"Face the consequences!" Katherine barked.

  "Get OFF!" Galateya bucked her hips, trying to throw the clingy cyborg off.

  Katherine's tail wrapped around Galateya's wrist, pinning it to the mud. Then the other wrist.

  "Eleven... Twelve..." Dax grunted in the background, his arms starting to shake.

  “What are you so giddy about?” Galateya grunted at Sage. “What'd you two whisper about?”

  “Super fun things!” Sage grinned. “Focus on yo match! I'll tell you after we catch Ash. Ke ke ke."

  Galateya focused back on Katherine, trying to understand the cyborg’s strange words. The metaphorical Justice shield formed in her mind, protecting her from assumptions, while the Truth sword cut through the surface to examine what lay beneath.

  “Let me go, damn it!” She growled, swinging with the Truth. The sword caught nothing bouncing off Astral echoes of magisteel plating.

  She needed to be more specific.

  "Nope!" Katherine's pixel-mouth huffed. “You are staying right here! In the mud! Where you belong, you savage!”

  “What makes me a savage?!” Galateya thrashed.

  “Take a guess.” The pixelated eyes came closer, glaring sternly.

  For some inexplicable reason, Galateya sensed… genuine anger.

  Hurt. Betrayal. And underneath it all, a desperate need for acknowledgment.

  This was… something deeply personal, not mere drunk wrestling.

  "Who are you?" Galateya demanded, trying to read deeper.

  "Do you have ears in your mud? Ermmm... Mud in ears! I'm Katherine!" The cyborg pressed down harder. "Knight of the Muddy Shore! Defender of my boat-liege!"

  The Truth sword in Galateya's mind sliced through the words, analyzing them.

  Truth: She was Katherine. Recently... Katherine. The name tasted new.

  A revelation: There was something else, something familiar beneath the surface.

  Dax's pushups were getting slower, sloppier, his mouth slurring on the count as he panted.

  “Is… he going to be okay?” Galateya asked, glancing at the human.

  "Peachy!" Sage replied. "Daxy's demonstrating the effects of prolonged me-exposure! S' very educational!"

  “That’s… cruel,” Galateya said. "He can't stop."

  “Yeah,” Katherine looked at Dax with a look of concern. “That’s kinda… mean. He's just a human.”

  “He’ll pass out in a bit,” Sage shrugged. “After a nap, his brain will restart and he won’t be as cooked. I can’t just tell him not to be attracted to me. That… doesn't work, trust me, I tried that already. Over-working-out is best solution to dull the allure.”

  "Can't you make artifacts to block your allure?" Galateya asked.

  "I wish," Sage lamented. "It's too OP. The artifacts I make are weaker than my allure. Got too many fox-souls twirling in mah hurricane. I'm like a god who cannot microwave a burrito that's too hot for me to eat."

  “Why'd you charm him to begin with?” Katherine demanded.

  “Wanted another friend.” Sage frowned. “Relaxed the Phase-Shift too much, sank into my human skin. It, uhm, happens naturally when I start chatting a human up. M' sorry. Not sure what I expected. Guess I got excited that Ash was able to push me away so easy, thought that his best friend would be similar... but I guess not.”

  Katherine sighed and pressed her digital face to Galateya's. “Go on, admit defeat, you blackguard."

  "No!" Galateya snarled.

  She reached out with her water affinity, calling to the lake. A tendril of liquid rose up and splashed across Katherine's back.

  "GAH!" The cyborg arched her mechanical spine. "Chilly wetness! Unfair use of water powers!"

  Galateya used the distraction to flip their positions, rolling Katherine onto her back in the mud. "HA! Now who has the advantage?!"

  "Sixty-one... sixty-two..." Dax collapsed face-first into the sand, panting, eyes closing. "Gah. Can't... do more…”

  "Advantage, me!" Katherine's legs wrapped around Galateya's waist, locking her in place. "Because I have MORE LIMBS!"

  “What? We have the same number of limbs!” Galateya stated.

  “Yes, but you kinda suck at using your tail,” Katherine commented. “Mine extends out. Like this.”

  The tail came back around, wrapping around Galateya's arm. Katherine used the leverage of the tail and her weight to pull Galateya's face down toward the mud.

  "No—wait—don't—Gah!" Galateya's protest was cut off as her snout hit the wet earth with a SMOOSH.

  Katherine held the dragon in the mud, pixel-eyes gleaming with satisfaction. "How's the mud taste? Good? Terrible? Emotionally devastating?"

  Galateya managed to summon a bigger lake-wave that washed over her and the cyborg. It did nothing to aid her, only making the mud more… muddy.

  "Nice try!" Katherine shifted her weight, pressing Galateya's face deeper into the mud while keeping her body pinned with the leg-lock. "But you'll have to do better than that!"

  Galateya's Justice sense was screaming at her now.

  She absolutely knew this person. But how? From where?!

  Sage smiled, undressing rapidly. "This looks fun. Mind if I join?"

  "What? No helping the criminal!” Katherine declared. “She must face justice!"

  Justice? Justice for what?! Galateya thought furiously, sputtering mud.

  "Criminal?" Sage's freckles rearranged into intrigued question marks. "Ooh, what'd she do?"

  “Terrible crimes!” Katherine insisted.

  "Like wat?"

  "She knows what she did!"

  Galateya's mind raced.

  The Truth sword cut deeper, examining the emotional signature.

  Recent trauma. Anger directed specifically at her.

  Galateya tried to buck Katherine off again, but the cyborg's bendier-limb advantage kept her pinned. With a snarl she summoned a massive wave from the lake, the water forming an arc that crashed down on both of them.

  The impact knocked Katherine sideways, breaking her hold.

  Both of them rolled apart in the slick mud.

  Sage launched her naked self at Katherine with a delighted yip. "NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES!"

  The Skinwalker crashed into the cyborg's side. They rolled together through the mud, ball of red fur and black metal, Sage laughing wildly.

  Galateya pushed herself up. She examined Katherine more carefully now, reading the emotional patterns, the behavioral tics, the way the cyborg moved, blinked, smiled, blushed.

  Familiar. So familiar. Transformed? Changed? Changed from whom? Someone from the Third fleet. Someone she knew far too well.

  Galateya summoned another wave and rode it toward the wrestling pair, crashing down on both of them with a splash.

  All three ended up in a pile of limbs.

  Katherine ended up on the bottom, bubbling into the mud. Sage was in the middle, giggling. Galateya landed on top, pinning down the cyborg.

  "Wew!" Sage wiped mud from her face, grinning at Galateya. "Best hunt-break ever! Friendship pile!" She hugged the dragon and cyborg, rubbing her wet, muddy fox-face against both.

  Galateya glanced at the distant boat. Ash had gotten far out onto the lake, dismounting on the far edge and vanishing in the forest.

  “F-friendship?” Katherine blinked, commenting from a speaker in her shoulder as her face was half buried in mud.

  “Yus,” Sage nodded. “Unless your mind is melting? Is your mind melting?”

  “I have camera eyes,” Katherine replied. “So no. Your visual allure does nothing to me. Hrm. Perhaps Maksym should invest in robot eyes to avoid... future incidents.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Yass! You’re now part of the skulk, allure-immune chrome cutie. My new BFF!” Sage fiercely hugged the cyborg.

  Katherine wiped her head and a digital mouth stretched in a wide, brilliant grin. “Second best friend! Maksym! Ahhhh! I made a second friend!”

  Dax didn't respond, visibly completely out of it.

  “What about Teya?” Sage asked.

  “Teya and I are frenemies till further notice!” Katherine stated.

  "Why?" Galateya blinked, staring down at the cyborg pinned beneath her. "What did I do to you?"

  "Nothing!" Katherine said quickly. Too quickly. Her pixel eyes flickered.

  Galateya's Truth sword sliced through the response. Lie. Complete and utter fabrication.

  "You are upset about something specific," Galateya stated flatly, pressing her advantage. "Something I did. Recently."

  "Nope!" Katherine's metal tail thrashed in the mud. "I'm just... defending my liege's honor! Standard Knight behavior! Very normal! Nothing personal!"

  Lie.

  "You keep saying 'crimes' and 'consequences,'" Galateya continued, her Justice sense burning like a flare. "What crimes? Be specific."

  "Umm..." Katherine's pixel-mouth wobbled like a wave. "...Tax evasion?"

  "I don't pay taxes," Galateya said. "My great-grandmother owns me and tells me to do stuff and gives me a budget to work with. Try again."

  Sage chortled. "Kattio, you're such a bad liar! Mega-transparent as fuck!"

  "I'm not transparent!" Katherine protested. "I'm opaque! Very solid! Made of crystalloid substrate and—"

  "Not physically transparent, you dork," Sage giggled, poking Katherine's chest. "Emotionally transparent! You wear your feelings on your sleeve! On your shoulder and chest screens!"

  Galateya focused on Katherine. The cyborg was visibly avoiding eye contact, the three pixel eyes darting around like she was looking for an escape route.

  "You said I'm a 'savage,'" Galateya pressed. "Why specifically that word?"

  Katherine's entire body tensed. "I... uh... read it in a book?"

  Lie.

  "You said I should 'take a guess' about what makes me a savage," Galateya continued relentlessly. "That implies you think I should know. That we have shared history."

  "We don't have shared anything!" Katherine squirmed beneath them. "We just met! I'm a stranger! A mysterious stranger! Very mysterious! Full of mystery!"

  "You're about as mysterious as a cardboard box," Sage commented cheerfully. "A very drunk cardboard box."

  "I'm NOT drunk!" Katherine insisted. "I'm... Mildly impaired! On purpose of... relaxation!"

  Galateya's scales shifted to interrogator-gray. The emotional signature was too familiar. The hurt too specific. The anger too directed.

  Whom has she hurt recently?

  She pointed the sword of Truth at herself, plunging it deep into her own heart.

  The freezing incident.

  The café.

  Keiy.

  "Oh," Galateya breathed. "Oh no."

  Katherine's pixel eyes went wide. "What? What 'oh no'? No 'oh no'! There's no 'oh no' here!"

  "You're—" Galateya started.

  "NOPE!" Katherine's hand shot up and shoved a massive handful of wet mud directly into Galateya's open mouth. "No talking! Mud time! Everyone gets mud pies!"

  Sage broke down into bubbling laughter.

  "Mmmpphh!" Galateya sputtered. The mud in her mouth dissolved rapidly due to her Taniwha saliva. It tasted of... dirt, lake water, and… regret.

  "Just a fun mud fight!" Katherine stated, sounding slightly panicked. "Between strangers! Who don't know each other! At all!"

  Lies. So many lies.

  Galateya glared. "You... you..."

  Katherine shoved more mud at her face. "Mud! So much mud! The mud never ends!"

  Sage was laughing so hard she'd rolled onto her back, legs kicking in the air. "Oh my god, the desperation! Katty, you're making it SO OBVIOUS!"

  "Making what obvious?!" Katherine demanded, trying to keep Galateya's mouth full of mud. "Nothing's obvious! Everything's perfectly normal!"

  Galateya used the opening to grab Katherine's wrists, pinning them in the mud. "Cease deflecting."

  "I'm not deflecting!" Katherine tried to pull free. "I'm... artfully avoiding!"

  "Same thing!"

  "Is not!"

  "Is too!"

  "You two are like children," Sage observed, propping herself up on one elbow. "Cute, muddy... sisters having a slap-fight."

  Galateya ignored the fox, focusing entirely on Katherine. She summoned the Truth sword again, slicing through the cyborg's protests. "You're not... hiding the truth from me! What are you so desperate to hide from Dax?"

  Katherine's pixel eyes flickered to brilliant pink, then back to red as the question struck her. "I'm not—"

  She glanced at Daxagon's body.

  "Yes you are!" Galateya growled, the words becoming extra-dimensional, infused with her Justice affinity. "Admit it!"

  Katherine flinched.

  "Fine! I don't want M-Maksym to know who I am," Katherine admitted in a rush, covering her face. "Because then he'll think I'm weird and pathetic and he won't want to be in… in a relationship anymore!"

  “Why?” Sage asked.

  "Because!" Katherine's voice wobbled. "Because I'm not actually a cool mysterious cyborg knight! I'm a fucking—" She cut herself off, clamping her digital mouth shut with a pixelated X.

  Galateya leaned closer. "You're my..."

  Katherine shook her head violently, sending wet mud flying. "Nope! Not saying! You can't make me!"

  "I can," Galateya stated calmly. "Because you want to say it. You want someone to understand. You're just scared."

  "Am not scared!" Katherine protested weakly.

  "Are too."

  Sage wiggled in the mud, tail swaying. "Okay, now I'm invested. Kat, babe, what's the big secret? We're all cryptids and weirdos here. Except Dax, I suppose. He be into dating alien cyborg girls, das' honorary weird."

  Galateya kept the Truth-sword aimed at Katherine. The cyborg was trembling slightly now.

  "You're angry at me," Galateya let out softly. "For hurting you. For freezing you without warning. For treating you like a tool instead of a person."

  Katherine's pixel eyes went wide.

  "Yes. I hurt you," Galateya admitted. "Recently. I hurt someone I should have respected more. Someone who was bound into total obedience."

  The clearing went quiet except for the gentle lapping of lake water against the shore.

  Sage's ears rotated forward. "Oh shit! Are you actually her gu—"

  "DON'T!" Katherine yelped, slapping another handful of mud toward Sage's face. The Skinwalker dodged easily, snapping her vulpine maw shut as the message was clear.

  Katherine glanced at the passed out human again, looking panicked.

  "Ke… Katherine," Galateya said gently. "He's going to figure it out eventually. He's not stupid."

  “No!” Katherine's entire frame twitched. "I'm... I'm recovering from injuries! Totally true! Not suspicious!"

  "Oh? What KIND of injuries?" Sage pressed, freckles rearranging into detective magnifying glasses. "What kind of damage would require a complete body replacement but leave the consciousness intact enough to transfer? What kind of damage the all-fixing incarnator can't fix? He might ask such things, ya kno'.”

  "Lots of kinds!" Katherine said quickly. "Many kinds! All the kinds!"

  Galateya felt a pang of guilt. She remembered the ice spreading through Keiy's chassis. The way the gun unit had screamed about the cold, about her systems failing, about—

  "Conceptual freezing," Galateya whispered, frowning. "You can't fix that... once a concept is nullified it's basically gone, gets divided by zero."

  Katherine's pixel-mouth wobbled into a frown too.

  "You froze her… conceptually?" Sage breathed. "Holy fuck, T. That's... that's legit advanced magic. Like, way beyond what a fresh-from-time-bubble dragon should be able to do. I'm impresso!"

  "I didn't mean to," Galateya said, releasing Katherine's wrists. "I was really upset. Overwhelmed. I just... let it out. I didn't even know I was doing it until..."

  "Until a third of my neural architecture got fucked sideways!" Katherine burst out, then immediately slapped her hand over her X-shaped mouth. "I mean, uhh, a third of some other person's neural architecture! That I heard about! From someone else!"

  “You're just digging yourself deeper in, bruh,” Sage said.

  Katherine made a sound like a tea kettle losing pressure. "I'm not digging or confirming anything! You're all... making wild assumptions!"

  "They're not assumptions if they're true," Galateya said quietly. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't realize I'd hurt you that badly."

  "You DIDN'T hurt me!" Katherine insisted, trying to maintain the fiction. "Because I'm not whoever you think I am! I'm just Katherine! Knight of the Muddy Shore! Defender of—of—"

  "Of your own dignity?" Sage supplied helpfully.

  "YES! Wait—NO!" Katherine flopped back in the mud, defeated. "Ugh. This is the worst. I can't even maintain a simple cover story. I'm terrible at this."

  "To be fair," Sage said, "you smell, like, super drunk. And Teya's getting goodly at Truth-pulling."

  "Wah!" Katherine wailed. "Maksymilian said it would help with my feelings processing! He LIED! You liar!" She yelled at the unmoving human.

  Sage grinned ear to ear, muddy, red tail swishing. "Yummy drama. T, you gotta make this right with your gun-bae."

  "I know," Galateya said. "I know I messed up. I was angry and hurt and I took it out on someone who didn't deserve it."

  Katherine's pixel eyes flickered into three X’s and then flattened into Ts dripping pixel-tears. "I... I was nice to you. I didn't do anything wrong."

  "I know," Galateya repeated. "You didn't. I did."

  "You made me feel like I was disposable," Katherine continued, the words spilling out rapidly as the feels-dam had broken. "Like I was just a tool. Like my feelings didn't matter because I wasn't... wasn't supposed to HAVE feelings!"

  Galateya's scales and mane shifted to ashamed-black-gray. "I made you feel exactly how my great-grandmother makes me feel."

  Sage let out a low whistle. "'Das some heavy emotionalage."

  Galateya looked down at Katherine. The cyborg was staring up at her, waiting.

  "I was wrong," Galateya said simply. "You're not a tool. You're a person. And I hurt you really bad. And I'm sorry."

  Katherine's digital mouth trembled. "You... you really mean that?"

  "Yes."

  "You're not just saying it because Sage is watching?"

  "No."

  Galateya reached out and hugged the cyborg gun unit, crying and petting her. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll do whatever it takes to make it up to you. You're my friend… my first friend, my companion… my… bou...” she sniffed. “Shit. I don't feel our blood bond. It's gone... how could it be completely gone?!”

  “You probably conceptually froze it too, you big, scaly dummy,” Katherine hugged her ex-owner.

  “Yeah,” Galateya snuffed. “I… I guess I did. No wonder it took me so long to recognize you.”

  For a few seconds Katherine's pixel eyes studied Galateya's face. Then, slowly, she smiled. "Okay. I... I forgive you. On one condition."

  "Name it," Galateya said.

  "The fox took down our judge, so... You have to let me win the mud wrestling match."

  Galateya blinked. "What?"

  "I need a win!" Katherine insisted. "I need to feel powerful! And victorious! And get an excuse to smoosh you."

  "Perfect condition!” Sage bobbed. “T-bun, let her win!"

  Galateya looked at the cyborg beneath her, then at Sage, then at the distant North-West pine-covered shore where Ash had vanished.

  "Fine," she sighed. "You won the match. Happy?”

  "WOO! VICTORY!" Katherine walloped. "I AM THE CHAMPION! BOW BEFORE MY MUD-WRESTLING SUPREMACY!"

  "You're... very drunk, Kat," Galateya observed with a deep sigh, mentally struggling to reconcile the idea of a drunk gun symbiote.

  The guns were usually the ones caring for their drunk prad partners. A completely free gun unit who could drink alcohol and eat and... go out on dates with humans seemed wildly, shockingly outside the norm. Incredibly illegal too.

  And Galateya. Galateya only had herself to blame for it.

  She was the one who lost control of her power, perma-broke Keiy. If anyone in the fleet found out that she could free, break gun units, she wouldn't just be sent to a doomed world, she'd get court marshalled and spliced into the Admiral's wall for a decade or a century!

  She didn't just fuck Keiy here, she fucked herself into a most terrible fate, because she sucked at lying!

  “Yes, I am drunk-as-fuck!" Katherine burped out a pixel-bubble, then smooshed Galateya with a tight hug, not noticing the panicked thoughts boiling in the soul of her ex-master. "Mmm. Warm dragon. My best… friend."