"You. Again." The tapping begins.

"You. Again." The tapping begins.

Size up your enemy.

A creature in perpetual movement, she quivers in her place, impatient.

On further inspection -- physically trained and capable of doing damage.

Seems like a natural for violence.

Maybe a neuro-degenerative thing. Someone had to help her get dressed, probably.

Size up your... enemy?

"What's with the blood?"

A snarl twitches through her features, almost lost in the chorus of tics and tapping.

Her gaze performs a quick triangulation -- blood smear, cut palm, you.

As if an equation is forming in which you are subtracted.

"I am paying what is due. Respect."

"Paying your respects to whom? Him?" (Nod at the statue.)

"Yes. No... to all of them." She looks back at the statue.

Her blood a black streak on the stone, already starting to dry.

"Admiral Gutierrez was a great man, but he was only a splinter of the whole... a spark of the great fire that was Anonimo."

You are surrounded by representations of his mind, in all its facets and incarnations.

"How does cutting yourself fit into it?"

"The cut is unrelated." Her right hand twitches.

It is not.

The contact between stone and open flesh was a transference, an attempt to gain something that she does not have.

Her hands were not there to pray. She was trying to absorb the essence of that stone.

"It's almost as though we are inside Anonimo, isn't it?"

For a moment, she freezes.

Desperate yearning.

"It is wasted on you. How could you possibly appreciate what it means to be inside of Anónimo?"

"Never said I appreciated it."

"All the same, you're right. Inside him… an echo of an echo…"

"You might be surprised."

"What was so great about this Gutierrez?"

"The Leatherback, they called him. Warlord of the southern ocean, Cacique of the deeper waters."

Leatherback turtles often emerge from unknown battles in the abyssal depths.

A sinuous rope scar wound around his arm and across his shoulderblade, he screams.

"He quelled the uprisings of the Archipelago and mantained peace in the Island territories for more than thirty years."

"So he's the one who liberated your people."

"Yes. I owe him much." She nods. "But you're missing the point."

"Gutierrez was an instance. A shining instance. But beyond, behind all the instances, there is something eternal... Something Real."

"He seems like a real hard worker."

"You're missing the point..."

Keep listening.

"Blood and shrine. Cool." (Go back.)

Nostrils flare. Foot taps. Her arms cross and then uncross again.

"Thought I might just stand here a while. Nice view."

"The only worthwhile location in this city." She gives a vague glance into the distance. "One problem: You can see the rest of it from this vantage point."

"I despise coming here. The jail's being governed by the inmates."

An off-hand reference to Portofiro's colonial past.

"Where are you from, then? Somewhere cool?"

She stares at you, jaw thrust forward.

A fighter's chin.

"I am from one of the liberated territories," she exclaims proudly.

Portofiro as a warped mirror image -- re-annexed Luzian lands reflecting against this island's precarious independence.

"You mean the ones annexed by La Luz?"

"I said 'liberated'."

"Which territory, exactly?"

"St. Ulwen. The Tenantries."

Same place those old pilots came from, different reality.

The Tenantries of Saint Ulwen, re-annexed in the early 80s.

A particularly brutal annexation, the Tenantries were razed almost to the ground. What remains is a shrunken capital surrounded by non-arable land.

"The Luzians really did a number on you guys back then, huh?"

For a moment, her stare turns nowhere.

"The old Tenantries were exactly like Portofiro... content in their own decay, unambitious, stagnant... The Imperio Iluminado liberated us from that."

"They bombed you halfway to oblivion."

"What choice did they have?"

She is either well rehearsed or uncaring.

"There was a folk tale that people used to tell in the Tenantries, about when the Agorans tried to conquer St. Ulwen five hundred years ago." Her eyes narrow.

"The story goes that the Agorans captured St. Ulwen within a day. The locals didn't even put up any resistance. But the conquest failed because, though you could easily kill the islanders, there was no threat or prize that could compel them to work."

"They were too lazy to be worth colonising, in their own words. Remember, this is their national origin story, a source of their pride!" She gestures with her hands, wildly.

The irreverent self-image of a trickster people, eternal underdogs.

"Sick."

"Diseased." She nods. "Near terminal."

"But now we are cured. The fires of Luzian discipline have healed us. Give thanks."

"Being conquered is a weird thing to feel proud about, you know?"

"Only if you are on the side of the conquered."

A fanatic's certainty, forged through sheer trauma.

The final stage of colonisation -- the oppressed become strange parodies of the people that colonised them.

"That 'us'... You mean 'those who were left'."

"The rest held fast to their pride of indolence all the way to the grave."

"We who survived are Luzian -- and have always been Luzian at soul."

"You don't seem particularly lazy."

"I was three years old when the Tenantries were liberated. I was raised with the fire of Luzian discipline."

"And your parents, were they pro-Luz?"

"They were also being educated at the same time as me."

Raised in a military boarding school while her family disappeared into camps marked on no map.

"I'm starting to get why you might want to bomb them. They sound obnoxious."

"This place is no better. A tepid version of the same degenerate ethos." She bites her lower lip.

"And we are not 'obnoxious' anymore. The fires of Luzian discipline tempered us."

"Good for you." (Pat her shoulder.)

"It is very good for me." She nods metronomically. "Also don't touch me again."

Snarky. Begging to be crushed.

"Sounds like a cool place."

"That does sound pathetic, actually."

"Enough about your homeland." (Go back.)

"Enough about everything." She flicks her head like a horse ridding itself of flies.

"Weird, us running into each other twice."

"This city is small. And I have tried to stay off its streets as much as possible. The stench." She sniffs. "Intolerable."

Its smell is the same as all port cities -- damp concrete, diesel exhaust, drifting mats of golden-brown sargassum.

Up here you smell only pine needles, ozone.

"I'll be happy to leave it behind."

Get in her head.

The blood on her hand is a desperate attempt to bond with a heritage not her own.

"How does it feel to know you'll never be one of them?"

"I am one. They made me one."

"Yeah, but not really. Come on."

"Little whore." The creases on her brow and her lower lip shake in place.

"I don't have to listen to the words of some Portofiran, a slave racer who understands nothing."

You've hit the vein. Now twist the knife.

"Oh, I'm not from here. Just an outsider's observation." (Smile politely.)

"Fool." She forces the words out through a gauntlet of raging tics.

"I don't presume to be equal to the Heirs of Anonimo. They are... obviously superior. That is as it should be."

She recites dutifully, without mistakes. But she is rattled.

"Good. Just making sure you're aware."

"I will bleed harder, not faster." She stares at you, unblinking.

"I think it bothers you more than you let on."

"Seems kind of desperate, all this blood stuff. Bet they can see straight through it."

"You're not even a real Luzian. Let alone part of Anonimo."

Her fascination with dead fascists is obvious. Use it against her.

"You know there's a secret 67th war criminal?"

"Yes? And?" Her foot keeps tapping, impatient with you.

"Are you not excited about this?"

"You understand nothing." She spits out the words.

The burning, twitching gaze she fixes on you transmits the message with telepathic clarity -- you will not distract her -- she is onto you.

Those little uncontrollable movements of hers will grow up to become acts of violence.

"Don't you want to go and look for them? They were just over that cliff..."

Alternative wording

"Don't you want to go and look for him? Think it was just over that cliff..."

"Why would I do something like that?"

"I've heard there's loads more statues down on the slope."

"I'll leave you to your blood and shrine." [Leave.]

She gives you three sharp, militaristic nods.

Head bowed, one hand raised and held against the statue in front of her, the woman in the military coat murmurs softly.

The posture suggests prayer, but a violent one -- every muscle clenched and quivering.

"... Severidad... Embriágame de vuestra fuerza... Alumbra..."

"Excuse me..."

"What?" Undisguised impatience as her eyes turn to you.

On the statue, a smear of fresh blood from her hand. Open cut on dirty stone.

"You're bleeding."

"It's nothing. I cut myself. Rock's sharper than it looks." She glances at the wound.

That stone is smooth. She did it to herself.

"Why does this matter to you?" She taps her foot with unnecessary vigour.

Don't answer. Just stare at her.

In the silence, her movements quicken. Twitches and spasms, a hammering foot.

She was part of the trio standing in front of the Housing Campaign.

Her costume is a stylized but unemblazoned piece of Luzian military history.

She is disguised as herself.

Most likely a mid-rank Weeping Eye asset.

"Well?" Her fidgeting accentuates itself, faster still.

Hold her stare.

The silence lies very heavy between you.

The air quivers alongside her movements.

Itching to commit violence.

Keep staring. Just a little while longer.

"Are you..."

Out-stared. A small tactical victory.

"Are you planning on just... standing there?"

Though she speaks fluent Illuminado, she is not Luzian.

"So..."

"Yes, so." The words erupt from her with a short burst of relief.

"Just going to stand there? Or do you intend on making conversation?" The tapping quickens.

Start tapping your own foot.

Mirroring her does nothing to stop her fidgeting. If anything, it amplifies them.

"Are you going to put a bandage on that, or..." (Gesture to her cut.)

"No. I'm fond of the blood. Fond of bleeding."

... Goon?

"Just... kind of weird to see someone bleed on a statue."

"If blood makes you uneasy... then you should look away." Her lip curls in distaste.

"I was concerned for your wellbeing."

"My wellbeing does not answer to your 'concern'." Her lip curls in distaste.

Clean diagonal slit. Superficial. Self inflicted.

"What are you up to?"

"Nothing. I cut myself. Rock's sharper than it looks." She glances at the wound on her palm.

"You seem very into this shrine."

"Of course I am. Cut myself, even. Rock's sharper than it looks." She glances at the wound on her palm.

Say nothing. Wait.

"... y vuestra visión." She lowers her voice to inaudible registers before finally going silent.

"Yes?" Undisguised impatience as she turns to you.