Fiddling with random ideas.

 2 AM, 20xx

Andromeda Marius landed on the roof of the building housing her apartment, and exhaled, a steamy haze clouding up the cool air. Sigh. Was she content or bemused? She shook her head, and felt coolness somewhere around her diaphgram. Going out had been worth it. She walked to the edge of the building. She slid down the pipe at the edge of the fire escape, until she was slightly above the balcony, then lightly hopped , landing softly. Her pale reflection reminded her to take care of her skin color-- no rush for tonight, but might as well.

She twisted her neck to a satisfying pop of pressure equalization, as her insides shifted. She found the seam on her outfit and begun unclasping the mesh. Heavy, flexible weight thocked on the floor as she undressed. Tomorrow... She was giving a lecture on metamaterials for freshmen. Could she make time to sit on Otani's lecture on phonons? The schedules didn't overlap, last she'd checked.

Her laptop reminded her of an alert she'd set up. "Report any strange sightings of large drones to DHS." Vague. Could be about her. The reward was decent, she supposed.

Oh. Her laptop's battery looked hotter than it should. It had been second-hand, and she could just carry a power bank, she supposed.

Afternoon

"Sorry, just recalled something I need to take care. I'll catchup." Andi excused herself, gesturing with her phone. "I'll catch up, 'k?" She left, walking briskly to a nearby alley.

Thank god she wasn't wearing stockings. She slipped out of her heels and sprinted. At the other end, she quickly crossed the street, and slipped to another narrow alley. There, at the end. A person with a hot gun and another, pale. From shock? She theorized.

Well. She dashed at reasonable rate and snatched the gun, the pressure from her hand keeping the trigger immobile. "None of that, now." She dismantled the gun and took a step past the two, dodging a hasty grab attempt. She pulled out her phone.

"I'm calling the police now," she informed the two. She didn't really want to... the situation was inconvenient to her, but she could at least temporarily pacify the situation, she hoped. She looked at the two faces, trying to read social cues. Not her forte.

She gave the two a closer look. Both male, young adults or older teens... Ugh, there was a graze at the side of the other one "Keep pressure on it."

The pale kid nodded, so Andi took that as agreement, then she got closer to the shooter. "Look, I don't really want to be involved, so..." Her hand snaked, lightning-fast to his pocket, and pulled out his phone. She guesstimated the unlock code from the screen's surface, and on second attempt she was in. She dialed 911. "Hello? There's been an..." They were both just kids. She hedged a bit. "Accident at < invent street address here >, and a kid's bleeding." She then ended the call and handed the kid his phone back, after quickly checking his socials. "Here. Now, don't go far, Edward."

She turned to check on the other kid. "You holding up okay?" It didnt' seem like any major blood vessels or more than a tear at the transversus... "I know it hurts, but keep pressure on it and you'll be okay."

Andromeda glanced momentarily as Edward chose to take off.

When she heard the sirens at the end of the block, she nodded, "You'll be okay. I have to go now."

She quickly made herself scarce and started making her way back to where she'd left her heels. Now, what was that dinner place where she was supposed to meet up with her coworkers?

----


I'm not very good with environments and minor characters. Working on it. Maybe. 

Snippet from a backstory novelette type thing

 

Eska fiddled with tufts of hair. She'd been fixated on figuring out how to create thread, or yarn, and shedded fur from various visitors was one of the things available during winter. 

Eid nodded. An improvement, honestly. Hopeful, even.  Perhaps they'd get to pottery, come spring; Right now there was only two crude bowls, one filled with meltwater, and a naturally-formed piece of stone with a hollow indent in the middle. A gift from an earth spirit.   

Eska tilted her head and glanced at the door, her eyes sharp for a moment, until hesitation settled in. As a field mouse ran, touched Eska's foot, and then turned to Eid's floating figure, lifting its upper body with a nervous squeak, Eid's metaphorical heart sunk.  She gave a reassuring smile to Eska, and walked through the door. 

Eid looked up at the cyclopean moose... or elk, perhaps, staring down at her incorporeal form. She bowed, hovering over the snow in the yard around the strange mushroom-y cottage. "I offer my greetings to the ruler of the forest," she spoke, in a language learned from listening to the villagers.  Then she waited.

The moose tilted its antlers, the drooping lichen waving in the crisp winter air. 

*"A word passed on to me, of a spirit, audacious enough to tell the wolves not to hunt. That spirit is you."*

The voice was not spoken via mouth, but never-the-less, it was clearly heard.  Sovereign. 

Yet, Eid sensed hesitation in the words, a glance at the cottage behind her, with a wisp of wood-smoke rising from the chimney. A flicker of an eye... The cottage hid Eska's presence quite well, but a sovereign like the moose was likely picking up on something.

"Only within sight of the cabin," she quietly asserted. "I do not seek to assert rule over them, but those who choose to come, should do so in harmony." Her rebuttal, polite. passive.

*"You know me to be the sovereign, yet you would set law?"* A humph created condensed swirls of foggy breath from the spirit-animal's nostrils.

"Law? No. A boundary. They are free to be here, free to hunt... but they will be thought of less kindly, then." She smiled. Her wording... she could lie, but did not wish to, so her words were... open for interpretation, she supposed. She really should see if Eska was up to doing _some_ little bits of... *cultural arts*. 

*"A boundary."* The Sovereign digested the word.

*"Wolves, foxes and bears mark their territory, birds call to set their limits. Spirits of earth, waters and trees have their whims. Beasts and birds protect their cubs and chicks, punishing those who attack them."*

A long pause followed. Eid waited patiently.

*"Yet, **Being thought upon kindly** is enough to keep the fox from devouring the rabbit?"*

Eid gave a small bow. "As you say."

The Sovereign paced, considering. its powerful shoulders shifting with clear muscles, even through the winter coat, the warm body steaming with tempered vitality.  

 

Eid thought of the possible patterns of interaction.  Likely, the Sovereign wished to be invited in, but the cottage was too small for it; It was too proud to ask, or to demand that Eska came out. Still...

"Would you like to hear me sing?" Eid interjected.

Cold open for Cyberpunk(tm) solo RP w/ Biopunk

Caveat: All of my writing is drafty

Cold Open 

Aya poked at her stomach. A still-angry scar followed her lower ribs, tracing a five-angled shape around a port implant. The only flaw visible in otherwise pristine skin. A bit of a novelty. She hissed in pain, and touched the opal-like round gem in her jugular notch. 

"Don't", a voice admonished her, - hers, almost, - and a silvery hallucination of a woman - her twin, almost, but a bit taller and more muscular - appeared in her vision, standing next to a rotten couch in the dilapidated room.

"It's potentially an optical sensor. Better depth perception, wider visual range. You know this." 

Aya pinched her lips. "Andi... yeah. Hm. You do look like how I think Andromeda does." 

The figure preened. "Good. that's the goal. Sure you don't want a bit more of a frame?"

Aya shrugged at that. "If needs must."

She brushed her hair, same pale opal as her gem, almost like fiber-optic but not quite like the ones she saw in the ads, or on the streets. "Photonic crystals?" 

Andromeda nodded. "Proof of concept, plus, we like the aesthetic." 

Aya smiled at that. "Yeah... Haah."

She pulled her shirt back down. "I don't think it's infected. Just a bit inflamed, still." 

Andromeda agreed, "Umu. I'm numbing some of the pain, but... the prototype was never meant to be implanted into a person, not for long. Connecting it to major arteries makes the propagation of the retrovirus faster, but..." She shrugged.

Aya knew all of this. Mostly. Just in less detail. She sighed and gave a resentful look at a metallic briefcase, with the 'Biotechnica' logo messily covered by stickers. "And now we gotta deal with that. At least we're bootstrapped, but..."

"...No guarantee we managed to wipe all of the director's private server and polymer-encoded data storage, AND we have no idea if the control computer has malware AND we can't break the WIFI without risking breaking the whole thing AND we need to vanish into Night City and that place is... well..." 

"...Social media made out of concrete and neon lights." Aya sighed. 

"That. But at least you've stopped sweating goo," Andromeda suggested, chipper. 

"...I guess there's that." was Aya's acknowledgement. "Maybe I can finally start wearing something besides cotton." She pulled at her shirt and pants. She was not entirely sure she wasn't just wearing pajamas. 

She sighed.

"I want to get this piece of junk out. But we need it to build a proper, high-quality replacement, and...  I can't exactly do surgery on myself. So we need to find a, whachamacallem, ripperdoc? Ugh. Getting used to the slang is.... I'm not going to even try."

"That. Don't worry, I am keeping a todo list.", Andromeda confirmed.

"..."

"...You don't want to know how long it is."  Aya really didn't.

Andi continued, 

"But if we want to get our body to 'Astra' spec... You don't mind eating bits of silicon and titanium, right?"

Aya sighed. "Call me a lightning rat and feed me kibble."

"Pica pica," Andi cheerfully voice-acted.

"..." After a moment, Aya humphed, "Gotta catch 'em all, huh?" The pursing of the left edge of her mouth could be interpreted as a smile.

"So," Aya stated.

"So..." Andromeda confirmed, also appearing to look at the briefcase.

"...Do we leave that here or lug it around? Neither option seems ideal."

It didn't matter which one of them said it. 

Snippet from RP.

The following is from an isekai PbP RP. 

---

Andromeda was resting. Staring a the inn's ceiling, in their room.

Truly, shadow control, such scientifically impossible nonsense... and it

wasn't just blatant photonic manipulation, she herself could do that -

with plasma, and even easier with magic.

She'd checked her armor for her base assumptions, and fortunately it

seemed it wasn't meaningfully weaker from the inside. She hadn't dared

to test it's limits, it would do fine, for now.

Classical elements... Well, you could see anything as anything. Life as

chess. Spacetime as a rutabaga.

She thought. She looked at her outstretched palm, then closed her hand,

except for the index finger. With her other hand, she wrapped all but

the tip, and focused.

There was a reason she didn't blow up every circuit and wipe every hard

drive when she walked past them, back on Earth. Her body was essentially

electromagnetically shielded, unless she chose otherwise. It did make it

a pain to see through, though. Even for her eyes.

A slight hum appeared, and a sharp hiss, from the electromagnetic

energies she was using.

"This was kind of like using a tourniquet", she reasoned.

The precise electromagnetic configuration at the tip of her finger gave

up, and she watched through it.  

  

She could use a plasma field to generate an optic lens.. but she needed

to practice her magic. So. She began using her amateur magic skills. She

felt the weave, and took the part that flew through the fingertip, and

spread it out. not by much, but a darker, ten times larger image of the

fingertip appeared in front of Andi's eyes, and their natural ability to

see the EM spectrum.

Earth, she though. It was hard to tell, but she could see the magnetite

and silicate cilia, as her cell wriggled, stressed. There was titanium

there too, calcium, of course, and more. then she focused on the liquid

nitrogen and ammonia channels.

Water, ice.

Then, she looked at where she knew an ion channel went. Air ions...

hydrogen, others. helium.

Air.

Then, she gazed at the near surface region, and excited it, until plasma

started forming

Fire.

How did that one student, Vesper, what was her first name like to say?

All models are wrong, some are useful.

She sighed, and allowed the fields and the magic lens to dissipate.

The lens, though....

She'd once, after her mother had died, flown as close to the sun as she

could.

When she'd been somewhere around Mercury's perihelion, the sun's energy

had felt pleasant.

At about half that, it had started to be too much, but her body had been

adapting.

At what she'd estimated to be less than 20 million kilometers, it

started to get to be significantly too much, and she'd stopped before

she was 15 million kilometers away, turning back. She had gone to

Mercurius's shadow to check the astronavigation data, and then,

slingshotted herself back towards Earth.

Technically she'd been the closest satellite for the sun, until 2018,

when the Parker solar probe broke the record. Had taken a while, though.

Accelerating and then decelerating...

Sunlight. Magic lenses.

The weave wasn't a field. This was significant. That meant that if you

picked the right "threads" and their interactions, energies didn't

dissipate the same way.

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow I'll look for an easy job I can take

with the Dai-Ken-Shi trio.