Metal Angel

we'll go with that and now also this/this

Fiora grew up with boys, surrounded by them; raised by them. She's never forced herself to be a beauty queen, never once flinched at the hobbies that other mothers might have frowned upon. Dunban doesn't mind if she plays with Blood Worms, so long as she squirrels away a few choice insects to show him at home, into the bargain. It's Fiora's world, and he'll gladly live in it for as long as he can.

Reyn, none (or rarely) threatened by her boisterousness, welcomes her as one of the gang. Shulk is too inscrutable to care.

And there was even a time, however brief, when Mumkhar still tried, and he would call a young Fiora, chubby-cheeked and gap-toothed, "angel face". Her smile would burgeon ever brighter, broader, at the praise. This toddler some passed-away parents had called Fiora knew love, from every quadrant, quarter, and corner; even from the most bitter of bitten soldiers.

Bitten by needles and claws. Bitten by fate. Bitten by jealousy.

He hadn't yet begun to begrudge that Dunban was a saint, was Fiora's brother's logic, later on, inasfar as he - the Hero of the Homs - would ever allow himself to be pronounced as such.

Fiora could be cocky, even arrogant, like her brother, in fits and starts, but she was never one to pile on admiring attention like so many airs. She didn't want to be a hero in a different way than Dunban didn't want to be, but the end result was the same, or thereabouts. Humility, she trained at; it was only in tossed-off conversation that she could falter in any significant fashion.

Hunting Knives, they were, and if Fiora loved to hunt, it was partially for the spatter of blood (Lacerate! Lacerate!) and partially for the safety of her friends and neighbors. It wasn't for glamour, and maybe only for a little bit of a show. That's our Fiora, the Defence Force said, as good as her word and just a little bit better.

Fiora's pride was deserved - and so was Dunban's, most of the time, of course. She'd earned her licks, licked her wounds and tattooed her scars upon her soul, where it mattered, where they were worth keeping, where her soul would allow.

Maybe Mumkhar's infliction was the one most worthy of all, for eternal preservation, but the leader of Mechonis had other plans for that one. Much more elaborate, intricate, elevated and sublimated plans.

As if any infinite measure of transfusions, of relaid ether track and veins, can put the blood back where it's supposed to be. Who could ever unmake Fiora from being gaunt and pale and keening, the ever-ossifying, forever coronating corpse that she is now?

Of course, she's not awake enough to protest, when it begins. Meyneth's consolations are few and far between, dim and bleak and unsatisfying even as they bless Fiora with the grace of an entire titan, half a rebirthed and retraumatized world.

The Fiora of childhood and adolescence had loved, dearly loved, sensation. That's what all the bloody lust had been about; that's why she's so vivid, so viral. Now she lacks it, motor-tongued, thrumming oddly and ill-often.

Love as a sensation. Love as a heartfelt edict. Love as a well-shared lifetime.

And does this Fiora know love? Does she know anything more than empty, weaponized admiration?

Perhaps she begins to feel some kind of a love, for Meyneth. Perhaps she takes in, breathes and buoys, some of Vanea's stray personal determination not to be quite confused for affection, regard and personal reverence.

Perhaps her forgetting Dunban has less to do with the remnant traces of that toddler and more to do with her body being repurposed beyond any former identity into something that thinks, feels, moves as if divine. Not as if born to be, but as if made to be.

The blood can't be put back where it's supposed to be because, according to the will and the might of the Mechonis, it's not supposed to be there anymore.

It says something, doesn't it, that Egil's other recent attempts were all so...ugly?

If Mumkhar is your star player, then you're really strapped for talent. If Gadolt is your kingpin, your operation really doesn't have a lot of wiggle room. If you're relying on Xord not to get bowled over, you've got another flybit coming.

Those are the Face Pilots, units within the mechs that soar and strafe and enforce what Egil needs must to accomplish. They are individuals, not mass-produced, and their subjects have been oh-so-carefully chosen.

But yet. And even so.

Face Nemesis is different. Quite different, indeed.

For one thing, it's the Face that's centered and pillaged. No description of how, by color, it should look. It shouldn't be identified. It doesn't need to be. Silver Face, yes, but only just. Identified as such in the making, but not from then on.

Silver, the knight of Gold.

The most conductive. The most reflective. Not quite as noble, but versatile and stable when met with purity, approached with grace. If not perfectly biocompatible...well, some compromises have already been made. Antibacterial, posing industrial versus luxury. Not so precious, and yet the very most precious of all.

Yaldabaoth's captain has made Face Nemesis the best of them all, even as he does not know that his lady of worship lies in wait. The body of the pilot does not know this either, but in time she will. She will know both loves, and determine as she wishes to accept them.

Fiora, man or woman, is as brave as her blade and twice as fine. As she shimmers back to consciousness, she knows that she hasn't got a scrap of righteousness left in her - or, maybe, that's all she's got. Drones firm, helmet girded, red gems and chestplate sparkling with verve and the faintest memory of that darling blood. Like an angel dereft of duty who can do no more than stalk the halls of heaven, encased in metal and mettle.

And yet, the expression on Egil's awestruck face, which has never opened to peaking, pleading brows for any fraction of a moment, tells a markedly different tale.

Nemesis is the unspoken master of the pack, decrying Mumkhar's every infrivolous suggestion. Even were she his underling, she would best him with ease, with dignity if not with subtlety (but Meyneth does do well with subtlety).

Mumkhar remembers even when Fiora doesn't. And even through his undying bitterness, he would know the glint of that smile anywhere, on any titan and on any sea.

Oh, you beautiful butter-knife tragedy, with your forever angel face.

Deified deliverance, Meyneth's soul merely the conduit for Fiora come down from on high.

Agniratha's expatriated citizens adore her, of course, and if they notice that she's somewhat changed, somehow intensified, they don't know that they do so. They simply shine to see and hear and feel the goddess among them, their mother returned to right what had been wronged and perhaps even to reach Egil, in his damning delirium. This love might be Fiora's most cherished, of all new and unforgotten things that she might hope to hold most dear.

With all this brought to bear, Egil, even though he is not among them, does now lie among them, ranked to face, tempestuously proud.

Egil hates the Homs, obviously. Uses them where necessary; creates superweapons, juggernauts, ironic impossibilities, because he's out of options, by this point, and desperate enough for anything. How low and humiliating, that living loach of an anything. So he does not discuss it, if he can avoid it. Egil, the sentient, simply just does.

Mark this, of many things: Egil takes remote control of Meyneth's piloting Nemesis. He does not do the same to Fiora.

Could he do the same to Fiora? Could he even dare to dream to dare?

Much though he is, because he's an endlessly, idiomatically careful mastermind, Egil is so desperately not keeping track of what sins Fiora might wish to levy against him. There are far too many, and she is far too infinite, all-encompassing. Not thoughtless, nor either crimeless. A world too far over gone. He is throwing his lot in, and that will be the end of it.

Fiora, everlasting metal angel, will be the very end of him. Oh, Egil is dumbly devoted, and he of all hellions knows she will.

She's gonna go all out. She knows no other way.

Indeed, Fiora's world, and the Bionis and the Mechonis, Zanza and Meyneth, Shulk and Egil, Dunban and Vanea, Mumkhar and Linada, all merely living within it.

research, unfortunately. like #machina would know