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Lilian Rook     Though it is, in every respect, ostensibly and in spirit, a war museum, the word 'war' features nowhere in the title, writ large in smooth in white letters on amber from the banners outside and the display above the entry. In the Second Circle of the city, where the old world wealth and luxury preserved and reconstructed in the First meets the extremely utilitarian and excessively modernized functionality of the Third, the museum still takes up a very respectable amount of space, despite not being strictly reserved for the wealthy, and is accessible via main monorail routes and only a modest charge, despite not being a strict necessity for the working class either.

    In a compactly arranged urban landscape, dense and vertical, white and glass and solar panels and surveillance cameras and token greenery nestled around holographic signage, laced with train routes, few roads, and stuffed with civil services, the place stands out as several blocks dedicated to a little world of its own. A place that nobody whose hands touched the project would call anything so crass as a 'war' museum. The title displayed on signage for blocks around is 'The Museum of Humanity, BOE-AOE'.

    Anyone would know what it's all about the minute they enter. There are no flashy advertisements, no banners for which exhibits are in or new, no foreign loans or timed specials, and there is nothing even approaching a gift shop. An entire wall of bronze stamped donor names make it very clear how this place is financed. The curved walls that dampen ambient sounds. The predominating shades of black, silver, beige, amber, and white which absorb light away from thoroughfares and direct it only on exhibits. The low ceilings with soft, diffuse lighting, and warm spotlight only on exhibits. The absence of any sort of music or intercom chatter. It's all very clear that it wasn't envisioned as a public attraction trying to lure people into sparing a thought for things older than social media.

    The mood and intent of the building complex is best described by the writing, hand etched, into a platinum plaque under glass on a black marble pedestal that splits traffic coming from the entrance in half: "Nations have always built monuments to their heroes. They have always built tributes to their conquest of, or perseverance in the face of, their enemies. Memorials to the history embodied in the victor have existed as long as humankind. This monument is amongst the first ever that does not. It favours no side, writes no narrative. This monument is the first to commemorate the continued survival of the human species, and those who fell, not for flags, but for fellow man."
Lilian Rook     The posh and serious gravitas about it, more in reverence of the spirit of veterancy than possessed of any specific patriotism, has its benefits. The traffic is low, and distracting noise is almost entirely absent. Long branches are ingeniously designed away from the central hub, with its benches, counters, and small indoor park, such that the sound of recorded narration, videos, and tours, doesn't reach beyond any given corner. There's scarcely a need for a map, since the museum bears for main thoroughfares that loop back in on themselves and either return to the hub or split off into the adjacent course. They're titled only: 'Ourselves', 'Our Enemy', 'The World Before and Ahead', 'The Fallen'.

    The first appears to have to do with everything to do with the people that fought and the means by which they did, focused on timelines of changes. The second seems to concern the obvious, in as far as they can be explained and detailed at all, as well as the ways that understanding of them became more sophisticated over time. The third looks to focus on the comparative states of everything from geography to the ecosystem in a short period, with a running timeline inherent to it more like a documentary. The last seems like it'd be encompassed by a simple singular memorial, but appears to be stuffed with specific information.

    There's a rather prominent 'no photography or recordings' sign, along with the usual bevy of prohibitions, seemingly purely to discourage people from running through to snag selfies of everything; it's not exactly expensive to get here.
Ishirou I4 had decided to attend this museum, mostly because he was still very curious about this world.  The only thing he liked more than libraries, were museums.  Places where history was preserved, remembered and honored.  Sure, there was always going to be someone's spin on things based on patriotism.  That too was important to capture, to see how a nation honors itself.

What really catches I4's eyes is the plaque in the front entryway.  The continued existence of humankind was what he was built to do.  It's a mission, despite how his humans treat him, that he sticks with.  He finds it odd, how this world responded to the threat against them, compared to his own.  

Moving on, I4 heads towards 'The World Before and Ahead'.  It really felt like this would show him not only what was lost, what was regained, and what would be ahead.  It was a good measure of the humans of this land, and their desire to fight on despite the monstrous world that existed beyond these walls.  

Fortunately, he didn't need flash photography, having it in his head was an advantage.
Arcadia A memorial to a catastrophic war that has left the world in a very broken, secular state. This is precisely the type of place Arcadia was sent into the Multiverse to investigate.

You know, when she's not blowing up something trying to cause such catastrophe. She's got uses outside of combat!.. Some she's still getting use to not being combat, but she's trying.

The sphinx woman steps through the main doorway only to stop, immeadiately struck by the solemness of the facility. "Wow," is uttered softly under her breath. "More dramatic than anticipated." The lack of things beyond the actual historical displays (ie no gift shop, gasp) did not escape her attention.

She makes a brief face at one of the 'No photography or recordings' signs, then huffs softly as she deactivates and dismisses her visor out of respectfulness.

What she learns will just have to go straight to memory then.

Though being a combat model technically, it's not a surprise that the 'Our Enemy' is the first section to catch her attention and be the direction Arcadia wanders to.
Revali Revali is here. He's made an effort to fit in with a more modern world.

It hasn't entirely worked. Tabantha's tailors did their best, to be clear, working from photos of modern-world fashions and the materials they had on hand, but at the end of the day Revali is a blue birdman no matter how he's been dressed up.

He idles near the entrance, hands held behind his back, contemplating the plaque at the front.
Strawberry Princess      In costume, Strawberry Princess is a surprisingly imposing pastel superhero, mixing Golden Age aesthetics with a frilly flair. Out of costume, she looks like your depressed neighbor walking to the mailbox. It's the latter guise in which she's chosen to arrive at the Museum of Humanity, almost unrecognizable from her typical self.

     You can see it if you look, though. The way her hands are blistered and 'sunburned' from holding a nuclear reactor. Her height, only partially bowed with a slump. The unnatural scar that wraps around her cheekbone and up her temple into her scalp, which her visor- in retrospect- must be perfectly fitted to conceal. And the way her eyes never quite focus fully on anything, always just... staring through.

     The somber, majestic mood of this place seeps into her easily, forming a destructive harmonic with her natural mien. She pulls her hoodie around her like protective armor, and looks around for a familiar face. Unable to find Lilian, she latches onto Revali near the entrance plaque, one-sidedly recognizing him as the only blue bird in town.

     "Hey, Revali," she says. "It's... you look pretty great. Making me feel underdressed. What're you hoping to find, here?" She doesn't introduce herself, but her hoarse, hesitating voice is unmistakable from the radio.
Staren     Staren solemnly regards the monument. He wonders if his own world would have something similar, if the old nations had survived. Actually, come to think of it, Germany kind of retained some continuity of government, didn't it? Maybe they have a monument like this over there.

    He briefly considers confessing that he can't help but record with his cybernetics, but decides that will only cause trouble.

    Where to go first? He's interested in all of it. In the end, he decides to accompany Arcadia. "So, how much do you know about this world, anyway?"
Tomoe Tomoe took the time to make use of the nice clothing she bought the last time she'd had downtime on this world and had gone shopping with Lilian. So she doesn't look like she just fell out of a dungeon or a barn. The tall pointy-eared woman. She's made sure she'd had all her paperwork in place and on her. She seemed in good spirits as she would arrive at the museum. She notices how formal it seems, for one and the lack of anyone trying to make money off a gift shop. That helps set the tone for the Salamander woman as she will enter and pauses to read the plaque.

She looks a bit sombre before she makes up her mind of where to go. She'll head for the our enemy first and falls alongside Arcadia as she does so. The ban on photos or recordings she gets, given this is a museum but it also feels akin to certain sites back home. She'll look to Arcadia and says quietly.

"Hey."
Revali "Of course I look good," says Revali, though his heart's not quite in the boasting.

He looks over the plaque again. "I'm not entirely sure what I'm hoping to find here - that is, not certain of the specifics, not the generalities."

"I'm facing down a war, and... well. There's a certain requisite amount of self examination to be had beforehand, isn't there?"

He glances over at Strawberry, as if conveying that this is a question she'd know more than he would.
Arcadia Arcadia shakes her head to Staren as he follows her. "Not beyond what is in the report files. Which is why we are here, is it not?" Can't say she doesn't have a point there. At least for herself.

Followed by turning her head the other direction at the second voice. She squints a little, just because she doesn't have her visor to instantly do ID scans for her. "Oh, hello... Tomoe, was it?" Her folded wings twitch a little when she shrugs. "Hard to get proper introductions when crashing boss fight parties."
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry's shoulders somehow manage to slump further. Her eyes cast over to the plaque, but her head doesn't turn. "Yeah," she says after a couple of seconds. "Self-examination is... good. It's- you're going to lose people you care about. I can't tell you who. But you are, because that's... how it works. And it's going to damage you. One way, if not the other."

     Her eyes drift back up to his face, trying to hold eye contact despite the weirdness of seeing a bird-person in the flesh. "This is the last time you'll be this 'you' ever again. Afterwards, you'll be someone else. And you... you get to decide, how it changes you. But you can't decide to go back. Do you understand?"
Tamamo     Tamamo no Mae is present. For once, she appears on her own, though possibly just because she's walked ahead of someone else. Apart from having had her outfit repaired, she looks much as she did there at the bottom of the pit, having fought down that long tunnel of distorted gravity, just a few days past. That is: Having dressed for cold weather, wearing a good, modern coat.

    She's not very far in. In fact, she's still there at the entrance, having walked in toward Revali and Strawberry Princess. Boots, rather than tall geta, tap against the ground with each step. Of the two targets, the former receives, "Good evening, grandmaster," recalling the title without recalling who had granted it, while the latter receives, "and to you... Strawberry-Princess. If you had not spoken, I may not have recognized you too quickly." Tamamo is smiling, softly, but that could be more of a default expression than a purposeful attempt at cheer in such a somber context. "Are you well?" It's more than a rote question, though that polite tone doesn't betray too much of what.
Staren     Staren nods to Arcadia, and smiles to Tomoe. "Heya. Good to see you." He looks back to Arcadia. "I guess... it's like Seifer said before on the radio. Without being familiar with Earths, it's hard to tell what's actually unusual about this one."
Gawain Gawain is in his formal suit, instead of something extremely casual. Something like this deserves that much. The blonde knight steps up to the plaque, reading it carefully, as he watches the birdman and Strawberry Princess talk. He approaches them as he listens, and talks up to them, Tamamo as well once she steps up.

"Hello! Sorry if I'm interrupting. Sir Gawain, from the radio. Please, don't heed me any mind, I just wanted to ask you if you wanted to go through the exhibits with me! I was considering 'Ourselves', but if you have any preference, please, state as much!" He's smiling cheerfully.
Tomoe Tomoe says "That's pretty much how it foes."

SHe notes to Arcadia she holds out her hand for a moment.

"Tomoe the Iron Lily, Vice-Captain of the Gatecrashers Guild."

She takes a note to look to Staren for a moment. "Hello, Staren."
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry smiles back at Tamamo, taking her hand out of her hoodie's pocket to wave amiably- and then to Gawain, too, as he approaches. The expression crinkles her scar, shiny and 'distorted' at the edges like a burn in the shape of a cut. "No, I'm not," she answers the kitsune, with characteristic candor. "I'm sorry. It's not... good, or happy, to be here. But I felt like it was important somehow- you know. ... You haven't seen Lilian, have you?"

     Then, to Gawain, she gives a chagrined grimace. He's dressed up for a funeral, because in a way, this is one. And here she is in thrift-shop comfort clothes. "I can't say I had a specific order in mind. Maybe... 'the World', after that?"

     It's phrased as a question, but she sounds fairly firm.
Revali Revali's eyes narrow at Strawberry as she talks. From his body language, he's probably reacting more towards the scenario she's raising than her words or her herself.

"I get to decide... how it changes me," he repeats.

Behind him, he grabs onto his left wrist with his right hand. To an observer not familiar with rito physiology, it all looks like a mess of feathers, breaking the tone and the mood somewhat.

"I'm quite well," says Revali, addressing the newcomers, suppressing his initial double take at Tamamo's appearance. "And touring the the exhibits together sounds as though it'd be a pleasing time."
Arcadia Arcadia pauses briefly at the hand offering. Only because she's previously met Arthur Lowell and his very energetically involved greeting gestures. It takes a moment for her to realize that Tomoe is not going to do the same and grips it in one of her own pawlike hands. "Arcadia, Guardian Enforcer of Argo Alexandria, Technocracy of The Line."

There's another pause, and she tilts her head a little to the side. "Descriptive enough?" She is not all the accustomed to actual introductions yet.
Mauve Gauntlet Mauve Gauntlet, or rather Mauve Gauntlet's player, Aika, arrives on her own. She's had little if any interaction with this world, so she's not sure what to expect. She decided not to bother with wearing her Duel Avatar or even a Net Avatar. It was a museum, and what were the chances she ran into one of her multiversal allies here? So she's just here, in a plain looking school uniform.

She hums quietly, coming across the plaque. She adjusts her glasses as she reads...and then frowns. Oh, well...that was depressing. But given how there was even a memorial to begin with there was at least some form of success right?

She moves forward, walking into the 'Ourselves' exibit...and spotting I4. she lest out a small 'eep.' What was that about not expecting multiversal people here again?
Tamamo     Tamamo's look after Strawberry's response is something like a cat's--with wide, golden eyes that either catch or shine with light, attentive to the smallest motion, and almost eerily inhuman when set on a human face. She relaxes after that moment, tall ears minutely adjusting. "I see. Perhaps, I could provide you some assistance, should you discover some request within my capabilities. They are, if I may say so, conveniently broad."

    She waves off the little lapse in courtesy before answering regarding Lilian, maybe too vaguely, "Oh, yes. Quite recently."

    Revali, being well, gets a much more ordinary and less searching look, but a nod with Tamamo's returned smile. At the next arrival, Tamamo brightens, "Ah, sir Gawain. It is always a pleasure. I will be quite fine, wherever we find ourselves, within." So, no particular preference.
Lilian Rook     "Sorry, sorry, I got a little caught up!" says Lilian, just entering through the double sets of glass doors. She was absolutely not caught up in anything. It is basically physically impossible for her to get delayed and end up late somewhere. Nobody really needs to know that, though. It's very 'convenient' that her not being there right at the start has several newish arrivals all talking to each other though --especially Tamamo and Strawberry Princess in particular.

    She's clearly spent time (or 'time') picking out her own outfit, having matched it to the occasion, such that she has an adjacent palette to the building interior going on, going as far as the heels, gold earrings, black ruffled skirt, dark cardigan over white blouse and black ribbon mark, managing a sort of upper class occasion affectation without getting into black tie or cocktail party territory.

    "Oh, sorry to interrupt!" she adds, also not actually slightly sorry. "I'm glad to see you . . ." Lilian sort of trails off when she actually gets a look at the owner of Strawberry Princess' voice. She'd seen her before, but only in costume. Now she just looks . . . concerned.

    "Are you alright?" she asks. "Did something happen?"
Lilian Rook     OURSELVES:
    This part of the museum looks to be as close to a traditional war museum as you'd find. Huge tracts of space are dedicated to illuminated glasses, pedestals, walls, and rises that display and educate on the sparse remnants of the world in which humans fought each other, the fighters who were grossly unprepared for what they encountered, the initial impacts of the fifteen year period called the Onslaught, and then a running play-by-play of the narrative of desperate adaptation, invention, militarization, and eventual cooperation and unification. The entry information makes it clear that all of the pieces are donations, and some of them are their only surviving models.

    The very oldest and scarcest of the exhibits are perfectly boring to those of typical 21st century Earths. Following the intended route, the stages roughly progress from starting at the era of the Vietnam and Middle Eastern wars, of which everything is highly aged surplus that likely never saw use, or was retired and made obsolete anyways, to a stage starting at 2035, a stage ending at 2050, and a stage roughly about 'the modern day'.

    Big chunks of floor space are dedicated to displays of AFVs, aircraft cockpits, artillery pieces, bombs, entire transplanted chunks of battle-ravaged scenery, and other large pieces, usually with their own button-press narration.

    Considerable wall space is given over to progressive lines of 'the human soldier', demonstrating the evolving kit of various nations, photographic albums of the period, extensive facts about how awful being a soldier was at that time period, how they were trained, the intended use of the museum pieces when they were active, and comparative benchmarks to the modern day. Many come with short stories and testimonies recorded from veterans, many since deceased.

    A great number of cases are given over to lines of 'great inventions' along the lines of the invention of insulin and radar from the great wars, honouring scientists who saved lives rather than exclusively those who fought on the front lines. The gist is put in layman's terms at length, but there are surprisingly technical readouts available for those using the electronic screens.

    Outside of the usual traffic, a vaguely official person wearing a VIP clip is loitering around the later exhibits regarding a military initiative called the 'G.D.F'. Luxurious blonde, glittery black dress, tall, fair-skinned, glasses, stacked, PDA busywork; the picture of the modern high-powered go-getting western ambassador.
Lilian Rook     OUR ENEMY:
    Out of the branches, the bent to this one could almost be called paleontological. Not only is the arrangement and lighting best suited to a museum of natural history, its content would match it as well, if one meant the exact opposite of natural. Public education on the Antegent would obviously be sparse, both due to the fact that it's such a messy topic full of so many exceptions, and the fact that nobody sane would want the common person to feel like they have a good handle on the idea, but this looks to be about as good as it gets. The entry information delineates, quite clearly, which parts are models, which are reconstructions, and which are real remains, organized into stages as well.

    The most prominently visited section is dedicated to the various alien beasts the museum could reconstruct or gain specimens of themselves. Chunks of scenery styled after dinosaur exhibits pose various bizarre creatures in lifelike, action-oriented poses, while others are forced to use floor and ceiling holographic projection to properly convey the effect of something too strange to be presentable in static material. They seem to be the 'common' strains, seen repeatedly and given clade names. All of them, quite seriously, display the number of people estimated to have been killed by them.

    Collections of bones, carapace, crystals, or even anthill-cast-like filaments are held up as war relics, with diagrams of the full monster it was taken from, its method of defeat, and those involved, in the sideline. These seem to be uniques, fought on local soil. They too display grim statistics.

    Another section is given over to huge posters, infographics, and interactive displays of the classification systems and applied knowledge gained through study and experience, providing overall information about the otherwise confusing threat levels and archetypes posted on exhibits, but also information on various populations, distributions, at what year they were first discovered, and estimated remaining numbers.

    One more is more anthropological, in the sense that it contains a great deal of grim, if tastefully presented, human remains, and pieces of long-deceased nature. It is very much a contained mausoleum of disturbing medical horror, painfully detailing a myriad of ends the donated or recovered remains met, lest people come to view the exhibits too casually.

    Another vaguely official person seems to have staked this corridor as their turf. A woman with deep brown hair of impractical length, of A-list Asian celebrity physical features, wearing a barely localized take on the rich-blooded eastern wardrobe, fiddling with a fan in one hand, a phone in the other, and watching the traffic sharply and alertly without looking like it.
Lilian Rook     THE WORLD BEFORE AND AHEAD:
    The third branch, by virtue of its material, at first looks as if it's elected for a bizarre compromise between geopolitical world history and the kind of history that would normally be narrated by David Attenborough. Midway into a walk around it though, the thematic starts to make sense, and the relationships come together. In very large part, this branch exists to paint a picture of a world from before 45 years ago. The average age of people going through it certainly indicates why it has a right to exist. The main entry information is more of a disclaimer that it can't possibly cover every aspect of the 'BOE period', and that some details will inevitably be glossed over, or have been lost, nor can it paint a comprehensive picture of the world unknown far outside of any modern habitation, and cautions against the more modern mindset of 'the map being filled'. There's an open solicitation for verifiable records to complete the museum's collection.

    One part is a dizzying tunnel of map projections, national borders and cities marked out in meticulous, painstaking detail, with all sorts of 'heatmaps' about elevations, climates, population density, and the like, coupled with satellite photos cobbled together from various space programs of the day, day and night view. A new one is put up every three months, for fifteen years, in sequence, displaying the rate of radical transformations to the planet, both in the collapse and rearranging of borders and population, and the very look of the planet itself, even as seen from space.

    One part is more exclusively dedicated to the planet's natural environment. Terrariums, rock pools, walk-through gardens, and extensive interactive 'picture cubes' jealously document as much flora and fauna as can be hoarded into one place, while more sterile, glass-preserved areas house harmless samples of 'ecosystem' and anomalous curiosities from around the globe; the equivalent of genuine moon rocks or meteor remains.

    A third section is dedicated specifically to rather dry and jargon heavy, if well-illustrated and branded, walls of data and sit-in video presentations of various private initiatives, no doubt many of whom bankrolled the museum's construction, and continue to pay its bills. Their focus appears to be in support of 'the most crucial decisions about our future', and all bent slightly towards propaganda, since these special interests would all obviously compete for funding and votes.

    The recurring pattern of some probably important official person having mutually agreed to stake out an area without the others to visually stalk the traffic holds up here as well. A dark-skinned man, wearing a three piece suit and with a short beard and head of hair more salt than pepper, watches people come and go with surprising amounts of geniality in his crow's feet-affected gaze, despite how hyperattentive he seems.
Strawberry Princess      While the un-magical girl was able to adjust to Revali's appearance with only moderately effortful dignity, Tamamo's searching, feline expression makes her instinctively recoil in a flinching and restrained way. Something in the wrongness of that expression stretched over a human skull trips a nameless recognition. But she packs it down a moment later, replying with a more closed politeness: "I wouldn't- want to burden you like that. It's nothing to fret about."

     Lilian's arrival gives her a convenient 'out' from the interaction, and she waves a little more excitedly than she ordinarily ought. Though, at Lilian's evident concern, she gives a little self-conscious grimace. "Hey! It's alright, it's alright. I... I forgot to comb my hair, I guess." It's an answer that deliberately deflects from other avenues of worry.
Revali As he enters, Revali's gaze sweeps over the general layout of the 'Ourselves' space quickly.

"Ah... A lot of this looks just so alien to me. So much metal and concrete...""

His eyes glance over the room again. There's buttons next to a lot of the things. This means... it's a dungeon with a puzzle? No. That can't be it.

His gaze is drawn next to the walls, and he starts reading.

And reading.

Instead of the questioning gaze he swept the whole room over with, he's very focused in on the words there now. And as he reads further, the complexion starts to drain from his face.
Ishirou I4's path takes him across Mauve's, which causes him to give her an odd look when she lets out the 'eep'.  Turning towards her, he speaks calmly, more curious than anything.  "Everything alright?" Though his path continues to take him into the 'World Before and Ahead'.  

Into the exhibit, he decides to start with the TUNNEL. OF. MAP.  This was the sort of thing he liked looking at, heat maps, national borders, elevations...RAW data.  This also included maps from space and everything else.  

I4 eats this data up, trying to get a good feel for the world before, trying to piece together everything he can about the old world.  What was really interesting was the aftermath and the rebuilding of the current day.  

"Interesting, isn't it?"
Tamamo     Tamamo's next look to Strawberry is sympathetic, almost apologetic, for... something. "Are we not now comrades?" She closes her eyes a moment. "As you insist."

    Half-turning about, with only a little motion of cloth but a lot of fox-tail (by volume), "Ah, Lilan. We had only just arrived, it is so."

    She shows no hurry in prodding at the exhibits.
Arcadia Once the proper off-the-battlefield introductions are out of the way Arcadia walks into the actual 'Our Enemies' exhibit hall.

Only to stop immeadiately and crane her head back to stare up at one of the larger and more impressive reconstructions of a... vagely creature like thing, if even that. "Holy shit."

Strange mutations and adaptations are nothing new to her. The Line is full of such things, savage Turbofauna and equally savage speed-obsessed societies alike.

But Turbofauna were the product of accelerated evolution and mutation, due to their environment. These Antegent; these were on their own level. Beyond the requirement of 'matching' their environment, is the best phrasing she can put in mind to explain it.

"Even with minimalist details I can begin to see why this world nearly died," she mutters, entirely solemn in manner now.
Lilian Rook     "You . . ." Lilian is now staring at Strawberry like the mother of some teenager who'd just given such an absolutely awful excuse for the damage to the family car that she's wondering if she even heard the lie right. "Forgot to comb your hair?" There is further staring. She leans back and forth, slightly, as if expecting to see dilated pupils and red eyes, or maybe vampire bite marks or something. She sighs. "It seems there's never an end to the people I need to educate about building a wardrobe and using it. We're going shopping later." she says. She does not say 'let's go shopping' or 'would you like to go shopping?'. It's a fact.

    "Well, that's fine. I'm a little sad I wasn't later now; I'm sure it would have been interesting." she finally remarks to Tamamo, a little cleanly, though she doesn't take off just yet. "I know this was a bit of a spontaneous one-off, and it's not the most exciting and upbeat tourist attraction around, but I felt it'd be . . . appropriate; so, take it at your pace."
Staren     Damn, they have fake Antegents in giant dioramas? That's kinda messed up, but hey, these threats didn't ravage HIS world. He regards the list of monsters and their classifications and statistics coldly, calculating, considering the human cost. The human remains are distantly horrifying at worst, after the cancer tree and the 2D bone monsters, and he quietly wonders at the incredibly strange workings of the Antegent that could lead to such states.

    He nods to Arcadia. "Yeah. This is... one of the worst things that can happen to a world that's still survivable."

    He looks up at the exhibit she's currently regarding. "Maybe some worlds create something like you to fight these... Heck, that's the situation those androids are in, S6 and I4."
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry emits an uncomfortable half-laugh, a little exhalation of air through the open mouth. Her expression is gamely unguarded in the manner of someone who isn't used to her face being visible. She looks a little uneasy, a little ashamed. "Coming here in costume... didn't feel right. Disrespectful, somehow, I guess. Shopping- that'd be nice." She means it.

     Tamamo, she gives the same kind of uncomfortable smile, albeit to a lesser degree. "No, I'm sorry! You don't have to be... like that. I'm okay. I really am. So, please- don't worry. I don't like to make people worry. Okay?"
Tomoe Tomoe has fought the Enemy before, it was harrowing and that is saying something given Tomoe's history in the multiverse. She gets a bit more of an understanding of the enemy. Though she knows damn well to trust anyone such as Lilian or other field operatives about anything she might run into. She will check out the various exhibit. The human remains on display chill her. Yet after a while, she gets why they are here. They are to drive home the point of just how horrific these things are.

"Having fought an outbreak of some of these things? I have to agree. It's a testament to its people that they pulled through in the end."

Tomoe looks over to STaren for a moment and then to Arcadia and notes.

"Go back to when I was a kid and my world could have ended up dead or ravaged like this from some random thing to come out of the multiverse."

She also takes note of the somewhat official-looking woman with the eastern style clothing.

Tomoe will after replying to Staren and Arcadia, Tomoe will wander over seemingly interested in the woman.

"Come to see the exhibits?"

She asks in a friendly tone.
Revali Revali reads, and reads...

When he reaches the end, he pauses, going still, then closes his eyes and shakes himself lightly, as if trying to shake off something unseen but tangible that's physically settled on himself.

"Strawberry," he says, and then turns to look over at her. She's given an examining gaze, one that's... conflicted? Anxious?

"This is... how it was in your world? For you?"
Arcadia Arcadia nods in agreement to Staren. "As I was crafted to protect my city from the dangers caused by the The Line's nature."

She getures at one of the smaller creature displays. "But Turbofauna are a product of their environment. These.. are beyond such restrictions. No reliance on a biome survive, and no regard for other lifeforms that do." She voices some of her thoughts to the one she feels, being a scientist, would probably understand the notion. Then shakes it solemnly. Even her tail is mostly still behind her due to the serious atmosphere.

That and she doesn't want to accidentally knock something over.
Lilian Rook     OURSELVES:
    The examination of the long processions of exhibits stacked up across the wall space is a broad one that slowly grows narrower as it progresses. At the very start, national flags are arranged around the once-familiar sight of uniforms and kit emblematic to modern nations. Old dress uniforms are available in considerable number, donated from various families of veterans, their whites and blues and golds and blacks starkly contrasted next to the adjoining camouflage, olive drab and urban grey of combat outfits.

    Stood up on mannequins to get the full effect, each one has its standard gear arranged on little plexiglass shelves for the full vertical effect, as well as several old examples of standard weaponry. The American GIs can be seen with pristine M16s, field medical kits, folding shovels, NVGs, and shitty still-sealed MREs, right next to Russian winter wear and Kalashnikov designs, and red-starred Chinese caps and Type-95s, in a collection more centralized, complete, and authentic than any current Earth would get to have.

    The technology that was cutting edge then is a quaint note now. Defused hand grenades are stood up like market fruit, delineating that they'd work by spraying metal fragments everywhere. Old surplus ammunition is stacked up in rows, delineating the size, who used it, the energies involved, and how this could pierce 15mm of steel or that would tumble once it entered the body, because when fighting humans, the idea was to put people in the hospital with as much bodily damage as possible to bankrupt the enemy nation. Wild, huh? There are plenty of pleasant photos of soldiers smiling or doing stupid recreational activities out of boredom at various bases, in the winter, desert, and by the coast, and it talks about basic training, enrollment, tours, discharges, etc.

    Yet, moving on, this variety very rapidly disappears. The representations of most nations drop away completely, or their flags are simply bunched together with the bigger dogs. Shortly enough, camouflage largely disappears, citing its general uselessness against enemies that rarely rely on sight as a primary visual sense, and then later, switching over to stark colours that'd normally stand out, but absorb wavelengths they would see; white or black armour doesn't make sense otherwise.
Lilian Rook     Soon, the bodysuits are weighed down in excessive ceramics, then interlocking plating, and then need bits of exoframe to keep carrying it all. Packs of increasingly more excessive explosives and loads of ammunition, the numbers and figures of which just become number soup. Full facial helmets with breathing filters become mandatory, then tons of sensory suites, then standard features like visually censoring and automatically scrambling certain sights and sounds to protect the brain.

    MREs disappear completely, replaced with cans of nutrient solution. Medkits are reduced down to capsules and syringes. Anything non-combat related is cheap, barebones; a fun factoid is that socks weren't expected to last three months, because of the short lifespan of soldiers. Suicide functions become mandatory. Remote 'assisted suicide' functions after that. Command variants need multiple feeds from a score of soldiers beneath them, so that the minute someone's software picks up on an enemy, it alerts everyone in the squad, then the squad leader alerts the others, and up the chain. The photos are few and far between, mostly of men and women both, some of whom can't be older than 16, forcing smiles as best they can in alien-looking territory. Apparently, assistant AI had to be taken out of everything because it'd frequently be corrupted by the enemy and try to kill the operator!

    It's only at the very end where it turns around and ends on something like an uplifting note, where the national flags have largely been replaced by half a dozen newer symbols, and are variants on the same standard stuff. It's all bright, clean, fully sealed, highly mechanical, much lighter than the previous, with no expense spared, a butter zone between software assistance and AI, and lists and lists of lessons learned and applied. The entire weapon paradigm has changed to a complicated bit that'd fly over Revali's head specifically that proudly claims it's never been used on a human being, in the same sentence it also adds 'it'd be pointless anyways since a human being would just explode completely', and that superhuman strength is required to use it anyways.

    The small section of bright and shiny, brand new, slick and sci-fi stuff all falls under the 'dream' of a single, unified, Global Defense Force, under no one nation's command, solely in defense of humanity. It goes on at length about how the casualty rate has dropped from 99.8% to 5% average per major engagement, how they expect advances will save thousands of lives, et cetera.

    The blonde watches them through the whole thing, giving off the feeling she's eyeballing and documenting reactions.
Tamamo     "Oh, I can see this readily," Tamamo says to Strawberry, "but have you considered the differences, as there are, between 'making worry' and 'requesting aid'? Must it be another who makes the decision to sound the horn, and nothing less?" The words are softened with a gentle warmth, and a sincerity that makes that brief, earlier impression appear a lie. "The gods will not strike you down for a selfish prayer, I assure and guarantee. Think upon that for which you might pray, will you not? Or else you might be forever tugged along by those who seek you well, for that need to do good by another will not be suppressed solely by 'worry not.'"

    Tamamo's attention shifts partway to Lilian toward the end, at which she brightens once more, claps once, and switches onto the new topic, "I have had no complaints concerning the work of the tailor to whom Lilian introduced me. A most attentive craftsman, he was. Although, 'shopping' refers instead to the market of immediate goods in this sense, no?" Pecularities of language remain, despite the supposed ease of translation, where 'localization' may be what failed.
Lilian Rook     OUR ENEMY:
    The remains Staren and Tomoe browse through are clearly selected for shock value. There are skulls split so cleanly in half that the insides look polished, or done by autoclave. There are bones that have petrified into some kind of spiny crystal that the readout assures him happened while the person was still alive. There are preserved samples of horrendously mutated tissue, and some black-veil graphics of what sixth degree burns and esoteric energy damage looks like. It's all very fun, very horrible, medical knowledge. There are samples of wildlife too, passively killed by mere Antegent presence, like fish turned to some black tar-like blob, or a songbird with literally nothing inside of it past the first centimeter of its exterior, verifiable via tiny holes delicately drilled through it, like its insides vanished out. They haven't wasted the space on anything like bite marks. If it isn't 'pulverized into fragments and here's a diagram of how jellied the body would be' then they aren't interested.

    Looking for a more impressive reconstruction, Arcadia happens on the huge holo-tanks, which still have to specify a scale with a little projected human being, as some of their subjects don't fit into the building at all. A thing like a nimbus of purplish watery clouds, dripping literally hundreds of meters of long, drifting tendrils, translucent and flickering with rainbow light, with flashing frond-like 'gills' and 'sails', claims to have killed sixty two thousand people by floating over towns and scooping people up off the ground, out of their houses and basements, with its prehensile bits, until brought down in 2038, three months after it appeared, where the jelly-fish like parts on display were taken from when it was wounded with multiple ICBMs and fought on the ground.

    Another should be familiar to those who touched London, though it's an imprecise 'artist's rendition' sort of lifelike, animated hologram. Something halfway between a therapod dinosaur and an incredibly muscular humanoid with overlong arms and huge shoulders, alternating between two, three, and four point stances, bipedal and imposing or low and feral, with a gigantic tail, predatory, fanged maw, and massive, sweeping horns. It's all black shadow covered in ivory white carapace, almost like knightly armour. A second mouth is visible inside its maw. A halo of light that can only be rendered as fire-coloured fractals constantly surrounds its head, and there are digital reconstructions of 'energy weapon' use from it. The death toll is two and a half million, defeated on the same day it appeared, in the Fall of London. The pieces recovered match 100% to the gigantic turbo corpse in the city. True to their intuition, it says that the Antegent, class Titan, is presumed to not be dead, but only kept in a comatose state by one of the thirteen Excaliburs planted in its skull. The (dead) hero who accomplished it has his name added.
Staren     Staren nods. "True aliens. Hostile to the very existence of the people of the Multiverse. And yet so many still feel the need to regard their fellow people as if they were these beings."

    Beat. He glances at a nearby exhibit showing human remains that lived through days of torturous mutation. "They haven't seen true horror. True enemies."
Strawberry Princess      Following along behind Revali through "Ourselves", Strawberry gives the exhibits a quiet and solemn berth rather than inspect them in detail. Either she's a very fast reader, or she's already grimly familiarized with the outline and needs few details to fill it in. The melody is different, but the drums of war are always the same.

     "No," she tells him quietly. "This is... worse, in scale. But similar in character. Some things don't change. People, soldiers. You gain heroes, and then you lose them." Her eyes linger on his, equally searching, but for different purpose. It takes her a moment to process through that.

     Then, to Tamamo, she manages a little smile: "Thank you. I mean it. I... I know what you're doing. When you say those things. I say them to other people, too. But sometimes you need to hear it yourself, you know? So... thank you. And- if I can help you with things, don't hesitate to ask, either. Okay?"

     "'Shopping'," she says, turning her gaze to Lilian with that smile remaining, "has the tone of an... emergency stopgap measure, doesn't it? A rescue from the terrible fate that's befallen me, to buy time for a proper tailoring." At least now she's able to treat it with a sense of wry humor. "Seeing how she dresses on her own time, I'm inclined to trust Lili's fashion sense."
Lilian Rook     THE WORLD BEFORE AND AHEAD:
    If I4 has done any checks on modern Earth statistics, the start would look very familiar to him, in pretty much every regard.

    By the first six months, the total population has decreased from eight billion to five. The demographics leave the Middle East, eastern Russia, central Africa, and lower South America as wastelands. Huge amounts of population from the central US have blobbed up in already high population centers, and the terrain becomes notably scarred by nuclear strikes from orbit. A number of lesser islands have disappeared under the sea. Blotches caused by massive fires and deforestation are visible across China, Australia, Korea, and Vietnam.

    By year three, the sea level has somehow risen almost ten meters, though the temperature is lower. Sixty percent of the formerly inhabited globe is now dark at night. Most satellite imagery is gone, with the satellites themselves lost, or newly put up for classified military use. The US is now a tapestry of nuke marks, half the states uninhabited. Western Europe has only fared better for less nukes, though the number of strikes outweighs the number of currently stockpiled weapons by orders of magnitude. The Middle East and Russia are both far worse off, for having churned out many more, much cheaper, much dirtier ones. Signs of terraforming are all over the place; the Encroachment class of Antegent was only first discovered around this point.

    Halfway through, there are only a few meaningful points of light at nighttime. Populations are either on scattered islands the chaos hasn't bothered to reach yet, or centralized in capitals, major cities, rapidly expanded military bases, or huge urban fortresses. Pretty much every developing nation is effectively gone, as is most of India, Russia, and Central America, severing the still-fighting South America from the US above it. The changes to the globe are extremely severe, the Architect class appearing at year five and doing their work. Half the seaboards are visibly transfigured. Air travel is notably compromised, and sea travel is risky.

    By year ten, the picture has settled into its nearly final state. The population is one billion, eventually to settle down to a mere hundred and fifty million. There are less than a thousand cities remaining, four hundred of which will become the modern Urban Centers. Terraforming doesn't meaningfully progress here; if it's not a nuke site, or near defended habitation, it's weird. The UK is a strange red and black forest with a huge glowing scar hanging over it. France and Spain a white and teal land devoid of water where formations of teeth grow from the soil (the silver crater is visible much earlier). Germany to Greece are a nightmare kaleidoscope of shifting colours crowded together and blotting out the sun. Japan is perpetually shrouded in alternating bands of dark mist and explosive, primeval overgrowth, littered with stone and metal growths like artifacts of tremendous size. Most of Canada and Russia are permanently frozen over, and the ice and snow drawn into patterns that are *only* visible from satellite. The entire coast of Australia is blockaded inside miles high 'vaguely cora-esque' monoliths rising from the sea.

    It's only slightly reassuring that some of the terrain is beaten back and normalized by year fifteen, albeit only a fraction of a percent. The number of functional satellites is next to nil, but their utility is massively upgraded, allowing for global maps again.
Arcadia Arcadia was going to question if they were hostile by intention or just by being so different and hazardous to contend with.

Reading over the reaccount of how the massive gas-jellyfish specifically snatched up and killed thousands puts that question to rest. No, there was no way that was not without intent. These things do not need to prey to feed and sustain themselves, so specifically catching humans ... for whatever reason that was beyond their logical understand.

The numbers of casualties listed on various displays makes handpaws clench at her sides. But she keeps herself refrained, and just dips her head in a brief moment of rememberance and respect. Before turning away to resume looking over morbid displays. "But humanity does not roll over and give up. They're too stubborn. Too.. adaptable. Losses are a terrible truth... But they learn from them."
Lilian Rook     "No no, you can't just tell me not to worry and expect that solves it." Lilian says to Strawberry. "*Obviously* you don't show up in costume. You're right about that. But you look like you were absolutely forced to come; like you're here sheerly out of spite or something." She then relents, for a moment. "I suppose nobody would have taught you how to dress or take care of yourself around that time, if the government had you. I hear that veterans have a lot of difficulty acclimating to 'unimportant' things especially." She says that, however, while puffing out her chest a little at Tamamo's approval of her last shopping outing.

    "Well, it's probably not wise to jump straight to bespoke tailored goods, right? Those require a lot of care and attention, and if you aren't caring for yourself properly, you won't care for your clothes." She claps her hands together at Strawberry's own assessment. "Absolutely! Even if you don't feel like it, you're a hero again now, aren't you? I can't claim to know what's going on in your head, at least not what it really feels like, but you don't look like a person who's been given a purpose again, and if you look the wrong way, you'll start thinking of yourself the wrong way again too."
Revali Revali meets Princess Strawberry's gaze.

He's the first to look away.

"This is war, then..." he says. "I was prepared for losing people. I was not prepared for..."

"..."

He looks over at a different part of the room. "It's all too much to try to process at once. The things, the realities I'm unfamiliar with... the sheer scale of..."

He glances over at one of the displays at the end, at something he can grasp on. "Five percent. We'd be decimated at a five percent casualty rate, and here reaching that is celebrated as a crowning achievement..."
Tamamo     Tamamo rewards Strawberry's deduction with a warm smile. "Of course. I shall keep this in mind, Strawberry-Princess. Perhaps I shall find need for one who can place burned holes through near anything that exists, but I think I should enjoy the opportunity for intelligent conversation moreso."

    Tamamo pays some attention to the surroundings as they progress through the more recent eras of humanity's development of the art of war, though it's more polite than detailed, and her reactions to the pieces are heavily muted. Lilian, at least, has seen Tamamo react to modernity, and so has the position from which to guess that Tamamo is purposefully avoiding outward signs, even as her eyes pass over the exhibits just slowly enough to have plausibly read them. Nor does she react directly to Revali's shock.
Staren     Staren takes in the jellyfish, and the monster that menaced London. "That's what it looked like alive, huh?"

    Staren nods to Arcadia. "Yeah. I mean... who knows how many more worlds out there /lost/ so we never hear about them, but... intelligence and hope fight on and find a way as long as they can. They have to."

    Staren looks at the number of dead listed under these Antegents and sighs, shaking his head. "Why can't people see... THIS is what we should be fighting. The universe is not kind, or caring, or hopeful, it simply is; if we value these things, we must force them on the world. But no, everyone's gotta have an /agenda/. They can't be trusted. If you just want to help, people regard you as a distrustful lunatic. And sure, you gotta gather more power to be able to use it to carve out enclaves of kindness in an uncaring universe, but..."

    Staren sighs again. He glances back to Tomoe, "It coulda been your world. It coulda been mine. If we were in their place... wouldn't we want help?"

    He looks back at the hologram of a monstrous jellyfish extracting a family from their home with precision and intent. "Worlds with /people/ in them unify while so many other possible worlds do not. Perhaps there is /one/ bit of kindness in the laws of Multiversal physics. We should be siezing the opportunities it gives us to do good, not bickering and squabbling amongst ourselves."
Lilian Rook     OUR ENEMY:
    Scoping the smaller displays discovers that the more common, less impressive Antegent have naturally ended up claiming the most lives. While the unique cases have massive disaster tolls, even the lowest classes, which stuck around until the modern day, have claimed tens of millions by themselves.

    Notably for the experienced members, there are a few variants of a familiar, quadrupedal, 'double-ended' frame, like BD's 'big dog' without a clear front or back, all black carapace, blinking deep-sea lights, five-jointed legs, horrific folding serrated scythes, and display-case 'darts' made of body tissue and fired via combustion which purportedly release disintegrating levels of exotic radiation. The clade name is 'Undobhar', with over a hundred million civilian and combat casualties attributed to them, despite millions of confirmed kills against them as well. The earliest widely seen Antegent species, they're essentially synonymous with the start of the Onslought. The versions fought before appear to be on the smaller end, with larger, more complex organisms geting to tiger or even elephant size.

    There are surprisingly few examples of anything aquatic at all, and flying monsters only appear on a timeline *after* ground travel had largely ceased, and airstrikes were an everyday occurrence, though the only aerial example on display is some hideous V-shaped manta ray *thing* with an underside that's all giant, freakishly human-like jaws, blue-black patterned skin like solar panels, and what look like organic jet turbines in it rear wing phalanges. It's the size of a truck. Supposedly they congregate in flocks of hundreds. Fun.

    Tomoe talks to the woman with the fan. Tilting it lower than her neck, with a slight motion of her wrist, she smiles in a way that, regardless of its cliche, can *only* be described as 'enigmatic'. "Oh no." she says, in English that is heavily accented, but not any Japanese accent she recognizes. "I've been here many times before. Fortune told me that some interesting people would be here, so I came to watch those instead. I hope you don't mind." she says. "Why've you come, then? It's fair to ask, isn't it? Since you've seen these with your own eyes."
Lilian Rook     Confirming Arcadia's suspicions, the basic info section agrees that no Antegent has ever been witnessed intentionally killing or consuming either animals or other Antegent. The only known examples are essentially collateral damage; the behaviour of doing so intentionally has never been recorded. Universally, they only respond to humans, and in lieu of those, human habitation. Essentially all known settlements that have been evacuated in advance have been intentionally destroyed.

    All of the exhibits also have the Beast to Titan scale, alongside the colour grade and Archetype, and timeline. There are some displays further back that are just jumbles of colour and light, with those rent-glasses available near them (on chains); there's probably some overlay needed to play enough tricks on the eye to see them rendered according to eyewitness description.
Ishirou I4 records all of it, from year one to year fifteen.  It's horrible, a massive loss of life, the world from what many worlds are like now to a barren, sickly shadow of its former self.  It causes the Android to sigh slightly because it wasn't too far off from what was happening to their world.  If Indus is really the last city...

This world's people recovered, they pushed through.  Was it because these humans just had a stronger desire to survive?  Sure, the humans created the Androids, but...

With a sigh, he turns out of the exhibit.  The black box floating beside him chimes in, -Unit I4's brain activity is in an abnormal pattern, please verbally indicate that you are within functioning parameters.-

"Yes I'm fine," he says, and deciding to head into the Ourselves exhibit.  "Oh, hello," he says towards the others as he enters.  
Lilian Rook     With the pair deciding to go through the warfighting section, Lilian quiets down about clothes and Strawberry's personal life. She ostensibly has that much decorum when it comes to a monument like this place, when past the front lobby.

    She does a double glance over the remains of an M1 Abrams tank, with a huge, perfectly spherical gap having clearly exposed the insides of the remaining half, and a plaque saying it's the most intact model anyone can find. She vaguely passes over a case with a photo of the guy who invented battlefield medical foam, the first example to the modern variety, and the estimated number of lives saved and its applications in hospitals and EMT service. She's not paying too much attention.

    "It was more exciting as a kid." she all but mumbles. "Everything is, but when you've actually held the weapons in your hand . . ." She shakes her head. "Well, superheroes are at the end of the hall, past anything about 'soldiers'."

    Still, there's no failing to notice the state Revali is in. He stands out enough that even the patrons who sweve past Tamamo give him an even wider berth simply for visual strangeness. She doesn't particularly sound as if she's trying to be reassuring, or even sympathetic, but she does say "It'd be inaccurate to call this 'war'. War implies there is another side. Someone else who wants things. Who has feelings and demands. Even 'that man's' incomprehensibly irrational hatred of Hyrule is a feeling. A motivational desire. That war is probably unavoidable, but if you think of it as like this --the end of the world-- before it's even started . . ."

    "Well, I suppose you don't feel particularly comforted by the thought you're supposed to win in the end, right? But that hero boy seems prepared to go through anything for it, and he never seems prepared for anything. Maybe start thinking realistically about how you'll fight and how many you'll protect, instead of envisioning hell."
Arcadia It's not predatory, not in the sense of needed for survival. That makes it essentially murder. All these deaths, war crimes. Nearly genocide. Not that anyone is going to put one of these things on trial. It's difficult enough to execute them as is.

Arcadia sighs solemnly to Staren. "Agreed. But differences in opinion; just in -what- to do, will always get in the way of unified action. Many societies have difficulty looking past their own ideals."
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry smiles a little pensively throughout Lilian's assessment of her self-care. Mean-girl intuition and trained social psychology might tell her that Strawberry's trying not to tell any reassuring white lies. Without those to counter with, there just isn't much to say. What else could there be? At the mention of 'being a hero', though, she reflects the smile. "I'm not... not sure I think that way. This isn't 'me'. It's what I am when I can't be me. But you're still right. It's important to be... respectful. And you can't always wear pastels."

     Tamamo, too, gets an awkward yet positive response. "I think I'd like that best, too. Out of... all the things, I'm sure you can do. I'm not sure if I'm really ready to... to make friends, again, yet. But having someone like you to talk to, it's nice."

     Walking over to Revali, the muscles in her face all tighten up without managing to form a coherent expression. Her voice becomes uncharacteristically firm. She doesn't intrude on his space by trying to get in front of him, but her eyes meet his through the reflection on a display. "You shouldn't. Try to process it, all at once. Not because it'll hurt you, but because it won't. This is the worst thing. Do you know? It's the worst thing on Earth. And if you can get used to that, to this, to five percent casualties being good, you can get used to anything. So don't. Never do. Please."

     She turns away from him for a moment, her voice slipping back to its faltering hoarseness. "It's... poison. For your heart. For anybody who lives."
Staren     One ear turns towards the woman with the fan. Staren hmphs. "If only we could even agree on the goal... but maybe we'd still sabotage it just as much with bickering even so."

    Then he turns towards the woman and approaches her. "Well, here we are. Have you anything to ask of us 'interesting people'? I came to learn a bit more about your world's... this world's own perspective on the threat they face, and to learn more about just who they are, as peoples."
Arcadia "Huh?" Arcadia turns her head to watch Staren go to a different display. Except it's not a display, it's a person. Oh, she was so enrapt by the exhibits she hadn't even noticed.

But her conversation partner is going over so she follows. Though at 'interesting people' she smirks a little. She definately counts.
Tomoe The museum sells home just how bad the Antegents are and she gets why. When things start to get good again people forget about the bad things and that can lead to it happening all over again. It's not pretty but she gets it, and she still wonders. Where did these nightmares come from? She knows her world's own changes and problems were of its own doing for the most part. Yet here she's not sure about what might be the source of all this, on this world. It's may never be known. Or it may need people to go into some of the worst afflicted areas to find.

Before she had departed to talk to the woman she does respond to Staren and Arcadia.

"It really could have happened to any of our worlds. Still, they are taking help, I did get cleated to take jobs to help fight the remnants of these things. Also, you are from the line Arcadia interesting."

She thinks about the losses too. It seems she didn't have a comment for what else Staren had to say. Or maybe she will reply to that later.

For the moment she's talking to the woman who has been watching them. 5R
Tomoe seems relaxed but he does notice she can't place the woman's accent.

"An interesting reason to be here."

She catches that the woman is aware of her activities here. She does assume from this she's well informed about certain things.

"I'm not a native of this Earth and wanted to learn a bit more as I am curious. Another to keep myself from getting too cocky. It also helps me learn about the people of your world a bit. In so much in what is said and shown here as well. I go by Tomoe."
Revali Bringing up Link seems to snap Revali out of it, or at least some of it. He's snapped out of the worst of the funk, at any rate.

"Oh, don't talk to me about the goat herder right now," he says. "Could fate have picked a worse option for the singular person the entire destiny of Hyrule rests upon? The goat herder, the king of evil, and the little girl in the castle, all in some... silly dance the steps of which have already been decided, it's just... asinine."

He exhales, and then turns to Strawberry Princess. He meets her gaze his time, willing himself not to look away.

"... Alright. Not all at once. Not... all at once. And not to that level. For my heart."

"I have to believe what you're all saying is true, I think. I just have to. That this..."

He looks around. "This isn't what it's going to come to. It's going to get bad, I am not downplaying that. But this is... beyond that. This is not my world. It's not going to turn out like this. Ganondorf and the Gerudo are many things, but the kind to resort to tactics that require... 'remote suicide buttons'...."

He shakes his head, trying to ward off that funk again. "Not going to dwell on that."

"I haven't... really talked about why I'm here, have I," he says, realizing something. "Why I'm here and not at my home world, I mean."
Strawberry Princess      "Wonder's harder to find when you see it yourself, I guess," Strawberry replies, her own voice taking on a more hushed tone to mirror her "host's" respectful demeanor. She soaks in the atmosphere for a while longer, stepping deliberately a bit out of earshot when Lilian starts talking to Revali, but rejoins the two of them a minute later.

     "I think I'm going to go visit 'the Fallen'," she says. It has the tone of an uncertain resolution, not a casual whimsy. It's in her eyes, too- that she wasn't sure she was going to be up to do that when she first got here. Her mind's made up now.

     On her way down to that wing, though, she adds- if Revali's following- "I'd love to hear that, though. Why you're here. Didn't you say it's... self-reflection? Getting ready for what you think is coming?"
Lilian Rook     OUR ENEMY:
    "No no, you were right the first time." the mystery woman says to Staren, in tones that speak of so many layers of fine and multifaceted amusement that he'd need a figurative electron microscope to figure out what is so entertaining --and even then, her expression barely changes from a polite smile. "Have I anything to ask, though? Well, I hadn't come with the express intention of asking anything, if that's what you're referring to, but if I were to hypothetically ask something; shouldn't there always be something worth asking anyone you meet? What a question~" she says, seemingly going around in circles for her own, further amusement.

    "Ah, so earnest. Straightforward." she says to Tomoe, her voice saying 'enjoyably quaint', but the slow shake of her head saying 'you have a lot to learn'. "I'm perfectly aware of who you are. Not so many people are that comfortably disinterested in things like 'these' just because they happen outside of their doorstep." She says 'these' in a frankly impressively airy and nonspecific way; the emphasis is almost invisible, yet is easily taken to mean 'everything Elites have done so far'. "Though it's also true that I rarely see this side of Earth anymore these days as well." she finishes, without explanation.

    Unfolding her fan again, she continues after a spell, somehow without her voice being even slightly muffled by the paper spread in the way. "Have you given any thought as to why you're doing these things? I don't mean ideologically; of course nobody needs much of a reason to reject the things you see before you. I mean where you're going. What you stand to gain from it. Whether it's worth the possibility of a horrible, torturous death, like so many before you --even remotely, as a mere, distant, unheeded possibility in the back of your mind, only coming scratching when the Sanzu looms closer. These . . . open calls. Mercenary work. I assume you haven't heard the name or seen the face of any of your employers, yes? Being happy to help is fine, but are you even aware who you're benefiting?"

    Finally she snaps the fan shut again, and is somehow holding a trio of what look like business cards. They're in the black and platinum usually associated with this world's Enlightened ID cards. "Think on it a little; whether you're content hammering down mice as they pop out of their burrows, regardless of who your aid goes to, or whether you have bigger plans than staying expendable mercenaries, and would prefer some representational direction in where you're allowed to ply your talents."

    She leaves it at that. The cards have extraordinarily elegant silver kanji on them, with a tree and wave motif barely visible in slightly different shades of black behind it. The English subscript has references to some organization called the Undivided Asiatic Traditions, and more prominently below that, something called the 'Ayakashi Interests Symposium', with a personal number.
Lilian Rook     OURSELVES:
    "If you'd like my opinion, I think a goat herder and a little girl are the best possible types of people that the prophecy could have picked out for you." Lilian says to Revali. Her tone is completely confident. Conversational. As if discussing the weather; something obvious to everyone but worthy of being verbal filler.

    "If they ended up being larger than life fairytail supermen, that would be too natural. Everyone would obviously see how they're meant to save Hyrule, and leave it all in their hands. If they look like idiots --totally unprepared-- then people have mixed confidence in the prophecy. They want to believe it, but at the same time, they're certainly not willing to leave it *all* to destiny. Furthermore, people of means, such as yourself, look at them aghast, and say 'I could do that'. Rather than resting and waiting for a peerless saviour, they see an equal, or a lesser, realize that it can't be all that hard, pick themselves up and go do something about their situation. Your intent to outdo him is everything Hyrule needs, not to mention your people."

    She grows less casual when the two of them settle the topic. "I was hoping you'd tell me, actually. It hadn't escaped my notice." she says to Revali. When Strawberry displays her intent to visit the final exhibit though, Lilian's finger twitches as if she means to raise her hand, matching the a slight start of her body forward, and the flicker of a frown. ". . . are you *sure* you'll be alright?" she asks.
Revali "We've run simulations," says Revali as he follows Strawberry.

He pauses. "Tokens moving around a map on a table, not... whatever calculations the machinists of the worlds call 'simulations'. I trust ours more than theirs anyway, since we rely on people who can relate and feel, and not uncaring numbers and metal."

"In any case. The reality is that it's coming. War breaks out in... two years, at most. The gerudo will not back down. The hylians defend to a stalemate in the best case, and provoke the gerudo further in the most likely case. In either outcome things... spiral out of control."

Revali listens to Lilian. He narrows his eyes."I'm not of means. I've never rested or waited for a savior. Everything I have - everything I am, down to the last impressive detail - I've worked hard and harder for and never rested on my laurels."

"And I'm here... because it's all not enough. Working myself to the bone, clawing ounce after ounce of skill and spectacularness from nothing..."

"And it's still not enough."

"We're going to war, and I need to get better."
Arcadia Arcadia cants her head to the side curiously, sidebangs swishing a bit with the motion. She's the sphinx but this woman is the one talking in riddles of vage yet deep philosophical circles.

But in the end the fanning woman produces something of physical interest. Ooo, a potential contact within this world? Arcadia snags one of the offered cards between clawed fingers. Turns it over to look at the fancy detailing, names and contact number. Excellent. This is the sort of thing, along with general information on the world, she is suppose to be gathering.

The card is flicked away into her subdimensional inventory. "For some of us, it is what we were made to do... but that does not mean guidance from the more familiar is unwanted." She made a small, polite bow to the woman. "Thank you for your time and insight."

Definately something else to look into. Making connections within another world is definately prefered, as there was still society and culture here to save.
Staren     Staren looks at the woman and frowns at her speech. He takes a card and frowns at it too. "Are you serious."

    He makes a sweeping gesture at the room around them. "Faced with all of this, that anyone on your world could still be embroiled in these political shadow games..." Staren shakes his head. "I'll never understand it. You're LUCKY there's people like us motivated by helping our fellow man who'll do the work anyway... because if EVERYONE played games like this, you'd all be dead. Parasites on the back of society..."

    He storms off. "I guess even when your world has ACTUAL TERRIBLE MONSTERS and you could ACTUALLY BE A HERO FIGHTING THEM, some people STILL have to find some way to feel special without contributing."

    He wanders off to the OURSELVES room for a bit while the player reads some of the backscroll of the other branches.
Arcadia Arcadia blinks as Staren acts less than pleased and storms off. Huh. She doesn't really grasp why he's abruptly being so sour about it... but in the end, it's probably some grand scientist thing she wouldn't understand anyways.
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry's facing away from Lilian when those words- "are you sure you'll be alright?"- hit her. She stops walking, turns her head not quite enough to look back over her shoulder. She takes an audible breath, and a transformation comes over her. Not the transformation, not here, but something reminiscent of it.

     Her shoulders square up. Her spine straightens from its habitual slouch, adding a couple of inches to her apparent height. Even her feet are planted differently, a little more securely. It's the act of becoming Strawberry Princess proper, instead of just some wreck of a kid who happens to share the name. She turns her head the rest of the way, and she's smiling a smile that context says is fake, but you wouldn't be able to tell.

     "This is important to me, Lilian," she says, her voice sounding- for just one sentence- almost like it might've if she hadn't spent four years gargling brandy and cigarettes. Not "yes, I'm sure". But "this is important".
Lilian Rook     "I don't mean 'of money'." Lilian says to Revali, perhaps too dismissively of the entire concept. "I'm sure that's what the average Hylian believes 'means' are. I mean people who have the means to do things. Skills, talents, followers, magic, political power --anything. An untouchable demigod inspires people to wait to be saved. A questionable idiot inspires people to stand up for themselves. Even if it upsets you --no, especially because it pisses you off on every level, you're going to do it, right? You're going to fight for the Rito ten times harder than you would've if you had some version of the Hero of Courage you approved of."
Tomoe Staren joins in on the conversation, she listens she also takes note of the woman's reply. There's no real external rankling from it, she is, after all, a frontline fighter and she knows it. Still, it makes her think a bit about the woman talks about these people. She thinks she catches some of the implied meaning. Elites bring all their personal baggage in when they get involved in a world. Tomoe does wonder about the woman's last statement and she wonders? Is she a veteran of the conflict? She doe snot voice this as the conversation continues.

"I find generally reducing the number of aberrations on a world tends to be a net gain for the local population yet...you raise an interesting point."

The pay was good sure, and she often felt the need to pass the buck forward. Still playing wack a mole wouldn't solve the whole problem. There were still many of these things left to deal with. She also knows as the Vice-Captain of her guild getting more contacts out in the multiverse was an important thing after all.

"You have made some interesting observations."

She will accept the offered card, read it over briefly, finally when she does that she'll pop it carefully into her wallet. Then she pockets it away.

She takes note Arcadia and Staren also seem interested int his as well.

"Where there are people there will be political issues. It just depends on the scale of it."

Staren's outburst surprises Tomoe a little given his experience with the Concord as one of the Hands she thought he'd get stuff like that a bit better.

Once thingd wrap up here she'll check the rest of this place out as she is also hear to see and learn.
Lilian Rook     THE FALLEN:

    As one would expect, the final branch is the smallest section, and the one least trying to engage the attention economy of the generations after the affliction of the three second rule. It's very much a place someone expected would be glossed over by teenagers and tourists --and that would be fine; it isn't necessarily for them. It'll be there when they get older, and more importantly, once they lose someone close to them.

    One of two major points of interest is the part that attempts to put the entirety of the fifteen years of disaster into perspective, for those who weren't there for it. Almost perversely modeled in fashion of the highly effective interactive displays, quizzes, calculators, and exercises put up in science museums in past, it contains a grim bevy of means to psychologically contextualize 'what had happened', in a sense that some twenty something who has maybe a dead grandparent might begin to grasp. It is only populated by people who look quite serious, who seem to have a strong intellectual interest, or people who already appeared to be some shade of morose before even entering, here on a terrible day to put it into perspective.

    The other is what dominates the remaining three quarters of the space. It is, evidently, a memorial hall, and the need for all of it isn't immediately apparent at first glance. There are actually soundproof glass doors here to cut it off from all outside noise, with its own climate control, and it seems to go both up and down a half-floor in concentric circles, with glass steps between them, to maximize the amount of information it can cram into the walls. There are rent-glasses at the door, for some reason.

    The vaguely officious maybe-important person who'd chose to hang around here is a grim looking man with a hawkish face and a nose that obviously broke once and didn't fully set right, balding earlier than his evident age, and likely not from genetics. Whatever he's wearing, it's under his black, rumpled greatcoat, with his hands stuffed in its pockets, barely leaving more than dress shoes visible below him.



    Strawberry Princess need not spend much time on the former. As opposed to the other exhibits, this one is very coy about the statistics, waiting until the visitor volunteers something of themselves to be gripped and shaken. The most prominent and intentionally callous of them, right at the front, allows visitors to enter in the names of up to 200 people they know, and list an occupation, residence, and social status. Then, it crunches weighted random numbers, and spits out how many of those people they'd be left with if the Onslaught happened more recently. It's pretty ghastly.

    Kids who enter in the names of all their friends, classmates, teachers, family, relatives, and random celebrities they can think of, end up with entire screens of dead people, and are lucky to have one random kid at the same school be the sole survivor on the list. The younger ones compete over it to see who knows the most living people and have to be shoved off by their parents. The older teens and young adults try it several times over and over hoping to get a green icon on someone precious to them, and eventually give up. Sometimes an adult opens up the 'probable death by' information, makes a hard face, and then always either walks away, or goes through every single one of them, with no middle ground.
Lilian Rook     The memorial hall itself is almost fantastical by comparison --no, fantastical in objectivity. The half-space up and down is needed to get an extra floor of space, so that each tier can individually stack its contents fifty high; their contents are names. Names of the dead. Barely given more than three square inches each, crowded together, impossible to etch in bronze, and so rendered on digital display. They're glowing wallpaper on glass screens top to bottom, needing short steps to get up and down to see them all, if one were so madly inclined.

    The room itself is laid out in the shape of a multi-petaled flower. At first it just seems to be for privacy, but it quickly becomes apparent that it's absolutely necessary to fit all of the names into an area with less square feet than a football field, exponentially multiplying the amount of wall to put names on. Tapping on any one of them brings up a window, the wonderful age of social media and government registration ensuring that all of them can come with a smiling photograph most recent to their deaths, before joining military service, and last in military service --because they're all military. All of them.

    There must be a million --no, two million names here. The rent-glasses are for an augmented reality function that lets someone properly sort through them, by alphabet or date of service or theatre or even search specific names. Only a fraction were enlisted in the army in 2035, and not too many more after. The great bulk are in the late periods. Many are sixteen are seventeen, many are fifty or sixty, many are mothers, or parentless orphans; anyone who could pick up a rifle and had either the guts to do it or nowhere else to go is represented, though there is the small mercy of black bars censoring out where and how they were killed unless they're deliberately revealed. The dedication on each of them is 'to all those who gave their lives to defend queen and country'. This is because the entirety of the exhibit is dedicated, as it would follow, solely to people from the old United Kingdom. The room doesn't contain foreign soldiers. It cannot.

    If Strawberry Princess has the sheer desire for self-harm strong enough, she can locate one additional option with the AR overlay: the ability to cycle out the military deaths and see civilian ones. Most of these are only random facebook photos pulled off the remains of the internet, and a 'last seen' date; the vast majority lack a real confirmation of death, and none of them have any details but place of birth, school, occupation, place of residence, and surviving relatives, if any. It's a more compact display, and largely based off of heads the government wasn't able to account for once it was all over.

    The second display terminates in the As. There is an option to continue to display 2 of 32.
Arcadia Arcadia will investigate the information on the card later. For now she goes to see the other parts of the memorial. Though honestly they're not going to be as interesting to her than the one on the potential challenges she'll have to deal with if she comes to fight for this world. It's just the way she's wired, so to speak.
Tomoe Tomoe would be hit hardest by The Fallen wing would hit Tomoe hard. Very hard she spends some time looking over the images, some she sadly thinks likely have not had anyone look at them in a very long time. After she finishes there she will head back to her world to a certain Tavern. She had the urge for a drink after seeing all of that.
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry enters the Fallen wing like she's visiting a cathedral, solemn and hushed as she crosses the soundproof threshold- all that's missing is crossing herself. She offers the black-clad man her hand in a firm shake, but doesn't introduce herself. One name would be a lie; the other a glittering profanity.

     The simulator at the entrance- her gaze lingers on it for a moment, after she figures out its function. The people from home, the Britain she knew- it wouldn't be hard. But the thought's grotesque. There's no sense in seeing how things could've been in some other world, some other disaster. She clears her head and walks past it, snagging rent-a-glasses on her way by.

     The Memorial Room is suffocating, both metaphorically and in a literal sense. There's that familiar tightening ache she gets between collarbone and jaw, burning like a mouthful of saltwater. They say it's not the cigarettes but they don't know what it is. But Strawberry knows.

     I am being 12 in England, watching my home destroyed.
     I am being 17 in Massachusetts, holding a fading friend.
     I am being 23 in a museum, looking at the faces of the dead.

     She stands in the center of the room, the AR glasses resting on her face. Her breathing is shuddering and catching in her chest, like a silent laugh but not. Page three. Page four. Page five. "This is important to me." "It's poison for your heart." "Not because it'll hurt you, but because it won't."

     After some time, she takes the glasses off. Her eyes are watering, but not quite overflowing. It takes a while for the ragged catching to stop. "There's a kind of growth, from pain, that isn't scarring. It's... easy, to be cold. And it's hard to learn to be warm again."

     She doesn't say a word until she's out, and the soundproof doors have closed behind her. "Thank you," she says to Lilian, her voice hoarser than usual. "I wanted to be sure... that I haven't left a piece of me behind."