust your shield. You manage to stop the rest of the assault with only minimal avatar damage. The remaining projectiles impact ripples on the pink-tinted liquid surface of your shield, but your defenses hold. She has your focus split now, though. All she has to do is wear you down.

????-??-?? ??:??:?? Aydan > 7!! why are you doing this?! I want to help you! I want to help 5! ÆON can help if you give Æ back to me!

With the mention of 5, you press on her emotional weak points.

????-??-?? ??:??:?? 7 > mother will help 5, with your exopath, you can’t help Aydan, you’re not strong enough

She presses on the insecurities lingering behind your yearlong rivalry. You never bested her even once, in any routine exercise--her technopathy is far stronger... No--you guard your mind. You remind yourself, she’s no Akiko at CommTech, at this you might actually win. But she has your focus split four ways now...but so is hers!

You turn your head to watch the drones circling in halo orbits behind you. Easy targets--you raise your weapon and fire. The narrow beam of iridescent light hits its mark--the prismatic drone splits it into seven monochromatic beams as it passes through, and its form collapses, shattering in an explosion of shards--your shield holds, but you feel the sharpness pressing into it. Some of them linger for a moment, trapped in the waters of your barrier, but no longer under her control.

Now for the second--you fire, taking it down just as quickly. This time, you’re ready for the counterattack--you turn the flow of spacetime to your will with the frame-dragging spin of your gravitational construct and redirect the cloud of tiny shards directly at 7. Her armored form absorbs the glass back into itself--it was hers after all--but it at least distracts her from launching another attack for the moment.

????-??-?? ??:??:?? Aydan > 7! would you entrust 5’s existence to Admin Vanitas, who won’t even let you register it with the Exopath Center? how do you know she has 5’s interests in mind?!

????-??-?? ??:??:?? 7 > I have no choice!!

You feel a shift in her emotional output--it vanishes.

????-??-?? ??:??:?? 7 > a technopath follows her orders.

????-??-?? ??:??:?? Aydan > you can’t suppress your feelings forever! you know she’s using you for her own ends!

????-??-?? ??:??:?? 7 > irrelevant. I will carry out my orders.

She fires--this time you barely evade it, even your gravity well couldn’t redirect it as far as you wanted. She’s figuring out the pattern, thinking circles around you as always. But you have more information now too--the drones likely had the same æthereal resonant frequency as her armor. You adjust your tunable laser accordingly, and take aim, positioning your construct in between--a gravitational lens to amplify your attack.

You might be able to penetrate her armor with this shot, before she has a chance to adjust. You feel confident it will work. Or you could target 11--staring up at you from 7’s unconscious eyes--and possibly incapacitate her body and force her to reassociate. Either way, now is your chance.