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Owner	Pose
Remilia Scarlet	There's clearly been a terrible incident.     Gauley Creek City is, apparently, under quarantine. Not just 'nobody leaves' quarantine, but full on, straight up, flat out military in the streets, yellow tape, armed soldiers and gas masks quarantine. Armoured jeeps patrol up and down empty streets, spreading the hum of the engine, the crunching of gravel, and the repetitive broadcast of echoing 'stay indoors' orders, mirrored through the city's handful of old-fashioned siren posts. The whirr of helicopter blades occasionally passes over, likely responsible for the long plastic emergency crates stacked up at various intersections, watched carefully by armoured troops, without anyone in sight lining up to get them.     Being somewhat fair, this had been on the news previously, as the only currently Multiversally stand out feature of the country on a news cycle basis. An especially lethal disease had come in through warpgate customs at some point, and still not left. Large portions of the country look like this, halting the spread only halfway through, east separated from west. Thankfully there are no zombies involved, but nobody wants to risk a bubonic plague-tier threat in a densely populated and interconnected 1990s-esque nation. You can see why, given the canvas truck that wheels past stacked with plastic body backs, driven by a pair of men in hazmat suits.     However, in this particular city, things are even worse. A viral research laboratory, alternately said to be developing a vaccine and the original virus itself as a bioweapon, has gone up in flames. Not just a matter of molotov cocktails, the once white compound high up on a previously green hill on the rolling outskirts of town practically looks like something blew up inside of it. The data, papers, samples, and any progress towards a cure are, of course, completely ruined.     And to make matters worse, now a horrid, and certainly creepy, mist has fallen over the city. It doesn't quite fill the valley enough to plausibly have rolled in and settled like a fog; it's just a bit too well contained around the city limits, and doesn't seem to want to drift with the faint breeze outside. It has the same general properties as a fog bank, albeit a very thick one, but visibility sharply tapers off into walls of sickly greenish grey all around, occasionally glittering in a sort of semitranslucent mystery cocktail way.     So it seems odd that soldiers would be on triple alert urging everyone to STAY INSIDE! DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOMES! when it's so evidently shitty outside, like something out of an apocalypse films, but, the army, y'know?
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Take Clearish-Greenish Mist Incident quest     Arthur Lowell decides to take the CLEARISH-GREENISH MIST INCIDENT quest from his Questlog. He's flying high above, circling the thing. If this mist's behavior is so well-defined, is there a clear shape it's adhering to besides the approximate boundaries of the city? "City Limits" aren't the kind of thing you can manipulate mist by, the only thing "City Limits" matter to is loading screens, so Arthur seeks out any geometric formation the mist adheres to when viewed from high above -- and if he can find one, he'll immediately DIVE straight for the center of it, where one might probably find the source!
Karlan Nobles	The ringing of a lone bell can be heard echoing through the (relatively) empty streets, slow, methodical, and vaguely ominous to really add to that foreboding feeling surrounding the city. A soft humming follows not long after, sounding almost like some kind of cultish chant as a chill spreads, growing heavier around the source of the sound while the wind picks up at a steady pace. It doesn't take a lot of work to find the source of the chilly wind and the ominous humming: A white-haired woman clad in a thick blue and black coat, performing some kind of odd ritual as she keeps humming and ringing her bell in a steady rhythm. She's headed for the burning laboratory, and the purpose for her ritualistic ringing becomes clear rather quickly. The winds churn around her steadily as she calls forth a LIGHT SNOWFALL, using the wind to help guide it towards the burning building and aiming to extinguish the immediate danger first before joining in on the investigation proper.
Yuuki Kuran	Everything was going well, until the explosion. Yuuki had put on her business clothes and her business face and had gotten to business! "Yes, of course. I'll arrange for a pickup personally. Then we can all put this matter behind us. Of course, I have to make some more arrangements, but please be patient. Of course. Thank you for understanding." The conversation still echoed in her ears. A subordinate had created work for her, but smoothing out things for her friends was that Kuran Yuuki found a pleasant diversion. Which is why, when faced with a city choked by a thick green mist, and a crater in the location she had a meeting that day, at that hour, Yuuki was more than a little confused. "Did someone... Take revenge?" She looks down at the application in her hands, before folding it back into thirds and placing it into an envelope, which then goes into her jacket pocket. "Well, I don't think the professor will be attending his orientation." Still, ignoring the MPs and national guard all standing around acting tough, Yuuki makes her way towards the crater that was the virology lab, to see if there was any trace of something salvageable. "Is this what they talk about? A 'pea soup fog'? It's green enough..."
John Rizzo	As warnings are broadcast through the city, a black Dodge Polara rolls up on the outskirts, perhaps a mile away. The air-conditioned cabin overlooks a distant field of sickly green mist as the car slows to a stop. From here, the driver's unnatural senses allow him to make out a guard detail posted outside the city. Rizzo frowns. Getting in won't be a cakewalk with those GIs patrolling the place. He cuts the ignition, and the moody, contemplative jazz is silenced, as is the rumble of the V8.      His approach to the city proper is circuitous, by necessity. Keeping the soldiers in his field of vision, he does his best to stay out of theirs. Most times, he can do this just by putting something between himself and them. The closer he gets, the more he's forced to rely upon his dark gifts. Hiding in plain sight now, Rizzo broadcasts a kind of psychic interference to place himself beneath the notice of the soldiers. Nimbly, with posture more like an animal than a man, he crouches and springs into the air, vaulting over a barrier erected at the city's edge.      He's in, and now it's time to hit the books. First thing's first is to check out the labratory on the hill. He's already dead, so he's not concerned about catching--and he knows bupkis about this mist. He's no virologist, either, but maybe they're connected. When he arrives, the first thing he does is hang back, allowing Pramanix to extinguish the flames. He doesn't fear them as he once did, but there's no point in getting lit up like a Christmas tree just for a lead. Once it looks like they're out, he'll check the outside for damage. How did the fire-slash-explosion start? He'll examine the scorch marks, search for a point of origin.      "So thick you could cut it with a knife," says Rizzo to Yuuki.
Zero Kiryu	As always, Zero Kiryu can be found at the Director's side. He doesn't seem to have much of anything to say about the situation itself, more-or-less wholesale ignoring the locals who might object to someone's presence. As usual, as he goes, he sows trails of vines in his wake. He's /carrying/ a rather large umbrella, but it isn't in use because they're walking into an enormous fog bank. If, indeed, it can be accurately described that way. He sniffs curiously at the air and surrounding fog, but doesn't find anything terribly remarkable about it in and of itself. He shrugs faintly in answer to Yuuki's question. "Something like that. Ordinary a 'pea soup fog' has something to do with local pollution, though. It isn't common in our part of the world because we keep the air reasonably fresh, but there are a few stops along the train lines where you can encounter such a phenomena on a regular basis. /This/... may be a result of that," He gestures towards the crater, "because I don't see anything that would be causing the air to be that bad normally."
Guzma	Guzma is here to vent, but in a completely productive way that doesn't involve hurting random people, and also doubles as training. As he approaches, though, he notices the men in suits and gas masks. He needs to get past those guys. Good thing he has three goons for that! Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp are also here, and as the thug leader goes to take the direct route through the city, they circle him, like bodyguards. Guzma's a little anxious about the fog, but it hasn't seemed to kill anyone yet, and avoiding it is what cowards do. So, they march on the lab, spotting Yuuki Kuran along the way. The boss nods to himself, getting to see the director in action would be cool. And so, as soon as he sees enough guards to be scared of, Guzma waves his hand off for Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp. "Go distract them, alright?" "Sure thing, Guzma!" This is why the first MP to spot Guzma and try and get in his way gets approached by the trio. Rapp, the pink-haired girl, speaks up. "Hey, excuse me! We're tourists, can you direct us to the nearest directory? We're trying to find our way to the aquarium, yo!"
S6	One of those shipping containers emits an electronic wirr, then a series of clicks. A recessed panel slides back, allowing a boxy drone to float up and deploy mechanical arms. A moment later, the front of the case splits open, and a woman in black emerges. Unlike the soldiers, there's no protective equipment or hazmat suit-- but an android like S6 doesn't need anything like that anyway.     A pair of swords flicker into existence just behind her shoulders, as she glances upward into the fog obscuring the sky, eyes concealed by that ever-present black visor. After a pause, she speaks up, "Pod. Atmospheric analysis. Isolate and identify uncommon or unknown contaminents."     -COMMENCING ANALYSIS.- chirps the floating drone.     Only then does S6 bring her gaze down to the guards around the pile of boxes she just unpacked herself from. Hands raise, "I am a machine. Biological contamination is an impossibility. If you'll excuse me." A cursory examination flagged the bombed-out and burning laboratory as a place of interest, after all, and so S6 simply attempts to pass through the guards in that direction.
Remilia Scarlet	The first thing immediately noticed by anyone heading in is that the mist tastes, smells, and feels *awful*. Just absolutely horrible. It's like breathing in aerosol, with that vague and unpleasant tinge of scent, and the tickling, itching bite at the back of the throat. It tastes even worse. Getting it on your tongue is like licking a swab fresh off of being applied to a newly inoculated arm, with all the complex and full bodied taste of rubbing alcohol and spots of blood while somehow less pleasant than both.     The lab itself is a shitshow. Just barely at the edge of the fog, where it's less noxious to breathe and concerning probably-not-healthy for the lungs, you quickly meet a cordon of military police warning people away from the disaster site very early on, though Yuuki's Official Concord Business has them step aside anyways (and honestly, it's not like they can tell if other weirdos are Concord or not at a glance, unless they look especially sketchy (which some honestly do)). The fires are largely under control by now, smouldering with an awful plastic-y chemical-y veil of smoke, largely where the slowest burning items still are. The place is already slightly damp all over, ostensibly from condensation, though fires 'large enough to matter' still block off many room husks. Burying them under layers of snow works out fine to extinguish them. It melts, turns nasty grey colours, then smothers the fires in water anyways.     It's very difficult to tell if anyone was killed, nobody was killed, or everyone was killed. You don't exactly trip over any carbonized skeletons, and the shreds of labcoats are usually from lockers that've melted like candle wax and disgorged their contents where they haven't fused shut.     'Scorch marks', plural, is a bit of a misnomer. Following the grid of halls, it seems to be one giant sooty black pattern across the floors and tiles, worsening the deeper you go in, until the walls have burned through in blots, then crumbled halfway down, then are just completely gone. The origin point appears to be deep in, near the back, and actually underground, down a flight of --well there used to be stairs-- and past the dribbling remnants of a decontamination airlock. The floor slash ceiling has just been blown right off and the explosion mushroomed out from there, it seems, radiating out most intensely down the western and eastern halls of the intersection.     Perhaps very slightly unexpectedly, the room past it doesn't quite look as bad, despite being ground zero; it's a very large chamber with heavy metal walls and flooring, multiple decks and observation screens with their plexiglass cracked and melted, floor to ceiling racks the size of warehouse stockpiles filled with puddles of melted glass and plastic and scorched paint labeling what each pallet contains, and blackened metallic crates still gripped in dangling, sparking robot arms. There appear to be rows of testing chambers with one way glass in them (and, a little ominously, strapped chairs and tables), but nothing in those.     Poor Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp are immediately warned off. That is to say, the only reason they don't have more guns pointed at them is that they look like dumb punk kids. They're squadded up on by the beefy shoulders of brave men who are currently permitted to shoot civilians, and currently aren't the men refusing to do so in protest. They're blocked off by a huge armoured humvee and told to turn right back around, because this is a class 1 disaster area and anyone out on the streets can and will be considered a national health risk and dealt with accordingly. 'Dealt with'. Good thing they're not paying attention to Guzma now.
Remilia Scarlet	Arthur flying around up top finds that the shape of the fog is still kind of nonsensical, but up *real* high it sort of looks like . . . wings? Like a bird spread its wings from the center of town, kinda. It makes the coverage weird, rather than a perfect tabletop AoE template. The blob where the wings join is both the thickest and the nastiest to breathe. Here the military isn't even patrolling, but rather, they've taped off the area and guarded it at every intersection while swarms of hazmats and probably scientists are going all around a huge plaza with a giant commemorative fountain statue, scraping samples and waving around sensors, crunching numbers in big lab trucks, with their own, warning yellow crates of crap.     He's immediately the subject of dudes swarming around him and very impolitely yelling at him to know who he is, why he's here, and exactly in what manner he intends to fuck off before they shoot.     S6 climbing out of a relief crate is, honestly, a welcome distraction at that point, in that it mostly seems to boggle soldiers at how the hell this happened. One of them with a beret carefully worked on top of his gas mask tentatively dares to ask "Is this thing from the Pentagon?"     Yet, despite her POD not really built to be a chemical sensor or medical suite, she does get a result or two. Specifically, sweeping radar and biosign sensors through the thick fog works fine, highlighting the patrol routes of a great many soldiers, tons of people huddled inside their homes, many in nearby plastic medical tents (no doubt unable to move, even), and, shockingly more than a few blips that certainly aren't military, because they're crowded in back alleys, gardens, or climbing out windows. There are a *bewildering* number of people intending to sneak out. In *this*. Possibly because it'd be good visual cover? Assuming that they assume they aren't sick.     There is, however, a residual trace of magic in the area, especially dusting the plaza like gunpowder residue. The laboratory direction prickles hot like graphite still registering on a geiger counter.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur lands, and is immediately accosted. Ahhhh, shit. Okay, how do you resolve this? Arthur spends a few seconds raising his hands, looking like he's trying to find a solution. >Arthur: Flip the script     "QUICK," Arthur shouts in his most obnoxiously demanding voice. "EVERYONE POINT A GUN AT ME AND ASK ME A MILLION QUESTIONS! RIGHT NOW!! DO IT!! Don't pay attention to ANYTHING you were doin' BEFORE! Everyone FOCUS ONLY ON ME and also POINT GUNS AND QUESTIONS AT ME. Spend AS MUCH TIME AS YA CAN on it! Remember, eyes ONLY ON ME, DO NOT keep ANY awareness ANYWHERE ELSE. LOOK HERE!!"     The psychology of this maneuver may be questionable. >Arthur: Examine weird birdsource     Arthur is going to hope that his maneuver, made to bully the men with guns into being defiantly authoritarian by fucking off, will succeed at least enough to give him a little space to back up the sensors by performing high-intensity ANALYSIS on the immediate area, trying to determine the nature of that weird trace of magic and why this area is rooting or emitting or otherwise potentially controlling the mist -- or if it's simply a point where things are redirecting, and if he can find a True Source.
Karlan Nobles	There's quite a few unfamiliar faces here, but Pramanix isn't going to let a little thing like strange people and military police stop her from poking into the strange facility! She plays it cool as she follows the rest of the group into the laboratory while giving the guards a brief nod, tipping her hat forward for a moment and not giving them a second glance. Once inside, she furrows her brow at the repeated mentions of- "Pea soup? I've never had pea soup that felt or tasted this bad. Or hung around in the air like this." She sounds more curious than annoyed by the uncomfortable sensation surrounding her, reattaching the bell to her belt while keeping her free hand on that and her tail close to her front with her other hand. It's easier to keep herself dry that way, but her attention is diverted rather quickly when she comes across the burnt and missing walls. "What could have removed the walls so completely? I don't think a fire could have done damage like this, but the explosion..." She doesn't sound convinced, but she also isn't coming up with any concrete theories of her own just yet. At the comment about the harsh smells (and unwilling to just keep breathing it without trying something herself), Pramanix unhooks that bell and starts ringing it again, gently with that same humming from earlier. It takes a moment before the wind starts to pick up again, wafting in a gentle breeze at roughly head height! Of course, since the breeze is still just a breeze, it's probably just moving the smells around instead of diverting any of it. She tried. Upon reaching the main chamber itself, Pramanix pinches her nose shut as she starts taking a look around. "Maybe... There's something laying around that might clue us in." Despite the physical discomfort, she actually sounds somewhat excited to dig around. She focuses on the areas near the puddles of melted glass and plastic, looking for labels or writing that in particular that might give her some insight.
S6	When the POD results come back, S6's lips turn down in a small frown. A lot of red 'UNKNOWN' text flickering across her vision alongside unfamiliar compounds. The air sample is sealed, stored, and secured. A deeper analysis of this is needed by a specialist unit, that much is certain. The POD chimes, and she nods once. However, the other results bring her to a stop. After some consideration, she turns back to the guards she had just passed.     "I do not belong to the Pentagon, I report direction to FANTOM." A hand lifts into a gesture, "You two. Secure a supply of breathing masks and follow me."     In her HUD, the biosigns illuminate. Those determined to be indoors fade from blue to green. Those outdoors and Military fade from blue to cyan. The unknown, presumably civilian contacts are then designated orange. She quickly counts them up.     "No fewer than fifteen units are required. Collect them and follow me."
John Rizzo	Rizzo looks pretty sketchy most of the time. Thankfully, the presence of a notepad and pencil in his hands solidifies his appearance as 'detective of some sort' rather than 'recovering alcoholic vagrant.' He steps over a piece of rubble and begins tracing the path of soot, jotting down a quick note--      Went up like a Roman Candle. Origin downstairs, towards the back.      --as he walks. He stops at the airlock, not to investigate, but to take a moment. As a magical apex predator, his sense of smell is heightened. The scent is cloying to the point of being mildly distracting. A vestigial trace of humanity appears, as he wipes his forehead despite the lack of any sweat. After, he strides through the remnants of the airlock into the blast zone. Ground zero.      Another note. Some kinda doc Frankenstein deal--test tubes, chairs, straps, just past the origin. He's not sure if this undamaged room is /past/ it, or if it /is/ the origin. But, he might be able to source up a witness. Pramanix seems to have the same idea--or a similar one, anyway. "That's cooking with gas," says the vampire approvingly. He knows from nothing about computers, but what he does know is that, usually, you gotta touch them to use them. So, that's what he does. Only, he's not using it.      As Rizzo's hand makes contact with one of the cracked terminals, he's trying to see if he can observe, through his power of psychometry, just what happened in the moments leading up to the explosion, from the perspective of one of the researchers here.
Yuuki Kuran	Official business still gets Yuuki into the middle of a crater, with or without the prize at the end. There's an energy about her, a palpable psychic 'presence' that spills out from her like a thunderstorm miles off. It pushes the soldiers out of her way with the pace of her step. Rizzo's observation breaks her mein for a moment, the light huff of her exhalatory laughter. "But a knife wouldn't be useful to eat soup, would it? It'd take so long to dip a knife, over and over, into a soup bowl. That sounds like torture." Like smelling the air around here. Yuuki finds a red handkerchief to hold lightly over her face with her left hand as she's waved through the security cordon, eyes half-lidded. "Pollution. I can taste it on the air. But why is it green? It tastes like a hospital..." She complains to Zero, stepping over rubble to follow Rizzo towards the terminal - and the mostly-intact ground zero, kneeling by a locker with the melted fabric and running a finger across a curled namebadge. "Dalton. Look for an A. Dalton." She 'orders the air', before hunting for the scent of blood in the lab area. There had to be some reason the very air tasted like it!
Guzma	Guzma slips ahead as Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp get kicked out of the city, joining up with the 'group at the lab'. If he's hassled, he claims he's Concord and tells them to screw off, as he picks up a Pokeball and throws it out, coughing on the horrible air. A weird stupid butterfly-moth-whatever thing is summoned, the Masquerain perching above Guzma. "Masquerain, go scout the alleys. Stay away from soldiers. Report back with two clicks if you find anything and lead the way." Masquerain flies off, moving to duck over the heads of the soldiers and disappear into the alleyways, trying to avoid any sight of soldiers so it doesn't get shot out (though it's a Pokemon, it can defend itself.) Guzma joins the others to poke around the lab. "Anything in specific we're looking for?" Yuuki says a name, and there's an 'A. Dalton'. "You know what this guy looks like, Director? MEANWHILE: Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp try to find their own alleyways, having 'left' and then went to look for another entrance into the city to sneak in horribly. They'll probably catch up with Masquerain, if they succeed.
Yuuki Kuran	"No. It was an application I took over processing. They're a local virologist with some big ideas - and, probably, a short lease on life. Their application was handled so poorly I had to take over." She shrugs at Guzma, her kerchief hiding all but the corners of her tired grin. "These things happen. Smoothing things out is my role."
Zero Kiryu	"Having a bunch of chemicals released into the air abruptly isn't good for the air. Exactly what might result in the green, I couldn't guess credibly. There are numerous possibilities, but I don't have the expertise required to identify it positively. Based on past experiences, it is also possible that airborne contagions simply 'have that appearance', though that is more common in worlds with a specifically supernatural bent." Zero replies to Yuuki, with a faint shrug. "It's not doing any good for my sense of smell, though..." He considers Guzma's inquiry, and Yuuki's answer for a moment, and adds, "We /should/ consider requesting photos for situations like this. It would also help us keep a file on people who are potential problems if they don't gain entry." Between his senses being muddled and the sheer amount of /vampire/ around him, he's not really finding a lot of use to examine the situation closer. He seems content to just let everyone else pick over the situation, and just Look Ominous for Yuuki.
Remilia Scarlet	Where glass didn't survive, scotch tape labels, markers, paint, and plastic nametags didn't either. 'Near' the puddles is the operative word. There's a certain radius around the fringe of the room where the explosion seems to have partially spared by going straight up. Here, Pramanix finds essentially unintelligible nameplates scattered around, being combinations of letters and numbers that denote large sample sets in two different series of what appear to be drugs --no, one is a series of drugs, and the other a series of cultures, given the way some attach to a vial and some to a dish.     Rizzo touching the terminal and asking it to disgorge its secrets is both brief and vivid. A sharp, smash cut flash of blaring alarms and repeated evacuation warnings in two languages. The scuttling of chairs and frantic smashing of keyboards. Men in coats hunched over their monitors staring desperately at loading bars, fingers on USBs like a gunslinger on the trigger. The roof rumbles. The power flickers, the room only lit by the glow of monitors for a few seconds where the brownout protection preserves them. The room is bathed in backup power red. A handful of people in hospital gowns are heaved out by black-clad security forces. He can smell smoke. There's another rumble, closer this time. There's --there's an emergency elevator at the back of the room, behind the big robotic racks. The terminal watches the last of the scientists flee, tripping over each other where they'd stayed to hurriedly snatch their backups, ripping out cables. Eerily red fire spills out over the scene from the door, and the monitor fries.     Searching the room for A. Dalton finds the name only on a workstation. It's . . . reasonably well preserved, all things considered. Smudgy fingerprints all over it looks like either he stayed behind to grab everything he could, or someone meddled with it later, or both. Rebooting his terminal is basically a useless endeavour, and the papers up top are ash, but forcing over melty file cabinets finds considerable stacks of boring and incomprehensible tables on both genetic sequencing of a micro-organism and chemical compounds it reacts to. It seems like *both* virus and antiviral related. It also looks like someone pawed through it rather roughly but then meticulously put it all back in alphabetical order. Or, possibly, someone rifled through it with zero regard to the integrity of academia, and someone else obsessively reorganized it.     The beret-wearing man in front of S6 scratches his head, contemplates for several seconds whether FANTOM is a real thing, and then apparently errs on the side of believing it's probably yet another alphabet soup agency under the US military or intelligence services. "Yeah okay whatever." he says. "You're in deep shit if I don't get them back though; I don't care who your boss is, I have orders." Some white hazmats run up and dump a sealed plastic box with twenty masks in it in her arms. She can hear a muttered 'freaky' behind her as she leaves.
Remilia Scarlet	Arthur isn't dealing with geniuses though. Yelling something that stupid and weird is confusing. The smart ones seem to think that's he's pulling a really shitty attempt at a distraction, operating on the yomi layer below him, and immediately start looking around in a frenzy of 'where is the enemy he's distracting from', sending guys to fan out straight away.     His analysis of the area turns up the idea that this place was previously the center of a very large, one-off magical event. It's sort of dusting the bricks like fresh rain, and rolling out from there. Geometrically, all it appears to be doing from there is keeping the mist contained to this weird shape, after having initially created, or 'released' it here. A true ground zero to the mist, blooming out everywhere through magic. Also there's a trail to the north end of town, opposite of the laboratory.     Arthur causing a minor scuffle allows Guzma's goons an opportunity to slip back in through a wire fence that they're probably willing to cut. The masquerain flying overhead finds that people don't usually look up all that much, and especially not in a spooky fog like this. The pokemon (and possibly the goons) lay first eyes on what S6 had detected; people attempting to sneak out of their homes.     However, rather than swarms of able-bodied, rebellious youth, or stubborn asshole boomers, it appears to be largely family or neighbours working together to cart virulently ill people out into the open. Family members or friends are being shuffled out of windows or back doors on makeshift stretchers, visibly pale, blistered, and wheezing enough that it's obvious why they have to find alleys rather than just camping out in the backyard. It's like they're stockpiling sick people out in the fog, but then not running back in doors to leave them for dead or anything.     Two different groups are also in immediate danger of being discovered by soldiers, now on the lookout, in that ominous method that involves swift, steady steps, a hip firing stance, and smooth corner sweeping, probably looking for baddies now.
John Rizzo	As the vision fades, Rizzo takes a step back, waiting for his head to stop swimming. He doesn't understand the rituals he saw--the smashing of keys or progress bars. But he knows the emotion. It's a particular kind of panic. He jots down another note. Trying to skip with whatever they could. What's more important than your life? Vaccine, maybe. Fire might not be natural. Chemical/supernatural?      When he's finished, he's ready with a couple of questions.      The first is for Yuuki. "What did you mean by 'application?'" He has an idea, but it never hurts to ask. He's also ready to write her answer down on that notepad.      The next doesn't come until after Rizzo makes a glance around the room, peering at the Auras of the others. Zero and Yuuki are... something other than mortal, but not quite vampires. Ghouls, maybe. Or maybe Dhampir. He's never met one, never seen one--but in the end, it doesn't matter, even if it does raise concerning questions about who their sires and/or masters are. There are two mortals here, and usually they know this technology gig the best out of anyone.      He settles on Guzma, who looks, sounds and dresses like he belongs here. Rizzo knows that he doesn't--but Guzma looks like the best person to ask, by Rizzo's limited frame of reference.      Getting the boss' attention with a gentle elbow nudge, Rizzo nods towards the airlock.      "Put me wise, kid," says the vampire to Guzma. "What's the wire on that thing there?" Though his lingo might be confusing, it's obvious by the look on Rizzo's face that he isn't at all familiar with technology this sophisticated. He's literally asking what it is, and what it's for.
Karlan Nobles	"They were testing something pretty thoroughly over here... Hard to say if they were being careless or not." Pramanix murmurs as she checks out the nameplates and the various letters and numbers, trying to find some kind of pattern in them briefly. She zeroes in on the set of drugs and cultures fairly quickly, though, as she gets up and rubs her neck anxiously while grimacing again at that lingering stench. "Biological testing, too... Be careful breathing over here." She warns the group as she backs away from the drugs and cultures, turning to Yuuki with an inquisitive glint in her eye. "This Dalton fellow must have had something to do with those samples, then." She gestures towards the sample sets, then approaches Rizzo to peek at the terminal he's working with. "Any luck?" She asks, watching him curiously for a few moments before turning to the screens again. Pramanix nods slowly as she looks over the screen and the keyboard, pacing back and forth a few times while tapping her chin, but ultimately... She has no idea what she's looking at there. Rather than messing with the disbaled terminal, she starts digging through the file cabinets. "It looks like someone else has been here before us, but they're probably planning on coming back here." Pramanix guesses while heading back towards the samples, memorizing whatever numbers and letters she can make out there before heading back to the cabinets again. Thus begins the arduous task of skimming the legible notes to try and find matches for those series of numbers and letters she had just memorized. "Nobody would sort something this neatly without intending to use all these papers again... It'd be too much work for nothing if they weren't."
Guzma	Guzma is given the ability to act as he will. Luckily for the world, he has no idea what's going on here and doesn't really care. When Rizzo asks him a question, he looks over at the wrecked metal, takes a few moments to squint at it, and shrugs. "This is a lab, right? Probably an airlock. It's like, a big door they have a couple of, in order to regulate the air or something. Like in a spaceship." As he hangs around Rizzo, he waits for Masquerain to return, it doesn't, and it catches up with the Trio. That's fine. They have latitude now. It can work with them. MEANWHILE: Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp cut a wired fence and slip through, finding people taking their sick loved ones into the mist and not abandoning them. That's...touching, and the trio immediately decide, you know, they'll help these people. Approaching slowly, Tupp, the blue-haired leader, talks to some of the people, maintaining distance from the ill to speak. "Yo! Why are you out here, they've got humvees and guns and stuff, they'll shoot you!" He looks nothing like a military police officer and everything like a thug, as he tilts his head. "And this mist, it could make them sicker, y'know? You all should bring them back inside!" "Yeah!" "Yeah!" Rapp and Zipp join in. Masquerain, meanwhile, scouts out for the incoming police officers, and comes back to Tupp, clicking. Too bad Tupp doesn't speak Pokemon!
S6	"They are to be requisitioned. We are delivering them to personnel in need," S6 states to the officer, "If someone perishes because you require paperwork to justify reasonable action," One of the swords floating behind the android's shoulders shifts as if to draw itself. She immediately catches herself, and the weapon settles down, "It will not be me who is 'in deep'."     Curtly, the android spins on one heel and marches off, her footsteps clicking loudly. In her HUD, the orange markers are isolated, then compared to the scanned area map. By her next step, she's plotted the ideal course, while accounting for an encumbered human escort.     Her color-coded map is the first warning she gets. And the soldier who pushes his gun around that corner in such a practiced maneuver finds it surrounded by a ring of golden runes. The safety is engaged with a noisome click, and she holds it down with the VRCS as she approaches, "There are unarmed civilians. Firearms are not required, recommended, or necessary." She steps right past that patroller, instead, while telling him, "Direct medical personnel to my position. This is not a request."     She then sharply turns into a narrow alleyway between buildings, swiftly approaching those orange contacts while not engaging in insane parkour because the gasmask-toting trooper following her probably can't do that.
Zero Kiryu	Zero sniffs the air for a moment, nose wrinkling up in an expression of disgust. Evidently it's enough, though. A moment later he's gone, a cutting of vine working its way into the ground where he was standing and disappearing there. A moment later he emerges from the vines he seeded on the way in, seizing Guzma's goons out of nowhere. He has to bring them one at a time-- the sensation of traveling with him feels rather like being uncomfortably compressed without experiencing damage for it. A feeling of tremendous pressure, relieved immediately once he's done. The three are deposited either behind Yuuki or -- at their preference -- elsewhere within the city. He doesn't offer a lot of chatter along the way, and in fact imposes some mental coercion to get them to come and answer to their preference without asking a lot of questions before getting on with it. "... But you should be especially cautious." He warns all three of them, once he's done transporting them. Left unstated is the idea that he gets the impression they'd be voted most likely to die in a horror film.
Yuuki Kuran	Moving through perfectly orderly and organized folders that have also been clearly gone through in a hurry is quite nostalgic for Yuuki, as her index and middle finger walk down the folder labels and allow her to peek inside. She gets more information from the sense she gets from the folders than any sort of the contents. Praminix approaches to inspect and she steps back, sighing. "It reminds me of Hanabusa, cleaning up behind me. Everything's in its 'proper place', but it feels like someone's ruined it anyway. Rizzo interrogates her with his eyes before his words, and she considers for a moment. "Dalton sent an application for consideration to the Concord, claiming that they were a landmark virologist with a miracle cure for every ailment just looking for funding to complete their research. Attached was their dissertation on... something, and it mouldered on someone's desk for three and a half months." Her expression gains in the tiredness that only management positions gain, a tension in the eyes and brow, a scowl that furrows itself into the soft spaces between her eyebrows. "They thought it was a way to get grant money, so they sat on it as a joke. Now, here to finally clean up everything, and it appears as if they either got mad enough to take decisive action that proves they're Concord material, someone got to them first, or..." Yuuki shrugs, gesturing all around at the devastation of the lab. "... time's unfortunate passage ruined potential greatness. I wonder if there's answers in the wreckage. Obviously, the Concord wouldn't be recruiting someone who viral bombs population centers in a fit of pique: especially one directed at our organization."
Arthur Lowell	>==>     "NO, HEY!" Arthur persists in "trying" to keep their attention. "OVER HERE! You gotta YELL QUESTIONS and POINT GUNS AT ME. FUCK OFF, by which I mean FUCK OVER HERE and POINT GUNS AND YELL AT ME." After some flickering in his eyes and some swirling around his head, he reconstructs what happened.     Confused, he scrunches his face up in an incredulous expression and looks off in the direction of the trail. "Hmm." >Arthur: Move north     "Alright, FUCK ALL Y'ALL if you're not gonna POINT EVERY GUN AT ME." He says, floating up abruptly and mounting his broom. "I'm OLLIES OUTIE. LATES, BITCHES." His broom-rocket errupts, sending him off following the issue. Another excuse to get ABOVE the stanky cloud, which he hates breathing because that shit STINKS. What kind of status effect does it give anyway? Arthur doesn't know!
Guzma	As they're moving to talk to people, Tupp getting the words out as he's literally kidnapped, the three are prone to asking questions. It is to Zero's benefit that they don't have the ability to resist his compulsion, but they make...a weird decision. Normally, you'd expect them to want to be with their boss, joining the action at the lab and finding out the source of this. But, they decide to be dropped off at a safe alley nearby, so they can help one of the groups of the sick. See, they saw everyone's camaraderie for their loved ones, and knowing that the MPs might hurt these people soon, they're not going to let it happen. Each member confidently clutches a Pokeball. If the MPs are gonna cause problems, they'll have to get through their team.
Remilia Scarlet	Pramanix doing the most boring --yet still useful-- thing imaginable finds a dizzying variety of obnoxious numbers and serials that takes quite a lot of effort to go through. To the best of her ability to tell, *both* rumours might be true, though it'd be standard fare for a virology lab if they weren't. Various cultures seem to correspond to growing lab viruses, and the drugs appear to be a million slightly different mixes to test on them. Creating viruses to learn more about curing them, charitably. Creating a bioweapon but making sure to have the cure on hand, less charitably. Depends on how tinfoil she feels. 5tAnother maybe important detail that Yuuki discovers is that the papers have some big sweaty fingerprints on the intact portions, much smaller soot-stained fingerprints all over the badly treated edges and dog-eared corners, and clean, intermedia fingerprints smudging the residual soot, indicating three different people in chronological order.     The triple goons with names are looked at either askance or with mild panic by civilians who alternatively wave them over or make great big emphatic shushing gestures. Someone replies "So? If they stay inside they're just going to die anyways. That lab up there blew up right? So if it really *was* working on a cure, then it's gone. My grandma's not gonna last two more days, and I've probably got it now too." Someone else adds "Besides, this whole fog tastes like shitty cough syrup right? I heard it's like . . . medicine mist, y'know? Kicked up by the fire. I got a call from Johnny who got a call from Suzan who got a call from Adam who says he heard from someone important that it's like they were holding out on a huge pile of antivirals and now it's like . . ." he makes hand gestures. "A crop dusting thing. Dave said he took his daughter outside and hid under a tarp in the back yard all day and she got better! So we've been on the phone with all the neighbours to sneak out."     And then they're wisked away. Whoops.     S6 butts in to prevent a soldier from stumbling on the same group of civvies. There's only a moment where she still gets away with the alphabet agency act. The guy in the front of the squad whose gun she grabs pulls the trigger a couple of times on sheer reflex, then the one stacked up behind him says "Negative, lethal force measures are authorized on all pandemic vectors leaving mandatory lockdown; spread of the pathogen is unacceptable." He clicks his radio. Immediately, he calls in the foreign interloper's presence, repeating (with the words 'I repeat') that she's clearly paramilitary or special forces from some foreign power.     The rest of the squad opens fire on her immediately. It's close enough Guzma's underlings can hear it.     Arthur beelines north. This takes him up past the crest of the 'wings' of the mist, and to a radio tower he can start to make out through the fuzzy fog. Nothing seems to be remarkable about it except the tingle of magic about it, until he hears the misty snap crackle pop of gunfire far behind him, and little pinpoints of light wink through the mist, tinged green by the distance. He can just barely, from the top of the tower, hearing someone yelling "Finally! Something's happening! I was starting to wonder if they'd all just decided to die to be boring on purpose." It's joined by a much quieter, less excited voice saying "That would be ridiculous. It's obvious they're more afraid of authority than for their own lives. I did tell you that you should have made an announcement as well." "Did you? Well that's fine. I already decided I'll make an announcement on my own now anyways."
John Rizzo	Rizzo listens to Yuuki's answer. That's what he thought. He jots down that detail--but he keeps writing as she gets into speculation. That's valuable, too. Perspective from the Director. He scribbles. A. Dalton. Concord hopeful. Never got in. Acting out for attention? Possible motive.      Guzma's answer is helpful, too. Like in a spaceship. A memory is stirred by that. A happy memory, of watching corny B-movies with...      Rizzo frowns. Don't think about that now. Think about the answer. It's designed to regulate the flow of air. That makes sense--if they're doing the testing in here, they want it to be sterile. He takes a moment to look over the scene again. The 'airlock,' as Guzma called it, looks like it was just knocked over. But... the explosion happened near those racks of drugs in here. He thinks back to the vision. The flames were encroaching while everyone was trying to leave. Another note, a working guess on how this might have played out. Fire already burning before it got to the rack. Stuff on the rack went up, exploded, scorched the crates. Scorch marks outside look darkest near airlock. The pencil taps against the notepad thoughtfully. It still doesn't explain how the fire started, or who started it--if anyone here did. S6 and Arthur have been on the radio about magic influences. It could be that.      He enters the office, peering at the papers from afar, keeping his distance from anyone else doing the same. He doesn't want to be rude, and besides, he can make out the details easily enough thanks to his supernatural senses. Sometimes, that old wives' tale about always returning to the scene of the crime has a little truth to it. Prints on the papers in office past 'Frankenstein room.' Three sets.      Rizzo touches the back of his hand to the papers, aiming to incite another vision. Who all was here, and how recently? That might offer some insight into how the fire started--maybe one of them was the arsonist.
S6	Sometimes the same trick can't work twice, and trying it on some bored guards isn't the same as trying it on a trigger-happy patrol. As soon as the guns are raised, S6 shifts to place herself in front of the trooper accompanying her, using her own body as a shield when the automatic fire starts. One arm raises to protect her face, the other reaches out.     Golden rings of runes materialize around the remaining firearms. Not just the assault rifles aimed at the android, but the side pieces as well. She twists her wrist, engaging the safeties on all of them, and then wrenches towards herself, jerking the rifles out of the hands holding them. This also wrenches the pistols against the restraints of their holsters-- unfastening to draw it would quickly relieve said trooper of his sidearm.     Her uniform filled with holes and leaking crimson, S6 thrusts that same hand sidelong, discarding the firearms she'd seized to the opposite side of the street.     She remains quiet for a long moment, assessing her damage. At last she directs her gaze to the leading patrolman. She tasks her POD to assessing their consumables; their grenades and flashbangs, and preparing the VRCS to seize those as well if anyone reaches for them. Seeming calm despite wounds, she speaks at last, "Hasn't this incident harmed enough people?"
Yuuki Kuran	It's a puzzle. A people puzzle, but a puzzle. A whodunnit with nothing but ashes and bits of paper to interrogate. One that was foisted onto her - one she's not passionate about. Dalton was just letters on a page to her. A mess to clean up - and what a mess this was. Rizzo speaks in such a peculiar, ear-catching way that Yuuki can't help but pay him extra mind. "I think there's three people on these. And look at one of the sets - ashes on the page, in the fingerprints. But after, a third set, that aren't the first. I think what happened was that the ash-fingered person is our culprit... And it's not Dalton, which at least puts me at ease." She leans against the side of the office desk, arms crossed. "But what doesn't put me at ease is you. If you're a 'malk', and a 'private dick'-" There's recognition in the latter, but not the former. "-what does that make me? You know 'what' I am, you've called me 'director'. But..." Zero returns, visiting on her another word. "Gunsel? Is that like gun-counsel? I mean, he's not really the sort to carry a gun any more... Unless you want to get very specific." She scrunches her nose at a sniff, briging her handkerchief up to loudly blow her nose into it. "I believe you, when you say that you give everyone 'that look', but... You're giving me quite a bit of it. Is there something wrong?" Yuuki looks to Zero for guidance on the matter - he's got the better nose for this, if it still works. "I don't *feel* like it's coincidence."
Guzma	As they're dropped off, Tupp and Zipp are feeling better. Stronger - Zero helped them out. As the trio try to get back to the person they were talking with, they hear the gunshots. "Oh no! The police are committing a brutality!" Rapp shouts, as they huddle into a circle. "What do we do?" "I dunno, what do you wanna do?" "I wanna help them, yo!" "Yo!" "We're capable! We're nto the extras, we're /capable/!" "YO!" After a brief talking of 'plans', Tupp and Zipp break off, suddenly leaping onto a wall and running up it, to the rooftop of a building, where they perch. Pokeballs still in hand, they move towards the source of the gun violence, and release their pokemon - a poison-y fire lizard, and a giant bag of trash. Yes. "Salandit! Toxic!" "Garbodor! Gunk Shot!" The two Pokemon leap down into the pile, not the mightiest Pokemon, but superhuman nonetheless. Salandar spews a toxic blast out of its mouth, caustic enough to cause burns, while Garbodor fires poisonous blobs of trash and acid at the guns, trying to gunk them up. Rapp does not have their temporary abilities, due to her own fear. But she's not standing out. Going around the corner, she sends out her purple flying bat, the Zubat scouting for her ahead and leading her to the shouting, hopefully in an angle where she can pincer attack the enemy. It aids with the disarming of everyone, as Rapp shouts out. "Gust!" And then it flaps its wings, and a big blast of wind is let loose at the officers. "Oh, yo! Are you hurt?" Rapp shouts to S6, as she moves over for cover. Tupp and Zipp have TEMPORARY SUPERPOWERS. They can handle themselves. MEANWHILE: Guzma just kinda watches Rizzo do his thing. He listens to the Director talk, trying to get a better picture of what kind of person she is, while he talks to Rizzo as well, an aside. "What are you doing with those papers?"
Karlan Nobles	The reasonable part of her brain reads all of these numbers and samples as vaccination testing. The excitable part of her brain reads it as a conspiracy. Naturally, she chooses to go big tinfoil. It's more exciting that way, especially having sifted through so much (relatively) mundane paperwork mere moments ago. "They were preparing viruses. A virus and its cure, perhaps. I think... They were preparing a bioweapon. Some kind of large scale virus, designed to be dropped into an urban population center, but with a cure ready for any of their own... Troops? Police?" It's not quite clear if she's terrified or excited by the possibility of such minds existing. Both, probably. "That doesn't explain how this place went up, though. Viruses don't just /explode/ right?" Pramanix asks nobody in particular, although she does look towards Guzma, Rizzo, and Yuuki for a few moments before following Rizzo to the next room (and nearly jumping out of her skin when Zero just shows up again). She stays back far enough to watch him do his thing that she doesn't seem to understand, and she seems just a little bit more relieved when Guzma asks him directly what he's doing. She looks aside as she hears the reports coming in from the group on the outside. "... We should finish up here quickly. Whoever's shooting outside might come in looking for us soon." Pramanix warns, already moving towards the entrance-ish area and peering out of it to see if they're being followed yet. If they are, she can raise thealarm ahead of time! If not... Well, it still scratches that spy itch.
Remilia Scarlet	Touching the file folders is less helpful. They've been handled less. Perused far less frequently than a computer terminal has been operated. Long periods apart. Less emotion associated with them. The older prints are male. They exude faded boredom, frustration, impatience, over a course of at least several days. Flashes of insight or focus, but altogether a background of tedious dissatisfaction with LED lighting, recycled air, and number crunching. The ashen set is just the briefest of flashes. Elation. Smug satisfaction. Excited anticipation. Not understanding a thing on the page, but a sense of . . . relief? Escape? The contents are incomprehensible to them, but a reason to be happy. They feel unnatural. The final set is female. Cold, detached, a little annoyed and vexed, but distantly sort of amused. Interested but exasperated, like someone had cooked a nice meal for them and then left all the greasy dishes in the sink and bailed. They have a vastly greater comprehension of the contents, if not as much as the male figure.     The people behind S6 of course immediately panic, trying to cart their sick relatives away; they can't go right back into their houses; the soldiers know where they are and thus where they live. On S6's part, absorbing two score bullets and throwing the rifles away has the rearmost soldier calling for backup immediately. The first row pull their sidearms immediately, smoothly transitioning to putting another two score nine millimeters in her, until those go flying away. Finally starting to look a little daunted, a couple reach for grenades, but they have the training to know that fragments will bounce and fly everywhere in an alley like this. One of them sneakily rolls a flashbang between several of his comrades' feet, bumping S6's toes before it goes off; their own masks are tinted to avoid the flash.     Guzma's goons to the rescue chase off a second squad rounding the corner to pincer S6 and get a clear line of sight on the pathogen risk law-breaking civvies. Blasts of toxic goop cause the extras, retreating in a hurry with a lot of yelling and panic. A few get shots off at the pokemon themselves, but mostly they want to be away from potentially virulent sludge; more importantly, their clothes are specifically meant to be germproof and to block out the suspicious mist, meaning that it's mostly layers of plastic and sealants that melt away when exposed to genuinely serious toxins, rather than melting off any flesh or the like, but that also means those with breached suits are very eager to ditch and run before they catch plague too.     Then one of the armoured keeps rolls up at the escape end of the alley. A guy is up top in the turret nest. He sweeps for any visible targets, and then a proper hail of beefy .30 caliber rounds is shredding up the bricks and fences with a rapid thud-thud-thud-thud, punching holes through dumpsters and telephone poles and blowing apart shingles and roofing where people might take cover. It's all the attempted escapees can do to throw themselves flat.     Of course the cordon outside the lab is alerted. They're doing a lot of radio chatter, sending their extras down the path to the city center, and a helicopter briefly buzzes deafeningly overhead before converging on the same location. There's a firefight unfolding over maybe fifteen random civilians because of Elite interference definitely resembling unacceptable foreign agents compromising the lockdown ordered by the top levels of government. They're not gonna let a few guards get KOed and back off. It's the actual military. It'll continue to escalate. Pramanix can figure that out the instant she pokes her head outside.
Arthur Lowell	>==>     Arthur follows the trail to the base of the radio tower, settles down, and then hears what's above. SCHEME VOICES! They sound /involved/. Arthur immediately decides to take action. Does he know how to operate anything related to radios? No! Is he willing to learn? Also no!! Is he willing to do violence adjacent to the thing? Absolutely! >Arthur: Can you find a microphone?     Arthur does have a SMART PHONE! Which is something which still does have a microphone, in spite of how increasingly vestigal it is. >Arthur: Get a wire on the radio tower     Arthur slams into the base of the thing, where either wiring or buildings containing wiring tend to be found, and finds the one thing every obnoxious kid often demands: "GIMMIE THAT FUCKIN' AUX CABLE!" Did you know that extending lines in space includes extending the length of cables? It's true! GODS OF SPACE are known for extending CORDS across tremendous distances, or so the myth goes. Arthur rips whatever wiring he can out and then rushes up. His body flares with intense solar fire as he pulses huge volumes of energy through the cable and into the radio tower, ideally using his ENERGY PROVISION to massively overcharge its capacity to broadcast, and to overpower other sources of audio. Is this hacking? Probably not, but it's probably HIDEOUSLY ILLEGAL.     "'AY, 'AY, 'AY, 'AYYYY!" Arthur shouts as he rises on a rocket-thrust! "Are you about to CLEAR THIS SHIT UP? You gotta GET ON THE HORN!" He raises his plugged-in phone, which is on solar fire. "WHOEVER YOU ARE, get this HOT FUCKIN' MESS straight FIXED FAST!"
Zero Kiryu	"I can try to get a better idea of the scent of things," Zero grants as he wipes blood away from the palm of his hand, where a wound has freshly closed, "but I don't know that it'll help. The hospital smell is very strong. Let's see..." He shuts his eyes, focusing his senses on his sense of smell. Truly, he has no idea whatsoever what Rizzo or Yuuki expect him to find by digging into the scents of this place a little deeper. Anything distinct that /was/ there was probably scorched to nothingness when things went to hell. But maybe there will be a residual scent trail, or something along those lines, that can be followed. His brow twitches slightly as fighting begins to escalate outside. "By the way... That word. It has a double meaning. I don't appreciate it." Zero adds, more than a hint of aggravation finding its way to his voice.
John Rizzo	"Don't snap your cap, pal. I didn't mean it /that/ way."      To Yuuki, "'Director' is what you do. But what you /are/--both of you--is Kindred. Or close enough for government work."      Upon the word 'Kindred,' Zero and Yuuki both receive a mental image. It's a thought. Both of them know, instinctively, that it isn't a thought of theirs. It's an outside projection. The image is as obvious as it is simple--a classical vampire, complete with the fangs and the cloak. By his use of that word, they might assume that he, too, is one. He doesn't seem to feel strongly about it, one way or the other, but it's hard to be sure. He fixates on his work almost right after that explanation.      Rizzo again taps the notepad with his pencil, reading over his notes so far. He scribbles some more, as the radio chatter picks up. 'Good fog.' Made of cough syrup. They were testing a cure here, too.      The vision comes. He drops the notepad, seeming for a moment to be somewhere Else. The pencil rolls across the floor, until it collides softly against the leg of the desk. Tink.      "You're on the nose," says Rizzo. He agrees--the culprit is probably the ashen fingerprints. "Soot Fingers here... call it a shot in the dark, but. We've got this Frankenstein stuff in the other room--tables, chairs, straps. I'm thinking this is a guinea pig, and not the willing kind."      "Suppose... they get loose, light up outside the, uh... the airlock. My money's on magic." Those flames didn't look natural. "Fireball. That's their ticket out--everybody else is too busy, too scared to stop 'em, once the alarms go off. Once that H-bomb goes off. The rack over there goes kaboom. Outbreak. The fog, that's somebody's band-aid."
S6	S6 was watching for that. The second the flashbang leaves the soldier's hand, it's ensnared by the golden rings of the VRCS and she hurls it behind the soldiers, instead of allowing it to roll towards herself. She twists her extended hand, now dripping that scarlet fluid, and ensnares the entire squad's compliment of fragmentary grenades. They've seen the VRCS enough in these frantic few seconds to know what those golden runic rings mean.     "This. Has. To. Stop. I am not your enemy."     Humvee at the end of the alleyway. With a gun turret. Her gaze jerks towards it, and the grenades are released. She twists herself behind cover, brick and mortar. Her visor-clad gaze shifts to the patrol commander, "Does citizenship status change upon contracting illness?"
Karlan Nobles	Pramanix grimaces as she sees and hears what's going on outside, dipping back in to relay that information to the lab crew. "Things are getting worse outside, to put it lightly. We'll need to get the civilians to safety!" She pauses for a moment, grunting lightly while mulling over the logistics of that. "... Relatively. Even though they're in quarantine, it's... Hn. Where would that even be?" Details later, subduing the military now. Adjusting her cap, she starts tapping her bell against her side idly while poking her head back out. "The guards are moving. I can hear them shooting, and it's not all aimed in the same direction. It's definitely not at those of us still inside, either. It's just a matter of time, though. If there's anything that looks like it's worth taking, best to take it now in case they torch this place later." On that note, Pramanix starts ringing the bell a little more forcefully and outright chanting as she heads out of the busted up facility, snow and wind coming down in force now that she's not as worried about being subtle. Rather than bringing it down on any one set of soldiers, she opts to spread it far and wide, sending blinding snowfall and and massive gusts of wind every which way to make it exceedingly difficult for the escalating response teams to... Respond.
Remilia Scarlet	Scenting the room, Zero finds a lot less 'fire smell' than he'd think. Something did a pretty brief, *really* hot burn, without releasing much particulate or residue, and then the rest just comes from what actually lit on fire. The smell of the mist is still, of course, revolting, drifting even all the way down here. The smell of 'gauze blotted with a little blood' is actually kind of incongruous though. There's just sort of a vague 'bloody' scent component, that doesn't feel like it was spilled by a wounded person. There's also a vague fragrance of some kind of herb, with a whiff of liquid mercury about it.     Arthur hotwires a radio tower very illegally. His yelling can be heard basically across the valley. In reply to him, a probably oblivious voice yells back at him, and is similarly broadcasted. It sounds like . . . honestly it sounds like a goddamn fourteen year old girl.     "Huh? Clean it up? What a stupid question. What's the point of cleaning it up now that it just got interesting? Even more, what's the point of cleaning up something that was already a mess? Don't you get it?"     A second, older, calmer voice says "Remi, I think he's broadcasting everything we're saying." There is then a little slap of fist meeting palm. "Perfect!" There's a little throat clear after it.     Then the younger voice just starts *intentionally yelling* over the big broadcast microphone. "Attention! Attention! Listen up! Since you're all too stupid to figure it out, allow me to explain! Your boring village is under 'quarantine'! This means that all the sick people have to stay inside, so that they can't make anyone else sick! Only healthy people are allowed outside! You're supposed to stay inside to save lives, and going outside means you get killed, right?"     "Wrong! You morons! That stupid medicine stockpile? I blew it up! I took everything inside and blew it up because the people inside weren't doing anything! Nobody cares about 'tests' and 'studies' and 'distribution' and 'procedure' and 'models'! You're all hiding inside while the cure is right there in a different building! Honestly, how dumb are you? I took the medicine out of the building, I mixed it all up with magic, and now it's everywhere *but* there!"     "Do you get it now? 'Quarantine' is over! Now if you stay *inside* you're gonna die, and if you go *outside* you get healthy! Hear that, 'big government'?! I turned you 'quarantine' inside out you *idiots*! Fools! Now you have to kick them all *out* of their houses to fix things! I heard 'big government' likes pushing people around; what are you, chicken? If you don't start kicking people out of their houses right now then get out of my sight before I kick you to the moon!"     The second voice is briefly heard muttering "Really, you didn't have to say it out loud. I'm certain they already knew. You're giving the humans too much credit." Replied to only with "If it's that boring then what's the point of making a magic cure? They're supposed to rise up and do a riot or something. If I knew they'd all just stay inside like good dogs instead, I'd have done something more fun."
Guzma	The goons are feeling great. They're doing a good job! Though Garbodor's shot and leaking, while Salandit is scraped and Zubat is, well, it's airborne and small so it's harder to hit. But then comes the armored jeep with a turret. Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp all dive, taking their Pokemon with them. They're not equipped to deal with a /jeep/. But you know what is? One of Guzma's Pokemon is. Masquerain, still there, sweeps overhead from it's 'no one is looking' vantage point, and decides to intercept the threat before it hits 'friend'. A massive beam of ice juts out of the flying bug, moving to encase the turret in ice and prevent it from firing. And then, Remilia's announcement comes out. Guzma, at his side, is like 'what the heck' and then coughs up a cloud of fog. Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp...roll their will saves, and stand back up. Tupp and Zipp are enhanced, so they're feeling confident. So, they shout to the people in the streets. "Yo, you hear that? They're keeping you down! They're keeping you sick from getting some sweet cough syrup! You love your family, right? Get them some sweet air! Yeah!" As on cue, Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp all pose, and therefore are at prime position to get shot at. "SCREW THE POLICE!"
John Rizzo	"Their houses or the sewers," says Rizzo to Pramanix. "That's my vote." No one ever follows you into the sewers. Maybe when the shooting stops, they can get them back into this pea soup stuff. As Pramanix leaves, Rizzo reaches for the papers--the one tangible form of evidence he's actually familiar with, if unable to comprehend. He rolls them up and stuffs them into the pocket of his loose-fitting trench coat.      The moment he's outside, he hears the broadcast, even over the blizzard that Pramanix has conjured up. Well--it wasn't Soot Fingers after all. /That/ voice doesn't sound relieved or ecstatic. Definitely smug, but more annoyed than anything. Annoyed that the good time they tried to cook up ended up being a flop. Annoyed that they have to reveal what the con is. He'll bet that's the smaller, younger set of prints.      Rizzo follows behind Pramanix, revolver in hand, ready to provide covering fire with his dinky little wheelgun. Or at least that's what it looks like. In truth, what he's doing is searching for spikes in emotional energy, perceiving the auras of soldiers in their path. Any soldier that looks as if they're about to fire--that brief spike of fear and aggression--is blasted with an overwhelming wave of shame that rests upon their mind like a damp, soured towel.
Yuuki Kuran	'Kindred' is the word. A word the reflects in Yuuki's mind, within her mind's eye in a way that none others had directly done by Rizzo. It's a word with a meaning, and she contemplates it visibly for a few moments, half-lidded eyes closing as she finds an understanding. "Ah, that makes more sense. You think we're like 'my older brother'." Yuuki decides, her eyes re-opening as if from a dream. "I guess you're not wrong, but it's stuffy, isn't it? That picture in your head. I think it's too dark by far to describe us. I'm the sort..." She taps her nose with a smirk. "Who likes a little sunshine, too. It's not so bad. And Zero's the sort who'd torture himself to prove a point about when to sleep and when to stay awake." Rizzo lays out the pieces of the puzzle, and having it all pointed out: the parts make sense. "You're not half bad at the detective work!" She decides, reaching into her coat to finger the envelope lightly. "Still, you've got a bad read on Zero, and that wasn't the kindest way to make an impression on either of us. And even if 'Directing' is what I do, that doesn't change what I like to be, and be called." She extends a hand, to shake. "I'm Yuuki. It's nice to meet you, John." The group move outside, largely as the CULPRIT reveals themselves. Her hand goes back into her coat to finger the envelope. "Guzma, that sounds like a job for Team Skull, isn't it? To drag those people into a world they don't know they want or need? I'll leave you to it." She flips out her phone and lifts it to her ear, obviously addressing the young woman behind the events. "Hello! I'm Yuuki Kuran. That was some impressive work with the cloud. Who am I speaking to?"
Karlan Nobles	When that teenage-ish voice comes out louder and clearer than any voice should at that age, Pramanix can't help but just stare upwards vaguely in that voice's direction. "What? Is that why it's... Really?" She opens her mouth, shuts it, then takes off her hat to rub her head rapidly and soothe the onset of a headache. "So it wasn't a government cons...? No, wait. Of course it still is, even if the cough syrup thing..." Rizzo can probably see the confusion plastered all over Pramanix's face while she talks to herself to try and work out the logic behind all of this, and as she listens to the younger voice further, she actually starts to chuckle. "... That's one way to get them out. But will the military accept it, I wonder...?"
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Captchalogue phone     Arthur captchalogues the phone back into his sylladex after that seems to be done. "What the hell? Hey, wait, that shit sound real fuckin' FAMILIAR." Let's get a bit closer, through the fog. "HEY! Did you do ANOTHER of these things? Is that the GIMMICK, ya get BORED and then ya find whatever VAGUELY STABLE THING would FALL APART weirdly! 'Cause I'm a RAMBUNCTIOUS goddamn HOOLIGAN and I can TOTALLY LOVE THAT GIMMICK, except for the bits where people get NEARLY SHOT!"
Zero Kiryu	"He wasn't saying it to injure. I'd just prefer if he didn't say it again." Zero asides to Yuuki, indifferently. His aggravation seems to have largely ebbed away, present though it was briefly. He seems content with just setting boundaries in cases like these, and letting it lie if it was a reasonable misunderstanding. Which it absolutely was! "... And I brought an umbrella, didn't I?" He adds, on the subject of torturing himself. It wasn't necessary, of course. But Zero has /mostly/ come around to conducting himself more reasonably with regards to vampirism. To some extent, that's just informed by being inclined to spend time with Yuuki, though. When he sets his own schedule, it's usually not vampirism-friendly. "Also... whatever happened here was a bit too directed. There's some blood underneath it all, and some other chemicals too. And--" But before Zero can continue, Arthur gets his work done elsewhere and they all get an earfull. His expression flattens out, dull and distant. "Well..." "It looks like our man here was too unlucky to make the cut, anyway. It's a wonder his application didn't end up in the shredder before we got this far. Or-- did you stop that practice?" He asks Yuuki.
Yuuki Kuran	Yuuki looks as pleased as a cat freshly fed. "Hmm? Of course." "Priscilla burns them now, usually by hand. She quite enjoys the way the embers flutter, I think." Yuuki relates, terribly amused at the whole situation. "You did bring an umbrella. I'm very proud of you. Still, with the fog as it is, I doubt the sun could reach us if we were in it."
Remilia Scarlet	Crowded into a single alleyway, even from both ends, the army has a very limited ability to actually surround and suppress S6's position. The attempted sneaky flashbang goes flying, straight into the gunner's face, and then it's more the bang and percussion that takes him off the triggers, holding his head. The ice beam from above freezes the mechanism, traverse and all, solid, and leaves the current pileup mostly disarmed and baffled, multiple troopers all shouting into walkie talkies. The roaring buzz and beating gale of a helicopter passes above, casting its shadow over the yard. Laser designators are visible as little red lines in the mist, pinpointing the Elites bellow. The helicopter swivels, aiming a pair of honeycomb rocket pods at them.     The blizzard from Pramanix hits it especially hard. Helicopters are known for being garbage flying death traps in bad weather, and it goes spinning away rather quickly as the pilot wrestles the controls to keep it level rather than focused on 'the enemy'. The scene on the town is emotional chaos for Rizzo to pick out. Apparently, Guzma's goon squad yelling the rallying cry of 'fuck the police' is having a lot of effect; not so much on the military, but the people indoors. Now that the rumour shared between neighbourhood gossiping Betties is just a broadcast fact, well . . .     The situation expands beyond the army's ability to contain. Even with hundreds of troops, when *thousands* of people start busting out of their homes and making a run for it, or gathering up and chucking rocks and bottles and coming charging out of alleys in groups with random household bludgeoning objects, the intimidation factor falls to pieces under the reality of one man with a gun not being able to deal with a hundred sufficiently motivated men with random shit at hand, bravado in their hearts, and dying friends and/or family members on the line. More importantly, the chain of command is currently in chaos when the source of the mystery disaster announces itself over a hijacked radio tower.     Arthur is, drumroll, absolutely right. Getting up to the top of the radio tower, he finds a girl barely over five feet tall with blued gunmetal hair, an overly elaborate red and white dress, and dark wings wider than she is tall, standing mary janes apart and hands on her hips, bright red eyes glinting with recognition at him. "Oh? I remember you! You're from that time!" she says, raising a hand just to snap her fingers. An older woman, with deep purple hair and eyes, who looks like she'd barely bothered to drag herself out of bed given matching layers of quasi-pajamas and robes, flips through a stack of medical files that sure look like they'd belong back in the lab alright. She says, in a much less excited tone, "That time when you decided the 'modern world' was too boring for you and came right back, Remi." "It's not like I forgot Patch! I was being mysterious!"     Something starts bleeping in the reading woman's pocket. Remilia jumps with "Oh, that's the communication thing isn't it? Big government must be calling right now to surrender!" She just kind of grabs it without asking, putting it to her ear. "Am I to correctly surmise I am speaking with the president?" she replies, suddenly putting on a bizarrely smooth and haughty air, like changing hats. "You're speaking to the Scarlet Devil herself. Most Fearsome Descendent of Tepes. The Eternal Red Moon. Remilia Scarlet, Vampire Queen of Crimson. Are you ready to give up yet? Or are you going to make things interesting and send the rest of your forces~? I'm prepared either way."     Rizzo seems pretty much right at this point. Dalton got driven off his files, these sooty little fingers were all over them, and then an older and more responsible lady put them all back when they were done --except for one bundle of fires, apparently.
Arthur Lowell	>==>     "Didn't you have a MAID before? You downgrade from SPOOKY MANSION to PAJAMA PARTY?" Arthur immediately launches into his most obnoxious shit-talk. "Hey, stop SOLVING EVERY PROBLEM with EXPLOSIVES! You know what most RICH OLD ASSHOLES who live in MASIONS do when they get BORED? Because I don't, honestly, sounds like a fucking awful gig, but they do something that isn't EXPLOSIONS." He waggles his finger like it's motion-controlling something. "I THINK IT'S GOLF."     "Anyway, seriously! Can we get, like TWITTER UPDATES on the BOREDOM? I need an EARLY WARNING SYSTEM. WEE WOO WEE WOO, BLOOD-RED ALERT, REMILIA SCARLET BACK ON HER BULLSHIT. C'mon, I'm tryin' to HEROISM here." He wrings his hands. "There's a MILLION THINGS you can do that are SUPER INTERESTING and don't involve RANDOS gettin' SLIT. What kinda DEAL does a homie gotta make for you to STICK TO THOSE THINGS!"     "Also thanks for releasing the cure, even if I guess it was dangerously untested? But, like, conditional thanks. If people start vomiting their livers out after the cure fixes 'em I pre-retract the gratitude."
Karlan Nobles	Hearing the girl calling herself Remilia is rather surreal for Pramanix. There's a whole host of thoughts running through her head, and it's taking all of her remaining concentration and muscle memory to keep the ritual going properly to keep that helicopter away from where it needs to go. And then Yuuki identifies herself as the leader of the Concord. "She's...? Oh. Oh my." It takes a few more moments for Pramanix to process everything, but once she starts putting more pieces together, she chuckels to herself. "That makes things more interesting... What a fun place." For a moment, she forgets about her work, and she just basks in the absurdity of the entire situation, looking entirely at peace with everything. The next moment, she's back to bell-ringing and chanting, going for slightly more targeted bursts of hail as the townspeople begin to rally themselves against the military. It's going to take a while longer to translate what Arthur's yelling.
Guzma	As the crowds start rioting, Rapp gets out of the way while Tupp and Zipp team up to carry her onto a rooftop. They start cheering for the crowds, blasting any cops that seem like they'll actually kill massed civilians to scare them off. Guzma pushes his way through the riots, taking other routes, and returns Masquerain to his Pokeball. Climbing up a ladder on the side of the building, he reaches the rooftop with his gang. "Man, you guys got a riot going? Good job. Ice cream's on me." Cough. Will probably be soothing on the throat, he thinks.