Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Nathan Hall     Thus far, the available materials for pursuit are arrayed in a pretty sparse way. There are a few limited supplies taken from the various Hunters. One captured Channeler, who's pretty uncooperative, but less dangerous. A Hunter still recovering from an interrupted interrogation in the hospital. And a limited knowledge of how the Channelers form their particular environments.

    Haruno recovered one of the pendants that the Hunters use to detect the Channelers. Like him, or so they say, so the pendant keeps focusing on him. But with a little tweaking to the standard Hunter-style artifact, he can make himself a blind-spot for just that one particular pendant, and with that, he can hunt down more of the Channelers. Tracking them down isn't too hard, but it doesn't seem like the influence is pushing more major structures, per se; Psyber isn't going to find any more massive complexes like before. What he's going to find is something more subtle. There's only one signal, somewhere in the Syndicate embassy and network facility in Boston-666. It's there as, of course, the convenient site for the neutral network to handle information distribution, coordination, and its limited political obligations.

    The Syndicate, of course, will give free reign to Psyber -- one of their well-respected allies and demigods -- to deal with that, on his word alone. The rather modern, stout structure, a cross between a stylish Wright-style mansion and an office building, sits near boston proper, and will be an easy place to start things off. Unfortunately, it's starting off on a bad foot: Looks like the Channelers have more stealth ability than expected, if they're just sitting around, on their own, in important locations like this. It also implies that the being that the Channelers are extensions of is doing something here...
Guest Psyber     There was a time for subtlety and a time for brute force. People usually know Psyber as the detective and footman, but today he's Psyber the Cop. He's encountered their weapons before, and he knows these guys often don't go down, so his briefing to people coming with him is simple:

    "If it has a growth that looks like an eye, hit that if you need to kill it. Otherwise, break a leg or disable them so they can't get up. I'm not sure they can feel pain and they tend to do some weird time stuttering thing. We're going to all hit this guy at once and close the net around him. Remember, no one talk about this on the group or Union bands. This is a Dark Op. Use only the encrypted channel I gave you."

    Psyber, wearing a ballistic vest over a t-shirt and jeans, has a gun in his hand. He doubts the Channelers have weapons that could hurt him, but they ARE emulating or at least watching Nathan. And Nathan has the mitochondrial ammunition that could probably hurt him more than he wants to find out. So he has some basic vest to protect from that.

    "All units, prepare to breach on my mark. We're going in at once, closing the net, and taking this one alive. Now we've got the tools we need to run some leadership."

    Psyber, who is actually not at a door and instead rigging some breaching cord in the rough shape of a door on a side wall makes a quick countdown, "Alright. Three. Two. One. Breach."

    Much like last time, he comes into the area like a peal of thunder, "Down on the ground! No one move! This is a Boston PD Sting!" He holds up a badge.

    From here, it should be a pretty basic operation to catch it. He's left the compass in the hands of Duet, trusting her to locate the target.
Nathan Hall     With the compass pendant in Duet's hands, she'll need to make a few adjustments to it as well, the same as Psyber did. That's primarily because it has as strong a reaction to her as it did to Psyber. The hollowed-out-eye emblem turns to face her and refuses to turn away until thusly adjusted. But afterwards, it can function appropriately.
Duet Fortuna     "Hmm, apparently I'm a 'bad guy' too, if this is saying what I think it's saying." Duet makes a face at this as she adjusts the Compass, then flips it over to take a look again. She is, as mentioned, not the greatest at combat... supposedly. She is armed, however, with her sidearm in plain sight at her hip. Today she's wearing a jacket and jeans, fairly simple and casual fare, but the mask is still on. It's at least a different style, though, more like a domino mask.

    She'll hang behind Psyber as he does the charge in, holding the compass and watching for any particular movement. If it looks like this thing is on the move, she'll have to know right away.
Kimiko Shinobu     Having done this before, it's a given that Kimiko is in position and ready with time to spare, if not much. Psyber gives the signal, and she kicks in the door hard enough to break anything that wasn't specifically designed to withstand superpowered mayhem. Since that would just mean she'd go through the wall, instead, she's going to bet that this isn't the case for the door she's chosen. If she's wrong, it's going to be an awkward delay.

    Given what happened last time, she's not going to follow up immediately if the door just ignores her attempts to bash it in, nor is she going to shout at anyone once inside. She's going in armed, armored, and ready to fight or subdue an enemy entirely unwilling to negotiate. Her initial choice of weapon, in this case, is the rapier.
Mizuki     Mizuki could never tell you why, but she has of late felt particularly inclined to stay in the company of Psyber and several other of her closer friends. Whatever the reason, though, it only makes it all the more eerily appropriate for the angel to have spoken to her when he did. Something about Nathan Hall, she remembers; something about an ill-defined adversary whose abstract nature might render her ample opportunity to be of use. In her eyes, it was an excuse to leave Silent Night, to have a chance at meeting with Priscilla, Riva, Psyber, the rest. In her eyes, Psyber's 'request' was more a favor to her than her showing up here could ever be to him. She recognizes this, and so she is respectfully silent as she shadows him on the way to the 'sting', as it were.

    She's come clothed appropriately for the circumstances and the situation. Though wearing a combat vest is not quite so practically useful for her as it might be for Psyber, she has nevertheless produced a visible facsimile of one that all who appraise her will see. She has overlain that with a green jacket that makes her blend in more with the urban atmosphere, too, and that will hopefully make her look less out-of-place among the rest of the 'Boston PD'. It might handicap her somewhat, but to fit the scenario she has also come bearing her revolver rather than her sword -- she needs more practice with conventional firearms anyway. She spares only a quirk of her brow at the mention of 'time stuttering'. Well, that might bear some investigation on her part.

    The moment Psyber orders the breach, Mizuki utilizes the ensuing smokescreen of surprise to slip into the realm of invisibility. Psyber and Kimiko should have no trouble dealing with whatever threats might crop up here, and she would prefer not to dirty her hands until it becomes absolutely necessary. Far better that she stay on the lookout for any additional clues or any 'wise' delinquents who might inconvenience them by trying to flank or otherwise surprise them. Ah, and as for those distortions in space-time? She would focus in on those at any opportunity she is given. More than anything else, her concern for the moment is in identifying what exactly these breakages represent. What's happening when they flicker, if that can be discerned?
Nathan Hall     The wall explodes inward, but only a half-seconds after the explosion goes off, once more demonstrating the odd causality disconnect. It's harming nobody for now, allowing Psyber and his group to get the drop on those within. The dust is clearing, and humanoid shapes are putting their hands up in surrender.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/201370883/The_Eye_Soundtrack/SENSE_OF_DREAD.mp3

    The Syndicate Network is one of those organizations that has learned a lot from Psyber, and so the workers and security here are a well-rounded mix of supernatural and natural, of paranormal and normal. So the fair share of zombies, werewolves, vampires, demons, and similar suchlike are mixed well with the humans, and all are... Very compliant! The security is a similar mix, but they quickly verify that Psyber's legitimate and stand down, giving him space to do what he needs to, and making sure nobody leaves. This goes the same for Kimiko, who's breached at another point.

    The Channelling-detecting pendant twitches in the vague direction of the area further in. Duet can clear each office they pass, scanning it easily... Except one. One office door, further in, hasn't even opened up yet. The pendant gently turns, back and forth, swaying over the door. Mizuki, herself, can feel a gentle flicker, a subtle tugging of time here and there, but it feels disjointed, wrinkled, like it's done blindly from outside time itself, and it's hard to pin down quite exactly, right now. Nothing is happening behind the door, as far as most senses can tell; the group can clear out the rest of the workers easily before dealing with the office door.

    The building itself is, as Kimiko expected, very mildly affected by that strange causality disconnect. She can confirm it, but only because she's looking for it. The kick's effect is just slightly too late, and it would catch one off-guard, but not really be a huge problem for most people on a day-to-day basis beyond being unsettling... The being they're dealing with is entirely capable of exerting its influence in a much more stealthy way, having infested the building without detection.
Guest Psyber     "Mizuki. I'm tired of this time stuttering. Can you try to reinforce conventional causality in the area? I know your zones are powerful," Psyber comments as he breaches into the building, his handgun clasped in his hands as he begins sweeping carefully.

    "Just adjust it, it'll be fine, Du," Psyber comments as he proceeds inward. He stops to plant a hand on her shoulder firmly before signalling her to keep behind him, keeping up with her lack of combat ability by putting her in a back-line support position. He doesn't try to pursue anyone that Duet clears as clean, trusting her to handle that task.

    He'll move methodically, room by room. Mizuki already has her task, and he's given her a pretty big ticket to play. In fact, one of the most important roles he can give out in terms of the entire area operation. Room by room, he sweeps until arriving at the one aberrant room.

    "I'm going to move in. Get ready to seal or immobilize where you can. We want to study this one and figure out how to use its tie to hurt its origin point," He's not refurring to the humanoid insurgents into reality as people, because he doubts they're anything except projections.

    This time, he moves more carefully, signalling Duet (And Kimiko if she joined them) to get ready to go in. He carefully opens the door and pushes on it a little, trying to open it to get at the inhabitant, "Freeze! Don't move!"
Priscilla     It is at this point that Priscilla drops the invisibility. Of course, everyone else would already have known she was coming, it just wasn't relevant that she was traipsing through the building until now, with effectively zero real resistance or danger. She could breach into the room completely hidden, but a show of force seems more useful in trying to take a target alive rather than the equivalent of an in-room sniper, and so she's plainly visible to whoever is in the room. More importantly, the room is plainly visible to her naked eye as well as her soulsense. One particular eye's powers have integrated into hers, sliding laterally in portfolio, but she is still willing to see if it'll give her some, small advantage in dealing with this particular foe. As soon as Psyber is in, she'll step in right behind him, fanning out to the side to screen Mizuki behind her.
Kimiko Shinobu     Since she's not immediately attacked, Kimiko has a moment to doubt her initial judgment, but won't regard it as worthless caution just yet. "Down! This is Boston PD!" are words that come in sufficient volume despite her normal mode, and quickly enough for having just heard someone else utter them. She takes another moment to confirm over radio that they aren't getting a target reaction from anywhere except further in the building, before she sets to releasing anyone within to get out of the building, with only a cursory check that they're responding like a sane person. Not knowing what will happen next, they're probably safest well away. There's a risk of letting someone get away that shouldn't have, but that's the direction her caution takes.

    She's careful and methodical in working through the building, not leaving any openings for someone to slip past her--which might mean having to stop in a hallway at some point, since she's only one person. If that doesn't slow her, she'll meet up with Psyber and wait for him to go in first, meanwhile giving a not-quite-veiled look of curiosity to Duet, as someone she's never seen before.
Duet Fortuna     "Definitely something behind here," Duet is saying, just idly walking through the place until she can pinpoint the door. "Be careful, though." She's plauing a bit more dumb than she actually knows, but such is the price of taking on a new identity. At least there are some good fighters here that can handle the intimidation to others.

    Kimiko's look will find Duet is... well, competent at least. One of those engraved pistols that Psyber makes is in her hands in an instant, holding it toward the room to cover the others while her other hand holds the Compass. "I'll let you know if the eye moves."

    The bystanders are a little bit of a worry, so Duet uses one of those powers that Elliana so rarely demonstrated. It's not really her specialty, and some of the creatures in the building are probably too strong for it, but she does attempt to quietly force any bystanders into a state of deep slumber.
Nathan Hall     Psyber breaches the office. The influence is going by the alias of George Sinclair. He looks entirely unassuming. A short little guy, rather unassuming. Business casual, clean-cut, short black hair with very neutral sorts of features, and a very light bit of scarring at the neck and jaw. His office is well-kept, but it certainly doesn't look like he's been doing work. That is to say, the heavily stocked filing cabinets don't seem like they've been touched in years -- far longer than the facility's been here! -- and the computer he's working on is nonstandard, looking like something out of 80s tech. Especially out of place that big chunky brick of a cell phone that Mr. Sinclair keeps on his desk. But it's subtle enough that most co-workers wouldn't bring it up.

    Mr. Sinclaire, for his part, is rapidly typing away! Just still working. His cell phone rings, though, in response to Psyber's breach. Once, twice... It picks itself up though. A voice, presumably Mr. Sinclair's, speaks, on speakerphone, from the chunky cellphone: "Hi! You've reached the Syndicate Network department of information distribution." There's a noise like a tape rewinding. "I'm sorry, it looks like you've already rejected this job before." A sound of fastforwarding. "I don't think I understand what you mean." Rewind. "I don't think I understand--" Rewind...

    Mr. Sinclair isn't speaking himself. He's still typing away, seeming like his actions are a bit on loop. There's a growing feeling of tension in the air as it continues, though... Something is about to happen, from the look of it. But whatever the entity is, it seems to still not entirely, fully understand Psyber's actual intentions here.
Nathan Hall     Priscilla's soul-sense gets a good look at the room. There's a human here, sure, or at least it mostly looks like there's a human here. What there actually is, is a stream of energy from a soul far afield. It's like the Channellers of Duke Seath, except this person no longer seems to exist as far as soul-sense can tell. She'll also be able to tell that the entity -- it looks like the stream is coming from back towards Heaven or Hell! -- is increasing the stream, not in some intelligent sudden rush, but like an animal's instinctual, reflexive action. It doesn't know what's happening, but it responds regardless.
Mizuki     So she can't pinpoint the cause quite yet. A shame -- if would have been far easier to cut this off at the source than to counteract it with brute force, but alas, she may yet be able to limit the expenditure of her energy if she can observe some pattern in the fluctuations. Is it more an ebb-and-flow of temporum, or is there a constant pressure in one direction or the other? If the former, she will attempt to readjust the pattern such that she only needs to apply a minimal amount of her own force to rectify the imbalance. If the latter, though, she will simply be forced to donate the full strength of a stasis field to the purpose of giving an equal and opposite reaction. Regardless, the maneuver she eventually puts into motion will be visibly identical to outside eyes.

    That maneuver, of course, incarnates as a small, monochromatic, pulsating bulb that forms in Mizuki's hand. She loosens her grip on it as soon as possible, allowing it to float away, closer to the center of the room she is currently situated in. Once it is cleanly situated, she adds a bit of flair: a snap of her fingers orders the thing to explode outward, a dull sepia coating suddenly overtaking as much of the interior of the building as it is able. Though her field presses itself against the walls and ceilings of the architecture, it does not travel beyond these confines so as to contain the effect, and to make it as subtle as possible. She would prefer that her magic's effect be kept quiet enough that its presence might be overshadowed by these creatures' own.

    And as expected, she does not need to do much of anything to help Kimiko and Psyber make way through the building. For the most part she only glides shortly behind them, careful to keep quiet, eyes trained on whatever anomalies she can locate. All else fails, she might attempt to take one of the breakages into a condensed dream zone, give it a fierce sneer, -demand- to know from whence it came... but she very much doubts that that would work in the way she hopes. Then there's always the risk that interacting with these things directly might trip some alarm, feed information back to their point of origin. And if that origin is this 'eye' Mizuki must admit that she feels an exceptionally negative aura surrounding the happenstance. She sighs. As much as she would like to help things along, she is too much a stranger to the circumstances.

    Rather a good thing, then, that some hints always seem to fall in their lap. As she comes to rest in the corner of the room containing Sinclaire, she's privy to the familiar yet unerringly bizarre scene of a person trapped within a broken timeloop. Instinctively, she raises a pair of fingers charged with the magical energy necessary to effect a more potent stabilization... but she hesitates. This effect is much more concentrated, much more 'insistent' than what she has seen previously, and she can't even be sure whether this is a temporal stimulus or a convincing mimic thereof. Would it be wise to attempt to halt whatever is going on here, or should they just watch? She looks to Psyber, Kimiko, and Priscilla. They know better than her, and so...
Nathan Hall     Kimiko gets to releasing people, which is convenient, because that means a lot of them are in a much better position for what happens next. The methodicality is a good thing here. Kimiko working through every office individually, regardless of scan confirmation, means that one of the lower offices, disused and dusty, will get opened for the first time in months. Lot of ancient, bulky servers in here, still active and humming, working on their own dial-up modem of all things, a seperate network. It's not concealed, left hidden in plain sight, as if someone were unfamiliar with stealth in the first place. There's a convenient access terminal -- man, monitors used to be so bulky! -- here too, with essentially no security; should be easy enough for a modern teen to deal with, right?
Guest Psyber     Psyber's gun lowers as they all enter the room. He looks around a bit and keeps the gun in both of his hands. However, as the events begin to play out, the cell phone, the message, the feeling of something coming, Psyber remains cool and collected. And he also steps back and away, keeping the gun drawn but not bothering to aim it at George Sinclair. He frowns a bit.

    "Alright. Specialists, go. Investigate. Poke and prod. Do what you need to to get information. After that? I wanna excise and seal this place. See if you can, without alerting the component being, find out how to use this in a way to hurt its source. Top priorities are information, weaponization, and sealing. I wanna find a way to snuff this out so another one doesn't pop up like some sort of fucked up Concept Hydra."
Priscilla     Priscilla hits the dark frequency almost immediately. "Worthy of mention, there is no true human here. This man may hath never existed, or ceased to exist at some much earlier point. This essence originates from elsewhere." She glances sidelong towards Psyber. ". . . most likely, Heaven or Hell." She takes two more steps into the room, only passingly familiar with the anachronistic technological details, though window dressing they might be to the oddity going on, feeling somewhat more secure with Mizuki's magic filling the room and more at the ready.

    "Rejected?" she intones. "I believest Lord Psyber hast done admirable work for thee before. If thou referreth to our excursion to another one of thine holdings, I assure thee, such was done completely without proper knowledge. Consider such irrelevant until here and now." She's chatting up the freaky causality demon she saw with her own eyes? That's kind of an odd thing to be comfortable with. Or maybe that's exactly /why/ she's doing it. "We both knoweth full well thou art in no serious danger here, and that thou art about to go nowhere. Let us maketh things clear."
Mizuki     Given Psyber's suggestion, Mizuki briefly considers dismantling or contracting the first field to achieve the desired effect, but she hesitates. It may in fact be a good idea to keep a 'buffer zone' here, as it were; although weaker, it still represents a zone of her influence, and anywhere were her arm may reach is a place where she can at least theoretically attend to damage control. So for the time being she creates a second field. This one, like the previous, grows to encompass the area of the room, taking color out of the environment. The sort of envelop this creates is liable to impact any within the area - including Mizuki's allies and Mizuki herself - with a weak but omnipresent sensation of nausea. There are at least four forces at work here: the entity's influence, two of her own influences, and the inertia of conventional reality. Since people need only manage one of those under most circumstances, some sensibilities may not react well to the growing instability.

    Still, Mizuki does as she is asked to: she crafts a specialized 'rim' around the edge of the field intended to resist all temporal stimuli that do not adhere to local norms, hopefully creating an impermeable barrier to the outside world. She highlights this rim, for the reference of others, as a visible maroon coating along the extreme edges of the room.

    Turning to Psyber, Kimiko, and Priscilla, she adds, "I am committing much of my concentration to maintaining these fields and keeping them distinct of one another. I will help with the investigation as much as I am able, but I am afraid I will not be as useful in that regard as I might have been otherwise. Apologies." She's going to finish watching how things play out with the timelooped worker first, though. Everything else can wait.
Nathan Hall     Duet works her magic on the bystanders. It works without issue. The assorted paranormal sorts have their own natural resistances, but they're not nearly determined enough to withstand it much. Mr. Sinclair doesn't seem to be affected -- man, he doesn't even seem to be a valid target! -- but something about that wave of magic seems to trip a recognizing look. The cellphone's voice changes.

<X-Confed-Chatter> No. 9, confused and almost suspicious sounding. "Hey what what?--"
*FFWD*
<J-IC-Moderated> No. 9 says, "I need to talk to you--"
*FFWD*
<J-IC-Moderated> Psyber says, "--wanna meet with you in person about something I need your help with--"
*RWND*
<Union-IC> Elliana Fairchild says, "Sir Psyber--"
*FFWD*
<Confederate-IC> No. 9 says, "--helped me out that one time--"
*RWND*
<J-IC-Moderated> Utsuho Reiuji says, "--but now--"
*FFWD*
<J-IC-Moderated> Psyber says, "--won't listen t--"
*FFWD*
<J-IC-Moderated> No. 9 says, "--The rewards are worth it--"
*RWND*
<J-IC-Moderated> Psyber says, "--wanna meet with you in person--"
*RWND*
<J-IC-Moderated> Utsuho Reiuji says, "--need help with what--"
*FFWD*
<X-Union-Chatter> Whoosh! The Salty Gale says, "--I'm planning--"
*FFWD*
<Union-IC> Elliana Fairchild says, "--just like last time."
*CLICK*
Duet Fortuna     Even though she claims to be less-skilled, Duet is approaching this with far more seriousness than she's indicated. She's slipping into the room, Compass at the ready, and taking a quick survey of all the objects around it. This serves two purposes. For one, it gives her more of an understanding of the being that's inhabiting this 'person' or shell of a person. That could be very, very useful later on, as she's already forming a plan...

    ~You promised no more plotting, remember?~ Wrathborn speaks within her mind, a little teasingly.

    ~This is a bit different. Get out of my thoughts. Any ideas, though?~ She replies.

    ~Working on it. I'll let you know if I notice anything.~

    The other reason she's looking is to spy anything obviously supernatural, which she will attempt to lightly hover her hand over and perform a simple Binding upon, if it seems needed. If she doesn't know a lot about the object, it may fail or be short term, but it's better than nothing.

    Toward the 'creature' and the cellphone, she speaks, "And what is it you want, then?" She actually isn't sure WHO it's talking to, but... more information is better.
Kimiko Shinobu     Kimiko's not great with computers, but it is true, at least, that she's a 21st century teen. She even tried to improve her electronics-related literacy following that business in Scarlet's world, so if it's as simple and clunky as it looks she has a decent chance.

    Later, that is. First, she completes her sweep, gets up to Psyber's position, gives that look to Duet, siletly acknowledges that the four others have this office in hand, and starts walking back--noticing in the process that people are falling asleep. Well, that works

    Once she gets back, it's 80s Hacking time.

    ...Meaning that no hacking is involved, just punching in commands like 'dir', 'list', 'man', and 'help'.
Nathan Hall     Psyber's gun lowers and the being seems to not understand.

<X-Confed-Chatter> No. 9 says, "--I can see you from here."
*FFWD*
<X-Union-Chatter> George says, "--I still don't understand--"
*CLICK*

    It seems to have recognized what Psyber is doing, but not why. Which wouldn't make much sense. This is really, really simple stuff, so anything with a mind that's even remotely close to human should be able to recognize what he's doing. This just... Doesn't.
Guest Psyber     Psyber takes out his cell phone and opens up a messenger client as he stands around. He pulls up Eldritch Instant Messenger and starts going through his Buddy List. He scrolls past a few names...

YellowKing
MissBlue
GBurden
>MasterTurnedTeacher
OlOneEye

9:04:44 ImmortalAngel: Hey. If you were going to pull down a being outside causality, how would you do it?

    Then he looks up from the cell phone. He decides to play along with Priscilla's game, "You wanted to make me a job offer. I had to pretend not to want it at first, but now I'm here to listen."

    Might as well give the Crossbreed some leverage and see what he can bait out.
Mizuki     In a similar vein, Mizuki's voice truly is her most formidable weapon. If Priscilla means to conceal lifehunt until the latest possible moment, it might do for Mizuki to keep the entity unaware of her - and what she might say - as long as possible, too. That said, she elects to remain silent for now. At least until she learns a bit more.
Nathan Hall     Priscilla trying to chat with him gets an odd reaction. The typing office worker turns and looks DIRECTLY at her. At her one particular eye...? "Good job!" Back to Mr. Sinclaire's voice, for Priscilla, it seems like. *RWND* "--Really helped out there!" *FFWD* "--Couldn't have done it without--" *FFWD* "Have you received your payment yet?" *RWND* "--Wait--" *CLICK*

    ...

    *CLICK* "Sorry, looks like I had a wrong number." *FFWD* Priscilla says, "--Holdings,--" *RWND* "I don't know what that means." *FFWD* "Expect some pain on this job!" *RWND* "--Hurt--" It seems like it considered those events less attacks on its holdings and more attacks on... It? It's hard to get a clear message from that last bit.
Nathan Hall     Duet can run her investigation over the area. The man is one thing. Sealing HIM would mostly just be a barrier against the influence of that being, simply dispelling the man himself, which might be counter-productive. However, there's a few artifacts around the room. One thing in particular is an instance of something that Amalthea picked up a while ago, another dagger. It's specifically made, albeit amateurishly, to look like the blade Elliana used to stab Nathan. It courses with the unknown entity's power, hidden in a desk drawer.

    Above it is a mask, wrought of cheap plastic. It's... Like a clockface. Specifically, the clockface of that Device that George once used to contain Ashen Mirror. The mask's single eye almost seems to look back at Duet. Very abruptly, Mr. Sinclair's voice rings out in her ear. <J-IC-Moderated> Psyber says, "Yeah. That's mine. Or Me. My office." The rewinding is insistent. If she does anything to the mask, it's likely to attack! Elsewhere, though...

    There's several jobs in the filing cabinets. The really dusty, ancient ones that haven't been opened in at least thirty years, despite this building only standing for less than half a dozen itself. Several large sets of job documents have a great deal of its influence going through them, as if they were part of a system of relays. Worth examining...?
Priscilla     Priscilla takes a moment to realize exactly where 'George Sinclaire' is looking. Her hand reflexively rises to her eye, but stops halfway, and slowly falls back to her side. "No, I knoweth to whom thou speak. I speaketh not for him, but in ways I inherit the message." She blanches slightly to hear her own voice inserted into the butchered rosary string of recordings, even if only so very briefly.

    ". . . I see." she finally says, attaining some measure of comprehension. She had already postulated over the radio that the Lifehunt might hurt the being, but kill its 'terminals' before it. She hadn't anticipated that it might do so through the ones called 'channelers' as well, though that response all but confirms it. "In his place, thou hast mine apologies for the misunderstanding. He hast shared the nature of his work with none but mineself, and not until after the fact. The matter of payment is at thine discretion." She's not /entirely/ bluffing. She does have some small, trace amount of Kalameet's soul memory in that piece of him.

    She hits the radio again. "I am beginning to believeth this creature dost not entirely understandeth the concept of death." She pauses. "Furthermore, I believeth the Lifehunt works through its channelers as well. It was harmed by our confrontation with Kalameet, by mineself most greatly, and is confused to hath felt pain itself. Kalameet himself was meant to die. Perhaps predestined. But without understanding of the fashion." One more pause. "I see a potential issue."
Nathan Hall     The gibson is breached.

    Which is to say, Kimiko gets to access some densely packed records of a parallel, shittier job system being run out of here. Multiple jobs that are being handled like the Syndicate normally handles its jobs. However, they seem to have none of the usual finesse of review. In fact, it seems as though this has been catching all the least trustworthy people with "good intentions", in conspicuous airquotes. People who are likely to not actually, truly have good intentions after all. All the responses are a little disjointed -- the phrases seem copypasted from other stuff... -- but they all direct the allegedly well-meaning individuals through specific territories, or tries to connect them with Union help.
Kimiko Shinobu     Well, there's really only thing Kimiko can do with this information. Rather, there are lots of things she could do, but what she actually does is try to find some way to download the data. This thing might be too old for USB. What did they use before USB? Floppies or something? There has to be some kind of drive and something to push into it, anyway. She'll figure it out as she looks around.
Duet Fortuna     Duet reaches for the dagger... then hesitates. Sealing it now would probably turn it against her right away. Instead, she'll spend the time analyzing the energies she is seeing, including kneeling down to start going through the file folders. She's going to try to follow the connections, silently telling Wrathborn to keep tabs on them, getting a good idea of the 'layout' here.

    But for now... pump for information. "And what is it you would want from me? What can I do for you, and why should I help you?"
Nathan Hall <J-IC-Moderated> Elliana Fairchild says, "--those of you who helped me achieve--"
*FFWD*
<J-IC-Moderated> No. 9 says, "--I'm going to do it again."
*RWND*
<X-Union-Chatter> George says, "The last time--"
*FFWD*
<X-Union-Chatter> Psyber says, "And you'll never have to do it again."
*RWND*

<J-IC-Moderated> Psyber says, "So just one more--"
*RWND*
<IC-Broadband> Psyber says, "I should be free--"
*RWND*
<J-IC-Moderated> No. 9 says, "--Seven--"
*FFWD*
<X-Union-Chatter> George says, "--so far--"
<X-Union-Chatter> George says, "I'm eight--"
*FFWD*
<J-IC-Moderated> No. 9 says, "--do it again."
*FFWD*
<X-Confed-Chatter> No. 9 says, "Number Nine--"
*RWND*
<X-Union-Chatter> George says, "The last time--"
*FFWD*
<X-Union-Chatter> Elliana Fairchild says, "--serving a higher purpose is far more rewarding."

    It's hard to tell exactly what it's asking Psyber and Duet to do. To add one more to something that's tallied seven so far, so that this thing is ninth? Which will have... Some sort of effect, from the sound of it, but it's unclear! The tape deck rewinding and fastforwarding sounds eager, though, in some sense. Incredibly eager. HUNGRILY eager, in fact; the cellphone emits an intense aura of almost desperate, animalistic craving.
Guest Psyber     As much as it disgusts Psyber to ask this question, he winces and says, "And what do you want me to do?" It's a brief question that he asks, still white knuckling his gun. As much as he wants to just bust this place, pop it like some causality zit, and move on, he should gather the intel he can. He takes a slow and steadying breath.

    "What's the plan?" He asks to the voice.
Nathan Hall     Mizuki's temporal senses will be able to detect something in the way that the temporally-aligned energy flows. It is neither an ebb-and-flow setup nor a constant pressure. It's like a respiration, like an intake and an outake, like... A creature, breathing. It's not a creature that's aligned in time, or a creature that breathes time. It's something made out of time, made out of cause and effect, made out of events. This area can be thought to be, in essence... A mouth. And its breath shudders time when it exhales, stuttering action and disjointing cause ever so slightly from effect.

    The effect is suppressed, though, in the way you can suppress the flow of air when someone tries to blow on a pinwheel; interpose the hand and you can block the flow, but the mouth remains unobstructed. If the eyes are closed, it may never know it was stopped in the first place.
Nathan Hall     The barrier she tries to form, though, can only work partially; the man is a projection into this world of the entity they're interacting with, and so his presence is rooted a bit too firmly to be banished quite so directly, though the barrier stops... Additional rooting. it's also possible that some flow of information has been halted as well! But it's not clear how reliable or complete that is... This technique will be useful, though. Temporally-aligned boundaries seem effective in cases where roots don't cross those boundaries. With the work of a full-on expert of dealing with this sort of situation, Mizuki may have the ability to assist in forming majorly effective techniques for altering the links with Nathan.
Nathan Hall     Priscilla gets the friendlier Sinclair voice again. Well, no, first she gets her own, saying, *CLICK* *FFWD* Priscilla says, "--inherit--" *FFWD* "I don't know what that means." *FFWD* "Can you put me through to him?" *RWND* "--Really helped out there!" *FFWD* "You earned it, kid." *CLICK* Looks like Priscilla is about correct; whatever this thing is, it literally has no ability to comprehend the idea of someone or something dying.
Nathan Hall     The folders are thick, ancient stacks of sheets. Hiring information for Salty Gale, George Weissman, Utsuho Reiuji... Social networking records between Nathan and Nine. Syndicate stuff, but charged with an unknown power. It seems to loop elsewhere, and then back in on itself, according to supernatural senses such as those accessible to Duet. But these are things it wasn't, and, in fact, technically could not have been responsible for in the first place. In fact, deeper down inside, Duet will find star charts, of all things, as job documentation. She'll recognize them because they show the rare celestial alignment necessary for a particularly ancient Elliana scheme.

    The loop of magic makes something clear. This being, whatever it is, is attempting -- and perhaps in some senses, is already partially successful -- in injecting itself as retroactively responsible for some of these incidents. Alongside this, these incidents seem to reinforce what it is, in some abstract way. As Mizuki just stated it's a being composed of circumstances and events, and as signs have shown it's beyond causality...
Nathan Hall     These things don't even know what a USB drive even is.

    However, the documentation for attempted future betrayal candidates of sorts -- which, as has just now been revealed, presumably actually exist as a future influence over the past (present) from this timeless being -- is gathered. One assumes that if this data package is given to the right people up the command chain, it can utterly halt an ongoing attempt to bait Nathan into another betrayal. Assuming Kimiko, a 21st century teen, can figure out which disk goes in which slots, or... Some kind of drive goes here? No, this one's a printer jack... It's very difficult to puzzle out.
Kimiko Shinobu     Kimiko spends too many moments in frustration, trying to visually match connectors and end points and divine the meaning of various, archaic equipment configurations before she finally does the sensible thing, takes out her smartphone, and starts tapping words into Google.

    'How... to... connect...' followed by model/part/serial numbers until things start clicking (mentally, then physically).

    If this takes so long that the building is sucked into a far plane of existence before she's done, she's going to be very cross.

    Her willingness to get one of those neck-mounted supercomputer gadgets has increased, today.
Duet Fortuna     Duet finishes going through the files, only half-listening to what is being said by the entity. "I can see now at least a little of what you can offer me," she finally says. "But you chose your timing poorly. This isn't an offer to me any more, it's an insult. You'll have to reconsider the offer if you want me to speak to you."

    She turns around, picking up the dagger. "In fact, you could say that I'm angry."

    The blade flicks across her arm, drawing blood and powering her own Binding that she attempts to slam onto the dagger and the cabinet. "The mask. You all want the mask. Take care of it."

    Her own attention is on something considerably more experimental than simple bindings that attempt to seal away the power feeds, to 'sever' them as Mizuki had requested. She's not entirely sure that will work, but she figures if it doesn't, that's something she'll have learned. What she really wants to try is unleashing something else. The being is not able to comprehend humanity, but that doesn't matter to her. She's curious to see if it has nightmares... or can be given them. THAT is what she attempts to send through the link.
Nathan Hall     Psyber asks a question. What is the job, SPECIFICALLY? The tape on the other end begins to fastforward. It winds, and winds, and winds. And it doesn't stop. It keeps going, and going, on and on, until suddenly it hits the end of the tape and something snaps inside. It's run out of words to say. Time itself, briefly, seems to strain, as if someone or something beneath it were trying to lift something heavy, or pull something with great force. What comes next seems to be formulated with great effort, as if the being itself. In fact, so much so that this event itself seems to take place simultaneously /before/ and /after Duet sets off a bit more direct combat.

    The cellphone speaks, but it's unlike any other voice ever heard before.


                 do it
                     DO IT AGAIN
      i need you to do it again  AGAIN
                  do it    AGAIN
                     do it




                       to create the parts of time that are what i am
      to be what i am   JUST DO IT ONE MORE TIME

                    what you did before
                    YOU DID IT BEFORE
         to earn another reward






                       FEED ME
                  ONE MORE BETRAYAL






                          FREE ME




                                        YOU WILL BE




                                                 REWARDED

    This attempt at speaking -- and, in fact, this creature's failed attempt to emulate the human perspective and methods in any substantial way in its brief intersection with this reality -- will be interrupted, shortly, and already has been interrupted, some time ago.
Guest Psyber     Psyber stands there and watches the cell phone, listening to the voice coming out of it. He tilts his head slightly and then takes a slow breath, "I have... never been rewarded for what I've done to Nathan. Only punished. You have... nothing you can offer me. By trusting him, he's given me all I ever actually wanted," Psyber notes, looking askance at Duet briefly before his eyes flick back over to the cell phone.

    "The betrayals I committed were not to serve you, they were a grave mistake. And... I will not let you claim responsibility for all other betrayals," Psyber notes as he calmly continues speaking, his voice almost void of emotion, "If I will do one thing correctly by Nathan, it is to prevent his greatest fear from becoming a reality. I am going to shatter this conspiracy where-ever it grows." He half-lids his eyes.

    Granted, for all his threats, he suspects he may be the person in the room least equipped to handle a being such as this. That hasn't ever stopped him before. His phone, however, does finally elect to vibrate.

MasterTurnedTeacher: Sorry, had a class. Think of it like hunting a whale. Harpoon it, break the surface of the water and drag it out of the water if you want to kill it. Or drag break and then drag it into causality as the case may be.

    The half-angel flips the phone shut and looks around the room. It's been said that Psyber is a man who is skilled in many weapons. It has also been noted that Psyber's most powerful asset isn't his own capabilities, but the people he keeps company with. And so that's why he's willing to pull the trigger on his greatest weapon: Trusting his friends.

    "Clean up this mess."

    The only four words he has to say to the people in the room.
Priscilla     Priscilla doesn't seem to have terribly long before this little seance is cut off, and so she decides to take the risk of attempting something, knowing that even if it goes poorly, her allies will be shutting it down incidentally all the same. This 'demon' wants to meet Kalameet? Well she can't exactly do that. He's as dead as Everlasting Dragons can really be. In that vein however, said death is more than superficially meaningless to this being. Whatever link it had with the Black Dragon of Calamity was much more explicit. Non-retroactive. Kalameet saw it. Knew it. At least to some degree. That integration into the weave of time, the branching of the future and the looping of the malleable past, has always been the domain of the dragons.

    In that sense, with all the souls he had gained in his human-esque period of life, some of his physical being, and his conceptual signature within her, the entity had mistaken Priscilla for him momentarily. What if she were to bring the latter to greater prominence, expressing that more foreign power over her own? It seems plausible. The demon only appears to recognize people by their place in causality, rather than by their individual traits. Exercising the same weight might look effectively the same to it.

    The eye that once belonged to an avatar of conceptual disaster begins to shine, emitting a diffuse corona instead of a sharp, cruciform flash, exercising not a rite of destruction, but the purview of the dragon's 'curse'. She doesn't have nearly the finesse or control to actually /see/ into causality, but she understands how to exercise that exact same gravity on its fabric, attracting ruin to those looked upon. All in all it's basically a smokescreen; spoofing a signature to look the same in higher space.
Nathan Hall     While there's horrible speech from beyond reality above, downstairs, Kimiko is googling this. Thankfully, while all this stuff is INCREDIBLY ancient -- it seems like these guys use nothing but 80s and 70s-era technology -- Kimiko won't have any problem identifying it as real. Not in production literally anywhere anymore, though. None of this should still be functioning at this time, but somehow it is. Yet another display of temporal dissonance.

    Kimiko manages to get the data onto some kind of weird combination of a cassette tape and a compact disk, with some kind of dongle kind of hanging off of it that has yet to be used, or seem to be able to actually plug into anything.
Mizuki     Either through intuitive foresight or her sensitivity toward time (or both), Mizuki garners that the time she has to work with in this situation is swiftly wearing thin -- that's to say, she does not know how much longer the influence of the entity will remain here. So ultimately she elects to save the idea she has in store for the next opportunity. Really, though, it's only in that moment when she begins to realize that she's already committed to investigating this situation again. Whenever had she decided upon that? It could... certainly have been a one-time thing, couldn't it have been? ... or no? It's a bit puzzling, and the brief moment of broken concentration costs her the external field still casting its influence over the interior of the building. She catches herself just before the second one falls, however, though she suspects now that it hardly mattered in the first place; it was useful as an exercise, but not particularly practical in this situation.

    Following this realization, the smaller dream field around Sinclaire and the field specialized with the impermeable membrane soon follow suit. She appraises the root for but a moment more before giving a small bow to them, as if instinctively. If that /was/ indeed a person, a part of her wonders if there is anyone to remember them. Or possibly association with the entity removed them, and all memory of them, from reality entirely? My, what a grisly fate that would have been. The thought brings the smallest of frowns to her face, but it isn't exactly her place to fret, less of all to mourn. She trusts the cycles of creation to deliver his souls some form of peace, even if that peace is simply unawareness within a parasitic collective. In this case, that may have to suffice indeed.

    Soon enough, Mizuki walks over to rejoin the rest of the group properly. Once she is sure the seance has concluded, she quietly wisps, "It's a pity, really -- for everyone and everything involved. Betrayal is an act that almost universally involves terrible strain and anguish. I can only imagine that a being drawn to the products of such terrible events must be a very restless creature, if I may be allowed to personify them at all. Not that that does, nor should, concern us in the least." After a brief pause and an audible breath, she plainly adds, "That said, we will certainly 'free' them in one way or another. Given due time."

    Mizuki thereafter summons Aelinos. She almost cleaves open a portal to her home, but she hesitates. Just... a bit longer, intuition tells her. A bit longer before she leaves.
Nathan Hall             I DON'T UNDERSTAND



    That's all the response Psyber gets. It's the response he keeps getting, in many times. It seems, very often, that there's no malice in what this entity is doing. It simply doesn't understand. The response that Priscilla gets is quite different though. There's a moment where she might feel recognized. Looked at in a very, very intense way, and straight at the light of sorts she's making. And...

    Sinclair's voice is the one that speaks up this time to Priscilla. "Thanks for calling on short notice." *FFWD* "I didn't catch that." *RWND* "You earned it, kid." *RWND* "--Really helped me out there!" *FFWD* "--Hope you received your payment on time." *RWND* "You'll receive payment at the end of your job. Good luck!" *CLICK* Was Kalameet compensated? Or Elliana, or Psyber? It seems... Unlikely that this thing actually knows what a reward is for humans, if what happened to Kalameet was a reward. But that might not be the real meaning...

    In comes Duet Fortuna, though. She snags the knife and cuts off the loop of power. One of, potentially, many, but as she feels the binding techniques cut the power feeds, she'll understand that this only relieves symptoms. The way the power network of sorts responds shows that it's all emerging from one place. By now, known to be one specific person. As for the shock of nightmare energy... It goes somewhere, but for something with an utterly alien mind, if it can be said to have a mind at all, the effects remain completely unpredictable.

    George Sinclair has his mask on at a moment's notice, in a single frame-skipping flicker. He responds in kind against the group. His subsequent burst of violence comes with a shedding of this "stealthy" focus. Two pairs of raven-black feathered wings and one twisted, horrible set of scaled wings as well, emerge from his back. His body emits gushes of bright fire, a sudden bright red-glowing growth forms at his chest, there's a burst of psychic pain, and a sudden rush of super speed... This time, though, the scream the man emits comes with another attack, not seen before. It's a version that's far worse than Priscilla's inherited version, but Kalameet's telekinetic abilities were acquired as well; it seems that the being is growing in power with successive betrayals, accumulating more and more abilities after each betrayal.

    This is dangerous. It starts focused exclusively on Duet, the sole aggressor, but turns its attentions on anyone who gets involved. It can be taken down, of course; too many Elites in too close a proximity will do that to anyone or anything. But it had better be some thorough strikes to that core eye growth at the chest, otherwise the man is going be yanked backwards in time, into a living state again, with more awful flickers.

    But once he's put down, that'll be the end of most of this issue. The awful causality effect will be relieved, though for once, the stuff associated with these people doesn't disappear.
Mizuki     -- ah, yes, there -is- something else. Something beyond what the entity had said grabbed her attention. Looking to Psyber, Mizuki briefly feels a pang of guilt. What... had she recently considered doing? Something terribly self-destructive, something terribly sad; something that would have been a veritable feast for this 'eye' creature, of that she can be absolutely sure. She still has no idea what made her reservations on the issue take precedent over her 'convictions', though the more she thinks the more certain she feels of the decision. And hearing Psyber speaking here... only reinforces that further.

    "I'll pray the lot of you don't have to endure betrayal again for a very long time," She says, intonation betraying nothing, eyes forfeiting everything. "And I will do whatever I can to see to that." For once, she doesn't seem to be taken off-guard by the fairly sudden appearance of Sinclaire's corruption. In fact, she already has her sword drawn. If only she hadn't wasted all that energy before she might still have enough left to do something quite impressive, but ah, this might be better left to the professionals. Grasping her sword's grip with both hands and using it briefly as a channeling implement, she envelops the bodies of as many of her compatriots as she can reach - all of them, even, if they're receptive - giving them a fairly conventional 'haste' buff. Of course, Mizuki will pitch in if she is needed.

    She won't be.
Guest Psyber     Conceptual investigations? Crazy high-end magic? High-tier manipulation? All these are outside of Psyber's purview and the scope of his power. But if you put a monster in front of him and give him a focal point for all that anger? Well you've now given him a problem he can address.

    Inaudble over the piercing and painful scream is the sound of a single sheet of paper tearing. Psyber has, in an instant, a greatsword in his hand. He grips the handle of it tightly, letting a sickly purple energy whirl and eddy around it as he lunges forward. While he may be charging directly into the fire and the onslaught, he's deliberately putting himself on a course to intercept the being before it can harm Duet.

    The sword is up and coming forward, aiming to lunge straight through the chest of the being, carefully sliding upwards to try to sever the connection between throat and lunges as he pushes right back against the form of George Sinclair. He's impaling the being on the Sun-Slayer Greatsword. He knows Priscilla believes her version of the lifehunt can hurt the being. He has no reason not to test if his much more watered-down version can do anything.

    The end of his strike would try to pin the being to the wall before bringing the sword down and out of him, trying to bisect him vertical, "In him was life, and life was the light of all men. That light shines in the darkness and the darkness will never overtake it. John One, Verse Four and Five. Don't ever. EVER. Attack my friends." He pauses, "That last verse is from me."

    He seems, for lack of a better word, pissed off at all the new information that has come to light tonight. He's out of his element and having to rely on a lot of people who aren't himself.
Duet Fortuna     Duet is, of course, backing up because there's no way she's going to want to fight a creature like that head-on when big heavy hitters like Priscilla, Mizuki, and Psyber are in the room! She hurriedly backs away while Psyber does that, and that's where...

    She grabs for the mask, hurling it to the side and levelling her pistol at it. Just in case.