Scene #7577: TRUE PSYCHIC TALES: The Cat That Lost Its Way

Owner	Pose
Staren	This region looks sort of northwesternish, like maybe the very far north American regions. Forest, oddly-shaped mountains, and clear black starry skies are visible as far as the eye can see... except in the direction everyone is headed. Maslow Peak is twisty, "gnarled" in the way one might expect a tree to be, and all leading up to one singular peak in an almost pyramid-like way, it looks like it'd be a hell of a hike to get up there. Fortunately the signal is coming from only partway up. UN-fortunately, the mountain is ringed by a strange, voluminous cloud with pulsating, twisty protrusions and an unsightly purple glow. It's unnerving to look at. Those with psychic or weather-sensing abilities can tell that it's slowly dissipating, but... do you really want to wait? Approaching by road leads up the mountain's base; Densely forested with exaggerated evergreen growth, with snowy frosting at the top. A sign, slashed in two by some sort of energy weapon, declares: MASLOW/ /PEAK UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS/ /STRICTLY PROHIBITED Eventually the road ends, giving way to a rocky offroad experience, and eventually even that ends, leading to a foresty path. But for the spectacle in the sky up ahead, it's almost beautiful and serene. ...Until the path of destruction begins. Trees splintered in half by bullets or explosions, cut to stumps by energy blasts, and parts of the ground are marred by craters from explosive weapons. Sometimes there's the corpse of an animal near the destruction. The reason why becomes apparent when, on occasion, bears, deer, wolves, and other forest critters wielding element-kinetic powers emerge from the forest and attack with a nigh-suicidalness and deadly determination surpassed only by Etrian wildlife. But there aren't that many; these are only stragglers. It seems whoever came through here depleted the area of hostile critters. The path of destruction leads partway up the mountain, to the entrance of a large cave system. A simple transmitter set in the snow, an antenna connected to a tablet and a battery pack, is the source of the signal. (If examined, the tablet has only a basic OS and the programming to send the signal.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXfHKEaDg4s Distant mechanical sounds echo from the cave. Whirs and clanks. Just the entrance is brimming with twisty stalagtites and stalagmites that seem formed by no particular rational geological processes. It also looks like this area was previously inhabited; very, very old mining equipment from the 20s at latest can be seen. Rails jut out from long-collapsed mineshafts, or present paths further into the mountain, and hefty iron crosswork bars offer climbing options.
Guzma	Guzma usually never flies. That requires going through the Ride Pokemon service and that's a pain. But when he learns Staren is not only out there, but dying, on top of a mountain... A Charizard swoops over the forest. And then three more. They're all solely for flying - not combat - but Guzma and the Team Skull Trio, Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp, are all flying across the road. They move to fly over the animals, using immense speed to beeline straight for the goal. The cave entrance. The Charizards are dismounted, left outside, as the four human trainers move to turn to the others. Guzma turns on his phone light. "We get in, we get Staren, we help him out, we get out. Got it?" As soon as he has assent, he moves to be the first in. He didn't know Staren the best. But he knew that Staren was family.
Cantio	Heading up any mountain would normally be a several hour affair, and Cantio would relish it as a chance to explore and challenge herself. With a Concord member's life seemingly on the line, however, she's opted to go with a more direct method of getting up there: Flight. As per Flamel's advice, however, she's chosen not to fly as high as possible, but staying relatively close to the ground so as to still be within drop kicking distance of any hostiles in a matter of seconds. Her drones, however, are a bit more expendable than that. She sends up a trio of boxy-headed robots that fly up into the sky, spinning slowly to help give her some more eyes from their point of view. The path of destruction is easy enough to follow and direct her in the direction of the cave, but she's keeping those drones up there to watch out for movement. It sounded like there might be more Starens, and she's seen plenty of beasts on the way up already. No sense lowering her guard yet.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel Parsons is here. His spy jet -- the one that isn't wreckage strewn on the mountain -- alights nearby, not on the mountain but relatively close, and he exits as quick as he can. He locks on to the path of destruction with rapid clairvoyance pings, identifying a trail of combat-aggression energy and following it swiftly. When he meets up with Guzma, he gives a cheerful little wave. "I'll track him down however I can. I don't know if I can, though, there's a lot of machinery and a lot of psychically-reactive minerals in here..." He strides in, planting two fingers on each temple and releasing sonar-like pulses. "Come on, where are you..." He's worried about that machinery noise, instantly activating his levitation to set about navigation.
Persephone Kore	The Psi-Responsive Alter Ego "Queen in Veils" is a serene thing; barely a mecha at all, more like a three-story doll made in the image of a fanciful goddess. Its halo-crown casts down white slats like solid sunbeams, hiding its body behind a shifting curtain that gives it a half-glimpsed mystique. Its dark hair curls and flows like wispy smoke; its ball-jointed limbs are moved by Persephone's telekinetic strength alone. It materializes in a shimmer of twisted space at the base of Maslow Peak, and casually walks up. The cloud parts ahead of it- no, the cloud is supplanted. Projecting a terraforming aura, the Queen in Veils leaves a hundred-foot-wide path of verdant grass and flowers behind it. The cloud can't encroach on its world, and is simply overwritten or bent around. The psychic animals hassle its legs, pelting it with various flavors of attacks. It bends down for a moment, reaching a hand out to them, and is met with a biting and burning rebuke- so it stands up again and simply keeps walking, my force of identity bending its body back into wholeness faster than it can be damaged. Sorry, little creatures! I'd love to stay and be friends, but there's so much to do. It kneels down next to Flamel when it catches up to him, watching him with faceless fascination. Persephone's own psychic sense reaches out, trying to feel for the weight of sapient minds: what intelligent creatures are on the mountain besides just them, and what are their general thoughts or feelings? "What do you see, Flamel? Or hear, haha. I want to know!"
Staren	Cantio's drones are safe as long as they don't approach the clouds. The brainstorm (uggggh) isn't aggressive, it just makes flying directly to the cave entrance a problem. Low flight neatly bypasses any issues besides literal thunderbirds. (Why is this place like this?!) Also someone with Superior Psychic Power showing up. The Ghost isn't here to guide and shape things, so Persephone just shows up and owns it. She may be able to just Asterios the party through this next bit... Deep within the mountain, there is one intelligent mind. It is tired. Determined. Angry at itself. There's a lot of self-anger. It's spread out, disembodied, shards of emotion without true intelligence wandering about. Inside the cave, the environment changes. Splotches of purple metal and crystal exude from the walls, forming hazardous spikes or attached to mechanical traps like spinning buzzsaws. Yet further in, the metal and crystal have completely covered the cave's inner surface, restructuring the environment into the innards of some great, nonsensical machine; giant gears and pistons threaten to crush those caught in an unlucky position or with poor timing while being necessary platforms to traverse the space, blades and gouts of steam and flame threaten to slice and burn, sections of floor visibly electrify on a timer, and pneumatic transport tunnels try to twist and turn around the direction sense of those who ride them. Here and there, constructs made of the metal and crystal attack -- humanoid and quadrupedal golems, giant tin soldiers, skelebots, and flying eye-drones. They say things like "INTRUDER" and "OUTSIDER" and "YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE" and "YOU ARE NOT PART OF THE SYSTEM", but they do not attack with much sophistication or great enough numbers to be a serious threat. The metal and crystal used in the environment, the traps, and the enemies... They're all psychically reactive in the same way as the brainstorm. Persephone may be able to start returning the cave to normal.
Staren	Eventually, the party comes to a hallway. The words WE DON'T NEED TO CLIMB THE MOUNTAIN are melted along one wall, and at the end of the hallway, a crushing gear trap has been jammed by a different, less-finished design of skelebot, with exposed wires, hoses, and bits of circuitry. Only part of its chest, one arm, and its head are exposed, and it flickers with light of that same purplish hue. Its arm claws uselessly at the wall, trying to free itself, until someone approaches and then the head turns to look at them. Unlike the structure or other enemies, it's not as easily reshaped. Staren's voice, tinny and distorted, says, "I am Staren Wiremu. And I hate--" The change in movement unsticks something, and the gear trap moves a bit further with a metallic crunch. The robot sparks and jerks. "I hate-hate-ha--" the gear finally crushes it and rolls off along a track in the wall, leaving broken bits of robot on the floor and exposing the next room. There's a cacophony of overlapping voices. It's another gear room, where the floor is one giant, slowly-spinning gear and the walls are smaller gears that could give an awful pinch if someone got caught in them wrong. And there are a dozen more Cold Readers clawing at the walls, with the remains of a few more already crushed by the gears. As soon as the party enters the room or attacks, they turn and attack, some just charging and clawing, others picking up the limbs of their broken brethren and dual-wielding them in a desperate, berserk style that takes advantage of their superhuman range of motion, and yet others staying back and firing beams of light or bolts of telekinetic impact from their fingers. All the while, each repeats a different phrase in a tinny imitation of Staren's voice, like a mad mantra: "--don't understand how. I don't understand. How?? I don't understand how--" "--I can't communicate with them. They don't make sense. How does everyone else--" "--just want to help. I just want to help!! I just--" "--is wrong with me? Is it me that's broken? How can I fix anyone else's problems if I'm broken? What--" "--broken in design. Am I fixable? I'll never work right. Nothing I try works. It's like I'm--" "--possible to understand. They're impossible to understand! How can I help them when they're im--" "--hate this. Hate it. Why can't I be like them?! Where their gut heroism impulses turn into saving the day?! Where making the hard decisions gets them respect?!" "--so selfish. I could do more if I wasn't a person. Stopped trying to be seen as one. Why do I want that? It's holding me back. My own selfishness--" "--see me as right enough or strong enough or they'll kill me or use me. The immortal untouchable man, Staren Wiremu. If I show weakness, I'm done for. They have to see me as--" "--'ve made sure nothing can hurt me, body of steel, armor of titanium, why do I still get hurt?? I need better--" "--only one I can trust to make the RIGHT hard choice is me, I just tried to do the right thing why does it always turn out this way?!"
Guzma	As they cross through the caves, into the lasers, Guzma's frustrated at Dark Staren, but has learned to shut up. Persephone gets a thumbs-up as she helps them blitz through, but when they get to the Cold Readers... The beams and bolts blast out, causing the four Team Skull members to duck to the ground. Guzma should summon a Pokemon. But...the Trio have a different plan. They begin tackling and trying to grapple the Cold Readers, shouting out to Guzma and the others. "We got them! Shoot them down! Boss, run ahead! You need to help Staren!" Avoiding gears and pincers and claws, Guzma moves to charge past with mildly superhuman speed, and be the First to get to Staren, if he can. Staren obviously doesn't like him, but... He's changed. Maybe by showing that to Staren, he can help the cat.
Flamel Parsons	Persephone gets a shake of the head. Dang! "Can't read much. There's too much Staren for me to find Staren, it's a needle in a needle-stack." He grits his teeth. "Which means I can't find the Dark one either. And if it's gonna ride out of here on a Cold Reader... Mmmh." Flamel, with shield and beam, and with levitation-powered movement, works to navigate around the gears, but more specifically, to counter thje Cold Readers. He shouldn't be doing telepathy at them if he can help it, considering how they constantly draw in any mental identity they're exposed to. So he sticks to blasts, ruthless heavy shots as if from a handcannon based on how much kick and stopping power they have. Telekinesis is used to try to remove limbs from sockets to prevent continuity of body and to limit how much Staren-identity can be in one body, to hopefully make sure they won't have pursuers once these recover. They always seem to come back together eventually... Guzma's speeding ahead. Will that be okay? "Be careful! But, good luck!" Flamel can tell this is more complex, emotionally, than Guzma is letting on. He tries to take in the tailwind, so to speak, and get in the gaps that Guzma's team has made, to head in swiftly as well. "Not everyone can climb this mountain... It's a big challenge. Even I couldn't do it alone. Jeez, Staren, why did you climb it alone...? That alternate-timeline thing can't have been the real story. This is too much to take alone, especially if you're fighting your Ghost."
Cantio	Entering the cave with a whole host of her friends and allies, Cantio's actually feeling pretty good about her odds here. Now that she's not flying around, it's easy to see that she's already transformed ahead of time, too, complete with white bodysuit, gag-inducing pink hair, and power-symbol pupils that makes her look more like a children's toy than anything resembling a moving person. Compared to how the Dark? Staren looked earlier, she's feeling a bit self-conscious about all of that, although she's doing an okay-ish job hiding that with her posture in trying to look focused. Thankfully, with so many hazards in their path, it's pretty easy to focus on those rather than her personal appearance. She sends a drone in to test out the timing first, wincing slightly as one of them gets smashed between some gears and pistons. Getting through them should theoretically be manageable enough, but... <X-Concord-Chatter> [4] Persephone Kore says, "Hey, Cantioooo." <X-Concord-Chatter> [4] Persephone Kore says, "This whole area's psychically responsive! It's so cool. I bet you could reshape it, couldn't you?" <X-Concord-Chatter> [4] Persephone Kore says, "Just remember what I taught you!" Isn't this Persephone's wheelhouse? Or Flamel's? She's known them both to be way better at this, but if that's what's being asked of her... <X-Concord-Chatter> [4] Cantio says, "Reshape...? Oh! Oh. I can try, yeah!" Worst case scenario, she fails horribly and they all die. No pressure. Swallowing lightly, she holds her hands out as she tries to remember how she did the thing that last time. IT's a bit wonky, but she's soon 'punching' her will into the psychic landscape, not quite reshaping it through any sort of finesse so much as she's just playing the part of a psychic battering ram against things that may or may not be suitable for getting hit with battering rams. "A-am I doing it? This is... Kind of tricky to control, right? How do you all manage this?" She asks of them while focusing her efforts on widening everything out, to give the crew more space to maneuver and to aid Guzma's team with the Cold Readers. "I don't know much about this.. This whole climb thing, but we're here for you. And also for you, too, so give us a chance!" She shouts through the cave, not quite sure if he can hear her, but she's pretty good at projecting her voice even without fancy gear to back it up.
Persephone Kore	Persephone is, in fact, capable of totally trivializing the terrain- but she'd rather see Cantio's newly-gifted abilities put to use instead! The Queen in Veils casually trudges through the hazards, helping out Guzma's gang members with their tussles by radiating a crushing aura of gentle warmth- the Cold Readers it passes by ought to succumb to a kind of awed serenity, unable to bring themselves to any further hostilities. It crouches down and ever-so-gently pats Cantio's head with just its index finger. "Haha, yeah! Just like that. I knew you could do it, Cantio! It's like controlling a new limb. You know? Your brain's still figuring out how. But you're such a fast learner!" Since everybody else is handling the practicalities, Persephone can indulge herself just a little. The Queen in Veils reaches down and plucks one of the more intact Cold Readers up off the floor, holding it securely enough that it can't squirm free, and then scours it with my super-concentrated psychic influence. Flamel thinks that you're not adoptable, little thing! But I think you're beautiful- almost as beautiful as he is. It's just that you've been poisoned by someone's bad side, right? I'll teach you to be someone better. I'll teach you to be me! Won't that be wonderful? Its priorities and loyalties are gently but irresistibly realigned to hers; its previous psychic impressions forcibly sheared off. The impressing herself on it can come later!
Staren	It's crude but it works, like giant hands are battering and pushing aside the platforming level. Less trouble for Guzma and everyone else. When they get to the Cold Readers, though, the 'giant hand' doesn't interact with them as easily and well, there are a lot of them. Flamel knows how to fight them so they can't really surprise the party. But Guzma splits the group even as one of the cold readers he rushes past complains about heroic impulses. Down one tunnel, he can hear voices. It sounds like more Cold Readers, but there's also a higher voice shouting intermittently. Heading that way leads, after some 'dodge the swinging blades' and 'hop from gear to gear over the chasm' challenges, to another large chamber. This one is still largely stone, though much of the floor and large sections of wall are covered in the metal; the only other exit is another metal deathtrap hallway, though. More importantly, someone is here, as are a few Cold Readers A fight is already in progress: "--ven when I try to do right it's wrong. I couldn't save her. Why did he stop me? Was I that wrong? Or was I just a coward? I ran away. She's gone now. I couldn't--" Their voices aren't tinny this time, clearly Staren's. "SHUT UP!" A young woman hoarsely screams. She's... well, it's obviously Staren. She's smaller and the hair is longer, but the ears and tail are there, the outfit is the same, the overly long white labcoat scorched and torn in places, smeared with a bit of blood on the arms. The front of the scarf has been burned away, scorched circuit traces dangling from the tattered fabric. The red shirt and black cargo pants make it hard to see bleeding cuts and scrapes, the latter bloused into leathery work boots. She struggles to her feet and fires at the one that spoke once, burning a hole in its armor but not finishing it -- a second charges and she pulls the trigger again, but the batteries are empty. She drops the laser pistol and barely finishes standing in time to step aside, swiping with her laser sword to keep it at bay. It bends and twists its body inhumanly to avoid the attack, all the while shouting in despair: "--how much power I get, nothing changes. Why am I so weak? No matter how--" "SHUT UP!" It stumbles back as small explosions rock its body, blowing holes in the armor. Staren's drawn a conventional pistol, but the third shot goes wide as another Cold Reader grabs her hand from behind. "No!" She swings the sword wildly behind her, and then suddenly is a cat scampering away -- just in time, as the Reader that grabbed her jabs the sharp bones of its other arm -- its hand cut off -- where Staren's back was an instant before. A cold reader tackles the cat, she slips free because, well, cat, and then scrambles to halt as the ground near her explodes, the one-armed reader now firing the pistol it took. The cat's ears perk up at a distant shout: "We're here for you. And also for you, too, so give us a chance!" Staren transforms again, grinning to themself knowing they just have to hold out until whoever that is gets here, springing to her feet and turning to dodge, when the one they lasered before holds out a blue-white glowing hand and the patch of floor under Staren is covered in something clear and shiny, and with feet suddenly stuck in place she falls on her hands. "No! YOU'RE not supposed to use it on ME, no fair!" Cybernetic laser-welders extend from her wrists and start cutting the floor around her hands, but it looks like that will take awhile. She looks at the cutting like an idiot, then, half-blinded, looks up at the shapes of the advancing Cold Readers, which continue their despaired words: "--relax for a moment and they'll die, more friends will die, lost forever because I wasn't prepared en--" Whoever was shouting... if they get here in time, will it only lead to Staren not being good enough to save her, one day? "No no no! No..." She braces, turning to take expected attacks on the armored labcoat. Small explosions rock the floor; the cold reader is not a good
Staren	Small explosions rock the floor; the cold reader is not a good shot with that pistol. Will it get lucky before it runs out of ammo? "--is my fault. I thought I could kill anything bad inside of me but I just unleashed a new Ghost. Maybe he's right. Maybe he'll be a better me than I ever was... This is my fault--" Hearing that, she slumps to the floor in tears. And then her ears perk up and she turns to look at the activities and words of... Guzma. Great. She gets to live, but... It will only show that even he is a better asset than Staren. It's like getting saved by Lezard or someone, results continuing to make evil ways look attractive to the Concord. After what the Ghost said, he can probably guess what the expression on her face means. Still, at least Staren can resign themself to life rather than death. "Help..." She starts trying again, moving tiredly, "Help me!"More expressions flash over Staren's face in rapid succession: Anger and embarassment at being seen losing and having to be rescued from his own screw up. Cold determined poker face trying to cover up that last one too late. And finally, the realization that now they're completely bodily stuck to the floor until the effect ends. "Oh, f--!"
Guzma	As the Cold Reader starts attacking Staren, who is apparently a girl, Guzma rushes in. He can hear her words. He can hear her fear. The fear of the Cold Reader. And he has something to say. Something he never got to say before. As she slumps to the floor in tears, and starts calling for help, and the Cold Reader keeps shooting, Guzma suddenly runs in the way, to bodily block every shot. "Staren, be strong! You were right! I was nothing but a thug! An angry brute who stole, because all he wanted was validation from a crappy boss who couldn't give it to him! But then I met you, and the Concord, and everyone taught me that it didn't matter! I didn't need validation - I needed family!" A shot slams him back, thudding against the ground. The blood pools at his lip. But he rises anyways. "And you're family! Come on! Fight this! We're getting out of here!"
Cantio	It's working! Sort of. It's working well enough that Persephone's praising Cantio for it, and she perks up despite (or perhaps especially) from the giant machine's touch. "R-right! It's... Yeah, it really is like another limb, huh? It's easier to swing around than to do careful stuff with, but for something like this..." It'll have to do. Advancing with the rest of the group that hasn't charged forward, Cantio listens closely to the voices, the sounds, that turmoil that reminds her a bit too much of what she's already heard before. Of what she's said before. It's hard to make out, and she's only getting bits and pieces, but she gets a fair amount of context clues from the radio. Sort of. "That's just like..." She trails off, instead using that lingering anxiety to push her onwards. She can't worry about the what-ifs if she just charges forward, and with Guzma already so far ahead, her best bet is to just focus on keeping up instead of thinking too hard about it. "We can't fall too far behind. If we can catch up to Guzma, we can recover Staren and figure out the rest from there!" Cantio shouts with renewed vigor, taking advantage of both Persephone's telekinetic force powers and her own blade to just barrel through whatever other non-Staren-shaped enemies are in their path. She may even resort to using that telekinesis on her sword like a blender without anything to hold its power back.
Staren	Meanwhile in the next room: Staren looks shocked. And then hopeful. Guzma has changed... and if Seifer could change, and Guzma could change... Maybe there's hope Staren can change, too? She winces as Guzma takes one of her uncle's magic exploding bullets, though. That's GOTTA hurt. "I'm STUCK. You need to kill the mage! The one staying back! Look out!" Just then, the reader that keeps rushing charges Guzma, trying to grab him -- dodged or not, it catches the next bullet, and after that looks like it might fall apart if hit hard enough. "Reach into my bag, think 'submachinegun'! Just empty the mag at it if you have to! There's two in there!"
Guzma	The trio follow Cantio like dogs. Meanwhile... Guzma scratches his head, as he's bleeding. "Oh, this isn't a 'metaphorical fight your demons' thing, gotcha. Lemme just..." He reaches into the bag, and thinks. Submachinegun, submachinegun... He doesn't know what they look like except from images, but he gets one. He grabs it, feels it in his hands, and aims it at the Cold Reader, right as he rolls out of the way. "Take this, you bastard!" The entire magazine is emptied into the Cold Reader, trying to tear it apart. Chest, and head if he can get a few lucky shots. It's just point and shoot, right?
Flamel Parsons	Flamel has a hell of a time catching up to Guzma. He can't share any of his abilities besides the ability of astral projection. But a quick nod to Cantio confirms. "I'll try to bring up the pace if you can too! Persephone, can you bring it to a jog?" His levitation begins to produce an engine-like whine as he accelerates to an intense dash's speed. His barrier is summoned up and he tries to shield-bash his way through more of the hazards and more of the terrain, even, to get to Staren. Who is a girl now! Okay! Flamel isn't really equipped to think about that right now. Instead, he's equipped to think about getting out of here. He offers a massive telekinetic hand with which to toss her up to the Queen in Veils as the group eventually manages to catch up with Guzma. "We can get you out! Hey, Persephone, can you carve an exit tunnel and take Staren?" Asking her to core out a small chunk of Maslow Peak might just be because he's still a tad flustered about getting some of his brain tunnelled through.
Persephone Kore	The Queen in Veils simply wades through the remaining hazards and crowd of Cold Readers- my aura will eventually erode their capacity for violence, and the mech's regenerative durability minimizes most harm taken until then. At worst, she gives them the dignity of telekinetically deflecting their attacks and gently scolding them: "Hey, stop it. That hurts a little! It's really not cute." (She can also spare a little energy towards protecting Cantio! Look at that little psychic prodigy go.) Finding Staren's mental signature may be like a needle in a haystack among all the Cold Readers', but tracking Guzma's is considerably easier: he's unique, and I know the feeling of his weight pretty well by now! It's a good shape. It isn't long before she catches up, her serene implacability eventually covering the same ground as his mad dash. From a distance, to a panicked Staren, the Queen in Veils could almost look like Priscilla: monstrously tall, pearly-white, with a pseudo-divine aura and the impression of a flowing dress. But it isn't: its hair is black smoke instead of flowing white, its limbs are ball-jointed plastic-and-metal instead of flesh and blood, its face is featureless instead of noble and half-draconic, and it bears a halo-crown instead of a scythe. "Got it, Flamel!" "Oh, hi!" she says in a distinctly un-Priscilla-like voice as her doll-mech catches Staren in one hand. "You look a lot different than I thought you would, haha. 'Staren' is still a good name, right?" In the background, casually- she doesn't even look- I take exception to the structure of the world! It's being really inconvenient right now. I'd like it to be a different shape. And so it becomes a different shape. Thousands of tons of rock are instantly blown out under the terrifying psycho-gravitational force of Persephone's will, creating a hundred-foot-wide tunnel directly back from here to the night sky. Stone is shredded into rocks are shredded into pebbles are shredded into dust as their permission to exist is abruptly rescinded, with no visible effort at all. The Queen in Veils starts to walk out through the smooth-walled tunnel, exuding the sense that Persephone is very quietly pleased with herself. In the distance, boulders that managed to get blown away as intact matter impact against the ground miles away with distant dull crunches. "Are you feeling okay, Ms. Staren? Any injuries we ought to know about?"
Staren	Guzma is going to get a nasty surprise the next time he uses a gun if this was his first time. It seems so easy, high-tech recoil compensators make it easy to keep a full-auto barrage like that on target, and technology pushed to the limit of improving slug-based weaponry ensure extra damage! The bullets pierce armor and break vital important bits, and that Cold Reader goes down. Staren's LUCKY GUESS seems to be correct that it was maintaining an imitation of the spell rather than successfully casting a psionic version. She's relieved to get to her feet and immediately spears the cold reader that was trying to grab Guzma with her beam sword. That leaves the one with the stolen pistol and sharp arm-stump which SOMEONE is probably going to make short work of shortly. If for no other reason than that its despaired moaning is really kind of bringing down the happy reunion mood: "--I wasn't prepared enough, I think I can relax for a moment and they'll die, more friends will die, lost forever because I--" Cantio puts a stop to that as the psychic construct is thrown into a wall and then aggressively and finally impaled by her sword. "Flamel!" Staren, for his? her? Their part, smiles in recognition and scrambles into the telekinetic hand, and then... Priscilla, presumably with Asterios's help, walks into the chamber at full size like it's nothing-- Wait, no, that's not Priscilla. Staren stares up at it. Normally a mech is no big deal but Persephone has presence and also Staren's pretty out of sorts right now. "Why wouldn't it be?" She's puzzled, and pulls a healing potion out of her bag to drink. Persephone complaining about the structure of the world gets a "Man, that's a mood." of agreement from Staren. And then stares wide-eyed at the tunnel. They're not familiar with this mech's tricks yet, and would have expected a bore or something! Okay, it's got incredible telekinesis or something! For a brief moment before the Queen in Veils takes a step, the moonlight shines in from the tunnel, perfectly framing Staren's shadow (not Shadow) against the opposite wall. The later question finally tips Staren off to what was meant as they're adressed with 'miss'. "Oh, that. Name's fine. I was... I was always a boy and a girl, just... people thought it was weird if I changed... but now I guess my animus has run off, so..." vague gesture at herself.
Guzma	The gun feels so easy, and Guzma just destroys the Cold Reader. "Wow, these are nice. Not my thing, but I don't kill, yanno?" It was a robot, so. He returns the gun, and moves to leap out with the others as Queen In Veils carves the mountain open. The Charizards fly up, catching the trio and Guzma. "Staren! You've got a lot of explaining to do...but first, we need to get you somewhere safe and cozy. Let you rest. Got it?"
Cantio	"I can show you some later if you'd like. Or swords that shoot lasers, if you'd prefer something different." Cantio suggests to Guzma as she catches up with the crew, doing a quick sweep around the area with her own sword (which she's still using with that telekinesis) even though most of the area is no longer area. "Staren? You're... Ah, we'll worry about the rest once you've recovered. It's good to have you back!" She smiles, although there is a bit of a troubled expression beneath all of that. Could she have ended up like this, too?
Persephone Kore	The Queen in Veils walks down the carved-out path, painted in gentle moonlight. Its movements are elegant, graceful- probably some mental interface, if Staren had to guess; it even has natural body language. "So you just ended up that way," she concludes. "I get it." Somehow, Staren could get the sense that she really does. Her psychic senses explore the shape of Staren's mind, though, memorizing it for later: she'll have to remember its shape to figure whether 'Dark Staren' is really a distinct person, or 'just' a missing puzzle piece. And, while she's examining them, she looks through the narrative residue of their life for pivotal events. In a broad and simple sense, she's trying to glimpse crucial past events to answer the question: "Why are you the way that you are?"
Staren	Staren blinks. "I guess? I shapeshift by natural magic, so..." 'I don't know how it works' was on the tip of her tongue, but she looks away again, reminded of whatever she was avoiding earlier. Persephone gets SOME STUFF. A kid that wanted to be a hero in a world where that was a thing. Misunderstandings with other kids. The Union. Misunderstandings. The nightmare. Distrust. Feeling unwanted. Failing to save people. Wireless. Giving up on the war. The suicide mission. LOSING MORE PEOPLE. Befriending and working across faction lines. New faction. Great time. Until they tolerated more and more who weren't trying to make the world better. Pushed into talking about Utopia. Looked down on for not building it. Fighting for Seifer and Riku's friendship. Losing Haguro. Lost in the past. Seeing that poor dragon child gunned down by Coalition power armor. Seeing that troubled kid off himself. Falling in with a group of crazy vampire hunters to survive feeling constantly uneasy. Coming home. Learning that he was half-fey and his parents are very concerned about his anti-fey zealotry. Deciding to purge himself of evil. Oh. Oh. That's why.