This is a sidethread to Uncaring Stars, roleplaying the flight from Worms to the Schwarzwald. No one needs to join as they can just enjoy their view and remain silent, of course. I just thought it might be a nice idea.

After a while, bnc casually walks over to where Anna sits and takes place beside her. "Stunning view, huh?"

Anna replies "It is beautiful, I almost feel like I am flying." she pauses and then shows bnc her ring. While it is the same one as before, she had a jeweler fit it to her finger, and polish the metal, adding a pretty green stone. "Best toy I ever had. I can't believe that Wraith gave it up, or that I had doubts if I wanted it." she pauses So what have you been up to? Are Kerstin and you close together? now? You never answered my calls

"I coulda sworn your favorite toy woulda been longer..."
She fidgeted when Anna mentioned the calls, then sighs.
"Yah ... girl, I am sorry for what it's worth. I just - Kerstin and I got us a nice house in the Mühlviertel and moved everything there and then we had so much talk to do and then both of us went to shadow clinics and ... well, you know, couple of months pass so freakishly quickly. I honestly never found time to meet you and I kinda didn't want to answer without giving any definite answers, so ... I guess I didn't answer at all."
bnc grimases. "It is the coward's way out, isn't it?"

My favorite toy is taller, and more cybered of course. Having the body I always dreamed of having, and will never have even if I spent my entire life a the gym, but Splitterbruch knows what to do with me.

She pauses "That ring, is like having Singularity at the highest possible level simultaneously to all the skills you can think of. It makes me good at anything magical. I bound a spirit for the first time in my life, it is expensive as hell and I never thought I'll do it. Did not even bother studying how to do it as I never imagined having money. Thing is, without the ring it would have taken a year or two of studying, but with the ring, I did it while reading the textbook and following the charts. I just understood what to do, and my mind filled in the gaps of the schematic drawings.
It is amazing, and the hard part is to forget having it and continue working on my skills as if I never had the ring. I studied quite a lot since we last met.



she responds "Don't be like that, it is fine bnc. You chose your family over me which is understandable you had your issues. I thought I chose you over my family because you were like the coolest person I ever met. In fact, I chose your lifestyle. I wanted to be free and see the world, and before I met you I never left Seattle, and I never had money to even develop the parts of my talent that require reagents.

[color=cyan]Now, look where we are admiring the view after we played a trick on the coppers. I spent my entire life fearing the coppers of Seattle, and here I am just walking to the police station and taking Rabe with Taurus and Nova. I cannot be angry at you for bringing me here, even if you left me to fend for myself and adjust almost instantly. I was, disappointed that you did not want me as a lover, but Chaos is about freedom. You did what felt right to you.

What is your house like? I never bothered to rent a place just stayed at a hotel. Studying most of the time, and enjoying myself when I got tired.

"Splitterbruch??", bnc asks incredulously, but Anna's already rambling on about other things. Baffled, bnc just listens. She could have sworn Anna had to breathe at some moment, but it just goes on. bnc blushes a bit when Anna so casually mentions her disappointment at bnc not being her lover in front of Muhme, Nova and Taurus.

Finally, bnc manages to break into the flood of words before it strides to an entirely different topic yet again. "I didn't bring you here more than Slobber or Krestov did. I was just part of the team. And to be honest, I never chose "my lifestyle". I just ran from the old one.
"Again, the coward's way", she adds after a short pause, in a downcast voice.

You saved your sister, dealt with all the emotional drek you have been avoiding your entire life. You sticked around with her afterwards, and actually talked to her. she pauses, and leans over to look at bnc. You are brave bnc. She frowns Ghosting me was cruel, but it sent the message loud and clear. You do not call if you do not need me, you did not care that doing that job was personal for me too. I went to great lengths to make you happy, did for you things that nobody has ever done for me. Most people would at least try to be nice me afterwards. "

"Then why are you? I've been insulting you from the first moment. Why don't you react ... the way Sharkboy did."
bnc looks at the floor, self-conscious.

Anna sighs, "Because I can see why you insult me as clearly as I see your face, and it has nothing to do with me. I am beautiful, talented, and in control of my emotions, and I am confident enough in my worth to not be insulted. You on the other hand, are a mess of repressed emotions and insecurities, but somehow you are also Sprinklers the brilliant. Not all the time, but you have your moments. "

bnc gawks a moment, surprised, then shakes her head in a kind of amused shock.
"You really are a bitch." She grins, then. "Did you just turn all my insults against me? Helluva slitch, you..."

She then sighs. "It would hurt less if it weren't accurate." Her grin vanishes, turning to pain. She changes subject, shooting a sideway glance to Alex (and avoiding looking at Muhme).

"So, how did you spend your downtime. Wie gut geht's deinem Deutsch?"

Ich bin gut, ich gurgle viel. she laughs softly, trying to break the tension.

Then she says My life is a bit lonely, I am alone most of the time. I miss Mark but mainly because he came with a pack of friends, that I lost when I broke up with him. He was a rebound anyhow. I still talk to Christof tough, he explains all sorts of things about music and art, and I find it funny that I have a friend like that. He get so involved in his stories, that I get an urge to steal his wallet. The old me would have done that, I miss the old street cons they made me feel alive on a daily basis.

I hooked up with Splitterbruch, and he taught me to drive a bike. I would have been more skilled but I always cheat with magic to keep up with him. I go to the gym every day, and practice for an hour, but all in all 90% of my time I am alone. So I study, partly because it is very important for me as a young mage but mainly because there are no better options at the moment. I took this work as also as vacation from my day-to-day. I mean, we've seen more excitement today in just a few hours than I normally see in a week.

She then asks "What about you? How are things in the sisterhood? Do you still keep in touch with Nacl and Wraith? "

bnc laughs at Anna's German joke, then turns a bit guilty when Anna speaks of her loneliness. At her question, she blushes and looks down.
"Uuuhm, well ... I, uh, meant to. Kind of. I haven't been paying attention to keeping in touch with anybode, to be honest."

bnc stands, somewhat uncomfortable. "Well ... shall we enjoy the view a bit more?"

Anna responds I mean, I thought Nacl and Kerstin were a thing, but I guess I misread their connection.

She stands and walks to the wall, observing the view as close as she can without leaving marks on the screen. How high would you guess we are? The view is quite detailed, things look nice from up here.

"No, you didn't. Well, you did, but in the other direction. I, uh ... Dunno if that makes sense at all, but I don't feel comfortable around him. I'm not sure how Kerstin feels about him, actually. We hardly talk about ... those things. You know. What happened..."

Glad for a change of topic, she guesstimates "We can't be beyond the surveilled flight space which would be at about 11 km, nor can we be below, 'cause that's basically the ground. I haven't been in a plane that often, but I'd put us somewhere 'tween 5 and 8 km. What's your guess, Chaos mage? I mean ... you can fly, astrally, can't you. You must have experience."

Anna says "We are trying to illegally cross a border, and we are invisible, and are slow moving, so it would be dangerous to cruse on the regular height along with faster planes that cannot see us. So I would fly us slightly above or below the commercial airspace to keep safe. Now we drive a dangerous helium ballon, and weather conditions may take us off course - so I'll go lower than the commercial flights. Perhaps 3km puts us below the 'ground' for airplanes with a safety distance from mountains and other surface objects. That way if there is bad weather there is less chance of intersecting with normal routes. " she pauses and then adds I don't project very high, and I did not have a window seat coming here. So I wouldn't know what I am looking at. I'll just trust my common sense in this matter.

"Really? Why don't you? It must be wonderful to soar through the sky, seeing the auras of birds and bats flitting through the air. How come you don't do that more frequently, anyhow. If I were capable ... I would travel the whole Earth!"

Anna responds, "The movement speed is so high that the challenge is not getting as far as you want, it is not to overshoot your target. I can project faster than airplanes, and in my first attempts - I lost the entire city when I first tried to run. I run for a mere minute and found myself above the ocean with no sense of direction and no point of reference. I'd probably kill myself just for trying to run because there is a limit to how much I can be outside of my body, and at the time, that limit was not much. What saved me was that I left a minor spirit near my body, and could follow the link between us like a trail of breadcrumbs. It took me a minute to get lost, and an hour to find my way back.

My point is that developing the precision and controlling my astral form, took a lot of effort and experimentation. Imagine what it would feel like to ignore acceleration, and move faster than an airplane without maps or GPS to tell you where you are. This is running on the astral; you can go slower. You can also crawl on the physical it is perfectly safe, but it is not very pleasant. I usually don't get lost when I know the surface around me, but I do not know the atmosphere very well.

You get up to the sky, and all your visual anchors disappear. You do not know how high you are, but you know that "space" is not very far in astral terms. You can get to space and kill yourself in less than a minute, and well. I do not know how high it is safe to go. I assume that mana becomes scarce gradually, and that it may hurt my health long before it directly damages me. I did some experimentations and managed to get to 1km or so safely. Difficult to tell exactly, but I got high enough to get above some of the clouds and see the city from the sky. I still had visual anchors at this attitude - for example, I could always see the space needle or Atzetchnology's pyramid and get back there, and I memorized the way home from these central locations.

Now, "space" is just a few seconds of running upwards. It is very close, and the entire manasphere feels like a small island surrounded by a lifeless void. Approaching that void goes against your survival instinct, it feels dangerous. It is not just me, most spirits stick relatively close to the surface where the mana is more abundant. I hope I explain it well.

By the way, if you really want to project I can find a way to take you with me. You would not technically be in the astral, but I can share my astral senses with you and you will *see* what I see and can instruct me where to go or what to look at. I'll need to study to learn how to do that, but I at least know that it is possible because I recently got into detection spells, and I've seen references of such sense linking spells in a survey about the field."

Surprisingly, bnc didn't answer Anna's offer at the end. But there was no mistaking the effect it had on bnc. For a moment, she lost control over her facial expressions in a way she usually only displays in fits of heavy emotional overwhelming. Her eyes grew wide and she actually stares, but only for a split-second. Then she blinks, regaining control, and says in a forcefully non-chalant way:

"Yah, well, but you went on a lot of scouting missions so far, so if you know roughly where you are, you'll find back. Cities with their vibrant auras, the pollution, the characteristic background count, should be easy to find. There are a lot of landmarks in the astral: mountains, places of suffering, hospitals, ley lines, cemetaries, churches, arcologies, and so forth. So, I don't buy your "the challenge is to find back". Maybe in the beginning, but not after all your practice.

What is it like, Anna? Do you feel the rush of speed? Do you feel the thrill of weaving through the clouds - or crowds? Does it tickle if you move through an aura? What does it look like to watch people doing it? And I know you did."

While talking, she moves over to the wall, not far away from the others, to look out through it. She casts a glance at Taurus, trying to judge from his expression whether he's listening or not.

Anna says, "First time is overwhelming, too many details too little apriori knowledge to understand what you see. Imagine yourself being a blind person opening your eyes for the first time.

Astral is a different world; it feels like looking into the source code of our world. When I look at you physically, I can tell it is you from the other side of the room, but I cannot see how smart you are, if you are addicted to some substance, or if you practice martial arts. In the astral, I can probably tell that you are a metahuman from a glimpse, but I need to observe carefully to identify that it is you. The source code metaphor fits in as well, as you can say that something is a program by looking into the icon, but you need to read the source code to see if it is a specific program. Once I look at you in the astral, I can read your source code and learn everything about you, ofcourse people are very complex and I cannot understand everything that I see, but I learned to understand many structures. Kind of like I know someone practice marital arts, or I saw why that the crazy elf lady was unstable.



Part of the reason I am good with health magic is that I can see what the spell is doing. Your aura has some structure that determines how charming you are, and I can manipulate that property to make you more appealing. I can bend the rules a little bit, sort of like how you hack devices. Astral is very exciting, but it has no rush of speed or wind in your hair. Movement is so fast that you appear when you want to be, and you need to learn common sense again because you have no intuition of that world. My early mistakes were because I did not realize just how fast movement is.

People having sex is tricky; in many cases, it is boring because they do it mechanically to satisfy a physical need. When people are passionate about it, it affects the astral around them and makes it enjoyable even to be present there. You get a glimpse into their passion, and you do not need to look at them. For example, when my dorms flatmate was having a good time, I felt her passion behind the wall even if she tried to be quiet. She aspected the apartment and made a mess with my spells but also made me horny by association. The background count in the police station made me suffer by association. Rabe was suffering so much that it was a torment just to be in the car with him. His emotions affected the entire police station.

So watching sex is fun if the people are really enjoy it, but it does not have to be sex. It can also be BTL, or euphoric drugs, or a soccer fanatic watching his team scores. When you feel strong positive emotions, and I am in the same room then I can feel a little of that as well. When I made you pretty for the first time, I felt how happy you were. Not as a metaphor, I felt it like you feel the wind on your hair. Perhaps your most attractive feature is that you have very strong desires by the way. It sound strange, but I view people in an unusual manner.

Accessing the astral made me a less violent person and more submissive and pleasing. I can cope with plenty of crazy, like I did with Mark, if someone really wants something, giving it to him feels amazing.

She laughs "I sound like a slutty Santa Claus, but I hope that you understand what the astral feels to me, and how it profoundly changed me.

"I see", bnc says after a long pause, pondering.

"So you actually enjoy being a slut not only because it gives you pleasure, but because sensing others being pleasured is in itself desirable for you. But ... If that's the way the astral feels, why are there so many asshole mages? How can you perform blood magic or fling a fireball if it immediately backlashes at you? I don't get it. I buy it, but I don't get it."

Anna seems pensive for a moment, and then she comments she strokes the ring and then says "The world is filled with sadistic people taking pleasure at the misery of others. Now imagine having an extra sense to actually feel emotions of others, I bet this extra feedback intensifies their pleasure. Others just don't care, so while hurting others makes the astral unpleasant, they can simply leave the unpleasant location once the deed is done. They enjoy the benefits of their violence long after it is done. Also, we mostly encounter criminal or outright insane mages... "