Hellfriede Ripley

THE HELLFRIEDE FILES [1]

Before Liberation: Interrupted Execution

TW: Mention of child soldiers

{Observation of SSC private soldier.

Name: Hellfriede Ripley. Callsign: SKYLINE.

Video File Transcribed By: ???}

The execution parades in the capital were always led by Metalmarks. The Assembly had been in bed with Smith-Shimano Corpro for a long time, and the light, easy steps of the mechs along the streets were coldly melodic. What do beauty and craftsmanship care for blood if the shedding can’t be remembered as artistic? Hellfriede stood with the other Cavaliers. They were always required to be present for the killings. Maybe it was to remind them that their uniforms were keeping them far away from the firing squad.

The people sentenced to death—the condemned—had been branded with thick, black words on their arms stating their sins. When they reached their final positions, they’d be bound to posts with their branded arms on full display for appropriate mockery. Beside Hellfriede, two Cavaliers muttered to each other about the remnants of a revolutionary cell. They sounded bored. In the heavens above, someone wept, but their tears fell to the city as nothing but a drizzle. Hellfriede closed her eyes when she felt the first drops. Two Death’s Heads mounted on opposite high rises in the central square, two Metalmarks leading the procession and two in the back, two White Witches waiting by the execution posts, invisible Dusk Wings stalking the grounds. Deaths like this had to be orderly, at least, if they couldn’t be beautiful.

A woman with the word “insurgent” on her arm was wearing red; the torn cloth draped over her was probably a cloak once. She was led by the same wrist shackles as those around her. Her clothes slumped off her body at awkward angles; she was slight and probably not older than eighteen. The person behind her hadn’t stopped staring at the back of her head. It might have been despair. It might have been hatred. The woman stopped walking. “She’ll die to the second Death’s Head,” Hellfriede said it only to herself. It was a reminder to stay still when the woman in red slipped her shackles and turned on her heel.

Previously dull voices rose in pitch. Footsteps fell out of time. Two Dusk Wings appeared and fired their Burst Launchers in sync, but the woman hit the ground fast enough for the explosive shots to collide in the air. The resulting fiery burst knocked an entire line of condemned off their feet. The woman disappeared under the wave of struggling bodies and rattling chains. The two Metalmarks in the back turned invisible. That didn’t matter because the woman emerged from the throng of bodies and shackles from a spot the pilots hadn’t thought to cover. A Shock Knife severed an entire inch from her hair, but she just kept running. Hellfriede watched like someone being forced to take an eye injection. Two Railgun shots went off. The first Death’s Head missed. The second one spread shards of the woman’s skull across the street. It was quiet again after that.

No one knew what to do with the headless corpse in the street, so it was ignored until after the executions. Hellfriede stared at the dead woman’s red rags as though she wanted to wear them herself when no one was looking. She didn’t. The Cavaliers met with the Assembly that day. They were still young—all around 13—and still training to be useful. It was their first true interaction with their planet’s leaders. The head of the Assembly was a woman with a name that sounded like her parents knew she was going to watch many people die. Hathor Grimm. It was a funny name that didn’t make anyone laugh. Ms. Grimm shook Hellfriede’s hand and Hellfriede stared down at their fingers. They both went to bed early that night. For Hellfriede, it was after vomiting and brushing her teeth.

Before Liberation: Perfect Average

TW: Murder of an intimate partner

“You know, you’re not the prettiest woman here.” Reign says. She’s a 5’3 bombshell blonde and she’s very aware of that fact. Hellfriede should be just as aware since she’s been splayed out on her bed the past half hour. She has to see it: the way Reign pouts to push out her plush mouth every so often and glances up at Hellfriede with her perfectly baby brown eyes. Hellfriede didn’t crack the top ten on their last exam, but she’s far from dumb. There’s no such thing as a stupid Cavalier.

“Ouch.” Hellfriede glances over her dataslate, eyeing the blonde bundle on the silver platter that is her own leg. Her hand darts forward to pinch Reign’s arm.

Reign doesn’t scream because she is a mature adult who can regulate her frustration. Instead, she swats at the hand that pinched her. “Let me finish!” Oh, how she would love to- “You’re not the prettiest, BUT, I think you could take a bunch of people here to bed if you tried. Maybe most people.”

Hellfriede looks back at her dataslate. Then, something divine and without indifference wills itself into existence just to look down on Reign and wink, because Hellfriede sets the slate aside. “I don’t think most people would pick me out at a bar.”

“Yeah, but you’re, like, the perfect average.” Reign draws a gesture up Hellfriede’s thigh and appreciates the muscle there. They’re all soldiers, but Hellfriede wears it especially well right now. “Not so far out of the everyman’s league and not so far below it. If you made the first move, someone without another person in mind would totally go for you.”

RA kills the other divine—Hellfriede takes a mech engineering book out from under her pillow. “Most people wouldn’t like being called average by the woman who’s trying to sleep with them.”

The divine lives and they only ever looked down at Reign to laugh at her. “… You fucking knew? This entire time?”

“I’m not stupid and you’re not clever,” Hellfriede deadpans.

Reign takes a moment to seriously consider screaming. She lunges to push Hellfriede down. Desperation must be making Reign sluggish because she knows she’s quicker than Hellfriede, but the other woman is out of her grasp and behind her far too fast. Hellfriede pins Reign’s dominant arm behind her back and shoves her down face-first. “Please do something. Do literally anything or just put me out of my misery.” Her voice is muffled by chamomile-scented pillows.

Hellfriede leans down and says, “Ask nicely.” Her voice is a rough whisper.

Reign dies multiple times that night. Then, she wakes up alive and gargling her own blood. She’s too weak to scream now. Her gaze swims through the room, trying to find Hellfriede. The noises spilling from her throat aren’t quiet. Hellfriede is standing by the edge of the bed. She checks her dataslate, pockets it, and heads for the door.

Tears bubble up in Reign’s eyes. The attempt at crying makes her choke harder. Hellfriede’s back is the last thing she sees. As she dies, she takes the smell of chamomile with her into whatever waits after life.

Not the prettiest, but she’ll do in a pinch.

Relevant Information

Hellfriede Ripley, Liberator of Varuvi.

Hellfriede Ripley was born on the Diasporan planet Varuvi in the confines of what is now known as the Old Capital. Her birth was part of Smith-Shimano Corpro’s secret Cavalier Program to develop ideal soldiers for private armies and classified missions. Hellfriede was immediately taken from her birth parents to be raised by a group of handlers who regularly assessed their aptitude in various areas: coordination, intelligence, obedience, etc. While in this phase of the program (which lasted for 11 years), Hellfriede befriended a girl named Dorothea. The two of them initially bonded over a mutual appreciation for quiet moments; they could often be found sitting quietly together and completing their assignments in tandem. The assessments showed that Hellfriede had great potential. As a result, she proceeded to the second phase of the Cavalier Program. Dorothea didn’t make it to the second phase. On the day of the program’s graduation ceremony, Hellfriede asked everyone where Dorothea was. No one could give her a satisfactory answer; they all just waited for her to stop asking.  

At age 11, Hellfriede started training to be a Lancer. By age 13, she had acquired her first two license levels in the SSC Monarch and had an integrated flight system in her mech. Hellfriede proved to be a terror in the sky during drills and was quickly developing a combat style adept at dispatching multiple opponents without help. Phase two of the Cavalier Program was far more openly brutal than the first. Multiple other Cavaliers were “pulled out of the program”. When this happened, a handler would list out their failures before a Dusk Wing appeared to drag them away. There was still never an explanation for what happened to them, but the threat hanging over Hellfriede’s head had become obvious. As the first series of missions for the Cavaliers approached, they were allowed a personal meeting with the Varuvian Assembly: their planet’s leaders. This meeting took place after an execution parade wherein “wannabe revolutionaries” were killed. When the head of the Assembly shook Hellfriede’s hand with all the care of someone who would sleep easily that night, Hellfriede started planning. She was going to need to climb the ranks and stay in the Assembly’s good graces.

At 14, Hellfriede went on her first mission: it was supposed to be simple reconnaissance on another planet in the same star system, but she and her allies were quickly met with resistance. Their opponents were also using mechs, though theirs looked far more scrapped together. Hellfriede took out the frontline with a series of hit and run skirmishes while others focused on the backline. The mission was a resounding success, but something didn’t feel right. With a year of subtle investigation and occasionally sucking up to those above her, Hellfriede learned that the people she had helped kill that day were the remnants of an older SSC experiment similar to the Cavalier Program. Apparently, SSC had “cut them loose” as a trial for their new Cavaliers. Hellfriede kept her head down.

By the age of 16, Hellfriede had acquired multiple more license levels. She wasn’t the best in the program, but was also far from the worst: a solidly middling soldier by program standards. Hellfriede intentionally scaled back her efficiency in combat, allowing others to have the spotlight and earn more praise. She befriended other Cavaliers and found that a good amount of them had bought into the Assembly’s rhetoric. It would have been immensely risky to try changing their minds. Hellfriede waited. She gave her formerly nameless Monarch the moniker Hell’s Sister.

When she turned 17, Hellfriede celebrated her birthday by finally requesting a TLALOC-Class NHP which she promptly shackled to her mech. Hellfriede’s limited experience with NHPs made her uncomfortable with using a sentient being in such a manner, but she needed a TLALOC for her plans to work. She acquired a Player_Two Neural Bypass to let the TLALOC have access to her body when she deemed it necessary. For two years, Hellfriede and her TLALOC discussed every possible way of killing the entire Varuvian Assembly and the other Cavaliers.

Hellfriede’s 19th birthday would go on to become Varuvi’s Liberation Day. She woke up early in the Cavalier training facility and quietly murdered every other Cavalier she could find along with their handlers. Alarms were eventually raised, but it was too late. Hellfriede had already mounted Hell’s Sister by then and launched her assault against the Assembly. The fighting lasted for 10 hours. It was 10 hours of seemingly endless skirmishing from Hellfriede and TLALOC. They picked off the Assembly’s ground soldiers and mechs with a ruthless efficiency that would come to be known as the Hellfire Style of combat. The two of them were utterly relentless, even for the final 6 hours when TLALOC was cascading. The revolution ended with one of the single most lethal uses of the Monarch’s core system—Divine Punishment—in recorded history. As the Assembly’s forces lay decimated, Hell’s Sister plummeted from the sky and crashed to the ground as a mangled scrap heap. Hellfriede had died, but miraculously, the TLALOC’s casket was able to be recovered.  

In the aftermath of Hellfriede’s revolution, SSC distanced themselves from Varuvi, unwilling to take direct control of the planet to avoid drawing Union’s full attention to their operations. The Liberation Council was formed to govern the planet with laws that abolished SSC’s genetic caste system and allowed for more personal freedoms like open critique of the government. Union’s attention was eventually drawn to Varuvi for one reason or another and plans were made to convert it into a Core World. The current planet capital of New Varuvi stands on the bones of the Old Capital and there’s a park dedicated to Hellfriede along with a statue of her in the city’s heart.

Hellfriede’s TLALOC copilot went on to become a legionnaire and take the name Torin. He joined a sect of Horizon Collective in the effort to fight for NHP rights. Torin also took the remains of Hell’s Sister and created a downsized, scrappier version of the original mech. According to him, Hellfriede had never really liked how “put together” the Monarch’s design was.

HER LAST MESSAGE

Before Liberation: Final Forethoughts

{Subject: Hellfriede Ripley, Callsign: SKYLINE.

Video Recorded By: Torin, TLALOC-Class NHP.}

“… I thought about trying to start this with something that could inspire the people who hear it, but I wasn’t built to be a leader. I’m not going to lead anyone. I’m just going to talk instead.

The reason why I’m doing this is entirely selfish. It’s not because I want to live a life outside what was chosen for me by SSC. No, ultimately, I’m just doing more of the same. It’s because I’m so, so tired. I’m tired of listening to the other Cavaliers gossip about the brands during the execution parades. I’m tired of standing between them and predicting which condemned man is going to run and lose their head for it. I’m tired of not feeling sick because of it anymore. I’m tired of this numbness that I’ve had to perform for so long because it’s not a performance anymore.

I’m going to kill a lot of people. And I don’t know if I want to be praised for a lot of it. I’m just tired at the end of the day. That’s all there is. I need to do something before that goes away, too.”

Hellfriede makes direct eye contact with the camera for most of the recording. There is bone deep weariness to her face as she speaks. She’s only 19. As soon as she’s done talking, the youthful exhaustion disappears, and her expression numbs into that of a murderer.

Hellfriede originally died 10 years before the events of In The Shadows of a Willow. In 5026U, she was cloned by Torin and a mysterious benefactor. She lives.

THE HELLFRIEDE FILES [2]

Beyond Liberation: Irreverent Revelation

TW: Mentions of slavery, violent revolution

{Observation of Union Liberation Front leader.

Name: Hellfriede Ripley. Callsign: SKYLINE.

Video File Transcribed By: ???}

Silas Vega dies the kind of death worthy of a man who spent his final hours having his foremost slave do a solo performance of the third play written in his honor. Four missiles decimate the silver platinum door to his sanctum (a man cave of a bunker underneath his estate). He has enough time for indignance to make the veins in his neck flush royal purple. He draws breath to scream for his dead guards to cast aside the audacity of the Monarch mech presenting itself without due reverence. Hellfriede Ripley gets out of her mech, cocks her gun, and shoots him twice before the would-be shriek can be anything more than a suggestion to his vocal chords. She shoots him the way you shoot a man who should have been merciful enough to ask for death a long time ago—without a smile. The former slave makes a break for it.

“Why did you bother getting out?” Torin, the acting NHP of Hellfriede’s mech, asks when she gets back into the cockpit.

“I think he needed to see that just one person could be his killer.” Hellfriede ignores the incoming call from her Union superior. “Maybe that’ll matter to him in another life.”

“Hah. Do you remember anything from the afterlife?” Torin asks. It’s a joke. It sounds like a stab at himself.

Hellfriede turns her Monarch away from the crownless corpse. “There was a lot less work to do.”

Seth Knox, the Union member who pretends he doesn’t give actionable information to a violent revolutionary, has to at least pretend that Hellfriede went further than a violent revolutionary should. “You were supposed to investigate the planet and see if it was possible to arrange an audience with Vega.” This is what Hellfriede gets for finally accepting one of his calls.

“He met the Liberation Front’s arrival with a slave display and had his officials threaten to execute us if we wouldn’t prove our willingness to abide by his laws. By choosing a slave to own for the duration of our visit. He wanted us to own a slave.” Hellfriede’s voice never rises—it stays low and flat. She sits in the nondescript office in New Varuvi City that Union has her unofficially working out of. The only hint of personality in her office is a small replica of Simon Dominguez’s mech, Free Me From Hell, that sits on her desk.

“You’ve been briefed in de-escalation. He just needed to feel like his power wasn’t being threatened.” Seth’s tone indicates that he, or someone else, has already decided that she needs more de-escalation training.

“Us being on the planet at all was a threat to him. He was going to find a reason to kill us regardless of anything.” Hellfriede’s dataslate earns more of her attention than Seth does by presenting information that doesn’t sound like bureaucratic recitation. While Seth tells her about the one-on-one negotiation classes she’ll be taking next week, she looks at potential systems for a Black Mountain mech.

The Black Mountain is a mech suit that focuses on boosting the defenses of allied mechs. It only has one weapon mount. It’s inherently slower than her Monarch. It’s an alternate version of the Emperor mech, which is all the pomp and pleasure of SSC given physical form. The Black Mountain should only draw one thing out of Hellfriede: a disdainful form of apathy.

“How long are the classes going to be?” Hellfriede asks. The obvious weapon to give the Black Mountain is the Emperor’s bolt bow. Hellfriede is not going to use the Emperor’s bow.

“Only about an hour.” Seth says something about how Hellfriede should use the hour to its fullest. The will to waste time was being bred out of her before she even existed. “… Off the record, I think you did good work.” He hangs up quickly, as though his own superiors are waiting for the chance to trap him with the bureaucracy he just espoused.

Since the Black Mountain is so small, it’s less trouble to get it printed. There’s a decent enough printer in the basement of Hellfriede’s office building, so she heads downstairs and lets the printer confirm the licensing data in her biosignature.

Hellfriede doesn’t hear the voices of the dead. The only version of mourning she has ever known was the prestigious efficiency of SSC’s Mourning Cloak mech when other Cavaliers piloted it. Even after being revived, her one week of readjustment downtime spared no thought for her kill count.

What Hellfriede hears instead, as the body of the Black Mountain prints, is a voice that reflects her own.

“A soldier offers indifference

when they do not offer mercy.

That kills much more than wrath.”

A mechanized bow that Hellfriede didn’t print is leaning against the finished mech. It’s black with cracks of silver coursing through it. After Hellfriede reaches for the bow, because it must be hers even if she didn’t ask for it, she picks it up like it weighs nothing. Silver cracks reflect in her pupils. The bow is indifferent. It is not the Emperor’s.

She names the mech Irreverence. It only sees use in the least official capacities.

Beyond Liberation: Absolution of Inhumanity

{Observation of Union Liberation Front leader.

Name: Hellfriede Ripley. Callsign: SKYLINE.

Video File Transcribed By: ???}

The illusion of civility dies where the illusion of humanity ends. The leader of Varuvi’s ruling Liberation Council, Aera Synth, has been out of her seat for the past several seconds; she stood to snap when Torin corrected her usage of the term “simulated understanding” in regards to how NHPs process the outside world. She doesn’t acknowledge Hellfriede because she looks like an average bureaucrat and not like the Liberation Day Champion. It’s been ten years since the revolution. Hellfriede has never stopped working.

“… In summary, while it should be understood and acknowledged that Non-Human Persons are far more advanced than artificial intelligences,” Ms. Synth keeps sweeping her gaze around the room and ending with her eyes on Torin, “they do not have humanity. We cannot afford to treat them as humans to the detriment of people like the Varuvians desperate to be brought out of the shadow of our past oppression.”

Torin’s expression stays lax. “Varuvi is eager to be fully assimilated into Union, yes? Then let’s discuss the Utopian Pillars.” He doesn’t stand, but he does hold up one finger. “One. All shall have their material needs fulfilled.”

Ms. Synth stiffens. “NHPs don’t have material needs-”

Torin interrupts her right back. “We do, actually. By definition of being material—by definition of having a casket which serves as a physical body—we do have material needs. A casket needs to be cared for lest it break. A body needs a home to shield it from deterioration and harm. A body needs to take up space. But thinking beyond just the words of that pillar, is that really all Union seeks to provide? To my knowledge, Union has also sought to give those it governs above proper mental care.”

“Union recommends the regular cycling of all NHPs,” Greg Delta chimes in with a statement that might be able to see the point from several star systems away.

“… Yes.” Torin doesn’t flinch. “If cycling was the only thing needed from an NHP to maintain an acceptable mental state, then it would be recommended that every NHP be cycled every single day.” To his credit, he doesn’t say ‘cycling’ with the gravity that discussing forced ego death probably deserves. “Back to the topic at hand: the pillars. Two. No walls shall stand between worlds.”

“I fail to see how that’s relevant to this discussion.” Ms. Synth says.

“Perhaps not the pillar itself, but the interpretation and execution of it.” It’s now that Torin stands. Hellfriede adjusts the collar projecting her disguise. “Union wants all to have the right to firm ground, clean air, and sunlight—thus, the decree that there should be no walls that encroach on that objective. The interpretation of this pillar has been proven to extend beyond what’s plainly written. We can use Varuvi as an example.” Torin begins to walk the room. “After the revolution, Varuvi had access to all three of those things, but Union went out of its way to establish connected transport to and from the planet anyway. Why?”

“Obviously because a civilization needs to be connected to the rest of the universe to thrive in this era,” Another woman, Helka Mavenport, responds with a barely restrained eye roll. She called Torin an AI earlier and has been fortunate enough to live to see the rest of this meeting.

“Yes and because interconnectedness can be interpreted as a necessity beyond delivering basic essentials. Varuvi could be fine on its own, but there is evidence that it thrives under the second pillar. Three.” Torin hasn’t looked at Ms. Synth yet. “No human shall be held in bondage through force, labor, or debt.”

“It specifies no human.” Ms. Synth hand grips the edge of the table.

“But we’ve already established that furthering an interpretation for the greater good is well established within Union. Let me end this discussion on the three pillars with one simple question: if it really is only supposed to extend to humans, then what makes the Third Committee of Union all that different from the Second Committee?” Torin sits back down.

There’s a beat of quiet. No one wants to be comparable to the Second Committee. The quiet still only lasts for a beat.

“He’s ultimately suggesting that we stop the widespread usage of NHPs on Varuvi. In every system.” At this point, Aera Synth stops bothering to look at Torin. Instead, her eyes lock onto the greying man at the head of the table: Ergo Chen, a high-ranking Union official. “That’s not possible. Not without taking several steps back.”

“I am suggesting that we consider the spirit of the pillars,” Torin says coolly.

Mr. Chen looks at Aera’s pleading eyes. “It does sound ineffective, doesn’t it?”

Hellfriede sees Torin’s jaw twitch. She clears her throat. “I’m sure the Second Committee would have considered it very ineffective to not use Total Biome Kill weapons in their assault on Hercynia.”

The silence returns. It’s heavier this time.

“We should take a break,” Hellfriede says, already standing. No one disagrees, though most of them don’t know why her voice carries so much weight. She and Torin find an empty corner outside the meeting room.

“Ineffective. Hah.” Torin laughs. His foot is tapping and his eyes are flicking back and forth; his thoughts are running faster than the concept of thought. “What’s ineffective is that this meeting has lasted for three hours.”

“We can fly around for a while after this.” Hellfriede knows he craves motion.

“That sounds… God, I need to get out of this body.” Torin takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. Hellfriede hasn’t asked him why he bothers with glasses even though his eyesight is more than perfect. “I shouldn’t have brought up the three pillars. It’s too cliche.”

“You’re right, though.” Hellfriede nudges his shoulder with her own. “It’s hypocritical to champion freedom for all humans while intentionally creating an enslaved underclass.”

“It sounds so obvious when you say it like that,” Torin sighs. “If only I could say it. They already barely see me. If I talked like that they’d just see an indignant Tlaloc-Class. Or worse.”

“… Has anyone seen you since I died?” Hellfriede asks.

He laughs again. It’s been ten years since the revolution. Torin will never stop working.

Beyond Liberation: The Myth of Delirium

TW: References to predatory behavior, blood drinking

{Observation of Union Liberation Front leader.

Name: Hellfriede Ripley. Callsign: SKYLINE.

Video File Transcribed By: ???}

“Blue Moonlight makes blood and sweat look like liquid sugar.” That’s what the woman, Diva Demure, says after Hellfriede stabs a dose of Rebreathe into her neck and her heart decides that breathing is a worthwhile activity. “That’s why so many of the girls at Vixie’s take it. The sweat pouring off you, the blood in the showers from Vixie’s temper—Blue makes it all smell sweeter, you know?” Her voice is a shudder, like being alive is making her veins shake.

No one in the Cavalier Program was ever allowed near stims lest they alter their carefully curated brain chemistry. They all flocked to SSC’s list of extracurriculars and simple sex to distract themselves from executions and dive bombing people they’d never know anything about. Hellfriede did a few things to fill the void of nonexistent addiction: mostly, she read about mech flight techniques.

Now, after sundown in an alleyway that reeks of old death, Hellfriede wipes the cold sweat from Diva’s forehead with one hand and starts reprogramming the disguise projection on her prosocollar with the other. “I’m taking you to the Union ship I arrived on. You’ll stay in the ship on Rivnuan’s dock for two days, then be escorted to a rehabilitation center on the moon.”

Diva stares at her, red lined lips dropping into a half-frown before she remembers herself. Instead, she tries for a grateful smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Thanks, hon, but Vixie will kill me before I get anywhere good if I miss out on tonight.”

“You don’t have to miss anything.” Hellfriede sends a neural command to her collar and the illusion shifts. Diva goes back to staring. “There’s another stim deal going through tonight, right? And Vixie’s going to try to kill off their only competitor?”

“Yeah…” Diva reaches forward, nearly touching Hellfriede’s new face. “Do I really look that… small?”

“No.” Hellfriede looks at the ivory pallor to Diva’s skin—an apparent side effect of Blue Moonlight use. “You just look sick.”

Within an hour, Hellfriede walks the streets of Midnight City with Diva’s dead end show girl strut and a semi-permanent pout. It’s easy to stay loose as she reaches Vixie’s blue velvet doors and seductive sign. SSC never wanted their soldiers to be too stiff. She’s inside just in time to see a man collide with the reinforced window next to the entrance. He leaves a streak of blood on the glass as he slides to the floor.

“Take your busted head and get out of here, Kian.” The man standing on the stage in the center of the club, built like a Barbarossa with blatant cybernetic arms, is too obvious about his power to be Vixie. Diva warned her about Atlas and how much he “enjoys” blondes. Hellfriede doesn’t flinch when Kian shoves past her. She bites her lip when Atlas eyes her up, tilting her head down and avoiding eye contact. “Where’ve you been, DD?”

“Visiting my sister,” Hellfriede answers. Diva’s tone is sweet and shivering in her mouth.

Atlas’ eyes stay trained on her body. “Vix has a job for you. Wants you to head to the Delirium and get the bitch over here for the show tonight. Their words, not mine.”

The bitch is obviously Vixie’s rival, the owner. “Me?” Hellfriede squeaks. Torin would be shocked by the sound.

“Don’t piss yourself.” Atlas waves off her apparent fear with a smirk. “She thinks Vix is happy to have her around, so it won’t take much. Just don’t act too high and you’ll be fine. You can do that, right, junkie?”

She nods and repeats his words. “I can do that.” That earns her a half-smile that’s all chrome teeth. “Can I freshen up first?”

Atlas licks his teeth. “Go right ahead.”

Hellfriede heads into the dressing room. When no one’s looking, she alters the illusion to feature an extra layer of red lipstick. Diva told her red makes people think you’ll look pretty when you die. Hellfriede is inclined to agree.

A few blocks away, Delirium contrasts Vixie’s so much it seems pointed. Vixie’s blue and black tones are supposed to be a cool serenade for the senses; the colors wrap around the sleek architecture like possessive lips. Delirium is all brash reds, rainbow graffiti, and brickwork with so many cracks it has to be intentional: an assault on the senses. Hellfriede’s SSC bred eyes see faults in both designs, one too easy and the other too directionless. Delirium opens earlier than Vixie’s and a bat of Diva’s long lashes gets Hellfriede past both the line and the bouncer.

Stepping inside is like stepping on the line between blinkspace and reality. Hellfriede’s vision swims, diving into the paint splatters that cascade from the floor to the high ceiling, pooling into a dripping, stained glass brain. Every step ventures past lifted cages of breathing statues and people screaming silently inside simulation headsets. There’s a bar on the other side of the vast first level, but before that is a pit in the center of the floor for the resident entertainment: a band playing archaic instruments. The music coming from them squeezes Hellfriede’s temples in a way that feels more sensual than sex. It takes sixty seconds of being in Delirium for her to understand why Vixie wants their rival dead.

Hellfriede skirts around the pit, ignores the itch in her muscles, and orders a drink with a smooth name from a bald bartender with a prosthetic eye. “If it’s not too much trouble, could you point me over to the owner?”

The bartender squints at her while shaking up something bubbly. “Who are you, again?” He asks.

“I’m one of Vixie’s girls. Diva Demure. DD.” Hellfriede offers a tiny smile with a hint of a pout.

“Ohhhh yeah. Miss Edith said you’d be coming over. Head downstairs, to the last room. Tell the guys back there ‘the secret is burning to life.” He immediately turns his attention to a loud, drunk woman offering him a big tip for just one more drink. Hellfriede leaves thinking that Vixie’s invitation was supposed to be a surprise.

The club basement is more splattered graffiti and uneven floor tiles. Noises ranging from desperate to pitiful sound out from the row of closed doors that lead Hellfriede to the back. Behind one, a person begs to see the Dagon again. The men standing on either side of the surprisingly plain last door are slim, but there’s muscle and sidearms under their mismatched uniforms. “How do you avoid burning to death?” One asks. His eyes are fixed on a point past Hellfriede. She tells them the secret and gets waved inside without a first or second glance.

The room could pass for an interrogation space. There’s a single table in the center with a woman who must be Miss Edith sitting at it. She doesn’t dress like a club owner at all: Edith is adorned with a simple green sweater and a cozy skirt featuring foxes along the lower edge. The most ornamental things about her are the gold bands in her black braids.

Edith. Art by @annaskytsko on Fiverr.

Hellfriede opens Diva’s mouth.

Edith looks up from her dataslate. There’s a dark burn scar along the left side of her face. “You should sit down.”

The second chair doesn’t look inviting. Hellfriede sits without hesitation. “Good evening, Miss Edith.”

“Is it?” Edith smiles. “I heard lots of people overdosed today.”

“… Uh, well, that’s awful.” Hellfriede doubts Diva would look her in the eye, so she doesn’t either.

“Blue Moonlight makes blood look like sweat and sweat look like water.” Edith shrugs. “Or something like that.” She taps away at her dataslate without looking down, then smiles again and nods her head at something Hellfriede doesn’t hear. “Anyway, do you not like the way you look?”

“Well, I like to think I’m pretty,” Hellfriede says shyly.

“Then why are you wearing another woman’s face?” Edith asks.

Hellfriede’s own voice hitches. “…”

“Is it the brown hair? So many brunettes want to be blonde. I mean, that’s how it was way back when, I think. Now anyone can change anything even if they don’t want to dye.” Edith hasn’t stopped smiling.

No technology is invincible. Hellfriede knows this. Miss Edith must have some damn good visual enhancements. She lets everything about her that belongs to Diva die. “What do you know about the owner of Vixie’s?”

“He has everyone’s favorite drugs: pretty women and depressants.” Edith cocks her head. “Are those your favorite drugs?”

“No.” Hellfriede sets her hands on the too small table.

“Everyone has a favorite, though,” Edith sounds incredibly matter-of-fact. “People come here to find their favorite, too.”

“What drugs do you offer?” Hellfriede has to ask.

“Well, people are still trying to find Delirium.” Edith laughs.

“The drug or the club?” Hellfriede wonders if being in this room is what thinspace feels like.

“Hm. I wonder.” Edith looks back down at her slate for several seconds. “I wonder if Vixie really wants to kill me for a drug that doesn’t exist.”

“People come here for a drug that doesn’t exist?”

Edith nods to someone who isn’t Hellfriede. “Delirium exists.” She bites her lip so hard that a drop of blood runs down her chin.

Something stirs under the synapses in Hellfriede’s brain. She doesn’t know how long she’s been looking Edith in the eye. “… Vixie beats his employees, forces them to maintain drug habits, and moves drugs that are illegal under Rivnuan and Union law through his club. Allegedly.”

“Do you want to kill him?”

Has Hellfriede ever wanted to kill anyone? “People have to die sometimes.” It’s her turn to shrug. “I was told to bring him in alive after getting evidence of his crimes.”

Edith puts one hand beside both of Hellfriede’s. The blood is still on her lip. “Do you want to kill me?”

The question feels perverse. “I don’t have a reason to.” Yet.

“Good. Then you can let me kill Vixie instead.”

Suddenly, Vixie is in the corner of the room like they were always there. They aren’t bound by anything except their arms wrapped around their knees. Their eyes speak of someone who thinks they’re already dying and is very scared of death. “… please…” They sound like they’ve never said that word before.

“Why do you want him dead?” Hellfriede’s lethargic heart certainly doesn’t beat for Vixie, but she has orders.

“Because he beats his employees, forces them to maintain drug habits, and moves drugs that are illegal under Rivnuan and Union law through his club,” Edith lies.

“…” Hellfriede glances at what Edith’s been typing.

“… there’s a lot of comfort to be found in accepting that your hands committed murder before you really understood it. You only understand when people are dead and your hands hurt.”

Hellfriede doesn’t give verbal permission.

Edith strides over to Vixie and pets his head. “You’re alive now.”

Vixie’s mouth opens wide. There is no scream. Edith leans down and bites into his throat like she’s telling him a secret. There is no blood left to leave a storied stain of who Vixie was when she’s done.

In her report, Hellfriede doesn’t mention much about Vixie.

Beyond Liberation: Antipathy & Satisfaction

Hellfriede was engineered to sleep light, so the man dies as soon as he comes through the door: bullet through the eye. His body ragdolls into the men behind him. One of them shouts some tangential version of “restrain her”. Her bedroom window opens and a hand perches on the sill. She impales it with the combat knife she keeps under her pillow. The window intruder, a woman, cries out. Hellfriede’s knife has a heated blade.

By now, the men in the doorway have dislodged their friend’s corpse. Four plus the woman whose hand is melting. Hellfriede palms the shock rod from under her bed and fires again with her other hand. Most hardsuits are weaker around the joints to allow for movement: the bullet cuts through the kneecap of the person about to lunge at her. Bone crunches under their weight and they go down with a hiss. Hellfriede rolls onto the floor, away from a net bomb, and stays low as smoke starts to fill the air. They have visors. She doesn’t.

That doesn’t matter.

It didn’t matter that she poisoned or throat cut everyone who had ever thought to call her by a nickname. It didn’t matter that she was locked in the cockpit as Hell’s Sister plummeted while its last missiles tore free from its frame like cannibalistic children.

What’s needed is all that ever matters.

Before the smoke thickens, Hellfriede sees the Smith-Shimano Corpro logo stamped sweetly on the arm of an opposing hardsuit.

They die.

Seven bullets. Three shattered knees. Two broken necks.

They die. It’s necessary, so they die.

One severed tongue.

Hellfriede goes through the data logs in their comm links. SSC offered them 1,000,000 Manna each. That’s five million Manna to retrieve the only remnant of their decade old experiment. Hellfriede Ripley, Liberation Day Champion, only survivor of SSC’s Cavalier Program, is worth five million Manna to her makers. She’s never spent time researching the cost of people before. Is that number low or high?

That doesn’t matter.

Her heartbeat has still been noticeable for the past several seconds. The adrenaline should be dying down by now. Hellfriede looks at the comm data again: they’re supposed to meet back at an established base outside New Varuvi City. There might be more of them. She could report this to Union. She should report this to Union. Her heart feels like it’s made of plasma. Hellfriede retrieves her dataslate from her nightstand.

She happens to look through the window. Hellfriede comes face to face with the mech she knows is the Dullahan. She has never had a Dullahan. The red of the mech’s hull is hateful in the moonlight.

The Lesson of the Open Door: A lock may be keeping you in rather than out. Open it regardless of this.

The Dullahan needs to connect to a human brain so it can use it as its central processor for all its functions. Hellfriede read that when she researched HORUS mechs before the rebellion; before an SSC-ordered mission to eliminate a HORUS cell. Where is this Dullahan’s brain?

In response to that thought, the mech’s systems flare in her nerve endings. The Spine Launcher: for cracking open a hull to make sure the pilot knows they’re not dead yet. Seismic Charge: so you can decide what around you is irrelevant. The Kinetic Driver: to shred them. Are mechs capable of hatred?

That doesn’t matter.

What’s needed is all that ever matters.

Hellfriede is holding a weapon instead of her dataslate. The axe is the same red as the Dullahan.

That night, four mercenaries hired by Smith-Simano Corpro are decapitated in their hideout. Two more are piles of scattered limbs and organs.

Is Hellfriede capable of hatred? What matters is that, sometimes, she needs to be.

Mech Hangar

These are the mechs Hellfriede uses on Liberation Front missions: unofficial assignments given to an unofficial task force to investigate particularly egregious human rights violations in the Diaspora.

Second Sister

After her revival, Hellfriede surprised no one (aside from perhaps SSC) by acquiring another Monarch mech. She named it Second Sister after her original Monarch, Hell’s Sister. Despite being a legionnaire now, Torin transfers his casket into this mech to act as an approximation of a Tlaloc when Hellfriede pilots it. Second Sister is primarily used for solo or small group missions since Hellfriede excels in using the Monarch to take down multiple opponents without aid.

Weapons

• Flex Mount: Sharanga Missiles. These missiles don’t need line of sight and can attack two targets at once.  
• Main Mount: Sharanga Missiles. “Strike the sky with fire and blood. That will make people think life is finally in motion.” — Unknown.
• Heavy Mount: Gandiva Missiles. The Gandiva Missiles target electronic defense, don’t require line of sight, and ignore cover. They also deal energy damage rather than explosive.

Frame Traits & Core System

• Avenger Silos: The Monarch can deal extra explosive damage to another target after critical strikes.
• Seeking Payload: When the Monarch consumes lock on to attack with a launcher, that weapon gains the ability to bypass cover and hit targets it doesn’t have line of sight to. Consuming lock on also prevents damage reduction (from armor, resistance, etc.).
• SSC-30 High Penetration Missile System
  • Divine Punishment: The Monarch can launch a barrage of self-guiding missiles against a vast number of targets.

Systems

• Superpositional Profile: Can be used to make ranged attacks less likely to hit and grant limited teleportation.  
• HYPER ENGINEERED MUNITIONS: When attached to a ranged weapon mount, attacks fired from that mount deal additional armor piercing damage and impair targets.
• Trajectory Arc Mapper: Attacks that capitalize on a weapon’s range gain additional accuracy.
• Expanded Heat Sink: Adds additional heat capacity.
• Personalizations: Personal touches that bolster the mech’s hull.
• TLALOC-Class NHP: The Tlaloc Protocol allows the mech’s NHP to rapidly take control of weapon targeting and firing. Missed attacks will be retargeted. However, this protocol temporarily immobilizes the mech.

Irreverence

Hellfriede pilots her Black Mountain when she isn’t acting on Union’s orders. On these personal missions, she takes a handful of other Liberation Front pilots with her and acts as support, using its one weapon and ability to “Fell the Mighty” to point out and pick off the most prominent targets. Despite her other mechs being more directly damaging, Irreverence is possibly the most terrifying mech in her arsenal due to the detached effectiveness it inspires in both herself and her allies.

Weapons

• Flex Mount: Painful Indifference. This nexus bow is an enhanced version of the one from the SSC Emperor license. It deals both energy and explosive damage and easily pierces armor. Like the Emperor’s  nexus, it targets electronic defense, doesn’t need line of sight, and ignores cover.

Frame Traits & Core System

• An End to All Things: The Black Mountain can incur heat to have an ally it gave temporary shielding (called overshield) to deal additional damage.
• Dread Harbinger: When this mech or an ally lands a critical strike on an enemy, that enemy becomes locked on. The Black Mountain gains overshield when this lock on is used.  
• Fragile: The Black Mountain’s hull isn’t the sturdiest.
• Blackstone Bell
  • Bringer of Glory: The Black Mountain can reactively grant overshield to an ally by “exalting” them.
  • Fell the Mighty: This mech can mark a hostile target as “Doomed”. This increases accuracy against them and makes allies who successfully hit them increase their overshield.

Systems

• The Walk of Kings: This quick tech ability gives an ally overshield. While they have this overshield, their melee attacks become armor piercing. In addition, the first time they hit with a melee strike or get hit, they release a burst of armor piercing energy damage.
• Shahnameh: A quick tech ability that grants an ally overshield. While they have this overshield, they become resistant to hostile sources of heat and will clear all heat when they lose the overshield.  
• Superpositional Profile: Can be used to make ranged attacks less likely to hit and grant limited teleportation.  
• Expanded Heat Sink: Adds additional heat capacity.
• Minimized Silhouette: Irreverence’s general shape takes up less space, making it harder to target.

Gallery

Hellfriede Ripley, Liberation Day Champion. Art by leadjockey.