I want to develop software to assist table tennis players. I want to work it like this: it will take a small video of a player playing as input. The software will use a trained AI model to generate output indicating which improvements are required.
I have always wanted this type of functionality. To my knowledge, there is no OpenAI model available (yet) to accomplish this.
I would love this idea also, what I’ve done in the past, from the video you want to analyze extract key frames at set time intervals. You can batch them for analysis. Then have Vision analyze the extracted key frames with the analytics you want to perform. Make sure to de-noise the material for better analysis.
This post from a while ago should’ve been easier than a table tennis game…
Watching this thread with interest.
Actually, that’s an excellent idea. I have software that can capture video frames. Gonna give it a try over the weekend,
Ooh. Let us know how it goes, please.
Yeah, got a bunch of movie trailers: mov; mp4; mkv; webm; asf; wmv formats. I’ll see what I can do.
You may want to add a sports science framework knowledge or bio-medical to your analysis. You can also use something like plottly or dashy to track spatial trajectory. Eventually clustering potential optimization of the technique but also impact on the body due to bad posture or body stressors with impact on health .
Sounds like a nice project for you.
Sounds like a nice project for you.
I don’t play tennis. But done something similar in the past. Done some mocap tracking for motion and medical. With simulation of falls. Proof of concept. It’s fun once you get a dashboard replicating this in real time. But can also find data sets already prepared for usage on kaggle or hugging face.
Since I don’t have a tennis use case like @ss.sonusarraf, I decided to go with movie trailer Furiosa. Here is how I captured seventeen frames:
And here are the frames:
Vision with gpt-5.5 has an amazing abilty for facial recongition. The last frame picked up her name as “Furia” which it used to generate The Story:
The Story
The Road That Ate the Sky
The desert had many names, most of them rude.
The old map called it the Red Meridian. The priests called it the Furnace of Regret. The people who crossed it on foot called it “bad planning.” But the woman standing alone in the middle of the road simply called it home, because home is not always a roof. Sometimes home is a long strip of cracked asphalt, a horizon that refuses to come closer, and enough dust in your teeth to season soup.
Her name was Furia.
She had black war paint smeared across her eyes, a mechanical left arm that ticked when she was annoyed, and the expression of someone who had once punched destiny in the throat and was still waiting for destiny to apologize.
Behind her, the sun rose like a golden coin dropped by a careless god. Ahead, the road stretched through the wasteland, empty and bright.
Furia did not trust empty roads.
Empty roads were liars. Empty roads waited until you took one relaxed breath, then coughed up raiders, spike trucks, flame buggies, cannibals on stilts, or worse, men with speeches.
A distant horn blared.
Furia sighed.
“Worse,” she muttered. “Definitely men with speeches.”
The horn came again, louder this time, followed by drums, engines, and the joyful screaming of people who had mistaken volume for personality.
Across the flats, a convoy rolled into view: silver tankers, cage wagons, motorcycles, armored cars, and one ridiculous chrome chariot with six brass horns welded to the back. At the center stood a shirtless man with a magnificent beard, a microphone the size of a brick, and shoulders that looked like they had been built by angry architects.
He raised one hand.
The convoy slowed.
He leaned into the microphone and boomed, “Citizens of the sand, children of hunger, worshippers of the wheel, prepare your eyes for the grand parade of Lord Varric the Voice!”
His words burst from speakers bolted to every vehicle. The desert itself seemed embarrassed.
Furia watched the convoy approach. She noticed the tires first, because tires meant movement. She noticed the fuel tanks next, because fuel meant power. Then she noticed the cage at the back of the horn-wagon, because inside it sat a girl in a hood with a respirator strapped to her face, clutching a stuffed fox as if it were a royal scepter.
The girl could not have been more than nine.
Her eyes were pale blue, bright, terrified, and furious.
Furia knew that look.
It was the look of someone who had just learned the world had teeth.
Beside the cage stood a robed guard holding a short-barreled shotgun. The guard scratched his neck, bored. He had the posture of a man who thought bars did the work for him.
Furia hated men like that. They made her arm tick.
Lord Varric saw her on the road and smiled into his microphone.
“Behold, a lone wanderer!” he roared. “A tragic little dust beetle in leather! Speak, beetle. State your tribute.”
Furia tilted her head.
“Tribute?”
Varric spread his arms. “Water, fuel, bullets, jewelry, amusing secrets, anything of value.”
“I have a headache.”
The convoy erupted in laughter.
Varric slapped the microphone. “She has jokes! How precious. Chain her to the music rig.”
Furia looked past him at the cage. The girl stared back, barely moving. The stuffed fox peeked from her cloak, one button eye missing, which somehow made it look even more judgmental.
Furia took two steps toward the convoy.
The guard with the shotgun raised the weapon.
“Stop there.”
Furia stopped.
The guard grinned.
Furia smiled.
The guard stopped grinning.
This was because Furia’s smile contained no warmth, only weather.
A second later, her mechanical arm snapped up. A small blade sprang from beneath the wrist. The guard blinked, which was exactly long enough for Furia to hook the shotgun barrel, twist, yank, and plant her boot into his knee.
The knee made a noise like a carrot losing an argument.
The shotgun went off harmlessly into the sky.
The convoy roared alive.
Varric shouted, “Seize the beetle!”
Furia hit the cage lock with the shotgun stock. Once. Twice. Three times. The lock cracked.
The girl shoved the door open with her shoulder and stumbled out.
Furia grabbed her by the cloak.
“Run.”
The girl shook her head and pointed to the fox.
Furia looked down. The stuffed animal had fallen into the cage.
A pale raider lunged at them, spear raised.
Furia shot him without looking, scooped up the fox, shoved it into the girl’s arms, and said, “Now run.”
This time, the girl ran.
They dove beneath the horn-wagon as bullets chewed the dirt behind them. Engines thundered. Boots pounded. Someone shouted something about sacred chrome. Someone else caught fire, though it was unclear whether this was part of the plan or just enthusiasm.
Furia dragged the girl between grinding wheels and out the other side. A motorcycle lay tilted nearby, its rider busy being unconscious under a dropped speaker.
Furia kicked the bike upright.
The girl climbed on behind her.
The bike coughed, spat black smoke, then screamed forward.
Lord Varric’s voice blasted from the speakers behind them.
“Bring me the girl! Bring me the beetle! Bring me my microphone polish!”
Furia glanced back.
A dozen motorcycles peeled away from the convoy and surged after them across the sand.
The girl pressed her mask against Furia’s back and clutched the fox.
Furia leaned low over the handlebars.
The road swallowed them.
The chase tore through the morning like a pack of metal jackals.
Furia rode with one hand and reloaded the shotgun with the other. Her mechanical fingers moved fast, clicking shells into place. Behind her, the girl looked back at the raiders gaining on them.
One raider stood on his seat, waving a spear and howling through a painted mouth. Another had strapped two red smoke canisters to his back and left a bloody cloud behind him like a festival thrown by idiots.
Furia veered off the road.
The motorcycle bounced over hardpan and rock. The girl squeaked into her mask.
“Hold tight,” Furia said.
The girl’s arms locked around her waist.
The first raider came alongside, grinning through blackened teeth.
Furia waited.
He lifted his spear.
Furia kicked his front wheel.
The bike flipped. The raider flew magnificently through the air, completed one heroic somersault, and landed in a cactus with the musical grace of a dropped kitchen drawer.
The girl watched him vanish behind them.
Through the respirator, she made a small sound.
Furia thought it might have been laughter.
Good, Furia decided. The kid had spirit.
They rode until the convoy became a smear in the heat and the raiders gave up one by one, not from fear, but from lack of petrol, courage, and basic navigation.
At dusk, Furia stopped at an abandoned signal tower where old telescopes pointed at the sky. Some still had brass rims. Some were cracked. All of them were useless, unless a person wanted to inspect the sun while dying dramatically.
The girl climbed off the bike and removed her respirator. Her cheeks were pale, her mouth dry.
“What is your name?” Furia asked.
The girl hugged the fox.
“Little Tamsin.”
“That is either a name or a warning label.”
The girl frowned.
Furia handed her a canteen. “Drink.”
Tamsin drank carefully, as if water were an animal that might bite. Then she offered it back.
Furia nodded approval. “Who took you?”
Tamsin looked toward the horizon, where the last copper light burned.
“The Sky Nursery.”
Furia went still.
The Sky Nursery was a fortress carved into a mesa, ruled by a man named Saint Mortan, who wore a skull mask and claimed he could make children grow into angels if he fed them enough fear. He collected the young, the clever, the strange, and the useful. He had pipes in his mask, pale hair like desert lightning, and a church bell made from an old fuel tank.
People said Mortan was immortal.
Furia knew better.
No one was immortal. Some people were just overdue.
Tamsin said, “They were taking me back. I ran once.”
“Good.”
“I bit a priest.”
“Better.”
“I stole his keys.”
“Excellent.”
“He cried.”
Furia almost smiled. “You’re hired.”
That night, as the stars sharpened overhead, Furia cleaned the dust from her face and drew black grease across her forehead. Tamsin watched her with solemn curiosity.
“Why do you paint your eyes?”
“So the sun knows I’m watching it.”
“Does it work?”
“The sun has behaved suspiciously for years.”
Tamsin considered this and nodded, accepting the answer with the grave wisdom only children and lunatics possess.
Then she pointed to Furia’s mechanical arm. “Did Saint Mortan do that?”
Furia flexed the metal fingers. “No. He only did the part before it.”
Tamsin did not ask more. Smart girl.
At dawn, they were not alone.
A fleet of bikes appeared on the ridgeline, engines growling. At their front rode a war chariot with a huge fan mounted behind the seat, its blades wrapped in netting and decorated with horns. The rider wore black goggles and a red scarf. Behind him, pale riders lifted long spears tipped with hooks.
Furia stood in front of Tamsin.
The lead rider removed his goggles.
He was older than Furia, broad-faced, red-bearded, and entirely too cheerful for someone leading a murder parade.
He grinned. “Furia of the Bitter Road.”
“Rusk.”
“You still owe me three bullets and half a lizard.”
“The lizard was gambling debt.”
“The lizard was my cousin.”
“The family resemblance was striking.”
Rusk laughed so hard his fan-bike rattled.
Tamsin hid behind Furia’s leg.
Rusk leaned sideways to see her. “Is that the little thunderbolt Mortan wants back?”
Furia’s hand moved toward her shotgun.
Rusk raised both hands. “Peace, grease-face. I did not ride half the night to return a child to that milk-skinned chimney goblin. I came because Mortan put a bounty on you big enough to make honest men dishonest and dishonest men poetic.”
“Are you here for the bounty?”
Rusk scratched his beard. “I am here because my crew voted. Four wanted to sell you. Seven wanted to help you. Two wanted breakfast. The breakfast faction was very passionate.”
A rider in the back shouted, “Eggs!”
Rusk pointed at him. “See?”
Furia’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”
Rusk’s grin faded. “Mortan took my son.”
The desert wind moved between them.
No jokes survived that sentence.
Rusk said, “The Sky Nursery opens its gates tonight for the Dust Communion. Every raider, trader, preacher, and engine-worshipping fool in three territories will be there. If a person wanted to sneak in, start chaos, steal children, and possibly do something rude to Mortan’s plumbing, tonight would be the night.”
Furia looked at Tamsin.
Tamsin clutched the fox and lifted her chin.
“I know the little door,” she said.
Rusk blinked. “Well, that’s handy.”
Furia looked toward the west, where Mortan’s mesa rose like a broken tooth against the sky.
“Then we go tonight.”
Rusk clapped once. “Splendid. Treason for dinner.”
The Sky Nursery looked holy from far away and diseased up close.
Its towers were made from tanker shells, pipework, glass, and scrap iron. Windmills creaked overhead. Searchlights swept the ground. Beneath them, hundreds of people gathered in a courtyard lit by flame pits: bikers, scavengers, masked priests, chained prisoners, and pale boys painted white, all chanting while drums pounded.
At the center stood Saint Mortan.
His hair hung white over armored shoulders. His mask covered the lower half of his face, metal teeth wired to hoses that pulsed with stale air. One blue eye stared from a face dusted with powder. Behind him, a child in a plain tunic carried a tray of red fruit, the brightest color in the entire wasteland.
Mortan raised his hands.
“My little sparks,” he said, his voice hissing through tubes, “the world burned because it was weak. I will build a new world from obedient bones.”
The crowd cheered.
Furia, hidden under a robe near the gate, whispered, “I hate speeches.”
Tamsin whispered back, “He does three before supper.”
“Monster.”
Rusk crouched beside them, disguised in a hood that did nothing to hide his beard. “The breakfast faction would never allow this.”
Tamsin led them through shadows to a drainage grate behind the nursery’s lower tanks. The grate was bolted shut. Furia’s mechanical fingers rotated, clicked, and unfolded into tools. Within seconds, the bolts dropped.
Rusk stared. “That arm opens locks?”
“It opens many things.”
“Doors?”
“Yes.”
“Cans?”
“Yes.”
“Skulls?”
“When necessary.”
Rusk nodded. “Useful.”
They crawled through the drain into a maintenance tunnel. The air smelled of rust, oil, and old fear. Tamsin moved fast, counting turns under her breath. At last, they reached a chamber of cages.
Dozens of children looked up.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then Tamsin stepped forward and removed her hood.
A small boy at the nearest cage whispered, “Tamsin?”
“I’m back,” she said.
The boy stared at Furia and Rusk.
“With criminals?”
Furia said, “Specialists.”
Rusk bowed. “Breakfast-adjacent specialists.”
Keys hung on a hook near a sleeping guard. Furia stole them. Rusk stole the guard’s boots, for reasons he called “strategic morale reduction.” Within minutes, cages opened and children spilled into the tunnel, silent as mice, wide-eyed as prophets.
Then the alarm sounded.
It began with one bell, then became many bells, sirens, horns, and a priest yelling, “The sparks are escaping!”
Furia swore.
Rusk brightened. “Ah, the chaos portion.”
They burst from the tunnel into the vehicle yard, where Mortan’s war machines waited under tarps. Tankers. Bikes. Buggies. A long silver rig armed with swiveling guns. A skeletal car with a harpoon launcher. And, gleaming beneath a cloth, a black truck with armor plates welded over its doors.
Furia looked at the truck.
The truck looked back, spiritually speaking.
“That one,” she said.
Rusk ran to the silver rig and climbed into the driver’s perch. “Children on board! Small ones inside, bitey ones near the windows!”
The children scrambled in.
Tamsin hesitated at Furia’s truck.
Furia opened the passenger door. “You ride with me.”
Tamsin climbed in, fox first.
The engines came alive.
The yard exploded into motion.
Priests ran. Raiders shouted. A pale boy leapt onto the hood of Furia’s truck and raised a blade. Tamsin wound down the window and hit him in the face with the stuffed fox. He fell off with deep confusion and a newfound respect for textiles.
Furia slammed the truck through the yard gate.
The convoy roared into the desert night, pursued by Mortan’s army.
Behind them, searchlights stabbed the dust. Motorcycles swarmed. Flame buggies belched fire. Rusk’s silver rig thundered beside Furia, loaded with children, stolen food, stolen water, and at least one priest’s boots.
On the ridge above, Saint Mortan watched them escape.
His single visible eye burned cold.
“Bring me Furia,” he hissed. “Bring me the little spark. Bring me all of them.”
A towering warrior stepped from the shadows. He had long hair, a beard caked with dust and blood, and fury packed into every muscle.
His name was Brannox, Mortan’s champion.
He cracked his knuckles.
Mortan leaned close, mask tubes flexing.
“You were born for this hunt.”
Brannox stared at the fleeing lights.
“I was born before you put a leash on me.”
Mortan’s eye narrowed.
Brannox said nothing more. He climbed into a roaring pursuit car and drove into the night.
The chase became sunrise.
By morning, the desert was a screaming ribbon of engines.
Furia drove at the front, one hand on the wheel, one hand gripping the shotgun. Tamsin sat low beside her, fox in her lap, eyes locked on the mirror.
“They are coming.”
“They usually are.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“Several.”
“Good plans?”
Furia fired through the side window at a rider, who spun away into a sandbank.
“Mixed quality.”
Rusk’s voice crackled over the radio. “Furia, my glamorous sand disaster, we have company on the right.”
A tanker truck armored like a beetle charged alongside them. Pale raiders climbed its sides, waving lances. On top stood Varric the Voice, somehow back in the story and twice as loud.
He spoke into his microphone, his beard whipping in the wind.
“Furia! You thief of children, bruiser of guards, destroyer of my sound system! Surrender, and I will only narrate your execution for six minutes!”
Furia grabbed the radio.
“Make it three.”
Varric gasped. “Insulting!”
Rusk’s rig swerved. A child fired a flare from the rear hatch. It struck Varric’s horn array.
All six brass horns erupted at once with a noise so awful that three motorcycles crashed out of sympathy.
Varric clutched his ears.
Furia accelerated.
A red smoke bomb exploded beside the road, filling the world with sparks and crimson haze. Bullets hammered the truck. Tamsin ducked. Furia swung the vehicle left, clipping a buggy and sending it flipping into the dust.
Then Brannox arrived.
His pursuit car smashed through the smoke like a charging bull. He drove straight at Furia’s truck, eyes blazing through the windshield. Metal rammed metal. The vehicles locked side by side.
Brannox stared across at her.
Furia stared back.
For a moment, the desert became quiet around them, as if the world wanted a front-row seat.
Then Brannox shouted, “Give me the girl!”
Furia shouted back, “Get in line!”
He leapt from his car onto the side of her truck.
The impact rocked the vehicle. Tamsin screamed. Furia jerked the wheel, scraping Brannox against the armored tanker, but he held on, teeth bared.
He punched through the side window.
Furia slammed the shotgun stock into his face.
He laughed blood.
“That all?”
Furia raised her metal fist.
“No.”
She punched him once.
Brannox flew backward, crashed through the windshield of his own car, and disappeared into smoke.
Tamsin stared.
Furia said, “Good arm.”
But Brannox was not finished. His car surged again, dented and smoking, with him snarling behind the wheel.
Ahead, the road narrowed between two ridges. Beyond it lay open salt flats, flat enough for speed, bright enough to blind. If they made it there, Mortan’s heavier vehicles would lag.
If.
A harpoon slammed into the back of Furia’s truck.
A cable snapped tight.
The truck lurched.
Behind them, a spiked dragster reeled them in. Raiders cheered.
Tamsin looked at the cable. “That seems bad.”
“Correct.”
Furia climbed through the window onto the side of the truck as it roared forward. Wind tore at her hair. Bullets sang past her. She swung herself onto the roof and crawled toward the harpoon.
The dragster pulled closer.
A raider with goggles shouted, “Got you now!”
Furia yanked the harpoon free.
The cable whipped loose and snapped back into the dragster’s front wheel.
The dragster folded itself into a spectacular metal pretzel.
“That is also bad,” Tamsin said from inside, watching it vanish in flames.
“For them,” Furia said, sliding back into the driver’s seat.
They hit the pass at full speed.
Mortan’s army followed.
The ridges magnified the engine noise into thunder. Rusk’s silver rig bellowed alongside Furia’s truck, overloaded but unstoppable. Children pressed faces to portholes. One held up a stolen boot like a trophy.
Rusk called over the radio. “The pass is mined.”
Furia looked ahead. The ground glittered faintly.
“Who mined it?”
Rusk paused. “I did, years ago.”
“Why?”
“Optimism.”
The first motorcycle hit a mine behind them.
The explosion lifted it into the air like a delighted insect.
Furia swerved between faint markers only Rusk seemed to understand. Rusk guided the convoy with terrifying confidence and one hand out the window, pointing.
“Left! Right! More right! Not that right! Philosophical left!”
Furia snapped, “What is philosophical left?”
“Just keep not exploding!”
Mines erupted behind them in fireballs. Raider vehicles burst apart. Varric’s tanker lost two wheels and spun in circles while he screamed into his microphone, producing feedback so shrill it may have killed a bird.
But Mortan’s main war rig survived. It surged through the flames, armored plates glowing red, Saint Mortan standing at the front like a ghost nailed to machinery.
Behind his mask, he hissed, “Minefields are for peasants.”
His cannon fired.
The shot struck Rusk’s rig.
The silver vehicle lurched. Children screamed. Smoke poured from the engine.
Rusk fought the wheel.
“Furia!”
She looked back.
Mortan’s rig was closing.
The children would not outrun it.
Furia saw the salt flats ahead, bright and endless. She saw the ridge above the pass, where loose stone hung in broken shelves. She saw the old fuel tanker abandoned on a slope, rusted but sealed.
She saw a bad plan.
Bad plans were still plans.
She grabbed the radio.
“Rusk, take the children to the flats.”
“What about you?”
“I am going to be rude to Mortan’s plumbing.”
Rusk laughed once, grim and proud. “That sounds terminally entertaining.”
Furia turned to Tamsin. “When I slow, jump to Rusk’s rig.”
Tamsin shook her head. “No.”
“That was not a debate.”
“I know the little door. I know the tunnels. I know his pipes.”
Furia kept her eyes on the road. “Tamsin.”
The girl lifted the stuffed fox. “Mr. Nix says I am not done biting priests.”
Furia glanced at her.
The fox, despite missing an eye, looked committed.
“Fine,” Furia said. “But if we die, I am blaming the fox.”
Tamsin nodded. “Fair.”
Furia slammed the brakes.
Rusk’s rig shot past. A child reached out. Tamsin did not move. Rusk saw her staying and yelled something that was probably not breakfast.
Furia spun the truck around and drove straight at Mortan’s war rig.
Tamsin climbed into the back and fed shells into the roof gun.
Furia shouted, “Aim for the pipes!”
Tamsin fired.
The gun roared. Bullets chewed through Mortan’s front armor, snapping hoses, valves, and mask-feed tanks. Mortan staggered as vapor sprayed around him.
Furia drove faster.
Mortan raised one clawed hand.
“You cannot kill a saint!”
Furia leaned out the window and shouted, “Watch me provide a theological update!”
The truck rammed the front of Mortan’s rig.
Metal screamed.
Tamsin fired a flare into the leaking pipes.
The rig blossomed into fire.
Furia and Tamsin bailed out as both vehicles smashed against the slope below the abandoned fuel tanker. They hit the sand hard and rolled. The tanker above groaned, its rusted supports snapping one by one.
Mortan emerged from the burning wreck, mask cracked, hair aflame at the ends. He moved like a nightmare too stubborn to wake up.
Furia pushed herself upright.
Tamsin stood beside her, shaking but unbroken.
Mortan’s eye fixed on the girl.
“My spark,” he rasped. “Come home.”
Tamsin clutched the fox and said, “No.”
It was a tiny word.
It carried more power than all of Varric’s microphones.
Mortan lurched forward.
The rusted fuel tanker broke free.
It rolled down the slope with majestic, absurd, slow-motion certainty.
Mortan looked up.
Furia grabbed Tamsin and dove behind a boulder.
The tanker smashed into Mortan and his burning rig.
For one perfect second, nothing happened.
Then the desert became sunrise twice.
The explosion punched the sky orange. Fire rolled through the pass. Shockwaves knocked raiders flat. Varric’s microphone, freed from his grip, sailed overhead and landed in the sand with a sad little squeal.
When the smoke cleared, Saint Mortan was gone.
The Sky Nursery’s army stared at the crater.
Furia stood, blackened, bruised, and grinning just enough to frighten everyone.
Tamsin rose beside her, still holding the fox.
Rusk’s rig returned from the flats, loaded with cheering children. He leaned from the window.
“Did we win?”
Furia looked at the burning wreckage, the fleeing raiders, the ruined army, and the crater where a saint had learned about gravity, fuel, and consequences.
“Mostly.”
Rusk pointed behind her.
Brannox staggered from the smoke.
His face was bloodied. His beard was singed. His eyes were no longer furious, only tired.
Furia raised the shotgun.
Brannox stopped.
For a long moment, they faced each other under the bright, brutal sky.
Then Brannox dropped to his knees.
“I had a son in those cages,” he said.
Rusk climbed down from the rig. A boy of about twelve appeared behind him, thin and pale, with Brannox’s eyes.
The boy walked forward.
Brannox looked at him as if the sun had turned gentle.
“Jory.”
The boy did not run into his arms. The world was not that simple. But he stepped close enough for Brannox to touch his shoulder.
That was enough to make the big man bow his head.
Furia lowered the gun.
Tamsin whispered, “Is he bad?”
Furia watched Brannox weep without making a sound.
“He was used.”
“That is not the same?”
“No.”
“Is it better?”
Furia considered the burning pass.
“Sometimes.”
By sunset, the freed children had food, water, blankets, and the first loud argument over who got to keep the priest’s boots. Rusk declared himself Minister of Breakfast and was immediately challenged by three children with superior organizational skills.
Varric the Voice was found under a tarp, alive, humiliated, and whispering because his microphone had been destroyed. This improved him immensely.
Furia climbed to the roof of an old outpost overlooking the flats. Telescopes surrounded her like strange metal flowers. She adjusted one with her mechanical hand and looked west.
Far away, the Sky Nursery burned.
Beyond it lay more roads. More tyrants. More cages. More speeches.
Unfortunately for the tyrants, Furia had discovered she was very good at ending speeches.
Tamsin climbed up beside her and sat on the parapet.
“Where do we go now?”
Furia kept looking through the telescope.
“Somewhere with water.”
“Does somewhere have a name?”
“Everything has a name if enough fools fight over it.”
Tamsin thought about this.
“Can we call it Fox Town?”
“No.”
“Spark City?”
“No.”
“Breakfast?”
Furia glanced down. Rusk was leading a chant among the children.
“That one may already be taken.”
Tamsin smiled, the first real smile Furia had seen on her.
The desert wind lifted dust around them, warm and restless. The road ahead glimmered gold in the dying light.
Furia stood.
Below, engines started. Children climbed aboard the rigs. Rusk shouted orders nobody followed. Brannox helped repair a tire while his son watched from nearby, still cautious, still present. Varric, newly silent, polished a dented horn with the tragic dignity of a retired thunderstorm.
Tamsin pulled the respirator over her face and tucked the fox into her cloak.
Furia drew black grease across her eyes once more.
Tamsin pointed at the mark. “So the sun knows you are watching it.”
Furia nodded.
“And is it behaving?”
Furia looked at the burning horizon.
“For now.”
They descended to the convoy.
The engines growled.
The wheels turned.
And under a sky full of bruised orange light, Furia led the children out of the land of cages and into the wild, ridiculous, dangerous promise of tomorrow.
Behind them, the road ate the dust.
Ahead of them, the world waited.
It would learn manners eventually.