[Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 4

Sara is not particularly good at talking while she eats. There’s the occasional “but she kissed me first” and “she doesn’t understand” but mostly she is scarfing down food like she’s starving again very very hungry.

It’s heavy food. Grounding food. The kind of food that makes you want to lie down and take a nap.

The ball’s still in Locker’s court. Sara’s already had her explosion, and it’s up to him to bring it back up— or to deliberately let it fall. Turn the conversation elsewhere, if he likes.

[PhoeKun]

There are fingers on her chin and they are so much softer than anyone else's oh gosh this is so much nicer than when Nobunaga held her oh gosh it's not fair to think that oh gosh but those eyes don't burn her it's just deep pools of kindness and how is she so pretty in real life oh gosh she's talking oh gosh she's saying stuff Euna and you are supposed to answer oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh

"L-l-like I said..."

Euna stammers and she blushes and that's basically it for a minute. She's really, deeply outmatched here. Not only is she looking directly into the crystaline eyes of her biggest on-screen hero (and if you've been following her journey to this point, you know that's not a small feat) who happens to be a supernaturally pretty and graceful girl who's looking at her like she'd just moved the sun or something which is just... a lot to process ok, and on top of what her dumbass hormones are doing to her brain there's also the embarrassing fact that she jumped through that portal so fast she doesn't even have a cover story so now her brain needs to scramble to find enough purchase to explain what the hell and how the hell and who the hell. If she's lucky they won't get to why.

Start with a foundation, soldier. Your mission depends on successfully 'recruiting locals' and these are by miraculous happenstance the three most potent locals on the possible recruitment list. Well, except for maybe Princess Helya Laynasdottir of Rowan, but really she's just more implied to be awesome and doesn't often actually deliver on-- ahem. Start with a foundation. That means answer the simplest question first, and move from there. Euna is seized with a fantastic desire to do something stupid that would get her chewed out for a year at least by the Commander, and then the second it's in her head her eyes shrink to pinpricks because all of a sudden she's thinking of

Sara. With her wet hair pulled into a ponytail, wearing that suit like it was a weapon and armor at the same time. Pressing her hand over Euna's nose, filling her with the scent of perfumes mixed with bath oils that still didn't blot out the actual, kind of salty smell of her body. Her wild eyes alight with the flame of a Bad Idea, telling her she had to say the word, had to call her a...

"P-Princess!" she blurts out all of a sudden, her fist clenching tight in a way she hopes nobody notices. There's an edge to her eyes still, but her blush is rising to conquer all other feelings, "Please, call me Princess Euna, of AEGIS."

This is technically accurate! What is a corporation these days if not a kingdom? And what is their Corporate Champion if not a princess? Ok fine sure, she does zero ruling whatsoever and is basically at the bottom of the decision making ladder, but they still send her out on all the adventures and stuff, right? It's a close fit! Shut up! She's taking this word back for herself!

"I... so... that is, um, this is really complicated." gosh gosh gosh she is still being held by Princess Alina it is so nice wow b-but maybe she could please stop being so handsy? Her words come out rapidfire, "I, we, that is AEGIS is a... um. We're basically like The Watch? I mean not really, not exactly, we're not anti-princess or anything like that, and-- hey back there stop thinking at me, I'll explain later! So anyway we, I, that is, yeah I'm from, uh, you know, a place outside this world."

She pauses long enough to consider the ramifications of this statement. Then she squeaks.

"But not like the Riders! Not from the void or any of that! My world is totally fine and I actually came here through a warp gate kinda thing and I don't really know how it works but, like, you can see how I'm not all starry-eyed and stuff right? So it's cool. I'm good. Y-yeah. S-so anyway yeah, my world gets up to a lot of weird stuff and sometimes that means we kinda know what other... I feel stupid saying 'worlds' over and over again but whatever, yeah, other planes of reality and junk, so we... that is to say, I know a lot about you. Big fan. Huuuuuge fan. Of your work. Is Princess Rita here? I love the way you two are together! It just makes me feel so... ah, no. Never mind."

Huff, huff, huff, oh goodness gracious Euna Kim you are making a mess of this.


{Scrubbed}, this is so much harder than I thought it'd be. Uh... long story short, like you maybe remember me saying when I popped up here, I'm chasing a... well, basically a devil? I mean, not a Devil but... well actually yeah kind of exactly that, only not from 'round these parts and no mask that I'm aware of. Don't have much of a profile on the guy, he's maybe a little Oberon-esque. But not related! It's fine. I'll get him. He broke into this place and he is very very not supposed to be here, so they sent me to beat him up and bring him back to our containment fields so Your Highnesses can go on about your lives and teach people to love and care about things other than money and consumer products and junk. But um, you know, if you and your friends aren't too terribly busy, and you wouldn't mind it too much, maybe you could... help me? We'd do a fair exchange, I promise! I'll help you guys with whatever on the way. It's just, yeah, I'm really understaffed here and you are the three best princesses I'm aware of and it'd be a huuuuuge help, so..."

[Thanqol]

POTENTIAL 4

Sara is not particularly good at talking while she eats. There’s the occasional “but she kissed me first” and “she doesn’t understand” but mostly she is scarfing down food like she’s starving again very very hungry.

It’s heavy food. Grounding food. The kind of food that makes you want to lie down and take a nap.

The ball’s still in Locker’s court. Sara’s already had her explosion, and it’s up to him to bring it back up— or to deliberately let it fall. Turn the conversation elsewhere, if he likes.

Locker doesn't say anything. Instead he quietly moves around the room while you eat, cleaning things up. There's a soft clinking as he picks up glass bottles and puts them into the plastic bag the beer had come in, straightening tossed blankets and clothes in passing. It seems just like an ordinary act of quiet, parental kindness right up to the moment when he gets to the garbage bin.

When he opens it, instead of putting the bag of glass bottles in, he reaches into it and starts taking bottles out.

Reflexively collecting bottles from the trash for the recycling money is not a habit you come by if you're in a great place in life. It didn't even look like a decision for him - he didn't consciously think of the absurdity of scavenging for small change in the midst of a gorgeous apartment like this. It was just a habit to grab those bottles in the same way you might bend down to pick a dropped credit chit off the ground. You don't think he noticed you watching.

He comes back around, sitting across from you as you finish eating. "You feeling better?" he asked, and it really is all about you to him right then.

"P-Princess!" she blurts out all of a sudden, her fist clenching tight in a way she hopes nobody notices. There's an edge to her eyes still, but her blush is rising to conquer all other feelings, "Please, call me Princess Euna, of AEGIS."

This is technically accurate! What is a corporation these days if not a kingdom? And what is their Corporate Champion if not a princess? Ok fine sure, she does zero ruling whatsoever and is basically at the bottom of the decision making ladder, but they still send her out on all the adventures and stuff, right? It's a close fit! Shut up! She's taking this word back for herself!

"I... so... that is, um, this is really complicated." gosh gosh gosh she is still being held by Princess Alina it is so nice wow b-but maybe she could please stop being so handsy? Her words come out rapidfire, "I, we, that is AEGIS is a... um. We're basically like The Watch? I mean not really, not exactly, we're not anti-princess or anything like that, and-- hey back there stop thinking at me, I'll explain later! So anyway we, I, that is, yeah I'm from, uh, you know, a place outside this world."

She pauses long enough to consider the ramifications of this statement. Then she squeaks.

"But not like the Riders! Not from the void or any of that! My world is totally fine and I actually came here through a warp gate kinda thing and I don't really know how it works but, like, you can see how I'm not all starry-eyed and stuff right? So it's cool. I'm good. Y-yeah. S-so anyway yeah, my world gets up to a lot of weird stuff and sometimes that means we kinda know what other... I feel stupid saying 'worlds' over and over again but whatever, yeah, other planes of reality and junk, so we... that is to say, I know a lot about you. Big fan. Huuuuuge fan. Of your work. Is Princess Rita here? I love the way you two are together! It just makes me feel so... ah, no. Never mind."

Huff, huff, huff, oh goodness gracious Euna Kim you are making a mess of this.


{Scrub the post, scrub the quote} me, this is so much harder than I thought it'd be. Uh... long story short, like you maybe remember me saying when I popped up here, I'm chasing a... well, basically a devil? I mean, not a Devil but... well actually yeah kind of exactly that, only not from 'round these parts and no mask that I'm aware of. Don't have much of a profile on the guy, he's maybe a little Oberon-esque. But not related! It's fine. I'll get him. He broke into this place and he is very very not supposed to be here, so they sent me to beat him up and bring him back to our containment fields so Your Highnesses can go on about your lives and teach people to love and care about things other than money and consumer products and junk. But um, you know, if you and your friends aren't too terribly busy, and you wouldn't mind it too much, maybe you could... help me? We'd do a fair exchange, I promise! I'll help you guys with whatever on the way. It's just, yeah, I'm really understaffed here and you are the three best princesses I'm aware of and it'd be a huuuuuge help, so..."

Princess Adila has made her way over to you. This has been a bit of a feat because she is still in chains - what was also almost (but not quite) impressive were her attempts to replicate Alina's escape-artist moves. She tried to squirm into a point where she'd be able to apply pressure to the lock with her claws, and while you were sure that she'd get it if she kept at it she quickly gave up and settled for just squirming her way over a bit in your direction while still trussed.

Despite the actual conclusion of this action being basically a bumbling failure, it's still fascinating to watch in that way that animal videos are fascinating to watch. There's such fascinating unpredictability to her movements because she doesn't have even remotely human body language or muscle groups. Just being around her creates a weird tension where your ancient monkey hunter brain is trying to figure out how to relate to this alien creature and gets an avalanche of competing signals. Is dog? Is person? Is cobra? Is shark? Is tiger? Is horse? Is cat? Is dinosaur? You instinctively want to pat her, to stare at her unblinking, to run and burrow away, to ride her all at once. Sometimes in the show people just kind of freeze up when Adila gets close to them and you're understanding the feeling that's going on inside those heads a lot better right now.

+So you're saying,+ and that thought just compounded that tense weirdness by interrupting your thought process with another's voice - a voice that was, like yours, trying to hold back a deep excitement with a veneer of professionalism +you're a member of a cosmic law enforcement agency that travels the stars through magical gates, bringing justice? And your name is Euna...+

The thought trails off as she stares at you with big golden eyes. +Euna... Audna... Adila? Are... are you a time travelling Adila I?+

[Balmas]

[Pierce the Mask: 7. What are you really planning?]

{Scrubbed} he says placidly. "Arm goes through the bracer here. Look, I'm not upset with you for lying to me, but there's a reason that the stream isn't called the Brainstorm and Friends Power Hour. I'm the background in the stream."

Unlike @SARAHPHIM, super star, or Errant, Corporate Champion, or even Ferra, rising star riding(?) on Sara's coattails.

Brainstorm snarls under his breath. That's going to change.

"Point is, I acknowledge that I have a small. dedicated fanbase, but you aren't acting like a fan. You're not asking for an autograph, or a selfy. You're sitting here, lying to my face, and I'd much rather that I have an infiltration buddy I can trust."

[PhoeKun]

Princess Adila had her own special place in Euna's heart, but it was also a very complicated one.

You'd have to be an idiot to watch Princess Champions and not immediately see the parallels between the two of them. They were both star members of a paramilitary organization, both boundlessly enthusiastic but equally wrapped up in protocol. Neither of them had parents they could turn to in hard times and had to fold their Commanders and mythic figures from their past into those roles to make do. One time at Argossa Con she'd been assigned to security detail (which was not as fun as she thought it would be, by the way) and had to shoo away a bunch of kids from an autograph session because the voice actor for High Queen Ourania was an hour overdue for lunch and desperate to get a break, and they'd followed her the entire rest of the day from detail to detail making mocking Adila impressions. So yeah, she saw the link there. But all of that was only skin deep.

The real mark Adila left on Euna came from watching how uncomfortable the dragon was in her own body. She was strong and she was fast and she was powerful... and she'd spent the entire first half of the show to this point wishing she were like everybody else. She pined after a human form, wished with all her heart for the ability to move and interact with people as equals, to have friends and go dancing and never have anything break underneath or around her. It crushed Euna to watch it. It made her spend a lot of time staring at her own limbs, touching them to things, wondering if the information her sensors fed her about the world around her were even remotely close to what a normal girl would feel. It couldn't be, right? Her fingers were cold armor, they had none of the soft yielding warmth of some happy, normal girl. She wanted to know. But she... she couldn't remember what it was like. Her brain had already adjusted, discarded the sense memories to keep her going. She'd lost her life and body forever, and this was all she'd ever been.

But Princess Adila figured it out. She'd learned to revel in what made her special, to find happiness in the things that set her apart. She'd had the opportunity to walk away from being a dragon forever and lived the life she'd been dreaming of, and she chose to leap back into her own skin and be a hero instead. Euna hadn't made the connection for a while, but the day that episode aired was also the day she'd taken to finding optimal workouts to improving life with cybernetics. Shortly after, she'd started advocating for better conditions for all the people living in the city with poor fitting, third hand augs and injury victims in need of new limbs. She still struggled with her image sometimes, even now. But she had a dragon-shaped beacon to turn to in those moments, and she'd never stop owing this world for what that meant to her.

"Oh. My. God," Euna said to her in the most exasperated voice she had, "How did you even get to? I, like? What? Audna? Audna?! This is worse than that time my bank started sending me updates in Japanese because they thought my name was Yuna. Listen. Listen! Euna! Euna! Not Yuna, Eunha, Eung-ha, or Una! And definitely not Adila! And I'm sorry if you can't hear the difference but... {Scrubbed}, why does this always happen? It's two syllables! It's not that h-- oh sorry, hold on a second."

She reaches a hand out and grabs those chains between her fingers, then crushes a link into a useless lump and snaps the lot with a hard turn of her wrist. Probably... probably should have done that first. She blushes.

"Sorry, I'm... I get this a lot. I don't have a lot, but I like my name the way it is, you know?"

[Eldest]

The roomba comfortingly polishes your arm.

It's only a matter of time before you find a memorial that includes an obituary.

Today we mourn the loss of Idra Gears, loving daughter taken too soon. Her long struggle with Rx poisoning came to a quiet end on 2/4/2130, surrounded by her family and friends. Her parents and sister hope that she will be the last claimed by this terrible disease.

Rx poisoning was a global epidemic following the explosion of the particle accelerator a hundred years ago. While some people developed superpowers from exposure to pure Rx in the atmosphere, some people just got sick. The atmospheric scrubbers were not just devices to reduce the rate of uncontrolled superpowers (or, cynically, to harvest Rx for its own use) - they were part of a vast public health initiative that Doctor Gears spent a great deal of his life working on.

It's strange to find this answer so quietly, with such an absence of drama. You, Ferra, were created from someone already dying. Your body was already laced through with concentrations of Rx before it was condensed into one of the world's most stable Rx pieces. That's all there is to it.

(And, thinking, it suddenly makes sense why the human harvesting Rx apocalypse hasn't fully manifested despite Comstar's revelations - no doubt corporations have tried but without the combination of factors it likely wouldn't produce pepper nearly high quality enough to justify the cost. The only person who knows that secret is still Comstar.)

Well that certainly takes the wind out of her sails.

There's surprise, sure, shock. Grief, for what she was. But she's not exactly angry, not at her death. She's been dying enough times that she is upset about it, but she can process it.

No, she's angry that nobody told her.

She had a sister. She has a niece. And her dad stuck her in a stasis pod and gives her short bits of conversation every time she dies, and nothing else.

She sits down by the monument and sets down the roomba, idly programming the monument area as the new room to clean for the moment. And she moves downward, this time. Inside of herself, as best she can. To a room with infinite reflections of herself, with the majority of the damage fixed.

"You coward!" She shouts to the sky.

If you want a freak roll, or if Out Of This World applies here, (2d6+2)[9]

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 4

“No. Yes. Maybe?” Gotta love giving all possible answers. Sara reaches up to brush her hair back on reflex, but, again, nothing there to brush. “Just don’t tell anybody, okay? I... if I’m back out there soon, I can play it off as, like, I got a stomach virus from all that jankass plant life, I’m back and better than ever.”

Even now, that sounds... hollow. Exhausting. But none of us get to have the life they dreamed of for free, right? Nothing comes free. And Euna...

...Euna’s not worth starving again. Now that she’s thinking straight. Fly straight. Rock the franchise. Ignore the fact that just thinking that thought hurts. Pain is weakness leaving the body. She made her choice, and now they both get to live with it.

She hides her face in her hands a moment and then takes a deep breath. “Franchised. Fill me in. What have all of those other Saras been up to?”

[Thanqol]

POTENTIAL 4

“No. Yes. Maybe?” Gotta love giving all possible answers. Sara reaches up to brush her hair back on reflex, but, again, nothing there to brush. “Just don’t tell anybody, okay? I... if I’m back out there soon, I can play it off as, like, I got a stomach virus from all that jankass plant life, I’m back and better than ever.”

Even now, that sounds... hollow. Exhausting. But none of us get to have the life they dreamed of for free, right? Nothing comes free. And Euna...

...Euna’s not worth starving again. Now that she’s thinking straight. Fly straight. Rock the franchise. Ignore the fact that just thinking that thought hurts. Pain is weakness leaving the body. She made her choice, and now they both get to live with it.

She hides her face in her hands a moment and then takes a deep breath. “Franchised. Fill me in. What have all of those other Saras been up to?”

"A lot of tripping over each other," said Locker, falling into the conversation naturally. "Every time they have a brilliant idea to stand out from the rest they all assume they're the only one to have had it, so it's been a catfight on horseback. Still, the bank put a dimensional stop on your card, so they're all looking to get enough sponsor money for the trip home, and I think they've decided whoever ditches this place the fastest is the winner. Big flashyness, lots of show off, they're all working to boost your rep as hard as possible and that'll all signal boost you once they go and it consolidates. The pirate one is driving around robbing crime banks. The stretchy one punched the actual Devil, like, big man Satan, a couple of days ago and chased him into another world - those are some hella clips."

"Oh. My. God," Euna said to her in the most exasperated voice she had, "How did you even get to? I, like? What? Audna? Audna?! This is worse than that time my bank started sending me updates in Japanese because they thought my name was Yuna. Listen. Listen! Euna! Euna! Not Yuna, Eunha, Eung-ha, or Una! And definitely not Adila! And I'm sorry if you can't hear the difference but... {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}, why does this always happen? It's two syllables! It's not that h-- oh sorry, hold on a second."

She reaches a hand out and grabs those chains between her fingers, then crushes a link into a useless lump and snaps the lot with a hard turn of her wrist. Probably... probably should have done that first. She blushes.

"Sorry, I'm... I get this a lot. I don't have a lot, but I like my name the way it is, you know?"

Adila's apology is a confused blurt of overtly-complicated mental static, where she's trying to simultaneously apologize for offending you, explain that this is a speculation based on what is potentially centuries of linguistic drift and translation efforts, confess that she really likes your book, and try to figure out if she should start telling people her name is Euna II. It's a beachball of confusion to the cranium that's only cut short when Princess Kazelia gets in your face.

"Tell me about the portal," she says, staring intensely into your eyes for any hint of stars. This rapidly turns into slumping against you because she was no better at getting out of those chains than Adila was. "You're saying you came from another world without crossing the void? This could change everything! Tell me how it works! Any details! How many wizards did you need? Was it rune based, or did they channel the arcane energy from ley lines? Have you done this before? Are you experiencing any side effects? Do you feel eviler than you used to be, hollowed out in any way? And you have knowledge of this world too!? That must mean you have a way to scry between worlds! Was that a product of the portal energy, or is it a separate technology?"

[Pierce the Mask: 7. What are you really planning?]

{Scrubbed}he says placidly. "Arm goes through the bracer here. Look, I'm not upset with you for lying to me, but there's a reason that the stream isn't called the Brainstorm and Friends Power Hour. I'm the background in the stream."

Unlike @SARAHPHIM, super star, or Errant, Corporate Champion, or even Ferra, rising star riding(?) on Sara's coattails.

Brainstorm snarls under his breath. That's going to change.

"Point is, I acknowledge that I have a small. dedicated fanbase, but you aren't acting like a fan. You're not asking for an autograph, or a selfy. You're sitting here, lying to my face, and I'd much rather that I have an infiltration buddy I can trust."

"Alright, alright!" he's cringing back, raising his power-armoured hands shakily - holding them close to his neck as though he's afraid you'll start strangling him if he pushes you here. "I'm Ferraphim! From the stream! Look, I'm here for work, okay? I don't normally do this {Scrubbed}field ops james bond {Scrubbed} but I really need the payday and - like, I know I'm a different person on the internet, but it's fun and, y'know, and privacy is really important to me and also if I lose it I'm going to get murked by the {Scrubbed} Mouse -" he's definitely right that he's not cut out for field ops if this is how hard he cracks under pressure, "Look, the job is to figure out dirt on these Spiral Corps guys so the Johnson can blackmail 'em. They're a full scale army that just came out of nowhere right before this event which means that some corp is shovelling assets under the table and I need to find the who and why, but they're also hopped up on pumpkin gas and now I'm going to have to rely on my bluffing skills to get past a security station and now you know who I am and I'm in way over my head -"

This is threatening to turn into a bit of a panic attack.

Well that certainly takes the wind out of her sails.

There's surprise, sure, shock. Grief, for what she was. But she's not exactly angry, not at her death. She's been dying enough times that she is upset about it, but she can process it.

No, she's angry that nobody told her.

She had a sister. She has a niece. And her dad stuck her in a stasis pod and gives her short bits of conversation every time she dies, and nothing else.

She sits down by the monument and sets down the roomba, idly programming the monument area as the new room to clean for the moment. And she moves downward, this time. Inside of herself, as best she can. To a room with infinite reflections of herself, with the majority of the damage fixed.

"You coward!" She shouts to the sky.

The rage shakes through you in this hidden place; and as it does things come loose. Mirrors fall, paint flakes from the roof, walls crack to leak spirals of programming, doors fall from their hinges to show rooms insufficiently rendered. There are holes - there are holes everywhere. The entire edifice of your mind is profoundly, totally, incomplete. All the raw material is here but none of it fits together, nothing has been completed yet. There are portraits, photographs, articles, books, testaments to a million different possibilities for you and you feel like if you stepped into one you could pass through any of them and step into a different life...

But the only one here is the body you started with. Agendered, robotic, plain, simple... incomplete. Prototype. A pile of concepts stacked together, just like all the other half-finished projects in Doctor Gears' warehouse.

"I don't think this was how he imagined it going," it said with that smooth, toneless rhythm.

[Balmas]

"Alright, alright!" he's cringing back, raising his power-armoured hands shakily - holding them close to his neck as though he's afraid you'll start strangling him if he pushes you here. "I'm Ferraphim! From the stream! Look, I'm here for work, okay? I don't normally do this {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}" he's definitely right that he's not cut out for field ops if this is how hard he cracks under pressure, "Look, the job is to figure out dirt on these Spiral Corps guys so the Johnson can blackmail 'em. They're a full scale army that just came out of nowhere right before this event which means that some corp is shovelling assets under the table and I need to find the who and why, but they're also hopped up on pumpkin gas and now I'm going to have to rely on my bluffing skills to get past a security station and now you know who I am and I'm in way over my head -"

This is threatening to turn into a bit of a panic attack.

"So, Ferra's new look is quite something," Brainstorm spits out, and instantly regrets it. But he's already in it, so the only way out is forwards. "D'you think it'll affect her chances with Sara? It's so striking how she has the suggestion of motion, the sketchwork, that makes it look so instantly recognizable.

He's babbling. But he recognizes the first signs of a spiral, and the best way to cut it off is to misdirect it, disrupt it, so that the person gets knocked out of their anxiety loop.

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 4

Five minutes later, they’re watching those clips. It’s so weird watching someone made out of toon physics have a fight. It’s like, like if Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a documentary. Cel-shaded hammers shouldn’t be able to flatten somebody, especially if the swing lifts Phimmy off the ground completely, her little Mary Janes two feet in the air.

“Hey,” Sara says, as the end-of-video ad starts up, along with a picture-in-picture ad to sign up for Premium and watch ad-free every week. “Thanks, dude. I needed that.” What that is, is left unspoken. She lets that hang in the air, daring to hope it’ll just be, like, you know, whatever. Between friends. Kept mum.

Locker, will you tell anyone the truth about Sara?

[PhoeKun]

As an agent of AEGIS and even moreso as a Corporate Champion, Euna Kim has had to deal with a lot of weird and unpleasant sensations. Pretty much all of them are the result of outright attacks, though one or two Shogun shaped culprits may have balanced the scales a little in the past. But short of those mystically panic-inducing eyes (and possibly even including them), she's never encountered anything quite as debilitating as having a dragon rapid-think twelve jumbled thoughts into her head all at once. Not even Doctor Sylvanius' deep-concussing nerve gas hit this hard. She squints as if suddenly sensitive to light and even holds a hand up to her head to shield it against this onslaught until all of a sudden there's a new person in her face bombarding her with questions that are no less perplexing for being asked with a mouth.

Euna has always admired the way that Princess Kazelia keeps her eyes on the prize, even when every other person. She knows every part of the equally awesome and tragic backstory of the Rider Princess, who came to Hyperborea with all her wicked sisters and their absurdly terrible father King Oberon across the starry void to conquer and freeze this beautiful planet as they'd done to a dozen or more worlds before that. But Oberon had clashed with (they covered this all the way back in Episode 0, see, in the prologue embedded temporarily in the archive section of the online-only game Crystal Saga before the official show began) High Queen Ourania who rules the entire world from her throne on the massive stone World-Tree Argossa, and Oberon had lost that fight badly. So badly, in fact, there might never have been an invasion or any problems at all had it not been for the misguided kindness of one Alina Cascade, but focus please Euna there's too much lore to get lost down this rabbit hole right now. The point is that seeing her father's seeming aura of incredibly smug invincibility get cracked lit a spark of rebellion and hope in Kazelia, and ever since and by degrees she'd been trying to build up the land of the princesses and integrate herself into it rather than tear it down and use it for her own selfish wants.

She was the ideal redeemed villain, and it was a truly bold choice, Euna thought, to have her start from that position at the very beginning of the show. Her battle tactics were something Euna cross referenced when she was trying to make sure her plans were cool enough, and her interactions with all of the different Rider characters were electric. But Euna liked her best when she slipped from that impossibly perfect intellectualism into trying to figure out how to enjoy basic things. There was a... wholesomeness to watching Kazelia you didn't really get from any other princess. And that made it hard to doubt the sincerity of her redemption, which in turn became a key touchstone for Euna's professional life because it showed her, on screen if nowhere else, that people with badass armies and personal battalions and flying crystal horses could still care about the people she had ever reason to think her lessers. It was a good reminder for how Euna herself wanted to act, and a reminder that some of the darkest sorts of villains had good people floating around inside them.

Cartoons weren't reality. She knew that! Or... she did know that, anyway. Now Euna was here, looking at her heroes, spiritual guides, and hopes for her future right in their faces which were every bit as real as hers was, and suddenly she wasn't sure what she knew anymore. It was really all too much to handle; a fresh surge of adrenaline spikes through her system and carries the threat of panic tears back to her honey-brown, not-at-all-starry eyes. She's taken with the urge to spill every detail she knows, all at once in an almost Adila-esque fashion in the hopes that her world and Hyperborea could be more solidly linked if only more people knew about portal technology. That she'd never have to go back to thinking this place and all of its beautiful people were just a clever batch of digital drawings. That maybe, maybe, maybe she wouldn't even have to...

...She sighs. Then she snaps Kazelia's ropes with a quick swipe of her hand and frees the last of the captured princesses. She stares at Kazelia straight in those eyes that are no longer so much of a starry void to make her seem completely alien, but just distant enough to remind her what sorts of stuff was waiting out here. And she knows before she says a word exactly what Kazelia herself would urge Euna to do if she only knew the stakes as well as AEGIS did.

"I'm sorry," she says, fighting to find any kind of calm or coolness that'd make her seem likable in the face of all this... other stuff she's been doing, "I'm not authorized to share those sorts of secrets with anybody. It's against my world's rules. Normally we, uh, restrict ourselves to observation only (sure), but this is an out-and-out emergency. I wouldn't be here at all right now except that we screwed up enough to let a dangerous trans-dimensional entity into your world in the first place which by total{Scrubbed}coincidence I happen to be the only member of AEGIS equipped to actually be able to track down and handle. And I would really, really love you guys' help in handling that, please please please say you will, but... y'know, when that's finished and I'm gone, that's the last you can know about these portals. It's, like, we can't let you lot go poking around where you don't belong either. Not to mention what the Megas would do here if... yeah, look, you get it, right? I'm sorry if that sounds fishy, but I really did come here without touching the void and I'm really completely fine if I didn't suddenly have a headache and I can't tell you anything about how I did that or else I'm going to have to wipe your memory, and I really... don't want to do that. So please don't make me."

[Thanqol]

POTENTIAL 4

Five minutes later, they’re watching those clips. It’s so weird watching someone made out of toon physics have a fight. It’s like, like if Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a documentary. Cel-shaded hammers shouldn’t be able to flatten somebody, especially if the swing lifts Phimmy off the ground completely, her little Mary Janes two feet in the air.

“Hey,” Sara says, as the end-of-video ad starts up, along with a picture-in-picture ad to sign up for Premium and watch ad-free every week. “Thanks, dude. I needed that.” What that is, is left unspoken. She lets that hang in the air, daring to hope it’ll just be, like, you know, whatever. Between friends. Kept mum.

Locker, will you tell anyone the truth about Sara?

"It's cool," said Locker. He answers the unspoken question with the same background silence that he's used to cover for you for years. You think he couldn't have made a quick buck doing a tell-all to the gossip mags? You don't think that kind of money wouldn't be tempting to a guy who supplements his income with bottle deposits? He's like a hole in the world, you can pour anything you want into him and it won't change the tone or texture of his uncapitalised internet arguments.

He's been watching your back since you were first assigned as partners. He has more reason than anyone to be jealous or bitter. Ain't nobody in the world who's carried as much weight for you. If you can't trust him trust doesn't exist.

"I'm sorry," she says, fighting to find any kind of calm or coolness that'd make her seem likable in the face of all this... other stuff she's been doing, "I'm not authorized to share those sorts of secrets with anybody. It's against my world's rules. Normally we, uh, restrict ourselves to observation only (sure), but this is an out-and-out emergency. I wouldn't be here at all right now except that we screwed up enough to let a dangerous trans-dimensional entity into your world in the first place which by total{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}coincidence I happen to be the only member of AEGIS equipped to actually be able to track down and handle. And I would really, really love you guys' help in handling that, please please please say you will, but... y'know, when that's finished and I'm gone, that's the last you can know about these portals. It's, like, we can't let you lot go poking around where you don't belong either. Not to mention what the Megas would do here if... yeah, look, you get it, right? I'm sorry if that sounds fishy, but I really did come here without touching the void and I'm really completely fine if I didn't suddenly have a headache and I can't tell you anything about how I did that or else I'm going to have to wipe your memory, and I really... don't want to do that. So please don't make me."

The princesses look at each other. It's a meaningful look, the look of a team sharing an unspoken observation and secret - undermined only slightly by the fact that you can distinctly hear Adila thinking +She's in trouble, we should help her+.

"Please don't be so concerned, Princess Euna," said Princess Alina, and isn't it nice to hear her call you that? "Even if nothing else you have rescued us from a grave peril and the least we could do to repay you is assist you on your mission."

"And you're probably right to be cautious," said Princess Kazelia, nudging the broken chains with her foot. "You're stronger than Adila, faster than Alina, and know more about magic than I do. Your world must be very dangerous."

+You said that you're part of, like, a super Watch?+ thought Adila. +Can I join? If I do good in this mission can you teach me to do what you can do?+

"Baa," said the sheep. Its friends agreed. About thirty of them have made their way from the ruins of Asteria's camp to nuzzle against you and - oh wow, you've never seen a real sheep before in person, but now they're surrounding you and bleating gratefully and those ones are carrying a fully adorned four-poster bed over to you and being a superhero has never been so cuddly.

[Princess Kazelia wants to shift your Danger up and Mundane down, accept what she says or reject her influence]

"So, Ferra's new look is quite something," Brainstorm spits out, and instantly regrets it. But he's already in it, so the only way out is forwards. "D'you think it'll affect her chances with Sara? It's so striking how she has the suggestion of motion, the sketchwork, that makes it look so instantly recognizable.

He's babbling. But he recognizes the first signs of a spiral, and the best way to cut it off is to misdirect it, disrupt it, so that the person gets knocked out of their anxiety loop.

"Oh yeah, it's all about those heels, you know?" said Ferraphim, still high tension - perhaps aware of what you're doing but trying to lean into it. "It's like she's made out of knives - there's so much danger to her I don't know how to think about it. I don't think @Sarahphim's going to go for it, I mean, that'd be like dating a Comstar and I only see that working as some kind of hate dom thing. It's just startling to think about that journey, though, starting off as kind of a nothing and going all the way into something with that much edge -" his voice has actually started to steady a lot based on that sentence. "- and she took to it so naturally. Yeah. If she can handle that pressure and become that dangerous then anyone can step up in the right situation."

[Ferraphim1tp is telling you how the world works; shift danger up and mundane down or reject his influence]

[Eldest]

The rage shakes through you in this hidden place; and as it does things come loose. Mirrors fall, paint flakes from the roof, walls crack to leak spirals of programming, doors fall from their hinges to show rooms insufficiently rendered. There are holes - there are holes everywhere. The entire edifice of your mind is profoundly, totally, incomplete. All the raw material is here but none of it fits together, nothing has been completed yet. There are portraits, photographs, articles, books, testaments to a million different possibilities for you and you feel like if you stepped into one you could pass through any of them and step into a different life...

But the only one here is the body you started with. Agendered, robotic, plain, simple... incomplete. Prototype. A pile of concepts stacked together, just like all the other half-finished projects in Doctor Gears' warehouse.

"I don't think this was how he imagined it going," it said with that smooth, toneless rhythm.

"You don't think? He left me unfinished! The mousetrap was more thorough than this. Sure, I have a hell of a better trick than the mousetrap, but how much of this" she gestures at the everything "was designed, and how much was emergent from what he did make? What part of me is you, and what part of me is from me, growing? What did he expect? Or did he just throw an idea together and then freak out and hide it like everything else in the archives?" She doesn't know how much of this is frustration, how much of it is Comstar's push, and how much is just raw hurt, and it's all she can do not to flee down one of those doors. Run away from it all. But she will not, she's a hero, and heroes face down the terrible truths and make them right.

Her father was imperfect. And she wanted to, at the very least, figure out how she felt about that.

[Thanqol]

"You don't think? He left me unfinished! The mousetrap was more thorough than this. Sure, I have a hell of a better trick than the mousetrap, but how much of this" she gestures at the everything "was designed, and how much was emergent from what he did make? What part of me is you, and what part of me is from me, growing? What did he expect? Or did he just throw an idea together and then freak out and hide it like everything else in the archives?" She doesn't know how much of this is frustration, how much of it is Comstar's push, and how much is just raw hurt, and it's all she can do not to flee down one of those doors. Run away from it all. But she will not, she's a hero, and heroes face down the terrible truths and make them right.

Her father was imperfect. And she wanted to, at the very least, figure out how she felt about that.

"Do you really want to know?" said 1.0 passively, heartlessly. "If everything that happened was according to design, what would you do? What if everything was pure accident and coincidence? Perhaps this is all according to a master plan or perhaps it's all the half-finished wreckage of a man killed before he could complete his life's work."

"The question is not rhetorical. He has been dead for decades. There are no answers to be had. You must determine what motives you wish to project upon him."

[PhoeKun]

...Princess Euna.

Princess Euna!

Princess. Euna.

It's a cliche, for sure, but don't you dare underestimate the effect hearing something like that can have on a person. Especially a person who spent her childhood answering to 'Eunacorn'. It's how you take a girl whose three modes are 'training', 'on mission', and 'binge watching, do not disturb' and make her dream of wearing beautiful, flattering clothes in all manner of styles. It's how you make a lonely girl with metal arms and legs, armored plates under her skin, and surgical and combat scars all up and down her back and stomach, and make her feel pretty and worthwhile. It's one word. It's a word she said to use, even! And still it's enough to make a soldier feel like she doesn't need to shrink under the light of other, brighter stars. If she could just... if someone would only... was Sara really?

The thought is interrupted by a swarm of cuddly sheep, which her hand reports are warmer than an AEGIS towel left sitting under one of the sun-imitating-warming lamps, and softer than even Nobunaga's partially non-synthetic clothing. It's incredible. She'd have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this, maybe even upwards of a full million for the full vacation she definitely wouldn't have the days off for even if she did suddenly hit a jackpot somewhere, and even then it'd probably pale in comparison to this. Which is just sort of happening! Like, what? What even? This place!

...Actually it's weird. It's like the world itself feels naive to her. Soft enemies, soft allies, soft sheep. None of it even knows to be afraid of her. Is that really how it is? Is the magical world with dragons and laser princesses beset by an evil overlord from beyond the stars really not as weird or dangerous as the street she walks down to buy coffee? Well it... I mean, that is, if you ignore the fact that there's an average of three armed robberies a week nearby (it's artificially low because of the proximity of AEGIS HQ), the mafia crime bosses with state of the art battlemechs that can crush her limbs without trying, the psychic superhackers, the corporations flinging billion dollar cyberwarriors at problems they made because they were bored, and oh yeah the multiple missiles launched at her home on a daily basis from a base somewhere on fucking Mars... ignore all of those things (and the fact that on her own team she's ranked 4th out of 4 on the Villain Turn Threat Assessment Power Rankings) and yeah. Hyperborea is muuuuuch more dangerous than home. But she doesn't mention any of this. Doesn't even hint at it. How can she? It'd break these poor princess' hearts to find out the truth.

"I owe you for this," she says with a smile and a laugh, "I really do. This halfassed rescue doesn't come close. Before I leave here, I promise I'll do whatever it takes to pay you back properly. I'll even... well, anyway. Shouldn't waste time. Protocol on mission states that... uh. I mean. If Your Highnesses are ok already? We could rest first or eat something if you need to. I'm not sure what your after-- oh my god, um! Princess Adila! Here's the first part of your official AEGIS Entrance Examination: say you're tracking an invasive demon lord by the name of {Scrubbed} into an unknown environment. All you know is that he sometimes turns the ground where he's been into flaming pits with decrepit bridges hanging over them. What is the best and most efficient way to track him?"

[Princess Euna accepts the shift]

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 0
+1 MUNDANE, STAT SCRAMBLE

There is one hell of a view from up here. Sara lets her legs dangle and watches the ten thousand lights of traffic go by, yellow and red, yellow and red, great rivers of light snaking between the skyscrapers. Everything‘s light. This whole world runs neon and electric and bright, and that’s what she plugged into herself. That’s how she made herself an angel. That’s how she made herself free.

This is later. If you haven’t guessed. It’s night, and the smog’s out, and empty beer cans are lying in little heaps by their sides. An errant gust of wind might blow her off into empty space, but there’s nothing scheduled for tonight, and besides. Locker’s there. He’s cool.

“But the thing is, right, she, she kissed me first.” Her cheeks are glowing. She is being Loud. Not the dramatic, hammy loud of showing off, but the Loud of “my brain has shut off Volume Control dot exe.” She makes a stabby gesture with her can, sloshing a little out. By the time it hits a window on its way down, it might as well be a little bit of rain. “I don’t get why she’s so two-faced. Oh, Sara, I want you so much I’m gonna be unprofessional about it! Oh, Sara, now that you’re actually ready for a relationship, I don’t want you anymore! Bleh!” Sara sticks out her tongue, pretending to be an ungrateful Euna. “And it’s not— it’s not what you thinking— because I? Made her siiiiii~iing. So, like. Was it just... did she like @SARAHPHIM, not me? Or what even the {Scrubbed} What did I do, Lockie? What did I do wrong?”

Oh, no. Oh noooo. Now we’re at the drunk sniffles and tearing up.

“She’s such a dork! And she likes these dumb princess cartoons, and she has a total stick—“ Pause for undignified digestive system reboot noises. “Stick up the you-know-what {Scrubbed}, and... she’s the most real person in the whole world.”

The tears are just coming out hot and free, and her face feels like it’s burning up. Heat on heat, like lights left on all night.

“Maybe that’s why. Cause... she realized I’m not real.”

[Balmas]

"Oh yeah, it's all about those heels, you know?" said Ferraphim, still high tension - perhaps aware of what you're doing but trying to lean into it. "It's like she's made out of knives - there's so much danger to her I don't know how to think about it. I don't think @Sarahphim's going to go for it, I mean, that'd be like dating a Comstar and I only see that working as some kind of hate dom thing. It's just startling to think about that journey, though, starting off as kind of a nothing and going all the way into something with that much edge -" his voice has actually started to steady a lot based on that sentence. "- and she took to it so naturally. Yeah. If she can handle that pressure and become that dangerous then anyone can step up in the right situation."

[Ferraphim1tp is telling you how the world works; shift danger up and mundane down or reject his influence]

[Accept the shift.]

"Exactly," Victor breathes. Mission success. "See, if she can come from that to being so dangerous, then infiltrating the Mouse is gonna be a piece of cake. Now put on the helmet, and let's go. We need to get out of this dead zone before someone gets suspicious."

So. How does a guard in a security convention approach the gate? Business-like, that's the ticket. He's a guard. He belongs here. This is his joint. How dare these people think that they can stop him? Scan the crowd, like a guard would. Try not to think about pumpkin gas. Swagger up, talk of the town, straight towards the field, no hesitation, and trust--hope?--that the suit will get him through.

[Thanqol]

POTENTIAL 0
+1 MUNDANE, STAT SCRAMBLE

There is one hell of a view from up here. Sara lets her legs dangle and watches the ten thousand lights of traffic go by, yellow and red, yellow and red, great rivers of light snaking between the skyscrapers. Everything‘s light. This whole world runs neon and electric and bright, and that’s what she plugged into herself. That’s how she made herself an angel. That’s how she made herself free.

This is later. If you haven’t guessed. It’s night, and the smog’s out, and empty beer cans are lying in little heaps by their sides. An errant gust of wind might blow her off into empty space, but there’s nothing scheduled for tonight, and besides. Locker’s there. He’s cool.

“But the thing is, right, she, she kissed me first.” Her cheeks are glowing. She is being Loud. Not the dramatic, hammy loud of showing off, but the Loud of “my brain has shut off Volume Control dot exe.” She makes a stabby gesture with her can, sloshing a little out. By the time it hits a window on its way down, it might as well be a little bit of rain. “I don’t get why she’s so two-faced. Oh, Sara, I want you so much I’m gonna be unprofessional about it! Oh, Sara, now that you’re actually ready for a relationship, I don’t want you anymore! Bleh!” Sara sticks out her tongue, pretending to be an ungrateful Euna. “And it’s not— it’s not what you thinking— because I? Made her siiiiii~iing. So, like. Was it just... did she like @SARAHPHIM, not me? Or what even the{Scrubbed} What did I do, Lockie? What did I do wrong?”

Oh, no. Oh noooo. Now we’re at the drunk sniffles and tearing up.

“She’s such a dork! And she likes these dumb princess cartoons, and she has a total stick—“ Pause for undignified digestive system reboot noises. “Stick up the you-know-what badonkadonk, and... she’s the most real person in the whole world.”

The tears are just coming out hot and free, and her face feels like it’s burning up. Heat on heat, like lights left on all night.

“Maybe that’s why. Cause... she realized I’m not real.”

"You're not thinking about this logically," said Locker with the red-cheeked, narrow minded focus of a drunk person trying to get out an important concept. "It's a puzzle. It's a code. She said 'you don't get to hurt me again', or something. Right? So what was she referring to? What's the secret meaning?"

This is, perhaps, an overtly dramatic way of phrasing that particular question, but there's the right kind of heart behind it.

"I owe you for this," she says with a smile and a laugh, "I really do. This halfassed rescue doesn't come close. Before I leave here, I promise I'll do whatever it takes to pay you back properly. I'll even... well, anyway. Shouldn't waste time. Protocol on mission states that... uh. I mean. If Your Highnesses are ok already? We could rest first or eat something if you need to. I'm not sure what your after-- oh my god, um! Princess Adila! Here's the first part of your official AEGIS Entrance Examination: say you're tracking an invasive demon lord by the name of Lucifer Morningstar into an unknown environment. All you know is that he sometimes turns the ground where he's been into flaming pits with decrepit bridges hanging over them. What is the best and most efficient way to track him?"

[Princess Euna accepts the shift]

Princess Adila looks like she's been waiting for her entire life for someone to ask her that question.

+First step is to collate all information regarding the target and his allies,+ she thought in the delighted tone of someone getting to talk about their interests. +Determining any relationships or accomplices in advance is critical. Ordinarily I would dispatch Detective Brill to investigate, but the situation prevents me from accessing important tactical gossip so I'll need to improvise - in this situation I'd observe the target closely for rings, necklaces, tattoos, hickies, or tokens of affection that are out of sync with his overall look that might indicate he has a girlfriend on the outside ready to rescue him, and perhaps provide clues to the nature of his allies.+

There's actually kind of something to that. Adila's crime fighting strategies are designed for a much softer world than yours, but they're oftentimes really thoughtful and educational. Her tactics feel very... normal. Even AEGIS-like. I mean that sort of makes sense given that she's written by an AEGIS controlled studio but that's weird to think about when she's saying those things in person.

+I'd perform this observation from the air. At nighttime, or through cloud or fog cover if available. It is somewhat predictable that I would do so, but it's a unique capability and I have to guess that the target being new doesn't know my operating loop well enough to plan a counter. If he is using fire magic I should be able to spot him from far off, otherwise I'll systematically land in local communities and build up a network of informants in between regular returns to the sky.+

[Princess Adila is shifting your Soldier up and Freak down. Accept her words or reject her influence.]

[Accept the shift.]

"Exactly," Victor breathes. Mission success. "See, if she can come from that to being so dangerous, then infiltrating the Mouse is gonna be a piece of cake. Now put on the helmet, and let's go. We need to get out of this dead zone before someone gets suspicious."

So. How does a guard in a security convention approach the gate? Business-like, that's the ticket. He's a guard. He belongs here. This is his joint. How dare these people think that they can stop him? Scan the crowd, like a guard would. Try not to think about pumpkin gas. Swagger up, talk of the town, straight towards the field, no hesitation, and trust--hope?--that the suit will get him through.

What's kind of creepy is that it does. The guards at the checkpoint don't wave - they don't say 'hi', or 'how you doing', or any sort of co-worker small talk. You start pushing through the slow timeslump of the Disruption Field and people look at their machines but they don't look at you. It makes ingress real easy but it's definitely super creepy.

What's even more super creepy is the server room. Everyone in here is wearing power armour, that's weird enough - this stuff is cheap but it's not that cheap. Secondly you've got like eight people in here. Two people are watching the cameras and the rest are just kind of... standing around. Staring blankly at walls, at each other, like somebody threw a bunch of robots into a closet. Their sight lines are pretty comprehensive and there isn't really an opportunity to sneak around them but they don't seem to be responding.

Finally, one of them is sitting cross-legged in mid air, levitating like two feet off the ground in a lotus pose, faint purple light glowing from the inside of his armour's eye lenses. Also creepy.

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 0

“How am I supposed to know? I’m the one who got hurt! It was hell, leaving her. I just wanted to be with her all night, but... but then it might leak, and...”

Her voice trails off. That’s still raw to think about. How close everything came to disaster. How she had to push down her own wants and hopes. How she tried to follow them anyway, and ended up here.

...here, without Euna.

Euna Kim, the backbone of the team. Stuffy, formal, way too much responsibility for her age Euna. Euna, always there to make the save. To stop her from dying on the moon. To stop both Comstars at once. To stand firm, her limbs shining, and be the knight this world needed but didn’t deserve.

The knight Sara needed, but...

Come on, Euna. What’s your game? What do you want? Sara stares sightlessly out at those ten thousand lights, but what she sees is you. Your dumb dork face, screwed up in concentration as you try to solve the AEGIS Problem of the Day, gleeful in your victory on the race track, filled with terror and longing as you pulled her back to earth.

What could Sara possibly do to bring back your dumb gross nerd smile? Because if she doesn’t, she’ll snap like a toothpick.

[That’s a 7 on Piercing the Mask. So, what does Euna want from Sara? Feel free to angle this towards “what gestures from Sara does Euna always show appreciation for.”]

[Balmas]

What's kind of creepy is that it does. The guards at the checkpoint don't wave - they don't say 'hi', or 'how you doing', or any sort of co-worker small talk. You start pushing through the slow timeslump of the Disruption Field and people look at their machines but they don't look at you. It makes ingress real easy but it's definitely super creepy.

What's even more super creepy is the server room. Everyone in here is wearing power armour, that's weird enough - this stuff is cheap but it's not that cheap. Secondly you've got like eight people in here. Two people are watching the cameras and the rest are just kind of... standing around. Staring blankly at walls, at each other, like somebody threw a bunch of robots into a closet. Their sight lines are pretty comprehensive and there isn't really an opportunity to sneak around them but they don't seem to be responding.

Finally, one of them is sitting cross-legged in mid air, levitating like two feet off the ground in a lotus pose, faint purple light glowing from the inside of his armour's eye lenses. Also creepy.

Okay, first off, weird. And keep in mind, that's coming from the guy whose response to being paralyzed was to build limbs out of what amounts to sentient sand instead of picking limbs off a shelf at Cyborgs-R-Us.

Second off, you see that guy in the center with the the glowing eyes? These are the Borg, and he's the queen.

That's why everyone's in the power armor, and why the pumpkin gas, and why the suits seem so cheaply made. If you put everyone in a suit and juice everyone with--with what, some kind of susceptibility gas?--the guy in purple can manage to run the whole shebang from the center. And it all looks precise, military, expensive, all the hallmarks of "this is a security detail that you should hire." Oh, the thrill of discovery is a high he'll never tire of.

Briefly, his conscience twinges at the realization that the two corporate mooks may not have been corporate, and definitely didn't deserve the horrors of being strangled from inside.

More importantly, and third off, everything's gonna go to shit the very instant that Queen Psychic over there recognizes that there are two ants that aren't responding to his control. And suddenly it seems like a much worse idea to put on a helmet that could start pumping nerve gas at any second.

So. Eight mooks. Queen Psychic. That's. Yeah, that's cake. Perfect. Fine. Not a problem. All he needs to do is figure out a way to hijack the Queen Psychic's signal, or maybe hijack his perceptions, and this'll be fiiiiine.

Keep saying that, Victor, and maybe you'll even believe it.

[Assess the situation: 13. What can I use here to take over Queen Psychic's control of the power armored goons? How could we best end this quickly?]

[PhoeKun]

To begin with, Euna has no idea how she got up here. Nobody ever rides Adila. It never happens! Never! And all she'd done was smile a little and say, "Well reasoned" and follow up with a throwaway line about wanting to start checking the skies right here to establish her bearings, and the next thing she knew she was being scooped up onto a dragon's back and shooting up into the air like a missile with great big fluted wings, that was actually extremely bumpy and unstable and ok not really like a missile at all.

She's never flown like this before. Modern aircraft tend not even to have actual windshields if they can help it, what with the constant threat of acid rain and all, so not only are you in a fully temperature controlled, dynamically stabilized environment where there's no sense of motion, something like 90% of the time you aren't even seeing the real world pass beneath you. There's high flying scout jets, she supposes, if you wanna get technical, but a Field Agent never gets to fly things like that when city-specific transport fills her needs much better, and even then you'd mostly be staring at the tops of clouds anyway so it's not... not like this. Feeling the power of another living being underneath you. Having your hair whipped around by the wind. Taking deep breaths and feeling so alive and--

She coughs.

"Hey so, I meant what I said down there, but um," she halts when Adila cranes her neck to look at her and she's forced to stare directly into those luminous pools of gold, "There's a couple of points where your approach is left-of-target. AEGIS doesn't do the same kind of work as the Watch; we're not up against princesses just trying to subdue us and get away. Targets nearly always... it's just... it's dangerous, ok? If you saw what I used to look like before I started this work, you'd understand. So here's your free lesson from a fellow professional: make better use of your team. Gathering intel is important, and you're one hundred percent right to want to use your natural advantages, but what happens when you expose yourself? Keep your team closer than that. Trust... your friends, you know? The further you fly trying to play hero ball, the more likely it is that you lose them forever. Or they lose you. A proper support structure is more important than being strong or clever. Odds are, you're weaker than your opponent."

[Rejecting Influence: 8 Clearing Afraid (finally) by acting to prove Adila wrong, by way of a 'friendship is more important than tactical acumen' speech]

She grimaces as a wave of disappointment gets pushed through her skull. She tilts her head to one side and purses her lips while she thinks for a moment, before breaking into a grin and reaching into one of her uniform's many, many pockets. She pulls out her visor and clicks it into place over her eyes. Truth be told, she'd been hoping not to touch these things on this trip for fear of what looking at the reality of a weird cartoon universe might do to her brain, but the value is higher than the risk, and for some reason it's easier to be cavalier about these things when there's free access to healing magic about. Besides, preserving Princess Adila's feelings (erm, morale! Morale is what she meant) was important, too.

"Hey don't worry about it. Come on, let's play a game while we're on the way back down to the other Princesses. My eyes against yours: who can spot the most case-relevant details before we hit the ground? It'd be pretty embarrassing to lose to a human, wouldn't it? Show me what you can really do!"

And that's when--

[Unleash Your Powers: 6. Potential: 3]
********************

PRINCESS CHAMPIONS OF HYPERBOREA WILL RETURN AFTER THIS BRIEF MESSAGE

Darkness.

Or, maybe not darkness so much as the absence of anything to see. Normally when it's dark if you strain your eyes you can still make out some vague outline or another, but this is just inky black stretching on forever without end or--

"Oh god damn it, not again!"

There's a clicking sound. The protective screen slides off of the camera lens on her computer screen, and a spartan, dimly lit bedroom decorated by a plethora of random movie memorabilia scattered across the floor comes into focus. The figure of Euna Kim hurries back across the room and sits down in the chair that's already waiting in center-frame. She's wearing a pair of black yoga pants that stretch all the way up past her waist, a weird rainbowy-beaded bracelet on her left wrist, and an extremely pastel pink t-shirt that's been cut off just beneath the chest that sports a black stencil outline of the head of a horse flanked by wings that spread all the way up to her shoulders. Which is weird, because for one thing isn't that, like, way too girly for how she normally presents herself? And for another, as far as anyone is aware, does Euna actually, like... own a real shirt? Also weird, her hair is an unkempt mess that gives off the impression she just rolled out of bed; bits of it stick out every which way.

She leans forward in her chair and clasps her hands under her nose. The intensity in her eyes as she sits there in silence is Very Extremely Errant. Finally, she shakes her head and reaches for a remote. The screen clicks off.

The screen clicks back on. It can't have been more than a few seconds since the last set of images: nothing on the floor has moved, and she's wearing the same outfit, though she's switched to sitting straight up with her hands folded on her lap while her feet tap out a rhythm on the floor. She's frowning with that stupid expression she gets when she's contemplating a thought too large for her stupid dork brain. Finally, she sighs.

"Private log, Euna Kim. The current time is... son of a {Scrubbed}, really? 0315 hours. Well, so much for sleeping. I have... just been informed by HQ of an incident in our animation studio that requires my intervention. I haven't been briefed just yet, so I don't know any of the details, but I haven't been asked to assemble the team or anything so I assume they're looking for me to fly solo on this one. I... on a personal note, I can't really imagine what they'd even want me for. But the directive comes from the Commander himself, so I guess it's serious. And then right after, Nobuna-- I mean, um. H-Her Excellency The Shogun advised me to record something and... {Scrubbed}"

She shifts her weight on the chair again and starts busying about with her hair. Somebody should really get around to teaching her how brushes work.

"Sara, it's me. For some reason people think I'm gonna die or disappear or whatever, and if that happens I, uh. Look, just shut up for a second, I just wanna... say I'm sorry, ok? I don't want the last thing you heard me say to be 'eff off'. So there, I said it. I just... man, I don't think there's another person anywhere I get this twisted up about. You have this, this way of getting under my skin, and then once you're in there I can't figure out if I want to strangle you or pin you down on a bed and--"

Euna goes as pink as her shirt, and slams her fist down on the chair. Predictably it shatters, and the next minute of footage is nothing but an unrelenting string of curses. When she finally pulls herself back together, Euna sits down on the floor with her legs folded underneath themselves. She glances repeatedly to her monitor to check she's in frame the way she wants.

"Do you remember... that time, in the rain? I was standing there like an immature brat just falling to pieces and you stormed out to find me like a goddess, and you ripped through that shield and let it drench you just as much as me, and I, I, you know? When it happened, I thought, 'There it is! She's real, and she cares so much and I want to protect her forever.' And... that was the only time you've ever been like that when the cameras are on. When I thought I could see past @SARAHPHIM and just touch Sara. I just, you know, wish there were more memories like that. I loved it when you'd invite me over to play games, that time you let me sneak you into a movie theater, arguing with you about music. I wish our relationship was more of that and not just stupid posturing{Scrubbed}

A sniffle cuts her off. Euna wipes a series of frustrated tears out of her eyes, and growls when more immediately well up to take their place.

"Just, god damn it Sara. I gave you everything that night. I risked my {Scrubbed} job for you. I've got people trying to infect my limbs with viruses over you! I loved you as hard as I knew how, and y-you, and you... how is it everybody, god damn everybody seems to know about it, too? What did you do, Sara? And then you start acting all normal again and, stupid me, I even get my hopes up, right before you use me to bump up your stream numbers because I had to take out another dangerous criminal by myself while you were busy posturing with your clones! And it's so stupid! Because even now I want to trust you, you idiot! You were my first! You're my only! What am I supposed to do with that?! What am I supposed to... look. I'm really sorry, ok? But I can't keep doing this. I wish... I wish I thought you loved me, like I love you. I keep having these dreams where you come up to me and say, 'Hey, let's go somewhere quiet and just talk for a while, yeah?' and we do and I wind up kissing you again and it's amazing... but it's never gonna be like that, is it?

That's why I'm... that's why I'm here, right now. I just wanted you to know how I felt before, you know, the end. If I come back from this mission I, I'm planning on... o-o-on req-questing a transfer to another city. Someone's gonna get killed if we can't stop this. So. Um. This is. Yeah. Goodbye, Sara. I hope you never see this."

********************

WE NOW RETURN TO PRINCESS CHAMPIONS OF HYPERBOREA!

[Eldest]

"Do you really want to know?" said 1.0 passively, heartlessly. "If everything that happened was according to design, what would you do? What if everything was pure accident and coincidence? Perhaps this is all according to a master plan or perhaps it's all the half-finished wreckage of a man killed before he could complete his life's work."

"The question is not rhetorical. He has been dead for decades. There are no answers to be had. You must determine what motives you wish to project upon him."

She takes a deep breath to keep her rant going. She's angry, she wants to, and yet... with these many lives unlived... none of them were picked. And it wasn't Dr. Gear's job to pick that. She's a person.

"You leave things undone when you die." She says that as if she knew that, but didn't grasp it until now. An understanding of the rules everyone but her plays by. "He didn't plan for this. Or he planned, desperately, and didn't get to do it but it doesn't matter, does it? It's all just... a mess, now isn't it? And I'm just reacting like he failed me, but I don't think he did now. Or I don't think it matters, because what I am is so far beyond the scope of what he could plan for." The words are pouring out, insecurity being hammered into hard-edged purpose. "Idra. She has the right to be upset. But I'm not her. And while what happened to her was not her fault, or Dr. Gear's fault, it's my responsibility to do better."

It feels good. Less like with Halfwoman, less hesitant and unsure. She's got an idea. She has somebody to be.

8 to reject "always go BIGGER" and replace it with "Always look to improve"

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 0

This is why you make your dramatic "if I don't come back" timers longer than 24 hours, Euna. This is why. Because then, Locker and Sara wouldn't be fighting right now. It's all your fault that Sara's flailing at Locker like a drowning swimmer. Just because the manual says 24 hours doesn't mean that's what you have to do exactly! Except it does, doesn't it? You have to do it by the book.

"Give me the keys!"
"You are not driving."
"give me my goddamn keys"

It's a real shame you're not here to see this. Sara's face is 100% tear and snot and running mascara and she is climbing Locker like a rock wall to try to get the car keys he's vainly trying to keep out of her reach. She hardly ever uses the car. She did some commercials with it and pays for its parking space and uses it as a status symbol, but she doesn't drive it. She's not actually good at driving. But she's super not caring about something like that.

Euna has gone on a top-secret mission and has vanished and if she's not captured or worse she's going to leave anyway and Sara's never going to see her again and the only way that Sara can stop it is by going and saving her and kissing her and then asking her if she wants to hang out and talk and then kissing her some more and that's if she's not if she's not if she's not if she's not if she's not

Locker trips on the rug and lands on his ass, hard. Sara dives on top of him with a tigress screech and grabs the keys. Her yowl of victory is short-lived, as Locker manages to catch her ankle as she tries to go for the door.

"No! No! I have to go save Euna!"
"You are drunk as hell!"
"I'm fine! Right as a whistle! Shut up!"

Eventually, several hisses and scratches later, Locker manages to toss the keys out the window. And Sara, vaguely aware that diving after them would be a stupid idea, tears out the door anyway. If Locker won't let her drive, she's gonna run to AEGIS and bang on the doors (confusing the hell out of the night staff) until they tell her where they sent Euna. And then, and then she's gonna get her to not go. Not to leave the team. Not to leave her. Come on, Euna. You're the only part of this whole AEGIS thing that's worth anything. Don't leave. Please.

[Thanqol]

POTENTIAL 0

This is why you make your dramatic "if I don't come back" timers longer than 24 hours, Euna. This is why. Because then, Locker and Sara wouldn't be fighting right now. It's all your fault that Sara's flailing at Locker like a drowning swimmer. Just because the manual says 24 hours doesn't mean that's what you have to do exactly! Except it does, doesn't it? You have to do it by the book.

"Give me the keys!"
"You are not driving."
"give me my goddamn keys"

It's a real shame you're not here to see this. Sara's face is 100% tear and snot and running mascara and she is climbing Locker like a rock wall to try to get the car keys he's vainly trying to keep out of her reach. She hardly ever uses the car. She did some commercials with it and pays for its parking space and uses it as a status symbol, but she doesn't drive it. She's not actually good at driving. But she's super not caring about something like that.

Euna has gone on a top-secret mission and has vanished and if she's not captured or worse she's going to leave anyway and Sara's never going to see her again and the only way that Sara can stop it is by going and saving her and kissing her and then asking her if she wants to hang out and talk and then kissing her some more and that's if she's not if she's not if she's not if she's not if she's not

Locker trips on the rug and lands on his ass, hard. Sara dives on top of him with a tigress screech and grabs the keys. Her yowl of victory is short-lived, as Locker manages to catch her ankle as she tries to go for the door.

"No! No! I have to go save Euna!"
"You are drunk as hell!"
"I'm fine! Right as a whistle! Shut up!"

Eventually, several hisses and scratches later, Locker manages to toss the keys out the window. And Sara, vaguely aware that diving after them would be a stupid idea, tears out the door anyway. If Locker won't let her drive, she's gonna run to AEGIS and bang on the doors (confusing the hell out of the night staff) until they tell her where they sent Euna. And then, and then she's gonna get her to not go. Not to leave the team. Not to leave her. Come on, Euna. You're the only part of this whole AEGIS thing that's worth anything. Don't leave. Please.

You are in good shape, @Sarahphim. You are the kind of person who has to answer questions from reporters about how you got that perfect bod. By the time you crash drunkenly down into the gutter, too exhausted to take another step, it takes Locker a good two minutes of wheezing jogging to catch up to you - he's also in pretty good shape, actually, but he didn't have the motivation you have. He pulls you out of the wet and the rain and under an overhang in front of a used refrigerator store and you both lie there gasping for breath in the polychromatic neon light and rain reflections, soaked through and with no chance of getting dry.

She grimaces as a wave of disappointment gets pushed through her skull. She tilts her head to one side and purses her lips while she thinks for a moment, before breaking into a grin and reaching into one of her uniform's many, many pockets. She pulls out her visor and clicks it into place over her eyes. Truth be told, she'd been hoping not to touch these things on this trip for fear of what looking at the reality of a weird cartoon universe might do to her brain, but the value is higher than the risk, and for some reason it's easier to be cavalier about these things when there's free access to healing magic about. Besides, preserving Princess Adila's feelings (erm, morale! Morale is what she meant) was important, too.

"Hey don't worry about it. Come on, let's play a game while we're on the way back down to the other Princesses. My eyes against yours: who can spot the most case-relevant details before we hit the ground? It'd be pretty embarrassing to lose to a human, wouldn't it? Show me what you can really do!"

And that's when--

[Unleash Your Powers: 6. Potential: 3]

"YOUNG LADIES!" {Scrubbed}from directly behind you.

Princess Adila almost spinflips out of the air but despite the sudden three-dimensional lurch he keeps pace perfectly, flipping around in perfect physics-defying form, dainty black doc martins with pink bows never moving from their place on Adila's back. And that casual disregard for reality causes a terrible connection to form in your mind.

"How do you do? How do you do?" he said, grabbing your hand and shaking it vigorously, then walking around Princess Adila like gravity was towards her heart to shake one shocked talon as well. "Oh my stars, what a view! What a green and pleasant land! You know, I heard that there is a kingdom here where everyone is a cat, ha ha ha! Oh, what will they think of next? Oh, of course, I have not introduced myself - I am Old Man Satan. I'll forget my own head next! Don't worry about introducing yourselves! What, you don't think I watch cartoons?"

Your brain clicks. There are only two places you've seen movements as utterly disconnected from physics as Old Man {Scrubbed}: In goofy comedy cartoons, and from Phimmy - the goofy comedy cartoon @Sarahphim. Any efforts to apprehend him during his speech, by either you or Adila, he stretches around like he's made out of rubber without breaking stride at all.

"You know, I don't really get the opportunity to visit my interdimensional competitors very often," said Old Man {Scrubbed}. "Some dimensions don't even have Hell, and some don't take their job seriously at all! Or take it too seriously! Reeee-diculous! You know I once saw a version of myself giving soulful, heartbroken eyes to a {Scrubbed}officer? Have some standards, Lucie!"

He clapped twice, like summoning a waiter.

The oceans from horizon to horizon cracked open and the twisted spires and impossible architecture of Devilhome began to rise to blot out all of Hyperborea.

"You know, I am starting to suspect that this show won't get to Devilhome except maybe in your epilogue?" said Old Man {Scrubbed}, elbowing Adila slyly. "And what a waste that would be? All that worldbuilding going to waste, the opportunity for visual effects - the raising of the stakes? Oh, I'm getting way ahead of myself. I'm just here to deliver a simple message: Don't worry! I don't have any mischief planned," he said as the raising spires block out the sun, "I'm just looking to see if any of these lovely old Devil Grandmothers are worth making into a Mrs. Old Man {Scrubbed}. Wouldn't that be swell! Power of love, uniting the hells - and finally the strength to destroy that hated Phimmy once and for all! You should take a load off, enjoy the sights, here's my card, ciao!"

He burst into a plume of flame, and was gone, leaving you with a card with one side containing every one of his names and titles crammed together in absolutely tiny typeface, and the other side a phone number: 666-666

So. Eight mooks. Queen Psychic. That's. Yeah, that's cake. Perfect. Fine. Not a problem. All he needs to do is figure out a way to hijack the Queen Psychic's signal, or maybe hijack his perceptions, and this'll be fiiiiine.

Keep saying that, Victor, and maybe you'll even believe it.

[Assess the situation: 13. What can I use here to take over Queen Psychic's control of the power armored goons? How could we best end this quickly?]

Get a handle on yourself, Victor - you're thinking too small! That's always been your problem! You keep trying to solve strategic problems with tactical plays. Just because you could go out into the tech show and pick up some kit from the wireheaders and use it to jack the Queen's brain doesn't mean you should. That's an AEGIS play: stop the superpowered baddie Before It Is Too Late. Errant's really rubbing off on you.

But this isn't a superpowered baddie - this is a weird security contractor running an event. They're not the objective. Taking out this entire room full of goons isn't the mission. These guys aren't decision makers. Someone brings this kind of force to an event as a demonstration, they're going to have some actual person of importance on site to oversee it. There's an Executive on the floor, possibly even a member of the board. Rather than getting into a brawl with a dozen guys in suits you should track down the VIP. They're the one with the leverage and access to get you what you're really after - they're the single point of vulnerability in this network.

She takes a deep breath to keep her rant going. She's angry, she wants to, and yet... with these many lives unlived... none of them were picked. And it wasn't Dr. Gear's job to pick that. She's a person.

"You leave things undone when you die." She says that as if she knew that, but didn't grasp it until now. An understanding of the rules everyone but her plays by. "He didn't plan for this. Or he planned, desperately, and didn't get to do it but it doesn't matter, does it? It's all just... a mess, now isn't it? And I'm just reacting like he failed me, but I don't think he did now. Or I don't think it matters, because what I am is so far beyond the scope of what he could plan for." The words are pouring out, insecurity being hammered into hard-edged purpose. "Idra. She has the right to be upset. But I'm not her. And while what happened to her was not her fault, or Dr. Gear's fault, it's my responsibility to do better."

It feels good. Less like with Halfwoman, less hesitant and unsure. She's got an idea. She has somebody to be.

Reality returns, like waking from a daydream - the jolt of catching yourself from nodding off. You're back in Doctor Gears' warehouse. It's quiet and empty and small, rain knocking quietly on the windows, lights off and grey-blue-pink light without source or definition streaming in through the windows. You're amidst the wreckage of lives and a Roomba continues to buzz around your ankles. It's quiet. It doesn't feel crushing any more. It's like all the power and mystery of that place is now on the inside of you now.

Who do you want to be today, Ferra?

[jdizzlean]

The Mod Life Crisis: Review and follow the forum rules as they apply everywhere on this board, including this thread. Failure to comply may result in this thread being locked.

[PhoeKun]

She's caught off guard as much as anybody else here, but Errant doesn't waste the opportunity to throw down. By the end of 'young ladies', she's already gone from her nice safe sitting position on the middle of Princess Adila's back to a narrow boxer's stance somewhere nearer her tail. Which... you know, honestly, this would've been a lot easier if Adila had been one of those "blot out the sky" kinds of dragons and not a large, scaly horse with wings. Not a lot of space to move up here. Not great footing, either.

But she's not AEGIS' Corporate Champion for nothing, you know. There's a billion dollars worth of combat tech inside her, and if it couldn't handle this much then AEGIS wouldn't be worth anything as a protection agency. It's just, none of it matters. Her punches are blindingly fast, her footwork is good enough that every single one of them has power behind them even through needing to adjust to her ride's constant shifting and swerving and general trying to shake this unshakable opponent. The problem is, nothing's connecting. She throws knockout blow after knockout blow, and at the last second his torso or his chest or his shoulder just sort of stretch or warp away from her fist. It's worse for her because he's not using any kind of technique she can trace or a power her visor is designed to recognize. It's not like Big Show's size shifting or even tracking an invisible opponent like Sabrem. Everything his body is doing is happening entirely inside of one dimension and according to one set of rules. It's just not a set that particularly cares about anybody else's. In one especially disturbing moment she goes straight for his face and he does that incredibly stupid cartoony thing where his neck and head just kind of disappear into his body. He doesn't even seem to notice! Open a button or two on his shirt, and hey! There's his head inside of his chest. After that, she stops trying to hit him altogether, and just watches with a mixture of caution and horror while he talks and gestures and makes everything worse. Not that he notices her stopping any more than he paid attention to her attacks.

In the end, she's holding the dumbest business card she's ever seen (and again! she attended Argossa Con!) and left to watch helplessly as the completely nonsensical architecture of Devilhome rises up out of the... everything. It smothers the light and obliterates the sight of Euna's favorite fantasy world with giant pagodas, towers, and Old-English Style Tea Houses stacked on top of umbrellas and kitchen chairs and, in one especially bizarre case, a pile of sewing needles. She grits her teeth. It's true that this is also a part of Hyperborea, but it's also the only part of it Euna doesn't really like. The Devil Princesses are all big jerks with no respect for the rest of the world, and... listen. Listen, ok? The rest of Hyperborea might be a bunch of stitched together pastiches that a lot of people deride for being "cliches", but every Kingdom follows its own very carefully cultivated aesthetic with highly specific fashions, names, and colorful expressions. And it's... it's not that Devilhome doesn't have that it's just. Well, you see it here. The aesthetic is "make no sense, obey no rules". Fans love drawing Devilhome. Loooooooove it. But for Euna it feels like it comes at the expense of loving the rest of it. Like people just want an excuse to make things that can't exist, to draw lines that don't connect and not get told off for doing it. And then that spins around and starts mocking Illumina and Jedad and Feloria because everyone's too busy being edgy. The promise of a character like Princess Iron Star Crushes the Strong is that someday, all of these beautiful, vibrant characters will become irrelevant. The promise of the Grandmothers is that the world doesn't matter. And that just can't be true.

Euna's face suddenly twitches. She squeezes the card into an illegible lump in her fist.

"HEY! HEY GET BACK HERE YOU DISFLIX REJECT! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU CALLING A CARTOON????"

Her fists clench. Her face burns. She's not going to let this happen. She's not. And when she gets back she's going to walk straight up to the Commander and tear into him for lazy briefing until he can't walk straight. He'll wish he was in a staring contest with Nobunaga.

"So, um," she starts in some vain attempt to recover composure in front of a bunch of horrified princesses, "N-now you, uh, now you see why we're so guarded about dimensional travel. I'm sorry this happened. I promise you the people responsible are already in jail."

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 0

Sara is brokenly sobbing between gasps for air. There’s no telling where the rain stops and the tears begin, and she’s leaning on his chest and emptying herself of her pain in hacking gasps and cries.

That’s because she’s not here. Not anymore. She’s eight years old and her parents have gone to pick up the new fridge. The house is dark and she’s watching cartoons on her janky old tablet.

Nobody ever comes back. When they leave, nobody ever comes back for her. Euna’s never coming back. Her parents are never coming back. Hell, once Brainstorm figures out what he’s doing with his life, he’s going to leave, too. Gonna vanish and become a proletariat vigilante, or else a CEO. One or the other.

She knots her fingers in Locker’s jacket because it’s literally the only real thing in the world. Euna is gone. Euna is gone. She’s never coming back. They never come back. Just like...

She roughly wipes her face on her sleeve, then, because that didn’t do anything, wipes her face on his shirt. Then, because he’s been nice to a real scab like her, she sniffles and says, “Sorry.”

Then: “Who cares, right?” The emotional needle is swinging, and it says: you need attention. You need people. You need people who won’t leave no matter what. “Let’s just... let’s just hang. With everybody.”

***

Locker: hey everybody what is UP
Locker: everybody is invited to a shins downtown
Angel-IKA: A what? o.o
Locker: shins
Locker: shingig
Bode: You can do it.
Locker: PARTY
Dominus: WHO IS THIS AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH LOCKER
Locker: he’s fine don’t worry this is Sara Andy’s last one here is a rotten egg
Locker has uploaded their GPS coordinates to the chat.

[Balmas]

Get a handle on yourself, Victor - you're thinking too small! That's always been your problem! You keep trying to solve strategic problems with tactical plays. Just because you could go out into the tech show and pick up some kit from the wireheaders and use it to jack the Queen's brain doesn't mean you should. That's an AEGIS play: stop the superpowered baddie Before It Is Too Late. Errant's really rubbing off on you.

But this isn't a superpowered baddie - this is a weird security contractor running an event. They're not the objective. Taking out this entire room full of goons isn't the mission. These guys aren't decision makers. Someone brings this kind of force to an event as a demonstration, they're going to have some actual person of importance on site to oversee it. There's an Executive on the floor, possibly even a member of the board. Rather than getting into a brawl with a dozen guys in suits you should track down the VIP. They're the one with the leverage and access to get you what you're really after - they're the single point of vulnerability in this network.

It's hard to sidle unobtrusively in power armor that forces you to walk differently, but Victor manages it, dragging Ferraphim with him. "There's your guy," he whispers once they're around the corner. "Purple-eyes is the lynchpin of the operation. That should be enough for your Johnson--an obvious security flaw, that's money. Now, you can stay or go as you like, but I need to find Eisner. And to get out of this suit before the mind-control gas turns back on."

Now, if he were an executive, where would he hide? Normally the answer might be in the center of the operation, but that would be rubbing shoulders with a greasy pleb like the head of security. He'd be somewhere fancy. So, if he just follows the fanciest areas--stupid executives would never be so considerate as to post "evil lair this way" signs--then eventually he should come to an area that looks like a board room or an office, and he can be persuasive.

[Thanqol]

Then: “Who cares, right?” The emotional needle is swinging, and it says: you need attention. You need people. You need people who won’t leave no matter what. “Let’s just... let’s just hang. With everybody.”

***

Locker: hey everybody what is UP
Locker: everybody is invited to a shins downtown
Angel-IKA: A what? o.o
Locker: shins
Locker: shingig
Bode: You can do it.
Locker: PARTY
Dominus: WHO IS THIS AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH LOCKER
Locker: he’s fine don’t worry this is Sara Andy’s last one here is a rotten egg
Locker has uploaded their GPS coordinates to the chat.

"It is," said Locker with the broad, expansive phrasing of someone drunk about to make a profound observation about life. "The party wagon."

Is it though? You'd imagine the party wagon would be more colourful and significantly more loud. While it is appropriate for the people within the party wagon to be wearing masks you'd hope that they'd come wearing more than identical balaclavas and turtlenecks - really, it must have been embarrassing when everyone turned up wearing the same thing. Perhaps the most serious mark against Locker's observation is that the party wagon should at least be full of additional beer and not crowbars and black-market ray guns. One guy is wearing a loading exoharness, though. That at least has a little party potential.

Pow! Crash! Wow! That guy just blew the door to the shop right off its hinges with his ray gun. That's certainly a party-adjacent move. But nowhere near as cool as writing your name in the side of a skyscraper with laser fire. This party is very mediocre, to be honest. Perhaps Locker is poor at party identification, or perhaps he is expressing the sentiment hopefully - a belief that this wagon has the potential to become a party wagon.

Exosuit guy goes straight in through the window and starts hauling a fridge out to put in the party wagon. Ray gun guy comes over to loom over you. "Beat it, gutter trash. You didn't see nothing."

Euna's face suddenly twitches. She squeezes the card into an illegible lump in her fist.

"HEY! HEY GET BACK HERE YOU DISFLIX REJECT! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU CALLING A CARTOON????"

Her fists clench. Her face burns. She's not going to let this happen. She's not. And when she gets back she's going to walk straight up to the Commander and tear into him for lazy briefing until he can't walk straight. He'll wish he was in a staring contest with Nobunaga.

"So, um," she starts in some vain attempt to recover composure in front of a bunch of horrified princesses, "N-now you, uh, now you see why we're so guarded about dimensional travel. I'm sorry this happened. I promise you the people responsible are already in jail."

Princess Kazelia stares intensely at a walking stick balancing on top of a chair. She gingerly reaches out and picks it up. Along with it, five hundred floors of apartments, stairs, courtyards, statues, and all the associated devils living and walking on top lift as well. She stares with wide eyes up at the enormous cityscape she is holding aloft with seemingly no effort or strength whatsoever, like she's holding an ice cream cone with far too many scoops to make for practical eating. She bobs it up and down experimentally. She gingerly puts the stick back down. It wobbles - there are terrified screams from above. Kazelia lunges for it and holds it steady with both hands. It takes her five full terrified high-stress minutes before she can get the balance right again and then even as you walk away she's throwing glances back over her shoulder to reassure herself that it held and isn't going to collapse a building the size of Manhattan.

Just as the Princesses are about to turn a corner, she sees a devil come by and kick the chair out from under the stick. The entire enormous edifice falls, falls - and then the stick wedges itself in a gutter diagonally. The enormous structure freezes there at this new impossible angle, everything at a forty-five degrees. The devils atop either begin building new buildings to get themselves nice horizontal surfaces, adjust to living diagonally, or decide to ignore the whole thing and proceed as though the ground is towards the floor. Princess Kazelia almost faints.

This is Devilhome, where Do As Thou Wilt be the Law.

There are devils sitting on lotus blossoms, smiling beatifically while offering blessings to those who can successfully wrestle any of their six arms. There are devils which are chariots drawn by black boars that trample down the street, driving ahead of them crowds of fleeing devils that somehow miraculously emerge unscathed. There are devils tigers that walk with their heads upside-down, swivelling rainbow eyes moving independently like chameleons. There are devils that are like bubbles of soap that fight in the air with lances and clubs, shattering each other like glass for the scavenging mantis-devils to snatch out of the air with their pincers. There are devils that are enormous sea crabs with eye stalks that turn into the heads of dogs, one of which asks riddles and the other one of which barks until it is patted. There are devils with dresses that run behind them like slime trails, wrapping all around the spires and towers without end, wrapping anyone unfortunate enough to be caught against the wall. There are devils made of salt sculpted into gateways running stores where a twentieth-piece will buy you wisdom, and ten will buy you wisdom teeth. There are devils that sing, and march about with whips to prompt passer-by into reminding them of the lyrics to their songs when they forget their place. There are devils who place their dainty feet into the mouths of other devils like one would put on a pair of shoes, and have those devils carry them all about while walking backwards. There are devils with golden shields and bare torsos who lay down their lives to prevent violent crowds from reaching a single perfect peach tree. There are devils who smile and beg for criticism as a monk might beg for rice, for these unworthy forms can only be purified through suffering. There are devils enough.

How to find a devil amidst all these devils? Mr. Lucy would never blend into this strange world's visual style; he'd stand out like a cardboard cut-out in the dustbowl. But there are devils and devils, and even knowing where you are - and keeping your friends close - is strife enough.

It's hard to sidle unobtrusively in power armor that forces you to walk differently, but Victor manages it, dragging Ferraphim with him. "There's your guy," he whispers once they're around the corner. "Purple-eyes is the lynchpin of the operation. That should be enough for your Johnson--an obvious security flaw, that's money. Now, you can stay or go as you like, but I need to find Eisner. And to get out of this suit before the mind-control gas turns back on."

"I'll... see if I can find a spot where I can crack her armour systems," said Ferraphim nervously. "If I can get a control exploit in then I'll be done here. I just... need to do it carefully. Let me know if you need backup."

Now, if he were an executive, where would he hide? Normally the answer might be in the center of the operation, but that would be rubbing shoulders with a greasy pleb like the head of security. He'd be somewhere fancy. So, if he just follows the fanciest areas--stupid executives would never be so considerate as to post "evil lair this way" signs--then eventually he should come to an area that looks like a board room or an office, and he can be persuasive.

You're so used to seeing power armour about the place that one more suit doesn't register to you at first. You've seen Spiral Corps guys standing around inside bathrooms, lying down in air conditioning ducts, broom closets, packed into the corridor - eerie still, like how a spoiled child might scatter dolls through every corner of their house. This isn't organized, this isn't the professional discipline of a mercenary company that has time to figure out the best practices for all its meat puppets. This is a work in progress.

But there's one set of armour that's different. Oranges and reds and... no helmet.

You stare directly into the razor sharp eyes of Victoria Messermitt, Turbo Knight II. She has one hand on a doorknob, about to enter a boardroom, but has stopped like a hawk, sniffing the air, looking directly at you like she can see through your armour, skin and bone.

[Eldest]

Reality returns, like waking from a daydream - the jolt of catching yourself from nodding off. You're back in Doctor Gears' warehouse. It's quiet and empty and small, rain knocking quietly on the windows, lights off and grey-blue-pink light without source or definition streaming in through the windows. You're amidst the wreckage of lives and a Roomba continues to buzz around your ankles. It's quiet. It doesn't feel crushing any more. It's like all the power and mystery of that place is now on the inside of you now.

Who do you want to be today, Ferra?

Ferra wants to be... a person. She's had a lazy day in. She stole office supplies (or rather, is in the process of doing so: dibs on the Roomba). And now it's time to go for a nice walk and, perhaps, try her best to be a good person. Anonymously: she squelches the voice inside her demanding and craving attention, and goes on a repair spree of the Foundation building like never seen before, cheerfully blocking herself out of cameras and avoiding people. No fun if they know!

Rejecting "A superhero should always be the centre of attention" and got a 12. Acting contrary for a potential, and then replacing it with "A superhero is there to help and protect others".