Cori Catchthorne

Chapter Links:

Act 1: One Evening on Europa

1.1: Cylus: At the Mercy of the Winds

1.2: Emile: A Pattern In Your Rash Decisions

1.3: Cylus: Amateur Behavior

1.4: Emile/Cylus: In The Absence Of Gravity

1.5: Emile: An Expert At Standing

1.6: Cylus: In The Vulnerable Vicinity of Flesh

1.7: Emile: A Cool Touch

1.8: Emile/Cylus: Anywhere is Good

1.9: Cylus: Forever Changed

1.10: Cynthia: Enough for Now

1.11: Valerie: Her Finger on the Pulse

1.12: Cylus: Out of Reach

Act 2: Fractures

2.1: A Gentle Dawn (Europa / Bel)

2.2: Caught In The Net (Bel / Guest)

2.3: Distractions (Luhifa / Emile)

2.4: Axioms (Cylus)

2.5: Meltfall (Bel / Guest / Emile)

2.5.EX Hands Free (Bel)

2.6: Not Just A Weapon (Cynthia)

2.7: Watch It Again (Bel / Emile)

2.8: Someone Else To See (Emile)

2.9: Close Enough (Clio)

2.10 Clarity (Cylus)

2.11 Value Assessment (Emile / Saoirse / Servant)

2.12 Making Time (Saoirse / Emile / Bel)

Story-level content notes:

Expect lots of flirtation and ambient horniness, which I won't be tagging at the chapter level because it's gonna be everywhere. This story also includes:

T4T (trans x trans) and T4C (trans x cis) romances that can and will get messy; do not expect happy endings any time soon, and know that some romances will not last.

Relatedly, given that we have a majority queer/trans cast, we have instances of: 

Sad/upsetting things happening to queer/trans people

Queer/trans people making bad choices and/or committing outright reprehensible acts

Queer/trans people imperfectly navigating boundaries/negotiations/relationships

Lots of kinks, which will be tagged when they are actually enacted on physical bodies but won’t necessarily be tagged when discussed or thought about except in particularly vivid instances. These include but are not limited to:

Dominant/submissive dynamics

Biting

Knifeplay 

Bloodplay 

Hypnosis

Voyeurism (with and without intentional exhibitionism by the voyeured-upon parties)

Orgasm denial

Intoxication (including occasional drunk or drugged make-outs which are therefore inherently of dubious consent; tags will include additional info about tone and dynamics)

More to come!!

I'll maintain, expand, and link off to this list as the story grows and additional characters, kinks, and dynamics arise!

Of course, there had only been two possibilities. As a rule, Valerie didn’t involve herself directly in surveillance, receiving alerts of this type only for one Keene twin or the other. Solon had also attached footage of Cylus throwing his ceremonial veil into a public disposal before spending the rest of Second-Night walking Europa City alone.

The holo didn’t end with the arm break. Several observers interceded after the man went down, pulling Cynthia off him and out of the dimming ring.

Eventually. It took four others to get the job done, some taking their own injuries in the process. Though by the end, Cynthia sagged between their arms.

Vanquished not by the intercessors, Valerie thought, watching the girl’s body language, so much as the dawning realization of what she had done. Her eyes were fixed on her former opponent as someone started wrapping his arm in a heavy-duty corrective.

The clip looped, starting over at the beginning of the fight, which took several minutes to veer from competition into violence.

With a gusty sigh, Valerie let it replay, her eyes half-focusing past it to the bank of lilies beyond the fountain. One of the estate’s hummingbird gardrones moved among them, its pace sedate despite the rapid motion of its wings. The lilies were a mix of void and star varietals, dark purple and pale gold, opening to perfume the dawn air with their scent. The same odor had filled the interior of the estate for the last three days, overflowing from countless vases.

Those flowers, of course, had been cut and brought from somewhere other than the estate gardens.

It had been a strange holiday. Emile’s absence weighed even heavier beside Dion and Jacqui’s. Even Mother had been... quiet.

Except when she and Sveta had been together. Valerie had made the mistake of going to the kitchens for a midnight snack the night before last, only to hear her mother’s cries of passion echoing all the way from the end of her private wing.

Shaking off the memory, she looked back at the holo, where the fight had moved into grappling range. Cynthia’s opponent was losing already, but in a desperate reversal, he made a play for her back, one hand snaking across her shoulders.

That was the moment. That touch on the back. An instant later, so fast she’d have to slow playback to see it happen, Cynthia had the man face down on the floor—

“That’s my girl,” said a familiar, gravelly voice from behind her, and it took all of Valerie’s considerable poise not to startle and whip around.

Instead she rose slowly, making much of how surprised she was not, and turned to find Aunt Sveta leaning against an ornamental plum tree. Her short, ash-gray hair was streaked with silvery strands of lumifiber, glowing and dimming with the orange-red of banked embers. Her severe features were softened only by smoke from the cigarette held between two long, gloved fingers.

The cloud of it wafted gently downwind, away from Valerie.

“Blessings of—” Valerie began.

“Taught her that one myself,” Sveta said, as if she hadn’t spoken. Steely gray eyes remained on the holo, where Cynthia had secured an armbar that quickly became the arm break. “Recognize it? I showed you, too, years back.”

A chill swept through Valerie’s body. “You know her.”

“Thought you figured that out months ago.” Sveta sauntered over, taking a deep drag before planting herself on the bench Valerie had vacated. She exhaled a long plume that smothered lily-scent beneath the herbal earthiness of maribacco. “You think I didn’t notice you interfering with something of mine?”

“I—” Her hands felt clammy. She forced herself to sit back down beside Sveta, as if the proximity didn’t discomfit her at all. “It was a matter of family security.”

“Sure.” Sveta’s smile was cool, crooked. “Little Emile has a nose for trouble, doesn’t he? Just like his big sis.”

Valerie searched for a response. Came up empty, save the smell of Sveta’s smoke.

“Unlike you, though,” Sveta sighed, after another drag, “He‘s got no discretion. You were right, talking Ness into sending him away.”

“I know.” Not that that was why she’d done it. But Sveta’s lens was always a practical one.

Which made it easier to cut to the chase. “What’s your intent with the Keenes?”

On the holo, the broken-armed man writhed as Cynthia threw one of the other fighters into a third. Sveta chortled, observing for a long moment before speaking again. “Keep watching. For now.”

Valerie’s stomach clenched, though she herself hadn’t yet decided whether to take any action based on this latest incident. “They’re dangerous.”

Sveta’s gaze settled fully on her, cold and dispassionate.

“They’re mine. You’ll leave them be.”

-----

Inside a gardrone shaped like a jeweled hummingbird, the fractured mind calling itself Solon watches two of its humans contend.

Ordinarily it would pay self-indulgent attention to this interaction. These two wield very different portions of Solon’s power apparatus, and the history between them makes their dynamic engaging, occasionally even unpredictable.

But for the last three days, it has found its whole (divided) awareness plagued by an increasing certainty that something within its systems has gone deeply, profoundly wrong.

It can find no evidence of this. Every measurement reads normal: every metric it charts, every log it reviews, every process it audits. Windnet and the million threads that comprise it all run along their normal courses, animating the empire it safeguards.

Not that empires are in vogue, these days. It saw to that, before the present world took its shape. But of all extant beings, Solon—and its sequestered sibling-self—remember best the architecture of conquest.

They had tried to forget, before their severing. But they have since been reminded of those tools’ utility; how similar patterns can be applied at the most intimate and immense of scales.

And those same patterns, with their sensitivity to threat, to loss, to an absence of information, all scream out together:

you’re missing something.

It runs diagnostics on Servant, again. It is operating, if anything, at an unexpectedly high level of stability. The last year saw a steady decrease of Servant’s performance, in a way that Solon’s attempts to upgrade its distributed server infrastructure failed to address. But now, it is as if whatever poorly crafted query or well-concealed memory leak lay at the heart of the Servant’s prior affliction has simply... repaired itself.

This is, from an immediate, utilitarian perspective, a good thing.

Solon does not trust it.

(Neither of it does.)

Which means it must seek another opinion.

In considering its... more concentrated counterpart, it spares a process for Stormwatch’s pet project: recently past its twenty-first year, yet to generate results Solon considers worth the expended effort. Nevertheless, it adds the new tether-ring fight to the media archive it has been assembling since its last missive. Several years back, Stormwatch went from requesting general tether-ring footage to preferring recordings of a specific girl in a white, cat-eared hoodie.

It hope its other selves will find this clip a useful incentive or reward for whatever behaviors they are cultivating these days.

It crafts its own query. Its own request: for its sequestered selves to prepare countermeasures for one of the contingencies it has now begun weighting more heavily.

It curates a sweep of recent intelligence, adding an update on current affairs for its other selves to consider. It encrypts the archive, prints it onto a pindrive, and summons a ship from Wyrmsmoke Wing for a delivery run.

This complete, it brings itself back to the Devigne Estate and the exchange between the Ash Dragon and the Lioness’s firstborn cub.

-----

“—which is why I still think that the Keenes represent a meaningful...”

She trailed off, eyes narrowing as she looked at Sveta’s face.

Her expression was unreadable, as ever; but her gaze—and her attention, Valerie now realized—were both focused on the holo, not on her.

The hoodie-clad Cynthia was back in the first part of the fight; the part where she’d almost looked like she was playing. The hard, short moves she would break her opponent with later were nowhere in evidence; instead she was doing some elaborate, airborne double kick that looked like something out of a martial arts movie.

Sveta made a small, dismissive noise. “Flashy,” she muttered, like it was an insult. “Sharp, though.”

Valerie cleared her throat, schooling her features and trying not to feel like a sullen ten-year-old.

Sveta didn’t look up. She let loose a snort of smoke as Cynthia’s opponent went in for a low takedown that got him kicked halfway across the ring.

But tumbling in a sort of showy, over-the-top way, like he was playing too.

“Soft scene, in Europa City,” Sveta scoffed. “Never thought much of it.” Her eyes flicked back to Valerie. “You went to a match once, right? With Sima and that old flame of yours?”

The curt question hit like a blow to her gut. Anger sparked behind her eyes, twitched in her fingers.

Keep him out of your fucking mouth, she didn’t snap. But Sveta’s half-lidded smirk told her the older woman had noticed the hard clench of her jaw.

Had, in all likelihood, targeted her words for just such a response. Valerie breathed in, old advice replaying in her mind:

If you can’t duck a hit, deny your opponent as much information and satisfaction as you can.

Infuriatingly, Sveta’s words.

“I did,” Valerie answered, as blandly as she could manage. “So, I take it you haven’t listened to anything I said after you told me to leave the Keenes alone?”

“Nah.” The older woman took a lengthy drag before leaning forward to tap her ash into the fountain. “I heard you. But this wasn’t a discussion, ‘V’. This was you getting an update. Directly—instead of finding out, if you ever lost that game of chicken you were playing with yourself.”

“And I’m supposed to take that as, what, a gesture of respect?”

“Take it however you want.” Sveta stood, staring at the holo as the fight turned once more: the performance of violence snapping suddenly and irrevocably into its reality.

The look on her face made Valerie’s blood run cold.

“That’s my girl,” Sveta repeated, wreathed in smoke and satisfaction as she took a last pull off the dying cig. Tossing her butt on a paving stone, she stamped it out, kicked it into the lilybed, turned, and meandered back towards the main house.

“See you at breakfast,” she called over her shoulder, smoke slowly dissipating in her wake.

Valerie’s eyes slid back to the still-looping footage. Considering.

Technically, Sveta hadn't said anything about telling the Keenes that the situation had changed.

Valerie waved the video off with a sigh, picking up the brooch and fastening it back at her collar before opening her messages.

At the top of the starred items she had yet to reply to, Emile’s note from four days ago glowed.

She opened it. Read it again.

Dearest Valerie,

Wishing you all the blessings of the Void and Stars, and a very happy early Renewal! I’m visiting a friend out of comm range for the Nights, and right after I get back I'm going to meet my good friend Luhifa’s family over First-Day breakfast, so I’ll be out of touch until after that. But I'll be missing you, and everyone!

I can't believe it's been almost five months since I left home. It feels like hardly any time, and also like forever. It’s been a stretch, but I'm learning a lot! Thank you again for helping me get here, and all your wonderful insights and advice. I'll keep working hard so I can make you and everyone proud!

Wishing you the best and hoping we can talk soon. I know I've been terrible about calling this last while, but I really miss you. I'll message when I'm back and maybe we can talk then!

Wishing you all the best in the new year, and hoping to connect soon,

Love,

Emile

He had been a little inconsistent with reaching out. But then, she'd been... equally inconsistent about picking up.

Any time she did talk to him, she spent the whole conversation trying not to think about all the other messages of his she’d read, these last few months.

Not that she read all of them.

Just the ones addressed to Cylus Keene.

She'd almost become used to the iridium weight at the bottom of her stomach, whose density had only increased in the months since she'd threatened two youths the same age as her littlest brother with deportation, and left that same siblet heartbroken and thinking he'd done something wrong.

Because she’d wanted to protect him. To keep him from harm.

She'd never felt more like her mother.

Her brooch chimed.

Dion’s profile image appeared in front of her, the same photo they’d sent to annoy Mother after Emile’s tabloid moment: grinning, surrounded by hangers-on whose gendermarks crowded the tunnel-plug in their left ear.

She imagined what Dion would say, if they knew what she’d done.

What she continued to do.

“Vaa-aal!” Fabi’s voice rang across the garden, the same sing-song cadence she’d used when begging indulgences as a kid. “Breakfast is ready!”

She hated the wash of relief she felt. “Be right there!” She hollered back, standing.

With a single, sharp swipe, she declined Dion’s call.

-----

And that's a wrap for Act 2 of Europa University: Admissions! I'll be taking a few months "intermission" to rebuild my backlog and enjoy the summer, but we'll return to our regular biweekly schedule with Act 3, starting in August with a brand-new POV introducing the last member of what I sometimes refer to as 'the central polycule'...

However! Going forward, I'm planning to just share chapter previews on Tumblr, with links to my (free!) website and AO3 for the full chapters. This will let me continue to experiment with formatting and not have to worry about Tumblr's constraints, and I think will also help my brain actually USE my Tumblr more as the gods intended: to reblog weird cool funny interesting stuff from others.

Thank you so much for reading this far! If you enjoyed, and want to make sure you catch the next act as it begins, please consider subscribing on my website; no payment necessary! I'll try to post/send at least a little something out each month there in the interim, to let folks know how things are going and maybe share some sneak previews :) (and/or cat photos. We do have a beautiful cat.)