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Priscilla     With there only being one step left on the very bleak, very Sensible, very bland (except for the Secretaries), very eerie (especially for the Secretaries) road trip through the mostly 'corrected' version of Zone 1, seemingly all reference to its previous purpose, habitation, and complete nonsense arrangement, wiped out, it seems like a strong possibility that the journey may end without discovering any shocking bombshell. No damning secret. No secret superweapon. No freakish omens. Informative, but all on its face. Still there, but Not Safe.

    It's worth checking out the last spot on the map though, especially considering its likely importance. The head offices of Dedan himself. The one permanent resident of Zone 1 who could sketchily be accredited with real humanity, even as bitter and mean as it was. The place the last battle had happened, and where Zone 1 was declared pure, and thus likely some sort of ground zero or another to the process, if it is indeed a process, and not some more universal shift of paradigm.

    You enter into the same four way crossing as before, steep, grey-white walls soaring up above you until perspective causes them to pinch together, drizzling wide, flat falls of clear water down their sides into the metal pools around you. The other three doorways into darkness are equally as identical before, however, without the bombastic sounds of organ playing to track down the office by sound (there never was an organ in here in the end, was there?), the only character of the place is the trickling splishing of water, like being inside a garden fountain in an echo chamber.
Tina Natsumi Any of y'all remember which way went the last time?" Tina chimes with her usual cheery demeanor, playing a peaceful overworld walking tune on her phone to break up the maddening silence from the considerably quieter crossing. She still hasn't quite gotten used to it being so quiet after the last few times, but at least the music does take some of the edge off for her.

"I think we went... Straight? But we turned at some point, and that was... Uh. Left or.. Around somewhere?" Tina tips her hat back as she glances down the multiple doorways, squinting to try and see if any sign of their presence here from last time still lingers.

Probably not, and she just ends up going down the middle path first.
Thomas Alva Edison EDI SON was walking through the halls of this place, it was a lot harder to find where they needed to get to without the sound of an organ.  Every hall looked the same, there were no clues or defining features that distinguished one thing from the other.  While there seemed to be no shocking clue, no smoking gun, no obvious ill intent, there were still things they were learning, but a lot of this brought more questions than answers.

The last spot remained, but right now that would continue to remain a challenge for them, and Edison was hoping that they did not have to run into another one of those screaming baby monsters.  Edison looks towards Tina, shrugging.

"Trying to remember when the sound got louder...this is still rather disorienting, especially without the organ."
Starbound Flotilla     "I cannot remember /jack shit/ about how to get there. You were streaming it, right? Check your VOD, kiddo, I'm sure you'll make it." George says, shaking his head at Tina, wandering about. "Think that my saxophone is somewhere around here? I left it last time. Saxophones are pure, right? I'mma go take a look. Those things aren't cheap, y'know." He picks a path -- one seemingly at random -- and wanders on in. Where did they find him last time? Ah well, it's a mystery.
Janine Liberi     Janine, having finally gotten over her soporific encounter, Janine tromps along at the back of the party, looking slightly peaky and strained. "I remember. God it was so fucking loud. This is honestly an improvement," she says. "We went left, then right, then right again, then... ah wait, shit. Anyway, I'm sure about that first part."

    Tsking as everyone just starts wandering off, she heads along what she remembers.
Doctor Strange      Strange takes a look around the crossing. There is that telltale furrow of his brow. He's thinking of some way to be a cheating shit and just cut straight to the office. "Yeah. See ya, George." Maybe that's it. The sorcerer calls forth the mandalas which conjure his magic, each slowly rotating before his hands.

     Wheels of brightly burning fire roll across the wall of each passage. The intent isn't to burn, but to illuminate. It doesn't occur to him that there might be a penalty for guessing wrong or a cranky inhabitant in the 'wrong' doorway. Or that this could be a Lost Woods situation. He hasn't been here--but does it matter? He's the Sorcerer Surpreme. Even if he screws something up he can fix it.

     "Not sure how long that's gonna last, so... yeah." He makes a 'hurry up' gesture with his hands after his attempted illumination.
Yuuki Kuran It's such a dreamstate memory to recall the path taken before. All of Zone 1 was. A hazy blur of the smell of plastic, the sound of rain, and the feeling of subtle nightmare. When it's asked which way they went...

Yuuki shrugs. "I don't really recall! We had some way to guide us before, didn't we? Why don't we just use that?"

With a pair of sniffs, Yuuki instead zeroes in on another question - was there any more of that George-spooking MYSTERY BLOOD around? Anything that upsets George was really Yuuki's priority.

"We can just..." Yuuki considers the paths. "... look for the Saxophone? Maybe Stephen can use his spells to track it. Isn't... that how sympathetic links work? If it's still here, then we can find our way back."
Zero Kiryu Zero Kiryu... wasn't there for the Dedan fight, at least not that he can remember. He can offer no answer to the question of which way to go. But if he remembers what he heard of that second-hand accurately, it's probably something that Yuuki remembers clearly.

With nothing helpful to offer, he instead turns his attention towards George. It isn't the first time that he's wandered off, and Zero is quite certain it won't be the last. He doesn't really buy the actual reason, though. Near as he could tell, all the Flotilla members who had come to this place knew more than they were letting on at any time.

He figures that it's probably useful to pay attention to what they do. But what he really can't help but wonder is whether or not Moonfin will make a reappearance, or if his role here has ended.

In the absence of any good ideas of his own, or any experience at all with this area, he... pretty much just falls in with Yuuki, like anyone would expect him to.

"I think he would need a part of the saxophone." Zero replies, glancing questioningly towards Dr. Strange. He has no idea where the Sorcerer Supreme's limits are. The man does some fairly /extreme/ manipulations of reality on the regular.
Yuuki Kuran "If it's George's saxophone-!" Yuuki retorts, pointing at George directly. It's almost accusatory. "Then just flip that on its head! We're not looking for George with the saxophone - we're looking for George's Saxophone, with George!"

The shoujo triumph exuding from Yuuki like she just solved a rubik's cube with LOGIC and FACTS and TAKE THAT, THEISTS is palpable. This is, certainly, definitely how magic works.
Priscilla     Illuminating the halls works this time. They are exceptionally, pointlessly long and bare, but Strange can see to the next room beyond them. Well, he can see *a* room. It might be the same room. It's very far away and it just kind of looks like another crossroads.

    To absolutely nobody's surprise, choosing a corridor at random results in a slightly too-long walk through a dark, echoing metal hallway, and emerging into a crosswalk of metal paths over four pools in the corners, from the opposite direction as the one they'd taken before. Except this time it doesn't appear to be the same one. At least, the first people to go through don't end up back with everyone else. Going through any of the doors takes anyone to yet more of the same exact room, but the further they go, the further they grow apart from each other.

    The central office isn't a nonsense space warping, screen-wrapping room anymore. It's a gigantic grid of the same room copypasted over and over and over again, probably very slightly curved so that it completes a full circle eventually. Same effect. Same propensity for getting lost. Perfectly ordinary. Perfectly banal and pointless. Once again. Why is a central office like this? Doesn't matter. This is how it *would* be if it were *real*.

    With that knowledge in mind though, the only place a central office would really be is 'in'; though there's no telling where it'd be in which layer, the further one goes in, logically the less identical rooms there are strung together to search through.

    Going further into the extremely boring and simple maze, despite how long it'll take to get back out, you eventually start to find signs of more interesting things. Things that weren't there before. Not white chests or wiped information or stranded set pieces. More purposeful things. The odd bundle of wires, or vent, or pipe, that comes from the walls and hugs the ceiling in old industrial style, going nowhere in particular, but growing in number and frequency of occurrence further in, starting to look more built rather than spontaneously generated out of the fresh, pale, bleak, whiteness.
Priscilla     With nothing but the echoing trickle of water to guide you, finding the office again is essentially no different from blundering through the door again. You stumble right back into the only room with one exit, onto a broad white platform with decorative waterfalls at the opposite end, and a constellation of high, tiny windows, letting the pale, blank sunlight filter in, over the elaborate design on the back wall --the Queen's design doesn't seem to have changed. That 'fancy' rounded office desk is there, back in place instead of smashed to pieces, and behind it, in a chair, a pasty, square-headed, tie-wearing, grey-eyed nobody sits with his feet up on the desk.

    "I'm the boss." says the Elsen, to nobody in particular.

    "I finally got promoted to Alma. It's nice." he reassures himself. "I'm the boss now, so no more work for me. No deadlines. Not even any employees to have to boss around. Alma is nice."

    The rear access of the room, where the mysterious teleporter . . . part of the floor had been, is the last outstanding detail, essentially out of the way of the office space proper, and connected back to the hallways through recent retrofitting. The Elsen pays the clutter blissfully no mind.
    There are tubes. Really big tubes. Large, glass, and white like everything else, built out of the place rather than imported. Though large enough to reach floor to ceiling inside of a corridor, they're very plain, very ordinary, very solid, very real . . . and each one contains a Secretary, suspended in a thick, near-opaque column of smoke.

    Soft, whispering sounds churn through each of them. Unlike the noises that the Secretaries seem to emanate during their incursions, they're calming. Gentle. Less like a trapped child or conspiring crowd, they sound . . . mothely? A mother soothing a child. The Secretaries seem to be asleep.

    There are two foreign aspects to them, present only in their design. One is esoteric etching in the glass, of a magical but unfamiliar nature. The other is what looks like Starbound Flotilla teleporter technology built into each tube. They may be built out of the local material, but they aren't locally sourced.
Janine Liberi     Janine walks to the next room, and the next, doing her best to recall the path she took. It is eventually that she realises however, that this place is no longer beholden to the space-warping it previously. Now it's literally just... the same room, over and over, copy-pasted like a lazy school report. She begins stomping through it, getting increasingly aggravated, until she notices the new features. The pipes are new, not here previously. They must lead somewhere.

    And indeed they do. Back to the office, with an Elsen straight chilling at Dedan's desk, feet up and everything. "Holy shit!" Janine exclaims, beholding the caricature of a man. "Hell yeah buddy, you did it!" It's an oddly positive comment from her, but seeing a wretch here, probably after dodging Secretaries to finally be the boss can warm even her heart.

    And then she notices the Secretaries in the tubes of smoke.

    "Yeah you just uh. Sit there and chill boss. No need to lift a finger or do anything. Ever." The notion that he might hit the wrong button and let these things out has her chilled. She first examines the glyphs upon the tubes, producing her phone to snap a picture of it. "Hey, Magic Mike. You're a wizard right, what do you make of this?" She's probably talking to Strange.
Doctor Strange      The sight of another 4-way corridor gives Strange the suspicion that this is one of those 'the-wrong-way-brings-you-back-to-the-beginning' situations. As such, he considers his other options, one of which is Yuuki's idea for a tracking spell. He /would/ need the sax... "For your boilerplate 'tracking' spell, yeah," says Strange, nodding at Zero. "The saxophone, or something or... someone... who was closely associated with it." He looks in the direction that George wandered off to for a moment. Again, he strokes his goatee, corners of his mouth twitching briefly upwards in a smirk.

     "Sorry, George-- c'mere a second." The sorcerer's upper body pops through a hole in reality which opens directly in George's path. His hand jerks out and he snatches a hair from the top of the old man's head. The sorcerer then disappears back through the hole.

     Strange whips up a sax-tracking spell, using the strand of hair from George as a sympathetic link. Searching through the halls with the spell, Strange finds his suspicion disproven. This isn't a space-warping deal. It's just... boring. If Hell was the way things were before, is this Elsen's idea of heaven? He hopes not. That'd be kinda sad.

     He can thankfully do two things at once, and can search for the sax while following the others towards the increased concentration of monotony-breaking things. "One sec," says Strange to Janine. Someone said 'magic,' that's him, no question. He doesn't even blink. Another Strange appears. /That/ Strange studies the glyphs while the other follows the pings of his tracking spell to find the sax. It was probably just a means of finding this place, but he kind of wants to see if George knows how to play now.
Starbound Flotilla     There's someone behind Janine that she can see, lit by the camera flash in the reflection.

    No, wait, no there's not, on checking again. Never mind.
Tina Natsumi "VOD? ... Dang, that's a good idea. Remind to clip the next time I record stuff goin' on here." Tina chuckles lightly at George as she starts fiddling with her phone, trying to find out if she even did record that outing. She only messes around with it for about a minute before giving up, though, and turning that overworld walking music back on.

"If we can find yer sax, that'll... Hm. Wonder if it woulda changed after all this purification stuff goin' on. Or if it even sounds the same." The faux-cowgirl muses while watching Strange's flame wheels go down the passages closely and nodding towards Yuuki. "There was creepy organ music. Ain't none o' that here now, though. Just this stuff."

Her phone keeps playing that music quietly. It does mean she's not streaming anything today, but it's a small price to pay for not going nuts. Not getting LOST is a different story, though, as Tina finds that going straight ahead doesn't result in quite the same weirdness as last time.

At least she can also find her way back easily enough. Eventually finding the Elsen after taking way too long to get to the office, Tina raises her hand in a brief salute. "Howdy! Doesn't sound bad not havin' deadlines, nah. But... Uh."

Those sure are some Secretaries. The Persona user keeps her hand on her phone as she keeps mostly still and doesn't utter another word, watching the tubes cautiously while turning to her companions to hold a finger to her mouth in a shushing manner.

Like Janine, she doesn't want those things awake. "So..." She starts quietly. "What... /Do/ you do here, then? As an Alma?"
Thomas Alva Edison "Calm down, the more you get upset the more likely you are to get blinded to the details," Edison says towards Janine, perhaps trying to be helpful.  Who knows how it'd look, but the old man isn't above trying to help the new generation when he can.  Edison continues to think about what he is seeing, the shifting as they walk into the facility instead of around it.  

Is it a perception of the person made to suffer here?  Things work how they are supposed to because that is how they work...not the underlying reason WHY, but the simple comfort in knowing something works as it always had...even if that had not been the case at all.

The Elsen that stands before them finally got to have his job, the promotion.  Is it the same Elsen?  Does it matter?  Is it...the release of suffering that has caused this content man instead of the nearly panicked and suffering others?  

Beyond him, however, were the Secretaries, asleep and...soothing?  What could this be about?  They're not dangerous...well, at least not while they are asleep.  He walks slowly towards the tubes...looking at the various technology and trying to piece together with his knowledge what is going on here.  What could this all mean?  What did these tubes do besides simply hold or contain...if that is their job at all?  

And why the odd teleportation technology?  
Starbound Flotilla     George kinda flails his way through the hair-strand removal. But not too hard to grab! "Hey, I'm gettin' to that part where I don't have too many of those left, ya know." He says, laughing at it. And as he gets into things, he'll find the saxophone among the maze, elsewhere. And he'll note, after a certain point, that George doesn't show up to reclaim it. George's path has diverged elsewhere; he seems to be consciously avoiding the proper solution of the maze.
Yuuki Kuran It takes a lot of bumbling to get to the end of the maze.
A lot.
Like, right hand on the side of the wall and just GOING tiers of bumbling. But that's OK. There's no enemies! One INCREDIBLY boring session of fast travel THE SLOW WAY later, they find themselves in the BOSS ROOM.

Where there's a BOSS. It's a square-headed Elsen! Neat. This room is cozy, a stark contrast to the aggressive, oppressive awfulness before. Yuuki approaches the desk, hands clasped behind her back.

"So I hear you're the boss!" She offers, conversationally bright. Her blindfold is still on, but she's still bright.

"What're you the boss of?"

She is not really capable of interacting with TUBES because TUBES don't have blood, and the sound they produce is sort of... offputtingly comforting? Thomas is handling it.

"Is it nice being the boss?"
Zero Kiryu Zero nods his understanding of the mechanics to Dr. Strange. His attention is drawn, soon after, to the secondary features of the maze. More specifically, to the wiring and piping that sometimes emerges from the surroundings. He pauses briefly to examine them-- not so long that he can't catch up by following his mental radar, if people choose to carry on while he's doing this. It looks... perfectly normal, which is /strange/ for this place. Is somebody actually running wires in this place right now?

He carries on with Yuuki not long after. Edison is already attending to the tubes -- which are creepy, but not especially unexpected -- so Zero turns his attention towards the Elsen. Or just Elsen? Zero isn't really certain which, anymore.

He stops at Yuuki's shoulder, and inhales deeply, trying to get a sense of whether or not the Elsen's blood -- if it /has/ blood -- still smells like a whole bunch of nothing interesting or usable, or if it has some substance to it now.
Starbound Flotilla     Thomas Alva Edison has surely seen something like this in the past. The place is designed like a shipping and receiving warehouse. The tubes, it seems, are designed mostly to provide rather than receive. The Secretaries are being shipped somewhere. Only a few tubes aren't full, and presumably they're waiting to ship out through teleportation. Getting into and out of this world with teleportation looks like it needs all kinds of esoteric sciences, though. The teleporters are tuned to an odd offworld signal, one that is magical in nature.
Priscilla     The Elsen looks a little startled that . . . anyone else exists. A little scared by someone yelling 'holy shit!' especially. When Janine tells him to just chill out (boss), he blinks his beady eyes, and goes back to doing exactly that. "Okay. That's what it's like to be the boss. Everyone else does the work." he muses, rocking back and forth on the chair, awkwardly trying to affect an arms behind head posture. He doesn't actually look at Tina. "Alma is nice. No pressure. No deadlines. No quotas. It really was all it was cracked up to be. I could stay like this forever."

    Yuuki prompts the Elsen. He awkwardly nods, and replies "I'm the boss." He pauses for a little while after she asks him 'what of'. "The . . . boss of Alma. Which makes me the boss of Zone 1 I suppose. It's very nice being the boss. Nobody to tell you what to do." He stops to think for a little while longer, continues "Well, except the Queen, I guess. Doesn't she give orders to the bosses of each Zone? I wonder if she'll give orders to me. That sounds awfully lot like deadlines." He then begins to look . . .

    Nervous.

    The Elsen's blood is the same as Zero would expect it to be. This one's is especially kind of blandly inoffensive --that is, not a whiff of melted plastic and burnt ham and coal smoke circulating through it.
Starbound Flotilla     "This Guardian is free to take his time, for whatever he wants to take his time for." A voice speaks. It sounds like it's coming from the whispers in the tubes. "The Queen's prayers were answered, and the bargain she struck gave us this place, when it was lost. It's our payment for Albert doing his best to protect it." The voice grows harsher, and pushes a little more out of the whispers. "It's got nothing to do with your holy mission. Here, I'm the pure, divine force that gets to decide what is holy. I shape what piety means. The Batter didn't join you for a reason. Everything here is pure, and I'm the one who gets to decide that."

    Smoke gathers at the top of the room. Shifting, swirling stuff from the tubes. Golden, holographic feathers drift down. "You've entered the divine realm of a true God, but you haven't made yourself worthy of heaven. I'll ask you to leave. Your mortal spat with the Queen and your service to the Puppeteer's will have nothing to gain here. Though I'm sure the Queen would bargain for even more rewards if I drove away the Choir."

    Pavo descends from the smoke, covered in elaborate golden mesoamerican armor draped in religious finery. Partially holographic mechanical wings drop a wide rain of golden feathers. Her face is hidden in a shroud of smoke, as something crown-like lets off a haze, but one can see the glint and glow of deep yellow eyes. "What are you here to do, then?"
Zero Kiryu "Smells about the same," Zero says, "but without the... hm... peculiar nastiness." He's not certain how relevant it is, exactly. Except that, perhaps, it means that this one can't go... how did they describe it, again? Burnt? The thought of deliberately stressing it out occurs, but... these guys have gone through enough. Besides, if anything was going to do it, a bunch of strangers showing up should've come close by now.

His attention turns then to a blip that appears in the back of his mind. Subtly, vines begin to wind their way out of his skin beneath his clothes. But he doesn't attack pre-emptively, or at all. It's an unfamiliar blip, but it isn't moving just yet. If it were a surprise attack, then he'd be dealing with it by now.

Or someone else would.

The hunter turns and regards Pavo, and in particular the shroud of smoke that obscures her.

"Just finding out the state of the world beyond purification, as I understand it. Is that a problem?" He replies to Pavo, dully.
Janine Liberi     Janine flinches and pivots about when she feels as if someone was behind her. But now, just Strange coming over to check out the sigil. Slipping her phone back into her pocket, she affects that squinting look you do when it's late and you just watched a scary movie before walking through the darkness towards your bed.

    But the conversation between Yuuki and the Elsen snatches her attention, and she rushes over.

    "Nonono! It's a known fact that the higher you go, the less oversight you get! You think the last guy was ever worried about deadlines? Nah, he was just worried about being a dick, wasn't he? Not you though, you're a better boss than him. So the Queen will just let you do what you do."

    She then proceeds to engage Yuuki in that expressive yet understated nonverbal language that girls use. "Don't rile him up, if he becomes Burnt, we'll have to put him down, and I'd rather not fight in a room filled with sealed Secretaries. What if those tubes break?!" All without a single word spoken.

    And then Pavo shows up, looking really godly right now. Janine just stares at her with incredulity. "Wow, pull your head out your ass. 'A true God?' Are you even South American enough to be wearing that stuff?" She rolls her eyes, but her mind is still on those Secretaries. She really, really doesn't want to start a fight here. "I don't mind leaving in exchange for answers. Can your 'divinity' provide? Or are you going to be obnoxiously vague like Albert?"
Tina Natsumi "Ain't that the truth?" Tina chuckles lightly at the Elsen's assesment of being a boss, furrowing her brow slightly when he mentions the Queen. She doesn't ocmment on his lack of orders, although the significance of that is mildly wasted on her.

At least she can figure that /not/ having orders is important. She just can't figure out why. When that voice comes from the tubes, though, she steps back to rest her hand on her revolver. She doesn't draw it yet, but she doesn't relax even after Pavo makes her appearance known. "Howdy again. Uh. You sure we got nothin' to gain from bein' here? Because that sure sounds like somethin' someone would say if there was somethin' important."

Tina smirks confidently for all of five seconds before glancing around at her companions again and relaxing her posture. "Just lookin' around, seeing what happened after all that stuff we did 'round here. I don't think there's much else for us to do 'ere unless..."

Another glance around. "Any of y'all got ideas?" And then she turns to Pavo directly with a broad smile and hand on her hip. "How about you? You didn't come here just to do ask us that, didja?"
Doctor Strange      Strange takes the saxophone. It's put into the Sanctum, for now.

     "Nah," says Strange to the Elsen as the instrument is spirited away. He has no idea how corporate life works, but he doesn't want this guy going Clockwork Orange. Unfortunately, he doesn't really have anything more witty to say. He briefly looks askance at Yuuki to try and get some help on that front. The glance is brief, but purposeful in its awkwardness.

     Pavo appears dramatically, and asks everyone to leave. "Nnnno....? No." Strange squints at Pavo and shakes his head. "Yeah, I'd... prefer not to." He clicks his tongue and shrugs archly at her. "I'm here to see the /effect/ of what I'm /doing./ Since... no one here wants to actually tell me... what that is... and seems offended that I even asked. I'm not gonna make a decision that affects an entire world without seeing the effects of that decision."
Thomas Alva Edison Edison looks up, scoffing at Pavo as she appears.  It appears his analyzing of the tubes will have to wait as now there is someone here claiming to be a 'god'.  The lion man moves next to Strange as he keeps his eyes firmly on the person who has made some outrageous claims.  Crossing his arms, he finally speaks, calm and deliberate, but not friendly.  

"The truth is what we are here to find, as Dr. Strange said, to understand the full scope of our decisions.  To cut through ignorance and those who claim to be holier than thou, to stare at the naked truth without the trappings of divinity or the vanity of self-righteousness."

"Though I am interested in knowing what you are doing with these monsters?  Strange that a god should need the mortal contrivances of man, such as teleportation devices," Edison says, very contemptuous.
Starbound Flotilla     Pavo is now behind Zero, scowling at him between bouts of inspecting the tube. A wave of smoke rests at her feet. "/You/ are being problems. For the Queen. If she were a little more faithful, a little more devoted to the true way, then I might be so inclined to bless her with driving you out of her world even without any of her holdings at stake. You're lucky that she hasn't earned quite as much blessing as she could have, otherwise I'd let some of my new followers indulge their nature a little." She puts her arms out, gesturing to the area around here. "This is the state of it. I intend to bless it a little more every day like this. Wonderful, isn't it?"
Starbound Flotilla     "What is an America?" Pavo is very abruptly right in front of Janine. She sounds skeptical that the word is even real, crossing her arms and somehow frowning through the haze of smoke around her. "My divinity can provide everything. The four great pillars of godhood. Miracles, blessings, wisdom, and smiting. I hope you plan on leaving the entire world. Maybe you haven't noticed how much this is messing up the Queen's plans? We're contracted to protect her holdings, and as you can see, this place only has reality's grip and my own on it, now that you've messed it all up this much."
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki nods sagely. "Oh, no no, of course. You're the boss."

Janine - and Strange - both Subtly (or rather, unsubtly, but using the Language of Shoujo) Influence her to just wave it off.

"I'm a boss too, not of here. And I have to say, you're doing a very good job."

Pavo floats down, making an offer. The STILL blindfolded Yuuki listens to the smoke, and then the feathers fluttering, and then Pavo's Normal and God voice.

Yuuki is halfway through 'ok!' and turning to leave while Stephen Strange delivers his answer in No Uncertain Terms.

Rather than continuing to step forward, or back, she steps Aside (nearly bumbling into the tubes in the process). "We don't always get to see the effects of our decisions before we make them. But this fight is over, isn't it? We won. Then again... Pavo, if you're here, and blessing this land, doesn't that mean you're changing it? Making it un-pure?"

She frowns slightly while she tightens her blindfold behind her head. "Are you the reason there was blood at the stables? If not... You probably wanna figure that out. George was pretty freaked out about it."
Priscilla     The Elsen nods along. "Right. I'm the boss. I'll keep doing a good job."

    While everyone is having the big serious discourse behind his back, while Pavo is doing divinity theatrics, he fishes around for a pencil (a white one) and begins spinning it around in circles on his desk.

    It must take something . . . special, to be this guy. Then again, that might be why he's still around after the Purification.
Starbound Flotilla     "I've got plenty ideas. Most of them are ways to smite a Choir, just to give... well." Pavo isn't where Tina last looked, she's behind her instead, pacing around contemplatively. "Come to think of it, I suppose if I don't remove you /now/, you might give /her/ a bit of a beating before Director E pounds you into sweet dust. Which is reason enough to set a few of those ideas aside. Only a /few/ though. So I'll advise you not push your luck."
Starbound Flotilla     "What did you think it would be? You're the Choir. You fight the Queen. Did you think the Queen's hold on things would just stay in place if you purified her Guardians? You fight the Queen and her hold on things loosens. You get something rather like this. Another notch in that cycle before her." Pavo's no longer there when Doctor Strange squints, instead she's far closer, like she emerged from the smoke near him. "They're not offended. It's the kind of stupid question mortals ask and then get upset that you /dared/ to be wiser than them about it. How's the saying go? Kill 'em all, let God sort them out?" She gestures broadly with both feathered arms, a sarcastically presenting motion. "So I'm here to sort."
Starbound Flotilla     Thomas gets a suddenly more vicious response. "Strange that a mortal should need so many words to beg for a god to smite them." It calms. "The Queen is not the only one contracting with us. A private benefactor has prayed for me to bless her with some new friends. Between the Spectres and the Secretaries, she'll find her efforts well-manned, as well as well-infanted." She laughs aat her own joke as she's gone from where Strange was speaking with her, and instead kneeling near the teleportation devices.

    "What do you think godhood is? It's getting things done with the right angle. It's power through a lens. The fact that I can bless someone with great power from the comfort of my own temple here isn't any less divine for the fact that you might be able to write a book on it if you studied it very hard. All that needs to be true is that they pray, and I bless." The smoke curls around nearer Thomas' shoulders. The voice comes closer to his ear. "That is the /only/ worth of godhood, you know. The only good it can bring. If you intend to question it, I'll show you and all your friends the /substantiality/ of my divinity. I am no little spirit claiming rights by the color of the gaudy energies I emit. I bless, I work miracles, I give wisdom, and I smite nonbelievers. The fact that I don't bother abstracting it barely changes what blasphemous conclusion you choose to draw, doesn't it?"
Janine Liberi     "Okay, it's the second one then," Janine scowls. She glances askance at the Elsen, currently busy playing with the pencil, before drawing her sword and looking into it. Biancabella emerges from the air behind her, bringing with her a strong gust. It's not an attack, but rather a ventilation tactic. Trying to stir up all the smoke in the room and blow it out the windows.

    "Don't make me laugh. If you were actually a god, you wouldn't be slumming it with the likes of the Flotilla. Fuck off with the literal smoke and mirrors and come talk to us." She then throws back her head and laughs. "Oh,. So you don't actually even really work for the Queen? Then fuck you, Boss Elsen here is more god of this realm than you!"
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki gasps lightly. "That's a mirror? Is it really smoke and mirrors?"

She reaches for her blindfold, but remains STRONG in the face of desire.

"But it's like they're actually zipping around. I can definitely feel them! I think."
Starbound Flotilla     "I don't make anything unpure. You've seen the nature of the Batter. His piety, his pilgrimage to the Room and the Queen. His devotion." Pavo isn't near the tube anymore, she's peering at Yuuki, trying to see if she can see through the blindfold, waving a feathered hand in front of her face. "No, you see, my devotion and worship to myself makes me pure. I take charge of blessing our benefactor with these particular sorts because I am one of the few who can walk this place purely, and one of the few who can speak to the lost and abandoned. I'm one of the few pure enough to find them a new home. A new mother of sorts. What a miracle, isn't it?"

    The question of the blood seems like it's going to get /an/ answer. But it doesn't. Instead Yuuki gets a startling, rather unusual question. "George is /here/?" She asks, narrowing the smoke-hidden gleam in her eyes. "Has he been /helping/ you?" It's informative, in its own right.
Doctor Strange      Strange takes a circuitous walk around Pavo when she translocates, scarred hands behind his back. The walking turns to translocation--a subtle 'yeah, I can do that, too.' He looks as if he's examining a patient, going so far as to put one hand on his chin and squint academically at her. "A /straightforward answer./" He seems concerned that this was given. "Did it hurt? Did your blood sugar go up? Heart rate increase? You have Legionnaire's Disease now? Godly... indigestion? All of the above?"

     He shakes his head in disappointment. "Granted, it's exactly the kind of stupid answer gods give, and then get upset that everybody /dares/ to go to a different faith... or do the atheism thing, whatever..." The sorcerer makes a vague hand gesture. "...but it's a step in the right direction. Anyway, let's not take this thing too far. You know what I'm talking about." He gives her a flat look.

     "This place is someone's personal hell. What I know so far is that some people want to double down on it, and some people want to pry the warden's fingers off the controls. I care about that guy. To me, that guy's 'the lost and abandoned.' What can we do for that guy, and, without using the words..." He begins counting with his trembling fingers. "'god,' 'purity,' 'divinity,' 'blessing,' or any of this place's other $1 Buzzword Menu Items, please tell me what, if anything, you want from us, besides 'stop looking behind the curtain.'"
Thomas Alva Edison "Nay," Edison says, "There is no worth in gods.  Superstitious belief, smoke and mirrors and the use of ignorance to lead men astray from logic, reason, and SCIENCE!" Edison booms, even as she attempts to spook him by speaking right to his ear.  He stands steadfast, there was something in the man that made him worthy of the Throne of Heroes, not just his words but the will to see his convictions through.

"I care not for the game you are thinking to play.  If you are not willing to speak the truth and cloak your intent in ignorance and lies, then begone, I have no need of you," Edison says, firmly in his conviction.  

However, to her surprise at George gets a smile from him, "Oh, so not so omnipotent as you would have us believe.  I wonder what will fall next?  Your omniscience?  Your power?  Being a god and fighting me will not avail you against me."
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki is clearly AWARE that Pavo is around them, but it's aurally and nasally based. She hears, and smells, but she definitely cannot see. That would be the entire point of a blindfold!

"Well, if you say so. I don't think you'd lie to me. The Queen gave each of the Flotilla some special item, didn't she? I'm sure yours is perfect for you. But even then..."

Yuuki sighs lightly. "It must be hard, trying to bless a land like this. I hope you're successful."

As for George, Yuuki tilts her head, looking off slightly to the right of Pavo's smoke-obscured head. "He's been around. He was at the stables, worried about that blood. Last I saw him..."

Yuuki remembers, through the fog of the dreamstate of memories that are far clearer in the Pure zone. "Pedalo! He wanted to ride the pedalo. Why?"

"He lost his Saxophone, so we had to find it for him."
Starbound Flotilla     Pavo is left behind as the smoke clears a little. Janine would need to keep that up, with all the smoke constantly filtering in, but for a moment, Pavo's scowling form can be seen more clearly. "That's your blasphemy. The idea that godhood is a special thing, full of conditions and rights. Godhood is power with a lens. It is blessings, miracles, wisdom, and smiting that you believe with your soul truly came from god. If I perform a miracle, or someone prays to me and I bless them, who do you think matters more? Me? Or someone pointing at some inconsequential mechanism and saying, 'but it isn't /real/'?"

    More smoke fills the cleared-out space, wafting from the still-obfuscated crown-like shape on her head. "We provide our service to the Queen. We fulfill our contract, doing our best to protect her holdings and her interests. In turn, we are given compensation. She prays, she follows the rules, and I bless. It's the way it's always been. As for being a god? Hmmm." She looks to the Elsen, and smiles smugly. "You know what? You might be right. He has that enlightened air to him. I think I'll have a chat with him later to encourage some self-improvement."
Zero Kiryu Zero is fairly used to dealing with rooms full of people who are catty, puffing themselves up, and getting aggressive. He doesn't rise to Pavo's more threatening statements, preferring on the whole to let somebody else decide whether or not this actually warrants a Miniboss Fight. A part of him would prefer it if Moonfin /had/ made a reappearance, here.

He doesn't know this member of the Flotilla that well.

So in the end he offers only, "It's fine to be confident in your abilities, but... by those measurements, most of the people in this room could be classified reasonably as deities, and if not that as demigods. Especially..."

His eyes track towards Yuuki. It might be that he has Ghirapur on his mind with that statement.

He asides to Edison dully, "She accepted a commission on behalf of the Queen and is here to stall or stop us. The Queen has ceded this place to her as payment, and she is making use of local monsters to fulfill agreements elsewhere."

As for Elsen...

"... If he survived all that's happened," he remarks, "there must be something special about him, even if it's just luck."
Yuuki Kuran "Oh, that's good. Pavo is always quite insightful in ways of self-improvement. Most of the Flotilla are, in fact. Biteblade has some wonderful ideas on thinking and mind-states, did you know?"

Yuuki frowns at Strange. "You're a very smart gentleman, Steven, don't be self-disparaging."
Starbound Flotilla     Pavo looks to Strange. She spends a loooong, long time looking at him, narrowing her eyes further and further. Then she closes them relaxedly, like she's come to a decision. "The Batter and the Queen are working for the same goal. This is the first cycle that the Queen has had a chance to ease the pain. This is the first cycle that the Batter has had a chance to end the cycle. It's a crossroads, mortal. No more cycle, no more torture, no matter who wins. It's a question of methods, not goals. Do you think it's better to put someone out of their misery, or prolong it on the small chance that just one more try will fix it?" She's cold-reading hard. "You look like the kind of man who knows what it's like to go around the cycle of pain until you learn that you can only break it by injecting something new. That's what the Queen is. That's what the Batter is too... this time around. But only this time."
Janine Liberi     "Bitch, I am not here to discuss idolatry and theism with you! I wanted answers about purification, and them you came down from your high horse and started making threats!" Janine shouts. "I'm not exactly intimidated by a crazy bird who can't even keep track of her co-workers and pretends to know more than she does. Admit it, you lot don't have a fucking clue how any of this works either, you're just playing along for wont of a payday."

    She begins to storm out of the doom due to frustration, but comes to a dead stop when Pavo makes an implied threat regarding the Elsen. The sword stays out, and the winds Biancabella is conjuring seem to become choppier. "You know that Gilgamesh asshole? I gave him one when he started murdering those guys for no reason. The only reason I didn't do more was because his fangirls would have dogpiled me, and we are ostensibly on the same side." She turns, and points the sword at Pavo. "Imagine what I'll do to you, someone who is alone with only berserk babies that I really doubt you have actual control over. You don't lay a feather on him. Am I clear?"
Starbound Flotilla     "I know enough human history of religion, lion. Gods of the atomic bomb. A whimsical paperclip pantheon, unbound by human morality. Demigods dueling at the World's Fair. I don't have to use ignorance, it's just there. I use knowledge." Pavo says, having made enough smoke to get a little closer to Edison, wandering his side. She's not sure whether to lash out violently or go for a corruption. She decides, oddly, on the latter.

    "I still don't see why you think this way. Why you see divinity as a way of going astray from science." She says. "Divinity doesn't ask you not to believe in what you see, faith does. You could be a god yourself. Let there be light! You blessed the people, you worked the miracles, you gave the wisdom, and now you smite the nonbelievers. There's a lot of differences between you and me, Lion, not the least of which are that I'm richer and more gloriously beautiful, but none of them are that you couldn't fulfill those pillars of godhood less, and one of them is that the reason you don't is because you don't believe in yourself the way I do."

    She makes dismissive gestures. "Other divines can yammer all they want about how worshipping divinity demands not knowing something for sure. Or how godhood demands omniscience. I don't care. Have you ever tried proving to yourself that you're a god? Empirically defining your own divinity? If you're a capable person, you'll see quite quickly that failing it isn't that easy in many cases. That you see solutions when you want to bless someone, or a way to make it through the problem when you want to work a miracle. Faith? Ignorance? They're secondary."

    She offers him an easy solution. "Talk to me divine-to-divine, or pray. Tell me a godly will, or give me a prayer for wisdom. I won't ask you have any superstition, I won't hold any wool over your eyes, and I'll tell you the absolute truth of... let's say one question. But ask it as a worshipper or a god, one or the other. Which are you?"
Tina Natsumi There's a certain blankness to Tina's expression as Pavo answers her question (sort of) along with everyone else's (sort of). Their answers get that same look of curiosity and confusion, and it probably isn't going to take a genius to figure out that the girl in the cowboy hat has no idea what the hell they're all going on about.

That stuff about cycles, about whether a decisive end or holding onto hope are better, about divine power? Right over her head. Janine's increasing irritation and the more direct threats? That's easier to understand. "Hey, come on now. We ain't gotta bring this to blows, Pavo, you know that. Just lay off a bit, okay?" She manages an awkward smile, but doesn't maintain it for long as she looks from Pavo to Janine a few times. "'cause we're having a good... Decent enough conversation here. See?" She chuckles lightly at the comparison between Pavo and Edison, peering between them next. "See? Even makin' wisecracks! More of that, less o' the stabbin'."
Starbound Flotilla     "Did he think it was /my/ blood? I'm touched." Pavo's expression softens a bit. "Hmmm. I suppose he'd always be worried about us. Why would he be /with/ you in the first place? What is he doing?" It looks like Yuuki's determined that whatever George is doing, it's entirely wildcard rogue vis-a-vis the Flotilla's interests. Pavo can't figure out what in the world is going on there, she seems as baffled, but it looks like the going theory is that George was worried about finding real blood around here because he thought it might be Pavo's.
Starbound Flotilla     She gestures to Zero. Or the space next to him, where Pavo is gesturing widely to the rest of the group, following Zero's eyes tracking. "You see? You understand? You're right. By those measurements, all sorts of people could be called divine. That's why it's such a worthless title. That's why you can achieve it through nothing more than the right science, the right resources, or the right abilities applied in just the right ways. Edison here? Prime candidate. The Director? I expect the same thing. The Doctor? He could make a convincing argument. The kids? ...Hmm, no, but maybe later. Godhood is just the right kinds of power with a lens. That's all it'll ever be. So believe in yourself! Find the people who believe in you too! You see?"
Doctor Strange      "I know," Strange stage whispers to Yuuki. It's perhaps not the most humble thing to say when one is complimented.

     "Thank you," says Strange to Pavo. There is not a trace of his usual sarcasm. "That's all I wanted." Now they're getting somewhere. "So, this time is a chance to break the cycle, and it's supposed to be a mercy killing for Elsen." He mulls it over. He's not... crazy about it. "And if we don't take it, we might not get another chance." Sometimes that's the most humane option available, though. His eyes flit momentarily away from hers as he ponders what she has to say.

     The fight with Dormammu looms in the forefront of his mind. Over and over again... in that case, one more try /did/ fix it. Granted, time exists in this dimension. That trick won't exactly work here. "It's my job to go around that cycle of pain, specifically for people like Elsen," he says. "There's /no/ other way? We can't... break him out of jail? It's either pull the plug or roll the dice?"
Thomas Alva Edison "You may have learned about our history, but you know nothing of it," Edison says, with that same unflinching conviction.  He stares at her, while she might try to convince him of her nature, his nature is to deny it.  

"Divinity does not believe in the method of Science.  Science is not a religion, it is not a belief system.  /It is a method/.  How you use this method, how you subscribe to life rather or not if you are an optimist or an optimistic nihilist is a personal philosophy and is beyond the scope of science.  Divinity demands a conversation where it is correct unquestionably, Science scrutinizes itself, changes itself, and constantly reaches for /truth/."

"You think you are gloriously beautiful!?  Look at this mane.  This powerful form!  The form matches the mind inside, a lion of science!  Your beauty is ephemeral, but my conviction has already been inscribed onto the throne of heroes."

"I am not a god, nor am I a worshiper.  I refuse to be any of these things, and I refuse to submit to your classifications.  I am /Thomas Alva Edison/ King of Inventors, Presiking of the United States of America, and man of science, logic, and reason!"

"If you want my question then I shall ask it.  Not as a god, not as a believer, but a man who is searching for the truth.  The question I shall ask is simply, what is the goal both the Queen and the Batter are aiming for?"
Starbound Flotilla     "I know enough to make an informed decision. You do too, you're just refusing to." Pavo says. It looks like she tried to move to somewhere near Janine, but the sword has stopped her, a blade pointed just at her neck as the smoke stops flowing under the wind. She has a scowling, annoyed look on her face.

    "Do you think I'm going to kill an enlightened man? I'm going to have a conversation with him. I'll see if he's open to believing in himself. He's the boss, you know. Perhaps he could be much more? I've always wondered if Elsen was ever amenable to intensely-believed escapism. Do you want to fight over that, or not? I can start choking the insolent life out of you now if you'd like to get a head-start." She speaks tensely.
Starbound Flotilla     Pavo and Janine are sort of baring their teeth -- in Pavo's case, beak -- at each other. But Tina Natsumi's insistence on keeping this peaceful makes Pavo give a snide sort of look at Janine, an invitation to make good on her word and disappoint Tina. She seems to enjoy that kind of fucking around more than she would going to do the life-choking-out she was discussing earlier, at least. "A decent conversation, hmmm? Doesn't it feel like that?"
Starbound Flotilla     Strange's response is fast, terse, and simple. It condenses everything down into a few words, and they're the only words Pavo needs to say as she blows away with Janine's windy push and her smoke roils over in a corner near Strange. "You're a doctor. This is a triage disagreement. Let them die, or pay the price of more pain for the tiny chance of recovery?" There's a long silence. "Well, the Batter has more of a history of success. But he's not willing to pay us, so." She settles that thought.
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki's blindfolded countenance brightens to a shining radiance as a smile splits across her lips and beams out at the smoke-cloaked Pavo that she can't see... But has an okay-ish idea of where they are.

"That would be like George, wouldn't it? Worried about his friends. Even if they're on the other side. It's like all of you, but..."

"It's like George the most. That he'd be concerned by a hidden splash of blood."

That little mystery 'solved', Yuuki shrugs. "Try not to bleed out all over, Pavo! From one person concerned with their precious inside-juice to another."

She seems to wink, but it's unclear.
Again, blindfold.

As for godhood, as Zero prods on and Pavo returns, Yuuki's smile becomes just a touch bashful. "I'll leave that to the godhood experts. Rather than a god, I'd like to be a friend. For those people close to me, I'll move heaven and earth. It's like being a god... But I guess I'm more subjective about who I take prayers from. It takes a great person..."

"To recieve prayers from the masses and deliver blessings the way you do, Pavo. Whatever title that confers should sound pleasing, shouldn't it?"

"Don't you agree, Doctor Stephen Strange? Sorcerer Supreme, Master of the Mystic Arts?"

She's not snippy or 'you THOUGHT' about it. It's illustrative of a point! And Strange has a very impressive title... And one that lines up well for the circumstance.
Starbound Flotilla     "...Heh. Well, in that case." Pavo wanders to Edison, not doing that weird zippy thing this time, just walking until he's near the man, kind of in his face, and hovering on artificial wings to loom a bit over him. "Then I treat you as neither a worshipper needing wisdom, nor an equal god. I answer your question only with that perfect cryptic answer that gods give mortals without worship. And when you reach the Room, and you meet the Batter, and see precisely the exact nature of the sin on your hands and your shoulders, you will scream with the pain and the regret that might convince you to take up a righteous path. I'll tell you the goal of the Batter and the Queen, their /life's goal/, and the only thing both of them care about."

    "HUGO."
Zero Kiryu Zero is used to fighting herds of angry cats, so when Pavo actually just /agrees/ with his assessment and the tone shifts at least a little less hostile (and he, at least, would say a /lot/ less hostile) he is a bit taken aback. But it does earn the faintest hint of a smile, and a noise that is probably most accurately interpreted as relief. It's around this moment that he makes a slightly odd decision, based on what's going on right now.

He circles 'round to Yuuki's opposite shoulder, moving himself a little farther away from where Pavo is -- or at least, where she was at the time that he decided to adopt a specific posture. Beneath his clothes the creeping vines he had been shaping into a combat configuration sink back into his flesh.

"It may be a bit overwrought to say you're a divinity," he asides to Yuuki, "but I don't think that it's inappropriate considering your recent accomplishments. But if you prefer 'useless', then..."

He leaves the thought there, for Yuuki to pick up, or fumble as she will.

His attention turns back to Pavo, explaining the situation to Edison-- not as directly as would be liked, but even so. A flicker of concern passes across his features, but Zero says nothing.

This still isn't his show to run, no matter what 'Hugo' means to the Batter and the Queen alike.
Janine Liberi     Janine glowers at Pavo and her infuriating smirk for a long moment, her wrist tensing in anticipation of taking a swing at her. But Tina's plead, followed by a short talk on the radio, has her lower the sword. "An informed decision on the fate of this world? Please. Whichever I pick will be wrong. Everyone will pick the other one to spite me. I've already given up on that."

    She sheaths her sword and goes to lean on the wall. "I'm more concerned with you lot. Any world that gets you pack of assholes meddling in it is gonna end up worse off no matter what. I'm going on with this out of spite for you and George and fish weeaboo and your whole fucking pack. Consider me Heretic Number One."
Zero Kiryu "You are mistaken," Zero interjects towards Janine, "their passage is as capable of mending as it is of breaking. If they were so simple as that, then no one would deal with them."
Janine Liberi     Janine shoots Zero a glower. "I'm being /pissy/ and /dramatic/ man, god damn. You let your friend go around and be a weird goober, let me do my thing."
Zero Kiryu "If you think that I don't get in the way of that you haven't been listening even as recently as thirty seconds ago." Zero retorts, with a dull-eyed look that is all too familiar to Yuuki, but probably not so much to the rest assembled here.
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki lets her head hang, seeing as she isn't seeing at all. Zero moves around her shoulder, 'retracting his claws'. The relief that he exhales is one she echoes in a pleasant huff of air.

"I'd rather you not call me useless or worship me both. But if those are my choices, then it's as I said: I'll leave godhood to the experts, and remain a useless girl just trying to help."

"At the end of the night, as dawn comes, I hope that we are all working towards the same goal. The only real goal there ever is: The best outcome."

"Like in Ghirapur. Which, I seem to remember, the Flotilla was helping August out, at the time?"

"We can spend one dream simply talking. We can always come back. Pavo will be here, in her temple. Is it really so strange to accept compensation for a job you're passionate about?"
Doctor Strange      Strange's initial response to Yuuki's question about titles is hypocritically cryptic, given his frustration with vague answers. It's a look. A pointed one, but that's all it is. Not even a nod. With her blindfolded, it probably doesn't do any good, he realizes--so he answers verbally after a pause. "It should get the point across."

     Pavo receives another cryptic response. "I see." Her answer, terse though it might be, is quite informative. "Thank you." The fist-in-palm bow that Strange gives Pavo might seem surprising. When he rises, there is a note in his hand, extended towards her. He withdraws his hand. If she refuses to take it, it simply disintegrates.

     After that, he silently makes his leave, cutting another hole in reality. It'd seem he'll have to talk to the Batter next.
Janine Liberi     "Fine whatever, Janine is wrong again!" the Italian says, throwing her hand up in the air with frustration. "Purification sterilises the world, fills it with Secretaries, and seems to wipe out everyone except like, maybe one Elsen. We got what we came for. I'm leaving." She storms off, clearly heated.
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki laughs at Strange's retort, a kind version of the 'ah, I see!' reflective.

"It's true, Stephen. Your title is very descriptive and comprehensive. Pavo, you should learn something from the Sorcerer Supreme!"

"You should come up with a wonderfully descriptive title for your godly activies. Pavo Wishgranter, Bearer of Blessings, Maker of Miracles! That has a heavenly ring to it, doesn't it?"
Thomas Alva Edison Edison holds the gaze of Pavo as they make their proclamation. His force in disbelieving in the gods and divinity might be just as intense as the reverse in Pavo.  They are simply (apparently) incompatible, incapable of agreeing or coexisting in a group.  However, it does not mean that Edison will use his strength to force his opinion or will.  

Hugo.

"Then that is the answer a man will get, if you wish to simply guide things onto that end because of your pride, then I will make sure it does not come to pass.  Besides, while I may regret what happened, I go forward in the knowledge I do so as a /man/.  Not as a servant or a god, nor as a god who lords themselves over others."

Edison turns to leave, it appears this is all they will gain here.
Tina Natsumi Tina manages another laugh at Janine's reply, adjusting her hat idly while trying to figure out if that actually worked or not. Judging by the lack of stabbing going on, sort of! "Hey, bein' wrong ain't so bad. Give it enough time, maybe you start sayin' the opposite of what you want to make things happen!"

That even /felt/ stupid suggesting. Perfect. She shakes her head, then turns back to Pavo. "But... Yeah, I'm stickin' with my gut here. I ain't gonna fight any battles I don't need to, but... Work with us here, eh? Then you don't gotta listen to so many people tryin' to cram all sortsa big words and ideology down your throat."
Zero Kiryu "It can be neither." Zero cedes to Yuuki, having already come to the conclusion that 'useless' was wildly unfair at this point, and only really used it in jest. He seems to consider whether or not to reply to Janine, parts his lips for a moment to say something, and thinks better of it.

Making a small, agitated noise, he turns his attention back towards Pavo.

"Be careful with this." He says, simply.
Priscilla     When people start leaving, the Elsen looks up from his desk, having apparently gotten a hold of an elaborate, dot matrix printer, shitty old school handout-quality diagram of the complicated meat processing pipeline that used to exist in Alma, and folded it most of the way into a little paper hat. Despite the sheer amount of cattiness and number of weapons drawn, there is still not a hint of boiling tar or charred meat from his blood.

    "Huh? Oh. Get back to work I suppose? Or if you're not from Zone 1, then have a nice day."
Starbound Flotilla     The intruders are leaving, and Pavo seems satisfied about that. Janine gets a plaintive look, like Pavo fundamentally disagrees, but isn't going to snipe some response her way, or just is too sociopathic to care about perceived morality. She does say, though: "I'll put you on the list." As for the last of Yuuki's end, Pavo has her own thoughts. "Try to pay attention to how all the gods that won't be friends with the people all wind up dead. You're not wrong on that angle."

    As for the goal? Pavo's beak presses tightly closed as she considers her words. Not just in the divine context, but in the context of the Concord. "Nothing happens in a vaccuum. Any god's got to know that everything's connected." She says. "I'm working on a lot of angles. There's ways the outcomes need to be here to help in other places. I've got shipments to send out for a reason." As for the title? "I don't constrain. But maybe you're right. I'll workshop it."

    She reads Stephen's note, then grins wide, almost laughing. Tina's the one who gets to interrupt that, and Pavo keeps at least a chuckle. "The agreement is that I /don't/ work with you. If you think this was 'help', you're wrong, it's the scraps of wisdom at the foot of a heavenly throne. I'd rather leave you kicking at least long enough to beat up... someone in particular on your way through Three."

    "Would be /great/ if you killed 'em, even."