[NEXUS] WATCHTOWER 17: Through Cloud, Shadow, Earth, and Flesh.

[Terumitsu]

[Front Gate, Later]

That seemed like rather sound advice save for one not so minor detail... But that likely could be solved with a question or two. "I'd like to make a stop by the medical wing if there is one before doing that." she said. At least she suspected there was one given the size of the place despite not having been directly introduced to one as of yet.

"Might as well see about if this is just a physical ache or not while I'm there. For all I know, it could be cured with a bit of aspirin. Would probably help me fall asleep at that." she said, musing with a bit of irony that she would probably be sleeping throughout the day purely by accident this time around. It was an upset to her usual schedule, yes, but Ghoul wasn't going to let such a small thing like that bother her.

[Deathkeeper]

Front Gate, Later

Klitcht provides instructions to the infirmary, although he's never been there himself. He bids Ghoul good evening and takes his leave at this point unless she wants him around in the infirmary.

[Reinholdt]

[Front Gate - Tomorrow]

Ilpholin, demon queen and leader of AMEN is riding Mister Squiggles up the path to the entrance.

[happyturtle]

Front Gate - Tomorrow

Darcy should have told DC that Ilpholin was coming. She knew she should have, and she really really intended to. But Ilphy was so pretty, and DC so scary that... it sort of... didn't happen.

So it might be a surprise to the Watch leaders that she's on her way, unless Ilphy did the notifying.

At any rate, Darcy will run down the steps and out the door to greet Ilpholin and...

"Hi, Mister Squiggles! I've missed you."

[Reinholdt]

Front Gate - Tomorrow

Ilphy thought Darcy was telling them/already told them! It was her idea!

*chitter chitter*
Good to see you Darcy. Good to be out and about too. I think I was gaining weight from all the henchmen.

Interestingly, henchmen mistranslates to monsters in some languages.
"Hello Darcy."

[happyturtle]

Front Gate - Tomorrow

Darcy's cowardice is a handy excuse for 'player didn't want to start a contentious scene with DC when we're about to rp a contentious scene after Ilpholin gets here'. *nodnod*

"Nonsense. You're as beautiful as ever!" Darcy says.

[Reinholdt]

Front Gate - Tomorrow

I figured she'd just tell Wenomir or Cessie personally. But no matter.

*chitter chitter*
Why thank you. You look well yourself.

I'm sure Mister Squiggles is blushing if he could.

Anyways, he resumes walking alongside Darcy to head in to Watchtower proper.

[happyturtle]

Front Gate - Tomorrow

Once inside, Darcy will put up the bat signal or whatever it takes to call a meeting.

[Morty]

[Meeting Room]

Wenomir will be there. He's wearing full armour and he has his longsword in the sheath on his back. He's markedly not happy and he's expecting trouble.

Training Grounds - Cutter

Cutter slowly turns with Wenomir even as he lowers his lower-right hand closer to his hip and all four hands curl into fists. He still waits for Wenomir to make the starting move, but his guard does appear to be exposed somewhat now.

Wenomir steps forward and makes a quick downward slash at one of Cutter's arm. It's not really intended to strike home - he's just probind his defences. He's ready to dodge all the while.

[Darkcomet]

[Meeting Room]

DC is present as well, and it's all too clear that he is incredibly angry right now.

By which I mean he has a beam gun out already. It's probably a good thing no one let him outside or he would probably be shooting with heavy weapons by now.

[Ashen Lilies]

[DC's Lab]

KR crosses her arms.
"Frankly, I'm this close to just making an announcement on the Wall that says you don't represent us anymore and then leave you to deal with the fallout of your idiocy on your own." She snaps, raising her right hand to show exactly how close with her index finger and thumb.
"Unfortunately that's a stupid plan and no one would agree with it, so I guess you keep your leadership spot. I'd like it if we could withdraw that bounty, but that would only make us look more clueless and indecisive than we do already, so thanks for backing us into a corner, DC. I guess we have to follow through on your idiot plan."

[KR and Wenomir's Room]

KR's eyes widen slightly. Crapcrapcrap, why did she suggest showing her magic!? Think of something! Think of something fast! She looks down, trying to appear totally wise and deep in thought and not panicking at all, but then notices her shirt is inside out and almost has a complete meltdown.
"Um.... um... givemeaminuteineedtopreparesomereagentsjustwaitthe rekaybye."

*SLAM!*

[Meeting Room]

KR is sitting at the map table, aggressively slumped over with her arms crossed on the table and glaring at DC.
"Just put it away already. She's coming here for some reason, and if you shoot her before I find out why, I will slam your head into this table repeatedly."
She's wearing her coat fully buttoned to hide her grease-stained shirt (having just come from the lab) with the collar popped up despite the summer heat, and is kicking the foot of the table repeatedly with her dragonscale boot.

[Reinholdt]

[Meeting Room]

Ilphy joins the meeting room as well, holding Ilpholin's hand as they sit down. I'm sure Darcy's on the other side of one of them. Mister Squiggles stands behind them and somewhat out of the way. Of note, he does have some things strapped to him. Like a hobo bag almost! Except Mister Squiggles eats hobos, so it might not be his. =x

"That reason, since KR brings it up, would be that a bounty has been placed on my head by my own teammates. It seems that I apparently lack the trust I need in order to complete the mission assigned to me by you. As such, I've fully scrubbed the mission and have returned to explain my actions in detail at which point you can decide the fate you believe I deserve."

[happyturtle]

Meeting Room

Darcy is standing behind the Ilpholins, with a hand on a shoulder of each. She'd threaten DC with some awful fate if he dares to shoot her love, but she knows she's the combat lightweight in the room. Anyone else at the table (except maybe Ilphy) could mop the floor with her, so she'd look pretty stupid tossing threats around. She'll settle for looking pretty angry, and giving DC the glare of "Ihateyousomuchrightnow".

[Darkcomet]

[DC's Lab]

"'Idiotic' is what I'd use to describe how we're apparently supposed to as merciful as GLoG now. You know, the organization indirectly responsible for multiple of Reinholdt's actions? We can't afford to play nice with traitors and attempted infiltrators. The end results of that have already been proven in the past, thank you very much. They are destabilizing influences that need to be stopped if we want everyone else to be ready for what we're really meant to face. I apologize only for not putting my foot down sooner."

[Meeting Room]

DC pointedly does not lose the gun, though he also doesn't shoot. Yet. He does, however, keep it pointed at Ilpholin the entire time.

"Traitor. Let me tell you why your story is bull****. One, you have next to never expressed any interest in consulting with us, when we are entirely capable of keeping in contact in a manner that is difficult to detect." He taps the side of his head to indicate what he means.

"Two, your plans not only went forward without any consultation from us whatsoever, you have actively been making AMEN stronger, which is not acceptable, in case you were wondering. Three, on top of this, your bioweapon attack caught our own assets in it, namely, my people in Riverside. Your forces even made a deliberate attack on my reactor in Westside when the defenses I had actually deployed against your attack were far more easily targeted. Four, you have displayed a remarkable lack of foresight or care, judging from the exploitation of the bioweapon you unleashed in an attack on Inside. Allegedly, that wasn't you, but I won't hold my breath. The point remains that had I not hired those mercenaries to interfere, things would be far worse there now. Your activities have resulted in the exact same destabilization we wanted to prevent.

The stupid politics are the only reason I haven't done far worse than put a bounty on all of your heads. I don't buy the duplicate gambit either, considering it would make spying on us awfully simple. You are either a traitor or simply an incredibly lucky idiot. Neither of which we want with that kind of power."

[Morty]

[KR and Wenomir's Room]

Milena waits patiently. She's too enthralled by the prospect of being shown magic by her idol to notice anything amiss.

[Meeting Room]

Wenomir leans on the table, peering at both Ilpholins with narrowed eyes.

"I'll withold any declarations about agreeing with DC or not until I hear your side of the story... but you better make it a good one."

[Gullara]

Gardens

Jeremy lets the orb be grabbed, but she'll find it's really really light and easily played with and squishable. As the orb is moved, he snaps the sucker out of the air. "Anything I can do?" he asks, holding the treat for later for the little girl.

[Gardens]

"That's okay. When you're a dad you'll get used to being thrown up on really quick, trust me." Sakura giggles and looks up at Jeremy again. Just in time to see laela going to put the orb of light into her mouth. "Laela, don't eat that!" She says and reaches to stop her, but the baby doesn't even hesitate in popping it in her mouth.

[Reinholdt]

[Meeting Room]

"The day you're allowed in my head Charles is the day I'm dead. But that goes two ways. I know you knew about the plan, seeing as how you were intended to find out just like everyone else. Any single one of you could have picked up the phone and told me to stop. Yet I heard not a ring."

"Any of your precious assets caught in the crossfire was unintentional and never ordered. Near as I can tell, you barely suffered a scratch anyways. As for the so called 'exploitation' of the bioweapon, I seem to recall Inside squashed that attempt without a single casualty, with minimal resources, and an overall complete lack of even blinking an eye. It's a shame I had the foresight and care to have a cure created at the exact same time as I did the 'weapon'. That said, you seem to have fully misunderstood the Riverside situation. Allow me to explain from the beginning."

"To start out I revealed the plan to an open AMEN meeting, knowing full well it would get leaked. In fact, getting leaked was every bit part of the plan." Who did the leaking was not. "Furthermore, I went to explicit lengths to ensure a cure was formed at the same time. In the end, I managed to argue out a non-lethal plague with a cure. Practically like getting strep throat. The point of this was rather simple. Minimize civilian count. The leak would ensure that people evacuated or took precautions. Those crazy enough to stay behind were almost certain to be strong enough to resist. In short, the city was flushed of non-combatants beforehand, ensuring their safety. Any still affected could invariably be cured."

"Beyond that, I convinced AMEN, perfectly capable of just teleporting in, to ride in on a sub instead. Because it'd be 'flashier'. More importantly it'd be seen, and we'd be seen teleporting. Once that was done, it ensured Riverside dropped teleportation blockers all over us, blocking AMEN's final escape route. All I needed to do then was draw away the last remaining defenders of the AMEN base, which I did thanks to a timely betrayal by Shayan." Removing Clegg from the base. "Should Riverside have pressed the attack, as I hoped, there was a high likelihood AMEN would have been devastated or worse. Mister Squiggles was on standby to call Watch, who I presumed would be at least watching the situation, to take advantage of the opportunity and destroy the home base. In fact, an entire program was written into the AI Mister Squiggles has there to turn the base in on itself and attack AMEN members, while leaving the door wide open for strike teams or bombings. In short, I set up the perfect opportunity to destroy AMEN forever." Should AMEN turn around and survive a Riverside assault, Ilpholin would have no choice but declare Mister Squiggles a traitor and sacrifice him. Hence why he would be the one calling. Plausible deniability. "Things didn't flow that way, unfortunately, but they still turned out very beneficial for Watch." More explanation soon! But this is getting long.

Mister Squiggles steps forth now and reaches into his hobo bag to pull out a data device, place it on the table and slide it towards the center. "That's the information you need to access and activate the program remotely if you decide to still use it."

She pauses briefly to allow DC to further his petty personal attacks on Ilpholin's intellect and motives along with anything else other people wished to interject now.

[Shadowcaller]

Next Day

Ronai pauses after the second button, revealing scattered blue scales beneath the shirt and raises an eyebrow. "An earth one would be heavy handed, a fire one too destructive, and an air would would feel things rather more personally I think. Unless I'm getting it wrong somehow."

Next Day

"Let's summon an air elemental then." These people were all too quick on stripping down. An air elemental appears and will gently pad Ronai down, sparing Cessie and the water elemental from seeing the part dragon strip down. It would have been so awkward!.

[The Bushranger]

[Training Room]

"Is there anything about plasma swords that makes using them this way less..." Wenomir's word of choice would be 'suicidal', but he decides to be a little more tactful. "...impractical?"

"Weight," Shawna answers promptly. "A plasma sword is, essentially, weightless, aside from its hilt and emitter of course. This makes it significantly more dangerous for the untrained, however for a user who is capable of maneuvering them safely, they give a great advantage in speed of combat."

[Somewhere]

"Ok." So mia will head for her room to take on the new clothes. They will meet later at the entrance.

Shawna changes as well, into something much like her old outfit: white, and fully covering. While waiting for Mia, she notes the commotion, and drifts to the [Meeting Room] door, listening in. And frowning.

[UncleWolf]

Next Day

The elemental will find Ronai to be mostly unarmed except for a pair of daggers strapped to his inner thighs and a small snub-nose revolver under his right armpit. Other than that, he's carrying several thousand dollars in a billfold, a pen, a pencil, a pair of tweezers, a nail file, a cellphone, and an expensive looking platinum watch.

In the bag, he has a crossbow with several bolts, a manicure/pedicure kit, toiletries, several thousand dollars worth of high-end makeup, extra ammo for his revolver, several strategy and tactic books, and a Go board with all the pieces. Other than that, he has nothing on him. "Satisfied?"

Training Grounds - Cutter

The Half-Horror twists slightly as the blade comes down, avoiding it by a sliver of space, and uses his upper right hand to try to tap the back of the blade as it passes to try and knock it off balance. As he does so, he'll step forward, rotating his upper-left arm downwards with his hand cupped to try and hit a specific nerve on Wenomir's upper thigh with the side of his hand. If that works, Wenomir should feel his entire leg go instantly numb and hopefully it'll fall out from under him.

Gardens

Jeremy can't help but chuckle as he turns the orb into a flutter of small butterflies to zip around the girl's head. "I know how it is. I've helped raise a niece." He admits.

[Shadowcaller]

Next Day

"I should probably scan all your electronic devices. But would it be okay if you just leave them outside for now? I really mean no disrespect Ronai, I personally don't think you're carrying anything dangerous on your person, but I know I would have to have a long discussion with the others if I just let you in. I don't you don't take any offense." She offers him an apologetic smile.

[UncleWolf]

Next Day

"I understand." The man says, pulling out his cellphone and offering it to her. "Only two contacts are in there, no names. One is to my "Matron" who is still at Room 34 and the other is to my contact within the Temple so I can explain what is going on. If you wish I'd rather leave, I can. My goal here is to provide a way that everything can be worked out smoothly, but that can only happen if Watch lets it."

[Shadowcaller]

Next Day

"You might as well have a look around the place while you're here and I did pick out a room for you." Cessie replies as she accepts the cellphone. Now what in the void was he going to do with all that make-up? Did he really use that much?

"So just follow me." She gestures for him and the water elemental to follow her inside the building so she can show him around. "May I ask what you know about Watch? I realize there might be a lot of rumors going on about us right now."

[Gullara]

[Gardens]

Laela giggles and swats at the butterflies. Pretty! Sakura chuckles at herself for worrying so much about that. "That little girl will put anything in her mouth. You gotta keep an eye on her all the time." The dryad reaches out and taps Laela's nose with on finger, prompting the baby to grab hold.

"So you're a man with some experience with kids then, huh? If Shawna wants some, she should count herself lucky. Me and Adir had no idea what we were doing." The dryad suddenly looks pained, but she quickly put on her smile again. By now Jeremy and most of the rest of Watch should know that Adir vanished.

[UncleWolf]

Next Day

Ronai picks up his bag and carries it inside. "I know enough to have a personal feeling about you all, but unless it becomes prudent to explain it, then it shouldn't matter what I think of this place." He says with a shrug.

Gardens

Jeremy notices the look and makes the butterflies vanish before trying to give Sakura a loose hold. "It'll be okay. We're here for you if you need anything, I promise."

[Gullara]

[Gardens]

Sakura sighs and nods. "Thanks, Jeremy. I appreciate that." She gives him a small hug, as well as she can with two children between them. "I'm getting by, though."

[Shadowcaller]

Next Day

"I can see why Jezebel picked you." Cessie comments but has no more to say on that particular subject for the moment. She leads him down to the barracks where he will be shown to the room furthest inside the building. Opening the door he will see a standard room. Nothing really out of the ordinary. "Here is where you will be staying. It's spartan but you can always give it a personal touch." The sorceress says as she looks around.

[happyturtle]

Meeting Room

Darcy remains silent, though much of what Ilpholin is saying is a surprise to her.

[Morty]

[Meeting Room]

"It would seem you overestimated the willingness of the Riverside factions to fight AMEN," Wenomir says dryly. "It's no surprise they took an opportunity to resolve things without further bloodshed. I'm not going to say 'no' to a chance to destroy AMEN's base, though."

He has no idea how much of what Ilpholin's telling them is true, so he's keeping most of his thoughts to himself for now.

[Training Grounds]

"I suppose that makes sense," Wenomir says. "I don't think I could use such a weapon effectively, since I've been trained in using steel ones. But I can see how it might work."

[Training Grounds - Cutter]

Wenomir disengages, having been prepared for a counter-attack, and steps backwards nimbly, using his momentum to make a quick jab at the attacking arm as he moves.

[Darkcomet]

[Meeting Room]

"Really. Really. You say you planned on it being leaked, when that only happened because we interfered." DC indicates Darcy over there to illustrate his point.

"Had we trusted you, at the very least Inside would not have the cure now, and Riverside would have been far worse-prepared. No preparations would have been made, because they simply would not have known. That is the truth of the matter.

Using a less than lethal disease is simple enough to explain. It provokes less hate from the population, allowing you to be seen as a force for something other than the raw destruction AMEN revels in. This is most likely why the shortsighted Riverside powers refused to press the assault. Had they been convinced of AMEN's true nature, I doubt they would have decided to play nice. No, it was a move designed to reduce the anger of the population to prevent you from facing far greater reprisals. It is an act of fear, not restraint.

And you claim to have wanted to draw defenders away-again, this would have been a moot point had we not known about the attack beforehand, which I've gone into already. Even then, you did not know Shayan would defect, making it even more of a moot point. As for that device, I expect it's loaded with viruses to cripple the systems of whoever uses it. Even if not, it is very much like an AMEN leader to put their people in danger in order to convince others to halt their reprisals.

This story is clearly tailored to the events that transpired, but it is not perfect. I can only hope that everyone else here sees through it as well."