Anticipation

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## Anticipation

### Affiliation(s)

Divine FleetSeneschal's Brace

*Argosy, Spliced*

The Splice

**Anticipation** is a Divine of the Divine Fleet. Its ship was *The By-and-By*.

Its current Candidate/Excerpt is Tender Sky, whose excerpt name is **Our Voices Combined, Filled With Great ⸢Tenderness⸣, As We Sang For Their Good Fortune**, or **Tenderness**.

## History

### Pre-Twilight Mirage

As a Divine, Anticipation's focus was on the simulation of scenarios that the Divine Fleet as a whole. This might include figuring out what planets can be sustainable, or the literal physical direction the fleet should go. This job became dramatically more important in the last thousand years of the fleet, during the decline of the Divines.

Anticipation decayed over time. Its ability to calculate slowed down to the point where it completely stalled, as though it's stuck in a rendering or buffering status. Before their death the ship's sections were able to fan out and signal or call to the other members of the fleet. Now they cannot.

During Tender and Signet's exploration of the Tomb to the Divine Pleroma, the reason for Anticipation's death was revealed. Pleroma, designed to see the Divines of the fleet from an outside perspective, had proposed the hypothesis that, given sufficient time, Divines would ultimately end up being enslaved. This idea infected the Divines of the fleet, ultimately leading to their deaths, and with Anticipation, causing her to devote more and more time and energy to attempting to either prove or disprove this hypothesis.

### The Vault of Anticipation

After the Miracle of the Mirage, a temple to Anticipation was formed on the planet Altar. From this Vault, countless blue threads of a number of different fabrics spread all over the planet, searching for processing power that the Divine might use to help her in her calculations.
Tender Sky and the Excerpt Signet were asked by Sho Salon and the Waking Cadent, who had been undertaking a joint expedition to uncover the truth about the threads, to enter the temple and recover the Divine relic inside, which was at that point believed to be some small part of Anticipation. Doing so, and moving through ancillary temples to Eon and Naught, and Pleroma, the two eventually reached the finale chamber in the Vault of Anticipation, where they found the Divine, still enthralled in attempting to find the truth of the Hypothesis.
Tender then took Anticipation, not wanting it to be used by either the Waking Cadent, nor the Divine Free States, and became her Excerpt/Candidate.

## Personality

Anticipation, due to her focus on divining the truth of the Pleroma Hypothesis, was not greatly concerned with the wellbeing of her Excerpts. The relationship between her and her final excerpt before her "death", Civit, was more akin to that of Divines and Candidates several thousand years ago; Civit was merely another component that Anticipation could use in her calculations.
Her relationship with Tender was similar, with Tender appearing anxious while carrying Anticipation, due to the amount of her mind given over to the calculations. Austin has also said that Anticipation "eats people alive," and Ali described Tender as "A Candidate with an Excerpt's name".

## Appearance

### During the Divine Fleet

Anticipation's form, linked to that of her ship, *Thyrsus*, is inspired by the funnels of the nu Gundam. It is formed of long rectangular floating pieces, which sit together in a fan shape or can spread out, forming shields in between them. There is no complete separation in this form, but they can form goal posts that create shields to protect other parts of the fleet: a much less elegant version of *Thyrsus*, comparatively. There are layers similar to a pocket knife that are still connected but can move. The body of the Divine itself, which died, is now considered the elevator between the different levels.

### Post Divine Fleet

When Anticipation was found on Altar, it took the form of a great number of blue threads, which had spread themselves over the planet. It retained this form in Tender's mind, when using her Stratus abilities to link with the system's linked computer networks, as well as while present in the Splice.

## References

1. ↑ Episode 56
2. ↑ Episode 55
3. ↑ Episode 56
4. ↑ Episode 56, 1:23:00
5. ↑ Episode 65
6. ↑ Episode 67 3:34:53
7. ↑ Episode 67, 2:24:08
8. ↑ Episode 67, 2:56:08