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This is Krinn writing high-concept sci-fi! It's a bit of a departure from my usual, which I think is a good thing - got to keep experimenting to keep growing. Thanks to :iconinaki: and :iconhayatoru: for consenting to appear, and to :iconneogeen: for getting me thinking about the richness of ocean-worlds. I have mixed feelings about the experiment: this might need to be a comic script at some point - it's heavy on visuals, and while I'm gradually getting better at text-art, heavy visuals are the domain of the visual arts (right there in the name). Also much of this was written while listening to loud electromusic, so that's an influence, as is Exalted (:iconhayatoru: again :love:).

Also also: fuuuuuuuck I am out of practice with writing (watch me punt on describing characters - unless you already know what Elluim and xenokitty look like, I probably left a lot to be desired there) and I have a November project coming up, criminy. Kitty's got a lot of work to do.

But.

Finishing things, posting them.  Enjoy.

(word count: ~4500)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Over the endless seas of Benth, over kelp and wave and gyre, float the homes of visitors.  The sea of Benth is already crowded, and so visitors crowd the endless sky: like the great kelp colonies, they float together and apart without fixed order, mirroring the liquid surface of the planet.  Over the endless seas of Benth float the homes of the visitors in their many species and their many architectures. The night sky of Benth is crowded with their lights among the stars: every node and sphere of the visitors is draped with lights, signalling and shimmering.  Over the endless seas of Benth float the homes of the visitors, the homes of the conquerors.

Under the sinuous curves of a sky-home’s surface, there is glass with spines of sapphire and diamond for strength, under the glass there is a layer of public rooms, under the public rooms are private rooms, and under the private rooms, among the generators, on a night thick with richly-lit sky-homes drifting together into winter clouds, was Qi. Qi’s slim rodent body, sheathed in black, smooth as the glass, slid through the gaps in the sky-home of the High Diplomatist, pressed against translucent surfaces, colored lights from the High Diplomatist’s party faintly visible above. She was a tiny shadow far below the million lights of the High Diplomatist’s home, its surface heavy with dew that compounded the light and spread splintered, glimmering points of it in all directions.

Qi slithered along the glass, working her way through gutters and pipes.  Her eyes were closed as she navigated by touch: she had metal all down her spine and woven with her bones, in her fingers and arms, in her legs and toes.  With a black rubber sheath over her fur from the neck down, only her face was bare, her whiskers out, round ears twitching from time to time.  The wires that ran along the spines in the glass gave her magnetic hints with each pulse of electricity, guiding her to the depths of the sky-mansion.  The grips on her feet and hands let her hold the glass and pull herself along, curving and bending, the glass constantly against her, her short tail flexing and curling behind her.  Far above, the brightly lit rooms that the gala spread itself around in radiated light and electromagnetic noise, outshining the gleam of Qi’s electronics like Benth’s sun hiding the stars in the daytime sky.  

Hidden in the low curve of the sky-mansion, wrapped in dark smoky glass, was the house’s mind: a bubble bulged from the floor, another from the ceiling, and between them hovered the core, emitting soft chimes as it bobbed up and down, touching the top and bottom bubbles gently when it met them. The house's mind was a glinting orb with wire-tendrils like a jellyfish's hanging from it, waving in the air and glowing in pulses. It was humming softly when Qi laid her hands on it.  Her fingers slid over it slowly, and she took a deep breath.  Pulled by thumb and forefinger, twin cables unwound from her shoulders, tips gleaming as she plugged them into the under-curve of the floating sphere.  It slowed, sinking towards the lower bubble, and Qi cupped her hands under it, lifting it to the top bubble.  The chime sounded wrong, and her ears flattened, but she let the sphere down again, keeping it from falling too quickly.  Her cables glowed orange as they interrogated the mansion’s data silo, and the center of the disc set into her chest, between her breasts, began to glow along with the cables, pale orange in the dim room.

Rising and falling, Qi’s hands kept the data sphere moving, but the chimes sounded less and less right, and her tail fidgeted as she grew more and more aware of her time running out.  Swinging back and forth as she moved, her cables eventually began to blink: she sighed in relief at the sign of her download’s completion.  The data sphere floated freely once she tugged her cables away, her eyes following it up and down several times, her ears twitching at its chimes.  When she stepped away to re-open the drain that she’d entered by, she found that it had returned to its closed position, watertight plates clamped shut in a double layer.  She tapped it with one finger and frowned, her tail swishing from side to side.  

There came a faint snap, followed by a creaking, shuddering, grinding noise.  The floor lurched under her, and she scrambled along the curve between the floor and the wall.   A bright line appeared halfway up the wall; white light poured into the dim room, a stripe of it cutting across Qi’s suit.  The line on the wall widened as the room gradually split open, top and bottom hemispheres twisting in opposite directions.  Qi frowned, looking up and down warily, retreating from the brightest patches of light.

The guards waited outside: raised at their shoulders were their splatguns, reservoirs of viscous ammunition slung beneath.  Spotlights all around the perimeter of the outer room shone down into the inner one, leaving no shadows around the lower bubble.  The data sphere chimed softly against the bubble, then rose again, leaving the inner room empty.  

Two guards advanced: their clinging uniforms were black with white shoulders and grey piping, and they leaned forward, long canine muzzles sweeping from side to side as they looked about with wolfish suspicion. They hopped in over a small gap, making the glass floor vibrate.  The larger of them kept his splatgun at his shoulder while the smaller lowered his and approached the bubble in the floor.  Putting his hand on the data sphere, he guided it down - and his eye was drawn to a flicker in it.  The smoked glass of the split room reflected little - but the shining datasphere reflected brightly its surroundings, and he turned in response as Qi sprang down on him from where she had attached herself to the upper hemisphere.

Her hands grabbed his shoulders, and she whipped the rest of her body down from above her head, tucking her legs in. Bent knees landed against his back, and feet twisted as she arched her own back, hands pushing off of his shoulders. Her body curled and flowed faster than theirs flexed and lunged: the guard leaned forward, raising a foot as he felt his balance changing, and behind him her hands reached the floor, her back bridged, her soles against his spine.  She kicked, arms extending, and sent him sprawling forward as she whipped upright and spread her feet, hands whipping out into a ready pose.

In unison came the clicking of triggers, the coughing of the splatguns, and the wet impact of slime-pellets on the walls. She dashed forward, darting in faster than the second guard could push his companion away and aim his splatgun at her. As the first guard struggled to push himself upright, she trod on him, feet on his leg, his chest, his shoulder, and finally launched herself from the second’s head, black claws flexing out as her foot ground against his scalp.  The disc set in her chest glowed more brightly as she demanded more power, twisting through the air, compressing, and landing in the outer room.

The guard in front of her twisted, the butt of his splatgun aimed at her head.  She reached up, caressing the gun and yielding with the guard's motion, twisting with him and pushing him to continue his twist, putting him between her and the barrage from the rest of the guards. She felt the slime-pellets slam into the guard's back as she spun with him, only needing to continue the motion he'd begun in attempting to strike. His head jerked and he yowped in pain as the pellets splattered all over his back, leaving a heavy, gooey resin. Qi huffed with effort as she completed the spin, then shoved. There was a satisfying wet noise as he stuck to the wall.

By the time the second round of splatgun pellets was in the air, Qi was climbing up the guard's front, her claws digging into his uniform and pulling on it as she rose, then jumped from his shoulders onto the top hemisphere of the inner room. She dashed across it, then threw herself into a headlong leap forward, heading for the sharp-edged light of the door that the guards had come through for their ambush. She could hear their boots gripping the slick floors as they reacted to her, following the pulsing light of the reactor in her chest - but reacting too slowly as she tumbled through the door, pushing up on her hands to kick the door's waist-level control panel, then rolling to her feet.

The corridor was brightly lit as she sprinted down it, a crackling in her ears as the wire filaments in the walls carried alerts from the guards behind her to the rest. There was a split ahead of her, bare corridor on her left, two oncoming guards on her left. She darted left, towards a section of corridor with thicker wires in the wall. The guards' teeth were bared and their eyes narrowed with adrenaline, their fingers tight on their splatguns. Qi simply ran: she was close by the time they stopped, inside arms-length as they raised their rifles to their shoulders, and jump-slithered over and between the pair as they brought their fingers to their triggers. In the time it took them to find her again, she was already around a curve in the corridor.

Another curve down the corridor, and she found a door set into the wall. Pressing a button beside it opened it, and Qi stepped into a snug, sleek elevator car. Her fingers brushed over buttons as the doors closed, and she smiled.  She opened the doors again, pressed half of the buttons with a series of crisp clicks, then stepped out, holding the doors open with her body. The elevator car fell away smoothly in its descent, and Qi looked up and down the shaft. There were no cables - but she could feel a tremendous pulse of current from the arm-thick wires in the wall, and between them the grooves that the elevator-car travelled along. Qi concentrated, and the glow from her chest-reactor intensified, spreading neon light along lines that followed the contours of her body, outlining her in orange. She held the doorframe with one arm as she leaned out, testing the currents, then grinned and leaped into space.

Her body ached as the magnetic fields produced by the powerful electric flows pulled on her in conflicting directions, and she writhed in the air, grimacing, before she was able to pull herself into one of the two supercharged flows. She rose, faster and faster, grinning widely as the lights of the mansion slid past her, higher and higher, finally surrounded by the light and noise of the High Diplomatist's gala. Neatly turning herself upside-down, she crouched on the ceiling for a moment, then clambered over to the wall. The glow in her chest faded briefly, and she flexed as her body's weight lost the support of the fields in the middle of the shaft. There was a door set into the wall, and she hug from its frame by one hand, her other reaching towards the door as her chest began to glow.

The High Diplomatist's party sprawled across the glowing floors, self-involved, shimmering, and noisy. To Qi, it was just so much terrain - difficult for her, lunging from shoulder to shoulder, staying as light as possible, taking advantage of every outrageously space-consuming costume - to the guards, as guests fell in protest behind her, as movement halted, as irate voices rose, it was impossible. The ballroom's edge was a giant, curved, clear window, and the skies of Benth were visible through it, stars gleaming as though trapped in the glass.

A growing crowd of guards followed Qi, all in an arc, contracting towards her, ranks of them falling back, spread out and already raising thick splatgun rifles towards her, as well as long, thin dart-throwers. Qi's teeth showed, clenched, as she ran, the lines along her suit brightly lit, the reactor in her chest making her limbs ache with the energy pulsing through her. One hand vibrated, shaking with each step, and she thrust it out in front of her as she ran towards the wall. The nearer guards fell to kneeling positions: she could see them all reflected on the curve of the glass in front of her, weapons all shortened, pointed directly towards her reflection. The noise of the crowd further behind her faded, and a rising buzz-whine overwhelmed the sound of the guards raising their rifles and firing.

The High Diplomatist's window exploded: Qi's hand touched it, and there was a moment of bone-shakingly loud sound, a sound that attacked the glass with perfect resonance. The guards crumpled: Qi tumbled forward into the air, her ears simply turned off. The rushing of air greeted her as she turned them back on, and glass shone around her in the air like stars as she fell towards the ocean.

Qi tucked her arms and legs in, curling, hands and knees against her chest, then arched as she opened up, hands and feet flying outwards. Along the arc of her body, from wrists to ankles, an orange line glowed brightly, then snapped outwards, dragging a grid of light behind it. Electric crackling snapped in the air as the mesh bulged, flexing into curves, leaving bright streams of light behind Qi as she fell. She flexed her limbs, the air rushing over her, ruffling her fur and catching in the woven-light patagia at her sides. Pointing herself head-down, she left a dazzling, glowing tangerine-colored trail through the sparkles of falling glass as she slid along air currents.  

Beneath her spread the cone-shaped floating city of the visitors, the High Diplomatist's mansion at its point, the dark of the ocean at the base. The electromagnetic noise radiating from the sky-homes beneath Qi made her itch as she looked for the loudest signals among them, fighting the wind to give her body a chance to drift towards currents of energy strong enough to help her accelerate. Her course began to curve as she found one, pulling her towards the next sky-mansion even as it let her reach out for a transmission from far below.

"Keep up the good work," came the calm, warm voice of her partner, the feline-accented words entwined with packets of information for Qi's electrical senses. Color seeped into the winds and fields around her as Krinn's transmissions gave her a map, guiding her to easy ways through them. "We're bringing you the Runway: curve around and slingshot towards us."

From beneath Qi rose buzzing, darting fliers, bursting from the sides of several sky-homes, fighting the wind as they struggled to rise towards her, flat and roughly triangular, buffeted by air currents despite their powerful engines. Qi's body sliced through the air as she flew down the curving side of a sky-mansion, the same repulsion that she'd used in her escape through the elevator shaft letting her skim along the glass surface without touching it. Transmissions from Krinn over-wrote her knowledge of the High Diplomatist's mansion, replacing it with memories of how to ride air currents, how to fly on magnetic fields, and how to hold a sky-path in her head. She saw the visitors' city all at once, enmeshed in invisible connections radiating from each translucent residence, and saw herself as a slim orange thread making a spiral pattern outwards, into the mesh between sky-cities.

The howl of jets joined the din of the wind around her as she stretched herself out, slowly bending her course from a fall to a flight, absorbing as much energy as she could from the transmissions around her, the robotic frame of her body straining to absorb the stresses of flight. Leaving their own burning trails of light, the jets blazed past her angrily, buffeting her, nearer and nearer. After the second time that they came close enough for her to feel the heat of their engines, she smiled into the wind and noted the shape of the weapons on the jets' undersides - unlike the guards she'd evaded earlier, they had nothing that could hurt her without destroying  a sky-mansion in the process. Far smaller than them and skimming along the surface of one sky-mansion after another, Qi was an impossible target.

"They can still just run into you," Krinn pointed out, listening to her thoughts through the link. "Don't slow down."

Qi thought an electronic chirp back at her, then changed course again, curling around one sky-home after another, angling downwards again, shaking from the stress that the speed put on her body. The jets roared by her one by one, holding a loose, wary formation of their own, the turbulence from their passing throwing her about more and more violently the closer they passed and the faster she flew. At two-thirds of the way down the cone of the city, she saw her guide-path, green light painted over the raw input of her senses, curve around a sky-mansion and bend into a tangent away from the city. The reactor in her chest vibrated with energy as she swam in the electromagnetic flows around the last mansion, pushing her faster and faster, a glowing spot in the sky impossible to miss.

She whipped through the last curve and out into the open sky, corkscrewing as she corrected herself, the sky and ocean rotating around her before her path stabilized into a solid line out over the endless seas. Behind her, there was a confusion of fliers, then a growing coherence as they emerged from the city, engines glowing, a constellation of pursuers closing in on her.

"Don't slow down," came Krinn's voice again, like a whisper as sizzle-screaming shots passed Qi, a barrage from the visitors' weapons, slicing the air around her and falling into the sea far ahead. The line of her flight arced downwards, pulled towards the sea without the sky-city's powerful currents of radiation to support her.

The composition of the sea ahead changed, a bright, blue-white beacon breaking the surface of the water, drawing Qi forward, a shining target elongating into a runway among the waves, so luminous that it threw a shadow of her body onto the closest jet behind her. The jets peeled away, seeking another angle of attack, and Qi focused on the light. The air around her was far cooler than it had been at the peak of the sky-city, damper, the spray of high waves leaving tiny droplets on her front, streaking down her body and scattering behind her. The waves were heavy, and as she approached the light of the runway, she could see it undulating through them, the long streak of light separating into two parallel lines, and at their far end, blue, pink, and green.

Elluim looked up into the sky at the approaching line of orange: he clung to the tops of two bone-spikes far taller than himself, he grinned with hope, and he glowed blue, pink, and green all down his front, wild hair tossing back and forth with the wind, flexing as he adapted to the rising and falling beneath him. The otter kept his eyes upwards, tail swaying, a bright beacon for Qi at the end of the runway. From the back of his neck fell a thin cable, trailing down his spine, swaying back and forth in the air above a rough, scaly surface. Rows of bone-spines made two parallel lines down the back of the giant sea-dragon carrying Elluim, brightly glowing algae clinging to her scales between the spines, giving Qi a clear target.

Straddling the lines was Krinn: the bulky green-black tigress leaned forward against the harness that attached her to two bone-spines, all four arms spread, her eyes glowing green, her snake-hair splayed, watching in all directions. The cable from Elluim's back bent away from the dragon's scales and rose to a plug between the xeno-feline's shoulders. Krinn swayed back and forth, hands splayed, keeping her body loose, ready to catch the rapidly-approaching orange glider. She huffed at each jerk of the harness, her body poised to open up for Qi and her data, tail lashing with anticipation.

The cable linked her senses and Elluim's, letting them both hear the ripping sound of the jets passing and arcing around, Qi's soft wheezing as she dipped into her energy reserves, and the rumbling breath of the sea-dragon carrying them. Their voices blended as they spoke comfort and encouragement to Qi, then sent the dragon a deep blue hue of appreciation and reassurance.

Qi ground her teeth, feeling herself losing horizontal speed even as she fell faster, closer and closer to the glowing runway. The visitors' jets came around again, and she felt the crackle of radiation as they targeted her again, her slim body profiled in the light rising from the sea-dragon. They had switched away from bullets - from the wedge of attackers came a pulse of noisy, tangled, disruptive electromagentic force tearing through the air. It swept over Qi; she went limp and lightless, falling helplessly.

The sea-dragon's back arched in pain, caught in the cone of the attack, then stabilized. Elluim's eyes rolled and his own light flickered as he pulled the pain of the attack into himself, twitching as he clung to the dragon's spines. A dark spot thudded onto the bright light along the dragon's back and rolled, leaving a smear among the glowing algae. Skidding, it slid through the wet, slick fungus and was scooped up by Krinn as water rose around all of them, the sea-dragon diving, the dark ocean engulfing all of them.

"Hurt?"

"Hurt."

The voices passed in pelagic darkness.

"Alive?"

"Alive."

There was a soft flicker, and echoing, clicking, hollow sounds carried through the water.

"Rising?"

A pause.

"Rising."

Qi awoke with a jolt, going from floating weightlessness to tight immobility. A plug jabbed into the back of her neck, and damp, cool, close restraints were all around her. Bands wrapped around her chest, legs, and arms, paralyzing her. A moment later, there was a whisper in her mind, and she sighed, slumping, relaxing. Her chest-reactor glowed faintly as the huge xeno-tigress' body wrapped around her, enveloping her and armoring her. The plug connected her to the xeno-feline with a close, pleasant blurring of identity. She asked herself for permission, and granted it: there was pressure at her hips and shoulders and neck, pressing in - then a click-click-pop as the glider's body came apart. The disassembly tingled - she could feel one of her bodies completely helpless, the other entwined with it, connected to each part of her, wires curling into her, extracting information as quickly as possible from her detached head, her bare trunk, her separated arms and legs.

In the quiet dark, Qi, Krinn, and Elluim stood, the world featureless around them, and before them a bright globe.  Krinn made a firm gesture with her down-left hand, turning the globe, which enlarged at a spreading gesture, zooming in to show the city of the visitors. Elluim spread webbed fingers and wiggled them, nudging the tiny sky-mansions, examining them carefully. His shoulders, arms, and legs, were black and rubbery, his chest, throat, and hair continued to glow in cheerful pastel hues. Qi watched quietly - she hung in the air, mirroring the arrangement of her pieces, her arms, legs, trunk, and head separated by several inches of air.

"That's everything," Krinn said with a firm nod. "Now you know them - and you know what they know about you."

Elluim shook his head, moody deep blues and a faint wine-red briefly passing over him.

"They're angry and scared. Why are they scared? We haven't done anything to them."

Krinn put her mouth to one side, her hair hissing softly.  

"To assuage their guilt. To conquer, you have to believe that those you're conquering aren't really people - or are bad people. On the bright side, they, like you, would rather not be bad people."

"So we could go and forgive them."

"You could. It won't necessarily work."

Elluim cycled through colors as he flicked his tail, gliding lazily around the gleaming model city, nosing at individual mansions, then paddling upwards and staring intently at the mansion at the top of the city.

All was dark again.

"Forgive?"

A quiet voice: "Forgive."

Water rushed past, rippling against Krinn's body as she woke, still harnessed to the sea-dragon. The currents made Elluim's hair go wild and wavy as he wriggled against her, holding a cable in his hands, still plugged into both of them. He nuzzled against the massive feline's face, webbed paws sliding against her hair-snakes, then turned and swam forward, tail pushing, hands pulling as he climbed along the dragon's back, cable trailing behind him. At a caress, she turned towards the surface, massive tail pushing water behind her, long, sinuous body sliding through the water.

Elluim began to glow: rising from the depths, he was a beacon, green and blue, the colors of sun on water, and his voice in the water mixed with the dragon's, a bass note audible for miles. Around them shone scales reflecting Elluim's light, unblinking eyes watching, smooth-scaled heads listening. Gleaming bodies gathered in a school around the dragon as she swam towards the city of the visitors, rising towards the surface, sleek and streamlined, her vibrant, resonant song calling through kelp and wave and gyre, each note pulling information from Qi's body through her xeno-feline armor, translated by Elluim, and spread by the dragon's voice from waves to seafloor.

Over the endless seas of Benth, the sun rose, vibrantly yellow, casting pink light on clouds in the pale blue sky, and its light spread over Elluim and the sea-dragon as they broke the surface, waves caressing them. The sky above them was crowded with floating mansions, the homes of the visitors. The glowing otter and huge dragon watched the sky for a moment - then sang again, swimming upwards, rising from the water to the air.

All around the dragon's body rose a shining, swaying, shimmering school, spreading through the air, as light as the dragon, as easy in the air as the floating mansions. All around the homes of the visitors they swam, the dragon's coils sliding along the smooth surfaces of sky-mansions, the colors of Elluim's joyful radiance reflecting from the glass. At the peak of the city was the mansion of the High Diplomatist, wall still torn open: Elluim hopped easily from the dragon's head to the floor of the grand ballroom, still singing, still glowing, a joyful smile on his face.