Scene: Yè Yī's Apartment — 2:14 a.m.
The room's small — one desk, one futon, one stubborn ceiling fan.
Violet's sitting on the floor with her hoodie half off, nibbling a piece of burnt beef she found from earlier.
Yè Yī leans against the desk, still processing everything.
He finally says, "You said something about 'Arms.' What are they?"
Violet glances up. "Wow, you really skipped the lore manual, huh?"
"Just explain."
She rolls her eyes but smiles. "Okay, fine. Think of Arms as… the world's worst gift system. They're not magic, not tech — more like… manifestations of energy that come from the Forge. Basically, the world's engine room."
"The Forge?"
"Yeah. Imagine something ancient and alive that got tired of being ignored, so it started choosing people to act as… extensions. Arms are what you get when the Forge decides you can handle something impossible."
Yè Yī crosses his arms. "And there are… types?"
"Three branches broken down into Seven types," she says, counting off on her fingers. "Each tied to elements, but not in the boring high school chemistry way."
---
1️⃣ The Fire Arm
"Pure aggression. Think combustion and raw willpower. Fire users can reshape energy, heat, and sometimes even emotion — because emotions burn too, right? But they also crash fast. Most Fire users live quick and die loud. Temper issues included."
---
2️⃣ The Water Arm
"Flow and adaptability. These guys manipulate states — liquid, mist, even blood if they're good enough. It's emotional, memory-based. Most Water Arms are good at reading people — and hiding stuff. Creepy calm types, y'know?"
---
3️⃣ The Air Arm
"Freedom junkies. They mess with velocity, distance, pressure — some even sound. Air users always act like they've got everything figured out, but really they're just one existential crisis away from skydiving without gear."
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4️⃣ The Earth Arm
"Structure and endurance. They can manipulate ground, minerals, even magnetic fields if they're advanced. Kinda the tanks of the Specialists — reliable, tough, a little boring sometimes. But they'll outlive all of us."
---
5️⃣ The Gold Arm
"Now this one's tricky — it's not a real element. It's refinement. Enhancement. They reinforce, polish, upgrade things — both physical and metaphysical. Like… boosting another person's ability or stabilizing space. Dangerous if abused, though — you can make people too perfect."
---
6️⃣ The Ice Arm
She looks directly at him.
"Control. Stillness. Preservation. Ice is all about slowing decay — in time, in matter, in people. You freeze the moment so it doesn't die. Which is cool and tragic, depending on who you ask. You feel cold because it's always stealing from your pulse."
Yè Yī's gaze tightens. "That explains a lot."
"Yeah," she says softly, "you've got that frozen-eyes vibe."
---
7️⃣ The Void Arm
Her voice drops, half whisper, half warning.
"Void is the outlier. No one really understands it. It doesn't create or destroy — it erases. It eats the in-between: time, space, thoughts, even the laws that make stuff exist. Most who get it… don't stay normal."
He stares. "You sound like you've seen it."
"I have."
"You have one?"
She doesn't answer. Just leans back against the wall, looking at the spinning fan above.
He presses again. "You said there are seven. That's six. What's the last one?"
Violet smirks, eyes flicking up with that same mischievous glint.
"The last one's mine. And you don't get that spoiler yet."
He groans. "Seriously?"
"Yup," she says, stretching. "I'm mysterious, remember? It's my brand."
He looks unimpressed. "You just made me memorize six power systems at two a.m. and left out the seventh."
She grins. "Exactly. Welcome to the Specialist life — zero closure, all chaos."
---
The Arms — three main Arms, each with branches (explained like Violet would say)
> Quick note from me (Violet): "Okay, open your ears. This is the cheat-sheet nobody gives you until you've already screwed up. Pay attention."
---
First Arm — Raw/Direct Forces
Branches: Earth, Air, Fire & Lightning
Earth
What it does: Anchors, shapes, resists. Move dirt, stone, metal; make barriers; manipulate weight and friction.
Uses: Fortify a spot, create instant cover, crush or pin things. Great for defense and blunt-force attacks.
Limits/Cost: Heavy physical toll if you try to reshape big stuff fast — your body gets that back as fatigue, joint pain, muscle burn. Overuse can "lock" your sense of balance (you'll feel like the floor's moving when it's not).
Tactical note: Earth users are the slow, reliable tanks in fights. Don't expect finesse — they're about permanence.
Air
What it does: Speed, range, pressure. Push, pull, create vacuum pockets, mess with sound and breath.
Uses: Knockback, super-speed maneuvers, lift/throw objects, suffocate or disperse gas. Great for hit-and-run and controlling space.
Limits/Cost: Mental strain — you'll get headaches and disorientation if you push airflow manipulation into chaotic environments. Over-extend and you may lose fine motor control for minutes.
Tactical note: Air is mobility + control. Best paired with someone who sticks and holds.
Fire & Lightning
What it does: Raw energy output. Fire = sustained burn, area denial. Lightning = high-voltage single strikes, disruption of electronics and nerves.
Uses: Burn, explode, short-circuit tech, stun enemies. Lightning disables systems; fire removes cover and forces movement.
Limits/Cost: Emotional volatility often mirrors power. Fire users burn out emotionally and physically faster. Lightning throws your nervous system out of whack — muscle spasms, seizures if you push too hard.
Tactical note: High damage, high risk. Great for breaking lines or detonating traps.
---
Second Arm — Refinement/States & Support
Branches: Ice, Water, Gold & (refined) Earth
Ice
What it does: Slow, preserve, freeze kinetics or decay. You can literally freeze motion or hold a moment in place.
Uses: Stop time-like motion locally (not actual time, but it feels like it), create defensive shells, immobilize targets. Preservation = heal-delay tricks (keeps something from getting worse temporarily).
Limits/Cost: Cold takes from you. Overuse drains. Freeze too much and you risk "numbing" parts of yourself — memory gaps, emotional blunting.
Tactical note: Crowd control and clutch saves. Also very good at making traps that last.
Water
What it does: Fluidity, adaptation, emotional/biological manipulation. Shift states: liquid, vapor, pressure.
Uses: Heal/support (hydro-regeneration), drown or suffocate, move quietly, mask energy signatures. Can be used offensively or stealthily.
Limits/Cost: Water users have to keep flow. If the environment lacks water, their output is weaker. Emotional toll too — too much empathy or trauma can destabilize control.
Tactical note: The Swiss Army knife of Arms. Balances offensive and support.
Gold & (refined) Earth
What it does: Enhancement, stabilization, precision. Gold branch refines or "uplifts" other Arms or tech; refined Earth is structural finesse (micro-manipulation of minerals).
Uses: Boost allies' abilities, stabilise reality-warping effects, forge or fix relics, reinforce constructs to last. Can turn a weapon from "risky" to "reliable."
Limits/Cost: Requires focus and intent — sloppy thinking ruins the uplift. Over-stabilizing something that's supposed to remain volatile can backfire (explosive feedback).
Tactical note: Support specialists who change fights by making everyone else better. Also very valuable to organizations.
---
Third Arm — Meta & Existential
Branches: Time & Space, Void
Time & Space
What it does: Bend how things move through time and where they appear. Teleportation, short time-slow/fast windows, discrete rewinds on tiny scales.
Uses: Blink short distances, create time-bends to dodge or force attacks to miss, rewind seconds to undo a critical hit, map timelines.
Limits/Cost: This is heavy. Screwing with time piles up metaphysical debt: memory loss, ageing anomalies, temporal dissonance (you might remember things others don't). The bigger the rewind, the bigger the backlash.
Tactical note: Game-changer when used right. Also the kind of power that makes people paranoid and enemies obsessed.
Void
What it does: Erasure. Removes the in-between: gaps in space, memory threads, bonds, sometimes reality edges. Not simple destruction — it's deleting the fact that something existed in a particular state.
Uses: Wipe surveillance, tear holes in constructs, sever connections (like a weapon's link to its wielder), erase evidence or an instantaneous danger.
Limits/Cost: Void is the scariest. It rewires the self. You risk losing parts of your identity (memories, senses). Repeated use fragments personality. It attracts attention — the less an event exists, the more paradoxes shout.
Tactical note: Last-resort weapon. Use to erase worst things — but you pay for the erasure in who you become.
---
What a Specialist actually is (no drama, just facts)
Definition: A Specialist: someone the Forge chose to be an extension of a branch of power. You get an Arm — it's not optional.
How people become Specialists: Not a school application. The Forge "picks" — sometimes it's genetics, sometimes trauma, sometimes a relic touches you. And no, we don't fully understand why it picks who it picks.
Core traits: You have to be able to carry cost. Arms can take from you (health, memory, time, sanity). Specialists are survivors who can channel that drain productively.
Training: Formal and informal. Corporations, old families, or factions teach them. There are specialized Forgebases (nurseries and labs) where new Specialists are catalogued and trained — but could also be exploited.
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The World & Organizations — short-guide
ET
What they are: Organized raiders. They treat relics and Arms like products. They dig, steal, weaponize. Not purely ideological — profit, power, and obsession.
Behavior: Fast, ruthless, leave chaos to cover tracks. Use covert tech + field operatives. They're the "who will take your stuff and sell it" faction.
Factor IV
What they are: Reactionary group. Specialists—organized, tactical, sometimes bureaucratic. Thinkb: never let the humans find out there are Specialists.
Behavior: Investigative teams, forensics, containment.
Other players
Old Families: Lineages with relics, secrets, favors. Can be protective or predatory.
Black Markets: Trade relics, tech etc. Dangerous networks.
Independent Specialists / Freelancers: Lone wolves or small squads. Hard to control, often unpredictable.
VIOLET: {breathes}
"I'll let you in on more later".
VIOLET:
"Okay, listen up, 'cause I'm not repeating this twice. You've got three Arms. Think of them like… elemental bloodlines, but not genetic—more like cosmic signatures.
The First Arm is what most rookies awaken to. It's your basic elemental control set:
Earth — you're basically one with terrain. Can shift the ground, feel vibrations, shape minerals. It's slow but stupidly strong. Most defensive Specialists come from this branch.
Air — the fast ones. They manipulate wind, sound, even pressure. They make good scouts, assassins, and—well—show-offs.
Fire & Lightning — one Arm, two temperaments. Fire users are raw emotion and chaos; lightning users are calculation and speed. Both burn through stamina fast but… they look cool doing it.
Now—The Second Arm. That's where things get colder, quieter, and… deadlier.
Ice — it's control through stillness. They freeze moisture in air, objects, even nerves if they're precise enough.
Water — fluid manipulators. Offense, defense, healing—whatever. They're the flexible ones.
Gold & Earth — don't get confused; it's not the same as the First Arm's Earth. This one's refined, alchemical. It's about conductivity, transformation, bending matter itself.
And then there's The Third Arm. The rarest. The ones everyone either fears or worships.
Time & Space — yeah, that's me. We can bend time, warp distance, twist location. I can rewind a moment or jump hours ahead, like now. You saw it.
Void — the black hole of the system. It's not destruction—it's absence. It eats energy, matter, even memory if the wielder's strong enough. Nobody really 'masters' the Void; it just lets you exist near it without dying.
Now—what you really need to know:
People like us are called Specialists. We're not superheroes or wizards or whatever your brain's trying to compare it to. We're anomalies—humans who can manipulate Arms, these fundamental forces that shape everything.
There are organizations out there—whole systems built to control us, study us, or straight-up weaponize us. ET's one of them. Think military, science, cult, and corporation all rolled into one psychotic ball.
Most Specialists are ranked by Tier—from 1 to 10. Ten means you're basically an act of nature. Me? I'm close. You're somewhere… below that. Don't pout, you'll get there. Maybe.
Each Arm has its own language, style, and philosophy. The First is power through force. The Second is power through flow. The Third? Power through understanding.
And here's the thing—most people only ever get one Arm. A few… can awaken two.
Me? I've got two—Time & Space and Void.
Don't ask how. You won't like the answer.
So yeah, welcome to the world of Specialists. No rulebook, no 'chosen one' prophecy, just chaos, bloodlines, and a lot of bad decisions."